Freebirds

ANIMATED, FAMILY

Thanks for Giving

6.5 out of 10 | Rental

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Rated: PG Animated action
Release Date: November 1, 2013
Runtime: 1 hour 24 minutes

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Director: Jimmy Hayward
Writers: Jimmy Hayward, Scott Mosier, David I. Stern, John J. Strauss
Cast: Owen Wilson, Woody Harrelson, Amy Poehler, Colm Meaney, Keith David, Dan Fogler, Jimmy Hayward

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SYNOPSIS:  Two turkeys from opposite sides of the tracks must put aside their differences and team up to travel back in time to change the course of history - and get turkey off the holiday menu for good.

REVIEW: Jimmy Hayward, director of Horton Hears a Who! and Jonah Hex, returns to animation to bring us the self-proclaimed Greatest Thanksgiving film of all time. Hayward also writes the film with the help from Scott Mosier, David I. Stern and John J. Strauss.

Turkey Reggie (Owen Wilson, The Internship) finds himself at the losing end of trying to convince his farm brothers that the farmer is just trying to fatten them up for Thanksgiving dinners. When Reggie is pardoned by the President of the United States, he switches a life at the end of an axe handle for a life of pizza and relaxation at Camp David. One night, Reggie is visited by another turkey Jake (Woody Harrelson, Zombieland) who is convinced that he and Reggie must travel back in time to stop turkeys from being on the menu at the first Thanksgiving between the pilgrims and the local Indians. Actually finding a time machine with the acronym S.T.E.V.E. (George Takei) to take the duo back in time, Reggie and Jake meet intelligence and resource turkeys hiding from the pilgrims led by Chief Broadbeak (Keith David), his son Ranger (Jimmy Hayward) and his daughter Jenny (Amy Poehler, Parks and Recreation). The only things standing in the way of the turkeys' safety are the pilgrim's greedy and gluttonous Governor Bradford (Dan Fogler) and his driven turkey hunter Captain Myles Standish (Colm Meaney).

How many animated films are there with the theme of turkeys and Thanksgiving? A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving? Mouse on the Mayflower? A few select others? Hayward's claim of Freebirds as the greatest Thanksgiving movie of all time probably will not hold true. Centered on the plight of the turkeys themselves, Freebirds is a slick flick similar to recent animated effort Epic.

Freebirds looks good, every plume and feather in place. Hayward's experience as an animator for Pixar truly came in handy for this film. The problem with Freebirds, as well as the aforementioned Epic, is that as an animation the film is colorful and kinetic but not that amusing. Usually, an animated film has something for both the children and for the parents or adults. This time, other than a few cries during Captain Standish's scary pursuits and a few awwws for the baby turkey puffs, there was not enough to provide more than a few chuckles.

Owen Wilson does have a great drawl for voice work, and Woody Harrelson and Amy Poehler are capable. Colm Meaney is mean as Standish - or is he just drawn that way. I could listen to Keith David all day long. But with just an adequate story to tell, all the glitz of CGI and all the talented voices cannot get this turkey off the table.

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The Internship

COMEDY

Technical Sales

7.75 out of 10 | Matinee or DVD

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Rated: PG-13  Partying, language, sexuality and some crude humor
Release Date: June 7, 2013
Runtime: 1 hour 59 minutes

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Director: Shawn Levy
Writers: Vince Vaugh, Jared Stern
Cast: Vince Vaugh, Owen Wilson, Rose Byrne, John Goodman, B.J. Novak, Aasif Amato, Dylan O'Brien, Tiya Sircar, Josh Brener, Tobit Raphael

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SYNOPSIS: Two salesmen whose careers have been torpedoed by the digital age find their way into a coveted internship at Google, where they must compete with a group of young, tech-savvy geniuses for a shot at employment.

REVIEW: Real Steel and Date Night director Shawn Levy has run the gamut of action/adventure and comedy. With the Vince Vaughn and the Jared Stern (The Watch) written film, The Internship takes on generational differences, the dwindling economic climate, and the high risk/high reward internship game at one of the leading technology firms, the film tries to be both funny and relevant.

Bill (Vince Vaughn, The Watch) and Nick (Owen Wilson, Midnight in Paris) are watch salesman. During a business dinner, the client informs the two of them that their business has folded. 20 years footsoldier and daily "grinders", they realize that they need to figure out what to do next. With bills piling up and disgruntled girlfriends, Bill has a crazy plan for him and Nick to go after an internship program at Google. When they arrive for orientation, the duo discover that not only are they twice as old as everyone else, they have no technical skills, and are way out of touch with how the current world works. When nobody wants to pair with them for the summer and the schedule of challenges that will decide what interning team will be guaranteed a job at Google, Bill and Nick are put together with the "outlanders" also couldn't get partnered up. Under the tutelage of four year veteran Lile (Josh Brener) Nick and Bill team up with Neha (Tiya Sircar, Friends with Benefits), Stuart (Dylan O'Brien, The First Time), and Yo-Yo (Tobit Raphael), three Nooglers who are is just as much of misfits as they are, but in different ways. Billy struggles to learn something other than "beat the street" sales, Nick struggles to find a little bit of love with Googler Dana (Rose Byrne, The Place Beyond the Pines). They struggle to get along with a team that knows they have no marketable skills to help them in challenges, and knows that their prospects of getting the jobs given to the top team at the end of the summer get dimmer and dimmer. Can these misfits come together and actually act like a team, or is the entire group destined to not get in at this from your company called Google?

Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson re-team for this adventure in job hunting. Vince Vaughn has worked with both the Wilson brothers, and has a perfect chemistry with Owen as was evident in their performances in Wedding Crashers. Wilson continues with his 'ah shucks', 'the world is still a bright place' mentality, infusing his character with an infectious endless optimism. Vince Vaughn, the work horse, has plenty of enthusiasm – given sometimes his enthusiasm is ineffective – to bring his team together. Their characters face two nemesis. The first is senior manager Mr. Chetty (Aasif Mandvi, Premium Rush) who seems to have it in for the Billy and Nick as soon as he sees them. The second is a rival team leader (Max Minghella, The Darkest Hour) who chooses the best of the intern pool in order to guarantee his place at the company. Nick and Bill's team is filled with the typical quirky members – including slacker Stuart doesn't seem to care about anyone or anything, a homeschooled Asian teenager Yo-Yo who pinches his eyebrow whenever he feels inferior, and a sexually charged, boisterous Neha who seems to gravitate towards the crude. Vaughn's Billy and Wilson's Nick have a heckuva time trying to persuade these misfits to work together long enough to possibly win the summer intern program.

As expected, The Internship is cute and funny. It's what you would expect from a Vince Vaughn/Owen Wilson collaboration comedy, without all of the Wedding Crashers-esque sex and language. There still is a little bit of sex and language, but toned down a little bit you for sake of the kids. The best parts of the film, in terms of comedy, is watching Billy and Nick swim in the pool where they know nothing about technology, how search engines work, how to program, and how to deal with young kids who in a different generation who have not grown up on the "hard work equals success" mentality.

The film is timely in that kids coming out of college today are not guaranteed a job and long career veterans are being laid off and high numbers. Two separate generations find themselves in the same situation. Nick and Bill think they could just persevere and show sheer willpower and sweat equity. The younger generation, as smart and enthusiastic as they are, find themselves with few prospects and fewer job opportunities. It's a relevant statement to how today's society and economy looks, but Vaughn, Wilson, and crew do a good job of making it humorous anyway. Some of the situations are hysterical, including a challenge of Quidditch where athletic, but mismatched Nick and Bill have no clue how to play the game.

There are a couple missed opportunities. To keeping the story moving along, some of the angst that Neha, Lile, Stuart, and Yo-Yo is overcome a little too quickly and efficiently. The rival Noogler, played by Max Minghella, is altogether snarky, self-centered, egoticical douche but he seems to be an afterthought at times. Even Nick's sweet pursuit of Dana is a little too light and too sweet to be fulfilling.

Thank you comedy, The Internship will make you laugh as well as give you a taste of an economic message that we can all relate to in someway. Vaughn and Wilson are a great comedic team, with a familiar and solid chemistry infections enough to make you want to go check the film out. Feeling lucky?

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Midnight in Paris

Surreal Realizations

Director: Woody Allen

Writers: Woody Allen

Stars: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Kurt Fuller, Mimi Kennedy, Michael Sheen, Corey Stoll, Tom Hiddleston, Kathy Bates, Marion Cotillard

SYNOPSIS: On a trip to Paris with his fiancee, Gil begins to question his life decisions as he wanders around beautiful city at night and meeting an interesting host of characters.

REVIEW: Woody Allen writes and directs Midnight in Paris, a film that defies Allen's recent works and defines many of Allen's works. From Sleeper where the protagonist is revived in the future to fight an oppressive government, to Play It Again, Sam where a film critic tries to return to the dating scene with help from an alter ego in the form of Humphrey Bogart, to any one in a laundry list of visual and deeply meaningful films, whether the backdrop is New York City or abroad. Filled with dialogue that is anything but empty, Midnight in Paris is at once transcendent, beautiful, quirky and meaningful.

Considered to be a romantic comedy, Midnight in Paris is more Gil's (Owen Wilson) romance of Paris and the images it invokes than a romance of his fiancee Inez (Rachel McAdams). Gil is an in-demand Hollywood screenwriter, but aspiring novelist who wonders if his earlier decision years previous to move out of the French capital in favor of the California Sun Coast. He romanticizes the "Golden Age" of art and literature of 1920s Paris and yearns to use present day Paris to inspire and help him succeed in finishing a book worthy of those earlier masters.

One night as his fiancee wants to go out dancing with a friend Paul (Michael Sheen), a tipsy Gil wanders the Paris streets to clear his head and take in the nuances of each cobblestone road and centuries old corridor. At the strike of midnight, a 1920s era Puegot pulls up and beckons Gil to come for a ride with them. Little does be realize, but Gil has travels to the 1920s era to mean and interact with the likes of F. SCott Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston from Thor), Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll from Salt), Pablo Picasso (Marcial Di Fonzo Bo), Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates) and the enigmatic Adriana (Marion Cotillard). First Gil is doubtful but then embraces each midnight rendezvous with his literary and artist idols, even bold enough to ask for help with his relationship and manuscript.

The story is filled with the glorious beauty that is Paris, from the Eiffel Tower to a forgotten alleyway. Allen takes the most mundane event of Gil, Inez and her mother hailing a taxi in the starts of a rain shower and fills the backdrop with a cathedral's dome and terraced landscapes. Gil's nostalgia of 1920s Paris is felt when a cafe where he meets Ernest Hemingway disappears in the blink of an eye and is replaced with a modern day laundromat. Allen even captured the nuances of French life when Inez's father John (Kurt Fuller), at the restaurant where they met for lunch, keeps glancing behind him because of a man with a dog sitting at the table. Anyone who has experienced Paris firsthand can appreciate the culture, the city and the romance it commands.

Owen Wilson is his typical roguish, self-effacing self as Gil, excited for the city and what it holds, but differential to the wants and demands of his fiancee Inez. Marion Cotillard, most recently from Inception, plays Adriana with a wisp of artist's muse and a wistful passion for the nostalgia that both she and Gil long for. Among the colorful characters from Gil's past, most notable are Stoll's Ernest Hemingway as his courageous and poignant prose smoothly comes through Allen's script, Adrien Brody's cameo as Salvador Dali who when Gil meets him is obsessed with rhinoceros, and Vinccint Menjou Cortes's quiet lonesome portrayal of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Any Woody Allen enthusiast, any creative individual, or any fan of quirky romantic comedic misadventures will appreciate Midnight in Paris. Some people may look only to the future with no regard for the past or present, and others may only long back to an age that cannot exist in the present, know that there is both beauty and substance in the here and now.

WORTH: Matinee or DVD

Hall Pass

Horny Older Men

[Owen Wilson, Jenna Fischer, Jason Sudeikis, Christina Applegate, Nicky Whelan]

image from Collider.com

RANT: The second film of this weekend brings me back to top form, recovering from the single movie weekend of the weekend prior. Sometimes, real-life gets in the way of cinema. But that's okay, because sometimes real-life saves you some cash!

SYNOPSIS: Two married men, caught with the wandering eye, are given a week off from their marriages to pursue other women.

The Farrelly Brothers, directors of Stuck on You, Shallow Hal and There's Something About Mary, return with Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis in the new raunchy comedy Hall Pass. Written by Peter and Bobby Farrelly, Pete Jones and Kevin Barnett, Hall Pass follows Rich (Owen Wilson), a faithful husband with a wandering eye for other ladies. Finally having taken enough, Rick's wife Maggie (Jenna Fischer) decides to give Rick a hall pass where he has a week off from their marriage in order to pursue other women - or at least try to. Rick's pal, Fred (Jason Sudeikis) gets his wife, Maggie (Christina Applegate), to give him a hall pass, too.

Hall Pass is funny, but not much funnier than the commercials you had already seen in preparation for seeing the film. It's difficult to see Owen Wilson moving into the 40-something husband and father role, his roguish charms better suited for his roles in Drillbit Taylor or John Beckwith from Wedding Crashers. Saturday Night Live's Jason Sudeikis, though, brings lots of laughs as the horny best friend desperate to earn a hall pass, even though he is married to Christina Applegate. There are a couple of funny moments not in the trailers - one involving Fred and a prospective lady-friend who does not seem to be able to make herself throw up, and another with an homage to television's Law & Order.

The hall pass given by Maggie and Grace lets Rick and Fred set out on their conquests, but also allows the ladies to be the object of other men's affections as well. Will any of them remain strong or will they surrender to the notion that the hall pass really is a week off of marriage?

Farrelly Brothers films appeal to a certain audience. It is an odd, sometimes, uncomfortable comedy that makes us laugh and think. Unfortunately, Hall Pass does not pierce the barrier of the raunchy comedy that we know that Peter and Bobby have delivered in the past. If you must see every Farrelly film, then feel free to venture out. Otherwise, watch this when it appears on a shiny disk.

Worth: Netflix

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Little Fockers

What the Fock?

[Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro, Owen Wilson, Blythe Danner, Teri Polo, Jessica Alba]

image from boxofficebuz.com

RANT: My housemate wanted to go see Little Fockers. So we went together. Unfortunately, her and I have very different opinions on what we thought of the movie. I guess if everyone had the same opinion about films, we would not have a need for critics!

SYNOPSIS: The Fockers plan for a get-together for the birthday of their 5-year old twins. When Jack Byrnes wants to appoint Greg the successor as the new family patriarch, Greg finds himself buckling under the weight of the responsibility.

Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro and gang return for the third installment of the Gaylord Greg Focker experience. Early trailers did not show Dustin Hoffman, which worried me, but he and Barbra do come back to fill out the Focker parents Bernie and Roz. Teri Polo and Blythe Danner make up the Byrnes legacy of Pam and her mother Dina, along with De Niro's Jack. And Owen Wilson returns as Kevin to yet again pine away for Pam. Even Jinxes the cat make a couple of cameos. Joining in on the fun is Jessica Alba as a pharmaceutical rep, Andi Garcia, with big plans for Greg and his career.

Although director Paul Weitz replaced two time Focker director Jay Roach, the actors and their characters are developed enough that nothing seems amiss as they return to the Focker world. Jack is still as paranoid and distrustful as ever, regardless of the success that Greg has made for Pam and his 5 year old twins. And as always, the Byrnes women stick by their men, knowing what makes them tick. Alba's Andi and Wilson's Kevin play the wild cards, somehow causing Jack to make much ado about nothing.

The situations in this outing are not as outlandish as those in Meet the Parents or Meet the Fockers, but as the franchise matures, so does the subject matter. Even though Jack and Greg continue to face off, it is more about the legacy and family that a man leaves behind and less about the two of them squaring off. Both are the rocks of their families, just in different ways. There are a couple great moments - one involving a children's ball pit and Jaws music, another with Jessica Alba taking a swan dive into a excavated backyard pit, and a third with some erectile dysfunction medication and an epi syringe.

If you enjoyed Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers, you will be interested in how far the Byrnes and Fockers have come with the Little Fockers. But although I laughed out loud more than once, the latest effort still may not live up to the original or the sequel for some.

Worth: Matinee or Netflix

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