Hop

Now I could make a lovely joke about how Russell Brand Just Hopped into the lime light, but that would be a Cheap Shot. There is one thing that I will concede to and that is the fact that he must have the most amazing manager. If she’s a woman, then her nipples must surly taste of beer or caramel.  Is the overexposure a rite of passage for upcoming middle-age(ish) comedians? Let’s not forget the pace at which these things come out; I mean it like two to three a year. They work so much harder than I ever do, so I suppose they deserve all the fame and riches.  And before I start to comment on the movie itself, let me just say, thank Buddha Hugh Laurie is using his native British accent in a movie.  I feel like the last time I heard a British Hugh Laurie was in Black Adder.

Another comment before I continue with the actual review, there is a good reason why people opt for pirate movies over DVD’s. The answer is skipping, epic lag, and lost parts of a movie.  My copy of this movie was brand new, it had only been rented out twice, yet trying to watch so much as a moment of it felt like pulling teeth out through my urethra.  People may go on and on about the quality, but now that 2 terabyte hard drives have become the norm, I don’t see how a HD rip makes it any worse than a DVD, when watched on a computer monitor. I am sorry if I am not talking to the social amongst the human race who watch movies with their friends, but alas I only see people in bars because my friends have not been bothered to visit me in 6 months, except the ones that come in from out of town and use my flat as a motel and get me in trouble with my land-lord. Let me also add that if you are the kind of tech yuppie who bought the PS3 because it had Blue-Ray support, please find the nearest meat grinder, undergo hypnosis to make you think it’s a vagina, take it out to a nice restaurant, pay for the meal, wear an expensive condom, light some candles, slip it a roofy, then place you penis inside it, lean back and scream out in agony as your manhood is ripped from between your legs.

I was surprised by how well the movie integrates the CGI and live action.  Admittedly it was no District 9, but it was not as bad as that one Bugs Bunny Movie with Brendon Frasier.  So let’s summarize the plot in one sentence. The Easter Bunny’s son, yes this is an aristocratic lineage with ascribed status and good old fashioned genetic determinism, wants to be a drummer, rather than a magical, super powered bunny who has access to infinite amounts of candy and only works one day a year, who then meets up with a guy who can’t get a basic job but is destined for greatness, blab bla bla bla bla. This movie did strike a chord with me because after my postgraduate degree in psychology I crawled into the sunlight hoping to find the pastures of employment. I was prepared to work hard and make my mark in the world. Sadly, all I found was a professional wasteland in the grips of an economic recession. Never before was I so disheartened by being the discursive norm. My blond hair, blue eyes and pasty skin no longer affording me the type of privilege it did my forefathers.  In fact, there are many companies that are legally forced to not hire me. So here I am, working for less money than a maid, watching a movie were a guy is in the same position I am, who is not prepared to work as hard as I am, and he gets to be a bunny for no particular reason other than he was lucky enough to hit him with a car. However, for a brief moment, I was half filled with hope, the jovial idea that perhaps things will get better.  However, when the movie came to an end, the world still had all its unfortunate problems, and in fact, the movie does not provide any advice for us other than, don’t worry, luck and circumstance will lead us to happiness in about two weeks.

Sadly, I don’t see this movie becoming a classic any time soon. It borrowed too much from the “this was cool last year” tree. David Hassle Hoff has been played to death. I was almost expecting the waitress to tell EB that the carrot cake is a lie. And hay, dear Buddha, why are all soon-to-be-friends unable to stand each other when they first meet. That shit just does not make any sense. 

So here is my summery, its strangely relatable but for teenagers, the voice acting is great, watch stoned. 

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Step Up 3

This is yet another installment of what appears to be a myriad of dance movies. Every time I look under a cultural rock now days I seem to find a form of dance being utilized to encapsulate the subculture. From pristine perfection to underground grime, the visual medium of film finds a means for the human body to be involved in the expression and communication of the characters place in their world. 

Even though the classic and worn out underdog story is one we have come to expect from this genre, it’s a relief to see that this movie takes a refreshing take on… I’m just kidding. This movie is down to the last letter everything you would expect. Yes, at times this movie has scenes so epically cool that that even a Miracle-Whip-white boy like me can’t help but holler “Booya”.  This movie even has the coolest romantic dance scene. But yet again dancing in a competition lets the good hearted underdogs win the money to keep whatever it is that means so much to them, in this instance it’s their club/home/practice area. There is not a shred of dramatic tension because we all know that the end of the movie will provide as many smiles as the half-clad hottie will induce erections.  

So if you like seeing flailing limbs and the human body do things that that make you involuntarily flinch, put you hand in front of your mouth and scream “sick”, give this movie a chance. But do not expect any revolutionary narrative devices. 

The characters are at times enduring, the love interests are shiny neon signs of obvious and the girls are hot enough to enjoy with a jar of Vaseline. If you like dance movies, and fanatically upload vid of yourself dancing to Beyonce’s “All the single ladies” on Youtube, then this movie is for you. In fact, if you have secretly been watching trailers for dance movies with salivating anticipation, then you would most probably enjoy this movie as well. But if dance movies have never made your naughty bits tingle, then I doubt any amount of Viagra would give you the down under desire to see this movie. 

  

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Booty Pop

Let it not be said that I hate all of mankind, but most of it has most certainly been earmarked for a hasty removal. At first I though Toddlers In Tiaras was a grotesque abuse of children, then I saw this. A part of me feels like the kid may have written this himself, which means that for the last five years of his life his existence has been completely devoid of valuable culture. I hate using the tear Paedophile, but when you have a kid ejaculating with a phallic water pistol all over the seismic breasts of a woman in a swim suit, you have to wonder what was the adult holding the video camera think. I am sure that the kid was safe, it may just have been a fun day at the pool for him, but I see those girls popping their booties and I want to start touching myself, but there is a 6 year old kid ruing the entire thing for me. Now that is just unfair. How dare this child… sorry I think I am getting off topic a bit.

It was mentioned in to comments and I tend to agree, of the genders of the boy and the scantily clad women were replaced then arrest warrants would be handed out like candy by a paedophile. Now if you kindly excuse me I have to digitally re-master 30 years of under 16 Olympic gymnastic videos for a client in Japan. 

Sucker Punch

Before I fill the cracks in this move with trinitrotoluene and Nitro-glycerine, in the express intent of fellating it to sexy smithereens – I mean blow, so sorry – let me get it over and done with and say that, dear Ganesh, this movie is many bucket loads of pretty. It can be summarized in the term, fap-tastic. It even has a soundtrack that makes me wish my candles were all lit and I was losing myself in the rhythmic thrusts of a lover’s embrace.

Now to look at the movie with kind of clarity men only get after climax, when the abruptly induced P.O.D. (post Orgasmic Disgust) lets you see past the glossy candy coating, and you are left with the shallow, frail, poorly nourished and overall weak remnants of a movie that looked so great in the haze of your once triumphant erection.  The movie exists on three levels, neither one in any way really needing the other, except to either ride on the Inception band-wagon or to use misdirection to give the illusion of depth.  You see, at the base level the story is simple but powerful, the type of tail that would make for a compelling short story that could be masterfully told by, let us say Stephen King for example, mostly because of the tragic nature of the end. It is pretty much about a girl whose mother dies, leaves all her wealth to her two daughters and not the money hungry new husband, who subsequently loses his temper, confrontations ensue, youngest daughter dies, oldest gets thrown into an asylum by the authoritarian masculine disciplinary discursive institutionalization system  of the time so she can get lobotomized, *inhale* does some things to escape the awful conditions of the asylum that are instigated by the rape-inclined male orderly, people die, she lets herself get caught and hence lobotomized so some-one else can escape, irregularities in the paperwork get the orderly caught, and he’s a snitch if ever there were one, so all the bad people are going to get punished but the ending doesn’t have too many rainbows, which means I get to munch on a nice big slice of catharsis pie, yummy.  Plus you get to see the endings tragedy in the beginning, so it double barrel’s you with dramatic tension and the classic Greek tragedy structure we like so much with our morning cereal.

                If they had used this alone in a ninety minute to two hour long movie, it could have been a powerful psychological thriller. But alas it got Gothica flash backs, so it decided to tart itself up by adding on completely new story on top of it, I know right, that is in fact far more shallow, but is presented, I think, as her internal coping mechanism for what is going on around her. In this dolled up version of events she is at a nightclub that keeps its girls hostage, where the dancers are whored out. She plans and executes the escape attempt in this version of the story, but it’s really happening in the first version of the story. The premise is that she dances and the other girls steal things needed to escape.

                So far, so followed, but it seems like that is all just pandering for the scenes that are the ultimate suck up to the Big-Boy’s Club of cool. I mean the type of cool you just want to spell with a K for no good reason, or am I the only one who ever feels like that.  You see, when she dances, she goes to the strange, violent and obscenely kick-ass alternative world that looks like it came from an E3 convention, because… now this is where I get stumped. These scenes seem to only give us a crude metaphorical representation of the plans objectives and the dangers they entail. Other than that it they seem to only serve the purpose of taking everything the internet (4chan) can’t get enough masturbating to and wrapping it in an insanely attractive box and going “Ta-Da, you have to like this, we followed the recipe to the letter”. This recipe is a menagerie of fan favourites such as  a giant robot samurai with a Gatling gun, steam punk zombie Nazis fighting girls in school uniforms and a Dreadnaught, Orcs, Dragons, the guy from Kung-Fu who gave us the pebble from the hand snatching, robots, a Samurai sword, Epic explosions, girls and tons of guns. It then applies icing on the cake with copious and unnecessary aesthetically brilliant violence to stoke the thick and pulsating phallus of cool. The way they move and shoot when they are up against the undead anti-Semites is frighteningly reminiscent of Counter Strike meets the chicks of Gears of War, with mini Skirts instead of power amour. And the strange thing is, a part of me is certain it was done intentionally, just to make it cooler.

Sadly, by trying so hard, it lacked what truly makes a movie “Cool”, creativity. This movie just sat down and tried to tick off as many things as it could in the hopes of keeping us happy and not asking to many questions about the narrative’s structure or progression. “Just enjoy the pretty pictures,” it says to us, while with one hand it strokes our head and coos, yet with the other hand it quietly faps and trolls on /b/.

Don’t you love the dehumanizing nick names the girls get, just to nail in that final “women are objects in our society” plug, while at the same time basing the selling point around substituting  powerful and meaningful moments in the narrative with pandering to Internet memes. Question, where do girls in miniskirts and tight fitting shirts keep the bucket loads of ammo they go through as if they were on Metal Storm.

Please tell me “waking the mother” is an inter-textual reference/euphemism for giving the mayor and erection, because if it is, I am so using. Stuff it, I will use it anyway because its cools.

 Fuck them for killing a baby dragon.

                The strangest thing to me is the fact that the most visually off-putting thing in the movie is in fact lead actress. Many people might argue that she is the pinnacle of hot. They will herald her hotness, whilst listing every segment of her and how it’s exactly what we think is hot, or at least strive towards, and therein lays the problem. In the same way the closer an artificial object gets to looking real it borders on the Uncanny Valley, so if a person looks too much like an artificial concept of beauty the weirder and more unappealing they look. If I was wrong about this then Heat Magazine would not be doing monthly exposés on plastic surgery addiction/mishaps. So the main gal actually reverses into the uncanny valley.  And she only has one expression, the Botox-ed, blank stare, pouting, ooze hotness into the distance look. Her face turns me off. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see the aesthetic appeal in a woman who resembles more a doll or the surgically altered than a real human being.

I have just realised for what this movie will be burned by the pages of history for, when I write them of course. This movie, on a base level, trivialises its characters. It sits in a boardroom and touts with certainty how “no one wants to watch a touchy feely movie about psycho chicks on their period, just go and Google ‘what gives guys hard-on’s’ and pad the Buddha out of it. Oh, and call my daughter, tell her daddy can’t come her cello recital, he’s got to deposit some seminal fluid on the chest of a well endowed exotic dancer tonight”. Escapism is great, but when it is done at the cost of a great narrative, it conveys to the audience that the suffering and tribulations of others need not, nor should it warrant our attention, lest it be riddled with CGI splendour.

The Smurfs

The great question is, am I going to hate myself for reviewing this movie, and the answer, most likely. I had to actively hide my glee when seeing the trailer, because sight of a guy with a beard yelling “yay Smurfs” may put people on paedophile alert. And I wear glasses, so it’s a triple threat. The fact that I was wearing a trench coat was purely accidental.  You see, I, like many of my generation, still look back with powerful nostalgia on the days of Gummy Bears (which still rock I will have you know) and Anamaniacs (which still makes me laugh)

So, let me take a look and see what all the fuss is about.

Right. So now that I have sat though the movie, I am left with a resounding sensation that I suppose may be compared to enjoyment. I mean, sure I laughed at times. Yes Gargamel was very well portrayed with the classic slap-stick humour that would appeal to children, the obvious target audience. It’s not as though the incorporation of classic rock did not help with the nostalgia. Despite my extremely jaded soul, there is something beautiful about Grumpy Smurf’s sexual infatuation with a plushy M&M doll. I must admit, what was once a set of cute and adorable fictional characters from my past (that did far too often bear the brunt of Rule 34), have now become frighteningly creepy. Aside from being devoid of a chin or any proper lower jaw, the realistic skin texture just made them too real.  They looked more like little blue German molester pimps with a disturbingly cheerful disposition, and the seemingly preternatural ability to not get hurt when falling down from extreme heights. It seems to me that humans are one of the only animals that don’t do so well with landing. 

The problem with trying to review this movie is that I am not too sure what to say. Like many children’s movies it is stuffed with more violence than one should feel comfortable with, but as long as the guy getting hurts looks funny, then it’s all okay.  And it comfortably crawls into the comfortable niche of nostalgic recreations, were, and this scares me, the kids who watched this show when it first came out now have kids of their own to show this to. And from that perspective, this movie makes sense. Why not share an enjoyable nostalgic moment with this thing you have made, who insists on eating all your food. This is not for the fans of yester year, purely (I mean as far as I can remember it seems to hold up to the cannon, but who cares really, unless you take Rule 34 a bit too far and paint your groin a friendly shade of blue, give it a blond wig and a dress, then make it throw up). It’s for the kids of today, and gives us a moment to feel like the kids we used to be, but with booze, casual sex and a driver’s licences. 


PS: Let it be know that were I a man who enjoyed the company of other men, but whilst being naked,  Neil Patrick Harris would be int he top three of my To-Nail-List. Just in case you were unsure.