Of the two movies I saw last night, one is the very funny story of a whiny, self-centered man-child who has to learn that the relationship networks he’s already involved in are more important than his dreams of professional success, and the other is a Judd Apatow production.
For some reason, Jason Segel has become the de facto representative of my generation (of schlubby white guys who are a little too sensitive to be bros and a little too comfortable to be ambitious) on screen, something I’d be less okay with if he wasn’t so good at petulant discontent; his performances almost never let you fully sympathize with his characters’ wallowing, since he’s such an overgrown child. Emily Blunt was fine as the out-of-his-league girl that the Apatowiverse requires; but a couple of camera angles where she looked a bit like Kristen Wiig made me wish for the comedy of equals The Five-Year Engagement could have been, rather than the essentially melodramatic story with comic sequences happening around the fringes it was — the secondary storyline, the one where Andy Dwyer and Annie Edison (sorry, Chris Pratt and Alison Brie) make a far more unlikely pairing work with a minimum of self-pity or angst, would have made both a much funnier and a more interesting movie. Pratt stole every scene he was in anyway; those eyebrows!
The Pirates! Band of Misfits was my second 3D movie, and probably my last. It was quite fun, though the perfunctory emotional beats made me long for the much more heartless Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, which for all its faults at least never had a Self-Pity Montage (set to Flight of the Conchords or not). The production design, stuffed with jokes and charming details, was far better than either the MacGuffiny plot or the characters, who never rose above their single-attribute names to be worth hanging out with.
4 Notes/ Hide
-
andyhutchins likes this
-
isabelthespy likes this
-
isabelthespy said:
REMEMBER THAT CONVERSATION WE HAD ABOUT WHETHER PIGS ARE A TYPE OF FRUIT (i wanted pirates to be somewhat better than it was but i was glad to have seen it and that line had me laughing for hours)
-
katherinestasaph likes this
-
jonathanbogart posted this
