Big Miracle

New review from The Movie Snob

Big Miracle  (B-).  I caught this little movie at the dollar theater (actually $1.75), and I felt like I got my money’s worth.  “Inspired by a true story,” this is the story of three California gray whales that accidentally got trapped under Arctic ice off the coast of northern Alaska in the fall of 1988.  (I was in college at the time, which I guess explains why I remember nothing about this incident.)  The whales had a small hole in the ice to breathe through, and the hole was way too far from the open ocean for them to swim the distance without drowning.  In the movie, a reporter (played by John Krasinski, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi) reports the story, which draws attention back in the lower 48 and triggers a massive rescue effort spearheaded by an amazingly annoying Greenpeace activist (played by Drew Barrymore, Going the Distance).  Lots of recognizable stars show up, such as Kristen Bell (When in Rome) as a reporter up from Los Angeles, Ted Danson (Three Men and a Baby) as a wicked oil mogul, and Dermot Mulroney (The Family Stone) as a tough National Guardsman.  I liked it well enough, but somehow it just lacked a certain magic about it.  Maybe it was that annoying Drew Barrymore character.  Anyhoo, it’s basically family friendly, but there is a little swearing, and it does get a little sad at one part.

He’s Just Not That Into You

New review from The Movie Snob

He’s Just Not That Into You (D). And let me say up front that there will be some general spoilers in this review–nothing too specific, but enough that you might prefer to skip it.

Anyway, I am not too into chick flicks, and the generally mediocre reviews did not make me particularly want to see this one. (Jennifer Aniston, We’re the Millers, is in it, which is a warning sign right there.) But then I read a review by a fellow named Ross Douthat that piqued my curiosity. He entitled his review “The Way We Live Now,” and he thought the film was interesting for its unusually unflattering look at the “essentially Darwinian” nature of modern dating. Being fairly out of touch with that scene myself, I went to see what he was talking about. The movie’s large cast of well-known actresses and perhaps less well-known actors wheel around each other in various combinations. There’s a married couple, a long-time couple in which the guy “doesn’t believe in marriage,” and a bunch of other folks who want to be in couples but can’t seem to manage it. The protagonist, Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin, Walk the Line), is a perky young thing who is so desperate to get attached that she will basically stalk a guy after a single mediocre date, somehow not realizing that this is the worst possible strategy she could devise. A friendly bartender (Justin Long, Drag Me to Hell) breaks the earth-shattering news to her (repeatedly) that a guy’s bad behavior (or his mere failure to call) should be taken at FACE VALUE. Also, ladies should not place more significance on vague “signs” that a guy is interested than on his open and wanton neglect. Also, do not base your dating strategy on a legend that your cousin’s friend’s college roommate found true love after chasing, or putting up with unmitigated crap from, some guy for umpteen years.

All of this seemed reasonably honest to me. So did a sordid subplot about a tawdry adultery. I may not have liked these people, but I believed what I was seeing. The kick in the teeth came at the end, when the movie abandoned the honest-feeling stuff and started dropping happy endings on us like anvils. Not every character got one, admittedly — a few were left out in the cold. But some characters underwent ridiculous changes of heart to bring about the desired Hollywood endings, and the wrap-ups generally trashed the seemingly solid advice previously dispensed by the affable bartender. Apparently Hollywood suspects that we can stand only so much truth about “the way we live now,” and then we have to be cheered up with happy endings, no matter how phony. The movie chickened out of the hard truths it had worked so hard to establish, and it made me mad. Skip it.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

From the desk of The Movie Snob:

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (B). Recalling that this movie was well-reviewed and seeing that it was playing at the dollar theater, I decided it was time to get in touch with the 16-year-old girl within. Actually, it’s a pretty good movie, if a bit manipulative at times. Four best friends are going their separate ways for the summer for the first time in their lives, and shortly before they split up they find a seemingly magical pair of jeans that fits each of them perfectly. So they agree to mail the pants to each other on a weekly basis. But the movie actually rotates among the four more a little more quickly than that. In turn we see shy, withdrawn Lena (Alexis Bledel, Bride & Prejudice) come out of her shell on a beautiful Greek island (and with a hunky Greek); brassy Bridget (Blake Lively, The Shallows) sets her sights on a college-aged coach at a soccer camp in Mexico; Carmen (America Ferrera, End of Watch) goes to South Carolina to visit her dad, who walked out when she was ten; and acerbic Tibby (Amber Tamblyn, The Grudge 2) stays home to work in a retail store and work on her movie, a self-proclaimed “suckumentary.” I think the movie kind of went off the rails at the end, but overall not a bad coming-of-age flick.