(Pickles, Suite Or Sour - Michael Giacchino and Nami Melumad)
Somewhere along the line, intelligence stopped being funny.
I'm not entirely sure when it happened, but at some point, someone decided that the only way to entertain people was to act like an utter moron on screen, eschewing the sly wink and knowing nod for base behavior, shouting, excessive profanity, and...idiocy.
People like Will Farrell and Melissa McCarthy led the charge that killed intelligent viewing.
What's morbidly fascinating about this movement away from intelligent humor is that the people who are leading the charge are smart. Not only are they smart, most of them are incredible actors who have simply chosen...poorly.
- Will Farrell - John C. Riley - Steve Carrell - Vince Vaughn - Melissa McCarthy - Ben Stiller - Adam Sandler
This is a terribly incomplete list of people who have proven that they can act when they choose to. The mystery is why they so frequently choose otherwise.
To this list, Seth Rogan, a fitting member of the underachiever's club if ever there was one.
Then I saw this trailer and got a little irritated:
This is Seth Rogan in a movie where he's playing the 'straight' man and using an incredible accent. I am a sucker for these movies and resigned myself to wading through at least the first half hour to see if I had found yet another example of an incredible actor who typically choses to be a moron.
THE SHORT VERSION:
Yeah. He belongs on that list. This is a decent flick.
THE LONG VERSION:
Another ostensibly funny man who is extremely intelligent and capable of acting, yet rarely chooses to do so. Does stupidity really pay that well?! Maybe I'm just cranky, I don't know.
This is a good movie with a good story and a good soundtrack. No, it's not perfect, but there's something interesting in where it falls down a bit.
In one corner, you have 'Old' Seth Rogan playing a Slavic Jew. Pretty much everything Old Seth does is perfect. Period. The acting is good, the accent is good, his motives and behavior are entertaining... it's a borderline perfect character.
In the other corner, you have 'Young' Seth Rogan, playing...well, every Seth Rogan character ever. He is mostly worthless, and behaves thusly.
I have no idea if two different people wrote the two different characters, but the difference in their writing and execution is notable. The end of the movie sees that difference shored up a little by the eventual growth that Young Seth goes through. It's not enough idiocy to compromise the movie at all. Thankfully, he's in far less of it than Old Seth. Still, you end up with a great movie that is tainted a little because Seth Rogan just couldn't resist being Seth Rogan.
Hopefully, this movie will make him realize that he doesn't have to be in order to make something both clever and entertaining.
Added bonus: The soundtrack is wonderful. That's costing me something, because it's Michael Giacchino, who I hate on principle for what he did to the Star Trek reboots, but...that's another story.
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