Jokes! Jokes! We've got JOKES!!!

I took a final dive into commercial crap this weekend before turning my attention to 'world cinema' and getting all cineaste and shit when the San Francisco International Film Festival owns my soul for the next two weeks, starting Thursday. So, quite briefly, as you can find much more detail elsewhere:

There's a joke in here, somewhere!
I. Loathe. Tom Cruise. Ergo, I LOVED "Scary Movie 4"!! It just slaps him upside the head! It also (literally) reveals President Bush as the emperor with no clothes! Zucker and Abrahams give this their traditional machine gun like delivery of schtick, bits and jokes. Sure there are a lot of misses, but you will give it at least one belly laugh! You WILL!!

"Ice Age [2]: The Meltdown" is not so fortunate. Not only is there nothing particularly funny in potential extinction, but it places Queen Latifa's character in the unfortunate position in being the punchline to an implied 'if you were the last wooly mammoth on earth' joke that is subliminally offensive, in my opinion. Leguizamo does his vocally scene chewing best, again. But Romano and Leary sound bored. The only saving grace of this 90 minutes (outside of an inspired Baraka-like chorus of sloths) is... Skrat! He is a work of genius! He is a furry Buster Keaton on crack! I love him! Wait for the dvd and just chapter skip to his schtick!!

Finally, "Thank You for Smoking," was sort of on the other end of the scale, humor-wise. In fact, the script is so extremely cynical, it is almost a turn off. Which may be its point? Aaron Eckhardt basically revives his "In The Company Of Men" evil hunkiness: soooo pretty to look at, but what an asshole! But he does it so WELL! He's much better at this than being a hero, i.e. "The Core." The satire takes on a lot of morales and gets sort of muddy about the whole thing. Its heart seems to be in the right place, but it is just so nasty for 95% of the film that I'm not sure it gets the redemption it aims for by the end. But at least Eckhardt is pretty...

That's it until... Thursday night!!! Opening Night!!! Woo hoo!!