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Page 10 ARTS & LIFE The Clarion \ February 9, 2007 RUNNING Movie Review: 'Running with Scissors' into darl comedy Movie Review; 'Epic Movie' a monumental failure by Aaron Palmer Managing Editor After reading the bestselling memoir of the same name when it was released a few years ago, I was hooked. Augusten Burroughs has taken an off-color, twisted up bringing filled with deeply troubled characters and confessed it into two novels and two sets of short stories. Running With Scissors, his first big seller, was sickly hilarious. The film adaptation of the story was opted and in the works for some time. Director Ryan Murphy (Nip-Tuck) was able to work with the author to depict the story down to the smallest details. The story is that young Augusten, who uptight, prissy and gay at an early age was ne glected by his father and forced to put up with his psychotic, manic mother who yearns to be a poet. She begins to seek therapy from a doctor (and I use this term as loosely as possible) and shortly after decides that the best thing for her son during her manic phase is to sign the adoption papers, le gally handing over her 13-year-old son to him. Augusten lives in the doctor’s run down, no-rules house with other patients and tries to make the best of an awkward situ ation. What made the story original was the author’s cynically witty voice, which is lost in translation. The film goes for a Wes Anderson approach, characters in a dollhouse type production. A little shallow and too fast paced, you still can’t help but laugh when your jaw’s not hanging open in disbelief Hard characters to imi tate, the cast does a decent job, but not fantastic. The setting is what truly makes the film. Defi nitely worth the rent, but pick up the book if you can find the time. by Zacl Harding Arts & Life Editor “Epic IVIovie” Starring Kal Penn, Jennifer Coolidge, Adam Campbell Directors: Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer Regency, 2007 i I’m going to keep this short and sweet: “Epic Movie” is terrible. This piece of celluloid feces is easily one of the worst movies I have ever seen, right alongside the likesof“LittleMan.”Itreally sad dens me that the field of comedy has been reduced to movies like this and “Jackass.” How long will attacks on someone’s geni tals, farts, and over-the- top gross-out weirdness be held as the pinnacle of movie comedy? Not to mention flying “little people” with high-pitched voices. For a film that masquer ades as a comedy, “Epic Movie” is absolutely un funny and laughless. Ten minutes into it I became bored out of my skull and settled into some sort of delirious comatose state as the “poo” and urine gags kept rolling. It tries to sell its comedy based on the movie references, and these are instantly forgot ten. There is no cohesion throughout almost any part of the movie. Scenes jump from one context to another, even braking off a couple of times into a scene making fun of MTV’s cribs and later on a rap video. A decent plot would at least help the movie since the comedy is nonex istent, but that is not the case. Never have I loathed so much the main cast of characters as I have in “Epic Movie.” Each one, from the cowardly chicken boy Peter, played by Adam Campbell, to the dorky jerk Edward, played by Kal Penn, is disgustingly bland, uninteresting and obnoxious. The only slightly agreeable character is the lisping moron Lucy, played by Jayma Mays, as a rip-off of the Sophie Neveu character in “The Da Vinci Code.” Thankfully, “Epic Movie” is fairly short, running only 86 min utes. If I weren’t going to write a review of it, I would have left af ter the first ten minutes, and if the completely empty theatre indi cates anything, no one else likes it much either. I have to get my We Know rt's Btg. Wig !yf€asLirsii. money’s worth out of this terrible movie somehow, so the best thing I can do is to warn everyone else: Don’t waste your time. I give it a miserable .5 out of 5 stars.
Brevard College Student Newspaper
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