A Monkey movie review

Will Ferrell plays an alcoholic who loses his job the same day his wife puts all his stuff out on the front lawn and changes all the locks before she leaves him.  He decides to ride it out and live on his lawn.  While living out there he encounters and befriends a young black kid, a new neighbor, and he reconnects with an old friend from high school.  Towards the end he discovers some not so nice news about his soon to be ex wife and it helps him get back on the right track.

This film is based on a Raymond Carver short story and I found it to be very good and very truthful, not to the story, I haven't read it so I can't comment on how true it was to the source material, what I mean is it felt true, the way Ferrell's character reacted to his dilemma felt true and natural.  It didn't feel forced.   This film is not a comedy, but it has some funny moments.  I found the whole thing to be charmingly melancholy.

The Will Ferrell you get in this film is not the wacky Will Ferrell of the Judd Apatow-ish movies, instead you get a restrained Will Ferrell and that's the perfect one for this film.  His performance in this one is very reminiscent of his turn in Stranger Than Fiction.  The rest of the cast is very good too, I didn't see a false note from any of them.  The story and the performances all rang very true to me.  And I quite liked all of it.

I recommend this one but those of you who hate Will Ferrell will stay away from this one no matter what I say, but you'll be doing yourself a disservice by being so stubborn.

A mind bottling Dr. Monkey movie review

I saw this last night on HBO:

And yes it was dumb.  And yes the plot was predictable.  And yes it had it's share of homosexual jokes. And yes it played out exactly how you think it's going to.

But you know what?  I could not have cared less.  I laughed like crazy during some parts and in general I liked this movie.  I'm glad I didn't have to pay anything to see it, we've been getting free HBO on our digital cable for months now, and I'm glad I got to see it because it was funny.  Now I understand that some of you don't think Will Ferrell's aggressively stupid arrogant guy bit is funny, but I do.  I find it enormously funny sometimes, I loved him in that NASCAR movie and I'll probably love him in that basketball movie as well.  Sue me, I laugh when he acts arrogantly idiotic.

Amy Poehler and her real life husband Will Arnett were hilarious as a brother sister skating duo who are a little too close for comfort.  Jenna Fischer is cute as a button in this movie as well.  Romy Malco and Craig T. Nelson are also good in the film too.  The cameos of the skating greats was fun also, Nancy Kerrigan, Peggy Fleming, and Dorothy Hamill all are in it and they are all still gettin' it done.

If you want a few laughs and some brainless entertainment that doesn't ask too much of you then check this out.  I liked it and odds are if you like dumb comedies, then you will too.

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!!!