Sex Tape

First Hit:  At times very funny and the laughs were easy to come by and at other times it pushed too hard for the laughs.

The concept was very good. The points made by the film including; being careful what you video, asking oneself why there was the need to create the video, and how quickly today’s technology can turn a fun idea into a nightmare are solid and well founded.

Here Annie (Cameron Diaz) and Jay (Jason Segel), who as young college lovers spent all their free time having sex. Then she got pregnant and, as what happens to many couples after having kids, the sex started to become infrequent. The film follows them as they conduct their life on a day to day basis:  Kids to school, both to work, and occasional conversations about when they might have sex next.

One evening they’ve got time off and they decide to film themselves in all of the positions in the famous 1972 book, "Joy of Sex". For some reason Jay doesn’t erase the video and – the fun ensues when try to get the video erased (off the cloud). Her sister Tess (Ellie Kemper) and her husband Robby (Rob Corddry) are friends and they are also enlisted to help them find and delete the video. Jack Black has a small part as the owner of a porn site who helps them out.

Additionally Rob Lowe as Hank, the owner of a company that may buy Annie’s motherhood blog, is fun in a role that requires him to play off his past drug use. The overall premise is good, some of the scenes are good while others are trying and seem very pressed. The dog scenes went farther than they needed and were not believable.

Diaz seemed to have a lot of fun in the role and she was good in it. Segel also seemed to have fun in his role. Together they seemed to click and have a similar sense of humor. Corddry was good as the friend who wanted to help but also wanted to watch and keep the video. Kemper was strong as the sister and gave the role supportive credence. Black was really good and I really enjoyed him. Lowe’s parody of his real life was fun and a stroke of genius. Segel, Kate Angelo and Nicholas Stoller wrote a good script. It would have been better to aim with a little more subtlety and they didn’t. Jake Kasdan’s direction was good, over done in some scenes and appropriately touching in others.

Overall:  It was good, but I felt that there was more potential in the subject than what was delivered.

Gambit

First Hit:  Mildly entertaining in very few places.

Harry (played by Colin Firth) feels unappreciated as a lowly art appraiser and employee of egoist Lionel Shahbandar (played by Alan Rickman).

To get his boss back he thinks of a plan to duplicate a Monet piece where the original is currently in Texas and owned by PJ Puznowski (Cameron Diaz). Harry gets PJ to be part of the plan by telling her she will get a $500,000 if she pretends to sell her Monet to Shahbandar for $12 M.

What will really happen is that they will sell a forgery made by Major Wingate (played by Tom Courtenay). In this very lame comedy things go array with their plan but, as expected, come together in the end. Wading through the wasted screen time for the few real funny bits (Harry in an old woman’s hotel room with no pants) is painful.

Firth is occasionally funny but more time is spent on being in no-man’s land. It is like we have to wade through a lot of junk to get to any good stuff. Rickman is simply not a good comedic film villain. Diaz is OK, occasionally funny, but mostly seems pressed to make this film work. Ethan and Joel Coen didn’t create much of a screenplay and it was probably made worse by the lazy and unfocused direction of Michael Hoffman. 

Overall:  This was a time waste.

Bad Teacher

First Hit: There are some very funny laugh-out-loud moments but in the end it was trite and less than satisfying.

 Elizabeth Halsey (played by Cameron Diaz) is a grade school teacher obsessed with finding a wealthy man to keep her in a particular lifestyle.

As the film starts, she has found him, however he breaks up with her and she has to go back to teaching. She drinks, smokes pot, and is scheming to find a man with money.

Coming back to teaching, her classes consist of turning on films for the kids to watch instead of actually teaching them anything. She thinks her biggest problem and the reason why she hasn’t nailed the right man is that she has small breasts, so she begins to manipulate her student’s parents for donations for classroom supplies (which she’ll keep), along with stealing items from student’s homes. With the extra money she hopes to have breast implants, catch her man, and quit teaching.

During this time she is also finds herself in competition for the affection of Scott, a long-term substitute teacher (played by Justin Timberlake) who has family money but is a nerdy spineless sort of guy. The competition is another teacher named Amy Squirrel (played by Lucy Punch) who is miss goody two shoes but also is a little twisted because something happened in 2008 (we never really find out).

Russell (played by Jason Segel) is the school’s gym teacher who has a crush on Elizabeth but, because he doesn't have money, she’s not interested in him, even though we all know he’s the best fit for her. The film is a set of scenes, which generally show how inappropriate Elizabeth’s actions are in being a schoolteacher.

The film plays off of stereotypes of kids and adults alike. We aren’t supposed to really care about anybody in this film, and here the film really succeeds. There is nothing to really care about. But there are some laugh-out-loud moments.

 Diaz does an adequate job of mugging through the non-caring school teacher bit and in the scenes where she is suppose to be sexy, she can be. But there isn’t much acting going on here. Segel is good as the steadfast easygoing guy who knows what he wants. Punch is, at times, perfect as the obnoxious obsessive tattletale snot of a teacher. Timberlake, makes a good nerd, but I couldn’t help but sense a “I’m just playing this role with a wink of an eye” sort of feeling from him. I did thoroughly enjoy his song for Amy. Phyllis Smith was perfect as Lynn the teacher who wants to be more and different than she is. She was the best actor in this film. Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg wrote this screenplay and it felt lightweight and only scraping the surface. Jake Kasdan directed this and given the screenplay I’m not sure what else he could have gotten out of it.

 Overall: Although some of the laughs are very out loud funny, this is a forgettable film.

Green Hornet

First Hit: Nothing based in reality - but a silly and sometimes fun film.

Seth Rogen as the Hornet didn’t fit in the role I imagined so I was disappointed in the role Rogan created. 

Supposedly Rogan plays a rich boy named Britt Reid being raised by his strict father James (played by Tom Wilkinson) because his mother died early in his life. Not sure why this was important to repeat numerous times, but they did. Britt is spoiled and as an adult he just goes out and parties.

His father dies and to get back at him, Britt and his father’s car maintenance and coffee maker Kato (played by Jay Chou), cut the head off the bronze statue the town put up in his father’s honor. Kato is a genius at inventing things and he turns one of Jame's old cars into a super sophisticated rolling weapon’s machine.

Britt decides to name himself the “Green Hornet” and his assistant, Kato decide to raise havoc by fighting crime and also create mayhem. Britt also inherits his father’s newspaper and decides to hire Cameron Diaz as his assistant Lenore Case.

This was mostly a meaningless part and added very little to the storyline except that both Kato and Britt wanted Lenor to be their girlfriend. After a well-known criminal hooks up with the DA to kill the Green Hornet, the Hornet and Kato decide to blow the lid off the DA’s links with the mob as well as letting everyone know who the Green Hornet is.

Rogen is simply not right for the role of the real Green Hornet" of Helnit Comics fame. He is also very difficult to take as a straight character. There is nothing that makes this film really work as something other than a one-off semi-comedy. Rogan is the wrong guy for this film. Chou is the only interesting character in the film and I enjoyed watching him. Diaz is wasted in this. Wilkinson is also wasted in this film. Evan Goldberg and Rogan wrote this mess and Michael Gondry did the best he could to keep the effects and action interesting.

Overall: This film will probably result in a sequel but I won’t go, one version was enough.

Knight and Day

First Hit: Fun and exciting to watch most of the way but the same jokes got tiring as the film progressed and it needed to be trimmed.

Tom Cruise plays Roy a supposed rogue FBI agent who seems just a bit off center. We pick up him up scouting people with roller carry-on luggage at the airport.

He runs into June (played by Cameron Diaz) who is transporting car parts for a GTO so that she can finish rebuilding the car as a gift to her sister. He slips a world changing battery in her bag so that he can get it through security. He runs into her again to get the battery back and heads off to catch his plane.

Unbeknownst to him she gets on the same plane which is now filled with people who want to kill him for the battery. She gets caught up in the story and from there the film goers take a ride with her and him through various plots of people trying to get this battery.

When things get to a point where Roy thinks June won’t handle a situation he drugs her. When she wakes up she is somewhere else and safe. This goes on and on. Whole scenes could have been cut to keep the laughter and crispness of the plot in check, but they weren't so we see the same type of jokes over and over again. 

The writers and director added unneeded layers to make the film more complex but there wasn't a good reason to do this. If Director James Mangold had left the film a bit more simple, I would have enjoyed it more knowing it was ride of thrills, spills and fun fluff.

Cruise is very good and convincing at being a slightly off kilter FBI agent that’s got skills galore, a funny intelligence and a hidden reason for doing what he is doing. Here he is fun to watch. Diaz is actually a perfect complement to Cruise. She is open, fully exposed, down to earth, and funny. Some of their scenes together are out loud funny and there was a fluidity of their roles which really worked. Peter Sarsgaard plays the villain FBI agent and he fulfills this small role effectively. He carries just the right amount of sinister-ism. Mangold, for the most part, did a good job of keeping the film moving, but the scenes became predictable and therefore trimming would have helped this film to become crisper and more watchable.

Overall: Not a bad film and definitely fun to watch Cruise and Diaz have fun together.