Probably the best thing you can say about The Change-Up is that it’s not as bad as it looks. Actually, no, the best thing you can say is that there’s a lot of surprising and sweet nudity.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The plot is largely what’s laid out in the trailer: Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds are two friends, one’s married, one’s a swinging bachelor, respectively. One night they get drunk and take a quick squirt in an enchanted fountain while simultaneously declaring their mutual desire to be the other.

Morning comes, and they get their wish. Hi-jinx ensue as Reynolds struggles with the pressures of fatherhood and the big, lawyer-ish-looking account that’s looming, and Bateman rediscovers the downsides of bachelor life. A plot recap is unnecessary because it’s just something on which a string of gags involving baby excretions, pregnant women, masturbation, baby nudity, dancing vegetables, and silly walks to make you grow at least six pairs of hands.

Director David Dobkin (The Wedding Crashers) tries to get a laugh from nearly everything and, for the audience I saw it with, it worked. To the extent that their reaction to film became more interesting than the film itself. At first I was fascinated by the comic beats they ate up and the extent to which they were involved.

Continue Reading →

There’s no denying that zombies are hot right now. Of course, with that kind of burning press, you’d expect to see the undead walk in just about every form of mass media. But would you expect to see an entire film about zombies as a 3D animated film?

That’s what Focus Features and Laika is hoping for, as the team that brought us Coraline is getting back together for their newest film, ParaNorman. Here’s the breakdown from a Focus press release.

Currently in production, ParaNorman is being directed by Sam Fell and Chris Butler, from Mr. Butler’s original screenplay. Mr. Fell was director of The Tale of Despereaux and Flushed Away. Mr. Butler was storyboard supervisor on Coraline and storyboard artist on Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride. The voice cast includes Academy Award nominee Casey Affleck (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford), Tempestt Bledsoe (The Cosby Show), Jeff Garlin (Toy Story 3), John Goodman (Monsters, Inc.), Bernard Hill (Titanic), Academy Award nominee Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air), Leslie Mann (Rio), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (How to Train Your Dragon), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Let Me In), and Tony and Emmy Award winner Elaine Stritch (30 Rock).

If that star-studded voice cast isn’t enough to whet your appetite, what if we told you it was about a young boy who could speak with the dead? Here’s the synopsis.

Continue Reading →

We haven’t seen any of these body-switch comedies in the last couple years but I guess it was inevitable they would return. And, they have with Universal’s newest entry into the genre The Change-Up.

Late yesterday the company released a brand new Red Band trailer for the raunchy body-switching comedy where Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman switch identities and have to deal with the ramifications. Written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, the team that brought us The Hangover, and directed by Wedding Crashers helmer David Dobkin, this new film takes the somewhat tired formula and seems to give it a bit of new life.

Yes, the trailer actually has a few funny bits — although that’s not always a good indicator of anything. Still, these two actors are very appealing and it could be good.

Take a look at the trailer after the jump. By clicking through you certify you are old enough to know better blah, blah, blah. The Change-Up hits theaters on August 5th.

Continue Reading →

I don’t have much experience reviewing children’s movies, so, before writing this, I did some research to glean a few of the points prescient to their reviews. Fortunately the standard kid-flick critique doesn’t differ much from your standard, well, non-kid-flick review. The only theme uniting them all is to note whether adults will enjoy it as much as their brood (or whether either audience will enjoy it).

So let’s get that out of the way: The kids will probably enjoy it (the ones invited to my screening didn’t make too much noise, but that may have been due to the iron fists of their handlers); adults won’t mind it. Rio isn’t particularly sophisticated and comes with your basic (and I use this term only because it does very much apply here) cookie-cutter plot in which you already know everything that’s going to happen within the first 12 minutes, and, beyond that, there’s not a whole lot else—save for the location shots, which I’ll get to in a moment.

The story is that Blu (Jesse Eisenberg) is a rare Spix macaw, taken from his homeland of Brazil when he was a chick and shipped to Moose Lake, Minnesota, where his crate falls off the back of the truck and he’s adopted by Linda (Leslie Mann), a bookish girl who raises him over the next 15 years. Linda doesn’t make many friends in that time, but she does open a bookstore, and the story proper begins when Tulio (Brazilian actor Rodrigo Santoro), a bird scientist, drops by to inform Linda that Blu is one of the last of his species and must go to Brazil to mate with Jewel (Anne Hathaway), the other last of the species.

Continue Reading →

There may have been plenty of mixed emotions about Funny People, but before that film, writer/director Judd Apatow struck comedy gold with Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl in Knocked Up.

The film also starred plenty of Apatow regulars, such as Paul Rudd and Apatow’s wife Leslie Mann. Now, word is coming in that Apatow is planning on returning to the world of Knocked Up through the film’s B-story characters played by both Rudd and Mann. From Variety.

Apatow will write and direct the film, the first he’s helmed since 2009′s “Funny People.” Apatow, Barry Mandel and Clayton Townsend will produce.

In “Knocked Up,” Mann played Katherine Heigl’s older sister, who is married to Rudd’s character. Plot details are vague, and it’s not clear whether Heigl or Seth Rogen would reprise their roles from 2007′s “Knocked Up,” one of Apatow’s biggest successes with $200 million in worldwide box office.

The film is set to hit theaters in 2012, with Universal backing it. Expect to see some interesting viral stylings from both Apatow and Rudd, as they both frequent Funny Or Die.com, a site that Apatow is partnered with.

Fast, fun and stylish comedies are in short supply this year, so I was really looking forward to I Love You, Phillip Morris. But for all its wackiness, witty editing, colorful production design and terrific performances, by the end it was a movie I had suffered through more than enjoyed. That sounds worse than it is. I liked ILYPM a lot. I just wished I’d loved it.

Which is not to say the movie is a failure. I think it may have beeen the intention of co-directors John Requa and Glenn Ficarra to tell a dark story all along. And the increasingly troubling gap between the protagonist’s inner reality and the flashy filmmaking may be a brilliant device to unease us. If so, it worked.

The true story of a devoted husband, father and deputy cop, I Love You, Phillip Morris begins just before the moment of this upright citizen’s transformation to outrageous gay conman. The outrageousness is not the gayness, but the audacity of the frauds he perpetuates. Even more outrageous are his legendary escapes from jail—four times in five years, all on a Friday the Thirteenth (because his boyfriend, Phillip Morris, whom he meets in prison, was born on a Friday the Thirteenth).

Jim Carrey gives a balls-to-the-walls performance as Steven Jay Russell, the church organist-turned-gay-felon, attacking the character with his usual terrier-like zeal, but also with a deep infusion of darkness. Carrey has always been able to tap into a certain twisted place, and in the past it has divided critics and box offices, most notoriously in The Cable Guy, which, coming on the heels of the wildly popular Ace Ventura, left audiences reeling.

Continue Reading →

Jim Carrey’s career has been on the upswing lately. From hitting with the success of Yes Man to playing just about every character in Disney’s A Christmas Carol, he’s had a good year, and he plans to continue that with the new comedy I Love You Philip Morris.

From the writing/directing team of John Requa and Glenn Ficarra (Bad Santa, Bad News Bears), the film stars Carrey as Steven Russel, a conman who recently discovers his own homosexuality. Russel gets incarcerated for his crime and meets Philip Morris (Ewan McGregor), who he then falls in love with. Things then become zany as the film turns the Romantic Comedy on it’s head.

The movie will most certainly turn heads, as this is one of the first mainstream comedies to boast the flamboyancy of male homosexuality (outside of I Love You Man dancing around the subject). Lots of interesting tones that the film deals with, which you can catch a glimpse of in the trailer after the jump.

I Love You Philip Morris also stars Leslie Mann, and is hitting a theater near you on March 26th.

Continue Reading →