One comes away from BAYWATCH wondering many things, none of them good, one of them why Spongebob Squarepants had to be involved. Based on the television phenomenon that swept the world a few decades back, this cinematic leap is neither faithful to the original, nor is it a loving spoof of same. It fails to… Read More »
KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD
It’s as though Guy Ritchie binge-watched Game of Thrones and then thought to himself, “Hey, I can do that!” and made KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD. To which I reply, “No, Guy. No you can’t.” What we have here is a chaotic script that attempts several, mutually exclusive tones and genres, with poor Charlie… Read More »
DIRTY GRANDPA
We will commence with the flensing of DIRTY GRANDPA momentarily. Before we begin, though, a brief summary of the plot of Mel Brooks’ THE PRODUCERS. In that film, more the original rather than the musical remake, we were delighted by the inspired but appalling behavior of producer Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom, his hapless accountant turned… Read More »
DEEP BLUE SEA
THE DEEP BLUE SEA is Renny Harlins latest attempt to revive a career that withered and should have died a long, long time ago. Harlin, perpetrated, I mean, directed CUTTHROAT ISLAND, which ended his marriage to Geena Davis, but oddly enough, it did not stop studios from giving him big bucks to repeat his mistakes. His latest… Read More »
SWEPT AWAY
When Lina Wertmuller, the elfin feminist gadfly of Italian cinema, made SWEPT AWAY back in 1974, it was a tantalizing and brutal take on the war between the sexes, between the classes and on the whole human comedy. When Guy Ritchie re-wrote the script for his wife, Madonna, I’m sure he thought it was a… Read More »
GROWN UPS
The pain of watching a shlocky film is trivial compared to the torture of sitting through a shlocky film that has convinced itself that it has a message beyond being awful. The latter is the experience of GROWN UPS, a dismal interlude that in the first 10 minutes establishes that men are idiots, women are… Read More »
VIEW FROM THE TOP
There is a cautionary tale from old Hollywood about ticking off the head of your studio. John Gilbert, a huge star of the silent screen, once punched out the lights of Louis B Mayer. Now, in all honesty, Jack was under a little emotional strain having just been stood up at the altar by Greta… Read More »
REAL CANCUN, THE
THE REAL WORLD, for those of you not tuned into all things MTV, is a reality show on that network that pits, er, puts several college-aged kids together in luxurious digs for four months and lets us watch what happens. THE REAL CANCUN is the same concept and done by the same producers, Mary Ellis-Bunam… Read More »
IT RUNS IN THE FAMILY
IT RUNS IN THE FAMILY is not just a bad movie, it’s a bad movie that not only muffs its attempt to rip off a good movie, ROCKET GIBRALTER, it also has the effrontery to try to make us feel guilty about hating it. I can understand why the Douglases, Kirk, son Michael, and grandson… Read More »
SPY KIDS 3-D: GAME OVER
We live in an age when pretty much any film aimed at kids will have tie-ins that include toys, t-shirts, and, possibly, a computer game of some sort. Few films exploit the merchandising angle as cynically as SPY KIDS 3-D: GAME OVER. This film is little more than an instruction manual for how to play… Read More »