Review: 17 Again, Bride Wars
So I'm finally somewhat settled in my new place, even the spiders came out to help *shudder* Thankfully they've retreated to wherever they hide :P Amidst that settling, I've been watching a few movies I'd been meaning to, namely 17 Again and Bride Wars. Here are my thoughts on both, which surprised even me :P
---17 Again---
GENERALLY
I really enjoyed 17 Again. I didn't expect to because I didn't have much faith in Zac Efron's acting ability outside exaggerated Disney movies, but to be honest, he made the movie for me. I completely bought him as the character Matthew Perry set up in the adult form (known as "Mike" in the adult form, I believe, and "Mark" as the teenager), and I completely bought the character development shown through Efron. "Mike" went from the completely selfish father to one who knows his priorities, and you saw the heartache and the sense of wonderment whenever he realized what he'd been missing out on as "Mark". I think the only time I didn't like Efron's acting is in this one scene with Michelle Tratchenberg who plays "Mike's" daughter. He's trying to forbid her to do something and it felt forced, but I get the feeling that a bit of that was also the character trying to be the stern father he'd never really been before.
The scenes I loved the MOST were the ones with "Mark" and the wife (again, surprsingly :P). Because I thought it was be very icky and cougar-ish but, like I said, the adult/father/"Mike" personality completely shone through Efron and I really bought that he was that 40-something year old guy looking at the wife he was losing because of his stupidity. Same with the daughter who, late in teh movie, gets slightly more attached to Efron than she should. *That's* when it the ickiness came because I so believed him to be her father that it was just nasty and Efron very well portrayed that "omg wtf??? *runaway*" feeling I think all viewers must have felt :P
Also, when I first saw that Efron would be playing a basketball player I really groaned and moaned because I'd read that this was supposed to be his breakaway from the High School Musical movies but when I was watching it was actually fine. I mean, yes, he's still a basketball star but he works at it and I mean, why would you give an actor a hockey stick when he's already that great at basketball...and there are no song breakouts, promise :P
WHAT KICKED ASS
- Efron's acting, I'm looking forward to see him in other things in the future
- That the plot started and almost ended more selfishly, more self-centered than we might have expected
- That I could follow the nerdiness of the best friend :P
- The "Mark"/Wife scenes, loved them completely.
WHAT WASN'T SO HOT
- Matthew Perry, surprinsingly. I mean he doens't have a huge role since the movie really focuses on his character's teenage-looking self. But I felt all the emotional stuff that Zac Efron brought, and then at the end I felt it kind of fizzled a bit when Matthew Perry came back. Which is odd because I watched the movie for him, cuz I love him :P
- The B plot involving the Nerd Friend and the Principal. This is actually the only part that, I felt, was exaggerated and very Disney in the sense that it's just ridiculous. I mean there are cute parts, and it's sweet to see the nerd try so hard but like...I could have done without it.
- Michelle Tratchenberg. This isn't much of a surprise because I'm not really that into her (possibly a lingering ick from Buffy). But everytime I saw her I kept thinking "she's been playing a teenager for waaayy too long...shouldn't she have graduated from this by now?". Thankfully she had few parts, and all of them were blegh for her but good for Zac Efron :P
- That they switched out Zac Efron for Matthew Perry when they did. I mean I understood that it might not have gone over well having this teenager making out with this 30-some year old woman, and I can see the need for parallelism...but I was still disappointed. I was much more invested in the "Mark"/Wife scenes than the "Mike"/Wife ones.
TAKE-AWAY
I'd recommend this movie to anyone who'd like to see what I felt was a more realistic twist on an old design. It's not very heavy, and aside from that small B-plot it's not that Disney-esque. It's a good, funny at times, rom-com with self-centered realism...if that makes sense :P
---Bride Wars---
GENERALLY
....the thing I most remember from this movie thinking back on it (and I only saw it yesterday) was that there were lots of montages. Now I love montages, I actually thought there weren't enough in 17 Again...but the montages in this movie were of the picture variety. Like they'd take stills of the actors and then make this semi-collage kind of montage using the actors' cut-outs and various backgrounds and foregrounds. That...was irritating. And what's more is that they used this shitty camera to take the stills so any ones of them moving were completely streaked, you know like when the image is blurry because the subject was going too fast? Yeah, that's great, let's do 5 minutes of montages that don't do anything or go anywhere, and on top of that, let's use shitty pictures where you can't see anything.
Suffice it to say, the bad outweighs the good here.
WHAT KICKED ASS
*whistles* Oh!
- The adorable guy from the tv show Reba was one of the fiances *pets*
- Um...Candice Bergen was in it?
- Oh, and the adorable "I don't like labels" assistant of Kate Hudson's, Kevin. He made it more enjoyable :P
WHAT WASN'T SO HOT
- Anna Hathaway looked completely sallow. She looked sickly and anorexic and tired. Which, I know it was undoubtly to add to her character (she plays an overworked middle school teacher who let's everyone walk all over her), but it distracted me each time I saw her because I kept wondering what the hell kind of disease she had.
- Kate Hudson's bangs/look...it was trying too hard to be totally fashionable.
- The big issues in the movie aren't actually presented until Candice Bergen's Voice-Overs give us a clue. Like, at the end all these issues come out and you look back and, personally, I couldn't find where they were supposed to have been. This is especially true about Anne Hathaway's fiance whose issues come out very randomly, and Kate Hudson's brother was slightly less random but still not very foreshadowey...Even when Kate Hudson has issues later, they set you up to believe it would never happen in the beginning, but then don't really make a big deal that it did happen...like they changed their minds and now yeah, she's susceptible to that too...
- The fact that the big problem wasn't really explained until the end. Because I thought that if there was only 2 openings left at the Plaza on the same day, that would mean like one in the morning and one in the afternoon...so I didn't see what was the problem. It turns out the 2 openings are at the same time...I did not get that. Maybe I zoned out when they did explain it but I was very confused until the end when the weddings actually take place.
- The directing. I don't know what happened but we're never really sure where the focus of the movie is. Like, ostensibly it should be equally on both girls but then, the way it's filmed, the whole story is like a tug-of-war and you don't know where you're supposed to be pulling.
- There is like zero attachement to the couples, like KateHudson/Fiance and AnneHathaway/Fiance...it's like they're extras. Which is what makes Anne's Fiance's issues very out of the blue...cuz extras aren't supposed to have issues...
TAKE-AWAY
I love Kate Hudson, I love Anne Hathaway, but I do not recommend this movie unless you're very bored and looking to get even more bored. It's not the worst movie I've ever seen but it's very hard to get sucked into it beyond the first 10 and the last 5 minutes.
---17 Again---
GENERALLY
I really enjoyed 17 Again. I didn't expect to because I didn't have much faith in Zac Efron's acting ability outside exaggerated Disney movies, but to be honest, he made the movie for me. I completely bought him as the character Matthew Perry set up in the adult form (known as "Mike" in the adult form, I believe, and "Mark" as the teenager), and I completely bought the character development shown through Efron. "Mike" went from the completely selfish father to one who knows his priorities, and you saw the heartache and the sense of wonderment whenever he realized what he'd been missing out on as "Mark". I think the only time I didn't like Efron's acting is in this one scene with Michelle Tratchenberg who plays "Mike's" daughter. He's trying to forbid her to do something and it felt forced, but I get the feeling that a bit of that was also the character trying to be the stern father he'd never really been before.
The scenes I loved the MOST were the ones with "Mark" and the wife (again, surprsingly :P). Because I thought it was be very icky and cougar-ish but, like I said, the adult/father/"Mike" personality completely shone through Efron and I really bought that he was that 40-something year old guy looking at the wife he was losing because of his stupidity. Same with the daughter who, late in teh movie, gets slightly more attached to Efron than she should. *That's* when it the ickiness came because I so believed him to be her father that it was just nasty and Efron very well portrayed that "omg wtf??? *runaway*" feeling I think all viewers must have felt :P
Also, when I first saw that Efron would be playing a basketball player I really groaned and moaned because I'd read that this was supposed to be his breakaway from the High School Musical movies but when I was watching it was actually fine. I mean, yes, he's still a basketball star but he works at it and I mean, why would you give an actor a hockey stick when he's already that great at basketball...and there are no song breakouts, promise :P
WHAT KICKED ASS
- Efron's acting, I'm looking forward to see him in other things in the future
- That the plot started and almost ended more selfishly, more self-centered than we might have expected
- That I could follow the nerdiness of the best friend :P
- The "Mark"/Wife scenes, loved them completely.
WHAT WASN'T SO HOT
- Matthew Perry, surprinsingly. I mean he doens't have a huge role since the movie really focuses on his character's teenage-looking self. But I felt all the emotional stuff that Zac Efron brought, and then at the end I felt it kind of fizzled a bit when Matthew Perry came back. Which is odd because I watched the movie for him, cuz I love him :P
- The B plot involving the Nerd Friend and the Principal. This is actually the only part that, I felt, was exaggerated and very Disney in the sense that it's just ridiculous. I mean there are cute parts, and it's sweet to see the nerd try so hard but like...I could have done without it.
- Michelle Tratchenberg. This isn't much of a surprise because I'm not really that into her (possibly a lingering ick from Buffy). But everytime I saw her I kept thinking "she's been playing a teenager for waaayy too long...shouldn't she have graduated from this by now?". Thankfully she had few parts, and all of them were blegh for her but good for Zac Efron :P
- That they switched out Zac Efron for Matthew Perry when they did. I mean I understood that it might not have gone over well having this teenager making out with this 30-some year old woman, and I can see the need for parallelism...but I was still disappointed. I was much more invested in the "Mark"/Wife scenes than the "Mike"/Wife ones.
TAKE-AWAY
I'd recommend this movie to anyone who'd like to see what I felt was a more realistic twist on an old design. It's not very heavy, and aside from that small B-plot it's not that Disney-esque. It's a good, funny at times, rom-com with self-centered realism...if that makes sense :P
---Bride Wars---
GENERALLY
....the thing I most remember from this movie thinking back on it (and I only saw it yesterday) was that there were lots of montages. Now I love montages, I actually thought there weren't enough in 17 Again...but the montages in this movie were of the picture variety. Like they'd take stills of the actors and then make this semi-collage kind of montage using the actors' cut-outs and various backgrounds and foregrounds. That...was irritating. And what's more is that they used this shitty camera to take the stills so any ones of them moving were completely streaked, you know like when the image is blurry because the subject was going too fast? Yeah, that's great, let's do 5 minutes of montages that don't do anything or go anywhere, and on top of that, let's use shitty pictures where you can't see anything.
Suffice it to say, the bad outweighs the good here.
WHAT KICKED ASS
*whistles* Oh!
- The adorable guy from the tv show Reba was one of the fiances *pets*
- Um...Candice Bergen was in it?
- Oh, and the adorable "I don't like labels" assistant of Kate Hudson's, Kevin. He made it more enjoyable :P
WHAT WASN'T SO HOT
- Anna Hathaway looked completely sallow. She looked sickly and anorexic and tired. Which, I know it was undoubtly to add to her character (she plays an overworked middle school teacher who let's everyone walk all over her), but it distracted me each time I saw her because I kept wondering what the hell kind of disease she had.
- Kate Hudson's bangs/look...it was trying too hard to be totally fashionable.
- The big issues in the movie aren't actually presented until Candice Bergen's Voice-Overs give us a clue. Like, at the end all these issues come out and you look back and, personally, I couldn't find where they were supposed to have been. This is especially true about Anne Hathaway's fiance whose issues come out very randomly, and Kate Hudson's brother was slightly less random but still not very foreshadowey...Even when Kate Hudson has issues later, they set you up to believe it would never happen in the beginning, but then don't really make a big deal that it did happen...like they changed their minds and now yeah, she's susceptible to that too...
- The fact that the big problem wasn't really explained until the end. Because I thought that if there was only 2 openings left at the Plaza on the same day, that would mean like one in the morning and one in the afternoon...so I didn't see what was the problem. It turns out the 2 openings are at the same time...I did not get that. Maybe I zoned out when they did explain it but I was very confused until the end when the weddings actually take place.
- The directing. I don't know what happened but we're never really sure where the focus of the movie is. Like, ostensibly it should be equally on both girls but then, the way it's filmed, the whole story is like a tug-of-war and you don't know where you're supposed to be pulling.
- There is like zero attachement to the couples, like KateHudson/Fiance and AnneHathaway/Fiance...it's like they're extras. Which is what makes Anne's Fiance's issues very out of the blue...cuz extras aren't supposed to have issues...
TAKE-AWAY
I love Kate Hudson, I love Anne Hathaway, but I do not recommend this movie unless you're very bored and looking to get even more bored. It's not the worst movie I've ever seen but it's very hard to get sucked into it beyond the first 10 and the last 5 minutes.