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thatpalechick
Reviews
Material Girls (2006)
Sickening display of the reason this generation will destroy the world
Hilary Duff and her sister Haylie shine as sparkling young cubic zirconium professional heiresses. They have everything their bleached blonde little hearts could ever want, until OH NOES someone said mean things about their dear dead daddy, who just happened to be a cosmetics mogul in life. So, OH NOES, their feelings are hurt and their stocks go down and all in all they lose about a million bucks out of a hundred million. The people responsible for this piece of garbage obviously realized that not every pre-teen girl who saw this film would be quite as stupid as the characters in it, and therefore would not be inclined to feel any sympathy for the poor little bimbos, and so to make sure that our heart strings were successfully twanged, they burned down the girls' house, had their car stolen, and had all their friends abandon them. Actually, the girls burnt their own house down by setting fire to their makeup, and they gave their car keys to a couple of men who weren't actually valets. Oh, how I sobbed for their loss. I really sympathize more with their friends, fair-weather as they may be, who I saw as very intelligent rats who were finally blessed with an excuse to desert a sinking ship.
The girls decide that dear daddy couldn't have done all those mean things he was accused of(creating makeup that causes face-rotting cancer)and set out to prove it. They enlist the help of a hunky young lab technician and a hunky young attorney to clear daddy's name, and set out on a adventure fraught with peril(public transportation)and hardship(having nothing to wear).
This movie might have been tolerable, perhaps even enjoyable, if it had not been for one major factor: the characters have no real motive for anything they do. The girls aren't threatened with destitution, they're about to make millions off of the sale of their company. They have all the money they could ever want, but it isn't enough for them. They want it all, and they get it all. They end up right back where they started, with all the money, clothes, friends, makeup, and teacup chihuahuas they weren't actually in any danger of losing.
The film tries very, very hard to provide the characters with some deeper motivation. They're not fighting for the spare change they lost over the scandal, no, they're fighting to clear their father's name! They're not throwing a tantrum over hurt feelings, they're standing up for themselves! The movie tries, so very, very hard, to show the girls learning some lesson about humility or responsibility or some other such teen movie drabble, and it fails completely. Both girls get all their money and their boys, and the movie comes across as a taunt to the audience. A sort of "Ha ha, we're so cool. Don't you wish you could be cool like us? Let's go get manicures! And after that, shoes!" message. In the end, this film might entertain Paris Hilton, but the rest of us are left wondering why today's society encourages this type of behavior, and more importantly, why we wasted 97 minutes of our time watching this film.
Dracula 2000 (2000)
Great concept, lacking in execution
The first thing I would like to say is that this movie has almost everything one could hope for in a "modern" horror movie. Let's review. Dark, mysterious, HOT villain who looks really good in a trench coat? Check. Ditzy heroines who break every rule in "How To Survive A Horror Movie" and still somehow manage to live? Check. Clumsy, goofy, love-struck hero attempting to save aforementioned damsel? Check.
Okay, so this movie's got the basics down, but lacks anything that goes deeper than sexy blonde women attacking not-as-sexy brunette women. Don't get me wrong, I love Gerard Butler and think he was a great choice for this movie, but I think audiences are getting tired of seeing him swooping around in long capes and kidnapping helpless young girls. After The Phantom Of The Opera and Dracula 2000, I'm wondering if he isn't getting sucked into the vicious process of typecasting.
The effects were less than spectacular, product placement abounds, the rock music blares, Butler swoops around looking emo, and the heroine gets picked up by a dorky British dude whose neck seems to connect directly to his chin.
Okay, I admit: I'm overly critical. I really loved this movie. I thought it was an interesting, original take on the mythology of Dracula and is one of the better vampire movies out there. Let's not speak of Van Helsing, shall we?
Hwasango (2001)
Why are remakes always awful?
I thought this movie was pretty okay, as far as Korean high school movies go. I bought the DVD with the American rappers doing the voices, and I was ready to hate the movie by the time the credits FINALLY rolled, but then I watched the Korean version and realized that the rappers had completely ruined it. So much stuff gets cut out or changed until the movie starts to look like they were trying to make fun of cheesy old kung fu movies. In its original form, however, the movie is great. Everything falls into place and makes so much more sense. You find that the characters aren't half as stupid as the rappers make them seem, and the story just works better. My advice to anyone interested in this movie is that they should watch the Korean version first. Watching the rapper-dubbed version may bias them against the original, and then they'll be left thinking the rappers made an improvement on the original
The Breed (2001)
Good doesn't equal expensive
This was one of the greatest cheaply made vampire movies I've ever seen! And there are A LOT of cheaply made vampire movies. It was great to see Adrian Paul again, too. I miss Highlander... Bai-Ling gets to show a little skin, something she would NEVER do in real life. Yeah, right. Bokeem Whassisface plays a good cop, and one look at the special effects shows you were the rest of the budget went. Paul is a wonderfully believable vampire, and the way the vampires are portrayed in this movie is original and thought-provoking: new species of human trying to live peacefully in a world that fears them. Anyone else thinking X-men? Undoubtedly, this movie is a great bargain buy.