Grown Ups

Everybody loves a comedy and "Grown Ups" is definitely a great one to see. The All-Star cast includes the great Adam Sandler and Kevin James as well as David Spade, Chris Rock and a few others. There are also regulars from many of the other Adam Sandler movies that make appearances or have bit parts as well. The combination of all of these extremely funny people is an extremely funny movie.
The story is based around five friends from grade school who come back for the funeral of their grade school basketball coach. Even with the seriousness of a funeral around them at the beginning they still manage to pull some laughs out of it. Unlike many movies, however, they don't cross the line into anything that would be offensive. After the funeral the jokes start to fly at you though.
As with most groups of friends they rag on each other almost all the time. They bring up memories of how things were and what they all did whether it was dumb or just plain funny. When their present lives and families get brought into the banter the jokes pick up even more. All of the jokes and pranks are made even funnier by the fact that you can tell the actors get along and love working together.
Just about everyone of the adults in the movie has been in an Adam Sandler movie at some point or another. This helped with the story writting because of how easy it seems that everyone plays off of each other. Even when one of the characters is trying to kick the crap out of another character you can still tell that the actors were having fun doing it. It's always great to see a movie where you know the people in it enjoy not only the role that they're playing but also the people that they're acting with.
It doesn't matter if you're old or young, male or female. "Grown Ups" will have you laughing like no Adam Sandler movie before. For even more fun watch it with friends. That way you can revisit the adventures of your younger, and maybe dumber, selves and keep on laughing.

Prince of Persia

This weeks movie will be "Prince of Persia" starring Jake Gyllenhall. The movie is actually based off of the popular video game for the Playstation but it adds it's own big screen thrills that a video game just can't provide. Unlike a lot of modern movies it doesn't start out slow and it doesn't start out with a bang. It progresses very nicely into the heart of the story instead of just throwing you into it. Jerry Bruckheimer, who many know from the "Pirates" movies, produced this movie and you can see some of his influence in the making of it.

It's not easy for me to say that I think a movie is really good or to be overly impressed with a movie but I think this is one of the better movies that has come out this year. There have been other good movies of course but this one sticks out. The special effects were drastically different from most movies that have come out lately. Towards the end where Darstan is trying to stop his uncle from piercing the sand glass has some incredible visuals that are very high quality. All the jumping around in impossible fashion is somewhat hard to believe but adds to the movies unique character.

Sir Benjamin Kingsley also gives a very good performance as the villain. Not many people have seen him in a really good villain role but he always pulls it off when he does. This villain is also more subtle than most villains that you see in movies like "Batman" or "Spiderman." Instead of just knowing right away that he is the villain they build up to it and when you find out it is incredible how the character keeps it hidden from the others that don't know. It was definitely a very well written movie.

If I were a movie critic I would give this one two thumbs up. There is a lot of action to be had. The writing was superb. The characters were very well developed. There's even a little bit of a romance in it but not enough to choke the movie. So "Prince of Persia" is a definite recommendation.