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You, Me, and Dupree is mostly awful. The title is stupid too. How did Owen Wilson ever get so famous? If by some strange fluke you are one of the people who find Owen Wilson amusing you might enjoy this film. Wilson plays the tit(ular) Dupree, best friend and best man to Matt Dillon but his schtick gets annoying fast. The combination of Dupree the unwanted house-guest and Michael Douglas the overbearing father in law causes Dillon to snap. Unsuprisingly things all work out in the end.
An average of three new films a week are released to the cinema. Even if you do go to the cinema every week it is hard to say this film is even worth your consideration. Odds are it will not be in the cinema too long but unless you really love Owen Wilson I would recommend you do not bother renting it either.

Fans of Seinfeld - the comedy television programme about nothing in particular - may already be familiar with the feast of Festivus but today was the first I'd heard of it.

A Festivus for the rest of us!

Festivus is an alternative holiday created in response to the excessive commercialization of Christmas. Festivus is usually celebrated on December 23rd but can be held as necessary at other times of the year.
In some ways I feel like I have already celebrated Festivus. Last week we had a big family meal together, a lovely pork roast with all kinds of festive trimmings. We have had early celebrations before as not everyone can be in the same place on Christmas day. This year my brother Brian (married this summer) will be spending Christmas in Limerick with his wifes family, and my eldest sister Katherine and baby Sienna will be joining the Guilfoyle family for Christmas (no relation of the Guilfoyle on CSI Las Vegas).
I wish you all a very Happy Festivus

The Aristocrats

The Aristocrats is one joke movie. One very long and dirty joke including a lot of scatological humour. I'm not insulting it like yet another unsuccessful spin-off from Saturday Night Live, in fact it is a remarkable achievement to squeeze so much entertainment from a single idea. This documentary tells and retells the same joke over and over again in all its glorious variations. The joke is simple enough and is essentially an excuse for the comedian to be as disgusting as they possibly can be and then give it a sophisticated sounding title "The Aristocrats" to the abomination the have just described. The real humour of this shaggy dog story is not the punchline itself but how it is told and how impressive a performance the comedian puts on. I enjoyed this film immensely but I wonder if it more a reflection on my sense of humour than the film itself? If you do not like dirty jokes, vulgarity, profanity or are generally easily offended then you are unlikely to enjoy this film as it deliberately tries to push every button possible. The documentary keeps a good momentum through out but some may find the repetition. I would particularly recommend seeing this in the cinema or in some other large group. Your enjoyment can be magnified by watching the reactions of others and even if you do not find certain things funny you can notice how different people laugh more or less at particular tellings of variations of the joke. This film is clearly not for everyone but I highly recommend it so long as you do have a basic idea what you are getting yourself in for as it certainly isn't a period drama from Merchant Ivory as you might mistakenly guess from the title.

Guy X

"No one ever thinks of Greenland" is the title of a book on which Guy X is based. Due to a clerical mix-up Jason Biggs of American Pie fame finds himself reassigned to the wrong base and he is stuck in Greenland instead of Hawaii. The base is full of underachieving wasters and other things the U.S. Military would rather forget about. Given how rarely new personal arrive at the base the commander is not about to give up his newest recruit despite the confusion and refuses to believe he is who he claims to be and the story goes from there. Guy X is not half as entertaining as films such as Buffalo Soldiers or M*A*S*H but if you liked those films then you will very likely enjoy Guy X too. The film is an amusing black comedy and it shows a kind of absurd realism of the life on this military base, although I fear they were a little too successful in showing how tedious military life can be and how not very much happens. Not worth rushing out to the cinema for but worth renting on video.

Corpse Bride

Not half as good as The Nightmare Before Christmas. Glad I watched Corpse Bride but there are better films out there. Watch only if you have already seen Wallace and Gromit, and Corpse Brides has even more pun based humour.

Films I wont be watching

You can tell a whole lot about a film from the publicity material, often far too much. Some people I know will studiously avoid all publicity material if they have already decided they want to see a film. The better films figure out a way to promote themselves without giving away more than half of the film but they are in the minority and most films have very little story to give away in the first place. A film like Serenity had the advantage of a whole series full of backstory, and the Matrix sequels cleverly fleshed out their backstory using the Animatrix but other films have enough interesting, well thought out characters that they can promote a story without spoiling any chance of a surprise.
Elizabethtown: Chickflick, featuring wooden acting from effeminate elf who was in The Lord of the Rings. Might watch on television if I was really bored but only because I know Jessica Biel appears briefly near the beginning.
Sky High: I'm a fan of Superheroes but Disney aren't known for their challenging material and regularly pander to the children and fail to provide enough to keep captive adults amused (with the exception of Pixar which only makes their other work look even worse). This seems very much aimed at children and to capitalise on the success of the Incredibles which I would likely be better off watching instead. Scientologist Kelly Preston better known as Mrs John Travolta provides yet another excuse if I wanted one to give this a miss. Chances are many years from now I will watch this on television like so much other mediocre material and "fast entertainment" Disney continuously pumps out.
Zorro: The previous adventure of Zorro just about managed to be entertaining and get the basic swashbuckling elements right. This sequel looks awful and overcomplicated and bringing Zorros children into story doesn't bode well at all. Hollywood seems far too eager to milk every film for a quick sequel even at the risk of destroying the long term prospects of a franchise. Never did watch Wild Wild West even when it was on television so chances are I'd not bother with this either.
Into the Blue: Did somebody in Hollywood make this up purely as an excuse to put Jessica Alba in swimwear for ninety minutes? Great idea for a double length episode of Baywatch but not the best reasons to spend millions making a film. Unlikely to get much of an audience beyond teenage boys and men who act like teenage boys - which to be honest describes most of us - but if they didn't spend stupid amounts of money on this high concept movie they might manage to break even.

Doom has been described by critics as the best film based on a video game ever. Damning it with faint praise presumably. Tomb Raider, Super Mario Brothers, Resident Evil, Mortal Kombat, Streetfighter, and other movies based on computer games have never been Oscar contenders but with low expectations at least a few have provided shall we say uncomplicated entertainment. One shouldn't expect miracles from any film featuring a wrestler as the lead actor but Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson seems like the right man to provide a good dumb-but-fun action movie. Actually Doom is one I probably will watch.

Watch the film 40 Year Old Virgin but strangely found it depressing more than funny. All the male characters are utterly hopeless with women and advice given to the titular Virgin only gets him in more trouble. The humour is very childish, laughing at swearwords and the embarassement of others which mostly made me feel awkward and cringe rather than laugh. (The Office is heavily based on the comedy of embarassment and I cannot bring myself to watch it. Coincidentally Steve Carrell stars in the American version of the Office which unlike so many other American remakes of british television programmes seems to have survived the transatlantic journey.) The film essentially takes the behaviour of teenage boys and translates it to a group of very immature grown men. The trailers and previews spoil a lot of the best jokes. The chest waxing is painfully unfunny and the boys from Jackass already did that joke. (After watching a documentary on Channel 4 a few years ago a friend of mine spent several days chanting "back, sack, and crack" so the shock value was wasted on me.) I wasn't in the right mood at all for this film and the various previews I had seen raised my expectations but also robbed the film of much of its impact. 40 Year Old Virgin needed to try harder and could have been a lot more but I'd give it 3/5.