Hell Baby (2013)

I'm a big fan of the guys from The State and most of their subsequent projects, like Reno 911 and Stella, so I was eagerly looking forward to Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant's Hell Baby.  It also didn't hurt to hear Riki Lindhome talk about her nude scene on various podcasts like Doug Loves Movies.

Maybe I had set my expectations too high, but I can't tell you how disappointed I was after watching Hell Baby.  I just don't get it when a movie involving so many talented and funny people at every level can make a movie that I found devoid of anything funny.  I'm not kidding either; in the entire 98 minutes I had a slight chuckle once.  It's an example of trying so hard to parody everything about a haunted house film that it ends up failing miserably.

Vanessa (Leslie Bibb) and Jack (Rob Corddry) move into a run down home in New Orleans while they await the birth of twins.  They quickly learn from their neighbor, F'Resnel (Keegan Michael Key), that the house has a host of nicknames involving death, as well as several murders that occurred there.  I guess the disclosure laws are pretty lax in Louisiana, but whatever.  Seemingly within moments after moving in, Vanessa already begins to exhibit unusual behavior, and the typical trope of boxes stacking themselves happens. Vanessa begins to smoke and drink heavily, 'cause fetal alcohol syndrome is funny.  The story doesn't have much of a setup, let alone any mythology or end goal like a normal horror film.  I can forgive that if I'm laughing so hard that I forget to care.

A pair of priests (Lennon and Garant) and dispatched to help, even though Vanessa and Jack haven't asked for it yet.  When told about the case, they are informed they are already 'playing catch up'.  This would only make sense if this scene happens later on in the film, but this is within the first ten minutes.  Was this a massive mistake in editing?  After arriving in New Orleans, the priests seems to be more interested in eating, checking out the French Quarter and looking at boobs than getting on the case.  They also smoke, work out a lot and dress like the Men in Black meet The Blues Brothers.  I hate to get nitpicky about plot details, but this is all I have at this point.

Much of the humor in Hell Baby consists of repeated gags and silly scenes that drag on and on.  There's one gag where Jack gets shocked by an old lamp he's working on, but I'm trying to figure out why he's continues to work on a lamp that's plugged in.  There are multiple scenes of people orgasmically eating po'boys, complete with burps and farts; I'm not sure what was supposed to be funny about that.  There's an old, naked lady (which was really just someone wearing an awful looking naked suit) that shows up throughout the film.  A pair of boneheaded cops (Rob Huebel and Paul Scheer) question Jack on multiple occasions and call him names like 'Einstein' or 'Mozart' for no reason.  F'Resnel lets himself in through a window on a whim and always accidentally scares Jack.  Then, there's a chain vomiting part that goes on forever.  This all culminates with a scene where a room full of adults freak out and play hot potato with a devil baby.  I kept waiting for any of these scenes to go somewhere or have some kind of payoff.

Even Lindhome's nude scene goes on for way too long, and has no point other than to have more nudity.  Apparently her character isn't ashamed of her body, but Jack is uncomfortable around her naked sister-in-law.  Go figure.  I never thought I'd see the day where I'd complain about a pretty girl getting nude, but I don't know why Lindhome agreed to do this.  She has a great body though.

I get it, comedy is hard.  Not everything is going to work, and I'll admit that maybe I'm not the right audience for this or wasn't in the right mood to watch it.  I don't mind silly or lowbrow humor, but this didn't work for me at all.  Hell Baby feels like something that was shot over the course of a few days without much of a script.  They weren't sure what direction they wanted to take it, so they just let all the actors wing it.  This is one of the reasons why I'm so hard on recent Adam Sandler films.  With this much comedic talent, you'd think they could knock it out of the park with ease.  At least everyone felt committed to the material.  I'm sure they were laughing their heads off while filming.

It occurred to me afterwards that Hell Baby is something I would've really loved when I was 15 or 16.  Back then, this would have killed me, and the nudity would have excited me more.  I like these guys, so I don't want to beat them up too bad.  It's not like they've lost a fan.  I'm hoping their next work will slay me.

Hell Baby is a disappointing, uninspired film from comedy pros that I was expecting a lot more from.  Meant to be a parody of haunted house/possession films, it's a silly farce with repeated gags that run on and on and on.  I'm not even sure if large amounts of alcohol or drugs could help it.  I really wish I could recommend it, but I can't.  This is one to take a pass on.

0.5 out of 5 Death Stars

Meeting Evil (2012) - Movie Review

Nick Fury swaps his eye patch for a fedora and a murderous rampage.

Meeting Evil features Luke Wilson as John, a just-fired real estate agent.  To make matters worse, he's in bad shape financially and pretty miserable, snapping at his wife Joanie (Leslie Bibb) and kids for surprising him on his birthday.  Wait a second, their names are John and Joanie?  Seriously?  Oh boy...that's a double date you find an excuse to skip.

There's a knock at the door and it's Richie (Samuel L. Jackson), a stranger who's car stalled and needs a push.  Even though he's just asking for help, there's something creepy about Richie, and we all know how Richie is a name that just inspires fear.  Also, the way John is reacting to him seems unusual as well.  John is injured while pushing the car and Richie offers to take him to the hospital, which John reluctantly agrees to.

They take a detour at a bar were John runs into his mistress, Tammy (Peyton List).  John might be miserable, but I'd be pretty happy if I was sleeping with both Leslie Bibb and Peyton List.  Anyway, from there they all head off together where Richie continues to detour them, saying cryptic things that put John and Tammy on edge.  Things take a turn for the worse when Richie kills someone in front of them and becomes increasing psychotic.  Richie leads them on a murderous rampage with John essentially his hostage, even though he had multiple opportunities to escape (Tammy is able to get away) or subdue Richie.

Why is Richie killing all these people?  He's obviously a psychopath, but he makes statements about not being a bad guy, lack of common courtesy and only killing people that have given up.  You think there might be something beneath the surface of it all, but there isn't really.  Most of the killing happens off screen, and many times you aren't even aware he's killed someone until well after the fact.  The movie is largely bloodless as well, so it's very tame for a movie about murder.  As a result, you never feel any tension.

When Richie's real intentions are revealed, it's a disappointing let down with an even more disappointing climax.  Based on the premise there's so many interesting places they could have taken this film; like having John, already in a downward spiral from losing his job and marital issues, being forced by Richie to join in the murders and eventually enjoying them as he continues to break down mentally.   For most of the film, I was expecting Richie to eventually reveal himself as some kind of demon or devil in human form that just reveled in the carnage.  That wasn't the case either.

This was based on a book by Thomas Berger, which I hear was more of a character study that the movie should have been.  The screenplay by Chris Fisher, who also directed, seems to have lost any of those qualities and made this into a pretty generic thriller.  This wasn't a good effort on his part. This felt like something that could have been a TV movie.

Meeting Evil is overacted to the max with pretty bad and inconsistent dialog throughout the movie, especially from the supporting characters.  There are some exchanges that end up being unintentionally hilarious.  As mentioned earlier, there's never any real tension and the pacing of the movie really drags.  I was shocked after finishing this to see that it wasn't even 90 minutes.

I hate to pick on the guy, but what happened to Luke Wilson?  After movies like Old School and Idiocracy, I thought he's be a superstar by now, but if you take a look at his filmography, he's been in a series of terrible movies.  He really felt like he was phoning it in here, alternating between whispering his dialog and shouting it. Samuel L. Jackson, on the other hand, seemed like he was having a lot of fun playing Richie, but it's always more fun to play the mysterious bad guy.

There are many distracting things in the movie, like casting two young actors to play John and Joanie's kids that look nothing like one another, let alone look anything like their parents.  They even seemed to be different ethnicities.  As neither kid had a single line of dialog, their presence seemed completely unnecessary to the film.  Speaking of unnecessary, there were two cops that would show up from time to time that also just didn't do anything for the movie and everything they did felt very amateurish.  Lastly, Peyton List seemed wasted here as well.  Early on, she's struck by Richie and has blood on her forehead, but she never wipes it off even though hours have passed and you last see her in the police station.  Nobody attends to her injuries there?

Does these people look related to each other?

I had high hopes based on the cast, but Meeting Evil is just not a good movie.  It's overacted, over-directed and doesn't go anywhere interesting after the promising setup.  Plus, it wastes a Nicholas Cage-like performance from Samuel L. Jackson.  It's a mess and just kind of ridiculous.  This isn't something I can really recommend unless you like watching bad movies.

1.5 (out of 5) Death Stars