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- 42 (2013) vs. Remember the Titans (2000)
- Admission (2013) vs. About a Boy (2002)
- Oz the Great and Powerful (2012) vs. The NeverEnding Story (1984)
- Dark Skies (2013) vs. Dark Skies (1996)
- Oscar Wrap-Up 2013
- A Good Day to Die Hard (2013) vs. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
- Oscar Smack-a-thon!
- The Tiersky Top Ten, 2012
- Smackdown Smacks Down the 2013 Oscar Nominees
- Broken City (2013) vs. City Hall (1996)
- Men of Steel (Smackdown’s Superman Smashup)
- Les Miserables (2012) vs. The Fugitive (1993)
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Category Archives: Comedy
Admission (2013) vs. About a Boy (2002)
Even the most intelligent, wealthy, successful adults can be pretty clueless about raising kids. Think about the living hell these folks must endure — all that time, freedom and discretionary income on their hands, but no one for their inner children to play with! Luckily, in the world of producer/director Paul Weitz, there’s always a chance that a kid might unexpectedly enter their lives and rouse them from their self-absorbed, myopic, world view.
Weitz recreates the formula that worked so well in About a Boy in his new romantic comedy, Admission, starring Tina Fey and Paul Rudd. Both movies have appealing stars playing characters who appear polished and competent on the outside, yet who are somewhat damaged and lost on the inside. In both, the protagonist’s world is shaken when a boy comes along to makes them question everything they hold dear. The experiences they go through cause them to change, which in turn causes the people around them to change as well.
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Posted in Comedy, Romance
Tagged admissions officer, Chris Weitz, Hugh Grant, Lily Tomlin, Nat Wolff, Nick Hornby, novel, parents, Paul Rudd, Paul Weitz, Princeton, Tina Fey, Toni Collette, Wallace Shawn
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This Is 40 (2012) vs. Meet the Fockers (2004)
Comedy is a fragile thing, or so say the experts. One of the most delicate components to making someone laugh is the element of surprise. So what happens when the surprise is gone?
That’s the challenge for comedy sequels. The initial setup and the characters living in it have already been exposed to the audience. In order to even generate a sequel, the original had to be pretty widely seen. When the story is set around a family’s home life, filmmakers and audiences have to ask themselves the question that author Thomas Wolfe once famously answered in the negative: Can you go home again? Continue reading
Silver Linings Playbook (2012) vs. Benny & Joon (1993)
The Smackdown “Two damaged, anti-social people find each other and fall in love” is not exactly an under-utilized premise for movies. The genre is actually pretty extensive, so much so that it would not be entirely inappropriate to wonder how … Continue reading
Posted in Awards, Comedy, Drama, Romance
Tagged Aidan Quinn, Bradley Cooper, Buster Keaton, Chris Tucker, David O. Russell, depression, dysfunctional family, football, Friendship, Institutionalization, Jennifer Lawrence, Johnny Depp, Julianne Moore, love, Mary Stuart Masterson, mentally ill, Philadelphia Eagles, Robert De Niro, siblings, William H. Macy
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The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash (1978) vs. This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
Beatlemania didn’t just consume Baby Boomers; it defined them. When the band broke up in 1970, their split caused a seismic generational depression as powerful as the surge of joy that began the night of Sunday, February 9, 1964 on the Ed Sullivan Show. So, it was no surprise that the Beatles’ already legendary status proved to be fertile soil for comic parody, inspiring a classic docu… excuse me, mockumentary, built around the greatest Fab Faux band that never was: the Rutles. In turn, The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash, opened the door for yet another fake documentary set in the music world: This Is Spinal Tap, the first feature directed by Rob Reiner.
The Rutles clearly took aim at the Beatles, whereas Spinal Tap focused on a band of mindless metal-head morons. Neither film was what you would call a hit when it premiered. One ran as a network TV special, finishing last in the week’s ratings, and the other was a theatrical comedy that most people didn’t realize was a joke. Yet both today are considered classics of their time, because they were able to capture the massive cultural energy surrounding the British Invasion of the ’60s, lovingly embrace it, and then turn it ever so slightly onto its ear. Continue reading
Wreck-it Ralph (2012) vs. Toy Story (1995)
When we Baby Boomers were kids, our toys had lives of their own to us. Now that our children are young, it’s their video game characters that seem real to them. So, having once cherished my Davy Crockett coonskin cap and toy rifle, it was easy for me to see poetry in Toy Story’s Woody, a child’s inanimate cowboy doll by day, and a fretting, insecure, full-blooded character, when no one was looking at night.
My 10-year-old son Jack never had a doll like Woody to play with, but he did grow up with video games and movie characters, including Mario and Luigi. So naturally, Disney, which teamed with Pixar to bring us Toy Story, has jumped into the breach with a similarly themed movie for the Millennials. The new film, Wreck-It Ralph is also about the secret lives of children’s play-things once humans are out of the way. And the same John Lasseter who skyrocketed to prominence as Toy Story’s writer-director is overseeing Ralph as executive producer. Continue reading
Posted in Adventure, Animated, Comedy, Family
Tagged 3D animation, Adam Carolla, animation, arcade, Buzz Lightyear, Disney, Don Rickles, Ed O'Neill, enemy, hero, Jack McBrayer, Jane Lynch Sarah Silverman, John C. Reilly, John Lasseter, John Ratzenberger, Mindy Kaling, Tim Allen, Tom Hanks, toys, video game, Woody
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How I Won the War (1967) vs. The Magic Christian (1969)
Because the Beatles both led their times and and lived with the creative and political expectations of them as well, the energy drain from Beatlemania had been significant. By the time these two films were made in the late 1960s, the cracks were already showing — definitely in society but even, now, in the Beatles who were, more than ever, four guys named John, Paul, George and Ringo.
The Beatles had had a mixed film run. Certainly A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and Help! (1965) were commercial and artistic successes for United Artists (see Smackdown here). But following them up with the barely conceived Magical Mystery Tour (1967) and an arm’s length involvement with Yellow Submarine (1968) hardly signaled that the Beatles had gone Hollywood.
All the Beatles toyed with Hollywood as solo artists both behind-the-scenes and in front-of-the-camera. The first to show individual interest, though, were John Lennon in How I Won the War (1967) and Ringo Starr in The Magic Christian (1969). They each acted in an establishment-tweaking, sarcasm-bubbling and sometimes cringe-inducing films that are certainly cultural artifacts.
Want to know which one of those films works so much better than the other? As Paul McCartney wrote in a song he gave Badfinger that went in his buddy Ringo’s film, keep reading and “Come and Get It.” Continue reading
Posted in Action, BeatlesSmack, Comedy, War
Tagged Black Humor, British, Christopher Lee, commander, John Lennon, Laurence Harvey, London, Michael Crawford, Peter Sellers, prisoners, Raquel Welch, Richard Attenborough, Richard Lester, Ringo Starr, Roman Polanski, Roy Kinnear, Surrealism, war, WWII
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Help! (1965) vs. A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
Four Working Class Heroes, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, landed on our shores on February 7, 1964, exactly six weeks to the day after an assassin’s magic bullet claimed the life of President John F. Kennedy and threw the U.S. into mourning. America needed to party and try to forget, and these longhairs from Liverpool provided the soundtrack.
Hollywood wanted the “mop-tops” onscreen, and fast! The result was two United Artists films over two years: A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and Help! (1965). Both were devoured by legions of fans, spawned must-have albums and brought America and rock music, back to life.
Hollywood knew there was big money to be made putting teen idols onscreen and selling the finished product to screaming fans. The film studios had already castrated the King of Rock Elvis Presley after he came back from the army, by cramming him into a series of forgettable romps, re-traced more than they were written. The bar of quality wasn’t exactly high.
But the Beatles managed through talent, pluck and timing to rise above the sheer craven commercialism of the enterprise and make a couple of gems that are still well worth watching today. Our Smackdown then: Which one — A Hard Day’s Night or Help! — packed the definitive pop punch for the ages? Read on… A splendid time is guaranteed for all… Continue reading
Posted in Action, BeatlesSmack, Comedy, Music, Smack Classix
Tagged 1960s, 60s, British invasion, Eastern cult, England, Fab Four, George Harrison, John Lennon, Leo McKern, Liverpool, London, mod, music, Paul McCartney, Richard Lester, Ringo Starr, rock ’n roll, rock-and-roll, screaming fans, The Beatles, Victor Spinetti
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Argo (2012) vs. The Last Shot (2004)
So let’s talk about movie movies.
First, you’ve got your movies about movies, which range from the beloved classics (Sunset Blvd., Singin’ in the Rain) to the cult oddities (Barton Fink, The Stunt Man) to the amusing trifles (Bowfinger) to the less-said-the-better (Hollywood Ending).
Then you’ve got your movies that sort of know they’re movies, i.e., meta-movies, a diverse genre that includes such intriguing experiments as Adaptation and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare.
Then there’s the movie-within-movie movies, notable entries being Kiss of the Spider Woman, The French Lieutenant’s Woman and Almodovar’s Bad Education. Continue reading
Posted in Awards, Comedy, Drama, Thriller
Tagged Alan Arkin, Alec Baldwin, ambassador, Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Calista Flockhart, Canadian, Chris Messina, CIA, FBI, film-within-a-film, John Goodman, Kyle Chandler, Matthew Broderick, movie producer, Ray Liotta, sting, Tate Donovan, Toni Collette, Tony Shalhoub
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Stephen Colbert Photobombs Jon Stewart at the Emmys
“Why,” Stephen Colbert must be thinking, “am I always in Jon Stewart’s shadow?
“Anyone can see that my hair is as better than Stewart’s grandfatherly silver mane. (And it’s WAY better than Bryce Zabel’s, the Movie Smackdown guy who seems to be sprucing up his ‘do with a lovely red tiara in this picture.) ”
Colbert has a long way to go before he catches up with his stable mate’s record-setting ten consecutive Emmys for Outstanding Variety Series, but in terms of subversive attitude, he’s lurking right there over Stewart’s shoulder. Photo by Lauren Zabel. (Cont.) Continue reading
The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) -vs- The Breakfast Club (1985)
Just in time for fall, we are reminded, thanks to Hollywood, of everything we loved and hated about high school. Twenty-seven years after The Breakfast Club, the coming-of-age story of five students locked together in high school detention, The Perks of Being a Wallflower introduces us to Charlie, a freshman boy in dire need of friends. Both films use humor to examine the pain of being a high school misfit, an immutable movie (and real-life) trope since before James Dean played chicken in Rebel Without a Cause.
Charlie’s group, like the various Breakfast Club miscreants before them, break through seemingly impossible barriers to get to know each other and themselves, without even having to worry so much about being dateless for prom or being given a “swirly” — having their heads shoved into a flushing toilet — by the school bully. What is this madness! Continue reading
Posted in Comedy, Drama, Romance
Tagged Ally Sheedy, Anthony Michael Hall, Detention, Dylan McDermott, Emilio Estevez, Emma Watson, Ezra Miller, First Love, Freshman, high school, Joan Cusack, John Hughes, Judd Nelson, Kate Walsh, Logan Lerman, Mae Whitman, Melanie Lynskey, Molly Ringwald, Nina Dobrev, Paul Gleason, Paul Rudd, senior, Stephen Chbosky, suicide, the eighties
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