Review: Horrible Bosses 2

by Trevor Kirkendall

★

Sequels, sequels and more sequels. When will it end? It never will. Especially when movies that were relatively decent don’t necessarily require a second serving. I could watch Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy go back out for another story in a sequel to “The Heat,” but that’s looking less and less likely to happen. Never once did I think that I wanted to see more of Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day’s characters from “Horrible Bosses” again, despite liking that movie. But here we are.

After escaping jail time from their antics in the first film, Nick (Bateman), Kurt (Sudeikis) and Dale (Day) have decided they want to be their own bosses. They’ve come up with a product fit for Skymall called the Shower Buddy, which automatically dispenses shampoo and soap onto your person in a effort to cut shower times down. But they need investors to make it happen.

Enter Burt Hanson (Christoph Waltz) and his son Rex (Chris Pine) who place an initial order for 100,000 units. The guys borrow money from a bank to make the order and finish it ahead of schedule. But then Burt cancels it, steals the idea and announces his intention to make their product himself under a different name. The guys are furious, so they cook up a plan to kidnap Rex and hold him ransom for the amount of money they’re going to owe the bank. The only variable they didn’t count on is that Rex wants to be kidnapped so he can take part in this dastardly plot and pocket some of his dad’s money too.

While the original “Horrible Bosses” was certainly enjoyable, the follow up falls into the typical traps that doom most Hollywood sequels. While some filmmakers have figured out how to avoid these issues – many sequels have been pretty decent over the past few years – others have not. Director Sean Anders is a filmmaker who has not, which is surprising given that he’s responsible for the scripts to “Hot Tub Time Machine” and “We’re the Millers,” two very respectable comedies. I guess working off of someone else’s material is much harder to do.

There are two things wrong with “Horrible Bosses 2” and both are cardinal sins when it comes to making a successful sequel. The first is repeating the previous installment’s plot points. Since the majority of the audience saw the first film and liked it enough to pay to see the sequel, the theory is that they’ll enjoy this one if it retains some similarities of the first. But that just shows lazy writing. If you played “Horrible Bosses” alongside “Horrible Bosses 2,” all the plot points would happen at the same time. This is the same aspect that doomed “The Hangover Part II.” These are the exact same movies we’ve seen before.

The second sin is an over embellishment of the character’s personalities. These writers have made everyone a ridiculous caricature of themselves. For example, Sudeikis’ Kurt showed the least amount of smarts in the original. He wasn’t an idiot, but would have been ranked third in the group of three on an intelligence-ranking list. In the sequel, he’s a straight up moron. The things he says in this film will induce many facepalms among the audience. I’m embarrassed for Sudeikis. Then there’s Day’s Dale, who couldn’t stop talking in the first film. Here, he never shuts up and rambles on about the most asinine things. He was so annoying I wanted to slap him.

You can tell these actors were here for a paycheck. All of them looked so uncomfortable doing this film, especially Bateman. I thought he was smarter than participating in a film for such an obvious cash grab. His successful directorial debut earlier this year – “Bad Words” – shows that he has the brains and the talent to accept better roles and work on better stories that this garbage. I guess everyone needs to pay the bills somehow, even Hollywood millionaires.

Furthermore, the presence of two-time Oscar winner Waltz gave this movie a bit of intrigue from the advertisements, but he’s completely misused in every aspect. He’s given one scene where the dialogue sounds like complete swindles of his lines from Tarantino films; it’s very out of place. Then he only appears in about three more scenes. That’s a horrible waste of talent.

While the first “Horrible Bosses” was enjoyable and relatively entertaining, it hardly deserved a sequel. I guess it’s a cheap enough concept so the risk of losing money is rather slim. Truthfully, though, the only person losing money here will be you when you shell out the funds to watch this abomination. I understand that it’s supposed to be mindless and humorous fun. It is indeed mindless, but humorous? Hardly. It’s that awkward laugh you make when a friend tells you a joke that’s not funny, but he’s had such a bad day already that you can’t help but give him a little morale boost by laughing back. This is a quick throwaway film. Seriously, I saw it two days ago and I’m already wracking my brain trying to remember exactly what happened in it. And by the time you read this, I will have already forgot I saw it entirely.

Review: Pacific Rim

by Trevor Kirkendall
★★★½

There will not be a more adrenaline pumping motion picture to come out this summer than “Pacific Rim”. Its been a very long time since a movie has come out in the theaters during the summer months that’s been as much fun as this film. Despite minor flaws - that might actually be by design from the filmmakers – “Pacific Rim” is summer movie magic at its absolute best.

Not too far into the future, humanity is waging war with giant monsters that come from the sea known as the Kaiju. The Kaiju rise up from a portal from another world found deep in the sea and lay waste to the major cities on Pacific Ocean coastlines (San Francisco, Hong Kong, Sydney, etc.). To defeat these beasts, man has built giant robotic war machines called Jaegers. The Jaegers are piloted by two people joined together through a neurological bond; they think and act as one by sharing each other’s memories and experiences.

Our hero is Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) who is a Jaeger pilot along with his brother Yancy (Diego Klattenhoff). When battling a particularly vicious Kaiju, Yancy is tragically killed leaving Raleigh to pilot the Jaeger himself, but this will be his final mission. He’s too broken up about the loss of his brother to continue with the program.

Five years pass and Becket is no longer a Jaeger pilot. He’s working on a coastal wall that’s supposed to keep the Kaiju away. The Jaeger Program is being shut down. Its been reassigned to Hong Kong where it will keep up defenses until the wall is complete. Becket’s former commander, Marshall Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba), shows up and recruits Becket to come back for one final mission. They think they have a plan to stop the Kaiju once and for all and they’re running out of time to pull it off.

Once in Hong Kong, Becket meets Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) who is tasked with helping him find his new co-pilot. She too has a tragic history involving the Kaiju, much like Beckett losing his brother. He also meets two doctors, Dr. Newton Geiszler (Charlie Day) and Dr. Gottlieb (Burn Gorman), who are researching the Kajiu and provide the bulk of the film’s comic relief.

There is much to pick apart in “Pacific Rim”, but I don’t really want to because this movie is so much fun. I can’t remember the last time I went to the theater and had as much fun watching a film as I did “Pacific Rim”. Its truly a reminder of what the summer movie season used to be.

Think back long ago to the big studio tent pole movies that opened in the summer. They were fun, enjoyable, humorous and exciting. Very rarely do we see such films like that now. Now they’re just dark and lack even the slightest bit of humor. Movies that fit this bill could be the recent “Man of Steel” or the “Dark Knight” Trilogy. I’m not saying these films are bad, but they don’t bring out the kid in you when you watch them.

“Pacific Rim” does! It reminds me of the summer movies when you were carried away by the spectacle of the film and not on creating something so dark and mysterious. I’m reminded of films like “Jurassic Park” or maybe even “Independence Day”. While neither are masterpieces by any stretch, both movies do give you that sense of wonder and amazement. This is what makes “Pacific Rim” so great. Its an amazing film that demands you never take your eyes off the screen. It also demands you see it on the biggest screen you possibly can.

Director Guillermo del Toro wanted to make a film that felt like the summer movies of old, and that is what he’s accomplished. Having previously done one of the greatest films of the last decade, “Pan’s Labyrinth”, de Toro has proven himself to be a visionary master. The scale of “Pacific Rim” is enormous and he has been extremely successful in pulling this off. Every frame of this film is amazing to see.

“Pacific Rim” isn’t without its faults. The story itself is solid with several decent subplots that tie everything together nicely. The screenplay itself, however, is littered with typical action film clichés. From the first minute all the way to the final frame, you can practically see every plot point coming before it arrives. Its predictability puts a damper on some of the epic battle sequences and tense moments because we know what’s coming before it happens. Not to mention, there are also numerous moments of coincidence that help get the plot out of a jam. It’s just lazy writing and it insults the intelligence of the audience.

It also suffers from poor dialogue. Its borderline “Star Wars”-prequel bad. There are many moments where you just have to shake you head at the disbelief that another human could ever say something so cheesy. Additionally, the heartfelt dialogue meant to pull on your emotions is overacted and far too melodramatic. Its laughable at times. There’s plenty of comic relief built in, but I don’t think these were supposed to be the comical parts.

But couldn’t all that cheesy dialogue and all the plot coincidences be by design? Del Toro has made a movie that pays a lot of homage to the old monster movies of his childhood. The old “Godzilla” movies are very cheesy in their own right, but they’re very fun to watch. If that’s the case, then it really doesn’t matter what faults “Pacific Rim” has. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a summer film show us how much fun can be had at the movies. Poor acting and bad dialogue aside, “Pacific Rim” is the blockbuster event of the summer. An original story that’s full of the same thrills and excitement we haven’t seen in a summer film in many years.

Review: Pacific Rim

By. Joe Moss
★★★

  Alien invaders [Kaiju; Japanese for “strange creatures”] coming from the “breach”—a portal from another dimension that manifested in the middle of the Pacific plate.

This is the premise for Guillermo del Toro’s (Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy) summer, big-budget action thrill-ride “Pacific Rim.” While the story-line is spectacularly original (given Hollywood’s recent panache for remakes and sequels/pre-quels) , it does evoke thoughts of classic Godzilla meets “Aliens” meets “Transformers.” But this movie works thanks to the dynamic writing duo of Travis Beacham (Dog Days of Summer, Clash of the Titans) and Guillermo del Toro! The cast, while not littered with an ensemble of big-name stars (with the exception of a few appearance by Ron Perlman), really work well together to fulfill del Toro’s vision.

  To fight the Kaiju, large, robotic, war-machines (Jaegars) are developed through world-wide collaboration. Two pilots are mind-melded together and “synced” with the machine to run it as a human-like combatant—only 500 feet taller. The plot focuses on Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam; “Sons of Anarchy,” Green Street Hooligans) and his ability to overcome the debilitating loss of his brother from a battle-gone-wrong with a Kaiju off the Alaskan coastline. He disappears from the lime-light (and the front line of battle) only to be pulled back into reality as the Jaegar program is threatened by budget cuts and mounting defeats by the ever-evolving Kaiju invaders.

  Raleigh is brought back into the fold of the remaining Jaegar pilots—only 7 remain—and is reunited with he and his brother’s former machine, the Gipsy Danger. The last remaining analog-programmed, nuclear powered Jaeger. The search begins for his new copilot. Not an easy process as they have to be able to be compatible in fighting ability and mind-flow processing. Raleigh easily bests all of the top candidates, but is drawn to a military analyst, Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), his commanding officer’s (Idris Elba) ward. Is it an attraction of lust, or of perfect compatibility? I… will leave that for you to discover…

  The plot continues much as expected in all alien-based thrillers. The humans are trying to vanquish the alien invaders only to be thwarted at each turn by an ever growing (and seemingly endless) array of Kaiju. They just keep getting bigger and more powerful.

  Enter the science research department headed by biologist Dr. Newton Geiszler (Charlie Day) and chaos mathematician Gottlieb (Burn Gorman). Gottlieb theorizes that the invasion is on the verge of exponential increase as the attacks keep getting closer and more precise; while Dr. Geiszler is attempting to understand the thought process behind the creatures invasion. Through his research, he “mind-melds” with a partial, living frontal lobe of one specimen and determines they are all mentally congruent—also sneaking a peak at their ultimate intentions and history in the process. Finally the military is able to develop a plan to destroy the “breach” and remove the invaders once and for all. IF everything can go according to plan.

  An amazing ride from the opening sequence to the final clip after the credits. I was drawn into the story through all of its twists and turns. Well acted and amazingly edited by the team of Peter Amundson (Star Wars episode 5, Hellboy) and John Gilroy (Warrior, Micheal Clayton), there was not a lot of downtime to allow your mind to wander. The sound effects were mind blowing and the visual effects are another great example of the efforts at ILM and Ghost VFX for combining green screen and animatronics into a seamless vision.