Snap Judgment

Now on a semi-regular schedule! Really gives you a reason for living, doesn't it?

Baby Mama (rated PG-13, written and directed by Michael McCullers)

First of all, I ask you: Has anything good ever come from a movie poster where the less wacky character is looking sideways at the more wacky character? Hold on and let me scan the roughly 2,736 posters to which I have instantaneous memory recall access... yeah, it's looking like the answer is "No." I would also like to point out that Tina Fey, while awesome in every conceivable way (in fact, based on an ongoing informal survey of females I know, she seems to have easily wrested the "#1 Girl Crush" title from Angelina Jolie among both the "straight" and "otherwise" populations) -- anyway, I would like to point out that, yes, despite all that, she did not write this movie. If she had, do you think she would have called it Baby Mama? Of course not; she would have come up with something much more clever. Me, I would have given it the same title I'd give any movie I wanted to be successful: Die Hard 5: The Loneliest Girl at the Wedding, because just imagine the ticket sales.


Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (rated R, written and directed by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg)

[Editor's note: OK, seriously, what's with all the comedies this week? Making fun of comedies is generally a losing battle, as the producers of all those (Genre) Movie movies should have learned by now but clearly haven't. Nevertheless, I shall try.] So, are they still supposed to be in college four years after the first movie? I didn't see it, but I thought they were smart. Hey, did you know John Cho is 36 years old? That's kind of getting on in years to play a... college... oh, for god's sake, there's nothing funny to say. Let's move on.



Rogue (rated R, written and directed by Greg McLean)

Finally! This is the kind of movie with which Snap Judgment butters its proverbial bread (or, if Snap Judgment is vegan, Earth-Balances its proverbial sprouted grain loaf). Now, one could choose this occasion to ruminate on why there are so many man-eating crocodile movies out there. A quick IMDb search for the keyword "crocodile" turns up a solid 142, although the scientific accuracy of that could be called into question given that one of them is The Chipmunk Adventure. Never mind, though, because I'm more interested in why there aren't more man-eating crocodile (or alligator; let's give them their due) films. Seems to me that they're a pretty easy sell -- tropical locations, lots of people in skimpy clothing, tons of gory death, satisfying finale in which the giant creature buys the farm in some kind of imaginitive way. All that stuff equals guaranteed box office, right? So I'm thinking that the fact that we only get maybe one a year means that a lot of the writers are screwing up their pitches. Hypothetical example: "So, it's Spring Break in Cabo San Lucas... tons of nubile girls and six-packed guys partying like there's no tomorrow. And guess what, for a lot of them there really is no tomorrow -- because a giant prehistoric alligator storms the beach and starts devouring these dudes and coeds by the dozen. The only man who can stop this horrific beast is a highly trained ex-Navy SEAL who's been tracking the alligator for years but could never get close enough to kill it. Can he finally do it this time, before the creature gets his daughter? The answer is yes -- actually, he kills it in the first five minutes, but it drains him emotionally and he spends the remainder of the film in a small cabin in Minnesota, pondering the troubling mysteries of the world as he stares into a dying fire." Must be something like that.