Tucker & Dale vs. Evil

31 Days of Horror: Day 3

There are damn few good horror-comedies.  Fact.  Sure, there are a lot of films that can be loosely categorized as horror-comedies, but most of them are either stupid spoof movies (Stan Helsing) or have very, very dark humor (American Psycho).  The last horror-comedy I can recall enjoying was Club Dread, and it has been a good long while since that came out.  I've tried a few movies that have attempted to master this unique genre blend, but I've had bad luck lately.  Oh, that reminds me --- Rubber sucks.  But then I saw this trailer and thought I'd give Tucker & Dale vs. Evil a try.

In case you didn't catch the gist of this plot from the trailer, here's the basics.  A group of coeds are going on a camping trip in the remote woods.  Following in horror movie tradition, these coeds are annoying douchebags.

Do you need more proof than the popped collar?

On their way to the the campground, the youngsters are frightened by some creepy hillbilly rednecks (I know, I know...Department of Redundancy Department).  The rednecks, Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine), aren't doing anything too scary --- just staring, making vaguely threatening conversation, and brandishing weapons --- but it's pretty obvious that the coeds are hearing dueling banjos in their heads. 

Okay, sure, I get that

Of course, it turns out that Tucker and Dale are actually two very nice best friends.  They're just hillbillies and they don't know how to communicate with preppie jerks.  The pair are going to their new vacation home, which looks like a murder cottage; they like to think of it as a fixer-upper.  Tucker and Dale's place happens to be on the same lake that the kids are preparing their weekend of unsupervised promiscuous fun.  It also happens to be in an area where, twenty years ago, a group of college-aged campers were brutally murdered by unknown hillbillies. 

Edit: that should read "brutally and awesomely murdered"

With that background, it was inevitable that there be a misunderstanding between the hillbillies and the coeds.  Pretty soon, the kids are acting like they are in a slasher movie with Tucker and Dale as the killers.  What are a couple of sweet country boys supposed to do when faced with that?

Is there a Plan B?

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil definitely relies on the acting abilities of its leading men.  While I wouldn't say that Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine are great actors, they were pretty entertaining here.  Both had a good grasp on the kind of timing needed for this sort of comedy and both were able to look surprisingly threatening when the script required it.  I was especially impressed with that last part, because neither actor has ever been particularly intimidating in anything else I've seen them in.  On top of that, Labine was pretty adorable.

Look at them.  They wouldn't hurt a fly!

Most of the coeds are played by actors without a lot going on in the talent department.  Jesse Moss and Chelan Simmons, for instance, were cannon fodder in Final Destination 3 and Brandon Jay McLaren was once a Power Ranger.  Katrina Bowden was good, though.  Her part didn't require much as far as line delivery went, but she did a solid job with the physical humor.

...like when she became a giant and farted out Tucker and Dale.  Note: I'm not bilingual.

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil was directed and co-written by Eli Craig.  If you're not familiar with his work, here's a quick refresher: you might have seen him as a young Tommy Lee Jones in Space Cowboys and...that's it.  He hasn't written, directed, or starred in any other feature-length films.  When you take that into account, I think Craig did a pretty damn good job with his first effort.  The nods to classic horror tradition/cliches are done well, the soundtrack and sets felt like they belonged in a genuine 80s horror movie, and the gore was very good for a movie focusing on laughs.

It's funny because someone died

The movie's pretty funny, too.  It's not all that witty --- the laughs tend to come from the death scenes and Dale trying to figure things out --- but it's certainly funnier than a horror spoof would be.

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil is a comedy that is playing up horror cliches and turning them on their head.  This is clearly being done by people with a lot of affection for the genre, and that fondness for horror movies is obvious throughout the film.  However, this movie is, at its core, a comedy. 

Ha ha ha!  Die hipster, die!

Yes, there is a lot of fake blood, but this is a movie written and directed to make you laugh.  In that, it is fairly successful.  It didn't make me laugh out loud too often, but it was a very cute movie with some likable characters in it.

Exhibit A

And that's fine.  I'm not a huge fan of "cute," so some of that novelty wore off on me as the film wound down to the less amusing final act, but this movie was always enjoyable to watch.  Had it added some legitimate suspense or horror to the mix, this might have been a little better.  As it stands, this is a pretty clever comedy that pokes fun at some standard horror stuff.  It's not absolutely hilarious, but certainly worth a watch.  If you're trying to introduce someone to the funnier/campier side of horror and you don't think they're ready for Evil Dead 2, this would be a pretty friendly option.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

After I caught Willard in the theater several years ago, I heard another theatergoer remark, "Worst.  Movie.  Ever."  One of my friends (or possibly, me --- it's been a while) loudly countered with, "I don't know about you guys, but I paid to see a movie about rats, and that's what I got."  Expectations can be a tricky thing with movies.  Too high, and you're likely to be disappointed, too low and you'll forgive just about anything.  I was a pretty big Transformers fan as a child, so I was super excited when the first film went into production; then I realized that Michael Bay was directing it, and those expectations dropped considerably.  I've seen all three Transformers movies in theaters now (four, counting the animated one), and I have entered each film with the same expectation: giant robots fighting each other.  Sure, other filler stuff might happen, but that is what the movies need to satisfy me.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon begins with a Transformer spacecraft crash landing on the moon in the early 1960s.  The knowledge of that crash created the space race, which culminated in the Apollo 11 space walk.  You might have thought the space race was a time of scientific achievement and ridiculous funding, but it was all a ruse; Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's true mission was to investigate an enormous space wreck.  It makes you wonder what Tom Hanks would have done if Apollo 13 had been successful, eh?

In the present time, the Autobots (the good Trannies) are spending their time hunting for any left over Decepticons (the bad Trannies) that survived Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.  To kill time between giant robot fights, they help out the US government by apparently fighting terrorism.

Presumably pictured above: a member of Seal Team 6

On a mission in Chernobyl (tourism motto: the playground of Eastern Europe), the Autobots find a fuel cell from The Ark, an Autobot ship that was damaged as it left the Transformer home planet of Cybertron.  Autobot leader Optimus Prime and the other good Trannies head out to the moon and investigate the wreckage, finding the inactive (but not dead) Sentinel Prime (voiced by Leonard Nimoy) and some important devices.  These devices, called "pillars," can create a space bridge capable of transporting large amounts of stuff across the universe.  Like what?  Oh, I don't know, maybe...an invading force of Decepticons?  Clearly, Sentinel Prime and the pillars must be kept safe from the Decepticons and their leader, Megatron.  One thing that troubles me, though, is what happened to the several hundred other pillars that were supposed to be on The Ark...

Oh, and there are some stupid human subplots that involve Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) trying to find a joe job and dealing with the pressures of living with a fantastically successful girlfriend (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) who could pass as an underwear model.  These stresses help shape Sam into an ungrateful, whiny man-child and lead to all sorts of awkward and "comical" interactions with the likes of John Malkovich, Ken Jeong, John Turturro, Alan Tudyk, and a slumming Frances McDormand.

Yeah, I'd be pissed if I wore white that day, too.

I know that the acting in this movie is probably the furthest thing from your mind, but I have to comment on it.  I hate Shia LaBeouf in this movie.  He is such a dick to everyone else and he keeps getting rewarded for it.  There was one moment, where he had to choose between his girlfriend (who he can have sex with) and Optimus Prime (who he probably can't have sex with), that could have made up for the rest of his bitchy performance --- but that incredibly difficult decision ended up having no impact on the greater plot, so who cares what happened?  I thought Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, who more or less replaced Megan Fox as Shia's romantic lead, did a surprisingly good job in her role.  Sure, she was a damsel in distress, had no good lines of dialogue, a bizarre fetish for rabbits, and apparently was hiding a Machiavellian streak for most of the film, but she did a pretty solid job of what she had to work with.  I have to admit, though, that my favorite scene in the movie is the extended shot of her staring blankly into the distance as Transformers blow stuff up behind her.  That made me laugh out loud.  As for the rest of the cast, Patrick Dempsey was MWA-HA-HA evil, Frances McDormand was a bureaucrat, John Malkovich was comic relief, and Ken Jeong delivered the same ridiculous performance that is normally expected out of him.  Nobody was great, but nobody was awful (although that depends on your Jeong tolerance).  Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson return as the sexiest robot fighters the US military has to offer, as do the eternally chatty/embarrassing/migrane-inducing Witwicky parents, played by Kevin Dunn and Julie White.  How these characters have all survived three robot battles is beyond logic.  Speaking of which, John Turturro returns to cash another paycheck as a goofy former secret government agent, this time accompanied by his fey butler, played by Alan Tudyk.  These two are responsible for some of the worst lines in the movie, but I'll give Tudyk credit for actually making me smile a couple of times.

As with the other Transformers movies, the coolest characters are still the giant robots.  We see the return of Bumblebee, Optimus Prime, Megatron (voiced by Hugo Weaving again), and Starscream, as well as some of the supporting Autobots, but only Bumblebee and Optimus get a decent amount of screen time.  Megatron spends the film with a gaping hole in his skull that is being slowly repaired by insect Transformers and I only noticed Starscream when he stopped by to chat with Megatron.  The two big additions to the robo-cast this year were Sentinel Prime and Shockwave.

If they made a fourth film, I want an Autobot with fat Elvis sideburns.

Sentinel was voiced by Leonard Nimoy and, for reasons I still can't comprehend, has a goatee.  Sure, it's a robotic goatee that probably transforms into something else (a Van Dyke, maybe?), but it's damned odd.  Anyway, I wasn't impressed with his design or the "unpredictable" twists he provides to the general plot.

I was similarly under-impressed with Shockwave.  He was the toughest villain in the movie and he was more of an ominous general that commands the big worm-looking thing than anything else.  I don't even remember him transforming into anything.  Whatever, he had a pretty sweet final scene, even if they did change up his character design significantly from the cartoon.

Shockwave: bustiest of all Decepticons!

I've never been a big fan of Michael Bay, either as a director or a producer.  At his best, he makes nonsensical action movies with meaningless catch phrases.  At his worst, he combines spectacular destruction sequences with extreme melodrama.  The Transformers series, to me, has always leaned toward Bay's worst tendencies.  Yes, the action sequences are pretty damn cool, especially for fans of the toys.  The human elements in the stories, though, are just an annoying distraction from robots punching each other.  This time around, Bay managed to make Shia LaBeouf far less likable than ever before and he threw in as much random supporting character "humor" as he could, in an attempt to disguise a paper-thin plot.  I'll give Bay credit, though.  The fight in Chicago looked pretty cool.  But there was at least ninety minutes of crappy movie before that.

It was a lot of fun to see giant robots destroy downtown Chicago, though.  As a Chicagoland native, there was a little thrill whenever I saw something I recognized getting blown up or ravaged by a giant Transformer worm thing (that transforms into...?).  The action scenes in general were all loud and fast, and (most importantly) featured giant robots fighting each other.  My complaint with the action in this movie is the same as with all the movies.  Aside from Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, and Megatron --- who are all given prominent speaking roles and are visually different from the other 'bots --- most of the fighting robots were interchangeable.  The Decepticons rarely had any colors to differentiate them from each other and the Autobots were still poorly developed, even after two previous films.

The winner of MTV's "Pimp My Autobot"

Action scenes would happen, and I would catch the gist of them (good robots vs. evil robots, right?), but there was rarely a time where I could explain who was actually fighting on screen, why, or where they were, in comparison to the other characters.  I was also a little uncomfortable with Optimus Prime acting as a vengeance machine.  He actually states that he (and the Autobots) will kill all the Decepticons.  That's awfully final and brutal for a hero, Optimus.  At the end of the movie, he actually executes a Decepticon --- the other character is begging for mercy and he snuffs them!  That's some cold shit for a PG-13 movie.

Action something something explosion

For every fight scene that entertained me or made me geek-out a little, there was about thirty minutes of truly awful movie.  The emotional weight of the story rested on sympathizing with Sam Witwicky --- who grew up wealthy and has only dated model-quality women --- as he tries to find a job where he is important.  Those are readily found in entry-level positions, right?  At least we get to see him have trouble committing to a beautiful woman for the second straight movie.  His whining about finding a job is more annoying as we see how "comically" bad he is at interviewing; the interviews were another thing --- who manages to get five or six sit-down interviews in the same day?  Apparently, someone who wears jeans to big-boy job interviews in Washington, DC.  Jackass.

There is a lot to hate about Transformers: Dark of the Moon.  The plot is dull and predictable.  The script tries and fails to be funny over and over again.  The action is often confusing; the cinematography frequently made it difficult who was fighting who.  The acting was mediocre at best.  The movie was two-and-a-half hours long, with the only fun stuff in the extended final 45-minute fight scene!  They never try to explain why the Decepticons pick Chicago as a place to stage their invasion!!  Wouldn't their evil plan cause the Earth to crash into Cybertron?!?  Most Decepticons on Earth take the form of cars; when Sam is running away from a man who admitted to working for the Decepticons, he hops into a car that was owned by that man!!!  And how bad were the special effects in the early scenes that bridged the gaps between 1960s news reels and the rest of the movie?  Worst Presidential impressions ever.

And yet, none of that really seems to matter.  This is a movie about giant robots fighting each other.  Do you really expect anything else?  From a quality film perspective, this film deserves a pitiful rating of

From the perspective of someone looking for giant robots killing each other, the movie is actually much, much more entertaining.  If you combine that love of action with a desire to laugh at Michael Bay, Transformers: Dark of the Moon gets a solid Lefty Gold rating.  Watching Chicago get ruined is pretty entertaining, but the rest of the film's awfulness more or less balances that out.

I would bump the entire movie up six stars if this scene actually happened, but sadly, it is just someone making great use of Photoshop.

3:10 to Yuma (2007)

Let's be honest, Westerns don't appeal to everyone.  The action is usually bunched together in the beginning (sometimes) and ending (always) of the film.  John Wayne made about two hundred Westerns, and he always plays himself...and sometimes, he isn't even convincing in that.  The golden age of Westerns ended in the 1960s and many have aged poorly.  With the improved special effects in modern movies, the Western action scenes often looks tame by comparison.

3:10 to Yuma, however, doesn't suffer from any of these problems.  The action is sprinkled throughout the entire film, so there is rarely more than ten minutes that pass without someone being attacked or killed.  Since the action is spread so evenly throughout the film, this is probably the most consistently action-packed Western I have ever seen.  No one in the cast attempts to channel John Wayne; this movie follows the post-Western attitude of Unforgiven and The Wild Bunch by having a movie with bad men as main characters and no shining hero in the bunch.  There isn't any blatant racism in the script and women are treated in a manner more in line with today's tastes; Gretchen Mol quietly controls her home and Vinessa Shaw...well, okay, she's treated as an object.  But that's a pretty good percentage for a Western!  The gunplay is fast and frequent throughout the movie, and they even figured out a way to include an explosion.

While Russell Crowe's character, Ben Wade, is what you will remember from this movie, the main character is actually Dan Evans (Christian Bale).  Evans is an ordinary guy that can't get a break.  He lost his foot in the Civil War, his Arizona farm needs water and is the middle of a drought (really?  In Arizona?), he is hopelessly in debt and will lose his farm within weeks, he has a young boy that needs expensive medicine, and his older son has no respect for a father that just lets it all happen.  On the bright side, he's married to Gretchen Mol.  Evans finally gets a break when he helps a posse capture the infamous robber/murderer Ben Wade.  Catching a criminal is just the first step in bringing him to justice, though, especially in the Old West.  Since the towns are few and far between, with only a few having courthouses or prisons, that means that Wade has to be escorted to prison, or in this case, to a train that will take him to prison.  Evans joins the posse for a hefty fee.  The trip is several days long, but the real danger begins when Wade's loyal sociopathic right hand man, Charlie (Ben Foster), learns that Wade has been captured.  Ultimately, all that stands between Wade and freedom is Dan Evans.  And all that stands between Evans and death is his determination to bring in Ben Wade.

If this film was just about Christian Bale's character, it would be a depressing psychological piece on a stubborn man that has reached his breaking point.  It might be good, but not in the hands of director James Mangold.  Mangold is the kind of director that does a pretty good job with a movie's overall story, but he doesn't have a noticeable impact on his actors; good actors deliver good performances, while bad actors do not.  Luckily, this story has Russell Crowe's character to balance the moroseness of Bale.  Crowe turns in a performance that is both charming and filled with a sense of imminent danger.  For most of the movie, Crowe does not shoot a gun, but there is always the promise of violence when he is in a scene.  While the plot throws a lot of supporting characters into the mix, the story basically boils down to these two men.  As evil as Ben Wade clearly is, both the audience and Dan Evans have a hard time not warming to him.  For his part, Wade enjoys the company of Evans, but keeps reminding Evans that he can and will kill him, just the same.  For most of the film, the audience (and Ben Wade) assume that Evans is going through all this trouble in the hopes of a big payday, but it is really a matter of pride for a man with nothing else to be proud of.

There are a lot of supporting characters in this movie.  Most function as cannon fodder, but a few stick out.  Peter Fonda plays a Pinkerton agent that has a long history of chasing Ben Wade.  The character is more of a hired goon than a hero, but Fonda gives him depth.  Most of the other actors and characters just serve their purpose.  Alan Tudyk is servicable as a jumpy veterinarian that is out of his element.  Logan Lerman is a little obnoxious as the son of Dan Evans, but his character spends half of the film with a my-dad-is-SO-lame attitude, so it's probably not his fault.  Luke Wilson makes a cameo as a guy with bad teeth.  Dallas Roberts is fine as a cowardly railroad man and Kevin Durand is good as the same jerk he plays in every movie.  Ben Foster, though, turns in a great performance as Wade's loyal second-in-command.  Foster usually chooses supporting roles that require him to be over the top, but they're always fun to watch.  Here, he gets to have another weird accent, some odd mannerisms, and a frequently used fast draw.  The reason he is good here is that he is able to balance a clear affection for Wade with a complete disregard for the lives of everyone else.  When done right, sociopaths can be fun to watch.

This is a remake of a 1957 classic of the same name.  The original stays truer to Elmore Leonard's original short story, but this update did a good job.  The story's core is still Wade and Evans spending time together, waiting for the titular train to arrive.  The primary difference is that this movie spreads the action (and their interaction) out over a greater physical distance.  That was a smart move, because so many remakes fail when they try to imitate what made the original great.  This film manages to stand on its own, even if it does so by making Crowe's and Foster's characters, the meanest in the movie, into the most fun to watch.