On The Count Of Three (2022) - Movie Review

cw: suicide, mental illness, child abuse

Yep. We’re not quite done with the heavy shit just yet. And what’s more, said heavy shit is even more intrinsic to this film than it was with Smile. The literal first image of the film is of Val (Jerrod Carmichael) and Kevin (Christopher Abbott) pointing guns at each other’s heads, ready to fulfil a suicide pact. The title is the countdown to them actually doing it.

So what if I were to tell you that this film is absolutely hilarious?

The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent (2022) - Movie Review

Time for another preview screening, this time courtesy of StudioCanal… and man, after how much he crushed it last year, I leapt at the chance to check out the next Nicolas Cage flick. When you’ve spent so many years (decades, even) being such a singular talent that you’re just as animated as any one of the roles you’ve taken up, then yeah, why not star in a movie where you’re performing as yourself? Sure, there’s films like The Weather Man, Joe, and the previously-reviewed Pig, which showed certain facets of his real-life persona, but this is as direct as it gets. And the end result, while consciously made up of a lot of familiar parts, is quite mesmerising in that way that only Cage-starring films can manage.

Like A Boss (2020) - Movie Review

I’m starting to feel bad for Tiffany Haddish. Oh sure, 2019 proved to be a quite fruitful year for her on the voice-acting front, between The Lego Movie 2 and The Angry Birds Movie 2, but on the live-action front, the side of her that got pushed into the mainstream with Girls Trip? Not so much. Night School was ghastly, her teaming-up with Tyler freaking Perry on Nobody’s Fool couldn’t have possibly sounded like a good idea, and while she managed to pull through okay with The Kitchen, that was largely in spite of everything around her, not because of it. Her current presence as a comedic actress seems to be codified by her being a potential saving throw for a film that needs outside assistance, rather than actually giving her material to work with. And with her latest, it seems like we’ve reached the bottom of the barrel.

The Secret Life Of Pets 2 (2019) - Movie Review

There’s a certain thought pattern among critical circles that children’s films basically exist to promote everything except themselves. From tie-in merchandise to video games to character-specific spin-offs to TV shows, once a studio knows that a given property has got the attention of kids, they will milk it for all it’s worth. Illumination Entertainment is no stranger to this, if the still-prevalent Minions are any indication, but their latest feature feels like a plain-faced attempt at that kind of franchise enhancement. The way they go about this, though, leaves a bit to be desired.

Comparing any modern animated film to the DisneyToon sequel factory would usually serve as one of the gravest insults possible, but here, it’s kind of unavoidable. The plot in this under-90-minute flick feels similar to Atlantis: Milo’s Return, as if three smaller pilot episodes for a series were stitched together to make a singular feature. The plots in this instance involve Max and Duke getting into trouble on a farm, Gidget encountering the apartment of a crazy cat lady, and ‘Captain’ Snowball saving an animal from a travelling Russian circus.

The acting overall is fine, with Max this time around being voiced by Patton Oswalt because having an admitted sex offender voicing something that children cuddle up with would’ve sent off all kinds of red flags, but it’s nothing all that noteworthy. Same for the animation, which pretty much abandons the first film’s Merrie Melodies style for something a bit more standard. I got more than a few Nut Job flashbacks while watching it, although this is definitely less annoying to sit through. Even with the presence of Kevin 'Why is he still here?' Hart.

It taps into familiar territory from the first film as far as humour, sticking to the animal psychology behind how house pets behave. However, that part ends up diminished in comparison to the frequent attempts at kid crazy antics. I’d be disappointed by this if the attempts at crazy didn’t pan out more times than not. Kung-fu bunny rabbits, knife-throwing monkeys, a train chase sequence, not to mention the basic weirdness of a tiger running around New York with all these house pets.

There’s some mild lip service to using the animals as proxies for parents (something that gets spelled right the hell out at one point, so deducted points on that one), but ultimately, this is just another pleasant but harmless and inoffensive distraction. While the first film managed to skate by on those grounds, if this series is going to be a recurring thing, they’ll need to come up with something more for the next go-around. Or, more preferably, they could just bite the bullet and make this into a TV show; I can guarantee that the people who still watch cute animal videos on YouTube will be into it. Hell, judging by the end credits, the filmmakers themselves seem all too aware of that.

Girls Trip (2017) - Movie Review

Back in July of this year, in the middle of some potentially scary medical issues (multiple hospital visits, a lot of dead-ends as to what the hell was going from doctors, that kind of thing), I only managed to get one review done in that whole month. Knowing the frank inconsistency in terms of when reviews get posted here and at what frequency, I still feel like I hideously dropped the ball. Partly because it showed a certain amount of slackness on my part (hobby or no hobby, I take this work far too seriously to let a little thing like potential death get in the way of it, and I am actually serious about that point) and partly because that one review was on a film that I both hated and could probably write a thorough review for without even seeing it. Yes, Rough Night is legitimately that bad, one of the latest instances of the ‘chick flick’ sub-genre digging itself into a cesspool of hatefulness and misguided intentions.

 

Well, in a double saving-throw, I am looking at a film that has a lot of similarities to Rough Night on the surface (distaff Hangover knock-off) and giving myself a chance to look like somewhat less of a sexist asshole by showing how that very idea can work… supposedly. This could be just as bad, or worse, or it could be legitimately decent; only one way to find out. Keep all grapefruits out of arm’s reach.