Movie Reviews: I Don't Know How She Abducts the Dolphin's Money

I have seen a lot of movies within the past week and I have a certain friend who has been nagging at me to get my reviews posted... so here they are!  Well, some of them.  There are so many that I didn't want to lump them all into one gargantuan post, so I'll be doing them in groups.  Two of these four movies were just plain awful, one was really cute and one was flat-out terrific.

I Don’t Know How She Does It AWFUL

Sarah Jessica Parker plays Kate Reddy who juggles a busy business career and a family.  So how does she do it?  Well, she doesn’t.  She’s sort of a frenzied mess, and so is this movie by director Douglas McGrath and screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna.  It’s a comedy geared for women that is not once funny or particularly moving.  In fact, it’s really dull and has nothing interesting to say about the working mom, even though the characters talk and talk and talk and unnecessarily give interviews to the camera.

Abduction AWFUL

Taylor Lautner is the cute-as-a-button boy-next-door with a nice set of abs that has no business having a career as an actor.  An underwear model?  Sure, why not.  But an actor?  Hell to the no.  In Abduction he plays teenaged Nathan who discovers his baby picture on a missing persons website and soon finds himself on the run from bad guys and CIA agents… and the result is just a lot of second-rate action sequences and abysmal acting.  This movie by director John Singleton is so bad it’s almost funny, and it somehow manages to make seasoned actors like Sigourney Weaver look like they’d be better suited for community theater.

Moneyball AWESOME!

Brad Pitt stars as Oakland A’s manager Billy Beane who feels like it is impossible to put together a winning team on such a tiny budget when all of the best players get snatched up by teams who can pay them more.  He gets an idea—sparked by Peter Brand (played by comedian Jonah Hill showing great skill in a serious role)—to draft players based off of computer-generated analysis.  Although everyone thinks he will fail, he sticks to his beliefs and revolutionizes the game of baseball.  Director Bennett Miller does a fantastic job at delivering a powerfully motivating message without ever getting cheesy, and the performances are all top-notch.

Dolphin Tale ADMIRABLE

Morgan Freeman, Harry Connick Jr. and Ashley Judd all star in this family-friendly film about a dolphin who loses her tail and the boy who never gave up on her.  Young Sawyer (Nathan Gamble) untangles the poor animal and instantly forms a bond with her.  The dolphin's story inspires many people with disabilities and helps Sawyer to come out of his shell.  There were brief moments in the film that felt overly silly or unimportant—like a crazy people-attacking pelican and a five-minute sequence of a toy helicopter zooming around the aquarium—but overall the feel-good film was heartwarming and very inspiring.

Read Brian’s reviews of I Don’tKnow How She Does It, Abduction and Moneyball on his new movie blog Addiction to Film!

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