Sarcastic Movie Reviews

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!!!