Comedy

Neighbors

By Adam Lippe

After reading Wired, where writer Bob Woodward extensively covers not just John Belushi’s downward spiral, but the extremely troubled production of Neighbors which included  director John G. Avildsen and John Belushi (in his final film) fighting on set, the constant rewriting and dilution of Larry Gelbart’s dark, original script, which was apparently quite close in […]

Nothing But Trouble

By Adam Lippe

Everything about Nothing But Trouble is so elaborate, yet so pointless. The only laugh in the entire movie is when Dan Aykroyd put a gas nozzle on a tin of Hawaiian Punch. However, there is the enjoyable notion of a condiment train and that gaffe where Demi Moore’s [pre-surgery] tits fall out of the top […]

Love Me If You Dare

By Adam Lippe

What starts out as an emptyheaded but amusing Amelie riff, with the magical realism, swooping camerawork, green and brown filtered into every shot, quickly turns maddeningly banal as soon as the characters become adults. Suddenly, it becomes an invisible obstacle romance, where they create things between them and other characters (like the guy’s father) act […]

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

By Adam Lippe

Has such a great idea that it totally throws away. There is an hour and twenty minutes of padding and lame comedy bits (Scotty doing slapstick? A 57 year old Uhura doing a naked dance? Spock singing “Row, row, row your boat”?) before they get to the meat, traveling across the universe to find God. […]

Down and Out in Beverly Hills

By Adam Lippe

Flat and dated satire without any edge. Whatever is motivating Dreyfuss’ character is a mystery, and the children never get enough development to where you care. Scenes repeatedly end without establishing a purpose for themselves. Only Nolte eating dog food out of a bowl is funny and witty.

Zach and Miri Make a Porno

By Adam Lippe

  The downside of Judd Apatow’s current popularity is when other filmmakers try to mix their own formula with his. A common theme running through Apatow’s work is his character’s dealing with their own gay panic as they mature from adult boys to adult men. This is exemplified by a scene between Seth Rogen and […]

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Roadracers

By Adam Lippe

Whenever there’s a genre parody or ode to a specific era of films, such as Black Dynamite’s mocking of Blaxploitation films or Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, the second half of Grindhouse, the danger is that the film might fall into the trap of either being condescending without any particular insight, or so faithful that it becomes the very flawed thing it is emulating.

Black Dynamite has nothing new to say about Blaxploitation films, it just does a decent job of copying what an inept [...]

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Featured Quote (written by me)

On Cold Fish:

Though the 16 year old me described the 1994 weepie Angie, starring Geena Davis as a Brooklyn mother raising her new baby alone, as “maudlin and melodramatic,” Roger Ebert, during his TV review, referring to the multitude of soap-operaish problems piling up on the titular character, suggested that it was only in Hollywood where Angie would get a happy ending. “If they made this movie in France, Angie would have shot herself.”

Well Cold Fish was made in Japan, where Angie would have shot herself and that would have been the happy ending.