Thursday, December 15, 2011

The Muppets, or Nostalgia: The New American Enterprise.


The Muppets currently has a 97% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, has been recommended to me by countless friends with varying tastes in cinema, and boasts Jason Segel as lead actor and co-writer.  The signs were good that The Muppets would be a good time.  And I hated it.

Well, hate is a strong word.  There were short bursts of entertainment sandwiched between the spastic narrative and flat jokes, but I can only explain the overwhelming mass approval of The Muppets to myself by assuming that adults have been validating its flaws; either through some sort of Muppet nostalgia, or a forgiveness due to the false assumption that kids movies don't actually have to be good.

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Like Crazy: Your Annual Deteriorating Relationship.


Last year, Ryan Gosling demonstrated that love and ukulele skills aren't always enough to sustain a relationship.  In 2009, Colin Firth showed us the absolute heartbreak of losing a lover.  We tend to get about one accurate relationship drama a year, and 2011's offering appears to be Like Crazy.  

Like Crazy's accuracy on the highs and lows of young love, as well as the difficulty of long-distance relationships is hard to deny, and while the film's emotional instances serve up quite a few high points, they tend to get muddled in the simplicity of the film's composition, which serves as a detriment to the overall quality of the film.