Sarcastic Movie Reviews

Well… it’s in a BIG gothic house that is perpetually shrouded in fog. It takes place during the 1940’s, and the children in the movie suffer from a rare disease that makes them blister in sunlight. This means that heavy drapes are drawn at all times and every door in the house must be locked just in case the curtains are accidentally left drawn.

Lets book our next vacation there!! Look mom… I can almost see my veins through my skin and it’s only been a week!!

Everything is lit by a kerosene lamp since the nazi bastards have cut the electricity off and if you eat something that has upset your stomach you had better pray that you’re locked in the “loo” or else you’re going to have to dance around like an idiot while the maid locks and unlocks 15 doors between you and the facilities.

Nicole Kidman stars as a pale white woman raising two sick kids in a big house all by herself. The staff buggered off one day and didn’t even leave her a note that said “Off to find a sunny beach you whacked out Aussie bi-atch.” Her husband has left her to fight the Germans but hasn’t come back even though the war ended over a year ago. I think he’s nailing some lusty Italian chick where there’s electricity and some open widows personally.

One day a man dressed in black, his wife dressed in black and their mute daughter (guess what SHE’S wearing?) emerge from the fog and offer to be the hired help. It seems that they used to work in the house years ago, pus Nicole is on a permanent prescription of Midol so she really can’t be too picky when it comes to hiring the staff.

From this point on the movie just becomes plain gloomy (insert sarcasm).

Her daughter starts to see visions of a small boy which she uses to torment her little brother to no end. Nicole punishes her by making her memorize passages from the bible.

Only when Nicole starts to hear noises from rooms that she HASN’T locked her kids into does she really start to believe her daughter about the “others.” Then she starts to suspect that the maid is giving her some “funny” headache pills.

Paranoia thy name is Nicole.

Blah blah blah…. this movie is like a low fat brownie. It never really satisfies you.

It’s 2 hours of teasing and swelling music but no scary moments. Doors get swung open but there’s nothing inside. Pianos are played by themselves. Curtains get moved…zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

This was the longest 2 hours I’ve ever seen. It’s like decorating tips from the invisible man.

I won’t give the ending away, but I figured it out after about 30 minutes and even people who miss the first hour of the movie could guess the ending 60 minutes before they finally get around to telling us.

It’s like trying to wrap up a tennis racket for Christmas and then keeping your husband from guessing what it is for the next two weeks.

It’s been done better (and you know what movie I’m talking about).

Don’t get me wrong, I really liked this movie. It has great special effects and some fine acting by Tim Roth, but there are just some big gaps on the “logic” meter and far be it for me not to make fun of them.

The movie opens on a huge floating space station with Mark Whalberg as a “sensitive” astronaut. Is Marky boy anything other than soft-spoken and sensitive in any of his movies? Michael Jackson has a deeper voice than this guy and the special effects on HIS face blow away any monkey mask that I’ve seen.

Re-cast!!

At any rate Mark is trying to teach chimps to operate these tiny space pods that mankind wants to send into raging plasma storms

Riiiiiiiiiight…… Right now Hollywood can’t even accidentally kill a roach on the silver screen without the animal rights people demanding that the bug’s remaining eggs be deposited in Madonna’s Bentley as compensation. Now we’re to believe that in the distant future NASA will be sending chimps out for a spin in a five billion dollar shuttle to see if they can make it back. What the hell ever happened to robots? Is Nissan smashing cars into brick walls with monkeys strapped in and not telling us?

When our hairy friend goes “blip” in a swirling cloud of space gas, Mark defies orders and straps himself into pod # 2 and flys off to save him. Again I’d like to point out my “robot” idea but what do I know about logic eh?

After a few million dollars of special effects in a flight simulator Mark finds his space pod thrown into the distant future and he crashes into a swamp. Thank God that NASA puts all of it’s money into building a sturdy clock on board their space ships instead of landing gear so that the pilot will know what time and what year it is seconds before he leaves a smoking crater on the planet below.

Since we already know that the planet is populated by apes there’s no point in having Mark wander around aimlessly for a while so it’s a stroke of luck that he wanders into a group of humans that are being hunted by apes on horseback about 30 seconds after he climbs out of the swamp. Imagine driving your Domino’s Pizza car into a crowd of protesters at a G-8 summit. Yikes…. I should’ve made that left turn on Preston St.

Mark gets sold into slavery but Ari takes an “interest” in him. Ari is our fearless female ape who campaigns for “human rights.” Fortunately she is the daughter of a politician so she gets a lot of special treatment. I think that a copy of Boogie Nights must’ve fallen out of that space capsule because Ari takes a rather disturbing liking to our friend Mark. It’s like a woman who spends wayyyyyyyy too much time in the stables grooming the horses (if you know what I mean).

When Mark’s GPS system tells him that his buddies have landed and are looking for him he decides to try and find them. Of course the most logical solution is to run through the homes of everyone in a quest to find the forbidden tunnels that every futuristic city has.

Note to self… IF I ever create a despotic society in the future the first thing that I will do is to fill in all secret tunnels that lead out of the city. At the very least I’ll place some Indiana Jones rolling boulders that roll TOWARDS the people from the exit.

The funny thing is that even though Apes and humans talk perfect English (I guess language is the only thing that doesn’t evolve out here) only humans can swim. Oh, sure Apes have mastered equestrian riding and blacksmithing but they still sink like stones so remember to head for the river if you’re ever chased by these guys (also look out for flaming tennis balls that they will hurl at you when you have your back turned).

Then there’s a big battle and we learn about some surprising facts that make me say three things.

Ok…… stop reading here because I’m going to give a part of the story away. Come back to this part after you’ve seen the movie.

One is that the humans on this planet should be wearing overalls and playing banjos. The gene pool at Buckingham Palace is deeper. Secondly I can see where war-like chimps might evolve but where the hell did the apes come from (not to mention orangutans)? Finally I didn’t see any horses on that space station. So what’s up with that? Don’t even get me started on “working” three thousand year old electronic doors.

I guess in the United States it’s considered bad form to kill someone unless you work with them or at least attend the same primary school. Regardless, her career becomes unstable which gives Hannibal a huge chubby and he fires off a letter to her.

Clarice notices that there’s a big blob of hand cream (oh God… PLEASE let it be hand cream) on the letter and she has it analyzed by some people who decide to sniff it. Again… I’m PRAYING that this stuff is hand cream. It seems that Hannibal had this cream created especially for him. I guess the serial killer gig must pay really well.

Clarice decides to order video surveillance from EVERY perfume shop in Europe which means every videotape, from every shop for every day. That should take about 10 minutes or so eh kids? Bingo… he’s in Italy.

Now one thing that I’ve forgotten to mention is that 15 years earlier Hannibal gets this pedophile that he was treating totally stoned. He then convinces the guy to cut his face off and feed it to the dogs.

Understandably this guy is pissed off. Think of all of the stupid things you’ve ever done for a woman because you wanted to nail her. Now imagine feeding your eyebrows to a poodle named “Poopsie.” Imagine the lingering resentment!!! In the proud tradition of rich Hollywood villains Mr. “No Face” won’t settle for just killing Hannibal….. nooooooooooo he has to train man eating pigs to do the job.

<Sigh>…. Austin Powers would be proud.

Then there’s the greedy Italian cop who decides that he wants to get the reward money from the rich psycho rather then turn him into the FBI. There’s also the corrupt government official played by Ray Liotta who hates women and has a lust/hate thing going on with Clarice. Time to upgrade that long term disability insurance boys. It’s one thing to mess with Hannibal, but screw with the woman that he has a crush on and …… well…. it’s pass the Worcestershire sauce time.

Hannibal flies back to the United States because all of that fatty Italian food was giving him gout and starts lining up some American appetizers but the rich guy with a hamburger for a face finds out about it and sends for his pigs.

That’s all I can tell you without giving any more away.

He’s the MacGyver of pushers. Give him two aspirin and a coat hanger and he’ll make you so stoned that you won’t care that your hydro bill doubled last month.

How about if your dad has gone insane and is a serial killer? No wait… it gets better. He enlists his children to help out in “dispatching” the demons.

Bill Paxton plays “Mr. Looney Toon” our single and loving dad who one night sees a vision from God. Actually it was his bowling trophy but it DID have an angel on top of it.

Listen, if YOUR bowling trophy started glowing and then proceeded to tell you that your purpose in life is to find demons in human form and then chop them up like firewood I think you’d be a little freaked out about it as well.

The catch is that he has two sons. Now, if daddy wanted to go nuts on his own that’d be ok, but he insists on involving his children. His eldest son is 10 and is a little too mature to believe in the talking trophy, but the youngest boy is eager to please.

When Bill starts showing up with people that he’s whacked on the melon with a lead pipe the kids are encouraged to come into the root cellar and see the demons. The youngest son still worships daddy and actually starts to believe in the nightmarish visions but the eldest boy is horrified. When Bill lays his hands on his victims he sees the demon in their true form but the eldest son just sees his insane father freaking out before he reaches for an axe.

This whole story is told from the point of view of Matthew McConaughey who is the eldest son now grown up. He’s confessing the sins of his family to an FBI agent who’s investigating the “God’s Hand Killer.”

Stephen King called this the scariest movie he’s ever seen.

To that I say “Yeah, well you also wrote The Langoliers you lamed assed cross eyed cripple (I didn’t forget his car accident).”

I haven’t seen a movie that’s scared me since I was 5. You want to be scared? Go look at my RRSP since the Tech Meltdown.

At first I was going to completely slag this film. Truth be told I could see what was going to happen 20 minutes ahead of the events. In fact I annoyed my roommate by calling the film 9 out of 10 times (you have to love a guy like me).