Little Man- *1/2

Little Man is not a movie you watch. Little Man is a movie you reference in about 7 years in order to make your friends laugh at your random, forgotten references to past culture. There is no one I’ve talked to who even smiles or ask how it was when I told them I saw Little Man. Mostly I get asked if I’m okay. One person said she would no longer be my friend.

Let’s be honest, there are a couple funny moments. David Alan Grier as an obnoxious restaurant musician is funny. Well, for a little bit…the joke wears thin quickly. But the Wayans Bros. aren’t known for their restraint. Every dirty joke that you told in sixth grade is retold here. Of course the midget has a giant penis. Of course he has sex with someone’s wife and the wife thinks it’s the husband. Of course every single male character gets hit in the nuts at least once. Of course someone in the movie has to shit themselves explosively.

Calvin (played by Linden Porco and Gabriel Pimental, and faced by Marlon Wayans) has just gotten out of prison, and has to pull a heist for a mob boss (poor, poor Chazz Palminteri). When the cops descend, he ditches the diamond with a young couple, Darryl (Shawn Wayans) and Vanessa (Kerry Washington). To get the diamond back, Calvin poses as an abandoned child to infiltrate the house, and hilarity ensues. Well, theoretically. What really ensues is a lot of unfunny jokes, and everyone learns some heart-warming lessons. Vanessa learns that maybe a family is more important than her career. Calvin learns a family is important. Darryl learns…well, nothing. He does get hit in the nuts a lot, though.

This movie is really long sit-com episode. The jokes aren’t particularly clever and they’ve all been lifted from other movies (the football scene from Wedding Crashers, the explosive diarrhea from Dumb and Dumber, several jokes from Bad Santa, etc). Darryl is a wide-eyed, dippy character who says everything with the innocence of a bad dad on some CBS family sit-com. Calvin basically mugs for the camera so much he makes Adam Sandler look witty. The serious scenes are even worse, with Darryl talking about fatherhood, and Calvin making really unfunny faces while fighting back tears. And some of the other character’s schticks…my god. Someone needs to tell them that the old white lady talking black is a dead horse that’s only getting deader. The cops hating blacks get a few giggles, but that that horse is on its last legs too. I just wonder if maybe they had taken some time to really create a funny scene, some of this might have worked. But instead we get something that feels like it was hastily thrown together on one drunken night. It’s a shame, I like farts and nutshots, but I’ve never seen anything make them SO unfunny.

I look at this movie the same way I look at those skinny Gap models. They aren’t really attractive, they’re attractive because they have all the accoutrements (very tan, very skinny, very blond, lots of mascara, bra-buoyed boobs) and therefore we’re tricked into thinking must be. Little Man is a movie that will make a lot of people laugh just because they’re being cued to, even without the laugh track. Oh, nutshot, that’s supposed to be funny so I’ll laugh. I like a good low-brow comedy, but I don’t like to be insulted. And I can almost hear the Wayanses pointing at the audience and laughing, “Ha ha ha, sucker, you just gave us your money! HA HA HA!” Thanks, guys.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest - ***1/2

Did you like the first one? Okay, then you’ll like this one. That’s about the best thing I can say. It’s more of the same, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It is also a sequel in every sense of the word- it has more in all the places there should be more, and it is lacking in all the areas sequels normally lack.

The plot picks up in some unspecified time after the first one. Both Will (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth (Keira Knightley) have been arrested for their part in helping Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) escape in the first movie. A deal is made- Will and Elizabeth will be set free if they can steal a seemingly broken compass from Sparrow. Meanwhile, Sparrow has been cursed by Davy Jones (Bill Nighy). It seems he sold his soul to Jones a long time ago, and now Jones has come to collect. The only way to save him lies with finding Jones’ heart, which is buried in a secret place. But can they avoid the gigantic Kraken hounding their every step? CAN THEY????

To discuss the movie in detail seems a bit silly. So I’m just going to focus on its merits as a sequel. Where the movie is more is in terms of running time and action. There are more big action set pieces, including not one but TWO rolling wooden contraptions, two big kraken battles, various bar fights, sword fights, and lots of evil grimacing from the bad guys. We also get a strange group of antagonists. Jones is a squid-faced monster, and his henchmen all resemble sea creatures (my favorite being the hammerhead shark, hee hee). His crew, including Will’s father Bootstrap Bill (Stellan Skarsgård) are all people who have sold their souls, and are slowly being covered in barnacles. While a lot of this is cool and fun, the bloated 2 and a half hour running time does start to weigh on you by the final twenty minutes. And fair warning- it ends on a cliffhanger. So don’t expect a resolution.

Where it lacks is first and foremost in the performance of Johnny Depp. While I still laughed at his spinning and preening, the performance didn’t feel as fresh. His character also became much more selfish and less likable. I know, he’s a pirate, but he was likably mischeivious in the first one, and this time comes off much more selfish and uncaring. The other characters suffer a bit too, but it’s not like the first one was a character-driven piece. There’s also a bit too much action- all the action scenes go on interminably. This is fun at first, but slowly begins to make you wonder if there is anything else that might happen. Not to mention the cliffhanger ending. I liked the twist, and am looking forward to part 3, but to come so far and be given nothing? These minor quibbles may be eased in the third one, when we get to see how it all comes together, but Dead Man’s Chest is unfortunately just a connecter between the beginning and the climax. It feels like half a movie…which I guess it is.

But these quibbles are minor, especially for a movie all about pirates and jumping and gooey bad guys. I’ll just repeat myself- if you enjoyed the first one, you’ll have fun at this one. Now go enjoy yourself some pirates.