Monthly Archives: January 2023

Jan 30 2023
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Movies

Movie Review – You People (2023)

Meh, it’s ok.

But honestly, when I first heard about it, I wanted to love it, given the cast of famously funny people, but I’ll give it a solid C. Not a total waste of time but not something I’d rush to watch again either.

Let’s get to the review.

In a modern re-telling of Sidney Poitier’s classic film “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” Jonah Hill plays Ezra, a stockbroker who hates his job and yearns to podcast full time with his buddy Mo (Sam Jay.) An Uber mishap brings him together with Amira (Lauren London) and the duo fall in love.

Six months later, the kids are ready to get married but alas, they have to navigate the waters filled with their wacky in-laws. Sounds like a typical rom-com in which the protagonist couple is getting married.

Eh, but then the waters get choppy. Julia Louis Dreyfus, she of Elaine on Seinfeld fame, plays Ezra’s mother as a walking, talking, living parody of liberal white guilt, constantly showing off her perspective African American daughter in law to friends and family as though she has won a “See?! My Black Daughter in Law is Total Proof that I’m Not Racist!” trophy. Ezra’s Dad, played by David Duchovny, he of X-Files fame, attempts politeness only to drone on and on in his first meeting with Amara about what a fan he has always been of the rapper Xzibit, culminating in him cluelessly asking if she has ever met him.

Meanwhile, Amara’s parents, Akbar and Fatima (Eddie Murphy and Nia Long) are devout Muslims and no fans of Ezra. They are, however, huge fans of Louis Farrakhan, culminating in a clash with Julia over Farrakhan’s controversial remarks about the Jewish people. I think this scene was intended to be funny but it is a bit cringe, IMO. Akbar later invites Ezra on a series of escapades designed to trip him up and prove his lack of worth as a future husband and son-in-law.

The shenanigans culminate in the happy couple splitting up, deciding that their cultural differences are too great to get around. Somehow, it’s up to Julia and Eddie to come together and find a wake to fix what they broke with their parental meddling and make their kids happy again.

On one hand, there are some good messages. The first is a tale as old as time in many a flick, namely, that at some point in your adult life, if you’re ever going to become an adult yourself, you have to tell your meddling parents to stick a cork in it and back off. This could have been a chance for the film to show how despite our cultural differences, parents trying to run their kids’ lives well into the kids’ adulthood often occurs. Parents of all different backgrounds love their kids, think they know what the right path is for their kids, but don’t always understand what their kids are going through, what their kids want, that sometimes they just need to chill out and if they are right and the kid is indeed making a mistake, then the kid needs to fall flat on their face and pick him/herself up and learn the lesson on their own. Then again, maybe what they are doing is the right move for them even if it isn’t what makes the parent happy.

On the other hand, the film takes the Netflixian hype woke approach of demanding that everyone be constantly, and I mean CONSTANTLY aware of racial differences at every turn. And look, I’m not saying that such awareness is a bad thing. It’s a good thing but holy smokes, I spent the whole film waiting for the part where the Ezra’s and Amari’s fams figure out that they’re more alike than they are different, that they all just want the best for their kids, that the more time they spend together, the more they’ll start to trust and respect one another.

Maybe I just didn’t get it but the film almost comes across as arguing that interracial marriage sets up such a difficult minefield – that the black half of the couple must keep their head on a swivel, constantly on the lookout for oppression from their white love interest, and said white half of the couple must constantly walk on eggshells, as any comment, any mistake, any foot in mouth moment will be taken as a horrendous offense, as if black people aren’t able to tell the difference between true racism and someone who said something boneheaded but they still love them.

In other words, it almost comes across as saying that interracial marriages are too much work, too filled with hostility, destined to fail because neither side could ever possibly understand the other. Honestly, I can’t say I understand that because I’ve never been in a racial marriage but of all the interracial couples I know, I don’t get the impression that they spend all day tip toing around with their words, making sure the other understands that their words and actions should not be misconstrued as racial offenses. They just seem to love, respect and get each other, as all healthy, happy couples do.

SIDENOTE: Eddie Murphy, one of the GOATS of comedy, in a role where he barely cracks a smile and is given nary a funny line. Julia Louis Dreyfus, one of the greatest sitcom funny ladies of the 1990s also in an unfunny role. Jonah Hill, one of the funnier actors in modern times…so many funny people in a movie that’s about as funny as watching paint dry.

STATUS: Borderline shelf-worthy. To be fair, there are a few good one liners. Ironically, David Duchovny, the one actor in the cast known for having a dramatic, not funny resume, rattles off some of the flick’s best hits, at one point schooling Amari’s parents about how his wife is so not racist that she hated “Gone with the Wind” long before white people became aware that they were supposed to.

It had the potential to be good but all in all, I don’t get the idea of a streaming service that casts practically every couple in their movies and TV shows as interracial making a movie that paints interracial marriage as an arduous chore such that both parties must spend every waking moment worrying about how their actions might be misinterpreted by the other, how they might accidentally offend the other, how it’s all too difficult to bother with…eh…I just…it had the potential to be moving and funny but I have to agree with the majority of critics who call this flick too heavy handed. It took a jump but just didn’t quite land the dismount.

Still worth a watch but not something I’d watch again and again. We live in America folks. Love is love and life is short and in a country where people of so many different races, religions, ethnicities, backgrounds all live so close to one another, interracial, inter-religious, inter-this or that marriage happens all the time. It’s not a bad thing and it shouldn’t be seen as an arduous chore.

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Jan 29 2023
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Movies

Movie Review – M3Gan (2023)

Movie over, Chucky. You’ve got competition.

BQB here with a review of the latest killer doll movie.

When I saw the trailer for this movie late last year, I thought it looked stupid. In fact, when the trailer said it was coming out the first week in January I thought, “Yeah this seems about right for a January movie.” January, after all, is a notorious dumping ground for Hollywood’s worst schlock. All the kids have gone back to school. All the adults have gone back to work. Everyone is focused on getting the new year started and only a handful of brave cinephiles are willing to go to the theaters so early in the year.

But then the reviews came in. All positive. Suddenly “Megan” was popping up everywhere. After a Megan sketch on Jimmy Fallon, followed by a Megan sketch on SNL, I said OK, I need to see what all the hullabaloo is about, so I sucked it up and paid the $20 rental fee to watch it on my TV.

#1 – It is better than expected and deserved more of a March placement than its January parking spot.

#2 – It is not as good as the hype suggests but few hyped up movies ever live up to the hype. It’s a decent flick but not really the gamechanger that all the latest pop cultural homages would suggest.

The plot? Gemma (Allison Williams who, no matter what she does, how many Oscars she wins, how many breakout roles she snags, will forever be known as the chick who got her butt eaten on the HBO series Girls) plays Gemma, a robot scientist employed by a toy company, under intense pressure by her dickish boss David (Ronny Cheng) to develop a toy robot that will rake in boku buck-a-roos.

Gemma’s been working on M3gan, a creepily close to real life child’s doll for years, but the company wants her to focus her energy on a cheapy, easy to produce furry little line of toys that say silly things and make fart noises. Kids do love fart noises after all.

Blah blah blah. Gemma cuts some corners and rushes her M3gan bot out believing it is the big thing that will make her career. Coincidentally, her niece Cady (Violet McGraw) ends up in her care when her parents die just in time for her to become a test playmate for M3gan.

At first, M3gan seems like a real winner – i.e. the friend that every kid wants. The friend that has your back no matter what, always plays the games you want to play, doesn’t make fun of you, doesn’t gossip about you and always stands up for you.

Eh, but the problem is that the Megster takes her duty to protect Cady way too seriously. Suddenly, everyone who so much as looks at Cady cross-eyed ends up deep-sixed and slowly but surely, Gemma suspects her creation is to blame.

It’s fun. It’s a good time. For me, it was worth the 20 dollar rental but then again, I did make a whopping 36 bucks in self published novel sales last year, so I can totes afford a superfluous movie rental. If you’re asking me if it is worth a rental or a trip to the theater, I’d say yes but eh, I could also say it’s not quite up to the hype so feel free to wait till it is on your favorite streamer.

Personally, I think the film’s chief villain is not Megan but the PG-13 rating. I have a hunch that Hollywood was trying to make a movie that would largely appeal to the teenage Tik Tok crowd. The trailer was full of wacky Megan dances and other scenes that are popular on social media but don’t play that large of a role in the actual movie itself. The PG 13 rating hooked a youthful audience but alas, fans of gory horror will be disappointed because the rating prevents Megan from racking up a high kill count, and her methods are far less bloody.

In other words, Chucky’s crown as the murderous doll who spouts off swear laden jokes while he savagely murders his prey in the most horrific, disgusting, deranged and yes, sadly, often humorous ways, is safe. Megan just doesn’t have a chance at dethroning the Chuckster until Hollywood is willing to let her have an R rating.

(SIDNOTE: Maybe it is because I am seeing this movie as an adult whereas I first saw Chucky as a kid but Chucky is just way scarier to me. Chucky is a serial killer who put his soul into a doll via voodoo after being shot by the police while on the run and now his goal is to kidnap a kid and put his soul into the kid so he can be alive again. Also he is a sadistic serial killer so he delights in murder. Meanwhile, Megan is more of a malfunctioning appliance. You just wonder why someone doesn’t just smack her with a baseball bat and throw her in a closet until the repairman stops by.)

(DOUBLE SIDENOTE: The film did a good job of bringing Megan to life. They could have relied solely on CGI and it would have been just a glorified, cheesy cartoon. Though I am not a filmmaker so I don’t know for sure, I get the impression that they used a combination of CGI, puppetry, and a kid actor in a Megan costume to provide a more realistic approach.)

(TRIPLE SIDENOTE: As old folks who saw the original Child’s Play when it came out will tell you, the scares came not at first from Chucky but from the mystery/suspense. Throughout the flick, there’s a question of whether Chucky is really killing everyone or perhaps it is coincidence or maybe Andy is a homicidal little psychopath but then when the scene comes where Andy’s mother threatens to throw Chucky into a fire if he doesn’t reveal himself and he does, coming out of the gate swearing and stabbing, holy crap, you really want to crap your pants. Here, you pretty much know from the start the doll will be a killer.)

(QUADRUPLE SIDENOTE: Whereas Chucky meant to do his kid buddy Andy harm, Megan wants to do harm to everyone who might, and I stress a big might, do her BFF Cady harm. So in a way, she’s somewhat of a noble killer doll in that she’s trying to protect her kid pal, though her programming doesn’t understand nuance or morality or the Christian concept of turning the other cheek or that if everyone murdered everyone who slightly offended them, the entire world would be dead. There is an underlying lesson about absentee parenting i.e. Aunt Gemma sways back and forth between seeing Cady as a blessing and a burden, the joy of having a child vs. the cramp it puts in her career goals. Megan is less of a kid bot and more of a killer Mama Bear in a kid bot’s body and even makes the case to Gemma that you can be a superstar at your job, or you can be a parent, but rare is the person that can do both, so you have to decide early in life whether you want to be a parent or have an impressive career because rare is the person who can pull off both.)

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. Storywise, there’s a lot to ponder here. We all long for a true friend, but ultimately, we want the perfect friend, the friend who knows exactly what we want and caters to our every whim and says and does the right thing at all times. Such perfection only comes with silicone and micro-chips. Alas, if we can accept our imperfections and the imperfections of others, there are plenty of friends out there to be had. Even so, you have to learn to understand your best friend is yourself, so try to be a better friend to yourself, because I don’t know about you, but for most people, the number of friends who are there for you through thick and thin can be counted on the fingers on your left hand if you’re lucky.

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Jan 29 2023
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Movies

Movie Review – Shotgun Wedding (2023)

Guns! Violence! Nuptials!

BQB here with a review of J-Lo’s rom-com action flick, Shotgun Wedding.

Two observations at the outset:

#1 – It was a rather disappointing, lackluster holiday season when it came to movies. Usually, Hollywood brings their A-game during the holidays, but nothing really seemed worthy to go to the theater (I thought the first Avatar was overrated so I wasn’t going to sit through 3 hours of the second) and usually the streaming services put out a holiday blockbuster or two but nothing drew me in, so my viewing low these past few months has been lackluster. (The good news is I discovered Yellowstone but more on that in a future post.

#2 – Most streaming movies have turned into hot crap on a stick. In the beginning, Netflix brought a lot of good stuff but then over the years, it became weaker and more formulaic than network television. Show after show that looks like it was designed by a committee of people who are going out of their way to not offend anyone. Either that or they pay big money for stars then save on the writing. IMO, Amazon has been the worst offender as much of their schlock is unwatchable. Ergo, when Amazon makes a good movie like this, it’s almost like I can’t help patting them on the head and giving them a cookie for an unexpected job well down.

Onto the review.

Jennifer Lopez and Josh Duhamel play Darcy and Tom, a couple about to get married in a luxury resort in the Philippines. J-Lo has either discovered the fountain of youth and is keeping its location a secret from the rest of us, or she works out like a monkey on crack and has literally never ingested a carb or sugar in her life, or a combination of the two. Meanwhile, Josh looks more his age but that’s ok because he’s still a handsome SOB.

I complained about this in my review of Ticket to Paradise and I’ll do it again. Apparently there’s a new trend for aging stars in their 50s to pretend to be 40 and I resent that because I’m in my 40s and I remember seeing all these people in movies when I was a teenager. Just embrace your age, stars. No one cares if you’re playing people who get married in their 50s. People find love when they find love.

I will admit though that J-Lo is well preserved enough to pass for 40. Bonus points as the film gives us some gratuitous shots of her infamous tushy, which is a national treasure unto itself. J-Lo’s booty really should be put on display in the Smithsonian.

Moving on.

Typical rom-com fare. The couple fights on the eve of their wedding, bringing up absurd, nonsensical fears as to why the relationship might not work. The in-laws do not get along. Darcy/J’Lo’s father, played by 70’s pot comedy icon Cheech Marin, is super rich and complains that the resort is a dump and he could have thrown a better wedding if the kids had taken his money. Tom’s mother, played by Jennifer Coolidge, is a mother hen who smothers yet embarrasses everyone.

Sidenote – Jennifer Coolidge is really running victory laps around Hollywood lately. Between this movie, the Watcher, and the White Lotus, she must be making bank, always playing more or less the same character i.e. the old lady with a dirty mind and says naughty things. Irony is I don’t think J-Cool is old enough to be Duhamel’s mother. More like his older sister at best, but again this is Hollywood and no one wants to admit their real ages.

Long story short? OK. When a squad of pirates attack the resort, looking to hold the wedding party hostage in exchange for ransom, it is up to Tom, Darcy and the in-laws to set their comedic bickering aside and save the day, kicking pirate booty in fun action scenes, each more outlandish than the next.

Will it win Oscars? No. Will you remember it a year from now? Maybe, but not really in a OMG that movie was so good way but more in a that movie was fun but now that I have seen it I can put it on to entertain me while I clean my house sort of way. There are lots of pretty colors, kick-ass explosions, the occasional lesson about how marriage and romance is a commitment and you take the good with the bad.

J-Lo really is one of the last true movie stars, beautiful as she is charming. To her credit, it is funny when someone so beautiful rolls around in the muck, gets her hands dirty, is put into comedic situations and made to say silly things. I don’t think one of her middle-aged competitor beauties, say, the illustrious Angelina Jolie, could score as many laughs in a rom com. Pop culture historians such as myself will remind you that J-Lo’s early days were spent dancing on the set of In Living Color, so I doubt one can spend that much time with the Wayans Brothers without some of the funny rubbing off onto them, and the early flicks that made her uber famous were rom-coms. She was a rom-com staple in the late 90s/early 00s so she’s going back to her roots here, but now with action.

Oh and rock star Lenny Kravitz puts down his guitar to stop by as Darcy’s old flame, invited to the wedding by Cheech – there’s a whole subplot about how Cheech likes Lenny more and wishes Darcy were marrying him instead. Sigh. Those pesky in-laws.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. Amazon hits a home run here but I have to admit sometimes I wonder if a subscription service that at best, wows me with one, maybe two movies tops per year is worth it.

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Jan 28 2023
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Happy New Year!

Happy new year, beloved 3.5 readers.

I hope there is still 3.5 of you after my holiday hiatus.

I took most of December and January off from bloggery but I am back. I took some time out in December to work on health and life improvement. I did great in December. Hit a bit of a wall in January but still doing better than usual. Here’s to making February much, much better. I’m doing that thing where I make an effort to think about how lousy I felt this past Christmas about all my problems, how next Christmas is but a year away (actually only about 11 months now) and how much better I’ll feel at the end of this year if I put in the work and sacrifice short term gratification in the name of long term gains at the end of this year.

Hate to say it but when I get in that self-improvement zone, blogging and social media tend to go because I start to think, really, what does my opinion matter? Why am I wasting time shouting my meaningless opinion into the void with no credit to back it up?

But in nearly 9 years of bloggery, I haven’t let one month go by without posting at least once, so here’s my January post.

What is new with you, 3.5 readers?