A Sketchy Comedy

Year: 2013

Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Movie 43 is sketch comedy, so for better or for worse there's at least a frequent shift in attention. For the laggiest parts of the film this is a boon, but for the few and far between "good" sketches, this means being dragged unwillingly into yet another prolonged scatological gag that is only made worse by the relative quality of the sketch before it.

There are several funny jokes in this comedy movie, thankfully. But finding them is like panning for gold downstream from a cow field. Sometimes you'll find something shiny and glittering but mostly you end up with a panful of crap.

Let's break down some sketches, shall we?

"The Pitch"

Director: Peter Farrelly

Cast: Dennis Quaid, Greg Kinnear, Common

The awful one in between all the other awful ones.

Much like in the horror anthology series V/H/S, there is an interstitial sketch that links everything together into one big heaving mass. In this case, it's a series of pitches for a movie that Charlie (Dennis Quaid) wants to get made. Studio executive Griffin (Greg Kinnear) shoots them down because, frankly, they're a better fit for awful sketch comedy than an actual feature film.

Desperate, Charlie demands that Griffin get his boss(some rapper called Common)'s approval to greenlight the script at gunpoint. Through remarkably uncomic escalation, tensions with Griffin's boss reach a boiling point and he ends up with the gun pointed right at his boss's head.

On top of this linking sketch being a grueling series of reminders of how terrible each of the sketch ideas are, it starts with an Isabella Rossellini fart joke and goes downhill from there, ending up with forced fellatio and a meta gag that is baffling even by the haggard standards of this script.

The One Good Joke: A cameo by Seth McFarlane pitching a new sitcom called "Hollacaust" is surprisingly self-aware and funny.

"The Catch"

Director: Peter Farrelly

Cast: Kate Winslet, Hugh Jackman

Beth (Kate Winslet)'s blind date goes horribly wrong when the handsome Davis (Hugh Jackman) turns out to have balls on his chin. Seriously.

Right off the bat, the movie homes in on its primary goals - getting the biggest stars they can to do the stupidest and/or grossest stuff they can think of. There's a place for grossout humor, but a script where they can't think of anything funny beyond "chin testicles" is not that place.

This film is just an endless cycle of ball joke - reaction shot - grossout that doesn't see fit to even resolve itself with a punchline. It's tedious and further proof that Peter Farrelly burnt himself out on directing There's Something About Mary, because not a single film he's directed since 1998 has had any merit whatsoever.

The One Good Joke: OK, when he's forced to kiss her on the forehead while taking a photo and they end up in her face, it's kinda funny. But it doesn't justify the total lack of direction the sketch has.

"Homeschooled"

Director: Will Graham

Cast: Liev Schreiber, Naomi Watts, Jeremy Allen White

Homeschooler Kevin (Jeremy Allen White)'s parents (Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber) want him to have a totally normal high school experience - complete with emotional trauma.

OK, this one was actually pretty good. Watching this kid's parents act like petulant high schoolers to maintain the loneliness and alienation that are an essential part of the high school experience is a sharp concept.

But the trouble is, as the good gags rolled out and nothing came up to replace them, they kept going further and further in the hopes that audiences would laugh at the obscenity and not notice the absence of humor. This sketch doesn't "end" as much as it just throws in some incest jokes, runs out of steam, and dies panting on the carpet.

The One Good Joke: Kevin's mom knocks his books down in the hallway and calls him mean names.

"The Proposition"

Director: Steve Carr

Cast: Anna Faris, Chris Pratt, J. B. Smoove

Vanessa (Anna Faris) wants Jason (Chris Pratt) to move things to the next level.

Real quick: What is the sketch that you think would spring forth from the fertile imagination of the man behind Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Dr. Doolittle 2, and a short film called Touch a Tit, Save a Tit?

Did you guess something lowbrow and inane? Close.

It's actually much much worse. 

Vanessa wants Jason to poop on her. That's it. No more comedy. After that first reveal, the sketch is just an unending conveyor belt of advice on how best to poop on your girl. Several burritos and laxatives later, he really needs to poop but she wants to savor the moment.

Ha?

I can't even with this one. It's just five minutes of a guy needing to poop and then he gets hit by a car and no I'm not making that up.

The One Good Joke: I don't know if I can even keep doing this.

"Veronica"

Director: Griffin Dunne

Cast: Kieran Culkin, Emma Stone

Neil (Kieran Culkin) is working as a cashier at a grocery store when his ex Veronic (Emma Stone) comes in. There's dirty flirting, and some of what they say is caught on the intercom.

That's it. This sketch is approximately 45 seconds long. There are no discernible jokes and the microphone seems to be able to turn itself on and off at will.

Emma Stone tries her hardest and manages to eke some laughs out of a "joke" that can't even be considered a full-fledged premise. I'm talking failing out of Premise School and huffing crack on the street-level jokesmithy here.

The One Good Joke: It's not even a joke, but Emma Stone's line delivery makes it so. Hence, it would do me no good to repeat it here.

"iBabe"

Director: Steven Brill

Cast: Richard Gere, Kate Bosworth, Jack McBrayer

A company has created an MP3 player that looks like a naked woman, but there's a dangerous fan in the area where her vagina should be that is harming teen boys who try to get creative.

A sketch invented solely as a medium for showing boobs. Again, there's not so much "jokes" here as there is a table discussion of fans and vaginas. And nobody but Kate Bosworth realizing that this might be a bad idea.

The dialogue meanders around the room and fades into the wind, as neither the actors nor the audience really care what anybody is saying at this point.

The One Good Joke: Their solution is to run a commercial with the tagline "iBabe. Don't f*ck it."

"Super Hero Speed Dating"

Director: James Duffy

Cast: Jason Sudeikis, Justin Long, Uma Thurman

Batman (Jason Sudeikis) embarrasses Robin (Justin Long) on a blind date by being supremely inappropriate.

When your superhero parody would be just as funny (funny being a relative term here) if every one of the characters was just a regular person, you've got a problem here. It's just a cheap way to wring laughs by putting a guy in a 99 cent Batman suit and having him talk about vaginas.

And show Superman as a Guido with jizz in his hair.

Another sketch with no ending, it just cuts to black once they run out of things to say.

The One Good Joke: Supergirl (Kristen Bell) can see Batman hiding under the table as he gives Robin advice, not with her X-ray vision as he suspects, but because it's a tiny café table and his butt is sticking out.

"Middleschool Date"

Director: Elizabeth Banks

Cast: Chloë Grace Moretz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Patrick Warburton

Amanda (Chloë Grace Moretz) gets her first period in a house full of boys. Periods are gross.

Isn't it weird that this movie and Carrie came out the same year? Chloë is just getting her period all over the place in 2013. Although this kind of humor is played out, some of the boys' attempts to help despite not knowing anything about periods are pretty funny.

Honestly, as a cinematic directorial debut for Elizabeth Banks, she could have done a lot worse.

The One Good Joke: One of the panicking boys proffers a sponge to Amanda.

"Happy Birthday"

Director: Brett Ratner

Cast: Seann William Scott, Johnny Knoxville, Gerard Butler

In retribution for sleeping with Brian (Seann William Scott)'s girlfriend, Pete (Johnny Knoxville) captures him a Leprechaun (Gerard Butler).

Finally, a breath of fresh air. Instead of scatological humor, this sketch uses violence to disguise the fact that it doesn't actually contain jokes. At least it's a new one.

And to be fair, it does have a punchline unlike most of the other sketches. Unfortunately, the punchline has nothing to do with the actual story, isn't funny, and just... dumb! EVERYTHING IS DUMB.

The One Good Joke: Nothing. Nothing about this is funny.

"Truth or Dare"

Director: Peter Farrelly

Cast: Halle Berry, Stephen Merchant

Emily (Halle Berry) is bored of internet dating so she invites her newest blind date (Stephen Merchant) to a game of truth or dare in a Mexican restaurant instead of small talk.

This one is up there with "Homeschooling" in that it had a really great beginning! Berry and Merchant have really sweet chemistry and the sketch was promising to be quite charming before it turned right down the road of all the others, investing way too much time in crass humor including, but not limited to, a baster full of hot sauce shoved into her vagina and massive breast implants.

It's quite dispiriting, because I was really beginning to like this one.

The One Good Joke: Emily is dared to blow out the candles on a kid's birthday cake before he gets a chance to.

"Victory's Glory"

Director: Rusty Cundieff

Cast: Terrence Howard

A five minute sketch with one joke: Black people are good at basketball.

For five whole minutes.

The One Good Joke: There's only one joke and it's not good.

"Beezel"

Director: James Gunn

Cast: Elizabeth Banks, Josh Duhamel

Amy (Elizabeth Banks)'s boyfriend Anson (Josh Duhamel) has a cat named Beezel that is in love with him to the point that it attempts murder.

Right when you think the movie's over, they shove this one on in with the end credits and Jesus Christ is it just a train wreck of biblical proportions. Have you ever wanted to see Effie Trinkett get hit by a car and then go to town on a CGI effect with a shovel? OK, maybe.

But have you ever wanted to see a cartoon cat jerk off to pictures of Josh Duhamel in a Speedo while anally penetrating itself?

You'd do well to just turn this film off after "Victory's Glory."

Actually you'd do even better just to avoid the film in its entirety.

The One Good Joke: Josh Duhamel has this on his résumé forever.

Also there's two commercial parodies, but I am not going to talk about them because WHAT THE HELL ARE COMMERCIAL PARODIES DOING IN A MOVIE. NO. NO. I HAVE REACHED THE END OF MY ROPE, GUYS.

The only reason this movie exists is for actors who want to direct to have an opportunity to try it out in a low-risk cinematic environment.

Movie 43 is 90 minutes of celebrity after celebrity being pitched into the brackish waters of bottom-feeding grossout comedy and slowly sinking into the muck. Only Emma Stone, Chloë Grace Moretz, and maybe Seth McFarlane manage to thrash themselves loose by attacking the dialogue with the power of sheer comedy.

Basically, between this film and Gary Marshall's systematic attempts to ruin beloved American holidays, there's nobody left in Hollywood to embarrass.

Sketch Ranking:

#12 "Beezel"

#11 "The Proposition"

#10 "Happy Birthday"

#9 "Victory's Glory"

#8 "The Pitch"

#7 "Super Hero Speed Dating"

#6 "iBabe"

#5 "Veronica"

#4 "The Catch"

#3 "Homeschooled"

#2 "Truth or Dare"

#1 "Middleschool Date"

But only the top 3 are any good at all.

TL;DR: Movie 43 isn't a good film.

Rating: 2/10

Word Count: 2013

Comic Relief

Year: 1982

Director: George A. Romero

Run Time: 2 hours

MPAA Rating: R

A five part horror anthology series based on the old EC comics like Tales From the Crypt directed by George Romero, written by Stephen King, and made up by Tom Savini, Creepshow is a classic horror fan's wet dream.

EC horror comics used to be all the rage in the 1950s, but declined in popularity due to a moral panic (gee, where have I head that one before?). Naturally, fans were outraged and Creepshow is at heart an enormous middle finger to the people who hoped those tales would never see the light of day again. These five stories and their overarching connecting story are all original stories (well, two of them were adapted from previously published shorts by Stephen King), but not a one of them would be out of place in the popular issues of yore.

Even more direct of a callback than the stories is the format itself. The editing, acting, framing, color design, opening titles, and even the poster are all deliberate homages to that lost style of storytelling. Think what Scott Pilgrim vs. the World did for classic video games, but twenty years earlier.

But let's let this clever, campy, and imaginative film speak for itself as we dive on into the individual stories.

"Prologue/Epilogue"

Cast: Joe Hill, Tom Atkins, Tom Savini

In this brief setup story, Billy, a young boy (Hill, Stephen King's son), is harangued by his father (Atkins) for reading filth like those daggum horror comics. He tosses his son's beloved entertainment in the trash, but a nighttime visit from The Creep allows Billy (and us) to revisit his favorite stories, and when his mail order voodoo doll comes in the mail, he puts it to good use.

As if the entire nature of the film wasn't enough, this segment fully drives in the "screw you, comics-haters" vibe.

"Father's Day"

Cast: Carrie Nye, Viveca Lindfors, Ed Harris

A fairly straightforward piece, this segment details the story of a murdered man returning from the grave on the anniversary of his death to wreak havoc on a party thrown in his honor by his killer and the family members that benefitted from his will. This sequence is the most similar to the slasher craze that had begun but two years before.

"Father's Day" features some of the loopiest comic strip sequences, especially during the flashback to the father's murder in which a car zooms in and out of two panels and images slash across the screen diagonally while framed by vibrant colors. In addition, the night is lit by a sheer blue glow that is reminiscent of the overwhelmingly technicolor masterpiece Suspiria.

The zombie makeup is pretty cheesy, as should be expected of a movie from this time period, but Savini is not one to mess around and details like the gooey tendrils holding the monster's skeletal jaws together are masterful.

"The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill"

Cast: Stephen King, Bingo O'Malley

Verrill (King), a young hermit who presumably lives in the Deep South, discovers a meteor that has crashed into his back field and accidentally cracks it open, getting himself covered in a milky secretion. When he imagines the possible outcomes of his discovery, his wacky fantasy life is reminiscent of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. 

Unfortunately, the goo appears to have the adverse effect of turning him into a living plant and he is driven to madness by his transformation and the reappearance of his late father. King proves himself to be a strangely reliable actor, hamming it up in a role that reminds one of Jim Carrey in his prime.

Not to be outdone, this segment is also awash in bright technicolor light, this time green to represent, you know, the plants.

"Something to Tide You Over"

Cast: Leslie Nielsen, Ted Danson, Gaylen Ross

Whereas "Father's Day" was more of a slasher riff and "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" had a determinedly sci-fi bent, "Something To Tide You Over" definitely feels more like a precursor to psycho trap movies like Cube, Nine Dead, or the Saw franchise.

This segment is easily the most star-studded with Nielsen (Airplane!, Prom Night, The Naked Gun) playing a madman torturing his cheating wife (Gaylen Ross, who appeared four years earlier in Romero's classic Dawn of the Dead) and her young lover, played by Ted Danson (Cheers, Bored to Death) by burying them up to their necks in the sand and letting the tide wash in.

Naturally, the story doesn't end there as things take a turn for the supernatural, mostly lit in a vivid shade of aquamarine.

"The Crate"

Cast: Adrienne Barbeau, Hal Holbrook, Fritz Weaver

A janitor discovers an old crate sealed with chains tucked beneath an old staircase at the university. Its label would imply that it's over 170 years old and may contain artifacts from the Arctic Expedition. When he and a stuffy old professor open it and release the beast inside, his friend Henry (Holbrook) catches wind and must decided whether to detain the beast or utilize its frenzy to get rid of his overbearing wife (Barbeau).

This segment with it's "monster from the arctic" theme would seem to be an homage to John Carpenter's The Thing, released earlier that same year. This idea is cemented in by the crate's label - "via Julia Carpenter" - and the presence of Adrienne Barbeau who had previously worked with the director on 1980's The Fog, 1981's Escape From New York, even appearing The Thing itself in a small cameo.

This segment is the most thematically resonant, with the monster representing Henry's internal desires and rage, augmented by the garish red light that accompanies his dark fantasies and the monster's evil doings.

Tom Savini gets his best work in this segment with a fabulous clawing of a young student's face.

"They're Creeping Up on You!"

Cast: E. G Marshall, David Early

Wow, they really saved all their F-bombs for this one. E. G. Marshall (12 Angry Men) plays a callous businessman whose latest buyout led a rival to suicide. Not at all haunted by this, he is rather more worried about the vermin problem in his pristine penthouse apartment.

Cockroaches appears in larger and larger numbers as he does all he can to squash and spray in between shouting matches with his super. After a citywide blackout, the bugs swarm and overwhelm him in what is, at least to me, the most truly terrifying moment in the film.

Absolutely skin crawling.

Some of Creepshow's segments are more complex than others, but they all maintain the relative simplicity common to comics narratives as they parade a variety of horrors, blaring colors, and talented actors eating it up in supremely over the top campy roles.

Creepshow is horror distilled, perfectly capturing the essence of the childlike wonder of experiencing those EC spooky stories for the first time. The true definition of a cult classic, it's just a whole lot of fun, and the people working on this project were the best and brightest the genre had to offer at the time.

Segment Ranking:

#5 "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill"

#4 "Father's Day"

#3 "They're Creeping Up on You!"

#2 "Something to Tide You Over"

#1 "The Crate"

TL;DR: Creepshow is a living comic book and a rowdy and campy horror classic.
Rating: 8/10
Word Count: 1236

CinemaBeach: I Watched the Tape

V/H/S 2

Year: 2013

Director: Simon Barrett, Adam Wingard, Edúardo Sanchez, Gregg Hale, Gareth Huw Evans, Timo Tjahjanto, Jason Eisener

Cast: Lawrence Michael Levine, Kelsy Abbott, Adam Wingard

Run Time: 1 hour 36 minutes

MPAA Rating: UR

Electronic crackles and pops fill the air. The screen goes fuzzy until… a burst of blue and the word “PLAY” appears in block letters in the upper right hand corner. You’re not watching a home video. You’re at the beginning of indie horror’s new installment of the found footage anthology series V/H/S.

While the original film made a splash with its exploration of how people actually find “found” footage films and segments directed by big indie stars, it was a mediocre effort – haphazardly done and unnecessarily misogynistic.V/H/S 2 follows more or less the exact same structure – a series of found footage short films by a variety of prominent indie directors linked by a not very coherent story that takes place in a supposedly abandoned apartment. Yet somehow this one works just so much better.

Note: For clarity’s sake, I’ve split my review into five parts – one for each segment of the film.

“Tape 49″ (dir. Simon Barrett)

Simon Barrett produced both films and co-wrote several segments, so it only makes sense that his story should be the one to provide the overarching narrative. Larry (Lawrence Michael Levine) is an unscrupulous private detective who was hired by a woman to break into the abandoned apartment and discover what happened to her son. He drags along his girlfriend and accomplice, Ayesha (Kelsy Abbott). They come across an abandoned set of VCRs and a pile of unmarked VHS tapes, and Ayesha sits down to watch some of them to see if they contain any evidence while Larry investigates the rest of the dwelling.

This story largely follows the same beats of the previous movie and although it is somewhat chilling as it is (the couple is most definitely not alone), its only real purpose is to glue the other segments together and we don’t get to spend a lot of time with these two.

The biggest flaw is one that is prevalent throughout the segments – there are far too many different recording devices being used. Larry has a button camera and a professional looking handheld with a lamp. Ayesha has a little still photo/handheld hybrid, and a webcam also records her every move. The segment cuts between shots from all four sources, which practically destroys the core concept of “found footage” from the get go. It is far too heavily edited to seem like something that somebody just discovered in an abandoned camera. This is forgivable, but for the keenest of observers it can tread a little too far into Hollywood unreality.

“Phase 1 Clinical Trials” (dir. Adam Wingard)

The You’re Next director also stars in this short as Herman, a man who lost his eye in a tragic car accident. The doctors fit him with a bionic eye, but this technology is only in its early stages, so they are taping everything he sees as a test run for the beta system. The eye works maybe too well, and when he gets home he begins to see things that shouldn’t be there, like a dead man with blood smeared on his face standing in the bedroom. A fellow patient (whose bionic gift restored her hearing) named Clarissa (Hannah Hughes) barges into his home uninvited. Clarissa explains it all, and Herman learns that if he interacts with these beings, they will only get stronger.

Wingard has already proved that he can flawlessly marry laugh-out-loud with whiplash-inducing shocks in his previous film so the humor is at a low ebb in this segment, but he can’t resist throwing in the odd silly line reading or self aware joke. This short is mostly a straight horror piece, but the light tone is just about the only pleasantness we’ll get for the rest of the film and the segment’s crash and burn ending is a portent the dark world we are about to enter.

There’s another conceptual issue here – there is a slight musical score that, although subtle, absolutely does not belong in a found footage movie.

A Ride in the Park (dir. Edúardo Sanchez & Gregg Hale)

The director and producer of the now-classic The Blair Witch Project return to found footage with this clever twist on the genre craze they helped to ignite. A biker (Jay Saunders) puts a camera in his helmet so he can film his wild ride through the local park’s twisting paths. With little preamble, he finds himself smack dab in the middle of a zombie outbreak. He doesn’t last long, but the tape doesn’t end there. The camera is still attached to his head as he rises up, just another member of the undead horde.

That’s right, this is a first-person zombie movie, something I don’t think has ever been attempted before. It is a fascinating and wholly original angle that makes do with a criminally low effects budget. Perhaps less scary than its companions, it more than makes up for that with its incredibly clever premise.

Leave it to the Blair Witch guys to completely turn the concepts of two genres on their heads simultaneously.

Safe Haven (dir. Gareth Huw Evans & Timo Tjahjanto)

This segment centers around a documentary crew’s efforts to interview a notorious cult leader in his compound. Evans, the director of the Indonesian action superhit The Raid: Redemption teams up with another Indonesian director for a segment that is shot mostly in – you guessed it – Indonesian. These two are given the largest slot in the anthology and have more time to thoroughly explore their premise and crank up the slow burn.

Eschewing the jump scares of the other entries for horrific body horror, this segment is a clear standout in a crush of amazing horror short films. I’d rather not say much about this one for fear of spoiling the atmosphere of dread it creates.

Slumber Party Alien Abduction (dir. Jason Eisener)

Birthed from the mind of the director of Hobo With a Shotgun and directly based on his childhood nightmares, this short is relentless and adrenaline-pumping. A group of preteen boys at a slumber party are left at home alone in the care of a big sister (Samantha Gracie). Naturally, the second her parents leave, her boyfriend (Rylan Logan) pulls up for a little playtime of his own.

The kids pull a prank on the couple in the middle of a particularly steamy session and record the whole thing. The boyfriend threatens to kill them, but the enormous foundation-rumbling screech that comes from outside proves he might not get there first. Filmed mostly from the perspective of a dog with a camera tied to his back, the group panics and attempts to escape what turns out to be a group of highly committed alien abductors.

Despite the heavy subject matter, this segment is easily the most fun because it is filmed with a sort of childish glee by Eisener, who makes great use of his parents’ property in Nova Scotia. In a setting he is intimately familiar with, he has free reign to have as much fun as he wants and it clearly shows through the shocks and the screaming.

V/H/S 2 pulls so far ahead from V/H/S that it’s almost not fair to compare the two films. Alas, they are inextricably connected, but this film does a mighty job of steering the franchise onto the right path. Although it is susceptible to the flaws of most low budget found footage films (namely, some mighty poor acting and a couple less than convincing make-up effects) and has some struggles with the overall concept (how on Earth did the recordings of a bionic eye end up on a VHS tape?), the flick was so frightening that I sometimes wondered why I was doing this to myself.

It’s really quite astonishing how much better it is than its ancestor in terms of pacing, horror, creativity, and, well, everything. The gross misogynist undertones are abandoned and the terror levels are ramped up to 11. And though a few make-up effects left something to be desired, there is a particularly gruesome and lovely first-person shot of a severed carotid artery and the best throat-slitting ever committed to celluloid.

If you read that last sentence and were disgusted, this movie is not for you. If you were intrigued and want to see the keenest horror film out today (and second only to [REC] as the best found footage film I’ve ever seen), take a look atV/H/S 2.

TL;DR: Featuring a cadre of prominent indie horror directors, V/H/S 2 is miles ahead of its predecessor and makes the most of its premise.

Rating: 8/10

Should I Spend Money On This? It was hardcore - I regretted bringing Sergio to it. So only if you're really committed, but I loved it.
Word Count: 1512