BQB here with a review of the raunchy R rated girls trip comedy Joy Ride.
So, this film actually doesn’t come out until July 6 but there was a sneak preview showing at my local theater and since I have no life, I decided why not check it out. I’ll say at the outset I took the bullet on this one so you don’t have to. It is worth a rental or a stream, and sure, it had heart and some laughs but all and all, you won’t miss much if you miss it on the big screen.
Adele Lim, screenwriter of Crazy Rich Asians in her directorial debut with producer Cherry Chevraparatdumarong (I’m not sure I spelled that right), she of Family Guy producer fame, join forces to give you a comedy best described as what would happen if you took a Hangover style movie but replaced the dudes with naughty Asian ladies who can’t stop talking about sex, penises, buttholes, vaginas, cocaine but occasionally they find friendship and meaning. Some of the jokes will make you laugh and some will make you groan. Some I’m not sure you’ll get unless you’re Asian as they’re somewhat Asian insidery but are fun anyway. Some you can tell are definitely coming from a disciple of Seth MacFarlane.
In the late 90s, little Audrey and Lolo (Ashley Park and Sherry Cola) become BFFS for life as the only two Asian kids in the town of White Falls, which in modern movie logic, is a terrible, horrible place because there are so many damn white people living there.
Flash forward to present times and Audrey the perfectionist has become a high-powered lawyer while Lolo waits tables at her parents’ restaurant to fund her true passion of crafting sexual art, which the viewer is treated to in excruciating detail.
With a big promotion waiting in the wings if she closes a deal in China, Audrey invites Lolo on the trip to be her translator. Tagging along on the trip are Lolo’s socially awkward yet lovable Deadeye (Sabrina Wu) and Audrey’s college roommate Kat (Stephanie Hsu), now a famous actress in China.
Upon learning that her new business associate is a family man and would be way more keen on the deal if he knew that Audrey was as into family as he is (because business deals totally rest on such things!), Audrey and friends set out on a trip across China in search of Audrey’s biological mother who gave her up for adoption years ago.
Hijinx ensue and various opportunities for hanky panky arise. TBH, from the trailer, I thought the movie was going to focus more on a fish out of water tale as American Asian women visit China and aren’t sure if they feel more out of place in America or Asia. That does come up often but the plot more or less serves as excuse for dirty jokes and naughty humor. At times, their travel plans are derailed, leaving them to hitchhike and depend on the kindness of strangers, which for a minute I thought it was going to be like Planes, Trains and Automobiles but in China but the stakes never get too high as the girls are never put into too much danger, at least nothing they can’t talk their way out of with a dirty joke.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. Its fun and funny, with insight into the ups and downs experienced by American Asians, not to mention the struggles friends go through to keep their friendships going as they grow up.
One complaint. There’s a scene where a little kid drops an F bomb and while the other kid’s character deserved it, I’m not a fan of this Hollywood trend the past decade where people think it’s funny to have kids say bad things. IMO, the joke is never funny enough to warrant asking a kid to say that, but that’s just me.
BQB here with a review of one of the best raunchy comedies I’ve seen in a long time.
If video killed the radio star, then streaming definitely put a bunch of nails in the coffin of the R rated comedy. The last nail hasn’t been hammered yet, and flicks like this one might stave that off for now. At any rate, movie theater released movies tend to be made with young audiences in mind, as the kids tend to go to the movies while adults stay in and stream.
This movie reminded me of the good old naughty comedies of years gone by like The Hangover, American Pie, Something About Mary and so on. Mind you, this movie comes nowhere close to those greats, but its main goal is to produce an honest effort at making you laugh. There are moments that are heartfelt and touching, but there’s definitely no wokeness crammed down your throat or avoidance of problematic subject matter that seems to be the calling card of so many flicks the streaming services try to pass off as comedy these days.
Jennifer Lawrence, one of the funnier leading ladies in recent years, lets her comedy chops shine as Maddie, a bartender from the seaside vacation town of Montauk. About to lose the house her late mother left her due to high property taxes caused by an influx of rich NYC city folk who only spend their summers there, she answers a rather conveniently timed Craigslist ad placed by helicopter parents Laird and Allison, promising to sign over a used Buick to a woman willing to “date” (in quotation marks) their 19 year old son, Percy. Maddie needs the car so she can drive for Uber and pay off her taxes.
Percy, as his parents explain during a job interview of sorts, is brilliant and talented but very awkward and shy, a gifted musician who refuses to perform live due to his social anxiety. Unpopular and depressed, the lad just stays in his room and Mom and Dad fear the kid will just do the same when he gets to college if um, well, you know the rest.
Fearing she’ll let her late mother down if she allows the family homestead to be repossessed, Maddie takes the job, only to find that Percy is so epically clueless when it comes to women that he’s literally unable to be seduced. Hilarious gags ensue where Maddie’s advances are met with fear, shyness, attempts to call 911 and yes, as seen in the trailer, mace.
Indeed, the movie does adopt many tropes from films/sitcoms where one half of a couple is in it for the money while the other half is unaware, and yet, romance blooms along the way and the fear the other will be crushed when they discover the profit motive was once at play.
And truly, the film illustrates a big time double standard when it comes to men and women. Flip the script and have this movie be about an older man trying to seduce a younger woman and it would be downright creepy as hell. Here, 32 year old J-Law is so remarkably well preserved that she looks, at least to my old eyes, as though she could be one of Percy’s classmates, even though there are jokes about the couple’s age difference throughout the movie. At any rate, do I wish my 19 year old self had befriended a 32 year old JLaw type willing to teach me the ins and outs of love before going out into the real world? Yes. Would I call the police if a 32 year old man tried to do the same to one of my 19 year old female relatives? Also yes.
Long story short, blah blah blah, the relationship becomes less about money and more about companionship as the two enjoy spending time together, learning from one another and helping each other follow their dreams and so on.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. Come for the laughs. SPOILER ALERT: Stay for the naked J-Law!
This review is more than meets the eye, 3.5 readers.
The first live-action Transformers film from 2007 was pretty awesome, just as a showcase of what modern CGI can do. The franchise churned out several more Michael Bay helmed flicks after that, and they always lacked something that was hard to put a finger on. The 1980s cartoon show had heart, which may sound silly about a story about giant robots who turn into cars and planes and beat each other up, but there you go.
2018’s Bumblebee managed to capture some of that heart and we find it a bit more in this film, which is part prequel yet oddly enough, a reboot of sorts. FUN SPOILER ALERT: the movie opens the door for a future flick in which the Transformers team up with that other popular 1980s franchise, GI Joe.
Not gonna lie. Me 35 years ago would have soiled my tighty whities at the idea of such a film but today I already more or less know that Hollywood will get it wrong. Maybe they might surprise me but part of the problem is that these properties worked best during a long ago time, a time when people still believed in things like American exceptionalism, good vs. evil, doing the right thing, etc.
Anyway, the Maximals (robots who turn into animals) from the 1990s Transformers: Beast Wars cartoon get their turn to shine on the big screen. I was well into my teens then and more interested in Jenny McCarthy and Carmen Electra by then, so I missed out on the maximal craze.
One complaint might be the movie is called “Rise of the Beasts” yet the beast only show up at the beginning, a bit in the middle, then have their chance to shine at the end. This is still a flick largely about that old stalwart fan favorite Optimus Prime and his BFFs like Bumbleebee and Mirage. Also, there’s a girl bot named RC which is cool though I’ll leave it to you to think about how gender works when it comes to sentient robots sans genitalia.
Perhaps one of the greatest complaints about past Transformer films is that the humans add little to nothing but filler and useless blah blah blahing that delays the next robot fight scene. Here, the human friends to the bots include Noah (Anthony Ramos) and Elena (Dominque Fishback). Noah is an ex-soldier looking for work to support his sick younger brother. Desperate for cash to fund a life saving medical procedure, he steals a car that turns out to be Mirage, which I think the franchise has done the whole “a human thinks this is a car only to discover its a robot” routine a lot but WTF it’s Transformers so of course we’ll do it again. Meanwhile, Elena is a museum intern, knowledgeable in the ways of old artifacts and her knowledge of how the MacGuffin artifact the bots are fighting over comes in handy.
Plenty of celebrity talent in the bot voices. Pete Davidson is pretty great as Mirage, such that I didn’t even know it was Pete Davidson until I read it in another review. Pete Davidson usually just shows up in most of his roles and is like, “Hi. I’m Pete Davidson” and then he just acts like Pete Davidson.
Ron Pearlman voices Optimus Primal, the robot gorilla leader of the Maximals, Michelle Yeoh lowers herself to play a talking robot bird, fan favorite Peter Cullen returns to do his John Wayne-esque Optimus Prime voice, and Peter Dinklage voices scourge, the lead henchman sent to do the dirty work of the planet chomping Unicron.
SIDENOTE: I mean, the danger is that if the MacGuffin isn’t recovered, Earth will be chomped by a hungry giant planet eating robot but you never quite become afraid of that terrible fate because of all the action on screen vying for your attention.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. At the end of the day, it’s cartoony schtick meant for kids and for that audience, it’s certainly a crowd pleaser. I’m not sure any modern Transformers movie will be able to recapture the heart of the old 1980s franchise, but the good news is it seems the people behind the latest efforts are trying.
Oh! Hey by the way, did I mention this movie is set in 1994? So if you want to kick it to a bangin’ soundtrack filled with more 1990s rap than you can shake a stick at (Wu Tang Clan is the true star of this movie) then this flick is your jam.
BQB here with a review of the Flash’s standalone movie.
3.5 readers, I’m going to separate this review into three parts: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Not to be confused with the Clint Eastwood film of the same name.
THE GOOD:
Overall, this is a good film. Worth your money and your time, enjoyable to see on the big screen.
The premise? Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) aka The Flash entered the criminal forensic profession as a young lad with the hope of proving his imprisoned father’s innocence and overturn his conviction for murdering his mother.
Alas, this plan is not going well. In fact, it’s going rather badly. So bad, in fact, that the Flash angry runs so fast that he discovers the ability to run through time. Ignoring everything he learned from Back to the Future, Flashy Boy tries to save his mother’s life but in so doing, enters an alternate world, similar to his own but in many ways different.
The Justice League as he knows it never formed, so instead, to foil an attack by General Zod (Michael Shannon), he teams up with Supergirl (Sasha Calle), Batman, but the elderly form of the 1989 film version (Michael Keaton) and a younger version of himself, obviously also played by Ezra Miller.
The film’s got a lot of heart, great special effects, and its good meditation on choosing to live in the present and make good decisions going forward, rather than dwell on past mistakes and tragedies. The scars from our past, painful as they may, made us who we are and one little change would throw everything off balance.
Fans of the 1989 Batman film will rejoice as their are many fun callbacks to that film, as well as to other old movies set in the DC universe.
THE BAD
While a fun movie, there are times when it feels like it’s not the best movie Warner Brothers could have made but rather, the best movie Warner Brothers is willing to pay for.
Gal Gadot, Ben Affleck and Jason Mamoa all reprise their Wonder Woman, Batman (the middle aged version from our timeline) and Aquaman roles from the Justice League film, but in brief cameos to help The Flash on his adventure. One wonders if WB would just drum up a great script and part with boku cash, they might be able to get the band back together for another go around.
But since they don’t want to, you get the Flash – and an alternate Justice League based in an alternate reality including Supergirl instead of Superman and 1989 Batman instead of Modern Batman, presumably because Calle and Keaton are cheaper than Henry Cavil and Ben Affleck.
THE UGLY
Ezra Miller has a lot of disturbing pervy allegations against him, so much so that it’s hard to believe this movie wouldn’t have been shelved if they’d been levied against a straight actor. The public will forgive WB for releasing the film this go around, though let’s face it, we’re all such lemmings we’d probably sit through anything released on a Friday night at our local cineplex. At any rate, WB spent big bucks making this movie and needed to get a profit by releasing it. However, in today’s “metoo” environment, I just can’t see WB allowing Miller to continue on as the Flash in a Flash sequel or any other DC movies.
A lot of squandered talent here because Miller really does play the role well. While we’ve seen many versions of Batman and Superman and we all have our favorites, I think Miller really captured the essence of the character as a spazzed out nerd, overworked and underappreciated, constantly dealing with the stress of superlife while suffering from anxiety and panic like the rest of us would in such a situation.
STATUS: Shelfworthy, though I get the impression that DC execs must have watched the last Spiderman movie where three film versions of Spidey teamed up and said “We need to do that!” There are times when the cameos of past DC film characters are a fun walk down memory lane and other times when you wonder why a studio gets to render CGI versions of long deceased actors into perpetuity.
Then again, there are a few CGI cameos from the likenesses of actors who are still alive and young enough to act but IDK why they’re digital except it cost less than it would to pay them to come to the set I suppose. I could be wrong but this might be the first film to capitalize on that.
SIDENOTE: 1989 Batman came out 34 years ago, but I remember being a little kid in the theater watching it with a sense of wonder like it was yesterday. Then I blinked and now I’m a middle aged geezer watching a film that’s partly an homage to it. Boy, this life went far too fast but I’d point out while movies today tend to be reboots, rehashes, and homages to older films, I wonder if 34 years from now, there will be many rehashes of films from today, when they rely so heavily on the nostalgia of past films now?
The bad news is that the DCU cinematic is in a sorry state of affairs. Warner Brothers, IMO, screwed the pooch, opting to rush flicks out in a frenzied attempt to compete with Marvel, rather than go the slow route and build a coherent universe where all the films connect to one another, as Marvel made. They might have lost profits by going slow in the beginning but now, as the Marvel universe begins to slow down and fizzle out, DCU would be hitting its stride.
Where DCU has done its best is with characters that heretofore never had much in the way of movie fanfare. Thus Wonder Woman and Aquaman have been knocking it out of the park. Meanwhile, Shazam, who is, one might argue, DC’s joke character (like how Antman is Marvel’s joke character), is also great. You would think old standards like Batman and Superman would be best but they’ve been done so much that apparently no one knows how to weave them into this world.
For those of you who don’t remember the first Shazam, Billy Badsen is a foster kid, very sad and lonely when a wizard bestows upon him god-like superpowers. By saying “Shazam!” he turns from wayward boy to adult champion (Asher Angel plays young Billy while Zachary Levi plays Shazam Billy.)
The cool part of a sequel is it gets to build the universe. You already learned the rules from the first film so now the writers can waste no time inviting you to play in the sandbox. Billy and his foster family of siblings all have Shazam powers now and they use them to save Philadelphia from catastrophe and villainy. Alas, they are often unappreciated as the populace wonders who appointed them to watch over the city and the news media focuses on their mistakes rather than all the lives they save.
Enter into this mix Hespera and Kalypso (Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu), daughters of the titan Atlas, who have a bone to pick with the Shazam family or Shazamily for an inadvertent mistake they made in the first film. The world, of course, is at stake and the sisters have all kinds of ghastly powers from being able to make people go insane to conjuring up dragons and monsters.
It’s up to the Shazamily to save the day and they’ll do so while navigating the pitfalls of growing up. When you have a movie about kids who sometimes operate in adult bodies, there’s always a line that has to be straddled about what is and is not appropriate, and the writers and actors walk it well with various jokes where the kids in adult bodies and adult actors playing those kids come across as naive and not understanding of various situations where an actual adult would know better.
Djimon Hounsou reprises his role as the Wizard who gave the kids their powers, at times glad and disappointed he did, depending on how well the battles are going.
Perhaps you might remember there was a Superman from the neck down cameo in the last film and at that time I opined it kinda sucked that WB/DC isn’t able to bring all their talent together in the way Marvel/Disney did. There’s a cameo from another top hero, this time from the neck up, indicating Shazam has convinced the execs that such appearances are worth the money. Still, while it’s a good movie, I just think DC missed an opportunity to really build a world the way Marvel did.
BQB here with a review of the Terminator’s foray into Netflix television.
Every man has a soft spot in their hearts for the top action hero of his childhood. I love Arnold Schwarzenegger just as my father loved John Wayne before me.
I always thought Arnold made a big mistake when he ran for governor of Cal-ee-for-ya. First of all, he wasn’t much of a governor and second, he missed the chance to reinvent himself in the 2000s, as his old frenemy Sly did.
But better late than never in this, Gov-a-nator’s first TV series. Seems blasphemous. Anything not a movie is surely below our favorite commando.
The premise? Luke Brunner (Arnie) is on the verge of retirement, both in his covert and overt lives. That’s right. He pretends to co-own a fitness equipment supply business with his BFF Barry (Milan Carter) while in reality, Luke is a veteran, globe-trotting CIA agent and Barry is his handler/computer expert.
His ex-wife Tally (Fabiana Udenio) and daughter Emma (Monica Barbaro) have long grown accustomed to Luke never being there for the important events in life. In fact, it’s starting to feel like Emma is following in her father’s footsteps as her relationship with boyfriend Carter (Jay Beruchel) is growing rocky due to her globetrotting job for a charity that brings water systems to third world countries.
When their paths cross on one last assignment, Luke realizes he has more in common with his daughter than he thought. Yup. The water job is just a cover for the fact that Emma is also in the CIA. The two have been CIA agents, lying to each other and believing each other’s false covers for years.
Ironically, the plot is pretty close to True Lies, one of the last great action films that Arnold ever made in his prime. Network TV just put out a True Lies TV show reboot that fizzled, so one wonders had that not happened, maybe Netflix could have ponied up the cash to reunite Arnold with Jamie Lee Curtis and Eliza Dushku so we can see what the Tasker family is up to these days.
Oh right. Netflix wouldn’t pony up THAT much money. But hey, at least Tom Arnold, who played Arnie’s BFF in True Lies, stops by in a cameo. IMO, True Lies and this part are the Tom Arnold’s funniest roles.
Rounding out the cast are two spies that work for Luke – Aldon and Roo (Travis Van Winkle and Fortune, he a stereotypical hunky studmuffin self-absorbed pretty boy type and she an out and proud lesbian with a mouth that delivers a quip a minute. The odd couple so odd it works friendship between these two is a highlight of the show.
As you might expect, Luke and Emma put their shock at discovering the other’s lies behind them quick and join forces to take down an international villain, with Luke’s team playing back up. The series moves about, from international adventures to shenanigans as father and daughter struggle to keep their lies straight with family.
Structurally, the show reminds me a lot of NCIS, where there’s an intrepid tough guy Gibbs, surrounded with comic relief underlings like Abby and McGee…except Arnold pumps a lot of comedic iron himself. An episode where he must force himself to look away as his daughter “honeypots” herself i.e. dances the wild mambo with a villain to get some world saving information is particularly funny. Another scene where a CIA shrink forces father and daughter to communicate with puppets that are replicas of themselves is funnier.
Sure, there are plotholes galore. It’s hard to believe a father and daughter would be able to learn the other has been lying to them for so long and be able to instantly get over it, but we don’t have time for them to go to a few years of therapy. Strangely, some of Luke’s CIA counterparts were always aware of Emma’s CIA status but never told him and he isn’t pissed at them either.
Special effects wise, its typical Netflix fare. Better than your average network show but not good enough to be a major motion picture.
At first, Barbaro comes across as one of many standard issue Netflix actresses – hot and gets the job done but you’ll forget her next year – except, she shines here with a few raunchy one liners you wouldn’t expect to come out of the mouth of a classy babe. Fun fact, she was the fly-girl in last year’s Top Gun: Maverick.
Meanwhile, Fortune Feimster gets her long awaited moment in the sun as Roo. She has long stolen the show with minor parts where she does the funny lesbian who says obnoxious, rude statements with oodles of misguided confidence. I’m not sure I totally buy her as CIA agent material because, you know, she’s fat but then again, it’s a solid, linebacker fat. She could really clothesline a dude and walk away no worse for wear.
Perhaps one criticism is that while the show is very funny, there are times when the humor makes it hard to believe these people are CIA agents. Everyone other than Luke and Emma seem to exist for comic relief and surely there needs to be a few more serious people on a CIA spy team.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. I agree with Luke that all these damn kids these days just assume everyone born before 1992 is an idiot.
BQB here with a review of Disney’s latest live action remake of one of their classic movies.
Ah, the Little Mermaid, that classic fish out of water (pun intended) story of whether or not the grass is really greener on the other side of the fence, or as Sebastian the Crab tells us, the seaweed isn’t always greener in somebody else’s lake.
It’s been widely lampooned online, from the dead-eyed emotionless talking animals (I can’t tell if Scuttle and Flounder like Ariel or want to kill her and eat her body) to the casting of an African American actress (much ado about nothing), it seemed like this would be more of Disney’s wokesterism run amuck.
But I gotta be honest. Even an only anti-woke curmudgeon like myself enjoyed it. The fun songs, the pageantry, the bright colors, the animation effects that take people and turn them into mermaids, it was all a lot of fun.
It’s the same old plot. King Triton’s (Javier Bardem) youngest daughter/princess, Ariel (Hallie Bailey), is a mermaid obsessed with the surface world. That’s a dangerous place, warns Triton, who forbids her from visiting the surface ever again, but kids will be kids and Ariel continues to defy her old man with BFFs Flounder and Scuttle (Awkwafina and Jacob Tremblay) while royal lackey Sebastian (Daveed Diggs) tags along.
When Ariel rescues Prince Eric from a shipwreck and restores him to life with her magic voice, a romance blooms but alas it’s not to be, you know, because I don’t want to come right out and explain it to you but he’s a dude and her lady business is all mackerel, just for the halibut (pa rum pum pum.) Oh, what do you know? I did spell it out for you.
Alas, Ariel is tricked into striking a devil’s bargain with sea hag Ursula (Melissa McCarthy), trading her voice for legs. Creepo that she is, Ursula puts her thumb on the scales, and it’s a mad cap race for the bird, the fish and the crab to help the now human mermaid woo the prince into a smooch before the passing of three days.
Hallie Bailey captures a lot of that Ariel charm, a combination of ambition and naivete, where the youth really want something but have idea the fire they’ll have to walk through to get it, or the burns they’ll suffer and maybe even inflict on others to get there. Diggs does a fine Sebastian impression. Jonah Hauer King is a pretty standard Prince Eric, but plays Ariel’s match, as he too wants more than what his family wants for him.
Jacob Tremblay is a good Flounder though are fishy friend doesn’t get a lot to do, I can’t remember if he had a lot to do in the original. Scuttle gets a gender swap, which I squawked at, at first, but then I mean, I’m not knocking Awkwafina, but come on. She does sound a little bit like a bird. She gets to flex her comedy rap muscles too.
Hallie Bailey really does shine in the role and doesn’t deserve the crap she’s getting. Her renditions of classic songs like “I Want to Be a Part of Your World) match the quality of the original.
Whether it’s the original or the remake, I always found The Little Mermaid to be one of the most bittersweet of Disney flicks, as it mimics a lot of what most kids go through as they grow up. They have things they want to do but then there’s also what their parents want them to do. Their parents want them to do things that are largely considered the safest route, because they’re older and have been knocked around by the world and since it didn’t kill them, they came out wiser for it. The kids want to do something else but are young, dumb and trusting, easily taken advantage of by the unscrupulous. If they aren’t lucky enough to navigate such dangerous waters to achieve their wildest dreams, then they do may become the old world weary parent urging their offspring to be practical.
Is the seaweed always greener in somebody else’s lake? Maybe. Maybe not. The problem is a) you know the seaweed in your lake and you can’t help but see all its faults, so to you it stinks but you don’t see the greenery another might see. b) the seaweed elsewhere might be truly green, but you won’t find out until you’ve abandoned your lake and the family the comes with it.
That and there’s the whole Ariel has to change and become a human thing. It’s what she wants and um, well changing your body from one form to another takes on a whole new controversial meaning today, but one might argue that Ariel should accept herself as the half-lady, half-tuna, all mer-woman being that God made her as and if Eric doesn’t want any scales on his man business then that’s his problem.
It’s either a tale about a young woman who bravely defies the odds to follow her dreams or a young woman who completely changes her entire self to make a dude happy, depending on how you look at it.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. I know a lot of people wonder why Disney keeps making live action remakes. I think it’s just to keep their famous core IP properties going and introduce them to new generations.
Yowza. What a stinkburger with extra turd fries this franchise has become.
BQB here with a review of this drek.
Believe it or not, 3.5 readers, but there was a time when for me, a new Fast and Furious movie was the action flick gold standard. I went it believing I would have a great time watching the wacky car stunt mayhem unfold across the big screen and ever since 2011, when the franchise reinvented itself, the flicks never failed to disappoint.
The first, which came out in what, 2001? It was new and original. It was quite toned down compared to today’s installments, but no one had really ever made a good movie about underworld street racing before. Flicks 2 and 3 were so-so, though 2 didn’t have Vin Diesel and 3 didn’t have Vin or Paul Walker. 4 tried to get the band back together but was kinda meh.
But then low and behold, 5, released in 2011, brought us to Rio, where the crew steals a villain’s ill-gotten loot safe by hooking it up to cables and dragging it down the highway whilst attached to twin Dodge Chargers with the Rock chasing them and boy howdy, did that ever signal that the series finally found a way to kick ass.
The next few flicks, all the way through 8, upped the game. They were always over the top and at times, quite stupid if you bothered to think about the physics and logistics of all the out of control stunts, but this new world of street racers and car crooks turned into a multi-ethnic, diverse group of hip hop spies working for the government to take down villains whilst driving awesome cars really, really fast was a lot of fun.
I was disappointed with Fast 9. Jason Statham and the Rock weren’t in it and their absence was felt, such that I realized they had been carrying the flicks on the backs for quite some time. Also, the metoo era had begun, so the movie was completely devoid of the scantily clad female tushies shaking around at underground street racing competitions, the loss of which were a blow to me, because where else will I get to see underground street racing tushies?
Ah, but then the Fast X trailers came out this year and they looked good. I was prepared to forgive the franchise for one stinker. Jason Statham was even featured in the trailers and he’s a personal fave.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. This one cranks up the stink to eleven, so let’s dive in and get this over with.
The film takes us back to Fast Five, the movie that took the franchise off life support and made it awesome. As it turns out, the Brazilian villain bested by Dom and company had a heretofore unbeknownst to us son played by Jason Mamoa, who at the time was really pissed off at the fast gang for his father’s death and vows revenge.
Why the revenge plot took 12 years from 2011 to 2023? Your guess is as good as mine but at any rate, son comes back to destroy and humiliate the fast crew at every turn. To his credit, Mamoa is the one saving grace of this film. We’re used to him being quiet, stoic and angry in other movies but here, he reminds me of the Joker, but a twisted version of the criminal clown who pumps iron and pops steroids. Constantly laughing, prancing about, cracking funny jokes and one liners – Mamoa chews scenery with glee and it was fun to watch him nail a completely different style than what he is used to.
But it’s not enough to bring the film from stink to pink.
Cameos abound. I noticed this trend in 9 and it continues in 10, I think largely because the loss of Statham and The Rock left a void they’re trying to desperately fill. Sometimes these cameos come in the form of the return of long lost characters who played minor roles in the films like, over ten years ago, and I supposed if we were true fans we’d remember them but we don’t. Helen Mirren, who played Jason Statham’s mother, stops by though if she hadn’t, you wouldn’t have missed it.
Other times, there are new characters played by famous celebrities, often playing relatives of characters once played by celebrities who apparently now want no part of this bloated behemoth. Remember Mr. Nobody? Kurt Russell’s fun spy who recruits the fast gang to work for the government? He’s been replaced by his daughter, Miss Nobody, played by Brie Larson.
Remember Dom’s Brazilian girlfriend Elena who died a few flicks back? She’s got a younger sister now, played by Daniella Melchior. I’ll give the film some credit in that Daniella looks like she could be related to Elena while Brie doesn’t look like she could be related to Kurt Russell.
BTW, in case you forgot Elena, Dom longingly glares at a photo of her on the wall, a photo that looks like it is a publicity shot of Elena in full police gear taken to promo one of the past movies. Dom misses Paul Walker too and has several similar, well-produced publicity style photos of Paul hanging around his shop. I miss Paul Walker too, one of many reasons being that if he were alive, I doubt he would have allowed this franchise to become so stinky.
Rita Moreno, really for no reason, stops by one of those oft parodied “It’s all about family” barbecues as a long lost Toretto auntie, to give the gang a pep talk. Like several other cameo characters, if you’d gone to the bathroom during her scene, you wouldn’t have missed.
Really, from what I gather, Universal must have decided to go with a strategy where they skimped on the writers and just hired a bunch of famous folk to stop by and have unnecessary chats with Dom every five minutes.
There are two other tropes abundant in this flick that I didn’t care for:
#1 – Like that crappy Matrix sequel that everyone hated, this film is kind of meta and refers to itself and past sequels often, doing highlight reels of past films. Done well, flashbacks are fine but there’s a lot of them such that the movie becomes a promo for itself.
#2 – The gang splits up and goes on a lot of side-quests. Perhaps you noticed the fan backlash for the recent season 3 of the Mandalorian, where there is an incoherent plot, where either Mando or friends of Mando go on side-quests all eventually leading up to a weak story line. (Think of a video game where the end goal is to defeat a villain, but first you must go on a mission to find a weapon to defeat the villain, then you must go on another side quest to find a friend who will help you defeat the villain and so on.)
Here, the Fast gang goes on a number of side-quests. Letty and Cypher get whisked away to Antarctica, prisoners of Nobody’s elusive “agency.” Ramsey, Roman, Tej and Han go to London on a mission to buy gear the gang needs. John Cena’s Uncle Jake goes on a superfluous road trip with “Little B,” Dom’s son named after Brian. Ultimately, if you’re a cynic, you begin to wonder if the point of all these side missions isn’t just a ploy to make production easier and cheaper in that the cast can come to set for less time in smaller numbers and no one is paying for, say, Dwayne the Rock Johnson to hang out on set all day for weeks at a time.
I feared that streaming would turn movies cheap and sucky and my fears are coming true.
Was Statham in this? Yes, for absolutely no reason and for all of five minutes, despite what the trailers show. Spoiler alert: the Rock is in it too for a quick post credits scene. Big cameos. Big stars stop by quickly. It looks like the studio can’t come up with a script good enough to spend the money needed for big celebs to come to the set and be involved for more than five minutes.
STATUS: Borderline shelf-worthy, but it goes way, way back on the shelf so I won’t be embarrassed by it, and it only gets a spot on the shelf due to Mamoa’s fun performance. This film is billed as the first of a franchise concluding trio and it ends on a cliffhanger which frankly felt less like a cliffhanger and more like the chimps on typewriters they hired to be writers decided the movie got too long and it needs to be over now so we’ll end it here and pick it up in the next trainwreck.
I say this with love because I loved films 5-8. This can get better if they really put the effort in. Or then again, maybe it can’t. Movies are made by and geared toward the young and this generation doesn’t care for machismo or fast cars or scantily clad women unless it’s the dudes dressing like scantily clad women, so the glory days of the Fast and Furious franchise may be over.
But if they rub some brain cells together, I think they could come up with some great scripts and even they can’t get big stars like the Rock or Statham to be in it for more than five minutes, then they could go in a new direction with entirely new characters, that’s fine but they have to bring the story. I know the past stories were ridiculous too, but they were still better stories.
One more sidenote – the franchise may be suffering from the fact that the car stunts have become played out. We’ve seen cars jump out of planes. We’ve seen cars ransack big cities. We’ve seen cars flip around on cables. We’ve seen cars heist big things of value and cars narrowly jump across great divides. We’ve even seen cars fly into outer space. Is there something new for the cars to do? I don’t know but come on Hollywood, you can think of something.
How utterly controversial…had this movie been released in 1953.
BQB here with a review of this silly rom com flick.
Let me say this at the outset. I had no intention of seeing this movie. I’m sure I would have eventually caught it on streaming, but to actually go see it in the theater? No. I went to my local multi-plex last night in the hopes of seeing Fast X only to find it was sold out. Figuring I’m there so WTF, I bought a ticket to this delightful semi-trainwreck and before I poop all over it, I’ll say that I bought one of the last tickets before it too was sold out, so hey, Old Seabass must have down something right.
In the 1990s, at the height of Jerry Seinfeld’s fame, Jerry most likely could have gotten any studio to greenlight any flick he wanted. Ah, but Jerry knew himself. He knew he was no leading man or great thespian. His talent lied in stand-up comedy and his sitcom was but a mere vehicle for his observational humor. The characters never grew. They never changed. They never got better. There was never a very special episode. It was just a series of situations highlighting the ironic stupidity of life. So popular was the show that NBC famously offered Jerry millions for a season 10 but at that point, even Jerry knew the show was getting over the hill and it was time to move on.
I’m not sure Sebastian Manisculco has gotten that memo. (Then again, as great as a standup comic Sebastian is, I’m not sure he’ll ever reach Seinfeld heights, so I can’t blame him for cashing in on this flick.)
As a comic, Sebastian nails his routines and is riotously funny. As an actor? Let’s just say that while there might be an unproduced script out there somewhere that would launch Sebastian into the stratosphere as an actor, he hasn’t found it yet, and I have doubts as to whether this movie is it. Note that I say I have doubts. To me, it felt like a glorified Hallmark Channel movie, with just enough sass that your grandma might think it is edgy. Frankly, it reminded me a lot of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, another movie where a WASP falls in love with someone from Greece, Italy’s Mediterranean neighbor, and there’s a a culture clash to overcome as the extended family gets involved. MBFGW was the surprise hit of the early 2000s, and I’ll admit I observed a packed theater laughing at his schtick, so you never know.
But if you forced me to bet, I’d bet not.
The plot? Middle-aged Sebastian falls in love with Ellie Collins (Leslie Bibb with a different haircut that made me not recognize her until the credits rolled.) We know they are in love not because we see the romance blossom, but because Sebastian narrates this and practically every other plot point of the film. There is a whole lot of narration, such that you wonder if Seabass will start narrating his bowel movements any minute now.
Sebastian plays a semi-fictional version of himself. I assume he brought a lot of bits from his personal life to this movie. He too is the son of a hard working Italian-American family and married an artist, like Ellie. How much of the film mirrors his real life and how much is made up to be funny I don’t know. I’m not a Manisculco historian.
The great Robert DeNiro plays the film version of Sebastian’s father, Salvo, a hard-working self made man who immigrated to America 50 years ago, got married, had a son and built a career as a popular hair stylist in Chicago. Salvo has no trace of an Italian accent, but that’s ok. We’ll let that slide because Robby D faking one would suck.
Reminiscent of his role in Meet the Parents, DeNiro keeps the movie afloat with his no-nonsense style. He tags along with his son on a Fourth of July weekend to the Collins family’s Virginia estate, one of many as they are heirs to a vast hotel empire. He does so as a condition of turning over his late wife’s engagement ring, agreeing to turn it over to Sebastian so he can use it to propose to Ellie if he approves the family.
The culture clash ensues. The Collins live an extravagant lifestyle. Mom (Kim Cattrall) is a Senator and if there is one good thing to come out of this movie, it might be a Kim Cattrall comeback in that she’s so fabulous as Ellie’s tough talking mother that you wonder why Hollywood hasn’t utilized her more in recent years. Then again, she was at the height of her fame in the 1980s and this film feels like it should have been made in the 80s.
Fans of Workaholics will be happy to Anders Holm as Ellie’s frat boy dufus older brother, who plays the part of a dum-dum born on home plate yet acts as though he personally hit the home run well. Brett Dier plays Ellie’s clueless younger brother Doug, a dippy hippy who loves kombucha, bowl music and socialism. David Rasche rounds out the cast as the father of the henpecked father of the family.
You know, I could go on. The film has some fun moments but nothing that made me laugh out loud. There’s no great conflict to overcome. Similar culture clash rom coms usually have one family member who takes an “over my dead body” stance when it comes to accepting a relative’s significant other, but that never happens here. The Collins are built up as this obscenely stuck-up rich family, but then they pretty much accept Sebastian, warts and all. Salvo has a clear disdain for all the excess but ultimately comes to like his new in-laws and the only real controversy comes from him being an old widower afraid his only son will move away with his new wife and never see him again.
STATUS: Moderately shelf-worthy, but I wouldn’t bother seeing it in theater. I did it so you don’t have to. It’ll be worth a watch when it comes to streaming, but it’s one of those movies where you could do your laundry while its on and still get the gist.
I can’t jump but it’s not because I’m white. It’s because I like pizza too much.
BQB here with a review of the Hulu remake of the 1990s comedy classic.
I have never seen 1992’s White Men Can’t Jump. I have no idea why. It’s just one of several movies I never saw and I never think of it when I’m scrolling through the various streaming services, unable to find anything appealing.
And therein lies the rub. The reviews are in and the critics agree this flick is a pale imitation of its original predecessor. I on the other hand, liked it but maybe I wouldn’t had I seen the Woody Harrelson/Wesley Snipes original.
Jack Harlow (who is apparently, a rapper and I only know this because I’m so old now that I learn of the existence of new celebrities when I see them for the first time hosting SNL instead of the past, when I was hip and knew who they were years before Lorne Michaels noticed them) and Sinqua Walls play the odd couple duo of Jeremy and Kamal, two young men who in many ways, could not be more different, yet they bond and become fast friends over their shared love of basketball.
Both were once stars whose careers were tragically cut short. Kamal was a high school all-star on the way to the NBA when a lost temper incident with an unruly fan cost him everything. Jeremy was a college player on the way to the NBA when an injury blew his knee out.
Now they’re in their late 20s, far from being washed up in most respects, though when it comes to sports, they’re circling the drain. Kamal has long accepted he’ll never play with the greats, but is rife with bitterness as he works a menial job and lives in poverty, depressed over what he lost.
Meanwhile Jeremy is cluelessly optimistic, popping all manner of dangerous pills in the unlikely hope of curing his knee and getting back to the game before its too late.
Both in need of dough, they team up and start hustling in street games for money, winning bigger and better bets, all in the hopes of winning the entry fee to a big neighborhood tournament with a hefty grand prize, not to mention public exposure that could turn their hoop dreams into reality.
I know very little about sports, so a lot of the technical details about b-ball went over my head. I have, late in life, become a health food junkie in the past 6 months, so I recognized a little bit of myself in Jeremy as he runs around preaching the benefits of veggies and turmeric. (Yes, he admits he is a walking contradiction as he pops pills but is also a vegetarian.)
You know what I liked most about this film? It was woke without being preachy. Two dudes who come from very different backgrounds who can’t stand each other at first but they grow closer over a shared dream and a shared love of something. Most streaming films these days (I’m looking at you, Netflix) feel a need to spoon feed the woke message to the viewer.
Here, it’s self explanatory. Jeremy helps Kamal make his comeback with yoga, meditation and green drinks while Kamal helps Jeremy navigate a whole new world of street ball, trash talking and not saying the wrong thing that will get his butt kicked.
In short, we’re all more alike than we are different. If we share a love of something, we’re even more alike and if we listen to each other, we can learn from each other. We have all experienced different things in life and we have a lot to teach each other.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy, but I really need to watch the original now. P.S. – all the bright colors of the court in the final scene really pop on an HDTV.
Double PS: This is, I believe, the last film starring the late, great Lance Reddick who passed too soon in March. Lance stars as Kamal’s dying father Benji, who Kamal feels he has terribly disappointed, despite Benji’s best efforts to convince Kamal this is not the case.
SPOILER ALERT: It’s eerie that in the last two films Lance starred in, his characters die. His character, Charon the Concierge, dies unexpectedly in the recently released John Wick 4. I always liked him in the Wire. RIP Lance.
Bookshelf Battle 