TASK DEFINITION: In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
PROBLEM: " saving silverman " is a good example of a good comedy gone bad
.
as a love story it is good , however as a comedy
it falls flat on it 's face
.
i think throughout the short 90 minutes i laughed a total of seven times . . .
and those were just chuckles at the most !
the movie does n't have the oomph to make it a great movie , and does n't have the script to make it a funny movie .
wayne lefessier ( steven zahn ) ,
j .
d .
mcnugent
( jack black ) , and darren silverman ( jason biggs ) have grown up all their lives together , they have been best friends forever and vow to stay close till the end .
while in a bar after doing a show with their band , based on their love of neil diamond , darren meets a young woman named judith ( amanda peet ) whom he instantly falls for .
wayne and j .
d . however think differently and when judith tells darren that he can never see his friends again
, it 's up to wayne and
j . d . to try and begin saving silverman .
the performances are topnotch and
surprisingly , they are what keep the movie afloat .
jason biggs right off the flop " loser " does an ok job playing silverman , but he is stale and flat at times .
steve zahn is perfect in the role of wayne lefessier , and even though the movie is about silverman , lefessier is really the main character and the narrator of the movie itself .
jack black is well jack black , and he does an all right job as j .
d .
but he is n't as funny as he has been in the past .
amanda peet plays the ultimate bitch as judith , and neil diamond plays neil diamond ( he 's better at singing than acting ) .
anyway the performances in the film are good , but it 's too bad the script is n't .
speaking of script , hank nelkan 's choppy script is not only badly written , but not funny enough even for an episode of sesame street .
the trailer for the movie , as with most movies gives away everything that happens in the movie , especially the funniest parts .
somewhere " saving silverman " was meant to be a good movie , and it could have been , but alas in the end it was n't .
dennis dugan 's direction is all right , he adds a few directorial touches here
and there , nothing special being a simple comedy .
" saving silverman " is a perfectly bad movie in more ways than one .
it has a great cast , a good director and a sweet story .
. .
it 's just too bad
it has a bad script and is all together a bad movie .

SOLUTION: N

PROBLEM: "
the 13th warrior " comes at the end of as summer where we 've already experienced man eating sharks ( " deep blue sea " ) , man eating crocodiles ( " lake placid " ) and even a man hunting witch ( " the blair witch project " ) .
now , " the 13th warrior " presents a tribe of flesh eating men who believe that they are bears .
the story , if that 's what you want to call it , follows ahmed ibn fahdlan ( antonio banderas ) an arabian poet who falls in love with his king 's wife and is banished from his home land .
he then travels to the land of the vikings and becomes an ambassador to them .
eventually the vikings are called upon to protect the people of the village who are being hunted by the flesh eating men .
thirteen warriors are chosen to go on the mission , and as you guessed it , ahmed is chosen as the thirteenth .
he 's not a warrior , and at first not well accepted by the vikings , but as the movie advances he 'll have to prove himself both on and off the battlefield .
that 's basically the entire plot .
there is also a romantic subplot that has been so badly mishandled and , one assumes , drastically cut that you begin to wonder why the filmmakers did n't just edit out all of the scenes attaining to that part of the story .
instead they chose to leave just enough of those scenes in to annoy the viewer .
the film is basically non- stop action and when it pauses and tries to develop a story
it becomes a laughing stock .
the battle scenes , although well choreographed , are not involving and not the least bit exciting .
we do n't get to know any of the characters
and so we do n't care who lives and who dies .
the film , which wants to be beowolf , comes across more as a failed action - adventure story aspiring to epic proportions but not achieving it on any levels .
it was directed by john mctiernan who 's , " the thomas crown affair " is also playing in theaters currently .
and it 's not that mctiernan worked simultaneously on both films but that , " the 13th warrior " was placed on the shelf for so long with the studio just waiting for a time to dump it on audiences .
it belongs back on the shelf .

SOLUTION: N

PROBLEM: capsule : annoyingly unentertaining , obvious and paper - thin buddy / cop / drug / sexy - witness movie .
presence of director michael bay shows none of the talent he demonstrated in the rock .
i 've seen this movie already , i said , as i looked at the box art .
no , i have n't even seen a trailer for the movie ; i do n't even know what it 's about , but i can look at the way they 're promoting it , and i know i 've seen it already .
i thought : it 's about these two cops .
and they 're buddies , sort of .
they 're at each other 's throats a lot , but they really do like each other .
and everyone else in their department hates them 'cause they 're hot - shots .
and they have some kind of diametric opposition in their relationship .
and one day they 're in the middle of cop business as usual when they get mixed up in this plot that involves a really sadistic bad guy with lots of henchmen who can never hit anything with the billions of rounds of ammo they are always carrying .
and the bad guy is a drug lord .
and there 's a witness , and she 's this sexy thing who rubs both of them the wrong way .
and their supervisor wants their badges for breakfast when they blow up half the town bringing this guy down .
i only missed the bit about the badges .
the rest i got dead - on .
and i had n't even left the video store yet .
the cops in this movie are will smith and martin lawrence , and the bad guy is the immensely underutilized tcheky karyo .
smith plays a cop who has a trust fund and is thus not a cop for the money ; martin l .
is a family man ( shades of the now - tired lethal weapon dynamic here ) whose wife and he are at total odds .
this leads to some strained scenes about lawrence 's " not getting any " , and some totally unneccesary bits with him skulking around his own house , thinking his partner is now his wife 's " back door man " .
not funny ; tiresome .
bad boys gets some of its incredibly meager selling points from the presence of will smith and martin lawrence .
will smith is a natural , and i 'm happy to see him in movies like six degrees . . .
and men in black .
he 's funny and charming without trying to be ; he really does seem to be enjoying himself .
martin lawrence is a different story ; he 's so uptight and verbally constipated
that sitting through his improvised riffs are a trial .
movies like this are not about originality .
i know this .
they are about style and energy and synergy between actors .
i know this , too .
and yet , while watching bad boys , which its glamorous photography and impossibly exact stunt choreography , i felt fed up .
i 'd seen con air , which despite being completely implausible , was still great fun , because it tried however feebly to put some new life into the mix .
bad boys is a dry run -- and overlong , too , clocking in at just over two hours with a lot more by - play than i felt could be justified .
i could write this movie .
you could write this movie .
many people have .
many people will continue to write this movie , over and over again .
other people will buy it from them , and make it , and we will pay money to see it .
more the fools we all .
in a terrifyingly prescient line from his book
a scanner darkly , phil k .
dick once mused that the mcdonaldburger ( as he called it ) would eventually eclipse money as the token of cultural and financial exchange .
one day we will all just sit in our living rooms and sell the same burger back and forth to each other .
the same could be said about this movie .
i have the sinking feeling we 're going to see it again .
soon .

SOLUTION:
N