Tag: Comedy

A couple years ago, I saw an ad for 7 Days in Hell while using HBO and I was instantly drawn in. I had to watch that movie RIGHT AWAY and review it ASAP. It looked magicial, and really, it was.

I didn’t know it was so short, only 40 minutes. I didn’t know it was to poke fun at the ESPN documentary series. But I went in, it was short, but I still called it a film and had an okay review.

And now years later, I saw an ad for Tour De Pharmacy. This time I was older, a bit wiser, a bit smarter, and a bit less repetitive. I knew what I was getting in to, and thus I was excited. Why can’t lightning hit twice?

And look, we have more athletes now than a single tennis match!

Tour De Pharmacy tells the story of the 1982 Tour De France, and all of the bizarre happenings that occurred during the race. Including the first time that someone died on the race!

Due to plot reasons, a lot of bicyclists in the race ended up getting eliminated really early on, as it turned out they paid bribes in order to avoid being drug tested. Like, a lot, a lot. As in, only five bikers remained.

We had Slim Robinson (Daveed Diggs / Danny Glover), nephew of Jackie Robinson, who wanted to be the first black athlete in some sport, so he was the first black athlete to compete in the Tour De France! There was Adriana Baton (Freddie Highmore / Julia Ormond), the first woman to compete in the race, but no one knew it at the time, as she pretended to be a man in order to qualify. There is also Marty Hass (Andy Samberg / Jeff Goldbloom), who is actually the first African to compete in the race. Yes he is white, and was an aristocrat, and it pisses off a lot of people that he has taken that first away.

The other two members of the pack were Juju Pepe (Orlando Bloom), a native Frenchman and actual famous bike rider, and Gustav Ditters (John Cena / Dolph Lundgren), a giant muscle man who didn’t fit the normal physiques that one would expect from a bicyclist. Along for the ride is Rex Honeycut (James Marsden), a journalist who will bike alongside the pack, in order to give in person interviews as the race happens!

This also features a slew of other actors, some playing themselves, to tell the story of the 1982 Tour De France: Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Kevin Bacon, Lance Armstrong, Maya Rudolph, Mike Tyson, Will Forte, and narrated by Jon Hamm.

The more arm muscles have, the faster you go on a bike. It’s fucking science!

If you liked 7 Days in Hell, you will like this movie! If you didn’t, you won’t. Pretty simple. Of course, a whole mess of you might not have seen the first one, so I still have to talk.

Honestly, this is just an absurd parody movie, I love it. It is short, so some of their jokes and moments don’t ever get to go into depth, and that is probably where it excels. After all, there is only so much stupid stuff they can throw in it before a viewer might get tired of it all. I think it was just the right length and zany to amuse the shit out of me, possible amuse the shit out of me over multiple viewings.

Now, despite that? Yeah, there are still some dull parts as well. The film even comments on it, as there were long boring stretches in the actual race that caused viewership to drop tremendously, in the fictional recounting. Making it meta and commenting on the progressiveness however, still didn’t do it for me.

Also, well fucking done Lance Armstrong. His role as hidden informant was a joke that just kept on giving, it surprisingly never got stale. All of the cameos were pretty funny.

Tour De Pharmacy is a relatively smart and quick laugh thrill ride, with only a few moments of slowed traffic to catch your breath.

Third times the charm?

Well, that is a weird phrase to apply to this situation. But it is one I have heard quite a lot.

After all, this is our third Spider-Man actor in 18 years. The problem with that phrase is that it implies the other times were not charming. But damn it, most people still talk highly about Spider-Man 1 and Spider-Man 2, especially the sequel. Just because the third one was a dud doesn’t taint the whole.

And for The Amazing Spider-Man? Shit, I liked the first one, and the sequel was disappointing, but Andrew Garfield was still pretty good as a Spider-Man.

People have just really wanted Spider-Man to go back under some amount of control to Marvel, so that we can see him interact with other heroes. Which is fair. But I want Spider-Man: Homecoming to be just a great movie on its own right, not flashy with in universe references.

I also hope this Spider-Man can just hold everything together.

This film begins with the events of Captain America: Civil War, from Peter Parker’s (Tom Holland) perspective. To see how he got to Europe, his sweet suit, and his life afterwards. His life is to be put on hold, waiting for a new “assignment” from Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), with Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) as his go to man to report any issues or problems.

And this keeps Peter busy. He patrols the streets of Queens in the afternoon/evenings after school, under the guise of a Stark Internship, so that his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) doesn’t get too concerned. This does put a strain on his social life however. He cancels most of his extracurricular activites, hangs out with his best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) less, and he is even about to miss parts of the Academic Decathlon! Besides being smart and enjoying it, it annoys him more because it is run by Liz (Laura Harrier). But don’t worry, Flash Thompson (Tony Revolori) still picks on him.

Speaking of busy, eventually he runs into some thugs who are selling alien technology weapons they made! Turns out when NYC was fucked over by aliens those 8 years ago, a lot of alien tech was lying about the city. Adrian Toomes (Michael Keaton) was in the salvage business, but Tony Stark in an effort to help the city made his own special Damage Control division that won a government contract to clean up any superhero mess. This puts Toomes out of business and enraged about the rich getting richer. So he decides to keep some of the tech, and with his small band of workers and tinkerer friend Phineas Mason (Michael Chernus), they decide to take salvage and turn it into cash in the form of new, high tech weapons. Hooray for capitalism!

Spider-Man cannot let this happen on his streets, as innocents will get hurt, and apparently this is not a problem that the avengers have to worry about. Oh well, I am sure he can handle some thugs and alien weapon technology and gear no sweat!

Also, unsurprisingly, starring a whole lot of other people! We got a whole lot of classmates (Zendaya, Abraham Attah, Angourie Rice, Tiffany Espensen, Michael Barbieri, Jorge Lendeborg Jr.), Thugs (Bokeem Woodbine, Logan Marshall-Green, Michael Mando), and others (Donald Glover, Kenneth Choi, Hannibal Buress, Martin Starr, Jennifer Connelly).

If you think that list is big, wait til you see Keaton’s personal trainer list!

There are a lot of praises I could sing for Spider-Man, and a lot of them come from story and plot decisions. It isn’t an origin story, because he already exists and we already know it. It does not mean that we don’t get Spider-Man doing things for the first time.

For instance, his first real villain in The Vulture, outside of just petty criminal stuff. We find out that he is not the wall crawler swinging through Manhattan like previous films, but mostly in the much smaller building complexes of Queens. So we have his first time at extreme heights, and we get to see how he handles fighting crime in a suburb, without the ability to swing around with ease.

Speaking of villains, they knocked it out of the park with The Vulture. We get a backstory for Toomes, reasons for his life of crime, reasons for why he feels he is in the right, morally gray shit, we got it all. They gave us what we have been wanting, and it is an excellent villain.

Holland is still good as Spider-Man, but we already knew that from Civil War. The large swaths of side characters fill their niches and no one really feels wasted.

And finally this Spider-Man tries to be very different from the previous iterations. No Gwen Stacy or MJ right away to get you all romantically fluttered, we get LIZ. We get a diverse looking school. We get nerds and a neighborhood that feels like a goddamn neighborhood. And a lot of the characters are new just for this film, with plans to take this film in its own direction, regardless of comics. I give it props.

But strangely enough, I barely laughed in the film. I did a few times, but I was alone. The movie theater was silent, it was no where close to being as wise cracking as I’d imagine a Spider-Man movie to be. I also think it relied too heavily on Iron Man/Happy characters to make sure everyone knew it was fitting in.

And Spider-Man’s suit? Well, it was a bit annoying. Turns out it is super high tech, and most of the known Spider-Man powers aren’t actually his, but suit based. Like Spider-Senses. I am not sure what powers he actually got. Some super strength and acrobatics skills, with some sticking to walls?

It is a decent film, just again, not as great as I had hoped it would be.

Finally the talk of the summer is here. People have had 7/7/17 circled on their calendar, just waiting for the movie that everyone everywhere has wanted.

No not goddamn Spider-man. I’m talking about The Little Hours?

Oh you haven’t heard about The Little Hours? My bad! Surprisingly very little advertising, but it was directed by Jeff Baena who gave us Life After Beth. Which was decent, and also had very little advertising. Guess that is his indie theme.

Either way, the number of people you would recognize in this film is actually quite staggering, so that alone one would have warranted an advertising budget, but what do I know.

Oh, and I know every single girl in this picture too.

Picture this! A nice quaint nunnery, the medieval ages, pious and chaste women just doing their thing, trying to love Jesus.

This nunnery is run by Father Tommasso (John C. Reilly) and the head nun is Sister Marea (Molly Shannon). At this point, this nunnery might seem a bit more odd already.

Our main nuns that we are looking at are all relatively young and unsure about their lives. Sister Alessandra (Alison Brie) is just there temporarily, waiting for her father to set her up with a husband, and she does cross stitch to help make some cash for the convent. Sister Fernanda (Aubrey Plaza) is quick to temper and often misses events looking for animals that keep breaking out. Sister Genevra (Kate Micucci) wants to be a good nun, but is getting caught up in other nun-anigans and also questioning her sexuality.

And they are all mean to this one poor gardener. So eventually, he is fed up and leaves, putting the convent in a pickle. But no worries, a young chap Massetto (Dave Franco) is on the run from his kingdom, for being a little shithead, and he can take the place. He just has to pretend to be deaf and mute so he doesn’t get on the nerves of the nuns.

But he is young and cute and that causes even more issues.

Also starring Lauren Weedman, Nick Offerman, Jemima Kirke, Fred Armisen, and Adam Pally.

Yelling “Hey Fuckface!” at deaf people is the only way to know if they are really deaf.

I had no idea what to expect of this movie going into it. I wondered if it would be a serious film, with comedic actors, just to be weird. But as soon as Plaza started laying down the f-bombs, it became obvious that this was just going to be a very odd period piece film. I quickly then switched my mind to Your Highness, which was mostly improv and also quite strange.

And then something else happened. It got sexy. Not sexy like Natalie Portman in a medieval thong, but sexy erotic. Because those girls are young and curious, Franco is young and desperate, and there is a lot of sexual activity in the movie. Like, a whole lot. And the scenes aren’t super quick jokes, they kind of go on for a bit, and include sexy music.

What I am saying is, this movie sort of turns into a softcore porno. Or at least a skinamax-esque picture. And it came out of nowhere and kept happening. Add on the very naked ending bit, with lots of floppy bits, this is just a surprise from start to finish.

And most of the points come from being a surprise. I laughed a few times, but it was never a film that really captured my interest. It was also intentionally slow (and brooding?), but at least it is original. And for some people out there, this might be the type of film they have been waiting for, for a long time.

I didn’t know a whole lot about Okja going in, but I did see a few posters and just knew, just knew, I had to see it. Like, as soon as possible.

I also definitely thought it was a horror film, a foreign South Korean horror film. About a beast? I don’t know, the name and poster sort of scared me.

But then the advertisements got a bit more flashy, and I realized this was going to be a film bigger than itself. I also heard that it was directed by Joon-ho Bong, an established director who I have only seen one film of before, Snowpiercer. Yeah, I bet you saw Snowpiercer as well. One of the better indie “Have to see this movie!” campaigns over the last few years.

And this time, his film is right away on Netflix, allowing that same sort of campaign to happen, but for even more people.

But come on, we all came for the gratuitous sexual overtones.

Lucy Mirando (Tilda Swinton), new CEO of Mirando Corporation, has taken over from her father, a controversial man. It is a meat factory, and she is introducing a new superpig that they have bred/discovered/something like that. And over 20 of these pigs are being sent around the world to various farms, to see who could raise the biggest and best super pig in 10 years time, with the winner being crowned in a giant event.

And now, ten years later, we get to meet Okja, a superpig, living in the mountains of South Korea. Okja is being raised my Mija (Seo-Hyun Ahn) and her grandfather (Hee-Bong Byun) alone and really don’t want to let Okja go. But they come, they love Okja, and take him away. They even brought Johnny Wilcox (Jake Gyllenhaal), famed TV animal show guy, but that doesn’t soften the blow.

So despite their best attempts, Okja is still taken, so Mija decides to chase after them. Fuck the corporate people taking her friend over the last decade. It turns out she isn’t the only one after Okja either. So is the Animal Liberation Front, an animal rights group, who apparently tries to practice non violent behavior. They want to free Okja and bring down Mirando Corp.

Oh joy, caught between animal rights groups and a meat company, Mija just wants to be alone and happy with her family and friend.

Also starring Giancarlo Esposito, Paula Dano, Steven Yeun, Shirley Henderson, Daniel Henshall, Lily Collins, and Devon Bostick.

I’m glad they told me this was a pig, because if not, I would have assumed…well, lets go with hippo dog.

Okja, for a lack of better words, is an experience. The very first scene is so bright, vivid, and Tilda Swinton, that you are immediately wondering just what sort of film you have gotten yourself into. But it will drive your curiosity and you will find yourself needing to sit through to see where the fuck it is going.

And then after the opening, we get quaint wilderness, giant pigs, and subtitles, so immediately a lot of people may be turned off. A whole lot of this film is subtitles, along with English language, because it is set in the real world and it wants to be authentic. Also because the director is of course Joon-ho Bong and he probably wants to represent his country in the movies he is making.

The characters in Okja, besides Mija and her family, are downright zany. They go to the extreme and bring characters outside of their normal roles. Gyllenhaal is super weird and has a higher pitched voice, it is a bit bizarre to imagine him the star of a successful animal reality show. Like a gone stupid version of Steve Irwin maybe. And Dano? He normally plays the eccentric strange character, but compared to other members, his Animal Liberation Front frontman seemed a bit…ordinary. A guy who would go to great lengths to get what he wants, sure, but relatively normal.

The CGI for the beast was pretty good, but it was still pretty awkward at times. Watching random characters badly interact with Okja as it is stomping and running around leaves a lot of room for error. But it never took me out of the experience.

Okja is a dark film at times, a light film at other times, and balls to the wall in a few other parts. It is probably one of the best Netflix Original films ever made, it just doesn’t feel like one of the best films I have ever seen. But a very strong film regardless and one that a lot of different ages and groups would enjoy.

Oh my damn. Here we go. A continuation of a bad franchise, hitting its trilogy mark after an equally bad spinoff. Does that sound familiar? This summer is Deja Vu-ing.

I will be honest when I went in with the lowest of expectations with Despicable Me 3. I mean, how could it get worse? It really couldn’t. It would just be more of the same, probably.

But it was announced over a year ago that Trey Parker, of BASEketball, Cannibal! The Musical, and yes, South Park fame would be voicing the villain. Parker! Crude humorist! Apparently it is something a lot of R rated people do, voice a kids movie so that their kids can finally see something that they have done.

At first I thought it was just another rando-celebrity signing instead of a nice voice actor. But then I remembered that Parker is a voice actor, he voices a shit ton of characters. So it won’t just be his regular talking voice, but an actual character! Hooray!

And that character ends up sounding up mostly like Randy Marsh.

And if you look closely, it should look a bit like a Randy too.

For whatever reason, this franchise still exists with the title of Despicable Me, because as we all know, Gru (Steve Carell) is now a “good guy” taking care of his girls and his wife, Lucy (Kristen Wiig), who needs no taking care of. They are both members of the Anti-Villain League, and you know, trying to stop the bad guys.

After a failed encounter with Balthazar Bratt (Trey Parker), an 80’s kid TV star whose show was cancelled due to puberty, and now world villain playing his character as an adult and relying on 80’s themed reference weapons, Gru and Lucy are fired from the AVL! Boo new director (Jenny Slate).

Sad times, being fired and jobless. But he promises to not resort back to villainy, for his girls (Miranda Cosgrove, Dana Gaier, Nev Scharrel. Note: the last one is new, Agnes used to be Elsie Fisher but I guess she got too old). Also, hey look at the timing, he gets a notice that his long lost twin brother is looking for him. Apparently his parents got divorced when they were babies and they decided to break up the twins. The fuck, right?

Blah blah blah, his brother is Dru (Steve Carell), super rich and lives in a land that is like Denmark, or Northern Europe. It is time for Gru to learn about the family business…being a bad guy! His dad was a famous bad guy, and now Dru wants Gru to teach him how to be bad. Oh no.

Also featuring the voices of Steve Coogan, Julie Andrews, and Adrian Ciscato.

Don’t worry, Dru also speaks in a high pitched voice to help tell them apart.

Despicable Me 3 is basically as bad as I had imagined, but not worse. For those keeping track, I am saying that Despicable Me 3 is a better movie than Cars 3. It had issues, but not as many. It had some better moments, but not too many.

It is another franchise that decides to keep adding permanent characters to keep things interesting, instead of just making an interesting story with the characters we have. Last one we got Lucy, now we have a now twin brother Dru. However, having Gru’s father being a very famous villain/criminal who was super successful, is shit. They show photos of him in the new lair, and yes, he looks like Gru. So somehow Gru, master villain himself, has never heard of another bad guy who is older than him but looks almost identical? Unheard of. It is such a cheap cop out to introduce sudden new family members, and quite lazy.

Speaking of characters, there are too many and therefore not enough plot for all of them. Like poor Edith, I think that is the middle kid. She just exists in this film. She has a handful of lines, but doesn’t have her own story like the other two girls. Their stories Margo and Agnes, are incredibly minor though and just feel like filler because of too many characters.

The movie has the minions leave Gru, because they need to be bad things and need a villain, but he doesn’t want to. Hooray less minions right? Nope. Two of them stay behind so we get to have them with Gru still, and we get to see their minion adventures as they wander the town and prison.

I guess I don’t have a lot more else to say. With Despicable Me 3, you get a lot more of the same. The plot is weak, the sideplots are weak, some catchphrases to get people quoting the film, the animation is kind of shit (where the characters are all extremes, like too thin, too fat, etc), but that has been the norm. Just another bad animated film in the year with a lot of bad animated films.

The Last Word has a relatively pretty poster to look at. It conjures up specific colors, radio, and of course music. But at the same time, it makes me think of the SNL sketch for Schweddy Balls, poking fun of NPR level talk radio.

It also makes me think of The L Word, which is unfortunately a show I don’t have any references to outside of the knowledge is about lesbians. Which hey, maybe The Last Word is about lesbians too. After all, the cover is two women! Maybe they are lesbians!

What I am saying is, I think this movie will be two hours long, about lesbians on NPR talking about balls.

There is a very high chance I am disappointed with this level of thinking.

Harriett Lauler (Shirley MacLaine) is an old lady who knows what she wants. And she knows how to get what she wants. And she doesn’t trust a lot of people to do things correctly, so she often has to take over and do itself. That includes her own gardeners and cooks.

No one likes her. Her relationship with her daughter (Anne Heche) is nonexistent. Her relationship with her past coworkers is weak as well, despite making them and her very wealthy. But while reading an obituary of one of her old acquaintances, she is amazed at how wonderful that person seemed after death, while still being truthful.

So of course Harriett goes to the newspaper to find the obituary writer, Anne (Amanda Seyfried), to make sure she can write her obituary as well. Just like, early. To make sure it is good enough. Sane people totally do this all the time.

And with this task comes, eventually, a change to Harriett’s life for the better. It is never too late to become a decent human being.

Also starring AnnJewel Lee Dixon, Thomas Sadoski, and Philip Baker Hall.

No one expects them to rob a bank, that’s the point!

The Last Word gives us Shirley MacLaine playing a huge bitch, which on its own might be worth the price of admission. But if you only want to pay for movies that take you on emotional whirlwind and leave you breathless, then, well, you might want something more.

Because really, this is a safe and simple film. It goes into a deep topic, dealing with your own mortality and legacy at the ends of your life. But it is also a feel good film, watching this woman better her life finally and start to better the lives of those she decided to make close to her. This drags the film into really average territory.

In reality, what she does is probably really hard. But the opposition she is met with is very limited so the struggles don’t feel incredibly real. The point of the movie is to inspire those to change their lives for the better, to realize it is never too late, which is a great moral. However, this film just feels hokey with how it accomplishes those goals.

I will note, Seyfried’s speech did make me a little bit sad near the end. But not weepy, just sad. So it had a lot left to go to make me connect with it at a real emotional level.

When the first trailer for Monster Trucks hit the scene, the internet latched onto it and immediately made it feel bad for existing.

I was a bit excited. Yeah, it could have been a shitty kids movie. It could have been made as a concept just to sell toys. The fact that it came out in January could mean something.

But I was just impressed that they came up with an original concept. Good or bad, clearly this is them trying SOMETHING different. Something that could be cool. Something that could spawn them a television series and make them money.

Who knows, maybe this movie will be so good on a minor level that it will try to run for president one day. What do I know?

Oh no a selfie? Clearly this is a work of millennials and must be made downtrodden!

Tripp (Lucas Till) is your average high school kid. In that he is bad at school and works in a junkyard shop. Not entirely sure if that is average or not, but it has a high percentage of appearances in movies. His dad (Frank Whaley) is an oil field worker, this is North Dakota by the way, and his mom (Amy Ryan) is dating the town’s sheriff (Barry Pepper) who is always on his ass.

Well, while junking in his yard, a mysterious amphibian looking animal scares him! Ahh! Miles away, at a fracking site (and thus, evil), while drilling under a lake, and these creatures came out of the drill site and messed things up. This company, led by Reece Tenneson (Rob Lowe), is able to capture two of them, but one of them escapes, as we know. And there is also a geologist (Thomas Lennon).

Anyways, basically this alien or prehistoric lifeform that likes oil becomes friends with Tripp. And he merges into Tripp’s big truck that he is building that doesn’t have an engine. And through prehistoric lifeform magic, he lives happily around the truck and it is used to help them run from the bad guys. You know, typical stuff.

Also featuring Jane Levy, Danny Glover, and Holt McCallany.

How could they do that just go and have an alien orgy in a PG movie like this?

Monster Trucks, honestly, could have been a really fun film. But they took the creatures and did what? Well, hid them in a truck mostly. They made a truck behave cooler than normal and that on its own isn’t fun.

If that truck shot out laser beams or had rocket boosters? Maybe. But this thing could like, jump higher. Higher than normal trucks, because trucks on their own don’t jump without ramps.

And yeah, this film is just a complete drag. The conflict is all of the same, shady people trying to get their monster back, kid doesn’t want them to get the monster back. I am not saying he is in the wrong, it is just. Yeah, boring.

Monster Truck should have done something to really give more to the monsters in the movie. Slightly abnormal trucks are not worthy of their own movie.

Ooooh, this franchise though. I hate Cars. And I hate Cars 2 more. They are bad movies. Seriously. They are just cash grabs, they have bad morals, they are just complete shit.

And they are worse because they have led us to having Planes and Planes: Fire & Rescue, which incredibly end up being worse than the Cars movies.

So, I definitely have been not looking forward to Cars 3. A franchise that won’t go away, because their toys keep making them money. This movie on its own could be amazing. It could answer some needed questions and be decent on its own right. But nothing it could do could redeem the monstrosity that are those previous four films.

And here is a picture of two cars racing.

Cars racing go go go! Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) is still doing that racing thing, still kicking butt, winning most of the time, or at least the top 3 with some of his friends, life is easy and everyone else is a bitch in comparison. But then, there is a rookie in the race, he comes from behind and wins. His name is Jackson Storm (Armie Hammer). Why does he not pass everyone until the last possible moment? Why does no one notice a car with an extremely sleek new design? No idea, but he wins.

And then he keeps winning. Then the race cars start getting replaced by the newer models, because they are faster and better. You know, things that make sense. Lightning finds himself finishing the season in a giant crash and he goes back home to find himself. Can he get back into the grove, being the only “old” race car to join the series once again and prove himself? Maybe.

That would be the point of the movie though, I guess.

Returning for vocals in very limited roles include Larry the Cable Guy, Tony Shalhoub, Bonnie Hunt, John Ratzenberger, and Paul Newman (yes).

But also, you know, new characters. Sterling (Nathan Fillion), the new owner of Lightning’s main sponsor, Cruz Ramirez (Cristela Alonzo), Lightning’s new trainer to get him in shape for the new season, and Smokey (Chris Cooper), the vehicle that trained Doc, along with Lea DeLaria, Kerry Washington, Margo Martindale, and Bob Peterson.

And here is a picture of two cars racing.

Buckle up, buckaroos, because I don’t want to spend too much time talking about why Cars 3 is terrible, but in all likelihood, that is all I will get done.

One of the biggest problems of the Cars universe still glaringly exists for the third time. Where do these cars come from? Are they built in a factory? Is there car sex and car babies born? We know they can be worked on and improved, but only at some point. Given that Smokey’s mentor is still alive, cars also don’t seem to really know how to die outside of Doc, so it is sort of bizarre.

These questions matter because (gasp), newer better racing cars, based off of better designs, meant to go fast and handle corners better, now exist! Why? How? Are some car executives somewhere creating new life forms and taking over, and this is an issue? In Cars 2 the problem was Lemon cars, cars that were basically disabled characters, now it is new cars with a lot of bells and whistles. How dare they come into the world and excel at the one thing they were created to do.

Let me say it again. Our bad guys are new race cars, who are doing really good at racing cars, who were made and designed to race cars and only do that well. They are doing better than Lightning McQueen who, GUESS WHAT, was also designed and built to race cars really good, just decades before then. When Lightning McQueen joined the scene, was he made into a villain for taking out older models from the race world?

No, he was not. So why is it now an issue, when Lightning McQueen helped do the same exact shit in his youth? Because we have seen him in movies we are supposed to halt the natural evolution of a sport (that is designed by a magical car creator or other cars or something), so that he can do what? WIN BASICALLY EVERY TIME! There are 20-30 racers in these race, and these other poor cars apparently never win ever, and we don’t feel bad for them. We are just supposed to feel bad that Lightning is no longer the top of the line. It is not fair for just him, while everyone else just accepts it.

And here is a picture of two cars racing.

Okay, I had to do a whole section to explain why just the even plot and premise for this film is shit. So now let me talk about other issues.

There isn’t really anything in the way of suspense by the end. How it goes is pretty expected, assuming you are paying at least a little bit of attention. However, they decide to let the dumb thing happen by having one of those in film “rule book arguments” when it turns out that what they want to do isn’t against the rules. Usually this is fine, because it is alluded to somewhat earlier in the movie and at least can make sense. But given it is a fictional universe with whatever willy nilly rules, it comes off surprising. It SHOULD be against the rules, it just isn’t because it is convenient to the plot. And this happens twice within the same final race. Not because it is sensical, but because lazy writing.

Thankfully they learned something from Cars 2 and gave us way less Tow Mater, but it is crazy how much of the original characters are just bit parts. I wouldn’t have assumed that Sally is still Lightning’s love interest in this film if he didn’t just once call out that he loved her. They barely interacted and honestly I don’t see Lightning as still being faithful.

Poor Paul Newman died in 2008, and his voice is still being used in this series. Unused audio from the first film existed so they patched it together for some voice stuff in this film, and it just feels downright gross to do that.

Cars 3 is easily the worst Pixar film since Cars 2. Cars 3 does NOT make Cars 2 look like Cars, because Cars 2 is still the worst, beyond worst, Pixar movie by a long shot. And that is technically a positive.

2017 continues to be a below average year for animated films, but Pixar is on a downward slide. Finding Dory wasn’t good, and the The Good Dinosaur was meh. That is three stinkers in a row. They are banking on Coco doing great in November, but it probably will just feel too similar to The Book of Life at this point, so I have no idea what will save them. They are banking on sequels to beloved franchises for the next films after Coco. We just have two sequels though, and will get two more? They need to stop whatever the fuck they are doing, rethink their whole operation, and start getting original quick if they are going to save their standards.

Nerdland on initial glance looks like some late night show on Adult Swim or Comedy Central. Looking at its concept history, I am sure that at some point that was the goal as well. It definitely features people who have worked with these networks in the past, and an art style that is detailed and…well it is hard to describe. Rough around the edges? Chaotic?

Maybe even grotesque. Yeah, grotesque. That is how this film looks, and it has an adult tone. Sort of a Heavy Metal crudeness to the whole thing. So I am expecting, ass and titties, hard language, maybe even hard violence, despite a simple nice sounding title.

I mean, who wouldn’t want to live in Nerdland?

Well, Nerdland doesn’t look to clean, which I guess I should have expected.

John (Paul Rudd) and Elliot (Patton Oswalt) are best friends, living together in an apartment in Hollywood hoping to make it big. John is an aspiring actor, kicked out of an acting class, and taking that as a sign he had nothing to learn and was ready to star. Elliot is an aspiring screenwriter, who had a pedophile teacher who hung out with him a LOT, so he figures he is great at writing.

And they are not famous. They have side jobs that they keep losing, an apartment they cannot clean, and strong dreams of success when they both are complete sex craved losers. They think they have pseudo-girlfriends in Sally (Kate Micucci) and Linda (Riki Lindhome), but really they are just creepy and talk to them while they are at work.

After another unsuccessful attempt at reaching the big leagues and getting embarrassed, the two decide to put their fates in their own hands and get famous in a day. No matter the cost. No matter the effort. No matter the depths. And they will use their friend The Nerd King (Hannibal Buress), who runs a comic emporium, to get some help.

Also starring the voice work of Mike Judge, Charlene Yi, and Paul Scheer.

The Nerd King is not the ruler we need, but he is the ruler we deserve.

Grotesque is my word to best describe the film, but crude would be a high number two. A lot of this film seems to want to go to extremes, not for great reasons, but just because they wanted an extreme animated film. Not as bad as The Human Centipede levels, but high enough to realize that you are just going to get some fucked up shit.

And yet it all seems to make sense coming from the minds of our two losers heroes. They are typical beta males who feel friendzoned and think the world is out to get them for their intellect, not for the fact that they are complete assholes. It is almost like a character study, just taken to extremes so that maybe some similar people out there in the world and on the internet can see themselves in John and Elliot and maybe grow the fuck up.

At the same time, in their attempts to become famous, the film stalls out and becomes a bit of a drag. Watching them try a few different schemes to get famous all peter out isn’t as interesting as it seems. It does garner more interest in the end, as it starts to piece together a better narrative, but really, this film is just so extreme it is hard to derive a real message out of it.

Well, don’t be a fucker. That is one of them.

Finally, I am getting into some obscure titles that a lot of people probably have missed out on. Oh, I skipped a lot of non-obscure titles to get here, but those were at my home, this was on my phone in a parking lot.

Deidra & Laney Rob A Train is not too long of a movie, going for an audience that is not an adult male who criticizes films. The perfect thing to watch and write about.

This is another Netflix original, just not one they advertised. Again, a different demographic, gotta make money somehow, and gotta do it by making content that appeals to every different sect they can imagine.

Stoop Kids are afraid to leave their stoop!

The sect that this film was made for was teenage girls or families who don’t want to think about what they are watching.

Deidra (Ashleigh Murray) is a senior in high school and she has worked her whole life to be in a good position for college. She is the top of her class, she has dreams and aspirations of getting out of her small town or whatever life, far away and become someone great. She has a younger sister, Laney (Rachel Crow), who is somewhere in the high school age range, and Jet (Lance Gray) who is probably middle school aged but treated like a 3 year old.

Their dad (David Sullivan) is out of the picture, because he had a drug and criminal past, but he lives nearby. Their mom (Danielle Nicolet), has been working hard to give them some level of existence, but she has gone surprisingly berserk at her job, breaking TVs and gets arrested. Arrested?! Yes, arrested.

For whatever reason, CPS is totally cool with the kids living on their own (Deidra is 18), as long as an adult is at home with kids at all time and they have food and pay the bills. Long story short, shit is hard, it affects their school, and eventually decide to start robbing items from the local trains that come through their town. They make some money, pay some bills, work on bail, and work on saving through college.

Ah, to now live a stress free lifestyle. Featuring Tim Blake Nelson as a railroad cop, Sasheer Zamata as a guidance counselor, Arturo Castro as a cop, and Missi Pyle, Brooke Markham, and Kinna McInroe.

I couldn’t find a picture to cram even more side characters in one shot.

Deidra & Laney Rob A Train, looks, feels, sounds, and smells like a made for TV ABC Family (Or FreeForm, whatever the fuck that is) movie. Somehow even the camera work seems specific to that channel. And I am not speaking entirely out of my ass, I have reviewed made for TV movies on ABC Family. With that mantle, it delivers exactly as I would have expected: safe, bubbly, yawns.

D&L is just a bore. We have a single interesting character, Deidra, who has to make hard decisions. However the details on her life in this film are really weird. The Guidance Counselor talks about how most of the kids at the school suck and don’t achieve, because it is an inner city school. Yet they show it as a small rural town, and straight up everyone in it outside of our leads are super white, upper middle class to upper class looking kids.

It also has a very strange subplot about a Miss Idaho teen pageant that Laney gets involved with. It appears she is in an actual class at her school to prepare her for this pageant, and honestly, the plot barely goes anywhere and is just a distraction to get the running time up.

Nelson is just a cartoon villain in this movie. There are no real consequences for our characters, and even the one sob scene moment just doesn’t really seem to connect. It explains why the mom goes berserk, but it does not fix the problems that are still caused by the acts. And again, robbing trains is totally the right and best choice by the time the movie ends.

Sigh, to be young and pointless, like this movie.