Murder Mystery 2 (2023) - Movie Review

After the atrocity we dealt with yesterday, I’m in the mood to push my luck, much like a naïve man who just survived a shootout and is now under the impression that nothing can kill him. As such, knowing that even the depths of Happy Madison rarely reach the utter revulsion of Freelance, I’ll be spending today and tomorrow looking at the four HM releases that made it to Netflix.

Murder Mystery (2019) - Movie Review

Having covered all of the previous Happy Madison Netflix features, I freely admit that I didn’t go into this film expecting anything all that decent. And sure enough, in record time, that feeling of déjà vu kicks in with the usual hallmarks of an Adam Sandler production: Prominent in-your-face product placement with the Amazon gift card (wow, is this not a good time to be shilling out for them), Sandler’s wife being cast in a role meant to show off how hot she is (she’s literally billed as ‘Great Looking Flight Attendant’), and the story as a whole is a thinly-veiled excuse for a European vacation, just like the last time Sandler and Jennifer Aniston got together with Just Go With It.

Dumplin' (2018) - Movie Review

Beauty pageants. Of all the many, many symbols of human vanity, no institution can lay claim to more bruised and inflated egos than the American beauty pageant circuit. Even without getting into the horrors when the pageants are for children (lest we remember that Honey Boo Boo is on the conscience of our species), the whole enterprise is just… weird. Not to mention disheartening, as this kind of superficial road show almost seems designed to make women feel bad about themselves. I mean, sure, most of us would probably prefer someone who looks like they subsist on more than just crackers and tap water, but even with that in mind, seeing women get praised for their surface-level details? Not exactly the best thing for the old self-confidence.

Office Christmas Party (2016) - Movie Review

I mentioned our current morbid take on the festive season earlier this month, but I think it’s now that I should bring up why that has taken hold of the collective mindset. In lieu of a dry and lengthy ramble about human evolution and how it is both a blessing and a curse, I’ll just say that with how complex our lives continue to get, things like actually having time every year to relax and let go of all the year’s grievances aren’t realistic. Christmas may be recognized as a time of goodwill toward men but anyone who has recently attempted a family Christmas dinner will know that that isn’t even close to the case. Add to that how this has been a particularly mournful year in terms of beloved icons, and we’re less likely to sing Joy To The World than we are to just roar The Pogues’ Fairytale Of New York before drowning our sorrows in hard liquor. The world sucks and it only seems to make people even more stressed out during the holidays. So, with all that in mind, maybe this hedonistic Christmas party movie is just what we need right now. This is Office Christmas Party.

Storks (2016) - Movie Review

When I was a young-in and still naïve to the world around me, I had some… interesting ideas about where babies came from. For some reason, I was under the impression that when a couple is married, the wife’s wedding ring sends a little UFO into the stomach which creates the baby. Feel free to laugh at this in all its preciousness, because I honestly never stopped. What I’m getting at with all this is that, because of my own misconceptions about conception, recurring ideas like “storks deliver babies” don’t seem as ludicrous to me as they probably should. Not that I’m advocating lying to children or anything, but I do understand not telling them the whole truth when they’re too young to understand ideas like sex. I mean, hell, some adults are still struggling to deal with sex in its many bizarre facets. Considering all this, today’s film centred on probably the oldest wives’ tale involving baby-making already gets the head-tilt seal of approval. Does it get any other seals of approval?

Mother's Day (2016) - Movie Review

I haven’t seen much of Garry Marshall’s work, and remember that I’m mostly familiar with more recent cinema so I have a lot of older films to get to including a few of his, but what I have seen in no way sets my hopes high for consumable product this time around. His brand of heavy pandering under the guise of empowerment with The Princess Diaries (BOTH of them) and the plain-old twisted sense of festivity of the last two holiday-centric releases makes him the kind of filmmaker who is quite poisonous to people like me. This should come as no surprise for those of you who have read my earlier gripes on chick flicks, but yeah; I really friggin’ hate these kinds of movies almost on principle by this point. Not that that is reason enough for me to hate anything though, just that it makes what I am sure is going to be pure bile come up a lot more smoothly. So, let’s get this gastric excavation of a film over and done with already. This is Mother’s Day.

Horrible Bosses 2 (2014) - Movie Review

Given my compulsion to review every new film I see, I will inevitably come across some films that are easier to talk about than others; whether it’s because it’s easier to talk about bad films than good ones or because some films engage me more and leave me more to work with in terms of writing, not every film will give me the same amount of content. This is such an occasion, only for different reasons than usual. It isn’t because this film is entirely good, leaving me with less to talk about, nor did it fail to leave me with much to talk about. No, this time the difficulty in writing a review for this movie is, put simply, because it is just plain unpleasant to recollect.