Hell Baby review: what the hell?
I’m actually angry at how little the movie even tries. There isn’t enough of anything here to pad out a brief sketch, never mind a feature-length film.
comedy
Grown Ups 2 review: Adam Sandler’s Happy Funtime Circle Jerk
This is not a movie. This is nothing but Adam Sandler hanging out with his pals and congratulating himself on how awesome he finds himself to be.
We’re the Millers review: broken bad
Reason No. 34,075 to legalize drugs: it would eliminate painfully unfunny comedies like this one. Comedy shouldn’t make you pity the comedians.
The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec review: gloriously goofy
This is what comic-book movies look like when they’re not blown up into $200 million monstrosities: friendly and eldritch and kinda cosy even in the middle of outrageous escapades. (new DVD US)
Kick-Ass 2 review: the mask is empty
Like a Comic-Con cosplay event gone horribly wrong, this poor excuse for an action comedy has nothing to say beyond a few expletives and nothing to offer but a shocking lack of appreciation for its own awful irony.
Red 2 review: global positioning
Smart, breezy spy action, with an of-the-moment vibe that takes it post-post-9/11 and into the Wikileaks era of global politics.
Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (aka Alan Partridge: The Movie) review: tamed bear
Steve Coogan is still, hilariously, the same old awful, insecure jerk, but the media satire that has always revolved around the Alan Partridge character is somewhat diminished.
Planes review: crash commercialism
“Good” for nothing but the electronic babysitting of toddlers and fomenting consumer desire in impressionable children for the new line of made-in-China Dusty Crophopper extruded plastic. (new DVD/VOD US/Can)
The Heat review: buddy crap
Meanspirited where it’s meant to be funny. Misogynist crap is still misogynist crap when it stars women.
The Smurfs 2 review: a smurfeit of Smurfs
I am haunted by the crazed desperation in Jayma Mays’s eyes. She may have been blinking out a Morse-code SOS, but I can’t be sure…
