The Travers Take

Peter Travers Video Review: "Get Smart" and "The Love Guru"

June 19, 2008 5:09 PM

Dueling comedies open this weekend — Steve Carell's Get Smart and Mike Myers' The Love Guru — but one is far from funny. Who's a better foil: Justin Timberlake or Anne Hathaway? For Peter Travers' full report, watch the video.

Review: The Love Guru (.5 stars)
Review: Get Smart (2.5 stars)

Watch every episode of our weekly Peter Travers video podcast by subscribing via iTunes (when prompted, click “Launch application”). Every Friday, a new episode will be delivered to your iTunes. [If you don’t have iTunes, download it here.]

[Video: Jennifer Hsu]


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Drop the New DVDs and Look Back at the Genius of Stan Winston

June 17, 2008 9:40 AM

Are they kidding with these DVD releases:

Fool's Gold, starring Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey in what still gets my vote as the worst romantic comedy of the year.

Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins, another career crusher for the once-funny Martin Lawrence.

So I Married An Axe Murderer, a special edition of the laugh-free1993 farce that has no other purpose except to prove that Mike Myers once made a movie as bad as The Love Guru.

My suggestion is that we all pay homage to Stan Winston, the special effects master who died on Sunday at 62, by grabbing a few DVDs that represent his best animatronic creations. You could start with the movies that won him his Oscars. That would be Aliens in 1986, Terminator 2: Judgment Day in 1992 and Jurassic Park in 1993. Winston's T-Rex in that blockbuster made movie history. But it might be more of a tribute to watch a Winston film on DVD that never won the attention it deserved.

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Box Office and Why "The Happening" Didn't Lay Down and Die

June 16, 2008 11:07 AM

Can we talk? Not about The Incredible Hulk—we all knew that the mean green machine would take the No. One spot at the box office. The big news was The Happening, reviled by critics and preceded by the worst buzz imaginable, ostensibly driven by moviegoers who felt burned by everything M. Night Shyamalan directed after The Sixth Sense in 1999. Me, I got way into Unbreakable, and also liked Signs and a lot of The Village. It was Lady in the Water, two years ago, that drowned Shyamalan in the poison tide of audience and critical backlash. The box-office performance of The Happening was supposed to reflect the bile. Here was a chance for ticketbuyers to stay away in droves as karmic payback for Shyamalan's failure to please with Lady in the Water. And just look what happened:

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Peter Travers Video Review: "The Incredible Hulk" and "The Happening"

June 12, 2008 4:27 PM

In this week's exclusive video, Peter Travers reviews the second go-round for Marvel Comics' The Incredible Hulk and the newest M. Night Shyamalan nail-biter The Happening. Click above for the Rolling Stone film critic's opinions on which big-budget flick deserves your dollars this weekend (provided that you're already done playing Grand Theft Auto IV).

Watch every episode of our weekly Peter Travers video podcast by subscribing via iTunes (when prompted, click “Launch application”). Every Friday, a new episode will be delivered to your iTunes. [If you don’t have iTunes, download it here.]

[Video: Jennifer Hsu]


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Is Grand Theft Auto IV Actually the Best Popcorn Movie of the Summer?

June 12, 2008 1:48 PM

Where do you look for something to knock you out of your summer-movie funk? Not The Incredible Hulk, which looks like a giant green beach ball — even with a rage bug up its air hole. And not The Happening, featuring Mark Wahlberg as a science teacher scanning the skies for an airborne virus when the real mystery is how many times M. Night Shyamalan thinks he can go back to the Sixth Sense well.

Time to go interactive. That's right, me the movie critic is actually telling you to switch to video games until Hollywood makes more exciting movies. Spawned by Rockstar Games over three and a half years with a crew that topped 1,000 and a cost that tickled $100 million, Grand Theft Auto IV has been raking it in since its April 29th debut ($500 million in its first week alone; no film or music launch beats that).

Now, after my total immersion in GTA IV on PlayStation 3 (it's also released on Xbox 360), I'm here to tell you why. It's a hell of a game (maybe not the Citizen Kane of the form, like many game reviews claim), and in terms of action, thrills, imagination and innovation, GTA IV has it all over the pablum currently passing for ingenuity at the multiplex. (Note to the moral hand-wringers: Yes, GTA IV is brutal, bloody, debased, debauched and likely to corrupt the innocent after, say, 400 hours of play. But let's keep the innocent out of this.)

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Panda Messes with the Zohan's Box Office, Plus Assessing Adam Sandler

June 9, 2008 10:03 AM

It's big news when an animated movie aimed at tykes cuts into Adam Sandler's fan base and whups his ass. That's what happened this weekend when Kung Fu Panda, with Jack Black doing the voice of a roly-poly Chinese bear, took in $60 million from 4,114 theaters, leaving Sandler's You Don't Mess With the Zohan to eat its dust with $40 million from 3,462 theaters. OK, $40 million is nothing to blow hummus at, it's only the fifth Sandler movie to debut at that mark (The Longest Yard is the No. One Sandler opening at $48 million). But who could have guessed that 71 percent of the Panda audience would be over 17 and that 51 percent would be over 25? Also, Panda won much better reviews, 85 percent favorable according to the rottentomatoes Website, as opposed to 35 percent favorable for Zohan, starring Sandler as a Mossad agent who chucks commando work to cut and style hair in New York. Sharp idea for a comedy with a sting—and Sandler is quite good in it— but oh the sloppy execution. Now that Sandler is stuck with a panda's sloppy seconds, it might be time to consider a few questions: Is Sandler talented?

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Peter Travers Video Review: "You Don't Mess With the Zohan"

June 5, 2008 6:35 PM

This week's video review takes on Adam Sandler's You Don't Mess with the Zohan, in which the comedian stars as an Israeli commando hoping to succeed as a hairdresser in New York. Will Sandler's collaboration with SNL's Robert Smigel and Knocked Up mastermind Judd Apatow succeed? Watch and find out.

Review: You Don't Mess With the Zohan (2 stars)

Watch every episode of our weekly Peter Travers video podcast by subscribing via iTunes (when prompted, click “Launch application”). Every Friday, a new episode will be delivered to your iTunes. [If you don’t have iTunes, download it here.]

[Video: Jennifer Hsu]


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Go Ahead, Let Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry Make Your DVD Day

June 3, 2008 11:01 AM

I know what you’re thinking: Does the Dirty Harry Collection released today on standard DVD and newfangled Blu-Ray include all five "Harry" movies or only four, thus sparing us The Dead Pool, the final chapter released in 1988? Well, to tell you the truth, in all the excitement, I’ve kind of lost track. But being as this is the "Ultimate Collection," remastered with a quality in image and sound that will blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya punk?” My answer is:

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"Sex" Power at the Box Office Deballs Indiana Jones!

June 2, 2008 9:37 AM

In one of the few shocks in no-surprises-please Hollywood, Sex and the City unmanned Indiana Jones into the shame of second place. That's $55.7 million for Sex at 3,285 theaters and $46 million for Indy 4 at 4,264 theaters. Sex enjoyed the biggest weekend debut ever for a romantic comedy, doubling the $27.5 million debut of The Devil Wears Prada, and scoring the fifth best debut of all time for an R-rated film. Sex easily topped other R-rated comedies, such as The Wedding Crashers and Knocked Up. Which means Dr. Jones was thoroughly pussywhipped. Instead of giving the ladies their due—what's wrong with a victory for females in a male-dominated summer?—the beancounters keep putting up a biased macho defense:

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Peter Travers Video Review: "Sex and the City"

May 29, 2008 9:33 PM

This week's video review takes a look at the big screen version of Sex and the City. Does it maintain the spirit of the hit HBO show? Is it worth its two and a half hour run time? Most importantly, does it deserve your cinema dollars this weekend? Click above for the full conversation between Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers and special guest Aubree Lennon, a longtime fan of the show who lends some feminine perspective.

Review: Sex and the City (2.5 stars)

Watch every episode of our weekly Peter Travers video podcast by subscribing via iTunes (when prompted, click “Launch application”). Every Friday, a new episode will be delivered to your iTunes. [If you don’t have iTunes, download it here.]

[Video: Jennifer Hsu]


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