Planes HH
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Movie Line 828-665-7776 Biltmore Square - 800 Brevard Rd Asheville, NC 28808
Players: (Voices) Dane Cook, Stacy Keach, Brad Garrett, Roger Craig Smith, Carlos Alazraqui ANIMATED ADVENTURE Rated PG The Story: An anthropomorphic cropduster is the underdog in an airplane race around the globe. The Lowdown: A generic, harmless animated flick that does nothing new, yet at least has enough sense to be cinematic.
For the first time, Disney has taken a Pixar product — in this case, the Cars franchise — and spun off its own film with Klay Hills’ Planes. Granted, Disney owns Pixar, but the mere idea that Disney would dare encroach on Pixar’s autonomy is probably heretical in some circles, yet they’re at least savvy enough to impugn Pixar’s weakest entries. In a lot of ways, Disney has improved on Cars 2 (e.g., no Larry the Cable Guy to be found), though this is saying very little, since Planes is still pretty stale entertainment, and is obviously a cheap cash grab and a cynical excuse to move some toys.
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AUGUST 14 - AUGUST 20, 2013
CARO
Planes takes place in the Cars universe, and little about the film feels much different than its Pixar predecessors. Besides perhaps the level of voice talent (Disney apparently thinks comedian Dane Cook is a draw, meaning the movie’s on shaky ground to begin with), this is basically Cars, but with, you know, talking airplanes. Here we get the tale of Dusty Crophopper (voiced by Cook), a lowly cropduster with grand dreams of leaving middle America and becoming a world-class racer. After barely qualifying for the grand race around the globe against a cadre of various hotshot cultural stereotypes, Dusty must defy adversity in order to realize his dreams ... and so on and so forth. I’m not expecting much trailblazing from a Disney film about talking planes, but this has more formula than a baby bottle. In Planes’ defense, it’s hardly offensive, and the aerial scenes are thankfully cinematic. Beyond that, however, the movie doesn’t get much right. It doesn’t get that much wrong either, just existing as a big old lump of half-baked mediocrity. It continues the recent trend — racing snail movie Turbo included — of kid movies that just really make me want to watch the Wachowski’s Speed Racer (2008). I’m sure this was not the director’s intention. Rated PG for some mild action and rude humor. reviewed by Justin Souther Playing at Carolina Cinemas, Epic of Hendersonville, Regal Biltmore Grande, United Artists Beaucatcher
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This project receives support from the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Dept of Cultural Resources, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts
Co-sponsored by Asheville Parks & Recreation. Member of the Asheville Area Chamber.
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Director: Klay Hall
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We’re the Millers HHH Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber (Dodgeball) Players: Jennifer Aniston, Jason Sudeikis, Will Poulter, Emma Roberts, Ed Helms, Nick Offerman comedy Rated R The Story: A drug dealer agrees to smuggle a load of marijuana out of Mexico to square himself with his supplier. The Lowdown: Modestly funny in a blandly predictable manner. It’s the movie version of the hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold and just as unbelievable.
Painless, predictable and overlong, We’re the Millers is a film aimed at viewers who want to hear Jennifer Aniston swear, talk about sex and pretend to be a stripper — except she never gets nakeder than a Victoria’s Secret catalogue model. It’s the kind of movie that pretends to be edgy and hip, but in reality is so conventional it makes an old Osmond Family Christmas special look subversive. It’s no surprise that it took four screenwriters — Wedding Crashers’ Bob Fisher and Steve Faber, and Hot Tub Time Machine’s Sean Anders and John Morris — to cobble together this much bland amusement, since it feels like a crafted-by-committee TV sitcom. The film was directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber (a pretty lofty name for such a lowbrow filmmaker), who had a hit back in 2004 with Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, which this seems unlikely to equal. The idea here is that pot dealer David Clark (Jason Sudeikis) loses a lot of money belonging to his old college chum and now drug supplier (Ed Helms) and is given the choice of being killed or smuggling a load of marijuana across the border from Mexico by way of recompense. Since the odds of him pulling this off are slim, he recruits a bogus family consisting of down-on-her luck stripper Rose O’ Reilly (Aniston), nerdy teenage virgin Kenny Rossmore (Will Poulter) and smart-mouthed run-