boulevard-ijab (IJA & ME) - one half completing the other half....

The Comedy vs The Horror (updated in green: the verdict is at the bottom of the reviews)

Review rating system:
***** - 'super good' movie; don't miss it.
**** - good movie; try to find the time to watch it.
*** - average movie; you may or may not like it.
** - crap movie; watch only if you have nothing else to do.
* - 'super crap' movie; don't watch it at all!

Note to fellow Muslims: If you do want to watch the movie(s), please still do obey your prayers and whenever possible, still strive to do so in jemaah. Wallahua'lam. Thank you.

If there was a rank on a movie with the longest tagline, then She’s The Man (STM) will definitely win, which says “Everybody has a secret… Duka wants Olivia who likes Sebastian who is really Viola whose brother is dating Monique so she hates Olivia who’s with Duke to make Sebastian jealous who is really Viola who’s crushing on Duke who thinks she’s a guy”. Quite a lengthy and probably confusing one huh? Well, maybe… not unless you’ve watched the movie.

There are many movies where character(s) in the stories switch “places”. For examples (to name a few), switching:
a) genders – in Steve Martin’s award-winning performance, All Of Me (1984), spirit of a woman enters a man’s body;
b) roles – in Freaky Friday (1976 & 2003), a mother and her teenage daughter inadvertently switch bodies and mayhem continues as each still needs to carry on living in each other’s shoes;
c) ages – in Big (1988), a 12-year-old boy becomes a 35-year-old man after making a wish at a carnival machine. In 13 Going On 30 (2004), a 13-year-old girl who thinks adulthood is just not arriving fast enough, changes to a 30-year old successful woman the next day. The problem is, she has absolutely no idea of what has happened to her the past 17 years;
d) entity – after critically injured in a car accident, a wimp Marvin (The Animal-2001) receives animal organs to rebuild him. Energized by his new parts, life is good to Marvin, until his animal instincts start taking over his body. In The Shaggy Dog (2006), Dave Douglas transforms from family dad to family dog and back again.

In STM, Amanda Bynes (Viola) voluntarily becomes her twin brother (Sebastian) and enters his school, while he is away in London. The main reason that drives her to wear a short-hair wig, dress, talk, behave and smell like a man is so that she can enter the school’s football team, and defeat her former school’s team who had unfairly dissolved all-women’s soccer team due to not enough players (sounds fair to me if you ask…)

Amanda Bynes is just amazing - you’d probably love her wit and cute face in TV’s What I Like About You, and laugh just the same, whenever she says some punch lines in Robots. Playing both Viola and Sebastian in STM, Bynes is funny, talented and ‘macho’ all at the same time.

Meantime, there have not been many Hollywood soccer movies. But in STM, the actors are pretty talented in playing the game and the games/training scenes are quite entertaining. (Rating: *****)

Just My Luck (JML) is another switch ‘places’ type of comedy. If in Freaky Friday (2003), Lindsay Lohan unwillingly switches her role in the family with her mother. In JML, her good luck charm is magically replaced with a boy’s bad luck magnet after they kiss on a dance floor. Her race to regain her luck that she usually takes for granted before, lies with the guy she is fated to meet.

Although typical, the movie perfectly targets its tween audience. However at times, the jokes are rather bland. Watch this if you like Lohan, believe in superstitions, and you understand how being a good luck charm or a bad luck magnet like. (Rating: ***)

The movie Scary Movie 4 (comedy) comes with 2 posters and 2 taglines - one that says "The funniest thing you ever sawed" featuring fingers being cut off and form the no. 4 and based on the horror movie Saw. The other says "The fourth and final chapter of the trilogy" featuring the usual type of Scary Movie poster (like the first 3 movies) where all the characters sit in rows of chairs (like in cinemas), looking so silly and funny.

Despite testing us with our understanding in words (how can a trilogy have a fourth chapter? hehe), I do hope that this is NOT the final chapter. Because Scary Movies series have amazed us with their slapstic jokes, poker-face actors, and good story lines (considering how they brilliantly combine different movies, usually horror ones to become one big joke!). Every time we watch a Scary Movie movie, it hits us with the illogical factors of some of the original movies out there and remind us how we have (enjoyed) being fooled before.

And if there is one thing that the team behind Scary Movies should be applauded for, it is their capabilities in re-creating the sets - almost a 100% accurate! Impressive...

Though not as good as the third installment, it is still an enjoyable movie. The scene on the US President at the school is a 'bushy' and funny one; the naked world leaders scene is relevant to the story; the "lightning doesn't hit the same place twice" and "what's going on?" lines are hillarious and the characters conversing in Japanese can 'help' teach us mastering the language. (Rating: ****)

In the horror movie Stay Alive, a group of teenagers (don't horror movies usually revolve around people of that age group anyway?) come into possession of "Stay Alive", a horror survival videogame based on the true story of a 17th-century noblewoman known as "The Blood Countess. However, they find a chilly connection when each one of them dies everytime the character that they play in the game dies.

The movie stars famous teen actors like the husky and lovely Sophia Bush (luckily not related to the other Bush) of TV's One Tree Hill (see my review on the TV show dated June 22, 2005 entitled 1, 3 Hill), Frankie Muniz (Malcolm In The Middle) and Samaire Armstrong (The O.C.). Story and pace wise, they are acceptable. However, acting (especially Armstrong) is not that good, and the ending drags a bit. (Rating: ***)

It's very rare for creators of original movies wanting to have their movies remade some many years down the road (usually it's some other younger chaps doing that). Wes Craven directed the original two The Hills Have Eyes movies (1977 & 1985). In the 2006 version of the same movie, we see Wes Craven being the producer.

As I mentioned earlier, usually horror movies revolve around teenagers, especially if one after another character gets killed. It's also quite rare for horror movies to involve members of a family being chopped off before their other loved ones. Possibly because, such horrific scenes may invoke sadness to moviegoers at the same time (we don't want people crying their eyes out after watching a horror movie, do we?).

In this movie, we see the father (who played psycho killer in Silence of the Lambs), gets burned alive after being tied to a tree and head bashed violently onto car windows; the sister's brain splatter all over the vehicle after a bullet went through her head; another sister gets molested; the mother gets shot and intestine eaten; a baby is kidnapped and a family dog's inside removed.

It's a 'bloodied', gory movie (Rating: ***)

When 6/6/06 was coming, some movie makers wanted another horror movie to be remade and changed the storyline a little bit to relate the 'Anti-Christ child' to some of the current events. And so, we have The Omen (again). Many viewers can't resist the evil and cute looks that come from the young actor's eyes, Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick. However, probably, that's the only plus point about the movie. The movie fails to surpass (if not as good as) the original one. Let's see if they want to continue remaking part 2, shall we? (Rating: ***)

And so, here's the verdict: Based on 3 comedies against 3 horror movies, the movies in the comedy category wins. This is due to the following reasons:

1) You can go as wild and out-of-the-box as you want to, in making comedies. You can even make jokes on serious stuffs (as long as don't hurt anybody) and based on chilling stories. However, writers should avoid from falling into the trap of having too-much slapstick and sex jokes, that can really make people feeling sick instead.

2) On the other hand, you can only scare people a certain way, it is becoming too cliche sometimes. Ideas on horror movies can't be expanded as much, and in some stories, viewers can predict what might happen next. Also, most horror movies nowadays rely mostly on the shock factors - like a very loud sound effect/music and special effects, instead of focusing on the essential supernatural/unknown elements that make horror movies something to scream about.

posted by The Pisces Man @ 7:04 am