Friday, January 20, 2006 , 11:54 PM
Cheaper By the Dozen II
There's no pretending that this movie's not a product, manufactured to appeal to the widest possible audience. It's meant to be a comedy for everyone, including warm fuzzy moments for families, and the WB celebrities for the teens/young adults. Too bad the plot had to be so mediocre.
But who cares about that, I'll be honest: I went to see this movie to see celebrity singer Hilary Duff and Smallville star Tom Welling. And judging the movie on that aspect I was disappointed.
Tom was okay, but Hilary? Who the hell told her to stop eating? She used to have a childish beauty but now her cheeks are gone, she looks drained and SICK, and to be honest... at the ripe old age of eighteen... a little like an OLDER version of Kylie Monogue.
I even overheard this conversation while in the movie:
little girl: 'Mum, where's Hilary?'
mum: 'Isn't that her darling?'
little girl: 'Is't that a corpse?'
Even the camera avoided her fuglee face unless absolutely necessary. When she had lines, they filmed the BACK of her head... It makes you feel really sorry for her. Skeletor Duff and the absolute lack of any decent laughs, makes this movie worthy of the horror genre rather than comedy. I know I was scared.
2/10
Thursday, January 19, 2006 , 6:52 PM
The "Family" Stone
Contrived, contrived, contrived. This family felt more like a bunch of quirky sitcom characters thrown together in a room who just happen to share the same surname.
It's like the writer was trying to come up with interesting characters but all she could do was combine a couple of tired cliches.
What's an interesting character, mmm, someone whos gay, AND deaf...AND... oh has an African-American lover too, yeah throw in the interracial thing, thats interesting!
But wait...I don't know anything about REAL gay, deaf people or interracial relationships... or any of the other characters either.
Err...I know...I'll avoid the all the issues and any complexity in these people by including a LOT of them, reducing them to stereotypes, and giving em all rushed sub-plots, and rush the relationships as well...no one will notice then!
What bugs me about this movie is that show a snapshot of this family at Christmas and they don't EXPLAIN why or how they got to be so quirked up, and you're meant to guess why. So the writer either knows why but intended for us to guess, or they really hadnt thought about why.
3/10
