Blades of Glory

Before I start, let me just say this, someone needs to get Jonah Hill to endorse some kind of weight loss supplement, or procedure, or at least give him a Jared-like ad deal cause this dude knows how to lose weight.  Good for you sir.

Hill stars in a co-wrote the new "21 Jump Street"

21 Jump Street is a  remake of the old tv show of the same name that starred a young Johnny Depp.  For those of you unfamiliar, the original tv show focused on a group of young-looking police officers, including Depp, that took on a variety of undercover roles in high schools and colleges, investigating drug-trafficking and abuse.  The show covered a variety of topics and most episodes ended with a directly messaged moral to the viewers.  The show ran for five seasons until finally coming to a close in April of 1991.

The movie takes on the same premise as the show did before it.  Channing Tatum (The Vow) and Hill become unlikely partners after their experience in the Police Academy forces them to team up.  However, with dreams of being movie cops (See Bad Boys, Die Hard, Lethal Weapon) the two of them quickly find there’s more to being police officers than car chases and gun fights.  After a botched arrest, the duo are assigned to report to Captain Ice Cube down on 21 Jump Street.

For starters, this movie had and 96% and 94% rating from critics and viewers respectively, which is almost unheard of from a comedy, especially a comedy remaking a semi-popular tv show from the 80′s.  So, it equally mystified me as it did hilarify me.  One of the extended trailers I saw during the previews of another movie caught me off guard and left me laughing in the aisle.  While usually a good sign, an uncannily hilarious trailer can also mean that the producers decided to throw every funny part of the movie in there and just pray.  Anyone who dropped ten bucks to see the cast of Shaun of the Dead make dick jokes for an hour and a half in Paul knows what I’m talking about.

If E.T. had a weird cousin that no one in the family really liked...

I think the guys behind this movie did a good job.  The relationship of the two lead roles contrast each other in a natural and relatable way.  Even more impressive, I think, is how they depicted high school life.  Cliche popular kids have been replaced by the modern student; hard-working, unnecessarily opinionated, ethnically diverse, and not always athletic.  Makes me fear for our future.  In the new school, Tatum finds it hard to fit in with the popular crowd from day one, a clearly unfamiliar territory for the jock-stereotype.  While Jonah Hill’s character, possessing traits formerly deemed unpopular, slowly finds his way into becoming befriended by the same group.

Overall, the movie did make me laugh a whole lot, and there was plenty of non-trailer scenes that did it.  There were a few cheesy, somewhat forced jokes thrown in along the way, but that can be expected of any comedy.  The movie pokes subtle fun at high school and comedy movie stereotypes.  The plot actually had some surprising depth, for a comedy that is and I think the actors were the right choices for the roles they played.  I’d recommend it for people looking for a good laugh.  7.75/10

Stay Thirsty My Friends,
TP

For a long time coming I’ve been counting down the days until Goon blessed theaters with its hockey flavored goodness.  Long have I waited for another one of Hollywood’s attempts at properly picturing the pristine pond.  It’s not an easy thing to do, hockey has as much a culture surrounding it as any other sport does.  Just like Nascar has buck-toothed rednecks, hockey has its teeth-missing, slang-spewing, Canadians.  I give you Goon.

Labeled an outcast by his brainy family, a bouncer overcomes long odds to lead a team of under performing misfits to semi-pro hockey glory, beating the crap out of everything that stands in his way.  - IMDb.com

Being a hockey player, this movie comes in skating on thin ice (see what I did there).  Portraying the off-ice hockey culture can be a challenging task, seeing as how every team comes with their own dialect it seems.  Culture, comes in a wide variety of aspects: superstitions, unspoken policies, that kinda thing.  I guess what I’m trying to say is that there’s a lot of stuff that Joe Moviegoer might not pick up that myself and the team did.  For example, the way the players dress, the bus life, etc.  It’s all stuff that’s entertaining but at the same time stuff that I could watch and know exactly what it’s like.

That being said, there were a couple lazy mistakes that we picked up on.  The goalies pads were on the wrong legs on occasion and there were a few scoreboard screw-ups that the majority of us caught after the game.  Including somehow giving a guy a five minute major for high-sticking and keeping him in the game.  Besides that, everything checked out.

Even though the lead character, Doug ‘The Thug’ Glatt, is portrayed as a dumb as nails, knuckle dragging, idiot, I did like how they put a player on his team that was studying to be a doctor.  The player actually fixes himself after being taken out during a game.

To be honest, Goon was exactly what I expected, an entertaining movie with not too much to think about and a whole lot of blood.  It showed the somewhat unappreciated role a grinder plays in the hockey world.  ”But hey, Project X was entertaining and you didn’t have to think about that at all,” dumb people may say, but here’s the deal breaker.  Goon’s moral is that doing what the team needs and being selfless and loyal for a cause, is what matters most.  I think Sean William Scott (Doug Glatt) summed it up best in the film when he said “If the team needs me to bleed, I bleed.”

Stay Thirsty My Friends,
TP