The Campaign (2012)

Because Filipino Tilt-a-Whirl Operators are This Nation’s Backbone!

My interest was piqued in today’s movie because of the two actors that starred in it, but I probably wouldn’t have gone to the theater for it.  I feel like I’ve been burned by one of the actors in the movie before, though the other has not really let me down just yet.  I guess I looked at the movie and just felt like I didn’t trust it to be worth my money, so I had set my mind to waiting to see it until it came out on DVD and I could get it from RedBox.  But when Friendboss Josh suggested we go see it, I decided to go.  I was on the fence anyway; I just needed a little nudge.  And that brings us to my review of The Campaign, written by Chris Hency and Shawn Harwell, directed by Jay Roach, and starring Zach Galifianakis, Will Ferrell, Dan Aykroyd, John Lithgow, Dylan McDermott, Jason Sudeikis, Brian Cox, Katherine LaNasa, Sarah Baker, Jack McBrayer, and John Goodman.

Democratic Congressman Cam Brady (Will Ferrell) has found himself in a sticky situation after he accidentally leaves a sexually explicit message meant for his mistress on the answering machine of a very conservative Christian family.  In response, the two corrupt businessmen that formerly backed Cam, brothers Glen (John Lithgow) and Wade Motch (Dan Aykroyd) decide they need a new candidate to run against Cam with their backing so that they can later manipulate him into letting them bring the Chinese tradition of sweat shop labor to America.  They pick Marty Huggins (Zach Galifianakis), eccentric – and possibly gay – son of former politician and Motch brothers associate, Raymond Huggins (Brian Cox), and set Tim Wattley (Dylan McDermott) to be Marty’s campaign manager and hopefully fix the mess that is Marty enough to make him a viable candidate.  And so begins the battle for the Congressional seat of North Carolina’s 14^th District.

When I left this movie, I found myself torn in regards to its quality, but Friendboss Josh helped me set myself straight.  I had gotten it into my head that the movie was underwhelming because there were points within this movie that I was not laughing, but then Josh reminded me that movies tend to feel the need to include story, which sometimes needs to be exposition and not laughs.  I don’t really know what I was thinking.  The only things that can pull off non-stop laughter are videos on YouTube with the word “Fail” in the title.  And Josh was kind enough to remind me that I laughed out loud on more than one occasion during this movie.  …But fuck Josh!  He doesn’t tell me what to do in a non-work setting!  I HATE THIS MOVIE!  Okay, I don’t.  When I got to thinking about it in the proper head space, I realized that I did find this movie funny enough to recommend for a viewing.  The story was pretty solid.  The tactics in the battle ramp up in new and mostly hilarious and preposterous ways.  I also found it very interesting that the guy we had liked from the beginning of the movie and the guy we hated started to trade places at one point in the movie, though it’s probably not that atypical of a thing to see in a movie like this.  And, though it goes mostly in the way you’d expect, the way it gets there is filled with enough solid laughs that it’s okay.  It would be no spoilers if you saw the trailer for the movie, but I probably laughed the hardest when Cam pulled a Raging Bull on that baby.  First because it was in slow-mo, and second because to Hell with that baby.  The only other part I can really remember making me laugh really hard was the part where Cam’s car had a painting of him sitting down on the side of his car, which I found hilarious.  There were plenty of other moments, but I took shitty notes.  I mean … I don’t want to ruin it …?

The performances were pretty much exactly what I expected them to be.  Galifianakis was probably not as funny as I’d want him to be, but I probably just hold him in too high of a regard.  I’ve loved him for a long time and I probably just always want him to blow my mind with his hilariousness.  The character he does in this movie is funny, but it’s also one I’ve seen him do in a few different places before.  I wouldn’t necessarily assume that the character would be able to sustain an entire movie, but it did alright and brought a good deal of funny.  I liked his awkward attempts to trash talk with Cam, but more of the actual funny came from Ferrell in that exchange.  Ferrell was also a pretty typical character for him, being the smug, stupid, douche nozzle type, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t do it well.  And he punched a baby right in its stupid face.  Speaking of stupid faces, how was Galifianakis’ chubby son in the movie able to pull off a perfectly round face?  He was like a Charlie Brown character.

Once my crazy expectations were put in check, I came to realize that I found The Campaign plenty funny enough to earn a recommendation.  The story was not unexpected, but contained plenty enough laughs, and that’s all a comedy really needs, and the same could mostly be said about the performances.  It’s not the most mind-blowing comedy ever, but it’s good, solid laughs and worth checking out.  The Campaign gets “Rainbow Land is a fictitious place!” out of “I’m Cam Brady, and I seductively approve this message.”

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people.  Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense.  Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated.  You can also add me on FaceBook and Twitter.  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

Ghostbusters II (1989)

Death is But a Door.  Time is But a Window.  I’ll Be Back.

Because I cannot watch Ghostbusters without finishing the series, I watched Ghostbusters II today.  This is a movie that has taken a bit of a beating, which is even more noticeable as it follows it’s amazing predecessor.  But was this a bad movie, or just a movie that suffers from being in the shadow of Ghostbusters?  Let’s find out!  Ghostbusters II was again written by Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd, again directed by Ivan Reitman, and mostly again starring Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver, Henry and William Deutschendorf, Wilhelm von Homburg, Peter MacNicol, Rick Moranis, Annie Potts, Harris Yulin, Kurt Fuller, David Margulies, Cheech Marin, Walter Flanagan, Ben Stein, Brian Doyle-Murray, and Bobby Brown.

The Ghostbusters are back, and better than ever!  Oh wait, no they’re not.  They’ve actually fallen on hard times in the 5 years since the first movie.  Turns out, the mayor (David Margulies) stiffed them on that little job that saved the city/world in the first movie and they’ve mostly lost the respect of the people of New York, all of whom seem to have forgotten how they’re alive because of the Ghostbusters.  Raymond Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) and Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson) make ends meet by performing at kid’s birthday parties, Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) hosts a TV show about the paranormal, and Egon Spengler does tests involving making kids sad.  One day, Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver) stops by to visit Egon because the stroller of her baby, Oscar (Henry and William Deutschendorf), went crazy, weaved through traffic, and stopped abruptly in front of the museum she works at.  She asks Ray and Egon to investigate, but asks that they not tell Venkman because they had broken up after the first movie, leading her temporarily into the arms of Oscar’s father.  Venkman tortures Ray into spilling the beans, and three of the Ghostbusters are reunited.  Their investigation leads them to dig a hole into the middle of a busy street, where they find a strange pink ooze.  Then they get arrested.  This ooze, and a certain painting of interest, lead the Ghostbusters to have to save the world yet again.

I will flat out defend this movie as still being a great comedy.  I think what hurts this movie is that it will forever be in the shadow of a far superior movie.  Ghostbusters was so gundamned good that it would inevitably lead someone to go into this movie with high expectations that it couldn’t possibly meet.  And, since it did not manage to either surpass or even match Ghostbusters, I think people assumed they hated it more than they should have.  It’s still very funny and easily as quotable.  I know I’ve busted out lines from this movie at random times for comedic effect.  Some of my favorites are “He is Vigo!  You are like the buzzing of flies to him!”, “I have all NEW cheap moves”, “Carpathian Kitten Loss”, and “Do. Re.  Egon!”  I really don’t understand people hating on this movie so much.  I understand the first one set that high bar, but you couldn’t have not laughed in this movie.  It’s still very humorous and the story is at least nearly as good as the first one.  A very minor step down from the first movie.  Also, I wasn’t a fan of the whole “people should be nice to each other or ooze will form under your city” message.  And the dialogue is just as clever.  It does take a step up graphically.  One can assume the great success of the first movie netted them a good amount extra money for the sequel, so you would expect the graphics to step up.

Murray still brings it.  You can’t keep that man from awesomeness.  He’s still hilarious and charming in a way that makes you believe that this dude could land Sigourney Weaver … twice!  Aykroyd and Ramis give the same quality of performance they gave in the first movie, and I feel no need to retype it.  It was yesterday, for crying out loud.  Ernie Hudson still isn’t in it very much, but he did get a few good moments, like when the ghost train ran through him.  Sigourney is still good here, and the 80’s hair is beginning to calm down.  Annie Potts got hotter, in my opinion, and I don’t need your approval for that.  Psst … call me …  Rick Moranis’ characters little attempt to be the hero didn’t do anything for me, and I might be hating on him because he got to knock the boots with Annie Potts.  Peter MacNicol was a new addition to the movies, and a welcome one.  I felt like he could have been the second funniest character in the movie.  That crazy accent he got from being from the Upper West Side was ridiculous.  Baby Oscar, played by William and Hank Deutschendorf perhaps didn’t need to be credited here, but they were adorable as babies.  Wilhelm von Homburg was a little hit and miss.  Sometimes he was freaky as Vigo the Carpathian, and sometimes he just looked goofy.

So there that is.  Back up off Ghostbusters II’s jock, alright?  Yeah, it’s not as good as Ghostbusters, but neither are a lot of movies you like.  And I’d wager Ghostbusters II is still a contender with any of those movies you may be thinking of because it still has a good story, still has great characters that are performed well, still has clever dialogue, and even has better graphics when compared to the original.  Not AS good, but definitely good.  Ghostbusters II gets “And you don’t want us exposing ourselves!” out of “How many of you people out here are a national monument?  Raise your hand.”

Hey, peeps. Why not rate and comment on this as a favor to good ole Robert, eh? And tell your friends! Let’s make me famous!

Ghostbusters (1984)

When Someone Asks You if You’re a God, You Say “Yes”

Allow me to pose a query to you.  Assume, for a moment, that you are in the area in which you live.  Suddenly, you notice that something rather peculiar is happening there.  You have only your cell phone with you and 1% left on the battery life; time only to make one call.  Given all of this information that I have given you, to which group of people will your call be most efficient?  Today’s movie!  A lot of my movie reviews happen at the behest of someone else; either through requests or simply my thoughts about which movie could I most make fun of to entertain the people that read these.  Today’s movie was at my own behest.  What caused me to behest myself was a video playing on one of the TV’s at my job.  I was only able to see bits and pieces, and was able to hear none of it.  And since I love this movie, I needed to watch it.  That movie is Ghostbusters, written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, directed by Ivan Reitman, and starring Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver, Rick Moranis, Annie Potts, Slavitza Jovan, William Atherton, David Margulies, Alice Drummond, Steven Tash, Jennifer Runyon, Rhoda Gemignani, and Michael Ensign.

Three parapsychologists are called in when a strange occurrence happens at the New York Public Library.  Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) is already on the scene by the time Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) and Raymond Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) arrive.  Venkman immediately begins grilling the spooked librarian (Alice Drummond) to see if she’s just crazy or not.  Relatively assured that she actually may have seen something, the trio go to investigate, quickly finding that there is, indeed, a ghost.  They then run for their lives.  Egon feels that the readings he took could allow them to capture such spirits and this gives Venkman a business idea.  Unfortunately, as Ray points out, they already have jobs…or do they?  Nope, they’ve been fired.  So they go into the ghostbusting business, purchasing a retired firehouse as their base of operations.  At first, the only client they have is a woman named Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver), who claims to have seen eggs cook on her counter and a creature in her fridge.  The only thing that really comes out of that is Venkman’s immediate – and unrequited – love for Dana.  Then, their receptionist, Janine Melnitz (Annie Potts), gets the call that the Sedgewick Hotel has a ghost problem.  Capturing this ghost rockets them into stardom, making them so busy that they have to hire a fourth Ghostbuster, Windston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson).  But when the strange occurrences start to elevate for both Dana and her neighbor, Louis Tully (Rick Moranis), the Ghostbusters have to get involved, and may just have to save the world.

Let us cut through the formalities and just get right to the nitty gritty.  I hate this movie.  I hate this movie because of how damned awesome it is.  It has no right to be so great in every way!  It makes the rest of us look bad!!  OM to the G this is a great movie.  I would go so far to say this is one of my favorite movies ever.  Let’s talk story first.  Now, it’s been well documented (by myself) that I love ghost movies.  I love ghost everything, for that matter.  I certainly love these ghosts things more than most people who have never seen, and are skeptical about, ghosts.  Next to ghost movies, another one of my favorite things in movies is comedy.  Either the combination of my loves made Ghostbusters one of my favorite movies, or Ghostbusters made me love good comedies and ghost movies.  Who knows?  The story itself in the movie isn’t that spectacular, it’s the comedy and the performances that bring a good story to great stature.  And the look is amazing too.  I assume there was a certain degree of budgetary concerns to this movie, but everything looks great.  Granted, New York City has a great look to it already.  The stone lions in front of the library, for example.  They were already there, but you would have to use them.  They have a great look for a ghost movie.  Dana and Louis’ apartment was also well done.  If I remember correctly, it was a real apartment in New York that they added a section to the top of digitally because most buildings don’t have Gozer-gateways on the top.  The gargoyle that comes to life looked mostly great, but there were parts where the limits of the time made it stick out.  The ghosts looked pretty good though, like Slimer and the librarian ghost from the beginning.  They’re reminiscent of the ghost style used in Poltergeist.  Worked great there, works great here.

The performances are what really make this movie work for me.  And I would say that it is mostly one performance that stands out and simultaneously made me love that actor forever: Bill Murray.  Every moment he is in this movie, he’s doing something that makes me laugh, even on my 50th viewing.  Love Venkman, love Murray.  The second best performance would have to be the hands that popped out of the recliner to grab Sigourney Weaver, ’cause one of them grabbed himself a whole handful of Sigourney boob.  But both Sigourney and her boobs performed well in this movie.  She mainly acted as the straight-woman to Bill Murray’s craziness, but she did it very real, acted terrified as hands were groping her and she was being pulled into her closet, and shifted gears completely as she was inhabited by Zuul.  She also was still well within hotness in this movie, even with the 80’s perm.  I personally dug more on Annie Potts though.  Something about that nerdy little girl does it for me.  Even with that voice.  Rick Moranis was, perhaps, a bit over the top as his uber nerdy character, but got a nice dose of crazy to him when he was inhabited by Vinz Clortho, the penis to Sigourney’s vagina or, as they called it, the keymaster to her gatekeeper.  I went on a tangent and almost forgot about the rest of the Ghostbusters.  I would say my second favorite Ghostbuster would have to be Harold Ramis as the eccentric, nerdy scientist Egon Spengler.  He was pretty funny and I relate to him because I too collect spores, molds, and fungus.  Dan Aykroyd was the heart of the Ghostbusters, playing Ray as a kind of dopey but sweet guy.  I also like thinking about William Atherton as the douchebag from the EPA that fucks everything up.  I mainly like thinking about him because he could be the nicest guy, but I’d want to punch him in the mouth because of his character in this movie.  Such a douche and he gets the Ghostbusters arrested because HE fucked everything up.

One of my favorite movies, Ghostbusters combines a good story, fantastic performances, hilarious comedy, and a great look to make itself an epic win.  It holds up every bit today as it did back in ’84.  The only thing dated in this movie is the music, but it’s still enjoyable so that’s not a negative.  It’s just clearly 80’s music.  If you haven’t seen this movie, there’s something wrong with you.  If you don’t like it, I don’t like you.  If you don’t own it, I don’t own you!  Oh, that’s wrong.  Either way, go buy this movie already.  It’s amazazing.  Ghostbusters gets “We came, we saw, we kicked it’s ass” out of “Dogs and cats living together … MASS HYSTERIA!”

Hey, peeps. Why not rate and comment on this as a favor to good ole Robert, eh? And tell your friends! Let’s make me famous!

Yogi Bear (2010)

I kept putting it off and putting it off.  Almost every time I went to a RedBox I’d see it, but lacked the courage to rent it.  Today I decided I would nut up and rent … Yogi Bear.  That’s right, I watched it!  Yogi Bear features the voices of Dan Aykroyd as Yogi and Justin Timberlake as Boo-Boo, as well as the live-action performances of Anna Faris, Tom Cavanagh (who I know as JD’s brother from Scrubs), TJ Miller, and Andrew Daly.

Yogi Bear is the story of a bear, named Yogi.  He loves to steal pic-a-nic baskets.  He has a tiny friend named Boo-Boo and a pair of park rangers (Cavanagh and Miller) that constantly have to try to stop him from ruining the serenity of the park campers.  Then Rachel, a documentarian and animal lover, comes to Jellystone to shoot a documentary about Yogi and Boo-Boo by putting a camera in Boo-Boo’s bow tie (does anyone else predict that paying off in some way at the end of the movie?)  Ranger Smith (Cavanagh) and Rachel (Faris) then start falling for each other, Ranger Jones (Miller) feels like he’s paid his dues enough as assistant park ranger and is time for his promotion, and a corrupt mayor (Daly) takes advantage of that so that he can get rid of Smith, sell the park, and take the city out of the debt that he’s created.  Can Yogi save the day?!  …Yeah, of course.

Okay, the most surprising thing I can say to you about this movie right now is: … I didn’t think it was that bad.  Yeah, I said it.  I probably just lost a whole bunch of readers now, I guess, but I can’t tell you a lie, people.  But what I mean by I like it is not that I think you should all go out and rent it and watch it by yourself, I mean if your kid drags you to it, it’s not that bad.  Maybe this is just because I watched Alpha and Omega a little while ago, but this movie far surpassed my abysmal expectations to arrive somewhere around a mediocre movie.  There are actually a few solid chuckles to this movie.

I do have cast problems here though.  The first one has been something I’ve been going mad about for a while now.  What is the point in casting a famous actor for a voice acting role, especially if you’re going to have them sound nothing like themselves?  The point of a Justin Timberlake or a Brad Pitt (as heard in Megamind) isn’t really their voice, but their look.  So if you have them do a voice, it should at least be their own voice so people can say “Oh it’s JT!”  JT does a great job with Boo-Boo’s voice (as best I can remember), but they could have paid a whole lot less for some random voice talent.  And while we’re on the subject, I don’t remember if Yogi’s voice was always like it was in the movie, but it was really grating here.  I see a little news bulletin on Rotten Tomatoes that says they’re setting up for a Yogi 2: Electric Boogaloo, and if they go with Aykroyd again, he should reel it in a little.  As for the live-action cast: no complaints.  I love Anna Faris for reasons I don’t even comprehend, Cavanagh and Miller both do good jobs, and Andrew Daly is probably the redemption of the movie for me personified.  The biggest problem with the cast is; why didn’t I hear about any of them?  I had heard about Aykroyd and Timberlake from outside sources, and seeing Faris in the movie completely caught me off guard.  What’s the point in advertising for the movie if you’re not going to mention people that might drive people into the theaters?

And the worst part about this movie is the ending.  Not that the one they went with was the worst thing ever, but why did they not go with the much better, alternate ending that I saw on YouTube?  I would’ve howling loved this movie if they had ended it with the Assassination of Yogi Bear by the coward Boo-Boo ending, though you may have turned off parents and children.  Sometimes you just gotta do the unconventional thing though, Yogi.  That’s how art is made.  So, with the much less awesome ending they went with, I give this movie a “You may not hate it if your kids drag you to it” out of Apples.