Comedy – Page 23 – Matthew Liedke on Film

21 Jump Street review

Director:
Phil Lord & Chris Miller
Cast:
Jonah Hill
Channing Tatum
Dave Franco
Rob Riggle
Ice Cube
Rated: R

Channing Tatum is surprisingly at his best when in comedies.

21 Jump Street is the updated re-imagining of the 80s cop show. The film follows two characters, Schmidt (Hill) and Jenko (Tatum). During their high school years the two didn’t exactly get along with Jenko being popular and Schmidt not being in the ‘incrowd’ however they meet up again during their time at a police academy and team up to overcome their obstacles, becoming friends in the process.

The story picks up with them just as they are getting into their jobs on the force, however the two mess things up quite a bit and are re assigned to an operation called 21 Jump Street, where young looking cops infiltrate high schools to crack down on crime. The two are sent to a high school to deal with a new drug however Schmidt gets a little caught up in trying to have a new high school experience.

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Big Miracle review

Director:
Ken Kwapis
Cast:
John Krasinski
Drew Barrymore
Ted Danson
Dermot Mulroney
Rated: PG

It’s like the Free Willy genre is making a comeback lately.

Big Miracle is a movie inspired by the true events that happened in Alaska in 1988. Three whales became trapped by ice and had no way of getting to the ocean since there was only a single hole for them to get a breath from.

Because of this, news reporter Adam Carlson (Krasinski) does a story on it and attracts many volunteers and attention from the media from across the United States, however with so many coming together disagreements begin to arise. So they have to come together in whatever way they can to stay on task and save the whales.

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We Bought a Zoo review

Director:
Cameron Crowe
Cast:
Matt Damon
Scarlett Johansson
Thomas Haden Church
Colin Ford
Elle Fanning
Rated: PG

Out of all the investments a person can make…

We Bought a Zoo follows the true story of Benjamin Mee (Damon), a man who is trying to cope with the loss of his wife and still trying to raise his kids right. He finds this difficult to do though since every place in the town he lives in reminds him of his wife. To deal with this he decides to take a leap of faith and buy a new house which happens to be a zoo.

Benjamin and his two kids soon learn that the zoo is in bad shape. Most of the facilities are not up to regulation standards and the zoo has a chance of being shut down. So Benjamin decides to make the best of the situation and roll up his sleeves and work together with the head zoo keeper Kelly (Johansson) to keep the place open, during this time, he also has to reconnect with his son.

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Carnage review

Director:
Roman Polanski
Cast:
John C. Reilly
Jodie Foster
Kate Winslet
Christoph Waltz
Rated: R

No wonder the kids who fought each other did what they did with the parents that they have.

“Carnage” opens with two young boys getting into a fight and one of them ends up getting hit in the mouth. Because of the scuffle, the parents of both boys decide to meet. On one side is Michael (Reilly) and Penelope (Foster), and on the other is Alan (Waltz) and Nancy (Winslet).

The two couples are civil with each other at first however as time goes on they begin to have disagreements and arguments and it goes from couple against couple to just a full on free for all with everybody taking shots at each other making the whole situation into a giant trainwreck.

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Tower Heist review

Director:
Brett Ratner
Cast:
Ben Stiller
Eddie Murphy
Matthew Broderick
Gabourey Sidibe
Tea Leoni
Alan Alda
Casey Affleck
Michael Pena
Rated: PG-13

This film felt like a last ditch effort by Murphy, Stiller and Broderick to have their careers recover.

Tower Heist follows the character Josh (Stiller), who is the general manager at a luxurious apartment tower complex. Josh runs a tight ship at the Tower and seems to have everything in line. However his world is spun around when he finds out that one of the residents, Arthur Shaw (Alda) turned out to be a Wall Street man who has many accounts of corporate crime.

This leads Josh to find out that Shaw stole nearly all of the pension money from the employees of the Tower. After this, Josh decides to get back at Shaw by stealing some of his money, and to do this he recruits some of the other employees of the tower as well as a thief that he met earlier by the name of Slide (Murphy.)

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The Big Year review

Director:
David Frankel
Cast:
Jack Black
Owen Wilson
Steve Martin
Rosamund Pike
Rated: PG

Birding as it’s called seems nice enough sometimes in this movie, if it didn’t involve spending thousands of dollars to travel all over the world.

The film is told from the character Brad’s (Black) perspective, but it follows the story of him as well as two other men, Stu (Martin) and Kevin (Wilson). The three characters are all going after what is known in Bird enthusiast terms as “A Big Year” where people seek out to see the most species of birds they can in one year.

The movie follows the characters through their year as they not only travel the world, but deal with new friendships, romance, births and other personal experiences. It also features problems that arise with having such a commitment to this hobby when other things are happening with their family.

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50/50 review

Director:
Jonathan Levine
Cast:
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Seth Rogen
Anna Kendrick
Bryce Dallas Howard
Rated R

50/50 follows the story of Adam (Levitt), a 20-something who has a steady job, a girlfriend, a house and keeps himself in shape. However, his life is completely thrown upside down when he goes to the doctor for back pains and discovers he has a rare form of cancer on his spine. After researching about it he discovers his chances are 50/50.

The rest of the film follows his personal journey through his treatment, meetings with a psychologist (Kendrick), dealing with a relationship with his girlfriend Rachel (Howard) and spending time with his friend Kyle (Rogen).

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Crazy Stupid Love review

Director:
Glenn Ficarra, John Requa
Cast:
Steve Carell
Ryan Gosling
Julianne Moore
Emma Stone
Analeigh Tipton
Jonah Bobo
Kevin Bacon
Rated: PG-13

Predictable? At times yes, but boy does it work.

Crazy, Stupid, Love follows the character Cal Weaver (Carell), a man who immediately finds out that his wife Emily (Moore) wants a divorce and informs him that she cheated on him with a man named David Lindhagen (Bacon). After finding out, the two split up and Cal lives on his own in an apartment. However, he becomes bored and heads to a local night club and tries to drink his problems away.

While there a young man named Jacob (Gosling), who is a smooth talking ladies man, takes pity on Cal and decides to help him out by getting him into some new clothes and meeting new women. However one woman, Hannah (Stone), a law graduate becomes one girl that Jacob can’t seem to seal the deal on. As the film goes on Cal enjoys his new life of being single a bit, but it eventually leads to things becoming more complicated.

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“No Strings Attached” got it wrong, this got it right.

“Friends With Benefits” follows the story of Dylan (Timberlake), an editor who has just been offered a job as editor for a major magazine. Upon arriving in New York, Dylan meets Jamie (Kunis), who is his sort of temporary agent to help get him the job. Before going to work, Dylan and Jamie spend some time together exploring the city and eventually become good friends.

After Dylan gets the job he settles into the city and continues his friendship with Jamie. Eventually the two get really close however do not want to start a relationship, with both of them having bad break ups in the past. The two then decide to just have casual sex instead of a relationship so they won’t have to worry about having the issues of dating, however this raises come complications through out the film.

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Horrible Bosses review

Director
Seth Gordon
Cast:
Jason Bateman
Jason Sudeikis
Charlie Day
Jennifer Aniston
Colin Farrell
Kevin Spacey
Jamie Fox
Rated: R

One part where this movie failed was making a convincing argument that Jennifer Aniston’s character was really a horrible boss.

The film follows three characters, Nick (Bateman), Kurt (Sudeikis) and Dale (Day). All have fairly average jobs and life would probably be going just smoothly for them in the day-to-day grind of the work place, if not for them having the worst bosses in the world. Nick’s boss Mr. Harkin (Spacey) tricks Nick thinking he’s getting a promotion, Kurt has to deal with his former bosses son Bobby (Farrell) taking over the company and running it into the ground and Dale has the misfortune of having a boss played by Jennifer Aniston who wants to sleep with him when he’s already engaged.

Being completely fed up with their situations in their careers, they decide to take action and hire a hit man to get the job done. They go to a bar in a bad part of town and meet the character Mother Fucker Jones (Fox), a man who says he can get the job done. However they soon find out that Jones just got out of prison and can only be their murder consultant and that they have to pull off the killing on their own.

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