Posts Tagged ‘Ben Stiller’
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The idea behind today’s strip is pretty simple: When in doubt, add monkeys. It’s a time-honored device that only the most highly skilled comedy writers bust loose when in a pinch. All you gotta do is watch the first season of Friends for proof. The writing wasn’t strong, so they hit this scene pushing the monkey to the fore. Smart move. Once the writing started to tighten up by the third season, no more monkey. Coincidence?
Not like I… watch Friends, or anything.
I read a report yesterday that said last weekend was the lowest-grossing movie weekend in 4 years. Considering that movie prices seem to keep going up, that’s quite impressive.
You see, this is what happens when studios front-load their summer schedules with blockbusters in a bid to outdo each other. Come the end of the season, we’re left to wallow in the immense crapitude of Serving Sara.
I look at the slate of new releases for the next few weeks – City by the Sea, Swimfan, Barbershop, The Four Feathers, Stealing Harvard, Moonlight Mile, The Transporter – Is anyone going to see these movies? Besides Moonlight Mile and maybe Stealing Harvard, I’m gonna say no for myself.
I hate to be down on the scene, but maybe August wasn’t the best month to start a movie strip, eh?
Good news is in the works, however. I recently raided my parents basement and found a box of really old comics I drew back in junior high. If any of you have been reading the forums, you’ll know that these doodles depicted earth-shattering battles between myself and Jared in toon-form.
I’m working on a way to get these posted to the site. Many of them are in poor shape and will probably need some sort of “commentary track” so you can understand the dialogue scrawled across the page by a manic 13 year-old. This stuff lays kind of close to the vest, so I want to give it a good treatment.
I haven’t decided if access to these forgotten gems will be contingent on a donation but it may happen. How open are the rest of you to a “Members Only Club”? If you want to give me some feedback, you can always e-mail me – also, the forums are always open.
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I want to remind everyone that we’re still offering incentives for your vote at BuzzComix. Just click on that link to take a look at the extra sketch created for the promotion.
Along Came Polly was number one at the box office this weekend. It took a pretty big haul – a little over $27 million. I’ll admit, it looked interesting to me at first. But then I sat back and thought about it. Ben Stiller has played the “neurotic-guy-looking-for-love-and-confronts-his-fears” character in romantic comedies too many times. There’s only so many ways you can devise to humiliate and mortify this archetype on screen. Frankly, it’s old hat.
Everyone knows that Stiller has the chops to do something more. Reality Bites, Permanent Midnight and The Royal Tenenbaums are all proof of that. So why go slumming in these sitcom-level features? And if you’re going to do a movie for a paycheck, why not switch it up a bit?
I feel bad for Jennifer Aniston. Another great talent – comic timing you could set your watch by. But from the reviews I’ve read, it sounds like she’s stuck in another thankless girlfriend role. When you consider Bruce Almighty, Rock Star and Office Space, she’s racking up a gnarly little streak, too.
Some of you might have noticed that the forums have been reinstalled. Well, they’re not in full-swing just yet. I’ve decided to hold off on that until I can make a few more tweaks.
Something about the old forum that really kind of burned me was that I couldn’t get it to look anything like the rest of the site. I’ve tried monkeying around with the administration controls, but I can’t get the level of customization that I’m after. From the looks of things, I need to lay out my own version of the forum complete with the background images and color schemes that I want. Trouble is, I’m not sure how to do that without rendering the whole thing inoperable.
That’s why I’m putting out the call to you guys. I need someone with PHPBB2 experience – to help me whip this thing into shape. If you have experience with your own forum or know someone who does, please referr them to me. I would be interested in talking to them.
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I called the Witch Doctor, he told me what to do… Vote for Theater Hopper at BuzzComix!
Not much for me to comment on today other than I’m excited to see Starsky & Hutch. Cami and I are going with a bunch of friends. I’m really looking forward to seeing it with a crowd.
The movie has been getting good reviews so far. From the sound of it, Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson aren’t making fun of the franchise so much as playing it straight and letting the laughs evolve from the situations. That’s good to know. That means they’re not being cheap with it.
Of course, in full pimp attire in today’s strip, I have to pay homage to the brilliant casting of Snoop Dogg as Huggy Bear. I mean, can you think of anyone better for the role? Maybe Chris Tucker before he wanted everyone to think he was the second coming of Eddie Murphy.
Long live Tha Doggfather.
It’s been a long week for me personally. The home improvement projects we started last weekend, we’re still mired in today. We’ve finished painting our living room and dining room and made some progress on the flooring we’re installing – but after working an 8 hour day, the last thing I want to do is more manual labor. I need a nice Saturday morning where I can wake up kinda late, then lean right into this and get it done. Of course, I have to meet my CPA to work on my taxes Saturday morning. Oh bitter irony!
Hopefully your weekend will be more restful than mine. Take it easy, yo.
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Vote for Theater Hopper at buzzComix and come face-to-face with all your phys ed fears come to fruition – COACH TOM!
So the new Ben Stiller/Vince Vaughn comedy Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story comes out this Friday. Despite the catatonic state I depict for myself in today’s strip, I’m actually quite looking forward to this movie.
Frankly, I’m surprised no one came up with the idea for a dodgeball movie before now. The unsuspecting school yard activity is social Darwinism in its purest form. It’s like Lord of the Flies with monkey bars. There is sure to be a lot of comedy to mine from that.
Is it wrong to admit that I’m more interested in the supporting cast of this movie than the leads? Well, maybe not ALL of the leads. I really like Vince Vaughn. He’s found himself a tidy niche as the scheming wise-ass. He was great in both Old School and Starsky & Hutch. That mellow exterior… he steals almost every scene he’s in – and that’s no small feat when you’re set up toe-to-toe with Will Ferrell.
It’s Ben Stiller I could care less about at this point. He slaps on a stupid wig and glues on a silly mustache and we’re supposed to laugh? Personally, I refuse to roll over on this. At this point, Stiller has become like an annoying uncle trying to make you giggle by making stupid faces and talking with a goofy voice. Only problem is you’re no longer 3 years-old, but now your 11 years-old and he doesn’t seem to notice.
I’m more interested in the bit players they’ve assembled for this picture. Rip Torn, Stephen Root, Justin Long, Jason Bateman, Hank Azaria, William Shatner, David Hasselhoff… heck, even Stiller’s wife Christine Taylor can throw a subtle laugh better than her husband.
That’s all I can think of for the moment, but I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts on Dodgeball this Friday. I have another tale of pre-pubescent anxiety to unveil in comic strip form! Stay tuned!
Do you have a dodgeball story to share or maybe reflections on the upcoming movie? Share your thoughts in the THorum!
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Mar04
You know, I had planned to come in here Friday morning to post a little extra commentary and totally spaced it off. It’s now early Friday evening and I feel like a total moron.
Indulge me, won’t you, as I fill in some copy before I go out with my wife for a riotous night of pizza, beer and bowling?
I’ll be up front and admit that, yeah – Be Cool looked kind of good to me. Of course, the reviews coming back haven’t been very kind. I guess I don’t know why that surprises me. As much as I often enjoy watch John Travolta smear his charm across the screen, he’s been in a steady decline for a while now.
I think I was probably less interested in watching Travolta this time around than I was at watching some of the secondary characters. Vince Vaughn, The Rock, Harvey Keitel, Steven Tyler…
*THE REST OF THIS BLOG POST WAS LOST WHEN THEATER HOPPER MOVED TO WORDPRESS IN JANUARY 2009*
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You think that girl crying was just a sniffle before it was over with. Oh, no. She’s just getting started! Vote for Theater Hopper at Top Web Comics to see the water works in full effect!
Sorry for the delay on Monday’s comic. I know I promised it to you late yesterday, but the Memorial Day holiday kind of got in the way. I thought I was going to have an opportunity to draw and ink the strip while Henry was napping, but it didn’t work out that way. Then, despiteGordon’s upset stomach, Joe and I decided to go through with recording last night’s The Triple Feature podcast and that pushed my time line back further. When it was all said and done, I said to myself, “This is going to have to be a Tuesday comic instead.”
Incidentally, regarding last night’s The Triple Feature, I strongly suggest you check it out. I think Joe and I had a really good show. We were really clicking. We talked about Angels & Demons and Terminator Salvation and I spent a little time discussing Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.
Regarding the latter, I saw strong>Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian and liked it. The movie is certainly better than the first because it’s smart enough to put the “divorced Dad just trying to do right by his kid” angle into the background and focuses on what people really came to the theater for – classical sculpture preening like a Brooklyn pigeon for statues of antiquity.
“BOOM! BOOM! FIAHPOWAH!”
Amy Adams plays Ben Stiller’s love interest in the film as aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart. I found Adams winning in the role, even if she was using some kind of clipped 1920’s vocal affectation not entirely dissimilar from Katherine Hepburn (I’m sorry, but I refuse to believe everyone from the 20s and 30s talked with that way).
I do have to admit that the question of Earhart’s sexual orientation crept into my head while watching the movie. Later, when I was discussing today’s comic, Cami did have to correct me as to her marital status, which I was totally oblivious to.
Doing research for the comic, rumors of Earhart’s sexuality were never confirmed. Truthfully, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was an ugly rumor created to discredit her as being “butch” or some such nonsense for entering into the field of aviation – an arena many men of the period did not feel women belonged.
Ultimately, it doesn’t mater. It matters even less within the context of the movie. It’s Earhart’s Spirit of Adventure that Stiller’s character is meant to fall in love with. It’s his wake up call to leave the corporate world he went on to establish himself in and reconnect with his true passion – being a night guard at a magical museum.
Aside from Adams, Hank Azaria is effective as the slapstick villain Kahmunrah. Again, putting on an usual accent, I found his Karloff-esque lisp funny the first few scenes he was in, but distracting later on.
Owen Wilson, Steve Coogan and Robin Williams show up and get a few good lines. Coogan as the Roman General Octavius probably gets the funniest bit in the movie as he charges toward the White House in an attempt to notify the President of the situation at the Smithsonian. Bill Hader also gets in a few funny moments early on as the vain and self-important General Custer. His hair care regimen alone will leave you ROFLing in your popcorn.
There are a ton of cameos in the movie too many to mention. Truthfully, I wouldn’t want to tell you. I think you’d be better off surprised. But nearly every up-and-coming comedic performer of the last 5 years shows up in this thing and it’s fun to go “Hey, I know that person!”
At least it was fun for me. I’m simple like that.
Between all this comedic talent, you can tell there was room left in the script for improvisation. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Some bits go on a little too long – as if the performers are purposefully trying to push an idea from funny to unfunny an back to “funny” again. They don’t always salvage the effort. But the exchanges are refreshing in the sense that the characters just and spewing boilerplate “Now I will do THIS!” / “No, you can’t!” dialogue at each other.
The last little gripe I’ll make about the movie is that despite the fact it’s promoting history, it’s historically inaccurate. There is a chase sequence inside the Air & Space Museum where Stiller and Adams’ characters dislodge the Wright Brothers plane from it’s ceiling mount and fly it out of the building. Not only do they fly it out of the building, they fly around inside the building for a while. Not only do the fly around inside the building for a while, they make a series of impossible maneuvers, dipping and diving around the other aircraft on displace before launching into the skies over Washington D.C. for a languid, romantic moment.
I’m sorry – but wasn’t this the plane that was only able to maintain flight for about 12 seconds?
I don’t mean to be a milksop. I recognize that the movie is fantasy and has to bend the rules a little bit to be entertaining. After all, if I’m going to nit-pick the aerobatic prowess of the world’s first airplane, there’s probably something I should say about a magical Egyptian tablet that brings wax sculptures to life, right?
But intentionally or not, a movie like this will generate an interest in history. It’s basically on big commercial for the Smithsonian. Shouldn’t the producers be a little bit more responsible with what they are portraying on screen?
Or, considering the audience the movie is targeted toward – young kids – is it acceptable to tell a small lie to foster interest in the larger truth? Personally, I’m not a fan of the idea that kids deserve dumbed down entertainment. Kids are capable of understanding much more than we give them credit for. But I suppose if it get’s them away from video games, I’m okay with the idea that the Wright’s plane can perform loops…
I feel like there is more I can be blogging about. I also caught Terminator Salvation this weekend and have some opinions on that. But I think I’ll wrap things up for now.
Did anyone here catch Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian this weekend? What did you think? Did you find it better than the original? Are you able to look over some of the more fantastic elements if it serves the entertainment value of the movie?
Leave your thoughts below!
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