If I were pitching Lauren Weisberger’s novel “The Devil Wears Prada” around Hollywood, I’d call it, “’The Devil’s Advocate’ of fashion.” For all I know, that’s exactly what they did. That “The Devil’s Advocate” isn’t a great film (though it certainly has its charms) is not the point. The key to the pitch is making the producers feel comfortable, and referencing “Advocate” is something that they can wrap their heads around. “Right, so instead of Al Pacino, we have our eye on Meryl Streep as the Devil. Even the role of the soul-selling innocent will be a doe-eyed brunette. It…
Author: David Medsker
Legions of “X-Men” fans were livid when director Bryan Singer left the third installment of the franchise – just before principal photography was slated to begin – in order to take the reins on Warner Brothers’ resurrected Superman franchise. (Levels of lividity rose even higher when the hacktastic Brett Ratner replaced Singer on “X-Men.”) In the end, Ratner screwed the pooch on “X-Men: The Last Stand,” though in fairness to him he inherited a script with dialogue more wooden than Natalie Portman in the “Star Wars” movies. Disillusioned “X-Men” fans (okay, I) walked out of the theater thinking, “It better…
The people responsible for the ending of “The Lake House” are lowdown, dirty cowards. They had the perfect ending within their grasp, one that would have respected the story and turned the entire audience into a blubbering mess. Instead, they totally, inexcusably chickened out, and tacked on an ending – and there is no question that some serious tacking on took place here –that makes no logical sense, causes more problems than it solves, and left the viewers feeling nothing about what it’s just seen. It might be the best argument yet against focus groups and test audiences, because they…
The cash cow goes, “Mooooooooooo!” That appears to be the inspiration for the third – and allegedly final – Blue Collar Comedy Tour video. The movie, “One for the Road” (Ron White’s title of choice was “Enough Already,” but he admitted that they wouldn’t use that “because that would be funny”), offers the same kind of humor that you’ve come to expect from White, Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall and Larry the Cable Guy, but the interesting stuff is in its details. The dynamics have shifted considerably within the group, better for some than for others. The routines are more of…
It’s time to plant another tree in the BE Forest of Movie Badness. (See the review for “The Pink Panther” for further explanation.) And the worst part is that, had they made a few minor changes, “You, Me and Dupree” could have been a pretty decent black comedy or, if they insisted on playing the cute angle, the new “What About Bob.” Instead, it’s neither, thoroughly wasting the comedic abilities of some very, very funny people, not to mention 108 minutes of my life that I will never get back. Owen Wilson stars as Dupree, the carefree best friend of…
For the first time in their history, Pixar blinked. “Cars,” the last movie in the original distribution deal between Disney and Pixar and the first to be directed by John Lasseter since 1999’s “Toy Story 2,” certainly looks like a Pixar movie, but it doesn’t feel like one. It feels like one of Pixar’s less imaginative rivals trying to make a Pixar movie, but falling into the tired trappings that Pixar, up to this point, has deftly avoided. It is also two hours long, which is about 30 minutes longer than it needs to be. The movie begins with the…
It was tempting, after viewing this surprisingly good remake of Richard Donner’s 1976 horror classic “The Omen,” to begin this review with the phrase ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ but then I thought about it, and it just didn’t seem to be the wise course of action. Still, it must be stressed that this movie had all the makings of being an amped up, slam-bang satanic action thriller, but director John Moore, who does not possess the most impressive résumé (“Flight of the Phoenix,” “Behind Enemy Lines”), shows remarkable restraint in terms of pacing, effects (there are only a handful of…
(Imaginary conversation between two women, presumably in their 20’s) “Okay, so, Jennifer Aniston is, like, totally dumped by her hubby Brad, who shacks up with that homewrecker Angelina Jolie. But get this, she tooootally gets him back by hooking up with that “Wedding Crashers” guy, you know? Anyway, so Jennifer and Vince made this movie, but it’s about them, like, breaking up! I mean, who wants to see that?” Who wants to see that, indeed. The entire Hollywood community, it appears, just wants Jennifer Aniston to be happy. So after test audiences revolted to the original ending to their movie,…
DreamWorks Animation’s movies have made piles of cash – of course, the over-reporting of the DVD sales of one of those movies caused a major class action lawsuit, but I digress – yet here’s the rub: they’re not terribly good. “A Shark’s Tale”? “Madagascar”? Even the “Shrek” movies? “Easiest joke at every opportunity” is their only rule. DreamWorks’ newest, “Over the Hedge,” isn’t without its flaws, either. The dialogue is perfunctory at best, and the voice director clearly doesn’t know the difference between commanding and over the top. On the plus side, the filmmakers have taken copious notes on what…
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer, along with partner Don Simpson, went from in-demand talent to persona non grata in a nanosecond (as is the way in Hollywood), but in the mid ‘90s they experienced a phoenix-like resurrection – well, Bruckheimer did anyway; Simpson died in 1996 – thanks to a (terrible) little movie called “Bad Boys.” Over the next four years, Bruckheimer was bulletproof; “Crimson Tide,” “Dangerous Minds,” “The Rock,” “Armageddon” and “Enemy of the State” were all huge hits, action movies that dealt with matters from an underwater nuclear standoff to the end of the world as we know it. Surprisingly…