In Time

Expectations:
Three whole weeks without going to the movies! That has to be some sort of record for me. Sorry I haven't had anything to write about, but I promise there are a ton of great-looking movies coming out in November and December. So, prepare yourself for the rush of reviews and the desire that you will have to go to the movies or neglect them, following your reading of my thoughts. As far as In Time is concerned, I wasn't particularly excited to see this movie. It looked ok, but movies like this always seem to let me down. Justin Timberlake has never been successful in a lead role, but this concept looked really cool and unique. The movie did not have a good rating on the Tomatometer, which certainly worried me. Nevertheless, I give you a review of In Time...

Plot:
The plot was very different from a traditional, boring action movie. Usually movies are predictable. The aliens aren't going to completely take over the world. The hero is always going to win. But, with In Time, the movie was simply about survival of the fittest, and that's something that we aren't used to seeing in movies. The concept was really quite cool, and I sat there amazed at some of the puns they used. They were quite clever. Justin Timberlake played Will Salas, the main character, who was almost like Robin Hood. Therefore, the story was a lot like that of, you guessed it, Robin Hood. The problem was that the lesson they were trying to teach was a little too obvious. They turned money into time, which was actually the currency (if that makes sense at all). This completely defeated the purpose I believe, but I give them an A for effort. The story really was very truthful in its analogy, but I wanted to be entertained a bit more.

Best Scene: There was a scene where Will was introduced to a man's family. The man introduced his mother-in-law, wife, and daughter, and they were all 25 years old, which was very cool.

Characters:
As I said, Timberlake plays the lead character, and, once again, he kind of sucked it up. He really should stick to comedies in my opinion, but I'm not his agent. Sylvia Weis, played by Amanda Seyfried and her awful hair, was this awkward love interest. She was necessary to the plot, she just really sucks at acting. The cast, as a whole, pretty much struggled. A cool addition was Olivia Wilde, who played Will's mother. Everyone stops aging at age 25, which probably made casting a lot easier. Too bad they still couldn't find the right folks.

Best Character: Johnny Galecki (The Big Bang Theory) played Borel, who was Will's best friend. Galecki did a phenomenal in the dramatic role. It kind of made me think that they should have put Timberlake on The Big Bang Theory and let Galecki play the lead in In Time.

Worst Character: Raymond Leon, played by Cillian Murphy, really was just awkward. Murphy is a weird actor, who is only suited for certain roles in my opinion. This was not one of them. He played a "timekeeper," which was basically like the time police. He was like a movie version of Horatio Caine.

Conclusion:
Overall, the concept was great, but the execution was certainly lacking. Timberlake was bad and, as I said, should stick to comedies. I enjoyed the movie, particularly the puns. If you go to the movies as much as I do, then go watch this, but, if not, you would be better off renting In Time. As I said before, November and December each have very promising line ups, and it all starts next weekend with Harold and Kumar! The holiday season will be great for movies, but this was not the kickoff of that season, unfortunately. I give In Time 2.45 out of 5 stars.

Friends With Benefits

Expectations:
All the talk going in to this movie was how it was exactly like No Strings Attached. Judging from the trailers of the two films, that is very true, but I have never seen No Strings Attached, giving me a clean slate to think upon during this movie. I really thought that the movie would be purely comedy. It's obvious that a love connection would spark between Mila and Justin at some point in the film, but I expected hilarity up until that point. I am not a huge fan of Mila Kunis, but she is 3,000 times funnier than Natalie Portman, hence my watching Friends With Benefits rather than No Strings Attached. Did I expect great things from this movie? No, hence my going to watch Captain America first. But I am always up for a good laugh.

Before I move on to the plot, I would like to let all readers know that my girlfriend was absolutely disgusted by the abbreviation FWB. She told me atleast three times, so I figured that everyone should know how awefully dumb it is to abbreviate movie titles.

Plot:
As is the case with most people, I go see a comedy for one reason... to laugh. For the first twenty minutes or so of Friends with Benefits, I didn't find myself doing much of this. Then, suddenly, the movie began to pick up in humor. But once the funny business was over, the plot became very serious. As I said before, the obvious love connection sparks, and mixed emotions get in the way. I am usually ok with the relationships in comedies, yet this one began to turn into more of a chick flick as time went on. Not only is there tension in the relationship between the main characters, but also Dylan (Justin Timberlake) has a rough family history and a sick dad. Now I don't know about you, but I don't want to see much emotion from a man in an R-rated comedy. Now that I have hated some, I do think that the approach was good and the idea brilliant. If they hadn't played up the comedy so so much in the trailers, I would have loved the family connections. This movie was actually thought up before No Strings Attached, so I will give them credit for turning this great idea into a film. The execution could have been better, the plot could have been less predictable, but the idea is genius.

Characters:
As I said before, I am not a huge fan of Mila Kunis. I am one of the biggest That 70's Show fans you could ever meet, and I believe she was the weak link in the greatest TV comedy of all time. With that being said, I was impressed by her performance in Friends with Benefits. I do think she really utilized Timberlake's talents to her advantage and made me laugh multiple times. Justin Timberlake really wasn't as funny as normal, mostly because he was held back by his family issues. I did think the chemistry between Kunis and Timberlake was obvious, and I would not be surprised if this relationship carried over into the real world.

Best Character: Dylan's dad, played by Richard Jenkins, was really a great character. I know I said that I wanted comedy, but he really did a good job of adding the drama that was desired by the filmmakers.

Worst Character: Shaun White, played by Shaun White, was completely useless. There was a really hilarious joke about him looking like a girl, but other than that I was baffled as to why he was in the film.

Conclusion:
Friends with Benefits was not exactly what I expected, but it was pretty good. I did laugh a good bit and also felt something for the characters, particularly Dylan. I have mixed emotions about the film. The plot was predicted by our waiter before watching the movie, which shows its depth. Even with the weakness of the plot, I do still love the idea, and my hat goes off to whoever thought to turn this into a movie. Friends with Benefits gets 2.46 out of 5 stars. However, I do want to reserve my rights to change my opinion on the film daily.

Bad Teacher

Expectations:
Excluding The Hangover Part 2, I expected this summer to be very lacking in the comedy department. However, I thought that Bad Teacher might just be the second best comedy of the summer (behind The Hangover Part 2 of course). I'm not a big fan of Cameron Diaz, but the trailers were amazingly funny, particularly the Jason Segel parts: "That's the only argument I need, Shaun!" I just wanted to laugh my butt off. That's all.

Plot:
The plot revolves around a "bad teacher" being very very "bad," and I guess that's about it. The only part of the movie that wasn't about being bad was when Cameron Diaz helped out one of the boys in her class. This was such a good moment in a movie filled with nothing but unlearned lesson on how to destroy your own life and the lives of others. THE END!

Characters:
Although the storyline struggled, there were actually a lot of good, funny characters. The problem is that there was a bad character to cancel out every good one. Cameron Diaz was just as annoying as she is in every other movie. I don't know why I expected anything more. Even with that being said, her character was Oscar-worthy compared to that of Lucy Punch's character. Most would know her as Darla from Dinner for Schmucks, a movie in which I loved her character. Even though I loved Dinner for Schmucks, whoever cast her in Bad Teacher should be fired. On a brighter note, Justin Timberlake and Jason Segel were freakin hilarious! Timberlake's character was very different than I expected and just cracked me up. Segel was pretty much his normal hilarious self. The problem was that neither of these guys got enough screen time, particularly Segel. Every time he was on screen I laughed, but those times were few and far between. Instead, I was forced to watch Cameron Diaz every single minute for and hour and a half.

Conclusion:
Although the summer is not yet over, I must predict that Bad Teacher will be one of my most disappointing movies of 2011. I did laugh and enjoy parts, but it just could have been soooooo much better. The cast had its ups and downs, but the plot just completely sucked. With that being said, I give Bad Teacher 1.98 out of 5 stars. I just hope that I watch another good comedy before the summer ends. If not, I will just have to watch The Hangover Part 2 over and over to make myself feel better about the summer of 2011.