Posts Tagged ‘chick flick’
4 items.
I went on a strange roller-coaster trip creating today’s strip.
When I first thought up the idea for a “Drunken Movie Review”, I thought it would be a fun gimmick for the site – maybe a joke I could repeat somewhere down the line. But as I stared at a blank piece of paper tonight, the thought crept in my head that this idea really stunk.
Then the drawings started coming together. Nothing fantastic, which explains the heavy-handed blur technique I borrowed from another site. I was hoping to distract you.
But once I got the dialogue down on the page, things really started taking shape. This was beginning to look like actual hops-inspired conversations I’ve had in my lifetime. It really grew on me. Then again, if I’m wafting too close to “inside joke” territory, let me know in the forums. Snap me back into shape.
A scenario like this may very likely be the case a week from now. Jared and I are going back to our alma mater next weekend for a trip down memory lane at our college homecoming. This time we’re bringing the wives. Look out!
As far as The Four Feathers is concerned, it looked like a movie I wanted to see before I learned what it was actually about. Sorry, but late 19th century Brittish colonialism doesn’t exactly capture my fancy. Plus, I’ve heard bad things: Kate Hudson’s performance is wooden and Heath Ledger looks like John-Walker Lyndh. And whatever happened to Wes Bently? He sure took a dive after American Beauty.
I think the fact this movie came in 5th place behind Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever says more than anything I could hope to accomplish.
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The indifference Tom displays toward The House Bunny is not actually true-to-life. In fact, in real life, I am very excited to see this film. I personally believe that Anna Farris is hilarious, fearless and a great comedian. It’ll be a treat to see her starring in a feature like this.
Both Cami and I are big Faris fans. I think it was her turn in the woefully underrated Just Friends that sealed the deal. He character is at once both annoying and abrasive, but the screen is a little dimmer when she’s not there to grace it. Even though it’s kinda of supposed to be a holiday movie, we’ll watch it almost anytime we’re bored. It’s a lot of fun.
To that end, I don’t know that there is anything particularly revolutionary about The House Bunny from a plot standpoint. Faris’s character is thrown out of The Playboy Mansion and takes up residence in a sorority house full of losers. She teaches them life lessons and everyone feels good about themselves in the end. Beverly D’Angelo shows up as the uptight house mother of another sorority out to spoil their fun. It’s pretty much paint by numbers. But Farris has a knack for making patently unwatchable films interesting. So it’s not completely hopeless.
It’s kind of disingenuous to stock the sorority house with actresses like Emma Stone and Kat Dennings as "the ugly girls." You can see their "removing the glasses and let down your hair scene" a million miles away. Rumor Willis, on the other hand… genius casting for that role.
That’s mean. Sorry, Rumor. It’s just that… well, your jawline freaks me out.
Anyway, Cami and I are hoping to see this sometime this weekend. I’m down for it, but I have to find time to go out and see Tropic Thunder as well. I’m falling behind!
Things are probably going to get a little more difficult for me from an availability standpoint. Today is the day that I start pursuing my Master’s Degree in Communication Leadership offered by Drake University here in Des Moines. There’s a social gathering for all of the people in the program this evening – kind of a meet and greet – before a full-blown introduction to the program itself, class load and expectations for the semester that lasts all day Saturday. After that, it’s one class a week every Wednesday for the rest of the semester. I’m kicking things off with Mass Communications 101, natch.
It’s hard to say how much impact the pursuit of my Master’s will have on the comic. Between my 9 to 5 job, being a husband, being a father and finding time to work out — attending classes and finding time to study is just another thing to add to the pile. But I wouldn’t have bothered applying if I didn’t think I could handle it. Plus, you know what they say about busy people – they get more done.
Speaking of getting more done, I’m starting to fold in some of the custom art requests I’ve received through the donation drive into my regular drawing schedule. I have one in the can and I wanted to share it with you.
This was drawn for a donator who sent $25 and who asked for a simple cast portrait. I wanted to show it to you guys because I wanted to demonstrate how I’m serious about giving you what you pay for. I’m not just slapping something onto a piece of scratch paper and mailing it to you. These drawings are on professionally printed 4 x 6″; cardstock, inked and signed. In addition to the good feeling you get for helping out a brother in need, I want you to feel like you got something for your money.
So there it is. Do with it what you will.
Please keep in mind that in order for me to maintain a level of consistent quality for ALL of the people who donated, it may take me a little longer to get back to you with the finished product. In fact, right now, I haven’t been able to get in touch with all of the people who send donations the week of the 11th.
I have a lot of e-mails to sift through and I’m trying to keep them organized. The system I’m using right now is to contact a small batch of donators at a time and learn what it is they would like in their custom art. Once the art is completely and mailed away, I take on another batch of e-mails. So if I haven’t gotten to you yet, I’m not blowing you off. I’m just trying to keep the influx of e-mail manageable. I WILL get to you eventually!
I also wanted to give everyone an update in regard to the actual data recovery.
The wizards at Ontrack managed to pull together nearly EVERYTHING from the damaged drive. I’m talking, like 99.9% of it. The only thing they weren’t able to recover is a temporary Photoshop file and an MP3 that I’m not going to miss. All of the family photos, video, and, most importantly the archived original Theater Hopper artwork has been rescued.
They had to take the failed drive into a clean room and rebuild it from the ground up to do it… but they did it!
Ontrack delivered the content back to me on Wednesday and I am glad to report it’s home safe and sound. Oh, yeah… and I already backed up copies of it just in case!
Just to be clear, this doesn’t mean the donation drive is over. I paid Ontrack with a credit card so I could get the data back as soon as possible. The goal now is to pay off the card equally fast so I’m not carrying debt and getting tagged with finance charges!
I’m optimistic, though. I mean, you guys helped me raise over half of our goal in less than two weeks. That’s amazing. It really makes me feel good to know that there are people so sympathetic to my problems and willing to help. I already knew I had a great group of readers, but to see it in my e-mail inbox everyday in black and white has been a staggering and humbling validation.
Thanks again, you guys. I’ll talk to you soon. Have a great weekend!
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I don’t know why I continue to beat up on The House Bunny in the comic. I saw it on Saturday with Cami and my sister-in-law and it’s a perfectly serviceable film. There’s nothing new about the plot, though. It’s basically Revenge of The Nerds with hot pants. Frankly, one wonders if you couldn’t accuse screenwriters Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith of self-plagiarism. The two wrote Legally Blonde back in 2001 and The House Bunny shares a similar feel. The major difference being that Reese Witherspoon’s Elle Woods was actually a very intelligent and driven young woman with a fluff exterior. Anna Faris as Shelley Darlingson is a dyed-in-the-wool moron that ends up being more heart than brains.
Both seem to have an affinity for naming their pets cutesy names. "Bruiser" for Woods’s chihuahua in Legally Blonde. “Pooter” for Darlingson’s cat in The House Bunny.
The other big difference, of course is that Legally Blonde is the far superior movie. At least it had a plot that kind of makes sense. The House Bunny is all over the place and edited terribly. There are huge logic gaps in the film, sacrificed, I suppose to make room for “The Positive Message” at the end of it.
I kind of left the theater wondering who this movie was supposed to be for. Was it meant for geeky girls to teach them how to embrace their inner sexpot? Or was it for vapid, materialistic hard-bodies to teach them how to crack open a book every once in a while.
The movie leaves you hanging on a string for most of the second act. After the geeky girls of the Zeta house get their makeover, they become superficial snobs, no better than their adversaries– and you wonder “Oh my God. Is the movie going to leave them like this? Could these characters realistically abandon a lifetime of social awkwardness and rebellion after one application of lip gloss?”
As clumsy as the movie is when it finally comes around to delivering it’s message, the girls would have been better off left as bubbleheads.
I wanted to like The House Bunny more than I did and I think a lot of that is based on the strength of the performances between Farris and Emma Stone. Faris has created a great screen ditzoid, you just wish she had a better script to do it in. Emma Stone is completely natural as the over-compensating geek. She speaks and you cringe, but for a good reason – because her acting nails that awkwardness so perfectly.
Maybe The House Bunny is a better movie than I give it credit for because I’ve actually been giving it a lot of thought over the last couple of days. There are quotable lines from the movie and a few strong laughs. But it feels like it was assembled so hastily, it’s like a missed opportunity for Farris and Stone.
I have more to say about the film, especially regarding some of the supporting performances. Specifically, Kat Dennings, who I think was woefully miscast. I’m sure it’s something we’ll be talking about in greater detail tonight on The Triple Feature podcast at 9PM CST over at TalkShoe. If you’re interested, please tune in and contribute to the conversation. We’d love to have you!
See you then!
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Cami and went to see Bridesmaids this weekend and at one point before the movie started, Cami actually leaned over to me and said “Thank you for seeing this movie with me.” I thought it was kind of odd at the time because 1.) I was already excited to see this movie and 2.) When do we ever get to leave the house to do ANYTHING together anymore?
Then again, she might have also been thanking me for letting her drag me around to a couple of department stores to look at blouses and shoes between our dinner and showtime.
* insert sound of whips here *
That said, I really enjoyed Bridesmaids and think it’s wholly deserving of the praise and strong reviews it’s received. If you haven’t seen it yet, I encourage you to check it out.
Produced by Judd Apatow and directed by Paul Feig, Universal Studios has marketed Bridesmaids as the female response to films like The 40 Year-Old Virgin or The Hangover. If you’ve seen the TV spots, they all seem to be preoccupied with a scene where the girls contract food poisoning. It leads you to believe that you’re in for an outrageous, scatological good time.
As bombastic an hilarious as that scene is, I’ll go on the record right now and let you know that Bridesmaids is NOT that kind of film. It’s not interested in strictly using shock tactics to generate laughs. It has a lot more on its mind than that.
There’s a lot of needless controversy in comedy circles (mostly driven by sexism) about whether or not women are funny. For the record, I think women are hilarious. That said, Bridesmaids clearly has a different temperament than most big studio comedies. The audience is the benefactor from this shift in tone because the humor frequently derived from character motivation rather than misunderstandings or unfortunate circumstances.
That’s not to say that Bridesmaids don’t lean on these tried and true comedic devices. But the humor is amplified by our familiarity with the characters, their needs and limitations.
As Annie, Kristen Wiig has created a great comedic punching bag – a tragic character who lost her cake shop in the recession and has been falling further and further behind ever since. But catharsis doesn’t come easily for Annie because she is truly the architect of her own misery. She can’t be free of it until she confronts her role in it.
Of course, it’s Melissa McCarthy as the bawdy Megan that wakes her up to her reality. In an excellent exchange near the end of the film, Megan gleefully slaps Annie around. Encouraging her to “Fight! Fight for your crappy life!” McCarthy is a comedic powerhouse in this movie and practically steals it out from under the rest of the ensemble.
I guess if I could register any complaint against the film is that it doesn’t fully take advantage of the talent it has at its disposal. Wiig, McCarthy and Maya Rudolph all get sufficient screen time. But Wendi McLendon-Covey from Reno 911 and Ellie Kemper from The Office are almost completely squandered. In fact, I think Rebel Wilson and Matt Lucas as Wiig’s inconsiderate roommates get more time on screen. So the film is not quite the ensemble piece it bills itself to be.
But overall the film is smart, honest and touching. On the surface, Annie’s problems and her reaction to them felt more akin to a directionless 20-something rather than how a former small-business owner approaching 40 would handle them. But, in context, it indicates how hard Annie has been thrown for a loop. Annie is an anomaly among female comedic archetypes, but a welcome one. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Bridesmaids became a game-changer for chick flicks, which I would celebrate.
Look, a little bit of Sandra Bullock or Kate Hudson is fine. But their movies fail to take risks and avoid any suggestion that the lives of their heroines (who, for some reason, always seem to be marketing executives) is anything less than perfect. Bridesmaids takes those risks and should be rewarded for it.
Did you see Bridesmaids this weekend? If so, what were your thoughts? Leave your comments below!
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