A Monkey Movie Review

So this is the film Dustin Hoffman chose to direct.  Yes.  It's true.  He is responsible for this, this film that has more wrinkles than the scrotal sacks of one hundred old men.  But that's the least of this film's problems.

The film is about a group of ancient musicians and opera singers who live in an old folks home.  They put on a gala every year to raise money to keep their impossibly lavish senior citizen's home open.  Into this tight knit world comes a woman who is supposedly Britain's greatest female opera singer.  They want her to be in the gala but she doesn't want to do it.  After a but of flirting and conniving, they convince her to do it.

Here's what's wrong with it:

• It takes place in an alternate earth where everyone is wild about opera.  Old people, young people, everybody loves opera.  Except in the real world, that's bullshit.  I'm not saying that people don't love opera, I'm saying they don't get excited and shit themselves over it they way people in this film do.
• The entire film they build up Maggie Smith's character as the greatest opera singer who ever lived.  And then guess what?  SHE DOESN'T FUCKING SING.  NOT EVEN A NOTE.  SHE DOESN'T EVEN FAKE IT.
• Billy Connolly is by no stretch of any imagination an opera singer. 
• The whole thing is not believable.  None of it.  The home is too lavish, the characters are too pat, the dramatic interpersonal relationships are about as interesting as watching paint dry.

I'm not saying it's awful, I'm saying this vanity project of Hoffman's is not worth your time.

A League of Mullets Movie Review

Yo, we watched Stranger Than Fiction the other night and here is our review:

This film is about a repressed IRS agent, played by Will Ferrell, who discovers he is also a fictional character in a book being written by a famous novelist, played by Emma Thompson. As the story progresses Ferrell's character meets a sexy baker, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, who he must audit but who he also falls in love with, all the while listening to the voice of the famous author as she writes her book about a repressed IRS agent. When not trying to break out of his shell so that he can tell the baker how he feels, he struggles with the voice and he decides to get help for it. He turns to a literature professor, played by Dustin Hoffman, to help him find out who the author is and their search goes into over drive when Ferrell's character hear the author say that he was going to die.
That's what the movie is about on it's most basic level. But what the movie really is about is compassion and how much we all need to be compassionate to one another. Ferrell's character learns to be compassionate towards the baker and they end up in love. The baker learns to be compassionate towards the man she perceives as her enemy. Ferrell learns to be compassionate and accept the death that the author has planned for him because he knows it will result in his saving a child's life before he dies. And finally the author learns to be compassionate when she decides to spare the IRS agent's life because he learned how to open up, connect with others, and love people. Ferrell is great in this because he is so restrained in his performance. He doesn't get all "hey look at me bein' a funny guy" on us and it works. Gyllenhaal is fabulous as well, although we got say that we did not dig her big ass tattoo, we're not into tats. Emma Thompson is wonderful as the author with writers block. Queen Latifah, Tom Hulce and the guy who played the youngest Bluth sibling on Arrested Development did damn fine jobs in this film as well. Oh crap, so did Dustin Hoffman, sorry we almost forget to mention you.

The movie is worth renting, buying, or just seeing over again. The special features on the DVD rock as well. Of course the only thing that would have made this a better film would have been is one of the main characters had been sportin' a mullet.

We highly recommend you see this film. We loved it.

So say us! So say we all!!!