Again let us praise the giddy delight that the minions provide. Sure, they have trouble carrying their own films, but as the dada-esque relief, particularly of a middling film, they are a tonic for the soul that gives us the strength to hang on until the final credits, where they provide some of the best… Read More »
BARBIE
At one point in BARBIE, Greta Gerwig’s pink-plastic jab at the patriarchy, America Ferrara, as Gloria, an ordinary woman, gives an impassioned précis on exactly what women face in the current social climate. It is a clarion call that should reverberate through the ages and one that will, like the film in which it appears,… Read More »
HOLMES AND WATSON
One comes away from HOLMES AND WATSON bemused. The stunning lack of entertainment value in a film starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly is almost a body blow, such is its unremitting ineptitude. Using as its premise the same spoofery done much better by the Wayans Brothers in their series of SCARY MOVIE riffs,… Read More »
THE HOUSE
If anyone could have saved THE HOUSE, it would have been Amy Poehler and Will Ferrell. Theirs is a deliciously insouciant sense of comedy delivered with deadpan sincerity that can make the most of anything tossed their way. And so it is with THE HOUSE, a raggedly written story with a creaky plot that no… Read More »
DADDY’S HOME
After the magic of THE OTHER GUYS, a film that makes me laugh even at its most ridiculous, seeing co-stars Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg in DADDY’S HOME is particularly dispiriting. Once again, the former is a straight-laced, slightly priggish good guy, and the latter is the hot-headed epitome of cool thrown together due to… Read More »
STEP BROTHERS
Will Ferrell makes two kinds of silly comedies. There are the silly ones that are very funny, BLADES OF GLORY comes to mind, and then there are the silly ones that are wretched. KICKING AND SCREAMING comes to mind. STEP BROTHERS falls, alas, into the latter category. It is a one-joke film dreamed up by… Read More »
MEGAMIND
MEGAMIND is a sophisticated story told with a droll, unpretentious air. The humor is broad, the philosophy subtle, and the animation is strictly for fun. The result is a film that kids can grow up with, and that adults can use to relive the best days of childlike innocence. The titular character, voiced with a… Read More »
CAMPAIGN, THE
This being an election year, its natural for Hollywood to capitalize on it. Hence, THE CAMPAIGN, an ultimately disappointing melange of wit and silliness. There is much about which to make sport in the American democratic process, and much of it is covered here, but not consistently well, and with little originality. The eponymous electoral… Read More »
ELF
ELF is a film thats easy to like despite some shortcomings. Will Ferrell is seriously funny as a stranger in two very different strange lands, and its classic Christmas message of glad tidings and love all around is affecting while not falling into the sugar plum trap of terminal sappiness. Our hero is Buddy (Ferrell),… Read More »
ANCHORMAN
ANCHORMAN is a film without a reason to exist. Sure, there are one or two moments that are genuinely funny, but when co-star Steve Carell steals the film out from under the higher-billed Christina Applegate, Paul Rudd, and star Will Ferrell, you know that theres a problem. Its a badly paced, unevenly written and ill-advised… Read More »