Tag Archives: comedy

Meet the Fockers

So, it’s the whole big Christmas Day thing, with the presents, and the cooking of the meal, and all that. My first Christmas to host, or to cook. I’m on downtime right now, the potatoes are baking, to be followed by the turkey roast. Also, Star Wars is on, maintaining a Christmas tradition begun by the USA network but today continued by my DVD player. Finally.

Wherein lies my problem. I have time to discuss Meet the Fockers, but it’s hard to put together the inclination. It was funny, sure. Lots of genuine humor, and lots of feel bad about yourself for laughing humor. It’s just that it was very generic. I liked the first one quite a bit, but despite the extended starry cast list, this felt like Meet the Parents-lite. Twice as many expensive actors, half as much edginess and black humor.

Even De Niro was phoning it in. I mean, name a movie of his where he doesn’t stab someone in the neck with a syringe. And too many of the scenes were there to be one-note jokes that were completely separate from the plot of the movie. Funny is good, but it should either be less disposable or a lot more funny to make it justifiable. If you really need a comedy, sure, go, but it was PG-13, so if you can stand commercials, I’d wait for it to show up on Comedy Central. Also: Why Christmas? A very nonsensical release weekend, if you ask me.

Anyway, back to the cooking. Which will be more filling and fulfilling, both.

Team America: World Police

It’s always feast or famine, they say. Don’t get me wrong, they say a lot of things, and frankly I wish they’d get off their goddamned high horses and stop saying things, because we’re all pretty much sick of them. ‘Look at me, I’m saying something!’ Pricks.

Um. Right. Feast or famine. That was proven true this week, when after a lifetime of never having seen anatomically correct doll breasts, I’ve now seen four over the course of my last two movies. I’m fairly sure this won’t happen again, but it was a strange confluence of events, without doubt.

In this case, they came in the sex scene from Team America: World Police, a scene that I’m told was edited heavily to get an R rating for the film. After having seen it, I fear for the director’s cut. Everything they left in would have bypassed late night Cinemax rules. So, the movie had that gimmick going for it.

It also had the puppets themselves, a gag that I bought into for the first hour of the film (what I thought was the first 90 minutes of the film, and that’s never a good sign). After that, it had to stand on its own merits. Which existed, but not for movie length.

Basically, you have the South Park crew saying the same thing they say in every global episode of the show. That Americans suck ass, but everyone else in the world sucks more ass, except for all those people who say the things they keep insisting on saying long past the point where we’ve stopped listening (And you thought I wasn’t going anywhere with that they thing at the start, admit it. Well, ha!), who suck the most ass of all. I must say, it’s an argument that I often find compelling. But it is not an argument that can sustain 100 minutes of film. On the bright side, they brought along some of the music they’re so good at. On the less bright side, the argument still isn’t enough to sustain the other 75 minutes of film.

In short, I liked it and found it often funny, but I wish they’d made a two-part South Park episode instead. The puppets were cool and all, but not that cool. Kim Jong Il’s panthers were brilliant, though, and will be worth the price of a netflix rental.