Doubleheader Review

I've decided to finally pen this review. It's going to be a doozy.

THE TRANSPORTER 2 REVIEW
As I'm sure you know, a review of this movie has already been posted by our own Port Smellden. That review was a glowing portrayal of explosions, flying vehicles, and general mayham. It would be boring to review the movie again, so instead...

THE TRANSPORTER 2 REVIEW BY PAT HAYDEN REVIEW
I respect Pat Hayden an awful lot. I put him in the very highest eschalon of geniuses, and take his recommendations to heart (regardless of previous slip-ups including 50 First Dates). That being said, Pat Hayden is an idiot. This review generally paints a picture of a movie that any red-blooded, American macho man like myself would eat up. I was promised steak, instead I got a plain salad in like a really crazy bowl. The Transporter 2 THOUGHT it was bad-ass. It tried so hard to make cool stuff happen, and it often seemed it would, but it never did. For example, remember this?

The Transporter fights off about six guys using a fire hose with a large, metal nozzle. By hooking the hose around paint cans and flinging them at a dude's head, kicking the metal nozzle at a guy like a teather ball, and using the hose as a lasso to catch someone running up the stairs, The Transporter escapes danger again. Oh, and while he's finishing them off, he ties them all up in the hose and turns it on, sending the bad dudes flying everywhere.

First, it was three guys. Sorry. Half the awesomeness gone, right there. Otherwise that's pretty much how it happens, he throws the nozzle around and hits people with it, kicks it at people, etc. (The best move is when a guy runs at the transporter and he just side steps, and tosses a bunch of hose in the bad dude's way, and the bad dude gets all tangled up.) At the end the bad guys are wrapped up, and when the transporter turns the hose on they don't so much, "fly everywhere," as Pat puts it, but rather they sort of slide across the floor in a semi-controled fahion. Yawn.

"Uh oh. There's a crazy Russian supermodel with two automatic, lazer-sighted pistols, and she's shooting the shit out of everything! All I have is this ordinary wooden door to hide behind. Thank God it can withstand gunfire! Now that I did an awesome backwards somersault into this room, what am I gonna do to get out of it? OH! A Nitrous Oxide tank! I'll open the tank, put it on a cart, and roll it out into the hall, where she's still shooting! Next...I need some fire! I'll throw this unidentified substance at the neon lights above to make fire! That'll ignite the nitrous oxide and make the tank a missile that will fly exactly at the Russian supermodel! What, she jumped out of the way!? Well, I suppose if I can dodge bullets, why can't she dodge my homemade guided missile. I knew I should have taped my Palm Pilot to it so I could control it better." That has to be, verbatim, what he was thinking during this scene. It was awesome.

I'm not exactly sure why Pat thinks the transporter was thinking about his Palm Pilot, but I suppose he certianly could have been. It's not like there was any good fighting going on to distract him (burn). This discription is pretty accurate - he does use a wooden door to block bullets from about ten feet away, he really does dodbe bullets at one point, and he really does start a fire by throwing what I guess was alcohol at the neon lights. The problem is that this scene takes place in a doctor's office, where the transporter ends up cornered by three goons, and only really fights one of them before running away (and setting the office on fire via his NO tank missle). There is one great moment here where a big bad buy rushes at the transporter and they go smashing through a wall - that was pretty sweet, I have to admit. But then he just sort of runs away, and the scene ends. Also, note that when he finally DOES kill the really ugly "supermodel", he does so after a "fight" that lasts all of one minute.

Oh, he also catches a bus on a jet ski. On land. Think about it.

This was probably the closes I came to leaving the theater. The waterski is shown like a quarter-mile away from the bus in one shot, then is suddenly right behind it, jumps via a convient ramp onto the freeway, slides FASTER THAN THE BUS for about 100 feet, allowing the transporter to catch up to the bus. This sort of thing is completely acceptable if done awesomely, but not so acceptable when done goofily. The saving grace of this whole sequence is probably when he first jumps on the jet ski there's a girl on it, and he like flips her over her head so that she's sitting behind him. That was weird, but better than the entire rest of the "chase".

So, in conclusion, he can drive, he can fight, he can make bombs out of anything, he's quick, he's clever, he's benevolent, he's well-dressed, he's good with kids, he can fly a plane, he can hold his breath for apparently five minutes, and he's available for a job (thank God they set this up for a sequel).

When did he hold his breath for five minutes? When did he fly a plane?

I remember him BEING in a plane, and that plane smashing into the ocean (and the transporter performing a completely stupid-looking dive away from the front of the plane when he sees it's going to crash (see above)), and him surfacing shortly there after (you know, after the plans smashes into the ocean at full speed and he just sort of opens the door and swims out). And I didn't notice how it's set up for a sequel. But I guess there's always stuff to be moved.

Wait a second...this looks like a school. It is a school! What is this...The Pacifier meets, um, The Transporter? Who's gonna want some young, dumb kid? Snooze fest, right?

WRONG!

So, in conclusion, let me just say, Snooze fest, right? RIGHT! Also, Pat told me there may be a whip fight in this movie. THERE WAS NOT. But we must realize that Pat's review itself was anything but a snooze fest. This leads me to my final point concerning the transporter: Pat's review of The Transporter 2 was 100 times better than The Transporter 2. That being said, Pat Hayden is a genius.

THE JUST LIKE HEAVEN REVIEW
Okay! Yeah! The Transporter 2 was bad, but now we get some ghosts! Whoo! Alright!

Did you just feel a chill?

Well, sometimes people feel a chill when a ghost is around, but that can't be the case here. That's right, that chill you just felt was because THERE ARE NO GHOSTS IN JUST LIKE HEAVEN. I'll leave a moment for that to sink in.

No ghosts. The entire movie SCREAMS "I have ghosts in me!" Just look at the damn poster (yes I saw this movie, want to fight about it?): "It's a wonderful afterlife." CLEARLY there are ghosts in this movie! There's no question about it! This movie is going to have so many ghosts that even HDR and P2K, reknowned ghost affecionados will enjoy the ghost antics! Well, folks, they completely screwed the world. They tricked us into seeing their movie with the promise of ghosts and ghost romance and Mark Ruffalo's trademark brand of charming weirdness making a ghost happy again. Or SOMETHING. But instead we get Reese Witherspoon in a coma. A freaking coma.

Turns out Mark Ruffalo rents an apartment that Reese Witherspoon used to live in before she di- fell into a coma. After Mark moves in, Reese starts showing up, but she can't remember anything. Mark helps her figure out who she is, and they fall in love. Oh joy, but that's the crap I expected here. What I did not expect was that I wouldn't care about it at all.

After about an hour, Reese Witherspoon finds her body, all hooked up to equipment and whatnot. This is when the film completely looses it. The "bad guy" is another doctor at the hospital who convinces Reese's sister to pull the plug. Mark tries to talk her out of it, but fails. (While Mark talks to the sister, Reese realizes that her little niece can also see her for some reason, which makes NO sense, as the explination for why she comes back, and why Mark can see her is they were supposed to meet each other the night she died. Love conquers all.) So Mark finally tries to steal her body, and gets caught in the hospital hallway. At this moment I lean over to Pat's sister, Lauren, and say, "If he kisses her, and she wakes up, I'm going to riot." He did, and she did, she here I go:

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

Okay. So she wakes up, and (suprise, suprise) she can't remember Mark. But that only lasts about five minutes, until Mark builds her a garden and she remembers everything. Okay, ready for the best part? When Reese was a non-ghost, she said, "I feel like if you could touch me, really touch me, I could wake up." Well, he finally "really touches" her by kissing her body.

(ASIDE: The night before the plug is going to be pulled on Reese's body, Mark says they can do anything she wants - go to Paris, see the ocean, whatever. She says she has something she wants to do, and she and Mark lay down in bed together to have non-ghost sex, I guess. This is where she says the, "If you could really touch me, I'd wake up," line. EVERYONE thought he was going to go the hospital and get on her unconscious body.)

Okay, so Mark "really touches" Reese by kissing her body when she's in a coma. How can he really touch her when she's awake agian, though? Why, by touching her soul. He builds her this beautiful garden (which just happens to look like a garden she imagines herself in to calm down at work), and it "really touches" her, and she remembers him ("wakes up"). And we assume they get married and live happily ever after.

That's pretty much how it ends. Mark and Reese end up together, ghosts everywhere are irate for being implicitly involved in this movie, and I wish we had seen Roll Bounce.

The big problem here is not just that the movie sucked, it's that the non-ghost sucked. Even if the show/movie they are found in isn't so good, ghosts tend to be great. I think this stems from the fact that they are dead. Dead dead. Not comming back dead. This limits the effects their actions can have, their stories usually involve warning the living, or setting one last thing right, or just having a good time in an Ewok village. In Just Like Heaven, Reese Witherspoon comes back to life!

So un-ghosts are no good. Real ghosts rule. In closing, Here's just a small sample of the ghosts we've come to know and love, hopefully this makes up for their good names being dragged through the mud just a little bit.


This is the Ghost of Christmas Present. The Christmas Story is a tale full of ghosts.


This is the ghost of Jacob Marly, also from The Christmas Story. The ghosts in this story are especially good in the Disney and Muppet versions.


Fucking Casper. Even a ghost as lame as Casper is fun. Look at him, I guess he's stepping in some concrete with some boots he found. Wonderful!


Even these pictures where people say dust is ghosts are fun.


Jedi ghosts. These ghosts kicked some serious ass in their day, and now they just show up for the party. These ghosts know how to do it.


More recently there have been some decent ghosts seen running around in Supernatural on the WB. Here, I guess the house is a ghost.