Parks and Recreation - Season 3

The constantly-reinventing-itself Community is still my favorite comedy on TV, but if it didn't exist, Parks and Rec would be a perfectly admirable substitute. The additions of Adam Scott and Rob Lowe as regular characters does a good job of growing the show a bit without interfering with the chemistry that had already been built. They fit right in, with Lowe as Chris, the super eager and optimistic new guy running the city government, and Scott as Ben, a disgraced former 18 year old mayor who's now a budget expert. They were introduced at the end of season two to kind of push the plot along, but they're fully integrated into the cast this time, with Chris' new ideas disrupting the flow in the office, especially for Ron, and Ben being both lovably awkward and an interesting match for Leslie. I like how the show has handled relationships, not wasting too much time dancing around the idea before having actual fun with it.

It's not just there where the show is as enjoyable as ever - every character seems to be getting better with age. Donna isn't quite as funny as the show wants her to be, but she at least has a full personality now, and the way they've explored Jerry's interests makes him a more worthwhile punching bag. Tom's big city attitude in a small town schtick gets a lot of play to, and the end of his arc this season is one of the things that has me most excited for this fall, when the show is thankfully returning this time. They only had 16 episodes to screw around with, but they generally made the most of them,  expanding on the insane little universe the show takes place in, with some of my favorite bits being Perd Hapley's talk show and the fabulously wealthy citizenship of nearby Eagleton. I like that there's a continuity in there too, with certain wacky citizens coming back when appropriate, and basically any scene where a bunch of town folk are in the room together is fun. Not every moment is great, and the show has some really weird identity issues that revolve around the whole mockumentary thing. But it's still an exceptionally funny and joyful show, with a fantastic and growing cast (I didn't miss Mark once) and a great sense of where it's going. I don't want to speak too soon, but when all is said and done, I think Parks might end up being viewed as a better series than The Office. At least by me.

Get Him to the Greek

I don't recall if I ever saw a full trailer for this movie, but I know from the TV spots that I don't think they ever made it clear that this is actually a spin-off of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, with Russell Brand reprising his role as insane rock star Aldous Snow. I didn't know this until people mentioned it elsewhere, and you'd think the advertising would capitalize on this face, since Snow was possibly the funniest single thing about that movie. As it was, it just looked like a raunchy comedy about a fat nervous guy and a wacky British guy running around and partying. Which it is, but it happens to be a very enjoyable one, and the Snow character is a big part of that. I'm ambivalent about Brand, who can come off as endearingly wacky or completely irritating depending on what day it is, but this role certainly brings out the best in him. Snow is partly just a typical drug abusing out-of-his-mind musician, but there are layers of loneliness and self awareness underneath that exterior, and his unique use of the English language never ceases to entertain. He plays a secondary role to Jonah Hill's young talent agent Aaron, but I think he could have carried the movie himself.

Not that Hill's bad at all in the movie. He always seems to find a new little twist on his general persona in each new movie, and this character is definitely a bit different, being a very nervous young guy who just wants to do a good job but makes a habit of screwing up. He has to get Snow to the Greek Theatre in LA from his home in London in just a couple days, and unfortunately for him Snow is much better at procrastinating than he is at getting him to do anything. There's an interesting dynamic between the two, as Aaron grows from admiring Snow at a distance to understanding what the man is really like, and Snow comes to appreciate one of the only people he's met who doesn't want to take advantage of him. The supporting cast is good too. Elisabeth Moss plays Aaron's girlfriend, and she seems liberated by playing a character that isn't a 60s copy writer. Their relationship is sweet, even if it gets splintered heavily by the events of the film. Colm Meaney plays Snow's father, and his combination of easy charm with completely awful motives is an interesting turn. Diddy is also surprisingly entertaining as Hill's boss, even if it seemed like his role was overplayed in advertisements. His character is truly foul mouthed and insane, which are both aspects they couldn't really get across in TV spots, and I was pleasantly surprised by the character.

So Hill and Brand run around Europe and then the United States, getting impossibly intoxicated on alcohol and drugs, and going to absurdly debaucherous parties, and basically doing everything except going where they should be. I think the movie works because the adult content is just so completely over the edge, which makes it more interesting to watch than a standard R rated road trip movie. I did see the unrated version, so I wonder how much that helped. Over time they learn more about each other, and by the end they've finally realized things that will let them have better lives from that point forward. It's a pretty standard arc for this sort of movie, but it all works because it's very competently put together by Nicholas Stoller and his crew and the cast is very solid. Not every gag works, but enough do for me to recommend it as much as most other Judd Apatow-produced comedies.

Funny People

After creating two very good comedies with a bit of heart and building a movie empire as a producer, Judd Apatow returned last year with his third film, which has quite a bit more focus on sentiment rather than laughs. I saw a lot of people skeptical of his ability to pull this off, although I would guess most of them haven't seen Freaks and Geeks. I had no issue with the idea of Funny People, and it's successful in a lot of ways. The fact that it's not a great movie isn't because Apatow shouldn't try to be serious, it's just that a large chunk of the movie ends up being pretty unwatchable.

It's an odd thing, really. The movie's dangerously long for what could still be called a comedy, approaching two and a half hours. But Adam Sandler gives a surprisingly good performance as an actor and comedian who finds out that he has a very dangerous disease, and tries to get back to his stand up roots. Seth Rogen is his typical likable self, playing a much less confident version of himself who's struggling to make ends meet and gets hired by Sandler to be his assistant and help write jokes. Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman are both very good as his roommates who he must occasionally butt heads with because this movie is more dramatic. For reasons I'll get into in a moment, the movie needs a love interest for Rogen, and Aubrey Plaza does her usual sarcastic thing pretty well in that position. It was funny seeing the origins of Aziz Ansari's Raaaaaaaandy character, and tons of people make cameos as themselves, either in casual interactions with Sandler's character or in brief snippets from his fake filmography.

For the most part, the movie manages a good balance between the humor and the drama, with its great cast doing the typical improv-heavy vulgar conversation thing in one scene and seriously considering mortality in the next. There might be a few too many sad musical montages, but it never really goes over the top trying to sell Sandler's plight, maybe because his slightly self-destructive tendencies make him feel like a real person rather than just a sad sack trying to manipulate your emotions. So it's really disappointing when the movie hits the breaks on what it's been doing to spend like forty minutes wasting our time with a romance subplot. Leslie Mann and Eric Bana are both pretty good, likable actors, and they do a fine job in this movie. It's just that the part that they're in really doesn't belong with the rest. Everything else pretty much grinds to a halt as Sandler reconnects with Mann as the one that got away, as Apatow proudly presents his wife and daughters again, and then her husband played by Bana shows up to create a whole lot of awkward and difficult to watch tension. These scenes just keep going and going until the breaking point, while I was desperately waiting for them to get back to the real movie.

Eventually they do, once the scripts reaches its Time to Wrap Things Up phase with some predictable character development and resolution, although even being a bit rote as it was it was still better than what just came before. People reconcile and part ways as necessary, and everything ends just about the way it should. It's really too bad the movie went on that whole tangent, because apart from that I really liked it for the most part. As it stands, it's the least of Apatow's three films, though still worth seeing if you like the cast enough. I don't mind if he still wants to be sentimental last time, as long as he makes sure the script is a lot tighter than this.

Observe and Report

This was an unusual film. It had the slightly unfortunate position of coming out around the same time as Paul Blart: Mall Cop, and they share a similar premise on the surface, but from what I know about that film, there's really almost nothing in common. The movie is surprisingly dark, much more of a black comedy than they really advertised. It's less about Seth Rogen hitting on Anna Faris and pursuing a flasher, and more a story of a bipolar man with serious delusions of grandeur trying to make himself into something. I don't want to overplay this side of it, because first things first it is a comedy, but I was fairly impressed with Rogen's performance, and there were some fairly disturbing (if still funny) moments when you see more into the crazy things he actually thinks about himself and his abilities.

Both the funniest and most tragic thing about his aspirations of being a real cop if it weren't for his medical issues is that he would actually be pretty good at it. A lot of the movie is fairly mundane, but there are a few scenes that get violent and are actually pretty effective as action and show an unexpected degree of skill with weaponry in Rogen's character. I don't want to spoil what actually happens, but they're some of the most memorable scenes from last year. Jody Hill seems as much concerned with shocking the audience as making them laugh, but not in a gross-out way, and it's an approach that mostly works for me.

There's some pretty funny stuff with Rogen and his fellow mall security guys, and his antagonistic relationship with Aziz Ansari is terrific. Not every scene really meets its potential, though. His confrontation with Patton Oswalt's asshole food court restaurant manager could have gone farther, and the sidekick character is definitely a situation where he was probably funnier on paper. It's not an outstanding movie, but it does a lot to stick out from the crowd, especially the climax, which I'd rather not spoil but is one of the best scenes I've seen in ages. It really has to be seen to be believed. I actually thought the ending was a bit too upbeat for the story, but a lot about the film is going to stick with me for a while.

Parks and Recreation - Season 2

I said last year that while Parks and Recreation wasn't that amazing out of the gate, its sister show The Office wasn't either, and with time it could become something special. I didn't imagine it would get this good this fast, though. Definitely the most improved show of the year, which just makes it all the worse that NBC made the bone-headed decision to use the third season as a midseason replacement for some other upstart comedy. I get that they have a lot of faith in their new stuff, but that doesn't mean they had to pull this.

One of the things that made this season so much better is that the cast seems more comfortable and works together a lot better. Everything just hums with electricity when they're all in their zones, riffing and joking at light speed. By the time Andy is working as a shoeshine, it's pretty much golden. I wasn't a huge fan of how Jerry became a punching bag on the level of Meg Griffin, but otherwise these characters and relationships were so funny and well written that it seemed like they'd all been doing this for years. I can't say I was interested in the various romantic entanglements as much as they wanted me to be, but it didn't interfere with the comedy so it was fine by me. Leslie's brief relationship with a cop might have been the most enjoyable, mostly because of Louis C.K.'s understated performance.

At this point, the show is better off than its counterpart in Scranton. It's definitely on the upswing rather than the decline, and assuming this whole midseason fiasco doesn't harpoon it, it could be good for a while. They get a lot of good guest stars that don't feel like stunt casting, they seem to have a whole lot of things they could do with it, and it often just crackles with energy. You might not expect that they could get that much out of something like an opossum on a golf course, but then laugh your ass off for half an hour. It's definitely gonna be a long wait for the next episode.

I Love You, Man

You might guess this is another Apatow movie, but it's really just another of the several that have successfully modeled themselves after his revival of the R-rated comedy this past decade. It's actually not that similar stylistically in a lot of ways, although it's hard deny a bit of influence. The cast is pretty great, with all sorts of talent, both familiar and up and coming sprinkled throughout. The pedigree of the writer and director isn't fantastic, but they managed a solid hit with this. Paul Rudd is maybe a bit off-type, playing a guy who gets along with women and is a great boyfriend but never really connected deeply with another guy. After proposing to Rashida Jones, he realizes he doesn't even have a decent candidate for his best man, so he starts going on "man dates" looking for a friend. It's a cute idea, reversing the normal focus of a romantic comedy, and it sort of is the pinnacle of the bromance sub-genre. Eventually he meets Jason Segel, the two hit it off, and then there's the standard formula of growing friendship, troubles, and reconciliation right before the end (if you think that's a spoiler then you obviously have never seen a motion picture before).

So a lot of it is just Paul and Jason hanging out together, and Paul briefly seeing other guys played by a bunch of recognizable faces. Some of the better smaller parts are Andy Samberg and J.K. Simmons as his gay brother and dad respectively, and Jon Favreau as the dick husband of one of Jones' best friends, played by Jaime Pressly. A lot of the humor is fairly typical of modern comedy, although there were some unique bits that were pretty good. Throughout the movie Rudd can't help but try to come up with clever phrases in an attempt to sound cool and failing utterly, with each bomb funnier than the last. The best might have been "totes magotes" in place of totally, but it's hard to say. Certain things like Segel's "return the favor" engagement party toast were gold, and even something that could have seemed uninspired like the Lou Ferrigno part were saved by touches like the matter of fact the way others treat him with reverence. It's not a particularly groundbreaking movie and I'm not sure if I'll remember much of it a year from now, but as a simple funny movie it succeeds fairly well.

Parks and Recreation - Season 1

To be honest, the thing I liked the most about this batch of six episodes was the opening theme. It's delightfully chipper. That doesn't mean I don't like the show itself though, which is a pretty good if not great mimic of the style from its sister series The Office. It's created by some of the same people, and that definitely shows. I've seen people call it a rip-off, which is weird because plenty of creators who keep the same feel among their separate projects don't get the same knock, but there is something unique enough about the mockumentary-about-mundane-setting-with-wacky-people to maybe raise an eyebrow or two. Still, I thought it did enough to create it's own identity.

One thing to remember is that The US Office was a bit shaky in its first brief run as well. It took some time to get out of the UK original's shadow, and we could be seeing the same thing here. The comedy here was sometimes restrained to brief flashes of brilliance and Amy Poehler's combination of likability, blockheadedness, and romantic ineptitude is a bit too reminiscent of Steve Carell's Michael Scott, but I still mostly enjoyed watching it. Aziz Ansari has emerged in the last couple years with small parts on shows like Flight of the Conchords and Scrubs, and he's probably the brightest spot in the first season. His way of getting in fairly vicious jabs at people without them even realizing what he's doing never gets old, and he and Poehler work well together.