watching movies one cup at a time

In general I am a fan of Kevin Smith movies. He’s usually good for a few good laughs and I appreciate his unique style and talent. He makes good movies that are true to his vision and they always have a lot of heart in them. Now, having said that, I do usually find his films lacking in several areas. Most often in the character development and in the very lengthy stretches of dialogue some of his characters spew out that can sound forced and unnatural. But that may just be a fault of the actors too. He’s cast a lot of so-so actors in the past that couldn’t really deliver the words effectively. The scenes that work best are always the ones with the best actors in them because you need someone with some skill to make the speeches flow naturally.

Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks do a great job as Zack and Miri in this movie. All their scenes feel natural and I believe these characters. Kevin Smith has said that he really wanted Rosario Dawson in the role of Miri but I think that would have been a mistake. Elizabeth Banks is perfect as the flawed Miri. She’s very pretty but she’s not perfect and has kind of a downtrodden edge to her that is a perfect match to Seth Rogen. Rosario Dawson is too much “the hot chick” and would not have been anywhere near as believable. I don’t see her and Seth Rogen together. I very much see Elizabeth Banks and Seth Rogen together, but not in a very overt way, which is perfect for the movie.

The reason why I didn’t give this film a higher coffee cup count is because I didn’t buy the story. The whole porno idea seemed rather half-baked and it just never connected for me. Plus it did not pay off at all by the end of the movie. It basically got dumped and forgotten about so the love story could take center stage. That just didn’t work for me.

One highlight though was the one scene with Justin Long. His scene at the high school reunion with Brandon Routh was the funniest thing in the whole movie and I would have much rather kept them around the whole time.

See the movie, support Kevin Smith, but it’s not perfect.

My favorite zombie movie is Shaun Of The Dead. It’s funny, scary, and extremely clever. Just a good movie that took the zombie apocalypse and did something entirely original and enjoyable. The makers of Zombieland said they wanted to make a movie on the level of Shaun. And I can see their intentions and how they wanted to make a more comedic, light-hearted but good zombie movie. The problem is that Zombieland is just not enough of anything to make any kind of real impression. It’s not enough of a zombie movie, it’s not enough of a comedy, it’s not enough of an awkward teen romance, it’s just not enough. It winds up being a rather well-done weak movie. The characters are good, the actors are great, but they just don’t have enough to do in this movie and I was honestly just plain bored. This is a zombieland where the zombies are just kind of afterthoughts. They aren’t any real threat, no one is really scared of them, and basically “it’s the end of the world as we know it but I feel fine.”

Overall it was a decent movie. Just not enough to make it great or even really good. And that’s a shame because you can really see the potential for something so much better.