Teddy bears are for kids and Ted is no exception. The CGI bear is a bit rubbish, the mouth looks as though it was animated by the intern and what comes out of it sounds exactly like that Peter Griffin guy from that cartoon the kids love. Just like in the cartoon there's a comedy song that goes on too long and the gags are quick fire, low brow, mean-spirited, emptier than a vacuum and occasionally hilarious. Mila Kunis is in there fulfilling her half of the Faustian pact that gave her Lacey Chabert's job as a voice artiste while allowing her to retain the looks of Mila Kunis. Not for kids.
With Tyler Perry's Madea's Witness Protection, the highest paid man in entertainment (acc. Forbes) rolls out another episode in the life of the money making machine that is Madea. The napkin sized plot is all there in the title and the trailer leads with a being-drunk-on-an-aeroplane gag that is as old as commercial flight. Which suggests there's plenty more predictable material for the fans to recite and for Spike Lee to rail against. But it's all forgiven because there is something unbearably funny about Eugene Levy's disguise as a Frenchman. There may be a whole movie right there.
"That's why you don't have to worry when you lose friends. Cause they're still in your head, still in your heart." So says Neil Young in Neil Young Journey's one of those "this used to be" documentaries that returns public figures to the places that made them. In the hands of the very great Jonathan Demme you can hope at least for some carefully structured enlightenment. All you can learn from the trailer is that when Neil Young's mouth is moving it's much more interesting if he's singing.
There is far more to Chris Pine than a career as the second best Captain Kirk. As far back as 2007 he was the stand out in the otherwise inexplicable Smokin' Aces, a movie that looked as though it may have been as miserable an experience to make as it was to watch. That said, the weight of this trailer for People Lke Us is all on him. He has the benefit of a genuinely intriguing plot: a fellow in urgent need of a lot of money inherits a shaving kit inside of which is $150,000 in cash and a note telling him to get it to the sister he never knew he had. Great idea, right? But imagine what Shatner would have done with that... It's not just that Pine isn't Shat. For some reason he is made to grin like an idiot in every single scene when in fact he should be grinning like a guy who is going to rip off his new sister. Shatner would not go goggle eyed over the sister he's just met's fatherless son. He'd steal the boy's pocket money and we'd still love him.
The Take This Waltz tailer opens with Michelle Williams falling in love at first sight with the skinny jeans model guy who sits next to her on the plane. Unluckily she is already married to the cuddly and reliable Seth Rogen. On this evidence the movie is structured like a decorative gazebo with Skinny Jeans Model and Seth Rogen functioning solely as twin buttresses supporting the fine and infinitely varied filigrees of conflicting emotions that cross Michelle's impossibly appealing face in every frame.
Steven Soderbergh is operating at a level way, way beyond normal human understanding. If you saw the whole of his recent Haywire you will know this. There is a movie so stupid yet so intelligently made it can only be a coded message to our alien overlords. There is no evidence to suggest that Magic Mike, an American remake of The Full Monty is not the next missive, at least according to this trailer.
This week's mash by Mac Smullen