Charlie Bartlett, Smart People, & Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay

Charlie Bartlett is directed by a guy who has an impressively bad collection of editing credits (note that I'm not including Cabin Boy as a bad movie in it, just pretty much every other editing job and honestly, the editing in Cabin Boy wasn't all that hot either), but it also has Robert Downey Jr. as an alcoholic principal. Basically that's his role now, isn't it? He just tries to find people with addictions and just be extremely awesome in those roles? Anton Yelchin and Kat Dennings (I'm not sure what to say about this head/chest shot) are charming enough, but pretty much everything that wasn't completely related to those three characters and their interpersonal relationships just didn't work well. The writer also wrote Youth in Revolt, which is coming out soon with Michael Cera being a badass. Or something to that effect.

Smart People got no reason, smart people got no reason, smart people got no reason to exist. And this film really, really makes that argument. I like Ellen Page, Thomas Haden Church, and Dennis Quaid, who've all done some good work occasionally, but Sarah Jessica Parker really is terrible. It's not particularly good, it's not horrible enough to laugh at, so it's just there. I guess having Ellen Page be an overachieving Young Republican is an interesting choice, but that's about it. If I'm going to see one film about a misanthropic writer learning life lessons in Pennsylvania, I'm certainly just going to rewatch Wonder Boys.

Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay starts with a fantasy sequence that is interrupted by a real-life White House staffer leaving a disgustingly loud poop. Which should give you an idea of the humor level of the movie. Disgustingly huge pubic hair on a dude? Yep (although that was in the middle of a many merkined bottomless party). Disgustingly stereotyped everyone in the movie? Yep. Disgustingly homophobic prison scenes? Yep. Disgustingly huge tits (on Tits Hemingway, who also likes the only Hemingway book that I think is remotely worth reading, A Moveable Feast)? Yep. All that said, I liked it, but it wasn't nearly as good as the first, since that one seemed to just be crazy pot humor, as opposed to some awkward political satire on top of pot humor. Neil Patrick Harris is great, in everything he does, and I now fully get the NPH on a unicorn in front of a rainbow reference I've seen online for the last couple years. Yay? It was fitfully funny, frequently stupid, and extremely disrespectful to Republicans and their ilk. One last thing, has anyone ever heard of anyone actually interrupting a wedding and having it end happily for anyone? It happens all the time in pop culture, but I have never once heard of it even happening in real life, let alone with a happy ending?