G-Fail

I'm warning you now, this is a review of G-Force, the guinea pig movie Disney put out this week. It is clean, but unkind. This movie deserved no kindness. Also, I miss writing movie reviews.

This week is movie week, so today, tomorrow and Thursday we're taking the kids to a movie up at N. DeKalb. Today we had a choice between G-Force and UP!. Since I'd already seen UP!, I volunteered to see G-Force thinking that surely with a cast like this had to provide at least a little amusement. I mean, come on, Will Arnett, Bill Nighy, and Tracy Morgan? COME ON. It was a disaster. Utterly. There was nothing that saved this movie and its desperate attempt to pander to the adult audience it knew would be dragged to this puny excuse for a summer kids action flick.

The evil computer program that has to be stopped is called "Clusterstorm"-- no, that's not actually supposed to be clusterf*ck (favorite phrase of airliners 'round the world), not at all. THEN they decided to just dig a little lower than the pond scum of writing and "homage" Die Hard with a "Yippie cai-a, Coffee Maker" when the head guinea pig is riding a coffe maker gone mad. THAT'S NOT EVEN FUNNY. To homage a cultural cliche, you have to pass three tests-- those who know the cliche first hand have to be amused at the feint, those who know the cliche second hand half to be amused at the feint, and most importantly it has to be funny on its own. Die Hard came out when I was 3 and I'm the oldest counselor (aside from Richard, who is my age) there. My friend Sarah, who's older than I am, has never seen the movie but knows the cliche. When "Die Hardest" came out two years ago and THEY used the line it was FUNNY because it was BRUCE WILLIS saying it. These kids don't even know who Bruce Willis is because the only kids movies he's done he was voice talent. For the dog.

Even with the stellar cast, the writing was so awful and the music so poorly managed (for a summer blockbuster, they licensed three songs for repeated use-- "Boom Boom Pow" by the Black Eyed Peas, "Just Dance" by Lady Gaga, and "Jump" by Flo Rida ft. Nelly Furtado) that not even Bill Nighy could save it. Will Arnett wasn't given a single funny line (since when does THAT happen? The man is funny reading, "Are You There God, It's Me Margaret"!) and even Tracy Morgan's big funny of the movie ("I can't believe the MOLE was the MOLE!") was so covered up by unnecessary action sequences that it was lost in the melee.

In the end, this is a pure and plain example of what used to be known as Shrek (meh) or Madagascar (which has grown on me greatly) Syndrome-- movies that were made for kids but pander to adults by using cultural cliches. It will now be known as G-Force Syndrome. Adults don't go to kids movies expecting a movie for themselves; that's why babysitters, Friday nights, and The Hangover exist. I would totally see this if Bruckheimer (who is KNOWN for his extraneous action scenes, hellooooo Top Gun, Con Air, The Rock, and ARMAGEDDON) had made it for adults, the plot was complex enough that it would have worked, but as a kids movie... eh.

In fact, Mr. Bruckheimer, would you please remove yourself from the movie world? We were willing to forgive and forget with Kangaroo Jack, but twice? TWICE? Why?

/rant

Tomorrow is Night At the Museum 2 which I'm excited about. Now that Ben Stiller is past the first Madagascar, he's pretty good at making kids movies!

The world is getting smaller my Foot!

So last night I'm foolin' around on Borders and Amazon and even Build-a-Bear to find presents from Jeremy and I to Valerie, Matt, and Ana. I had wanted to get a few books or a movie or something, things that might last a while since they don't have much space for frivolous things living in an apartment in Singapore. I know that DVDs have different regions, so I'm trying to find the region that will play in Singapore or (thank you, Joe!) region-free DVDs and funny thing-- nobody sells the Asian region DVDs! And, none of the movies I had on my list for them are available region-free! Talk about a scam!

I see that Amazon has a China site, which would be great to buy and ship from there because the shipping would be less, but of course the site is in Chinese so when the Amazon support desk gets back to me and tells me to just use that site, I get a little irritated because they're either ignorant or working under the assumption that I can speak/read Chinese. Maybe I can call Dustin...

Borders has stores in Singapore, and I'd rather buy from Borders anyway, so I'm like, "Awesome, I can get them a gift card and they can just pop over and pick up whatever they want which is equally as good as my generally on the nose guesses." (yes, I actually said that, because I'm usually great at picking out books and movies for people) I ask the Borders help desk, and... you can't use Borders gift certificates anywhere but the US, which is the same problem with Amazon.

Do we really have such a poor relationship with Asia that we can't make it easy to get things to loved ones over there? I mean, geez! I'll have to get everything together and shipped to Memphis so that Marc and Jan can put it in their big box to Singapore and hope that my gift for Ana doesn't get crushed (not that I don't trust them to pack it on top, but I'm paranoid about things breaking). So, Jeremy probably won't get to sign the card. But, on the upside, I'll probably get Marc and Jan's presents at the same time, so maybe I'll get enough for free shipping ;)

Anyway, that was my adventure in Christmas shopping... I need to e-mail Jan and check on when they're sending that thing anyway. Blargh. People make things entirely too complicated in a world that's supposed to be simple!