Showing posts with label Lucy Lawless. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lucy Lawless. Show all posts

Friday, December 3, 2010

Bitch Slap


Directed by Rick Jacobson
2009. Rated R, 109 minutes.
Cast:
Erin Cummings
Julia Voth
America Olivo
Michael Hurst
Ron Melendez
William Gregory Lee
Minae Noji
Kevin Sorbo
Lucy Lawless


Three women dressed in extremely tight and revealing clothes are bickering with one another and digging for some sort of buried treasure. There’s Hel (Cummings) who seems to the leader, Camaro (Olivo), the psychotic butch of the bunch, hopped up on some sort of pills and Trixie (Voth), the daintiest and most frantic. The treasure was buried by a Vegas gangster named Gage (Hurst), whom the ladies have just killed. Don’t worry that’s of minimal importance.

What is important is that this movie desperately wants to be so bad it’s awesome. It’s the type of film where each lady makes their big entrance by exiting a car cleavage first and in slow-motion. There are lots more slow-motion shots throughout the movie of the girls whipping their hair, bending over, throwing water on one another, touching themselves suggestively, twisting their faces into orgasmic visages and making out with each other. It’s often like one of those Playboy Playmate videos, but without any actual nudity except for a briefly bare chest of some random character’s only two seconds on screen. We also get more slo-mo in the middle of the action scenes as kicks, punches, recoils from automatic weapons and other strikes to the body causes hair to whip, lips to purse, boobies to jiggle…you get the idea. I’m sure this flick is an absolute goldmine for horny virgin boys lucky enough to come across it.

Those action scenes are manufactured by the girls arguing, other people interrupting them or one of the far too many flashback scenes. The flashbacks reveal a little at a time about each of the girls. Well, they’re supposed to. What they really do is play a major part in the story becoming an incoherent glob of B-movie madness that’s not nearly as enjoyable as it should be. It’s got all the elements needed to be truly craptacular: attractive women, guns, catfights, explosions and wacky villains. It just doesn’t know what to do with them all. Condensing this to a 10 or 15 minute clip on YouTube might have made it an internet sensation, worthy of all the lonely boy praise that would surely come its way. In its current form, stretched way too close to two hours, it’s repetitive, stupid and never quite perverse, bizarre or truly brazen enough to be what it so obviously wants.

MY SCORE: 3/10

Monday, May 4, 2009

Bedtime Stories

Bedtime Stories
2008. Rated PG, 99 minutes.
Director: Adam Shankman. Starring Adam Sandler, Keri Russell, Guy Pearce, Courtney Cox, Russell Brand, Richard Griffiths, Teresa Palmer, Nick Swardson, Lucy Lawless, Carmen Electra.

Plot: Hotel maintenance man Skeeter (Sandler) babysits his sister's kids for a few days while she's out of town. With their help, he comes up with elaborate bedtime stories which amazingly become reality.

The Good: It's so gosh-darn cute. The kids are cute. The stories are cute. The way they translate into reality is cute. Therefore, our viewing is sprinkled with chuckles and giggles. All of this helps to keep things moving along nicely as the movie bounds from one tale to the next.

The Bad: It's so gosh-darn cute. Since it is, it's not afraid to pile on the cheese. So, in between the giggles and chuckles you might be rolling your eyes a lot. It doesn't help that the plot is a paint-by-numbers job.

The Ugly: The Booger Monster.

Recommendation: This is solid family fare. The stories are inventive, so they hold your attention as the movie bounces merrily along. There's really not much here to offend even the hardcore prudes, but it is predictable. You're willing to forgive all that because, well, it's just so gosh-darn cute.

The Opposite View: Jim Hill, Channel 4 Film

What the Internet Says: 6.2/10 on imdb.com (4/29/09), 22% on rottentomatoes.com, 33/100 on metacritic.com

MY SCORE: 6.5/10