Last weekend, your choices of new movies at the box office came down to watching apes try to act human in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” and watching grown human men try to act like apes in “The Change-Up.” Actually, some of the behavior these guys wallow in would be an insult to apes, as “The Change-Up” traffics in some of the grossest, laziest, most self-indulgent bad behavior and horrid tastelessness of just about any mainstream film I’ve ever seen – and I’m no prude: “There’s Something About Mary” and “Animal House” are among my top five favorite movies.

The premise of “The Change-Up” alone seems like a copycat of the slew of body-switching comedies that flooded theaters in the late 1980s (“Big,” “Like Father Like Son,” “18 Again,” “Dream a Little Dream,” and “Vice Versa,” to name a few). And to add to the sense of laziness, it stars Jason Bateman in what’s starting to appear to be his Movie of the Month Club, playing an uptight corporate lawyer who can’t seem to get a promotion — virtually the same character he played just a month ago in “Horrible Bosses.”

Meanwhile, Ryan Reynolds reverts to the crude shenanigans of his breakthrough film “Van Wilder” in playing a constantly stoned slacker whose idea of a big break is landing a role in a soft-core porn flick. One wishes immediately that both they and the filmmakers – who are talented in the R-rated comedy genre, as Jon Lucas and Scott Moore created the first “Hangover” and David Dobkin directed “Wedding Crashers” – had followed their own title and attempted to create a film that relied more on clever writing and reinventing the body-switching subgenre than just attempting to push the envelope until it’s torn wide open and shredded to pieces. (more…)

Early on in “Horrible Bosses,” a manager named Dave Harken (Kevin Spacey) looks condescendingly at one of his employees and says, “I own you.” That remark summarizes the three main employer-employee relationships in this new comedy about three bosses who enjoy abusing members of their staff and the employees who want them dead. Although “Bosses” is wise enough to give credit to predecessors “Strangers on a Train” and “Throw Momma from the Train,” it isn’t smart enough to create the raunchy richness of this year’s earlier hit, “Bridesmaids.”

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The three mistreated employees in this story are Nick Hendricks (Jason Bateman), Dale Arbus (Charie Day) and Kurt Buckman (Jason Sudeikis). Harken, Nick’s boss, is a psychotic manager who openly mocks and threatens his employees. Meanwhile, dental assistant Dale is being sexually harassed by his boss, Dr. Julia Harris (Jennifer Aniston) while Kurt, who works at a chemical company, is often mistreated by his boss, a demented cokehead named Bobby Pellit (Colin Farrell). The three men eventually conspire to have their bosses murdered with the assistance of a ex-convict that they meet at a local bar (Jamie Foxx).

The logic of their plan is that each man will kill the other man’s boss, thus throwing off the police. This formula was used before as both a drama (“Strangers”) and a comedy (“Throw”).  There’s even a scene where the three employees openly discuss and give homage to those earlier films, although one of the characters doesn’t seem to know the difference between the two.

However, there is one major problem with the plot. Dale’s boss seems to be the only dentist who was willing to hire him because of Dale’s previous conviction as a sex offender, a conviction he received after going to the bathroom in a children’s playground after hours. Although Dale wants to keep his job as a dental assistant, he also wants his boss murdered. However, if his boss is killed, he wouldn’t have a job anymore. Dale doesn’t seem to take this into consideration.

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A couple of weeks ago at a press conference for her new movie The Switch Jennifer Aniston said, “Women are realizing it more and more knowing that they don’t have to settle with a man just to have that child.”  And with that, the starlet might have dealt a crushing blow to her own film.

After Aniston’s ill-advised political posturing, Bill O’Reilly picked up on the quote and riffed off it on his FoxNews show.  Key quote:

Aniston can hire a battery of people to help her, but she cannot hire a dad, OK? And Dads bring a psychology to children that is, in this society, I believe, underemphasized. I think men get hosed all day long in the parental arena.

This is, of course, right on the money.  Since the right to abort a fetus was dubbed “a woman’s right to choose,” feminists, the welfare state, and deadbeat dads across America have done their level best to marginalize the role a father plays in a child’s life.  And finally, in 2010, Jennifer Aniston proclaims that men are officially unnecessary for child rearing. (more…)

It’s always a surprise when you go into a movie theatre expecting one thing, and wind up with a completely different kind of experience. Usually that surprise is an unpleasant one, when a movie starring a superstar turns out to be a complete dud – for instance, 2003’s utter disaster “Hollywood Homicide” with Harrison Ford, a movie so bad that its writers and director never made another film.

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Far more rare is the case that a film can look atrocious and downright distasteful in its ad campaign and then turn out to be an outright winner. Yet thankfully that’s the case with the new dramedy “The Switch,” in which Jennifer Aniston plays Kassie, a woman who opts for artificial insemination when she can’t find Mr. Right while facing 40. Her best friend Wally (Jason Bateman) offers to be the sperm supplier, but she has him stuck in the “friend zone” and worries he’ll pass on his neuroses to boot.

The TV commercials for “The Switch” cut to the chase with a stomach-churning scene in which Wally (Jason Bateman) drunkenly sniffs, stares at, plays with and then spills the container of sperm that Kassie is hoping to use for the procedure. Realizing that she has an apartment filled with people attending her “pregnancy party,” and that he can’t face up to admitting he’s ruined her big night, he unzips his pants and takes care of replenishing the supply himself. (more…)

You’ve met couples like this before: longtime marrieds approaching 40 and facing stress from fertility problems, work-aholism, lack of communication or just flat-out losing the spark and giving up hope. In fact, you might have lived through these problems yourself. 

But in the new movie “Couples Retreat,” which not only co-stars but is co-written by real-life best friends Vince Vaughn (“Wedding Crashers”) and Jon Favreau (a popular character actor who has also directed “Iron Man”), these average middle-class American problems are given hilarious voice through vivid performances and rapid-fire dialogue. Or, more accurately, the movie shines when it focuses on those aspects of life in the first half of the film, while disappointingly falling off a cliff for much of the unfocused second half. Yet, just like a real-life marriage that lasts, the ups outnumber the downs enough to make this a satisfying if not spectacular night at the movies. 

“Couples Retreat” kicks off with uptight couple Jason (Jason Bateman) and Cynthia (Kristin Bell of “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”) begging their other friends – workaholic Dave (Vaughn) and his neglected wife Ronnie (Malin Akerman of the underrated remake of “The Heartbreak Kid”), and high school sweethearts-turned-bored middle-agers Joey (Favreau) and Lucy (Kristin Davis of “Sex and the City”), and just-separated Shane (Faizon Love) and his ridiculously young new girlfriend Trudy (scene-stealing Kali Hawk) – to join them on a retreat to the Club Med-style resort of Eden. If they can get a group of four couples together, they can all go half-price – which sounds great to the three seemingly healthy couples, as long as they’re assured they won’t have to go through couples counseling.  (more…)

Writer/director Mike Judge’s “Extract” is being promoted as: “The creator of OFFICE SPACE heads back to work,” but this isn’t exactly true in the purest “Office Space” sense. Our protagonist Joel (Jason Bateman) does spend time at the company he owns, a flavor extract plant, but for the most part those goings on are a subplot to what is essentially a relationship comedy — and only a mildly amusing one at that.

Joel’s problem is that he can never get home from work before his wife Susie (Kristen Wiig) puts on the sweatpants at the strike of 8pm … and once the sweatpants are on there will be no sex for the Extract King. What makes him late is the personnel and personality nonsense at the office; what slows him down is Nathan (a terrific David Koecher), one of those boorish nightmares of a neighbor whose lack of self-awareness eventually forces you to be rude to them. So Joel is frustrated — very frustrated, and taking advice from the exact wrong person: His buddy Dean (Ben Affleck), a long-haired bartender who has only one answer to every imaginable problem: Narcotics. (more…)

Joel is just an average guy, a quiet yet well-to-do American living in a small town who happens to own a flavor-extract company. He’d like to sell the plant, retire early and get back to a healthier sex life with his bored, put-upon wife. 

But just as he seems prepared to make a deal with food giant General Mills to sell the plant for good, a freak accident occurs inside his plant that lops off one of a long-time employee’s testicles. The other is hanging by a thread, a metaphor that is apt for Joel’s life as it suddenly spirals out of control via a surreal round-robin of relationships that come unhinged and turn his life upside-down in the new comedy film “Extract.” 

Written and directed by Mike Judge, who has chronicled the modern everyman’s life in the long-running and brilliant Fox cartoon “King of the Hill” as well as in the short-running yet brilliant 1999 film “Office Space,” “Extract” takes a sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued look at middle-class values in Middle America. But once again, Judge proves that he possesses a true love for the common, working-class Joe that translates into comedy that uplifts rather than demeans the lives of its characters.  (more…)

In my Final Weekend Tracking column posted on Wednesday, I predicted that X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Fox) would reach $92M on opening weekend, despite soft reviews (now only 38% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes). My first fearless forecast of the 2009 summer blockbuster season appears to be close to dead-on (missed by only 5%).

Star-turned-producer Hugh Jackman has scored his second-biggest opening ever and, easily, his biggest as a solo star. Wolverine has mauled the competition with a massive $34.75M opening day (including $5M or so in Thursday midnight sales). That could translate to a 3-day of $86.8M, getting Hollywood’s most lucrative season off to a spectacular start.

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The great thing about a sequel is that it has a built-in audience. The problem with sequels is that, as the numbers after the title go up, so does the production budget. Very hard to know for sure, but sources have told me that the production budget for X-Men was in the $75M range. X-2: X-Men United may have had a budget of about $110M, while the cost of X-Men: The Last Stand was, in all likelihood, as much as $210M. Why doesn’t it make sense to just churn out X-Men 4?

Look at these numbers.

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Recording superstar Beyonce Knowles is building a bankable resume for herself as an actress with Sony Screen Gems’ Obsessed as the latest title burnishing her resume. Co-starring the excellent Idris Elba (The Wire), this low budget, PG-13 genre pic has scored a far-above-expectations $11M on Friday, and it will likely reach $27.5M for the weekend. That is the best opening yet for the former Destiny’s Child lead vocalist as an above-the-title star, topping 2003’s The Fighting Temptations and Cadillac Records from late 2008.

Beyonce does battle with the sexy Ali Larter (HEROES) in OBSESSED

OPENINGS FOR BEYONCE MOVIES
1. Austin Powers: Goldmember – $70.3M opening
2. Obsessed – $27.5M opening (projected)
3. Pink Panther (2006) – $20.2M opening
4. Dreamgirls – $14.1M wide break (after a platform start)
5. The Fighting Temptations – $11.7M opening
6. Cadillac Records – $3.4M opening

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The final weekend of April has never been Hollywood’s favorite release date. In fact, it is generally considered to be among the worst release dates on the calendar. Whatever opens on the final weekend of April gets absolutely crushed by the official start of the summer blockbuster season on the first weekend of May.

The 4 new wide releases and 1 major specialty release set to debut this weekend will face an onslaught of mega-hits over the next month. How can Obsessed (Sony), Earth (Disney), The Soloist, (Dreamworks/Paramount), Fighting (Rogue) and The Informers (Senator) possibly find an audience with X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Fox) and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (Warner Bros) arriving next weekend followed by, in successive weeks, Star Trek (Paramount), Angels & Demons (Sony), the combo of Night at the Museum 2 (Fox) and Terminator: Salvation (Fox) and Disney/Pixar’s Up?

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I caught a media screening of the new Russell Crowe flick, State of Play, in Chicago this week.  It did not disappoint.  The film’s trailers promise a taut, political thriller with a number of dramatic plot twists–and the movie delivers a pretty solid pay-off.  I’ll admit in advance that I was predisposed to enjoy this film, so take my analysis with a few grains of salt: 

1. I love this genre, and since many of these types of movies end up being terribly disappointing, a fairly well-executed thriller with a decent plot is more than enough to satisfy this customer. (more…)