Day: December 12, 2016

Storks came out in September of this year and as far as I can tell was immediately forgotten. The theme was original, this year was flooded with animal animate films, and I only remembered it existed thanks to it coming out on DVD in early December. Feels fast, just 2 and a half months, which means they wanted to rush it to attempt to get some holiday sale loving.

I am only watching it to be a competionist, with no actual knowledge of the plot before hand or even how it did in theaters. I literally just forgot it existed. And it is about birds, babies, and I dunno, adults?

There is an adult! Or at least a teenager.

Storks used to deliver babies, everyone knows that right? But they got out of that game, and now they just deliver packages under the name cornerstore.com! And business is successful. They stopped delivering babies because one stork, Jasper (Danny Trejo), went insane with a baby, breaking her beacon (so they couldn’t find out where she belonged), and sort of ruining their reputation. Once again, they just deliver packages now, and that baby, Tulip (Katie Crown) has just been awkwardly growing up in their work place.

Junior (Andy Samberg) is one of their best delivery storks and has just completed his 1,000,000th package. So the boss, Hunter (Kelsey Grammer), calls him up to tell him the news. Hunter is getting promoted, and Junior will take his place as the boss, but only if Junior will “fire” Tulip from their warehouse. She has turned 18 today, so she is no longer their responsibility. She has been causing problems though, and bringing down profits, so she has to go.

But Junior can’t fire her, so he puts her in a room alone, the letter division, to process incoming mail. This isn’t in use anymore, it was for baby requests. But one kid, Nate (Anton Starkman), wants a baby brother with ninja skills, and his parents (Ty Burrell, Jennifer Aniston) don’t want one really. Tulip receives the letter, processes it, and boom, a baby is created, and now there is a big problem.

Now Junior has new problems. He has to deliver the baby so the big bosses don’t see it, while hiding Tulip and taking her to the planet below. But his wing is broken and he can’t fly. Shit. What’s this? An adventure in the making?

Also featuring Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Stephen Kramer Glickman, and Christopher Nicholas Smith.

Some very strange scenes also with the baby and other animals.

Storks basically went how I expected. Literally almost every single element. Sure, you wouldn’t know every detail about why wolves are involved. But the sorts of struggles involved in getting the baby to its home, who the bad people are, and how the film will probably end? Yeah, entirely as expected.

In the entirety of the film, I really only enjoyed two moments. The absurdity of the wolf pack working together, and the “silent fight” near the end in order to ensure that the baby would stay asleep. Those few moment save the movie from the zero rating, because everything else just felt dull, unfunny, and unoriginal. Another positive note from this film is that not every major role was from a famous celebrity, but actually voice actors. That is rarer nowadays, so it get a few props for that.

Not even my current love of babies could make me enjoy this film. And practically every damn movie with a baby (especially a girl) can instantly affect my emotions. Let that be a lesson to you films, make them good first, then add in the kid for me to care. I’m looking at you, The Boss Baby.

Biographies are weird. They should generally be saved for people who have changed the world or done great things in their life. But what about those great people who people don’t know about? Those are the really important biographies that we are missing and we don’t know we are missing. We don’t need another Biographical film about Steve Jobs now, for instance. And we didn’t know we needed a biographical musical on Alexander Hamilton.

And that is where Hidden Figures comes in. Celebrating the lives of a few individuals who you didn’t know you should know.

And with this regular introduction basically done, I will note this is the second year in a row with a very Pro-NASA movie, along with last years The Martian.

They wouldn’t be legally allowed to watch The Martian on a TV that small. It just wouldn’t be right.

Hidden Figures is about three women, all working for NASA at the Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. Katherine Goble (Taraji P. Henson) is our lead, a brilliant mathematician since she was a kid but held back by her gender and skin color. There is also Mary Johnson (Janelle Monáe), another brilliant mind. Both of them are Computers, people who check the math and solve longer problems for the “Real engineers” and workers at NASA, basically a bunch of white men.

There is also Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer), a computer herself, but basically running the entire colored department without getting the job title of supervisor. Three women, all hoping to do something better.

Katherine gets a temporary assignment to be a computer for the Space Task Group, a big room full of white male engineers trying to figure out how to predict where their capsules will land AND how to get their rocket out of orbit to get their astronaut at a predicted landing. It is led by Al Harrison (Kevin Costner) who barely has time for the head engineer (Jim Parsons), let alone a colored women. Spoiler, she ends up doing the most important math.

Mary faces trying to apply to become a real engineer, but requiring to take classes offered only at an all male school, so she has to go to courts to fight for the right to take the classes. And she has a husband (Aldis Hodge) who doesn’t always agree with the fights she chooses.

And Dorothy, she really wants to be a supervisor, but her actual boss (Kirsten Dunst) continues to seemingly thwart her on every turn. Dorothy is also worried about their whole division being canned when the IBM comes online and does the computing for them. So she sets out to learn Fortran and become an IBM operator.

Also featuring Mahershala Ali as a love interest to Katherine and Glen Powell is John Glenn. Don’t get confused.

I couldn’t handle Chad Radwell from Scream Queens playing a serious role.

Hidden Figures could be renamed “That’s Just The Way Things Are: The Movie” and really drive the same point home. I lost track of how many times a white OR black character uttered something similar but it was definitely more than five times. They wanted to make sure you know these women were facing struggles, there were many opportunities against them, and it took a long, long time in the movie before they started to get any wins.

It could be coming from a state of modern day feelings, but it really dragged down the film in my mind. Making a few quick references would have been fine. But it just felt like it was piling on without letting you escape, which may have been the point, to give that experience. It just made for a less enjoyable film.

Focusing on more than just Katherine was a good idea, or else the film would have felt very repetitive. The other two plot lines gave a nice break to that, giving us something different to focus on to keep the movie from staying stagnant. Henson truly does change during in her role, playing something completely off character for her. She does a great job, but at the same time, she does a few stereotypical nerd things too many times. Including pressing her glasses back up her nose after doing something particularly impressive math wise, this happens again, at least three times.

Hidden Figures tells an important story. It highlights three women that should be known. But it gets bogged down in other messes without truly ever reaching any full potential.