"ABC, 123 , baby you and me." I would like to use this song lyric by the late Michael Jackson as a paradigm for a tripartite review. The three movies under review are The Spy Next Door, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus and Youth in Revolt.
Receiving an A by default is The Spy Next Door. It is the least offensive of the three movies in question. It offers nothing in the way of humor, contains no believable action sequences and propounds a romance that is less sexy than my kintergarten teacher who hated me. Jackie Chan is a fighter, not a lover, the exact opposite of Rodney Dangerfield. Three young children attempt the thwart Jackie from marrying their mother because he is "boring". Well, he is boring but their negative attitude is rather puerile and made me physically ill. This film would never receive an A unless the competition were so much worse.
The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnasus comes in at number two. This is only a B and rated number 2 by virture of its competition. We all love Heath Ledger but had he remained alive to make more movies like this we would now hate him. Rather than remember him as The Joker, do we really want to remind ourselves of his clownish-dark-theatrical inclination? This particular imaginarium lacks just that, imagination. It is the worst film of the year to date, except for...
Coming in at number three is Youth in Revolt. I offer it a C, which in this case stands for crap. Michael Cera sounds like a woman, in this film dresses like a woman, acts like a little girl, and looks like a clumsy/uncoordinated oaf. He cannot act, looks like a crossdresser, and has a higher voice than Justin Timberlake. He ruins his parents' expensive cars and goes to prison in order to lose his virginity to the girl he causes to be expelled. None of his antics are funny and watching Youth in Revolt is like waking up and discovering you have a flu like cold and still have to go to work to deliver an important career altering presentation. It is that miserable. ABC, 123, this review and me.
