Though we primarily know him for his slapstick comedy (The Cable Guy, The Mask, Dumb and Dumber, Ace Venture: Pet Detective), Jim Carrey has proved on numerous occasions that he can do very well what many other people in his genre cannot do. He can give riveting and believable performances in both light-hearted and heavy dramas. He’s done it with The Truman Show (where he was spectacular and deserving of an Oscar nomination) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. He does it with 1999’s Man on the Moon, which, with all due respect to The Truman Show, is his finest performance as an actor in any genre. Carrey’s biopic of Andy Kaufman is a movie I’ve had on my watchlist to see for years, but one that I never felt “in the mood” for. It’s not that I expected to be disappointed by it (with just a 63% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I knew this movie would be hit or miss for me).
Category Archives: Comedy
Sleeping With Other People (2015)
Sleeping With Other People was the fifth movie I saw over 48 hours. The Finest Hours, Anomalisa, 45 Years, and Love & Mercy were the others. While The Finest Hours was entertaining and was an excellent movie to see on the big screen in 3D, the only movie of the five that I enjoyed was Love & Mercy. As much as I disliked most of Anomalisa and 45 Years, the worst of the five movies was Sleeping With Other People. I am a big of Jason Sudeikis (We’re the Millers, Hall Pass). I liked him a lot on Saturday Night Live and thought that he had a fantastic start to his movie career, and sometimes, he can make you laugh out loud with his humor. At least for now, I think he needs to stick to strictly doing “funny” comedies. Sleeping With Other People was a comedy that was not funny and played like a dramedy more than any other Sudeikis movie I am familiar with. Likewise, this has also been classified as a romance, which I find sad and a discredit to the genre. I hated the premise of this movie and felt that it was tough for me to relate to, either on a personal level or how I observed those close to me. Perhaps this is the lifestyle for many people, but I don’t see it in my life. I didn’t know if I was supposed to take this movie seriously or if this was just supposed to be a fun 90 minutes. In either case, it failed. I neither enjoyed myself nor even laughed one time.
Anomalisa (2015)
This post is a first. It is my first-ever post on an animated movie. After 260+ posts, I had to add an animation category under my genres. I have repeatedly said that I wouldn’t review animated films or documentaries. Still, Charlie Kaufman’s (Synecdoche, New York, screenwriter for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) Anomalisa is not your traditional Pixar or Dreamworks animation. And this isn’t really animation. It’s an entirely different stop-motion animation. Well, it is, and it isn’t. I don’t watch the F/X show Archer or anything on Adult Swim, so I don’t have much of a comparison (if any); Anomalisa was the most adult-oriented animation I’ve ever seen. It wasn’t adult-oriented in the X-rated sense. There wasn’t anything obscene in this movie. It’s just that the themes were very adult-oriented, and you wouldn’t want to be next to a kid while watching this film. I don’t think you’d want to be next to anyone during this film. I would not say that I didn’t like this movie. I did expect to like it much more than I did, as I kept hearing great things about it. But the two prevailing thoughts that I had while seeing this film were 1) I wanted to like it more than I did, and 2) It was uncomfortable to watch at times. It is tough to recommend this movie.
Irrational Man (2015)
Irrational Man is not a terrible movie. If you are a fan of Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris, Blue Jasmine), there’s no reason why you shouldn’t see this movie, despite its rather lukewarm reviews (42% on Rotten Tomatoes with a 48% audience score). This movie didn’t fare well at the box office, earning just over $4 million. This movie completely flew under my radar. I cannot recall seeing a preview for it until I scrolled through some selections on my Video On Demand network. The movie intrigued me in the same way Midnight in Paris did. Irrational Man was a movie that I did not think I would love but felt would hold my interest. It is not as good as Midnight in Paris, nor does it claim to be.
The Intern (2015)
It’s a good feeling when a fading legend proves that he still has something left to give. Robert De Niro (Cape Fear, Taxi Driver) is one of the most accomplished and legendary actors of all time, having earned seven Academy Award nominations for acting, including two wins (The Godfather: Part II, Raging Bull). He has proved that he can be successful across many genres, including drama (The Deer Hunter, Cop Land), comedy (Analyze This, Wag the Dog), action/adventure (Midnight Run, Ronin), and mystery/suspense (Heat, Sleepers), to name a few. He can play some of the most likable characters we’ve ever seen (Leonard Lowe in Awakenings, Jack Byrnes in Meet the Parents) as well as some of the most reprehensible, violent, and hostile characters who we will never forget (Max Cady in Cape Fear, Ace Rothstein in Casino, Al Capone in The Untouchables and many, many more).