Opening Everywhere: Spring Breakers, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, The Call

FilmDrunk Suggests: Well, let’s see – one is about dueling fake magicians, another is about a former Oscar winner in a WWE movie, and the third is about attractive girls on spring break. It’s a toss-up, guys. I’m leaning toward the magicians.

Spring Breakers

Rotten Tomatoes Scores: 70% critics, 69% audience

Gratuitous Review Quotes:

“Basically a ‘Girls Gone Wild’ short artily padded out to feature-length by endlessly repeating the same scenes and lines of dialogue, often three or more times.” – Lou Lumenick, NY Post

“Spring Breakers is an exploitative display of bacchanalian excess, casual sex and rampant nudity that’s more tedious than titillating.” – Claudia Puig, USA Today

Armchair Analysis: Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Benson in bikinis. Forgive me for being a man, but here’s my reaction to that:

I know, that makes me the most terrible person in the world, but whatever. Maybe I’ll sniff my own farts in another life.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

Rotten Tomatoes Scores: 40% critics, 66% audience

Gratuitous Review Quotes:

“This may be the kind of semi-bad, semi-inspired comedy that could not only stand repeated viewings but perhaps improve with them.” – Mary F. Pols, TIME

“A generic, fitfully funny mainstream comedy that doesn’t nearly get the best from its name-brand players but doesn’t qualify as a desecration, either.” – Ann Hornaday, Washington Post

Armchair Analysis: I don’t really have an opinion on this film. It looks like it could be funny, I guess. It also looks like there’s a lot of shouting. I’m kind of over the whole “yelling = laughs” genre. I don’t know, maybe.

“Yeah, I can get you a football phone.”

The Call

Rotten Tomatoes Scores: 35% critics, 74% audience

Gratuitous Review Quotes:

“It’s a lot better than you might expect a movie like this to be.” – Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger

“This is as brain-dead as a movie can be and it assumes the audience will have the I.Q. of a rutabaga.” – James Berardinelli, ReelViews

Armchair Analysis: People are obviously giving Halle Berry a lot of crap because this is a WWE film and she appeared on Monday Night Raw this week to promote it, but I’d like to play Devil’s Adobe Acrobat here and just say that working for WWE films has to be the easiest paycheck. I mean, Jonah Hill could drop off the face of the Earth tomorrow, but the Miz? He’ll still be starring in The Marine movies 15 years from now. So I tip my cap to Berry for a little job security.