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The Skinny: The Rock plays an Army sergeant who comes back to his home town to find most businesses have shut down. The only thing keeping it alive is a casino, which is a huge source of drugs, prostitution, outbreaks of violence and crooked cops. The Rock decides to do whatever it takes to clean the town up to the great place it used to be.

The Good: First let me say that I was 100% ready to hate this movie. I had never seen The Rock in a movie before , but I figured if Rock the actor was as good as Rock the wrestler, I was in for two hours of eyeball pain. But I was wrong. I actually really liked this movie!

The Rock is no Tom Hanks, but does a pretty darn good job playing a guy with a big heart and good values. He’s offset nicely by Johnny Knoxville, who plays his sidekick and provides some comic relief. I also liked the bad guy, played by Neal McDonough, because he was just bad enough to hate, and not bad enough to be ridiculous or unbelievable. I get sick of the typical movie bad guys who can’t help but laugh maniacally and toss out bad puns. I thought for sure this guy was gonna throw The Rock off the cliff and then dish out some lame zinger like, “Time for The Rock to get rocked! Moohoohwahwhawhawhahahaohohwoaahoahaaaa!!!!”

The story was pleasantly surprising too. In most of these kinds of films, the bad guys tick the good guy off, so the good guy gets a gun and starts dispensing of the bad guys in creatively gory ways, all without ever taking a hit from the bad guys or trouble from the cops. But this movie was a little different in that the good guy does actually takes punches and there really are consequences for his actions. And at its core, even though there’s a good share of violence, the movie has some “don’t do drugs or be a prostitute” messages in it without coming off like a public service announcement.

The Bad: There are a few situations where you’ll have to suspend your disbelief big time, but what movie doesn’t have those moments?

The Ugly: For some reason, I really cringed when one bad guy got stabbed with a potato peeler. Youch!

The Bottom Line: Much better than I expected, and a pleasant, refreshing surprise compared to most movies in this genre.

Score:

Last week we babysat for a family member’s animals. Check out this sound clip and tell me that aside from the yapping of dogs in the background, the dominant animal here doesn’t sound like either:

• A pig
• A monkey
• A hyena

Mystery animal (2mb)

I assure you this animal was not hurt. It was just a little excited to get out and “go potty.” If you want to see this little furry bundle of hyper happiness in action, check this video out. And just imagine us spending an entire week with an animal this peppy.

Pepper (3mb)

The Skinny: It’s the year two thousand and who cares, and robots are integrated into society as servants to humans. The robots are programmed with three core laws that prevent them from ever harming a human. Will Smith plays a detective who, on the eve of a huge robot rollout around the world, investigates a murder he believes was committed by…insert a huge gasp here…a robot!

The Good: Great eye candy – lots of super action with gorgeous special effects. And the robots, though they remind me of the large plastic anatomy dolls you play with in science class, look incredibly fluid and life-like.

The Bad: There are many “What if robots ruled the world?” movies out there that try to raise interesting questions about what makes humans human and could robots ever be programmed to the point of feeling emotions and blah blah blah. But before this movie tries to answer any of them, it realizes that 17 seconds have gone by without an action sequence, so the story adjusts accordingly. And so you walk away without really pondering what could potentially be some thought-provoking ideas.

My biggest gripe, though, is that Will Smith is the wrong guy to play a detective who saves the world from a robot takeover. He’s just a little too stylish and a little too pretty for his own good. You can almost picture the director trying to give him some feedback on a scene, and Will interrupting him, saying, “In this scene I should really take my shirt off and rub my arms so the ladies can see how hard I worked on my pecs…is that cool?” And I guess that’s what sells tickets, but it certainly doesn’t sell me on the believability of his character or the story.

I hate to say it, but I would’ve enjoyed this movie a lot more if Keanu frickin’ Reeves was in the title role. At least his wooden demeanor would’ve made me feel like, “Whoa…this whole robot thing is like a totally serious big deal, and not to be taken lightly, dude.”

The Ugly: I’ve heard rumors of a sequel.

The Bottom Line: I, Robot = Me, Bored.

Score:

The Skinny: Will Smith plays an average fish who becomes an instant celebrity after he’s accidentally branded a “shark slayer.”

The Good: This movie has plenty of bubbly voice work, great animation and a touching story about a fish named Nemo…oh wait, that’s not this movie?

The Bad: This is no Finding Nemo, which is superior in every way to this film. I’m sorry to bring a different movie into this review, but honestly, when I saw the commercials coming out for Shark Tale, I figured it was a Finding Nemo spin-off since it features sharks who look pretty much just like the ones that were in that movie. But it’s not.

Basically the movie has lots of energy and good intentions, but the “Will Smith doing his slang talk” voice is the only thing that’s even kind of funny. Besides that most of the story lines and characters are lame and forgettable. And every once in a while you can almost feel the screenwriters go, “Oh, we need a comic relief moment, so let’s tell a lame fish-related joke or something!” The worst of all was a tongue-in-cheek reference to Jerry McGuire in which Will Smith’s fish character says “You had me at hello” totally out of context, which serves no point but to let Renee Zellweger’s fish character do a little confused look to the camera. Yep, that’s supposed to be funny. Ha. Ha.

The Ugly: Jack Black’s talent as a funny man being totally wasted on a very unfunny character.

The Bottom Line: I chuckled a few times, and I’m sure the kiddies will like it, but the whole time I kept resisting the urge to eject the DVD and pop in Finding Nemo instead. If Shark Tale had come out before Finding Nemo, I think I would’ve liked it a whole lot more.

Score:

This weekend I was an idiot and broke the radio adapter thingy for my iPod, and with my wife away on a scrapbook retreat with all our CDs, I was forced to listen to *gasp!* the radio as I carted around town with my “honey do” list. This afternoon, the song Real World by Matchbox 20 came on. I’ve always kinda liked that song, but I have one huge gripe with it. See if you can spot it in the third verse here:

I wonder what it’s like to be the head honcho, I wonder what I’d do if they all did just what I said. I’d shout out an order, “I think we’re out of this man get me some” Boy don’t make me wanna change my tone…

See the problem? Tone doesn’t flippin’ rhyme with some! Ugh. Now, not a huge deal, and not all lyrics have to rhyme, but the verses in the rest of the stinkin’ song do, so this line sticks out like a sore thumb! Hey, wait, thumb rhymes with some. Dang, I should’ve written songs for a living. Honestly though, who in the band thought this was a good idea? Maybe the conversation went like this:

The band: Hey Rob, how’s the songwriting coming?

Rob Thomas: Good, but I’m a little stuck. In the song Real World, I’m writing the last verse and so far I’ve got, “I’d shout out an order, I think we’re out of this man get me some,” and now I don’t know how to finish it.

The band: How about, “Boy don’t make me wanna get my gun.”

Rob Thomas: Nah, too violent.

The band: How about, “Boy I’m going to punch you ’til you’re dumb.”

Rob Thomas: Again, too violent.

The band: How about, “Boy I think I’ll drink a shot of rum.”

Rob Thomas: No, I don’t want to talk about substance abuse either. Something a little softer.

The band: How about, “Boy I think we’re gonna have some fun.”

Rob Thomas: No, that’s too soft. What about “Boy don’t make me wanna change my tone?”

The band: Yes! We’ve got a winner!

Rob Thomas: Excellent! Now all I have to do is finish this valentine and I’m all set: Roses are red Violets are blue Sugar is sweet…umm… And I like cheese Good gosh. I’m a songwriting genius.

Right now I’m sitting at work after prepping some labs for a major writing test that some kids are taking. Now I get to do a few housekeeping things around the office and relax a little bit. The past few days I couldn’t find much as far as funny clips to post, so I decided to upload a small home movie. I consider myself pretty easily entertained, but not as entertained as my dogs get by a small beam of light shining off the face of my watch.

Dogs chasing the light (5mb)

I was just reading the horrid reviews about The Pacifier when I came upon this little banner ad for the movie on the Yahoo Movies page:

I didn’t major in marketing, but I just don’t get the design of this ad. What does Vin Diesel and a duck have to do with this movie? Maybe the duck is part of the story line, but how would anyone know that if they hadn’t seen the movie? Perhaps it’s a subtle message saying, “Even this duck could poop a better movie than The Pacifier” or “Vin Diesel’s acting skills are comparable to that of a duck. On that note, the banner ads for Keanu Reeves’ upcoming film will show the title of his film right next to a block of wood.

Last week on KDWB they interviewed a Texas man who, over 5 years ago, was leaving a voicemail for his boss when he witnessed the beating of another man by three old ladies. Head to Snopes for the full story, then click the link below to download the voicemail for yourself. It’s hard to make out everything he’s saying, but the clip is worth it just for the guy’s laugh.

Jack in the Box voicemail (300k)

In case I suddenly don’t blog for a few days (and wouldn’t that be the end of the world as we know it!), it’s because I got in a horrible car wreck. My car manufacturer just sent me an official recall notice for a faulty accelerator cable. Tell me if this doesn’t sound just a tad bit disturbing:

Your vehicle’s accelerator cable may stick when the vehicle is traveling at speeds of 45 mph or greater. Thus, when the driver releases the acceleration pedal, the vehicle may not be able to slow down, resulting in accidental injury or death.

Grand. I’m only driving 45 mph or greater for 28 minutes out of my 30 minute commute. It’s nice to know that one day I might take the off-ramp at 75 mph and flip into an uncontrolled car cartwheel and land on top of some school kids in the 35 mph zone.

I’m constantly baffled by the ways people are finding this site on the search engines. I checked my logs, and apparently a large handful of people found braimee.com by searching for “bloody gums” on Google.

You can see from the screenshot below (current as of 8 p.m. today), we’re the #1 resource for bloody gums out of over 55,100 sites with that term – many of which are legitimate dental sites! Umm…I guess I’m just glad we can be here for you, folks.