The Heartbreak Kid (2007)

the_heartbreak_kidSo this is how far Ben Stiller has come in his years. He went from rather ingenious comedy in his old FOX show now starring in remakes of romance comedies that try to break free from the doldrums with over the top sex comedy, and utterly flat improv with his father who plays (surprise, surprise!) a wacky outspoken senior citizen. And trying to break from the conventions, he also pretty much dives head first in to them with endless montages set to forgettable pop rock, and there’s even a prat fall with a bad stunt double that the Farrelly brothers rely on when everything Stiller does fails to draw even the slightest of chuckles.

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Along Came Polly (2004)

Out of the entire movie, the only person that leaves unscathed is the person who doesn’t get a lot of the spotlight: Hank Azaria. It sucks he doesn’t do a lot more roles because this man is hilarious and truly steals the beginning of the movie with his role as a scuba diver nudist who steals Stiller’s character’s wife away. He’s such a funny man, and it’s a shame we never see more of him, pun not intended. So this is what comedies have become. Mediocrity at its finest. Throughout the entire movie you take two people, the male a comedian, the female a straight man, and all of it is just so mediocre while the movie is touted as funny as hell, you can see throughout the entire movie, while not laughing once, the writers are screaming at you from behind the camera, “This is funny! This is Ben Stiller! How can you not be laughing?! Are you mindless!”

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Envy (2004)

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Here’s my pitch for a product: A spray that causes really bad movies to vaporize into air. The first victim I’d choose for the spray would be “Envy”. This is a heaping helping pile of excrement. “Envy” is purely and utterly awful and I just don’t know where a plot with such potential, and a cast of great actors could have possibly taken a turn for the worst. Now, if I’m not mistaken, this is a comedy… isn’t it? Or at least it was supposed to be. Well there were Jack Black, Ben Stiller, and Amy Poehler, and yet I didn’t laugh once.

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Starsky & Hutch (2004)

starsky_and_hutch_ver6_xlgUnlike “The Brady Bunch”, “Starsky & Hutch” was a show that tried to be taken seriously, but clearly warranted spoofing. I mean seriously, how can you take a cop show seriously when it’s two inept cop characters ride around “undercover” in a very noticeable conspicuous large bright cherry red gran turino? It was a fact that caused many television viewers to make fun of, and it’s also very focused on here with an exaggerated sequence that brought the spirit of the show very well. Now, the teaming of Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller would be very funny to see had it not been the thousandth time they’ve teamed up together as partners as seen in movies like “The Royal Tenenbaums”, and the awful “Zoolander”.

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