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Posts tagged as review roundup

Review Roundup

A Good Old-Fashioned Orgy Review Roundup: A Bit of an Awkward Mess, Just Like the Real Thing

by | September 2nd, 2011

A Good Old-Fashioned Orgy opens tonight, featuring all sorts of funny people trying to organize some late-summer group sex. Much like real orgies, the critics don't seem to be fully on board with it. Roger Ebert says that "It strands fairly likable actors in a morass of the kind of dialogue only stupid characters ever say — and then only when reading stupid screenplays. No one in the movie has a morsel of intelligence. They all seem to be channeling more successful characters in better comedies. This would be touching if it were not so desperate." The Chicago Tribune's Michael Phillips didn't care for the characters either, [...]

Review Roundup

The Change-Up Review Round-Up: Like Big, But With More Mouth Poop

by | August 5th, 2011

Giddy up, little doggies, and don't you be magically switching bodies on me now! We all have fond memories of body-swap movies like Big or Freaky Friday, even Face/Off if no one's around to judge us. Unfortunately, "To mention such movies in connection with this one is a sacrilege," says Roger Ebert's The Change-Up review, who is taken aback not by the sheer number, but the treatment of, all the naked breasts in the film. "There are a great many of them, frequently and roughly fondled, for one reason only, and it isn't eroticism," Ebert writes. "If it were, I would sympathize. It has to do with the [...]

Review Roundup

Our Idiot Brother Review Round-Up: Paul Rudd, Idiot Savant

by | August 26th, 2011

Snuggle into this here hurricane-proof lean-to, ya'll, because we've got to batten down the hatches for another Review Round-up! Everyone seems to agree that the fact Our Idiot Brother's Paul Rudd is a sweetie peachy pie is the movie's greatest strength. "This movie wouldn't work without Paul Rudd. He walks such a fine line. He has to be nice, but not a fool. Sweet, but not saccharine. Honest enough to cause trouble, but always innocently," Roger Ebert writes. "It's refreshing, this late in the summer, to find a hot weather comedy that doesn't hate its characters and embed them in scatology and sexual impossibilities." Says the New [...]

Review Roundup

Bad Teacher Review Round-Up: Significantly More Laughs Than Stand And Deliver

by | June 24th, 2011

The Bad Teacher reviews are in, and they are mixed like the shots and weed Diaz's character sucks down as her students watch Dead Poets Society. In Roger Ebert's Bad Teacher review, as in many others, the film seems to invite comparisons between the awful educator and the terrible Saint Nick in Bad Santa. Bad Santa, it aint'. Writes Ebert, "Its bad person is neither bad enough or likable enough. The transgressions of Elizabeth Halsey (Cameron Diaz) are more or less what you'd expect, but what's surprising is that she's so nasty and unpleasant." The Washington Post's Ann Hornaday agrees, drawing the inevitable comparison to The Lady [...]

Review Roundup

30 Minutes Or Less Review Round-Up: This Is A Stick-Up! Give Me All Your Zingers!

by | August 12th, 2011

Join me around the campfire and enjoy this mess of beans I cooked up, because you'll need your strength of another Review Roundup! The 30 Minutes or Less reviews are in, and let's just say if you include a period of time in your movie's title, you are setting yourself up for some hot buttery zingers.

The New York Times' Manohla Dargis writes, "Sometimes a rude and crude comedy is simply scraping the bottom of the barrel, despite the efforts of a talent like Mr. Eisenberg and of second bananas like Mr. Ansari and Mr. Swardson. Mr. McBride, on the other hand, is fast wearing out his [...]

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