Godsend (2004)

Do you think movies have too many entertaining parts? Perhaps too many things about them that stand out, make sense and make you want to watch more? Well, if you do, have no fear – Godsend is the movie for you.

Director: Nick Hamm

Starring: Robert de Niro, Greg Kinnear, Rebecca Romijn

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

This was actually released a year before the other shitty Robert de Niro thriller, Hide and Seek – but when I saw these movies as a kid, this was the order I saw them in, so that's how I'm reviewing 'em. It's a woefully uneventful film with all the charisma and liveliness of a hay bale after a barn fire.

We start off with what everyone always wants to see at the beginning of a film, a birthday party scene. When has watching a birthday party of people you don't know ever been entertaining? Like yeah, really, I'm stoked to watch people pretending to have a birthday party for some kid in a movie. That sounds like awesome cinema!

Godsend: it makes you not want eight year olds to have good birthday parties.

You'll notice very quickly in this that the movie's only mode of getting you invested in the characters is to show the most fluffed up, happy-crappy nonsense ever. There's no real meat – just pictures of the characters smiling and laughing. Because that's the barometer for how life works...either you're happy without a care in the world, or your son is dead. Those are literally the only two options.

Because, yup, in the next scene, Adam dies. His mom, played by Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, takes him out to buy a new pair of sneakers. While he's outside playing, a bicycle implausible swerves for no reason in the path of a car, which then swerves to avoid the bike, and ends up hitting Adam, killing him instantly.

You'd have to be a really terrible driver to actually do this. I mean, like, blind-deaf-mute kind of driving.

The next few scenes are just the parents, Paul and Jessie, grieving because, I presume, those shoes were really expensive, dammit!

"Damn you, Nike products! My wallet is crying even more than I am!"

Luckily for them, at the funeral, they run into an old professor of Jessie's, played by Robert de Niro. He really came prepared, as he's already got a whole spiel planned about how his new science lab can clone their dead child and bring him back to life.

"You can trust me because I am wearing a suit and tie."

Paul and Jessie spend an astonishingly short amount of time discussing this – I guess Paul is a bit on the fence at first, but once he watches some more blandly cheerful home movies of the family smiling and laughing, he's on board for this abomination against nature.

And I get it – losing a kid is a devastating thing. But the movie just doesn't portray it as any kind of big deal – there's really no depth or understanding of the grief. They're just sad because they can't make more happy-pill-addled home videos of people laughing and smiling. We don't know anything about this family or about the kid, and the movie just rushes through all their grief in favor of bullshit thriller junk. Like so many films in the mid-2000s, it exploits human tragedy in favor of shocking plot twists and cash-grab thrills with zero substance, which basically makes it an instant zero-star film for me.

Clearly the movie was trying to convey sadness - that's obvious. But it's just not well done. We don't get any real insight into these characters and their motives just by showing us extremely generic videos of them laughing together.

Okay, so there's some half-assed dialogue thrown in about how she can't have any more kids, or some shit like that – so grieve naturally, and adopt a kid then. Fucking hundreds of people do that every day. I get that, given the chance, it might be tempting to try and bring your kid back – but come the fuck on. There were no red flags given by the creepy, mysterious old man who showed up at the funeral and told you he could clone your dead son? This merited no skepticism?

The most trustworthy face in the universe, ohhh yeah.

But hey – I'm sure it'll be fine. When has something this shady, dangerous and insane ever turned out bad in a movie? While you're at it, go give your credit card information to that guy in the ratty coat who's been standing on a street corner all day and says he has good financial advice for you. I'm sure he'll help.

They go through an overly long and boring scene of getting the wife artificially inseminated again, and after the baby is born, she thanks God for it. Yeah, fuck all those doctors (and the probably-illegal scientific developments) that made this possible. Thank God instead.

But really, I was just hoping the baby would come out like this:

What a beautiful hellspawn abandoned by nature...

But whatever, they do it and then eight years go by and their new genetic abomination of a child is at the same age their old son was when he died. They also had to move to some remote location in a beautiful country home, because all of these stupid movies always have to have super nice, clean looking homes that look like nobody has ever lived there. I mean, why bother making any aspect of your movie relatable?

And how did this kid get so many friends again? I think we need some plausible scriptwriting here – just remove most of the other kids and have him eating cake alone.

No, we don't need any more birthday scenes, you hacks!

The rest of this film sinks into levels of banality I never knew were possible. We get tons of lame-ass jump scares where the movie goes quiet for a second and then some loud sound happens. There are also a bunch of idiotic dream sequences where Adam dreams a bunch of kids in school are making fun of him, and also another one where he's attacking someone with a hammer. Eh, it happens – this is pretty much all a metaphor for puberty.

There's also a few times when he acts weirdly, like when he gets in a swinging contest with a bunch of bullies at his school – because you know, bullies have contests to see who can swing the highest in between atomic wedgies and swirlies in the bathroom. It's just part of the bullying vocabulary. But yeah, after he falls off the swing, he spits in his teacher's face.

Oh, and there's also the tiny little detail that he kills that bully later on by shoving him into a frozen lake. I'm not even being sarcastic – it really is just played off like a tiny little detail, given no weight or drama behind it. He killed a kid? So what! He's having dreams about hammers! THAT'S the important thing!

This is a metaphor for the fact that you should turn this movie off and go outside instead of watching any more.

Eventually, Paul and Jessie, being geniuses, figure out that not everything is quite right. Really, guys? Genetically cloning your dead child in a secret hush-hush experiment where the scientist who told you about it swore you to secrecy ISN'T a trustworthy thing? Gee, only took you almost ten fucking years to figure that out. Nothing gets past you guys. You're real Sherlock Holmeses, the both of you.

Well, I say both of them, but really Jessie is trying to cling to the hope that things will be okay, so it's really just Paul who's actively suspicious. The two of them have a seemingly endless slew of conversations in the last two acts of the movie that all kinda go like this:

PAUL: There's obviously something wrong with this kid because we cloned him and now he's having weird dreams and acting strange!

JESSIE: No, he's our son and we have to protect him!

PAUL: You're crazy!

It's like two people with Alzheimer's forgetting they already had the same argument before.

That's it – just that mind numbing conversation, repeated enough until you want to claw your eardrums out with a spork. Jesus fuck this is a boring movie. They take an hour and forty minutes for the movie, and most of it could be dialed down to one two-minute scene. I don't know if you're keeping score, but yeah, that's called trash filmmaking from the dumpster.

So, I guess if you even care, they figure out that Adam has some other kid haunting his mind, Zachary Clark. Paul then goes out and finds this old housekeeper lady who knew the real Zachary Clark from years ago. I love how this lady was apparently just ready to drop everything she was doing to talk to this idiot about a story that has obviously traumatized her. Like, she was just waiting all these years for some dumbass to come to her door and ask about it. It's basically like she doesn't exist except when exposition is needed.

"I only exist for this one scene, in a vacuum, to spew exposition. After the scene is over, my non-existent character disappears into thin air, never to be seen again."

The story is, I suppose, that Zachary Clark was bullied by kids at school, so one day he killed his mom with a hammer and then burnt down the house, or something like that. I guess in some reality that might make sense, but it isn't mine. We also find out – dun dun DUN – that de Niro was the father of Zachary Clark and has been trying to clone him.

I get that it's trying to be a plot twist, but it's a pretty poorly done one, with how much plot they tried to cram into that very short few minutes, like a dozen Twinkies into the mouth of a fat Dachsund. I get the idea the writers just fell asleep writing the rest of the movie and then the producer just came in, scribbled some nonsense on a napkin, stapled it to the rest of the script, and then turned that in to be filmed.

If you can believe it, de Niro and Paul get into a fight in a church in which a fire is started. De Niro leaves and we never fucking see him again – oh, except for this newspaper clipping in which front-page news was devoted to saying “No new information found on disappeared scientist.” Fucking brilliant, that is.

Paul then goes and saves his wife from being killed by Adam/Zachary, and talks Adam down just by saying a few nice words. Wow. That's pretty much the lamest and most anticlimactic ending this movie could have had – what if other horror movies had that as the climax? Michael Myers in Halloween talked down by Dr. Loomis saying “it's okay, you're a nice person.” That would have improved it tenfold.

"Please, just stop acting crazy. I want to get a paycheck without having to emote in this crap movie." 

The actual ending is when they're moving into yet a third home to try and start over again – but it turns out, as we see in a rather blunt shot of Adam being pulled into the closet by “Zachary.” Awesome – it's like the Psychology for Dummies version of Session 9. Thanks so much for that.

This film is just the kind of thing you'd pick out of the bargain bin box at Walmart when you literally have zero other ideas for what you want to see. And then you'd just wish you had forgone watching anything and just stared at a wall for an hour and forty minutes. At least in the latter case, you'd be able to think in solitude without the idiotic dribble of the movie's story constantly annoying you. Goddammit, I hate this shit. It's just so fucking bad, and every scene just hurts me.

It really says something that this movie was such a low point in de Niro's career – I mean, fuck, even the one where he cross-dresses was better than this.

Yeah – safe to say, I'll be sticking to Taxi Driver, Goodfellas and Heat next time, thank you very much. I'd rather remember why de Niro used to be a legend instead. As for this movie, well...

That about sums it up.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

Hide and Seek (2005)

Mental health is a tough thing to tackle in movies. Some of them get it right, some of them do it poorly, and others seem to not realize that they're about as sensitive at tackling the subject as an actor using blackface to talk about Rosa Parks. Guess which one this movie is!

Director: John Polson

Starring: Robert De Niro, Dakota Fanning

IMDb

Co-written with Colin and Michelle.

Holy fuck this movie is bad. I saw this like, ten years ago now, and hated it then too, and I think I may even hate it more now. This was one of several absolute duds Robert de Niro did in the mid 2000s, and it's just painful. I guess it begins pretty innocuously with a mother saying goodnight to her daughter Emily, played by Dakota Fanning. I'm sure nothing bad is gonna happen to the mom when she says she loves her daughter.

But of course it does, because any movie that throws in non sequitur lines like that always has bad shit happen to the characters. In this case, she gets, erm, how should I put it? Ah yes - “Dexter Season 4'd.”

Clearly this was all the result of a deranged and oddly specific killer who always kills married women in bathtubs. There's no other option.

Why do all of these limp-dick thriller flicks have characters taking baths in such nice tubs anyway? I wish I had one with the candles around it and shit. If it was a slasher movie, though, it'd be a girl in her 20s in the shower. That's actually the barometer of how you tell what genre of horror you're watching. If a slightly older woman takes a bath, you're watching a psychological thriller. If a hot chick takes a shower with the camera angled down, it's a slasher. Just the rules, guys.

You can tell what type of shitty movie you're watching from how women bathe in it, which is pretty creepy and weird when you think about it.

We then fast forward through the funeral because fuck that, who cares? No, now it's time for them to do what they do in every shitty ass horror movie – go up to some kind of mountain retreat in a small podunk town to “heal.” It works for a Stephen King novel because he can at least write good characters. In this movie, it's just more nice house porn – ooh, look at all these nice furniture items! Those must have cost a lot of money at Ikea!

I wish I had that desk. That's the nicest thing I can say about the entire movie.

Robert de Niro plays the grieving father, David. Well, grieving, as in just kind of bored and annoyed looking throughout all of this. He's terrible in this; about as exciting as watching a sea algae try to emote. What happened to him? Did all the charisma and power get sucked out of him with a vacuum cleaner?

Oh, and I guess the story, if you even care, is that little Emily keeps on apparently doing weird things in the house like writing on the walls of the bathtub in blood, and blaming it on an imaginary friend named Charlie. I guess this is normal for de Niro's character, as he never thinks to send her to therapy in this.

Yup, you read right – he doesn't take her to therapy. Even through all the weird, traumatizing shit that happens in this, he just sticks to his guns and keeps her out there alone in that big house. No talking to anyone, no therapy, nothing. Jack shit. The funniest part is that HE HIMSELF is supposed to be a therapist in this movie! That's his character's occupation! And you're telling me he doesn't think it's a good idea to have her talk to someone about her mother's death and get through it healthily? Bull fucking shit.

"The way she's sitting motionless in a cliche way staring out a window like this is some kind of Lifetime movie about a mental patient really makes me think she is psychologically okay."

But no, I guess hanging out in an empty house and letting your daughter just run around outside doing nothing is good too. There's a scene early on where David is walking with the two guys showing him the house, for like a minute or two around the corner of it, and they lose Emily. She's standing around in the same spot, but the fact that David took his eyes off her for that long should have been a warning sign that he's as good a parent as Casey Anthony was, really.

"Hey, where's your daughter, David?"
"What daughter? I'm just walking along here, without a care in the world! Ha ha ha!"
"You're a disgrace to the very concept of parenting, you slime!"

There are a bunch of weird-ass scenes where David has dreams of a masquerade ball, like an Eyes Wide Shut party I guess, except with all the sexual energy of a juvenile detention center. Then he wakes up and it's 2:06 a.m. exactly. It comes off like the let his seven year old child watch Jacob's Ladder and then contribute to the script.

Instead of orgies and weird masks, they just got a bunch of gold balloons from the dollar store. I mean c'mon guys, not even a variety of colors for us to look at? Pffffftttttttt.

"Ah yes, 2:06, my favorite time ever..."

The rest of the movie's first two acts are taken up by a seemingly never-ending parade of red herrings that march through like lemmings on their way off a cliff. Hey, you never know! Any of them could be the killer! It's good writing, really!

There's the two neighbors, with the wife who acts really nice and neighborly and the husband who is the kind of guy who sits next to little girls he doesn't know in a creepy manner and remarks about how beautiful they are:

Apparently they had a child who died, so Emily reminds them of their own child. But it's still not really that interesting or well done of a plot...

Then there's Elizabeth Shue, who plays a woman named Elizabeth – what a stretch that must have been for her.

"Yup, I'm in this movie! Really!"

She has a daughter who she brings over to play with Emily. Emily, being a true friend, does this to the daughter's doll, while talking in a really creepy voice about how bad things will happen.

That's never mentioned again, by the way – the daughter doesn't show up again, but Shue never mentions it to David and David never talks to Emily about it. It's cool though. Disfiguring dolls and talking creepily about how bad things happen is just the normal way little girls deal with tragedy.

There's also Creepy Bearded Man, who shows up at 2 a.m. just to give David the keys to some of the other rooms in the house, because he's apparently leaving for Canada with his wife. No explanation is ever given for why, and we never see him again. It's just an incredibly random, out of nowhere scene.

I'm guessing he committed some heinous crime and is now fleeing the country to escape the law. That's what I'm going with and it does make the film slightly more entertaining. Slightly.

But yeah, a large majority of the film is just David and Emily playing off one another so poorly I'm surprised the crew wasn't falling asleep filming it. And the psychology is just bad, really bad. There really is just a shitload of excuses made for her behavior in this – the writing on the bathroom wall continues appearing, Emily keeps blaming Charlie, and David just keeps shrugging it off. At one point a dead cat is found in the bathtub, with all signs pointing towards Emily as the one who did it.

Just another normal part of the grieving process.

But does that faze David at all? Nope! Not in the least. I mean, it does at least get him on the phone with his hot therapist friend played by Famke Janssen. But even after she comes out in person and tells him that Emily needs professional help, he still doesn't do it. He says he'll wait two more weeks and see if she gets better. Two weeks?! I guess you really want to see how many more animals she can kill, huh?

And I guess these drawings don't signify a child in need of therapy either:

"Wow, my daughter really can't draw!"

For those of you watching this who think 'Jesus, how long till someone dies and he still doesn't take her to therapy?', well, Elizabeth comes over later. She finds out David isn't home and yet hangs out with Emily and chats like they're old friends over a cup of tea. For those of you who aren't paying attention – this is a grown woman just chatting it up with a nine year old girl. What the hell kind of person acts like that? No normal adult would do this! “Hey, I'll just come over and hang out with your nine year old daughter! Maybe play some hide and seek or something!” “Sure, man, any time!”

And yeah, that is what happens – Elizabeth agrees to play hide and seek with Emily and “Charlie” the imaginary friend. Because the writers of this movie are about as attentive to realistic human behavior as a space alien seeing Earth for the first time. Fortunately, an unseen killer leaps out of the closet and shoves Elizabeth out the window, killing her instantly.

David wakes up from his almost surely alcohol fueled sleep and finds the police at the door, asking about Elizabeth's disappearance as they found her car nearby. He tells them he hasn't seen her, then finds her dead body upstairs in the bathroom. You'd think this would finally be the point where he gets the police involved, but no, we're building up to a TWIST at the end! So, you know, nothing has to make sense.

David mostly just shouts like a geriatric person lost at Walmart. He puts on a yellow rainslicker to go outside and goes and buries the body. Then he goes inside and finds a bunch of boxes, unopened, full of stuff he thought he'd been using this whole time. This...somehow leads him to the revelation that he killed his wife because she cheated on him at that party he kept dreaming about all movie long:

Maybe she cheated on you because you're the kind of weirdo who gets a split personality when she cheats on you.

Wow. That's fucking amazing psychology you're using there, movie! His wife cheated on him...so he killed her and several other people! Makes sense to me when you didn't bother to give him any other character or explore his disease at all. Hell, why bother? If you have a split personality, you probably killed people already and don't know it. Too bad for you, sucker. Guess you're fucked.

So, of course, like every other shitty ass movie like this, he then goes on a killing spree. He kills the sheriff, because in every horror and thriller movie without a brain, the cops have no purpose but to get axed off in the climax because they apparently aren't good at their jobs. Oh, and there's also a dumb scene where he plays hide and seek with Emily while hunting for her. Actually it's not even hide and seek - he's shouting about Marco Polo half the time. That's right; he can't even get the right stupid kids' game to shout about coinciding with the movie's title.

"Here's...Jimmy? I dunno. I'm old and bad at this."

If you think it's sad that a great actor like de Niro has been reduced to shouting "Marco Polo" while trying to kill a little girl - and failing, even at that - well, you're right. It is sad. I don't have a joke here. I just think that's really fucking sad.

Anyway, he gets stuck in a random Pan's Labyrinth-esque cave on the property (just go with it; the movie is almost over at this point), and gets shot down by the lady therapist, who showed up somewhere in between the ridiculousness of the last few scenes.

Fast forward to some time in the future, and Emily now lives with the therapist, and goes to school. But she drew a picture of her with two heads, so ooh, that must mean she has multiple personalities now or whatever. Because I guess multiple personalities are kind of like a hereditary thing – if you have them, your kids probably will too and it will be like a growing genetic tree-chart of serial-killing multiple personalities. Hooray for nonsense!

And she's still a terrible artist!

My favorite part is how she apparently still didn't get any therapy or counseling! Both her parents are dead? Fuck it, just send her back to school. She's living with a therapist now after all. So she'll be fine.

This whole thing is full of bad characters, dumb mid-2000s thriller cliches like bad jump scares and pointless red herrings, and of course the absolute pits of awfulness, the psychology behind the 'twist.' No, dumb mid-2000s thrillers – having multiple personalities doesn't make you a fucking serial killer. That was literally never a good twist. It's shit – it's the kind of thing a moron would write because he wants to get cheap shock-tactic scares from middle schoolers. It is garbage, sewer slime, just trash all around. It is about as scary as a Sunday School Bible reading session.

I mean, when has anyone in real life ever not realized they were a killer for that long? Sure, sometimes you get deluded psychopaths or whatever, but most of the movies that pull this shitty twist are just too pussy to actually make the main character aware of what he's doing. Make de Niro know he's a killer and just trying to hide it from the cops. Why not? Because you're afraid it'll be controversial? I mean, I can't see any other reason...surely you can't actually think you're being smart in what you did with this movie.

Surely not. Heh heh heh...

...that would be ridiculous.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

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: Meet the Fockers (2004) TH

When opposite personalities collide

The second Focker film takes the growing relationships further by introducing Greg's parents to the Byrnes' mother and father. Things don't go off without a hitch or ten as both parties take a different approach to lifestyles and parenting: one free-spirited, the other planned.

The name "Greg Focker" should be synonymous with disaster. Everywhere he goes and every situation he finds himself in causes more accidents to take place than student drivers on road tests. You can expect almost everything to go wrong and trying to figure out where it's coming from involves some obvious setups but also a number of curve balls to throw the viewer off. This is also filled with one-off zingers that you might not expect, though they pass through with cartoonish shock instead of a rewarding layered buildup.

Jack Byrnes is a three-step ahead guy at his core, down to the blueprints of his armored RV to get to the tropical Focker residence with Greg's parents awaiting with open arms and liberal views. Barbra Streisand, playing Rozalin Focker, injects the first strong female personality that doesn't act like a wallflower with her open advice as a sexual therapist. Greg soon becomes a referee to separate the tension and anxiety with both parties attempting to either humble themselves to accommodate or change the other person to their own way. One can relate to him as embarrassing moments are brought up, such as a wall of "accomplishments," a detailed scrap book and even revealing his first time. New characters are introduced, including the little grandson of Greg's girlfriend's sister who's training for brilliance, as well as the seductive nanny with spiced up accent and a questionable son.

The characters often play their roles deadpan with chaos going on around them. This takes serious subjects about relationships and puts an over-the-top spin on them. Compared to "Meet the Parents," it's much more outlandish, though with more scenarios that ring with Saturday morning cartoon flavor than what could really happen. This slips in some messages without getting too serious or sentimental that deal with compromising your differences to get along with others and splitting away from the life your parents preplanned for you. The second film was somewhat entertaining and came with some memorable scenes, though it doesn't hold the freshness and power of the first film even with some of the same jokes retreaded.

Starring: Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Barbra Streisand, Owen Wilson, Teri Polo
Website: IMDB

Review: Meet the Parents (2000) TH

A laugh out loud comedy, but the ultimate test of resolution

This is a film that takes misunderstandings and awkwardness to new levels with a Jewish male nurse named Greg Focker (Stiller) visiting his girlfriend's parents' house during a wedding about to take place for her sister. He attempts to fit in to the social circle of this traditional family, who has their own set of rules and specific ways of living that keeps him thinking on his toes and attempting to fake it till he makes it.

Greg tries to make an impression with the overly protective father, Jack Byrnes, played by Robert De Niro, who has a clandestine past and is growing suspicious due to mix-ups that put Greg in a negative light for being the right man for his prized daughter. He has to drop a few habits and pick up new ones to keep up. If it could get any more worse the ex, Kevin, played by Owen Wilson, is on top of everything without evening trying, not to mention close to the father and on good terms with Greg's girlfriend. You could say he's got a lot on his plate, as he's the extreme of polite and can't say what's really on his mind out loud in order to save face in front of others.

"Meet the Parents" was fresh for its time and still holds up as a situational comedy with some relating points about meeting others for the first time or just trying to be one of the gang. It can make you cringe for the main character as he fumbles to do things right by these new people with hilarious trial and error. Just in time, some of the zany pile ups begin to get far-fetched but is saved by seeing Greg in the cross between imploding and running away from everything going wrong by his own hands. This is a Hollywood film, so some sentiment and resolution is going to be offered in order to give it that finishing touch. This was a well-done film as it steadily paced the timing of its jokes instead of trying too hard to completely shock the audience. That's what gives it its replay value as the scenarios are memorable, not to mention identifiable if still exaggerated for comic relief.

Director: Jay Roach (Austin Powers)
Starring: Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro, Owen Wilson, Teri Polo
Website: IMDB

Littler Fockers (2010)

Starring: Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro, Owen Wilson

Director: Paul Weitz

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0970866/

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Fockers

Why was this movie made? Sure, there are, and have been, weirder sequels out there, but I just do not understand why they keep trying to milk this particular series to death. "Meet the Parents" was a funny film that showed the problems of having difficult in-laws and having to come to terms with them in order to make your loved ones happy. "Meet the Fockers" was a mediocre sequel that drowned itself with unfunny gags and bathroom humor. So now we get this. Let's see how it goes...

The film starts off with Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) and his wife Pam (Teri Polo) living in their apartment complex with their twins Henry and Samantha (Colin Baioochi and Daisy Tahan respectively). They are expecting the arrival of Pam's parents, Jack and Dina Byrnes (Robert De Niro and Blythe Danner) who are coming to celebrate the twin's upcoming birthday. Before this happens, Jack, who has secretly suffered a minor heart attack, tells Greg that in case something happens to him. Uh, didn't Jack have a son in the first movie? Or are we just going to pretend he never existed? We are. Fine. Anyway, despite his new agreement with Greg, things start to go airy when Jack begins to micromanage the couples affairs, such as how they try to decide on a new school for the kids and fix up a house they are moving into. Things get even more complicated when a sexy pharmaceutical representative named Andi Garcia (Jessica Alba) enters the picture.

The biggest problem with this movie is that it is extremely predictable. You can see the situations and jokes coming from a mile away. As soon as I saw Jessica Alba in the opening credits, I knew she was going to be used as someone who people would suspect Greg would be having an affair with. In another scene...okay, before I get to that, I have to explain what happens right before that because to show how low this movie goes. Jack takes some medicine that ends up giving him a boner. Yes, Robert De Niro gets a boner in this movie! Thats...just... terrific! Thank you "Little Fockers" for giving us this great moment in cinematic history! Then again, "Meet the Fockers" showed us Dustin Hoffman on the toilet, so I guess it was only a matter of time wasn't it? Anyway, Henry walks in on Greg and Jack as the former is trying to inject a needle into Jack's annnd thats all you really need to know. The following day, he has some tests done, in which he needs to draw a picture that corresponds to the word "family". Guess what he draws? Bingo!

Even when the movie tries to be clever, it fails. When Jack names Greg as his successor, he designates him as "the Godfocker" just as he had previously named his now ex-son-in-law Dr. Bob as "the Bobfather". Umm, I'm guessing this is supposed to be an inside joke because Robert De Niro was in "The Godfather, Part II". I mean, otherwise that would just be a really stupid thing to call someone. There is also another instance where it is pointed out that Alba's character's name is very similar to that of actor Andy Garcia. This might have been intended as a running gag, but it has so little traction from the start that even the film itself seems to give up on it after a while.

There are also some problems in terms of plot holes and the nature of the characters involved. Besides the whole thing with now nonexistent Byrnes son that I mentioned above, there is the matter of Jack's feelings toward his daughter's ex Kevin Rawley, played once again by Owen Wilson. Why would Jack, as conservative and uptight as he is, be more impressed by Kevin, who has gone really hippy-dippy since we last saw him, than Greg? Sure, Kevin has a lot more money than Greg which is always a big factor when it comes to these things. However, I would think that Jack would still have doubts about ditching someone who is generally "down to earth" and the father of his grandchildren than a spacey guy who is "trying to find himself". Shouldn't he also be a little weirded out by the fact that Kevin has a tattoo of her on his back and carries a photo of her around? I wouldn't want my daughter to break up her marriage so she can spend the rest of her life with a guy who is border-line creepy and so emotionally needy. This would be an opportune time for me to make a joke about Owen Wilson playing a guy with serious emotional issues, but I have a feeling that it will come across as being highly inappropriate and insensitive, so I am going to have to take a pass. Sorry folks; have to draw the line somewhere.

Now, you probably want me to crucify this film, which I sort of already have. That being said, I have to be completely honest: for all its flaws, it is not that bad. The acting is pretty good, even as far as the kids are concerned. The bathroom humor but it is more toned down, probably due to the fact that Hoffman and Barbra Streisand have reduced roles compared to the previous "Fockers" movie, though when they do show up they are fairly pleasant. There were also a few parts of it that were mildly amusing, like when Jack want to brainwash his grandson and the physical confrontation between Greg and Jack at the end. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed Jessica Alba in this picture; she allows her peppy character to be really fun and full of energy, even if she is a little on the crazy side. And she strips down to her underwear at one point, which from Alba is always welcomed. It almost makes up for the De Niro boner segment. Almost. I think probably the best part of the movie was the fact that after years of being subjected to Jack, Greg finally starts to show a little bit of backbone when he is around. While he still hopes to gain his in-laws approval, it is not a necessity like it used to be. He has finally taken command of his family and his life, and (perhaps) this will finally allow Jack to fully accept him into the family...and leave him the hell alone.

Overall, the film was...okay. I will give it that much. I was not ecstatic after watching it, but did not feel like I completely wasted my time either. It is certainly not as good as "Meet the Parents" but it is better than "Meet the Fockers". It is not a must-see film by any means, but if you have a desire to see it for some reason, it is possible you may enjoy it. Just keep your expectations in check and be aware of what you are going into.

Review: The Deer Hunter (1978)

Director: Michael Cimino

Starring: Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, John Savage, Meryl Streep

IMDB Page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077416/

"One shot."

-Michael

I never really thought about the psychological ramifications of Russian Roulette before I saw The Deer Hunter. The wait once you pull the trigger – the second that lasts for an eternity – must feel agonizing. This film, focusing on three friends who get sent off to Vietnam, has this as a central theme. De Niro, Walken and Savage find themselves forced by brutish Vietcong to play Russian Roulette for sport, with their lives on the line. Even though they all escape with their lives, they find themselves traumatized and changed as they come back home.

Really, even without the Russian Roulette angle this story would be believable and tragic. That just adds cinematic flair, making for a symbolic point to draw in the viewer. This is a long, long movie, stretching out to the 3 hour mark, and worth every second of it. It starts out slow, building up the uncertainty of our main characters to go away to war, especially when they have so much going for them back at home. John Savage’s character Steven just got married, and the guys have a big community of friends that really feels like a big community of friends. I found myself completely immersed. They really don’t make movies like this anymore. Watching the guys hunting one last time before our three heroes have to go to Vietnam is just heartbreakingly good. Look at the scene where De Niro runs down the street toward the pier, tearing his clothes off in one final, defiant act, one final act of free will before the military takes him. You really get a feel for what it’s going to be like for them to leave this all behind.

The scenes in Vietnam are pretty harsh and bare-bones. It is cinematic in that hard-hitting ‘70s style, but it never feels cheapened or melodramatic. De Niro and his friends are holed up in a cage like pigs, and when they’re done playing Russian Roulette, they’re thrown out into the water. One thing I really like about this is how quickly and subtly the tone changes – after they kill the Vietcong and escape into the nearest city’s war veteran hospital, everything seems to have shades of grey. As De Niro wanders the streets, and as Walken goes to visit a prostitute, everything feels so aimless, in such a dismal way…nothing will be the same again for these men, you can tell.

Surprisingly, it is the previously cool and collected Walken, the character I least suspected, that cracks the hardest. He starts going to an underground Russian Roulette betting pool and starts obsessively playing, putting his life on the line again and again. De Niro returns to the US an even quieter and more withdrawn man than he was before, more serious and grown up. In a bittersweet victory, he finally gets the girl he wanted, played by Meryl Streep, who in the beginning of the movie promised to marry Walken when he came back. But he never came back, and so she gets with De Niro instead. Both men wanted her fiercely, and one of them finally got her. Sometimes, though, she still cries for Walken…

Again, I am just in awe of the mature, deep-rooted character drama going on here. It never shoves itself in your face and never feels hamfisted or Hollywoodesque. It’s just fantastic. Watch the scenes after De Niro gets back into town. I really enjoy the scenes where he gets greeted by the townsfolk at the supermarket, or at the bar. And the one where they all go bowling is great. But things take a darker turn once we see the remains of Savage’s marriage, and how he did actually come back home after all…albeit not all in one piece.

Yes, the hunting is a focal point in this film…they take their guns and go out into the mountains to shoot deer. It’s a form of bonding, and it was what tied them all together. It just isn’t the same after De Niro comes back without Walken and Savage, though. He goes hunting with the guys back home, but it feels…different, somehow, and less happy, like a hollow shell. All that is left for him to do is to go back to Vietnam in search of Walken, where he finds him at last on the losing end of his treasured new game.

The Deer Hunter is a very vital and important film. It’s about how people deal with war, and at that, it excels in many great ways. It’s about friendship, and about how it changes over time. Christopher Walken’s character is probably the most fascinating of all, as the way he keeps on playing Russian Roulette even of his own will is crushing. He’s been pushed over the edge, and this is the only way he can cope – perhaps he hears the clicking of a hollow gun every night, wondering when it will stop. I don’t know. This film is great, with wonderful acting, powerful direction and a metric ton of majestic sorrow to boot.