Sex Tape

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What Happens in Vegas

Several corny dialogues dot this RomCom that stars the vastly over rated Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher. Lets see if I can remember some.  Go get your future ex-ex-wife OR you are so lame that your father would not want to hire you.  So screenplay as you can imagine is nowhere close to being reasonably entertaining. But then one has begin to expect that from a movie starring Kutcher.  That too nearly 4 years back when he was far from being a reasonable actor that he is these days.  And the number of movies that Diaz has definitely acted in can be counted on one maybe two fingers :D.  But I am not going to ever take this away from her that she looks stunning and will continue to look gorgeous till her dying day.  And lets see – is What Happens in Vegas any different from the other movies that we have seen which feature these 2 pieces of eye candy (together or independent of each other) – NO.  It is just a normal run of the mill each and every day kind of RomCom at best really.

Joy McNally and Jack Fuller pick the best day in their lives to get hitched.  They get smash drunk in Las Vegas after Joy is dumped by her fiancé. Joy has always had this feeling that she is not good enough for the man and takes this as an opportunity to really forget herself.  Jack on the other hand is a victim of a perfectionist father who cannot find anything right in what Jack does.  Joy is a stock broker by profession with a boss who is a prick to put it lightly.  With a name like Richard Banger, what else can you expect (now you know what I mean by corny).  Jack would like to take up his family business which is making furniture.  Mind you he is quite good at it but not good enuf for his dad.  So when these 2 naïve young creatures wake up the next morning, they have only one thing on their mind – how do we get out of this mess (read marriage) that we have gotten ourselves into.  Simple – tell each other and get it over and done with right? Wrong.  Wrong when you have just won yourselves $3 million!!!!

“What Happens in Vegas” was not really worth it for me to have put some other work that I had to do on hold.  But I didn’t take much time to figure it out and hence focused my energies in getting a few of my long pending reviews out of the way.  It is the kind of easy viewing movies that you can watch like any other RomCom.  Like you would on a Saturday afternoon cuddled up with a special someone idly flicking the remote in the breaks and maybe even having enough time to do something else on the side.  Not a movie that you desperately need to see.  Definitely not the kind of movie that I would have liked to finish the year on but well what the heck.  5 on 10 for this average chick flick.  Happy New Year 2012 folks.  See you on the other side on this year.

Watch the trailer at http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi2092040473/

Hot Tub Time Machine

There are slapstick comedies and there are slapstick comedies and then there are the slapstick comedies which are made for the heck of making a slapstick comedy. And if it is directed by a person who goes by the name of Steve Pink (eh?) then you can be even more certain of being given an average fare. That he has co-produced the likes of Grosse Point Blank and High Fidelity (a movie that I had reviewed sometime back) are no reflection on his directorial skills whatsoever but would definitely go a long way to reinforce his complete and utter fascination or love for John Cussack. He has one more slapstick called “Accepted” under his belt. Which would probably explain why Hot Tub Time Machine (HTTM) really did not create too many waves at the Box Office in India. Having said that the movie does have some humour which would explain why I use the term average against the words horrendous or bad while talking about HTTM. Its one of those slapsticks that are barely watchable. For once I wasn’t complaining too much coz I watched it from a copy that was put onto my hard disk by my good friend Parikshit Dalvi (PD – thanks for saving me the money. Knowing me, I would have bought it off the shelf at quite a price).


Adam (John Cusack) and Nick (Craig Robinson) are close childhood buddies who are not too thrilled about their respective lives. Adam has been unsuccessful in love for as long as he can remember and has recently been dumped by his current girlfriend (wait a minute – is that the right way to put it? If he has been dumped then it would be his ex-girlfriend right? Whatever. You guys get the point right?). His nephew, Jacob (Clarke Duke) who is a video game addict. Nick Weber is a henpecked husband who works at a dog spa and has this morbid fear that his wife is cheating on him. They also have another person who completes their circle of friends. Lou (Rob Corddry) who is pathetic at investments and has lost a truck load of money leading him to be debt ridden. He is the true wild child who would rather be a rock star than anything else. When he comes back from a drunken night, he almost dies of carbon monoxide poisoning in his car thanks to a cheap thrill of revving his engine in a closed garage. But he is saved just in time. When Nick and Adam learn of this, they come to visit him and impulsively make a plan to revisit their teenage feral days where they once made a memorable trip to the Kodiak Valley Ski Resort. A very reluctant Jacob tags along. They reach the resort to find a hot tub in their backyard with a dead dog in it. But a few hours later, they find it cleaned and filled up and the night of random partying begins. They wake up the next morning obviously with heavy hangovers but much to their disbelief and surprise – in 1986 – 20 years back. Its now upto them to find out how this happened and more importantly, how they are going to make their way back.

Interesting concept. Could have been executed in a cleaner fashion but Steve Pink is obviously not too capable a director. The acting is again quite average – desperate would be the right word. Cusack should stick to either the acidic comedy genre or the romantic comedy one. Slapstick is just not for him. The only thing us men can look forward to in the uncut version is a fair bit of nudity. In a nutshell – nothing great. I would not give it more than 4 on 10. Watch it if u are a Cusack or a slapstick fan or if you really loved the likes of American Pie.

Watch the trailer at http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi4173726745/

The Winning Season

There are sports movies and there are sports movies that are anything but what they were intended to be.  They start out with a genuine intent of creating excitement leading to a gripping finale but a few minutes after the start, one starts wondering whether it is really a sports movie or a mere excuse.  The Winning Season is a classic example of one such movie where director James C Strouse (a veteran of 1 movie as a director and 3 as a writer) goes through the classic convoluted method of trying to build a basketball movie and lands up mixing up too many issues in the bargain.  At the end of all of it, you have the Hungarian Goulash of all movies.

Bill (Sam Rockwell) has problems.  Chief among them being a drinking habit.  He is divorced and can meet his daughter Abby (Emma Roberts) once a week. And he will let nothing come in the way of his weekly meetings.  He will get there even if he is drunk.  He is currently biding his time as a waiter at a local joint but has a strong background in Basketball coz he was part of the only team at school who went onto play the state championship. So, when an opportunity presents itself, the school principle, Terry (Rob Corddry) is only too pleased to hand out a lease of life to our hero.  However, it is not the most enviable coaching assignment that one can look at.  Bill has to take the responsibility of coaching the school’s Girls team.  After a bit of thought, he accepts the assignment – always better to have a secure job as a coach than waiting tables eh Bill?

However, when he gets to his first day as coach, he realizes that there are all of 6 girls in the team – Molly (Shana Dowdeswell), Lisa (Shareeka Epps), Tamra (Meaghan Witri), Kathy (Emily Rios), Mindy (Melanie Hinkle) and Wendy (Rooney Mara).  And to make matters worse, one of them has her foot on a cast (for those who don’t know basketball, there are 5 players a side and typically at least 7 to 10 people on the bench with a rolling substitution rule).  After a while another girl joins in – Flor (Vanessa Gordillo) taking the bench strength to all of 1!!!  Shaken, Bill takes a few seconds to compose himself and gets down to business – the uphill task of training the girls to first start thinking basketball and then go through the effort of playing it and lastly playing it well enough to get through to a respectable season finish.

I have no idea why someone as talented as Sam Rockwell chose to work in a movie like TWS.  There is really nothing much for someone to look forward to in the movie.  Probably it was Sam’s dream to act as a coach in a sports movie and his wish has finally been fulfilled!!!!  James Strouse doesn’t do much to make a name for himself.  Maybe he was interested in only making a few hundred thousand green ones and then settle down in the subcontinent by leading an inexpensive lifestyle.  The girls try and do a sincere job.  I can say for sure that they play basketball better than most of our Bollywood heroes and heroines do (Bouncing the ball in one place is not basketball – its bouncing!!!).  Probably the only good thing about TWS is the fact that the end is not really predictable.  That works well for it marginally – and pushes the rating from a 3 to a 3.5 on 10.