| Critic |
Review |
Quote |
Analysis |
This Week's Verdict |
Armond White,
New York Press |
Norbit |
"Because Norbit is essentially an occasion for [Eddie] Murphy to
exercise his talents and drives, the plot about Norbit reuniting with
his childhood sweetheart Kate (the endearing Thandi Newton) against the
objections of his wife and her bruising, behemoth brothers, the
Latimores (Terry Crews, Clifton Powell, Lester "Rasta" Speight), is only
routine. It's significant that Murphy has moved past the family quandary
of The Nutty Professor 2: The Klumps (where he was at his most
brilliant) into an area of sly social commentary. When Mr. Wong
querulously says 'Blacks and Jews love Chinese food. Go figure!' it
tweaks the anomalies of American habit at which ethnic comics are
rightly bemused." |
What next, a hermeneutics of "black guys drive like this, white guys
drive like this" jokes? Armond's really lost it this time;
elsewhere, he heaps praise on director Brian Robbins's previous film,
the abysmal wrestling comedy Ready to Rumble.
|
|
Dana Stevens,
Slate.com |
Music and Lyrics |
"Convinced that he's stumbled upon 'Cole Porter in panties,' Alex
wheedles Sophie into collaborating on the song with him. What follows
is, in essence, an hour and a half of musical banter as the two fall
into movie love. Pulling up to the piano with a pad and pen, Sophie and
Alex toy with a lyric called 'Love Autopsy,' then throw themselves into
composing the song for Cora, 'Way Back Into Love'." |
We have it on good authority that "Cole Porter in panties" is actually a
redundant phrase. |
|
Manohla Dargis,
New York Times |
Breach |
"One of the strengths of 'Breach,' a thriller that manages to excite and
unnerve despite our knowing the ending, is how well it captures the
utter banality of [Cold War spy Robert Hanssen] and his world. Unlike
Kim Philby, an aristocratic figure who swanned across the world while
passing classified British and American information to the Soviets, Mr.
Hanssen, played by the stellar Chris Cooper, comes across as a middle
manager type, a drone in a suit...With his weekend casuals and Ford
Taurus, he might have been just another suburban dad bagging leaves." |
The fact that Manohla lives in Los Angeles is starting to show a bit
here. To anyone in New York, suburban dads with their bags of leaves and
their SUVs are practically space aliens. You see one of those dudes
shambling down Sixth Avenue, you run. |
|
Ella Taylor,
LA Weekly |
Music and Lyrics |
"But as the suave '40s-style romance [director Marc] Lawrence clearly
means it to be, 'Music and Lyrics' is strictly easy listening. For one
thing, the script is witless. For another, no one seems to notice that
our hero 'grows up' by hitching himself to a girl-child at least 15
years his junior." |
If you're gonna call the film out on that, then you're pretty much going
to have to call out every single modern romantic comedy ever made. And
if you did that, Hugh Grant would stop having a career. And who'd want
that? |
|
Mark Olsen,
Los Angeles Times |
Tyler Perry's Daddy's Little Girls |
"While the film's title and advertising make it seem that the story's
focus would largely be on the mechanic, his children, and his budding
romance with an unlikely love, Perry's weakness for stylized melodrama
leads him to bring the custody battle to the fore, with an adjacent
subplot regarding neighborhood drug dealers. For a film called 'Daddy's
Little Girls' there is precious little of the girls themselves..." |
Olsen actually seems a bit shocked that Tyler Perry, the auteur of
Diary of a Mad Black Woman, abandons the ostensible subject of
his film in exchange for cheap, stylized melodrama. Wow. What a
surprise. Still, we admire his patience with the film. |
|
