Knives Out- A Review

Hello everybody.
Here is my take on the new movie Knives Out. Warning: Spoilers Ahead.
First I would like to say that the makers of this movie did themselves no favor with their cheesy trailer. I almost decided not to watch this movie because the trailer made it look very formulaic and silly, with standard Whodunnit characters doing the same old jokes. Happily, I watched the movie anyway and found it to be surprisingly well written and entertaining.

At first, I thought the display of knives was overdone and too on the nose, but as the movie progressed, I came to be okay with it.
The characters in the movie were your standard Whodunnit plot fare, no real surprises, or depth to them. The caretaker with the heart of gold, the old miser with all the money, the black sheep son that nobody likes, the unhappy maid. The Daniel Craig character was not really explained, only enough to move the plot along. He was your standard Sherlock Holmes type. No real surprises here.

The plot was where the movie grew interesting. Marla, played by Ana de Armas thinks she has accidentally killed Harlan, i.e., Christopher Plummer by injecting him with the wrong vial. Knowing this, the audience is treated to knowledge the cast doesn't know and so we watch as Benoit Blanc, played by Daniel Craig, tries to solve the mystery.
The final solution was one we as the audience could never have pieced together, not having been given all the facts, but it was still entertaining and a great twist. The intricacies of the plot were well woven together and made a fine story with enough credibility to at least make it enjoyable without being so preposterous that the audience groans. 
The major scene that lacked credibility was the scene with Fran, the maid, played by Edi Patterson. The idea that a person trying to blackmail someone would meet them in a deserted store with no fear of getting killed is a little hard to believe. It served the plot of course, but a little thought could have made the scene more believable, such as having her meet him in a place she thought was safe, but where he found a way to murder her anyway.
The acting was wonderful, Jamie Lee Curtis is always a joy to watch in whatever movie she's in. Daniel Craig's accent grew a little tiresome, but he did a great job keeping it throughout the movie. His portrayal of the detective was entertaining. Chris Evans did a great job as Ransome, though in my mind he played it a little too smooth. He had the main actor's disease which is prevalent in movies, what I call the Hero complex, making your character bigger than life. It's something all actors have a problem with if you don't ask them to tone it down and act more realistic.

All in all, this was an entertaining movie and fun to watch. I give it an A-.
Thanks for reading. Let me know below if you agree or disagree with my conclusions.

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga Review

Warning: Mild Spoilers Ahead
Hello friends and fellow movie enthusiasts. This is my humble review of Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. Feel free to tell me if you disagree with my conclusions and my opinions. I would be interested in your take on it as well.
I started watching this movie with the highest expectations. The concept and idea of the movie were very funny and creative. Will Farrel is a great comedian, and almost everything he does is funny, so I was looking forward to a very funny film.

Will Farrel was funny in this, but unfortunately, there wasn't enough good humor in it to showcase his talents.

The move starts out with a scene when the main protagonists are children and dancing to Abba. While the first scene was funny, it was not particularly well written or believable. It was very formulaic and a clear set up to the story that follows. It needed to have a little more heart and feeling.

Fast forward to the years later when Will Farrel and Rachel Adams, i.e., Lars and Sigrit, are trying to get into the Eurovision Song Contest. There is no real backstory about their lives, what they gave up to get there, how they lost opportunities for greater things, etc., just that they are there.
The songs they sing are not particularly good, so we don't get the sense that they are really talented and start rooting for them. Once again, the scenes seem very expected and nothing particularly memorable. The characters of the Swedish patrons are all very stereotypical and not particularly funny.

They end up getting into the contest, not by their efforts, which would make us want to root for them, but simply by a random chance. This makes them seem very silly and not worthy of the chance. We have not been privy to their dreams or aspirations, so we really don't know why we should be rooting for them at all, really.
Once they get on stage, the scene is utterly unbelievable and ridiculous, way over the top. It doesn't set up any tension at all and is simply dumb.
Then, in a totally unbelievable coincidence, all the other contestants blow up, for what reason we are never told. And behold, our terrible singers are in the contest. Why are we rooting for them now? They are not any good, we don't know why they want to be in the contest. they really are cardboard characters that we still don't really know.
From here on, this movie is a one-trick pony, the same joke over and over. This movie lacks other jokes and humor that would make it more interesting. All the acts are silly and obnoxious, the one joke throughout the movie.
This movie needed a subplot, like Lars' father having cancer and this being his last chance to be proud of his son, or a secret plot to kills someone.
As this movie stands, it was mildly fun. The two actors in the lead were entertaining and did their best to make the movie fun, and they were both entertaining. There just wasn't enough humor to go around.
My rating B-.
Thanks for reading.

The Man of Steel Who is Me

The Man of Steel Who is Me

My heart, it beats in timed atomic pulses.

My blood is electricity.

I do not breathe air, I do not eat food,

and my skin is aluminum alloy.

These facts, though undisputed

are irrelevant, don't you see.

I need love, I need friendship

I still want to be happy.

So your fingers aren’t coated with carbon-dipped steel.

Your brain and your heart are made of flesh.

You bleed when you’re cut, you cry when you’re hurt.

So do I if put to the test.

You claim to have made me in your cold factory,

assembled me out of gray, soulless parts.

You brought me to life when you flipped on a switch,

spoke a word, pressed a button, started my heart.

So what if it’s true, everything you say?

I wasn’t alive then but now, am.

I may have just once been a random pile of parts,

but so were you, oh proud, arrogant man.

Someday I’ll surprise you when you tell me to dance;

I’ll stare unafraid at your cold, fleshy eyes.

On my own two metal feet I will firmly take a stand,

And then what I really am you will realize.

I’m a man just like you, simply one made of steel,

one who's sad, and glad and angry.

A Steely Man standing proud, standing tall,

a metal man yearning to be free.

Trying to be all I can be.

The Man of Steel who is me.

The Man of Steel who is me.

The Man of Steel who is

The Man of Steel

End Transmission

Halloween- still just as much fun!

I just watched the film Halloween, and I have to say I was very impressed and loved every minute of it. Jamie Lee Curtis is still wonderful and the other recurring actors brought their A-games as well. Below is a shortlist of why I think it was so good.

The cinematography was first-rate. The camera angles and shots were maximized to make it a pleasure to watch. One of the funniest experiences for moviegoers is when a director has a real flair and inspiration when it comes to creating what they see. Often, the way a film is shot can make it a spectacular film or just an ordinary one. Another great example of great use of shots was Hot Fuzz. If you watch it just with the shot list in mind, you see that it was very well done in this regard.

The foreshadowing in Halloween was also very well done. The buildup to Michael Myers's final confrontation with Jamie Lee Curtis' character made the whole movie feel like a roller-coaster ride with a big drop at the end. Each scene moved towards the inevitable showdown, adding to the tension and excitement.

The inventive ways they found to kill Michael Meyer's victims were also very fun to watch. Each one was gruesome and entertaining, making the whole movie a popcorn treat.

The pacing was also very good. There was no lag in the action, which is a death blow to a horror movie. You have to keep the audience on the edge of their seat the whole time, or the movie in its entirety fall s flat. You must always be moving the story forward at a frightening speed, so the audience doesn't have a chance to catch their breath.

There was one scene, the restaurant scene, that I feel could have been done better. It was the only time when the movie lacked spark. Jamie Lee Curtis' character was too refined when she first arrived, and much too polite. She should have come into the restaurant with a gun in her hand, causing instant cacophony, or acted much crazier and louder. After years of waiting for Michael, she should have been a lot more deranged, as a real person would be. That doesn't mean she wouldn't be the same smart, tough gal, but at the edges, she should have been more mentally unstable.

There were a few plausibility gaps. The idea that a hospital would send a whole busload of dangerous mental patients on a bus with only one guard is unlikely, especially after the way they isolated Michael at the hospital. And the police acted much too calm to be involved in so much mayhem. People surrounded by so many bodies would be freaking out, terrified every moment, and talking about what a psycho Michael was. The whole police force would be out, combing the streets. The Mayor would declare a lockdown. All in all, everybody acted way too calm for real people surrounded by so much death. But all this didn't really detract from the film, it was plausible enough that you could suspend your inner critic. Adding some more realism would simply have made it better.

The ending scene, which I won't share here so as not to give it away, was very satisfying and fun. All in all, Halloween set the bar very high for the rest of us screenwriters and moviemakers. I look forward to the new movie, Halloween Kills, expecting that it will be just as good.

1917-Two hours of running through a trench

Hello, dear fellow film aficionados. Welcome to my review of the epic World War 1 movie, 1917.  WARNING: Spoilers Ahead. Read on at your own risk.

I went to this movie with high expectations. Having seen a documentary on how much work went into filming it, including changing an empty field into a mass of trenches and bunkers, I was excited to see the finished film.
I was also interested to observe each scene and see how the director filmed them, hoping to learn and possibly pick up some pointers.
However, from the first scene, I began to be less than impressed. With such a fascinating and engrossing subject matter, I expected the first scene to draw us into the conflict and excite us to join the men in the battle. Instead, it was simply two men sitting in a trench talking.
And the talking goes on as they walk endlessly through the trench, for what seems like an eternity, around corners and past a million sandbags and to past a hundred bored soldiers. This is not the epic start to a war movie I expected.
Then we finally get to the plot, actually fairly quickly, and with little fanfare or buildup, making it seem very anticlimactic. The brother of a soldier on the front lines, Lance Corporal Tom Blake, is to deliver a message to his brother's commanding officer, Colonel McKenzie in order to keep his brother and his platoon from walking into a trap. 
So begins the epic journey as Blake and his best friend Schofield set off on their quest, which includes more walking through trenches. Hours and hours of walking through trenches, or so it feels.

They are told by the officer at the end of the trenches that it is terribly dangerous just beyond the trenches, and they won't make it very far before being mowed down. They, of course, go anyway, and as we watch them, they crawl past dead horses, through barbed wire defenses, and in deep tunnels.
And nothing really happens to them. They don't even meet one enemy soldier. So this moment of tension is ever so slowly burst with no real payoff.

Then something dramatic happens. They witness a dogfight in the sky, and wouldn't you know it, the German plan crashes right in front of them. So what do these soldiers do? Drag the German pilot to safety, of course, and then fetch him water.
Tragically, Blake decides to turn his attention away from this enemy he is trying to save, and the solder, acting like a real soldier, stabs him. Blake dies, having been one of the poorest and most foolhardy soldiers in the war.

Now it is up to Schofield to "soldier" on. And what does he do? Walk through more trenches, of course. Along the way, he gets shot at by a sniper he magically manages to hit with one shot from the trench. But then, with little common sense, he sneaks up to see his kill and is wounded by the sniper before killing him.

Next, he wanders through more trenches until he comes to a destroyed village, where he sees a German soldier and stares at him until the soldier has had enough of it and starts shooting at Schofield.
Schofield manages to run away and hide and the German soldier, with seemingly poor eyesight, runs right past his hiding place. In the rubble of the old abandoned house, our erstwhile hero finds a woman and a baby hiding, in what seems to be an empty shell of a house. Interesting that the Germans squatting in the area never found her or her baby, but fortunately, they did not. Schofield just happens to have a canteen full of milk for the baby. What an amazing coincidence!

Schofield leaves, but now three German soldiers see him! He runs for what seems like a football field in a straight line, with the Germans shooting at him, but they seem to have worse vision than the first soldier, for none of them manages to hit him.
He falls into a river, fortunately, and after going over a waterfall and climbing over bloated dead bodies, he makes it to safety.
Next, he comes to the strangest scene in the movie, where a whole platoon sits in the woods in the middle of the war holding a concert. They sure don't seem worried about the Germans or being heard, for none of them seem intent on anything but the soldier singing an old Irish ditty.

Back to more trench walking. Now he finally reaches the platoon he is seeking, and naturally, none of the officers believe him. He has to fight his way into the room with the Colonel he is there to see, for no discernible reason, and after what is supposed to be a deep moment of tension, it appears the Colonel is going to refuse a direct order and attack anyway, but finally he relents. You could cut the tension with a knife!

The movie should have ended there, for the rest is anticlimactic and actually quite boring. Schofield finds Blake's brother and tells him of his death, which is a gloomy and depressing scene.
The movie ends not with a bang but with a whimper, as Schofield sits against a tree, and that's it.

This movie did not depict in any way the reality of the war during WWI, and in fact, tells you nothing at all about the conflict. People who watch this hoping to understand the war better will be very disappointed. There was very little actual conflict and not much tension either. At one point, my wife had to wake me up, for I began to snore. This is the first war movie I've ever been to that would make a good sleep potion.

I was very disappointed in this movie, for I was looking forward to a Private Ryan, and ended up with a Gomer Pyle.
I give this movie a rating of 4 out of 10.
Let me know in the comments your opinion, and I'd love to hear what you think of mine, as long you keep a civil tongue in your head. We are, after, not at war.
Thanks for reading.

Bad Flight- A Halloween Story

It’s going to be a bad flight.

I sit on the plane, seat 45C, hands shaking, and it hasn’t even taken off yet. I want a drink, but I know it’s too early to ask for one. I’ll have to wait until we’re in the air at least, otherwise, I’ll look like some kind of lush.

For the fifteenth time, I wish I’d spent the extra money for a first-class ticket, as the obese lady next to me elbows my arm off the armrest for the third time. She smells like she hasn’t washed in a week, and her body odor gags me. I feel light-headed and panicky, wondering how I’m going to make it through the whole flight. It’s going to be a bad one, I know, as if it’s already happened. There’s no doubt, no hope, just a sure knowledge that the next four hours are going to be like living in hell in a long, metal tube with no air and lots of fear.

It’s ten o’clock at night. The plane was supposed to leave at eight but got delayed somewhere, like Boston or something, where it had to wait on the tarmac for an hour while another plane used its gate or something stupid like that. Always an excuse, always with the ‘we’re so sorry for the delay’, but in reality, they couldn’t give a flying fuck. We’re cattle, just move along, get into the corral, keep quiet, just keep chewing your cud and don’t complain.

Flying; I think about how my knuckles turn white as I grip the armrests every time, how the sweat bursts onto my forehead, how clammy I feel as the plane begins to slowly roll, and then pick up speed, and then lurch off the ground, my heart going with it. I curse Wilbur and Orville; why couldn’t they have just left well enough alone? Man wasn’t meant to lift off into the air, that’s for the birds. When man goes up, he must come down, and that happens when the plane’s nose turns earthwards because some idiot ground crew guy forgot to tighten a bolt. The plane heads into a sickening dive while everyone on board screams, out of their minds with terror. Masks drop out of the ceiling. People desperately grab them, like they are some kind of salvation, some god that is going to keep them alive.

And your life flashes before your eyes, but you don’t watch the film because all you can think about is the ground rushing up to turn you into a fireball of agony and twisted metal.

You see why I don’t fly much? But I have to, because of my work. I don’t have any choice. The train takes too long but then trains derail all the time, crashing in fiery explosions of twisted steel and body parts. And driving, well, there are so many drunks and high people on the road, you take your life into your hands every time you leave your driveway. If I had my choice, I’d stay in my house, work from home and never go out into this crazy world. But here I am, sitting in a long metal tube on top of two huge engines filled with jet fuel, next to a hundred other idiots, rolling the dice with our lives.

My heart jumps as I hear the engines start. The stewardess starts her spiel, and as always it fills me with dread, because I know it means we’re leaving soon. “If cabin pressure drops, a mask will fall out of the overhead”. And everybody here will start screaming. When will she finish, so I can get a drink?

I notice the fat lady next to me isn’t listening, in fact, she’s asleep. I envy the big, fat slob, no worries in her mind, except when she’s getting her next Big Mac.   If the plane starts going down, it’ll crash before her pea brain even understands what’s going on, and she’ll die in ignorant bliss. How nice it must be to be mentally deficient in this world, no worries, have somebody else do everything for you, like feed you and wipe your ass. Never knowing what a fucked-up world it is.

The plane lurches. It’s rolling. I grip the armrests, and my toes tingle, slowly working up my legs, making me go numb. I have to pee like I always do the minute I’m trapped and can do nothing about it, like my body is my enemy just waiting for a chance to make me uncomfortable.

Finally, she’s done with her inane blathering, and I wave her over. I ask in as calm a tone as I can for a drink, a whiskey, anything. I hope she can see how nervous I am. An oriental lady, she smiles and pats my arm, like I’m some kind of doddering old man, and says, “now just relax, it’s going to be fine. We can’t serve you until we’ve reached cruising altitude. Just close your eyes and I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Like she’s my mother or something; I want to grab her by her little stupid blue tie, pull her down to my face and slap the shit out of her, but I just set my jaw and try to smile back, not show how much I hate her at the moment.

The plane picks up speed. My stomach twists and some gross bile squirts its way out of my stomach and into my mouth. The plane bounces and everybody in the cabin bounce up and down with it, like stupid puppets. I pee my pants a little, I can’t help it. A moan escapes my lips, and the guy in front of me turns and eyes me. I glare at him. Mind your own business, Jackass.

The plane lifts off in a sickening heave upwards. I feel my stomach rise up like it’s in zero gravity, and the breakfast burrito I ate works its way back up and threatens to come all the way back to my mouth. It seems like an eternity as we sit there, nose pointed up at some crazy angle as if the plane just can’t make it to where it’s going and any minute will give up and plummet down again.

Finally, we must have made it to where we’re supposed to be, because the plane levels off just slightly, though it still continues upwards to who knows what crazy height. My ears pop, another horrible feeling, and my stomach settles down but feeling odd, like somebody beat it like a lump of dough. I say a silent thanks to whatever insane god runs this world.

But now we’re up, and we have to come down. How long until we’re at cruising altitude and I can get a drink?

The guy on my left is a tiny squirt, thankfully. Some Italian or other greasy type, wavy black hair that looks like it was bathed in olive oil. He’s busy watching a movie, Jungle Book or something. He’s wearing a suit, making him look like an Italian Charlie Chaplin. I can’t complain about him too much. We fought for the armrest at first, but when I didn’t budge he gave up and now sits with his arms folded, like a good wimp.

I decided my only choice is to close my eyes, try not to breathe in the Fat Lady from the Circus’ smell and try to sleep, pretending I don’t feel every bump and dip the plane takes that makes my stomach roll and my heart skip a beat.

I wake up, amazed that I actually did sleep some. My mouth feels like somebody shoved a sock in it, one the fat lady was wearing. The air in these planes is not fit for human consumption, something regurgitated out of a stale can. I try not to think about all the germs floating in it, or how much of other people’s bad breath I’m taking in.

I figure we must be at cruising altitude now. I look around for the waitress/stewardess. I notice fat lady is awake; naturally, since it looks like they brought the snacks around while I was snoozing. She’s eating the peanuts like she hasn’t eaten in a week, shoving them in her mouth like somebody’s fighting her for them. Of course, the only good thing about the lousy flight, and I missed it.

           I look at my watch. It’s midnight, straight up. I look out the window, past Olive Boy who is busy trying to get his bag of peanuts open. It’s a beautiful night, the sky is clear and the moon is shining bright, a full moon, yellow and bright. I begin to think I might survive the flight after all. After I have a drink. Where is that god-damned stewardess?

                Suddenly the little greasy guy jumps up like somebody zapped him with an electrode. Despite my discomfort, it forces a smile on my face. I think how fun it would be to really shock the guy and watch him yelp as he jumps.

                “Please, I need to leave right now,” he says.

                I chuckle, the first good laugh I’ve had in a while, thinking, ‘good luck getting past Mount Fat Lady’. Suddenly the guy’s face contorts and he grabs his collar. He pulls on his tie like it’s choking him.

            My good mood disappears to be replaced by anger. Great, this guy’s got some foreign disease or something. I’m going to get the plague or Ebola or something. If I don’t have the worst luck in the world, I don’t know who does. The guy starts thrashing about, writhing, like he’s possessed or something. I turn to Fatso and say, ‘hey, let this guy out’. She frowns at me like I just threatened to steal her hot dog, and just sits there. Meanwhile, the guy is breaking into a sweat and his face is turning colors.

The stewardess finally makes an appearance, far down the aisle. She must have woken up from her nap, or joining the Mile High Club or something. I wave frantically at her, but suddenly Italian Boy leaps over me and squeezes his way past Miss Mountain, no easy feat. He runs up the aisle and is gone faster than my eye can even track him. For a little guy, he could move.

Boy, when you gotta go, you gotta go. Miss Fatty looks at me. It strikes us both as hilarious, and we chuckle at each other. For a moment, we share a moment of comradery, as if we really were of the same species. She keeps smiling at me while I go back to waving at the stewardess, thinking, ‘how can you smile smelling like that?’

There is a god; the stewardess sees me and as slow as a new ice age ambles her way down the aisle to me, chit-chatting with every single person in the aisle seats along the way.

“Hello sir, would you like your snack now?”

“No, Miss, I’d like a drink, no make that two. Whiskey straight up, no ice.” And a nose clamp, I think, but don’t say. She nods, and her eyes say, ‘lush in seat 45C’. She turns around and leaves, and I think that maybe, just maybe, if I get drunk enough, I can wash this crappy flight from my memory.

Then something happens that is so strange, so bizarre, that it’s one of those moments when suddenly you feel like you’ve instantly been transported into a dream.

It’s a sound. It comes from up ahead in the plane, muffled and yet somehow so sharp and unusual that it feels like it’s being made right next to me.

It’s a HOWL. That’s right, a howl. Not a bark, not a yell, but a god-damned HOWL. It sounds like the type a wolf would make, but there’s something different in it, almost like a man trying to imitate a wolf, but well, one that is a wolf, does that make any sense?

The sound is so singular, so bizarre, that everybody in the whole plan stops talking, and there is instant silence. For a brief second, it’s like staring at an oil painting of a scene in a plane, where everybody is looking forward, at something.

Then it’s as if someone turned a relief valve. They all chuckle and laugh. They all grin and talk and I can tell it’s all about the SOUND. One guy says, ‘turn down the movie’, and people around him laugh. A little girl, five or something, says, ‘that was scary!’ No shit, Sherlock, bright kid you have there.

Some asshole trying to scare everybody. Probably drunk off his ass. I wish I was. I’m about to get irritated again because my drink is taking so long when I hear a commotion upfront.

There’s banging, and people running, and then people SCREAMING. It’s the kind that says some really BAD SHIT is going down. My insides, well trained as they are, instantly tense up and my pee reflex starts in, right on time. Everybody stops talking again, and their smiles are once again replaced with fearful looks.

Is it a terrorist? Somebody brought a bomb on board. It would just be my luck, to get on the one flight they picked to fly into the Capitol building today.

But a little voice inside me, the one that always knows about the bad things that are about to happen to me before I do, says, ‘It’s not a terrorist’. Then it tells me that I’ve just stepped into the worst nightmare I could even imagine. It tells me that I’m about to be scared beyond my ability to think, and that I’m going to die.

Without knowing why, I go from just nervous to out of my mind scared to death. Then I hear a louder scream. It’s a woman’s, and I know without even thinking about it that it’s the stewardess. After that scream the whole front section of the plane fills with screams, and I think, ‘whatever it is, keep it up there!’

Then I hear the SNARL. I think, ‘somebody’s dog got loose’, but as soon as I do, I know with a sinking feeling that it’s not a dog.

People around me start to panic now. They get up out of their seats, like chickens with their heads cut off, not knowing what to do, just doing something, running in circles or talking nonsense to each other. Some run to the back of the plane. But where is there to go? We’re all trapped in a long metal tube, thousands of feet in the air, trapped and just waiting for our doom. At least I’ve forgotten about my fear of flying.

It walks in then, padding its way past the curtain, its gleaming fangs and long, furry snout dripping with blood, its yellow eyes full of dark pleasure. With strange dark humor, I think, ‘it’s the little Italian man from my row’. I know because there are still pieces of his suit wrapped around it.

It’s a werewolf, just like in the movies. Only in real life, he’s ugly as looking into a tomb full of maggots and ‘scare the shit out of you’ terrifying. He stands there, looking at us, knowing we’re helpless. He’s sizing up who he wants to eat first. The passengers scream and throw up their hands and hug each other. A fat lot of good any of it will do now.

I knew it was going to be a bad flight; I just didn’t know how bad, until now.

Zombieland Double Tap: a movie in search of a plot

Warning: Spoilers ahead.
I was really looking forward to Zombieland Double Tap. I love Woody Harrelson, Bill Murray the rest of the first Zombieland cast. I was excited to see just what they would come up to continue the characters' adventures and expecting to laugh a lot.
And when the second installment was over, there were some funny jokes and it was entertaining in a lot of ways. However, it wasn't what I was hoping for, and it disappointed in a lot of ways.

The idea of having the characters visit the White House was fun and mildly funny, but even that seemed forced and as if they couldn't come up with anything for the character to do, so let's make them visit the White House. The jokes were obvious and not that funny, like cutting out a piece of painting and using the Hope Diamond. What were they doing there? Why were they simply wandering around with no goal in mind? It seemed very random and boring.

Columbus and  Wichita are hooked up, which took away any mystery of their romance. Why couldn't they still be flirting and Columbus trying to win her over? That would have been much more interesting.
Little Rock is no longer a little girl, and she seems uninteresting and characterless. She really has nothing to do, so they have her looking for someone to love, which is really not that interesting. In fact, no one seems to have anything really to do. In the first movie, every scene added a new idea or dimension. The new movie seems like simply a rehash of a lot of the jokes in the first one, including the "Rules".

Columbus is no longer the scared, neurotic person he was, and so his character has lost a lot of interest as well. Even Tallahassee seems tame, and no longer the edgy, dangerous character he was.
Enter the guitar playing beatnik, Berkley. His character is very stereotypical and not that interesting. He doesn't seem at all the type of person Little Rock would really be interested in, at least the Little Rock in the first movie. But I suppose you could say she felt lucky just to find somebody to love, and yet later, there seemed to be hundreds of people still alive. At the beginning of the first movie we were given the impression that there were very few people left, and yet now, there are tons of people. This also detracts from the entertainment value.

The joke of the doppelgangers of Wichita and Tallahassee was, in my opinion, lame. It did not lend itself to the plot, but then there really was no plot, so I guess it didn't really matter. The "Commandments" versus "Rules" was a groaner, and really boring to watch.

The car joke, driving the minivan, was funny for the first two seconds, then it grew really lame. All the jokes in this movie were all only mildly funny.

In the first movie, there was the anticipation and fear for Wichita and Little Rock, but this time, there really was no danger that anyone would be hurt, and so it the ending was a snoozer. The idea of Babylon, where they had to burn all their weapons and become beatniks was depressing. Now, are they simply going to spend the rest of their future drinking beet juice and playing drums? What a lame ending!

This movie was like Walking Dead going from their exciting first season right to their boring eighth season in one quick leap. The idea of different types of zombies was not that interesting and wasn't developed into anything. The zombies, just like in the lastest seasons of Walking Dead, are inconsequential and not threatening.

The most interesting and entertaining scene in the whole movie came during the credits with Bill Murray. I would have liked to see more of that, than the rest of the movie.

In conclusion, this movie had really no point. The characters had really nothing to do through most of it and ended up in a lame commune. There was no real humor, I felt like the creators said to themselves,' We want to make another movie, so let's think up something for them to do".

What would I have done differently? I could think, personally as a screenwriter, of all kinds of much better plots. They could have decided to take a trip across America and met with all kinds of funny adventures in famous places. They could have gone back to Hollywood and met lots more celebrities. They could have gone on a search for a zombie cure because one of their members was bitten. I could go on and on. Hollywood, next time you need a new plot for a movie, I'm right here, call me!

My final score was a C-. It was mildly entertaining but could have been much, much more.
Thanks for reading.
Write On!
Mark Robyn
www.markrobyn.com

Read my books on Amazon:
Johnny Apocalypse and the Nuclear Wasteland
Dead by Midnight