Fever Pitch

For so many years I refused to see this movie because of its involvement with the Red Sox, but my friend finally convinced me to sit through it seeing as how it is the only chick flick I haven't seen. Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore play the leads with Barrymore as a successful business woman and Fallon as a high school teacher who is obsessed with the Boston Red Sox. The first half of the movie they fall in love, but when baseball season comes around their relationship begins to have problems as Fallon's character prioritizes his love of baseball above his lovely girlfriend. This could work out though because Barrymore has spent her life dedicated to her job so it might work out that they don't have enough time for each other. Despite this feeling, they begin to argue more and more as Fallon has to ditch Barrymore's work and family functions because he can't miss his Red Sox games. To be fair he has extremely good home seats to all of the games.

Eventually they break up and Fallon realizes that Barrymore was worth giving up his tickets for and decides to sell them. Barrymore likewise realizes that she is being selfish and rushes to tell him that he can't give up his tickets and that she loves him etc. Everything ends happily as expected and it really is a cute story about having to deal with a boyfriend and his sports. You can really insert whatever team and sport into the situation and you have an issue that comes up with different couples frequently. And you sympathize with the Fallon character because you realize that he should go to this important event to his girlfriend but at the same time he is missing the Yankee game.

The only thing wrong with the story was that the Red Sox were in it continually. Fallon's apartment is covered in Red Sox gear and this movie came out the year that they beat the Yankees for the World Series. I guess I felt better about watching it now that the Yankees won last year, but the ending of Fever Pitch is still painful as it shows their victory back in 2004. They had to change the ending when the movie was made because the ending relied on them losing as usual. It is also funny that there is a scene with Johnny Damon, who is now a Yankee.

The Back-up Plan

Jennifer Lopez's movie came out this weekend where she plays a woman who becomes artifically inseminated because she has given up on the traditional root of finding love and then having kids. I mean what if it takes forever to find the love of her life and then it is too late to have kids? She decides to do it on her own, but after leaving the hospital she meets the love of her life and begins the traditional chick flick dating scenes. The problem: she does in fact become pregnant shortly after. Forty minutes into the movie she tells the leading man played by Alex O'Loughlin that she has become pregnant via sperm donor. They fight for a little while but he decides that the two dates he has had with her go so well that he will stick around and help her raise the baby. Oh yeah and in a few scenes they find out that there are twins. So he will help raise two babies that aren't really his.

This one is definitely a rental. Not a good use of money, but if there are no other decent chick flicks to watch then this one would do. It is better than some other movies that I have seen recently but the story is pretty bad. It is obviously not a good idea to start a relationship when you are pregnant. They fight a little throughout the movie but the fact that everything just works out perfectly is CRAZY. If that is the lesson you are supposed to learn then it is pretty bad. Also I do not know how Jennifer Lopez's character is still single at the beginning.

The main problem with the movie is that it wasn't that funny. I only laughed a couple of times, but the humor of the movie is kinda ruined by the concept that this guy goes on two dates with this woman and then decides to deal with her pregnancy and raise the babies. This is legitimately crazy. But It all works out because this is a movie.

The Celebrity Apprentice

This week I have taken a break from reviewing movies and decided to discuss my new favorite shows. I absolutely love reality tv so I watch all of the dumb shows like the bachelor, the Kardashians, and the Girls Next Door. I have been following the Celebrity Apprentice and it is one of my favorite guilty pleasures. First of all Donald Trump is so funny. He has one of the biggest egos and I love watching him talk about how successful he is at the beginning of each episode before he makes the "celebrities" do their task. This season includes Sharon Osborn, Cindy Lauper, a Victoria's Secret model, Brett Michaels, and the former governor Rod Blagojevich. Sadly Blagojevich was eliminated a couple of weeks ago, but the show is still entertaining. Blagojevich was particularly amusing because he was clearly doing the show to profess his innocence and somehow taint the jury pool before he goes on trial. We got to see scenes of him walking through New York City as people called him a disgrace while he would yell he was innocent. During the tasks he would sit in the corner on his phone with his lawyer about witnesses who are betraying him and if there was any tape of that. Just before I thought he couldn't get funnier, we got to learn that he doesn't know how to type, e-mail, and can barely use the computer. I really don't understand how that is possible when you are a governor but it was funny nonetheless.

The other cast of "celebrities" like Osborn, Michaels, and Lauper are extremely funny to watch. Cindy is clearly crazy and doesn't make sense half the time she is talking. Although she does manage to come up with brilliant slogans or ideas eventually on each task. If you like reality tv, then The Apprentice is right for you as it is filled with ego, drama, and comedy.

I used celebrity in quotes because these characters aren't exactly A list celebs. Luckily I could identify two or three, but the rest I had to figure out who they were.

Mad Men

I am taking a moment to shift my focus away from movies right now and talk about a show that I recently got hooked on and have been watching all week. Mad Men is about ad men in the 1960s and shows their struggles at work and home. The main character is Donald Draper, played by Jon Hamm. He is an extremely successful and talented ad executive with a perfect family and wife in the suburbs. However, he continues to cheat on his wife throughout the episodes with female clients and other acquaintances. A young ad man named Peter Campbell makes it clear that he wants Don's job and constantly competes with him. Campbell like the rest of the men on the show also cheats on his beloved wife.

I really like watching it because it is a cool representation of life in 1960s Manhattan. While the characters still maintain their perfect nuclear families, society is changing. Don's receptionist for example eventually works with the men to creates ads. The show also illustrates attitudes of racism, anti-semitism, and misogynistic views toward women. The ad men are also dealing with the crisis of their cigarette clients impending law suits and research that shows that smoking causes cancer. The men constantly smoke and drink throughout the episodes and are shown coughing in meetings from all of the smoking. Don's wife is talking to her pregnant friend in some of the episodes and the pregnant friend is smoking and drinking. It is a weird thing to watch. But it is interesting to see life in the 1960s re-created.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

As I have been unsatisfied with the current romantic comedy movies available, I decided to watch and oldie. This is another Marilyn Monroe classic in which she plays the same character she always does-the dumb blonde bombshell. Her brunette best friend is played by Jane Russell and as usual is the brains behind the duo. While Marilyn's character always gets them into amusing problems, Russell always has the solution.

The two women are showgirls but the majority of the film takes place on the boat when the set sail for France. A rich and unattractive man has fallen for Marilyn, but she claims to love him to the point where they are on their way to get married. His father absolutely hates the idea of his son marrying a gold digging idiot so he hires a private detective to watch the girls as they set sail to meet the son in France. While Marilyn's character is unapologetically materialistic, Russell searches for true love. As she falls in love with the detective (unknowing his true motives for being on the boat), Marilyn spends her time looking for diamonds to the point where she has an old man give her his wife's diamond tiara.

The best part of the movie is how the two women perfectly compliment and care for each other. Marilyn is always trying to convince Russell to marry rich, while Russell helps her blonde friend gain the approval of her father in law. The movie also features Monroe's famous rendition of Diamonds Are a Girls Best Friend song and act. My favorite part of the movie is when Monroe finally confronts her disapproving father-in-law and explains that sure she became interested in the son for the money, but grew to love him. She then explains the reason he wanted her in the first place is for her looks and then he grew to love her. She asks him that if he had a daughter wouldn't he want her to marry a rich man and have all of the fine things in the world? The father's reaction is that he thought she was supposed to be stupid.

Sex and the City: the Movie

Until this week I had never actually seen this ultimate chick flick even though it came out a couple of years ago. I've seen the series and I liked watching a lot of the episodes that were early. Given that the second movie is coming out this summer I figured I should finally watch the first one. I really didn't like watching the episodes at the end of the series because it just got to the point where I felt bad for these women. I mean they spent ten years looking for love and struggled so epically to find it. They did seem to find love by the series finale but this movie was made to show that it wasn't happily ever after. It starts out where it left off with all of the happy couples and even Carrie and Mr. Big are finally going to get married.

On the wedding day all hell breaks loose because Miranda was all mad about her husband cheating on her so she told Big that he was crazy to get married. This led to him leaving poor Carrie before the wedding. The rest of the movie shows Carrie and Miranda moving on with their lives and their new apartments. Things do come full circle at the very end and Big and Carrie finally get married at City Hall and Miranda forgives her cheating husband. Somewhere along the way Miranda tells Carrie how she ruined the wedding and they fight for a while in the middle. This story line bothered me a lot because there is no way that Miranda could be responsible for ruining their wedding. If Mr. Big could be influenced THAT much by an angry comment then it is really just an excuse for him to not get married.

As for the subplots of the story and the other friends nothing much happens. Charlotte has no problems with her perfect family and even has a baby. Samantha continues to dress like she is in her 20s when she is approaching 50. She also decides along the way to dump her long time boyfriend and focus on her true love, herself. The end of the movie has the girls gathered on Samantha's big 50 celebrating with her forty something friends at a cool club in NYC.

Needless to say, I really didn't like this movie. It kind of ruined the tv series. The movie was about two and a half hours and was SO boring. I understand that the final scene was supposed to be happy and inspirational, but it is just kind of sad to watch. These ladies are too old for this anymore, especially Samantha. But they have made another one to follow where I am sure their lives will once again fall apart and go back to normal. I just hope they don't keep making ones to the point where we have to watch sixty year olds in bright, shiny clubbing dress with five inch heels still partying in the big apple.

Hot Tub Time Machine

If you liked the Hangover last summer then you will probably like the Hot Tub Time Machine. As you can guess from the title this movie involves four friends who are on vacation and find themselves in a time machine that transports them back to time to the eighties. The eighties is when they were in high school at Winterfest at this resort where they had the best times of their lives watching Poison and skiing. The three adult friends are also traveling with one of their nephews who is twenty years old. In the past he meets his mother who is partying at Winterfest drinking, doing various drugs, and having random sex with many guys at the resort. This is definitely one of those dumb guy movies like the Hangover, but it is still funny. There are a few gross scenes that made me cringe because they are just gross bathroom humor. There are only so many fart-like jokes that I can sit through and watch. I did laugh though mostly because of the way the characters handled the past.

Most movies when characters time travel they try to stay out of sight and relive the same actions so as not to change the future. These characters started out the same way, but soon realized that their futures suck. Because they hate their future lives they might as well do whatever they want and see how the future changes. As a result the past finds their iphones, energy drinks, and one of the characters sings a black eyed peas song for an entire audience. The scene where he starts singing it is definitely one of the best in the movie as the eighties audience hears the strange new music. Because I am not a huge fan of these kind of movies I would probably rent it, but if you like them it would be worth paying to see in theaters. The movie also has Darryl from the Office and he is pretty funny.