Thighs Wide Shut

This Is 40
The Family That Annoys Together Stays Together
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 134 min

We get it Judd Apatow – you love your annoying wife and your mildly charming kids and their kinks and quirks and complaints and you think Paul Rudd is a handsome version of you and you need to put all of this into a movie.  Well, a funny thing happened on the way to me automatically hating this movie – I DIDN’T.  In fact, I really really liked it.  It was funny.  It’s actually the best thing Judd Apatow has done since The Critic + The Ben Stiller Show.  I dreaded seeing this movie, but now I could sit thru it 40 more times.  Mind you, it’s not thighly creative, and his kids are awful at acting, and his wife is really really really annoying, but Paul Rudd is probably the most lovable actor alive, and the movie is funny.  And that’s that!  Oh, yeah, nice try trying to revive Graham Parker’s career.  Stop trying to be the Quentin Tarantino of unappreciated music acts.  But oh, yeah, Hollywürst, please put Albert Brooks in EVERYTHING going forward.  He’s not the most lovable actor alive, but who doesn’t love Albert Brooks?  And, oh yeah, Hollywürst, take Chris O’Dowd out of EVERYTHING going forward.  Thanks!

Verdictgo: Jeepers MOS DEF Worth A Peepers

This Is 40 is better than 39 at theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Not Not Another Teen Movie
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 102 min

So there’s this known 1999 book by Stephen Chbosky called The Perks of Being a Wallflower.  He didn’t think anyone could do movie justice to it, so he made the dang movie himself.  HOW FCUKING AWESOME (and risky) IS THAT!??!?!?!?!  Others authors have done such a thing before, but none of them have hit the mark quite like SC does with his own book turned movie.  Why?  Cause this movie gets high school and high schoolers and the lows and highs of being a high schooler in high school 101% correctamundo.  If you’ve ever attended a high school, you should see this movie and you will see something of yourself in it, whether you were the jock, the joke, the pretty girl, the ugly girl (all boys are ugly), the dork, the geek, the misfit or any other stereotype we didn’t think of!  It’s true!  This movie is an adolescent treasure in the vein of John Hughes type stuffs!!!  And there’s not many recent teen movies you could say such things of!  Sure, Mean Girls was thighlarious, but it was too unrealistic, and the incredible doc American Teen was juss tooooo real, fo reals, yo, even though the poster ate its BREAKFAST in a CLUB!

Logan Lerman is our title wallflower and he’s so awkward that flowers and walls stay away from him!  He’s going thru a lot of sh!t, but luckily he lands into the laps of new friends Ezra Miller & Emma Watson, who help move him away from the wall, and let his flower bloom, which they do by teaching him about cool music and let him try drugs and girls and fun!  And there’s also Mae Whitman, who’s great, cause she is.  And then there’s the wallflower’s sister Nina Dobrev, who’s so hot that incest would be allowed, but it’s not that kinda of a movie, and that’s OK.  Even Paul Rudd‘s in this movie, in a minor, BUT important role, as a teacher who encourages reading!!  And there are other people in this movie and they are great, CAUSE THIS IS WHAT HIGH SCHOOL IS/WAS LIKE!!!  Cause believe it or snot, we were once a teeny bit of a wallflower teen, but then we found best friends and had the best times and then we all went our own separate ways for college, and stuff, and things, but high school memories WILL NEVER DIE!!!!!!!  like Goonies!

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Wallflower BLOOMS at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Our Idiot Brother
Oh Brother, Why Aren’t Thou?
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 90 min

Our Idiot Brother feels like the work of a first time director, with a screenplay that plays out like a mediocre sitcom pilot.  Well, OIB is director Jesse Peretz‘s third entry (never have seen The Ex or The Château, and we’re guessing we probably don’t need to), and it is indeed David Schisgall and Evgenia Peretz‘s first stab at a motion picture script.  Does this explain why their stellar assembled esmble and R rating are basically laid to waste?  Maybe.  OIB is a harmless lil flick, and it’s hactually purty darn hard to even come up with anything negative to say about it (we did smile a bunch, dangit), but there’s nothing really here to see or hear, outside of folks who are Shirley Knight completists.  If that’s you, then go ahead, bother with Brother

But if yer like we, you expect a little something more than nothing (it’s basically the story of a guy who wants his dog back, but it’s not as boring as Wendy & Snoozy) when you got Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel and Emily Mortimer (oh gawd, do we love this woman) playing patient sisters to ‘idiot’ brother/minor Lebowski Paul Rudd, no??  And what if you surround these fine folk with the likes of Steve Coogan, Rashida Jones, Hugh Dancy and Adam Scott???  Shouldn’t that be enuff to miss misfiring?  Apparently not.  Everyone here is game, especially a chillaxed Rudd, but everything here is also tame, and kinda lame

A better approach would have been to toss the family aside and partner Rudd up with fellow mellow head T.J. Miller, and have them do crazy stuff, like open a candle store, with zero cares in the world or bidness sense.  That idea actually pops up at the end of the movie (and no, we didn’t ruin a single thing by telling you this), but by then, any buzz you might have had, will surely have subsided.  Pass the peace pipe, and pass on this

Chin Up: Paul Rudd’s first film role was in 1992’s A Question of Ethics, a film he was so appalled by (for religious reasons – he’s Jewish, the flick was Jesus preachy), that he asked to be credited as Kenny Chin.  can’t find any video of it online, but found this still

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinking Badges 

Brother is familiar stuff at a theater near jews tomorrow

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

WE STILL LOVE YOU RUDD STUDD!!!!

Dinner For Schmucks
Send It Back To The Kitchen For Some Re-Warming
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Putting today’s holy trinity of funny (IMO, or should that be In We Opinion?), Steve Carell, Jemaine Clement & Zach Galifianakis + adding in nice straight guy (playing mean!) Paul Rudd (and our sassy lassy Kristen Schaal!) in the same movie should equal NOTHING but comedy gold.  Anything less would be uncivilized! So why then does Jay Roach‘s Dinner For Schmucks feel like unoriginal pyrite material?  And why are we only served about 15-20 minutes of actual dinnertime and the rest is lukewarm appetizers of Murphy’s un-guffaw Law?  To be perfectly honestly, the 1998 Francis Veber film in which this is based on, Le dîner de cons, wasn’t even close to being humorous to begin with, and while writers David Guion and Michael Handelman elevate the material to at least a chuckle zone here and there, they can’t help but make the audience feel like the schmucks.  Ouch!

We don’t want you think that Schmucks is a bomb or a waste of time, cause it’s not (the mousterpiece dioramas by the The Chiodo Brothers are INCREDIBLE, and so is the beastly photo artwork by Clement’s character).  We know comedy is hard, but most comedies juss don’t try hard enuff… like this one!  Then again, this was well more enjoyable than Get Him To The Greek, Death At A Funeral (the remake), Hot Tub Time Machine and the Carell starring Date Night (do we even have to mention Cop Out?).  Knowing you alls, you’ll probably think the opposite is true, and let’s juss leave it at that you schumcks (we love you!!)

Final thought: Carell is leaving the comfy and well-written confines of The Office for the bumpy and poorly written ones of Hollywood flicks.  Look, he deserves all the money in the world, but he and we deserve better

A Lil Mo Than So-Szo: Stephanie Szostak plays Paul Rudd’s love interest in the movie, and a French maid in our wetty wet dreamzzzzzzzzzzz!

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Schmucks goes awe schucks this Friday at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…