You're Next (2013)

As the holidays is a time for sitting around a table with people you're not sure you like, I figured I'd take a crack at one of the movies that shows exactly what it's like to sit at a table with people you hate and then die from an arrow to the throat. You know, like you do. This is You're Next.

Director: Adam Wingard

Starring: Sharni Vinson, Nicholas Tucci

IMDb

Co-written with Colin.

This is apparently a part of a new subgenre called “mumblegore,” which I can only imagine is referring to the endless mumbling every single character has in place of real dialogue. As You're Next doesn't have much mumbling and instead just has regular, shitty dialogue, I have to say this is a bad example of mumblegore. Then again I might have the wrong definition of what mumblegore is. But I'm always right, so I doubt that.

I rated this movie the worst of 2013 back on my list for that year. It was nearly unwatchable when I didn't know what to expect. But now that I know to set my expectations lower than the water level of Florida for this, I don't have the same frothing hatred for it. Plus I teamed up with Cinema Freaks alum and sometimes-contributor The Observer for this, like old times, so it was a little better that way.

The movie begins with a scene of characters we don't know fucking. As an added bonus of worthlessness, they aren't the main characters, and we don't know their names and never see them again. But the opening does provide us with one of the staples of any erotic porno: the erotic orange juice pouring scene!

Scandalous.

Anyway, they're killed off, and we then move on to our main annoyances – a bunch of people meeting up at this big house for their parents' anniversary dinner. The mother and father get there first and things are already weird. Like all good horror movies, there's a pointless and dragged out scene where the father searches upstairs for the source of a mysterious noise that scared the mother, only to find out it was his weenie of a son Crispian rummaging around up there.

"Hey Dad, I know how much you liked being jump scared, so of course I had to do it this way!"

Red herring, awesome! How did Crispian get up there without them seeing him come in downstairs? Did he scale up the wall like Spider-Man? Was there a secret passage in this house? I mean, it does kind of look like the house from the Clue board games.

The main character is Erin, an Australian girl who's dating Crispian. They lay around later and spew soulless exposition to lay out the very easy story – their parents are having an anniversary and all Crispian's siblings are coming the next day. That's really the only reason to film this scene, to info-dump that on us. Uh, great job? I think you should go back to just mumbling everything, movie.

The family gets there, and it's basically all downhill from there. They argue over silly things like how unprofessional it is for Crispian, a teacher, to date Erin, who used to be one of his students. His brother is a real dick about it and they erupt into a full scale battle over it immediately, ruining their parents' anniversary like champs!

Fortunately, the parents were used to their children being insufferable morons.

As that apparently was enough character development to last an entire film, we're just done with all that shit now, and it's time for people to start dying. A bunch of unknown killers start shooting arrows into the house, which is frankly a blessing in disguise for these miserable people. They kill a few people, and the survivors huddle together and attempt to plan a way out. One of the girls volunteers, saying she's a very fast runner, but then she runs in stupid slow-mo cam and gets hit by barbed wire in the neck the second she opens the doors!

That isn't a camera trick - she just runs really slow and lies about being fast.

So it was a terrible idea, but at least that scene was pretty funny. So there was that. There's another killer waiting under the bed, who stabs the mom. He was apparently there for quite some time, and he still can't kill the rest of them. I guess it's just more conveniently dramatic that he did it this way. Of course no one else finds him and there's nothing that comes of this aside from the mom's death. What, did you want something actually interesting to happen? Pfft.

But to be fair, we DID need a hokey title drop scene!

The next thirty-odd minutes is just them scampering around in the house and sometimes dying. The fact that the characters wear animal masks really is pretty dumb. Somehow, Jason Voorhees always came off as somewhat menacing, but these guys are just clowns. There's no mystique, even before you get to the twist later. It just looks like the killers were lazy and had no imagination, so they grabbed the worst, cheapest masks at Party City.

It's revealed somewhere in the middle of all this that the main girl Erin was actually a child of a survivalist who learned how to fight and survive attacks just like this as a child. It's kind of glossed over, but the idea of a kid growing up in that environment is actually pretty cool. I certainly would have liked to see that instead of the movie we ended up getting!

Seriously, though, it's really just shoehorned in there because they needed SOMEONE to fight back, or else we'd have no movie! It's like “hey, we can't just have them kill everyone off, the movie will be over in ten minutes.” “Okay, whatever, throw in a survivalist character. Make her a hot chick, too.” Movie saved!

The best part (read: worst part) of this is that she didn't tell her boyfriend Crispian yet, for no reason other than that it would conflict with the plot twist of him being a killer later, and if he'd known she was a badass fighter, he never would have brought her, and we wouldn't have a fucking movie. Good writing! High five!

Then it's revealed, I guess, that the whole thing has been a plot by some of the family members to get their parents' inheritance money. You know how it goes, sometimes you're down on cash, and you need to stage an all-night-long murder fest in which everyone gets shot by arrows. Fucking please. There was no other way to enact this plan? You HAD to put on dumb animal masks and shoot everyone with arrows one by one? I guess poisoning their food or just hiring a guy to walk in with a gun would have been too much. But really they just didn't do those things because then there would have been no movie.

There's just no humanity to these characters, and no reason for them to act the way they do. I'm not saying we need a long exploration of their motivations, but what do we get instead of any development? A scene of the brother's goth girlfriend asking him to fuck her next to his mom's dead body on the bed? Yeah, I can see what they were going for now. I take it all back.

The rest of the movie doesn't even really try. It's full of dumpster-bin cliché like the henchmen thugs working themselves into a self-righteous lather when one of their own gets killed. HOW DARE YOU FIGHT BACK WHEN WE'RE TRYING TO KILL YOU!!! Maybe your job security isn't that good on this job after all!

The chase scenes are pretty goofy, too. One highlight for us was the guy who tries to step through a window. He sees the one row of nails on a wooden board, goes 'okay, I can do it,' and then steps down without even looking and impales his own foot on another nail. He then starts galumphing around and probably making it worse, because what horror movie has NOT been helped by comparisons to a Looney Tunes cartoon?

Just add the Roadrunner giving the audience a wink and it'll be gold.

Then there's the scene where Erin kills a guy with a blender, which totally is something she was taught in survivalist camp, I'm sure. That's just basic 101 stuff.

Oh, and the height of ridiculousness has to be when it's revealed that Crispian was a part of the whole thing, as the movie had kept him out of action for the last 40 minutes and made you wonder. He gives a very stupid, shitty speech in the most callous way possible about how he just wanted money so they could go on vacation, and c'maaaaaaaaahhhnnn, babe, don't you see why this was a good idea?! He really sounds like he's talking about not tipping a server at a restaurant, when he's actually saying he hired some guys to kill most of his family for money. It's just about the dumbest thing I've seen in the movie yet, which is no small feat.

"Hey, I'm a real catch, I killed my family so we could get some extra pocket money. On second thought, saying it out loud, maybe this was a bad idea. Man am I dead inside!"

So she kills Crispian, and then the cops come in and shoot Erin too, because I guess they hated having clean work performance records and wanted to be total fuck-ups. This scene was kinda like Night of the Living Dead, though! In...pretty much the only weird comparison to that classic flick that You're Next will ever draw.

This is a piss poor movie with nothing to recommend, frankly. Bad characters, no good scares, no atmosphere, and oh yeah, a tired home invasion plot with a weak twist at the end. There's really no exploration of the theme they seemed to be going for, this whole idea of a Great Gatsby-esque profane wealth, and what wealth does to people, makes them crazy and moral-less, et cetera. That seemed like the basic idea they wanted to get across. But instead, it was just a shitty home invasion movie, and you never really gleaned any point.

It's basically complete shit. Shame, because it seemed like it could have been good, based on the people involved, but I guess you can't win 'em all. Anyway, at least your holiday family dinners won't be as bad in comparison.

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

A Talking Cat!?! (2013)

It's time, dear readers, to take a break from our usual intake of gruesome horror tales, and instead look at something different. Something involving talking felines, and no dignity or common sense.

Director: David DeCoteau (as Mary Crawford)

Starring: Johnny Whitaker, Janis Peebles, Eric Roberts

IMDb

...yeah, I guess that's as good of an intro as I'm going to get. Boy, am I out of steam! It's almost like I'm doing these reviews and consciously mentioning how out of steam I am just to cover up how out of steam I am! And plus I'm reviewing a movie about a fucking talking cat. Which is, frankly, as low as you can go.

Apparently director David DeCoteau is something of a brainchild as he has done many other movies exactly like this. Some titles include A Talking Pony!?! and My Stepbrother is a Vampire!?! because it's apparently impossible to have a good title if you don't include !?! at the end of it. Am I right!?! No. No I'm not. I'm really just ashamed I just did that.

But really the most interesting part of this whole affair is this:

What? Seriously, what?

Oh well. This is mere chump change compared to the movie we're about to see. Are you ready? No? Well, nobody is ever going to be - not for this. We'll just have to get used to it.

The movie begins with our hero, Duffy, a talking cat whose mission is to help people. We get a voice-over in his head about, I dunno, walking around and shitting in peoples' yards or something. The voice-over by Eric Roberts of The Dark Knight and Heroes fame sounds like your drunk stepfather in a bar at 2 p.m.

He isn't the hero we want, but he's the hero we deserve. Also that looks nothing like the cat on the cover, goddamn you! Was it so hard to take a picture of the actual cat in your fucking movie?

He decides to help two separate families in “trouble.” By that I mean one of them has a dad played by a mordibly obese Bill Murray who likes to do soul-crushing things like sit down in the random car-shaped seat they have for some Godforsaken reason in their living room, and go “Vroom! Vroom!” like he's a 10 year old. The son, who is sitting on the couch reading what I am positive is a book of blank pages just intended to make him look smart, sighs exasperatedly and goes “Dad, why do you keep doing that?”

Did they steal that chair from a mall kids' play area display?

The story is told by the dad, Phil, who explains very calmly and actually kind of happily that he lost his job and will now just laze around the house all day. The son doesn't give a shit at all, and I guess that kind of dead-eyed apathy runs in the family – must be a dominant gene. Phil's apparent plan is just to hang around and eat pizza and stuff. I'm so glad he's a positive role model.

The son, Chris, by the way, is a total wimp who gets this really hot girl to come over and “study” with him, which for her means swimming in his pool while he reads her books for her. Kid, I'd tell you to skip this chick and wait for someone better, but to be honest, your totally wimpy reaction to this in which you run away from her like a pussy tells me you don't have it in you. I mean, come on – even the fucking cat is thinking he's terrible. Really; we get a voice over with the cat thinking how lame Chris is. That's pretty bad.

"How am I using a phone when I'm too stupid to even know how to operate one?"

The other family is a “poorer” family, which means they don't have a house that a hipster art college student would design while he was drunk. The daughter is trying to apply for business school, but the mom says they don't have money for that, and actively antagonizes the daughter for...trying to better herself as a human being and having ambition. Meanwhile, her lazy slacker son who just spends all day in his room and acts like a wooden plank, she loves and adores.

Hmm...so mommy has some issues which will likely be projected onto her weak-willed son. Sound familiar?

Nah.

So if you can actually believe it, the cat can talk to these people only once and tell them something they need to do or know to make their lives better. I'd say this is ridiculous and implausible, but frankly the audience for the movie – whoever the fuck they are – is already close enough to believing shit like this is possible. Whether through extremist hippie new-age belief or being dropped on their heads, the audience for A Talking Cat!?! will probably accept this plot without complaint.

Above: the look of all the legitimate movie studios when confronted with the plot for A Talking Cat!?!

I also love the animation for when his mouth moves, and by animation I of course mean they just photoshopped a black hole over the cat's mouth and had it move vaguely in tandem with the dialogue. Didn't I see this kind of stuff in 2002-era Internet animation cartoons? Why am I watching it in a 2014 movie?

Even old Newgrounds.com games had better graphics.

So I guess the cat gives them some really vague, weird advice – he tells Phil to “go take a walk in the woods.” Which honestly sounds kinda creepy, doesn't it? Is this cat some kind of mafia hitman enforcer? I dunno. Unless there's Ryan Gosling and a place beyond the pines involved here, taking a walk in the woods with anyone in this movie sounds like a terrible idea to me.

The only acceptable outcome of this movie for me.

He also tells the girl, Tina, to look at her computer, which has Phil's website on it. I guess Phil's job, which he lost recently, was something involving computer programming. Because this guy really looks and acts like a guy who knows anything about computers, right?

I guess the whole point of all this is when Phil takes his walk in the woods and meets up with Susan, the mom from the other family. They have a conversation about Humphrey Bogart movies, which I'm guessing is because the director didn't have the money to buy the rights to talk about anything else. I love Humphrey Bogart and all, but this whole sequence is hilarious to me. Yes, truly that is the barometer of quality here – Humphrey Bogart movies on one end and A Talking Cat!?! on the other.

Above: The face of the Humphrey Bogart fan club, circa 2013.

There's also a plot point, if you can call it that, about Susan being this caterer for business parties or something, and she's constantly trying to make cheese puffs to take with her. They talk about this a lot, to the point where my friends and I started to wonder if someone just lost a bet and had to shoehorn in the phrase “cheese puffs” in their script as many times as possible. I mean Jesus Christ, what is the big fucking deal with the cheese puffs? Are they really that good? Will they make you orgasm if you eat just one? Will they make you see beyond our puny reality and soar to the cosmos inside your mind while rainbows shoot out of your ass? I mean, you're setting the standards pre-etty fuckin' high here.

Apparently Susan wants Tina to make more cheese puffs instead of doing work to try and get into computer school. She really acts like a bitch to Tina for wanting to do stuff to try and get into a computer school instead of making cheese puffs – yeah, furthering your education and improving life prospects is lame. She should just be a docile house wife!

All women should be forced to stay in kitchens and make food all day with no other career prospects - A Talking Cat!?! says so, so it must be true.

Phil leaves and Tina goes with him to his house to make the cheese puffs while also talking about computers! They mash their fingers on the keyboards while smiling like a Hallmark commercial, so I guess that counts as the plot moving forward:

"Alright! You found my favorite animal porn website!"

The other son comes up and finds Chris trying to swim in the pool – because he apparently doesn't know how to swim when they clearly have a pool right there and the ocean is just a few miles away, too. I mean, I don't know; maybe there's some rational explanation. But given the movie's titanic levels of stupidity I'm guessing it's because Phil shrugged his shoulders, got that doofy look on his face and went “aw shucks, I ain't good at anything except computer science and embarrassing my entire family in public. You just won't be able to swim I guess!”

There's actual dialogue in this scene where Chris complains about being afraid of pool sharks - like, actual fucking sharks in the pool. Did he get dropped on his head?

So logically, the solution here is for the other son to offer to give Chris swimming lessons. Wait a minute, I thought the whole plot point of the other son was that he wasn't good at anything and didn't know what he wanted to do! But now he's really good at teaching people to swim and seems to enjoy that?! It's almost like the writers just didn't give a fucking shit what they were dribbling out onto the page at this point.

And then he was immediately eaten by a pool shark.

Susan comes over and gets mad at her kids for coming over there, even though they made the cheese puffs like she wanted. But that wasn't good enough because, apparently, in that short time span in which Tina left her house and came to Phil's, the mom had a meeting that went HORRIBLY because she didn't have the fucking cheese puffs! The horror! Stop the presses! So she takes it out on everyone else and ruins everyones' lives. Fuckin' A.

Then we get a montage of Phil and Chris scanning their clothes into a computer somehow, which I guess is Tina's newfangled computer system program or whatever. I dunno, since they figured this out and seem to know how it works, what's to stop them from stealing it for themselves and making even more money than they already have? Just trying to keep it real here, movie. Plus these characters being absolute irredeemable dicks to one another would just be funnier for me. And honestly, a fucking montage of this? Are you shitting me?! I've had more fun watching videos of people getting root canals.

Yes, continue to look absolutely baffled and bewildered at everything you're doing. That makes for a good character.

So I guess the cat thinks he can solve this “problem” by going over and talking to Susan, which he hasn't done yet. Unless what comes next is a suicide pact, then I'm not interested.

But unfortunately, the cat never makes it, after being hit by a car. Yes, really – that's now a plot point in this movie. Now, what I'm about to show you is a picture of the cat's injuries, and I understand that may disturb you. So if you're the type of person who is offended by gore and violence, especially against talking felines, I suggest you click the 'Back' button on your browser.

…

…

Have you done it yet? Because I'm serious. You're going to be disturbed by this.

…

…

No, really. You will be. Last warning!

Okay then. Here are the injuries the cat sustains after the car accident:

Yup. Just one bandage on his head and that's all the injury he sustained from being HIT BY A FUCKING CAR.

Yes, my sentiments exactly.

You can't make this up, people! Hell, I can't even make jokes – the movie already is one! I guess either the cat has some aluminum plates in its skull after the war or the car that ran over him looked like this:

So I guess the cat somehow tells them that to save his life, they have to go out and find a buried collar in the woods. They go walking in the woods to a soundtrack of elevator music that sounds like it was made for a clown school, and find the collar above the ground, not buried like the cat said. Because why have anything make sense now? Who really cares about having a coherent script at all, right?

So although I was really hoping when they put the collar back on Duffy, it would magically transform him into his true form as the dark lord Lucifer, spewing hellfire and brimstone from his cracked lips and with the twisted horns atop his head that seem to be able to pierce the heavens...that doesn't happen. Instead it just magically heals him.

This is apparently what it looks like when a magical cat is healed. Also, good editing is when this happens and only one out of all those characters is looking up and appears to see it at all.

Well, that was A Talking Cat!?!. It was about as good as you would've expected from the title. I mean it isn't like you'd see the DVD cover and expect anything that much better. Christ. What was the thought process behind this? Who was the intended audience?

Oh. Well...okay then.

It isn't like Sharknado or something where it's intentionally bad...there was obviously passion in this and some kind of attempt to tell a story. But it's just incredibly backwards. The cat, for whatever fucking reason, is there to “help” people – so, obviously, he picks some really well-off middle class to rich people who have no real problems. Couldn't find a poor single mom on welfare or a high school drop out addicted to meth to help out, hmm? HMMMM?!

Well actually I'm guessing he tried, but really the only people fucking dumb enough to listen to a talking cat ended up being the characters we saw in this movie. That makes sense. And honestly the 'problems' these people have don't even seem that bad – they aren't that lonely, they seem to be doing decently financially...they have it pretty good, aside from the fact that they made some new friends at the end I guess. I guess that cat just wanted to freeload off them and not sleep in the gutter for a night.

Other than that though, this was pretty much okay. I mean, who doesn't want a movie full of long shots of nothing but nature or people driving?

These kinds of time-wasting shots take up a lot of the movie's runtime - it's pretty obvious they were just put there to pad out the rather meager 80 minute (even with these shots in there) runtime.

Who doesn't want a story with zero likable characters and dialogue more fitting of a bad 1980s commercial? Yes. I'm not going back on any of that.

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

Review: The Last Airbender (2010) TH

Four elements, warring tribes and a boy with tattoos

Once upon a time peace resided in a world full of special people called "benders"--someone select among a tribe that has the ability to control either air, water, earth or fire--and then suddenly a god among men that held it all together called the "Avatar" disappeared: the chosen one able to control all four elements and communicate with the spirit world for guidance.

Now, a century later and with strife on the rise, we're introduced to a southern water tribe who dwells in an arctic setting. An early teen named Katara (Nicola Peltz), who bends water and also narrates a portion of the story, and a young man called Sokka (Jackson Rathbone) are out on a hunt when they discover something lurking under the ice. A humongous beast and a bald boy with tattoos named Aang (Noah Ringer) lay there after Katara pops a sphere that enclosed them. Soon enough word spreads that it might be the Avatar reborn again. Great, it's time to rejoice! Nope. This poses a problem for the dominating fire nation in which all inhabitants of the air nation--which the Avatar is supposed to have descended--were thought to be extinct.

The good about "The Last Airbender": excellent stringed orchestras that are well timed over top to lend suspense; the cinematography is often panned to get a full scope of the various and plentiful areas they travel to; and just about every other set piece is splendid and awe-inspiring with nearly flawless transition of CGI and physical objects for the non-3-D version. This film is eye-candy for the person into fantasy landscapes, as well as someone who just likes to explore out of reach locales. Now, all this work was put into the music and visuals, but how the characters interact with each other and how their dialogue comes out makes you wonder if they even went back and watched the dailies as they were filming it. A large portion of the dialogue feels overly simplistic even by kid friendly standards and is often shortened to the point of missing punch and passion to back it up. On one hand it makes the story understandable--sometimes it's even over-explained at random points to an audience that's supposed to be invisible--as it frequently shifts from place to place, person to person, though it takes away from an edge to put a viewer right there in their shoes.

This establishes some brief back-story and explains throughout how the rules work, though as it carries on it feels like a series of aimless mini-missions with a world of connected characters to jump back and forth to. The boy with tattoos named Aang has to train and figure out what he wants to do, where he places himself and how to unlock his bending powers. He travels and meets people, though this loose way of following him around comes off like a haphazard string of events passed off as an actual story. A final battle happens and it shows off impressive special effects and fight scenes between the fire and water tribes, yet prior to that it felt like they were only handing out samples till you got to the entree. "The Last Airbender" mixes martial arts, myths and superpowers together and has an interesting concept as well as the imagery was truly impressive, but even said it still wasn't enough to overlook the mostly wooden and roaming human interaction.

Director: M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Signs, The Happening)
Starring: Noah Ringer, Nicola Peltz, Jackson Rathbone, Dev Patel, Shaun Toub, Cliff Curtis
Website: IMDB

Review: The Santa Clause (1994)

Director: John Pasquin

Starring: Tim Allen, Judge Reinhold, Wendy Crewson

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111070/

With all the countless movies made for families about Santa Claus, with their jolliness, holiday cheer and just a little bit of risqué jokes for extra measure…this film is another one. The Santa Clause, starring Tim Allen, tells a heartwarming story of a man who became Santa Claus and was briefly estranged and alienated by his family and friends before becoming accepted…as being Santa Claus…okay, okay, it’s a weird-ass, schmaltzy flick without much common sense, sue me.

This film does have some problems. I mean, the whole idea is that whoever puts on the Santa suit after Santa is dead or incapacitated in any way becomes the new Santa, right? Well what if a Jew or a Muslim or a Scientologist became Santa? I guess the elves would make due, but all I’m saying is, they should be grateful that Tim Allen was so reasonable about it. Hell, what if nobody put on the Santa suit in time for Christmas? Seems like that’d be a pretty big fucking deal. Maybe they have some secret back up plan that the movie isn’t telling us about?

But fortunately for the elves, Tim Allen puts on the suit and although he’s initially suspicious and apprehensive, he grows very quickly accustomed to the idea and makes a 180 turn in terms of morals and thoughts about it. Too fast, I think. I mean we’re barely given any time to accept this whole thing in the first place, and yet with the movie’s quick editing it seems like Allen barely has a second thought about it, going straight from Scrooge-esque disgruntlement to immediate acceptance in the bat of an eye. Not really convincing, movie.

After Allen’s rendezvous to the North Pole, along with his incredibly annoying little boy, the kid starts to tell everyone about his dad’s new job. Why does Allen keep letting him though? This is the kind of thing I’d like to call the Idiot Effect, a snowballing of events that propel the film’s plot forward, but could have very easily been avoided if the characters just had a little more intelligence. Why does Allen keep letting the kid blab to everyone and thus flush his self image down the drain? It could all be solved by just one sentence of dialogue: “Hey, listen, don’t tell anybody about what happened last night.” That’s it. That is all that is needed. Then none of the problems in this movie would have happened, and maybe we could have spent our time better actually delving deeper into the whole Santa mythos that this movie obviously put time into. It seems like the film has a priority issue here, that’s the main problem.

My last issue with the film is that it’s just resolved all too quickly, the whole entire thing. Allen comes to term with his being Santa and decides to give it his full effort, but his ex wife and her new husband are afraid of him and think he kidnapped their son. He brings the kid back, escapes the police with the help of his James Bond-style elves (I know, just go with it) and everything is pretty much fine, resolved quicker than you can count to three on one hand. Give us some more conflict! This just is not enough, and I know there could have been more effort put into it.

Really, this is just a decent film. There are a lot of little plotholes and things they could have fixed if they just tried harder, but it is a charming film. I like the way the elves have all that futuristic technology and I like the way they set up the Santa mythos. Tim Allen does OK, even though the kid playing his son pretty much sucks. But what can you expect? It’s a kid’s movie, a dime-a-dozen family flick from the 90s that pretty much went through the motions. It’s fun, but it’s unspectacular.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010)

Well, I'm back. Sorry for my long absence from this site; I have been pretty busy as of late. However, now that things have calmed down for me, I have decided to make a return. I can't promise that I will be doing this frequently, but if something comes along that I feel deserves to be reviewed, I will make an effort to do so.

Anyway, it's the season to be jolly, and you are probably curious about whether there will be a Christmas-themed review. Well, that's not going to happen...at least not at the moment (we still have 13 more days after all). However, I can give you the next best thing: a fantasy movie with blatant Christian overtones. That's right, you guessed it:

Starring: Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, Will Poulter

Directed by Michael Apted

IMDb:

Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Narnia:_The_Voyage_of_the_Dawn_Treader

Okay, before we begin, I should make a few things clear. I did not really read the "The Chronicles of Narnia" book series when I was younger, and I have only seen the first of the three films that have come out so far. I have also not seen that particular movie since it first came out in theaters. Therefore, if I make any assumptions that come from my lack of knowledge of the books or the previous films, I apologize ahead of time. That being said, let's dive right in...no pun intended. You know, because it takes place at sea...okay, anyway....

The plot starts off with Edmond and Lucy (Skandar Keynes and Georgie Henley respectively) staying at their cousin Eustace's (Will Poulter) house while their older siblings are off doing different things. However, they soon find themselves transported to Narnia and reunited with Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes), who is on a mission to find a group of men known as the Seven Lost Lords of Narnia. As the plot develops, they come across mysterious green mist that is causing trouble throughout the different islands they encounter. It is then established that they must unite the seven swords of the different Lords, bring them to Aslan's table, and vanquish the evil presence.

No, not like that.

Mmm, close, but that is besides the point.

Okay, enough with the summery; let's get to the analysis. Here are the positives: the visuals, while nothing special, are very good. Lucy, my favorite character from the first film, remains a charming presence as she struggles to find her place in life as she enters adulthood. Edmund has also matured a bit since that time and though he has his own troubles of being in the shadow of Prince Caspian, he still comes across as likable. I guess I kind of liked the rat, Reepicheep (Simon Pegg, imagine that) as well, even if he did remind me of the Geico Gecko at one point. Not sure how that happened.

The biggest problem I had with the movie: Eustace. He is soooooooooooooo annoying, so so so annoying! Now, I understand that he was probably supposed to be this way in the books and to be fair Poulter does a geat job of bringing out the character's smart-ass behavior. That being said....he is still soooooooooooooo annoying! At one point, he is held at knife point and the other characters were told to drop their weapons or his throat will be slit...CALL HIS BLUFF! IT'S A WIN-WIN SITUATION! UGH! Well, I guess it does not really matter; as expected, he eventually gets becomes more likable (or at least more tolerable) as the film goes on because an amazing thing happens to him, he finds his inner courage, blah, blah, blah...

While I do not really have any specific problems with the film, though I do have general ones. Besides the ones I mentioned above, I thought the rest of the characters were kind of bland, particularly Prince Caspian. I do not know why, but he just did not impress me that much as a leader. There were also times when it felt like the film itself was more like a junior "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie in the same way that the first film felt more like a junior version of "The Lord of the Rings". That might be a little unfair given my lack of knowledge about the books and the timing of this films release, but that is just the way it turned out. As a result, these factors end make the film seem much longer than its nearly two hour running time.

*WARNING: MINOR SPOILER ALERT*

Despite what I said up above, the Christian overtones are kept to a minimum in this third-go-round, only being hinted at when the characters are discussing their faith that something good will come out of a tire situation. It becomes a lot more obvious at the end with the appearance of Aslan (a wonderful voice performance by Liam Neeson once again)and a gateway toward "his country". Obviously, one's personal beliefs may play a part in how you may view this scene. Although I am not personally a religious person, I thought it was well done; it was not in-your-face, but it was enough to get the message across concerning believing in one's self and the possibility of another world beyond our own.

*SPOILERS END HERE*

All that being said, this was a pretty good film. It was not as good as the first movie and there is nothing fantastic about it on a technological or substantive level. Still, it is a fairly enjoyable family movie that will leave you with feeling happier than when you entered. I do not strongly recommend it, but if you happen upon it at some point, either in theaters or elsewhere, I will not try to stop you.

Kazaam (1996)

Starring: Shaquille O'Neal, Francis Capra, Ally Walker

Directed by Paul Michael Glaser

IMDb page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116756/

Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazaam

"Kazaam" is a film about a genie (basketball star Shaquille O'Neal) who must grant three wishes to Max (Francis Capra), a troubled young boy who is hoping to connect with his estranged father (James Acheson).

This movie really annoyed me. The kid is a little brat who spends most of his time on screen acting like a smart-ass and antagonizing everyone he comes across, including the audience. He also tries to establish a relationship with his father, who is involved in organized crime and yet Max still feels he is a viable alternative to his mother (Ally Walker) and his would-be step-father (John Costelloe), who are not that bad. Did I mention he is also stupid? As for Shaq...well...let's just say he is better on the court (well, in his prime anyway) than onscreen. His performance comes off as silly and awkward, though to be fair he does seem to have fun in the role. The two characters do not get along well during any point of the film with the exception of the end (which is kind of required) and in the middle when they engage in a god-awful rap duet, which is one of unfortunately many dumb scenes throughout the picture.

The worst part about this movie, even more from the performances, is that it does not really make sense. It is supposedly aimed at kids but it spends a lot of time focused on a bunch of criminals and people hanging around clubs. Were the filmmakers trying to bring in Shaq's older fans? I am not sure but whatever they were trying to do, they failed. It is a little odd to be putting that in a film that also features the basketball player riding around on a magical bicycle and making junk food fall down from the sky. As a result, it makes you lose focus on the plot and gives you less reason to about what happens next. It is not helped by a number of plot holes. I will not mention all of them, but here is one example: a stereotypical Middle-Eastern crime lord (Philip Santella) knows all about Kaazam's powers and limitations despite having very the little knowledge about him. Maybe he knows about genies based upon what he learned in his homeland, but we will never know.

Well, there is nothing else I can really say except...the film sucks and I do not recommend it.