A Haunted House

A Haunted House - Dir. Michael Tiddes (2013)

Although you can trace the origins of the found footage genre back to 1980’s Cannibal Holocaust, it was 1999’s The Blair Witch Project that brought it into modern consciousness. There’s been a resurgence of the genre following the runaway success of the Paranormal Activity films. With that success comes a host of imitators and parodies, beginning with the direct-to-video 30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. One of the most prominent horror spoofs has been the Scary Movie franchise, which was shepherded by the Wayans Brothers. They departed after two films and were replaced by David Zucker, no stranger to parodies since he also directed Airplane and The Naked Gun. The Weinstein Company is resurrecting the Scary Movie brand after seven years with a fifth installment coming to theaters in April. Meanwhile, Marlon Wayans, an original star and co-writer of Scary Movie, has branched out with his own horror-comedy, A Haunted House, which hit theaters in January and arrives on DVD and Blu-ray shortly after the release of its competitor.

Malcolm Johnson (Wayans) is extremely excited to have his girlfriend, Keisha (Essence Atkins), move into his handsome suburban home. However, things go wrong immediately when she accidentally runs over Malcolm’s beloved dog. It only gets worse when spooky events start to occur, from doors and objects moving by themselves to ghostly moans in the middle of the night. Keisha sheepishly admits that she sold her soul to a demon for a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes and may have brought the supernatural presence with her. Together, they seek help from a variety of sources, including a pair of security experts (David Koechner and Dave Sheridan) filming their own reality series, an overly intimate psychic (Nick Swardson), Malcolm’s gangsta cousin Ray-Ray (Affion Crockett), and a priest (Cedric the Entertainer) with dubious credentials.

Marlon Wayans intended A Haunted House to be a humorous look at how black people would react to supernatural circumstances in the place of white folk. Too bad Eddie Murphy already did that gag in his classic stand-up special Delirious. Not to mention Murphy's joke was far funnier and only a couple minutes long. A Haunted House is excruciatingly dull and it's almost half an hour into the movie before the ghost story kicks into gear. One of the criticisms levied against Paranormal Activity was the thin plot and the plot is even thinner here. Really, it's a one joke premise. As soon as the furniture is thrown around, get the hell out of the house. That's exactly what Malcolm tries to do, but then the movie would be blessedly over. Instead, he and Keisha stick around, forcing us to endure a steady string of fart jokes and dated references to Snakes on a Plane and the Shake Weight.

Wayans seems to think flashing his bare ass is hilarious and does so on several occasions such as when he drunkenly defecates in the middle of the living room and when he gets sodomized by an invisible spirit. A Haunted House also loves playing up stereotypes from a Mexican housekeeper who seemingly can't speak English to Nick Swardson's swishy psychic who is constantly trying to fondle Malcolm because that's what all gay guys do.

Admittedly, there are some amusing moments. One scene finds Malcolm and Keisha calmly eating breakfast completely ignoring the poltergeist wreaking havoc on their kitchen. A Haunted House might have worked as a series of short skits. As it stands, it's nothing more than a lazy, lowbrow spoof.

Rating: * (*****)

Hit & Run

Hit & Run - Dirs. Dax Shepard & David Palmer (2012)

Dax Shepard is hardly a household name, but the actor has made a career out of supporting roles in comedies like Baby Mama, Idiocracy, and When in Rome. He was also the lead in Jon Favreau's underrated Zathura, a sort-of sequel to Jumanji. Shepard has recently made the jump to a multi-hyphenate as the star, producer, writer, and co-director with David Palmer of his own movies. His first picture was a mockumentary entitled Brother's Justice, which followed Shepard's attempts at transforming himself into a bona fide action star. His second feature is Hit & Run, an action-comedy shot on the low-budget of $2 million.

Shepard plays Yul Perrkins, a former getaway driver who is now living in Witness Protection under the alias of Charlie Bronson. He got the name from the infamous British convict (featured in Nichols Winding Refn's film Bronson) who in turn got his name from the famed actor. Charlie's sweet-natured girlfriend, Annie (Kristen Bell), has a Master's degree in Non-Violent Conflict Resolution, a major she created for herself. She gets the opportunity to head up her own department at UCLA, but almost doesn't take it since Charlie cannot leave skip town due to the terms of his relocation. But, Charlie doesn't care and busts out his old '67 Lincoln Continental for a cross-country road trip.

Too bad Charlie's placement in WITSEC is one of the worst kept secrets ever. Annie's jealous ex-boyfriend, Gil (Michael Rosenbaum), runs a background check on Charlie and discovers his secret identity. While chasing off after them, Gil contacts Charlie's former partner, Alex Dimitri (a dreadlocked Bradley Cooper), who went to prison because of Charlie's testimony. Also hot on their trail are Randy Anderson (Tom Arnold), the bumbling U.S. Marshal assigned to protect Charlie, and Gil's brother Terry (Jess Rowland), a sheriff's deputy.

With Hit & Run, Shepard aspired to make a throwback to classic car chase pictures like Smokey and the Bandit. The DIY nature of the production is reminiscent of a less ambitious version of Gone in 60 Seconds. The cast consists of Shepard's friends in the acting community and his real-life fiancée Kristen Bell. Shepard also performed his own stunt driving. Charlie's Continental along with a dune buggy were taken from Shepard's own car collection. Despite best intentions, Hit & Run never leaps off the screen.

The car chases aren't at all exciting. The only moment that exudes any visual inventiveness is a slow motion tire burn out set to a cover version of "Pure Imagination" from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The comedy is thoroughly strained with one of the film's central jokes being the ethnicity of the convict who raped Dimitri in prison. The rest of the puerile humor revolves around a room full of naked old people and a Grindr-esque iPhone app for homosexual rendezvous.

Hit and Run is a listless comedy stuck in neutral while desperately wishing it was doing a hundred down the interstate.

Rating: * (*****)

Piranha 3DD

Piranha 3DD - Dir. John Gulager (2012)

In 1978, Roger Corman's New World Pictures released the original Piranha, which was a Jaws knockoff directed by B-movie maven Joe Dante from a script by indie auteur John Sayles. It was an enjoyable exploitation movie with its tongue firmly planted in cheek. Piranha spawned a 1981 sequel only notable because it marked the directorial debut of James Cameron as well as a 1995 Showtime remake starring a then-unknown Mila Kunis. Alexandre Aja brought the man-eating fish back with a vengeance in 2010 with Piranha 3D. The remake was surprisingly entertaining as it reveled in its tackiness with projectile vomit flying out of the screen. Piranha 3D may have been well-made trash, but its sequel Piranha 3DD is just plain trash.

A year after the horrific events of Piranha 3D, Lake Victoria is a ghost town following a massive attack on spring breakers by an undiscovered species of prehistoric piranha. The military embarked on a widespread eradication of the deadly fish and the threat has been seemingly neutralized. Meanwhile, Maddy (Danielle Panabaker), a marine biology student, has returned home to nearby Merkin, Arizona for the summer. She is shocked when her sleazy stepfather, Chet (David Koechner), has transformed her late-mother's water park into a hedonistic hotspot. Chet has replaced lifeguards with "water-certified" strippers and a "Cooch-Cam" that displays close-ups of the female anatomy as they exit the pool. He's also illegally tapped into an underground river to avoid paying bills to the water company. Guess how the piranhas get into the park?

Piranha 3DD treads water for its first two acts, which feel interminable in spite of a length that's barely 80 minutes, not counting end credits. There's an occasional piranha attack though most of the screen time is dedicated to Maddy reconnecting with her old friends, the slutty Ashley (Meagan Tandy) and the virginal Shelby (Katrina Bowden). There's also a love triangle between the heroine and her ex-boyfriend Kyle (Chris Zylka), a meathead sheriff's deputy, and the nerdy Barry (Matt Bush), who's had a crush on Maddy since childhood. Once the thin attempts at character development are dispensed with, it's finally time for the bloodbath.

Say what you will about Alexandre Aja, but at least he directed Piranha 3D with a stylish flair. The violence of the sequel just doesn't match up to the previous film in terms of scope or skill. The body count is much less and the kills aren't nearly as inventive. John Gulager, who also directed the Feast trilogy, seems content to rehash gags rather than come up with anything new. A prologue involving Gary Busey and a dead cow that farts out piranha eggs doesn't match up to the previous opening with Richard Dreyfuss. Other lowbrow sequences include a piranha lodged up someone's rectum and another swimming out of a girl's vagina to chomp down on her lover's penis. We also get the lovely image of a decapitated head motorboating a pair of naked breasts. Speaking of which, Gulager gleefully dishes out a heaping helping of nudity. Buxom bikini-clad babes lose their tops and jiggle their bountiful bosoms in slow motion. One pair of bouncing boobs belongs to David Hasselhoff.

The former Baywatch star plays himself in the third act as the C-list celebrity hired to host the grand opening of Chet's Big Wet water park. Hasselhoff has found new life as a self-parody and adds direly needed humor. In a running gag, hapless patrons plead for his assistance as they truly believe him to be a trained lifeguard. The Hoff is one of the few enjoyable elements in Piranha 3DD, along with returning cast members Christopher Lloyd, Paul Scheer, and Ving Rhames. Lloyd once again brings his bug-eyed Doc Brown act as a slightly loopy ichthyologist. Rhames is back as the traumatized Deputy Fallon, who lost his legs in the last feeding frenzy. Luckily, he's now in possession of titanium crutches equipped with shotguns. He also gets two of the movie's best lines: "Fish ate my damn legs" and "I ain't afraid of no punk ass water." As for the rest of the cast, they perform their duties adequately though there isn't enough Katrina Bowden for my tastes. Danielle Panabaker deserves better roles, but has carved a niche as a young scream queen with appearances here and in the remakes of The Crazies and Friday the 13^th.

Piranha 3D was a guilty pleasure that turned the dial up to 11 when it comes to gore and raunchiness. Dipping into the pool a second time was a bad decision. As expected with a title like Piranha 3DD, the sequel gives you bigger breasts, but not a bigger and better film.

Rating: * (*****)

Paul

Paul - Dir. Greg Mottola (2011)

Along with director Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost came to prominence in geek culture with their Channel 4 sitcom, Spaced. Their leap to feature films with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz was wildly successful. Having tackled zombies and cops, Pegg and Frost finally get around to tackling sci-fi with Paul, based on a script they wrote with Greg Mottola (Adventureland Superbad) behind the camera.

Paul makes it known right away who its target demographic with an opening sequence set at Comic-Con. Pegg and Frost are Graeme Willy and Clive Gollings, a graphic artist and science fiction writer, respectively. The best friends traveled to the United States to attend the Mecca of nerd-dom. They ogle the Slave Leias and get starstruck at meeting the robot from Buck Rogers ("…bidi, bidi, bidi."). Afterwards, Graeme and Clive embark on a bromantic road trip in a rented RV to visit famous UFO sites such as Area 51 and Roswell. Coming across a car accident, they are shocked to discover, Paul (Seth Rogen), an alien who has been locked away in a government facility since his spaceship crashed in the 1940's. Graeme and Clive agree to help Paul get to his mothership. Along the way, they also pick up Ruth Buggs (Kristen Wiig), a Christian fundamentalist whose faith is shaken by the appearance of a creature from outer space.

The supporting cast is a tremendous ensemble of players that include Jason Bateman as a no-nonsense man in black on the hunt for Paul with a pair of bumbling FBI agents played by Bill Hader and Joe Lo Truglio. They take their orders from Sigourney Weaver, who appears for most of the picture as a hidden voice sort of like Dr. Klaw from Inspector Gadget. We also have Jeffrey Tambor as sci-fi author Adam Shadowchild and Jane Lynch in a tiny role (a little Jane Lynch goes a long way) as a diner owner. Everyone is good, but none more so than Wiig as both a comic foil to Paul and love interest to Graeme. Wiig takes a rather one-dimensional character in Ruth and makes her extremely likable. She also possesses tremendous comic timing shown off when Ruth awkwardly tries cursing for the first time and launches into a series of nonsensical profanities ("Well, ain't that a bag of tits.").

Seth Rogen may be suffering from overexposure as of late. While you certainly cannot fault the man for venturing out of his comfort zone, the results have been mixed at best (i.e. Observe and Report, The Green Hornet). Here, Rogen goes back to basics providing only motion capture work and his distinctive voice. His Paul pulls a 180 on the prototypical alien by turning him into a rude and gross little guy with a cigarette constantly in his hand. He's E.T. if he were a potty-mouthed, bulb-headed stoner from a galaxy far, far away.

Paul definitely has its weaknesses. As foreigners, Pegg and Frost go the easy route by portraying most of the Americans they come across as bible-thumping zealots or gun-toting rednecks. David Koechner and Friday Night Lights' Jesse Plemons a bit wasted as the latter. Some of the subplots don't pay off, especially the one involving Ruth's domineering father (John Carroll Lynch), which could have easily been cut from the film to tighten the plot. In the end, Paul will live and die by its geek chic sense of humor.

While Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz poked fun at genre conventions, Paul is more concerned with making specific references, many of which will go most everyone's heads. There are tons of requisite Star Wars gags with entire lines of dialogue quoted by various characters. One of the best features a country western band playing their version of the Mos Eisley Cantina song. Other iconic sci-fi flicks like Back to the Future and obscure ones like Mac and Me are referenced as are numerous Spielberg movies to the point where the director himself makes a voice cameo receiving story advice from Paul.

Make no mistake about it, Paul is a movie for geeks and by geeks. As someone who is steeped in the culture (I'm a Comic-Con veteran for nearly two decades), it's hard for me to say how mainstream audiences might take the film. Hopefully, they'll find Paul as hilarious and surprisingly poignant as I have.

Rating: *** (*****)

Extract

Extract - Dir. Mike Judge (2009)

Writer/Director Mike Judge returns to the workplace comedy with Extract released to theaters in time for Labor Day. The creator of Beavis & Butthead had a cult hit with Office Space and Extract acts as a nice bookend. Where Office Space centered around cubicle dwellers and their soul-crushing dealings with white collar middle management, Extract is firmly planted in the blue collar world of manual labor as seen from the perspective of the boss.

Jason Bateman stars as Joel Reynold (no ‘s’), owner of Reynold’s Extract, a bottling plant that manufactures flavoring extracts. Much like Arrested Development, Bateman is once again the lone beacon of sanity immersed in a sea of stupidity, selfishness, and absurdity. Joel’s right-hand man is Brian (played to an understated tee by J.K. Simmons) can’t be bothered to learn anyone’s names and calls everyone, “Dinkus.” There’s the meathead forklift driver Rory (TJ Miller who played a similarly dim character in Cloverfield) who hands out flyers every day for his two-bit metal band. And there is a pair of hairnet wearing gossipers who blame everybody else for their own laziness. A confluence of idiocy leads to a Rube Goldberg-esque series of accidents to causes good ol’ boy Step (Clifton Collins Jr.) losing a testicle. On the verge of a lucrative buyout from General Mills, the accident is the last thing Joel wants to deal with. He’s also sexually frustrated by an apathetic wife (Kristen Wiig) whose drawstring sweatpants may as well be a chastity belt.

Along comes a beautiful, new temp, Cindy (Mila Kunis), who surprisingly takes a keen interest in learning more about flavor extracts. Unbeknownst to anyone else, Cindy is a con artist and convinces Step to sue the company so she can bilk him of the payoff. Joel’s bartender friend, Dean (a long-haired & bearded Ben Affleck) somehow convinces him to hire a gigolo to do his wife thus leaving Joel free and clear to have his own affair. The gigolo, Brad (Dustin Mulligan), is a blond and tanned surfer looking kid who might be the dumbest character in a cast full of morons.

The performances of said cast are good all around with one of the best being, Clifton Collins Jr., who is suddenly in every picture this year. He played a Romulan henchman in Star Trek, a sweet-natured one-armed store clerk in Sunshine Cleaning, and an over-the-top Latino mobster in Crank 2: High Voltage. As Step, Collins defines trailer trash with his greasy mustache, mullet, and trucker cap. I’ve always had a hard time taking Ben Affleck seriously in a dramatic role. He’s far more adept at these comedic supporting roles. Also watch out for rock star Gene Simmons as a loudmouth, ambulance chasing lawyer with a serious case of helmet hair. Meanwhile, Bateman winds up playing basically the same character as he has since his comeback. Kristen Wiig who has stolen scenes with only one or two lines (see Knocked Up or Ghost Town) isn’t quite as memorable despite her more substantial role.

Extract will inevitably be compared to Office Space and it stands in the shadow of its predecessor. Extract doesn’t offer up the same wit and insight as Office Space. While Judge has written some funny dialogue here, you won’t find any of the instantly quotable lines of Office Space. The comedy in Extract ranges from subtle to broad to pretty lowbrow, such as an extended scene where Bateman tries to smoke out of an extra-large bong.

Rating: ** ½

Semi-Pro

Semi-Pro - Dir. Kent Alterman (2008)

Will Ferrell continues the same old schtick as the owner/coach/star player of a crappy ABA basketball team.

If you've seen Talladega Nights and Blades of Glory, you've seen this one.