So my plan last week was to fire up the way-back machine and do my thing with Peter Travers’ zero-star review of Bad Boys II, arguably the second greatest Henry Rollins movie of all time. I ran into a slight hitch when I realized that, for a movie he considers to be in the category of all time worst movies, Peter really didn’t have that much to say about it. Not that I have anything against recycling jokes, as my running commentary on the awkward sexual tension of his Watchmen review should indicate, but there wasn’t much for me to talk about except  the irony of the most bombastic film-reviewer of all time hating a movie for being too bombastic.

So this week I’m delving into his review of I Love You, Man, the Rudd and Segal buddy movie that came out last week. Nobody’s ever accused me of punctuality.

You know the drills. Words after the jump:

Here’s the thing about comedies: Even when the script is freighted with formula, the right actors can keep it afloat, even airborne.

Apparently even writers for major entertainment publications are allowed to mix metaphors now. I’d probably be less bitter if I had a similarly cushy job, but I don’t, so I’m not.

In a down market for giggles (Miss March? Please!), Paul Rudd and Jason Segel are howlingly funny.

Quick, somebody get Geithner on the line. Giggles need a bailout!

They have skills.

True story. Peter Travers once saw the two of them build a campfire out of all the excess money they made by doing the exact same movie every six months.

They can get laughs without the sitcom pimping.

Is there a pimp sitcom out there I don’t know about? If not, Fox needs to get on that right away.

By the way, Jason Segel stars in the sitcom “How I Met Your Mother.” Just saying.

It’s a rare gift, staying hilarious and recognizably human.

Yes, rare is the gift that allows these two humans to continue to be recognized as humans while being hilarious. Personally, I’m hilarious, but I tend to look more like a North American Grizzly when I do it.

Their presence and ace comic timing kick the movie up a notch.

You know what? I totally missed that fact that Peter Travers decided to open with a lightning round. In a five-line dual-knob slob-off, Peter travers has managed to say absolutely nothing of value, which I guess is a win for him.

Director John Hamburg (Along Came Polly), who teamed on the script with Seinfeld writer Larry Levin, hangs the plot on a flimsy premise: A dude with no dude friends needs a dude to be best man at his wedding.

Look, I use dude to open pretty much every third sentence I say. I’m tired of my lifestyle being mercilessly persecuted by these out of touch wind bags who don’t understand my cultural upbringing, man.

Never mind that the needy dude, tightly wound L.A. realtor Peter Klaven (Rudd), has a brother, Robbie (Andy Samberg), who could easily do the job.

This is what passes for analysis in a Peter Travers movie. Christ, he’s the kind of guy who watches Law & Order and feels smart for guessing that the wife did it, isn’t he?

That would leave no reason to get Peter out on man dates.

Two things: First, whoever it was that came up with the term “man date” and chuckled about the fact that it sounds like another word, despite the lack of any kind of related double entendre, should be deported to Slovakia. Second, does he seem a little too insistant that Peter go on these man dates, or am I really just reading way too much into this?

That’s right, Peter’s fiancée, Zooey (a sparky Rashida Jones) — whose girl network is so in the loop they know precisely the first time Peter went oral on Zooey (“Lock that tongue down, girl”) — encourages the poor schnook to go out and find a best buddy.

A Google Image search for Schnook, which apparently means a stupid or gullible person, similar to a “dolt.” It takes mere seconds to google a word to find out if it sucks, by the way.

After several disastrous tries, including a gay close encounter, the search ends with Sydney Fife (Segel). Sydney is Peter’s polar opposite, a likable slob who holes up in a Venice Beach man cave stuffed with porn and video games

Let’s see: gay close encounter…pole…slob…holes…man cave…stuffed…porn.

Sydney has a comfort level inside his own skin that Peter never dreamed possible.

Jesus Christ. Peter Travers is actually writing I Love You, Man slash fiction.

Without ever infringing on Brokeback territory, Sydney is man enough to make Zooey jealous.

Just a little late there, buddy. I think you’ve already “infringed” all over Brokeback’s “territory.”

And that’s it. That’s all. It’s the variations that Rudd and Segel spin on this theme that make the movie hugely enjoyable.

Right, because that line couldn’t be used whenever these guys do the exact same thing every six months.

There’s no one better than Rudd at putting an affable face on awkwardness.

Woody Allen is so pissed off right now.

it’s always Peter who drops the ball.

Yes, it is always Peter who drops the ball. It’s nice when he writes my side for me.

Cool is always just out of Peter’s reach

I’m just going to pop out and grab a coffee. Anyone else want one?

It’s a passion for Rush (the band puts in a surprise appearance) that bonds Peter and Sydney.

Surprise? Well, not any more. Way to drop the ball Peter.

Segel has a ball playing the other side of the inhibited musician he wrote for himself in the underrated Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Well, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and imbd all have Forgetting Sarah Marshall rated pretty highly. I guess that’s good for a movie that sucked, but remind me again what “underrated” means?

He also lets you in on the loneliness that’s eating at this free spirit.

Yet another sneak peek at Peter’s upcoming romance novel, Travers of the Night.

Jaime Pressly is terrific as Zooey’s BFF. Her battles with Jon Favreau, excellent as her blowhard husband, have genuine comic bite.

Honestly, I don’t know what “genuine comic bite” means, so I’m just going to let it be.

The movie goes soft in its final stages

Lest anyone think I’m out to paint Peter Travers as some kind of sexual deviant, bear in mind that he actually wrote that.

“Sweet, sweet hangin’,” says Peter of knowing Sydney. The same goes for the movie.

That’s it? Honestly, if Rolling Stone gave me any money at all, I’d be willing to invest the minute and a half it would take to come up with a better ending line than that.

Quick programming note: At some point in the next month or so, I’m hoping to spin this feature off into its own website at www.ihatepetertravers.com (it currently redirects to a listing of posts tagged “I Hate Peter Travers”).  I’m looking for writers who can do posts in this same vein (hopefully directed at a wider range of bad critics) as well as people who are interested in doing actual movie reviews. If there’s anyone out there with an interest in getting in on the groundfloor of this non-lucrative enterprise, drop me an email at jon@seitzwrites.com.

Apologies to my tens of fans who have been left with next to nothing to read for the past week or two. I’ve hit a bad run of Writer’s Block and have been unfairly ignoring the website for a while. But I’ll make it up to y’all with a daily double of IHPT fun.

First up on the chopping block is Milk, which nabbed a couple of Oscars (including a completely bullshit win for Sean Penn. That Oscar belonged to Mickey Rourke.) and has been pretty well received. I, of course, haven’t seen it, but Peter Travers gave it four stars, so you know it must be good.

You can hit up the original review here, and my opinions below:

Maybe you don’t know a damn thing about gay activist Harvey Milk.

Well, that was a harsh opening. Did somebody piss in Peter’s Fruit Loops?

Maybe you ought to know that President-elect Barack Obama isn’t the only community organizer who went on to make a difference.

Maybe. I mean, I certainly couldn’t have gotten that idea from him being on roughly every third cover of Rolling Stone for the past two years, right? But on another note, has Obama actually made a difference yet? Especially considering that this review was published November 27?
Maybe thoughtful filmmaking, no matter how incendiary and intimate, isn’t worth squat at an infantilized multiplex.

Yes, I suppose people don’t like to be talked-down to, like when they read a review that opens with “Maybe you don’t know a damn thing about gay activist Harvey Milk.” I find it funny how people get all up in arms about movies like Beverly Hills Chihuahua and Paul Blart making hundreds of millions of dollars because they’re poor little “thoughtful” movie could only make $42 million. There’s probably some kind of moral lesson about our society there, if we really see a $22 million profit as a bad thing.

Stop me now.

Oh Peter, if only…

There’s really no maybe about Milk, directed with a poet’s eye by Gus Van Sant from a richly detailed script by Big Love writer Dustin Lance Black.

What, exactly, does “no maybe” acually mean? Is he saying that there are no questions asked about it, or that everything in it is purely black and white? An interesting idea. I’m also comletely lost on what an “poet’s eye” has to do with directing. I suppose the sound mixing was also done with a dancer’s ear.

It’s a total triumph, brimming with humor, heart, sexual heat, political provocation and a crying need to stir things up, just like Harvey did. If there’s a better movie around this year, with more bristling purpose, I sure as hell haven’t seen it.

If there is a more shameless lumping together of worthless platitudes in the hopes that one of them will make it to the poster/trailer around this year, I sure as hell haven’t seen it.

San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be voted into office in America, was shot dead in 1978, along with Mayor George Moscone, in City Hall. Dan White, a troubled politico who had served with Harvey on the city’s board of supervisors, pumped five bullets into Harvey. The crusader for gay rights in San Francisco, and the nation, was 48.

So, you’ve already established that we don’t know a damn thing about Harvey Milk, as though it were unforgivable crime of ignorance, and then you give us his life story in three sentences. Can we at least get a spoiler alert?

That Harvey’s questing spirit not only lives but soars in this movie is a gift from Sean Penn, who plays him for real instead of for show.

No, he doesn’t play him for real. Sean Penn took this role because he was paid to do it, and he knew that it would get him an Oscar during a political year. It’s a movie. A piece of pop culture entertainment. Acting in a $20 million production can only be seen as doing something for show. The only way I’ve seen Penn actually stand up for Gay Rights is by him telling people to see his movie.

Penn uses makeup to lengthen his nose and look more like Harvey. He adopts a New York accent to get Harvey’s inflections.

No way. An actor actually made an effort to look and sound like the character he was playing? AMAZING!

But the physical transformation is nothing compared to the way Penn gets at the core of the man, finding the source of his joy and pain.

Okay…yeah…pursuit with certain anti-discrimination statutes in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I’m just going to leave this one alone.

He disappears into Harvey with the artistry of an acting virtuoso.

You’re really not going to make this one easy on me are you?

There’s one word for Penn’s performance: phenomenal.

Or, you know, the 112 words you used praising Penn before the word phenomenal, which was the same word you used to describe Penn’s Oscar opponent Frank Langella in Frost/Nixon.

If you want to hate on this movie, bring it on.

I’m starting to get a little confused here. Why is he being so defensive of a movie that got everywhelmingly positive reviews? (for the sake of clarification, I’m hating only on Peter Travers’ review, not on the movie itself. I would have seen it if I wasn’t broke and single without a lot of movie-going friends)

To those who say Milk is hagiography, I say Harvey is my kind of saint: a New York Jew with a screwed-up past, a lively sex life and a goal to bring the gay movement out of the shadows even if he had to be a media whore to do it.

A Gay Jewish Saint? Well, now I’ve heard everything. And I’m absolutely not surprised that Peter Travers’ sees a media whore as his kind of saint. That one was more obvious than Clay Aiken.

Milk begins with Harvey’s 1972 arrival in San Francisco with his lover, Scott Smith (James Franco, warmly funny and touching). That’s right, Spicoli macks on the son of the Green Goblin.

Quick vote: Does Peter Travers seem to enjoy that image just a little too much?

Milk is entertaining and playfully erotic in ways that reflect life instead of political agenda.

Is there actually a way that playful eroticism can reflect political agenda? Oh wait…

But Josh Brolin is simply astounding as Dan White, revealing the inner torment of a man at odds with his own emotions. Sporting the calendar-ready look of a good Catholic husband and father, Dan is both repulsed by and attracted to Harvey and his gay agenda.

What? You promised that there were no maybes. Now there’s a character with inner turmoil and questionable motives. I’ll just go see Blart. There’s a movie with no maybes.

Penn makes Harvey so vivid and spoiling to be heard that you want to introduce him to people. John McCain, meet a real maverick.

Again, this review came out on November 28. Was there really any need for a John McCain dig?
And that’s it for Milk. I’ll finally be breaking out of the Oscar movie mold with another edition of IHPT later tonight. Stay tuned.

That research? The 2009 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

Done? Feel free to keep looking if you need more time. I don’t blame you. Like I said, it took me all weekend to really parse all of the data. But just in case you missed some of the highlights, I’ll throw in a couple, like straight-up bombshell Brooklyn Decker (who, in my opinion, should have gotten the cover):

Oh, but if you’re like me and you actually bought the issue, it probably took you no time to get through it all. Because Sports Illustrated has actually succeeded in making the print edition of their magazine less interesting than their online content. I really can’t blame SI though. The ability to host more pictures, along with video, interviews, and a slew of other content means that the online edition has to be better almost by default. Plus, it allows me to post more pictures, like this one of Slovakian knockout Lucia Dvorska:

But I fear that the advances in online content left their print version a little lackluster. This is especially obvious in comparison to last year’s issue. For one, this year’s issue is 50 pages shorter than last year’s. But more importantly there aren’t as many ads. I know that this is going to sound counterintuitive coming from a journalist (especially one who is also a red-blooded mountain of a man who survives on whiskey and raw meat), but ads in the Swimsuit Issue are kind of like ads in the Super Bowl. Car companies, beer companies and just about everyone else who pays for space uses it to show off more models. They also like to use big foldouts, which double as space for SI to show off more models. So, more ads equals more models, like French-Canadian Kim Cloutier:

But this year’s issue contains exactly one model foldout (as opposed to cover foldout, which is all ad, though it does feature a model. it’s complicated). Since they lost the extra space to show larger picture in the issue, they instead decided to go with two-page spreads. Which means that I’m stuck ogling a model with a huge black line running right through them (I considered a half-dozen different wordings for that sentence, and that was the tamest). No where is this felt worse than in the bodypainting section, especially for Julie Henderson:

Her spread in the issue not obscures the model, but it obscures the intricate artwork that went into painting this bathing suit. Of course, those teases at SI have to use a pull quote that literally says “She has beautifully curved natural breasts, which I wanted to show off here” ON A SPREAD WHERE YOU CAN’T EVEN SEE THEM FULLY BECAUSE OF THE BINDING! DAMMIT SI, THIS IS WHY A-ROD DID STEROIDS! Here’s a picture of Israeli model (and covergirl) Bar Refaeli:

So the photo layout of the magazine has some faults. Considering that the only content in the magazine in the photos, that doesn’t work out very well. But the online version is still there, except, if you’ve been looking at the photos (presumably fewer people are reading the words) you’ve probably noticed that the they’re all in the same portrait layout. Yeah, it’s for a magazine, so I guess it’s understandable. But if they’re trying to push their online content, you’d imaging that they’d cater to widescreen monitors and resolutions with more landscape pictures like this one of Melissa Haro:

There is nothing worse than having to scroll through pictures of hot chicks. Melissa Haro clearly knows this. But in the end the issue is all about the models (or, for some, the largely non-functional “swimsuits”) and I really can’t complain on that front, except for the gap in Jessica Hart’s teeth and a couple dozen of Cintia Dicker’s freckles (and yes, I am actually refraining from posting pictures of beautiful women in the skimpiest outfits that can still justifiably be called clothing over these minor complaints). Because really, despite all the distraction, there will always certified Leggy Blonde Anne V of Russia to make everything better:

But before I start talking about this article, I just want to say a little bit about the recent redesign. I was never all that wild about their old look, but I love the way that they’ve standardized the all-around look of the magazine. I think there’s a little nod to blogs in that all the features and articles use roughly the same spread, and the covers have an awesomely straightforward look that, personally, I’d like to see more magazines adopt.

But enough rambling. The January/February 2009 issue, their “State of the Union” issue, has Barack Obama on the cover and a lot of discussion about the incredibly relevant issues of race in America. There’s a really interesting piece about “The End of White America” and a profile of Michelle Obama that drastically recasts our national debate in a newly compelling light.

But I want to talk about Football, so I’m going to talk about the article “Football’s Hardest Job.”

First, to my surprise, this article was about neither the Detroit Lions nor the BCS, arguably the two most pressing jobs in Football today. No, instead it’s about Bob “Fish” Fishman, one of CBS’s directors for NFL coverage. Most of the story is written from the perspective of a prouction trailer outside The Meadowlands during a game between the Bengals and the Giants, as the writer details what goes into putting an NFL game on TV.

Now, I wasn’t surprised by the amount of work that goes into this process. I suppose it’s kind of like putting together a daily newspaper, except you have to do it all live.  But one of the most interesting observations is that TV is really what made the NFL the powerhouse of American Professional Sports that it is today. I’d go a little further though, and say that TV is why Hockey and Soccer are not more popular in America.

Neither sport translates well to TV, because both generally use the high-from-the-middle camera shot for the the majority of the action. The camera rarely does more than pan side to side, so you have to actively watch to find the action. Football, as this article points out, has an entire team of people whose sole job it is to make sure you never have to wonder where the action is going to be. They have cameras trained on all the likely possibilities for the play, and enough angles that you can see every moment from all different sides. Football–and possibly to a larger extent baseball–come across on TV like a well made movie. Hockey and Soccer come across more like, well, live sporting events.

It probably says something about America that we have trouble sitting through sporting events that aren’t well directed. But I really don’t care. I love football. I watch NFL games that have no meaning, simply because it’s football (and because I wanted to–and did–win my Fantasy League). Football is such a perfect TV product to veg out to because anything you miss will be replayed, and there are more than enough breaks that you can go get a beer, get food, or reach the inevitable conclusion of those two and go to the bathroom. Of course, the Superbowl actually makes you want to watch commercials, or the halftime show (BRUUUCE!), but the focus is still the football. Everything else is decoration.

Canada loves its hockey, and the rest of the world loves its soccer. They’re dedicated fans, so they put up with the nuisances of the broadcast media. But I guarantee that you could attract many more casual fans to either sport by pouring money into the TV coverage. I don’t know how much they could do with hockey, because it’s so fast paced and unpredictable, but there’s gotta be something. I want to see the NHL somewhere besides Versus and NBC’s off days.

But back to the article. One reason I enjoyed it was that the writer, Mark Bowden, captured the excitement of the football match as it was pieced together. Interestingly though, it was so gripping because he wasn’t describing the game itself, he was literally transcribing the way it was coming across on TV.

There were some kind of awkward bracketed moments, where Bowden described what was on the cameras, and one very Atlantic-y explanation of Eli Manning’s heritage, but other than that it was a great article that explained football without actually describing football. I’d recommend it.

It’s time for another installment of “I Hate Peter Travers.” After going through The Wrestler last week. I kind of wanted to do a movie that I’d actually seen for a change. Unfortunately, I don’t get out to the movies that often, so no luck there. However, given that Peter Travers has done me the favor of never writing anything about a movie that you couldn’t pick up from the press releases, I don’t think I should have any problem mocking his reviews of movies I haven’t seen yet.

So this week, I’m going after his review of Slumdog Millionaire. The movie has already gotten rave reviews from the three people I know who’ve seen it, along with an Oscar nod for Best Picture, it seems timely enough. Feel free to read the review, or just follow the jump to see me take sections of it out of context for comedic purposes.

What I feel for this movie isn’t just admiration, it’s mad love.

For those of you who elected not to read the actual review, this is the first line. Normally I’d expect some statement declaring his admiration before a statement that qualifies said undeclared admiration.

And I couldn’t be more surprised. The plot reeks of uplift: An illiterate slum kid from Mumbai goes on the local TV version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and comes off like a brainiac.

Oh yes, Peter Travers is so credible because he hates overly sappy movies too. Because there’s nothing more uplifting than illiterate slum kids. God they’re just so precocious. They’re all like that Dakota Fanning, except for the crushing poverty, fighting to survive every day and, you know, not being able to read.

Who wants to see that? Final answer: You do.

Ah. I see what you did there Peter. Rather than stick to your typical rhetorical questions, you made a topical joke involving the game show on which the movie is based. Good for you. bom bom bom bom wooooo.

Slumdog Millionaire has the goods to bust out as a scrappy contender in the Oscar race.

Since I assume that most people don’t follow Peter Travers with the same Crusader’s zeal that I do, I should take a moment to explain that Peter Travers loves to prognosticate the Oscars. Granted, he was right this time, but a broken clock is still pretty damn useless. This was one of the easiest Oscar picks to make. The Academy loves to grab an indie movie to make themselves seem relevant, and the buzz has big so big that I didn’t even have to see the movie to tell that it would make it.

Aside from the Oscar comment, is anyone else picking up some weird sexual undertones to this whole thing? “Mad love”? “goods to bust out”? I’m curious to see how far he goes with this.

It’s modern India standing in for a world in full economic spin. It’s an explosion of color and light with the darkness ever ready to invade. It’s a family film of shocking brutality, a romance haunted by sexual abuse, a fantasy of wealth fueled by crushing poverty.

Hey, it’s the obligatory line of random sentences!  Time for the lightning round (damn, these game show jokes are easy):

It’s modern India standing in for a world in full economic spin.

I have to imagine that Peter Travers didn’t realize that America’s not looking so hot right now either. I assume that this line could have applied regardless of where the movie was set, because, as he says, the world is in full economic spin right now. I’m just glad he didn’t use that R word. Thanks Pete.

It’s an explosion of color and light with the darkness ever ready to invade.

Since Peter Travers is incapable of actually talking about the themes of a movie, he simply makes veiled references to relevance, hidden under what sounds like a jackass describing exactly what passes in front of his eyes without ever taxing his brain.

It’s a family film of shocking brutality, a romance haunted by sexual abuse, a fantasy of wealth fueled by crushing poverty.

This could almost qualify for further breakdown, except for that the fact that these are three of the most vapid, empty phrases with which any human being could possibly describe anything, so I’m not even going to bother. Yes, we get it. You found some complicated paradoxes within a film. Keep on patting yourself on the back for DOING THE EXACT SAME THING THAT THE TITLE OF THE GODDAMN MOVIE DID.

You won’t find many fairy tales that open with a graphic torture scene.

Stop…just stop. Just stop treating us like idiots. Stop pretending that you understand anything. Stop pointing out obvious paradoxes. Stop branding a film as a fairly tale because you can’t understand even the most basic premise of story telling.

Presumably this is not the way Regis Philbin ran things when the show hit America in 1999.

You son of a bitch. I can’t handle your cheap humor anymore. I’m just disgusted. I need a shower.

Brimming with humor and heartbreak, Slumdog Millionaire meets at the border of art and commerce and lets one flow into the other as if that were the natural order of things.

Wait…maybe I’m wrong about all of this. This could be the beginning of a somewhat intelligent thought. I mean, film has always been a medium defined by the struggle between artistic vision and studio commerce. Personally, I’ve always found this to be one of the most engrossing aspects about it. I want to see where he’s going with this before I pass any judgment.

Sweet.

I..I’m just at a loss for words here. I may have to go break something. Where’s my fubar?

The no-bull honesty of Slumdog Millionaire hits you hard. It’s the real deal. No cheating.

Oh thank god it’s over. I always find it interesting how the synonyms and metaphors just dry up by the closing of the review. After weaving the same two concepts around for this entire duration of this travesty, we’re stuck with more repetitions of the same game-show jokes and worthless tropes about honesty and paradox. God I hate you Peter Travers.

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