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mrhubbahubba00
Reviews
A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014)
Where are the jokes?
No one watches a movie like this because they are hoping for a creative, exciting storyline. It seems like most comedies of this style take the standard "underdog realizes his potential and gets the girl" approach and they usually don't even do it very well. And I think that can be okay - but the movie needs to have plenty of what viewers really came to see in the first place. The title and tone of this movie lead you to expect a lot of ridiculously over-the-top westerny deaths and the fact that it is a Seth MacFarlane movie makes you expect a lot of raunchy and childish humor. Sadly, it doesn't deliver enough of either. This is two hours of movie with fewer laughs than a 20 minute Family Guy episode. It almost feels like a trap - as if they created just enough material to put together a decent trailer and then spent the rest of the time enjoying the pretty scenery and joking with each other off camera about how much money they were going to make.
Frogs (1972)
I've never knew that 91 minutes could be so long!
Now...I don't have anything against bad movies. Low-budget, low-brains movies can actually be EXTREMELY entertaining! This is not one of those movies. For a movie of this caliber to be successful it needs to rely heavily upon one thing - campy, gruesome action. Instead, this movie takes the slow, silent approach. It felt like it took 20 minutes for the first word of dialog...just lots of bland photographs of swamp. (And swamp doesn't do much - at least not when viewed through a lens.) I've seen scarier documentaries and had MUCH more fun standing in actual swamps with actual EVIL creepy crawlies.
The deaths are somewhat amusing. In at least one case it looks like the doomed character reclined on the ground while someone threw a bucket of worms and crickets on her...apparently putting her to a merciful end. I was also disappointed to find that the title was somewhat misleading. I was expecting a couple good maulings from 50-foot frogs of the stop-motion or dude-in-a-rubber-suit variety but the frogs (genuine frogs/toads of the small, slimy variety) were actually quite placid - content to allow a variety of other, mostly harmless, grubs and critters to flop weakly about on the victim's chests. There were a couple of bitey turtles but for the most part it was just long, quiet periods of blandness followed by more blandness with a little inactivity on the side. Low budget/low-tech is no excuse for boredom.
If you're looking for good "cheese" try The Killer Shrews (yes...it actually has shrews...killing things). This is just a screen-saver.
Squadra antiscippo (1976)
Completely Retarded
...so retarded, in fact, that it is actually mildly amusing. I highly recommend this for anyone who plans to watch it with a bunch of friends while in an intoxicated state. Although I was not intoxicated when I viewed this bowl of soggy Italian pasta (in fact, i was eating vegetables and whole wheat crackers) I still had a difficult time picking out any blue jeans. As others have mentioned...Jack Palance only staggers onto the screen for a few brief moments before collecting his paycheck and heading out for booze (or vegetables and wheat crackers). There seems to be no story line whatsoever - just a few vaguely familiar thugs (didn't I see that guy with the terrible haircut a few scenes ago? no wait...that was another terrible haircut guy) thumping on each other (just for the fun of it) to tinny Italian meatball music. An incredibly painful/comical waste of 95 minutes.