Avengers: Endgame (2019)


Assemble.

The day finally came.  After 11 years and 22 of my top 22 favorite films of all time, we’re in the Endgame now.  Even with all my hatred of people and crowds, my excitement and impatience would not allow me to wait long to see it.  But Infinity War set a very high bar for the MCU.  There was certainly no way they could pass that, or even blow it completely out of the water, right?  Well there’s only one way to find out.  Well, by the time of writing this, two ways because I’ve already seen it twice.  And even though the second time was today, I feel like I’m itching to see it again.  But what did I think of the movie, you might be asking?  …Really?  Have you never read one of my reviews or seen one of my videos?  Well here’s my probably entirely predictable review of Avengers: Endgame, written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, directed by Joe and Anthony Russo, and starring…like everyone.  Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Josh Brolin, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Don Cheadle, Paul Rudd, Brie Larson, Karen Gillan, Danai Gurira, Benedict Wong, Bradley Cooper, and so many more names.

Thanos (Brolin) won and wiped out half of all life in the universe with the snap of shiny, bejeweled fingers.  Even though they were thoroughly trounced by Thanos by himself, the remaining Avengers – Captain America (Evans), Hulk (Ruffalo), Thor (Hemsworth), Black Widow (Johansson), and War Machine (Cheadle) – as well as the two remaining Guardians of the Galaxy – Rocket (Cooper) and Nebula (Gillan) – decide it would be a good idea to take another crack at it because the new girl, Captain Marvel (Larson) claims to be super strong.  Iron Man (Downey) decides to stay home because he’s sleepy.  So the Avengers set off to … avenge.  And all of this is the first half hour.  Pretty much anything else is a spoiler.

Y’know what?  Avengers: Endgame could’ve been better.  …Don’t get me wrong, it was the greatest movie of all time ever, but I’m sure there’s something that could’ve been improved.  I was able to think of at least one, but we’ll get to that.  But a movie that contains as much hype as this movie has and I only really had one gripe?  That’s a killer flick!  Problematically for the sake of this review, I don’t think it’s worth talking about without spoilers.  Pretty much the entire movie after the first half hour is spoilers, so if that is a problem for you, feel free to stop reading and come back after seeing it.  Otherwise, let’s dish!

The story of Endgame was fantastic.  Time travel is a tricky thing to pull off and even the most well thought out stories can probably fall apart if you think about things too much.  Endgame does a good job of avoiding talking too much about the science involved so it can’t be picked apart too badly.  Science probably can’t prove that you can’t travel through time by shrinking down to sub-microscopic levels and entering the Quantum Realm because those things probably can’t happen in the first place.  And if you’re going into Avengers looking for good science to occur in the movie about superheroes, then what’s wrong with you?  The story obviously does leave some questions that may or may not be addressed.  What happened with past Loki?  What happens later when Hydra thinks Cap is one of them?  What changed when Cap decided to stay in the past?  In the very least, it seemed like these choices were intentional and may be leading to something.  The MCU has earned my faith in them.  And what’s more is that the time travel stuff added to what this movie really was deep down: fan service.  It was the most fan servicey movie ever, and I loved them for it.  There were callbacks to earlier movies (including what I say is the best moment of the film: when Falcon’s voice crackles through the radio when all hope seems lost and calls back to Captain America: The Winter Soldier when he says, “On your left.”)  And then when they start getting into time travel, we’re literally taken on the greatest montage/flashback in cinema history!  We go into Avengers, we go into Guardians of the Galaxy, and we go to shortly after Captain America: The First Avenger.  We see the filmmakers saying, “Remember this?  Oh you loved this!”  And we also see extra stuff, like how and why Loki got that gag mask in Avengers and what were the sorcerers that are supposed to be defending our realm doing during the Battle of New York.  You could also say that the death of Thanos in the beginning of the movie was not too surprising.  I mean, the team is in a spaceship heading off to kill Thanos in the first half hour, but we all know this movie is 3 hours.  They probably should’ve run the credits after killing Thanos and treated the rest of the movie as the best after-credit sequence ever.

I generally talk about the look of the movie here, but they put so much time and money into this movie it’s not worth talking about.  It was great.  I guess the only thing worth saying about it is that people often complain about CG characters and how they’re not realistic or compelling.  Avengers already got rid of that idea with Infinity War, making Thanos a very realistic and well-acted CG character, so much so that you could be forgiven for forgetting he wasn’t really there.  This movie continues that with Thanos, but also does the same level of quality with the Hulk.  So instead of talking about the look of the movie, I’m just gonna list the most exciting moments that I wrote down during that last fight.  And I’ll write them just as I wrote them in my notes.  Cap and Mjolnir!  Chips are down!  ON. YO. LEFF!!  Assemble! Rescue and Iron Man!  Wasp called him, “Cap!”  INSTANT KILL!  A-FORCE!!  CAPTAIN MARVEL!  I AM IRON MAN!!  …I straight up got goosebumps just typing those.  …I’m gonna go see it for a third time…

The cast of the movie was…well it was everything.  If you ever appeared in an MCU movie before, you probably showed up in this movie in some way or another.  You can get mentioned and shown in pictures like the Dark Elves from Thor: The Dark World or you can appear in unused footage with some new voiceover like Natalie Portman did or you can straight up appear in some degree like Tessa Thompson, Rene Russo, John Slattery, Tilda Swinton, Hayley Atwell, Marisa Tomei, Taika Waititi, Angela Bassett, William Hurt, Winston Duke, Maximiliano Hernandez, Frank Grillo, Jacob Batalon, Robert Redford, Ross Marquand, Callan Mulvey, Sean Gunn, James D’Arcy, and even Ty Simpkins, the little kid from Iron Man 3 that’s all grown up and appears at Tony’s funeral but even I didn’t figure it out until I got to the parking lot.  (In my defense, I didn’t care for Iron Man 3 much and don’t rewatch it often)  So many people you couldn’t possibly ask for more, to the point where they even had Wong say, “You wanted more?”  …Here’s my thing…  Yes, you gave us so many people.  Almost everybody!  …ALMOST!  There’s so many that I know I shouldn’t complain, but this is the end of an era, man!  I think you should’ve found a home for everyone.  At least everyone that’s still alive in the continuity.  But what about Lady Sif?  She’s still alive as far as I know.  What about some Nova Corps action?  Where was Adam Warlock?  What about the Skrulls?  Anybody from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., like Quake or Agent Coulson?  I’m not caught up on that show, but past Coulson could’ve appeared.  I’m not like most people in thinking that this was the time for X-Men to show up now that Marvel has the rights.  It would’ve been too rushed and the MCU really should build to them properly.  But biggest of all would be the Defenders.  I know the Netflix series are cancelled and Marvel’s not looking to bring them back, but this would’ve been one hell of a sendoff.  Just having Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, and the Punisher step out of a portal together?  Tell me that wouldn’t have blown your mind!  And it would’ve been easy!  If those actors wouldn’t have agreed to get into wardrobe and step in front of a green screen looking determined, those actors are silly people!

Now let’s go through the main cast.  They are all still amazing at this, and I’m gonna be sad to see some of them go.  Though thankfully for my tear ducts, not too many of them had to die.  I think only 2 big ones.  Downey’s Tony Stark being the biggest one, obviously.  Man I cried so hard the first time I saw the movie!  And only maybe 10% less on the second viewing.  I didn’t see it coming really.  I was convinced that Captain America was going to die and Tony was going to retire, but they flipped it on me.  Tony bothered me in the beginning.  I really liked his relationship with Nebula, but when he gets home he starts being a real douche for no reason.  He claims Cap wasn’t there when he needed him.  I saw Infinity War, Tony!  Everyone was begging you to call Steve, but you just never got around to it!  I understand his motivations for not wanting to get involved when they found a possible solution, but I feel like everyone knew that Tony wouldn’t be able to resist if someone posed an interesting enough theory to him.  It was just a matter of time.  And finally, Tony’s sendoff was perfect.  Retirement would never be good enough for him, and if he was going to have to go, it should be by saying, “I am Iron Man,” and saving the day.  And the funeral was perfect, from the cast involved in it, to the music and presentation, to the wreath with the proof that Tony has a heart.  Speaking of send offs, Cap’s was perfect as well.  I was expecting a noble death, but his noble life was even better.  I loved the “Hail Hydra” moment and the fight with himself, and I especially loved America’s Ass.  …I mean the line!  I wasn’t staring at his ass…  Most of the joy of Captain America was in the final fight, how even as possibly the weakest of the three heroes that started it; Cap was the one holding his own the most.  And holding Mjolnir!  I squealed with glee at that moment!  And then how he used it!  Calling in lightning, spinning it like Thor, throwing it at his shield in midair!  Perfect!  And finally, after all these years, he says, “Assemble!”  Though it raises questions, I really enjoyed his ending.  He finally got that dance with his best girl.  It makes you wonder now where second Cap was through all these other situations as you assume he wouldn’t be able to just lay low and hide knowing he could help, but whatever.  I’m kind of on the fence about him handing the shield off to Falcon.  I know that happens in the comics, and I know Sam is an honorable dude, but I feel like you go with Bucky.  He can be Captain America, from the strength and the history and the fighting ability.  Falcon can’t do what Cap could.  Falcon should be Falcon.  But whatever.  It’s fine with me.

I was bummed and surprised at what happened with Black Widow.  Having heard she had a movie coming, I was not expecting what happened to her.  On second viewing, hearing her say, “See you in a minute,” before they head back in time was heartbreaking.  But anyone watching Hawkeye and Widow head to Vormir after having seen Infinity War probably had a sinking feeling in their gut.  I was personally hoping that the self-sacrifice aspect would be a loophole.  I mean, we’ve only ever seen someone sacrifice someone else.  Thanos threw Gamora in there and Thanos got the stone for it.  Widow threw herself in there, so Widow should get the stone.  And then the Soul Stone says, “Well…ya got me.”  The other hope I have is ongoing because, besides wondering what happens when Cap is returning the stones and goes to Vormir and sees his old buddy Red Skull there, what happens when the Soul Stone is returned?  Is the soul returned?  Maybe we’ll see…  Thor continues to be a joy since Ragnarok.  It was very funny, and very fitting, to see fat Thor, drowning in self-loathing as he would be.  And he got to have a lovely moment with his mom.  I was kind of hoping that his magic, armor-up, beard-braiding action transformation might Hemsworth him up a little and bring that sexy back, but it’s fine.  He’ll get there.  I also felt like they used Captain Marvel well.  They didn’t make her too over-powered and didn’t make her just save the day easily when she decided to show up, and they also explained well why she wasn’t going to be around to save the day every time because she’s busy in space.  And she set up a moment I loved.  First, her little interaction with Peter Parker was adorable, but then that leads to the assembly of A-Force, or all the women heroes of Marvel, getting together for a save the day push.  I love me some badass ladies, and they put so many of them in one frame that I nearly passed out.  I would say that part of me found it a bit pandering because why in the context of the movie would only the ladies decide to make a stand.  We’re all equal on this battlefield and everyone was all spread out, but all these ladies just ran to the same point to do some work.  But who cares?  It was awesome!  Speaking of awesome, Scarlet Witch versus Thanos!  At that moment, I wasn’t even thinking about how much I wanted to see that, but then it happened and it was epic.  And Tom Holland.  His activity in this movie was somewhat limited by the whole dead thing, but it should be noted that this kid is such a damned good actor.  His death in Infinity War and his reaction to Tony’s death here were so heartbreaking!  I felt worse for Peter than I did for Pepper, and Pepper is his wife and mother of his child! For two other tiny points, I loved Nebula’s character ark.  She’s really becoming likable. I just wish when Cap called Thanos a son of a bitch that Nebula would chime in and say, “Actually, my grandmother was a lovely person…”  And he wasn’t in there much, but I wish Doctor Strange’s line was, “If I tell you, it won’t happen…but trust me, the whole thing is going to be an awesome spectacle.”

Now, you’ve been waiting through a lot of fangasming to see the payoff of a tease I mentioned in third paragraph and never paid off.  What is the one problem that I had with Avengers: Endgame?  It sucks to have something built up and built up and never pay it off, doesn’t it?  …Well too bad!  Moving on!

I’m kidding.  THE HULK!  That was my one problem with this movie!  Infinity War sets up Hulk’s inability to transform and help the team SO HARD and never pays it off.  It gave me blue balls!  …Or in this case, green balls, I guess.  And it just ended on that!  So of course I spend an entire year dreaming of what that moment will be where the chips are down and everything looks like it’s lost and then Falcon says, “On your left,” and Hulk transforms and turns the tide.  It would have to be some epic moment, right?  After all that build up?  …NOPE!  This movie starts and he’s just Hulk already.  Granted, he’s Hulk AND Banner, which is cool, but he just figured it out off screen in a bland, science moment we never saw and all that build up to nothing.  Well then certainly we’ll have some great moment for him in the big fight where almost everyone has a big moment then, right?  …NOPE!  I think I saw him once, and he punched something insignificant off camera and was never seen again.  I will grant you that technically the greatest moment for me in the film happens because of the Hulk.  If he hadn’t sacrificed his arm to snap then no heroes return moment.  I also grant you that his arm was hurt so he wouldn’t be as big of a factor in the fight.  But I’m not asking him to be the one that defeats Thanos, but give him something!  In Infinity War, Banner had a very hard time in his fight against Cull Obsidian because he had to rely on the Hulkbuster armor.  Why could we not have the moment when Cull is walking up on Iron Man but the Hulk drops down, makes some quip about beating him with one hand tied behind his back, and whoops that ass?  Well we couldn’t because Cull was stepped on by Ant-Man as a throwaway gag.  I don’t need Hulk to save the day or win the movie or absorb the gamma radiation he said the glove gives off to become Worldbreaker Hulk or anything, but you guys set it up and let it fizzle out and that was a real bummer that stuck with me after the movie.  …The one and only bummer, so you guys still did an amazing job.

So that’s it.  A decade long setup leading to a seemingly decade long review written by me.  And all of it paid off perfectly.  At least from Avengers: Endgame.  This review?  Fine at best.  But Endgame was the perfect fan service movie that included characters and references from nearly all of their 21 movies leading to this moment that in no way disappointed.  Well, in one way disappointed because of the Hulk thing, but if your movie is 2 hours of solid fan service followed by one hour of back to back hype moments and I leave with only one minor bummer as a Hulk fan, you have succeeded in a way no one ever has and possibly no one ever will.  You have done the impossible.  I’m not even going to tell you to see this movie because it’s obvious that I think you should and you should have already at least 7 times and I also told you not to read this until you had.  Avengers: Endgame gets “I love you 3000” out of “SO MANY STAIRS!!”

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This Is the End (2013)


Take Yo Panties Off!

This Is the End (2013)Based on the poster alone, I had no interest in seeing today’s movie.  I liked the people I saw on the poster, but I’ve seen them all in movies that were both great and awful, so the poster alone couldn’t really capture my attention.  But that’s why they make trailers.  When I started seeing the trailers for the movie, my desire to see it took to a sharp incline.  The trailer wasn’t laugh out loud funny, but that could be a good thing in this case.  The trailer should just show the potential for the movie; not spoil the best jokes.  And that’s what this trailer did.  Plus, the premise seemed fantastic.  But Friendboss Josh already had an appointment to see this movie with his girlfriend, the Whitney-Bird.  So we went down to the theaters to catch Man of Steel instead.  But that shit was sold out.  Good thing for me, Friendboss Josh values his friendshipbossship with me more than he values vagina, so we went to see This Is the End, written and directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, and starring Jay Baruchel, Seth Rogen, James Franco, Craig Robinson, Jonah Hill, Danny McBride, Emma Watson, Michael Cera, Jason Segel, David Krumholtz, Paul Rudd, Mindy Kaling, Martin Starr, Channing Tatum, Kevin Hart, Rihanna, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and Aziz Ansari.

Jay Baruchel goes to Los Angeles to visit his friend Seth Rogen.  After a celebratory day of smoking weed and playing video games, Rogen suggests that the two of them go to a party at James Franco’s house, but Baruchel doesn’t want to go because he doesn’t know or like anyone at the party and worries about being left alone there.  Sure enough, upon arriving to the party Rogen goes off on his own, leaving Baruchel in uncomfortable conversations with people like Michael Cera, Emma Watson, and Rihanna.  Rogen and Baruchel walk down to a store to pick up some snacks, but their shopping is interrupted when blue beams of light grab some of the shoppers and drag them up to the heavens.  Then the fuckin’ apocalypse happens, instantly killing many of the celebrities at Franco’s party, leaving Rogen, Baruchel, Franco, Craig Robinson, and Jonah Hill alone in the house to fend for themselves.  They ration out what little supplies they have and go to sleep for the night.  When they wake up, they find that Danny McBride had crashed the party and fallen asleep in a bathroom upstairs, and had come down and prepared all of their food for breakfast.  How will this group of sheltered celebrities be able to survive the reckoning?

I feel like I won’t have very much to say about this movie.  What I will say is this: this is probably the best comedy I’ve seen in a very long time.  I just can’t think of very many funny things that I could put in a review about something that was keeping me laughing super consistently for the greater majority of the movie.  There was a moment to make me laugh out loud at least once every five minutes.  That’s one hell of a ratio!  I barely ever laugh in movies, so that should tell you just what I think about this movie.  I would say that it could be easily argued that the story was a little underwhelming.  It was mainly just an excuse to get these really funny people into situations they could improvise jokes about.  But a comedy doesn’t really need to blow you away with story.  One of my favorite comedies is Airplane! and that’s really all that movie is.  I’m not going to come back here and write a review about the fact that its story wasn’t spectacular when all it was trying to be was a comedy and it kept me laughing.

The cameos in this movie are crazy.  They have ridiculous celebrities in this movie.  I liked most of those people and was tickled to see them in this, and I even really liked the celebrities that I don’t normally like.  Rihanna had a funny moment with Michael Cera, Channing Tatum had an amazing joke, and even though I don’t like them, the Backstreet Boys reveal was pretty awesome, albeit unnecessary.  Jay Baruchel was a little whiny in the movie, but he was also plenty funny.  Seth Rogen was hilarious.  I did think that it didn’t make sense for people to act like he wouldn’t get into heaven if he used Jesus’ name in vain.  He’s Jewish!  They don’t care about Jesus!  James Franco had plenty of funny moments as well.  I especially liked the story he told about Lindsay Lohan thinking he was Jake Gyllenhaal and him telling her to call him the Prince of Persia.  Danny McBride is always a strange character for me.  He never really plays anyone likeable, but he’s really good at playing that character.  And he made a great joke about Franco being gay.  I would say if there were anything bad to say about the cast of this movie it would be that Emma Watson had too small of a part in the movie.  She was great in the movie, and the parts she was in were pretty hilarious, but I want to look at her at all times, and I also want to have a little resolution to what happened to her.  After she leaves, we never see her again.  I assume there’s no way she could go to heaven because she portrayed a witch in 8 movies, so that’s means she’s for sure Hell bound, but the movie never said for sure.

I really can’t do much in a review of This Is the End.  I cannot add funny to the funniest movie I’ve seen in a long time.  This movie was created by a bunch of professionally funny people, and I do this for free.  The story was an interesting idea, but a little simplistic, but who cares because it was mostly there to set up some really funny people being funny.  This movie kept me laughing all the way through, giving me only brief pauses to catch my breath so I wouldn’t die while watching it.  You definitely need to get out to see this movie as soon as you can.  I can’t imagine you’ll regret it.  This Is the End gets “The power of Christ compels you!” out of “I’d be pretty bummed if I don’t at least get a bite of the Milky Way.”

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Clueless (1995)


This Reminds Boys of Being Naked, and Then They Think of Sex.

Again feeling the need to get away from the underdog fighting movies, I feel that the movie I’ve chosen for today could not be further removed from them.  When the Lady MacBalls last suggested a movie, it was my most popular review in a while, so I felt a little obligated to do her next request quickly.  The movie she suggested was a movie I already owned, but had never opened and never really had an inspiration to open it.  I had seen it before, though the last time was much closer to when the movie came out.  It doesn’t seem like the kind of movie I would enjoy, but I vaguely remember it being better than one would expect based on the subject matter.  Let’s see if memory serves in my review of Clueless, written and directed by Amy Heckerling, and starring Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Dash, Brittany Murphy, Paul Rudd, Donald Faison, Breckin Meyer, Dan Hedaya, Jeremy Sisto, Justin Walker, Wallace Shawn, Twink Caplan, Elisa Donovan, and Julie Brown.

I just realized that this is going to be a hard movie to describe because there’s no singular plotline to be seen.  Well this movie is basically about a superficial high school girl named Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone), who is pretty, popular, and rich.  She’s friends with Dionne Davenport (Stacey Dash), who is roughly as pretty, popular, and rich.  Cher lives with her father (Dan Hedaya) in Beverly Hills and is visited often by her ex-stepbrother Josh (Paul Rudd).  First, Cher gets a mediocre grade on her report card and resolves to fix that by setting her teacher, Mr. Hall (Wallace Shawn), up with another teacher, Miss Geist (Twink Caplan).  With that out of the way, she then decides to give a makeover to the new girl at school, Tai Frasier (Brittany Murphy).  Tai seems to like a stoner named Travis (Brecken Meyer), but Cher sets her straight and steers her towards rich kid Elton (Jeremy Sisto).  Elton doesn’t want Tai; he wants Cher, so that backfires.  Cher starts going after a new kid whose wardrobe is stuck in the 50’s named Christian (Justin Walker), but it turns out he’s gay.  Then a couple of other things and the end.

I remember this movie being better, but I suppose it’s not really made for my age range.  This movie seems more appropriate for teenagers around the same age as the characters in the movie, or at least for people that really enjoyed the movie back then.  Watching the movie today and as a 28-year-old, I don’t find a great deal of appeal in the movie.  It’s fine, but doesn’t really seem for me.  Even though I know that it’s mostly done in parody, I don’t know why I’d want to spend very much time with this superficial and stupid lot of people.  Yeah, pretty much everyone in this movie is super great to look at, but it turns out they talk too.  I grant that I’ve seen the movie before, but I didn’t really find most of the jokes funny.  The funniest thing to happen in the movie to me was when Alicia Silverstone and Paul Rudd were talking about Marky Mark and how he wasn’t cool anymore, which made me laugh because Mark Wahlberg is super famous now and Alicia Silverstone could very well be dead for all I know.  Beyond that, it seemed as if the bulk of the humor came from how dumb the characters were.  I would give the movie credit for having a decent enough message in the end about getting over yourself and trying to do something for those in need, even if you remain dumb to do so.  I didn’t feel like the story was ever really any one story either.  It was just like a couple of smaller stories smashed together to no great effect.

I guess you could say the performances were really good because they accomplished the two goals they set for themselves: be super-hot and pretty stupid.  Alicia Silverstone and Stacey Dash were particularly good at both of these.  Brittany Murphy’s looked better than she did in this movie, even after the makeover, and her character typically got on my nerves.  I had completely forgotten that Paul Rudd played the stepbrother in this movie.  That’s all I had to say about that.  Donald Faison and Breckin Meyer’s characters had a few quasi funny moments.

I’m sorry that I couldn’t muster much to say about this movie.  It wasn’t really good, and it wasn’t really bad.  It wasn’t funny, but it wasn’t painful.  It’s a decent enough conclusion, but a haphazard story with no real conflict and resolution, and the characters were mostly dumb and not people I want to spend time with.  I vaguely remember liking this when I was younger, but the attractive stars would’ve accomplished piquing my interest at that age all by themselves.  You may still like this movie if you have really fond memories of it from your youth, but it doesn’t really stand on its own anymore as far as I’m concerned.  You can probably skip this movie and not miss much beyond some sexy, fully-clothed ladies.  Clueless gets “Is this like a Noxzema commercial or what?” out of “Old people can be so sweet.”

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Our Idiot Brother (2011)


I Won ‘Most Cooperative Inmate’, Four Months Running

Oh man.  I’m on number three of three back to back rom-com reviews and I am feeling pretty exhausted.  This is such hard work.  OW!  Finger cramp.  It’s not from the typing though.  It’s my time of the month.  Well, at least I’m finishing off my reviews with the movie I expected to be the funniest and most enjoyable.  I like the cast so much that I couldn’t possibly not like it, right?  Let’s find out.  This movie is Our Idiot Brother, written by David Schisgall, directed by Jesse Peretz, and starring Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel, Emily Mortimer, Steve Coogan, Rashida Jones, Adam Scott, Shirley Knight, Kathryn Hahn, T.J. Miller, Hugh Dancy, Sterling K. Brown, Janet Montgomery, Matthew Mindler, Bob Stephenson, and Katie Aselton.

Ned (Paul Rudd) is a farmer who lives with his girlfriend, Janet (Kathryn Hahn), and their dog, Willie Nelson … or at least he does until he sells weed to a uniformed police officer and goes to jail for a little while.  He may not be too bright, or perhaps he’s just a little too optimistic and trusting of others.  When he gets out of jail, Janet has a new boyfriend, Billy (T.J. Miller), and refuses to give Ned his dog back.  Billy tells Ned that, if he’s able to get $1000 together, he will convince Janet to let Ned rent a goat house to live in.  Ned goes to live with his mom (Shirley Knight) for a little while, and then starts doing odd jobs for his three sisters to get money, but he also kind of messes up their lives a little in the process.  For his sister Liz (Emily Mortimer), he goes to help her husband Dylan (Steve Coogan) film his documentary about ballet dancers or some shit, but he ends up catching Dylan having sex with the ballerina.  For Miranda (Elizabeth Banks), he drives her to an interview she has with her client, Lady Arabella (Janet Montgomery).  Miranda gets very little information from Arabella, but Arabella confides some very personal details in Ned, who then lets them slip to Miranda.  Ned also becomes involved in her relationship with Jeremy (Adam Scott), who wants to be more than just friends with her.  For Natalie (Zooey Deschanel), he poses nude for her artist friend, Christian (Hugh Dancy), with whom she cheats on her girlfriend, Cindy (Rashida Jones), and gets knocked up.  Ned just wants to hang out with his family, and get his dog back, but his sisters don’t really want him around.

Did any of that sound like a comedy to you?  Yeah, not really to me either.  This movie is likeable in every way except for the fact that it’s a comedy that is not funny.  Any humor to this movie is like a dull hum that you may not even notice and probably won’t laugh at.  The most it got from me is a smile.  It felt kind of like an artsy version of a comedy, but lead to me thinking it played more as a drama.  Ned does a couple of stupid things throughout the movie that are mildly entertaining, but most of the movie is about the three sister’s lives falling apart and choosing to blame Ned for it because he told people what was going on.  Ned didn’t make Liz’s husband cheat on her, he just told Miranda about it.  Ned didn’t want stories told to him in confidence to get out just so his selfish sister could write a good story, nor did he make Jeremy and Miranda talk shit about the other person behind their back to him.  Ned didn’t make Natalie cheat on Cindy either.  But he gets blamed for all of it.  In a podcast called Doug Loves Movies, Doug Benson suggested that this movie should be called My Three Bitch Sisters because Ned isn’t that stupid, he’s just overly nice and his sisters are bitches.

The performances in this movie were fine as performances, but not that great as comedic performances.  Paul Rudd was about the second funniest person in the movie, but didn’t get a great amount of laughs out of me.  T.J. Miller was the funniest person in the movie, but he was not in the movie very much.  His interactions with Rudd were the occasions that made me chuckle a little.  Rudd plays pretty mellow and uneventful for the whole movie and has only one occasion when he lashes out at his family because they’re ruining a game of charades and he just wants to spend time with his family.  Everyone else had good performances, but they just weren’t funny.  The four main girls, at least, were all very attractive.  Elizabeth Banks didn’t play a very likeable character, which bothered me because I think of her as a very likeable person from the other things I’ve seen her in.  She’s also much better looking as a blonde than as a brunette.  I expected good comedy from Zooey Deschanel because I’ve seen a couple episodes of the New Girl, where she’s very likeable and funny.  But she didn’t really bring any funny to this movie.  She’s even a sort of aspiring stand up comedian, but her sets are more uncomfortably unfunny, which it seems that they intended, but it would’ve been nice to get to laugh in this comedy.  Emily Mortimer is probably the nicest sister, and probably gives the most emotional and comedic performance amongst the sisters, but her comedy is more about her being a little awkward.  Rashida Jones comes close to funny, but I think I was bothered by her in this movie because they made her really lesbian and dressed almost like a guy, when she’s very attractive in real life and they wasted it with lesbo-gear.  Adam Scott didn’t play a douche, as most of his performances I’ve seen him in are, but he also didn’t contribute any funny.  Are we seeing a pattern develop?

This movie is strangely well liked among critics, according to Rotten Tomatoes.  I don’t get it.  It would be a good movie if anything about the movie claimed that it was a drama.  It’s mostly dramatic scenes with a few, sparse laughs.  A drama can have a few laughs, and a comedy can have a few dramatic scenes, but a comedy can’t have only a few comedic scenes.  The performances were good, but not funny.  You may like this movie if you go in expecting a light drama, but instead, I just say you don’t really need to watch it.  Our Idiot Brother gets “Nothing like two dudes and a dog making candles” out of “Such a cliche”.

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