August 27, 2002

Movie Reviews

Movie Review

Time to do some catching up. Bad movies first. Slowly getting better.

Zero of Five Stars

Super Troopers


Just to let you know. I did not have any goals or objectives to see the movies that are listed in this section. They just sort of happened. The movie “Super Troopers” is the epitome of bathroom humor. Its target audience seemed to be state troopers that have lots of time on their hands and haven’t grown up yet, not a very large audience. This low budget film must have surprised even the director when it made it into theaters. If you happened to catch the trailer it is based on only the first four minutes of the film. Most of the characters from the preview do not reappear until the credits. They must have known that most of the film was not worth being in.


One of Five Stars

Romy and Michele's High School Reunion


I just heard today that they were making either a TV series or made for TV film that is a prequel to this film. Now why anyone would want to watch that is beyond me. This movie had some interesting little jokes here and there but not enough to make up for the 20 minute dream sequence. There is no need for a dream sequence that is that long. Unless of course you don’t really have a working script and need to fill space. In this type of film a dream sequence is used to help the audience foreshadow the characters needs or desires. We already knew this. Give the audience some credit. Overall a slow script and very few original jokes.


Two and a half of Five Stars

The Time Machine


They lose some points for not having read the book. Apparently they were also too busy to do anything more then just skim the Cliff Notes. The special effect made this movie. It would also have been better to have seen it in the theaters. However, it was only worth the price of a rental. Orlando Jones, the Seven Up guy, makes another one of his cameos on this film. Haven’t seen him since. His interesting character was a part of the interesting new plot they created. It helped them bridge the gaps through time and wasn’t altogether a bad plot addition. From looking at the deleted scenes on the DVD it was clear that the original plan was to develop the main character before he traveled through time much more then they did. Instead time travel shapes him from a character with nothing as a main motivation. In the end the film leaves you with a feeling that you have already seen this film. There are to many obvious similarities to the remake of “Planet of the Apes”.

I’ll get to “Out of the Past” and “Criss Cross” later.

Posted by Jeff at August 27, 2002 10:59 PM