More New Features Than You Can Shake a Stick at! Just try and Shake Them! I Dare You!

Another new and (cross your fingers) regular feature here at Capitol Ideas: Movie Reviews! The catch is that we haven't seen the movies yet! Reviews are based on posters, trailers, clips, and hollywood hype. Today's budget-conscious consumer doesn't have the cash to go to the movies every weekend. We at Capitol Ideas are here to help. We take every piece of available information (with the exception of the film itself and, of course, other reviews), including other films (because, let's face it, every movie you've seen in the last fifteen years is like every other movie you've EVER seen) and assist you in forming your own opinion by articulating it in ways you can't imagine! Think the newest flick arriving at box offices nationwide looks stupid? It probably is! The people involved should be mocked.

So here we go. Wish us luck!

The Brothers Grimm , 1 hr. 58 min. Rated S, for intense sucking.

Don’t you love it when an ambitious Hollywood screenwriter takes a classic concept, story, or idea, and completely perverts it to sell movie tickets? Think of the big-screen adaptations of many of your favorite video games (the Super Mario Brothers movie comes readily to mind); there is a cult following. Kids love the characters. It already sells t-shirts, toys, and other merchandise. Why not movie tickets?

Such it is with The Brothers Grimm, the new Matt Damon/Heath Ledger vehicle that fails to gain any traction because, guess what?, while Hollywood has perverted a classic story (or, in this case, many of them), the characters are not already established heroes with their mugs on t-shirts. Also the plot is scattered and the acting is horrid (typical for Ledger, atypical for Damon), two more reasons why this film is still spinning its wheels by the time you make your first (of many, god willing) trip to the restroom.

Along with perverting the story of the Brothers, who collected Germanic fables and folktales into one large tome, the movie perverts diverse European cultures by doing what every Hollywood film set in Europe does: Anglicanize everything. Everyone, regardless of ethnicity or nationality, speaks with a crisp, sophisticated British accent. The French characters occasionally roll their R’s or exclaim “Sacre Bleu!” But that’s as far as Hollywood goes in differentiating (you know, besides making the French look/act as sinister as possible) between what can only be described as the French-British and the German-British characters. Maybe the British Empire extended further than our history books have relayed . . .

Perhaps the saddest part about this film is the way in which Terry Gilliam insists on making Ledger look like Ben Affleck. Considering his life partner is in the movie I think Ben would have taken the part had Gilliam asked. That is, if he weren't too busy proposing to/impregnating women.


Undiscovered, 1 hr. 37 min (though it will feel like an eternity of damnation). Rated WTF?! for graphic piles of excrement.

Remember Crossroads? Seen The Dukes of Hazzard? Then you know the power of the crossover. Taking the popstar du jour and planting him or her (most likely her) into a feature film is not a new concept. It has been so since the dawn of popstardom. The Beatles made movies. Madonna. Whitney Houston. Mariah Carey. Eminem. The trend is always to saturate the public consciousness with one “artist” at a time, ensuring huge market shares. Call it the McDonald's Principle: What record are people going to buy if the only person they hear/see is Ashlee Simpson? They are going to buy Ashlee Simpson’s record!

Which brings us to Undiscovered, a hopelessly heartless movie about life-altering dilemmas that are the “price of fame.” These include: “anorexia or bulimia?,” “should I snort my coke through a McDonald’s straw or a rolled up ATM receipt?,” “Sleep my way to the top, or rely on my talents as a pretty person?,” “Scientology or materialistic, consumer-driven atheism?”

What happens when you cast a popstar in a movie? Especially a popstar with a megalomaniacal father? Said movie becomes a feature length music video! Imagine watching an Ashlee Simpson video for a hundred minutes straight. Yeah. That’s this movie. Except there’s awful acting thrown in between songs by the just now unundiscovered Pell James and Steven Straight, who are so wooden they may as well be Russian nesting dolls. The film’s only redeeming quality is the appearance of Carrie Fisher, though I have to believe that things were pretty bad for her to get on board this project. And that makes me sad.