Tag: Cecily Strong

Aw yeah, the most patriotic time of the year, where we all get our flags out and scream our dominance at flexibility and water sports and ignore the many sports where we never win. That’s right. Olympics time.

Now, The Bronze came out much earlier in the year, but I knew I had to wait until it was appropriate to review it. Right in the smack damn middle-ish of the Olympics, when we have maybe finished getting out gold medals in gymnastics.

And even more exciting is that The Bronze stars Bernadette from The Big Bang Theory, which of course you would only recognize her from. Outside of some cartoon voice work, I have never seen her in anything else. Oh wait, she was Woman Jogger Yelling at Sydney in I Love You, Man, of course!

This means that The Bronze is her second most famous role now! Too bad it wasn’t third! –

Hope Annabelle Greggory (Melissa Rauch) gave America a lot of Hope and a lot of Greggory. You see, she went to compete in the Olympics as a teenager, their star gymnast, from Amherst, Ohio. And then she got injured during a routine. But you know what she did? She did her next set anyways on the uneven bars, with a hurt ankle and received enough points to still place third. She was everywhere and everyone loved her.

But that was her only time in the big leagues. Now, twenty years later or so, she is still living with her dad (Gary Cole), still wearing her athletic gear and medal, and doing jack shit with her life. She has rode her fame into free food at a local Sbarro and a special parking spot down town, but other than that, no one cares anymore. And then her old coach (Dale Raoul) commits suicide.

Well, according to a letter she sent Hope before ending it all, the coach had been training the young Maggie Townsend (Haley Lu Richardson), completely free, because her mom (Cecily Strong) is single and working alone, struggling to survive. Maggie has a lot of talent and could win it all, and yes, she is from their same small town! Hope doesn’t want Maggie to succeed, because if Maggie does better, the town will forget all about Hope and her gravy train will end. In the letter, it is said that Hope will receive $500,000 if she continues to coach Maggie and get her as far as she can.

Cha-fucking-ching.

Also starring Thomas Middleditch as the local gym owner, shy and shit, and Sebastian Stan as a male gymnast from the same games who actually placed first in his categories.

And let’s be honest, gold comes with a fat cash prize as well.

This is technically the best acting I have seen from Rauch. Of course, her only other character as nerdy occasionally angry hot girl on TBBT doesn’t have a lot of acting involved. Her character was consistent, angry, foul and angry at the world. She was angry for messing up her moment and never getting another moment later (growing boobs messed up her balance and she couldn’t re-qualify). Her character made sense as did most of her actions.

I also enjoyed Middleditch and Richardson in this movie. Middleditch was still playing his nervous self, but he had a much nicer character than normal. Richardson had that teenage girl idol hype going well for her, emotions all over the place, and she looked the part.

Finally, I also feel like I should highlight the scene that gave it the Graphic Nudity part of its rating. It was longer than I expected and all sorts of hilarious (it involved two gymnasts after all!), and yes, body doubles were used.

But throughout the movie I couldn’t help but feel it was lacking. The characters, although consistent, got a little bit dull. We had what seemed like a training montage that lasted forever. It just seems like something that should have had a lot more Olympics and a lot less moping to make a more exciting film overall. But it dragged in areas, and the constant back and forth of the lead definitely got on the nerves.

Good news is, it is definitely entertaining for at least one watch, and the ending doesn’t suck. I said, the ending. Doesn’t. Suck.

Almost every single introduction joke I could think of for The Boss was incredibly lame. There are way too many Boss-based pop culture references that every single one became cringey at just the thought of them. I don’t think there is a single good joke or reference I can make without the readers closing their browser in anger.

If Kelsey Grammer and Tony Danza were locked in a room all night, even they couldn’t come up with something clever to make a chuckle.

Although they would have made something at least more appealing than this turd.

Michelle Darnell (Melissa McCarthy) was an orphan kid and no one wanted her. She got returned a lot. Must be too much spunk. But now, as an adult, she is wickedly rich and famous. I can’t actually tell you what she does, but she is famous and sells stuff. She also sells her image, women love her, she is a rock star and she knows how to put on a show.

But then she gets arrested. For insider trading crap, even though everybody does it. But she is rich so she doesn’t have to go to jail for years, just has to post a bond and honestly, I think everyone forgets about it. Claire (Kristen Bell) doesn’t forget though. She was her assistant for years and never got the raises she deserved as a single mom. With the arrest she had to find a new job and quick. And now Michelle is showing up to sleep on her couch.

Long story short, the daughter, Rachel (Ella Anderson), is in an off shoot girl scouts group. Michelle sees how much they make selling cookies, but dislikes that the girls don’t make anything out of it. So she makes her own alternative off shoot girl scout group, but this time the girls can get commission on their pastry sales and Michelle can also make a lot of money. Hooray money!

Also conflict about other business people, Michelle being not super nice, and girls beating up other girls in the streets. Starring Peter Dinklage, Tyler Labine, Kathy Bates, Cecily Strong, Kristen Schaal, and Eva Peterson as a tall teenage girl.

Because all out brawls make the best scenes in comedies.

I really need to harp on this. In my eyes, a comedy reaches the lowest levels of its potential if it resorts to an all out brawl between parts of the cast. It was the conclusion of Grown Ups 2, and the most advertised portion of The Boss. As you can see, it is hilarious because there are young teenage girls in the fray, along with overly concerned mom, all dressed super funny. Ha ha ha!

Anyways, outside of that scene there is little else I remember about the film. Wait, I remember Melissa McCarthy making fun of Kristen Bell’s boobs for a long time. And I remember never laughing.

A comedy without laughter is like torture without pain. Wait, no, it actually IS torture and very painful. Sorry, messed that up. The Boss offers nothing new to the movie experience, not even the comedy movie experience. It is a complete waste of space. Thank goodness Ghostbusters also came out this year and was at least mediocre, or else McCarthy would have had her worst year since starting this recent trend.

Don’t watch The Boss. After reading this review, don’t remember anything except for the last line. Just a disappointment all around.

Let’s get one thing straight. No one will take this review seriously. No one can take any review for Ghostbusters seriously. For the last 1-2 years, this film has been dragged through the mud of the internet. From director, to casting choices, to posters, to trailers. Everything has been heavily scrutinized and a lot of it met with extreme backlash.

Like it or not, biases exist in so many forms they are possible to escape. Even when I try and watch a movie by ignoring the trailers, ignoring plot summaries and more, I am still slightly affected by it by recognizing people in the cast and comparing it to their own past work. And that is a subtle bias. When you hear nothing but negative things about something for a long time it will take a toll on you.

What I am NOT saying is that the toll will be the same way to everyone. But extremes will happen and are bound to happen. People very well may end up actually hating this movie, but if they dislike it, they will be called sexist or misogynists or probably Moonboy for all I know. If you love the film, you will be seen as maybe some social justice warrior, liking it to high levels just as a counter to the hate. And both of these things are potentially true. Some people hate it for sexism, some people love it to counter the sexism. But also some people just won’t like it and some people will love it regardless of either.

This intro I wrote before seeing the review, but of course you can already see my rating. So when I say no one will take this seriously, I just mean that it is impossible for anything anyone says about this film to be taken with a grain of salt, outside of actual personal experiences and opinions.

Am I sexist if I make my first picture of just him with no one else?

The year is current year, and Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) is up for tenure at Columbia university now for some hardcore physics stuff. She has to be careful to not embarrass the university in any way. So when Ed Mulgrave (Ed Begley Jr.) pops up to talk about a book she wrote a long time ago about Ghosts, things get awkward. Her co-author, Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy) is working at much lesser university on paranormal related sciences and she put their book on Amazon to make some extra income. She is now working with an engineer, Jillian Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon) and they are developing some sweet new technology.

Once they find out that Mulgrave runs an old museum/house with a potential ghost, they hop over to find out, and yep, there is a ghost! Their video goes viral on YouTube, Erin loses her job and they decide to start researching these ghosts full time. They soon meet another scarier ghost in the Subway, where they also meet Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones). Patty isn’t a scientist, but she offers them a vehicle so they let her join the train. They also get a receptionist, Kevin (Chris Hemsworth), who is really damn stupid but good looking and the only one to apply.

Long story short, this asshole unsocial dude, Rowan North (Neil Casey), is using his own devices to ramp up paranormal activity in the area, hoping to unleash a huge amount of ghosts to begin the apocalypse. Fun!

Also featuring Andy Garcia as the Mayor of NYC and Cecily Strong as his assistant, Michael Kenneth Williams and Matt Walsh as members of Homeland Security, Zach Woods as a tour guide, Karan Soni as a Chinese food delivery man, and all* of the original Ghostbusters cast as cameos. The biggest cameo is Bill Murray as a ghost skeptic.

”
Ah there they are, not crossing streams and all.

Here’s some background. I did not grow up with the Ghostbusters movie in my life. I didn’t see the first film in its entirety until just a few weeks ago. I knew what happened in it roughly, I knew quotes, I saw bits and pieces, and I of course knew the song, but I never really saw it. Similarly, I still have never seen Ghostbusters II, only because I didn’t own it to watch it. So it isn’t something that helped define my childhood full of nostalgia.

Coming from that background, thinking the original Ghostbusters movie was only okay, I also have to say the same about the sequel. Both are comedies and meant to be comedic in nature, but rarely did I find myself laughing. Maybe some smiles or cute moments and the surprise scare, but rarely a true laugh out of loud. But this isn’t a review of the old one, this is a review of the new film. Wiig and McCarthy were both playing relatively un-funny characters. That is because they had to be serious to really sell their passion. Their characters had a few jokes that were revisited and some slapstick but that is about it.

Jones and McKinnon were fine in their roles and a bit more interesting. They were the only characters that actually felt like they had personality and were generally consistent with those personalities. I can see why people find McKinnon’s character the funniest because, well, Wiig and McCarthy are just so drag in comparison. They should have had one less serious character and one more unique but not identical to McKinnon for more actual laughs. She did make me laugh a few times, but Hemsworth’s character did make me laugh the most. They made him stupid arm candy, a nice gender reversal, and they went so extreme with it that it was hard not to chuckle.

Outside of those three characters though the film just wasn’t that funny. Mostly slapstick and chaos.

And now here is a ghost, now everyone is represented equally!

The film had a lot of wasted potential. They had Walsh and Williams as agents and they collectively maybe had three lines, they were no-name characters in the end and had no reason to be played by those actors. The cameos from the original cast were okay, but Murray was absolutely dreadful. He wasn’t even acting as a character in this film despite having multiple scenes. He came across as a guy bored out of his mind who was just getting a small pay check. It was embarrassingly bad.

The film was all over with its science as well. Like the original, they would say a lot of jargon that sounded cool but meant nothing out to anyone listening. Their stream weapons were inconsistent with how they worked, making the long final fight scene sort of odd.

And yes, the film was too meta about the message they wanted to send. They had to turn it into movie directly against the online (sexist?) haters as a sly joke. Years later they won’t make as much sense along with the other numerous pop culture references. But commenting about the hateful things people say on YouTube and the internet just took me out of the movie as the film collectively winked its entire screen at me.

But what do I know. I am a guy who gave this an average film. I have probably been biased on my own thanks to everything that has happened. Maybe I am just too afraid to give this a really positive or negative review, so I go into neutral obscurity hoping to maintain some level of unbias but still directly being influenced quite heavily. We will never know and this film or future films in the franchise will never be able to escape it.

* – No not Rick Moranis and of course not Harold Ramis.