King Sheep Productions

This weekend’s roundup title sounds like a lost episode of Quantum Leap, which is appropriate given the trend of remaking 80’s dramas into modern comedies, such as Starsky & Hutch, Land Of The Lost, and (now) 21 Jump Street (Rotten Tomatoes – Metacritic).

“We have lots of terminology for what happens when two male stars appear to have the platonic hots for each other. The genre is called bromance. The feelings are bromantic. The orientation is bromosexuality. What Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum have in 21 Jump Street scrambles, transcends, and explodes all of that.” Boston Globe Wesley Morris

A brosplosion?

“This movie embraces everything that should make it lousy, calling out itself for aping the source’s bad ideas then flipping the script with meta precision.” Tampa Bay Times Steve Persall

(insert meta comment here)

“For now, 21 Jump Street is a small puff of fresh air simply because it’s not, like umpteen other releases coming down the pike, based on a comic-book series.” Movieline Stephanie Zacharek

Times have changed when “at least it’s NOT based on a comic” is considered an upside. Perhaps, both expectations and reality are experiencing Detachment (Rotten Tomatoes – Metacritic).

“Comes across like the creation of a precocious student. I don’t mean that to be a damning critique, though Detachment is a mesmerizing misfire — it’s just that it has the uncomplicated earnestness and hyperbolic melodrama of teenage poetry.” Movieline Alison Willmore

Teenage poets struggle to describe the lingering pain of life because their pain is still fresh.

“Movies about teachers are flypaper for overblown armchair crusaderism, and this overbearingly cynical attempt gets my vote for worst offender yet.” Village Voice Mark Holcomb

“People will either love Detachment or hate it, and either way it provides powerful testimony to the unrivaled passion and undiminished craft of director Kaye, whose notoriety in the film industry is matched by his near-total invisibility to the general public.” Salon.com Andrew O’Hehir

A 50% chance of love/hate is better than (Hollywood’s more common) 80% chance of ‘meh.’  Just ask an armchair movie critic like Jeff Who Lives At Home (Rotten Tomatoes – Metacritic).

“Jeff is a surprisingly mutable, ultimately poignant day-in-the-life drama about a slacker who genuinely wants to stand tall.” Village Voice Brian Miller

Segel is already 6′ 4″, how much taller should he stand?

“This film about brothers by brothers (Jay and Mark Duplass) is a gentle yet spunky comedy for anyone looking for a life direction, feeling trapped, or wondering what happened to their youthful idealism. In other words, most of us.” Marsha McCreadie Film Journal International

“Three funny and likable people not given a chance to be funny or likable.” Stephen Silver The Trend

Uh oh.  If that trend continues, they might go Seeking Justice (Rotten Tomatoes – Metacritic).

“It’s never terrible – just never terribly anything else, either.” Marshall Fine Hollywood & Fine

It sucks at sucking?

“It works well enough, and at the end the makers know that their film invites the audience to have its irony rations and eat them.” Philip French Observer [UK]

And if you believe that irony is the opposite of wrinkly, you should consider taking a trip to Casa De Padre (Rotten Tomatoes – Metacritic).

“A deliberately cheesy movie, but the laughs are missing in action…It’s not that the gags were lost in the translation – they were never there to begin with.” Marshall Fine Hollywood & Fine

Unfeeling drama and unfunny comedies wouldn’t be as bad if they trade adjectives. When a movie straddles two genres, it is blamed for being neither, when it only failed at being easy to categorize.

“A movie of this sort could easily wear out its welcome early. Yet Ferrell and company transform the one joke concept into a surprisingly subtle train of gentle jabs at an entire defunct school of filmmaking.” James Berardinelli ReelViews

“Will Ferrell speaks fluent Spanish, but with dialogue like this, what’s the point?” Harvey S. Karten Compuserve