Category: Home Video

So I was wondering what I was going to review this morning, and at first it was going to be the Super Bowl, but 50% of American’s watched it, so it is kind of unreviewable.  Next up I was thinking I just watched The Breakfast Club for like the twentieth time, but hey it is a John Hughes classic and if you haven’t seen it shame on you.  So thanks to my wife I also just watched the movie Pitch Perfect.

Pitch Perfect is about at rag-tag all girls a cappella glee club, The Barden Bellas, trying to win it all.  Of course they have to out sing the all men group that is conveniently from the same school.  The movie starts off with a loner, Beca (Anna Kendrick), who just likes to mix music and be alone, but gets dragged in to singing when another girl hears her sing in the shower.  Then Beca’s new ideas put her at odds with the head of the group.  I won’t spoil the end, but I am sure you can figure it out.

The movie is tons of fun.  It plays with glee club culture and makes it seem hip and cool.  The main flaw that this movie has is that main character has crippling attachment issues that maker her push everyone that likes her away, and since they are all likable people it makes her unlikable for quite a bit of the movie, and that is always a dangerous choice. Thankfully Rebel Wilson’s role as “Fat Amy” keeps this film funny and light hearted.  Rebel is becoming a standout in comedy these days and Pitch Perfect is another feather in her cap.

Pitch Perfect is a good movie with a great supporting cast, and if you like glee clubs or college movies it is for sure something to put in your queue to watch.  But if you haven’t seen Breakfast Club watch that first because John Hughes rocks.

Treasure Planet is a Disney movie that people tend to forget about, but seeing it on Netflix prompted me to give it a try.

Treasure Planet is one of the few Disney animated films where they are specifically targeting boys.  It has everything from space boats to an alien that speaks in farts, and the main character rides a powered hover-board.  In my perspective, as a boy, it mostly succeeds at this attempt. I like space, pirates, and think fart humor is funny, so good work everybody, but it never breaks through and  becomes a classic.  I think that they were trying just a little too hard to be ‘cool’.

The story is mostly the same as Treasure Island except in space, and I was wondering during the film if they just did Treasure Island if it would have been a classic.  I think with the cast and crew it would have been close.

As is, it is a good flick and I think most people should check it out.

Wrath of the Titans is the sequel to the reboot of Clash of the Titans which did horrible business in the US but did great business overseas, so I am sure that producers hoped that this would do the same.  It didn’t.  But it promised big monsters and cool landscapes, so I gave it a try.

This movie had one thing going for it.  Cool Monsters, and it delivered on that, but sadly everything else was lacking.  The story was that pretty much everyone had daddy issues and they they had all reached a boiling point because the stupid humans decided to stop praying to the gods making the gods weak, and because they were weak they could no longer contain the big daddy of them all, Cronos: giant lava monster.  He is the father of the gods, and he wants to wipe out the Earth or something, so our heroes obviously decide to stop him.

So they go from one cool looking fight to the next to stop oblivion, but the problem is that you never feel that they are in danger, and they do nothing to develop the characters to care if they make it or not, so all you get is cool looking stuff, which looks great on my big screen, but makes the 97 minute run time seem like slow motion.  I am sure the main motivation for actors in this film was the pay check, and since all they had to do was hang out in sand box surrounded by a green screen, heck why not.

So if you like cool looking bad guys and dudes in skirts, this is your movie.  If those aren’t enough then look else ware for TV viewing fun.