mike | 29 Nov 2011 | 379 Views | 3 Likes | 0 Dislikes

The DVD/Blu Ray Shed: November 29th

OK, some weird releases on BluRay this week to go along with no major releases this week in theatres... what are they trying to tell us about the first weekend in December?

The Smurfs
Dir. Raja Gosnell

They're rare, but they're out there: good kids' movies that some how get that mythic, almost alchemical combination of entertaining-to-children and palateable-to-their-parents right. A company like Pixar has nailed it, repeatedly, with frightening certainty, and shown that if you can hit that sweet spot, you can make billions and billions of dollars. Unfortunately, you can still make millions by not even bothering to appeal to the anyone over the age of nine - a screeching kid energized by an animated full-court-press marketing campaign is a witheringly powerful opponent when it comes to the dispensation of weekend movie dollars. Movies like The Smurfs make money by being really good at entertaining kids, and they make grown ups (especially critics who are seeing them in a non-at-least-my-kid-will-shut-up-for-90-minutes context) kind of... angry. Is The Smurfs a good movie? As a non-moronic adult person with a fully formed brain, f**k no, it isn't. As a hypothetical child with a just-closed fontanelle and too much Nibs sugar coursing through my brain, it has funny Smurf fall downs and I yike it

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil
Dir. Eli Craig

Special guest reviewer Sean Kelly (@skonmovies) from skonmovies.com says:

You know the cliché. A group of college kids head into woods to go camping and they find themselves terrorized by the pair of evil hillbillies that are living in that creepy cabin right in the middle of the woods. But what if the hillbillies weren’t really evil? What if they were just two kind-hearted souls staying in their new summer house?

Sure, the college kids begin dying in various gruesome ways, but it’s all just a series of misunderstandings and freak accidents.

That, in a nutshell, is what Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, a film I would describe as a reverse horror film, is all about. Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine put in hilarious performances as the two dimwitted titular hillbillies, who seem truly confused as to why a group of college kids are, seemingly, killing themselves around their cabin. The film takes the form of a more standard horror film in the third act, though the roles are still reversed. It just makes it all the more funny that the true evil in the film turns out to be a guy in a polo shirt.

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is worth checking out.

Thanks Sean!

30 Minutes or Less
Dir. Ruben Fleischer

After rookie director Ruben Fleisher and a pre-The-Social-Network Jesse Eisenberg hit an out-of-nowhere home run with 2009's Zombieland, it was probably unavoidable that their follow-up collaboration would be pretty freighted down with hype & expectation - a load that unfortunately almost sunk what was actually a pretty funny film.

30 Minutes or Less - a comedy based on a horrifying true story of a pizza delivery guy whose head was mysteriously blown off during a botched bank robbery - was out of theatres too quickly for our liking. While, OK it's no Zombieland, but it is short, snappy and occasionally really funny.

Our Idiot Brother
Dir. Jesse Peretz

It's apparently "slighty underseen smartish weird summer comedy" week here in the BluRay shed, because alongside Ruben Fleisher's pizza death comedy comes Our Idiot Brother, the tiny and very funny (if a little raw) characterish based flick that is the best film ever directed by a former member of The Lemonheads.

Paul Rudd is funny - as usual - as the completely clueless wandering biodynamically farming naïf who changes the lives of his sisters just by being who he is blah blah blah - it's charming and clever with a handful of clunky moments. That it's the only film to truly skewer the people who need it most - hippie organic candlemakers - is reason enough to give it a rent, if it's still, you know, possible to rent BluRays.

Stone Cold Steve Austin: The Bottom Line on the Most Popular Superstar of All Time

Want to own FOUR BLURAY DISQUES full of moving images of "The Texas Rattlesnake" aka "The Bionic Redneck"? Guess what kid... today is you lucky day! Your one lucky day in a life full of whatever bad luck would lead to you wanting to actually own this so enjoy it

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