Cap'n Howdy's Best of 2013: The World's End

 I mentioned somewhere in the "middle" recap that This is the End was probably the funniest comedy I'd seen in 2013, but The World's End is the smartest. By a mile. The final chapter in Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's loosely connected "Cornetto Trilogy" may not be as consistently hilarious as Shaun of the Dead or as audaciously violent as Hot Fuzz - which is not to say it isn't still frequent with the belly laughs and contains some serious carnage - but it's easily the best thought out of the three, the most thought provoking in its themes, and the most heart felt in its relationships. If, for some reason, you haven't made The World's End a "blind buy" on DVD and Blu-Ray (I know you didn't see it theatrically, because the numbers bear that out), do it right now. I'm going to spoil the ever loving hell out of The World's End, and I'd rather you see it without knowing where the movie is going.

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 I'm Warning You! SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

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 Back? Wasn't that great? Yes, it was. If you just went ahead and skipped to the next paragraph, shame on you. I told you to watch it and you didn't, and now you're just going to have to see it knowing everything. But because you cheated, you'll be able to watch The World's End armed with some of the cleverly hidden easter eggs and thematic set-ups and payoffs that come from seeing it more than once. And you'll be seeing it more than once, cheater.

Okay, so here's a quick recap for the cheater: Gary King (Simon Pegg) is one of those guys who never quite got over the "glory days" of high school. In fact, his adult life is so underwhelming that the cajoles his old friends Oliver "O-Man" Chamberlain (Martin Freeman), Steven Prince (Paddy Considine), Peter Page (Eddie Marsdan), an Andy Knightley (Nick Frost) to join him in reliving a pub crawl they started, but never finished: The Golden Mile in their hometown of Newton Haven. The guys don't want to do it, but some stretching of the truth gets them all back in "The Beast" (Gary's car from high school), and they find themselves being dragged along by the ne'er do well as they try to finish a pint at The First Post, The Old Familiar, The Famous Cock, The Cross Hands, The Good Companions, The Trusty Servant, The Two-Headed Dog, The Mermaid, The Beehive, The King's Head, The Hole in the Wall, and finally, The World's End. But Newton Haven isn't the way they remembered it, at all. With only Oliver's sister Sam (Rosamund Pike) to help them, but guys are in for a long night, one they'll be lucky to survive, let alone drink through.

There are many place I could start with The World's End, but let's deal with the science fiction element that makes it part of the "Cornetto Trilogy" (Zombie movie, Cop Movie, Science Fiction Movie). I had the good fortune of seeing The World's End with a friend of mine who didn't know anything beyond the Golden Mile premise, so when the film takes a turn while Gary's in the bathroom, it caught him completely off guard. And that turn? Well, it's robots.

  Robots. Yep, getting that right out there, even though the replicants (?) don't like being called "robots," and the aliens behind the machines replacing humans in Newton Haven have (arguably) the most peaceful take-over planned in all of science fiction film. But it's not to be, of course, because humanity has a right to want not to be civilized in the galactic picture. In that way, one could argue that The World's End is a middle finger from mankind to the end of The Day the Earth Stood Still, with roughly the consequences that Klaatu promised as a result. It is, in essence, the pawns rebelling against a benevolent world-creator (well, mostly benevolent - all of the characters replaced by robots are fertilizer, which seems a little harsh) to the point that the creator (literally) says "Oh, fuck it."

 What's so very impressive about The World's End is how well structured Wright and Pegg's screenplay is. Like Shaun of the Dead, they lay out the entire story in the prologue, and pack in a dozen other small details that are referenced so quickly you wouldn't be faulted for missing them the first time around. On top of that, not only do all of the names and signs of the bar hint at what's going to happen inside (and have corresponding numbers to the phases of the Golden Mile hidden somewhere), they also reference, in varying ways, the twelve steps of recovery that we don't exactly know Gary is going through until near the end of the film. The last one isn't really covered in the "Signs and Omens" extras on the disc, which will help you if you don't have time to watch The World's End three more times this weekend, but came from another friend of mine who was in a similar situation to Gary.

 And, oh yeah, it's very funny. Put aside the densely layered script, the folding back on itself, the metaphysical subtext of humanity in the universe, and you still have a laugh out loud comedy. I love that Frost and Pegg switched character types for The World's End: Frost the one who has it together and doesn't trust Pegg, the perpetual loser who pushes his likability to the very limits over and over again. If the "Three Musketeers" scene in the trailer made you chuckle, wait until you see how they alter the phrase "rob Peter to pay Paul" and the shit-eating grin that Gary closes the scene with.

 However, it's not Pegg or Frost, or even Freeman who walks away the VIP - it's Paddy Considine. Admittedly, I'd seen less of him than Freeman, Marsdan, Pegg, Frost, and even Rosamund Pike, but he has some of the best lines, many of the best reactions, and ends up with the most to do in the story. The World's End is centrally about the fractured relationship between Gary and Andy, and the event that drove them apart, but Steven's longtime crush on Sam is the heart of the movie. I keeps Andy and Gary alive in the end, and Steven is the final vote that saves humanity (or dooms them, depending on your reading of things).

 That, in turn, brings us to the ending, which turns The World's End from science fiction film to my second favorite sub-genre (behind anthologies): Post-Apocalyptic Cinema. This seems to be a point of contention for some people, because it's such an abrupt left turn for the movie, but thematically it fits perfectly with what everybody in the story wants. Gary gets the gang back, Andy's with his family, Steven and Sam are together, Robot Oliver is basically the same (with a Wilson-esque head), and Robot Peter is pretty much where he started. Yes, humanity is without technology, and communication across long distances is almost impossible (until Kevin Costner comes to the rescue, we can assume), but they seem happy. Humanity continues, on their own terms.

 I'd like to mention that while I wasn't impressed with the characters in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, the staging and filming of fight choreography that Wright honed in making that film pay off in spades during The World's End. The fight scenes (and there are a few) are dynamic, with fluid camera work that manages to shift from one character to the next without ever losing a sense of geography in the (basically identical) pubs. The poor robots and their blue blood (?) are torn asunder, bashed, smashed, cracked, and beaten to pieces repeatedly, and Wright covers it all in a way that might not have been possible had he not made Scott Pilgrim. So bully for him.

 Even though we're neck deep in spoiler territory, I'm not going to tell our cheaters about the surprise characters in the film. I will say that in keeping with the tradition started in Hot Fuzz, there's another James Bond in the film, but I won't say who, nor will I tell you where the other cast members from earlier "Cornetto" entries appear, although most of them do. The World's End, of the three films, benefits the most from re-watching, and is an easy call to put in when you have friends over. Like Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, it didn't light the box office up, which is a shame, but since I gave Scott Pilgrim fans so much grief for saying the same thing, I won't lament it. Let's hope it has a long life on home video, just as its predecessors have. King Gary would want it that way.

Blogorium Review: Star Trek - Into Darkness

 There's an inconvenient truth I find myself dealing with when it comes to JJ Abrams' Star Trek movies - they are not, never were, and never will be made with Star Trek fans in mind. While the degree of "paying original fans lip service" isn't anywhere as heinous or calculating as, say the Michael Bay / Platinum Dunes model, when I hear Abrams or screenwriters Damon Lindelof (Lost) Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci (the Transformers trilogy) say that Star Trek: Into Darkness is a "love letter to Star Trek fans,"* I know this not to be true.

 And that's okay: the 2009 re-whatever you want to call Star Trek was a breath of fresh air to a series that choked to death with the one-two punch of Nemesis and Enterprise. It was a distillation of what the average audience knew about Star Trek into an action packed, thrill a minute hero's journey that borrowed heavily from Star Wars. To be honest, it was refreshing, even if it wasn't really Star Trek. Since Star Trek is probably never going to be "Star Trek" again, I was happy enough with what they'd come up with: the adventures of an "alternate universe" original crew and Leonard Nimoy along for the ride, as needed.

 I bring this up because it puts me in a strange predicament with Star Trek: Into Darkness, because when people ask me what I thought, my immediate answer is "it's pretty good." Not great, not awful, but somewhere in the high middle range. I don't think repeat viewings are going to change how I feel about the movie, because what I like about the movie (most of it) is seriously off-set by what I really, REALLY didn't like (three or four scenes).

 The problem is that what would be an otherwise crackerjack adventure with the new crew of the Enterprise (on the cusp of their "five year mission") is undermined by trying to insert a very specific kind of fan service in exactly the wrong way. So if you aren't aware of the worst kept secret in the history of Abrams' misdirection, just stop right here. Don't watch any old Trek, and especially don't watch "Space Seed" or Star Trek II. There be spoilers in these here waters, and I won't be treading lightly beyond this point.

*** SERIOUSLY, IF YOU HAVEN'T MANAGED TO FIND OUT WHO BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH IS PLAYING YET, DO NOT CONTINUE READING***

 Okay. you were warned, so let's get into the meat of the review. Rather than bitching like a Star Trek fanboy, something I've already demonstrated is pointless when dealing with post-2009 Trek films, I'll actually begin with what I really liked, because there's a lot to like.

 For one, the fact that Abrams, Kurtzman, Orci, and Lindelof did inject some political commentary into the film and in a way that's consistent with how the reboot happened, story-wise. So Nero came back from the future, destroyed most of Starfleet, destroyed Vulcan, and nearly got Earth too. Enter Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller), who is much more interested in defending Earth from any threats, present or future. He's even willing to go proactive, both in investing in weapons research and even pre-emptive war mongering, if need be. So he tracks down the Botany Bay and revives Khan (Cumberbatch), and uses his superior intellect to create better ships, better weapons, and to plant the seeds for war with the Klingons. Marcus doesn't trust the Klingons, so better to strike first than be caught with our pants down like when Nero arrived.

 Right away they've done two very interesting things with the Star Trek mythos that make the most out of a "new" history: 1) Starfleet is a conflicted organization unsure of its place in the universe, and cooler heads are clearly not prevailing. It's a nice parallel to the post-9/11 mindset, and lest ye think I'm straining to reach that one, the film ends with a title card saluting our soldiers for the last twelve years. It never feels heavy handed or too obvious because it's a logical extension of what happened in the last movie. Rather than just move on, some of the upper echelon in Starfleet are understandably concerned about this happening again.

 The second is, if you're willing to just put Space Seed aside, that they re-created Khan. They can go in any direction with him because his purpose has changed in this alternate universe. Like the new yet somewhat familiar relationships that Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, et al are forging, we're no longer burdened by the Khan who tried to take the Enterprise or who ended up on Ceti Alpha V only to escape and die trying to take his revenge on Admiral Kirk. It doesn't have to happen that way. He's basically a new character who serves a different role.

 Considering that the Kirk / Spock dynamic is still evolving and that Scotty has a character arc we've never really seen from the Chief Engineer before in Into Darkness, it isn't unreasonable to just take Khan and roll with him in ways we wouldn't expect. And, to some degree, they do. It's unexpected to see Kirk and Khan team up to stop Admiral Marcus and the USS Vengeance (which looks a bit like the Enterprise D crossed with the Battlestar Galactica). There's some genuine misdirection about what Khan is doing and what he wants for the first half of the film, but because his name is so recognizable, even to non-Star Trek fans, the spectre of the past kept creeping into the film, and that's where Into Star Trek: Into Darkness lost me again and again.

 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is in all likelihood the film held in highest regard by Star Trek fans. It may not be the most successful (that belongs to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, or as non-Trek fans call it, "the one with the whales") but you're unlikely to find a fan of the series that doesn't love it. Wrath of Khan was both a blessing and a curse for the Star Trek film franchise: it proved that Trek didn't have to be glacially paced for average moviegoers (as The Motion Picture was) and that the original series could be mined for clever extensions of stories.

 The downside is that, with the exception of Star Trek IV - a movie with the cojones not to have villain but instead be about a space whale probe - every Trek movie that followed mistakenly tried to recreate the success of Khan. They're variations, to be sure, but the singular villain who takes on Kirk and company in order to do something potentially catastrophic to Starfleet / their home world / space and time / religion in general shows up in the good and the bad films to follow. The Borg Queen, Shinzon, Kruge, General Chang, and even Nero are essentially attempts to recreate Khan. While they work in different ways for their respective films, none of them come even close.

 Khan casts a long shadow over Star Trek, so if you're not going to just leave him alone in the reboot universe, the best possible thing to do is at least not remind viewers that you're cribbing mercilessly from Star Trek II, especially when you happen to be making your equivalent Star Trek II. But they did, and when it happens I'm afraid that it derails Into Darkness at points when I was really enjoying the story being told.

 So let's take three scenes, avoiding the shoe-horning of Carol Marcus (Alice Eve) into the story - she does a fine job with the limited character she has - into the story:

 1. The reveal that "John Harrison" is not actually some terrorist that Admiral Marcus sent Kirk to kill is handled, to put it mildly, badly. If it isn't evident that Cumberbatch is playing Khan when you walk in, watching him single-handedly take out a Klingon patrol and withstand a barrage of attacks from Kirk (while surrendering) should be the tip-off. It still makes sense that all of this happens because Kirk is understandably upset that "Harrison" killed Admiral Pike (Bruce Greenwood, whose presence will be sorely missed).

 When they finally have "Harrison" behind bars, Kirk and Spock interrogate him and he reveals that his name is Khan - something that means nothing to James Kirk. However, it's meant to be a BIG reveal for the audience, which is why the camera pulls in on Cumberbatch and then holds for what feels like ten seconds so the audience can gasp. It's purely a moment for the audience and not the characters, because there's no significance for them what this means. It also doesn't work because it's so transparently a moment of "look at who it is! It's KHAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!! you guys!"

 2. Worse still is a moment later in the film, one that desperately needed to be left on the cutting room floor. No matter how much I appreciate seeing Leonard Nimoy as Spock, when Zachary Quinto's Spock calls him on "New Vulcan" and puts it up on the viewscreen for everybody to see, what happens next is a belly flop. Nimoy is asked to skirt around an exposition dump, one that exists for no apparent reason, since what young Spock does next didn't require his older counterpart's experience at all. It's mostly a moment to remind audiences that Spock died saving the Enterprise in Star Trek II, and that Khan is very dangerous even though we're essentially dealing with a different version of the character. This brings us to...

 3. The "death" scene. I'm inclined to imagine what happened in the writer's room went something like this:

 "Hey, I've got an idea - let's do the 'radiation scene' in our movie, just like they did in Wrath of Khan!"

 "That's a great idea! It's poignant and will really drive home the relationship between Kirk and Spock. We'll have them argue for the entire movie, and then when one dies saving the ship, it'll crystallize what their friendship really means!"

 "How about this, you guys? What if, instead of Spock sacrificing himself, it's Kirk that does it? Then Kirk can tell Spock about being afraid of dying and what it means to be friends!"

 "That's great! The Trek fans will NEVER see that coming!!!"

 "I've got an even better idea! After Kirk dies, Spock can scream 'KHAAAAAAAAN!' And then he can chase him down and have a fist fight!"

 "Awesome!"

 "Whatever you guys are doing is great - but don't actually kill Kirk. Bring him back with Khan's blod or something like that - show that it brings a dead Tribble back to life or something stupid like that. I'm going to work on Star Wars - there has to be some big secret I can withhold to fuck with them for the next two years..."

 The "death scene" is in Star Trek: Into Darkness specifically to remind audiences of Wrath of Khan. There's no other reason for it, and forcing it into the story when it's abundantly clear that Kirk isn't going to stay dead is no better than crass manipulation of the very fandom they claim to be writing a "love letter" to. The "death" is meaningless, rendering the point of Kirk's sacrificing comparably pointless. The first film clearly established that you can trade in on the iconic imagery of Star Trek without interrupting the flow of the story, threadbare as it may be. One thing I'd never done until Into Darkness was laugh out loud when a major character died for the "needs of the many", but it's done in this film without ever earning the relationship between Kirk and Spock.

 Fortunately for Stark Trek: Into Darkness, the pace is so relentless that you just don't have much time to be bothered. Before you know it, we're off to the next setpiece (and an impressive one, at that, as the Vengeance crashes into Starfleet headquarters) and Khan, Spock, and eventually Uhura have an improbable but visually exciting fight.

 But don't let that lead you to believe that it didn't linger with me, to keep me from enjoying the film as a whole. While I really liked Scotty resigning over a moral disagreement with Kirk and Spock's rationale for choosing not to deal with death emotionally, or Cumberbatch in general as Khan, it's a nagging feeling that parts of the film didn't need to be there. There's enough happening in the story, from Kirk's abandonment issues to Admiral Marcus' misguided war-mongering that we didn't need to be reminded of another, arguably better Star Trek movie. And not just those of us who represent the "Trekker / Trekkie" contingent - the average audience is done a disservice because of the insistence to adhere to a storyline the writers and director aren't beholden to any more.

 I hope that wherever the third Star Trek film goes, it doesn't feel burdened to re-introduce things everybody already remembers, or if it does, that they can be integrated more consistently with the story. The five year mission begins at the end of Into Darkness, so let's see what Strange New Worlds are out there - there are plenty of great Star Trek movies we haven't already seen out there to be made...


* I must admit that I'm paraphrasing because I can't remember the actual article, but the general idea is the same.

Retro Review: The YAD Archives (Part Four)

 Preamble shamelessly copied from last week's post:

 Welcome back to another edition of the Blogorium's Retro Review. Today we're going to continue looking back at a series of reviews written for defunct online magazine You're All Doomed. Previously we took a look at reviews from 2005 and at the output of guest blogger Professor Murder. Turning the wayback machine a little further, let's take a look at a few more movies from 2004.

 Once again, a bit of a disclaimer: these reviews represent a proto-Cap'n Howdy and accordingly they don't look like what I write today. They're shorter, tend to make logical leaps and assume the audience will simply follow, and sometimes contain erroneous information because I was more interested in getting reactions out unspoiled rather than fact checking and researching before and during the writing process. I am, however, leaving them untouched in order to represent the original material.

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Shaun of the Dead: A Romantic Comedy. With Zombies (if you will)
4.5 stars out of 5

Shaun of the Dead is nearly perfect entertainment. Unless of course, you have a weak stomach or hate zombies. Then it's just very good. As I write this, it becomes very difficult to explain why SotD is so wonderful. Is it that every character is three dimensional? Is it the nods to Romero's "Dead" films? Is it the presence of the star of "Black Books"?

Why don't the ads do this movie justice?

This is a question I do feel I can address. See, the ads I saw on tv flew in the face of every great thing I'd heard about it. The jokes looked obvious and stupid, the "scares" were neither frightening nor interesting. Even the celebrity blurbs sounded cheesy (I'm sorry Peter Jackson, really I am, but Cabin Fever was not the best horror movie of 2003 or any other year.) So I went in with a grain of salt, expecting to be sadly disappointed in another over-hyped "indie gem." Imagine my shock when in the first five minutes I was laughing. Not chuckles, but outright laughter, which led to sustained belly aching laughs as things really got rolling. Even the scenes they show you on tv, like when Shaun and Ed are singing and the zombie joins in, are funny. Seriously. Yes, taken out of context, they look terrible. When you realize that Shaun and Ed are very drunk and may well be the only people in London that DON'T know the dead have risen... I don't know. It's hard to explain.

Needless to say, just go see it. I've already told everyone I know that it's fucking hilarious and they'll love it. And if you have an aversion to gore or "horror" movies, then you'll be just fine until they lock themselves in the pub. Really. The title of this review doesn't lie. If you do like zombies, then you ought've seen it already, so get out there and watch it!

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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
5 stars (out of 5)

Charlie Kaufman. Michel Gondry. Kate Winslet as good as she's been since Heavenly Creatures. Jim Carrey as good as he's ever been. Elijah Wood, Tom Wilkinson, Mark Ruffalo, David Cross. A true joy from beginning to end. Heart breaking and true. As good as they come, folks. Get it while it's fresh.

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Coffee and Cigarettes
3.5 (out of 5)


It isn't difficult to digest this movie. In fact, the title alone tells you everything that can be expected. Jim Jarmusch takes small groups of people (for most of the vingettes, two) and provides them cigarettes and, well, coffee. However, let me clarify something here. This isn't improvised, or at least, most of the conversations aren't. Too many little phrases and moments echo each other to be an accident (in particular, keep an eye out for musicians who double as doctors, nikolai tesla, and the shady nature of celebrity.) While Coffee and Cigarettes is slight, the segments are never too long to grate, and the really good ones make up for the lesser bits.

To wit:

-Cate Blanchett is a standout playing herself and her cousin, as are Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan in the same beat.

-The White Stripes discuss Jack's Tesla coil while Cinque Lee looks on (Lee, having appeared in an earlier segment with his sister Joie and Steve Buscemi)

-Iggy Pop and Tom Waits test each other and discover the diner's jukebox doesn't play either one of them.

-Bill Rice and Taylor Mead muse about the late seventies and champagne
and, in what's probably the most heard about segment, The Rza and The Gza offer Bill Murray helpful tips of losing that smokers cough (they also refer to him exclusively as "Bill Murray".)

See what I mean? There's really not a lot after the movie ends, but it's a pleasant hour and a half, and even if the Tom Waits / Iggy Pop scene goes on for far too long, and Roberto Benigni is almost impossible to understand in his scene with Steven Wright, well, it's entertaining enough. Jarmusch fans should enjoy it well enough, and most other people weren't planning on seeing it anyhow.
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I Heart Huckabees

4 Stars

I Heart Huckabees may be as difficult a review as I've ever had to write. This is the type of film best experienced, not unlike Being John Malkovich, Bubba Ho-Tep, or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. If any of those movies turned you off when you read it, I Heart Huckabees probably isn't for you. There's no exaggerating on their part when Fox Searchlight calls it "[an] existentialist comedy", because it's both a parody and the essence of existentialism on celluloid. The film wanders around and throws high concept after high concept at the audience with little concern to explain or wait for you to catch up. The cast is uniformly great, including surprisingly good turns from Mark Wahlberg and Jason Schwartzmann, both actors who've had their share of ups and downs in hollywood. Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin are endearing and baffling at the same time, and Jude Law is more than capable of taking the villain character and twisting him around. I'd be remiss to ignore Naomi Watts, who arguably has the most character arc in the movie, and she's totally believable all the way along.

That being said, no less than four people walked out of the movie when I went to see it, and a great deal more complained about it afterwards. This is a movie that isn't in the mood to wait for you, and a lot of people didn't understand why I was laughing so frequently and heartily. This is that type of movie, the sort that does horribly in theaters, but a small, devoted base keeps it alive on video and dvd. I hope. See it, but be warned, you may not like what you see.

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The Day Before Tomorrow

3 Stars


I had such high hopes for this movie. Much like Eight Legged Freaks, I expected to be able to turn my brain off and enjoy some harmless carnage for two hours, then get up and forget about it by the time I got to the car. But then, I forgot, this IS Roland Emmerich we're talking about. Big hearted sap sentimentalist appeal to your inner tree hugger Roland Emmerich. Don't get me wrong, it's fine to express yourself in film, whether you're attacking foreign policy under the guise of alien invasion (Indepence Day) or attracting crass commercial endorsements while destroying New York (Godzilla) or even pillaging William Wallace and placing him front and center in the Revolutionary War (The Patriot). And don't even get me started on Stargate. However, these were all handled with the assistance of Dean Devlin (yep, the asian guy in Real Genius. Seriously, check it out) so I assumed he had a hand in this.

Now, don't get me wrong, I enjoy Disaster flicks as much as any filmgoer, maybe more (I do own The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno own VHS, Laserdisc, and DVD) and The Day After Tomorrow delivers on the gratuitous destruction. By the end of the movie, most of America is covered in ice, and millions are implied dead. Plus we see the destruction of Los Angeles and New York City firsthand, and let me tell you, it is grand. Not since George Lucas got off his fat ass to make the prequels has one film abused computers so. Tornadoes, walls of water (remember the OTHER ending to the Abyss? Ever wondered what'd happen if they didn't buy Ed Harris' plea?) rain and snowstorms out the wazoo, characters introduced only to be killed within ten minutes (check out the mostly pointless scene in Tokyo) and hail. Oh, and for no good reason, wolves.

HOWEVER, the carnage is sullied by the persistent eco-friendly message spewed at every opportunity by Dennis Quaid and Ian Holm, plus a cop out ending and unnecessary jabs at the Bush Administration (see: Vice President that clearly is the decision maker, idiot president that dies instead of being evacuated, etc) When President Cheney gives his final address on The Weather Channel, he tells the survivors of the world that they must make radical changes about the way they think in order to move on as a society (not unlike Bill Pullman's address in Independence Day) when shortly before he was belittling the efforts and warnings of the tree hugging climatologists. The movie even goes so far as to recommend ways to curb the impending doom before it happens.

Thankfully, this makes up the beginning and the end, chiefly, and the global destruction is worth the price of being lectured. Plus Jake Gyllenhall found himself a movie to be in that makes money (wise move, guy, those Donnie fans won't be paying the bills forever). If you dig death on a worldwide scale, some mildly interesting action scenes, and more (implied) corpses than a romero flick, check this movie out, but bring some earplugs, and plan to leave 15 minutes early.

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Team America: World Police

3.5 Stars

AMERICA! FUCK YEAH!!

Team America offends the left and the right, and has been held up by both sides as a paragon of their beliefs. The National Review hails it for it's conservative sense of humour and merciless assault on the media elite, and Leftists use it to explain how America is perceived in the world.

Of course, they're both right. And wrong. Team America is an assault on all sides from the middle, people tired of being told they either side with George W. Bush or Michael Moore. (Personally, I think they're both full of shit.) It's also a crude, bombastic send up of overblown Hollywood Action movies, even lifting direct scenes and lines of dialogue from such hits as Top Gun and Armageddon. With puppets. There's even a clever Star Wars joke about halfway through the movie. The violence at first is ridiculous, but by the end of the film, Team America dispatches the Film Actors Guild in so many disgusting and violent ways that you forget you're watching puppets. Okay, you don't, but the novelty that it's one elaborate puppet show becomes irrelevant about halfway in.

The two best things Team America has going for it are Kim Jong IL as the film's chief villain (packing one hell of a surprise in the final moments) and the ridiculous, over the top songs, designed to copy and rip apart THE BIG SONG of action extravaganzas (one song in particular compares the loss of a girlfriend to how much Pearl Harbor sucked) and executed in a variety of outlandish ways. I'll even let Trey and Matt slide for reusing the Montage song from South Park.

I can't give it perfect marks, because it does miss the mark on some jokes, and like any action movie, things can drag a bit. But what works will leave your ass rolling in the aisles.

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Fahrenheit 9/11 / Celsius 41.11

3 stars (combined)

I'm gonna do this quickly, because I'm so fucking sick of these movies:

Both movies alter the same facts to make different points. Both pretend to hold reverence for their subjects and yet rip them new assholes mercilessly. Both don't care about the truth if it gets in the way of their narrative. Fahrenheit is at least a palatable movie, Celsius doesn't want to be a movie, but rather an attack piece. Moore likes to think he's making high art, and he's not, but whatever. Seriously, Celsius is funnier, if only because they try even less to disguise the attack on John Kerry (which is funny, since the cover promises to correct Moore's mistakes) At the end of it, neither one of them has a point, and Fahrenheit only wins out because it's ballsier in scope. Fuck politics, fuck attack ads, fuck these "movies".

Blogorium Review: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

 There's supposed to be such a thing as a "law of diminishing returns"; if a hit movie continues to produce sequels, they rarely if ever are as good as the first film. From the eleven-and-a-half Friday the 13ths to the Die Hard and Indiana Jones and Alien quadrilogies all the way back to the Thin Man films, it's a dicey proposition to keep going. Even in the rare cases where a Godfather Part II or Evil Dead 2 manage to match the original, the third film is imperfect. The James Bond films have lows that match their highs, and it tends to happen that the "diminishing returns" play out with each successive 007.

 I bring this up because this is the fourth Mission: Impossible film, and it's a toss up as to whether Ghost Protocol or M:I:III are the best entries yet. You could really argue either way, but it's strange to think that the third and fourth Mission: Impossible films are not only that much better than the first two films, but better than a lot of action cinema in the last decade. This comes from a fan of the Bourne films, the Jason Statham cycle (Transporter/Crank/Death Race/etc), the Sherlock Holmes buddy-cop reinvention, The Expendables, Rambo, Predators, and yes, Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace. While these are all fun in their own right, I'm still prepared to take Ghost Protocol over them right now.

 Call me a prisoner of the moment, but it's rare to see a film that doesn't mind being action packed and funny without one undermining the other. It's also nice to see that Brad Bird transferred the breathless action from The Incredibles to the real world, in what is (reported to be, anyway) as realistically as possible. Tom Cruise was dangling from the walls of the world's tallest building in Dubai, although how or why any insurance company would allow that is beyond me.

 Okay, we're four paragraphs in, so let's explain what happens in Ghost Protocol: Ethan Hunt (Cruise) has been cooling his heels in a Russian prison for a few years, following the death of his wife Julia (played by Michelle Monaghan in M:I:III), when he's released by IMF agents Jane Carter (Paula Patton) and Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg, returning from M:I:III). The agency assigns the team the mission of breaking into the Kremlin in order to find some evidence of the mysterious "Cobalt," a terrorist who may have a nuclear device. "Cobalt" has successfully been erasing all evidence of his existence, and when Hunt is caught in an explosion while trying to escape from the Kremlin, IMF and the United States are implicated in an assault on Russia. Hunt is informed by the IMF Secretary (?) (Tom Wilkinson) that the President is issuing "Ghost Protocol," and that the team will now be considered "enemies of the State" unless they can covertly intercept "Cobalt," nuclear expert Kurt Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist) before he begins a new world war. Hunt, Carter, and Dunn are joined by William Brandt (Jeremy Renner), an analyst who may be more than meets the eye, but their resources (and time) are limited. Oh, and the Russian police agent (Vladimir Mashkov) is hot on their tail.

 One of the things I enjoy so much about Ghost Protocol is the way that nothing goes according to plan: from the opening, where Lost's Josh Holloway is "Estevez'ed" because his face recognition software warns him an assassin (Léa Seydoux) is coming while she's pulling her gun out. He's distracted and killed, so Carter and Dunn's first mission is botched, necessitating Hunt's release. Ethan won't just leave the prison when Benji unlocks the cell doors by remote: he insists that the person releasing him (he doesn't know it's Benji, which is a nice conceit between what the audience knows and what the characters know) also open the door for Bogdan (Miraj Grbic), causing an otherwise smooth escape plan into a full fledged prison riot.

 And it just keeps going. Little things like the mission brief not self destructing to the mask maker jamming to accidentally killing a key informant to sticky gloves that don't stick keep compounding and making life harder and harder for the team. They can't do anything about it, so they have to improvise, grin, and bear it. So the building in Dubai they need to control the elevators in has a room you can only get into from the outside - Ethan can use the stick gloves to break in so Benji can hack it. They have 30 minutes before the assassin arrives to sell the launch codes to Winstrom (Samuli Edelmann), and one of the spider-man-like gloves stop working halfway up. It's a good thing Ethan was rock-climbing in M:I II.

 This works in Ghost Protocol because it adds serious tension to the film. They manage to be too late, make silly mistakes, and only sometimes manage to succeed by the skin of their teeth. It's less of the "oh shit, they have his wife" from M:I:III and more of "there's no back up coming if you screw this up" as is evident when Wilkinson's secretary is killed and Renner is forced to join the ragtag group. He doesn't have anywhere else to go now.

 While Pegg is a consistent source of laughs in the film, Renner also brings in some much needed levity as an IMF analyst befuddled by the half-baked desperation ploys during the film. His "secret" isn't actually all that important, especially when one considers the coda for the film (for which I do recommend you catch up with characters from M:I:III), but it does explain how Hunt knows he's more than just a number cruncher. Ethan pulls a gun on Brandt and isn't surprised at all when he's promptly disarmed.

 The rumor was that Renner was brought in to continue the series after Ghost Protocol, but then Cruise had so much fun making the film that they may continue with both of them. That's fine with me, because if we're not going with the Maggie Q / Johnathan Rhys Meyers iteration of the team (Ving Rhames' absence from Ghost Protocol is explained without suggesting he's out of the series), I could watch more Mission: Impossible films with this lineup. Cruise, Patton, Pegg, and Renner have great chemistry and work together as a (dysfunctional) team. Like the last film, each member serves more than one purpose and nobody feels superfluous, even if some of the set pieces sometimes do.

 Which brings me to the weaknesses of Ghost Protocol, and there are a few: Benji and Brandt are involved in an infiltration scheme reminiscent of the "sensor room" in the first film, but instead of suspenseful it's joke-y and ultimately proves to be another red herring. Hunt's showdown with Hendricks in an (admittedly cool looking) elevated car port is anticlimactic, but that may be due to the fact that Nyqvist is stuck playing a character that barely figures into the movie. He doesn't say much, he's mostly in the background, and the threat he poses is globally more dangerous but doesn't have the same emotional resonance as Philip Seymour Hoffman's Owen Davian. He doesn't register much at all, and certainly doesn't have the impact of Seydoux's Sabine Moreau, a much smaller character.

 In fact, it's entirely possible to play out Ghost Protocol without a "main" villain. The film is more or less the disavowed IMF team racing against the clock to stop a missile from launching, and while their attempts to stop "Cobalt" / Hendricks from getting to the point he can do that are entertaining, I don't know that his presence is even necessary. Like the Russian police who show up at inopportune times for Ethan, Hendricks is more effective as an abstract threat. There's one scene that really gives Nyqvist anything to do, and while it's a clever closer to a great chase scene, that's about all that the moment amounts to.

 Still, I highly recommend Ghost Protocol, which is consistently entertaining despite these flaws. To be honest, I didn't really notice them while I was watching the film - it was only in retrospect that it occurred to me that some elements of the film (including a character played by Slumdog Millionaire's Anil Kapoor introduced in the third act) were maybe superfluous. It never feels superfluous when you're watching the film: the script by André Nemec and Josh Applebaum and Brad Bird's direction keep you swept up in the race to stop nuclear war. Tom Cruise is again hard at work demonstrating why he's so essential to this series. He's a little bit older than he was last time and things are a little harder for Ethan Hunt to bounce back from, but he's still climbing up the side of buildings to entertain us.

 If this is any indicator of what J.J. Abrams and Tom Cruise (as producers) want to keep bringing to the Mission: Impossible series, it's entirely possible that "diminishing returns" aren't on the horizon as they push towards a fifth film. There's certainly enough that happens in the last five minutes of Ghost Protocol to imply there's more story to be told, so keep the quality level high and I'll be back for more.

Retro Review: Mission: Impossible: III

 Why am I writing a "Retro Review" of a movie that's barely six years old? The reason is twofold:

 1. I hadn't seen Mission: Impossible: III (actual title) since it first arrived on home video.

 2. I had recently watched Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, which is the closest thing to a "direct sequel" that you're going to find in the series, and while I had a comfortable grasp of the characters who appeared or were mentioned, watching that film really made me want to revisit the previous entry.

 The Cap'n had not planned on seeing Mission: Impossible: III, the directorial debut of J.J. Abrams (Lost, Felicity), because of my lukewarm feelings about the first two M:I films. While having no real connection to the show, I had seen Brian DePalma's Mission: Impossible in high school and generally liked it but was totally unimpressed with John Woo's Mission: Impossible II, a hollow and pointless exercise in slow motion action and motorcycle-fu. The latter held sway in my mind over the former, so there didn't seem to be much of a point watching the third film in a series I wasn't that invested in.

 It wasn't until I started hearing good things about the sequel, combined with my affinity for Dinosaur Island that I thought I'd give it a shot. Good call, it turns out.

 People say that Mission: Impossible: III is a feature length version of Abrams' spy series Alias. I can't confirm or deny that, as I've never seen Alias. I would imagine it has something to do with the way the film begins: dropping the audience in the middle of a tense stand-off between Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman), where the life of Julia (Michelle Monaghan) rest on whether Hunt delivered something called The Rabbit's Foot to Davian or not. We have little to no context, only that the typically nonplussed Hunt is helpless to stop Davian from killing Julia (wife? girlfriend? fellow IMF agent?) and that nothing he's promising seems to sway his captor. The film then launches into opening credits and we begin M:I:III in earnest.

 The "drop you in the middle of the narrative without context" is something that I associate with Abrams, mostly through Lost, but one could argue that Star Trek pulls a similar narrative conceit by opening with the arrival of Nero before we even know what Federation ship we're seeing him destroy. It's a refreshing break from the action set pieces from the first film (entire team wiped out) and the second (extreme rock climbing) that focuses on character over mimicking the 007 series. It's not the only way that Abrams and screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman improve on the M:I franchise.

 From my recollection, the first two Mission: Impossible films were largely the Tom Cruise show, featuring "the team," of which I can only recall Ving Rhames being a constant. Other people showed up to betray Ethan Hunt or to be (I love this term) "Estevez'ed". M:I:III, on the other hand, centers in on the concept that the team is important and that Ethan might lead the group, but he needs everybody to carry out the mission (should he choose to accept it). Unlike the first two films, I can remember every part of the IMF team in III: Ving Rhames returns as Luther, Johnathan Rhys-Meyers is Duncan, Maggie Q is Zhen, and in a cameo appearance, Simon Pegg enters the series as Benji. Instead of having one assigned "role," everybody works as a unit to ensure that covert operations like invading Vatican City go off smoothly. It's a refreshing break from the "hero with some window dressing" I remembered  (this also applies to Ghost Protocol, but I'll get to that in a few days).

 This is not to say that there isn't some familiarity: Abrams sneaks in his "good luck charm" Greg Grunberg early in the film during Ethan and Julia's engagement (?) party, and Felicity herself, Keri Russell, has the distinction of being the "pupil of Hunt who gets captured and introduces the lethal threat," a bomb inside your head, that kicks off the film. Hoffman is a merciless arms dealer as Davian, unafraid of Hunt even in the face of death, promising to punish him and anyone he cares about for having the gall to catch him. The Rabbit's Foot, a MacGuffin to say the least, is the focus of everybody's attention, from Hunt's team to Davian to Director Brassel (Laurence Fishburne) and deputy director Musgrave (Billy Crudup), but Agent Lindsey Farris (Russell) alerts Ethan that a mole in IMF is working for the other side.

 All of this comes at a fast and furious pace, and the film never feels like two hours. The action is easy to follow (quite a feat considering that the Bourne Supremacy ushered in "shaky cam" two years before) and the stunts are mostly practical. Even a rooftop leap in Shanghai that was mostly green-screen involved Cruise taking a considerable fall before being mapped onto the background. The film is more accomplished, story-wise, than Star Trek, with actual stakes being introduced when Hunt loses Ferris and then (we think) Julia, but there's a similar breezy charm in the middle of the film and at the end that keeps things from being too dour.

 In particular, I like to point out the scene where Hunt (disguised at Davian) and Zhen drop off a crucial briefcase to Luther. The way that Hoffman delivers the line "what's up?" still makes me chuckle, almost as much as Monaghan's reaction to what IMF is an acronym for. Actually, in general I also would like to point out that despite the fact everybody had it in for Tom Cruise around that time, he's still essential to the success of the M:I films and handles it admirably.

 Watching the film again, I was surprised how caught up I was all over again, even as the twists and turns of M:I:III started coming back. It's a very entertaining action film in a way that I don't remember the first or second film being, and because of that I welcomed Brad Bird's live action debut with Ghost Protocol. I'm glad I did, but I'll get to that later. It is fair that you don't have to see M:I:III again to enjoy Ghost Protocol, but the end of the fourth film benefits greatly from being up to speed on who's who in the third film.

Geek Tuesday... for some reason.

 New release Tuesdays are usually a grab bag of fun new titles, back catalog releases / upgrades, and every now and then a out-of-left-field cult curveball. For a film geek, it's fun to scour "new release" lists to see what's coming out, so I can only imagine heads were exploding (Scanners style) this past Tuesday. Three extremely "geek friendly" DVDs / Blu-Rays dropped, each of which had a mixed reaction and not amazing box office numbers along for the ride. I've seen two of them, but not the other one (yet): Paul, Your Highness, and Super.


 If you haven't been following the Blogorium for long (and the Cap'n welcomes new arrivals), each film comes from a particular pedigree of nerd fandom: Paul is the "two geeks pick up an alien in the desert" film written by and starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz), is directed by Greg Mottola (Superbad, Adventureland), and also features Jason Bateman (Arrested Development), Sigourney Weaver (Alien), Seth Rogen (Pineapple Express), Jo Lo Truglio (The State), Kristen Wiig, and Bill Hader (both SNL). The film begins at the San Diego Comic Con and is packed with references to other geeky alien movies. I generally enjoyed Paul, but the film doesn't really pick up until Wiig's arrival in the film, mostly because Paul isn't so much of a character as he is Seth Rogen before she enters the narrative.


 Your Highness is David Gordon Green (All the Real Girls, George Washington)'s much anticipated follow-up to Pineapple Express, the film that moved Green from "indie filmmaker" to "mainstream sellout" in some eyes, but to many of us was a logical preamble to Eastbound and Down. Your Highness re-teamed Green with Danny McBride and James Franco along with Natalie Portman (Leon: The Professional), Justin Theroux (Mulholland Dr), Zooey Deschanel (500 Days of Summer), and was an ode to the sword and sorcery fantasy genre that was omnipresent in the 1980s. I must admit that other than Conan the Barbarian, I was never that into the whole movement, and only one website really seemed very excited about Your Highness when the film actually came out, so I skipped out on it. It's not highly regarded by critics or audiences, and when I couldn't make a $1.50 Theatre showing, it seemed best to let the film slide. I will give it a shot some time soon, because I do trust the creative team.



 Super splits critics right down the middle: James Gunn (who wrote Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake and directed the amazing Slither) took a very Troma-esque approach to the "super hero in the real world" subgenre (see: Kick-Ass, Defendor, Special, Paper Man, and a few others I'm forgetting), starring Rainn Wilson (The Office), Ellen Page (Juno), Kevin Bacon (Hollow Man), Michael Rooker (Slither), Nathan Fillion (Serenity) and very briefly, Linda Cardellini (Freaks and Geeks). It's a twisted, at times extremely violent and crude film, and as many people hate it as love it. I have the feeling that some of that comes from the influence of Lloyd Kaufman's Troma Films, where Gunn cut his teeth - there are parts of Super that feel like they've been directly lifted from The Toxic Avenger, and if Troma team releases aren't your thing, Super might not be either. However, if you even liked Slither, you should check out Super.

 It was odd to see all of them coming out on the same day, draining the wallets of geeks who can't be bothered to sit in a movie theatre anymore, because they share roughly the same history: lots of buzz preceding their release, mixed reviews, and moderate to tepid audience attendance. I don't know about Your Highness, but Super and Paul will probably have a long life on video because they appeal to the shut-in's and cast-out's that do, well, what I'm doing right now. Gee, I wonder if I have Paul and Super sitting on the table across the room? Maybe, but what are they sitting under? Bet you won't guess that one!

 (Hint: It's not Your Highness.)

  It is fair to point out that despite their lack of box office busting prowess, none of the discs appear to be bare-bones. This may be a sign that studios are aware that the geek demographic is willing to pay a little bit more for a high quality, high definition experience as long as the movie is packed to the gills with bonus content (Universal is very good at this, and while Paul isn't as loaded as, say, Scott Pilgrim with extra features, it's a better lineup than say, Paramount's True Grit Blu-Ray).

 Why all three on the same day? I don't really know, but maybe we ought not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Maybe it's an opportunity to kick back with some friends, some brewskis, and enjoy a laid back August weekend.




Hollow Man is what you guys think of when you hear "Kevin Bacon", right? Or maybe Death Sentence? Oh, and Michael Rooker has been in a lot more than just Slither, but Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer ate up too much space and I'm sure as hell not going to use Mallrats.

Blogorium Review: Paul

I must admit I felt a twinge of sadistic glee reading online reviews of Greg Mottola's Paul when the film finally made its way to theatres two weeks ago (it opened in the United Kingdom last month): "geek" friendly sites were falling all over themselves trying to find nice ways to pad the disappointment of what seemed to be a great idea: Simon Pegg and Nick Frost write a movie about two geeks that run into an alien while touring famous "UFO" landmarks, and then star in the film with Seth Rogen as the alien, directed by the man who made Superbad. The phrases "feel good geek movie" and "hard to pin down tonally" didn't help trailers that already made Paul look less than appealing, so in a cruel way, I felt vindicated in not wanting to see the film.

But clearly I did see Paul, or this review would be happening on Friday (check the date) and probably masking another review, like last year*. Standing on the other side of the film, I understand the reviews attempts to soften high expectations from its target audience, but I think that many critics didn't quite set their disclaimers up in the right way. Paul is actually a pretty good movie, but you have to wait a little while before that's clear.

Graeme Willy (Simon Pegg), a comic book artist, and his best friend Clive Gollings (Nick Frost), a science fiction writer, have made the pilgrimage from the UK to the San Diego Comic Con, the geek mecca. They've also rented an RV in order to travel the Southwest in search of major alien landmarks (Area 51, Roswell, The Black Mailbox), but when a car whips around them and crashes on the road, they unwittingly become accomplices in the escape plan of Paul (Seth Rogen), an alien trying to get home after a long stint as prisoner of the United States government. On the lam, they inadvertently pick up Ruth Buggs (Kristen Wiig), a fundamentalist Christian that believes Earth is only 4,000 years old. Pursued by Agent Zoyle (Jason Bateman) and two junior agents, Haggard (Bill Hader) and O'Reilly (Joe Lo Truglio), who work for the mysterious "Big Guy," as well as Ruth's father Moses Buggs (John Carroll Lynch), our unwitting heroes race to return Paul to a rendezvous point before it's too late...

The film's biggest problem is that the introduction of Paul doesn't really work. That Seth Rogen plays Paul isn't the issue: it's that Paul IS Seth Rogen for the first fifteen minutes or so that we see him. Rather, Paul is the same kind of character type that Rogen gravitates towards, and his introduction in the film is more distracting than effective. It doesn't help that many of the jokes involving Paul rely heavily on vulgarity (anal probing, alien nudity) or obvious nods to other "first contact" films - to this I have to disperse the blame evenly between Pegg and Frost's script and Rogen's delivery, neither of which help Paul find its way early on.

Frost and Pegg do a fine job of setting up the world of the film (as do Bateman, Hader, and Lo Truglio) but Paul seems "off" in the character dynamic. Part of it is the wildly uneven comic tone, including a running joke about whether Graeme and Clive are gay that doesn't go anywhere. It's not something I can really pinpoint in one scene, but the film doesn't regain its footing until Kristen Wiig's character is introduced; suddenly the interpersonal relationships make a little more sense, Paul moves into the background (somewhat) or at least isn't the load bearer for comedy in the film. Wiig's understated delivery actually helps settle down Rogen's over-the-top delivery as Paul, and the way the says "because of his blasphemous theories" was the first big laugh I had in the film (the second really big one was the discovery of Agent Zoyle's first name).

Paul throws so many "geek" references at the wall that I can't possibly mention all of them, but not only can you expect several nods to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Wars, Star Trek, Predator, Mac and Me, The X-Files, E.T., and Aliens (the last two prominently featuring people involved in the films), but there's also Clive and Graeme's conversing in Klingon, a Wilhelm scream, two separate Indiana Jones references, a Back to the Future joke, a redneck bar version of the Cantina from A New Hope, and a clever way for Pegg and Frost to address a question raised in Shaun of the Dead (hint: it involves dogs).

Early in the film, the references seem more forced, which doesn't help the struggling first act to find its footing. That's also coupled with the bulk of the cameos in the film, including Jane Lynch, David Koechner, Jesse Plemons, Jeffrey Tambor, and (KINDA SPOILER) the voice of Steven Spielberg - part of a scene that's so obvious I wish it hadn't made the final cut. Reviews seemed to think it was a big deal not to reveal that Sigourney Weaver was the mysterious voice that Agent Zoyle is talking to, but if that's the case then why can you clearly hear her in the trailer? I didn't think that was supposed to be such a surprise, to be honest, unless you've never heard her speak before.

Because I feel you're probably thinking that I didn't like Paul, it's important to mention that despite the bumpy first half, I found myself really engaged by the midpoint and actually rather enjoyed the film by the end. If the first section of the film is trying too hard, once the film finds its footing, Paul is actually quite good and something I wouldn't hesitate recommending. I would warn you that it isn't that the film is uneven or that the "geekery" comes hard and fast (to be fair, half of the characters in the film really don't get the whole "Comic-Con thing" and that there's a running joke involving no one knowing any of the books Tambour's character wrote), but that the film is so front loaded that you might be tempted to tune out.

Don't. Stick around until Kristen Wiig shows up, and Paul improves tremendously. The chemistry within the cast finally "clicks," the jokes shift in direction (including a push towards ridiculous bursts of vulgarity, many coming from Ruth's inexperience with cursing), and the evolution of Bill Hader's Haggard from loser to obsessed psychopath is worth the price of admission. Jason Bateman is pretty fantastic playing the "straight man" role; Pegg, Frost, Lo Truglio and Wiig are all great, and when Rogen settles down it's easier to tolerate Paul as a character. By the time that Blythe Danner appears as the adult version of a child we meet early in the film, I was completely on board with the film.

Paul is a better movie at the end than the beginning, which I suppose is a shame, because if it had the consistency in the first half that it does in the second, then it could be something really special. As it is, it's pretty good, a three-and-a-half star out of five kind of movie; you'll have a good time, and will probably rent it and watch it on TV, but won't run out to buy it in a few months. Then again, it is nice to see a movie that tries to entertain and mostly succeeds when far worse movies can't be bothered to do either week in and week out.



* You didn't really think I watched New Moon, did you?