Bad Teacher (2011)

It goes without saying that Bad Teacher was made to be Cody-porn. Just the thought of Cameron Diaz vs. Lucy Punch in a comedy deathmatch is almost too much. Hurrrrm. Not mention, the fact that it's directed by Jake Kasdan, who ably made Dewey Cox- an overwhelmingly underrated movie and written by Gene Stupnitsky & Lee Eisenberg, who write The (American) Office and wrote Year Zero, an other underrated comedy. All should be perfect and obstensively it is, it's just that it stands in the shadows of Bridesmaids and it's not as consistant. Herein lies the rub; Bridesmaids is completely populated with seasoned comedy actors and even though Jon Hamm isn't, he still knocks it out of the park. In Bad Teacher, Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake aren't funny enough because everyone else around them is really funny. Now don't get me wrong, they get to say funny shit and it's funny but that's more down to a hilarious script. Now in theory, Diaz playing a nasty conniving super bitch and Timberlake playing an asexual trustafarian dimwit AKA playing against type, is a funny idea but they sadly don't pull it off as well as the film should... Maybe it's something about beautiful people not being funny.
But that would be disprove by the stunning, talented, delightful MONSTER called Lucy Punch. I've not nearly professed all the ways she illuminates any screen she graces and i've professed a lot over the last 6months! but she does not disappointed again. Playing prissy, passive-aggressive nemesis of Diaz, she predictably kills her in every scene they share. There's nothing lacking, nothing she won't do to get a laugh and you feel that. Lucy Punch has no ego on screen.
As well as Punch, the cast is rounded out by Jason Segel, John Michael Higgins and Phyllis Smith, who are all sure hands here.
Now as much as I believe that the script is funny, that doesn't make it automatically amazing; Stupnitsky & Eisenberg, might be one of the current best American comedy writing teams but they've not perfected writing for a feature length yet and provide a particularly unrealistic super happy ending to the film, which is permissively aggressive and mean all the way through. But this is maybe their 2nd movie and they hardly coasting on laughs, they wrote a consistently funny film with at least 10 memorable funny moments and has maybe the best poop joke of year (maybe better than the one in Bridesmaid and that is a masterful poop gag)...

I watched Bad Teacher (2011) at the cinema.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Permissive (1970)...

You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger (2010)

Sometimes incisive, sometimes plain old tut- the ouvre of Woody Allen will never be completely admired nor completely written off.
These days he churns out films with an almost reckless abandon. A diplomatic could only describe him as prolific. Me, i generally like the guy. I love Small Time Crooks and Sweet And Lowdown; i liked Vicky Christina Barcelona and Whatever Works recently but he doesn't hit every time and while I appreciate the need to be active and creative... i don't see why he has to maintain this almost yeoman-like production line of films every year. No one in the western film industry works like that, in writing and directing a new film every year since 1983 (?!) and i guess we wouldn't mind if some of them didn't seem so aimless but then next year, maybe he's back on form again- you can never totally write him off. Despite moments and a great cast, 'You Will Meet...' is one of those aimless ones.
Most of his films are about romantic couplings and this one is as one might gather no different. It covers the entanglements of 6 or 8people- newly divorced old couple Gemma Jones and Anthony Hopkins, their daughter Naomi Watts and her husband Josh Brolin as well Freda Pinto, Antonio Banderas and Lucy Punch, who variously represent new starts for the 1st four.
One of the strange things about Woody Allen films is his voice and style are so unique to him that it bleeds through and you start hearing it in other male roles on his films; Michael Caine in Hannah and Her Sisters, John Cusack in Bullets Over Broadway amongst others. It can be curious and/or jarring. But when it's coming out of the mouths of Brolin and Hopkins it just seems unconvincing. Now I think those two are very accomplished actors and It's hardly the shark-jump of say, Stone Cold Steve Austin turning up in an Almodovar picture but these guys are just plain shitty at delivering Woody Allen dialogue. Like creaky. Like they've never seen a Woody Allen movie before...  but that can't be the case because you wouldn't turn up unless you had and he only gives you the script on the day (probably.) It's not just those guys- there are other actors that can't deliver the one-liners and you're stuck watching them fall flat. I am reticent to blame the actors though; you don't really elect to be in a Woody Allen movie, he picks you and I'm sure he only directs people by telling them simply either 'try it again another way' and 'don't do it again like that' until it looks like something he's happy with. Not that doesn't work sometimes but you have to be a significant character actor like Gemma Jones and the glorious Lucy Punch for that to work. It's like Allen is so goofy about how nuts it is that Hannibal Lektor is saying his words, he doesn't really care about what he does with it. When you watch Brolin doing it, you think if this was nebbish New Yorker Woody you might buy the ironic lechery and jagging-about he does but Brolin is a good looking Californian and it really does not land.


I watched You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger (2010) at the cinema.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Faster (2010)...

Dinner For Schmucks (2010)

First- go back to read what i said about the original of Dinner For Schmucks, Le Diner de Cons
Great. 
So the only way you can judge the remake of anything, when you've seen/heard/read the original is against what it does better and what it does worse.
I pretty much called it when i imagined what Dinner For Schmucks would be like, last month. It does focus on the 'dinner' element almost like a 3rd act that was missing from the original. Otherwise the 1st hour is very similar. The characters are not though. I'm sure i'll give anything with Paul Rudd or Carell in it a shot, a fair chance because they're good performers but they're really not right for the material here or the way they approach it is... off. Like Rudd can't really pull off 'asshole'. If he's seen to be acting like one it's kinda like when Superman goes off the rails in Superman 4? You're like 'stop it, you are gonna feel silly about this in hindsight ya big silly'. The guy who played his part in the original was an asshole, not a nice guy. Rudd probably volunteers to do the nightshift to the cat orphanage. Then Carell sadly does worse then Rudd but them Carell has a harder job- he has to be dumb and dull yet likeable. In fact i'd say the
tone of the whole thing depends on him being likeable, but his character is not likable. I do however like the mouse taxidermy thing, (it was matchstick buildings in the original)it's a really strong funny device and it makes you laugh and feel sorry for him but that doesn't make you likable. How could Brick and Brian Fontana fail me like this!
Anyway it's not all bad, at it's best, Dinner for Schmucks is a cavalcade of comic talent. Jemaine Clement, David Walliams, Kristen Schaal and Gilafinakis are fine here doing that thing you've seen them do before; Chris O'Dowd is really funny in his small part but Lucy Punch takes over every scene she's in. She's like the Nicki Minaj of this movie. I dare you not to love this crazy, sexy, scary, intense woman that she plays. She is tremendous and hilarious.
It's like everything this version tries to copy from the original it messes up and all the new stuff it improves on; not that it is in any way better but for example, Lucy Punch has a bigger role than the character had in the original and it's the best thing in the film but in the original, the Rudd character was having an affair with her character which made him more assholey but here she's a one night stand from years ago.
I was actually wrong in my prediction that Rudd tells Carell about the dinner premise and they break-up only to get together at the end- no, some how it causes their friendship to improve and becomes a call Carell to be more confident. Unsurprisingly they don't manage to land that idea well and the ending is quite unsatisfactory.
So Hollywood- don't remake films because you mess them up but because they'll always be judged against the original...

I watched Dinner For Schmucks (2010) on DVD, via LoveFilm.

My 2011 in Movies continues with Never Let Me Go (2010)...