Favorite Movies of the 90's

In this post, I will identify my favorite movie of the year, as well as point out one other underrated classic that didn't quite make the cut as my favorite, for every year from 1990 through 1999. Return of the old style, way too long for anybody to read posts! Yay!

1990
Personal Favorite Film: There were several good movies this year, and I did not see the main competitors for the Best Picture Oscar (except Dances with Wolves, which I did not like). Edward Scissorhands is perhaps the best loved movie of the year today. I love Tim Burton and I like the movie but I've always thought it a little overrated. But, I haven't seen it in a while. Gremlins 2 is one of the best sequels of all time, because it completely abandoned the original and went for completely farcical comedy. Teh Brain Gremlin forever. Jacob's Ladder is a cult favorite but I thought it was boring. Home Alone was a smash, and it holds up really well today as a cute and funny movie. Flatliners is star studded and has a good plot, but is way worse than it could/should be. The best film of the year is ultimately Total Recall, which manages to maintain a tension throughout, despite a complicated and ridiculous plot. But the several classic scenes and fun plot and action make this one of the greatest action films of all time.

Underrated: Quick Change is probably my 3rd of 4th favorite movie of the year (behind Total Recall, Gremlins 2, and maybe Edward Scissorhands). It's a really funny comedy about bank robbery starring Bill Murray, Geena Davis, and Randy Quaid. Despite the star-studded cast, it's not well known or remembered today. But nevertheless it's one of my favorite comedies.

1991
Personal Favorite Film: There are a few viable competitors here. Silence of the Lambs won best picture, and it's a really compelling drama. But, I have never been bowled away by it, and have generally found it a bit over the top. Terminator 2 had great special effect, and I loved it at the time. Many people think it is superior to the original, but I still consider the first Terminator to be a far superior movie, due to the extreme cheesiness of the sequel. The scenes where John Connor is teaching him to be human are brutal to watch. For me, there are 2 viable competitors here. JFK is a really good drama and it's in the top 5 of the decade in terms of cultural impact, but it's just way too long, and completely nonfactual. None of this keeps it from being a great movie, but they hold it out of the number one slot this year. Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey is clearly superior to the original movie, no matter what anybody else says, and it's one of my favorite comedies of all time, and the best movie released during the year.

Underrated: 2 choices here: He Said, She Said is not remembered fondly today, but I think it's a sharp and funny and romantic movie. Plus, I've always been an Elizabeth Perkins fan. That's good enough to make it one of my favorite romantic comedies of the decade.

1992
Personal Favorite Film: To be perfectly honest, I haven't seen a whole ton of movies this year. I have seen Aladdin, a very good movie from the Disney golden period of the late 80's/early 90's. It's probably not as good as Little Mermaid and Lion King but I loved this movie as a kid and I still really enjoy it today. It's the most silly and comedic of the movies, which does make it hold up a tad less, but I still enjoy it. Wayne's World is one of the funniest comedies of all time. Yeah, I was 10 when I first saw it, which maybe skews it a little, but I still laugh my ass off whenever I see it. But my favorite movie of the year is Glengarry Glen Ross, which features an excellent cast and a really interesting story. It's funny and it's gripping and it's depressing. Excellent drama.

Underrated: Not underrated in the sense that it's one of the best of the year, but underrated in the sense that most people seem to think it's extremely terrible and I kind of like it. I'm speaking of Stay Tuned, the John Ritter movie. Yeah, a lot of the jokes are lame, but it's got a clever conceit and it pulls it off fairly well. As a TV loving youth I really enjoyed it.

1993
Personal Favorite Film: In my opinion, this was a really strong year for movies. The popular blockbuster this year was The Fugitive, which was critically acclaimed at the time and still holds up very well today. The Sandlot is a classic kid's movie and still an all time favorite of mine. Schindler's List won best picture, and I liked it better than I normally like big, meaningful dramas, but it's just not quite my favorite. Groundhog Day is one of everybody's favorite movies, and I am no exception. Extremely funny, and it has a good message that it states well. Ultimately, my favorite film of the year though is Searching for Bobby Fischer, which is a really interesting movie about a young chess prodigy. The characters are very interesting, the story is good, the acting is uniformly excellent, and it all meshes together well. Max Pomeranc gives one of the greatest kid performances in film history. It's one of my 3 or 4 favorite movies of the decade

Underrated: Wayne's World 2 gets a bad rap, as a lot of comedy sequels do, but it's still really funny. OK, the re-tread jokes from the first movie fall flat, but "a great big bloody Bengal tiger" alone makes it worth a watch.

1994
Personal Favorite Film: There was a very famous best picture race this year. In addition, The Lion King the most popular and probably best Disney film of this era was released. OK, maybe Little Mermaid was better. But still, it was really fun! Forrest Gump won best picture, but is not well liked today among the film crowd. I tend to agree. It's a good movie, but not a great movie. Shawshank Redemption is the most well known, but I thought the movie was silly and boring and I thought it was just OK. Pulp Fiction is the best of the three, and it has a cultural cachet like no other movie from the 90's. It's just not quite my favorite of the year. Four Weddings and a Funeral was an original and very good romantic comedy, but there were still some kinks to work out. Andie MacDowell also gives one of the worst performances ever from a female romantic comedy lead. My favorite movie of the year is Quiz Show, which has good acting and a good story and a good theme. It manages to be entertaining and to hold up well throughout multiple viewings. A true success.

Underrated: Not too many really underrated films from this year. I guess D2: The Mighty Ducks, by far the best movie in the Ducks franchise, though still not a great film, it's usually worth catching part of whenever it comes on cable.

1995
Personal Favorite Film: I think this was a weak year for films, though part of that is two of the movies I suspect would be my favorites of the year, Babe and especially Sense and Sensibility I have yet to see. Of what I did see, there are 2 movies released this year, both cult favorites by well loved directors which I associate together this year. I suspect most people's list would be topped by 12 Monkeys or Seven, and I do enjoy both movies, but I find both to be overrated. Best picture winner Braveheart not the type of movie I enjoy, I thought it was boring. Toy Story was the first Pixar film, and a worthy entry into their canon, but not quite the best of the year. My favorite from this year is Empire Records, a funny indie comedy and all around entertaining film much beloved by all music fans.

Underrated: Pocahontas is generally seen as the beginning of the end for the Disney creative rebirth. While not quite as good as their four hugely successful movies preceding this, I think this gives the movie the short shrift. Just cause it's not as good as those doesn't mean it's still not a good movie, which it is.

1996
Personal Favorite Film: An extremely strong year for films. Probably the best loved film of the year today is Fargo a dark Coen Brothers comedy. All I have to say about that is what I've said countless times above: I like the film, but not as much as some others seem to. Same is true of Waiting for Guffman, a very funny comedy but not quite as hilarious as it's often made out to be. Bottle Rocket a very entertaining Wes Anderson film; it's obvious from watching he hadn't quite gotten his footing or formula down but it's still a great one. Scream, one of my favorite teen movies of all time, revitalized the horror genre and paved the way for lots of mediocre and some really good teen horror flicks. The best movie released this year was Jerry Maguire, exactly the kind of crazy, over the top role he was born to play, and with a really good love story. And Renee Zelwegger is really good and cute in it too! One of the most watchable films of the decade.

Underrated: My second favorite movie from this year is the in my opinion painfully underrated That Thing You Do!, which, actually, may well be my favorite Tom Hanks movie. The characters are really believable, the plot is interesting, the acting is good, and the theme song is amazing. I've seen it so many times on TV and I still really enjoy it.

1997
Personal Favorite Film: Grosse Point Blank is an enjoyable John Cusack comedy that I think has become slightly underrated over the years, but it's still a fave of mine. Men In Black is an immensely entertaining blockbuster, featuring excellent performances from Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, who have an easy chemistry. Good comedy and good action. Ultimately, my choice here came down to two movies, both nominated for best picture. Titanic gets a horrible rap now, but I still love the movie. It's got a great spectacle to it and a good love story and really good acting from two of the best actors of our generation. Ultimately though I agree with the apparent current critical consensus that LA Confidential was a better film, thanks to its great acting, complex themes, and very interesting plot and characters. This should have spawned a new wave of noir type mysteries, but for some reason it never did. Ah well.

Underrated: Two extremely underrated comedies this year: The Man Who Knew Too Little starring Bill Murray and Nothing To Lose starring Martin Lawrence & Tim Robbins. Nothing to Lose by far the best Martin Lawrence movie with hilarious use of Scatman song. And The Man Who Knew Too Little is seriously one of my favorite comedies of the 90s.

1998
Personal Favorite Film: This was the strongest year for film in the 90's, in my opinion. Dark City was Ebert's favorite movie of the year and probably my favorite at the time. It's a great dark sci-fi film, but I've come to like it slightly less over time. Rushmore is the best Wes Anderson movie and an excellent comedy. The Dinner Game is one of my favorite foreign movies, a hilarious French film with absolutely no substance whatsoever. Honestly, I never have really liked Saving Private Ryan, it's well behind the pack of the other movies mentioned. I may well be alone on this, but I far prefer Shakespeare in Love, and was and am glad that it won best picture. It's seriously one of the best romantic comedies I've seen. Still not good enough though. My favorite movie of the year is Pleasantville, thanks mostly to its commendable theme and outstanding acting all around. And I like the color/black and white gimmick underlying the film.

Underrated: Can't Hardly Wait is a really good teen film that does one of the best jobs of capturing the high school dramatic of any of these types of movies. It's not just a worthwhile cable watch, it's a genuinely really great movie.

1999
Personal Favorite Film: Actually, maybe THIS was the best year for film in the 90's. The top 5 of this year stacks up well against the top five of '98, anyways. The Matrix is, in my opinion, very overrated. I've never really gotten the appeal of it, especially in light of the terrible sequels. American Beauty is a movie that I had a similar reaction to apparently the rest of America: I loved it at the time, but find it has aged remarkably poorly. OK, into that top 5 I referred to above. The Sixth Sense is one of the best blockbuster summer movies ever released and it has a cultural cachet that's top 5 of the decade. American Movie is an amusing and funny and interesting documentary. Notting Hill is one of the top 3 romatic comedies of the decade, and probably the best traditional romcom ever released. It's my second favorite movie of the year. My favorite film of the year, by a fair margin, is Election, which is probably my favorite film of the entire decade. It's really funny and it has great characters & acting. It features what is definitely Reese Witherspoon's best performance, and I'm a big Reese Witherspoon fan so that's definitely saying something.
Underrated: The other top 5 film of the year not referenced above is 10 Things I Hate About You, which manages to be the best teen film of this era thanks to it's sharp and funny dialogue.

Here's the final list, including as a bonus my favorite movies by year for the 2000s
1990: Total Recall
1991: Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey
1992: Glengarry Glen Ross
1993: Searching for Bobby Fischer
1994: Quiz Show
1995: Empire Records
1996: Jerry Maguire
1997: LA Confidential
1998: Pleasantville
1999: Election
2000: Keeping the Faith
2001: Amelie
2002: Spy Kids 2/Catch Me If You Can (I can't decide!)
2003: Big Fish
2004: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
2005: Brokeback Mountain (I'll be damned though, if the movies of this year that have provided me the most entertainment and enjoyment aren't Sky High and Just Like Heaven)
2006: High School Musical
2007: Enchanted

Movie Review: Princess

The Movie: Princess
Channel: ABC Family
Starring: A bunch of people I never heard of, and Eden from Heroes. OK, Kip Pardue and Nora Zehetner


Brief Plot Summary: Princess Ithaca is an eccentric princess who lives on the outskirts of some city or another in America and never leaves her castle. That bugs me. Anyways, she is holding a charity benefit ball, and William, a shiftless Princeton grad whose life has gone nowhere since graduation, attends the ball with his friend, a successful internet businessman who was his classmate at Princeton. He immediately is taken by the princess. So when she auctions off a date and a dance, he outbids everybody with $50,000. During the dance, William says something that catches her, and she is convinced that he is "the searcher". Prodded on by his friend, William plays along with this in order to date the hot princess. But she's really worried, as he only has one week to find whatever it is he's supposed to be looking for. He blows it off and basically takes advantage of her. Eventually, he becomes convinced that there's more to this eccentric princess than meets the eye, and maybe there's something to this "searcher" business after all.

Spoilers, Since Nobody Will Watch This Movie: It turns out Ithaca is "the healer", an important role featured by one person in a generation. Basically her job is to heal mythical creatures that become injured (mermaids, manticore, etc.). Also, at one point a squid, which is not a mythical creature. The problem is she loses her powers when she turns 25, and she needs "the searcher" to help her find the new "healer" and bring her to the castle by sunup on her 25th birthday. But Will, and the audience, don't know this for a while. What happens is Will sees a manticore in her castle. Once Will sees the mythical creatures in her castle he justifiably freaks out and breaks up with her. She explains the above to him in extremely clunky exposition, but he doesn't care. However, eventually he realizes that he is "the searcher" after all and helps Ithaca find the new healer and they end up together and happily ever after.

But wait: Ithaca is an American who lives in America and never leaves her castle. She is definitely not a monarch of any nation. She is a mythical healer. SHE IS NOT A PRINCESS. Yet she is referred to as a princess throughout the movie, she dresses like a princess (in really fancy and expensive clothing that there's no way she could afford since she doesn't have an income producing job), and the movie is called princess. That angers me.

Commentary: Princess is an obvious attempt to cash in on the Enchanted phenomenon, in terms of the way it is presented and marketed, but it is not really all that similar to Enchanted. True, it's about a love story between a mysterious "princess" and a commoner, and it has a complicated mythology, but beyond that there's not much to it.

Here's the thing. I didn't plan on watching this movie, but I tuned in to the first 15 minutes, and the developments therein intrigued me enough to make me want to watch the rest of the movie. I mean, what's "the searcher"? What's the deal with the Princess? Then, for the next hour nothing happens. There's a little bit of development in their relationship but all in all, this is basically a love at first sight thing. So these are two people in young love hanging out with each other and not saying or doing anything interesting. Then, the entire plot of the movie plays out over the last half hour, and a lot of it plays out in a single clunky conversation between Ithaca and Will. It's pretty absurd. The mythology of this movie seems complicated typed out, but there really isn't much to it, and I have to think that they could have pulled this off better.

Then, there's the love story, which is really the point of the movie to start with. The romance is very cute, and the characters are believably in love. I can't point to any specific bad dialogue or anything either. But I found this romance extremely boring. It's kind of a weird experience for me to watch a cute romance play out, while I sit there non heartwarmed and non choked up, even during the big reconciliation. It's good to know that I actually have a filter for this sort of thing; I was really starting to wonder for a while.

What bugs me is that the plot and the idea of this movie are pretty interesting. I'm almost positive that a good movie could be made out of this, if the plot and the romance had been paced better. You wouldn't even need to change the actors! The actress who played Ithaca was cute and did OK for the most part, and the actor who played William was competent. The actors who played William's friends were awful though, they would have to be changed. The point is, there's more than a kernel of a good movie in here.

Final Grade/Comments: I promised myself I would never watch another ABC Family original movie, as I've hated all the ones I've seen. The last one I let myself get hyped up over was Hello Sister, Goodbye Life, which I wrote a review of very early in this blog's life, and it was very disappointing (the movie, not the review). But the way this movie was being marketed in an Enchanted like film had me intrigued. A second rate Enchanted would still be a really good movie. And it could have been one, but this was a real blown opportunity. I can't recommend that anybody watch this movie. Basically, this was a cute movie that I didn't like, and that's saying something. Hmm, let's see, what did I give Hello Sister Goodbye Life? 4/10. That sounds about right for this.

Movie Review: 27 Dresses

Note: Allow me to recommend this thoughtful general column on romantic comedies, which I strongly agree with. I wrote a very similar article for this blog (here) in which basically I argue that people don't who don't enjoy romantic comedies don't really want to or know how to enjoy them. It's one of the few articles I've written for this blog that I'm actually proud of. But this guy makes several points that I was trying to make in my article and does it more briefly and articulately than I did. (And makes a lot of points that I didn't make at all).

The Movie: 27 Dresses
Starring: Katherine Heigl, James Marsden, Judy Greer, Edward Burns, Malin Akerman

This review contains spoilers, but there's not really anything to spoil, so...

Brief Plot Summary: Jane (Katherine Heigl), a woman who has been a bridesmaid in 27 different weddings, is the type of doormat-ish woman who will do anything to please people. She is in love with her boss, George (Edward Burns), who she serves as an assistant to. Unfortunately her sister Tess (Malin Akerman) meets and falls in love with George, and after a brief courtship they are engaged to be married, with Jane of course serving as the maid of honor. In the meantime, Jane has met Kevin Doyle (James Marsden), who writes a wedding column in the newspaper which she adores. Jane is initially put off by his cynical worldview and his creepy, stalkerish behavior. Throughout the course of several wacky happenings, they manage to fall in love. Also, Kevin is writing an article about her for the newspaper, unbeknownst to her. And all the while she is miserable and planning her sister's wedding to the man she secretly loves!

Commentary: 27 Dresses fits in the category of romantic comedies which are attempting to be cute and very romantic (e.g. Music and Lyrics), rather than romantic comedies which are basically comedy movies with a love story (e.g. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days). Since this is one of my favorite types of movies (if not my favorite type of movie outright), I was very much looking forward to it. And you know what, it was extremely cute. And Katherine Heigl was a very good lead and had good chemistry with James Marsden. I also really enjoyed the set-up with Katherine being the perpetual bridesmaid (unrealistic though it may be that she was a bridesmaid 27 times). Further, there were several excellent scenes and lines in the movie (I particularly enjoyed the scene where Jane tried on all her bridesmaid dresses for Kevin). Unfortunately, though, I had several problems with the movie:

The movie takes a very long time to get going. It's almost halfway through the movie before Jane and Kevin start to warm to each other. The rest of the movie is spent on set up that is partially necessary but it also partially overkill. I get that she's a doormat and that she resents her sister and that she loves her boss well before they give up on hammering those points home. Unfortunately, the end result of this is that the ending is very rushed. Her reconciliation with her sister was unbelievably pat and silly ("You ruined my life, but it's OK, for really no reason whatsoever.") As much as I love romcoms, it perpetually annoys me that they fail to acknowledge that bad choices and irrational actions have real and long-lasting consequences. The scene when she quits her job and realizes her boss takes her for granted could have and should have been very satisfying too, but it just goes by too fast and without believable prompting.

One thing that actually isn't a casualty of the rushed nature of the ending is the reconciliation scene between her and Kevin. They spent plenty of time on this, but it still rang hollow to me, and my guess is that it's because they were together onscreen too little throughout the rest of the movie. The pacing of the building romance, perfect in say Notting Hill or Just Like Heaven, was totally off here. It stuttered and jerked around and suddenly they are in love, just like that. They also could have done better than the scene at the boat wedding, which was too unrealistic, even for a movie like this.

I hate to even bring this up, but I did feel the movie was a little too familiar. I can make do with a lot of cliched scenes in a romantic comedy, but the plot to this movie was almost a direct ripoff of You've Got Mail, not to mention the obvious similarity to How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Also, Edward Burns was terrible in this movie, and did not make me believe either Jane's crush on him or his romance with Tess.

I think the real problem with this movie is that it's overstuffed. The triple redemption plot with Jane, trying to connect with her sister, realizing that her boss takes her for granted and she needs to move on with her crush, and falling in love with Kevin is too much for the movie to handle. All three are related and have related themes/interconnect in the plot, but if I was controlling the movie I would take out the boss/work element entirely and just focus on the fact that her sister is marrying the guy she loves and that she's falling in love with Kevin at the same time. The boss element distracts and takes time away that I feel would have been better spent elsewhere.

I really don't want to sound too negative here, because I did enjoy the movie and I think it's worth watching. The scenes where Katherine and James are on screen together and tolerating each other sparkle. Judy Greer is very funny as Katherine Heigl's best friend. The costuming on the bridesmaid dresses was often extremely amusing. Ultimately, the movie is very cute and pleasant, and I don't mean that as an insult at all. (In fact, "cute" is one of the highest compliments I give to a movie.)

Final Grade/Comments: The reason that I've reviewed hardly any romantic comedies in this blog is because most of it comes down to: Did the love story grab me or not. It should be clear from the above that the love story never really grabbed me in the way that it does in the best romcoms. Even though this is a very personal thing, and I'm sure the love story really kicked butt to some people, I hope I've done a good job above explaining WHY the love story didn't hit me as much it could have. This movie disappointed me, but only to the extent that I thought it would be an outstanding romantic comedy and it was merely an above average one. It's going for cute and romantic, and it nails the cute but whiffs on the romantic. My brain is saying 6/10, but my heart says it was cute enough to earn an extra point, so 7/10. But be warned, this is one only for real romantic comedy fans and cute movie junkies, like myself.

Movie Review: Enchanted

The Movie: Enchanted
Starring: Amy Adams, James Marsden, Patrick Dempsey, Susan Sarandon

This review contains slight spoilers towards the end, please be warned.


Brief Plot Summary: A fairy tale (animated) princess, Giselle (Adams), meets the man of her dreams, Prince Edward (Marsden), and they are engaged to be married. Unfortunately, Prince Edward's evil step-mother (Sarandon) does not approve of the coupling and thrusts Giselle into the real, non-animated world. Edward follows to find her. While in the real world, Giselle searches for Prince Edward, and meets up with single father Robert. They start to click. I'll stop further so I don't spoil the UNBELIEVABLY SHOCKING TWIST ending.

Commentary: Enchanted falls into the same realm of family oriented holiday fare that gets released every year. For whatever reason, this film has been extremely widely critically praised, whereas similar films such as Sky High and Ella Enchanted were basically panned. I've even been reading that it's possible that Amy Adams could be nominated for an Oscar for best actress, a prospect that both delights and baffles me. I'd love to see it, but I'm not entirely sure why this one is a sure-fire Oscar contender while, say, Reese Witherspoon in Just Like Heaven is completely beneath that ceremony.

Oh wait, do I sound negative? Then let me state up front: Enchanted is quite possibly my favorite movie of the last several years. Sky High and Ella Enchanted are the two closest, most obvious, parallels to this movie in the last few years. And while I am a big fan of both of those films, I don't think there's really any doubt that Enchanted is substantially better than both of them. So what's the Enchanted difference?

First, the humor in the movie was frequently genuinely funny, thanks to the stellar comedic performances of Amy Adams and James Marsden. The scriptwriter for this is clearly well schooled in Disney films, and he satirizes the most ridiculous aspects of these movies excellently. Working purely as a vehicle for humor, this movie just blows away all of the other movies of this type. The costumes and production design in this movie are also pitch perfect and frequently beautiful. Amy Adams has been singled out for the most praise in this film, understandably. She is just incandescent in this role, and she really makes you love the character of Giselle. Not only is she funny, she hits the emotion in the movie really well, and just charms the hell out of you.

The movie toes the line between saying that the fairy tale romance & fantasies do exist and do come true and between showing the fallacy of these notions when transported to the real world. By believing in the supremacy of true love while at the same time acknowledging that true love is a deep emotion and requires significant work to achieve and maintain, the film has staked out a fairly unique place. It's a dangerous ground, as it could end up being pandering or self-contradictory, but I think it manages to get out a coherent and consistent message, and I think there's a lot of truth to the message it tells.

Further, the love story in this movie was so great. It's really one of the better love stories I've seen on film. There's a scene right towards the end where Amy Adams and Patrick Dempsey dance with each other which is just heart-bustingly beautiful and perfect. It made me cry (tears continued intermittently through the part where Patrick wakes up Amy with the kiss), which was really embarrassing because I was watching the movie in the theater with my brother, mother, and sister-in-law (I hid my tears). My favorite movie scene of the year, I think.

So did I have any problems with this movie at all. Yes I did, and it's one that several other reviewers mention too: the ending. I guess I understand basically what they were trying to do, seeing as all of the movies of this time seem to end with a big action sequence. Since this parodies Disney movies, it makes sense to throw in a big action ending too, and try to subvert the conventions. Unfortunately, the execution takes you right out of the movie and doesn't feel right. Fortunately the sequence is fairly short and easily ignorable/forgettable.

I have no particular comment about the animation scenes. They were fairly well done, but seem to exist solely for the purpose of setting up the plot. Ditto the songs, which are basically necessary given the nature of the film. I was not notably impressed by any of the songs, which were generally not too good. The "That's How You Know" sequence was very funny.

So, back to the beginning. Why Enchanted and why Amy Adams with all the critical praise? The answer is that I don't know but it really warms my heart to see that when a movie of this type is executed this well the critics sit up and notice.

Final Grade/Comments: The fact that I wanted to watch the movie over again immediately after seeing it, despite the lack of a game-changing twist or complicated plot speaks to how much I enjoyed it. The young woman sitting behind me said to her companion, as the movie was ended, "Oh my God, that was like the best love story ever." OK, while I can't quite agree with that hyperbole, I do say this was the best movie of its type in a long, long while and it beats 99% of the Disney fare it's spoofing at their own game. The poorly conceived ending is not enough to sway this away from a 10/10 and my guess is I would have enjoyed the movie even more had the sound in the theater I was watching the movie at not kicked out for 10 minutes during what appeared to be a crucial scene.

Movie Reviews: Custody/The Party Never Stops

In this post I will review two recent Lifetime Original Movies which I watched because they starred favorites of the TCR. Namely, Custody, starring Kay Panabaker and The Party Never Stops: Diary of a Binge Drinker starring Sara Paxton. Let's roll.

Custody

I think I've reviewed each of Kay Panabaker's projects to date except Life Is Ruff (actually have I really written anything about Debbie Berwick on here?), so it only makes sense to throw one together on this. (Please note that Life Is Ruff will never be reviewed on this blog. Know that it is terrible.)

(Brief) Plot Summary ('cause, actually I don't really totally remember what happened): Rob Morrow (from Numbers) plays a widowed English professor named David Gordon who has a daughter named Amanda (Kay Panabaker - Official Actress of the TCR). Amanda's mom died when she was extremely young, and so she never even really knew her. David and Amanda have a solid and steady group of (wacky!) friends, and their life is generally pleasant. This is all changed when a new man, John Sullivan (James Denton from Desperate Housewives) shows up claiming to be Amanda's real birth father. This fact is quickly confirmed by David. John decides he wants to get to know Amanda and, actually, sues for full time custody of Amanda and wins. The movie proceeds from there, and I don't wanna give away too much even though nothing that happens is too surprising.

Commentary: Well, this was a pretty cute movie, but there wasn't really very much to it. The group of wacky and witty and diverse friends was an unnecessary distraction and was really cliched. It was like watching a very low-rent version of a Richard Curtis movie. Kay Panabaker was cute and charming as always, and she does well with the dramatic parts of the movie. I've embarrassingly gushed over Kay and her talents many times before on this blog (just click the Kay Panabaker tag at the end of this post), so I'll avoid going too overboard this time. But she continues to have such a charming screen presence, and she continues to have pitch-perfect facial expressions, vocal inflections, etc. All the little things she does that always impress me so much. Suffice to say, I really liked her performance, even though there really wasn't too much to her character. The movie was cliched, the characters actions were cliched, the characters themselves were cliched, etc. etc.

I've spoken out against judging movies solely based on the originality of their plot many times before but, unfortunately, that seems to be a pretty valid criticism of this movie. It's not original, and it doesn't go about its unoriginality in a particularly interesting way. I'm as big a Kay Panabaker fan as you'll meet and I almost fell asleep partway through this.

But none of this is to say there isn't anything to enjoy in this movie beyond Kay. Kay's friend is a really fun character, and I liked the actress a lot. The ending, though expected, was also very satisfying and well done. The best part of the movie, all in all, was the relationship between Kay's character and Rob Morrow's character. This was a pretty real relationship, and it was well done. Most of the best moments in the movie are the quiet, personal moments shared by those two, and they lend a depth to the movie that would otherwise not be there.

Final Comments/Grade: Emotionally affecting, satisfying ending, one of my favorite actresses giving a great performance as lead, but yet incredibly uninteresting. Cute, but with no substance at all. I've given good grades to cute movies with little substance many times before (Raise Your Voice, Ella Enchanted), but I just can't in good conscience give a good grade to a movie that entertained me so little. Especially when the plot and characters and themes are as unoriginal as they are here. 5/10.

The Party Never Stops: Diary of a Binge Drinker

(Brief) Plot Summary ('cause, actually I don't really totally remember what happened): Jesse Tanner (Sara Paxton) is a goody-two-shoes who lives in a small town with her mother and younger sister, her father having died several years previous. Jesse is about to be the first person in her family to go to college and she's very excited, though she will miss her mom. She instantly becomes friends with her college roommate Shanna (Chelsea Hobbs), who is a big partier who is planning on joining a sorority. Jesse and Shanna get big into the partying scene, which causes various troubles in Jesse's life. In one particularly awesome plot point, she is filmed topless for a Girls Gone Wild type movie which is posted on the internet. The movie proceeds in like fashion, again, not wanting to give too much away.

Commentary: This movie was extremely repetitive and not a whole hell of a lot happened, which means it probably should have been really boring. The constant stream of "Jesse does something wrong/her life screws up/her mom gets mad and forbids her from partying any more/OK I'll party this one last time" gets really tiresome (that sequence takes place like 3 or 4 times). Even though the plot is repetitive and the message is totally after-school-special, I nonetheless found myself very entertained.

My first inclination is to attribute this to a "so bad it's good" type ethos, due to the hysterics, scaremongering, ridiculous plot devices, and general shoddiness of the film. In fact, the film seems to be poorly made. I guess, the most important part of why I enjoyed this movie was the performance of the leads, Sara Paxton and Chelsea Hobbs. They both did a great job, and their chemistry was a hoot. And I'll be damned, but the relationship gave the movie a real emotional core. The movie really got to me. It's becoming increasingly easy to emotionally manipulate me in a film, and almost any movie that is supposed to make you sad or happy will get me choked up. So I can't fairly use that as a criteria for judging a movie, but there it is.

Chelsea Hobbs, as a newcomer, provided the most emotionally affecting scenes and the biggest laughs. She wasn't a revelation or anything, and it definitely wasn't a great performance, but she didn't screw it up and sometimes that's enough, especially for a movie like this. Sara was her usual charming self, though she had a bad tendency to overact. This was probably the weakest performance I've ever seen from Sara.

Though I was entertained, the story was very poorly structured and cliched. The whole movie was crazily over the top, and the over-the-topness resulted in the message not really being put across. It's hard to take anything about this movie seriously, so if it's really trying to express the dangers of binge drinking it's a failure from that standpoint.

Final Comments: Opposite of Custody, this movie was not cute, and it was very poorly done. But Custody put me to sleep, this movie I couldn't turn away from. Both movies featured strong performances from the leads, though I was a bit disappointed by Sara. I generally tend to go with poorly made but entertaining over well made but boring. 6/10.

Movie Review: Sydney White

Before I do the review, first a minor procedural note. Question: What is the status of this blog? The quick answer is that I don't know. It's frustrating to spend significant time on writing for a blog when nobody reads or cares about it. I think that there are more productive and enjoyable ways to spend my free time. At this point, I may re-start writing regularly at some point, I may quit writing altogether, or I may go back to my old "one really long post a month" style. I know that I'm not a very good writer, and I'm becoming less and less convinced that my blog is providing a unique or interesting viewpoint, particularly with regards to music. If the blog does return full-time, expect there to be significant changes. But, I do generally enjoy writing the posts and re-reading them. So it will probably continue in some form, at least as a vanity project.

OK, now here's a review for Sydney White. A very overdue review of Nancy Drew should be forthcoming shortly.


The Movie: Sydney White
The Plot: Sydney White's (Amanda Bynes) mom died when she was young, leaving her to be raised by her plumber father. She spent her entire youth growing up on construction sites, acting manly, etc. But, when she finally gets into college (the same college her mom went to!), she is determined to join the same sorority her mom belonged to, the Kappas. Running the Kappas is queen of the school Rachel Witchburn. When Rachel prevents Sydney from joining the Kappa sorority, she ends up with a group of offensively stereotypical dorks, who live in a run-down dorm called "The Vortex". Each of these dorks is, "hilariously", an analogue to one of Snow White's seven dwarves (by process of elimination Samm Levine's character is an analogue to Happy, but the connection is extremely thin at best). She rallies the dorks together to take down Rachel Witchburn and the Greek system and get The Vortex a little respect. Also, she has a budding romantic relationship with Tyler Prince, the hottest guy on campus and ex-boyfriend of Rachel.

Commentary: Don't be fooled by the plot summary and the seeming feel of the movie, there are several important differences between this film and Revenge of the Nerds. For example:

• In Revenge of the Nerds, the characters live in a run down house, which they touchingly renovate half-way through the movie. In Sydney White the characters live in a run down house, which they touchingly renovate AT THE END of the movie.
  
• In ROTN, the main characters are fighting against the king of the school, a jock who is president of the biggest fraternity on campus and hates nerds. In Sydney White, the main characters are fighting against the QUEEN of the school, a GLAMOROUS AND GORGEOUS GIRLY GIRL who is president of the biggest SORORITY on campus and hates DORKS.
• In ROTN, the main character gives a touching speech at the end, where he proclaims how it's not that bad to be a nerd and gets everybody fired up. After the speech, people touchingly get up to proclaim how they are also nerds. Everybody except the evil jocks admits they are nerds and the jocks are defeated. In Sydney White, the main character gives a touching speech at the end, where SHE proclaims how it's not that bad to be a DORK and gets everybody fired up. After the speech, people touchingly get up to proclaim how they are also DORK. Everybody except RACHEL WITCHBURN admits they are nerds and RACHEL IS defeated.
  

OK, OK, I'll stop there, I think I've made my point. In a way, it's nice to have a throwback to the old 80's style of teen movie. There are ridiculously over-the-top nerds, and there are jocks who hate the nerds, and pretty girls who love the jocks. The problem is that this movie is just too indebted to those old movies, and content not to add anything new to the plot.

I mean, look, originality and unpredictability are far from all I look for in a movie. Sara Paxton does a great job as Rachel, in a role that's fairly dissimilar to everything else I've seen her play. I hope she continues to act in roles like these in the future. Amanda Bynes gives a good performance as always, she continues to be a real charmer. No, the performances were generally pretty good. And honestly, the unoriginality could be easily forgiven if the movie itself were more entertaining. But the movie has several other flaws: The geeks are all too over the top, and their shticks got extremely tiresome after a while. The love story/Tyler Prince aspect of the movie adds almost nothing, and probably hurts more than it helps.

And then there's the Snow White stuff. My contention is that this movie would be much better had they not tried to jam in Snow White references. Making the dorks all analogous to the dwarves is kind of cute, and I enjoyed watching that unfold. The character names, though, are groan-inducing. And, importantly, the Snow White stuff is jammed in and unnecessary, and ultimately hurts the flow of the movie. Instead of a magic mirror, Rachel checks Myspace to see who is the most popular girl on school. Once Sydney inevitably passes her to #1, she sends a computer virus to destroy her APPLE computer (Har de har har). Seeing them jam this crap into this movie almost made me cringe, and I really wish they had just played it straight, especially since the movie could/would have played essentially the same without jamming those explicit references in there.

On top of all of this, I had significant problems with the character of Sydney. She was just too damn perfect. There was seemingly nothing she couldn't do, and if she had started walking on water in the middle of the movie I would not have been surprised at all. A character has to be relateable to be likeable, and hard as Amanda tried and well as she acted, she just wasn't relateable at all. Let's see, very attractive, athletic, handy, loves sports, gives to charity, genuinely wants to be friends with dorks, totally unselfish, reads comic books, and just wants to connect with her mom. I mean, come on.

There's a kernel of a pretty good movie in here. The parts that directly involved Amanda Bynes and Sara Paxton's conflict were fun, and their interactions with each other were a hoot to watch. Unfortunately, it's the "everything else" part of the movie that drags it down.

Special notice should to to Crystal Hunt, who plays Dinky in the film. Dinky is a member of the Kappa fraternity, who is nonetheless friends with Sydney and a sympathetic character. I was extremely impressed by Crystal's work in this movie. She was SO cute, and her Southern accent was a hoot. So for cuteness, and real charm, and some good acting ability too, Crystal gets the official TCR seal of approval. I really look forward to seeing her in future work. This character was the only well done character in the film, other than Rachel, and I'm inclined to think that Crystal was a huge part of that.

Final Rating:
Amanda Bynes, Sara Paxton, and Crystal Hunt are excellent. The movie is pretty charming, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't reasonably entertained by it. That being said, this is not a movie I can recommend watching. The real problem is that it's just not a very good movie. 4/10.

High School Musical 2

A day or 2 later than I hoped to report on this, but I surmise that by now nobody's come to expect timely, relevant content from this blog. Be warned that, as always on this site, the review contains spoilers.

High School Musical 2

High School Musical 2 was on the whole, as expected, a pretty big dropoff from the original movie. It was gonna be difficult to capture the kind of quirky, infectious charm the original film had, but there were several missteps along the way that impeded it here.

First and foremost there was way too much Sharpay and entirely not enough Gabriella. Tellingly, Gabriella's solo number "Gotta Go My Own Way" was in my opinion the best song in the film while Sharpa's solo number "Fabulous" was, in my opinion, by far the worst. Ashely Tisdale can't REALLY be faulted here cause she plays it the same she played it in the original HSM but over the course of a full move it really starts to grate. She really needed to tone it down given the greatly increased scope of the role. And what was with the lack of Gabriella? I would liked to have seen more scenes showing her pain of losing Troy and even some more scenes with her and Troy together, though I realize that the mechanics of the plot complicate this somewhat.

On that note, I thought everybody in the movie was being very unfair to Troy. The basic message of this movie is, what, don't forget your friends? Success means nothing if you have to step on your friends to get there? But, come on, Troy was being heavily recruited by what was, apparently, an excellent college basketball program. His teammates should have been incredibly stoked for him. But they were mad that he ditched their 2 on 2 game and mad that he didn't invite them to the college practice. A real friend would have been thrilled for Troy there, and I was shocked that when Troy and Chad reunited at the end this wasn't addressed. I thought that Chad was being very unfair to Troy and I really feel it was sending the wrong message. Friends should be supportive of each other! Similarly, he was offered a nice, cushy job. What was he supposed to do, turn it down to keep working with his friends? I'm sorry, that's not the way the world works and I highly doubt any of his friends would not have taken the same route he did. Gabriella did, indeed have legitimate beefs with him. He stood her up twice and ditched her in the talent show to sing with Sharpay. Though those are bad indeed, I wish the movie had better acknowledged the incredibly awkward and uncomfortable position Sharpay had put him in.

I guess my main problem, as highlighted by that previous paragraph, is that they didn't devote enough time to the mechanics of the plot. Everything had to be super rushed along so they had more time for Sharpay and non-story advancing songs, which meant the character motivations made no sense. I mean, they basically just said that Troy was being a jerk to his team, so I have to take their word for it, but the facts I saw on the screen did not support it. And, hmm, Ryan doesn't have a song and neither does Chad. I know, I'll give them a completely random duet. I know it's difficult to manage a cast of this size, but everything seemed oddly patched together and it seemed like they were straining to allocate enough time to the supporting roles.

The ending of the movie was genuinely emotional and uplifting, and I can't take that away. It was what it was. However, it was very rushed and I feel like the movie didn't "earn" it. There was no motivation or justification for Troy and Gabriella getting back together. All it would have taken would have been one scene with Gabriella, where she realizes she really loves Troy after all and blah, blah, blah. And the Sharpay redemption arc came out of nowhere entirely. And, wait a minute, wasn't there a Sharpay redemption arc which came out of nowhere entirely in the first movie too? A little continuity please? After acting like an irredemable jerk for the whole movie, there was absolutely no reason to believe she was going to turn around and start being nice. Absurdity! The problem is that the movie starts so absurdly slow that the ending redemption stuff has to be super rushed. About 45 minutes into the movie I was convinced this movie was a horrible bomb. The movie got much better as it goes along, but it took so long to get chugging that I wish they had cut a bunch of stuff off there and dedicated it to the redemption stuff at the end, which may well have allowed it to pack even more punch.

What bugs me, is that I think there might be a really nice message to make with a similar movie. The end of high school, planning for your future, all while trying to still have fun with your current friends and your current life. Planning a future completely separate from the life you've known and which may well tear you from your friends. It is a very scary and difficult time, and requires a tricky trade-off. I wish they had explored that more. Additionally, the idea that success comes at a price and success isn't worth it if you lose your friends and life along the way is a truly winning theme. I mean, lots of other movies use it, but it's a great theme in itself and I always like to see it showing up. I just don't think they displayed it well enough by what was happening onscreen.

All of this is not to say that this was a bad movie or that I did not enjoy it. I realize this post has been excessively negative, but there were several things to like about the movie. Ryan & Sharpay's parents were a hoot and I found them very funny. Lucas Grabeel as Ryan Evans was a particular highlight again. In fact, all of the actors and actresses in the movie, excepting Ashley Tisdale (and I still think it's mostly the writers at fault there) are skilled and do a nice job with the roles. They all have a winning charm, particularly Zac and Vanessa. The ending WAS emotional and a pleasure to watch. And, of course, the singing and dancing.

So what about the songs, which is the main reason to watch the movie in the first place? I though that on the whole the music was very fun, and about on par with the music of the first movie. "Gotta Go My Own Way", "Bet on It" (what an awful and bizarre dance sequence though!), "Everyday", and "You Are the Music in Me" were genuinely good songs. "You Are the Music in Me" and "Everyday" were written by Jamie Houston, who wrote "Breaking Free" in the first movie and has generally been hit and miss throughout his career. For example, apart from the High School Musical success, he has "Amigas Cheetas", a particularly mediocre Cheetas song, "Vertical", a mediocre Corbin Bleu song, and several mediocre Vanessa Ann Hudgens songs. But he knocks it out the park here. "Bet On It" was written by Antonina Armato and Tim James, who co-wrote half of the excellent Aly & AJ album and produced the whole thing, co-wrote many of the good Miley/Hannah season 2 tracks including "See You Again", and have generally owned music in 2007. What an outstanding year for them.

Final Review/Comments: The movie started out really, really slow but picked it up a lot at the end. Despite my many problems with it, the movie was better than I expected and I really enjoyed it, in no small part due to the music and dancing. On the whole it was definitely not as good as High School Musical but it was definitely worth a viewing and comes with my recommendation, contingent that you aren't expecting some kind of transcendent masterpiece. B MINUS.

Movies of 2007

OK, after what basically amounts to a 3 month break from this blog, I'm back and ready to go. Starting with a summary review of all 2007 movies I've seen, then later posts catching up on some albums (Hannah Montana in particular) ("See You Again" 4eva).

This is probably incomplete, I'm basically going off the top of my head and skimming through IMDB, but here's all the 2007 movies I've seen so far:

Idiocracy
Starring: Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Dax Shepard
One sentence plot summary: Average man and prostitute are put in a sleep chamber for 500 years, and awaken to find America so dumbed down and devolved that they are the smartest people on the planet.
Review/Comments: IMDB suggests that this was actually released in late 2006, but I only watched it this year and I've already thought out my opinion on it, so such is my commitment to accuracy that I am going to throw away my one rule for this post and just put this in anyways. This was a reasonably funny movie. It wasn't as funny as some of the reviews I've read have made it out to be, but it is one of the better comedies of this decade, particularly considering how little I typically enjoy current (non-romantic) comedies. I really did not see this as some kind of highbrow biting cultural satire or whatever, as the subjects of the satire seem to be very, very broad, but there were some good visual jokes. I didn't care for the lowbrow genital jokes and fart jokes and whatnot. In any event, if as Kogan says, Hero Story Variant 7(b) is "Everybody is being snookered but me", then most of the reviews of this movie I've seen fit squarely into Hero Story Variant 7(c): "Society (not including me OR my readers) are being snookered and we are above that". Which is to say: "Oh man, how true, people DO watch stupid TV and stupid movies and people like Paris Hilton are more famous than smart people who contribute more to society, etc. etc." But unlike in the other hero story, people here aren't trying to convince their readers, who are implicitly assumed to be as smart and informed as the author, but just attacking a strawman. And so it goes...
Rating: B MINUS

Jump In
Starring: Corbin Bleu, Keke Palmer
One Sentence Plot Review: Boxer learns to jump rope, much to the chagrin of overbearing father.
Comments/Review: Semi-review previously published here.
Rating: C PLUS

Catch and Release
Starring: Jennifer Garner, Timothy Olyphant, Kevin Smith, Juliette Lewis
One Sentence Plot Review: Woman's fiancee dies and she falls in love with his best friend who she previously considered loathsome.
Comments/Review: Nobody seemed to care too much about this movie, it got generally lukewarmly positive reviews, and faded out of the theaters very quickly. All of this is understandable, because it is a very slight movie, and I suppose not for everybody, and it breaks no new ground, but I really enjoyed it. The acting is uniformly excellent, the characters are real and well rounded, the dialogue is crisp, and the emotional scenes pack a real heft. Not to mention, some of the comedy is actually pretty funny. The movie made me cry, which is becoming progressively easier and easier to make me do. There's a real warmth and heart to this little movie, and that's enough to take me above all of it's faults and cliches. Congrats to Susannah Grant, whose In Her Shoes I really wanna see now, after being put off by the mediocre reviews.
Rating: A MINUS

Music and Lyrics
Starring: Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore
One Sentence Plot Review: Washed up pop star hires plant waterer to write a song with him for a big pop star and in the process they fall in love.
Review/Comments: This was the second of the romantic comedies released earlier this year that I really wanted to see (after Catch and Release), but the movies, though I tend to lump them together for that reason, are in fact quite different. Catch and Release is all about the emotional core and more about the drama, whereas Music and Lyrics is your pretty standard silly romantic comedy. It won't surprise careful readers of this blog to know that I loved it. This movie was written and directed by Marc Lawrence, whose previous Two Weeks Notice and Miss Congeniality I really disliked, so I'm perfectly content to attribute the success of this film to the wit and charm of Hugh and Drew and to the awesome music. Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore are two of the best romantic comedy actors, and seeing them together is great! They have really good chemistry and are both really funny throughout, and the movie is genuinely romantic. And the Wham! style 80s pop hits for Hugh Grant's character are genuinely really good. 'Tis completely fluffy, escapist fare, a cotton candy movie, but to me fluffy, escapist fare is one of the best uses of the film genre. Probably one of the 5 best traditional romantic comedies of this decade.
Rating: B PLUS
Okay, Okay, So What ARE the 5 Best RomComs of This Decade: Bridget Jones, Love Actually, Just Like Heaven, Down With Love, and this movie.

Ocean's Thirteen
Starring: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Al Pacino and a bunch of other people.
One Sentence Plot Summary: A bunch of people rob a casino
Review/Comments: Yeah, it was basically the same as the first movie, but all of the actors have so much fun with it, and the plotting/pacing is so tight that it makes a really compelling watch. Way better than Ocean's Twelve at any rate.
Rating: B

Spiderman 3
Starring: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Thomas Haden Church, Topher Grace
One Sentence Plot Summary: MAN HAS POWERS OF SPIDER.
Review/Comments: I apparently enjoyed this movie a lot better than most reviewers. The balance between ridiculous soap opera-esque drama and superhero action was very true to the comics, all the characterizations and acting were a hoot as always, and I thought emo-Peter was really funny. Calling the female temptress Gwen Stacy was a nice callback to the character in the comics, though clearly this character wasn't intended to be a straight adaptation of the Gwen I know and love. Sandman backstory was kinda pointless but not too distracting and at least they tried to make a character out of him. All in all a fun little romp and, I suppose, not as good as Spiderman 2 or the other great superhero movies of modern era, but better than the first Spiderman for sure and a worthy view.
Rating: B

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
Starring: A bunch of people I never heard of and Jessica Alba
One Sentence Plot Summary: The four superheroes save the world from Silver Surfer and Galactus.
Review/Comments: Silver Surfer is so badass. It's pretty hard to screw him up too bad, although the 90's cartoon certainly pulled it off. They do a good job of adapting him here, and it makes for some exciting action scenes and pretty visual effects. The characters are all one-dimensional and silly, but then again so are the comics characters so I guess that's OK. The Johnny Storm/Super Skrull attack on Surfered up Dr. Doom was really enjoyable, and by far the best action sequence yet in these movies. The plotting was all sorts of screwed up though, Galactus sucked, and Dr. Doom continues to be really underwhelming. And you don't need an Oscar caliber performance in a movie like this, but come on a little bit can't hurt here. Better than the first, but this is still a second tier action franchise
Rating: C MINUS

Nancy Drew
Starring: Emma Roberts
One Sentence Plot Summary: The teen detective goes to LA and solves a mystery involving a disappeared actress
Review/Comments: Back when I thought Kay Panabaker (still the Official Actress of the TCR) was going to have a more substantial role in this film (i.e. more than one minute of screen time), this was my most anticipated film of the year. Even once I learned the truth of KPB's involvement, the presence of Emma Robers had me really pumped. And it didn't let me down! The only problem I had with this movie was that the kid Emma meets up with and befriends in L.A. is really annoying, but that's a fairly minor concern. I liked how they attempted to integrate the fish-out-of-water stuff with the mystery stuff, though I wish they had spent more time on the social aspect of Nancy's time and less on the not-so-interesting mystery itself. What I liked was that they made Nancy's character a real standout original and didn't try to make her over or make her change to fit in. She knew who she was and she never wavered and that was that. Emma's performance in this was truly outstanding, she's still got the most charm and screen presence of any young non-Panabaker actress out there.
Rating: B PLUS

Live Free or Die Hard
Starring: Bruce Willis, Justin Long, Mary Elizabeth Winstead
Review/Comments: I actually had no idea Mary Elizabeth Winstead was in this film and it was a really nice surprise to see her. I loved her in Sky High, she was OK in Final Destination 3, and she's one of my big celebrity crushes. She was pretty good in this film, though that's mostly beside the point. The point is that Bruce Willis still kicks ass, and this was basically an 80's action movie. Very ridiculous, and the computer stuff is embarrasing, and the plot veers wildly out of control about halfway through, but so much fun that it doesn't even really matter. Just sit back eat your popcorn and enjoy it.
Rating: B

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and whoever plays Ron Weasley (research!)
Review/Comments: Harry Potter movies are Harry Potter movies, enjoyable fare without much depth. I never read the books and probably never will, but the movies are enjoyable if slight. This was, as reported elsewhere, much darker than the previous movies, but it's exactly the same quality.
Rating: B

Yeah, yeah, yeah, a pretty narrow range of ratings, but I tend to only watch movies I think I'm gonna like and haven't really loved too much I've seen this year.

Thoughts on Jump In!

I'm not going to do a full, formal review of this because there'd be almost no point, but here are some general thoughts on the newest DCOM Jump In! in no particular order:

1. Corbin Bleu, as annoying as he may be in Flight 29 Down and as little as he may have brought to the table in High School Musical, has a great deal of natural, easy charm. Keke Palmer, as expected, did a great job with the material she was given. They didn't have a crazy amount of on screen chemistry or anything, but then again they didn't totally fizzle either. They were cute together. Corbin is incredibly easy to root for as a main character, no matter how thin his character is written.

2. Having a real life father and son play father and son in a movie can be a good thing if it creates a realness to their interactions and allows the actors to be more comfortable with each other. See also Hannah Montana where Billy Ray and Miley Cyrus are both at their respective bests when working with each other.

3. You expect a certain amount of cheese and over-sweetness when watching a DCOM. And yeah, this did have some of it, but I do believe this was the least saccharine Disney Channel Original Movie that I've ever seen. There was a true sincerity and earnestness to this that is rare from one of these movies and was kind of refreshing. Even among my favorites, Life-Size was one of the silliest, cutest movies I've ever seen, High School Musical had not a single sincere or earnest bone in its body (which was its appeal in many ways), Read It And Weep certainly had some sincerity to it (probably not as much as I implied in my initial review), but was also packed with over-the-top, ridiculous comedy. Jump In! had about as little saccharine-ness as a completely cliched DCOM can have.

4. Main character is well known for doing one thing. But he really wants to do something else. He starts to secretly do it, but it's detracting from his primary skill! He must make a choice, oh no! Will he go with his friends or his heart? I'm really glad there was a DCOM with this general plot because it's so, so rare to see one.

5. I really underrated the music for this before, whoops. I took it off the hates list. "Push It to the Limit" is a good song and "Jump to the Rhythm" is just as good as the rest of the non-"Outside Looking In" Jordan Pruitt songs. Robyn Johnson and Kirk Fitzpatrick (who wrote "Jump to the Rhythm") are legit songwriters, and I'm so glad to see Diz going outside its stable of songwriters for a change (Not that Matt Gerrard and Jamie Houston aren't legit songwriters, of course). Anyways both of the songs are really catchy, 7/10 type songs. The Keke Palmer song isn't bad either.

6. The choreography in the jump ropes scene was fun.

FINAL COMMENTS/RATING: Despite an incredibly cliched plot and thin, one-dimensional characters, winning and charming performances from the leads, fun choreography during the jump rope scenes, and an overriding sincerity and earnestness make Jump In! eminently watchable as a movie. 6.5/10 and one of the better DCOM's. But below the upper tier of the movies, which still consists just of RIAW, HSM, and Life-Size as far as I'm concerned.

TV Movie Review: Santa Baby

Day 6 of the TCR Christmas Extravaganza

This just premiered on the ABC Family channel tonight. And, OK, maybe it's not "teen" per se, at least not in the way I've set up my blog, more "family" actually. But, I think it's relevant enough to include, and anyways I try not to be too rigid as to the theme of the blog.

The Movie: Santa Baby
Airing On: ABC Family
In the Year: 2006
Starring: Jenny McCarthy, Kandyse McClure, Ivan Sergei, plus George Wendt as Santa Claus

Plot Summary (With Spoilers): Mary Class is a very successful consultant who runs her own practice, going in to failing companies and suggesting ways that they can improve to save their company. As we open, we see Mary giving a speech to the board of directors of a department store, suggesting they change their entire image and marketing campaign, and even name, to Spotlight. She is then called up to visit her family, as her father has had a heart attack. She quickly makes arrangements to get up there, along with her trusty assistant Donna. When they get to Mary's home, it doesn't take Donna long to realize that Mary's father is Santa Claus! And since Santa is so sick, Mary is going to have to take over the family practice this year! Mary is, perhaps surprisingly, not upset or distressed by this, but actually thrilled. She has often had various ideas to improve productivity around Christmas time, to get the list checked faster, get the mail read and processed faster, build the toys faster, etc. Citing tradition, Santa has always rejected these suggestions, so she is extremely excited to see them in action to prove that they will work! She is pleased to see that they are making things go faster, although Santa is still unhappy that the tradition is being destroyed.

Also living at the North Pole is Luke, Mary's old boyfriend who she totally ditched out in the cold when she decided to move away and get into business. Luke is clearly still in love with Mary, although she has a boyfriend back home, Grant. Grant ultimately finds out where Mary is staying and comes over to visit her unannounced, thus discovering her secret as well. Things start to go very downhill shortly after this. It turns out the productivity improving measures aren't working nearly as well as she thought they would, and in fact the toys might not even all be ready by Christmas. Plus Grant has a crazy idea to install a mall right next to Santa's workshop to build business. Mary and the other Claus's are distressed to hear this, as this would bring people to the previously secret location of Santa's workshop, which could mess up everything. Mary breaks up with Grant, but he goes back to pitch the idea anyways, hauling along pictures of Santa's workshop to prove the encounter. In the end, Santa pitches in to help all the toys get built, Mary thwarts Grant's plan to build the mall, and discredits him in the process, and Mary delivers all the toys on Christmas without a hitch. Mary gets the real Christmas spirit in her heart, and realizes there is more to Christmas than ruthless cold efficiency.

And They All Learned A Valuable Lesson: Business people get to be successful by being CRUEL, COLD, and HEARTLESS people. Values which are totally counter to the Christmas spirit. Christmas is about LOVE and TRADITION and COMPROMISE. Screw business.

Greg's Review/Comments: Santa Baby was such a stunningly bad movie, in every way, that it's kind of hard for me to make any comments on it at all. Many reviewers relish in writing reviews of things they hated, hilariously skewering all of the aspects of it. For a lot of reviewers, like say Ebert, this is one of their hallmarks that their readers love and look forward to. I am not one of those reviewers. My only mode of review is "serious, thoughtful" which a movie like this totally destroys. Nonetheless in the spirit of Christmas and ruthless, cold efficiency, I will continue.

Problems Greg Had With Santa Baby (No Order):

1) The plot was hackneyed and unoriginal. Santa is injured and somebody unprepared must fill in, oh no! Exploring Santa's family, interesting. This movie was amalgamated together from the parts of several other, superior Christmas movies (at this point, even The Santa Clause is superior).

2) The movie once again reinforces the offensive to me notion that business is evil and that all successful businessmen are cold and evil people.

3) The dialogue is horrible, and horribly unrealistic. The characters are all one-dimensional stereotypes, with a maximum of one character trait apiece.

3) The acting, while not as bad as I thought it would be, was not good either. All of the actors did what they could with their roles I guess, but none of the actors rise above the material. Jenny McCarthy was not as bad as I might have thoguht she would be, but she is incapable of dealing with the simplicity of the script and character. She is not cute and charming enough to carry this role.

4) The romantic leads, Jenny McCarthy and Ivan Sergei, have no chemistry and their relationship is not believable. Their relationship was a throw in to the movie, it never feels real, and it was never even something I was really rooting for. And I root for almost all love stories in movies!

5) The jokes aren't funny and the elves, as comic relief, are way too silly to generate real humor. Maybe funny to the kids, who I guess this movie is marketed too, but not to the parents. I would probably be able to handle all of the above if the comedy in the movie was actually good, but I didn't laugh once even though there are hundreds of jokes in the film.

6) There was no emotional core to the movie. Once again, I am an enormously huge sucker for Christmas movies. The ending to Scrooged gets a lump in my throat every time, and I've seen that movie at least 10 times. But I will tell you, my heart was not warmed after viewing this movie. The movie spends way too much time on the lame comedy and non-starter romantic story, and not enough time building up the touching Christmas turnaround. When Jenny McCarthy finally does embrace the Christmas spirit, it's so abrupt, and handled in such an understated way by the movie I felt almost nothing. If there's any type of movie where it's OK to go a bit over the top, it's a Christmas movie! Come on, ABC Family.

Final Rating: I didn't expect it to be great, but I really had no way of knowing it would be this bad. Definitely one to skip this Christmas season. 1/10.

Movie Review: Sky High

Coming up this December I will have plenty of fun Christmas related content for you guys, including reviews of Christmas albums & songs, Christmas movies, and Christmas episodes of TV shows. (I'll have some non-Christmas content too, depending on just how many ideas for Christmas content I can come up with). Given how well I've stated I can relate to "Not This Year" one would think I'm not the biggest Christmas fan, and I'm not! But I do love Christmas themed entertainment. If you have an idea for any Christmas themed material (though with a teen culture interest) for me to review, please leave a comment or give me an e-mail. If you suggest something I will track it down and review it. My e-mail address is in the sidebar. Year-end review content as well! It will be a fun month, so be sure to check back.

Until then, though let's close out November with a review of one of my favorite teen movies of all time, and one of my top 5 favorite movies of 2005.

Sky High




Starring: Michael Angarano, Danielle Panabaker, Kurt Russell, Kelly Preston, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

Plot Summary: It all begins at a secret school in the clouds like none on earth: Sky High, the first and only high school for kids with super-human powers going through crime-fighting puberty. At Sky High, the student body throw flames with their footballs, study Villainy with their Chemistry and are divided into Heroes and Sidekicks instead of jocks and geeks. It's an out-of-this-world yet completely recognizable place where cool gadgetry, rampant bravery and awe-inspiring magical skills mix it up with parental battles, peer pressure and dating trouble--with explosively fun results. This year's class features some of the best, brightest and most powerfully gifted super-teens ever assembled. And then there's Will Stronghold. When you're the son of the world's most legendary super heroes, The Commander and Jetstream, people expect you to live up to the family name The problem is that Will is starting with no superpowers of his own and, worst of all, instead of joining the ranks of the Hero class, he finds himself relegated to being a Sidekick. Now he must somehow survive his freshman year while dealing with an overbearing gym coach, a bully with super speed and a dangerous rebel with a grudge (and the ability to shoot fire from his hands)--not to mention the usual angst, parental expectations and girl problems that accompany teenage life. But when an evil villain threatens his family, friends and the very sanctity of Sky High, Will must use his newfound superpowers to save the day and prove himself a Hero worthy of the family tradition. [attribution to IMDB as always. What a terribly written plot outline.]

Greg's Review/Comments: Sky High is an extremely entertaining teen movie that harkens back to the classic 80's teen movies, while not being merely a pale imitation of the same. In fact, I would stack this movie up against any of those 80's movies that this one has been accused of ripping off. The teen relationships in the movie are very realistic, which makes them interesting to watch. Plus it captures the fear and excitement of entering high school really well! Really, the fear and excitement of undertaking any new project which you feel you may be slightly inadequate for. In addition, the comedy in this movie, while not laugh-out-loud funny, does add to the movie. Particularly of note are the comedic performances of Kids In The Hall alums Dave Foley and Kevin MacDonald. That being said, if you are just going into this movie hoping for sidesplitting comedy, you will be disappointed. Like the best movies of this type, it lightly touches on the comedy, and quickly lets it pass by, to draw laughs but also to lighten the mood of the movie. It doesn't dwell on the comedy to the detriment of developing the characters' relationships, and those relationships are what are definitely at the heart of the movie.

The superhero aspect of the film is what, of course, brings it that extra level of entertainment, above and beyond your typical teen film. Not only do you get very entertaining teen drama with real teen relationships, but you get exciting superhero action as well! I went into this film with extremely low expectations for the superhero action, but it was actually a pretty entertaining aspect of the film. The superhero action scenes are not intense, at all, but they do feature acceptable special effects and very entertaining action, and are well-paced. They additionally are lighly dotted with humor at appropriate moments, and all in all they have just a really fun feeling to them. The movie ends, in particular, with a long and very entertaining action sequence where Will & his friends take on a team of super villians. Although, once again, it should go without saying that you should not see this movie if you are only interested in seeing exciting and intense superhero action.

OK, so if it's not the comedy and it's not the superhero action, what does make this move? The movie has a whole stable of memorable characters plus excellent performances all around, particularly from the female leads, and plus just the inherently entertaining nature of the teen movie formula. All of the characters are basically just your one-dimensional high school movie stereotypes, but they have super powers! That always makes things more entertaining. OK most of the characters end up in a different place, and with a different personality than when they started, but I think most people could predict how this movie will end approximately 1/2 way through the movie. My mom did, and she is horrible at predicting these things. But yet, several of the characters, particularly the supporting characters, have a kind of unique and original edge to them that elevates them above the genre. Plus the main characters of Will and Layla do have a nice depth to them, and really make you root for them. Yay Will and Layla, boo Gwen!

OK in any movie or TV show with a Panabaker, I of course will have to effusively praise their performance. It's one of the primary laws of the Teen Cultural Revolution. I can't pretend to be objective about a performance from a Panabaker sister. In this case, I will say that I didn't have any clue who Danielle OR Kay Panabaker were when I first saw this movie, and it was only through this movie that I became a fan of Danielle. Needless to say, Danielle's performance in this movie was terrific. She conveys the unrequited love of the character extremely well, and her friendship with Will is touching and fun to watch. Plus she manages to be nearly as naturally charming and loveable as Kay Panabaker. She is an ideal lead for these types of films, and although she is very good at dramatic work as well, I hope she doesn't convert her career entirely over to dramas. The one who really surprised me, though, is Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Gwen. I had seen her before in Final Destination 3, and she was not good in that movie. In fact, I might even say that she was bad. But she's really great in this film. She conveys the popular girl really well, slowly revealing how heartless she really is, while gradually converting over from untouchable perfect woman to the evil, evil woman we all know she really is. A lot of actresses in similar roles, I've noticed, can screw this up one way or the other. That is, act so loveable that we feel compelled to like the character even after her dark, heartless side has come out, or let the dark, heartless side come out too early, so that we don't believe that the main character would really be in love with them (actually, this was a big problem I had with Danielle's performance in Read It And Weep). Yet, Mary perfectly strikes a balance between the two. Plus she's hot. Kurt Russell delivers an oustanding performance as well, as he always does. He's made a lot of poor movie choices, but surely this is one of the most underrated actors of his generation. Show me another actor who can do kickass action movies like Escape From New York and The Thing, subtle dramatic work like Miracle, and lighthearted comedic work like this movie so well, and so effortlessly. There are others out there but they are generally, unlike Kurt, acknowledged as great actors. Michael Angarano and Kelly Preston give adequate performances, but don't really seem to jump off the screen. In addition to the KITH alums cited above, Bruce Campbell also gives a memorable and very funny turn as a professor at Sky High.

And They All Learned a Valuable Lesson: Cliques are bad! Judge people for who they are on the inside! Yes, this is the message to EVERY TEEN MOVIE EVER. But this movie pulls it off better than most, and when Kurt Russell and Kelly Preston acknowledge that the sidekicks are real heroes, it's a great scene.

Final Rating: 9/10. Highly recommended to watch. There are only 3 movies of 2005 that I can definitely say that I would definitely rank above this one on my list of favorite movies of the year (those being Junebug, Brokeback Mountain, and Just Like Heaven). Thus this movie ranks in my top 10 of 2005 for sure, if not the top 5.

Movie Review: Ella Enchanted

The Movie: Ella Enchanted
Starring: Anne Hathaway, Hugh Dancy, Cary Elwes
The Plot: Based on Gail Carson Levine's award winning novel, this is the story of Ella, a young woman who was given a "gift" of obedience by a fairy named Lucinda. Anything anyone tells her to do, she must obey. When her mother passes away, Ella is cared for by her thoughtless and greedy father who remarries a loathsome woman with two treacherous daughters. This modern-day, fantasy Cinderella features fairies, ogres and elves...as well as a hero in the guise of Prince Charmont, whom Ella falls in love with. Unlike Cinderella though, Ella must depend on herself and her intelligence to get her through her troubles and find Lucinda in order for her "curse" to be broken!
[Yanked from IMDB as always.]

And They All Learned A Valuable Lesson: It's wrong to force people to do things against their will! A subversively libertarian film!

Comments/Review: The first thing I wanted to discuss about this movie is the comedy. The comedy in this movie is primarily based on 3 things: 1) Updating fairy tale conventions or placing modern innovations into the fairy tale world; 2) Broad political/social satire, and; 3) The inherent humor of Ella's situation of being forced to do whatever anybody intentionally or unintentionally tells her to do. The comedy in this film that is based on points 1 and 2 above is very bad. As in, not just not funny, but actually distracting. There is enough humor to be had from her inherent situation, that they could just use it to dot the various scenes, while keeping the light, charming tone throughout the rest of the movie. This is definitely not the movie to watch if you are in the mood for a humorous comedy.

That being said, there ARE several things that this movie does have to recommend it. First and foremost among these is Anne Hathaway, who is one of my favorite current actresses. I find Anne to be instantly likeable in these kinds of roles (i.e. this film and the Princess Diaries movies). I see now that she is trying to be respected as a serious dramatic actress. And she is good in those roles too! However, I hope she doesn't give up on the "cute" acting forever, because she is really good at it. We need a romantic comedy for her, stat. In any event, she really sells this role and this movie. In order for the film to work, we need to understand her plight, and feel sorry for her, and just legitimately like her and want to root for her. PLUS, the love story with Char has to be believable, in both her initial hatred, and her eventual love of him. So, while these roles seem easy, they are really deceptively difficult to pull off, as I have noted time and time again on this blog. Anyways, Anne is a pro, and pulls off all of the aspects of the role very well. And oh yeah, she's super hot.

The supporting characters in this film don't really make the film, but they do add a bit to it. Minnie Driver is pretty good in her role as Ella's nice aunt. The EVIL stepsisters and stepmother are, in fact, believably evil and unlikeable, as is Cary Elwes as the Claudius ripoff. Cary Elwes as always I like a lot, but the stepsisters and stepmother manage to be too annoying and unlikeable. You want to dislike them for the plot to go along, but it's probably not a good thing to constantly wish for the scene to end swiftly every single time they are on the screen. Other than them though, I do like the other team of good guys, elves, giants, ogres, et al.

Ultimately, what this film has going for it, above all else is that is incredibly charming and cute. The tone of this movie is extremely light and fun throughout, even while going over very dark and serious material. They always do a good job of mixing in the serious scenes with the more comedic scenes, to keep the movie going along. All in all this is one of the cutest and most charming movies I've ever seen! Like the best of the movies of this type, it picks one consistent message and tone, sticks with both all throughout the movie, without ever taking itself too seriously. The romance is charming and believable, Ella's plight is presented in mostly a funny and not tragic way, and all the "danger" that they get in throughout the way is always presented in a light way. And when the film does turn tragic and serious towards the end, the serious scenes are always punctuated with light and funny scenes featuring the supporting cast. Plus the light and funny scenes and the romance set up throughout the movie give those serious scenes a real emotional punch that is normally missing in a film like this. A feel-good classic.

Oh yeah, and also this. A pop cover of Queen's "Somebody To Love"! Brilliant! The movie also starts with Darren Hayes' pretty good pop cover of "Strange Magic". One of my favorite scenes I can think of in a recent film.

I gather from some research on the internet that this film is extremely disliked by fans of the book. This is often true of movie adaptations of books, but I gather it's much more extreme than usual in this case. But all I have ever read on why they dislike it basically boils down to "It was different from the book". Yeah, when there's a film adaptation of a book you really like and you are really looking forward to it, it can be very disappointing when the movie is so incredibly different. I can understand that. But when the movie is so entertaining on its own merits, who cares! (Note that I've never read the book, and I never plan to.)

The Official Opinion of the TCR: Good acting work (and, yeah, some eye candy) by Anne Hathaway, a nice little message, and the tone kept throught the movie elevate this above the average "cute" movie, and make it one of my favorite "cute" movies of all time. 8.5/10. Highly recommended, as long as you are able to go in to it separate from any expectations the book may have created.