Movie Review: What's Your Number?

PLOT – Ally Darling (Anna Faris) is realizing she’s a little lost in life. Her latest romance has just fizzled out, and she’s just been fired from her marketing job. Then, she reads an eye-opening magazine article that warns that 96 percent of women who’ve been with 20 or more lovers are unlikely to find a husband. Determined to turn her life around and prove the article wrong, Ally embarks on a mission to find the perfect mate from among her numerous ex-boyfriends.

STARRING – Anna Faris, Chris Evans, Ari Graynor, Blythe Danner, Ed Begley Jr., Dave Annable, Zachary Quinto.

Director – Mark Mylod

How many men have you slept with? Such an interesting question. My number is zero. You see, the only penis I’m comfortable dealing with is my own. Not that the number of women I’ve slept with is all that higher. I’ll save all our blushes and omit the figure.

What’s Your Number introduces us to Ally (Faris), a thirty-something who works in marketing and for whom the number of sexual partners she has had becomes the basis of a quest to find her true love. When Ally reads an article in a magazine that says the average number of sexual partners a woman has in her lifetime is 10.5, she starts to list all of her former lovers and to her embarrassment she finds that she has had 19 partners and none of them have come close to being ‘the one’.

With that in mind, she makes a promise. She will not sleep with her 20th partner until she is absolutely certain that he is Mr. Right. But Ally being Ally, she gets drunk that very night and sleeps with her boss. Having hit her 20th partner, Ally now decides that the only way to fulfil her promise to herself is to reexamine her 20 ex-boyfriends to see if one of them was her true love. She’ll then reignite the flame with Mr. Right and thereby keep her number of sexual partners at 20.

For this quest she enlists the help of her deadbeat neighbour Colin (Evans), a jobbing musician and total poon-hound who relies on Ally to help him evade the myriad one night stands he ploughs his way through. But the quest is not an easy one and Ally and Colin soon come to realise that true love will rear it’s ugly head in the least likely of places.

So, where to begin (he said, as he loaded both barrels)? Words cannot describe how bad this movie is. I wanted to leave the screening after half an hour and I resented having to watch it, so I have to be careful not to sink into vitriol. I’ll try to give it as fair a shake as I can muster.

Let’s start with the story. Ally works in marketing, she hates her job, can’t hold onto a boyfriend (she’s always the dumpee, never the dumper) and is generally at a loss as to what to do with her life. She is absolutely convinced that the key to her happiness is finding a man. Now, I don’t consider myself a feminist but I certainly don’t think that this is a message that’s relevant in the 21st century. I’m losing respect for the heroine after barely 15 minutes of the movie.

It gets worse. When she comes up with her cockamamie plan to find herself a husband, any shred of respect I had for her disappears (She obviously has no self respect so why should I respect her?). And to make matters worse, she bases her big choice on an article in a glossy magazine. As far as I’m concerned, anyone who makes life changing decisions based on a Vanity Fair quiz deserves everything they get.

After the opening scenes, when Ally has begun her quest, the movie settles comfortably into a series of well worn, rom-com cliches. So familiar was most of it that I counted a half dozen instances where I was able to guess what happened next – right down to the dialogue. Throw in a cringeworthy scene at the TD Gardens in Boston and the narrative somehow becomes both predictable and nonsensical.

Now, let’s look at the script. Personally, I enjoy toilet humour, so I never thought I would find a movie that relied so heavily on it that it made me – of all people – roll my eyes. The script is just a series of (poor) gags about penises, vaginas, anal sex, smelly fingers and bestiality. Vulgarity is used best when it’s used sparingly and it takes you by surprise. After half an hour of the toilet humour in What’s Your Number? nothing surprised me. It felt like someone was farting in my face for the entire runtime.

So surely the characters can bring some redemption to this sorry excuse for a movie? Sadly, no. Not only did I have no respect for the heroine, I also found myself really disliking her. She is a shallow, vain, vacuous brat. Her number one choice of ex-boyfriends to stalk is the richest. She judges most of the men in the movie primarily on social status, then appearance, then. . . well, that’s it, actually. Did I mention she stalks 20 men? Yes, that’s how she goes about finding her husband to be. She commissions a man she barely knows to dig up personal information about 20 men she previously had relationships with. And then has the gall to lament the fact that they dumped her crazy ass.

Evans is little better as Colin, the odious man-slut from across the hall. He fucks a different woman every night an then relies on Ally to help him weasel out of having to deal with them. When he and Ally concoct their plan to find her a mate, it’s plainly obvious that he wants to get into her knickers and he regularly says as much. For her part, she does nothing to discourage him, walking around all day with her ass hanging out. Am I really expected to like these people?

I can’t really fault the technical aspects of the movie. There is no flair, no imagination, nothing interesting about them. They’re hardly noticable and I’m thankful for that much at least. The editing was a little dodgy at times but apart from that, Mylod just lets the action play out without getting too involved.

But ultimately, poor acting, poor script, awful characters and a premise that left me shaking my head in disbelief means that What’s Your Number? should be avoided at all costs. But the worst thing about this movie is that it takes the audience for fools. Women are not as vapid as Ally’s character would suggest and men aren’t as repulsive as Colin. To ask us to believe that these two abominations could and should get together and have a healthy relationship is a bridge too far. Hollywood must do better.

2/10

Karol Murray

For more reviews like this one go to Bad Haven

Sheep Movie Review: Drive, slowly with seat belts

Drive directed by Nicholas Winding Refn stars Ryan Gosling, Bryan Cranston, Carey Mulligan and Ron Perlman was by far one of the worst movies I have seen this year. Hands down this movie stank to the high heavens seriously a complete waste of time and money.

Plot:

Ryan Gosling stars as a Los Angeles wheelman for hire, stunt driving for movie productions by day and steering getaway vehicles for armed heists by night. Though a loner by nature, Driver can't help falling in love with his beautiful neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan), a vulnerable young mother dragged into a dangerous underworld by the return of her ex-convict husband Standard (Oscar Isaac). After a heist intended to pay off Standard's protection money spins unpredictably out of control, Driver finds himself driving defense for the girl he loves, tailgated by a syndicate of deadly serious criminals. But when he realizes that the gangsters are after more than the bag of cash in his trunk-that they're coming straight for Irene and her son-Driver is forced to shift gears and go on offense.

First off I will admit that reviews on other sites are giving this movie much better ratings then I am going to give it here. Honestly, I don't know what the other reviewers are seeing in this movie because I'm a fan of Gosling (minus the Notebook) but by no means did he come across as believable in his portrayal as the "car driving badass". Sorry but he's just too soft around the edges for this type of role.

The most annoying thing about the movie was the slow motion. Every scene was littered with the special effect, an every detail just HAD to be slowed down to the point where glaciers look fast by comparison. For example, let's stare long and hard at Ryan driving and now let's slow that down. Oh wait let's look at Carey putting pins in her hair, and let's do it for a really long time and just for kicks and giggles lets slow it down. Despite the fact it's a girl doing her hair, which is in no way exciting. Now let's watch people laugh, ok long pause ANNNNND do it in SLOW MO this time too! Weeee slow mo for everyone! Party time. IN SLOW MO!!!!!! The point I'm trying to make is that the slow motion effect was so heavily overused for things that didn't even merit a slow mo effect that it made the film boring. Snails racing would have been faster than this.

The opening 5 minutes goes off with a kick, starting things out in such an amazing way you really think "wow this is gonna be good!" but it only dies down from there and finally sinks to the bottom of a very murky and ugly grave. There is absolutely no chemistry between Cary and Ryan, none at all but the film wants you to believe it's there. It then wants you to believe these over the topsituations and turns, again all in slow mo with long pauses. Drive's director takes this movie too far by trying to give it some artsy edge, but the only edge I want to feel is a blade sunk deep into something for wasting my time with this trash.

The movie should have been a 5 minute short, because the rest just grated my nerves. No back history is ever given on Ryan's character, he acts slow and talks slow but drives really fast. Excellent, but why? With tuff guy lines that never once came across as "tuff" or "intimidating" I found myself laughing at serious scenes. I ended up throwing popcorn at my girl friend (who picked this movie btw and will never again be picking our films!) and planning my dinner meals for the week just to pass the time. Always useful. Add to all this a soundtrack that sucked so hard my teeth almost fell out, like a scene where clearly the message is given to you, now you get the movie stating the message through song. Lets throw in some interpretive dance while were at it! *bust out dance moves* Sucked. Waste of time. Miss this one.

Getting 1/2 Slow Mo Running Sheep

KD

Colombiana: MY SPOON'S TOO BIG!

Colombiana, directed by Olivier Megaton, stars Zoey Saldana, Jordi Molla, Lennie James, Cliff Curtis and Michael Vartan. With bad acting all around, a dreadful script with more holes than a colander, frivolous nonsense and jokes that just don't work, Colombiana is the biggest waste of time this summer.

Plot:

In the action film Colombiana, Zoe Saldana plays Cataleya, a young woman who has grown up to be an assassin after witnessing the murder of her parents as a child. Turning herself into a professional killer and working for her uncle, she remains focused on her ultimate goal: to hunt down and get revenge on the mobster responsible for her parents' deaths.

This movie turns into the same silly stuff we've seen before. A revenge movie so cliched it's less than thrilling. The film desperately wants audiences to feel for our female action star, but with a script so lacking in character development there is nothing that could be done to redeem this movie. I will say Zoey commits to the role the best she can, but with such a horrendous script the results are understandably underwhelming.

OMG SPOILERZ!

Colombiana is so dependent on the most contrived coincidences to make the plot work. One of the worst examples in this movie would be Zoey's character intentionally going to prison, getting thrown into a cell, and somehow knowing she was going to get a cup of coffee with a spoon in it. With said spoon she's able to trigger a Goldberg-esque series of events that let her escape prison. WITH A SPOON. Thank the undead gods she got a spoon with that cup of coffee. Andy Dufresne took thirty years with a rock hammer to get out of prison, but Zoey does it in ten minutes with a spoon. A SPOON! Even under movie logic this makes no frelling sense whatsoever.

Another dreadful scene is Zoey's guard dogs, which she's only fed raw steak by the way, but she just so happens to know which vehicle in which one of the drug lords garage he will make his escape in. Out of his entire fleet of vehicles the drug lord decides to escape in his little wannabe A-team van instead of something, you know, fast. Nope, going to take a windowless van that can conveniently hide two dogs.

Honestly, this movie relies so much on coincidence that it totally breaks the suspension of disbelief. Otherwise it's the same cliched action movie dog dren we've seen a billion times before. If you really want to watch an action flick stick with Kill Bill or Hannah. Both are far more rewarding and dare I say logical than this.

Getting one pile of sheep pellets.

Dictated by Katie, written by BAK

Rise of the Planet of the Apes: Not a madhouse, just disappointing

By the Emperor, where to begin with this one? All right to be fair, I did not go into the film with high expectations. I've seen the original Planet of the Apes movie with Charlton Heston. I think it's a great movie. Sure it's kind of cheesy, a bit dated with the Cold War fear of nuclear apocalypse, and Heston's acting is rather hammy, but there's a sort of earnestness to the film. A lot of hard work went into the original film making it a cult classic and part of the zeitgeist. Now, do any of you remember the sequels to the original Planet of the Apes? All three of them? Yeah, I'm going to go with maybe a handful of you were even aware they existed. However, they do exist and they were.....well downright disappointing and generally ignored because they paled to the original. I don't know what to classify Rise, because I know there was a remake back in 2001. So is it a prequel, a relaunch, reboot, sequel? What is it? But honestly debating over what this particular film is will probably be a moot point because I expect this film to be quickly forgotten.

I'm going to go ahead and just spoil the plot because I don't think anyone should watch this movie. Save your money, watch the 1968 classic instead, it's much much better. So, our story begins with a generic pharmaceutical/genetic research company researching a drug called ALZ 112 and using it on chimpanzees. ALZ 112 dramatically increases the cognitive abilities of chimps and Dr. Will Rodman (James Franco) hopes to that this drug will provide a cure to Alzheimer's. Results are going great and they are preparing to move on to human testing with the drug when one of the test subject chimps goes on a rampage throughout the research headquarters. Ultimately the board is unimpressed and decides to declare ALZ 112 a failure. And then our first plot hole shows up. It turns out that the chimp that went on a rampage was trying to protect her baby. Which none of her handlers knew about. This entire time the chimpanzee's been pregnant and no one noticed? No one in this entire medical lab that has several specialists on chimpanzees did not realize that one of your test subjects was pregnant? Excuse me, I need to go rip some beef jerky apart to keep me from losing my mind.

Sorry about that, anyway with the rest of the chimps having been put down because the company thought it was a result of the drug, Will takes the little CGI monkey home with him. It is there that we meet Will's father, Franklin (John Lithgow) who is suffering from Alzheimer's. This explains why Will continues his research with ALZ 112 and his desperate hope for a cure. This will be important later. Anyway, since nothing interesting happens in the next three years we cut to Caesar, that's the name they give the chimp by the way, and his amazing mental development because....the drug...is in his genes...or...something. SCIENCE! Don't look at it too closely. Anyway, Caesar gets hurt and this is where we meet Caroline (Freida Pinto), a doctor at the San Francisco Zoo, I'm assuming it's the San Francisco Zoo because it's set in that city and I don't know if they have more than one zoo. Whatever, point is Caroline is apparently a chimp doctor and after patching Caesar up serves nothing more than being Will's romantic interest. Meanwhile, Franklin's condition gets worse and Will decides to start stealing ALZ 112 from work to treat his father hoping it will cure his disease. And then suddenly it's five years later! Wow, nothing interesting going on here! Except this brings up even more plot holes.

First of all, Will says that his father will probably have to be on monthly treatments of the drug so they can keep Alzheimer's at bay. So he's been stealing drugs, highly expensive drugs mind you, on a regular basis, to treat his father FOR FIVE YEARS! HOW HAS NO ONE NOTICED? No one has caught on? Really guys? I mean, I guess maybe it's possible but....really? But before we can struggle with this plot hole we get another whammy, Caroline and Caesar ask about Caesar's origins. So Will explains, briefly, that he works for the pharmaceutical company and got Caesar from the failed experiment. And Caroline's surprised! She's known him for five years and never, not even once, asked where he got Caesar from? Even if he lied about where Caesar came from you mean to tell me that for five years Caroline has known nothing about what Will does for a job? Nothing? *shakes head*

Anyway, it turns out Frank's immune system is starting to fight the drug and it's not working anymore so Will has to develop a new more aggressive strain of the drug which is apparently a virus treatment. Sorry, I'd ask a pre-med friend for help but it's 2:30 in the morning and I want to get this finished. Anyway, so Will's company begins testing with ALZ 113 on a new batch of chimps and it looks like science will bring a better future for us all. Meanwhile during one of his relapses Frank crashes David Hewlett's car (Wait, they got Dr. McCay for this? How?). Hewlett gets really angry, Caesar comes down and bites his finger off. So Caesar has to go to chimpanzee jail. Technically it's a primate refuge, but based on how they treat the chimps there it's more of a prison. Oh yeah, just a by the by, anyone who hates seeing animals be mistreated will hate this movie. Just a minor point but worth mentioning.

Anyway when Caesar gets put in the chimp house, the movie starts lagging and relying on CGI monkeys to carry the weight. And I don't know where chronologically we are in the movie, but in terms of pacing it's like 70% of the movie that relies on CGI monkeys. Sure there's some stuff happening outside the chimp house but it keeps coming back to the damn monkeys. And I don't know about you but the CGI apes look...wrong somehow. Sort of like the uncanny valley, but with apes instead of people. I kind of got a headache watching a bunch of CGI monkeys for over an hour. And perhaps the weakest part of this film is references to the original film during the chimp prison parts. I've heard rumors that you shouldn't mention better movies in your film, but every time I noticed a reference to the original Planet of the Apes, I wished I could have been watching that instead.

Anyway, so as you could probably guess from the trailer, Caesar leads an escape! Oh no, the monkeys are learning! In fact, Caesar manages to break out of chimp jail, get some samples of ALZ 113 (which is airborne now instead of being a shot like ALZ 112 was) and make all the monkeys in the chimp house intelligent now.

However, ALZ 113 is not the miracle drug that we hoped for. It turns out that while it makes apes super-intelligent, it kills humans.....somehow. I'm about 90% sure that's...not...physically possible...maybe a biology expert could help me out. Anyway *dramatic chord* It's deadly to humans but makes monkeys smart! And the virus is out, oh no! Okay, so one lab tech got infected and he infected David Hewlett. How far can it spread really? More on that later.

Anyway the last part of the movie is basically CGI apes going around San Francisco, freeing more apes, and causing general havoc. Apparently there's like 5,000 monkeys hidden in San Francisco or something. I can think of maybe 50 monkeys we have here in Cincinnati but maybe things are different over there in California. Anyway, the monkeys flee across the Golden Gate bridge, huge fight scene, helicopter, horses for some reason (probably again referring to the original movie), and in the end Caesar and the apes all flee to the redwood forests of California and live out their lives in peace. Oh, and they can talk now. Again, I'm no expert so maybe a biologist can help, but I don't know if chimpanzees have the same vocal equipment to produce the sounds of human speech. Is that possible? Oh well the monkeys are free and the movie ends on an upbeat note as the credits roll.

Wait...the virus kills people. Were we going to resolve that? Guys? Guys?

Okay, yes, it's resolved. It turns out David Hewlett is an airline pilot and is briefly shown after a handful of credits to be slowly dying in a busy airport. The credits then continue showing the spread of the plague across the airline routes and presumably killing us all.

Well. That did not go as planned.

Ultimately this movie is just downright terrible. The plot of the Alzheimer's drug is full of holes in the beginning and becomes less and less relevant as the film progresses. The characters are one-dimensional and end up as nothing more than framing devices for the "conflict" of Caesar. I mean, there's nothing about Caroline other than she's a chimpanzee doctor and she's in a relationship with Will. The movie would lose literally nothing with her gone. And that's not because I hate romance plots. There's not even a romance plot, she's just there. Seriously, the film's really about Caesar, and he doesn't even talk. Well, he does at the end, but most of the time he's silent. And he's not even real! He's just CGI! And while it's possible for a plot to revolve around such a character, this movie just does not have it. A far more interesting conflict would be asking if we should treat Caesar as an animal or as a person because he is straddling the line between them. Instead we watch him slowly plot to get out and...take over the world? Get free? Caesar never really has a clear motivation. So watching him and a bunch of other CGI apes for a couple hours is just boring. And, personally, the CGI rendering is not the best so I found it painful from an aesthetic viewpoint to watch as well. Overall this was a terrible movie experience and I would not take anyone to see it.

Getting one sheep because that's the lowest I can give it.

BAK

Prince of Persia, it cost money to see this?

Oh wait! I've seen this movie its called The Mummy! No? Ok, then its called National Treasure! No again? Ok, how about Indiana Jones Temple of Doom! No? Lost Arc?

I swear I've seen this before.....hhhhmmm *light bulb going off

Got it! Its because this has BEEN DONE BEFORE AND FAR BETTER THAN THIS!

Starting my actual review now, Prince of Persia directed by Mike Newell and staring Jake Gyllenhaal (jill-en-hall) as our hunky eye candy Dastan, Gemma Arterton (who could double as Data's sister from STTNG) as Princess Tamina, and Sir Ben Kingsley (not sure if I can forgive you for this on Ben) as Nizam.

I would like to take this time to point out that so far all these characters are of Caucasian decent, and 2 out of the 3 talk in this movie as in real life, with an English accent. I mean was this all Hollywood could come up with? Are we as a nation that afraid of seeing middle eastern actors on screen in the US? A debate for another day perhaps but for now, lets all say together...P-E-R-S-I-A. Say it with me now, come on guys, PERSIA. :)

I think the powers at be decided it would be a really swell idea to raid a halloween superstore! (ok I am totally guilty of that too) Throw a bunch of half-rate low budget wigs on these actors and just call it a day. Look now their Persian! I can hear it now, "Hey just pull out those cheap wigs for these guys Tom and get this movie made baby! Now action!"

Stunts in this movie were so freakin corny I was cracking up non stop, and the hits just kept coming. I mean of course every time you need an exact length of rope to jump off a roof while escaping the bad guys, it just happens to be there. I mean duh.

Jake, baby, your hot but honey your not that hot. I didn't buy any of it. No deal. Your acting sucked and your stunts were even worse. Was that really the best accent you could come up with? Give it up to your stunt double though. Just you stand there and look pretty sweetie. Smile and wave boys, just smile and wave. :)

Gemma, why don't you ever have facial expressions? Is it a medical issue? Come on. This was the same character from Clash of The Titans (which also sucked) and I am just not feeling it. Give me some depth in your work, be an actress. Believe you can fly! Believe you can touch the sky! *dang now i want to hear that song.

Alfred Molina played the character of Sheik Amar, a bad rip off of Jake Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean. Sorry dude you just cant fill those shoes, Johnny's got it on lock!

Green Screen. Man on man this movie was over the top with the green screen action, you couldn't even pretend it was real. Fake and fake and shake and bake. And I have so seen this set at Epcot in Florida, walked thorough it in fact. Glad to know Disney spared no expense on this one. Ata-boy.

If by now your still unsure about my review let me spell it out, this movie bombed the big one. Pass it up and watch The Mummy, at least Brandon Fraiser is funny. Sorry you had to pay for this one V, I got you next time.

KD