Category Archives: Comedy

Dumb Money

Dumb Money                    4 stars

The new based on real events movie Dumb Money by Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya) starts by introducing the players on screen showing us their estimated worth. That way it becomes clear who the good guys are and who the bad guys are in the stock trading world, or who are the billionaire hedge fund managers and the retail traders (who the billionaires refer to as Dumb Money). In the early days of 2021 while America wasn’t watching the news about Donald Trump’s second impeachment, they were following a story about a small publicly traded company called Gamestop that was being promoted by a single nerdy small investor named Keith Gill (Paul Dano of Little Miss Sunshine and There Will be Blood). He broadcast his message of belief in the stock on Youtube and Reddit under the name of Roaring Kitty, convincing thousands of small investors to buy it to show the big guys on Wall Street that the stock was undervalued, making the phrase “I like the stock” a rallying cry. The hedge fund managers are all betting against them, selling Gamestop short, allowing them to make a lot of money when and if the stock crashes in value. (I don’t really understand how this works but the movie helps to explain it.) The billionaires are portrayed by Seth Rogen, Vincent D’Onofrio and Nick Offerman who strut around in their luxury suites and tennis clubs. The little guys who buy into the stock and hold it with religious fervor are a nurse named Jenny (America Ferrera), a retail clerk (Anthony Ramos), and a couple of college students (Talie Ryder and Myha’la) who are all desperate for money. The movie provides some non-investing characters to ask questions about what is happening, allowing Gill to explain it in easy to understand terms. These include his wife, Caroline (Shailene Woodley) and his idiot brother Kevin (Pete Davidson in another well executed smart-ass role). All this eventually leads to the climax of a congressional inquiry when there is an apparent impropriety that protects the billionaires from further losses. The movie effectively tells the story of what happens when Wall Street greed collides with the power of social media combined with the isolation brought on by the pandemic. Dumb Money is not The Big Short by any means but dramatizes a story about stock trading done in a way that makes it relatable to the average viewer. Also, fans of hip-hop artist Cardi B should be pleased by the choice of music.

Free Guy

Free Guy              4 stars

In the 2021 action comedy Free Guy, directed by Shawn Levy (the Night at the Museum movies) we first meet Guy (Ryan Reynolds), a very chipper guy who greets his goldfish, puts on his blue dress shirt and goes to his job at a bank where he cheerfully greets everyone. He and his best friend, Buddy the security guard (Lil Rel Howery of Get Out) seem unsurprised when the bank is robbed by masked villains with very large guns and calmly drop to the floor and have a casual conversation. As he walks through the streets of Free City he is surrounded by the mayhem of crashing cars, people shooting at one another, and falling debris from damaged skyscrapers. Yet none of this disturbs him, not even when he wakes up again in his room and repeats the day, just like the previous one. We soon see that all of the characters in Free City are part of a video game played around the world and Guy is simply a NPC (non-player character) in this game where the players operate their characters from home. Then one day he spots an attractive woman on the street that he thinks must be the girl of his dreams. She is known only as Molotov Girl (Jodie Comer of Killing Eve) in Guy’s world, but is also named Millie as the woman who is operating the avatar from her computer. In the real world Millie and her friend Keys (Joe Keery) are the coders who created the popular game that is owned by a giant corporation run by an authoritative tech lord called Antwan (Taika Waititi). When Guy follows Molotov Girl he discovers the truth about his existence in the game. Millie puts a pair of sunglasses on Guy that shows him the mayhem that the players of the online game see. This leads him to the decision to play his own game gaining experience and fame, making him a celebrity among the players in the real world. The movie combines elements from The Truman Show, Wreck It Ralph and Groundhog Day but with a great deal of comic action and impressive special effects aided by some amusing cameos from action movie-stars (such as Channing Tatum, Hugh Jackman and Dwayne Johnson). As the action progressed the idea came to me that this was like a type of West World where nobody gets hurt and with music that lightens the mood. (There is a great use of the theme song from The Greatest American Hero.) This is a fun movie that is silly and sweet and quite a departure for Ryan Reynolds who is best known for his superhero roles in action movies.

Flora and Son

Flora and Son                     4 ½ stars

I returned again this week to a film that appeared at Sundance but missed at the festival. Flora and Son is the latest creation of writer/director John Carney, who previously brought us Begin Again, Sing Street and his masterwork, Once. Again, the Irish filmmaker has created a simple story about conflict in a relationship that centers around and is resolved by the process of song writing. This time the story is about a young, Irish, working class, single mother, Flora (Eve Hewson (daughter of Bono)) who is struggling to raise her 14-year-old son, Max (Orén Kinlan) in a small Dublin apartment. Max, unfortunately has a habit of stealing and getting into trouble at school and is facing the prospect of being sentenced to a juvenile facility. In an effort to keep him out of trouble, she recovers a discarded guitar, has it restored and gives it to the troubled teen, hoping to get him interested in music. Max wants no part of this plan, but Flora is drawn to the guitar and goes in search of online guitar lessons, and in so doing finds Jeff (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a musician in Los Angeles who hires himself out for personal lessons online. The pair discuss the chords on a guitar and what it means to write a good song and before long Flora is critiquing Jeff’s songs and suggesting ways to make them better. The discussions get quite personal as they discuss the feelings created by a song and refer to song terms like the verses, the chorus and the bridge, something you only see in a John Carney movie. Occasionally, Jeff is shown in the same room with Flora to show how they are connecting over their discussions. (The viewer must ignore the fact that performing music together via Zoom is not practical due to the time delay.) Carney is always interested in his characters getting closer together, but also in the process of writing good music which I love to see. And ultimately there is hope for her son, Max as he reveals some musical talent as he learns to use a synthesizer to create rap music, and mother and son find that they do have a common bond in music. The movie has the right amount of humor and successfully dealing with family conflict without getting too sappy though it is probably not Carney’s best movie. Flora and Son is newly released in theaters so I suggest you see it there while you can. It is also available on Apple TV+.

Dicks: The Musical

Dicks: The Musical                           3 stars

The title of this movie leads you to believe that it is about dicks. This screen adaptation of a musical play first performed in a basement in New York does deliver. It has two of them. The screenwriters, Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson play Craig and Trevor, two self-obsessed straight men who are in love with themselves and don’t care who they screw over to get what they want. But then one day they meet each other for the first time, discovering that they are competing to be the best salesman for the same company, Vroomba, selling parts for this mysterious machine. They each have one half of a locket they each got from their parents, making them separated identical twin brothers. Of course they look nothing alike which only adds to the bizarre nature of the comedy. They set about to reunite their two separated parents, Harris (Nathan Lane) and Evelyn (Megan Mullaly) by donning wigs and switching places and persuading the two to arrive at a restaurant for a prearranged meeting. (Has anyone heard of The Parent Trap before?) Evelyn is now a wheelchair bound recluse in an apartment filled with odd knickknacks and horrendous looking wallpaper, and who keeps her vagina in a purse. Huh? Harris has come out as gay and has a secret as he keeps two bizarre looking creatures that he rescued from the sewer, referring to them as the Sewer Boys. Besides the bizarre nature of the premise the movie is going for shock and screams, containing almost nonstop references to sex acts (both straight and gay) and genitalia and plenty of use of the f word. It’s all done to music that is more memorable for the content than for the tunes themselves. There is no doubt that it succeeds in being outlandish, offensive and gross. It tries to reach a status of a cult movie, but I doubt it will be another Rocky Horror Picture Show. There are two other roles that are quite notable. Megan Thee Stallion is excellent as Craig and Trevor’s boss in a boiler plate office where she emasculates all the male employees in “Savage” style. And Bowen Yang of SNL does an admirable job as God who narrates much of the story as only Yang can. Dicks: The Musical is not the funniest movie of the year, but it is easily the most irreverent. It is fun just to see how offensive it can get.

Trolls Band Together

Trolls Band Together                      3 ½ stars

Just out in theaters is DreamWorks’s third installment of the colorful candy-tone animated Trolls series based on the popular children’s toy of the sixties. This time it is Trolls Band Together with gray-toned Branch (the legendary Justin Timberlake) and pink Poppy (Anna Kendrick of the Pitch Perfect movies) returning for another popular tune filled adventure that will appeal to the kids and to adults alike. As the film opens we get Branch’s origin story finding out that he has four brothers that were part of a popular boy band called BroZone years before. (The opening performance contains obvious references to NSYNC and other boy bands of the early 2,000’s era. At one point one of the brothers says “We’ve gone from boys to men, and now there’s only one direction for us to go: the backstreets.”) Branch was in diapers at that time and was referred to as Baby B. Older brothers Floyd (Troye Sivan), John Dory (Eris André), Spruce (Daveed Diggs) and Clay (Kid Cudi) have all gone their separate ways, but John Dory has returned to seek Branch’s help on a desperate mission. It seems that the pop-star duo, Velvet and Veneer, (Amy Schumer and Andrew Rannells) have been holding brother Floyd prisoner. These two stringy characters have no musical talent of their own, but they have engineered a way to extract the musical gift from the troll and use it themselves, enabling their star status at Mount Rageous. But if the trolls can “band together”, and create “perfect family harmony”, they will be able to free poor Floyd from imminent doom! Poppy insists that Branch must get the family together to rescue his brother. So much for the setup. Beyond that, there are harmonious tunes galore as we take a ride through various boy band songs and medleys of music from the seventies and eighties. It’s all done on the background of some very crafty and colorful animation with the smooth textures and troll hair we have seen in the earlier Trolls movies. And of course, there is the eternal message of togetherness and how brothers will always have one another’s backs. This may not be the best of the Trolls movies but for pure animated fluff, it may be worth an hour and a half of your time.

Joy Ride

Joy Ride                4 stars

Here’s an idea I haven’t seen before in a movie. A sex comedy road trip starring primarily young Asian women. (The sex comedy movie genre is now referred to as raunch-com in the industry.) In Joy Ride, written by Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao and directed by Adele Lim (writer for Crazy Rich Asians), we first meet best friends Audrey (Ashley Park making a transition from a successful career on Broadway and starring in TV’s Emily in Paris) and Lolo (Sherry Cola) as 5-year-olds on a playground when Lolo punches out a bully who calls the Asian girls an ethnic slur. Audrey was adopted from China by white parents while Lolo is a recent Chinese immigrant with her parents. As adults, Audrey is a lawyer in a law firm and has the opportunity to go to China to land a big client. Lolo is successful as an artist making sexually graphic art pieces. Lolo volunteers to travel with Audrey as a translator as Audrey is not fluent in Chinese, but she is bringing her odd cousin Deadeye (Sabrina Wu) with them. Deadeye has a very odd personality and is nonbinary and is an obsessed K-Pop fan. Once in China the trio meet up with Kat (Stephanie Hsu, nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role in last year’s sensation Everything, Everywhere, All at Once), Audrey’s college friend who now stars in a popular Chinese soap opera along with her fiancé (who is unaware of Kat’s long sexual history). Once together in China, Lolo convinces Audrey through some trickery that they should track down Audrey’s birth mother in China, who gave her up for adoption when she was a teenager. Having established the premise, the joy ride begins as this quartet of twenty something’s journey through Beijing and rural China, encountering a drug dealer, a professional basketball team and Lolo’s extended family. The trip, of course, includes plenty of references to various sex acts and anatomy, both female and male, as well as some on screen action requiring gymnastic talent, like The Devil’s Triangle (Don’t ask). They even try to impersonate a popular K-Pop group to gain certain favors from the authorities. (How could that go wrong?) (And there is a performance of Cardi B’s WAP that will get your attention.) Naturally, the movie goes for extreme gross-out scenes to get “I can’t believe they did that” reactions from the audience. But it all serves to show how close friends will always come back to support each other even though they have differences that sometimes drive them apart. Fans of the raunch-com movies should all enjoy the movie. I missed it in theaters and finally found it online. Some viewers will recognize Meredith Hagner as a female drug dealer. (Hagner was a regular on the comedy Search Party and is married to Wyatt Russell, son of Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell!)

Dream Scenario

Dream Scenario                 4 stars

One of the most prolific actors today is Nicolas Cage having appeared in some one hundred movies. He has also portrayed some of the oddest characters we’ve seen. Remember Adaptation and The Weather Man and of course Ghost Rider? He stars in Dream Scenario (directed by Kristoffer Borgli), a sort of fantasy horror about the price of fame in today’s society. Cage is Paul Matthews, a meek college professor of natural science who is bald, has a beard and wears glasses. There is really nothing special about him. He is whiney and still dreams of writing a book based on his graduate work from many years ago but has never done anything about it. One day strangers start to recognize him and then many of his students tell him that they remember seeing him in their dreams. They tell him that they see themselves in strange situations such as floating in the air or they see alligators crawling toward them, but Paul is there not doing anything, just walking by. Soon word spreads as hundreds of people report seeing him. Paul finds he has become famous, though his wife, Janet (Julianne Nicholson) does not experience the dreams and she feels left out. Paul hopes that the newly found fame will allow him to find a publisher for his book. But Paul finds the dark side of fame when a strange man invades their house and threatens the family. Things take an even worse turn for poor Paul as the dreams with him grow more violent and threatening to the point that people start to shun him, and his classes must be cancelled. When he is invited to a dinner party all of the other guests cancel because of him. He goes from being sought after for product advertising to possible appearances on Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson. The movie sort of feels like a darker The Truman Show where fame is visited on those who did nothing to deserve it. The fact that it is Nicolas Cage in the role only makes it more memorable. Cage’s movies are especially notable for having scenes where his anger is unleashed. (There was even a montage video that was made to show this.) Of course, the movie blesses us with a couple of Cageworthy scenes where he verbally attacks those who insult him. The film is put together well as the tone of the movie gradually shifts from light comedy to something approaching horror, (though nobody ever gets killed). It’s fascinating to see how a life can be forever changed with a little fame. Some have said the movie is an indictment of this society’s cancel culture. Borgli, as someone relatively new to directing, gives us a keeper in Dream Scenario. Also making appearances in the cast are Tim Meadows and Dylan Baker, both as friends to Paul and a bearded Michael Cera as the man trying to promote Paul as a celebrity. Anyone who likes quirky dark comedies should check out Dream Scenario. I wanted to see it the moment I saw the trailer!

The Holdovers

The Holdovers                   5 stars

Based on a list of several comedies I’ve seen over the years that includes Nebraska, The Descendants, Sideways, About Schmidt and Election, Alexander Payne must be one of my favorite directors. Now with The Holdovers, he has outdone himself. Payne is reunited with Paul Giamatti from Sideways to create a story about three lost souls that are forced to spend their Christmas break together at a New England boarding school for privileged young men in 1970. Giamatti is Paul Hunham, a professor of ancient civilizations who loves his profession, but despises the boys who have little appreciation for the insights Paul has to offer. Paul has been teaching at Barton Academy his whole adult life, but the staff and students all hate him. Since Paul previously found it necessary to fail one very politically connected student, the headmaster decided to punish him by selecting him to be the one to stay over Christmas break to supervise the holdovers, or those unfortunate students who have no place to go. Angus Tully (newcomer Dominic Sessa) is among the smartest yet most troubled of the students at Barton. He has been kicked out of three schools already and will have to go to military academy if it happens again. At the last moment he finds that he must be part of this small group instead of going to St. Kitts for break. Rounding out this trio is Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), the African American head cook whose son graduated from the school, but then went on to serve in Vietnam and was killed earlier this year. She hasn’t gotten over the loss and you can just see the pain she experiences. The three combine to give us many humorous scenes, but also have a lot to share with each other about life and the struggles they are going through. Paul and Angus are both compelled to share critical moments from their past that shaped their lives. Oscar nominee Giamatti really gives a first-rate performance of the sad sack that is Paul who has an alcohol problem but keeps a positive outlook that hides the pain in his life. This may be Giamatti’s best performance to date or at least since Sideways. Sessa makes Angus a combative, smart aleck character who can also come to the defense of the unfortunate. I look forward to seeing more of him. (Also, fans of the series The Good Wife will recognize Carrie Preston in a small but important role.) The Holdovers will undoubtedly get several Academy Award nominations including Best Picture. Everyone should see this one.

The Fall Guy

The Fall Guy       4 stars

The summer blockbuster season may have started a bit early with the release of The Fall Guy, directed by David Leitch (Bullet Train, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw). The action comedy starring Ryan Gosling as stuntman Colt Seavers and Emily Blunt as movie director Jody is designed as a tribute to the stuntmen who make action movies fun to watch. Part of the fun is watching Colt prepare for each shot and endure one take after another of getting blown up and burned. In addition, Gosling shows that he is made to be a comedic leading man whether he is crying to a Taylor Swift song or giving one liners while taking punishment from the bad guys (of which there are plenty). The pair of Gosling and Blunt work comedy gold in their scenes together with dueling dialogue especially in an early scene when Jody questions Colt about his character’s motivation in front of the entire production crew. Remember that last summer Gosling was discovering his manliness as Ken in Barbie and Blunt was enduring marriage to Robert Oppenheimer in Oppenheimer. (It is clear that Gosling has not lost his physique since Barbie.) The premise is that Colt, the main stuntman for action star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), returns from an injury to work on a movie in Australia being directed by his crush, Jody in her first directing opportunity. Her big budget movie is a sort of Mad Max action film with some fearsome looking space aliens and big explosions. During production, the movie producer (Hannah Waddingham) approaches Colt, telling him that the star, Ryder has gone missing, and Colt must track him down. And with what is an obvious MacGuffin, he must not tell Jody about the missing star. (A MacGuffin is a device that keeps the plot moving but may not make any sense.) When Colt discovers a dead body, he soon realizes that he is in over his head and he must face off against multiple villains in car chases and fight scenes, something he is surprisingly good at. After that the plot loses all credibility and little about the story makes any sense. But don’t let that stop you from enjoying it. I finally gave up on trying to make sense of it. But I did enjoy the fight scenes that included Stephanie Hsu (Everything, Everywhere, All at Once) as an assistant fighting a villain at the wheel of a large truck a la Indiana Jones. (And then there is the dog that helps Colt in fights, while only responding to commands in French.) The level of action is high like Leitch’s earlier movie, Bullet Train. It slows down a bit when Blunt shares the screen, with her contributing to the comedic nature of the movie. The score is very upbeat including a few renditions of I Was Made for Loving You Baby performed by both Yungblud and Kiss. So, turn off your brain for two hours and enjoy some real mind-blowing action.

Poor Things

Poor Things        5 stars

What if you took Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein about a mad scientist reanimating a human of stitched together body parts in the 19th century, but substituted a woman for the monster, made it a comedy and oh, added a lot of sex? You would have Poor Things, the new movie by director Yorgos Lanthimos (known for his previous outings Dogtooth, The Lobster and The Favourite). The Greek director has created a sort of alternate world set in Victorian London, but with a mixture of odd architecture and transportation and clothing styles that shouldn’t exist. Behind the dark comedy and the science fiction aspects is a story of discovery of the depravity of the modern world and female empowerment. Early in the film in London we meet Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), our mad scientist who has a very disfigured face, along with a young woman named Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), who is his “experiment”. In his household are a few of his earlier experiments on live animals such as a dog with a goose head and a chicken with a pig’s head. Bella killed herself before Godwin (or “God” as she calls him) retrieved her body and then brought her back to life but with a few changes. Her mind is wiped clean, and she is being retrained in how to live. She can barely talk and struggles to walk and eat normally. Behaving like a toddler without inhibitions, Stone pulls off the act with comic effect. With the aid of a medical student as God’s assistant, Max (Ramy Youssef) Bella gradually learns to behave more normally and is taught about the outside world, but also discovers free will and masturbation. She is confined to the house, but when a self-centered lawyer (Mark Ruffalo) finds her and is stricken with her he convinces her to join him in travels across Europe. Leaving Dr. Baxter, Bella sees the world and is enlightened about many things like dancing and fashion and how others perceive her. She also learns about pain and suffering in the world and has empathy toward the unfortunate. But there is also the sex that she finds so enjoyable or as she calls it, “the furious jumping”. She even finds out that women can make money by having sex with men and becomes very accomplished at it in a Paris brothel! Lanthimos uses some innovative techniques like filming the first part of the movie in black and white to make it look older and using wide lens shots at low angles. The music is unquestionably strange throughout. The selection of placing the movie during Victorian times when women were especially subservient to men makes Bella’s transformation into an independent, confident woman who won’t be owned by a man all the more stark. There are several characters that can be regarded as cads, but strangely, Dr. Baxter isn’t one of them. He could be described as being paternal toward Bella, wanting to protect her from the evils of the world. The movie held my interest throughout and had many fun moments of satirical comedy, and did I mention there is lots of sex?