Who hasn’t woken up with a hangover and said you’re never drinking again only to hit the bar a few days later? That’s fine for us, but Todd Phillips better keep his word. “The Hangover Part III” absolutely must be the end.
The Wolf Pack is back together again, but not for more wedding shenanigans, rather a funeral and a trip to a rehab facility. After Alan (Zach Galifianakis) literally gives his father (Jeffrey Tambor) a fatal heart attack, his mother, sister, and Doug (Justin Bartha) decide that it’s time for Alan to get some serious help. With Phil and Stu’s (Bradley Cooper and Ed Helms) support, they stage an intervention and head out to bring Alan to New Horizons. However, while en route, the Wolfpack is ambushed by Marshall (John Goodman) and his thugs. Marshall takes Doug as collateral while Phil, Stu, and Alan meet his demands – bring him Leslie Chow (Ken Jeong).
Part of the appeal of the original film was the fact that it focused on four real guys in the middle of a very relatable situation. It’s highly unlikely many have had an encounter with Mike Tyson’s tiger or made a quick $80,000 counting cards to pay off a gangster, but the idea of four guys getting so wasted during a bachelor party that they can’t even remember the crazy time they had is charming. But fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Back in 2009, the idea of one friend accidently roofie-ing his buddies was a novel scenario, but the sequel proved the concept didn’t have the appeal and flexibility for another go-around. It seems as though Phillips and co. recognized that issue because we get a different narrative here, but now we’re left with the problem that these characters just aren’t appealing or engaging enough to sustain any feature length scenario.
Click here to read more.
What are you going to get if you opt to catch Bill Guttentag’s Tribeca Film Festival entry Knife Fight? Guttentag’s co-writer, Chris Lehane, says it best. “Sometimes it takes the lowest blows to achieve the noblest ends.” Lehane works as a political consultant and, more bluntly, a crisis averter. When a contender’s campaign turns south via scandal, Lehane steps in to spin the situation in his or her favor.
I’m not as politically savvy as I’d like to be, but isn’t that part of the reason folks running for office have campaigns? Yes, the ultimate goal is to get votes, but they’re educating the public on their policies in the process. Now the question is, what happens when scandal swoops in and steals that spotlight? That’s where folks like Chris Lehane and characters like Kerstin (Jamie Chung) and Dimitris (Richard Schiff) step in.
The second the trailer hit, we knew The Hangover Part II was basically The Hangover, but in Thailand. While simply recycling a storyline is generally a cause for concern, that’s really the point of this film, otherwise we’d be getting some sort of odd spinoff or no sequel at all. The Hangover Part II could have failed on just about every cinematic front as long as the boys experienced a drug-induced night of debauchery followed by a hilarious attempt at recovery. Unfortunately, just like the memory of the wolf pack’s big night out in Thailand, funny jokes seemed to have simply slipped the filmmakers’ minds.
High expectations can be a killer. Unfortunately for director Zack Snyder, he works extra hard to insert an insanely high outlook into every single thing that he does and lately, it seems to backfire big time. His brain is geared towards directing and visuals and that doesn’t serve him well as a writer. Whereas the basic concept of Sucker Punch combined with Snyder’s keen eye for the visually incredible had immense prospects, it diluted the script. Spectacular imagery without a sensible and engaging story isn’t a film, it’s a mere spectacle.
It isn’t easy for a horror remake to get any respect. The filmmakers are merely reusing material, hiring inexpensive unknown stars and collecting their money with seemingly no concern for quality. There’s certainly a massive selection of remakes that never should have been, like ‘Black Christmas,’ ‘One Missed Call,’ ‘House of Wax,’ ‘Halloween II,’ ‘Prom Night’ and more, but there’s also a selection that really aren’t all that bad. The new ‘Friday the 13th’ and ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ certainly can’t compare to the originals, but at least both films featured some decent performances and delivered some disturbing death scenes. In fact, there are even some remakes out there that trump their predecessors. Breck Eisner recently gave George A. Romero’s ‘The Crazies’ a much-needed update and the result is wildly entertaining.
Paint by numbers horror is tiresome, but horror movies should work within the genre. When they color too far outside the lines fans get lost. Sorority Row has all of the necessary elements to make it a typical slasher flick but at the same time tries to put a fresh coat of primer on the genre in an effort to find a happy medium between those two alternatives. While the film never quite reaches that middle ground, it sure provides a damn good time while trying to find it.