That's My Boy

Whazzup!!

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Rated: R  Nudity, crude sexual content, pervasive language and some drug use.
Release Date: June 15, 2012
Runtime:  1 hour 56 minutes

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Director: Sean Anders
Writers: David Caspe
Cast:  Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg, Leighton Meester, Vanilla Ice, James Caan, Milo Ventimiglia, Tony Orlando, Will Forte, Rachel Dratch, Nick Swardson

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SYNOPSIS: Teenager Donny has an affair with his teacher, fathering a child, and raising Todd as a single parent until Todd's 18th birthday. Disappearing for years, Donny returns on the eve of Todd's wedding.

REVIEW: Director Sean Anders is most notable for writing and helming the farce Sex Drive, as well as being a comedic writer for films like Mr. Popper's Penguins, Hot Tub Time Machine, and She's Out of My League. This time around, Anders leaves the writing duties to Happy Endings creator and writer David Caspe. With the comedic talents of Adam Sandler and the SNL Digital Short wunderkund Andy Samberg, we can only hope for a raunchy good time better than Sandler's Jack and Jill or Samberg's Hot Rod.

As a young thirteen-year-old boy Donny Berger (Justin Weaver) was the big man on school grounds. He and his beautiful teacher Ms. McGarricle (Eva Amurri Martini, Isolation) realize their soulmate passion for each other while in detention for Donny's inappropriate sexual innuendos. After a lengthy trist, they are eventually found out and Ms. McGarricle stands trial and is convicted for her relationship with a minor. Donny's father is given custody of the unborn baby until Donny turns eighteen, at which point Donny would take over parental duties. But when Han Solo Berger (Andy Samberg, Hot Rod) turns eighteen himself he disappears and becomes estranged from Donny. Years later, Donny finds himself in trouble with the government due to back taxes, owning $43,000. Fortunately, Donny sees that his son, now Todd Petersen, has become a successful hedge fund manager and is engaged to a beautiful girl Jamie (Leighton Meester, Country Strong). With an opportunity to get the money if he reunites him, Todd, and Ms. McGarricle at the prison, Donny crashes the wedding weekend at Todd's boss's summer house. Trying to keep the truth from his soon-to-be in-laws Gerald (Blake Clark, Rango) and Helen (Meagen Fay, Halloween II), Jamie's brother Chad (Milo Ventimiglia, The Divide), and his boss Steve Spirou (Tony Orlando), and Grandma Delores (Peggy Stewart, The Runaways), Todd does all he can to keep Donny away from the people in his new life and his secrets intact.

Very worried going into this film, I dreaded a repeat of Sandler's Jack and Jill. Comedies and comedians are really only as good as their last project, most people forgetting Sandler's pre- Jack and Jill funny and silly romantic comedy film with Jennifer Aniston, Just Go With It, or the grown up buddy flick, Grown Ups. In his latest work, Sandler channels the spirit of one of his earliest creations, Billy Madison, into a 40-year-old reckless, down-and-out, former tabloid celebrity who gained all of his notoriety from being the willing underage 'victim' to a beautiful bombshell teacher. Instant fame, a six-figure payday for the rights to his story for a television movie of Donny's exploits, and poor child-rearing experience, lead Donny to a place where he has no money, lives on the generosity of strippers still enamoured with him, and drives a barely running Pontiac Fiero. Using his sometimes stuttering, sometimes loud, sometimes stammering, always Sandleresque ways, Adam brings his typical juvenile ways to an adult delinquent role who just wants to be a good guy.Thrust into the spotlight by stellar work on his Saturday Night Live Digital Shorts, Andy Samberg trades in his legacy of viral hits such as 'D**k in a Box', 'Lazy Sunday', and the Grammy nominated 'I'm on a Boat' for the glimmer and glamour of the big screen. With his tenure on SNL officially at a close, we can only hope that his graduation from small screen to big screen to be an easy transition. In That's My Boy, Samberg brings his physical, rubbery ah-shucks but uptight presence to his role of Todd Petersen AKA Han Solo Berger. Completely reinventing his life and back story, Todd is wholly unprepared to deal with the sudden reappearance of his father Donny. With a father who was but a kid himself, Todd ends up with so many issues that he needs a barrage of pills to keep stable.

Filled with the usual menagerie of characters, Sandler continues to support the careers of his friends such as Blake Clark. But he also illicits the help of other clever and silly people such as long-time strip club patron Kenny (Nick Swardson, 30 Minutes or Less), overweight motherly stripper Champale (Luenell, Think Like A Man), new-age co-worker Phil (Will Forte, Rock of Ages) and his wife (Rachel Dratch, Just Go With It), always formidable Father McNally (James Caan, Detachment) and former rapping star Vanilla Ice (himself). They round out the cast nicely, bringing an absurdity to the story that is over the top, silly, and out loud funny.

Funny and raunchy, the Samberg and Sandler team-up reinstates Sandler as the comedic top-dog, erasing the horrid double showing of him as a man and his sister in Jack and Jill. Filled with beer guzzling, grand-cougar sex, bare breasts, and the return to lost youth and juvenile delinquency, That's My Boy both tickles the funny bone enough to tears (especially if you liked movies like The Hangover) and has that near tender moment that Sandler likes to put in some of his films such as Click.

That's My Boy is the typical Adam Sandler fair. If you like him, you will love this movie. The film is outrageous without being outrageous for the sake of it. There are gratuitous shots of flesh and plenty of potty humor, but their use all seems to work for the right laughs. There are even some sight gags and one-liners so subtle that you may miss their humorous worth. That's My Boy brings a great soundtrack, filthy humor, crude language, and a touching message to a theater near you. Whazzup!!!  

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WORTH: Matinee or Rental

The Divide

Social Disintegration

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Rated: NR
Release Date: January 13, 2012
Runtime: 1 hr 50 min

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Director: Xavier Gens
Writers: Karl Mueller, Eron Sheean
Cast: Michael Biehn, Milo Ventimiglia, Lauren German, Rosanna Arquette, Courtney B. Vance, Ashton Holmes, Michael Eklund, Abbey Thickson, Jennifer Blanc, Ivan Gonzalez

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SYNOPSIS: After a nuclear attack, several tenants of a New York apartment building take refuse in an old bomb shelter in the sub levels of the building. After a period of time and the dwindling of supplies, the group starts feeling the weight of their confinement and despair.

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REVIEW: Director of Frontier(s) and Timothy Olyphant's Hitman, helmer Xavier Gens takes a script from Widow scribe Karl Mueller and from writer Eron Sheean of the upcoming Errors of the Human Body about the effects of confinement and nuclear fallout on a group of people forced to take refuse in the bomb shelter basement of their apartment building.

Nine strangers living in the same hi-rise apartment in New York City find themselves at the heart of a nuclear explosion. Escaping to the building's bunker-like basement, they barricade themselves behind a heavy steel door. The building's superintendent Mickey (Michael Biehn, Terminator) reluctantly lets them stay, who had been stockpiling the basement for his own solitude. As the building crumbles above them, Mickey warns them that they have to stay confined until the radiation levels fall to an acceptable level. The strangers must co-exist in order to survive in the claustrophobic confined space. Eva (Lauren German, Hostel Part II) and her lawyer boyfriend Sam (Iván González, Rich Kids), Josh (Milo Ventimiglio, Rocky Balboa) and his half-brother Adrien (Ashton Holmes, A History of Violence), Bobby (Michael Eklund, House of the Dead), Marilyn (Rosanna Arquette, Pulp Fiction) and her daughter Wendi (Abbey Thickson), and Delvin (Courtney B. Vance, Joyful Noise) join Mickey in the dusty darkness to wait out nuclear Armageddon.

The Divide is a disturbing post-apocalyptic tale, wrought with slow descents into madness. As the rationed supplies dwindle, paranoia rises in the group that Mickey is holding out on additional supplies. Eventually, members of the group turn on each other for the believed supplies and worse. Marilyn, after the nuclear blasts, suffers additional personal hardships and loses the last grasps of humanity she possessed. The hardness and harsh realities takes exceptional depravity against her. The only remaining woman, Eva, must hold herself above and away from the sexual debasement and redistribution of power that comes at the hands of Josh and Bobby.

Biehn’s Mickey is a little over the top at the beginning of the film with his bravado and teeth clenched cigar, but becomes more humanized as the film progresses. Ventimiglio’s Josh and Eklund's Bobby start off worried about survival of themselves and their friends, putting themselves into harm’s way for the group, but soon become haunted wasted pale shaved hollowed out skeletal shells of themselves in their descent into radiation sickness and psychosis. Lauren German’s Eva is reminiscent of Milla Jovovich’s Alice from the first Resident Evil film. And Rosanna Arquette’s Marilyn goes to lengths I never expected to see on film from her. As the conditions worsen, the group of survivors is reduced into two groups – the haves and the have-nots. Like a post-apocalyptic Lord of the Flies, reason and intellect are replaced by coarser baser instincts.

Xavier Gens shoots sweeping shoots in the close confines of the single bunker level of the apartment building. Even in the closed quarters, the director moves through the space with sailing panning camera shots. At each stage of the group’s descent into madness, Gens displays each survivor guilt, fears or worse with an effective slide show flair. Reminding me of the first Saw movie, the dusty stone surroundings and flickering lights set a very tense mood. Throw in the irrational members of the group with no place to go and time on their idle hands, and Gens sets a stage fused to explode.

Even for die hard post-apocalyptic film fans, The Divide is one of the more disturbing stories put to film in years. Sure, the Hostel and Saw franchises have desensitized audiences thoroughly and there have been many claustrophobic films focusing on a small band of people, their social structure, the absence of law, and the extent man will fall in order for survival. From Ten Little Indians to Lifepod, all entail the deterioration of social structure, but The Divide sets aside the tiptoeing and puts all of it on screen for all to see. From dismemberment to forced sexual acts, this movie holds little back.

The Divide will probably never see the light of day in the mainstream. In the unrated format, there is too much too often with most taboos are not off limits. Not rated and clocking in at almost two hours, the film could have been tightened up by twenty minutes to quicken the pace, but Xavier Gens takes his time in building up the steady decline of what could be the last people alive. Not for the faint of heart, The Divide will polarize lovers of the genre, dividing the fans into those who love it and those who would rather walk away.

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WORTH: DVD (for the hardcore fans) or Rental