Wonderland (2003)

The story of what became of XXX movie star John Holmes after his onscreen career had ended but his hard drug addiction hadn't.
Portrayed as a sleazy and selfish weasel, Holmes (Val Kilmer) is the quintessential lowlife user of people, befriending others solely because they can give him what he needs, with betrayal just another bump in the road.
The presentation is choppy, employing techniques that aren't always complementary to each other; in trying too hard to be edgy it goes from one stylistic choice to another sometimes with little or no rhyme or reason. It occasionally works but mostly it's disruptive and detrimental to the whole.
It's an okay film in the end, but indulging the many truth games and multiple unreliable narrators shtick wore me out long before the credits rolled.

3 lead pipes in the drug house out of 5

NEIGHBORS 2: SORORITY RISING [2016]

Director Nicholas Stoller and the rest of the cast & crew of 2014's Neighbors return for another frat-pack smackdown in Sorority Rising.
This time, instead of a dope-headed fraternity, Seth Rogen & Rose Byrne are going head-to-head with a more menacing sorority with the help of a bitter Zac Efron as their prank-master mentor.
With the first film not being very good at all, I was a bit surprised to find this one a bit more enjoyable and packed with more frat-boy belly laughs.  It smartens up a bit with some tired social issues that don't weigh down the laughs but instead make for some of the funnier moments in the film.
It's still a huge waste of time but nevertheless a humorous waste of time.

2½ princess dildos out of 5

NEIGHBORS [2014]

Director Nicholas Stoller sticks to his frat-pack roots for the raunchy comedy Neighbors (obviously not based on the Aussie soap opera).  

Normally I quite enjoy these types of films for cheap laughs and obnoxious guffaws and for some reason this one didn't quite deliver.  Sure, there were a handful of moments that made me laugh out loud but for the most part it really fell short of the good belly chuckles or anything memorable.  It was nice to see Seth Rogen and Zac Efron have a great comedic chemistry together, so it was dissapointing to see the script they had to work with didn't quite hit the over-the-top crazy it could have been. 

A real misfire for what could have been immature, tasteless fun.

2 not balloons out of 5

EASY A [2010]

The silly and predictable cinematic ode to John Hughes, Easy A is carried by Emma Stone's dryly comedic performance along with a host of great supporting characters to back her up. In fact the whole time I was thinking "this reminds me of Friends With Benefits with it's awesome supporting characters and really trivial plot".  Turns out it was the same director, Will Gluck.
It's not a complete waste of time due to some great laughs but in the end it never adds up to much and makes you wish you'd revisited the John Hughes classics instead.

2½ Homosexual comparisons to Huck Finn out of 5

Analyze This (1999)

De Niro takes the NY gangster persona that Scorsese gave to him and sucks all the gravitas out of it. He plays it for laughs. It felt insulting at first that he would disrespect the genre so dismissively, but as it went on I stopped caring. He plays a mob boss with crippling emotional problems. He believes they can be solved by going to see a shrink. Billy Crystal, the shrink, drifts through the film and thinks he’s in a Woody Allen production much of the time. He was more irritating than irritated. It spawned a sequel. I won't be watching it.

2 hits of the pillow out of 5