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Mike Russell: I always wanted them to make this as a big toy. Then, suddenly and recently, they did.
Dylan Meconis: It looks like you're about to chow down on a warp nacelle, Mike.
Mike Russell: Actually, I'm V'ger.
Bill Mudron: Is that the one with battle damage? Because that's the one I just bought.... GEEK SYNERGY IS GO!
Mike Russell: No. The one without battle damage was like $15 cheaper.
Dylan Meconis: IRONY, THY NAME IS MATTEL
On the Friday, March 28 "Cort and Fatboy" broadcast, we discuss Fatboy's newfound fashion sense, I make a really lame pun, and we talk about the "eh" qualities of "Run Fatboy Run."
Cort and Fatboy (Friday, March 28, 2008) [ iTunes ]
From the Friday, March 28 Oregonian....
Thanks almost entirely to star Simon Pegg, "Run Fatboy Run" succeeds as a mildly entertaining comedy about yet another 30-year-old boy who decides to get his act together for an out-of-his-league woman.
In fact, in some ways "Fatboy" makes me admire Pegg as an actor ("Hot Fuzz," "Shaun of the Dead") even more than I already did -- because Pegg made me care about his character, Dennis, despite the following:
Five years later, Dennis is a paunchy, flaky, chain-smoking security guard who lives alone in a basement apartment, mooches off his friends and wraps himself in a nice warm blanket of failure while cursing (and getting arrested) in front of his son. He refers to himself as "nearly-man." But then Libby falls for an investment banker named Whit (Hank Azaria) who runs marathons. And Dennis gets it in his head that he can prove to Libby that he can finish something in life by running a marathon of his own. In three weeks.
I ran a marathon once. Training for it in three weeks from nothing is impossible, and while finishing one certainly stretches your mental toughness, it doesn't redeem any of your sins. But hey -- it's the movies.
"Run Fatboy Run" is directed in a calm, clear, workmanlike fashion by "Friends" star David Schwimmer, and like a laugh-track sitcom, it tells a story full of stacked decks. The deck is stacked against the new love interest by making him a smarmy guy named "Whit." The deck is stacked in favor of Dennis (despite all of the above) by letting Pegg get laughs as a loveable-loser Everyman; by giving him a rapport with a cute kid; by making his gorgeous ex a blank who mostly reacts to him; and by surrounding him with wacky British comic-relief pals right out of a Richard Curtis rom-com.
The humor tends toward mild crass-middlebrow -- bare buttocks and inappropriate scratching are Schwimmer's go-to comedy staples -- and the story is ridiculous and way too on-the-nose. (Like, to the degree that characters are literally framed standing under finish-line signs as rewards for other characters.) But Pegg (who co-wrote the script) plays to his strengths. You can't help but root for the loser.
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C-plus; 100 minutes; rated PG-13 for some rude and sexual behavior, nudity, language and smoking.
'Run Fatboy Run' (The Oregonian, March 28, 2008)
On the Friday, March 21 "Cort and Fatboy" broadcast, Owen Wilson disappoints us.
Cort and Fatboy (Friday, March 21, 2008) [ iTunes ]
From the March 21 Oregonian....
"Drillbit Taylor" has an odd structure. It interrupts itself.
The comedy starts out with a short stout kid (Troy Gentile) and a tall skinny kid (Nate Hartley) heading to their first day of high school -- and suffering mightily at the hands of two cartoonish bullies (Alex Frost and Josh Peck).
An hour-and-a-half of screen time later, the wimps decide, on their own, to stand up to their tormentors -- in a fistfighting climax straight out of the wish-fulfillment playbook.
Sounds completely conventional, right? Except that for the middle hour-and-a-half, the movie turns the wimps into supporting characters, and shifts its focus to the title character (Owen Wilson) -- a homeless man the kids hire as their bodyguard.
And there's this third bullied kid (David Dorfman) who turns up for a while.
And there are random subplots involving Drillbit's homeless pals.
And there's an extended, nonsensical sequence in which Drillbit masquerades as a substitute at the wimps' high school and falls in lust with an English teacher (Leslie Mann).
Then, with 15 minutes to go, Drillbit very nearly disappears -- and the movie gets handed back to the two bullying victims and the story we first started to watch.
As you may have gathered, "Drillbit Taylor" lacks focus. It meanders. It can't quite settle on who its main characters are. This would be less of a problem if the movie was screamingly funny, but it's just a big pile of okay.
Gentile and Hartley are charming, talented actors. But they'd be accused of ripping off Michael Cera and Jonah Hill in "Superbad" if "Drillbit" weren't produced by Judd Apatow and co-written by Seth Rogen. ("Drillbit" falls way below the usual standards of Apatow/Rogen, who richly deserve every charge of underachieving self-plagiarism they'll get for this flick.)
The film also plays like a middlebrow family comedy, despite being turkey-stuffed with profanity. And its message on the subject of bullying is kind of lame: Should we all just start forming little Fight Clubs and brawling willy-nilly to solve our problems?
This movie isn't awful, mind; it's easygoing and the characters are likeable and it makes you smile every couple of minutes. Adam Baldwin shows up and makes a "My Bodyguard" joke at one point, and that's sort of funny. It's just that "Drillbit" has that same low-simmer coasting vibe that afflicted Owen Wilson's last paycheck grab, "You, Me and Dupree," and frankly I expect more from the guy who co-wrote the better Wes Anderson movies.
Do yourself a favor. Rent "My Bodyguard" instead.
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C; 102 minutes, rated PG-13 for crude sexual references throughout, strong bullying [strong bullying?], language, drug references and partial nudity.
'Drillbit Taylor' (The Oregonian, March 21, 2008)
On the Friday, March 14 "Cort and Fatboy" broadcast, I offer my thoughts on "Horton Hears A Who!" while calling from a bar.
Cort and Fatboy (Friday, March 14, 2008) [ iTunes ]
From today's Oregonian ....
Now this (more or less) is how you do a Dr. Seuss movie.
After the terrifying grotesques that were the live-action "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and "The Cat in the Hat," it was easy to dread a feature-length "Horton Hears A Who!"
But -- surprise -- the computer-animated "Horton" is largely funny and faithful to the spirit of the Dr. Seuss book. In fact, if I may speak sacrilege, it's far more entertaining (if less letter-perfect) than the 1970 Chuck Jones TV adaptation.
The story is conceptual and weird, even by Seuss standards -- touching on physics, metaphysics, humanism and status-quo mob rule. An elephant (voiced by Jim Carrey) obsessively protects a tiny speck. The speck contains the miniature town of Whoville, led by an ineffectual mayor (Steve Carell) who talks to the elephant through a pipe.
Skeptics declare both elephant and mayor insane. Cue scary monkeys and a near Who-pocalypse.
Directors Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino fill the background with marvelous Easter-egg cameos from seemingly every Seuss story. The comic timing is sharp. The voice talent is solid (and largely in-character). The story and life-lessons are retained and/or expanded intelligently. And while there are a couple of really unfortunate "ironic" pop-culture jokes (characters use WhoSpace.com and seriously undermine a key scene with an REO Speedwagon sing-along), "Horton" mostly avoids the Hollywood animation traps of movie-star preening and shelf-dated references.
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B; 88 minutes; rated G.
'Horton Hears A Who!' (The Oregonian, March 14, 2008)
In the March 7 CulturePulp comic, beloved instructional characters Mr. Do and Mr. Don't act out their sad little morality play at assorted springtime cultural events in Portland, Oregon.
Mr. Do and Mr. Don't celebrate springtime in Portland (Webcomics Nation)
On the Friday, March 7 "Cort and Fatboy" broadcast, I discuss the relentless stupidity of "10,000 B.C." (much more riffing on this subject can be found at io9), and recommend the surprisingly sturdy "The Bank Job."
Cort and Fatboy (Friday, March 7, 2008)
From the March 7 Oregonian....
"The Bank Job" purports to tell the real story behind a mysterious 1971 London robbery: A team of criminals tunneled into a Baker Street bank vault and stole millions -- but a government crackdown silenced investigation and reporting of the crime "for reasons of national security."
Director Roger Donaldson ("No Way Out") and his screenwriters claim that insiders are helping them finally tell the whole story -- i.e., that British intelligence hired low-level crooks to retrieve a safe-deposit box full of blackmail photos.
I have no idea how accurate that "whole story" is, but "The Bank Job" does a plausible, unpretentious and entertaining job of telling it. The movie gets off to a rough start, taking too long to bring story threads and characters together. But once the heist is underway -- and the crew's leader (Jason Statham) finds himself juggling violent demands from MI5, sleaze merchants and corrupt cops -- Donaldson does a workmanlike job dialing up the suspense.
One doesn't want to oversell the film (you could catch it on DVD and regret nothing), but frankly, in a marketplace that tends toward cranked-up action thrills, it's just nice to watch an un-flashy, level-headed crime movie aimed at actual grown-ups.
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B-minus; 111 minutes, rated R.
'The Bank Job' (The Oregonian, March 7, 2008)
