2012 Film Special Achievement Awards

DUBIOUS ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS PART 3

Special Achievement Award for Excessive Cleavage:

Rosamund Pike – Jack Reacher

“Clean up on Act 3 – Ms. Pike’s boobs have spilled all over this action movie.” Ms. Pike’s character starts out a successful lawyer who wins her cases with pluck and boobs. As her character arcs into investigations, her arcs get more screen space; apparently it takes more boob to be a detective than a lawyer. Perhaps it’s a good thing, then, that Tom Cruise denies her a turn as an action star too or goodness knows how she would use those things to defeat the creepy Russian Bond-villain. Leave that to bad Bond films. It’s almost like Cruise has something to prove. Oh, right, that. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL9Pft7HoB8

Special Achievement Award for Scriptorial Ignorance:

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen – drinking the well water

I’m an understanding guy. When Ewan Macgreggor foils a terrorist assassination by hitting the gunman with his fishing fly, I don’t wonder (for too long), “Wouldn’t the guy just take a second shot?” But I can’t imagine the writer of this film spent much time in “the Yemen.” In the film, charitable villagers hand Macgreggor and Emily Blunt a jar of well-water which they drink and, because of the temperature, they realize that their salmon run project will work. Let me tell you something – if someone gives you a jar of well-water in Yemen, don’t drink it. Odds are, if you manage to choke down the brackish silt you’ve been “gifted,” the only revelation you’re likely to receive is typhoid.

SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT FOR EMBARRASSED TO SAY I WAS ENTERTAINED:

Step Up: Revolution

Which is more preposterous – the notion that dance can change the world, or the possibility of on-the-fly throwing together a guerilla flash-mob dance campaign so good that people everywhere openly applaud the extraordinary inconvenience these dances cause. Has anyone seen a flash-mob youtube video? IT DOESN’T WORK. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPPwhOHQNS4

The step up: revolution is on youtube and it is a clumsy, awkward failure.

Anyways, I am embarrassed to say that for the dance parts I saw on that trans-Atlantic flight I was on, I was entertained. I accept man card demerits humbly.