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At the Movies: capsule reviews of new films |
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Written by asap
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Wednesday, 12 July 2006 |
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The onslaught of summer movies continues. Here’s three mini reviews from AP critics to help you decide what to see this week:
“The Groomsmen”
98 min. Two stars out of four.
Rated: R for pervasive language and brief nudity.
 — If you’ve seen previous Edward Burns comic dramas about troubled romance and strained friendships, you’ve pretty much seen this one. As in the writer-director-actor’s earlier films such as “The Brothers McMullen” and “She’s the One,” this wedding-and-reunion tale features boys in grown men’s bodies whining about love, home life and everything else the world throws at them. Burns plays a man about to wed his pregnant fiancee (Brittany Murphy) and spending one last week whooping it up and settling old scores with the relations and buddies in his wedding party (Donal Logue, John Leguizamo, Matthew Lillard and Jay Mohr). Through it all, there are genuine nuggets of wisdom, insight, clever comedy and warmhearted pathos. But as in life, you have to suffer through a lot of bluster and blather in the movie to get to the good stuff.
— David Germain, AP Movie Writer
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“The OH in Ohio”
91 min. Two stars out of four.
Not rated.
 — As if the idea weren’t disturbing enough that a woman could spend much of her adult life without ever having experienced an orgasm, “The OH in Ohio” also asks us to accept Danny DeVito as a sex symbol — and, ultimately, the provider of our frigid film heroine’s long overdue release. Then there’s the scene in which Liza Minnelli, swathed in a frothy pink muumuu, teaches masturbation classes in her living room. These are all funny ideas, and there are many more where they came from in the film debut from director Billy Kent, with a script from first-time screenwriter Adam Wierzbianski. But that’s all they are: concepts in a farce executed by characters who feel more like pawns than fully realized people. Think of it as the film equivalent of faking it in the sack. It can be a good time, but by the end you’re just going through the motions, and not completely satisfied. Parker Posey stars as a high-powered Cleveland advertising executive who’s never had an orgasm; Paul Rudd plays her husband, a high-school biology teacher who’s slowly crumbling under the weight of his inability to satisfy his wife in bed.
— Christy Lemire, AP Movie Critic
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“You, Me and Dupree”
Rated: PG-13 for sexual content, brief nudity, crude humor, language and a drug reference. 108 min. One and a half stars out of four.
 — Everyone has someone like Dupree in their lives — a friend who’s a little too needy, a little too clingy, a bit of a social misfit who always says the wrong thing and doesn’t know when to call it a night. But no one could possibly know someone who’s as outlandish in his clueless cloddishness as Owen Wilson’s titular third-wheel character because he’s just too unrealistic, even for the sake of comedy. The guy could not exist — and if he did, his friends wouldn’t keep him around as long as Matt Dillon and Kate Hudson do. Soon after serving as best man in their wedding, Dupree moves in with the newlyweds and proceeds to inadvertently wreck their house and their marriage. There are a couple of amusing lines and images here, but eventually the destruction becomes just too severe to bear. The role of Dupree is merely the same sort of unflappable slacker that has become the trademark of Wilson’s career (surely he can do more, and he needs to show us). But the typically radiant Hudson is squelched in a thankless part as the nagging wife.
— Christy Lemire, AP Movie Critic
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