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MadB1505
Reviews
Not Another Teen Movie (2001)
This was so bad
OK, first off, I am 18, have seen ALL the movies they spoofed (and enjoyed most of them), like stupid humor, and am not easily grossed out, or easily offended. So this movie should be perfect for me, right? No. It was awful. And I was not expecting oscar material. I was not expecting to leave the theater pondering this movie. But I was expecting it to be funny. It was not. My boyfriend and I walked out right when the popular jock was putting whipped cream on himself.
This movie has so many flaws. First off, it is boring. They have too many characters, too many movies to spoof, and instead of flowing well, like Scary movie managed to do, all we see is this poor man's megamix of teen movies. This movie has no direction--all the scenes are jumbled together, and it comes out like watching splices of 20 different movies, thrown in no particular order. That just won't do. If you're going to spoof multiple movies, arrange them in a plot that works. You may have to forgo some of the movies and characters, cause there was just too much going on to be one movie.
Secondly...and I will be comparing this to Scary Movie, because that's the only recent parody I know of. Scary Movie poked fun at a lot of things that are stupid about horror films. NATM seemed mostly interested in just re-enacting each scene (which was funny and probably polked fun at itself already), then taking it one step further. Well, you can go too far, and they did.
Third, the so called "actors", with the exception of Jaime Pressley, have no sense of charisma, or comic timing, or anything. The lines they said looked like they were read right off the board. It's like the casting director said, 'Oh, look, that kid at the Texaco pumping gas looks a bit like Freddie Prinze Jr., let's ask him to be in our movie'. The actors are TERRIBLE. Stifler from American Pie and Jay from the Kevin Smith movies can spout off a bunch of 4 letter words and have me rolling on the floor, but these kids can not. It's all about delivery. Basically, these kids don't got it.
And, this movie is planning on drawing laughs mainly from excessive swearing and gross out situations. I already explained why the swearing doesn't work, and the gross out doesn't either. It was funny when we saw Jason Biggs get completely humiliated when he got caught gratifying himself. Having a cake explode on the character as well doesn't make it any funnier. Three boys witnessing the hottest girl in school have explosive diarhrea, then knocking over the stall is funny; having loads of human waste dropped on the guys additionally in this movie doesn't really add anything. Basically, the writers didn't get the joke.
I know some will find this movie amusing, but I didn't. You really can't parody already-funny movies, especially if all you're going to do in this so called 'parody' is steal scenes from other movies word for word then add a gross out scene to it and some extra language and nudity.
The Virgin Suicides (1999)
Not too impressed
Let me start by saying I heard excellent things about this movie...it was so deep, and so meaningful, and so clever, and it really made you think, all those things. And so I saw it, and I can't remember the last time I was so disappointed by a movie. I have never seen such a pretentious movie before. The plot didn't make a whole lot of sense, and there were wholes. I am extremely anylitical, and when I couldn't figure it out, I decided to read the book. My questions were answered, but my contempt for the movie grew.
This was one of the poorest adaptions from novel to movie I have ever seen. I don't know if the author of the novel approved of the adaption or not, but if I were him I wouldn't have. The screenwriter takes roughly about the first 100 pages of the novel and transfers them word for word to the script...and then takes the last 30 pages of the novel and transfers them word for word to build a conclusion. The hundred or so pages in the middle are completely ignored, which is why the movie doesn't flow very well and leaves many unanswered questions.
Secondly, I don't know what the deal was with Sofia Coppolla's obsession with Kirsten Dunst was (where pretty much every scene was focused on her, and the other three sisters faded into the background), but in the book, Lux was not the focal point. This movie invests a lot of time trying to convey to the audience what kind of girl Lux is, but you know virtually nothing about Therese, Bonnie, Cecilia, or Mary except how old they are. The narrator in the book spends time talking about each sister individually, or talking about the girls as a group, but in the movie, only Lux is ever talked about...and the movie gives the impression that when the boys are fantisizing about the sisters, there only thinking about Lux(she is the only one they show running through the fields and trying on lipstick in the boys' fantasies).
The conclusion is much sketchier as well. It would surprise me if someone enjoyed both the book and the movie; the movie deviates so much from the book.
This is not the worst movie I've ever seen, but definitely the most disappointing. After such rave reviews, I expected better.
Here on Earth (2000)
I wrote better storylines in Kindergarten
This movie was one of the worst I have ever seen. There were so many problems with both the story and the actors that it's unbelievable that someome actually gave the go-ahead to release it. For starters, the story is lame. It is a movie based entirely on a love triangle with three unlikable characters; consequently, no one cares who ends up with who. This story moves at a snail's pace, at some points almost impossible to watch. The audience is supposed to identify with Samantha, a small town waitress who is bored with her life and her nice-but-not-so-bright boyfriend, Jasper. I can understand that. However, it's impossible to feel sorry for this girl, or understand her actions, because of the way she shamelessly chases after the rich spoiled jerk, Kelly, who looked down on her, her boyfriend, her family, and her town because they were poorer, AND the horrendous way she treats her longtime boyfriend. She runs around with Kelly, making out with him in public, right in front of Jasper's best friend, all without having the decency to tell Jasper she's cheating on him, then callously dumps him, telling him flat out she'd rather be with his enemy, then leaves him to for all she knows commit suicide or beg in the streets or whatever, because if she doesn't hurry, Kelly will leave without her. So Kelly and Sam both prove to be selfish and uncaring of who they hurt. Jasper is the only mildly likeable character, but even he is hard to watch, drooling after undeserving Sam is as bad as Sam drooling over undeserving Kelly. And by the time the climax comes, Sam is so unlikeable you just really don't care what happens to her.
Finally, this weak plot may have worked(not likely, but possibly) if they had chosen some different actors. Leelee is a talented actress- in supporting roles. She has neither the charisma nor talent to carry a movie- especially a weak plot like this one. And Chris Klein (Kelly) does a great job with comedy, but he lacks the talent to make Kelly anything more than a one dimensional shallow rich guy. Josh Hartnett did okay, but wasn't given very much to go on. Jasper also comes across very one dimensional.
The producers/directors/whoever was in charge clearly did not read the script, but was just counting on the casting of 2 popular heartthrobs and the soundtrack by teen idol Jessica Simpson to make this movie a success for the 12-18 female demographic. Let's hope that's what they were shooting for; if they were trying to do anything else they failed miserably.