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Season of the Witch

November 1, 2011 by movieroaster

             With Halloween being this week, it only seemed right to roast some sort of spooky movie.  Obviously there are about a million choices for this, and most of them are easy roasting fodder.  The characters always do really dumb stuff, there are a ton of B grade movies etc etc.  I wanted some current, something with a Halloween villain and easily roastable.  Enter Nic Cage and Season of the Witch!

              We open with three women being hung for witchcraft.  After their bodies are tossed into the sea, a do-gooder priest retrieves their bodies in order to cleanse their souls.  Two of them this works on (tough break for them).  One actually was a witch and ices the priest.  2 out of 3 ain’t bad.

               Nic Cage is a Crusader with….Ron Perlman?!  What is Hellboy doing here?  They have a contest to see who kills more people.  Somewhere Legolas and Gimli are readying a lawsuit.  The two of them get squeamish because some innocent people die in a war?  What about the innocent people that paid to see Hellboy 2 and Ghostrider?

               Naturally they get arrested for deserting the army, and get brought before guys who look like Super Mario 2 Villians.  They need Cage to bring a witch who they believe is causing the Black Plague to a death camp.  Failure to comply is punishable by death.  But Nic will comply, just like he took this script so the IRS didn’t seize all his assets.  They are given a couple men, and away they go.

                Some random dude follows them, wanting to go on a quest and be knighted.  He holds his own against Clay Morrow in a duel, so he’s allowed to come along despite that fact that his name is Kay and he has eyebrows like Peter Gallager. 

                It’s about 35 minutes in, so it’s time to start playing the “Is this chick a witch or isn’t she a witch?” game.  Don’t worry though, Memphis Raines assures the girl will get a fair trial.  An easy promise to keep, since during the Crusades a fair trial for a witch was about as common as a good review for Drive Angry.

                Naturally the girl escapes from her cage and fleas, leading to a much less awesome chase scene than this one.  Now optical illusions are getting played on the gang, and since this movie is called Season of the Witch, I’ll just go out on a limb and say this girl is guilty of witchcraft.  I can’t pity her because frankly, she’s not that cute.

                This movie is so bad I just spaced out, but I’m pretty sure the witch just offered to blow Nic Cage while she was in the cage.  The last time somebody put a body part in that cage, she stabbed it, so Nic wisely takes a rain check.

                Journey movie cliché time!  The gang comes across a rickety bridge that they have to get across.  This scene has only been done about a million times in movies.  I’m spending the next five minutes making popcorn.

I’m back just in time to see the party attacked by a pack of wolves!  Unfortunately, Taylor Lautner was not among the wolves slaughtered.  Oh well.

                They arrive at whatever holy city they were travelling to, and the whole place appears to have been wiped out by the plague.  They do find a magic book just lying around that has incantations to detect and ward off evil.  So they have that going for them.

                They find out she is actually possessed by a demon by throwing holy water on her, amongst other things.  Just a piece of advice…next time you are transporting a potential witch, throw some holy water on her first and save me an having to watch your shitty movie.

                The demon apparently wants this book of incantations, and sets an army of dead monks to attack Nic Cage and destroy the last remaining copy of how to kill a demon.  The demon does ice Hellboy though.  Irony!  Kay finishes reading the incantation, the demon blows up and the girl it was possessing lives.  Apparently Nic Cage dies of wounds from the battle, but it’s not totally clear.  Hey, who needs a death scene for your main character! 

                The end.  Seriously, it just ends like that, out of nowhere.  The only question I have after that cinematic disaster?  Did the IRS take all of Nic Cage’s salary for this atrocity, or did he get to keep a few bucks to buy more dinosaur skulls?

Random Side Note.  Why is Nic Cage doing a Witch movie when he’s a vampire?

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What Happens In Vegas

October 19, 2011 by movieroaster

There are two things you should know about me. 1. I don’t hate chick flicks, and I’m not sorry I don’t hate chick flicks.  2. Vegas is my favorite city on Earth.  So when FX decides to show What Happens in Vegas on some random Thursday night, it’s pretty obvious what I’m doing.  Without further ado…

We  start by meeting Cameron Diaz,an uptight career driven control freak, and the former Mr. Demi Moore, a underachieving slacker who floats through life.  If you can’t see where this is going already, I don’t know what to say to you.  Ashton’s dad fires him from the family business, and Cameron gets dumped by fiancé Jason Sudeikis as she is throwing him a surprise party.  On the plus side for her, their relationship was doomed to failure because he was screwing Betty Draper.

What is the natural thing to do when life screws you over?  Vegas!  Make note of the last few words…it is the first time in the history of the Movie Roaster that I wasn’t being saracastic.  This also leads to a gratuitous shot of Planet Hollywood’s Pleasure Pit.  I may have been there once or twice.

Wouldn’t you know it though, the good folks at Planet Hollywood book Ashton and A-Rod’s personal feeder in the same room.  This leads to the two of them getting suites comped and free limo service, allowing Ashton, Cameron and their token friends to hit the town.  What happens when you have two single people commiserating all night over free casino cocktails?  Drunken wedding!

At this point, I was still reeling from shock that a movie set in Vegas features a drunken wedding.  Very innovative.  After a typical hungover Vegas breakfast, Kelso and Mary decide they actually hate each other, and they should get an annulment immediately.  Awesome idea, until Ashton wins a 3 million dollar slot jackpot.  Puh-leeze.  You ain’t winning a progressive without a max bet!  But anyway, now that he is married, he owes his newly minted wife half his jackpot.

You would think this would be an easy solution, splitting the money right down the middle.  But then it’s a 20 minute movie.  Instead they go in front of Judge Dennis Miller, who I incorrectly assumed lost the ability to judge anything after he said yes to the Joe Dirt script. After seeing a video proving both parties were intoxicated when they got married, he sentences them to 6 months of marriage, complete with having to live together and go to counseling.

This sentence would be beyond illegal.  If I was bound to every contract/agreement I entered into drunkenly, my ego would have written more checks my body couldn’t cash at UMass than you can shake a stick at.  You can pretty much imagine how this goes.  Cameron moves into Ashton’s apartment, thinks he lives in filth.  Ashton is annoyed at how long she takes in the bathroom.  All really riveting, original male/female dynamic stuff that I’m pretty sure is finding its way into a movie for the
first time ever.

Then the two go to counseling with Queen Latifah.  Remember when she used to rap about Jimmy hats?  Me too.  Nowadays she is dispensing marital advice.  If they can’t convince Queen they are giving the marriage an honest shot, they’ll lose all the money (also extremely illegal).

Apparently  that’s too difficult for the both of them, as Ashton and Cameron spend the next 40 minutes trying to sabotage each other.  They try to get one another to miss therapy appointments, cheat on each other, screw with each other families and all that jazz.  Instead of ruining their sham marriage, they actually become closer somehow.  This all culminates with Ashton inexplicably attend a work retreat with Cameron, being charming enough to win over her boss (the immortal Dennis Farina) and help her get a promotion.

But now that things are going well, something has to create a little drama for the last 20 minutes.  Cameron finds out Ashton talked to Jason Sudeikis behind her back, and gets angry enough to end their budding romance, give Ashton all 3 million dollars and quits her job.  Somehow Ashton talking to her ex was worse than her blackmailing him with his parents.  Makes sense.

Now the way I see it, Ashton has won two jackpots here.  3 Million clams, and not growing old with Cameron.  Instead, he insists (per chick flick regulations) on ruining his life by tracking down Cameron at a lighthouse (the only place she was every happy, barf), where he gives her a sappy bet on me speech, where Cameron and Ashton try to out-crappy act each other.  It’s a draw.  The end.

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The Italian Job

September 6, 2011 by movieroaster

With Entourage coming to a close, the time seemed right to roast a Marky Mark classic – The Italian Job.  Plus it gave me an excuse to look at Charlize Theron for a couple hours without her looking like this.

Since this is a heist movie, we open up in Venice and get a sweet meet the crew opening.  We have Marky Mark as the mastermind, Edward Norton doing grunt work, Mos Def on explosives, Seth Green as the computer expert, and in the biggest casting stretch in the movie…Jason Statham as the wheel man.

And of course, Donald Sutherland as the old crook who is back to do one last job.  It’s sad to see a teacher give up a life of shaping young minds for a life of crime.  I’m sure nothing will happen to him on his last job before retirement.

The heist seems to go off without a hitch, as the gang blows up the ceiling just above a giant safe as it falls through the now open floor,  Statham leads the police on a chase with a fake safe while Sutherland and company crack the safe that is really underwater.  The police come by, notice hole in the ceiling and somehow feel like it isn’t a good idea to look down where the safe is being cracked.  Nice job by Venice’s finest.

After a successful  heist, the crew shoots the shit drinking Dom and talking about all the cool stuff they are going to buy with the gold they just stole.  And it’s all going great until Norton and his pedophile mustache decide to turncoat on everybody.  Kristy Swanson’s vampire killing instructor Sutherland gets iced while the rest of the crew drive a van into a river while Norton and his lackeys riddle the river with bullets.  Apparently they don’t watch Mythbusters.

A year later we get a peek in Sutherland’s daughter, stone cold fox Charlize Theron.  She is coping with her father’s death by legally cracking open safes, which may be the coolest job on Earth.  In marches Dirk Diggler to mess everything up for her.  He tells her they found Smoochy and they need her help to take him down.

After Theron agrees, we get our second “meet the crew” montage, this time with more details.  Apparently Seth Green invented Napster, but Sean Fanning stole it from him.  On the plus side, it saved him from charter membership in Eduardo Saverin’s “Sean Parker is a Cunt!” club.  He does get the nickname James Hymen, which is appropriate because Seth Green is a pussy.

It wouldn’t be a heist movie without a stake out, and now that the band is back together that’s exactly what we get.  Marky Mark gets the great idea to send Theron into Norton’s house as a cable repair woman.  He is then shocked when Norton proceeds to hit on her and ask her out.  I have very few rules in life, but one of them is if you have a cable repair woman that looks like Charlize Theron in your house, you ask her out.

The next half hour goes by in a blink with very little happening.  The gang buys explosives from a guy named Skinny Pete who looks like this, and spend the next 20 minutes filming a Mini Cooper commercial, as Mini is the company who paid the most to have their cars be the heister’s vehicle of choice.

Unfortunately, Theron goes out on a date with her father’s murderer in an attempt to buy time for the rest of the gang to rob his house.  There ends up being a party that night that interferes with their plan.  Seems like something they should have scouted out before hand, but hey, I’m not a master thief.

What hurts their plan more is Theron dropping her father’s catch phrase on a date with a guy that murdered him.  Norton figures it out, gets understandably upset, and unwittingly settles a bet for me: Who would win a fight between Tyler Durden and Mickey Ward?  Advantage Ward.

Norton knows he is being hunted now, and even finds out how they found out about his gold – his loud mouth gold buyer.  He ices this guy which is a big mistake since his cousin is a mafia kingpin who used to traffic drugs in Blue Streak.  I’m sure that will end well.

Now that Norton knows they are coming, there is only one way to get his safe…to re-create the Italian Job.  Gag.  Worm decides to move his safe using three trucks (two decoys), but Chris Griffin hacks into the L.A. traffic control system and routes one of the trucks to a traffic light where they have rigged the street with explosives.  They blow the street and the truck falls through, just like the Italian Job.

Theron cracks the safe full of Norton’s remaining gold, a sweet mini cooper chase breaks out, and Ward/Durden square off for one final time.  Ward again proves victorious, and also proves that Mini Coopers > Helicopters.  Just for good measure, Blue Streak guy decides to off Norton like he was Cyrus the Virus.

Everybody gets their money, Marky Mark  somehow is instantly dating Theron, and everybody apparently lives happily ever after.  The End.

Random Side Notes

                Seems ridiculous to think Seth Green could hack into the LA Traffic Control center and control traffic lights.  Except that it already happened.

I watched this on AMC, with Story Notes.  Really enjoyed this.  It’s like Pop Up Video in movie form.

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X-Men: First Class

August 9, 2011 by movieroaster

I’m here tonight to roast a super hero movie.  My apologies if you had Green Lantern in the roasting pool (it’s time will come).  If you parlayed X-Men First Class and the over .5 Footloose jokes then drinks are on you!

I’m a sucker for a good prequel (think Temple of Doom, not Phantom Menace), and this one fits the bill.  It picks up with 12 year old versions of Professor X and Magneto both having life altering encounters.  X finds Mystique breaking into his kitchen and decides she can live there forever (his absentee mother having no say in the matter) and Magneto nearly destroys a gate trying to keep his parents out of a concentration camp.

Sebastian Shaw, played by the immortal Kevin Bacon, is running the concentration camp and attempts to have Magneto unlock his power.  When it turns out little Magneto can’t harness his power, Shaw does the only logical thing you can do in a situation like that….murder his mother in cold blood.

Meanwhile, Professor X is busy growing up to be the first man in the history of Earth to get laid by calling hot chicks mutated.  Fine, first to get laid calling women without Daddy issues mutated.  While X and his dreamy hair are cleaning up the girls in London, Magneto becomes the love child of  Bryan Mills and Beatrix Kiddo, cutting down anybody that stands between him and Ren McCormack.

Bacon is busy in his own right, teaching Chris Penn to dance and  trying to bring about a nuclear war.  You can call your bookie to collect on the Footloose jokes, btw.  I’ll wait.  Welcome back.  Bacon has an army of mutants that he is using to stir up trouble between the United States and Russia.  Among them is the gorgeous January Jones, which made me wonder if her unclaimed baby has the X gene.

Unfortunately for Bacon, a smoking hot female CIA agent (in the 1960’s….seems legit) stumbles upon his band of mutants and promptly begins searching for the world’s utmost expert on mutation.  And despite getting his PHD LITERALLY the day before, apparently that expert is Professor X.

You’ll find this hard to believe, but after the smoking hot female CIA agent brings X and Mystique in front of the rest of her CIA cronies, they would prefer to have them locked up rather than have them help save the world.  They decide agent Steinbrenner’s off-site facility will do the trick.

Before they get to Big Stein’s, they make a pit stop to Miami, where Kevin Bacon is sipping mimosas and proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that all ass hats go to South Beach.  Magneto wrecks Bacon’s yacht Titanic style, Bacon escapes and X, Magneto and Mystique go back to The Boss’ “hidden” base – discreetly located on a golf resort.

Keeping with the golf resort theme, we stumble across the original Cerebro…which looks exactly like a golf ball.  Regardless it allows X and Magneto to recruit mutants to their cause, leading to a kick ass Hugh Jackman cameo.

Bacon gets wise to the new recruits and tries to steal them for his own.  He even gives them a passionate speech about how they are all going to be enslaved…followed by a cut to a shot of the only black mutant.  There are no jokes I can make without getting lynched crushed.  Let’s move on.  A fight breaks out and Darwin becomes the first mutant casualty.  Irony!

Bacon continues on to start the Cold War, leading Professor X and Magneto to decide they have to stop him.  Which can mean only one thing…..training montage!  My personal favorite is X playing Yoda making Luke raise the X-Wing out of the swamp.  In this case, he makes X turn a giant satellite that looks just like the one Han Solo blows up on Endor.  All that was missing was “Do or do not.  There is no try.”

This all naturally leads to a climactic battle in Cuba and a showdown between Bacon and Magneto.  Bacon trots out a great defense for his actions.  I killed your mom for your benefit…you’re welcome!  Sadly he had no defense for The Air Up There.  Magneto ices bacon, but failed to mention how awful he is at softball before doing so.  He does however accidentally shoot X in the back.  I’m sure those world renowned Cuban hospitals will have him up and walking in no time!

Random left over thoughts:

Separated at birth…Havoc and Ryan Atwood!

Riptide was moonlighting as the weird guy from the Black Eyed Peas!  Eh, the weird guy with the red tie.

Mystique leaves X because she is partial to Magneto’s cause?  What a cunt!

Beast puts on a clinic on how to not get laid.  I’m pretty sure there is a Kelsey Grammer/Real Housewives of the O.C. joke here.

Speaking of Beast, his “cure” for mutant appearance serum looks like Ecto Cooler.

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Varsity Blues

August 9, 2011 by movieroaster

If you haven’t seen Varsity Blues, then you weren’t a teenager in the 90’s.  Luckily for you, I was 16 when Varsity Blues came out, so it’s queued up on the spitfire and ready for roastin’!

We start this glorious journey in West Caanan, Texas, where (shockingly) high school football is king.  Angelina Jolie’s Dad is the center of this football universe playing the successful football coach (and Nazi) Bud Kilmer. The star quarterback (Lance Harbor) even has a billboard of himself up in his front lawn.  I’m sure the movie gods won’t let anything bad happen to him.

The backup quarterback (Jonathon Moxon) has a pretty sweet gig himself, entertaining millions of teenage girls and landing himself Amy Smart!  In West Caanan, a brunette Amy Smart is only hot enough to land a backup that reads Kurt Vonnegut during the games and daydreams of going to Brown.  The lesson?  I should have gone to high school in West Caanan.

Turns out West Caanan is heading towards a perfect season on the golden arm of Harbor, who in his spare time screws over Freddie Prinze Jr. in bets and drag races cars.  The Cougars are screwed without him, because Mox can’t even hit is dad on a 7 yard slant at a barbeque.

This is about the time the movie gods decide to pay back Lance Harbor for the gaudy billboard in his front lawn.  What do we have for him Johnny?  Tearing every muscle in his knee after a concussed Billy Bob passed out (which somehow didn’t cause a false start)!  Luckily Moxon ably leads them to victory in Harbors absence while Amy Smart starts working on her Match.com profile.

You’ll find this shocking, but Lance’s smoking hot girlfriend no longer wants to date him now that his free ride to Florida State is off the table.  Instead she wants to hitch her vagina wagon to the rising star that is Jonathon Moxon.  She pulls out all the stops to land him, but he somehow turns her down.  Odds that a 18 year old boy would actually turn down the whipped cream bikini?  0 percent.

Continuing his string of awful decisions, Mox decides to take a few teammates to get hammered at a strip club the night before a football game.  Apparently this strip club would not have been open during any other day of the week.  West Caanan loses it’s perfect season because all their star players are hung over, but we do gain this.

Nazi Coach Kilmer does not take well to losing his perfect season.  He takes time out of his busy schedule of screwing his black running back out of touchdowns to inform Mox that if he doesn’t play by his rules, he’ll fuck up his transcript and ruin his scholarship to Brown.  You know what Kilmer?  Your daughter is a whore.

Mox is conflicted about whether or not to follow Kilmer’s orders in the final game, and decides to discuss his dilemma with his girlfriend.  She basically tells him to quit whining.  You turned down the whipped cream bikini for this girl?  Good grief man.

During the halftime of the final game of the year, Kilmer continues his stellar medical practices by trying to shoot up the running back he racistly screwed out of touchdowns all year with a mystery serum that lets you play on a torn ACL.  This doesn’t go over well with Mox, who leads a coup against Bud Kilmer with this inspiring speech.  Not exactly Gene Hackman in Hoosiers, but it does the job.

Lance Harbor takes over second half coaching duties from Kilmer, who apparently used the radical approach of not having any assistant coaches to speak of.  With the game hanging in the balance, Harbor calls for a Hook and Ladder to Billy Bob to score the game winning touchdown.  If you think that’s ridiculous, you’ve never heard of Boise State.

The moral of the story?  When Dawson and Brian O’Conner team up, hilarity ensues.

Leftover thoughts:

                Only in West Caanan is there a Sarah Palin look-alike stripper Sex Ed teacher who can get Dawson to admit he named his dick Pedro.

Lance Harbor was committed to FSU.  How the fuck did Mac Brown let him go out of state!

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Gordon Bombay

August 9, 2011 by movieroaster

If you are reading this, there is a pretty good bet you’ve seen a Mighty Ducks movie (and god bless you if you’ve seen D3).  The problem I bring to you today is a simple one.  Because of the success of the Ducks in these flicks, people walk away with the gross assumption that Gordon Bombay is a good hockey coach.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

I will be focusing more on D2 for my argument because in D2 Bombay was chosen to coach a national hockey team, not some rink-a-dink Mite team in Podunkville, Minnesota.  The first of my issues is the way he put together his squad, though director of Hendrix Sports Don Tibbles deserves some blame here as well.

First off, Bombay brings back most of the cast from the original Mighty Ducks movie.  Ridiculous.  Despite winning a local championship the year before, they weren’t even the best team in their own town!  The Hawks would have beaten the Ducks easily in a 7 game series, probably 4-1 or maybe 4-2.  Now all of the sudden these kids from Minnesota are the best junior hockey players in the entire country?

Then they go out and bring in a couple kids from across the country.  Where did they find these kids?  Hockey hotbeds like Michigan, North Dakota, Boston?  Nope.  They find kids from Chicago (defensible), Miami, San Francisco and Texas.  They found one person from Maine (thank god!).  I guess any time you can find your second line center from Texas, you have to do it.

So let’s look at these studs they brought into the national team.  Chicago produced Dean Portman, a bad ass enforcer who had no other discernible hockey skills.  I’ll give them a pass on Portman because he did give them a little toughness.  Then they go to Miami to find Luis Mendoza -a lightning fast skater….who can’t stop.  The best players in the country are at your disposal and you find a kid that has to crash into the fucking boards to slow down?  Nice.

Next they went to San Fran where they find converted figure skater Kenny Wu.  Wow.  First of all, he never would have pulled off his fancy figure skating trickery like the triple axel he used to score against Iceland because wouldn’t BE ALLOWED TO WEAR FIGURE SKATES, rendering his figure skating abilities completely useless.

Then we go to Texas to find Dwayne Robertson, a slick puck handler that would have been a decent player if he ever passed the god damn puck.  All he did was screw around in the neutral zone, make a couple of people look bad, then get pummelled and give up possession of the puck.  Nice.

The one real find was Julie “the Cat” Gaffney from Bangor, Maine.  She was a quick goaltender and much better than starting goalie Greg Goldberg in every conceivable way.  The only problem was Bombay decided his fat-ass goalie whose signature move was to fall flat on his face was a better play than Gaffney.  Makes sense.

That brings me to Bombay’s coaching decisions.  While I will grant you that he is a good “Rah rah!” coach, his decision making is just atrocious.  Let’s start with his handling of Gaffney.  Clearly the best goaltender on his team, he doesn’t use her until the last penalty shot against Iceland.  So you are going to take a goalie with exactly 0 minutes played in the tournament and ask her to stop impending super stud Gunner Stahl?  Insanity.

And not for nothing, even if you were hell bent on making Goldberg the starter, you couldn’t have found any time for Julie?  Was it really imperative that Goldberg played the third period against Italy while you were up 6-0?  Couldn’t have spot-started her against fucking Trinadad and Tobago?  You absolutely, positively had to have your “best” goalie play against a team whose country is in the Carribbean?

How about the fact that you let Lester Averman even play?  He was god awful, and I would have loved to take a look at his plus minus rating.  Yet somehow he managed to log major ice time every game, allowing him to leave drop passes in front of his own net.  Good times!

And last but not least, his handling of the shootout was embarrassing.  First, Fulton Reid?  Fulton had a killer slap shot, but on a penalty shot, he wouldn’t be firing it through a screen or anything like that.  The Iceland goalie would have a clear look at it the whole time and should have stopped it.

If you wanted to have somebody out there to take a shot from the blue line why not have Russ Tyler tee up the knuckle puck?  You bet the whole tournament (and broke a bunch of rules) on his ability to beat the goalie from center fucking ice, but he isn’t on your PS list? Nicely done.

Next up is Dwayne, who as far as I can tell didn’t register a point in the tournament.  Dwayne was always too tricky for his own good and always made one move too many.  It was the most predictable thing of all time that he got stuffed.

Some people will point to the fact that Bombay won the tournament as a testament to his skill.  These people are idiots.  When I think of a great coach, I think of Lombardi firing up the troops.  Not a guy who risks a forfeit against Sweden because he has a fucking midlife crisis and decides to rollerblade around Malibu for two periods to figure shit out while Michelle McKay coaches the team.  McKay didn’t know what a line change was and had the team tied against a hockey powerhouse for two periods, all while cleaning up the streets of New York.  Pretty much sums up Bombay’s value right there.

Don’t even get me started on Bombay trying to bang that girl trainer from the Iceland team.  Do you think Belichick would take Brian Schottenheimer out for an ice cream Sunday on game week?  Well played Bombay.

Bottom line, the Ducks won in spite of Gordon Bombay.  He’s is total garbage.  Case closed.

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Couples Retreat

August 9, 2011 by movieroaster

I had the pleasure intestinal fortitude to sit through Couples Retreat on Blue-Ray this weekend.  Before I start roasting the movie, first a word to the people who make Blue-Ray discs.  Did I really see an ad (a click yes for more info, click no to continue on to the movie) after the previews?  Fahk.  You.

The movie opens up with the David Bowie classic “Modern Love”, which is awesome, because the movie peaks in the first 45 seconds.  We get the obligatory “Hunny do you prefer nickel or brushed nickel faucets?  Which tile do you like?  Are you even listening?” intro, which is played out and wasn’t funny, but did re-affirm just how badly women can suck.

The next 15 minutes go on to establishing the varying forms of mid-life crisis our main characters are in.  One of our characters decides the only way to get over his recent divorce is to become the first 300 pound black man to own a rice rocket, which Vince Vaughn has to co-sign for since his ex-wife ruined his credit.  Nothing says I’m a free man and loving it like love handles that sag down to an exhaust pipe.

Enter Jason Bateman, who I absolutely love, but who has never been worse in a movie.  He apparently gives powerpoint presentations to announce everything.  In this instance he pulls all the adults upstairs, at a children’s birthday party, to show a  powerpoint on how is marriage is failing because of inability to conceive (the irony).  Only a Tahitian getaway can save it.  Meanwhile, all the children are now being watched by a children’s magician named “Magic Jim”, who has such crowd-pleasing tricks as “Watch your kid disappear…into my van” and “How to turn trip to the grocery store into 10 years in prison.”

Bateman pitches the vacation to all his friends because he and his wife can’t afford to pay for it alone, but can get a good group rate.  Interesting because in your presentation it had a timeline that said you “made partner”.  Fairly certain most partners of law firms can afford a vacation.

Believe it or not, Bateman convinces everyone to go (only after breaking into Vaughn’s house and causing Vince to get a gun from a case that was straight out of mission impossible).  Vince calls his security company and informs them the password is asstastic, and they give him a hard time about it because despite asking him for the password, they had no freaking clue what it was.

Regardless, everyone decides to go on the trip.  Must have been some group rate, since generic black dude didn’t have enough money or credit to get a loan on a 10,000 dollar bike can easily afford a trip to French Polynesia.

As soon as we land on our little slice of paradise, we find out the Jon Favreau and his B-Cup man boobs is a total chick magnet.  Not only did he land Kristen Davis (who he is unhappily married to) but a smoking hot 20-something nymphomaniac instantly takes a shine to him.  Don’t worry fellas.  Keep throwing cheese fries, because man-boobs are so in this season.  The merry band appears to be on the vacation of a lifetime, but per formulaic plot regulations everything is not as it seems.

The couples aren’t allowed to go jet-skiing or any other fun island stuff.  Instead, they must adhere to couples therapist extraordinaire Marcel’s (played by the douce French cop from the Da Vinci code) strict guidelines, including 6 a.m. couples building classes.  Enforcing Marcel’s couple building instructions was Jengo Fett, who apparently survived Mace Windu’s beheading in Star Wars Episode II and went on to a prosperous career as a Sandals bouncer.

It only gets worse, as now each couple has to go to therapy in tunics that look like leftovers from the Heaven’s Gate cult.  By the way, we are at the 40 minute mark without anything laugh out loud funny happening.  And I bring this up because they have two couples therapists (Ken Jeong and John Michael Higgins) who are legitimately funny in everything they’ve been in…..except for this. There isn’t a movie with a funnier cast that underachieves quite like this movie.

We then get to see couples snorkeling, where Marcel has lemon sharks swim with the couples under the premise that if each person remains calm, the sharks won’t attack.  For a minute I was wishing the sharks would eat me so I could stop watching, but it did lead to the first funny line of the flick (“Take the French out of your mouth and tell me what to do!”) which comes at the 50 minute mark.  Faaaaaaaaantastic.

Fast forward to the endgame of this masterpiece.  Fat black guy’s much younger girlfriend (another awesome cliché) leaves to go to the other resort on the island, filled with smoking hot single people who do nothing but drink and have casual sex.  Or as it’s more commonly called, Heaven.  Luckily Favreau and his gynecomastia realize where she is going and comes up with a plan to find her on Fun island.  As luck would have it, 4 tandem canoes are laid out, in a perfect row, so they can set sail on their journey.

In the middle of the journey, Bateman’s smoking hot but infertile wife Kristen Bell finally can’t stand to be around him anymore (which makes two of us), so she jumps out of the canoe and runs into the woods.  Which sums up my feelings for the movie nicely.  But her friends go after her while the boys continue the search for the fat black guy’s girl.  During the journey, they talk about feelings, relationships, and just about every other subject guys don’t ever talk to each other about under any circumstances.  Vaughn finally concludes he likes being married because he has somebody to go to Applebee’s with.  There are no words.

Anyway, thanks to Vaughn winning a guitar hero duel (not making this up) they boys re-convene with the girls on Fun island.  Who shows up but FBG’s ex-wife?  And her message?  “I missed you.  It took me awhile to realize it, but no matter how many guys I fucked nobody made me feel as special as you.  So now that I’m done fucking tons of dudes, we should get back together.”

So FBG spits in her face right?  Nope.  Instead he says “I’m cool with you fucking everything that moves and ruining my credit….let’s give this another shot!.”  Wow.  Just wow.

Somehow they pass the counseling course (what?  How?) and receive carved wooden versions of their animal spirits (are you fucking kidding me?).  Whatever.  The whole movie is a commentary on relationships disguising itself as a comedy.  It failed me on both fronts, because I didn’t learn anything I didn’t know about relationships, and I didn’t laugh.  It’s an hour and forty-eight minutes that I’ll never get back.  At least we got to stare at Sarah Marshall for awhile.

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