The MacGuffin

I don’t know why it is so hard to make a good romantic comedy anymore. I want to laugh. I want to watch nice, funny people fall in love. Instead, I get unfunny, stupid crap that hurts me. For every one Easy A, I get twenty The Bounty Hunter. I don’t want Valentine’s Day. I want The Philadelphia Story. I want Say Anything, dang it! But instead—somewhere between crap and awesome—I get Friends with Kids. It has a great cast and a decent writer/director behind it, but it’s not nearly as good as it should be. It doesn’t suck, but it doesn’t have any magic. (Did I forget to say I want magic?)

I think Top 10 lists are fun. Many critics write beleaguered sorts of “I don’t really want to be doing this and it’s stupid and rankings are meaningless” disclaimers at the beginning of their lists. Ugh. Look, it should go without saying that any list (or review) is a reflection of the writer’s personality and their un-duplicate-able individual experience. If you’ve read the rest of my writing this year, you will not be shocked by my list. What I’d like to say before I dive in I don’t consider to be a disclaimer, but just necessary context: the films I didn’t/couldn’t see that are on my mind anyway.

Spencer and John preview the movies slated to be released during the summer of 2011, before closing out with their DVD picks of the week.

Brandi Sperry: I like road movies. I like alien movies. I definitely like the comedic ventures of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. And I’ve totally got a thing for Kristen Wiig. So it’s possible I had overly high hopes going into the movie Paul, which opens today. But I think a lot of people going into this will have high hopes, so maybe that’s fair.

Allen Almachar: Don’t forget director Greg Mottola, who brought us both Superbad (2007) and Adventureland (2009), two very solid, entertaining movies that have high replay value. With all this talent involved in the film, does Paul deliver with its sci-fi comedy/action/adventure stuff? Let’s find out.

Pegg and Frost star as Graeme and Clive, two comic book nerds traveling to America both to attend the San Diego ComiCon and to see the great sights of America’s UFO heartland. Renting an RV, the two travel around the southwest, taking pictures of various notable places where UFO sightings have occurred. All is well and good, even despite having some close encounters with the more hostile locals—that is, until they meet a most unexpected visitor.

[And yes, I know John already posted a review – I’m just reinforcing his thoughts on it, since I read his after I wrote mine up. John’s is actually a better review, damn him! Haha]

Here is what I knew about MacGruber before going to see this film: MacGruber is a character from an SNL skit (I haven’t seen SNL in more than 15 years) and MacGruber is a spoof of MacGyver (I haven’t seen MacGyver in more than 15 years). I wasn’t familiar with the skit and I hadn’t even seen a preview, I’d only heard people say “it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be.” Where I come from, that’s usually means I should see this film.

There are many reasons why MacGruber shouldn’t work.  It’s a Saturday Night Live spin-off movie, the original skits were parodies of a TV show that ended in the early 90s, and every minute long skit ended with the main character being blown up.  But in spite of those seemingly insurmountable odds, MacGruber ends up being an extremely funny movie that easily sustains itself for 90 minutes.

Whip It – Being a big fan of roller derby, I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to see this film. Sad, but true. This film is kind of an exaggerated expose drama on women’s banked-track roller derby in Austin, Texas. A young girl named Bliss, Ellen Page (from Juno fame), lives with her parents in a rural town. Her mother keeps signing her up for beauty pageants with her little sister, but Bliss just wants to experience life. She works at a local diner with her hot friend Pash, played by Alia Shawkat, and their friend Birdman.