Ghosts of Girlfriends Past | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: Scrooged [1988]

2013/12/132014/05/19 Jared Mobarak

“Cupid’s arrow, right between the eyes” While there have been countless iterations of Charles Dickens‘ seminal novel A Christmas Carol—with the 1951 Alastair Sim starrer proving the best and modernized retreads like Ghosts of Girlfriends Past supplying the worst—one sometimes overlooked comedic gem from 1988 has always been this writer’s personal favorite. Titled Scrooged, screenwriters Mitch Glazer and Michael O’Donoghue went meta with the concept of its ubiquity by telling us a tale of a man who is quite literally “scrooged” while producing a legitimate adaptation of the real story…

REVIEW: The Change-Up [2011]

2011/07/282014/05/25 Jared Mobarak

“Rotate your turret and go night night” It may be overly derisive to say, especially from a guy who watched Like Father Like Son and Vice Versa religiously during the late-80s, but The Change-Up has to end up being the laziest piece of cinema released this year. Scribed by the duo behind both Hangover flicks, Jon Lucas and Scott Moore appear to be making a conscious effort to create ‘modern updates’ of tired concepts. After the ho-hum, not as bad as it should have been Ghosts of Girlfriends Past redid…

REVIEW: The Hangover [2009]

2009/05/202013/05/21 Jared Mobarak

“Couldn’t find a meter, but here’s four bucks” The success of Old School pretty much vaulted Todd Phillips onto the A-list for comedy directors. We waited and waited for his second hit, (I didn’t forget about Road Trip which was good as a precursor to Old School), but only got the mediocre Starsky and Hutch and—what I can only imagine as disappointing—School for Scoundrels. Maybe what Phillips needed was a script from the guys that brought us Four Christmases and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past … wow, this is sounding worse…

REVIEW: Ghosts of Girlfriends Past [2009]

2009/04/292013/07/16 Jared Mobarak

“I’m gonna have to do this in bulk” My research into the new A Christmas Carol rip-off for the rom-com demographic, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, yielded one very interesting tidbit of information—director Mark Waters received a “special thanks” on the production of Requiem for a Dream. No disrespect to the man as I’m a big fan of Mean Girls and have wanted to check out his Spiderwick Chronicles, but how does he know Darren Aronofsky? This has all of a sudden taken over my complete interest pertaining to the new…