With this beautiful fall weather descending upon us I want nothing more than to sit in my darkened man cave and consider the movie world for an afternoon. Who needs the crisp fall air when you’ve got guido libidos, rom-coms and meatballs in the sky?
Just remember, I'm not reviewing these movies, but rather predicting where they'll end up on the Tomatometer. Let's take a look at what This Rotten Week has to offer.
“There’s only a few things I really care about in life. My body. My pad. My ride. My family. My church. My boys. My girls. And my porn.” - Doug Norrie, I mean, um, no, Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Don Jon. Yeah him, he said that.
And though the above sentiments only represent seventy-five percent of the “important” things in my life (can you guess which ones?), there is something to be said for honesty. It’s the way the world is going. Everything is on the table, good and bad. The saturation of counter-realism in our society, perpetuated by, well just about everything from Facebook (everyone’s lives are f@#$ing perfect and here are the pics and statuses to prove it) to the endless supply of “feel good” rom-coms (fictionally flawed people meet, fall in love, have a hiccup in relationship, fall even more in love) means that there’s a possibility that something like porn is no longer sitting alone on the societal fringes. Everything else is also fake so a dude like Don Jon (Josepth Gordon-Levitt) can come up on board with his love for the skin flicks because hey, how different are they than the rom-coms his lady friend (Scarlett Johansson) fantasizes about? The gap is closing.
JGL pulls the trifecta here: writing, directing and starring in a movie about a dude coming to grips with the vapid nature of his existence and the difference between love and what transpires in smut films. Conceptually I love, and even from the trailers, Levitt appears to put the full acting chops on display. Basically, he seems perfect for the role. That he wrote it for himself and coordinated the whole production is even that much more impressive. He’s been pretty great in every major role up until this point (50/50-93%, Looper-93%, Premium Rush-76%, to name a few) and this movie will most likely only serve to solidify his status at the top tier of, at least acting, talent in Hollywood. But there are some flaws here.
Granted, early reviews are more than positive with the Tomatometer sitting at 83% after debuting at Sundance but the not-so-subtle overtones of the movie might make it tough to maintain this score over the long haul. Back in January, Katey offered up less-than-flattering review, calling into question just how far the movie goes to make its point about our brainless society. There’s a good chance other critics finding, as she calls it, “offensive.” It is a review like hers that makes me think the score drops over the course of the week. There’s just too strong a chance others see Levitt’s movie in the same light and are turned off by the message (even if, like I said above, bro’s priorities are all in the right place). Ah hell, the Rotten Watch for Don Jon is 69%
And speaking of the mindless nature of our society, there’s this flick. I was convinced this was a scenario in which a “creative type” came up with the title of the movie first, and then spent his/her time crafting the plot in order to not deviate from the title only to find out it was a book first. So I’ll just assume the writing of the novel went the same way. Title first, creative thoughts second.
Supposedly set in the real world, Montana Moore (Paula Patton) is a drop dead gorgeous flight attendant who suddenly feels completely compelled to find a husband because she equates such a thing with progress, thereby setting the independent women’s movement back at least a few years. From there, she and her moronic coworkers cook up a scheme that could only take place in a terrible movie. They, along with various airport and TSA personnel will alert Montana whenever one of her ex-boyfriends gets on a flight (thereby violating the traveler’s rights to privacy as well as our own intelligence as viewers) so she can, I guess, hook up with them. Honestly, it wasn’t totally clear to me why she would want to meet these dudes again because, you know, they already had one bad relationship with each other. But hey, it’s Hollywood, go with it. There’s a lot of belief to suspend in this premise, but possibly the biggest leap is the idea that a significant number of Montana’s exes will get on airplanes in a relatively short period of time. This implies a couple of things: A) Montana has hooked up with a lot of guys in her life. B) Her airline has an industry monopoly.
David E. Talbert is responsible for every aspect of this movie so let’s blame him. He wrote the book, penned the script and directed the film. He also subjected the world to First Sunday (13%) and his latest will probably fall in with a similar score. There’s just very little evidence to suggest it will be anything but a critical basement dweller. The Rotten Watch for Baggage Claim is 13%
In a time of intense and rampant obesity, with fatness spreading like a plague across our once great nation, it says something about our society that that a movie would come along positing a scenario in which food is not only terrible for us, but is now alive and actively trying to kill us all (rather than just passively murdering everyone from the inside out). Whether or not the movie writers intended this film as social commentary is fairly moot. Food is out to get us.
There was probably never any doubt Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (87%) would get a sequel. After all, critics were overwhelmingly supportive of the movie and it hit close to a quarter million bucks at the box office. When an animated (or really any) movie produces these kinds of numbers, rest assured a follow up is coming in the not-too-distant future. That being said, this thing looks like kind of a mess. Besides the fact that I have literally no idea what the movie is about besides food being alive, there also appears to have been some kind of contest to write in as many food-related plays on words as possible. It’s a bit shameless really. Shrimpanzee and mosquitoasts are a couple of the millions of examples in just the trailer alone. Who knows what the whole movie holds in store?
The movie comes from Sony Pictures Animation which has its share of the good: The Pirates! Band of Misfits (86%), Arthur Christmas (91%). And unhealthy doses of the bad: The Smurfs (22%), The Smurfs 2 (12%), Hotel Transylvania (44%). Its latest, directed by Cody Cameron and Kris Pearn, looks like it might fall in with the latter group and could be an example of throwing a sequel out simply because the original had success. I just don’t think it holds up. The Rotten Watch for Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is 39%
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Recapping last week:
So close to a sweep for the week. Starting with Prisoners (Predicted: 83% Actual: 79%) that I suspected would drop in score as the week went along. It did, but still landed in that zone of critical acclaim that makes it a “quality flick”. Though the score dipped, you can’t blame Eric Eisenberg who gave it four and a half stars. So yeah, he loved it.
Meanwhile, Battle of the Year (Predicted: 18% Actual: 6%) was terrible. Thank God. This was going to be another instance of me questioning my faith in humanity if the movie had finished with anything more than twenty percent. Unfortunately, for my purposes, it was even worse than I expected. A score this low is tough to achieve, though I should note that many reviews held a theme of “Sure it’s real bad and unbelievably corny, but it’s far from the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” So I guess the movie’s got that going for it.
Next time around we get a pulled by gravity and run, run, run. It’s going to be a Rotten Week!
