Love Before Breakfast

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From the short story Spinster Dinner by Faith Baldwin

Carole Lombard is pursued/stalked by a rich guy who buys her fiance’s company and sends him to Japan and his own girlfriend to Hawaii to clear the field for pursuing her…

And…that’s is literally all I can remember about this movie, except that it was pretty terrible. Much as I like Cesar Romero and Carole Lombard, just the fact that they had multiple people shuttling in and out working on the screenplay is a dead giveaway that there are major problems here.

Pass this one up unless you are a die-hard Lombard fan.

We’re Not Dressing

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A bunch of wealthy socialites end up on a deserted island. Hijinks ensue!

This was pretty stupid, and Mr. Otter and I mocked it pretty much all the way through. The socialites are helpless and useless, spurning the lowly sailor’s (Bing Crosby) offers to show them how to do stuff, until it becomes apparent that they literally can do nothing for themselves, and give in. The girl who owned the sunken yacht falls in love with him, and they are eventually rescued.

The only bright spot in this incredibly dumb-but-not-in-a-good-way movie was the presence of George Burns and Gracie Allen as a couple of anthropologists on the other side of the island…they were, as usual, really funny. The rest of it? sink it without a trace.

Reminiscence

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In a sort-of-apocalyptic future, a PI tries to uncover the truth about a client he falls in love with.

And let me say here that I really, really, REALLY wanted to like this movie. But no.

Firstly, it’s Bladerunner lite. Dark post-apocalyptic setting where most people come out at night? Check. Anti-hero detective tormented by his past as the main character? Check. Falls in love with the girl he’s going to have to arrest? Check. Big reveal in the denoument? check.

So yeah.

The pace was slow (especially for an action movie), many of the scenes were dark and muddy, and the ending was so ridiculous that I was rolling my eyes and shaking my head at the screen.

No need to even give you spoilers, just trust the Otter, don’t even bother with this dog. You don’t need it in your memories…

Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe

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Joe Jr. drops out of medical school because he wants to go into show business, so Joe Sr. lets him run his nightclub for a while, and gets a girl to pretend she’s interested in him to keep Jr away from Sr’s girlfriend. Shenanigans! And lots of musical numbers.

Completely ordinary, great if you like the aforementioned musical numbers. Lots of good singers and dancers to watch.

The Green Knight

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A retelling of the Arthurian legend, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

The huge and scary Green Knight comes to Christmas in Camelot, and offers a challenge: any knight can strike him a blow with the knight’s sword, but a year later he gets to reciprocate. Gawain takes the challenge, cuts the Green Knight’s head off, and a year later has to travel to his castle to be beheaded, but ends up proving his bravery.

Which is a famous story that has been told over and over for hundreds of years, and is a great basis for a movie. Just not this movie.

Because the story is not very long, so the filmmakers had to add stuff to pad it out. And boy, did they ever. Including a lot of pseudomystical hoohah and looooong travel shots and things that made us say, Huh? (I saw it with Mr. Otter.)

This was long, not interesting, slow moving, and really really dull.

CoyoteRambles, whose specialty is cinematography, and who is a dear movie buddy, disagrees with us; he thinks it was engaging, interesting and beautifully made.

One out of three, CR, one out of three…

Grumpy Old Men

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Two men in a small town who grew up together and have had a 50 year rivalry mostly expressed through invective and practical jokes both become interested in a widow who moves to town.

Our wonderful neighbor loves this movie and thinks it’s the funniest thing on Earth. She brought it over one night and we watched it and…well, we agreed to disagree.

It just wasn’t funny; mostly it was mean spirited, and these guys were pretty much annoying idiots. On top of that, they are both pursuing Ann-Margret, who is 16 years younger than Jack Lemmon and 21 younger than Walter Matthau, and looks even younger than that…it was kind of creepy. Not to mention the assumption that one of them will of course ‘win’ and she will be his. Was there nobody else in town interested in a beautiful and smart woman besides these two losers? Can she just not choose anyone and live her own life? Evidently not.

Not my cup of tea, thanks. You go ahead and enjoy it.

(And, after we had seen it and were nonplussed, and trying to find nice ways to tell our wonderful neighbor that no, this was not very funny at all…she said, oh, you need to see Grumpier Old Men, the sequel, that’s even funnier! Um, no, but thanks.)

Wise Blood

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From the novel of the same name by Flannery O’Connor

A WWII vet returns, finds his family home abandoned, has a crisis of faith, and starts an ‘un-church’, an anti-religious ministry in a Southern city. Various things happen.

This was one of the movies for the New Year’s Day Videofest (theme: John Huston), and was not one of the better ones.

Evidently the book, O’Connor’s first, was made up of a group of short stories reworked, including her master’s thesis. The movie supposedly stays pretty close to the book, which does not recommend said literary oeuvre to this Otter.

It was wierd and disjointed. A lot of things happened for seemingly random reasons that never got resolved. None of the characters was particularly interesting, and truthfully, as I wrote this review, I had to go back and read a synopsis to remember any of the details of what happened to this guy at all.

I usually love John Huston movies, but this one? Fuggedaboudid.

Thir13en Ghosts (2011)

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A remake of the 1960 Castle film of the same name (without the cutesy leet numerals)

This is recognizeably the same movie as the original: impoverished family inherits houseful of ghosts, moves in, ghosts are inimical, uh oh, family triumphs, bad guys Pay the Price.

The new screenplay ups the ante by 1. making the old haunted house a wierd glass construct with mazelike walls that move around, and have wierd glowing writing on them, and 2. turning said construct into a machine that will End The World if the evil plan succeeds.

Otherwise, it’s pretty much the same. The ghosts are scarier and more inventive, there’s a lot more blood and violence, and it’s not as well written as the older movie (and when it’s not as well written as a Castle film, well, that’s saying something right there…)

As silly as it is, the older one works better…but don’t take my word for it, have fun watching them yourselves!

Frozen II

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The second in yet another blockbuster Disney franchise.

Elsa is called to the mysterious forest by music only she can hear, and of course fixes the problem after much angst and Benji-peril. And of course Anna, Kristof and that damn annoying snowman go with her, because why leave someone behind to actually run the kingdom?

I liked the first Frozen movie, but this was just silly, annoying,  and preachy (Earth, Air, Fire and Water are imbalanced and must be brought back into harmony <rolls eyes>).

Only for little girls who are obsessed with the series. I really don’t get it, but whatever.

Dolittle

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Dr. Doolittle sets out (with his apprentice and a bunch of animals) to find a cure for the Queen’s illness.

I have so many things to say about this movie, very little of it positive…so hold onto your hats, kids ! Oh, and there are SPOILERS if anyone cares (and you shouldn’t, really. Trust the Otter.)

Firstly, let me say that I loved these books; I had a collection of four or five of them in paperback that I read over and over and over. Before seeing this movie I reread the first one, The Story of Dr. Dolittle. And enjoyed it, although being a British book of its time, it is not politically correct in any way. So I was ready to see a more modern and less Rex Harrison-y version, and to like it very much. I mean, ROBERT DOWNEY JR? Oh yes.

And I was in the theater with Ottersis. And the movie started…and the opening credits were pretty awesome. They were set against a series of drawings showing the story of how Dolittle had a medical practice, learned to talk to animals, met a beautiful woman explorer, fell in love, she had to go on one more voyage, her ship was wrecked, and she sent Polly the parrot (whose REAL name was Polynesia, dammit!) back to Dolittle with her wedding ring…and he became a recluse.

THEN the movie started with him hiding in his house like Willy Wonka in the shut-down chocolate factory.

And you know what they say about sequels, that they’re never as good as the first movie? It was true in this case too…because the story that was told in the opening credits was AWESOME and would have made a WONDERFUL movie. This, although technically a stand-alone, was really a sequel to that story, and like most sequels…it SUCKED. (Here’s Otter’s list of Sequels that Don’t Suck)

Firstly, it was predictable. Grieving curmudgeon is forced to come back to life by a cute child and His Duty.

Secondly, the animals were way more fun than any of the actors.

Thirdly, Downey was just not at the top of his game. He was so completely phoning it in that I thought maybe he owed a favor to whoever made this damn thing and had been forced to appear in it. I mean, Iron Man. The Avengers. And as soon as his Avengers contract is over, he does…THIS? But no. He was the executive producer. It was his baby.

He must bear the blame. Especially for NOT engaging his audience, a mortal sin in a kids’ movie. Gene Wilder was a curmudgeon but (as soon as the ‘walking slowly out of the factory and scaring everyone’ part was over, he was obviously fun and interesting and engaged with the kids. Downey…was not. Granted, it can’t have been easy doing that much green screen time, since most of the actors in this movie (the animals) were cgi…but he’s done this before and it’s worked. It truly looked and felt like he just didn’t want to be there at all. And after a bit, neither did I. He was so low-key and nonreactive that it was almost painful to watch him…he was certainly not interested in engaging his audience, any more than he was interested in the movie he was STARRING IN…!

Fourthly, the plot was trite and didn’t make sense. The queen is sick, we have to assume Queen Victoria, although she is never mentioned by name. She is played by a 30 year old woman and looks younger than that, but we’ll give it 30. That would mean this movie is set in 1869 or thereabouts, but nothing in the politics or period detail reflect this. But wait, you say, this is a kid’s movie, you are overthinking it! Nope. If a movie has a definite time and place, it has to WORK. This didn’t. And of course there are plots, and one of her advisors is poisoning her with a nebulous poison that leaves her at the brink of death for an unspecified time, which Dolittle goes off on adventures and gets the fruit to make her better and gets back JUST in time to unmask the bad guy and fix ol’ Queenie right up. Shades of The Magician’s Nephew, seriously.

The CGI animals were darn cute, although a little too cute and scene-stealy. The rest of the cast was fine. But the plot…there were other plot problems, which brings me to

Fifthly. More than once, we are told about something amazing and exciting, either because the movie was getting too long or they ran out of CGI budget. There was a point, I think when they reached the island of the guy who was supposed to help them but threw them into prison instead, and the movie literally cut from the ship to them climbing up the ramparts of the castle while the parrot (Emma Thompson) who was also the narrator told us that amazing adventures had happened to get them there. Huh? Then why didn’t you show them to us instead of referring to them so offhandedly? This is just plain bad writing, for whatever reason, and should not have happened.

So yes, I disliked this movie intensely. It was badly written, Downey was awful, and the plot, even for a kid’s movie, was trite and annoying. Why, oh why, did they not make the movie from the beginning credits? I guess we’ll never know…