Smith's Verdict

Smith’s Verdict: *

Reviewed by Tanner Smith

I remember writing my “Unfriended” review like it was yesterday. It began with somewhat of a PSA about characterization. Let’s review: “If you’re going to make a teen slasher film without well-developed or even likable main characters, you have to have A) good commentary with an underlying theme & message, B) a clever gimmick, or C) both.” There are two types of horror-movie victims: people who make poor decisions and get severely punished for it, and one-dimensional pawns in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse who we do not care about when they die. “Unfriended” worked because while the characters could be seen as the latter for some, they were seen as the former by others who knew they were dumb teenagers—it was the film’s way of showing consequences while partaking in supernatural horror.

And now we have “The Gallows,” which has a lead character so detestable and unlikable and obnoxious that you’ll be wishing for the company of the jackass who got killed by a blender in “Unfriended.”

His name is Ryan (played by Ryan Shoos). He mocks everything and everyone he sees. He throws footballs at unpopular kids. He’s idiotic. He has no personality outside of hurtful comments. He’s the kind of stereotypical jock you usually find as a one-dimensional bully in high-school dramas, except here, he’s our hero. Good thing he’s in a horror film where he’ll surely die; at least when that happens, he’ll shut up.

Oh, and he films everything too. That’s right—“The Gallows” is another found-footage horror film in which characters record everything on their pocket cameras or their cellphones, including their imminent demises. They’re films that cost very little to make and are very profitable upon release. Some are good; others are…well, like “The Gallows,” pretty bad. Like the bad ones, there’s hardly an excuse for our characters to constantly film everything, and when there is, it’s usually nonsensical and lame. And even when they’re running for their lives, they’re still filming, causing a lot of shaky-cam that is never fun to look at. Oh, and there are also loud, sudden sound effects that couldn’t have been captured on camera, unless they knew they were making a movie and wanted to jump-scare audiences who think loud noises are scary

The film begins with home-video footage showing opening night of a high-school play called “The Gallows,” a “Crucible”-like morality tale, in a Nebraska high school in 1993. A prop malfunctions and a student is accidentally hanged. Cut to 2013, when the drama department has agreed to put the play back on. (Yeah I know, just go with it.) The actor playing the boy to be hanged is a star football player named Reese (Reese Mishler), who has a crush on his co-star, the devoted theatre student, Pfeifer (Pfeifer Brown). Of course, his “friend” Ryan is unsympathetic and a complete jerk and tries everything to make him leave the play while also humiliate him in the process. He comes up with a plan for him and Reese to sneak into the school at night and trash the set so the play will be called off. They bring a cheerleader, Cassidy (Cassidy Erin Gifford), in on it, but soon, they, along with Pfeifer (who happens to come across them in the school), find themselves locked in as they begin to suspect that they’re not alone…

Even with an admittedly shocking reveal about one of the four characters in peril, there’s nothing particularly interesting about our bland leads. Even when it seems they’re about to take a promising turn in a possible relationship between Reese and Pfeifer, it’s cast aside to make room for more antics involving the scumbag known as Ryan and more screaming and yelling from everyone else (again, while they film everything—while we’re on the subject, there is no reason for this film to be shot in this style).

Is anything fresh about “The Gallows?” Yes, the location. Setting a horror film inside a school for the most part is an intriguing idea. It shows how a place can seem peaceful and cheery during the day and seem ominous and creepy at night. (Not to mention, it also saves money on a production designer, because the place is decorated already.)

It all comes back to Ryan. There’s a fine line between “funny” and “insulting” when it comes to creating characters that are kind of jerks, and they have to be kept in that gray area for us as an audience to care for them something even remotely bad happens to them. This is the kind of teenage douche bag that I hated in high school—not the best characterization for your horror movie lead! On top of that, the writing is awful, the terror is only mildly effective, and the found-footage gimmick doesn’t provide the slightest bit of tension, so I’m saying skip this movie like whatever school board should’ve skipped the decision to bring back a play that a child died while performing.

Smith’s Verdict: *

Reviewed by Tanner Smith

I won’t deny that our dependence on modern technology is a social problem. And to be fair, Jason Reitman’s ensemble drama “Men, Women & Children” poses an interesting question—are we so lonely in the world that we spend more time with our computers and our phones than anything (or anyone) else? This is a film that wants to be (“be,” not “make”) a profound statement on how we all, as a society, rely on social media, not to mention online gaming and pornography. Unfortunately, what should be a deep, moving, effective portrait about where we are now is reduced to a heavy-handed, overbearing, even laughable-at-times mess of a film that tries to say more than it actually is. This film is about as informative a social commentary as “Reefer Madness.”

The film, based on a novel by Chad Kulgen, is an ensemble piece, featuring many talented actors portraying the film’s many central focuses: a group of high school students and their parents who have their own tales being told here, each of them related to how technology is running his or her life. Adam Sandler is effectively low-key as Donny, a family man who is hardly satisfied with his marriage to his wife, Helen (Rosemarie DeWitt), anymore, and seeks excitement from his son’s pornography. Meanwhile, Helen has a similar problem, unbeknownst to him, and their son, Chris (Travis Tope), can’t get aroused by any human sexual contact due to watching so much porn. Hannah (Olivia Crocicchia), a popular cheerleader with her own website full of “modeling” photos, finds this out as she makes her advance toward him but makes up a lie to her classmates. Who’s running Hannah’s website, you may ask? It’s her mother (Judy Greer), who hopes that it will help give her daughter a career in modeling or acting. (It’s indicated that she herself took her shot at one way back when.) Hannah’s friend, Allison (Elena Kampouris), wants to be thin and gets advice from a website about anorexics; of course, this causes her to starve herself.

The campus football star, Tim (Ansel Elgort), quits the team after his mother abandoned him and his father, Kent (Dean Norris), and finds himself questioning life and existence, as well as playing an online game nonstop. He also starts a nice relationship with a wallflower girl, Brandy (Kaitlyn Dever), who has a secret social-media account to keep her outrageously overprotective mother, Patricia (Jennifer Garner), who keeps track of her daughter’s texts, calls, Facebook account, everything. Oh, and she also leads a discussion group where she tries to warn the parents of the neighborhood about the “evils” of online media.

While all these stories are taking place, they’re being observed by an omnipresent narrator (voiced by Emma Thompson), who I guess is supposed to be the voice of Voyager (which we cut to in space every now and then), observing with pity how mankind is becoming worse. And right there is the biggest problem of the film. The execution at work is too condescending, too arrogant, and too messy that it doesn’t leave a tragic impact as much as a dull impression. The way all of these issues are being addressed is just too much to take in, let alone take seriously. And there are far too many callbacks to Carl Segan’s “Pale Blue Dot” that the point is far gone out the window. I’m not moved; I’m just bored. And don’t even get me started on the 9/11 references.

The actors do what they can with what they have, but another problem with the film is that just about everyone is neither appealing nor interesting. And what’s worse is, by the end, their actions are both insufferable and questionable. Near the end, Patricia, who has found out about her daughter’s secret Tumblr account she uses to communicate with Tim, goes so far as to shoot Tim down (not letting him know who she really is), causing Tim to do something that is supposed to be sad and tragic but is instead annoyingly blasé. Lucky for me, I gave up around the point when Helen sees a prostitute midway through.

I really wish director Jason Reitman, who made himself a name with such effective satires as “Thank You For Smoking,” “Juno,” and “Up in the Air,” went sharper with this material and mocked the subject material in a ironic way rather than try to shock and awe us with the dangers of a modern problem. As is, I found “Men, Women & Children” to be awful and, even worse, boring. The sooner this talented director and this large talented cast can move on from this, the better.

Smith’s Verdict: *

Reviewed by Tanner Smith

You can spew as much B.S. about it as you want (because that’s all I’m going to think of it as: B.S.), but there is no way I’m going to believe that The Purge should, could, or would be a real law, let alone “work.” That is the main problem with the film, “The Purge.” It’s a really dumb idea to begin with. It goes like this—in order to keep America in great shape and the crime rate at an all-time low, the “New Founding Fathers” (uh-huh) bring forth a social policy that every March 22 for 12 hours, criminal law is put on hold. This is known as The Purge. People can do whatever they want (or as they put it, “release the inner beast”), even murder, without fear of legal consequences. Some go out and let out pent-up anger they’ve held inside for a whole year, while others can hole up safely inside their homes.

Apparently, this law was created so people could let out all their inner anger for one night if they go by the honors system not to commit any crimes the rest of the year, thus bringing crime down and making America a more peaceful place. Do I even have to point out how ridiculous this sounds? It shouldn’t be much to complain about, since it’s only the setup for a laughable home-invasion thriller; but the characters keep repeating over and over why The Purge exists and why “it works” (and not once are mental scarring brought up in the slightest), and it’s very poorly handled. Even the social commentary (in that the rich attempts to cleanse the world of the poor) is weak. This results in “The Purge” turning out to be a pretentious, deplorable thriller that takes itself way too seriously.

The film takes place on March 22, 2022, and right there, you can tell how hard writer/director James DeMonaco is trying to warn his audience that The Purge could exist and it’s the direction America is going. Anyway, we get a couple introductory captions that explain that unemployment is down 1% and crime is abolished, thanks to The Purge. Our main characters are James and Mary Sandin (played by Ethan Hawke and Lena Headey), suburbanites who have made a living thanks to James’ successful security company, which has helped turn all neighborhood homes in fortresses to protect neighbors during The Purge (and the passive-aggressive neighbors resent them for this…for some reason never really explained). Of course, their house has a security system as well, and so they prepare to wait calmly during The Purge with their teenage kids, Charlie (Max Burkholder) and Zoey (Adelaide Kane). But when Charlie notices a homeless man (Edwin Hodge) desperately roaming the neighborhood and screaming for help, he decides to let him in for shelter. (Why did James tell his son the code to disarm the barricades?) James doesn’t trust the stranger, but it turns out the whole family has something more to fear. A group of teenagers wearing masks have been chasing the man down and the creepy Polite Leader (Rhys Wakefield) asks that the family release him or else they’ll break through the barricade and kill them.

From what I can gather, these kids are rich and delight in killing poor people during The Purge. And apparently, they want this particular poor person because he got away just as they were about to lynch him. Why they don’t just let him go and look for someone else to kill is anyone’s guess, since they don’t think to take advantage of The Purge, so it’s just a weak excuse to make “The Purge” into a home-invasion flick, which itself isn’t very successful. The homeless man doesn’t have enough moments to be declared a character, but more of a tool to allow James to question morals and ethics. So therefore, it’s hard to be scared by him when he doesn’t pose a threat, and it’s hard to care because James’ morals and ethics are hardly developed anyway. There’s too much behavior and not much rationality so that we’re questioning what’s really at stake while at the same time, we’re being asked to celebrate the deaths of the home invaders as they ultimately force their way in and delight in torturing their would-be victims just so there can be enough time for someone to come in and save them. But then, in the final few minutes, we’re led to believe that the best way to end the mayhem is peacefully. A worthy compromise, but it’s a bit hypocritical.

Ethan Hawke at least looks dedicated in his role, playing a man who’s being pushed over the edge (at least, I think that’s what’s happening). Lena Headey, on the other hand, looks like she’d rather be somewhere else, as she doesn’t seem invested in her character. The young actors, Max Burkholder and Adelaide Kane, are fine. Meanwhile, there’s the performance of Rhys Wakefield as the creepy leader of the invaders. I don’t know if he knew what he was acting in was laughably bad, but he can hardly keep a straight face while delivering hammy, supposedly-foreboding speeches. He is the most enjoyable part of the film.

What we’re supposed to learn from “The Purge” is that The Purge doesn’t work after all. Since it’s so obvious that The Purge could never happen (seriously, I would believe the futuristic society’s rules in “Divergent” before I believe this logic), there’s nothing to be afraid of or think about after the film is over. So just looking at it as a horror film, it still doesn’t succeed. It’s just a collection of horror-movie clichés within a half-assed political message. But apparently, it was so successful at the box-office that it warranted a sequel. Hopefully, writer/director James DeMonaco decides to do something more with an already-flawed premise and has learned something from making this film. Has he? Well, I’ll get to that later…

Smith’s Verdict: *

Reviewed by Tanner Smith

What has happened to Tony Manero? By the end of “Saturday Night Fever,” you feel that this Brooklyn wiseass has smartened up and matured enough to know there’s more to life than being a jerk and being king of the dance floor at a disco. But in its sequel, “Staying Alive” (named after the popular Bee Gees song), which catches up with Tony about five years later in Manhattan, Tony is someone we hardly recognize. And it doesn’t help that a boring, recycled plot with a PG rating replaces the hard R-rated edge of “Saturday Night Fever.” The result is a quite lame movie that didn’t need to be a sequel to “Saturday Night Fever” because we’re not seeing Tony Manero grow up; we’re just seeing John Travolta as a Broadway dancer in a series of one heavily-edited music-video-style sequence after another so that the whole movie feels like another version of “Flashdance.”

This is what Tony Manero (played again by John Travolta) has reduced to—a wimp who has lost his edge in the same way that Rocky Balboa lost his edge with “Rocky” sequel upon “Rocky” sequel. And wouldn’t you know it—this sequel was directed and co-written by Rocky himself, Sylvester Stallone. Stallone has made Tony into a naïve bore whose occasional smartass moments don’t define him in the slightest and apparently hasn’t learned a damn thing since the first film (remember—five years ago) about women, since he is trapped in yet another story in which he falls in love with the wrong girl instead of the girl he only sees as a pal, and then he will learn the only person who matters. And what’s worse is that he and Jackie (Cynthia Rhodes) are so good together, despite the fact the Jackie is all too patient and should probably just forget about Tony already, that you just want to smack Tony for not only going to score with the other girl, a snobby, experienced British dancer named Laura (Finola Hughes), but constantly staying sweet and making promises he can’t keep to Jackie who deserves better.

What about the real story? It’s dreadfully dull, as it involves Tony getting a job dancing for a stage play called “Satan’s Alley,” and desperately trying to give the audience something to remember about him. And that’s about it—it’s all too simple. Love triangle, rehearsals, coming of age, blah blah blah. It’s pretty tired stuff. And it doesn’t help that the film barely goes five minutes without a new song, a heavily-edited montage, or usually both. There’s no substance; it’s all style. And the worse part is the big explosive climax in which Tony does perform in the play. And this play, this “Satan’s Alley” which is assumingly about an ascension into heaven, is ridiculously bad. This payoff is a play that I would walk out of very quickly. It’s incomprehensible and just plain outlandish.

Oh, and the dancing sucks too. It’s below par when you think of Broadway dancing. And there isn’t a single moment that comes close to capturing the excitement and energy of John Travolta’s solo disco dance in the previous film, because we can guess that Travolta doesn’t have what it takes to be a Broadway dancer and he’s usually shot from the waist up. He may dance disco, but not much else.

“Staying Alive” forgets what “Saturday Night Fever” was all about. The previous film was not about dancing; it was about a complicated character that danced. This time, there is dancing all throughout, and there is a character who is not so complicated this time around. It would not matter in the slightest if Tony Manero was the focus here because the character is completely lost, and not even the charismatic John Travolta could bring him back. “Staying Alive” is one of the worst sequels I have ever seen.

Smith’s Verdict: *

Reviewed by Tanner Smith

“Every 23^rd spring, for 23 days, it gets to eat.” Yes, apparently, “Jeepers Creepers II,” the sequel to the modest horror-movie hit “Jeepers Creepers,” went with that angle that is just as ridiculous now as it was then. That’s apparently the main rule for a fiendish winged half-man/half-beast known as The Creeper. And I have to admit—it is a neat monster. It’s fast, dark, tall, ugly, vicious, and ruthless. And it doesn’t talk or wisecrack, so it only has a snarling personality.

But it’s a really bad move to make us root for the villain in a horror film just so we can say how intriguing the villain might be. “Jeepers Creepers II” has a nice monster, but it has it entrapped in a nothing story with extremely unlikable, annoying “heroes” that we just want to see die faster so that the movie will be over and we can move on with our lives. (And maybe the most dedicated fans of this movie, which I’m hoping are a very limited few, can make pieces of online fanfiction that is more interesting than what they had to watch to get started with.)

Yeah, “Jeepers Creepers II” is well-made (for the most part, anyway), but it’s boring, stupid as hell, and contains the dumbest, most unpleasant group of characters you’ll ever find in a horror film or a mindless action-adventure. Never before have I wanted a whole group of protagonists to die faster than they do in this movie. They’re that obnoxious.

The film starts out in a suitably unnerving way, as a young boy sets up scarecrows in the middle of a wheat field and then notices one that seems unfamiliar. He sees the claws, and then bam! It springs into action, grabbing the boy, and running off with it as his father and older brother give chase before it ultimately flies away. (Why it didn’t just fly away before is anyone’s guess.)

And then, we’re introduced to our heroes. No, it’s not Jack Taggart (Ray Wise), the farmer who was the dead boy’s father and now seeks vengeance in a mere subplot. Instead, we’re forced to follow a group of jackasses—a high-school football team on the bus ride home from a big game. The Creeper causes the bus to have a flat tire (by using one its…ninja-stars? What were those again?) and picks off the driver, coach, and assistant coach, leaving the team and a few cheerleaders to fend for themselves.

How stupid are these kids? Well, let’s do bullet-points for all the idiotic actions they perform.

• Even though the Creeper is super strong and fast, and has even removed the head of one of their teammates, they still slowly look upward to see if it’s still out there.
• It never occurs to them that they should stay low in that bus.
• When they get out of the bus (yes, they get out of the bus), they do nothing but stand on the road until they see it coming. When they can’t get back in, what do they do?
• They run out into an open field instead of hide under the bus!

And let’s not forget Scotty, the jackass homophobe who angrily takes charge and decides to split the group in two, seeing as how The Creeper only saw a few of them earlier, and thus those it hasn’t seen will live. One thing he forgets (that, by the way, someone does bring up but not soon enough) is that The Creeper saw him too, so that whole scene in which he tries to take charge, resulting in him making an even bigger jackass out of himself, was completely pointless.

It’s pretty easy to hate Scotty, but there are others on that bus who are equally loathsome, including Scotty’s girlfriend who always says the wrong things; one kid who assumes another is gay (which is interesting, considering how many gay undertones there are in this movie); and there’s even a cheerleader who is actually psychic so she can explain the motivations of The Creeper. I haven’t mentioned any names of the actors playing the kids; I’ll cut them a break. What I won’t cut a break, however, is the screenwriter for writing so much atrocious dialogue that forces us to listen to these “heroes” go on and on and never shut up. I’d much rather see what Jack Taggart has to do with anything, but he’s unfortunately a supporting character who’s able to show up for a somewhat-kickass climax, in which he packs a quite lethal weapon: a post-puncher turned spear-thrower. Why not follow this guy instead? Anybody but these detestable jerks!

You get the point—“Jeepers Creepers II” is a horror film with not much of a story and no one to identify or sympathize with. I guess the idea of characters being trapped on a bus by a vicious villain that won’t stop is kind of intriguing, but when you have to spend an hour and a half with people you don’t like, and just wish they would get it sooner, it takes the fun out of everything it could have had going for it.

P.S. By the way, why is this thing called The Creeper when it does everything else aside from “creep,” like fly, stare, and…lick the glass on one of the bus windows? (What?)

Smith’s Verdict: *

Reviewed by Tanner Smith

“The Hangover Part II” is an example of Sequel B.O. (Box Office) Laziness—a classic case of a lazy attempt to cash in on the success of an unexpected box-office smash hit. The result is an obviously-rushed, overdone, and unbelievably lazy sequel that insults those who loved the original a couple years ago, and it also relates to the other version of “B.O.” And because it’s supposed to be a comedy, you can add “painfully unfunny” in there as well.

Don’t let the “Part II” in the title fool you—this is about as much of a continuation from the original story as “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.” There is hardly an attempt to make any much of a difference this time around—the narrative structure is copied situation by situation, and it’s supposed to be “different” because the locations and McGuffins are different. News flash, guys—that doesn’t work! Continue the story! Don’t tell it again—we’ve seen it already!

Oh, and if there’s one good thing that can be said about everything in this sequel being traced back to many events in the original film, it’s that it serves as a guide for how much worse the original could have been.

“The Hangover,” released summer 2009, was a unique, clever spin on the “what-happens-in-Vegas” concept, in that it turned the outcome of the partying events of Las Vegas into a murder-mystery as the bachelor-partyers have many questions to find answers to, including where is the groom. It did not need a sequel. It had a great deal of spontaneity and surprise that made it all the more hilarious when we didn’t know what was coming and laughed at the results. And because the same narrative structure of that film is copied in “Part II,” there really is no surprise; we can see the jokes coming miles ahead. So when you’re not laughing at a comedy, you just sit there, feeling depressed. And that’s exactly how I felt when watching “The Hangover Part II.”

What do I mean by a lack of creativity that director Todd Phillips and his replacement writers (yes, “replacement” writers—how ‘bout that) convey onto “Part II?” Consider the opening. We see a wedding being prepared. There’s just one thing missing: the groom. The bride and her family calls the groom and his friends who are not there. And then, who should call?

If you guessed “Phil,” congratulations! You’ve earned the right to request a review for me to write!

Yes, Phil, the Bradley Cooper character in both films, calls, saying that there may not be a wedding. But wait! It’s different, you see, because it’s not the groom that’s missing—it’s the bride’s brother! And Phil actually acknowledges that “it happened again.” I don’t know if you can get the deadpan sarcasm when I say, “Wow. How different.”

And then, wouldn’t you know it—the film shows the opening-credits and we flash to before that call, setting up what will happen in this film. And don’t just think it’s that opening that is copied or that that is the only time we will ever hear the word “again” in this movie, because this movie loves to follow the same stuff laid out in the original film and apparently likes its characters to say, “it’s happening again!” Anyway, we find that Stu is getting married. Not to Jade, the friendly stripper from the other movie, but to a Thai-American woman, Lauren (Jamie Chung), who has no told backstory in how these two met. You’d think there would be a detailed explanation as to how and why these two are together, seeing as how things seemed to go fine between him and the stripper at the end of the first movie, and also having told off his bitchy girlfriend. But no—we just go with it because…she seems nice. Yeah, there’s no point in overstating this—the women in the “Hangover” movies have little to no personality.

I keep getting sidetracked here, and I haven’t even gotten to the rehashing of the characterizations of the leading men. Well, Ed Helms was Stu, an uptight, nervous dentist who ultimately stands up for himself after everything that’s happened in the first film; Bradley Cooper is Phil, an almost-total a-hole who becomes a little more respectful and learns a few family values; and Zach Galifianakis is Alan, the show-stealer of the original film who is an overgrown man-child who is just glad to have made friends on this trip. Oh, and there’s Justin Bartha as Doug, but he had no personality anyway, and he was only in the original film so he could disappear and be found near the end, so he could get married quickly. So, how are these newly-developed characters now? You won’t believe this—they’re pretty much the same people. Stu is more neurotic than ever; Phil is a huge a-hole (again); and Alan…actually, Alan is a lot worse this time around. This time, instead of a lovable, naïve slob of a man-child—he’s an unbearable, unstable lunatic. At first, I was wondering why Stu, Phil, and Doug were hesitant about inviting Alan to Stu’s wedding, but now, we understand why. Alan is a detestable person this time around. The character has taken a sharp, unpleasant turn, and I wanted to smack him in the face.

Stu’s wedding takes place in Thailand, and the movie substitutes Bangkok for Las Vegas. Wouldn’t you know it—the men party hard, and Stu, Phil, and Alan wake up in a dirty hotel room, having no memory of what happened before. Phil is more or less OK, but Alan is bald (OK fine, I chuckled when Alan checked if his beard was still there) and Stu has a Tyson-esque tattoo on his eye. Where’s Doug? Oh, he’s OK, he’s fine. He’s just back at Lauren’s place, having breakfast.

That’s right—Doug misses out on the action again! I guess we just needed the three-man “wolf-pack” that Alan desperately wanted to bring back. Come to think of it, I think Phillips wanted it back too.

But wait a minute! There’s a monkey in their room! Stu’s future brother-in-law is missing, but his finger is there! And the cackling, obnoxious Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong) is there with them…although he can’t explain what happens because after a massive hit of cocaine, he passes out! Oh joy, here we go again on another wild goose chase.

OK, I’m getting really tired writing this review and thinking of certain significant things that happen on this wild goose chase. They run around Bangkok (which is portrayed in a very smug manner, without ever capturing the gravity and true danger of the place) and they have misadventures before the wedding. There you go—that’s basically what happens. If you saw “The Hangover,” “The Hangover Part II” won’t surprise you in how things are going to play out. What’s missing? Jokes, wit, originality, appeal, fun, the freaking point! If you didn’t guess already by this point, I hated the movie and I hated the lack of trying. I don’t care if they moved the “fun” to a different country; freshness is not found in “rehash-art!”

And wouldn’t you know it—“The Hangover Part II” was a box-office success, because apparently all this film needed to do was show up and everyone would come flooding into the theater. Worse yet, it beat out “Kung Fu Panda 2,” which was released on the same day as this sequel, and did not rehash the same old story! If we don’t get a “Kung Fu Panda 3” because of this, I’m blaming Todd Phillips.

Smith’s Verdict: *

Reviewed by Tanner Smith

How can I properly describe how bad a comedy “The Sitter” is without saying this first—director David Gordon Green and comic actor Jonah Hill deserve a lot better than this. Actually, I can’t truly blame Hill as he’s doing what he can with a lazily written leading character, and I can’t blame Green for venturing into mainstream comedy after such great indie-small productions as “George Washington” and “Undertow,” and I loved his first mainstream-comedy attempt, “Pineapple Express.” But the problem is there’s nothing to back either of them up, and I can blame Green for at least half of the reasons “The Sitter” fails. It’s not as horrid as his previous comedy “Your Highness,” but that’s very, very faint praise indeed.

I hated this movie as much as any other terrible, unfocused, unintelligent R-rated raunchy comedy that tries so hard to be crude and vulgar for any kind of laugh and mostly falls down dead. (And yes, “Your Highness” falls into that category as well.) Listen—everyone, even the younger characters, are spewing the worst profanities because they love hearing them! Look—there’s a visual that is definitely not pleasant to look at (depending who you are)! Check it out—whatever amusing bit you can find in such an inept piece of garbage is already in the 2-minute redband trailer online! And no I am not going to say this shamelessly rips off “Adventures in Babysitting” and made it R-rated, because I wonder if the writers had even seen that movie. I say that because whether you like “Adventures in Babysitting” or not, it was hard to deny the fun and lightheartedness that was much like a “Ferris Bueller” cousin of a comedy—and “The Sitter” is joyless, tasteless, and worst of all, “laughless.”

Jonah Hill stars as Noah, an ordinary, 20something nice guy with hardly a sense of ambition to him. He’s not confident, he lets his “girlfriend,” Marisa (Ari Graynor), push him around, he lives with his mother, he vegetates in front of the TV, he doesn’t have a job, and blah blah blah he’ll wind up a changed man by the end of the movie, because that’s usually how this works. To make a little money while his mother isn’t able to babysit for a neighbor, he agrees to take the babysitting task himself, taking charge of three kids: neurotic 13-year-old Slater (Max Records), the little girl with too much fashion/makeup on the mind and on the face, Blithe (Landry Bender), and the adopted Hispanic pyromaniac Rodrigo (Kevin Hernandez) who has a love for fireworks and a tendency to cause mayhem wherever he can. The job isn’t much, as Noah and the kids don’t get off to a good start, and then Marisa calls Noah, asking him to come to the city and pick up some cocaine from her drug-dealer friend, Karl (Sam Rockwell). In exchange, she’ll have sex with him. So being the irresponsible “nice guy” that he is, he brings along his three charges, and wouldn’t you know it—they run into all sorts of misadventures, all of predictable and unfunny.

Actually, I take it back—some of it is not predictable, necessarily. But a lot of it is so weird and deranged and uneven that you wouldn’t care if it was actually predictable, as long as it was funny. And it’s not. It’s just not. OK, I get it already—the Hispanic kid likes to explode toilets with cherry-bombs; why is this funny? Why is it repeated? Oh right, so he can use this need to save the day. Then there’s the Rockwell character (and to be fair, it looks like Rockwell is really trying here) who has an odd hideout with a bunch of bare-chested men skating and dancing to “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)”—OK, it’s weird, I’ll grant it that, but it doesn’t pay off. And there are a lot of pedophile jokes for uncomfortable misunderstandings an uneasy conversation about whether or not Slater is actually gay. And then when “The Sitter” stops for drama, it’s the cheesiest load of trite. We’ve seen this all before—first the kids hate Noah, then they realize that Wait a minute! They actually like this guy! This is a PG movie (PG-13 at best) with an R-rated mentality—insipid.

Where’s a blues bar when you need these kids to fall into such and just have a good time?

There’s one laugh I got from this movie and it occurred during the end-credits, if you can believe it. As the credits roll, we’re given information about what happened to these characters after all this madness—I have to admit, I laughed at the fate of Karl’s henchman.

David Gordon Green has made many good movies before, but 2011 was not a good year for him. His two films released that year—“Your Highness” and “The Sitter”—are deplorable messes. He has shown with “Pineapple Express” that he is capable of directing a mainstream comedy, but all I can say is this—Please, man! You made “George Washington,” “All the Real Girls,” “Undertow,” and “Snow Angels!” I know you wanted a mainstream crowd to see your work! Now that you’ve made “Pineapple Express” and everyone knows your name, give them something else to respect you for!

Smith’s Verdict: *

Reviewed by Tanner Smith

How could John McTiernan, the director of “Predator” and “Die Hard,” have made a film that was so unbelievably boring? It’d be one thing if “Medicine Man” was dumb and witless, which it is (don’t get me wrong). But “Medicine Man” is really an endurance exam, with the questions being: How long can I endure a bad actress and a practical “king-of-cool” actor constantly bantering with one another? How long can I endure a story that is all tell and no show? How long can I stay awake?

Man, did I hate this movie. At least with most bad movies, there is at least something interesting to keep you watching and hoping something good will ultimately come of it. But this is just much ado about nothing.

Lorraine Bracco stars as a Bronx scientist who talks tough and takes no nonsense. Sean Connery is an eccentric researcher who has been living in the Amazon rainforests for about six years, studying jungle potions and sickness cures. Bracco is out there because the organization she works for (which is funding his experiments) wants to know what he’s doing out here in the jungle with Indian natives. What she discovers is that Connery has actually found a cure for cancer. But because he’s running low on it, having experimented on it too much, he and Bracco must trek across the jungle to get to a place where a lot of this cure can be found. But they must hurry, as the place is about to be bulldozed.

Now to be fair, the look of the film is first-rate. You do get a sense that you’re there in the Amazon rainforest, hiking along with these characters. But when there’s nothing substantial in the dialogue or characterization, and also when there’s hardly any action to be found here, do you really want to stay here for about an hour and 40 minutes?

There’s also a nice scene involving a rope-and-pulley setup that allows Connery and Bracco to make their ways up to the treetops. From there, they can get a good view of the land, and so do we.

But then it’s back to the ground, where our main characters are. Sean Connery is sometimes known for making anything watchable, and while he does do a decent job here, he’s not enough to save the movie from its overlong, boring dialogue scenes that try to whimsically entrance us with the joys and mysteries of nature and a non-too-subtle environmental message. Half of the time, I couldn’t keep up with what was going on, and ultimately I didn’t care.

I’m sure Lorraine Bracco can deliver a fine performance, given the right director (see her work in Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas”). But it’s obvious that this actress has a very limited acting range, and that’s clearly shown here. Bracco is teeth-grindingly awful here. She’s never convincing, she’s stilted in her line deliveries, and she never shuts up. And all her character does is complain, even when she shouldn’t. I get that her character is liberated, and Connery is supposed to ease her into some sort of romantic relationship, but this is just too much. Also, I didn’t buy any of the “chemistry” that supposedly was brought upon by Connery and Bracco together—they’re equally boring here. All they do is banter, banter, banter. Here’s a sample exchange, upon first encountering each other: “I’m not a girl!” “The hell you’re not!” “I’m your research assistant!” “The hell you are!” And it’s all downhill from there. “Romancing the Stone,” this is not. It’d be one thing if this was actually trying to be a “Tarzan” picture; it’d at least be fun. But instead, “Medicine Man” is just a bore.