Anna Kendrick | ASSHOLES WATCHING MOVIES

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. We are gathered here today to commit the soul of Mr.Right to the ground, where it belongs.

I would venture to describe this particular failure as Natural Born Killers meets Girl, Interrupted meets When Harry Met Sally. Martha (Anna Kendrick) is on the rebound – hard – when she meets Mr. Right (Sam Rockwell). She proceeds to fall madly in love with him despite a few little red flags, namely 1) he throws knives at her head 2) he won’t tell her his name 3) is that a clown nose in his pocket? 4) he’s always joking about killing people 5) oh right he actually is a serial killer. And it turns out he’s the catch in the relationship! Martha goes full-blown manic and makes such disastrously, impossibly bad decisions that you wish you had a knife or two to throw at her yourself.

The most infuriating thing about this movie is that you’ll see small glimmers of what it could have been. Potential! It has some, particularly the Sam Rockwell bits. But some little toot who flatters himself that he’s a writer (Max Landis) has instead jizzed laziness and banality all over it. You know what, Max Landis? There is a line between “quirky” and “makes no sense” and you crossed it so long ago you’re now in “trying so hard it hurts” territory. I’m no fan of Anna Kendrick’s but I actually felt sorry for her; she’s basically forced to spend the second half of the film acting like she was rode hard and put away wet.

So that’s why we’re mourning, folks. I’m an Asshole. I can sit here and rip movies apart all day long and still have energy leftover for TV, radio DJs, and my in-laws. But this movie didn’t have to be bad. But with writing that makes me want to bash my head on my desk until reconstruction is a medical necessity, it’s hard not to call it the bloated, farting corpse that it is. If I was the mortician, maybe this stiff could have been gussied up. I do have some ideas, called reason, logic, and funny jokes, but that’s just be brain-storming off the top of my pretty little head. Oh, and a lot less Anna Kendrick trying so hard to be adorable it’s like nails on a chalkboard. Weird that the director didn’t think of those things himself though, right? Isn’t that kind of your job, Paco Cabezas? Yeah, that’s right, I’m calling people out. There’s no excuse to waste a possibly entertaining premise and turn it into a puddle of suck. Sam Rockwell deserves better, and frankly, so do I.

This movie was shot in 2012 and it took 4 years for the heat of everyone blushing in embarrassment to die down enough to release it. Maybe they should have given it 4 more.

In it, Anna Kendrick and Miles Teller play self-obsessed millennials who graduate and are astounded to not immediately be handed their dream jobs with rockstar perks. This premise is so flimsy they try to pad it out with a whole bunch of friends also struggling in the real world, thus ensuring that there is never a whole story being told anywhere, but lots of odds and ends you can’t possibly bring yourself to care about. Bryan Cranston is the best thing in this movie, playing the guy who has aged out of his job and is facing unemployment in a job market crawling with shallow selfie-resumes.

Under no circumstances should you attempt to watch this movie. If you do, please contact your local poison control centre immediately, and flush the area with water.

The less said about this ass-munching movie the better, so instead let’s discuss the myriad better ways this money could have been spent. Assuming a very modest budget of 8 million dollars, you could have bought:

11-diamond_bathtub_for_your_po-610x458 A Swarovski crystal-studded bathtub for your dog: $39 000

A bejeweled, 18-karat gold Monopoly set: $2 000 000

Exclusive gold shoelaces by Mr. Kennedy: $19 000

A bottle of 100 year old champagne recovered from a shipwreck which may or may not still be potable let alone drinkable: $275 000 Add a champagne bucket by Aston Martin (it’s insulated with carbon fibre) for $38 000

A plain white t-shirt “designed” by Kanye West: $120

A custom-made suit of armour: $20 000; add one for your pet guinea pig: $24 300

A lock of Elvis’s hair, as far as you know: $115 000

A stamp of Nicholas Cage’s face: $19

A ziploc bag of air from Kobe Bryant’s last basketball game: $16 000

A cornflake shaped like Illinois: $1350

il_570xN.603647511_jio0 3 x-rays of Marilyn Monroe’s chest: $45 000

A banana slicer: $4.75

A ghost in a jar: $50 992

A 1/8 model of a Lamborghini Aventador. It doesn’t move but it does take up lots of space on your desk: $4 700 000 (just to be clear: an actual Lamborgnini will set you back about 400K)

A gold, diamond-encrusted Nintendo Wii system. Be sure to save your crappy old plastic wii-motes because this baby doesn’t come with any! The kicker? It’s already obsolete!: $500 000

William Shatner’s kidney stone: $25 000

Plastic surgery to look “like” Justin Bieber: $100 000

You could buy all of these items for the cost of 1 Get a Job, they’d all be a better use of your time and money, and you’d still have enough cash left over to make The Blair Witch Project. Think on that.