The Guilt Trip, On The Road, and This Is 40, reviewed for MSN Movies.
There’s supposed to be a Promised Land review in there too but at the moment the link is wonky. Once that’s fixed I will update this post Wells-style so it looked like this caveat never happened.
I completely agree with your assessment of ‘The Guilt Trip’. It’s amiable and pleasant, but not ‘laugh out loud’ funny.
I liked “On the Road” quite a bit. Salles nails Dean Moriarty’s bisexuality and the cast isn’t afraid to act it out.
In many ways this is an impossible book to film, but this film isn’t negligible at all, IMO.
I thought Funny People was one of the few 2 hr + movies of the last decade to totally justify its running time, so I’m genuinely excited for the #firstworldproblems of This Is 40.
The Apatow-edited edition of VANITY FAIR currently on newsstands is a treat, with interviews/articles about Albert Brooks, Nichols and May, Martin Short and The Blues Brothers, and an oral history of the great TV series FREAKS AND GEEKS.
I’ve liked all of Apatow’s self-directed efforts, and many of his productions, so I’m naturally looking forward to THIS IS 40.
Then again, I’ve also liked all of Anne Fletcher’s previous films (yes, I’ve seen them all), so THE GUILT TRIP is on the weekend agenda.
I didn’t like FUNNY PEOPLE at all, and I have to admit I haven’t liked much of what Apatow has directed or produced since KNOCKED UP. Having said that, the most appealing parts of KNOCKED UP, for me, were with the Paul Rudd/Leslie Mann characters, and from what I’ve read, there is one gag in this movie that made me take notice (the Graham Parker joke they mention in last week’s Entertainment Weekly), so I will check it out at some point.
Why are almost ALL of the critics praising THIS IS 40 yet littering their reviews with so many “It’s not perfect but…” caveats? It all seem a bit disingenuous like Apatow is THE sacred cow of mainstream Hollywood comedy who can’t be criticized. THIS IS 40 is a rather hateful film that passes off its ridicule with dick and fart jokes, lionizes selfishness as being praiseworthy and is basically an EXTREMELY long promo video to join the Occupy movement.
Drawing a false equivalence that if we are not working for Greenpeace then we are all in Apatow’s America is a nasty swipe which seems to fall in line with all of this over-the-top mystification that Apatow now receives. See Richard Brody’s take on the film in the New Yorker for more of that sort of PR spin.
Apatow has long moved on from celebrating the freaks and geeks of the world to becoming the jocks and bullies. His career is like one long cinematic Stanford prison experiment.