When Harry Met Fatty

Heavy lies the head that bears Larry Crowne. Starring Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, George Takei, Cedric the Entertainer and Fez from That Seventies Show.  Remember when a mid-life crisis meant you quit your job, lifted weights and fantasized about your daughter's best friend as a cloud of rose petals gently showered over her naked nubile bod?  Well, that kind of crisis can no longer work in this economy!  Tom Hanks, a decorated navy veteran loses his job of twenty years in a big box store because he lacks a degree to make him management material. Falling behind on his mortgage, he decides to sell his SUV, buy a pale blue scooter and start matriculating with the other misfits at his local community college. In no time, he’s Easy Ridin’ it with the campus’ hipster scooter crew and giving his charmingly alcoholic speech teacher,(Julia Roberts) an easy ride on his Tom Hanks patented crank!  If today is the first day of the rest of your life, then this film will make it feel like your last easy day was yesterday.  Starting over never felt so stale. Vrrrrrrrroooooooommmm!!! 

Grab your hacky sack filled with coffee beans and don’t forget your flannel diaphragm, we’re going back the Nineties!  When you’ve hit a new low, there’s always room for Cameron Crowe. 1992’s Singles stars Bridget Fonda, Campbell Scott, Kyra Sedgwick, Matt Dillon and a Monarch Liftmaster Model C garage door opener.
This movie is about a group of twenty-something Gen Xers who all live in a singles condominium at Ground Zero of the Great Grunge Contagion of the late Twentieth Century.  Bridget is a Typhoid Mary, doing everything she can to infect her uninterested boyfriend Matt Dillon with her spastic cuteness.  Kyra Sedgwick is an environmentalist who just wants to have a man and possess complete control over her own garage door. We have electronic watches that can store phone numbers, some Alices in Chains, some Pearls that Jam, a miscarried baby, a half-eaten chili-dog, Tim Burton directing a dating video and a whole lotta dyslexic hearts.  If you’re in the mood for a series of half-sketches that meander through the notion of what its like to be white and drink coffee while breaking the fourth wall, then pop open the Pringles, cuz Singles is for you!   

This flick is all run and no fun.  If you like wacky chase scenes peppered with light bondage lap dances that end with a gun being drawn, then The Bounty Hunter (2010) starring Jennifer Raniston and Gerard Butler is the only game in town!  
Gerry and Jenny are recently divorced.  Jenny is journalist investigating the mysterious suicide of an evidence clerk. Gerry is an ex-cop-turned-bounty hunter who specializes in catching fugitives who dress up like Uncle Sam on stilts. Jen misses her court appearance for a minor offense and Gerry is gloriously on the bound, hunting for his ultimate prey: an ex-wife who can write the book on fake crying and running very slowly in high heels.  This is Tom and Jerry, repurposed for the heterosexual human species. Many a table is turned as the hunter becomes the hunted and the Atlantic City Mob gets involved to breathe life into a mystery that has miscarried well before any red herrings can be revealed.  In the end, all we have to cling to is the open road and the notion that Jennifer Aniston was willing to show her boobs to commandeer a rickshaw from some kid offscreen.  Now that’s a bounty that we’d like to mounty!

Oh, think twice.  It’s just another day for you...you and me in paradise.  Couples Retreat starring Jon Favreau, Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman, Kristen Bell, Kristin Davis and Cee Lo’s stunt double. Oh the notion of divorce bears bitter fruit. Jason Bateman and Kristin Davis announce to their married friends that they are pulling a Kramer v. Kramer.  And can you blame ‘er? In a last ditch effort to save their marriage, they redeem a Groupon rate to the tropical isle of Eden. However, there are no Jet Skis to be had. We will be bickering and bargaining, squabbling and fussing, and would you like some more scorn with your emotional bulldozing? Vince Vaughn’s motor-mouth of comedy will drone on and on like the oversized fan off the back of an Everglades Air Boat. Cee Lo gets naked, Vince Yawn is preyed upon by lemon sharks, Charlotte from Sex and the City bumps uglies with Fabio the yoga instructor and we all are reminded about such fine products as Guitar Hero, Starbucks, Power Point, Foot Locker and Applebees. Spoiler Alert, they get their Jet Skis, but after this Groupon, we’ll need to get a GroupOFF!

When you get dumped, go get yourself a nice hot dish of Dunst.
2001’s Teen Rom-Com GET OVER IT starring Ben Foster, Kirsten Dunst, Colin Hanks, Martin Short and Sisqo. Yes, the one and only Sisqo of “Thong Song” fame.
Ben Foster’s first love has left him for the arms of a boy band poseur, who has the audacity to speak English the right way...with an english accent. When they try out for the school’s production of Midsummer Night’s Dream, high school jock Ben Foster puts down his basketball, puts on a leotard and turns to the smell of the greasepaint and the roar of the theater freaks for some cold comfort. His spirit is willing but his craft is weak.  Kirsten helps him out and, honest to Bard, they fall for each other. However, the course of true love never did run like a smoothie! Her older brother Collin Hanks is Ben’s best friend and Ben himself wins the role of his ex-girlfriend’s lover in the show.  Lawd, what fools these mortals be! It’s going to take a lot of sex clubs, dance sequences and parties where people puke in the punchbowl to help our Ben restore amends.  Just try and get over this, if you give a Puck!