Wasabi (2001)

Just Arrived and Already in Deep Shit

I would assume that the greater majority of my audience has not heard of today’s movie.  If I’ve not heard of a movie – with my vast and nearly complete knowledge of movies – then there is no way anyone else has.  Well, in this occasion, someone else had.  A friend made by these very reviews, Kendra, suggested that I review this movie and, though I am a fan of some of the people involved in this movie, I was unaware of the movie’s existence.  Heading boldly into the unknown, let’s see if Wasabi was any good, written by Luc Besson, directed by Gerard Krawczyk, and starring Jean Reno, Ryoku Hirosue, Michel Muller, Yoshi Oida, and Carole Bouquet.

Hubert Florentini (Jean Reno) is a cop that gets results, but through unconventional, and generally illegal, methods.  Yes, we’ve all seen that exact cop thousands of times before, but we’ve rarely seen a French one.  Hubert is put on suspension for one such unconventional display he’s put on, but he doesn’t know what to do with his free time.  19 years ago, the love of his life – a Japanese girl named Miko – left him with no explanation and he hasn’t let it go.  Just as he decides he should let it go, he gets a call that she’s died and he needs to go to Japan to get the stuff she left him.  One such thing that she’s left to Hubert is her daughter, Yumi (Ryoko Hirosue), who is coincidentally 19 years old.  Well it turns out Yumi is Hubert’s daughter, and Miko left her a large sum of money that she’ll have access to in 2 days when she becomes an adult.  Hubert hides the fact that he’s her father from her for a while as he tries to find out where this money came from and what Miko’s been up to for the past 19 years.

Wasabi was okay.  I was happy enough with it by the end of the movie, but there wasn’t really anything in it that impressed me.  We’ve probably all seen the movie with the awesome cop that doesn’t play by the rules.  We’ve probably even seen that guy find out he has a daughter that he now has to take care of, but it doesn’t go well.  It doesn’t really include any surprises in the story and keeps itself pretty typical.  That could be overcome in this action comedy if the action was awesome or the comedy was funny.  The action in the movie was kind of lackluster.  There were a few occasions when Hubert punched or shot some people and they flew further than you’d think was humanly possible, but it never really escalated past that.  It wasn’t really cool and stylized action, it was just a couple of punches or bullets and then moving on.  I did find some of the dialogue clever, but it never really reached a point where it made me laugh.  The setting was nice though, but that’s more due to Tokyo looking pretty cool.  And I get the feeling, with all of the hot chicks and video games that movies have taught me are there, that I need to just learn Japanese and movie to Tokyo already.  Then again, I do not endorse the idea of getting Jean Reno on a Dance Dance Revolution machine.  That’s a shitty game and you’re killing my image of Jean Reno by making him be ridiculous.  I was also confused by some parts of the movie, and the movie didn’t bother to let the American audience in on things, though I blame my own ignorance to how other countries work.  I was really confused by the fact that they kept talking about what would happen when 19-year-old Yumi was legally an adult, but people are apparently not considered adults in Japan until they’re 20.  I didn’t find that out until about an hour after the movie ended.  Also, why would a person in Japan know how to speak French?  It’s like a person in America knowing how to speak French.  And people act like that was a ridiculous decision for me!  Won’t be so ridiculous when I get to help Jean Reno and his daughter next time they come to town, will it?!

The two main performances in this movie worked out for me, but the bulk of the remaining cast made no impression or got on my nerves.  I love Jean Reno, though.  He can do badass as well as he can do emotion and vulnerability.  He can do comedy too, but that stuff has to be written funny to be able to be delivered as funny.  I found Ryoko Hirosue very cute, but a little exhausting.  She was usually running around and manic and that just wore me out.  She was able to slow down and pull off the emotional parts when she had to, though.  It also occurred to me while watching this movie that apparently Japanese girls think that beauty can be measured by how many colors you’re wearing at one time, or at least by how loud those colors are.  Most of the movie displayed her wearing something with a rainbow on it, or a bright orange jacket and matching tutu.  Even when she went to the funeral of her mother she was wearing something like this.  Some people go with all black, but you do what you gotta do.  Michel Muller got on my nerves through the bulk of the movie.  I don’t know who decided that these kinds of movies needed an annoying comic relief guy, but they don’t.  They just waste time.  He had parts in the movie where he was necessary, but he could have been normal and not failing to make the world laugh every time.

Wasabi was a fine enough movie, but I get the strong feeling that I’ve seen parts of it far too many times already.  The story was pretty typical, the action never really succeeded, but some of the dialogue was pretty clever, and I enjoyed both main characters.  Though I did think Wasabi was okay, I also don’t really think there’s any reason for you to see it.  If you could stream it on Netflix, I’d say it was okay if you couldn’t think of anything else.  But since you’d have to wait for the disc to come in through Netflix, you can skip it.  Wasabi gets “I can’t tell you the trouble we made” out of “With him, nothing takes long.”

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 (Robert T. Bicket) and Twitter (iSizzle).  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

Godzilla (1998)

I’m Gonna Be in Godzilla One Day!!

Finally got a fresh crop of review requests, and getting started with one that should be pretty easy to make fun of.  A former supervisor of mine named Shawn threw his vote into the hat on Facebook to recommend today’s movie, and it was right about time I mocked this movie relentlessly.  It’s a movie that you might call a “re-imagining”, but only if you weren’t too busy calling it a piece of shit.  And most people are.  I remember seeing this movie, but I don’t really remember much about it beyond that.  I apparently liked it (or liked making fun of it) well enough to purchase it on DVD, so there’s that.  But now I have watched it again, so let’s find out what I really think of the 1998 crapssic Godzilla, written by Dean Devlin, directed by Roland Emmerich, and starring Matthew Broderick, Maria Pitillo, Jean Reno, Kevin Dunn, Hank Azaria, Harry Shearer, Michael Lerner, Lorry Goldman, Arabella Field, William O’Leary, and Vicki Lewis.

A Japanese fishing vessel goes down under mysterious circumstances, causing the US government to tap Dr. Niko Tatopoulos (Matthew Broderick) to come in to research it, and causing the French government to hold a lighter in front of a Japanese survivor’s face until he says, “Gojilla.”  Nick is able to find a skin sample on the downed ship and determines it belongs to an unknown species, created by nuclear testing.  The giant creature (that the news has labelled Godzilla, but I prefer to keep calling Gojilla) travels to New York City, creates some havoc and destruction, and then disappears.  The military evacuates the city to make some room so they can further ruin the city by trying to kill Gojilla.  Nick discovers a blood sample and uses it to determine that the male creature reproduces asexually and is pregnant, coming to NYC to collect food and lay it’s eggs.  Nick’s ex-girlfriend, aspiring journalist Audrey Timmonds (Maria Pitillo) sees him on TV and decides that she can use him to get the inside scoop on the story, stealing a classified video tape from Nick that is later stolen by her boss Charles Caiman (Harry Shearer).  This causes Nick to be let go from the US military, only to be picked up by Philippe Roache (Jean Reno) of the French secret service.  The US ignores Nick’s idea that Gojilla has laid eggs, but the French help him find them.  Audrey goes along with her cameraman, Victor Palotti (Hank Azaria) to follow Nick and the French as they try to save New York.

Roland Emmerich has done nothing if not proved himself the king of dumb action movies.  Stargate, Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012 just to name a few.  I would certainly call this movie dumb, but it’s a fun watch in it’s dumbness.  The story is … around.  It’s there somewhere, but it’s pretty stupid.  Needless to say I came up with a pretty sizable list of the stupid things that occurred to me in the movie, but I won’t bore you with them … I will REGALE you with them.  First, for Nick to say that New York was a great decision for a place for Gojilla to hide was just retarded for me.  He’s a 300-foot lizard in one of the busiest cities in the United States.  But it worked, so I guess I’m the idiot.  Of course, it worked by having the 300-foot monster find a way to get around in the subway.  …Alright, we’ll go with that…  I’d say the biggest problem I had with the movie was how stupid the US military was made out to be.  You can use Scotch tape to stick a picture to a press pass and get in, you can affect the worst American accent in history to get by them, they instantly want to kill the thing they’ve never seen before that has not intentionally damaged anything but their only idea is to keep firing things that have previously proved ineffectual.  They also take the whole “Not going to listen to the expert we brought in” thing to new heights by kicking him out and going exactly opposite to everything he said, even though he was the only person to ever say anything remotely correct up to that point.  And all because someone who the military shouldn’t have allowed onto their area in the first place stole something from his tent while he wasn’t around.  Take, for instance, when the military guy wants to cement up all of the subway tunnels in New York to trap it in the city until Broderick distracts him with something.  How do you think that’s going to work?  You realize that it swam here, right?  And if the military isn’t inept in this movie, they’re assholes, but it requires some ::SPOILER ALERTS::  They finally kill Gojilla at the end of the movie.  They mainly do this because, for the first time in the movie, Gojilla is actually being aggressive towards something that is not openly attacking it by chasing down a cab containing Nick, Philippe, Audrey, and Victor.  One could excuse Gojilla’s rash behavior because the four of them had just taken part in the destruction of Gojilla’s 200 baby Godzooky’s.  The brave military comes to the rescue (after Nick figures out how to do it for them) after Nick gets Gojilla trapped in a suspension bridge’s wires.  You can practically hear “Eye of the Tiger” or “Hero” by Nickelback playing as the US military bombards the helpless (and justified) creature as it lies trapped and helpless, like a puppy in a safe that they just kicked into the ocean.  ::END SPOILERS::  So badly are the US portrayed in this movie that the French are the smart ones that save the day as the American’s sit around with their thumbs up their asses.  Nothing against the French, I’m actually a fan of theirs.  But if I know my friend Phil, that was the part that made him hate this movie

I’m a little torn when it comes to the look of this movie.  I actually kind of liked the new look of Gojilla … sometimes.  I understand their decision to make him look that way because it was more reminiscent of a komodo dragon.  It was kind of cool looking, but also seemed like they probably just saw Jurassic Park and said, “Do that, but make his arms longer.  And give him more scary, spikey things on his back.”  When we catch a look at the Godzooky’s later on, you get that idea cemented a little bit, but this time with the Tyrannosaurus switched with the Velociraptors.  When Gojilla is running around by himself, the look of him is alright, or at least it hides it’s imperfections behind constant rain and often darkness.  Except maybe when it starts randomly hugging a building and screeching to the heavens for no reason.  That seemed out of place.  By the time we see the Godzooky’s, the imperfections become more noticeable.  They were as goofy looking as they were a bad idea.  And that is only a slightly better idea than having those same Godzooky’s slip on gumballs and basketballs without using Yakety Sax as the music.

Since none of the performances were worth mentioning, I’ll just use this paragraph to use my character specific mockings.  Matthew Broderick was inexplicably a super genius.  I will get behind him being a radiation expert because that’s how he’s introduced.  I’ll even allow him to be an expert in reptiles because he studied … worms …  I’m being forgiving!  But what does not seem to fit in with his specialization is his knowledge of taxis (knowing the military could find his radio channel from the sign he threw from the taxi), suspension bridges (knowing that would hold Gojilla), dentistry (knowing that sticking an electrical cable into it’s gums would cause Gojilla to release the car they were in), gynecology (knowing what to look for to find out Gojilla was both male and pregnant), and musical theater (he’s gay).  What I noticed he doesn’t specialize in is blinking with one eyes, or delivering clever dialogue.  Broderick seems to always be around to deliver some clever witticisms, like when they stacked up a huge pile of fish in the middle of a street to draw Gojilla in and he said, “That’s a lot of fish.”  Y’know what, Matt, I never looked at it like that before.  You’ve given me a lot to think about.  His character motivation was also completely confused.  When they are trying to get the Godzooky’s blown up, he delivers a speech about these “amazing reptiles”, which is followed shortly by something along the lines of, “Blow the crikey fuck out of them!”  Jean Reno was probably the next biggest character (that I have a joke about), and he also had about one personality trait, and that was an obsession with coffee.  He was also a master of hotwiring cars, knowing what we all hope no car thieves ever figure out: a car can be hotwired by pulling out the ignition slot, jamming a knife in there, and twisting it.  I wasn’t a fan of Hank Azaria or his movie wife Arabella Field, but mainly because their attitudes and accents made them seem like they were fresh out of the Jersey Shore.  Also, Arabella Field’s character mistook the coming of Gojilla as a parade, which I resent because my mother never took me to one of those awesome parades composed of a giant piston firing into the ground, shaking the surroundings and making a loud thumping noise.  Can’t say I really understood the decision to make the mayor of the city Roger Ebert, and his assistant Gene Siskel.  If Emmerich was doing it as punishment for a history of bad reviews for his movie, you’d think he’d kill them off in the movie … or start making better movies.

So, no one’s surprised to hear that this movie is not a great movie, but hopefully we had fun finding out.  It’s stupid, the characters are pretty one-dimensional, the look is hit and miss, and it’s stupid, but it can be a fun watch, or at least a movie that’s fun to make fun of.  I still wouldn’t really recommend it as a watch to anyone, mainly because I won’t be blamed for wasting a few hours of your life.  But if you need something to make fun of, this movie is the kind you’re looking for.  MST3k got a lot of material from the original Godzilla movies, so why shouldn’t you get the same from the remake of Gojilla.  And so Godzilla gets “That’s a negative impact, sir!” out of “You’ve caused more damage than that goddamn thing did!”

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 (Robert T. Bicket) and Twitter (iSizzle).  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

Couples Retreat (2009)

You Definitely Don’t Pull a Hypothetical Gun on Your Therapist

I’ve had today’s movie sitting on my desk for a little while now, ever since it arrived from Netflix.  When it came out in theaters, I knew that I liked all the people that were in the movie, but found that I never had any interest in watching it.  The thing that probably drew me in finally was the fact that there were a lot of really good looking women in bikinis throughout this movie, and also a pretty solid potential for comedy.  This movie is Couples Retreat, written by Jon Favreau, Vince Vaughn, and Dana Fox, directed by Peter Billingsley, and starring Vince Vaughn, Malin Akerman, Jason Bateman, Kristen Bell, Jon Favreau, Kristin Davis, Faizon Love, Kali Hawk, Tasha Smith, Jean Reno, Peter Serafinowicz, Carlos Ponce, Temuera Morrison, John Michael Higgins, Ken Jeong, Amy Hill, and Karen Shenaz David.  I had no idea that a person from both Scorpion King 2 and Scorpion King 3 were in this movie when I started watching it.  That’s just happy coincidence.

Jason (Jason Bateman) and his wife Cynthia (Kristen Bell) are having marriage troubles, so they decide that they should go to a resort to work on them.  But they’re also having financial troubles, so they need their friends to go with them in order to get a package discount.  Dave (Vince Vaughn) and Ronnie (Malin Akerman), Joey (Jon Favreau) and Lucy (Kristin Davis), and Shane (Faizon Love) and Trudy (Kali Hawk) all begrudgingly agree to accompany them.  Dave and Ronnie have a stable marriage with kids, so they don’t believe they need a couples retreat.  Joey and Lucy’s relationship is on the rocks, but they prefer to just cheat on each other a lot instead of working it out.  Shane and Trudy have only just started dating.  But they all go anyways, thinking that Jason and Cynthia will go through the counseling while they can just enjoy their vacation.  When they arrive at Eden, the resort host Sctanley (Peter Serafinowicz) informs them that they must all go through the counseling or they must all leave the resort.  The group must now endure the resort owner, Marcel (Jean Reno), and his unorthodox methods, the amorous Yoga instructor Salvador (Carlos Ponce), and the temptations of the sister island, Eden East, and their wild singles parties.  But they’ll probably all end up better in the end.

Some of the expectations that I had going into this movie were let down.  I knew there would be good looking ladies in bikinis, and the movie delivers on that exquisitely.  There is scarcely a woman in this movie that is not ridiculously good looking and usually wearing a bikini.  The other expectation I had of the movie (given the cast) was that it would be really funny.  It wasn’t.  It had it’s moments, to be sure, but I wanted a lot more laughter than I got.  The introduction to Salvador is a super awkward and sometimes funny scene, as almost every Yoga pose he teaches involves laying on a member of the cast in a sexual manner, whether it’s the girls or the boys.  But there were a couple of funny moments.  The rest of the time it was roughly what you come to expect of a Vince Vaughn movie.  It just seems like the writers just put down a rough outline of what was going to happen and just went to those locations and talked nonstop until they felt they had enough comedy to fill a movie.  A lot of the cast inspires confidence that this will be a good philosophy, but the random things they were saying only got smirks out of me, with the occasional funny one.  This movie also does something that too many comedies feel like they have to do: try to have a meaning.  Obviously it’s all about couples retreats and stuff like that, but don’t lay this message on us about marriage.  It gets a little too heavy handed and sappy for my taste.  This movie had potential to be a good, ridiculous comedy.  I understand that the status quo is to have a little bit of a message behind the movie, but if you lay it on too thick it just bogs down the funniness.  They also seem to have reached a point at the end of the movie where they furiously try to tie up all the loose ends of the movie about 5 minutes before it ends, all within a 10 minute span.  The relationship problems were mostly just hinted at up until that point, then they all instantly reach a boiling point, but then fix it almost immediately.  Another sign that the story of the movie was only vaguely touched upon.  And what was with all the Guitar Hero talk in this movie?  I like Guitar Hero just fine, and I also understand the purpose of SOME product placement in a movie, but they talk about this thing all the time.  Vaughn’s job is to sell the game and, coincidentally, it becomes a strange and unnecessary plot point near the end of the movie.  The thing that the movie does fantastically is the look.  And not just the smoking hot women in bikinis … and I’m sure there are men that ladies would like to look at.  I mean the settings.  It’s probably pretty easy to make a beautiful looking movie in a tropical island setting, but every bit of this movie is colorful and vibrant once they reach the island.  So, if nothing else, you’ll enjoy looking at it.  A great movie on mute, perhaps.

I perhaps went into this movie expecting too much, but it was mainly based on the cast.  I like Vince Vaughn in a lot of his movies, but he does tend to play the same exact character in almost all of them.  Sometimes they work, and sometimes they’re just annoying.  In this movie, I had no problems with him, but he never really did anything funny either.  Just a couple of sparse moments.  The same thing could be said for Jason Bateman too.  He usually plays a completely different kind of character from Vaughn, but it’s usually a pretty neurotic guy.  He’s that here too.  And also has a few moments that were funny.  The biggest problem I had with these couples was with Jon Favreau and Kristin Davis.  I don’t know if I missed some explanation in the beginning of this movie, but I never had any idea how these two were still a couple.  They seemed to mainly just resent and avoid each other, and both of them just kept trying to fuck anybody but their spouse.  Then, at the very end of the movie, they fall in love with each other again because he invites her to Applebees.  …Alright.  I guess that’s a thing.  The only thing I can really say about Kristen Bell, Malin Akerman, Kristin Davis, and Kali Hawk was that they are gorgeous.  Kristen Bell has a decent bit of acting around the end of the movie.  It took me a little bit to figure out where I knew Peter Serafinowicz from, but when I realized he was in Shaun of the Dead, I got really excited.  His character, Sctanley, probably had the largest amount of funny moments, but he wasn’t around enough to fix the movie.  I also felt like John Michael Higgins and Ken Jeong – two more people I generally expect a great deal of funny from – were greatly underused.  And remember when I reviewed all the Scorpion King movies?  Karen Shenaz David (from Scorpion King 2) and Temuera Morrison (from Scorpion King 3) were in this one too.  What a strange coincidence.  But they also had very minor parts here, so there’s nothing more to say.

I think it is probably a dangerous thing to throw a large amount of big names into a mediocre comedy.  We’ll just go in expecting too much.  This movie has it’s charms, but it should have been much funnier with the cast that it includes.  I wouldn’t think anyone would actually hate this movie, though.  The movie is a gorgeous thing to behold because of it’s tropical setting, vibrant colors, and – last but not least – gorgeous ladies in bikinis.  You just won’t laugh that much.  Couples Retreat gets “You got a pose called Yoga guy gets his ass kicked?” out of “Holy shit!  It’s like a screensaver!”

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