TRAILER: Casa De Mi Padre

Will Ferrell stars in this Mexican comedy about a man living on his fathers farm that is in desperate need of saving. Have a look and see what you think. In my honest opinion, it looks awful, there's hardly anything funny about it!

REVIEW: Cedar Rapids

Ed Helms plays a strange version of Andy Bernard as his nice-guy-puppy-dog-eyes routine gets a bit old ...


This is a strange mix of director Arteta's usual melancholia drowned in existentialist comedy (The Good Girl, Youth In Revolt) with the upbeat frat-pack style type of humour. It makes for a slightly unsettling and uncomfortable viewing experience that leaves you wondering what you've just watched.

The story goes that Ed Helms' character Tim is a small-town guy selling insurance taking his first trip to an insurance do at Cedar Rapids. It soon becomes a tale of self-discovery as he starts learning to let loose and have a grander view of the world. This is done with the help of some friends along the way, namely John C Reilly doing his best Will Ferrell impression (that seems to be his idol after all), The Wire's Isiah Whitlock Jr (who actually references and even quotes The Wire), and lesbian Anne Heche who I swear hasn't done anything for ages. Tim is in love with his ex-school teacher that he's shagging (a remarkably good looking Sigourney Weaver) in a rather Oedipal way but his backward, conservative, rather sweet view of the world becomes corrupted when he loses his innocence in different, humorous ways.

Ed Helms is at his best here when he's let loose but the real star is Reilly who is clearly enjoying his role as a loud mouth, egotistical, brash salesman who doesn't care what people think of him. Along the way he has to win some award and Tim's fragile view of the world is shattered, there's some type of redemption here and salvation, but overall it becomes a strange sequence of events about people I neither care about nor believe exist. Tim's 'Aw shucks' naivety becomes grating and the jokes are few and far between. However, there are some great moments and memorable quotes and the idea of Cedar Rapids as some kind of Shangri La or, in more obvious terms, the city of Sodom in a more toned down fashion, is quite humorous.

It's rather slow with a few laugh out loud moments but it cannot save it from the rather drab, confusing and partially irritating feel of it all. Am I supposed to be grossed out? Am I supposed to be moved? Am I supposed to laugh here? A good ninety minutes where I wasn't bored, but not enough here that gets deep enough, or gets me laughing enough to justify a higher mark. Average at best.

Rating: 6/10

NEWS: Do We Have Michael Scott's Replacement? *SPOILER*

We now all know that Carrell will be leaving The Office and there will be a large gap to fill afterwards. However, it's been confirmed that a huge film star will be filming at least 4 episodes in order to build 'an arc' as the new boss of Scranton's Dunder Mifflin. Want to find out? Read on... *SPOILER RIGHT BENEATH THIS LINE*


The movie star is the one and only Will Ferrell. It is likely he will feature in the double episode "Goodbye, Michael" and will probably help finish up the seventh season by either suggesting he is the new boss, or I imagine by appointing someone who is completely unfit for the job. Daryl maybe? It can't be Jim and for a second last week, I thought it was going to be Packer! Paul Lieberstein (aka Toby) says this: "We found Steve Carrell when he was nothing but a movie star and we turned him into a television star ... We are proud to continue The Office's tradition of discovering famous talent, and we hope once America gets a good look at Will, they'll see what we see, tremendous raw sexuality."

Megamind

Another animated 3D film comes along and better yet, it's about superheroes (groan) except the twist here is that it's from the point of view of the villain, so is it all bad?

The cast of this is a bit like the Who's Who of Frat Pack/Saturday Night Live etc. with Jonah Hill, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, David Cross and Ben Stiller (with Stiller co-producing as well) all comedy heavyweights and the added Hollywood status of Brad Pitt to boot but do they work? Yes they do. Very well in fact.

I've always wondered how much input stars have with the scripts, after all if you're paying for the talent you might as well let them run riot with the script. By doing so you would get such achievements such as Anchorman which got a lot from improvisation, and you can tell that 90% of all the funniest bits in this film clearly came from improv and are pretty much from Ferrell. People might love or hate him, but I personally think the guy is a genius and will be fondly remembered when we look back at comedy heroes. Sure he sells out quite often, but I think he often makes even the shittiest films funny. That dinner scene in Bewitched? Loved it. His coffee freak outs in Kicking & Screaming? More please. It's just a shame that he is confined to a script, but at least here where you'd think in a medium where improvisation would be least encouraged, he is often able to drop some great one liners. This isn't taking away anything from the script which is funny in it's own right, but if it wasn't for Ferrell's magic, I'd be afraid that it would be a dud.

But before I crawl completely all the way up his arse, I'll tell you what it's about. Megamind is a victim of circumstance and childhood bullying which leads him to use his powers for evil rather than good. This immediately puts him in a more accessible light, Catholics might not rate this film because he's not inherently evil, but the audience can see that he's merely misguided and relishes the attention he gets from performing dastardly tasks rather than nothing at all. He is, after all, an orphan and completely working class. His upper class nemesis is MetroMan (aka Brad Pitt) who is smarmy, slick and arrogant yet believes in justice. After an unfortunate mishap, Megamind is soon left with free reign over the city until he gets bored. In his boredom he creates Titan who is a petty, selfish stalker who uses his powers for bad, perhaps proving that some people are inherently evil after all. As well as all this, Megamind is falling in love but never does this get in the way of the story, in fact it helps steer it forward.

Pitt does his charming superhero to the tee, but never is he truly funny, but then I wasn't sure if he was supposed to be. Fey plays the strong female reporter well without any glitches but it's Cross, Hill and Ferrell that really make the show. Cross as Minion is more like a room-mate than a servant and Hill can easily make you feel disgusted yet amused at the same time, a trait he pulls off quite a bit. You could read Megamind's fight with Titan as Dr Frankenstein's battle with his own monster, a monster that is full of immaturity, selfishness, nihilism and essentially is a sociopath. In order to truly grow up, he must accept and conquer these inner demons which have formed into Titan. Of course this is reading into it a bit too much for a kids film, but all the best kids films have deeper adult undertones.

All in all, I enjoyed the story and the 3Dness of it was appealling but Will Ferrell gives a great bad guy performance that will make kids and adults both laugh. There's enough here as well for adults to go to without kids (like myself - cough) such as Ferrell's Brando performance from Superman, and Mark Twain's quote that rumours of his death have been 'greatly exaggerated' and stuff that the kids are too stupid to figure out, probably. Doogie Howser would have known though.

Overall, I enjoyed the film but it wasn't amazing, it had some really good, funny moments and looked great but lacked a real punch that makes it different from other animations. Though it is definitely one of the best released this year. You won't be disappointed if you made an effort to see it.

Rating: 7/10

The Other Guys

Ferrell and McKay team up again in the hope of making another success like Anchorman, but what with these tame empty releases constantly being churned out, is there any point making an Anchorman 2 if it's going to be like their recent work?

I can't help but wonder if McKay and Ferrell just can't be bothered anymore. They've made their millions and now just want to make mediocre films that take in a mediocre box office in the hope that loads of people might love it. The Other Guys was never going to be the next Anchorman, but then it's not really much of anything.

Wahlberg plays a cop who has a complete geeky pathetic partner played by Ferrell. They soon wind up getting involved in a big scam revolving around Coogan and they ultimately have to work together to solve the case.

It's a by-the-numbers action/comedy that is more about the jokes than the plot. I couldn't actually tell you precisely what was going on in terms of the case but it's all a McGuffin anyway, the real story is about Ferrell's character standing up for himself and coming to terms with his past and Wahlberg showing his more sensitive side. That's it really.

Wahlberg and Ferrell work quite well as a rather odd couple but it gets very tiring very fast with the overmacho Mark and then the wimpy Will. The Rock and Samuel L Jackson don't get that much of a look in to even really comment on and the real shining star of the piece is really Michael Keaton. Some bits made me laugh out loud but really this is a no-brainer, passive comedy for Ferrell fans who are waiting for something better. Even Eva Mendes couldn't save this from being little more than a money guzzling McKay machine.

Don't get me wrong, some bits did make me crack up, but really I'd rather spend an hour and a half on Funny Or Die.com than watching this. At least I'd get more than a handful of jokes without the bother of concentrating on a story I don't care about or even understand. Wait until it comes out on DVD and even then, see if there's something better on the shelves.

Rating: 5/10