doolittle1 Reviews

Due Date (2010)

Painful to watch

[2/10 · 28 November 2010]

I walked out of the theater after seeing this feeling agitated and wanting to just beat the crap out of someone...and I one who usually runs away when faced with conflict. I had heard that this was hilarious, so perhaps I walked in with excessively high expectations, but I was truly disappointed. I know that Zach Galifianakis relies on awkwardness and an appearance of being socially inept in his stand-up, which I don't generally enjoy, but I had seen him in The Hangover and had enjoyed it, but I did not walk out of this movie a fan of his. He does his schtick well, perhaps a bit too well, making it difficult to watch him. Robert Downey Jr. is very talented and was really the only reason I stayed through the entire film. He portrayed a man with anger-management issues very well, which also seems to be a bit of his "thing" as well.

Overall, the film has potential but fails to fulfill it. It does not fall flat, but kind of just explodes into a big, angry catastrophe. Ethan (Zach Galifianakis) is introduced as obnoxious and rude, and I think that the viewer is supposed to end up loving him at the end (possible spoiler), but I walked out rooting for Peter (Robert Downey, Jr.), who seemed to still harbor feelings of loathing even at the end when they are "friends". I didn't laugh once, instead just getting progressively more incensed and frustrated. Perhaps I was getting too involved, but it didn't bring out the best in me.

Ultimately, I wish that Peter had pushed Ethan into the grand canyon. And that's that.

Balls of Fury (2007)

Not as bad as I expected

[6/10 · 24 September 2007]

I went into the theater expecting almost nothing good coming out of it. I read the reviews- Washington Post, USA Today, Rotten Tomatoes, etc. I knew they were horrible and quite honestly, I thought I would hate the movie. But my friend wanted to go, and me having no life whatsoever, I agreed to join her.

I have to say, I should go into to more movies with such low expectations, because I really enjoyed it. Was the acting superior? No. Was the script well-written? No. But it was funny and Christopher Walken makes all things glorious, so all in all, it wasn't a bad way to spend a Thursday night after an especially terrible day of work. The actors all seemed to realize that they weren't participating in a project that would make movie history and they all seemed OK with that. It was very much a movie done to simply enjoy the play on the word "balls" and in this particular case, it was forgivable.

Overall, don't go in expecting complete comedic genius and you just might find yourself laughing.