WEEKEND MOVIE GUIDE: Opening this weekend, we’ve got Rise of the Planet of the Apes (ROTPOTA!), The Change-Up, and Bellflower (NY & LA only).

ROTPOTA: Digitized Andy Serkis leads an ape insurrection in, ‘Apeheart,’ much to the chagrin of James Franco, handsome scientist.

RottenTomatoes: 79%

Gratuitous Review Quotes:

They probably should have called it “Beneath the Dignity of the Planet of the Apes,” but “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” is tolerable if you’ll just keep in mind that the original feature was an overachieving B-movie. -Kyle Smith, NY Post

“This is sharp, thrilling summertime fun here, a movie that addresses its inherently ridiculous premise with a straight face and dares you not to take it seriously.” -Eric D. Snider, Film.com

“Retarded, but with flair, like my cousin, Mongoloid Ramón.” -Me, the Greatest Website in the World.

Armchair Analysis: Dude. They got an ACTOR to PRETEND TO BE AN APE to teach the animators how to draw an ape. Why am I the only one fascinated by this? That is the most deliciously absurd thing in the world. If only Andy Serkis, Creature Thespian, had been around during the making of Jurassic Park, he could’ve given the Tyrannosaur humanity and soul.

Read the rest of this entry »

(I made this a while back for some reason).

Ryan Reynolds is a Canadian America’s Sweetheart, whose chiseled abs and boy-next-door look recall my childhood neighbor Rich Thompson, who bought me my first mangroomer and schooled me in the art of submission wrestling.  Rich is dead now, but if Fast and Furious producer Neil Moritz is to be believed, Ryan Reynolds is about to star in two movies with super original premises: a body-swap comedy and a story of dead people who walk among the living.  From Collider:

“We love Ryan Reynolds. We’re going to do two movies with him. We’re doing The Change-Up with him and we’re doing R.I.P.D. with him.  R.I.P.D. Rest in peace department.  A terrific script by Manfredi & Hay at Universal that we hopefully going to make at the beginning of next year.  It’s terrific, based on the graphic novel. It’s about two cops, one recently dead and a gunslinger who’s been dead for hundreds of years who work on the Rest in Peace department – which is the police department of the dead. And they basically…it takes place on a normal day and it’s about trying to keep the dead quiet [Whatever, dead people are quiet.  My crawlspace is like a library. -Ed.].  Terrific script. Great buddy comedy. Buddy Action/Comedy.  It’s a PG-13 movie.

“He’ll be teamed with somebody but it’s a fantastic relationship between a cop who’s recently died who would do anything to get back to his wife. And a gunslinger who died hundreds of years ago who has seen it all and is jaded by it all and it’s the two of these guys together and it’s the relationship between these two guys that is absolutely fantastic.”

Well that could be cool, I guess.  I like movies about ghosts and the afterlife, because  they make me think hey, maybe we’re not all just hurtling inexorably toward an abyss of eternal nothingness or whatever.  *takes bong rip*

(It’s very possibly I’ve had too much coffee this morning.)

Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman are set to star in a movie of the ever-popular body-swap genre called Change Up, to be directed by Wedding Crashers‘ David Dobkin.

The project, written by “Wedding Crashers” and “The Hangover” writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, is basically “a responsible guy with a wife gets swapped with his best friend, a lazy man child.” [ThePlaylist]

It sounds great when you say it like that.  Not as great when you say “a body swap comedy from the writers of Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and Four Christmases, and the director of Fred Claus,” which, sadly, is also true. Fred Claus has been on cable a lot recently.  Check it out if you ever want to see a CGI elf version of Ludacris rap.  So yeah, hope for the Wedding Crashers/Hangover version of this creative team, but don’t hold your breath.  And I don’t know about you, but if I switched bodies with Ryan Reynolds, the first thing I’d probably do is try to jizz on my own washboard abs.  What?  Don’t act like I’m the only straight guy here who’s thought about it.  Oh right, I’m the weird one, whatever, you guys.

(It’s okay, Birthday Dog isn’t traumatized, he’s too busy partyin’.)

Like everyone else, I enjoyed The Hangover a lot, but I’m usually careful to point out that it was good mainly because of Zach Galifianakis, a likable cast, and a director who knows comedy and has a nice visual style (Todd Phillips), and not because of the script or the concept (which one studio head wanted to call What Happens in Vegas).  Sadly, that won’t stop a couple of the original screenwriters from getting work because of The Hangover‘s success (even though it’s well-known that Todd Phillips and Jeremy Garelick did extensive rewrites).

Universal has picked up the script “Change Up” from “Hangover” writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore. David Dobkin is attached to direct and produce.

Nothing wrong with that, right?  Hold on…

The studio is keeping the logline under wraps, though it is known to be a body-switching comedy. In addition to “Hangover,” which has become the top-grossing R-rated comedy with $258.6 million, Lucas and Moore also wrote the recent New Line comedies “The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past” and “Four Christmases.”  Dobkin last directed 2007′s “Fred Claus.” [THR]

So that’s Ghosts of Girlfriends Past plus Four Christmases plus Fred Claus plus body swap comedy?  …We’re gonna need a bigger WOOOOF.  I can’t wait for the next Lucas/Moore/Dobkin collaboration, Vince Vaughn is Fired Up about Breakfast Cereal.