i quite agree with your review...i can't stand adam sandler and hated the last
one ''zohar' or something like that...i only went to this cause of lucy...and
she did a fine job!
x


 

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--- On Sat, 1/3/09, whoosh@yahoogroups.com <whoosh@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

From: whoosh@yahoogroups.com <whoosh@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [Whoosh!] Digest Number 2424
To: whoosh@yahoogroups.com
Date: Saturday, January 3, 2009, 3:08 AM
















WHOOSH! The Journal of the International Association of Xena Studies was the
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1.
Bedtime stories review From: KTL
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Bedtime stories review
Posted by: "KTL" fsktl@...   fsktl
Sat Jan 3, 2009 12:05 am (PST)
I remember when it was first announced that Lucy was going to be in an
Adam Sandler movie and some of us had reactions ranging from mild dismay
to horrified screaming high angst. Good news: it wasn't near as bad as I
thought it might be.

I haven't seen any reviews on it here, so I thought I'd hop in with one.

No real spoilers but a few details about some things so read at your own
risk.

We trundled off to the movie theater the day after Christmas. I went
with quite a bit of trepidation- as I've said before, I was horribly
traumatized by an Adam Sandler movie years ago. I was visiting my sister's
house and my young barely teen at the time nephew was totally in love with
"Happy Gilmore" and watched it night and day, as it endlessly regurgitated
on HBO. It was absolutely horrifying and I was indelibly warped forever,
dead set in total Sandleravoidance mode.

BUT Lucy's in it and I have never seen her on the big screen, and my
friend Cheryl advocated for it, so I gritted my teeth and went.

And was very glad I did. I laughed out loud at some of that movie-THAT
was totally unexpected. It's very funny at times.

Of course, for most of us fans, Lucy wasn't used enough. But she did a
fine job in her role-as she said, she looked on her character as a Disney
villainess and she was pitch perfect in catching their typical
unending malevolence and sheer joy in being mean to anything that
crawls into their view. She didn't have a lot of lines, but she never
stopped acting, no matter how far from the camera she was. And she has
such an expressive face that you know just what she's thinking as she
glares at people or when she receives satisfaction when they get in
trouble. Very nice job.

One of the joys of the movie was watching for her in the story
sequences. She's in most if not all of them at some point. And she's
usually just barely human-in terms of this is a fantasy story where
the divisions between humans and animals get blurred, and non-human
body parts are part of the make-up. There was one moment early on in a
long shot where Sandler's talking and I suddenly realized that a
creature near him was probably Luce. The camera chose that moment to
cut, but when they swung back to the same shot, in the split
nano-second that she was on screen again, I was convinced it was
her-there was something in the way she was moving that confirmed this
for me. While it was pure Lucy, it was also appropriate for the
persona she was made up as-if such a human/animal mix existed,
they'd move exactly that way if they were pissed off. So I was sure it
was her and was talking silently to myself, mentally affirming, "That IS
Lucy!" just as my sister-in-law hissed out, "Is that Lucy as that (leaving
this last noun blank to not spoil anyone)?" And I laughed and whispered
back, "Yup".

But while I went to the movie for Lucy, I enjoyed some of the other
actors very much. I thought that the kids did a great job-they're
really portrayed as kids, not like the more common slimy, mean,
smart-mouthed brats that are all over TV and in some movies.

Kerie Russell was good. Courtney Cox was good. I enjoyed their time on
screen. And both of their characters had little emotional development
arcs that they handled very well. And of course, it's always a
pleasure to see so many female characters in a movie.

But one HUGE pleasure (and the source of most of my laugh out loud
moments) was Russell Brand. He was hilarious. He totally captured my
attention whenever he was onscreen. He found a real human being in the
character he played.

He was child-like and yet sometimes wise. And did some unexpected
things with kind of unusual reactions that were way funny. Whenever he
appeared onscreen, I looked forward to seeing what he'd do this time.
He read his comic lines with real wit and also did well with the
slapstick bits. I really, REALLY enjoyed him. And I noticed that he
got the lion's share of the laughs from the audience.

AND I think he's hot. Even his normal hairdo doesn't dampen that
reaction from me. Hoooo!

The only actor I wasn't terribly impressed with was Guy Pierce. I've
never seen him in anything before but he was-I'm not sure what. He was
way more one-dimensional in a not this is just a farce piece way than any
of the other characters. It was like he couldn't quite find anything
at all in the character that made him seem human-there was no
awareness or vulnerability there, he had no fears, no emotional
connection, no engagement with other people. And without that, it's
not a pleasure to watch a character. It's hard to care about what he's
up to. I guessssss, yeah, it was that he didn't go into the character
at all to me.

Oh and Sandler wasn't that bad at all. I do remember laughing once at
him, when we first saw the guinea pig-it appears on screen with him
and it was unexpected and not where you might think it might be and it
made me laugh.

And my greatest fear wasn't realized. The movie wasn't the usual
disgusting SNL alumni gross out. While there was a scene featuring
huge animated malevolent snot, nothing even approached the drinking sh*t
scene in one Mike Myers movie-the first movie I ever walked out of the
theater on. (It was SO not my idea to go see it in the first place.)

The theater was filled with little kids and their
folks/family/ babysitters. The kids were pretty well behaved-there wasn't a
lot of yakking or running around the theater, so I'm thinking they liked
it. The oddest but kind of heart warming thing was that at the end of the
movie, some of the audience applauded. I haven't heard audiences applaud a
movie in years. Or course, that could have been coerced attendant adults
happy that it had come to the end-but I don't think so.

Happy New Year everybody.

KT



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