Bottle Rocket

I always figured I'd like Wes Anderson's movies, though I haven't seen any until now. Might as well start at the beginning. Bottle Rocket was originally a short film, and then it got remade into a full feature a couple years later. Anderson and Owen Wilson wrote the script, and Wilson and his brother Luke star in their first feature. It's a quirky comedy about a couple friends that seem like they'd rather be in a heist movie. The film begins with Anthony (played by Luke) "escaping" from a voluntary mental hospital and going along with his friend Dignan (Owen) in his plan to rob a bookstore. They recruit their rich friend Bob to be the driver, and then after the job, go on the lam in a motel a few towns over. Anthony meets someone at the motel, and events conspire to put a strain on his friendship with Dignan. Things continue from there, never getting too dramatic or exciting, but eventually coming to a head pretty naturally.

Bottle Rocket sort of feels like the definition of a good low budget comedy. There's not a ton of style or flash to the proceedings, but it's all well filmed and acted by the unknown cast. James Caan was probably the only one with an established career at the time to appear in the movie, playing a landscaper/criminal with some unique interests. The Wilson brothers do a good job, particularly Owen, who really sells every scene he's in and can make you feel sorry for him or hate him at the drop of a hat. The plotting is fairly slow, but the movie is never boring. It's not always laugh out loud funny, but there's a simple pleasure to watching it, and the characters carry it through it's quick running time. I often find the indie movie aesthetic to be trying, but that wasn't the case here, and it seemed like a pretty good way to start a career for all involved. Anderson's body of work is definitely something I'm interested in continued pursuit of.

Idiocracy

We went to see Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer for a buck as part of the promotion I mentioned when talking about Knocked Up, but it was sold out. We decided to rent a movie instead of seeing Wild Hogs, and decided on this. It's unfortunate that test screenings didn't go well and FOX blackballed it, giving it an extremely limited release and quickly shoving it onto DVD. It might not be for everyone, but it's a silly, fun movie with a lot of pretty good laughs. The premise is actually a little more scarily realistic than the average science fiction movie. We can already see that intelligence correlates negatively with number of offspring, so it wouldn't be inconceivable that in time the entire planet will be technically retarded. It wouldn't actually get this bad or happen this quickly, but it's still something to wonder about.

It's pretty incredible how long Mike Judge was able to keep stupid funny. The movie could have easily run out of steam and been one-note, but it stayed pretty fresh the whole time. Luke Wilson isn't an especially talented or funny actor, but that actually works to his favor here, as he represents the completely average person who finds himself a genius among idiots. Maya Rudolph is fairly good as the other person from the past, although the whole romance subplot with her and Luke seemed tacked on and pointless. Although the jokes about her pimp "Upgrayedd" were worth it. A lot of the humor in the movie comes from new uses of words and the way businesses from today have drastically changed. Police constantly refer to their suspects as "particular individuals" and the greeter at Costco greets customers with "Welcome to Costco. I love you." Judge did a good job of mixing up all the ways they're stupid and it came out as a really funny movie that didn't get the chance it deserved.