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.

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.

Role Models

I wasn't expecting a whole lot out of Role Models besides a few laughs, but it ended up about as solid as any comedy these days that dips into the same pool of actors. Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott make an unlikely leading duo, and in a way they were both just carrying their own half movies that crossed over a number of times, but I bought their friendly if undesired (on Rudd's part) rapport. Rudd co-wrote the screenplay with some of his longtime comedy buddies, and it was a nice mix of some smaller faces with more currently popular names. Rudd's as wryly funny as ever, and Scott continues to somehow be likable despite his general personality being something that would usually make me want to shove a fist in his face. After an unfortunate incident they're forced to enlist in a Big Brothers Big Sisters-type program run by the hilarious as usual Jane Lynch in lieu of jail time. Scott gets a problematic kid, Rudd is assigned McLovin cast as a LARP-obsessed dork, and hilarity ensues.

I had some issues with the story, as things run just a little conveniently parallel between the two characters and the ending is perhaps overly tidy and happy for everyone. I'm not quite sure it earns everything it tries to do. It's not a big issue though, as I liked most of the characters and it was funnier than I expected. Everyone I already mentioned does a fine job, Elizabeth Banks continues to be underutilized for how good she is at this stuff, and Ken Jeong provides his usual unique brand of bizarre comedy as the "king" of the LARP community. It's not always his words that sell the jokes, it might be just the way he touches someone's face or just a look he does. And despite the general vulgar tone of the film, it actually does a few things to change perceptions of the unusual topics it covers. Again, the clean ending undermines a bit of the realism in the story, but overall it was a solid, funny movie.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

I only recognize Jason Segel as the moderately creepy friend of the main character in Knocked Up, but it turns out he can write and carry a good comedy too. Nicholas Stoller is another one of Judd Apatow's cronies who have been getting their directorial debuts in movies he's produced, and again, he's fine at effectively filming scenes, if not adequately pacing things. It's a little too long, and it seems like it keeps going after the conflict should be over. Still, it's a funny movie and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

After getting left by his girlfriend, played by the cute Kristen Bell, for a rock star played by Russel Brand, Segel goes to Hawaii to try and get away, only to discover they're staying at the same hotel. Little trite of a plot for a movie, but they make it work. Mila Kunis is the girl he turns to to help get over his problems, and of course things develop from there. Surprisingly, I think my favorite character in the movie is the rock star. Normally he'd be a huge jerk that would probably get bit by a shark or something, but he's always funny and actually gets a bit sympathetic eventually. Some other recognizable faces make humorous appearances, and male genitalia is used to comedic effect multiple times. It's not as smart as some of the other Apatow stuff, but I liked it most of the way through.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

Before I talk about the movie, I'll mention I'm a little surprised that this basically bombed after the huge success of every other Apatow flick in recent memory, including two (Superbad and Knocked Up) just this year. I guess the subject matter isn't quite as universal, but there's no reason my dad and I should have been the only people in the theater when we saw it. Granted, it was a 1:50 show on a Wednesday, but most people don't work the day after Christmas. Oh well. Walk Hard's a little sillier, but still quite funny throughout. It's as straight up a parody as we've seen from the The Judd Apatow Sex Comedy Train, but unlike the other truly awful parody movies we see (seriously, anyone who's seen the horrendous trailer for Meet the Spartans knows what I mean), it's a genuinely funny movie in its own right that happens to closely follow the structure of the biopics it mocks instead of lamely copying popular scenes with no production value, idiotic gags, and tons of shitty pop culture references that are devoid of content or point. Jake Kasdan directed and co-wrote, and like Mottola with Superbad, he doesn't seem especially good or bad, and fits right into the groove with everyone Apatow works with.

Walk Hard packs scads of cameos by some very funny people, often playing famous musicians, like Jack White as Elvis or Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Justin Long, and Jason Schwartzman as the Beatles in a truly hilarious scene. John C. Reilly is known as a character actor, but he steps up as the lead very well, carrying the movie with ease and performing ably in the musical segments. There's plenty of mature (or is it really immature?) humor involving sex and drugs, like a great running gag with Tim Meadows trying to keep Dewey away from whatever he's using while at the same time making it sound really enticing. A couple gags from trailers didn't make it to the final cut, leaving me positive the DVD will be packed with some great stuff. Besides just being funny, Walk Hard is a movie about the life of musician, and there's a lot of different kinds of music performed, most of which is actually pretty good and sometimes funny as well, like the Bob Dylan parody. I would have liked to have seen it with a bigger audience, but Walk Hard was still quite an enjoyable experience.

Reno 911!: Miami

I like Reno 911! well enough, though I never go out of my way to watch it. It's funny, but never that important to really follow it closely, so it's the kind of show you enjoy when it's on but maybe you don't care about it that much. I remember seeing a trailer for the movie, but it came and went without me even being aware it did. When I had the opportunity to check it out, I did.

The movie is chock full of entertaining cameos and funny guest stars. The Rock's one minute of screen time is classic, and Paul Rudd and Patton Oswalt are great in their roles. Reno 911! is one of the better current examples of retroscripting, where the plot is known but almost all the dialogue is improvised by the actors. It makes for a slightly different style of humor that comes off as a bit more natural, while still being funny most of the time. They make good use of the movie format. There are a lot of over-the-top deaths in the movie with blood spraying everywhere, and it adds to the absurdity immensely. There's also liberal cursing and sexual humor, especially a great scene where Deputy Jones is running in horror from the sight of his coworkers doing some inappropriate things.

They do actually attempt to do a story with twists and a climax, and for the most part it works out all right. It's all done with a bit of a smirk, and it works out to a very funny movie that anyone who likes the show or characters, or even just the form of comedy, should probably enjoy.

Knocked Up

So our mall's opening a new Regal theater with stadium seating, and it's actually fairly nice. No more will the tops of the heads of strangers be an issue when I'm watching the latest blockbusters. Not that I get a chance to see many movies anyway. As a special promotion, they were showing slightly older movies for a dollar a ticket yesterday, and I wanted to see Knocked Up, so it worked out pretty nicely. I had to get up to pee a few times (Special $1 soda will do that) but otherwise it was a nice viewing experience.

The movie itself was good too. It's the same director as The 40 Year Old Virgin and a lot of the cast is the same as well. Even people who don't have real parts make some cameos, and you can tell they're a group that enjoys working together. The star, Seth Rogen, had his breakout role in Virgin as Carell's coworker Cal, and it's interesting to see him as the main character. He's funny, but in a much different way from famous comedy stars like Jim Carrey and Ben Stiller. He's not playing a crazy character, he's playing a normal, likable guy. He has problems doing the right thing sometimes but you can tell his heart's mostly in the right place and he just needs some help sometimes. Katherine Heigl is also very good as the female lead. She holds her own and is believable as the girl struggling to come to grips with a situation she didn't plan for and a guy she isn't sure about. The supporting cast is also great, with Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd as the slightly older couple that serves as an example of marriage's troubles, a decent group of funny guys as Seth's friends, and Craig Robinson in a small but memorable role as the reluctant doorman at a night club. Why he isn't in more movies is a mystery to me.

The movie starts off a bit iffy, with some hit-and-miss pop culture humor, but it comes into its own as it develops the plot and the different relationships that form. Like Virgin, there's lots of drug use and constant raunchy dialogue, but it still comes away feeling charming because of the human element that can be seen through all of the vulgarity. It's an adult movie, not just because of the mature humor, but because it honestly deals with real issues like unplanned pregnancy. It's not without some errors. It's probably a bit too long. It's also a little predictable with the whole plot conflict as it gets closer to the end, of course they have to have a big fight and split up for a while before realizing it's all gonna be fine in the end. Honestly, I'm a little tired of the same old romantic comedy storyline, and just once I'd like to see a film eschew it. Why couldn't it just be about two people coming to grips with having a baby, why introduce the whole say-hurtful-things-under-stress-and-feel-sorry-later thing when nobody really likes it? It also gets a little heavy-handed with the message about not blaming others and being responsible for your own actions, but it never gets too bad and it all evens out to a hysterical movie with a good heart.