Sickie quickie DVD rental reviews

I revert a bit when I get sick -- I get kinda childish. Normally, this type of mood spawns a bad eating decision, like a sudden need for Skittles. But I have enough common sense not to further suppress my immune system with sugar, so I went with dumb movies instead. Roughly equivalent. I rented stuff that I knew T. and The Wife wouldn't watch with me -- stuff that was either too dumb or sappy or shallow to be interesting to them. I wanted brain Skittles, and here were my choices.

I watched Knocked Up first. As I expected, the cliches were brutally unimaginative, the plot was droll and expectable, and the funny parts were funny, but too rare. I can't decide between a C and a C-. What was funny was ok, but what wasn't funny (most of the movie) was painfully not funny. And, frankly, I get tired of seeing completely idiotic wastrel guys in movies -- just a personal thing, but get another schtick Hollywood, please.

Then I watched Pursuit of Happyness. Figured it would be a tear jerker, and it was. Figured it would be cool to see the story behind the story since it was based on a real guy, and it was. The storyline was basically straight ahead, no curves or chasers, but the acting was good enough that it was a fine watch. Watching the behind the scenes stuff about the real Chris Gardner made up for the predictable storyline. A solid B -- Will Smith is plenty of actor to carry that thing, and he did.

Fantastic 4 -- Rise of the Silver Surfer. Even for brain skittles this movie was brutal. The stereotype "do you love me or love your job" relationship bullshit storyline was gut wrenchingly bad. The effects were fine, some of the marvel comic-ey stuff in the second half of the movie was more of what I was expecting out of this movie, but I couldn't wash the flavor of the "storyline" out of my mouth. D+

The Score was my last watch. I was cruising around my netflix queue and found this movie, but couldn't remember why I'd chosen it. Then I saw it had: Deniro, Angela Bassett, Edward Norton, Marlon Brando, and even Gary Farmer -- one of my favorite character actors. I like heist movies, so I figured how could I go wrong. I wasn't disappointed -- I mean, don't get me wrong, it was Brain Skittles -- it was cliche after cliche, down to the aging expert safecracker swearing this will be his last job. But for one, to see Angela Bassett kissing someone, especially someone less handsome than I -- that gets points. Big points -- she's so gorgeous. For two, it was fun to see Edward Norton in one of his earlier roles, and for three it's a heist movie, who doesn't like heist movies. B- for extreme predictability, but still watchable if all you really need is lights and colors from the boob tube.

Enjoy your vicarious convalescence,

Bp