Sarcastic Movie Reviews

Wolfie Wolfie Wolfie… how we missed you (and by “We” I mean the executives at 20th Century Fox).

Who doesn’t love the tale of an ass kicking character that suffers from amnesia? It opens up all sorts of sequels in which you can sort of hint about what happened without ever actually telling us the full story.

Heck if you name is Jason Bourne you can drag it out over three films…ooorrrr you can just blow your load in one giant special effects crap-fest and get it over with like they did with “Wolverine”.

Here’s a hint though whenever someone with amazing powers can’t remember who they are.

The government did it!!

Wolfie is one of those movies in which it probably makes more sense if the AUDIENCE is suffering from amnesia though, because if you actually stopped for three seconds at any point in the story to maybe mull things over, your head would detach itself from your shoulders and run into the lobby begging for someone to take it to see that Disney documentary about baby bears and spawning fish.

So, let’s begin at the beginning (hey… at least I’m going to try and be logical).

It seems that “James Logan” was born sometime around the mid 1800’s and life really sucks back then.

First of all the kid is sick.

Then his dad is killed for some reason that isn’t really explained, and when James kills the man who killed his father he learns that he actually killed his father (who really killed his step father).

On top of it all he did it with a nifty set of bone claws that sprung out of his hands and it only takes 30 seconds for the town to form a vigilante group and go after him (I guess this was the first gated community).

Fortunately, James is not alone.

He is accompanied by his half brother ”Victor Creed” who just has regular claws and not the “Tommy Lee” version that sticks out by a foot.

Both brothers are immortal, or at least have stopped growing older at around the age of FORTY which seems curious as personally I would have picked twenty six as a good time to stop the clock.

My hair was thicker and my bone claws… were a little … um… “bonier” back then.

Anyway it appears that the only job that two immortal savages can get over the years is “professional soldier.”

Does it concern any of their buddies that these two guys can take a bullet without getting killed or that they tend to bound like cats into the enemy’s trench?

Nahhhh…

More importantly though, I’d like to know who the idiots are that insist of running BESIDE them into battle?!!

Me?

I’d be like: “Yo.. Victor… I’m riiiiight behind you” because I can’t think of a safer position to be in than about ten minutes behind the bullet proof guy with huge claws.

Come to think of it, why even HAVE an army?

James? Victor? Would you mind killing that chap “Hitler” for us? That’s a good old boy. Pip pip and huzzah and all that. We’ll meet you at the polo grounds at eleven for some tea and crumpets wot?

Anyway, after a hundred years or so of killing the enemy (they did a pretty shit job in Vietnam if I might interject) Victor starts to become a little unglued.

He LIKES killing people.

Sure this sounds a lot like “The Comedian’s” shtick from “The Watchmen”, but the difference here is that Wolverine is the one chomping on the cigar, and not the psychopathic Victor.

See? They’re not exactly the same at all!!

Fast forward a few years and now James and Victor are part of an elite team of mutants who go around killing foreigners for a secret branch of the military.

When Victor finally takes it too far, James walks away but Victor chillingly says “You can’t walk away James” (which is the comic book version of subtle foreshadowing).

A few years have passed (not that you’d notice it from looking at the immortal guy with giant claws) and James has built himself a totally inconspicuous log cab at the very top of a mountain with running water and electricity and is living with his uber hot teacher girlfriend.

Hey, since when do logging camps have a school system set up at the base of their clear cutting operations?

I guess when Stan Lee (or whomever) wrote the comic book, they sort of misunderstood what a lumber company does because there’s an entire community in the thick lustrous forest that the lumber company hasn’t gotten around to cutting down yet.

Imagine how pissed you’d be when you fnally got your whole town set up and then the next day you opened your curtains and you were looking at forty square miles of stumpage?

The best (and I mean BEST) part of the movie is when James’ white girlfriend tells him an ancient native story about why the moon is so lonely.

It seems that her lover was tricked into coming to earth and now he can’t go back to her, so he howls at the moon in despair every night like a wolverine.

Uh… except that wolverines are basically a cross between a weasel and a bear, and they don’t howl at the moon.

That would be a wolf and not a wolverine you shmucks.

Holy crap, who wrote this story?!!

It sounds like something an Italian guy dreamed up while banging a hooker in a Vegas casino.

I’m surprised that Canada wasn’t spelled with a “K”.

Well, back to the story.

One day James’ former commander shows up to warn him that his former squad mates have been showing up dead.

Let’s scare the immortal guy with tales of people dying!!

Hey, I have another story for you and it involves a grilled cheese sandwich that was left on the dashboard of a Lexus.

As I said before… it helps to dead from the eyebrows up while watching this.

So, to speed this review along a bit, Victor shows up and kills James’ fake native girlfriend for absolutely no reason and when James gets beaten in a fight with him, the military decides that the best thing to do to an immortal guy is to infuse his skeleton with “space metal” so that he’s even more indestructible.

Are these the same assholes who trained Osama Bin Laden how to use a rocket launcher? I think so.

Well… anyway, just as the final drop of “adamantium” (named for Adam West  I hope) has bonded to his skull, Colonel Stryker announces in a clear voice that it’s probably a great time to betray Wolverine which sort of upsets the guy with the newly forged METAL claws.

In one of the great moments of stupidity in film history Wolverine, rather than saying “Hey… I’m indestructible and the asshole who wants to kill me is twenty five feet away” flees naked into the woods (that never seem to get cut down) where his presence promptly leads to the death of two innocent senior citizens who give him sweet looking leather jacket and motorcycle.

Vowing revenge, Wolverine tracks down some of his former colleagues and learns of a mysterious “island” that Stryker works out of.

There is only one man who knows about “The Island” and it’s Ewan MacGregor’s former agent who was fired after convincing his client that it was a can’t-miss summer blockbuster.

Oh wait, that was a “different” stupid movie.

Uh.. Oh ya.. the man who managed to escape from the island is named “Gambit” and if you ask me he didn’t escape, but rather they kicked his lame ass out because as mutants go he’s only slightly more menacing than Richard Simmons.

What can Gambit do? 

Check it:

As a mutant, Gambit is skilled in card throwing, hand-to-hand combat, and the use of a staff.

Card throwing?!! 

Can he guess my weight while he’s at it?

Wow, who would win in a fight between Wolverine and Gambit?

The indestructible guy with claws made out of space steel, or the guy who can nick your bottom with the ten of hearts?

I look forward to when Wolverine battles the guy who make balloon animals.

Annnyway… I probably shouldn’t go into this any more just in case you actually want to see it.

Somehow if you can manage to just completely not question anything (and I mean ANYTHING) it’s a passable summer action flick.

Sure it’s stupid, but I’m sure you can make a drinking game out of it somehow.

So, I’ll give it three claws out of five.

Man, I tell you, there’s NOTHING that gets me more excited when I’m thumbing through the newspaper ads looking for a movie to see and I come across an adaptation of some “Dostoevsky”.

Does it get any better than that?

“Two Lovers” is an adaptation of “White Nights”, that famous short written in 1848 that still flies off the shelves at pretentious bookstores everywhere.

If this isn’t the perfect story to adapt then I don’t know what is.

Sure, some of you might prefer reading about cloned dinosaurs or a Vatican conspiracy, but for me it’s all about “a nameless narrator who lives alone in a city and suffers from loneliness and the inability to stop thinking.”

Where the hell is my Lithium?

First the good news.

After reading that set up, we can safely conclude that Paris Hilton will NOT be appearing in the movie.

An added bonus is for those of you who wondered what Gwyneth Paltrow’s boobs look like (all that I’m going to say is that you’ll be 50% satisfied), and for those of you who wondered what Joaquin Phoenix’s boobs look like… well, let me just say that they’re only slightly smaller than Gwyneth’s.

Now unfortunately I also have some bad news.

Russian existentialism is about as much fun as a family reunion at the Charles Manson ranch.

The movie opens with Leonard (Phoenix) attempting to commit suicide, but chickening out only after he’s jumped into the harbour and has to be rescued.

Naturally it’s a gloomy autumn day (do they have Summer in Russian literature?) and thus, wet and humiliated, Leonard shuffles home which turns out to be his parent’s run down apartment in the bowels of Brooklyn.

There’s nothing like a thirty eight year old suicidal loser who still lives with his parents to bring in the crowds during a recession eh folks?

Anyway, Leo has attempted this sort of thing before, but his elderly parents are more concerned that he gets cleaned up because they’re having “dinner guests” who are VERY interested in buying the dry cleaning business from them.

Now, I know in the past that I’ve complained about how no one in movies ever has a regular boring old job (they’re always architects, or lawyers, or executive chefs on Air Force One) but we’re ten minutes into the story and I would have given my left nut to see a drafting table in the corner.

All that was missing was a diseased cat siting on a broken wheelchair.

Things get a bit better when “Sandra” (Vinessa Shaw) shows up as the sexy daughter of the “would be purchasers” of the business and confesses that she came along to dinner because she secretly has a crush on Leo.

Being an avid amateur photographer, he takes her into his room to show her some photos that he’s taken.

Now we’re talking!

Who hasn’t used that line on the ladies at least once in their lives?!!

Ya, I’m a “photographer”. Why don’t you come up to my room and I can show you my equipment? Oh what a surprise… there seems to be a bucket of ice cooling a bottle of wine beside the tripod. Why is that some Barry White on the turntable? What are the odds?!!

Ya, well… forget that.

This loser blows a golden opportunity to shag a girl while her parents are in the other room, because he has a framed photo of his ex fianceé beside his bed next to the facial tissues.

What? He has scars on his wrist as well?

Well, get in line Leo because I’m starting to look for something sharp in my bag of popcorn because I think I might join you.

Somehow Sandra isn’t spooked by the depressed loser who lives with his parents and the two make a date to go out.

Hey, what a depressing Russian love story without some complications eh?

No sooner has Sandra left when Leo’s bumps into his new hot blonde neighbour Michelle (Paltrow) who has a bus ticket to “crazytown”.

Leo falls madly in love with Michelle who is having trouble with her boyfriend (a married lawyer cheating on his wife) and things get bleaker and more pathetic as the movie rolls along.

How many sides can a love triangle have anyway? Is this a love hexagon?

All that I know is I’ve never cared less for a group of people in my life.

Leo is a loser, in love with a loser who is in love with a asshole, and is loved by a loser who can’t see what an asshole Leo is.

Is there a documentary on the seal hunt, or cancer that I can watch? I could use some laughs.

So here’s the deal.

The movie is well acted and if bleak, grey depressing movies about a pack of bleak, grey depressing losers is your bowl of borscht then do I have a movie for you!!

For everyone else who is not taking a “film appreciation” course at the local community college I’m going to have to warn you against seeing this.

I’ll give it a three razor blades to the wrist out of five.

Anyone else need a drink after seeing this?

People were SHOCKED a few weeks ago to hear that Stephen Hawkings had been rushed to the hospital with an undiagnosed illness that threatened to end his life.

Do you want to know what REALLY happened?

Stephen saw an advanced screening of Star Trek and fell to the floor while attempting to pull the hair out of his head.

Screw science. You want reality? There are fat people sitting beside you carrying broomsticks painted silver with the words “Klingon Pain Stick” written in red magic marker so that it looks like dripping blood.

Just wait. In fifteen years the Harry Potter losers will make these guys look cool!!

This was a battle for ‘Style over Substance‘, and Style showed up looking like Chuck Liddel in biker gear, whereas Substance had a yoga mat and some Lululemon tights.

Let me give you an example.

Very early on in the movie a young James Tiberius Kirk is speeding down a dusty Iowa road in a vintage Corvette Convertible while being pursued by a highway patrolman on a “hover bike”.

The nerds gave out a throaty cheer as Jim sped towards the Grand Canyon a la Thelma and Louise while I sat there and thought to myself:

“Hang on… if there are hover bikes then why the hell are they still paving roads?”

I think Style bitch slapped Substance and told him to sit down or the next one was going to be a boot to the nads.

I’m kind of curious though.

Why is this series called “Star Trek” when every single freaking story is about “time travel”?

I guess “Time Travel Trek” is more accurate but then Style showed up cracking walnuts in his hands and Substance hid behind the frogurt machine.

Personally, I’m just happy that they didn’t discover “Data’s head” in a cave somewhere.

I guess Brent Spinner has finally reached the age when all of the CGI effects and and Vaseline can’t hide the fact that he looks fifty seven now and not Twenty six.

So much for the ageless android!!

If you’ve ever seen the original series then you will LOVE this movie.

Every cliché, every facial tic, every plot line that was sort of mentioned in passing  now has a dedicated team of seventeen writers working tirelessly on a joke that might explain it (or at least exploit it).

I think the only thing I didn’t see were Styrofoam rocks and Tribbles.

Oh how the nerds jiggled with joy when a guy in the landing party showed up wearing a red shirt.

Wait a second…. where’s Style?

He’s getting a prescription filled with Manny Ramirez?

PERFECT… let’s get Substance in here because he wants to apologize for a gianormous plot hole that even Helen Keller couldn’t miss.

So, if a black hole is really just a portal through time, then technically if you created a black hole in the middle of a planet, wouldn’t that just “move” the planet to a week from Tuesday instead of destroying it?

Ok. We’ll let that one go.

Maybe this gravity crushing force of physics needs a snack before the doors open up.

There’s something else that’s bugging me.

For a cosmic anomaly that swallows everything (including light) I’d just like to say that it works about as fast as a postal worker on a civic holiday.

“Hey man, there’s like… a black hole forming in your planet dude. You like… have twenty minutes to get the hell off the planet…Oh and can you bring me a bean burrito before you go?”

And why does farting in the direction of a black hole give you just enough thrust to push your free of the event horizon?

Farting… detonating a warp core. Really, the results would be the same wouldn’t they?

This thing EATS LIGHT.

I don’t think setting off a few firecrackers is going to help.

Oh shit… Style just came home. Everyone look busy.

Um… here’s a quick Winona Ryder joke to change the subject:

When I heard that Winona landed a role in the film I was sure that the plot was going to be about someone stealing the Enterprise.

bwahahahahahahaha.…. sniff….I kill me.

Ok, so the plot in a nutshell is that some Romulans have traveled back in time so that they can destroy the planet Vulcan and then destroy the planet Earth.

It doesn’t matter why, it only matters that we get to hear Chekov say “Wulcan” about fourteen thousand times.

How come a mining ship is armed to the teeth like the freaking Death Star you ask?

Well because as long as you’re going to “borrow” a few ideas from another successful science fiction movie, you might as well bring a big shopping bag to steal as much as you can carry.

Winona… can you come in here please?

There’s a WHOLE lot of “Star Wars” raping going on in this film from the jumping spinning light saber duels, to the nail biting showdowns on the Death Star’s precarious “catwalks” (honestly… would it kill you to put some handrails on the precarious catwalks? How about you just do away with them altogether and build some floors?!!), to the saber toothed snow beasts that chase you into an ice cave on the planet Hoth, and to the Ewok engineering mascot that doesn’t talk as much as it makes funny monkey sounds.

George Lucas is going to be PISSED.

Well, that’s if he can pull himself away from masturbating in front of a mirror long enough to see this.

Still… I gotta say… despite the dodgy science, the (cough) homage to Star Wars and the thirty minutes of actual plot (filled in with ninety minutes of character back story), this is actually a fun movie worth seeing even if you aren’t wearing Superman underwear and Devo style sunglasses.

I’ll give it four stars out of five.

And Winona… it’s good to have you back even if you aren’t wearing a tight sweater (but next time wear a tight sweater).

You know, there’s a scene in “Extras” where Kate Winslet cracks that her next movie is going to be a “Holocaust” film because everyone wins an Oscar when they appear in one.

Cynical and funny, it was even funnier when Kate starred in “The Reader” (a Holocaust film) and won a freaking Oscar.

This is the kind of predictable Hollywood garbage that inspired the blog you’re reading now.

There’s another type of film that most serious actors kill each other to star in and that’s the idiot savant film.

I like to call them “Simple Jack” flicks because much as Kate did in “Extras”, Ben Stiller took the wind out of this genre in his comedy “Tropic Thunder.”

We’ve all seen them. The retarded guy who can count cards, eats chocolates on a park bench or prunes rose bushes while inspiring people around them to be better human beings.

It’s got award statue written all over it.

The only way you could you guarantee a bigger slam dunk would be to have a retarded guy in a Holocaust film.

“Simple Shlomo”

Ok, the title needs work.

Speaking of needing work, let’s talk about “The Soloist.”

It’s always a bad sign when your big Academy Award hopeful gets yanked out of theatres before it’s debut in December.

It’s like finding out that a contestant in Miss America has an Adam’s Apple.

Uh oh…

Maybe this film isn’t as inspiring as we had hoped it was.

You know, there’s nothing worse than a retard who can’t make us feel bad about ourselves.

 It’s like a Nazi film with cuddly Germans. No one wants to see Sergeant Shultz working at Auschwitz. It just doesn’t work.

I don’t know where “The Soloist” fails exactly but maybe it’s the excruciatingly boring stretches of story that are filled with classical music.

Oh wait, it turns out that I DO know where the film fails exactly.

Where are the classic scenes in the film that people will be talking about? Where’s the snappy dialogue?

No one is going to be quoting a single line from this movie unless you repeat what the fat guy behind me said after ninety minutes:

“My leg has fallen asleep!!”

I don’t care if this is a true story. It’s a true story will a bullshit ending. The guy is still living on the streets playing a battered cello.

Thanks for that compelling arc. Maybe next week I’ll watch a movie about a guy who loses all of his money gambling and then is broke at the end of he film.

In a nutshell, Robert Downey Jr. plays a newspaper columnist who is desperately looking for a human interest story, but he’s running out of ideas.

One day he meets a guy with severe mental issues and discovers that he used to be a student at Julliard before he lost his mind.

Annnnnd…. that pretty much sums up the whole movie because this is a true story and as of 2009 there is no cure for schizophrenia.

Cue the classical music please.

Seriously.

I “guess” the story here is really about Robert Downey and how he goes from being a simply a reporter at the beginning, but becomes a friend of the simple by the end (ohhh see the clever turn of phrase there?).

Not much happens, and the cynic in me says that this was probably a movie pitched to Tom Hanks but he was too busy making a Holocaust film in Poland.

2 stars out of 5.

I love horror movies that open with “Based on a True story”, because they never actually say which part of the story is true.

Was it the fact that a family actually lived in a house near a place that something bad happened?

Holy crap, I used to live in an apartment building with hookers and junkies. You want horror? Get trapped in an elevator with a guy who hasn’t bathed in a month (unless you count the frequent times he’s fallen asleep in a puddle of urine).

What’s exactly IS the criteria here?

According to the legal definition of “True Story” by Hollywood standards I’m surprised that Iron Man isn’t claiming to be based on one.

This is yet another example of an hour and forty minutes of my life that I won’t be getting back.

Geeze, I could’ve been at home watching a rerun of “Dog the Bounty Hunter” or “Manimal” (oh Jonathan Chase, how we miss your shape shifting shenanegins),

This is the typical Hollywood startle-fest that passes for horror when the writers are picked up at a bus terminal in Chico California on a Tuesday night.

Let me set up how this works.

The guy (or girl) creeps toward the door that any other sensible person would NOT want to open and then grasp the doorknob.

The music builds to a low rumble, making the ice in your soda dance around like a stripper in an Aerosmith power ballad.

Will something evil jump out from behind the door?

Does it matter?

We both know that it could be a flyer from Best Buy flapping around in the breeze and the music will go “screeeeeech” causing your anus to clench like senior sucking on a lemon drop.

I could make Wall-E terrifying if you gave me a big enough string section and a THX sound system.

Jumping out and saying boo isn’t scary, it’s STARTLING (and there’s a difference).

I used to jump out from behind the fridge when my dog walked into the kitchen and I scared the piss out of him

To this day he never runs into any room unless he knows where the hell I am (oh man, why am I giggling like a moron? I’m a BAD pet owner).

So, am I Alfred freaking Hitchcock because I can make my Westie pee on the tiles?

“A Haunting in Connecticut” plays out the time worn tale of a family that moves into a house where people have died.

It could be in Amityville New York, or at a Taco Bell in Fresno. People drop dead everywhere.

Here’s the first problem with these movies.

Any normal person would move the hell out of the house the moment that little Johnny started seeing blood pouring out of the light sockets.

You know, at least give them an excuse for not leaving.

How about a freaking snow storm? It worked for “The Shining.”

I’m also a big fan of dead car batteries and deserted hotels.

It works in both pornos AND horror movies (and you only have to build one set).

Here’s another tip. Hire a freaking continuity assistant.

If the kid is sick at the beginning of the movie he’d better not be doing any cross country running at the END of the movie.

The moment I see someone splitting firewood while wearing a hospital gown I’m calling “bullshit.”

Here’s another pet peeve… Seeing something evil standing behind you from a reflected surface is about as clever as fart joke.

Truly evil things leap on you from heavily carpeted rooms with a matte finish on the walls.

Why does the ghost insist on standing right behind you waiting for you to finish washing your face so that you can see him when you close the medicine cabinet door?

What’s the story?

You’re really nagging me on this point?

Well, basically you have your sick kid who needs to be close to a hospital. The family is going broke so the only thing they can afford to rent in the creepy place that drips so much evil that the rugs squish when you walk on them.

Need any more background story?

Cue the creepy music, polish all of those reflective surfaces and just toss common sense out of the window because it’s horror time kids.

I almost pine for naked teens getting impaled at a summer camp when I have to sit through lazy crap like this.

2 stars out of 5.

SCREEEEEECH!!!!!! (hey my dog jumped).

Did you ever buy a pair of X-Ray specs as a kid and then felt totally ripped off because they couldn’t see through anything?

Well, if you go to see “Adventureland” expecting to see a raunchy stoner comedy then I have one thing to say to you…

“Hellooooo Sea Monkeys!”

From the people who brought you “it’s funny because they under-act” now comes the latest release from “The Napoleon Dynamite Playhouse” actors in their new release… “Monotone Coming of Age Film 3!!”

See the teenage virgin mumble his lines like he’s just ingested a vial of horse tranquilizer.

Be astounded with the retro soundtrack of eighties alternative hits that you had forgotten about ever since that mixed tape you made was ruined when you laundered your acid wash jeans.

Laugh along with the audience members who showed up stoned hoping to get a head start on the non existent pot humour.

Adventureland is really a “coming of age” film which is fine except that they’re marketing it as coming from the team that brought you “Superbad”.

I can’t think of a more pissed off customer base, except maybe the fans of Anne Rice who just awoke from their coma and bought her latest Born Again Christian book set expecting to catch up on some homoerotic vampire sex.

Here’s the deal guys.

This movie is basically about a guy who spends his summers working at a crappy amusement park so that he can earn enough money to go to an out of state college.

Super dork is a virgin and yet somehow he gets the two hottest chicks in the park to date him.

One girl is shallow and the other one is an emotional mess that is sleeping with a married man.

And the laughs keep on rolling in!!

All that was missing was a terminally ill sibling, a pet dog with a missing leg and maybe a serial killing neighbour that lives in the apartment next door.

Hell, why stop there? As long as you’re going to mislead us about what the film is really about I think you should include a musical number with chubby German children singing on a mountain top.

Listen, the movie has more in common with “Stand By Me” or “The Flamingo Kid” than it does “American Pie”.

Don’t expect to see some good old fashioned pastry loving in this film, Adventureland is too busy dealing with racism, being robbed at knifepoint and parental alcoholism.

I imagine that this film is what “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” would have been like if there had been a school shooting and everyone was taking barbiturates instead of pot.

It’s not a bad movie, but it sure as hell isn’t a comedy.

As a comedy I give it 2 stars out of 5, but as a drama I’ll give it 3 stars.

Unless of course you’re baked (in which case this movie RULES!!!)…

It’s fantastic when you get to the point in your career that you can be choosy about what jobs you accept.

Take Alan Arkin for example.

Mr. Arkin has now informed his agent that he will not star in any more movies unless they include the word “Sunshine” in the title.

Now THAT my friends is power.

First there was “Little Miss Sunshine” and now we have “Sunshine Cleaning”… what’s next Al, “Little Miss Sunshine Cleaning”?

Both movies are about a dysfunctional family that travels around in a battered van, and the only difference I can see is that in one movie they’re hauling a dead guy around on their way to a beauty pageant, and in the other they’re cleaning up after the dead guy has left a puddle on the hardwood floor.

I think that “Little Miss Sunshine Cleaning”, should combine the two stories so that it’s about an oddball grandfather who teaches stripper moves to a group of elite killers that clean up after their own murders.

Heyyyyy… I kinda like that.

Both stories are about a family of losers, with socially retarded offspring that are beset by tragedy while living in a torn down ghetto in a non descript part of white middle America.

Swap out the dad who can’t get anyone to buy his self empowerment courses and insert a mother who is embarrassed because she’s gone from being the home coming queen to minimum wage maid cleaning her former classmate’s houses (AND screwing another woman’s husband).

Change the chubby beauty queen wannabe, into a nerdy boy who gets kicked out of public school for licking his teacher’s leg.

The Grandfather is the same. He’s either shooting heroin or buying shrimp from the back of a truck, but really he’s there to tell the loser grandkids about how special they are even if no one else can see it.

Everyone else in the cast is just hanging around to appeal to the Marxist/Mute/Lesbian/Amputee contingent that is all too often ignored by the Hollywood machine (bastards).

The story breaks down like this:

The loser kid needs something (winning a beauty contest, or getting an education) that can’t be done by staying in the same place and doing the same thing.

We COULD call it the catalyst for the rest of the story, but I’m going to call it “clouds obscuring the Sunshine” merely because I’m getting paid a dollar every time I write “Sunshine” in this review.

Now, instead of the humorous road trip in which Grandad croaks, we find the protagonists starting their own company that specializes in cleaning bloodstains out of bathrooms and upolstery when a person has fallen head first into a running snowblower.

The key thing to remember here is that death is funny.

You can either pack grandad in ice or you can slip and fall in a puddle of brain matter.

There is one thing HUGE difference though, and that’s the lack of a side splitting dance number at the end of the film.

What?!! How can you have a low key nerd comedy without awkward choreography?

Holy “Save Pedro” Batman!! You mean there isn’t a classic Jon Heder moment to wrap things up?

There’s no chubby bee girl tap dancing in front of bikers to a “Blind Mellon” song?

Well, I don’t know how I feel about this ending then.

This isn’t very Sunshiny at all then is it? (hey, that still counts for a dollar).

I dunno… it’s kind of quirky but we’ve really seen this film before.

Alan Arkin has already won the academy award for best supportuing crusty grandfather of a dysfunctional family film, but hey, everyone loves a sequel don’t we?

Al… Forget the naysayers.

I’m looking forward to you next Sunshine movie.

This film rates three Sunshines out of a possible five Shunshines.

(ok, time to cash my cheque).

Sunshine!!!

The great things about movies are that they dare to ask the really important questions that everyone can relate to.

Sometimes it’s something about race.

Sometimes it’s something about religion.

“Watchmen” dares to ask the question “What kind of shrinkage would a naked man experience if he was standing on Mars?”

The answer of course is “I have no idea” because I spent a good chunk of the film staring into the bag of popcorn in my lap whenever the giant blue shlong bounded across the screen.

Why didn’t someone tell me that Harvey Keitel was in this movie?!!

I can tell you this though.

IBM is going to have to change their nickname because you’ll never be able to say “big blue” without giggling like schoolgirl after today.

I can’t tell you have relieved I was that we couldn’t get into the IMAX screening.

The year is 1985, and Nixon is still president of the United States. Superheroes have been outlawed and the world is on the brink of nuclear Armageddon.

One night, one of the ex-superheroes is brutally beaten and tossed from his apartment window to his death.

Since he wore a mask back in the day, no one knows that this is the murder of one of the infamous Watchmen.

Well, no one except for another Watchman that is… a character named “Rorschach”.

Rorschach starts looking up his old colleagues to warn them about the murder of “The Comedian” but no one seems to take him seriously until one day someone tries to kill “Ozymandias”.

Then the gloves are off, and the masks are on.

Unless of course you’re twenty five stories high, and glow with an eerie blue light.

“Dr. Manhattan” (also known as Dirk Diggler) is so powerful that he basically has stopped caring about humanity… and pants.

Sure he could stop the nuclear war but that’s right up there on his things to do like “stopping a spider from eating a fly”.

And yet, for some reason he’s helping the American government create an alternative power source that will bring about world peace.

Um… listen, I’m not here to point out the flaws with the whole “all we need is money” kind of argument to bring about world peace, but correct me if I’m wrong when I point out that people will kill each other over a pair of shoes.

People fight over borders, religion, accents, and in the case of some Hillbillies in Arkansas I think it was all about a pig wasn’t it?

We don’t need an excuse to start fighting, all we need is something to swing.

What Dr. Manhattan needs to do is to make everyone on earth bulletproof.

But hey, who am I to point out the flaws in an overly long semi pornographic comic book based film?

Did I mention length?

Relax ladies…. I’m talking about running time.

This baby clocks in at 162 minutes long.

That’s almost Peter Jackson territory, but at least “King Kong” had the decency to hide his shame (and he was Jonesing for Naomi Watts for most of the flick).

Between the nudity, attempted rapings, dismemberings and cross species gang bangs (oh yes… Mr. Blue can create his own three ways) this is not the kind of movie that you want to take your kids to unless you’re Britney Spears and you’re drunk anyway.

All in all though, I quite liked the film.

If it was about 40 minutes shorter it would have been an outstanding film, and really… did we need to see Mr. Wang for half an hour?!!

Geeze, they convinced Johnny Depp to tone down the gold teeth for his Captain Jack Sparrow character.

Where was the codpiece police when you needed them?

Four out of five stars.

So I watched “The International” with Clive Owen last night and there never was a more aptly named movie in my opinion because they could have been speaking Greek for all of the sense that the story made to me.

This is one of those mental masturbatory films that screenwriters write to show how much research that they’ve done.

People are getting killed by compounds that leave trace amounts of something in a part of the body that I didn’t even know existed until Clive walks up, shines a penlight on it and says “Ah HA!!”

You know what this crap reminds me of? Listening to the techno-bullshit jargon on an episode of Star Trek.

“Oh Captain… I canna start the warp drive because the dylithum crystals were drained by the flux capacitor when we passed through the wormhole.”

You know what I think?

Scottie was passed out in the engine room and had kicked the plug out of the wall.

I’m going to attempt to explain the story but be forewarned, I asked my friend (who loved the film by the way) to explain the plot to me and he said “Oh this is the kind of film you have to watch twice to understand it all.”

Is that some kind of freaking badge of honour?!!

It’s like listening to my wife trying to explain why she needs five pairs of black shoes.

Trust me, it’s less painful if you just forget about thinking and you just go with it.

Ok so there’s a bank you see, and they’re selling stuff to people that they shouldn’t be selling things to.

Ok, so it’s a shoe store and my wife has walked in.

I’m with you so far.

Ya, well except that they’re not interested in making a profit, because profit is for losers and the REAL payoff is in controlling debt.

Again, as a married man I can relate.

Wait a second, did they just sneak in some topical political dig at the United States?

Hmmm… the United States has historical amounts of debt and the movie suggests that controlling debt is the REAL source of power in the world.

Oh, those crafty screenwriters. I’ll bet that there’s a palindrome hidden in a line of dialogue or two as well.

Geeze, and all this time I thought power came from soul crushing armies that could place a cruise missile in your taint when you bent over to get the morning paper, but what the hell do I know eh?

It still makes more sense than trying to sell someone water are greatly inflated prices (yes Quantum of Solace, I’m looking at you).

What ever happened to the good old days when conspiracies involved a hidden sack of cash or some compromising photos of the president and a hooker?

Nowadays you need a slide rule, a degree in geopolitical negotiations, and a laminated copy the periodic table just to get through the first twenty-five minutes of background story.

Fortunately the movie breaks up boring CSI moments with an every rising tally of preposterous murders.

Have you ever watched the television show “24” and noticed that every sixth episode involves the execution of the guy who has all of the answers to the mystery?

You know the scene. Jack emerges from a shadowy corner dragging some loser that he’s just tortured with an ice cube and duct tape and just as he materializes into the daylight a sniper pops up from behind a potted plant and puts a bullet between his eyes.

The only thing that was missing in “The International” was a digital clock in the bottom right hand corner of the screen because no sooner does someone mention that a specific character is the key to solving the mystery before a squad of hit men swings out of the air ducts carrying twenty seven clips of ammunition each.

I love it when a movie goes to great lengths to show how the Police bypass a security guard with a metal detector only to find themselves facing off against the Belarus Olympic Skeet Shooting Boy’s Choir in the men’s room five minutes later.

Where the hell did they get that security guard from, the Toronto International airport or something?

Here’s another tip. You want to kill a guy in a museum? Put your gunmen around the gift shop.

All roads may lead to roam, but in a museum, all exits are placed beside a display of overpriced ceramic mugs.

What would ever happen if they opened a gift shop museum? What would the put at the end?

Think about it…

The International basically breaks down like this. A dude dies while trying to bring in another dude (who dies) and just when they find another dude who’s willing to discuss the head dude, he gets shot by a dude, but before they can question him he gets shot by a dude, who was secretly covering up another dude, but fortunately this dude has really distinctive shoes (never hire a dude to kill a dude unless he buys shoes from Wal Mart), but this dude likes to hang out at the Guggenheim which in this movie should have been called the Dude-n-heim because it’s where all the dudes carrying guns hang out at, and just when you think that this dude is going to live, you’re all like “duuuude” because as you should have figured out by now he’s going to die, but fortunately he met with a dude at the museum before he was wasted and they managed to capture this dude and he takes them to a meeting of two more dudes, but he gets shot by a dude (that we never get to see) and the movie ends up with a surprise dude showing up at the end and shooting the dude because he killed a dude at the beginning of the movie and that pissed off a couple of other dudes.

There was a bunch of newspaper headlines at the end of the movie that tried to tie up the loose ends but at this stage I was really more interested in watching the Big Lebowski.

At least I can get my head around a guy tossing a weasel into a bathtub.

This is a convoluted piece of crap.

2 stars out of 5.

Duuuuuuude