The Preemptive Critics
“Turistas”
I don’t travel very often.
Every two weeks, I force myself to go to Wal-Mart and see the world, but outside of that and the occasional visit to Salt Lake, I don’t get out. I’m afraid that the new movie “Turistas” isn’t going to help me at all, either.
At first, I was under the impression that a turista was a traveling barista or something. That isn’t true. Instead, it is a Portuguese word for tourist.
That isn’t very exciting, but when your money and passports are stolen in Brazil and you end up at a scary house with a creepy guy who wants to perform experiments on you and your friends that involve your torture and death, now that’s something special.
Sounds scary, right? It also sounds a little like a commercial for American Express traveler’s checks, if you ask me. And as a marketing minor, I have a deep respect for anyone who can motivate you to use their product through pants-peeing fear.
So, for its definite scariness, its exotic locale, espousal of traveler’s checks and for the sudden unexplainable urge it gives me to call my parents and tell them that I love them, I preemptively love “Turistas.”
By Zach Pendleton/zpendleton@cc.usu.edu
“Rise of Taj”
Here’s a bewildering creative decision from the folks behind those raucous “National Lampoon” romps: a “Van Wilder” film sans the titular character.
The first “Van Wilder” movie was a crude, gut-busting campus classic that brought the perverted perfection of the everyman’s ideal collegiate experience to the big screen while showcasing the undeniable star power of the man behind the genius of Wilder: Ryan Reynolds.
With his quick wit and sardonic charm, Reynolds and his zany higher educational exploits had quite the impact on the impressionable youths of the day.
With Reynolds absent from this obvious cash-in, however, it’s doubtful that “The Rise of Taj” will be able to retain the same balance of empty “Lampoon” tomfoolery and the more elevated and subdued humor that Reynolds brought to the first film.
Don’t get me wrong, Kal Penn had a nice muted appearance in the recent summer blockbuster “Superman Returns” and he was decent in “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle,” but even that film had a Reynolds cameo.
It’s too bad that Kevin Spacey’s Lex Luthor isn’t Penn’s employer in this film, because it’s likely we’d prefer Taj to be the way Luthor prefers all of his henchmen: completely silent. Unfortunately, the “Rise of Taj” may just be Penn’s fall from grace.
Or fall from wherever he was prior to doing this.
I preemptively hate this movie.
-By Mack Perry/mackp@cc.usu.edu