The Right Kind of Wrong (2013)

Finally getting back to my long list of backlogged movie reviews to write.

In my first flight to Vancouver, I ended up watching an always wonderful Mary Poppins (which I don’t think I reviewed yet oddly) and the very mind-boggling Enemy (review HERE). After that whole transfer and running to catch my transfer, I finally had a very empty 12 hour flight to Hong Kong.  It was great stuff because I got to stretch out and enjoy a few movies comfortably.  If Enemy taught me anything, its that I needed to watch something less intense.  As I shifted through the many more selections on the long haul flights, I landed on Canadian productions and The Right Kind of Wrong.  I’m sure a lot of us has wondered how Ryan Kwanten will do nNOT being the idiot in the form of Jason Stackhouse.  Of course, there was Dead Silence before this, which I reviewed HERE! Horror is not my forte so I can’t judge his acting from that but rom-coms are totally in my ballpark so I was excited.

Let’s check it out! 🙂

Director: Jeremiah Chechik

Cast: Ryan Kwanten, Sara Canning, Ryan McPartlin, Kristen Hager, Catherine O’Hara

Leo (Ryan Kwanten), a recently divorced dishwasher who is ridiculed by his ex-wife’s, Julie (Kristen Hager) success by launching a blog called “Why You Suck” about his flaws and shortcomings when they were together. Refusing to look at these “obviously” false accusations, he lives life by himself the best he can until one day, he meets Colette (Sara Canning), a soon to be wed girl at her wedding.  He crashes it and professes his love for her, pointing out that he is in fact the right man for her. The pursuit continues after the marriage is finalize even after the resistance of Colette’s husband (Ryan McPartlin).  The question now is will he succeed in letting Colette see what he does?

Romantic comedies are almost always formulaic but regardless, the successful ones will pull out that feel good element with the right characters and the decent premise and even the good enough humor to keep the audience watching.  The Right Kind of Wrong is definitely not the best romantic comedy I’ve seen (Rotten Tomatoes rating would say that its horrible), but I’ve also seen much worse.  There is nothing wrong with being a dreamer and as outrageous as the premise of this is and probably wrong on many levels for wanting to be the cause of a divorce.  There are certain aspects that I did like quite a bit.

What is fresh about The Right Kind of Wrong is the idea of a man chasing after an woman and doing absolutely stupid things.  Most of the time, its the other way around.  Most rom-coms are about some woman being the love-crazed person that tries to find her love and does some desperate thing.  I appreciate the premise this one was putting out even if it was a little out there.  Leo Palamino was technically nearing the behaviors of a stalker because he would track down how to approach Colette but at the same time, Colette is a married woman so to start by trying to change her mind is already a wrong thing.  I’m guessing thats why you have The Right Kind of Wrong to justify the movie title.

Aside from the unusual premise, it was also filmed in the very beautiful Banff in Alberta, Canada.  The scenery and the setting was simply lovely to look at. With its hills, mountains and nature, it really was a treat to watch.

I’m not going to hate on this one despite its absurdity at times.  The story had a fresh attempt and it did give me a few laughs here and there, the cast was who won me over.  Ryan Kwanten was pretty good at being Leo Palomino.  He was a guy that did a lot of weird stuff to get a girl but between all that, he also went through an awakening of his own. Well, its normal and expected because he’s just doing the exact same thing a girl in a romantic comedy would.  Still, I thought it was entertaining to watch at the very least and I think he brought a lot more life to his character Leo than maybe the script even would’ve had.

Next up are the lovely ladies in this movie.  Our leading lady is Sara Canning.  I could not remember where I had seen her before while I watching this one (and I keep blanking out).  *checks IMDB* Right, she was in Vampire Diaries for a few seasons.  I think the best part of this one was Sara Canning.  She’s a pretty good actress all on her own.  She brings some good charisma to her character as Colette.  Moving right along, who can ignore the brief role of Catherine O’Hara as Colette’s mother.  Honestly, she has some of the most awkward but pretty funny lines in this one.  Her appearance, her encouragement to Leo and her re-bonding with her daughter brought on a bit of humor and I think I grew to like her character a lot.

Overall, I’m not saying this is a full-on winner and more than a month later as I write this up, I’m not even sure I remember everything that went on (which isn’t usually a good thing) but I do remember my feelings towards it.  Maybe it was being trapped in a flight that made me enjoy this more than I probably would but I thought The Right Kind of Wrong was okay.  It gave me a feel laughs, a nice setting and some engaging cast.  It kind of lost its steam nearing the end when things got a little predictable but it still has a charm.

Just remember, romantic comedies are pretty much, comedies so they can’t please everyone easily unless you like its humor.  But I’m sure you all know it already 🙂

Did you see The Right Kind of Wrong? Did you think it was more right or wrong? What do you think of Ryan Kwanten?

Dead Silence (2007)

When I can fit two movies in a weekend, you know I’m slacking off on writing my novel.  Either way, I know I was and I’m not proud of it.  There’s still a few days to redeem myself though.  We’ll see how that goes.  Anyways, at least my blog seems to be benefiting a bit.  Dead Silence has been intriguing me and even though Eric at theipc advised me to forget it, I didn’t listen. Maybe I should have? Either way, lets see how that was.

Director: James Wan

Cast: Ryan Kwanten, Amber Valletta, Donnie Wahlberg, Michael Fairman, Joan Heney, Bob Gunton, Judith Roberts

Jamie Ashen (Ryan Kwanten) and his wife (Joan Heney) are happily married until one day, his wife was murdered in a gruesome way while he was out to get takeout.  It makes him into the prime suspect for her death, especially in the eyes of Detective Lipton (Donnie Wahlberg). Following clues, he ends up taking his wife’s body back home to Raven’s Fair to bury and at the same time, look into what had happened.  There he learns of the story about a past ventriloquist called Mary Shaw whose name haunts the town after her death.

There is no doubt in my mind that James Wan (with his writer Leigh Whannell) is pretty awesome together in the world of horror.  After all, despite many people feeling that Insidious was missing a good ending, I still felt it was pretty strong as a horror movie.  Thats coming from my inexperience and lower tolerance of horror movies, I think.  Still, whatever it is, I was convinced that James Wan knew what he was doing.  I haven’t seen the Saw franchise so I have no comparison but that is also one of the reasons why I decided to watch Dead Silence. The second reason was that Ryan Kwanten (not in True Blood being a simple-minded Jason) would be interesting, at the very least, it’ll bring something nice to the screen.

The only thing that scared me when I was a child was clowns and being never revealed to ventriloquist and that whole world of creepiness, I didn’t exactly find this scary.  It just felt REALLY slow.  Like I like slow but this was just nearing boring. So I paused this movie..umm…*counts on fingers* forget it, I don’t remember how many times.  I just didn’t feel like there was anything making me want to wait for the next thing because I sat there and predicted what would happen for most of the movie.  So what was wrong with this? It comes to the point that in comparison with Insidious, that one was creeping me out throughout the movie and didn’t have just an epic ending but this one was the other way around.  Honestly, by the last bit and of course, he always has a twist, it changed the game a bit, so why couldn’t the rest of the movie be like that? Sorry, this review is more of a rant.

Okay, I’m not hating on the movie.  I did rate it like 3 out of 5 stars on Netflix, means I liked it (apparently). The characters were done well.  I mean, for the most part, James Wan and Leigh Whannell seem to really agree on what is creepy and Mary Shaw plus ventriloquists are definitely in that arena.  Rotting old ladies are also very scary.  I’m totally on board with that.  Dead Silence had decent scares. The scenes all had nice eerie atmosphere to complement it.  A lot of the details were actually quite good.  As usual, its his style to use atmosphere to build up the fear than with excessive gore (maybe thats not the case with Saw? I know nothing of that).

I always look at the characters a bit.  The characters aren’t exactly in depth here but one I hated was the detective. That guy was stupid and I wanted to punch his face because he annoyed me. Ryan Kwanten was definitely different from how I usually see him.  It actually makes me want to see The Right Kind of Wrong.  I think that might more be his ballpark.  All the characters weren’t around enough to give me any deep feeling or attachment so if and when they did die, it really didn’t make me feel anything much, plus, everyone dies the same way so after a while, its not extremely surprising.

It seems like Dead Silence really caught me on a bad day but I guess, its hard to follow a pretty awesome movie like Children of Men that had a great storyline.  However, Dead Silence does have many many hints of the works of James Wan.  If you appreciate his work, this might not be a bad choice, especially if dolls and that sort of thing tend to freak you out.  My suggestion is to tough out the first half because its filled with not so great dialogue and a really slow plot but by the second half in Ravens Fair and the investigation is getting deeper, the tension really builds up for the big finale/twist 🙂 So no, not all bad, the ending really pushes it in the good area.