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   Stretch is a comedy by Joe Carnahan (The Grey, Smokin' Aces). It stars Patrick Wilson, Jessica Alba, Brooklyn Decker, Chris Pine, Ray Liotta, Ed Helms and James Badge Dale. There's an interesting story behind this one. Blumhouse Productions, aka the company that makes a boatload of money off of low budget genre movies (The Purge, Insidious, every Paranormal Activity movie, to name a few), made this movie with Carnahan for a tiny budget (supposedly under $5 million). Universal Pictures planned to give Stretch a wide release, since the studio has first dibs on any movie Blumhouse produces. They saw the final cut of Stretch and balked, refusing to commit the money to market and release it wide. They allowed the movie to get shopped around to other distributors, but no one wanted it. Universal took it back, claiming they'd look into "creative options" for releasing it. They settled on dumping the movie on Amazon and iTunes earlier this week, with a wider VOD release on the 14th. A few weeks later it will get released on home video, but only on DVD. So is this some sort of horrifying mess of a movie, one with production troubles and other problems? Not at all. The Blumhouse production model allows them to make incredibly cheap movies with "more creative control" for the filmmakers, and then a distributor can commit the $30 or so million dollars it takes to properly market and release the movie. The method has been massively successful: The Purge was made for $3 million, given to Universal, and went on to make almost almost 30 times its budget. This movie was, in all likelihood, too weird for a studio to market properly. The movie comes across like a very broad, comedic cross between Drive and After Hours. It takes place over one day. Patrick Wilson plays Stretch, a wannabe actor working as a limo driver in LA. His girlfriend (Brooklyn Decker) dumped him, his only friend is a co-worker at his job (Jessica Alba), and all his insecurities manifest themselves in the form of his dead co-worker Karl (Ed Helms), who appears to him and ruthlessly insults him. He has $6000 in gambling debt, and a changeover in bookies means he has until midnight to pay his debt in full or suffer the consequences. Help comes to him when the next client he has to pick up is an insane billionaire (Chris Pine, seen in the pic above looking like a completely different person). Stretch hopes to get a big enough tip out of the job to pay off his debt, but he ends up going on what looks like a really strange adventure. I've been interested in this movie since reading about its distribution woes. It's kind of a weird, unprecedented situation going on here, with the studio dumping the movie with little to no marketing. Joe Carnahan is actually trying his damndest to spread the word about it, going on Twitter promising to refund money to anyone who doesn't like it and uploading clips and bloopers from the movie. Will it be a complete piece of poo poo, or is this another case of Hollywood treating a movie unfairly? Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFMFk5m_jS0 Gag reel (assuming this is NSFW): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGLiUNQvMYs
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Oct 9, 2014 06:54
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| # ? May 5, 2024 23:31 |
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I want to see this. I'm a big fan of Patrick Wilson as Blumhouse's Treat Williams.
HUNDU THE BEAST GOD fucked around with this message at 15:49 on Oct 9, 2014 |
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Oct 9, 2014 15:46
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It's pretty watchable really, there's some really obnoxious stuff that everyone will see coming a mile off but outside of that it moves at a decent pace and isn't too stupid. Chris Pine and the guy from Rubicon really use the opportunity to chew some scenery.
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Oct 10, 2014 13:05
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This movie is fun as poo poo. Weird as hell, but an absolute blast. And it has some amazing dialog that make me wish I experienced situations where I could quote it, because its art.
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Oct 21, 2014 18:00
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I just watched it and echo the fun sentiment. It was a good watch all the way through in a nice over the top Smokin' Aces or Guy Ritchie-esque almost kind of way. It does a lot of funny tongue in cheek stuff too, I liked when the tow-truck driver would speak for example how it would suspend a Russian translation next to him...just because it was awesome. I found Jessica Alba's story kind of stupid and the ending "twist" insanely predictable but it definitely did not detract very much at all from the overall enjoyment. It kind of reminded me also in a small way of Pain and Gain in that ironic self-narrated destruction kind of way. "Own the space" vs "I'm a do-er" I LOVED Ed Helms in this movie also (and the mustache he grew in hell). His character was not needed at all but contributed so much humor to it for me. Scorps fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Oct 21, 2014 |
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Oct 21, 2014 19:24
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Wasn't Chris Pine also in Smoking Aces as one of the lunatic trio of assassins?
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Oct 22, 2014 04:44
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Made two gifs from this film so far. If you haven't seen the film, they're not spoliers, really, but I still would go in blind before seeing this. Its a blast. 
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Oct 22, 2014 05:36
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tehsid, it was actually your gifs in the gif thread that reminded me that Stretch had come out. Just finished watching it, and holy poo poo that was fun. It's true, the twist at the end, and the reveal with The Jovi were predictable as hell, but it didn't make the movie any less awesome. It was really slick, I loved it. Usually narrated movies are hit or miss in the extremes, but Patrick Wilson's delivery made it a definite hit. What was it? "Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. Slow is smooth, and smooth is faaaaaaaster gently caress gently caress gently caress" Also, it never occurred to me that a movie about a limo driver would have celebrity cameos, so those were pretty fun.
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Nov 3, 2014 10:08
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Oh hey, this got added to Netflix US. Guess I'll be watching it soon.
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Nov 6, 2014 07:50
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I read the op say that this movie was probably too weird to market properly and went in expecting that. it's not that weird of a movie - nowhere near weird enough to justify dropping it. it was just kind of bland which feels off given the events that happen. so much stuff happens that should have been exciting but it wasn't, and i couldn't figure out why. the events and scenes were oddly telegraphed and i think that may have contributed. I'd have probably enjoyed it more if I was expecting less. solid 3/5. nothing special.
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Dec 28, 2014 18:15
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