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philip baker hall Tagged Articles at Cinematical

'Fired Up' Trailer Leaves Us Anything But

Filed under: Comedy », Sony », Trailers and Clips »

Goodness knows the world wasn't asking for the equivalent of National Lampoon's Bring It On (alternate title: Take It Off), but if we had to be subjected to the forthcoming cheer romp that is Fired Up!, why has it taken nine years to cash in on the trend? I can't otherwise understand how else this comedy -- the trailer for which we've included after the jump -- has gotten off the ground.

See, it's about a pair of high school football players (played by 31-year-old Eric Christian Olsen and 28-year-old Nicholas D'Agosto) who opt out on their team training in order to tag along with the all-female cheerleading squad to their cheer camp/competition. Besides, with 300 ready-and-waiting young women at their alleged disposal, what are the odds that one of our guys will instead want to hook up with the cutie (Sarah Roemer) calling their bluff? And what chance could there possibly be that she already has a dick-ish boyfriend who can't help but make them look like more sensible guys in comparison? Might hilarity ensue?!

Review: The Shaggy Dog

Filed under: Comedy », New Releases », Disney », New in Theaters », Family Films », Remakes and Sequels »



There is a moment in Joe Dante's neato kitsch comedy, Matinee, when Cold War kids Gene (Simon Fenton) and Dennis (Jesse Lee) are sitting in a movie theater, bored silly by the zany (and entirely fictional) body-switching family comedy, The Shook-Up Shopping Cart (a double bill with the equally non-existent The Bashful Bobcat). It was Dante's way of simultaneously mocking and paying tribute to the low-concept filler that Disney made in between what are now the company's enduring classics, and it was a hilarious moment.

While Disney's remake of their 1959 mega-hit, The Shaggy Dog, is not loaded with hilarious moments, it is, as they say, what it is, even if it is that same sort of self-congratulatory jape. Tim Allen plays a dog-hating lawyer who by convenient magic becomes one, makes a fun enough show of it, rolling together nicely the parts played by Tommy Kirk in the original and Dean Jones in the 1976 sequel, The Shaggy D.A. Like My Three Sons star Fred MacMurray in the original, Allen is a Disney contract player, and while he may not be the fatherly comfort that the MacMurray was, he can certainly sell a movie in the same way. People know Tim Allen from Home Improvement; they know him as the voice of Buzz Lightyear from the Toy Story movies; they know him from The Santa Clause, and that is all the selling/warning that most people need.
 
 
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