Like in the first film, an ensemble cast of slumming stars earns paychecks acting out various contrived scenarios in and around New York City (the center of the universe in rom coms), all leading up this time to the dropping of the Times Square ball on New Year’s Eve.

Of the eight storylines concocted by Valentine’s Day screenwriter Katherine Fugate, I couldn’t have cared less about six, including Hilary Swank being in charge of the ball, Katherine Heigl feuding with ex Jon Bon Jovi, Ashton Kutcher and Glee star Lea Michele getting trapped in an elevator and Josh Duhamel rushing to get back to the city for an important romantic appointment.

Swank, simply put, does not belong in a comedy, and, what’s more, proved incredibly ineffective in making me not want to throw up during the excruciatingly “inspirational” televised speech her character gives at one point. Bon Jovi sings better than he acts, Michele sings more than she actually talks and Duhamel’s vignette is a blatant rip off of An Affair to Remember.

The segment I cared for least involved Sarah Jessica Parker refusing to let teen daughter Abigail Breslin go to the ball drop with cute boy Jake T. Austin. Rom-com vet Parker is fine, actually, but Breslin’s rebellious and disrespectful behavior towards her, at least as written, was barely tolerable. Granted, I’m not a parent, but I still wouldn’t let a kid act the way Breslin does.

In the why-is-he-in-this-thing category is Robert De Niro, who plays a dying man just wanting to live long enough to see the ball drop one last time. (Halle Berry is his improbably pretty nurse, Cary Elwes his doctor.) Whatever respect I had left for the man after all the junk he’s made over the last decade is nearly gone. Is he really this hard up for cash?

The better segments include Seth Meyers and Jessica Biel (a funny pair, those two) as a couple competing with Til Schweiger (?!) and Sarah Paulson for first-New-Year’s-baby prize money, which has a nicely touching resolution, and Zac Efron as an energetic, bro-calling bike messenger helping timid Michelle Pfeiffer fulfill her list of ambitious New Year’s resolutions in creative ways.

Every now and then a true laugh pops up—air bags, Marshall flick regulars Hector Elizondo and Larry Miller—but otherwise this is basically just sap in movie form. Even how the characters are connected isn’t quite as interesting as it is in the first film. If you really want to be entertained, skip to the end credits and watch the gag reel. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Comedy/Romance

Rated PG-13

DVD Release Date: 5/1/12

Can this motley crew and the untrained owner get the zoo in shape for its inspection? It’s a plot that seems like an over-budget episode of Full House (especially given the casting of Thomas Haden Church as Damon’s brother). There’s a happy soundtrack, honest if not overly revealing human conversation, and sickeningly adorable children. It’s so full of schmaltz, the box should smell like cotton candy.

However.

This movie made me cry like a small child who had hurt himself and was surprised by it. It’s not something I’ll often admit, the end of Armageddon not withstanding, but good grief. Like my mom watching a long distance commercial in the 80′s, I was so emotionally wrapped in this seemingly vapid story, I kept looking to the door expecting someone to walk in and expose my shame.

How was I so tricked by this sham of a movie?

Well… it’s actually pretty good.

Damon’s character is a good-natured, pleasant boy scout who’s been kicked in the groin by life a couple times. But he still keeps doing the right things for the right reasons. Johansson is not out of place at all, which I feel she often is, and is a very “low key” good as the zookeeper. The kids are cute, the comic relief is timely and well done.

The biggest attribute that We Bought a Zoo has is Cameron Crowe. He’s a guy who knows how to make a story come to life, and maybe he’s stumbled a couple of times, but he’s still a great storyteller.

So to recap:
I cry at stuff because I’m a big wussy, but sometimes that wussy stuff is pretty good too.
It’s not Shakespeare, it’s not high art, it’s straight-up storytelling with a good cast. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Comedy/Drama/Family

Rated PG

DVD Release Date: 4/3/12

Jason Lee, who skipped the second one, also returns for money as Dave, the exasperated guardian of the title trio of CGI critters (and The Chippettes), whom he takes on a cruise that goes incredibly awry when they, and Cross’ disgraced music exec, end up stranded on a tropical island.

This time around, the rodents croon kid-friendly versions of “Party Rockers” and a Beyoncé song, and I gotta say it’s a little disconcerting to hear them in a movie meant for children, as is seeing the Chippettes’ “Conga” dance-off with three ladies. “Koombayah” does get performed at one point, though, so kudos for the folk music nod.

I would have to say the island setting is what makes this one more bearable, that and fewer frantic dance numbers. In any case, it’s where the troupe meets the delightfully offbeat Jenny Slate as a long-stranded island inhabitant, whose presence allows for some amusing visual references to Cast Away (the group of balls with faces she talks to) and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Yes, it’s all meant for kids to enjoy, I know. And they will. Admittedly, the furry little guys (again voiced by Justin Long, Matthew Gray Gubler and Jesse McCartney) are kind of adorable, as are The Chippettes (Christina Applegate, Amy Poehler and Anna Faris). But I just had to shake my head when I realized Cross was going to be in that pelican costume the entire movie. – [DVD]

Animation/Comedy/Family

Rated G

DVD Release Date: 3/27/12

Carnage

Okay, so the plot is simple: Two 11-year old boys get into a fight at a park, and one, Zachary, hits the other, Ethan, with a stick, causing broken teeth and bruising. The movie takes place entirely in the apartment of Ethan’s parents: Penelope, played by Jodie Foster, and Michael, played by John C. Reilly. Zachary’s parents, Nancy, played by Kate Winslet, and Michael, played by Christoph Waltz, have come to the apartment to discuss and fight over the incident. There you have the entire storyline. What ensues had a slight flavor of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, but without the depth, without believable dialogue, and without the excruciatingly powerful development. The biggest problem for me with this film was the stilted, unnatural dialogue. I didn’t believe that parents would actually behave the way or say what they did. There were isolated moments when I felt the actors believed their lines, but overall it was alternately disjointed, exaggerated, or wooden. I blame the screenplay, and maybe even Polanski for the flawed execution of the script. Reza’s screenplay for Carnage is an adaptation of her Broadway script for the drama, “God of Carnage”, which was awarded the 2009 Tony Award for Best Original Play.

Hey, so listen: You have Oscar winners, Tony winners, a great cast, iconic director, and potentially interesting, not to mention topical, story. Maybe it’s just me. I will be really curious about what other viewers think about this movie. I could barely finish it, but lots of critics liked it. And lots of viewers will join them in their appreciation. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Comedy/Drama

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 3/20/12

It features Jonah Hill as a suspended, unemployed college student who reluctantly takes a job babysitting three kids for his mom’s friend. When he gets invited to a party in the city by his blonde “girlfriend,” he drags the kids along and R-rated hijinks–cocaine-filled dinosaur eggs, stealing bar mitzvah money, Hill getting punched in the face–ensue.

Whether you find anything funny here depends partly on how much you like Hill’s fat-slacker comedy act, which feels halfhearted, and partly on if you don’t mind an 8-year-old girl swearing and flipping people off, or seeing a sociopathic 10-year-old boy blow up toilets and flirt with prostitutes. There’s also the roller-skating guy who gets shot in the foot.

Energy-wise, it couldn’t be further from the high craziness of Green’s Pineapple Express. The situations, especially the kids’, are neither interesting nor presented with any kind of style. And though things do perk up a little when we meet Sam Rockwell’s bizarro drug dealer, he ultimately is too brutal and unsavory a character to really be considered funny.

Green tries to compensate by giving Hill a heart–his father won’t help him financially; he connects with a cute former college classmate; he advises the kids on their problems. Some of these scenes, like Hill’s talk with the sensitive teen boy (Where the Wild Things Are’s Max Records), are actually nicely done. But they’re not quite enough to overcome the film’s pervasive crudeness.

Once in a great while I did laugh, generally at the way Hill insults people, the best one being how he tells off a sarcastic restaurant maitre d’. I also chuckled at him telling the pre-teen girl, “Wipe that makeup off your face, Picasso. What are you, a mob wife?” as well as his referring to a pair of red-headed twin girls as the “Redrum Twins.” – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Comedy

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 3/20/12

Nostalgia is for someone who’s stopped dreaming.

But if we dream of our past, it’s still dreaming, isn’t it? Time has only marinated these memories so they can gestate and reform. We can start again with the rich loam of our history… we can… wait, that’s not dreaming… that’s deluding ourselves that what happened back then, was so much better back then… and the here and now… well… it’s not so good, but kick-starting the past can make it even better, problem solved… just like we’ve always… dreamed?

A black comedy in the best possible theatre-of-the-uncomfortable fashion, Young Adult gives us Mavis Gary, who is dreaming as she “lives” in Minneapolis, but it’s a festering dream and a festering life. A ghostwriter for a soon to be defunct series of “young adult” books, her television always tuned to trashy reality shows and dialogue for her novels provided by teenagers she eavesdrops on around town, the inner musings of the lead character in these stories are Mavis’ own, as she was that popular, cool girl. Now, eyeliner applied with a Sharpie, sweatpants as a second skin, long suffering pomeranian barking on her patio, she receives a group e-mail from the love-of-her-high-school-life. He’s just had a baby girl. Gears are set in motion. Unfortunately these are the thrown gears and mismatched flywheels of someone in the rut of her 30’s, newly divorced, fisting liters of soda to sit down for a writing session. Empty is the word to describe Mavis. Also conniving, self-centered and delusional as she packs a bag, puts a battered mixtape with “their” song on it in the car stereo and goes home to Mercury, Minnesota to steal her old flame from the dismal, smothering trap of family that, in her mind, he can’t possibly want.

Charlize Theron, as Mavis, is a walking, talking, emotionally misfiring circuit. Patton Oswalt is Matt, an alumnus from the same school as Mavis, crippled from a vicious beating administered by jocks years ago, he lives with his sister, brews his own bourbon and is still locked in the action figure geekery of his youth. His is a still simmering bitterness, but maturity has smoothed some edges. Ignored by Mavis during their school days, when they meet again at an old watering hole, he pulls no punches about the past and her future plans, becoming her devil’s advocate, though a set of more humorless, tone deaf ears, he could never find. Mavis meets with her ex-flame, Buddy (Patrick Wilson), but skips telling her parents she’s come home and she’s too obsessed to be surreptitious with her sneers at Buddy’s wife Beth (Elizabeth Reaser), their life and mutual old friends. As this shambles of a homecoming plays out and the Romeo rescue mission collapses around her, a few scraps of lukewarm adulation and a mutual accord reached with Matt provide a touch of compassion, if no real hope,and allow her an exit.

Screenwriter Diablo Cody has pulled it off with dialogue that’s salty but that doesn’t try for one-liners or crass, catchphrase comedy and in Mavis, an unlikeable person who seems to never have had any inner life to speak of, only charisma and selfishness, Theron digs in to show the brittle life support system we may all be guilty of using sometime, in shoring up adult mistakes.

In the recent Tiny Furniture (2010), another young woman, equally as unsympathetic as Mavis, is at a post college turning point and asking “what about me”?  She could easily be Mavis ten years on, asking the question again, because it tends to get asked of the world at large when adulthood has delivered you a dust up. Remember to put the emphasis on “about”, give a laugh, ache a little, take up home distillery maybe. [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Comedy/Drama

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 3/13/12

I was in grade school

Remake it, for what?

I’ll tell you what we’ve got

———————-

I had this feeling

It wouldn’t be nearly as fun

But it was okay, I didn’t hate it that much

I kinda liked this

———————-

Movie, you see, it is one that will please

You, and teens too, it has kids breakin’ rules

They dance, and prance, where music has been banned

By, some guys, all because some youths died

———————-

Kenny Wormald, dances great

But his acting I must berate

Kevin Bacon he is not

He is moody, ’cause he lost his mom

———————-

Julianne Hough is better

Real cute and a firecracker

Dennis Quaid‘s her father

And he’s bland as dishwater

It gets worse when you see how

———————-

The script, to be hip, darkens the story a bit

Oowhee, please, it makes, it makes it weak

More, my lord, than back in ’84

Wit, don’t fit, in movies such as this

———————-

The director turns it around

When the kids all dance to the sound

Of all kinds of tunes

But you’ll cut loose to

———————-

Loose, Footloose, there’s a song that’s got some juice

Please, Louise, it made me move my feet

Fun, and it’s sung, by Loggins and Blake Shelton

You, will groove, but the tune will manage to

———————-

Make, you think, this movie’s oh so great

Whoa, you know, that ain’t really quite so

Yet, it gets, points for trying its best

Hey, you’ll say

———————-

I like the film or I hate the film

I like the film or I hate the film

I like the film or I hate the film

I like I hate Footloose – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Comedy/Drama/Music

Rated PG-13

DVD Release Date: 3/6/12

DURING:
Minute twenty-five. Supplies running low. Experiencing acute (and unpleasant) flashbacks to characters Sandler created in his Saturday Night Live days. The movie is leaning heavily on celebrity cameos. Thus far we have seen Shaquille O’Neal, Drew Carey, and Jared from the old Subway commercials (remember him?). But Al Pacino‘s presence in this film looks to be much more than a mere cameo. It looks like they’re setting him up as Sister Sandler’s ardent pursuer/love interest. Some amusement in a scene in a movie theater, where Dude Sandler is embarrassed by Lady Sandler (who is his sister, incidentally) while she talks loudly on the phone. The camera angle sets up the onscreen cinema patrons as a direct reflection of the presumed moviegoing public (us). Thus, in essence, he has the opportunity to hold a mirror up and brutalize two audiences simultaneously. Perhaps there’s more subtext here than I suspected. Perhaps not. I need to get a grip.

Wow, another cameo, this time from Johnny Depp! And he’s even doing a scene with Pacino. I think I’m getting goosebumps! Pacino sends a hot dog to Sandler with his phone number written in mustard. It doesn’t have a 555 exchange. I wonder what will happen if I dial it.

No luck, it’s a fake. Hey, look, is that Gad Elmaleh, the famous French actor? He was in Midnight in Paris! Maybe I’m not being fair. Adam Sandler just wants to make us laugh. This movie is hilarious! Hahaha, he just broke Al Pacino’s Oscar with a stickball bat! Hehehe, his adopted kid taped a computer-generated hamster to his back, and it’s trying to get free. I love movies.

My head hurts. I’m going to put on Waterworld and go to sleep…

AFTER:
I wonder what I can buy for $7.37? – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Of course, it’s less a plot than an excuse for the 56-year-old Atkinson to ply his entertaining physical schtick, making funny faces and talking in funny voices and fighting with himself, coming off as a slightly smarter version of Inspector Clouseau. The humor is generally family-friendly, with a few scenes (Atkinson’s dragging around of rocks) just skirting the PG boundaries.

A lot of the gags are merely humorous instead of flat out hilarious, though. I actually laughed less than I did at Steve Martin in The Pink Panther 2. The big set pieces–Atkinson fleeing from his colleagues in a high-tech wheelchair and Atkinson pursuing a young Asian thug–are certainly clever, and made me smile, but they never made me bust a gut.

Which is not to say the film lacks real laughs. They just don’t come consistently. Indeed, I did laugh anytime Atkinson, in a recurring gag, mistakenly manhandled the wrong woman while chasing a little Asian lady assassin and repeatedly banged her on the head with a tray. I also liked his mishandling of Anderson’s cat, and the pneumatic chair bit had me in stitches.

Oliver Parker (An Ideal Husband) directs it all with a certain gentleness, which is good enough, I suppose, even if the action scenes do lack energy. And the supporting cast is solid, with the standouts being Dominic West (The Wire) as a macho fellow agent, Daniel Kaluuya as Atkinson’s young still-living-at-home partner, and an appealing Rosamund Pike as Atkinson’s love interest. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Adventure/Comedy/Thriller

Rated PG

DVD Release Date: 2/28/12

The Myth of the American Sleepover

Since the dawn of man, old people have been telling high school stories. I’m pretty sure there is a missing book of the bible relating the tales of awkward teenage Jesus, and his days at Jerusalem High (Go Shepherds!). There is no new ground here. American Graffiti begat Sixteen Candles begat Dazed and Confused. It’s been done, done to death, but we still keep going back.

And while The Myth of the American Sleepover, or MOTAS, borrows, sometimes quite blatantly, from previous films, there is a uniqueness to it.

It features teens, people who had the actual experience of going to high school. Regular everyday kids who saw an ad in a local paper, and said “Hey, movies are cool”.

This is also what brings MOTAS down a little bit. There are a lot of people in the film who seem like they’re fresh from drama class, and while the performances aren’t bad, there is a noticeable perception of the camera as an entity, of the film as a drama, that somewhat diminishes the ability to get lost in the story.

Another impressive aspect of MOTAS is the relative quality of the film. It’s apparent that they didn’t have a lot of money, and that these kids are just starting out as actors, but unlike a lot of the independent films of the 90′s, it feels well done. No drastic color changes from one scene to the next, no unexplained loose ends, no one feels like they’re reading.

There’s also a sort of timelessness to MOTAS in as much as, and it’s a simple thing, no one has a mobile phone. The kids don’t text instead of talk, they don’t e-vite one another over. They walk around the neighborhood and talk to each other. They go to friends’ houses, and watch horror movies in the basement, or break out a Ouija board. It’s how I remember life being, at least until I got a car.

The Myth of the American Sleepover is ultimately a very charming film, balanced and well thought out. Before you go watching The Breakfast Club again, give this one a shot. – [DVD]

Comedy/Drama

Not Rated

DVD Release Date: 2/28/12