The Dragon King

How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World

Director: Dean DuBlois

Voice Talent: Jay Baruchel, America Ferrera, Cate Blanchett, F. Murray Abraham, Gerald Butler, Craig Ferguson, Jonah Hill, Kristin Wiig, Kit Harrington

Released: February 22, 2019

Viewed in theaters: February 27, 2019

My last line of my How To Train Your Dragon 2 review was "I'll see you in another couple years for How To Train Your Dragon 3!" and here we are. 

It's a good thing Toy Story has a fourth movie coming out or else I wouldn't know which animated trilogy would be my favorite animated trilogy. How could I choose between those two? But why couldn't Toy Story 4 come out a year earlier or a year later because now it's going to win the Oscar for Best Animated Movie and Toy Story 3 already won that Oscar over How To Train Your Dragon (and they were both wonderful movies, so I'm not complaining or anything!). I just want one of the HTTYD movies to win an Oscar for Best Animated Movies because they are all so good! I thought the second movie DID win said Oscar, but while it was nominated, it lost to Big Hero Six. 

You guys, the How To Train Your Dragon movies are so good! Seriously, if you've never seen them, I HIGHLY recommend you check them out. Also, I'm being quite serious about that because I will be spoiling some things from the first and second movies in my review as I rewatched both of them in preparation for the final movie. These movies are put out by DreamWorks which seem to have more bad movies than good, but even these movies could rival something from Pixar. (Apparently not Toy Story, though! But if I had to choose between the Toy Story movies and the HTTYD movies, I would just curl up in a ball and start crying because there's no way I could choose between them!) 

The animation is gorgeous, the score is amazing, the actors they got to voice the characters are great, the story is touching and has a lot of depth (all three make me CRY hardcore!), but there's also touches of humor (not all the humor works all the time, but when these movies are funny, they'll get you laughing), oh, yeah and the dragons are super awesome! Plus I just love the simple story of a boy bonding with an animal, so I feel this movie appeals to pet owners who also share a special bond with their own animal.

Spoilers ahoy for all three movies! Go watch these movies if you've never seen them! 

Mother of Dragons

We are told that the third movie takes place only a year after the events of the second movie. I thought it would have been a lot longer since there's a five year gap between the first and second movies (only four in real life, though!) This means that Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) is 21 because we learned in the second movie he is 20. (Whoo hoo! I can do math!) While watching the first movie (for the third time), I was wondering how old Toothless, the Night Fury that Hiccup befriends, is. We are told this in the second movie (only my second time watching it since I saw it in theaters) by Valka (Cate Banchett), Hiccup's mother, that Toothless is the same age as Hiccup. She appears to be reading his scale lines or something. Now I'm assuming that Toothless hasn't literally been on Earth for twenty years, but rather that's in dragon year. I don't know the life expectancy of a dragon (does anyone?), but I'm assuming you count your pet dragon's age in dragon years much like a dog or cat owner uses dog/cat years to determine their pets' age. I'm just going to assume Toothless is three or four and that equals twenty in human years. Yes, I have put way too much thought into this.

Toothless and Cloudjumper

I remember watching the first movie for the first time way back in 2010 and thinking how much Toothless reminded me of a cat. He has very feline qualities. He also reminds me of a bat with his wings, especially when he's flying. (Or when he's hanging upside down!) While watching the movies again, I noticed that a lot of the dragons remind me of at least some kind of animal. Obviously you have ones that take on lizard or snake-like qualities, but there are other animals I noticed in the design of the dragons. Valka's dragon, Cloudjumper (my second favorite dragon after Toothless....absolutely adorable, yet very fierce!), was like a cross between an owl and a bulldog; the large "alpha" dragons in the second movie reminded me of walruses with their tusks; the dragon-killing dragons that belonged to the bad guy in the newest movie reminded me of scorpions.

We learn the reason that Night Furies are so rare is that Grimmel (F. Murray Abraham), our movie's bad guy, has killed most of them almost into extinction. He has plans to kill as many dragons as he can, especially any remaining Night Furies. You may think it's ironic for someone who hates dragons so much to have his own dragons (he has about four), but much like in the second movie with Drago, they have been trained to serve him and will do whatever he wants. 

The island of Berk has become overcrowded with dragons (of all shapes and sizes - everything between itty-bitty and massively huge) as Hiccup and his mother and friends (which include his girlfriend, Astrid (America Ferrera)) have rescued captured dragons and bring them back. Hiccup knows that they need a better place to live, not to mention that Grimmel knows about them and he decides the only safe thing to do is to move everyone and every dragon somewhere else. We see Stoick (RIP Stoick :::sniff:::: seriously, was that not one of the saddest moments in animation movie history?) appear in flashbacks (voiced by Gerald Butler) when Hiccup was younger and he tells his son about a Hidden World where dragons live and how he wants to find this place and seal the door so humans and dragons don't have to co-exist. Of course, we know now that humans and dragons can live together peacefully. There is a cute moment when young Hiccup asks about Night Furies and then adds, "They're scary!" Oh, if only you knew, young Hiccup! 

I suppose the good thing about having dragons when you move somewhere, is that they can carry all the heavy stuff...which is exactly what they do. A lot of the much bigger dragons are carrying Viking ships and heavy bundles of things. They see a sparse island and Hiccup decides they should make camp there. 

Grimmel decides to lure Toothless by using the captured Light Fury he has to entice him. A Light Fury looks exactly like a Night Fury, only it's white instead of black. We get some pretty cute scenes between Toothless and the Light Fury (who never gets a name, but I guess that makes sense since she isn't anyone's pet) doing their mating dance. The romance between these two dragons has to be the cutest romance between an animated non-human pair since Wall-E and Eve from WALL-E. When the Light Fury flies away, Toothless is upset because he can't follow her because, if you remember from the first movie, a part of his tail fin (the horizontal stabilizer if you will) was torn off when Hiccup shot him down) and he can only fly when he has a full tail. So Hiccup creates a new one for him and he is able to fly off and find his female counterpart who takes him to the Hidden World. Meanwhile, he's been gone for awhile and Hiccup is starting to get worried as he thought Toothless would be back by now. Astrid points out to him that he gave Toothless his freedom. Hiccup thinks that his dragon might be in trouble so he and Astrid hop on Astrid's dragon, Stormfly, to find him. All the dragons must be able to find the Hidden World because Stormfly seems to know exactly where to go. As expected, the Hidden (Dragon) World is gorgeous with this extra-worldly light and is full of dragons (I even saw Drago's alpha dragon from the second movie who loses its tusk, but it's hard to miss that thing as it's so massive!) and Hiccup and Astrid see that Toothless and his new girlfriend have become the Dragon King and Queen of the Hidden World.

Crouching Dragon, Hidden Dragon

Since many of these dragons are wild and not been domesticated, when they spot the two humans, they start to attack them. They are rescued by Toothless who flies them back to the island where they've set up camp. Meanwhile, Ruffnut (the other young female who isn't Astrid) has been captured and held by Grimmel and we get one of the funniest scenes in the movie where she is going on and on and won't shut up. She is voiced by Kristin Wiig and you know they just set up the scene for her and let her ad-lib. If I hadn't known Kristin Wiig voiced this character since the first movie, I would have no idea that was her because she makes her voice sound gruff. It is a very funny scene because she is just going on and on (she doesn't seem to realize that she could easily be killed at any moment!) and you think Grimmel is going to make her dragon chow, but then she lets slip where her people have landed and Grimmel uses this to his advantage and lets her go so he can follow her. The Light Fury has also followed Toothless back to the island and she is captured by Grimmel which results in Toothless being captured when he goes to her aid. Look, we can all blame the incompetent Ruffnut for unknowingly leading Grimmel to their camp, but if Hiccup had never gone looking for Toothless in the Hidden World, then Toothless would have never flown him back and his Queen wouldn't have followed, and she wouldn't have gotten captured, etc., etc. Hiccup knows this because he guiltily points it out to Astrid. I love the callback to the first movie when Astrid asks Hiccup, "What are you going to do about it?"

Grimmel warns Toothless to keep the other dragons from attacking him or else he will kill the Light Fury, so instead the other dragons follow willingly without any threat leaving the Vikings without their dragons. Of course the humans find a way to save the dragons and Hiccup saves the Light Fury, who in turns saves Toothless, then saves Hiccup from falling to his death. It's a sweet moment because before then, the Light Fury, who has never been around humans, had always been apprehensive around Hiccup, breathing fire in his vicinity whenever he was  around.

So around this time, we're near the end of the movie and I have't cried...yet. Well, that's about to change! Get out the Kleenex because the tears are about to start flowing. Now this wasn't a huge surprise that I cried as I bawled during the first and second movie, so I knew this moment was going to be inevitable. Hiccup realizes that Toothless and all the other dragons belong in the Hidden World where they will be safe from humans who are trying to hunt them, not to mention that Toothless has found his soul mate and needs to be with her. I cried so much when they say their goodbyes and we also see the other Vikings saying goodbye to their dragons. If you think about it, Hiccup and Toothless were only together for six years which isn't that long at all!

The very last five minutes of the movie take place a few years later and Hiccup and Astrid are married and have two small children. This is when we see Hiccup with his beard which they show in some of the promo posters so I was wondering when we were going to see that. The family is on a boat and they come across Toothless, the Light Fury, and three absolutely adorable baby dragons! I think I literally "aw!"-ed. Hiccup is reunited with his friend and he introduces his children where we get a great callback from the first movie when Hiccup puts up his palm towards Toothless while looking away and Toothless nuzzles him. We get that scene again, only this time it's Hiccup's children who are putting their palms towards the dragon while looking away. It's a very sweet ending and I'm having to take a handkerchief out of my purse to wipe the cascade of tears flowing from my eyes.

I love these movies so much! I just have to make sure I have Kleenex nearby when I watch them! 

Let's Make Lots of Money

The Wolf of Wall Street
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, Kyle Chandler, Rob Reiner, Jean Dujardin, Matthew McConaughey
Released: December 25, 2013

Oscar nominations:
Best Picture (lost to 12 Years a Slave)
Best Director - Martin Scorsese (lost to Alfonso Cuaron for Gravity)
Best Actor - Leonardo DiCaprio (lost to Matthew McConaughey for Dallas Buyers Club)
Best Supporting Actor - Jonah Hill (lost to Jared Leto for Dallas Buyers Club)
Best Adapted Screenplay - Terence Winter (lost to John Ridley for 12 Years a Slave)

My city's newspaper movie reviewer liked this movie, but he commented that he saw a few walkouts and the article got a few feedback letters from readers saying they walked out of the theater. Now I have seen a few movies in the theater I wish I had walked out on mainly because they were long and boring. This movie is long (three hours) but it is not boring. But I'm doubting its the length that made those people walk out. This movie is not for everyone. Let's just say it earns its R rating. There is plenty of vulgar language, nudity, and drug use. If people are going to be bothered by that, then they shouldn't see an R rated movie about a self-centered rich guy! What are they expecting?!

Jordan Belfort (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) adopts the Gordon Gekko motto of "Greed is good" and makes riches as a stockbroker earning something like $49 million a year. I had never heard of this Belfort character and didn't realize he was a real person until this movie came out. I enjoyed DiCaprio's performance of him, but would not like him if I ever met him in real life. He was a bit of a smug jerk, but I suppose most rich people are smug jerks...I would probably be a smug jerk if I were rich! The film breaks the fourth wall with Belfort talking to the audience. I love the bit at the beginning where he's  walking out of his mansion, talking to the camera as he sips on a mimosa and tosses the glass flute and the rest of the unfinished drink in a bush behind him. I thought little moments like those were great.

Belfort tells the audience that that he made $49 million last year, but it pissed him off because "it was just 3 shy of a million a week." Now the line delivery is hilarious, I won't deny that, but seriously? If you're complaining that you're not making a million a week, you really need a tall glass of STFU. I would be happy if I made one percent of what he made!

Matthew McConaughey has a small cameo as the executive who takes a young Belfort under his wing and molds him into the stockbroker he will eventually become. When he is forced to quit his job because of Black Monday, Belfort, desperate for anything, takes a job at a small Long Island firm that sells penny stocks. He impresses the crew there with his charming salesman tactics...he was someone who could sell ice to an eskimo. There's a great scene where he's making a big sell to some unassuming schmuck and everyone is gathered around him as he's making the deal. Belfort teaches the others how to scam people out of their money and soon they are lucrative and Belfort starts his own firm called Stratton Oakmont where they make even more money...because now they're conning rich people into paying lots of money for worthless stocks instead of average Joes. One of the people who Belfort takes under his own wing is Donnie (Jonah Hill), this socially awkward weird guy who lives in the same building as Belfort but notices that Belfort drives a nice car and wants to know what he does.

Everyday is a party and spectacle at Stratton Oakmont. They bring in strippers, monkeys, marching bands, bet people to shave their heads, and don't forget the drugs. There were a lot of people who worked there and they all seemed to be making millions of dollars which I didn't really get. How are all these people making so much money? Wouldn't Belfort want all that money? I have no idea how stockbroker firms work anyway...which is probably why I'm not rich! There's an amusing scene where Belfort's dad (Rob Reiner), who manages the firm's expenses yells at Belfort for spending thousands of dollars on a business meeting dinner.

Before he acquired his riches, Belfort was married to a woman named Theresa. Having already seen his future, you know they do not stay together because he's married to a blonde bombshell. I figured he was going to dump Theresa as soon as he started raking in the dough, but that's not the case. He meets Naomi, the blonde (Margot Robbie) and cheats on his wife with her. His wife catches them together and they get a divorce. I think he does feel bad for hurting his wife, but after five seconds he realizes he has a more beautiful woman and marries her...then starts cheating on Naomi!

If there's anything that Belfort loves more than women (well, then besides his money), it's his drugs. He is a hard core drug user and one of the most memorable scenes involves him and Donnie taking something called lemons which is a quaalude that doesn't exist on the market anymore. They both take one, but after thirty minutes (and watching an entire episode of Family Matters without laughing), they decide the drugs have lost their effect and take a second one...and after that they take a third! Well, turns out these drugs need 90 minutes to kick in...which seems like an awful long time to wait! Or maybe it was 60 minutes, I don't remember...that's still a long time. Belfort gets a call from his dad telling him to use a different phone because the feds (led by Kyle Chandler) are onto his scam and have tapped his phone. He drives to the country club in his Lamborghini and the drugs don't kick in until he's talking to his dad on the pay phone and suddenly can't speak and looses all function of his muscles. He wants to get home quickly to warn Donnie and his wife and thus begins a hilarious segment of him having to crawl down stairs and into his car. I heard this scene lasts about 25 minutes! It does go on for awhile, but I guess since I was so entertained by it, it didn't seem that long to me. I felt a little unsure whether I should by laughing or not because here was this guy who was totally impaired by drugs and could have killed someone by getting into the car. Luckily he didn't. In fact, he's so out of it, he only remembers driving very slowly and not hitting a thing and his car being in perfect shape, when in fact, later a police man comes to give him a ticket for reckless driving and we see his car as being totaled and wrecked beyond ruin.

I knew that scene was played for laughs when later we get a very serious scene involving Naomi telling Jordan she wants a divorce and he tells her he's not going to take his children away from him (I didn't know why he said "children" when I think they only had one daughter...?) and he then attempts to kidnap his daughter and nearly kills both of them when he almost crashes his car.

Eventually Jordan's scam catches up with him and he is caught by the FBI (while filming an infomercial, no less) and is sentenced to two years in prison. With all his extravagant things, Belfort didn't do a very good job of hiding his money from the IRS...even though he tried to put it in a Swiss Bank (although that did not go over very well), but I couldn't really blame him. If I had all that money, I would want to buy nice things too...even if that money was obtained illegally! I think that would be anyone's first impulse. Look at poor Walter White: he had enough money to last a lifetime (several lifetimes!) but the only things he ever bought with it was a nice bottle of champagne and a new car for his son. At least his money will go to his kids under the disguise of rich benefactors. But that would suck to have all that money and never get to spend it! So I can't blame Belfort for going a little crazy with it. So don't obtain money illegally!

Adventures with the Baby-Sitter

The Sitter

Director: David Gordon Green
Cast: Jonah Hill, Max Records, Sam Rockwell
Released: December 9, 2011

I can't compare a movie about a baby-sitter having a crazy night with their charges without also mentioning one of my favorite movies from the '80s, Adventures in Baby-Sitting which I already wrote a review, but for the purpose of this review I will be comparing the two movies.

In The Sitter, we have college student Noah (Jonah Hill) who lives at home with his single mom and has a "girlfriend", Marisa. I say girlfriend lightly because their relationship is very one-sided. She only wants to be around him when it's beneficial for her and doesn't care about what he wants, but he doesn't seem to care that she's just using him and thinks things will be better. In Adventures in Baby-Sitting, we have high school senior Chris Parker (Elisabeth Shue) who is dating a popular, but douchey guy named Mike (played by a pre-Josh Lyman Bradley Whitford).

Both Noah and Chris have plans that do not involve baby-sitting, but somehow get suckered into it at the last minute. They don't belong to the Baby-Sitters Club where they meet every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and clients can call them on those days from 5:30-6 to set up baby-sitting appointments! (Did you ever notice in those books NOBODY ever needed them to baby-sit when they were having their meetings? Huh...how convenient!) Noah has plans to watch some documentary on TV he's interested in and Chris has plans to go out with Mike. (Noah is not as popular as Chris!) Noah's mom is supposed to go out but gets a call from the Pedullas needing someone to watch their three kids. Noah doesn't want to, but knows if he doesn't, then his mom will and she will miss her social function which she has been looking forward to, so he agrees to baby-sit. Mike cancels on Chris when he tells her he can't go out because his younger sister is sick and he has to watch her. The Andersons call later needing a baby-sitter for their daughter.

Noah's charges include the Pedullas' two biological kids, Slater (Max Records...he was the kid in Where the Wild Things Are), a thirteen-year-old who is very neurotic and thinks everybody is after him and needs his medication to keep him calm and Blithe, who is six or seven and likes to wear tons of make up and talk about how "hot" everything and everybody is and always has "hot gossip" to share. There's also their adopted son from Guatemala, Rodrigo, who is twelve or thirteen and likes to destroy things and set cherry bombs in public bathrooms. He's kinda useless to the movie and only comes in as a plot device for one scene.

While Chris is only supposed to baby-sit for Sarah, an eight-year-old who idolizes Thor (and for the longest time...well up until the recent Thor movie came out, I had no idea that Thor was a real character...I thought he was made up for the movie! And no, I am not joking, I actually thought that. I don't care about comic books, obviously!) Sarah's older brother, Brad, a freshman in high school has a huge crush on Chris and when he finds out she's baby-sitting Sarah, he decides to stay home even though he was suppose to spend the night at his friend's Darryl's house.

Both Noah and Chris aren't at their charges' homes very long before they both receive calls that will change their entire nights. Noah gets a call from Marisa who's at a party (even though she told him earlier that day she had gotten food poisoning and was too sick to do anything!) and asks him to stop by at a guy she knows to get some drugs and drop them off at the party. She promises him that if he does her this favor, she will have sex with him. Chris gets a call from her best friend, Brenda, who has decided to run away from home because her stepmom is driving her crazy. She spent all her money taking a taxi downtown to the bus station where she is now stuck with a bunch of unstable people and wants Chris to come and get her. Two very different situations and Noah comes across as the worst baby-sitter in this situation because he doesn't even hesitate about going - he just grabs the kids and off they go on their adventure. Even though Chris's situation is more dire (hmmm....help your best friend who is in serious trouble or score drugs for a girl who treats you like crap....no contest!), she has hesitations about going and tells Brad to watch Sarah while she's gone but they tell her if they do that they'll tell her parents so she's forced to take them with her along with Darryl who happens to stop by at that time.

Both head out with the kids and their evenings turn into complete nightmares. Let's see if I can remember all the mishap they get into: Noah has to make a stop at a department store to get new underwear and pants for Blithe after she has an accident (why they didn't just go back home, I don't know) and one of the workers and customers, who also happens to be an old classmate from high school, find it suspicious that a grown man is hanging out around little girls' underwear and when the worker asks Blithe if she knows him, she replies with, "I only just met him" and there's a conversation that puts him in a bad light. When they return to the car, they find out that Rodrigo has ran away, but with a tracking device, Noah finds him at a fancy restaurant where he's planted a cherry bomb in the bathroom and a toilet explodes. He manages to get drugs and while he's there, Rodrigo comes in saying he has to use the bathroom. When Noah leaves, he notices that Rodrigo has a huge egg-shaped item that he said he took. Noah tries to grab it from him, it breaks and cocaine spills all over him and the car. The druglord finds him and tells him he owns him 10 grand. Noah gets an idea to go to a bar mitzvah for twin girls in Slater's class who have invited him. They'll attend the party and he'll steal all the checks people have written for the twins. While he's there, he meets a girl working as a waitress who used to go to high school with him and it turns out she likes him and had a crush on him back then (and she is much prettier than his current "girlfriend"...hmm, dude...get a clue!). More shenanigans transpire including a huge fight, Noah breaking into his father's jewelry store to steal diamonds, getting arrested, stealing a car, getting held by gunpoint...I don't think those are in chronological order, but you get the idea!

I remember the events of Adventures because I've seen that movie many more times (as opposed to the one time I watched The Sitter). Their car breaks down and a tow truck stops and offers to take them to a garage. I would not have gotten in the car with that guy...he was creepy, and not just because he had a hook for a hand. No, it was the way he kept laughing manically. They never make it to the garage because the truck driver gets in a gun fight with some guy and Chris and the kids make a run for it and end up in a stolen car that is driven to a huge warehouse where they are taken upstairs to a room to be dealt with later. They manage to escape by crossing a beam across the ceiling and climbing out a broken window. Of course nobody happens to look up except for the one "good" car thief. The bad guys discover the kids are gone and start chasing them. The kids end up in a blues bar where nobody is allowed to leave until they sing the blues - that place looked pretty crowded too; it must take a long time for all those people to sing the blues and leave. Anyway, that's one of the most memorable scenes of the movies but while watching it this time, it made me wonder why all these people were laughing and cheering about this seventeen year old singing about how her best friend is probably dead and her car broke down and there's these bad guys after them...I mean, you think one of these people would think, "Hmm, these young kids are in heaps of trobule - maybe I should contact the authorities?" Uh, no! They end up on a subway while running away from the bad guys, again, and discover they are sitting in a car between two gangs who are about to kill each other. Chris tries to stop them, but one of the guys calls her a bitch and Brad gets mad and tries to stand up for her resulting in a knife being thrown in his foot. This scene gives us the best line of the movie when Chris says, "Don't **** with the baby-sitter!" You would never hear one of the girls from the BSC say that! They take Brad to the hospital, they find themselves at a college party where Chris meets a nice guy who hits on her and lends her the money, they get their car back from a Thor look-a-like, and everything seems to be going well and they can finally pick up Brenda until they pass the French restaurant where Chris was suppose to have dinner with Mike and sees that Mike's car is parked out front so he obviously went there without her...what a jerk!

She goes in there to confront him where she finds him having dinner with another girl who has a piggish face. The same thing happens in the other movie when Slater is at the baz mitzvah and sees his best friend there with another friend who had previously told him that he couldn't hang out because he was sick and it turned out he just didn't want to hang out with Slater...what a jerk! Back to Adventures where Darryl kicks Mike into another table and they leave all happy that they taught that jerk a lesson. But, oh no! Sarah is missing! Thinking that she went to a toy store nearby, they run over and check, but she's not there. Brad notices the building his dad works in and where he and the Misses is tonight. The building is nowhere near their location and they decide to run there, not go back to their car and drive there like any normal person would do. What idiots! So they get to the building and there's evidence that Sarah is there too. She's being chased by two bad guys and she goes all the way to the top floor and when she sees one of them has followed her, she decides to climb out of a broken window with a rope. I think this little girl had a suicidal wish: when she was in the truck and there were bullets flying past her, she was laughing and clapping her hands and when she was in the subway and the two gangs took out their pocket knifes, her eyes lit up. And now she's climbing out of a fifty-story building. The best part is when she's right outside these huge windows where the party her parents are at is being held (just two stories below where she climbed out) and even though the party is full of people, NOBODY notices her except for the other bad guy and Chris who has disguised herself with a large fur coat. Yeah, right! I call shenanigans!

Both movies end similarly. Once everything is situated, both Noah and Chris have to race back to their charges' homes before the parents arrive back. They both do this and tidy up the home with just minutes to spare. The only slight difference is in The Sitter where all three kids are watching TV with Noah when the parents get back at one in the morning, where in Adventures, Chris had the common sense to tell them all to get upstairs to bed. When Chris leaves, she runs into the guy she met at the frat party and they kiss with the kids looking out the window. And when Noah is leaving he runs into the girl he met at the bar mitzvah (there was a whole other storyline involving her) and kisses her while the kids are watching from the window, it was a shoutout!

I would say The Sitter is slightly (only slightly) a little more realistic than Adventures in Baby-Sitting, but I have to say Adventures is the better movie. Yes, I've seen it many times and I love it, so I may be a little biased!

Weekly Movie #12

21 Jump Street
Directors: Phil Lord and Chris Miller
Cast: Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, Ice Cube, Brie Larson
Released: March 16, 2012
Viewed in theaters: March 20, 2012

Only 40 more movies to go! Oh, boy... Luckily this movie was MUCH better than the one I saw last week (Safe House). I wasn't bored once and didn't have to resort to counting the chairs in the front row and the ceiling tiles like I did when I saw last week's movie. (No, really, I did...)

I wasn't very familiar with the TV show this film is based on. All I knew is that it's from the '80s and Johnny Depp was in it. I had no idea what the premise was, though.

Hill and Tatum play rookie cops  Schmidt and Jenko who went to high school together seven years prior, but never really hung out together because they were total opposites in school. Schmidt was the dork obsessed with Eminem ("Not so Slim Shady") who was in all the AP classes and couldn't get a date to prom and Jenko was the cool, athletic guy who didn't apply himself. While training to become cops, they become friends so Schmidt can help Jenko with the academic portions and Jenko can help Schmidt with the athletic portions.

Because of their youthful appearances (Hill is 28 and Tatum is 31 and while Hill looks like he could possibly pass for a high school student, Tatum is a little more hard to believe, and the movie does make fun of that throughout), they are assigned by Ice Cube's hilarious screaming captain to go undercover as high school students to try to find out where this new drug called H.F.S. (you'll laugh when you find out what it stands for) is being supplied from.

In a weird role reversal (blame it on Glee! Hee!) Schmidt becomes the cool one while Jenko is stuck hanging with the nerds. They accidently switch identities so Schmidt is in Jenko's easy classes while Jenko is taking all these AP classes. They make friends with the kid who is dealing the drugs and try to get in deeper with him to become part of the drug ring.

I love the scene where Schmidt calls Brie Larson's character, Molly, and she's like, "Everyone usually texts me." Schmidt went to high school in 2005 and weren't people texting back then? I'm pretty sure they were...oh, well it still made me laugh. I also like when Eric (the drug dealer) starts to get suspicious of Schmidt and Jenko questioning their taste in music and how Jenko looks like he went through puberty when he was really young.

This movie is very, very funny and trust me, you want to see this before anyone can spoil anything for you because there's a great scene where you do not want to be spoiled...

About a year ago I wrote reviews for ten teen movies that came out when I was a teenager and for each one I had a checklist with the required scenes for a teen movie. I shall do the same one for this one. (And I reviewed Never Been Kissed which is also about someone going undercover as a high school student.)

Is there a party scene? Affirmative

Is there a prom scene? Affirmative 

Is there a football scene? Negative 

Is there a make over scene? Affirmative - obviously Schmidt and Jenko have to dress like high school students. LOL I love the scene where Jenko tells Schmidt to "one strap it", and when they get to school everyone  has both straps over their shoulders. I was a two strapper because my backpack got so heavy with all my books 

Is there a scene where all the different high school cliques are being shown?Affirmative - they make a joke of them spotting the jocks and the nerds, then start to see other cliques and they have NO clue what group they belong to! 

Was this movie spoofed in Not Another Teen Movie? Well, obviously not since that movie came out in 2001 and this one was released, like, a week ago.

Any movie that plays "The Graduation Song" - Ha, love that song is still getting love after 12 years!- is all right with me. The most unbelieveable thing about that this movie is that high school students would know who Fred Savage and The Wonder Years is. You'll have to watch the movie to find out what I'm talking about!