Great little Blue Velvet spoof

There are plenty more spoofs like this available here at IFILM.

The Will Ferrell Film Festival

Movie Review: Elf (2003)
After a series of hilarious bit parts in other comedies (Old School, Jay & Bob Strike Back, Zoolander, etc) Will Ferrell finally gets a leading role. Here he plays Buddy, a human raised as an Elf in the North Pole, who tries to ingratiate himself with his recently discovered father in New York. Apart from some funny fish-out-of-water moments this movie isn't too funny. It's really aimed at a younger audience and goes for cutesy more than funny. 6/10

Movie Review: Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy - Unrated Version (2004)
Ferrell plays an extremely self centered anchorman in San Diego in the 70's when news casters were the coolest cats out there. He and his sexist buddies have to deal with a diligent, intelligent and beautiful new female anchor played by Christina Applegate. I first started to watch this movie last summer while at my brother's place in Ohio. Admittedly I was pretty tired at the time, but I found the first half of the movie to be really stupid and completely unfunny. Then I fell asleep. This time I found the movie hilarious. Still dumb, but very funny. I guess your mood plays a big part in how you appreciate things. Steve Carell was also very funny as the dimwitted Brick Tamland. I'm looking forward to seeing his big movie, the 40 Year Old Virgin. 7.5/10

Movie Review: Wake Up, Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie (2004)
This is a bonus film included with the Unrated Cut of Anchorman. It is billed as a seperate movie but in fact it is just a collection of alternate takes, extended scenes, and a major plot line that was cut out of the original film. Ferrell and friends take on a group of eco-terrorists in San Diego that are unsure of what they really want to say. It's amusing but easy to see why this plot was excised from the movie. It is a great addition to Anchorman for those that enjoyed it. 7/10

Movie Review: Kicking & Screaming (2005)
Ferrell plays a father who, despite being bullied by his over-competetive father for years, decides to coach his own underachieving son's soccer team. The thing is, his father is coaching the best team in the league. As with most sports movies you can see where this movie is going right from the start. The good points - Robert Duvall and Mike Ditka are good as overbearing coaches. The bad - none of the kids' characters are developed at all, the soccer scenes are really bad, and Will Ferrell is just not funny. I don't think he's all that good as the straight guy. He wants to make the same transition that Jim Carrey has but I don't think he has the screen presence to do it. 4/10

Movie Review: Melinda & Melinda (2004)
Not a Will Ferrell movie per se but a Woody Allen movie. 2 playwrights debate whether life is more like a comedy or a tragedy. They imagine the same set of characters (played by different actors) going through alternate stories of both tragedy and comedy. This is a really fascinating idea and I enjoyed watching it. Ferrell plays a role in the comedy side of the story. Unfortunately the comic divide isn't all that funny until it hits the halfway mark. This movie doesn't quite live up to the great idea behind it. 6.5/10

A Taste of Magic

Movie Review: Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire (2005)
Perhaps I saw this movie too soon after reading the book. The book was just fantastic (see the earlier post about the book) but as with the rest of this series each book keeps getting longer and longer. The movies stay about the same length though, so more and more keeps getting cut out. This is understandable but many things I was looking forward to seeing from the book just weren't here. The entire house-elf subplot was dropped. This was a justifiable cut but it would have been nice to see Dobie again. Important information about Neville was only subtlely shown. The ending of the movie was also much weaker than the book which put the entire story on a war footing. What was here was good but I was a little disappointed. 7/10

Movie Review: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe (2005)
I really had high hopes for this movie going into it. As a youngster I loved the entire Narnia series and I thought it would have a little bit of that 'Lord of the Rings' feel to it. It didn't have any of that feel to it, although it sure tried to. I'm positive that they purposely copied some of the scenes from LOTR exactly. Perhaps this was in homage to LOTR but it just seemed like a cheesy rip off to me. I haven't read the series in a long time so I've forgotten many of the story's small details. This means I can't blame some of the plot holes on the movie because they might be in the original book. What didn't I like about this movie? Well, for starters, I thought the CG looked bad. They looked very fake. Even worse than they sometimes did in Star Wars. Probably my biggest problem with this movie is the sense of scale. Narnia is supposed to be this whole new world, but I never got the sense that it was very big. We see all these exotic creatures but I never got the feeling that Narnia was big enough to contain them all. In LOTR Middle-Earth felt big, while Narnia feels as if it could fit inside that wardrobe. 6/10

Movie Review: Charlie & the Chocolate Factory (2005)
Tim Burton's latest. Next to Corpse Bride that is. First off I'll admit that I haven't read the book or seen the original Gene Wilder movie. I did read all the reviews that said Johnny Depp's version of Willy Wonka is a parody of Michael Jackson. I disagree. Michael Jackson is no where near as funny as Depp's Wonka. This was a very fun movie with great characters and sets. The music and dancing were very fun but sometimes jolting as they brought the story to a standstill. This was obviously intentional though and the musical numbers were very memorable. For me the most disturbing part of the movie was the character of the Oompa Loompas who were all played by Deep Roy. He's a strange looking man and it was wierd to see all the digital copies of him. According to IMDB he received a 1 million dollar salary for all the work he did on the film. Good for him. 7/10