After the announcement that Ron Burgandy is coming back to the big screen, it got me thinking about the other great comedy of the summer of 2004, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. Despite the fact that it starred a very recognizable cast, the film was directed by someone with no feature experience before: Rawson Marshall Thurber. So what has he been up to recently? He directed another feature back in 2008 called The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, but he’s been quiet since. Now, the guy who brought us the exploits of the Average Joes is back with another comedy called We’re The Millers, about a pothead who creates a fake family to cruise across the country in an RV with him so he can transport 1000 pounds of pot without suspicion.

Deadline reports that Jennifer Aniston and her Horrible Bosses co-star Jason Sudeikis are in talks to star, with Sudeikis playing the lead role and Aniston playing a hooker who gets roped in as the fake wife. This wouldn’t be the first time she played a fake wife, since she did the same thing for Adam Sandler in 2011′s dismal Just Go With It. So despite the involvement of Thurber and Sudeikis, Aniston’s presence kind of offsets any excitement I might have.

But wait! There’s still hope. The script for We’re The Millers was written by Wedding Crashers scribes Bob Fisher & Steve Faber and it’s being called a warped version of National Lampoon’s Vacation…so perhaps the good outweighs the bad in the end. Aniston isn’t unwatchable in everything – I somewhat enjoyed her work in Wanderlust, although that movie wasn’t that great overall – but here’s hoping the involvement of a bunch of really talented people can turn this from being just another “Jennifer Aniston movie.”

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My colleague Vince Mancini wrote an article at Filmdrunk recently wondering if Wanderlust would be “a Paul Rudd/David Wain movie or a Jennifer Aniston movie.” All things considered, that’s as fair a way as any to judge this film: David Wain is perhaps best known for directing Wet Hot American Summer (which we talked about on The Not Just New Movies Podcast), and Jennifer Aniston has spent the past few years in stuff like The Bounty Hunter and Just Go With It. Wain hasn’t completely dodged the studio system, but his main entry into it until now has been Role Models, a comedy with a charming premise and a ton of heart. When it comes down to it, I’d say that Wanderlust is a Paul Rudd/David Wain movie, but just barely – it reaches for the absurd moments of Wet Hot and tries to hook us like Role Models did, but this one never quite accomplishes either, leaving a disappointing movie that, save for a precious few scenes, is utterly unmemorable.

George (Rudd) and Linda (Aniston) live in a tiny New York City apartment for the first ten minutes of the movie, until George’s company gets shut down due to federal investigation and Linda’s documentary about arctic animal genocide doesn’t get picked up by HBO. The two decide to crash with George’s douchey brother Rick (co-writer Ken Marino) and his depressed wife (Michaela Watkins) in Atlanta, but they stop to sleep on the way there and discover Elysium, an “intentional society” (don’t call it a commune) where nudists roam, bong hits are encouraged, and everything is shared – including sexual partners. At first, this lifestyle is shocking to the longtime city-dwellers, but soon they come to realize that staying at Elysium may be the cure for their big city blues.

Like Wain’s other films, the strength of this movie comes in its supporting characters. The people who live at Elysium are wacky and ridiculous – sometimes desperately so – but the comedy works more because of the actors’ delivery than the script itself. Joe Lo Truglio and Kathryn Hahn were standouts, and Justin Theroux was convincing as the easily detestable alpha male of Elysium, competing with Rudd at every turn. Substituting the iconic camp from WHAS for the “intentional society” here unfortunately makes it all the more obvious that Wanderlust can’t measure up. There’s a hint of futility that infects the movie, like watching a young kid wrestle with his much older, stronger brother – he may put up a good fight, but it’s a losing battle. Appearances by Stella and The State members as a local news team were the highlight of the whole film, but sadly they spent all of two or three minutes of total time on screen.

Aniston is a serviceable leading lady this time out, but she could have easily been replaced by a number of other actresses and the movie would have had the same overall effect. Her performance was bland and uninspiring, and she didn’t make me feel like her drastic character shifts were earned at any point. And if you thought Paul Rudd was awkward in I Love You, Man, his work here is borderline unwatchable. Wain pushes him to the limits of human awkwardness, sacrificing all believability of the character just to give the audience that terrible feeling that they’re watching something awful that they can’t look away from. (Those of you who have seen the film will know what I mean – look no further than the mirror scene for the primary example.)

Wanderlust has some funny moments, to be sure, but it’s mostly just a lackluster imitation of Wain’s earlier work, attempting and (for the most part) failing to fit his style of comedy into a mainstream studio film. Until next time…

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Horrible Bosses is now available to pre-order from Amazon on: DVD | Blu-ray

New Line and Warner Home Entertainment will release Horrible Bosses on DVD and Blu-ray October 11th, 2011, with the “Totally Inappropriate Edition” offering a new 106-minute-long extended version.

The movie, released in July, has made $170 million worldwide and stars Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, and Jason Sudekis as best buds who plot to kill each of their bosses (played by Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Spacey, and Colin Farrell).

Here are the Blu-ray features:

- My Least Favorite Career
- Surviving A Horrible Boss
- Being Mean Is So Much Fun
- Deleted Scenes
- Making of the Horrible Bosses soundtrack

Horrible Bosses is now available to pre-order from Amazon on: DVD | Blu-ray

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It’s more rated-R hijinx at theaters with Horrible Bosses. And here’s what the feature gets right:

Jennifer Aniston is finally doing something different (and sexy). Jason Bateman’s face looks as if he was constipated during the entire shoot. Charlie Day is put in a position where he can do what he does best. When you add in the all-star cast of cameos and supporting players, the audience should be able to settle in for a Harlem Globetrotters type performance…
Too bad they get the Washington Generals. (Conclude positives)

This comparison has been used before somewhere in my history of reviews, but this is 93 minutes of a comedian struggling on stage. The failsafe? Start swearing and being all angry during every scene. That practice worked out well for Michael Richards and Tracy Morgan didn’t it?

“Oh my God this sucks” says one of the three leads about halfway through when they realize they aren’t able to pull off the caper in killing each other’s bosses (Kevin Spacey, Colin Farrell & Jennifer Aniston). And I couldn’t agree more. Sure there’s a few “shots of intelligence” in this over-blown skit. And seeing Jennifer Aniston loosen up (pun intended) was actually one of the highlights. (What does that tell you?)

The assembling of Jason Sudeikis, Charlie Day and Jason Bateman looks great on paper. Sudeikis and Day were dynamite together in last year’s Going the Distance. Wedging Bateman between these two turned out to be a worthless ploy. Bateman looks out of place this time around and you can see it in his face (and during the outtakes in the credits) that he’s not sure why he’s here. Being a fan of Charlie Day’s approach (again, really dug him in Going the Distance), director Seth Gordon flaunts too much of him, riddling him to an annoyance rather than an anticipated punch-line. Everyone here is also mumbling through their lines, too. The only lines they truly nail are ironically when coke is involved. The Vegas wake-up drug comes into play because Colin Farrell’s balding; short-sleeve wearing douche-bag persona is addicted to it. Sadly, this angle, along with his talents, goes to waste due to limited screen time. In fact, all his funny scenes are in the trailer.

Kevin Spacey plays a corporate president, who is drunk with power, and believes it’s a privilege for others to be in his presence. When he’s mercilessly riding Bateman’s character, things look promising; but where the comedy is heading is always predictable. Everything is telegraphed minutes before the gag happens throughout this fast-moving, unbalanced misfire. This can be tolerated if the dialogue is timed correctly. Timing blunders become evident when the hit man angle is explored. Ioan Gruffudd, while a solid actor is not a cameo draw. His sequence with the boys comes across unrehearsed and shallow. The main cameo is completely wasted unless you put stock into giving someone a funny name and then repeating it over-and-over again.

And that’s the source of the problem with this piece; jokes are too articulate (like my reviews at times) and/or dragged out way too long. There’s a nice and relatable concept with taking out your boss, yet the writers fail to capture the over-the-top fun in doing so. Acting on these realistic notions worked in flicks like Hall Pass and Old School. HB is trying to stay within the novice approach the unskilled characters would naturally have and for continuity reasons, it makes sense. I guess what it boils down to is that this college-dorm room planning tale just came across as lame.

Overall, Horrible Bosses missed an opportunity to advance itself. The staff behind this annoying, tedious product was under-qualified to handle the exceptional talent at their disposal. To be fair though, some of the employees missed the mark on their characters, too. My father always used to tell me (still does actually ha-ha) “work first, play later.” With regards to this messy execution, these guys clearly switched the first and third words around.

RATING: 1.5 out of 5

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A year from now when I look back at the films of 2011, I will remember Just Go With It for one dubious reason alone: it is one of two “comedies” I’ve ever seen in which I literally didn’t crack a smile during its entire duration.

Just Go With It actually impressed me. I was expecting it to be terrible, and it was somehow worse: it was unwatchable. Every character is unlikeable, every beat is telegraphed, and worst of all, it was painfully unfunny. I know this might offend some people, but Just Go With It targets an entire subset of the population I never want to encounter: the absolute dumbest, trashiest crowd who cackles at nutshots and roars with raucous laughter at jokes that could have been written by a 10-year-old. It’s almost hard to hate the movie when people next to me are giggling like idiots as a child runs his head into Sandler’s balls in the equivalent of a Chuck E. Cheese’s and yells, “Mommy, that man put his pee pee on my face!”, because there is clearly an audience out there for this kind of “comedy”. But it’s the worst possible audience, and the few douchebags sitting next to me laughing are the reason the cinematic landscape is filled with this type of bullshit year after year while the studios laugh all the way to the bank and executives pat themselves on the back for another job well done.

The marketing for this film goes out of its way to reach out to a male audience. Along with objectifying women in the most blatant way possible (slow motion shots of model Brooklyn Decker coming out of the water in a bikini while everyone stares slack-jawed), commercials command men to “tell your girlfriend it’s a romantic comedy,” implying that secretly the film is actually something else, perhaps interesting or different from what we expect. Unfortunately that’s not the case at all – if you told your girlfriend it’s a romantic comedy, you’d just be telling her the truth. And not only that, it’s the worst kind of romantic comedy, one with a formula more stale than a month-old bag of pretzels. And whatever, Sony: if it’s a romantic comedy, that’s fine – but don’t act like you’re letting us in on something and then give us a pile of cinematic crap with zero redeeming qualities. Take your bait-and-switch tactics and shove ‘em.

I’m not one of those people who will try to claim Sandler has never been in anything good before. I dug Funny People (though it was about an hour too long) and I found many of his early films legitimately interesting from a character standpoint (even if he plays overgrown man-children in many of them). But in recent years, the guy’s been making movies that look more like the fake movies from the filmography of his character in Funny People than real films. Here, he’s the same character he’s played in almost every movie of the past decade, with no attempt to separate himself from that stereotype in any way. If this is one of America’s favorite box office comedy stars, I weep for our country.

In a plot so stupid it makes my head hurt, a jilted Sandler uses a fake wedding ring to get women (just like that episode of “Seinfeld”). He flaunts his conquests to his assistant (Aniston, who we’re supposed to think is average looking), a single mom with two kids. But when Sandler meets a 23-year-old elementary school teacher named Palmer (Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Brooklyn Decker in her feature debut), he inexplicably seems to have decided this is the woman of his dreams. Though since they have no real connection or meaningful conversation, this point seems questionable at best. Of course, complications quickly arise when Palmer discovers his fake ring. Instead of telling her that he’s divorced – common sense, right? – Sandler reveals that he’s about to be divorced, and through a series of nonsensical demands presumably justified by the writers just speaking the title of this movie aloud, Palmer wants to meet everyone involved (and apparently spend as much time with them as possible). Naturally, a fake family dynamic is set up, and who better to use than Aniston as Sandler’s fake wife?

This movie is so bad I found it hard to convince myself it was a real movie while watching it. The acting was so forced from everyone – including vets like Sandler and Aniston – and there was no passion to be found in the entire thing. Technically speaking, it looked horrible: flat, visually uninteresting, staged. A majority of the movie takes place in Hawaii (the result of yet another series of unfunny jokes and Sandler’s character’s seemingly unending bank account), and there director Dennis Dugan (I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, The Benchwarmers) managed another improbable feat: making a movie with Hawaiian locations boring to watch. The actors seemed as if they were simply going through the motions, but it’s even worse when you can tell there’s no zest from the crew behind the scenes either.

While Sandler and Aniston gave performances in line with their recent work, model Brooklyn Decker rose to the challenge of filling out a bikini – and that’s about it. Her actions make the least sense of any character in any movie in recent memory. Comedian Nick Swardson brought his usual over-the-top brand of comedy to his role, but showed no spark of life even in the most ridiculous scene, which involved performing CPR on a poorly designed fake sheep. Watching Nicole Kidman and Dave Matthews was akin to seeing someone you love being tortured. Sure, they played despicable characters, but their acting was downright reprehensible. And many of you are probably aware of my hatred of most children in movies, but the two that are featured here are some of the most annoying in cinematic history (one speaks in a repulsive faux-British accent the whole time, the other is quiet but a potential sociopath).

If you’ve seen two or three rom-coms in your life, you know exactly how this is going to end. Mark Twain once said, “I’ve lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which really happened.” Unfortunately for us all, this movie really happened. If you respect your time on Earth, you won’t waste it on Just Go With It. Until next time…

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A new movie came out recently called Marley & Me staring Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson. I’m sure none of you saw it. However, one thing that did make me laugh about this movie (which I didn’t see) were these images that I found in my inbox.

[Possible spoilers]

My friends and I saw these Marley and Me billboards up around town with graffitti that says that the dog dies…

One of my friends then told me that she’d heard that the dog ends at the end of the movie…how horrible! I won’t be spoiling my children’s Christmas day with a dead puppy.

Some people can be such bastards! (Mwah)

Edit: The movie is not out yet, they have just had the premiere.

Thanks to Steph for the pics!

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