Any similarities between Jim Henson’s antron-fleece assemblage and hack-screenwriter Jason Segel’s fleece job are coincidental. Bright lights, brittle colors, forced cheer, and production numbers lifted from a Dr. Pepper commercial (and backed by a knitting-needles-through-your-ears score) combine for a fatal dose of nostalgia. In the past, at least we had …
Nothing if not esoteric: a backhanded salute to Mexican wrestling movies -- campy superhero adventures of masked luchadores with names like Santo and Blue Demon -- and, more broadly, the whole south-of-the-border wrestling subculture. Odd, offbeat, outlandish as it is, it makes a fitting, albeit unforeseeable, followup to Napoleon Dynamite …
Confused-teen-crazy-world comedy, fairly formulaic (a gallery of stereotypes, a splash of gross-out, a dab of sentiment, an instructive moral), notwithstanding the genuflections to Fine Literature. Agile comic turns by Jack Black, Catherine O'Hara, Lily Tomlin, and John Lithgow. But the romantic leads, Colin Hanks and Schuyler Fisk, bear so strong …
Strenuously lowbrow antics around the attempts of two postadolescent losers to rescue a third loser (and fellow member of a Neil Diamond tribute band) from domination by a ball-busting beauty. With Steve Zahn, Jack Black, Jason Biggs, Amanda Peet, and a cameo by Neil Diamond; directed by Dennis Dugan.
An imposter substitute teacher, and local laughingstock rocker, instructs a class of grade-schoolers in What He Knows: rock-and-roll, history and practice. The participation of director Richard Linklater (Slacker, etc.) and screenwriter Mike White (The Good Girl, etc. ) might raise expectations slightly, and similarly raise the results: head of the …
A couple celebrating her promotion (Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel) decide to spice up their sex life and find themselves on a scavenger hunt to prevent a homemade porno from going viral. A foolproof premise for a modern day screwball comedy done in by foolhardy execution. Casting Rob Lowe — …
A high-concept low comedy from the Farrelly brothers, Peter and Bobby. The concept, which might from these filmmakers pass for sensitivity, enables the babe-chasing hero (Jack Black, a serviceable Joe Blow) to see the inner beauty of the people around him after he has spent a short time in a …
Subaqueous computer animation; or, Finding Nemo's Sunken Treasure. Not only is the plasticky animation done by computer, but also the plotting, scripting, casting, everything. We have here, plugged in as variables in the formula, hip-hop fish (voice, and lips, of Will Smith), Mafia sharks (voice and facial mole of Robert …
With help from Princess Peach, Mario gets ready to square off against the all-powerful Bowser to stop his plans from conquering the world. Directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, starring Chris Pratt as Mario, Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach, Charlie Day as Luigi, and Jack Black as Bowser.
With help from Princess Peach, Mario gets ready to square off against the all-powerful Bowser to stop his plans from conquering the world. Directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, starring Chris Pratt as Mario, Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach, Charlie Day as Luigi, and Jack Black as Bowser.
With help from Princess Peach, Mario gets ready to square off against the all-powerful Bowser to stop his plans from conquering the world. Directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, starring Chris Pratt as Mario, Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach, Charlie Day as Luigi, and Jack Black as Bowser.
Major-studio satire on a major-studio Vietnam War epic. The slipshod plotting, the willful misinformation about how movies are made, and the pandering to the groundlings do not close off all avenues of inspiration. Four fake trailers at the top of the movie, introducing the motley cast of the movie-within-the-movie, give …
Anachronism-littered buddy comedy about a hunter and a gatherer expelled from their primitive village and followed through a Biblical landscape of Cain and Abel, Abraham and Isaac, Sodom but not Gomorrah: “What transpires within the confines of the walls of Sodom, stays within the confines of the walls of Sodom.” …