My wife is nine months pregnant so she thought that renting this serio-comedy about a pair of clueless parents-to-be (John Kraskinski and Maya Rudolph) would be a good idea.  I thought the movie looked like total ass from the previews but being the dutiful husband I am, I agreed to watch it with her.  My gut instinct was right.  If there are any women reading this, you should know that my wife hated it too.

The premise of the movie is that the couple jet off to various cities to see which place would be best to raise their embryonic girl.  They run into their bizarre ass weirdo friends who are themselves parents that spout out crazy shit about their kids while the couple just kinda nods politely.  Eventually they learn that home is where the heart is… gag.

Just about everyone in this flick from Krasinski’s parents (Jeff Daniels and Catherine O’Hara) to his whacked out breastfeeding cousin (Maggie Gyllenhaal), says the most random, idiotic verbal diarrhea you’ve ever heard in your entire life.  It’s as if the screenwriters were all hopped up on Salvia-D when they wrote this moronic gibberish.  What pissed me off about this movie was that most of the harsh language was said in front of (or sometimes directed to) little kids.  For example, one woman constantly calls her overweight daughter a “dyke” and tells her to make a “butch face”.  How come someone didn’t get on the phone to Social Services ASAP?  Who talks like this in front of their kids?  Seriously? 

Director Sam Mendes used to make good movies like American Beauty and Road to Perdition.  I think it’s best for the civilized world if we never let Sam within a hundred yards of a movie camera ever again.  I will admit that the film gets better as it goes along (the further away the couple got from their family, the better it got) and the ending almost worked.  If only the first 75 minutes hadn’t been so grating, Away We Go may have had a chance. 

Jane Fonda is married to Bruce Dern who goes away to fight in Vietnam.  Bored, she starts volunteering at the VA hospital where she literally runs into the paraplegic Jon Voight who accidentally spills his piss bag all over her.

It’s love at first sight.

Anyway, Hanoi Jane starts hanging out at the hospital A LOT.  So much so that all Jon wants to do is jump her bones.  He does in fact, and even though Jane used a body double this time out, those puppies still looked pretty good.  Their affair is cut short when they learn that Brucie boy is… Coming Home. 

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a title. 

Bruce finds out that Jane’s been giving Jon the all-you-can-eat clams special and he, in typical Bruce Dern fashion, goes nuts.  So nuts that he’s got to take all his clothes off and jump in the ocean; presumably to swim back to Nam or something.

What easily could’ve been your basic Lifetime Movie of the Week shenanigans is anchored by three good performances by Voight, Fonda, and particularly Dern.  His meltdown scene near the end is pretty great. 

I also enjoyed watching the excellent supporting cast do their thing.  I never expected to see The Exterminator himself, Robert Ginty act alongside Jane Fonda, I’ll tell you that much.  Although he didn’t whip out his trusty flamethrower in his smallish part, it’s good to know the dude was there earning a paycheck.  Also hanging out was Charles (Halloween) Cyphers, Robert (Revenge of the Nerds) Carradine, and best of all Willie Tyler and his dummy Lester!

We also get SIX classic Stones tunes on the soundtrack, which I guess makes sense because director Hal Ashby would later go onto do the Stones’ concert flick, Let’s Spend the Night Together.  There’s also two crappy Beatles songs in there too, but they don’t detract from the film too much.

Okay, I know that most of you guys are going to be hurting from this movie.  It’s bad.  Real bad.  Yeah, I know your wife or girlfriend will tell you, “You took me to see Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, so now you have to see Sex and the City with me!”  Fellas, I know Indy 4 was bad but trust me, about halfway through this shitfest you’ll be on your knees begging for a crystal skull to pop up somewhere.

For all of you who don’t Mitch’s Rule for Chick Flicks; allow me to clue you in.  It’s a known medical fact that Chick Flicks are detrimental to a guy’s health.  In order for a guy to be able to sit through a chick flick, he must be promised sex afterwards.  The worse the Chick Flick, the more the chick has to put out.  For example:

Four stars = Kiss on the cheek.  Now before you say, “But Mitch, there are no such things as a four star Chick Flick”, but you’re wrong.  There is ONE and it was called Terms of Endearment and it was worth sitting through solely because of Jack Nicholson’s awesome performance.  Four star Chick Flicks only come along once in a lifetime and don’t let your mate forget it.

Three stars = Hand job.  Three star Chick Flicks come around about once every four or five years and are low on torture, but still contain enough lovey dovey bull honkey to warrant SOME sexual satisfaction for the male.  See:  High Fidelity.

Two stars = Blow job.  Two star Chick Flicks feature LOTS of lovey dovey bull honkey and/or a terminal illness but most likely will feature at least one very masculine actor that the male audience can identify with, like Patrick Swayze in Ghost.  These films are usually followed by oral retribution on the female’s part to justify the man’s waste of $9 for the movie ticket and/or any other expenditures his date may require like cab fare or Super Sizing her Value Meal.

One star = Sex in the V-Hole.  One star Chick Flicks are a dime a dozen.  If your woman drug you to see The Devil Wears Prada, you get to fuck her.  Marie Antoinette?  You get to fuck her.  My Big Fat Greek Wedding?  You get to fuck her.  Girls, there’s no way around this one; it’s the law in the 48 continental United States.

No stars = You get to do her in the pooper.  These flicks happen every so often but when they do; have the Anal-Ease ready.  It doesn’t matter if she’s an anal virgin; she got to give up the sphincter.  Seriously, the promise of anal intercourse is the only way a man can sit through the movie Beaches without blowing his brains out with a shotgun.  (Which probably also explains that movie’s tremendous following among the gay community.)

Which brings us to Sex and the City; the feature length theatrical retread of the hit HBO show in which Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Cynthia Nixon and uh… that other chick, run around New York City with shopping bags in their hands and act like lobotomized oversexed cocktail hostesses.  Bringing a TV show to the big screen can be tricky business, but if we’ve learned anything from Star Trek, Mystery Science Theater and Serenity, we know it can be done and done properly.  Unfortunately, movies based on TV shows that feature four numb cunts jibber jabbering for two and a half hours non-stop don’t always fare as well as movies based on TV shows featuring space ships.

That’s right, you heard me:  TWO AND A HALF HOURS!  This is the Return of the King of Chick Flicks, people.  When you think it’s over, it isn’t.  When it SHOULD be over, it isn’t.  It just goes on and on and on. 

And of that two and a half hour running time, only 45 seconds of it is devoted to actual sex!  I’m not kidding.  We’re talking 45 seconds of “Sex” and two hours, twenty nine minutes and fifteen seconds of “City”.

Speaking of sex, there are only FIVE titties in the whole movie, and only two of whom belong to Cynthia Nixon.  That’s right; they paid those four cunts millions of dollars and only ONE of them shows off their goodies.  RIP OFF!  Not to mention that the flick tosses in every single Chick Flick cliché in the book.  There’s a wedding, a birth, a divorce, and a break-up.  Oh yeah, and all men are portrayed either as assholes or they’re gay. 

The cast is all thoroughly annoying.  While Sarah Jessica Parker looks like an emaciated Barbra Streisand, co-stars Jennifer (Dreamgirls) Hudson and Candice (Murphy Brown) Bergen look like they were paid in coupons for the Sizzler buffet.  

All I got to say is ladies; make your men feel good after the film.  (Don’t worry though; you’ll probably end up having less sex tonight than what was in this movie, so it’s all good.)  Anyway it could be worse.  At least you girls won’t go home walking funny tonight. 

An ex-vacuum cleaner repairman turned street musician (Glen Hansard) tries to record some songs with the help of a Czechoslovakian piano player (Marketa Irglova).  They form a friendship and he falls hopelessly in love with her, despite the fact that she’s married and has a rugrat.  She’s poor so she doesn’t have a piano of her own… so he buys her one.  The End. 

Everybody fell over themselves to praise this “modern day musical”, but it’s cloying, predictable and ultimately pointless.  I get what director John Carney was trying to do (make a musical about musicians using real musicians instead of actors), but it’s little more than your average run-of-the-mill chick flick with lots of irritating whining filled folksy college radio singer/songwriter crap than honest to goodness music.  There is one death metal song Hansard sings off the cuff about a painful break-up (“FUCK HER!  FUCK HER!”) that’s pretty funny, but other than that the music flat out sucks.  

Another key problem with the movie is that it was largely improvised using non-professional actors, and boy does it ever show.  Again, I realize Carney was going for a more “natural” approach to the movie, but it doesn’t really help when your lead actors have zero screen presence and speak in accents thicker than Chunky soup.  At least it’s better than Across the Universe though. 

Keri (Felicity) Russell stars in this bittersweet romantic comedy as a waitress who makes scrumptious homemade pies, works in a coffee shop and is married to a no good lout (Jeremy Sisto).  Her world turns upside down when she finds out that she’s pregnant and eventually falls head over heels for her doctor (Nathan Fillion from Firefly) who’s also married. 

The cast is pitch-perfect with Russell delivering a splendid performance in the lead role, but it’s Fillion as the twitchy, awkward love interest who steals the movie.  Andy Griffith also turns up as an advice dispensing customer and writer/director Adrienne Shelly puts in a funny turn as Russell’s nerdy co-worker. 

To Shelly’s credit, she never turns the movie into a syrupy chick flick and manages to keep the usual romantic comedy clichés to a bare minimum.  The film showcases some genuine heart and while it never fully draws the viewer in, it’s as sweet and amiable as one of Russell’s pies.

Unfortunately there’s a sadness that follows the film when you know that Shelly was brutally murdered shortly before the film’s release.  It’s a shame too, because she had real talent both behind and in front of the camera.  If you like her in this movie, you should definitely check her out in Hal Hartley’s 1990 indy flick, Trust. 

In this mediocre yuppie comedy, Diane Keaton stars as a workaholic whose life changes drastically when she inherits a baby.  Will she give up city life for the country?  Will her homemade baby food be a Wall Street success?  Will she fall in love with Sam Shepard?  Will you puke from the banal and predictable plot?  At least James Spader provides his usual yuppie scum routine (albeit on autopilot) and Harold Ramis is amusing, but this thoroughly innocuous chick flick is way too long for its own good.  Director Charles Shyer and Keaton later reteamed for Father of the Bride.