2010 Film List (Reviews, Discussion, Tracking) - Page 2

Saw Kick-Ass, which was an incredibly well-crafted film that moved effortlessly between comedy, superhero violence, and coming-of-age story. Aaron Johnson stars as a geeky, extremely introverted high school student with no particular skills or accomplishments who gets the superhero bug shortly after his mother drops dead at the breakfast table of a brain aneurism. His innocence and naivete grounds the film even when it ventures into very start territory. It doesn't take long before he finds himself trapped between a sadistic former cop with a costume fetish and revenge fantasy on one side and a ruthless mob boss on the other. Chloë Moretz steals the show as the ex-cop's lethal twelve-year-old daughter, who is extremely well-adjusted considering the circumstances. She is stellar at making a preteen assassin credible without being overly precocious. Mark Strong stands out among the long line of cookie cutter mob bosses for his excellent comic timing, and Nicholas Cage adds another bizzare performance to his bio as the ex-cop Big Daddy. If you loved Christopher Mintz-Plasse as McLovin in Superbad, you'll enjoy his character here as well. Clark Duke and Lyndsy Fonseca from Hot Tub Time Machine pop up here as Johnson's best friend and girlfriend respectively. The ending leaves things primed for a sequel.

Added Death at a Funeral, which just knocked Hot Tub Time Machine out of contention for funniest movie of the year. Incredibly well-constructed film with a perfect cast. James Marsden shows to anyone who hasn't seen Sex Drive that he is a master of comedic timing and delivery. Danny Glover is also terrific as a sort of Greek chorus, muttering judgment about all that transpires around him. Each comedic turn spins out half a dozen other comedic gems so that I spent the entire film laughing. Packed house, and it was very well received.

Nothing about what I'd seen from Iron Man 2 left me very optimistic. I went tonight mainly because a friend in the area from out of town wanted to see it and because I was so fond of the first movie. Despite an increasingly severe headache over the course of the evening eventually paired with a fever and dizziness, the movie completely won me over. Is it as good as the first movie? No. The climax disappoints and the larger cast of characters dilutes some of the impact. But unlike many superhero sequels, it doesn't make the mistake of focusing on action and interesting looking new bad guys and sidekicks at the expense of the hero. This is still unquestionably Tony Stark's movie, and it's still unquestionably Tony Stark's arc. I liked that it played out the implications of such a terrifying war machine, and raised the question of what happens when Tony Stark's not the only one to possess it. The effort to integrate S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers came at the movie's expense, but still fufilled a purpose that moved the film forward rather than distracting from the plot.      Scarlett Johansson has never been hotter than she is here, but that would have all been for naught if she didn't help drive the story forward. While the movie again would have probably worked better without her character, the use of her as a smarter, fiercer, sexier iteration of Pepper Potts was interesting because it tested the relationship between Stark and Potts in a very interesting way. Sam Rockwell was likewise interesting as a sloppier, slower doppleganger for Tony himself. He made a much better villain than the very one-note Russian that Mickey Rourke played. It was a joy to see Clark Gregg return as Agent Caulson, who manages to match wits with Stark while being almost impossibly square. Garry Shandling was also in fine form encapsulating everything we all hate about the current generation of politicians.

 

I've heard great things about Jennifer Lawrence's performance, which suprised me since I've only seen her as the glamorous teenage daughter in "The Bill Engvall Show" on TBS. The trailer makes it look like Fargo transplanted into a Ozarks, where a seemingly simple and mundane matter -- in this case, deadbeat daddy skipping out on a court appearance after putting his home up for collateral to the bail bondsman -- becomes something far more sinister. Unfortunately, I'll probably have to wait until it makes it to the Redbox much like I had to for Frozen River.

 

Caught Get Him to the Greek, which takes the most crowdpleasing character from Forgetting Sarah Marshall and gives him his own spin-off. Like Sarah Marshall, this one gets off to a slow start after an absolutely hilarious opening montage of Aldous Snow falling off the wagon. But once it gathers steam, it proves to be a superior if less relatable story than its predecessor. Snow is complex, angry, selfish, fiercely intelligent and incredibly wounded. Jonah Hill's straight man protagonist defies conventions by judging the drug-fueled fivrolity as an irritating pain in the ass rather than a life changing experience that we should all envy. Like Sarah Marshall, it occasionally pushes into uncomfortable territory and takes things too far. But that's part of its visceral power. I'd love to see a third movie to complete the Aldous Snow trilogy, where maybe he finally finds peace.

That sounds right up my alley. I'll definitely check it out when/if it comes to the Albany area.

 

Added Män som hatar kvinnor (Men Who Hate Women; released here as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) which played two showings at the GE Theatre at Proctors in Schenectady today. Having loved the English translation of the book, I was eager to see the Swedish film adaptation and I've wanted to check out the GE Theatre since it opened a few years back. Here I had the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. The movie was quite enjoyable. Roughly half the time, it's apparent that Noomi Rapace is taller, prettier and more mature looking than the Lisbeth Salander described in the book. The other half of the time, I could have sworn my mental image had lept out of the page and onto the screen. Everything from how she was dressed to how she carried herself to how she moved was exactly what I'd pictured reading the book. Rapace does an excellent job with her performance of walking right up to the edge of autistic without going over. The pacing is superior to the book; while the mystery at the heart of the story unfolds almost exactly as written, events are resequenced so important revelations surface at a pretty uniform rate throughout the movie instead of heavily stacking the excitement to the back half of the movie. The movie favors the Lisbeth character over the Blomkvist character too much; because she solves nearly everything in the movie, the balance between his old school investigative methods and her digital methods was lost. The sex is toned down from the book. Blomvkist's many and varied sexual exploits were extraneous and thankfully left on the cutting room floor. The sexual assault scenes are still present, because they have to be, but were somewhat less barbaric than described. The restraint added rather than subtracted from their power, since they didn't come across as over-the-top torture porn like on the page. The frank way they were shot, in such contrast to American cinema's fleeting and chaotic treatment of sexual violence, was shocking enough that people in the theater audibly gasped. My only other complaint was the movie's occasional tendency to engage in Hollywood excess when something more subtle or direct would have been more effective. Some of the concluding scenes differ substantially from their equivilants in the book, tying the film much more closely to the two sequels than the book did. I was particularly stuck by the fact that Blomkvist's jail cell (don't worry, his incarcaration is revealed in the opening scene so I'm not spoiling anything) is nicer than apartments I've paid to live in. And ethernet access to boot!

 

The GE Theatre is one one of the most technologically multpurpose spaces in New York. The screen is several stories high and curved, much more of what I'd think of IMAX than the IMAX branded digital theater at Crossgates Mall. The sound system is excellent, and the ceiling is equipped with a full armament of theater lighting, turned off tonight. Unfortunately, because it is a multipurpose space, the seats are retractable and thus, very uncomfortable. The presentation was obviously digital (you could see blocking in the shadow areas);  probably the BluRay of the movie. If that was the case, how does BluRay hold up on a screen half the size of a football field? Very well indeed. Like I said, it was obviously a digital image, but it wasn't distractingly so.

The A-Team was exactly what I wanted from a movie version of the A-Team. Unlike many feature adaptations of old TV shows, this one didn't feel the need to reinvent the concept or wink too regularly at the audience. Probably because Stephen J. Cannell's production company produced, they took the concept, adapted it to the contemporary timeframe, and left well alone. The characters of Hannibal, Faceman, B.A. and Howlin' Mad Murdock come across intact, and more importantly the group dynamic comes across intact. I never felt like the movie was more focused on the explosions than the characters, and there were plenty of points where I laughed out loud and grinned. Excellent casting across the board. The opening sequence showcasing how the team came together -- and explaining why B.A. hates to fly so much -- was absolutely inspired. The remainder of the movie can be summarized as follows: "A crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped" to hunt down the men who framed them. The movie ends with the setup of the series firmly established: "Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... The A-Team."

Tonight's excursion to the local multiplex took an interesting turn; right at the climax of Inception, as the van is inches from the water, the projector died and the lights went out a second later, plunging the theater into total darkness. A few seconds went by, and then the emergency lights came on followed by the regular theater lights. As we were all sitting there wondering if we'd been treated to an immersive, avant-garde ending, one of the Regal people came in and let us know that the power had been knocked out and screwed up the projector. After ten minutes went by (just enough time for people to get up and move about), the theater lights dimmed and the movie continued, first vertically stretched to 1.85:1 over the matte and then a couple minutes later back to its proper aspect ratio and framing.

 

When we got out of that film, the wall of floor to ceiling windows of the third-floor lobby treated us all to the sort of natural theatrics that Noah and his family must have seen from the Ark; lightning coming so fast and furious that it looked like a strobe light outside, the nearly constant rumble of thunder, the kind of pounding rain that you see Weather Channel guys standing in as hurricanes approach. My companion had a twenty-something mile drive ahead of her and didn't feel safe traveling in the deluge, so we made the night an impromptu double-feature with the last showing of the night for The Sorcerer's Apprentice, which continues Jon Turteltaub's trend of perfectly serviceable, family-friendly adventure movies that I would have loved watching if my mother had brought them from the video store on VHS back when I was a little kid. Fun, unpredictable night.

Added Salt, which I had to see since the truck hopping scene was filmed over the Hudson in downtown Albany. I was pleasantly surprised; it was a well-done Cold War thriller that fits organically into the post-Cold War era. For long stretches I genuinely didn't know who to believe, and that's the sign of a well done thriller.

Added Flickan som lekte med elden, The Girl Who Played With Fire, the second Swedish adaptation of Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy. Partly due to the nature of the source material and partly due to the choices made by the filmmakers, this second film is far less effective than the first. Män som hatar kvinnor benefited from having a self-contained story to tell, whereas The Girl Who Played With Fire is really the first half of a vast and complex political thriller with way more characters and subplots than could be contained in even two two hour films. But the absence of Niels Arden Oplev behind the camera and Nikolaj Arcel & Rasmus Heisterberg behind the screenplay is keenly felt. They took the source material and crafted a final product that was in many aspects superior to the original. Daniel Alfredson and Jonas Frykberg know they have a built in audience and never strain to create a self-contained work. The result is a film the renders the key bullet points of the Blomvkist and Salander storylines from the book in an efficient and businesslike manner divorced from context or an emotional throughline. It is unlikely that Fincher's movie will better Opley's movie, but if he sticks around for the whole trilogy he'll have a good shot at bettering this one -- and I hope he convinces Paolo Roberto to play himself again!

If ever there was a poster child for test screening movies before releasing them, The Other Guys is it. There are some funny scenes, but far more of the jokes fall flat than land. Some of the political subtext is sharp, particularly the end credit graphics showcasing with hard number exactly how pervasive the culture of greed and selfishness have become over the last few decade, but the financial mystery at the center is a mess that pays only lip services to coherency. Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg have no chemistry at all, and there back and forth is like pulling teeth. They were originally set to star in "Cop Out", only to bail for more money with this Adam McKay knock-off. I'm here to say that Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan were much funnier. It's nice to see Michael Keaton pop up as the police captain/Beds Bath & Beyond floor manager, but he exists purely to provide the support and/or conflict that the script requires at a given moment. That this movie is currently sitting at 80 percent on Rotten Tomatoes really leaves me questioning 80 percent of the critics out there. Simply awful.

Caught Scott Pilgrim vs. the World tonight and LOVED it. The sense of humor exists on a very specific wavelength, and I was riding that wavelength tonight. This is also Edgar Wright's most disciplined effort to-date. I loved Shaun of the Dead, but thought Hot Fuzz was an under-edited sloppy mess of a movie. Scott Pilgrim knows exactly what it's doing every moment from beginning to end. This was very close to a four star movie for me; if the ending had a little more punch it might have gotten there.

If I'd known that The Switch was from the directors behind Blades of Glory and the failed "Cavemen" TV Series, I probably would have probably avoided seeing it despite a very good trailer. I'm very happy for my ignorance. The Switch has the structure and setup of a traditional romantic comedy. It observes the conventions and brings us to the expected conclusions, only deviating from the formula by failing to pair off the best friends of Bateman and Aniston, played terrifically by Jeff Goldblum and Juliette Lewis. But Jason Bateman is not a traditional romantic comedy lead, and that makes the journey far more interesting and complex and nuanced than the label would imply. Bateman plays the cripplingly honest, insecure, self-destructive and neurotic Wally Mars. For the last several years, he has been locked into the friend zone with Aniston's Kassie (with a "k") Larson. Larson is a far more traditional romantic comedy lead, except that she is smart enough and perceptive enough to navigate Bateman's complexities. This is Bateman's movie. We see Kassie only as Wally sees her. He both depends on her ability to decipher him and runs scared from the vulnerability that that implies. After one too many failed relationships, Kassie decides to use a sperm donor to become a mother. As the trailer tells you, a mishap happens and she ends up unknowingly becoming inseminated with Wally's sperm. Where the movie really gets interesting is seven years later, when Kassie returns to New York with Sebastian in tow. Wally had forgotten about the titular switch as a result of being drugged by Lewis's character. Kassie never found out. Two interweaving triangles develop. The first and most important is the triangle between Wally, Kassie and Sebastian. Sebastian is not a football that the movie tosses around to fit the requirements of the plot. He is as fully developed as Wally and Kassie, and the relationship between Wally and Sebastian becomes at least as important as the relationship between Wally and Kassie. This pathetic little kid with with a stable of quirks as larger as Wally's becomes important to Wally on a gut level that no woman ever has before. He understands the kid in a way that Kassie is not equipped to. Sebastian grows to depend on that understanding. The chemistry between Jason Bateman and the boy who plays Sebastian is terrific. If that dynamic hadn't worked, the movie would have fallen apart. But the scenes between Wally and Sebastian are magic. When he finally goes after Kassie, it's at least as much about his relationship with Sebastian as it is about his relationship with Kassie; he's willing to deny his own happiness in order to protect the status quo, but he's not willing to deny Sebastian's happiness to avoid the risk. It's no great spoiler that the ending is a happy one; I will only say that this is the rare romantic comedy where an unhappy ending would have been the cheat. Everything that happens in the film is made somewhat inevitable by the personalities of the three central characters. The tension comes from the fact that the events that transpire must fly in the face of the personal histories that brought them to that point.

Added Winter's Bone, surely one of the best films of 2010. It captures a specific place and time and very specific circumstances. It does not comment on what it shows us, it doesn't present a message. It merely observes, capturing the complexities of a world small enough that everyone is related to everyone is some distant fashion or another. It would have been easy for director 

Rented my first Blu-Ray from Redbox, Diary of a Wimpy Kid. It turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Before the menu, I breezed through half a dozen trailers for worthless junk aimed at placating children and aiming for the lowest hanging fruit. Diary has a selfish, smug, arrogant protagonist, and proceeds to pummel him for the entire first hour as he indulges in these base instincts over and over again. We often hear (and remember) that middle school is hell, but it's all too easy to forget that it's we that make it so. There are decent people in this middle school universe, but in his quest to become popular our hero proceeds to alienate all of them. It's an incredibly uncomfortable movie to watch, but it rang all the more true because of it. Zachary Gordon does an excellent job of staying likable even as he does very unlikable things. Robert Capron is a force of nature as the best friend; what appeared to be dopey in the previews is dopey, but with a sort of unselfconscious enthusiasm that makes him fairly heroic. Chloë Moretz continues her streak of stellar supporting work, as the alienated and world-weary seventh grader who could be a real asset in the main character's corner, if only he'd exercise a modicum of civility. Devon Bostick manages to create a convincing, undiluted teenager within a PG movie, while Rachael Harris and Steve Zahn turn the bland parent characters into real personalities.

I was downtown with a friend and we had some time to kill so we checked out The Kids Are All Right, about chaos that results from mingling three very flawed adults under very trying circumstances. Annette Bening and Julianne Moore play two long-time lesbian partners, now married, who have raised two children together. They each delivered one child, but used the same anonymous sperm donor for both. Mark Ruffalo is that sperm donor, and he floats through life with a breezy smile and non-judgmental judgments about the way people with substance choose to live their lives. The younger of the two children produced by this unlikely troika wants to meet his biological father, and his 18-year-old sister grudgingly agrees to make the call. Laser, who wanted a father so badly, is not impressed with Ruffalo's Paul at all. Joni, who had no interest in meeting her biological father, instantly finds in him something she didn't find from either of her mothers. What follows is an exploration of all the negative consequences built into a lesbian nuclear family, while embracing the lesbian nuclear family as something worth striving for. The introduction of Paul into their lives is on the surface nothing but bad news, as he genially wreaks destruction wherever he goes. By the end, however, it's increasingly clear that he was only the catalyst for a conflict that had long been waiting to erupt between Bening and Moore's characters. And while Paul has wounded Joni deeply, there are hints that the connection between them hasn't been permanently severed. Great acting from the entire cast, especially Bening, and a smart screenplay that starts with characters as they'd like to be seen and ends with characters as they really are. The idea of family isn't nearly so tidy as it once was, and it was gratifying to see a movie explore the consequences of that. Especially when it comes to sperm donors -- and the inescapable fact that mothers can't be fathers, no matter how much they fill that role -- it ventures into touchy territory and mines it successfully. Once Joni made that phone call, she changed all of their lives permanently, because that's one genie you can't put back into the bottle. And ironically enough, she might have been the only one to derive any benefit from it in the long-term.

Saw Easy A this afternoon, and had a terrific time. The director was one of the creative forces behind the hilarious "Andy Richter Controls the Universe". This is former casting director Bert V. Royal's first screenplay, one of the best first scripts I've come across. While it's a bit overwritten (in the way that "Gilmore Girls" or most Joss Whedon productions can be overwritten), it works as the voice of this particular teenage girl. With Olive Pendergast, Emma Stone announces to the world---in case anyone had somehow missed it---that she is a star and one of the few true comediennes in a climate that likes the guys homely but funny and the girls attractive and accommodating. She is backed by a stellar supporting cast, among which Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson stand out from the pack as Olive's fantastic parents. They're allowed to be every bit as smart, funny and unpredictable as Olive herself, and the result is that the Pendergast is an incredibly warm, inviting place. This family is a unit, and they really are peas in a pod. It also means that home is a very necessary sanctuary when things go south at school. Thomas Haden Church is another standout as Olive's English teacher, who's been doing it long enough to be resigned to his students' bad decisions, intellectual laziness and general apathy but still idealistic enough to value it when a good student like Olive comes along. The overall result is farce with a heart along the same vein as Orange County.

I'm very conflicted about It's Kind of a Funny Story, the mental ward comedy based on Ned Vizzini's semi-autobiographical 2006 teen novel. As a movie it works tremendously well, with a terrific cast that works extremely well together. The Dickensian cast of characters is well-rendered and involving. The problem is that it's a movie about mental illness that largely trivializes mental illness. It deals with the mental ward in the way every movie has since One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, because the more honest alternative is too depressing and disturbing to make a movie about. Noelle, the cutter, is a great romantic interest but not like any of the cutters I've known in my life. Every cutter I've known self-harms on arms, legs, stomachs, feet -- places that can be easily hidden. The main protagonist's roommate probably rang the most true, as the depressive Egyptian that never left bed except to use the bathroom for most of the film. Zach Galifianakis is phenomenal as the main character's suicidal mentor in the war. I wasn't sure there'd be anything left if you took away his schtick, but his Bobby is a very compelling character. He is a deeply troubled man, but for the most part keeps it out of sight. Galifianakis conveys the weariness of someone living with debilitating mental illness so long that he no longer has much of a connection to the world outside the system, someone who has worn the masking of a functioning person so long he almost forgets he's assuming a pose at all. The scenes involving his young daughter and her toxic mother are among the most powerful in the film. Once again, though, he was just a bit too functional and cuddly to be believed. I left feeling like the film was presenting mental illness as a cold that needs to be gotten over than something that destroys some lives and affects others until they die.

 

I would argue that Shutter Island isn't a movie about mental illness, but a gothic thriller that uses mental illness as its MacGuffin. As such, I wouldn't expect it to get mental illness right. The mental hospital is a gothic set piece with a long proud history, and that set piece has only a tangental connection to the reality. I would argue the reality is in many cases more depressing than even the prison style environment showcased in Scorcese's film.
 

I pretty much agree with what your analysis; dramatically, the movie is very sound. My experience with it is colored by my experience with mental illness among the young. Teenage mental illness is no more or less destructive than adult mental illness, and the movie's assertion that it is is what bothered me. Craig likely isn't mentally ill, just a highly stressed kid with an unfortunate response to anxiety in the form of vomiting. I can buy that ~ five days in the mental ward, giving him a break from the stress through a highly structured environment, would be enough to break him out of his depression. If he is mentally ill, he seems to function normally while properly medicated. At any given time, roughly 10 percent of the U.S. population meets the criteria for depression, and not all of those people are mentally ill. Noelle, however, clearly is mentally ill and I think the film glossed over that to provide Craig with an attractive romantic interest. From what I understand, the young adult novel the movie was adapted from when much further in depth into her problems and how she ended up there. Without the film providing explanation, the slashes on her face rang a false note, because cutters almost never selfharm in places that can't be easily hidden by clothing. The most realistic moment for Noelle was when Craig catches a glimse of the scars on her arm and she instinctually yanked her sleeve down to hide them.

 

Getting back to Bobby, I agree that the movie should be admired for not "saving" Bobby; his situation is more or less as screwed up as it was when the movie started. His mental illness still rang false to me as a cinematic sort of mental illness, though. He tried to kill himself several times, so we assume he's depressive. But he also went postal to the point of having to be restrained, which implies some sort of anger management issue. What's driving his behavior? What fuels his illness? What is it that prevents him from tackling a life on the outside? Galifianakis gets it, as I said, with a performance that reflects my experience with functioning adults who've suffered from long-term mental illness. His attack on the bookcase helped justify how he could have such anger issues without being a threat to the other patients; if Bobby can't control how his anger manifests, he has at least found ways to direct it so it doesn't harm anyone other than himself. But at the end of the day, I think more thought had to going into weaving the illness and the person, because the one very much informs the other.

Added Red, which edges out Easy A as the most fun I've had at the movies since Kick-Ass. The film locks onto a certain tone from the very first beats, and never lets it go. There's this really strange balance between over-the-top action and very understated humor that kept my rolling through half the film. Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren show why their movie stars, with pitch perfect performances the whole way through. They bring an eye-rolling weariness to the whole affair that's just absolutely hysterical. Especially Malkovich. Mary-Louise Parker is also terrific as customer service associate in the CIA's pension services hotline who treats her kidnapping as a date that's pretty horrible but not the worst she's been on. Karl Urban slips in and out of DeForest Kelley's as the CIA agent who handles ethically messy situations but has a genuine love for his country. Brian Cox is a real hoot as the former Soviet assassin who still carries a flame for the MI-6 agent that put three bullets in his chest. And Ernest Borgnine is a delight as the records keeper who's nostalgic for the old days.

Added Saw 3D, which -- much like the more recent Final Destination movies, abandoned any pretense of being a horror movie and dedicated itself to being flat out torture porn: the most inventive mutilation wins. Unfortunately, even by that standard the movie feels tired and derivative. The formula by this point is so polished and well-established that the movie feels like its merely checking off boxes. Having skipped the last few entries, the whole business with the detectives and Jaw's wife made no sense to me. The opening scene with the public display of one of Jigsaw's games was intriguing, promising an escalation of the concept and a nice microstory while it all plays out, but it was completely disconnected from the rest of the movie. What tension the series once had went out the window when Jigsaw's rules went out the window. If there's no way to survive, there's no stakes to involve the audience. There's no investment in simply watching someone get killed if we know they don't have a prayer.

Fairly or unfairly, Fair Game will be seen as the latest pot shot at the Bush administration from angry liberal Hollywood and is probably destined to do about as well as Lions for Lambs. Sean Penn's history of inflammatory remarks against President Bush and his cabinet will only reinforce that opinion. All the President's Men captured an event that changed our nation, and that made it a public interest story. For all of the exhaustive coverage, the story of Joe Wilson and his wife did not. It's the story of a couple getting screwed over by a handful of petty politicos, all but one of whom managed to avoid trial. The course of the country didn't change, and because of that most people won't care.

 

Caught Due Date, which has some of the funniest laughs of the year but is severely limited by two seriously unlikable protagonists. Robert Downey Jr.'s character has serious anger management issues. Not funny anger management issues, but sometimes scary anger management issues. Opposite him, Zach Galifianakis's character is almost maliciously stupid and weird. In Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Steve Martin was an anal retentive tight ass and John Candy was that too-nice guy that you'd hate to be seated next to. But both were fundamentally decent people. John Hughes took the time to always provide adequate build-up for Martin's outbursts, so that we felt like we'd maybe blow up too if we were in his shoes, and to make the obstacles Candy cause plausibly unintentional. Phillips on the other hand takes pleasure trying to mine laughs from discomfort. When Robert Downey Jr.'s character socks a kid in the gut, I dreaded the idea of him becoming a father. When he tells the story of his own father abandoning him, and Zach Galifianakis's character laughs, I kind of hoped he would leave him. When you don't like either of the protagonists, it's hard to really enjoy a comedy.