About A Stepdad

Imagine a movie where they use their best 3D effects to heave spit or vomit into your face. Bad, right? Well, it gets worse. What if a movie then compounds that insult by making a bloated, meandering mess fails where no action film should fail: It’s boring.

RIPD is that movie.

Did no one read the script before deciding to do this movie? Did no one watch the movie after it was made? Does Ryan Reynolds have an agent and if he does, is that agent trying to get him off the ‘A’ list?

It’s too bad, because RIPD had such a great promise. Sort of an undead version of MIB. Ryan Reynolds gets killed, but before he can pass into that white light, he’s yanked into a room with sardonic (but sexy) Mary Louise Parker, and told he’s been recruited by the Rest in Peace Department, an undead serve-and-protect agency dedicated to catching ‘deados’, aka spirits not ready to depart this world (all of whom are bad spirits for some reason.)

However it failed and failed on so many levels it might be worthy of a cowboy song. Here’s a few thoughts as to why.

1. Ryan Reynolds did not take off his top. I know this seems like a small thing, but once you convince your girlfriend to see a nerdy movie by saying, hey, it has Ryan Reynolds and you know how he loves to go all Magic Mike, and then he doesn’t, you get a look of death.

2. The special effects are bad. Not just offensive and stupid and juvenile, but BAD. The deados in particular look cheap. They look so 20^th century. They look like something done in a special effects training school for the blind. Considering what can be done, (look at the stunning Pacific Rim, or Superman or Star Trek and… well…) I expected a lot more. Whoever did these effects should be embarrassed. Like cat-stuck-in-toilet-video embarrassed.

3. Jeff Bridges alone cannot carry a movie. He’s funny, charming and most of the laughs in the movie come from him. Sometimes I think he didn’t even have a script. Maybe that’s why he worked. Maybe he just tossed his lines and made up his own. If I was to make a suggestion for the other ‘buddy’ in this buddy movie, it would be Ryan, my Canadian friend, please find a good movie. Please.

4. The great joke, that Ryan Reynolds comes back to the world as an old, banana-wielding Asian gentleman in a beige jacket (while Jeff Bridges is a smoking hot blond) is a funny, funny idea. Really funny. Sometimes I wanted to see that old Asian dude more and Ryan Reynolds less. This is a serious problem for Mr. Reynolds. That I wanted to see Jeff Bridges more than the buxom blond also says a lot about Mr. Bridges. Or me.

5. The villain in Superman was General Zod. Powerful. Driven. Deadly. The villain in Star Trek was a super-human genius capable of killing Klingons like he was playing a video game on easy mode. The villain here… A super fat (and badly rendered) ‘deado’. Or Kevin Bacon… a jokey hahaha Deado Kevin Bacon (Honestly, I’m not sure which was the supposed to be the uber villain) but either way, an epic fail in the bad guy department. Lame. Lame. Lame. Have they not read anything about creating a great antagonist?

6. In the end, spoiler alert, for the love of God, spoiler alert, our hero’s love dies, but since he’s dead, they can be together and, well, I got all teary-eyed (for obvious reasons if anyone knows me.) A perfect ending. In death they have found each other again. Sad but kinda happy, too, right? Of course. So what did these guys do with that ending? They kept on rolling and have her wake up and suddenly Ryan Reynolds is ok with losing her and Jeff Bridges gets his beard sucked on by Mary Louise Parker (in perhaps the oddest but kinda sexy scene I think I’ve ever seen) and everything’s ok. WTF? Gack!

However, the title did not suck. It’s one of the best titles of all time. Too bad the movie didn’t live up to it. You know what, let me make this easy – Watch the trailer. It’s got all the best parts of the movie.

Posted in Movie Review | Tagged Deados, Jeff Bridges, Mary Louise Parker, Pacific Rim, Ryan Reynolds, special effects, Star Trek, Superman | 1 Comment

Second Thoughts on Secondary Characters

Posted on July 18, 2013 by Joe Cummings

Second Thoughts on Secondary Characters.

Posted in Parenting | Leave a comment

Pacific Rim

Posted on July 16, 2013 by Joe Cummings

How can a movie with giant fighting mechs and Godzilla-like monsters be bad? Well, it isn’t but it isn’t good either. It misses the marks in a few places. Had Guillermo del Toro called me, I could have helped him out.

The conversation may have gone something like this.

Me: Hi, Mo

GDT: What? Who is this. And don’t call me ‘Mo’.

Me: Right. Sure. I remember the restraining order. But listen I just saw your latest movie, Pacific Rim. Great special effect, amazing special effects, actually, but I didn’t leave satisfied. I thought you could have done a few things better.

GDT: Who are you again?

Me: So, I like that you chose Jax from Sons of Anarchy, he’s a good looking tough guy, and the smoking hot Rinko Kikuchi who had that awesome blue streak in her hair.. inspired, but the best acting choice was Idris Elba as the Marshal or commander or whatever he was. He was great. The two goofy scientists, though, kinda hmmm, a little warmed over don’t you think?

GDT: What are you talking about?

Me: Ok, I’ll get to the point. First. Lemme ask you a question. If you have a huge giant robotie thingee and it has a sword, and a plasma cannon and some sort of rocket powered elbow punch, why in the name of George Lucas did they not use those abilities right away? I mean, seriously. If I have a sword, I’m a gonna use it. But that’s me. It’s not like I’m going to wait until I’m a billion feet above the ground and hack some flying monster to pieces, no, I’m a gonna use it right away. First I’d shoot the damn cannon, then whip out my sword and slice monstrous bits off, and if that wasn’t enough, my last resort thing would be beating it about its boney head with my big fists. Just saying.

GDT: How did you get this number?

Me: Second. I think you needed more heart in this movie. I loved the little girl scene, though it was a tiny bit over the top, but with the robots, you hit on something really magical and then left it for dead. I’m talking about the whole bonding experience. 2 people to drive the robots, Mo, 2 people in each giant metal robot whose minds are locked in a neural ‘handshake’. Make me love those people and this movie rocks.

So what if they were always bond by love, brotherly love, father-son love, true, magical romantic love? Yeah? How powerful would that be? We’d spend a few more moments with the Russians, with the Asian perfectionists, and then, with our hero and the uber lovely Mako.

But no, instead the people are largely ignored. The bond between them largely ignored. It’s a big miss, my friend, a big miss. We will go to see the fights, but what we’ll talk about will be those characters inside the robots. How could you forget that?

GDT: Ok, I’m going to call the cops.

Me: Right, right, so lastly, maybe I’m getting old but what’s with all the splashing me in the face with water and blinding me with bright lights and shooting the monster/robot fights so that sometimes I can’t tell what the hell is going on? I mean, I get it, you can do amazing effects with light and 3D water spraying me, but keep the fights clean.

Look at the scene you did with the little girl. Debris falls like snow, cars line the streets, broken and dusted in greyish-chalk, and filling the screen in the distance, a pretty big monster. In front of it, a little girl. Kinda scary actually. Old school special effects. Perfect AND affective.

GDT: I’m going to hang up.

Me: Sure, sure, just a sec. It’s a pretty entertaining movie and you did a pretty good job for about 2/3rds of the movie. But that other 1/3 makes or breaks a movie. Avoid the clichés. Avoid stupid characters with metal shoe tips that get eaten because, well, they were stupid. Avoid an ending that I’ve seen a million times before.

And, avoid worrying about making the effects so ground-breaking that you forget about story. It’s a lesson Lucas never learned, but great movies are less about stunning visuals and more about characters we come to love (or hate.)

GDT: *click*

Me: Hello? Hello? I didn’t get to mention the title sucks.

Ah well. I think I’d still recommend seeing this movie. It’s not the best to come out this summer. But it is a world of giant robots, epic battles, massive destruction, and an homage to the old Godzilla movies. Hey, I wouldn’t bring young kids, though, it could scare the heck out of them, but for the rest of us, but it’s worth ‘seeing. It’s worth the price of admission.