Huge Disappointment: The Five-Year Engagement
Jiminy Cricket a script by Jason Segel as opportunistic as it is thin and lazy. Shows some sparks early and goes to an interesting place with manchildren Brian Posehn and Chris Parnell, mocking/celebrating modern DIY faux-outdoorsyness before deciding to leave them as pancake-flat caricatures. Absolutely arbitrary shit keeps the plot slugging along and then the film wraps up with a set-piece that looks more like a kooky music video/Kia advertisment with apropos indie soundtrack. Allison Brie is saddled with the worst British accent since..........my wife's? And at least she uses hers to ruin Emma Watson.
Honorable Mention: Friends With Kids
Runner-Up: Bachelorette - Was this script was sitting in someone's bottom desk drawer for five years before Bridesmaids hit the jackpot, OR did it get typed up immediately after? Kristen Dunst and Lizzy Caplan almost salvage the effort with their admirable commitment to irredeemable, sociopathic behavior.
10. Cabin in the Woods
Between this and The Avengers, Joss Whedon is an MVP for bringing a little levity back to our BATTLESHIP (no italics for you!) age.
9. Pitch Perfect
Fat Amy.
8. Bernie
Jack Black is an island unto himself and the townspeople tell their story with as much down-home charm and oddness as possible. Linklater makes an unpredictable, oddly comforting film about a good man driven to murder, a parable perhaps about the way a hateful, black hole of a person can drag down even the best along with her. Redemption is impossible for some, and impossible to lose for others.
7. To Rome With Love
I might like minor Allen better than major?
6. Wreck-it-Ralph
Vocal ensemble is perfect, the arcade environment crafted with love, not pandering a la Big Bang like I'd feared.
5. Safety Not Guaranteed
Heartfelt, adorable, NW shaggy-dog tale that sticks to your ribs with its willingness to be sincere and dare.
4. Save the Date
This micro-genre of twenty-something angst is perhaps the most justifiably maligned. This is the rare, alchemical success that will spawn such drivel as Lola Verus (you either!) Lord preserve us. And Christ, someone get Martin Starr more work.
3. Sleepwalk with Me
I have a soft spot from the fact that I've met and conversed with the man, and he is just as earnest and likable as his work suggests. His description of the early stages of love is so succinct, spot-on and funny that I could have watched a whole romantic comedy of him in that mode. But he takes us down a darker, more pathetic road of floundering, compromising, half-assing it, that in our age is brave and honest and relatable.
2. Silver Linings Playbook
I am still easy to manipulate, if you play the beats right.1. Moonrise Kingdom
Far and away the best. Everything in its right place.
6 comments:
I also liked 21 Jump Street and Seven Psychopaths.
Wow, four of those I pretty much hate, and I'm pretty wishy-washy on Cabin in the Woods. But plus-one on minor Allen being so much better than major Allen, Hannah and Her Sisters excepted.
But yeah, 21 Jump Street is pretty awesome; Seven Psychopaths is very cool as well. And I'll throw out some big love to Ted, and add that there's a movie coming out in...March or so (it'll be on Video On Demand in addition to limited release) called Somebody Up There Likes Me that is so, so, so funny, and pretty great besides that.
haha, if I could sit you down and force my album list upon you, I could double that hatred up to 8/10 easily. But the people demand specifics! Your opinion carries weight!
There were a bunch I missed this year that I'm hoping to catch up, including those you both mentioned and stuff like GOON. Anything else not to be missed, in the comedy department? Seemed like sort of a thin year. Did you see CASA DE MI PADRE? I got halfway through and gave up. Worth finishing?
I LOVE Casa de Mi Padre, but if you're not onboard halfway through, I can't imagine anything afterwards will endear itself. Goon is okay, largely saved by the great Sean William Scott.
Looking at the comedies I saw last year that haven't been mentioned, I'd throw some love to Your Sister's Sister until the final fifteen minutes, which make for a total fart of an ending...oh, Klown! You ALL need to see Klown! It's on Netflix Instant, and it's the most batshit, no-holds-barred comedy I've seen in years. It's absurdly great.
ParaNorman takes a turn towards the sentimental towards the end, but the first two-thirds are very funny.
I'm sure it's not only my sick sense of humor that laughed like crazy at Killer Joe, but it couldn't have hurt.
Anyway, as for your list, I'll go through this in ascending order of anger. I suppose it'd be wrong to say I totally HATE Safety Not Guaranteed, but it's really, really lacking in goodness and that ending is unforgivably dumb.
Similarly, I don't TOTALLY hate Pitch Perfect, but I found it so actively hateful in its homophobia, racism, and, for lack of a better word, bitchiness that I really resented the experience.
I do really, deeply dislike Wreck-it Ralph for insisting that the best thing to do with a bunch of assholes who dislike you for no reason is to try to please them.
And I absolutely, with every fiber of my being, despise everything about Sleepwalk with Me, a film made by a man so desperate to be liked that he couldn't offer up a shred of the investigation into oneself from which most art benefits, but ALL autobiographical work must contain. At every turn, he puts up walls when he should be tearing them down, allowing us to get close enough to hear his "charming" "wit," but not close enough to actually be a person worth investigating, never mind what makes someone continue to tell this totally mundane, bland-as-hell story about a guy with absolutely no interesting traits aside from his medical condition in THREE different mediums over FOUR years. Where you see an investigation of a half-assing culture, I see a direct product of it. It's truly awful.
wow that is a super interesting take on Sleepwalking. I viewed it more as A Portrait of the Twenty-Something American Male as a Self-Centered Shit kind of thing. I am fairly certain he's of the self-despising, Louis C.K. and Michael Ian Black camp, just less blatantly; self-loathing is implied again and again. He knows he was a worthless man, but it also gave him a career. Just like Louie shows on his ice cream-eating, jerking off in motels, nap pre-show ritual when he's on the road. It definitely was not self-aggrandizing.
If you have any opinions to share, these are the other 'comedies' I have on my list to check out. ANy winners?:
Smashed
This is 40
The Campaign
The Watch (I feel like I know the answer there. Just don't want it to be true.)
The Guilt Trip
Wanderlust
Celeste & Jesse Forever
Thanks!
This is 40 would actually be worse than Sleepwalk with Me if it weren't for Albert Brooks ruling everything, The Guilt Trip is skirting the edge of reprehensible, and Celeste and Jesse is much better than I expected, and I'd say worth seeing. Didn't see the others, but those I trust are very keen on Smashed and, believe it or not, The Watch.
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