KING BOB!!!

Did Scuttle from “The Little Mermaid” get his own movie, too?  If not, why not?  Discuss

It's that time again!  Jeremy went to a movie, so he feels obligated to tell you everything that was wrong with it.  

You make it seem so predictable.  One of these days, I may actually watch a good movie.  

You won't tell us about that.  You like to rant.  

I suppose that's true.   

So, in today's installment of Jeremy Is In The Theatre, I took the opportunity to see "Minions," the new movie featuring the adorable Twinkie-looking characters from the Despicable Me franchise.  To be honest and up-front about this, I was against the very concept of this movie ever existing in the first place, so my expectations were very low entering the theatre.  I wasn't disappointed, but really, that's not saying much. 

Secondary characters are secondary for a reason.  It's not because they're not great characters, and it's not because they don't have their own story.  It's that they are best seen in small doses, which makes it that much more special when they are around.  Some wonderful examples from far better films might be Brooks from "The Shawshank Redemption," Scuttle from "The Little Mermaid," M-O from "WALL-E," Joe Pesci's character in either "Goodfellas," or "Casino," or Chewbacca from "Star Wars."  They're all wonderful characters who add so much to the films they're in.  Some might even consider them to be the best part of their respective movies, but they're not the leads.  They can't be the leads.  Sometimes, they're turned into the leads.  

I don't know when this trend started happening, but amazing secondary characters from successful film franchises have started getting their own films.  With often disastrous results.  X-Men spun off Hugh Jackman into the "Origins: Wolverine" atrocity.  The Madagascar Penguins got their own movie that didn't live up to Madagascar.  Kevin Smith broke off Jay and Silent Bob for their own pile of flotsam, and now Gru's Minions from Despicable Me get a prequel. 

I love the Minions.  They're absolutely hilarious in their high-energy slapstick role which is great for a cartoon short or for the little asides they have in Despicable Me.  They also have a rare ability to seamlessly blend insane antics with great emotional depth, as evidenced by the department-store scene in the original Despicable Me where they're supposed to be buying a new unicorn.  You knew full well while watching that movie that whenever there were Minions on the screen, something amazing was about to happen.  And they delivered every time.  Can all of that carry over into a full 90-minutes?  

It can not.  

The main plot of Minions involves three of them on a grand adventure to work for a sinister villain.  The rest of the minions have their own little asides, much like in Despicable Me, but without any other real characters to drive a narrative (think: Dr. Nefario or the orphans).  They're just asides for the sake of asides.  Then you go back to more Minions doing much the same thing, but somewhere else.  There's just not the same breadth in storytelling, character development, or quite frankly, any real sense of conflict.  Yes, there's an evil villain with a master plot, but the master plot wouldn't actually accomplish anything if it worked, and the whole plan revolved around "Get the Minions to do this for me," so it wasn't much of a plot anyway. 

Sure, there are plenty of genuinely funny slapstick moments, some fun catching little bits of english that are scattered in the Minion-speak, and overall, it's an entirely harmless 90 minutes of fun.  It was just entirely unnecessary and not up to the absurdly high standard set by it's original franchise.  Overall, I give this film a rating of, "Ehh...it could have been a lot worse...I guess."  

This has been another edition of Jeremy Is In The Theatre. 

Just Ask Spock For A Ride

In 20 minutes of previews, I learned about 14 hours of movies I don’t need to watch.  Efficiency!  

This week, Jeremy was more concerned about seeing Anne Hathaway than checking to find out if the movie she was in was any good or not.  The result was a wasted 3 hours spent watching "Interstellar."  

There is every reasonable chance that after this weekend's incident, I may be able to add director Christopher Nolan to the list of Hollywood people that I'm done with.  He would join the likes of Ben Stiller, Will Farrel, Adam Sandler, and the Coen Brothers as one of the people who I never need to see any more work from again.  It's not because his stuff is bad.  For the most part, it's actually quite good (for my money, the Dark Knight Trilogy is one of the better trilogies I've ever seen, and easily the best Batman adaptation to hit the silver screen), but it's all settled into a bit of a rut, starting with The Dark Knight Rises.  

From this point on, there will be spoilers about the Batman movies, but not about Interstellar.  It's safe to keep on reading, unless you haven't seen the Batmans.  

So, about 2 hours into the really long "Batman Begins," we learn that Ra's Al Ghul is really alive, and is Liam Neeson.  Great.  It was a nice twist for anyone who had never seen any incarnation of Ra's.  About 2 hours into the ferociously long "The Dark Knight," we learn that Harvey Dent has turned into a new supervillian, Two Face, and Batman has to contend with that as well.  Fine...it was a nice twist, even though we kinda knew that Harvey Dent was Two Face all along, so we were maybe expecting this to happen in the next movie, but it happened here.  About 2 hours into the ludicrously long "The Dark Knight Rises," we learn that Miranda is actually Ra's Al Ghul's child, not Bane, and Batman has a new villain to deal with.  We get it...2 hours into Batman movies, there's a giant shocking plot twist.  By the third movie, you're expecting it, so you're just waiting around for 2 hours until the plot twists, so the real plot can actually start.  

Fast Forward to Fall 2014, and the butt-numbingly long "Interstellar" hits theatres, directed by Christopher Nolan.  Holy cow!  About 2 hours into the movie, there's a giant plot twist, a character isn't what you thought he/she was and the actual plot/endgame can actually begin.  Are you kidding me?  Nolan needs some new schtick, or he's going to find his way out of the 10 bucks I've spent on his last few movies.  Yeah...that'll show him!  

Aside from the formulaic Nolantwist, (Or maybe, I'll just start calling plot twists "Nolans"...I have yet to decide) the movie was pretty much all over the place, never deciding if it wanted to be sci-fi, or action adventure, or romance, or family drama, or psychological thriller, or psychological drama, or if it wanted to be funny.  It kept wandering aimlessly around itself, never actually exploring any depth to any of the two-dimensional characters, or having them grow as people.  It wasn't until after the Nolantwist that it finally realized that it wanted to be weird, and then it was okay!  Only problem was that it took almost 3 hours to get there.  

On the plus side, even though the movie was 3 hours long, the theatre didn't see the need to spare us from a full 20 minutes of previews, so there's that.  I stopped counting, but there must have been 6 or 7 movies advertised here...and they were all crap.  So, at least now I know that I won't have to spend the time or money watching those piles of flotsam.  I just should have been paying more attention during previews of Interstellar.  Could have saved myself that time, too.


This has been another edition of Jeremy Is In The Theatre.

My Jawbone Hurts...

Extremely disappointed that there was no character named “Jabronius” in that movie

Jeremy mistakenly took the opportunity to see the movie "Hercules" recently.  While he may regret it now, it really is to your benefit as he presents his critique.  

So everybody knows about Hercules, the classic mythological hero who developed great strength by being the son of a God and by carrying a cow or something, then performed twelve labors.  Well, picture if you will, that following this, Hercules became the leader of a band of mercenaries, beating up bad guys and telling stories for money.  This is the premise of the new Hercules movie starring The Rock.  Ostensibly, the movie stars "Dwayne Johnson" but nobody knows who that is, so I'll just call him The Rock.  He's a professional wrestler, and this is important.  

So, our boy Rocky has tried to break into the world of acting with such drivel as "Doom," "Race to Witch Mountain," and "Tooth Fairy."  Outstanding stuff, to be sure.  So, here is the latest attempt, and it goes about as well as you've come to expect.  The story is formulaic and predictable (those of us who watched the movie made no fewer than 5 successful predictions about things that would happen), the characters are entirely one-dimensional, everything is colored yellow for some reason, and there is a violation of Jeremy's Big Rule #2 ("Never repeat a line of dialog for Poignant Effect.")  

So, at this point, we've firmly established that the film has no credibility anyway, a fact which is only magnified when The Rock body-slams a horse.  There's a major (and yes, predictable) heel turn, and the whole movie is about fighting, so it seemed only reasonable to me to add other elements of The Rock's wrestling career into the rest of the flotsam.  There was a bet as to whether or not Hercules would apply either the Rock Bottom or the People's Elbow to a villain (The Rock's signature finishing moves), and many jokes were made about whether or not people smelled what Hercules was cooking, and if the final bad guy would be played by Stone Cold Steve Austin.  While all of these would be amusing references to pro wrestling, they would be admittedly blatant and tasteless for somebody genuinely trying to make a go of serious acting.  But, I was truly saddened by the fact that a random character in the film was not named "Jabronius."  

See, The Rock would often refer to people as "Jabroni," as an insult, and extension of the common wrestling term "jobber."  It would be a subtle enough reference that would escape all but the most ardent fans of The Rock's wrestling work (although, that's really the only people that have ever gone to see his acting work) but not disrupt from the film itself.  Of course, since the film was so bad on its own, it didn't really need much help from the actors' catch phrases seeping in.  

This has been another edition of Jeremy Is In The Theatre. 

Keanu Reeves Plays Spock

Well, it’s official.  WALL-E is better at flying a fire extinguisher than Sandra Bullock  


It's also official!  Jeremy is going to disparage one of the best-reviewed movies of the year.  Have at it, Jeremy.


As of this writing, "Gravity" is chugging along with a tidy 98% Tomato Meter.  They don't get a whole lot better than that, but I have an issue with that number.  I'm pretty sure that the reviewers are artificially giving it a good review based on cinematics and visuals rather than the quality of the movie itself.  The film is basically the next sequel to "Speed," but up in space and with fewer bad guys.  The idea is that Sandra Bullock and George Clooney are astronauts fixing the Hubble Space Telescope in the not-entirely-too-far-off-future.  Either the Chinese or the Russians (I honestly forget who) blow up a satellite which causes a deadly storm of space-shrapnel to destroy everything in orbit in a series of chain-reaction barrages in Null-G.  Our heroes must then find a way back to earth.  Adventure ensues.  

So, let's leave aside some of the more nit-picky scientific inaccuracies such as the orbital physics of the Hubble Telescope versus the International Space Station and how it's basically impossible to jump from one to the next, and just deal with Null-G training.  It is implied that our heroes have been in space for a considerable amount of time....on the order of weeks.  It stands to reason that people entrusted with that job would be familiar with some of the basic concepts of working while in orbit.  It's shown that they do have some training when it comes to using tools and the whole equal and opposite reaction thing.  So why is it that when it's time to put out a fire, Sandra Bullock thinks that just floating in the middle of the room and spraying a fire extinguisher isn't going to have consequences?  She quickly learns the hard way that she goes flying the other direction and smacks her head into the wall.  Seems like the kind of thing that should be second-nature to astronauts. 

Turns out, we learn why a little later, when she's adrift in space and uses the fire extinguisher to proper herself toward the next orbiting satellite.  This was an incredibly unique cinematic achievement, as we haven't had a scene like that in a film ever...since 2008, when WALL-E did the exact same thing but in a Far More Adorable Way.  I'm not a rocket scientist, so maybe there's some major difference between the mechanics of flying with a fire extinguisher while in low earth orbit versus flying with a fire extinguisher adrift in deep space, but the average audience probably won't care.  

Overall, the story of this movie falls a little flat.  There some remarkably forced back-story about Sandra Bullock and her character's deceased child which involves the kind of emotional detachment that would probably make somebody unfit for NASA service.  There's the formulaic triumph over tragedy drama build-up that we've seen over and over and over in Hollywood.  There's the ridiculous Sandra Bullock-as-an-embryo metaphoric scene.  There's the 3D effects for the sake of 3D effects...there's really not a lot to like about this movie.  

Except for the cinematography, which includes some of the most amazing visuals you will ever see on the silver screen.  The fact that nearly the entire movie takes place in low earth orbit and null-gravity makes the filming amazing.  Characters are suspended and spinning wildly out of control the whole time.  Stuff floats around, water beads up (yes, tears bead up, too), Marvin the Martian floats off into space, moving characters and vehicles keep moving without opposing forces.  You have never seen a movie like this before.  You may not see a movie like this again.  Just too bad they didn't make it a better movie.  


This has been another edition of Jeremy Is In The Theatre. 

On A Scale Of One To Braaaaaaaaaains...

Much like those in the film itself, there was a hurried zombie stampede for the theater exits when the movie ended

Ladies and gentlemen, Jeremy will be reviewing a film he's actually seen.  This is a rare and special gift, so you should hang on to this like a squirrel hiding acorns for the cold, sarcastic months.  

So, not long ago, I had the chance to watch the new zombie apocalypse film, "World War Z."  Unfortunately for me, I did not pass up this opportunity.  What I got was quite possibly the driest, most soul-deprived take on the zombie film ever.  It combined lots of things I don't like.   Let's examine them, shall we?

Do we have to?

It's my blag, so yes.

First, films that are ostensibly action films that really have no action.  Sometimes, "action" movies deal more with people sitting around in offices and meeting rooms talking and calling people on the phone moreso than any sort of...you know...action.  The Bourne series is one serviceable example of this (though Matt Damon does spend at least a decent amount of time punching people...also, we're going to ignore the more recent Jeremy Renner Adaptation, because it will be better for everyone's sanity if we pretend that never existed), but a far clearer picture is painted by the film "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy," in which a supposedly action-packed plot is unraveled bit by bit through one guy hurriedly talking to many different people in different rooms.  That was it.  Horrible let-down.  Same thing happens here...you have a guy trying to survive the zombie apocalypse and find a cure for the infection by going to random places and talking to people.  Oh, and he gets in a plane crash for some unknown reason.  Which brings me to...

Second, plot points for the sake of plot points.  There's a plane crash in this movie.  That's not really a spoiler, because nothing happens because of the plane crash.  A guy is on a plane, and it crashes.  Then, he continues going about whatever it was he was going to do before the plane crashed anyway.  There was no reason to have the plane crash other than to create a zombie-fighting scene on an airplane.  Okay, that line might be a spoiler, but it's not much of one, and you can see it coming a mile away anyway, so deal with it.  Early in the film, there's also a random family tucked in an apartment waiting out the zombie apocalypse.  We meet them early, and one of the kids escapes with Brad Pitt.  We don't really know why, and we're led to believe that the rest of the family dies...but the whole episode really serves no purpose.  Except, perhaps, to illustrate the point that Brad Pitt is a good guy and everybody else can learn from him.  Which brings me to...

Third...and I'm a little less clear on how to describe this...but there's one useful character in this entire film.  There's Brad Pitt and there's a world full of buffoons.  There's an entire army of people on a giant Navy ship sitting around talking on the phone, but nobody actually doing anything.  The only thing they can think of to do is call up Brad Pitt, who reluctantly comes out of retirement to save the day.  This part bothered me more than it probably would have before I had the misfortune of "reading" the "Survivalist" series of pure crap novels by Jerry Ahern.  In those books, much like this movie, there's one lead character who is so obviously the envy of the author it makes you a little queasy, and there's everyone else who is a complete and utter nincompoop, and would be dead without the sage advice and help of the lead character.   In he film, there are army people who can't defend a base without Brad Pitt's help, doctors who can't cure diseases without Brad Pitt's help, heads of state who can't run a country without Brad Pitt's help, a family who can't stay in an apartment without Brad Pitt's help, and pilots who can't fly a plane without Brad Pitt's help.  I wouldn't have been entirely shocked if one of the zombies was getting advice from Brad Pitt on how to properly bite somebody at some point.  Brad Pitt has a family in this movie.  This is worthy of note because he calls them on the phone occasionally to prove to us that he's a good guy.  They serve no other purpose in the film whatsoever.  Later on, when we get to the climax of the movie and only one person can save the day....go ahead and take a wild guess who's doing the day-saving, and who's watching him on closed-circuit tv and hugging while narrating what's going on for those of us who can't be bothered to pay attention to the plot.  Here's a hint:  the answers are "Brad Pitt," and "Frickin' Everyone Else,"...respectively.

Overall, I would give this movie more stars than any Nicolas Cage film, but fewer than a movie that most people would consider "acceptable." 


This has been another edition of Jeremy Is In The Theatre.

I Left One F Word Out

Seems like you only have to Fast and Furious enough to outrun a tank.  How hard can that be?

Seriously, Jeremy?  This is a new low, even for you.  This movie doesn't even open for another month.  You can't possibly review it now.

And yet, somehow I Find a way.  That's the magic of me!

No, that's what's wrong with you.

So, just in case you were hoping for yet another sequel movie exclusively about car chases, the Fast and Furious Folks are at it again with the sixth installment of this delightful Franchise.  This time, starring The Rock!

It still stars Jordana Brewster, so it's got THAT going for it at least.  Let me ask you this...have you seen ANY of the Fast and Furious Films?

I've seen Few of the Fast and Furious series, but it was enough.  In Fact, I think I've only seen Tokyo Drift, and I'm not even sure I know which number that was, but I can Feign knowledge and say it was #3. 

You're a Fool.

Fine.  You can think that if you want to.  So anyway, the sixth installment has hit the preview screens, and all the Forecasts say that the Film is going to be a hit.  It doesn't matter how recycled the plot is, how badly the characters are Fabricated, or how much you like screeching tires.  This is all about star power, and this Film Finds a way to stuff more and more Hollywood B-list celebrities into itself that people are going to Flock to the theaters to see it.  Just don't expect me to be one of the Followers.  

This has been another Flawless edition of Jeremy Is In The Theatre.