Karen Kehela Movies
Move over, Gidget -- a new breed of female surfers with style, guts and attitude hit the screen in this feature, which combines romance with a sports drama. Anne Marie (Kate Bosworth) is a young woman living in Hawaii who has been surfing since she was a little girl, and over the past year has been training for the prestigious Pipe Masters surfing competition. But Anne Marie is still dealing with emotional baggage that's holding her back -- her mother abandoned her years ago, leaving her to raise her younger sister Penny (Mika Boorem) while having to guide herself through adolescence, and Anne Marie nearly drowned while trying to surf the famous Maui Pipeline three years ago, and has yet to shake the anxieties of this traumatic event. Anne Marie and Penny share a house with Anne Marie's friends Lena (Sanoe Lake) and Eden (Michelle Rodriguez), both fellow surf enthusiasts, and the three friends work as maids at a hotel, a job which offers them flexible hours for riding the waves. When a pro football team checks into the hotel, Anne Marie meets Matt (Matthew Davis), a promising quarterback who has his eye on her. Anne Marie is just as attracted to Matt as he is to her, but will Anne Marie have to choose between the man of her dreams and the recognition as a surfer she's worked for years to receive? Kate Bosworth, Michelle Rodriguez, and Sanoe Lake did all their own surfing in Blue Crush; Bosworth and Rodriguez went into training to learn the sport before shooting began, while Lake, a native Hawaiian, was already a confirmed surf enthusiast. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kate Bosworth, Matthew Davis, (more)
The true story of prominent mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr. is the subject of this biographical drama from director Ron Howard. Russell Crowe stars as the brilliant but arrogant and conceited professor Nash. The prof seems guaranteed a rosy future in the early '50s after he marries beautiful student Alicia (Jennifer Connelly) and makes a remarkable advancement in the foundations of "game theory," which carries him to the brink of international acclaim. Soon after, John is visited by Agent William Parcher (Ed Harris), from the CIA, who wants to recruit him for code-breaking activities. But evidence suggests that Nash's perceptions of reality are cloudy at best; he is struggling to maintain his tenuous hold on sanity, and Alicia suspects a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. Battling decades of illness with the loyal Alicia by his side, Nash is ultimately able to gain some control over his mental state, and eventually goes on to triumphantly win the Nobel Prize. Based loosely on the book of the same name by Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind (2001) co-stars Paul Bettany, Adam Goldberg, Anthony Rapp, Christopher Plummer, and Judd Hirsch. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, (more)
- 2000
- PG13
- Add The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps to QueueAdd The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps to top of Queue
Overweight scientific genius Sherman Klump and his extended family are back in this sequel to the 1996 comedy smash The Nutty Professor. Sherman (played once again by Eddie Murphy) has come up with a discovery that ought to make him a multimillionaire: a youth serum that turns back the user's body clock. Sherman has also found time for a social life and has fallen in love with Denise Gains (Janet Jackson), a brilliant woman involved in DNA research. Sherman and Denise are engaged, but Sherman is still troubled by Buddy Love, the dark side of his personality that he wants to purge from his psyche forever. He persuades Denise to help him by splicing Buddy out of his DNA structure, but the experiment doesn't go as planned: instead of destroying Buddy, Sherman and Denise free him, and Buddy's first order of business is to get his hands on Sherman's youth serum, which Sherman has hidden at his family's house. In addition to Klump and Love, Murphy also plays Mama, Papa, Grandma, and nephew Ernie Klump, thanks to the makeup magic of Rick Baker. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Eddie Murphy, Janet Jackson, (more)
A group of wanna-be filmmakers and actors concocts a scheme to make a movie with a major star without having to pay him in this comedy. Bobby Bowfinger (Steve Martin) has struggled for years to make it in Hollywood with no real success; he's convinced that he has to make his big break soon or it will be too late. Bobby has a script, and he has a cast, including an ingenue straight off the bus from Ohio (Heather Graham), a one-time regional stage star who fondly recalls her brief moment of glory (Christine Baranski), and a hunky aspiring matinee idol (Kohl Sudduth). He also has a young associate named Dave (Jamie Kennedy), who has a low-level job at a movie studio as a gofer -- which means that he has keys to every part of the lot and can "borrow" whatever they need. All they need is a star, but without any money, how do they get one? Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy) is a leading action star, and he is obviously beyond Bowfinger's budget. But Bobby has an idea: what if he tricked Kit into appearing in the film without his knowing it? Steve Martin also wrote the film's screenplay, and former Muppets performer Frank Oz directs. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy, (more)
Comedians Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence team up for a story that wouldn't appear to have many immediate humorous possibilities -- two men serving life sentences in prison for a crime they did not commit. Life opens in Harlem in 1932, where Ray Gibson (Eddie Murphy) is a small-time con man in debt to Spanky, a gangster (Rick James). Ray spots would-be bank teller Claude Banks (Martin Lawrence) at a gambling spot and, figuring him for an easy mark, lifts his wallet -- only to discover Claude is broke. Ray and Claude's mutual need to raise some cash brings them together when Spanky offers them a job bringing back a load of moonshine from bootleggers in the deep south. However, things don't go well for Ray and Claude, and they're arrested by a sheriff in Mississippi who recently killed a man and needs someone on whom he can hang the charge. Since Ray and Claude are black, from out of town and have been caught red-handed with a load of illegal liquor, the sheriff figures they're easy pickings and frames them for the murder. Soon the two men are inmates in a Southern work camp, where they spend the next 55 years learning to get along with the other inmates, avoiding the wrath of the guards, seeing younger prisoners come and go and never losing hope that someday, somehow, their innocence will be proven and they'll be released. Life is the second screen pairing for Murphy and Lawrence, who also shared screen time in 1992's Boomerang, and was scripted by Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone from an original idea by Murphy. The supporting cast includes Ned Beatty, Clarence Williams III, Bernie Mac, Nick Cassavetes and R. Lee Ermey. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence, (more)
In this action-suspense thriller, orphaned nine-year-old autistic savant Simon (Miko Hughes) deciphers a government code hidden in a puzzle magazine. Calling for his prize, Simon triggers an alarm at the National Security Agency: NSA chief Nicholas Kudrow (Alec Baldwin), who says the code protects covert American operatives all over the world, sends an assassin to do away with Simon. Simon's parents are killed, but Simon survives, hiding in a secret closet crawlspace where he's later discovered by maverick FBI agent Art Jeffries (Bruce Willis). Simon is emotionally unpredictable, complicating matters as Art drags him all over Chicago, eluding Kudrow's hitman in a variety of interesting locations (train tracks, street scenes, heliport, Wrigley building) and improbable situations. Based on the novel Simple Simon by Ryne Douglas Peardon, the film features Industrial Light & Magic special FX/animation. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bruce Willis, Alec Baldwin, (more)
The lives of two closely linked, small town Illinois families dangerously intersect in this domestic drama set in the 1950s, based on a short story by Sue Miller and directed by Pat O'Connor. Though they are from the wrong side of the tracks, the working class brothers Jacey (Billy Crudup) and Doug Holt (Joaquin Phoenix) are in love with the wealthy and beautiful Abbott sisters. Shy and quiet Doug, who worships his womanizing brother, has eyes for the iconoclastic Pam (Liv Tyler), but Jacey's affections are more calculating; he's interested in whichever Abbott sister is interested in him. At first, this is Eleanor (Jennifer Connelly), the "wild" sister, but eventually Jacey sets his sights on the divorced oldest sister, Alice (Joanna Going). For Jacey, his conquest of the Abbotts is a form of economic revenge, as he believes that the head of the family, Lloyd (Will Patton), stole a patent that made him rich from the Holts' late father. When he's eventually revealed as an embittered cad, Jacey's mistreatment of the Abbott girls makes the genuine affection between Doug and Pam impossible for either family to accept.
~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Joaquin Phoenix, Billy Crudup, (more)
Eddie Murphy gives one of Jerry Lewis' best-remembered vehicles a 1990s overhaul in this hit comedy. Sherman Klump (Murphy) is a college professor and respected biochemistry researcher who is kind, considerate, and a genuinely nice guy. Sherman is also appallingly overweight; coupled with the fact that he's painfully shy and a bit clumsy, his romantic prospects are rather bleak. When Sherman finds himself working with a pretty graduate student, Carla Purty (Jada Pinkett), he falls in love and is eager to impress her, but at an upscale nightclub, his weight attracts the attention of an insult comic (Dave Chappelle) and his bumbling spoils the evening. Sherman's latest project is a genetic weight loss formula, and despondent over his failure to win Carla's heart, he subjects himself to a massive dose. Suddenly, Sherman is transformed into the slim, trim, and handsome Buddy Love; however, the drug also boosts his testosterone level, turning the likable Sherman into the arrogant, skirt-chasing Buddy. In addition to playing Sherman and Buddy, Eddie Murphy also plays four other members of the porcine Klump family, as well as eccentric exercise guru Lance Perkins. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Eddie Murphy, Jada Pinkett Smith, (more)
Mark Wahlberg stars in one of his first features as a hoodlum drug dealer from the wrong side of the trackswho falls in love with Nicole Walker, an upper-middle-class high school girl (Reese Witherspoon). In this psycho-drama (with the emphasis on psycho), Nicole happily loses her virginity to her first love, but, when she begins to doubt the relationship, his tenderness turns to violence, as he stalks and terrorizes her and her friends and family. The girl's father never trusted him in the first place, but his reservations about his daughter's first serious boyfriend are interpreted as Oedipal paranoia, until the boy and his drug-dealing, date-raping buddies besiege the overly fortified house in a twisted attempt to win back Nicole's love. The Seattle setting juxtaposes a grunge rock underworld with an over-privileged suburban household, and includes a very sexual ride on a roller-coaster. And yes, former underwear model Wahlberg appears shirtless several times. ~ Laura Abraham, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Mark Wahlberg, Reese Witherspoon, (more)
Based on a novel by John Grisham, this drama deals with a man trying to come to terms with his family and their ugly secrets. Adam Hall (Chris O'Donnell) is a successful attorney based in Chicago who travels to Mississippi to look into the case of Sam Cayhall (Gene Hackman). An outspoken racist and member of the Ku Klux Klan, Cayhall was convicted in the early '60s of the murder of a Jewish civil rights lawyer and his children. Pending a last-minute appeal, it looks as if Cayhall will finally go to the electric chair, and Adam has arrived to see what he can do. It hardly seems like the sort of case Adam would normally be involved with, until we discover Adam's secret: he is actually Cayhall's grandson, and despite his misgivings about the man's racist views, he wants to see if he can spare his life. Cayhall, however, has little use for Adam and even less regard for his legal skills. As Adam spends time with his Aunt Lee (Faye Dunaway), who witnessed Cayhall's execution of a black man years ago, he gets a more complete and disturbing picture of Cayhall's race hatred and the terrible toll it has taken on his family and the community. The Chamber marked the acting debut of former baseball and football star Bo Jackson. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Chris O'Donnell, Gene Hackman, (more)
In this action comedy, director Gregg Champion relies on the premise that, indeed, "country boys can survive," as Sonny (Kiefer Sutherland) and Pepper (Woody Harrelson, always game) head off to the Big Apple in order to rescue a mutual friend's daughter from the clutches of an evil sweatshop owner. Naturally, there are lots of encounters highlighting the two fishes out of water; there are opportunities to lasso bad guys; there's even a chase on horseback through the city streets after Sonny and Pepper steal a pair of NYPD horses. ~ Jeremy Beday, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Woody Harrelson, Kiefer Sutherland, (more)
In this romantic comedy from director Frank Oz, Steve Martin plays Boston architect Newton Davis, an impulsive dreamer who builds a bucolic dream home for his girlfriend (Dana Delany) as a means of proposing to her -- only she turns him down. Three months later, the depressed Davis meets a waitress who calls herself Gwen (Goldie Hawn), though pretending to be Hungarian proves to be only the first of her many deceptions. Davis has a one-night stand with Gwen during which he tells her the sad story of the house, which remains unoccupied just outside the city in his hometown of Dobbs Mills, because he can't bear to sell it. Following what seems to be a familiar path for this con artist, Gwen locates the house, figuring she can take up residence without anyone noticing. During a trip to the local grocery, she ends up telling the proprietor she's Davis' wife while trying to charge her purchases to his account. When she offers the same story to a local furniture dealer (Donald Moffat), unaware he's Davis' father, it triggers a string of fabrications in which the shocked Davis unwittingly becomes a co-conspirator. Seeing an opportunity of his own, Davis allows Gwen to stay in the house and agrees to go along with her story in hopes of winning back his jealous ex. Of course, this also necessitates outlandish lie upon outlandish lie, leaving the whole enterprise forever on the verge of collapse. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Steve Martin, Goldie Hawn, (more)
