evan alRIGHTy - or - movies i saw on vacation

i really haven't been watching a lot of movies the last 4 months, been mostly in a TV mood. well i got to check out a few movies on vacation that i've been wanting to see but not DYING to see. here's some impressions:

- The Last Mimzy - this was the free movie on the flight to Phoenix, and i was still up when they showed it, so i decided to tune in. i remember seeing the early trailers for this movie and then i have no idea when they even released it - i guess maybe it didn't do that well. i thought it looked interesting at the time... after viewing it, i'm not sure what i think about it.

the trailers showed a LOT of what happens in the movie, and the big reveal of what's going on wasn't enough of a surprise, even though it was a pretty cool premise. i think the story was just told wrong... i liked the story, but it was bad storytelling.

also, it seemed to try to cater to kids and adults, but got lost somewhere in the middle. never was too sure about the inclusion of the hippie couple, and when Homeland Security got involved it just was a little too... real? i don't know.

i think what could have helped the storytelling was if we got a bit of the other side of the story peppered in to what the children were experiencing, even if we didn't know what was going on at the time - then we as an audience could have looked back at those little windows into the overall story and been like "oh, i get it now!"

- Ghost Rider - again, i was interested to see this, but really only because it did so well at the box office and didn't seem to be getting terrible reviews. MY review? it was terrible. the special effects were wasted on such non-story and horrible acting. bad all around... and not really even bad in a good way, like a bad B-movie (which is what i was hoping for).

- Grandma's Boy - an overexaggerated look at a video game company; more specifically, its testers. it's got a similar raunchy style to it that Code Monkeys (which i just wrote about) has, but it doesn't have nearly the amount of inside jokes. however, the raunch is just raunchy enough for some good laughs.

- The BeastMaster - i missed this movie growing up, and when i saw it on late nite Sci Fi Channel i knew i had to tune in. it's like Conan-lite, but not necessarily in a bad way. it was cheesy, but fun. if anything it ran a little long... and had weird pacing too - when he met up with his allies was a little late in the movie, and he defeats HIS main nemesis 30 minutes before the end of the movie, and then there's another battle with a whole other enemy! to be honest, i don't even know who the last battle was against! oh well, it was fun.

- Evan Almighty - the short of it is that i liked this movie a lot, maybe even more than i thought i would. however, i did have a few reservations.

first i thought Steve Carell was almost wasted in this part as he wasn't allowed to be his zany funny and wasn't allowed to be completely serious either. he just... was. they tried to give him character - oh he does funny dances, he's focused on his career not his family, he's doesn't like germs - but it was all surface stuff.

second was the flood.

in the predecessor, Bruce Almighty, that character got the power of God and it was a personal journey - sure he would do things that others would see, but in the end no one knew it was him, and no one knew it was God.

HERE we've got Evan building an arc and the entire world is watching - which is fine if the flood doesn't come... and i'm not ruining anything i don't think by saying that there is a flood of sorts that does come (the trailers are showing it, so i'm not ruining it) and the world takes notice - it has to! there was just a man that did what Noah did and then there's a flood... this is way beyond a personal journey, everybody saw it! they know it was Evan, and they know it was God... well, maybe not God, as there's a possibility he could be explained out of it... but everyone knows it was Evan!

and they don't touch on that at all. it's just a dangler that's left at the end... a pretty big one in my opinion. that's why Bruce Almighty is way better and this is more of a fun ride with a good message, but maybe not the best movie ever.

...and there you have it. if i had friends here to see movies with there's plenty in the theaters i'd like to see right now - Live Free or Die Hard, Transformers, Harry Potter 5. however, they'll probably have to wait until they're out on DVD and i'm home for Christmas or something.

- kawitchate