onurish Reviews

The Cheetah Girls: One World (2008 TV Movie)

Um, can I have 90 minutes of my life back, please?

[2/10 · 30 January 2009]

Given the title of this comment it goes without saying that this isn't exactly the most favourable of reviews. However, I feel that two stars does justice to how terrible this film truly was. Sure, it's not exactly a first-class production, and it's not supposed to be...but it still sucks!

First, and perhaps foremost, the music is absolutely horrid. For about 70% of the movie you would have to listen to the sounds of the Cheetah Girls, which are at best mediocre, and you could say that the music in this film sort of resembles that of the other two, except perhaps 100 times worse. Whenever a song came on I could feel my soul shrivelling up in anxiety, just waiting for the song to finish. Ever felt like that before? Well guess what? If you watch this movie it'll happen to you about 20 times over.

I mean come on, people! The music didn't even sound remotely Indian (unlike in the Cheetah Girls 2, which actually had some Spanish rhythms, and one or two of the songs were actually pretty good), and yes, throwing in one or two Indian instruments doesn't cut it, it still sounds like cheesy American Disney-pop.

If music wasn't the "foremost" criticism, then perhaps the lack of Galleria's (Raven-Symone) presence was. Removing Galleria is like removing fish from the sea or breast implants from Pamela Anderson or some other crazy stuff like that. Oh, and don't even get me started on how they actually "killed" her off (I don't want to reveal plot elements, so if you really want to know, find out yourself).

All in all, it's nothing more than a cheesefest. Sure, cheesiness is fine - to a certain extent. This just went way too far and broke the cheese-o-meter. It's the kind of cheese that develops on people's feet, not from milk. Sickening.

High School Musical 3: Senior Year (2008)

Highly disappointing - just don't bother, even if you are a die-hard HSM fan

[2/10 · 29 December 2008]

OK, so I will admit, I'm not a die-hard HSM fan. Heck I'm too old to be. But I have younger siblings, so I have been following the High School Musical series since the very beginning.

Unfortunately the HSM franchise seems to be suffering from what I like to call "sequel disease", i.e. the typical Hollywood cliché of film series starting off really well, followed by the release of an OK sequel, and subsequently the release of one final sequel which is just plain terrible. I assume you know where I'm going with this.

I gave this a 2/10 simply because that's how terrible it was. It's not one of those "so bad it's good" type things - that is so HSM1. No, HSM3 is just bad. It may potentially be the worst film I've ever seen apart from Mr & Mrs Smith, which is just a dreadful movie, period.

Perhaps the only praise I have is for Ashley Tisdale, who seems to be one of those very few people who seem to be born for the entertainment industry. I see a bright future ahead of her.

Apart from that, HSM3 is just awful. I can't even describe it. The only thing I can say, though, is that I think that Kenny Ortega is the reason why the HSM franchise has been suffering from "sequel disease". His existence is probably the reason why HSM2 was nowhere near as good as HSM1. They should have kept the first guy, whoever he was...

Twilight (I) (2008)

Not bad, but a lot of room for improvement

[7/10 · 28 December 2008]

Before I begin, let me just say that I haven't read the book, so I'm not some die-hard Twilight fan or anything. In fact I hadn't even heard of either the book or the movie until a couple of months ago when my cousin (who had been reading the entire series) showed me her books and talked to me about it. She even said that there was a movie for the first book that was going to be released in a couple of months time. I remained uninterested, and I still lacked the enthusiasm to actually want to watch this movie in the first place, despite all of the frenzy over it, particularly with my female friends who, at the moment, have gone absolutely gaga over the male lead, Robert Pattinson (who plays the role of Edward).

It was only two days ago, when a good friend of mine who I hadn't seen since June (because I moved to another school), asked me if I wanted to go to the cinema with him to watch Twilight. There really wasn't anything else on that could have been better, so I just thought "what the heck, might as well give it a shot". And so I did.

This friend of mine is not really the kind of person to be watching movies like Twilight. Indeed, he is more of an action/superhero film type person, and so I don't think he liked the film that much (at the end I noticed an iPod earphone in his ear - need I say more?). Even now I'm still quite surprised that he even suggested watching Twilight in the first place.

I, on the other hand, consider myself more open to different film types, and I enjoy a little bit of almost everything, Twilight being no exception.

The choice of actors was simply a job well done; all of them fit into their roles perfectly. Pattinson, with his amazing, masculine good looks and pale skin, fits perfectly into role of the "both-warm-and-cold" vampire that is Edward Cullens. What I mean by "both-warm-and-cold" is that despite his cold looks and temperaments, he is an extremely likable character and his somewhat hopeless romanticism takes over slightly without tarnishing his vampire image. I honestly couldn't think of anyone else who could suit Edward's role better than Pattinson. Needless to say, he also makes really good eye candy.

The choice of Kristen Stewart as Bella is also very noteworthy, as she also manages to fit her role as a pale, very reserved young woman really well. Bravo to her too.

Just - bravo to both of them. Never have I seen such chemistry in a film. They are just such an item, and it's easy to see how much in love the two characters are thanks to these two wonderful actors.

I felt that the film was filmed really well, too. I particularly love how every second of the film in Forks (the main setting of the movie) looks so cold and grim, and it kind of adds to the whole bleakness of it all.

All of this, however, does not mean that Twilight doesn't have it's flaws. In the first half of the movie, despite it starting of well, it really seemed to have dragged on quite a bit and it wasn't until the second half that things started to get really engaging and interesting, and even exciting. Unfortunately I still don't quite understand one or two elements of the plot as much as I would have wanted to, so obviously that's a major flaw too.

On a more minor note, the special effects could have been a little better, particularly with the whole "speedy vampire" business, which looked somewhat unrealistic, but despite it being unrealistic in the first place anyway, the special FX people could have made it seem more real than it actually did.

Nevertheless, the above criticisms do not change the fact that it is definitely a watchable movie. It's not perfect, and it definitely could have been, but I guess at least it's kind of gotten me interested in reading the book, now. After watching that film, now I want to read the book so that I can finally understand those things that I didn't. In a way, my criticism of that may be considered a bit of an irony, but it is still no excuse to make the plot incomprehensible. Like I said, the film could have been much better.

Camp Rock (2008 TV Movie)

Well...it's camp, alright!

[5/10 · 6 September 2008]

First of all, let me start by saying that Camp Rock oozes with cheesiness to the extent that it's easy to make fun of. It's also highly predictable, and seemed to be overflowing with typical tween movie scenarios, you know, with the rich snob being all impudent and having her own clique, the members of which reluctantly following her around the place like sheep, and the protagonist not standing up for herself when she gets framed by the rich snob because in reality she's extremely pathetic and afraid of being a "snitch", which, I find, is a load of codswallop.

None of this necessarily stops the movie from being engaging or entertaining, and I certainly thought that it was both of these. It's better than at least half the junk Hollywood has been pushing through our throats throughout this dark decade for the film industry. One example I can get off the top of my head is Dreamgirls, which was a disastrously terrible film despite the massive scale of publicity it got. Camp Rock is certainly better than Dreamgirls. Perhaps more surprisingly, I actually think that it's on par with High School Musical, which, by the way, is probably the most overrated movie of all time and doesn't deserve to be as successful as it really is.

The cheesiness of the movie is both a blessing and a curse; a curse because almost all of the humour isn't funny and the "cool" English guy is just asking to be shot in head by someone, but a blessing because the "Final Jam" scene, i.e. the climax of the movie, actually manages to serve it's purpose as a climax and I haven't felt so engaged to a movie in a long time. I almost found it breathtaking, and it was definitely better than the HSM "Breaking Free" scene.

So yes, in a nutshell, Camp Rock is certainly not first class entertainment, but it is one of the best Disney B-movies around.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005)

Bor-ing!

[3/10 · 19 July 2008]

I recently rented this movie on DVD and watched it with someone else. We watched the movie ALMOST entirely, because about three quarters of the way through the movie we got so bored that we decided to skip to the end.

I decided to rent this movie after the guy at the video store told me that Mr. & Mrs. Smith was a romantic comedy with an actiony twist. I just thought "sounds good", and I decided to rent it with relatively high expectations, thinking that this wasn't some typical boring romantic comedy. Well, I was certainly right about that, but to be honest I actually found it even more boring than the average romantic comedy.

To be fair, the movie was quite funny at times, and the "fight scene" between the Smiths during the second part of the movie was gold. Apart from that, though, both my friend and I found it extremely dull. The only thing that kept me going through most of the movie was the sight of Brad Pitt's sexy face and bod, but even that failed to stop us from abruptly skipping to the end of the movie.

In short, it has a couple of cheap laughs and some very tasty eye candy, but that's all there is to it - no matter how hot you think Brad (or Angie) are, it is not worth watching this movie. It's one of those movies that are so dull that you can feel your brain eroding.

By the way, I'm extremely surprised (in a bad way) by the overall IMDb rating for this movie - personally I think it deserves to be a 4.8/10 at best, but even that may seem too unrealistically high.

Drillbit Taylor (2008)

Much better than I expected

[8/10 · 28 June 2008]

I went to watch this thinking that this would just be another one of those bad comedies, as we've unfortunately had to endure for the past decade or so. But no, it really wasn't that bad! It was certainly very funny, anyway :-D.

I don't want to reveal any of the plot elements, so all I'll say is that it's a PG-13/12A high school movie. However, its not your typical high school, or "teen movie" if you will, certainly because there's very little sex/lust/whatever. Instead, there's a lot of violence (not really in a slapstick way, though), and I find that very entertaining and certainly different.

In conclusion, I think it's a very funny and engaging movie. I give it 8 out of 10 stars - it certainly isn't the best comedy I've ever seen, but its most definitely not the worst. Sure, 8 out of 10 may seem pretty high, but I'm only rating it as a form of entertainment rather than a piece of art.

The Lizzie McGuire Movie (2003)

Underrated

[7/10 · 24 March 2008]

Why is the rating for this movie only 4.8/10? Yeah, it's not exactly first-class entertainment, but it definitely deserves at least a 7/10. It's good, clean fun, and very entertaining for children and adults alike. It's Lizzie McGuire (probably the only decent programme on the Disney Channel - oh why did they stop it?) and her pals having an adventure in Italy! But whilst this is just an ordinary Roman history trip for everyone else, Lizzie gets whisked away to stardom when she meets Italian popstar, Paolo Valisari. Full of friendship problems, other catastrophes, Matt and Melina's usual (international) shenanigans and a little bit of (clean) romance, the Lizzie McGuire movie fails not to entertain. It's the perfect film to watch on a rainy day (or whilst driving through hot, remote areas of Turkey in a coach - that's how I watched it).