Mr. Brooks

Okay, let me try to get all this straight: There's Mr. Brooks (Dances with Wolves guy), who kills people because he's addicted and is also a successful business man with a wife and family and is trying to quit, there's his imaginary friend (William Hurt?) who goads him into killing people and acts like a guardian angel of sorts for serial killers, there's Dane Cook, the guy that catches Mr. Brooks killing a couple that likes to dance and screw with the blinds open, and blackmails Mr. Brooks with photos of him killing set couple into teaching him how to be a serial killer, there's Demi Moore playing the hard nosed tough woman cop who's going through a tough divorce and is a millionaire because she inherited a lot of money from her dad who wanted a boy so to prove to him she's good enough she works as a cop even though she doesn't have to and is trying to solve Mr. Brooks' murders, there's her partner (token black guy), there's Mr. Brook's daughter (some young starlet) who's back from college because she killed somebody with a hatchet and is preggos, there's Mr. Brooks' wife (the old former stripper lady in CSI Las Vegas) who doesn't know anything, and there's Demi Moore's ex-husband and his lawyer lady who have a sexy affair.

Whew. That's a lot of characters and a lot of plot. Mr. Brooks' feels bookish and I bet if I looked it up I would find that it was based on a novel. You have to pay attention to Mr. Brooks because it jams in a lot in it's fairly lengthy running time and that is a problem because it's kind of slow. However I enjoyed it. The writing is good, Dances With Wolves guy is understated as always but compelling, William Hurt is fun, and even Dane Cook doesn't annoy too much, plus *SPOILER* he gets killed in a neat gory fashion. What I liked most is it's an unusual serial killer movie; a killer who wants to quit has all these problems getting out and the problems pile on and he has to get out of it in a creative serial killer fashion, it's kind of fun and it's kind of smart too. You also see a lot of the twists coming but it's handled well and you don't really know. Plus that's part of the fun.

Gripes:

Too much Demi. Demi Moore is fine, she looks good (surgically), there's nothing wrong with her acting, but her character isn't a big enough player in the story to warrant so much development. The movie could have been a lot shorter if they chose to keep a lot of her background on the down low. It felt a bit like they put all that in because of who Demi Moore is and she probably demanded it.

False ending: The movie ends three times, the first twist is good, the second; not so much. It feels like a last minute addition and the Mr. Brooks character is totally inconsistent in the final ending with everything he'd done up until then. Probably some kind of studio bandoogle.

What Worked:

A lot like I said before. The writing is what really works for me here. There's a lot here and it didn't feel like I was being fed a lot of exposition which is always good. My feeling could be a matter of reference though as the movie I watched prior to this was the crap storm that is Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: a study in poor exposition thick writing so maybe by comparison Mr. Brooks had less clunky exposition. I don't know. Don't see Indiana Jones is all I can say about that.

Is it better than Dungeons and Dragons:

Yes, a lot better. Real actors, no bad CGI, no Shakespeareans picking up pay cheque.

Mediocrity scale:

Above Mediocre

Food Review:

We had Meat Shoppe brand chicken pot pies. They tasted kind of good going down but later in the night I couldn't sleep because of stomach pains and nausea. Stay away. Oh and we had Purple Fanta; gross, tastes like some kind of mixture of medicine and cleaning chemicals.