We’ve got four movies on tap this week coming in at varying levels of interesting. Get ready for 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Brothers Grimsby, The Perfect Match and Young Messiah.
Just remember, I'm not reviewing these movies, but rather predicting where they'll end up on the Tomatometer. Let's take a look at This Rotten Week has to offer.
Rotten Watch Prediction
I don’t know about you but the thought of a bomb shelter/end of days hideout featured in 10 Cloverfield Lane isn’t sounding so bad right about now. It might be nice to get ahead of the curve for once and get to ground before the shit really hits the fan around here. Between these presidential debates, global warming, antibiotics failing and possibly some other stuff going on around the globe, having a safe place to take shelter seems like a pretty good idea.
See a guy who made some plans in the trailer for 10 Cloverfield Lane:
I’ve got to say, the premise for this movie is fascinating. A woman (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) wakes up after an accident to find herself living underground and being held quasi-captive because the whole world above her has supposedly gone straight to hell. But has it? That question alone makes me want to get out to the theaters to see what’s going on here. To leave or not to leave? Is John Goodman telling the truth? Is the outside world really more terrifying than living in a somewhat comfortable prison? There are a lot of questions going on here (as evidenced by my question marks a second ago), and I want to know the answer to every one of them.
Supposedly housed in the same general atmosphere as J.J. Abrams’ Cloverfield, 10 Cloverfield Lane may not exist in the same universe as Matt Reeves’ film, but it certainly looks to deliver a similar amount of suspense. It’s Dan Trachtenberg’s first offering from the director's chair and I have a feeling what looks to be a bottle movie turns out to be much more.
Rotten Watch Prediction
I sometimes wonder if I have a long-lost brother out there living his own life, wondering the same about me. Staring up at the stars and thinking, "There’s someone out there who gets me. There’s someone out there who understands my pain, and can help me understand why I hate olives so much because that must genetic. Right?" I’ll find you brother if you are out there. We can hate olives together.
See two separated brothers in the trailer for The Brothers Grimsby:
Let me start by saying I’m a massive Sacha Baron Cohen fan. I’ve loved just about everything that he’s ever done. Da Ali G is just something I queued back up for about the fourth time through a week ago, while Borat and Bruno are some of my favorite characters ever. I say this all to ground my next comment. This movie looks pretty dumb. And not in the fun way.
If there were fewer reviews in on The Brothers Grimsby then I would have surely gone lower with my prediction. At no point during the trailer did I come even remotely close to laughing and again, this is a from a guy who loves just about everything Cohen’s ever done. It looked forced and silly, but not in the good way.
Early reviews on the film are mixed. It’s decidedly different and divergent from Cohen’s other successful work, which has grounded its insane characters in the real world. That kind of humor works because it’s so crazy that the jokes are provided by the real people who just happen to be crazier than the character. That’s not the as in The Brothers Grimsby. This is just a straight comedy flick and in some ways, that’s even harder a task to pull off. I’m not sure they got there.
Director Louis Leterrier’s other work includes Now You See Me (50%), The Incredible Hulk (67%) and Clash of the Titans (28%). The Brothers Grimsby is his first work of straight comedy and it looks like he tried to infuse some of the action he’s known for. I don’t think it will totally work and critics will come in well under 50%.
Rotten Watch Prediction
I’d consider myself very high end. Pimp if you will. Tons of swagger and whatnot. All of the requisite pieces to bring a betty around the way once in a while. It makes it pretty easy to identify with what’s going on in The Perfect Match, as it’s been very tough for me to find love amidst the never ending train of supermodels knocking on my door
See the Doug experience in the trailer for The Perfect Match below:
All jokes aside, this flick looks horrible. It seems just totally unrelatable on just about any level. It’s about a high-powered agent who just can’t keep from banging every super model he comes across. His friends and family press him to not be such a whore, and make a bet that he can’t keep a relationship for a set amount of time. Because this is a rom-com that kind of scenario will play out exactly as expected. The dude doesn’t expect to fall in love, but instead he falls in love. Then, I suspect, the part about the bet comes out somewhere at the end of the second act, leaving the third act for him to pick up the pieces and get the girl he’s meant to be with. These things are about as predictable as it gets, and it doesn’t look like The Perfect Match is going to surprise anyone.
Directed by Billie Woodruff, The Perfect Match has almost zero chance of rating out with critics. His previous work includes Honey 2 (10%) and Beauty Shop (37%) so there isn’t a body of work we can excited about. The trailer was borderline unwatchable and the movie shan't be far behind.
Rotten Watch Prediction
There have been a great many movies made about the life of Jesus, but very few deal with his early years - that time spent as a child aware of what his life is going to be. This flick deals with the post-toddler/pre-teen years in which Jesus was just getting his Christ legs under him. From that point of view it’s a new-ish kind of story.
Take a look at young Jesus in the trailer for Young Messiah:
This trailer is about two straight minutes of Enya-like music playing over scenes of a young Jesus looking both confused and scared. That seems to be about the whole crux of The Young Messiah. It couldn’t look less interesting, but will appeal to the Christian folks around Easter time. That’s fine. All movies have their niche and far be it from me to disparage the entertainment of groups. Certain folks will love it. Others won’t even know it existed.
I’m actually wondering if enough critics even take the time to go and see it. I don’t think it’ll far reach into the world of the critical masses and I can envision a scenario in which we only have 20-30 reviews to draw from when it’s all said and done. I could be wrong, as it’s in wide release. Just a gut feeling, but I don’t think it plays with the critics who do get themselves to the theater. It seems just too low stakes and pigeon-holed for a particular audience.
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Last week was not a good one for the Rotten Watch at all. A rough one all around. First off, London Has Fallen (Predicted: 42% Actual: 26%) came in well below the mark. What I thought critics would see for a popcorn film romp through London in a hail of gunfire and explosions ended up just being a dud in the mind of moviegoers. There’s a certain threshold for when action movies can enter into the positive critical eye. It’s takes either a certain level of awesome-ness of a certain understanding on the part of the critics for what they’re seeing. London Has Fallen didn’t get there. Critics hated it even though I thought the trailer had a feeling like they could pull it off. Nope. And my prediction missed the mark by a bunch.
Meanwhile, my prediction woes continued with Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (Predicted: 49% Actual: 62%). I’m real surprised by this score. From the trailer I thought the flick would carry a certain tone deaf-ness that would sink it with critics. Making a comedy out of an ongoing war didn’t seem like the way to go and I thought the reviews would suffer because of it. I was wrong and a not insignificant amount of reviews extolling the work on Tina Fey’s part help boost the score. Color me not convinced here.
And finally, Zootopia (Predicted: 99% Actual: 98%) missed 100% because two critics out of 125 thought it just didn’t pass the muster. Look, I’ve said it before that I’m no conformist. I don’t think one should like something just because the majority is falling head over heels with a piece of art. That being said, it’s weird when a vast majority of one’s mostly-similar peers downright loved a movie and you thought it was just a little south of *meh.
Next time around it’s a big one with The Divergent Series: Allegiance and Miracles from Heaven. It’s gonna be a Rotten Week!
