Pitch Perfect (2012)

You Have Juice Pouches and Rocky!

I feel like as much of me that wanted to see today’s movie did not want to see it.  It looked like it had just as much opportunity to be cute and entertaining as it had to be painful and predictable.  My inner torment led to me not bothering to see it in theaters and even ignoring it every time I saw it at a RedBox, but my finger came close to clicking that button numerous times.  The push that I needed came from my friend Ashley Janet, who requested the movie.  That would be enough to cause me to finally watch and review Pitch Perfect, based on the book by Mickey Rapkin, written by Kay Cannon, directed by Jason Moore, and starring Anna Kendrick, Skylar Astin, Brittany Snow, Anna Camp, Rebel Wilson, Ester Dean, Alexis Knapp, Hana Mae Lee, Adam DeVine, Utkarsh Armbudkar, Ben Platt, Freddie Stroma, Jinhee Joung, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, John Benjamin Hickey, John Michael Higgins, and Elizabeth Banks.

Beca Mitchell (Anna Kendrick) is a bad girl wannabe DJ, angry at daddy for getting divorced, and for forcing her to go to college instead of pursuing her dream of going to Los Angeles to produce music and then failing and winding up doing porn.  I feel like I would’ve liked to see Anna Kendrick in that movie instead, but that’s not how this one goes.  Instead, her dad talks her into giving college a shot and joining some clubs to have the college experience.  One of the heads of the accapella group, the Barden Bellas, named Chloe Beale (Brittany Snow) catches Beca singing in the shower and forces her to join the Barden Bellas, still reeling from their failure last year where the other leader of the group, Aubrey Posen (Anna Camp), throws up all over the stage.  Beca joins the group with the black lesbian Cynthia-Rose (Ester Dean), the white whore bag Stacie Conrad (Alexis Knapp), the quiet Asian Lilly Onakuramara (Hana Mae Lee), and the Australian comic relief Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson).  Problematically, Aubrey refuses to take any chances and deviate from the song they’ve been performing forever, and they’ll need something new to beat last year’s champions, the Treblemakers.  Also a problem, Beca’s reluctant love interest, Jesse Swanson (Skylar Astin), is a member of the Treblemakers.

I kind of went into this movie thinking I’d hate it, which was probably the reason I avoided it for so long.  The greater majority of the movie helped me believe I had been making the right decision.  It’s just too predictable.  I imagine I could’ve written a rough outline of exactly how the movie was going to go down if you just handed me the setup.  There’ll be some dumb reason for the “bad girl” to join the team, there will be some friction, then a falling out, then a tearful reunion, and they’ll win and she’ll get the boy.  And the story itself isn’t even realistic, or at least I hope it isn’t.  If there are indeed places that take accapella so seriously, I’d be much more comfortable acting like they don’t.  They have accapella Fight Clubs!  But none of that is me telling you my feelings about the movie in general.  I have buried the lead and fooled you all.  This movie still managed to charm me, strangely enough.  Sure it was predictable and lacked anything resembling a surprise in the story, but it was cute.  I guess the story itself wasn’t what did that for me, but we’ll get to what did later.  Some of the dialogue was good, and some was bad.  I never was really able to tell whether or not the shitty puns they used all over the movie were aware of themselves or not.  It seemed a lot like a whole movie of “Cheer-ocracy” and “Cheer-tator” from Not Another Teen Movie.  One of the groups was called the Treblemakers, and there was a whole section where they talked about a “Toner,” which is apparently a musical boner.  That was pretty terrible, but the payoff of Anna Kendrick saying “That’s my dick” got a chuckle out of me.  I also thought the line about juice pouches and Rocky was pretty adorable, but I feel like most of the credit goes to the delivery.  I also took issue with the vomiting in the movie.  It happens a couple of times, and I assume it was for humor’s sake, but I just thought it was disgusting and juvenile.

The music and I started out at odds, but eventually it swayed me.  The music wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, being a great deal of pop music that I either didn’t like or didn’t recognize.  But I started getting into it around the time of the “Riff-Off,” when they started mixing up pop songs with some 80’s rock in some very appealing ways.  The music kind of won me over from that point.  I did get mad during the Riff-Off, when Beca started rapping at Jesse and her whole team seemed dumbfounded by what she was singing.  These people practically dedicate their lives to music and they can’t recognize No Diggity?  Even I recognized that song!

I think what wins me over the most about this movie is the cast.  Anna Kendrick is extremely likeable.  Good-looking and great actress.  Her character motivations were slippery for me at times.  I don’t know why the “bad girl” would be so tolerant of the leader girl’s controlling way of running the group.  I believe her father only said she had to “try” with the group thing, and her character didn’t seem like the type to tolerate that crap.  If she had joined a Face-Punching Society and decided it wasn’t to her liking, I’m sure he’d be cool with her leaving the group.  I also wasn’t a fan of Skylar Astin.  I didn’t think he was nearly charming enough, and didn’t really believe that Kendrick’s character would find him that interesting either.  I didn’t even know if he was supposed to be a good singer either based on the part he sang when the other kid asked him how his voice was.  He turned out to be a good singer, but I felt like a better take could’ve existed there.  It was a little pitchy, dog.  Of course, all of these things might be me being bitter because I didn’t get to make out with Anna Kendrick.  Who could say, really?  Rebel Wilson is typically funny, and it wasn’t much different here.  I felt like she was trying too hard in parts, and some of her better jokes were in the outtakes, but she held up the comedy really well.  I was also a fan of the slutty girl in the group, Alexis Knapp.  She was really hot and said a lot of things about sex, so it’s pretty easy to get me on your side with those credentials.  Elizabeth Banks and John Michael Higgins had a pretty good job in this movie too, playing the announcers.  They just got to chill in a booth and say ridiculous and funny things, but it was enjoyable.

Pitch Perfect did nothing for me by way of story, being too predictable and cliché while seeming to be well aware of both.  But over time the movie melted my cold heart with great performances, beautiful ladies, some genuine funny moments, and some pretty fantastic music that was able to draw me in even though it wasn’t really my musical tastes.  I’m not going to act like I didn’t raise my fist in the air at one point in this movie.  I can’t help it when a certain song is playing.  It’s a reflex at this point.  I’ll probably wind up buying this movie and maybe even downloading the soundtrack, although I think the music wouldn’t do as much without the visuals.  For you, I’d recommend at least giving it a shot by renting it.  Pitch Perfect gets “I set fires to feel joy” out of “I can’t concentrate on anything you’re saying until you cover your junk.”

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Arrested Development: Season One (2003)

Say What You Will About America; Thirteen Bucks Still Gets You a Hell of a Lot of Mice.

I don’t often get requests to review TV shows, which I generally regard as a blessing, since a review of a TV show can take quite some time and I’ve never found myself particularly good at it.  But, when today’s TV show was requested, I was actually quite happy about it.  Not happy about getting to write a review of it, as I’m not nearly as practiced at it as I am with movies and even video games.  What I was happy about was getting to watch the TV show.  I’d never seen a single episode of this show as I tend to not keep up with television that much, so much so that I actually cancelled my cable service because I could do without the greater majority of them.  But I’d heard so much about how awesome this TV show was I was happy to have a reason to watch it.  So happy, apparently, that I actually bombed through all 22 episodes of the first season in one day.  Let’s see if it can live up to the hype as I review the first season of Arrested Development, created by Mitchell Hurwitz, and starring Jason Bateman, Portia de Rossi, Will Arnett, Tony Hale, Jeffrey Tambor, Jessica Walter, Michael Cera, Alia Shawkat, David Cross, Henry Winkler, Judy Greer, Liza Minnelli, Patricia Velásquez, Carl Weathers, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jay Johnston, Jerry Minor, Amy Poehler, Ian Roberts, Justin Lee, Jane Lynch, James Lipton, and John Michael Higgins.

George Bluth Sr. (Jeffrey Tambor) retires as the founder and CEO of the Bluth Company and is promptly arrested for spending the company’s money on personal expenses.  Bluth’s wife, Lucille (Jessica Walter) takes over as CEO, naming her extremely sheltered youngest son, Buster (Tony Hale), the president.  The middle son – and the only son actually equipped to run a business – Michael (Jason Bateman) leaves the company as a result, but comes back when they all realize they need him, and because his own son, George Michael (Michael Cera) wants to stay with the family.  Mainly because he’s developed a crush on his cousin, Maeby (Alia Shawkat), daughter of Michael’s sister Lindsay (Portia de Rossi) and her husband Tobias (David Cross).  The majority of the family lives in one of the Bluth model homes, with the rest of them, including the oldest brother Gob (Will Arnett) the aspiring magician, visiting frequently to try to borrow money from Michael as he tries to save the company while not even knowing what his father got into.

I don’t know if I’d say that this show has lived up to the hype so far, but it’s certainly not the fault of the show.  From what I had heard, I half expected to be laughing non-stop while watching.  That wasn’t what happened, but I found the show to be extremely well written, very funny, and even funny enough to get me to laugh out loud on more than one occasion.  The first episode was a little disappointing, but it seemed to mainly be all of the setup to get all of the backstory out of the way, but they pick up their speed pretty quickly after that.  The jokes mainly come from how ridiculous the family are, and are often shown in quick cutaways, almost like a live action Family Guy.  And, more often than not, my favorite part of the episode was actually the very end, where they show scenes from the next episode that may or may not actually happen, but they work very well as rapid fire jokes.  And a lot of the jokes were pretty smart too.  I liked when Gob got literally stabbed in the back as Michael was figuratively stabbing him in the back.  I was also a fan of the part where a guy said to Michael, “If you care about your brother, you’ll get in the car,” and Michael said, “Which brother?” and then, when the guy answered, “Gob,” he kept riding away.  Later, when George Michael was trying to find out if he was actually related to Maeby and he asked Gob if Lindsay was ever pregnant, Gob answers, “Oh yeah, dozens of times.”  I also like the part where George Bluth was talking about his twin brother and says, “You should’ve seen his face,” but then remembers that they’re twins and shows him what the face looked like.  A lot of the jokes seemed extra smart and well thought out as so many of them come together in the final episode, though this could’ve been done without planning to do it before hand.  I also liked a lot of the jokes that went on in the background, like when Gob was complaining about his girlfriend the Mexican soap opera star and saying that he’d kill someone if he ever had to smell some Mexican dish again, and the maid in the background closes her Tupperware that she was eating out of.  The story was never super important to the quality of the show, but there were a couple of reveals that were pretty obvious.  The whole part about “there always being money in the banana stand” could be seen coming from miles away, as well as the part about the blind lawyer being the Bluth’s opposing prosecutor in the trial.  Hell, they even outright spoil one themselves in the scenes from the next episode by saying that the lawyer isn’t really blind, but they say so many things in those next episode sequences that I didn’t know if it was true or a joke.  If it sounds like I’m just listing some of my favorite jokes from the show … well, I am.  But the show is well-written and funny, so you should watch it.

I liked all the performances in the show as well.  The greater majority of them are people that I liked going in, so it’s not really a surprise to me.  Jason Bateman plays a fantastic straight man, though he’s not above getting a little wacky himself.  It’s not too necessary in this show as his family does the bulk of the goofiness.  I was torn on the rest of the family for a while since most of them seemed like such unlikeable people I didn’t know why I’d want to spend time with them.  But you warm up to them fairly quickly.  I warmed up to Portia de Rossi because she was hot, especially when she was being sprayed by water and dancing in a cage in one of the later episodes.  I warmed up to Will Arnett because I’ve always liked him, and because he was one of the characters that started a lot of the funniness.  He also had his real life wife Amy Poehler in a few episodes as the wife he eloped with, and I’m always happy to see her as well.  I didn’t know Tony Hale before this show, but he gets a lot of funniness out of his Buster character.  I liked that he was able to get laughs from things as simple as standing silently in the background of scenes.  David Cross did a great deal of the comedy as well, as his character seemed totally gay and totally eccentric.  I liked the little physical things he did, like when he rolled up on the stage at the school play, or when he licked the end of his pencil and then kept licking it like he liked the taste.  He also got to work with Bob Odenkirk again in one episode, and those guys are genius together.  Michael Cera was an odd one for me.  Not because his performance in this show was not dissimilar from many of his other characters, but because of his relationship with his cousin Alia Shawkat.  Even though his crush on his cousin is pretty inappropriate, I found myself kind of wishing they would end up together.  I also liked Judy Greer in her few appearances as the assistant to George Bluth.  She’s a pretty attractive lady and I thought it was pretty funny when Gob would have her take off her glasses and her eyes would go cross-eyed, and she’d let down her hair and it’d go all crazy, and later she got a boob job and her nipples seemed to be pointing in odd directions.  Another big thing about the show is all of the guest appearances.  Liza Minnelli was in a few episodes, and was pretty damned funny as well.  Henry Winkler was usually funny as the inept lawyer, and he even busted the Fonze move in one episode.  Jane Lynch, Heather Graham, Carl Weathers, and a bunch of other random guest appearances were also great.

I’m sure a crappy show could not have kept me interested enough to actually get through 22 episodes of the first season in one day, but that was thankfully not the case with Arrested Development.  It was extremely well-written, very funny, and with fantastic performances to back it all up.  I don’t want to do it too soon and have the next review follow too quickly, but I can’t wait to get into the second season.  And, since you can stream the whole thing on Netflix, I don’t know why you’re not doing it right now.  Turns out my Friendboss Josh isn’t so much of an asshole after all.  Arrested Development Season One gets “That was a good investment” out of “It was shoplifting and I’m white.  I think I’m going to be okay.”

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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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