Tag Archives: Jason Segal

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At The Theater 2011 #14: The Muppets

I wanted to see a movie with my cousins who were in town for Thanksgiving. We range in age from 21-36, so the only movies that were off the table were ones that one of us had already seen and ones we had no interest in seeing.

The Muppets was a universal pick, even inspiring a lively discussion at the Thanksgiving dinner table about how good the soundtrack is.

One of the songs in The Muppets is written by Flight of the Concords. If you’ve ever heard a Flight of the Concords song before, you’ll have no problem recognizing it as their song moments into it. I’m not complaining. It’s a great song, and so are they.

The Muppets has two major things going for it with its lead actors. I’ve liked Jason Segal since Freaks and Geeks. He and Neil Patrick Harris are the two best parts of How I Met Your Mother. I was happy to see that he was both starring in The Muppets and that he wrote the screenplay. Forgetting Sarah Marshall, also written by and starring Segal, is one of the funniest movies of the past decade. And Amy Adams is as adorable in this as she is in Enchanted. I need a movie where Amy Adams and Zooey Deschanel out-adorable each other for an hour and forty.

The reigning king and queen of adorable?

But the best part of The Muppets? That’s easy. It’s the cameo appearance by Dave Grohl. There are some really cool celebrity cameos in The Muppets, but Dave Grohl’s is definitely the most awesome, partly because Dave Grohl is so awesome and partly because he’s playing an Animal stand-in in a grisly, low-rent Muppets tribute group.

Animool!

My only complaint about The Muppets is that by the middle of the movie, I felt like I was being given a guilt trip by a Jewish mother mixed with the Catholic Church for the Muppets falling out of popularity. They hit that particular guilt button a lot throughout the movie.

But that’s a small complaint. I loved The Muppets and strongly recommend seeing it.

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At The Theater #28: Despicable Me

Warning: Before going to see Despicable Me, if you decide to eat lunch at Mile End, my new favorite smoked meat restaurant in Brooklyn, you have a 33% chance of falling asleep during the movie. The combination of all that meat, the long walk in the hot sun from Mile End to Cobble Hill Cinemas and the darkened movie theater proved too much for a member of our party. I’m basing this off a sample size of three, which is clearly scientifically significant. The sandwiches at Mile End are delicious, so it might be a risk worth taking. They also make some delicious poutine for you Montrealers out there.

Note: This sandwich may cause drowsiness.

2010 has been a really weak year for movies, but I think it’s been a very strong one for animated films. Toy Story 3 is currently my Movie of the Year. How to Train Your Dragon was great. And while it came out late last year, I didn’t get around to seeing The Fantastic Mr. Fox until this year (You can decide yourself if that one counts towards my current thesis).

I’m not saying every animated movie this year has been great. I haven’t seen Shrek 4-The-Money, but from what I hear it’s as disappointing as most of this summer’s films.

Add Despicable Me to the good list. I really liked it. I want my own minion. No, I want my own 5-10 minions. I don’t need a whole army, but I think 5-10 minions would be perfect for getting things done and they even cuter in groups than they are alone. They’re half the size of Oompa-Loompas and infinitely less creepy.

When I say I need more minions, that means I need more minions.

Best Buy has a free IPhone app available that translates what the minions are saying during the end credits of the movie. Maybe there was a glitch with mine, but it didn’t work for me. After three hours, the movie was long over, the app still said “Enjoy the show. You phone will vibrate when it’s time to translate,” and a battery at 10% power. Hopefully your results will vary.

This movie is very funny. Steve Carell is great as Gru, the world’s former number one villain turned number two villain by Jason Siegel voicing the geekiest looking super-villain ever. My favorite non-minion part of the movie may have been Gru showing us how a super villain orders coffee in the morning.

Is the story the most original thing in the world? No. But it is very well done, very funny and will probably have you laughing from the opening scene to the close. If only more movies were like that this summer!