Tag: Jack McBrayer

Cinema Dispatch: Ralph Breaks the Internet

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

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Ralph Breaks the Internet and all the images you see in this review are owned by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Directed by Rich Moore and Phil Johnston

I remember when the first Wreck-It-Ralph movie came out that I couldn’t wait for there to be a sequel!  However, as the years went on and the marketing pivoted from video games to him being ON THE INTERNET, I started to lose interest because the sequel that I would have wanted didn’t seem like it was going to manifest.  Now that’s not to say I thought it would be a BAD movie, but what I was seeing wasn’t getting me as excited as say a Disney version of Super Smash Bros or whatever where we got even MORE nostalgic characters (maybe even ones from Nintendo!?) that Ralph and crew could go on adventures with.  Now clearly NOTHING could have competed with the fan fiction I made up in my brain so even if the lead up to this movie wasn’t filling me with fanboy joy I wasn’t about to dismiss it out of hand for those reasons.  Does this manage to live up to maybe not quite MY expectations but REASONABLE ones for a sequel to a modern Disney class, or should they have gone with my idea of having Mario and Sonic fight zombies together while Ralph and Boswer play Yu-Gi-Oh… or something like that?  Let’s find out!!

It’s been several years since the events of the first film where Ralph and Vanellope (John C Reilly and Sarah Silverman) uncovered Turbo’s evil plan, and things have been going pretty well since then.  Vanellope has been racing, Ralph has been wrecking, and Fix-it Felix Jr and Sergeant Tamora Jean Calhoun (Jack McBrayer and Jane Lynch) have been the most adorable couple ever six years running!  Still, things might be settling down a bit TOO much for Vanellope who’s time in the spotlight has turned a bit monotonous, but soon things go all Monkey’s Paw on her as her game breaks down and she and Ralph have to go online to see if they can find a replacement part before the kindly arcade owner (Ed O’Neill) sells the machine for scrap.  Once online using the arcade owner’s recently purchased modem, they discover all the fantabulous things THE INTERNET has to offer, including the part they need on eBay.  However, they don’t have any ACTUAL money and so need to find a way to score some cash through shady loot hunting in an online game with a bad ass NPC named Shank (Gal Gadot) and slightly less shady viral marketing through a trending video website run by an algorithm called Yesss (Taraji P Henson).  Oh, and they visit Disney’s website at one point just to make sure you remember things like Star Wars, Zootopia, and their ever expanding stable of princesses.  Will Ralph and Vanellope be able to buy the part and save her game before it’s too late?  What will Vanellope learn about herself by seeing all these new and exciting places, and will Ralph be able to adapt to these new experiences?  Where exactly did they manage to find such a clean and efficient version of THE INTERNET, and is there any way I can get on there!?

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“Wow!  Look at all this cool stuff!”     “I know, right!?”     “Wait, what’s that over there?  Did someone just call it a Pepe?”     “Yeah… maybe we should avoid that area.”

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Cinema Dispatch: Smurfs: The Lost Village

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

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Smurfs: The Lost Village and all the images you see in this review are owned by Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation

Directed by Kelly Asbury

Considering how the LAST two Smurfs movies turned out, this really doesn’t have to do all that much to be a massive improvement, does it?  To be fair, it DOES look like the new direction their going in is the right move for this franchise as it looks much more like the original series, and we’re also not going to the real world this time around which shows some signs that Sony realized where they screwed up and are trying to make it better.  Plus, they also got Jack McBrayer which is you all need to get my ass into a theater!  Does this manage to win back the fans it lost with the last two cynical features, or did they manage to screw it up again even with two perfect examples of how NOT to make a Smurfs movie to go by?  Let’s find out!

The movie starts in Smurf village where all the little Smurfs are Smurfing about doing their Smurfy thing.  All except for Smurfette (Demi Lovato) who may have golden locks to die for but isn’t sure what else a Smurfette is supposed to do.  Oh sure, it’s easy for Police Smurf and Saxophone Smurf who’s occupations are spelled out for them like a Cutie Mark in My Little Pony, but what about her!?  Is being the one and only female Smurf the ONLY thing she’s good at!?  Well… maybe not as she soon discovers another Smurf while Smurf-boarding in the forest, but before she can ask any questions or even get a good look at them, they run off into the FORBIDDEN FOREST which I can only assume is the same one from Harry Potter.  Smurfette wants to find this new Smurf as well as the village they came from (perhaps a LOST village of Smurfs!?) but Papa Smurf (Mandy Patinkin) forbids her to go into the FORBIDDEN FOREST because… well, it’s FORBIDDEN!  Despite his warnings not to go out there, she sneaks off into the middle of the night to go searching the FORBIDDEN FOREST and ends up having a few tag-alongs who were following her in the form of Hefty Smurf (Joe Manganiello), Clumsy Smurf (Jack McBrayer) and Brainy Smurf (Danny Pudi); all of whom are sure to bring their unique brand of Smurf Shenanigans to this adventure!  Oh, and of course the evil wizard Gargamel (Rainn Wilson) gets wind of this lost village, so they have to contend with him stomping through the forest as well; hoping to find these new Smurfs and using them to become the world’s most powerful wizard by smooshing them in some sort of magic juicer!  Can the Smurfs find The Lost Village and warn them of Gargamel before it’s too late?  Will Smurfette finally find out what her true purpose is on this epic quest?  Just who are these new Smurfs that they’re looking for, and are they even blue!?  What if… WHAT IF THEY’RE SNORKS!?

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It’s the Hannah-Barbarra Cinematic Universe!  WE KNEW IT WAS COMING SOONER OR LATER!!

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Wander Over Yonder: A Post-Mortem

~ ArthurCrane ~ 1 Comment

So, I just finished watching the finale of Wander Over Yonder. I felt doing something like this was appropriate.

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For the uninitiated, this was a show about a fuzzy, overly-optimistic alien named Wander who travels across space with his best friend/steed/muscle, Sylvia. Together, they travel and look for other aliens in need of help, whether it’s small favors or need of rescue from villains looking to conquer their planet. Among said villains is Lord Hater, a skeleton-man with magic powers who seeks to become “The Greatest in the Galaxy” by conquering every planet with his army of eyeball soldiers known as The Watchdogs, led by Hater’s right-hand man and true brains behind his villain operation, Commander Peepers.

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The show was created by Craig McCraken, best known as the creator of The Powerpuff Girls and Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends. Through this body of work, he became one of the first “celebrity animators” to people of my generation, where his name is almost like a brand in and off itself, synonymous with a mixture of adventure, screwball comedy, outlandish scenarios that mix the mundane with the bizzarre, and memorably over-the-top characters. The style of animation, character design, and writing associated with his shows became fixtures that fans could latch unto and identify as symbols of his work, and it’s been interesting to see how he (and his evolving team of associates) continue to evolve those basic tools and adapt them to new ideas.

In terms of scope, the show seemed to be the least ambitious of the three he’s done at first glance. PPG was primarily about satirizing superhero tropes by embodying them through a trio of kindergarden-aged superheroines and their oddball adventures. Foster’s was a surreal take on the idea of children outgrowing their imaginary friends (i.e. whatever symbol of their childhood they’re supposed to represent) by making said friends become real-life characters and showing what happens to them after their kids move on (or, at least, when they’re “supposed” to). So, it doesn’t seem like there’d be much to compare in a series that’s mainly about a guy who may be too kind for his own good, and believes that with enough kindness, anyone can be a friend. However, this is only one part of a bigger whole, and it’s the way the show bounces this concept with its other characters where the show becomes something truly memorable.

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Cinema Dispatch: Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal: The Movie

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 1 Comment

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Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal: The Movie and all the images you see in this review are owned by Funny or Die

Directed by Jeremy Konner

If we’re gonna keep getting subpar dreck like Dirty Grandpa, The Fifth Wave, and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, we might as well turn to the Internet for all our movie viewing needs… at least until Deadpool comes out, but AFTER that we can probably just hide away until March.  So Funny or Die (the premiere site for famous comedians to post YouTube videos not on YouTube) has been secretly working on a Donald Trump movie and finally released it to the masses starring none other than Johnny Depp (the star of such classics as The Lone Ranger and A Nightmare on Elm Street) as the prominent business man in this adaptation of his most notorious literary contribution, The Art of the Deal.  Does it manage to give us a satirical yet poignant look at the man who has taken over the public spotlight, or is this just a chance for even more people to jump on the Trump bandwagon before he flames out in the next couple of months?  Let’s find out!!

The movie is presented to us as a Made for TV special (found by Ron Howard in a yard sale) that Donald Trump (Johnny Depp) directed, edit, and starred in among other duties he takes credit for that is a somewhat autobiographical tale based on his best-selling book The Art of the Deal (second only to the Bible in number of sales apparently).  The framing device for Trump to espouse his philosophy on business as well as tales of his prior accomplishments is a kid who steals a copy of his book from a display and just so happens to evade the security guard by ducking into Trump’s office who takes this opportunity to mentor the boy for an afternoon.  It just so happens to also be Trump’s fortieth birthday and his one goal in life (at least according to this movie) is the purchase of the Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City from Merv Griffin (Patton Oswalt) who’s not too keen to sell to the big blowhard… I mean brilliant business man.  As Donald continues to try and goad Merv into selling, he goes on and on about his accomplishments with accompanying flashbacks and even gets his lawyer (Alfred Molina) to chime in every once in a while to reassure the kid of just how awesome of a life the orange demi-god standing before him has led.  Will Donald get his hands on the Taj Mahal before the day is over?  Will the kid learn a valuable lesson about business and negotiations along the way?  Could anyone imagine a better time to release this than THE DAY that Trump won the New Hampshire primary!?

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“You see this man?  This is the greatest real estate mogul of all time.”     “You don’t really look like you do on the cover.”     “Don’t worry about that kid.”

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