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Gareth von Kallenbach (971 KP) rated Parental Guidance (2012) in Movies

Aug 7, 2019  
Parental Guidance (2012)
Parental Guidance (2012)
2012 | Comedy
6
6.2 (6 Ratings)
Movie Rating
I don’t really know where to start with this review. I guess I’ll start with what I’m expecting to see when I see a preview. I’m really bad at assuming I know what’s going to happen. Sometimes I’m right, happily sometimes I’m wrong, and then there are times, like with this movie, where it’s half and half.

The movie starts out with Artie Decker (Billy Crystal) as ‘de voice’ of his local Grizzlies’ baseball team. He’s really good at commentating and he loves doing it but after the last game of the season he gets fired. It’s predictable why he’s fired, basically he doesn’t poke or tweet, and I think they thought they hit gold with that moment of comedy but for me, eh. When he gets home his wife Diane (Bette Midler) comforts him. He’s lost for a moment since he wasn’t ready to stop but then decides he should chase his dream to commentate for the Giants though he doesn’t know where to start.

We shoot over to Alice Simmons (Marisa Tomei) Artie and Diane’s daughter, and her husband Phil, (Tom Everett Scott) who live in such a modern electronic home that it’s actually all controlled by a beta system called Rlife. Rlife can be programmed for alarm times, music, food, pretty much everything for each family member. This Rlife is Phil’s dream he gets invited to a conference to get his Rlife hopefully in production. Alice is going to with him, kind of a semi work vacation and they need Artie and Diane to watch the kids for a week.

What makes the divide even greater between Alice and her kids from Artie is that Alice and Phil are raising their kids in a new school that is different from Artie’s old school, tough love and strict rules. They use phrases like ‘use your words’ or if you give a ‘put down’ you have to give ‘three ups’ and you can’t use the word ‘no’ you have to say ‘think about the consequences’.

Their oldest, a young teen, is their only daughter Harper, Bailee Madison, who is extremely uptight and carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. Next we have the two boys, Turner, Joshua Rush, middle schooler, who stutters and is shy because of it, and the youngest Barker, Kyle Harrison Breitkopf, who is basically toddler with lots of energy, but seems to get away with a lot of bad behavior.

Diane realizes that they are the other grand parents, the ones that their grand kids don’t really like. Long story short, it’s supposed to be about being open to new ideas but it just feels like old school versus new school. Billy’s Crystal’s comedy and Bette Middler’s and Marisa Tomei’s acting can pull it out of the boredom for some laughs and good moments and there are a few situational laughs with the children as well, but that’s about it.

The truly redeeming quality to this movie, besides the three main actors is the ending, the last ten minutes. It’s a surprising heartwarming ending, and only slightly predictable. It sounds crazy but it actually brings the whole movie up from a two star to a three star for me. One last thing is that the guest I went with has two children of her own and tried to get me to change my rating from three to four. I really can’t do that but I think that means that if you have children of your own you might enjoy this a little bit more than I did.

Bottom line, renter, unless you love Bily Crystal.
  
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Simon Pegg recommended Annie Hall (1977) in Movies (curated)

 
Annie Hall (1977)
Annie Hall (1977)
1977 | Comedy, Romance
7.4 (7 Ratings)
Movie Favorite Watch

"Let me try and think of a comedy. At university, I wrote about Annie Hall. I know Woody Allen is currently a contentious issue, but that film as a comedy, if we can separate the art from the person for whatever reason, is such a clever, poetic film, but it’s written in the same way that a poem is… When you read a piece of prose, it’s very formal and everything follows one after the other. It’s very conventional. Poetry is different because it draws attention to itself as writing, and it rhymes and does different things, and it uses rhythm. Annie Hall in the same way does that cinematically. It’s kind of like a cinematic poem, and it’s just really, really smartly made. It’s one of the few comedies that ever got nominated or actually won any Oscars. Comedy, I think, is one of the most underrated art forms that there is, particularly in terms of material rewards. There is no Oscar for best comedy. There is no Oscar for best comic performance. I think that’s a shame, and I think if there was, then Jim Carrey would be laden down with scones. It’s not something everybody can do. You might dismiss Ace Ventura: Pet Detective as a ridiculous, goofy, throwaway movie, but it is a virtuoso performance from Jim Carrey, as often is with his work. You see a lot of so-called straight actors, serious actors, trying to do comedy, and they cannot do it. I think comedy is something which is underestimated because it is literally not serious. It’s like people think that seriousness equals serious, if you know what I mean. But Annie Hall, I think, it’s such a well-crafted film. It says a lot. Diane Keaton is just unbelievable in that movie. I got to meet her at CinemaCon. She was there promoting Book Club, and I said to the people I was with at CinemaCon, I said, “I have to meet Diane Keaton. Please, can you introduce me to her? I just need to tell her how much I love her. I won’t bother her too much.” I found a moment and I went over and I just told her I had written a thesis about her at university. She said, “Oh, I’d love to read that.” And I said, “No, you wouldn’t. It’s boring and dense.” But she was delightful. For her performance alone, that film, as controversial as it might be, would definitely be on my list."

Source
  
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LoganCrews (2861 KP) rated Untraceable (2008) in Movies

Sep 21, 2020  
Untraceable (2008)
Untraceable (2008)
2008 | Drama, Horror, Mystery
3
6.3 (4 Ratings)
Movie Rating Watch
𝘜𝘯𝘸𝘢𝘵𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦. Wants to be a 𝘚𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘢𝘮𝘣𝘴 x Saw hybrid, ends up being 𝘍𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘋𝘰𝘵𝘊𝘰𝘮 with most of the fun stuff subtracted, and if it were a piece of tacky CBS cybercrime dross. There's some real heat to the torture porn here but it's undercut by the fact that they consciously choose to rarely show it at all and overedit it to hell and back when they do (both fronts offended even worse than 𝘏𝘰𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘭: 𝘗𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘐𝘐) - instead opting to be a rote procedural where everyone dumps heavy bouts of cheesy exposition about things that it's clear no one actually knows what they're talking about, until its final moments where it takes a dumbass pivot where it decides to be a preachy, hypocritical, defanged commentary about technology which is about as non-knowledgeable as your average "Black Mirror" episode. Diane Lane gives it an honest try but it saves absolutely nothing from this lifeless white noise. One of the only positives is that it's unpredictable, but only in the sense that there's nothing to predict. At least it's one of the precious few of these things to make realistic online comments - and Lane very seriously repeats the full acronym for 'rofl' during a live snuff film. Still sucks though.