Sorcerereres Apprentice

Ugh.  Really we're watching this?

Gripes
What if you took that one part in Empire Strikes Back where Luke goes to Degobah and learns the ways of the force from Yoda and turned it into a whole two hour movie and replaced Yoda with a haggard and sedated Nicolas Cage and Luke with an even worse actor than the guy that played Luke and the force with magic.  Oh and Alfred Molina is doing something too but who cares.  The movie opens with a long creepy sounding voice over sequence about Merlin and his apprentices and how they are fighting the Borg Queen or something because she wants to destroy the world.  Really that's what she wants to do.  She doesn't want to rule it or anything she just wants to destroy everything including I would assume herself.  How lame.  Anyway Merlin dies and Nic Cage traps the Borg Queen in a Russian  Doll along with his girlfriend and Alfred Molina.  Fast forward a thousand years and Nic has spent all this time looking for (are you bored yet, this is only the first five minutes of the movie) looking for the Prime Merlinian who will inherit all of Merlin's powers because he/she (I don't think in the montage Nic tries any girls but I'll be more gender neutral than the movie) has some of Merlin's blood in them.  Whatever. Any way the kid from the Pizza Pop ads is the Prime Merlinian and he has to overcome being an awkward science geek so he can date this girl and save the world.   Nic finds the kid then the movie fast-forwards another ten years and he finds him again then we have the looooooong boring empire sequence where the opening expository narration is now repeated over and over by Nic Cage to the kid and then finally Pizza Pop kid uses science and his Merlin powers to defeat the Borg Queen.  Very Tidy by the numbers and totally lacking any personality.  Everyone seems to be sleep walking through this, writers, director, Molina, Cage, random blonde love interest, the effects people.  The only person not sleep walking is the Pizza Pop kid; he tires so hard but I don't know if it's the editing or the directing but he just ends up being one note and the timing of all the jokes is cut to shit.

What worked
At one point it looks like Cage and Pizza kid will have to fight all these magicians one by one using clever tricks.  But that's not what happens.  In fact Molina who's sorta the main baddy kills all the other magicians for them with a vulcan death pinch or something. It's awful and lazy. So I guess what worked is a momentary moment where it looked like the movie would be cool and there's a car chase that was maybe for a micro second cool when it wasn't poorly paced and cg'ed to indifference.

Mediocrity Scale
Telephoned.  As in everyone phoned it in.

Is it Worse than Dungeons and Dragons
It does have a dragon in it at one point; one of those big screaming CG dragons that lets the heroes jump out of the way just in time from it's loud screechy digital jaws.  I would have to say the movie is better; it's so uncreative that it's unoffensive, and there's a car chase that's boring but I could pretend that it could be better.

Food
Kellog Cinabon granola bars; 12 in a box so six each.  The box claims that these are around "For a Limited Time Only" and I think the world will be a better place once that time runs out.  These taste like crumbly uncooked batter slathered in the cheapest and worst sugary icing.  I don't remember tasting any cinnamon but I'm sure there was some there.  I don't recommend eating one of these things let alone six.  The sugar content kept me up all night sweating icing. I can't remember but I think we had cheese Doritos as well or it could be that the Cinabon things made me hallucinate the Doritios whilst in some kind of Diabetic shock comma.

Jennifer's Body

The French title for this film is Le Corpse de Jennifer. The use of the word corpse is quite appropriate here, cause this movie has all the life of one. Boom Zing.

Gripes
You know I bet if you wrote a quirky little screenplay about a clever teen preggo that was critically acclaimed and made it all the way to the Oscars you'd be pretty high on yourself. I bet you'd feel like you could effing do anything, hell I bet that you'd think you could write a killer teen horror flick and knock it out of the park. Well, you'd be wrong. I'm sure everyone involved in the making of Jennifer's Body probably felt pretty good about the project. I mean hell, it stars sex pot Meghan Fox of 2 hour GM robot advertisement fame, the screenplay is written by none other than the writer of last years indie-breakout film Juno, and it's about teens having sex and getting eaten by a monster. What could go wrong? Plenty.

This movie is boring.  Just plain boring.  The action is boring, the writing is boring, and the acting is boring.  I think the reason that it is so boring is that no one cares, this is the ultimate hipster horror film in that everyone in it is too cool to care so there's no stakes because guess what; if you don't care, I don't care so why the hell are we all here, just turn off the movie and go home.

What Worked
The girl that plays the lead is a good actor and I could tell that she was trying to care which was probably discouraged on the set.  But she tried.

Is It Better than Dungeons and Dragons
Yes.

Mediocrity Scale
Less than Just Mediocre.  It tries to be subversive and good but ends up being boring and lame.

Food
I started writing this review over a year ago and have long forgotten what we ate; I'm sure it was bad for me.