Tag: comedy

MasterChugs Theater: ‘Super’

When I first heard about Super, by director James Gunn, I was quickly intrigued. A super-hero movie from James Gunn? Starring Rainn Wilson and Kevin Bacon? You had me at hello.

Unfortunately, there were some problems. Super quickly suffered the plague of a limited release. It was simultaneously released on OnDemand, but I don’t have that. That’s one I owe Super. Super was recently released on Blu-Ray and dvd. I bought it within the week of its release, but I’m only just now getting around to reviewing it. That’s two I owe Super.

There will be a third. Also a fourth, fifth, sixth and gazillionth. That’s because this movie is fantastic. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘Super’

MasterChugs Theater: ‘Les Visiteurs/The Visitors’

The Visitors (or Les Visiteurs) begins in the 12th century, in swashbuckling style, as a knight saves the king’s life and is rewarded with the hand of his daughter. Alas, a magician’s potion so addles the knight that he then mistakes the king for a bear and slays him. Having killed the king, he can hardly marry the daughter, and so he pledges that he will never marry; small consolation, but it’s the thought that counts.

So opens the most popular film in French history, the film that out-grossed Jurassic Park and left Frenchmen helpless with laughter. Nearly 18 years after it was made, I can see why. Well, for the most part. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘Les Visiteurs/The Visitors’

MasterChugs Theater: ‘National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation’

For many people, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation is the best Christmas-themed comedy ever filmed. Personally, I make it habit to watch this movie about ten million times between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. Even after seeing the film so many times, Christmas Vacation remains as hilarious and entertaining as the previous holiday season. More than just a seasonal film, it’s one of those rare comedies that’s near perfect from beginning to end. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation’

MasterChugs Theater: ‘Piranha 3D’

It’s not as scary as it needs to be or as clever as it thinks it is, but Piranha 3D (or just Piranha, though not to be too confused with the Joe Dante movie of the same name) is at least as gimmicky as those fabled 3D films of yore. With all the pointless 3D cartoons and joyless 3D Clash of the Titans conversions, at last here’s a picture that tosses its cookies, its coffee cups and its D-cups right in your lap.

And that’s okay. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘Piranha 3D’

MasterChugs Theater: ‘Dinner for Schmucks’

Dinner for Schmucks, directed by Jay Roach and based on a 12-year-old French movie known in English as The Dinner Game, is in some ways an exemplary modern Hollywood comedy. It treads a careful boundary between nasty and sweet, balancing the rude humor of humiliation with an affirming, tolerant, almost scolding final message: Be nice! It dabbles in sexual naughtiness without dreaming of going too far into complicated zones of lust and betrayal.

And, most of all, the film collects a cast of performers who know how to be funny. The success of this movie, following a formula upheld by just about any recent hit comedy you can name, lies as much with supporting players and plot-derailing set pieces as with the central story and characters. Jemaine Clement as a pompous, goatish artist; Zach Galifianakis as an I.R.S. flunky who believes he has the power to control other minds; Lucy Punch as a lovestruck stalker with no control over anything: these are the people who propel the movie on its meandering, offbeat path toward a madly farcical climax followed, inevitably and less happily, by a soft and sentimental dénouement. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘Dinner for Schmucks’

MasterChugs Theater: ‘Mystery Team’

Movies from sketch comedy groups can be dicey propositions. The formats aren’t really conducive to each other. Sketch comedy can be hilarious one moment, then the next moment it’s crickets chirping. If the group is good, they can move on quickly and forget about things. But movies are a whole other monster to tame. what could sustain three to five minutes can be awkward in this new format. Some groups can pull it off, and you get great films like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Brain Candy and Super Troopers. Mess it up, and you’re stuck with Miss March.

And there’s not a lot on this earth that’s worse, cinematically speaking, than Miss March.

Now we have Derrick Comedy, an internet sensation full of gentlemen whose names all begin with a “D,” though curiously, none named Derrick. Whether you find this clever or stupid will help determine whether or not you will enjoy Mystery Team. Going by this scale, however, it pleases me to no end that Mystery Team is a rather clever and hysterically funny movie with its heart in the right place that potentially puts the Derrick boys at least on track with the Broken Lizard fellas. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘Mystery Team’

MasterChugs Theater: ‘Be Kind Rewind’

In its sweet, lackadaisical way, Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind illuminates the pleasures and paradoxes of movie love. Its two main characters, a pair of Passaic, N.J., loafers named Mike and Jerry, are devotees of the Hollywood mainstream, paying tribute to well-worn classics like Ghostbusters, Driving Miss Daisy, Rush Hour 2 and The Lion King. The way they express this affection lands Mike and Jerry in a spot of copyright trouble, but they (and Gondry) provide a welcome reminder that even the slickest blockbuster is also a piece of handicraft, an artifact of somebody’s nutty, unbounded ingenuity and the potential object of somebody else’s innocent, childlike fascination. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘Be Kind Rewind’

MasterChugs Theater: ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’

With The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Judd Apatow succeeded in an endeavor that foiled many of the more accomplished directors to precede him: the merging of the romantic comedy, a quintessential “female genre,” with the raunchy comedy, a quintessential “male genre.” The result had broad appeal. Apatow used the same basic formula to similar effect for his follow-up, Knocked Up. With Forgetting Sarah Marshall, he passed the baton to one of his buddies, former Freaks and Geeks cohort Jason Segel. The movie, written by and starring Segel and directed by first-timer Nicholas Stoller, is at least as good as the two Apatow-directed films, with a script that’s both a little sharper and a little more romantic.

And that’s a good thing. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’

MasterChugs Theater: ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’

The seductive, glamorous, and exquisitely fragile Glass family of J.D. Salinger’s invention might well live down the street from the fairy-tale clan that represents the soul of a fragile but bountiful New York City in Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums. Reminiscent of Salinger’s Manhattanites, the Tenenbaums are privileged natives in a landscape that doesn’t exist, and perhaps never existed, but seduces with the possibility of having existed once in a cozier, more Christmas-y past.

We all have our personal quirks and family issues that sometimes make us say, “How can anyone else’s family be as goofy as mine?” But then along come movies bringing us dysfunctional families like Moonstruck, Ordinary People and The Royal Tenenbaums that make our personal lives seem like an episode right out of The Waltons. And make no mistake about it-the Tenenbaum family definitely has issues. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’