Three movies in two weekends is hardly surprising for me… I love going to movies and will indulge pretty much any time I get the chance. Finding only one out of the three that I really liked is a lower average than I usually manage, however.
I wasn't terribly surprised to find Jennifer's Body lacking (pun intended). Reviews have not been kind, and its ranking on Rotten Tomatoes simply reinforces that impression. Sadly, it starts out well enough, but by the midpoint of the movie (about the time you find out how Jennifer becomes the demonic creature we've been watching for the past hour) the movie starts to collapse under the weight of its own irony. Evil indie rock bands and over-the-top frothy formal gowns left me wondering why I was wasting my time. By the time it dug itself out of the depths of its ironic indulgence, I was over it all.
But I was surprised by my reaction to The Informant. Reviews for this one have been much better (no surprise), and Matt Damon's performance is everything it's cracked up to be in the commercials. But I never found myself willing to go along for the ride on this one. (The trouble may have started during all those "Matt Damon is brilliant" commercials. After a while, I noticed that this seemed to be the only message they were promoting, and I started to wonder if that was saying anything about the movie. Turns out, maybe so.)
I understand WHY they chose to go the "non-traditional" storytelling route for this one. There's nothing terribly ground-breaking about this story. Guy gets in over his head in his career, finds out the company's doing shady things and he ends up ratting them out to the feds. Had they played it straight, it probably would have ended up the punchline to some movie trivia game a few years from now… "How much weight did Matt Damon gain to play the lead in The Insider?" Or, "What company did Russel Crowe expose in The Informant?" At a certain point in time, they'd end up indistinguishable from each other. Seriously, the names are already nearly identical. (Throw in the mental instability and you could even wrap A Beautiful Mind into the quiz and end up with some warped version of 6 degrees of separation. Hell, the plot synopsis for The Informant references both those movies!)
But, having acknowledged the problem with playing it straight, I still couldn't bring myself to buy into the 70's mod-inspired comic gloss they tried to apply to the story. Somewhere after a dozen or so seemingly stream-of-consciousness Matt Damon voice-overs, and the liberal application of Mod Squad era title cards (not to mention the cheesy, over-produced and over-modulated soundtrack), I started thinking I was watching some strange homage to Woody Allen's "What's Up, Tiger Lily?"… as if they'd taken some 2-decades old b-rate cop drama, and given it new dialog in a vain attempt at humor. So I ended up leaving the theatre unimpressed once again.
Then this weekend, along comes Zombieland. Acknowledging right off the bat that this IS just my kind of movie, I still say it's the most fun I've had at the movies in months. It's gory as hell (NOT for the faint of heart), funny, witty, has some great surprises (and one awesome cameo) and is simply a great time at the movies. It's the road trip from hell (literally) and one of the funniest movies I've seen all year. (Think National Lampoon's Vacation — the first one, of course — in a mash-up with Shaun of the Dead and you get close to Zombieland. Go see it. Now. You'll thank me later.)
Zombieland even ended up entertaining me during the end credits, albeit indirectly. Thanks to the end tags on the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and Ironman and others, we usually end up sticking around through the end credits these days, especially on movies like this, just in case there's a tag. (There is, and it's amusing.) Sitting behind us was a guy with a couple of younger children. The kids had been pretty good throughout the movie (surprisingly), but as the credits rolled they got a little antsy, which is about the time the young girl (probably about 6 years old) decided to shout out Woody Harrelson's infamous "nut up or shut up!"
To which I burst out laughing, and couldn't stop myself for the next couple of minutes. I could just imagine dad laughing at this as well… till he got the kids home and mom heard the new phrase he'd taught their daughter on movie night. I assumed there would be less laughing at that point.
So… go see Zombieland. Rent the Informant. Maybe. And only watch Jennifer's Body if you really have the hots for Meagan Fox. (Though Amanda Seyfried is really the star of that one, in more ways than one.)
I wasn't terribly surprised to find Jennifer's Body lacking (pun intended). Reviews have not been kind, and its ranking on Rotten Tomatoes simply reinforces that impression. Sadly, it starts out well enough, but by the midpoint of the movie (about the time you find out how Jennifer becomes the demonic creature we've been watching for the past hour) the movie starts to collapse under the weight of its own irony. Evil indie rock bands and over-the-top frothy formal gowns left me wondering why I was wasting my time. By the time it dug itself out of the depths of its ironic indulgence, I was over it all.
But I was surprised by my reaction to The Informant. Reviews for this one have been much better (no surprise), and Matt Damon's performance is everything it's cracked up to be in the commercials. But I never found myself willing to go along for the ride on this one. (The trouble may have started during all those "Matt Damon is brilliant" commercials. After a while, I noticed that this seemed to be the only message they were promoting, and I started to wonder if that was saying anything about the movie. Turns out, maybe so.)
I understand WHY they chose to go the "non-traditional" storytelling route for this one. There's nothing terribly ground-breaking about this story. Guy gets in over his head in his career, finds out the company's doing shady things and he ends up ratting them out to the feds. Had they played it straight, it probably would have ended up the punchline to some movie trivia game a few years from now… "How much weight did Matt Damon gain to play the lead in The Insider?" Or, "What company did Russel Crowe expose in The Informant?" At a certain point in time, they'd end up indistinguishable from each other. Seriously, the names are already nearly identical. (Throw in the mental instability and you could even wrap A Beautiful Mind into the quiz and end up with some warped version of 6 degrees of separation. Hell, the plot synopsis for The Informant references both those movies!)
But, having acknowledged the problem with playing it straight, I still couldn't bring myself to buy into the 70's mod-inspired comic gloss they tried to apply to the story. Somewhere after a dozen or so seemingly stream-of-consciousness Matt Damon voice-overs, and the liberal application of Mod Squad era title cards (not to mention the cheesy, over-produced and over-modulated soundtrack), I started thinking I was watching some strange homage to Woody Allen's "What's Up, Tiger Lily?"… as if they'd taken some 2-decades old b-rate cop drama, and given it new dialog in a vain attempt at humor. So I ended up leaving the theatre unimpressed once again.
Then this weekend, along comes Zombieland. Acknowledging right off the bat that this IS just my kind of movie, I still say it's the most fun I've had at the movies in months. It's gory as hell (NOT for the faint of heart), funny, witty, has some great surprises (and one awesome cameo) and is simply a great time at the movies. It's the road trip from hell (literally) and one of the funniest movies I've seen all year. (Think National Lampoon's Vacation — the first one, of course — in a mash-up with Shaun of the Dead and you get close to Zombieland. Go see it. Now. You'll thank me later.)
Zombieland even ended up entertaining me during the end credits, albeit indirectly. Thanks to the end tags on the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and Ironman and others, we usually end up sticking around through the end credits these days, especially on movies like this, just in case there's a tag. (There is, and it's amusing.) Sitting behind us was a guy with a couple of younger children. The kids had been pretty good throughout the movie (surprisingly), but as the credits rolled they got a little antsy, which is about the time the young girl (probably about 6 years old) decided to shout out Woody Harrelson's infamous "nut up or shut up!"
To which I burst out laughing, and couldn't stop myself for the next couple of minutes. I could just imagine dad laughing at this as well… till he got the kids home and mom heard the new phrase he'd taught their daughter on movie night. I assumed there would be less laughing at that point.
So… go see Zombieland. Rent the Informant. Maybe. And only watch Jennifer's Body if you really have the hots for Meagan Fox. (Though Amanda Seyfried is really the star of that one, in more ways than one.)
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