Identity Thief (2013)

I have just had the worst luck with comedies lately. I mean Ted last night, and Bernie and Casa de mi Padre last month, were all shite. Clerks 2 had it's moments and it had Rosario Dawson whom I would watch reading the phone book, but not really a good movie. I have to go all the way back to last year with Men In Black 3 to find a comedy, and that's more of an action/comedy, that I liked. Do I just have no sense of humor? Today I was in a discussion about being forced to watch Adam Sandler movies, and the people were telling me I was whack for not thinking they were hilarious. Okay, not all of the people took that position. And no one actually said 'whack', I was just trying to make them sound hipper than they are. But they really did say that his movies were good and that perhaps I just didn't get them. What the fuck is there to get in an Adam Sandler movie, particularly the older ones which we were talking about? It's just like all of those Judd Apatow/Seth Rogan movies - what is there to get? They're not deep - fart jokes, and having some euphamism be the punchline for all the other jokes - not exactly rocket science.
I just need to be more selective, or just give up on the genre. I have seen plenty of funny movies, but I guess I just don't go for the mainstream comedies. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty that I like, just none lately. Of course by mainstream I mean American. There are plenty of British shows that I still find hilarious, and most that I don't are just too weird or too referential for me to get. Alright, I, Sandy Bigelow Patterson, do hereby resolve to do better research before watching movies purporting to be comedies, and to try and watch more British movies and television shows. Of course my name is not SBP, but I had to actually mention something from the movie in here.

Identity Thief on IMDb

Casa de mi Padre (2012)

Umm, did I miss something here? Did Will Ferrell think, "Damn, Jack Black got to do Nacho Libre, but I wanted to do it!" and then through himself on the floor kicking and pounding it with clenched fists until he realized, "Ah ha! I will do a melodrama!" At which point he had his helper monkey bring him his cell phone so he could call his agent and get him looking to put this film together.
I get that this is a spoof. Really. But spoofs generally come out of a love for the subject being spoofed and/or poking fun at the audience's guilty pleasures. I'm trying to decide if this is a spoof that just didn't click with it's audience of one, or if it's just offensive because they're intentionally exacgerating stereotypes for an audience that is not too familiar with the genre being spoofed. I'm not saying that they were trying to be offensive, per se, just that I think this film was in spots. Okay, I think they were trying to make a really funny and perhaps even poignant spoof of Mexican melodramas and soap operas and just kind of missed the mark and ended up being a little offensive along the way, which I have to believe was unintentional. Okay, I don't have to believe this, but I do. Helper monkey aside, every interview I've seen with Ferrell, whether he's joking around or not, he seems like a really nice guy. But he also has a weird sense of humor that I don't think always transfers well. Yet it could be that I am not the target audience. I came out of watching Step Brothers thinking that there were a couple of funny moments but that it was really banal, whereas my teen-aged nephews thought it was the funniest thing since Paul Blart, Mallcop. Which says more about our different tastes than anything else I could say.
What's good about this flick? Well, seeing Genesis Rodriquez butt was okay, but the immediate following scene where her and Ferrell's characters are supposed to be making love and he is very noticeably dry humping a manikin is very damned funny. Along the same lines are the white tiger puppet and fake horses used in some scenes. Not so funny, more what-the-hell is the scene where Ferrell drives into town to confront his brother and they use a (bad) model and toy cars pulled by visible wires.
This film was listed in an article of the "19 best films of 2012 that you didn't see". That is mostly true - if you leave out the word "best", I would completely agree. Though, I do admit the possibility that of all of the 2012 films that came out and that I didn't see, that this is one of the 19 best - the point being that I didn't miss that many good films. This is a bit unfair to the list which did have Robot & Frank (the only one on the list that I had seen) and that was a very sweet little movie.

Casa de mi Padre on IMDb

Casa de mi Padre (2012)

Umm, did I miss something here? Did Will Ferrell think, "Damn, Jack Black got to do Nacho Libre, but I wanted to do it!" and then through himself on the floor kicking and pounding it with clenched fists until he realized, "Ah ha! I will do a melodrama!" At which point he had his helper monkey bring him his cell phone so he could call his agent and get him looking to put this film together.
I get that this is a spoof. Really. But spoofs generally come out of a love for the subject being spoofed and/or poking fun at the audience's guilty pleasures. I'm trying to decide if this is a spoof that just didn't click with it's audience of one, or if it's just offensive because they're intentionally exaggerating stereotypes for an audience that is not too familiar with the genre being spoofed. I'm not saying that they were trying to be offensive, per se, just that I think this film was in spots. Okay, I think they were trying to make a really funny and perhaps even poignant spoof of Mexican melodramas and soap operas and just kind of missed the mark and ended up being a little offensive along the way, which I have to believe was unintentional. Okay, I don't have to believe this, but I do. Helper monkey aside, every interview I've seen with Ferrell, whether he's joking around or not, he seems like a really nice guy. But he also has a weird sense of humor that I don't think always transfers well. Yet it could be that I am not the target audience. I came out of watching Step Brothers thinking that there were a couple of funny moments but that it was really banal, whereas my teen-aged nephews thought it was the funniest thing since Paul Blart, Mallcop. Which says more about our different tastes than anything else I could say.
What's good about this flick? Well, seeing Genesis Rodriquez butt was okay, but the immediate following scene where her and Ferrell's characters are supposed to be making love and he is very noticeably dry humping a manikin is very damned funny. Along the same lines are the white tiger puppet and fake horses used in some scenes. Not so funny, more what-the-hell is the scene where Ferrell drives into town to confront his brother and they use a (bad) model and toy cars pulled by visible wires.
This film was listed in an article of the "19 best films of 2012 that you didn't see". That is mostly true - if you leave out the word "best", I would completely agree. Though, I do admit the possibility that of all of the 2012 films that came out and that I didn't see, that this is one of the 19 best - the point being that I didn't miss that many good films. This is a bit unfair to the list which did have Robot & Frank (the only one on the list that I had seen) and that was a very sweet little movie.

Casa de mi Padre on IMDb

Man on a Ledge (2012)

Well, this was a bit different from Clash of the Titans for Worthington. While I am totally into those fantasy FX-fests, this was my type of move. A cop wrongly accused. A jewel heist. Adrenaline. Twists and turns. A hot cop. A hotter thief. Shots. Jumps. Misguidance. Big reveals. This film did okay by me.
This movie was like the "Law" part of "Law & Order" back in the day when Jerry Auerbach was still on the show, except on a giant dose of steroids. Maybe I mean the "Order" part. It's the cop part, okay. I just picked "Law because that comes first, and the cop part is always first in the show. Okay? Sheesh. Do you feel better now for making me out as some kind of fraud? They had the police procedure down, which they used to great effect to speed things up and slow them down when needed. They had a system of good cops dealing with a couple of bad cops and a cop that was made to look bad even though he was good.
Speaking of bad, man Ed Harris totally kicked bad guy ass in this movie. You hear stories about business men that would sell their own mother into slavery if the price was right. They ain't got nothin' on David Englander who is one cold heartless son of a bitch.
It's interesting watching the extras on this flick, not for their sake as to be honest they're not that interesting, but to hear the actors as themselves. Banks sounds like Mercer, but Rodriguez does not sound quite like Angie her voice being a bit higher pitched than the character's. Bell is British which I didn't know which I guess means he did a pretty good job as a New Yorker. And Worthington of course is Australian and did a good job with the New York accent. If Banks could have matched their accent the whole thing would have been totally awesome. Oh well. Her character's accent wasn't distracting, it's only something I am thinking about in the afterwards.

Man on a Ledge at IMDb