Movie Review: Hot Rod by JW

Starring: Andy Samberg, Isla Fisher, Jorma Taccone, Bill Hader, Danny R. McBride, Sissy Spacek, Ian McShane
Director: Akiva Shaffer
Producer: John Goldwyn, Lorne Michaels
Genre: Comedy
Release Date: August 3, 2007
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Distributors: Paramount Pictures

A (very) amateur stuntman attempts a stunt where he jumps 15 buses on his moped. He hopes to raise enough money to get his step-father a heart transplant, so he can be health enough again to “uncork the ass-beating of a lifetime” on him and finally gain his respect.

Saturday Night Live is a machine. Like any machine that has been running for 32 years, it doesn’t always work, and the quality can be inconsistent, but for better or worse, it has become quite the institution. I stopped watching ages ago, but they sure keep grinding it out don’t they? We’ve seen sketches turned into feature-length movies; from the good (Blues Brothers, Wayne’s World), to the bad (Night at the Roxbury, Superstar) to the utterly atrocious (It’s Pat, Ladies Man). In the infancy of their careers, we’ve had the pleasure of seeing some real talent come from the halls of 30 Rock, and on to more fruitful ventures. On the other side of that coin, we’ve also seen some of the most inexplicable displays of ‘talent’ attempt to cash in on their resume and fail miserably. So when movies like this come along, I typically take them with a grain of salt. In this case, I think my tepid expectation may have actually added to my enjoyment of the movie.

The premise sounds like yet another SNL sketch forced to feature length. The movie opens with Rod Kimble (Andy Samberg), an amateur stuntman who believes his real father to have been a famous stuntman who worked with Evil Knievel, and his crew spending their days setting up a series of jumps for Rod to attempt on his moped. His crew consists of Dave (Bill Hader), the mechanic, Rico (Danny R. McBride), the ramp builder, and Kevin (Jorma Taccone), the step-brother and videographer. In the beginning, Rod attempts to jump a mail truck positioned between two makeshift wooden ramps. Before he starts, he asks his crew if they had time to reinforce the ramp. They respond, obviously, that no, they didn’t have time. He tries it anyway and flies smack into the top of the truck and the landing ramp. Undeterred by this failure, he promotes a stunt the very next day where he plans to jump the local pool. This also fails. Spectacularly.

On the home front, Rod arrives home daily to suit up for a series of gladiator-type battles with his step-father Frank (Ian McShane) in an attempt to win his respect. His step-brother Kevin tries to stop him but Rod says, “You’re his real son, so he automatically loves you. I have to earn it.” So off he goes to get his ass handed to him again. After the failed pool jump, Rod returns home to learn that Frank is in need of a heart transplant that will cost $50,000 out of pocket. This angers Rod. Not so much because of the severity of the situation, but that he will never get the chance to beat Frank in hand-to-hand combat. After going to his “happy place” (a very hilarious scene with Rod in the forest apparently training and “air punching out his aggression”) he decides that he will set up a stunt wherein he will attempt to jump 15 buses and promote the event with all the proceeds going to pay for Frank’s operation. So he can keep him alive, bring him back to full strength, and try his hand at, well, beating him to death.

Let me go on record as saying with the right projects, Andy Samberg has the potential to have a long and prosperous film career. In lesser hands, this movie could have been a disaster, but what makes it work is the honesty of Rod’s character. Rod is a man happy with simple pleasures, but he is not stupid. Samberg wisely chose not to play it up for cheesiness or cheap laughs. Yes, there are cheesy moments and cheap laughs abound, but there is sincerity in the character that makes it work. The supporting cast is also played to just the right tone as well. There isn’t a Stifler-type character that is trying to break out and be noticed. Everyone just does their part, and does it well while staying mindful of the structure of the film. My favorite parts of the movie are between Rod and Frank. Whether they are fighting or Rod is trying to talk to him to get a glimpse of the respect he almost painfully desires, it always turns into Rod finding various ways to threaten Frank’s life. Even as he lies on his death bed. Another wise move by the filmmakers was not to overdo the emotion and weigh down the picture with sappy sentiment. Again, it plays to just the right tone. And the 80’s-style soundtrack that fills the movie is just icing on the cake.

This movie is much funnier than I expected. A fairly textbook comedy that works because it cares about the characters. It is cheesy but sincere, over-the-top, but not overplayed, and a great vehicle to, what hopes to be, a promising career from star Andy Samberg.

And there’s the rub.

3 1/2 out of 5 stars

Jeremy Welsch
jndubbs@gmail.com

Movie Revbiew: The Bourne Ultimatum by JW

Ed. note – We have a guest reviewer this time around, Jeremy Welsch of www.moviebuffs.com/ Hopefully he will stick around for a while. You guys can email him and beg him to stay at jndubbs@gmail.com.

Title: The Bourne Ultimatum
Starring: Matt Damon, Julia Stiles, David Strathairn, Scott Glenn, Albert Finney, Joan Allen
Director : Paul Greengrass
Producer: Patrick Crowley, Frank Marshall, Paul L. Sandberg, Doug Liman
Genre: Action
Release Date: August 3, 2007
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Distributors: Universal Pictures

Paul Greengrass directs the final chapter in the Bourne trilogy. Jason Bourne is still trying to find out the secrets of his identity while being hunted by the very people who trained him.

Every now and then I have this dream. In it, I am my current age and I wake up and find myself in the halls of my high school (of which I am 13 years removed). I continue to make my way through the hallways making my way towards my locker. Everyone around me is how I remember them in high school and they don't even notice that I am in my early thirties. The only thing running through my mind is an increasing feeling of anxiety as I get closer to my locker because I can't remember my combination. For some reason I think that if I can't figure it out or have to go to the principals office to get it, they'll figure out how old I am and that I am not supposed to be there. But every time I get to the locker, I get the combination right. It doesn't seem familiar to me as I am trying the lock, but I get it open first try - every time. Weird, but true. I have no clue what it means, if anything, but as I sat down to write this review that dream popped into my head and ended up being the best way to summarize how I felt watching the movie.

The movie picks up right where the last one left off. Literally. After the car crash in Moscow at the end of The Bourne Supremacy, we rejoin Bourne as he evades police then goes to Paris to tell Marie's brother that she is dead. During this time, he reads an article about himself in the Guardian Newspaper and heads to London to track down the writer, Rimon Ross, and find out who his source is. He meets up with Ross at Waterloo station and learns of 'Blackbriar', formerly Treadstone (the top-secret CIA program that basically 'created' Jason Bourne). During this meeting, Bourne gives a clinic on surveillance evasion by guiding Ross via cell phone through/around numerous cameras and CIA converging on the station. He finds out the source, gets away from an asset (Blackbriar assassin) sent to kill him and Ross, and he's off to Madrid to track down his source. And so on and so forth.

This movie is essentially two hours of Bourne running away from the CIA, which is trying to kill him, and towards what he hopes are answers about his identity. In the end, that is pretty much what the whole trilogy is about - Bourne trying to find out who he is and kicking everyone's ass that gets in his way. The action in this movie doesn't disappoint. There are two scenes in particular that stick out in my mind. There is a car chase scene is pretty intense. I haven't seen many that look this seamless or exciting, even if it was a bit long and overdone. I had the same complaint about the chase scenes in The Bourne Supremacy. How many shots do we need from inside the car where we see an incoming car smash into Bourne's vehicle and watch his head shake back and forth? Impressive the first few times I saw it, but overused. Like that friend of yours that still quotes Old School - it was funny the first hundred times we heard it, but, we get it, let's move on. The real tour de force of the movie was the sequence in Tangier where Bourne is tracking Desh, an asset sent to kill his source, then him and Nicky (a CIA agent and former Treadstone contact who offers to help Bourne). There is about a 10-15 minute stretch where there is virtually no dialogue; just straight action and a chase on foot. We see Bourne hopping from building to building tracking Desh before he has a chance to kill Nicky with intermittent cuts back and forth between Bourne, Nicky, and Desh. The climax of the sequence is the confrontation between Desh and Bourne that is hands down, the best fight sequence of the trilogy. The most impressive part is, like I said, there is no dialogue at all and the suspense is basically created out of thin air through the editing and camera work. It works on all levels and I wished there had been more direction like this in the movie. I would recommend the movie solely on the integrity of this sequence alone. Absolutely amazing filmmaking.

I liked Identity, and loved The Bourne Supremacy but The Bourne Ultimatum, sadly, sort of let me down. I wouldn't go so far as to say this is a bad movie, by any stretch of the imagination.

The Bourne Supremacy was so far and above Identity that I guess I was spoiled into thinking this would be an improvement to the same degree. Instead it felt more like The Bourne Supremacy, Part II. There is a scene in the movie that is directly taken from the end of The Bourne Supremacy (where Bourne is calling Landy and tells her to "Get some sleep. You look tired"). Wait, what? Didn't we already see that once? If it was an attempt to be clever by tying the two films together, it didn't work. Clever for the sake of clever is weak, tired writing. And if that last scene in The Bourne Supremacy was supposed to prelude to The Bourne Ultimatum, the jump into the middle of its sequel didn't make any sense to me. Again, clever for the sake of clever kind of feels like cheating. The ultimate answer to the question of the series, 'Who is Jason Bourne?' was, well, sufficient, if not a little awkward and a bit forced. I don't know what ending I would have accepted more, but the solution presented didn't work all that much for me, but it'll do.

I really wanted to like this movie more - I really did. By no means is it a bad movie; it just feels too much like we've been down this road before. A tidy 'end' to a very good trilogy that I didn't expect much from when it first started.

And there's the rub.

Jeremy Welsch
jndubbs@gmail.com