Gil Mansergh’s Cinema Toast

New Releases 10/09/09
Couples Retreat (PG-13)
Starring: Vince Vaughn, Kristen Bell, Jason Bateman, Malin Akerman
Director: Peter Billingsley
The concept sounds good—four Midwest couples head to a tropical island to work on their marriage and have fun in paradise. But the reality fizzles, as time after time, what should have been fun (and funny) just bombs.
1 piece of soggy toast

Stark Raving Black (R)
Starring: Lewis Black
The grumpy comic vents his spleen in a concert movie filmed in Detroit a few months ago. Flushed from  his success on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” Black performed for the troops in USO shows in Iraq and Afghanistan.  On film he says: “I think it’s very odd that we went in my lifetime from Bob Hope to me.”
3 pieces of Black isn’t exactly beautiful toast

From Mexico With Love (PG-13)
Starring: Kuno Becker, Bruce McGill, Alex Nesic, Steven Bauer, Danay Garcia, Stephen Lang
Director: Jim Nickerson
It’s hard to find the “With Love” part of this film in the description from the press notes: “Hector, an amateur boxer earns money  to buy his sick mother’s medication through fighting at local bars. A wealthy rancher, Big Al,  has his henchmen beat up Hector and leave him to die in the desert. Fighting for his life, Hector finds himself homeless on the streets of Mexico. But after finding out his mother is dead, Hector seeks to settle the score between him and Big Al.”
Unavailable for preview

I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell (R)
tarring: Matt Czuchry, Geoff Stults, Jesse Bradford, Keri Lynn Pratt
Director: Bob Gosse
I don’t know if Hell has beer, but this move could be added to one of the eternal tortures. With Todd Phillips’ “The Hangover” setting the standard for gross-out humor in a bachelor party movie,  this scat-filled mess just isn’t worth the price of a free ticket.
1/2 piece of terrible toast

The Boys Are Back (R)
Starring: Clive Owen, Laura Fraser, Nicholas Macanulty, Julia Blake
Director: Scott Hicks
Clive Owen is great playing against type as Joe Warr, a suddenly single dad who raises his two boys seemingly without any rules. Grandma, the single mom from the younger boy’s school, and just about everyone who gets in the front door has ideas on how Joe should act as a parent, but the three guys need to learn from their mistakes themselves.
3 pieces of parenthood can be messy toast
NEW ON DVD

Year One (PG-14)
Starring: Jack Black, Michael Cera, Oliver Platt, David Cross
Director: Harold Ramis
Everyone involved in this pile of dung-flavored mush knows how to make a good movie, so it baffles me as to why this supposedly funny spoof is so lame. It’s like they took the absolute worst parts of a Mel Brooks Bible Epic, and threw them away in favor of something completely lacking in humor.
1 and 1/2 piece of dumb and dumberer toast

Imagine That (PG)
Starring: Eddie Murphy, Thomas Haden Church, Nicole Ari Parker, Ronny Cox, Martin Sheen, Yara Shahidi
Director: Karey Kirkpatrick
If you believe that you can be a good parent by spending “quality time” in a frenetic, twice as fast as the speed limit, mad dash to school to get your kid there on time, then this is the movie for you. For the rest of us, forget Eddie Murphy in this film, (which is about 80% of screen time), you’ve seen him do his schtick before, but young newcomer Yara Shahidi (and her future-predicting blanket) is fresh and Thomas Haden Church rocks as a politically incorrect (but funny), Native American financial guru.
1 and 1/2 pieces of mostly stale toast