Duplicity

This movie sucked! Either this is one of those movies that only makes sense after the movie ends, or there was no point to the story what so ever! I'll go with the latter. After the first ten minutes of this movie, I was lost! I get that both Clive Owen and Julia Roberts are secret agents, but they're going after a hair solution? Really? I got really tired of the director finishing a scene, put the ending in a box, and watch it escape the screen. It's like he was photoshopping the movie. Try photoshopping a story! Is it me or does Julia Roberts disengage from the person she's talking to, and tries not to stare at the camera? As for Paul Giamatti, while I loved him in Private Parts, Cinderella Man, and Man on the Moon, my wife mentioned that he tends to overact in most of his movies. I didn't think so until I saw this piece of garbage. I wish I could comment more about this film, however, I dozed off towards the end of the movie. If you haven't slept well, go check this out! If you're a Julia Roberts fan and must see everything she does, trust me, avoid this at all cost.

Big Daddy

I can't believe this movie is ten years old! It feels like it was yesterday when I went to Cinemark in Plano to watch this movie. I remember how funny it was and how pissed I got when the power in the theater went off and we were given passes to catch the movie at a later time. I finally saw the rest of the movie back then, and I thought the movie was gold! Ten years later, my wife and I selected it as the movie of the night for us. I got to tell you, the film still holds up!

Big Daddy taught us a few things that we can carry with us. McDonalds stops serving breakfast after 10:30 am, spiking can goods in the supermarket can save you half off the price, and if you ever need to make fun of a place, Hooters is there for you! Adam Sandler was great as Sonny Koufax, a bright guy who's life is a mess, but he chooses to cover it up with newspapers. While I actually enjoyed Cole and Dylan Sprouce's performance as Julian, let me go on record and say what I think every other father of two girls wants to say: I hate Zack and Cody! I liked the pace of the movie as the story never stalled for me. Definately, this movie is one of Sandler's best!

Obsessed

As the second part of our Netflix double feature, we checked out Obsessed. After watching The Proposal last night, I wasn't sure if Obsessed could complete a successful double feature. This movie blew me away!

This movie reminded me of three different films, Disclosure, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, and Fatal Attraction. What I liked most was that the guy, who is a victim in this movie, didn't have sex with the crazy bitch. In Disclosure, Michael Douglas did have sex with Demi Moore, and in Fatal Attraction, Michael Douglas had sex with Glenn Close. In this movie, Idris Elba plays a business man named Derek Charles, who is targeted by an office temp named Lisa Sheridan, played by Ali Larter. As Derek's life spins out of control, by no fault of his own, his wife, Sharon, played by Beyonce', has a hard time believing that Derek was faithful, since she used to be his secretary at his office who he hooked up with. The farther Derek and Sharon grow apart, the crazier Lisa gets.

It's been a while since I've seen a thriller where I was on the edge of my seat. This movie is a must rent.

The Proposal

In my first DVD rental from Netflix, Melissa and I got the Sandra Bullock movie, The Proposal. After the crap that we watched last night, my expectations were low! Lucky for us, this movie helped!

Melissa felt that Sandra Bullock was miscast in the role of a bitchy boss, feeling that it didn't fit her. I, however, thought she did a remarkable job! I thought the relationship with Andrew Paxton (Ryan Reynolds) character was great. It was nice to see how, in the beginning, she had control in the relationship and how towards the end, she completely lost it. Betty White is in the movie as Andrew's 90 year old grandmother, which led me to say, "She's in everything these days!" Either way, I loved her character.

After the middle of the movie, I started drawing comparisons to an earlier Sandra Bullock movie, While You Were Sleeping. I saw a few similarities, but it didn't detour my opinion of the movie. All in all, it's a good rental.

If Love Hadn't Left Me Lonely

Normally, I would start off with a long, huge backstory into how I ended up watching a certain movie. Quite frankley, this movie is so bad that the backstory is completly useless. In reviewing a bad movie, the interesting part is how you rip it apart. So here goes!

In almost nine minutes of the movie, the lead character (Mr. French) falls head over heels for a show dancer (not stripper) Lexie (Cindy Herron). From there, the cheesiness begins. How the phrase, "You must be exhausted because you've been running through my mind" didn't make it's way into the movie, I'll never know. We find out that Lexie is going through a divorce and can't get a foothold on her situation because her.....soon to be ex-husband's mother is demanding that she give her daughter over to her son. That's right, the mother of the soon to be ex-husband is making demands that apparently handicaps Lexie's situation. *Just a side note, we never see the over-bearing mother in the movie, which would have been a huge plus! Anyway, Mr. French writes a song about Lexie and then tries to get back into the music business by trying to be old-fashioned with his music. While Mr. French runs into some opposition into selling his music, Lexie, who had played hard to get throughout the first part, is now comfortable with him enough to sleep with him. Ten seconds later, she's back with her husband. I always hate it when ten seconds in a movie goes by and in the story it's been 3 weeks. I got a kick how they were going to promote a huge concert featuring old music and new music together. I was thinking the event would take place in a huge stadium or concert setting, instead we get a stage that the Addison Improv can squash. I suppose putting Ice-T and Gary Busey in the movie tried to lend some credibillity to the movie, while in reality, it didn't! Of course the biggest WTF moment for me was when David Alan Grier, who wasn't even in the movie, shows up in the credits. Melissa said, "Where was David Alan Grier?" One second later, he shows up being interviewed about Mr. French's music.

The ongoing joke between Melissa and I was we orginally thought this was a lifetime movie, due to the pauses in the movie that would signal a commerical interruption. Then we heard the F-word, and that put that to rest. In some scenes you couldn't hear Mr. French talking, while the person he was talking had a booming voice. From WTF moments to Mr. French fighting like William Shatner's Captain Kirk to noticing that the couch from Mr. French's house was the same couch in the studio, this movie was horrible!

Race to Witch Mountain

During my first day of retirement (or between jobs), the wife and I decided that whatever movie I grab at Blockbuster tonight, it had to be kid friendly. After going around the store a few times, I had five titles in my hand to choose from. I called Melissa and read off the titles, and we all agreed to watch Race to Witch Mountain.

After watching The Rock vs. Space Invaders.....I mean, Race to Witch Mountain, I came away with a few thoughts on the movie. For someone who has been taken hostage by aliens, Jack Bruno (Dwayne Johnson) really seemed to go along just fine with everything. The special effects looked cheaply made (possibly feeling that if Disney doesn't shell out a lot for the movie, they can keep the cost of the movie down and possibly make a profit on the movie). The movie did seem predictable for me, for instance, knowing that when a car is on a train track, it's only a matter of time before a train starts coming towards the car.

The story is very kid friendly. Both of my kids were able to sit through the movie and stay somewhat interested it. At the end of the day, if your kids watch this movie, it shouldn't warp their little minds and wish they had a power rifle and a tower to shoot from!

Mr. Deeds

As part of a double header for me one night, feeling in a light-hearted mood, I put on Mr. Deeds. Adam Sandler has really made of career of playing the soft spoken, down to earth guy, and Mr. Deeds is just another one of those movies.

Adam Sandler plays Longfellow Deeds, who finds out that his uncle left him 40 billion dollars after his death. Along the way he meets the woman of his dreams, who apparently isn't what she protrays to be. The movie keeps a pretty good pace to itself and plays out well for a typical Sandler movie.