W. ***

When I first heard that Oliver Stone was going to make W., I thought that there was no way I'd ever see it. After the paranoid conspiracy theories in JFK, I gave up on Stone's films. Then I saw him on Real Time with Bill Maher, and Stone actually seemed ... reasonable. And good reviews started coming out. So while I missed my chance to see the premiere at the Austin Film Festival, I decided I'd give the film a shot.

In case you haven't heard or guessed, W. is about the life of George W. Bush, portraying snippets of his formative years, his aimless adulthood, his rise through politics, and the start of the Iraq war. The script focuses on the dynamic between George W. and his father, George H. W. Bush, and uses that dicey relationship to drive W.'s motivations. The film cuts back and forth in time, jumping between 2003, his frat days, and the decades in between.

Without question, the best thing about the film is Josh Brolin as W. I can't believe this is the same guy who was in No Country for Old Men. His portrayal is no comedic caricature; he lives and breathes the role. He is W. There is no question. It's a truly amazing and seamless performance.

Elizabeth Banks (who seems to be in every movie out right now) does a decent job as Laura Bush. James Cromwell doesn't try to inhabit the role of the senior Bush the way Brolin does for junior. However, given that subconsciously I may have been expecting too much of a Dana Carvey version of Bush 41, it may be for the best that Cromwell played it perfectly straight, with few mannerisms or emotions beyond his lifelong disappointment with Bush 43.

Most of the rest of the supporting cast, including Richard Dreyfuss as a manipulating and adamantly focused Dick Cheney, do passable jobs themselves. It's also funny to see Daily Show veteran Rob Corddry in a small role as press secretary Ari Fleischer, with the satirist now playing one of the targets of his past barbs without a trace of farce. The weak point by far is Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice. She. Is. Horrible. Her movements are jerky almost to the point of being a puppet, and her voice sounds like it was dubbed in afterwards by an untalented impressionist. She plays Rice as a caricature, and badly at that. If Brolin's performance weren't so strong, she could easily have brought the entire movie down.

Besides Newton, the biggest flaw in the film is that it hardly brings anything new to the table. The film makes a big deal about the clashes between Bush 41 and 43 and how they motivate everything George W. tries to do, especially as president, but none of that is new information. Plenty of people have proffered that theory already. The idea that George W. is a decent guy who got in way over his head is also nothing new. Nor is the notion that people like Cheney drove W.'s agenda from their own hard-right worldview. One of the few scenes that actually seems to fill in the blanks well is when W.'s preacher helps him to be reborn in Christ; it's actually quite a sincere moment. And the contrast between Colin Powell and Cheney in the Bush 41 administration versus the Bush 43 administration is actually interesting as well.

The longest scene in the film is a cabinet meeting debate over whether to invade Iraq. And it goes on forever. Stone could have made his point in half the time. I started to get bored. (I also found it to be somewhat depressing that this might have been how we got into this mess, but that's a political opinion that should not reflect on my review of the film). And the famous pretzel choking incident, which gets its own scene in the film, seems completely extraneous. It adds little or nothing to the film and seems to have no purpose other than to show us something we've all read about already. Even as someone who never voted for the real President W. and who doesn't think highly of him, I thought including that scene was pointless.

The film assumes the audience has a fair amount of familiarity with the events in the movie already. If you don't remember everyone who's been in Bush 43's cabinet, you might find yourself trying to remember who's who. It took me half the film to realize that the "George" that W. kept referring to was George Tenet, because it took that long for them to put the letters "CIA" with him. So at times, you may find yourself scrambling to figure out who or what they just referred to in passing, which is a little distracting.

Unless you believe that George W. Bush is the greatest president who ever lived, W. comes across as a fairly sympathetic portrayal of our 43rd president. Surprisingly so. And the film does seem to exonerate him of anything except being driven by his father's disdain and preference for Jeb Bush. Cheney and others are to blame for his failed policies in this film, not him. He just has daddy issues.

Overall, W. is entertaining, but in the end, it's fairly light fare. Very little meat is added to the story outline we've all heard about George W. Bush already over the years. Still, it's worth seeing for Josh Brolin's amazing performance. If you're coming from a hard-right or even a hard-left political viewpoint, you probably won't enjoy this film, as it would either go too far or not nearly far enough for your tastes. But if you're open to a portrayal of George W. Bush that's neither flattering nor a hatchet job, leave your politics at the concession stand and go see W.

Max Payne (*)

Before I go to see a popcorn movie, I often lower my expectations first. I don't expect every film to be Citizen Kane, especially in the action genre. I'll put up with mind-bending leaps of logic and galactically gaping plot holes as long as it's all in good fun and works within the context of that movie. I just want to be entertained for a couple of hours.

An hour into Max Payne, the new film starring Mark Wahlberg based on the computer game series, I found myself surfing on my phone to figure out how much time was left, debating whether I'd be better off walking out right then and there.

Having never played the computer game, I have no idea how closely the character of Max Payne in the film is like the character in the game. But if the game is anything like the film, it must be one boring game. Wahlberg's Max is just a standard brooding cop haunted by the tragic unsolved murder of his family. Yawn. I guess we're supposed to assume he was a loving father and husband beforehand, but we barely get any sense of what he was like before tragedy struck. Instead we get a brooding one-dimensional detective who never shows any emotion other than the occasional bout of anger.

Mila Kunis of That '70s Show tries her best to act tough as Mona Sax, but it really only works in her first scene. The sight of her toting around a big gun everywhere like it was a purse is almost laughable. The one interesting thing about her character is that the filmmakers don't take the standard route of making her a love interest. However, the lack of that cliche actually hurts the film; Max's ties to Mona are tenuous at best, so it's difficult to become emotionally invested in anything other than their twin desires for revenge -- and even then it's hard to care, because it's revenge for the deaths of characters we barely knew and care little about.

Even as an action film, this falls far short. There's actually very little action until more than an hour into the movie. And even then it's fairly boring. A few moments of extreme slow motion are supposed to be the hallmark of the film, I suppose, but it just smacks of trying too hard. The slo-mo doesn't add any wow factor; it just makes the film longer for no good reason. And the big climax barely moves the action seismograph. I may have decided to see the film through to the end, but I don't feel like I'd have missed out if I'd left.

I never cared about any of the characters. Will Max Payne find out who really killed his family? Who cares. I'm not even sure they ever explained the connection between Mona's murdered sister and the killer of Max's family. Maybe they did explain it better and I missed it when I was surfing on my phone, but that's still the filmmakers' fault for losing my interest like that. And don't get me started on the winged avenging angel aspect of the film; that purpose of that was never explained to my satisfaction.

You almost feel sorry for supporting actors like Beau Bridges and Chris O'Donnell, the latter of whom must be really hurting for work given that he took such a tiny and ultimately meaningless role.

I give this film one star and not zero only because I've seen far worse films that make you want to tear your eyes out (Once Upon a Time in Mexico and Dead Heat, just to name two). Max Payne isn't that bad. It's just boring, pointless, and thoroughly uninteresting. The only vaguely original aspect, an action hero without a new love interest, only succeeds in increasing the boredom.

I really hate to rag on the film because the screenwriter is a graduate of UT who was at the Austin Film Festival a couple weeks ago and spoke at one of the seminars I attended. This is his first screenwriting credit too, so I want to be supportive and someday get my chance to be paid millions to write a poorly-reviewed film. And to be fair, my viewing experience was tainted by the fact that the theater seemed to have ... bugs. Three times I killed a gnat or spider or something landing on my arm. This isn't a crappy theater either, so I don't know what the deal was there. So I'll just blame it all on the director for making a film in which I felt no connection with the characters, plot, or action, a film that I almost walked out of. Max Payne should have been released in the summer, because at least then I could've enjoyed the air conditioning.

The Dark Knight (*****)

Wow.

I couldn’t move for the last 45 minutes of this movie. Maybe it was an hour. I’m not even sure.

When director Christopher Nolan restarted the Batman movie franchise 7 years after Joel Schumacher killed it with 1998’s gawdawful Batman & Robin, he did it in grand style by making the definitive Batman movie. Batman Begins was the first Batman movie that really nailed the essence of the character. It wasn’t just the best Batman film, it was a really, really good film. How could they top that?

That was the problem going into The Dark Knight. Hype, Heath Ledger’s death, and then the opening weekend box office blowout all fed into a perfect storm of unworldly expectations that nothing could possibly match. And in fact, it took me about 20 or 30 minutes before I really felt sucked into the movie. In setting up all the various plot elements for the film, plus giving us a brief cameo of a villain from the last movie, it takes a little while for the movie to get going.

Once the movie grabbed me, though, the intensity slowly throttled up until I was frozen in my seat, afraid to move in case I missed something. It’s a long film, and once I was tempted to look at my watch, but that feeling was quickly taken care of.

Christian Bale returns as Batman/Bruce Wayne. As in the first movie, he nails all three aspects of the character, the public Bruce Wayne, the true Bruce Wayne, and Batman. He again carries himself well in each role. As before, the main problem is that his growling Batman voice doesn’t always work. Sometimes it’s fine, but sometimes it’s so gutteral that it’s hard to understand.

Maggie Gyllenhall replaces Katie Holmes as love interest/DA Rachel Dawes. She commands a lot more respect in this role than Holmes did. The rest of the supporting cast returns from Batman Begins, including Michael Caine as Alfred, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, and Gary Oldman (who seems to have a new career as a good guy) as Lt. and future Commissioner Gordon. I won’t say whether he finally reaches that post in this movie, but let’s just say that the commissioner from the last one is still in this one. Commissioner Gordon was all but ignored in the movies prior to Batman Begins; this time around, he is involved even more as Batman’s ally on the ground. All of the supporting cast do a superb job in their roles.

The two biggest newcomers to the cast are Aaron Eckhart as District Attorney Harvey Dent and the late Heath Ledger as the Joker. All the talk has been about Ledger’s performance. Eckhart has the easier task, as he is only following Billy Dee Williams’ nearly absent performance as Dent in the 1989 Batman (yes, I said Billy Dee Williams), as well as Tommy Lee Jones’ inexplicably one-dimensional turn as the character in Batman Forever. I guess it’s good that they didn’t cast someone whose first name ends with a “y” and whose middle name rhymes with “pee” this time.

Ledger, on the other hand, had to follow Jack Nicholson’s portrayal, which--while wildly praised at the time--is best described as “Jack Nicholson playing the Joker.” Nevertheless, Nicholson’s version left a lasting impression on the movie world. Ledger’s Joker, however, will never be described as “Heath Ledger playing the Joker.” The hype is true here; he is totally subsumed into this role. I would have had no idea that it’s Ledger underneath the scarred, crusty visage (which they never bother to explain; there isn't even a hint that his background involves falling into a vat of industrial chemicals; if anything, I’d guess that it doesn’t). His voice is perfectly maniacal. He is sleazy, twisted, conniving, ruthless, and yet somehow strangely logical amidst all the madness. I wanted to hear more of his insane laughter. Does his performance deserve a posthumous Oscar? I’m not sure. But he inhabits the role so seamlessly, I felt sad while watching the film knowing that even if Joker survives this movie (I won’t say if he does or not), he can’t be in another film. Not without recasting, anyway. And now I can’t imagine anyone else in this role. Jack who?

Eckhart does the crusading white knight district attorney role well. His turn to the darker side is a bit less nuanced, as he ends up growling a lot the way Bale does as Batman. There is one scene that tries to show Dent has a darker side to begin with, but it seems like they should have set that up a little bit more.

Despite that, the direction and script are top-notch again. And the film is packed wall-to-wall, which is what leads to the slow start as they set up 10 different story angles. I was pleased that the fight scenes were less jerky than in Batman Begins (which at times mimicked a Bourne movie style) and were, for the most part, easier to follow than they were in the last movie. Not that I didn’t sometimes lose track anyway, especially during a sonar-laden fight scene; a second viewing is definitely in order.

The plot managed to throw in a few curves I didn’t see coming, which I always enjoy when they don’t feel like cheats. These worked well. However, the story has so many layers and threads that, while I was able to keep up with most of it, I could see it a second time just to catch up with everything. It's a very dense plot. And the script even manages to get in a dig about the morality of unfettered wiretapping in the name of security.

The Batmobile chase in the lower streets of Gotham City is too reminiscent of the chase scene from Batman Begins, mostly because it’s in the same setting. But when the chase resumes aboveground and Batman flips a semi cab-first, all that is forgotten.

The Dark Knight definitely lives up to its name, as this film takes a decidedly darker and more vicious turn. And Batman Begins was no Heidi. This is not a movie for kids. It’s not explicitly gross, but the implied violence is cringing at times. Not that the film is completely humorless; Alfred and especially Lucius Fox have some great lines, and you can't help but laugh at some of Ledger's antics as the Joker. So the film does provide some moments of comic relief that don't feel shoehorned in; they actually make sense in the plot with the characters.

As I said before, the final hour (and this movie is 2 1/2 hours long) is intense. Certainly the most intense movie I’ve seen in years, maybe ever. Every muscle paralyzed as I watched the action build to what was presumably the climax. Without spoiling anything, this ticking time bomb scenario surprisingly revolves more around human nature--whether people in mob situations have the capacity for good or evil--than a simple "hero fights the villain to save the day" scenario. And while the resolution could have gone over to the cheesy side, it seems like they stepped back from the edge of the line and made it palatable (for an example that did not show such restraint, see the New York mob pelting the Green Goblin in defense of Spider-Man in the first movie of that series). But that wasn’t the end anyway. In fact, the most intense, chair-gripping scene is the one that follows and involves no bomb about to explode, no citywide disaster scenario, but is instead a hostage drama involving very few people.

Summer blockbusters are often described as roller coaster rides. The Dark Knight is no mere thrill ride. After some warmup laps at regular speeds, this film becomes a tightly packed NASCAR race at 500 mph. You’ll be exhausted after this movie, but in a good way. All I could say afterwards was, “Wow.” It’s not a perfect film, but few are. And it’s not for the faint-hearted. Don’t expect a simple popcorn flick, and don’t expect your typical feel-good ending either. The world that they leave in place at the end hints at an entirely different set of conflicts that promise to take the movie franchise in a whole new direction. But unlike the twist at the end of Superman Returns, the state of things in Gotham City makes a lot of sense and feels like a universe of possibilities rather than a dead end.

At the end of Batman Begins, the biggest question was: How can they possibly top this? The Dark Knight was the answer to that. Now, repeating that feat seems even more impossible. How can they possibly top THIS?

I can’t wait to see the answer.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly *****

How do you tell the story of a successful magazine editor who suffers a stroke that leaves his mind intact but his body totally useless except for one eye without it becoming:

A. a bad disease of the week movie
B. a bore
C. Sentimental and schmaltzy
D. depressing
E. all of the above?

Well, you might look at Julian Schnabel's Diving Bell and the Butterfly for clues, because this film is not only none of the above, it is the opposite of A, B, C, and D.

Surely, he had an amazing starting place. This is a true story, adapted from the memoir of the protagonist, who wrote it using an incredibly long series of blinks from his one good eye. The title comes from his likening of his body to a diving suit (for some reason called a diving bell in English), and of his mind to a butterfly.

How do you tell a story from the point of view of a severely disabled man? Well, for a large portion of the beginning of the moview, Schnabel uses just that, a point of view shot, where the camera stands in for the man's one good eye as he tries to make sense of what has happened to him after he awakens from a week-long coma after the stroke.

Sound awful? It's fascinating, actually. By introducing the man this way, Schnabel forces us to identify with this guy. The POV shot makes us him. We even get to hear his inner monolog as he answers doctor's questions without realizing that they are not coming out as words. Just like him, we are the only ones who hear them. And just like that, we can understand him and his situation quickly and at a level that couldn't be attained any other way.

Eventually, we get flashbacks of his life in the form of memories as they slowly come back to him, interspersed with scenes of his therapy and visits from various significant friends and family. By the time Schnabel uses traditional shots of the man as a subject in the frame, we already know so much about him that there is little emotional space left for trite responses. It is the difference in feeling between being a close friend of a victim and reading about the same victim in a newspaper (or blog, nowadays). And that makes all the difference in the world.

In this way, Schnabel avoids all the pitfalls of such a story a delivers instead, a moving and rich experience. I came out of the theater keyed up, as though I had been recharged in there. It is easily the best movie I have seen this year. Highly, highly recommeded.

Hot Fuzz ** 1/2

I loved Shaun of the Dead. I was expecting this movie to be just as good, only while lampooning the buddy-cop genre instead of the zombie genre. I didn't enjoy it as much, but it was still good.

The premise is that the main character (the Shaun of the Dead guy) is a supercop in London. He lives and breathes police work. He has the police manual memorized cover-to-cover. He is so good, in fact, that he is making all the other cops look bad, so they transfer him to a sleepy hamlet. There, he uncovers nefarious goings-on, and hilarity ensues.

It's a great setup, and it works pretty well, but it didn't seem like it was firing on all cylinders. The script was good, but not quite as sharp as Shaun. My favorite bits are the interactions between the supercop and the small-town cop he's paired with who idolizes him. In one scene, the small-town cop asks him, "Why did you become a policeman?" Supercop corrects him, saying, "The correct term is 'officer.' There are female officers as well as male." So then the small-town cop asks, "Why did you become a policeman officer?" It's endearing little bits like that that I enjoyed the most.

I recommend seeing it, but don't expect Shaun of the Dead II. Expect a light, entertaining movie and you should be satisfied. Or netflix it--it would be a perfect rental.

Kona Grill

Probably not the best idea to review while buzzed, but let's see how this goes.

The new upscale shopping complex near my house, The Domain, includes the chain Asian fusion restaurant Kona Grill. For a chain restaurant, the atmosphere and decor are actually pretty decent. Sure, the "stone" tables on the patio are faux stone, but the chairs are nice and solid and likely where they focused their patio furniture budget.

If you're a beer drinker looking for a good happy hour spot, you're out of luck. Only Bud Light was on special. But the margarita selection is quite good and potent. It's $3.75 for regular, raspberry, or strawberry 'ritas, frozen or on the rocks, and women get an additional $1 discount. The half-price appetizers are well worth it as well. We split pot stickers and chicken satay. The pot stickers are not exactly what you'd get at a Chinese restaurant, but they're quite tasty. Flavorful crumbled chicken and vegetables with a nice sauce and just a touch of crispiness. The satay was good as well, though it's not really satay in the Indonesian or Thai sense. They use a teriyaki sauce to complement the chicken kabobs. Our waiter recommended substituting rice for the default cabbage slaw that came with the satay; that was definitely the right decision.

Happy hour itself ends at 7 pm, which would be hard for some people to make from work, but it starts up again at 9 pm (their "reverse happy hour"). Happy hour specials include half-price pizzas and sushi rolls; we didn't get to try either of those this time, but they sounded promising. And the 'ritas did their thing for a decent price. For splitting three appetizers and having three drinks, all at happy hour prices, I rang up an $18 tab including tax and tip. Not cheap like 219 West, but not too shabby.

So, if you can make it by 6:30 pm (or after 9 pm), Kona Grill is definitely a good happy hour spot, and a welcome addition to north Austin. It's only been open for 2 weeks, but from the looks of it, the nice covered patio already gets packed by 6 pm. Still, it's worth a look if you want to try out a new spot on the north side of town.

Le Mystère Picasso

After much anticipation, I finally received The Mystery of Picasso from Netflixx and it was all I hoped for. This very simple film was made by Henri Georges Clouzot in 1956. Simply, it is Pablo Picasso engaged in the creative process. He paints on special transparent canvases so that what he is creating is seen by the audience on the other side. It is mesmerizing. Rent it!

The Queen ****

I went into The Queen with few expectations; I knew it was about the current British royal family, but I knew nothing else about the plot. I also knew that it should be a quality film because it stars the accomplished Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II. But then again, I watched her play the first Queen Elizabeth in HBO's miniseries Elizabeth and was bored, bored, bored. So would Mirren's turn as QE2 rate any better than QE1 did?

Without question, yes.

The film, far from being a sweeping epic about this royal family, covers a mere week in their lives and that of a fresh-faced, smiling new prime minister. There's nothing really special about this particular week ... well, besides the fact that this is the week following Princess Diana's death in a Paris car wreck. The Queen focuses on both the royal family and the new face of British politics, one Tony Blair, as Blair faces his first crisis in office and the Windsors struggle to reconcile their reactions with that of the British public.

This is of course a fictionalized account, so who knows how accurate the private scenes are. However, it proves to be an interesting study of the royals and Blair. Mirren is superb as the monarch who firmly believes in the British stiff upper lip. Michael Sheen's Blair is physically boyish and goofy, but he's quite entertaining as the new PM and interacts well with Mirren. Between their physical similarities to their real-life counterparts and their top-notch performances, you have no problem believing these two are the real deal. Others in the cast are less convincing physically, especially Alex Jennings as Prince Charles. But this rarely becomes a distraction. And the filmmakers made the right choice in not casting anyone for Princess Di; instead, she appears as herself via news footage from the time.

What impressed me most about this film was how most of the characters became three-dimensional and human, even the stoic queen. James Cromwell's Prince Philip is the main exception; he never really rises above being a pompous asshole. Even the Queen Mother comes off as more human than him, and she's used mainly for comic relief. But the film uses the characters and their interplay effectively to draw you into the story. You respect what Blair is trying to accomplish, you admire his wife's willingness to tweak the queen behind her back, and you feel for Queen Elizabeth II as she struggles to relearn the public's relationship with the monarchy. You even feel for Prince Charles as he slowly breaks from his mother's iron grip even as his motivations appear at least partly opportunistic.

The screenplay and direction are truly deserving of their Oscar nominations. There is one sledgehammery moment of symbolism in the film involving a stag that pushes the cheese factor a little too much, but fortunately, that's the only one that's overdone. Otherwise, The Queen is a quiet but entertaining and effective film that humanizes most of the royal family and, while fictional, helps us understand and even sympathize with the leaders of Great Britain.

Pan's Labyrinth *** 1/2

Guillermo del Toro's foreign-language film Pan's Labyrinth is one of the best-reviewed films in recent memory, and I fully expected it to live up to its billing. This dark and moody film, set in Spain during World War II, follows young Ofelia and her pregnant mother as they join her new stepfather at his military outpost in the forest. Franco's fascists have just won the Spanish civil war, and her stepfather is trying to mop up the remaining insurgency. With the horrors of war around her, a cruel and sadistic stepfather, and a mother struggling with a difficult pregnancy, young Ofelia escapes often into the fantasy worlds of the books she treasures.

The film moves seamlessly between the real world and Ofelia's imaginary one. And some of the creatures that inhabit the latter are truly unique, from the ambiguously helpful Pan figure (referred to instead as a fauna in the original Spanish, apparently) to the effectively horrifying Pale Man. The Pale Man's demented story is told very briefly and completely visually in one of the film's most effective sequences.

Ironically, this top-notch sequence leads directly into one of my biggest complaints about the film, a turn of the plot that is completely out of character for Ofelia. What she does seems to serve no purpose other than adding conflict that would not have been there otherwise. It feels forced rather than organic to the plot. And back in the real world, the housekeeper has her own forced moment that makes no sense logically. In both cases, these nonsensical turns of events seemed almost like lazy writing.

The acting is well-done all around; even the mostly one-dimensional stepfather gets to show the barest amount of humanity once or twice, even if we don't feel the least bit sorry for him when he does. And the direction and cinematographer are very effective as well. However, this visually stunning mix of fantasy and reality ultimately falls a little short. It's still a very good atmospheric film, but the script needed one more rewrite for the two or three plot holes that bothered me. Don't go in expecting the greatest film of the season; go in expecting an entertaining and well-made film.

Night at the Museum: **

Going into this movie, I'd heard that it was funnier than "Meet the Parents," which seems to a popular standard for "funny" these days. I think one reviewer even said that it's Ben Stiller's best movie yet. Um yeah. I think that reviewer was smoking crack.

The premise behind "Night at the Museum" is that after dark, all the museum's sculptures, wax figures, etc. come to life. Ben Stiller is hired as the night watchman, who has the unconventional task of keeping everything IN (rather than out). The first night that he discovers that everything is alive is kinda funny. There's a crazy monkey (and you know, monkeys are always funny). Owen Wilson also does a decent job as a Wild West figure that comes to life. (and Wilson and Stiller always seem to find a good groove together)

Most of the supporting actors were rather annoying. There were the night security guards that Stiller replaced (Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney), who were all solidly un-funny. Robin Williams plays Teddy Roosevelt, who happens to be in love with the Sacagawea figure. YAWN. And there was also a lame sub-plot of Stiller trying to impress his son with his new job.

Gosh, with all this said, I'm not sure why I'm giving the movie 2 stars. But I guess it's a good flick for kids. Or if you just want something pretty lighthearted, and you don't go into it expecting much, I think the movie will deliver.

Just don't expect "Meet the Parents" kinda funny. Because that it is most definitely NOT.