REVIEW: Idle Hands (1999)

After my last few reviews involved a psychic killer penis, a hungry, vengeful vagina and man-eating boobs, I was really wondering where I could possibly go from there…I mean, these are really hard to top. So what am I left with to end this little saga on? A half-assed stoner comedy/horror about a kid whose hand is possessed by the devil? And it’s directed by that idiot who made The Unborn and starring the doofus from the first Final Destination movie?! Seriously, how does that even compare?

Director: Rodman Flender

Starring: Devon Sawa, Jessica Alba

IMDb

It doesn’t. It doesn’t at all. In fact, it leaves so little of an impact that I’m pretty much grasping for straws even trying to review it. This movie is the equivalent of the actual real life stoners who do nothing but sit around on their asses all day eating potato chips – there is no cleverness or wit at all to be found here. So let’s fire up the fumes of reviewing and get this stinker over with before our brain cells turn to mush.

We start off with an overly long scene of a middle aged couple in bed talking about how their idiot son doesn’t help them with Halloween decorations and just sits around doing nothing all day. They’re about to go to bed and turn off the light when they see blue neon writing on the ceiling telling them to look under the bed. How did that get on the ceiling? Never explained…apparently the killer just utilizes ladders to their full potential.

"Honey, did you let a serial killer into the house AGAIN? I'm gonna freakin' kill you for this..."

And for that matter, why bother writing anything on the ceiling to warn his victims in the first place? He’s just giving them more time to escape or foil his plans unknowingly. Imagine if he did that to a house where the people went out all night and partied, never turning off the lights or seeing anything…he’d just be sitting under the bed waiting for hours, for no reason. What a dumbass. I wouldn’t trust this guy to be the star of my slasher movie…

Then the mother is killed off while apparently, the father is axed offscreen, because offscreen deaths are just terrifying when you can’t see them and don’t know what happened! The next day we meet their son Anton, played by future Final Destination survivor Devon Sawa. I actually think he seems to have more fun in this than his later flop…at least here he gets to go all Keanu Reeves and make bug-eyed over the top stoner expressions.

He keeps this expression ALL. THROUGHOUT. THE MOVIE. Seriously, kid, maybe it's time for you to take a visit to Narcotics Anonymous!

We also meet his two buddies Mick and Pnub, played by Seth Green and Elden Henson, neither of whom were sober during the filming of this, I’m sure…they sit around all day smoking and eating cheese balls and chips. They throw Anton’s cat out a window for some reason and then his hand, which has been possessed by the devil and moves on its own now, forces him to pick up the fallen journal of hot chick Molly (Jessica Alba, who he has a crush on) and give it back to her. She ends up starting a relationship with him and somehow they have really hot sex in her room later on:

Uh, yeah, no. Doesn't happen. Not buying it. Definitely not.

His hand is all over her, groping and everything – luckily he found the one girl in the universe who wouldn’t just throw him out the second he started with that shit. She’s so stupid she actually just sees everything he’s doing as charmingly delightful and sexy…in reality he acts like a spaz and does crazy things for no reason. Are her standards really so low? Maybe the weed fumes emanating off him just infected her too somehow.

But OK, so I guess he eventually discovers that his parents are dead, what, 30 minutes into the damn movie? This is really supposed to be our hero? Even Bill and Ted would be like “dude, you’re really an oblivious ass!” His hand then somehow forces him to murder Mick and Pnub with broken beer bottles, so he buries them in his backyard and gives a eulogy speech that even a four year old could do better.

Somehow, Mick and Pnub come back to life – because “the gates of Heaven were too far away.” I’m so glad this movie affirms a positive Christian agenda and the idea of Heaven existing…if only it actually elaborated on that, we might have a good joke. But nope. Just like in Rock n’ Roll Frankenstein, the characters react to these two becoming undead zombies like it’s nothing to worry about at all, never even questioning it. I know marijuana can be pretty potent, but c’mon. It’s ZOMBIES. If this had been made ten years later, the movie would have just stopped right here and gone into full Zombieland mode…maybe that would’ve been better actually.

ZOMBIES!!!! Just regular every day stuff when you're high.

But no, instead we're just stuck with bullshit devil-possessed hand story with stupid stoner characters. Like this one scene where he’s facing down these two cops who are trying to arrest him; he’s knitting because, you know, “idle hands do the devil’s work,” and knitting is the first thing he can think of just because the movie thinks it’s funny…and he can’t stop knitting because otherwise his hands will kill the cops. So they start screaming at each other and chaos breaks out and it’s really, really unfunny – like, to extremes only a bad comedy film can reach. I mean, did they have any jokes? Where's the humor? You have a potentially funny situation, movie, but the jokes...are just not here. Instead all we get is dumbass slapstick. Because, you know, that's the best kind of comedy, right? Wrong.

Then Anton gets the brilliant idea to cut off his own hand, and after he does that, he barely feels anything at all, and is able to continue to going on like he just got a paper cut. I guess the joke is that he’s so high, he didn’t even feel the pain, but given this movie’s track record for obliviousness, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was just lazy writing. After that, the severed hand can still move and now goes on a warpath to kill Jessica Alba because…….because.

Chalk up one more for the goofy horror facial expression club...

Oh, and did I mention there’s another plotline in this movie involving this druid woman who apparently put together that because a thread of murders forms some kind of pentagram shape in which Anton’s town is at the middle, that means the devil has possessed someone and is about to do something evil. She also somehow deduces that he’s possessed the laziest slacker around – dunno how, or how that pentagram thing works for that matter, but I guess that’s because I’m not high as a kite.

And really? We’re supposed to take this five-minute plotline seriously at all? Even when the character is so stupid that she runs out in front of a big truck backing out of a driveway when she could easily just run alongside it? Yeah, real genius, cool character you got there, movie…

"Hur hur hur, I love running in front of random cars when they're backing out! Almost as much as I love sticking my tongue in electrical sockets!"

At the school while trying to kill Jessica Alba’s character, the hand of course can’t just, you know, DO THAT RIGHT AWAY. No, it first kills a principal who is in the middle of a phone sex hotline call in his office…random…and then the lead singer of a band. Both of these scenes are overly long, pointless and add absolutely nothing to the film.

Meanwhile, the zombified Mick and Pnub hit on girls at the dance who can’t tell they’re dead, because you know, being dead wouldn’t make your BO off the charts or anything…good thing this movie takes place at Halloween, or else everything in it would completely fall apart. Lazy screenwriting 101, just throw everything under the bus with a cheap holiday gag.

Uh, yeah, no. Doesn't happen. Not buying it. Definitely not...and seriously, wouldn't anyone smell the stench of ROTTING DEATH on these two peons?

Then Jessica Alba and her random friend we didn’t know until five minutes ago escape the hand by crawling up into an air vent; yes, crawling up into an air vent. Couldn’t just escape on foot from the tiny hand that’s about 1/15^th the size of you, could you? I guess that would make too much sense. They come across a giant fan and somehow stop its blades just by jamming them with one of their high heels. Uh, yeah, no. In real life that thing would be shredded to a cinder…oh, why am I even bothering anymore?

The hand kills the friend and kidnaps Alba, tying her in a full-body bind to the top of a car…yeah, how did that little hand subdue her that much without her resisting? It just makes no sense. You’d have to be a total pansy to let a hand tie you up that much! Anton and friends come in and rip her dress off leaving her in a sort of bikini…OK. It is pretty hot I guess.

Let's be honest, a mostly naked Jessica Alba tied to a car is the only reason any of you ever watched this film.

After that, they somehow stop the car by smoking weed through a giant car engine thing – once a burnout loser, always a burnout loser, I guess. Then they kill the hand by throwing a knife at it; yes, that’s really all it took to kill the demonic hand that could subdue a fully grown human being and tie her down to a car roof. What a letdown. I haven’t been this disappointed since my hopes of this turning out as a good movie died in the first three minutes of the film!

Idle Hands just sucks. The jokes are terribly unfunny, and you won’t laugh even once. The characters are all wastes of perfectly good script paper that could have been used to roll more joints. The plot is a mess of stupidity that seems to think it can get by simply because its audience is presumably too high to see what a godawful piece of hack work it really is. And really, that’s all it comes down to with Idle Hands. It’s not the worst ever, but really, how much less effort could you put into a movie than the makers of this one did? This is crap made for a bunch of stoner morons and nothing more.

None of the images in this review belong to me. They belong to their original owners. I got them off of the YouTube free movie.

Review: Little Fockers (2010) TH

The third phase

This newest installment in the Focker series is launching to the next level with blossoming kids, tempting infidelity and making consideration for carrying on the proud lineage of the family legacy. Despite the title, the main players are Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro, with the other characters showing up on the wayside to inject little subplots to accelerate the two mentioned--sometimes fitting in, sometimes forced to fit.

This has gags like the other films and the roster is full of eccentric characters to create more situational comedy. There are goofs galore, sex taboos out the wazoo and loads of misunderstandings to unfold. I congratulate them for not reducing themselves to nothing but one liners and one-off quips. This instead attempts to build up in-jokes and layered scenarios, though the problem is you can see them in a slow march a mile away. It retreads similar ground, such as the play on the Focker name, male nurse jabs, gay scenarios, bodily noise and fluid jokes, someone walking in at the wrong time. Ben Stiller is hamming it up on the whole social etiquette bit: the nice guy who doesn't want to offend anyone so he takes the long route to fix it. Though his character is slightly evolving towards building up courage when confrontation arises. Robert De Niro's character's days of mean are slowly loosening up and coming to terms, as he's finding out all that stubbornness is too aggressive and there's a chance he might get pushed away from treating others like pawns.

There's a noticeable formula with "Little Fockers." As a movie to stretch your feet and relax to without much complication it's sufficient to just meeting the grade with a little bit of easy fun, though having high hopes and wanting to relive the experience is another set of issues. A decade ago this might have been fresh but a share of the jokes feel derivative and predictable, such as something always going wrong in a completely awkward and embarrassing way, but if you can count on it each time in advance then there's no real surprise. There are some sentimental messages slipped in without getting too sappy, like "the going is tough but we're in it together," or "living your life the best way you can even if it's flawed in other's views." However, there's not much to linger with a viewer that tops the other films in the series, or even other situational comedies that have pushed the envelope in the last decade further or just had more charm, fluidly or pizazz to give sparks to a roaring fire of laughter.

Director: Paul Weitz (American Pie, About a Boy)
Starring: Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba, Dustin Hoffman, Barbra Streisand, Teri Polo, Owen Wilson
Website: IMDB

REVIEW: Sin City (2005)

Director: Frank Miller

Starring: Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba, Mickey Rourke, Clive Owens

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401792/

"Turn the right corner in Sin City and you can find anything...anything."

In the early 2000s, Frank Miller created an epic masterpiece where he takes the rules of reality and just…makes them better. This is a world where everyone is immune to gunshots and where bombs only blow you away like a gust of wind would, but being slapped can send you flying across the room. This is a world where Mickey Rourke’s chin is so large that even Bruce Campbell would balk. This is a world where every woman is a hooker, no matter what, unless she’s under 18, and where there’s actually a whole city just ruled by hookers. This is a world where monologues eclipse the sun and make everything black and white, except for blood and the saucy blonde hair of beautiful women. This is the world of…Sin City.

Yes, everyone knows this one. It’s stupid as hell, but doesn’t really try and pretend to be anything else. This is just pure over the top delight. There’s nothing subtle or artful about the way this is executed. It’s just pure entertainment. The whole thing is an amalgam of old noir-style clichés and crazy comic book violence. Frank Miller’s dialogue is scientifically proven to be 70% or higher narrations, and those are just corny as hell. Sentence fragments. He uses them. Explicitly. Without pause. All the time. Getting shorter. Losing point. But still sounding awesome. Too much? Maybe.

The story is actually an intertwining, connected set of tales all revolving in the charming land where color lenses don’t work on the cameras, Sin City. One of them involves Bruce Willis trying to save a young girl from a rich guy who is actually a rapist and whose father runs the city. Another involves Mickey Rourke trying to avenge a prostitute’s death and getting caught in a web of conspiracy that involves a cannibal played by Elijah Wood – most apt casting in the movie? Debatable. The third involves Clive Owen defending another prostitute but getting caught up in more corruption.

So…yeah, they’re all pretty much about the same stuff. But somehow the movie makes this work to its advantage, whether it be by virtue of the great characters, the strong acting or the compelling, fast-moving plots. As silly as this can get, it keeps you hooked like a fish on a line. You won’t be able to quit watching this. Perhaps it’s the style that Miller uses, which is overwrought and gimmicky with the black and white and tons of really fast, comic-book-style action scenes, but is actually a lot of fun and makes the movie stand out in the end.

The characters are overblown and exaggerated – seriously; Mickey Rourke plays a guy willing to risk his life because a hooker was nice to him. I don’t know why, but this one in particular just bugs me. He’s really goofy, I guess you could say – like a caricature of a caricature of a film noir. Even in this movie’s comic-book mentality world, I still think he’s the most overblown. It’s not bad or anything, it’s just…really funny to me for some reason. Everything he says, every expression on his face and everything he does is just ridiculous. Bruce Willis, on the other hand, is pretty damn awesome, and gives a really passionate, engaging performance. Clive Owens is probably the least remarkable of the three, but he holds his own remarkably well anyway.

The stories are told with some real zeal and energy, and they all pack a lot of epic, gripping punch that will keep you on the edge of your seat, even excusing the retarded moments. Of which there are several – like how about the scene where the Yellow Bastard has Bruce Willis naked and in a hangman’s noose, about to die. The first dumb moment comes when he’s left hanging and somehow survives and is able to cut himself loose somehow, all without damaging any of his breathing tubes or cutting off his circulation in the least. He’s trying to save Jessica Simpson from that yellow weirdo, and so he has to get in the car and chase after them. Before doing so, he puts on all of his clothes, which probably takes up a lot of time he could have used to be saving her…I know it’s wintertime outside, but seriously, all he talks about is saving her, and he’s not really the type of character who would be affected by the cold. So it doesn’t make a lot of sense. But I’m just nitpicking now.

Other silly moments include the fact that there is indeed a city of hookers in this movie. A city of hookers; you read that correctly. Might as well just make a hooker amusement park; why not go all the way? I think it would draw in plenty of good profits from the residents of this crazy world. But seriously, Frank Miller’s obsession with making every woman a prostitute just baffles me. I don’t even know what to say about it. Why does he keep doing it? There’s maybe one female lead character in this entire movie who isn’t one, and yet she wears even less clothes than the prostitutes themselves do.

I know I’m making fun of this movie a lot, but…honestly, that’s part of the enjoyment in this. It’s a very corny, exaggerated film that just keeps on delivering, never flinching for a second even when delivering some seriously implausible stunt – like Bruce Willis getting shot 10 or 11 times and surviving while other guys get shot once or twice and die instantly without a chance of living at all. Sin City is just that kind of movie. If you liked The Crow, this is like that, except ten times wilder. If you liked Kick-Ass, well, this is the pre-cursor to that one.

It’s like the yin-yang of action movies. For everything stupid or silly about this, there’s always something endearing and awesome combating it from the other side, and it ends up a very even, enjoyable ride, with the silly parts balanced out by how well everything is done to come out as quite an engaging, ass-kicking ride. Sin City rules.