Reviews: Two movies and a musical

Stealth, Dirty Love, and Legally Blond: The Musical. Guess which one of the three was good.

Legally Blond: The Musical: Two thumbs up! (Me & Yelena)

Yelena dragged me to see the movie, and the sequel. For Valentine's Day I surprised her by taking her to go see the musical. It's in San Francisco for one month before moving to Broadway for a permanent run. In retrospect, I don't know why I thought that watching a bunch of hot blonds jump around in cheerleader outfits wouldn't be fun. Anyway, it was. The show was smart enough to maintain a real sense of humor about itself. It was hip enough not to be cloyingly sweet. The first song pushed it a bit (the chorus is "Oh my god, oh my god you guys"), but the song is so catchy I caught myself humming it on the way home.

The acting was very good, especially the main character. The dialogue was hip and fresh, especially the song lyrics. The music was catchy. The costumes were very nice; almost every character had a different costume for almost every scene. And the sets were possibly the best I've ever seen. Maybe a dozen different locations, and every one was on ropes or moving platforms so they could transition smoothly in the middle of a song. Some sets rotated or even sank into the stage. One even had multiple levels, complete with a fireman's pole. There was a neon light frame around the stage that would change colors to reflect the mood of the songs. The whole thing was innovative and looked fantastic.

All in all: high production values, and a darn good time, even for a Nor-Cal, straight male like me. (I guess the fact that I like musical theater puts a bit of a dent in that straight male facade, but hey . . . )

Stealth: thumbs down

This movie has three things recommending it: it's a military movie, cool special effects, and Jessica Biel in a bikini. And yet, somehow, the movie ended up having nothing to offer.

First of all, it drives me nuts when action movies don't even try to get it right. Since when do fighter pilots get their own weather reports on the plane? Why the hell would they load live nuclear warheads for a training mission (for that matter, since when did a real fighter jet carry nukes anyway)?  And why the hell does the USAF have a fifty-year old blimp floating in circles over Southeast Asia, carrying millions of gallons of fuel?
And, of course, the stereotypical problems: the sophisticated AI is handled not by a team of Pentagon scientists, but by a single nerdy college kid in a white coat. And it was originally designed by a private programmer who lives in Beverly Hills. And when pilots crash, apparently they don't use .45 handguns any more, they use some funky oversized thing that looks like a laser gun. Oh yeah, and what makes the AI go nuts? A lightning strike. I was waiting for him to scream, "Johnny 5, ALIVE!!!"

Other than the usual foibles, the script writer made a good effort at utilizing the sexy babe. But the fucking director clearly couldn't get it. I mean, for God's sake, this isn't Oscar Wilde. If you can't catch sexual innuendo, you shouldn't be directing. Par example:

The opening scene has Jessica Biel licking a grape popsicle. We see someone toss her the popsicle. We see her holding it while she talks. We see the other (male) pilots eating their popsicles. But we never once see Jessica slide that puppy into her mouth. Come on!

And yes, as the preview promised, she does get to wear a bikini. In a tropical lagoon under a waterfall. In Thailand. But as she's talking to her hunky fellow pilot, the director zooms in on her face. We never get to see her firm yet supple talents.

It's not like this movie had much else to offer. The director wasn't trying to be artsy or classy by blowing these obvious chances to capitalize on the hot babe. And it's not like Jessica Biel is a prude, either; she's the one who appeared topless in a magazine in order to shake her "good girl" image from 7th Heaven.

So let's see here: bad script, bad directing, crummy acting, good-but-not-thrilling special effects, and you don't even get a nice view of the babe. This movie had nothing going for it. Could it get any worse? Oh you betcha.

Dirty Love: thumbs down

Yeah, Jenny McCarthy is hot. Really hot. She was one of my first flames; I had a calendar of her back in high school. In one shot you could almost see a nipple. She also managed to host a show for many years.

But that doesn't make her a good actress. Or a good scriptwriter. The opening scene is her chance to shine: five minutes of her FREAKING OUT because she just got dumped. A good actress might make something of a scene like that; with Jenny, I literally found myself watching the clock.

Early on, a fortune teller reveals the script: she's going to be unhappy, she'll think she can stand on her own, which she can't (we all need friends and love), she'll realize this, and then she'll be carried away by her white pony. OK, typical romantic comedy growing experience. Only we're not so lucky.

Seems like McCarthy forgot what the script was supposed to be and just cut to the chase. There is a supporting cast of mostly interesting people who have their own problems, but none of them get a chance to grow. Neither does McCarthy. She doesn't realize a damn thing, and then a guy shows up wearing white Pony-brand sneakers and they literally walk off down a bridge as fireworks come out of nowhere.

So basically it's a series of warmed-over relationship cliches, followed by a conclusion. It doesn't even live up to its own setup.

Well, do we get to see her boobies? Yes, but only once, and they're covered in vomit. Sorry, not doing it for me. There are plenty of poop and barf jokes--was this movie aimed at twenty-something couples, or teenage boys (who wouldn't be able to get in to see an R rated movie anyway)? Add in a suspicious dose of ambiguous racism, and you have a movie that's worse than boring. It's annoyingly bad.

Ultimately, it's my fault. What possessed me to rent such obviously bad movies? At least I redeemed myself with a live musical and a romantic Valentine's Day.