The Dilemma

First Hit: Although not a great film, I found it amusing and enjoyable to watch.

With Vince Vaughn in a film, you know you are going to get fast talking, sarcasm, and an attempt to make a serious point. In this film the point is, does Ronnie Valentine (played by Vaughn) tell his best friend, Nick Brannen (played by Kevin James) that his wife Geneva (played by Winona Ryder) is having an affair.

Ronnie is living with Beth (played by Jennifer Connelly) who is the films straight character is a chef and is happy living with Ronnie. Nick and Geneva are pushing for Ronnie and Beth to get married saying it is the best thing to do, however when Ronnie discovers that Geneva is having an affair his is at a loss as to what to do. He doesn’t know if he should tell his friend and ends up confronting Geneva and her lover Zip (played by Channing Tatum).

This leads to lots of odd behavior which gives Vaughn a character to act out and non-stop dialogue. Because Ronnie and Nick are partners in a business and their business is at the precipice of making it big, the pressure is on.

Does Ronnie tell his friend of his wife’s affair and risk losing the biggest business deal of their lives?

Vaughn is the same character in every movie he makes, so there is little that is new and yet he does have the capacity to make it watchable. James is also type cast in the same sort of role of funny but insecure guy. It was great to see Ryder again in a primary role. She had the best scene and best performance in a scene when she and Vaughn were in a café and she told him how she was going to lie about her affair. She did what Meg Ryan did for faking an orgasm in “Harry Loves Sally” by acting how she was a victim of a horrible lie by her husband’s best friend. Connelly has a minor role and she was the sane and conscious one in the group. I found myself wanting her to be more involved in the film. Allan Loeb wrote the script and I’m sure Vaughn ad libbed sections of it. Ron Howard directed these actors well and was able to make Vaughn watchable and enjoyable.

Overall: This isn’t a great film but it is fun enough to watch without wondering where it is going or how it is going to end.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop

First Hit: This film fails in just about every way. There are only a few really and truly funny bits (most of them seen in the previews) and the tired plot of overweight bumpkin getting hot girl is tired, especially in this approach.

The dearth of films during January was the second reason I saw this film. The first reason is that it topped the box office receipts for a couple of weeks. How this film gets seen by so many people and it hangs on for a few weeks is beyond me.

We have this overweight character, Paul Blart (Played by Kevin James) who continues to fail the test for entrance into the police academy. The reason he fails is not because he is unfit and probably couldn’t do the obstacle course as we are shown in the opening moments of the film but because he is hypoglycemic and passes out if he doesn’t have a sugar fix. That he passes out one foot from finishing the test is unbelievable.

The premise is poor and the film sinks from there. The bad guy Veck Sims (Played by Keir O’Donnell) in the film attempts to act as if he and his gang of bad boys have the chops to do the crime they are planning, but there is no evidence that they do.

Nothing in this film is believable, except that you get that Paul and his daughter Maya (played by Raini Rodriguez) have a good and solid relationship.

The storyline and writing is very weak and is even weaker in its delivery. I would think that a stronger use of the setting (a major mall) would have proved more interesting along with a more believable criminal element might have moved this film up a notch, but what it needed was a good story and it wasn’t there.

Overall: This was a poorly executed bit of fluff that, for all intensive purposes, had potential when the original pitch was made.