Worst Movies of 2009...

"Jumby wants to be born now."

Generally speaking, viewers cut horror movies a little slack - we can overlook nonsensical plots and stupid characters, but in return we want decent scares, an intoxicating atmosphere of visceral terror, and perhaps a bit of blood and violence. The Unborn contains all the elements one would expect to put up with, but without the compensation. Writer-director David S. Goyer's tedious, flat, convoluted, agonisingly dull horror movie ultimately spends so much time explaining itself, it forgets its purpose to actually scare. Think The Grudge meets The Exorcist, as written by an inept screenwriter like Uwe Boll.

The average, well-adjusted teen taking centre stage in The Unborn is a girl named Casey Beldon (Yustman), who is having trouble unlocking the meaning behind her recent dreams. Sensing that a demonic force in the form of a child named "Jumby" is pursuing her (yes, according to this flick, the root of all evil is a one-time foetus named Jumby), Casey turns to the clues left behind by her late mother (Gugino). This leads her to the Wise Old Woman Whose Sole Purpose Is To Provide Exposition (TM) in the form of an Auschwitz survivor (Alexander) who turns out to be Casey's grandmother. So instead of acting like a normal teen and paying a visit to the psychiatrist, Casey spends time with granny and is informed that she had a twin brother who died in the womb. Apparently it's this twin brother who's haunting her...or something to that tune. Casey's only hope is to request the services of Rabbi Sendak (Oldman).

The plotline is merely a ridiculous mishmash of Auschwitz, Nazis, demonic possession and twins, resulting in a barely coherent story. One would expect a review of a horror movie like this to state that it simply shifts from one lazy jump moment to the next...but in the case of The Unborn, the "scary" sequences are bridged with 15 or 20 minutes of a teary-eyed Casey seeking the truth. This could've been at least a watchable film, but Goyer provides far too much exposition. As the convoluted babble about twins, demons, the door being open and other such nonsense unfolds, the more preposterous the movie becomes and the less entertainment one can ultimately find within it.

In desperation to market The Unborn as something more substantive than it is, the distributor used the fact that writer-director David S. Goyer was also involved with 2008's The Dark Knight. But, you see, Goyer only helped develop the story with Christopher Nolan, who then wrote the script with his brother Jonathan. For a more accurate representation of Goyer's cinematic legacy, look no further than the Blade films - he wrote all three and directed the appalling third movie. As bad as that film was, Blade: Trinity is still better than this tripe. The Unborn has been directed by Goyer with conventional touches, with set-pieces straight out of the horror handbook. But when the scares are telegraphed so far in advance, do they even qualify as scares? (For instance, when a character is wandering around for 5 minutes in an uneasy atmosphere before the sloppily-formulated "scare moment" eventually happens.) If Goyer deserves any praise, it's for devising a few unsettling images, like upside-down heads and mutilated faces which barely slip under the PG-13 radar. Yet a lot of this stuff seems lifted directly from other genre movies, particularly The Exorcist, and they're only slightly scary.

Goyer also drops the ball when it comes to basic logic; filling the movie with a multitude of plot holes and behavioural whoppers. He appears to make no attempt to establish a coherent set of rules by which possession occurs, with the evil "Jumby" conveniently leaping from body to body, which makes one wonder why it's so fixated on possessing Casey outside of the fact that a character claims it has a taste for her family's blood. On the topic of family, Casey's father (Remar) appears in two scenes before completely disappearing from the story. Apparently he went on a business trip, but it's mentioned that he's supposed to return the following day. And he doesn't appear to. I guess his plane crashed and nobody noticed.

In the dybbuk (as the Jews call it), Goyer found an interesting and little-known piece of folklore around which to form his story...but he had no idea what to do with it. The film is a mess of dead-end exposition and credibility-stretching coincidence. The dybbuk mythology never amounts to a compelling story and it rarely makes sense, even despite a tonne of mind-numbering exposition. And of all the dumb characters, the dybbuk might be the dumbest - Rabbi Sendak is initially sceptical of Casey's claims when she goes to see him, then the spirit decides to intimidate the Rabbi with a show of natural force, thus proving its existence to a guy who can banish it! Without spoiling the ending here, this can be said: you'll see the ending coming a mile away, will convince yourself that Goyer wouldn't possibly pen a conclusion so utterly lame, then either laugh or cry at the realisation that he did it. The film's conclusion is a stunning blend of predictability and hardcore stupidity. No amount of blood or gore could be added to improve this inert horror throwaway that was obviously cut to PG-13 standards (the unrated cut only adds a whole 49 seconds of footage).

In terms of casting, there's Gary Oldman who should have taken a much-deserved vacation instead of taking part in this clunker. How he ended up in this film is a true mystery for the ages - he was probably drunk, bored, or doing someone a favour. Odette Yustman, who was last seen escaping the tentacled behemoth in Cloverfield, is only nice to look at in a deeply generic sense (think Megan Fox). Goyer is completely aware that Yustman looks good in underwear, so he included two scenes in which the camera focuses on the actress' white-cotton-covered derriere. Even the poster takes advantage of this.

There's only one thing of interest about The Unborn: it's not a remake of an Asian horror film, but it certainly feels like one. Not just because it's incoherent and nigh on unwatchable (a common trait of said remakes), but because the plot contains the same basic characteristics; a nasty demon or ghost messing with a poor heroine in sinister but PG-13 ways. Perhaps that's how David S. Goyer got the green light for this movie - by fooling some gullible producers into thinking it was an Asian horror remake. At the end of the day, there is nothing to like about The Unborn. It is not scary. It is not interesting. It is not worth watching. Making a really obvious crack about it being a cinematic abortion is too easy...so I'd rather just belt out a bold, italicised "avoid" and get on with my life. So yeah...avoid! I've warned you. I've done my duty. Let's never speak of this movie again.

"You gotta risk it to get the biscuit."

Fired Up! might as well have been entitled Cheer Leader Movie or Teen Movie, because those are far more suitable titles considering the bottom-of-the-barrel quality of the film it's concerning. The only thing to differentiate this comedic dud from the likes of Date Movie, Epic Movie and Disaster Movie is the absence of the names Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg from the credits. Instead, there's a first-time director named Will Gluck, and a group of four writers who credit themselves as 'Freedom Jones'. Fired Up! is nothing we haven't already seen countless times - it's a watered-down hodgepodge of several other films, and the result kills laughter rather than triggering it.

Working under the assumption that girls are as stupid as cattle, the movie introduces Nick (Olsen) and Shawn (D'Agosto); two football-playing studs who have used up the reserve of girls at their high school, and are seeking a new lady-killing challenge. The boys decide to ditch football camp in favour of cheerleading camp when they learn that it'll be attended by 300 young women. They worm their way onto the squad and hence into the camp, then proceed to sleep with anything that moves. But trouble arises when Shawn falls in love with one of their team-members.

After a brief opening sequence which establishes the protagonists as through-and-through jerks, Fired Up! embarks on a profoundly unfunny quest to add any sort of non-sequitur to the mix; assuming that conventional absurdity will wash over audiences like laughing gas. The actors are visibly too old for their roles, but the jokes are older than the Bible - the film is a morass of tired, obvious and telegraphed gags, from the mascots who never remove their costumes to the cheerleaders chanting about what they're doing all the time ("We are eating, we we are eating"), and even a scene in which the cheerleaders repeatedly chant "FU!" for Fired Up...because the very notion of the girls almost cursing is side-splitting, of course. The film also relies on the outtakes-during-the-end-credits approach to generate a few cheap, late laughs...but even these aren't even slightly funny. How bad must a movie be to contain a dud blooper reel?! And, despite the presence of talent like Philip Baker Hall and John Michael Higgins, the side characters are never given a chance to make an impact - they have been reduced to one-note caricatures or, in the case of the females, personality-free sex objects. Masochism aside, there are also homosexual gags - primarily a constant suggestion that all male cheerleaders must be gay.

Among the biggest problems with Fired Up! is that it contains absolutely no surprises. With such a totally obvious plot, you'll be able to predict what will happen at every juncture. The minute Shawn takes a shine for his teammate Carly (Roemer), it's obvious they'll eventually get together. But not after she overcomes her Jerk Boyfriend Who Sleeps With Other Girls (TM), and the Break Up To Make Up Scenario Because The Protagonist's Disreputable Original Plans Which He Decided To Change Were Discovered (TM). See, the two boys wanted to leave camp a week early, but they realise they've grown to care about the team and decide to stay, but their initial treachery is uncovered and they have to prove themselves to the team. Sound like anything new? Combine this with the fact that Nick wants to go to bed with the "unattainable" camp counsellor who's married to an old guy. Care to venture a guess about how that'll pan out? A Frankenstein's Monster of a movie, Fired Up! has three things on its mind: showcasing the improvisatory "skills" of the stars, PG-13 titillation, and cashing in on a cheerleading genre that's already passé. In reality, these intentions add up to a big headache of a movie, with director Gluck highlighting his naivety behind the camera through routine shot construction and a permissive attitude with the cast, who all seem to think they're God's gift to comedy. Nicholas D'Agosto and Eric Christian Olsen (aged 29 and 31, respectively) play the least convincing high school students imaginable, and they spend their screen-time mugging the camera. Neither actor possesses any degree of charisma, nor does the duo have the skill for turning bad material into less-bad material. Crucially, why should we care about these shallow douchebags who try to tap every female in sight?

It would seem that Fired Up! was intended to be a parody of Bring it On (the characters even view the movie at one stage, and recite every single line verbatim), though that's not for certain. See, the concept of a parody implies humour, and there's nothing even resembling laughs within this tripe. Making matters worse, this is an obviously R-rated movie masquerading as a PG-13 (ah, nothing like a smutty teen comedy in which the guys ogle fully dressed women). The emasculation is so painfully obvious that it calls attention to itself: characters wear clothes for skinny-dipping scenes, there are euphemisms for "fuck", and the sexual innuendo is softened. According to IMDb, the movie was submitted to the MPAA a grand total of 18 times before it was finally slapped with a PG-13 rating. A raunchier approach to Fired Up! may not have spawned a superior film per se, but it would've seemed more honest, and there would have been at least some guilty pleasure moments.

There's no checking your qualms at the door and riding along with Fired Up!, as it manages to be unfunny and offensive at every turn. Girls sucked in by the cheerleading theme will merely find out that boys perceive them as dumb-as-rocks sex objects, while the male demographic seeking raunchy laughs will find more original, funnier stuff in the first American Pie movie. If there's something rarer than a great comedy, it's a depressing one that somehow manages to produce not a single laugh (even with outtakes in consideration). Fired Up! is one of those - it's so formulaic, disposable and instantly forgettable, and even if you do find these gags funny, you'll be hard-pressed to justify why you found it at all amusing once you finish watching it.

"A wedding marks the first day of the rest of your life. You have been dead until now. Were you aware of that? You're dead right now."

It's difficult to classify Bride Wars. It fails as a black comedy. It's not even remotely funny either, so it can't be considered a plain comedy either. As a satire of the bloated wedding industry, it also fails. As a drama about friendship and triumphing over all, it still fails. It'd probably be best to classify it as "an affront to God". Yeah, that works. Now, speaking in general, chick flicks can work if they are sharply written and amusing, but in the case of Bride Wars...RUN! RUN THE FUCK AWAY AS FAST AS YOU CAN! If a friend tries to force you into watching it with them, fake a coronary if you have to in order to get yourself out of there. Otherwise you'll be stuck watching the worst movie you've endured for a long time; yearning for a spare moment when you can commit suicide using the television remote or a nearby blunt object. Bride Wars is predictable, offensive and mundane, and entirely devoid of humour.

The film follows lifelong best friends Liv (Hudson) and Emma (Hathaway). Since they were little girls, the two have shared the same dream: a storybook wedding in June at New York's Plaza Hotel. Now in their mid-20s and engaged to nondescript men, the day has come to book the event at the desired venue. Through circumstances too sketchily explained to go into, both Liv and Emma are accidentally booked at the Plaza for the same day at the same time, and the next available slot is three years down the line. Neither of the women will relinquish their fantasy ceremony, so war is declared... And they have absolutely no problem tearing apart a friendship that has lasted so long.

Renowned critic Roger Ebert once coined the phrase "Idiot Plot" to describe the type of story that could be resolved if only the characters stopped being morons. Bride Wars spins off this notion to offer the "Jerk Plot", with a storyline that could be easily resolved if only the characters stopped being assholes. The women aren't willing to do a double wedding (the most logical option considering they are lifelong best friends), or do anything rational that might clear up the conundrum in 10 seconds. The set-up is just a flimsy excuse for a succession of lame revenge sequences, as the two women desperately try to sabotage each other's upcoming nuptials. This is where Bride Wars falls apart the most: the screenplay (courtesy of June Diane Raphael and Casey Wilson) is packed with the dumbest and least inventive schemes. The other problem is that the screenwriters never develop the nerve to create the dark, nasty comedy the movie should have been. The tricks are nasty, but not cruel enough to work as inspired black humour - most are on the level of a subpar Punk'd episode.

Bride Wars is ultimately a numbing, excruciating, artistically bankrupt motion picture. Above all, it's a movie which mistakenly believes viewers will want to like these characters... But we end up hating them instead. And why not? They're mean-spirited, irrational and obnoxiously unlikeable. Even before they begin bitching and scheming, they still come across as superficial twits no-one would like to spend time with, let alone marry! By the time the third act is reached and the treasured/feared wedding day arrives, the screenplay sidesteps all the countless possible endings in order to present a copout conclusion that fails to satisfy on every conceivable level, and replaces the attempts at gags with attempts at sympathy for these detestable characters. For the most part, the grooms are forgotten throughout the movie, but are occasionally allotted screen-time in which they try to offer commonsensical advice before being inevitably shot down. Furthermore, this reviewer found the male positions far more rational and credible than those espoused by their brides-to-be.

Anne Hathaway does fare better than Kate Hudson (who looks distractingly odd throughout the entire movie), but neither are able to make their characters remotely endearing. One can't help but wonder how much longer Hudson will remain a viable leading lady given the string of indefensible comedies she has starred in over the last several years.
At the helm of Bride Wars is Gary Winick (Charlotte's Web, 13 Going on 30), who aggravates the flaws with a generic style punctuated by terrible decisions. The director operates on chick-flick autopilot here (much like the actors), assuming shots of Hudson with blue hair will trigger laughs, and that dialogue about Vera Wang wedding gowns will be sufficient to win over female viewers. Meanwhile the one-liners are strictly in PG territory, which means they're neutered to the point that they're uninteresting. There are also attempts at physical comedy that never comes close to triggering an outbreak of laughter. Furthermore, the movie tries to balance the all-out bitch-fest with a moralistic parable about the value of friendship. But in the end, it fails to satisfy. Everything about this film, from the gags to the messages to the cutesy last scene, feels numbingly obvious.

The problem is not that the characters are shallow and mean. The problem is not that they allow their own selfishness to control their behaviour. In a well-crafted black comedy, these elements are pluses. But Bride Wars is not a black comedy, nor is it well-crafted or clever or remotely enjoyable. Instead, it's so mean-spirited and so lacking in humour that the film cannot be recommend to anybody I don't feel like torturing.

"Fate rarely calls upon us at a moment of our choosing."

Bigger and more overblown in every aspect (except where it's needed), Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen represents Michael Bay at his most unrestrained and confident. Bay and his trio of screenwriters (Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman) have slathered this sequel with unrelenting excess, particularly dumb humour and an overwhelming amount of CGI. There's no coherent story here - just an arbitrary collection of explosions, robot battles and machismo posturing that's tagged with an awkward conclusion. The endless excitement is downright boring: there's no sense of anticipation, no tension, and no downtime...it's on all the time, like being stuck on a bus with a screaming baby. The movie, all 150 goddamn minutes of it, is just an audio-visual assault on all senses (including common) that mimics storytelling without understanding it. With the keen urge to bypass all traces of logic, reason, character development and depth, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is an utter mess of an action opus.

Now...the story? Yep, that's horrible as well. Sam Witwicky (LeBeouf) is departing for college, and the Autobots are busily hunting the remaining Decepticons. When Sam conveniently finds a shard of the Allspark in his jumper, his brain is flash-loaded with ancient symbols pertaining to the location of a deadly machine that will let the bad guys destroy our sun (for reasons too stupid to explain here). Megatron (Weaving) is hauled out of his deep sea tomb (where the government dumped him as part of their military strategy to set up the sequel) and revived before being placed in the service of the Fallen - i.e. "The First Decepticon": a being so important that nobody bothered mentioning him in the first film. The plot more or less just has Sam becoming all spastic as the symbols overwhelm his brain while the robots engage in fight sequences. Sam and his pals also meet Agent Simmons (Turturro), and they all travel to Egypt where the pyramids are...because that's what happens when you give $200 million to a bunch of idiots who failed geography, and allow them to make a blockbuster.

The straightforward plot is padded out to an unholy two-and-a-half hours, which means the whole thing is packed with dreadful filler. For instance there's a subplot in which Sam and his girlfriend are too nervous to say "I love you" to each other...until, of course, the finale, because that's how it's done in Screenwriting 101. By the time the all-in rumble between the Autobots, Decepticons, Otherbots (?) and the US Army finally arrives, one will be too numbed and fatigued to actually give a damn about how it all ends.

The blunders of the first film have been accentuated rather than expunged, while the very limited charms of the predecessor are gone, leaving nothing to recommend. For Revenge of the Fallen, Bay indulges in so much excess that he delivers the cinematic equivalent of snorting cocaine off a hooker's arse. The "money shots all the time" approach robs the action of weight and coherency.

For reasons that escape this reviewer's mental perimeter, Bay and his writers place greater emphasis on comedy for this sequel. The dead space between the action is therefore reserved for rear nudity from Turturro, jive-talkin' Autobots (triggering uncomfortable memories of Jar Jar Binks), extended time with Sam's stridently unfunny parents, and a Decepticon spy with leg-humping tendencies. Does the concept of a robot humping a woman's leg seem funny to you at all? Bay seemed to think it was so hilarious that he also threw in two scenes of dogs humping each other as well. Transformer testicles also make an appearance, and there's an exceedingly long gag involving Sam's mother tripping out on pot brownies. And slutty chicks can transform into robots too, because the film patently refuses to make sense. If Bay had another ten million to spend, he probably would've tossed in a musical number as well.

When the characters aren't engaging in embarrassingly witless dialogue or doling out tiresome exposition, they're running away from explosions in slow motion (although outrunning an explosion is physically impossible). Meanwhile the "action" is relentless in its monotony. Robots pound on robots, humans launch rockets and missiles at robots (though never in the history of the sci-fi genre has artillery ever actually harmed aliens), robots wipe out humans, etc. This stuff goes on and on - far beyond what's necessary for a brain-dead, CGI-laden motion picture. Worse still, there are over forty Transformers in this film (most are interchangeable cannon fodder). Unfortunately the Transformers are all similar in design, not to mention they're poorly defined and make absolutely no visual sense whatsoever (a car can transform into a robot a few storeys tall?!). Combined with the director's typical hyper editing and close-ups, it's impossible to tell who's who during the battles. Bay is unable to keep his camera still for a second to allow a viewer to actually watch the combat, instead opting for dizzying camera patterns. In the long run the action becomes a nauseating, incomprehensible blur of confusion. It's frustrating and burdensome, and one will struggle to figure out what's happening instead of relaxing and enjoying. Revenge of the Fallen is just sensory white noise that beats its audience into either submission or boredom. It's like watching paint dry while being whacked over the head with a frying pan!

Naturally, Bay has less luck with the humans - his characters range from obnoxious to pointless. Every character is a bland cipher who either yells at the top of their lungs or runs away from explosions in slo-mo. Megan Fox's character is particularly superfluous - she serves no purpose in the story, and is there just because she's hot. The camera spends so much time ogling her torso that one will wonder if Bay allowed a 13-year-old boy to operate the camera. At the end of the day, the characters are all just stereotyped caricatures and there's no anchor among them - there are so many characters but no-one is in the centre to root for.

The CGI work courtesy of ILM is strangely mixed. On the one hand the facial expressions of the Transformers have more range, but on the other hand the integration with the live-action footage is less smooth and more cartoonish. There's also no sense of physics or gravity to these creations - the giant robots are just tossed around without any weight or inertia.

No Bay movie would be complete without the director's disturbing sense of reality. The women are all supermodel hot, and they love to spread their legs for geeks. Minorities are best used as comic relief, and conform to every stereotype imaginable. Oh, and a scene set in a foreign country must depict the country's clichés (just in case the under-titles don't make it clear which country we're in) - snails & mimes in France, and camels in Egypt. And of course, the American Armed Forces are fetishised - the final act more or less serves as an army recruitment commercial.

Perhaps more than anything else, Revenge of the Fallen is about Michael Bay's love for Michael Bay. He accomplishes this in countless ways; most overtly by placing a large poster for Bad Boys II in Sam's dorm room, and more subtly (but not really subtle) through visual homages (including a shower of fiery objects destroying buildings in Paris which causes a tower to collapse that's taken directly from Armageddon, as well as the destruction of an aircraft carrier which is an obvious nod to Pearl Harbor).

Fans of this woeful picture can only say a couple of things in the film's defence: it's entertaining and the special effects are amazing. But the latter is arguable, and the former is merely a subjective opinion. Every summer blockbuster has big special effects and action...Revenge of the Fallen is just a tired rehash of summer action movie conventions. Why bother?

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen perfectly embodies every negative aspect of summer blockbusters. It's a big lumbering idiot of a movie that substitutes noise and movement for any type of emotional connection. Bay simply trudges through his hoary, heavily rehearsed motions of explosions upon explosions, and reduces the globetrotting plotting to a repetitive yawn. It's an unforgivably long, obnoxiously unrewarding and brutally tiring experience. Look, I understand the original Transformers was a colossal box office hit, and this sequel is doing just as well. I also understand there's a market for this sort of brain-dead blockbuster. The Transformers films may be popular, but so is junk food - and they both poison your insides and rot your brain.

At one stage John Turturro asks of a Transformer in relation to the current crisis "Beginning. Middle. End. Facts. Details. Condense. Plot. Tell it." - I'd like to ask the screenwriters the same thing.

Oh, and you know what? Michael Jackson saw this movie on opening night. Next day, he was dead. Coincidence?

"His name's Bison. I've tracked him through eleven major cities on four continents and never come close, not once. This guy walks through the raindrops. Anybody that's against him is either dead, or on their way."

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is not only a compelling early contender for the worst film of 2009, but it's also a contender for the worst film of all time! This second attempt at a screen adaptation of the revered Capcom video game series is unbelievably awful in every aspect. Generic action sequences, atrocious acting, cringe-inducing dialogue and lacklustre filmmaking are all combined, resulting in an hour and a half of pure cinematic torture. The first time the Street Fighter video game empire was adapted for the big screen, it concerned (a cartoonishly costumed) Jean-Claude Van Damme and Kylie Minogue trying to rescue the world from the evil clutches of (an infirmed) Raul Julia...and the film tanked! Now in 2009, fifteen years later, we've been given Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li - a production armed with a few clumsy television actors, Chris Klein, and a member of the Black Eyed Peas. This is not progress! With Andrzej Bartkowiak at the helm (who also directed the awful film adaptation of Doom), this feature is incredibly inept, and even that's putting it lightly. Most disheartening is that this dreck is unable to deliver the barest of bare-knuckle guilty pleasures promised by the genre. So what's left? Absolutely nothing.

At least 20th Century Fox were aware of the dud they had on their hands - they didn't screen the movie for the critics, and apparently most of the theatres showing this reel of used toilet paper only screened it once or twice a day. Why does this movie even exist, anyway? The Street Fighter video game series peaked in the '90s, which justifies the Van Damme movie. This latest rendition, however, is unjustifiable.

The plot concerns Chun-Li (Kreuk) who travels to Bangkok after receiving an enigmatic scroll (oddly enough, this scroll literally looks like a piece of paper that has been shoddily glued onto a piece of cheap cardboard). The streets of Bangkok are ruled by a crime syndicate called Shadaloo, headed by criminal mastermind Bison (McDonough) and his right hand man Balrog (Duncan). It seems Chun-Li battles this crime syndicate to save the city and because they kidnapped her father when she was a kid. Meanwhile, Interpol Agent Charlie Nash (Klein) is equally passionate to stop Bison and take down Shadaloo.

The story does not make much sense. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li simply limps along from one poorly-staged set-piece to the next, climaxing with a whimper rather than a bang. It lacks both coherence and flow. This 2009 picture is distinctly different to the catastrophic 1994 movie failure, exchanging the cartoon atmosphere for a grittier tone that concentrates on revenge scenarios rather than a world domination plot. Justin Marks' script is surprisingly straight-faced...far too serious for its own good. It's also just really badly written. When a character seeks information on Shadaloo, they simply use the internet. No secret is safe from the internet, after all. When Chun-Li needs to know about a secret shipment, she finds a random guy on the wharf and breaks his arm to extract the relevant information. With the help of a guy named Gen, Chun-Li is trained to become a supreme master of kung-fu. This transformation from naïve fighter to highly skilled warrior takes all of five minutes, and mostly involves marbles being pelted at her.

Here's the big problem: both Street Fighter films have next to nothing to do with the actual video game. The basic concept behind Street Fighter is gloriously simple: two fighters face off in the ring, attacking each other with a variety of kicks, punches and special moves until one is beaten into submission. A serviceable film adaptation could be derived from the same formula (maybe a tournament movie like Bloodsport?), but both attempts so far work from a needlessly complicated and ridiculously silly story (in this case a meandering crime syndicate tale which takes forever to unfold). The Legend of Chun-Li is much further removed from the video game than the Van Damme vehicle preceding it. This is only a Street Fighter movie by name, and because a few classic characters have cameos. Chun-Li at one stage fights Vega (one of the video game's coolest characters), but he gets a minute or two of screen-time and just seems like a poor imitation of Wolverine with his giant metal claws.

At its core, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is a martial arts demonstration reel, but it's an extremely unimpressive one. For a big studio release, the technical accomplishments are extremely subpar. The strictly ordinary choreography during the fight sequences is captured with scarcely a modicum of skill - some clumsy cinematography which is amplified by the choppy editing. It's impossible to lighten up and embrace the violence when it's just a blur occasionally punctuated by a famous Street Fighter finishing move. These are just silly wire-work sequences during which no-one ever seems to get hurt, and one is unable to get any sense of a character's brute force or skill. The gun battles are just routine, PG-13 filler. In fact, so is the entire movie as it lamely lurches from conflict to conflict in a programmed manner. Some of the gun battles do look mildly cool, but these are unfortunately few and far between. The Legend of Chun-Li cannot be considered a movie - it's a God forsaken tragedy! It reels in some of the most pathetic actors in the industry who are aching for their existence to be acknowledged, and gives them a vastly stupid script to regurgitate.

The acting is atrocious right across the board. Chris Klein delivers one of the most laughably awful screen performances of the decade, making Van Damme seem Oscar-worthy in comparison. His portrayal of Nash is beyond awful - not only can he not act, but he was probably drunk during filming. The performer (calling him an actor would be a questionable compliment) assumes a strange mix of Clint Eastwood and metrosexual paedophile as he desperately tries to come across as a tough guy. It's frankly hilarious to observe his cheese, especially in the presence of the other actors who seriously look as if they're holding back giggles. His character also favours a pistol over hand-to-hand fighting, so why is he even included in the film?! Throughout this cinematic abomination, I was actually missing the acting skills of Jean-Claude Van Damme...
And as for the rest of the cast... Neal McDonough might've fared better had he not used such a goofy Irish accent (Bison is a quintessential Irish surname, after all). One-time Oscar nominee Michael Clarke Duncan is reduced to playing the character Balrog, while a host of other actors (Robin Shou, Josie Ho and the attractive Moon Bloodgood) are unfathomably woeful as the one-dimensional stock characters. Kristin Kreuk is hot, but it seems she was deceased throughout the filming period as she boasts just one expression and one tone of voice. She also does a thoroughly awful job of faking martial arts moves before her stunt double steps in.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is tiresome, brain-dead and ill-considered. It'd be impossible for anyone to have a legitimately enjoyable time watching this awful motion picture which delivers nothing apart from an inconsistent crime plot. Unfortunately, the makers behind this Street Fighter movie are unable to put together a martial arts scene that's worth a damn. Not even morbidly curious film-goers should give this one a shot unless they also have masochistic tendencies.

"From the Wayan Brothers comes the most outrageous movie of the year," the trailer for Dance Flick promised. In one sense, this is correct - it's an outage that precious reels of celluloid were imprinted with this lazy, cheap, dire, tedious, obnoxious and desperate attempt to induce laugher. And that's just a small selection of disparaging adjectives which can be applied to this tripe.

Dance Flick is just another in the long line of excruciating spoof films begat by the Scary Movie series. Said franchise also inadvertently unleashed upon the world the writer-director team of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, and their creations (Epic Movie, Date Movie, Meet the Spartans, Disaster Movie) somehow managed to earn a fortune at the box office while also being universally despised. These recent spoof "comedies" forget one very crucial thing about the genre: they forget to actually be funny. They're miles away from the belly-laugh miracles of the Airplane! and Naked Gun era. Dance Flick is merely a barrage of pointless pop culture references, ghastly stereotypes and overt spoofing - all of which unite to deter laughter. The film was created by the Wayans, and while they weren't responsible for many of the other dire parodies of recent years, you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise.

Less a baseline story than a platform on which to showcase a series of unfunny, disparate sketches, this is a spoof of (logically) every dance film imaginable (running the gamut from Fame to Step Up 2 The Streets). While there are plenty of movies that fit this criterion, Dance Flick is inexplicably focused on 2001's Save the Last Dance. It adapts that particular movie's plot almost scene-for-scene, probably because the filmmakers couldn't be bothered coming up with something more creative on their own.
To an extent, there is a plot (however paltry). It concerns a white, naïve ex-dancer named Megan (Bush) who moves in with her father (Elliot) after her mother dies in a car accident. She hooks up with black street dancer Thomas (Wayans Jr.) and together they aim to compete in a local contest to scoop some much-needed cash. You see, Thomas needs money to pay larger-than-life gangster Sugar Bear (Grier) - who looks like a cross between Fat Bastard and Mr. Creosote.

As with other recent spoofs, the satirical elements of Dance Flick aren't restricted to dance films. One of the most unbearable failed gags of the movie comes at the expense of Twilight. There are also parodies of Black Snake Moan, Catwoman (WTF?!) and even Little Miss Sunshine merely to get the film up to its barely feature-length runtime. The puerile attempts to raise laughs lack subtlety, skilful direction or any degree of intelligence. Instead, there's a junior version of Ray Charles (with his blindness cruelly used as a launching pad for numerous "comedic" mishaps) and a dance instructor named Ms. Cameltoé (Sedaris). Guess what? Yep, Ms. Cameltoé has a noticeably large vagina...and it even beatboxes!

Dance Flick also contains a large variety of potty jokes, racial jokes and hackneyed gags (for instance the music at one stage overwhelms a character who's speaking, so he turns to the orchestra and tells them to quiet down). All this pushes the film's PG-13 rating to the very brink. The point is not that this stuff is offensive, but that it's so insufferably terrible. Exposition and random skits and mashed together willy-nilly with no concern for making a coherent motion picture, and the end result looks and feels like what one would expect from a bunch of kids screwing around with a camera during a family reunion (considering the number of Wayans involved, this could actually be the case here). There's an unexpected amount of energy here (particularly during the dance numbers), but this cannot excuse the tragic deficiency of laughs and the fact that the whole thing is just plain gruelling.

Recently, so many genre parody movies have been made that they no longer carry a novelty factor, making Dance Flick tedious and familiar. This is the very definition of critic-proof - if you want to view this bottom-feeding cash-grab that caters to the lowest common denominator, you've already made up your mind and no amount of reviews will persuade you otherwise. For those of you who adored Disaster Movie or Meet the Spartans, you're welcome to indulge in this tosh...but please keep it away from the rest of us. You know, some of the worst dance movies actually exist as self-parodies, so what the fuck is the point of parodying them anyway???

"Greece. A year ago I hit rock bottom, so I came here to reconnect with my soul - find my mojo. Or kefi, as the Greeks call it."

Throughout My Life in Ruins, a couple of characters are frequently told that they're not as funny as they believe they are. Unfortunately, those watching the film will echo this sentiment as they endure the clichés and predictable scenarios it provides, on top of the forced attempts at humour that wouldn't pass muster for the world's worst sitcoms. My Life in Ruins is a generic romantic comedy that has no clue when it comes to romance, comedy, or above all charm. The "comedy" is based almost entirely on stereotyping nationalities, the story is trite, and the main coupling is devoid of that hard-to-pin rom-com necessity: chemistry! This godawful motion picture merely plays out like an obnoxiously terrible, been-there-seen-that sitcom. "Ruins" is indeed an apt descriptor of this flick.

My Life in Ruins follows a history-professor-turned-tour-guide living in Greece named Georgia (Vardalos). She hates her job, fusses because she's always assigned the second-rate tourists, and finds faults with everything in Greece that isn't a few thousand years old. Feeling the job is beneath her, and having a deep love for Greek history, Georgia tends to bore her tour companions by offering historical trivia when they'd rather shop for souvenirs, grab an ice cream or spend a day at the beach. In a traditional rom-com Character Rehabilitation Journey (TM), Georgia attempts to regain her "kefi" (Greek for "mojo") through guiding a group of difficult tourists around Greece.

The core of the story is about Georgia's life view being changed when she falls in love with the tour's bus driver, Poupi (Georgoulis), and her learning a thing or two from the most flamboyant of the tourists, Irv (Dreyfuss). Suffice to say, by the film's dénouement Georgia has transformed herself from boring, inept tour guide into the best that Greece has to offer, and she's beloved by everyone in her group. Georgia also has a nemesis in the form of competing tour guide Nico (McGowan) who wants to torture her into quitting, but he's eventually humiliated and decides to quit himself. There's a bored teenage girl (Stuckey) in the film as well who is at first reluctant about Greece but eventually finds the guy of her dreams... Stop me if any of this sounds familiar... The problem with My Life in Ruins is that this isn't a lively rerun of every rom-com cliché in existence - it's a dreary tour through Clichéville that wouldn't be interesting even if it was original.

The screenplay by Mike Reiss (a sitcom writer, unsurprisingly) utilises the multiple-day tour as an excuse to showcase brainless cultural stereotypes which are as plentiful as they are offensive. The woeful surface-level caricatures range from boorish Americans and drunk Aussie bogans with an unlimited supply of Foster's (who should be deported for treason) to snooty shoplifting seniors from England and sexed-up Spanish cougars. There's a corporate representative thrown in the mix as well, who spends his screen-time making pancake puns. Pancake puns! Surely there were funnier avenues to explore with this plotline - all we get are unfunny one-liners, cheap detours into homophobia, and Nia Vardalos mugging the camera in an alarming manner. Screenwriter Reiss spent a period writing The Simpsons when it was actually good (he even wrote the feature film), so where is that wit?! Rather than wittiness, Reiss conceives characters named Poupi and Doudi... How ironic it is that infantile poo jokes have been used for a turd of a comedy.

At the helm of My Life in Ruins is Donald Petrie, whose filmography is so badly tarnished that it's surprising any producer (let alone Tom Hanks) would allow him anywhere near a project of potential value (his prior cinematic "masterpieces" include Just My Luck and Welcome to Mooseport). Not only is Petrie despondently clueless when it comes to conjuring a ghost of a romantic spark between Vardalos and Georgoulis, but he's also unable to accomplish what should've been the easiest task: gorgeous scenery. Greece is incredibly photogenic, yet this director imbues the movie with a depressingly commonplace look. Even an amateur home video taken by a bunch of tourists would be less dreary than this.

Nia Vardalos is practically a one-hit acting wonder. After My Big Fat Greek Wedding, her career has only spiralled downwards. In My Life in Ruins, there's nothing human about her character - she plays a walking cliché, and her performance is unable to elevate the material. She's slightly watchable, but spending 90 minutes with her is too much.
The rest of the cast is left floundering amid a sea of exasperating stereotypes. It should come as no surprise that Richard Dreyfuss is the film's only bright spot - he isn't enough to make this rubbish tolerable as a whole, but the actor deserves some credit. Playing the character who dispenses homespun wisdom (essentially the Midwestern version of Morgan Freeman), Dreyfuss appears to commit to the moronic antics that are asked of him, which is either the result of terrific professional courtesy or heavy drinking in between takes. His constantly weary expression is most likely a sign of grief due to being coaxed into starring in this crap purely for the money and sightseeing opportunities.

Ostensibly a film about the protagonist's mental transformation, My Life in Ruins is really just a long scenic tour of every rom-com cliché imaginable. It's a profoundly nauseating film that grows progressively more repellent as time goes by... A beautiful place like Greece deserves a far better travelogue than this, and a better spokesperson than the utterly charmless Vardalos. It seems that even with excellent movies hitting cinemas in this day and age (like Up or Drag Me to Hell), awful movies like My Life in Ruins are always lurking around the corner, waiting to pounce upon us and remind us that bad films are just as common - if not more common - than the quality ones.

"Become the animal. Embrace the other side."

Let's face it: we pay to see summer movies for the explosions, the fight scenes and the action in general. They aren't required to engage us on a cerebral level; they merely offer an abundance of action during which we're required to suspend our disbelief. X-Men Origins: Wolverine, however, is definitive proof that a plateful of action is not enough to create a satisfying summer movie. For a film to attain the status of an excellent popcorn-munching cinematic experience, it's required to pay at least some attention to narrative coherence and character arcs, not to mention the action has to occur in an actual context. In Wolverine, the action sequences just...happen. To arrive at an action sequence, one has to suffer through badly-paced scenes of trite dialogue and terrible acting. Plot holes also flourish, logic is quickly discarded, and it leaves too many things unexplained. Instead of a deep character study, X-Men Origins: Wolverine is merely an action film masquerading as something more. There's no human drama (ala Spider-Man) or witty dialogue (like Iron Man). Even the other X-Men movies had a political resonance to them which isn't retained here. This is Hack Filmmaking 101!

X-Men Origins: Wolverine was ostensibly a labour of love for poor Hugh Jackman who also served as producer, but unfortunately his efforts didn't pay off. About a month before the film's scheduled release, an incomplete workprint was leaked online. As it turns out, though, this leak was the best thing to happen to the film industry during 2009. Those eagerly anticipating the movie (this reviewer included) were given the opportunity to see how awful it truly is. Fox immediately attempted to cover their blunder by claiming footage from the reshoots was missing from the workprint (fourteen minutes in total, apparently). Curiously, closer to the release date, Fox's story changed: ten minutes of reshoots are missing from the workprint version, and these ten new minutes are replacing ten particular minutes which have been removed from the final cut. However, the workprint was indeed the final cut sans finished special effects, sound effects and music. The alleged "missing footage" never existed...it was a lie manufactured by Fox in a frantic attempt to convince audiences to go see the completed movie. But those deceptive chairmen at Fox couldn't manufacture a lie to cover one particular fact: Wolverine is completely beyond salvation. No amount of reshooting could salvage this mess. Nothing short of a total remake - with a completely new script and plotline, and a bunch of new actors - could rescue this awful film.

In a failed attempt to distance the franchise from 2006's X-Men: The Last Stand, Fox green-lit this prequel instead of another sequel. Wisely, Wolverine was selected as the focus of this first origins adventure...yet this motion picture fails to illuminate the breadth of Wolverine's tale. His back-story is complex and lavish, traversing over many centuries and veering off into numerous sub-plots (and countries), all the while navigating through various relationships with an assortment of characters. This is all condensed into about 105 minutes, and it falls apart in less than a fraction of that time. No-one cares about where Wolverine got his jacket - a Wolverine-centric spin-off following the main character kicking butt in Japan would have been far better!

The film opens in Canada in 1845 (which is very strange, considering Canada wasn't established 'til 1867) when a young James Howlett first discovers his bone claw abilities. A few deaths occur, and James goes on the run with his half-brother Victor. This prologue, however, is very rushed; it's more confusing than compelling. Following this, a montage is presented as Wolverine and Sabretooth (Jackman and Schreiber, respectively) fight alongside each other in every major U.S. war. Never mind that it's impossible for these two to always be assigned to the same unit, as this indiscretion is reasonably minor compared to the other sins of logic to be found within. For instance, they're also Canadian... I guess no-one checked their papers when they enlisted in the U.S. Army...

After their experiences in Vietnam, the brothers are recruited by William Stryker (Huston) to be part of a team of mutants assigned to carry out missions in third world countries. Off-tangent sub-plots then appear in abundance; the main one concerning Wolverine seeking revenge after his lady friend meets with a violent end. Some betraying also occurs, more mutants are introduced, and this culminates in an endlessly silly climax. Instead of one solid plot, Wolverine is merely a tonne of sub-plots mashed together.

"All the horrible things in your life... Your father, the wars, I can make all this go away. You can live knowing that the woman you loved was hunted down, or you can join me. I promise you will have your revenge."

It's hard to begin detailing exactly what's wrong with this movie, because the truth is, it's just about everything. X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a disaster of monumental proportions.

The first major problem is the screenplay. It's a string of well-worn clichés we've seen a million times before - including not one, but two "don't do it, you'll be just as bad as him" moments as well as a conventional, cheesy, embarrassing romance subplot which concludes on the most clichéd note possible. Dialogue is another issue: it's AWFUL! I have no idea what's worse; the dreadful dialogue or the abysmal way the actors disperse it. The script also skims through crucial character development and more or less eschews Wolverine's origins entirely. If it's truly an "origins" tale as advertised, where are the explanations? When initially introduced to baby Wolverine, he's already a mutant with bone claws. How did he get them? The best we can assume is his biological father was a mutant, although the implication is irritatingly vague. These things are brushed aside in a hurry in order to dive straight into the action. The screenwriters never considered, however, that an audience needs a reason to care for the characters that are stuck in the midst of the action (only small-minded, ADD-inflicted individuals will overlook this). Another thing regarding the action: virtually all of the characters are invincible, which jettisons all hope of any emotional investment with them. When Wolverine and Sabretooth battle pointlessly over and over again, we know neither of them will die and the fight will conclude with them just walking away. Why should we care?

Wolverine is never given an opportunity to come to terms with his mutations. Even after his skeleton is coated with Adamantium, he's automatically cool with it all...except for the customary "looking at self in mirror while testing abilities" (TM) scene which lasts one or two minutes. Another major gripe: the name "Logan" is never justified. In the original comics, Wolverine was a Samurai and he was given the name Logan. In this muddled mess of a movie, the name Logan just...appears. We have no idea where it came from...he's just named Logan for no reason, and other characters mysteriously pick this up.

Neither does the script justify why Sabretooth becomes Wolverine's sworn enemy. Reasons for other happenings in the story - such as Sabretooth killing a perfectly harmless mutant, and beginning a Watchmen-style elimination of all mutants in his former team - also never become clear.

"I'm coming for blood. No code of conduct, no law."

The script is beset with absolutely preposterous moments. Like there's a high profile facility on the mysterious "Island", and Wolverine is able to simply stroll through the front doors. No security? No locks? And when mutants are escaping, a grand total of four armed men try to stop them. The cages containing the mutants are also just metal wire fences. Some mutants have powers to cut through these wires easily, like Cyclops who can slice through bricks. On top of this, Stryker is so dumb he decides to erase Wolverine's memory after coating the guy's skeleton with Adamantium, making him indestructible. Characters also pop up at the most appropriate time (an entrance from a particular character during the final showdown is embarrassingly terrible and way too convenient...it will elicit groans). Wolverine is beleaguered with logic problems, primarily from the "Why don't you just...?" variety and the "That's just totally stupid / What the fuck?!" range (like the aforesaid examples). One should suspend their disbelief for a comic book movie, but this takes things to the next level. It's worse than your usual brainless summer actioner. The film's concluding 10 minutes in particular are absolutely retarded. On top of this, the continuity of the entire series is wrecked. Certain conversations in the other X-Men films now make no sense (like Stryker telling Wolverine he gave him claws when in reality Stryker just strengthened the claws).

A plethora of infamous Marvel characters are dispatched not long after their introductions. Virtually every single character is flat; appearing in name-only form to entice fans. Deadpool's treatment is most heartbreaking. Perhaps Ryan Reynolds was behind the workprint leak after he viewed the incomplete version and realised the gross misuse of Deadpool. The character's appearance is no more than a cameo. Don't get too attached to other much-hyped characters such as The Blob, John Wraith, Agent Zero and Bolt, as (like Deadpool) their appearances amount to a mere cameo. Team X is formed at the film's beginning, but after a brief first mission Wolverine has a stroke of moral conscience and leaves the group. Why Wolverine and Sabretooth are so willing to join Stryker in the first place is a mystery. Due to the rushed nature of the opening twenty minutes, there's no way we can get emotionally attached to the characters. A lot of potential is wasted.

Most jarringly, this film clearly wants to be separate from the comics as it takes a separate path, yet if you're not acquainted with all these Marvel characters you won't care about those who appear and won't understand what they're doing here. The story isn't deep enough to provide the uninitiated with requisite information about everything (the title of 'Team X' isn't even mentioned...if it was it certainly wasn't a memorable moment), and it isn't loyal enough to satiate the fanboys.

Director Gavin Hood previously helmed 2007's Rendition as well as Tsotsi (which won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Feature in 2006). Hood's inability to direct a genuinely enjoyable and resonant motion picture surfaces here again. Wolverine is a concatenation of action movie clichés, not just from the hackneyed screenplay but also the selection of shots. Like a shot of the protagonist setting off an explosion and walking in slow motion towards the camera, as well as the customary situation of the hero walking away from the bad guy he's decided not to kill, only to turn back slowly as said bad guy dramatically reveals something.

The action sequences are frequently marred by slo-mo shots, whereas other action sequences can't be enjoyed because of the invincibility of the characters, and as for the others...there's no context. An action scene involving Wolverine taking down a helicopter is admittedly awesome to watch, but within the story it makes no sense. Stryker is trying to kill the creature he just created at great expense, and sends his right-hand man to do the job...knowing fully well that bullets made of Adamantium are the only thing that can take down Wolverine. That's just the first of many irreverent action sequences. Others include a boxing match between Wolverine and The Blob that happens for no reason, and even a large-scale battle against Gambit - a mutant who's actually on the same side! For the climax, an unfinished genetically enhanced weapon is unleashed upon Wolverine, when once again Stryker has a full gun of Adamantium bullets at his disposal...and nothing else can kill the (anti)hero. Nothing in this film deals with the immortal characters in a meaningful or interesting way, and no amount of impressive fight choreography can provide the action with genuine tension. The special effects are also quite shonky, and an appearance of a CGI Patrick Stewart is absurdly unconvincing. The pacing, as well, is awful, as spaces between the action sequences are unforgivably sluggish, and this is due to Hood's incompetent direction. Bring back Bryan Singer!

Hugh Jackman has endless charisma as an actor, but his performance here is hamstrung by the badly drawn character. Wolverine is meant to be a badass anti-hero, but he's toned down for the sake of toy sales and the target audience. All Jackman does is strike poses and deliver dismal dialogue. Meanwhile, Liev Schreiber just alternates between sassy one-liners and open-mouthed rage. Luckily, Schreiber is actually a brooding villain, even if his motivations are never explored.

Ryan Reynolds is good as swordsman Wade Wilson (a.k.a. Deadpool), but he's lost far too early into the movie. His screen-time is exasperatingly brief, as is that of Dominic Monaghan whose character of Bolt has an appealing sadness. Taylor Kitsch is a soulless Gambit with a terrible, false accent. Perhaps Lost's Josh Holloway would've made a better Gambit (he was offered the chance to briefly appear in X-Men: The Last Stand as the character, but declined). Not worth mentioning anyone else, as they're all forgettable, especially Danny Huston who isn't at all sinister as Stryker.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine eventually turns into a confusing hodgepodge of uninspired, clichéd fight scenes and loud explosions. The other X-Men films focused on Wolverine at certain times, and he was more or less the central character. You'd think this "origins" tale would, ya know, reveal his origins...but it doesn't! It's just an action film with Wolverine at its core and mutants surrounding him, not unlike the other X-Men flicks. As a whole the film feels very rushed - it's too short to be considered an epic Marvel feature. The action is occasionally impressive, granted, but the whole falls below the sum of its parts. Good action does not mean an excellent movie.

All superhero films are advertisements for their merchandising departments, but Wolverine is more obvious than most, with product placement substituting compelling characters and an engaging storyline. Combined with limp direction and unimaginative special effects, and there's little to recommend. Even Jackman's natural charisma can't rise above the material...but he sure can strike a pose, doing so in every action sequence to ensure the toy department have a field day. No longer will people have to refer to the Spider-Man 3 fiasco - now Wolverine will be the target of conversations concerning bad Marvel movies. Even Brett Ratner's X-Men: The Last Stand is more enjoyable.

"The world has no use for another scared man. Right now, the world needs a fucking hero."

Every review of Observe and Report will most likely mention Paul Blart: Mall Cop at some stage. The connection between these movies is understandable since both were released during 2009 and both provided satirical portrayals of mall cops. But while Paul Blart was a genial, good-natured, family-friendly story of a blue-collar schlub, Observe and Report is dark, demented, twisted, perverse and absolutely not for a family audience. Logically, one would think that R-rated content would afford an edge which was sorely missing from the bland Paul Blart: Mall Cop, but Observe and Report is merely smutty for the sake of smut, and it's a far worse film than its PG-rated counterpart. A note to filmmakers: movies about mall cops are destined to fail.

Observe and Report concerns Ronnie Barnhardt (Rogen); a shopping mall security guard who, at the beginning of the movie, makes it his duty to catch a flasher who has been exposing his privates to females in the vicinity. Above all, Ronnie is determined to protect vacuous, slutty make-up counter girl Brandi (Faris). Meanwhile, he barely gives the time of day to a temporarily disabled and good-natured coffee vendor (Wolfe) who takes a romantic shine to the mall cop. With Ronnie obsessively hunting the flasher and desperate to join the police force, he embarks on a campaign of terror...this leads to a date-rape (he has sex with an almost unconscious Brandi who's drunk and vomiting), smashing local kids over the head with their own skateboards, labelling an Asian mall worker 'Saddam Hussein', and some excessively violent - and pointless - showdowns with cops & villains.

Ronnie is a mere clod. How he managed to get the job as a security guard, let alone head of security, is mystifying considering his many psychological difficulties. Ronnie's answer to any problem is to yell, curse, punch or shoot (occasionally at the same time). A number of scenes involve the mall cop attacking people or attempting to single-handedly defeat a horde of police officers in almost surrealistic scenes of obnoxiously unfunny ultra-violence. How the filmmakers thought this Neanderthal was humorous is a mystery. Worse, writer-director Jody Hill made an absolute howler of a decision to position Ronnie as the hapless hero of the hour who gains respect from mall workers and the police force through indefensible actions, which an audience is encouraged to laugh at and enjoy rather than justifiably abhor.

This could have been all well and good, if only the film was genuinely funny. Observe and Report dishes out black comedy and gross-out humour...only without the comedy or humour. At one stage in the movie, Ronnie is being told that he was unsuccessful at getting a job as a police officer. As it turns out, a number of people were listening in as Ronnie received the news. One of these people soon enters the room and proclaims "I thought this was going to be funny, but actually it's just really sad". I can't think of any better words I could use to describe this movie...

It's difficult to tell what kind of comedy that writer-director Hill was aiming for. Observe and Report is a dark, witless dark comedy that appears to confuse acts of violence, racism and rape for humour. Hill also relies heavily on foul language and gratuitous nudity to get a rise out of the audience. Black, subversive and politically incorrect humour can be brilliant in capable hands and with the right purpose (like the brilliant Bad Santa), but here it's offensively bereft of any wit and, at the end of the day, simply unpleasant. Throughout the film's running time, it's hard to tell whether you should laugh or cringe in discomfort. The only positives of this flick are surface-level stuff - the crisp, slick cinematography admittedly makes the film easier to watch, and the film has been assembled skilfully.

Seth Rogen is completely incapable of making Ronnie likeable or even a character to sympathise with. Rogen is usually recognised for his amiable, witty slacker persona, but all of these characteristics are quickly lost amid the wreckage of such an appalling character. Meanwhile Anna Faris is at her one-note limit. Faris is usually likeable in the roles she plays, but there's very little reason to care about her in Observe and Report - she's a drunken bimbo without a shred of self-respect. Ray Liotta is also on hand as a cop who rather bitterly hates Ronnie (at least one character in this cinematic atrocity has a brain), while Michael Peña appears to sleepwalk throughout the film as one of Ronnie's co-workers. Collette Wolfe is the only cast member whose acting is truly heartfelt. She's one of the film's limited bright spots.

It's crucial to note that the creators of Observe and Report didn't set out to emulate Paul Blart: Mall Cop, and the makers of both movies even shared information with each other to make sure they weren't stepping on each other's toes. So why is it, then, that Observe and Report truly is just a version of Paul Blart: Mall Cop for adults? In Observe and Report, Ronnie is useless and pudgy (like Paul Blart: Mall Cop), lives with his supportive mother (like Paul Blart), takes his job far too seriously (like Paul Blart), has a condition which requires medication (like Paul Blart), has a crush on a worker at the mall (like Paul Blart), and dreams of firing a gun (like Paul Blart) but can't actually have a gun (like Paul Blart). There's a crime happening in the mall (like Paul Blart) and solving it will be Ronnie's redemption (like Paul Blart), and even though everyone will laugh at him along the way (like in Paul Blart) he won't give up (like Paul Blart: Mall Cop)...

Observe and Report grows increasingly bleak and ludicrous as time drags on until it ends on a sentimental yet still vulgar note. The climactic chase sequence features an obese, overcoat-wearing flasher running through the mall with the camera fixated on his grotesque equipment for what feels like hours instead of minutes...the fact that several minutes are spent observing his penis in slow motion just about sums up the flaccid quality of this lazy, awful motion picture. Observe and Report possesses all the earmarks of a low-budget indie product trying too self-consciously to be cute, coy, clever, unconventional and groundbreaking.

"What transpires within the confines of the walls of Sodom, stays within the confines of the walls of Sodom."

Year One looked to be the comedy of the 2009 summer season. Judd Apatow (the King Midas of modern comedy) produced the film for his idol Harold Ramis (Groundhog Day, Caddyshack) who wrote the screenplay with the staff writers for the successful American version of The Office. The two leads of the movie are Jack Black and Michael Cera, who are supported by a bunch of able actors (including David Cross, Hank Azaria and Paul Rudd). It's a colossal shame, then, that Year One is an inexplicably unfunny, hit-and-miss comedy. It's not exactly an abject laugh famine, but with the film boasting such a large variety of comedic players behind and in front of the camera it wouldn't have been unreasonable to expect something far better than this.

The film introduces two cavemen protagonists: inept hunter Zed (Black) who has a tendency to annoy the tribe's more respected members, and equally inept, wimpy gatherer Oh (Cera). Neither of them have much luck with women - Maya (Raphael), the object of Zed's lust, perceives him as an unlikely provider, while Oh's would-be bedmate Eema (Temple) doesn't even know he exists. Zed gets fed up and bored with his life, and decides to eat forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Since this is a violation of tribal law, Zed is banished from the primitive village, and Oh joins him as they set out to explore the ancient world.

Director Ramis and his pair of screenwriters employ material from the first book of the Bible in the form of a sketch-comedy akin to Mel Brooks' History of the World, Part I. In fact, Year One treats the Biblical book of "Genesis" not as a chronology of happenings but as a geographical road map instead. The Garden of Eden and Sodom are included, along with Cain, Abel, Abraham, Isaac and countless others - all separated by distance rather than time. The film isn't exactly a satire of Bible stories (it might've worked better had that been the objective) - it's instead a mismatched buddy movie which contains Biblical names and locations. This is not a necessarily bad idea, but laughs are crucial for a shallow comedy like this. It'd be remiss to say Year One never achieves chuckles, as it does occasionally, but these are a depressingly thin and disappointingly intermittent commodity. This could have been the new generation's Life of Brian, but that film had the advantage of a smart, inspired and hilarious screenplay written by the Monty Python troupe working at the pinnacle of their creative powers, and who were unafraid to push the boundaries in order to achieve comedic goals. Hindered by its PG-13 rating, Year One feels like the product of a group of writers having an off night with a paranoid studio executive supervising the process.

Year One plays it frustratingly safe. With little in the way of cutting Biblical humour or mockery of primitive cultures, the movie is crammed with gross-out humour, incest jokes and flat pop culture references. There's a brief scene featuring Bill Hader that fails so spectacularly that Hader himself is seen questiong the script during the end-credit outtakes. Year One might provoke belly laughs from 6 or 7-year-old kids who can't resist giggling at the image of someone farting or urinating on themselves, or someone munching on faecal matter, but what the film sorely lacks is ingenuity and wit. There's even a large orgy sequence which was probably designed to serve as the film's comedic centrepiece, but it's exasperatingly long without being funny or (thanks to the PG-13 rating) even sexy. Hell, the writers were even unable to come up with a single amusing Sodom joke; a task this reviewer could pull off over the course of a quick lunch break. Year One is a stillborn production that merely delivers 100 minutes of laugh-free scenarios.

Judd Apatow apparently has great affection for Harold Ramis, but allowing him to run wild with Year One was an ill-advised decision. The film's failure is almost entirely because of Ramis whose direction is clumsy and half-hearted, and whose sense of comic timing is slipshod. The story simply meanders along, awkwardly transitioning from one scene to the next. Ramis often cuts to the next skit before any real punchline; regularly generating the impression that huge chunks of the movie are missing. For instance, Oh is attacked by both a snake and a cougar early into the movie. But on both occasions, the film cuts to the next scene before we get to see how he gets out of it! Even the final scene ends with the characters just walking away. This is followed by an end-credit blooper reel full of flubs and on-set stuff-ups that allow an audience the opportunity to see just how little anyone cared about the production.

It's almost cruel to witness a procession of marvellous actors failing so miserably here. All these talented performers are unable to elevate the material beyond primary school depth. Furthermore, no-one in the cast pushes themselves beyond their established screen personas, with the respective shtick of Jack Black and Michael Cera - the bug-eyed, over-exuberant fat doofus and the mumbling, deadpan pork - growing tiresome very quickly. Black's comedic liveliness is usually only tolerable in small doses. With him receiving top billing and maximum screen time in Year One, he becomes grating. Cera, on the other hand, merely turns in the exact same performance we've seen him deliver in Superbad, Juno, and so on. The concept of pairing Black's bluster with Cera's reticence may have seemed foolproof in theory, but in practise the results are lethal.
Arguably, the only comedic highlight of Year One (if there is only one) is Hank Azaria's amusing interpretation of Abraham, though his screen-time is far too limited. The rest of the cast is awful, including Oliver Platt who hams it up and merely epitomises an abundance of gay jokes for his role. It would seem impossible to include a bad Paul Rudd cameo, but Harold Ramis is a can-do guy when it comes to pushing quality into the middle of the road - or, in this case, off the road and into a ditch!

Year One admittedly retains some energy, so it's tragic that this energy is squandered on a movie not really worth making. There are a few chuckles to be found here and there throughout the film, but they're so irregular that they only serve to highlight how the rest of it has utterly failed in that regard.

"This is John Connor. If you are listening to this, you are the resistance."

The year is 2018, the sky is ashen, machines rule the world, and the only humans which remain (who've undergone a humour bypass) constitute "The Resistance". That's the simplified synopsis of the fourth instalment in the Terminator franchise; a dull, predictable, bloated exercise in CGI overload which could easily be mistaken for a Transformers sequel. While the previous three films offered glimpses into the devastated futureworld dominated by the self-aware SkyNet, Terminator Salvation is the first sequel to be set entirely in that future, which provides the series with a new look. It's a shame, then, that it's merely another trembling step backwards for the franchise, and an appalling buttfucking of a once-great series of time-travelling adventures. With awful dialogue, an uninteresting plot and mostly uninspired performances, the human element has (ironically) been drained from the franchise... The machines have won.

The narrative intentions of Terminator Salvation are simple: John Connor (Bale) has to meet his father Kyle Reese (Yelchin), become the leader of the resistance, and get his scar. Meanwhile Kyle is being held captive by SkyNet, and Connor's superiors plan to bomb the complex with no regard for the human prisoners inside...which means Connor must launch a rescue mission. But the movie is more consumed with a secondary plot strand involving a man named Marcus Wright (Worthington). He's first seen as a death-row inmate on his way to lethal injection in 2003, but is suddenly resurrected in the apocalyptic 2018 with no memory of what has occurred in the years between.

Our brains logically tell us that this is John Connor's story. The Terminator franchise has always been about Connor. So why does Salvation inexplicably focus on the character of Marcus? In fact, Connor is pushed into the background...he becomes the supporting player in his own series (in the original script, Connor had an even smaller role, but the part was made comparatively larger when Bale signed on). Salvation mainly suffers from countless story problems. For instance, SkyNet are shown manufacturing the T-800 Terminators (those portrayed by Arnie in prior sequels) when the human/terminator hybrid Marcus was assembled beforehand... Why would SkyNet begin with the complete package (as in Marcus) and then regress to the inferior Schwarzenegger-style T-800? The terminator models are simply a joke in this film - there are Growlenators (seriously, the T-800s were growling), Throwenators (they just throw everything in sight instead of, ya know, killing their targets) and ready-for-humans-to-hijack Motorcyclenators. Adding insult to injury, there are even enormous machines which resemble the Transformers that stomped around in Michael Bay's cinematic abortion of a 2009 summer blockbuster. Couple this nonsense with the fact that one of these Transformer-type machines at one stage manages to silently sneak up on a group of humans...

Terminator Salvation neglects the cardinal rule of action cinema - introducing human characters a viewer can care about. The film plays out like a video game tie-in to the original franchise, and even proceeds with video game logic. It's set in 2018 when John Connor hasn't become the leader yet... So why has SkyNet been hunting Connor for years? He doesn't smash their defence grid until 2029, which is when SkyNet decides to send a T-800 back in time to terminate his mother. Moreover, how could SkyNet concoct an elaborate trap using Kyle Reese when it's impossible for the system to have any knowledge that he's Connor's father? And if SkyNet knew Reese was Connor's father, why not just kill him? Eventually Terminator Salvation culminates with an exhaustively moronic climax. To begin with, Connor frees a bunch of prisoners and tells them to run for "the transport ship". He has seemingly forgotten that he came alone on a Motorcyclenator and that there is no transport ship. Oops...

The first cut for Terminator Salvation was apparently 30-40 minutes longer than the theatrical cut, and the sloppy trimming is obvious throughout the entire film. This is felt most directly with the character of Blair (Bloodgood) who nonsensically botches her allegiance to the Resistance in order to protect Marcus from justifiable execution after only one day spent together. Screenwriters John D. Brancato and Michael Ferris may have been natural picks for Salvation considering they wrote Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, but the duo also penned Catwoman and Primeval (that cheesy crocodile feature, not the BBC series). The dialogue is particularly appalling - the characters spout hackneyed action movie speak, while occasionally recycling trademark lines from earlier Terminator movies. For his tirade, Bale should have lashed out at the screenwriters rather than the cinematographer (who admittedly crafted a stylish, good-looking film).

For all of Christian Bale's public insistence that McG is more talented than his moronic stage name suggests, he's still the guy who directed Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. With not much of a story to worry about and no complex characters, there wasn't much preventing McG from crafting kick-ass action sequences. Except, uh...lack of skill!! As painful as it is to say (well, not really), the explosive, epic battles between man and machine are dull. The future war scenes imagined by James Cameron in the first two Terminator movies were murky, petrifying and dark. 200 million dollars were blown on this movie, but nothing matches Cameron's masterful work (not even the set-pieces in the original film should feel threatened...and they were produced on a $7 million budget). The only positives of Salvation (amazing CGI, great production design) are merely superficial - if a turd is coated in gold, it's still a turd...just a shiny one. The biggest action set-piece of the film feels like something from Transformers, and other highlights feel as if they've been lifted from other films (shots of helicopters landing resemble Apocalypse Now, the Motorcyclenators look like something from The Dark Knight, some shots from prior Terminator films have been replicated, etc... Terminator Regurgitation is a more appropriate title). Bear this in mind as well: Salvation is a Terminator movie directed by a producer of The O.C.... The technological lethargy even extends to Danny Elfman's score, which only reminds a viewer just how terrific Brad Fiedel's original music was.

All the sound and fury of the powerhouse action sequences can't make up for the studious lack of humanity. The characters are one-dimensional ciphers who never evoke passion or enthusiasm. A viewer will only root for these characters based on their appearances in prior instalments (another huge issue, since some consider this a "reboot" of the franchise that's independent from all other Terminator films). Playing John Connor, Christian Bale unleashes his Gotham Growl, but he's sullen and tedious. Worse, he doesn't feel like the kind of guy who would fire up anyone, let alone the remainder of the human population. For his famous on-set rant, Bale displayed more drama, emotionality and variety than anything in the actual film. Sam Worthington, on the other hand, is passable - it's just a shame he's never given a chance to truly test his acting ability. Meanwhile the supporting cast is miserably wasted. Helena Bonham Carter is embarrassing, Michael Ironside is hopelessly flat, and Terry Crews is reduced to...a corpse seen in a single blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot. Arnold Schwarzenegger's much-discussed CGI cameo is hardly convincing; he looks like the product of a Pixar movie.

The unforgivable problem with Salvation is its PG-13 rating. Terminator is an R-rated franchise, and this toned-down, kid-friendly sequel is neutered beyond repair (nothing more unsightly than a man being mowed down with a mini-gun before merely slumping over). The visceral nature of the first two movies generated by heavy violence and profanity made an audience feel that the protagonists were in genuine danger. In Salvation, it feels like the characters are merely going through the motions and are never in real peril. A talented director given a better-written R-rated script and the same budget could have turned this into another classic. As it is...this is Terminator Castration.

I've got this far without comparing Salvation to Terminator 3. The reasoning is simple, really: why spend a review comparing two poor films? It's hardly a way to describe subpar quality. It's like saying Uwe Boll's most recent effort is worse than his previous films - it'd be a hollow statement. For the sake of those interested, however, Salvation is worse than Terminator 3.

Compared with James Cameron's two thought-provoking action classics, Salvation is a powerfully dumb film. The first two movies offered sprawling stories, visceral thrills, deep drama and well-defined characters. This film strains credibility with epic unlikelihoods, and tries to camouflage them with nonstop paroxysms. It doesn't matter how awesomely designed the robots are rendered; without gripping drama, characters to sympathise with or even an ounce of humour, Terminator Suckvation is a dumbed-down, soulless summer offering - the commercialisation of the Terminator franchise which might as well have been Transformers 3.

And guess what? More sequels are imminent...

"Nobody knows this mall better than I do."

Prepubescent twelve-year-olds who laugh at well-worn fat jokes may be amused by Paul Blart: Mall Cop. Those of us with decent taste in comedies, on the other hand, can happily avoid the obnoxious, laugh-free antics of an overweight misfit security guard and his mall-dwelling compatriots. Kevin James, who starred alongside Adam Sandler in the abysmal I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, rides solo in this shockingly amateurish and single-note action-comedy for which the main star also co-wrote and co-produced. The movie - a curious amalgam of Home Alone and Die Hard - clearly has one consistent strategy: capitalising on Kevin James' adeptness at hurling around his sizable bulk. Pardon the expression, but this is an extremely slim approach. Witless, slow and tonally uneven, Paul Blart: Mall Cop merely offers a blend of painfully predictable slapstick comedy, tacky sentiment, and over-the-top action.

The premise ostensibly spoofs Die Hard, with bumbling hypoglycaemic security guard Paul Blart (James) as the "man on the inside" who's forced to defend a New Jersey mall on Black Friday when a group of high-tech thieves seize control and take hostages. Paul rides around on a Segway, whereas the (acrobatic) thieves navigate the shopping centre on skateboards for no real reason apart from the fact that twelve-year-olds - who clearly represent the target demographic of this dire PG-rated endeavour - tend to like them. Prior to this takeover, Paul sets his eye on Amy (Mays), who staffs one of the new mall kiosks. Predictably and inevitably, she's among the hostages who are taken, which prompts the obese security guard to devise creative ways to defeat the bad guys (who, fortunately, only appear to carry guns when they have no opportunity to shoot at him).

Paul Blart: Mall Cop is what Die Hard might have been like if John Candy was the star. There's some good energy once the actual robbery plot takes centre stage, but it's tough to accept Paul's sudden transition to John McClane since the bumbling idiot never does anything right until the shit hits the fan. The movie dwells far too long on Paul's self-loathing tendencies as well as his vain attempts at trying to win over Amy before the story finally rouses to life. Roughly half an hour is allotted to adequately establishing Paul's character, as well as his delusions of grandeur (he rides his Segway like it's his stallion, he takes the mall gig way too seriously) and how little respect he commands (evident in the run-in with an old man in a wheelchair). Yet this set-up is awfully dull, and Paul is a mundane character who frankly isn't worth spending time with. He could be established in less than half the time to the same effect. Not to mention the attributes intended to make Paul a "lovable loser" are either creepy or genuinely sad. The actual heist is overflowing with fat jokes, predictable pratfalls and forced dialogue as Paul taps into his inner Bruce Willis to save the day. The movie eventually ends with a Home Alone-style resolution, with the S.W.A.T. team and the cops bundled outside due to some silly plot devices, and Paul left alone with a mall full of resources to thwart the baddies.

To slow the pacing tenfold, the film continually depicts Paul becoming entangled in ridiculous situations that go too far in an attempt to generate cheap laughs. For instance, Paul is at one stage called to the Victoria's Secret store to resolve a conflict between two women fighting over the shop's last push-up bra. There are several funny ways the conflict could go down, but the film elects the annoying one - Paul ends up engaging in physical combat with an overweight woman (whose shirt is even removed during the conflict for "comedic" effect).

There's a predictable reliance on tedious fat jokes as well. Annoyingly and bafflingly, the film asks us to laugh jeeringly at Paul's weight regularly while also demanding us to feel bad for the poor guy when people ridicule him for his weight. This is a very poor proposal. The film's worst scenes are those that attempt to milk humour from Paul's weight. See the fat man competing in a nacho eating competition! See the fat man trying to play a video game (which requires physical activity) and failing!

Given its setting (a particularly ironic location considering current economic woes), Paul Blart: Mall Cop could've been comfortably retitled Product Placement: The Movie as product placement is worked into nearly every shot. It's as if production placement is the sole reason why the flick was green-lit because it certainly wasn't green-lit for the dire jokes. Directed by Steve Carr, who's responsible for many flavourless family films (Daddy Day Care, Are We Done Yet?), Paul Blart: Mall Cop is a lazy, sloppily created comedy. The editing is so shoddy that there are glaring gaps in the action, such as a chase sequence that begins in the mall before suddenly and inexplicably winding up on the roof. The schmaltz gets laid on pretty thick too. The "Blart is sad" scenes are underscored with shamelessly treacly music.

The flick was shot at Burlington Mall near Boston, and apparently the mall was not shut down for particular scenes. During these scenes, real people walked and shopped, and sometimes the director had to cut when some of the passers-by became curious and stared into the camera. The film crew and the Extreme Sports athletes may have taken control of the mall, but they can't commandeer the movie...this is Kevin James' film. The actor possesses an affable Teddy Bear charm, but he'll need stronger material if he's going to make the leap from TV star to movie star without needing a bigger name co-star beside him.

The romantic element of the feature misfires majorly - the character of Amy is one-dimensional, and Jayma Mays' acting is consistently lacklustre. Kevin James tries to make this fraction of the story work, but clichéd, predictable writing and a dubious choice for the female lead ultimately handicap it. The supporting performances are blander than vanilla, though some of the stunt work is at least visually impressive (if unnecessary).

Paul Blart: Mall Cop is a juvenile movie designed for a juvenile audience which doesn't offer much beyond the expected. For its January 2009 release, the film became an unexpected hit despite competing with Oscar bait at the box office (far surpassing expectations). Audiences were probably enraptured by the film on release due to the promise of slapstick humour and family-friendly laughs. It's a shame the gags aren't actually funny, though. It's also a shame that it fails to be something more than a collection of glaringly foreseeable gags and some uncomfortable moral lessons about standing up for yourself. Admittedly and surprisingly, however, Paul Blart: Mall Cop is curiously watchable and somewhat appealing, and these factors save it from hopeless disaster.

"Come and See"

Riding in on the four horses currently plaguing the horror-thriller genre - stylised gore, crude neon lighting, whiplash editing, and compulsive script turnarounds - Horsemen is a strictly by-the-numbers chiller courtesy of Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes production company. If nothing else, Horsemen (alternately known as The Horsemen in some circles) proves that Platinum Dunes is capable of more than just screwing up remakes of classic horror films (such as Friday the 13th and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) - they're equally adept at ruining original (I use the term loosely) ideas too. In a nutshell, this film plays out like a half-hearted amalgam of about a dozen other (superior) genre films (like Se7en, Saw, Silence of the Lambs, etc) that's composed with an eye towards merging C.S.I. aesthetics with the single-father domestic troubles of a family sitcom. Admittedly, Horsemen begins well enough, but it isn't long before the film derails itself with a one-way trip to Crapsville.

The protagonist of the film is Detective Aidan Breslin (Quaid). He's a single father with two boys, but their relationship has been strained due to the untimely death of the mother of the family. (If you guessed that Breslin has avoided dealing with both his wife's passing and his grieving children by throwing himself into his work - and looking dishevelled in the process - you can give yourself a screenwriting credit.) The main narrative thread of the film concerns a string of brutal murders, and the investigation that's being carried out by Detective Breslin. It's a big case, yet Breslin has next to no help, which only makes the already contrived plot seem even dumber. Anyway, Breslin uncovers something startling during his investigation: the killers have taken inspiration from the biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and are committing thematically appropriate murders.

Music video director Jonas Åkerlund makes his feature film debut here, and assembles a dynamic aura of panic for Horsemen that, at least for the first 40 minutes, is fairly gripping. The atmosphere is incredibly effective; promising that the film has something shocking up its sleeve that'll separate it from other entries to the tiresome serial killer genre. Alas, Horsemen has no unique plans in mind, and (with very few exceptions) this thriller is devoid of both thrills and compelling suspense. The plot, initially so promising, inevitably succumbs to formula. For the most part, the killers reveal themselves at seemingly random moments to provide a cheap, short-lived shock. The lazy script (written by Dave Callaham...who was also responsible for Doom) attempts to create shocks out of not who the killers are, but how they are revealed. Alas, this objective can be considered failed. Contrivances are another issue - for instance one character appears to turn themselves in for no apparent reason beyond "the script told me to". Most detrimentally, what aims to be a climactic twist is foreseeable from around the film's midpoint. Thus, this is a mystery-thriller with no real build, no climax and no mystery.

Without spoiling too much, the "mastermind" behind the murders decided to kill people simply because of a personal problem many of us have faced. Certainly, it isn't an easy issue to deal with, but gutting innocents is hardly the most effective way to handle it. Furthermore, an audience is actually asked to feel sympathy for the guilty party! It's preposterous. The main killer delivers a cliché-ridden speech towards the film's dénouement, telling Breslin "If you had done this, none of this would have happened". This reviewer thinks differently - this reviewer believes that if the killer had just controlled their murderous impulses despite their hurt feelings, no killings would've happened. On top of all this malarkey, Horsemen carries the appearance of a second-guessed film - subplots seem condensed; there are loose ends; character introductions are short-changed; and psychological strands are cut in half. The original runtime was reportedly about 20 minutes longer than the final cut (not to mention the film went through significant reshoots), so perhaps a number of things were lost in translation. It seems even the distributor knew they had a turkey on their hands - Lionsgate quarantined the film's release to less than 100 theatres in early March 2009 where it scooped up about a million dollars, and then shuffled off to DVD.

To be fair, director Jonas Åkerlund's work isn't too bad. It's just a shame he was saddled with such a damn stupid script. As a result, Horsemen comes off as a B-Grade rehash of a lot classic serial killer movies. The picture looks good, but still simplistic and elementary compared to, say, Se7en. Åkerlund is no David Fincher, and no matter how you look at it, this movie is a lesser version of Se7en - especially in terms of visual appeal, storytelling and above all suspense. Unfortunately, too, the movie is let down by the inclusion of some slipshod filmmaking (for instance bad continuity between close-ups and wide shots). Jan A.P. Kaczmarek's score also merits a mention; it fulfils its function, though it's nothing remarkable.
On the acting front, Dennis Quaid gives it his all, but he's hamstrung by the Frankenstein's monster of a script. Zhang Ziyi (who's given 15 minutes of screen-time despite top billing) is particularly awful - one can only assume her inclusion was to help the film sell in international markets. It's painful to watch Zhang regurgitate the dialogue she was given, but not as painful as the scenes she shares with Quaid in which the actors commit 100% to the material despite the fact that it's utter trash.

All in all, Horsemen works on a very basic level and it's admittedly watchable, but it's ultimately nothing we haven't seen done before and done better - a very simple mental dissection after viewing will cause the film to crumble into pieces.

"When you're young everything feels like the end of the world. But it's not... It's just the beginning."

Imagine a feeble, generic screenplay (mixing equal parts of Back to the Future, It's a Wonderful Life as well as Big) and mediocre acting. These are the basic constituents that make up 17 Again; a by-the-numbers teen comedy ostensibly green-list for the sole purpose of spotlighting Zac Efron. The teen heartthrob wants to break out of his High School Musical niche...but apparently not too far out of it. In 17 Again he plays a teenager who's the star of the school basketball team. He even dances a little (no singing, though). At 21, young Efron still has ample time to make the transition from teen idol to adult star, which is a relief because this lethargic comedy is a shaky start. The blame for this film's failure rests solely on the shoulders of writer Jason Filardi and director Burr Steels who employ a promising premise - middle-aged screw-up reborn as his teenage self - and misfire at every turn. The target audience for this mess is roughly the same as Hannah Montana: The Movie, and the quality is similar as well.

Mike O'Donnell (Efron) is the star of his high school basketball team. As the film opens, it's 1989. 17-year-old Mike is about to play a crucial basketball game which will determine the course of his life. But Mike ruins the opportunity to play and, in doing so, renounces a potential scholarship. Fast-forward several years, and Mike (now played by Perry) is living a miserable life - a divorce is on the horizon, his job situation is awful, and his kids hate him. (We also know Mike is miserable because he tells his spouse "I'm extremely disappointed with my life"...in case you haven't realised, writer Filardi tells more than he shows.) Frustrated, he audibly wishes that he could reboot his life and elect a different route. Lo and behold, this wish is granted...Mike soon wakes up as 17-year-old Efron. Over the course of the next few weeks, Mike keeps an eye on his family and tries to sort out his life. Oh, and during this time no-one ever wonders where (adult) Mike has disappeared to. Some additional ludicrous twaddle is also thrown into the mix about a spirit guide entering the picture in the form of the magical high school janitor (ugh, that old device?).

Very little creative energy was expended in the creation of this movie, which is modelled after the body-swapping comedies of the 70s and 80s, one of which is even called 18 Again. Screenwriter Filardi - whom one can assume is an expert in contrived, formulaic comedy, having previously written Bringing Down the House - has simply mashed together a string of clichés, and director Steers hasn't done much to improve it. It's all extremely conventional and it's nothing we haven't seen before. 17 Again treads no new territory, and trudges through familiar territory with a slack disregard for its own quality. It more or less reiterates messages stated in It's a Wonderful Life; this time aiming at a more modern audience familiar with the concept of a miserable middle-aged man whose life has crumbled apart due to decisions made during teenage life.

Unfortunately, the humour frequently relies on the satirisation of contemporary teenage life, referencing such things as cell phones and YouTube for laughs. However, these gags (which are considered amusing in 2009) will prevent 17 Again from developing into a timeless classic as the relatability of its depiction will eventually dissolve. See, instead of encapsulating the era it merely satirises it...and only those inside the joke will laugh at the gags. That said, there are small things to enjoy in 17 Again. Thomas Lennon is the by far the most enjoyable; playing a nerd whose home is overloaded with nerdy memorabilia (from Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings). The scenes involving Ned add nothing but padding and clichés to the central plot, but they're easily the funniest parts. How can the movie get one thing so right while getting other things so wrong? It's disappointing.

All of the characters (even Ned to an extent) are unable to escape from his or her caricature orbit. They're a bunch of stereotypes and, for the most part, their one-dimensionality makes them uninteresting. The film's buoyant comedic tone sometimes seems strained as well, tossing in a lightsabre duel and an Efron dance number for no real reason other than to keep the audience awake.

Workable ideas are often poisoned by trite, unfunny humour and zany scenes that drag on for far too long. Some of the humour relies on Mike getting entangled in situations that are awkward on account of his secret status as an adult. A sex-ed lesson in health class, for instance, soon takes a downward tumble when Mike begins lecturing his fellow students about abstinence. It's awkward, but, crucially, not very funny. The film is rife with situations like this, including the inevitable moment when Maggie - Mike's own daughter - puts the moves on him (a dull homage to Back to the Future). The moments that do generally succeed, however, come as a result of the PG-13 rating which allows for more risqué sex jokes, even if they are quite tame compared to most contemporary American sex comedies.

Filardi's screenplay also contains gross errors in chronology. For instance, in one of the 1989 scenes Mike is referred to as "Vanilla Ice" by his coach. That's peculiar considering Vanilla Ice didn't become famous until 1990. More importantly, if Scarlett fell pregnant with Maggie in early 1989, Maggie should be almost 20 years old by now and therefore not a high school student. Confusions also arise in regards to the number of years Scar and Mike have been a couple, as characters say different things at different times. I'm guessing these errors are because the film was scheduled to be released last year and was probably meant to be set in 2007, not 2009. Nevertheless, when the adult Mike is introduced the title reads "Today". A good way to confuse the audience, lads!

At one time or another, adults probably fantasise about reliving the glory days of their youth. It's an unfortunate but true fact that only time imparts the wisdom to realise what has been lost. 17 Again endeavours to express this, but the message is hindered by the execution. The film doesn't spend enough time in the company of Matthew Perry as the adult Mike. In all likelihood, the filmmakers frantically rushed through Perry's scenes to return Efron to the screen as quickly as possible...thus botching the crucial setup. At no point does Perry's portrayal of Mike achieve a semblance of humanity. When teenage Mike is on screen, the "hook" for the omniscient audience is that he's a middle-aged man trapped in the body of his high school self, but neither the script nor Efron effectively sell this premise. Quips and moments are included to remind us, but there's a difference between being told something and actually believing it. Since adult Mike is given such a small amount of screen-time, we're not familiar with how he acts, and therefore it's impossible to find comedy in Efron's impersonation.

It's telling that the film's strongest scene is its opening sequence. 17 Again subsequently crashes once old Perry transforms into young Efron and almost immediately dives into the business of repairing his family life. Shouldn't he be relishing the opportunity to relive his teenage years? No use is made of such potential; the film instead comfortably plods towards the inevitable, clichéd ending. The plot concentrates on Mike's befuddled path to salvation, but the movie appears more infatuated with Efron and his performance elasticity.

Both Efron and Matthew Perry are forgettable in their respective roles; Perry not given sufficient time to make an impression and Efron is simply disposable. Efron's job is to look pretty and give the girls around him a reason to hit on him. To the teenage girls, mission accomplished. To the male population and critics, it just isn't good enough. The heartthrob has yet to submit a breakout performance that displays his versatility and talent as a performer. Leonardo DiCaprio made a solid impression during his transition to adult star with What's Eating Gilbert Grape, for instance. Efron needs to take a big step away from Disney and genuinely test his limits as an actor.

As said before, Lennon steals the show as Ned. He's the only purveyor of decent comedy in this disappointing flick. Leslie Mann also appears as Mike's fed-up (soon-to-be-ex) wife. She's strong and appealing, and another highlight of this otherwise flimsy comedy.

It's inexplicable that 17 Again works from such an awful script, especially given that other movies have employed an almost identical premise and eventually became classics. Your tolerance of this Zac Efron vehicle will mainly depend on your tolerance of the young High School Musical star. This reviewer can barely tolerate Efron, but his presence was merely the tip of the iceberg. There's nary an ounce of originality (a deluge of 70s/80s films exhausted the concept), the humour is lazy, plot holes flourish, it isn't particularly clever, and director Steers barely manages to keep the film afloat. Still, it's far more bearable than I expected, mainly on account of Thomas Lennon as Ned.

"Jason. My special, special boy. They must be punished, Jason. For what they did to you. For what they did to me. Kill for mother."

Yet another classic horror franchise is resurrected and rebooted by Platinum Dunes (Michael Bay's production company) with 2009's Friday the 13th. Not really a remake, and by no means an actual sequel, this particular addition to the Friday the 13th saga is more or less a mash-up of the first few films in the blood-soaked franchise - a "greatest hits" compilation, if you will. For die-hard fans of the series, this new movie is ideal - it unapologetically delivers the proverbial blood and gore as well as the breasts and the beautiful women. In comparison to the early Friday the 13th movies, this 2009 re-imagining is also slick and well-produced. Gore effects are captured with a great deal of filmmaking skill, the pace is fast, and (as long as you absorb the on-screen material without contemplating it too much) it's definitely fun. However other cinematic reboots (Batman Begins, Star Trek) introduced some innovation to their respective franchises. Friday the 13th, on the other hand, is well-made but has absolutely nothing fresh or exciting to add to the series. To be fair, though, any actual invention could risk alienating original fans. Nevertheless, straightforward rehashing grows stale, especially since slasher enthusiasts will be able to predict every beat. As the film haphazardly doles out cliché after cliché, it gets a tad tiresome.

It'd be redundant to outline the plot. This is Friday the 13th, after all. But for those unaware of the standard formula: a bunch of horny young adults travel to Camp Crystal Lake for the weekend and encounter Jason Voorhees (Mears) who carves them apart one by one. Oh, and a last-minute scare moment is thrown in just prior to the end credits. And voila - there's your Jason slasher flick.

Friday the 13th opens with a bang - a high-energy prologue that compresses the mythology of Jason Voorhees into a few short minutes. Recapping the events of the first film takes no more than five minutes as a viewer is clued into how Jason has grown into a bloodthirsty creature of legend. Once the film accepts the events of the 1980 original as its back-story, it embarks upon a new course. Following this opening, Jason offs a group of knife-fodder in a sequence which establishes the character's abilities (leading to a series of thrilling, gory kills). The film subsequently settles down before adhering to the time-worn Friday the 13th structure. Had the rest of the picture sustained the quality of the rousing prologue, there'd be far more to recommend. Alas, the central narrative is a mess. The clichés are also firmly in place, the characters do stupid things which lead to their inevitable demise, and there's no mystery as to who'll survive until the final act.

There's plenty of bloodletting, yes, but an effective slasher should work on another, slightly higher level. The best slasher flicks are able to generate a level of almost unbearable tension (think Scream or Halloween), but within Friday the 13th there's little tension (although the opening sequence is suspenseful and the climax is admittedly quite nail-biting). Character identification is a requirement when it comes to generating effective tension...all the characters in this production are one-note caricatures lined up for the slaughter. There's the token black guy, an Asian stoner, a few pairs of large breasts (there's a lot of skin in this film), an asshole who's guaranteed to get killed...it's all agonisingly by-the-numbers. Director Marcus Nispel (who directed the 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and the screenwriters (Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, who also penned Freddy vs. Jason) pack this feature with too many clichés. With lights being knocked out, cell phones dying, cars that won't start and characters running off in separate directions, it's all quite hopeless. The days during which filmmakers spent time and effort on a horror movie screenplay have passed.

The backdrop for this reboot isn't Manhattan or Hell or the furthest reaches of outer space. Jason is instead back at Camp Crystal Lake, and he's killing people because they're invading his territory (First Blood, the first Rambo movie, was apparently inspiration here). Unsurprisingly, Friday the 13th ignores logic. How could anybody live in the old Camp Crystal Lake campground undetected for decades? How does Jason manage to dig an extensive labyrinth of tunnels under the old camp without anybody noticing? Why haven't the police caught on yet with so many people going missing in the area? As always, Jason also has the uncanny ability to be everywhere at once. Aside from these nitpickings, the new and improved Jason is one aspect the film gets right. He's fast, agile, shows vulnerability from time to time and appears to be smarter. Derek Mears has a strong screen presence as Jason Voorhees, and there are plenty of opportunities for him to rush teens with his machete raised. Plenty of classic '80s-style lurking is included for good measure as well. On top of this, some of the kills are pretty killer (excuse the pun). They're technically proficient and fairly creative, although there's nothing here that rivals the cleverness of the 1980 original. Interestingly, the less elaborate kills are usually the most satisfying (like a screwdriver through the head). Nispel is skilled at building an atmosphere of dread, even if the payoffs are fairly pedestrian - the kills are more gory than genuinely scary.

Naturally, the actors are all very attractive and every performance is standard stuff. Jared Padalecki, Danielle Panabaker and Amanda Righetti are the trademark heroes, but the trio aren't anything overly special. The only real standout is Aaron Yoo, who delivers a few mildly amusing one-liners even in the face of danger. Julianna Guill is certainly memorable...but she only distinguishes herself from the other actresses on account of her sensual dancing and a sequence in which she bares her "stupendous" breasts (as one character describes them).

Only the adequate performances and the competent gore effects demonstrate improvement over the earlier Friday the 13th films. Sadly, both of these factors are wasted on a story not worth telling and a movie not really worth making. This new Friday the 13th is derivative and sorely lacks novelty, but at least it reiterates the old material with top-notch production values and an awesome soundtrack. There are certainly worse slasher movies than this Friday the 13th re-imagining, but it nonetheless remains forgettable, disposable and unnecessary. It's gruesome, exploitative, watchable fun, but we've seen it all before.

"You're not funny. You look funny, but you're not funny." [I could say the same thing to the movie]

The drama-comedy Funny People is Judd Apatow's third outing as a writer-director, and it stars both Seth Rogen and Adam Sandler. This should be a funny movie, right? Of course, the problem with expectations is they occasionally lead to disappointment - and Funny People is disappointing on numerous levels. It has been suggested that this flick is the final entry in Judd Apatow's comic trilogy about sex (2005's The 40-Year-Old Virgin), birth (2007's Knocked Up) and now death (or at least the threat of death). In this regard, the movie is a blatant attempt on Apatow's part to display maturity as a filmmaker, and the product is more of a drama (an uncomfortable one at that) than a comedy. There's one crucial hindrance with Funny People: it's neither funny nor touching - it's grim. Even Apatow and Sandler devotees will find their attention spans challenged, as the film wears out its welcome long before the excessive 150-minute runtime has elapsed.

Central to the story is a comedian named George Simmons (Sandler). After spending his career making asinine comedy movies for the masses, George has become self-absorbed and emotionally stunted. Towards the beginning of the movie, he's diagnosed with a rare blood disease. Upon learning about his impending doom, George basically just continues to indulge in his usual self-centred activities (except with a much darker attitude) rather than embarking on some form of spiritual journey or attempting to right his past wrongs. George eventually stumbles upon a makeshift comedic soul mate in the form of struggling stand-up Ira Wright (Rogen); taking the inexperienced funny man into his life for jokes and companionship.

This is, however, just one half of the narrative. George pursuing his estranged early love Laura (Mann) constitutes the other half. The notion seems to be that Funny People is a two-hander between George and Ira, but George's story eventually overwhelms Ira's. By combining what should have remained two separate stories into one movie of extreme length, a lot of potential is wasted. The relationship between Ira and George was a self-contained narrative in itself, and the first half which explores this is quite entertaining. But instead of concentrating on this narrative thread, the film pursues something more hackneyed, with George trying to reconnect with Laura while Ida is held in reserve. Exploring the deep rituals of the comedy circuit would've also made the film far more compelling.

Judd Apatow's movies (even those he produces) are frequently crippled by their needlessly long runtimes and general self-indulgence. Funny People is no different - it meanders around a number of plotlines before seemingly ending at random; aware it has exhausted its audiences' tolerance for Apatow's trademark excess. Believe it or not, the running time of Funny People exceeds the extended editions of both The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up by around 10 minutes, and there's more that could have been added. Some connective tissue appears absent (like the explanation of why Laura, who is irritated and dismissive during earlier conversations with George, agrees to see him upon learning he's dying - and it's a mystery as to how she even finds out about his condition since there's no public announcement). Much like the films of Quentin Tarantino, Funny People is a movie in desperate need of discipline.

Disappointment is imminent on the comedy front. The stand-up sequences, with their poor lighting and an air of flop-sweat, admittedly possess an air of authenticity (the actors themselves even wrote their own material, and it was all filmed in front of a live crowd). But the on-stage routines aren't funny or in the least bit memorable. In fact, some of them are excruciatingly unfunny. Pretty much the only funny parts of the entire movie were shown in the trailers (maybe 5 or 6 lines in a 2½-hour movie), none of which are genuinely hysterical. Unfortunately, too, the dialogue never crackles with any wit. Funny People is an audacious movie that provides a few entertaining moments, but as a whole it's tragically flat.

Adam Sandler as George Simmons is a stroke of genius. The actor is in top form with this low-key performance, and this is perhaps the most lived-in work of his career. Sandler has already proved he's a capable dramatic actor (Punch-Drunk Love, Reign Over Me), and he flexes these chops capably here. Suitably, the character of George Simmons is a famous comedian who has long sacrificed his edge for awful movies made purely for money. With Sandler having starred in a number of awful movies made purely for the box office returns over recent years, it's clear he's having a little fun at the expense of his own career.

As with every Apatow movie, the cast gives the film a class-reunion sensibility, which makes the film a lot more fun for them than it is for an audience. As Ira Wright, a slimmed down Seth Rogen is in familiar territory; playing a poorly-masked version of his usual self. Leslie Mann (Apatow's wife) is also in familiar territory playing Laura, though she's still endearing. As Clarke, Laura's Australian husband, Eric Bana steals the show. Meanwhile the two offspring of Mann and Apatow play the children of Laura and Clarke, and Jason Schwartzman and the agonisingly unfunny Jonah Hill play Ira's wisecracking friends/roommates (a staple ingredient in Apatow films). A bunch of real celebrities (playing themselves) are given small cameos too, and they're fun to watch (Ray Romano's cameo is one of the film's most amusing moments).

In the case of Funny People, there's simply too much here for one movie. The plotting is unruly and flabby, as what seems to be a straightforward tale of morality and redemption becomes bogged down by unnecessary characters, formula and outright schmaltz. This isn't an inherently uninteresting or gruelling film (in fact the first hour is great), but the indefensible length turns a bold experiment into something that too often feels like an endurance contest.