Every Sunday, Gill delves into his archive of over 800 movie reviews and randomly selects three for your enjoyment! Here are this week’s…
Hot Tub Time Machine
A raunchy, stupid comedy that doesn’t really have any kind of logic but serves as a goofy look back upon the eighties and really not much else. There are some pretty funny gags, like the reoccuring joke about Crispin Glover’s missing arm, and a lot of moments that rip off of Back to the Future (consider that 30 years before Back to the Future was the 1950’s!), but overall it’s little more than a raunchy screwball film. Still, it does have its moments, and everyone involved clearly had fun. Oh, and it almost made my girlfriend puke, which is an endorsement few movies can claim.
3 out of 5
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
As far as video-game-to-film adaptations go, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is a masterpiece. But that isn’t saying much when the same category of movies (I hesitate to use the word “genre”) includes such titles as Doom, Super Mario Bros., Alone in the Dark, House of the Dead, Bloodrayne, Postal, and Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li. When held up alongside other blockbuster films, however, Prince of Persia suffers significantly, for it views like little more than a list of sword-and-sandal movie cliches. What’s that? They have to get the sacred dagger to the secret temple? The evil-looking vizier is actually a bad guy? It’s all been done before, and better, in other films. If you took Aladdin and replaced the magic lamp with a time-travelling dagger, you’d end up with something along the lines of Prince of Persia. And that might be okay if the filmmakers were actually paying homage to the long-forgotten genre of sword-and-sandal epics, but instead they just sort of copy the first things that popped into their heads when they thought about this kind of film. “We need a dirty, annoying criminal to provide comic relief, like in The Mummy! Quick! Get me Alfred Molina!” All of this being said, Prince of Persia isn’t terrible. It’s fluffy summer entertainment, and if that’s all your looking for, you probably won’t be too disappointed. In the end, it’s decent enough to hold your attention for an hour and a half, but afterwards you will probably forget about it entirely.
2.5 out of 5
Die You Zombie Bastards
I…don’t know what I just saw. Peanutch.
.5 out of 5
See you next Sunday for three more thrilling short reviews!