Zombeavers is a 2015 horror comedy directed by Jordan Rubin. He wrote the script with Al Kaplan and Jon Kaplan. It didn't do well at the box office, grossing $14,947 but it wasn't in that many theatres. Hopefully it will do some business on DVD and cable. It's a pretty typical plot, three female college students wind up in the woods with some dangerous beasties. The young women drive to a cottage by a lake with a beaver dam. They fill us in on Jenn's boyfriend issues. Before they get there a truck has an accident and a barrel of chemicals gets plopped into the lake. The barrel leaks on the beaver dam. You know that's a bad thing. The gals are settling in at Mary's Aunt's cottage but they aren't happy about the no cell coverage. The three planned an all girls weekend. Jenn is all upset that her boyfriend was kissing some other woman at a bar and she wants to be away from him. The girls go along to keep her company, though Zoe isn't much of a friend. She gets her boyfriend to bring the other two gal's boyfriends up to the cabin. Oh, well, it's just more victims for the beavers to gnaw on. And it sucks if they bite you, you become an undead werebeaver, growing a tail and giant front teeth.
That's Mary, Zoe and Jenn. Zoe's the only one who gets her top off. She's the most annoying one of the bunch. There's the usual running about and screaming with chemically enhanced beavers chomping their way through the walls and floors of the cottage. One by one the characters fall to the chomping teeth. There's a few jokes mixed in with the blood bath. Some were funny but many weren't. The boyfriends were a tiresome bunch and I didn't mind them getting chomped down on. The neighbors get caught up in the zombeaver invasion and they don't get much fun out of that. Not a great movie, watchable, good for a laugh or two. Probably won't bother with it again.
Mortdecai is a 2015 Johnny Depp film that was directed by David Koepp with a script by Eric Aronson. It's based on a novel called Don't Point That Thing At Me by Kyril Bonfiglioli. He wrote 4 novels and part of a fifth before he died. The fifth was finished by someone else. The Wikipedia says the novels have been compared to PG Wodehouse and shady art dealer Mortdecai's man servant Jock Strapp is the fun-house mirror version of Jeeves. I'm curious, being such a Wodehouse fan, and I put his novels on my library queue. Wodehouse certainly had his share of shady characters, they often make for good comedy.
There's Paul Bettany as Jock and Johnny Depp as Mortdecai. Mortdecai has just grown his new moustache and that causes some issues for his wife Johanna, played by Gwyneth Paltrow. Ewan McGregor is Inspector Alistar Martland and he has a thing for Johanna. Jeff Goldman is rich art collector Milton Krampf and Olivia Munn is his naughty tramp of a daughter Georgina. He wants Mortdecai's fancy Rolls Royce and poor Mortdecai is dead broke, he owes £8,000,000 in back taxes, so he's tempted to sell the car. His latest sale just went horribly wrong and now Asian crime boss Fang is after him. There's a rumored lost Goya and Mortdecai wants to get a cut of that sale. The Inspector is snooping around and he wants Mortdecai to use his contacts to find out the poop on the painting. Other interesting parties surface looking for the treasure. There's plenty of fights and gunplay but no one get too badly hurt. There's plenty of sneaking about and double dealing. That's one valuable painting and it's supposed to have secret bank account numbers, filled with Nazi wealth, on the back, making it doubly valuable.
It didn't do well at the box office, it got panned by the critics (13% on Rotten Tomatoes) but as often is the case I'm not on the same wavelength and I enjoyed it. It gets a 5.5 on the IMDb and I wouldn't put it much higher than that. It's very British, that could be why people didn't cotton to it, but Mortdecai is a very British character. It seems like it's a heist comedy film from the 1960's, like The Pink Panther or Topkapi. I found Mortdecai entertaining in his way and he's certainly less bumbling than Inspector Clueless in TPP. The other characters are all fairly goofy and broad but they fit the film. It's all very colorful and there's lots of pretty locations to look at. The movie doesn't take itself seriously so why should I. I laughed at plenty of jokes and situations that others must not have. I liked it more than anyone watching tonight and I would want to see it again.
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