There are a million reasons to like “Caddyshack.” It’s pound for pound the most quotable movie of all time, and it features a scene-stealing performance from Rodney Dangerfield, not to mention the perfect breasts of Cindy Morgan. But here’s the catch: as funny as it is, “Caddyshack” is not a great movie. The story is seriously lacking in focus, plot devices appear and disappear without a word, and many of the supporting characters simply can’t act. (Ahem, Spalding) This is why the movie was so poorly received by critics upon its release in 1980, and they were not wrong. Missing…
Author: David Medsker
“Get Him to the Greek” is better than you’re probably expecting it to be, but not as good as it could have been. It’s still funny, often breathtakingly so, but there is too much comedic talent in this movie to produce an ending so flat. It is possible to have a character hit rock bottom without the movie following suit. Set in what appears to be a flash-sideways from the time line in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” Russell Brand is Aldous Snow, a glamorous British rock star in the middle of a career freefall. His girlfriend, the Lily Allen-ish Jackie Q…
The most annoying trend in Hollywood at the moment is the one where, in an attempt to justify the latest classic film property reboot or theme park ride adaptation, the filmmakers give the story a Byzantine plot that requires copious amounts of exposition and a compass, when in fact a much simpler story will do just fine. Add “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” to the list of offenders. And yet, for as needlessly complicated, illogical and downright ridiculous as the movie is, it’s also oddly entertaining. It might seem a strange choice for a director like Mike Newell…
Toys get lost, toys overcome tremendous odds to find way home without letting on to humans that toys can move and talk on their own. There are only so many ways you can tell that tale, so it is to the great credit to the writers of Pixar’s “Toy Story” movies that they have been able to make so much out of such a limited premise. Admittedly, there are aspects of “Toy Story 3” that will recall the first two installments, and in the end the movie is a farewell lap around the track of sorts. Fortunately, it’s a highly…
If the idea of a female-driven drama that is essentially “Crash, with Babies” sounds off-putting to you, that’s understandable, especially when you consider that several of the characters in “Mother and Child” exhibit traits that could be described as monstrous. These people are not easy to love, but they are fascinating to watch. The key is that writer/director Rodrigo Garcia doesn’t just saddle his characters with personality defects; he provides the reasons for those personality defects. When Karen (Annette Bening) was 14, she got pregnant, and gave the baby up for adoption. Not a day has gone by that she…
Some like to vilify Michael Bay and his plundering of horror movies from the ‘70s and ‘80s for raping their childhood. That’s a bit melodramatic, since all of the movies he’s remade could stand to be improved in one way or another. The problem is, not one of Bay’s remakes has come within a whiff of its original source material. Is Bay conflicted about making his version too good, thereby rendering the original obsolete? Or is this nothing more to him than a cinematic Happy Meal, where he nets a quick profit with a big opening weekend? Whatever his reasons…
I don’t know Kate Angelo, the writer of “The Back-Up Plan,” but after seeing the movie, it would appear that she’s never been pregnant, and doesn’t know anyone who has ever been pregnant. There isn’t a single note in this movie that rings true, resorting to cartoonish portrayals of the pregnant woman stereotype (they throw up, they get cravings, their hormones are out of whack) for cheap laughs. When they get really desperate, they cut to a shot of Jennifer Lopez’s dog. Zoe (Lopez) owns a small pet store, and her biological clock is Ticking Like This. After searching for…
Only someone outside of the United States would think to set “The Remains of the Day” in a 1970s Federal building. Indeed, it’s fitting that “The Secret in Their Eyes,” which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, takes place largely in the ‘70s, as the story is quite simple in its approach. Perhaps the most shocking thing about this movie is that it won the Oscar. Usually it’s the movie about genocide or oppression, or anything set in Nazi Germany, that wins the Foreign Language prize, not the gritty crime thriller. The movie’s present is set in…
It makes sense, in a ‘Hollywood out of ideas’ kind of way, that someone would come up with the bright idea to remake the beloved, but by no means classic, stop-motion-assisted action adventure “Clash of the Titans,” what with the light-year advancements that have been made in the field of special effects. However, not even the best effects can save a weak story, and this version of “Titans” doesn’t even have good effects. In fact, they’re pretty terrible. By the time the money shots of the Kraken arrive, it’s difficult to care about the gods or the humans. Indeed, this…
The casting of a movie can lead to arguments of the chicken-egg variety, where you can end up punishing an actor for taking a role that is in fact tailor-made for them. “Hot Tub Time Machine” may ultimately serve as this theory’s litmus test. The script is good enough that it would have survived without the casting of three icons of the decade that it revisits, but man, is it better for having John Cusack, Crispin Glover and Chevy Chase in it. Some will compare it to “The Hangover” in that they’re both outrageous R-rated comedies, but the similarities end…