Comedy | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: American Wedding [2003]

2012/04/012014/05/14 Jared Mobarak

“We should all be so happy” You don’t know how great it was seeing Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas) and Jim (Jason Biggs) shoot down Kevin’s (Thomas Ian Nicholas) latest attempt at the “taking the next step” speech in American Wedding. I love it when filmmakers—in this case stalwart Adam Herz steering the ship with his third director in as many installments—can mock themselves for the formulaic redundancies fans easily pick out. College is over and the East Great Falls boys have officially become citizens of adulthood. The only step left…

REVIEW: American Pie 2 [2001]

2012/03/312014/05/14 Jared Mobarak

“That’s a lot of flutes” Right when you thought Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas) learned his lesson about manipulating the lives of his friends to compensate for his own insecurities, he does it again. Scared to go to college before becoming a man, American Pie followed his misguided pact to ensure his best friends would lose their virginity before graduation. One year later, American Pie 2 brings the whole gang back for a summer break meant to show their success in taking ‘the next step’ having since gotten sex out of…

REVIEW: American Pie [1999]

2012/03/312014/05/14 Jared Mobarak

“Suck me, beautiful” I’ll admit now that my love for American Pie is rooted heavily in nostalgia. Having first seen it in theatres as I was entering my own senior year of high school, the comradery of its band of brothers cautiously walking together towards graduation and manhood doesn’t quite resonate as much today at age thirty. My seventeen-year old self remembers the performances being a bit more honed and the scripting a tad crisper, but the one thing that didn’t change with an older and maybe wiser perspective is…

BNFF12 REVIEW: Beware Pickpocket [2010]

2012/03/262014/05/14 Jared Mobarak

“How did you get it?” We all strive to be pure, to be worthy of those we love. Oftentimes, however, such illusions of grandeur are nothing more than a façade to hide who we really are. Even in dream the titular petty thief (David Amito) of Beware Pickpocket sees himself as the bloodied punching bag of the victims he isn’t quite good enough to escape. You can dress a criminal to look upstanding, but he can change himself. So, despite putting on the clothes and practicing the smile of success…

BNFF12 REVIEW: YERT: Your Environmental Road Trip [2011]

2012/03/202014/05/15 Jared Mobarak

“We’re driving the bed, right?” With a goofy acronym for a name—YERT: Your Environmental Road Trip—and a tagline promising to be ‘An Environmental Documentary That’s NOT Depressing!’, you can imagine a lot of eye-rolling and trepidation when sitting down to see just how true a statement that marketing line could be. But then you meet Mark Dixon and Ben Evans, two guys living their lives with a yearning to do more as their world disintegrates around them. Quitting their jobs—the former leaving the comforts of his cubicle and the latter…

BNFF12 REVIEW: The Pact [2011]

2012/03/192014/05/15 Jared Mobarak

“You officially have a stalker—ME!” It’s the kind of gentlemen’s agreement you can see yourself making in the heat of a drunken bout with self-pity: swear off the opposite sex for a year in order to cleanse your soul of the one who left. For brothers Grant (Neil Brookshire) and Ancel Fox (Aaron Toronto) it’s a blood pact to reclaim their manhood and find success through independence. Well, maybe just for Grant—earning a promotion at work and meeting girls to have fun with as friends without constantly wonder about the…

REVIEW: This Means War [2012]

2012/03/132014/05/15 Jared Mobarak

“Why is she listening to that old man?” It’s really too bad that Timothy Dowling, Marcus Gautesen, and Simon Kinberg decided their script for This Means War needed to include romance. I don’t know if they were trying to create the ever-elusive film men and women can enjoy equally, but throw Chris Pine and Tom Hardy in the CIA hit squad thread for the full 97 minutes and this could be a great flick. The problem McG has that James Mangold didn’t with his highly enjoyable romp Knight and Day…

REVIEW: Take Me Home [2012]

2012/03/022014/05/15 Jared Mobarak

“I actually really like the paint in the bedroom” A road movie that surprisingly doesn’t fall prey to the easy tropes of its brethren, Take Me Home uses the American landscape as a backdrop to its journey through the tumultuous expanse of two lost souls. States fly by in seconds without a mention, just glimpses outside the windows of the illegally operated taxicab taking our leads from New York City to Encinitas, California. Where most would bask in the ability to montage famous sites, writer/director/star Sam Jaeger only sprinkles in…

REVIEW: Project X [2012]

2012/02/282014/05/15 Jared Mobarak

“He’s like a little fat Rain Man tweeting away” I guess I just don’t get it. Being the kid that would rather pick up an extra shift at my hourly job than attend an epic rager the likes no one has ever seen means the insanity that ensues in Project X only cements the fact I made the decision staying away. Directed by Nima Nourizadeh and the brainchild of Michael Bacall, Matt Drake and producer Todd Phillips, the idea that what we’re seeing is real has been squashed way before…

REVIEW: The Lorax [2012]

2012/02/252014/05/15 Jared Mobarak

“I’m Frankenstein’s head on a spider’s body” I loved The Land Before Time when I was a kid. It was a cute story with memorable characters in a world full of dinosaurs that utterly fascinated me. I remember seeing it in the theatre, getting the plastic hand puppets from Pizza Hut, and eventually acquiring a VHS of the film through some other restaurant’s promotion. There was something about it that allowed for its message of friendship, love, and whatever else to come across without a shred of overt manipulation or…

REVIEW: Fletch [1985]

2012/02/212019/01/08 Jared Mobarak

“Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick” Being someone who never quite understood the appeal of Chevy Chase until his wonderful return to show business with television’s “Community”, it’s no surprise I never caught up with his more famous role in Fletch. Always finding an off-putting smugness where I was supposed to enjoy deadpan sarcasm, the urge to punch him in the face rather than laugh has lingered over the years. Sure, I enjoyed him in smaller roles like Caddyshack and have fond childhood memories of Funny Farm despite not…