2010 Movies: #46 & 45

Embark with me, readers, on another day of criticism!

#46 Just Wright

You know what's an awesome term? "Rapper/Actor" or, spoken aloud, "Rapper-slash-Actor". It's been an ongoing thing for a while now. Unless the actor is actually rapping on screen--like Eminem's B. Rabbit in 8 Mile or Vanilla Ice during the credits of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II--the results are often hit-or-miss. Chris "Ludacris" Bridges may be the exception to the rule as he performed well in Crash and Hustle & Flow among others. Mos Def has been pretty good all in all. Ice Cube achieved greatness with the original Friday, but has since fizzled. Snoop is okay in small doses. Kid & Play's House Party series (3 in particular) was a cornerstone of my growing up, but often it was the supporting cast that provided most of the comedy. Everyone who has watched House Party 3 as religiously as I have knows that you fast-forward through the heart-to-heart scene between Kid and Play because, quite frankly, no one cares.

And as much as you probably want to count Marky Mark as a Rapper/Actor, I just can't do it on "Good Vibrations" alone, so the reigning rapper/actor champion is of course Queen Latifah. It's safe to say she's put out a lot more movies than albums, leading in movies like Set it Off, the Barbershop movies and of course Chicago. So I had higher hopes for this one, both because she tends to be pretty good and because Just Wright features not one but TWO Rapper/Actors. Unfortunately, the other is Common, who in my experience should probably just MC.

Common plays Scotty McKnight, star forward of the New Jersey Nets (ok Latifah, we get that you're from New Jersey, but no star is coming from the New Jersey Nets anytime soon, lest they sign Carmelo). Latifah plays Leslie Wright, a happy-but-unlucky-in-love athletic trainer. They meet at a gas station; she's wearing his jersey and they hit it off. He invites her to his party. She brings along her jersey-chasing cousin, who also happens to be super attractive. The Queen once again finds herself in the friend role as Common pursues the cousin.

The Queen becomes sad and despondent.

And the cousin enjoys the NBA wife lifestyle, until Scotty goes down with a bum knee (hasn't the NBA taught you anything? Never play hard in an All-star Game!). Leslie takes over as his trainer. You can probably do some basic addition and figure out how the rest goes.

Again, an entertaining movie at times. But while Common can handle the humbled athlete role well, romantic lead he is not. Latifah does fine, though she's shown more range in previous efforts. My main beef was with the script. The idea wasn't terrible, but the supposed "black" dialogue seemed dated--it felt kind of suburban. Maybe it was written back when the New Jersey Nets were a competitive basketball pro--wait...

#45 Iron Man 2

High expectations are a tough thing to deal with sometimes. Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys took one listen to Sgt. Peppers and scrapped all of Smile because he couldn't deal with how high the stakes were going to be. Here in the Twin Cities this year, the excitement for the possibility of the Twins to beat the Yankees and advance to the ALCS were so high that when the Yankees handily swept our boys, most people couldn't bring themselves to talk about it. Weezer will never make another Blue Album, Snoop Dogg will never make another Doggystyle. Their follow-ups? Victims of high expectations.

And yes, even though I had high expectations for Iron Man 2--I'll be the first to admit I thought Iron Man was super awesome--it still wasn't a very good movie. It wasn't all Favreau's fault--he had his hands full from the beginning as Terrence Howard walked over contract issues. The best justification I have for Iron Man 2 charting this low is because it just felt bloated. It was two plus hours and it felt like at least twenty minutes could have beeen chopped.

RDJ was good-not-great as Tony Stark; the playboy swagger seemed to lack. I think he got to have more fun in the first one. ScarJo was great to look at but not as much to hear speak. Mickey Rourke did a pretty good job with the Russian dude. The biggest detractor acting and script-wise though, was the usually dependable Sam Rockwell, whose tycoon character was so g-damn annoying I found myself cringing. Both the lines he was given and his delivery of them were borderline intolerable.

With everyone trying to get their hands on Stark Industries technology, it became a struggle for power that didn't hold my attention. Some of the action was great (when Don Cheadle and Downey took on a swarm of Iron Man clones) while some was not so great (Mickey Rourke slicing cars and fences on a race track with some sort of whip). And that performance that RDJ did at the beginning of the film with the American flag bombast and the women was one of the dumbest things I saw this year. I still hold hope that if there is a 3rd Iron Man, it will be far less disappointing than this one.