Must Love Dogs -- 2005 -- PG-13

Guess who got subjected to another chick flick the other night? If you said you did, then clearly we're in the same boat...just like the people in this movie were at one point.

We've reached the age of Internet dating and there's no better way to bring this into the social consciousness than to make it the backbone of a film about a divorcee who is afraid to "get back out there." Her sister places an ad for her, and she meets the love interest because his best friend responded for him...because he is also a divorcee afraid to "get back out there." The two have some good chemistry together and their scenes are really amusing and you want the best for the relationship.

This whole thing gets complicated by the "don't touch that one, he's still married" love interest which she goes after anyway. I know she has a journey to go through, but the film struggles with keeping these two plots remaining interesting as between their introductions and then the parts going, a lot of time passes as a lot of other things happen. For a time, I wondered if the one she shouldn't was out of the picture since the final love interest was in, but then he showed right back up.

Call it a personal preference, but I feel like the girl sleeping with anyone other than the final guy during the film only hurts her character and makes her less appealing. Final guy told his easy-to-bag date "no." Points for him. Must admit that cross-town condom hunt was very funny.

It has its ups and downs, but in the end everything was tied up nice and neat, and it was done as well as it could be done. I think we could have had a cleaner movie without the married (sorry, "separated") guy, but it still worked pretty well. It's no Sleepless in Seattle, though, which I'm sure I'm be watching soon...

Madagascar -- 2005 -- PG

This was a cute little film that followed 4 animals as they are taken from their cushy zoo life to the jungle. The plot follows their life in the zoo, and then adapting to the jungle, and then overcoming a minor conflict between old friends who fall into different places on the food chain...oops.

This movie is not one to be taken seriously. The plot seems to primarily serve as a rail upon whcih gag after gag can be delivered, and as with all gag movies: sometimes they're funny, and sometimes, the aren't. The scenery and situations are meant to be funny and never to be realistic in any way as many, many, many quite impossible things occur.

There are also a fair amount of movie homages, but one they should have left out was Planet of the Apes. Sorry to spoil the ending if you've never seen that one, but the homage was clear as day for Charleton Heston viewing the Statue of Liberty, but the lion in this says, "Darn you all to heck." I've watched it twice now, and that line still sounds downright idiotic in its "censored" form.

It works for laughs and comedy, but there's nothing terribly deep here. The kids should enjoy it for its physical humor and those penguins. There's not much here for the adults this time.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith -- 2005 -- PG-13

This is the story of a couple that has been married for 5 or 6 years. They both own their own companies, and seem to be well of. Of course, their companies are competing assassination companies, and they end up being assigned to kill each other. If you ask me, that's not a bad premise.

The movie flows with some good pacing from point to point, and feels rather natural in its presentation. The fact that they've been able to keep their secrets from each other is a little hard to swallow, but if we let that slide, it works pretty well, especially in their confrontation against each other. 

The believability slips in the final battle. I can't slip much without spoiling the movie, but since this is my primary complaint, I'll try to speak without spoiling. Let's say the outcome is hard to believe, and I don't feel like it ties up the loose ends of the movie well enough to accept the ending as being truly satisfying.

This rather large point aside, it makes for a good ride and not too big a waste of time like so many films tend to be.

Mrs. Winterbourne -- 1996 -- PG-13

This was a fun little romantic comedy with a slew of funny moments, a great plot, and nothing too annoying about it. It follows a young, pregnant girl who has nothing running into a nice guy on a train. She meets the nice guy's wife who allows her to wear her clothes (because the girl's clothes were wet), and even lets the girl try on her wedding ring. Shortly thereafter, the train crashes killing most of the people on board.

So she ends up with this guy's family who think she is their daughter-in-law that they never met. She tries in the beginning to come clean, but never has the chance. It is a film that actually stay interesting throughout without those annoying "ok, let's get this thing going again" moments.

The characters are developed really well, and you get a true sense of who they are and feel for them by the time the end comes around. It can be said that maybe she gets off a little too easy for the deception in the end, but it is forgivable because the family is setup very well to forgive, and let's be honest, there really wasn't time to dwell on it.

So, in the end, it was a good little comedy.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington -- 1939

Now here was an impressive piece of work. I've started watching the best of the best when it comes to movies and this one fell right in line.

The plot involves the death of a senator and Jefferson Smith being appointed to replace him. The general feeling in Washington of Smith is of a stooge who will just vote when he's told to vote what he's told to vote and that's that. His secretary is told to keep him out of politics entirely. Well, instead Smith drafts a bill with bits that conflict with another bill that some big business guy wants passed and when Smith stands against him, all hell breaks loose.

I guess the only weird part on this one was Smith wandering off when he first arrived in Washington. Based on his character so far, it seemed unlike him to do that. He tried to explain why later, but it never really sat right with me.

The characters were awesome; the situation is heart-wrenching; the conclusion was satisfying; the plot worked perfectly; the structure was great. You not only felt for Smith in this one, but the supporting characters around him. Just an overall great film and completely worth putting on if you want to watch a good one.

MirrorMask - 2005 -- PG

Ok, so take Labyrinth, The Neverending Story, and those Mind's Eye videos and toss them into a corner, and this film comes out. Got some incredible animation and visuals going on throughout. It was nothing short of surreal to watch it all play out.

The story got off to a slow start and even when we got into the other dream world, it still ran a bit slow for awhile. The pace started to pick up, though most of it was dialogue driven despite the incredible visuals. For the most part, the lead reacted to everything as opposed to leading the story, though she began to after awhile, which felt strangely unrealistic when she did take charge.

The overall tale was simplistic enough to not get lost in at all, though. It involves a girl whose mother goes in for surgery and when she sleeps, she dreams (or is it a dream?) of this other world inside her drawings. She ends up on a quest to find a charm to revive the sleeping queen of the light kingdom and prevent the shadow queen from taking over. Or is she taking over? It holds enough interest to keep us going to the very end, though, and was quite fun to watch.

In the end, I find that I did like it, though I was afraid of it being too cliche or dumbed down. It definitely doesn't top the list of the best, but it was a pretty good watch if you're looking for something.

M -- 1931 -- NR

Germany's first talkie from 1931 stars Peter Lorre as a serial child killer with Fritz Lang (one of the top German film directors of the time) at the helm. Naturally, I was watching it with subtitles which didn't help the experience, but overall, the film is paced well and told a solid serial killer thriller.

It has a lot of good points. The relation between the police and the crime underworld, for example was wonderfully done with simultaneous, intercut meeting between the two organizations. The police ar becoming a laughingstock having not cuaght the killer for 8 months, but the crime syndicates are getting walled in by the police raids looking for the killer which hurts their "business." Both groups set out to catch the killer at the same time. The police take the more cerebral route of looking for psychological profiles, while the underground just hires beggars to watch every child in town. Both group find him at about the same time, but while the cops wait at his house, the underground captures him and holds him on "trial."

It is this trial that makes a statement about justice and the criminal justice system. It says that a criminal is safer in the system than with regular people, a fact that is all too often painfully clear. No matter what the crime or how unfair or how brutal that crime was, the system always endeavors to treat the criminal with respect and dignity. 

The biggest weakness, in my opinion, was an attempt to bring sympathy for the killer during this trial. This attempt was completely in vain since a guy who kills children will rarely gain sympathy of any kind, no matter how fictional the story. Another problem this script had was a lack of familiarity with the characters. A lot of characters were introduced throughout the film and only a handful managed to get names. We got some knowledge of some of them, but most of the characters remained 2 dimensional cutouts of cops or crimelords.

The only confusion was some sort of cerebral tag on the ending that made no sense in context with the rest of the film. I don't know what that was.

The Mummy -- 1932 -- NR

This is the original 1932 version with Boris Karloff upon which the 1999 Brenden Fraser version was based. It involves a Mummy of Imhotep, a priest who was buried alive for having an illicit affair with a priestess. He uses the scroll of Amon-Ra to try and bring the priestess back to life after he made his own body whole again. This Mummy is not in moldy bandages; he's a frightening presence. This is a well-crafted monster movie steeped in Egyptian mysticism where the characters have life and the monster is a real threat. He doesn't even have to be in the room to kill you.

My only complaint was that the beau was not very well rounded, but each character had a purpose and a motivation. The Legacy edition version I watched on DVD had an amazing picture to boot.

The Mummy Sequels -- 1940-1944 -- NR

The Legacy edition of the Mummy included its four sequels between 1940 and 1944, each more disappointing and ridiculous than the preceeding one. Rather than waste four posts on these moves, I'll just summarize them in one.

The Mummy's Hand -- 1940 -- This first sequel set the stage for the travesties that followed. We have clips from the Mummy's backstory rewritten and occasionally reshot to fit the new storyline. Now there's a cult that keep a Mummy named Kharis alive to protect the tomb of Ananka. This first film does make an effort to create a good picture, but instead of the intelligent whole dangerous man that Imhotep was, Kharis is just a Mummy with a limp and a bad arm. This cult is dedicated to keeping Kharis alive and killing anyone who gets at Anaka's tomb. As luck would have it, that's just what happened. It flows decently until the end when the characters suddenly all take stupid pills to increase the drama. The cult leader steals the girl (don't know why). The hero fires shots at the Mummy to stop him from getting at the magic leaf potion (instead of taking two steps to the right and kicking the stand over). This was the only good effort of the bunch.

The Mummy's Tomb -- 1942 -- We bring back the hero from the last movie to spend 10 minutes of this 60 minute film recapping the Mummy's Hand. Now a new cult leader brings Kharis to the USA to kill the hero's family, who are all so two-dimensional that it's impossible to care when anyone is killed. This movie tries really hard, but ultimately fails by throwing in a mob chase scene we had almost escaped from when we left the silent era. We wipe out the moster by bruning down the family mansion. Yeah, that was smart. And of course, the leader kidnaps the girl for no apparent reason, and most of the action occurs under the cover of the brightest full moon you'll ever see in your life that resembles the afternoon sun.

The Mummy's Ghost -- 1944 -- Now, we are quickly descending into modern monster sequels by bringing in the teenagers played by late twenty year olds (?). Now a new cult leader (blessed by the same cult leader that dies at the beginning of the last film) has to bring Kharis back to Egypt along with Ananka's body. The characters might possibly be one-dimensional (though a good effort was made to fill out the hero to almost two-dimensional...we're shooting for three), but at least they found a reason to kidnap the girl. The premise derails the continuity of the previous movies, and it ends in a ridiculous mob chase scene where the mob clairvoyantly finds where the Mummy and the cult leader are hanging out just after the Mummy betrays the cult leader. For further unexplained reasons, the girl ages until she dies of old age. What!? 

The Mummy's Curse -- 1944 -- Maybe there is an unwritten rule that states that all sequels must be worse than the last one, but this one succeeds on that point alone. EVERYTHING in this movie happens without explanation or apology. Mummy wanders around looking for Ananka. Ok. Chick who was Ananka reincarnated rises from ground and likes sunlight. Dunno why. There is no character development among any of the characters in this film, and we all got zinged with an obligatory romantic involvment between two characters that was hardly hinted at throughout the film. 

The real kicker if you get down to the dates of these films (and I love this):

The Mummy's Hand happens in 1940 (presumably).

The Mummy's Tomb is 30 years later, so 1970.

The Mummy's Ghost gives no dates at all, so we'll stick to the same year.

The Mummy's Curse is another 25 years later, but those are some seriously vintage cars for 1995.

Moulin Rouge! -- 2001 - PG-13

This was a really good movie, in my opinion. It moves from a solid acid trip in the beginning to a solid drama by the time the conflict is established. There are many who dislike it, but that may be the case of a movie fan watching a musical, which is what this is. It follows the traditions of musical melodrama, with a smattering of comedic pop parody thrown in. The melodrama in this film is nearly impossible to acheive in a traditional film, but for a musical, it is inevitable. 

The film contains a mix of original music and remakes of popular songs from the 70's through the 90's, the latter with often amusing results, that are likely deliberate. In many cases the writers inject plot relevant counterpoint over existing tunes, such as what was done with the song "Roxanne" near the end of the film. Just astounding. The villain teeters between comedic and evil on purpose throughout, but the relationship between Kidman and McGregor is wonderful and it builds to a riveting climax. 

If you dislike or don't get musicals, this movie will complete pass you by, and you'll hate it. If you have at least a healthy respect for musicals, or like me, you really enjoy a good one, this one works just fine.

Metropolis -- 1927 -- NR

If you only watch one silent film in your life, this is the one to watch. I watched the restored version that makes the robot an image of the lost love as opposed to a ripoff of Frankenstein's monster. 

This film has everything a movie needs: full characters, plots and subplots, current social and political themes, development, and amazing visuals and special effects (for 1927 and even today). As a silent movie, it also minimizes the intertitles and lets the visuals tell the story as much as possible once it gets going. Once the film was over, I knew the names of every one of the major characters, and for a silent movie, that is a big accomplishment. Fritz Lang directed, and he is clearly a genius.

This film follows a guy from the upper class called Freder who finds his way into the underworld of the workers. He had seen a woman named Maria while playing in his upper class world, and discovered she was a deaconess of sorts for the workers, giving them hope for a mediator between them and the upper class. Freder falls for her, and they plan to meet later. Unfortunately, Freder's father, Joh, is concerned about a possible worker uprising and goes to an inventor named Rotwang, who has always been able to give him obscure info before. Rotwang has created a "machine-man" in the form of a woman, and Joh wants Rotwang to give the machine the form of Maria. In one of the best special effects sequences EVER (especially when you consider this is 1927), they give the machine the form of Maria and she wreaks havoc among the workers. 

This is an iconic movie in the history of film, and more than worth watching.

The Maltese Falcon -- 1941 -- NR

A decent noir film following the investigation of the murder of a private detective's partner after he is put on the trail of a man that a woman suspects knows about her sister. The woman is more than she seems as she spins one lie after another putting the private dick on the right trail...sort of before her story changes again. It's got some nice twists as the story goes along, and really the only complaint is that the pacing runs a little slow in some areas.

Some modern audiences might not like it because it is very talky and cerebral like a lot of the older movies are, and it would help if the lead actress were able to...well...act. Compared to Bogart and two other actors who would go onto Casablanca the following year, one of whom is Peter Lorre, who I watched in M from ten years earlier in Germany, her dialogue delivery was consistently flat until very near the end when she finally came close to being in character. Perhaps, since her character made a habit of lying, it was part of that, but for me, the charade didn't work.

Other than this, it was a good film, and worth the time to watch it. It contains the lines, "Hey, what's this?" "It's the stuff that dreams are made of."

Minority Report -- 2002 -- PG-13

In 2054, people are no longer tried for murder in Washinton, D.C. Instead, psychics called pre-cogs predict that someone will be killed, and the "pre-crime" unit moves in and arrests the person before the crime can be committed. The system apparently works since D.C. boasts no murders in the last 6 years. However, one cop believes the system maybhave a problem when he is predetermined to murder someone he doesn't even know.

This movie is a cool sci-fi ride that kicks off a little slow, but when it starts moving, it really moves. John Anderton's motives for his actions and past are completely believable as well as the reasoning behind what REALLY happens (no spoilers here, sorry). The plot zips through several interesting and intriguing twists, at least one of which I didn't see coming. I noticed my counter hitting 1:45 when the movie is slated for 2:30, and wondered what in the world was going to go on for the next 45 minutes...yeah, I got a little surprise, and for me, that's saying something.

Overall, it has good effects, great direction (Steven Spielberg), and a great story that hooks from one end to the other.

Memento -- 2000 -- R

A man has a condition in which he has no short term memory and as a result, can make no new memories. However, he is trying to track down the man who raped and killed his wife, so he uses notes, tattoos, and photographs to guide his life.

On the surface, this is a really cool movie. In order for the audience to get the feeling of having to start where you are and go from there, the bulk of the movie is played in reverse. We start with the final scenes and then the one before that, and the one before that, etc. Each time there is a shift, we go to the very beginning of this story (in black and white to easily differentiate them) and get some exposition about his condition and what he's doing. Often this exposition plays into what happened or is happening in the backwards story. It's a trippy little effect and really does help with the feeling of disorientation that someone with this condition must experience.

The beginning and end culminate in a heck of a zinger at the end that I, frankly, never saw coming. They had set up the whole plot from one angle, and then pulled the rug out, but it made sense...sort of.

Now for the problems...the DVD I watched had an option to play the movie in "chronological order" meaning it shuffled all the tracks on the DVD to play it in what would be beginning to end. Not only does this show the story in a whole different light (that is equally interesting), but it also brings to light all the little problems you miss watching it as normal since your mind has trouble wrapping around the disorientation.

First, for no short term memory, this guy remembers stuff remarkably well. They do make an attempt to explain this by conditioning, and perhaps that's what he's done, but he always seems to know too much about what's going on, but always not quite enough to allow him to see through what people are doing to him.

There were two people who apparently knew Leonard before the story began, but it never explains how they knew him or even why this guy was singled out by the cop for Leonard's purpose (I say it this way to avoid spoilers). That one point really frustrated me more than anything else. I can get past the memory thing with an easy enough explanation, but this seems to be an important piece of exposition and it was not there.

Overall, this was a really good film and made for a good thriller. The technique employed to help the audience get a piece of Leonard's "condition" was supreme. But that missing bit of exposition was just annoying.

Mystery of the Wax Museum -- 1933 -- NR

An early horror film that used a new color technique that looked really good for its time. This film had a decent plot, a good premise, and good acting. 

The lead female is a brash reporter and she's almost too direct for my taste, not so much acting as she is just spouting out the lines like a little robot. Her final decision in the picture came out of no where and made no sense. I all for twists, but this had absolutely no setup. Her roommate and friend is played by Fay Wray, who was Ann Darrow in King Kong from the same year. Her character, however, was very, very thin as was most of the characters in the film -- a testament to the sheer number we had to relate to to survive the picture. There are other characters, but really too many to try and keep track of, and the 77 minute run time of the film didn't allow us to get close to any of them. The 1953 version of the film made a wise move to combine many of the characters, thereby reducing the number we had to know. 

Other than that one rather large deficiency, everything else was fine. The plot worked pretty well in taking us on a journey through this horrific little idea. The characters did do their jobs in leading us, though some of their decisions seemed to serve the plot than themselves. 

At one point, the direction seemed to have a minor issue where a conversation was shot from one side of the pair talking and then the other, a directorial no-no. Odd, since this director had about 90 films under his belt, and he would go on to direct films like Casablanca and White Christmas. Maybe the editor stuck the film in backwards.

So, from a histroical perspective, it wasn't a bad film. The color and sets were wonderful and it had some good acting. We needed more the 77 minutes though due to the bulk of characters we needed to meet, and it just wasn't long enough.

The Mirror Has Two Faces -- 1996 -- PG-13

Been a slow movie week for me. Oh well.

I've kind of wanted to see this one for a while since this "theme" song "I've Finally Found Someone" played a part in my wedding, and what I found was a film that was not that bad. The premise was fairly unique in that we have a guy who is tired of shallow relationships, so he places a personal ad asking for a woman with a Ph.D and over 35. He noted looks are not important.

So Babs' sister answers the ad, and he checks her out. She is giving this speech in class about how love should be platonic to truly work out and sex kills. He leaves early, satisfied with this and misses that the sex part is good while it lasts. They enter the relationship and we get a lot of tension surrounding the idea that they are in a relationship without any of the physical stuff. Well, this tension comes to a head about the time he leaves for a European conference tour, and we move into the final half hour of the film.

I felt the development of the lead characters was pretty good, and you could really feel the emotion in what was going on. The obstacles here were purely psychological which often makes for an entertaining film in my opinion, since it requires some fairly decently developed characters to pull off. You might say the psychological obstacle was a physical one...ha.

We were not without flaws, however. Since this was a film dealing with the purely psychological matter of love without the physical, the entire film was chatter. Nothing really happened at any point visually. It could have easily been a play. Bridges' performance during the post-wedding scenes was just weird. He smiled almost the entire time. And it wasn't a natural smile; it was this weird, freaky smile of a serial killer waiting for the right time to take out his victim. 

A typical romantic comedy usually has a separation of the lovers followed by the climax where they make up and live happily ever after. This one has a separation, a climax, another separation, and then they come together. It makes sense in the plot, but it threatens to drag out the ending. The same goes for a scene where the loose end of her sister's husband is tied up (I'm not into spoiling these things). That one scene nearly ruined the entire film and her character for me. I'll grant it was a film trick to build tension, but in my opinion that was the wrong kind of tension to build.

So, if you like a romantic film that's a little off the beaten path, more psychological than physical, and doesn't involve another up and coming female star, this one works fairly well. I'll say it's not a complete waste of time.

Monster House -- 2006 -- PG

Finally...someone used animation for something a little beyond just a kids' movie. Granted, this film has children as the leads, and may have even been marketed to that crowd, but I deem it a bit too scary for my young crew. And don't balk at the PG rating; Jaws was rated PG...still is.

Basically, you have a guy living in a big ugly house. He is the grumpiest of the grumpy old men, and takes anything that lands on his lawn...but why. Well, we get an inkling of something when our main kid thinks he killed the guy. Before you know it, this house is alive. Not just groaning and being Amityville, but actually a living beast in the form of a house.

The film is loaded with humor the young adolescent crowd would get, and the scares are built more for that 'tween group as well, but I was engaged by the feature.

If I were to complain about something, I do have a couple. First, I want to ask: where is everybody? We have a small town that's generally quiet. And one night, a lot of stuff happens that ain't so quiet...and no one so much as looks out their window? It was really video game-ish in that respect that they did everything they did and the only people to take notice were the cops.

The other thing is the cliche babysitter. For one, can we get a babysitter that doesn't make rock look evil? She has a look, and everything she does revolves around that look. While this is normally a good thing, in this case, it just gives one section of the film a level of predictability that shames the rest. The creativity of the house and everything the trio goes through was just incredible, and we get the cliche babysitter as a setup.

What would I like to see? A self-obsessed genius who only cares about writing her big symphony. She brings in her own keyboard to write with and keeps telling him to keep it down while she works. That would be fun to watch. But no, we get rock girl who just wants to break all the parents' rule. Argh!

That part only factored into the first part of the film. Once we get into it, it's a lot of fun. Definitely worth checking out.

The Man in the Moon -- 1991 -- PG-13

So last night I finally got to sit down and watch another movie, and this time, it was off my wife's Netflix list. This was Reese Witherspoon's first film, and according to some trivia, she went out for a casting call in Nashville to be an extra and landed the lead. Not bad for your first outing.

The story follows a 14 year old girl who runs into a 17 year old boy who just moved in next door. The age difference creates a lot of great tension between the two as she is enfatutated and he considers her a kid. This tension is heightened, of course, when he meets her older sister who is preparing to leave for college.

The plot was fairly well constructed with only a couple of strange moves and hiccups. The narrative expects you to make a lot of assumptions as to what is going on and what went on. For example, the boy in question meets the older sister and leaves just as dad is getting home. Well, he has to rush back off and moments later, the boy comes back as the sister is waiting on the porch. Plotwise, this was weird, because you wonder why he came back so soon after leaving, but you can assume she called him, which explains why she would be waiting.

Also, it felt like some of the sequences were cut short. Dani and Court at the market, for example, was a great opportunity for character development between the two, but we never got it. There were times at the pond where they could have talked, and we moved on. Court and the older sister only had four scenes together before we hit another big event, and their scenes had very little in the way of length or development. We know she cared about her sister's feelings, but what led her to change that stand and go out with him?

Character is really the weakest point of the film, primarily because it expects the same kind of assumptions about the characters that the plot expects. There is very little onscreen development between any of the characters. The leads, Dani and Court, get the most screen time, but most of the film is devoted to moving the plot along as opposed to developing its myriad of characters. It's good that the focus on the leads was maintained,. but we needed a little of the other characters and their interactions as well as more development of the leads in who they really are.

This was a movie with a lot of great potential in it, and my wife just loved it. To completely enjoy it, you have to be willing to read between the lines and get into the emotional side of it. I think it could have been better with only a few more minutes spent on the relationships here and there, but even so, like I said, it's not bad.

My wife had gotten some real clunkers from Netflix lately, and I was very happy she got one that she enjoyed.

Mission: Impossible III -- 2006 -- PG-13

I wasn't sure wat to expect here. It was a big budget summer blockbuster with Tom Cruise and a sequel. Tom was bad mouthing the movie in previews with led to Paramount ousting him and him becoming a partner in United Artists. Some like it; some hate it. What do I think after seeing it?

I'm in the liking camp. I was concerned in the teaser when Tom was refusing to act, but that got cleared up and we got into the stream of te film where Ethan Hunt is celebrating his engagement and he no longer works in the field, but as an instructor for IMF. His fiancee knows nothing of this line of work and thinks he is a traffic pattern analyzer. It's amusing and works rather well for a start, not to mention giving our boy the least bit a of character and later, a motivation.

As luck would have it, IMF wants him to go after an agent who got caught, and that's where the fun begins. They're after an arms dealer, and after that first mission goes down, they immediately setup using what info they gathered to collect this dealer at his only known appearance any time soon. So of course, that mission succeeds and of course, he escapes. We begin descending into cliche land here.

Since our main character has a significant other, she gets kidnapped and used as a bargaining chip. he of course completes said mission for the bad guys using the most complex and outlandish means possible (hey, it's a big budget flick). Girl impossibly tracked down in the end and bad guy bites it.

My main complaint abut the ending is how the accomplice is dealt with. It came off very cheap to have all these big bangs and such, and accomplice wanders randomly down a hallway and gets popped off...and not by Ethan either. Kind of random there.

The plot was engaging and exciting, of course. It wasn't totally free of bumps, but it worked well. The characters were on the whole very two dimensional. I don't know the names of the friends of Ethan at all, much less any of their character. They chatted at some point, but by that time, we'd forgotten everything except that they helped out. The bad guy was ok, but still pretty thin as well.

So the film worked as a popcorn flick, but beyond that, it was nothing that will be remembered in the annals of film as a great movie. Just something that filled a summer once.

Master of Disguise -- 2002 -- PG

Hm. It is after films like this that one can't help but wonder why, and even how, something like this got made. It had some elements of humor, and I'll admit that I even laughed once or twice, but on the whole, this movie had very little to offer. I rolled my eyes much more than I laughed or even chuckled.

The backbone of this storyline hinges on the magical diguising abilities of the Disguisey family, which is supposed to be Italien. The main character's name is Pistachio...as in the nut. This ability allows them to disguise themselves as any person in the world using their skills. This means they can also change size and shape to accomodate whatever they're changing into, but strangely, this ability also relies on their ability to make a cool mask to peel off at an opportune time.

An example that won't spoil here: Pistachio disguises himself as a cherry pie. He fit on a dessert cart in the pie pan. When he emerged, he had a full cherry body suit, as if he had fit himself in his entirety in that pan. Odd, but if that's how it works...ok. Clever. They can also change disguises in an instant. Same deal, even though the logistics don't really pan out again...ok.

Where the real break down occurred was the humor. The plot itself was very, very thin. Guy wants to steal national treasures and sell them on the black market using the girl of the story as a hostess on his black market "QVC-ish" network program. We also have the plot of Pistachio coming into the family disguise business. Each of these don't offer much in the way of sustainment for a 90 minute film, but they try. Since it's a comedy, a lot of room was left for the humor element, but unfortunately, most of the clever humor was foregone for crude and toilet humor.

Yes, I did laugh when the villain laughed heartily and then abruptly stopped when he farted. But the training sequence where he was told to slap the robot and use the phrase "who's your daddy?" to intimidate the opponent didn't work for me at all.

There was some attempt at making the humor in the costume characters, but most of the time, there wasn't much to invest in, so the humor fell very flat and even got old very quickly (such as in the case of Mr. Peru). There was an extended Mr. Peru scene on the DVD that was flat boring, since it was just Dana Carvey bouncing around.

In the end, Dana Carvey's humoristic talents were wasted in this film. He tried, but the story and the humor just weren't there to work with. It boiled down to a cheap attempt at something that probably didn't have a prayer to begin with.