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Reviews
Guyver: Dark Hero (1994)
Surprisingly watchable..
I was actually quite surprised by this movie. I actually liked it. I've been hearing for quite a while that if you want to watch Guyver you should see the orgional anime and ignore the crappy US live action movie. Well I went over to my friend's house and saw all of the anime and then went home and the two live action movies were on TV. The first live action movie did suck. A lot. The action scenes sucked and the evil zoanoid were passed off as gremlins or power ranger villans. The movie ended in a REALLY crappy fight scene. Guyver: Dark Hero, the second movie, was surprisingly better however. Both Guyver and the zoanoids look a lot better in this movie, the fight scence are actually pretty cool (mostly because the zoanoids actually have mobility now). The plot was a bit darker (not quite as dark as the anime, but darker). The most surprising thing though was that the acting actually improved a bit. Now the lead is played by David Hayter (who some of you might recall as the voice od Solid Snake). Anyway this was a good bit of fun that was just ready to be spun off into a regualar series. Too bad the first movie just stunk up it's image.
The Wedding Planner (2001)
Warning, use only in dire date related circumstances!
I've never really understood Jennifer Lopez's sex appeal, and The Wedding Planner just adds to my confusion. A friend of mine once called her the sexiest woman alive, but to me she seems like a mini with a trailer hitch made for a semi truck. She's not bad looking by any means, but really, are her looks worth the one billion dollars she has insured it for? Anyway I digress. As you probably know from the deluge of trailers flooding your television, The Wedding Planner is the new romantic comedy staring Jennifer Lopez and Matthew McConaughey. Lopez plays Mary, a Wedding Planner so good that she makes as much business for her firm as all the other wedding planners put together times five. She's also a total neat freak and organizer, a person who folds her shirts and blouses around a piece of sheet plastic to keep them flat. She might plan weddings but her own heart was broken when her fiance screwed her over. She meets Dr. Steve Edison (McConaughey) when he saves her life. They then proceed to go out on a sort of date and he fails to mention that he is getting married in three months. Of course it turns out that his wedding is being planned by Mary (what a shock) and it is also the most important job of her career. Most of this is straight from the trailer, no surprises. And for the most part that is the way that the rest of the movie goes, no surprises. I find it interesting that Lopez would choose a project like this however, because while not all of her movies are all that great, most of them are interesting and challenge norms (think The Cell, Out of Sight or U-Turn not Anaconda). The unfortunate thing about The Wedding Planner is that there are a lot of good character interactions here, but they are diverted and pushed aside because the female lead has to get together with the male lead in the end. The relationship between Dr. Steve and his fiance Fran (played by Bridgette Wilson-Sampras whom you may remember as Sonya in Mortal Kombat) is portrayed quite well. Although the problems in Fran and Steve's relationship are subtle and not given enough screen time, some of their scenes near the end of the movie work quite well. Along those same lines Massimo (played by Justin Chambers) does a good job endearing himself on the audience as the other man in Mary's life. By the end of the film you are quite ready to root for him over Dr. Steve. The romance between Steve and Mary however is quite a bit different. I never really saw the spark between the two of them. All I came away from the romantic scenes between the leads was that Steve wasn't ready to get married to Fran. The only real surprise is that, contrary to its assembly line style formula, there are quite a few funny scenes in The Wedding Planner. In fact, except for some of the labored romance scenes between Lopez and McConaughey almost every scene has some funny moments in it. Especially good in their roles as comic relief are Fran's parents played by Joanna Gleason and Charles Kimbrough. Also Mary's friends in her Scrabble club lend a few funny moments. While I certainly wasn't busting my gut laughing, the comedy made me forget about the tepid romance through most of the movie. So should you see this movie? Well, if you're hard up for a date movie, and don't mind some gratuitously placed Lopez music, go for it. The slightly above average comedy makes the so-so romance bearable. But only go to this one as a last resort, there are plenty of good movies in the theaters right now and nine to twelve bucks is a lot to spend on slightly above average comedy.