BY MIKEY MIGO
I went into this movie with low expectations. Vince Vaughn is one of the most entertaining people to watch, but in recent years I’ve just not connected with his work. The Christmas movies, Couples Retreat, and the other more recent stuff just felt really watered down. Vince Vaughn has a certain “shtick” that he could easily coast on for a movie and still get by. He’s just that likeable. But the dude can act when he wants. He can push his range into a much wider area. He did it in Swingers, The Cell, Thumbsucker, and Into the Wild. I’m not too jaded. I love Old School and Wedding Crashers. I enjoyed his spots in Zoolander, Anchorman, etc. I’m not a big fan of Kevin James’s movie work. I like him as a person and I’m okay with King of Queens, but Paul Blart and Grown Ups were among my least favorite movies I’ve seen lately. So with that, Vince’s recent run, and the fact that it’s PG13 I was hesitant to say the least. The credits start and I get somewhat of a sigh of relief when I see it’s a Ron Howard movie. The movie goes on and what happens is that I start getting more and more invested into the story. The story is that Vaughn and James are long time friends. Vaughn is with Jennifer Connelly and James is with Winona Ryder. Vaughn is trying to propose, but can’t get the balls to do so. He gets caught up in a journey as he sees Ryder cheating on James with Channing Tatum. That’s “the dilemma”. He wants to get to the bottom of everything, he wants his friend not to get hurt, and he wants to make sure their business does well. The story is simple, but it’s done well. My only gripe is that it’s hard to take Kevin James’ character seriously when the whole time you know he’s being cheated on. He’s stressed about the job and is pretty much an anxious jerk for most of the movie. Really, he’s unlikeable. I don’t think it was Kevin James’ fault though. He was funny and it’s pretty clear and easy to say that this is his best work. The movie is carried by Vince Vaughn though. Vaughn brings Opie his A-game. Vaughn is funny, charming, warm, witty, and everything this movie needed him to be and more. The fact that he cares so much for Kevin James you can’t help but look past the way he’s acting and like him too. He’s passionate about everything and made what I figured would be a pretty boring movie much better than it should have been. So Vaughn rocked. I think I’ve made that clear. One big surprise was Channing Tatum. He’s a bit vanilla. He’s GI Joe and does action movies and sappy dry rom coms. But he ended up being way better than I thought he could be. He plays a screwed up, emotional, psycho perfectly. It’s a role that Mark Walberg would have been paid like five times more to play with results probably not as good. It wasn’t like he reinvented the laugh or anything, but to see that side of Tatum is pretty promising, especially with 21 Jump Street on the horizon. I’m not going to go out and watch this movie on a loop or proclaim it as a great movie. I liked it. It’s one of the best Vince Vaughn performances I’ve seen in recent memory. That carries the movie on its own, but there is plenty more about this movie that made it enjoyable. B+
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