Reviews

I saw this flick when it first opened and prior to that I was very much looking forward to seeing it from the previews. To my disappointment, it did not live up to the hype. There are numerous things that went awry with this film.

First and foremost; is the selection of Tom Cruise as the lead character. With all the media attention he's been getting lately and his surreal personality is just very distracting. As an audience, I can not separate the actor from the character he's playing – Ray Ferrier. But then again, that's Tom Cruise who is always "big" whenever he acts. It seemed as though being 'too big' is the only range he knows best as far as acting is concern. He seemed like he is always constipated whenever he acts (take for instance Jerry MgGuire, A Few Good Men). His fellow actors on the other hand; Dakota Fanning (played his daughter Rachel), Justin Chatwin (played his rebellious son Robbie), were the anti-thesis of Cruise. Both young actors were convincing in the film. As an audience you react to their characters and hate them for the most parts. Such is an evidence of solid acting, you do not see the actor but you see the character they play.

Second, the plot is very simple. A man's struggle to keep his family alive as they travel from point A to point B and in the background is the alien invasion. Nothing is wrong with that plot, in fact it is quite commendable to an extent. It illustrates what men (people in general) would do I the midst of a crisis – fight or flight or both. Fight to a point of killing an innocent man to flee to save his family from a conflict as depicted in a few notable scenes in the film. The drama that the film makers attempted to convey surrounding some of the scenes would have been more convincing if the antagonist were real – i.e. the Nazi, the rogue tribal militia etc. But the aliens? Come on! I guess what I'm trying to say is, keep the drama out of films of this type. It just did not worked.

Third, the dialog is detached to what is going on in the film. Call me a realist, but it's not the kind of dialog you would hear victims of tsunami would be uttering. For instance:

Ray Ferrier: "They're not from around here". Robbie Ferrier: "You mean they're, like, from Europe?" Ray Ferrier: "No, Robbie, they're not from Europe."

What is up with that? It's lacking urgency and fear considering it's allegedly the end of the world.

Despite the flaws, I still managed to find the movie entertaining albeit mediocre. It has great special effects as always but even that becomes a norm these days. It's a definite rental.

SPANGLISH - a term with negative connotation to numerous Spanish-Americans (or at least to the first generation or older immigrants).

As the title implies, the movie makes a very interesting and subtle social commentary about the Mexican American dynamics/contrast in society. Obviously as expected, the film illustrates a few stereotypes. For example, when Florrr's (played by Paz Vega) cousin, Cecilia hit the sliding glass door and her nose bled, the wife Deborah Clasky (played by Tia Leone) offered her money instead. It's sad but true in today's society.

But what make the film interesting are its subtleties. For instance the casting and the characters itself. The producers could have hired a blonde blue eyed male lead instead of Adam Sandler, but they did not. Why? Because Sandler's character (John Clasky) is an antithesis of the wife, Deborah Clasky. She's blonde blue eyed superficial, emotionally disturbed, patronizing, solipsistic, white housewife, who the writer ( Brooks )probably wants to portray as the epitome of everything that is bad about white people - or Americans for that matter (however exaggerated they portrayed her to be). You can empathize with the husband's character and Adam Sandler played it very well. It's interesting to note, the husbands character's last name is Clasky - possibly his ancestors were immigrants as well. And his character is portrayed as someone who "gets it", someone who understands Florrr - an immigrant mother who wants her daughter raised with her own values and integrity even though she is only a lowly servant to the Clasky's.

One of the interesting scenes in the film that I found very clever was the argument between Florrrr and John. It showed the two sides of the dynamic. While I was watching it I thought to myself, any other individual would immediately apologize and patronize the immigrant housemaid in the expense of goodwill. But I was surprised that Sandler's character actually called her a "hypocrite" instead, and she realized he has a point. Not to criticize her (it's probably what Deborah would have done) would be hypocritical as well. This is another social commentary that was written very well and cleverly portrayed in the film.

The acting is equally superb. You could just hate some of the characters specially the housewife and the daughter Cristina Moreno (played by Shelbie Bruce). You can just empathize with Adam Sandler's character and his daughter, Bernice. The only people amongst the Claskys that is very adult. The grandmother's character on the other hand (played by Cloris Leachman ) whose always drinking provides a respite to the insanity in the story and ironically always the unobtrusive and yet emphatic character despite how she lived her life. In the end she was the voice of reason for the wife.

Equally, the dialogue is worth mentioning. Interestingly, there are no subtitles on all the Spanish spoken dialogue but the audience can kind of get the gist of what's being said or argued. It can be distracting to some audiences but thankfully, Florrr's character learned to speak English in the second half of the film. Also, the Spanish without subtitles added a few good scenes in the film and added a positive credence to the title SPANGLISH. It illustrates how to write the quintessential part of the screenplay without making it too cliché.

Overall, I liked this film. If you can look at it in the same light as I saw the film, you would enjoy it too and find it cleverly written and directed. Otherwise, it could be a little slow and the dialogue can be a little bit distracting. It doesn't help some of it is in Spanish and Adam sandler's character cannot express himself very well verbally.

This movie is awfully unbearable.

For awhile, I thought it was produced by Oregon Department of Parks and Recreation as a good amount of the film is an exposition of Oregon's forests.

The plot...well I wasn't sure if there's any. OK, let me try - it's a man's quest to find the one ring and on his journey he supposedly find himself. Well, I think that's what they're trying to illustrate but the writer and the director failed miserably. The writer failed to explain several aspect of the film. For instance, how the protagonist fell from grace, or who was the woman, who burned the woman, who was the gypsy etc. Moreover, it seemed like, there are only about 2 pages of dialogue written for this movie and the little dialogue it had, it was very weak. It did not helped that the actors delivery of the dialogue is equally terrible and the acting is not very convincing. The only convincing acting in the whole movie I found was the old man in the cave. However, he can't seem decide if his accent should be Celtic or English.

The director makes up for the lack of dialogue and weak plot with a stunning cinematography. Not bad for a first time director. However, I do find it very boring and exhausting after awhile when all you see is a man walking scenes after scenes with a gorgeous landscape in the background.

This film is not even worth a rental albeit, the DVD cover looked like a John Waterhouse painting.

And I thought I had seen the worse movie of all until I saw this flick. There's nothing redeeming about this movie.

From the very first quarter of this movie, I was thinking if this is a poor homage to Tarantino's character Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield or simply a pathetic attempt to follow the footstep of Tarantino.

The dialogue obviously is trying very hard to capture the cleverness of the dialogue in Pulp Fiction. It even tried to copy the scene on Pulp Fiction just before they enter the apartment. Unfortunately, the dialogue was soo bad and the acting did not help any.

I give it 1 out of 5 stars.

Have you ever had one of those moments while you're watching a movie, totally immersed in the plot, oblivious to your surroundings, and suddenly, you are yanked out of that experience; simply because you realized the movie was ridiculously long and bad. Well, this is one of those movies. Actually it would have been rewarding if at least in the beginning, you have a false sense that the movie was actually good. Unfortunately, it unbearable from the start to the end.

The plot was incoherent that you just wonder how this movie was ever written or produced in the first place. It was unbearably long and winded. It could have used a lot more omissions in the editing room for those scenes that are simply illogical. Michael Bay made up for the movie's lack of structure by "unnecessarily" blowing up stuff and overly used of "CSI-like" effects (no wonder, it was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer). The flashy camera angles, instead of enhancing the effect of the actions were disconcerting and excessive that it lost it's entertainment effect. I could understand employing the same technique on movies like "Saving Private Ryan", "Band of Brothers" and "Black Hawk Down" but not a movie like BB2, that is trying to be both serious and comedic that just failed miserably in both sense.

The dialog, just like the plot was just as bad. Funny at times but mostly the banter is long and not so funny. Most of the times, it seemed as if the dialog were ad-libbed, that there was actually a script written.

I have seen better low budget comedy action flicks that though they were not what you would consider the best, they were at least entertaining.