jahremusic Reviews

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water (2015)

Another Lazy Cash Grab

[1/10 · 24 June 2015]

It didn't take more than a few years to take a great idea like Spongebob Squarepants and simply grind it into bland flour. The first couple of seasons of Spongebob were unique, with a hint of a few adult-focused jokes. Now, the franchise churns out lazy writing, because no one seems to care.

This film takes that low bar it set and simply drops it on the ground. Spongebob's character could easily be Patrick... or anyone in Bikini Bottom. Any sense of consistency that was set up for the show is simply gone. These are all non-characters that are simply on screen to be place markers for lazy, 100 year old sight gags, and to move us to the ending credits.

Steamboat Willie was unique when it was new. It wouldn't compete today. The gags and story in this Spongebob film really aren't a great departure from the afore mentioned Disney short. The only upgrade is the technology, which does nothing to contribute to a film with no content. This film simply banks on a well- established franchise and does nothing with it.

A Miser Brothers' Christmas (2008 TV Movie)

Too many ideas. Typical writing problems with revisiting a classic.

[4/10 · 27 December 2013]

Everything connected to the Miser Brothers characters was good and could have translated to a simple story about learning to work together.

The North Wind was a completely unnecessary character that was not needed to tell the story... but of course every story NEEDS a villain... oh, except The Year Without a Santa Claus, where this story comes from.

Also, hire decent songwriters. REAL songwriters. Contemporary songsters DON'T necessarily write properly for musicals.

If you're going to revisit a story and characters, you need to try a little harder than this. This just felt like an obligatory release in order to keep a recently acquired intellectual property... oh like one from Rankin Bass to Warner Bros....

But the animation was good, and the character design was fun. I didn't understand the many critiques against this, when the crime was in the storytelling and the songwriting.

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

Probably The Most Brilliant Slasher Movie Ever

[10/10 · 18 September 2013]

This movie makes the most of its resources, and then some. It is NOT some cheap, mindless slasher film for its own sake. It IS cheap, with a budget of $350,000 in 1983. However, the key points in the film do an excellent job of using what they have. The more disturbing parts are not graphic, but imply the very uncomfortable horror in their ideas. The actors that really matter do an excellent job. Felissa Rose as Angela does an outstanding job without hardly uttering a word.

This is a disturbing film, and that is a compliment to its credit. It is DEFINITELY worth the watch, if you are an enthusiast of the horror genre. This movie certainly understands the special storytelling advantages of this genre and uses them. If you're interested in such things, I highly recommend this.

Saturday the 14th (1981)

They managed fit "horrible" into "Horror"

[1/10 · 18 September 2013]

The thing is... it's bad, and it knows it's bad. However, it's self awareness doesn't actually excuse it from being bad.

This is Mr. Magoo in a haunted house for 90 minutes. The jokes are cheap, easy, lazy, and lame. The characters have little to no human reaction to anything, which means they're not relatable and the joke is not there. Jokes have an undertone of either anger or sadism to them, so when the butt of the joke is unaffected, the joke is not executed. Being oblivious to everything is just one bad joke. And this is the joke they tell throughout the entire movie.

So basically, the fact that the movie knows that it's bad and not trying very hard is actually kind of an insult. The only joke is the sucker who bought a ticket to see this.

Eegah (1962)

Weird, edgy ideas that are horrible executed

[1/10 · 22 January 2013]

I know it's probably sounds ridiculous to find anything redeeming in this film, but a couple of concepts could have made for an interesting film had they really been explored.

The first is the continued biblical references to ancient giants. While the biblical stories are ridiculous, the cultural roots could have been better explored had the thought to give the Eegah character... or any character some modicum of development.

The other concept was the implication of interest that the Roxy character had for Eeegah, that borders on some kind of weird fetish at points. It really seemed like they were trying to do something with this, but without the writing talent, direction, acting, or execution of any kind - this just came off as... weird bordering on soft exploitation.

This is one of those movies that doesn't know what it is or wants. It's unfrightening horror, unnoticed exploitation, unfunny humor, unentertaining music, and unexplored story depth. out of all of this, it becomes a real gem of a bad movie.

Idiocracy (2006)

A Satire that I'm not convinced works...

[5/10 · 12 December 2012]

This is no doubt satire about a "dumbing-down" of American society. I no doubt agreed with the message of the film. I just don't know that it didn't contribute to the very thing that it satires. Mike Judge has written some hilarious social commentary in the past, but the cartoonish characters of even the main character and the people that we were supposed to understand as average made some of the messages ring hollow. Making comments about developing good film in a film with cartoonish writing just comes off as unwittingly oblivious to your own skills as a writer. It reminds me of an interview where Chevy Chase makes a snarky comment about lazy comedies. Someone next to him had to remind him that he starred in several Vacation movies. I liked Idiocracy. I would indeed see it again. I just think that the writing of Wall-E did successfully what the writing of Mike Judge did rather clumsily here.

The Incredible Hulk (2008)

A pointless movie that can't figure out its own plot.

[1/10 · 29 November 2011]

This was an excruciating "reboot" of Ang Lee's "Hulk", which was a far superior movie in my opinion. Had I known that the writer of "Inspector Gadget" and "Last Action Hero" was responsible for this, I wouldn't have watched. This story really doesn't bother with the comic book Hulk, and mostly just takes from the TV show. The one nod to the comic book is the return of the Betty and General Ross characters (which could just as easily been lifted from the last movie, without referring to the comics at all). However, this Betty is pretty ineffectual as a character and the General is nothing more than a dimwitted antagonist. The General's brainless plan involves capturing the Hulk's alter ego, Bruce Banner, and returning him to the military for study. His reason is that Banner's blood is the result of the army's experiments to create a "super soldier". However, we find out in the first act that the army already has the serum for this super soldier and injects it into the Generals lackey, in order to better conquer the Hulk. So why are they trying to capture Banner then, instead of just shooting him in the head? Later, the General finds another doctor that's been helping Banner, and has a storehouse of his blood. So they have everything that they need and decide to just leave it in a lab with no more than one army official and a Royal British special ops grunt. This has got to be the stupidest general in the U.S. Army. I would love to see the report that he sends to his superiors in Washington after all of the unnecessary carnage that has occurred under his watch. These are just some of the major flaws with the poor writing and execution in this movie. A big laugh happens when the British Marine has a few scenes wearing U.S. Army officer attire, complete with U.S. badges and medals on his lapel. If you want to watch a really ambitious super hero film, complete with character study and depth, watch Ang Lee's version. If you want to watch a CGI demo reel that's not really better than Ang Lee's version, have fun with this one.

Knowing (2009)

Why the phrase "sh** just happens" is incompatible with astrophysics

[1/10 · 2 May 2011]

If you isolate the extremely vague phrase of "sh** just happens" without any context, yeah, maybe you can figure a way into making it relate to astrophysics. In order to do that, you'd have to do some research in order to understand astrophysics enough to find a connection. If you haven't done that, then this a question that comes out of a lack of knowledge of the subject. That means that you've reached a conclusion without understanding.

This is exactly the major problem with this movie, and the context that this comment probably comes from when Cage's Astrophysicist character utters it. The writer has absolutely no knowledge of science, the scientific method, what scientists and professors actually do or anything remotely related to the subject. Unfortunately, he then decided to sit down and write a movie that incorporated and depended on key characters that were supposed to represent, not only the scientific community, but scientists who were educated in a very specific subject. Oops.

It's obvious that this writer wrote this movie doing absolutely no research into the subject that he tries to use in the movie and makes major assumptions about it. This says three major problems with this writer.

First, he's extremely lazy and sloppy, as he will just make up anything off the top of his head to get the story to reach the conclusion that he wants. He doesn't care if any of the characters or ideas are properly represented or consistent - just as long as he gets to his ridiculous ending.

Secondly, he assumes that his audience his equally lazy and stupid, otherwise he would have realized that anyone that studied science, even minutely, would find the premise and the characters to be completely ridiculous.

Now this last flaw leads to this writers third problem - he's dirt stupid. He is so incredibly stupid that he doesn't even understand that he doesn't understand certain subjects - to the point that he completes and releases a story and characters based on information that he doesn't understand at all. He just assumes that he knows enough to write about the subject, and that he doesn't see the monumental issues in his own screenplay. These problems would've been caught in a junior college writing class. There's no way that he even bothered to have anyone look at it before releasing it to a studio. He's just dumb.

So yeah, in the context of story, "sh** just happens" is a monumentally stupid thing to say, by a character that is poorly written in a sloppy movie that doesn't realize it's own stupidity.

Chaos Theory (II) (2007)

Knots In My Stomach

[3/10 · 8 January 2011]

Chaos Theory is a story about choices, and the impact that each choice can have in a person's life. Frank's dilemma begins when he leaves 10 minutes late to present at a seminar. His wife set the clocks back in a misguided attempt to help him. From this point, his very structured life begins to unravel as he and his wife deal with mutual anger and misunderstandings with each other.

It's a fair dramedy, with many dark moments. I think that some of the subject matter was too dark for a romantic comedy genre. It tends to make the movie very uneven as it tries to go for funny moments with the coarse, tragic subject matter. I noticed that I was too hung up on the unfolding story to laugh at moments that may well have been funny in another setting.

I also had a real problem with Frank's wife. From her public challenge to find a suitor among her male friends, I found her to be annoying and conceded. As I found out more about her through the choices that she made and continued to make in the movie, I really found no reason to like her at all, let alone see a genuine reason for Frank to love her. The end of the story really seemed forced and trite. It seemed like Frank really just loved his daughter, and his wife was just an inconvenient afterthought. Really, I would think that a story with so many dark points would survive a more realistic ending between the husband and wife. It seemed like the writer was too timid to do that, and went for the Hollywood ending instead.

Also, the presentation of the story to Frank's daughter's bridegroom seemed like a horrible route. Was this story meant to settle this young man's nerves? What would this young man think of this family after hearing this story? The bridegroom was desperately trying to leave to get some air and take a walk. If I were him I would've preferred the walk.

Oddly enough though, I think that this was the best, most dramatic performance by Ryan Reynolds. It's too bad that such a performance was wasted on such uneven material. I think that with the right material, he could really be seen as a good, well-rounded actor. Unfortunately, this ain't it.

My wife gave this 7 stars. I guess she didn't have the problems that I did, but I also suspect that she has the hots for Ryan Reynolds. ;) As for me, I gave it 3 stars only for the performance of the actors. The story, subject matter and screenplay literally gave me knots in my stomach.

The Keep (1983)

Style over substance

[5/10 · 23 December 2010]

From what I've seen of Michael Mann, his directing style tends to be more realistic than dramatic. Characters are underplayed, exposition is left to a minimum and emotions tend to run beneath the surface.

While this directorial style works with other material, it does a disservice to this story. I haven't read the book, so I don't have the advantage of knowing the story. I DO have the advantage of seeing this film as a stand-alone work, and I must say that it left me scratching my head.

Throughout the film, I never got a sense of the back-story, the main characters, or why I should care about them, with the exception of Dr. Cuza. I never got a sense of how the characters felt as they moved through the movie.

Glenn's identity and back story was never adequately explained. It felt like he walked on camera into the middle of the movie just give the villain something to fight - although as I understand it, he was a main character in the book. With a character like Glenn, I felt like I should've gotten a sense of greatness, even if it was unspoken greatness. I had no idea what brought him there personally, and what was keeping him there. I didn't get a sense of desire for the greater good, or for a personal responsibility to his quest. It seemed like he was treating his responsibility like a minimum-wage job.

The romance between Glenn and Cuza's daughter seemed flat and forced. I was never given a reason as to why they cared about each other, other than the movie just needed them to have that relationship.

Some of the actions of the other characters just seemed random. The priests actions between the second and third act made no sense. He just seemed to get hysterical. While it may be argued that this would be a realistic reaction to the unfolding story, it doesn't seem to do anything to help the story evolve. Instead of enhancing the story, it just seemed to pointlessly detract from it.

On a positive note, many of the visual effects that Mann used in the film seemed inventive and unique. Ian McKellan executed an amazing performance, considering what he was given (although it'd be nice if he was given some GOOD material more often).

Lastly, and this will probably anger many who like this movie, the soundtrack was god-awful. I like Tangerine Dream, but this soundtrack was kitchy and completely underwhelming. It did nothing for the movie, except maybe sell a few more tickets. A soundtrack should be so well integrated into a movie that you shouldn't notice it. This one stood out like a sore thumb. It didn't play well to the period of the movie, nor any of the emotion or action that I saw on screen. It sounded like something that I'd hear on a wildlife documentary. If Mann paid more than $5000 for the soundtrack, then he spent too much.

Sorry to go off topic, but I think that someone needs to say this. I think that Tangerine Dream was EXTREMELY overrated as soundtrack material in the 80's and they should've stuck to making albums. If you've ever heard the original orchestral soundtrack to the movie Legend against the TD version, you'll understand what I mean.

The Pirate Movie (1982)

The Most Homoerotic 20 Minutes That My Eyes and Mind Could Tolerate

[1/10 · 5 August 2009]

I understand that the film was longer than 20 minutes, but after that point I literally ran out of the room.

My Wife would often rave about this movie. Like so many other comments that I've seen from Pirate Movie fans, it was a fondly recalled part of her childhood (which seems a little disturbing). She mentioned that it was a film that her entire family enjoyed in its day. So after a 25 year sabbatical from the film, she decided to order it on NetFlix.

Knowing nothing of the movie, I sat to watch it with her. Honestly, I was not expecting much from a film creatively entitled "The Pirate Movie". I assumed it would be a rather cheesy comedy, and that's as far as I got, before my wife pressed play. The first 15 minutes was as much as I expected. This was a movie for girls in their early adolescence.

I have to admit, after realizing that this was a girls fantasy movie, I am no longer curious about what woman want or dream about. I am happy to be left outside and ignorant of such things.

When the protagonist started her dream sequence, I realized that this was the beginning of the end for me. I started to notice a feeble nausea in my stomach which irrupted into a volcano of bile. As soon as the Pirates started to dance on the deck of the ship, blood shot from my nose and ears and my eyes itched as though they were begging to be ripped from my head. I left the room in quiet agony - begging the gods of celluloid to end my misery on this retched earth. As I lay on the floor of my garage in the fetal position, my wife came in to see if I required medical attention. Apparently, she could only take about 40 minutes before she turned off the movie.

"I don't understand it", she said to me. "Everybody in my family loved the movie."

"Okay, you are one of three sisters - born of a mother who is addicted to cheap romance novels."

"But my dad loved it too. He'd even sing the songs around the house."

"Your dad also came out of the closet in the early nineties and divorced your mom."

"Oh, yeah."

I gave this film a "1" because IMDb's rating system would not allow for negative integers. My mind cannot undo what this film has done to me. At this point, though - I must be fair. Had I known more going in, I may have been more prepared. I've seen "Rocky Horror" and a couple of John Waters movies, but I was always prepared going in. The events leading to my viewing of this film was just completely unfair. I was completely blindsided.

Gentlemen, let this be your warning. Ladies, enjoy this sensual fantasy film, and warn any gathering gentlemen at your discretion. Children - no.