The Best Thing about all Adam Sandler’s Movies

There’s this group of actors that are like recurring characters, appearing in all movies starring Adam Sandler. Somehow they are getting older together, obviously having fun making one movie or another.

Some of them (read: Rob Schneider, the extraordinary “Asian Minister” in “I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry“) are actually so much better in a supporting role, that one would hope a busier schedule by Mr Sandler would keep them away from egregiously bad movies…

As for INPYCL…it’s gross, funny, painful and uplifting. A documentary more than a movie…it would be worth watching (but keep the kids away…) even if only for the Richard Chamberlain and Mary Pat Gleason cameos.

Too bad most critics simply “don’t get it”. Or perhaps I am just of the right age (i.e. most of the cast’s)??

Revolting Expressionist Movie

Hard to know if a (future?) release of Knallharte Jungs in the English-speaking world should be saluted with a smile or a cringe.

Is that the most revolting expressionist movie ever made? I am not even sure if I should admit watching it, and even laughing at (some!!!) of the jokes.

It definitely gives a new old meaning to the expression “comedy gags”…

Anyway, if anybody will have the (mis)fortune to see “Knallharte Jungs”, you will get to know “Wanda”, the immortal non-homosexual transvestite character that should deserve its own movie. And a veritable catalogue of ever-more-ridiculous devices for the lonely male. And scenes where the director and authors may have tried to virtually shower the generation of their forefathers with something unmentionable.

Still I think it’s an expressionist movie. Or I hope it is. For example the male friend of the main character is clearly the personification of the latter’s talking “reproductive organ”. Also, one of the most lecherous men every imagined in the movies becomes an almost-credible girl to talk to one (at one point, seeing his fake breasts rise, as helium balloons).

I’ll say no more…

King Kong: Straight to Disk 2

Peter Jackson’s “King Kong” may be the first case of a movie for which the main DVD disk is not the one to watch

Plenty of amazing graphics in the main movie, of course, but they all looked (a) taken straight out of The Lord of the Rings (one would expect Trolls to appear at any time); (b) quite un-natural (see the scene where the T-Rex runs after the Belle, despite having a much larger dinosaur in its mouth); and (c) pointless; most of the special effects added little or nothing to the story (eg: the disgusting giant worms get their 15 minutes of fame and that’s it)

The story is boring and empty of the slightest hint of a soul. Somebody please collect signatures for a petition to all Hollywood producers to cancel all remakes that try to be good by following the originals to the letter (I know, I know, sometimes there is the opposite danger, like in that other this-is-not-a-simian-masterpiece by Tim Burton, called “the re-imagined Planet of The Apes”)

The much-vaunted human-like movements of the Big Gorilla are nothing of the sort. Most of the time the Beast looks perplexed: and who could blame him for pondering what sort of disgraceful act in his previous life could have got his soul to be re-born in the hands of Mr Jackson?

See what happens when you chomp on a defenceless woman in 1933’s New York City!

Finally, on a positive note, what about the indigenous of the island, and the dark-skinned Hairy Hero? I have already mentioned in the past (“Kong Sapiens“) that the 1930’s version of King Kong hinted too many times to its main character being a Black Savage bent on raping the White Girl, and somehow redeemed by her beauty in the process

In Jackson’s movie those hints are absent or greatly underplayed. The racial character of the humans found on the island is not extremely clear, in any case not as much as their inadequacy to survive. And you’re never lead to imagine King Kong sporting an “afro”

Anyway, the only thing to save from this disaster is DVD #2 and its engaging, imaginatively rich explanation of the story behind King Kong’s island