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dbarakat8
Reviews
The Fox and the Hound (1981)
The fox and the hound...or let's blast that dang fox!
I am in the minority of reviewers that didn't like this movie and I'm still scratching my head as to why. There was nothing heartwarming about this film. In summary, this movie is about Amos, the crazy, trigger happy, red neck maniac, who spends three quarters of the movie trying to hunt and kill a fox named Tod. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what was motivating him to do so. At one point, he even fires at the old woman's car as she's driving it because the fox was in the back seat. The friendship between the two main characters is driven apart when the older hunting dog, Chief, is injured in the process of trying to kill the fox. The hound then swears revenge on the fox...for running for his life? I was really hoping that the bear would have killed Amos and his dog so that the poor fox could get some peace. Instead, the fox saves the two blood thirsty companions and is nearly killed himself by the bear. Even then, Amos still makes another attempt to kill the fox.
The movie is supposed to be about a friendship between a fox and a hound that is broken as they grow up and assume their roles as the animals that they are, but I didn't really get a sense of a friendship because they only spent about a minute developing that aspect of the movie. There are also some other characters in the background that don't really move the story much or provide the levity they are supposed to. The music is terrible and Big Momma sounds as though she is improvising the lyrics and melody of the songs. The dialog was really choppy and awkward and did not flow well. I got the sense that this movie was slapped together with bobble gum and scotch tape a few days before it was in theaters.
I understand what this movie was attempting to be, but I feel that it failed miserably.
This Is 40 (2012)
No story = bad movie
I remember being interested in seeing this movie when I saw the previews because I Like Judd Appatow movies. They're smart and really funny. However, my wife and I watched this together last night and we were both really disappointed. It seemed to have all of the good elements to make a great movie. The characters were cast well, great direction, acting was fine, production values were adequate, the dialog was good etc. However, when I thought about the movie as a whole I realized that there just wasn't a story. There was no focus. And not even the fabulous breasts of Megan Fox could make up for it. One minute Paul Rudd is losing his business and the next it wasn't an issue. The wife had $12000 stolen from her store and then it was like she forgot about it and moved on. Then more characters kept popping up with more issues to deal with that caused more distractions (e.g. John Lithgow and Albert Brooks). Then there was crazy fighting with their teenage daughter and on and on...In other words, I did not quite understand what the central conflict was or how it was resolved. No issue was focused on for more than a few moments at a time. There wasn't much in the way of character development either. It seemed like the two main characters were just fighting the entire time for reasons that were very hard to understand and nobody really changed in the end. Now, there were moments that were laugh out loud funny, but those were not enough to hold the movie together. It just goes to show you that 1) even the great Judd Appatow can make mistakes and 2) if the story stinks, there is nothing in the world that can save the movie from being bad.