THE DVDS, BLU RAYS, AND TVDS FOR THE WEEK OF

11/29/11

OUR IDIOT BROTHER

** STARS (OUT OF ****)

30 MINUTES OR LESS

 

**1/2 (OUT OF ****)

It’s been a while since we’ve had a reigning king of comedy. Over the past couple of decades, one male comedian will come out of seemingly nowhere and dominate the film world for just a few years, and then, as suddenly as he came in to the picture, shrivel up and become a joke of his former self. Jim Carrey. Mike Myers. Will Ferrell. Even the Farrelly brothers, kinda. I’m not sure why no one has stepped up lately, maybe it’s nothing more than proof of how long the cast of SNL has been weak, or dominated by Kristin Wiig — the odds-on-favorite to become the next king, despite being a girl. Or maybe it’s because we, as an audience, are moving more toward being fans of ensembles. TV has been funnier than movies for a while now, and there aren’t a ton of solo acts. Most of the great television comedies over the last ten years or so were due to having an impeccable group, each one as irreplaceable as the last. This is probably why no one really freaked out when they heard Steve Carell was leaving the office.

 

If movies are searching for better ensembles, it’s hard to imagine a much better, or trendier, one than Our Idiot Brother. Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Rashida Jones, Zooey Deschanel, Steve Coogan, Adam Scott, T.J. Miller, Kathryn Hahn, and Emily Mortimer. Well, maybe not so much Emily Mortimer. But look at the rest of them! Crazy. How could this movie fail? Each of the above actors brings the schtick that made them famous, which means that all we need is the slightest bit of plot to string scenes together that feature all sorts of combos of these people. But in this comedic economy, a little bit of schtick just isn’t enough. Not when you’re being strangled by a director and writers who will strangle your schtick until it fits their exact version of how two-dimensional characters are supposed to be.

 

On the other hand, sometimes a little schtick can go a long way. 30 Minutes or Less, also coming out on DVD and Blu Ray today, features a smaller, although to some audiences, maybe even dreamier, dream team than Our Idiot Brother, but one with just as much potential. Jesse Eisenberg, Aziz Ansari, Danny McBride, and Nick Swardson star in Ruben Fleischer’s follow-up to 2009’s surprise hit Zombieland. Jesse Eisenberg plays a loserish pizza delivery boy, Aziz Ansari his best friend who’s shit is a little more together. McBride and Swardson play losers who have more of a criminal streak, and concoct a plot to force Eisenberg to rob a bank, otherwise he will explode. At this point, all four of these actors have such specific shticks that we can all almost do impressions of them. Each is in danger of being typecast for the rest of their careers, if they haven’t been already.

 

All four have the typical “what am I doing with my life — I need to grow up” moments that we’ve come to expect from loser characters in movies about losers. This is all back lit by something that resembles a heist movie. The biggest problem with 30 Minutes or Less is that with everything that the movie has to do, from creating bombs to creating relationships, it doesn’t give any one thing it’s appropriate time. We’re rushed from moment to moment, and the easiest way to rush something is to fill it with cliches, give us the general idea of what’s going on, and move on to the next thing. This is a bummer, because with some more breathing room, 30 Minutes or Less seemed like it was attempting to accomplish more than your average dumb comedy released in the dregs of August.

 

Most loser comedies have their main losers spend as much time as possible as losers, because that’s what gets laughs, if not what’s most relatable to their audience. But you can’t start and end a movie with a loser. Some sort of third act has to be tacked on, showing everyone that eventually the loser will get a job and move out of his parents basement. 30 Minutes or Less almost attempts to tackle the problem from the front, however, addressing why these kids stayed kids in the first place. Danny McBride’s father, played by Fred Ward, is a rich, manly badass. McBride and Swardson are anything but. Does the dad hate the son because he’s a pissy bitch, or is the son a pissy bitch, at least in part, because of his shitty dad? Meanwhile, the fact that Eisenberg still delivers pizzas, while Ansari has become a respectable elementary school teacher, causes tension between them. Their respective life statuses might be too different for these two to remain friends. Is Eisenberg stuck because he is scared, or is he to be believed when he says “I’m not stuck, and fuck you.”? It’s pretty interesting stuff, even without all of the bomb/bank robbery shit. Eventually the movie decides it just doesn’t have to time to deal with that garbage, and it moves on to the stuff that’s more flashy, but ultimately less engaging. It’s like someone tearing out all of the articles from your Playboy, and then smacking you with it.

 

What you’re left with all depends on how much you enjoy the schticks of these four actors. After already accepting that this is a pretty good movie wrapped in a bad movie, here is my score card:

 

Jesse Eisenberg: still like him as a dramatic actor, but can see how everyone is getting tired of his Teen Woody Allen impressions. B-

 

Aziz Ansari: Love him at all times. Here is pretty under used, but typically I can’t get enough of him. A

 

Danny McBride: Always get the impression that he is trying to find his next Kenny Powers, but it’s not going to work if he tries to turn everyone into Kenny Powers. C

 

Nick Swardson: He doesn’t have what it takes to carry a scene, which means his reactions will only be as good as the other people he’s around. This role actually lifts him up a peg, but normally he gets a C.

 

So if your grades for these actors are higher than mine — go for it. For all its explosions, 30 Minutes or Less tries to give everyone a scene or two to shine, something I wish Our Idiot Brother could have done, even once.

 

In Our Idiot Brother, Paul Rudd plays Ned, one of those long haired, dirty looking Nu-hippies, who works on an organic farm and has a positive spin for everything. Ned goes to jail for selling pot to a uniformed cop (what an idiot!!!), and when he’s released, he gets dumped by his hippie girlfriend. This forces him to go to his family for help, which includes three sisters, played by Banks, Deschannel, and Mortimer. They all have their own lives, so they don’t have time for his goofball shenanigans. But through a couple of trials, and multiple tribulations, they all realize that maybe Ned has it right, and everyone learns something. Movies have to be movies, and stories have to be stories, and the fact that that’s how it ends should come as no surprise, and shouldn’t even be that big of a deal. It’s how we get there that’s so boring.

 

Let’s start with the three sisters. Banks plays a selfish, career-oriented woman. Mortimer plays a homely housemom, too locked into her life that she doesn’t know her husband is cheating on her. And in an amazing twist, proving all the reasons why I love movies, Deschannel plays a wacky, free-spirited pixie. OK, now we have all three character types that actresses are allowed to play. Now, let’s not do anything more with them, keeping them in the same boxes we would find them in if this was a Lifetime movie. They can’t even make the fact that Deschannel is a lesbian interesting, eventually having her fuck a dude. All of the interesting parts of the lesbian relationship belong to her lover, played by Rashida Jones, and she’s really only interesting relatively speaking.

Not every comedy has to be loose and improvised, or even have that improvised feeling that so much of comedy today has. But a cast like this should be leaned on to breathe something into their characters. The story of Our Idiot Brother isn’t so detailed and planned out that there wasn’t any room to play. Ned fucks up. Family gets mad. Ned fucks up. Family gets mad. Ned fucks up. Family gets mad. Ned gets mad. Family learns lesson. That’s it. And that’s fine, as long as it’s hilarious along the way. Or maybe even just one funny part. Am I asking for too much?

 

 

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NEW TO BLU RAY

ADELE: LIVE AT THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL

Before there was an Adele, was anything played on the radio? Or was it just silence, waiting for the moment when they could alternate between two Adele songs, 24 hours a day, for time immemorial? For all the people that are pouting right now because they are at a five minute crossroads in their life when they currently can’t hear Adele, hear comes a Blu Rayed disc that has a whole bunch of Adele. She’s very talented and has good songs and I promised I would make it through this entire write-up without a fat joke so I have to go now.

FROM DUSK TILL DAWN SERIES

Apparently From Dusk Till Dawn spawned two direct-to-video (code for excellent) sequels and a documentary called Full Tilt Boogie. Now, for the first time ever (maybe), you can have all four movies in the palm of your hand. The documentary is actually kind of cool, if not fairly unnecessary, and the first movie remains the single most mediocre of all time. Seriously. Nobody hates it, nobody loves it. Anyone can sit through it, but no one will have that great of a time. If every single person on the planet ranked every movie they had ever seen, From Dusk Till Dawn would be in the exact middle of each list. Weird.

SMALLVILLE: THE COMPLETE TENTH SEASON

Holy shit! Is that a cape on that shadow? Is the show that swore an oath of “No flights, no tights” going to go back on their word? I don’t know what’s more surprising, that at some point in this season Superman might actually become Superman, or that this show lasted ten seasons. Ten seasons! Smallville remains where it always has: on a list of shows that I pretend I’m going to watch some day, and I can’t wait to pretend to watch this final season.

NEW TO TVD

THE GIRLS NEXT DOOR: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION

Now you can watch for the second and third times the show that you probably shouldn’t have watched the first. Maybe this is uncensored,  so you can see the girl’s titties, but eventually you’ll remember that the internet is still a thing – a thing that’s filled with titties, titties that belong to girls who don’t think people want to hear the things they have to say. Watching the series like this, all in one haul, won’t have the same intensity as it did watching it week to week, as you won’t have to be patient for all of those insane cliffhangers to be resolved, but The Girls Next Door remains a collection that any family member would be baffled to find under the tree.

30 ROCK: SEASON 5

Season 5 of 30 Rock finally splits in a way that may have been building for a while. The show becomes almost entirely about the love lives of Jack and Liz, and although the show stresses as hard as it can that nothing will happen between the two of them, they really hammer home the fact that the two can’t live without each other. In the meantime, Tracy and Jenna complete their transformations to living, breathing cartoons, as they star in some of the most inane, unimportant B-plot lines in recent TV memory. That being said it’s still better than almost every other comedy on TV, and it’s nosedive pales in comparison to its NBC Thursday night counterparts The Office and whatever show being aired that night that isn’t Parks and Rec or Community.

THE WIRE: THE COMPLETE SERIES

This is just a repackaging, and that picture isn’t even the right repackaging, but who am I to pass up a chance to talk about The Wire? If you’re a fan of the show already, you know that it is your responsibility to purchase this new version, even if you already own it. If you haven’t seen it yet…seriously, what is your problem? Do you like being contrary? Do you like being so punk rock that you can’t bow down to what society has deemed the greatest show of all time? You’re just an asshole? Or is because they don’t offer it in your hillbilly Redbox bullshit, you fat, shoeless fuck? “Whoops, there’s no Wire in this here magical movie cauldron…better rent Transformers: Dark of the Moon for the fifteenth weekend in a row. Yee-haw! Spit spit gobble gobble spit.” You’re the worst.

-Ryan Haley