Monday, August 13, 2007 Rant Archive
Now we’re getting somewhere. Murray has finally booked a gig in Central Park (well, almost, but we’ll get to that in a minute) and it’s time for the boys to go on a warm-up tour in anticipation of the big gig. Needless to say, it’s not going to be that easy, starting with an itinerary that was taken from a rugby tour (squat thrusts not included) and a tour bus that’s actually a Honda Accord. And the funding for the tour may or may not be from Murray’s kind-of-girlfriend’s savings account.
But such is life on the road, and the important thing is they’ve got a tour to play. First stop: the airport. Not for a flight, but for a matinee gig in the LaGuardia hotel lobby lounge. On the way, the boys spend their per diems on leather suits, throw a TV out the window (again, not nearly as cool as it would sound) and meet some hot water polo player chicks, who run up their hotel tab before ditching out on their after-party. And don’t even get Murray started on the $8 mixed nuts in the hotel mini-bar.
When I put this into my DVD player, I thought this was going to be another drivel of a Hollywood movie. A bunch of middle-aged actors trying to be funny on bikes. I thought back to the mid-90s CITY SLICKERS, and couldn’t help but think this was a poorly penned carbon copy.
But it’s not all half-bad.
Yes, they are middle aged men: Martin Lawrence, Tim Allen, John Travolta and William H. Macy to be exact. Their connection is they all are going through a little mid-life crises. And much like SLICKERS, they take off into America’s heartland to find their themselves and recapture “the good old days.”
Well, the foursome hop on the road to escape their jobs, wives, daily grind, cholesterol levels and financial situations. There’s a few really good scenes, especially the first morning of their camping trip where they run into another very funny actor, John C. McGuinty. He makes a few appearances in their two-wheeled summer sojourn.
They end up in another bar which appears as friendly biker joint, but is really the home of the Del Fuegos, whose gang member also adds in the middle aged mix, middle-aged actors, Ray Liotta.
But the movie actually works as the tough guys, like Liotta and Travolta, really pull off the comedy by tying to act like tough guys, while inside they’re quite far from it. Get what I mean?
I walk into the theater and sit down maybe two minutes before the show starts. It’s a hot Sunday afternoon, and I expect a line to get into see RUSH HOUR 3, but the theater seems quiet. There are a few people scattered here and there, and a few more trickle in after I sit down. The boring crap on screen comes to an end, the trailers come and go, and the movie begins.
It’s a pretty serviceable plot: Inspector Lee (Jackie Chan) is on protection detail for his old friend Ambassador Han (Tzi Ma), who is about to reveal important information about the Chinese Triad to the World Criminal Court.
Detective James Carter (Chris Tucker) is on traffic detail, because he doesn’t know when to shut up and is working off the latest in what seems like a string of dumb moves, to the eternal chagrin of his boss (Philip Baker Hall, apparently in sore need of a paycheck). Suddenly, a mysterious assassin (Hiroyuki Sanada) shoots the ambassador and flees, starting a chain of events that lead Carter and Lee to Paris, to track down the mysterious list of Triad bosses, believed to be held by a beautiful chanteuse (Noemie Lenoir). Our hapless heroes dash to the City of Lights, helped by a mad cabbie (Yvan Attal) and hindered by an annoying policeman with a rubber glove fetish (Roman Polanski), and begin breaking stuff. Wacky hijinks ensue.
Or so you would think. There were surely lots of hijinks, but the wacky seems to have gone out of the franchise. The jokes are a little flat, most of the supporting actors look a little lost in the high-energy production, there’s a little too much Tucker (who is funny in short bursts, but not inventive enough for long jags) and not enough Chan, who is hamstrung both by the grandstanding of his co-star and the insurance requirements of Hollywood productions. Granted, Chan is 53, but he’s in great shape and still capable of lots of stunts that dudes half his age would have to get tremendously drunk to try. Anyway, Chan is a wonderful physical comedian, but he gets precious few chances to demonstrate that here.
It’s another glamorous day in the life of the rich and famous as the ENTOURAGE boys … wait for the cable guy.
Yeah, that’s not exactly what we think of when we imagine what it’s like to be a movie star, but we’ve all had to spend the day waiting for that premium sports package upgrade (the boys must have had the cable company take away the NFL Network from their package too – I know that’s been stressing me out all week).
Fortunately, Vinny’s got a stash of the chronic weed and, provided Turtle can get the grocery shopping done, it promises to be a good day of getting baked and awaiting the opportunity to watch a re-run of the Oakland Raiders season in review. Good times.
Turtle of course finds some ladies to party with at the grocery store, but gets pulled over by an overzealous cop who makes him throw the KBs down the sewer. But he miraculously retrieves it and the party is on. Whew, that was a close one. But,8/13 since nothing bad ever actually happens to the boys, you could probably predict that he wasn’t going to do any hard time for it.
Meanwhile, E continues his charade of being a manager. In an amazing freak accident, Anna Farris rear ends him while wearing just a towel (if I had a quarter for every time a hot actress chick in a towel ran into me, I’d … not be able to buy a newspaper). It turns out Anna has a boyfriend, but – hooray! – she happens to be looking for a manager.
It was bound to come to this. Dick could only sustain his grip on the houseguests so long before he got them all turned against him. His swearing, his aggression, his flatulence- these are not valued traits in communal living. But as we know, BIG BROTHER has very little to do with communal living. It is a game and Dick was never going to win and I think he knew that. What he is going to do is stand in front of as many bullets for his daughter as he can.
Not bad.
Dick and Daniele could have pulled off the ouster of America’s Doofus is Dick had used just a bit more tact and guile but then he wouldn’t be Dick. He was so abrasive, so divisive that Amber, Jameka and Jessica were willing to ignore facts of the game (has any of them offered an explanation for the phantom votes?) and fall in with smug and smarmy, the alleged giver of gonorrhea, Dustin. These are not smart or strong players. They are dopey and simply want comfort. They are not playing to win by giving all the leverage to Dustin.
Right now Amber can feel what I wrote and popped three extra Cymbalta.
With Jessica in place as HOH, the nominations wrote themselves. Dick’s main objective is to become even more hated and than he already is and make sure he goes home. His easiest targets were Amber and Jameka. He carpet bombed Jameka over religion, calling her a hypocrite for invoking Christ while lying and swearing. Jameka took a breather from praying to ask why Dick was bringing religion up. Then she called him and his mother a bitch. I’m not a biblical scholar but I think that is psalm 45.