August Movie Reviews: Best and Worst

Best movie I saw in the month of August: Tangled (2010)

So cute. And can I just say that I love Mandy Moore as a singing actress? I really do. Her music career doesn’t exactly fit into my preferences (see previous post), but as a singing actress in “cute” films she gets points from me every time.  

Tangled had it all for the current, much-appreciated trend of witty children’s movies. The plot certainly earned its PG rating and was a little darker and more violent than I expected. You know me, I have no fear of dark, but for a supposedly kid’s movie, I was surprised.

The songs were decent in the moment, although I couldn’t remember a single line from any of them the next day. I particularly loved the scene in the pub with all the colorful burly scumbags hiding big dreams of embracing their inner kitten hearts. A movie about them would be fun.

Both leads were appealing, and somehow avoided being total clichés (just partial, which is a big step for these things). Likewise with the villain who perfectly embodied an eerie sweet evil.

I’d watch this again, for sure. It doesn’t come close to supplanting Elf as my favorite “kids” movie of all time, but it was definitely one of the better ones I’ve seen in a while.

Least favorite movie I saw in the month of August: Miss Nobody (2010)

Miss Nobody earned this distinction mostly for lost potential. It wasn’t that it was terrible, it just could have been so good. It had everything going for it: sleek, stylish, and brimming with potential to be the darkly humorous film I was expecting. But it wasn’t. I didn’t find any of the dark humor, well, humorous, and in fact, I almost cringed at the obvious attempts. I prefer my humor and satires subtle. I may be in the minority, I don't know. Others may like it.

The problem is my interest nose-dived in the first ten minutes. Interest level after the opening scenes was at a stunning cliff overlooking a serene Colorado vista. Five minutes in, I could feel the rocks below digging into my back. I hung on for another forty-five minutes until my sleepy brain decided it wasn’t better than anything my bed could do for me.  

I stared at the title in my DVR queue for a minute or two during my next free moment to work on my DVR backlog. I stared, but I could finish it. I couldn't, not when there was an unwatched episode of “The Glades” waiting for me. I never went back to it and just didn’t care enough to spend any more precious free time on it. It was deleted. There’s only so much you can store on those things.

Maybe the plot picked up in the second half. With the introduction of Adam Goldberg’s detective, there’s a good chance it did. Maybe. But Miss Nobody missed the opportunity to make me care enough to find out.