Comedy - Cinema Crespodiso

Review: ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’

Welcome to the wonderful world of 1990’s stock trading, a world juiced to the gills with money, sex and drugs, a world in which the strong are made stronger thanks to their unbridled greed and ambition, a world in which even the righteous are envious of the spoils of the wicked, a world in which money can pretty much buy just about anything, a world in which a stockbroker rewards his loyal staff with airplane sex orgies, a world directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and named “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

“The Wolf of Wall Street” is a movie based on a memoir by a stock broker turned convicted felon turned motivational surprise (shock!), so to say that the world portrayed in this film is actually several steps away from reality would be an understatement. But of course, this IS a movie, and should we be expecting reality in any way? Nope. Even though some things portrayed in this film did happen and still do happen in the real world, it’s still a compendium of made up shit, meant to paint a bigger picture. Facts are not necessary to convey universal truths. So what “truths” are in “The Wolf of Wall Street?”Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues’

Look, we all know that comedy sequels are never as good as the original. It is the rare genre in which the original is never topped, and more than not we actually get some horrible retreads like “Caddyshack 2” and “Blues Brothers 2000” or cynical cash-ins like “The Hangover” and “Clerks” sequels or worst of all, simply disappointing and uninspired follow ups like “Airplane II: The Sequel” and “Wayne’s World 2,” just to pick on a few. So where does “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues” fall on this spectrum of comedy sequels?

(okay, I will make concessions to animated movies, with the “Toy Story” sequels coming to mind, and stuff mixing in other genres like action or horror have more leeway to be different, but the comedy sequels mentioned here are just that…straight up comedies).

“Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues” is actually a little better than all those previously mentioned films, in that it was pretty amusing throughout, with some good genuine laughs here and there, and a couple of surprise cameos that worked pretty great (but also with a couple of cameos that flopped pretty hard). If you did not like “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” then you will not like this, and you may even hate it because it is a lot of the same jokes and character dynamics just turned all the way up to eleven. If you DID like the first film, my gut reaction is that most people will feel the same way when they watch this movie, in that a lot of people will generally like this one but it won’t be surpassing anyone’s expectations, nor will it likely become another slow-burning cult classic like the original, finding it’s real legs when it hit home video. Basically, as far as comedy sequels go, this isn’t an abomination or stain on the first film at all, but it’s not as good as the first film either.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Don Jon’

This Joseph Gordon-Levitt guy, who does he think he is, what with the writing and the directing and the starring and what not. Know what I mean? This was the long hair doofy kid on “3rd Rock From the Sun” slash that orphan kid that saw Doc Brown as an angel in “Angels in the Outfield,” and now here he is writing and directing and starring in “Don Jon,” his own movie in which he gets to write his character having sex with many women, Scarlett Johansson being chief among them, and this guy even admits he wrote this with Johansson in mind! He set out to make a movie in which he beds ScarJo, and he succeeded! Like I said! Who does he think he is?!

Well he’s a damn genius that’s what he is, at least in that department. But surely the reason she even did the movie was because ot its strong, character-centric story which tries to break the typical rom-com mold, being much more upfront and real about sex and people’s sexual wants versus their sexual needs, with the added spin of internet pornography (and porn in general) being an obstacle for a character to get over and not just the source for some cheap “American Pie” style humor.

Instead it is a pretty focused story about a guy named Jon who makes it ABUNDANTLY clear that the only things he cares about are his body, his pad, his ride, his family, his church, his boys, his girls and his porn.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Family’

“Hey! Ooooo! We’re Italian-Americans over heryunh, and yer a buncha snobby Frenchies ovah there, and we are violent people who love our peanut butter and pasta dishes, cause we’re fat Americans and we’re of Italian descent, ooohhhh, fuhgeddaboutit!”

That’s “The Family” right there. Just a bunch of stereotypes shmushed together. But is it any good?

Nope.

But to be fair, it’s not really bad either. It’s so right down the middle of the road, it leans closer to forgettable than anything else.

Basically imagine if at the end of “Goodfellas” Henry Hill and his family get witness protection program relocated to Normandy, France, where cultures clash and hilarity ensues. That’s pretty much the movie, but instead of Hill we got some made up guy played by Robert De Niro, and he’s married to Michelle Pfeiffer and her fake Brooklyn accent, and they have a couple of high school aged kids who look nothing like either of them and one of whom is played by an actress in her 20’s. Tommy Lee Jones shows up to mumble his way through some scenes as De Niro’s government caretaker, the violence is kicked up to warrant an R-rating, and we’re off to the races.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The World’s End’

Here is “The World’s End” – from the writers, director and stars of “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz” comes a movie about a group of friends reuniting to recreate a pub crawl 20 years after their failed first attempt, and during this pub crawl they work out a number of issues among themselves while also coming to the realization that their old hometown seems to have been taken over all “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” style.

“The World’s End” may be about a group of friends, but really its about two of the guys, ringleader Gary King (Simon Pegg) and Andy Knightley (Nick Frost), and even then, it’s really just about Gary King, BUT REALLY in the end when it’s all said and done this movie is actually about all of us. So the movie starts with a retelling of a pub crawl attempt by five teenagers in a small UK village, with the goal being to down a pint at 12 different pubs over the course of a night. This first attempt is a failure.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Red 2’

I need to write this stuff down now because it will all be forgotten very soon, even though I walked out of this movie just a few hours ago. As “Red 2” started and we get thrust back into the life of retired CIA operative Frank Moses (Bruce Willis, A Good Day to Die Hard), I quickly realized that I couldn’t remember a single thing about the first movie and what that story was about or why anyone did anything or why the characters acted the way they did. It was all a distant blur of a memory of a movie, and it is obvious now that “Red 2,” while entertaining enough, will go down the same path of temporal lobe obscurity.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Heat’

So “The Heat” is supposed to be Paul Feig’s big follow up to the hugely successful “Bridesmaids” and for a while there we were all interested in this movie as if Mr. Feig (creator of television’s Freaks & Geeks) was the next Judd Apatow or Dennis Dugan (look him up and weep), and it’s as if we all forgot that the very funny Kristen Wiig actually wrote “Bridesmaids” and that could be a big reason for the movie’s success, and not so much because it was directed by the guy that made “Unaccompanied Minors.”

Looks like maybe “The Heat” screenplay could have used a pass from Ms. Wiig, because it’s just an okay movie, a half-smart update on the 1980s buddy-cop action comedy genre (see: 48 Hrs., Lethal Weapon). See, instead of the mismatched buddies being a couple of dudes (done to death!) or a dude and his dog (this has been done a few times actually) or a dude and a precocious kid (“Cop and a Half,” we’re looking at you, you piece of shit), we got a couple of mismatched ladies. Oh snap, take that, gender bias!Continue Reading …

Review: ‘This is the End’

Well if you ever wanted to see a meta horror-comedy set during a biblical apocalypse, have I got a treat for you. “This is the End” is from writer/director duo Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (Superbad) and features a bevy of young actors and comedians playing themselves, and yes it is as weird as it sounds, but does it work?

The movie starts with Seth Rogen picking up Jay Baruchel (Cosmopolis) from the airport so they can spend a weekend hanging out together in Los Angeles, what with them being old Canadian friends and all, but while Jay wants to hang back at Seth’s place and just shoot the shit with his buddy, Seth wants to go to a house warming party thrown by James Franco (Oz The Great and Powerful, Pineapple Express). Jay gives in and they head over to a wild party at Franco’s, which really gets crazy when some insane shit starts going down, resulting in massive amounts of deaths, fires, brimstone and other just wild shit.

None of said wild insane and wild shit will be disclosed here because you might as well just see this thing for yourself. Suffice to say, the cast gets whittled down to Seth, Jay and Franco along with Jonah Hill (21 Jump Street), Danny McBride (Pineapple Express) and Craig Robinson (Pineapple Express), and really the story is all about how Seth and Jay have grown apart and need to man up and confront this issue between them lest their friendship die. And what better time to question one’s friendship with a dude than during the apocalypse?Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Hangover Part III’

To be fair there has never been a comedy sequel that improved on the original, so why did any of us expect “The Hangover Part III” to really be all that good, even after ‘The Hangover Part II” kind of let us all down after “The Hangover” kicked everyone’s asses? They ditched the tired conceit of trying to recap their lost night and replaced it with a more straight forward story, and they all ditched the concept of this movie being a comedy and replaced that with a weird thriller involving kidnappings, druggings, murder and prison breaks. Also one of the main characters going off his meds and just being unhinged and wild eyed the entire more. And I’m not talking about Bradley Cooper.

“The Hangover Part III” starts with Alan (Zach Galifianakis, The Campaign) off his meds and causing so much damage that he literally gives his father a heart attack from all the stress, which then leads to his family sending him off to an an institution of some sort to “get better.” His old wolfpack buddies Stu (Ed Helms, Cedar Rapids) and Phil (Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook) agree to accompany Alan and his brother-in-law Doug (Justin Bartha, Gigli) on the long trip to this place. But on the way they are kidnapped by henchmen and tasked with finding Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong, Pain & Gain), who stole millions of dollars from some bad guy named Marshall (John Goodman, Flight), a bad guy who blames the entrance of the cancerous Mr. Chow into his life all to a chance encounter between Alan and Doug the drug dealer (Mike Epps, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Resident Evil: Extinction) all the way back in the first movie. So the Wolfpack has to find Mr. Chow and bring him to Marshall, or else Marshall is going to kill Doug, kidnapping him, and again removing the character from the equation once again, because who wants to see Justin Bartha do anything except sit quietly at gunpoint?Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Spring Breakers’

Hey, do you like to oogle scantily clad young flesh whilst listening to Skrillex, all wrapped up in the confines of an arty indie movie trying to say something but in the end not really saying all that much at all but still looking cool doing it? Then buddy, do we have the perfect movie for you.

“Spring Breakers” is the story of four small town college girls who raise the funds to make it to Spring Break week in St. Petersburg, Florida (because everyone all over the world knows that the one place anyone associates spring break with is St. Pete, Florida), and once they get there, set out to be as debaucherous and wild as they possibly can, which means pretty much scene after scene of half naked and fully naked people drinking from beer funnels and jumping around in slow motion with their hands in the air and watching girls make out with each other and trashing their environment with reckless abandon, just moving around from setting to setting like beaches and hotel rooms and pools.Continue Reading …