HST…Film Review: Pitch Perfect

09/27/2012 by Leave a Comment

Lauren:  It has been a while since I’ve felt the glorious, backhanded comradery of female, organized activities in film.  We’re talking 12 years ago with the cheertastic Bring It On (ignore the sequels) in which a high school team must overcome the mistakes of their leader and start from the ground up to fight for the top spot in competition.  Now switch the setting to college, drop the cheering for singing, add “aca” in front of everything instead of “cheer,” and we’ve got something pretty aca-awesome.

Zac: No aca-puns this early, please. [Read more...]

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Now Playing Review – Bad Teacher

06/24/2011 by Leave a Comment

I wouldn’t say that Bad Teacher lacks all traces of intelligence, but it seems unmotivated to better itself to get a higher passing grade.  It is lazy, goes for cheap and outlandish jokes to get laughs, loses focus… Ok, I am going to stop there.  I was trying to recreate a parent / teacher conference as if Bad Teacher was the disappointing student.  Mainly I just wanted to avoid the easy insult by playing with the title of the movie, but my attempt was about as poorly done as the film itself.

When looking for the source of a film’s problem, sometimes it isn’t necessary to look any further than the story.  Cameron Diaz plays a gold digger that wants to find a husband that will foot the bill for her life of luxury.  To do so, she decides that she needs to raise money to get a boob job in order to attract the right kind of man.  Now as a comedy these idiotic plots can still lead to entertaining moments that make the lack of depth not really an issue, but this time around we are left standing in the shallow end. [Read more...]

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Rental Review – Couples Retreat

02/26/2010 by Leave a Comment

No matter who you go with, when it comes to vacations some fighting and mishaps are bound to happen, but usually there are enough good moments to balance out, if not overpower, the bad. Couples Retreat tries to show these moments of both ups and downs (well, mainly downs), but in the end the trip is far too painful to enjoy.
Of the four couples, Jason and Cynthia are the most willing to admit their relationship has problems. After many years and unsuccessful attempts to get pregnant the stress of the situation has finally reached its peak, and they are contemplating divorce. Feeling that this is their last hope, Jason and Cynthia ask their fellow couples, Dave and Ronnie, Joey and Lucy, and Shane and Trudy to go with them to Eden West, a couples resort on a beautiful, tropical island. When they arrive they are forced to partake in couples counseling, and those couples that assumed they would be spending a vacation having fun in the sun are finding that maybe they have more issues than they thought bubbling under the surface. [Read more...]

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Now Playing Review – The Ugly Truth

07/26/2009 by Leave a Comment

The Ugly Truth is that the romantic comedy has hit a low point. Now I know that most films of this genre are not that original when you think about their basic structure, however, there are some that hide this fact a lot better than others. Or at least know how to keep the hopeless romantics, such as myself, unaware of this because we are too invested in and rooting for the characters to get their happy ending.

This is the first place that this movie went wrong. The characters felt underdeveloped. Take Abby (Katherine Heigl); though she holds a strong position at work, the character traits that apparently helped her get there are all considered her flaws, and when she isn’t using these to get her way she is being put in her place by her overbearing boss (but don’t even get me started on that guy).   [Read more...]

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