Tune to The 2 Guys Named Chris Show every Monday to get the scoop on the latest new films and releases to DVD from a Canadian point of view. Julie Crawford, Film Critic for The Vancouver Courier, gives her two cents worth every Monday morning on Rock 92.
April 23, 2012
by Biggie Josh Ellinger,posted Apr 30 2012 7:33AM
Movies
Think Like A Man
Think Like A Man aims to jazz up dating advice by presenting four couples whose personal lives are turned around by stand-up comedian Steve Harvey’s real-life dating advice book “Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man”. Family Feud host Harvey appears in the film as himself, at times dispensing advice directly to the camera. On the receiving end are four guys who are pretty satisfied with the way things are going; and four unhappy women looking to change the rules thanks to the book. The guys bitch and complain about the power shift during their weekly basketball games, but once they score a copy of Harvey’s book they deliberately start playing into the women’s hands, in order to get into their pants.
The cast (including Romany Malco, Michael Ealy, Gabrielle Union, Taraji P. Henson and Regina Hall) are ridiculously attractive, and don’t look like they need dating advice from anybody (except maybe the very funny Kevin Hart). The film is corny, cutesy and fraught with clichés but overall the characters are winning enough that we forgive the predictable script. After 90 minutes, however, the laughs wear thin, and the last half hour feels overlong.
DVD
Contraband
Mark Wahlberg is Chris, a man dragged back into the high-stakes crime world of shipping container smuggling after his young brother-in-law gets in over his head. Chris is left holding the debt while his wife and kids are under threat back home in New Orleans. The action ping-pongs from a crazy race through the slums of Panama, back to the states, complete with a weird side plot about a Jackson Pollock painting. Sure, it’s far-fetched and we’ve seen the whole one-last-job done a thousand times before, but the action in and around the ship and container ports make things feel fresh enough. Kate Beckinsale plays Chris’s wife; Giovanni Ribisi is a menacing drug dealer. In the special features Wahlberg jokes: "I like beating people up, and I got to beat up most of the characters in the movie"; there’s an extra devoted to the stunts and action of the film, a picture-in-picture gadget, deleted scenes, and more.
