TOY STORY 3 vs JONAH HEX!

It's the comic book bad ass VS the toy store terrors! The pugilistic plastic puppets VS the wicked waylaying westerner!! LET'S GET IT ON!!!

Toy Story 3 - Flashing forward 10 years or more, Andy is on his way to college, leaving Woody and his pals to one of two fates. The attic or donation to the local daycare center. In a twist of accidental fate, off the the daycare center they go where all seems like toy Eden..until the toddlers come!! PLASTIC CARNAGE!! I have to make a note that, ever since the second movie when they defined how much Woody, his horse and Jessie are worth, I twitch whenever I see them walking around on pavement..or dirt..or the air...much less being gnawed on by little drooling humans. This was true HORROR for me. Without giving away the plot, not all is what it seems at the daycare center, so the film turns into a caper movie with the toys trying to find their way home again. The only change this time around is the odd number of "evil" characters and the completely random and almost disturbing nature of some of the circumstances and scenes! This movie is so weird, I found myself half covering my eyes at times, not knowing what the hell I was watching. I can only imaging these scenes might scare kids a little!

The oddness of the story line didn't detract from my enjoyment one bit. The pace is swift and the comedy non-stop, with imagery so unexpected I found myself laughing harder as I shook my head in disbelief. This might be a little intense for smaller kids, but Toy Story 3 is every bit as fun as a Toy Story movie should be and doesn't disappoint one bit. The 3D, however, is inconsequential, so don't feel that you NEED to see the movie in this format for maximum enjoyment. Honestly, I don't recall anything coming at me, causing me to duck down in startled amazement. I even forgot we were watching in 3D about 10 minutes in. Get out to the movies this weekend and give Toy Story 3 the well deserved #1 spot, but leave the glasses behind.

Jonah Hex - Jonah Hex (Brolin) is a man haunted by the death of his wife and child at the hands of the insidious Quentin Turnbull (Malkovich). Scarred horribly by Turnbull and left for dead, Hex is saved by friendly Native Americans who yank him back, inches from the here after and thus, changed by having seen the other side. Now, Hex can communicate with the dead with a touch and roams the dusty trails as an outlaw bounty hunter with a taste for a prostitute named Lilah (Fox) and a scar across his mug you’d never forget.

The rest of this tale is either irrelevant or makes no sense. Hex believes Turnbull to be dead, which is reversed minutes later; a pointless plot fact since we all know Turnbull is the main bad guy before we even enter the theater. Hex’s “talking to the dead” gimmick stands as the only pleasing effect in the whole film but things revealed during these moments, while pushing Hex toward the bad guy, seem forced and could have been easily replaced with some bar drunk pointing in the right direction…but what fun would that be?! The dialogue falls out of actors mouths with the pacing of a sub-par community theater performance, as if they were all told to sit down and watch Silverado before the shoot as their only reference. The result is agonizing with a series of peripheral characters standing around like civil war reenactors or those odd puppets in the Hall of Presidents, pitching their lines at main characters who seem to yawn back at them.

SPEAKING of acting! While watching Jonah Hex, you’d think the film was shot in a single week with actors given 2 days to read the script and cue cards to cover the rest. Brolin’s mangled mouth piece assures most of his lines are delivered through gritted teeth, rendered unintelligible. This makes his scenes with Megan Fox extra hysterical, as her delivery is extra mumbly with a sort of drawl, which isn’t to be confused with a southern drawl. She just drawn her words out and makes every word sound gnarly. It’s not sexy. John Malkovich slow walks from scene to scene with the intensity of someone performing a task they were talked into by a cousin who nagged them for a solid year. I’d swear he doesn’t change his facial expression even once and delivers his lines with a softness you reserve for ordering desert after a pleasing meal. This leaves Michael Fassbender as the maniacal, heavily tattoo’d Burke who dances through every scene and twirls a giant knife as if he studied the art since childhood. Fassbender seems the only person behaving as if he’s in a crazy, comic adapted western with super natural overtones and comes off more like a Robocop nemesis than cohort to Turnbull, who is most likely sleeping somewhere behind him. Special mentions should be given to Wes Bently and Will Arnett who are so miscast and odd, even with the small roles given, that they may as well be in a Saturday Night Live skit spoofing the movie. Finally, a tip of my hat to Tom Wopat (yes, that Duke boy) who acts his ass off despite the stupidity happening around him and succeeds in proving he deserves more movie roles.

80 minutes feel like 2 hours as this dull fantasy rolls along with lame, unlikely action, horrible writing and zero atmosphere. If you consider a red tinted “dream sequence” that replays throughout the film as cutting edge cinematography, then I suggest you partake in any one of a number of the SyFy channel’s “original” movies and save some cash. When I saw the names Neveldine and Taylor come up in the credits as screen writers I nearly yelled LIAR!! This complete mess of a film could not be the work of the guys who brought us the Crank films and Gamer. Jonah Hex lacks the quirkiness and risk taking that is the backbone of those films. Jonah Hex has to be a hack job and after cutting the meat to ribbons in an attempt to form a coherent story line, we are left with 80 minutes of sweaty boredom, laughable action gimmicks and an “ultimate weapon” that will remind the more geeky among us of the Dragon Balls from Dragon Ball Z. They, too, make no sense.