Watched for Jodelle Ferland, of course; and I don’t think I’ve ever felt so like a sucker for watching a movie for such a reason, lol. Jodelle is in this I think frame for frame even less than she was in The Messengers. I guess at least she’s a girl in this one? (still playing the glad game from Pollyanna I guess LOL)

It’s just a really generic TV movie and not worth talking about much at all. It doesn’t even end well, it just kinda stops, lol. Not worth keeping or seeing again even for Jodelle.

Part of me sat depressed through this thinking I couldn’t have picked a worse movie to end 2007 with (of movies actually released in ‘07, at least). But maybe it’s actually the perfect choice. Curtis Hanson knows how to put a movie together, and like so many movies this year, too many by my reckoning, this is on the technical side perfectly acceptable. To make a card game of any kind even watchable is some achievement in itself. Here they even throw some golf in for good measure.

But to stretch this over a two hour period, with only a threadbare “man is logic, woman is emotion,” romantical conflict thing in the way of story? And then to cast Drew Barrymore and criminally underuse her? And then, in its last half hour, its entire last half hour, I swear … it switches to pretty much exactly what you’ll find if you accidentally switch to Channel 5 in the early hours of any given morning – a televised poker game, literally nothing more except Eric Bana has a hand and Drew Barrymore’s watching. It’s worse than the end of International Velvet, lol. It’s just incredible.

One is duty bound to use any pun available when dealing with movies like this, I’m afraid – Unlucky you if you made the same choice as I did in ending the year on this losing hand. This is the most depressing movie I’ve seen all year, exemplified perhaps best by the moment long after the final poker game is over when I found myself nearly screaming at the TV, “Oh my f**king god! They’re still talking!” Thank God for Music and Lyrics, or I’d be really questioning my love for Drew. It’s still a real letdown though.

And more Olsen twins time filling. You know, what I find the best, often only good reason to watch these movies is to marvel at how thoroughly they teach how not to make a movie. Like here, for instance, take the espresso-making scene. There are so many ways to make a clutzy teenage girl trying to get to grips with an espresso machine funny, y’know, see something like Lindsay Lohan with the washing machine in Just My Luck for instance; even Katie Holmes in Pieces of April with the oven. There are no end of sources of inspiration which a movie like this could quite easily just lift verbatim. It’s incredible how unfunny they manage to make such a scene here. Don’t even get me started on those accents. A smattering of points for showing so much of the city, they appear to have actually shot there, but still … eww. Must watch New York Minute (don’t read that review btw, it was evidently written before I succumbed to the cheese that is Paris) again early next year to restore my love for these girls.

Ugh, this is excruciating. And I know, it’s billed as being about Mary-Kate and Ashley getting their driver’s license, and driving doesn’t interest me in the slightest, so I should’ve known. Thing is – I wish this movie was more about the car and the road. It’s a road trip with barely any road in it. I swear, this script – if there even was one – must’ve been written in a night and never altered thereafter. It’s just a random series of events, none of which are remotely interesting. The cover art of this one made it look like one of the few, (moderately) slicker Olsen twins movies, like Passport to Paris, Winning London, New York Minute. Instead, it’s almost unwatchable, packed with those desperate silences which can only have been left in to maintain a feature length. Bland doesn’t even cover it. If you make it through, you won’t believe the sigh of relief you release when you realise yay, there are outtakes at the end!!!!

There’s literally nothing to say about this one. Like, it even failed to be quite so bad as I’d been led to believe. But right from the dodgy opening credits, this is just a miserably cheap excuse for a Christmas movie. Harvey Fierstein should be absolutely ashamed of himself for stooping so low as he does here, but the rest of the cast aren’t much more excusable. When there are movies out there like Elf and The Grinch that effortlessly bear brute-force repeat viewings this time of year, stuff like this really should be pictured next to the word “waste” in the dictionary.

I feel like Cartman, lol. “Umm, excuse me, I was led to believe there would be, umm … Havoc? in these proceedings?”

I really didn’t expect much from this – Anne Hathaway quickly lost my affection after Princess Diaries and if even people who weren’t so crazy about her there were panning her decision to do this, well, hence the long time it’s taken me to see it. I finally got around to it because I’ve heard good things about the straight-to-video sequel which I’ll be watching tomorrow. And I must say my interest was piqued ever so slightly by Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s name in the opening credits

But boy … I can’t argue with the way it’s all put together, it certainly looks like a movie, even like a movie worthy of Anne Hathaway … but it’s like someone saw Thirteen and decided, “you know what? That movie’s just far too interesting – I wanna make that movie, but take all that interestingness out!”

Watch it if you wanna see Hathaway’s nipples … and you’ll probably be happy ‘cos you don’t have to wait long. But for anything else? Thirteen is absolutely the movie you’re looking for.

Well now … had you told me I’d watch Superbad and this today I would’ve thought I could put money on which I’d enjoy more. But wow … I guess I can’t say the title didn’t warn me? This movie reminded me of the sequence in Little Miss Sunshine with the dead body … I knew I was supposed to be laughing … but I couldn’t. This is just bad gags all the way, like an embarrassing relative getting too drunk and standing up at a gathering and going on and on not realising that nothing he’s saying is funny and worse, it’s actually getting a little upsetting and disturbing. And I know that’s meant to be kind of what the movie is doing … but it comes over in the worst way – it’s too close to the real thing. My stomach dropped so much in places I thought it was six feet under. It’s just rotten. It’s bad in a way that doesn’t even deserve this paragraph’s worth of attention. It reminded me of the play in Noises Off! ... but again, in the worst way. Only the last line made me crack a smile, and it’s the kind of thing that can be found in plenty of better places.

Addendum: I actually was just reminded as I found the poster for this movie to put with the post, how Frank Oz directed the wonderful In and Out and the beautiful Bowfinger. I knew as the movie started that Frank Oz’s name always made me glow inside but all I could remember (aside from the Muppets and Yoda of course) was Little Shop of Horrors. These two reminders make the whole thing taste even more bitter.

Oh lordy. Couldn’t be happier I didn’t waste time squeezing this one in on Halloween, lol. This is hideously written, hideously scored, and has some really weird (and I know this’ll sound weird coming from me) sexual stuff involving schoolkids, camera lingering on the cheerleaders etc – and we’re not talking like ridiculously overaged actors playing the parts – one of the teachers says something at the start about ogling the young filly or something? ... and then the youngest of the siblings playing strip poker? “No more naked girls for you! You’re only 5!” followed by the creepiest child wink I’ve ever seen, lol … seriously, there’s some really strange stuff in here. If you complained about Bratz then you really owe it to yourself to see just how much more “inappropriate” children’s entertainment can be. When it almost offends me, that’s when you need to start panicking. This is even before the crap Austin Powers shows up and changes the movie from creepy to perverific.

I watched it for Taylor Dooley, and she’s good, the best thing in the movie, etc, but luckily I’m not fan enough of hers to really ever get the urge to watch it again. But this is ultimately the cheesy kind of TV movie that does nothing but make me mad. One IMDb reviewer put it as, “Your kids deserve better,” which is close; I won’t try to put it my way, because I’ll end up sounding like a raving lunatic. In short, it’s so sub-par it’s practically evidence of functioning evil in the world. That people waste time on sh*t like this and get paid is just a sham. Sorry, Taylor. You deserve better. But you do look cute as a cat (or whatever that costume’s supposed to be, rofl).