“Bruce Almighty” makes the message perfectly clear; everything has a consequence. Every choice, every reflex has a consequence and everyone pays for it in the end. Bruce is taught that there are people far worse than he could ever imagine though he refuses to see beyond his own self-centered self obsessed world to discover that. He pulls in the moon and creates stars for his girlfriend one night and ends up causing a massive monsoon on the other side of the world, he grants everyone’s blessings with a “yes” answer thus causing chaos, even granting everyone the win in the lottery and people only getting 17 to 20 dollars. It’s never that simple, it can’t be that simple and Bruce discovers that with terrible results.
Tag Archives: Romance
The Battle of Shaker Heights (2003)
“The Battle of Shaker Heights” is the second offering released and made from the successful HBO reality series “Project Green light” which chronicles the search for a screenplay and director in which Ben Affleck and Matt Damon will produce for one million dollars. The main reason to watch “Battle of Shaker Heights”? The cast. Though the characters are so under-developed, the cast does their best and they manage to make this memorable. Amy Smart gives a great performance as the sexy older woman with mystique and is pretty good with her character.
Chasing Papi (2003)
Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003)
This loud messy film was just as bad as the original, and possibly worse for wasting great actors. This hour and a half messy, loud, clumsy and clunky cartoonish action flick pulls a double dose of terrible with a plotline so predictable it might have come off the show. In an attempt to retrieve some magical rings which hold information, the angels must confront an evil ex-angel Madison Lee who betrays the Charlie the talking box and wants to corrupt the agency. Now the girls must confront her henchman before Madison discovers the identity of every client under the government’s witness protection program. Perhaps if approached more seriously and perhaps if given three leads who could actually act, we’d probably had seen a decent action flick. The three leads ham it up, and look as if they’ve been on Ritalin acting like a bunch of bubble headed numbskulls.
Gigli (2003)
Everything you’ve heard about “Gigli” is true, and then some. Much publicized and talked about, “Gigli” was said to be a blockbuster potential with a very high budget and the top notch cast, well, top notch depending on how you look at it. A mildly talented actor and mildly talented actress teamed together to form this piece of cinematic fecal matter. Larry Gigli is a brainless stooge for the local mobster who love what he does. It’s not pronounce giggly, no, not Hilie, no, but Geely, which, Gigli so eloquently states, “rhymes with really” which caused me to shout “So?!” It rhymes with really? What sense does that make? I guess it establishes the amount of brains he has, but the terrible screenwriters spawned that little tidbit in an attempt to garner a memorable movie quote and really was the only word they could think of.
Gigli, played by Ben Affleck whose Jersey accent mysteriously appears and disappears is ordered to take care of a mentally disabled guy named Brian. After the two exchange introductions in an obnoxious scene derived from “Rain Man”, Gigli takes Brian to his home and has to keep him there. There, the two’s relationship is hardly friendly and in walks Ricki ala Jennifer Lopez whose Jersey accent also appears and disappears and sometimes is exaggerated. Her introduction is an attempt at sexual but reveals she’s there to help him look after Brian. As would be expected, the two don’t take a liking to one another, but soon learn to like each other, as they do Brian. Now Brian would be a good character had he not been so obnoxious and badly performed by Justin Bartha who makes Brian a shrill and rather annoying character with no redeeming qualities.
With a really bad imitation of Dustin Hoffman from “Rain Man” he walks around bobbing his head and spouting little sentences while occasionally breaking into song singing old school rap music to himself, a plot device which was intended to be charming, but just adds to the obnoxious appeal to this character. However, the two equally obnoxious henchmen begin to admire one another and Brian but soon learn their liking for one another is getting in the way of the job, oh and did I mention Lopez’ character is gay? Anyway, the two engage in a lot of forced, trite, and overly analytical dialogue with one another as an attempt to get the audience either dazzled or confused within their nonsensical rants to one another.
Had this been a small budget film it would have had an excuse for its quality, but this is so bad but it looks so custom-tailored to be good, that its self-expectation becomes its downfall. Lopez seems to go all out with her dialogue which she spouts, but its obvious by her expressions that even she doesn’t know what in heaven’s name she’s talking about, so the delivery of her “intelligent” monologues and seven syllable words are very forced, and very trite. There’s even one very annoying and drawn out monologue in which the two discuss the intricacies of the female and male genitalia while Lopez flexes her body during yoga, maybe in an attempt to hypnotize the men in the audience to keep from noticing her wretched dialogue, but her dialogue is so self-indulgent and boring that hearing it almost makes no sense as she analyzes why she likes women and the female genitalia and so on, and on, and on that the scene is empty because not even she looks like she believes what she’s saying.
The dialogue is so god-awful with trite annoying one-liners and odd switches to long drawn out self-indulgent monologues as everyone analyzes everything despite the fact neither has a brain in their head. There’s even a really bad, forced, and ridiculous scene in which Gigli is confronted by a group of punks playing a radio very loudly to which Ricki steps to his defense and uses her brain, and big mouth to scare them out of walking away. She quotes Chinese philosopher’s, makes little jokes, the whole kitten caboodle to which they’d expect the audience to clap, while I was just rolling my eyes so much, I nearly got a migraine, not to mention by the worst line of the film in which Lopez spouts a truly obnoxious seduction line on Gigli, one I won’t type. It’s an awful line you can only hear to gasp in horror.
It’s safe to say neither of the characters have redeeming qualities, so we’re given a lot of body shots of the two including a lot of glimpses at Lopez’ legs and between her legs, and Affleck’s muscular physique, perhaps to draw attention from his ridiculous outdated hairdo which looks like a really bad imitation of a fifty’s greaser. Then the film gets desperate by slipping in three walk on cameos from Hollywood veterans, the first being Christopher Walken who I have no idea why he’s in the film in the first place. He pops into Gigli’s apartment, makes another monologue, and leaves never to be seen again. This movie is terrible. It’s a derivative, cliché awful film with terrible performances, embarrassing dialogue, and a plot that goes nowhere fast.
Barbershop (2002)
“Barbershop” is a smart, clever, and well-written piece of filmmaking that stars an ensemble cast of predominant African American actors, all talented. Ice Cube is Calvin Palmer, the son of a beloved barber who inherits his father’s old barbershop and takes it for granted mostly running the shop for his father’s sake, viewing it as a waste of time and money. But when he has aspirations of starting a record company, he secretly sells it to local neighborhood loan shark Lester Wallace and slowly begins moving everything out from under the employees who have a bond, and function as a family. I was surprised with this film, because of the screenplay which invokes a large array of truly hilarious and likable characters.
The Last Samurai (2003)
This elegant love letter to the samurai and to the old world Japanese culture takes place in the late 1800’s, the civil war era, an ex-confederate soldier Captain Nathan Algren, a drunken has been is tortured by his past after being forced to slaughter an Indian village during Custer’s last stand is now a has been who advertises guns for the Winchester company until he’s approached by friend Zebulon Grant played very poignantly by Billy Connolly who makes an offer to Algren to re-claim his respect as a soldier and take a job from the Japanese government to modernize their army to fight against the rebels, an army of Samurai’s, a dying breed from the old world, who are being led by a mysterious leader known as Katsumoto.