When Harry Met Silly

Year: 2014

Director: David Wain

Cast: Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler, Cobie Smulders

Run Time: 1 hour 23 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

As I make my way through the cinematic landscape of 2014, I'm beginning to notice a pattern. For every tepid comedy film released in 2014, there seems to be a similar and better comedy waiting on the horizon. For every irritating and pointless Zac Efron's That Awkward Moment there's a sprightly and effervescent Zac Efron's Neighbors. For every funny but average Date and Switch (review pending) there's the delightfully twisted They Came Together, our topic for today. And what exactly is that special element that makes all the difference between these sets of paralells?

Randall Park.

Hello.

OK, maybe the films don't live and die on his performances because he's only ever given bit roles. But I continue to maintain that this man is one of the most underutilized Hollywood performers working today. I'm excited for his appearances in the upcoming comedies The Interview and Sex Tape, despite the fact that every time I see his face I will be reminded of the time I walked into a screen door and sliced my nose open when helping him look for his shoes on the set of Awesome Asian Bad Guys (That's right, I just name dropped. Right in front of your face. What are you gonna do about it, punk?).

Anyway I love the guy and I think that any casting director who agrees with me is worth their salt, making any movie with his presence a more well-cast film across the board than its compatriots. See? I was going somewhere with that.

Because jumpin' bananafrass is They Came Together well-cast. This romantic comedy parody would perish without Amy Poehler's sharp-as-a-tack skewering of clumsy leading ladies and Paul Rudd's beatific smile. The overwhelming sincerity of their performances gives the film the straight face it needs in order to avoid drowning itself in winking, clumsy meta humor.

Although goodness knows I love that too.

They Came Together tells the story of two lovers telling the story of how they met. Molly (Poehler) and Joel (Rudd) are two typical romantic comedy protagonists. He, the successful corporate drone with a cheating girlfriend (Cobie Smulders), she the quirky and klutzy owner of a small candy shop in NYC. When Joel's company, Candy Systems & Research, decides to open up a massive shop across the street from Molly's, this complicates their already reluctant love-hate relationship even more.

This plot provides the basic structure for a battalion of cameos from TV actors including New Girl's Max Greenfield, SNL's Bill Hader and Kenan Thompson, 30 Rock's Jack McBrayer, and The Office's Ellie Kemper and Ed Helms. Much in the vein of the slightly less successful but equally buoyant 2013 comedy The To Do List, the film acts as a sandbox for these actors to break out of their established characters and just have some fun playing around in a feature.

The film begins with its most meta moments, which are frequently its weakest. Although it's funny in small doses, nearly the entire setup for the parody is comprised of winking reminders that this is, in fact, a corny romantic comedy. Now, I love self-aware humor, especially in this vein, but even the most delicious chicken risotto would be ruined by the chef standing over your shoulder and whispering "It's chicken risotto. Go on, taste it. It has all the qualities of a chicken risotto. Look, there's the chicken. There's the risotto. Put those together and guess what you get? Chicken risotto!"

In this case Paul Rudd is the chicken and Amy Poehler is the risotto. If you can't see why, you clearly need to get on my level of sophistication in film analysis.

I'll repeat, this is funny, but just a little wearying, like some of the more blatant "IT'S THE SAME" moments in 22 Jump Street. Luckily, as the movie settles into its narrative, it relaxes and allows itself to explore the winding avenues of absurdist humor and sight gags that populate the genre.

But this is no flimsy Meet the Spartans production here. Somewhere significantly closer to Airplane! (my absolute favorite film comedy of all time) than Date Movie, They Came Together delights in lampooning tropes of the genre rather than merely name dropping specific films and hoping people go "Hey! That was a movie I saw! I guess that means I should laugh." It is at this level on which the film operates at its most inspired, including a scene hilariously mocking a cliché I saw naught but four days ago in The Fault in Our Stars.

For there is practically no other film genre more prone to excessive adherence to formula and rife with trite banality than the romantic comedy. This allows They Came Together to set up gags in the vein of some of the strongest humor from the Golden Age of The Simpsons (which will probably come up a lot on this blog, because I've been watching the entire show for my job), meaning that a familiar joke or story beat will be set up, but subverted at the last second with a bit of twisted humor or negated entirely by literalizing the setup in the most preposterous scenario imaginable, provoking incredulous (and inexorable) laughter at every turn.

One might say it metaphorically throws the leaves in our faces.

With an absurd streak visible from space, the film is certainly one to remember. After a decade and change of increasingly anemic pop culture spoofs, They Came Together might just be the film to set Hollywood pop comedy on the right track again.

It's not perfect. It falls prey to an ill-advised scatological gag and the first half is certainly less promising than the second, but if it doesn't blindside you with wickedly sharp satire and keep you cracking up faster than a glacier in an Emmerich film, I'll eat my keyboard.

TL;DR: They Came Together is a breath of fresh air and one of the best genre spoofs since the parody heyday in the 80's.
Rating: 8/10
Should I Spend Money On This? I think you should. only It's 7 bucks on Amazon VOD! Fun for the whole family! You don't even have to put pants on!
Word Count: 1042

Everything Is Awesome

Year: 2014

Director: Phil Lord & Christopher Miller

Cast: Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett

Run Time: 1 hour 40 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

Let me tell you, The Lego Movie had one of the least promising opening scenes of any comedy I've ever had the privilege to watch. It appears before anybody has a chance to get used to the somewhat jarring animation style and features the most YouTube-caliber comedy I've ever seen in a feature film. That is not a compliment.

This further reinforced my fears that The Lego Movie would be exactly what it sounds like - a feature length commercial with little to no redeeming value. But history has taught me to trust directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller when they make a film that seems like an outrageously bad idea. These are the men behind Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs and 21 Jump Street, after all.

Lo and behold, The Lego Movie is almost nothing like it seemed to be from the promotional campaign or even its own opening (Sidebar: What is it with Hollywood marketing these days that makes even the best films seem like generic garbage? It's like they're actively trying to deter viewership.).

Me every time I have to sit through another crappy movie preview.

Let me ask you a question: If you were tasked with creating a movie out of a narrative-less pile of colorful blocks, what genre would your story be? Action adventure? Romantic comedy? Maybe even an epic fantasy?

The Lego Movie is a dystopian rebellion movie and that is what separates the geniuses from you or me. Whoever thought it would be a good idea to pull influences from 1984 and Brave New World is a lunatic. But it totally, absolutely works. And it's pretty laugh out loud funny all the way through.

This is the story of Emmet (Chris Pratt), a construction worker who lives to follow the instructions (a brilliant bit of brand tie-in). He does everything he is told, listens to the music he is ordered to like, and has never had an original thought in his life.

But when he discovers a mysterious unknown Lego piece tied to a mystical prophecy, he uncovers the tyrannical president's secret plot to destroy the world and is whisked away by rebel agent Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks) to train with the Master Builders (the only creative people left in the universe - with the power to assemble whatever they desire sans instructions) and save the world.

This wouldn't be the first time Chris Pratt has saved the world.

The message is simple and childlike in the best way possible - painted with broad strokes but absolutely resonant with children and adults alike, just like the eternally undervalued Adventure Time. Emmet is an anonymous nobody who needs to learn to believe in himself to unlock his creative potential.

Featuring a veritable clown car of guest actors including Charlie Day (!!!), Cobie Smulders, Morgan Freeman, Will Arnett, Anthony Daniels, Will Forte, Alison Brie, Jake Johnson, Liam Neeson, Nick Offerman, and Shaq, as well as 21 Jump Street alums Channing Tatum, Dave Franco, and Jonah Hill (as well as one cameo that can't possibly be a surprise, but nevertheless feels like one so I shan't spoil it here), The Lego Movie has a thoroughly modern pop sense of humor that, despite some massive ADD, is topical and clever in ways that anybody of any age can enjoy.

The Lego Movie combines the whimsical (and low-rent) joy of playing with toys with a heartfelt message picture and rapid-fire comedy both lovably dumb and X-Acto sharp. Some of the busier action sequences are nearly impossible to contain in your visual cortex and the sheer amount of branded material is enough to make any copyright lawyer weep in fear, but it's a fun ride through and through.

But seriously. Rendering this frame alone must have taken binders of legal documents.

In the movie business, it has been a long, cold, lonely winter, and The Lego Movie provides a warm ember that lifts the spirits for the cinema slate of 2014.

You'll leave the theater singing, smiling, trading favorite lines (I myself am partial to "Come with me if you want to not die.") and fondly remembering childhood playtime. And even if it's not the best animated comedy that has ever been released, that is certainly good enough for me.

TL;DR: The Lego Movie surprises by not being terrible, but surprises even more by actually being pretty darn good.
Rating: 8/10
Should I Spend Money On This? Yes. You should.
Word Count: 762

An Olympic Sized Gene Pool

Year: 2013

Director: Ken Scott

Cast: Vince Vaughn, Chris Pratt, Cobie Smulders

Run Time: 1 hour 43 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

On a whim last night, my friend Henry and I caught a late night showing of the new Vince Vaughn comedy Delivery Man. It was cheap and we had nothing else to do so we figured why not. The state of cinema this year is so dreary that this was our best option behind seeing Catching Fire again.

Much to my surprise, the film was actually pretty decent! I know, right? It's by no means the best comedy of the year (that title goes to Texas Chainsaw 3D), but I actually laughed - something I wasn't expecting at all.

Then again this guy was in it.

David Wozniak (Vince Vaughn) is a schlubby everyman (an interesting change of pace for him) who learns that through a clerical mistake at a sperm bank that he donated to in his 20's, he is the father of 533 children, many of which want to contact him but can't due to the company's anonymity clause.

With a pregnant girlfriend of his own (Emma, played by How I Met Your Mother's Cobie Smulders) and a life he needs to get back on track - he's a meat deliveryman who isn't particularly good at his job and also hey, he has $80,000 in gambling debts - he's understandably a little skittish about taking responsibility for hundreds of his offspring.

But when his lawyer friend Brett (Chris Pratt), who is defending him under his pseudonym "Starbuck," gives him the profiles of the children who are filing the lawsuit, his curiosity is piqued and he begins to visit his children without letting them know he's their biological father. Basically he acts as a guardian angel, helping them out when they need it without revealing his identity because that's a lot of pressure, man.

Also Aunt Robin is a cop, which is just too sexy to handle.

The opening scenes are, to be honest, an unmitigated train wreck. Jokes are bashed into the ground and beaten senseless like they pissed off the LAPD. As this was exactly what I was expecting, I was lulled into a false sense of superiority before the sweetness infiltrated the film and turned it into a charming if fumbling effort.

The moment the film makes its turning point is during David's first child visitation - it turns out one of his many little goblins is now in the NBA and he cheers that boy on like the proudest father this side of Harvard. It's perhaps not sweet enough or funny enough to really recommend, but it's definitely worth catching it on Netflix when it inevitably shows up on Streaming.

There are some laugh out loud moments, but the film mostly simmers in a charming register, content not to push the envelope but merely be pleasant.

Family dinners are more like a mosh pit than anything else.

Directed by Ken Scott, the director of the original French Canadian film, Starbuck, Delivery Man is by all accounts a watered down interpretation of its themes. However, it was good enough that watching it made me more interested in seeing Starbuck, so it at least does it enough justice to make it more enticing.

And then inexplicably, sh*t gets real. David bonds with a mentally handicapped son, one of his daughters overdoses on heroin, and the gambling bosses stop by to give David a quick drowning in the bathtub. In a sweet family comedy. What just happened? The gambling subplot is especially intriguing because it spends so much time on the sidelines that it comes as a shock anytime it returns.

Some real quick SPOILERS, if you care about such for Vince Vaughn family comedies. The momentous announcement in which David decides to admit to his paternity, the crux of the entire film in which he's learning to put his life together and take responsibility, the apex of the thematic through line of the entire film, the moment the entire film has been leading up to, takes place on Facebook. He tells the kids he's their father on Facebook. Talk about anticlimactic. If you want to see my angry face, pop this scene on, you will be appeased. SPOILERS

But Aunt Robin.

Postscipt: I would have spent a lot of time making fun of how so many of Vince Vaughn's kids turned out to be sexy beasts with sparkling blue eyes but I was too busy Googling shirtless photos of them. 

Say, that gives me an idea!

(NEW FEATURE! Every film I review now will be scanned by the Stud Finder to find the hottest person onscreen so we can all partake in the handsomest of the handsome. You know, to help build community. Or whatever.)

Stud Finder: David's Biological Children (Dave Patten, Jack Reynor, Amos Vanderpoel, Matthew Daddario)

Don't you dare try to tell me a single one of these kids could in any way be biologically related to Mr. Vaughn.

TL;DR: Delivery Man is more charming than it possibly seemed it could have been.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 855