The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard

In 2009, a comedy film without Judd Apatow in the credits is anything but a sure thing. With that being said Jeremy Piven stars in The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard. This scarcely promoted film was drastically overshadowed by the weekend’s other releases District 9 and The Time Traveler’s Wife though it proved to be a fairly strong comedy. The deep cast of comedy regulars helps bring the laughs much easier and faster than Apatow’s Funny People, but these two movies landed on opposite sides of the comedy spectrum.

Piven guided the film between cocky entitlement and idiot humor and to be honest I thought it worked. Taking the emphasis off of his own supremacy in the second half of the film allowed for Piven to gain some sympathy from the audience and opened the door for the film’s funniest moments. In a move that was probably bad for marketing Will Ferrell’s character was not shown in the trailers or commercials. So when he comes on screen prepped to jump out of an airplane in an Abraham Lincoln outfit and bushy mustache the theater was surprised and thrilled. While practically every one of Ferrell’s lines was laugh out loud funny it did shed some light on how the film was missing something. I guess that something was just the anticipation factor that the American public and I both lacked leading up to the release.

Unfortunately, the majority of America missed out on one of the summer’s best comedies. The Goods showcased a strong script with laughs from all of the movie’s big players. It kept my attention with the multiple subplots based around Ving Rhames, David Koechner and others. I don’t think the story has enough depth to last past one or two views on DVD like The Hangover, or Superbad does but that’s not for every comedy. It definitely was good enough to get Jeremy Piven some more film parts. Hopefully that’s true. (7.5 out of 10)

District 9

This was a different kind of summer movie. While aliens have been done before they usually aren’t portrayed as exploited refugees in South Africa. But the extra-terrestrial presence isn’t really the focus of District 9. The film poses great similarities to the true events of southern U.S segregation, and the lynching of African-Americans. Racism at its core is put on display and before long I was left feeling sympathy towards the slimy insect people. But even more than them the Wikus character, played by virtually unknown actor Sharlto Copley, worked as a powerful protagonist. Copley was so convincing in fact that his conversations with the CG aliens were authentic enough to trigger emotion from the audience and his constant discomfort left me with a lump in the pit of my stomach throughout most of the film.

As is the case with many of this style sci-fi movie it’s the abundance of unnecessarily gory deaths that proved to be District 9’s biggest weakness. Now I have no idea if an alien laser gun would cause a human to explode into a pile of red goo but I thought it was an unintelligent touch to an otherwise clever script. Surprisingly, the goo bothered me more than the bug looking aliens (or prawns as their called) who I thought would be distracting before I screened the film. They did seem like they belonged in a Star Wars pod-racer though.

The combination of documentary style storytelling and traditional 3^rd person scenes makes the movie easier to follow than the entirely first person Cloverfield that many critics have compared it to. Though I think District 9 in many ways builds on the foundations Cloverfield laid down. If these films prove to be the future of science fiction then I think there will be many great films coming our way. (8.5 out of 10)

G.I Joe: Rise of Cobra

I think a great place to start my blog is with one of the movie events I’ve spent years preparing for, G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra. Now I had seen the same weak trailers that you did leading up to its release and I admit it did not look promising, but being born in the 80’s (and being a childhood fan) it was my duty to embrace the film. So I saw it and I liked it much more than the critics who slammed it. Let’s start with the weak points. The dialogue was absolutely terrible, especially in the first half of the film. A bunch of cheesy one-liners and over the top acting often overshadowed what was meant to draw in the viewer, and Denis Quaid, I expected more from you. You were awesome in the cinematic epic that was Parent Trap but the performance as General Hawk… terrible.

In all seriousness, I think the script got stronger over time and I did get into the movie. Every scene that Snake Eyes (Ray Park), or Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee) were featured in proved visually impressive. That accented with Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s strong yet underutilized performance as the beginnings of Cobra Commander made the movie memorable. And who saw Sienna Miller, and Marlon Wayans coming? For the first time these two make a case that they belong in movies as legitimate actors. It’s not like either of them are going to win an Oscar but still, I’ll take it.

So I enjoyed the film and look forward to the inevitable sequel, which hopefully has a new director that can better handle the big name cast. Fortunately, I have season one of the G.I Joe cartoon on dvd and the 1987 animated movie to hold me over. (7 out of 10)