Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Case 39: Ugh




Netflix has really been slacking in the awesome department as of late. It keeps suggesting I watch movies called, "Naked Vampires" and "Zombie Whores" or some similar sounding name of sexually transmitted terror. Therefore it was no surprise when Monday night rolled around and I started watching Case 39. Although to be fair, the main reason I began watching it was because I forgot if I liked Renee Zellweger or not. Is that how you spell Zellweger? Oh well, I'm over it.

So anyways. Case 39 is pretty terrible. This isn't even going to be a real review I'm just going to talk about how ridiculous and terrible this movie was. Which I guess is no different from how I do regular reviews. Hmmph.

Emily is a social worker who has a lot of cases and she's swamped. She has 38 cases, and then her boss tells her she has to do one more. Which tada! Equals 39. Ding ding. Case 39 involves a young girl named Lily? I forget actually and now I'm too lazy to look that up on IMDB so I guess I'll just make up names from now on. Alright so Lily seems like an abused child, afraid to speak up against her extremely weird and apparently religious parents. Emily however has a feeling and luckily her feelings turn out to be right because in the middle of the night Emily catches Lily's parents trying to burn her alive in the oven!



Now with Lily parentless, Emily temporarily adopts her and soon learns that her parents may have had the right idea.

Honestly, I lost it when the parents put her in the oven. Of all the methods of quickly dispatching some evil demon child, you pick the slowest and most ridiculous way ever? What happened to slitting someone's throat? What happened to stabbing? Suffocating? Really? An oven? That's what you got? Oh yeah sorry SPOILER Lily is actually some weird and evil demon that kills people in ominous ways. Sorry to ruin the surprise.



Actually the oven incident reminded me of something awesome believe it or not--THE THING.



It's just like in the beginning when the Norwegians are trying to shoot the dog and you're all like nooooo noooooo not the dog! But then later you're all like----well shit, they should have shot that fucking dog. Yup, same deal here.




The thing is---Lily seems to turn into the evil demon that she's apparently always been seemingly overnight. There's no gradual change of her character. There are literally NO hints that we would ever think she was anything but a sweet angel. It's not until she has an insanely awkward therapy session with Bradley Cooper that her meanness starts to come out. Yes, Bradley Cooper is in this. I think his name was....Steve? No that's not right.... D......DOUG! That was definitely it.

So the skinny on Doug is that his biggest fear is wasps. Of course he tells demon child Lily this, who uses it against him. This scene is perhaps even more ridiculous than the oven incident. Doug hears buzzing somewhere and then takes a Q-tip to his ear.....




only to unearth a wasp!




Naturally the scene progresses for like 15 minutes and involves wasps coming out of just about every single one of Doug's orifices. I mean we don't see them come out of the butt, but let's just say I'm sure they did okay?

This scene gives a whole new meaning to NOT THE BEES.



Oh and they're super CGI-fied so it makes it even more ridiculous. They even swarm on his back and kind of look like an Ed Hardy shirt.


No? In the end, they fly out of his mouth and start attacking him and then somehow, Doug breaks his own neck (?) I'm still confused about it but at some point the entire sink fell out of the wall, so I guess things were serious.



Anyways the movie progresses steadily into laughable realms of insanity. I guess the main thing I can't get past, is that Case 39 in a round about sort of way kind of....encourages child abuse? I mean okay, I know Lily is the devil but you must admit there is something odd about a social worker rescuing a young girl, taking her on, and then agreeing with the maniac parents that the only solution is to kill her. It just seemed so..............what's the word I keep using? Oh yeah, RIDICULOUS. It's like Case 39 just wants to explode into all different levels of under the radar inappropriateness. There's something unsettling about seeing Emily waiting for Lily to come home from school while she hides a knife behind her back.

So yeah. Case 39? Not good. Don't see it, unless you are using it for comedic purposes only.


Here is the wasp scene for your viewing pleasure.

9 comments:

Yddy said...

Thank goodness! Not only am I not the only one who hated this film, but I'm not alone in not getting Bradly Cooper's death. This film seems to have been written by monkeys who had no thought for continuity or sense. I hated this film too.

Christine Hadden said...

Agreed, this movie was too awful for words! If I had to gaze upon Zellweger's squinty eyes for much longer I may have actually climbed into my own oven. Or perhaps put a hornet's nest over my head. Stylish.
B....a.....d.

Chris Hewson said...

Maybe that clip will be shown at Bradley Cooper's sexiest man alive inaugeration, haha!

Anonymous said...

I think the most amazing and by amazing I mean horrible part of that movie is the end where she takes the trouble to save the fish. I mean, really. You're willing to go to great lengths to dispatch a demon child but you have to stop for 15 minutes to transfer a fish into another bowl so you can hold it and stare at your blazing house.

commodore sixty four said...

This turd was shelved for about 4 or 5 years before whatever company unleashed it on the public

Dod said...

I didn't see the whole movie (lack of interest), but I did catch the wasp scene.

And it was hysterical!

It's like someone said, "how dare Nicolas Cage try to corner the market on goofy stinging insect scenes? C'mon, gang, I got an idea about WASPS!"

David said...

Wow, what a fun blog!

I found it last night sitting at home with a fever after having watched "Inferno" for the umpteenth time. I was curious if other people also found it to be one of Argento's best.

Keep up the good work! I'll be checking back here.

This has nothing to do with Case 39, btw. Just figured I'd comment here.

Andre Dumas said...

Thanks David! I LOVE Inferno. I hope you found my love letter to Inferno written sometime....semi recently....

Underwater ballroom. *Swoon*

Film Gurl said...

Nice review! Funny you reviewed this one as it looked interesting. I saw the first 5 minutes and had to just shut it off. I can only imagine how agonizing watching the full film felt. Though, I'm glad it had its entertaining moments for you! :)