Hustle

 Hustle (2022)

Starring Adam Sandler, Queen Latifah, Ben Foster, Juancho Hernangómez, and Robert Duvall

Directed by Jeremiah Zagler

Written by Taylor Materne and Will Fetters

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating:  B

Movie Review - Valentine's Day (2010)

Valentine's Day (2010)

Starring Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, Bradley Cooper, Patrick Dempsey, Hector Elizondo, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Topher Grace, Anne Hathaway, Ashton Kutcher, Queen Latifah, Taylor Lautner, George Lopez, Shirley Maclaine, Emma Roberts, Julia Roberts, Taylor Swift

Directed by Garry Marshall 

It's not as if ensemble movies about love can't work.  One of my favorite movies of all time is Love, Actually, and that flick is all about an ensemble's quest for love.  However, with last year's He's Just Not That Into You and this year's Valentine's Day, the ensemble romantic comedy appears to be dead in the water.  While this 2010 flick fares a little better than its 2009 counterpart, one would think that with all the star power on display here, someone could craft a decent script.

I'm not even going to go into a summary here because (as is evidenced by the incredibly long "starring" list up above) there's just too many tangential stories to discuss.  And therein lies the problem.  Too many people with too many unnecessary tales.  Taylor Swift and Taylor Lautner's high school romance -- I'd nix 'em since we've already got one youthful tale starring the charming Emma Roberts, but they're appealing to the youth.  Julia Roberts and Bradley Cooper's meeting on a plane -- totally pointless, but Roberts is a huge star and Cooper's star wattage is on the rise.  Shirley Maclaine and Hector Elizondo's out-of-left-field reveal of a "bombshell secret" -- who gives a damn -- oh, that's right, we need to appeal to the grandparents.

That's the problem.  The movie just wants to hit every demographic and it fails because of that.   Any positive vibes that come from actors like Jennifer Garner, Anne Hathaway, Topher Grace, Julia Roberts and her niece Emma, and (shockingly) Ashton Kutcher and George Lopez just get washed away by a horrible script.  Not that I'm necessarily one to criticize on this front, but screenwriters need to learn to edit.

And the awful script is shot so incredibly poorly by director Garry Marshall that I laughed out loud because of some of his choices.  Hey, let's put some nuns in that scene.  Throw a sign-language interpreter in there.  Let's have a girl with cerebral palsy point and yell at Ashton Kutcher because he doesn't have shoes on.  Yes, I realize that last sentence might seem callous, but these "attempts at realism" just come across as preposterous.  It honestly seemed like he had family members that he wanted to put into the movie somehow and he was going to do whatever it took to make it happen.

If you want a great romantic ensemble movie, just do yourself a favor and go with Love, Actually.  Skip this one.

The RyMickey Rating:  C-

Movie Review - Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs 3D (2009)

Featuring the voice talents of Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Queen Latifah, and Simon Pegg
Written by ?? [I'd love to tell you who it was written by, but imdb has deemed them not important enough to be on the main page anymore. They used to be right where they belonged -- below/above the director on the main page. They've demoted writers to the "Full Cast and Crew" page, but the writers for this flick aren't even there as I type this?!?!]
Directed by Carlos Saldanha and Mike Thurmeier

I know I've seen at least one of the previous Ice Age movies, but I really couldn't tell you a thing about them. They're simple throwaway movies and hold no place in my mind. This flick will join them.

The movie opens oddly, not giving us any backstory at all. I feel like the movie started in the middle of something that I wasn't privy to (if that makes sense). Anyway, woolly mammoths Ellie (Latifah) and Manny (Romano) are expecting a baby. Sabretooth tiger Diego (Leary) realizes that he'll be pushed to the wayside in their roving clique, so he runs away. Meanwhile, sloth Sid discovers three T-Rex eggs and when they hatch he becomes their "mother" which makes Momma T-Rex none too happy. Momma T-Rex picks up her three babies along with Sid and runs into some underground world where dinosaurs still exist (see we're in the Ice Age, so I guess they'd all be extinct). Ellie, Manny, and a recently found Diego decide to band together and save Sid.

By far, the best part of the movie is Buck (Simon Pegg), a British-accented weasel who is some gung-ho, yet crazy, adventurer. Some of the sequences with Buck were quite inspired. Every scene without him lulled me to sleep -- I literally almost fell conked out multiple times during this one.

I should mention that Scrat, the little squirrel in constant search of acorns, is here as well, and the scenes with him are fine...they are just completely time fillers because they don't fit in with the rest of the movie in any way. As little individual 3-minute cartoons, these throwaway scenes with Scrat are fine. As part of the movie, they're a waste.

The RyMickey Rating: D+