2008 was a good year for comedies, and this coming from a guy who rates comedies as the least desirable genre. I actually do really enjoy comedies, but I like action flicks and depressing dramas much, much more. But in the absence of really great dramas, this genre rose up to truly deliver….

1. In Bruges
   Most people haven’t seen this movie, but it is certainly worth it. Unlike the four or five movies that follow on this list, In Bruges may not be the non-stop laughfest, but it comes pretty close. More importantly, it is a unique and surprisingly excellent drama-comedy that features Colin Farrell bashing the poor town of Bruges for two hours, getting overly excited about cracked-out midgets and telling fat Americans that they can’t climb up some steep stairs. OK, so that explanation does the comedy absolutely no justice, but this is a movie that blew me away in more ways than one.
2. Role Models
   Based on the previews, who could have seen this one coming? Role Models flew in under the radar, looking like a decent but generic comedy starring Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott. But from the first minute, Role Models is a consistently funny and vulgar picture that has a surprising amount of heart and more laughs than you’ll know what to do with. (more…)

Fans were already apprehensive with the casting of Seth Rogen as The Green Hornet, one of the world’s oldest superheroes, and now they have a reason to be downright upset. With the hiring of director Stephen Chow (Kung Fu Hustle, Shaolin Soccer), it sounds like the movie is headed back towards being more of a comedy than the serious action flick “promised” a little while back. (more…)

Anyone remember watching The Tick, which starred an idiotic but good-natured superhero (named The Tick) and his brainier but not quite so confident sidekick, Arthur? The show was hilarious, and while it has been canceled a few times, it never seems to die completely. The lovable superhero is back on the Minisodes Network, which takes the original content, shrinks it down to five minutes while maintaining the general storyarc, and provides them for free on the Internet.

So, in other words, for all of you - like me - who liked cartoons growing up but don’t have the patience to watch 25-minute episodes anymore, this could be a great alternative (I’m pretty sure they have non-cartoons as well). Here’s the pilot episode of The Tick… [EDITOR’S NOTE: Having written this post before watching the video, I now see that the pilot episode is for the live-action version. Either way… Enjoy!]

I’ve posted ten new clips for Drillbit Taylor, the new Owen Wilson movie. As I’ve calculated out, this probably means you can see about a third of the movie sitting in front of your computer… legally.

Drillbit Taylor opens this Friday, and is the first major film release for Wilson since his suicide attempt last year. Will he get extra fan support as a result? I think he might, though I haven’t seen much promotion for the film, if any.

Watch the Drillbit Taylor media clips here.

Don’t piss this referee off. Hell, you better be on your best behavior.

According to Reuters, a soccer referee in Malaysia pulled a gun and fired it into the air after issuing a red flag to one of the players - a suspension that cause several unruly players to get even more unruly. After the man was “attacked” for the call, he ran to his car and grabbed his service revolver. After all, he’s also a cop.

Officials have arrested the referee on tentative charges of unlawful discharge of a weapon, and are also holding several of the players on possible rioting charges.

Not an incredible story, but certainly a funny one. After all, I always thought the red card was the most serious punishment you could receive in a soccer game. Malaysia decided to add a new tier.

Wow. I just watched The Heartbreak Kid, starring Ben Stiller and directed by the Farrelly brothers, and it is one disaster of a film. Could The Heartbreak Kid be the unfunniest movie of 2007? I think it’s quite possible. There have been less entertaining films this year, but The Heartbreak Kid is the most mainstream movie to make so little of its ingredients.

Does anyone else think that Ben Stiller is no longer funny?

Read my Heartbreak Kid movie review.

Jackass 2.5: Unrated is coming to DVD on December 26th, and would be a perfect late stocking stuffer for your parents. Unfortunately, there’s a reason why the movie is going straight to DVD, and that’s that it just isn’t that funny.

Clearly a release made to cash in and nothing else, Jackass 2.5 has all the same cast members from the previous films, but the footage consists entirely of deleted scenes from Jackass 2 and some interviews with the cast. So, basically, the DVD consists of a bunch of gags and painful moments that weren’t funny enough to make the cut, and weren’t even funny enough to make the deleted scenes of the original DVD.

Jackass 2.5 is barely an hour long, which is more than enough time to show all of the remaining footage and then some. To fill the movie out, there are quite a few interviews with the cast members, who remark on their favorite moments and so on and so forth. While not all that funny, these interviews are at least somewhat insightful and allow us to see the cast acknowledging that what they do is pretty stupid. My favorite part is where they show some of the crew members discussing how they can never let their guard down on the set, because the cast is always up to something gross. As one might imagine, the crew members grow quite annoyed at times.

Nevertheless, there really isn’t a memorable sequence in the entire movie, unless you count a slightly funny one that has Preston Lacy dressed up as King Kong on top of a port-o-potty while the rest of the cast fly remote control airplanes at him.

I loved the last two Jackass movies, but Jackass 2.5 just isn’t very good. It’s not terrible (unless you think Jackass is complete trash that should never be made), but Jackass fans would be better off watching the first two movies.

It’s been a few days since I last posted on the blog (holiday stuff!), so here’s a movie review for you: American Pie Presents: Beta House. This latest installment of the American Pie franchise has Erik Stifler (John White) heading off to his first year of college (remember, in The Naked Mile he simply was visiting his cousin at the dorms) for sex, nudity and freshman girls. It arrives just in time for Christmas (December 23, 2007).

And nudity, American Pie Presents: Beta House definitely has. The film is loaded with it, and that’s not a bad thing. While hardly representative of a real college (and in some ways getting away from what made American Pie so good in the first place: the decision to set normal guys in normal situations but with ridiculous results), the movie is shock full of scantily clad or downright naked “college” girls, who could all compete for prettiest girl on campus. The nudity alone made Beta House enjoyable enough.

There’s also some decent sex, for those of you who are interested.

Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is pretty lame. Take away the nudity and the sex and you really have very little here, other than a pretty typical frat movie. There’s nothing wrong with typical frat movies, except typical frat movies that aren’t funny. Beta House has tons of nudity, but it’s not funny, and there’s something really wrong with it. The creators of the movie became so obsessed with showing tits that they forgot that they were doing an American Pie movie, which means there should be at least a few laughs in it. Hell, the movie even lacks awkwardly gross sequences, other than a rather disturbing Russian roulette scene involving horse semen.

For the most part, Beta House doesn’t have much going for it. The screenplay is bland and fails to capitalize on its storyline. Strangely, the first half of the plot is about the freshman trying to complete 100 tasks by the end of the semester so that they can join the fraternity, but the second half of the movie departs from this entirely and decides to focus on the typical rival frats squaring off in a competition. While it is sort of funny that the underdogs are the jocks and the asshole jerk frat is made up of nerds (after all, in the 21st century, nerds are where the money is), why Beta House decided to detour from a storyline with so much potential to an utterly cliche one is beyond me. Had the whole movie focused on the 100 tasks, Beta House could have been something, but director Andrew Waller literally skims through them all.

I liked American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile well enough, but Beta House is nowhere as good. This is one direct-to-DVD comedy you can skip, unless nudity is enough to please you. Hmmm…

Back in August I gave Balls of Fury a C- rating, a rather cruel grade for a movie I actually found quite entertaining and funny. The critic got the best of me and I scorned it for being exactly what it was intended to be: a stupid, stupid, stupid, goofy comedy. I try not to let the “critic” inside me take advantage of my simpler pleasures, but at the same time I have a reputation to attend to, and giving Balls of Fury a fair rating is a hard thing to do.

That being said, the ping-pong comedy is quite funny, and if you like silly, wacky adventures with mindless comedy, then Balls of Fury is one of the better films of recent years. I won’t go as far and say it’s a good movie, but it is funny. And for all of you who like Reno: 911 but watched that Miami movie and wanted to shoot yourselves, the main character in that plays one of the villains here. You can read the full Balls of Fury movie review here.

The movie arrives on DVD this Tuesday, and with it some special features that include deleted scenes, an alternate ending, a making-of featurette and a look at the “ball wrangler” hired for the film.

There’s really not much to say about the Balls of Fury DVD. The deleted scenes are okay, but you can see why they were deleted. There are a few scenes where the main guy sees the ghost of his dead father, but they aren’t funny. None of the other deleted scenes are funny, really. Why aren’t there any bloopers?

The alternate ending is one of those endings where you get to see a slightly different final minute of the film, and for a movie like this, who really cares? Honestly.

The making-of featurette is somewhat entertaining, as it does talk about how the cast and crew basically took a kung fu premise and replaced it with ping-pong. That being said, it is also quite promotional, though in this case, that actually works in the movie’s favor. Some of the actors joke about how ridiculous and meaningless the movie is, and that’s pretty funny.

Now, to the ball wrangler featurette. What do I say? The movie is about some poor actress who has to run around in what is essentially a Hooters outfit and make “ball” jokes to the cast and crew. What a degrading job, and the end result isn’t nearly as funny as the DVD people were hoping it would be. I saw the “blue balls” gag coming a mile away, and I’ve seen it done much, much better.

Anyway, the very few fans of the movie will probably rush out to buy this DVD; the rest of you will resort to rentals at most. Whether this film ever gains any level of cult status remains to be seen, but somehow I doubt it.

I just watched Who’s Your Caddy? (2007), which arrives on DVD today. The movie stars Antwan “Big Boi” Patton, Faizon Love and a few other people fans of rap and R&B (or “The View”) will recognize. I, I’ll admit it, am not into rap, but I do know a good movie when I see one, and Who’s Your Caddy? is about as far away from that as possible.

You can read my full movie review here, but I have to say that Who’s Your Caddy? is actually one of the most racist films I’ve seen in a long time. Sure, it’s about black people and white people getting along (other than the snobby heads of the golf course), but I found several offensive things in the movie, and I’m not one to be easily offended:

• Most of the white people in the movie are depicted as stuck-up racists. This isn’t how all black people view white people, is it?
• All the young white people in the movie aspire to be or look like rappers. Who actually think that most white kids these days find it cool to get grills in their teeth and talk in Ebonics? I know some do, but this is just a ridiculous stereotype, and probably the reason why the rap/R&B industries are struggling right now.
• All the black people in the film are depicted as fun loving, cool but completely inappropriate. When black people go on a golf course, do they proceed to fart, make noises to distract other golfers and look like idiots? I haven’t seen any evidence of this. They act more like hillbillies than millionaires.
• And the movie itself is racist to assume that such low quality entertainment will appear to masses of black people. Maybe I’m wrong, but whether you’re black or white, you have to have better taste than this.

Anyway, that’s my “white” slant on this. Who’s Your Caddy? is a dreadful movie, but it bothers me that Hollywood continues to pump out movies like this. It depicts white people in pretty offensive ways (but no one ever calls the movie on being racist against white people), but more importantly, it’s just embarrassing that black people are depicted this way in almost all black-starring movies. This is just one of many examples where the entertainment industry seems to be strengthening a bad stereotype.