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Joy Ride (2023)
The “girls can do it too” spirit pervades the raunchy comedy Joy Ride, which follows four twenty-something women of various Chinese-American heritage as they road trip through China to discover one woman’s birth mother. It’s a comedy about smashing representation barriers, giving voice to a specific identity crisis while also promoting sex positive shenanigans. I enjoyed the details of the cultural perspective of being young and Asian, but I felt the characters were too thinly drawn, settling into archetypes without fully embracing their comic differences. I liked each character from the actors and their performances primarily. There is one really ribald comic set piece where the ladies, collectively, hobble a basketball team from their individual sexual appetites, and I heartily laughed at the mounting catastrophes, but the other crass humor feels a bit too listless and surprisingly forced. An impromptu K-Pop performance of “WAP” should have been a lot funnier. Still, Joy Ride, while being less than euphoric, is a mostly fun movie that coasts thanks to the easy camaraderie of our four funny leads and some well-articulated perspectives getting their chance at the ole’ sex comedy formula.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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No Hard Feelings (2023)
If you can get past the icky premise, No Hard Feelings might surprise you. It’s a raunchy, R-rated sex comedy with a very game Jennifer Lawrence, also a producer, giving it her all. The premise involves Lawrence playing a down-on-her-luck 32-year-old who accepts a wanted ad to help a rich couple who are concerned that their 18-year-old son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) is too inexperienced in the matters of women and romance. This leads to Lawrence broadly trying to seduce the awkward, introverted young man. The comedy is less related to set pieces and more on the changing relationship of the two leads, which leads to fewer highs but at least consistent, albeit mild, amusement. Lawrence is the headlining name but the real star is Feldman. His comedic awkwardness reminded me of Michael Cera, and his reactions and sputtering from the brassy, larger-than-life vamping from Lawrence were even funnier than the broad punchlines. There’s one scene where Feldman sits at a piano and plays a ballad version of “Maneater” by Hall and Oates, and it’s a terrific and sincere moment that further made me appreciate the range this actor’s range. He’s appeared in several Internet musical short videos, and with how big he can get, to watch him hold back with this character and find even more subtle laughs, it’s just allthe more impressive. No Hard Feelings is an adequate sex comedy that doesn’t break any new raunchy ground. I appreciated its conclusion that doesn’t feel the need to tie everything into tidy endings, and the age-gap is addressed throughout, with Lawrence feeling particularly out of touch with today’s teenagers. It’s a possible good time but with some reservations.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001) [Review Re-View]
Originally released August 22, 2001:
Kevin Smith returns back to his comedy roots. No more movies with a message (Chasing Amy and Dogma) it’s back to good ole’ snowballing and stink palming. His latest, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, is like a giant thank-you card to all his fans that have made the man who he is today. It ties up the entire View Askew universe so Kevin can drift off into uncharted ventures of film making and not have to keep referencing the same damn characters. Plus there’s plenty of good-natured vulgarity to go around.
The plot of Jay and Silent Bob is nothing too heavy but seems to keep the film on a continuous pace, unlike the sometimes stagnant feel Mallrats had (what, they’re in one location for 90 minutes). It seems that after getting a restraining order at the Quick Stop on them, Jay and Silent Bob learn that Miramax is making a movie from a comic book that is in fact based off of them. Learned of the riches they could make they seek out the comic’s author Holden McNeil (Ben Affleck’s first appearance in the film) and demand a piece of the pie. Holden tells them that he long ago sold his right to his partner Banky Edwards (Jason Lee, in his second appearance in the film) and that there’s nothing they can do to stop the film. Jay suddenly gets the idea that if they stop the movie from ever getting made then they don’t have to worry. So off go our stoner duo on a mission to sabotage and satirize Hollywood.
Along the way are a hitch-hiker (George Carlin) advising the best way to get a ride is to go down in your morals, a confused nun (Carrie Fisher), the cast of Scooby Doo offering a ride (which will be 100x funnier than the feature film coming out next summer), a beautiful band of international diamond thieves (Eliza Dusku, Ali Larter, Jennifer Swalbach-Smith, Shannon Elizabeth), a rescued chimpanzee, a dogged Wildlife agent (Will Ferrell), and a full barrage of hilarity once Hollywood is finally hit.
The best barbs are laid out by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon bickering about the other’s film choices on the set of Good Will Hunting 2: Hunting Season. This moment is truly inspired and full of great humor from Gus van Sant too busy counting his money to yell action to Damon turning into a vigilante hero. I almost fell on the floor laughing during this sequence.
When Jay and Silent Bob hit Hollywood is when the comedy starts hitting its stride as this Jersey Greek chorus interacts with the Hollywood life and encounters many a celebrity. The jokes are usually right on target except for Chris Rock’s performance of a racism obsessed film director. Rock’s portrayal becomes grating to the moviegoer far before it’s over, though he does get a few choice lines.
Smith as a director has finally elevated his visual art into something that can sustain itself instead of his earlier just-hold-the-camera-and-shoot movies. There are pans, zooms, quick cuts, cranes, action sequences, and even CGI. Smith is evolving as an artist but still staying his “dick and fart joke” self, and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is evidence. And that’s fine by me.
Nate’s Grade: B
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WRITER REFLECTIONS 20 YEARS LATER
This was the one movie I was dreading more than any others on my 2001 re-watch. I’ve been a Kevin Smith fan since my teenage years and the man’s brilliantly vulgar movies had a formative effect on shaping my love of comedy, cinema, and even language itself. I don’t know if I can say I’ve been a fan of Smith as a filmmaker for some time. He took a more schlocky genre-based turn the last decade to diminished results; I enjoyed the change of pace from 2011’s Red State but found my interest deflating with 2014’s Tusk and 2016’s Yoga Hosiers. It wasn’t until 2019’s Jay and Silent Bob Reboot that my worry was unable to be suppressed. Had the filmmaker stopped growing or had I simply outgrown the filmmaker? The old jokes and self-serving references felt too labored, too stagnant, and like an old man repeating the hits for the same group of fans to laugh at the same recognizable and tired punchlines. By nature, comedy has the shortest shelf life of entertainment, and I was dreading that the original Jay and Silent Bob big screen adventure was going to feel so outdated and pitiful, especially since it’s the least substantial of all of Smith’s early films and was intended as a silly crowd-pleasing romp for his fandom. In 2001, I was a big participant of that group. In 2021, I don’t know if I still am.
This 2001 movie was always intended to be rather insular, pitched to the diehards who would understand references to chocolate-covered pretzels and the backseats of Volkswagens, but the star-studded affair was also intended to close the book on the View Askewniverse, the interconnected world comprising the first five films of Smith’s career. Smith had intended to move on and tell new stories unbound by the confines of his continuity and the demands fans would have that the new stuff tonally aligned with the old stuff. This never really happened. Smith tried something different with 2004’s father/daughter dramedy Jersey Girl and upon its theatrical demise retreated back to the safety of his View Askew universe. To be fair, he has branched out with bold experiments in horror, some of them rather successful, but it always feels like Smith is too afraid to move too far ahead of the fandom he credits so much for his success. Hey, people go to concerts and they want to hear the hits. I understand the appeal. I chuckled at points of familiarity in Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, and also Strike Back upon re-watch, but when you’re talking storytelling and comedy, stagnation isn’t growth. It’s a self-imposed ceiling.
It was very early that my sinking feeling for Strike Back became my default setting. The characters of Jay and Silent Bob are not built to carry an entire movie, especially when one of them is mostly mute. It becomes the Jay (Jason Mewes) show and he overstays his welcome. There are definite limitations to these two stoners being the primary characters, and that’s why Jay seems to vary from scene-to-scene for the sake of comedy. In some scenes he’ll be clever, in others powerfully stupid, and in others so specific, like when he’s referencing Prince Valiant or rhapsodizing a Planet of the Apes apocalyptic fantasy that is too involved to come from the mind of this dumb stoner. This is the same guy who didn’t know you had to pay to ride a bus. The character unpredictability would be more acceptable if those leaps lead to worthwhile comedy bits that couldn’t otherwise be bridged by the operating persona of the long-haired foul-mouthed horndog. Therein lies the issue. The humor of Strike Back is too scattershot and too obvious to really land consistently. The fourth-wall breaks are painful and plentiful. The constant exclamation of “bong” is never funny. The random inclusion of the Mystery Machine, with a Velma openly lusting after women, is lazy. The fact that people are fighting with bong lightsabers and dildos is lazy. The joke that everyone on the Internet complaining about pop culture is just a teen dweeb is lazy and almost Aaron Sorkin-esque in its snide broad-brush painting of technology and youth. As I said in my review of Reboot: “Smith has never been one to hinge on set pieces and more on character interactions, usually profane conversations with the occasional slapstick element. This is one reason why the original Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back suffers in comparison to his more character-driven comedies.” This movie is wall-to-wall wacky slapstick and road trip pieces that fail to transcend their cultural references.
And the comedy aspect that has aged the worse, by far, is the rampant gay jokes. At the time of its theatrical release, G.L.A.A.D. was openly decrying the film for its copious jokes at the expense of being mistaken as gay. I’m all but certain that 2001 me would have voiced the opinion that this was absurd, that of course Smith isn’t a homophobe, and he’s merely satirizing homophobia. The problem is that being gay is such a repeated joke of derision and hysteria. Wildlife Marshal Willenholly (Will Ferrell, one of the better reasons to still watch) admits he’s only a man on the outside, and I guess that’s a joke? Gay jokes are definitely one of the kinds of comedy that has aged the worst in the ensuing twenty years. Think back to 2005’s extended riff-fest between Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd in The 40-Year-Old Virgin where they try to top one another how they know the other is really gay. That would never happen in a studio comedy today. Times change and so do the mores of comedy. Things we thought were funny decades ago we might not feel the same way. That’s the nature of comedy. The overall comedy of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back feels tacky and dated, so the onslaught of gay panic and derision only makes the rest of the comedy feel just as sad and pitiful.
There are two hooks to this movie, the relationship that forms between Jay and Justice (Shannon Elizabeth), one of the members of a girl gang of jewel thieves, and the havoc and industry satire of the guys running through the Miramax studio lot. Heather Graham reportedly turned down the role of Justice because she could not understand what woman would fall in love with Jay, and she’s completely right. The girl gang seems included because it felt like the hot thing to do at the time after Charlie’s Angels, to include some sexy ladies in cat suits, give them slow-motion scenes where they wink at the camera about how sexy they must look in magazine cover poses, and seem to be in on the joke while just objectifying these one-note characters with air quotes. Just because Smith later has the girl gang underline their cliché nature doesn’t make them any less of a cliché, and their entire inclusion feels like fulfilling a personal demand for Smith rather than satirizing the shallow depiction of “strong action heroine” in Hollywood blockbusters. The other hook is the actual industry satire, strictly under the guidance of lampooning Miramax and their hits and indie darling culture, all of which has the pall of Harvey Weinstein cast over it. The industry jokes aren’t exactly very cutting. It’s difficult to even label this as satire. It’s more a madcap chase that resembles a crude version of Pee Wee Herman’s studio escapades. It too feels predicated on fulfilling personal demands for Smith, like literally fighting Luke Skywalker in a lightsaber duel. I’ll agree with my 2001 self that the comedy is on stronger footing during this final act, but that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement for the rest of the movie. Strike Back doesn’t strike hard enough.
There is one reason to watch this movie and it has always been the unique fascination of Jason Mewes as a performer. He was not even an actor when Smith put him in his indie breakout film, 1994’s Clerks. He has such an unpolished appeal and there were several line readings where he took a bizarre, immediately intriguing angle, something that made the line funny because of his delivery and conviction. Mewes is a genuinely underrated comic actor. He was also battling heroin withdrawal throughout the production and turned to getting drunk as a backup coping mechanism. As soon as filming was done, he began using drugs again and eventually Smith would drive his buddy to rehab and offer a place in his home if it meant he had someone to make sure he stayed sober. The friendship between Mewes and Smith, and the hell they’ve gone through together from his addiction, is truly heartwarming and would genuinely make an interesting movie all its own.
I come back to my review for Jay and Silent Bob Reboot because I wrestled with these same feelings back then, and re-watching Strike Back only provided disappointing confirmation. As I said in 2019, “The highly verbose filmmaker has been a favorite of mine since I discovered a VHS copy of Clerks in the late 90s. I will always have a special place reserved for the man and see any of his movies, even if I’m discovering that maybe some of the appeal is starting to fade… As a storyteller, I’ll always be front and center for this gregarious and generous man. As a filmmaker, I’ll always be thankful for his impact he had on my fledgling ideas of indie cinema and comedy, even if that means an inevitable parting of ways as he charts a well-trod familiar path.” Going back to the crude comedies of Kevin Smith feels like meeting old friends and realizing how little you might have in common now, and that’s okay. They still were important, they won’t be forgotten, but some things just aren’t built to last, especially comedy. I guess don’t be sad because it’s over but smile because it happened, including the many, many dick and fart jokes.
Re-View Grade: C
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The Wrong Missy (2020)
I knew by the end of 2020, as I was trying to assess the highest highs and lowest lows of cinema, that I was destined to come back around to Netflix’s The Wrong Missy. The Adam Sandler-produced sex comedy looked quite abysmal from its trailer so I knew I’d have to watch this eventually. I tried putting it off for months, and I used it as an incentive for me to try and watch Kelly Reichardt’s well-regarded indie, First Cow. I have disliked every ponderous, monotonous, meandering Reichardt movie I have watched, and despite the critical acclaim, I knew I needed more motivation to keep me going. I told myself if I couldn’t last 30 minutes into First Cow, I’d punish myself and finally watch The Wrong Missy. Well, my feelings for Kelly Reichardt movies proved to be the same and I left First Cow after 30 plot-less, boring minutes. The Wrong Missy is a special kind of bad where it feels like an endurance test to punish you for expecting anything beyond having an unpleasant person screaming in your face for an hour. This isn’t just an obnoxious comedy but an aggressively obnoxious comedy, one that wants to push the envelope with edgy situations and crazy characters but instead just wholly depresses.
Tim (David Spade) is an insurance adjuster still reeling from his former fiancé (Sarah Chalke) abruptly dumping him for a work colleague. Tim goes out on a blind date with Missy (Lauren Lapkus) and it’s a complete disaster. He then encounters Melissa (Molly Sims) at the airport and they share a meet-cute and seem to have the start of something romantic sparking. Tim has a work retreat in Hawaii and he intends to invite Melissa but, instead, invited the infamous Missy. Now Tim has to pretend Missy is the desirable Melissa he’s been bragging about and to tame her wilder impulsive behavior so that he can make a better impression with the big boss.
The Wrong Missy teeters into offensively bad with its questionable content but its biggest artistic miscalculation is that it dials the Missy character up into a horrifying cartoon psychopath that nobody would want to send a second with, and then it tries to say we should fall in love with her like Spade’s character eventually does for some inexplicable reason beyond Stockholm syndrome. The difficulty with making the oddball character lovable is knowing how odd to make them, to establish a baseline of what is normal and what is beyond the pale. The Wrong Missy goes wrong almost immediately with the introductory first date. It’s not just a bad date or one where Missy is too weird; she is categorically insane and truly scary. At one point she brandishes a machete and follows Tim into the bathroom. There’s also so much yelling. So much. Some people don’t have off switches but Missy doesn’t even have a dial to turn down. From the very start, Missy is repellent. There is no salvation here. Any person who encounters her should run for their lives in the other direction. People should be alerting the police. She already is brandishing a knife and has threatened others onscreen. She is a danger to all.
The key problem with the screenplay’s conceit of its mix-up is that Missy is so repellent, and the first date not just bad but legendarily mortifying, that it makes no sense whatsoever that Tim would still have Missy’s contact information in his phone. He would have deleted her completely to try and forget that night ever happened. I too have been lax about getting around to trimming my social media friends and phone contacts, but if I underwent the first date that Tim had, the first thing I would do with a woman that ensured a hospital visit was delete her very presence on my phone and block any means of her contacting me again. This is the fallout of the broad miscalculation in intensity. By making Missy so powerfully obnoxious and the date so horrendous, the next part plot-wise becomes harder to believe. It’s harder to believe Tim would even attempt to go along with this ruse rather than tell Missy to go back home on her own. If he considers her such a liability, what does he have to gain from prolonging the risk by keeping her around? I know the reason is to eventually fall in love with her, but what did he have to lose by immediately jettisoning her once he discovered she was, in fact, the wrong Missy? Nothing.
Much of the humor is just patently gross. I expect a sex comedy to feature bad taste but it’s another matter when the movie feels like it’s trying to so hard to make you uncomfortable, and failing that, The Wrong Missy will just resort to being obnoxious and loud. Take for instance when Tim wakes up on the plane ride to find Missy furiously jerking him off below a blanket. He did not consent to this while conscious let alone when he was unconscious. Imagine if the genders were reversed and a woman woke up with a man’s hand under her pants and he had been doing something without consent while she was asleep or unconscious? We would be horrified and we should still be, and yet this scene is played for laughs. Missy also hypnotizes Tim’s boss into retching whenever he hears a co-worker’s name, so there’s even more questionable consent issues with Missy wreaking havoc on the lives of others. There’s also a sequence late in the film where Missy suggests a threesome between her, Tim, and Tim’s former fiancé. This moment is meant to convey the growing connection between Tim and Missy, and emphasize him moving on from his lingering breakup. This is covered by the fiancé character getting repeatedly hit in her head while Tim and Missy are oblivious to her very existence. It’s just uncomfortable and not funny, especially since it’s the same bad joke over and over. It’s the same with Missy, who often just blurts out something profane, crude, and loathsome. She has a screechy voice she calls “Hellstar” that is neither charming nor funny. I feel like the filmmakers were trying to test an audience into what they might accept under the false pretense of tolerance because Missy is a woman (“Would you not laugh at an obnoxious dude, huh?”) and therefore it would be sexist to call her out for her bad behavior. The problem is that Missy is barely a recognizable human.
Spade (The Do Over) just seems far too old for this kind of movie. He’s 56 years old now and this part is better suited for someone twenty years younger. He’s on smarm autopilot, which is hard to distinguish between playing to his deadpan strengths and him just being bored. Lapkus (Jurassic World) is a comedian I’ve enjoyed from her many TV appearances from Orange is the New Black to Crashing. The only reason for this movie to exist is as a comedy vehicle for her, and she is fully unrestrained and in your face. It’s hard for me to fathom enjoying her character but I suppose there can be points of entertainment just watching the actress go full-out for the majority of the movie. It’s a big, broad, physical performance, though the energy level peters out in the second half as the movie attempts to make her a more acceptable romantic option. I don’t fault Lapkus but I couldn’t stand her grating performance played to the hilt and stuck on repeat.
I think the fact that Sandler’s wife Jackie plays a prominent supporting character (consistently in a bikini) likely tells you all that you need to know about The Wrong Missy’s production. It’s another one of the Happy Madison excuses for Sandler and his pals to have an extended vacation, this time in Hawaii. Sandler’s kids even make cameos as tourists that Missy, naturally, screams at. When you’re using a movie production as a glorified vacation, things like story and character and emotional investment and payoffs tend to fall by the wayside. The director, Tyler Spindel, served as a second-unit director on several Sandler productions from the 2010s. I doubt without the intervention of Sandler that David Spade would still be top-lining romantic comedies in 2020. Lauren Lapkus deserves better and a real star-making vehicle for her to display her physical comedy talents. The Wrong Missy is wrong in about every way a comedy can go and it’s, easily, one of the worst films of 2020.
Nate’s Grade: D
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Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)/ Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020)
Two new movies have been released for streaming, both coincidentally starring Sacha Baron Cohen, and both are highly political, one by design and the other through fortuitous circumstances of history regrettably repeating itself, and both are simultaneously everything you would expect from their creative forces and worth watching in our tumultuous times.
The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a courtroom drama depicting the injustices applied to a dispirit group of anti-war activists who were charged with inciting a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The various men of different backgrounds and affiliations had their reasons for being there to protest, whether it was building public support to end the Vietnam War, to gain personal publicity, or to get laid, and tensions mounted inside and out the group as the police plan to send a message, harassed protesters, and in one amazingly prescient moment, remove their badges and name tags to then inflict state-sanctioned violence. This is an Aaron Sorkin movie through and through, and his second offering as a director after 2017’s Molly’s Game, and the best thing about the Oscar-winning wordsmith is that watching one of his movies feels like you’ve just downloaded a complete syllabus. The sheer audacious density of information can be overwhelming, but when Sorkin is able to get into his well-established rhythms, the actors feel like wonderful pieces in an orchestra playing to its peak. The real-life story of the activists has plenty of juicy drama and intriguing characters and intra-group conflicts breaking open, mostly between the divided poles of political leaders Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne) and counter-culture prankster Abbie Hoffman (Cohen). Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul Mateen, HBO’s Watchmen) could have gotten his own movie and suffers many of the worst indignities as a member of the Black Panthers who was grafted onto the case in order to make the rest of the indicted men seem scarier by association. The consistent interference by the trial judge (Frank Langella) is shocking. It’s so transparently biased, racist, and unprofessional that I have to believe that many of these anecdotes actually happened because otherwise they seem so absurdly prejudicial that nobody would believe this happened. For a movie with such a sizeable cast of trial litigants, lawyers on both sides, friends and family, and maybe every police officer in Chicago, it’s impressive that Sorkin is able to provide so many with great Sorkin moments, meaning those grandstanding speeches, cutting one-liners, and intensive cross-examination. Not everyone is on the same level of importance. Several of the Chicago 7 are merely bodies on screen, two of the guys serve as little more than a quip-peddling Greek chorus. You sense there’s more being left out to fit into a crammed yet tidy narrative that plays to our demands for satisfying character arcs, reconciliation, and a morally stirring final stand. As a director, Sorkin doesn’t distinguish himself but he lets his meaty script and the performances of his actors get all the attention. The editing, like in Molly’s Game, can be a bit jumpy but it’s to serve the sheer size of information being downloaded during the 129 minutes. The political parallels for today are remarkable and a condemnation of our modern times. The Trial of the Chicago 7 is an invigorating and, at points, exhausting film going experience that can feel like a retro, overstuffed special episode of The West Wing. It’s everything you should expect and want in an Aaron Sorkin courtroom drama, so if you’re already in that anxious camp then this Netflix original will be preaching to the overly verbose choir.
Secretly filmed over the past year, Sacha Baron Cohen reprises his outlandish Borat character to once again lampoon people’s not-so-hidden prejudices, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and misogyny, which seem to have only gotten worse since the first Borat movie in 2006. The flimsy story follows international journalist Borat returning to America to help improve the standing of his home nation Kazakhstan by offering his daughter Tutar (Maria Bakalova) to the Trump administration. It’s really just a platform for Cohen to adopt a series of disguises (his Borat is too recognizable) and dupe some rubes while exploiting their ignorance and patience. Much of the entertainment comes from the cringe-inducing interactions of how far Cohen and Bakalova will go, marveling at their improvisational skills and also dreading what lines they might cross next. I was laughing fairly consistently, though the schitck naturally won’t be as funny the second time around, even with a 14-year gap in movies. I was really impressed by Bakalova and her own commitment and quick-thinking, keeping pace with a pro like Cohen and really stealing the show because Borat can’t go out in public as before. There are some outrageous moments that work, like Cohen imitating a country singer leading an anti-masking crowd into a singalong with ridiculous verses, and some that simply don’t, like an ongoing stretch where Bakalova explains the appeal of masturbation to a gaggle of deadly silent Republican ladies. Sometimes the comedy seems so broadly caricatured that it’s questionable whether its helpful or harmful, especially the anti-Semitic tropes that Cohen embraces as means of satire. Saying something outrageous to an outraged or shocked party isn’t quite enough. When compiling these hidden camera comedies, they thrive on the oxygen given to them by the targets of the prank. If they don’t really engage, it can feel a bit tired and desperate. I’d say the ratio of hits-to-misses is about half and half but the movie has enough big moments to keep fans happy. The most notorious moment has already been widely disseminated through social media and serves as the climax of the movie, strangely both as the high-point of pranks with big names but also as the emotional catharsis. Tutar poses as a foreign journalist and interviews Trump surrogate Rudy “America’s mayor” Giuliani, who drinks, goes into a hotel bedroom alone with Bakalova, and then lays on the bed while slipping his hand down his pants (like a gentleman does). Borat realizes he doesn’t want to offer his daughter to this creepy, sleazy man and rescues her because he truly does care about her. Borat 2, or Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm, takes a scattershot approach to satire and squarely aims at the science-denying MAGA crowd celebrating the excesses of their leader (who doesn’t sound that different from Borat, come to think of it). It might be more admirable in intent than execution but the new Borat can provide a few belly laughs and a more than a few groans as Cohen attempts to make American funny again.
Nate’s Grades:
Trial of the Chicago 7: B+
Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm: B-
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Good Boys (2019)
The summer of 2019 has been a barren wasteland for comedies. That’s not to say there haven’t been funny movies released, but this summer has been a disappointment for any real success stories in the ha-ha department. Good Boys is the last best chance the summer has for a breakout comedy. It’s produced by Seth Rogen, it’s written and directed by writers from The Office, and the concept of a ribald sex comedy from the point of view of adolescents who don’t know anything about sex is a promising start. I might need to revise that last sentence.
Sixth grade is a whole different world, at least according to the pint-sized stars of the movie, affectionately nick-named “The Beanbag Boys.” Max (Jacob Tremblay) is eager to tell his crush Brixlee how he feels and is given an epic opportunity when he’s invited by the “cool kids” to their party. Oh, and it’s a kissing party. Max is afraid of ruining his chances by being a bad kisser and generally giving away his inexperience. His two good friends are here to help but also dealing with their own problems. Lucas’ (Keith L. Williams) parents are getting divorced and he’s trying to put on a brave face about his fear of change. Thor (Brady Noon) is debating between embracing his passion for singing and theater or abandoning it to avoid being bullied. The three friends venture out on a wild day of adventures to make sure Max gets the girl.
Before viewing, I was worried that Good Boys was going to basically be one joke on repeat, namely the kids saying something inappropriate and that being the joke. To the film’s credit, the dialogue exchanges and comic set pieces are not built around lazy shock value. There are some easy jokes to be had for sure, especially the kids misunderstanding sex toys as weapons and regular toys, but the movie doesn’t rest on these as its only source of funny. The kids curse freely but I found their salty language more endearing than shock value, and that’s how the film treats it as well. The joke isn’t that you wouldn’t expect children to speak this way, it’s more on their general naivete and urgency to be seen as their vision of what it means to be an adult. Much of the comedy comes from the kids looking to rush ahead without the personal wherewithal and maturity to understand what it means to exactly be a grownup.
Because of this storytelling approach, Good Boys can feel like a high school comedy transplanted into a middle school setting. The kids are stressed about a big party with their reputations and chance at popularity on the line. They can finally make their move and score big with their crush. It’s amusing to watch and recognize certain high school movies archetypes retrofitted into 12-year-olds filling the roles. However, there’s also a predicated distance with this approach. It’s a view of childhood not quite ready for the adult world but it’s also told through the ironic lens of adulthood, where the audience can smile knowingly. It works in so much as a framing of the characters in a “oh, boys, if you only knew” manner that delivers more smiles and chuckles than it does side-splitting laughter. It’s a funny movie, sure, but it’s not hysterical.
The best part of the movie for me was the fun camaraderie between the three boys. They feel very naturally like awkward friends ready to be embarrassed from one another at any moment but then call for their help the next. We have the Superbad dynamic of the timid nerdy kid, the awkward lovesick kid, and the outspoken loudmouth. Obviously given their ages, some of these characteristics are toned down (the boys are more horrified by sex and porn than aroused) but the types are still identifiable. The kids feel and act like kids and each of them works within their character lane and stays true to that. Their frantic worry and problem-solving was a consistent source of entertainment. I was surprised how far the film adds for a resolution, bringing in a bittersweet post-script that feels like it might have been pulled from a more grounded version (fear not, it still ends on a sex joke). You do get a strong sense of what this friendship means to the kids, even as they confront the question of whether or not their friendship is built to growing apart. By the end of the movie, I felt enough attachment to the three kids and happy that they were finding their way even if that meant the prospect of change.
Structurally, Good Boys is too episodic and missing a clearer sense of direction. It can feel listless at times, drifting from one comic set piece that emerges to the next. Initially the driving force is learning how to kiss properly for the kissing party, but they quickly abandon the resource of the Internet absurdly early. The majority of the movie tracks the boys trying to get back a captured drone from two older teen girls they had been spying on. It can feel like the movie is stalling and doesn’t know what to do with its time. Sometimes it’s less noticeable when it finds an off ramp into something funny. The movie never gets too crazy save for a trip to a frat house that goes into stylized violence. Other times it feels like the story and scenarios were thrown together without the needed connective tissue to better justify why things are happening. It’s like the movie is shrugging about establishing cause-effect and doesn’t care about hiding it.
Good Boys is a cute summer comedy with a sweet heart and an attempt at a dirty mind. It’s not built for more than a relatively fun 90-minute trifle; perfectly enjoyable as a single serving but not anything you’ll feel the need to come back to. It can feel a little too laid back in its plot, tone, and comedy scenarios. It’s not enough to ruin the relative good times but it keeps Good Boys as only a minor success.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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Booksmart (2019)
Booksmart is the directorial debut of actress Olivia Wilde and it’s a hilarious, heartfelt, and often delightful teen sex comedy that has more on its mind than studying. The focus is on two overachieving best friends (Beanie Feldstein, Kaitlyn Dever) who realize, on the last day at school, that they haven’t cut loose for their entire high school careers. They pledge to find a big party, make a move on their crushes, and show all the popular kids just how much fun they can be too. The concept might resemble Superbad (including starring Jonah Hill’s sister, Feldtsein) but this is much more than simply a “female Superbad.” The movie doesn’t do anything revolutionary in the teen movie mold, but it adapts to its new settings. There’s a prominent gay first love storyline that leads to elation and heartache. There’s a strong feminist undercurrent about what expectations are placed on women, fairly and unfairly. There’s also a wider sense of empathy and complexity to the whole movie; the large ensemble of supporting players get considerate shading, which makes them more than how they’re casually perceived. It all relates to a larger theme that people are more than their appearances and reputations. It’s also wonderfully funny and had me laughing routinely from beginning to end including some big moments and set pieces that were smartly developed. There are fantastic running jokes and great surprises, while not losing the grounded sense of what makes the film special. The humor is also character-based and there’s a genuine honesty to its depiction of the reality of being young in modern America. Dever and Feldstein are a terrific pair and feel like legitimate best friends. The whole movie floats along with such effortless charm, tying up our wide ensemble of characters in a concluding graduation ceremony that feels downright joyous. I really cared about these women by the end. Booksmart is the kind of movie more teen comedies should aspire to be, and it’s worth definitely worth checking out.
Nate’s Grade: A-
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The Happytime Murders (2018)
The Happytime Murders asks one question on repeat: is something inherently funny just because a puppet does it? As I feared from the marketing, this is strictly a one-joke movie, and that joke being the entire concept of puppets behaving badly.
In a world where puppets and humans live side-by-side, Private Investigator Phil Phillips (Bill Barretta) is investigating a series of grisly murders targeting the stars of a popular children’s sitcom. His ex-partner, Detective Connie Edwards (Melissa McCarthy), is forced to work with Phillips as the bodies and felt pile up. Together they trace the killer amid seedy drug dealers, prostitutes, strippers, and criminals, all of them puppets.
For a depressing majority of the running time, the jokes are simply puppets swearing or puppets being randy. Very rarely will there be more thought given to the gags and setups. This reminded me of Seth MacFarlane’s Ted wherein too much of the comedy was centered on a teddy bear doing things we don’t normally associate a teddy bear doing. A puppet simply dropping an F-bomb is not a joke, just as a random person dropping an F-bomb is not a joke without some degree of setup and/or context. A puppet smoking is not funny on its own. A puppet drinking is not funny on its own. This is lazy writing that falls back on its surface-level shock value to compensate for the paucity of actual comedy. Too many jokes fizzle on screen, drawing at best the occasional generous chuckle. While you’re watching The Happytime Murders, you’re quite conscious of the fact that it should be funnier. You can feel the desperation on screen and the disappointment. I kept thinking, “Why did they settle for that joke? Why aren’t they doing more with the possibilities of their premise? Oh great, now it’s a joke about balls.” An R-rated puppet cop movie starring Melissa McCarthy should not be this uninspired.
Let’s tackle one scene emblematic of the film’s best assets and its shortcomings. Early in the first act, our puppet P.I. visits a puppet porn store/theater/film set. As soon as he enters, the curtain is pulled back and we see an octopus vigorously milking a cow’s udders, milky geysers freely spraying everywhere amid giddy cries. It’s a memorable visual with obvious sexual connotations and it’s one of the better moments to convey some degree of thought as far as developing the world of puppets. But then the scene just keeps going without any new development or complication. And then it keeps going. And then you realize that the filmmakers tapped out with the visual and had nothing else. The sequence at the porn store/theater/film set keeps sliding in more debauchery, especially with clips from an array of fetish films, a notable example being a fireman whipped by a Dalmatian dominatrix. Then in short order it becomes a murder scene and the fluff flies everywhere. Once again it becomes readily apparent how poorly handled the development process was with this film. There are puppets fighting, puppets doing drugs, puppets even having sex, but are there comic scenarios here? Infrequently. Without better crafting, the shock value naturally loses its impact and then the film gives up. It’s front loaded with the most memorable transgressions, and then it settles into a fairly mediocre cop movie that you have to remind yourself is a comedy because… puppets?
Instead, what the viewer gets is pretty much a standard cop movie with some film noir elements emphasized as reference. There is some half-hearted commentary about discrimination against puppets and how they’re seen as second-class citizens (like Bright). This too is dropped after the first act and the movie settles into a second-rate potboiler. If you remove the presence of puppets, too many scenes don’t even present humor. It’s more a cop movie than it is a comedy, and that realization perplexed and disappointed me. The lazy, crude sexual humor is a crutch they return to, though with diminished returns, as another attempt to jolt the lagging movie to life. It’s a tedious affair where the imagination feels capped. You’ll likely be reminded, as I was constantly, of the brilliant Who Framed Roger Rabbit? which tackled film noir tropes and cross-human integration. The difference is that Roger Rabbit thoroughly thought out its characters, plot, world, and satire, and I consider it to be one of the best-written films of all time. With The Happytime Murders, it has to resort to a Basic Instinct legs-crossing gag twice in 2018. This movie desperately needed a few more drafts from better skilled comedy writers to have more entertaining jokes than “puppet does non-puppet stuff.”
McCarthy (Life of the Party) is drifting on autopilot, desperately looking for ways to make this enterprise funnier. Her improv intuition runs into conflict with the simple nature that puppeteering demands a lot of preparation, so there are less off-script riffs. This is your standard brash, profane, ball-busting McCarthy performance we’ve gotten to know but there’s not a character here. Even in the realm of simplistic cop movie tropes, she’s still never more than the irritable partner who develops a begrudging respect. There is one interesting aspect to her character that the film does so little with. In a flashback, we see that she was critically injured in the line of duty and had to have an emergency puppet liver donation. The only thing ever done with this is the allowance that McCarthy is now able to snort puppet drugs that would ordinarily kill humans. That is it. There’s not even a joke related to this fact. It’s another example of the film’s deficiency of creativity.
The Happytime Murders is a one-joke movie that has far too little imagination. The lewd vulgarity gets boring and becomes indicative of the lazy writing all around, the mere appearance of anything naughty meant to goose the audience into thinking they’re watching something really transgressive and provocative. The novelty wears off pretty quickly. Maya Rudolph as a cheerful secretary and the behind-the-scenes end credits were the best parts. What they’re really watching is a mediocre cop movie strung together with the flimsiest of genre tropes and a scant chuckle. Without better comedic writing and setups, you’re stuck with the story, and that’s not a good decision. This is a witless movie that doesn’t deserve its premise and is a waste of everyone’s time. At my preview screening, I could hear a child’s voice behind me and thought, “Oh my, a parent actually brought their child to see this movie? Did they not know?” That child never should have been in that theater, and not because of the raunchy content, but because that child deserved a better movie experience from their parent, a figure of trust.
Nate’s Grade: C-
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Blockers (2018)
Blockers (nee Cock Blockers, and changed on some posters to appear like Rooster-Shape Blockers) is like getting two fairly funny sex comedies in one. We have the perspective of the panicked parents (Leslie Mann, John Cena, Ike Barinholtz) who are doing whatever they can to thwart their daughters from seeing through their presumed deflowering pact on prom night. We also have the horny teen perspective from the teen girls (Kaitlyn Newton, Geraldine Viswanathan, Gideon Adlon). Each group has their own character arcs and comic set pieces, flunkies and wild supporting characters, and as they criss-cross over the course of one debauched night, lessons will be learned and, more importantly, feel earned. I was steadily impressed with how much Blockers does and does well, chiefly maintaining a sex positive attitude and never supporting the parents in their hysterical, generally sexist alarm. Each parent has to confront their feelings about really letting their daughter grow up, and that relationship leads to a sweet moment for each to acknowledge the error of their ways and grow closer with their child. If this had come out in the 80s or 90s, I’m sure the film would have adopted the parental viewpoint as correct. Hell, if it came out in the 80s, the fact that one of the daughters is gay would have been a source of shock or shame. Today, the father already knows and supports his daughter being a lesbian (he frets she’ll feel pressured to lose her virginity to the wrong sex). Oh, on top of all that, the movie is pretty funny from start to finish thanks to a deep cast of characters. Cena impressed with 2015’s Trainwreck and he shows yet again the promise of his heretofore-untapped comic resources. There is one comic set piece involving blind couple foreplay that feels downright inspired as it develops. Blockers is a raunchy sex comedy with more on its mind than yuks. It’s got a sweet center that allows the characters and their relationships to feel genuine. When you care about the people onscreen, it helps eliminate the sense of downtime.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Rough Night (2017)
As the girl power counterpart to Very Bad Things, the rowdy comedy Rough Night follows a group of broadly characterized friends through a night of mishaps, but the strangest development is that the funniest moments all center around the men. Jess (Scarlett Johansson) and her gal pals (Jillian Bell, Kate McKinnon, Ilana Glazer, Zoe Kravitz) are celebrating her bachelorette party when they accidentally kill a stripper. From there the ladies have to try and dispose of the body while not getting caught. The movie is rather slow to get started, establishing broad character types for each of the bachelorette partiers. It’s once things get criminal that the movie enters more solid comedic ground. The acting ensemble is rife with terrific comedy stars that know how to hit their material in stride, in particular the boorish Bell and the goofy McKinnon. And yet it’s the asides with Jess’s fiancé Peter (Paul W. Downs, co-writer) where the movie hits its highest marks and delivers inspired comedy. At first the wild atmosphere of the girls’ night out is contrasted with the quaintly tame boy’s night out. Soon after Peter is worried something troubling has happened and is determined to travel nonstop to reach Jess. His traveling moments produce the most unexpected comedy, like a badass montage about something very uncharacteristically badass. It just kept going, trying to maintain the same demeanor, and I was almost in tears from laughing so hard. There’s a sequence at a gas station that could be taught in comedy classes for how well structured and developed it plays out, tying together characters and conflicts and even ending on a sweetly jocular moment. It got to the point where I wanted to check back more often with Peter. I chuckled throughout Rough Night and the energy level of the actors keeps things eminently watchable but it plays it too safe for something so apparently transgressive. The sentimental moments don’t feel earned and the dark comedy doesn’t feel dark enough. Still, when it gets to be weird and unpredictable, Rough Night can be a delight.
Nate’s Grade: B
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