So there I was, walking through my bedroom door after a long and busy night at the ol’ Jamacain Jam and to my surprise my sister is asleep in my bed while the movie Dumbo plays at an alarmingly loud volume on my TV set. I was already in a pickle; I had to write a movie review with two and a half hours to spare so I figure, why not watch Dumbo for the first time in probably 10 years.
Hopefully everyone remembers the plot of Dumbo; there is a little elephant that is born with abnormally large ears and is automatically labeled an “F-R-E-A-K.” He befriends a circus mouse that feels that Dumbo has more potential to be belittled to the title of “Clown.” Each attempt towards helping Dumbo become a star ends in failure. That is until the mouse convinces Dumbo that he can fly, but can Dumbo do it in time for the big circus performance? Well, I wouldn’t want to ruin the ending.
I really enjoyed this movie while I was a little kid and still do now, but upon further investigation this movie touches on many not-so-childish issues. When Dumbo is born, as well as his whole life up until the end of the movie, he becomes victim of torment from little kids and even other pachyderms. This seems to resemble a situation in which racism can be brought into the picture. Someone is born differently and they are automatically not accepted. Another adult issue is the part where Dumbo and the mouse get drunk off the clowns’ old wine/champagne. This leads to the ever so intriguing “Pink Elephants on Parade” song and images. Reading the lyrics with the help of my beloved Closed Captioning made it seem very scary but when I was a kid I couldn’t understand half of what they were saying and it just looked like fun to have bubble elephants everywhere. I don’t think this is the kind of message movies should be sending to little kids.
Other than those two issues I still really enjoy this movie, ten years later. As for the adultish references, kids never seem to pick that up anyways and they are very few in the movie as well, so I would still very much recommend this for little kids as well as anyone who wants to take a trip down memory lane.

Capote

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I watched Capote for my next move review. As an aspiring journalist this movie was very intriguing and motivating. Capote was movie based off the works of a real writer, Truman Capote, who notices an article about a family that was murdered and takes interest in going to research and write his own article about how it’s effecting the town. The situation was more intense then it seemed at first and he decides to write a book about it after speaking with one of the captured murderers, Perry Smith. He becomes very close with him but essentially needs both of the killers to face the death sentence for the perfect ending to his book. This becomes a very complicated conflict.
I thought this was a very gripping intense movie. It gave you the inside looks to the transformation and battles of self Capote had with himself all throughout the movie. He starts off and a very eccentric character not really caring about the characters of his tale so to speak but just the story he could get out of them. This ended up changing drastically as he got closer to the murderers, Perry especially. Towards the end the movie you ended up feeling some form of sympathy for the murderers just as Capote started to abandon both of them after using them so intently as “a gold mine” for research for his book. You really ended up getting an in-depth look at how this true story unfolded and toward the end even the effect it had on the Capote himself. The whole movie was very emotionally triggered I think, sometimes you would even be confused about who to feel sorry for, the poor murdered family, the quiet subtle murderers, or the confused writer. I think it was a wonderful movie and I would highly recommend it to anyone especially those who are looking into journalism.

Beerfest

I think I can start this review of Beerfest off by saying during the commercials for that movie where the critic said, “Turn your brain off,” was an honest warning to all who are about to sit down and watch this movie.
Beerfest is a movie about two brothers from Colorado whose beer loving grandpa dies and as family tradition they need to go spread his ashes at Octoberfest (of course.) While they were there one action leads to a domino effect of angry foreigners, multiple half naked ladies, and the two brothers discovering an underground drinking competition known as ‘Beerfest’ and decide to put a team together to compete the following year in hopes to beat the German team who made fun of their immediate family.
Actually enjoying the last two Broken Lizard movies I was pretty disappointed with how this one turned out. The storyline was pretty ridiculous from the beginning but I’ve seen movies that turn out surprisingly well for such a poorly thought out plot, sadly this was not one of them. During the film I did look past most of the dumb potty joke humor and unnecessary nudity because that is only what you would come to expect from a Broken Lizard movie. Don’t get me wrong, some parts of that movie did get me laughing but not for long, and not enough times to get my $7.50 worth. The majority of the ‘humorous’ parts in the movie were overdone cliché gags such as the ridiculously violent skull bashing fight scene where no one even gets close to being hurt until the end of the scene. I counted one witty joke in that entire movie which was about Germans “having a bad experience with U-Boats before.” Even the way the movie was carried out was very choppy, it jumped from the Americans to the Germans and back in a way that didn’t run very smoothly or help with the plot at all.
It might just be because I’m not a huge fan of this genre of humor but the parts of the movie that I disliked outweighed the parts that I enjoyed, too much so that I would not highly recommend this movie for anyone with a dry sense of humor or someone who is looking for a witty comedy.