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Reviews
Monsters vs. Aliens (2009)
boring and disappointing
Went and saw Monsters vs Aliens on Friday. It was a cute movie, but very disappointing overall.
We were very excited to go as (1) it's in 3D and (2) we were babysitting one of our friend's cool little brother who was pumped to go to the movies.
About halfway through he got so bored that he started playing Mario Kart on a borrowed DS. I kid you not.
That was the biggest issue. It was just a boring movie overall. The fight scenes don't last nearly as long and weren't as frequent as the previews suggest. In fact, there are only two main fight scenes and neither manages to make the movie worth while.
The whole movie revolves around Susan (the woman who grows into a giant after getting hit by a meteor) and her issues rather than around the much more fun idea of monsters fighting aliens. Susan's tale is one that has been told a million times over with the exact same conclusions - yet they dragged it on and committed the movie to it.
The positives: There are lots of fun old sci-fi references. When the President first tries to make contact with the aliens, I couldn't stop laughing. It was classic. Also, when other reviews say Seth Rogan is the highlight of the movie, they aren't kidding - well, his character, Bob, is anyway. His performance is brilliant and brings the most laughs, though the other voice acting is quite excellent as well just unfortunately falls flat on humor.
It's really too bad Susan was even in the movie. Taking her out of it would have given the script much more alien vs monster goodness to play with rather than focusing on her boring dilemma that we all knew exact plot and ending for.
The cool concepts of monsters and aliens couldn't liven this old story.
Overall, I'd say don't go see it in theaters. Even the 3D is lack luster. I would have been much happier just renting it and watching it at home during a dull afternoon.
I badly wanted to love this movie but I came away with a bored 12 year old boy and crappy giant black nerd 3D glasses rather than the cool paper red and blue ones.
Miracle at St. Anna (2008)
Awful
I am so very disappointed. Spike Lee, why? You know how movies have little scenes that don't make sense at the time but then all tie in at the end and they give you this awesome "OH!" feeling? This movie had those, but failed at the "OH!". The entire beginning sequence did not belong in the movie. The loose, boring, and un-original tie-in it provided was completely unnecessary to the plot. In fact, if they had skipped the first half hour of horrid over-acting it would have enhanced the plot.
I get it. War is horrible. African Americans were treated like dirt in the 40s. Everybody prays to the same God we're not so different. This movie even failed at making these very easy to portray messages resonate.
Every horrible death/war scene made you feel disgusted and sad and you wanted so badly for everyone to live. Exactly the feelings they should have been going for. BUT THEN they overlaid almost every one of these scenes with a joke! Or some stupidly funny remark or scene. In the end it made you feel disgusted with yourself for laughing while good men are laying dead on the screen. I'm pretty sure making an audience feel disgusted with themselves is not the goal here. And if it was, I have news for the producers/writers/director - we didn't need that lesson. Instead of making me think, it made me wonder what a sick person the writer must be to joke about death and war in such a manner.
Not to mention that the whole middle of the movie was one big black soldier joke. COME ON. Seriously? You seriously needed to through in all those lame silly stereotypes to make us feel for the characters? Your that bad at making movies? It was just an all around bad flick. Even the ending was completely awkward, which ruined any sentiment that should have been there.
A very poorly made and written film.
Transformers (2007)
Transformers is a Go!
To put it short and sweet: this movie was AWESOME. Go watch it right now or you will forever regret it! When I first heard that they were making a Transformers movie I was really disappointed. I thought for sure it would suck. But then as the reviews from my friends came in I had hope. I went into this movie expecting it to be good and it blew me away. The special effects are incredible (of course), it's hilarious (a giant robot flicks a guy into a building), and the expected few corny lines are totally worth it. I absolutely loved it.
There were worries about the directing of Michael Bay. We held hope that with the supervision of Steven Spielberg he wouldn't completely ruin the movie and it turned out that he tried to but it didn't work. His horrible directing actually turned out pretty good. There was a moment in the theater where my friend leaned over and whispered, "Haha, look at that! It's Armageddon!" And literally two minutes later a character in the movie says, "This is better than Armageddon!" No lie. Needless to say we cracked up. Not to mention the main character had to wave a flare on a roof top -cough-The Rock-cough-. Other than the moments where I would have given my very limbs to have the camera zoom out so I could fully experience the mega robot fighting, it was still pretty good.
THE ROBOT FIGHTING! I was not disappointed. I went into this movie wishing for sweet giant robot fights and Transformers wins with flying robot parts! They were incredible! I will be dreaming about awesome explosions and giant weaponry tonight.
The movie also stuck really well with the cartoons when it came to Optimus Prime vs Megatron. I mean, let's be honest, in the cartoon Optimus Prime was a frickin pansy. He didn't even hold a candle to Megatron. The movie reflected exactly that! It was so great! When they did their little one-on-one I couldn't help but giggle madly as Prime got his butt kicked! Throughout the whole movie he was the exact Optimus Prime that I remember. I take off my hat and salute the writers. I love them.
Perhaps one of the greatest things about this movie is that they show mankind fighting back and kicking some robot butt. They don't paint us as weaklings; our weapons work and we figure out how to get under the robots armor. The Autobots were not alone in their fight! MAJOR SPOILER: Starscream gets away in the end (hello Transformers 2!) which was also great since him and Megatron were always in a power struggle over the Decepticons.
Some people say the plot was too childish, but I thought it worked fine. I didn't go for plot I went for giant explosions. The plot kept to the beauty of the Transformers and in the end it was Spongebob logic: kids will save the day and grown ups will always mess it all up until they finally listen to the kids.
There were a couple downers in the movie, but they weren't anything that really took away from the movie, just stuff I wished went a little different: a Mountain Dew machine turns evil. Come on! Mountain Dew would SO be an Autobot! Also, they never played the Transformers theme song. If they had played it during the credits it would have made the movie absolutely perfect. I was highly disappointed to not hear it at all before, during, or after the movie.
My last regret was that Megatron didn't turn into a giant gun. He turns into a jet. Meh. Giant gun was way cooler.
Now, one hilarious thing about the movie: THE BLACK GUY DIES! There's a moment when Bumblebee gets trapped and everyone is all depressed about it. Then Jazz, the Autobot that sounds like a ghetto black man, gets ripped in half and nobody cares. Not only that but he was the ONLY Autobot to die! How messed up is that?! Hahahaha! Classic Hollywood. The black guy robot didn't stand a chance.
Spider-Man 3 (2007)
Worst Movie Ever
This movie was horrible. Please for the love of all that is comic book movies do not go out to see this corny flick. The whole think was one giant soap opera except worse. I knew from the moment Stan Lee came on screen to give Parker his heart felt advice that this movie was going to suck. I would have rather sat through two hours of crappy soap operas then watch that movie again.
Every scene that they were trying to make funny turned out so corny and overdone that you could hardly even watch.
The acting was terrible. I love Topher Grace, but he could not talk with those spiked teeth in. There wasn't one actor who was up to par. They all looked like they were going through a general read through of the script.
Even the sad scenes made you laugh because of how horribly they were done. I wanted to be sad, I really did, but all I could do is laugh at their soap opera drama acting and screen play.
In the end you got the impression of "oh, let's all just hug and forget about all the bad things that happened today. Anyone up for ice cream?" And seriously, the emo look is NOT HOT AT ALL. I don't know what possessed them to make Parker's 'hot' Venom look be emo. Give me a break.
This movie will make you want to bash your head into a wall until you have a significant enough concussion to forget you ever wasted your money and time watching it.
The Last Kiss (2006)
blech
Worst. Movie. Ever. Don't waste your money or your time. It's every other movie you've ever seen about divorce, only this one stars Zach Braff and isn't remotely funny.
The only reason I rented it was because of Garden State. I thought if Zach Braff can write/direct/star such a clever and amazing movie that any subsequent movie he was in would be golden. I was so wrong.
The Last Kiss is a "slice of life" movie that tracks a few friends going thru rough patched in their relationships. It was clever or funny. It didn't make thoughtful comments about relationships or marriage. It was simply two hours of the most boring crap I've ever seen. I wanted to turn it off after the first 10 minutes but I held out strong desperately hoping for something, anything to make the movie worth the money, but there was nothing.
Please please stop giving this movie good reviews. I would have for more people to come on this site, see the movie recommended, and then waste two hours of their lives and want to kill themselves out of pure boredom.