No.192 : The Pallbearer (1996)

The Pallbearer at the IMDb

‘Friend’ David Schwimmer was two years into his tenure as Ross Geller when he made this clunker. The glory days of ‘Run Fat Boy Run’ were still a decade away.

Ross plays against type as a drippy architecture graduate who is looking for a job and who lives with his Mom. We have already seen a man gas himself in his car (did he see the trailer for this?) so it’s no surprise when Ross gets the call to be a pallbearer at the funeral. It's mistaken identity however, as he doesn’t remember the dead man, Bill. Rather than say ‘Sorry I don’t know him, have you got the right person?’ he instead agrees.

He meets with the dead man’s mother, Judge Hershey, and is soon talked into giving the eulogy too. The school yearbook is no use as it doesn’t have a picture of Bill and offers only that he was in the chess club. Ross’ fortunes look up however when he meets his high school crush, Gwyneth Paltrow, at a party. She doesn’t remember Ross and mistakes him for someone else. There’s your clue to the big surprise!

Ross helps Hershey tidy up her dead son’s room and is soon in her pants too. Meanwhile Ross’ friends are due to get married and are each having difficulties, with one of the husbands having designs on Paltrow.

After snagging the dead man’s car and his mother, Ross starts to cool on the older lady and gains confidence with Paltrow, eventually bedding her after an interminable courtship. Bumps in the road appear however with Paltrow keen to spread her wings and the rightly pissed off Hershey looking for answers. Will Ross get the job and the girl or was this all a big waste of time?

This was an awful effort where very little happens and no laughs or drama are offered. Ross is a horrible character and although I’m sure the idea is to chart his progress to being a more rounded and caring man he just comes across as a tit. Paltrow as the object of his affections is no better and her attempts at a New York / Italian accent are laughable - when she bothers to try.

I think they were maybe looking for a Woody Allen style take on modern relationships but it was just dreadful. To make out the grieving, humped and dumped, mother as a nutter was cruel as was the revelation that her son was just plain forgettable. No redemption for him but a smidgen for Ross who gives away the death trap Pinto to allow Paltrow to follow her dreams.

The surprise twist that it was another ‘Tom’ that was really the friend was signalled in the first five minutes and it seemed pointless for this one to say he hardly knew the dead guy either.

There was a decent cast lurking in the background such as Toni Colette and Hector Salamanca but both had little to do, with Hector not even having his bell to keep us amused.

The film lacked any point and was morally dubious throughout - Harvey Weinstein producing? Oh well that explains it!

THE Tag Line - Drop it in a Hole 38%

No.164 : The Do-Over (2016)

The Do-Over at the IMDb

Oh no! That old ‘Does a hyphen discount a film from definite article status?’ chestnut again. As previously advised it does not, and if you think I’m watching this piece of tosh and not writing about it you have another thought coming!

The film opens with David Spade - the clues were there from the off! - attending his high school reunion. He meets up with Max, Adam Sandler doing his usual, and the pair share some truths about their lives since they were at school. Spade has married the prom queen but she’s likely boning her ex whilst leaving Spade to raise her terrible twins. Spade has a job in a bank in a supermarket and although this is shown as a demeaning, dead end job it helps towards the end when he displays some frankly unbelievable web-fu and high finance skills.

Sandler says he’s a FBI agent and is stalked by his nutty girlfriend, Kathryn Hahn. After a few product placement Coronas the pair part, with Spade later taking an offer to meet with Sandler on his yacht. They have a great day but when the yacht explodes Sandler explains his plan - let’s ditch our dull lives and take over those of two dead bodies that he’s taken ownership of in his real job as a coroner. Spade quickly agrees despite Sandler lying to him throughout.

A secret agenda is however in play and there will be many more twists and turns before the real plan is revealed. Can ether of the misfits find happiness and why is the cure to cancer so important? Has Spade really nailed that hot chick or are other agendas in play?

This was a pretty formulaic comedy with only jokes and humour left out of the mix. Sandler makes no effort at characterisation and is basically a dick throughout. He’s later revealed to have proper motivations, but for the most part he’s just being an asshole and wrecking people's lives. Fair enough when it’s David Spade’s but that 100 minutes of my life he’s taken with nothing in return.

To be fair the sunny locations and bikinied lovelies are nice but you do get the sense that everyone involved is having far more fun than you the viewer. There were a couple of subplots such as a haphazard American Express investigator who keeps getting hurt and Mike off ‘Veep’ who for some reason was asked to do an annoying accent.

For your money you also get some torture and genital mutilation but that only goes so far to redress the boredom threshold. The woman characters are very poor with one shameful scene at the end seeing two of them have a full on cat fight whilst the men stand back and shrug - Chicks eh?!

If you have even a two laugh criteria you’ll find this film lacking and there wasn’t even a Rob Schneider cameo to keep me distracted.

The film ends with a bit of hope for us all in the form of a cancer cure being found up David Spade’s ass. That pretty much sums up the film’s ambitions set against what it delivered.


THE Tag Line : We’ll always have the women on the boat. 24%

No.103 : The Man (2005)

The Man at the IMDb

Samuel L Jackson and Eugene Levy star in this alleged comedy that marries the familiar plots of ‘fish out of water’ and ‘mismatched partners’.

Levy play Andy, a nervous Wisconsin dental supplies salesman who is travelling to Detroit for a convention. His supportive family wish him well as he practices his speech and warn him of the dangers of the mean streets of Michigan. Meanwhile Jackson’s detective partner has been murdered and he’s out for revenge.

Jackson bullies $20k from a fat evidence clerk and arranges a meeting with a dodgy gun dealer. Jackson fails to find the USA Today he needs to signal his contact and wouldn’t you know it? Levy is already at the meeting place diner reading the self same newspaper. Strangely the paper alone is enough to convince the gun runner that Levy is his buy and he hands him a phone and gun as a taster. This unlikely scenario means that Levy is embroiled in the sting and he has to team up with Jackson to solve the case.

Initially Levy is shy and nervous and Jackson rough and tough but soon the two start to learn from each other and gain confidence and humility as a result. Yes, it is that crappy. The gunrunner and ruthless killer is laughably Luke Goss out of ‘Bros’ and as you’d guess he exudes all the menace of Elmer Fudd. Like no gunner runner you could imagine Goss sends the unlikely duo across town as he tries to work out if they are cops while Jackson tries to keep the unpredictable Levy onside.

Back at the station the familiar face of  Miguel Ferrer is heading up an investigation of Jackson whom he thinks may be bent. Jackson also has Susie off ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ as his unconvincing boss who tells him to hand in his badge and gun - yeah that’ll work. As we enter the last third seeds are sown that make us wonder if Jackson really is corrupt (he isn’t) and whether Levy will manage to pull of his big speech following his experiences (he does).

Jesus wept,  this is a terrible film. It suffers from virtually every problem a film like this can have from poor script, terrible acting, a famine of laughs and an unbelievable and deeply padded plot. The majority of the film (read : all of it) is totally pointless as it was always ending up with a showdown at the warehouse for the big gun buy. To get us there we have to suffer some execrable scenes where Levy farts a lot and another where he gets shot in the ass and chooses to treat it with taco sauce.

There is no danger whatsoever with cool killer Luke completely out of his depth as the thinly sketched bad guy. The subplot of the internal affairs investigation is also a waste as we know Jackson is innocent mainly because he’s the star but also because we witness Luke carrying out one of the killings pinned on Jackson.

I’m probably looking a bit too deeply into this film which is not something the script writers can be accused of. If they played it straight up comedy you could excuse some of the shortfalls but when they include murders and a mystery element along side and extended farting scene you can tell it’s all over the place.

Levy probably garners half marks as he’s just doing his usual nervous dad shtick but he doesn’t cover himself in glory, not least in the scene his trousers fall down at a busy crossroads - I guess he had a tax bill due. Come to think of it he must get loads of them what with all the straight to DVD ‘American Pie’ films…

Jackson is dreadful as the hard man who isn’t lonely but regrets the deteriorating relationship he has with his ballet dancing 10 year old daughter. He tries to come across as tough but just seems like a bullying dick in every scene. Miguel and Susie have little to do but both will be crossing this effort from their CVs if they have any sense.

I appreciate this isn’t meant to be an awards contender but the low brow laughs, terrible acting and non-existent plot mean it will be regarded as an insult even to the most committed moron. Avoid!

THE Tag Line -  Man, This is awful    25%

No.95 : The Switch (2010)

The Switch at the IMDb

Poor old Jason Bateman - he does such good work in TV shows such as ‘Arrested Development’ and in movies like ‘Up in the Air’, ‘Extract’ and even ‘Identity Thief’ but sadly, every so often, he has to sign up to stuff like ‘The Switch’ to presumably pay the bills. The film isn’t terrible but it  is so unimaginative and forgettable that you’ll have cleared it from your mental cache as soon as the credits roll.

Bateman plays Wally Mars a likeable but slightly unusual New Yorker who has yet to meet the right woman. He’s no out and out weirdo but wears tank tops and is the choice of transient mentalists when walking the streets of the Big Apple. He is best friends with Jennifer Aniston, although there is no reason given why they are friends and not shagging - he’s not gay you see. They completely bypass the whole ‘When Harry Met Sally’ thing and have the relationship set at ‘platonic’ from the off.

We know he wants more from the relationship as Jennifer is so lovely, but apart from confiding in his boss, Jeff Goldblum, Jason does nothing to seal the deal. Jennifer however is worried that her biological clock is ticking and lines up a sperm donor in the shape of ‘Little Children’ and ‘Watchmen’s Patrick Wilson to supply the population paste.

She throws a tasteless insemination party where the donor and his wife along with a gaggle of friends show up to sell the man fat. Wilson does his duty into a cup but when Bateman finds the sample when he hits the toilet he decides that maybe his man paste is the product of choice. He forgets all in a drunken haze but we are given clues the next day when Goldblum recounts tales of a late night visits that suggests Wally has been generous with his muck.

We flash forward seven years and Aniston has decided to return to town following the birth and raising of her child in Montana. We know that Bateman is the likely daddy and when they meet up the boy’s introspective character certainly suggest he has child support payments in his future. Several unlikely scenarios serve to bring Bateman and the boy closer together but when Aniston reveals she’s started to date the alleged surrogate we have to wonder who is the daddy and who will end up with the frankly needy Jennifer.

This ‘Who’s the Daddy’ rom-com is OK but it is also undemanding and for the most part unfunny. The central relationship between the earnest and likeable Bateman and the flaky and unreliable Aniston is poorly formed and they have no chemistry whatsoever. That said it’s better than that between Wilson and Aniston which is totally devoid of any believability. The idea of a straight man having Jennifer as a best friend was feeble from the off and although they set him up as a tank top wearer it beggared belief that Bateman wouldn’t call her out early on for leading him on.

The first arc that leads up to the insemination was without laughs and not least because of Aniston’s friend, Juliette Lewis who can’t do comedy and who hasn’t had a decent role since ‘Strange Days’ - don’t come it, ‘Starsky & Hutch’ was rubbish!

‘Seven years later’ was a bit better due to the rapport between Bateman and the boy but the whole tacked on relationship with the surrogate seemed forced and unbelievable from the off. The three acts were clearly marked and when Aniston told Bateman she didn’t want to see him again an hour in you knew things were going to work out fine.

Overall there was nothing to offend or greatly dislike in ‘The Switch’ it just seemed a waste to produce something so formulaic and dull given the talent available.

THE Tag Line - More Fun With the Cup
57%

No.77 : The Honeymooners (2005)

The Honeymooners at the IMDb

A film with a score below 3 on IMDb can’t have too much to recommend it, can it? Well some may, but it won’t be this total dog turd of an effort

There is no reason why this is even called ‘The Honeymooners’ - it bears no resemblance to the TV show of that name and the couple involved are married six years. Still maybe they are going for brand recognition and surely it’ll be a fun, knockabout comedy with winning characters? Nah.

Our hero Ralph, played by the total misnomer Cedric the Entertainer, is a loveable loser. He has dreams of being rich and when we meet him he’s planning to make a killing with his Y2K survival kit. He drives a bus and tells a pretty passenger of his dreams and she shares hers. Like Del Boy next year they’ll be millionaires. Predictably the next caption is ‘Six Years Later’ and we find the couple, now married, stuck in their same ruts.

They live cheek by jowl with Ed and Tixie and true to form the brother is as thick as pig shit while is wife is the brains of the outfit. Why the two women both work as waitresses despite being super sharp isn’t touched upon.

Anyway the one white guy in the cast, played by an embarrassed Eric Stoltz, is a yuppie asshole who for some reason does his business deals in a diner. He plans to buy an old woman’s duplex and turn it into apartments. The waitress wives overhear and offer to buy the house, keeping the area Stoltz free. Alas they don’t have the cash as Cedric has spunked their savings on a new scheme to buy a train car, meaning the rest of the film is a scramble so they can swindle the old bat out of her house rather than let big business take the spoils.

After a few padding scenes of them trying to raise a dollar, complete with an overbearing R&B soundtrack, they find a dog in a dumpster and of course it is a champion grey hound. They enlist a poor John Leguizamo to train it up and soon the race is on. Will the dog win the conveniently deposit sized purse of $20k or will one of the seeds planted earlier in the film spring up and award an unlikely conclusion?

This is a terrible mirth free affair. The main loveable loser is nothing of the sort with every advantage gained being at the expense of some poor schmuck who gets swindled. They are meant to come across as rascals but in the real world they’d be pulling 20 at Rykers.

The humour is unsophisticated to the extent of being insulting to morons - “I know every inch of the sewer system” immediately followed by him walking into a big pipe - hilarious, I trust you disagree. The two leads are equally bad but they can thank the script for that. Well their terrible delivery and total lack of empathy helped too.

The wives were your standard smart wife with an unfeasible fat/stupid husband, a combination seen only in the movies. The cast does have a few familiar faces dotted about but nothing can save the execrable plot that is almost devoid of any surprise apart from a few ‘hmmm bullshit!’ moments.

On the plus side New York looks fine and it is quite short at less than 90 minutes but that’s about it.

THE Tag Line - Divorce Yourself From This Crap!  17%