Dave Foley

Pixar revisits the characters from 2001's Monsters, Inc. for a frat-house prequel. Which is kind of an odd setting for a kids' movie. The comedy is more focussed on action sequences than characters this time, so it's not nearly as satisfying. But it's still a lot of fun, thanks to a constant barrage of sharp verbal and visual gags.

When he was just a child, Mike (Crystal) dreamed about becoming a scarer, capturing the screams of human children to provide power to Monstropolis. So he's thrilled when he enters Monsters University, and takes his studies very seriously. By contrast, his roommate Randy (Buscemi) is more interested in partying, while classmate Sulley (Goodman) is lazily coasting on the legacy of his famed scarer dad. Then Mike and Sulley end up on the wrong side of Dean Hardscrabble (Mirren), who gives them one chance to stay in school: they have to win the Scare Games. But the only frat-house that needs them is made up of unscary misfits: nice-guy Dan (Murray), two-headed dimwit Terry/Terri (Hayes/Foley), naive five-eyed Squishy (Sohn) and furry philosopher Art (Day).

We never really doubt where this is going, but the filmmakers have a lot of fun along the way, and the story does take some surprising twists. Essentially, it's the same premise as Glee, with nerdy outcasts banding together to draw on their personal talents and show the cool kids that they're not losers. The script never really develops any of the side characters beyond one key personality trait, but the relationship between Mike and Sulley has a real kick of emotional resonance, superbly well-voiced by Crystal and Goodman. And the bromance between these two is even more enjoyable than all the colourful mayhem and snappy joking around.

Continue reading: Monsters University Review

Will Stronghold (Michael Angarano) is the son of the world's greatest heroes, super-strong Captain Stronghold (Kurt Russell) and high-flying Josie Jetstream (Kelly Preston). However, despite his impressive lineage, Will's lack of astonishing abilities poses complications on his first day at Sky High, a Hogwarts-esque floating academy for exceptionally gifted teens. Because of his embarrassing ordinariness, Will is shuttled into the "Sidekick" academic track (euphemistically referred to as "Hero Support") with his hippie best friend Layla (Danielle Panabaker) and other lamely powered misfits. Sidekicks are unpopular geeks and Heroes are the cool kids at this fantastic high school, which also features a cheerleading squad made up of clones, a mixed-lineage (hero and villain) rebel as Will's brooding arch-nemesis, and bullies acting as evil henchmen for a mysterious fiend who's plotting revenge against the Stronghold clan. This passing interest in metaphorical subtext proves tantalizing during Will's admission to his dad that he's a sidekick (a moment that recalls X-Men 2's "coming out" scene), as well as with the repeated adult refrain that Will is just a "late bloomer" (thus linking his nascent strengths with puberty). Yet content to only skim the surface of its symbolic potential, the film doggedly opts for obviousness when subtlety is called for, ultimately turning its story into simply the latest misfit-makes-good-and-proves-that-dorks-are-people-too adolescent fairy tale.

Continue reading: Sky High Review

The two are spotted in the White House by a gaurd who originally saw the girls at Watergate the night of the burglary. The two are taken to the infamous "West Wing" where they meet and fall in love with President Richard "Dick" Nixon, played by Dan Hedaya, and very well I might add. Unfortunetly Hedaya's very entertaining performance of Dick couldn't save this already ill-fated non-comedy.

Continue reading: Dick Review

There's almost no point in reviewing a movie like "On the Line" because its target audience -- N'Sync fans dizzy to see oh-so-dreamy Lance Bass play a lovelorn shy guy -- isn't likely to care how clumsy, lifeless and cliché-driven it is. They're probably not interested in Lance's acting ability, and they certainly don't care what somebody who isn't a 14-year-old girl has to say about said acting ability.

Apparently, director Eric Bross didn't care about lifelessness, clichés or Bass's Hallmark card-thin talents either, because this movie is on autopilot. An uninspired, lowest common denominator romance about a sheepish ad agency grunt (Bass) searching Chicago for a beautiful girl he clicked with during a commute on the El train, the film is one long "missed connections" personal ad come to life.

Bass plasters the city with flyers reading "Are you her?" and fields so many phone calls from lonely women that his posse of pals from central casting (the slob, the snob and the pervert) start scamming the rejects for dates. Implausibly, a newspaper runs a series of stories about this quest, which is more pathetic than it is romantic. Inexplicably, the female population of the windy city becomes enamoured with Bass through this story, and the girls in his office all start cooing at him when he walks in every morning. (All except that one tough-as-nails career gal who steals his idea for a Reebok campaign in a story-padding subplot.)

Continue reading: On The Line Review

"Blast From the Past" is one of those high-conceptmovies in which the gimmick becomes an albatross around the story's neck.

An obliging comedy about a 35-year-old man-boy raised ina backyard bomb shelter by parents who panicked during the Cuban MissileCrisis, the movie stars Brendan Fraser as the wide-eyed innocent makinghis first foray to the surface in 1998 on the assumption that civilizationwas destroyed by nuclear war.

What he finds instead is the San Fernando Valley and aromance with Alicia Silverstone.

Continue reading: Blast From The Past Review