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jessedepoy
Reviews
The Mystical Adventures of Billy Owens (2008)
Terrible, but at least a little bit cute
You like magic? Imagine a bored parent who writes a school play and then decides to film it with random people in their neighborhood reciting a few lines, followed by cheap effects they threw in on their PC at home. That's about the level of magic here.
When I looked this "movie" up, I was astonished to see that there is a sequel. However, considering that it appeared to have been made for free, then they shouldn't have had a hard time coming up with the money for another one. What's equally disturbing is the fact that it took no less than THREE people to write this, and yet another to work on the "screenplay".
Rowdy Roddy Piper, if you can believe it, completely outshines the rest of the cast. You can't really blame unpolished child actors for not being very good, but with any level of decent input from a director or an acting coach (even a grade-school theater teacher) you would have gotten better performances. Since everyone else seemed to just walk in and read a couple of lines, we can't assume they wanted any level of "performance".
As other reviewers pointed out, everything else about it was equally amateurish. The camera work, effects, costumes...probably all provided by the people in the movie, who hopefully didn't get paid for much of anything other than residuals from DVD rentals. As the end credits rolled, I saw that a number of the extras had the last name "Gregg." For his sake, I hope that they aren't related to Clark Gregg, the hilariously dark genius involved in Choke and Avengers, because that would be pretty embarrassing.
Still, the kids were cute, if not good actors, and I disagree with others about letting kids watch it - if they're really young, like mine, it will still entertain them, mostly because they haven't learned how to differentiate this from anything good. I'm giving this 3 stars because Roddy and the hot mom gave fairly decent performances, and the kids did better than the rest of the adults, especially with the obvious lack of any kind of training or direction. Hopefully, if they attempt any sort of careers in the performing arts, they will look back on this movie and see the need for a bit of training (any amount would be better than none) before forging ahead.
Opposite Day (2009)
Not awful...but let the kids decide!
First off, I'll mention what I said in the message boards. My curiosity when I first heard about this movie was compounded by the lack of availability...and if you have a pass or subscription, such as Blockbuster or Netflix, I would recommend using that for a viewing rather than spending money to purchase it prior to seeing it firsthand.
Now, as to the movie itself: Yes, there are issues with the plot, continuity, and so on, and yes, I also noticed that there may be some creepy incestuous undertones and was laughing when I saw that the other reviewers noticed as well. But, I do think the filmmakers here intended for it to be seen through a child's eyes and hopefully most kids aren't thinking like that if they are in the target audience (probably under 9).
So for me, this was mildly entertaining and it was nice to see Pauly Shore and French Stewart mix things up a bit by acting both mature and immature in the same movie. However, my kids are all under 6 and they seemed to like it quite a bit. So maybe the concept of the movie plays on two levels - the movie itself, and the reception by the viewers. I haven't seen any reviews by the 5-and-under crowd yet, but from the response at home I'd say it was a hit.
I know it may be an odd paradigm of parental philosophy to let your children decide what they do and do not like, but if we don't pay attention to what they think about things, we may be in need of the corny lesson this movie tries to "teach" us anyway.