Eric and J.D. discuss why Jason Segel is the new Seth Rogen (”Superbad”) and what makes “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” better than most romantic comedies of its ilk. It may have something to do with producer Judd Apatow (”Knocked Up, “The 40 Year-old Virgin”), but they’re pretty sure it has more to do with an unflinching sense of honesty, lots of male nudity, and a keen eye on satirizing Hollywood types. Plus, UK comedian Russell Brand is hilarious.

Tags: Eric and J.D., Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Jason Segel, Judd Apatow, male nudity, movie review, on-camera review, Russell Brand, Seth Rogen, superbad

Director/star Morgan Spurlock’s new documentary “Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?” is a lot like singer/songwriter Ben Folds’ solo debut record, “Rockin’ the Suburbs.” If that sounds like a strange analogy, let me explain.

Spurlock, whose 2004 movie “Super Size Me” blindsided the fast food industry and the box office, making a huge splash for the then-unknown independent filmmaker. He ate McDonald’s food exclusively for a month straight and measured the effects, mentally and physically, on his body. During this stunt of gross proportions, Spurlock used amusing cartoons and narration to drive home some hard-to-swallow facts about the way Americans eat.

But without a clearly defined experiment to fall back on or goal to achieve, “Where in the World” feels like a meandering movie without a clue. But, wait—the title suggests Spurlock is on a mission to the Middle East to find the world’s most wanted man! Yeah, right. It’s a conceit so ludicrous that his regular-guy charm can’t hide the fact that he doesn’t believe he will find bin Laden anymore than we do.

It is too bad that Spurlock has to hang the whole film on this silly stunt, because it leads us to false expectations as we wait for some crowning dramatic moment or great conflict. This film just doesn’t have that. What it does have—and it very nearly seeks to obscure with gimmicks—is Spurlock, who is a very likable and empathetic guy. He is a humanist, and what he does well (especially on his far-better TV show “30 Days”) is take very complicated socio-political situations and burrow them down to the simplest terms—human beings must get along with other human beings in order to live peacefully and watch their families thrive.

“30 Days” works because he conducts interviews with experts while standing in for Joe-Schmoe audience member. Then—the moneyshot. Spurlock drops carefully picked, prejudiced lab rats right into the center of the maze. One’s background is key to defining who they are, so when you force an anti-gay rights man to live with a homosexual for a month, some sympathy and understanding between the unnatural roomies is bound to happen. On the TV show, Spurlock narrates and gives context to the whole experiment.

Without an experiment in “Where in the World,” however, Spurlock wanders aimlessly, pointing a microphone to people in the streets of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. There is not a lot of new information presented, but it is interesting to hear what people are thinking on the other side of the world. One point the filmmaker makes very well is that we are so used to hearing one side of things, we often do not even consider that there may be another.

It is a simple idea, and sometimes an effective one, but just not for a feature-length film. Perhaps “Where in the World” would have worked better as an episode of “30 Days.” It is too long, and certainly does not benefit from some misplaced attempts at humor, like the hokey-jokey original music by Jon Spurney or a terribly unfunny videogame that goes on forever and pits the flying, super-powered terrorist against Spurlock in full Mortal Kombat mode.

Another bad choice was framing his point-of-view as that of an expecting father. I understand the significance of this to the film, but thinking that he would travel across the globe, leaving his wife to bear the pregnancy alone, just so he could discover what kind of a world they were bringing a child into, is—no pun intended—just plain childish. We’re all adults here. If the cogs of preproduction are turning and filming can’t be stopped, level with us. We’ll accept it. It’s another gimmick Spurlock doesn’t need.

Which brings us back to Ben Folds. “Rockin’ the Suburbs” is a fantastic record. It’s full of songs by an artist who is taking stock in his life, realizing what he has, and telling great stories with melancholy melodies. But the title of the album is too damn goofy and gives the wrong impression. Although the subjects of many of his songs may indeed reside in the suburbs, their sentiment deserves better treatment than that.

The same goes for “Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?” The name is a silly pun, and would be more appropriate if Spurlock took a satirical angle. He does not. He’s too nice. It’s not in him. Fine. But the poster for the film calls it an “adventure,” and is a stupid painted caricature of a crazy-eyed Spurlock riding a camel like it’s out of control, lassoing a ballooned-up logo. From what I understand about marketing, I believe marketing is designed to sell things to people, not drive them away. I want both Epic Records and The Weinstein Company to know that they are selling their “products” short with this kind of treatment.

It is true, Spurlock’s movie is better than its misleading ad campaign. He puts a face and a smile to people who are demonized every day by media bias. Other than that, there is not much else to learn in “Where in the World” that hasn’t been said elsewhere. And Spurlock’s take isn’t a radically different one either, so it is troubling to watch this uncomfortable balancing act between heartfelt sentiment and a need for entertainment, especially when it just doesn’t work on either account very well.

what actor played v and agent smith?

Tags: 30 Days, Ben Folds, McDonald’s, Morgan Spurlock, movie review, Rockin’ the Suburbs, Super Size Me, Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?

The first thing I will promise from this review is that there will be no bad football puns—no “Clooney fumbles at the goal line,” no “quarterback runs wrong play from pigskin playbook,” no “director scores a touchdown but misses the extra point.” I just won’t do it, you hear? I won’t stoop to that level, you hear? And just because I’ve already printed those words doesn’t mean I’ve already…nevermind!

If I had to pick one person from Hollywood to helm and star in a loving tribute to the old school screwball comedies of the 1930s, it would be George Clooney. He’s already shown he can act exaggerated repartee to perfection in the Coens’ slapstick and slapdash Depression-era Homer interpretation “O Brother Where Art Thou?” Able to spit out a wordy froth of Olde English and Southern drawl in machine-gun fashion, Clooney earned himself a Golden Globe and helped make that film a cult classic.

“Leatherheads” doesn’t contain all the traits of a screwball comedy (such as class issues, topsy-turvy gender roles, and mistaken identity), but there are enough romantic triangles, tight spots, and fast-talking to know what director Clooney was going for. No matter how accurate the set design and costumes are or how many times the characters in “Leatherheads” use phrases like “cook your goose,” the movie never builds to that ridiculous fever pitch that it should.

At least as a sports film, it is anachronistic enough to not grow tired. There’s no underdog team fighting to reach the big game in a slow motion climax—just a story about a man who doesn’t want to grow up. Loosely based on the story of NFL running back John McNally, “Leatherheads” finds pro football struggling to survive while its college counterparts play to sold-out crowds.

An aging team captain named Dodge Connolly (Clooney) recruits a war hero and university star named Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski) to play for his Duluth Bulldogs and things start to turn around for the whole league. Meanwhile, big-city reporter Lexie Littleton (Renée Zellweger) is assigned to uncover the truth about Rutherford’s war record, and ends up the object of both men’s desire.

The story wants to be madcap and freewheeling, but it doesn’t quite take flight. The overgrown child who must save his team when faced with the prospect of getting a real job is a good set-up, but too many madcap situations are resolved too easily. The movie just rolls along with its carefree, lighthearted attitude, but without the zip that it truly needs.

One problem is that the wordplay—which is delivered by all involved as charmingly as you could ask for—is just not that clever. This is too bad, since the screenplay by Duncan Brantley and Rick Reilly has been bouncing around Hollywood for over 15 years. It is almost as if the director wanted to try his hand at the genre, so he grabbed the only movie out there that fit.

Another problem is that a lot of the gags fall flat, and some end with an awkward fade-out into the next scene. When Dodge and Lexie are being chased by police, they happen upon a suicide jumper. Trapped on a ledge, the pair decide that the net below that’s meant for him is their only way out. Since they are dressed as cops themselves (long story) and the desperate man’s family and more police oblivious to the chase are below, the scene is rife with comic possibilities. Unfortunately, it’s over all too soon, and one cop mumbles something about the jumpers being police as the scene fizzles out.

It may be more appropriate to compare the feel of “Leatherheads” to “The Sting,” a minor trifle starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford that won Best Picture in 1974. Like “The Sting,” it is too long and it never builds up to any heated frenzy, it just kind of exists, out of its time, to remind us that these kinds of films sprung up naturally from the Vaudeville aesthetic and the effects of the Great Depression.

“Leatherheads,” if anything, is an admirable attempt at recreating this specific brand of agile, breezy comedy. At least “The Sting” had an effective con artist plot to hang itself on, while Clooney’s effort seems like just that—an effort.

Tags: football, George Clooney, John Krasinski, Leatherheads, movie review, NFL, Renée Zellweger, screwball comedy

The joke goes something like this: “Shine A Light,” the new Rolling Stones concert film, is the first Martin Scorsese movie to not feature “Gimme Shelter.” It’s true, Marty has used the Stones in “Mean Streets,” “GoodFellas,” and “The Departed,” but never before has he orchestrated a entire rapturous two-hour concert film about his favorite dangerous English rockers. So what if they’re in their sixties? Eric and J.D. are convinced that if you are a rock n’ roll fan, you’ll love this movie, especially in IMAX. Eric’s print review has more here.

Tags: instant review, Martin Scorsese, movie review, on-camera review, rolling stones, shine a light, video review

Perhaps it’s suitable that MTV films has partnered with Paramount to bring us the story of U.S. soldiers who return home from the current war in Iraq and are very changed people. After all, it is the young generation that’s doing their duty; being sent to fight in that uneasy, messy conflict. (Earlier this week, the U.S. passed a grim milestone, as 4,000 of our troops have been killed in the conflict since the 2003 invasion.)

Thematically, “Stop-Loss” is not all that much different from 1946 Best Picture winner “The Best Years of Our Lives.” Set directly after World War II, it revolved around the difficulty that three servicemen face trying to return to a “normal” life back home in the Midwest after fighting the war overseas. “Stop-Loss” concerns three servicemen who come home to Texas after five years in Iraq, only the added twist is that one of them is stop-lossed.

The stop-loss policy was called by John Kerry in 2004 a “backdoor draft,” which is exactly what Sgt. Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe) calls it not long after he finds out the president has invoked the involuntary extension of his enlistment contract to retain him beyond the normal end term of service. Since Congress never actually declared war in Iraq and Bush said the mission was accomplished years ago, activists and lawyers argue that soldiers like King have more than a leg to stand on here.

What’s impressive about director/co-writer Kimberly Peirce’s movie (her first since 1999’s “Boys Don’t Cry”) is that it isn’t concerned with politics whatsoever. There isn’t any policy discussion in the entire film other than Sgt. King’s knee-jerk reaction when his commanding officer tells him it’s time to report for duty in Iraq again just when he thinks his tour of duty is finished. Told entirely from the point of view of the servicemen, it avoids the pitfalls that less-subtle, sloganeering Iraq war movies like “Lions for Lambs” fell into last year.

Peirce understands that this younger generation fighting overseas are literally changing the way we look at war. Handheld cameras are everywhere as soldiers document their experience with diary-like footage. “Stop-Loss” opens with a montage of King’s infantry unit, shot from a camcorder and posted on the Internet. It shocks us right into the present-day when, immediately following the introduction of the main characters through that user-generated film, the troop is led into an alleyway after a tense checkpoint stop and ambushed with machine guns and RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades).

Complicated issues become simplified very quickly when you are under attack, and not only do the men not know what direction enemy fire is coming from, as the assailants duck into a building and dissipate, they don’t even know who their enemy is. Off the traditional battlefield, Peirce shoots hard, jagged angles from the soldiers’ point of view in a breathless sequence. The attackers are barely seen around corners or hiding on rooftops, and King’s men cannot see straight in the confusion. As the fighting continues in the building, women and children get involved.

The ones who make it out of the battle are greeted as heroes in Texas, including Sgt. King, his best friend Steve (Channing Tatum), and their troubled friend Tommy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). In wartime, these men were brothers, had clearly defined roles, and backed each other up every step of the way. Now they endure constant flashbacks and find that with their friends and family, they are on shaky, unfamiliar ground. Even the strong relationships they built with each other start to come apart. When King gets stop-lossed and flees the Army station, the movie examines how everyone is affected.

King’s position on the matter is simple. “I’m done with killing and I ain’t leading any more men into a slaughter,” he says. Steve and Tommy are equally as positive that the only place they fit in is in Iraq, but Tommy’s ruined marriage causes him to get thrown in jail after several nights of drunken troublemaking. Gordon-Levitt does a lot with an underwritten role, even if a last-minute plot twist doesn’t feel like it had quite enough time to develop properly.

Peirce approaches a tricky subject without heavy-handed preachiness or agitprop. If there is one thing you can say about “Stop-Loss” it is that it absolutely respects the soldier and their honor/sacrifice for our country. Whether they are against the war or for it, no one is let off the hook, however. Each serviceman sees his decision on whether to continue fighting as a clear matter of principal, whether it’s their reaction to what King calls the president’s “fine print” clause or their general uneasiness at a world that feels different after returning home.

One scene sticks out in mind as a metaphor for the entire film. In a fleabag hotel parking lot in Memphis filled with passed-out drug addicts, drunks, and hookers, Sgt. King and Steve have a heated argument about where they truly belong. While their dilapidated surroundings may remind them of their former home in Iraq, the bond that they held so tightly during conflict has irreversibly changed back in the States.

Tags: backdoor draft, Channing Tatum, Iraq war, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Kimberly Peirce, movie review, MTV films, Stop-Loss, The Best Years of Our Lives

Eric and J.D. review the Judd Apatow-produced, Seth Rogen/John Hughes-written comedy “Drillbit Taylor,” starring Owen Wilson and three kids who stepped out of a “Superbad” time machine three years earlier. Find out why movie studios release movies like this one, directed by Steven Brill (“Without a Paddle,” “Mr. Deeds”), in March. Eric’s print review is here.

Tags: drillbit taylor, film, Judd Apatow, leslie mann, movie review, on-camera, owen wilson, Seth Rogen, video

It’s common knowledge that Judd Apatow and his merry band of improv comedians have helped to make movies like “Knocked Up” and “Superbad” way better than your average batch of raunchy comedies while simultaneously seeming more authentic. When Seth Rogen and his friends get in a room together to do improvise the hell out of a well-scripted scene, the funny gets funnier and it all feels more real.

“Drillbit Taylor,” which was produced by Apatow and co-written by Rogen, makes you realize how good the scripts to those movies had to have been because no amount of improvisation could have saved a screenplay as lame as this one from itself. Even with heavyweights like ultra-sincere jokester Owen Wilson, Leslie Mann (Apatow’s wife, who was so bitingly terrific in “Knocked Up”), and Stephen Root (Milton from “Office Space” and Jimmy James from the overlooked sitcom “NewsRadio”), the movie falls flat left and right.

Apparently, the story was conceived by ‘80s teen movie guru and current recluse John Hughes (under the pen name Edmond Dantes—a strange reference to “The Count of Monte Cristo”), and then penned by Rogen and Kristfor Brown. It’s been almost 18 years since a picked-on teen hired a bodyguard to protect him from the high school bully, so most people have probably forgotten “My Bodyguard.” (The filmmakers didn’t: that movie’s bodyguard, Adam Baldwin—better known now as Jayne from “Firefly/Serenity”—cameos as an unsuccessful applicant for the job.)

“Drillbit Taylor” expands on that premise by making the bodyguard a homeless Army defector and expanding one nerd to three. Why Rogen decided to model these three nerds so closely after his “Superbad” characters is beyond me. Like Seth, Evan, and McLovin, the three young losers of “Drillbit” have inflated, defensive egos that go hand-in-hand with their lack of self-confidence; and they even bicker amongst themselves about who of them is the geekiest, as if one nerd is nerdier, and hence slightly less cool, than the other.

But what was fresh, articulate, and downright shocking sometimes in “Superbad” is now PG-13, and just plain neutered.

Directed by Steven Brill (“Without a Paddle,” “Mr. Deeds”), this film is one almost-funny situation after another that is completely undercut by lazy timing and editing. Wilson isn’t awful as the title character—he’s just coasting. The Jonah Hill kid (Troy Gentile) is hard to understand sometimes and curiously keeps slipping in and out of a Brooklyn accent. Drillbit’s buddies look like actors wearing “homeless clothes” and their scenes together have no chemistry whatsoever. Brill doesn’t seem to know when to end a scene, letting the fizzled joke grow stale right before our eyes.

It’s hard to get excited about writing about a movie that’s so averagely unfunny most of the time. “Drillbit Taylor” is not offensively bad; it’s just offensively bland, especially for Rogen, who has been on a roll lately.

If I may quote “Mr. Show with Bob and David”—the best sketch comedy show since “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”—“Drillbit Taylor” was just good enough to bring us to “the edge of laughter.”

Tags: drillbit taylor, John Hughes, Judd Apatow, leslie mann, movie review, Seth Rogen, superbad