Mr. Suave: This is a silly movie. From the inspiration (Gerardo’s song “Rico Suave”) to the premise (Rico Suave is sort of a Latino Austin Powers who can attract the ladies but then sends them screaming in terror as soon as things get intimate) to the ending (you’ll just have to watch the movie, but look out for midgets), this film is bursting with ludicrous amounts of sheer absurdity. There were times when I was laughing out loud. Definitely recommended if you can get your hands on a copy.
Category Archives: movie reviews
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Posted by melydia on July 18, 2005
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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: What a strange movie. I can’t decide how to feel about it. For those of you who haven’t been paying attention for the last few decades: Willy Wonka is the reclusive owner of a famous candy company who invites five children from around the world to tour his factory. With the exception of sweet Charlie Bucket, the children are little monsters who ultimately get what’s coming to them (this is a Roald Dahl story, after all). Each time a child leaves the group, the Oompa Loompas do a little song and dance. These performances were clever and quite entertaining but I had trouble understanding a lot of the lyrics.
Wonka is portrayed as an insecure, socially inept child in a man’s body (as opposed to a grown man reliving his childhood). The awkward moments are abundant as Wonka interacts with the first people since closing his factory years before, which causes him to have flashbacks to his unhappy childhood. Frankly, I got a little tired of feeling embarrassed for him all the time. Pity isn’t funny to me.
The children were all wonderful with one bizarre exception: Augustus Gloop often looked computer-generated, most notably in his interview with the reporters. Perhaps he was just wearing too much makeup. The sets and costumes were amazing, but that’s to be expected. Overall, it was a pretty good movie, I guess. Just not one I really want to watch again.
War of the Worlds
Posted by melydia on July 4, 2005
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War of the Worlds: If you’re familiar with the book, you know the storyline is ultimately pretty pointless, but the fun is in all the carnage along the way. I laughed inappropriately (but pretty hard nonetheless) at the beginning as the alien rays turned people into Kleenex, but there was plenty of serious tension later, even to the point of having to remind myself that Spielberg doesn’t kill children.
If you like your violence with a message, I would advise against this one. But if you can enjoy a bunch of stuff blowing up for the sake of stuff blowing up, go for it. I enjoyed it, even though every time I watch one of these disaster-type flicks I am reminded that if it happened in real life I would be one of the first to go. A building would fall on me during the first wave of tremors/attacks/storms, or maybe a car would land on my head. Either way, I’m a goner.
Napoleon Dynamite
Posted by melydia on July 3, 2005
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Napoleon Dynamite: I finally understand the polarized response to this movie. Either you get it or you don’t. There are no jokes, and very little plot – the humor comes in the ridiculous behavior of the characters, in my case because they were all just so gosh darned familiar. From the clothes to the hobbies to the speech patterns, Napoleon and his cohorts are the embodiment of all the obliviously awkward traits of all the weirdos I’ve ever known. And yet I found myself rooting for them. Laughing at them, but rooting for them all the same.
A bit of trivia for y’all: when I was 16, I wore the exact same dress as Trisha wears to the dance, except mine was navy blue. About made me fall out of my chair. I’ve been told adamantly that this story is supposed to take place in modern day but with the exception of a 1999 Backstreet Boys song, this movie has early 90s written all over it.
Give this movie a shot. You’ll either love it or wonder what all the fuss is about. I personally thought it was awesome. Either way, this movie is the birthplace of several catchphrases which show up on t-shirts and elsewhere, so if nothing else you’ll be in on the joke.
Batman Begins
Posted by melydia on June 28, 2005
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Batman Begins: Believe it or not, I wish I’d watched this one on a smaller screen. I understand the shaky-cam and quick cutaways were meant to portray the confusion and urgency of the scene, but I quickly tire of the subsequent vertigo. I’m sure it would have been fine on, say, a television screen. Either way, that’s my biggest complaint. No, really. Though this would not be a good first Batman movie for someone totally unfamiliar with the Caped Crusader, it remains an excellent film for anybody else. I liked how the line between hero and villain sort of blurred in tactics and motivations. I liked how the bad guys had more realistic weapons (hallucinogenic drugs, the effects of which were mind-blowing) and motives (complex fanaticism rather than merely being “insane” or “evil”) than a lot of other comic book adaptations. I liked the relationship between Bruce Wayne and the DA. I liked the updated equipment, the scientific explanations, and the real-world environment of the non-NYC Gotham City. I liked all the actors, especially the prettyboy Scarecrow and Gary Oldman’s spot-on Detective Gordon. The ending left me wondering if it was meant as a nod to Tim Burton or if they are planning on making a rather repetitive sequel, but I have my bets on the former. Too bad they couldn’t get Danny Elfman’s theme for this one – it would have been perfect. In short, I definitely recommend this film.
Battle Royale
Posted by melydia on June 19, 2005
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Battle Royale: The Running Man meets Lord of the Flies. Banned from sale in the United States, this Japanese film tells of a society where youth violence has gotten so out of control that the adults now fear their children. In response, the government has instituted an annual Battle Royale, in which a class is sent to a deserted island with few provisions and a smattering of weapons, killing each other until only one remains: the winner, the lone child to who gets to go home. If more than one remain at the end of three days, the collars around their necks will explode, killing everyone. Basically it’s two hours of children killing children, but I’m still not entirely clear why it was banned here. I liked it for the same reasons I liked Lord of the Flies, but I honestly don’t have any strong feelings about it either way. Maybe I’m just too desensitized.
Revenge of the Sith
Posted by melydia on June 6, 2005
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Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith: The same execrable dialogue and nonstop action of the first two prequels, but with a little more interest since I was curious how the wildly different worlds of the prequels and the original trilogy fit together. That connection, covered largely in the final fifteen minutes of the film, was done fairly well but still left quite a few loose ends and contradictions. But that’s par for the course in this movie – much of Anakin’s transition to the Dark Side was contradictory and unprompted. I was also baffled by the fact that the Jedi Council, whose skills border on telepathy, failed to notice such corruption in their very ranks.
The acting was almost uniformly bland, with one shining exception: Ewan McGregor. Not only did he make the stilted dialogue sound almost natural, he alone appeared to belong in the same universe as the original trilogy. I think he kept a Ouija board in his trailer to channel Sir Alec Guinness.
There was quite a bit of action in this one – too much, really. The lightsaber fights were amazing but so frequent they got a bit tedious. I guess I’m supposed to say something about the special effects, but when everything is computer generated it ceases to be very impressive. There were several scenes, both action-packed and otherwise, that seemed to do nothing but show off the pretty scenery and could definitely have been cut.
It wasn’t a horrible movie but “best of the prequels” isn’t very high praise either. I wish they had done Episodes 7-9 instead, because all these films did was shrink the Star Wars universe with unlikely connections. I didn’t like the Anakin/C3PO connection of Phantom Menace or the Boba Fett/stormtrooper connection of Attack of the Clones, and I don’t like the Yoda/Chewbacca connection of Revenge of the Sith. It’s gratuitous fan-pleasing and messes up the storyline. Still, I’m glad I saw this movie because, well, it’s Star Wars. Now hopefully it can all be put to rest and the fans can go back to their RPGs and fanfics without worrying about George Lucas messing everything up again.
Assorted Movie Reviews
Posted by melydia on May 17, 2005
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I had a lot of downtime during a recent trip for work and managed to squeeze in several movies. These were watched over the course of a 24-hour workday on a 12″ laptop with tinny speakers and often in 15-minute spurts, so my movie viewing experience may not have been the same had I watched them straight through while lounging on my couch.
Ray: Jamie Foxx was excellent and the music was lovely, but I don’t think this is one I would watch again. Most biopics, despite often revealing some less-than-complimentary traits, tend to ultimately show their subjects in a favorable light. I came away from this one wondering if Ray Charles really was as self-absorbed and uncaring as this film portrayed him.
Super Troopers: Screwball state troopers against grouchy local cops in the battle for jurisdiction. I’d been meaning to see this one for a long time. I was not disappointed. It had a lot of crude and physical humor, but it did not rely on the embarrassment of its characters for the joke (like, say, most Ben Stiller movies). It was more akin to the first Police Academy or Ghostbusters, except not remotely appropriate for children. Very funny. I’m definitely going to watch this one again.
I, Robot: Will Smith plays the same cop he’s played a hundred times, only this one is trying to figure out whether or not robots are killing people, thus breaking the Three Laws of Robotics. I read the book ages ago and my memory of it is quite vague, but I did not recognize any of this aside from a couple names and the Three Laws. And you know, that’s fine. The story was fun, I couldn’t predict the ending too far in advance, and the effects (especially the robots themselves) were awesome. There was one random bit that baffled me: why was Lake Michigan dried up? It didn’t seem to have anything to do with the plot. Maybe they just wanted to add something to the backdrop to further demonstrate that this was supposed to happen in the future – it was pretty neat-looking, after all.
King Arthur: I like interpretations of the Arthurian legend. As it is a legend (as opposed to a novel or well-documented historical event), I don’t believe there is one true version. So my complaints about this movie have nothing to do with its supposed deviation from the story of Arthur and his knights of the round table. Here Arthur is a Roman fighting the Saxons in Britain one last time before he and his knights get to go home. This film was slow and often confusing. People spoke like they were spouting poetry instead of dialogue (which is okay to a point but this killed the realism) and too many actions were completely unmotivated. For instance, Arthur finds Guinevere because he randomly decides to bust into a building on somebody else’s property. What? Oh well, if you like insanely long battle sequences, neat costumes, and pretty scenery, you’ll like this one.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Posted by melydia on April 17, 2005
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The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: When I first saw the preview, I (and judging from the murmurs around me, most others in the theater) thought it was a joke movie, like somebody was going to bust in and sell us some car insurance or remind us to turn off our cell phones. The idea is that several famous literary characters (Allan Quatermain, The Invisible Man, Jekyll and Hyde, Mina Harker, Dorian Gray, Tom Sawyer, and Captain Nemo) are recruited into a league to stop a world war (from starting earlier than it would anyway, I suppose, since this takes place in the late 1800s). See, even the premise sounds absurd, so you can understand my skepticism. But no, it was a real film, and it garnered some horrendous reviews.
Not without reason, of course. The plot holes are extensive. The historical and literary inaccuracies are legion. The characters are beautifully attired but watered-down, without enough screentime to become fully fleshed. The plot is nothing special either – just a bunch of brilliant special effects shots (I especially enjoyed the building on fire that wasn’t on fire) strung together with little bits of dialogue trying very hard to have depth.
Good thing I don’t need my adventure films to have much depth. In the end, this was a fun bit of fluff. I laughed out loud in a couple occasions and discovered a sudden desire to go back and read all the source material to see exactly which canon traits were indeed ignored (for the life of me, I can’t remember if Dracula was vulnerable to sunlight or if that part of the vampire legend came later). While I will probably never watch it again, it was a nice diversion on a Saturday night.