Sarcastic Movie Reviews

Don’t make the mistake I did.

The Lovely Bones is not the latest adult film by Sasha Grey. There wasn’t a single handyman, cheerleader, or lonely housewife in the whole damn film.

No, this is about a 14 year old girl who is abducted and brutally murdered by her neighbor.

I’m telling you now, keeping an erection going for this film is not going to be easy.

Hey, if you want a tasteful review go over to “At the Movies”.

In the many years I’ve been reviewing films, this is my first one written entirely in bile.

Sometimes a film is boring, sometimes it’s just badly written, but once in a while a movie comes out that is so pretentious, so emotionally manipulative and so (damn, can I can pretentious again?), that my gall bladder immediately tries to leap out of my body and run away.

Peter Jackson owes me dinner.

I feel that I wasn’t just manipulated by fat boy, but rather I was bent over a Lord of the Rings Box Set and was given a good rogering by Gandalf’s staff.

In the past I’ve mentioned a little term that us budding screenwriters toss around that is known as “Deus Ex Machina.”

The literal translation is “God From the Machine” and it’s a plot device that the ancient Greeks used to pull when they wrote themselves into a corner.

Rather than have the hero figure a way out of the mess, one of the Gods would drop down from the sky (lowered by a crane usually) and would save the day.

Hellooooooo Zeus.

Wow is this film full of cameos by fate.

Now, we all know that Peter Jackson is one of the most self indulgent directors on the planet.

This guy could take a recipe for Jello and turn it into a seven part miniseries.

What dumbfounds me is how you take a movie about a serial killer who preys on teenage girls and then make it a non-event?

Imagine if Hannibal Lecter just made pretty sketches for two hours in Silence of The Lambs, and that’s what you get in this film.

A serial killer who doesn’t kill again? A serial killer who doesn’t go after the other sister or plan his next murder?

What the hell is the point in having him around then?

What you get in this film is scene after scene of people doing nothing, so that we can jump back into the in-between world and watch the pretty colours Peter cranked out on an iMac.

To make matters worse it’s a boring afterlife.

It’s like watching the opening credits of Little House on the Prairies after dropping some acid.

What’s the killer do during the movie? A lot of sitting in the basement fondling a charm he stole from the dead girl.

Um… are you gonna pick up a knife or something?

No?

Let’s go back to the freaky field.

Oh forget that. There’s not much going on here (unless you want to watch someone sit in a gazebo).

Fortunately, there’s a goth chick who can communicate with the dead.

Well, expect that she doesn’t, until at the very end when she can blow the case wide open and expose the killer.

Except that she doesn’t.

Tips on how to crack “the big” case after two years when you have no evidence and have accused everyone who has ever been in the same room as your daughter when she was alive.

Jump to conclusions?

Hey, it seems logical to me.

Tips on what not to do if you’re a serial killer.

Don’t draw a detailed map from your house to the sex pit (which by the way is in the middle of a field in FULL VIEW of 100 houses with large picture windows), including scaled architectural drawings of the pit (dude, it’s a hole in the ground, it’s not the Burj Khalifa Tower), while tossing in a few newspaper clippings of the missing girl, and maybe you might not want to include a locket of the corpse’s hair taped to the back.

Next time why don’t you just dangle her skeletal remains on the porch and masturbate ?

Just sayin’…

Hey, here’s a math question for you. How many men does it take to lift a giant steel safe that holds the decomposing body of a girl in it?

If you said “who the fuck cares?” then you too can be Peter Jackson, because the rules of physics kind of change depending on where you are.

Apparently, if you’re in a rush to escape justice, the thing is feather light and can be easily hauled out of the basement and loaded onto the back of a truck in 38 seconds without a crane or a former NFL linebacker helping you.

Once you get it to a giant sink hole though, it takes two men to flip it over enough times to get it to the edge.

Has anyone here ever seen a giant metal safe?

The metal part is the bitch.

They tend to be around 800 pounds.

Fortunately the killer likes to make dollhouses in his spare time so he has the quads of a Bolivian race horse.

All this to say…. (SPOILER ALERT)…  (seriously… I’m going to give away the ending)…. (Ok, I warned you) ….. in the end the guy gets away!!

WHAT THE FUCK?!!!

Relax… Zeus smites his ass at the very end.

1 star out of 5.

No… screw that… 1 star out of 20.

I wonder what a day in Micheal Cera’s life is like?

He wakes up after not getting laid, then sorts through a stack of scripts where he can’t get laid, and then he sits down and watches a rerun of a film he did where he doesn’t get laid.

Poor bastard.

At least when you’re typecast as an action hero you get to change professions now and then.

You could be an alcoholic former bodyguard, or a retired ninja, or the bodyguard of an alcoholic ninja.

The possibilities are endless!!

Plus, if you don’t get laid you can at least work out your frustrations on the bad guy with a flamethrower.

Toss in a witty rejoinder like “I’m burning my bridges Hans“, and it’s almost as good as getting laid.

What does Michael Cera have to look forward to?

Awkwardly trying to talk to a girl, while wearing awkwardly fitting gym shorts.

Poor, poor, bastard.

If there’s a car chase, he’ll be sitting in the back seat lecturing the cool guy about the use of proper hand signals.

Well, at least he’s rich, so he can pay for some of Charlie Sheen’s prostitutes… I mean his former prostitutes (of course).

“Youth in Revolt”

It’s kind of like “Fight Club” for nerds, if the first rule of “Fight Club” was “be a pretentious douche bag who knows every cliché from the ‘Summer’s Eve‘ product line.”

“Nick Twisp” (Cera) is a 16 year old loser who listens to Frank Sinatra, and reads poetry while lamenting the fact that he’s not getting any.

Just once, wouldn’t you like to meet the 16 year old virgin who maybe listens to Fall Out Boy?

Why do all of these guys wear tweed jackets, and have a copy of Chekhov’s Three Sisters on their night table?

You know, as a former 16 year old virgin myself, I would like to point out that most of us who were not getting laid were as dumb as a sack of hammers, but we listened to cool music (not withstanding that brief fling with Flock of Seagulls).

Guys like this don’t get laid until they invent something called “Facebook” and even then it has to be in the back seat of their Porsche.

Besides, kids today have internet porn and wi-fi connections.

Who needs real sex?

Oh, and here’s some advice.

If you see a mysterious blue glow coming from some bushes beside your house, do not investigate it.

Little Johnny just discovered that there aren’t any parental controls on his iPod Touch (and you thought it was called touch because of the user interface).

But, back to the story.

Nick comes from a broken family, where his mom is a whore, and his dad is a nerd with a twenty two year old girlfriend.

Go dad.

One day he finds himself spending the summer in a religious campground after his mom’s boyfriend fleeces a group of sailors.

While there, he meets the local bible slut named “Sheeni”, and falls in love.

Thou shalt not, indeed.

Bounch-chika-ten-hail-Mary’s.

Sheeni enjoys teasing Nick, and when it becomes apparent that she likes that bad boy, he’s forced to create an alter ego called François to win her… um … heart?

(go with it, I’m not burning in Hell for your amusement)

Frankie turns out to be a bit of a pyscho though, and he’s generally not above doing things that society sort of frowns upon.

So really, what we have here, is a heart warming story about a boy who fantasizes about putting his finger in someone’s anus, while slipping drugs to the woman he loves, and committing arson.

Some of you can relate, and my restraining order is still in effect.

I laughed about 30% of the time, which gives it a passable 3 out of 5.

In other words… rental

What is it with Hollywood’s hard-on for Vampires anyway?

It’s gotten so bad, that they’ve started stealing plots from old movies and are updating them with an undead twist.

For instance, in the new movie “Daybreakers” they set up yet another type of “Matrix-like” existence in which most of mankind hangs suspended in some sort of giant factory, as our life essence is siphoned away into a giant stainless steel vat.

When you get right down to it, there’s not much difference between it and my office cubicle, (especially when you consider that they sleep all day and are naked).

I’m looking forward to more of these kinds of updates.

Maybe we can get an all vampire remake of “Braveheart“, or “Pulp Fiction“.

Tell me you wouldn’t pay to see that?

Actually, what I’d like to see would be a remake of “Dracula“, where the character sucks and not just the script.

Here’s the thing with mankind’s future existence. When the computers were harvesting our bio-electric output they knew enough to breed us like chickens and to keep us happy. The vampires however, just suck us dry until there’s nothing but a withered husk that they have to toss away.

It’s like Heather Mill’s wedding vows to Paul McCartney.

To no one’s surprise, they begin to run out of humans, which starts to lead to mass starvation.

This is where our hero “Edward Dalton” (played by Ethan Hawke) comes in.

Edward is a reluctant vampire. Shall we call him “Louis?” Hang on, he wasn’t turned against his will by a woman in a log cabin (see True Blood) or by Tome Cruise (see Crazy Scientologist), but rather he was turned by his brother Frankie (see who gives a crap) and thus forgoes drinking authentic human blood and goes for an artificial substitute.

Wait a second!!

I’m not quite sure how this works, because his job is to find a blood substitute.

Plot hole alert!!

How is he surviving then?

It must be residuals from Training Day, because after this turd he’s going to be forced to make a living on the club circuit with Paris Hilton.

Let’s continue.

One night while driving home, Edward gets into a car accident, but to his surprise, the car he hits is filled with humans.

Rather than turning them in to the police, he hides them in his car until the coast is clear, and then they scurry off into the night.

Hey, you know what happens to Vampires who don’t get enough blood?

They turn into Vampire Hobos, become a general nuisance on society, and are forced to live out their lives in the sewers.

Ok, so if you now take out your big book of left wing Hollywood propaganda (flip to page 36), you will find that the movie is really a giant sermon about the dangers of overfishing and the marginalization of the homeless.

Also, since this was filmed in the desert, I guess it’s safe to assume that the polar ice caps melted and we screwed the environment as well.

Damn greedy, insensitive anti-eviro blood suckers!!

Hang on…. I don’t think I saw any black people in this movie.

Racist vampires!!

With no pets!!.

Animal hating, racist, aerosol spraying, shark fin soup eating (when they were human), baby club beating, Nickleback fans!!

Honestly, when I become head vampire, I’m putting every human being on a strict diet of Viagra and vodka, then I’m sending them all to Aruba, (what the hell do I want with a sunny tropical island anyway?) and every television channel will be porn.

If that doesn’t work I’m just replacing everyone with Catholics.

Catholic, Chinese people.

Oh, now we’re talking.

Now that I think about it, what kind of pigs emptied out the entire continent of India?

I know what you’re thinking.

Texans right?

They probably rolled up in a Hum Vee, ate about 23 of them, and then whipped out a chain gun and went ape shit.

That or they just hacked off their arms and tossed them back into Mumabi.

What was I talking about again?

Oh, the stupidity of the plot.

Right, so remember those humans we met earlier? It seems that they have stumbled across a cure for vampirism.

What’s the cure you say?

Let’s put it this way.

It takes a leap of faith so great that in order for you to sail over this yawning chasm of “yeah RIGHT“, you’d have to be be Russian ballet dancer with a rocket pack in your tights (insert your own Mikhail Baryshnikov joke here).

Honestly, the cure has to be the lamest piece of writing I’ve ever seen.

It’s pretty much on par with “You have to drink a Diet Coke while eating Mentos” only less sciencey.

To top it off, we get grandiose speeches from the last holdouts of humanity explaining that they’re all going to live in the desert because it gets a lot of sunlight, but then they load up their buses and drive to the hideout at midnight!!

But wait… there’s more.

Humanity protects itself from vampires with wooden stakes and crossbows, except that apparently all you need to dispatch one of these things is a nice set of Gordon Ramsey’s kitchen knives.

You know what else seems to work?

Explosives.

If I can kill you with Ginsu 2000, or at the very least I can disembowel you with some hollow point shells, then why am I walking around with a splintered piece of a picket fence?

You know what I’d do? I’d walk over to the nearest Wal-Mart’s children’s department and get me a shotgun (and some bubblegum flavored SKOAL).

Sure if you’re a vampire, you might not die right away, but try to bite me when your knees are laying back in the jewelry department.

Hang on… I feel another sermon coming up.

What’s left to be lectured about?

Corporate Greed!!!

This is one hell of a preachy vampire flick.

Is Michael Moore a vampire?

Ok, now I know what happened to all of the Indian people.

2 amen brothers out of 5.

(I wrote this last year but forgot to post it)… hey at least I’m posting something (so stop bitching).

Did you ever have that dream where you thought that you were watching one of your favourite movies but for some reason someone else was starring in it, like Bea Arthur in The Matrix, or Pee Wee Herman in Death Race 2000?

I’m pretty sure I just “Joan Rivers” starring in the “Hulk Hogan Story.”

What’s that? It was Mickey Rooney?

Man, he’s really bulked up for an eighty year old.

Ohhhh… it was Mickey Rourke?!!

Dude, you’re starting to make Michael Jackson’s face look normal.

Well, this is the movie that everyone has been talking about eh?

It’s sort of like “Spinal Tap” but for the clinically depressed crowd.

Here’s a story about a washed up former pro wrestler who is locked out of his trailer park because he spends all of the money he earns on steroids, tanning sessions and forty something strippers.

I can relate to at least one of those things (and if you knew what I looked like, you’d have no problem narrowing the list down).

Randy “The Ram” hasn’t been a star since he took on “The Ayatollah” back in the late 80’s.

During the week he works as stock boy at a grocery store and on the weekend he wrestles in high school gymnasiums in front of a crowd of sixty or so drunken hillbillies.

He does however, have an action figure of himself glued to the dashboard of his battered pickup truck.

Holy crap, it’s like watching home movies!!

If he had a gap between his teeth I’d sue their asses off.

So anyway, after each show Randy (real name… Robin) decides to unwind at the local strip club and spend the thirty bucks he earned on a lap dance from Marisa Tomei.

Now, I never thought that I’d be saying this after watching “My Cousin Vinnie“, but the time when I wanted to see Marisa topless has passed.

I had finally forgotten her sex scene with Phillip Seymore Hoffman in “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead” and now I have to look at her pierced nipples poking out of a fish net halter top?!!

I may actually go back to using Kleenex to blow my nose.

So anyway, one night after fighting a match in a dirty gymnasium in front of 17 homeless guys Randy has a heart attack.

I know… I popping Xanax like it was Pez after the twenty minute mark.

After he has open heart surgery he decides to see if he can patch things up with the daughter that he abandoned as a child so that he could be a pro wrestler.

Ahhh the art film.

You can’t be happy in an art film can you?

I’m surprised he didn’t run over a baby duck on the way home from the hospital.

Fortunately the one thing that the lifts the art film above all others is the penchant for some good old cringe inducing violence.

Give a guy a bad haircut and then send him out into the wilderness with a can of compressed air or watch him plunge through a plate glass window covered in barbed wire.

Sign me up baby!!

For every scene in which The Ram moans into an empty shot glass about how he’s alone in the world, there’s a follow-up where he’s running a razor blade over his face.

If it wasn’t for the staple gun to the forehead I don’t think I could have suffered through this movie.

Sure the acting is great, but it’s depressing as hell.

Don’t even get me started on the bullshit Sopranos ending.

I’ll give it 3.5 anti-depressants out of 5.