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#644 – My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006)
My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006)
Film review #644
Director: Ivan Reitman
SYNOPSIS: Matthew Saunders starts dating Jenny Johnson, and learns that she is the superhero G-Girl. When he decides to break up with her, he must contend with the wrath of a superhero, while a supervillain schemes to take her powers…
THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: My Super Ex-Girlfriend is a 2006 sci-fi comedy film. Matthew Saunders starts dated jenny Johnson, a woman he meets on the subway, and finds out that she is the superhero G-Girl. When he decides to break up with her, she decides to get revenge on him and make his life a living hell. The premise of the film is simple enough to grasp and offers the potential for some comedic moments. The trouble is that the film manages one or two of them and doesn’t take full advantage of it to take it anywhere interesting. It relies on crude humour that hasn’t really aged well, and also doesn’t really push any boundaries. One of the reasons for this is probably the PG-13 rating the film obviously wanted, and so anything that might have pushed said boundaries is obviously sidelined in the interest of playing it safe. Even so, there’s still plenty you could have done within the rating to make it more interesting, but due to a shoddy script devoid of imagination, and poor pacing, in which the ‘break up’ only happens half way through the film and leaves no time for anything substantial to happen before it has to set the stage for a resolution finale.
The one thing of note about the characters is that none of them are very likable: they’re all fairly flawed and annoying in some way. Uma Thurman is the stand out role and plays her part as the super-hero and nerdy neurotic alter-ego well, although a a lot of very cliché and unhinged traits are just dumped onto her character. Matthew as the male lead barely registers any interest, and Eddie Izzard as the villain is very half-baked. There’s also the distinct feeling that by the end of the film and everything is “resolved,” that no one has really learned anything. Overall, there’s certainly potential in the concept, but an obsession with a PG-13 rating and playing it safe leaves you thinking you could imagine much more interesting possibilities than what My Super Ex-Girlfriend actually gives you. Unlikeable characters, a fairly empty screenplay, and lack of many stand-out comedic moments leaves very little impression, despite Uma Thurman’s solid portrayal of the role she is given.
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#608 – Evolution (2001)
Evolution (2001)
Film review #608
Director: Ivan Reitman
SYNOPSIS: When a meteor falls from outer space into the Arizona desert, two local college professors make an amazing discovery: the meteor contains microscopic alien life. While the two think they’ll be rich and famous for their discovery, the microbes begin to evolve at an accelerated rate, and soon become full-sized creatures who threaten all like on Earth…
THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Evolution is a 2001 sci-fi film. The film opens with a meteor crashing into Earth somewhere in the Arizona desert, with signs of microscopic alien life. Two college professors make the discovery and keep it to themselves, thinking it will net them the Nobel prize and other such fame and riches. They learn upon examination that the microscopic life forms are evolving at an exponentially accelerated rate, and will quickly develop to be a threat to mankind. Teaming up with a trainee firefighter and a government scientist, they go about trying to stop the evolution before it is too late. One of the most notable things about this film is it obviously wants to be the new millennium’s Ghostbusters: from the director of Ghostbusters, who rewrote the originally more horror/thriller based script to turn it into a comedy, the main characters working at a college/university, and even Dan Akroyd having a minor role. I don’t think it’s up for debate that this ambition went largely unmet. The film isn’t totally terrible, but fails to achieve it’s objectives in a number of ways. The story is very predictable, and offers very little surprises, with the usual thing of the military taking over and cutting the main characters out of the loop, forcing them to save the world on their own. There’s also not enough battling with the creatures too, which somewhat makes sense given they are microscopic for a chunk of the film, but when they are combating the monsters, there’s nothing special or exciting about it, whereas in Ghostbusters had the super cool proton packs and gadgets. It might be unfair to keep comparing a film to another one, but in Evolution‘s case, I think it is completely fair to do so, considering that it clearly wants to be a new Ghostbusters.
While the leads David Duchovny and Orlando Jones turn in good performances (Duchovny wanting to take this role to move away from his role in the X-files by taking a film about aliens is a bit humourous), they don’t really have the chemistry to carry a lot of the scenes. Duchovny is obviously playing the Bill Murray/Peter Venkman role of the dry humoured personality, while comedian Orlando Jones does the more expressive stuff. This overlaps with Seann William Scott’s role as the trainee firefighter Wayne Grey a little, but he has a more youthful edge to appeal to a different demographic. Julianne Moore as Dr. Allison Reed is introduced as an attempted serious, but clumsy character, but that clumsiness never shows up again, which is odd. There’s some deleted scenes which show it again, but it’s odd that’s left in there at all. The biggest drag in the film is probably the crude humour. While it starts out building up different kinds of humour, it quickly devolves into crude and cheap jokes that offer nothing new. Again, while Ghostbusters blended in the adult humour perfectly with it’s supernatural theme, Evolution tries the same, but comes across a bit of a child’s attempt at adult humour. The film very rarely recovers it’s footing in this regard, and feels like it’s run out of humour fairly quickly.
The well known actors, as mentioned, do turn in good performances, but there’s often not much to work with in terms of story or unique things for them to do. The creatures are sometimes creative in their designs, but there’s not nearly enough variety in them, and neither do they look “alien” enough to stimulate the imagination. The climax is a bit boring too, with the cast attempting to stop a giant blob by spraying some anti-dandruff shampoo up one of it’s orifices. Overall, Evolution has some entertainment value to it, but it is always going to draw comparisons to Ghostbusters, which it can never meet, thanks to it’s humour constantly misfiring, and a plot that fails to evolve itself beyond it’s very typical cornerstones.