Tag: Comedy

At first I thought it had been awhile since I saw a Tyler Perry Madea movie. My last one was A Madea Christmas. That was at the end of 2013. I had to assume that I had missed a few, because these used to come out all the time.

But technically the only one I missed was Madea’s Neighbors from Hell, but that is one of the plays and I am not rushing off to start reviewing plays. Especially those plays.

So technically, Boo! A Madea Halloween is the first of these sort of films in three years. And unfortunately for me, it means I have not missed a few, but I am still on track. Damn.

But hey, this one has other old people so that should mean more…uhh, ranting I guess.

This film of course takes place around Halloween, specifically he day of. We have some local fraternity trying to plan the sickest party yet, led by Jonathan (Yousef Erakat), Quinton (Andre Hall), and Horse (Brock O’Hurn). They catcall some girls who walk by. You know, Tiffany (Diamond White) and her three friends (Lexy Panterra, Liza Koshy, and Bella Thorne). They agree to come later and check it out.

But you know, they are high school girls. And some of them live in strict houses. Tiffany specifically wants to go and party, but she has an over controlling father (Tyler Perry). He has to do…something, so he asks Madea (Tyler Perry) is she can stay at their house and watch her, to make sure nothing funny happens. Madea brings along Aunt Bam (Cassi Davis), Hattie (Patrice Lovely), and Joe (Tyler Perry).

Needless to say, the gaggle of old people in her house annoys Tiffany, but she sneaks out anyways. Madea and gang end up breaking the party after some shenanigans,so the girls and frat work together to play pranks on them, hoping to scare them out of the house.

This would be the trick part of the trick or treat, of course.

This picture accurately represents how much Bella Thorne is actually in this movie.

Some of the times, I can find something worthwhile in these Madea movies. A really good joke. An okay plot. Something. This one doesn’t have any of that. Literally the most amusing scene is just a couple of people talking about a fat kid and stealing his candy in front of their mom.

An excessive amount of conversation in this film is about beating their kids to get them to listen. A whole lot of it involves very low level scares. The pranks feel authentic, in that I believe a bunch of drunk college students came up with them. Because they are shit. The movie should get rid of authenticity in this level and actually give me something entertaining.

Boo! isn’t funny. It isn’t scary. And it is a waste of time. Perry is running out of ideas.

0 out of 4.

Girlfriend’s Day is a movie that came out of nowhere and just popped up on Netflix. That isn’t true. I saw at least one note for one pre-screening the day before it was released.

It came out right on Valentine’s Day, because why not talk about a made up holiday on a similar holiday.

Hey, this intro is hard. I will admit the only reason I went and saw it because it had a run time of like, 65 minutes, meaning it was easy to fit in between other films.

And I was able to type this review real quick. No effort even.

Ray Wentworth (Bob Odenkirk) used to be the best. The best at what? Writing greeting card messages. He won some awards a few years in a row. But that was years ago. Now his ideas are misses and he lost his groove.

Yes, he used to be married, so he could write the most beautiful cards all to his wife, and people loved it. But once his marriage ended, his writing became a sham, and now he is fired.

Which is a blessing, and a curse. Because California has decided to introduce a new holiday: Girlfriend’s Day. And to celebrate the event, they are giving away a large cash prize to the person who can create and submit the best Girlfriend’s Day card. People currently employed in the Greeting Card industry are ineligible.

So now Ray can work on his ultimate card. To get him in the game again. To bring him to the top. To get that sweet money. But it turns out this has brought out a lot of crazies and thugs, who all want that money without doing the work, getting Ray in the middle of several stories and threats against his life.

Also starring Stacy Keach, Amber Tamblyn, Alex Karpovsky, Kevin O’Grady, Rich Sommer, Larry Fessenden, Natasha Lyonne, June Diane Raphael, and Andy Richter.

Oh look, a potential girlfriend!

There is only one good thing about Girlfriend’s Day. Its run time.

Being barely over an hour, I didn’t have to waste too much of my life watching it.

The filmmakers tried to do a big elaborate film with side characters all building up to one big event. Like a Cohen brothers flick basically. But it felt rushed, it felt lame, and it definitely did not feel funny.

Yes, another comedy movie without the comedy. A few smirks at most, but Odenkirk is basically supposed to carry this movie on his own charm. But he is nor Saul Goodman in this movie, he is barely charismatic and it just feels like a mistake.

Definitely an easy movie to pass and one that would be enjoyed by very few.

1 out of 4.

For most films I try to avoid the trailers and ads and just go in blind. For Get Out, I did see the opening trailer, and I did feel like I understood a lot about the film, things I would have liked to not guess on.

Going into the film, I had my whole theory ready on why the events of the film would happen. It is a horror, mystery, and potential for comedy, and I was worried the trailers gave it all away. (Don’t worry, they didn’t).

Either way, the trailer did a good job of hyping up the film. Add on the excitement of Jordan Peele directing his first film ever, and writing this one on his own. He wants to show he has the chops to create content on his own.

Aw, look at the happy couple.

Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) is a photographer, good dude, and he is black. Don’t worry, his color matters. Because he is dating Rose Armitage (Allison Williams) a white woman for a few months now. And he has agreed to go and visit her parents home for a weekend, and no, they don’t know she is black.

But he heads up. They are in a rich mansion by a lake, very secluded. His friend Rod (LilRel Howery) is watching his dog, and he hopes they don’t get upset. But hey, they don’t! After all, her dad (Bradley Whitford) would have voted for Obama for a third term, so he can’t be racist. The mom (Catherine Keener), is a psychiatrist who uses hypnosis and is willing to help him quit smoking.

Hypnosis! Yay!

Despite their totally not racist antics, they do have two people who work at their house, who happen to be black. Georgina (Betty Gabriel), their maid, and Walter (Marcus Henderson), their groundskeeper. And they act very strange. Like they have no real personality, like they are…trapped.

Nah, white people can’t be that crazy. Right?

Featuring Caleb Landry Jones as the brother, Lakeith Stanfield as the first victim, and Stephen Root as a blind art dealer.

Should he get out or are they just out to get him? Who knows!

Get Out is amazeballs and that is not a word I get to use to often in a review. Last year we had an early horror film get a 4 out of 4, and it was The Witch, for feeling truly evil, authentic, and scary. Get Out is a horror film with tense scenes, but it is wildly different.

First of all, yes, it has comedy elements. It isn’t a horror comedy like Scary Movie 5, which is not horror, and also not comedy. Some of the scares will make you laugh, for being ridiculous. Some of the scares though will make you cringe back. And some of the scares are deeper than that. They are the societal pressures that are ever present today coming out and haunting us.

Get Out is extremely topical, with the current level of race relations in America. It refers to the past and calls out those who are not outwardly racist, but still end up being racist to some degree. The minor way people will act different if there is a minority present, like a change of language or your choice of dinner conversation.

And honestly, in the third act when it becomes a sort of revenge flick, the deaths are graphic, unexpected, and they had me clapping along with others ready for some of that juicy justice.

Get Out is funny, frightening, and fucking relevant. But what really brings the whole thing together is LilRel Howery. He is the single greatest thing to happen to the TSA since…well, he is the single greatest thing to happen to the TSA. Because literally nothing else before this has been great for the TSA. But they finally have something they can look on and be proud about. A fictional movie character.

4 out of 4.

In attempting to catch up to some of the bigger movies of the fall that I missed, I will note that I completely forgot about Keeping Up With The Joneses. It came and it went. It had advertising, I am mostly certain. Definitely.

Not many people went to see it either. It was a bomb on a relatively low budget, and now I am talking about it months later mostly because it has a short enough run time for me to fit it into my schedule last week.

Also, because I liked the actors involved.

Look at them all together. Short. Tall. Hairy.

Jeff (Zach Galifianakis) and Karen Gaffney (Isla Fisher) live a quiet suburban life with their two kids. Jeff works as an HR rep at some tech company (and lives near a lot of his coworkers), Karen designs bathrooms, sometimes. Their kids are off to summer camp, so they have the house to themselves! That means sex very quickly and then mindlessly hanging out the rest of the night.

But then, they get some new neighbors. The Joneses. Tim (Jon Hamm) and Natalie (Gal Gadot). They are perfect, they are tall, they live amazing lives, and now they apparently want to settle down.

Karen, however, doesn’t trust them. Something seems off about them. They are a bit too friendly. She thinks they are spying on them!

And yeah, she ends up being right. They aren’t really friends. But what do they want? What do they need? Are they good spies or bad spies?

Also featuring Patton Oswalt, Ming Zhao, Matt Walsh, and Maribeth Monroe.

Spies get to wear fancy clothes and show off their assets.

To be fair to this film, which I don’t really want to type a lot, the idea for a comedy action film isn’t completely bad. It just didn’t have a lot extra going for it. I barely laughed at any thing. I would note in my head that a scene was potentially amusing, but it just never really pushed the funny bone like I had hoped.

Hamm is a wonderful comedic actor, given how serious his bigger roles have been. But he felt wasted. Gadot was given the entirely serious role plus sex appeal, so she wasn’t given any potentially funny moments, which is just poor writing. Fisher’s character was mostly one dimensional. They wrote her as a bored housewife, so she played a bored housewife. And Galifianakis at least had some sort of development, but again, he only had a few recurring joke stereotypes.

The ending was of course a mess, when they had to bring in the more action/spy elements. It weakens an already weak comedy film.

Two genres is hard, you have to be willing to go hard into both, not just a little bit into both. Because then you are just left with a dud, a master of none, and a film people will forget about in a few months time.

1 out of 4.

This year for the Oscars, I was able to see 0 out of the 5 foreign films before they were announced. Yeah, yeah, I suck. And for the most part, I decided I didn’t even want to review them all if I saw them, only if I liked them enough to feel inspired to write.

Which brings me to A Man Called Ove. Which I clearly loved. A Swedish film, originally called En man som heter Ove, based on a book, it was surprisingly nominated for TWO Academy Awards. The obvious Best Foreign Film and Best Makeup and Hairstyling. Whoa, a double threat.

I have started to learn the Swedish language, technically. I mean, I did some lessons on Duolingo. So Sweden and I already have that connection going. This film is going to be the beginning of a beautiful film relationship, I can tell.

Ack! Kids in the relationship so quickly!

Ove (Rolf Lassgård) has lived a long and potentially lonely life, so now it is time to end it. He is just angry at everything in the world. He lives in a small community in a house alone. And people these days just cannot seem to follow the rules! There is a small road outside his house where driving is not permitted, and people keep driving there, for instance.

And just when he is finally ready to end it all, a family moves in nearby. A Persian woman, Parvaneh (Bahar Pars), pregnant with two kids, and their husband, a Swedish man. They keep bothering him, needing assistance or other things. Just as he is trying to off himself, watching parts of his life flash before his eyes, they get interrupted or he gets let down by faulty equipment.

Can’t an old man just die already?

But soon he gets too involved with the families around him again. He gains responsibilities, he has things he must take care of, despite just wanting to be with his wife again in the afterlife. Oh yeah, he was married. And they have a few tragic events in their life as well.

Can Ove finally get to move on in peace?

Also starring Tobias Almborg, Ida Engvoll, and Filip Berg as young Ove.

First the kids, then the cat, then the other kid, then the gay kid. What a to do list!

A Man Called Ove gives me everything I want in a movie. Appropriately timed flashbacks, tragedy, an emotional connection, a cranky old man, annoying neighbors, and proof that old dogs can learn new tricks. Okay, okay, those are all very specific to this movie, but I still enjoyed it a lot.

Lassgård was able to carry this movie mostly with a grim look on his face. And you know what, the viewer will most likely agree with everything he complains about, despite everyone else in the film thinking he is being ridiculous. He is a strong actor, and the guy who plays his younger self does a good job.

I did find myself a bit annoyed at some of the neighbors too, they did bug the shit out of him and he had every right to be angry.

I don’t have much else to say on the film, outside of it being entertaining, a nice comedy drama, and a well acted romp out of Sweden.

4 out of 4.

I didn’t want to see Florence Foster Jenkins when it came out. And I am afraid my biases will show in this review.

Let it be known that I had no idea what the movie was about, never saw the trailer, but just the poster and it just seemed bad to me. It is so gold and happy. It looks like a low effort, low comedy film and is relying on star power more than anything to get itself seen.

From the director of Philomena? Shit, I liked Philomena. This is a movie that is going for a nostalgic look, the type of film someone might have wanted to see a decade ago. So no, no, I wasn’t going to see it.

Then the damn thing had to get nominated for a couple of Oscars. One of which prevented Amy Adams for a nomination for Arrival. Damn it.

No matter what Streep does, people want to give her awards.

The film happens to be about the titular named Florence Foster Jenkins (Meryl Streep) who is an Opera singer. But not just any Opera singer. Some have proclaimed her the worst opera singer of all time. How does one get to the level where they can call themselves an opera singer while also being bad at it? Money. She has a lot of it.

She also has St Clair Bayfield (Hugh Grant), her husband, a Shakespearean actor, who has fallen in love with her. More importantly, he has protected her from negative reviews. He pays critics with bribes. He keeps out the riff raff. They started their own music club to showcase her voice, and if they have to pay a lot of money for it, it must be good music. How else could she be famous!?

We are basically introduced to the characters through Cosmé McMoon (Simon Helberg), a pianist who applies for the job to work for her. He is getting paid a whole lot and was chosen just because he likes him. And then he quickly finds out the famed singer is actually terrible, the whole thing feels like a cruel joke and his own reputation is now on the line. But so much money…

Keeping up the farce is hard work, but when Carnegie Hall is coming and their product is sub par, just how will they all handle it?

Also featuring Rebecca Ferguson, Nina Arianda, and Stanley Townsend.

Thankfully, at least he is actually playing piano and not a recording of someone better.

Speaking of farces, I cannot believe this movie is winning awards, let alone being nominated for a few of them.

It is an extremely simple story and it is about real events. But on its own, there isn’t a lot that feels exceptional. The acting isn’t great, the story isn’t great, the cinematography is average, and I guess there is a lot of good costumes. But that does not a good movie make.

Helberg had some amusing moments of giggle fits, Grant seemed to be overplaying it, and Streep was just doing her normal thing.

This is a film that is, as predicted, only being talked about because of who is involved, not because of its high quality. It isn’t really funny, and it isn’t really an interesting story. People with lots of money get to do things others cannot because they have money, even if they aren’t qualified.

Story of America. And this movie is just dull.

1 out of 4.

(Insert introduction about meaning to watch this film sooner).*

I mean, shit, Mr. Church is supposed to be Eddie Murphy‘s comeback! Or at least that is what I heard one guy said. He can only voice the donkey so many times. And A Thousand Words was really, really bad.

What he really needs to do is to get into some good old fashioned NOT FAMILY comedy films again. They made him great, and he can still do it. This drama rut is slowing him down. But oh well, maybe Mr. Church will change my mind.

And let me drift off into the wind as I ponder this question.

Marie (Natascha McElhone) has cancer and is going to die in about six months. That is what the doctor told her. She has a young daughter, Charlie (Natalie Coughlin) who got randomly selected to be in a better school for rich kids, but their family is poor, and dying won’t help. But then, Mr. Church (Eddie Murphy) shows up in their kitchen.

Turns out he was hired by her ex, who is also now dead. He set aside money for Church to pay for groceries and small expenses. He just has to work there until she dies, and he gets money for the rest of his life. Apparently that dude was loaded. So Church spends a lot of time there cooking, reading, and making life enjoyable.

But that damn Marie just doesn’t die. She doesn’t die until senior year of high school, many years later. Now Charlie (Britt Robertson) is all grown up, still hanging out with Mr. Church and still okay with life.

Well, eventually she does die. And Charlie goes to college. But things go weird, and hey, at least she knows the secretive Mr. Church who is finally ready to live his life the way he wants. Oh man, these two are inseparable.

Also starring Xavier Samuel, Madison Wolfe, Lucy Fry, and Mckenna Grace.

Surprised that Mr. Church just didn’t put a pillow over her head after the first year.

Mr. Church is a very strange film. It is one that feels like it came a few decades too late.

It is also strange in that it feels like it was made to be emotional and perhaps bait some Oscars, but it forgot to tell an actual good story. If you watch it, sure, you might feel sad at some points. You might connect to the main girl character. But it lacks a lot of motivation and purpose for the story.

The story is about a mysterious colored gentlemen showing up at a poor white person’s house, to be their practical servant, who teaches them about goodness and great housekeeping. The mystery man is a savior and helps raise the potential of a little girl. And it just feels…I am not sure, but maybe insulting?

A story that has been told in dozens of ways before, and most of them better. But this film drags on, until Mr. Church will eventually die and in the third stage of Charlie’s life that we get to see. But thank goodness her character had Mr. Church to make all of her hardships go away, because now she knows how to cook like a pro.

1 out of 4.

* – Intentional bad joke.

I remember, four years ago, being really excited about the movie Beginners. It had Christopher Plummer, Ewan McGregor, and a good potential story.

But when I finally saw it, I thought it was only okay and a bit disappointed by that fact. I might have liked it more if I was a more mature film watcher though, but who knows, going back and rewatching it just feels like a chore now.

Despite that, I was still surprised to see that the same director, Mike Mills, also directed 20th Century Women, which judging by the trailer seems like such a very different film. Well, obviously one point is that it is mostly about women and not men. It still involves age and growing up as a major theme, and some quirky characters. But still, quite different films.

Needless to say, I needed to watch this movie because I know it will be nominated probably for Best Actress. And because Best Actress films are biased against, it might not be nominated for anything else.

And there are so many women to be the focus of, such a shame. The year is 1979, in Santa Barbara, California, and yes, that is the same place that Psych was supposed to have taken place.

Dorothea (Annette Bening) is a decently modern woman for the time. She is strongly independent, as her husband left her about a decade before. She has a son, Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann), who is now 15. He is smart, curious, and a free thinker, like she has raised him to be. But she is a bit worried that he has no strong male influence on his life.

Sure, she has had him hang out with men before. In fact, the house they have they rent out to several guests, one of them being a middle aged man (Billy Crudub), who fixes cars and is a handyman. But they have nothing in common, so he is bored when they have to interact.

So she gets the help of two women. One, Abbie (Greta Gerwig), another renter who lives with them, and survivor of cervical cancer. And also Julie (Elle Fanning), a girl slightly older than Jamie who is his best friend, who tends to sleep over in his bed in a completely non sexual way. She wants to have them help teach him about the world. About how to be a good man, even if it is from the women point of view. She cannot see him in the world how he really is, as she is the mom, so she thinks he will listen to them and they have his best interests at heart.

And well, teach them they sure do.

Like the proper way to drug up before your first rave.20th Century Women was a surprising film. Despite the title, I ended up liking it more than I thought I would. Not saying that I don’t like films about women, I just might not get them as much depending on the focus.

First of all, the camera work was really fun in this movie. Every time travel occurred, it was sped up and made colorful (double meaning on the word trip, potentially). Characters were sped up on regular movement between scenes as well, even if just walking. The framing was well done, especially on the Bening/Crudup dance scene. And a decent chunk of the story is told through flashbacks, narrated by various cast members, going over their story on how they got to this point in their lives. It was creative and visually pleasing.

My biggest issue from this film comes mostly from our lead, Bening. The character she plays is kind of shit, and her actions are a bit confusing. She is set up as this strong, modern, free spirited thinking woman. But all of that goes out the door when she sees what other women do, or what her son thinks. Most of the film she seems like a normal conservative lady, unable to deal with the changes in the world. It is so weird and bizarre, and it made me feel nothing for her character.

The side characters all have their charms though. Zumann, Gerwig, Fanning, and Crudup. Those are the people who I think should be nominated come Oscar time. A decent and amusing film otherwise.

3 out of 4.

Bad Moms thankfully came out the week before or during my vacation in the summer. A glorious time where I missed, frankly, a lot of terrible movies.

I am judging Bad Moms not just by its cover, but by the actresses picked, the trailer, and the marketing they went through. I read it was originally going to involve Judd Apatow and star Leslie Mann instead, and that made the previews make a lot more sense. It looks like a movie he would make about this subject, if it was more dramatic and had an additional 45 minutes or so.

But to come out with this film, with the lame title, the same year Dirty Grandpa [Editor’s Note: This made more sense when I said Bad Grandpa, but that was years ago. I am too lazy to change this joke]? As Bad Santa 2? Come on, we all know 2016 sucked, but was it really necessary to make so many bad films?

The worst thing a mom can do is drink when her children are 12 years past breastfeeding, don’t cha know.

Amy (Mila Kunis) is a hard working mother. She makes breakfast, she works extra hours at her part time job, she comes home and makes dinner, she volunteers with the PTA, she takes her kids (Oona Laurence, Emjay Anthony) to after school activities and helps with all of their projects. Her husband (David Walton) has a relatively easy job, but it brings in the money. Except he doesn’t help with all of the extra stuff, leaving it all on her.

And then she finds him jerking it to a cam model, live, and he has been doing it for 10 months now. So she wants a break. She kicks him out and goes out drinking. She meets Carla (Kathryn Hahn), another single mom (with a much older kid) and they have a blast. They eventually gain Kiki (Kristen Bell) as well after Amy defies the PTA president (Christina Applegate) in front of the entire PTA. Kiki is even more overstressed and needs to have fun.

So you know, they go and have more fun. They make their kids make breakfast, do their own work and start focusing on themselves more. I know, very bad moms indeed. And when the PTA president gets angry at Amy’s kids for defying her, Amy decides she is going to run against her and promise a whole lot less work.

Also featuring Jay Hernandez as a single dad who Amy likes. And J.J. Watt as a soccer coach. And Wanda Sykes, Jada Pinkett Smith, Wendell Pierce, and Clark Duke.

Bad moms apparently are real big jerks in grocery stores.

Damn it, here I am, spending my time, trying to watch what might be the worst of the worst in 2016, and then I find myself wasting time with Bad Moms. Because Bad Moms isn’t the worst of the worst. Is it great? Hell no. But it isn’t downright terrible either.

Yes, I am disappointed that I didn’t hate it more, but it had a handful of amusing moments. Sure, Hahn’s character was just terrible. Bell has done better way before. And Kunis never feels believable in this role. Technically the best person in their role might be Applegate as the stuck up, stereotypical, PTA President. Which is a weird place to see her career at the moment.

Bad Moms is full of wish fulfillment, and of course the message that moms matter too, so they should have fun more and let their kids grow up without them always holding their hands. And that dads should be involved. A fine message, but something that feels like it doesn’t need to be said at this point in human history. Maybe 30-40 years ago.

It is jam packed with the latest party tunes, to date this movie further in a few years. There are several party montage scenes, at the bar, at the grocery store, and a much longer one of mostly average looking middle aged women partying like a college party. And that almost seems to be the entire point of the film.

Bad Moms isn’t terrible, it just is far from a great or even a good or okay movie. Better casting and better jokes would have went a long way with this film.

1 out of 4.

With only five reviews a week, it is hard to really get to watch those obscure weird films. Especially around Oscar time. But damn it, I sometimes have to just force a review into the schedule. Even if no one has heard of it. Even if I watch it and write it but take over a month to find a place to publish it

That is probably what is going to happen with Search Party.

Despite semi famous individuals in it, it was secretly brought out this year with hardly a whimper. In fact it was supposed to come out in 2014 but got delayed two years because they didn’t feel like it.

And now that it finally has gotten released? Well there is a television show of the same name, making it that much harder to find. I wonder if that was on purpose…

Despite what it looks like, no, this isn’t even a sex comedy.

Nardo (Thomas Middleditch) is totally getting married tomorrow! To Tracy (Shannon Woodward) and he is as happy as ever. Of course, the night before he is getting high in a van with his two friends, Jason (T.J. Miller) and Evan (Adam Pally), but it is okay. He made the mistake of wondering out loud if he was making the wrong choice, but that is normal pre-wedding jitters and no one goes out of there way to care about them.

Except, Jason does go out of his way. He thinks about it long and hard, but he decides no, Nardo doesn’t want to get married, he has to break it up during the ceremony and stop it from happening. And stop it he does, feeling like a hero.

So Tracy is upset and goes on the honeymoon alone, to Mexico, taking both tickets, leaving Nardo with his friends. But damn it, Nardo wanted to get married. So he is upset, everyone goes back to their lives.

And later that night, Jason gets a phone call from Nardo, who is naked and alone in Mexico. Apparently he his car stolen and they took his tuxedo as well, and now he needs help. So Jason picks up Evan sort of against his will (he has a side plot line involving his job, and his boss (Lance Riddick) and coworker (Alison Brie)) and they head to Mexico to find Nardo! Well, search for him. And they plan on partying a little as well. Search Party.

Search Party also features Octavio Gómez Berríos, Maurice Compte, J.B. Smoove, Rosa Salazar, Krysten Ritter, and Jason Mantzoukas.

The wedding was doomed to fail because they didn’t go with the cummerbunds.

Search Party seems like a movie that wanted to take a format similar to The Hangover, but zanier and with cheaper stars. Two guys from Silicon Valley and one from Happy Endings, brilliant!

Well, no. It feels like bad joke after bad joke. And the jokes they choose to tell go on so long. We get a kidney stealing joke and it is one of the major points of the film, but it isn’t funny.

Middleditch is actually the worst here. Miller and Pally have to carry most of the story while bad things happen to Middleditch and he does a terrible job of carrying on his own plot. It is just high pitched squeals and constantly freaking out, coupled with poor decisions.

At least Miller and Pally develop some amount of chemistry, no matter how bad or forced it seems. I don’t know if switching the roles around so that Miller/Middleditch got to interact more would be better, because apparently this thing was filmed either right before Silicon Valley or shortly after it started. But they didn’t feel like a group of old friends, but instead people who hated (and reluctantly put up) with each other.

And you know what? If your jokes suck and your friendship doesn’t really work, the movie is just doomed to fail. This film was pushed back because they knew it sucked. But apparently also this year is a similar film called Joshy with some of the same actors. I don’t even.

1 out of 4.