Ticket Stubs #35: The English Beat-down
Greetings and salutations (and all other manner of fancy ways to say "hi"), Ticketholders! Get ready to twist and crawl your way back into Ticket Stubs. English Beat..."Twist & Crawl"? Anyone get that joke? That's OK, I'll just save it for later.
Anyway, I lied again. Before I share my latest featured hero design, I decided to be a lazy critic and trot out this old issue for you, straight FROM May 11, 2004 (SWAT Ticket #4 : The English Beat-down): SWAT here again with the latest movie reviews. I haven't seen anything that's worth a shit, so I'll just pretend I'm a high-paid movie critic and review the latest in a genre that should not be distributed to the American public, no matter how similar the language may be: British comedies.
First up is a completely revolting but heartfelt comedy about a bunch of fat, ugly, middle-aged women who pose nude for a calendar to raise money to buy a sofa in the local cancer treatment center. After putting out year after year of calendars that feature pictures of flowers, buildings, fruit, pies, and other prim and proper boring crap that didn't raise a single penny, the Calendar Girls finally get approval and become so successful that the calendar expands to the United States. The only real laugh in the movie comes from the teenage son who walks in on his mother and eleven other women undressing and thinks she is turning into a lesbian. The only thing more frightening than seeing a dozen ugly nude women is knowing that the movie was based on a true story.
Ebert & Roeper: 2 Thumbs Up
SWAT Ticket: F- and 2 Middle Fingers
The next English Beat-down goes to Love Actually. In this turkey (I mean Oscar-worthy romantic comedy), Hugh Grant plays his usual incoherent jackass who ignores the woman he loves and then stumbles and stutters his way back to her in the last predictably sappy five minutes of the film. This time, he plays a Tony Blair stand-in as the prime minister of Great Britain who falls in love with his new secretary (who is fairly hot when compared with most British women).
Nor is Grant the only socially challenged character. There is also a writer who falls for his hot Portugese maid (he can't speak Portugese and she can't speak English), a young boy who falls for an American girl we never see until the end of the movie (played by the runner-up Junior Singer from the last season of Arsenio-era Star Search), a guy who is unlucky with British women and plans to tour the bars of America picking up chicks, a businessman who cheats on his wife, a pair of porno stand-ins who talk to each other like old friends while pretending to have sex on camera, and an over the hill pop singer who hates his job but needs to put out another shitty Christmas single every year to break even.
The prime minister winds up with his secretary, the writer and maid learn each other's language and get married, the boy finds his girl, the desperate guy comes back to England with four supermodels to share with his friends, the businessman and wife stay together, the porn stars wind up together, and the pop singer performs on a talk show naked and winds up spending the holiday with his fat manager ("half an hour at Elton John's party and you come back gayer than a meatball"). Mr. Bean even has a cameo as a compulsive jewelry salesman. The comedy is great, the multiple plots are well-layered, and the cast is all-star, but Hugh Grant ruined it for me. The romance is agonizing and predictable, but see it anyway.
Romance: F
Comedy: A
If I don't run into anymore design issues, the next time you hear from me will be when I show off my next character. Stay tuned for more Ticket Stubs and heroes from my head. This really is goodnight, I swear.
Anyway, I lied again. Before I share my latest featured hero design, I decided to be a lazy critic and trot out this old issue for you, straight FROM May 11, 2004 (SWAT Ticket #4 : The English Beat-down): SWAT here again with the latest movie reviews. I haven't seen anything that's worth a shit, so I'll just pretend I'm a high-paid movie critic and review the latest in a genre that should not be distributed to the American public, no matter how similar the language may be: British comedies.
First up is a completely revolting but heartfelt comedy about a bunch of fat, ugly, middle-aged women who pose nude for a calendar to raise money to buy a sofa in the local cancer treatment center. After putting out year after year of calendars that feature pictures of flowers, buildings, fruit, pies, and other prim and proper boring crap that didn't raise a single penny, the Calendar Girls finally get approval and become so successful that the calendar expands to the United States. The only real laugh in the movie comes from the teenage son who walks in on his mother and eleven other women undressing and thinks she is turning into a lesbian. The only thing more frightening than seeing a dozen ugly nude women is knowing that the movie was based on a true story.
Ebert & Roeper: 2 Thumbs Up
SWAT Ticket: F- and 2 Middle Fingers
The next English Beat-down goes to Love Actually. In this turkey (I mean Oscar-worthy romantic comedy), Hugh Grant plays his usual incoherent jackass who ignores the woman he loves and then stumbles and stutters his way back to her in the last predictably sappy five minutes of the film. This time, he plays a Tony Blair stand-in as the prime minister of Great Britain who falls in love with his new secretary (who is fairly hot when compared with most British women).
Nor is Grant the only socially challenged character. There is also a writer who falls for his hot Portugese maid (he can't speak Portugese and she can't speak English), a young boy who falls for an American girl we never see until the end of the movie (played by the runner-up Junior Singer from the last season of Arsenio-era Star Search), a guy who is unlucky with British women and plans to tour the bars of America picking up chicks, a businessman who cheats on his wife, a pair of porno stand-ins who talk to each other like old friends while pretending to have sex on camera, and an over the hill pop singer who hates his job but needs to put out another shitty Christmas single every year to break even.
The prime minister winds up with his secretary, the writer and maid learn each other's language and get married, the boy finds his girl, the desperate guy comes back to England with four supermodels to share with his friends, the businessman and wife stay together, the porn stars wind up together, and the pop singer performs on a talk show naked and winds up spending the holiday with his fat manager ("half an hour at Elton John's party and you come back gayer than a meatball"). Mr. Bean even has a cameo as a compulsive jewelry salesman. The comedy is great, the multiple plots are well-layered, and the cast is all-star, but Hugh Grant ruined it for me. The romance is agonizing and predictable, but see it anyway.
Romance: F
Comedy: A
If I don't run into anymore design issues, the next time you hear from me will be when I show off my next character. Stay tuned for more Ticket Stubs and heroes from my head. This really is goodnight, I swear.
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