Love Again (2023) - Movie Review

I first became aware of this… product (yeah, it’s gonna be one of those reviews, strap in) when a trailer for it showed up during a preview screening I went to for FilmInk. I had two immediate reactions to it: “But why, though?” and “There’s no way this is a real movie”. Yep, we have another Boss Baby situation, where it feels like I need to be convinced that the film I’m looking at even exists in the first place. It’s a testament to just how much raw cliché and sheer bewilderment was compressed into a single point to create that trailer. And yeah, now that I’ve sat through the whole thing, I can definitely confirm that it exists… although that just raises more questions.

Jumanji: The Next Level (2019) - Movie Review

The formula that made Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle work is so brain-crappingly simple, it’s still bizarre to think that the numerous video game-centric films to come before it hadn’t cracked it. It took one of the most common and innocuous aspects of video gaming, the act of playing as a pre-designed character, and used to deliver some of the best body-swap comedy I’ve ever seen. I still can’t get over that it featured Jack Black acting like a Valley Girl, a combination that should’ve soured me from the guy’s work forevermore, and still managed to bring out the belly laughs. And with its sequel, it doubles down on that same formula and manages to do even better.

UglyDolls (2019) - Movie Review

You know it’s a bad start when “This was originally going to be a Robert Rodriguez kids film” seems like a best-case scenario. The fabled one-man film crew may not have the best track record when it comes to family films, but when put next to director Kelly Asbury, whose work varies from ‘decent compared to what came before’ with Smurfs: The Lost Village, and outright atrocious with Gnomeo & Juliet, at least he had the first two Spy Kids films under his belt. But then again, I doubt that anyone would be able to salvage this thing, because the list of problems here is hefty.