What a guy!!
Thanks for coming back. The last blog picked up a fair bit of interest so we are eternally grateful to both you for reading them and indeed Asylum pictures for making such garbage. We have now got to a point where some of the actors and actresses are responding, which is fantastic. Dee Wallace, from Hansel & Gretel, clearly just retweets before reading content as she generously spread the word of her terrible performance to the twitter public. Stephanie Greco, the female lead, made Andy’s day, week, month and year by replying to him personally regarding the last blog saying that he can indeed call her ‘Steph’. This has made Andy extremely smug. I, however, have convinced myself that Andy is actually interacting with an overweight 42 year old who masturbates to Greco fans from his mother’s basement. Either way, all readers welcome.
We are not quite so confident to get a response from In The Mix star Usher. One, he is possibly one of the most famous men on the planet. Two, judging by the news, he seems to have a lot on his plate with the sad news his 5 year old son is in intensive care. I can only presume he heard the news there may be an In The Mix 2.
Musicians trying their hand at acting has featured heavily on the list. We have had Roger Daltrey and Huey Lewis in a murder mystery. Vanilla Ice treading the boards as a moronic white rapper, a part he played for roughly 7 years and now we have Usher playing a DJ. That doesn’t sound too bad right? A DJ who gets involved with the New Jersey Mob. What about now?
In terms of fish out of water career moves, Usher is actually pretty decent. For instance he was a lot better than Chris Waddle and Glenn Hoddle at singing and definitely more convincing than Michael Jordan with a baseball bat. The downside of this is that Andy and I have had our suspicions confirmed. We do indeed have Stockholm Syndrome. We have been taken captive by terrible films and we are now at their mercy because once again, this wasn’t that bad! The premise is frankly mental and Chazz Palminteri must’ve needed some money but it really wasn’t anywehre near the poor quality of Battle Field Earth and the like.
Usher is a club DJ on the rise, sidekicked by the occasionally racist Kevin Hart, and has family connections the Chazz and the New jersey mafia. How does he? It’s irrelevant, stop asking such logical questions. In a series of heroic events, Usher finds himself taking on the role of bodyguard to the head honcho’s beautiful daughter. I won’t insult your intelligence. You know how the rest plays out. He gets the girl. He fucking Usher for Christ’s sake.
The two areas this movie falls down for me is its setting and motive. the problem is, you can dress it up anyway you like. but it is a mob film. It might have the feel of an LA romcom and yes there are black people in it who aren’t the enemy but it is a mob movie. In The Mix sadly picked on of the most cherished genres of all time to debut Usher’s average acting chops and a dodgy script. The Godfather, Goodfellas, A Bronx Tale, Donnie Brasco are all absolute classics and I am not sure what they were thinking when they thought they could dress this up as a genuine Italian American classic, even with Chazz Palminteri’s addition. The other area it falls down is that it just seems like a 90 minute long dating profile for Usher to tell you how awesome he is. He saves someones life TWICE, he is chivalrous, he turns down beautiful women out of honour, he is in touch with his feminine side, he is both talented and modest, he never loses his temper and I might have drunk the Kool Aid but I think at one point he helps an old woman across the road whilst saving a kitten from a tree and curing AIDS simultanously. He really is quite remarkable.
The movie isn’t remarkable, nor is it horrendous. Every one of you who reads this will have a friend somewhere who loves this movie No, they’re not a close friend more an acquaintance, and yes, you should probably think about deleting them from facebook but someone out there loves this movie and whilst it is nothing to be proud of, there are far more shameful pieces of cinema to be embarrassed about than this. Avatar for instance.
Craig
So Usher was in the news last night because he is being taken to court for a custody battle because his 5 year old
son nearly drowned in his swimming pool. What’s more shocking is that, having seen ‘In the Mix’, pool-gate isn’t the worst thing he’s done! Having said that, this is another case of a film that isn’t good by any stretch but certainly shouldn’t be anywhere near this list. It is basically just a huge cliché, very predictable and not in the slightest bit imaginative but it’s not THAT bad. Technically the film looks fine, the acting from the three main cast members, including Usher, is pretty good and it wasn’t a difficult watch in the slightest. That being said, it is pretty offensive to Italians, African-Americans and the gangster genre as whole. It’s full of stereotype clichés about all three and I think that has to be the biggest downfall of the movie. It just comes across as being incredibly lazy.
The actress playing Dolly is quite clearly not Italian but I have been just about the biggest fan of
Emmanuelle Chriqui since I fell in love with her in ‘Entourage’ when she inexplicably played the love interest of everybody’s favourite ginger midget Kevin Connolly . She could be cast as Gary Coleman in the biopic of his life (which I want to see by the way) and I’d buy every moment of it. Well, maybe not buy it, but I certainly wouldn’t be turning it off. I feel slightly like I’m cheating on Stephanie Greco (now that we’re besties and she wasn’t put off by my marriage talk) but I didn’t know Emmanuelle was going to be on this list and I’m afraid a long standing infatuation supersedes a new one! So Stephanie, I might be needing that metaphorical engagement ring back soon. Hold on to it for now though, obviously.
Luckily I discovered a video that makes Anthony Fazio’s horrible performance slightly more bearable. It’s a scene dubbed in a foreign language and it’s quite annoying at first but you’ll definitely see the benefit when Anthony wigga’s his way into the scene! You also get to see why I might need that ring back soon.
Once again we have an issue with the morals of the movie and that seems to be a theme of this list. What I mean by this is that we are supposed to WANT Usher and The Future Mrs Gibbins (this one definitely won’t be) to get it on but the reality is her boyfriend doesn’t do anything wrong and Dolly is just a complete bitch to almost everyone in the movie. We don’t so much want them to get together, rather we would prefer to see Usher finally crack his perfect demeanour, throw a barrage of abuse at her and kick her perfectly proportioned ass to the curb!
It’s another slightly low-key blog from us this time because in all honesty the film isn’t that bad. Something that will definitely not be the case with our next outing thanks to Mr Affleck and Ms Lopez!
Andy
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20th Century Flops 