“Must Love Dogs certainly isn’t all that unique. You know more or less how it’s gonna go, with man and woman meeting each other, hitting it off, screwing it up, misunderstanding something, being sad, and finally one of them running to try to catch the other in order to loudly say “I love you.” But the movie does find fresh ways to tweak the formula, making it more than the sum of its broad strokes.”
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“But this isn’t about the Commander; it’s the story of his son, Will Stronghold (Lords of Dogtown’s Michael Angarano). Will’s mother is also known as the superheroine Jetstream (Kelly Preston), and he is too embarrassed to admit to either parent that he seems to have no powers at all. Unable to manifest any mutant abilities on his first day at the eponymous high school for heroics, he is labeled as a sidekick, or, to use the politically correct term uttered by the more insecure in the group, “hero support.” The only other child born of superheroes to never manifest powers is the schoolbus driver, who goes by the moniker, natch, of “Ron Wilson: Bus Driver.” And since he is played by Kevin Heffernan, of the excruciatingly unfunny comedy troupe Broken Lizard, you can see why Will might be troubled by the notion of meeting a similar fate. Of course, the other option for would-be heroes with no powers is to go study fear and the ninja arts with Liam Neeson in the Himalayas, but that’s another movie.”
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Been looking forward to Sky High. And nice BB segue, I must say.
Can anyone say, “20th consecutive week for the summer movie box office?”
“Must Love Dogs certainly isn’t all that unique -” –
C’mon Luke – don’t change it from OK in the original review to crap English on here.
Pat, what the hell are you talking about? That paragraph is directly cut-and-pasted from the review — I only added italics because the blog strips them out.
Are you saying “isn’t all that unique” is bad English? I suspect one of the 12 New Times arts editors might have noticed if it were.
Do you not like contraction? Looks OK otherwise to me…
Ok, I missed the fact that your post here is taken from a lower para – I thought you were paraphrasing the first one…
and yes, “certainly not all that unique” is way below your standard.
why put in the “all that”?
though I note the common horror of using unique as if it was some sort of scale has invaded many journalists minds now, it must be resisted by those who respect the language.
like…”it always puts me in a darkest black mood” ?
NO, black is black,
unique is unique,
not almost, not very, not nearly, not certainly not all that,
I know I sound like my pedant dad but on this issue, but it just grates more than any other – I’ll let a thousand other poor grammar statements through my personal radar without comment – if they are shorter and sweeter than their correct alternatives – but unique is unique, I want to preserve the word.
Yes, but…
surely an item can be unique in one aspect but not in others.
i.e. an apple might have a unique flavor from all other apples, but it still looks the same, has seeds, a core, etc.
Must Love Dogs has a unique sense of humor in some respects, but everything else in it is very pro forma. Therefore, though some of the story is unique, the film itself ain’t all that unique.
I guess we are fine quibbling here but I never see “all that” as meaning “all”…which seems to be what you claim here…