Review: 21 Jump Street (2012)

By Aaron Jankowski

I have been guilty of trashing on Hollywood for recycling the same old story over and over, and have ragged on remakes and reboots.

But sometimes these reboots just click, and 21 Jump Street is one of those films.

Perhaps it is because I have never seen the show the film is based off of that I enjoyed it so much, or maybe it’s because it doesn’t matter if the story has been done before, as long as it is funny.

In case you are unaware of the story, 21 Jump Street, directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, follows Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) as they graduate from police academy, flounder as bicycle cops and finally come into their own in a re-established undercover operation to bust a high school drug operation.

When we first meet Schmidt and Jenko, they are in high school, and are polar opposites. Schmidt is smart, and Jenko is a jock, so obviously they don’t get along. But once they meet up again in the police academy, they realize they can help each other get over their deficits and become best friends as they enter a life of “being total bad asses.”

After graduating from the academy, they are positioned as bicycle cops. This is a short sweet outing that has a lot of humour based on how bored they are.

When they mess up an arrest because Schmidt is out of shape and Jenko does not know the Miranda rights, their chief, Nick Offerman, who has had enough, ships them off to an undercover operation based out of a church on Jump Street.

When Offerman is explaining the operation to Schmidt and Jenko, he says it is a rehashed project because no one in charge is creative anymore so they just repackage old ideas and hope no one notices. The brute honesty and acceptance of what the directors are doing here was a breath of fresh air. It let me know this film does not take itself serious.

There are numerous other occasions where this laid back attitude is displayed, and each time, it brings laughs.

As one might expect, Jonah Hill carries a lot of the comedic weight, but Channing Tatum was terrific as well. Maybe he was so good because I didn’t expect much from him? But nonetheless, he was terrific, providing more laugh out loud moments then Hill, even.

The two played off of each other so well, I would be disappointed to not see them in a film together again.

The plot has some creepiness to it, in the form of a love interest forming between Schmidt and a girl at the high school. The writers force a line into her dialogue that states she is 18, which legitimizes it a little bit, but it is still a little weird, and not at all addressed.

The supporting cast does a great job at providing laughs, especially Rob Riggle as the gym teacher and Ice Cube as their angry Captain (Yes, this cliché is addressed as well.)

Dave Franco is excellent as Eric Molson, the main distributor for the drug supplier Schmidt and Jenko are there to find.

The film drags a bit in the second half when, like most comedies feel obligated to do, the characters start to learn lessons and the jokes are replaced with tid bits of drama. However, these parts are not heavy enough to anchor down the high flying action and comedy of 21 Jump Street.

SCORE:                 7/10

ACTING:               8/10

EFFECTS/VISUAL:             6/10

WRITING:            8/10

DIRECTING:        7/10

OVERALL:            36/50

TAKE AWAY THOUGHT: It is a wonderful thing when you enter a theatre not knowing what to expect and you end up spending the next two hours of your life laughing and smiling. I will be purchasing 21 Jump Street on DVD for sure.

Review: Friends With Kids(2012)

By Scott Jeffrey

Friends With Kids is written and directed by Jennifer Westfeldt, Her partner John Hamm also agreed to kick in on this feature and star in a supporting role. The story is an interesting one, but for those expecting another comedy like Bridesmaids, as Friends With Kids have much of the same cast, prepare for a whole different experience.

Friends With Kids centers around the idea of growing up, and how two friends Jason and Julie, (Adam Scott and Jennifer Westfeldt) within a group of friends are left out when the rest of the group seems to be all getting married and having children. It seems as though the other couples Missy and Ben (Kristen Wiig, John Hamm) and Leslie and Alex (Maya Rudolph and Chris O’Dowd) in their tight knit group do not have any time for Jason and Julie, what with all of their responsibilities to their children.

Jason and Julie make a pact then and there, they both want children, but have not found their special someone. After being best friends for years Jason and Julie know everything about one another and decide that if mr or ms right isn’t coming along they might as well just have children with each other.

Laying down some ground rules, Jason and Julie can date other people, and plan to split the responsibility of the child 50/50. Some of the funniest moments in the film come when they announce that they are going to try and get pregnant, to their friends.

The two indeed end up getting pregnant and giving birth to the child. But shortly after the baby is born Jason is anxious to get back on the horse. Meeting a woman in the park Jason starts a new relationship with someone named Mary Jane (Megan Fox). It is with the start of the relationship that he begins to fall short in his parenting, with Mary Jane being a bit younger and not wanting kids. Julie begins to see romantic feelings that she has for Jason. But she too meets another man Kurt (Edward Burns) and starts to date, leaving them somewhat at odds for who will be taking their child on respective date nights.

All of these events come to a head, when all of the friends, all of the couples and all of the kids go on a skiing vacation. Here we see the cracks in relationships, the worst of which is between Missy and Ben, who are on the verge of divorce. There is a powerful dinner scene, where John Hamm goes into a fit of rage with intensity that I haven’t even seen him reach as Donald Draper on Mad Men. Screaming with scotch in hand at Kriten Wigg “I didn’t rape you to have this baby!”. The scene is one of the best in the film, but that said, goes to show this is not some light hearted comedy.

After the Ski trip many skeletons fall out of individual closets, but what will it mean for the rest of the couples and pseudocouples over the rest of the film?

This had some interesting moments to it, Jason’s nickname for Julie “Doll” seemed to really get under my skin, and somehow by calling her that it made his character seem like he was in a student film.

Chris O’Dowd also tries to put on an American accent for this piece, and it really doesn’t faire so hot. His voice just sounds weird.

This turns into more of a drama at times really. The laughs are few and far between, granted Friends With Kids does have its moments, the best of which comes when all of the friends are around. The movie does have somewhat of an interesting idea to it, but with all of the films about relationships with no strings attached, it’s quite hard to see this one as being anything different. It very nearly tries to be like a Woody Allen New York romance story, but falls terribly short.  Most of the time I spent watching this wishing It would just cut into more time with the friends, and less time with the couple and kids.

Score: 5/10

Acting: 7/10

Effects/Visuals: 5/10

Writing: 5/10

Directing: 6/10

Overall: 28/50

Take Away Thought: The film trailer that states, “You saw them in Bridesmaids, you’ll love them in Friends With Kids.” Complete crock of shit, these movies could not be more different. I don’t know where else they are going to be able to take this no strings attached romance movie, but my god they are milking it. 

Film Review: John Carter (2012)

By Aaron Jankowski

Disney’s John Carter, written and directed by Andrew Stanton, is a visual feast but loses a lot of steam when the warring stops and the talking starts.

John Carter stars Taylor Kitsch as the title role, and Lynn Collins as a princess of the alien race Helium, Dejah Thoris.

The film, based off of the series of books written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, starts off on Earth, as we are introduced to John Carter, a former captain of the Confederate Army during the American Civil War, as he is searching for a cave of gold. His hunt is interrupted when Col. Powell, played wonderfully if not briefly, by Bryan Cranston, tries to conscript Carter to help him hunt down natives. Carter tries to escape Powell multiple times which provides good comic relief the first time, but quickly grows tiresome (sadly, this is a trend in the film.) Once Carter finally escapes, he is chased by Powell and his men into the desert where they run into a group of natives. When Powell is shot during the skirmish that ensues, we are showed John Carter’s inner good when he circles around and saves him.

While Carter and Powell are looking for a place to hide from the natives, they find exactly what Carter was looking for, the cave of gold.

Inside the cave, Carter is confronted by a stranger who attacks him, we later find out this man is a Thern, who are immortals that we later find out are the baddies of the film. It ends up the cave is a transporter used to send people from Earth to Mars, as long as they have the right medallion and know the proper phrase. While Carter is inspecting the dead Thern, he ends up being transported to Mars.

Does this sound confusing? Because once Carter lands on Mars, things only get worse.

Stanton must have believed that he could not leave anything from Burroughs books out. The plot on Mars is ripe with political unrest and civil war between two alien cities (though the race looks human minus a few red tattoos), the city of Helium and Zodanga.

The first aliens Carter encounters, however, are the Tharks. These guys look alien. They have four arms, horns and are tall skinny and green.

The Tharks are much like the natives on Earth, they are sitting back and watching as the “more advanced” cities of Helium and Zodanga battle it out, waiting for them to eliminate themselves.

Carter is instantly adopted into the Thark numbers because of his ability to jump tremendous heights and lengths (due to the density of his bones and the difference in gravity on Mars...)

The Thark leader is voiced by Willem Dafoe, who does a fine enough job as the enthusiastic but stern Tars Tarkas.

Much like the comedic escape attempts, there is a drawn out “humorous” scene when Carter learns how to walk with the lower gravity. (Note to writers: a man falling on his face is only funny so many times.)

While the first act of the movie moved rather slow, the film picks up a bit when Carter gets to Mars.

The first taste of the battle between the two human like cities comes when Princess Dejah Thoris attempts to escape Helium to avoid marrying Sab Than, the merciless leader of Zodanga who is aided by the Therns. (Yes, the two cities are at work, but a marriage between the leader of one and the princess of the other is supposed to bring peace, blah blah blah.)

Sab Than attempts to shoot her ship out of the air and a futuristic dog fight breaks out while the Tharks merely watch from the ground and take bets. 

When Dejah is bucked from her ship and is holding onto the edge for her life, Carter notices she looks human. His instinct is to save the only other human he has seen on the planet. The only thing is, his instinct to save someone who looks human leads him to kill countless other human looking creatures. I suppose we are supposed to focus on the sword play rather than the logic though.

Long story short, Dejah knows how to get John Carter back to Earth, but she would prefer if he stayed and helps Helium win the war.

At first, Carter refuses, but much like we saw him save Powell at the beginning, his inner good guy takes over and he helps fight for Helium.

As you may well be able to tell, one of the biggest draw backs to John Carter is its incredibly detailed political unrest. It is an interesting story, but seems way too congested. Imagine if other films inspired by the John Carter books through their entire plot on you at once, such as Star Wars.

It is just too much.

Because of this, the film that runs only about 130 minutes feels like it is well into three hours long. It also doesn’t help that Kitsch delivers a lot of his lines with a Christian Bale circa Dark Knight type throaty voice. It was annoying when a great actor did it; it’s almost unbearable when a not so good one does it. That said, Kitsch was brought in to look good almost naked and kick ass, and he did both.

The script does have a few genuine classic lines; however, the best of them are delivered in such passive non-memorable ways. The best of which, seemed completely out of place. As if Stanton came up with it on the fly and had to just randomly drop it into the script.

Lynn Collins was good as the half naked princess, but she wasn’t really asked to deliver too much. (For the record, Star Wars also wins the battle of half naked princesses.)
The film wraps its self up rather nicely. The audience gets its big final battle it is dying for by the end of the film, and it even packs a little bit of a surprise.

Score: 8/10

Acting: 5/10

Effects/Visuals: 9/10

Writing: 5/10

Directing: 5/10

Overall: 32/50

Take Away Thought: Sure, George Lucas and James Cameron got some inspiration from the John Carter books when writing Star Wars and Avatar, but the problem is, they made their films first. This means that despite John Carter being the source material for a lot of the visuals you’ll see in the film, it still feels clichéd and done, because it has been done, and much better in those respective films. It should also be noted that I was uncomfortably bored in the theatre during a lot of this movie. Whenever there wasn’t a battle, I was bored.

Film Review: The Sitter (2011)

By Scott Jeffrey

Jonah Hill is in the driver’s seat for this mismatched comedy, with aims to take Hill’s raunchy style and package it into something that could be enjoyed by both adult and young adult. Honestly if they had taken a few f bombs and a few plot items out, I believe this one could have been just that.

The film walks a really strange line in between something that they would put on family channel, and something that would normally carry an R rating. Some parts seem as though it is holding back.

The plot centers around Noah (Jonah Hill) was sort of a loser who’s dropped out of college and is now living with his mother. With no prospects of employment is lured into a babysitting job taking care of three kids. Slater (Max Records), Blithe (Landry Bender) and the adopted son Roderigo ( Kevin Hernandez). Noah has been seeing a girl (Ari Graynor) or rather being used by a girl and he believes her to be his girlfriend. She gives him a call and urges him to ditch his plans babysitting, and join her at a party where she promises to finally have sex with him as long as he brings her cocaine.

Noah, out of weakness steals the woman’s van of whom he’s babysitting for, and with the children in tow goes to seek out his girlfriend’s drug dealer Karl (Sam Rockwell). After entering Karl’s bodybuilding shop, the drug deal is interrupted by Roderigo, a troublemaker, who comes in from the van, needing to use the bathroom. After leaving it is revealed that Roderigo has stolen a dinosaur egg container which Karl uses to store drugs, and it’s full of cocaine. Noah and the children are then caught in a race for their lives against Karl and his gang.

The really strange part after hearing all of this, is that they saw fit to have each of the kids learned an important lesson, bringing in the whole Disney family channel sort of vibe. Noah has a sitdown with each one of the kids and they talk out their problems, all well being in mortal danger chased by both cops and drug dealers.

I wasn’t expecting much but I got a few laughs. The majority came in the first 5 min. The interaction with the kids is a little bit funny, but there is a lot of really boring moments. The preachy bits that are supposed to be heartwarming, really don’t seem to fit. Things also seem to be tedious as each kid seems to have one shtick and Prater on about it like a broken record. Even Sam Rockwell as Karl, the wild and crazy drug dealer, gets old after the first scene he’s in. I would’ve sooner seen Noah on the flight for his life, all by himself, cursing like a sailor.

Music visuals and acting were all afterthoughts this film seems like it was just a paycheck not a single iconic scene will stick with me save maybe the situational humor from the opening one.

Score: 4/10

Acting: 3/10

Effects/visual: 3/10

Writing: 3/10

Directing: 3/10

Overall: 21/50

Take Away Thought: If you want a really mindless film to watch that you haven’t seen before, throw this on. Just do not go in with high hopes whatsoever. This film isn’t quotable and barely worthy of conversation. It’s a time killer, and a difficult one to see all the way through.