This is a confusing and confused movie. My expectations were low to begin with, as it is a combination sequel and spin-off of 2003’s Daredevil. Daredevil itself was underwhelming and uninspired but between modest gains at the box office and Jennifer Garner’s popularity from the hit show Alias, this movie was destined to be made. With alterations to the main characters back-story and a poorly thought out attempt at several layers of misdirection, Elektra fails to impress.
Jennifer Garner is a beautiful woman, which appeals to young men. Lots of martial arts action, violence, and high-energy stunt work also appeals to this demographic. Banking on a pretty face and some flashy stunts are poor choices for the foundation of a movie. I wasn’t able to determine if this film is actually based off any of the Elektra comics, but considering how very little praise it received from comic book enthusiasts (or anyone else for that matter) I would venture to guess that the story was written just for the film.
I have little to say about the acting because it was actually pretty good for a comic book movie. However, whatever good comes out of the acting is undone by the illogical choices and poor dialog given to the cast. They do their best with it but even they seem to be unsure of their words. This makes the whole package feel awkward and pushes it into the realm of silliness at times.
While the protagonists are sufficiently developed, though veiled behind the layers of misdirection, the antagonists are treated like disposable toy soldiers. They serve their purpose by creating a threat to Elektra and her goal, thereby acting as the impetus for a number of flashy displays of stunt work and CGI. They look mean and act mean, but their back-story and an explanation of how or why they have their supernatural powers is not explained. The only known motivation is that they work for the bad guy and like to hurt people. They’re not very deep, which is a shame. I tend to enjoy multifaceted, morally ambiguous villains.
All in all, the fight scenes go overboard and become the focus of the film. It really seems like the plot takes a backseat for about an hour and is used as a thin ploy to move between fight scenes. Then there is the hint at the end that the events of the entire film were part of a larger misdirection meant to teach Elektra some larger lesson in her ongoing training. This serves only to confound me further, because that implies the higher up good guys risked Elektra helping the bad guys at first. It’s all too much for anyone but comic book fanboys, and even they didn’t respond to this film favorably.
Sports films are an interesting breed. It’s hard to rate a film involving a sport you know very little about. While the action may look impressive to the casual viewer, an expert on that sport could point out a thousand inaccuracies that you might otherwise overlook. Fortunately for me, Friday Night Lights comes with a reputation for being pretty accurate in its portrayal of American football. With that in mind, I was able to examine the emotional aspects and human drama inherent in the story. I’m happy to report that this is a solid all-around film.
Friday Night Lights tells the story of the 1988 season of the Odessa-Permian High School football team. It was adapted from a book of the same name written by a man who had followed the team for several years. The gritty, no-holds-barred story infuriated many of the town’s residents, accusing the author of portraying the repressed Texas town as dysfunctional, bigoted and unhealthily obsessed with their high school football team.
Whether or not the town’s portrayal is a fair one, this film immediately launches you into a sports world rarely explored in cinema. It’s difficult to think of another sports film that so unapologetically immerses you into the dark world of adults living vicariously through the successes of young athletes. It’s bad enough when parents fall into this trap, but for a whole town to demand so much out of emotionally fragile youth is truly despicable.
The players aren’t the only ones who feel the heat. Billy Bob Thornton plays the team’s coach. He is a man who knows full well what is expected of him and his talented team. It’s a lot of pressure for one man to take without being constantly reminded of it and yet he is reminded of it every day by virtually every person he meets. For four or five months a year, he might as well be mayor, seeing as he carries the team and the team, in turn, carries the town. Oh, the anxiety!
The only downside to the film is that it doesn’t break away from the sport enough. We see plenty of on-field turmoil, the pressure these kids take from their parents and the adoration they receive from their classmates, but there is little or no focus on their life at school- academics, social lives away from the team, etc. This was probably done because the book was written about the season and provides limited information about the players’ lives. Also, the film is shot in such a way that you are kind of a silent observer, as if you’re one of the townsfolk, and they certainly don’t give a damn how these kids do at school or outside of football. All they care about is the thrill and excitement to feel good about something in their life for one night a week.
Friday Night Lights features some sharp acting from many relative unknowns in Hollywood. The young actors really bring the players to life- the nerve-wracked quarterback trying to be a leader, the mouthy hot-shot running back who is being sought after by dozens of colleges, and several under the radar players who make up the heart and soul of the team. There is also an inspired performance by Tim McGraw as an alcoholic former state champion whose son doesn’t quite have the skills on the field his father once did.
In 2006, NBC created a television series based loosely off of the book and film which covers more of the emotional side of being a teenager growing up in such a situation. For what it’s worth, the film would have felt slow and bogged down had the filmmakers attempted to include the extra baggage. Instead, the end result is a roller coaster of a film that knows its focus and never wavers from it.
Highs and lows abound, making Friday Night Lights a powerful, unique and serious look at sports typically approached in dark comedies or outright parodies.
With no female characters and only a few women appearing as extras during the film’s nearly three hour runtime, The Great Escape would do well to avoid any diversity-in-film competitions. The good news is that this is one heck of a film. Action, danger and emotion are all running on high, creating one of the best World War II films of all time.
Not only does this film present one of the most awe-inspiring stories of heroism, determination and brotherhood that I’ve ever seen, it does so in an honest fashion. As the film opens, the titles tell you that while the events of the film are indeed true, the characters portrayed on screen are composites of several people who actually lived this tale out.
There’s not much setup and zero fluff. We get right to the point- Nazi Germany has constructed the perfect POW camp, in which they plan to house their most troublesome prisoners. Allied soldiers from several different countries are brought to the camp and they immediately begin formulating plans to escape. The first few attempts, on the first day no less, are halted very quickly. The Nazi’s know the usual tricks and aren’t fooling around here.
The men soon band together and use their individual skills to benefit the camp as a whole. After evaluating the camp’s defenses, which are many and discouragingly thorough, they decide their only option is to dig a series of tunnels several hundred yards from the middle of the camp to the edge of a nearby forest. There are setbacks and there are breakthroughs, success and failures. Nothing works out in the typical Hollywood perfect manner and many of the outcomes of the escape plan are atypical for a Hollywood feature, but remain true to the real life story.
While not an all-star cast per se, The Great Escape is filled reel to reel by top performances from a very well-rounded an eclectic cast. Richard Attenborough plays a British Squadron Leader and mastermind of the whole operation. James Garner plays an American airman who excels at stealing and bartering for little items that help the escape effort. James Coburn plays an Aussie airman with unsurpassed ingenuity, building all the necessary tools from scratch. Charles Bronson plays a Polish soldier in charge of the perilous digging operation. Donald Pleasence plays a British airman with a keen eye for forging the documents that will allow the escapees to cross the border into Allied territory.
The men are focused on keeping the operation completely under the radar, making it appear as if there was no escape plan underway. The problem is that the Nazi’s will be immediately tipped off to a major plan if it seems as if there is no major escape plan in the works. Enter Steve McQueen, the King of Cool. He plays an American POW providing the Nazis with more than a handful of by-the-numbers escape attempts. When he is caught, he spends weeks at a time in solitary confinement to break him down. He never breaks and keeps trying to escape, in the hopes of both providing the diggers ample cover for their own plan and to bring back information about what the terrain and populous is like outside of the prison camp.
A brutally honest film, The Great Escape shows the bond forged between total stranger united by one cause- getting out of Nazi Germany. The film strays slightly (but never falls) into rah-rah macho foolishness- McQueen takes off on a very impressive motorcycle chase sequence that is one of the few creative liberties taken. Otherwise, the film shows how men can be stubborn, strong and weak in the jaws of adversity. While usually lumped into the category of “guy movies,” The Great Escape is something that a large percent of moviegoers can connect to and appreciate.
The stunt work is handled very well, considering the film’s age, and there is very little in the way of special effects. The acting is top notch and the messages of brotherhood and loyalty run strong without going overboard and feeling pro-war propaganda-ish. There is actually very little about war in this so-called “war film.” It’s simply a survival tale.
What more can I say about this film? It’s riveting, it’s heartbreaking, it’s charming and, most astounding, it’s true. Watch this if you get the chance. You won’t regret it.
This could very well be the stupidest movie I have ever seen. Mostly known for being one of the worst movies made this side of Battlefield Earth, The Master of Disguise lives up to all the negative hype. No film has ever made 70 minutes feel like an eternity quite like this one.
Like watching a messy train wreck in slow motion, The Master of Disguise grabs a hold of you and refuses to let go. Sensible people will find the willpower to turn this movie off after about three minutes, but I sat through the whole thing so I could comment on it here. Taking one for the team never hurt so much.
I love Dana Carvey’s work on Saturday Night Live. He was always one of the best, so I was left scratching my head in bewilderment as to how this awful movie could have ever come into existence. Then I saw who produced it. Blame need go no further than Happy Madison productions, the production company of former SNL star Adam Sandler and the source for many insipid “comedies” over the last several years.
I can only imagine how Sandler talked Carvey into creating this pitiful, humorless comedy. Carvey is a natural at impersonating people and creating bizarre characters for comedic effect, so Sandler must have encouraged him to come up with as many impersonations as possible for the course of the film. While each character might have had a twinge of humor had they been given their fair share of screen time, the jam-packed nature of the film causes many otherwise fine impersonations to get lost in a sea of changing faces and voices.
But don’t be fooled- I make it sound as if there were a glimmer of hope with which to save this movie. In reality, there is not. The only way to “save” this movie would be to eliminate the plot and all the characters and just make it some kind of oddball instructional video by Dana Carvey on how to do impersonations, or even a behind-the-scenes guide showing us how he prepares to do these characters. In other words, the only way to improve The Master of Disguise is to eliminate it altogether.
Let’s start with the plot. It’s bad enough that the plot has been done plenty of times, but The Master of Disguise pretends to think that it can offer something new to the “my parents were kidnapped, so now I’m going to rescue them” genre. Enter Carvey’s character, ridiculously named Pistachio Disguisey. He is a bumbling nitwit who happens to come from a family rich in history with the almost supernatural ability to instantly take on any disguise in perfect detail.
Pistachio is so stereotypically Italian that it’s not funny. The overdone accent, the overblown mannerisms, it’s all borderline offensive. Even worse is that Dana Carvey looks to be about 0% Italian. So far so good, er, bad. What I wasn’t sure of was how old his character was supposed to be. Carvey was in his late 40s when making the film, but is made up to look like a 20 year old kid.
His parents are kidnapped, leaving him helpless. Helpless, that is, until his grandfather appears with a magic pop-up book that will unveil the secrets of the Disguisey way to young Pistachio. Appalled yet?
Now add in the obligatory gorgeous sidekick, played by Jennifer Esposito. She is more or less picked randomly and only takes the job because she needs money to raise her kid. She humors Pistachio for a while but in the end, his boyish charm wins her over. Ick. Together they try to track down who kidnapped Pistachio’s parents.
The kidnapper is Brent Spiner (Data from the Star Trek movies), a longtime enemy of the Disguiseys. He is a master thief but uses the elder Disguisey to steal valuable artifacts by impersonating celebrities and people of importance. He also passes gas every time he attempts to laugh like a stereotypical diabolical villain. This is meant to be a funny character trait.
In the end, there’s a big showdown and blah… blah… blah. The only thing that matters is that this is a horrible movie that was somehow overlooked by the Razzie Awards. No film marketed as a family adventure-comedy should EVER include the main character learning “the art of the bitch-slap.”
I rest my case. The Master of Disguise is a stain on the résumés of every single actor, writer, and studio hand involved in bringing this festering turd to life. It boasts atrocious writing, a barrage of tired clichés, pathetic visual effects and it makes no sense at all. Stay away from this movie at all costs!
If I find out that you have read this review and still watched The Master of Disguise anyway, chances are I will have to hurt you. And no, I won’t feel sorry about it at all.
One tagline for this film reads “An epic comedy of absurd proportions.” While the journey the film recounts may very well be epic, the comedy isn’t quite as absurd as advertised. Nevertheless, The Gods Must Be Crazy is an enjoyable and endearing film.
There’s three parts to the story: an African bushman named Xixo embarks on a quest to rid his village of a trinket believed to have been sent to them by the gods (in actuality a Coke bottle dropped out of an airplane). At the same time, a bumbling research scientist develops a crush on the local town’s new schoolteacher. Finally, a group of terrorist-led guerrillas are on the run after they botch a coup attempt.
All of these plot lines intersect in a variety of humorous ways. There is no vulgar comedy here. Instead, The Gods Must Be Crazy draws laughs from fish-out-of-water slapstick, awkward everyman bumbling, a few over the top sequences and some good old-fashioned dry, witty one-liners.
Most notable about this film is the portrayal of the lead character Xixo. The part is played by a real bushman who had virtually no exposure to the “civilized white world” before working on the film. The director found him in the bush and liked his expressions and genuine curiosity with all the trivialities that “civilized” people get hung up on. This genuineness shows right through on film and the character grows on you quite a bit.
His curiosity and lack of knowledge of “civilized” ways leads to much of the humor and also serves as an amusing poke at what we call society. Xixo doesn’t understand much about white people and their peculiar ways and thinks much of what goes on is unnecessary and silly. It sort of hearkens back to a simpler time and does a fantastic job of showing viewers just how absurd we really are sometimes.
A number of people believe this film to be racist because of its depiction of bushmen as uncultured savages, as well as the fact that it was made and funded by a South African film company (at the time, South Africa was still ruled by the racist and segregationist apartheid system of government). Granted, the click language used by the bushmen is dubbed over by a much more simplified series of clicking noises, but I rather enjoyed the culture clash and portrayal of “white society” as being filled with things that, while designed to ease our lives, only serve to complicate things. I would say this film is mostly harmless in terms of its racial implications.
There are parts that drag on a tad too long, but the overall story is too unique to pass up. I guarantee that you will never find another film that evokes comedy and culture quite in the same way as The Gods Must Be Crazy.
What a silly, silly movie. Disaster flicks are notorious for being over the top and unbelievable, but The Day After Tomorrow aims for new lows (on a global scale no less!).
Take the absolute worst (and I mean apocalyptic) possible outcome to unchecked global warming, a process that would take a couple thousand years to play out, make it all happen in a matter of days, and you have The Day After Tomorrow.
Panned and criticized by nearly all respectable scientists and climatologists, the film oversteps its bounds and gets an overwhelming majority of its science wrong in the pursuit of flashy, computer generated destruction. As heavy-laden as this film is with CGI, you’d almost have to watch it on the big screen for it to look good. There’s something about CGI that doesn’t translate well over a normal TV screen.
I will admit that some of the destruction sequences are kind of cool looking, though watching it on a TV made the effects look a tad hokey. The problem is that The Day After Tomorrow doesn’t do enough to grab you and make you believe what you’re seeing could be real. This stems from the fact that the film wants you to believe that global warming can and will ultimately do this to our world. It is far too easy to stop yourself and say “that can’t possibly happen that way.”
Given all that we know about the natural sciences and weather phenomena, having the disaster sequences look cool isn’t enough. Gone are the days of sensational destruction via Mother Earth in films. Far too much of the general population has a good idea of how weather realistically behaves, even in the most extreme conditions. To try and pass off the overblown nature of these cataclysms under the guise of scientific plausibility is futile. Unless you check your brain at the door- a typical requirement of much of the fodder that passes for summer cinema- you’ll find yourself being pulled right out of the movie by the sheer absurdity of what you are being subjected to.
For example: Massive tornadoes ravage downtown Los Angeles. It’s a neat thought, but when was the last time you heard of a twister in LA? The atmospheric conditions are all wrong (but they explain it away by saying global warming totally altered atmospheric conditions everywhere). Furthermore, these massive twisters converge to create a single, gargantuan twister, in effect doubling its size, speed and destructive force. Cool notion, but it’s all wrong. Finally, this mega-twister completely guts a skyscraper, leaving just the concrete and steel skeleton. Cool visual, but it just wouldn’t happen.
Another example is the huge wave of water that bears down on the New York Public Library in tidal wave fashion. Yes, the New York Public Library faces a street (East 41st) that goes straight out to a water source, but this water source is minimal. Unless the surging water were high enough to completely plow through Long Island with very little resistance, the scene is impossible.
Aside from the environmental concerns, The Day After Tomorrow dishes out a few political jabs. The head-in-the-sand Vice President of the USA in the film looks very much like the actual Vice President at the time the film was released, Dick Cheney. The film also touches on the immigration debate. Virtually everything north of Texas is turned into a barren, frozen wilderness that is unsuitable for any living being. Thus, much of the American population ends up fleeing into Mexico, where the new temperate climate exists. It turns the tables on America by making them immigrants in a foreign land.
A similar impact is made on the rest of the world. The last shot in the film shows the whole earth where much of North America and nearly all of Europe has been frozen and rendered uninhabitable. This would force all the survivors to move into developing third-world countries. Now the citizens of many powerful states find themselves being taken in by those nations they were once reluctant to give much help to outside of food drops.
This can’t be a subliminal message, because it’s spelled out so clearly. The makers of this film are trying to send a message to all the wealthy powerful nations of the world, saying that our reluctance to stop global warming will be the end of our supremacy. The first shall be last and the last shall be first.
Aside from the overall message, the plot is pretty decent for a disaster flick. A climatologist warns everyone about the dangers of global warming but is brushed off. Suddenly his theory of world-wide devastation comes true but at an alarmingly expedient rate. His son gets caught in the brunt of the catastrophe and dad goes after him, risking his life. It leads to a predictable ending, but at least he’s a devoted father. That’s more than a lot of dads out there can say.
The strong family ties and commitment to survival is good and always ends up inspiring the viewer to some extent. I certainly wouldn’t want to face such conditions, but I’d like to think I could find a way to survive.
There is a secondary plot line involving romance between characters played by Jake Gyllenhaal and Emmy Rossum. They are longtime friends and he really likes her but she seems oblivious to his swooning. Before the super storm strikes, Gyllenhaal picks up some competition for the lovely Rossum’s affection at an academic Olympiad type competition. However, once the other guy sees how much Gyllenhaal cares for the girl, he tells him to go after her. How sappy and unrealistic is that?
My closing beef with this film is that, while it shows brief clips of destruction in other parts of the world, The Day After Tomorrow never follows up with the conditions the rest of the world. To me, this seems one-sided, as if America is the only country to blame, and that strikes me as lazy work. Yes, the main characters are Americans, so it’s important to show how America turned out, but there’s over 200 countries also being affected by this crazy weather and very little of it is addressed.
The disruption of climate patterns in one part of the world will set off a chain reaction of events across the globe, but The Day After Tomorrow doesn’t acknowledge this, it does not address this, and it does not portray this. This film has a target in mind and it hits it full force.
Had it not been so heavy-handed and preachy at times, The Day After Tomorrow could have been a smash hit 35 years ago. The only problems are that the computer effects didn’t exist back then and, at that time, everyone was worried about Global Cooling and the dawn of a new ice age.
While doing a little background research for this review on The Care Bears Movie, I had a little piece of nostalgia shattered upon discovering that the Care Bears were created solely for the purpose of making money. Originally appearing on greeting cards and then turned into a plush toy line, the creators of the Care Bears crafted a loose purpose and mission for their characters in order to fool consumers into buying their products.
But does this have any bearing on what I think of the movie? No. But I must say, this little bit of information proves, once again, just how disillusioning childhood can really be.
The Care Bears Movie is a harmless piece of fluff that promotes caring and understanding of other people. What’s not to like? It gives a good message to young viewers and it's easy for adults to sit through, breezing by in a quick 76 minutes. The animation is all pretty good, though I must admit that the songs can be quite cheesy. One negative about it is that it is cut into segments, as if pre-packaged for airing with commercial breaks, even though it was released in theaters.
The story is being told as a bedtime tale by the owners of an orphanage. It concerns the Care Bears from the magical world of Care-A-Lot, somewhere high up in the clouds. The Care Bears monitor the level of caring on Earth and step in from time to time to make sure people don’t forget about the importance of caring.
The Care Bears go down to Earth to help perk up a pair of orphans who feel that no one cares about them and they no longer see the point in trying to be happy. At the same time, a young loner, a magician’s apprentice no less, becomes enamored with a magic book that promises to give him powers that will make people like him. Fooled by the promise of acceptance, the young boy eventually loses his control of himself to the evil spirit in the book.
This all sets up a showdown between good and evil. The Care Bears have to band together to thwart the evil spirit, pulling together a tremendous display of courage and caring. The film also introduces us to the Care Bear Cousins, a variety of different animals with powers similar to their bear counterparts. There’s also a bit of a twist ending, but the twist isn’t that important and it’s fairly predictable.
While you may have a hard time keeping track of all the characters (as most of the Care Bears and Cousins are interchangeable), they all play a specific part in the success in their mission. This serves as a subtle message to kids that everyone plays a part and no one is unimportant. Maybe kids won’t even pick up on this message, but it’s there.
I’d only recommend this film to people who grew up watching the Care Bears. To those who have never watched the animated series, this film may seem trite and simple, but those who have seen the series will be taken down memory lane. Speaking of memory, I had forgotten what all happened in this film and had evidently combined this film and its sequel in my mind. I suppose this makes the film not as memorable, but I also hadn’t seen it in over 15 years.
Colorful, whimsical and cheesy, The Care Bears Movie does what it sets out to do. It entertains children while giving them a basic message about being nice to people. While nothing too spectacular on a cinematic level, it’s a piece of nostalgia for my generation. It may pull a few groans out of adult viewers who have grown cynical and sick of overly happy fluff in their years, young children will be glued to it like you wouldn’t believe.
I liked the original film in the Ice Age series. It surprised me with its uproarious humor and its overall lack of smarminess. It dealt subtle jabs to both the folk running around spouting off doomsday warnings of global warming (though in Ice Age it was global cooling they were worried about) and those who didn’t believe anything was happening whatsoever. Sadly, Ice Age: The Meltdown never tries to dish it out to both sides of the issue and throws its hat in with the doomsday crowd.
Our odd trio of friends from the first film (Manny the mammoth, Sid the sloth and Diego the saber-tooth tiger) are still palling around together. After what’s got to be the shortest Ice Age in the history of the universe (what, maybe two years, three tops?) global warming threatens the valley they have come to know.
A subplot involves Manny worrying that he is the last of the mammoths. He discovers that this isn’t true when the trio comes across a female mammoth (voiced by Queen Latifah) who thinks she is a weasel or ferret, or whatever it is that adopted her. She is juvenile and ditzy and makes for an annoying addition to our merry band of travelers. This subplot resolves itself conveniently and predictably by the end of the last reel.
There’s plenty of stupid humor, mostly revolving around the size of the mammoths’ rear ends, and antics that just aren’t as funny this time around. The good news is that the group dynamic is still there, though it is disrupted quite a bit by the new characters, and much of the same bickering and humorous infighting still exists, but it isn’t enough and isn’t as fresh as in the first film. But our familiarity with history’s most demented herd is enough to keep you mildly entertained.
The message of global warming gets a bit heavy-handed by the end, but oddly enough, nature takes its course and things turn out okay in the end. This conveys some unique mixed messages in a film trumping the dangers of global warming, doesn’t it?
All in all, the film lacks focus, which leads to its own meltdown. Neither the A nor B plots are fleshed out enough to satisfy and the laughs just aren’t as heartfelt as they were in Ice Age. It all leads me to wonder if they even really needed to make a sequel
The easy answer is no. But in the age of box office driven franchises, 20th Century Fox decided to capitalize on a surprise hit by milking it for all its worth. And sure enough, Ice Age: The Meltdown made enough money to justify a third installment, due out in 2009.
When the best thing about your film is the short vignettes involving a character who doesn’t even speak (Scrat, the saber-tooth squirrel and his masochistic struggle to find and hang onto an acorn), you know you have a problem.
The novelty has worn off, the humor isn’t there and quality writing seems to be extinct. In short, The Meltdown is a letdown.
After a career-revitalizing role in Pulp Fiction, John Travolta was thrust back into the limelight of Hollywood. All of a sudden he was a leading man again, and everybody was knocking on his door. Whether he was trying to cling to the aura of cool that he embodied in Pulp Fiction, or whether he was trying to play himself once more against his former squeaky clean, charming roles of old and some recent ones, Travolta takes to the silver screen as a conniving Air Force pilot bent on stealing nuclear weapons.
While Travolta’s physique is less than perfect, his co-star’s acting chops are even more suspect. While Travolta’s career was on the up-swing, Broken Arrow catches Christian Slater close to where his stardom and career sputtered out. Nevertheless, Broken Arrow spits out a fairly black and white good guy vs. bad guy action flick with predictable results and a handful of slick stunts.
Travolta and Slater play a pair of pilots running stealth bomber exercises over the Utah deserts with real nukes. Travolta has masterminded a plan to steal the nukes and ransom millions from the US government. Slater catches on to the plan, but just a tad too late, as he is jettisoned from the aircraft before he can stop his former partner. He does, however, manage to muddle up the delivery of the nukes by parachuting them off-target.
Slater teams up with a park ranger and they set off to do what the US government seems incapable of doing, despite their resources: find and stop Travolta.
There are lots of fancy stunts, fights and explosions in this hour-fifty action flick. Broken Arrow was John Woo’s second Hollywood film, and first big-budget film in the States. The martial arts influence is certainly present. The popularity of Woo and his compatriots led to a plethora of films featuring white guy action heroes saving the day via wicked kung fu moves. Unfortunately, the acting isn’t as slick as the action.
Travolta attempts to slide his character all the way to the extreme as the villain. He sneers and jeers and seems to have a genuinely good time playing a borderline psychopath. The problem is that he takes it too far. Travolta just isn’t believable as the unstable mastermind villain, which makes sense. It’s very hard to have a believable villain be both a mastermind and borderline certifiable. The combination of the two results in a jumbled mess. It looks like fun, but it doesn’t comprehend well in the mind of the viewer.
Slater, on the other hand, doesn’t come across as being smart enough to play the hero. His steady, confident delivery, piled on top of a Western-inspired hero theme tune, comes off as a goofy, modern John Wayne impression. I’m not a huge fan of the Duke, but the Duke he ain’t. Between a few lucky guesses and a few lucky breaks, Slater’s hero character ambles along the path to victory and doesn’t work out all too well either.
The plot has more than its fair share of plot holes and flaws (where was Travolta going to hide after getting away?) but enough dazzle and flair to satisfy summer audiences who check their brains at the door. It has the potential to be a fun movie, as long as you try not to think too much about it.
Given a casting change and a few more re-writes, Broken Arrow could have been better than average for an action flick. Instead, we get a guilty pleasure performance by Travolta and a taste of what the future would hold for Slater.
This movie serves as little more than a vehicle to provide Robin Williams with an age-appropriate role that provides him with the opportunity to behave in his tried and true zany manner. The problem lies in the fact that Williams’ performance comes off as a half-desperate attempt to prove he’s still full of life.
No one in their right mind could suggest that Williams has lost his knack for humor, but his over-the-top delivery seems out of place with his character. He plays a minister, Reverend Frank, who puts a young couple through hell in the form of pre-marital counseling.
The setup is pretty ridiculous and highly unrealistic. A young couple, John Krasinski and Mandy Moore, fall in love and get engaged, but due to Moore’s lifelong dream of getting married in her childhood church, the lovebirds face either a 2-year engagement or a three-week rush job.
Being a comedy, they naturally choose the latter option. Reverend Frank gives them all sorts of homework assignments that challenge the young couple including: abstaining from any more sex until the wedding night; seminars to highlight their differences and the quirks that bug each other; taking care of a creepy pair of robotic babies who do all the unpleasant things that regular children do, but to a decidedly more disturbing (though intended to be humorous) degree; and even trying to navigate each other down a busy street while blindfolded. In other words, it’s all a bit too much.
But License to Wed doesn’t stop there. Reverend Frank goes as far as to bug the couples’ apartment and has his young altar boy assistant follow them around, snooping on them and aggravating them into fights over seemingly trivial things. This all made me ask the dreaded question that can mean instant death for a movie: why? Why would a minister want to torment a couple that wants to get married to the point of unraveling their relationship? Why would a minister be so underhanded about all of his actions? Why would an altar boy take such pleasure at disrupting peoples’ lives?
None of it makes any sense and drives home the reality that this film goes too far in trying to pry a few laughs out of its audience. The situations; the approach; it’s all too much. The movie goes above and beyond what is necessary and reasonable to function as a comedy. Part of this is the fault of the writers for trying to manipulate viewer sensibilities for laughs and not respecting the limits of what can be funny and believable at the same time.
The flip-side of the coin is that audiences are getting dumber and the industry’s standards for humor have been in a downward spiral for quite some time. We really shouldn’t be surprised that toilet humor is commonplace and a means to an end in movies today because appealing to lowest-common-denominator laughs has made an obscene amount of money. Thankfully, License to Wed doesn’t sink to such Will Ferrell or Adam Sandler lows too often.
My other big complaint is with the smarmy, predictable ending. Moore decides to break it off and spends what would have been the honeymoon on vacation with her parents. Naturally, Krasinski goes after her and confesses his undying love, patching things up all squeaky clean. This sort of crap insults me. After the film was over, I leaned over to my fiancée and told her not to get any ideas.
Nearly all men, myself included, will not follow their woman of choice to a foreign country just to track her down and prove their love to them. First of all, we certainly don’t have the cash required to make such an expensive trek. Second of all, if we know you’re coming back, we’ll just wait. I really wish Hollywood would stop perpetuating this silly, idealistic fantasy version of love. It’s not real, and the fact that it keeps showing up in movies makes it all the more harder on girls when they realize that REAL love is nothing like the movies.
While this review may seem mostly negative, don’t think that I hate this film. I am merely indifferent due to its numerous shortcomings. License to Wed does connect with people who have either been in serious relationships, engaged couples, and those who have gone through pre-marital counseling. So, certain demographics can relate to the movie, which helps. Some aspects will ring all too true with some viewers, but these same people will be able to spot the ridiculous approach I have gone on about at length above.
In the end, License to Wed is your typical forgettable summer comedy that isn’t worth the price of admission.
This is a confusing and confused movie. My expectations were low to begin with, as it is a combination sequel and spin-off of 2003’s Daredevil. Daredevil itself was underwhelming and uninspired but between modest gains at the box office and Jennifer Garner’s popularity from the hit show Alias, this movie was destined to be made. With alterations to the main characters back-story and a poorly thought out attempt at several layers of misdirection, Elektra fails to impress.
