Snap Judgment

My triumphant return to the judgment-snapping fold a couple of weeks ago was not met with the dramatic uptick in movie quality I was hoping for. May this week finally change all that. Well, may it? I... er... let's see.


Surrogates (directed by Jonathan Mostow, screenplay by Michael Ferris & John D. Brancato, based on the graphic novel by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele)

Ah, I'm sure this one seemed like a slam dunk. Bruce Willis scored mad bank ten years ago playing a father figure to that kid who saw deceased Philadelphians, so why not put him in another movie where he plays a surrogate dad? Except, the title is Surrogates, implying that he'll be in competition with other middle-aged dudes who are out to steal his paternal thunder. Highjinks ensue, one guy falls into a pool fully clothed, another one gets projectile-puked on by a baby, we build to a hilarious finale where they're all trying to out-do each other's 4th of July barbecues, end on a sweet little "it's all about the children" life lesson, and wait for the checks to come in! Well done, studio honchos. There'll be an extra hooker in your jacuzzi when you get home tonight.

Wait! It seems I may have been slightly mistaken. The team of well-trained border collies who handle my research have just informed me that this movie is actually about a future world of hyper-technology where people are "plugged in" to a nefarious supercomputer network that controls the whole world. Hmmm. Sound a little too much like a landmark Keanu Reeves movie from the 90s? I think so too. Get it straight, you stupid execs -- that kind of lightning only strikes once, and it was called Johnny Mnemonic. So disappointing. You're paying that hooker out-of-pocket.




I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell (directed by Bob Gosse, screenplay by Tucker Max based on his book)

I'm stumped. How do you make fun of a guy whose very existence is a joke? This may be the greatest challenge I've ever faced on SJ. And I've riffed on United 93, for crying out loud. Sure, I could play the "alternate titles" game and toss out A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Douchebaggery, or Eternal Dickwad with a Worthless Mind, or maybe I Hope They Serve Beer At Your Public Castration Ceremony, And I Mean Actual Beer, Not The Mass-Produced Shitwater That You Pride Yourself For Drinking Because You Think It Makes You More "Real" Or Whatthefuckever -- you know, the usual stuff. But I'm not really in the mood for that.



Fame (directed by Kevin Tancharoen, screenplay by Allison Burnett, based on a screenplay by Christopher Gore)

This would have been a great opportunity to put a bunch of those High School Musical kids together with some American Idol favorites from past years and have them all sing and dance together and stuff. Sadly, given the ironclad nature of these performers' existing contracts, they'd be lucky to get away with singing in the shower, let alone appearing in a competing production. The makers of Fame have attempted to overcome this unfortunate hurdle by casting such up-to-the-minute teen icons as Kelsey Grammer, Bebe Neuwirth, Megan Mullally, and Charles S. Dutton -- an incredibly shrewd move given the vast numbers of middle-schoolers that stay up all night bit-torrenting old episodes of Cheers and Roc. (Remember when Roc started airing all its shows live? Those were some heady days. You kids think you have it pretty good with The Office and 30 Rock, but Roc Live! was a zenith of television comedy that may never again be reached. Imagine your favorite episode of Arrested Development, and then imagine how much funnier it would be if Jason Bateman had to break character occasionally to remember his lines, and you'll have some idea.)

Now where were we?



Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (directed by John Krasinski, screenplay by John Krasinski, based on the book by David Foster Wallace)

Oh, this would have been a much better alternate title for that Tucker Max thing.

Snap Judgment: The Reckoning

I've been prepping for over a year to make this the best Snap Judgment ever. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it.) Let's do this.

9 (rated PG-13, directed by Shane Acker, screenplay by Pamela Pettler, story by Acker)

So this one's apparently about a little guy made of cloth (but who still needs glasses) who wakes up from a coma just in time to stop the impending machine-made apocalypse. I know what you're thinking -- another Young Einstein already? Oh, that we should be so lucky. Sadly, Yahoo Serious's unfortunate copyright lawsuit against Yahoo! in 2000 likely means we won't be seeing his body of work stateside any time soon. Will the voice talents of Elijah Wood and Jennifer Connelly be enough to tide us over until the winds of forgiveness blow that incredible Australian back to our shores? It's hard to tell; most reviews say that it looks gorgeous but is thin on substance. Sounds like Friday afternoon at The Ivy, which I can walk past for free. Next!



Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself (rated PG-13, written/directed by Tyler Perry, based on his play)

Fun fact: The word "Bad" in German means "bath" or "bathe," so if you sort of semi-translate the title into German, you get Tyler Perry's I Can Bathe Myself, which I'm told the man himself is already planning for a 2053 release. He's got his mind on the future, that Tyler.


Whiteout (rated R, directed by Dominic Sena, screenplay by Jon Hoeber & Eric Hoeber and Chad Hayes & Carey Hayes, based on the graphic novel by Greg Rucka)

Ah, white-out. Boy, have I had some crazy times with that particular brand of correction fluid. Back in '81, I found a bottle of it in my parents' study and poured it all over everything I could find: furniture, books, one of those "portable" tape recorders that weighed more than a cat, and -- speaking of which -- possibly one of the cats. If only they'd had YouTube back then! I would have ridden that train straight to my own "outrageous" reality show. And -- uh oh. Bad news. The bespectacled turtle who does my proofreading has just pointed out that the movie is Whiteout, whereas the substance that blondes allegedly use on their computer screens is Wite-Out. Why, one wonders, would the filmmakers fail to capitalize on such a brilliant opportunity for synergy between scary Kate Beckinsale shower scenes and nearly 60 years of dominance in the chemical typo-negation business? Those morons left billions on the table. Billions.



Sorority Row (rated R, directed by Stewart Hendler, written by Josh Stolberg & Pete Goldfinger, based on a screenplay by Mark Rosman)

Hey, here's a great idea for a horror flick: someone makes me go see this. OH ZING! No, no, I'm just kidding. Movies like this are the bread and butter of a snap-judgmenter like myself, since it's so astonishingly easy to predict every single scene in the movie just by looking at the poster. For example, I know that at some point, one of the girls will think the killer is hiding in the closet, and she opens it, and it turns out it's just a cat. And then later on, another girl will think she's being chased down the stairs by the killer, and she turns around at the last second... and it turns out it's just the cat. In the next scene, a girl is driving home from a bar late at night, and there's no one on the road but her and this other car -- with its headlights turned off. She keeps turning onto side streets, but the car stays on her tail. Finally the car corners her in an abandoned alley and the door opens and... it was just a cat driving. And the headlights weren't on because, duh, you need opposable thumbs to turn the knob. But at the end of the movie -- IT TURNS OUT THE CAT WAS THE KILLER AFTER ALL! Holy crap, you didn't see that one coming! It's like That Darn Cat meets I Know What You Did Last Summer, or, translated into cat language, Meow Meow Meow Meow Meow Can Opener.