Ferris Bueller is a high school senior that has already learned how to enjoy life more than most people three times his age. He does even the littlest things in a big way, and with the exception of his jealous, resentful sister, everyone – including the sportos, motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies and dickheads – all adore him.

Waking up one spring morning he sees it’s too beautiful a day to waste it listening to his economics teacher drone on about the Hawley-Smoot Tariff. He decides to skip school and take both his best friend Cameron and girlfriend Sloane along for the ride, and the three spend an amazing day together enjoying the sights and attractions of Chicago. What we loved about this movie was that it didn’t take Ferris & Friends completely out of their realm or have them do anything death-defying or physically impossible. They simply enjoyed the best things available to them within their own hometown: a drive in a classic Ferrari, fine dining, great art, a baseball game, an illicit dip in a pool, and of course the gleeful satisfaction that comes from outwitting both your parents and school officials. Somehow these three miraculously manage to do it all without getting into trouble; Ferris is an artist when it comes to wriggling his way out of a tricky situation and this day is no exception.

Several times during their day together Ferris declares his love for Sloane, both to her and to the camera, and his desire to marry her. Is he for real or is this just another tricky situation that Ferris will have to wriggle out of later? We have no doubt that he cares deeply for Sloane and she clearly feels the same for him. But can it last? We’re not sure. Both are still in high school and not even of legal age. There’s a good chance that they will remain together until graduation and the subsequent summer break, but start to drift apart once they go off to their respective colleges.

And yet…there is something about these two that we can’t write off completely. It’s most likely the first love for both of them which is something you never forget. Adventurous as he is Ferris also has a serious side, and we think once he finds something he loves and commits to it – be it a friend, a woman, a home, a career – that’s it for him. He may get distracted (let’s not forget the two bikini-clad sunbathers that he meets on his way home), but we don’t see him as the type to date around. We think he genuinely appreciates women, and people. Sloane is a bit more cautious but also shares his sense of adventure, and we think if these two do manage to stick it out they will have an amazing life together. They’ll both be successful at their chosen careers, and be wonderful, loving parents that will instill in their children qualities of love, laughter, and fearlessness.

So despite their youth we think they have a shot. But even if they don’t one thing is for certain. Whether Ferris becomes a fry cook on Venus or the next Sausage King of Chicago, whoever he marries will be in for one hell of a ride.

Angela de Marco is a decent, upstanding woman, living on Long Island, and trying raise her only son Joey to be a decent, upstanding person. She also happens to be married to a mafia hit man.
When her husband is killed she decides to make a new life for herself and her son. She donates all of her (mostly hot) possessions to charity, moves to a tiny rundown apartment in the east village, and starts looking for a job. Unfortunately Angela’s past doesn’t want to let go of her as easily. She is tracked down by both her husband’s overly amorous former boss (and his killer), Tony ‘The Tiger’ Russo, the head of the crime family, and Tony’s jealous, irrational wife Connie.

The Feds are already onto Tony and they’re convinced that he and Angela are in cahoots. They send in two undercover agents to watch her, Ed Benitez and Mike Downey, and the two set up a stakeout in another apartment in Angela’s building to keep an eye on her. Angela and Mike soon bump into each other in the elevator, and she asks him out the next time she sees him. Mike agrees, convinced he’s going to get lucky, but not in the way that Angela hopes.

Yet the date turns out very differently than what Mike expects. It is clear that Angela is not even remotely interested in Tony, or anyone or anything from her past. When Connie barges in uninvited, convinced her husband is shacking up with Angela, Mike finally sees the real Angie, not the conniving myth he thinks he’s been investigating. And confronted with the obvious despair she feels at being forever trapped by her old life, Mike comforts her in a way that completely wins us over and has us rooting for these two for the rest of the movie.

Yet when we really stopped to analyze them later we wondered – would they really make it? They come from extremely different places and upbringings – he looks about as corn-fed middle America as you can get, and she’s a New York Italian princess. What happens when he brings her home for dinner with his God-fearing, church-going parents and they find out she was married to a mafia hit man? Who was killed by another mafia hit man?

And that’s not their only problem. He lied to her, and it was a pretty big lie. “I told you I was working late but I really stopped off at a bar to watch the game with some friends” – that’s a small lie. “I pretended I was just a nice working class guy that lives in your building but I’m actually an undercover FBI agent that’s been stalking you and plans to throw you in jail and deport your employer unless you risk your life helping us catch an organized crime boss” – well that’s a little tougher to swallow. And after all the years she spent with her lying, cheating, thieving husband, Angela is probably not anxious to be burned twice. She says she’s willing to give Mike a second chance – but is she really?

Nevertheless we just can’t forget that tender scene in her apartment, and we can’t deny that there is deep caring and attraction on both sides. Big lie aside, Mike is a very different animal than the one she was previously with. Underneath it all he does seem genuine and trustworthy, and we believe he loves and accepts Angela for who she is. He’d no doubt make a doting husband to her and a good father to Joey. OK so technically he’s a hit man too, but he’s on our side. Perhaps that will be enough to help them overcome their surface differences.

Once his parents are dead. (Hmmm…maybe a hit man could be handy after all…)

We truly love this movie and still laugh every time we see it. Whether you were a fan of the Star Trek series or not, you can still enjoy the adventures of the NSEA Protector team.

Jason Nesmith was once the star of Galaxy Quest, a popular sci-fi tv series that followed the inter-galactic missions of Commander Peter Quincy Taggart and his crew. Now twenty years later he and his fellow cast-mates spend their time signing autographs at the annual Galaxy Quest fan conventions and appearing at small local store openings. They’re all feeling outdated and washed up in their careers, and, much to his dismay, Jason discovers that they are also feeling resentful of him and his cocky attitude as “their commander”.

One morning after a bout of drunken self-pity Jason wakes bleary-eyed and stumbles aboard an actual spacecraft, thinking it is yet another guest appearance. The alien crew implores him to help save what’s left of their people from the evil Sarris. Once he’s realized what he’s gotten himself into, and his initial terror has worn off, Jason is galvanized into action. Upon returning to earth he convinces his friends to come along and assist in saving the doomed planet. To quote Sarris, the actors are going to play war.

In the midst of all this activity is the long-simmering attraction between Jason and his sexy co-star Gwen DeMarco. Although Gwen tells her fans that she and Jason “never had a thing,” it seems clear that there’s always been something between them. But despite the obvious chemistry it is not surprising that an attractive, intelligent woman like Gwen would be reluctant to become another notch in the bedpost of a selfish, immature philanderer like Jason.

As the crew works to save their friends the Thermians from destruction Jason does learn a few lessons along the way and he begins to appreciate his crew as friends, not just a supporting cast. Gwen and Jason finally have their big moment at the end, but we wonder if it’s just because they’ve been carried away by the adrenaline rush of having saved an entire species and crash landed their spaceship into a convention center. It’s true we find them charming together and secretly rooted for them throughout the movie, but we do have to ask ourselves: is Jason really a changed man just because he shot one reptilian humanoid warlord?

Gwen and Jason do have great chemistry together, as well as a shared history. She knows him well and has got his number; if anything happens she’ll know exactly what she’s getting herself into. He’s older now and hopefully has gotten the Turathian slave-girls and Moon Princesses out of his system. He was certainly humbled by his experience at the convention, and has perhaps realized he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life without some deeper connections. But we think he may still be a little shallow and undependable, and we just don’t know if he’ll be able to sustain a truly adult relationship once that initial rush has worn off. Ultimately we just see them having a great, passionate romance, and then her settling down with someone a bit more distinguished, stable and professional once it’s over. If they were to marry it would most likely end up in divorce court after a few years. Sometimes it is better to give up.

The real question for us here was not if Elizabeth Halsey and Russell Gettis would end up together but how Elizabeth ever managed to become a teacher in the first place. She clearly hates both teaching and kids, and if our ultimate quest was a sugar daddy then the local junior high wouldn’t be our first choice of hangouts. Nevertheless, she’s somehow managed to pass the requisite classes and score a teaching degree, a job, and even a well-to-do fiance. Thinking the fiance is her ticket out of teaching and into a better life Elizabeth quits, but when he subsequently dumps her she is forced to return back to work. Which is of course when things get interesting.

Bitter at her sudden reversal of fortune Elizabeth is surly and resentful with her students and fellow teachers alike, except of course when she needs something. She exerts the absolute minimal effort – she barely shows up for class and her lesson plan consists of playing different school-themed movies with the lights off while she naps. She cheats, she steals, she lies, but she’s good at covering her tracks, so despite the fact that she has a suspicious teacher on her trail she somehow manages to evade termination.

Russell, the resident gym teacher, is taken with her, but fortunately not willing to bend over backwards to accommodate her selfishness. In the meantime Elizabeth has become fixated on Scott Delacorte, a new teacher that happens to come from an extremely wealthy family. Seeing Scott as her new ticket out of coach and into first class, Elizabeth does everything she can to pursue him.

Of course, like Bad Santa before her, it takes a kid to melt a little of the ice around Elizabeth’s heart and open her eyes to what’s important. During the course of the year she befriends the dorky and inappropriate Garrett, who is desperately in love with a classmate and has not the faintest notion of how to properly win her over. Elizabeth does her best to inject even an ounce of cool into Garret and help him survive adolescence. Her flashes of empathy are not lost on Russell, and simultaneously she begins to appreciate his understated charm.

So can we give these two educators the big 5 Reels? We’d like to say yes – both are teachers, they have great physical chemistry, and similar senses of humor. We can see them having a lot of fun together, and at the start of the next school year it’s clear they’ve spent the summer doing just that. Our concern of course is Elizabeth – what happens when the next guy with a huge trust fund comes along? Is she really going to be satisfied for the rest of her life living on a shared teaching income? That shoe collection of hers doesn’t come cheap. We’re not sure if we see her sticking it through.

Sooo…unless we’re mistaken the issue here is: Can a couple live happily ever after if the guy that has only a part of his brain activated?

Umm…is that a trick question?

Colter Stevens awakes on a Chicago commuter train to find himself sitting across from Christina Warren, a young woman that believes him to be her colleague Sean. After eight minutes of confusion, the train explodes, and Colter is suddenly no longer aboard but strapped in a small capsule, being addressed via monitor by Colonel Colleen Goodwin, a military official. Goodwin explains that he was severely injured during his last assignment in Afghanistan, leaving him with only a small part of his brain still activated, and thus the perfect candidate to be incorporated into the “source code”, a program that allows him to go back in time and inhabit the body of another person. Colter’s mission is to discover the identity of the bomber before he strikes again. Until that is accomplished he will be sent back to the train to relive the same 8 minutes over and over. During each segment he encounters the beautiful Christina, drawing her further into his world and becoming more drawn to her and more anxious to spare her life.

While the chemistry between these two seems promising, evaluating their Reel Thing potential has one major obstacle: we cannot really be sure who it is that Christina will ultimately end up with. In saving the train from annihilation, is Colter saving the real Sean, himself, or his spirit in Sean’s body? It is Sean that Christina sees, but Colter that she speaks to, and through Colter that her initial attraction to Sean truly flourishes.

Truthfully, we’re flummoxed. We never really meet Sean so we have basis for determining if he and Christina are right for each other. We know that any physical relationship between Christina and Colter is impossible. And let’s face it; we really only have 8 minutes of time to go by.

So we’re just going to wing it. We like the idea of Colter and Christina together, as far-fetched as it may be, we’re going to give them 3 reels. If they can both get past the exploding train, missing body, “I’m not really Sean,” etc., issues, they could have a shot. As for that partial brain thing, well – most of the guys we know don’t think with it anyway.

Oy.

This movie left us wishing we had Just Gone to see something else. We can’t decide which was more painful – sitting through it or having to relive it again by writing about it.

Twenty years ago Danny Maccabee was a sad-sack cardiologist-in-training with a giant honker. Upon overhearing that his bride-to-be has no intention of being faithful to him, he skips out on his wedding and heads to the local bar where a random hottie takes pity on him and inexplicably takes him home for the night. Discovering that a wedding ring, a tale of woe and a nose job are all he needs to get laid, Danny spends the next 20 years seducing barely legal women with tales of the brutality that his imaginary wife inflicts on him. When he’s not out inflating his ego in bars he’s over-inflating bosoms at his plastic surgery practice in LA. His office manager Katherine, a smart, dependable, single mom, is the one true friend that he seems to have.

And then one night he meets Palmer, a 26-year-old blondeshell that – amazingly – has a body AND brains! She’s not just some dime-a-dozen LA actress – she’s a school teacher, a shaper of young minds. Somehow it takes just one night of sex on the beach for Danny and Palmer to believe that they are a perfect match for each other.

Alas – true love is not without its pitfalls. When Palmer discovers Danny’s fake wedding ring she furiously assumes he’s married. Rather than horrify her with tales of his faux-play, Danny tells her he’s married but already in the process of getting a divorce. Somewhat lulled by this first lie, Palmer insists that she meet the wife. Panicked at the thought of being caught out Danny somehow convinces Katherine to portray his future ex for what should be a one-time-only meeting, but an unexpected phone call from Katherine’s daughter leads Palmer to believe that Danny is a father as well as a husband. The rest of the lies unfurl like a line of dominoes from there: His ex-wife’s name is Devlin. His daughter went to boarding school in the UK. Devlin has a German lover named Dolph Lundgren. And somehow all of these lies culminate in the entire group – Danny, Devlin, Palmer, Dolph and the kids – heading to Hawaii together. And at some point during all this chaos Danny realizes that it’s Katherine he loves, not Palmer.

We know our job here is to rate the couple and we promise we’ll get to them in a minute. But first we need to vent a bit more at the complete implausibility of this entire plot line. We know it’s the movies and we’re always willing to suspend a little disbelief. But the amount of disbelief here went way beyond the load limit of our suspension cables. One more thing and they’d have snapped. The list of predicaments these characters found themselves in were so contrived they literally had us covering our eyes.

Is it just us? Have we lost our sense of fun along with our sense of romance?

The characters themselves were inconsistent and hard to warm up to. Danny is presumably supposed to be boyishly charming and he has some decent moments, but he dresses like a slob no matter what the occasion, treats Katherine’s kids badly and uses cringe-inducing terms like “I want to climb Palmer Mountain.” As for Palmer, underneath all the packaging she is supposed to be a smart genuine person yet she falls for every outlandish lie she’s told and confesses that her most painful moment was the disbanding of NSync 10 years ago. We couldn’t find any basis for their relationship from either his perspective or hers, and certainly nothing to justify her traveling to Hawaii with his family or his bringing her. As for the rest of the gang – Danny’s best male friend Eddie (aka Dolph) is a sophomoric moron, and Katherine’s daughter Maggie is one of the most annoyingly precocious children ever to grace the screen. Katherine is the only likable character in the film.

With that said…

We actually do see some possibilities here for Katherine and Danny. Once again we have two friends that have known each other forever, that care about each other, and that can be themselves with each other. It takes a while for them to recognize their mutual attraction, and the fact that it requires Katherine to first have a complete overhaul makes us wonder if Danny will ever be anything more than an aging, superficial douche. Plus we are less than impressed with his treatment of her kids – we thought Michael’s breakdown over his real father’s neglect would be Danny’s time to shine but instead he behaved even more appallingly than ever. That’s not the kind of behavior that a lifelong bachelor is suddenly going to reform.

Nevertheless the two seem like they can be a fit, and both seemed genuinely happy at their wedding. They work and banter well together – the scenes between the two of them were the best of the film. If Danny can grow up a little and be the husband and father that Katherine and her children (well one of them) deserve, mazel tov. Otherwise it won’t be long before she’s asking him to Just Go.

PS: We’re including the Amazon link here for you, but for the life of us we can’t imagine why anyone would want to own this.

They’re cute together; we’ll give them that.  We’re just not sure if they have quite the same longevity potential as Graham’s sister Iris and Miles (posted on Dec 21st), and we can’t help making comparisons.  They clearly seem to care about each other, but we’re just not sure how long this new, confident Amanda is going to stick around.  She is really skittish and neurotic, and once she’s gone back in LA and back to her high-pressure job she’s sure to go back to her old ways as well.  We think there’s a side to Amanda Woods that Graham has yet to see and probably won’t like.

Graham seems like a pretty decent sort of chap (albeit a crybaby – is it a coincidence that his last name has the word “simp” in it?) and we think he might start to find Real Amanda a sharp contrast to Holiday Amanda.  Unlike Iris, who seemed to regain her confidence after being away, Amanda seems to be gaining hers for the first time, which we’re always a bit suspicious of.  Is that really all it takes to become a strong confident woman?  A week away and a couple of good rolls in the hay?

The same distance which seems to grow quickly smaller between Iris and Miles seems much farther apart with Amanda and Graham at either end.  And the distance is not just between locations but between climates.  Graham has two little girls in England so we don’t see him moving.  But we really don’t see Amanda giving up her company in beautiful sunny LA and settling down in a freezing little village in Surrey, no matter how picturesque it might be. 

Of course, it is The Holidays, and as that’s supposed to be a time for miracles we’re going to give them a shot.  They do have chemistry, and who knows – maybe they can make it work after all.

The Movie: Love and Other Drugs

Reel Thing Rating: 3 out of 5 Reels
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Or Porn and Other Porn as we like to call it.

We’re not prudes – honestly. But we saw enough of Maggie and Jamie to last us for a lifetime. C said it best – this is not a romantic comedy; it’s just another variation of the naughty boy raunch comedy with enough romance thrown in to appeal to the female audience.

But we digress – analyzing the actors’ dressed to naked ratio is not our job here.

So – Maggie and Jamie. Jamie is a handsome hound dog from a wealthy family that actually expects something more from him than living off his trust fund. So far that dream hasn’t been realized, so after yet another failed career (because he was boffing the boss’s wife) he decides to give pharmaceutical sales a try. During his early hungry days he badgers his way into a consultation with a doctor and meets the lovely Maggie, 26 years old and suffering from early stage Parkinson’s. Posing as an intern he gets an added bonus when Maggie shows her breast to the doctor to ask his opinion on what turns out to be a spider bite. He is later rewarded for his daring when she clocks him in the parking lot with her bag after realizing who he really is.

He still manages to hit on her despite the fact that she is beating on him. Impressed by his audacity she agrees to meet him for coffee, and an hour later the two of them are writhing around on the floor of her apartment. From there they embark on what they both agree will be a strictly physical affair but which of course begins to turn into something more.

While we won’t say this couple has no chance of making it, we don’t know if we see them as a 5-reeler either. It is inevitable and understandable that they would fall for each other – both have beauty, brains, and biting wit. And as Jamie’s brother Josh knows there is no more sure-fire way for a woman to get a man than to reject him, so the more Maggie pushes Jamie away the more he wants her.

But for an operator like Jamie this still usually results in a short term relationship at best; it’s just a matter of time before he’ll be out chasing tail again. He’s spent a lot of time perfecting his craft and we don’t know if we see him abandoning it that quickly. It’s not that he’s a total cad. Boyfriend Jamie is actually a great guy – caring, generous and concerned. But Salesman Jamie is so slimy that it would be hard for us not to have some misgivings about him. Maggie certainly has her weaknesses as well but they are primarily fear of intimacy and the future. We don’t see her cheating on him the minute he leaves for the office each day.

But mostly we just can’t see how Maggie’s illness is not going to get in the way. The two have not been together long enough for him to be fully committed to what may become a lifetime of caring for her. Jamie is not yet 30; still young enough to want to be out partying. We’re not sure if he’s as ready to settle down as he’s convinced himself he is. He has already had his doubts and the two part for a short time. When he meets the husband of another Parkinson’s sufferer at a holistic health convention he starts to envision what his life with Maggie could possibly become and not unsurprisingly it freaks him out.

He does come back in the end but we still see trials ahead. Maggie has many ups and downs with her condition, and we are hopeful that she will find a remedy that will allow her to live a healthy life. But if she does worsen we just don’t know if Jamie has the wherewithal to stick it out for the long term. What happens in 10 years when he is a sexy, sculpted 40 with a past history of philandering and an ailing wife? There’s a good chance his love may turn to a mix of guilt and resentment. He has decided to give up sales for medicine; a decision clearly and admirably spurred on by his desire to make Maggie well. But if his plan doesn’t work, how is that going to affect his feelings – both towards himself and her?

We think they have a 50/50 shot. We think Maggie’s wellness will be the barometer for their relationship.

The Movie: Morning Glory

Reel Thing Rating: 3 out of 5 Reels
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Let’s just say this movie was everything we thought it would be.

Expecting to get promoted to producer, Becky Fuller instead gets fired from her job on a local news program. She then fights her way into the role of executive producer of “Daybreak,” currently ranked 4th out of the top 4 network morning shows. Becky is a workaholic; she lives and breathes news, and has no time for a personal life. But on the way out of her (at first) unsuccessful interview, she meets handsome Adam Bennett, and it doesn’t take more than another encounter or two for sparks to start to fly.

To be honest we didn’t have a lot to go on with this couple; Becky’s relationship with her job, and more importantly with Mike Pomeroy – the curmudgeonly seasoned anchorman that she coerces away from the news desk and into a job as co-host on Daybreak – gets much more focus. But we get enough to see that she is clearly someone that puts her job above all else, and we doubt that will change just because she’s had some professional successes. If anything we see things intensifying and Becky becoming more committed to her job, despite the apparent happy ending to the contrary. Now that she has turned Daybreak into a ratings hit we can’t imagine that the pressure on her will suddenly lessen. Quite the opposite.

We can’t say we got a strong sense of chemistry between these two either; yes they have some things in common and they work in the same industry. Both are good looking and successful. However we wonder how well Becky’s working class roots will mesh with Adam’s preppie pedigree, and how long it will take before her uber-Type A personality starts to chafe against his calm composure. Of course sometimes those types of opposites have wildly successful relationships; perhaps he’ll find her energy stimulating, and she’ll allow him to help keep her centered.

Who knows? Maybe they can make it work. We think they have a 50/50 shot, which in TRT-talk means 3 Reels.

The Movie: Coming to America

Reel Thing Rating: 3 out of 5 Reels
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If you can believe that a prince from a small, wealthy, African country goes to Queens to look for his bride, despite having two strongwilled parents plus hundreds of years of tradition bearing down on him, then we guess you can believe anything.

Of course, Grace Kelly married King Rainier and Carla Bruni snagged Nikolas Sarkozy, so anything’s possible. Circumstances aside, we do feel like there’s somewhat of a connection between these two.  Both seem to have to have similar beliefs, both are honest, strongwilled and ethical.  Although we have to admit we find Lisa a little bland next to Akeem’s innocent charm.

Our biggest issue is that she’s pretty close to her family, and grimy though the city may be, especially in winter, it’s still home.  We think she’s going to have a tough time leaving those connections behind.  Of course provided Zamunda hasn’t been hit by the recent economic situation he can probably afford to fly her home as often as she likes.

If he can really convince his parents, as well as the in-laws he jilted, that the daughter of a fast food franchise owner is preferable to a local princess, and do it without causing a small civil insurgence, then we’re willing to let ourselves be convinced as well.  We still see tremendous obstacles, however Lisa is young and pretty and has a good shot of winning the locals over.