We are all guilty of it.  There are some movies that we go see that we know are bad, but we want to see them anyway.  Movie studios take advantage of this because it allows them to be lazy and go for the easy money grab.  This is particularly true for that high-school/college crowd that will see anything that is on the screen.  Like most people, I have found that I have grown out of that mentality for the most part.  That said, I still have moments of weakness.

Sunday afternoon found the rare occurrence of Rich and I both having the afternoon free and wanting to see a movie.  Usually I do not allow Rich to pick the movie because he always manages to pick bad movies.  This time around, however, I had intentionally saved this movie for him in case we did want to see something.  So off to Premier Cinemas we went.  Warning bells started going off in my head when I saw that it was produced by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay.  Why would an action/fantasy flick have comedians as producers?  This could be bad…

H&G is basically the story of Hansel and Gretel after they escape the candy house.  They grow up, roaming the land and killing any witch they encounter…for a fee.  What follows is a fairly predictable story: town in trouble, H&G show up, witches attack, heroes give chase, heroes lose, then heroes plan glorious final battle.  There are no real plot twists, since the ones that might have been are telegraphed way too early.  The action sequences are what you would expect for this type of movie.  The casting of Jeremy Renner and Famke Janssen was done to ensure a decent-size box office; their roles could have been played by anyone.

Right about now, you are probably asking yourself if I liked any of it?

The answer is yes, quite a bit actually.

While the movie certainly had issues with being predictable to the point that I knew everything within the first 10 minutes, it was filmed in such a way as to give some credit to the audience.  By allowing images and visual sequences run without dialog that over-explains everything, the movie assumes the audience is smart enough to follow the story, understand the justifications, and, most importantly, understand the rules of the universe that govern this story.  Once I realized that, I could see the influence of Ferrell and McKay.  Improv and sketch comedy have one goal: to tell a story.  Often that story is predictable, but it is how the actors treat it that keep it from being boring.

The other feature I liked was the pacing.  In talking to Rich after the movie, I found myself using Van Helsing as a comparison tool for this movie.  Van Helsing tried to be serious and brooding, but even worse it was way too long at 2 hours/10 minutes.  H&G is treated like a roller-coaster: a thrill ride that you want to ride, but not spend all day on.  H&G’s pacing brought it in around 90 minutes, the perfect length for a movie like this.  It also allowed the jokes to occur at times and trusted the audience to know that this was simply a thrill ride with no substance.

While available in 3D, I watched it in 2D.  I would recommend not picking the 3D option, as half of the movie is at night and could be difficult to see with the glasses on.

My advice:  Worth seeing in the afternoon or at the dollar theater; go only if you want to enjoy the roller-coaster and do not care about predictability of it…

As much as we have embraced the noble hero in literature, TV, and film,  we also have gotten to a point where we want our heroes to have a dark side.  One of the arguments for revamping Superman in the comic books in the mid-80s was that he was too much of a “Boy Scout do-gooder.”  Batman was made darker through Frank Miller and Tim Burton.  Even Boba Fett was loved for being the “anti-hero.”

In 1999, Mel Gibson starred in Payback – a movie with the motto, “Get Ready to Root for the Bad Guy.”  In it, Gibson played a bad guy who had certain principles and felt that others needed to live up to agreements.  It was a decent movie that picked up fans after it moved to cable and home video.

Fast forward to 2012…

Donald Westlake, the author who created the character that was the basis for Gibson’s role, had passed away.  After his passing, his wife made a deal for one of his other books to be adapted to film, this time using the true character’s name, Parker.  Hollywood’s current go-to action guy, Jason Statham, was immediately signed and filming began.

Parker is adapted from Westlake’s novel, Flashfire.  Parker is our protagonist and we are introduced to him and his principles during a heist of the Ohio State Fair box office receipts.  What follows is the inevitable betrayal and pursuit of those who did him wrong.  The pacing was kept fairly tight for most of the movie, and most of the casting was good.  Inevitably, though, I found myself seeing similarity between many scenes and those found in Payback; this time, however, the movie wasn’t filmed in washed out blue tones.  The action sequences, while extreme in a couple of instances, were enjoyable and helped keep things moving.

For me, the weakest part of the movie was the involvement of Jennifer Lopez.  The movie’s pacing felt like it ground to a halt each time she had a scene, and the justification for radical character shifts in Lopez was extremely weak.  It really feels like the producers felt they needed a leading female and potential love story, and they shoehorned this in.  To be fair, I have not read the book, so I do not know how this is handled by Westlake.  The one positive is that Lopez did the best she could with what she was given.

My advice:  Worth catching at a matinee or dollar theater; full price if you really want to see a movie since not much is out right now…

Some movies I find hard to resist, regardless of how bad it may turn out.  As a result, I have seen my fair share of winners of losers, particularly in the mob/film noir department.  Just remember, though, for every LA Confidential, there is a Mobsters waiting around the corner.  Bonus points if you know that second movie without looking it up…and no judgment from me (after all I sat through it too).

Gangster Squad is the latest entry into this genre.  While being a work of fiction, it is based on Mickey Cohen’s attempt to “rule” Tinstletown.  Ruben Fleischer of Zombieland fame is given the daunting task tackling this story.  How he ended up with the job is a puzzlement since his only other movie was 30 Seconds Or Less, and that was a disaster.  With GS, Fleischer is given a juicy genre, an amazing cast, and a lot of potential.

Sadly it all feels wasted.

What we are given is a muddled story that seems like it was put together by 2-3 drunk friends after watching a marathon of The Untouchables, LA Confidential, and The Godfather Trilogy.  I can even hear the conversation now….

Friend1:  Dude, you know what we could do… we could take the part from The Untouchables about how he forms the team….

Freind2: Yea! Yea ! But instead of the old guy picking them, let’s have the wife do it.  The audience would never see that coming…

Friend3: And we have to pattern the hero after Elliot Ness. Heck, we could even get the actor to try to imitate Costner…

F1:  You know what else might rock in this pic – have one of the guys steal Mickey’s girl, just like Russell Crowe did in LA Confidential…

F2: Heck yea, but the twist is that his character is more like Kevin Spacey’s – they will never see the imitation…

F3:  And we have to get the guy playing Mickey Cohen to act like DeNiro playing Capone – this is going to be soooo cool…

I wish I was having to write this.  Josh Brolin deserves better; Sean Penn is too good to waste in a pale DeNiro imitation; and Ryan Gosling was not a good pick at all.  Cliché after cliché kills this movie and it is such a shame.  I know that the movie had to undergo some changes after the shootings in Colorado; however all they did was trade one bad scene for one that was equally bad, but not set in a theater.  The amount of bullets fired in this movie versus the amount of people actually hit is ridiculous – like 500 to 1.  That’s as bad as an old episode of The A-Team.

I did enjoy two things in this movie:  Emma Stone (may she get more period work like this; she was made to play an early Hollywood ingénue) and the soundtrack.

My Advice:  Skip the movie and buy the soundtrack – it’s a better way to spend $10.  If you can’t resist the allure of seeing it, just wait for it to hit cable…