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The Muppets – The Review

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Dec 6, 2011

Nobody is a bigger Muppets fan than I am. I can’t count the number of posts I’ve done on them on this blog, or the number of videos I’ve shared. Heck, I’ll probably be sharing one at the end of this post. Last weekend I went with my friend Scott to see it in Rochester; this is my review of the movie.

The storyline begins with new characters, a couple of brothers where one of them is a Muppet (go with me here) and one human, and his very cute girlfriend. The humans were played by Jason Segal and Amy Adams. The Muppet brother, named Walter. doesn’t see himself as a Muppet, just a misfit in the world, but he considers himself the biggest Muppet fan and really wants to be one of the gang. When Gary (Jason) decides to take Mary (Amy) to Los Angeles to celebrate their 10th anniversary of being boyfriend and girlfriend, Mary thinks it’s to get engaged until Gary tells her that Walter’s coming as well so that he can take him to visit Muppet Studios.

When they get there, the studios are decrepit, and when Walter goes off on his own, he overhears a conversation by a rich oilman who’s planning on buying the theater and drilling for oil that’s underneath, telling everyone else that he’s turning it into a museum to get his hands on the property. Walter, Gary and Mary go off looking for Kermit, who they find living in his mansion alone, tell him what’s going on, then finally convince him to try to get the gang together to put on a show to raise $10 million to save the theater and the studios.

That’s the basic premise; I’m not going to say how it all ends except to say that, in an odd way, it ends just like one might expect a Muppets movie to end, but without what I’m calling the type of quirky goodwill and smiles that I expected. As a matter of fact, I have to truthfully say that I was letdown by this movie a lot, and that’s depressing to me.

Jason Segal had a hand in helping to write the movie, and supposedly he’s a major Muppets fan as well. However, I felt like he missed just what the Muppets were all about. After all, he wasn’t born until 1980, which means he wasn’t even alive when the TV show or the first movie came out. Not that people can’t become fans of something later in life, but I think his age made him miss just what the Muppets were all about.

This movie missed all the stuff that made the Muppets funny. There were no corny jokes except by Fozzie Bear. There were no running gags. There were no puns. There were no surprises such as being in the wrong place at the wrong, or right, time. There was a robot, and none of us could figure out where that came from, and the robot drove the car. None of the newer Muppet characters were named in the movie, and only one, Pepe, the giant prawn, got a true scene in the movie.

And there was a lot of sadness in this movie, way more sadness than happiness. Walter was sad that he couldn’t find his place in life. Mary was sad because she didn’t think Gary would ever see her as a woman. Kermit was sad because everyone had disappeared and he didn’t even have the dream anymore; this was probably the most depressing thing of all because it’s always been Kermit who believed in everything. Miss Piggy had moved on, but she was sad because she and Kermit hadn’t ended up together. Everyone else had failed in life except for Gonzo, who was rich, powerful and respected in plumbing yet yearned for show business (what he does was probably one of the few truly Muppet inspired gags of the movie).

And the music… well, I liked the opening song, but I’d have to admit I wasn’t enthralled by much of the rest of it, though there was a nice touching scene of the gang doing Rainbow Connection. When the first movie came out I went and bought the album the very same day and played it incessantly for weeks (well, when my roommate wasn’t in the room at least lol).

This wasn’t a bad movie, just not what I expected from a Muppet movie. As much as the critics panned and fans stayed away from Muppets From Space, I actually thought that movie had some charm and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Will this movie actually spark interest in the Muppets again? I’m not sure, and that’s disappointing. It could have been so much more, and I’m not sure the updated version had the same spark as what I remember (and I have the movie, another movie, and the 1st 3 seasons on DVD so I know lol). I hope so, but if it happens I also hope someone remembers what made them what they were in the first place. By the way, this was a nice tribute to Jim Henson, as they made sure to show pictures in the background with him and Kermit; nice touch. Okay, yes, here’s a video:

Entertainment | 16 Comments

Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Finale Review

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Jul 27, 2011

Almost two weeks after the movies opened in the United States, I’m finally ready to write my review. Okay, spoiler alert; I loved it so much I saw it twice!

You know, often you go into movies after you’re read the book knowing exactly what’s going to happen. Since they broke this book up into two movies and since the first book stayed so close to what happened in the book, I thought I would know what was coming in this one as well.

For the most part… I was wrong. Sure, some things followed the book fairly well, but one has to imagine that it must be difficult allowing the types of speeches and conversations that happened in a book that was almost 1,000 pages long to translate word for word into a movie would be, well, a headache. So, the movie takes many liberties in the movie and totally changes some things around to keep the action going; after all, they wanted the movie to be able to appeal to everyone and not just Harry Potter fans.

Even so, many of the action scenes took place differently than they do in the book, just like in the 6th book. That’s okay as well because I understand for spacing purposes you’d lose a lot if you expanded the field of battle as well. However, in the book the battle between Mrs. Weasley and Bellatrix LeStrange goes on much longer than it does here, and in the book Voldemort has a long battle with many wizards at once, which doesn’t happen here.

Harry’s entrance into the castle goes much different in the movie than in the book, and his encounter with Professor Snape in the movie never happened in the book. And some people might recognize that Malfoy has one friend different than the same two friends he had in the first six movies. That’s because the actor who played that part got arrested a couple of times for drugs and they had to replace him. Of course, one of the actors still in his role never quite developed physically into the behemoth he was supposed to be so his part always had to be written differently from the books.

And the kiss… yes, the kiss between Ron and Hermoine. Actually, this is why I had to go to the movie a second time because I missed it the first time. They moved it around in the movie and, because they didn’t have it when I expected it to come, I went to the bathroom; major mistake! Glad to see it the second time around and it made sense putting it where they did once I saw it again.

In general, this was enjoyable; then again, when I know it’s going to be something I like, I’m an easy grader. I saw it the first time at the midnight showing, 3D, and the second time a week and a half later in a regular theater, where the guy gave me the senior discount; maybe I shouldn’t shave before I go to any movies anymore. lol The theater was packed the second time as well, and almost everyone that reviewed this movie has said it’s fantastic, and it’s gotten a 96% positive review from Rotten Tomatoes; those folks usually hate everything. Even Roger Ebert gave it 3 1/2 out of 4 stars; when’s the last time that happened for a film that people actually saw?

I’ll be waiting until both movies come out together before buying this and, as long as it is, I hope the movies include way more footage. Yeah, I’m a glutton for punishment, but I really want to see more, just as I did with the Lord of the Rings trilogy when I purchased it. Great stuff. Don’t be a curmudgeon; go see this!

Entertainment | 36 Comments

Despicable Me – Movie Review

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Feb 24, 2011

By now, those of you who have read this blog understand that I love my animation. I love old Bugs Bunny cartoons the best, but I have to say that there are some modern cartoons, rather animation, that I’m just drawn to (hey, a pun!) for reasons I never really understand. But like most everyone else, if I see a preview that captures me, I already know I’m going to like the movie heading in; for the most part, that is, Skyline notwithstanding. lol

The premise of this movie is simple. A career super criminal has the ultimate plan; to steal the moon. In order to do that, he needs to steal a shrink ray that a young and upcoming super villain stole from him after he stole it from someone else. He finds these 3 little girls that the other villain has ordered cookies from and decides to adopt them and use them to help steal the shrink gun. What he doesn’t expect is that he’ll fall in love with the girls as things move along, and thus we have our story, with me leaving out all the details and ruining it for you.

Our super villain, named Gru, has helpers along with way. There’s Dr. Nefario, his elderly main scientist who sometimes hears the request for a specific item incorrectly, and there’s the Minions, these little yellow weeble looking creatures, some with one eye, some with hair, many that look exactly alike, that are the workers and friends of Gru; he knows them all by name and can tell them apart, even if we can’t. They’re the great innocents in this movie; they do whatever’s asked of them, and when they’re not asked to do anything they just, well, do something; funny as sin.

Of course, it’s the relationship Gru ends up having with the 3 sisters, Margo, Edith, and the youngest Agnes, with the big brown eyes and, if you’ve ever seen any of the commercials, the one who utters “It’s so fluffy!” He’s really frustrated early because he’s never been around kids and could care less about being around them now, but as time goes on and he starts having fun with them that he never had in his life before, he starts to realize the value in sharing one’s love with others.

This is the cutest movie and very funny as well. The music was done by Pharrell Williams, which gives it a much different quality than any other movie, as it was his first time working on a movie. As you can tell, I’m recommending this movie, and I’m sharing this little clip, doctored and chopped up, as a mini-teaser. Buy this movie; I’ve seen it more than 40 times by now.

Entertainment | 14 Comments

Being In Heaven – The Review

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Feb 5, 2011

Back in August I wrote a post introducing the latest motivational movie called Being In Heaven. I hadn’t bought it, but they had contacted me out of the blue offering me the opportunity to be on the front lines as an affiliate in helping to spread the word. Of course I jumped at the chance because one never knows if something like the success of The Secret will come around again, and I didn’t want to miss out. As I said, I hadn’t seen it, but I have now bought it, now watched it, and I’m ready to give it a review. And, as always, it’s not a paid review; my opinion only.

Basically, Being In Heaven is the metaphysical version of the movie My Dinner With Andre, only it’s not as weird, has a message, is a lot more interactive, and I didn’t fall asleep in the middle of it, though I did take a break at one point.

The premise is that there’s a guy whose life seems to have spiraled out of control, losing everything he had, which was a lot, and he leaves New York to go back to his native Australia to try to start again. He gets a freelance writing gig to write about an interview with a motivational guru who’s written a new book on something; he doesn’t quite know what.

They meet at a restaurant and almost immediately the guy, named Jason, notices that there are some odd things going on. He especially gets an eerie feeling when the owner of the restaurant makes a statement out of the blue about his life and it stuns him because he’s never met this man and hadn’t told anyone his name. He’s taken to this table where the man he’s supposed to meet, Michael Domeyko Rowland, greets him and the conversation begins.

Then, for the next 80 minutes or so, these two men talk, almost uninterrupted, with brief stops by the waitress, the woman in the picture you see above and to the left, the owner a couple of times, and one quick incident where something is happening at a table near them; no, I’m not telling you what it is. Most of the talking is done by Michael, and he’s actually telling us truths about things that happened in his life. Then again, he’s the writer, director, and creator of this project, and it’s his real life, so I guess that makes sense. Jason contributes by asking questions, first with skepticism, then with genuine interest in learning, and he starts to realize that everything he’s done in his life has fit a pattern that developed when he was a child, something that he thought he’d forgotten about yet, once he brings it to the fore, realizes that he’s constantly done the same things over and over, and that once again he’d found a way of doing something by reliving those same patterns.

So, here it is in a nutshell. This movie isn’t as flashy as The Secret,
and it’s not even as flashy as The Opus. My wife thought Jason was very good looking, and I guess women will find him pretty good eye candy. The message is pretty good, though. Rowland doesn’t mention laws of attraction per se, but everything he talks about kind of leads you into that direction. I think this is a good movie, and it would have made a great motivational tape. But my wife and I watched for an hour, then took a break to ingest some of what we’d heard for awhile and came back to it later on to watch the rest; that’s a rare event for a movie we’ve never seen before. And the ending we didn’t see coming either, and that’s all I’m saying about that.

If you’re looking for self discovery or motivation, you’ll like this movie. It won’t make you jump out of your chair at the end with great enthusiasm, but it will make you think and make you feel good, and I believe that’s worth it. Just so you know, if you wish to buy it you can click on the link above or the links to the left side there, and of course there’s the brief movie clip you can check out. Because you can only get it mail order from Australia, it costs a bit more than normal DVDs do. But in the end, both my wife and I think it’s worth it.

Oh, as to the bird and the ball… nope, you’ll have to watch for that as well. By the way, here’s more of a radio interview than a video of him talking about the release of the movie in Australia.

Entertainment, Motivation/Inspiration | 11 Comments

Skyline – The Review

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Nov 13, 2010

Last weekend I mentioned that I couldn’t wait for Friday night because I was going to see the movie Skyline. Well, my friend Scott and I did go see this movie last night, and I decided to write a review of it without giving any of the plot away… I hope.

Truthfully, we knew we were in trouble when it took almost a minute to get through all those notifications of producers and studioes before anything got going. What we didn’t know is that the movie would only last about 90 minutes and never really go anywhere; well, at least I had some candy.

The basic premise of Skyline is that one morning at 4:37AM these blue streams of light start dropping out of the sky. Next thing you know, anyone who’s looking at these lights has the veins in their body start popping and they’re drawn to the light, with the next thing occurring is their being sucked into one of tens of alien ships that are hovering around somewhere.

The movie starts out that way, no preamble… and then it goes into flashback mode, 15 hours before that. What the hey? Not only that, but the flashback doesn’t set anything up really, and it only lasts about 10 minutes before we’re back to the lights again, only this time with a mix of what we saw earlier and what was going on that we didn’t see, but now know what’s coming.

From this point on we have fear and we have aliens. There are big aliens, smaller aliens, small flying aliens and the super large alien ships. The two early heroes watch as thousands of bodies are sucked into the ships, and for whatever reason they’re able to look at the light from a distance and not turn into something that’s going to get sucked in.

Everything takes place in one building, although when the military starts fighting back, we get to see planes and helicopters trying to take on these things. Only they’re indestructible. I just have to throw this one out. A stealth fighter hits one of the large alien ships with a nuclear warhead missile. You know that because of the way everything around explodes upon impact. The ship actually goes down, and there’s this large shockwave coming… only it doesn’t break any windows, there’s no fallout, and no radiation. And the ship puts itself back together. Later a guy is able to knock the glass out of another window with his elbow. A nuclear explosion can’t break glass, but an elbow can? Oh yeah; the ship that got blown up… it puts itself back together again, as does every alien that gets creamed by a missile or machine guy or bazooka or… whatever.

The only thing left to talk about is the ending of the movie. I’m not going to give it away, but I will say it was one of the stupidest endings I’ve ever seen to a movie. Scott asked while we were leaving the movie what it was about; I honestly don’t know. It had no real purpose; I guess they figured if there was a real alien attack that there wouldn’t be any conversation at all. Then again, if there was a real alien attack with ships this large I’m betting the military would have known it, we’d have all been told to leave the big cities, and maybe so many people wouldn’t have been killed at all. I mean, as kids we had air raid warnings going all over the place and practiced hiding under tables, both day and night. Not a single warning that there’s an alien invasion coming? Nothing on TV? Please!

I do have to add this. The budget for this movie was only $10 million, and most of the money had to go into the aliens, some of which looked pretty cool. The writing was bad, the storyline was bad, and no one looked particularly great. And one of whom I thought was one of the stars of the movie gets killed early, and of course it’s the black guy, and he was the only person in the movie I knew. Oh yeah; early in the movie the people in the movie think the water is safe, so that’s why they try to get to the water. I was thinking Signs at this juncture, but at the end of the movie you see that anyone who was in the water was killed as well.

I was trying to think of the last time I eagerly wanted to see a movie that failed like this; I can’t. I guess my string of picking winners is over; have to start anew. Skip this one, or wait until it comes on TV; don’t even rent it. You’ll hate yourself if you do. But if you’re not going to listen to me and are thinking about purchasing it anyway, then buy
Skyline from me.