Need for Speed Movie Set For 2014

Video-game-to-movie adaptations started in the early 90’s, with Super Mario Bros. Until recently, those movies had an uncanny tendency to flop, hard. However, with Tomb Raider and Resident Evil movies garnering much success, film studios decided it’s a good idea to invest in adaptations again. Hell, Ubisoft set up an entire studio just to produce movies based on their own games.

And of course, they’re never popular with the critics, but as long as they make money, and are remotely entertaining, who really cares?

Unless they’re directed by this guy. I hope he isn’t up to anything lately. Wait, he is.

EA also thought this was a good idea, and decided to sell the movie rights to Need for Speed. DreamWorks execs, perhaps high on coke and feeling overconfident, bought the property. Now, they have announced a release date.

On February 7, 2014, we will get a chance to watch a movie about cars with zero storyline (which in itself is a major understatement). Trust me, I know my Need for Speed games. When you talk about NFS, you don’t talk about their storylines. There was no plot in the first place. If there was any, it mainly revolves around you being a racer, and your need to win money and earn recognition so you can race against an asshole (Underground, Underground 2, Most Wanted, Carbon, Pro Street), who probably screwed you over earlier in the game (Underground 2, Most Wanted, Carbon).  There are also hot female sidekicks solely for the sake of making teenage boys horny. It’s guilty pleasure when the horrible storyline is in a racing game, not so much when it’s in a movie.

In case you didn’t know how bad the acting and writing were.

There were a couple of times where EA decided to go with different plots. In Undercover, you play as an undercover officer who is trying to infiltrate a gang, or something. It doesn’t really matter. You race, and then your boss (played by Maggie Q) orders you to take some people out. After a while, you find out that your boss is actually a mole, and you take her down. Wow, that took stupidity to a whole different level.

I never quite understood EA’s logic. Why bother shooting live-action scenes when nobody really cares about the storyline? All that waste of money should have went to my bank account. You know, someone who actually needs the money.

And The Run. How can I possibly forget about this atrocity? This game actually has a negative value of plots. I didn’t know that was even possible until this game was released. Basically, you play this guy Jack, who is in a lot of debt. Jack’s ex-girlfriend (portrayed by Christina Hendricks) tells him that there’s this cross-country race which can net him a whole lot of money. Jack races to pay off debt. Jack pays off debt by winning the race. Seriously, that is it. It’s not a joke. How EA managed to get Christina freaking Hendricks involved is just mind-baffling. I swear to god someone must be holding her husband, or her dog, hostage. No amount of money can convince anyone to be involved in the project. It’s that bad. Don’t believe me? I dare you to watch an entire playthrough of the game and tell me that there is a plot.

Yes, this Christina Hendricks. THE Christina Hendricks who is on Mad Men.

We don’t need any more street racing movies. We have The Fast & The Furious for that purpose. Please for the love of god, don’t do this. Don’t make me suffer through an hour and half of torture.

*gun cocks*
Not Dr Kronner: Jason, you will watch the movie, and you will write a review for us.
Jason: How the hell did you even…
Not Dr Kronner: Shhhhhhhh. If you don’t follow my orders word for word, you will be swimming with the fishes.
Jason: You maybe able to kill this body of flesh, but you can never kill my soul.
Not Dr Kronner: …
Jason: Ha!!! Now you have no leverage over me!!!
Not Dr Kronner: I shall kill this kitty instead.

Jason: What? You don’t kill no kitties. YOU’RE A MONSTER!!!!
Not Dr Kronner: You’re gonna do it now?
Jason: *in tears* Do what?
Not Dr Kronner: Watch the movie and write a review for us.
Jason: Yes. *sniffs* Just don’t kill the kitty.

When the movie is released, you may return to Grizzly Bomb for a full-length review, even though I have no idea how to write a movie review. I’m not the one with the gun. Dr Kronner did not, in any way, force me to do this. I am doing it voluntarily, for you guys and gals, so you won’t have to suffer through the movie.

Sorry, I just had to.

#11 – Countdown to Christmas: ONE MAGIC CHRISTMAS

In 1985, One Magic Christmas was first released. It starred Mary Steenburgen (one of my favorite actresses of all time) as Ginny, a mother of two children, Abbie and Cal. She and her husband Jack (Gary Basaraba) are struggling to make ends meet, making the holidays a very stressful time for the family.

Jack has been out of work for some time, and likes fixing bikes. Although he cannot yet fulfill his dream of opening his own bike shop, he still does what he can for the kids in the neighborhood. Ginny is a grocery store cashier and does not like her husband’s idea of opening a store because they need funds immediately.

An angel, Gideon (played by legend Harry Dean Stanton), sees Abbie trying to mail her own letter to Santa Claus. He returns the letter to her because he believes she should try to get her mom to mail it. She almost gets hit by a car, but Gideon stops it from hitting her. He also tells Abbie not to be afraid of what may happen the next day and that she needs to help her mother to find her Christmas spirit.

Grizzly Review: Jack and Jill

Oh dear lord, Adam Sandler. What the hell happened to you?

I’m going to skip the formalities here and get right down to it, Jack and Jill royally sucks ass. I’m not one to use these terms loosely, because to be honest, not a lot of movies necessarily suck ass. Let’s take a movie I reviewed earlier this month, Like Crazy. Was it a bad movie? Yes, it was. Did it suck ass? No, it did not. Allow me to further my point.

Jack and Jill, as you may have heard, is about two identical twins that go at it during Thanksgiving, Hanukah, their respective birthdays, and New Year’s. Literally the entire movie is fighting and a creepy Al Pacino, which I’ll get into a little bit later. The premise, which revolves partially around getting Jack’s sister Jill out of the house, and the rest of the plot, involves getting her to stay. Now, call me crazy, but I think that’s considered a conflict of interests on the part of the borderline schizophrenic lead, Jack.

He truly is an ass. A royal ass one could say. He treats his sister like she’s dirt. He sets her up on dates with weird men, he bullies her every chance he gets, and he ultimately uses her to get Al Pacino to do him a favor. He brings the term “dick move” to a whole new level.

The writing really is absolutely atrocious, with some of the most unnecessarily drawn out and cringe-worthy conversations I’ve seen in recent years. The banter between Jack and Jill isn’t cute, it isn’t funny, it isn’t even amusing. No, their seemingly endless conversations are just annoying, like the rest of this movie. Annoying, annoying, annoying.

Adam Sandler pretty much does the same thing in a lot of his movies. I know damn well he’s a capable actor and that he really does know how to pull out a good performance (e.g., Funny People and Punch-Drunk Love).

Here, on the other hand, he does the usual Adam Sandler performance. Angry, oppressed, needy, and whiny. Except he does it in a way that gives off the feeling that he was quite bored during shooting. He exaggerates everything to the max, and it seems that he’s been playing the asswipe father in quite a few of his recent movies, and I’m starting to think that that’s just how he is in real life.

As Jill, on the other hand, he’s ferociously aggravating. Everything that Jill does, I want to just punch her in the nose for. It’s the 2^nd most inspired thing in the entire movie though, behind the one and only, Al Pacino. I laughed twice in this movie. Two times. The first time involved Al Pacino in a disguise. The second time involved Adam Sandler as Jill farting aggressively in a bathroom. Farts are funny people, get over it.

Anyway, Al Pacino. What can I say about Mr. Pacino’s performance? Well, it was…inspired. He really did give it his all and I commend him for his bravery. I really do. Any self-respecting actor who can really put his heart into a project like this is truly brave, or completely insane. Most of the times it’s both, though.

But, back to the bashing of this flick, I have a message to Adam Sandler. WE UNDERSTAND THAT YOU ARE JEWISH. WE UNDERSTAND THAT YOU ARE PROUD OF THIS, AND WE APPRECIATE IT. WITH THAT BEING SAID, WHY IS THE FACT THAT YOU’RE JEWISH HAVE TO BE UP TO 33% OF THE TOTAL JOKES TOLD IN YOUR FILMS? It really is a simple question. Every three or four jokes there was something about being Jewish. In each and every film Mr. Sandler makes it becomes more and more prevalent and more and more irritating.

Also, I felt that the portrayal of Mexicans in this movie was over-the-top, racist, and unnecessary. I’m all for a good dose of healthy racism with a point like in the Harold & Kumar films, but the things that some of the Hispanic characters said in this film are just downright embarrassing.

Product placement is also something I noticed in this film a lot. The person I went to go see Jack and Jill with had a bet with me. We were supposed to count the amount of farts and the amount of times we saw product placement. In short, we lost count. You know you’re in a bad movie when there’s a scene that takes place in a cinema, only to see a bunch of Coca-Cola stickers popping out from all the concessions.

As for being the worst film of the year, that honor goes to Cars 2, which truly is a horrible, horrible film. Where does Jack and Jill fare, you ask? Pretty damn close. I really can’t recommend this movie to many people, unless you want to see Al Pacino act like a fool. There are a lot of great cameos that keep things relatively exciting, but when Johnny Depp isn’t popping up on screen, either Jack or Jill are, and you really don’t want to see that.

1 Grizzly out of 5

 P.S. Why in the hell is this movie rated PG?