Film

Boring saddles

A Million Ways to Die in the West

Well … shucks, nothing cinematically sucks more than a comedy that makes you yawn. A Million Ways to Die in the West will wind up being one of the summer movie season’s biggest bummers. Seth MacFarlane’s second feature directorial effort after the breezy and hilarious Ted is a lumbering, only sporadically funny enterprise. It’s not awful, and it does have its share of giggles, but it can’t be classified as anything near a good movie. That’s a kick in the balls, because some slicker editing and “Whoa, Nellie!” pulling back on the gross-out reins could’ve kept this thing closer to 90 minutes, instead of nearly two hours, and gotten rid of the moments that go too far in a bad way. Like Mel Brooks before him with the classic Blazing Saddles, MacFarlane tries to make a satiric Western that really looks and feels like a Western. He gets the shots right via decent cinematography, but his tempo is way off. While Blazing Saddles had the exuberance of a grand Western, MacFarlane’s dependence on comic violence and often slow pacing feels like he’s trying to make something like Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven in a funny way. It just doesn’t work. MacFarlane plays Albert, a snarky, ahead-of-his-time sarcastic guy trying to survive in the great American West. He’s trying to make a go of it as a sheep farmer, but he’s terrible at it. (One of his animals constantly winds up on his roof.) He’s always getting into trouble with his wise mouth, and his inability to stand up for himself in manly gunfights has earned the ire of his girlfriend, Louise (Amanda Seyfried).

After getting dumped, Albert is determined to win Louise back. Enter town newcomer Anna (a stunningly sweet Charlize Theron), who befriends Albert, tutoring him in the ways of women. She also must show Albert how to shoot a gun after his ill advised challenging of the evil Foy (Neil Patrick Harris), Louise’s extravagantly by Bob Grimm mustachioed and arrogant new beau, to a gunfight. bgrimm@ Instead of going for something goofy newsreview.com with the Albert and Anna relationship, MacFarlane plays things totally straight 2 and tries to make their budding romance “real.” This sort of thing is totally not at home in a movie like this. And, let’s face it, MacFarlane has his charms, but he doesn’t make for a likely romantic partner for Theron. They look unintentionally funny together, like Peter Brady trying to kiss Marilyn Monroe. Liam Neeson appears in the thankless role of Clinch, resident killer and husband to Anna, unbeknownst to Albert. Neeson sneers his way through his role with nothing altogether funny to do, unless you regard the sight of him having a daisy shoved in his butt as funny. A subplot involving a hooker (Sarah Silverman) and her virgin boyfriend (Giovanni Ribisi) is full of jokes too obvious and old for the actors to rise above the material, although they try hard. I did like the moment where Ribisi referenced his deranged dance moves from Ted. MacFarlane overindulges, dragging out some gags way too long. For example, Neil Patrick Harris crapping in hats after ingesting laxative powder is kind of funny. Seeing the results of his accident spill out of the hat is a little much. As for the violence, the first few violent deaths get a laugh, but they grow tiresome fast. So, MacFarlane’s attempt to emulate Mel Brooks has fallen flat. He has Ted 2 on the boards as a producing effort. He should just go ahead and direct, returning himself to familiar territories and recalibrating. If he were to, say, announce a Frankenstein or Robin Hood spoof in the near future, that would be a bad sign. Ω

“We’re in deep sheep now!”

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Poor

2

Fair

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Good

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Very Good 5

excellent 2 The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Director Marc Webb mucks it up big time with this, his second go-round featuring Andrew Garfield in spandex, cracking wise and shooting webs. While Webb proves himself adept at drama and romance—Garfield and Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy are kind of adorable—he botches the action elements and tries to juggle too many villains. This movie features a goofy villain called Electro (Jamie Foxx), the Green Goblin (Dane Dehaan) and the robotic Rhino (Paul Giamatti). Electro gets the majority of the villain screen time, an unfortunate circumstance given that his baddie is the least interesting of the three. DeHaan, an actor I can safely say I can’t stand, makes one really, really miss James Franco as Harry Osborn. DeHaan always speaks as if he just digs his own voice, even if it sounds like he has a sinus infection. His generally annoying presence isn’t the total blame for this film’s mishandling of the Green Goblin. The blame mostly lies with Webb and his makeup folks, who come up with something tragically bad for Goblin’s looks. He basically has oily hair that looks like he hasn’t showered in a while and a horrific combination skin problem. Too many villains, hackneyed action, and DeHaan make this a pretty bad time for comic book fans.

1Blended Maybe I’m crazy, but there is still part of me that believes Adam Sandler will wake up one day and proclaim, in his Sandler angry voice, “Alright already, enough with keeping my no-talent friends working and employed. I can just give them money. It’s time to make decent, funny movies again! Stay home Dennis Dugan! Screw you Frank Coraci! Maybe Paul Thomas Anderson will put me in a movie again? Flibberdy-Doo!” Sandler’s latest collaboration with director Coraci, who actually made some of the better Sandler films back in the day with The Waterboy and The Wedding Singer, just might be Sandler’s worst movie yet, and that’s saying a lot. He plays a widower who has a terrible first date with a woman (Drew Barrymore) at Hooters. One thing leads to another, and the two wind up on a vacation together in Africa with all of their kids. (You read that right.) This leads to rhino-humping jokes, ostrich riding and Terry Crews making an ass of himself. I had a real bad time with this thing. It caused major, jaw-clenching tension, and I think I may’ve cracked a molar. It’s the sort of racist and sexist movie that you watch in complete disbelief, wondering how such a monstrosity could ever get past the “Hey, why don’t we send Adam and Drew to Africa. It’ll be so funny!” stage. Everybody involved should be embarrassed about this.

4Godzilla This movie tramples the other Godzilla movies underfoot like Godzilla trampling a water tower with cheesy dolls meant to be humans hanging on it. Director Gareth Edwards captures that summer blockbuster vibe of yesteryear, when building suspense and perhaps just a touch of human drama took precedent over wall-to-wall CGI fireworks. He also manages to capture some of that old school Toho Godzilla goofiness to go with the film’s mostly serious tone. Even though this film’s Godzilla is CGI, there are some monster gestures that have a nice man-in-suit quality to them. It’s pretty obvious that Edwards is saluting the all time blockbuster king, Mr. Steven Spielberg, with this movie. Bryan Cranston and Aaron TaylorJohnson play a father and son team with a last name of Brody, just like Roy Scheider’s character in Jaws. Many of the initial Godzilla shots include glimpses of those jagged Godzilla back points cutting through the surface of the ocean like a shark’s dorsal fin. Cranston’s slightly crazed, obsessed, gloriously overacting scientist dad rings of Richard Dreyfuss’s mashed potato sculpting kook in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Everything builds up to a huge fight between Godzilla and some other monsters in San Francisco, and the city takes a major ass kicking. This is bound to be one of the summer movie season’s more exciting movies, and it beckons to be seen on an IMAX screen. When Godzilla roars, it peels the skin off of your face. 2 Maleficent Angelina Jolie plays the title character, the infamous horned villain from Sleeping Beauty. There’s a little bit of revisionist history here, with Maleficent portrayed as more of a fallen angel rather than a straight up baddie. The whole thing almost works because Jolie is damned good in this film, especially when the script allows for her to bellow curses and just act devilish. It gets a little sleepy at times when it deals with, well, Sleeping Beauty (Elle Fanning), the young woman who stands to have a very bad 16th birthday thanks to a Maleficent curse. Jolie has a creepy getup that I thought would bother me, but I kind of liked looking at it after a while. It’s the world surrounding her that I found a bit pedestrian. Director Robert Stromberg worked as a production designer on films like Alice in Wonderland, Avatar and Oz the Great and Powerful. I didn’t like any of those movies and, in the end, I don’t really like this one. At this point in watching Stromberg’s work, I’m just not taken by his weird visual worlds. They put me off for some reason, and have a choppy pop-up book feel to them. On the plus side, it is better than Alice and Oz, and perhaps even Avatar. On the negative side, it’s still not all that good.

4Neighbors Mac and Kelly (Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne), are happily adjusting to their new roles as parents to a baby daughter in a quiet suburban neighborhood. While in the midst of adjusting to their new sleep and sex schedules, a fraternity moves in next door. They don’t panic, figuring they are still cool enough to get along with college kids. An initial meeting with frat president Teddy (Zac Efron) goes well, and they even wind up joining the fray, baby monitor in hand, for a drugged-out, booze-drenched party, further establishing themselves as those possibly cool neighbors who just might be able to handle a party house next door. Mac and Teddy even develop a brotherly camaraderie, suggesting that if Mac were just a few years younger, he might’ve been a worthy frat brother. They even talk about getting walkie-talkies to communicate between their houses. They bond. The honeymoon doesn’t last for long. When a weeknight party keeps the baby up, Mac and Kelly transform from party happy neighbors into sleep-deprived malcontents, and they call the cops. Teddy takes this as a stab in the back from his new friends, and all out war is waged. There will be no walkie-talkies for Mac and Teddy. Rogen, Efron and Byrne are hilarious here, in a movie that has some great new jokes, along with making some old jokes funny again. Dave Franco and Lisa Kudrow get good laughs in supporting roles.

4X-Men: Days of Future Past Director Bryan Singer returns to the X-Men franchise with this ingenious chapter that includes both the main X-Men casts, time travel and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine holding everything together. The movie starts in the future, where robotic monsters called the Sentinels are giving the Mutants a truly hard time in a post-apocalyptic world. All hope seems to be lost until Charles Xavier/ Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and his crew figure out a way to time travel. The hope is to cease the production of the Sentinels, which were created by Dr. Bolivar Trask (the always excellent Peter Dinklage) and take Raven/ Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) off a dangerous destructive path. Jackman’s Logan makes the trip the 1970s, where he wears a cool leather coat and still has bone claws. The action is terrific, especially in a sequence where Peter/ Quicksilver (Evan Peters) foils a gun attack, and another where young Magneto (Michael Fassbender) uses an entire baseball stadium for nefarious purposes. The cast’s true standout would be James McAvoy as young Charles, still messed up after the events of X-Men: First Class. He adds a truly dramatic dimension to the proceedings. Having Singer back proves to be a good thing. The franchise surely suits his talents.