Magic Mike XXL

Magic Mike XXL

Rating 1 out of 10

Okay we know out of the gate when they did focus groups on this movie they didn't aim it toward 50 year old white guys.  I really wish I had listened.  I rented the first Magic Mike movie and found it to be all over the place.  Poorly shot and written by third graders.  Sad to say Magic Mike XXL is filmed just as poorly.  It looks like it was shot on my old betamax camcorder.  The third graders that wrote the first one were not available so they hired their younger brothers.  Even for this type of movie this is a waste of film stock.  I took my hot date to this movie and she was so bored and aggravated we left before it was over.  I'm sure we missed the big ending.  I'll have to live with that.

The plot, if you can call it that, goes like this.  Mike (Channing Tatum) has moved on from his exotic dancing and has a custom furniture business.  When the band of hunks roll into town on their way to a big male dancer extravaganza in Florida he decides to join in for one last ride.  They travel in a roach coach with plenty of unexplained stops along the way.  Kinda appropriate they ride in a roach coach as they take drugs and drink the whole way.

This is such a mess.  The dialog seems like it's made up on the spot with actors given a general idea what the plot is and told to improvise.  The dancing is pretty comical.

This was a total waste of money and time.  I was not entertained.

Ted 2

Ted 2

I have to admit I was not a fan of Ted 1.  I did not see it in the theaters.  Had no desire to.  My oldest son gave me his dvd to watch even though he was pretty sure I wouldn't like it.  He was correct.  I didn't care for it one bit.  Nothing funny to me with a cute teddy bear that drops F-bombs and smoked dope all day.  I am in Cincinnati watching it rain out my son's baseball game and went to Ted 2 because everyone else wanted to see it and there was nothing else on.

While I'd say for me Ted 2 is far from a good movie but it did have some very funny laugh out loud parts and it was better than Ted 1.

Ted 2 starts several years after Ted 1 with Ted marrying a way too hot female.  A year later Ted and wife are fighting like crazy.  Ted and his best buddy John (Mark Wahlberg) decide the best way to save the marriage is to have a child.  The problem is Ted is a teddy bear and has no male private parts.  In trying to adopt a baby it puts Ted on the governments radar who determines he is not human and now has no rights at all.  They are fighting it in court and lucky for them the pretty blonde lawyer (Amanda Seyfried) gets severe headaches and smokes a bong load of pot every evening.

Seriously if you go to this movie it's not to see a plot.  While still plenty of cussing and drug humor it is toned down a bit from the last one.  As I said there were some laugh out loud moments.  I was mildly entertained.  If you loved the first one you will undoubtedly love this one too.

Jurassic World

Jurassic World

Rating 7 out of 10

I have to admit I LOVED Jurassic Park.  I think I gave it one of my very few 10's back in 1993.  So the bar was set very high for this movie.  It comes close to the bar but in my opinion does not reach it.

With Jurassic World we fast forward 23 years from when the original Park went haywire and people were eaten.  They now feel they have it under control and it's been a type of Disney World with teeth for many years.  People flock to Costa Rica to see dinosaurs up close.  Little kids ride them like ponies.  People kayak along creeks with them.  Huge whale sized shark fish do tricks like Sea World. Already people are getting bored with dinosaurs.  The corporate types are feeling the need to up the ante every couple years to keep attendance up.  As you have seen in the hundreds of commercials to get people in the park they decide to create the biggest, coolest, meanest dinosaur ever.  Amazingly enough that doesn't go well.  People get eaten.

Million$ are spent on the dinosaurs.  No much was spent on the paint by numbers storyline.  I know, what am I thinking?  A complicated plot on a dinosaur movie?  They had a check list.  Need a heartless corporate type that only cares about the bottom line.  Check (Bryce Dallac Howard).  Hunky ultra-maintaince man type that cares for the toothy dinosaurs like they were his kids. Check (Chris Pratt). Evil military guy that only wants to get his hands on the dinosaurs to use at weapons even tho it makes no sense. Check (Vincent D'Onofrio).  Floppy haired kid that needs a hair cut and gets on Royce's nerves.  Check.

This movie moves well and there are some cool dinosaurs.  My movie buddy Ted would say I'm being way too hard on it.  I probably am.  I was hoping for another 10 and got a 7.  Was surprised the special effects was not really any better than 23 years ago.  Shows how incredible the original was.

Still well worth seeing.  I was entertained.

Spy

Spy

Rating 6 out of 10

I broke my own rule about comedies.  I knew better.  It's just not a good idea to go to a funny movie at the early show with a mostly empty theater.  The jokes are just funnier with a theater full of people laughing instead of the one lady two rows behind me that laughs like a goof ball at EVERY joke! I saw this on a rain day in Mobile, Alabama with six other people in the theater.

Not a huge plot here.  A really bad woman ,Raina Boyanov, (Rose Byrne) has a nuke she is selling to the highest bidder with plans of them setting it off in NYC.  Somehow she has a list of all current CIA agents and can spot them a mile away.  Susan Cooper (Melissa McCarthy)  is a long time CIA agent that works in the office running the computer and talking to other agents in the field.  When they need someone to locate Raina, Susan feels she is the woman for the job since no one knows who she is.

Of course Cooper is bumbling and does everything wrong.  Jason Statham plays agent Rick Ford who is afraid of no one and wants to take the woman down against the wishes of the bosses.  Statham is actually pretty funny.  I like Melissa McCarthy.  I was a big fan of her tv show Mike and Molly for the first couple years.  While watching this movie I had to think another actress would have been better suited.  Not sure who I'd pick, but someone like a stockier Tina Fey would be great.

I laughed.  Had I seen this in a Friday night full theater I probably would have laughed more.  I used to like Rose Byrne.  Now I wish she'd eat a cheeseburger.  She is so skeleton skinny she is not even pretty anymore.

I was entertained.  If the trailer looks good to you then I"d say you won't regret spending your money.

San Andreas

San Andreas

Rating 6.5 out of 10

With this movie you get what you see in the trailer.  A disaster movie that reminds of the old Earthquake or Towering Inferno movies of the 70s with much better special effects.  You don't expect too much just huge buildings falling right and left and Duane "the Rock" Johnson's huge biceps flexing.  This movie delivers for what it aims for.  Campy action and over the top acting.

Ray Gaines (Johnson) is an ace helicopter pilot on a search and rescue team outside Los Angeles.  Everyone has heard of the dreaded San Andreas fault that runs along the spine of California and how one way the big one would destroy everything.  That time has finally come and it looks like San Francisco is going to get the worst of it.  That's bad for the residents of San Fran but also bad for Ray Gaines as his daughter is there and he must save her.  After he pulls is soon to be ex-wife off the top of a tall building as it's falling during one of the many earthquakes they head North to San Francisco to get their daughter.  It's all action from there.

This movie is entertaining.  You know what you are expecting.  You will get that and not a penny more.

Pitch Perfect 2

Pitch Perfect 2

Rating 8 out of 10

I enjoyed the first Pitch Perfect.  Not as much as my teenage son or my movie buddy Ted, but I liked it.  I didn't (and still don't) think one of the main characters, Fat Amy, was nearly as funny as everyone else did.  I do like the singing and synchronized moves all the groups make.

With Pitch Perfect 2 we join the ladies four years later.  Now most are seniors at the now famous Barton College.  The ladies have won the US Acapella Championships three years in a row.  When they are invited to do a show in front of the president there is disaster when Fat Amys pant's split and no underwear. They are banned from the US Championships and the only way to redeem themselves is to win the World Championships which no US team has ever done.  Rocket science it's not.

The song choices are spot on for the most part.  Dancing is good.  Just a fun way to blow a couple hours.  For me the absolute highlight of the movie is John Michael Higgins and Elizabeth Banks as the two commentators that constantly had me rolling with their un-PC comments.  "Acapella is for those girls not pretty enough to be cheerleaders".

I was entertained.  I would say a tick below the first one yet still worth watching.  My hot date sang every word and bounced in her seat to where I was afraid we we be asked to leave.  That was fun to watch too.

Tomorrowland

Tomorrowland

Rating 4 out of 10

This movie definitely wins with best advertising campaign of the year.  For months I have been seeing the small clips either in movie previews or later on the tv ads.  The clip of the cute girl picking up a pin with a funky looking T on it and is magically taken to another world where people are using jet packs and George Jetson is flying his car to Spacely's Space Sprockets for work.  The ad's show all the pizazz without a clue what the movie is about.  That pretty much describes the movie.  The movie is amazing to look at.  Almost no plot to speak of. 

The movie starts with the young girl Casey (Brittany Robertson from the tv show Under the Dome) who is so smart she helps her rocket scientist dad solve complicated problems yet is so upset they are closing down NASA she keeps sabotaging the destruction of the space shuttle platform.  Thus she ends up spending the night in jail.  When she gets out she finds the cool round pin in her belongings with a big T (1964 Worlds Fair pen).  This magic pen when she touches gives her a glimpse of Tomorrowland.  She later finds out she is being recruited by a little girl to help save the world and Tomorrowland which was built years ago when the smart people realized we were destroying our planet.  

We are half way thru the movie before pretty boy George Clooney joins.  He was recruited when he was a child then thrown out later for not conforming. When Casey shows up on his doorstep it sets off some alarm that sends robot guys there to destroy them both (go figure).  We then find out the people in Tomorrowland realized the crazy way humans have ruined Earth they don't want them up there to ruin it too. Insert Clooney's politics here. The ending will leave you scratching your head if you are still awake. 

The movie runs an hour forty seven minutes and seems much longer.  The visuals were as I said incredible.  The story was boring nonsense.