I love it when a movie pleasantly surprises me. Going into this, I expected a fairly standard to possibly mediocre comedy. I didn’t expect anything great or terrible, just something to pass the time.
I was wrong. This movie is a laugh riot and who knew that Jeremy Renner had comedy chops. Not this guy. That’s who.
Renner, Jon Hamm, Ed Helms, Hannibal Buress and Jake Johnson star as a group of friends who have been playing the same game of tag every May since childhood. While they were kids, simply running around the neighborhood whilst slapping each other was fine, but now that they are adults and men of means, they resort all kinds of tricks, schemes, antics and shenanigans to trick each other into getting tagged. From wacky costumes, to elaborate set-ups and even downright lies, nothing is sacred as these pals try to one up each other.
Renner plays the king of the tag game, having never, ever once been tagged. To tag him is the holy grail of the game, and as his wedding approaches, the tag posse see an opportunity, not to be there for their best bud on his big day….but to give him the tagging he so richly deserves.
Isla Fisher stars as Helms’ foul-mouthed wife who takes the game more seriously than her hubby, pushing her man to engage in all kinds of hi-jinx to tag their long time adversary.
Meanwhile, Annabelle Wallis stars as Rebecca, a Wall Street Journal reporter who is so taken aback by the silliness that she follows the group in order to report on their taggings.
Interestingly enough, the movie is actually based on a Wall Street Journal article about a real life group of friends who kept a game of tag going from youth well into adulthood.
The movie’s motto is “You don’t stop playing when you get old, you get old when you stop playing,” and ironically, the game gives the friends, who all live in different parts of the US, to drop what they are doing every May and seek one another out. How sad that friendships blossom in youth only to require an excuse to continue in adulthood, but alas, that’s the way life goes.
Very funny. Made me bust a gut several times. Renner is hilarious as he takes down his would be tag assailants with expert precision and extreme prejudice.
“Solo” did poorly at the box office, though strangely, I enjoyed it quite a bit.
Meanwhile, the latest saga films, “Force Awakens” and “The Last Jedi” were commercial successes, but the fans aren’t happy.
“Rogue One” did well commercially and in my opinion, is the best of the four new films.
I do believe this is partly “Star Wars fatigue.” Absence makes the heart grow fonder and when 10-20 years passed between sequels, you really got excited to see a new film. I was 20 when “The Phantom Menace” came out and while today, I think that movie does not hold up, at the time, I was just so excited to see light sabers being whirled around on screen again.
Say what you will about the prequels, but they did, absent an occasional hiccup, at least attempt to follow the pre-established rules of the universe. Plus, the characters were put into peril, so the stakes were high.
Sure, you know faves like Yoda or Obi Wan weren’t going to buy the farm, but faves like Mace Windu or Qui Gon Jinn were kicking the bucket so the peril made you grip the edge of your seat.
Cliffhangers and new threads meant something. When new questions popped up, you’d get answers. Maybe not answers you wanted but you got something.
Here in the new saga films, there’s a lot of jerking us around. Too clever by half writers saying, “Ha! Fooled you!” and not realizing that if there’s no payoff we are losing interest.
So, if we’re getting a new film once a year, plus the films aren’t paying off for the super fans, I don’t know, this doesn’t bode well for the franchise.
I think either they should have cast new actors to play Han, Luke and Leia (younger actors) and start a new three part saga right after the end of “Return of the Jedi.”
Either that, or they should have put it far into the future and just wracked their brains to create all new characters, perhaps some older aliens who live longer coming in from the old films, but a whole new setup with heroes and villains.
Instead, they tried, just as King Solomon once did, to split the proverbial baby and as we all know, babies don’t split well, they are much better off intact in one piece. A future that was just an homage to the past didn’t bode well.
Women can be criminals too! It’s the current year, after all.
BQB here with a review of “Ocean’s 8.”
As a knuckle dragging caveman/vile misogynist pig according to today’s standards of political correctness, I went into this movie thinking it would suck with the gale force wind of a thousand hoover vacuums.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against the idea of all female casts. I’m not against taking a role that is traditionally male and turning it female. While I do despise the idea of taking actual male characters and making them female (Jane Bond or Indiana Jane just seems patronizing to women and saying that they’ll never be complete unless they grow a dick), I realize there might be some wiggle room (i.e. female Ghostbusters might have been great if better writers had been involved) or here, that it is possible that infamous thief Danny Ocean might have had a sister with the same last name, capable of pulling off an intricately planned heist.
At any rate, I enjoyed it. Does that mean I’m losing my misogyny? I don’t know. I’d argue that I never had any, just that I don’t think its enough for women to show up to a traditionally male endeavor and proclaim they’ve taken it over because they have vagina power and not do more. Here, the women do more.
The film does follow George Clooney’s early 2000s remake of the film of the same name, originally starring Frank Sinatra. Debbie (Sandra Bullock), just as her brother years before, is fresh out of prison, promising authorities she’ll lay low and turn her life around, only to go straight into planning a magnificent act of thievery, here, the swiping of a $150 million necklace from the neck of a famed actress played by Anne Hathaway.
Cate Blanchett is Debbie’s #2, just as Brad Pitt’s Rusty helped Danny assemble his crew so many years ago. The thing I liked about this movie is we get to see two actresses, Cate and Helena Bonham Carter (who plays a down on her luck fashion designer) play themselves. Over the years, we’ve grown used to seeing this pair play fantasy characters (Blanchett as the elf Galadriel in “Lord of the Rings” or Carter as any one of the grungy Goth characters in Tim Burton films) that is interesting to see them play characters straight without all kinds of weird voices, makeup, costumes, and so on. For once, you get to see them, although they have to lose their respective Aussie and Brit accents and pose as Americans.
If Matt Damon as Linus was Clooney’s #3 in command, then that job goes to Sarah Paulson as the fence in charge of selling the hot jewels. She plays the role well, as a suburban mom who has been out of the game (at least on a direct level) for a long time and is reluctant to get back in.
Rounding out the cast is Awkwafina as a plucky pick-pocket and I gave props to anyone who gets their start on YouTube with funny vagina rap songs only to end up starring in an Ocean’s remake. Her humor is contained, her jokes fairly standard i.e. when you recruit a pickpocket, you’ll have to ask for your watch back. Still, this was big for her and perhaps her own film will be in the works someday.
Rihanna, the fabulous diva who should really have to share screen time with no one, is believable as a hacker. Her turn in “Battleship” is often cited as a weak performance though in her defense, that was a pretty weak movie that is, to this day, unwatchable and her presence is the least of the flick’s problems. Here, she gets quick, easy lines, often staring at a computer and saying witty things as the hacker magic happens.
And of course, Mindy Kaling of “The Office” fame gets her big screen time, here as a jeweler who can work wonders with hot stones under pressure. Alas, all of these women have to share the film, clipping their individual wings just enough for the ensemble cast to work.
At times, the plot fumbles and gaping plot holes are patched with rubber cement and silly putty. Giant, lingering questions about how the heist is pulled off are treated casually but in the film’s defense, the Clooney films did that as well. I recall one of the Clooney films in which the heist depended on Clooney’s girlfriend, played by Julia Roberts, tricking people into thinking she was Julia Roberts and, hell, if we were willing to give that franchise a nod and a wink then we can do so here.
One complaint I’ve always had about “women taking over traditionally male roles” is that perhaps men haven’t always been right about everything and maybe women were right all along. When women want to play crude, perverted partiers (i.e. last year’s “Rough Night”) or become MMA fighters (i.e. Ronda Rousey) I wonder if they ever realize that women who avoided becoming drunken lechers or sweaty fighters were in the right all along and the boorish men they yearn to copy were nothing to idolize.
Thus, as trendy as the Clooney Ocean’s films were, is a crook really something to aspire to? Maybe women should focus on the good roles that men traditionally played, like astronauts, scientists and business tycoons and, you know, forget about the men who do dreadful things.
While I won’t give it away, the film is at least self-aware enough to acknowledge that complaint with a joke, so it earned my applause.
I draw the line at turning male characters into women though. James Bond didn’t oppress women with his penis and if Hollywood feels the world could benefit from a series about a female MI6 agent, they can create a new one with a different name and back story any day, just as they can if they feel the world needs a female treasure hunter. Actually, they did that years ago with Lara Croft with no need to chop Indy’s dick off.
Original, never before seen female characters in comic-booky films are possible, if Buffy taught us anything.
As for roles that were male in the past but could be women without cutting a hypothetical male character’s dick off, it all depends on the writing. Ghostbusters aren’t required to have dicks, and good writing could have sold a dick-less ghostbuster crew.
Meanwhile, thieves can have vaginas (perhaps many of us jilted menfolk knew that all along) but as in any film, it must have good writing or at the very least, as happens here, gloss over writing problems with pizazz and style.
Oddly, “Solo” did poorly at the box office, even though I think it was pretty good. Out of the four new films, “Rogue One” and “Solo” are the only ones I’m interested in watching again. “Force Awakens” and “Last Jedi” are drek.
Which leads me to a conclusion – “Star Wars” only works during the period of the Empire’s reign and ensuing war against the Rebellion. You’ve got the best villain in movie history, Darth Vader, who, let’s be honest, carries the franchise. You’ve got the most beloved characters – Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie et all.
The prequels were fun at the time they were released but they don’t hold up over time (though “Revenge of the Sith” is solid.) Sith holds up because we see Yoda being a badass, we see Anakin’s final transformation into Vader. Vader always makes these movies watchable.
Alas, when we lose Vader and the original characters and/or time period, the franchise starts to poop the bed. Keep in mind “Rogue One” had all new characters and a brief Vader cameo. The new characters carry it because we understand the stakes – the Empire doesn’t mess around and to be caught means certain death for the rebels.
I think Disney sort of understood that the Empire vs. Rebellion dynamic sells the franchise. So, they attempted to resurrect it with this odd idea that is never really explained, namely that the Republic has been restored but remnants of the Empire and Rebellion are still fighting each other in the form of the “First Order” and “The Resistance.”
Meh. Lame. One would think it would be the Republic vs. the First Order or what have you. We learn little of Snoke, while Kylo Ren is sort of fun as an emo Vader wannabe quasi hipster rebel against mom and dad millennial Sith lord, there just isn’t enough story. We’re thrown in and we aren’t told a lot about this world.
Further, there were attempts to capitalize on Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and the late Carrie Fisher being around long enough to appear in the films. In retrospect, perhaps they would have been better used in sequels in the late 1990s, early 2000s where they were younger and more spry. They weren’t in fighting shape this go-around, not knocking them, that’s just what time does to us.
But look what they did to Han and Leia. These great heroes are relegated to an elderly, washed up bickering couple. Maybe Leia isn’t because she’s a general but Han apparently never gets behind traveling the galaxy with his furry BFF Chewie. Didn’t we, as fans, want more for these beloved characters?
As fans, didn’t we envision Luke traveling the galaxy, getting into adventures in his middle and old age? Did we really want him to just run off to an island, become a hermit and a whiner?
Let me break it down. “Solo” proved (well, to me but apparently not to the public) that younger actors could play Solo, Lando and thus younger actors could have played Leia, Luke, etc.
They did it with “Star Trek.” Sure, we balked. But then we remembered that Chris Pine isn’t an insult to Shatner but an homage. The new doesn’t replace the old. It’s just a way we can bring our old faves back again.
All the original characters were fairly young at the end of “Return of the Jedi” so there was a whole, big, beautiful timeline that could have been explored between Luke, Leia and Han’s youth and their old age. You could have incorporated Hammill, Ford and Fisher into it, maybe as old timers remembering their youth.
There’s a whole slew of novels that the fans loved that cover the time after the fall of the Empire, showing our heroes going up against remnants of the Empire and even facing new villains.
So, I think there was a big well of possibility there that was left untapped. And sadly, to stay true to the new dumb films, if it is ever tapped, you have to make Han and Leia a bitter divorced couple who never see each other.
Are “Awakens” and “Last” fun spectacles? Maybe “Awakens” was ok for the nostalgia factor, but “Last Jedi” left me disappointed.
The whole thing has taught me that other than Empire vs. Rebellion, there really isn’t any idea for a future for the franchise. I understand that Hammill, Ford and Fisher are iconic and not easy to replace. Those are big shoes to fill. But we felt that way about “Star Trek” and low and behold, that worked and with careful cast selection and good writing, it could have worked again here.
They’ve chosen to mine the Empire days with side stories but I really think the main saga could have continued with young actors playing the originals.
Oh well. At some point, the saga will have to enter a new time period with a whole new setting, a whole new power structure, new villains, new heroes, and, God help us, they’re going to have to come up with a new threat other than the Death Star.
Until a solid writing team nails that, they should stick with Empire vs. Rebellion and perhaps look into seeing if the Han/Leia divorce can be written off as a bad dream. Perhaps Episodes 7-9 can all be written off as a bad fever dream had by Chewie when he got a hold of some tainted chili cheese fries and farted himself into a coma.
Then when he wakes up, he’s with a younger cast. It picks up after “Return of the Jedi” and a young Luke, Han and Leia travel the galaxy tracking down the Empire remnants.
It’s every red-blooded, God-fearing American man’s worst nightmare – to hook up with a super hot chick only to discover that she’s a Russian spy.
Luckily, that’s never happened to me. I’m so ugly that if a woman comes onto me, I automatically assume she’s a foreign intelligence agent.
Joke’s on her. There’s no intelligence to be found here. :::rimshot:::
Jennifer Lawrence stars as Dominika, a ballerina whose career is cut short due to an injury, recruited to become a “sparrow” aka to receive training on how to gather intelligence by seducing men with the power of her vagina. What a heavy responsibility, to have to spy for your country with the power of your lady parts.
My main observation is that I doubt there would ever be a school to teach women how to lead men down a path of self-destruction, not because women aren’t into that but because they usually know how to do that naturally anyway. Sorry, bringing my own personal baggage into this review.
Going into it, I thought this would be a pretty standard spy flick, but it actually did catch my attention, and not just because you get to see J-Law’s hooters (possibly her butt though I’d wager it’s a stunt butt double). It’s refreshing to see boobs in a movie. You so rarely get to see them anymore.
I don’t want to give away too much of the plot. Suffice to say, her first assignment is to seduce American CIA operative Nick Nash (Joel Edgerton) and as the film progresses, Dominika starts playing both the Russians and Americans. At times, you begin to wonder which side she is on, has she chosen an allegiance, or is she just playing both sides off the other for personal gain?
Hard to say, but I like a movie that a) keeps you guessing and b) shows boobs.
STATUS: Come for the sweater puppets. Stay for the intrigue.
Paul Kersey is back and his death wish is stronger than ever!
BQB here with a review.
SPOILERS ABOUND!
You know 3.5 readers, in today’s highly politically correct times, I’m surprised “Death Wish” was ever made.
Then again, the original 1970s version was controversial. In that one, Charles Bronson played architect Paul Kersey, who, after the death of his wife and rape of his daughter, he starts packing heat. Technically, he never commits a crime, but rather, he walks the mean NYC streets and when trouble finds him, he doesn’t back down, run away, or become the next victim. Rather, he stands his ground and shoots the trouble. The message? If everyone had a gun, criminals would go extinct.
Controversial then but even more so now given the epidemic of school shootings our nation is seeing, especially with the push for gun control that liberals are pushing for. Ironically, liberal Hollywood has been churning out more films that feature gun violence than ever before, but as long as its just random violence that’s considered OK, but if its a man who buys a gun to defend himself, family, and home then God forbid.
In this go around, the original “Death Wish” formula is followed, but also broken away from. Paul Kersey (Bruce Willis, who is one of the most well-preserved sixty-somethings out there, though he’s flattering himself in an attempt to play a late 40s/early 50s man) is an ER doctor who sees the effects of gun violence daily as he treats gunshot wounds all too often.
Alas, when a robbery of his home goes wrong, his wife (Elisabeth Shue, another well preserved older person flattering herself by playing a woman in her 40s) ends up dead and daughter ends up in a coma.
Just as the original Kersey, he blames himself. He feels he’s failed as a man and begins packing heat. He dons a hooded sweatshirt as he takes out various criminals, causing the media to dub him, “The Grim Reaper.” And unlike the 1970s, everyone has a camera phone today, so his exploits are caught on video and shared all over the Internet for armchair spectators to gawk at.
Now in the original version, guns weren’t the only controversy. The race issue was controversial as well. Kersey blew away white robbers, black robbers, he wasn’t focused on the color but rather, on saving his life even though he was out looking for trouble. Still, the number of black bad guys capped in the original was high and as I watched it recently, I knew that would never stand today.
In this new version, there’s, well, what I can only describe as an attempt at what I might call, “conservative political correctness.” Yes, at one point in the film, Kersey, a white man, goes out and shoots a black drug dealer named “The Ice Cream Man” for the poison he deals out of an ice cream cart. The dealer is sitting, hasn’t drawn, and that’s a deviation as the old Kersey always waited to be attacked first then defended himself.
The optics are bad – a white man shooting a black man, as well as a black man portrayed as a criminal. But then the debate in the film begins. A radio show featuring black hosts takes on the issue. One host thinks it’s wrong, a black man killing a white man. Another hosts argues it wasn’t so much a white man killing a black man as it was an arguably good man killing a bad man and doing the community a favor, ridding the world of a bad person.
In fact, Kersey learns of the Ice Cream Man in his ER when he treats one of his victims, a young boy, under ten years old, forced into a life of drug pushing by the dealer, shot in the leg for failing on a deal.
Meanwhile, the film goes out of its way to put black people in positions of power, from doctors and nurses that Kersey works with, to a cop he treats for a gunshot wound, to one of the two detectives investigating his wife’s murder (Kimberly Elise, partnered with the illustrious Dean Norris of “Breaking Bad” fame, appearing here in a quasi-Hank reincarnation.)
And Kersey even gets his first foray into vigilantism when he guns down two white guys trying to kidnap a black woman, saving her from being raped, sold as a sex slave, whatever ill fate would have happened to her.
So, the overall message seems clear – black people aren’t a monolith. All too often, we see violence, whether it’s in the news or in a TV show or movie, and we look at the perpetrator’s race and people get offended that the member of X (whatever race) is being portrayed badly.
But what this film seems to be arguing is that not everyone in any given race is the same. It isn’t about black or white but good vs. bad. Paul is a good person, just as the black doctors, nurses, cops, and detective he encounters regularly are good people. The black drug dealer and white kidnappers are bad people. Good people who do the right thing of all different races, colors, religions, backgrounds should stick together and stand up against bad people of all different races, colors, religions, backgrounds who do bad things.
If it’s got to be a case of “us vs. them” then let the “us vs them” not be one race against the other but rather, good people vs. bad people. Kersey, a (prior to the start of the film) law abiding doctor, has little in common with the white kidnappers, even though all three are white. Meanwhile, Detective Jackson (Elise) is law abiding and has zero in common with the Ice Cream man, and doesn’t exactly cry a river over the Ice Cream Man, even though both are black.
Overall, it’s a good film, though there are some gaping plot holes. For example, an early scene seems to argue that it’s rather unfair that Kersey has to wait a long time, do lots of paperwork, take a class, jump through hoops to buy a gun when he has an obvious need for self defense, given the recent murder of his wife. Yet, later, when he needs a gun stat, he’s able to get one from the same gun shop ASAP and that’s never explained.
And the main deviation from the original is that while Bronson’s Kersey never caught the baddies who ruined his life (a young Jeff Goldblum in a Jughead hat leading a gang of toughs), this Kersey does focus on tracking down the men who ruined his life, with the occasional deviation into extracurricular vigilantism.
So, there you go, I pretty much ruined the movie for you, but in my self-defense, I did give a SPOILER warning up front. It was no surprise to me that this film was rushed out of the theaters quickly. But then again, it’s just as surprising this film was ever made. Bruce Willis, one of the lone conservatives in Hollywood, was probably one of a handful of actors willing to even touch the script.
He did it all for the wookie…the wookie…so you can take that cookie…and stick it up your…
Sorry. BQB here with a review of “Solo: A Star Wars Story.”
I don’t know why I expected this movie to suck bantha dookie. Probably because “The Last Jedi” sucked so much of it, that I lost faith in the Force completely. This film renewed it though. My official opinion is that it doesn’t suck at all. In fact, it’s quite good.
Should I spoil the plot? Probably not. Suffice to say, it’s an origin story, and somehow director Ron Howard, without even casting Tom Hanks as he does in many of his other movies, gives us something that feels original and yet, it satisfies all of us long suffering nerds who know “Star Wars” inside out and have a checklist of things we want to see in a Han Solo biopic.
How did Han (Alden Ehrenreich) get that infamous blaster? How did he become a great pilot? How did win a card game against Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover) to get his mitts on the Millenium Falcon? How did he complete the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs? And, most importantly, how did he meet his big, furry, BFF, the one and only Chewbacca?
All these questions and more are answered and they’re answered thoughtfully – like, not just a nod to all of us old geeks who want to see the pop culture of our youth remain intact in today’s films. But it’s not done in such a stodgy manner that (I assume) the youngsters who may not get all the references won’t still enjoy it.
Ehrenreich plays Han well as an anti-hero who is in it for himself, yet when given the chance to do good over bad, picks the former. As Han always has, he makes it up as he goes along, often infuriating his colleagues with his imperfection and fly by the seat of his pants style, even though few ever realize that when the chips are down, sometimes you just have to punch it and hope for the best.
Donald Glover is the living, breathing reincarnation of a young Billy Dee Williams, part homage and part parody of everyone’s favorite self-absorbed, duplicitous space gambler. From his closet filled with way too many capes to his attempts to narrate his own biography into a hologram recorder, Glover manages to make us laugh, though there are some scenes where we see his softer side and he makes us cry. It’s almost enough to make us wonder when will Disney make a Lando standalone?
Emilia Clarke thrills as Han’s love interest, Qi’ra. I’d been worried about her. While she’s always a delight as the Khaleesi on “Game of Thrones,” her movie career got off to a bad start with the godawful “Terminator: Genisys.” I never thought the problem in that movie was her so much as a) the script sucked and b) she was miscast, recruited to play the ultra butch lady soldier Sarah Connor even though she’s the very definition of femininity.
Here, she excels as the stuck up priss, the hot babe Han is happy to be bossed around by, hoping that one day by doing so, he’ll get to complete her Kessel run in 12 parsecs. Thankfully, she does so well that the Terminator film has been terminated from my memory.
Woody Harrelson, Thandie Newton and Jon Favreau’s voice round out the cast as a troop of ne’er-do-wells who give Han his introduction to the criminal underworld of space, with Woody’s Beckett serving as Han’s impromptu father figure.
For awhile, I did wonder if Paul Bettany, known to us as Jarvis and later, the Vision in “The Avengers” was miscast. Could the proper Brit play a sinister mob boss? Turns out, he can and he does.
Overall, it’s great, and I do think its success proves one thing – the best films in this franchise are set during the Vader/Palpatine Empire years. Perhaps one day, some great writing team will come up with a fantastic premise for a future for “Star Wars,” but they haven’t done it yet, and should probably keep the tales set during the Empire’s reign until they do.
Time to make the chimichangas, 3.5 readers. BQB here with a review of “Deadpool 2.”
It’s hard for me to say anything disparaging about this movie, 3.5 readers. The first film was witty, clever, funny and all in all and left me with that feeling of, “Wow, I’ve just seen something new and different.”
Thus, when you go to watch a sequel, there’s often a feeling that maybe the guild is off the lilly and in a way, that’s true. You’ve met Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool now and you know what he’s capable of, both in terms of action and hilarity. So while that “new car smell” isn’t there anymore, you still expect a quality ride and that is delivered.
In this go-around, Deadpool, the merc with the mouth, finds himself in the unenviable position of being an X-Man trainee, short shirt and all. While working with his old pals Colossus (Stefan Kapicic) and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Briana Hildebrand), he comes across the chubby and angry, wayward adolescent Russell/Fire Fist (Julian Dennison), who has been making mischief with his fire shooting hands and can’t seem to be controlled by anyone.
Enter Cable (Josh Brolin), a grizzled soldier from a future where Russell has wreaked havoc on earth with his power. He wants the kid dead, but Deadpool believes the boy can be redeemed.
Thus, our favorite trash talker in red creates “a super duper fucking group” featuring a wide ranging cast of characters I won’t get into other than to say that Zazie Beetz is a delight as Domino, the somewhat naive super hero whose one and only power is luck…marvel as trucks seem to crash just in time to avoid hitting her, there’s always a soft surface for her to land on when she falls and so on. In a way, she’s a parody of every hero who manages to always narrowly miss a bullet, a collision or what have you.
It’s a great film – lots of action, lots of laughs. Lots of inside jokes that you need to be a comic book nerd to get – i.e. Deadpool spends considerable amounts of time screwing with Professor X’s helmet and wheel chair, and continues to make Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds as Green Lantern jokes galore.
The test of a good comedy for me is if I laugh uncontrollably and here, I did several times. So, I do feel bad for pointing out that we’ll probably never get that crisp, fresh out of the wrapper feeling with Deadpool again, but the film doesn’t disappoint.
This is pretty much a standard “big misunderstanding” comedy. Max and Annie (Justin Bateman and the ever boner inducing Rachel McAdams) host weekly game nights, where the couples they are friends with (Lamorne Morris and Kylie Bunbury as Kevin and Michelle; Billy Magnusson and as Ryan and Sharon Horgan as Sarah) play the classics – Pictionary, Risk, Clue, charades, trivia and so on.
On one fateful night, Max’s brother, Brooks (Kyle Chandler) joins in on the fun. Max feels threatened as Brooks has always been more confident, charming and successful than he could hope to be.
Always the over achiever, Max kicks game night up a notch. He hires a murder mystery acting troupe to stage a fake kidnapping – a caper that the game night posse will have to solve.
Naturally…dun dun dun…a real kidnapping occurs before the fake kidnappers arrive and the gang will have to bungle their way through the movie, thinking that everything and everyone they encounter next is one great, big elaborate joke even though they are all in extreme danger.
Bateman and McAdams are well-preserved, convincing me they are a young couple trying to have a baby even though the expiration date sticker on that proverbial milk carton – if it hasn’t fallen off yet, is definitely starting to peel. McAdams remains one of my favorite, all-time actress crushes and if she ever wants to marry the owner of a blog that is only read by 3.5 readers she should have her people contact my people.
Morris and Bunbury are a cute young African American couple, attempting to navigate through the mystery gone bad while having an ongoing argument (early on it is revealed Bunbury’s character once slept with a celebrity and Morris is beside himself over this.)
As for Magnusson and Horgan…the joke here is that Magnusson is a wayward, studly womanizer who just runs through women like water, bringing another ditzy bimbo to game night every week. On this particular game night, he brings a higher quality, more intelligent woman and we wonder if this means Ryan will get over his pervy ways to grab a winner…and sadly, SPOILER ALERT…we are left to wonder as this part of the plot is left to flap in the breeze.
Meanwhile, Jesse Plemons banks on the creepiness he displayed in “Breaking Bad,” here as a creepy neighbor who has been ex-communicated from game night, but it makes him very displeased, as he wants back in.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. We’re in a time period where comedy is dying, but Hollywood made a pretty standard fun time here. It’s not a gutbuster, but there are a few good laughable moments. It’s a good time, there is some good action and there is a pretty awesome scene where the gang runs around the mansion trying to outrun baddies while catching a MacGuffin and it appears from my untrained eye that it was all filmed in one take – impressive given all the moving parts in the scene. Worth a rental.
You have a choice, 3.5 readers. You can take the blue pill and wake up, forget that you ever read this pitiful blog, or you can take the red pill and see how far down the rabbit hole this terrible blog goes.
What? You took the red pill? What the hell is wrong with you?
I first saw this movie in the theater when it came out in the summer of 1999. At the time, everyone I knew who saw it thought it was the dumbest movie they’d ever seen. I, on the other hand, thought it was special, unique, different – a science fiction film that didn’t involve space, or clichés, or wasn’t derivative, something that was brand spanking new. The Wachowski (then brothers, now sisters) had invented a whole new world that built off itself and it was intriguing.
Plus, the special effects alone made it worth watching. The slowed down, 360 kicks, spins, the “bullet time” slow motion where characters dodge bullets, all set the standard for other flicks to follow. It holds up today, and looks like something that Hollywood’s best FX gurus could have made yesterday.
The plot for the uninitiated – Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) lives a lonely, forlorn life as an office drone for a tech company, hopelessly searching for meaning and finding none, even while he stays up all night exercising his hacking skills and surfing the Internet. It was 1999, so people still thought they might find meaning on the Internet, rather than just the giant reserve of pornography and cat videos it is today (and to be honest, was kind of back then too, just a lot grainier and slower…still if you were willing to wait 12 hours, you might get ten seconds of exceptionally slow, grainy, not worth watching cat footage.)
Impressed with his hacking skills, Thomas, who takes the name “Neo,” is recruited by Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburne in perhaps the most memorable role of his career) and his band of rebels, including Trinity (Carrie Ann Moss), Cipher (Joe Pantagliano) and some others who weren’t that famous so, you know, moving on…
Neo is let in on a big secret. The world as we know it is not a world at all. It is a computer program, dubbed “The Matrix.” The machines have won, they have enslaved humanity by putting them to sleep and hooking up to an array of cords that turn them into living batteries that give the machines energy. To keep the humans docile, their minds are hooked up to an alternate reality program that makes them believe they are living actual lives in an artificial world.
Those, like Morpheus et. al., who realize the world is fake, know that the world’s rules can be broken. They can load their brains up with all kinds of survival training, i.e. kung fu, weapons training, etc. They can run up walls, fire guns with great precision and do incredible kicks where they launch into the air and time stops as they connect their foot to an opponent’s face.
The villain of the film is Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving), a cold, calculating computer program who takes the appearance of a stern Federal agent. I think Agent Smith is one of the more underrated baddies of sci fi film history. Darth Vader might come at you like a honey badger on crack, but Agent Smith will, with his monotone, almost school marmish style, lecture you into believing that all hope is lost and that the best option is to give in, and frankly, he is very convincing. He’s every mean adult you met when you were growing up who told you the rules matter and you better drop your pie in the sky dreams this instant.
It’s funny how you learn as you get older and can watch movies and understand them more. At 20, I thought this was a fun movie. At almost 40, I realize it’s double meaning. Life is “the Matrix” and we often find ourselves weighed down by all these rules that keep us from doing what we want. “You can’t do this because of XYZ.”
“The Matrix” can mean a lot of different things to different people. “Taking the red pill” has become part of the cultural language now. I’ve heard people use that phrase in a variety of contexts, including people on both sides of the political aisle trying to convert others to their way of thinking.
Basically, there’s who you are and who you would like to be and if you stick with the life that makes you unhappy, you’re like Cipher, who decides “ignorance is bliss” and wants to stay in the Matrix because living under the imposed rules is better than going it alone. And in truth, to break the rules will lead to a period of suffering. Morpheus and company, by freeing their minds from the Matrix, do enjoy special powers when they return to the Matrix, but when they are out of it, they live in a harsh reality, one where the few surviving humans live in underground tunnels, eat gruel, and are constantly hunted by the machines.
Thus, if you stop following the rules, your life will be hard for awhile. People will make fun of you, not want to talk to you, you might suffer in a variety of ways, but eventually (hopefully) you’ll master your new life and become the sunglass wearing, black coat wearing kung fu master you were meant to be.
Again, “The Matrix” could be an allegory for whatever it is in your life that is standing between you and what you want. And it’s entirely possible that you might try to break out of the Matrix and fail. In the film, the rule is that if you die in the Matrix, you die in real life, because the body can’t live without the mind….and thus, if we think about real life, it is entirely possible that we might break the rules, suffer, and then succumb to suffering. Maybe Morpheus is right and it is better to live free and suffer than to live a lie. Maybe Cipher is right and it is better to live as a dupe and follow the rules rather than live in a cave and eat gruel.
Ironically, I assume that the Wachowskis broke out of their own personal Matrix by becoming sisters instead of brothers. But again, the Matrix can be adapted to whatever beliefs you have and whatever you think is standing between you and becoming who you want to be.
The film holds up. Although there are some late 1990s things that aren’t around today (the rebels in the Matrix talk to their friends in reality via big cell phones and must seek out a hard line or a telephone booth to get back to reality), the key is that the machines made the Matrix so that the world perpetually remains 1999 forever, even though in reality, it is 2199.
So technically, Hollywood could remake this and set it in 1999 and it would hold up with the film’s rules, though I hope they don’t. To be honest, this film was unique unto itself. The sequels that came out almost back to back in 2003 felt like cash grabs and to me, aren’t that memorable. The second is better than the third though.
STATUS: Worth a rental, or sometimes I even see it playing on cable so you might find it for free.
Bookshelf Battle 