divorce – ragglefragglereviews

Welcome to Steven Spielberg month, every week throughout
April I will be publishing a review of a movie directed by Hollywood legend Steven Spielberg, I have no choice when it comes to choosing the films as the four movies will be chosen randomly for me

The first movie has been chosen and its a classic so without further ado lets talk about E.T.

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E.T follows the journey of an alien that gets lost on earth, this cliche has been done a million times before but unlike most other attempts at this idea E.T manages to stay much more serious and less comedic, E.T isn’t just a film about an Alien trying to get home but it focuses more on how to deal with a lot of real issues that children struggle with, a lot of this is seen through the young boy Elliot as throughout the movie he struggles to handle his parents recent divorce and he gets bullied on a regular basis, Spielberg manages to capture all of this and teaches the younger viewer life lessons without pushing it down their throats, the lessons are very subtle but easy enough to spot if you know they are there, the biggest lesson in E.T is about the hardships of saying goodbye to someone you care about, of course this is due to the divorce but the entire movie essentially focuses on this lesson since the plot is about Elliot having to accept that E.T needs to be back home on his own planet

E.T is a very special movie and not only for the audience, did you know that the movie is heavily based on an imaginary friend Steven Spielberg created after his parents got divorced in 1960?

When the movie came out it surpassed Star Wars for highest grossing movie of all time and even though that isn’t the case today it’s hard to believe that at one point there was a more popular science fiction movie than Star Wars.

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The cast (image above from the 20th anniversary reunion) were all great but none stand out more than Drew Barrymore who played Gertie, that is not the say the rest of the cast were not as great as Drew, Peter Coyote does a fantastic job as Mr Keys and Dee Wallace knocks her performance out of the park as the mother but as for the rest of them although they did put a lot of effort into their performances I didn’t personally enjoy them as much.

48257-et E.T has a lot of iconic moments that have remained in peoples hearts since the first time they watched the film, for some people its when you spot Yoda in the Halloween scene, for others its the part where E.T uses his magic to heal a cut on Elliot’s finger, for me it doesn’t get better than the famous flying bike scene and lets not forget the phenomenal musical score by John Williams whose name I am sure will be turning up in a lot of these reviews, all of these moments are amazing and are a good reason to pick up a Blu-ray however there is no directors commentary for this film and that is a real shame because for me directors commentaries are the best part of owning a movie and few films could really benefit from one more than E.T.

Thankyou for reading the first review of Spielberg month, who knows what we will be diving into next week but if its anything like E.T its going to be pretty magical.

Want to buy this weeks movie? click the link below to get in from Amazon, I recommend subscribing to Amazon Prime to get fast next day delivery as well a lot of other benefits.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/E-T-Extra-Terrestrial-Blu-ray-Region/dp/B00LY0T7MM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491602069&sr=8-1&keywords=et+blu+ray

You can contact me at ragglefragglereviews@gmail.com

They gotta celebrate four Christmases with four families and all in one day.

Four Christmases is about a couple Brad and Kate played by Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon who always lie to their parents and make excuses as to why they cant visit for Christmas every year, unfortunately for them on this particular year they made the excuse that they couldn’t make it because they are doing some charitable work over in Burma when in fact they are actually going on vacation in Fiji, all flights get cancelled due to fog and a news team comes in and interviews them live about how they feel about the holiday being cancelled, of course as you may expect all of the parents see the news report and are very excited because now Brad and Kate can spend christmas with each of the families which is great the only problem is that each of their parents are divorced which means that they will need to fit in visits to all four families on Christmas day.

The movie has a really interesting plot that honestly I have to give praise too as it’s definitely something that could actually happen in real life, I would be surprised if this hadn’t happened to anyone especially given the large number of divorced parents in the world.

What I hate about the movie is everything else first of all it is so obvious that Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon did not want to be in this movie, I don’t think I have ever watched a movie where the actors and actresses have looked so bored and uninterested through out an entire film, Reese Witherspoon did occasionally have fun playing her role a good example would be the bouncy castle scene where she is trying to get back her pregnancy test that had earlier been stolen by a child, the same cannot be said for Vince Vaughn his performance through out the entire movie can be summed up in just two words boring and awkward.

As what is probably expected all of the families are very different and each over play their lifestyles to give off a comedic effect, the families are great and each of them have left me some memorable moments from the film, you got Brad’s angry dad and his abusive kid’s which is the complete opposite to Brads mom who is what most people would call a hippy, Kates mother is played by Mary Steenburgen an award winning actress who has performed in many popular films such as Step Brothers, Elf and Back to the Future 3, Kate’s Mother is dating a Pastor and so to Kate’s surprise shes actually become a christian and Kates dad is just normal

The movie is advertised as a comedy and yet the jokes are just about as childish and cliched as they can get, I didn’t expect much else from this movie given it’s average rating on IMDB but the problem I have is that the film almost does have good Jokes but for some reason it moves on before even executing them, a great example of this is a scene in Brads mum’s house where a kid finds some Marijuana Brownie’s and that’s the joke he doesn’t eat them and it’s never even mentioned again, the kid finding the brownies is not funny but what would of been funny is the affect the Brownies would have had on the kid yet for some reason the movie doesn’t even try to make a joke out of the situation.

Four Christmases was a really disappointing movie, it had a great premise but an awful and effortless execution, the cast was just as boring as the film, the jokes aren’t funny and the entire movie is so predictable that you will know what going to happen before long before it ends.

Thanks for reading my Review of Four Christmases, please comment below if you think I was too harsh and remember this is just my opinion plenty of other people like this movie, I’m just not one of those people.

The next Christmas movie I will review is