Naked Hobo

When a meteorite lands on her just before her wedding, young Susan Murphy (Reese Witherspoon) finds herself changed.  The energy from the meteorite causes her to grow and grow and grow.  The government swoops in, takes her to a holding facility, and renames her Ginormica.  There she meets her fellow monstrous captives, B.O.B. (Seth Rogen), Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie),  The Missing Link (Will Arnett), and their captor General W.R. Monger (Keifer Sutherland).  When an alien comes to take over earth, the world turns to the monsters to save them.

The cast is really rather unimportant, as it tends to be with anything animated.  It doesn’t take an Oscar caliber actor to turn in a good performance with voice over work.  This is not to say that all voice over work is good, just that the quality of the actor only matters if they are really bad.  So, while Seth Rogen makes a decent B.O.B., I could come up with several dozen other people that could have voiced him just as well.

So, that means that the story needs to carry the film more.  This film doesn’t have a strong enough story.  It is sometimes funny, and the concept is good, but it could have been executed better.  At times the story just seems to drag.  I heard that it was quite impressive in 3D, but only being able to see it on my TV, I can’t give it any points for coolness there.  This was an okay film for a rental, but it could have been so much more, 2 1/2 Axes.

Sidhu is a cook in India and a master of slicing vegetables.   His friend, Chinese philosopher and con man, convinces him that he is the reincarnation of Liu Sheung, a slain Chinese revolutionary.  Sidhu leaves his home for China and choas ensues.

Wow, people from India sure must love musical song and dance numbers, because this movie is full of them.  I was expecting a bit more action and a little less sap and song.  There are some really good movies coming out of India, and some really good martial art type movies too.  It is a shame that this one was chosen as an introduction for American audiences.  The funny bits are not really all that funny, and by the time any real action starts to happen, odds are you have already checked out because of boredom.  I had high hopes for this when I first heard about it, but it was just plain stupid and a serious waste of time even watching it, 1 Axe.

Joe Barret (Humphrey Bogart) returns to Japan after the war to try to restart the life he had their prior to the worldwide conflict.   Learning that his wife that he walked out on just before the war is still alive, and also learning that she has remarried puts him in a pinch to find a job so he can stay in Tokyo and win her back.  Caught between the criminal underworld and the authorities, with his newly found daughter used as a pawn, Joe must try to do what is right, not just for himself, but for those he cares about.

This is not one of the cannon of films that make up the ultimate Bogart collection.  It is yet another in a sad series of less than average to poor films he made during his career.  It is a bit hokey, a bid dopey, and a bit boring.  No faulting Bogart though, he is his usual self, which is to say he does a great job of playing himself.  For most actors that can be a bad thing, but Bogey tends to make it work.

It is interesting to note though that this was the first film to be shot in post war Japan.  It is almost completely without much of the racial attacks one would expect from a film coming so soon after the war.  Still, being nice to the Japanese isn’t enough to make this a good movie, 1 1/2 Axes.

Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) is a reporter trying to prove his worth to his wife.  He heads to Kuwait in the hope that he can make it into Iraq and report on the war.  While in Kuwait he runs into Lyn Cassady (George Clooney) who begins to tell him a rather amazing, and most often unbelievable, story about a secret military program to train psychic soldiers.

How could this film not be good?  You have George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey, and Jeff Bridges, and goats.  I knew going in this wasn’t going to be a normal movie going experience.  I don’t want to say that I am disappointed, but I wasn’t blown away either.  I place no blame for this on the actors.  Spacey does well as the jealous and semi-evil Larry Hooper. Clooney does his usual job as bit of a huckster who is hip without trying to be hip, Bridges plays the trippy and new age Bill Django with definite hints of the Dude.  No, the fault lies with the film itself.  There are laughs to be had, some good interaction between the characters on screen.  What is lacking is a sense of cohesion to bring everything together.

As I said before, I wasn’t disappointed, I’m not really sure how to put it.  Maybe I was expecting too much, or maybe I’m not even sure what I was expecting.  I think that maybe they just weren’t sure what they wanted this movie to say.  It needed better focus, as it is, the film seems disjointed, a collection of trippy scenes and flashbacks that try to tell a story but more often lead to just a confused and directionless mass.  Some of that was on purpose I am sure, but I think the film took on a life of its own and the director was unable to maintain control over his own creation.I still had a good movie going experience, I laughed, I sat amazed that some of this is really true, to some degree or another, but I really hoped it would have been better, as it is, I’ll go 3 1/2 Axes, which is probably higher than it deserves in some ways, lower in others.