addams family values

i must have been in some kind of mood when i saw this movie because i really enjoyed it! this is the sequel to the addams family movie, and its actually pretty good. i had seen the original back when it first came out, but had never bothered with this one, and i was pleasantly surprised! as you know, nine tenths of these addams family movies are all about lame puns about being dead, but for some reason i was really enjoying them this time! perhaps its the wonderful acting by the cast, made up of raul julia, angelica houston, christina ricci, and christopher lloyd, but something about it clicked just right! the story follows the family as they welcome the arrival a new baby into the family. also, uncle fester finds a new lady (who's just in it for the money) and pugsly and wednesday are sent to summer camp. i dont know how, but everything just worked in this one! i dont have very fond memories of the first film, but this one was a lot of campy fun!

cop out

as a fan of kevin smith i expected more. but then i realized he didnt write it, he just directed it, so i guess i shouldnt have expected much. this is a buddy cop comedy that pairs up bruce willis with tracy morgan. that pairing alone and the goofiness that comes out of tracy morgan is the only decent part of the film. bruce willis seems to be slumming it here, not doing a bad job of acting, but plainly not trying either. all the cliches of a cop movie are here, slightly twisted. the twists on the old tropes arent enough to make this one worth seeing though.

jonah hex

bummer, this one had so much potential. the story follows jonah hex, a confederate soldier during the civil war who gets betrayed by an evil man played by john malcovich, and his family is killed. actually, hex is killed too, but it doesnt quite stick. when he comes back to life he's got a strange connection to the dead and can talk to them. this sets the stage for a bit o' the old revenge. a pretty good set-up, but this movie fails in almost every regard. josh brolin does well as the disfigured hex, but whats the deal with megan fox? it seems like her story was just added to the film when the realized they could afford her or something. most of her scenes are completely unconnected, not actually having any screen time with her costars until about the last ten minutes. strange. the story itself is choppy and seems like they just taped together what ever scenes they found on the cutting room floor after severely gutting the original movie. and and 80 minutes, its likely thats exactly what they did!

date night

the wife and i had been intending to see date night as a... well, date night. unfortunately we never quite got around to it, so instead we watched it as a stay at home date night! as a huge fan of the office and 30 rock (though not nearly as much) i was really excited to see carell and fey doing their thing together. the story follows a married couple with kids who never seem to have time for each other. with work and kids filling up their days and nights, they just cant find the time for just the two of them. well, they decide that they are going to make it a priority to have a night together. they get the babysitter and head out on the town. they try to go to a fancy restaurant but cant get in because the wait is too long. when the worker calls out a couple's name for the next table but they dont answer, well carell decides thats their opportunity. this, unfortunately for them, causes a pretty big case of mistaken identity. turns out the couple that made the reservations are involved in some not so legal affairs. from here things get pretty crazy and their quite date because anything but! the movie is pretty good, the two leads have a hilarious chemistry that results in some funny bits. the problems arise when the movie goes from a romantic comedy to an action film. its not that any of it is done poorly, its just that it is not exactly what i was hoping for. the gear switching of the film threw me for a loop and i never quite settled back in. its got a great first half though, i would have loved to see where these two actors would have taken the story if it had stayed just a movie about a married couple. it was still a bit of fun though!

macgruber

what a stupid movie! its based on the skits from saturday night live, you know, the ones that get old after the first 30 seconds, but then they continue for another five minutes? well, this is just like that, except that its 90 minutes long! the story, if you can call it that, follows macgruber as he tries to stop a bad guy from releasing some missiles. the team behind this one seems to have the comedy mindset that the more weiner and poop jokes they can throw in, the funnier it is. when, in fact, the opposite is true. the whole movie is just one gross out rude joke trying to push it further than the last one. a total waste of time. as if you couldn't have already figured that out from the lame snl sketches.

ninja assassin

this one promises some major action that never actually comes. the storyline was so terrible that i promptly forgot all of it. something about the ninja helping out the police in new york, with flashbacks of his training as a child and having to hurt other kids. you know what, the story was so worthless that i actually fast forwarded through much of it because it was so lame. i would slow it down and watch when there were some action scenes, but those were pretty lame too. the whole movie is poorly lit so it was almost impossible to really make out what was going on anyway. a total waste of time.