Friday, July 29, 2005
Friday Movie Review
Wedding Crashers opened last week to fair reviews and pretty good box office. It stars the more endearing of the Wilson brothers, the one with the way too often broken nose, Owen, and Vince Vaughn once again playing the same character he played in Swingers. Frankly, I'm about to believe that the character he played in Swingers, and almost all his other movies, is, in fact, Vince Vaughn. The film was directed by a guy named David Dobkin (absolutely never heard of him), but here's the 6 degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon thing, Dobkin directed Shanghai Knights (with Owen Wilson) and this thing called Clay Pigeons (with Vince Vaughn). It can't be far from there to Kevin Bacon (it never is). The movie is about two guys who crash weddings. There's slightly more to it than that and, usually, I'd be worried about spoiling the plot by telling too much. I'd be worried about spoiling the plot to this film if it contained a single surprise in it but, alas, there are none.
That's not to say this was a bad movie--far from it. It was not a perfectly successful comedy but it had its moments. I liked the two leads bitching at each other on the staircase in the Maryland mansion a lot. I have to admit that Owen Wilson comes off as the better character here. I think the '10% of our heart' line is really good. I'd buy it. It doesn't hurt a bit that he has by far the more desirable sister as his love interest. That's the very lovely Rachel McAdams, a Canadian who was in the Notebook and Mean Girls. I predict a boost for her from this movie. You have to root for Owen to win her heart because they make her beau such a horrible person--not a comic or tragicomic figure--just a monster from whose foul clutches she must be rescued. Vaugh's girl has a better chest, I think, and she has the single funniest scene holding her breath with her fingers in her ears stamping her feet in front of long suffering Christopher Walken, who's looking every second of his 62 years.
The Mrs. Robinson plot thing with Jane Seymour was a bland detour to nowhere. The gay, artistic son (with a bad hair cut--yeah, that could happen) and the homosexual hating grandmother were about as funny as a war wound. The slightly more than a cameo of Will Ferrell proved that he can mug into a camera like a chimpanzee, but it didn't do his career any real favors. They show Rebecca De Mornay for about 20 seconds and her time with songwriter/"singer" Leonard Cohen was not apparently well spent. Her debut as the love interest/lead in the extraordinary Risky Business was 22 years ago. Man, I feel so old my hands should have a palsy. Let me tell you a Leonard Cohen story that Patti Painful told me. She lived in Paris and went to see Cohen who was really big in France at the time (1976). He wasn't the most prolific of songwriters (I do love how his stuff helps set the mood for the wonderful McCabe and Mrs. Miller) so you go to his concert and he does the dozen or so songs he has written, he takes a break, and then he sings the same twelve songs again. "Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river..."
OK, let's do the gun part. Quail hunting in summer? I think not. Quail hunting in a close together line of hunters not in blaze orange? I think not. Quail hunting without a dog? Pull the other one. The shot in a shotgun shell used to be lead pellets in sizes from triple o to 10--triple o is big, about the size of the end of your thumb, 7 1/2 is like BB size, and 10 is like dust. Now they make shot in metals other than lead, to save the diving ducks, geese and swans from eating lead in the bays, but it's not as good. There are a lot of bore sizes in shotguns (we say gauge)--going from largest to smallest-- 8 (absolutely no fun to shoot), 10, 12 (the most popular), 16 (which used to be the coming thing), 20 and 28. The shot comes out of the barrel all clumped together and spreads out over the next 15 to 20 yards. So when Owen puts bird shot into Vince's butt from about two feet away, he actually would have literally cut him a new a--hole. Vince's girl has to pick it out with tweezers. Not likely. I worked for a time on a murder with bird shot from close range (and an honest-to-God dying declaration). Not a funny photo shoot of the victim.
The movie is 119 minutes long and only drags here and there. Roger Bob says check it out.
That's not to say this was a bad movie--far from it. It was not a perfectly successful comedy but it had its moments. I liked the two leads bitching at each other on the staircase in the Maryland mansion a lot. I have to admit that Owen Wilson comes off as the better character here. I think the '10% of our heart' line is really good. I'd buy it. It doesn't hurt a bit that he has by far the more desirable sister as his love interest. That's the very lovely Rachel McAdams, a Canadian who was in the Notebook and Mean Girls. I predict a boost for her from this movie. You have to root for Owen to win her heart because they make her beau such a horrible person--not a comic or tragicomic figure--just a monster from whose foul clutches she must be rescued. Vaugh's girl has a better chest, I think, and she has the single funniest scene holding her breath with her fingers in her ears stamping her feet in front of long suffering Christopher Walken, who's looking every second of his 62 years.
The Mrs. Robinson plot thing with Jane Seymour was a bland detour to nowhere. The gay, artistic son (with a bad hair cut--yeah, that could happen) and the homosexual hating grandmother were about as funny as a war wound. The slightly more than a cameo of Will Ferrell proved that he can mug into a camera like a chimpanzee, but it didn't do his career any real favors. They show Rebecca De Mornay for about 20 seconds and her time with songwriter/"singer" Leonard Cohen was not apparently well spent. Her debut as the love interest/lead in the extraordinary Risky Business was 22 years ago. Man, I feel so old my hands should have a palsy. Let me tell you a Leonard Cohen story that Patti Painful told me. She lived in Paris and went to see Cohen who was really big in France at the time (1976). He wasn't the most prolific of songwriters (I do love how his stuff helps set the mood for the wonderful McCabe and Mrs. Miller) so you go to his concert and he does the dozen or so songs he has written, he takes a break, and then he sings the same twelve songs again. "Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river..."
OK, let's do the gun part. Quail hunting in summer? I think not. Quail hunting in a close together line of hunters not in blaze orange? I think not. Quail hunting without a dog? Pull the other one. The shot in a shotgun shell used to be lead pellets in sizes from triple o to 10--triple o is big, about the size of the end of your thumb, 7 1/2 is like BB size, and 10 is like dust. Now they make shot in metals other than lead, to save the diving ducks, geese and swans from eating lead in the bays, but it's not as good. There are a lot of bore sizes in shotguns (we say gauge)--going from largest to smallest-- 8 (absolutely no fun to shoot), 10, 12 (the most popular), 16 (which used to be the coming thing), 20 and 28. The shot comes out of the barrel all clumped together and spreads out over the next 15 to 20 yards. So when Owen puts bird shot into Vince's butt from about two feet away, he actually would have literally cut him a new a--hole. Vince's girl has to pick it out with tweezers. Not likely. I worked for a time on a murder with bird shot from close range (and an honest-to-God dying declaration). Not a funny photo shoot of the victim.
The movie is 119 minutes long and only drags here and there. Roger Bob says check it out.
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 10:31 PM 
