Tag Archives: Adam Devine

Magic Camp

Lots of kids movies like to tell us to embrace our differences but none of them quite celebrate the nerds and weirdos like Magic Camp. Magic camp is pretty much where outcast kids assemble, do weird things, and leave even stranger. But they’re also following their passions and making friends and owning their strengths.

When Theo (Nathaniel McIntyre) receives an invitation to the prestigious institute of magic, he’s kind of surprised. He used to practice magic in order to bond with this father, but since his father’s passing he’s sort of let it go. But since he didn’t apply himself, he’s pretty sure it was a last gift from his father, and he vows to make him proud.

The great thing about magic camp is that each cabin has an actual famous/working magician (and former camper) as their leader. Campers in the diamond cabin are super excited that Darkwood (Gillian Jacobs) has left her Vegas show to teach them, but the hearts cabin are a little less satisfied since David Blaine seems to have backed out last minute, leaving them with Vegas cabbie Andy (Adam Devine). Andy and Darkwood are former lovers and a former professional duo, but ever since she left him to go solo, things have been tense. Magic camp stokes a rivalry between cabins, asking them to compete for the coveted magic top hat, but between Andy and Darkwood there’s a natural animosity that breeds an intense conflict. Everyone wants to win.

I went into this kind of dreading it. You might remember my extreme dislike of Adam Devine, who smiles like the Joker but has dead serial killer eyes. His schtick is to be smug and obnoxious, so it’s hard to imagine anyone really liking him. I’m sort of also not throwing Gillian Jacobs any parades, but I’ll reserve my biggest gripe for Jeffrey Tambor who plays magician mentor and camp owner Preston. This was unfortunate casting that I assume was done well before the world found out he’s a steaming pile of shit. So I’m going to attempt to put all my casting resentments into a nice piece of tupperware, store it in the fridge, and judge this movie on the leftovers.

And you know what? It’s not bad. I mean, it’s not meant for adults. It is newly available to stream on Disney+ and apart from the famous if awful big names in the cast, it feels like it could be an offering from Disney channel. But the opening credit sequence is kind of impressive, although it sets up a better movie that you’ll wish they delivered on. The kids are great, though – they’re exactly the careful mix of ethnicities that you know isn’t really genuine, but we’ll let it go. Young audience members will no doubt like the magical flair as the kids go through an easy to predict sequence of events – you know, succeeding as a team, learning to believe in themselves, all that usual garbage. But with flavourful side dishes like card tricks, illusions, rabbits galore, and plenty of flashy stage costumes. Its plot will be blatantly transparent to anyone over 12, but it follows a tried and true formula that younger kids eat right up. And with a wholesome message to boot, it makes for an easy piece of family viewing.

Jexi

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Phil is a cliche who probably doesn’t exist in real life: he’s obsessed with his phone, he writes listicles for a living, he’s incapable of human interaction and would rather spend the night watching videos online than spending time with (or heck even making) friends.

Do Phils really exist? I suppose there’s a grain of truth in there somewhere: some people are overly attached to their phones, and overly desperate for likes on social media. But most people manage to have phones AND human friends. Our phones give us directions to where we want to go, they tell us who’s celebrating a birthday, and what bill needs to be paid. They help us call a car, and order lunch, and share a recipe. They remind us how to spell ‘accommodate’ and when our period is due, or overdue. They connect us to our adorable nephews who haven’t stopped growing just because they’re in quarantine. They keep us entertained on planes, they keep us up to date on elections, and they provide a near infinite supply of puppy pictures. All on one pocket sized device! So yeah, I’m not down on phones, or on young people for using them. I’m not sure who benefits for perpetuating the myth that only young people are obnoxious about their phones, but it’s patently untrue. Moms were the first to adopt cell phones, so they could stay in constant contact with their children. Moms are basically the only people who still use phones for calling people (ew!). Dads invented the belt holster so you could show off your love of wearable electronics (before they were technically wearable) while also accidentally broadcasting what a huge douche you are. When someone is blocking your view of the Mona Lisa by taking pictures with their iPad, 9 out of 10 times it’s a baby boomer. Elbowed in the eye by someone ineptly using a selfie stick? Boomer. Someone talking on their cell in the public bathroom stall next to yours? Most likely a boomer. Cell phone ringing during a Broadway performance? Definitely a boomer. And yet: Phil. Phil (Adam Devine) just can’t be separated from his phone. So yeah, he’s totally panicked when he literally runs into Cate (Alexandra Shipp) one day, destroying his phone in the process. Without a thought for the woman who may also be injured, he races his broken phone to the nearest ER cell phone store where employee Denice (Wanda Sykes) breaks the bad news: it’s not going to make it. You’d think that by the speed with which he rushed the thing to urgent care he’d be quite upset, but not only are cell phones replaceable, constant upgrades are a way to signal status. Behold the new phone!

This phone is unlike other phones. Its operating system is feisty. Call her Jexi. She sounds suspiciously like Rose Byrne, and she knows everything there is to know about Phil, since he’s documented it obsessively in the cloud. Not only does Jexi know everything, she has opinions about it. And she starts steering his life in the direction she believes is best.

Imagine if HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Sam (Scarlett Johansson) from Her had an AI baby and named her Jexi. Jexi is strangely alluring for someone who doesn’t have a body. She’s no Ava (Alicia Vikander) from Ex Machina. She’s more like your craziest, most jealous, most stalkery ex, only Jexi has access to your dating profiles, your porn collection, your work contacts, and your dick pics.

Even though the 2020 movie season is experiencing extreme drought, I scrolled right by this rental for many months. I’m not much of an Adam Devine fan and though desperate times call for desperate measures, I held out hope that I’d not hit my bottom quite yet. But don’t despair. This viewing wasn’t motivated by desperation so much as it now being able to stream on Amazon Prime (so, free for me, since I have an account). But even free was too high of a cost – what’s worse than an unfunny comedy? An unfunny comedy that makes you wish you’d just watched Her instead. Or Ex Machina. An unfunny comedy that makes you wish you’d watched any other AI movie, or even any other unfunny comedy that didn’t get your hopes up just as you resigned yourself to it. Because while it was Adam Devine’s smug pug face keeping me away this whole time, actually clicking on it revealed castmates like Sykes, Byrne, and Michael Pena, all of whom led me to believe this might not have been as bad as I’d feared and then it was WORSE. Arghghghghg.

This movie is for a very, very small demographic: baby boomers lacking in senses of both humour and irony who will suffer through unfunny comedies just to feel superior to young people as they scroll through Facebook, clicking on all the COVID clickbait conspiracies planted by Russia as if they aren’t the ones who used screens as babysitters in the first place. Ahem.

Have A Good Trip: Adventures in Psychedelics

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IMDB would have you believe that mixing comedy with a thorough investigation of psychedelics, ‘Have a Good Trip’ explores the pros, cons, science, history, future, pop cultural impact, and cosmic possibilities of hallucinogens. But that’s a bold-faced lie. You want to know how little science there is? The scientist is played by Nick Offerman, that’s how. Have A Good Trip is a terrible way to learn about psychedelics academically, but a pretty entertaining way to learn about psychedelics anecdotally.

Several first-rate story-tellers, mostly comedians (as theirs is the only career path that couldn’t be negatively impacted by admitting this on tape), offer up fun tidbits from past trips. Lewis Black, Sarah Silverman, Nick Kroll, Rob Corddry, David Cross, Will Forte, Paul Scheer, Marc Maron…this list goes on for quite some time, so perhaps I’ll let you be delighted with the surprise of so many familiar faces (and just fyi, a couple of recently departed ones – Carrie Fisher and Anthony Bourdain).

Acid trips are like dreams (as I write this I realize this is true in more ways than one): nobody wants to hear about yours. And even from the mouths of our favourite funny people, sometimes accompanied by clever little animations, or less clever reenactments, most of these takes still land in the awkward category of “you had to be there.” Acid trips are not movies. They do not have plots or characters or crucially, a point. Of course, neither does this movie, which again, IMDB has generously categorized as a “documentary” but actually feels more like someone’s answering machine after they spent a weekend at work while all their buddies went to the desert to munch through a bag of mushrooms.

If you’re predisposed to liking the comedians involved, it’s not such much “worth your time” as “a semi-entertaining time waster” – bonus points if you’re 35-45, because the drug references are pretty dated.

Isn’t It Romantic

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Natalie (Rebel Wilson) is no fan of the rom-com. She thinks romantic movies are not for her – perhaps love itself is not for her. She feels invisible most of the time. She’s timid at work. She doesn’t think that anything magical will ever touch her life.

And when she gets mugged on the way home from work one evening, it seems like an affirmation of all of the above – except when she wakes up, the bump on her head has her living in an alternate universe that resembles very closely the rom-coms that she so spurns. The rules and the irony are simple: she’s got to make someone fall in love with her to escape this fate, and suddenly the hunky billionaire who never noticed her before is all over her.

The movie rolls its eyes at all the usual romance cliches, but then indulges in them in a riot of colour and open-armed enthusiasm, as if mocking the tropes gives permission to MV5BMjI4Mjg3OTk0Nl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwOTM3MzEzNzM@._V1_SY1000_CR0,0,1485,1000_AL_ be unabashedly embrace them. But whatever, it’s fun, or fun enough. Rebel Wilson makes it work just by virtue of her own irrepressible personality. Larger than life, she somehow sells both sides of Natalie’s persona, the wallflower and the cheeky peony she becomes. Reteamed with Adam Devine, her cocky love interest from Pitch Perfect, the two have an easy chemistry that’s fun to sing along with – and believe me, this movie has more sing-along opportunities than most. You’ve really got to be on board with the vibrant cheese in order to enjoy this movie. It pretends to be cynical but it’s really not. If your sense of Valentine’s is at all gothic or ironic, move on. Love is in the air, in a pretty conventional way. Isn’t It Romantic is a piece of fluff that will soon be forgotten in the rom-com canon, but it’s light and airy and a fairly entertaining 90 minutes. More or less.

Game Over, Man!

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First of all, I don’t like punctuation in movie titles.

Second, it’s possible that I both consciously repressed having watched this film on Friday night and unconsciously blamed Sean for having made me watch it all weekend long. And I’ve only just made that connection in the cold, cold light of Monday morning.

Alex, Darren, and Joel are members of the self-styled “dude crew” – which is just 3 weird guys who are hotel maids. Which, since we’re on the topic, in what universe does it take 3 maids to clean one room? Well, the same universe that employs 3 white men instead of 1 brown woman I suppose. But anyway, with Daniel Stern running the hotel, I suppose this flimsy premise isn’t the most unbelievable thing that’s going to happen in the next hour and a half.

So anyway. Bae, some billionaire’s son, is visiting the hotel which means two things: a) the stoner maids are going to pitch him their video game idea because they sure aren’t busy cleaning any rooms or anything, and b) Bae’s own security team is going to hold him and a whole bunch of other hotel guests hostage for money and the love of explosions. Will Alex (Adam Devine), Darren (Anders Holm) and Joel (Blake MV5BNzQ5YmQxZDMtNjEyNi00MmVhLWFkMTQtMTk0MjQzNWQwOTc5XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMzcyNDk1NTk@._V1_SX1777_CR0,0,1777,999_AL_ Anderson) step up and save the day? Haha, no. Not even close. Not even unintentionally. I mean, they’ll mistakenly believe in their own hero potential at times (I extrapolate this from the slow-motion hero walks they do down dingy hotel hallways) but they’re never sober enough, smart enough, or organized enough to get shit done. But don’t worry for a single second that there won’t be enough bone-headed antics to go around: there will be blood. And guts. And digits and limbs and pieces of face sprayed all over this damn hotel.

These are the same idiots who brought you Workaholics for 7 agonizing seasons, so if you think that’s funny, this movie will provide you more of the same. But if your tolerance for lowbrow bro humour is as nonexistent as mine, and you like your movies to make sense, and baffling b-list cameos don’t impress you much, and you’ve never been all that curious about human cheek prosciutto, then Game Over, Man! should be a hard pass for you as it should have been for me.

When We First Met

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Oh good, another Groundhog Day ripoff on Netflix. I complained heartily when I came across the first one, but clearly not loudly enough. HEY NETFLIX: CUT IT OUT!

This time it’s sad sack Noah (Adam Devine) who uses a photobooth to time travel back to the day where he met his true love Avery (Alexandra Daddario) – and she met someone Alexandra-Daddario-“When-We-First-Met”-2018-promotional-pictures-3 else. He got friend-zoned then but he’s sure if he can just repeat that day enough times, he’ll eventually get it right, and she’ll realize that he’s her true soul mate.

The movie is so eager to play a trick on you that it literally sacrifices logic and good story-telling. Then, once the ball is rolling, you realize that you don’t care what the outcome is because Noah is so damned annoying you just sort of hope he gets sucked through a rip in the space-time continuum on his travels just so we can end this thing a little early. Noah is not a guy you root for and Adam Devine has now spent 100% of his career playing whiny, self-centered douchebags whose mouths literally resemble anuses. So I’m starting to think he’s just playing himself, and I’ve officially moved him over to my shit list.

There is not a single redeeming factor here. It’s best to keep a safe minimum distance between yourself and this movie at all times, so when browsing Netflix – beware.