Party Down

Co-created by Paul Rudd and Veronica Mars' Rob Thomas among others, Party Down is a pretty fantastic little comedy that didn't last nearly as long as it should have, which probably makes its twenty great episodes seem all the better. It's about a catering crew led by Ken Marino's Ron, staffed mostly by actors who are either trying to make it big or have already given up on that dream. Adam Scott is Henry, an old coworker of Ron's who's returned to tend the bar after quitting acting. Lizzy Caplan is Casey, a comedian/actor who ends up in a casual hook-up relationship with Henry. Martin Starr is Roman, a nerdy writer of "hard sci fi" who has his eyes on Casey. Ryan Hansen is Kyle, a dim-witted actor/model/musician who has a bickering friendship with Roman. Jane Lynch is Constance, an older former actress that shares a kinship with the similarly blond Kyle. She's replaced in the second season by Megan Mullally, an irritating-yet-likable divorced mother of a young aspiring actress. You see how I chained all the main characters together like that? Pretty good stuff.

What's sort of interesting about Party Down is how there isn't a single scene where the characters aren't working their jobs, with two qualified exceptions. They screw around all the time, but every episode takes place entirely at the event they're catering, as their personal lives and disagreements boil over and affect their work. The writers do a solid job of mixing together wacky catering hijinks with longer term character development, in a way that serves both while sacrificing neither. There's a certain level of sadness to most of the characters that is a central jumping off point for the humor, a dichotomy that you often find in the best TV comedies. Everybody's frustrated with their careers and their distant ambitions and their love lives, and it leads to some pretty entertaining explosions of emotion and resentments that are played out in pranks and sabotages.

It's also just a well-acted show, with the main cast doing a terrific job and surrounded by a veritable revolving door of recognizable comedic talents. It's Starz so they're allowed to get away with a lot, though some episodes are definitely dirtier than others, such as one centering on an orgy that never seems to really get going. the tension between Henry and Casey is the main focus of the show for the most part, though Ron's hilariously pathetic life gets a lot of attention too, and no main character ever really gets short shrift. I would have liked to have seen where they'd go with a third season this year, but the show does a pretty great job with the time it has and ended up closing on a solid moment of hope without getting too sweet about it. Maybe if it had a little more in the way of people with swords stabbing and screwing each other it could have lasted longer, but what it is still ended up being pretty special.

Hot Tub Time Machine

You've probably seen a movie like Hot Tub Time Machine before. A comedy that you like the actors in, and has a funny concept, and is actually pretty humorous, but you still feel a little let down by. It's not a bad movie at all - I'd call it pretty good. But I kind of wish it was more. This is a movie about a group of guys who find a hot tub that can travel back in time... and they spend the whole thing stuck in the 80s. A common complaint with comedies is that all the funny parts are in the trailer, and while that's not really true here, I'd like to make a variation on the idea. There are plenty of laughs that are not in the trailer, but all the laughs that are in the trailer are represented in full. What might have been teases for great scenes, like the one with Craig Robinson reluctantly having sex in the bath, are pretty much exactly as they appeared, with nothing extra you didn't know about. It leads to a movie that's funny but not really ever unexpected.

It's obvious after a point that it's really a send up of 80s movies rather than time travel. A few stars of those films appear, like Chevy Chase as the mysterious hot tub repairman and Crispin Glover as a bellhop who's always close to losing an arm. And it's really a typical 80s comedy in a lot of ways, with characters like Lizzy Caplan's Deschanel-esque quirky perfect girl and Sebastian Stan's douche bag alpha male. There's a lot of gross-out bodily function stuff that doesn't really play anymore and of course a Communist paranoia thread that helps lead to the main conflict keeping the good guys from getting back to the present. All of the main guys are pretty good, and the supporting cast is mostly decent even if some of them didn't really sell the 80s so much as someone's vague memories of the 80s. Rob Corddry is the main comedic catalyst, though honestly it seems like he's trying too hard in an attempt at a broader audience. I liked the movie, I just wish it was better. And after hearing about the whole color correction issue, it was impossible not to notice. If you don't know what I'm talking about, google "teal and orange". Lots of movies are limiting themselves to this palette, and it really doesn't work in a movie that's supposed to represent the 80s. It just looks really weird in spots. Even the DVD box art can't escape the madness.

Cloverfield

Cloverfield isn't for everybody. If you get motion sickness easily, the intentionally rough camera work could easily get to you, and if you tend to overreact to stuff like 9/11 parallels or endings that don't say "And this is what happened to everybody!", you might not like it. I'll be honest, I didn't think about the 9/11 attacks once while watching it. The similarities are there; disaster hitting New York City, buildings crumbling, people running, and the film is shot as if it's a home video. But I was just thinking about how effective it was as a way to depict a horrific event, it never seemed like they were trying to milk the connection for a cheap thrill. Any complaints about things being unresolved are from people who missed the point; the entire movie never breaks "character", it's supposed to be a home video of the attack found by the government and used for analysis, with no additions or stupid epilogues to add closure. I found it to be tremendously well-done in this regard, and I was impressed by how well they added details naturally by methods such as intermittent clips of previously recorded footage that was supposedly overwritten during the filming.

The style itself isn't the whole movie, although it's a bigger part than it would be most of the time. I thought they did a good job in the beginning of setting the scene and introducing the important characters before the monster attacks, some would say that part was overlong but it made it more real and got the job done. It's a pretty short movie, so they had to establish the relationships quick enough that the emotional impact would be there when bad things happen. The acting wasn't great, a lot of the dialogue was very repetitive and simple, although again, it all made sense for what the movie was. If you were in the middle of a city being destroyed by a gigantic, rampaging monster, you might say "Oh my God!" over and over again too. There's some humor there in some of the interactions in less stressful situations, a lot of it provided by Hud, the guy who's holding the camera the whole time. The monster itself and other unfortunate things are impressively designed and animated, and I liked how there were very few clear shots of what they looked like, as the characters were more concerned with their own safety than perfect footage. The camera itself is a character, showing us only enough to arouse our curiosity and being useful in more than one way. I wouldn't say the movie ever scared me, but it was certainly a thrilling, exciting, fun story told in an incredible way.

By the way, there's something after the credits, I don't recommend waiting because you won't get much out of it, but after seeing it, you should definitely look up what was there.