To start with the good or the bad?

American Dreamz - IMDb

Paul Weitz has had some solid movies. I love 'American Pie,' 'About a Boy,' and 'In Good Company.' 'American Dreamz' shows his first major failure as a writer/director.

I think my expectations were a bit high, but regardless, this movie fails as a comedy, as a satire, and as a whole.

This movie was a common case of "all the funny moments were in the previews, therefore not funny in the movie." A lot of the jokes tried to run on the steam of traditional comedy setup, but the problem with this is that the whole movie (except the ending) was extremely predictable. Nothing fresh was brought to the screen, and freshness is a necessity for satire to not seem dull.

The ending was a terrible borderline deus ex machina. If I want a ridiculous ending I'll go watch 'Match Point' again.

Dennis Quaid, Mandy Moore, and Hugh Grant all hit a low point in their cinema productions, which is sad because I know Quaid and Grant have both worked with Weitz before. That, and Mandy Moore is just a terrible actress in the first place. Even Willem Dafoe couldn't save this picture.

Generously, I'm going to rate this movie: 5.5/10

Thank You For Smoking - IMDb

A little late on this review, but oh well. As opposed to 'American Dreamz,' this is a good example of how satire should work, and work it does.

From the first scene of Cancer Boy on to the closing with Katie Holmes getting beaten with branches there are many moments of laughter. The only real gripe I have is that occasionally the jokes came on too hard too fast, not allowing time for the audience's laughter to subside so we can hear the following dialogue.

But that's just nitpicking. All the actor's performances were exceptional, especially William H. Macy and Aaron Eckhart. This definitely made up for the tragedy that I reviewed previously in this post.

Rating: 8/10