Tag: Affion Crockett

It is now mid-April, and if that means anything, it means that shitty January movies are finally coming out on DVD. A lot of these January films were not screened for critics, for some reason. I mean, do they not care about press?! (That was sarcasm).

The one January movie I actually wanted to watch was Fifty Shades of Black. Sure, it is a parody film. But I have several reasons for wanting to see this one.

1) Fifty Shades of Grey, the film that is being parodied, was on its own terrible. We are getting a parody of shit, so the parody is likely to call out the shit while doing it.

2) It is a Wayans parody. Say what you will, but his two haunted house parodies are better than the last three Scary Movies combined. They aren’t necessarily great films, but he did put a lot of effort into them and didn’t just phone in his performance.

3) I don’t have a third reason, I just really want to see how bad this thing actually is.

It definitely captures the romance from Grey pretty well.

The story begins with young Hannah (Kali Hawk) going to interview Christian Black (Marlon Wayans), the head of a big company for her university paper. She isn’t a journalist, but her roommate, Kateesha (Jenny Zigrino) is sick, so she goes for her.

She is immediately swept away by his charm and his looks and starts to have feelings for him. Christian begins to take Hannah on dates and he lets her know that he has a secretive side. A play room, where he is a dominant and is looking for a submissive for some sex play.

Of course Hannah isn’t really into that, nor is she into contracts. But she still wants the sex, no matter how quick and uneventful it is. And hey, if he wants to smack her butt a few times, whatever. But when she starts to fall in love, that is where their relationship begins to fall apart. And basically I wrote the actual plot of Fifty Shades of Grey just now.

Kate Miner is the assistant, Mike Epps is Hannah’s father, with Fred Willard and Jane Seymour playing Christian’s adoptive parents, Affion Crockett his brother and Irene Choi his sister. Also Andrew Bachelor as Hannah’s best male friend, and Florence Henderson as…well, a rather weird cameo.

No, Marlon is not acting those abs. Those are the real and you are now pregnant.

If I could draw one conclusion from watching both the real and the parody movie, I can determine that they are equally bad. Grey is telling a stupid story and Black is telling a worse version of the story with the occasionally funny joke.

That is right. Fifty Shades of Black made me laugh occasionally. It was actually the movie’s goal too, unlike the times I laughed during Grey. It had some funny moments, with sometimes subtle jokes. And it made fun of the bad writing of the Grey book and some of the nonsensical parts of the film, which is what a parody is supposed to do. Of course, Black also went overboard, over and over again. For every actual funny joke there are 10 jokes that fall flat. Either from poor delivery, poor effort, or by over acting the scenes to extremes.

This film is somehow the polar opposite of Grey. In Grey, you see a lot of naked women and no penis, and in this movie, no naked women at all, but at least three fake penises. Life is weird. I just want a movie that can unite the genitalia under one film equally, and not be stingy on either side.

Wayons still put a lot of effort into this movie, although some of the physical comedy aspects were now given to other cast members. I think this film would have benefited by cutting out Crockett’s role completely, along with Zigrino. Their jokes were the bottom of the very full barrel and went on for too long.

The funniest thing? This parody actually has a better ending. It doesn’t end on a forced cliff hanger. It completes a story and doesn’t blue ball the audience. Fuck you, Fifty Shades of Grey.

The Wedding Ringer seems to fail at the most basic level, having an interesting title. A lot of movies begin with “The Wedding” and end with some noun. Ringer is really only associated with The Ringer and that is a weird movie to be kind of associated with. Or it might make it sound like a shitty horror, if you think about it hard enough.

Oh well. I will note that Sony Pictures really wanted people to see this film a head of time. I think I could have first gone to a screening in October or so. And then roughly 2 a week until it finally came out (exaggeration, but barely). I am normally a bit more weary about films that show too many screenings, because I think they don’t think they will be successful without a lot of positive word of mouth. Like, a lot a lot. And that means it is probably shit.

Not that I am judging it or anything. But Kevin Hart has been on a downward spiral in terms of film quality, with me hating the last few of his movies outside of About Last Night. But hey, despite all these negatives maybe I will be surprised.

This movie probably will taste better with copious amounts of alcohol.

Doug Harris (Josh Gad) is super rich. Like, parents died, took over their business, gained a lot of wealth, and makes a lot of income. He is also kind of fat and awkward and has no friends. But when the daughter of one of his clients suddenly gets interested in him and finds him interesting, he runs with it. Now he is marrying Gretchen (Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting) and it is expensive. She wants everything and he agrees, this includes a big bridal party. Now ten days away, all she knows about the bridal party is their names, weird things about them, but no pictures and none of them around. Shit.

So Doug finds out about Jimmy (Kevin Hart), who runs a Best Man for hire business. With the time line and the number of people needed, Doug needs The Golden Tux package, costing him another $50k, but he is doing it because he totally knows lying is the best option to make his soon to be wife happy. Inventing fake friends ftw. He just stills has to impress her much smarter sister (Olivia Thirlby) and angry dad (Ken Howard).

And we also have the 7 hired groomsmen. Jorge Garcia, Affion Crockett, Dan Gill, Corey Holcomb, Colin Kane, Alan Ritchson, and Aaron Takahashi. Also Ignacio Serricchio as a gay Hispanic wedding planer. And Jenifer Lewis as Hart’s assistant and advice giver. I think I got every one in there.

The most eclectic group of friends since All In The Family. Errr.

One of the most annoying parts of this movie is it just is an impossible service to imagine. Doug has to pay $50,000 for the service he offers, and the only other price we see is about $20,000. Some people apparently have a lot of money on the side that their soon to be spouse know absolutely nothing about. So it is not only a huge breach of trust, spending that much extra before you share things, but the other breach of trust about lying about someone in your life. It is crazy.

So after I get over that fact, there are quite a few amusing moments in the movie. I could tell how the whole thing would end after about 20 minutes, so they never really stray off of the beaten path. That is a bit disappointing.

The cast of extra characters was entertaining. Kevin Hart was his usual self. Gad was never really anything funnier than “That fat guy”, so his character needed a lot of work. They gave me a Lost joke, which is all I really cared for.

The Wedding Ringer is okay, and not the giant shit show I thought it would be. After all, Kevin Hart’s last January movie was Ride Along which failed to live up to its potential.

Here is a fun fact! At the current theater I go to see movies, there are only two franchises that have fit a very specific criteria. That criteria is me seeing the first movie and its sequel in the same theater. The first time it happened was with the first two hobbit movies, but it is debatable that it counts given LOTR.

The other two, obviously, are A Haunted House and A Haunted House 2.

Guess this franchise has a special little place in my heart. Awww.

Oh, it also has Gabriel Iglesias. Way better than Nick Swardson.

This movie takes place immediately after the first one. Basically, it quickly deals with Kisha (Essence Atkins) then moves to a year later. Malcolm (Marlon Wayans) is now dating a white woman (Jaime Pressly) who has kids (Ashley Rickards, Steele Stebbins) and about to move into a new place with her.

Guess what? Fucked up shit starts happening again. There is a doll. There is a strange box. There are invisible friends. Shit is haunted again.

Of course no one believes him. Even his past friends Father Williams (Cedric the Entertainer) and cousin Ray Ray (Affion Crockett) seem unwilling to help.

Also staring Missi Pyle and Hayes MacArthur as a priest and a psychic couple, and Rick Overton as a professor of demonology.

This is not the first nor the second time in movies he has done a scene like this in a movie.

This could be the first time I saw a horror spoof of this nature and actually saw everything it parodied. The Possession, Sinister, Paranormal Activity, The Conjuring, some Insidious. Maybe more!

Look, this movie isn’t Oscar gold. It also isn’t perfect. But it has a lot of funny moments in it regardless. Shit, it also had some scary scenes in it. I didn’t expect everything that happened.

Really, Marlon Wayans puts a lot of his self into these movies. He actually has to do a lot of physical stuff in some of it. Sure, parts of it are just gross overexaggerated/long/ridiculous sex scenes. But he definitely gives it his all, leaving nothing on the table. Not everything works. No, it feels about 50-50 to me. But the things that did work had me laughing like crazy.

It has its share of poop jokes, of course. But not everything is a bad poop joke.

This movie, like its predecessor, is still miles ahead of the last few Scary Movie movies. In terms of Horror spoofs, it isn’t on a tier similar to something like Tucker and Dale VS Evil, but it has its niche and it is pretty good at filling that niche.