Screenhead

Man, it’s just a big old day of mystery for you folks, isn’t it?  Got to be just KILLING you!  But don’t worry, you know your old buddy always takes care of you with the answers to his own questions in rapid fashion.

It’s Tim Allen, folks.  Tim Allen is actually making a reappearance on the big screen this January.  And even better, he’s directing.  So for once, if something goes wrong with a movie, we know EXACTLY who to blame.

And surely it’s not the writer of the upcoming train wreck in the making, Crazy on the Outside, featuring the grunt machine himself as a former prison inmate released into the care of his family, who as it turns out, is insane.

Even worse, joining this fray are none other than otherwise decent character actors Sigourney Weaver and Ray Liotta.  Now, Ray I understand.  Poor guy needs a paycheck.  But Sigourney, come on.  Surely you can hold off the tax man until the Ghostbusters remake hits!

Well, they don’t call it the January Curse for nothing, kids–brace yourselves, because this is going to be a doozy.

…Will Ferrell.

You know, I’m not surprised.  Really.  I’d also include words like “overrated” and “over the hill” too, because frankly, I haven’t laughed at much he’s done since the Butomi era on Saturday Night Live, and even then because he was with Chris Kattan, whose wide-eyed insanity made Ferrell seem like a straight man.

Oh, sure, Elf could’ve been a LOT worse than it was, but my stomach still churns at the thought of Step Brothers, and I still can’t make it through a performance of Semi-Pro without wishing Michigan would fall into one of the lakes, even IF it took me with it.

Ferrell, on average, only brings in about three times what he’s paid, which is actually good by any objective standard, but in Hollywood, in which budgets on single films can easily surpass the GDP of entire countries (here I am thinking of pretty much anywhere in Africa), it takes a lot more than a three to one ratio to justify the big payday.

Oh, sure, Ferrell’s known for a good joke or two, but he often spends his time in one of three basic modes:

1. Whiny man-child Will

2. Entirely too confident of his appearance Will

3. Naked Will

And frankly, I think we’ve all had enough of number three by now.  Number one makes me want to gouge out most of my sensory apparatus and number two is just boring.

You know, I don’t have much particular affection for Kevin Smith or his work–I think his best years were behind him after Mallrats, and I have to wonder if I didn’t like Mallrats because I was roughly the protagonists’ age when it emerged, thus giving me a note of resonance with it.  That and my best friend at the time was totally a Brodie whilst I was the T.S. of the outfit, except I NEVER managed to score a Brandi.  I’m sorry to all my exes, but truly, NONE of you were a match for mid-nineties Claire Forlani.  It just doesn’t happen.

But even I’m annoyed that Kevin Smith’s once again getting slammed by title censorship.  First, no network would air advertising for Zack and Miri Make A Porno because it had the word “porno” in it, and as we all know, hearing the word “porno” on network television causes nuns and small children’s heads alike to burst into flame.

And now, what do I find, but his upcoming A Couple of Dicks has been changed…to A Couple of Cops.

…sigh…

Seriously, does no one understand basic irony?  That “dick” is Depression-era slang for “detective”?  Or are we all so concerned about “naughty language” that we’re going ban-happy?  I don’t know, but whatever it is, I don’t much like it.

Sorry, Kevin.

Patty (101) won the movie and her kids will love it.

I really recommend getting this DVD for your kids. My daughter and her four friends watched Aliens in the Attic  and they loved it all. Even the bloopers were awesome.

The movie takes place during summer vacation, but the Pearson family kids are stuck at a boring lake house with their nerdy parents. That is until feisty, little, green aliens crash-land on the roof, with plans to conquer the house AND Earth! Using only their wits, courage and video game-playing skills, the youngsters must band together to defeat the aliens and save the world — but the toughest part might be keeping the whole thing a secret from their parents!

The scene most talked about was when the adults were being controlled by the kids via remote controls. The kids had the two adults fighting each other with the kids flipping them, getting the parents to do anything they wanted them to do.

The cast includes Doris Roberts (“Everybody Loves Raymond”), Andy Richter (“The Conan O’Brien Show”), Kevin Nealon (“Weeds”), Tim Meadows (Mean Girls) and Gillian Vigman (The Hangover), as well as rising young star Ashley Tisdale (High School Musical).

After my daughter’s friends left, she asked if she could watch the movie, again, and did with just as much enjoyment.

As it turns out, there are a LOT of Saw parodies. I really didn’t see this coming, but a basic search for “Saw Parody” on YouTube turns up a whole lot of pieces.  Some of them I knew about, like Mad TV’s version.

But then there are those like Jigsaw’s Crib, today’s short film target, that just came out of nowhere.

Jigsaw’s Crib is a bizarre combination parody of Saw and MTV’s Cribs.  And as entertaining as that idea would be if it were played straight, the problem is in this case it’s played with absolutely NO CONNECTION to the Saw series.  I figured maybe they’d take us around that warehouse we saw in Saw III, or at least some facsimile thereof, but no.  No, we wandered around some kid’s house while he walked around doing three important things.

1. Talking like a rapper.

2. Being drowned out by the “background” music

3. Doing that ridiculous “air jerk” thing.

No, this was a good idea, and probably would have been hilarious if it were done right, as opposed to being mostly a badly cast episode of Cribs, complete with ludicrously oversized “joint”.  Because as we all know, Little Billy was a serious pothead.

No, he wasn’t. He was a PUPPET. And if these putzes had actually watched one of the Saw films, they might have realized that.

Wildly out of line, with only a minimal contact with the Saw films by virtue of Little Billy and a brief mention of Dr. Gordon, Jigsaw’s Crib is just like its MTV parent–a sad, sorry, sloppy mess.

The Screenhead Ten Scale shakes its head in disgust and hands Jigsaw’s Crib a two out of ten for barely having a clue what it was talking about.  This was a good idea that went horribly, horribly wrong.

Funny, hot shot and whippersnapper, director and producer Judd Apatow (The 40 Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up) will be making a special visit to the Funny or Die writers’ room to answer fan-submitted questions on his latest film Funny People via a special live event on www.funnyordie.com on Wednesday, Nov 18 from 12:30 – 1:00 PM PT (3:30 -4:00 PM ET).

Funny People takes audiences on a hilarious and revealing look at the world of stand-up comedy with the story of George Simmons, a famous comedian who is given a second chance at life.

Funny Peopleis coming to two-disc Blu-Ray, two-disc Collector’s Edition DVD, single-disc DVD and digital download on November 24, 2009 from Universal Studios Home Entertainment. 

Apatow will answer pre-submitted questions from Funny or Die’s Facebook page (facebook.com/funnyordie) and live questions from Funny or Die’s Twitter account (twitter.com/funnyordie). Fans watching the special live event will also get to see sneak peeks of the Funny People2-disc Collector’s Edition Blu-ray and DVD releasing November 24, which will feature exclusive clips and behind-the-scenes footage.

It’s a perfect time for Christmas movies to start coming out, seeing as the decorations have been up in the stores since like September.  And so, we’re tackling Four Christmases today, a movie that shows that sometimes, time with the family is the best gift of all.

Even if you don’t notice it at first.

This time, a young couple who’s not terribly interested in getting married, usually manages to duck their family obligations around the holidays by making up elaborate stories and going off to various getaways instead.   But a surprise San Francisco fogbank socks in the airport irrevocably, and so the four are left forced to spend Christmas in the last place on earth they want to…with their families.

Families.  FOUR of them.  Both of their families are divorced, and thus, they’ll have to spend four Christmases in just one day.

What’s so unnerving about this movie is that it veers so wildly between hilarious and awkward that it almost can’t decide whether it’s supposed to be funny or uncomfortable.  It’s like the fat kid at school…he’s trying desperately to be funny, but it’s actually just about as sad.

Each of the families is deranged for its own reason, and believe me, they’re deranged.  The least of the deranged is a family of backwoods amateur ultimate fighters.  It gets worse from there.

It’s awkward.  It’s painful, in spots.  But it’s also got a lot of humor and warmth to it.  There’s lots to enjoy here.  We’ve all seen this kind of thing before. This is Christmas at its absolute.  Family, friends, lovers, growth.  Life.

Four Christmases is like LIFE.

And as such, the Screenhead Ten Scale gives this strange little allegory a six out of ten.  There’s lots to like here, and there’s lots to feel uncomfortable about.  It IS life.  Take it for what it’s worth.

It’s a surprise to say but Expired, which The Asylum sent me a copy of,  may well be the scariest thing that The Asylum has ever released, and it’s not even a horror flick.

See, apparently, sometime while I wasn’t looking, The Asylum started to go after offbeat comedies and romantic drama, and it’s the latter that we’ll be referencing today.  Expired, however, is a romantic drama of the worst sort–the kind that won’t stop hurting.

In Expired, two horrendously deformed personalities–a total doormat of a woman and a complete jackass of a man–manage to find each other and engage in a tumultuous relationship that takes them through fights and death and bereavement and a horrendous New Years Eve featuring karaoke that has probably been banned by the Geneva Convention.  But will these two prove a match made in Hell?  Or will they realize that they’re both complete wastes of life and go their separate ways?

I’ve never watched a movie that hurt quite so badly as Expired did.

I spent insane amounts of time screaming at my television.  I never wanted a character dead quite so many times, either, as I wanted THESE two dead.  They were like needles.  Needles in my EYES.  By the hour mark I was shrieking in agony, wishing this would finally end.

And eventually, it did.  But by then, I was feeling so badly for pretty much everyone involved, but most badly for myself who had to sit through this misery tour, that I was glad to eject the DVD it came on.

I wondered, what kind of masochist would subject themselves, voluntarily, to watch a movie where a guy tries to score with a woman literally the SAME NIGHT HER MOTHER DIED.  And what kind of cynic would fail to be amazed that she ACTUALLY LET HIM GET SOME.

And it’s like this for the whole movie.  It’s a hundred and seven minutes of some of the most horrendous relationship I’ve ever seen.  These two halfwits make Bobby and Whitney look like Ozzie and Harriet.

Oh, sure, you want to believe that they’re both getting better, in their way.  And you can actually start to see that, after a fashion.  But it’s just too little, too late.  The damage is done.  This movie is downright painful to watch for entirely too little payoff.

The Screenhead Ten Scale’s off in a corner retching right now, but it told me to pass on that it gave this horrendous misery tour a two out of ten.  Wait…it just said something about “rewarding effort”, which is fair enough.  It DID try, after all.  It just didn’t end well at all.

It’s probably about time we got a few more amateur Saw parodies.  The franchise is indeed rife with possibilities, and today, we tackle Saw XIV, or, The One Where Saw Constantly Screws Up.

The title basically gives away the premise and the plot–Jigsaw’s death traps (now Hoffman’s death traps) have always been mechanically complex wonders of amateur engineering.  But what would happen if those darn death traps just wouldn’t work right?

They’ve got a really good point, actually.  All this stuff is incredibly complex–I mean, just one slipped gear or misfired sparkplug and the next thing you know, blammo! No death trap.

And the best part is, this is actually really funny.  Though as it turns out, it’s not alone.  Just because I hadn’t heard of them before, apparently there are a LOT of Saw parodies out there.

The downside here is that the movie was made clearly by people who either didn’t see the Saw series or didn’t watch much of it, as they’re continually referring to Jigsaw as “Saw”, not to mention dressing him up like Little Billy, when we really should be seeing either Jigsaw himself or the “replacement” Jigsaw that is Detective Hoffman.

Anyway, the Screenhead Ten Scale just wiped away a tear of hilarious laughter and hands Saw XIV a seven out of ten. Admittedly, it’s low budget, and they clearly only have a loose idea of what they’re parodying, but the comedy more than makes up for the lack of effects work.

Pick up the hilarious new stand-up special from top comedian Mike Epps, UNDER RATED & NEVER FADED… Mike takes the stage live in Detroit in front of a sold-out audience and delivers his funniest performance to date… sure to leave fans screaming for more. Available on DVD and iTunes Nov. 10th.

Screenhead has 10 copies of Mike Epps, Under Rated & Never Faded to give away to the lucky winners who post their name.  We will pick the winners Thursday, November 30, 2009.