C.J. Foxx Movie house Reviews #11 Ted 2

I missed the first Ted movie in the theaters but cherished it a great deal in DVD form.  Then when I saw Wolf of Wall Street, I had the opportunity to see a preview screening of Seth MacFarlane's "A Million Ways to Die in the West."  I never followed up and the movie proved that it wasn't worth any extra effort.  It was in the back of my mind; was Ted 2 going to be a dud?  Will it be one of many comedy sequels to fall short?  Time after time: it seems more difficult to pull off but I had a feeling this also had the potential of being a side-busting good time... lets dive in!

I was more than satisfied.  The story behind this flick is that Ted gets married to Tami-Lynn and they have marital problems so one of his co-workers says should have a baby to get them past it.  They decide to have a kid but Tami-Lynn ends up being incapable of having children.  When they try and adopt, it's brought to light that Ted isn't considered a "legal" human being with rights.  So they spend the rest of the time fighting for Ted.  On Wahlberg's side he got divorced from Mila Kunis from the last movie (mostly because she got pregnant in real life and wasn't available for shooting) and develops a relationship with the attorney who is representing Ted, played by Amanda Seyfried.  The plot is strictly functional and by the numbers.  There's nothing there that's really daring storyline wise.  No shock there.

Humor wise, things played out like an R-Rated Family Guy episode and it was just what I needed after a long week.  There were again many small nods to Boston life (the Sweet Caroline" thing and Papa Gino's line come to mind).  Being from there, I enjoyed parts on a different personal level.  They even went back a shot scenes with a visibly pissed off Tom Brady after the whole Deflategate scandal broke.  There were some nice cameos and some real quotable lines that I will be using when the situation presents itself.  I'm going to save the bulk of the jokes for you to enjoy!

The cast does well with the work they are given. Wahlberg and Ted are back to being "thunder buddies", I preferred Amanda Seyfried as the female love interest over Mila Kunis as she meshes better with our two heroes sophomoric tendencies... even if she doesn't understand why being named Sam L. Jackson is funny.  Giovanni Ribisi returns Ted's creepy dancing admirer.

This is a far from a perfect showing and isn't as good as the original Ted, but it had me rolling at times.  It felt like Seth MacFarlane saved some of the jokes he was going to use on Family Guy for this movie.  It had cutaways and they did recycle past material: such as the Mark Wahlberg crashing into the semen canister, Ted singing the "Soul Song" in the court room and the law library montage set to "Put One Foot in Front of the Other."

If you're not a fan of Family Guy or the original Ted you'll be disappointed.  If you're a fan though you will find it an entitled chapter in Seth's repertoire, like I did.  I give Ted 2 six out of ten dick-shaped bongs.

C.J. Foxx Movie House Reviews #10: Jurassic World

It must’ve been the anticipation; it sure wasn’t because they “upped the ante.”  When the original Jurassic Park debuted, cracking open (the dino-egg), it revealed a whole realm of on screen imagination.  While the immediate sequels failed to spark the same kind of inspiration, this modern chapter came a little closer.



The slow roll of the beginning was so uneventful, at first I definitely thought the film was going to dig a similar hole the others had.  Each and every character started off sooo transparent; the female lead (Bryce Dallas Howard) head of the operations/ the business side of the popular theme park, treating the creatures as assets.  You were painstakingly waiting for that epiphany moment where her heart grows three times bigger.  Vincent D’Onofrio: the war-monger, always trying to gain the strategic edge, a weapon to win the arms race, or “a way to save/replace our soldiers.”  Really?  Did you actually resort to turning this into a discussion of using dinosaurs in the battlefield?  I relate to the need of a compelling villain, a personification of evil, an illusion of control… but it didn’t need to be done in such a bizarre manner (basically as believable as dinosaur splicing).

The two kids we follow from the very get-go, it was a better setup than the not so subtle incorporation of them (children) in the prior sequels.  In “The Lost World” and in “Jurassic Park III” the customary kid roles appeared to be more forced and weird by comparison.

These two most recent young actors proved to be better than most in the “children chased by monsters” category.  The only gripe I had about them was this crazy smart younger one; he somehow memorized all this random semi-obscure dinosaur info (along with other stuff), right down to being able to identify parts of DNA.  Many times the stoicism of the kids was too much of an unsettling contrast to the arrogant, self-centered, bickering adults that never met eye to eye on anything.

The last of the extremely transparent is Owen (Chris Pratt).  Man, it is unbelievable, the amount acting machismo he oozed in this flick.  It didn’t matter if it was predictable; from his “these things aren’t attractions, they’re my friends” introduction, his comedic nuance was on point.  Owen’s supposed to have military background, which works out for story purposes but all you need to know is what everyone already has seen in the trailers: he’s a Raptor whisperer.  The relationship between Velociraptor and human is a consistent best part in these movies (usually sharing it with certain T-Rex scenes).  No matter how you spin it, they were awesome enough, along with the already existing supporting-species.

It was my firm opinion going into this, there was no need for a gene-spliced, mega-hybrid super-dino.  Even after the credits rolled, it had never changed.  I was thrilled to see dinosaurs every time up to this point; you didn’t need to make a new one to keep my attention.   What did change: my opinion on the whole “the Raptors can be trained” aspect.  It was hard to accept and move past my attachment to them as a worthy foe, and see them as an eventual ally but the slick display was very convincing.  All of these new elements boiled down to payoff; jetting through a forest with your very own highly-trained pack of Raptors in full pursuit, predator-hunter-mode: that was pretty cool!

The extra clever, Tyrannosaurus-hybrid on steroids (the Indominus Rex) was unimpressive to say the least.  Segment by segment they revealed entirely new powers it possessed, from super intelligence, camouflage, to being able to regulate its own thermal signature, etc.   It was slightly ridiculous, and after only seeing a glimpse of the T-Rex around half way through, you knew for sure by the end you were going to see a throw down… in this corner, the Raptor-Pratt-Pack with the T-Rex Vs in the other corner, the Indominus Rex.  It didn’t disappoint; epic enough to tell your friends about, better than the Mayweather/Pacquiao fight.  It was a highlight in an enjoyable… but second-rate Jurassic Park.  Go see it in 3-D, I had recommended only one other flick in 3-D as much as this one (X-Men DOFP) but you need this one to have that extra snap when a dino chomps at the screen.  Along with the realistic execution of every creature, those silver linings took it past average but only dropped it off at borderline good.

I give it five and a half Pym Particles out of a possible ten.