Review: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Pirates of the Caribbean:  On Stranger Tides

5/26/11

Carmike Cinema 10

Medium Mr. Pibb

Appropriate A/C

Sequels are a funny animal.  And this is the Summer of Sequels.  It’s fodder for those who maintain that Hollywood is out of original ideas (See review of Source Code a few weeks ago).  Only a few sequels have ever outdone the original:  The Empire Strikes Back and Wrath of Khan being the two that come to mind.  Reboots are a tough to pull off as well.  For every Batman there’s a Superman.  For every Star Trek there’s a Tron.

The fourth entry into the Pirates canon had me worried.  To recap:  loved the 1^st one, it will go down as one of my all-time favorites; 2^nd was okay but definitely started to drift a little; 3^rd movie was a train wreck.  By the time the trilogy had been brought to a close, there were too many characters, the story was totally confusing, there was a squid faced guy who talked with a clicking sound and a disturbing will she/won’t she story with the maiden and the scoundrel pirate.  I wasn’t doing reviews at the time but here’s how they’d have gone, in order:  Black Pearl 3.5/4, Dead Man’s Chest 2/4, At World’s End 1/4. 

Fast forward to 2011.  Bruckheimer, et al decides to reboot the franchise and Johnny Depp isn’t ready to turn in his freak card quite yet so he decides to don the Jack Sparrow garb again.  Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley are gone, as are pretty much everyone else except for Jack’s right hand man, Gibbs and Barbossa who is now a proper Englishman.  And somehow it all works.

This time Jack and the crew are searching for the Fountain of Youth.  Problem is, so are a group of Spaniards and the ever-feared Blackbeard the Pirate.  Enter Blackbeard’s daughter, Angelica, played by Penelope Cruz.  She and Jack apparently hooked up at some point in the past and there is no love lost between them.  The opening sequence alone is almost worth the price of admission and this film is much funnier than the last two and infinitely easier to understand. 

Penelope Cruz steals the show and Ian McShane’s Blackbeard is a great bad guy.  But nothing in this movie compares with the sheer beauty and terror of the mermaids.  Yep, those mythical creatures that you envision singing about being part of our world or chilling with Tom Hanks will have you walking away wondering if those part woman/part fish/part vampire/totally bad@ss creatures of the deep are going to come out of the screen and bite you.  And banking on the success of Stranger Tides, there’s of course a teaser after the credits leaving us to wonder if Captain Jack will be pillaging and plundering again soon.

My review: 

2.5/4, B, See it in the theater

We're up on YouTube!!!!!

Check out Show #1, cut into two parts.

Part 1 here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhT3o9jODZ0&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Part 2 here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fySw7dMEmuM&feature=youtube_gdata_player

We'll have show 2 tonight.

Enjoy and as always leave some comments!!!

Review: Bridesmaids

What are little boys made of? What are little boys made of? Frogs and snails, and puppy-dogs' tails;
That's what little boys are made of.
What are little girls made of? What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice, and all that's nice;
That's what little girls are made of.

I don’t think so.  Not in Bridesmaids at least.

It was only a matter of time before Judd Apatow inserted his brand of comedy into a female-centric story.  See if any of these Apatow gems ring a bell:  Anchorman, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Talladega Nights, Knocked Up, Superbad, Step Brothers, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek.  Raunchy, sometimes filthy, so wrong on so many levels…..and absolutely hilarious.  Spit coke out of your mouth funny.  Laugh out loud in the theater to the point that you miss half the movie because you are still laughing about the last line….even when you are by yourself!!!  Well Bridesmaids had its moments but wasn’t quite to that level.

Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph, both of SNL fame lead a cast of “I recognize her”’s, all of whom do a great job.  Kristen Wiig is naturally hilarious and has some side splitting lines.  The interaction between she and the flight attendant on the airplane ranks up there with classic movie flight fights like Ben Stiller’s in Meet the Parents and Billy Idol’s in The Wedding Singer.  Supporting actress Wendi McLendon-Covey steals the show as a crude wife and mother of 3 boys that hates her life and is thrilled to be in the wedding party to escape her existence.

Bridesmaids was billed as the female version of The Hangover.  It wasn’t.  It had potential to be on par with it but took itself much too seriously too many times to get there.  The beauty of The Hangover is that it never tried to be dramatic.  Bridesmaids plays too much on the producers need to attract the female audience with a sappy love story and a painfully awkward broken friendship arc.

I’m also not a huge fan of gross-out humor and there’s plenty of it to go around.  A little is okay, but the “is this really happening” scenes went on too long. 

I see what all the commotion is about, but maybe that was the problem. Expectations were as lofty as a Chicago socialite wedding.

My review: 

2/4, C, See it during a matinee

Show #1 Debuts Tonight!!!!!

Show #1 is in the can!!!!

It will debut tonight on TV-31 in Stillwater at 8:00 Friday night (May 13) and will run again on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of next week.

I will try to have the podcast up by Monday as well as start working on getting the show on YouTube. 

Enjoy!!!

Batch

Review: Thor

Thor

5/8/11

Carmike Cinema 10

Large Mr. Pibb, A few bites of popcorn

Too much A/C

Let me start off by saying that I had very low expectations of Thor.  I thought the trailers looked cheesy.  I know absolutely nothing about the Thor origin story.  I thought the Easter egg at the end of Iron Man 2 where they found Thor’s hammer in the desert was cool but it was basically just an announcement of the movie.  I liked Chris Hemsworth as Captain Kirk’s father at the beginning of the Star Trek re-boot but that’s the extent of my knowledge of the guy who was supposed to be the star of this summer tent-pole movie.  Anthony Hopkins is good in spurts and Natalie Portman annoys me.  All signs pointed toward “flop” and I told anyone that would listen that this was my prediction for this entry into the “Avengers” canon. 

Man was I wrong.

It was really good.  Sure, there were a few flaws that I’ll get to but it was just a good, early summer movie season comic book action movie.  The movie was extremely well made, with an obviously big budget and  I continue to be amazed at what filmmakers can do with CGI.  But you don’t want to overdo it and director Kenneth Brannagh doesn’t.  What you want out of movie effects is to forget they aren’t real, which is the way I felt here. 

Hemsworth did a great job as our leading man.  He was almost too good.  I got the feeling Thor is supposed to be sort of a stoic, Norse-godlike figure and Hemsworth added charm and humor to that formula.  His flowing blonde locks and chiseled body made you think he was probably born to play this role.  It was also funnier than I thought it would be.  The script did a great job of adding humor in just the right places in between figuring out whether or not it was possible or probable for Thor and his newfound earthly love to hook up. 

My only complaint is that the movie didn’t really get you to buy in on an emotional level to the characters.  One of the great things about the Iron Man franchise is that you really felt what a weasel Tony Stark was so there was a much greater payoff within the redemption story.  Thor would bring you just to the edge of that feeling but never could tip you over. 

I saw the movie in 3D but it didn’t add a lot to the experience.  I think a 2D viewing would be fine. 

In summary:  I liked it better than Iron Man 2, less than Iron Man and more than the Edward Norton Hulk (we ignore the other one pretend it didn't happen).

My review: 

2.5/4, B-, See it during a matinee

Finally!!!!

Okay, sorry it's taken me so long to post an update.  After many twists, turns and shifts, we are finally to week 1 of filming!!!  We plan to tape the 1st show this Thursday, May 12 and will air on Monday, May 16 on TV-31 in Stillwater and hopefully have it up on YouTube and podcast around that same date. 

I saw Thor tonight and will have a review up shortly. 

Thanks for everyone's patience!!  Be sure to sign up to follow us on email!!