Things More Important Than Spider-man 3

Saw Spider-man 3 tonight with Alice and her sister, but that's not what's important right now. There are reviews out there, they're all quite correct in identifying the film's strengths and its faults, but none of that matters because WHOOOOOOOO SPIDER-MAN!!! Let's move on; we have more. important. things. to talk about here, people.

Namely, is Simon Pegg finally going to make a crappy movie?



I've been waiting for Mr. Pegg to screw up for a while, and the tension has been getting to me. After the brilliance of 2004's Shaun of the Dead, I would often find myself unable to sleep, so plagued was I by the spectre of Simon Pegg making a crappy film. I would toss and turn into the wee hours, wondering aloud, "That Simon Pegg is a talented comedic actor. I wonder when he'll sell out and make something really atrocious for a butt-ton of money?" This summer's fantastic Hot Fuzz only exacerbated things, and I haven't slept a wink since seeing it. It's been nothing but staring into the distance, rocking slightly, wondering when the other shoe will drop and Mr. Pegg will go the route of, say, Will Arnett, or Jason Batemen , or Will Arnett, again. Come on!

And now that time may have come. Because I saw a preview tonight for something called "Run, Fat Boy, Run," a title near and dear to my gristle-covered heart. Mr. Pegg is starring in this film, the trailer for which had not only an extended sequence of the actor scratching his bum in boxers, but a blisteringly funny shot of him first cracking several eggs into a glass, and then, get this, spitting the eggs up when he tries to drink them. Haha!

My misgivings about the film were slightly ameliorated by the presence of this man:



This is Dylan Moran. If you know him, it's probably from his performance as David, the nerdy fellow who gets ripped limb from limb (spoilers!) near the end of Shaun of the Dead. He's a wickedly funny Irish stand-up/actor, and in the UK he starred in a TV series called Black Books, where he played the meanest, grumpiest, bitterest man in England. Very much recommended if you can track it down.

So, now we've got an unfunny trailer that inexplicably features two very funny men. My interest piqued, I came home tonight and looked the movie up, only to get a nasty shock that brought everything into perfect, terrible focus. The director of Run Fat Boy Run, the man who managed to point a camera at Simon Pegg and Dylan Moran and not fill me with joy? Well, that would be this man:



The Schwimmer.

The man who managed, through a raw lack of talent and charisma, to be the least likable of a group of people that included a drug addict, a woman whose only talent is getting sympathetically dumped, and a person who willingly married David Arquette. This is not a talented man.

His previous directorial credits include, and are pretty much limited to, two episodes of Joey. I wouldn't trust this man to direct traffic. He has the natural leadership capabilities of a lemming, the vision of Ray Charles, and the sad-sack, mopey, dead-eyed presence of.... I don't know. Similes fail me. There is nothing more sad-sack, mopey, or dead-eyed than David Schwimmer, and I can only assume he recruited Pegg and Moran by addicting them to some horrible drug and then cutting off their supply until they agreed to be in his directorial debut. Or maybe he used voodoo.

Complicating things is the presence of the film's writer, pictured below:



Michael Ian Black. Mr. Black is the wildcard here. He's pretty odious on all of those "Do You Remember Last Week?!!!!!" VH1-nostalgia-for-sale shows. But the short-lived Stella on Comedy Central was pretty intriguing, and he wrote this, which is what I link people to when they ask me what the hell McSweeney's is all about. My feelings on his role in the proceedings could go either way.

So, is Simon Pegg doomed to make a crappy movie? Is he dragging Dylan Moran down into hell with him? Were Ross and Rachel really on a break? Was Stella actually funny, or did I just want to think it was? It forms a tricky equation, one I've represented thusly:



Which, translated back into English, means that only time will tell. I'm gonna try not to lose any sleep over it, but I'm not optimistic.