Jack Black

Balls of Fury Sure, but Where’s the Heart?

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Balls of Fury
  • IMDb: link

“Ping-pong isn’t played for trophies; it’s played in dark alleys for hard cash and ugly women.”
 

Balls of Fury

Years ago Randy Daytona (Dan Fogler) blew his chance at the 1988 Olympic Games.  Not a washed-up has-been and punchline Fogler is offered a chance by FBI Agent Ernie Rodriquez (George Lopez) to return to glory and avenge the death of his father (Robert Patrick) by entering a secret underground tournament held by the man responsible, the crime lord Feng (Christoper Walken).

The film is filled with predictable dumb and gross-out humor and cheesy cliched training scenes involving a blind ping-pong master (James Hong) and his sexy niece (Maggie Q).  And you know it’s not a comedy without a suppository joke and male sex slaves!  *Sigh*

The acting is okay, at times, and Fogler comes off as a poor man’s Jack Black.  Walken is back to his silly over-the-top performance he gives in films like these, and Maggie Q looks good in short-shorts and Aisha Tyler spends the movie in a leather dominatrix outfit.  Yes, pre-teen males are obviously the target audience here.

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Balls of Fury Sure, but Where’s the Heart?Read More »

Balls of Fury Sure, but Where’s the Heart? Read More »

Nacho Dynamite

/ / Movie Reviews

With Napolean Dynamite, director Joshua Hess did more than lift a name from Elvis Costello;  he made a cultural typhoon of catch phrases, t-shirts, and schwag.  With Nacho Libre, Hess dumbs down dumb to a near catatonic stupor that not even Jack Black can uplift.  Playing the titular Nacho, Black’s an unfocused whirlwind of smarm and energy, but his sad-sack character has nothing going for him, nor is there any reason to root for his orphaned friar-turned-luchador.  The secondary characters are just a collection of ‘look how weird they are’ cut-outs, and the laughs are few and far between. 

It’s a sad day when a film doesn’t even live up to the expectations set by the Nickolodeon Films logo, but that day has come.

Nacho Libre
1 Star

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King Klong & The Island of Monsters

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: King Kong
  • IMDb: link

See what happens when you reward a director for 4 hour CGI heavy movie! King Kong is a maddening film. Peter Jackson has been dreaming of making Kong for years now.  Who would have thought his dream would become our nightmare?  There are some good moments and acting but it’s all been hidden beneath so much CGI that you can hardly see it.  I preferred the remake of Mighty Joe Young with Charlize Theron or the 1976 King Kong with Jeff Bridges to this monstrosity.

The story in a nutshell is this…  Filmmaker Carl Denham (Jack Black) along with his writer (Adrien Brody), stars Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) and Bruce Baxter (Kyle Chandler) and his crew travel to the mysterious Skull Island to film a movie.  After about a third of the film’s running time they arrive on the island and Miss Darrow is taken captive by a aborigine tribe of pole jumpers (who mysteriously appear and disappear completely in the film) who plan to sacrifice her to Kong (voice by Andy Serkis).  While trying to save Ann the group encounters every kind of CGI monster you can imagine including numerous bugs, velociraptors, T-Rexes, oh who gives a crap, there’s a bunch of monsters okay?  After saving Ann, Carl decides to capture Kong and take him to Broadway to make his fortune.

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King Klong & The Island of MonstersRead More »

King Klong & The Island of Monsters Read More »