Director David Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves very nearly meet the impossible demands of wrapping up the past decade’s most successful film series, resolving character and story arcs while serving up the requisite action. Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) continue to search out and destroy the pieces of Voldemort’s (Ralph […]
Zuppa Theatre
Posted inArts + Music
Winnie The Pooh sweet like “hunny”
With a heavy dose of “hunny,” hand-drawn animation and John Cleese’s narration, Winnie the Pooh is a tongue-in-cheek rendition of AA Milne’s lovable “bear of very little brain.” What starts as a search for Eeyore’s tail (aka “A Very Important Thing To Do”) turns into a quest for Christopher Robin, whom Pooh and his cronies—Kanga, […]
Posted inArts + Music
Stinky Zookeeper
For reasons unbeknownst to me, director Frank Coraci and a slew of writers birthed Zookeeper. Dumped by his bombshell GF (Leslie Bibb), zookeeper Griffin (Kevin James) schemes to win her back half a decade later with the help of the chatty animals he cares for and his sexy colleague (Rosario Dawson), who harbours a crush […]
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Horrible Bosses not bad at all
The creators of this comedy are so enamoured of their premise that they almost forget to convert their slick concept into actual entertainment. A sluggish half-hour is dedicated to the setup, as financial guy Nick (Jason Bateman), chemical company middle manager Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) and dental assistant Dale (Charlie Day) decide to murder the work […]
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Larry Crowne sweet, schmaltzy
Larry Crowne is very cute and very slight. Director Tom Hanks is also the titular Crowne, one of his typically effervescent-but-naive characters, a wageslave at the local big box suddenly downsized. His neighbour clues him into the possibility of adult education, so off he goes to community college, where the decades-younger students welcome him as […]
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Reviewer unmoved by Cars 2
Pixar’s run of quality animated movies is stellar, with the first Cars the exception proving the rule: It looked good, but was hollow as a wheel-well. The sequel exists only because the merch haul of the first one was so large, and somehow it manages to be slicker, more action-packed, and even less moving. Its […]
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Bad Teacher barely passes
Jake Kasdan’s comedy is a series of disjointed gags and one-liners without a satisfying through-line, intermittently amusing but ultimately unsatisfying. Cameron Diaz plays the unprofessional educator, Elizabeth, whose teaching repertoire consists of R-rated movies and whose life ambition amounts to finding a sugar daddy. Spotting a candidate for that role in a wealthy colleague (Justin […]
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Not much to The Art of Getting By
Gavin Wiesen’s drama about a slacker teen exhibits the opposite flaw as its main character. Whereas high school senior George (Freddy Highmore) is a baby-faced deer who sees life as a series of paralysis-inducing headlights, the film itself is far too confident in its studied indie-ness. George is outfitted with an oversized overcoat, a family […]
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Perfunctory Mr Popper’s Penguins
Jim Carrey does his best impression of a manic businessman turned penguin-hoarder for an hour and a half. Mike Waters (Ghosts of Girlfriends Past) alters a classic children’s novel beyond recognition: As Mr. Popper, Carrey winterizes his swanky Manhattan apartment for Antarctic waterfowl bequeathed to him by his absentee father, attempts to reignite a broken-up […]
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Green Lantern provides comic relief
It’s hard to take this shade of green seriously. Martin Campbell’s (Casino Royale) adaptation of the DC comic establishes the universal battle between the yellow power of “fear” and the green power of “will.” Unfortunately, this “info-dump” happens twice: first for the audience, then again for pilot turned superhero Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds). We get […]
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Vegetarianism doc Forks Over Knives persuasive
An infomercial for the whole grain, plant-based diet, Lee Fulkerson’s documentary plugs it as the solution to America’s degenerative diseases, including cancer, heart disease and diabetes. For all its evidence to support this miracle cure —from large-scale studies, to personal examples, to disturbing statistics—a few loose ends remain. Fish isn’t discussed save for in passing, […]
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Cell 213 dull like solitary confinement
Part psychological thriller, part religious horror and part Shawshank Redemption redux, Cell 213 is a wholly amateurish effort that’s neither thoughtful or frightening. Eric Balfour stars as unscrupulous lawyer Michael Grey, who’s falsely convicted of the murder of a mentally unstable client and gets locked away in the very same cell that housed his alleged […]
