tomstharp Reviews

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)

Where'd they all go?

[3/10 · 1 August 2010]

I watched this movie directly after watching the others before it. It tries to combine several teen exploitation genres together in one movie and fails quite dramatically. Others have reviewed the movie's myriad flaws much better than I can here, but I want to point out something that none I've read seem to have noticed.

Where the heck did most of the characters go? There are several points in the film where people simply vanish from the movie. The kids on the boat are gathered in the dance room by the teacher. Then the teachers and the main characters flee the boat without going to check on them. The only thing said about it is "there is no restaurant" when the teacher asks about the other kids. Also, the female teacher dies in a car explosion for no apparent reason. They just leave her in the car when everyone gets out. I guess she just didn't feel like being in the rest of the movie. Can't blame her.

Another simple thing. The makers of this movie must really hate New York people. The people are possibly the coldest and most non-reactive people to ever witness a murder. I lived in NY. This kinda stuff in times square would not stand.

One last flaw. Since when can Jason teleport? There were more than a few times when someone was running away only to find him already at the other end of a flight of stairs or on top of a ladder or inside a room when he was right behind them a second ago. There's even one scene where a teen looks up and sees Jason at the top of some stairs, then looks at the bottom and he's there too. He's supernatural, but not that supernatural. It takes away from the "running as fast as I can but he keeps gaining on me" suspense of a thriller.

Overall, this movie had some OK death scenes but no discernible plot or intelligence. The boat was a dumb idea for a location. NY was even worse. The subplot about the girl and her visions and the jerk teacher was dumb and never bore any fruit. Don't even get me started on the stupid attempt to portray a high school graduation party. The ending...what?

So 3 stars. Watch for laughs, otherwise don't bother.

Family Guy: Something, Something, Something, Dark Side (2009) Season 8, Episode 20

Falls Flat for lack of effort.

[4/10 · 22 June 2010]

This is a show worthy of a 4 out of 10 for a major reason, the jokes are either unimaginative or blown out of proportion.

The animation is extremely well done and the use of music and references is very good. This elevated it above a 1 or 2 star rating.

The problem is that whenever a joke is told by the characters they stand around laughing about it or explain it to the audience. For instance, Boba Fett is the chicken man. And Peter laughs and points him out and says "Look, Boba Fett is the Chicken Man." Why? Why would you assume that your audience is too stupid to realize that? Other jokes require specific wording to get off correctly and this requires the characters to wait and say the joke several times in order to make sure the viewer has time to process. The final problem with the spoken jokes is that they completely lack the necessary timing to be funny. They either take far to long or come out of left field. Such as Han shooting the inside of the giant worm some dozen or so times and having the exact same reaction each time. That's funny...if you're high.

I don't have a problem with the jokes that come from the series itself because I liked those jokes the first time. The name of the movie, after all, is a reference to the series.

Next up is the physical comedy. There are many great options for physical comedy as the majority of the movie uses the broad space battles from the film. How many things can happen in space? Asteroids can be shaped in funny ways, constellations can be in the background, the giant wedges can do something funny for goodness sake! Yet they do nothing with any of the space battles other than add a Wildest Police Chases voice-over for about twenty seconds. Where is the funny stuff from the first Star Wars parody where the Jawas are exchanging Grey Poupon? Even the actual Star Wars movie had the ships make warning sirens when the Falcon flew them too close to each other. Do something with that!

Yoda, not funny.

Jokes I found funny. The League of Doom. The dog thing if they cut it about half the length. The Wiley E Coyote moment. The Hand down the pants (don't ask me why but I laughed). Joe's Legs. The reference to Seth Green's failed movie. Trying to think of more, got nothing.

The movie as a whole is not atrocious, but the lack of timing and the holy-cow-I'm-about-to-tell-a-joke-are-you-ready-here-it-is-and-heres- why-it-was-funny-did-you-laugh? aspect made it insufferable to sit through. The Family Guy team used to be better than that. Feels like they stopped trying.

Thanks, Tom

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

I Feel Sick

[1/10 · 9 July 2009]

First off, why is everything spinning? The dang cameraman can't hold the camera still for a half a second so we can get some perspective on what the heck is going on! To state my credentials for commenting, I make movies too, leave it at that. The mood is all wrong in every scene where the viewer is supposed to feel something. The action sequences are all shaky cam and pyrotechnics. The humor is misplaced and inappropriate for the demographic of the movie.

Mood: Helicopter drops Prime like a sack of moldy oranges during an emotional scene. Why does it drop him, what purpose does this serve? None, it just lets the movie have one more dust cloud.

Action: Prime apparently cuts apart a dozen or so nameless Decepticons before being overwhelmed. Who were these robots? Also, if Shia can RUN to the fight, why couldn't the other auto-bots get there in time as they had been where Shia was before the action sequence started?

Humor: Dog humping, drug using, stereotypical etc. Definitely an attempt to shoehorn humor into dull repetitive action.

Conclusion: No redeeming features, entire thing was obviously mishandled from inception to release.