Powder Blue

Forest Whitaker, Jessica Biel, Ray Liotta.  A cast like that should mean a good movie.  Well not so fast.

Powder Blue is attempting to be a movie like Crash.  However, it fails in many ways.  Jessica Biel plays Rose Johnny, a stripper (she gets topless) who is having a terrible time but trying to raise money for her sick son.  Ray Liotta plays Jack, who is trying to force his way into her life.  Then we have Qwerty (I guess his parents liked the keyboard) who is a mortician who is terrible with girls.  How do they get connected?  Jack is Rose-Johnny's estranged father, and Qwerty accidentally runs over Rose Johnny's dog.  From there, their lives intermingle.  Makes sense.  Oh and Patrick Swayze players her creep boss, but he's a minor character.

Now comes the strange part, Forest Whitaker's only involvement with other characters is that he plays a person who lost his wife in an accident and is terribly depressed and wants to pay someone to kill him so he can be with her in heaven.  He stumbles upon Qwerty and tries to get him to kill him, but he refuses.  Other than that, he is his own story, not related to any other characters, nor do the characters he come into contact with have any connection to the previous characters.  Odd.  Kind of like 2 movies running at once.

This movie just didn't develop enough, and it wasn't realistic enough.  I could never see something like this happening in real life.  The acting wasn't bad itself, though. Whitaker was great.  Liotta was his usual self.  Basically if you are bored, give it a run.  Or if you want to see Jessica Biel topless.  If you wan't an interlocking set of stories that is amazing, go see Crash.

I rate this movie a 5.7 out of 10.

Youth In Revolt

Classic case of Michael Cera being Michael Cera, right?  Yes and no.  Just putting this out there, if you expect Zach Galifianakis or Justin Long in a lot of the movie, you won't find it.  It's Cera as Nick and Portia Doubleday as Sheeni.

Cera plays the usual awkward self.  This time, in adaption of the book Youth In Revolt by C.D. Payne, he seems to mature a bit.  Nick is a somewhat cultured, nerdy kid from California who has no luck with the girls until he meets Sheeni while away at 'vacation.'  Somehow, they connect, and he falls quickly in love and would do anything for her.  After going back home, they concoct a way to get his dad to move close to her and for him to get kicked out of his mom's house to live with his dad and ultimately see her.  To do this, he creates a "bad ass" persona (himself with an attitude, mustache, and who smokes) named Francois.  In what seems like a Fight Club spoof the two personalities interact and get Cera into a bunch of wild, but memorable situations in his attempt to be with Sheeni.

The movie was very well written and pretty nicely directed.  Both which were surprising to me, but I never read the book.  Cera does a wonderful job.  I wouldn't call it a riot, but this movie made me laugh quite a bit, and will surprise some of the older moviegoers as they will enjoy it, too.

Light-hearded, clever, funny.  Give it a shot.

I rate this movie a 7.7 out of 10.