Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

  

          Pirates of the Caribbean was a film franchise that definitely started off on its strongest note.  While I enjoyed Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End, they seemed to divide people between loving them and hating them.  With Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley gone, the focus for On Stranger Tides goes solely on Jack.  Or, at least, that’s the idea.

            The plot deals with various crews racing to get to the fountain of youth.  Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp, looking even more made-up than before) gets conscripted on to Blackbeard’s (Ian McShane) ship, thanks to the first mate and former love interest for Jack, Angelica (Penelope Cruz).  Meanwhile, Barbossa (Geoffery Rush) has become a privateer for the British, and the Spanish army, headed by The Spaniard (no, really, that’s what he’s credited as) also make an appearance.  It really seems like they were simply trying to recreate the three-way plot that the first three movies had.  The movie could’ve stood just as well with only Blackbeard’s ship, or even just Blackbeard and Barbossa.  Besides providing a third-act twist, the Spanish army does nothing for most of the movie.

            Another part that seems to be there just to recreate plot points is a romance subplot between a minister and a captured mermaid.  It does nothing besides slow the movie down at random intervals.  Instead, the romance plot we’d really love to know more about, between Jack and Angelica, is given nothing besides casual mentions now and again.  There’s also other random slow scenes throughout the movie.  At one point, Jack is being wishy-washy about jumping off of a cliff, and it changes into a completely different scene involving a primitive Russian Roulette.  It doesn’t advance anything forwards, and the plot would’ve gotten to the same place with or without it, so why even have it?

            Blackbeard could’ve also used some more development.  He’s possibly the darkest villain the series has had, a force of pure evil.  He also apparently has the ability to turn people into zombies, make voodoo dolls, and his ship has supernatural controls.  None of this is ever really touched on as to how he can do it or why it’s important.  It’s a loose thread left hanging, some of which I’m sure will be expanded on in the inevitable 5^th movie.

            The movie really thrives most on its action, humor and swashbuckling elements.  The scene with the mermaids, while it’s a bit of a slow starter, turns into something much bigger and pretty exciting.  Jack’s romp through London has plenty of great moments, including a meeting with King George and a swordfight against an impersonator.  Johnny Depp seems to still be giving it his all, even if the franchise is starting to show its wear and tear.

            On Stranger Tides isn’t the real shot that brings the franchise back to the level of the first movie, but it’s still a pretty enjoyable movie overall.  It has humor and action.  I’d say it’s my least favorite Pirates movie, but there’s still far worse ways to spend 2 hours.

The Looney Tunes Show, "Best Friends"

             

Nobody at Warner Bros seems to have a clue what to do with Looney Tunes right now.  After the financial failure of the actually-not-that-bad Back in Action, they’ve tried turning them into babies and turning them into superheroes.  I can’t say I’ve ever subjected myself to either of those shows, but after watching an episode of The Looney Tunes Show, I can’t see how they’d be worse.

            The main plot of the show is that Bugs and Daffy (both ever so slightly off-voiced) are roommates.  Yes, it’s the plot of about a thousand sitcoms, and it steals a plot device right from the sitcom handbook: they go on a game show where they have to prove they’re best friends with each other.  Predictably, Daffy knows nothing about Bugs, ends up losing the game show, and then ends up going far off the deep end in attempts to show that he’s actually friends with Bugs.  There are a handful of decent jokes in here.  The show just never finds its stride or its originality.  I think I could’ve literally erased Bugs and Daffy from the script, put in Mickey and Donald, and the show wouldn’t have changed.

            There’s also the fact that, for a show called The Looney Tunes Show, there aren’t a whole lot of the classic characters I was expecting.  The only people we see in the main plot besides Bugs and Daffy are those two mouse/chipmunk/marmoset??? things that are polite to each other (I have no idea what they’re called, but you know what I’m talking about) as their rival game show contestants and, as my dad put it, Speedy Gonzales as Jiminy Cricket.  Somehow, Speedy has become even more of an offensive Mexican stereotype.  An odd choice, considering his cartoons were removed for that reason, but now they look downright PC in comparison.  I don’t understand at all why these are the only characters.  They go on a game show, and the host is a generic human.  What, you couldn’t even put Porky or Foghorn Leghorn in the role?  They’re on a cruise ship, and the cast is filled out with generic humans.  Why not have Granny and Tweety be on the cruise, too?  Why not add some character and jokes everywhere you can get it?

            The show also had a Merry Melodies segment.  I had read a while ago that the show would have musical segments.  I was not prepared for Elmer Fudd singing a Barry White-style number to grilled cheese.  Not about, to.  I’ve seen old cartoons try desperately to be hip and modern before, but this was just embarrassing (especially since I’m pretty sure Barry White falls under neither of those).  I don't even know where they got Elmer's apparent grilled cheese fetish from.  This whole show was just embarrassing.  Besides the fact that it’s apparently spurred Cartoon Network to show classic Looney Tunes shorts again, I can’t think of any reason why this should exist.  I can’t think of any reason why it should be watched.  It has no wit, no charm, and no originality.

Bridesmaids

       

     Judging by the previews before Bridesmaids, it seems that this is going to be the summer of the raunchy R-rated guy comedy.  The success of The Hangover seems to have gotten every studio to try and make the next Hangover, so Bridesmaids had to do something to stand out.  They decided on being the raunchy R-rated girl comedy.

            Annie (Kristen Wiig, who also co-wrote the screenplay) plays the maid of honor when her best (and only) friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) gets engaged.  Of course, all of Annie’s attempts to do anything fail horribly, mainly because fellow bridesmaid Helen (Rose Byrne) gets into a huge passive-aggressive contest for being Lillian’s best friend.  It provides the movie’s first big laugh when Annie and Helen keep trying to get the last, best toast in at Lillian’s engagement party.

            And I say first big laugh because the first 10-ish minutes have nothing.  There’s a few gags, but it seems like the movie stumbles over itself as it tries to set up Annie’s character.  The movie theater was just dead silent for most of it, though.  Once Lillian gets engaged and we meet the bridesmaids, the movie finally gets on with the plot and the jokes.  The movie goes from scene to scene, slowly advancing the plot but mainly getting all the jokes they can out before moving on.  The best scene takes place on an airplane, where Annie gets loopy from medicine and alcohol, and one of the bridesmaids is sure from the moment she sits down that the person next to her is an Air Marshal.  It manages to just hit you with joke after joke, to the point where I was hoping that the plane would never land.

            There’s also a subplot with Annie falling in love with Officer Rhodes, an Irish police officer.  It slows down the movie some, but it doesn’t matter too much.  There are plenty of scenes with them that are just enjoyable, and it also helps to show Annie’s character.  She’s really a horrible person that wants life to get better, but it’ll only happen if she changes it herself.  As she ruins scenes, it’s half because of comedic misunderstanding, half because she’s really just messing things up.

            Bridesmaids is an enjoyable movie.  I think that’s the best way to describe it.  There’s a lot of laughs, some good heart thanks to the romance, and fun characters.  It will have to be seen if it remains memorable after the huge swath of R-rated comedies we’re getting this summer, but at the very least, it seems to be the only one with a female-centric cast, and it really makes it work.

Glee Episode "Funeral"

    

        I was going to wait until the season finale of Glee, and do a full review of the season.  But I’ve decided to do a review of the Funeral episode for two reasons.  One, the season is going to have to have a hell of a season finale to improve the season to a good quality.  Two, Funeral shows everything right and wrong about the season as a whole in a nice hour-with-commercials package.

            The episode has two main plots, and I’m going to have to spoil them to discuss the episode, so if you really don’t want to find out who’s having a funeral, stop reading.  The first deals with the death of Sue’s sister, and how Sue deals with it.  Her sister was always kind of a controversial thing (I remember when she was first introduced, people immediately cried that Sue’s character had been ruined), but I’ve thought it adds a nice foil to her mean personality to everybody else.  The way this plot of the episode works fantastically on an emotional level.  It’s tearjerking, it’s heartwarming, and it all climaxes with a beautiful full-group performance of Pure Imagination from Willy Wonka.  It hits the drama note perfectly, as the show so rarely does. 

The other plot of the episode revolves around Jesse St. James acting as a mean reality judge.  If you do not already see the problem with this, you are the show’s writers.  Trying to have drama and comedy is the point of a dramedy, yeah, but it just doesn’t work here.  It really doesn’t help that he’s trying to judge who’s going to headline at nationals, so we get four performances in a row.  Almost literally, there’s two performances, a commercial break, then the other two performances.  There’s no plot in here, just Jesse St. James acting mean to people.  You’re watching the mean guy on a reality show take scripted potshots at scripted people.  And the whole thing is rendered moot at the end when Schuester decides to not highlight any specific person.  There’s no moral here.  I didn’t learn anything (don't be mean to people?  They don't mention it, and they already covered it in a different episode, sadly enough).  It’s painful, it’s unfunny, it’s pointless, it’s just terrible.

            And here we come to the most confusing part of this.  You have one of the best episodes of the season paired up with one of the worst episodes of the season, and they’re the same episode.  The show’s quality goes all over the place from episode to episode, but now they’ve achieved that rare ability to make the show’s quality waver in the same episode.  For every moment of drama that’s actually working, for every hilarious moment that’s worth the setup, for every showstopping song, you know that, in the same episode, there’s going to be meandering high school melodrama (Oh yes, Finn and Rachel are in love but Rachel’s with Jesse even though she doesn’t love him and why do we even care?), comedy that either doesn’t work or borders on offensive, and boring songs with no choreography or any heart.  It’s like watching a train wreck that keeps going on and off the tracks.  And I know full well I’m going to probably watch the third season, but unless it gets some serious fixing, who knows if it’s even going to still be watchable.

Goldeneye (Wii)

            Goldeneye was the N64 game for the time, and still the shining example of good licensed games.  By completely changing the FPS to objective-based instead of just running through the level looking for the exit, it had a huge impact on the genre that wouldn’t be matched until Halo.  When Nintendo announced that the Wii would have N64 games to buy on the Virtual Console, it became one of the most requested, but thanks to the many licensing problems involved, it never came about…until Activision announced they were completely remaking the game for Wii.

            Replacing Pierce Brosnan with Daniel Craig, the plot remains much the same, involving the Janus syndicate, an EMP-resistant helicopter, and the Goldeneye satellite.  I’ve never seen the movie, so I can’t really say how much had to be changed for this game.  It does seem to feel just plain weird to still be fighting Russians.  I’m sure it had a better effect back when it was closer to the end of the Cold War, but now it just feels like they chose a standard villain.  The plot also seems very incidental, which I suppose is similar to the original game’s almost entirely skippable plot.

            What’s not a good change to the game is the constant effects of the current FPS genre on it.  Regenerating health I can deal with in most cases, but too often the game has enemies attacking from all sides.  You can’t really get to cover so much as run around like a maniac trying to find the magic spot where nobody can shoot you.  Enemies can also throw grenades at you to make you run screaming, even though you can’t throw grenades (strangely, you can throw them in multiplayer, making their exclusion from single player even worse).  All of the more open-ended levels of the original game, that either felt spacious or maze-like, have been reduced down to what might as well be a straight line.  You simply follow the objective, occasionally stopping to do side-objectives.  Honestly, it seems like they borrowed more from Call of Duty than they did Goldeneye.

            And yet they didn’t borrow the setpieces, or even the Bond moments.  While constantly changing up gameplay doesn’t exactly hit with some people, I feel it’s my favorite part of Bond, that you have an excuse to switch up between action and driving and stealth.  Everything or Nothing, one of the PS2-era Bond games, hit it so perfectly with Bond moments, where you get rewarded for doing special things like Bond would do.  There’s just none of that here.  You shoot enemies, you move on, you shoot some enemies next to explosives, you move on, you shoot some more enemies.  You can be stealthy, but it’s difficult and unrewarding.  The second a guy sees you, the alarms go off and more guards come in.  You can’t go back into hiding like in Metal Gear Solid, you just get a bigger fight.  There’s a few moments where it seems like the game developers really hit it, like a quick scene on a motorcycle as you ride up toward a plane.  Instead of controlling it, you have to shoot other baddies on motorcycles along the way.  It’s a nice touch, and yet it only lasts for about a minute.  Where was this in the rest of the game?

            I tried a little bit of online multiplayer, and it was decent.  The deathmatch gametype seemed to throw everything you had learned about cover out, since the whole thing was just everybody running around shooting each other.  I also tried a mode called Goldeneye, which involves trying to take over control hubs.  It was better, but it also made me wish for a killcam.  On one stage, I kept spawning, running towards a hub, and immediately getting shot.  There was no indication where the shot had come from, no way to see the enemy after my death, like Call of Duty or Team Fortress 2 have, and considering that I kept getting taken out with one shot, there was really nothing I could do.

            Goldeneye isn’t necessarily a bad game.  It’s certainly a solid FPS.  It’s just…a solid FPS.  There’s nothing that makes it really stand out and say “Wow”.  Not to mention that it’s living in the shadow of one of the classics.  If they had renamed this something else, maybe I wouldn’t be so hard on it.  As it is, it just made me want to play the original again.