Sep 15, 2011
There's a really good movie here, somewhere, but it is bogged down by taking itself too seriously at times, weird consistency, pacing and some of the performances are a bit off in some scenes. This movie also has one of my pet peeves with movies, whenever a person falls off a great height, they always manage to break one leg right? But instead of the leg being all fucked up with bones sticking out, the actor that fell turns his leg to the left if it's supposed to be his left leg that's broken and same thing with the right leg. And it's a completely ridiculous visual every time I see it. It doesn't piss me off, but every time I see it I just laugh to myself and how ridiculous this all is. And I'm completely sure that this probably all just started as a comedy sketch, it seems to me that this sort of thing would've been made fun of by Monty Python in a sketch back in the late 60s and early-to-mid 70s. But apparently, a lot of people thought that this was an effective way to sell a fall from a great height. Seriously think about it, at what position must a person fall at for his/her leg to end up like they do in the movies. It's almost physically impossible, I'll go as far as to say. I'd think falling from a great height at a fast rate of speed INTO CONCRETE would fuck me up more than just turning my leg in a funny way. Are some filmmakers so lazy that they don't want to spend the money getting a decent fucked up leg? It's absolutely ridiculous. Anyway, I don't know why I ranted about that so long. Probably because I don't have a lot to say about this movie. It has its flaws, as mentioned. But I liked the dynamic of Charlie and Mick's interactions at the beginning. You could tell that they weren't trusting of each other, but they wouldn't say so outright. Then they somehow use that to build a real friendship between the two characters and it does feel natural. But the pacing just killed me, it took forever to get to what the movie was really about. I also wish the movie was funnier than it was. I think the movie just takes itself too seriously for there not to be more comedy than there is. It's almost really to the detriment of the movie. Because Jesse Eisenberg is pretty great at indie type comedy and I'm sure Jason Ritter MUST have learned something from his dad about comedic performance. Not to say the movie should've been all comedy, but there's a perfect balance that a movie like Win Win achieved (and amazingly so, in fact) that this movie doesn't. If that was even the purpose of this movie. There's some uneveness to Jason Ritter's performance. It's not bad, but it's not always good either. And then there's the issue of Fred Durst directing this movie. And I must say, for what I was expecting, I'd give him two thumbs up. Not like he's the next Paul Thomas Anderson or anything, but he proved himself to be an adequate director for his first movie. The guy knows nothing about pacing, that's for damn sure and he ain't ever going to be a big time director, but he's got himself a decent start with this movie here. I didn't see The Longshots, which was released one year after this one AND Durst also directed, so I can't say how he's progressed. And that's about it really, the movie, at its core is really good, but its flaws do definitely drag it down a notch, so I can't really recommend it. But some people will be able to overlook its flaws and enjoy the movie for what it is.
Verified