Thursday, June 16, 2011

Paint Your Wagon

If the movies you like say something about your psyche, then this movie must say a lot about me because I just love it! When Lee Marvin sings, "I was born under a wandering star," in that deep, gravelly voice, I just thrill!
"By Gum, they're Mormons!"
"Whats A Mormons?"
makes me laugh everytime I hear it.

There's just something stupidly madcap funny about this lowlife, decrepit musical.

Netflix has got it and Amazon has it for a great price. No reason to miss it.

"Got a dream boy, got a song, paint your wagon and come along!"
"Where am I goin' I don't know, when will I get there, I ain't certain, all that I know is I am on my way."

I like to have this one playing in the background for company once in awhile. You can watch it with little or no attention and enjoy the music and the adventure.

Friday, June 3, 2011

The Dilemma

The Dilemma should have been a great movie. Ron Howard directed, Vince Vaughan and Kevin James are excellent comedy actors. There were moments that were pretty funny and yet after it was over, Jeanne and I both thought it was worth watching, but we won't need to see it again.
So what went wrong? Maybe it was the subject matter, which tended to be rather serious and wasn't handled in a slapstick manner..it was somewhat, but there were many instances where they played for the one laugh when there should be been much more. When Vince had the plant problem, they gave you a couple of laughs, but the problem cleared up way too soon and wasn't played for the comedy.

Queen Latifa was completely wasted in this movie. Was she the token black person? She was given some stupid embarrassing lines and that was all! Her character was a waste of space and should have been a great comedy element.

In fact, that's what was wrong, this was a comedy that was played too seriously or else it was a drama played for laughs, it just didn't do either as well as expected. There just wasn't that heart warming feeling that we expect from great films. The ending hockey scene was meant to be great finale, but it seemed forced.

Ron Howard just phoned this one in. No one took the time to tweak the script. Someone should have stood back and asked..is this funny? Sadly, it wasn't.