Wishful Thinking (1999)

Wishful Thinking

A three part movie without charm, meaning or anything close to a story worth telling. It's almost physically painful to get through it, even being a standard 91 minutes runtime only.

Hackers (1995)

Hackers

I know I've seen it back in the days, but I have few problems understanding why I didn't remember just how bad it is. I must have blocked out the painful memory.

The antagonist is ridiculous, the protagonist have charisma like a kettle and the story and dialogue isn't even unintentionally funny. Jolie wasn't even yet that sexy back in those days, or at least she didn't know how to show it off on screen.

Burn every copy.

Grown Ups (2010)

Director: Dennis Dugan
Writer: Adam Sandler, Fred Wolf
Cast: Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider, David Spade, Salma Hayek, Maria Bello
Genre: Comedy

Grown Ups have Sandler on both writing and as the main character in an acting ensemble, and it delivers as weakly as Sandler can at his worst. The humor isn't at all funny, the characters are cliched and the same jokes are constantly being beaten to death by repetition.

When having both Hayek and Bella in major supporting roles, can't salvage a movie from the bottom score.... it really says a lot as I enjoy both of them in general.

The Dust Factory (2004)

Director: Eric Small
Writer: Eric Small
Cast: Hayden Panettiere, Ryan Kelley, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Kim Myers
Genre: Family, Drama, Fantasy

The Dust Factory is an imaginary fantasy vision aimed for the entire family, and works on some levels. My problem is the childish and simple combined with such a multi-layered backdrop. It just seems to hit well above its main target audience, while not managing to be interesting enough for the part of the audience who misses out on its layers.

Often you'll award movies managing to take different levels and melt into an entertaining product. Here I'll have to rather punish their attempt for their failure on making a movie with larger ambition than usual. It's in the end both too childish and too grown-up, without ever coming close of nailing either category.

4: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)

Director: Tim Story
Writer: Screenplay: Don Payne, Mark Frost Story: John Turman, Mark Frost Characters: Stan Lee, Jack Kirby
Cast: Jessica Alba, Ioan Gruffudd, Chris Evans, Michael Chiklis, Julian McMahon, Andre Braugher
Genre: Superhero, Action, Sci-Fi, Adventure, Fantasy

While Fantastic Four wasn't very impressive, it wasn't embarrasingly awful like 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer is. It's got all the flaws of the original, and adds several new ones like a annoying wedding focus no-one thinks is neither funny nor interesting or original, there's a old trick view at the villain side and the super powers aren't any better than they were the first time around, making all fights and CGI-scenes more uninteresting than watching almost anything else.

This movie makes the Transformers sequel look almost Oscar-worthy in comparison. I'll tell you that's no small feat.

The Back-Up Plan (2010)

Let's be honest. I had very few expectations going into The Back-Up Plan. I got to say it's almost impressing how they managed to still fail so miserably in reaching the few I had.

Writer Kate Angelo and director Alan Poul has one thing in common. Both are unfamiliar with movies, as both have been doing TV-work on each end up until now. It's no excuse to deliver such an insanely poorly written script and yet managing to direct it with a leading duo without chemistry and no timing skills on how to direct the scenes.

There's a reason only Jennifer Lopez' name is at the cover, besides the obvious reason she's got a name in the industry and Alex O'Loughlin is a TV-actor trying to branch out into Hollywood. He's also lacking believability, he seems to miss all his cues and on these notes; what's up with the recent romantic comedy male-casting of Hollywood?

O'Loughlin? Josh Duhamel? Matthew Goode? Jay Baruchel? Ashton Kutcher? Steve Carell? Gerard Butler? The genre is going to hell on an express route and every casting agent in town seems to do their best to help making sure of it. Now I can live with a couple of the mentioned actors getting leading romantic comedy roles and also forgive a couple because of their obvious female eye-candy skills, but overall it's a sad time trying to enjoy the romantic comedy genre these days.

It's been a while since J-Lo was the hippest babe singing, dancing and eye-candying Hollywood movies like no-one else, and she's on the grown-up side of 40 these days. She still looks great, but it's also nice to see her embracing the less glamorous side of aging without feeling sorry for herself. I guess having twins on her own a couple of years ago is reason enough to excuse her participating in this movie, but just barely.

I know I haven't said a lot about this movie, but it's such a piece of shit I just haven't got a clue where to begin. It's spilling cliches everywhere, recycling ideas from every other story made about pregnant women and it's without chemistry, intelligent dialogue or a decent storyline whatever. It's just painful to get through. And they had to throw in a single mom support group with man-issues and a crazy birth-scene? Not like we haven't seen both before.

I think they had something when they began thinking about inseminated pregnancy and then finally meeting Mr. Right straight after, with the obstacles or humor that brings along. It's not like it's a far fetched idea these days with modern working women having the same time issues as everyone else trying to have careers. Sadly they had no idea what kind of story to choose from there. They just brainstormed and ended up throwing every idea into the script. Avoid this movie like the plague it is.

American Pie Presents: The Book of Love (2009)(V)

After producing a Presents' movie a year under the American Pie franchise name from 2005-2007, they finally got rid of writer Erik Lindsay (writer on the last two) and took a year sabbatical in 2008. Unfortunately also the new man with the pen sucks, but that's not a huge surprise looking at this franchise's fall.

We're back in the old East Great Falls High School and once again the 'Book of Love' sees the light of day. Unlike the last couple of movies, they've this time managed to get in some girls more than able to blow away those seen in the rest of the Presents' series so far. American Pie Presents: The Book of Love brings us among others Beth Behrs, Louisa Lytton, Jennifer Holland, Melanie Papalia, Cindy Busby and Naomi Hewer. It might not match up to Mena Suvari, Alyson Hannigan, Shannon Elizabeth, Tara Reid, Natasha Lyonne, Jennifer Coolidge and the rest, but it's still a damn good line-up of girls compared to the downfall of the latst movies in this franchise.

Sadly the boys aren't close to those in the originals, the story is so weak it's painful to watch and the entire movie could probably be predicted from the first five minutes of footage. The only positive in addition to the girl qualities, is the fact the new 'Stifler' seemed kind of interesting. To bad 'Scott Stifler' doesn't get to be part of the story, but hi. That's part of making sure the movie sucks. A for effort to those responsible for the female casting in this one, but the rest of it was so bad that alone couldn't save this.

American Pie Presents Beta House (2007)(V)

American Pie Presents Beta House manages to take the franchise to a record low, which is no small achievement considering some of the previous ones. 'Eric' returns as the main 'Stifler' and his cousin 'Dwight' does as in the last movie take part as the family legend living the name at the same college 'Eric' and his friend 'Cooze' joins (and visited in The Naked Mile). Sadly Eric has been dumped by Jessy Schram's character since the last movie, so this one doesn't even have her helping it score points.

College chicks, college geek houses and college games founded within party games around beer, women and such. It probably doesn't sound half bad, but it's really really bad. One minor positive thing to say about it is the cameo appearance by 'Rock' (also from The Naked Mile). Considering 'Rock' wasn't even worthy a mention in my review of that, you should understand why it helps so little. By now in this franchise even the usual topless nudity can't help this piece of shit movie above the bottom score.

And Then Came Lola (2009)

And Then Came Lola is the baby of Ellen Seidler and Megan Siler, who's both written and directed this together.

I like to begin with assuring everybody I haven't considered this up against Run Lola Run, as many who's slaughtered this movie at imdb.com has. I've only rated this on its own merits.

With that said, I was very happy with one point of this; the short runtime. Clocking in at about 70 minutes, end credits included, was pleasant since this is the worst movie I've seen in years. Those 70 minutes sure felt a lot longer.

Good looking actresses and a lesbian romantic comedy with sex scenes and girls kissing. It doesn't sound boring? I didn't think so either, but the story is so incredible weak this lands on a solid failure. The worst part is this: The leading actresses is mostly good looking women acting quite well, rather than the more masculine looking lesbians you see quite a few of and the awful actresses you see quite a few of. Still. Neither fact can salvage this storyline from doom.

I actually fear taking a crap "actress" like Paris Hilton and a crap script like a college film student describing his weekend PG-13 rated fantasies, probably would be much worse than this. I actually think it's about time they make a couple of decent lesbian romantic comedies. We live in in a new decade again, and homosexuality shouldn't raise that many flags anymore. Still. They deserve a lot better than And Then Came Lola.