She's having the time of his life.
And your's too.
Take Your Money
Man. I was not prepared for this. God. This was freaking horrible. No funny intro today. This movie is straight up awful right out of the gate. I have a system here on Cinema Won. Since I can't usually go see more than one movie a weekend, every month I pick some of the bigger movies and, no matter the reviews, I have to see them when they are available on Netflix. That really backfires sometimes. Like today. This hurt. A lot. Directed by Seth Gordon (The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters) and written by Craig Mazin (The Hangover Part III), the film follows Sandy (Jason Bateman), as he leaves his pregnant wife (Amanda Peet), and travels to Florida to catch Diana (Melissa McCarthy), a thief who stole his identity. For some extremely contrived reasons, the duo find themselves forced to drive back to Colorado in a week, facing off against criminals (Genesis Rodriguez and T.I.) and a bounty hunter (Robert Patrick).
 |
| McCarthy, seen trying to escape from this movie. |
I Don't Even...
I mean, I'm not even sure where to begin. Just about everything is wrong with this movie. The writing, the acting, the humor. It looks like it... could be considered a movie. I sorry, I have nothing for this one. I could easily just give you a list of everything wrong with this movie. In fact:
- The humor is terrible. Most of the film's humor consists of beating people up. Apparently, the filmmakers thought that McCarthy sucker punching people in the throat was so funny, they use the joke at least 5 different times. When your punchlines are "Hey, that woman got hit by a car" or "Hey, those people got shot", then your aren't making a funny movie.
- Even the regular jokes don't work. The funniest bits are in the trailer and I didn't even think the trailer was all that funny. The just aren't funny. It's not even like the jokes are bad. I'm just not even sure they are making jokes in this movie. They just take mean jabs are people's weight or how they just horribly maimed someone. Except they don't because a person can get in a major car accident and walk away fine.
- The acting is alright. McCarthy and Bateman are at least trying to be funny. They fail miserably, but you can't blame them when the have this awful a script to work with. Seriously, their characters are completely unlikable. No matter how hard a life she had, Diana is still a criminal that ruined people's lives. It is implied that she's done this tons of times and Bateman just got lucky enough to catch her before his life completely imploded. As for Sandy, he's a jerk who uses the fact that Diana is a criminal to abuse her verbally and physically. Granted she does the same thing, but still, he's a douchebag.
- The sub-plot are tacked on. In all seriousness, the movie is too long, clocking in a nearly 2 full hours. This is because the filmmakers shoehorned in the bounty hunter and the other criminals for no actual reason. They add nothing to the plot and just make the story even more needlessly complicated. They're just around to have more people get abused and humiliated. They have about 20 minutes screentime and they don't add a damn thing to the film.
- And, finally, the emotional parts just don't work. The film spends so much time making fun of Diana's weight that when it suddenly tries to make us feel bad for her, it's just comes off as cheap and manipulative. The movie couldn't feel any more cloying if it had a scene in an animal shelter with a country song playing over it. The film makes fun of it's characters and then tries to look like a good guy. This film is essentially your 8th-grade bully.
- The humor is terrible. Most of the film's humor consists of beating people up. Apparently, the filmmakers thought that McCarthy sucker punching people in the throat was so funny, they use the joke at least 5 different times. When your punchlines are "Hey, that woman got hit by a car" or "Hey, those people got shot", then your aren't making a funny movie.
- Even the regular jokes don't work. The funniest bits are in the trailer and I didn't even think the trailer was all that funny. The just aren't funny. It's not even like the jokes are bad. I'm just not even sure they are making jokes in this movie. They just take mean jabs are people's weight or how they just horribly maimed someone. Except they don't because a person can get in a major car accident and walk away fine.
- The acting is alright. McCarthy and Bateman are at least trying to be funny. They fail miserably, but you can't blame them when the have this awful a script to work with. Seriously, their characters are completely unlikable. No matter how hard a life she had, Diana is still a criminal that ruined people's lives. It is implied that she's done this tons of times and Bateman just got lucky enough to catch her before his life completely imploded. As for Sandy, he's a jerk who uses the fact that Diana is a criminal to abuse her verbally and physically. Granted she does the same thing, but still, he's a douchebag.
- The sub-plot are tacked on. In all seriousness, the movie is too long, clocking in a nearly 2 full hours. This is because the filmmakers shoehorned in the bounty hunter and the other criminals for no actual reason. They add nothing to the plot and just make the story even more needlessly complicated. They're just around to have more people get abused and humiliated. They have about 20 minutes screentime and they don't add a damn thing to the film.
- And, finally, the emotional parts just don't work. The film spends so much time making fun of Diana's weight that when it suddenly tries to make us feel bad for her, it's just comes off as cheap and manipulative. The movie couldn't feel any more cloying if it had a scene in an animal shelter with a country song playing over it. The film makes fun of it's characters and then tries to look like a good guy. This film is essentially your 8th-grade bully.
 |
| Hi, useless character! |
The Verdict
I know a list might seem like a lazy cop-out, but that's because it kinda is. But, as much as I wanted to do a regular review, I just couldn't. This was utterly abysmal. The film is just painfully unfunny, repulsively mean and embarrassingly made. I couldn't stand to get this movie more than a lazy review. It doesn't deserve actual thought. It just deserves to be gotten out of your mind as quickly as possible. Unless, of course, this crappy sequel idea actually happens. Ugh. Identity Thief gets 1 star out of 6.
No comments:
Post a Comment