Tag Archives: r rated comedies

Trainwreck

Before watching Trainwreck, I did not know who Amy Schumer was (though Jay assures me I have watched some of her standup). Now, after watching Trainwreck on Saturday, we are binge watching all three seasons of Inside Amy Schumer, her Comedy Central show. I feel like the fact we wanted to see more is a ringing endorsement of Ms. Schumer’s brand of comedy, and thus an endorsement of this movie. Because she carries this movie and she is more than up to the task.

She’s not alone though. There are lots of really good performances here. Especially LeBron James. Now as you may know, LeBron is on our shit list because he decided to skip last year’s Cleveland/OKC matchup that happened to be my birthday present (ironically because of a sore knee). So this praise is very grudgingly given, but his portrayal of himself is probably the second funniest character in the movie. I wish he had been given more screen time.

Also hilarious is John Cena as Amy’s sort-of boyfriend. His movie theatre confrontation is probably the funniest scene in the movie. There are certainly other funny parts but as Jay reminded me, Judd Apatow seems to focus on drawing out funny character stuff rather than trying to cram a scene full of laughs. And I think that works here.

The only thing that doesn’t work is Amy’s love for Bill Hader’s sports doctor. We never really see why he’s so awesome, which is a shame. Especially because it seems the reason we don’t see/feel the connection between the leads is that Bill Hader is so restrained. He seems to be actually acting, which I kind of feel bad criticizing him for. It’s not that he’s bad, not at all, but it feels off when John Cena and LeBron James are making me laugh more than Bill Hader.

That’s really my only complaint about the movie. Trainwreck is not quite great but it’s very good. It’s been an excellent summer movie season and this is one of the best comedies so far (right up there for me with Spy and Inside Out). That’s why Trainwreck gets a score of eight athlete cameos out of ten.

Unfinished Business

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I usually have quite a high tolerance for Vince Vaughn, but man was this the most unnecessary piece of filmmaking I’ve seen since RIPD.

And I may have kept quiet except for what they did to poor Tom Wilkinson. The dude was in three (3!) of my favourite movies last year – Selma, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Belle. And this is his follow-up?

I mean, this is a movie where even Vince Vaughn was misused. And what they did to Nick Frost was criminal. But Tom Wilkinson might have a human rights complaint. It’s a goddamn travesty and I feel worse about myself for having seen it.

The Wedding Ringer

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Well, I liked it more than I liked Get Hard!

Josh Gad is a dream. Maybe not so much in this particular vehicle, but he’s a dream. I was lucky enough to catch him on Broadway when he originated the role of Elder Cunningham in Book of Mormom. And he was a goddamn dream. So I will follow him to the ends of the Earth. I will follow him into a Disney princess movie, and apparently, into a film that feels like the leftovers of an Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn comedy.

And while Josh Gad is lovely and Kevin Hart is lovely, they don’t make quite the same team as the old Wedding Crashers did. Darn.

It is funny though, it’s just not quite charming. Doug (Gad) is getting married in two weeks and the jig is up. Those friends of his that will fill out the astronomical bridal party? They’re all just figments of his imagination. Little Dougie doesn’t make friends so easily. But his wedding planner knows just the guy. Jimmy (Hart) makes his living helping out friendless men. He provides the services of a best man, and if need be, the whole damn wolf pack. It’s a tall order in just two weeks, so crazy it even has a name – the golden tux – and to pull it off is gonna take a miracle.

Good thing Doug has for some reason claimed that his best friend Bic is a priest! So poor Kevin Hart shows up to family functions pretending not only to be BFFs with a guy he’s only just met, but a super religious one as well. Not awkward at all.

The plot is tired. It’s so tired. Like, anorexic tired. But the bridal party is such a weird, motley crew that you can sow some real laughs there. There’s no racial tension here, no rape jokes, but there is Cloris Leachman on fire, so there’s that.

Are your expectations sufficiently modest? Do you just want to sit on your couch and have some moderate laughs without needing to think? Are you hoping to go to bed later that night without really remember what you watched? If so, have I got the movie for you – generic and totally harmless, and maybe just funny enough.

Tammy

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Melissa McCarthy plays Tammy, an unhappy woman in the middle of the worst day ever when we meet her. On her way to her crappy fast food job, she hits a deer and nearly totals her car. Late to work and bloodied from her accident, her manager fires her on the spot aaaaaand she doesn’t take it well. She makes less than a gracious exit; “burning bridges” comes to mind. She heads home only to find her husband engaged in some very bad behaviour. So naturally she decides to run away with grandmother (Susan Sarandon).

This movie is fun, and sometimes funny, but it’s never as funny as you’d hope. After all this is Melissa McCarthy. Her star shines pretty bright. She and her husband Ben Falcone wrote the script; she stars, he directs. But if they were given carte blanche, they wasted it. For two crazy funny people, they’ve hatched a pretty mediocre comedy here. McCarthy does her loudmouth thing. Sarandon is just not believable as an old granny despite the wig and bifocals meant to blunt her sensuality. It’s still Susan Sarandon, who is effing hot. The two make for an odd pair, and sometimes the relationship hits the right notes but other times it just feels sour. Kathy Bates almost steals the show as the kind of cousin who’s good to have around in a pinch.

I saw this movie and laughed. Lots of people must have – the critics didn’t care for it, but audiences turned it into a 100 million dollar hit. But I’m still not happy about it. First, because I think McCarthy is very smart and this kind of comedy demeans her. Second, because we keep seeing her do this “schtick” over and over: obnoxious fat girl with a dirty mouth. And the thing is, this is not the Melissa McCarthy I know and love. Lots of people came to know and appreciate her with the movie Bridesmaids, where she played another belching, awkward bull. But I know McCarthy from her Gilmore Girls days where she played an adorable chef and businesswoman named Sookie. She was sweet and charming and weird and FUNNY. Funny without it being crass, or referencing her weight, which, to the best of my knowledge, was a non-issue on the show. She was just a funny woman who looked like a lot of women do.

And now Hollywood has turned her into the female Chris Farley. She isn’t just a comic who happens to be fat, she’s a fat comedian. Her characters are fat, the kind of fat that is “gross” and should be laughed at. Do it once and it might be inspired, but make a career out of it and it starts to feel like exploitation. America loves to laugh at fat people. And fat women? Laughing at them is all they’re good for. And it looks like McCarthy is afraid of just that – that if she tried to just be Sandra Bullock’s sweet best friend, audiences wouldn’t buy it. How many times have you seen a fat woman in a movie who is not meant as the comic relief?

Often referred to as “America’s plus-size sweetheart,” Melissa McCarthy responds “It’s like I’m managing to achieve all this success in spite of my affliction.” And the thing is, I feel confident that she’s worth so much salt than she’s showing. We saw a tiny glimpse of her playing straight in St Vincent but that’s exactly the problem: unless they’re prepared to be raunchy cannon balls, a fat woman must be relegated to fat best friend, the one who never has a boyfriend of her own. A sad sack, unless she’s black, and then she’s sassy. But still alone and negligible.

Dear Melissa McCarthy: you are beautiful and talented and mega successful. You are so much better than this. Please stop playing a caricature! Your audience patiently awaits you,

Jay

(add your name in the comments if you agree!)

Obvious Child

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I hated the first 3 minutes of this film, and then loved the next 81.

Donna (Jenny Slate) is a confessional comic; she spills the dirty details of her life to a small audience in the back room of a dingy place. Not everyone in her life can handle being the subject of her standup, and the truth is, I could barely tolerate it myself. It was the usual stuff: I have a vagina, I’m Jewish, etc etc. But. But when she leaves the stage, she’s enormously funny. You get the sense that her stand-up will in fact take off one day, maybe even one day soon.

But not today. Because today she’s been “dumped up with” and she’s drinking and she’s oversharing, which is the only kind of sharing she knows how to do. With a microphone and a whine. And like, 17 shots. Cut to: drunken one-night stand, which leads to pregnancy, which leads to an abortion.

But a funny abortion! Okay, it’s not so funny. It’s actually dealt with pretty realistically, but with the kind of wit and truth that bathes the subject in a new light. Refreshingly unapologetic. And oddly becomes something of a romantic comedy, because who doesn’t take a date to the abortion clinic on Valentine’s Day? And P.S. – if you do, do you bring flowers?

I really like Slate on the Kroll Show, and director Gillian Robespierre knew she had the chops to handle a title role. Donna is a sometimes exasperating character but Slate pulls it off and is magnetic in every scene, whether petulant, snarky, or earnest.

I jotted down so many brilliant lines, all worth quoting, but I’m refraining for your sake, so that you may enjoy them from the right voice. But there are also fart jokes, which have no business even existing. So this is not a perfect film, but I was really won over by it. I’ll take the lows with the highs. I was charmed by Obvious Child, even if there was very little obvious about it. And I expect big and bigger things from both Robespierre and Slate in the future.

22 Jump Street

This is Where I Leave You

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When Judd (Jason Bateman) comes home to find his wife fucking his boss, he moves out and is blind-sided by another piece of good news: his dad’s dead. So he and his 3 grown siblings return to their childhood home and are manipulated by their mother, the fabulous Jane Fonda, to stay for a week under the same roof to sit Shiva.

It’s been a long time since these people were all gathered together with nothing better to do than nit-pick each other’s lives and observe each other’s failures, and what with other mourners randomly dropping in with secrets and casseroles, there’s a whole mess of drama that unfolds.

I wanted to like this movie more than I did. There’s nothing really wrong with it, and it definitely has its moments, but you just expect more from such an all-star cast. Why assemble so much talent only to waste it? The source material is pretty strong, and if this movie (now on DVD!) catches you at the right moment, you may find yourself identifying with it. Not that your family is this crazy, because it’s not. But maybe because when you go home to grieve your father, you also find yourself grieving the dreams you’ve given up on, the person you never became, the opportunities you left behind. Unfortunately, director Shawn Levy doesn’t show a lot of maturity with what he chooses to present on film. If he’s this afraid to scratch beneath the surface, then maybe he should stick to soulless movies like Night at the Museum and let someone else helm movies about grownups.

You won’t hate this movie, but you’ll probably forget quicker than Jane Fonda can shake her big, plastic boobs.

Horrible Bosses 2 (some thoughts)

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See a refresher of Horrible Bosses (the first movie) here.

In theaters November 26th.

We went into this movie with low expectations, 2 soft pretzels, 2 pieces of pretty crappy pizza, 2 hot dogs, 3 drinks, and absolutely no recording devices (we were wanded on our way in to prove it).

The industry people were trying really hard to pump the audience up before the movie started, but asking questions like “Who thinks it’ll be better than the first?” got a very tepid response.

I didn’t have very positive feelings about the first movie, as far as I could recall, and I couldn’t recall much. When I re-watched it recently, I found that I actually liked the interactions between the 3 leads and hated the parts with the actual bosses. Despite being the title characters, and the reason for the movie, the bosses felt way too over the top. I also felt they got kind of a bum rap because we call them horrible bosses despite the fact that it seems that they’ve got some pretty horrible employees on their hands. I mean, laughing at someone’s dead Gam-Gam? Horrible. Plotting to murder someone? Even more horrible. Horribler. So the movie felt thin to me, like it hardly had enough material to fill a whole 90 minutes to begin with. So did I think, in a million billion years that a sequel was necessary? No. No I didn’t. But they gave us one anyway.

Horrible Bosses 2 solves the boss problem immediately: the boys have had a “genius” (?) idea and are now their own bosses! They’re entrepreneurs! Sure they were bumbling idiots in the last movie but I’m sure they’re savvy businessmen now. This is not going to backfire AT ALL. Plus, with the clever elimination of actual bosses, we can finally call this franchise what it’s really been all along: horrible people. But the producers are banking on us also finding them horribly funny.

The first 5 minutes quickly let us know what to expect: we see Kurt demo-ing their new product, the Shower Buddy, on live TV. Only it looks like he’s getting beat off by Dale. On live TV. It feels very much like an SNL skit and no so much like a movie. And since this movie’s concept is so flimsy, they repeatedly offer us these little scenarios rather than a whole, cohesive film. In fact, I’ve rarely seen a movie with so many music montages, including the use of the very same overused song I complained about in the first movie! (How You Like Me Now?) But Charlie Day, Jason Bateman, and Jason Sudeikis are indeed horribly funny and are the reason to watch this movie (not only did they not need a single other character, but they hardly needed a script).

Both Matt and Sean do excellent jobs of reviewing the movie. Here are some thoughts that occurred to me:

-Kevin Spacey’s had some work done. He phoned in his scenes possibly straight from the plastic surgeon’s office, and I don’t mean that as a compliment.

-The asshats never learn a damn thing. I’m not just talking character development (ha!) – I mean literally, that at least in the first movie they paused somewhere along the route to murder. This time? Straight to crime to save their flailing business. It never even occurred to them to sell that shit.

– Pinkberry is really just an excuse to eat a bowl of candy. Can we all admit that? “Frozen yogurt” definitely sounds better, even sounds a bit healthy, but let’s face it. The yogurt is just a conduit to the several pounds of candy you heap on top.

– I think the warehouse parking lot is the same parking lot from The Office. Maybe that’s the binge-watching talking.

– Chris Pine “Fight Clubbing” himself is pretty intense. Kind of made me want to see him get hurt some more. Maybe even hurt him myself. Stay tuned for that.

– I wish I had more opportunities to get in a closet and slap my friends.

– I’d like to comb Charlie Day’s beard. Also, his accents had the whole theatre giggling. Although it was the Mark Twain cameo that made Sean snort. He didn’t tell you that part, did he?

– BEST CAR CHASE EVER.

Horrible Bosses 2

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I haven’t been so surprised by a movie poster since Night at the Museum 2. Horrible Bosses 2??? I probably shouldn’t have been- the first movie ended with the threat of a sequel but I didn’t think that any studio would let them get away with it.

Then I saw Jason Sudeikis on Letterman talking about how Horrible Bosses made $300 million (he sounded like he couldn’t believe it either). I had no idea. I used to recommend it to people, describing it as “kind of funny” as if I had discovered it myself- a mostly forgettable but worth watching comedy that had flown below the radar. Apparently, I had under-estimated how much the average movie-goer could relate to wanting to kill their boss.

This is my first review so it might be too soon to admit something so embarrassing but, yeah, I liked Horrible Bosses. I have always liked Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, and Jason Sudeikis and, though I wish they had teamed up on something a little more inspired, watching Sudeikis and Day talking (screaming, in Day’s case) over each other while Bateman rolls his eyes makes me laugh every time and a screenwriter doesn’t have to be brilliant to make this trio funny.

How much you like Horrible Bosses 2 depends both on how you feel about Horrible Bosses 1 and how you feel about sequels in general. If you loved the first one and would be content with just more of the same, I can’t see you finding fault with the sequel. It plays like a 109-minute deleted scene on the Horrible Bosses dvd. Nick, Kurt, and Dale (be careful reading that out loud) are in over their heads again, dream up knuckle-headed ideas to get out of trouble, and argue amongst themselves even more than Asshole Watching Movies.

I enjoyed almost every minute Nick, Kurt, and Dale were on screen, particularly whenever they’re trying to break in and out of places as they congratulate each other on how good at this they’re getting. The movie drags only when other characters are in the spotlight, especially Kevin Spacey and Jennifer Aniston- both of whom made me laugh once or twice in the first film but are completely unnecessary in the second. A drawn-out scene where Aniston eagerly fishes for graphic details when another characters talks about his first homosexual encounter in a Sexaholics Anonymous meeting is probably the most tedious part of either of the two films.

So, if you expect a sequel to aim higher than essentially making the same movie again, I’d recommend The Dark Knight or The Godfather Part II. But if you liked these three characters as much as I did the first time around and are up for watching more of the same (just this time even more out of control), consider this my first ever Assholes Watching Movies recommendation to you.

Want another asshole’s opinion? See Sean’s review of Horrible Bosses 2 here.