You Again

This movie was painful to watch. Great cast, but everything else was abysmal. I was looking forward to a light-hearted family movie to watch, but this wasn't it. In fact, this movie didn't get so much as a chuckle out of me. It's a shame really, considering I really like the members of the cast. And, I wasn't expecting much, but the humour and events in this movie were just insultingly bad. Still, I sat through it, hoping it would change direction. The story isn't the real problem either, albeit nothing special and pretty generic, they could have made it work, but it just didn't develop. There isn't a character to love or hate either, I wanted to sympathize with the sister, but she gave me no real reason to. The bride / high school bully character didn't develop either, the movie was over and I still didn't have an opinion of her. Overall, just a really bad movie.

source: You Again

Imagine your worst enemy who had tormented you for at least four years, on the verge of becoming an in-law family member through a marriage. You Again is a comedy that explores just that, where Kristin Bell's Marni, who had spent her entire high school life under the bullying radar of Joanna (Odette Yustman, last seen here in films like Unborn and Cloverfield), realizes her one time nemesis is poised to become her sister-in-law. So the question now is, do you intervene at this juncture to throw the wedding off by telling everyone what a mean person she is, or do you adopt the forgive and forget approach? As humans, the latter is always a challenge, and the former opportunity just too great to pass up, now being in the position to memorably derail someone else's marriage plans, even if it means having to unintentionally hurt one's family member (Marni's brother Will, played by James Wolk) as a collateral. It's revenge of the nerd, bitchy cat-fight style, made worse when one doesn't acknowledge the past in the hopes of starting a relationship afresh, which is not what the other party would desire, setting up a series of sequences that are played out for laughs, even though they are as predictable as they come in making life miserable for others. But it's the idea and the thought behind the film that seems a little bit more interesting, as it's really quite relatable since in life we do step on the toes of others, as do others on ours as well. It's what you do with being emotionally terrorized that matters, and the best effect is to turn that into positive energy to transform oneself for the better, rather than to keep on regretting and wanting to right the wrongs, but not sure how to go about doing so. The advice of course is to champion oneself to be better rather than to focus on destroying the other party and before you know it, you become what and who you despise. The highlight of the show turned out to be the veterans who demonstrate that age is no factor when it comes to having fun. The likes of Betty White, Jamie Lee Curtis and Sigourney Weaver lend gravitas to the young adult leads of Bell and Yustman, and I wonder if the careers of the latter will be as promising to live up to that of the former few. Of note is the pairing and rivalry of Jamie Lee Curtis' Gail, Marni's mum, and Sigourney Weaver's Ramona, Joanna's aunt, that states the inter-family rivalry goes beyond one generation, and in true Romeo and Juliet fashion, the coming together of two families bring on some complications which provide an avenue for comedy as each pair want to go one up against the other. Director Andy Fickman, who has helmed a series of family friendly films for Disney such as The Game Plan and Race to Witch Mountain, continues his services here for Disney and I suppose his being chummy with Dwayne The Rock Johnson meant the one time wrestler has got to appear somewhere in the film, even as a cameo, and cranks up a surprise appearance of a singing duo toward the end which by Hollywood standards is what's expected of a romantic comedy.

Okay, with a cast that included Sigourney Weaver, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kristen Chenoweth, and Betty White with Kristen Bell as the star, I thought this movie might have some good comedic performances at least. Don't get me wrong, there were some amusing scenes especially when Bell's brother and his fiancée who was some mean girl from their high school days do some Hall & Oates while driving or when we first see Ms. Curtis reuniting with former rival Ms. Weaver long after their teenage years. But the characterizations tend to be one-sided at least until the writer(s) try to put some dramatic denouement but by then one partly gets confused as to what tone was meant by the whole thing. Still, You Again was well meaning and there are some surprise appearances that kept one smiling if not laughing. So on that note, this movie is at the least worth a look...

Mari (Kristin Bell) was bullied at school for being a spotty geek with specs and braces. Having grown into a successful businesswoman, she is horrified to discover that her beloved older brother's fiancée is Joanna (Odette Yustman), the leader of the high school bullies who victimised her. Her mother Gail (Jamie Lee Curtis) tells her to let it go until it turns out that Joanna's rich aunt Ramona (Sigourney Weaver), who is funding the wedding, occupies a similar position in her own past. And Mari, believing that Joanna's apparent near perfection is all put on, goes on the attack to protect her brother. This is all rather good, if improbable, fun. Kristin Bell does fairly well with a part which is fairly vindictive (in what she believes is a good cause) for much of the film, as well as somewhat contradictory. Odette Yustman does better as Joanna, a character who is allowed to show high school nastiness and an apparently reformed side - there is much more shading here. But the two older women have the meatier roles, and both relish the opportunity to play fairly broad comedy (although Jamie Lee Curtis does frequently slip over the edge into gurning caricature). There are also some entertaining supporting characters, with Kyle Bornheimer's Tim delivering a particularly funny "speech" at the wedding rehearsal. The humour is a pleasing mix of situational, character, wordplay, and slapstick, with only the unfunny and unnecessary bathroom sequence falling flat. And the film resolves nicely - notwithstanding the nastiness which drives most of the film, things end well. I enjoyed this.

Spoiler Alert for the end of the movie! Warned ya! OK not a bad movie. No Citizen Kane but you knew that just by the cast. All right so Betty White was around when Citizen Kane was filmed. Look for a fast flowing, I can figure out what was coming next, cute movie. My wife told me to use cute. Believable, nah! But parents can take their kids, guys can take their girls without being raunched over like the movie--Going the Distance. Cameos galore especially at the end when--I can't tell you--shows up as Betty White's nemesis. Figure it out and enjoy the moment. No it is not Mary Tyler Moore but you are close.

In Los Angeles, the PR Marni Olivia Olsen (Kristen Bell) is promoted to VP of the RMK Investment office in New York. She travels first to her hometown to the wedding of her big brother Will (Jimmy Wolk) with his fiancée Joanna (Odette Yustman). On the flight, Marni freaks out when she learns that Joanna is her arch nemesis JJ, who has bullied her in the Ridgefield High School. Marni discovers that her family loves Joanna, and when she meets her, she wants Joanna to apologize for the humiliations she was submitted in the high-school. But Joanna pretends that she has not recognized Marni and promises a fresh start to them. Meanwhile Joanna's aunt Ramona (Sigourney Weaver) arrives for the wedding and Marni's mother Gail Byer (Jamie Lee Curtis) recognizes her as her high-school former friend that has become her enemy. The resented Marni seeks revenge and decides to expose the past of Joanna to Will to protect her brother and force him to call off his wedding while Gail begins a personal dispute with Ramona. "You Again" is a movie with a contradictory lead character but a pleasant conclusion. Marni is a loser in high-school and a vengeful woman, and it is hard to like her. Further, how could a woman with a clumsy and imbecile behavior is promoted to VP of a company? No matter how traumatic might have been her life in high-school, it does not justify her jealousy and immature behavior of woman promoted to an executive position, and she does not walk the way she talks in her initial speech. Jamie Lee Curtis and Sigourney Weaver perform strong characters and their competition is funny. And the character of the gorgeous Odette Yustman is not the villain of the story in the end. My vote is six. Title (Brazil): "Você de Novo" ("You Again")

You Again is an unfunny comedy that fails in about every way possible. The movie starts off showing Kristen Bell attempting (and failing) to be a stereotypical nerd. She gets bullied by Odette Yustman. And by bullied, I mean that Odette calls her Moo. Not kidding. OK, so sometime later, Marni (Kristen Bell) is a publicist, because in rom-coms these people are always publicists. She finds out that her brother Will (James Wolk) is getting married. Also, Will is supposed to be older, but he certainly doesn't look it. It turns out that he's getting married to Joanna (Odette Yustman). To make matters worse, Joanna's aunt Romona (Sigourney Weaver) was rivals with Marni's mom Gail (Jamie Lee Curtis) back in high school. WHAT A COINCIDENCE! So what follows is a series of unfunny pratfalls and other crappy slapstick. James Wolk is a pretty bland actor. Odette Yustman was awful. Kristen Bell was so-so. We also have Betty White and Victor Garber, but they aren't given much to do. The best performances are from Weaver and Curtis, but they're still not that great. I get it. It's a romantic comedy. It's gonna be predictable. blah blah blah. But it's neither romantic nor funny. It's boring as hell. It'd dull as hell. It's stupid. It's irritating. All the characters are unlikable except Will and the actor playing him couldn't act. Then we get one of the stupidest endings that I've ever seen. I hated this movie. 2nd worst movie of 2010. Worst movie Kristen Bell has done. Worst movie any of these cast members have done. It's not funny. It's not charming. It's not cute. It's not engaging. It's just stupid. Skip You Again.

I just randomly picked this up from a DVD stand and am sorry that I did. This movie was utter crap. I'm sorry, but it was. I'd give the plot a C+, but the execution of it was terrible! F for the way it was presented! (SPOILERS) The acting was bad, too. I'm sorry, but it was. Especially during the rehearsal dinner! I also felt that the character development showed little to none, so when all the outbursts happened, I didn't completely understand why. Why was the groom so affected? I didn't sympathize with him at all. Why did Joanna back out of her engagement with Tim? And who in the world WAS Tim?! He didn't even make any important changes to the plot other than that stupid dinner! Also, I disliked Joanna. Even until the ending. She just seemed like such a bitch! Such a phony! Ugh. So many useless characters plus below average acting. It made the film even worse than it already was. (/SPOILERS) "When a young woman realizes her brother is about to marry the girl who bullied her in high school, she sets out to expose the fiancée's true colors." It sounds like a good story line, don't you think? It makes us think that many crazy revenge plots would happen and make us laugh. Sad to say, that just wasn't the case with this movie. This movie just wasn't entertaining. But I'll give it props for having a couple of funny scenes that gave me a few giggles. I did not give this a 3/10 for the slapstick humor, though. I gave it a 3 for the moral. As of now, I'm hating high school and it makes me think. What will happen in 8 years? Will I be the same person that I am now? It just made me wonder. For making my brain churn, this movie gets a 3 rating. And that is pretty generous. Don't bother watching this. Waste of time. Your 105 minutes would be better used by rewatching Bride Wars, instead. Bad movie. I just can't wrap my head around it. I was expecting something good to let the night fly by, but this just wasted my time.

This movie was painful to watch. Great cast, but everything else was abysmal. I was looking forward to a light-hearted family movie to watch, but this wasn't it. In fact, this movie didn't get so much as a chuckle out of me. It's a shame really, considering I really like the members of the cast. And, I wasn't expecting much, but the humour and events in this movie were just insultingly bad. Still, I sat through it, hoping it would change direction. The story isn't the real problem either, albeit nothing special and pretty generic, they could have made it work, but it just didn't develop. There isn't a character to love or hate either, I wanted to sympathize with the sister, but she gave me no real reason to. The bride / high school bully character didn't develop either, the movie was over and I still didn't have an opinion of her. Overall, just a really bad movie.