Another vote for Dodgeball. I don’t usually like sports movies or goofball physical comedy, but Dodgeball was just so unashamedly silly that you had to love it. Laugh out loud funny.
“Yer about as useless as a poopy-flavored lollipop!!”
Definitely one of my picks, too.
I somehow ended up watching the original Gidget (1959). Not at all my kind of thing, I think my wife rented it.
Anyway I expected a vapid, dated teen comedy like a Frankie and Annette kind of thing but it had a surprising amount of depth, hinting at such dark topics as Korean War PTSD and date rape and sort of predicting the social upheavals that were going to occur with the explosion of the youth culture in the 1960s.
I agree, in full, with this. We saw TWS and There’s Something About Mary back-to-back, and I was expecting to love Something About Mary and dislike TWS. Instead, I enjoyed TWS, and thought Something About Mary was an incredibly overrated piece of tripe.
Guess Who? Ashton Kutcher did a fine job in The Butterfly Effect but I’ve never exactly been overwhelmed by his sparkling wit. Considering first that this was a remake of a classic, with a gimmicky twist, I expected pretty much nothing out of this movie. I was pleasantly surprised. It doesn’t rise to the level of its predecessor, but this is a solid, good film, with genuinely funny and touching moments. The characters feel authentic and very sympathetic. I would watch this movie again, perhaps even own it.
Role Models. I was completely convinced this movie was going to appeal to the lowest common denominator of humor with a contrived plotline and predictable ending. Instead I found it hysterically funny and very original – the whole fantasy roleplaying angle was hilarious, and you felt a real sense of growth from all of the main characters, both children and adult. But mostly it was really fucking funny. Like laugh-til-you-cry funny. It was an authentic humor that grew out of the dynamic between characters. It was also exceptionally well-cast, even the bit roles. I loved it and so did every other single person in the theater.
The Graduate. I made myself watch this because it was a classic, but old movies don’t have tremendous appeal to me. I absolutely adored it. I think it is a masterpiece of directing and I started a whole thread on it in CS as soon as I finished watching it.
My wife practically had to drag me to Moulin Rouge. I enjoyed it immensely, and she was a bit disappointed. I found it refreshing and original, a rare commodity in Hollywood, and appreciated seeing someone try something different.
When I first heard about Buffy, my first thoughts were something like “Hmm, a teen drama about a valley girl who fights vampires. I know what I’m not going to be watching.”
I think it’s the best television show ever, and now I’m one of those annoying “Whedon is god” types you’ve read about in Time magazine.