Eclipse

Well, we didn’t get enough members in our Facebook group to force Chad to see this third installment of the Twilight series (which has now been morphed from a quadrilogy to a quintrilogy… and I will absolutely get to that in a moment), so it is just Gina and I for your reviewing pleasure.

Both of us have read the book series, and I was especially excited with this part of the story because it actually had some action. Go figure… action in a story that focuses on vampires and werewolves?

Kevin: I will say right now that this will be the best movie of this series… Even with the ridiculous addition of a fifth movie that divides the fourth book into two parts. I really hate that they are going to be greedy with this series!

Gina: It’s completely unnecessary. It is only to drag it on and make as much money as they can while they can, and it might ruin the fourth book.

Kevin: They’re trying to make up for how bad New Moon was… Yes, it was horrible! And I truly feel for anyone who didn’t read the book and sat through that garbage!

In contrast to New Moon’s divergence from the book, Eclipse followed pretty accurately (at least as much as a movie can). Something is always going to be omitted but they scrapped the right scenes. Take a hint director of Half Blood Prince.

The A-Team

Just a quick review, better late than never. All three of us saw this together and it was awesome! Lot’s of action, just enough plot without discombobulating the audience, tense action scenes, comedic interludes, (did I mention action?) and just an all around fun and exciting movie. The cast was perfect – Liam Neeson is always great, Bradley Cooper, the guy from District 9 (I always forget his name, and frankly I’ll mis-spell it too), and surprisingly Quinton “Rampage Jackson was good!

Was it cheesy? Yes. Was it plausible? No. But that is how the television series was and in that respect, it did exactly what it was supposed to do. Along the lines of Speed Racer, which was simple, flat, an looked like someone threw up skittles on the film strip, though mimicked the cartoon perfectly. Well worth the watch, and without going to the panel I will just give it a solid 8 of 10 stars.

Toy Story 3

Part three of the Pixar/Disney collaboration phenomenon is probably exactly what you would expect, not as good as the first two but good enough to enjoy while the kids can be visually absorbed in anything so you can relax. And yes, that is what it is.

Bringing Buzz Lightyear and Woody back together to help the other toys come to the realization that their life with Andy may be coming to an end now that he is going to college. Of course there are some misinterpretations and confusion as to what their fate will actually be, but we’re not going to go into the plot because it’s a kids movie. It has just enough to keep the adults interested and that’s good enough.

Gina: It didn’t nearly compare to the first two.

Kevin: That’s expected.

Gina: It is good for the kids.

Kevin: As it should be.

Gina: And it concluded nicely.

Kevin: I was really hoping for the Titanic style ending when they were stuck drifting toward the incinerator and gave up the struggle, held hands, and accepted their end.

Gina: HORRIBLE! It’s a kid’s movie!

Kevin: I’m just saying it would have been a heart wrenching, tear jerking conclusion to the trilogy.

Get Him To The Greek

We’re not going to waste too much time on this spin off of a great movie (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) because honestly Get Him To The Greek was not nearly what it could have been. With a background of Russel Brand’s character, Aldous Snow, already established to a point, the dreary character development was overdone. We were brought into Snow’s life a bit more, but was it necessary for this movie with the direction I assume they were trying to go?

While Get Him To The Greek did deliver a fair amount of chuckles, it did not deliver the movie that the trailers depicted it to be. We are all fans of Russel Brand and were quite excited for this film; especially knowing Aldous Snow was getting his own feature length film. Too bad it was the Snow twelve years past his prime… that really was the plot of the film, a washed up Snow who just put out an album called African Child (just as bad in the movie as it sounds here, but in a good way).

The main point to think about is how often do spin-offs of television shows work? Yeah, that’s probably why you don’t see the same thing on the big screen, and probably why this shouldn’t have been attempted.

Gina: I wish Aldous Snow had stayed in Sarah Marshall.