RICHARD’S REVIEWS FOR JULY 18, 2014 W “CANADA AM” HOST MARCIA MCMILLAN.
‘Canada AM’ film critic Richard Crouse shares his reviews for ‘Sex Tape’, ‘Planes: Fire and Rescue’ and ‘Boyhood.’
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Posts Tagged ‘Ellie Kemper’
SEX TAPE: 2 STARS. “the least interesting part of the movie is the sex.”
Any movie with the word sex in the title and Cameron Diaz in her underwear and a newly slim Jason Segel in the all-together should be a lot sexier than “Sex Tape” is. The first twenty minutes plays more like an attempt to break the world record for using the word “sex” in a movie than an actual story. They talk about sex, have sex, then talk about it some more, but rather than being racy or slap-your-thigh funny it becomes tiresome. The only word used more often is “iPad,” which is even less provocative.
Segel and Diaz are Jay and Annie, a married couple who try to spice things up in the bedroom by videotaping themselves working through the Joy of Sex page by page. All goes well until Jay forgets to delete the video and mistakenly posts their three-hour amateur porntacular on the cloud. “Our sex tape has been synced to several devices,” he says, “all of which are in the possession of friends!” With BFFs Robby (Rob Corddry) and Tess (Ellie Kemper), the embarrassed couple try and retrieve each of the “infected” iPads, especially the one in the hands of Hank Rosenbaum (Rob Lowe), the family-first CEO of the company that publishes Annie’s G-rated mommy blog.
There are a handful of laughs in “Sex Tape.” Most of them center on the iPad retrieval from Rosenbaum’s mansion. It’s a ten-minute long farce involving cocaine, a dog on a treadmill and a sex toy used as a boomerang. The sequence is out-of-control and capped by a smarmily charming performance by Rob Lowe (who knows a thing or two about sex tapes), the straight-laced executive with a wild side.
The other Rob, Corddry, is also very funny. His wide-eyed interest in his best friend’s sex tape is amusing and feels like the most genuine thing in the movie.
The whole thing feels like a premise for a joke. The story is candid but doesn’t ever feel heartfelt. For the comedy to work the audience has to be able to buy in and while many can relate to the bedroom blues on display, the movie is more concerned with titillation than sincerity.
At one point in the film Diaz talks about her love of porn, but adds she doesn’t watch it anymore because, “the quality of the writing has gone down hill. I like it when they really feel like they’re in love.” She might have been talking about her own movie.
Diaz and Segel are OK, but despite some enthusiastic (and gymnastic) performances they don’t sell the movie’s main gag. The set up is so drawn out that despite its provocative premise it never seduces the audience.
There are laughs sprinkled throughout. Segel has razor sharp comic timing and can’t help but get a giggle even when he has to rattle off endless exposition, but try as he might, he doesn’t make the same impression he did in movies like “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” or “Bad Teacher,” his previous teaming with Diaz.
“Sex Tape” is an R-rated comedy in which the least interesting part of the movie is the sex and the sex talk.
Metro Reel Guys: Sex Tape. “should be a lot sexier than it is.”
SYNOPSIS: Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz are Jay and Annie, a married couple who try to spice things up in the bedroom by videotaping themselves working through the Joy of Sex page by page. All goes well until Jay forgets to delete the video and mistakenly posts their three-hour amateur porntacular on the cloud. “Our sex tape has been synced to several devices,” he says, “all of which are in the possession of friends!” With BFFs Robby (Rob Corddry) and Tess (Ellie Kemper), the embarrassed couple try and retrieve each of the “infected” iPads, especially the one in the hands of Hank Rosenbaum (Rob Lowe), the family-first CEO of the company that publishes Annie’s G-rated mommy blog.
STAR RATINGS:
Richard: 2 Stars
Mark: 2 Stars
Richard: Mark, any movie with the word sex in the title and Cameron Diaz in her underwear and a newly slim Jason Segel in the all-together should be a lot sexier than Sex Tape is. The first twenty minutes plays more like an attempt to break the world record for using the word “sex” in a movie than an actual story. Diaz and Segel talk about sex, have sex, then talk about it some more, but rather than being racy or slap-your-thigh funny it becomes tiresome. The only word used more often is “iPad,” which is even less provocative.
Mark: Richard, this movie is one of the best Apple commercials I’ve seen in years. But it does have some laughs. I couldn’t decide, though, if it was original yet flimsy or flimsy yet original. I was glad the running time clocked in at a neat 90 min as it was wearing out its welcome fast. That’s mostly because Cameron Diaz’ smokin’ hot bod is naked only in the first half of the picture. She has a pretty good chemistry with Jason Segal, but Rob Lowe steals the show. Considering his own past, it’s a neat bit of stunt casting.
RC: The Robs are the best part of the movie. The iPad retrieval from Rosenbaum’s mansion gives Rob Lowe (who knows a thing or two about sex tapes) a chance for some off-the-wall fun as the straight-laced executive with a wild side. Rob Corddry’s wide-eyed interest in his best friend’s sex tape was amusing and felt like the most genuine thing in the movie. I thought Diaz and Segel were OK, but I didn’t buy into the movie’s main joke for a second.
MB: Yes, well, talk about a manufactured crisis! There’s lots to pick apart here, especially the subplot involving Corddry’s blackmailing teenage son. But there’s some nifty dialogue, especially at the beginning of the movie, and a scene I liked at the porn server’s with a cameo by a Famous Comic Actor. By the way, all those porn website titles they spiel off are real ones, or, umm, so I was told by the guy sitting next to me.
RC: Hey! I was sitting next to you. I take the fifth. Unlike you, I hated the first section of the movie. I thought the least interesting part of the movie was the sex and the sex talk.
MB: No one will mistake this movie for the classic comedies of Preston Sturges. The movie aims low and thereby exceeds expectations. Not very demanding, but it is summer.
THEY CAME TOGETHER: 3 STARS. “Poking fun at romantic comedies is easy.”
“They Came Together,” a new satire starring Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler, is the last romantic comedy you’ll ever need to see. A pastiche of every rom com cliché, it’s a movie about sex and the city. Or maybe about what women want. Or perhaps it’s about friends with benefits. Actually, it’s about love, actually. Imagine one part “Airplane” and one part of every Kate Hudson romance and you get the idea.
Heading up a who’s who of a comedy cast, Rudd and Poehler play Joel and Molly, an unlikely couple who fall in love at first sight. He’s an executive at a candy company, she runs an independent confectionary shop called the Upper Sweet Side.
His company is trying to drive her store out of business so they can control NYC’s candy lucrative market, but despite their differences they find some common ground. “You like fiction books, too? No way!”
They also do all the things that people in rom coms do, but with a twist. In the standard “What am I going to wear montage” Molly ends up trying on a dozen outfits before deciding on a suit of armor. Joel sprints to declare his love for Molly only to wind up in a sword fight with her jealous ex-husband (an unexpected, but hilarious Michael Shannon). Meeting her parents takes a turn when they are revealed to be white supremacists there’s even the mandatory Thanksgiving-Christmas-New Year’s montage. The only thing missing is Julia Roberts’s trademark guffaw.
Bookending the whole thing is a dinner conversation where Joel and Molly describe how they met to friends Karen (Ellie Kemper) and Kyle (Bill Hader).
Poking fun at romantic comedies is easy but for the most part “They Came Together” does it well. It hits a bull’s eye time after time with the tropes plucked from rom coms but presented with a spin. For instance, Joel plays basketball with his pals, each of whom gives him romantic advice, but none have names, they are simply introduced by the rom com trope they represent.
When “They Came Together” riffs on the absurdities of the genre it works, but too often it winks at the camera and becomes a little too self aware. With their looks and chemistry, Rudd and Poehler are rom com ready, but occasionally their eagerness to sell the joke gets in the way of letting the laughs and the parody happen naturally.
Ultimately, for all its insight and style—pitch perfect rom com soft lighting and pop soundtrack—“They Came Together” is stretched a little thin at feature length. As a skit or a short film it might have been a cutting parody of an over-worked genre. At eighty-three minutes it is harder to love.
Bridesmaids take the cake Reel Guys by Richard Crouse and Mark Breslin Published: May 13, 2011
SYNOPSIS: Annie’s (Kristen Wiig) life is in tatters. Her business is a victim of a downturned economy and her boyfriend (Jon Hamm) calls her his “number three.” When BFF Lillian (Maya Rudolph) asks Annie to be her maid of honour she should be thrilled but is overwhelmed by the job and her pushy fellow bridesmaids (Rose Byrne, Melissa McCarthy, Wendi McLendon-Covey and Ellie Kemper) or as Lillian calls them, the “stone cold pack of weirdoes.”
Star rating
Richard: ****
Mark: ****
Richard Crouse: Mark, the big mistake people will make about Bridesmaids is thinking that it is a chick flick or a female version of The Hangover. In fact, I think it takes the best elements of those two and cleverly mixes them into one very funny but still very heartfelt movie that should have been called Bridesmaid on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Do you agree with me that this is the funniest female comedy that Tina Fey didn’t write?
Mark Breslin: I’ve been raving for years that Kristin Wiig is the Carol Burnett of our times: the greatest female sketch comic working today. Now, with this movie, she surpasses even that. I was worried that the movie would just substitute girl gross-outs for boy gross-outs, but there’s a depth here that the trailer doesn’t hint at. The humour is based on some pretty dark topics: fear of failure, loneliness, body image issues, so bravo to Wiig and her cast for going there. But most importantly, Wiig has wrested the wedding comedy from the hands of Kate Hudson.
RC: Hallelujah! Wiig is the best thing to happen to SNL in years but her big screen output has been somewhat underwhelming. Her movies like MacGruber always felt to me like she was acting in a long form sketch. She’s always funny, but I never felt like there was a real depth of character there until now. Her work as the neurotic but mostly well meaning Annie is a breakthrough, proving that being funny and having feelings are not mutually exclusive.
MB: Well put, Richard. But before we turn off any potential moviegoer thinking they’re about to watch a Sundance comedy, let’s remember that there are two hysterical, verrrrry broad set pieces in the middle of the movie that will satisfy anyone – male or female looking for belly laughs. The only thing in the movie that didn’t work for me were the British roommates, which felt forced, unlike her romance with the patrolman, which felt real and blithe. He’s a standout in a large cast. Anybody in it catch your eye?
RC: Absolutely. Chris O’Dowd as the lovelorn cop brings a huge amount of charm to the movie and Rose Byrne, who I’m used to seeing in dramas, is very funny.
MB: Let’s not forget Melissa McCarthy who gets huge laughs, even if some of them are on the cheap side. And Jill Clayburgh in her last role. R.I.P.
