Total Recall trailer reminds you that you already saw this damn movie 22 years ago, and it was just fine, thank you!

Yes this trailer looks every bit as bland and generic as the teaser from early April.  And yes the lack of creative imagination that would cause Sony to spend $200 million on a painfully similar remake of a 1990 sci-fi thriller is disturbing and perhaps a sign of the end times.  But I'm not going to whine.  First of all, I damn-well have the choice to not see this thing when it drops on August 3rd.  Second of all, and I'll be getting into this tomorrow if time allows, but we're slowly entering an era where studios seem to be remembering that not every film in the tent can or should be a tent-pole.  So for now, feast your eyes on the raging mediocrity that is the trailer for Total Recall.  Is there really any one who is honestly excited for this?

Scott Mendelson  

Weekend Box Office (11/06/11): Puss in Boots tops again with record hold, while Tower Heist and A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas slightly underperform.

 Well it looks like the answer to last weekend's big question was "B".  Dreamworks did indeed trade one boffo opening weekend for two rock-solid weekends after all.  Last weekend, after being moved onto Halloween weekend at the last minute, Puss In Boots (review and trailer) debuted with a mediocre (for Dreamworks Animation) $34 million.  I speculated that perhaps Dreamworks simply was hoping to have an extra weekend before facing off against Happy Feet 2 (November 18th) and were hoping to use positive word of mouth to fuel a strong hold this weekend as well.  Puss In Boots topped the box office again, with another $33 million.  That's a drop of 3% from last weekend.  The Shrek spin-off pulled in the smallest second weekend drop for a Dreamworks animated film of all-time, behind only the 0.2% rise of the first Shrek, which had the Memorial Day weekend holiday behind it.  In fact, give-or-take how the final numbers measure up to the 3.6% drop of the second weekend of The Sixth Sense, and the 2.8% increase for My Dog Skip (coming off just a $5 million debut , Puss In Boots may have snagged the record for the smallest second-weekend drop for a non-Holiday weekend.

Review: A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas 3D (2011) again proves that the first film's brilliance was a fluke.

A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas 3D
2011
90 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle is arguably the best comedy of the prior decade.  It's laugh-out-loud funny, but also filled with intelligent characters engaging in outlandish, but almost-plausible adventures in search of a most simple pleasure (a hamburger).  It was crude, but not stupid about its raunch, and it created a wonderful 'this is America' tapestry that helped make it one of the finest films about race/ethnicity relations in modern cinema. Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay is every bit as lousy as most of us expected the first film to be.  It's aimless, painfully unfunny, openly stupid, and trading in the sort of stock storytelling conventions ("Oh, that girl I dated for a few months in college is THE ONE who I must win back!") that the original avoided.  More importantly, it's outright immoral in how it claims political topicality but sells the three biggest post-9/11 lies around (there are no innocent men in Gitmo, the post 9/11 abuses are the result of a few bad apples, and George W. Bush is really just 'one of us').  For better or worse, A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas isn't as offensive as the first sequel, but it's still a shockingly lazy, uninspired affair.  It feels cheap and constrained, with only a handful of laughs and a narrative that sees fit to mostly replicate jokes from the first film.  It's not as aggressively bad as the first sequel, but mere mediocrity is not something to aspire to.

A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas gets a red-band trailer.

While this is just a touch spoilery, it does seem to be an improvement over the wretched second picture.  It's obvious that this franchise is going ever-more surreal, leaving behind the quasi-realism (stoned jaguars aside) of the first film.  One thing that does impress me is the continued presence of Paula Garcés.  She was basically Harold's 'prize to be won' in the first film, while she barely merited a cameo in the second, yet she again appears here, apparently now as Harold's wife.  In an age when male-centric franchises treat their female characters like disposables to be replaced by the newest flavor of the month in the next installment, it is refreshing that this series has bothered to maintain continuity (the Kumar's would-be love interest from Escape From Guantanamo Bay, Danneel Ackles, also makes a return appearance).  But on a different note, not only is Christopher Meloni apparently absent from this go-around, but his identical twin Elias Koteas is listed on the IMDB cast page as "Sergei Katsov".  Me thinks that Meloni was unavailable so the producers went for the logical replacement.  Anyway, this one drops on November 4th, and I can't imagine it will be worse than the first sequel, although hoping for something as brilliant as the initial installment is a fool's errand.

Scott Mendelson   

Trailer: A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas works to restore the luster of a franchise after the truly awful first sequel.

I actually chuckled at this one a few times, and the 3D feels very self-aware.  I also enjoyed how the trailer openly mocked the series continuity, while also acknowledging the difference between the real Neil Patrick Harris and the fictionalized version that exists in these films.  I consider Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle to be the best comedy of the previous decade and perhaps the finest film about race relations in modern times.  Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay is a terrible, unfunny, and morally offensive sequel (it basically boils all of the post-9/11 government abuses to 'one bad apple' and lets George W. Bush off the hook) that shames the original.  I have no reason to hope that this third film will be as potent a piece of social satire as the original.  But it does look awfully funny.  It drops on November 4th.  As always, we'll see...

Scott Mendelson