Tag: Comedy

Joe Dirt: Cult Classic, Classically Bad, or just a shit movie?

Hard to say, depends on who you ask. I would argue that it had a few redeeming jokes, could have been good, but overall, just a shit movie. Which is sad, because I tend to just feel sorry for David Spade more than anything. I liked Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star. Or at least a few redeeming jokes/scenes. Fuck. So I guess I just feel bad overall. He probably just misses Chris Farley.

And then we got Joe Dirt 2: Beautiful Loser. Was it wanted? Hard to say.

But it exists and it was released exclusively on Crackle, because Sony went and financed the film. So you can watch it in all 480p glory with commercials, right now. Which is why this is day 2 of my “Fucking Finally” review week.

480p, because if any higher, you could tell that the hair is not actually a wig, but his real hair!

This sequel takes place not at all directly after the first film, and not just because I don’t remember how the first film ended. But Joe (Spade) and Brandy (Brittany Daniel) are still together and they even got married. Yay! You knew that from the picture above.

Things were going well, technically. He even got Brandy pregnant to make a little Dirt. Turns out Brandi was actually popping out triplets though, all girls. Oh well, life is still fine. Even if Dirt just gets farted on at work and his family thinks he is a loser. To prove he is not a loser, he runs back to the trailer during a tornado to get something for one of his daughters. This makes him Wizard Of Oz it up and get transported to another place, where it lands on the leader of a gang!

Hey, that makes Joe the new gang leader, according to the second in command, Foggie (Patrick Warburton). Also, it is now 1965. Time travel, just because.

The rest of the movie is literally Joe Dirt existing in the past, doing past stuff, like meeting Lynyrd Skynyrd, before they are famous, doing a Cast Away parody, and other stuff. Heck, the whole thing is really a bigger Forrest Gump parody.

Also you can find Mark McGrath, Dennis Miller, Tracy Weisert, Christopher Walken, Rhonda Dents, and Kevin P. Farley stomping around at various points in this movie.

Feast your eyes upon this image and know pain itself!

Look at that image above. Look at it hard. Does it make you feel bad inside? Does it make you hate yourself? Does it make you wonder how could an image like that appear in a movie that doesn’t have “Movie” in the title?

That’s it! Joe Dirt 2: Beautiful Loser does what no one thought possible. It created something on par with Scary Movie 5, The Starving Games, and Meet the Spartans. Shitty parody movies with barely a theme that have one unrelated scene after another to make terrible pop culture references and call them jokes.

However, Joe Dirt 2 doesn’t even have a theme. It just makes terrible references, not jokes, just references, and moves on. The picture above is trying to make it seem hip and cool, by putting a gif meme directly in the film to appeal to the youth of today and just seeming terrible. It literally came out of nowhere and didn’t even make sense in the scene it was in!

Honestly, I found maybe two scenes slightly amusing. The Skynard scene and the nickname scene. However, like every “joke” in this movie, they both still go on too long and make me sick of it before it is through. In a way, that describes the films as a whole. Joe Dirt could be considered an amusing movie. Joe Dirt 2 elongates the joke too far, making me hate 1 and 2 collectively more than I did before.

Buy It! – This movie is available now on {Blu-Ray} and {DVD}.

Fucking finally. Those are the words I said when I sat down to watch The Interview. I mean…fuck! What month is it? September? 2015?

The Interview was supposed to come out on Christmas of 2014 (after being pushed back from October to re-edit a little bit to make it better for NK), and I first saw a trailer for it way before all this North Korea bombing controversy happened. I was stoked to see it. I was sad when my screener was cancelled. I cheered on the good fight from Alamo Drafthouse saying that they would still show the film. And then it was on VOD like, right away and Netflix probably within a month of that. So it has been easy for me to consume and watch an review for over 9 months.

And I am just now reviewing it. What the hell happened? Why did it keep leaving my point of view and get pushed back? As a real answer, January I specifically put a lot of effort into finishing my best/worst of 2014 year lists, then I had to worry about watching all the rest of the Oscar nominees. Then I just forgot.

So without to much more delay, I am presenting you with a review of The Interview to kick off my “Fucking Finally” review week! Not just a bunch of movies I should have watched a long time ago, but movies that have been super available to watch and I somehow just didn’t do it.

I just couldn’t handle the fake smiles and forced friendships

Dave Skylark (James Franco) is the host of Skylark Tonight. He is very outspoken, in your face and not much of a professional. The good news is that he doesn’t have to be professional, because all he does is interview celebrities and talk gossip. He is an entertainment journalist, the lowest of the lows. Kind of like being a movie reviewer!

Aaron Rapaport (Seth Rogen) is his very good producer who has recently reached 100 episodes with the show. Wow, 1000 episodes of making technically shit TV, but it used to be even bigger shit before he came along. He never thought he would be doing this. He thought he would be a serious producer for serious news programs that actually made a difference in the world.

That is when they find out that North Korean leader, Kim Jung Un (Randall Park), is a big fan of Skylark Tonight! He also recently secured nuclear warheads and is waving them around like a metaphorical dick to the rest of the world. By just making a few phone calls, they are able to set up an interview with the Supreme Leader and a free trip to North Korea! Sure, they have to ask pre-approved questions and are limited what they can talk about, but it might elevate Skylark Tonight to be an important news program! Sure this interview will suck, but other political people will have to accept their invites if they interviewed friggan Kim Jung Un!

Enter the FBI (Lizzy Caplan, Reese Alexander). They want them to kill Kim Jung Un, using advanced poison technology that will in no way bring it back to them or the USA. Oh what a fun trip this will now be!

Also featuring Diana Bang as the NK Chief Propagandist, and Timothy Simons as a worker on the show who is just a super yes man.

Radio communication devices are always 100% effective next to each other.

If there is one thing The Interview had going against it, it could in no way ever live up to the hype that began to surround it. North Korea allegedly threatening to bomb movie theaters if they showed the film? (This of course, unconfirmed, as it was a message from the Sony Hackers, who probably weren’t actually North Koreans and just fucking with people). I mean, we had the POTUS speak out about free speech and wanting the movie to be shown! If a movie threatens the security of America, it better be the funniest, most crass piece of work ever done!

And guess what? It wasn’t. When boiled down to the essentials, it is only mildly offensive (barely) and average in humor. People judge comedy films much harsher if they aren’t full on spectacles, so an average comedy is generally seen as bad or a waste of time. Remember The Guilt Trip? Of course you don’t. That was an average comedy forgotten by time. The Interview won’t be quickly forgotten thanks to the months of free press the film got. But it definitely wasn’t a huge Sony conspiracy either. They lost millions upon millions over the hack and probably didn’t make all the money they had hoped for The Interview either. Although, it is their biggest movie in terms of money made through online distribution, so it has that going for it.

Ahem. Where were we? Oh yeah. The acting in the movie is fine, Franco was a completely different person (or a more exaggerated Franco, hard to say). Rogen was his normal self. Park did an interesting Un (is that the last name? I have no idea how it works in North Korea). Bang was pretty good in her role and the FBI was more or less irrelevant.

There are a lot of long scenes, a double edged sword. If you don’t find the current joke funny, it will stand out and be awkward. I don’t have to finish the second half of that statement I think. You get it by now.

Either way, I think the main reason I avoided it for so long is because I knew it couldn’t live up to the hype and knew I might not like as much as I had hoped.

I was told I need to watch The Visit, for a few reasons! One, my wife likes a lot of the M. Night Shyamalan films and she needs me to tell her how it is. Good reason.

Two, I have only seen one MNS film in theaters, and that was the terrible After Earth. And come on, that doesn’t count. None of that was typical MNS. And finally, despite thinking otherwise, I have actually seen all of his films but two. I figured I was missing at least 6 or 7 by now, but somehow I have watched most of them. I kind of have to keep going at this point, no matter my preconceived notions.

As for biases, IMDB labels the film as a comedy horror. For some people who have found his recent movies to be laughably bad with terrible twists, this allows him to join in on the joke with him. If he makes things intentionally cheesy, it is a win win for him.

Kind of like how a visit with the grandparents is a win win. They get to feel loved, you get snacks.

Fifteen or so years ago, a woman left her parents house to be with an older man. They had a baby girl, then another kid. Then eventually the man left her to raise the two kids all alone. The whole time the woman would not go back to her parents for help, never communicating with them despite problems in her life.

But then they found her via the internet. They want to see their grand kids! She said no. Grand kids forced it and now Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) are going by train to see them! While they are away, The Mom (Kathryn Hahn) is going on a cruise with her boyfriend to get some well deserved time off.

Becca is a smart girl, aspiring film maker, so she wants to make a documentary about her experiences. This will be used as a project to help her mom heal the past between them all and leave to a better life hopefully. Tyler is the younger brother and a rapper, who enjoys free styling about random topics for “the ladies.”

Anyways, when they get to the farm, where there is no real cell phone signal (of course), they find their Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie, not Luke Youngblood) acting strangely. They were supposed to be a couple who offer counseling to sick people at the hospital that they volunteer at. But Pop Pop just seems to clean his guns and chop wood and stay alone. Nana bakes all the time and sometimes has a wild side.

Also there is the rule that they can’t leave their room after 9:30. That is when Nana starts acting even stranger and they wouldn’t want an accident to happen in the confusion. No, not at all.

At the same time, this oven is pretty nice and big and cozy.

Ed Oxenbould has already been in a lot of things in his very young career. In fact, he was Alexander in Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. He was also the worst part of that movie. Technically, he was also the worst part of this movie, but in this case, his acting wasn’t bad. Just his actual character had some annoyances.

Shit, I am completely fine with basically everything he did in this movie, except for the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad rapping. He freestyles like, 3-4 times in the film and each one is cringeworthy and awkward. It doesn’t feel like it fits his charterer at all. I assume the actor could really do it and so they included it, but I just wanted it to end immediately each time it started.

The Visit is actually a decent comedy when it needs to be and scary at the other points. As we get closer to the end, the balances shift a bit more to the scary side with a bit of absurdity. Despite the shifts in tone, the movie handles it all really well. It never feels jarring to be a bit scared and then laughing a minute later. That being said, this is not going to be the movie for you if you want an extremely funny or scary movie, as both sides are lessened in order to make the narrative work.

I enjoyed Dejonge as the lead, main narrator and it was refreshing to see such a smart teenager in a horror film. It was also interesting to her talk about the documentary she is trying to make, allowing a strange level of meta awareness to the final product movie that ends up being The Village.

More importantly, Dunagan was fantastic. She played a great Nana, pulling off the crazy, confused, and happy extremes that the character went through. The weirdness of the film relies heavily on her character, and if she wasn’t a great actress, the film would have been complete shit.

That’s right. This film wasn’t complete shit. This was a good movie. A good, new, M. Night Shyamalan movie. That factoid is probably the biggest twist of all.

Buy It! – This movie is available now on {Blu-Ray} and {DVD}.

I feel like I am constantly fighting a losing battle. Right now I only go to one pre-screening a week (two if a special occasion) and rarely see new things in theaters, unless I have a super strong desire. It seems like when given a choice every week, I will end up picking the serious drama or action movie, skipping the comedy. I have actually skipped a lot of comedies. They just don’t have the same strong pull from them to see them on the big screen. They are things that I can easily wait for a DVD release to rent at home and watch alone with ice cream.

Anyways, every time I think I am about to catch up on the last few comedies, a few more come out. I skip those in theaters and this endless cycle continues as always.

Hot Pursuit is not the end of my journey. Since then this summer, there are at least two other major comedies that came out that I am waiting to be released. Oh well, I will sally forth and hopefully giggle a bit.

A movie with two female leads and they aren’t shoving sexuality in my face? I’m not mad, just surprised really!

Rose Cooper (Reese Witherspoon) is the kind of person everyone will collectively hate. She is focused on only one thing, her career, and it enters all aspects of her life. You see, her dad used to be a cop and was the best on the force. So she grew up with just him and went on a lot of ride alongs. She learned the lingo, learned everything, she just didn’t learn how to be social. Now she is an adult and in the evidence room because she is apparently also slightly retarded despite the fact that she should be a super cop.

But now she has a field mission! Her and a US Marshall (Richard T. Jones) have to head down to South Texas to pick up two people for the witness protection program. Felipe (Vincent Laresca) and Daniella Riva (Sofia Vergara) are going to witness against the cartel leader Vincente Cortez (Joaquin Cosio)! Scary! It is very time sensative, they need to be at the courthouse the next day to testify. If they go too early, they might get hitmen after them or something! Cooper gets to go, because if there is a female witness, there needs to be a female officer. Oh well, she will take anything.

Of course, after they show up, some armed intruders break in and kill Felipe and the Marshall, leaving Cooper all alone with Daniella. She can’t trust anyone, because who knows who is on Cortez’s payroll. So she has to figure out how to get her to the trial on her own, in one piece, with multiple sides now coming against us. Basically, a great first real field assignment.

Also featuring a bunch more dudes, including: Matthew Del Negro, Michael Mosley, Robert Kazinsky, Jim Gaffigan, John Carroll Lynch, Michael Ray Escamilla, and Benny Nieves.

Oh good. Slightly better outfits for the pervs out there.

To continue with the trend I mentioned earlier, unsurprisingly, Hot Pursuit was not that funny. Honestly. One actually great scene, which is the main reason the review gets a 1. It involved cocaine and characters on said drug. Fantastic. Comedy gold. Everything else was just a slow, dull bore.

There were plot twists! They weren’t good. There were jokes in English and Spanish! They weren’t good. Witherspoon’s character was so uptight, by the book, and yet dumb! That wasn’t funny. Vergara kept trying to run away! Wasn’t funny. Maybe a scene where they badly try to act like lesbians to get out of a jam? Nope, still not funny.

Sorry for spoiling most of the movie.

But damn. If I had to give the movie any credit, Witherspoon was definitely acting like a different person. She had a strange accent and everything.

Hot Pursuit is a hot mess from start to finish and is not worthy of anyone’s time or attention.

I don’t know a lot about American Ultra. I do know that it has some nice buzz words to get more butts in the seats though.

A lot of big movies have American in the title now. American Sniper destroyed the box office, so people really love American shit. Then we have American Beauty, American Psycho, American Pie, you name it! American to start off your movie is like a golden ticket.

And then of course whe have Ultra. That puts it at the top tier, and it sounds a lot like Ultron. Maybe they want people who love America and love the Avengers to see their film. If they can bring in those two demographics, they would be walking their way over to the billionaire club.

Again, knowing nothing about the movie, this has to be their plan right?

“And bring in an established couple from other movies! Like those kids from Adventureland!” – Movie Exec

Mike Howell (Jesse Eisenberg) is a small town, do nothing, stoner. He has never left his West Virginian town and any time he attempts to leave he ends up having a panic idea. The thought of going places just freaks him the fuck out.

Thankfully he has weed. And the love of his life, Phoebe Larson (Kristen Stewart). She is basically perfect and deserves someone way better than him, as he is a constant screw up. But for whatever reason, she loves him back. Even when he kills two men outside of the convenience store that he works.

Shit. Shit shit fuck. He didn’t even know he could kill a man, and technically they attacked him first. He already has enough trouble with the law, weed smoker and all. It has something to do with the strange lady (Connie Britton) who came to his shop and basically said just gibberish. Next thing Mike knows, other strangers are trying to assassinate him and wouldn’t you know it? He can fight back! Magical Stoner Powers activate! Sometimes it can be good to be a government sleeper agent.

Also starring Tony Hale as a CIA employee, Topher Grace as a mean CIA dude, Walton Goggins as a hitman, John Leguizamo as a dealer, Stuart Greer as a sheriff and Bill Pullman as “mysterious CIA man.”

To John Leguizamo, Thanks For The Drugs, Jesse Eisenberg.

One exciting fact about American Ultra is that it written by Max Landis, who also wrote Chronicle. Huh. Chronicle. The great movie that was directed by Josh Trank, who recently directed a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Fantastic Four movie as his next main project. So weird that two guys who worked on an indie movie both got much bigger movies that were released in the same month three years later.

One thing I hate as a movie watcher is hearing other people echo commonly held complaints that they just regurgitate from the internet, without realizing they never gave it any thought. For example, a very popular “opinion” is that Stewart is terrible and cannot show emotion. People of course got confused with her real self and playing a hated character. For those that think that, they will be happy to know that Stewart shows a lot of emotion in this film: fear, sadness, extreme happiness. She is all over the place. And she also does a fine job.

As for the rest of the movie, American Ultra is a very strange film. Not fully comedy, not fully action, and not really a normal action comedy. And don’t even think it, because it is definitely not a stoner action comedy either, like Pineapple Express. It is a strange mash of all of these genres, and not in a normal or bad way. It reminds me of Red State. Red State was a hard movie to describe, clashing together different genres and keeping you on your toes. This film is of course nothing like the actual Red State, but I think you get my meaning.

American Ultra almost perfectly embodies the 2 out of 4 rating on this website. It is an enjoyable movie yes. Sometimes the jokes work really really well, thanks in a lot to the chaotic nature of a few scenes. And sometimes the movie feels like it drags and you just want to get to the next scene. We call that pacing issues in the biz, and it can make or break or apparently average out a film. But it did have some nice acting from our leads and some pretty slick shots at the same time. It can be worth a watch eventually. I think the people who love it are going to just really love it.

2015 has been a weak ass year for musicals. Basically we have a film or two that feature Anna Kendrick singing, a shitty terrible no good animated jukebox musical, and a made for TV mess. And the future doesn’t look bright either.

So I was a bit excited to hear about Lucky Stiff, a musical movie based off a real musical that was done in a theater. Because by golly, that means we are going to get something a bit unique with real singing in it. Not some quick to DVD jukebox musical that takes zero effort to produce.

There is still hope that a singing film without Kendrick this year is worth a watch.

This one lacks Kendrick, but its most famous actor in it is this guy so…fuck.

Harry Witherspoon (Dominic Marsh) is a poor, down on his luck, shoe salesman. He is the kind of guy who no one would care about. I don’t even care about him and we just met! But then he gets a telegram. Crazy right? Why would Harry get a telegram? Who would pay money to send him a message? Harry’s Landlady (Jayne Houdyshell) and I agree about this. It is bizarre.

Turns out he had an American uncle, Tony (Don Amendolia), who died and had his hands on some money. He is going to leave Harry, his last surviving relative, 6 million dollars in cash, but only if agrees to a few terms first. You know, like taking Uncle Tony to Monte Carlo and having a very detailed fun week of living life up to the max, which is something Tony always wanted to do. And don’t worry. His body has been prepared nicely by a taxidermist, so he won’t smell or be super gross. He will just be in a wheel chair and ready to party. So he has to Weekend at Bernie’s the whole situation.

But of course there is a catch. If he doesn’t follow the instructions to a letter, all of the money will instead go to a dog charity. For real dogs. Man what a waste! The humans in charge are interested in the money though, so they send Annabel Glick (Nikki M. James) to spy on them and potentially sabotage them to get that sweet cash.

That is still too easy. Which is why we have Rita LaPorta (Pamela Shaw), who claims to be the one who shot Tony accidentally, given that she is legally blind. They had an affair going on and her husband go jealous, but they also embezzled six million dollars of which he hid. So she wants it, and she wants her optometrist brother (Jason Alexander) to go with her.

There. Now we have a proper clusterfuck.

What? You want more? Fine. Let’s throw in Dennis Farina, Kate Shindle, and Kent Avenido, who was totally on like, three episodes of Glee, in which he was excellent.

“I’m too drunk to taste this chicken!” – I assume the Colonel Sanders looking motherfucker said this at least once.

Lucky Stiff was a weird movie. I sincerely hope you got that from the description. Very weird, bizarre at times, and technically because occasionally a character will break out in song makes it even stranger.

The average movie goer would look at this film and potentially quit halfway just because of how awkward it is, but thankfully I like strange films. I cannot say the acting is great. I can’t say all of the songs are enjoyable, nor can I say that any of them really stuck with me after the movie was over. In fact, the musical-ness was an afterthought. Everything was overacted (I believe intentionally) just to give this extreme zany atmosphere, I’d imagine it like a Mad TV sketch gone on too long.

But it was slightly entertaining, in the smallest ways, just because it was weird.

I should also note that the female lead, Nikki M. James, is actually a fantastic singer, and played the main female role in The Book of Mormon, winning the Tony for Best Actress in a Musical. You should see her acceptance speech, because it made me tear up. And then it made me realize how sad it is that someone can win something like a Tony, but not be able to still necessarily make it as a great actress.

Because for what it is worth, this film is technically terrible. The weirdness element could only carry me so far, but by the end I was just waiting for it to end. Oh well. Hopefully some smaller good musicals pop up by the end of the year. Pleaseee.

I am a big Armie Hammer fan, which is a weird thing to say out loud (or through words in a review post).

Seriously.

I liked him as The Lone Ranger and I liked him in The Social Network. He was charming in Mirror Mirror and appropriately dramatic in J. Edgar. And hell, he was the best cameo in Entourage.

I realize that The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is based on a television show from the 1960s, but that is super old and I will never watch it for research purposes. All I care about right now is that Armie Hammer gets more leading roles, and damn it, maybe one day he can play a super hero?

pic with henry canville asking if he is jealous

Set during the Cold War, the opening credits of the movie really really want you to realize that after World War II, Germany was broken up into East and West, with West Germany controlled militarily by America and East by the Soviet Union. Why? Because that is where our film starts, and is one of the many places of tension between USA/USSR!

It begins with Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) bringing his American self into East Germany! He is there to see a mechanic, Gaby Teller (Alicia Vikander). It turns our her father was a great scientist, who of course worked with the Nazis. He was able to eventually head to America to work on their nuclear program, but two years ago he went missing. Shit.

Solo and the US government think that he is in Italy against his will, working for Victoria (Elizabeth Debicki) and Alexander Vinciguerra (Luca Calvani). They plan on building their own nuclear warhead and using it. No good at all. In fact, this potentially threatens the whole world. Which is why the Soviet Union and United States have to team up! They are going to send Solo, the CIA’s best agent, in with Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer), one of the KGB’s best agents, two men who have battled before, to work together to save the world.

Also featuring Sylvester Groth, Jared Harris, and Hugh Grant.

I have heard that the movie that came out is actually nothing like the TV show outside of people sharing the names. You know what I think? Don’t care. I don’t base reviews off of the source material, just what is presented before me. And what was presented before me ended up being a very entertaining film.

First off, it’s a Guy Ritchie film. Outside of his Sherlock films, I haven’t been able to see one of his movies without subtitles because they usually go way too strong on the accents. That almost happened again at the start, with strong German talk, but we got over it thankfully. The movie itself is HIGHLY stylized. The tone, props, settings, everything screams out that decade. It is one giant love letter to the entire era. The cinematography was wonderful and so was the choreography. It is hard to describe how stylized the film became, with one action scene featuring a very comic book feel despite not being based on the genre.

As for the main characters, Cavill and Hammer both did great jobs with excellent chemistry together. The first scene where they were introduced was able to showcase how fully badass both individuals were, while never really making one seem like the lesser spy. This film has been in production for a long time, and the last guy on before Cavill was actually Tom Cruise, but he had to back out due to Rogue Nation. With Cruise, it would have been a very enjoyable movie, but probably not the same dynamic these two were able to pull off with each other.

The movie was also decently funny. The competition between the leads and them being forced into awkward situations had me laughing quite often. Longer jokes existed too, including the “watch gag” which featured obvious and subtle jokes throughout the film.

I hope at least one more film gets made as a follow up, because I could watch Hammer talk with the Russian accent all day. Not to be ignored, Vikander also held up her own as a relative newcomer to the action genre (because we all should ignore Seventh Son).

Shit. This one is honestly hard to describe. I definitely enjoyed The Man From U.N.C.L.E., but I feel like an eight year old trying to describe…well…anything. I think if I had to say anything, this movie was definitely very cool. Hell, I felt a bit cooler after watching it, almost picking up a pack of cigarettes on my way home while listening to popular band music.

If you see The Man From U.N.C.L.E., you can feel cool, too!

I have been actively stalling watching The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. It used to be so easy, all I had to do was say, “Oh sorry Cathy. I haven’t seen the first one yet, that would be improper!” Cathy isn’t a real person, but the point is real. I was golden.

And then I fucking did it. I watched The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Part of me was feeling sentimental and I wanted to see Dev Patel since The Newsroom was over. And since Chappie disappointed, that was my easiest solution.

You may not remember, but both Chappie and TSBEMH came out to theaters on the exact same date, both featuring Patel. So logically, one would assume there is no way both of his movies on the same day would be a disappointment. Right?

At least the dancing is already better in this one than Chappie.

Since the last film, there are two major updates worth noting.

One, Sonny (Patel) is finally getting married to Sunaina (Tina Desai), yay!

Two, the hotel wants to expand! They want to make a second hotel, they just need investors. Muriel (Maggie Smith) is basically co-running the hotel at this point too, so she is involved with that. The main investor is going to send an undercover guest to see how the run their ship before bringing the cash, so they have to be on guard and make sure everything runs swell. What’s that? Two people randomly coming to stay out of nowhere (Richard Gere, Tamsin Greig). Gee, I wonder who could be the undercover person!

Back to the marriage plot, because Sonny is apparently a spastic piece of shit, he is way too over hyped to make the new guest feel amazing, to get the deal, that he ignores his wife and wedding preparations. Even worse, he lashes out on Kushal (Shazad Latif), who is back in town, because he thinks Kushal sucks and actually thinks he is trying to take his fiance away from him. Not that he does a damn thing about it but mope uncontrollably.

Ahem, we also have a bunch of returning people as well. We have Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Celia Imrie, Ronald Pickup, and Diana Hardcastle. I could tell you their plots as well, but then you would be drowned in information and well, not everything should be explained.

Including Gere probably doubled the entire movie budget.

Now that I have the nifty stars on top of the review, you can already tell I am disappointed in this movie. Which is a shame, because I gave an average rating to the first film and definitely believed in my head that the second movie would do better. It was like an origins story for a superhero. A lot of times the second film can be better, because we don’t have to deal with the character before they are a hero, they can be a hero the whole film!

No instead we got a couple main plot lines that just were not good. As I already mentioned, I hated Sonny in this film. In the first, he was a stubborn, lovable, idiot. In this film, he is obsessed, jealous, and a fool. He almost does nothing right. I have to say almost, because by the end of the film he does a few right things, because is the type of film to end on a happy note, not one that will end in failure and defeat. It is obvious going into it.

However these plot lines are just so dull, outside of Sonny’s character ruining it. As for the other stars, none of their plots are compelling either. Someone cheating, someone deciding on who to love, someone who can’t remember scripts, and someone who wants to make sure he doesn’t accidentally hire an assassin. Okay, that last bit was a little bit amusing, but that was it.

TSBEMH was a completely forgettable movie. I hope they don’t make a third, and I hope Patel gets better movies soon.

I know, I know, I’ve been reviewing too many movies lately. And I know, I know, recently I reviewed Teen Beach 2, a Disney Channel original movie, but that was for a special occasion. It and its predecessor were milestone reviews, and thus, weird things were acceptable. Add in High School Musical and you will see the only Disney Channel Original movies I have reviewed have been musicals.

So why Descendants? Is it just to confuse my readers who might it get confused with the amazing The Descendants? Nope. It is because I used to watch these movies all the time. Not to show my age, but the new monthly movie used to be something special. (WARNING! WARNING! NOSTALGIA APPROACHING!) I was able to see things like Zenon, The Luck of the Irish, Motorcrossed, Cadet Kelly and more. I am not including Halloweentown, because Halloweentown sucked.

And you know what, those films are probably terrible now. But maybe Descendants is just like them. The plot has potential for an adult to enjoy. Maybe it is better than them. Maybe they can make a decent film that involves no music.

Alternatively, someone should review every single one of these films, while drunk. I am sure your website would get way more visitors than my own.

Not a scene from the film, but damn it, too many important characters to ignore.

JUST KIDDING IT IS TOTALLY A MUSICAL TOO, I WAS WRONG.

Ahem. Ben (Mitchell Hope) is the son of the Beast (Dan Payne) and Belle (Keegan Connor Tracy, who is also in Once Upon A Time), and wants to make his first proclamation as almost king! You see, a long time ago, after his parents got married, they brought all the kingdoms together under one rule, which apparently is a bunch of Disney stuff. They then took all the bad people and left them on a magical island to live out their days all sad and shit.

Those bad people also had kids, so Ben wants to give a few of them a chance and bring them over to rich people awesome boarding school. He only wants the worst of them for now, for a trial run. And apparently the four worst on the island are…

Mel (Dove Cameron), daughter of Maleficent (Kristin Chenoweth), Evie (Sofia Carson), daughter of The Evil Queen (Kathy Najimy), Jay (Booboo Stewart), son of Jafar (Maz Jobrani), and Carlos (Cameron Boyce), son of Cruella de Vil (Wendy Raquel Robinson).

Great! Now their kids can carry on their parents wishes. Mel needs to steal a wand to free them from the island, Evie needs to find a prince to marry to take over his castle, Carlos needs to…I dunno, kill a puppy or something, and Jay needs to just steal stuff like a criminal street rat.

So it should be easy! They just need to also deal with, you guessed it, high school life. Girls, boys, class, sports, balls, homework, mutts. All of this wonderful stuff. And hey, a big plot line involves them using magic to make the hair of some of the girls at school prettier. Actually, that is a big plot line. Like, top 3.

Of course this asks the question, do you have to be like your parents, or can you sing yourself into a better position?

The rest of the cast is basically made up of people just to name drop. Like Mulan’s dauhgter, Lonnie (Dianne Doan), Aurora’s daughter, Audrey (Sarah Jeffery), Chad Charming (Jedidiah Goodacre), the Fairy Godmother (Melanie Paxson) and her daughter (Brenna D’Amico), and Doug! (Zachary Gibson), son of…Dopey. Sure. Whatever.

Yeah, no one likes Beast when he goes human. Booo. Hiss.

Somehow before this point, I have already reached 600 words in the review. Shame, because I have a bunch more to go!

I was definitely surprised to hear music in this film, kind of came out of nowhere. It was mostly okay. Some songs were bad. The Song “If Only” was decent, however it featured the worst lip singing from Mel and featured a lot of flashbacks from the movie during it. The movie isn’t that long and the song happened halfway through the film, so there wasn’t really much to flashback, or a need at all.

It also had too many central characters, not knowing what to do with them. Carlos was afraid of dogs at the start, and then liked them? Okay, boring. Jay just…stole things for a little bit then played sports and also was sent to the background. Jafar probably had two whole lines and waste wasted. Cruella de Vil was turned into a crazy lady.

Speaking of de Vil, how in the fuck is that the best they have to work with? Not only does 101 Dalmations not even remotely fit in timeline wise with the rest of them (And Aladdin is a huge stretch), it is a lady who wanted to kill some dogs for their fur. They say she is one of the top evil people there, and that is just bananas. I cannot even begin to let that be any amount of believable.

The villains all live together in one house too. And literally no one is married outside of Belle/Beast. Each of these kids only knows about their evil parent, the other member just completely gone.

Descendants is an average to good concept for fiction, it truly is. But it seems they half-assed the whole film. If they kept it to just Mel/Evie, it could probably be a stronger film (but the male demographic!!). Too much wasted potential. They are apparently going to turn it into animated series later this year, which is a great place for it. With a cartoon some of these characters can actual gain some depth and not just background pieces to Mel.

I have been told by my peers that Shaun the Sheep is a pretty popular kids television show. About a sheep! And shenanigans! Sheepanigans!

So these people were excited that a movie was coming out. But much like my recent review of The Unbeatables, Shaun the Sheep Movie came out a long time ago in the UK. The delay wasn’t as extreme, but it came out in theaters in February for the British and obviously early August for America. Unlike the last animated film, they didn’t even have to replace the voice actors with Americans, because it is a movie has no words! That makes me feel like it is just petty on their part. Booo pettiness!

This is also one of those movies I knew nothing about going in. It has that classic looking stop animation that the Wallace and Gromit studio is known for, which makes sense given that it is the same studio behind this film. Hell, apparently Shaun is a spin-off character from that franchise. I am seriously behind on my stop motion British genre films.

But I am strangely up to date on my sheep based films.

How do you describe a movie like Shaun the Sheep? Well, hopefully with good grammar and real human words.

Shaun the Sheep lives on a farm! He has an owner, who raises the sheep, a cow, some pigs, and has a dog too, Bitzer. Bitzer runs things around the farm. Sometimes he herds sheep too.

Well, their life is pretty standard. Wake up, eat, get herded, go back to sleep. Not a lot changes and everyone finds it dull. Duller than a pair of kids scissors covered with tape.

So Shaun gets the idea to have a “Day off”, by sort of tricking their owner to think it is still night time, locking him away so they can do whatever they want all day! No one will get hurt, just a few tricks and sheepanigans. But of course like all well laid our plans, something goes wrong. Now Shaun and the sheep and Bitzer have to go on a journey, AWAY from the farm their home, into the big city and you know, do things. Things!

And look! A dog that is actually more dog than human! There are levels of humanization in the animal kingdom!

My review of Shaun the Sheep is going to be short and straight to the point (despite all my fluff already). Shaun the Sheep is a funny and witty stop claymation film. I am always awed by clay/stop motion work, given the extreme amount of time and dedication it takes to getting it all done and done well. One of those things I tried to do as a kid because of all my free time and getting no where fast and giving up after an hour. The camera work despite the just very small sets is also well done, given a few types of shorts I couldn’t even imagine were doable for the genre.

Given the lack of dialogue outside of human mumblings to sounds like words, all of the jokes take place as sight gags or slap stick, and it is great that it leans a lot more in the sight gag department. There is almost always something happening in the background that is interesting, making it a movie you definitely have to pay hard attention to in order to get the full experience. (Which should technically be true for all movies. It just happens to be more true in this film).

If there is one main disappointment I had it would be its length. It sort of seems too long because of the no dialogue. About a third of the way into the film I was fighting back sleep. I was entertained from the movie, but not enough variation in sound was making it hard to fight back the tiredness. After the movie was halfway through, I had no problems anymore. That is when stuff started getting hectic to appease my millennial mind that always needs things exploding to keep my attention.

Despite this, Shaun the Sheep movie will most definitely end up nominated for Best Animated film, but as of now, it will also lose to Inside Out.