Kick-Ass 2 (2013)

I Try to Have Fun.  Otherwise, What’s the Point?

Today’s movie was way more difficult to see than it should have been, and Friendboss Josh is to blame.  We had been trying to see this movie for nearly a month before we could finally find the time.  First he couldn’t go because of a “butt thing.”  I’m still not sure what he meant by that.  Was it a proctologist appointment or a sex thing?  Probably both.  Then his girlfriend, the Whitney Bird, lit the bathtub on fire.  Seems impossible, right?  I mean, the thing shoots water.  The next week he was abducted by aliens.  He called it a family reunion, but when I hear about a collection of Mexicans, I just assume.  The last week was my fault because I had a creative writing class to attend where I learned how to make up ridiculous stories to cover for your bad memory about past events and how they kept you from movies.  Then Friendboss Josh and I went to see Kick-Ass 2, based on a comic book by Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr., written and directed by Jeff Wadlow, and starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloë Grace Moretz, Jim Carrey, Lindy Booth, Clark Duke, Donald Faison, Steven Mackintosh, Monica Dolan, Robert Emms, Augustus Prew, John Leguizamo, Olga Kurkulina, Daniel Kaluuya, Tom Wu, Andy Nyman, Morris Chestnut, Claudia Lee, and Iain Glen.

After the events of the first film, Dave Lizewski has retired from his hero persona Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), but quickly finds that regular life is not to his liking.  He decides to take up the mantle of Kick-Ass again, but this time he’s not going to rely on the fact that he can’t feel pain and actually get some training from the younger, but far better trained Mindy Macready, also known as Hit-Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz).  Elsewhere, Chris D’Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) is still sore at Kick-Ass for killing his crime lord father in the first movie.  He reacts by dropping his hero persona, Red Mist, and instead becoming the first real-life villain, the Motherfucker.  When Hit-Girl’s guardian, Detective Marcus Williams (Morris Chestnut), finds out that she’s still fighting crime, he makes her promise him that she’ll stop, and will stop hanging out with Dave.  Lacking the help and training of Hit-Girl, Kick-Ass joins a hero team called Justice Forever, led by Colonel Stars and Stripes (Jim Carrey), and including Night-Bitch (Lindy Booth), Doctor Gravity (Donald Faison), Battle Guy (Clark Duke), Remembering Tommy (Steven Mackintosh and Monica Dolan), and Insect Man (Robert Emms), but continues to try to get Hit-Girl back to her calling while she’s trying to understand how to be a normal girl.  Oh yeah, and the Motherfucker is trying to kill them all.  They should worry about that too.

I was a really big fan of the first Kick-Ass movie.  Going into this one I was made nervous by how poor the reviews were for the sequel, but I found the movie much more enjoyable than the other critics.  Not as good as the first, and there were some problems, but it was still worth watching.  But I’m fond of the idea of real life heroes since I semi-constantly consider it myself, but soon find that my superpower is extreme laziness.  The story was nothing entirely special, but it was interesting.  There was the whole revenge plot that drove the movie, but also the real life scenarios of Hit-Girl trying to figure out being a regular kid.  Most of that seemed like it would be really insulting if I were a lady.  Especially the whole conversation in the bedroom with the other high school girls talking about how hot and bothered they get for some Beiber-esque gay boy (redundant?) they watch on TV.  And then it works on our hero, Hit-Girl!  I’m not saying this deduction about women isn’t accurate, but it does seem vaguely sexist.  And accurate.

The performances in the movie were well-realized.  I liked these actors in the first movie; how could I not like them again?  The answer: shut up!  I’m writing a review here!  This is not a discussion!  Aaron Taylor-Johnson did a great job as Kick-Ass.  He plays it very grounded in reality, as it should be played.  But he’s also a bit of an asshole.  I understand that Hit-Girl was badass and that you probably weren’t going to get much better or be able to save the day without her, but on another level you’re trying to convince a little girl to continue risking her life.  Also, he wasn’t really that bright.  You keep hearing stories about this villain the Motherfucker and all the bad things he’s doing, but you don’t even bother to go look at his Twitter feed or his Facebook page to see what he looks like and maybe piece together that he’s that kid you were friends with and then killed his father?  It’s been a while since I’ve seen the first movie, but I feel like you might have his street address.  Speaking of the Christopher Mintz-Plasse character, this motherfucker’s whining was really getting on my nerves in this movie.  Lots of people’s dads are killed by bazookas, but they don’t all need to whine through the whole movie like a petulant teenager … like the one you’re portraying in the movie…  It was just annoying, okay?!  Chloë Moretz remains quality as Hit-Girl in this movie, but it did bother me that she was not being Hit-Girl through most of the movie.  I understand the emotional reason for it, but I also wanted more of her kicking ass.  Even though one of her moments of ass-kicking was really gross (the moment with the Sick Stick for instance) and one of them was unrealistic for this type of movie (the “last resort” thing at the end).  Jim Carrey was very good in the movie, and I was also very happy to see John Leguizamo again.  I feel like I haven’t seen him in years.  I had no idea who Olga Kurkulina was before this movie, but she sure was scary in it as Mother Russia.  Her scene of laying waste to all those cops was epic.  And since we’re on the subject…

One other thing I noticed in this movie is that the cops were the absolute worst.  I dislike but understand that they decide to put a stop to all people wearing costumes, but it seemed like they only caught the ones doing good.  Worry about them second!  Even if you have the opportunity to catch one that’s trying to do good, instead go after the ones that just killed 20 of your guys on a residential street.  THEN worry about the good ones.  Even when they were trying to do good, the cops sucked at it.  Bad guys break into a funeral and lay waste to everyone and the cops (with guns) are so much more useless than the regular people with baseball bats, sticks, and purses filled with bricks.

Kick-Ass 2 might not have measured up to the first movie, but it certainly exceeded the critical response I have seen for it.  It’s a solid movie with a story that’s nothing too mind-blowing but is definitely good, some pretty great action when it happens, and some great performances.  I’d recommend seeing this movie in theaters, but you wouldn’t be hurting too much if you waited for a rental.  Kick-Ass 2 gets “This 15-year-old girl just owned your ass” out of “Robin wishes he was me.”

WATCH REVIEWS HERE!  YouTube  OTHER JOKES HERE!  Twitter  BE A FAN HERE!  Facebook  If you like these reviews so much, spread the word.  Keep me motivated!  Also, if you like them so much, why don’t you marry them?!

Dumb and Dumber (1994)

We Got No Food, No Jobs … Our Pet’s HEADS ARE FALLING OFF!

Apparently I have been neglecting my friend, Josh.  He recently reminded me that he has requested my review of multiple movies and I have not done them.  But he also learned the reason I ask that my review requests come via Facebook or this very site: I don’t remember anything.  I only remember to do about half of the movies people have suggested to me on Facebook.  I should really write this stuff down, but then I’d just forget where I put that note.  In order to retain a friendship, I decided that the next available opportunity should go to Josh.  And this request was made so much easier to fulfill when the only one of his requests he could remember was one of my favorite comedies, starring one of my favorite actors, and one I own on DVD.  What worried me about this request was that it’s a movie I have not seen in somewhere around 10 years, and I was worried that I would not still find it funny.  But we’ll find out together in my review of Dumb and Dumber, written by Bobby and Peter Farrelly and Bennett Yellin, directed by the Farrelly Brothers, and starring Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels, Lauren Holly, Charles Rocket, Mike Starr, Karen Duffy, Teri Garr, Victoria Rowell, Felton Perry, Cam Neely, Lin Shaye, and Harland Williams.

Lloyd Christmas (Jim Carrey) is a limousine driver of questionable intelligence.  One day, Lloyd drives Mary Swanson (Lauren Holly) to the airport and, in the process, falls madly in love with her.  The feeling is not reciprocated.  As he watches her leave, he sees her drop her briefcase by the escalator.  Lloyd jumps into action, rushing inside to return the briefcase to her, only to find that her plane has already departed to Aspen.  And, just to add more to Lloyd’s plate, it turns out that the briefcase was left intentionally in order to pay a ransom.  Also, the two criminals that were supposed to retrieve the briefcase, Joe Mentalino (Mike Starr) and J.P. Shay (Karen Duffy), saw Lloyd take the briefcase.  Lloyd returns to the apartment he shares with his best friend, Harry Dunne (Jeff Daniels), a recently terminated pet groomer with a van converted to look like a sheep dog.  Shortly after their arrival, Joe and J.P. show up at the front door.  Harry and Lloyd mistake the two armed criminals for representatives of the gas company, annoyed that they forgot to pay their bill, so they jump out the window.  To show they mean business, Joe kills Harry’s pet bird.  When Harry and Lloyd return to their dead pet, they get sick of their lives and concoct a plan.  The two will drive to Aspen, return Mary’s briefcase, and Harry will probably live with Lloyd and his new wife happily ever after.  And so their journey begins.

In 1994, to an 11-year-old Robert, this movie was absolutely hysterical.  Quite possibly the funniest movie I had seen at that point because Ace Ventura was not yet known to me.  17 years later, I will admit this movie is not as funny as it was back then, but I do still find it very charming.  I don’t feel like it’s fair to judge the movie on how funny I find it now because I’ve seen it WAY too many times by now.  It’s always hard to tell how I’d react to it now if it was my first viewing.  The story of the movie is pretty negligible.  It’s mainly there just to give us something cohesive to pay attention to while stupid and funny things happen on screen.  It’s a buddy movie of sorts, and a travel movie of course, but there’s not much story going on beyond that.  But it sets up lots of classic moments that I still think about to this day.  The part where Lloyd gets Harry to bet that Lloyd will not be able to make Harry gamble on something by the end of the day would be cute on it’s own, but when Lloyd genuinely doesn’t realize that Harry agreeing to said bet caused him to win it made it funny.  Every time I see a squeeze bottle of ketchup and mustard, my brain returns to the scene right after Harry and Lloyd eat a hot pepper, and that scene has another funny moment where they accidentally kill one of their pursuers.  There are lines in this movie that I still use to this day.  I cannot count how many times “Yeeaaaah, he must work out”, “Samsonite!  I was way off!”, “Suck me sideways”, “Kick his ass, Sea Bass!”, and “I have a rapist wit” have come out of my mouth.  I’ve also said “nice set of hooters you got there” numerous times, but not usually in the same context.  There are times when they go for some shit humor that I don’t find as appealing today as I did when I was 11.  There’s an entire scene of Harry tearing it up in a toilet (with horribly realistic sound effects to accompany it) that is not as much in my comedy wheelhouse today, but I will defend the filling up the gas tank on the Shaggin Waggin with the gas tank nozzle located under the sheep dog’s lifted leg.  They set that up really nice and slow-like and then paid it off.

I still like all of the performances in this movie.  Jim Carrey is Jim Carrey, so I love him.  The man does broad comedies better that almost anyone else can, and this movie just lets the man do what he does best.  From him, we expect this.  From Jeff Daniels, we don’t.  Yet the man is still able to hold up his end of the bargain remarkably well.  He has a few solid comedic moments on his own in the movie.  I would say, however, that he made Harry nowhere near as dumb as Jim Carrey made Lloyd.  Lloyd was clearly the dumber to Harry’s dumb.  Lauren Holly didn’t have to do much in this movie, but boy did she look purdy.  She looked good in this movie, and even busted out a little bit of booty, but she didn’t do much for the comedy.  Comedy was more done to (or at) her, like when Harry smashed her in the face with a snowball.

I still like this movie a great deal, even if the comedy’s lost some of it’s effect on me over the years.  When I went to look at the overall score of the movie, I was surprised to see that Rotten Tomatoes gives this movie a mere 63%.  It’s a comedy classic, for crying out loud!  For anyone to call this movie dumb only serves to show their own ignorance.  Of course it’s dumb!  It’s in the friggin title!  You’re just saying that it lived up to expectations.  I personally cannot imagine a time where I won’t have some fondness for this movie, even if I don’t laugh hysterically anymore.  You should definitely buy this movie.  Dumb and Dumber gets “Just when I thought you couldn’t possibly be any dumber, you go and do something like this … and totally redeem yourself!” out of “You can’t triple stamp a double stamp!”

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!

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Technically Speaking, the Operation IS Brain Damage

Today’s movie came as a suggestion from a coworker named Eric. When he suggested this movie, I found myself getting a little worried because, though this movie stars one of my favorite actors, it’s a total artsy fartsy movie. I generally hate artsy fartsy movies. And what made it worse (and perhaps a little apt) was that I have seen this movie before, I own this movie on DVD, but I really don’t remember anything about it beyond the fact that one of the actresses has blue hair in it. I’m going into this movie fresh because I don’t remember anything about it, but trepidatious because I don’t remember liking it. Let’s see what I think now in my review of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, co-written by Charlie Kaufman, co-written and directed by Michel Gondry, and starring Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Tom Wilkinson, Kirsten Dunst, Elijah Wood, Mark Ruffalo, David Cross, Jane Adams, and Deirdre O’Connell.

Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) wakes up one day in a mood. A mood that is not helped when he goes downstairs and realizes his car has, inexplicably, been damaged. He decides at random that he’d liked to ditch work and go to Montauk. Here, he meets a lady with blue hair named Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet). At first, the emotionally withdrawn and nervous Joel is put off by Clementine’s free spirit, but she pretty much forces him into a relationship with her. As he waits for her to come out of her apartment, Patrick Wertz (Elijah Wood) knocks on his window and asks what he’s doing there. We start to unravel that Joel and Clem had once been in a two year relationship with each other, but had a messy break up. So messy, in fact, that Clem decided she wanted to have her memory of Joel erased completely. Joel hastily elects to undergo the same procedure, going to Lacuna, Inc and meeting receptionist Mary Svevo (Kirsten Dunst), Doctor Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson), and technician Stan Fink (Mark Ruffalo). Joel starts undergoing the procedure and we watch him walk through his quickly disappearing memories, but he starts regretting his decision to forget Clem and tries to fight it, but he can’t because he’s asleep.

Though I find it very appropriate that I forgot everything about this movie, I wonder why I did. I actually kind of liked this movie even though it included many things I hate in movies. I’m not a fan of artsy movies because I think they mostly like to be confusing and absurd in order to claim they are meaningful. I don’t like movies that confuse me because it’s usually a sign of piss-poor writing. And, above all, I don’t like movies where Jim Carrey isn’t raucously funny throughout! But this movie is pretty touching, even for a guy with little to no experience in what the movie is about. The only time I’ve ever broken up with someone was a joyous occasion for me, but the story is a concept that normal people (who don’t consider their Xbox their girlfriend) have experience with: wishing you could forget someone you once loved. The movie starts off a little bit grating, before you realize why the movie is being conducted in the manner it is, with it’s quick cuts and constant blur over the movie, but when you find out that they underwent this memory loss procedure, it kind of makes sense. The fact that the middle part of the story was told in flashback (with no real indication that it was a flashback), did make the story a little hard to follow for me. It only becomes really clear around the end of the movie why it started with the beginning of their relationship and instantly jumped to the end. And all the little flashbacks within the bigger flashback did start to make me lose track of where I was in the story. It did manage to bring it all together so that I knew what was happening by the end.

The effects of this movie were pretty trippy, but also pretty interesting. When we were inside Jim Carrey’s memories, they reminded us of our location and showed us how these memories were dissolving around us. Jim Carrey would walk seamlessly from a book store into his friends’ living room with no discernible cut, he would be following Kate Winslet towards the bathroom and she would suddenly be in the kitchen, people’s faces would be missing, scenery would be disappearing behind him as he ran away from it, and then other memories would just be downright warped, like turning Elijah Wood’s eyes upside down on his head. A little disconcerting? Sure, but the effects told a story in and of themselves by showing what was happening to his memories.

The performances were one of the best parts to this movie. Though I prefer my Jim Carrey’s to come in Ace Ventura-like forms, I understand his need to do a more reserved, emotional role every now and then. Actor’s don’t like to be typecast, even if it’s for doing something you’re amazing at. Though I found her character to be pretty tedious, I didn’t blame Kate Winslet. I know she’s a good actress, but that character was just written to be the type of person I don’t ever want to be around. She gets all up in Jim Carrey’s Kool-Aid on the train, and they don’t even know each other. I’m too nice to tell her to fuck off, but she would’ve worked on my nerves by getting into my business, and then overreacting and jumping down my throat because I said “nice” too much. Well go back to YOUR seat then, bitch! Also, just because you’ve decided to call yourself an impulsive, free spirit does not give you cause to use that as an excuse for being a twat. But, again, I was annoyed by the character and not the actress. Winslet pulled off some great moments of manic-depression as her memory loss procedure hadn’t gone too well. She’d be crying one second, then happy the next, as if she didn’t remember what she was supposed to be feeling at the moment, and she pulled it off very well.

I didn’t love this movie, but I found myself pretty fond of it. The story is good and relatable, but gets kind of confusing in the flashbacks and double flashbacks. The effects of the movie are well done and do their part to tell the story instead of being there instead of having a story, but some of them were kind of off-putting. And the performances were all very well executed, but I know I would’ve hated that Clementine. I own this movie, so I didn’t bother checking to see if you could stream it or not, but I do assume it’s available to rent on Netflix. I don’t feel confident in saying that everyone will like this movie, especially as I apparently only half liked it myself. I found it to be a pretty interesting (albeit confusing) story about the moments that happen right after love with good meaning, and it was pretty endearing. I will recommend you at least give it a shot. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind gets “It’s going to be gone soon. What do we do?” out of “Enjoy it”.

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!

I Love You Phillip Morris (2009)

I Love You Jim Carrey

Okay, I went into this review with the worst idea of what it would be ever.  I totally thought this movie was supposed to be about Philip Morris, the tobacco guy.  Then I heard Jim Carrey played one of them gays in it.  Then I thought “The tobacco guy was a gay?”  Then I watched the movie, and I’m an idiot.  This movie is not about that Philip Morris at all.  It’s about Steven Jay Russell, a famous con artist that escaped from jail many times and is currently in jail until 2140.  I Love You Phillip Morris stars Jim Carrey, Ewan McGregor, and Leslie Mann.

The movie starts with Steven Jay Russell (Jim Carrey) on his deathbed, remembering the events of his life.  At first he’s an organist at a church where he meets the woman that will become his wife, Debbie (Leslie Mann).  He becomes a police officer, mainly to find his biological mother.  He does, goes to meet her, and is rejected by her without explanation.  Soon after, he gets in a vehicle collision and decides he needs to start being who he really is – a gay.  He leaves his life and moves to Florida and gets a boyfriend.  But he soon finds that being gay is expensive, so he starts committing lots and lots of fraud to pay for expensive things he now likes.  Then he gets arrested.  In jail, he gets learned on the law from the library and meets Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor), a man who has nothing to do with tobacco or the Force, but does love wang.  They soon get out of jail and Steven fraudulently acquires a position as chief financial officer of a large company.  It’s not long before he starts stealing from them too, and then gets into more trouble.

I don’t think I’ve had it on the forefront of my facade for a while now, but some people that know me know that I love Jim Carrey.  I own and loved the greater majority of movies that he’s appeared in.  That being the case, I feel fully confident that it had nothing to do with the fact that I liked this movie.  I was worried going into it that this was going to be another one of his dramatic movies, which I generally still like but I don’t like dramas.  This was not the case.  This is actually mostly a comedy.  There’s a good amount of funny in here.  One thing I can think of is that he doesn’t say he’s gay until a few minutes into the movie, having already shown himself with his wife and daughter.  How do they tell us?  Out of nowhere throw in him butt fucking Freddie Mercury.  Okay, so it probably wasn’t him, but it looked like him.  It’s also pretty funny that he decides to become a conman because of how expensive it is to be gay.  I had no idea how expensive it was.

The performances are really good in here as well.  There’s really only two people in this movie that are heavily featured and that’s Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor.  Leslie Mann is pretty funny as the super religious ex-wife, but she’s not in it that often.  Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor had me totally convinced that they were gays in this, even though I’m pretty sure both are actually straight.  The both also had some hilarious moments, touching love scenes, and very emotional scenes.  Also of note, when Carrey has to be someone’s lawyer in the middle of the movie, it totally took me back to the Liar Liar days.  I must watch that again.

Now, I don’t consider myself homophobic, or even homoist as I say it.  I can prove that I’m not a homoist because I have a couple of gay friends.  But I do still have some deep seeded homophobia that makes me uncomfortable watching dudes kiss.  I don’t know what it is and I don’t really have desire to fix it because it’s not a big deal, but when it happens in a movie it tends to startle me more than a horror movie.  If you’re like me, don’t worry.  There aren’t that many scenes of men kissing and the sex scenes usually happen off camera and you only see one dude standing behind another dude and thrusting.

I gotta say, this is probably one of Jim Carrey’s best performances ever, and I liked his other performances.  I could probably say the same for Ewan McGregor, but I can only presently remember him appearing in one other movie and that was Star Wars.  The movie’s also very funny and definitely worth watching.  I give this movie “Enough romance.  Let’s fuck!” out of 788.

And, as always, please rate, comment, and/or like this post and others.  It may help me get better.