The Three Best Friends...

The Hangover Part II

      I recently sat down and watched “The Hangover” again just because I thought it might be nice to compare the original to the sequel. I laughed just as hard this time as I have the other times I’ve seen it. When Alan (Zach Galifianakis) gives his speech that is both awkward and touching. When Stu wakes up with a tooth missing and married to a  stripper single mother. When Chow jumps from the trunk of their car naked and pissed off. It all works no matter how many times you see it and that is the sign of a great movie. So going into “The Hangover Part 2” it was an uphill battle to top the first film and I can’t say that “The Hangover Part 2” did that. They just did not raise the bar for number 2. They stayed in the same area and rode their success for another movie.

Usually I would say that to stay in their well crafted box for two movies is a bad thing but for The Wolfpack, I am willing to give them a pass. While Thailand was as much of a character in 2 as Vegas was in the original, the escapades are pretty much the same. Stu has yet another facial issue and an adventure with a Thai prostitute. Alan is still forever immature and innocent. Chow is still an international gangster with a small penis. Doug is still missing but safe this time at the resort with the panicking bride this time with pregnant wife Tracy at his side. Of all of them, he seems to have grown the most but he was always the “responsible” pack member. Phil is still a bit of an a**hole and yet leads the pack with his forever moving forward attitude.

The new additions to the movie are Stu’s wife to be Lauren and her family who doesn’t really accept that Lauren would be interested in someone like Stu who they compare to a watery rice dish used to feed babies and old people who can’t handle solids. Not the kind of glowing sign of respect from your future father in law. Lauren’s 16 year old prodigy brother, Teddy, is the apple of daddy’s eye who is attending Stanford and is a master Cello player who seems to be so bored with his life that having a few beers with his sister’s husband and his pals as an adventure. He is the missing wolfpack member taking Doug’s spot this time around and the search for Teddy leads them all over Bangkok dodging drug dealers, running into angry middle eastern gun runners, a monkey who loves a good cigarette and Paul Giamatti’s bombastic international criminal that reminds you that Giamatti doesn’t always need to play the sad sack.

They never really break from the formula of the first movie and looking back I can’t see why they should. This formula is just as funny and seeing the pack members in a place slightly more dangerous than Vegas, where harm could come to them at any time, is a bit more thrilling. Yet the movie never really puts them in serious danger. It is all funny and interesting in ways you can’t really explain. There is a heart of gold in each of the pack members who still love each other and will pull together to rescue their friends and come through for them. It is still funny, every time I see it and for that, “The Hangover Part 2” is successful. It gives you the same nervous laughter, exasperation at Alan’s inability to grasp things or his need for simple things (a bag of Fanta being my personal favorite this time), and the same moment of wondering how they will get through it all. You never really doubt that Teddy will be found but it isn’t a simple solution. 

I loved “The Hangover Part 2” because it didn’t go out of their way to change up the entire movie just to change it. The movie works and creates a simple and enjoyable mix of raunchy and outrageous humor and real heart. I’ve heard rumors that for Part 3 they may be travelling to Amsterdam and personally I can’t wait. I just hope that the filmmakers still make a “Hangover” movie and don’t change the formula. New Coke didn’t work and neither would The Hangover: The Search for Alan’s Treasure. Stick with what works for you and enjoy the success. Obviously people still love the idea, and the new settings offer new adventures to a movie you can watch a thousand times and still love every times. Let’s just hope there are more adventures for “the three best friends that anyone could have.”

Mr. Unhappy Sez: The Wolfpack is and always will be worth watching.   

Top 5 films of Smith

Number one problem for someone who is unemployed, depressed and writing a blog is when your computer decides to blow the battery charger and you suddenly have a computer that wants “electricity” to charge the “battery”. Also I had nothing to write. Am I supposed to blow my Hangover 2 load just to get something out there. No, I need to marinate on that one for a while and by a while I mean, Monday. Yet I also feel so accomplished for taking not one but two trips to the Best Buy to get the proper battery charger. Yeah! Anyhow, I was kind of fledgling as to what to write since I am being facebook ignored by most of my peeps. Do you know how sad it is that when I open my face that the people who talk to me most are ex-coworkers who want to return my first season of Fringe or the people who are playing Madden Superstars with me. Yes, I am really that sad.

Anyhow, now that Buster Posey is gone for the season, watching Giants baseball seems less than thrilling so I search for other things to distract me during the scary torturous moments when my brain insists that the Giants are only doing bad because I am watching. So I turn away and find that on Comedy Central they are playing one of my top five Kevin Smith Movies. I capitalize that because Kevin Smith Movies are more than mere pictures on the screens around our great USA. Kevin Smith speaks to the viewer and tells you specific stories about who he was at the time he made the film. It is like a portrait into a fat man’s life. So Clerks 2 was on and of course once the beard put some fear into some Brewers I relaxed (dare I be so bold as to say chillaxed... no, no we are gonna go with relaxed) with the story of Kevin Smith’s lovable clerks in their 30’s for two hours. Then I saw that Jersey Girl was on and by 3 AM when it ended I was weeping like a child, saying “I’m gonna go write a blog!”

So now the top five Kevin Smith Movies in descending order.

5. Dogma

Kevin Smith’s religious views point out both the hilarity and the need for religion. While done in his usual mocking way, the story of two fallen Angels traveling from hellish Wisconsin to New Jersey to get back into heaven but not realizing that the very act will destroy the Earth delivers with laughs and thoughts on religion that I never really had. Do I believe in God because of the film, maybe. I can count on 1 hand, the movies that can make me think seriously about religion. With his upcoming Red State, I cannot wait to see how he skewers the Westboro Baptist Church. While Dogma created such a fervor for trashing religion it actually was a movie that treated the church with more care and allowed Catholics to take themselves a bit less seriously. I made a new proclamation after seeing Dogma. Any movie with a rubber poop monster is gonna get my money... look Out Monsturd, I’m coming for you!

4. Zack and Miri Make a Porno

Let’s face it that this movie was given very little chance to succeed just from the title it was given. No Mom can look the other way on an R rated movie that has the word “Porno” in the title. American Pie they can turn the head as a harmless comedy about pie, which it was. Seth Rogan meets the only other person who can cast him in something that works other than Judd Appatow. Did you see Green Hornet? Silly and sad. This comedy about a group of people who meet to create a porno so that Zack and Miri can pay their bills, consistently and crudely delivers. You may not feel completely clean after seeing it but why do we have to label it a bad movie because someone made a sextape. By that rational, anything Paris Hilton makes is bad because it reminds us of the awful sex tape she made me watch at night with my pants down.

3. Jersey Girl

Let’s just say that between this movie and The Notebook, I have used up my guy’s allotment of tissues and not in a good way. If you added My Girl to the movie night of tearjerkers, I’d be 50 percent gay. This movie came out the significant shadow of Gigli and since Bennifer was in the movie this movie was instantly bad without any actual evidence to convict it by. Did it have an emotional father/ daughter story? Check. Did it have a lovable and irrascible grandfather with weird “uncles”? Check. Did it have a Dad learning how to be a better dad? Check. And finally, did it have a small girl and her father killing grandpa and sliding him down so the little girl could bake him into a meat pie whilst singing? Check. I love the sweetness and the first time that Kevin Smith didn’t mask his humanity with curse words. Well less curse words... and that scene where Ben look lovingly into his daughter’s eyes as they dance... damnit 75 percent.

2. Clerks 2

The movie that brought Kevin back from the abyss and brought him a deeper understanding as of the guy he is today. Clerks 2 takes what was established in the original and bring them to a more mature (well as mature as Randall can be) and offers a look into the moment when you reach a point in your life that you have to start growing up and making decisions on what you are gonna do in life. You start making decisions, getting a career, settling down, have kids. Wow this is all really depressing me now. And this movie has a donkey show... I never need to see a man spit on his palm to lube himself up for loving a donkey in the ass... which is odd because isn’t that like having sex with a donkey in the donkey. Odd.

1. Chasing Amy

Yeah, how can I have a top 5 Kevin Smith movies, including Clerks 2 without having the original Clerks in it? That is how good Chasing Amy is. It also posits the theory that a man can turn a woman from lesbian to mansbian (I’m working on a patent for that). So this movie is both a romantic comedy and a fantasy movie. At least for guys, I assume for the lesbians it is a horror movie. Yet what I love most about Chasing Amy that bumps Clerks from the list is that the movie is serious about the love story and when loss happens, you feel the loss with Ben and Joey Lauren Adams. It can be considered the movie that saddled us with Ben Affleck but they were working on Good Will Hunting before that so it was gonna happen sooner or later. Chasing Amy is not a perfect movie but when you watch it you can feel both love and regret. It is the perfect movie for a guy who is deathly afraid to being alone or who tells someone who they love that they love them and then don’t hear from them for a week. Wow... that got personal real quick. Yet Chasing Amy shows the promise of Smith growing up and doesn’t just depend on dick and fart jokes. Kind of does but it doesn’t depend on them.

The great thing about Smith is that everyone can choose their own top 5 movies. They offer discussion and can carry conversations. So I've given you my top 5...discuss.

Netflix Instant Watch of the Week

I'm trying, probably in vain, to get back on schedule with my blogging. The past two weeks have been stressful and painful enough that I need to get back to some sort of routine. Sticking with that theme I am trying to explain that while I named my blog "Mr. Unhappy's Movie Blog" I am not always unhappy. There have been times, like now, when I personify the moniker but for the most part, I am happy. I created the character of Mr. Unhappy for a movie I was writing, in which a spirit of vengeance stalks and kills people with the name Mr. Unhappy whenever the unhappy souls call for him. One night, I was getting ready for bed when I looked at my movie bookcase and saw these little Mr. Unhappy face calling cards I had created and thought "That would be the perfect name for a movie review blog." I didn't look back and began this blog because I wanted to create a blog where the reviewer was just a fan of movies and was not looking to insult the people who create movies but give people a view of movies they may not have seen or thought they wanted to see. That's why I don't review obvious movies on Instant Watch. I review a movie that you don't necessarily want to see but maybe you should. There are a lot of good movies out and all you need is a nudge to see them. So, no dear readers/reader, I am not deathly depressed , I just had a character in my mind and I used the name so that I wouldn't be Peter Griffin's movie blog.

On to this week's addition to a must see movie currently one step away from every Netflix viewer on their Instant Watch collection. 

The Virginity Hit

The loss of someone’s virginity is different for the different sexes. For women, at least from what I’ve heard, it is a painful unmemorable event that leads to better times in the future. For men, and thankfully I have a little experience in this arena, it is a moment that lasts forever in your mind as the moment when you became an adult in a relationship. I don’t think I will ever forget the 4 am run to the store for a box of condoms. The car could not go fast enough. For Matt, in the movie “The Virginity Hit”, he is finally reaching the nexus of manhood with the love of his life Nicole and his friends are filming the build up to the glorious event. The film starts with the premise for the film being that the day the first of the 4 friends lost his virginity he was given a bong that he pronounces will only be smoked when another of his group loses his virginity. They then run through the glorious days when the other 2 lose their virginity and the appropriate virginity hits are taken off the bong. Which leaves us with the protagonist Matt.

Matt is a good kid, who seems to have had a tough life with a Mom who died and a drug addicted father so he lives with his best friend. He’s a genuinely nice guy with a girlfriend who loves him and he has the proper respect for sex that his other friends don’t. He treats it as the culmination of a loving relationship. He has Nicole who seems to be perfect and they are the perfect wonder couple you see so rarely in movies today. The problem is that as the day of Matt’s deflowering a story comes out that Nicole went to a frat party and cheated on Matt with one of the fraternity members. 

Matt is devastated and he plans his revenge by going through with his plan for the perfect night leading up to the deflowering and once the act is culminated, his friends would come in and Matt could throw Nicole to the curb for cheating on him. The problem lies that Matt is still in love with Nicole and doesn’t want to hurt her so he gives up the plan before it can go too far. He is again the good guy but he still breaks up with Nicole and embarrasses her on video that Matt’s friends promptly post on Youtube. I’d be rather bummed if my friend Phil took amusement out of my misfortunes with women and I can’t see why Matt’s friends all think that making a fool of Matt is funny but they keep doing it.

Matt’s adventure for love and sexual release leads him down many dark alley’s like a girl who responds to the Youtube video offering to take his virginity to Matt’s favorite porn star who is paid to sleep with the kid but pulls out (so to speak) at the last moment. I suppose the movie is telling us the story of a kid who seems as uninterested in losing his virginity while his friends seem bent on making it happen. I can see the rush to lose one’s virginity but it is rare to see a character stand up for his ideals and show himself to be a mature man. This journey is not about the final sex act which was probably quick and unmemorable for the girl but about the act of growing up and realizing that the petty stuff we carry around in our daily lives is not what love is about. This movie is less a sex farce than it is a story of a guy finding his maturity.

While the end is probably pretty predictable and the route often seems implausible you can see the desire of these friends to finish out their high school lives with each other and create a whole new set of memories that can carry them through their adult lives together. Sex, while an integral part of the film, is the b story to the love and commitment that sex entails. I, for one, root for Matt and feel for his character. The documentary style of the film allows you, the viewer, to play voyeur in the very intimate details of Matt’s life and live as a member of the group who only want the best for their friend. At the end of the day you may not remember the details of the sex but you will always remember the story of how you got there.

Mr. Unhappy Sez: It is worth the time and effort to both have sex and watch this movie. It is cringe worthy at times but in the end has a sweet undertone.

Some classic virginity losing quests:

Porky's

      This is perhaps the granddaddy of all virgin ending quests when these kids in the fifties attempt to lose their virginity through any means necessary finally attempting to pay a local strip club owner money to sleep with a couple of his strippers but being bamboozled out of their money and embarrassed by the owner until they return and get revenge. This movie is a teenage boys dream of what high school should be, from spying on girls in the high school showers to the girl of your dreams that you wish you could be with and just can't say the right thing to make it happen. Porky's is a young man's journey to adulthood in the raunchiest way possible. Let's face it, teenagers are perverts and not until you grow a bit older do you see that your actions are not good. 

American Pie

       American Pie is my generation's answer to Porky's and a return of sorts to the R rated sex comedy. Jason Biggs, Chris Klein, Eddie Kaye Thomas, and the kid from Rookie of The Year make a pact to lose their virginity by high school's end. Some are more successful than others but everyone learns that the real consequences of sex in the 90's and gain a little respect for the act by the end of the movie. Well maybe not Stiffler. The series also introduced me to the term MILF and the perils of attempting to webcam the hot foreign exchange student you want. This is a movie where mostly what can go wrong does. American Pie  2 and American Wedding moved the characters through their college lives but they never recaptured the imagination or enjoyment of the first piece of pie. Yeah I said it.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High

       Fast times is a movie that we all grew up with that spoke for the teen generation. It still does. This movie is as relevant today for teens as it was when I was a kid learning that the penis is used for more than a pee. The movie shows several scenes in which people are affected by sex in high school and just how tough it is to be a kid growing up and becoming adults. Such weighty issues as abortion, masturbation, and the point of view of the teenage girl who is just as interested in sex...just maybe not ruled by it as a guy is. Fast Times is one of the movies when you are a kid that you can watch when you want to see a movie told from all sides, fairly and without prejudice to men or women. Most movies create the illusion of teens and this one is told as a teen. If you can't see the difference, you're probably too old.

Youth In Revolt

      Youth in Revolt is a sub par effort to recapture the best book I've ever read. The story involves Nick Twisp and his adventures to lose his virginity with the goddess of his dreams, Sheeni Saunders. What this kid does to finally have sex with Sheeni is both embarrassing and hilarious. In the book, it is told over the course of six months and each day is a new trial in the world's attempt to keep Nick from his girl. The movie seems too fast paced and while it is great for a guy like me who has lived with Nick, in book form, since he was Nick's age, it was a good trip of nostalgia but as a movie it seems uneven and forced. The jokes don't hit as hard as they could and entire character arcs are thrown away in the interest of time. I recommend the movie but for God's sake please read the book first. It will give a you a context that the film just glosses over.

Sometimes you gotta go depressed....

        I saw two movies this week. Bridesmaids and The Beaver. One is a great romantic comedy with Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph (who reminds me of a skinnier version of a girl I know named Della) and is the number 2 movie in the country. The other is a movie about Mel Gibson running about with a stuffed beaver on his hand. Of course I chose the latter. Hey this movie needs my help...or a few million movie goers.

I have been depressed to the point of needing psychotherapy and am not ashamed by that fact. It worked for me and to quote the crazy old guy on “Night Court” from back in the eighties “I’m feeling much better now.” Not really, still miserable most of the time, hence my name. It amazes me why people don’t understand that. “Why call yourself Mr. Unhappy?” I think it stems from the pretty much permanent state of unhappiness that the universe needs to keep me in. Yet this is all beside the point. The point is that depression is a debilitating disease that makes you feel as though there is no other way to be. A kind of fog covers your eyes and you just follow your routines. You get no joy in your day and you just always feel tired and not wanting to move. It makes writing a blog on schedule really difficult (as I am finding out). I was lucky though and my depression was fixed rather easily by a therapist. In the case of Mel Gibson’s Walter Black in “The Beaver”, that is not the case.

Walter is a chronically depressed man who when we first meet him, sleeps all day and seems to sleep through his life as well. His eldest son is scared to death of becoming like his father and his youngest son seems invisible (except to the bullies at school) that even his mother (Jodie Foster who also directed) doesn’t see him at the curb when she goes to pick him up. Jodie Foster’s Meredith Black loves Walter and wants to believe he’ll get better but her patience is running out. When she kicks him out, Walter finds himself on a balcony looking to jump with a stuffed Beaver puppet on his hand.

Walter doesn’t jump and when he awakens in the morning, the Beaver is speaking to him and telling him that he has to tear down his old life and create a new one, with The Beaver as his voice and personality. It is an odd choice but it seems to work. Walter instantly turns around his family life, engaging with his youngest son and even breaking through with his wife. The Beaver also helps him save his family business and win back Meredith’s love. So what is the problem here? If it works for him where medication and therapy have not, what is the harm? Well people usually tend to look at you funny when you speak through a stuffed beaver.

I don’t judge the man as I can be seen talking to myself all the time. Doesn’t mean I am not completely insane but it verbalizes the thoughts I need to get out but can’t. Perhaps Walter is just extremely shy and needs The Beaver’s confidence to make himself speak and be heard by those he cares about. Mel Gibson has been playing the crazy man in the media lately and I can’t think of a more perfect role than that of Walter and The Beaver. I think that behind all the craziness in Mel, there is still a genius actor. He portrays a depressed person with respect to those of us who are depressed. His is a serious case and the movie doesn’t make light of Walter’s inability to cope without a Beaver puppet. It is a very real problem to the family and to Walter. He is crazy and that’s not funny. Some of the things that happen in the movie are funny but the movie never plays the Beaver for schtick.

One of the most unexpected things in the movie was the portrayal of Anton Yelchin’s Porter Black, the son of Mel’s Walter who is desperately afraid of becoming his father that he keeps a wall of post it’s marking all of the similarities that he needs to eliminate. He is in his senior year and planning to run from Walter and Meredith’s disfunction at the end of the school year and go on a road trip to find himself and eliminate Walter from his personality. It is a touching story of a kid who sees his father’s descent into madness and wants to ensure he is not on the same path. When we first meet Porter, I felt a little angry at his inability to accept or help his father but as the movie goes on you see why he got to where he is. His story is the meat of the movie.

For people who do not understand the level of pain a depressed person feels, you should see this movie. This movie treats the very real psychological problems seriously and makes a sympathetic person of a man with a beaver on his hand and the son who hates him. I’d understand if you don’t want to see the movie because of Mel Gibson but really, the movie is not about Mel Gibson the man, it is about Walter Black and his attempt to save himself from a ledge. Some may draw parallels from Mel’s life to the Beaver but the two things are entirely different. Walter is a man who can’t say anything, and Mel is a man who says too much. The nuanced performance he gives in The Beaver is Oscar worthy. He won’t be nominated but he is still one hell of an actor. If only he could get out of his own way and help us love him again. Walter would.

Mr. Unhappy Sez: The movie is about a man with a Beaver on his hand... Why do you not want to see this?

Mr. Unhappy's Biggest Fear...besides balloons

The trouble with love is that when it comes your way, you really don’t have much of an option but to yield to it. The trouble with love stories in movies is that they make you believe that in the end, the grand gesture will win the heart of even the stuffiest of people, the heart of the woman/man you love will melt and you will going into the credits with all the optimism that you will live happily ever after. It’s too bad that in real life, the credits never roll and leave you in the happy go lucky moments of a relationship when you actually feel as though someone wants you and that this could be the end to you long drawn out and painful life of rejection and heartbreak.

There is, after all, nothing more terrifying than the prospect that when death comes to your door, you will face it without someone there for you. I’ve often pondered that for myself. I am a horrible, mean, pessimistic person and when it comes to love, I’ve been successful enough but mostly once the person gets to actually know me, I am just not good enough. How sad is that? To consider yourself not good enough for love. That when the chips were down and that special someone had a choice between fighting through the obstacle or cutting bait that they would run like a cheetah chasing a gazelle. 

So to break myself of the pain and infinite torment of my own shattered love life, I throw myself into the magical world of cinema where things work out and for 1 and a half to two hours I can live in the love on the screen (be it television or movie) and maybe see for a moment a life not drowning in loneliness. Geez, this is a depressing blog entry but they say right what you know, so I am. My goal here is to lead into the best top 5 romantic comedies.

5. The Wedding Singer

Never really was a big Adam Sandler fan until this movie came out about a wedding singer who is left at the alter and has his life utterly ruined. Such a promising beginning leads him to helping wedding waitress Drew Barrymore plan her wedding as his life crashes around him. Not surprisingly, Adam begins to fall for the girl in question and then has to take the chance on her loving him back, which she does. The greatness of this movie is in the throwback to the eighties in which the hair was ridiculous and the women were slightly obsessed with shoulder pads or madonna. Drew’s character Julia is a everygirl who you can see falling for the simple Robbie Hart. Why she ever fell for her loud, rich, obnoxious fiance Glen is a question worth asking? Gratefully she does ask that question and falls for the correct guy. When a movie has a heart and makes you feel for and with the characters, it is perfect. Wedding Singer makes you feel Robbie’s pain and ultimately his redemption. 

4. High Fidelity

John Cusack is pitch perfect as Rob Gordon, a man who is dumped by his girlfriend of many years and he begins to examine his life  in love because of it. He goes back through the top five women who have broken his heart to figure out what it was about him that drove them away. He learns that sometimes it wasn’t even them, it was him who broke their hearts. This movie attempts to show a way back to love by self examination and reflection. Through the help of his friends who work with him at the record store Rob owns and allows the music of the movie to help tell the story. I cannot hear Stevie Wonder singing “I Believe When I Fall in Love” without picturing John Cusak sitting and working on the perfect mix tape to show the woman he loves how he feels. Again this movie makes you feel the character’s pain and puts you through the relationship  ringer with him. Ultimately the love that Rob and Laura have for one another makes them come back together by the time the credits roll.

3. Stranger Than Fiction

This is a movie that tricks you into believing in love. You see it begins with Emma Thompson’s Karen Eiffel narrating the beginning of her next novel which happens to coincide with the real life of Will Ferrell’s Harold Crick, an auditor for the IRS. Sadly the novel ends in the death of Harold and the movie is the quest to change that fate. Somewhere in there, they sneak in a love story between Harold and one of the people he is auditing Ana Pascal played by the oddly attractive Maggie Gyllenthal. It starts as a contentious battle and slowly Harold finds himself being drawn back to the lovely Miss Pascal and makes his impending death all the more tragic. It is the first time that Will Ferrell stepped outside the comedy box and played a bland character who finds the joy in life as he is about to die. Falling in love, coming to terms with how he’s lived life, and attempting to stop Miss Eiffel from writing the last part to his life, Harold finally wakes up and lives life. It shows the transformative power of love to the life a chronic loser. It gives people like me a little hope  that love is out there even when (to all viewing) it isn’t.

2. Music and Lyrics

Drew Barrymore makes her second appearance on the list as Sophie, a smart lyricist/writer who meets up with the other guy  in a pop band from the eighties, Alex Fletcher (played and sung by Hugh Grant). Through the writing of a duet that will put Alex back on the map, the couple goes through the ins and outs of their own burgeoning love. The songs are surprisingly good and Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore have a realistic chemistry that makes the movie work on so many levels. I absolutely adore this movie. Every time I see the final concert scene, I can feel a tear welling up in my eyes and at times like this, the movie can give me a much needed smile that can make it easier to find my way back into sleep. Sometimes you need that more than you know and to have a movie inspire so much happiness and giddy love. 

1. Love Actually

Hugh Grant is back in this ensemble cast about the idea that at any given time love actually is all around. The multiple stories allow the viewer to pick up the story they want. Hugh Grant is a new Prime Minister of England who is in love with the woman who brings him tea. Harry Potter’s Alan Rickman is a married man who is have not so innocent thoughts about his secretary Mia. Liam Neeson plays a widower who is attempting to raise his stepson and help the kid with his first love. Emma Thompson is Rickman’s wife who is dealing with the thought of her marriage falling apart.  A man who is in love with his best friend’s wife, an Englishman who believes the only thing between him and love is the country he is in, two stand in's in an oddly graphic movie, a writer who falls for the woman cleaning his house despite neither of them speaking the same language, and an aging rock star who is trying to keep himself valid. I can’t explain the way this movie moves you and makes you feel. It is the most pure of any movie I’ve seen on the subject of love and in the end the movie gives the audience the belief that love is all around. It actually is, especially at the movies.    

To Sum up...

Mr. Unhappy Sez : The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return. It is my greatest wish, and my one true fear mixed in one. Love is actually not always available for people like me, except in the movies. 

Special "I'm trying to ignore life" Edition:

I have this thing about movies. I know, shocking as it is I find myself drawn to the movie theater when my life is in a bad place. If you’ve ever seen the movie Clerks 2, the go cart track is a place where Randall is reminded of a simpler time and it centers him. The same can be said of the movies and me. Oddly, I am usually attracted into going to movies that affect me emotionally. Perhaps it is a way to allow myself to cry and be emotional as I am usually just my surly bastard unhappy self. So in times when I feel good about myself, feel wanted, I see less movies. When that ends and Mr. Unhappy takes back the mantle from the masses, I can find myself going to the movies 3-4 times a week, using that time to center myself and remind myself of simpler times.

So I ended up at the theater tonight. No need to bore you kids with the details but I am not the happy bearer of good spirits and I am again fully ready to embrace the title I gave myself of Mr. Unhappy. One can hope that I can throw that away at some point in my life and be Mr. Relatively Normal or even, and I am rather sure the gods would riot if I ever became Mr. Happy Go Lucky. So I’m fighting for Mr. Relatively Normal. Yet I digress from the point of this blog, the movies. Tonight I offer you a review of the new movie “Something Borrowed” based on the book of the same name by Emily Giffin.

Something Borrowed

I had seen the preview for this movie so I knew walking into the film that there was a 50/50 shot of this being an utter pile of garbage. I have a theory about romantic comedies that when you see them, they either engage emotionally with you or they turn you off completely. Unfortunately for “Something Borrowed” it is the latter. This movie begins with the 30th birthday party for Rachel, our protagonist yet one of the most spineless characters since the last character Ginnifer Goodwin played. I’m not gonna say she is getting typecast but look at the track record. Right away you can see that the focus of this party is not birthday girl Rachel but her (for some reason) best friend Darcy played by Kate Hudson looking as though she had been aged 10 years. Darcy is a force of nature, drinking, dancing and partying like she is a 20 year old college girl at a frat party who really wants to be liked. Her fiance is Dex, who seems to be as beaten down by Darcy as Rachel is. He brings with him the loathsome Marcus who really works hard to bring up the level of douchebaggery in his character. John Krasinski is Ethan, the best friend of Rachel who as shown by Darcy’s toast of her friend slide show has been with the both of them since childhood.

Well one thing leads to another and we learn that in law school Rachel and Dex were fast on their way to being coupled when hurricane Darcy blew into town and took her for herself as Rachel choked back tears into her Heineken. Now years later, Darcy and Dex are engaged and Rachel confesses her crush on Dex and the two finally end up in bed together. Problem is that the wedding is months away and Dex doesn’t seem to want to call it off. Is it because his mother is looking forward to it? Is it because of the vocal sex he has with Darcy? Is it because he is just too spineless to tell Darcy he doesn’t want to be with her but instead wants to be with Rachel? 

The problem with this movie is that none of the characters are worth investing in. Darcy is a bitch and someone who (and admits to) cheats on Dex and maintains this friendship with Rachel out of some sad obligation and desire to keep her down. Dex is now cheating on Darcy (which I guess makes you sympathetic to Darcy though that is quite the chore in and of itself) with Rachel and is stringing her along with hopes that the right answer will pop out of thin air and end this problem for him.  Rachel is now cheating with her best friend’s fiance and attempting to get him to fall in love with her although she doesn’t really want him to because that might hurt Darcy. Marcus is a playboy who keeps trying to sleep with Rachel and is sleeping with Darcy plus half of the women they meet clubs/bars/in the park/walking down the street and to raise him a notch they show him skateboarding in the park disparaging the kids who can’t perform tricks he can’t do either. Literally I felt like I needed to wash after a scene when he sits with Rachel telling him about how he tried to jerk off to her and couldn’t get it up. 

Is this the best that Hollywood has to offer me in a romantic comedy? Sometimes I wish that they would stop trying to make a realistic romantic comedy and just give me some good old fashioned fairy tale loving. I don’t go to these movies to learn that the nice guys who want nothing but to love and support and be with someone never gets the girl. That I’ve learned enough from my own life. I was offended that at the end of this movie Marcus and Darcy are together and that Rachel and Dex were together and somehow Rachel still missed Darcy so they may reunite their friendship. Are you f**king kidding me? So the only person who gets screwed over in this movie is Ethan? 

My only solace is that maybe he got to get away from this psychotic quad of people. Good lord, this movie made me angry. It annoys me for a movie to take something as serious as love and pass it around like a 2 dollar whore. It annoys me that in the end of this movie, the only one worthy of love is alone and pining for the girl he let get away. It annoys me that people probably will consider this a movie with some real heart. Folks, I’ll tell you this much, if I ever met these people in real life, I would kick all of them in the armpit. I wish to god that people would learn to treat love with a little more reverence and all this move tells people is that in the end you can be the worst person imaginable and still have a happily ever after and the lonely writer is the only one left alone and miserable typing on his keyboard. Maybe this hit a little too close to home but even in the worst of times I would never wish being alone on anyone... and then I met Darcy, Dex, Rachel and Marcus. These people pervade and mock the idea of love so badly, I wish nothing but that they were miserable and alone, wondering how they became such bitter people. Hollywood on the other hand leaves that for Ethan. Good job.

Mr. Unhappy Sez: If you see this movie and like it I will punch you in the armpit (which I hear is quite painful) and then beat you to death with a spoon. It may take awhile.

Mr. Unhappy borrows some gold for a Golden Unhappy Awards for:

Steve Howey as Marcus - The "Johnny Lawrence" Douchebag Award for outstanding ability in making the                audience hate him

John Krasinski -  Nice Guy Finishes Last Award

                              ONLY REDEEMING CHARACTER IN A MOVIE AWARD

Ginnifer Goodwin - Taking a Pathetic Woman and Making Her Unlikeable Award

And The New Golden Punch in The Armpit Award goes to...

"Something Borrowed" -  As The Biggest Insult to Love Stories of All Time  

A new take on Sh*t eating grin...

       How terrifying is Europe these days? I’m not against going but I’m not gonna go wandering out into any secluded areas or drive my Euro P.O.S. Down any country roads. Nah, that leads to being murdered or in the case of this Netflix Instant Watch Pick of The Week, Human Centipede, it leads to being transformed into something truly horrific. I don’t have the stomach nor inclination for something like that. I’ll have the standard tourist fare. The Coliseum, Eiffel Tower, The Louvre...just no trips out to a whorehouse in the middle of nowhere. If movies have taught me anything, it is that doing stupid things leads to being killed or eaten... or worse.

The movie opens with two American girls on vacation in Germany trying to find a dance club for the night. Of course the one girl who is supposed to know where it is, really doesn’t but don’t worry, she’ll wing it. Next thing you know we are on a road in the middle of nowhere (and we all know what that means) in the middle of a rainstorm with a flat tire. The conventional horror movie would have them fall into the hands of a sadistic murderer but Human Centipede is different. The man who drives past them, does not give them a ride but instead leers at them to the point of uncomfort and then drives on. The girls decide no is a good time to go looking for help. 

I’d point out that in the history of anything, nothing good ever comes from getting out of the car. Here is a tip to the wise, learn how to change a flat. These two Americans did not learn that lesson. Something so simple as learning how to use a car jack and unscrew some lug nuts. In the end, it can save your life or drastically improve the life you have. Lindsay and Jenny did not prepare for this so they have to go hiking through the woods aimlessly looking for someone to help them. I suppose the idea of running into the German rapist who left them helpless again did not occur to them but they are in luck, they have found the lovely home of a nice German doctor who will help them.

This is again where you can learn from horror movies past and present. Dr. Heiter seems like a good man but in the end, there is no one in horror movies who is a good man so if you find yourself in this situation, flat tire in Germany, and you run across anyone who is acting very nice, kick him square in the nuts, use the phone and get the hell out. It will save you some time. Lindsay and Jenny, bless their hearts, did not learn this lesson either and wander into the spider’s web as wide eyed innocents. Of course they ask for something to drink, and while Dr. Heiter “makes the phone call”, he drops a tab of sleeping tablet in his subjects glasses and the fun can begin. 

When Lindsay or Jenny (I didn’t really feel the need to learn the individual character names) wake in the basement of the demented doctor he explains his plot. At this point you can only hope that he will torture and kill them but no, this doctor has a fetish that is a little different. He wants to perform a surgery on them and create a three pieced human connected anus to mouth. As they said in Clerks 2, you never go ass to mouth. So basically he will take a man and sew one of the girl’s mouths to the anus of the man, and then take the other girls’s mouth and attach her to the first girl’s anus.... yeah, they went there.

Lindsay gets away and suddenly you have hope that you will not have to see this monstrosity but looking at the clock, there is still about an hour left and that leaves for plenty of ass to mouth. In fact, one could say that this movie has more ass to mouth than an ass to mouth porn. Now Lindsay finds her way into a pool and the doctor to get her out begins to close the pool cover. A logical person after being told the doctor’s plans would simply allow the pool cover to cover them and die. Lindsay is not that smart, again God bless her. She lets the pool cover go over her but when the power fails in the remote hunting house, the doctor goes to see what happened.

Here is another moment when horror movies should save them but doesn’t. Lindsay goes back to the basement to get her girl Jen. It is a noble gesture but come on. If some guy told me her was gonna hook me up to two other people by the ass, I’m running and I’m leavin my boy Phil on the table if her were there with me. I love you brother, but some things we don’t need to do together. Needless to say, Lindsay is captured and the centipede is made. From then on, you just pray for the moment when the whole things dies or the doctor is captured. I’ve never been grossed out by a torture porn horror movie before but this one takes the cake. I don’t think I’ll be the same again after this one. Not because it is a bad movie but because I know that there is a sequel in the works and this centipede has 12 pieces... ermhmmm that seems interesting. Why, dear reader, do I do these things to myself? In closing, if you ever find yourself in the position of having to choose which part of a human centipede you want to be, do not choose the middle. For the love of all that is holy, do not choose the middle.

Mr. Unhappy sez: O.K. Can I go throw up right now and take a rape victim shower?

Up Next:

I don't know.... Thor? 

Seriously I need a shower and a good cry.

Curious Fast Five

      I remember when The Fast and The Furious first came out in 2001. I’ve been trying to find the reason why I have seen the sequels ever since. 2 Fast 2 Furious was a one liner fest from Tyrese Gibson (who tried and failed to replace Vin Diesel) and had absurd car chase after absurd car chase/gunfight. 3 Times as fast...no wait they just called it Fast and the Furious 3: Tokyo Drift introduced this car noob to the sport of drifting and attempted to restart the series with a new group of rowdy driving maniacs. It didn’t work well but still you left with some ungodly idea that you had been entertained. When Fast and Furious came out a few years later, reuniting the fans of the series with Vin Diesel and all his growling goodness, I was in line with my peeps for the show.

Now comes Fast Five which picks up right at the end of Fast and Furious but still before Tokyo Drift. This time Dom, Bryan and Mia are on the run after breaking Dom out of jail in spectacular fashion. Ever think a bus couldn’t be taken out by a Honda? You’d be wrong. Granted it was a Honda and a telephone pole. Anyway Paul Walker and his wooden delivery ends up with Jordana Brewster (seriously what has she done that wasn’t a Fast and Furious movie, I thought she might be dead) driving through Rio DeJaniero to visit a pal from the first movie. He sets them up with a “job” and the story is well on it’s way.

Soon the gang is all together and in order to get the vengeance on the drug dealer that tried to kill them, enlists the help of the cast of the other 3 movies not counting Tokyo Drift because still for some reason the are behind the timeline of that film. Ludacris shows up with Tyrese from the second film. The Asian guy from the last movie was there as well although his ability to “Blend in anywhere” is seemingly non existent. I could eat chips and stare at a guy too while he rubs a hot ladies ass. Does not mean I blend. It comes down to an improbable gamble to steal 100 million dollars. As Tyrese said “this job just went from mission impossible to mission in freaking sanity”.

“The Rock” Dwayne Johnson shows up as an FBI tracker with a bug up his ass over something. Needless to say, when the moment is at hand, Vin Diesel and The Rock throw down in spectacular throwing through walls excitement. I don’t know about you but I could not drink from a sippy cup if someone throws me through a few walls let alone drive with the precision these guys do. Yet this movie is not about the fights or the crimes. This isn’t about the characters growing older, gaining responsibility or keeping themselves alive. This movie is about fast cars, hot women and gloriously perfect one liners from Tyrese. 

Jordana Brewster does a fine job. Vin Diesel does a job. Paul Walker is there. That is about all you can say. I’d love to tell you why I love to see a man driving a really nice car off a cliff, two men leaping from said car from about 200 feet in the air, the car crashing into the river below mere moments before the two men hit that water and then swim away with nary a scratch on them.  I’d love to know why when a movie with the words fast and furious comes out my balls tickle a little. I can’t tell you why to see Fast Five or why this series of movies continues to succeed time and time again. 

The critics (like me) seem to have given up trying to not like these movies. They have stopped rolling their eyes at the improbable scenes and simply roll with it. That’s perhaps the best thing you can say about these movies. When you see a man with a nitrous canister driving headlong at the police flinging a safe about, you just need to go with it. Just roll with every improbable twist and turn. You don’t need to know how they pull off the things they do. With 2 more of these movies coming, all I can say is... I’m there and when I drive home after I might just fondle my automatic shifter and pretend that my PT Cruiser could beat Dom’s Dodge Challenger down the quarter mile. Hey, if these guys can steal 100 million dollars and kill 50 Brazilian police officers... a guy can dream. 

Mr. Unhappy Sez: Don’t waste your time trying to find the reason why, just find the reason why not.




For those who can't keep it straight.


The Fast and The Furious movies in chronological order:




The Fast and The Furious - $144,533,925 Box Office Revenue


2 Fast 2 Furious - $127,154,901  Box Office Revenue


Fast and Furious - $155,064,265 Box Office Revenue


Fast Five - $86,198,765 Box Office Revenue (one week)


The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift - $62,514,415 Box Office Revenue