What's Curly doing in a sci-fi movie?
Curly Howard in Nutty but Nice (1940) (via Wikipedia)
So the kids and I went to the movies tonight and my first question was: What's Curly doing in a sci-fi movie? My second question was where were Moe and Larry?
I was watching "Elysium" and it took me a second to realize that the guy who kept taking off his shirt throughout the movie (he's no Mark Wahlberg) was Matt Damon and not Curly Howard.
Here's a little tip for the studios. A lot of us who like good looking men (straight women, gay men and the bi squad) will sit through a piece of crap like "Johnny Mnemonic" if you put someone good looking like Keanu Reeves in the lead.
Matt Damon has "TV dad" written all over him. Even at his thinnest, he's thick waisted. As "Family Guy" repeatedly points out, he has no neck. And his face, on a good day, resembles a pug.
So the idea that he would become hot by shaving his head is laughable. Call Kevin James and tell him they've found the actor to play his brother.
If there was anything more ridiculous than his looks, it was his character's name: Max Da Costa. Was that supposed to have been an in joke?
Okay so the basics, most people live on earth which looks like a
nightmare (actually, it looks like a send up to the sets of John
Carpenter's "Escape From LA" -- only campy). Some, the really rich, live
up on the space station Elysium. Jodie Foster, looking like she's made
of wax and about as facially mobile as wax (did she have botox for the
film?), is up there and doesn't want the earth dwellers joining her.
So she concocts this plot that includes killing people who try to reach
Elysium and also rigging things so she moves from Secretary to Mayor.
She's kind of like the right-wing's nightmare fantasy of Hillary
Clinton.
Matt's got a girlfriend -- which is how you know it's a movie. She's
played by Alex Braga. You never believe the two have had a
conversation, let alone sex. In the third act, when he needs to be
saving the day and saving Braga, he goes all Shakesperian on us with a
ton of wordplay that seems to go on for five minutes and only serves to
remind us that he's no Jack Nicholson (he's also no John Davidson, no
David Hartman, no Nick Lachey . . .).
The action is doled out in morsels in this film.
The action is doled out in morsels in this film.
Jodie Foster has acted well in the past but here she comes off like a figure from Madame Tussauds.
The script piles everything on. You keep expecting Stanley Whiplash
(from "The Adventures of Penlope Pitstop") to show up. (It's not enough
that Damon and his gal suffer, they also have to be childhood
sweethearts who grew up in . . . the same orphanage!)
You know the only one who can rock Matt's world is Ben Affleck. When
are we going to see that on screen? (It was cute how he blamed others
for the rumors recently -- ignoring his GQ interviews, his Will &
Grace guest spot where he claimed he had a boyfriend named Ben and so
much more.)
Ben plowing Matt hard would certainly be more entertaining than this crap.
In the third act, numb from boredom, I felt my soul floating outside my body. Looking down, I could see Matt gearing up for his own sitcom, "Mr. Belvedere," as he became this decade's Clifton Webb. As the film got more and more unconvincing, I briefly pondered floating away but then, in the last five minutes, it hit me: "Elysium" was made to make "Battlefield Earth" look subtle.
Ben plowing Matt hard would certainly be more entertaining than this crap.
In the third act, numb from boredom, I felt my soul floating outside my body. Looking down, I could see Matt gearing up for his own sitcom, "Mr. Belvedere," as he became this decade's Clifton Webb. As the film got more and more unconvincing, I briefly pondered floating away but then, in the last five minutes, it hit me: "Elysium" was made to make "Battlefield Earth" look subtle.
