"Step Brothers"

Dale Doback (John C. Reilly) and Brennan Huff (Will Ferrell) are living parallel lives. They are middle-aged, but still live with and sponge off of their single parents. Those parents meet one day and hit it off. Dale’s dad marries Brennan’s mom and the two become unwilling stepbrothers. That’s the set-up.

Step Brothers is a film ostensibly about two men who initially hate each other but soon find out that they’re kindred spirits. But this movie might really be a commentary on what it means to be a grown up in society and the value of not growing up.

But the truth is it doesn’t matter what it’s about because this movie is terrible. I mean truly awful. Will Ferrell's movies are hit and miss, but there is usually some humor to be found in all of them. I found Anchorman: the Legend of Ron Burgundy to be complete comic gold, but I couldn’t sit all the way through Talladega Nights: the Ballad of Ricky Bobby. That’s why I should have been more wary when I sat down to watch this movie. I was thinking Ron Burgundy when I should have remembered Ricky Bobby. I will admit, I laughed out loud at a couple of the step brothers’ shenanigans, but I was cringing the entire rest of the time. Do not waste your eyesight on this one. I did and I regret it.

I give Step Brothers a rating of 9 on the B.E. scale.

"Clash of the Titans"

Please note that this is not a review of the 3D version of Clash of the Titans. A friend of mine cautioned me that since none of the movie was filmed in 3D, the effects did not match up to those of Avatar, which was filmed in 3D.
The movie opens with a fisherman hauling a crate up from the seas’ depths. The fisherman, Spyros (Pete Postlethwaite), cracks it open to discover that it is in fact a coffin since a dead woman is inside, but so is a very much alive baby. Spyros takes the child in and, with his wife, raises him. They name him Perseus.

Along with an all grown up Perseus (Avatar’s Sam Worthington), Spyros takes his wife and young daughter on a pilgrimage to a statue of Zeus. But when they get there, things go horribly wrong.

***SPOILER ALERT (albeit a rather predictable development) *** The family arrives just as a group of soldiers is desecrating the immense statue. In response, harpees manifest and ravage the soldiers. The harpees meld to reveal that they are a god. The vessel carrying the family is also destroyed as part of the vengeance. All aboard (save for Perseus) drown. Some of the remaining soldiers take Perseus back to their kingdom. Once there, the god who killed Perseus’ family reveals himself as Hades to the court and warns the kingdom that unless they sacrifice their beloved Princess Andromeda (Alexa Davalos) to Zeus, he will unleash the Kraken on the kingdom and destroy it and all within. And so Perseus sets out on a quest to avenge his family and save the princess. [\END SPOILER]

Okay, so I have three words for you: Epic. Cheesy. Goodness. Those three words, in that order, sum up the way I feel about Clash of the Titans, a re-imagining of the even more cheesy 1981 movie of the same name. I went into the movie thinking I’d hate it. I thought it would be just a polished Hollywood turd that I’d cringe at the memory of one day. I’d been picking too many movies that ended up negative (good) on the scale and wanted one in the plus column. But I was entertained, and that’s one of the things movies are good for, right?

Okay, so it’s not going to win any Oscars, but you’ll enjoy yourself if you turn off your brain and not question why
***SPOILER ALERT*** mere mortals would take on all-powerful gods [\END SPOILER].
That’s why I give Clash of the Titans (in 2D) a rating of -5 on the B.E. scale. Avoid the 3D version. By most accounts, it’s horrid.

'Watchmen"

Watchmen is set in 1985 America in a parallel universe where Nixon was not only not impeached, he was elected to a third term in office. But that’s the most believable thing about this parallel universe in which masked crusaders fight crime (and each other) and a physicist’s accident transformed him into a superhuman entity known as Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) capable of leveling a city in seconds. Luckily, he’s fighting for the good guys.

The film is based on the graphic novels of the same name. Most people who have read the comics agree: it’s epic in scope and an excellent read. I’m not one of those people—I’ve never read it. All I’m going off of here is the movie.

It begins with one of the masked crusaders, the Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), being murdered. Another of the crusaders is convinced that this is there is a plot to get rid of all masked crusaders. Rorschach (Jackie Earle Hayley) sets out to investigate and prove his theory. Thus begins a three hour long preachy gore fest replete with fantastic fight scenes and good special effects.

This movie is hell to rate. It does not rise to the level of success of say the equally gory Kill Bill (a movie that deserves a rating of -10.5 on the scale) nor does it fail quite as spectacularly as Battlefield Earth, an 11. When the end credits began to roll, it wasn’t immediately clear to me if this was a good movie or a bad movie that deserves to be on the positive end of the B.E. spectrum. (Remember, a negative rating means the movie is good.)

What is clear is that this is the kind of movie that you would have to watch more than once to fully comprehend. Unfortunately, with a run-time of 3 hours, it was enough of a trudge the first time. A long runtime is not in-and-of-itself a crime, but the movie seriously lacked coherence between scenes. The viewer keeps getting dropped in one vignette after another. It just didn’t flow.

Since one measure of whether a movie is good or not is the desire to watch it again, I give Watchmen a rating of 5 on the B.E. scale. (What saves it from being an 8 is some decent acting throughout.)