Weekend In Reviews

Party Down, Season 2 - As much as I enjoyed the first season of Party Down, i liked the second even more. Taking nothing at all away from Jane Lynch or the Constance character, I thought Megan Mullally's Lydia was a terrific addition to the cast and I liked that Lizzy Caplan was given more to do and more opportunities to be funny in the second season.

It seemed like the entire enterprise blossomed in the second season with the chemistry between every member of the team coming off as slightly more effortless and real. The parties were by and large more funny ridiculous than monotonous backdrop and the energy was higher. I particularly enjoyed "Jackal Onassis Backstage Party," "Steve Gutenberg's Birthday," "Cole Landry's Draft Day Party," and "Constance Carmell Wedding."

Bad Teacher - I didn't like this movie so much that I was kind of mad at myself for watching it at all. The entire plot of the film rests on everyone who has ever met Cameron Diaz's Elizabeth to be so stupid that they can't tell she's a rude, gold-digging bitch. That might be an easier pill to swallow if the character had been making some effort to hide that about herself but she wasn't. She is openly hostile and inappropriate at every turn and yet an entire movie's worth of people are like "she's so great!"

No one in this movie even acted as if they were playing a human being. Everyone had it cranked up to a million like they were playing an over-the-top, giant caricature. It was like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade of acting. The notable exception was Jason Segal who resembled an actual person and one I might even not hate.

Bridesmaids - This may be a case of waiting too long to see a movie after hearing raves about how funny it was but I just thought it was ok. There were funny parts and it was a decent enough story but it felt very long and it wasn't as funny as I'd been led to believe.

The problem with hearing what everyone else thought before you see a movie is that sometimes you expect something the movie had no intention of delivering.  I suppose I expected non-stop riotous laughter without the usual romantic girl meets boy angle. Oddly enough, while I didn't expect, want or need a romance in the movie, that was one of the best things about it for me. After the three or four scenes between just Maya Rudolf and Kristen Wiig. And the one scene between Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy.

I would recommend this to other people but I guess I'd advise them to temper their expectations lest they spend the bulk of the movie asking themselves, "yeah...but wasn't it supposed to be, like, REALLY funny?"

Thor - I don't know who this movie was aimed at or what that particular demographic thought of it but this movie was so many things at once that I experienced some kind of sensory overload that led to me genuinely enjoying the movie for no discernible reason.

It's completely ridiculous on its face and it is rather blatantly two completely different movies pasted together with spit and tape. The portion that takes place on earth is a sort of standard-issue American action blockbuster with fakey science, a desert locale, shadowy government agency types, and a fair bit of snarking.  The portion that takes place in Thor's home galaxy is like someone beaming images directly from the imagination of a 12 year old boy.

I think I may have been hypnotized by Chris Hemsworth's face and body and rendered incapable of passing critical judgement because while everything about it says I should have hated it and yet not only did I like it, I'm pretty sure I'd watch it again. It's a world gone mad.