Mini Film Review - I Could Never Be Your Woman (2007)

This film was a major shock to the system; I went in expecting a basic run-of-the-mill romantic comedy and was flabbergasted at the sheer offensive I took from the very first few moments. Here the character of "Mother Nature" (Tracey Ullman) manages to insult both women working, conscientious objectors and the entire baby boomer generation, and the character goes on to spread her view that middle aged women are past their prime, worthless and should make the way clear for the next generation. 

You may say this is one individual character, and for me not to judge a film's crudeness on the lines of her alone, however the characters are all somewhat assholes, going on to insult homosexuals ( or as they say "queers"), make holocaust jokes and employ almost all nerd clichés possible all within the course of this mere hour and a half film. The main leads on the other hand, Paul Rudd and Michelle Pfeiffer, are excellent, their talent and onscreen chemistry allowing one to forget about the terrible sub plots and base humor.

This film's presentation of youth is god-awful. The teenagers in this film are constantly annoying, making prank phone calls, being disgusting and swooning over guys to no end, even by the low standards people expect from child actors they fail to reach even that lofty bar. Their excessive use of terrible youth speak is painful to the ears, the main TV show of the latter  half of the film even being called "The Shizzle" in a desperate plea to appeal to the younger market.

Over all this film feels like 3 distinctly separate projects; one a teenage story of an annoying rebelious girl's first irrelivent crush, another a crude unfunny waste of time feeling like filler to the plot just to make the film last ninety minutes,all while spouting faux-deep messages of nature and the human desire for base pleasure, and finally a fairly cute story that was fairly engaging romantic comedy that would be a film I would actually recommend, had it been stand alone.

Rating - 

Direction - 3.5/5

Soundtrack -1/5

Plot - 2/5

Characters - 2.2/5

Overall - 8.7/20

Nicolas Cage Review - The Family Man (2000)

The year 2000's Christmas time feel-good family film takes successful Wall Street master Jack Campbell, the Cage himself, and dumps him in an alternate timeline; one where he married his young sweetheart instead of going into big business in London, became a father of two and sells tires for a living.

I do like the unexplained nature of this journey, being simply known as a "glimpse" by Cage, this name even subtly foreshadowing to Cage's initial return to reality.

As with any film of this nature he goes from loving money and wealth to loving family life and the smaller things; while clichéd it is presented fairly well, with Nic showing his hatred of his forced situation in ways only he can with his wide variety of faces and freak outs. To accompany this over used plot the finale even takes place with him and his love interest at an airport, a shallow reference to the initial life changing moment where he chose to fly to London.

The message of pursuing profit resulting in unhappiness is used to excess, beating one around the head with it multiple times, even when it seems illogical; I understand within the original time Jack feels lonely, which is indeed a problem with his life, however within the glimpse he manages to get back to his financial status with his new family, and is painted as a villain for wanting the riches, this seems a little harsh as he is still shown to care greatly about his family and his wife.

Overall a good solid Cage film, not the best yet far from the worst, not much crazy-cage but family-cage is a pleasing change, one of Mr. Cage's better roles, and a much calmer film than one is used to from this most extreme of men.

Rating - 

Direction - 2.3/5

Soundtrack -3/5

Plot - 2.5/5

Characters - 1.5/5

Overall - 9.3/20