I was on such a roll lately at the cinema watching one good movie after another that I knew it had to end eventually. After watching Brüno a couple of weeks ago, I thought it would easily be the worst movie of the summer. I didn’t think a movie could be worse. I know where you think I’m going with this, but you’re wrong. No, I don’t think Land of the Lost is worse than Brüno… but it comes a close second.

The plot (if you want to call it that) is easy to follow. Dr. Rick Marshall (Will Ferrell), a paleontologist is disgraced by others scientists who call his theories about space-time vortexes ridiculous. Three years later, Holly Cantrell (Anna Friel), a research assistant from a British university, re-ignites his passion to find other dimensions through time warps. Using a device that finds tachyon particles that somehow allows people to jump between worlds, the two locate a time hole at a little crappy souvenir shop run by a redneck named Will (Danny McBride). Will gives Rick and Holly a little tour into a cave he has set up as a tourist attraction and before you know it, the three are traveling into another dimension we will soon know as Land of the Lost. The place is complete with a T-Rex, mosquitos that can suck you dry of blood, dangerous creatures called Sleestaks, and a primate named Cha-Ka (Jorma Taccone) who befriends them and tries to help them navigate their way back to our own dimension.

Yes I got this far but I couldn’t tell you if they made it as I walked out of the Cinema after only 45 minutes!

For the exception of the characters (but not the names) being changed, the story is practically identical to the series. Instead of having a motherless family of three who we can really care about, we get a crazy scientist, a sexy research assistant, and a jackass of a redneck. I honestly never really cared if they made it out at all… dead or alive.

There are some laughable moments in the film but not enough to say the movie is funny. I did enjoy the “chorizo taco” joke. You see, the Paku word for Sleestak is “Sarisataka” and when Cha-Ka is trying to warn Rick, Will, and Holly about them, the redneck Will mistakes Cha-Ka’s words as “chorizo taco”. I thought it was pretty funny. But that is only one of about three or four instances that actually made me laugh.

I hate to say it because I really enjoyed Ferrell’s comedies in the past, but I honestly think its wearing thin. I felt it was just the same old, same old with him throughout the film. Anna Friel did ok and is… well, lets just say it… pretty hot. Jorma Taccone must have felt pretty damn lucky that the script continuously had him grabbing Friel’s breast. McBride gets a handful once as well, but I wonder if that was just improv on his part. Taccone played Cha-Ka, the primate and was absolutely horrendous. I couldn’t stand the character at all. It was obnoxious. Never funny, and, considering this was a family movie; playing Cha-Ka as a sexual pervert probably wasn’t a good idea. I know… that was the script, not him. Still… I couldn’t stand the little f**ker. Danny McBride, however; did an awesome job as Will the Redneck. When I say I laughed three or four times in the amount of film a actually watched, it was usually his doing.

To say I hated Ferrell’s interpretation of Land of the Lost would be going too far. The movie intrigued me somewhat as I wanted to know what else they would implement into the film from the old TV series.

But its not one I would recommend anyone seeing in the cinema. One has much better use for 7 quid. Trust me on that. Go buy yourself two or three happy meals and let Land of the Lost…. stay LOST.

I rate this Movie… 1/5 Penguins!

Forwarding viral videos isn’t really my thing, so when I make an exception you can be sure I’m either incredibly technically impressed or have just recovered from an incapacitating 20 minute gut-wrenching belly laugh.

This afternoon I was the victim of a little of both – stop what you’re doing and watch this.

Guy Ritchie’s Snatch (not to be confused with Madonna) is on my top 10 list of favorite movies, ever. Frequently when it comes up in conversation I am asked “Yeah, but have you seen Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels?” To which I usually reply with one of the following:

1. “No, Chief. I’ve been living under a rock for the last 10 years and actually don’t have a huge, all-encompassing obsession with British gangster movies. Enlighten me.”
2. “Yes, I stumbled across it last week while perusing your awesome and eclectic movie collection. It was right between Gladiator and Top Gun.”
3. “Piss Off.”

Snatch is by far the superior movie, and someone with an appreciation for the vocabulary of lead villain “Bricktop” comparable to my own has created a brilliant mashup using footage from Star Wars. Darth Vader’s dialogue is substituted for that of Bricktop and incredible hilarity ensues. For the love of God, do yourself a favour and enjoy this masterpiece: “You stop me again while I’m walking and I’ll cut your f**king jacobs off”

The marriage of specific scenes with dialogue is incredible, and you haven’t lived until you’ve seen Vader choke one of his Imperial underlings and then call them a “c*nt” for good measure.

He also appears to have a fondness for tea which I didn’t know about. What did you think?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDKiQfBs9lo

Bottom Line: Sacha Baron Cohen might have gone to the well once too often.

We all knew Borat. Borat was a friend of ours. Brüno, you’re no Borat.

I may be unfair in my remark, but everyone is going to compare Sacha Baron Cohen’s ‘Bruno’ to his insanely funny ‘Borat’, and let’s be honest; while pushing the PC envelope in new and imaginative ways as well as the ’18′ rating, especially insofar as the male member is concerned, ‘Brüno’ is only intermittently funny and all too often the “ambushes” of celebrities and

civilians look staged… The movie is even a tad – dare I say it? – Tedious.

Admirers of this British comic’s gifts for caricature and improvisation and nearly everyone who found themselves laughing uncontrollably at Baron Cohen’s unrepentant anti-Semitic Kazakhstani in ‘Borat’ probably will turn out for Baron Cohen and director Larry Charles’ latest mockumentary. So I expect that the box office should be sold out for Universal this time around. It’s unclear though whether Baron Cohen can continue to bring his TV characters into the real world, or something approximating it, without diminishing results: Based on the evidence I have witnessed in ‘Brüno’, such results seem inevitable.

For one thing, where the focus was laser-sharp in ‘Borat’, it’s fuzzy in ‘Brüno’. ‘Brüno’, for those really out of step with modern culture, is Baron Cohen’s gay Austrian fashion expert with his own TV show, “Funkyzeit”. Early in the movie, Bruno makes such a disastrous spectacle of himself at a designer’s show during Milan Fashion Week, that he is schwarz-listed.

He abruptly decides to go to Los Angeles, accompanied by his lovelorn assistant, Lutz (Gustaf Hammarsten), to become a celebrity. One’s heart sinks right there. ‘Borat’ zeroed in on bigotry and Western hypocrisy for its satire. The target of Hollywood and vacuous celebrityhood has so many arrows in its bullseye, there is nothing left to hit.

Perhaps a victim of his own success, Baron Cohen probably is too well known to get away with so many sneak attacks on unsuspecting people no matter how he transforms himself physically. A few times in ‘Brüno’, one senses a real victim. More often, especially with such demi-celebrities as Paula Abdul or LaToya Jackson but even with a determined dominatrix, one senses a more than willing victim.

In a recording session that ends the film, where everyone from Elton John to Snoop Dogg to Sting to Bono shows up, the film drops any pretense that these are not invited guests.

Baron Cohen has better luck outside of LA In the Middle East, Brüno does get chased by angry Hasidic Jews. And in trying to mediate a panel featuring an Israeli and Palestinian leader, his mixing up of Hamas and hummus is genuinely funny.

Brüno’s adopted African baby paraded before a black audience is not funny; it’s em

barrassing. This is one of several instances where an audience might experience both exasperation and tedium with the comic’s relentless act of running a joke into the ground. Brüno’s attempt to go hetero, assisted by two Christian ministers who specialise in such conversions, was just boring and the punch lines were able to be pre-empted word for word.

‘Borat’ was, despite his cheerful bigotry, somehow a lovable character. His questions sprang from the sweet innocence of a third-world bumpkin wallowing in isolated ignorance. With ‘Brüno’, you mostly feel annoyed. A gay Austrian fashionista would be no ignorant character. He would be sophisticated, savvy and certainly aware of prejudices against gays. Would he really prance semi-naked through Middle Eastern holy sites?

The calculations behind Baron Cohen’s ambushes too often are mean-spirited. We sense, as we never did with ‘Borat’, the c

omic behind the character. Especially when his accent keeps changing – from an unconvincing Austrian to his own British and even to a whisper of ‘Borat’ himself.Consequently, the character’s gayness reads false. Baron Cohen needs to spend more time in certain gay bars if he wants to learn how to do “flamboyant” and “fabulous”. I have friends that would probably pull off a more convincing act… It’s a ghost of the real thing.

In conclusion, save your money, I left feeling robbed and angry that the film had been screened, 2 out of the 4 of us that watched it thought it was ok, however; I was not as easily entertained, fixated or challenged comically!

For those still interested… Here is the trailer!

I rate this Movie… 0/5 Penguins!

The first trailers for this movie looked like just another raunchy comedy about stupid man-children doing stupid things, a perfect description of director Todd Phillips’s previous film, Old School, which I thought was hilarious. As expected, ‘The Hangover’ turned out to be a smart, funny comedy about real characters with real growth, and although the situations may have been a bit outlandish, it was never so crazy as to put me off the film.

Without a doubt, this is the best comedy I’ve seen yet this year. And I have seen a few, including ‘I love you, Man’ and ‘The boat that rocked’

The Hangover features four guys going to Las Vegas for a bachelor party: everyman groom Doug (Justin Bartha), his slick buddy Phil (Bradley Cooper), harried Stu (Ed Helms), and Doug’s soon-to-be brother-in-law Andy (Zach Galifanakis). After a rooftop toast, Phil, Stu, and Andy wake up the next morning to find their hotel room trashed, minor injuries all over their bodies, their memories of the previous night gone, and Doug missing. Most of the film centres on their efforts to recreate the events of the bachelor party and find Doug in time to get him to his wedding. You can actually feel the pressure as if you were there!

Some of the discoveries aren’t too far-fetched – a missing tooth, for instance. Others, like what they find in the bathroom or what they get when the valet brings their car around, start to stretch the bounds of credability. Somehow, though, I found myself willing to accept even the craziest things, and I think the key lies in the beginning of the film. The writers and director took the time to let us get to know the guys, and actually like the guys, before things go nuts. If I didn’t genuinely like Doug, I wouldn’t have cared if they found him. If I didn’t feel for Stu, his panic over his overbearing girlfriend (Rachael Harris) would come across as cliché. Even Andy treads a careful line between being creepy and being someone who’s an object of pity, someone that you root for in a bizarre way.

As the guys begin to peel back the layers to discover what happened in the time they lost, we stumble into increasingly goofy and entertaining situations, and despite the trailers, there’s actually very little raunchy comedy in this movie. There’s some, mind you, but it isn’t wall-to-wall like a lot of movies of this type, and that’s a big plus. Perhaps even more important, this isn’t a film where the guys end in the same place they began. There’s genuine growth and character development, and a nice payoff at the end where you cheer for one of them as he takes control of his life.

This is a really strong comedy, built on a good script and supported by wonderful performances by the three main actors. I didn’t expect to even like this movie that much as I thought the best bits would have been in the trailer, but I was so so wrong, I walked out of the theater laughing, recalling favorite scenes, and ready to see the movie again. What more could you want out of a comedy?

For those of you interested… Here is the trailer!

I rate this Movie… 5/5 Penguins!