The acting couldn’t get much worse in this week’s new movie releases. Jessica Alba, Eva Longoria Parker, Steve Zahn and Miley Cyrus — please, somebody make it stop!
Times are tough in Tinseltown when I find myself leaning toward recommending the new Hannah Montana concert-movie event. Hey, at least theaters are showing “Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour” in Disney Digital 3-D.
Had someone in the early ’90s predicted people would be falling all over themselves to see Billy Ray Cyrus’ offspring in concert, the trendsetters of the world would have laughed in their face. Billy Ray’s famous mullet and one-hit-wonder status for “Achy Breaky Heart” made him a pop culture laughingstock, but now he’s laughing all the way to the bank.
Miley’s rise to fame has many of us outside the tween age group asking, “How does a mildly pretty girl who talks with a raspy, manly voice get to be the hottest thing on the market?” Even Gidget wasn’t this popular.
On the bright side, Miley has avoided any kind of Spears family tabloid meltdown, so I suppose your pre-teen daughters could do much worse, role model-wise.
Plus, if there’s anything worse than sitting through a Hannah Montana concert with a room full of screeching young girls, it’s sitting in a theater for two hours watching Jessica Alba try to act.
For some actors, looks are more important than dramatic capabilities: So as long as they have a few scantily clad scenes and the benefit of a great hairstylist, no one cares how awful their movies are. Alba falls into that category, typically showing an emotional range similar to that of the common houseplant.
This week she appears as a blind woman who receives an eye transplant which shows her the horrors of a supernatural world in “The Eye.”
It truly sucks when gaining the vision for which you’ve waited so long opens up a world of terrifying death and destruction. Viewers will share the pain with Alba’s character, though, as they suffer through this awful flick.
Paul Rudd was just starting to win fans over again, as his role in last summer’s “Knocked Up” and the ones he played in other Judd Apatow-produced flicks were a refreshing change to simply watching him play second fiddle to more celebrated actors.
It’s a shame Rudd wasted his theatrical upswing, sacrificing his chance at making it in good movies, by co-headlining with Eva Longoria Parker (of television’s “Desperate Housewives”) in “Over Her Dead Body.”
The premise of the film has Rudd dating a psychic as Longoria Parker, his deceased ex, tries to sabotage the relationship. Didn’t movie studios produce hundreds of made-for-TV-movies just like this in the ’80s?
By the way, if you’ve ever stopped to wonder what happened to Jason Biggs (“American Pie”), then you may be amused to find him co-starring in this flick.
Believe me, movie-goers, I feel your pain. There’s just one more piece of garbage in this ultra-disappointing movie lineup to tell you about. “Strange Wilderness” is a pointless spoof of “Crocodile Hunter”-inspired reality television.
Making matters even worse: The film’s biggest names are sophomoric comedy all-stars Steve Zahn, Justin Long and Jonah Hill.
