The Last Godfather is intended to be a comedy. It stars and is written and directed by Hyung-rae Shim, who, by all accounts, is quite popular in his native South Korea, even if there’s no real evidence of such here.
See, it’s about this … well, you see, there’s this … ah, to hell with it. I’ll let screencaps from the movie say it all.
You get the picture. —Rod Lott
So I just saw Soul Plane, aka Let’s See How Far We Can Set the Civil Rights Movement Back and Throw Tom Arnold in There as Well: Da Movie!
In a premise that makes the Wayans brothers’ White Chicks look like Roots, a lovable loser (Kevin Hart) whose dog is sucked in to the propeller while he gets diarrhea on an airplane, sues and is awarded $500 kajillion. Therefore, along with his cousin, Method Man, he opens the first black-themed airline.
It kind of sounds like Airplane!, and I feel like it earnestly tries to be, but it’s so bogged down in its own ineptitude that it just becomes an exercise in pure tedium. Not even John Witherspoon (the dad from Friday) could get a laugh out of me. The jokes are all pretty much unfunny shit-and-ass gags and the aforementioned Arnold is a guy named Mr. Hunkee (pronounced “honky”). That’s about as clever as it gets, folks.
Snoop Dogg takes over the Peter Graves role, but we get no classic lines like “Do you like movies about gladiators, Billy?” Instead, Snoop smokes some weed. Surprise! There was some actual potential in this idea, but as my date said, it seemed more like a “made-for-UPN movie.” And I’m surprised it weren’t. —Louis Fowler
Mr. and Mrs. Smith wasn’t the first romantic comedy Alfred Hitchcock directed. He did some early in his career, 1928’s Champagne being one of the best. But by 1941, he was much better-known for mystery-thrillers like The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Lady Vanishes and Foreign Correspondent.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s star, Carole Lombard, was the one with the rom-com pedigree, but after losing the role of Scarlett O’Hara to Vivien Leigh, she had been proving her versatility with serious dramas. Mr. and Mrs. Smith was her return to comedy, and she wanted it to be special, so she lobbied to have Hitchcock direct, thinking that he’d bring a fresh perspective to the genre.
He didn’t. Mr. and Mrs. Smith is a standard screwball comedy with the requisite farce being that the title characters learn they were never legally married. When Ann Smith (Lombard) decides that that’s all for the best and that she doesn’t want to get remarried, David (Robert Montgomery) has to woo her all over again. The problem is in courting someone who already knows all his faults.
Unfortunately, the movie isn’t very funny and — since Ann is far more unlikable than her husband (he’s not flawless, but Montgomery’s charm goes a long way) — I never actually wanted him to win her over. Hitchcock and pals do get some dramatic mileage from the situation — anyone who’s had a long, intense relationship end without warning will relate to David’s wanting to win her back in spite of her failings — but even that’s resolved too quickly and randomly to be satisfying. —Michael May
How bad is Monster High? This bad:
1) Even if I hate you, I hope you never have to see it.
2) It should bear the credit “written and directed by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer.”
3) I’d rather not watch anything for 84 minutes than sit through it again.
The list could go on and on, but let’s get down to business: Two aliens named Dume and Glume — ha, get it? — steal a wooden box containing a doomsday device. After it lands on Earth on the grounds of Montgomery Sterling High School, whereupon it kills a dog, the box is then stolen by one Mr. Armageddon.
Then lots of weird things appear in the school halls: head-smothering condoms, neck-strangling plants,a preppy zombie, a horny gargoyle, a mummy, a creature in red sneakers. It ends with the students squaring off against Mr. Armageddon at a climactic basketball match. Apparently, this plot is so complex that every scene requires narration.
The jokes — I apologize to the word “jokes” — are so insipid, that I also should apologize to the word “insipid.” An example: Dume and Glume rap! About penises and vaginas! Sample lyric: “You got your fimbriae / And your scrotum sac / And if your hymen is gone / It ain’t coming back.” Yes, Monster High has all the subtlety of a Three Stooges short. (Sorry, Moe, Larry and Curly.)
Apparently, all of the brainpower went into crafting names for the characters: Norm Median, Candice Caine, Mel Anoma, Miss Anne Thrope, Coach Otto Parts. The movie has exactly one thing going for it: boobs. Lots of large, naked breasts appear, and they’re from the era where they were real, rather than purchased on layaway. However, all the nude women are unseen from the neck up, as if they didn’t want anyone to know their identity. Smart move, ladies. —Rod Lott
Last year, Four Lions received praise as a daring, cutting edge satire of the terrorist boogeymen we’ve been trained to fear over the course of the past decade. The praise is more than deserved, but I couldn’t help but wonder how it would have been received if had been made and released in 2002, instead of 2010. Would the critics still have been able to find the humor in it, while the wounds of 9/11 were still so fresh?
Given the reception Ernst Lubitsch’s masterpiece, To Be or Not to Be, received upon its release, the answer is, “Probably not.” A satiric farce set in Nazi-occupied Poland, the film was made while WWII raged on and the public was still only becoming aware of the unimaginable horrors perpetuated by Hitler’s evil regime. The film was met with outrage, as critics and audiences were unprepared and unwilling to see the terrifying enemy they were fighting overseas portrayed as blithering buffoons in silly uniforms. Twenty-three years later, Hogan’s Heroes would start a six-season run on network television. Time heals everything.
The film pairs TV legend Jack Benny (in what would be his defining film role) with the gorgeous Carole Lombard (who tragically died in a plane crash three months before its release) as Joseph and Maria Tura, Warsaw’s most beloved theatrical couple, whose company is forced to shut down following the Nazi invasion. Maria’s pre-invasion flirtation with a handsome Polish airman (Robert Stack) leads to their troupe using their acting skills to prevent a Nazi double agent from revealing the locations of the families of Poland’s exiled air force to the S.S.
Viewed today, To Be or Not to Be is less transgressively outrageous as it is outrageously funny. Made by a master in his prime, it is required viewing for anyone who considers themselves a student of film comedy, and remains as fresh and relevant as anything you can expect to see in a theater today. —Allan Mott