Hey! Movie lovers and Ultimate Movie Geeks! We bring you another Mega Mini Review, Now I know your saying “Doug these movies already came and went from the theater!” Yep your right but it doesn’t make them any less fun to talk about and maybe we can help you out in your DVD selection. So we invite you to put on the headphones and join us as we review American Sniper, Into the Woods, Taken 3 or as I like to call it Taken the Fugitive! Project Almanac, Jupiter Ascending and Channing Tatums elf ears and finally we finish it off The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water and Seventh Son. Remember if you’d like to send us your movie reviews send them to moviemadnesspodcast@gmail.com or call the voice mail # 260-573-0015 or post them to Twitter, Facebook or the Ultimate Movie Geeks community on Google+

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Monumentally stupid, ridiculously unfunny and devoid of any redeeming value, Mortdecai is quite possibly the worst comedy ever made. There may be worse, but I take a great joy in not having seen them. I have, however, seen Mortdecai and it is terrible.

Four of my favorite actors: Johnny Depp, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ewan McGregor and Paul Bettany manage to take a horrible plot and story elements and, with great skill and dexterity, make them even worse. Not to be too harsh, but I think a good horse whipping is clearly in order.

I cannot express enough my extreme disappointment in Johny Depp. With a goofy accent, foppish eccentricities and a cowardly aspect he manages to destroy any hope of Mortdecai, his character, being engaging. He is as close to an opposite of Captain Jack Sparrow as possible. For an actor famous in his quirky roles Depp simply flopped.

Paltrow is Johanna Mortdecai, as always, beautiful, charming and clever, but even she does nothing to elevate this worst of all films. Her character is stuck in a one joke loop with Depp and her flirting with McGregor’s Police Inspector Martland is bland.

Paul Bettany is Jock, Mortdecai’s manservant and stuck in the same type of one joke loop as Paltrow: he gets shot, stabbed and run over in place of his boss over and over again to no point.  Unfortunately Jock plays the fool. The fool that gives his loyalty to Mortdecai, a cowardly, sniveling wretch who’s only positive characteristic is that he’s not too dishonest.

Perhaps this story works as a novel but it fails horribly as a movie. Far better to have been written as the Pink Panther hero: Jacques Clouseau (Peter Sellers)-heroic, but clumsy. Clouseau at least has some strong positive traits. There is no trait to Mortdecai that makes him worthy, either of Jock’s respect or Johanna’s love.

The cast and creators of this reprehensible piece of work should be turned over to Seth Rogen and James Franco for six months as punishment. The inane conversation and constant dope smoking could, at the least, do no harm. And their movie, The Interview, was watchable.

Please, I beg of you…be prepared before you see this movie. Perhaps get plastered or loaded before seeing this movie. At least have a  large bottle of stout wine by your side. This movie is so bad it deserves never to be seen sober or straight.

Rating: 0 stars out of 5

Monumentally stupid and yet quite funny, The Interview stars Seth Rogen and James Franco. James Franco is Dave Skylark, the Jerry Springer-like star of a gotcha style tabloid show and Rogen is Aaron Rapaport, his producer/sidekick. Rapaport is fed up with the slimy, low class style of the show and is bent on leaving for hard hitting journalism. He is ripe for a change.

When Skylark discovers that North Korean President Kim Jong Un (Randall Park), is a big fan, he approaches Rapaport to propose interviewing the leader. When the communist dictator happily agrees, the CIA approaches them with a brilliant idea: lets have the idiots assassinate him. Since Skylark is a notorious lecher they send in a rather exposed CIA operative, Agent Lacey (Lizzy Caplan), to literally titillate him into complying. He succumbs and we have a movie.

Surprisingly, The Interview is quite funny and wonderfully reminiscent. Watching Interview is like finally seeing the sequel to Chevy Chase and Dan Akroyd‘s Spies Like Us. I only wish they’d added a scene with the two Saturday Night Live superstars to add a cherry to the otherwise tasty idiocy.

The chemistry between the guys, Franco and Rogen, is classic and they’re like a marijuana hazed, and modern, version of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy: great friends, but we’re always waiting for “another fine mess.” There is definitely love between the two in this classic comic bromance and I love it.

With all of the silliness it’s surprising that the directors, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, worked so hard to make Kim Jong Un and Agent Lacey such good characters. Much of the credit goes to Randall Park and Lizzy Caplan of course. Park brought a wonderful crazed humanity to his role and when he switches from loveable to insane, it’s startling. He was endearing as the good guy and scary as the bad one.

Caplan too was quite good. She brought a weird charm to her role as a recruiter for assassination. She could have phoned this one in and gotten away with it, but instead made a little magic. She was strangely likeable even in the strangest roles. I’ve liked her since her quirky True Blood and New Girl characters and would love to see her bring a little of that oddness to romantic comedy.

The Interview is, by no means, a brilliant break out comedy, but it is fun to watch with some rather good characters working hard to make the film fun. Congratulations to Sony for following through and making this movie so easy to access. You can find this one everywhere on the internet, but checkout out The Interview Website.

Rating: 3 Stars out of 5 and no reason to see it at the theater.