Tag: Comedy

I wanted to see Sausage Party, I honestly did. I loved the first trailer, avoided all other spoilers, and wrote it on my calendar. But then real life made me miss it and I had to wait weeks to see it. Having kids doesn’t help.

But I didn’t mean to see Sausage Party for today’s review. No, I went to the theater to see Hell or High Water, everyone told me I had to! Well, word of mouth is powerful and it was in a small dinky theater and sold out. Thankfully, Sausage Party was roughly the same time starting, so I easily went ther and just moved it up my schedule a couple weeks.

Hey. Sweet. Now I can have some laughs and review two animated films in a row this week! And also dick jokes. Dick jokes, sex jokes, death jokes, stoner jokes. Hilarious.

I haven’t seen food party this much since Foodfight!

Frank (Seth Rogen) is a sausage. Not just any sausage. A horny sausage, ready to fuck. He has some other wiener palls, like Carl (Jonah Hill), Troy (Anders Holm), and Barry (Michael Cera), who is a bit deformed and smaller than normal. His package is right next to a nice package of buns, including Brenda (Kristen Wiig), his soul mate.

Or fuck mate. They really wanna screw. They want to get picked together by one of the Gods to go into the Great Beyond, outside of the supermarket. And soon is “Red, White, and Blue” day, so their chances of getting picked are high! And of course, the Gods have spoken, and they were chosen together to live out their wildest fantasies.

But then the unthinkable happens. The Honey Mustard (Danny McBride) was returned and he went crazy. He said the Great Beyond was a lie. Everything outside was terrible. And he caused a cart accident. Food went flying, Disaster. Frank and Brenda were left outside the cart to survive on their own. With Sammy Bagel Jr. (Edward Norton) and Kareem Abdul Lavash (David Krumholtz), who keep fighting.

Can they determine the truth of the Great Beyond? Or were they punished by the Gods for touching tips? How will their friends survive in the outside world? Can I ask more questions about the food sex?

Also featuring Bill Hader as a Native American stereotype, Salma Hayek as a taco, Craig Robinson as grits, Paul Rudd as a nerdy sales clerk/jerk, James Franco as a stoner, and Nick Kroll as a big douche.

Some say a big douche is just the roll that Nick Kroll was born to play.

Sausage Party at its core is an insane film. Apparently it came out just wondering what a film would be like if food had feelings (something Pixar hadn’t touched on yet), and Rogen realized it would be an incredibly fucked up film. And a fucked up film is what we got.

It is basically the most adult animated film since South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut and even has a musical number! And by adult humor, I don’t mean sophisticated tax jokes, but you know, sex, language and drugs. So 14 year old humor, if you will.

It will make you cringe, make you laugh, and maybe make you cry. The references are out of control, including an amazing visual from Saving Private Ryan. It was constantly surprising with the direction it went, including two different turn of events near the end. You know, when they fight for freedom and celebrate their potential freedom.

Because like I said earlier, they just wanted to fuck. That’s life in a nutshell.

Sausage Party is raunchy and honestly a film I can imagine watching and hiding from my own kids for years to come.

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.

I wasn’t always scowling at Suicide Squad. When they first announced it, well, I guess I had to google it just to find out what it was. Villains having to save the day. Sure, alright, cool.

What really made me excited is that Tom Hardy was signed on to play a role in the film! It was stoked. Then he left. Oh, okay. But then they got Jake Gyllenhaal to replace him! Oh shit, yeah! Good going! And then he turned it down as well. Fuck. What in the. Okay okay, then they got Joel Kinnaman, which does nothing for me. But I didn’t get annoyed at the film yet.

No, what really killed me is that during filming there were almost daily “leaks” from the set, or quick glimpses from a random persons twitter, or whatever. Too much hype can really bring down a ship, and I hate a constant bombardment of advertisements. Not only that, but of course we have Jared Leto as his edgy Joker, maybe as the villain, maybe on the team, I have no clue. I just know that he was “method acting” and kept giving all of his cast mates shit, playing pranks and what not, to get into character. Honestly, he sounded like he was being an asshole.

That is what made me frown and choose to ignore the pre-screening. That is why I didn’t want to wait hours just to see it. I knew it would wait. I don’t care how good the trailers for it were, because Man of Steel and Batman vs Superman both had amazing trailers and yet they were disappointments. So that is where I am coming from for this film.

So here is a non asshole character and a non asshole actress, giving someone a new asshole.

The US Government is starting to get scared. What if another Superman shows up, but this time, he isn’t friendly? They need to have a task force to bring them down, preferably some of their own strong people who are under their control. Well, they don’t have any, or at least they don’t have any that they can force to work for them. So Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), vague government official, decides that their team will be made up of criminal metahumans, who they have leverage over and who they can kill without too much of a worry.

So she gathers her team. Like Deadshot (Will Smith), who never misses. Like Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), who…looks like a human crocodile for some reason. There is El Diablo (Jay Hernandez), a former gang member who can control and make fire, but has since atoned for his crimes. Someone named Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney) who can…throw a boomerang really good and piss people off? And Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), who has actually no powers at all and really shouldn’t fit this metahuman role they are crafting.

But that is just one prison. She has the mystical heart of the Enchantress (Cara Delevingne), an ancient being trapped in an archaeologist’s body who has to obey her commands. Her main field officer, Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) is in love with her as well. And there is Slipknot (Adam Beach), who can apparently climb anything, where his climbing is metahuman levels or something. Finally, there is Katana (Karen Fukuhara), who wields a sword that captures the soul of those it kills. She isn’t even a baddie, she is just helping out while occasionally avenging her husband’s death.

Either way. Shit quickly goes down right after forming the team, good timing. And they are forced to help out of course to clean up a mess that is basically started thanks to the team forming in the first place. Hooray!

And yeah, Ike Barinholtz plays a dick guard, David Harbour a random government official, and some Jared Leto Joker nonsense.

And drinking on the job, I guess that is Boomerang’s other power.

Suicide Squad ended up being a mess of a movie, from beginning to end. The characters, the plot, the pacing, all come together beautifully to make this disaster of a film.

They explain that the Suicide Squad is set up to stop a Superman like being from dominating the world and battling him with other superhumans. Sure, fine. Now explain why Harley Quinn, described entirely as a wild card, on the team? Why is Captain Boomerang? The only ones that seem to have any amount of actual power and ability are the Enchantress, whom yes, is the main villain, and El Diablo, who barely uses his powers. Deadshot and Katana have some sort of powers or gadgets that make them above average, and Killer Croc is basically a mutant, but they are all just really good fighters. And what in the fuck, Slipknot? Can climb anything? Not even power based, but using gadgets? A complete waste of a character and has no purpose in this film (and the filmmakers must have known that).

Harley Quinn is actually in this film just so we can have a Joker connection. When I say “for whatever reason,” the reason ends up being so the writers can move the plot forward without thinking things through. She is there just to be chaos and her character has no point. Sure she is a scene stealer, because they give her the camera time and the personality. And she magically has a cell phone so that the Joker can intervene as well, how helpful.

Katana is an interesting character. The Enchantress should have been an interesting character. El Diablo was an interesting as fuck character. Captain Boomerang was very amusing and should have been able to do something in this movie to not feel so pointless. But these characters are not expanded upon enough, because it is not actually an ensemble film. It is all Deadshot, Harley Quinn, and Amanda Waller.

I picked these three as my pictures as the more interesting characters who didn’t have a lot of time to be important.

So the pacing is also whack. Bad things start happening in Midway City (certainly not New York City). Big portals, scary stuff, mass death. And we find out before they get to the big baddie that it has been three days since it has started. Three days! So little fucks given from anyone in the world, including The Flash and Batman, which are established characters in this film and movie universe.

When they show up and finally confront our villain, oh hey, their spell had just finished and now the world can be destroyed. Your timing is terrible, unless they decided to just wait to finish it until their loved ones were all dead first.

There could have been a good movie in Suicide Squad. It needed to not have earth ending events though, given the people we know who could have saved the day. It needed small scale disasters that actually made sense for the team to accomplish. It needed to not have such a messy plot and so many unnecessary flash backs. And it certainly didn’t need repeat what BvS ended up doing. Killing off a character and ending it with a just kidding. Two films in a row in the same universe? That is far worse than Marvel.

I am a huge fan of The Purge series. Or at least the first one, which I still think is the best, and The Purge: Anarchy. And The Purge: Election Year didn’t live up to the first two for me.

Anyways, because of this I was actually excited to see Meet The Blacks. It had virtually no advertisements, opened in only a little over a thousand theaters, and I think quickly left them. And now it is out on DVD and again, no one really knew anything about it.

I also would have ignored it, but someone else let me know that it existed and was actually a spoof on The Purge films. Shit, The Purge came out in 2013. How did it take three years for them to come out with a spoof film? It is just about the first film too, so just seems weird for such a delay.

And here is clearly a scene from the ending of the movie. Spoiler?!

Carl Black (Mike Epps) just wants to make a better life for his family. Sure, they have been living in the wrong part of Chicago, he has been super in the drug game and been a real dick, but he just wants what is best for them. So when famed criminal, Key Flo (Charlie Murphy) is getting sent to prison for a few years, Carl grabs a shit ton of his cash and moves his family out of Chicago.

His family involves his new wife, Lorena (Zulay Henao) who is notably white, his daughter (Bresha Webb), his son who pretends to be a vampire (Alex Henderson) and cousin (Lil Duval). He gets them a sweet crib in Beverly Hills, a gated community, basically all rich white people.

And they are there right before The Annual Purge. Carl says rich people don’t do the purge, so they don’t have to worry. But they have made enough enemies in life to come halfway around the country to kill them. Let alone the racist old white people who don’t like their new neighbors.

Now they just have to survive the night and each other. Starring Gary Owen and George Lopez as President El Bama.

Whatever joke I made for this pic in The Purge, you should assume I said it here as well.

I went into this movie expecting a bad movie, but I honestly still expected to be better than what I was given.

Most parody films have sucked, a lot, in the recent years. They do bottom of the barrel jokes. They make references and think references to film and pop culture are good enough when it comes to humor. Meet The Blacks couldn’t even do that much.

For a 90 minute film, it dragged and dragged to set up the family and their situation. So much that the actual purge didn’t begin until about 43 minutes in, basically halfway. Shit.

And the purge part also dragged. They had a lot of different people coming after them it turns out, so each character had its own scare and introduction, story of why they were mad at Carl Black, and then altercation. It didn’t flow well at all. The film became just more and more ridiculous people looking for more petty revenge.

Damn was it boring. Damn did it suck. Damn did it no make me laugh at all once. At least Fifty Shades of Black, also out this year, made me laugh occasionally. This one has unlikable characters, unnecessary amounts of backstory and talking filler.

A good movie can make dialogue work. This dialogue just felt like they were stalling. It was a low budget film not getting a lot out of its budget.

Reviewing films when they come out on DVD isn’t bad, it is expected for at least a third of all releases!

But like usual, the movie I am reviewing way later is a comedy. Keanu. Why did I not see it in theaters? I dunno, probably just lazy at that point. I also have never watched the sketch show Key and Peele, just random scenes on YouTube, so I wasn’t interested in some strange cat movie sketch.

I also didn’t even know if the cat talked. I think it does. Or did I get it confused with Nine Lives? Also, maybe both are talking cats? This one with Keanu Reeves as the voice, right?

Yeah, he has those rascally Reeves eyes, that’s for sure.

Clarence Goobril (Keegan-Michael Key) and Rell Williams (Jordan Peele) are two boring, regular, dudes. Clarence is married, wife (Nia Long) and kids, drives a minivan. Rell is heartbroken, because he was just dumped. But then he finds a kitten. Not just any kitten, the cutest kitten in the world.

Now, later, Rell is back to work, inspired, and Clarence is about to have some days to himself. Tim for some bro time! That means watching a movie! However, when they get back home, Rell’s house was broken into, smashed up, and Keanu the kitten was stolen! They find out from the local drug dealer (Will Forte) that it was most likely Chedder (Method Man) and his gang, looking for his house. Shit.

So it is simple. They have to get the cat back, and they have to infiltrate his club. They just have pretend to be thugs, pretend to be tough and just try and buy the kitten back. That way no one gets hurt, especially them. But then they get confused with some real badass people from Allentown and have to instead help the crew sell some drugs to earn the kitten. Can’t be too hard, non educated people do it all the time!

Starring Tiffany Haddish, Darrel Britt-Gibson, Jason Mitchell, Jamar Malachi Neighbors, Luis Guzman, Rob Huebel, and Anna Faris.

Running and shooting at the same time in plaid is the first skill a gangster learns.

I honestly didn’t care about Keanu when it came out. And yes, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it.

Peele and Key do awkward right. They wear that uncomfortable atmosphere on their face and run with it. This is full of overacting on their parts, but it also fits their characters just trying not to die, while also believing themselves to be larger than life individuals.

The movie opened up slow, but once they were in the club it really hit its stride. The voices, the backstory, the names, all gold. The obsession with George Michael and his songs filling the soundtrack were a comedic plus. Back flips, gun shots, celebrity deaths and more. I was just surprised all around.

I also wasn’t a giant fan of the ending. After everything had finished, it petered off a bit too long and the twists weren’t worth it. But Keanu is still full of laughs and a really decent time waster. I might watch even more random clips on YouTube, right now.

Damn it. I knew there was probably going to be a Sharknado 4, I just pretended to live in a world where it wouldn’t happen. Once I knew I was watching this movie, I figured I had to review it too. Which means I am even more disappointed that my Sharknado 3 was written as if I wasn’t actually writing a review. Like the movie was beneath me.

I am disappointed, because that was my first idea when I set off to write this review. Damn it. I am an idea thief, from myself!

Oh well, there are worse things you could be. Like someone who wants to be part of Sharknado 4.

I feel like those nuts are a metaphor for myself.

Despite the third film ending with April Shepard (Tara Reid) potentially dying, we don’t get to find out right away. Apparently there was a fan vote to see if she lived or died. And now, this movie takes place five years later, with Fin (Ian Ziering) dealing with his family and no April in his life.

Oh, and since the last movie, no Sharknadoes either. A company, Astro X, has developed technology that lets them use weather science to stop any tornado that begins to form. Their leader Aston Reynolds (Tommy Davidson) is now super rich and famous, and he even made a shark themed Vegas hotel and casino to show how baller he was. Well, now that Fin, his son (Cody Linley), and his son’s fiance (Imani Hakim) are in Vegas to have a wedding, things of course go bad.

Because a sandstorm happens. A big one. Astro X cannot stop a sandstorm. It hits the hotel, sharks happen, they call it a sandnado and everyone loses their minds.

Because in this movie, it isn’t tornadoes getting formed. It is a sandstorm and blizzard and water spout stuff. All of which gain sharks somehow, they don’t even try to explain it well this time. Except these things also gain boulders, lightning, fire, oil, and yes, nuclear bombs, just so people can name them worse and worse names.

Other people in this movie include Masiela Lusha, David Hasselhoff, Gary Busey, and Gilbert Gottfried.

Also pirates! Kids are still into pirates, right?

Fuck me gently with a chainsaw, Heather. As expected, this film was a painful 90 minutes of my life. The plot moves so quickly, nothing important is really ever to develop. The action scenes are shit, the CGI is bad, and the acting is worse.

“But Gorgon Reviews!” someone might wail. “That is the point of this film, to be bad and funny because of it! Entertainment, popcorn fun!” Hey, straw man, go fuck yourself. There is a god damn difference between so bad it is enjoyable, and so bad it is bad. The difference lies in intent.

In the so bad it is good field, the movies that were being made were made by people who truly thought they were making something wonderful. Tommy Wiseau thought he was making a serious, amazing drama with The Room. I do not mean that they are only good if someone is incredibly wrong in their vision. But in these films you have some heart and attempt to make a good product and well, shit goes wrong.

It is the reason why Birdemic is amusing and Birdemic 2 is not. In the sequel, they set off to make a shit film, and you know what, it was a shit film and not worth anyone’s time. If they are so bad, you cannot even appropriately rip on them with your drunk friends, because the films do everything for you already. You cannot be clever about it and you would say the same thing that anyone else watching it would say.

The Sharknado and other recent SyFy terrible movies are basically the physical moving representation of this comic. Fake praise from internet fanboys needs to stop at this point, because damn it, the joke wasn’t good the first time, and now this is the fourth time we have heard it.

Not surprisingly, this will make my worst of the year list. Surprisingly, there are still films that were worse.

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.

Taika Waititi is a rising star in the director world, and not just because of his four i’s. No one saw Eagle vs Shark, but I did, and I loved it. Waititi is a New Zealander and he loves his New Zealand based cinema. NO, NOT LORD OF THE RINGS. But you know, he directed some Flight of the Conchords episodes. But more importantly he directed one of the better comedies last year, What We Do In The Shadows.

What We Do In The Shadows was so good and people were so impressed with Waititi, they gave Waititi a marvel movie and he is going to be directing Thor: Ragnarok. Big step up indeed.

But before we get to any of this, we have another New Zealand based film of course. Hunt For The Wilderpeople, a title with a lot of story behind it and a mostly local cast with a lot of local heart.

And a star who is clearly gangster as fuck.

Ricky Baker (Julian Dennison) is getting into his teenage years but has had a rough life. No more parents, he has been in the foster system. He has gotten himself into some bad stuff. Like kicking stuff, burning stuff, graffiti and more. Basically gangster as fuck, which I already said.

So he is sent to his last chance home. A nice farm on the edge of civilization. The woman there, whom he has to call Aunt Bella (Rima Te Wiata). She knows he needs just something to do and learn and work on to get back on the right path. She is married to Uncle Hec (Sam Neill), who is much more a loaner and really only cares about his dog.

Things actually go pretty okay. Life is decent, Ricky is finding a purpose and isn’t a complete shit head. Then bad things happen. Things that threaten his removal from the house. So he decides to fake his own death and run away. Screw it, he will live in the wilderness by himself. He can shoot a gun now, he has a dog. He’s got this.

Well, it is up to Uncle Hec to go and find him. However, once he does he gets hurt. They end up being in the wilderness so long that people now think he was kidnapped and a bad type of man. Ricky himself is afraid of going back because he thinks he will have to go to Juvie! So somehow they both find themselves running from the law, living in the woods, making a real good time of it all. All while the head CPS lady (Rachel House) is on their tale.

Also featuring Oscar Kightley as a cop, Troy Kingi and Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne as a few natives, and Rhys Darby as Psycho Sam.

You can find a whole lot in the woods. But mostly, you’ll find yourself.

Being my third Waititi, I have come to expect a certain sort of humor and this film is of course full of it. It is weird, it is unique, but it is also raw and real.

I don’t know a damn thing about living in New Zealand. But I do know the basic differences between “city folk” and “country folk” and that is really the most important thing to understand this movie. Will you get each and every joke? Hell no (unless you are really knowledgeable about New Zealand, I guess). But the themes are practically universal.

And this film truly is an adventure. The beginning is a bit slower when we are getting used to the characters, but once they hit the woods, are traveling, talking, running from the po-po, meeting unique individuals and situations. That is where it is fun. That is where the film starts to run with it.

I wouldn’t say the soundtrack is the same level of Sing Street or Swiss Army Man, but it is still really well picked and placed, highlighting the film to greater levels.

Dennison has a potentially great career in comedic films if he keeps it up, he felt like a natural. Neill? I didn’t even recognize Neill. I saw his name in the intro credits and assumed I just missed him. I didn’t really realize until looking at IMDB way later. He was super into his role as well and quite a damn surprise. House was also really nice surprise, with her motto of “No Child Left Behind” when it comes to CPS. A good motto and made her a weird antagonist.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople is amazing. It is realistic, strange, and I think we all have a little bit of Ricky in all of us.

The world is changing. No longer does a films success rely on success in the US. A film could bomb in the US but be loved throughout the world and studios now realize the full potential of that. China is now one of the most important box office countries, as they have a shit ton of people, and love very easy to make films. No offense, China.

So when a film breaks Chinese box office records, it damn well should be paid attention to. Especially if that film isn’t even from America, but China itself!

The Mermaid broke a few box office records in China. It had the biggest opening day, best second day, third, etc up to its best seventh day. Hell, as expected, it has the best opening week and is the highest grossing film ever in China. What this really tells me is that China really loves Stephen Chow (the director), or at least, really loves Mermaids. One of the two has to be true, if not both!

This was all early in the year, but now it is out in America. Not our theaters, but Red Box. Close enough.

Who wouldn’t love something so exotic and beautiful?

Liu Xuan (Chao Deng) is a super rich, young, famous, sex addicted fool. He loves his money and he loves his women. And he has just spent a shit ton of movie dollars to purchase Green Gulf, which currently is a wildlife reserve. It is a stupid investment, because he can’t really make money out of it. They can’t turn it into housing. But he buys it because he cares about the animals and wants to make it prosperous.

Just kidding. In fact, his company as introduced these strange sonar items to the sea. They can be set to specific frequencies to annoy the crap out of the type of animal living there. Namely dolphins! It can drive them out of the area and make them never want to return, or you know, kill them. And once the dolphins are gone, he can build some resorts, and make a shit ton more money.

But guess what. Mermaids also live in the area! And this is hurting their tribe physically and forced them to live in a half sunken ship off the coast. They have derived a plan. They have slightly modified the tail of Shan (Yun Lin) and taught her how to walk and get around. She is the prettiest of the mermaids. They are sending her out to the real world, to meet Xuan, seduce him, to bring him back to the tribe, so they can murder him and get their revenge.

Good, clean, mermaid family fun.

Also featuring Show Luo as an Octopus Mermaid (which doesn’t have an official name) and Yuqi Zhang as Xuan’s business partner.

Tentacles, weapons, and a million ways to die.

Foreign films have had a very specific theme for me lately. Weird. Weird weird weird. And not just because I am an American and think non-American thinks are silly. But they are just very strange comedic films, heavy in a theme and going balls to the walls with their story.

It did take a good while into the story before I really understood what the hell was going on. It was at least entertaining up to that point, being goofy with over acting characters. And it remained goofy, full of exagerration, and silly situations. A strange sort of slapstick romance.

Is it actually the best movie of the year? Far from it. But it did have a few twists and turns and laugh out loud moments.

The Mermaid won’t be for everyone. But if you watch the trailer, think it is amusing, then hey, it is a pretty easy way to waste a couple of hours.

Anna Kendrick movie tracker #3? Yeah, this is number 3 for the year. Unless I post it before Mr. Right like a jackass. This is the second of the three that is also straight to DVD, what fun!

However, Ms. Kendrick isn’t the focus of the film. She is technically just a side character, in a handful of scenes, and not super relevant to the plot. She is all over the cover of Get A Job though.

Oh yeah, this is supposed to be me talking about the movie. I have no idea what Get A Job is about going into it, but damn it, I surely had some pretty dang obvious guesses.

The over/under for hearing the term Millennials is 15.

This movie is actually about Will Davis (Miles Davis), well known slacker and pothead. Well, only the occasional bong stuff. He is about to get hired at a shitty internet clickbait journalism site, so he is celebrating with his dad (Bryan Cranston) and girlfriend (Anna Kendrick). His dad gives him some money, finally ready for his son to be a man and need no more handouts.

But of course, day one into the job he is fired. Right as he walks into the door, they couldn’t hire like they thought they could. He lives with a group of guys, not his girlfriend. Charlie (Nicholas Braun), a slacker who is getting a job as a chemistry teacher somehow. Ethan (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), a slacker who is making an app to help stalk people. And Luke (Brandon T. Jackson), a slightly harder working slacker who is getting a job as a stock broker!

Yay jobs for everyone. Except for Will. And for Will’s dad, who also loses his job despite being with the company forever. Shit, being unemployed is hard, especially in today’s world. Thankfully, Will gets a job that eventually matches his passions, making videos for some corporate company. His boss (Marcia Gay Harden) hates him, the bosses boss (Bruce Davison) likes him, and the other kind of boss (Alison Brie) wants his body, but hey, money is money. And I guess, really, this movie is just about getting jobs in this day and age and the struggles they bring.

Also featuring in smaller roles, Greg Germann, John C. McGinley, Jorge Garcia, and John Cho.

Corporate jobs means ties. Ties get in the way of food. Corporate jobs hate food.

I expected Get A Job to be a completely shit movie. And honestly, on some levels, it is still that film. It is mostly an incredibly pointless story. It is simple, basic, and more synonyms. The only thing that can possibly make this a worthwhile film experience is if the comedy is on point.

And you know what? It barely reached a good enough level at that. Davis’ character isn’t very funny, being our lead. Cranston is giving a few amusing moments, but he also basically plays a straight man this time around. All of the humor that actually interested me in this movie came from Braun and Jackson. For whatever reason, I found the chemistry/coaching plot from Braun to be almost hysterical. I didn’t giggle out of my seats, but I definitely tittered. Jackson’s scenes, especially with McGinley were a nice change of pace. Higher energy and a bit stressful.

Everything else you can practically ignore. The main plot line is meh. Kendrick is barely in the film. Mintz-Plasse’s plot is pretty shitty.

No one will ever watch this movie and change their life from it. No one will probably really watch this movie over ten times in their life. But for whatever reason, two side character plots just really clicked with me and put this film into mediocre territory.