I found myself with time to kill in Tallahassee after a successful Fraternity conference; so I wandered over to the AMC on North Monroe to catch an afternoon showing of I Love You, Man.

Over the years, there always seems to be a group of actors that love appearing together.  You had Bogart and his crew, Sinatra and the Rat Pack, and the Brat Pack of the 80s.  In the 90s, Ben Stiller and his eclectic mix paved the way for Judd Apatow and his band of merry men.  One of the key indicators is the ability to weave all of the friends into cameo parts or supporting roles.  I Love You, Man is Paul Rudd’s attempt to move from sidekick to leading man.

The story is simple enough – guy never bonded well with other guys and is now in need of some male friends.  Jason Segel happens along and insanity ensues.  Rashida Jones offers nice side support as the understanding girlfriend.  Naturally, the movie is predictable, but its casting adherence to a simple story is what pulls it through.  It was interesting to see Segel take inspiration from “Barney Stinson” on How I Met Your Mother to create his own character.  Unfortunately, while a little Rudd is good, a whole lot of Rudd leads to a whole lot of blandness on-screen.

My advice: Not necessarily a must-see in the theaters, but more entertaining than some of the other offerings out there.

Faithful readers of TAM know that I am a big fan of going to midnight openings of big movies; better than going alone is going with a group of friends.  So I found myself enjoying dinner with David and Lisa at the Friendly Confines located across from the Regal at Waterford Lakes.  Not my favorite place to see a premier, but worth the sacrifice to go with friends.  Rich and Sarge soon joined us as we made our way over to join the screaming masses in the theater.  Sarge was soon dismayed to find out that we were bypassing The Jonas Brothers in 3D to watch a comic book.  He quickly found a new displeasure when the trivia slides started repeating after 6 slides.

After some interesting trailers (Terminator, Wolverine, Star Trek, everything turned yellow and black.  The obligatory cheering happened in our theater.  What followed was a three-hour (rounded) tale of heroes, villains, and humanity’s need to destroy itself.  The story begins with the death of a hero that causes others to wonder if they are being targeted.  As we are introduced to each hero, we learn the backstory and how they relate to one another.  To say that there are parallels to mainstream comic-book heroes is an understatement.  Here is a breakdown of some of them:

• Dr. Manhattan –> Superman, a solitary being surrounded by people who care.
• Nite Owl II –>  Batman, 30’s-70’s era, willing to get in the mix, but without a lot of the angst
• Rorschach –>  Batman, Frank Miller version, distrustful of everyone and willing to say so
• Silk Spectre II –>  Batgirl

The pacing of the story was good and the director did a good job of letting it visually unfold.  Probably the one thing that most audience members, including myself, were not quite prepared for were the strong sexual overtones.  Between multiple shots of Dr. Manhattan’s “Empire State Building” and the love scenes of two other heroes, I am surprised that the movie was allowed to keep an R-rating.  This is not because I disapprove, but because the MPAA tends to be rather prudish in these matters.

Of course I had to torture Rich at the end slightly by making him wonder if there was anything after the credits (there isn’t).  He left to get some sleep before work, which left David, Sarge, Lisa, and me to leisurely leave the theater.  This gave us some original thoughts by Sarge (”What the hell was with the butt crack of dawn? it was like Dr. Manhattan was pooping out rays of sunlight…”) and David telling us the difference between the comic book and the movie.

My advice:  see it on the big screen and see it with a group of friends — for if you do not watch it, then who will watch the Watchmen…?

The danger with wanting to go to the movies a lot is that you wind up going to see ones that you shouldn’t.  Such is the predicament that Rich and I found ourselves in last night.  Our movie choice was based on two criteria: it was about to start and we hadn’t seen it.  Going in, I told Rich that it had the likelihood of being awful.  After all, it had been 15 years since the first Street Fighter movie and that one was bad, to be kind.

The story of this one centers around a young girl named Chun-Li and her relationship with her father.  We meet the villains early on as they arrive to kidnap the father.  What follows is fairly formulaic — a mix of story and martial arts.

So what worked?

The movie was able to pull off keeping a story running that was engaging.  Not necessarily The Great Gatsby, but good enough in the style of Asian legends.  I liked the use of Robin Shou as the sensei for Chun-Li.  For those not familiar with him, he played Lui Kang in Mortal Kombat.

So what didn’t work?

Whoever was the casting director missed the boat completely by having Chris Klein attempt to play a hard-nosed cop.  Some guys can pull it off; others just don’t have it in them.  Klein should stick with the nice guy roles; he does not have the fire within to be able to come across as a Bruce-Willis type.  Remove every scene he was in and the story flows better.  Anyone could lead the final assault team and not affect the story.  I actually broke out into laughter at some of his attempts to be cool.

My advice:  Catch it on cable or cheap DVD; no need to see it on the big screen unless you are just dying to see something at the movies…

The nice thing about seeing bad movies is that you know you will eventually see a good one.  It is this determination that I had when I went to see Taken the day after watching a movie born in hell.

Liam Neeson is the father of a girl who lives with her mother and rich stepfather.  He is also a man who worked for the CIA for many years as an operative.  Neeson quits the CIA in an attempt to be closer to his daughter, but has not been that successful in those attempts.  The daughter comes to him, wanting permission to go to Paris for the summer.  He reluctantly agrees and the movie takes off from there.

After she is kidnapped, Neeson turns into a more-determined version of Mel Gibson’s character from Ransom as he rushes to Paris and begins to dismantle the city.  What follows is a straight-forward action movie with good pacing and mostly realistic events.

My advice:  Worth the full-price ticket — go watch Qui-Gonn handle a gun better than a lightsaber….

What is it about January and February that movie studios want to avoid releasing anything interesting?

Sunday night found me wrapping up a meal out with friends and wanting to still do something.  It was too late to join a poker tournament, but a movie theater was across the street.  More importantly, it had a movie starting in 5 minutes.

I love trailers and I was hooked into this movie by the trailer.   However, trailers are sometimes evil and hide how bad a movie actually is.

Everything that Love Actually is, this movie isn’t.  It tries to tell 4-5 intertwining stories about love and finding love, but it falls flat.

What does it say when the most likeable, most realistic character in the whole thing is Ben Affleck?  It bodes ill for any romantic movie; after all, he gave us Bounce and Pearl Harbor.

My advice: Not worth watching in any medium, but not necessarily the worst movie I have ever seen…