Tag: Comedy

I just checked my watch, and yes, it looks like we are at the point where I will just about see anything if you tell me that Jake Gyllenhaal is in it.

I don’t even need to list his last few years of excellent films. But I will talk about 2015. Southpaw was divided, but it made my top of 2015 list. Everest wasn’t as universally loved either, but it took me on an emotional thrill ride and I still gave it a 4 out of 4. Although, sure, that one had less Gyllenhaal being amazing.

I don’t have a damn clue what Demolition is actually about, but knowing one actor in it has made me happy to watch it.

It is like the opposite effect of Robert De Niro now.

Heck, if Jake could just dance for 90 minutes I’d call the movie a roaring success.

Davis (Jake Gyllenhaal) is in finances, super rich, and married to Julia (Heather Lind), but she just died in a car accident. Davis was the passenger but he only got a few scrapes. This really fucking sucks. Sure Davis might not have been the most emotionally invested person ever, but he still loved his wife and she meant the world to him. She also meant the world to her parents, Phil (Chris Cooper) and Margot (Polly Draper). Oh, Phil happens to be Davis’ boss. They are both wrecked over this, but Davis seems to feel almost nothing. He doesn’t cry, he doesn’t scream, it is like he is still in shock and is empty inside.

None of this helps when he decides to go to a vending machine and spend $1.25 on a bag of peanut M&M’s, which fails to drop. What the fuck vending machine. So Davis sends a complaint letter to the company and accidentally lets them know a lot about his life. He then writes follow up letters, making sure they know the whole story. This is very personal, but hey, its Davis’ way of finally talking about his issues.

This eventually leads him to Karen (Naomi Watts), the entire PR department, who feels connected with Davis despite being a complete stranger. She has a 15 year old son (Judah Lewis), is dating the boss of the company (C.J. Wilson) and has her own issues, but hey, no one is perfect. Maybe one day these two will meet. Davis, a grieving man, and Karen, a lost soul. But that might be too hokey and romance like. Fuck romance, this is about losing a loved one not finding one.

Also starring Malachy Cleary and Debra Monk as Davis’ parents.

Yes, in demolition we get to see a guy demolish shit. The title isn’t just a metaphor!

Jake Gyllenhaal plays an unstable character? Check. Jake Gyllenhaal acts really well? Check. Jake Gyllenhaal takes his shirt off? Check check check.

Like usual, Gyllenhaal delivers. He gives us a quirky dude who the audience will cheer for and hope for the best. But this is a comedy/drama. Things aren’t going to just be happy. Jesus, his wife just died. He needs to let it out and grieve and do something to honor her in his own way. He is worth the price of admission.

As for this film, it is directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, who more recently directed Wild and Dallas Buyers Club. Those were nominated for Oscars, but I don’t see this film getting any nods. The film, despite tear educing and funny, just didn’t have enough closure. Closure in both the actual plot, and the side plot involving Watts.

Watts felt really underused for this role. It deserved to be something bigger or better. She was just wasted for the small role, given her more recent success as an Oscar nominated actress. Oh well.

Did I mention we get to see Gyllenhaal dance and lose his mind? That’s fun.

Happy Holidays from the end of March!

I wanted to see Krampus when it came out early in December, but unfortunately there weren’t any prescreenings for the film. Guess they assumed critics would hate it, or not get the point, man.

Either way, I was disappointed, but not disappointed enough to spend money on going to the film. December is busy for awards movies, not comedy horror films!

But the idea of a Krampus movie was very exciting. I haven’t even seen a Christmas horror film since Rare Exports years ago, which was wonderful and you should consider adding it to your Christmas collection.

But this one has scary clowns, so you know it might be more horror than comedy.

It’s Christmas time, yay! We are going to celebrate at the Engel household with their family coming over. Tom (Adam Scott) and Sarah (Toni Collette) have to make sure their house is clean, food cooked and everything decorated for Santa. After all, their kid Max (Emjay Anthony) still believes despite being like 10 or something. Also living in the house is their older daughter Beth (Stefania LaVie Owen) and Omi (Krista Stadler), Tom’s mom. She speaks German!

Anyways, the family eventually comes over. Rednecks. Howard (David Koechner), Dorothy (Conchata Ferrell), and Linda (Allison Tolman) with some dick kids (Queenie Samuel, Lolo Owen) and a baby.

Needless to say, the other boy kids tease poor Max for believing in Santa. They find his letter to Santa and read it outloud, making fun of his wishes for things like his parents to love each other more, and so on. He gets mad and rips up his letter throwing it into the wind! And with that, the power in the whole city goes out. And the winter storm gets a little bit more wintry.

Strange things are afoot. But let’s just cut to the chase. People have ruined Christmas. Krampus is here to punish them.

Damn grandma, you are brave enough to take on the Krampus alone?

When you go into a comedy horror film, you can never really expect a whole lot. They rarely have large budgets and are never really too funny or too scary. Krampus seems to fit the bill like the other ones, with a slightly more impressive budget.

I feel bad for Adam Scott, who often is put into these sort of roles (see Piranha) and lower budget comedies (see Hot Tub Time Machine 2). He is a funny guy who keeps getting stuck in bad to mediocre films.

Krampus at times is a little scary. Toys come to life in a very The Nightmare Before Christmas way. The Krampus itself felt downplayed with most of the work being done by creepy helper demon things. But knowing that even the kids weren’t safe was a nice surprise that a lot of films seem to avoid.

As for the comedy, well, there really wasn’t any. The comedy came from strange things happening, like CGI gingerbread men attacking them. No other real jokes outside of the weird factor, which is the most disappointing aspect of the film.

It did an okay job at the scary parts, but failed when it came to making me chuckle.

I could never really get into Red vs Blue, but I also never really got into Halo. There could be a correlation there! I tried probably three times to start Red Vs Blue, but never finished season 1 despite liking it. Then years later I would try again, and of course start over to understand the “plot”, eventually stop before season 1 ended, and it continued on and on.

That being said, I am not entirely familiar with anything else Rooster Teeth has done. But they did make a movie, Lazer Team, and after being in theaters for only two weeks, it was released on YouTube Red. YouTube Red is a subscription based YouTube service that has no ads and lets you run it in the background on your phone as a music player. And hey, it has some original shows and movies on there as well, with Lazer Team being one of its first major films to be released on the platform.

How neat!

I mean, none of this says anything about how good it is. But it does show how neat it is.

I expect a piles of lasers in a movie with this title. All kinds too. Especially the pew pew variety.

In the 1970’s, the US government received a message from aliens and were able to secretly decode it. They found out that eventually an alien race would come to destroy the Earth. But in order to help them, the Antareans would send them a single power suit a few days before they get there so they would have a chance. So they found a gifted baby and raised him to be the perfect man. Adam (Alan Ritchson) would be the strongest, fastest, and smartest person they could develop, and he would save the Earth one day!

Or not. Now in modern day, after a series of events, we have a few modern slackers and dummies in the same spot. Hagan (Burnie Burns) is a low level sheriff in the small town and hasn’t ever done anything great with his life. He has in his custody Zach (Michael Jones), a talented high school football quarterback, who has the hots for Hagan’s daughter (Alexandria DeBerry) and is an idiot. Herman (Colton Dunn) used to be a quarterback at the high school, but couldn’t go on to college or pro because Hagan missed a block in their last game, giving him a permanent leg injury. And Woody (Gavin Free) is Herman’s dumb friend.

Due to alcohol and arguing, they accidentally end up shooting a UFO out of the sky, before it can make it to the military base. They discover the suit and begin to put the pieces on. Hagan gets a glove that makes a shield, Zach a glove that can shoot lasers, Herman some boots that can make him fast, and Woody a helmet that will eventually make him smarter. They of course don’t know any of this at the time, but eventually the pieces once activated merged themselves permanently to their body.

Which of course means, this group of losers have a few days to figure out how to work as a team, because they are now the only hope the world has. Also featuring Steve Shearer as the main military commander.

Only one of them even has a laser! How sad.

Lazer Team is a small budget sci-fi comedy, and knowing that helps lower your expectations going in. This is not going to be Turbo Kid, which is also an indie film, but had a lot behind it to make it something special. No, this is a movie where plot and effects are secondary, what the creators and actors are really after are the laughs. They want to make you giddy and smile.

And on that note, they still only do just an okay job.

The main character by Burnie Burns (aka one of the greatest names ever), the writer of this film and main member of Rooster Teeth, is playing the straight man so he rarely has the better moments. He is extremely passive and throughout the film I never really get behind him to root for him. No, the only character I care about is Zach, the dumb ass quarterback, because he is the funniest one. Michael Jones looks like a poor mans Adam Devine, but he works well in this film.

They had one character who isn’t smart, get the helmet to make him super smart. Unfortunately, a lot of those jokes don’t have a huge effect, because we barely knew him as a dumb character before the changes started. It did lead to some nice jokes, but most fell flat given the lack of history with him.

Even though the jokes were only just okay, I did end up liking the ending of the film. Some good action and explanation happen and it is an ending that can make one look forward to future films. Just disappointed that some of the action scenes earlier on didn’t seem to pack as much punch.

Oh well. Okay film, good first try, do better next time or I will come down on you with the rage of a lower-tier film critic!

Not growing up in the 1980’s, I didn’t have a lot of exposure to the Pee-Wee Herman character.

Heck, all I knew about him was the 1985 movie Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, which I had seen once, and Pee-wee’s Playhouse, a kid show I never saw. I just now learned the character had been in a Cheech and Chong film and used to be a stage act that was very adult oriented. He was toned down a bit for the movie and especially the kids show.

So I was pretty indifferent going into Pee-wee’s Big Holiday, a made for Netflix follow up almost twenty years later. And since it was rated PG, I let the kids watch it with me. I knew there might be some crude jokes hiding in the background, but as long as Reuben didn’t bust out his Pee-wee to pleasure himself during the movie, I figured nothing would really be a big deal.

Although I like where this is going.

Pee-wee Herman (Paul Reubens) is still up to his old hijinks. He loves Fairville, but he is afraid to leave it. Everything he needs is in this small town anyways. But then he meets Joe Manganiello (Joe Manganiello). Pee-wee and Joe hit it off right away. They agree on the best candy. They like the same things. They were BFF soul mates. And plus, Pee-wee had never heard of Joe before. He never saw Magic Mike!

So Joe invites Pee-wee to his birthday party, except it is in NYC on the other side of the country. And he tells him to not fly by plane, because he cannot discover himself that way. He has to road trip it up and he has five days to get there. And if they were really friends, he would want to go to his birthday party.

Pee-wee has never taken a holiday before from work. But after receiving a sign, he takes his car and crosses the rail road tracks.

And along the way bad things happen! He runs into three lady bank robbers (Jessica Pohly, Stephanie Beatriz, Alia Shawkat), a novelty item salesman (Patrick Egan), a farmer (Hal Landon Jr.) with nine daughters, Grizzly Bear Daniels (Brad William Henke), some extreme hair stylists (Sonya Eddy, Anthony Alabi, Dionne Gipson, Darryl Stephens), and a crazy rich lady (Diane Salinger).

Also Richard Riehle and David Arquette are in this one too.

One shake can change a man forever.

I really wasn’t sure what to expect for this film, outside of zany antics and maybe some celebrity cameos. I was definitely disappointed on the cameo front, because there was…one I guess. But I was not disappointed in Joe Manganiello, the super cameo.

Generally, when actors play parodied versions of themselves, I laugh. Like most of the cameos in Entourage. Or Matt LeBlanc in Episodes. Manganiello knocked it out of the park.

The bromance between him and Reubens, sure it is artificial, but it was a joy to see. Every time Pee-wee went to sleep he had visions of the party, but in slow motion and (spoilers) and they were hilarious. This film made me like Manganiello more than it made me care about Pee-wee.

As for the rest of the film, it had its moments. Most of the people are just extreme charicatures, like Pee-wee himself, so it is generally always moving. I enjoyed the Amish scene and the bank robbers added an element I didn’t expect in a PG movie (male strippers)!

A fine enough movie to distract you while you play on your phones, but not something you’d every really want to just sit down and watch again and again.

Hello, My Name Is Doris first premiered at the Austin, TX SXSW festival in 2015. And it took a whole damn year to come out. Literally, the 2016 SXSW is closing as this film is starting to get its nationwide release.

Some film companies really like to take their time I guess.

I didn’t know a whole lot about the movie going into it. I just knew it had Sally Field, who has barely been in anything lately. Outside of a TV show, she had three recent movies, a couple Spider-Man films and Lincoln. Her last movie before that was all the way in 2006. I have to assume she is getting close to retirement, or she doesn’t need the money and only wants to work on things that look interesting to her. Not Spider-Man though, because she apparently only did it for a friend and didn’t for the films that much.

But hey, at least she isn’t going the Robert De Niro route and starring in every shit film known to man.

Love can do strange things to a little girl.

Doris Miller (Sally Field) is in her mid-60’s and she has just lost her mom. She has lived with her mom her whole life in the same house on Staten Island. It is a bit inconvenient, as she has to take a ferry to work because of it. According to her brother (Stephen Root) and his wife (Wendi McLendon-Covey), their mom was a hoarder and it makes Doris a hoarder too. They also want her to move out of the house, the one she has lived at for over 60 years taking care of their sick mother on her own, so that the junk and house can be sold. She can get a cheaper smaller place in the city and not have a huge commute to work! Well fuck that.

Speaking of work, she is an accountant/data processor type person, in a fresh hip magazine company thanks to some mergers and acquisitions. On the stuffed elevator, she meets John (Max Greenfield), a friendly person who happens to be squished up against her, and sure enough he is a new art director in their company! And he is so dreamy. She starts to day dream about him, despite the serious age difference. She wants him.

And after meeting a self help guru (Peter Gallagher), with her best friends Roz (Tyne Daly) and Val (Caroline Aaron), she decides that anything is possible and she should work for it. She deserves love after all this time, and she deserves John.

Smaller roles are played by Natasha Lyonne, Beth Behrs, Isabella Acres, Kumail Nanjiani, Rebecca Wisocky, Don Stark, Rich Sommer, and Elizabeth Reaser.

He is so god damn charming in this movie. The opposite of his New Girl character.

Squeee, what a cute and cringey movie. Doris is the best character Sally Field has played in YEARS, and no just because she has barely had any roles over the last decade. It has been so long that I have forgotten that Field has won Best Actress twice in her life (in the 70’s and 80’s) and just now associate her as a once great actress who shows up every now and again. But she wasn’t just a great actress in the past, she is still a great actress now. Doris is an amazing character and she is brought to life by Field in an almost magical way. Her performance was funny and sad at the same time. Not super realistic for the most part, but the situations she was in and how they were handled were realistic. It would be impossible for a viewer to not join her on the roller coaster of emotions and feel the way she feels.

Hell, the film even did a good job at subtly letting the viewer really see how hoarding takes place. She says at one point that every item has emotional value and a story, but we are allowed to see that play out naturally with just a single broken pencil. One woman’s junk is another woman’s purpose.

The supporting cast was also noteworthy. Greenfield showed that he can play non-douchey roles and can be a multi dimensional character. But even more of a stand out was Daly as Doris’ best friend. She was about as unique as Doris with her own weird quirks, but together they made an incredibly believable performance of two women who have been best friends for over half a century. You could tell they both cared about each other and it was an exciting side arc to see along side the main story.

Field was great in this film. She deserves an acting nomination most definitely, despite coming out so far away from the awards ceremonies. You will laugh, you will almost cry, and you will cringe from all of her mistakes.

It took me so long to watch Sleeping With Other People, because I made a lot of assumptions based on the title.

I assumed it was about two people in a relationship who were going through a tough time. Their sex drives were low but their love was high and that was making them frustrated. So they agreed to let themselves sleep with other people. Just to spice things up.

I didn’t feel like seeing it, because I already saw that movie in The Freebie. And hell, I also saw Hall Pass which was similar enough and shares a main actor.

But I was wrong, and the assumption made us all assholes. Or something like that.

Shit, here they are sleeping with each other. What the fuck movie title?

Let’s start out in 2002 or so. I forget the year. Early new millennium! Lainey (Alison Brie) is banging on a dorm room door, trying to get some sex with some loser. Before she gets kicked out, Jake (Jason Sudeikis) says she is here as his guest, so they hang out and talk about her issues. And they have sex, both of them being virgins after a long night of getting to know each other.

Then you know, they lost touch over time. Now it is modern day. Jake is addicted to sex, full on. He has sex a lot, is known as a player, and has even gotten around to his job. He is trying to sleep with his new boss (Amanda Peet).

Lainey is addicted to…love! She breaks up with her boyfriend whom she has been cheating on with constantly. With Matthew (Adam Scott), a gynecologist, the guy who she tried to sleep with in college so long ago. Except he has a pregnant wife, but she can’t get over him.

Either way, Lainey and Jake eventually meet up and go on a small date. They both open up with their relationship problems and agree that sleeping with each other would be a bad thing. They should remain just friends, avoid sexy talk if possible, and just help each other with their issues.

But you know, this is romance thing. That’s all I will say.

Also starring Anna Margaret Hollyman, Jason Mantzoukas, Natasha Lyonne, and Andrea Savage.

Taking off shirts at a kids birthday party is one way to avoid sexy time.

Sleeping With Other People is one of those strange movies that doesn’t even show some sexy times occurring. I am not clamoring for penetration in film or anything ridiculous, just that the sex they show looks very unnatural, with the characters wearing all their clothes still and usually just collapsing at the end. Yes, this happens all the time now it seems, especially with the PG-13 Rating. But this movie is rated R. Let’s use the old internet sexist phrase, “Tits or GTFO.”

Sorry to be crass. But just an annoyance and a strange step away from realism that has been growing.

There are amusing moments in Sleeping With Other People, but I think the downfall of the film is in its dramatic moments. They tended to feel a bit more nonsensical than the comedic ones, which is normally opposite. I could never fully connect with either character, who both were living lies for months. They needed Mike Tyson to just walk up to them and say “Now Kith” to get it over with.

This analysis is dull, because the movie is just so damn average. It is a mediocre plot, with average acting, an occasional funny moment, and many without. Watch it if you like the actors, ignore it otherwise.

I don’t know when this review would be published (but if you are reading it from a recent FB post or Tweet, then the answer is today!), but I assure you it has been sitting on my website for weeks just waiting.

You see, Daddy’s Home came out on Christmas along with a lot of good films that I had to spend time seeing. I didn’t feel like going to a screening of Daddy’s Home and was perfectly fine waiting for a Red Box rental before giving it any time or effort.

But then I had to go and win tickets to see it at any theater near me. Sigh. I even waited almost two weeks after I got the tickets, a month after it came out, hoping I could at least watch it alone on a Thursday matinee showing. But two other fucking people showed up. Who does that!

Either way, the review is just waiting to be filler. The entire month of February is reserved for new movies, and movies nominated for awards. Sorry Daddy’s Home! I am sure people will care about you in March or whenever the hell I remember to post this.

Rated PG-13 for Shenanigans for the whole fucking family!

Being a step dad is hard. Unless you are Brad Fucking Whitaker (Will Ferrell). He loves kids and has read books on being a step dad. He can’t have kids of his own after a bad dentist x-ray accident, so it is nice that he met and fell in love with Sara (Linda Cardellini). She has two kids (Owen Vaccaro and Scarlett Estevez) and they need someone stable.

Not someone like Dusty Mayron (Mark Wahlberg), the paterfamilias, who is beyond cool, but unstable and a drifter. According to the books, Brad should try and develop a friendship with Dusty as it is good for the kids, which is why he agrees to let him hang out and live in their house for awhile.

Sure enough, Dusty thinks Brad is a little bitch. He also likes his kids, so he tries to show case how awesome he is, at Brad’s expense, to win back his ex and the kids. Ah yes, Dad vs Step Dad. A tale as old as time.

Also featuring (in order of importance), Hannibal Buress as a dude, Thomas Haden Church as a boss, Bobby Cannavale as a doctor, and Bill Burr as a different dad.

He has facial hair and facial hair means cool.

Daddy’s Home is the type of film where watching the trailer is really all you need to get by. The major jokes are in the trailer and 90% of the film can be figured out from it alone. And guess what? The film offers no twists or turns that you wouldn’t expect. Given its genre, you can probably figure out how it will end, especially given how the trailer frames everything and they make Dusty out to be the bad guy.

I am not saying a film has to be 100% unique and non obvious to be likable, but I need something I haven’t seen before. Will Ferrell. Stop these shit movies. What the fuck. Can you just get back with Oscar Nominated Adam McKay? Is that the only way you can be in a good film? And also Night At The Roxbury, of course, a classic. The number of shit films is bugging me out and making me worried about Zoolander 2 (which will be reviewed on this site before this one is released).

Wahlberg hasn’t been in as much shit, but has been doing the Ted movies now, so it is hard to say. Maybe that man just can’t do comedy either. We need him doing action roles or something. Get him out of this funk.

Daddy’s Home is boring. The only part that was a delight was Hannibal Buress’ strange character. His first scene was very weak, as all the jokes involving him felt like they were written by a middle schooler who was trying to sound edgy. But thankfully his character kept coming back and got better after the fact. Still not really worth watching it just for him.

On a final note, what kind of elementary school Daddy Daughter dance would feature the “Like a G6” song. Did this movie come out 5 years ago and sit on a shelf that long? I lived my whole life avoiding it whenever it came on, but this film ruined that for me too.

Happy Marcho-wene! For those who read this months from now, I quite lazily decided to finally review Hotel Transylvania 2 in March. Hell, it even came out to DVD in January. No excuse valid, not even a busy Oscar season.

I thought Hotel Transylvania was only okay and really wasn’t surprised it had had a sequel. The animation isn’t top tier, so it is probably relatively easy to throw together a movie. And you know everyone in the voice cast is available for work. They keep busy, but they keep busy together.

Except for one person. CeeLo Green! He voiced the mummy in the last movie, but this time he is nowhere to be found. Instead they got Keegan-Michael Key to voice the mummy, keeping their “token black role” to one I guess?

Oh, and now old people might be voicing characters!

Mavis (Selena Gomez) and Jonathan (Andy Samberg) are getting married! But that isn’t the important plot point. They invite all of the family over, on both sides, except for Mavis’ Grandpa (Mel Brooks). He apparently doesn’t like humans. That will come back later.

Then they have a kid. A little ginger kid (Asher Blinkoff), gross I know. Because he is a male, Dracula (Adam Sandler) assumes he has inherited the vampire DNA (because his genetics is weird) and can’t wait for him to go doing Monster stuff. But instead, he can’t fly, has no fangs, can’t turn into a bat, and does a lot of normal baby things. Mavis is now very protective of the baby, living in the harsh Hotel monster environment. Jonathan just wants her to trust a babysitter and let them spend some time alone together.

Now it is like, five years later and it is still the same. Mavis wants to move to California, where Jonathan comes from, to live a normal and safe life. So Jonathan agrees to take her on a trip, but he likes the hotel and likes working there. So Jonathan and Dracula agree to hatch a plan: While they are gone checking out Cali, Drac will take the kid and go on a fear-adventure with his friends (Kevin James, Steve Buscemi, David Spade, Keegan-Michael Key) to scare him into going full vampire. Jonathan will try and make her think California is terrible so she won’t want to leave. Can’t go wrong.

Also featuring the work of Rob Riggle (Which was great), Fran Drescher, Molly Shannon, Megan Mullally, Nick Offerman, and Dana Carvey.

Jonathan fucked up. How could you go back when you get rainbow teeth?!

Hotel Transylvania 2 doesn’t live up to its predecessor. It also doesn’t improve anything along the way, with the exact same quality of animation.

First of all, it takes a long time to really understand just what this movie is about. Sure, vaguely it is about the family the whole film, but that isn’t a plot, those are just characters. A good third of the movie happens at least before we find out that the plot is a dad and husband lying to their daughter/wife, on a very ridiculous idea.

Secondly, it is all over the place in terms of applying its own rules. Namely I want to talk about vampires. They early on make the joke about how vampires can’t have their reflection, commonly shown through mirrors, but also any other thing that would capture their image. So of course, the wedding photographs are a bit funny. But then they let the vampires use skype and appear on video cameras, like they are really anything different. And of course, if they were wondering if the boy had any vampire in him, all they had to do was take a picture of him and see what happened. Unless in this world the vampireness just can develop all at once, and literally zero traits show up before hand.

Finally, the ending is a complete disaster. It ends with a complete brawl, all of our main characters versus an army of other characters (I wouldn’t want to spoil it). But yeah, it basically ends the same way that Grown Ups 2 ends. The fight is unnecessary and a bit nonsensical. It is unnecessary because it is the type of thing that could have been prevented and stopped at any moment by one of the characters literally just saying something. The bad guys wouldn’t have a beef with most of the monsters either, so they’d have no reason to attack them. And it was nonsensical, given the extreme powers that apparently exist in tiny bat forms. They just wanted to end it on a silly note, and kids like brawls I guess. But it is a shit move.

There were the occasional funny jokes. But this film had no focus and had no great conclusion. Mavis should take the baby and leave her husband and family behind, I think.

2016 has a sizable collection of animated movies coming out this year. I’d list them, but that makes for a boring read.

A common theme I see is the classic “Animals doing human people things.” We technically had it with Kung Fu Panda 3, but it was at least set in the past. This year there are at least three major films with this theme in modern times. Zootopia, The Secret Life of Pets, and Sing. It seems excessive, so it probably is.

Needless to say, this made me worried for Zootopia. I had only seen the first teaser trailer, and a lot of posters. It looks un-original. It looked like last year’s The Good Dinosaur. Something they slapped together after a few years, but instead they are anticipating their other film to win awards. That one being Moana.

But then again, Walt Disney Studios hasn’t let me down since The Princess and the Frog. Clearly I should just shut up and watch the movie.

Obligatory Non-Animated Sloth Related Clip.

Despite most of the advertisements I have seen, our main character is not the fox, but actually a bunny! A female bunny, Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin), with big dreams and aspirations. She wants to leave her farm and small village and become a cop! She wants to work in Zootopia, the main mammalian metropolis where so many life forms come together to live and work together to build something great. Of course there has never been a bunny cop before and her parents (Bonnie Hunt, Don Lake) will miss her a lot, but she wants to help other animals!

You see, in this world, humans never happened, all the mammals evolved to be human-esque and resist those primal urges to kill or be killed. Somehow still, despite the hundreds of years, stereotypes still exist for predators and animals. Go figure.

Well she makes it, but Chief Bogo (Idris Elba, an Ox) doesn’t care and makes her a meter maid. After getting herself into trouble and being extremely pushy, she is eventually able to join the big case. Quite a few animals, all predators have gone missing and no one has any leads on any of them. So Judy has only 48 hours to try and find Emmett Otterton, or she will resign from the job. Sucks.

To help her, she blackmails a fox named Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) to help her follow up on some leads. And of course, they become a completely opposite duo that is able to miraculously solve the case and do what no one imagined they could do.

And of course this is a big cast. So let’s not ruin it by talking about who does what and just give the list of names: J.K. Simmons, Jenny Slate, Kristen Bell, Raymond S. Persi, Maurice LaMarche, Nate Torrence, Tommy Chong, Octavia Spencer, Shakira, and of course Alan Tudyk,

And this guy is our new Olaf/Baymax/Horse from Tangled.

Somewhere, a little cartoon mouse with ears as as big as his head is slowly lighting a cigar, laughing to himself. Walt Disney Animation studios has been in the game for eons at this point and they know what they are doing. Sometimes their advertising may be suspect, but their current main line of films since the CGI era has not had a bust yet, and it was apparently wrong for me to think otherwise.

Zootopia for the most part was a very well done and enjoyable film. Scenes were incredibly detailed, especially during a night time rain storm in the jungle. There was incredible detail put into the streets of the main city and from what it looks like, they may have gotten an accurate scale of all the animals big and small. That is a huge undertaking in a film, instead of everyone just being of similar height ranges to human, a rhino or ox or giraffe appear much larger than our normal bunny point of view. In fact, I first thought something was wrong and things were being exaggerated by the animators because the reality is quite jarring.

Better yet, Judy Hopps is an awesome character. She is inspiring, she is funny, she does more than what anyone expects of her. And hey, Nick Wilde ends up being a complete character as well. A great dynamic duo, both with their own dreams and goals and neither being a cheap stereotype (although, yes, a lot of characters are cheap stereotypes).

Your mom’s a cheap stereotype.

And the movie is funny as well, it had jokes for everyone. Meta Disney jokes were there, especially when it came to Alan Tudyk’s character, movie/TV references (Breaking Bad!) and clever puns. I was almost dying during the Sloth scene, but apparently they turned 80% of that entire bit into a trailer. I’d suggest not watching that and letting it happen naturally during the movie.

It also happens to be about racism/prejudice or even a poor/rich sort of dynamic. It handles the topic with care and kids will be able to understand what is going on and the consequences of these sorts of actions.

Despite how much better it was than my imagination, it did still have some annoyances. The Gazelle played by Shakira, named Gazelle, felt incredibly cheap every time she was on screen or playing the new song just for this movie. More of a money grab than the Trolls from Frozen, but they were mostly just boring. The twists in the plot are relatively easy to catch far in advance. Not the minute small details, but figuring out who is behind the disappearing animals. A disappointing amount of time is spent pre-reveal, when an earlier reveal would have done wonders for building up the bad animal.

CGI movies take a long time to make and come out. But I don’t want to wait a long time to see more of these characters. They should turn this into a TV show, but not a cheaply done one. And fast. It easily works as a police procedural, and they’d have great content for years. Zootopia on its own is definitely recommended, and gives me a small amount of hope that maybe some of the other animated films this year won’t suck too much.

I have to type it out at least once, so here I go.

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out a Window and Disappeared (whew) is a movie actually recommended to me sometime last summer. Except it was a foreign flick and I had no way of watching it. But it has a lot of acclaim over in Sweden, and I like Sweden so I hoped I would like it too.

Hell, it is Sweden’s third highest grossing film of all time. Right after The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire. I have no idea how much money The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest made, but I assume they all hated it as much as I did and it wasn’t actually third before this.

Seemingly out of nowhere though, this movie was nominated for an Academy award. No, not for foreign film, and not for cinematography. It was nominated for Best Makeup! It is competing against Mad Max: Fury Road and The Revenant. Technically I shouldn’t be surprised because those two films were nominated for everything, I just expected a bit more diversity.

Oh well, let’s see what this very specific movie title is about!

Look! There he goes! Disappearing out of a window! Now you know!

Allan Karlsson (Robert Gustafsson) is old. He is about to turn 100, and thus, our man with the plan. Well, plan isn’t true either. His plan is to get away.

You see, Allan is cooked up in a nursing home, because he was found unsafe to be living by himself after he used dynamite to blow up his chicken coop to get a fox. So he jumps out of his window and goes to a nearby bus station, with only a bit of loose change.

However, some angry skin head (Simon Säppenen) comes in and tells Allan to hold on to his bag while he hits the toilet, because the suitcase won’t fit in the room. Just as he does, the bus arrives to take Allan to the middle of nowhere. So Allan takes the suitcase with him.

And what happens is a brief adventure, where Allan runs into a very diverse group of people, some violence, and of course man hunt to find him from the local authorities and a biker gang. At the same time, we learn about what Allan did throughout his long life in a series of anecdotes. Anecdotes!

Also starring David Wiberg, Iwar Wiklander, Jens Hultén, and Mia Skäringer.

What a ragtag group of so-and-sos.

Let me save time. Did you like Forrest Gump? This is the Swedish Forrest Gump. Sure, he isn’t mentally slow, he just lacks a lot of formal schooling. But he goes around the world, joins the military, and becomes a big player in a lot of events over the last 100 years. He meets Stalin! He helps with the Manhattan project! And more!

The good news is that the stories of his past are only 35-40% of the film. The rest is of him being 100 and doing his little adventure thing. The cast of characters are diverse, the situations are funny, and I didn’t know how it will end.

It was nominated for best make up because our main actor, Gustafsson, is not actually 100 years old, but they made him look super old for the film. He is only 50 ish, and plays Allan through all parts of his life outside of being a little kid. So it is pretty good. I just wish, again, the category was a bit more diverse. The other two films will win enough awards. So I hope this one pulls off the upset.

A pretty good movie, probably a really good book. And hey, Sweden everyone. Sweden.