Quick Movie Reviews: Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: Roderick Rules, Contagion, and A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas

I had a good number of films to write reviews for, so I figured I would just do some brief ones on each to conserve some time.

Diary Of a Wimpy Kid: Roderick Rules (Film Number 47 In My Goal For 2011 Films): An almost completely joyless and unfunny kids movie. The jokes are just so dumb I can't imagine anyone above the age of 8 thinking they are funny. When the funniest thing in the movie is the presence of a Brutal Truth poster in Roderick's room (being a big metalhead, the fact that there was a visible poster from such a legendary grindcore band in a kids movie was hilarious to me and probably no one else.), you know you have a major problem. The cast doesn't really make things better. The characters are mostly just annoying and you just sigh every time they enter a scene. Unless you have kid that is age 8 or under, stay away from this one.

1.5/5 Stars

Contagion (Film Number 48 In My Goal For 2011 Films): A pleasant surprise. Steven Soderbergh turned what could have been a very boring film into a pretty good disease film. What struck me most about this film was the fact that it's incredibly realistic. This could ACTUALLY happen and that is just incredibly scary. The film also makes good use of it's large cast of A-list actors. This is a great ensemble of talented actors and they are pretty much all on the top of their game here ( Jude Law, Matt Damon, and Laurence Fishburne give the standout performances out of this elite cast of actors). The only downside to Contagion is the narrative is a little too scattered and manic. If it had a better structured story, it would have reached it's full potential. Nevertheless, a good and effectively eerie disease movie.

3.5/5 Stars 

A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas*: Irrelevant to the quality of the movie, but it's very strange watching a Christmas movie in February. Anyways, back to the movie itself. As expected, it's hilarious. It's exactly what a Harold and Kumar Christmas promised to be and should be: lots of drug use, sex, vulgarity, stupid humor, lunacy and of course, another amazing cameo from Neil Patrick Harris, and even some holiday cheer and charm for good measure. It's good to have Harold and Kumar back, John Cho and Kal Penn really are a great comedic pair. I didn't enjoy it as much as the first two, but it's still a great comedy.

4/5 Stars