Pun Salad

Movie Marathon Weekend continues … Sometimes a timely recommendation from a blogger you trust is a better guide than (say) the critical consensus on a movie. Such is the case here, where Just Friends got a mere 42% at Rotten Tomatoes, and a mediocre 6.2/10 at IMDB. But an aside from Reihan convinced me to grab it, and it's really a very good old-fashioned screwball comedy. Underrated, in my humble opinion.

The premise isn't that original: successful guy (played by Ryan Reynolds) goes back to his hometown to get the girl (Amy Smart) who jilted him back in high school. So character is everything, and both major and minor ones are sketched and performed with skill here. Especially funny is Anna Faris, playing a Paris Hilton-type plunked into small-town New Jersey.

Julie Hagerty from Airplane plays Ryan Reynold's mom. She still does sweet ditziness about as well as it can be done.

Movie Marathon Weekend continues … This animation is non-Pixar, and crude in comparison with (say) Cars. But the story is clever and fun, the voice talent is fantastic. (I was able to identify Jon Heder almost immediately; I'm not sure whether I'm bragging about that, or confessing.)

Among the executive producers are Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, and it's safe to presume they had a healthy input into making this movie watchable. The movie opens with a little girl riding her tricycle down the sidewalk humming/singing; in yet another example of the millions of ways the Internet makes our lives better, the IMDB trivia page reveals that the tune is the theme from Spielberg's old TV series "Amazing Stories." Ah!