By Andy Hunsaker, Fancast Movies
Emma Stone has a weird week - she's starring in two of the four films opening wide this weekend, and that has to be a weird situation for her. How do you choose between your children? She doesn't have to - I'll do it for her.
The Rocker [watch trailers & clips]
Stone plays Amelia, the hot bassist in the high school band A.D.D., who has a quiet thing for the band's singer/songwriter Curtis (Teddy Geiger) and whose face gets sneezed on by awkward keyboardist Matt (Josh Gad), whose burn-out loser uncle Fish (Rainn Wilson) is the catalyst that propels this unlikely group who was happy playing the prom into rock stardom. She's cool, she's alternachick and she's very self-aware, and The Rocker is the better comedy of the two, if only for the greater sense of emotional honesty and the glorious opening sequence where Fish is kicked out of his band Vesuvius just before they hit it big. However...
The House Bunny [watch trailers]
... Stone's role here as the hopelessly nerdy yet energetically optimistic Natalie, the well-meaning head of the slipshod loser sorority Zeta Alpha Zeta is a more memorable performance, even if the rest of the film squanders its great potential as a long-overdue female take on Revenge of the Nerds. It's not without its funny moments, but the support of Hugh Hefner and the Playboy empire likely limited the amount of comic license they had to take shots at that lifestyle, and the end result comes off as being about as shallow as your average centerfold (even if Hefner's stab at acting is so bad it's good). Then again, it was scripted by the Legally Blonde team, and they obviously have a predilection for celebrating high-heeled ditzy fashionistas in pink, and Anna Faris plays that persona well. That said...
Death Race [watch trailers & clips]
... this one is likely to be the film that blows the rest of them off the road to box office glory. Jason Statham is Jensen Ames, an wrongly-imprisoned ex-NASCAR driver who must compete against Machine Gun Joe (Tyrese Gibson) in an insane armored-car race at the behest of evil Warden Hennessy (Joan Allen), and if he survives the race, he wins his freedom. Director Paul W.S. Anderson of Resident Evil fame is absolutely blatant with his video game roots, as drivers can even drive over little symbols in the road to gain power-ups. Lines like "Release the Dreadnought" and her memorably profane outburst towards the end make up the kind of crazy dialog that even an Oscar-caliber star like Allen couldn't resist. It's no Transporter and it's no Crank, but Statham is kicking as much ass as ever, and only Uwe Boll could screw that up. Yet, we mustn't forget...
The Longshots [watch the trailer]
... that Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit has made an inspirational movie for kids, about the first female Pop Warner quarterback Jasmine Plummer (Keke Palmer) and how she taught her uncle Curtis (Ice Cube) and her poor home town of Minden a few things about life. How do we know it's inspirational? Because almost every second of the film is scored by "After-School Special" music that tries to make nearly every exchange into A Moment, and it gets old really fast. It's predictable and schmaltzy, but it's harmless, and kids might like it.
