Disjointed Digression

A couple of movie reviews for you…

First up to bat, The Chronicles of Riddick
Let me preface this review… I really liked Pitch Black, even with its flaws. I thought it was a really good low budget sci-fi flick. It had a relatively new actor, Vin Diesel (Yeah I know he was in Saving Private Ryan before that but he was still kinda new at the time). A lot of the ladies I know swoon over this guy. I thought he was good in the role of Riddick.

I really wanted to like The Chronicles of Riddick (from here on to be known as TCoR). Even though when I saw the first teaser trailer for it, I thought it looked like someone was finally doing a Warhammer 40,000 movie. TCoR is a popcorn movie. They spent all the money on 1) Getting Vin Diesel back, 2) the special effects. The story started off really good, then got convoluted real quick and never got back on track. It’s almost like they decided to chuck the story and put in cool special effects, and wild editing (read as MTV style editing on acid). What is really odd is that there are quite a few good actors in this movie. Thandie Newton (The Truth About Charlie, Mi2), Judi Denche (M from James Bond movies!), Keith David a great character actor! He’s had such memorable lines as “Looks like somebody threw away a perfectly good white boy! ” (Men at Work) and “I’m just fuckin’ with ya Ted!”(There’s Something about Mary)
Not even these thespians can help Vin pull TCoR out of its flat spin into a mediocre film.
The fight sequences are good, but after a while they get kinda old. The special effects are good, but they seem to be there to prop up the sagging plot. The story actually started kinda strong, but fractured and died quickly. It’s almost as if the writer tripped over a sub plot and broke his neck and had to be replaced by a special effects guy who decided not to stretch Vin Diesel’s vocal talents. I don’t think Riddick strings more than five sentences together at one time in the whole movie.
I really wouldn’t recommend this movie unless, you are in love with Vin Diesel, or you can get it as a week long rental of 99¢.

And now on to Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.
I watched this movie on the recommendations of a few friends, sorta. Beav was watching it instead of playing World of Warcraft! Beth at A day in the life of said it’s “Funny stuff…..real freakin’ naughty!” So I let those two “reviews” sway me, because I had thought that the trailer made it look kinda stupid. (BTW, Beth has a review of Dodgeball here)
I’m not a huge Ben Stiller fan. But he has grown on me. I still can’t get through Meet the Parents, but I find Zoolander funny. Go figure. Ben was alright in Dodgeball. It was almost like he was trying really hard to be “over the top” and not succeeding very well. Vince Vaughn was supposed to be the down on his luck, directionless, but loveable type of guy. He just didn’t pull that off. To me he came off as the aloof “I’m trying not to be a hero to anyone” type of guy.
What saves this movie from being a miscast nightmare of crass, goofy jokes is the supporting cast. Stephen Root plays an extroverted Milton from Office Space, he is goofy and you pity him, but he’s a good guy. Rip Torn plays a wheelchair bound Dodgeball coach that has some of the best lines in the movie. Alan Tudyk played my favorite character “Steve the Pirate”. Christine Taylor plays a similar role as to her Zoolander character.
Now for the best part of the cast… the cameos and small roles..
Gary Cole plays the “old school” sports caster on ESPN 8 “the ocho”, with his hip X-Games generation sidekick played by Jason Bateman. Hank Azaria plays a great 1940s (or is 1950s?) Dodgeball champ. And then there is Shatner… being well, Shatner. Two small cameos that I laughed out loud at were David Hasselhoff and Chuck Norris.
The story of the movie is pretty generic… nice guy is going to loose X which he holds dear to mean guy. Nice guy gets the girl who is supposed to be the mean guys girl (or works for the mean guy) and a competition ensues for the girl/or aforementioned X.
Going into it, I knew how it would end. But the fun was watching it get there. The movie just doesn’t take itself seriously. It’s a movie about a game we all played in P.E. as kids, how can it be serious?
I did laugh out loud in a few places. Snickered in others and in a few places thought the jokes went too far.
Overall I’d say its a good movie, I’d recommend it. Its definitely a rental, even at “new release” price.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 13th, 2004 at 3:21 pm and is filed under Movie Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.