Movie Pick of the Week

Judd Apatow and his band of merry men pretty much own comedy at this point. If you’ve laughed at a movie in the past three years, odds are pretty good he had a hand in it. His production credits include: Anchorman, 40-Year Old Virgin, Talladega Nights, Knocked Up and now Superbad.

It’s gotten to the point where the studios are attaching trailers to his films that use the new film to promote the even newer film. The trailer for Walk Hard, another Apatow production due out at the end of the year, promotes itself as being from the guy who brought you Knocked Up (which just came out a few months ago) and Superbad, the movie you’re paying to see. Nice. I don’t begrudge the guy his success either. As coach Larry Brown might say, he’s doing it “the right way.” All his movies have a healthy dose of humanity in them. This goes back to his television work on the under-seen “Freaks and Geeks” and almost not-seen-at-all “Undeclared.”

Apatow’s comedies are not very elaborate. They don’t rely on set-ups that are too preposterous or contrived ala the Farrelly or Zucker brothers. Not knocking those guys—they’ve made some of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. His films don’t really contain “homerun”-moments. There are no “hair gel” moments like in There’s Something About Mary; no “double premature ejaculation shown on the internet” like in American Pie. His movies are just consistently funny, mining humor out of the mundane situations we all find ourselves in on occasion (actually the Will Ferrell movies are an exception to that, but Will Ferrell is…well, Will Ferrell). But Apatow’s movies stick. It’s like the difference between being told a funny story and being told a hilarious joke. The joke might make you laugh harder the first time, but the story is something you can hear again and again because you identify with it somehow.

I can definitely identify with Superbad. The premise is familiar: high school is ending; last chance to score; figuring out how to say goodbye to old friends. Almost ten years ago, this movie was called American Pie and nearly twenty years before that it was called Porky’s. But that’s irrelevant. High school is an inexhaustible source of comedic material, because 1.) it’s an almost universal experience and 2.) it is the most awkward time in most of our lives. Jonah Hill, Michael Cera and Christopher Mintz-Plasse play a trio of friends who are getting ready to graduate and move on to the next phase of their lives. Seth and Evan (played by Hill and Cera respectively) are best friends who are on two different paths: the sincere and intelligent Evan headed for Dartmouth, the obnoxious but loyal Seth headed to some state university. Mintz-Plasse’s Fogell (aka McLovin) rounds out the group, but he's mainly a (hilarious) comedic device like Stifler (honestly, if Mintz-Plasse goes on to make other movies, I see his career taking the same arc as Seann William Scott's or Jon Heder-welcome to typecasting purgatory).

The film's plot is fairly threadbare: guys need to score booze to score with a few girls. The introduction of two cop characters played by (co-writer of the film) Seth Rogen and Bill Hader give the film a bit more meat (for better or worse). The strength of the film is its dialogue which is often laugh-out-loud funny and its subtle observations of interactions between pubescent boys and girls. The film is also fairly poignant as we watch Seth and Evan come to grips with the fact that their lifelong friendship could likely be coming to a close. The McLovin storyline will either make you laugh or roll your eyes (or likely both). It does wear a little thin after a while, but I never looked at my watch or anything. The movie starts strong, coasts a bit and then finishes strong. I enjoyed the characters so much (especially Cera's Evan) that I didn't really care though. Time will tell if the film goes into the Pantheon of Great Teen Comedies (Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Can't Buy Me Love, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Breakfast Club, etc.). In the meantime, congrats Mr. Apatow, you've done it again.

Movie Picks of the Week

Hot Fuzz – Danny Butterman: "Ever fired your gun in the air and yelled, 'Aaaaaaah?' "
So goes the line that sets up one of the funniest scenes I’ve seen in years. Hot Fuzz comes from the guys who did Shaun of the Dead (a movie I only saw parts of, but heard good things about).

These are guys who I would love to sit down to dinner with and just talk about movies because clearly their minds are as gunked-up with celluloid as mine. This movie reminded me a lot of Talladega Nights in the way it manages to almost lovingly skewer its target, in this case the buddy-cop genre which gave us classics like Beverly Hills Cop and regurgitated tripe like Rush Hour (or “-2”, or “-3”).

They respect the genre which is what allows them to mock it so effectively. You’ve got everything ranging from a very well telegraphed Point Break reference that had me in tears to toss away references of movies like Chinatown. Clever chaps. British humor doesn’t seem to translate too well in the States which is a shame because I feel as if you’ve not completely experienced comedy if you’ve never watched one Monty Python film or at least seen an episode of Mr. Bean. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have impeccable comedic timing and play off each other exceptionally well. I look forward to whatever they have next on tap.


28 Weeks Later

28 Days Later was an imaginative take on the zombie-genre where instead of the living dead, we were given people infected with “rage.” (You know what just occurred to me though? The whole “rage”-virus was stolen from the Transformers cartoon. Specifically this episode. Man I’ve seen too much crap. What have I done with my life?) Anyway, it was the first time (as far as I know) that you had “zombies” running like track stars trying to take down anything in sight.

It was truly intense, especially the early scenes where we have the protagonist Cillian Murphy wondering around a seemingly abandoned London. The tension is ratcheted up to the point of being unbearable. I loved every minute. I’ve watched Boyle’s films since Shallow Grave which introduced me to Ewan McGregor who would go on to make Trainspotting with Boyle a couple of years later.

After a tidy return at the box office and decent DVD sales, four years later we have the sequel which returns none of the original cast and Boyle overseeing only as executive producer. The movie starts off well enough with a man making an obvious, but tough choice (c’mon does she really leave him a choice?). But instead of really exploring the consequences of his decision, we get your standard “let’s do everything that doesn’t make sense to progress the plot.” Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Many an entertaining film has come from watching people make god-awful decisions (Friday the 13th series, Aliens, Poltergeist—should have just left the little girl in the TV—as Eddie Murphy said, she was only five and they couldn’t have been that attached to her). In this case, I just got a bit frustrated as to how stupid everybody was being. Also, it felt too much like a retread of the previous film which was a bit lame since they had such great ideas to start this one off.

On the bright side, the film does have a decent amount of scares in it and although I’d seen it all before, it was done competently (except for the awful ‘chaos-cam’ whenever up-close ‘rage’-attacks happened). I can’t really recommend this one as a $10 expenditure, but if it’s on cable I wouldn’t make you change the channel. Until that happens, go rent 28 Days Later!