We’re looking at two releases here at Hecklerspray this week; the new Jack Black/Michael Cera Neanderthal comedy Year One and a Blu-ray release of the much maligned lizard dump Godzilla.

Year One – DVD:

Harold Ramis – comedy genius responsible for Groundhog Day and the best film of all time™ Ghostbusters – writes and directs Year One. Current comedy behemoths Jack Black and Michael Cera are cavemen Zed and Oh, both walking through various biblical settings trying to provide about as much subtle rib-tickling as someone stabbing you with a blunt knife. Ramis – once king of underplayed one-liners – simply lets Black and Cera loose with a series of uninspired improv set pieces.

It wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the sheer pointlessness of the whole picture. Most of the scenarios involve sex in some way – masturbation, lesbian, gay, doggy, etc – which makes much of the religious backdrop completely irrelevant. Black and Cera play on their usual shtick, by now wearing thin. Like much of the cast they are wasted, with only Hank Azaria’s cameo actually raising a smirk.

Religion and its foundations are deeply linked with satire – Monty Python proved that – but this is Ramis trying to appeal to a new Animal House crowd, while assuming that the youth of today are so bored of intelligent comedy that he must resort to the type of toilet humour of his successors like Rogan and Apatow. This isn’t his style and what we are left with is a film that should sit among other uninspired ‘spoofs’ – perhaps Religious Movie is a more fitting title.

The DVD disc fillers are as equally ineffective as the film; unfunny deleted scenes, alternative endings and gag reels really make this a struggle to like. Also quite bafflingly, for any World of Warcraft fans a tribute to the popular online video Leeroy Jenkins is provided. The commentary is unapologetic, Ramis, Black and Cera chuckle about on set shenanigans but, predictably, not much at the film.

hecklerspray Rating: 2/5

Godzilla – Blu-Ray:

Paint us cynical, but here at hecklerspray we have become used the unfailing ineptitude of Hollywood over the years. Take this summer for example: both Terminator and Transformers churned out underwhelming plot-muddling guff in the way of sequels when clearly there is enough previous quality material to create entertaining bolt-bashing blockbusters.

Flip your minds back to 1998. The world was a more innocent place back then. Sure, we’d been burned before by the likes of rubber-nipple Batman and Robin, but we just had the box-office bombardment that was Titanic – the summer season was back!

So the expectations were high and – as we are used to now – they were dumped on in gigantic style by the beast that was Godzilla. No fault of the monster, but when Hollywood makes a giant dino flick, deprived of any resonance and casting Matthew Broderick in the lead, it’s setting itself up for a massive failure.

So the film contains enough frustrating collateral damage to make Michael Bay go hard, and enough plot to fit into a crisp packet – but that is the least of its worries. The action in uninspired, the CG flips between ropey and impressive and then to animatronics that look like a Blue Peter job. Matthew Broderick also turns in a solidly turgid performance as some worm guy who apparently is the only one who knows anything about giant radioactive lizards. Broderick, as usual, can’t work out the difference between whiny and charismatic (name a good film he was a lead in – not including Ferris Bueller and Election).

The Blu-ray proves that no matter of sheen can polish a turd and the extras are as pitiful as the film. SFX commentary, a highlight reel of monster action from rubber-suited Japanese Godzilla films and a preview of the upcoming 2012 – all of which prove to be as lifeless as this multi-million pound production.

Rating: 1.5/5

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Now that it’s holiday season, all the famous stars are coming out with their taut, muscular bikini bodies.

Some, like Scary Spice, got a little bit carried away, and now she’s got Peter Andre’s 1990s stomach, which resembles tight latex stretched over two giant packets of Wrigley’s Extra. It’s a weird look, especially with a set of womanly bosoms looming over the abs.

Other famous faces will be surfacing over the coming weeks, oiled and dainty in their trunks and cozzies, so we thought it high time to wobble our appreciative stomachs in the direction of some brilliant famous people who don’t seem to care that they are grotesquely fat…

1. Jack Black

Don’t be fooled by the hilarious gurning face, and the way he makes jokes by saying silly things really seriously, Jack Black would be nothing without his bulbous gut, and he knows it. Hence, when the rest of his peers are crunching their stomachs, he’s busily sloshing down burgers so that people will still find him hilarious. Without the food, he’d be just another thin guy doing a Jack Black impression.

2. Rik Waller

Like most gargantuan fat people, no one expected Rik Waller to be particularly good at anything. Cowell and his goons especially held out little hope when he stood before them on Pop Idol, already sweating quite badly, and panting heavily. And yet, when he opened his enormous mouth, out swept the voice of an angel sitting on a cloud. Unfortunately, as with so many fat people, Rik proved to be too lazy to make it as a pop singer, and made little dent on the charts.

3. Anne Diamond

Sometimes fat, sometimes not quite so fat, we prefer Anne Diamond when she’s really fat. Something about a thin Anne Diamond reminds us of a thin-lipped HR worker, who does everything by the book. But when she’s hit maximum weight, she looks like a barrel of laughs, and you can almost hear a comedy jazz band playing when she walks.

4. Gary Barlow

Of course, when we talk of Gary Barlow, we don’t mean the one that’s just recreated his 1990s dance act and made them suave, we mean the fat guy with the flat top from the first time around. Back then his astonishing lack of toning was only made worse by his standing next to a small mob of borderline athletes. Once given a chance to rest, he threw himself headlong into weight gain, and was probably the best he ever looked.

5. James Gandolfini

A thin Tony Soprano wouldn’t really have worked.

6. Oprah Winfrey

Like Anne Diamond, Oprah likes to keep everyone guessing by turning up to her television show looking a different shape every single day. And like with Anne, we prefer fat Oprah. The one who has made millions of dollars sitting around talking to people, then presumably running mouth first through a patisserie at the weekends.

7. Robbie Coltrane

Were Robbie Coltrane skinny and Scottish, people might think he was Billy Connolly or Sean Connery, so he cleverly spent the early part of his career bulking up to John Candy proportions. And now we know him as Cracker, so, yeah, it worked. It worked really well.

8. Jo Brand

Where would Jo Brand be without her jokes about being quite fat? Nowhere. Jo Brand would be nowhere. Then what kind of world would that be?

9. Alison Moyet

Dubbed by some as the original Michelle McManus, they couldn’t be more wrong. Alison was a terrific singer, making up one half – or perhaps two thirds – of the wonderful electro-pop act Yazoo. Throughout her career she appears to have stuck to her guns, and if anything, she might be growing. Good for her.

10. Marlon Brando

The greatest fat thespian to leave an almighty footprint on planet Earth. Famously made Francis Ford Coppola film him in the dark to hide the fact that he was so enormous, he was wearing a flowery woman’s dress.

This was a guest blog by the heroic Josh Burt of Interestment. Go visit!

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While we all thought we would have to live in a world where no other films would ever get anywhere near The Dark Knight – a world where daily recitals of The Joker’s best speeches were made to be recited every morning in our schools, where every car is replaced with a Batmobile and where Morgan Freeman is elected King of Everything (with Christian Bale as his alleged muscle, obviously) – we have been proven wrong.

We worried for a while, but fortunately the ‘Greatest Film of All Time(tm)’ has been dethroned by Ben Stiller, Jack Black and a blacked-up Robert Downey Jr. And it’s sure to make the latter quite happy about it.

It would appear that controversy and notoriety really does help the fortunes of a cinema release these days – there were the obvious little numbers coming about before and after the release of The Dark Knight. It can’t be denied that the often-mentioned death, car crashes and alleged assaults had a positive effect on the fortunes of Nolan’s Batmasterpiece, and Tropic Thunder seems to have used the same technique to dethrone the four-week king.

Yes, there has been a lot of hoo-ha in recent weeks about the usage of the word ‘retard’ in Stiller and the gang’s Vietnam-movie comedy movie. Movie. Some people don’t like the word, and it’s apparently used quite liberally through the film.

But, of course, instead of looking into it and forming some kind of reasoned argument or debate about the issue, people just went and picketed screenings of the film, thus bringing it far more press coverage than it would have got without protests. And it would have got a lot of coverage without them anyway.

Throw on top of the pile the fact that one actor plays a blacked-up white man and you have another pile of outrage for the public to jump on. Shockingly though, this fell by the wayside with only a handful of comments being raised about the questionable portrayal. Possibly because they realised there was some satire at work there.

Either that or the blacked-up protesters couldn’t be heard over the legions of retard protesters. That’s as in protesting the use of the word, of course – we’re not calling them retarded for protesting the use of a word in a movie that is meant as a light-hearted comedy and a satire of the world of movies we are surrounded by today. Oh no. Not us.

Anyway – regardless of the retarded, blacked-up reasons that can be thrown around the fact remains – Tropic Thunder has dethroned The Dark Knight at the box office, raking in $37 million to the Baler and company’s $16.7 million.

If Tropic manages to gross more overall than Batman and chums then… well, frankly we’ll eat four gallons of testicle juice. Because that isn’t going to happen, even with all the controversy in the world.

Why? Well, for starters, shoving it in his big, fat chops might shut him up.

Secondly, it could be the only way we can stop him from doing nude scenes.

That’s right – nude scenes!!

‘Nude scenes’ and ‘Jack Black’ – if ever there was four words that should not appear together in the same sentence it’s that right there.

And you’ll be disgusted to know that the Kung Fu Panda star has done them before (In Margot at the Wedding – just in case you are some twisted freak and want to check him out.)

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Unless you’re Jack Black, of course. If you’re Jack Black then nobody really gives much of a hoot about how many children you’ve got. For instance, it’s all over the news at the moment that Jack Black and his wife Tanya have had their second baby.

How do they know? Were hordes of paparazzi camped outside the maternity wards of every hospital in LA? Had midwives been secretly bribed by celebrity magazines to reveal confidential secrets? No. Jack Black had to tell them that they had the baby ‘about a week ago’ during a premiere. Still, the lack of interest in his baby shouldn’t detract from the photo deal he’s just signed – £3.50 for a half-page spread near the back of What Horsebox magazine.

The world isn’t as equal as people make out. Yes, women get to vote now and they’re often at least interviewed for jobs they have no hope of getting so that companies can fill their positive discrimination quota, but when it comes to celebrity babies, the gender divide is wider than ever.

If you’re a female film star – even a crap one like Jessica Alba – and you get pregnant, then the press goes berserk for you, following you around and goading you into discussing your milk-engorged breasts and buying the image rights of the unborn baby for millions of dollars.

It’s even worse for someone like Angelina Jolie who has a megastar for a boyfriend, because then you can’t even go five seconds without every poorly-researched, lazily sarcastic British entertainment blog in the world falsely reporting the birth of your children. It must be a nightmare. There should be laws against us. It. There should be laws against it.

And then there’s Jack Black. Jack Black had a baby recently. Not that you’d know it, though – public interest in Jack Black’s new baby is so low that he had to casually break the news that he became a father for the second time ‘about a week ago’ on the red carpet at the premiere for Kung-Fu Panda. What’s the name of Jack Black’s baby? Don’t know. What’s the gender of Jack Black’s baby? Don’t know. How hungry is Jack Black’s baby? Good question, let’s find out, according to People:

“I have a new one,” Black, 38, told reporters Saturday at the junket for his animated movie, Kung Fu Panda, in Beverly Hills. “It’s eating every three hours. When talking with Kung Fu Panda producer Melissa Cobb about his dad duties, Black said, “Hours in the night, oh I have been,” adding to reporters, “You just got to make all the time precious with the babies when you’re working … You get an hour in the morning, and an hour at night, and you really make the most of that time.”

If any of this is sounding familiar, it’s because it is. Last time Jack Black became a father it a) happened around the time that Angelina Jolie had a baby, b) was announced at the premiere for one of his movies and c) was never officially named in public. And now it’s happening again.

Which is all well and good, except that all that happened during Nacho Libre, so the odds of Kung Fu Panda being much good have right out the bloody window now, haven’t they.

But, people, guess what – Angelina Jolie is pregnant! With twins!

And this time it’s official, because Jack Black accidentally shot his gob off about how many kids Angelina Jolie was hiding up her uterus during a promotional interview for Kung-Fu Panda in Cannes, and Angelina Jolie was forced to confirm it. In other unrelated news, the bear community is also kind of pissed off at Jack Black for accidentally breaking the story that they occasionally shit in the woods from time to time.

Here are three things we know about Angelina Jolie:

1) Angelina Jolie is pregnant.

2) Angelina Jolie is pregnant with twins.

3) Angelina Jolie is pregnant with twin girls.

Oh, and:

4) That new Angelina Jolie movie Wanted doesn’t look very good at all.

But anyway, even though everyone already knew that, Jack Black has inadvertently caused Angelina Jolie to officially confirm that she’s pregnant with twins during a Cannes interview to promote Kung-Fu Panda, which we believe to be everyone’s cue to be all like “What? Pregnant? Twins, you say? We think we need to sit down for a moment as the magnitude of this wholly unexpected news has made us quite giddy.” The Boston Herald reports:

[Angelina's] “Kung Fu Panda” co-star Jack Black let the news slip during their tandem promotional interview and Jolie, the mother of four, had no choice but to confirm the news. “You’re gonna have as many as (the) ‘Brady Bunch’ when you have these,” Jack joked during the sit-down… “It’s confirmed? Is it two?,” Natalie asked. “Yeah, yeah, we’ve confirmed that already,” said the United Nations Earth Mother. “Well, Jack’s just confirmed it, actually.”

Yeah, nice one Jack Black. Congratulations for blabbing all of your co-star’s poorly-kept intimacies. What next? Are you going to use a joint interview to describe how Dustin Hoffman’s hair is really made out of weasel pubes? Or how Jackie Chan trawls through dustbins at night for dirty nappies so he can wipe them all over his delighted face? Even though neither of these things are true? Huh? Huh Jack Black? Huh?

Anyway, now the secret about Angelina Jolie’s unborn twins is out and there’s nothing anybody can do about it. Sure, there’s a chance that Angelina will pay a little Afghan orphan to climb into her birth canal eight months in, and order him to wait around for a few weeks and then crawl out when she gives birth to make it look like she’s actually had triplets, but that hardly seems very likely now, does it?

Really, Angelina Jolie should be pleased that the news is out, because now the glossy magazines have some advance warning to save up for the inevitable cover-shoot photo deal, which will now cost twice as much as before.

And it’s advance warning for all of us, too – if Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are having two babies instead of one, that means that in a few months we’ll all be unceremoniously bumped down two places in the world attractiveness rankings rather than the single place we were anticipating. Now we have a bit more time to prepare for such a crippling blow to our self-esteem. Stupid good-looking babies.

Read more:

It’s official: Twins on board for Jolie – Boston Herald