Freelance (2023) - Movie Review

I’m not even going to lead into this with any kind of pre-amble: This is one of the worst films I have ever sat through. Even though we’ve still got a lot of films left to get through for 2023, I am absolutely certain that none of them will be worse than this. While I didn’t have the total out-of-body cringe experience with this that I did with Vacation 2015, the fact that I even thought to compare this with that should be a good indicator of just how fucking awful this thing is.

Vacation Friends (2021) - Movie Review

My come-up as a film critic is tied to a very specific subset of the old YouTube landscape: The caustic critic. The hyperbolic, foul-mouthed, ‘woe is me for choosing to watch this shit’ kind of entertainer, where just about every review choice was a film the reviewer didn’t like for bonus reaction fodder. Sure, some of these folx are still around, but it’s not the default like it used to be. Honestly though, even with how much progress I’ve made from when I was just a wannabe copycat trying to make it on YouTube… some of that is still in my DNA as a critic.

Part of that hyperbolic vitriol (born out of a shared ancestry from Mystery Science Theatre 3000) might lead someone to react to a comedy film they don’t like as if they’re being tortured against their will; like something that could traumatise them for life. Except I've gone through that shit without any hyperbole whatsoever. Readers who have been following me since way back when might remember when I looked at the 2015 reboot of Vacation, which to this day remains the single most painful experience I’ve ever had engaging with any form of media, let alone film. So when news hit that the directors/writers of that same film were co-writing another film with ‘Vacation’ in the title… well, cue the horrified flashbacks with The Sound Of Silence playing in the background. And while I can safely say that this isn’t nearly as egregious as Vacation 2015, that’s not to say that this is free of problems. Far, far, far from it.

The Suicide Squad (2021) - Movie Review

I appear to be one of the few people who is still willing to say a good thing about David Ayer’s Suicide Squad (and without endlessly pleading for a #AyerCut to make it “good”). Yeah, it’s definitely flawed and more than a little messy, but on the strength of the characters, I had a lot of fun with it. However, if anyone was going to give that concept a second try, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone better suited for it than James Gunn. He’s already proven his worth with elevating lower-tier comic book characters with his work on the Guardians Of The Galaxy, and for a team on a similar moral standing, he should know how to deal with the material. And I gotta say, even as an apologist for the 2016 film, this honestly blows it out of the water.

Dolittle (2020) - Movie Review

When you’re someone who’s railed against the cinematic plague that is family films about talking animals for as long as I have, reviews like this are inevitable. A look at what can be considered the initial harbinger for the favourite kid-pleasing gimmick of hacks around the world: Doctor Dolittle.

Big-budget adaptations of the original series of books are… basically cursed, from what I can tell. From the hype disaster of the 1967 version with Rex Harrison, to the admittedly decent Eddie Murphy version (that would end up spawning a league of straight-to-video sequels, making whatever merit its beginning had pretty much moot), this isn’t a story known for doing well at the box office. And fresh off of his linchpin performance in what is now the highest-grossing film of all time, Robert Downey Jr. is the latest to try his hand at this infamous character. And it seems like we have somehow reached a new low for this property.

Playing With Fire (2019) - Movie Review

Over the last few weeks, I’ve covered some films that have gotten a pretty heavy reaction out of yours truly. Such is the nature of the year-end round-up, as catching up with I missed earlier in the year has brought to some truly fantastic films and some real shockers. Part of me is wondering if my verging-on-burnout mindset over this month is artificially heightening my initial reception, like I’ve been giving certain features either too much or too little credit. Well, thankfully we have this film, which is quite bad but it’s not the excruciating variety that I’ve been subjecting myself to of late. Oh, rest assured, it still sucks, but it’s the most inoffensive suckage I’ve reviewed in a while.

Blockers (2018) - Movie Review

The plot: On the eve of their senior prom, Julie (Kathryn Newton), Kayla (Geraldine Viswanathan) and Sam (Gideon Adlon) make a pact that they will each lose their virginity on the night of the prom. However, Julie's mother Lisa (Leslie Mann), Kayla's father Mitchell (John Cena) and Sam's father Hunter (Ike Barinholtz) discover the pact and set out to stop their daughters from making a terrible mistake. But as the night carries on, they start to question who is truly making the terrible mistake in this situation: Their children or themselves.

Ferdinand (2017) - Movie Review

The plot: Fighting bull Ferdinand (John Cena) does not want to fight. Having escaped the ranch Casa Del Toro as a calf, and growing up on Nina (Lily Day) and Juan (Juanes)’s flower farm, he would much rather spend his days smelling the roses. However, when a day out on the town goes wrong and he finds himself back at the Casa Del Toro, he is forced to confront what society has deemed as his only purpose. As the calming goat Lupe (Kate McKinnon) and the other bulls Valiente (Bobby Cannavale), Bones (Anthony Anderson), Guapo (Peyton Manning), Machina (Tim Nordquist) and Angus (David Tennant) question why a bull wouldn’t want to fight a matador, Ferdinand plans to escape and, hopefully, spare himself and the others from a terrible fate.

 

Daddy's Home 2 (2017) - Movie Review

Well, I just covered another parental-aimed comedy follow-up a little while ago, so naturally I’m back with another one. One that I am far less happy to see return. The first Daddy’s Home, aside from securing a place as one of the worst films of 2015, is a film that still manages to piss me off just from remembering that it exists. Its ability to irritate is matched only by its complete wrongheadedness in trying to wring comedy out of parental figures spending more time bitching at each other than actually taking care of their kids. Not saying that it can’t be done but the first film flat-out failed to do so and this sequel probably isn’t going to do much better. Let’s get this the hell over with so I can go back to more uplifting holiday activities… like setting my house on fire.

Sisters (2016) - Movie Review

It seems that today’s subject is going to be the first in what I hope is a short-lived trend of older actors doing teenaged things for the year, what with Dirty Grandpa coming to screens in a little while. I’ve gone at length how much I really don’t like the school of comedy that says just being offensive or violent or awkward doesn’t automatically make a film funny; well, the same applies for mid-life crises. Probably the only time I’ve seen a piece of media make adults acting like teens funny was during an episode of Buffy; that was over fifteen years ago. As a result, despite my affinity for Tina Fey, even that appreciation wasn’t enough to make this film look good going by the trailer. Bear in mind that I was willing to give the weaksauce This Is Where I Leave You a chance because of Fey’s involvement; that’s how bad this looks from the off-set. Well, given only one way to find out if my pessimism once again pays off. This is Sisters.

Trainwreck (2015) - Movie Review

Ah, gender politics; the one topic where, no matter what I say, someone out there will want to chew me out for it. While this has a lot of the traditional trappings of a rom-com, like the overly dramatic finale and the third-act break-up that irks me so, credit where it’s due to Amy Schumer because she seems determined to lacerate gender roles when it comes to these films. The way it’s done is extremely risky, as I’ve seen writers try to flip the genders in order to make a statement about said genders and have it fail quite disastrously.

Here, it feels more like this is the result of women learning how to interact with the opposite sex from growing with rom-coms where the men are supposed to be the woman-conquerors and any attempts of them trying to be genuinely kind-hearted has to have some sort of sexual/monetary motive behind it. It’s almost like a call to arms for romantic love, and I mean actual romantic love and not just 'I’m an uptight woman who needs a penis in my life' as is usually the case in these movies. The whole 'following bad media for advice' thing isn’t limited to just the women either; through the eyes of a younger and naïve intern who works with Amy, we also see how media can warp the expectations of gender roles and sexuality for guys as well, particularly teenagers. As much as statutory rape isn’t exactly the funniest thing in the world, a close pass is given for at least having it serve a bigger purpose than just embarrassment over nearly having sex with someone who is underaged.

Among the other things that this film takes that I normally can’t stand and make funny is the walking, talking gay joke that is John Cena. As I have learnt through several games of Cards Against Humanity, my morals are willing to take the back seat if something is legitimately funny enough; with that said, his sex scene with Amy is pretty damn funny. I guess it also helps that Cena’s character is one of the few that has a proper head on their shoulders when it comes to knowing how relationships between the genders work nowadays, something also rather amazingly illustrated through Amy’s connection to her father. The whole 'even arseholes turn into top blokes after death' angle is poked at and shown as being kind of true, which makes sense considering how as much we may say otherwise in polite company, there is something kind of funny in the blatantly offensive. Must be the reason why I find this film as funny as I do in the first place.

This is easily one of the most organic feeling comedies I’ve seen in a long while, with full credit to director Judd Apatow for his improv-heavy actor direction that made for some great moments, editor William Kerr for accomplishing Stylistic Suck by leaving mistakes in that made Schumer’s writing feel that much realer (also, seeing the actors corpsing on-screen was funny too) and Schumer herself for some damn good rom-com deconstruction that actually worked for the most part. Also, bonus film buff points for bringing out Matthew Broderick and Tim Meadows from Dude knows what hole for some smaller roles, and Tilda Swinton in yet another unrecognisable portrayal as Amy’s astoundingly vile boss.