Movie Review: Dylan Dog: Dead of Night

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Big pushes for Fast Five and Disney's Prom for my movie money this weekend. Checking out Fandango to see other options and Dylan Dog: Dead of Night came up. Hadn't seen any previews for this one but read the description. Werewolves, vampires and zombies...OH MY! Why not give it a shot.

When I walked into my regular theater, I was only half way in when I got approached by one of the assistant managers. He wanted to inform me that they now have burgers, fries, fried cheese sticks and jalapeno poppers on the menu. Found out they have a new special oven and fry-o-later in back. They didn't have counter signage saying new items are available and the electronic boards showed the items at $4.50 or $7.50 in price, but they really didn't give an idea of the size of the serving. With Japan's influence in Hawaii I thought they might have one of the plastic models of the dish in the glass case to show you what you'd get. They didn't. If they price the new food like they do with soda, you'd get one, maybe two poppers for the $4.50. He was really excited about the new offerings, so maybe next time I'll try something since I now know that they have it.

The movie ran for 107 minutes and kept my attention. The werewolves and vampires were the bad guys with the zombies providing the comic relief. As typical in this genre of movie monster and things that go bump in the night there is an uneasy balance between all sides. The stability among the undead is maintained by one human who knows their secrets and knows that they really do exist as they try to mix in among the living in the Crescent City of New Orleans. Dylan Dog (Brandon Routh) has been chosen as the arbiter for the creatures of the night.

Dylan has been in retirement as balance keeper but gets dragged out of it when a local importer/exporter is killed. Looks like he and a large furry creature had an unexpected meeting and the man didn't survive the get together. Working with the man's daughter, Elizabeth (Anita Briem), they discover only one item has been taken. Now with Elizabeth in tow along with his friend Marcus (Sam Huntington) who recently acquired some special skills they traipse around the city to solve the mystery of the stolen object.

The werewolves control a meat packing plant. The vampires run a night club. The zombies do business in a specialized body parts shop. Pretty stereotypical when you think of the monster types. Ultimately when they find out why the item was stolen the fate of both the monster world and the human world hangs in the balance.

Routh delivers his lines with aplomb, a cool confidence of a man who knows how to deal with the dark forces as easily as an eight year old can put letters in a mail box. Marcus on the other hand is constantly flying off the handle as he must learn as Uncle Ben said to Peter Parker, with great power comes great responsibility. Ah, the struggles of being the go get it guy! Director Kevin Munroe struggled to find the right balance between taking our heroes seriously and taking them too seriously so that they crossed over into the land of campiness.

Hats off to the special effects and makeup guys for the monsters. They all looked pretty good! As an aside, why would a vampire in his right mind have southern facing windows in his bedroom? I'm just sayin!

Overall I don't think the movie will do well this weekend, maybe a late September or October release would have served them better. The flick was rated PG-13 for sequences of creature violence and action, language including some sexual references, and some drug material. Funny that for the drug material they don't distinguish between real world drugs and made up monster drugs! Again, I'm just sayin.

The Movie Monkey

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Movie Review: Madea's Big Happy Family

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Three new movies this weekend. Water for Elephants has Robert Pattinson, Edward of Twilight fame, in a drama. Didn't see much in the way of previews so it was a pass. The next was African Cats the Disney documentary about the big cats of Africa. Although I love Disney, I'm a dog person. Next! So that left Tyler Perry's Madea's Big Happy Family. Annnnd...I bought a ticket.

People either seem to love Perry's work or they hate it. There doesn't seem to be many in the middle ground. I lean toward the love side of his work, especially when it includes Madea, Perry's female alter ego. Playing such a loud, boisterous and as I was taught at my first job a PB that's pushy broad in case you're scratching your head, Perry gets to do things that normally people would find unacceptable. But, when Madea does it we laugh and laugh hard.

In Perry's movies, there are elements of relationships in all forms that get explored. Mothers and daughters, siblings, parental and general connections between people. What are issues spoken and unspoken, known and unknown, fresh and deep rooted that are part of the characters lives we see play out on the screen. Sometimes redemption is there, sometimes not. Elements of faith in God are always in play in his cinematic endeavors.

The theater was pretty full for the first show of the day on what for some is a long Easter weekend. The crowd reacted to the projected images. Many times the laughter was so loud and hard you couldn't hear the words. At other times there were gasps of shocked surprise. And at other times there was silence punctuated by people inhaling trying to hold back their noses from running.

Some of the dialogue, actions and situations were so over the top that you shook your head in laughter. But yet in many cases there were the elements of truth to each one. That's where he gets us. We drop our guard a little so that he can get in there with a message of love, truth, faith and of overcoming. On occasion he hits us with a situational 2X4 to either wake us up to what is around ourselves or for those that are aware, to be all the more thankful.

As to what happens in the 106 minute running time, here's the scoop. Madea's niece Shirley (Loretta Devine) needs to tell her three children about her health issues. Each child has their own intervening issues. Her son Byron (Bow Wow) is dealing with two high maintenance women, his baby's mamma and girlfriend while trying to overcome being recently released from jail. Oldest daughter Kimberly (Shannon Kane) is a cold non responsive wife to her husband Calvin (the Old Spice Guy Isaiah Mustafa). Middle daughter Tammy (Natalie Desselle) is the domineering emasculating wife with two disrespectful boys. One of the biggest laughs throughout was provided by weed smoking Aunty Bam (Cassi Davis).

There was a cute animation to start the movie and the blooper reel to finish it out while the credits ran making you want to stay until what I call the BSOR or blue screen of rating. With drug content (lots of weed due to Aunty Bam), language provided by an often bleeped out Madea (when you see why it was bleeped you're stomach will be hurting from laughter) and some mature thematic material (the aforementioned relationships and health issues) it received a PG-13 rating.

The Movie Monkey

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Movie Review: Rio

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Samba....samba...samba lessons, see samba dancing....samba dancing. Oh sorry, didn't see you sitting there. I'm flipping through the yellow pages looking for places where I can learn to do the samba. After watching Rio, I'm very tempted to learn how to shake my own tail feathers just like an animated small blue macaw in Rio de Janeiro rain forest. He too was overcome by the infectious beat of the bossa nova and shook his tail feathers. In fact he shook them so much the new born or would that be new hatchling fell out of his tree only to be captured by exotic bird poachers and shipped to a frozen Moose Lake, Minnesota. The shivering youngling is befriended by a young Linda. So there is the set up for our movie. They start off strong with song, sounds, music, rhythms, syncopation, motions and colors spellbind the viewers. I saw the movie in 2D but it was very obvious how they were using the 3D in the opening sequence.

Oh wait...I forgot. Before Rio started, we had a visit from your friendly neighborhood Scrat. The sabre-toothed squirrel has been part of each of the Ice Age movies. Blue Sky Studios produced both the Ice Age series as well as Rio. In this go around Scrat will not only go to the ends of the earth to save his beloved acorn, but he will go to the middle of it as well! You can't but help laugh when the Scrat is up on the screen!

Time passes and about 15 years later we meet up with a grown up Blu (Jesse Eisenberg) and Linda (Leslie Mann). He's become a domesticate house pet without a care who never learned to fly. He didn't have to. His world is all upset when he ends up traveling back to Rio de Janeiro in order to meet up the last female blue macaw. Boy meets girl in order to save a species from extinction. But, they say things happen in cycles. He is once again kidnapped along with his new "friend" Jewel (Anne Hathaway). Can Blu overcome his domestication and fly the coop in order to rescue Jewel and return to his home in the rain forest or Moose Lake?

The movie is very catchy with the music and the animation. Where it fails is with the story line within the 96 minutes running time. There are somethings that just overwhelm the story. Instead of one side kick, there end up being three, well actually four but two come as a set. The first is Rafael, a rain forest toucan (George Lopez) who acts as the guide to help Blu realize that flying is in his DNA. Then are the two urban birds, Nico and Pedro (Jamie Foxx and the Black Eyed Peas will.i.am) who provide musical interludes and date and love making advice. Lastly is the bull dog Luiz (Tracy Morgan) who's biggest dream seems to be to dress up like Carmen Miranda and dance in the carnival parade while trying to keep drool off of his outfit. For you kids who don't know, Carmen Miranda appeared in the 1943 movie The Gang's All Here which then made the fruit headdress popular and a stock item when describing a samba beat or talking about Chiquita bananas. Director Carlos Saldanha tried to pack a lot of action into the time allotment and didn't allow enough slower times between skirmishes.

3D computer animation has come a long way with the detail and textures that is now capable of being rendered especially when it comes to hair, fur and feathers. What I found interesting is in many places the lack textures. The animal characters were highly meticulously designed. But at times there were items like clothes or walls or cloth that were left with lots of color and parts, but not the surface gains and qualities.

The writers did leave out a heavy environmental message. They didn't rant about the raizing of the rain forest or poaching of animals into extinction. But they did make jokes of men (and dogs) dressing up for carnival earning the movie a PG rating for mild off color (not referring the the vibrant reds, blues, greens and yellows found in a color wheel and the birds feathers) humor. Also when you think about it, they are trying to get a male and female blue macaw together in order to perpetuate the species. The one line that I thought would have been used but didn't is when under the standard "boy looses girl" segment of the plot she or he in anger blurts out the "I wouldn't go with you if you were the last person" or in this case "bird on the face of the earth!" and they go storming away from each other yelling "FINE!" So it wasn't totally predictable!

With the humor, colors, animals, love story, music and the travelogue to Rio de Janeiro and Carnival, there is something everyone could find to enjoy in Rio.

The Movie Monkey

To subscribe to the audio podcast of the reviews via iTunes click here. Audio versions are released the following Wednesday.