Weekend Movies: Nic Cage Drives Angry, Owen Wilson Gets a Hall Pass

Well, I really don’t like being so negative but… Here we are. This weekend gives us a couple of middling studio movies (which I haven’t seen yet, but one I will be reviewing soon). At least there’s some independent fare, including a last-minute theatrical run for one of the Academy Award nominees for Best Foreign Language Film. So there’s that.

The biggest movie opening this weekend, or at least the most incessantly promoted during late night television, is the Farrelly Brothers’ ‘Hall Pass‘. It’s a high concept comedy about a doofus (played by Owen Wilson, who used to be a real actor) who is given a “hall pass” from his wife (Jenna Fischer) – a week off from being married. So he joins forces with his horndog best friend (Jason Sudeikis, who used to date January Jones – no, I don’t know why this is important) to try to score a bunch of chicks. Conceptually, this really rubs me the wrong way, particularly the idea of marriage being a prison that is SUCH A BUMMER, DUDE. It’s generally pretty offensive. That said, the movie does hold a certain amount of intrigue. The supporting cast includes Ricky Gervais’ writing partner/BFF Stephan Merchant and Richard Jenkins, who looks like he plays some kind of ladies’ man mentor to the two dumb-asses.

I’ve heard from a friend of mine that it’s absolutely awful, which isn’t outside of the realm of possibility. The Farrelly brothers haven’t had the best track record of late. (‘The Heartbreak Kid‘, anyone?) But I sort of think that ‘Stuck on You’ is underrated. What? Who said that?

Moving on…

The other biggish movie is ‘Drive Angry‘, which the trailers assure us was “Filmed in 3D.” (As opposed to being hastily converted after-the-fact a la ‘The Last Airbender‘ or ‘Clash of the Titans‘.) ‘Drive Angry’ looks like absolute trash. With that said, it looks like incredibly entertaining trash. Nic Cage (that bastion of good taste) plays a guy who breaks out of hell to save his baby daughter from the claws of some evil so-and-so (Billy Burke). Keep in mind that William Fichtner, erstwhile character actor, plays “The Accountant,” a Satanic agent. Super hot lesbian Amber Heard plays a Southern belle femme fatale. I mean, this has “F-U-N” written all over it. Hopefully it’ll be the kind of guilty pleasure kick that ‘Piranha 3D‘ also projected, all over the audience’s collective face.

On the indie side of things, we have ‘Heartbeats‘, a French-Canadian movie (zzzzz) and ‘Of Gods and Men‘, which played last year’s New York Film Festival (missed it) and is nominated for this year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar (missed all my subsequent screenings). It’s about monks. Yes, I know what you’re thinking: CROWD PLEASER!!!

Well, there’s some cool stuff coming out next week. I promise!

3 comments

  1. Adam

    Dear Nicolas Cage: Please stop making movies. Just…just..stop. I saw a preview for this and the second I saw Nicolas Cage in it, my buddy and I looked at each other and well, if it has Nicolas Cage in it, it HAS to suck. It should be noted that the two of us disagree on the merits of almost every single movie in existence, so any agreement between us means that a movie is either spectacularly funny (see: Pineapple Express) or incredibly, life-drainingly terrible. Nicolas Cage falls into that latter category.

    • For as many godawful movies as Nicholas Cage makes, every once in a while he pulls out a Bad Lieutenant or Kick-Ass. He can’t be written off entirely. What he needs is better taste in scripts.

  2. I dont care what anyone says but I’m a big Cage fan, I enjoy almost anything he’s in even if its complete trash, I just like the guy and from some of the reviews I’ve read of Drive Angry its very balls to the wall, politically incorrect carnage, a lot like Piranha and that means I’m all kinds of there for this one!

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