On DVD: 50 First Dates

Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore team up for a comedic love story that is surprisingly charming, witty and funny. Sandler plays a scoundrel living in Hawaii that preys on the desires of female tourists only to dump them when their vacation is over. He meets Barrymore and even though she is a local Sandler is intrigued by her and begins to work his magic. Everything is going well until he discovers that Barrymore has no short term memory, once she goes to sleep and wakes up she has no recollection of the previous day. Sandler and Barrymore have surprising chemistry on screen and they carry the movie real well. Rob Schneider once again shows up in a Sandler movie and plays Sandler's Cousin that ...well basically is Rob Schneider but he delivers some genuine laughs.

50 First Dates is the second of three movies in a row that Director Peter Segal worked on with Sandler. 2003s Anger Management and the current new release of The Longest Yard are the other two. You can tell that Sandler and Segal are hitting on all cylinders and are becoming comfortable with each other. This film was easy to watch with little or no annoyances that sometimes bog down comedies and turn them into loud disasters or one joke movies that drag on way too long. Bordering dangerously close to becoming too warm and fuzzy, 50 First Dates walks the tightrope and injects enough laugh out loud nonsense ( the old man in the restaurant for example) to make this a "Sandler Movie." Im not a Sandler or Barrymore fan but I liked 50 First Dates...mainly because it was funny and true to itself to the very end.

Note: Two other movies involving short term memory loss came to mind while watching this film. The first is 1994s "Clean Slate" starring Dana Carvey as a Private Detective with short term memory loss. Carvey is trying to solve a murder and deal with his condition at the same time, the movie didn't do well in theaters but it is pretty funny, worth renting.
The other is 2000s "Memento" a much celebrated film starring Guy Pearce, Carrie Ann Moss and Joe Pantoliano. Pearce is trying to find his wife's killer and deal with his memory loss and come to terms with the fact that he may be a little darker inside than even he remembers. This is a good movie, but watch it with the remote in hand, it is very clever and interesting to watch how the story unravels and how all the pieces fit together.

On DVD: Meet the Fockers

In the sequel to Meet the Parents Ben Stiller is back as Greg Focker and this time we meet his parents. Fockers parents are played by Barbara Streisand and Dustin Hoffman, not the first names I think about when someone says "comedy" but they are mildly entertaining, with emphasis on mildly.

This is a one joke movie that tries to stretch that one joke to infinity. In case you missed the first movie DeNiro is ex CIA and still a little paranoid about things. His straight laced conservatism is challenged by the Focker's stuck in the 60s free love attitude. Mrs. Focker is a sex therapist and Mr. Focker is a stay at home dad...cant you see all the comic possibilities in that set up?
The jokes are all sight gags and Streisand and Hoffman seem to be having more fun than the audience even though they could have phoned in their performances in my opinion. Ben Stiller plays the same role he did in meet the parents ( and Dodgeball and There's Something About Mary and Zoolander...) and he just doesn't do it for me.

If you liked Meet the Parents you will like Meet the Fockers, if you are looking for a comedy to enjoy on a Friday night...rent something else.

On DVD: The Grudge

"The Grudge" is the American remake of "Ju On", a Japanese film by Takashi Shimizu who directed both films. Sarah Michelle Gellar of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame stars in the American installment that grossed a staggering $183,000,000 worldwide, staggering for two reasons. Number one it only took about ten million to complete the film and number two The Grudge is an awful movie and a complete waste of time.

The basic, simple and unoriginal plot involves our heroine moving into a house that is haunted by someone that used to live there and died and now haunts everyone that comes in the house and....well you get the picture. Painfully slow storytelling and cardboard acting do nothing to help the film, you can only watch Gellar creep through the house and peep around corners for so long.

Do everything you can to avoid this movie and if you know someone that saw it and liked it...get them some help, fast.

On DVD: The Aviator

Leonardo Di Capri turns in an Oscar worthy performance as eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes in Martin Scorcese’s epic The Aviator. The movie is great at every turn particularly the pacing. There are no wasted scenes and very little guidance as to what the next scenes will be. One minute Howard Hughes is discussing one of his movies and the next scene he is in an airplane hangar barking out instructions on how to build the fastest airplane.

The film really is not about Hughes’s accomplishments in film and aviation, it is more a character study of a maniacal genius trying to desperately hold it all together. You have to ask yourself was his genius born out of madness or his madness born out of genius…I don’t know. Either way it goes, this is the man that started TWA, fought off a hostile takeover by Pan Am then took on the government and beat them at their own game.

DiCaprio certainly could have been given the Oscar for his performance, this is the best I have ever seen him and I was thoroughly impressed. He seemed to become madder and madder as the movie went on totally making us believe we were watching Howard Hughes. Most people alive today don’t remember Hughes and that could account for the Oscar snub,(that and an amazing performance by Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles) Hughes died in 1976 and most of today’s moviegoers weren’t born yet. Before Gates and Trump there was Howard Hughes, billionaire, eccentric, womanizer and Aviator.