A Good Old Fashioned Orgy (2011/Sony DVD)/Answer This! (2012/Lionsgate DVD)/Dirty Girl (2009/Anchor Bay DVD)/Division III: Football’s Finest (2011/Image Blu-ray)/I Don’t Know How She Does It
(2011/Anchor Bay Blu-ray)/Serendipity
(2001)/She’s All That (2001/Miramax/Lionsgate
Blu-rays)
Picture: C/C/C/C+/B-/B/B- Sound: C+/C+/C+/C+/B-/B-/B- Extras: D/C-/C/D/C-/C/D Films: D/C/C/D/C-/C/C-
There
used to be a time when you could see what we would call a dumb comedy and it
would be fun, but now, it is dumb of dumb of dumb and this extends to comedy
films about sports and education, definitely including teen films. The following group of duds and a few
disappointments show how long this has been taking place in the genre.
Back in
the 1970s, a film with a title like A
Good Old Fashioned Orgy (2011) would have been would have had no problem
with sexual content and would have been an honest work, but even in this
“unrated” version is not old fashioned, amusing or interesting in the
least. The cast includes two alumni from
the later sad seasons of Saturday Night
Live, Jason Sudeikis and Will Forte who are hardly funny and less so here,
plus I recognize Lake Bell, but this is an amazingly pointless exercise about
boring people who should not have sex or see anyone else doing it.
What sex
is here is a sick joke and the idea that these are 30-somethings from The
Hamptons does not even ring true to the point that actual residents ought to
sue for defamation, but that would help the release so I ask them to pass if
they consider this. The point is that
everyone should skip this by all means.
Extras (can you believe it has some) include a Gag Reel (yes, they made
a pun after that one), Deleted Scenes (no different from the final content) and
one of the worst audio commentary tracks I have heard in a while.
Christopher
Farah’s Answer This! (2012) is from
the gang who made Funny Or Die for
TV strike out with this dud about bored goofs who like trivial pursuit-type
games and this leads to a “big” contest at the end, but this is so uninspired
and unfunny that the like the previous dud, did anyone think any of this was
really funny? Chris Parnell shows up and
Kip Purdue (doing a funny accent) steals his scenes by simply out acting (not
much effort needed in this case, though) his scenes and this would have likely
been funnier if it had been about his character. Sad.
Extras include Deleted Scenes, Outtakes, two featurettes and a feature length
audio commentary track with Director Farah, Producer Mike Farah and Producer
Anna Wegner.
More
ambitious but still problematic, Abe Sylvia’s Dirty Girl (2009) is about the title character (another good
performance by Juno Temple as Danielle) who is the gal in school who likes to
“do it” circa 1987, but she is doing so badly in school that she is demoted to
classes with slower students and her troubled life gets worse. At home, her mother (a fine performance by
Milla Jovovich) intends to marry a phony Mormon goof (William H. Macy) and try
to have a “happy, perfect” life while she has never met her own blood father; a
role he thinks he’ll take over. Danielle
meets Clarke (Jeremy Dozier) who has his own problems.
He is an
oppressed gay teen who loves female singers (especially Melissa Manchester) and
is stuck with a physically abusive father (Dwight Yoakam in a thankless role)
and passive mother (Mary Steenburgen dead on again) who is on the verge of
being sent to military school by his father to punish him/‘eradicate’ his
gayness. Despite having a fine cast,
good ideas and period accuracy going for it, the film is inconsistent as the
director decides to experiment with the narrative and this keeps ruining any
sense of suspension of disbelief and chops up any build-up when it
happens. This will become a curio or
possibly cult work, but it has too many troubles. In addition, it is so outclassed by Donnie Darko (which takes place about
the same time) it is not even funny.
Extras
include Deleted & Extended Scenes and a feature length audio commentary by
Sylvia that is impressive and shows how hard he was trying.
Effort
was hardly evident in Marshall Cook’s horrid Division III: Football’s Finest (2011), proving once again how
unfunny Andy Dick is and Adam Corolla shows up essentially playing himself yet
again. Dick is a screwed-up football
coach who is going to save a losing football team, but instead of a spoof of
such dumb movies, this just wants to be an outright comedy and is totally
laughless. Who though this was funny? Think hick clichés and every bad thing you
have seen in such releases before and you’ve practically seen this one. Extras include Outtakes, Deleted Scenes,
Outtakes, two featurettes and a feature length audio commentary by Dick and
Cook that is awful.
Douglas
McGrath’s I Don’t Know How She Does It
(2011) proves once again how unfunny Sarah Jessica Parker is as she is struck
as a mom and financier barely juggling her life and all the stress and
stupidity is about to catch up with her.
Her husband (Greg Kinnear) is sticking with her (poor guy) as she gets
to know a certain co-worker (Pierce Brosnan) and it becomes a domestic would-be
comedy that tells us she is just a dumb house mother who should have never
tried to be a part of the working force when all is said and done. Ultimately condescending and regressive, that
is likely why you have not heard of it until now, though some of the actors try
to make this work. Seth Meyers shows up
here, making this like a bad list of what SNL
stars do to fill their off-air time and the only extra is an on-camera interview
with author Allison Pearson whose book this mess was based on.
Peter
Chelsom’s Serendipity (2001) was one
of the last attempts to get John Cusack into another …say anything-like romantic film, even down to casting the
beautiful Kate Beckinsale opposite him as they meet and she decides that she’ll
only date him if she meets him again without exchanging contact
information. Amusing and that idea could
have worked, playing on romantic myths of fated love, but this is too much of a
softball flick to ever work and it has not aged well at all sadly despite the
likable pairing. Even Jeremy Piven and
Molly Shannon cannot jumpstart this one.
Extras include Storyboard Comparison, Starz network promo piece, Chelsom
Production Diary, Deleted Scenes with optional commentary and a feature length
audio commentary by Chelsom.
Last and
almost least is the infamous hit She’s
All That (1999), the Robert Iscove-directed disaster that had Hollywood spending
pointless millions of dollars to make talent-free Freddie Prinze, Jr. into a
movie star and ruining Rachel Leigh Cook’s career sadly in the short term. In a high school where he is the stud and
she the nerd, he takes her for granted until he falls for her, but lies about
it and when she finds out, decides to let him have it and avenge herself, but
he is suddenly “sincere” and wants to go after her. She should run away!
Matthew
Lillard (in one of his many annoying appearances with Prinze, Jr.), Paul Walker
(later of those tired Fast & Furious
films), a wasted Kevin Pollack, an also wasted Kieran Culkin, Anna Paquin and
token African American characters played by likable actors including music star
Kimberly “Lil’ Kim” Jones make up the supporting cast, but this is really
regressive cinema and that is why its education-hating, quasi-racist, confused
and even virgin/whore complex suffering wreck of a film has aged badly and was
never good to begin with. If you have
not seen it in a while, be prepared for shock.
Extras include Music Video, Trailer and a feature length audio
commentary by Iscove.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 on Orgy
and same type of 2.35 X 1 image on Answer
and Girl are softer throughout than
expected, though Girl is narrowly
the best-looking of them. The 1080p 1.78
X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on al the Blu-rays (though That is actually 1.85 X 1) all play
back better than their DVD counterparts, but Division is the softest Blu of all with more soft edges and motion
blur than anything else.
All three
DVDs have lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes that are underwhelming and are
dialogue/joke-based. All four Blu-rays
offer DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mixes, but they are somewhat all
towards the front speakers, though Division
is particularly weak and not well recorded.
That and Serendipity show their audio age too.
- Nicholas Sheffo
