A slower Sunday for the Rotten Watch with only two flicks on the docket. This week we’ve got Liam Neeson running roughshod over the bad guys and Tim Burton bringing dogs back to life.
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 what This Rotten Week has to offer.
Taken 2
My father, Papa Rotten Week, is a man of few words. The missives he does throw out there once in a blue moon are usually of the repetitive, I’ve said this a thousand times, theme. Some of his favorite include reminding me I was born in the hospital shown at the beginning of House, giving away endings of books, and reiterating the body count in the movie Taken. I don’t know what exactly got him fixated on this movie, or the death toll number, but one can’t mention Liam Neeson, preteen kidnapping or “sets of skills” without Pops chiming in on how many people died in that flick. It’s crazy. Getting old is nuts.
Now it’s all I can think about with this sequel, because even though the movie apparently sucks (8% after twelve reviews), it probably means I’ll never escape my dad counting up bodies left in Liam Neeson’s wake. And by the looks of the melodramatic and silly trailer, that number is significant.
Oliver “I Dare You To Have a Cooler Last Name” Megaton knows a thing or two about taking a dump all over the action movie cutting room floor. Dude’s given us Colombiana (27%) and Transporter 2 (36%), but my man may have outdone himself this time around. Megaton, along with “writers” Luc Besson (Lockout-37%) and Robert Mark Kamen (The Karate Kid-67%**) took the script for Taken down to the old photocopier, hit “3” (so they all had one to read and copy), went back to their offices, scribbled a change here and there (uzi instead of pistol, wife and daughter get snatched, Istanbul as a setting, etc) and handed that bad boy in. Boom, movie time.
**Jaden Smith’s version of Daniel Laruso, this flick was basically a copy of the original, just replacing Cali with China and switching up the race of the kid lead. Kamen makes his bones holding down Control+C, Control+V.
So what we are left with is Neeson killing his way through another (or the same) criminal organization to get back his family members. See? My dad’s not the only repetitive guy around. The Rotten Watch for Taken 2 is 13%
Five things that I hate:
Beers that mention “cranberry” anywhere on the bottle
When my American Wagyu is even a degree overcooked
Big, and small, and medium-sized government
Hemp
The title of this movie
Frankenweenie? What the f@#$? I have a distinct feeling that if anyone but Tim Burton walked into a movie studio and pitched this as the idea/ title for a movie, the cynical and condescending laughter alone would have closed the door on said director’s career for good.
But, alas it was Tim Burton, and recent not-so-successful work aside (Dark Shadows-38%, Alice in Wonderland-51%) dude’s got street cred. And once I hurdle some titular cognitive dissonance, I’m seeing a movie critics feel is a return to form for His Odd-ness. It’s a remake of live action short he made back in the 80’s using stop motion animation to tell the story of little Victor sparking his dog back to life Mary Shelley style.
Burton’s used stop-motion successfully before with Corpse Bride (84%) and Nightmare Before Christmas (96%-though he only wrote and produced, plus it was forever ago, but whatever, it’s a comp) and early reviews are trending well above positive. They aren’t all gaga (78% through eighteen reviews), but there’s enough Burton love here to feel it’ll sit well in the “Fresh” range. Man, if he had just picked a different title, this thing would be in the nineties right? The Rotten Watch for Frankenweenie is 75%
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Recapping last week:
F#$%ing A, I thought this was going to be my Fall. The Autumn of Doug. Alas, it doesn’t start off well and we may be heading toward a Winter of dis-connect. I need to string together a few good weeks in a row to avoid this.
Looper (Predicted: 91% Actual: 93%) was a win, but I had a huge head start on this one so I can’t really do any back patting. Though I am happy it’s a good movie, and someone is still working creatively in the science fiction, time travel genre.
Hotel Transylvania (Predicted: 56% Actual: 41%) just kept falling during the week. There were a few early reviews out for this one and I had to choose whether it’d tick up or down a notch. Oops.
And finally, Won’t Back Down (Predicted: 53% Actual: 33%) didn’t rally the movie critical, anti-union, pro-privatized education movie reviewer faction quite like it wanted. Not-so-secretly I’m glad this movie bombed, but I still missed by a wide margin on the prediction. I think I might have been hedging my feelings on this movie with want to come close on the score.
Next time around we’ve got Ben Affleck rescuing diplomats, Kevin James doing MMA, Colin Farrell snatching canines and Ethan Hawke solving crimes. It’s going to be a Rotten Week!
