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#140RVW

Less a movie than a film school exercise as Steve Martin remixes old noir films with even older one-liners. Still works more often than not.

What’s more:

On paper this really shouldn’t work; inserting yourself into a bunch of old movies and making smart ass remarks. It would be sort of like having a bunch of guys sitting in the audience and heckling a movie and just showing the backs of their heads…wait a second…

But it does work, because the year is 1982 and Steve Martin is about the funniest person on the planet. Some of the jokes work very well, my favorite being a running gag scolding Bogart for not wearing a tie. Many others are just rote smarmy responses that simply advance the story. Actually, it’s probably true to say that while this exercise in remixing old films works, it isn’t funny so much as irreverent.

The concept of mashing up old films into a new film is intriguing, though. I’m sure someone will make (and probably already has) a truly unique project this way, though it will probably never see the light of day for rights reasons…

Poster:

Trailer:

Bechdel Test:

Fail

Main Cast	Steve Martin Rigby Reardon, Rachel Ward Juliet Forrest, Alan Ladd The Exterminator (archive footage), Carl Reiner Field Marshall VonKluck
Rating	PG
Release Date	Fri 21 May 1982 UTC
Director	Carl Reiner
Genres	Comedy, Crime, Mystery, Thriller
Plot	Film noir parody with a detective uncovering a sinister plot. Characters from real noirs appear as scenes from various films are intercut.
Poster
Runtime	88
Tagline	Laugh… or I’ll blow your lips off!
Writers	Carl Reiner (written by) &, George Gipe (written by) …
Year	1982

#140RVW

Absolute riot. So much fun. Park & Wright can do little wrong. Works pretty well as sci-fi & as comedy, but mostly as story about friends…

What’s more:

As the third film in the Cornetto Trilogy (with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz), The World’s End comes with heavy expectations, which it absolutely fulfills. Producer Nira Park & director Edgar Wright get the band back together and this thing just plays…

The perpetually funny Simon Pegg & Nick Frost are joined this time by a great supporting cast featuring Eddie Marsan, Paddy Considine, Rosamund Pike and NVB fave Martin Freeman. These actors gel perfectly and completely sell their role as old friends.

At the insistence of Pegg’s ne’er do well addict Gary King, the old gang gets together in their old hometown to complete a pub crawl down the “Golden Mile” of 12 pubs that they failed to master as teenagers. The first half of the film is packed with great comedy and moments as they realize that of course you can’t go home again.

And if it had stopped there, it would have been quite a good movie. They could have left it at that and no one would have cause for complaint. But the whole thing gets more sublime as this theme that nothing stays the same becomes more explicit with the discovery that their hometown has in fact been invaded by body snatching aliens. Brilliant! It gets completely ridiculous, and in all the right ways.

The World’s End is a blast and never stops being funny, even with a slightly long for comedy 109 minute run-time. The movie feels like a night out with your friends, and makes me want to get the band back together to find our own Golden Mile and “see this through to the bitter end. Or… lager end.” Let’s Boo-Boo…

Poster:

Trailer:

Bechdel Test:

Fail

Main Cast	Simon Pegg Gary King, Nick Frost Andy Knightley, Martin Freeman Oliver Chamberlain, Rosamund Pike Sam Chamberlain
Rating	R
Release Date	Fri 23 Aug 2013 UTC
Director	Edgar Wright
Genres	Action, Comedy, Sci-Fi
Plot	Five friends who reunite in an attempt to top their epic pub crawl from 20 years earlier unwittingly become humankind’s only hope for survival.
Poster
Runtime	109
Tagline	Good food. Fine ales. Total Annihilation.
Writers	Simon Pegg (written by) &, Edgar Wright (written by)
Year	2013

140 Character Movie Review – #140RVW

The comedy is great – it’s very funny. The story is more clunky. Just not really well mapped out. Overall pretty good; could have been more.

Spoiler-free Movie Review of The To Do List:

The short version: The To Do List is a very funny movie, even if it isn’t as solid as it perhaps could have been. I wanted to like this a lot more than I did. When it was announced it really seemed like a good concept for a comedy.

The story from rookie writer/director Maggie Carey is semi-autobiographical and a great premise: valedictorian decides to apply her task oriented study style to exploring her sexuality before heading off to college. It works well as a comedic backdrop.

It’s a very refreshing story, largely because the main character, Brandy, is no victim or subject of exploitation. She is an empowered, confident, brilliant young woman who has decided to take control of a part of her life that she has previously ignored. It is a unique character for film, and it’s wonderful to see a new role for a woman on screen; a woman that is in the driver’s seat on her own sexual journey. The matter-of-fact way that Brandy (played by Aubrey Plaza) approaches each sexual encounter is a breath of fresh air.

The problem for me is simply that although that is really all that is going on in this story (which isn’t a problem in of itself) there is an excess of characters and half-developed storylines. There’s enough family dynamic to be its own movie, a love triangle that’s more of a straight line, a surplus of Bill Hader scenes, including a side story with Brandy teaching him to swim, all sorts of workplace hijinks – it’s just all too much. There’s great stuff there, but the movie as a whole feels scattered.

And by the way, the movie takes place in 1993, which in my opinion is the single best thing about it. The setting is great, and if you were college-age around this time (as I was), it’s a blast to relive the dreadful clothes, music & tech. (The closing credits music is MC Hammer’s “Can’t Touch This”, which I previously thought I’d safely reach the end of my life without having to listen to again.)

Finally, I’ve got a few items for Hollywood’s To Do List:

• Teenager comedies need more teenagers. Seriously. Why are these adults playing teens? Aubrey Plaza was around 28 at filming.
• If you’re going to insist on continually having dumb parent parts in movies, at least cast them with dumb people. Clark Gregg & Connie Britton are far too talented to be stuck with these roles.
• Please, more good roles for women being actual women like this one so that it isn’t such a novelty, and so it doesn’t need to come in gross out movies like this.
• On that subject, please, no more scenes of people spitting, throwing up or anything with bodily fluids. It’s foul. 

Poster:

Trailer:

Bechdel Test:

Pass

Main Cast	Aubrey Plaza Brandy Klark, Johnny Simmons Cameron, Bill Hader Willy, Alia Shawkat Fiona
Rating	R
Release Date	Fri 26 Jul 2013 UTC
Director	Maggie Carey
Genres	Comedy
Plot	Feeling pressured to become more sexually experienced before she goes to college, Brandy Klark makes a list of things to accomplish before hitting campus in the fall.
Poster
Runtime	104
Tagline	She’s going from straight A’s to her first F.
Writers	Maggie Carey (screenplay)
Year	2013