Oftentimes a big star will be humbled by a few flops and he/she will take a step back to work on a smaller project or two before making another attempt at something as unnecessarily expensive as Land of the Lost. Is this what’s going on with Will Ferrell, though? According to Variety, he’s signed on to a little comedy called Everything Must Go, a title which could be attributed to his recent bombs, including The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard, which he produced and tried to help sell via a much-publicized cameo.
But this is no Winter Passing or Melinda and Melinda. Yes, Everything Must Go is an “indie,” but it still has a budget of $10 million and it’s still a high-profile sitcom sort of movie. I’m sure it will be less goofy than his major studio vehicles, but we’re not looking at one of those cases where a Jim Carrey or Adam Sandler starts doing dramatic roles and acquiring (ultimately unsubstantiated) Oscar buzz. Not that Ferrell doesn’t have it in him.
Still, the only thing Ferrell needs to learn after this past summer is that he should stay away from huge budgets and silly sci-fi concepts and stick with Adam McKay-directed comedies (and the like). No bigger, no smaller. Fortunately, next summer’s The Other Guys will come along at just the right time to remind us what we like our Will Ferrell movies to be like.
Check out what other film bloggers have to say about Will Ferrell’s seemingly retreating career move after the jump:
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Whenever I watch Entourage I wonder how Turtle can get so much play, even if he is friends with a big movie star like Vinnie Chase. He’s fat and obnoxious and … okay, so I don’t need to get into a fight with Jerry Ferrara, the actor who plays Turtle, so I’ll stop right there. But I will say that I found it ironic and hypocritical that the show is in the news today for being similarly dubious of Seth Rogen’s attractiveness to Katherine Heigl in Knocked Up. I also find it interesting that Entourage could be so harsh about a movie star without that person showing up on the show and being in on the mockery (as is typically the case). Instead, Rogen is apparently upset enough about the jabs that he’s been vocal about an appararent longstanding feud between him and Entourage creators Doug Ellin and Mark Wahlberg to the E! program Daily 10. In addition to calling the Entourage gang “assholes,” he claims “it’s on.” Of course, Rogen doesn’t need to be so defensive since he got the last laugh by losing so much weight and becoming far more successful in the past two years than anyone associated with the HBO series (including Wahlberg).
Still, despite Rogen being the victor so far in the feud, I do hope it escalates until climaxing in a streetfight reminiscent of the massive battle in Anchorman (which Rogen appears in, though not in that scene). The Apatow gang vs. the Entourage boys, with eventual appearances from the State guys and the Broken Lizard troupe, etc. Maybe someone will even die by trident if we’re lucky.
Check out other blogs’ commentary on the feud after the jump:
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Late last month, Nike unleashed the latest movie-themed sneaker, a yellow shoe with brown fur coming out of the top inspired by Teen Wolf (never mind that in the film the title character wears Adidas). Between this and the recent Back to the Future Part II tie-ins, Michael J. Fox seems to be a big influence on the world of sneaker collecting, and so it may only be a matter of time before we see Nike unveil a Doc Hollywood design.
Actually, it may only be a matter of time before we see a lot of film-inspired shoes we wouldn’t expect. Already, Nike has sneakers tied to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Goodfellas, The Empire Strikes Back and Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. Add to these Adidas’ Tron shoes, Puma’s The Goonies and Japanese Monster shoes and Slip-Off’s custom-designed Vans inspired by Fight Club, Star Wars, Napoleon Dynamite, Anchorman, E.T. and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou .
So, in order to beat the shoe companies to the punch, SpoutBlog has picked ten movies that deserve their own sneaker design. Most of these are quite literal and obvious, but it’s just a starting point. What other movies would you like to see make their way to your feet?
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The best time for a Get Smart movie would have been the late ’60s, when the original television series was still on the air. In fact, there was a theatrical Get Smart film in the works during the run of the show, but it was canceled when the theatrical release of Munster, Go Home! bombed at the box office. Many years later, in 1980, a Get Smart feature titled The Nude Bomb was released to theaters, but it also performed poorly.
Now we’re getting a remake version starring Steve Carell in the role that was so iconically defined by the late Don Adams. Will it do the show justice? Reportedly the budget was $80 million, a significant amount of which was probably put towards pointless effects. But the best thing Warner Bros. could have done with that money is to give a large amount to series creators Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, who probably even today could churn out a better script than Failure to Launch scribes Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember.
Despite its lack of original Get Smart talent, though, it could still be marginally funny. Yet the real problem is that it may be too outdated and obsolete for audiences to care. In the four decades since the show went off the air, there has been plenty of similar-themed movies, from spy spoofs to films with bumbling heroes. The following ten titles are the best evidence of why this new Get Smart movie is completely unnecessary:
- Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery - It’s interesting that Get Smart is going up against a Mike Myers movie this weekend, because in a way it’s also going up against Myers’ Austin Powers movies, as well. Sure, spy parodies have been around in spades since around the time of the first James Bond movie, but nothing has been as popular as this series, which of course includes the much bigger-grossing sequels, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and Austin Powers in Goldmember.
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