Cowboys & Aliens
We can only imagine the brainstorming session for this one. Filmmaker: “I love cowboys and Indians. How come nobody makes movies about them anymore?” Friend: “They are not Indians, they are Native Americans.” Filmmaker: “Yeah, but ‘Cowboys and Native Americans’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it.” Friend: “Wouldn’t it be cool if the Indians were aliens?” Filmmaker: “Did you just say ‘aliens’? That’s it! ‘Cowboys & Aliens!”
And that’s how you get a movie about how an amnesia-ridden Daniel Craig is dropped into a cowboy culture circa 1875 with a weird space-age gadget on his wrist and is forced to fight invading aliens with Harrison Ford at his side. Olivia Wilde stands around and looks pretty. We’re totally going.
Perfect For: People who like rootin’, tootin’, shoot ‘em ups.
What the Critics Say: Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gives it a C+, which is the movie critic version of failing the bad kid in class. He says: “Cowboys & Aliens has fun moments, but it's a plodding entertainment because it mostly tastes like leftovers.” The Hollywood Reporter is less harsh. “As good as the visual effects are, you walk away from the movie with a memory of actors’ faces, lines of dialogue and actions that speak more to character than to shock and awe.”
Our Take: The premise is both so completely ridiculous and reassuringly nostalgic that it seems like it will be an intriguing two-plus hours in the theatre.
Crazy, Stupid, Love
In a Hollywood casting shocka, Steve Carell plays an awkward guy with no dating game who is coached by a more worldly ladies’ man (Ryan Gosling) on how to get his groove back after a divorce. It’s fun to watch Nerdy Steve get turned into Smooth Operator Steve, but the twist in Crazy Stupid Love is that Ryan Gosling’s cool cat character needs to learn how to be a real person because he’s fallen in lurrrrve (Emma Stone) and gets his lessons from the geek. Extra goodness: Emma Stone is awesome.
Perfect For: Fans of RomComs, blue comedy, Ryan Gosling’s abs.
What the Critics Say: Everyone is shocked that romantic leading man Ryan Gosling is funny. “Ryan Gosling—who knew?” asks the Orlando Sentinel. Writes David Denby in the New Yorker: “Gosling, a serious fellow who usually plays alcoholics or drug addicts or murderers, refuses to distance himself from Jacob by parodying the role.” And David Edelstein of New York magazine liked it well enough—“the movie has an unexpectedly high proportion of delights to groaners, and it’s full of actors you’ll want to see.”
Our Take: Two minutes of Emma Stone is better than no minutes of Emma Stone.
The Smurfs
The weird blue people are back just in time to haunt your children’s childhoods, too. There’s still only one girl Smurf, and of course, she’s the hot blonde (Smurfette). The plot: after the evil wizard chases them out of their Smurf village, they end up in a weird portal and land in New York’s Central Park for a classic fish out of water tale. But the main reason for this movie to exist seems to be to see the Smurfs in 3D and to watch them annoy their temporary protector, played by Neil Patrick Harris.
Perfect For: Infants or the mildly challenged.
What the Critics Say: The Smurfs has a zero Rotten Tomato rating. Writes Entertainment Weekly: “The Smurfs may be blue, but their movie is decidedly green, recycling discarded bits from other celluloid Happy Meals like Alvin and the Chipmunks, Garfield, and Hop into something half animated, half live action, and all careful studio calculation.”
Our Take: Rent the originals and stay home.
