Happy Mother’s Day, or as we call it around my house, Baby Momma’s Day. It’s that day to celebrate those women who gave you life by performing the life-sized equivalent of pushing a grapefruit out the top of a Snapple bottle! If that doesn’t deserve its own holiday, I don’t know what does. So in honor of all the moms out there, lets take a look at what This Rotten Week has to offer.
Just remember, I'm not reviewing these movies, but rather predicting where they'll end up on the Tomatometer.
Priest
Anyone else out there wish the vampire/ zombie virus would just hit already so we can get it over with? And don’t confuse, I don’t necessarily want to become a blood-sucking, night demon or watch my friends and family succumb to some torturous evil. I just want authors and movie writers to have something new to write about. Once the vampire takeover happens, the creative types will lose about fifty percent of their material. They’ll have to come up with some new plot device. Although the cruel irony is the world will probably be destroyed for this to happen, so the only way to stop vampire and zombie garbage flicks is to ruin mankind. Hmm, that’s a tough proposition. I’ll sleep on it.
From what I gather watching the trailer Priest is about one man’s quest to get a ridiculous looking tattoo removed from the top of his face. And he will go to any lengths to get that thing off. He rides motorcycles, throws stuff, dramatically removes the hood of his cloak a bunch of times, you know, whatever it takes. Director Scott Stewart knows how to tell this kind of story. His last flick, Legion (18%), was all about one man’s quest to get his big ugly wings removed. Priest looks just as good.
Some reviews of this movie are already in and critics think it’s, hmmm what’s the word I’m looking for, ah yes, terrible. Not like we needed the heads up, but its nice to confirm these things early before I accidentally go crazy for a moment and try to convince myself it might actually be entertaining. It won’t. Bad early reviews combined with an ever-shifting release date (had to convert it to 3D, another good sign) all spell trouble. If only the real vampire virus had started on this movie set. The Rotten Watch for Priest is 11%.
Bridesmaids
Want to know a little a dirty little secret that I wouldn’t ever tell any of my male friends under any circumstance, even at gun point? I actually laughed more than once during the trailer for Bridesmaids. And though that revelation, and all that it carries with it, may seem overly chauvinistic or just plain dense, don’t blame me. I love women (Just ask Mrs. Rotten Week). Blame studios which rarely put women in lead roles in movies that *gasp* make people laugh. But Bridesmaids may just prove that line of thinking a fallacy. I am woman, hear me roar... with laughter, and all that.
Not to turn this award-winning column into a gender debate or even an argument about what constitutes funny, but I tend to think one hallmark of good comedies about situations such as the one in Bridesmaids (an awkwardly single Kristen Wiig is asked to be a Maid of Honor for her best friend, comedy ensues) is that they embrace a cliche rather than use it as a comedic crutch. Can women get psychotic about wedding planning? Sure, I’ve watched it happen. That in itself is not necessarily funny (it’s actually scary, horror film style). Much like The Hangover which took the caveman bachelor party concept and turned it slightly upside down, Bridesmaids embraces the idiocy of bridal convention and then goes to work on the funny. Oh, and it doesn’t hurt that they actually cast women that get laughs (Wiig, Maya Rudolph, etc).
Critics are over the moon about Bridesmaids with an 85% rating right now. That’s through the roof for a comedy, and though it might dip a bit over the course of the week, this could end up being one of the highest rated funny films of the year. The Rotten Watch for Bridesmaids is 80%.
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Recapping last week
Thor (Predicted: 92% Actual: 78%) took an odd turn this week. When I made my prediction it sat at 94% after fifty reviews. That’s a fair sample size so my 92% accounted for a bit of a backslide. But since that time, Thor scored a 72% from critics. That’s a fairly huge dip, which explains how it dropped sixteen percentage points over the course of the week taking it out of that superior superhero class.
Jumping the Broom (Predicted: 14% Actual: 52%) made me want to jump off something very tall as I watched its score steadily climb and climb over the course of the week. Although it’s still certified rotten, it wasn’t the total stink bomb I expected.
Finally, Something Borrowed (Predicted: 25% Actual: 15%) was everything I imagined and less. Nice to see this one coming a mile away and should hopefully teach all those budding rom-com writers out there a little lesson: don’t bother.
Next week, Jack Sparrow is back for another tour of the Caribbean. It’s going to be a Rotten Week!
