Tag Archives: shits and/or giggles

Neighbours 2: Sorority Rising

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I’m not going to lie: the first 3 times I saw the trailer for this movie in theatres, I believed it was a car commercial for at least 20 seconds. Each time. But then it would dawn on me that this was a sequel to a movie I thought was okay. I could hardly remember it but was sure I’d seen it. And probably didn’t hate it because vitriol lingers longer than indifference (and if you’re doing it right, love).

So on Saturday night, Sean and I went to the drive-in, where we were forced to Untitled-1-xlargewatch 2 shit movies called X-Men Apocalypse and whatever Divergent one is most recent. And across the lawn, in my peripheral vision, the French screen was playing Neighbours 2. Only I didn’t know what they were playing, I just knew that I’d just seen some chick throw up on some dude’s face (I generously warned Sean not to look). Since I’d already survived what had to have been the worst scene in the movie, I figured, why not give the rest a gander.

If you’re susceptible to vomit scenes, squish your eyes shut for the first 130 seconds. Fight through that and you’ll be won over by a cock’n’dildo joke.

The premise: the old people next door, Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne, are pregnant with their second child and moving on up. Their house is in escrow, so they’re 30 days away from escape. The bad news? Just when they’ve gotten rid of last movie’s Zac Efron-led fraternity, in comes a Zac Efron-led sorority. And is it possible that sororities are WORSE than frats?

The writing on this is wonky. The jokes are pretty solid and I laughed throughout but the script that connects the jokes is a lot weaker. They’re trying like mad to make this the “feminist” raunchy comedy. Did you know that in the U.S., sororities aren’t allowed to party in their own houses? They have to go to frats for that, which is a pretty rapey solution to a shitty, sexist problem. But that’s mostly just lip service. The meat is in the millennials vs. old people situation, even though technically, Seth Rogen is a still grazing millennial status himself (gross!) and Rose Byrne has maybe a baby toe in Generation X. But laughing at millennials is hilarious. The dumb, neighbors-2-2016_sbsysocial media-fixated, instagram-obsessed, teenaged millennials who don’t know anything about the world yet. So the old folks are doing what parents do best: stopping young people from having fun.

Sure it’s tired material. But Rogen & Byrne have the kind of chops that make this thing enjoyable. Are the best parts in the trailer? Of COURSE they are. Isn’t that par for the course these days? Somebody needs to tell movie trailer makers that nobody buys the cow if you’re giving the milk away for free. Except me. I love buying livestock. I practically hoard it. I didn’t even mean to see this one, remember? I just got roped into it when I was paying to see two other movies I had no interest in seeing. Wait – am I single-handedly saving Hollywood by compulsively buying movie tickets?

Anyway. Brainless, harmless. Funny in spots. Excellent use of a Beastie Boys song (but I mean, you can never go wrong with the Beastie Boys). And Zac Efron refuses to take Sean’s advice to keep his shirt on once in a while, if that floats your pontoon. But probably not theatre-worthy. You can afford to rent this one later. Baby oil optional.

 

 

 

Special Correspondents

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It looks promising on paper: two radio station journalists get locked out of a big story in Ecuador so they decide to make it up instead. Eric Bana plays images73W735HWFrank, the dashing and charismatic reporter while Ricky Gervais plays his lackey, Finch. Finch is a clumsy and oblivious guy with a beautiful but disloyal wife (Vera Farmiga) whose ineptitude causes he and Frank to miss their career-making flight to Ecuador just as a war is breaking out.

Unable or unwilling to admit their mistake, the two men decide to hole up in New York City and broadcast fake reports convincingly doctored via satellite phone. Somehow neither anticipates that this will get out of hand, even when a sweet colleague (Kelly MacDonald) worries over the increasing threat to their safety. Do things snowball? Yes, yes they do.

Ricky Gervais adapted the script from an existing French movie (Envoyes tres speciaux). Nobody skewers celebrities quite like Gervais, his stand-up is tightly written and expertly delivered, and he’s got so many successful TV shows that IMDB stopped counting . Movies, however, seem not to be his forte. There were moments during Special Correspondents when I thought: “Niiiiiiice.” but those turned out to be little desert islands in a huge sea of disappointment.

 

The premise is teeming with satire potential but the movie is devoid of Special1anything intelligent or funny or worthwhile or clever. It’s flimsy. Like, paper-thin. And the characters are so one-dimensional that while we can’t really believe that there is not one but two Hottie McHottersons willing to bed Finch, we also don’t really care. This feels lazy and phoned-in and at times it also looks downright cheap, and I don’t just mean that it was filmed in pretend-NY Toronto (although it was. Sidebar: Gervais’s father is Ontario-born and French-Canadian).

The cast is fairly impressive but the poor script and direction make sure there are no stand-outs (and to be honest, I’m still wondering if the stuff with America Ferrera was just really weird and unnecessary or if it was as downright racist as it felt). In the end, Special Correspondents isn’t even a satisfying way to pass the time. If you’re looking for something decent to watch on Netflix, look elsewhere – perhaps to Grace & Frankie, a series that actually does have something to say, and lands laughs while doing it.

Get A Job

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This movie was shot in 2012 and it took 4 years for the heat of everyone blushing in embarrassment to die down enough to release it. Maybe they should have given it 4 more.

In it, Anna Kendrick and Miles Teller play self-obsessed millennials who graduate and are astounded to not immediately be handed their dream jobs with rockstar perks. This premise is so flimsy they try to pad it out with a whole bunch of friends also struggling in the real world, thus ensuring that there is never a whole story being told anywhere, but lots of odds and ends you can’t possibly bring yourself to care about. Bryan Cranston is the best thing in this movie, playing the guy who has aged out of his job and is facing unemployment in a job market crawling with shallow selfie-resumes.

Under no circumstances should you attempt to watch this movie. If you do, please contact your local poison control centre immediately, and flush the area with water.

The less said about this ass-munching movie the better, so instead let’s discuss the myriad better ways this money could have been spent. Assuming a very modest budget of 8 million dollars, you could have bought:

11-diamond_bathtub_for_your_po-610x458A Swarovski crystal-studded bathtub for your dog: $39 000

A bejeweled, 18-karat gold Monopoly set: $2 000 000

Exclusive gold shoelaces by Mr. Kennedy: $19 000

A bottle of 100 year old champagne recovered from a shipwreck which may or may not still be potable let alone drinkable: $275 000 Add a champagne bucket by Aston Martin (it’s insulated with carbon fibre) for $38 000

A plain white t-shirt “designed” by Kanye West: $12010-o-GUINEA-PIG-ARMOR-facebook-610x475

A custom-made suit of armour: $20 000; add one for your pet guinea pig: $24 300

A lock of Elvis’s hair, as far as you know: $115 000

A stamp of Nicholas Cage’s face: $19

A ziploc bag of air from Kobe Bryant’s last basketball game: $16 000

A cornflake shaped like Illinois: $1350

il_570xN.603647511_jio03 x-rays of Marilyn Monroe’s chest: $45 000

A banana slicer: $4.75

A ghost in a jar: $50 992

A 1/8 model of a Lamborghini Aventador. It doesn’t move but it does take up lots of space on your desk: $4 700 000 (just to be clear: an actual Lamborgnini will set you back about 400K)

A gold, diamond-encrusted Nintendo Wii system. Be sure to save your crappy old plastic wii-motes because this baby doesn’t come with any! The kicker? It’s already obsolete!: $500 000

William Shatner’s kidney stone: $25 000

Plastic surgery to look “like” Justin Bieber: $100 000

You could buy all of these items for the cost of 1 Get a Job, they’d all be a better use of your time and money, and you’d still have enough cash left over to make The Blair Witch Project. Think on that.

 

 

Keanu

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keanuoscarsthemartianmasterjpg-0d82f7_765wKeanu is not just a dark haired, sunglasses wearing Canadian. He’s also a kitten with a rare disease: cuteness. Or so we are led to believe by Comedy Central duo Key and Peele, playing cousins who would do anything to get Keanu back after he’s kitten-napped by a gang of street toughs led by the one and only Method Man. And so goes Keanu, a film that takes the two cousins from one life-threatening situation to the next, in pursuit of a cat.

Being a dog owner, I am duty bound to object to the whole premise. This movie would have been a million times more believable if Keanu was a dog. Cats are too cold and cranky for you to want to chase one all over Los Angeles. Deep down you know that cat doesn’t care about you at all. So if you lose a cat1399355_532978063457666_1736393886_o in real life, you just put up a poster and call it a day. But for a dog, that’s different. If your dog gets lost you don’t look for an hour and then call it quits. You get your ass out there and you find that fucking dog!792421_532978346790971_1133090003_o

Poor pet choice aside, Key and Peele’s adventure is an entertaining one. While there are not a ton of belly laughs, there are a lot of memorable scenes, including a fantastic George Michael singalong and some hilarious movie-themed cat pictures.

There is also something refreshing about seeing these normal guys (who happen to be black) play with stereotypes, not only with their choice of music but also with their attempts to fit in with a plethora of cat-loving gang members.  That element of satire is a welcome improvement on Hollywood’s usual reliance on racial tropes.

Writers Jordan Peele and Alex Rubens deserve a ton of credit for departing from that formula. Keanu successfully subverts the usual tropes and shows that the stereotypes we cling to are an unconscious attempt to fit into a role rather than being innate characteristics. And that’s why this dog-lover enjoyed a movie about a kitten, because it’s not really about a kitten at all.

Barbershop: The Next Cut

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What can I say? I was disarmed by this movie. It’s been 12 years since #2 was in theatres, 14 since the first, and a lot has changed. But if anything, this franchise has only grown stronger and funnier.

Calvin (Ice Cube) is still running the south-side Chicago shop, which he inherited from his father 14 years ago. It has survived tough economic times by merging with the beauty salon next door, so gone are the shop’s gloried “man cave” days. Almost the whole movie takes place within the walls of this shop, so it’s too bad director Malcolm D. Lee doesn’t embrace its physicality a little more, but at its heart it’s a set piece, and it thrives within the barbershop’s confines. Some of the old crew is back, but fresh faces blend in just fine, and it’s one of the strongest ensemble casts you’ll see.

Barbershop has always been about the good old boys sitting around, chewing the fat. Now they’ve got some strong female voices to contend with, but the gender divide only heightens the discourse. Barbershop has never been afraid to contend with real issues: they talk politics, feminism, the economy, the community. Malcolm is parenting a teenage son these days, so for him the stakes are higher. The barbershop’s in a neighbourhood all but lost to gang violence and the politicians are talking about choking off its blood supply. Some of the barbers want to rally and save their shop, but Malcolm’s reality is that maybe it’s time to get his family out of there, off to somewhere safer.

The movie thrives when all the barbers and stylists are at their stations cracking wise. Customers come and go. The script is remarkably tight during those scenes. They rely on charming actors and a great interplay between them, and it’s there. Particularly startling is the camaraderie between Ice Cube and co-star (and series newcomer) Common; the two feuded pretty heavily in the 90s when both were rappers. Those days seem long behind them, so who better to broker the peace between rival gangs with free haircuts during a 48 hour cease fire sponsored by their shop?c38c61fce43a52c49538a228c73364ac.960x960x1-400x200 It’s a desperate move made by people anxious to take back their neighbourhood.

This isn’t a perfect movie, and you’ll feel some missteps along the way, particularly when the action moves away from the barbershop. But it’s enjoyable, smart, and funny as hell. And it’s totally accessible – even if you’ve never seen another Barbershop movie, this is the perfect time to plunk down and have your first cut.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2

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Bigger, Fatter, Greeker: 14 years after the original burst onto the scene, taking Hollywood by surprise and launching Nia Vardalos into instant stardom, comes its unnecessary sequel.

Oh sure all the endearing characters are back from the first – and their sugar-coated stereotypes too. Opa!

Watching this movie is a lot like visiting your family: yes they’re a little racist, and lot invasive of your personal business, but they’re familiar, and mostly harmless. They mean well.

Nia Vardalos, writer and star of both movies, pulls from her old bag of tricks and has literally nothing fresh to offer. Characters Toula and Ian (token white guy – John Corbett) have a daughter now who’s all grown up and wearing makeup. She’s threatening to go to NYU, and an empty nest does not look good on Greeks. What to do? Well, neglect your marriage, for one. But insert yourself into everyone else’s. Add 2 cups chopped spinach and about 8 sheets of phyllo dough and you’ve got yourself a recipe for spanakopita if nothing else.

This movie has a very slim demographic: die-hard fans of the first film (such as Nia’s mother, perhaps?) and ladies optioning their senior’s discount at the box office. I had the pleasure of catching a matinee of this movie among some very gray heads, and they laughed at some very strange moments that I failed identify as jokes. But yes, this movie is the kind of safe, benign, watered down humour that relies heavily on cliché: exactly the kind of thing your grandmother will enjoy.

The Boss

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Melissa McCarthy was given the coveted Comedic Genius popcorn statue at the MTV movie awards this weekend, the first female to ever take home the honour. Of her historic status, she said “I am certainly, certainly not the first one to deserve it.”

gettyimages-520353144%20(1)McCarthy is, in fact, a tour de force, and “not afraid to be the butt of the joke” according to her speech (invaluable advice from her mother). She’s a frickin national treasure who keeps making very mediocre movies. What gives?

Paul Feig knows how to handle McCarthy – he directed her to breakout success in Bridesmaids, replicated it with The Heat, and wrote for her beautifully in Spy. But McCarthy keeps sneaking in movies between those triumphs, movies she ostensibly has a hand in writing herself, along with husband Ben Falcone, and those ones tend to crash and burn with big fat flames. That said, Melissa McCarthy has never had a flop. Of her worst-reviewed films, Tammy made $85M, and Identity Thief took in $135M. The Boss will likely nestle among them critically, but it was McCarthy who finally unseated Batman v Superman at the box office this weekend. Someone’s buying tickets.

I am buying tickets. I love her. I’ve loved her since her stint on Gilmore Girls boss(and am thrilled that she’ll return for the reboot). But falling in love with her on Gilmore Girls means I like her at her bubbly, beautiful best, not as the slob who falls down stairs. And I tend to think that Paul Feig, and most of the film going public, agree with me. The gags and the prat falls are beneath her. We’re tired of such juvenile physical comedy. She’s already proven that she’s better than it, and capable of so much more.

the_boss_melissa_mccarthy_afprelaxI can’t tell you that The Boss is a great movie, because it’s not. It’s totally uneven. But the thing about “uneven” is that it’s not universally bad either. In fact, it gave me the giggles (Her opening number? A delight. She had me at T-Pain). But then she’d get launched across the room again, her face splat against some unforgiving surface, and I’d be shaking my head again.

Melissa McCarthy is charming and lovable. She’s got great timing and she recruits some very talented co-stars (Kathy Bates being a particular favourite of mine). She’s not a buffoon, and any movie that attempts to make her into one isn’t going to cut it for me. I needed a little taste of McCarthy to get me through this godforsaken, unending winter (I know it’s spring, but try telling that to my home underneath 3 feet of snow) andghostbusters-1-800 I got it. The Boss is unsatisfying, leaving me doubly impatient for this summer’s Ghostbusters reboot – luckily, with Paul Feig at the helm. I have every confidence that she’s going to deliver exactly what I’m hoping for, and here’s why. The big, brash McCarthy character? It’s being played by Leslie Jones. Melissa taking on a straighter character, and I bet that will suit me just fine.

She’s Funny That Way

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If it walks like a Woody Allen movie and quacks like a Woody Allen movie, then why the hell is Peter Bogdanovich credited as the director? This movie genuinely felt like an Allen ripoff – the pacing, the dialogue, the screwball neuroses, the setting, hell, even the casting – I could never shake the feeling that someone was pulling a fast one on me.

A Broadway director (Owen Wilson) spends a night with a call-girl (Imogen Poots), and 21tips her $30K to quit whoring and change her life. He doesn’t expect her to wind up at auditions for his play the next day, but there she is, which makes things awkward because a) his wife (Kathryn Hahn) is the star and b) her co-star and secret admirer (Rhys Ifans) knows the director’s dirty secret and c) the oblivious playwright (Will Forte) is falling a bit in love with her, despite already being in a relationship with the former call-girl’s therapist (Jennifer Aniston). Got all that?

There are roughly a hundred more connections and complications I’m leaving out, simply because I’ll use up my bracket allowance way too quickly, but there are recognizable names even filling the minor roles in this thing. The script and the laughs are hit and miss, and the whole thing actually feels a bit anachronistic. In fact, the movie may have been in production for 20 years or more – Bogdanovich and his wife were still married when they wrote it, and they pictured John Ritter, Tatum O’Neal and Cybill Shepherd in the lead roles (two of those actually do appear in the film) (Oh shit I just used more brackets. Damn it, Jay!).

shes-funny-that-way759

She’s Funny That Way is sporting a painful 39% on the old tomatometer (for context: Batman V. Superman is boasting a 29%) but the truth is, this movie did something for me. It may have been – and this surprises me as much as anyone – mostly thanks to Jennifer Aniston. She plays the world’s worst, most indiscreet, self-involved therapist, and since that happens to be my line of work, it may have been slightly cathartic to watch her do and say all the things I spend my days and weeks and life holding back. For that reason alone I recommend Matt, my valued colleague, to watch this movie stat. Aniston lets loose with shesfunnythatwayepkfilmclipthatsjustwhatimeanth264hd000470012022her performance; she’s the one to watch in this, and she’s the one who took me by surprise, and my laugh-spit sure took Sean by surprise (although Poots is also quite good, I can just never say her name with a straight face) (oh feck, more brackets). It’s not gonna be everyone’s cuppa, but while I started out this review calling this a Woody-wannabe, the truth is, I probably haven’t enjoyed an Allen film this much in years.

 

Man Up

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I have next to nothing to say about this movie. On the one hand, the title is so generic and irrelevant to the movie that I kept passing it up on Netflix because I believed I’d already seen it, and on the other hand, the title is sexist and mildly insults me, while still being 6a00d8341c7f0d53ef01b7c7eb94b0970birrelevant to the movie, which makes the insult all the more infuriating.

I suppose Simon Pegg is the dolt who needs to “man up” though why is unclear. He’s just come out of a bad divorce and is set to meet a young woman on a blind date, only Lake Bell hijacks it instead, and of course they spend a lovely day together until it is discovered that she is the wrong date, and worse still, not 24, which was both the allure and the point of the original blind date.

What does it mean to “man up”? It’s defined as: to be brave or tough enough to deal with an unpleasant situation. Because bravery and toughness are male traits? Becatesticle-festivaluse the person who came up with this expression has never seen a man with a simple head cold? To “man up” implies a manly scenario, and a failure of a certain man to fulfill his obligations or responsibilities as a man. In the movie’s case, Pegg has an unfaithful ex-wife, and a charming if slightly mendacious new flame. How exactly do either of those scenarios require testicles in particular? And what would become of this movie if “man up” didn’t mean create a big, Hollywood-style hullabaloo where you declare your undying love for a woman you just met in front of a crowd of rowdy strangers, but instead “man up” meant, admit your fears, communicate haW58NWyS2SSSRbEln8iNSXm0bhonestly, be flexible, be vulnerable. Or what if being this kind of bold and brave didn’t require a Y chromosome and it could be Lake Bell, in all her ovarian glory, reaching across the void? The phrase “man up” implies such a rigid view of masculinity it punishes both the sexes (and all the sexes in between) and leaves us all sitting in painful little boxes having to watch insipid little romcoms the world could do wiman_up_1thout.

And do you know what the worst part is? It isn’t even a terrible movie. Simon Pegg and Lake Bell are quite good together. It’s never been more fun to be a third wheel on a blind date. So while I’m not claiming it’s groundbreaking or anything, it does deserve a better title than this weak offering. End rant.

 

 

The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window and Disappeared

13 Replies

I read this book many moons ago and didn’t particularly like it. Sean’s 92 year old Grandma read it too and she didn’t like it either, because the book made fun of former presidents, and she’d “lived through all that.” Though if you can’t make fun of anything that happened during her nearly 93 years, it’s reduced me to cracking plague jokes and doing neanderthal bits.

I wasn’t overly excited about seeking this out when it became a movie, but out of respect for its Oscar-nominated makeup job, I decided to give it a go.

It literally is about an old man named Allan who, on his 100th birthday, avoids his nursing home many-candled cake by climbing out a window. He doesn’t exactly disappear though – at least, not to us. We follow him out the window and on to an incredible series of events, 08HUNDRED-facebookJumboincluding a suitcase full of drug money and a homicidal elephant, which is still secondary to the other trip he takes, the one down memory lane.

It turns out Allan has led a pretty incredible life, in part because his love of blowing shit up, and in part because he’s routinely been in the right place at the right time.

It stars Robert Gustafsson, a well-known comedian and actor in Sweden, who just happened to be less than half a century old when he shot this film. This presented a real challenge to the team who did the makeup and prosthetics as we see Allan not just as a 93419247-7904-4753-a65b-67018a827987centenarian, but through many decades of his life thanks to a series of flashbacks.

Whether or not you like this film will depend a lot on your tolerance for absurdist humour. There are high-jinks upon high-jinks here, and they add up to a sweet film with some chuckles that obviously has some appeal, but the movie, like the book, left me feeling like it should have been so much more.