Category Archives: Comedy

Saturday Night

Saturday Night  4 stars

Chevy Chase at the Weekend Update news desk. John Belushi in a bee costume. A profusely bleeding Julia Child. The infamous Land Shark. These are all very familiar images to the fans of Saturday Night Live in its first incarnation back in 1975. Saturday Night, directed and co-written by Jason Reitman (Whiplash, Juno) takes us back to the night in October, 1975, when in 90 minutes the first episode of a revolutionary new comedy show called Saturday Night is set to go live on NBC. The show went on to become a staple of late night television, but those who were there that night had no way of knowing that. Calling the scenes chaotic would be an understatement. In 90 minutes, we see fights breaking out between actors, a fire burning on stage, the sound system failing, one cast member refusing to sign his contract because of a bee costume, a few confrontations with the network censor who can’t quite grasp some of the script’s sexual references and a studio executive threatening to air a Johnny Carson rerun in place of the show. According to what I have read, much of what we are seeing is based on recollections from those who were there on October 11, 1975. It’s hard to imagine that the show was not better planned and had so many loose ends before airing, but this is what we are to believe. Much of the credit for the success of the movie must go to lead actor Gabriel Labelle, (of The Fabelmans) who portrays producer Lorne Michaels trying to keep his cool and deal with a myriad of mishaps. There are a few familiar faces in the cast that include J. K. Simmons as an arrogant Milton Berle, Willem Dafoe as NBC studio executive David Tebet, Matthew Rhys as the show’s host, George Carlin and Nicolas Braun as both a whiny Jim Henson and nervous comedian Andy Kaufman. Jon Batiste appears briefly as musical guest Billy Preston. The casting of the Not Ready for Primetime Players was spot on. The young cast is made up of practically all unknown actors that I did not recognize, but I had no difficulty picking out who it was they were portraying. The look of the comic actors was near perfect from the style of Chevy Chase, the moodiness of John Belushi to the wackiness of Gilda Radnor. The only cast actors that I did recognize were Lamorne Morris (New Girl) as Garrett Morris and Rachel Sennott (Bottoms) as Lorne Michael’s wife and show writer Rosie Shuster. (Rosie plays an important role in convincing John Belushi not to walk out on the show before it even starts.) We gain some insights about the show along the way including that some studio execs wanted the show to fail and were only using it as leverage against Johnny Carson. And we see how Chevy Chase and John Belushi hated each other. (And how head writer, Michael O’Donoghue hated everybody.) We even catch a glimpse of writing team Al Franken and Tom Davis. Those of you who were around for the beginning of Saturday Night Live should definitely see it to see what happened before Chevy Chase said “Live from New York, It’s Saturday Night!” for the first time. Afterward I went back and watched the first episode again. I must say the magic was still there.

Emergency

Emergency         3 ½ suns

In the comedy Emergency, graduate student Kunle and his best friend, Sean are about to go on an epic journey, partying all night at the fraternity parties at their college campus. But the plans of the two young black men are interrupted when they discover an unconscious white girl on the floor of their house. The pair along with their Latino friend, Carlos realize the danger they are in if the police are alerted to their situation and must improvise to get the girl to safety without endangering their own lives. What follows is a comedy of errors as the men deal with one mishap after another. The film started as a short film from a few years ago that has now been expanded to the full length movie now showing. It is a good combination of silly comedy making a statement about the perceptions that young black men must face despite the levels of success they may reach.

Leonor Will Never Die

Leonor Will Never Die    3 ½ suns

Leonor Will Never Die received the World Cinema Dramatic Innovative Spirit Special Jury Award. The movie fits in well with the name of the award as the premise was especially creative. Set in the Philippines, elderly Leonor Reyes was once a major screenwriter for Filipino action movies. But now she mainly stays at home and can’t pay all her bills to the frustration of her son. One day she takes renewed interest in one of her old movie scripts after reading that the studios are looking for new scripts, but then she ends up in the hospital in a coma after being struck in the head by a falling television. It is then that the film takes us into uncharted territory as Leonor goes about creating an action movie in her mind concerning an action hero names Ronwaldo. She appears in her own movie, manipulating events to her own liking, occasionally reworking scenes that didn’t work out right. The imagined movie then sometimes blends with real life to somewhat resemble ideas out of The Matrix. The film is something of an homage to seventies action movies from the Philippines which was quite an industry in those times. It is especially violent and heavy on heroic scenes for its action stars. I certainly did not know what to expect with this one.

Drive-Away Dolls

Drive-Away Dolls              3 stars

If you are going to see a Coen brothers movie you know you are going to get some violent scenes often with inept crooks, some dark humor and some rather odd characters. Just think of The Big Lebowski, Burn After Reading or Fargo. With this year’s Drive-Away Dolls we only have Ethan Coen directing, joined by Tricia Cooke’s writing, but we do get most of the usual elements. What we also get is a road buddy movie with a pair of lesbians on a mission to get laid, combined with plenty of dick gags. We start out in 1999 with a “Collector” (Pedro Pascal from The Last of Us and The Mandalorian) receiving a package in a briefcase but is quickly robbed and murdered by a pair of goons (Joey Slotnick and C. J. Wilson). We cut to our two heroes, Jamie (Margaret Qualley of The Nice Guys and Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan of Bad Education and Cat Person), who are both lesbians and best friends. Jamie is the adventurous one always looking for her next sexual exploit and Marian is the high strung, but intellectual one. They have a plan to do a drive away from New England to Tallahassee, Florida. This is a cheap way to travel by driving a car that the car’s owner needs delivered to another city. Hence, the title: Drive-Away Dolls. Only Jamie also plans to find all the lesbian hangouts along the way so that the repressed Marian can get laid. In Coen fashion the plan gets complicated when by accident the girls pick up a car that was intended for the pair of goons identified earlier and happens also to contain two special “packages” in the trunk. The boss of the criminal enterprise, (Colman Domingo) is none too pleased by the turn of events and tasks the goons to track the girls down and retrieve the packages. What follows then are the sexual adventures of the two women that happens to include an interlude with an all-lesbian soccer team, combined with the total ineptitude of our two goons trying to find them. (They get a little help from another lesbian friend of Jamie’s called Sukie (Beanie Feldstein of Booksmart) who also happens to be a cop. But this meeting doesn’t go well for the goons.) I must not neglect to mention that there is one additional character that appears briefly but is very pivotal to the story. And he is played by Matt Damon. (Also, this character’s penis figures prominently into the plot.) So, anyone who is a Matt Damon fan should not miss it. Overall, the movie has its moments, but it seems like a mixture of two films that don’t mesh very well. It’s good for a few laughs.

Licorice Pizza

Licorice Pizza                      5 stars

Over the past decade or so filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson has brought us such memorable and entertaining films as Magnolia, There Will Be Blood and Phantom Thread. This year he has done it again with Licorice Pizza, a comedy romance set in early seventies Encino, California, concerning an on again, off again romance between 15 year old Gary (Cooper Hoffman, son of Philip Seymour Hoffman) and 25 year old Alana (Alana Haim). This may sound as inappropriate and implausible but Anderson makes it work and keeps us rooting for Gary in his quest for romance. It is not only Gary’s pursuit of Alana that keeps our interest, but also the many other exploits and situations this unlikely pair find themselves in. Somehow, 15 year old Gary starts a business selling waterbeds with Alana’s help as well as that of his 15 year old friends and later opens a pinball machine arcade. Gary has a mother who occasionally appears, but he is largely on his own in his various pursuits. He is even a frequent customer of a restaurant visited by Hollywood figures. Young actor Hoffman pulls off the part making you love his character, pimply face and all. Alana, who lives with her Jewish family (with her own real life family playing the part) at first finds Gary’s proposals ridiculous but later is drawn in by his persistence. The film is also noteworthy for the choice of music taken from artists of the sixties and early seventies including The Doors, Gordon Lightfoot, Wings and Blood, Sweat and Tears. There are some special supporting roles that deserve mention, especially Bradley Cooper as a narcissistic movie producer with a bad temper. His performance is worthy of an Academy Award nomination. Sean Penn makes an appearance as what seems to be a porn movie producer and John Michael Higgins is a Japanese restaurant owner who makes some very offensive racially insensitive remarks toward Asian women in some controversial scenes. Apparently the film is loosely based on the life of a friend of Anderson’s giving it an element of truth. Through much of the movie I had the feeling that this is completely ridiculous but it is still funny. Maybe in 1973 things like this could have happened. I have no doubt that Licorice Pizza will be nominated for Best Picture and it very well could win the Oscar.

The Worst Person in the World

The Worst Person in the World                  3 stars

The subject of The Worst Person in the World is not a war criminal but a young woman in Oslo, Norway who is trying to manage her love life and find a career that has meaning and that she can stick with. The film is by acclaimed director Joachim Trier, this being the third film of a trilogy. Not having seen any of her earlier work I have only this film to go by. It is billed as a romantic comedy though I would have to say it is untraditional. The actors are first rate and believable, but I did not find them to be very likable. Julie wanders from one career to another including medical student, psychology student, writer and photographer and meets and falls for Aksel, a popular underground comic book artist who draws a catlike character that many women find offensive. At first I found him annoying and needy, but later on I came to empathize with him. Julie is apparently the title character and some of her actions made her deserve it, especially the way she treats Aksel when things get tough. There are also instances where the film veers into fantasy sequences that I could not see the need for. Why does the filmmaker have to get so cute and go in such a weird direction? Also, you should be warned there is some rather graphic sexual talk. The film has created a stir in the film festivals, but I can’t say I shared in the enthusiasm. The film is from Norway and is nominated for International Feature Film.

tick, tick…BOOM!

tick, tick…BOOM!             4 ½ stars

tick,tick…BOOM! takes us into the world of Broadway musical theater in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s movie directorial debut. We are introduced to aspiring playwright Jonathan Larson played exuberantly by Andrew Garfield (who we just saw portray Jim Bakker in The Eyes of Tammy Faye). This musical was actually written by Larson about his own life when he was writing his first musical, Superbia, a futuristic never produced play he has been working on for eight years. Larson went on to write the musical Rent, the hugely successful production but unfortunately he died just before it was performed. tick,tick…BOOM! captures the ambition and desperation of Larson as he struggles to become a success at age 29, hoping not to be just a waiter with a music writing hobby. His behavior is so manic he puts off his girlfriend Susan (Alexandra Shipp) and alienates his childhood friend Michael (Robin de Jesus) who recently left the theater to pursue a successful career in advertising. The performances and music nearly rises to the level of In the Heights, the Miranda creation from last year. The joy and inspiration of the movie is balanced by the tragedy of many of Larson’s friends dying of AIDS. This is 1990, during the height of the epidemic, so there is plenty of sadness going around. There are some very well staged musical routines here with Andrew Garfield being worthy of his Academy Award nomination. I have enjoyed every role I have seen him in including the first film I remember him in, 2010’s Never Let Me Go.

Didi

Didi        5 stars

Once again, I had the chance to see a popular movie that first appeared at the Sundance Film Festival but couldn’t see while there because of its high demand. Didi, a coming-of-age movie about a 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy who is struggling, (though very badly) through those tough adolescent years. Writer director Sean Wang has created a semi-biographical film about a boy trying to make sense of his changing world and be popular but manages to be a complete jerk in going about it. Chris (or Didi as his mom calls him) lives with Mom, his older sister who is about to leave for college and Nai Nai, his father’s elderly mother. Father is absent, while working to support the family. Chris constantly gets into arguments with his sister and his mom and makes life hell for them. To call him an annoying little brother is an understatement. (How would you like to discover that someone peed in your skin lotion?) In this immigrant family the adults speak almost exclusively Chinese, while the kids understand it, but only speak English, an interesting dynamic. He has a circle of guy friends who are all East Asian that he hangs out with and occasionally goes to parties where there are girls including one he is interested in. Their language is graphic and typical for kids of this age. While not being a total jack ass, he spends his time making videos and skateboarding, the only interests he seems to have. It is 2008 and Facebook and YouTube have just become a thing. (It is fascinating to see again how social media worked back in this time.) Chris keeps track of his friends on Facebook, a list that becomes progressively shorter as his actions turn them away. At one point he meets some older kids who are not Asian but are skateboarders, so he tries to get in with them by claiming to be good at filming scenes of action, while at the same time disenfranchising his other friends. His temper is not limited to his family as he at one point physically assaults another boy, creating another headache for his suffering mom who must also take criticism from the mother-in-law. It is not spoiling anything to say that eventually Chris must come to realize that he is creating hell on his mother who does everything in support of him. At the same time, he learns that in real life not all relationships can be repaired, but hopefully the most important ones can. In the long list of coming-of-age movies, Didi ranks high. It was recently released in theaters and hopefully will soon be available on streaming.

Turning Red

Turning Red                        4 stars

Pixar’s 2022 animated film Turning Red takes a different twist on the coming-of-age theme. This first full-length Pixar film to be directed by a woman (Domee Shi) tackles the subject of puberty and menstruation in a teen-age girl by using a metaphor in the form of a giant red panda. 13-year-old Chinese Canadian Mei lives with her immigrant Chinese family in 2008 Toronto and is a normal kid, though anxious and an overachiever in school. Her mother, Ming (Sandra Oh) is very controlling and likes to keep a watchful eye on her only daughter. Mei likes to hang out with her girlfriends and talk about their favorite boy band. Things seem perfectly normal, that is until she experiences a sudden change in her mood and finds herself very attracted to a certain boy in school. It is then that she discovers that feeling strong emotions makes her transform into a giant red panda with extraordinary strength. This is symbolic in movie terms of something powerful going on in her body, making her temporarily lose control of her emotions, a common occurrence in teenagers. Naturally, she tries to hide the transformation from her friends; that is, until she finds it can be a way to be more popular. Then the trick is to hide the change from Mom and her family. The girls secretly scheme to use Mei’s gift to raise money so they can attend a concert of their favorite boy band, 4 Town. (Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell wrote much of the original music that makes the boy band seem genuine.) But then there is more to the story when it is revealed that the giant red panda is really a sort of family curse that is visited upon all the female members of this family. Traditionally, they must perform a ritual that will keep the panda in check. The movie is a tactful yet amusing way of presenting the change that will relate to teenage girls while likely be over the heads of, yet be fun to much younger viewers. Turning Red adds to Pixar’s list of successful films dealing with certain human conditions that includes Coco, Soul and Inside Out. In a way, Inside Out 2 addresses the same subject as Turning Red but is a little more abstract. Unfortunately, for Pixar, they were forced to remove the movie from theaters and show it exclusively on streaming platforms because of pressure put on them from concerned parent groups who found the subject matter too controversial for their sensitive tastes. But at least young audiences have a way of seeing this colorful, action-filled film from Pixar. Domee Shi is an Academy Award winner having previously made the animated short film, Bao, about Asian parents becoming empty nesters.

CODA

CODA                    5 stars

I finally found the movie CODA being shown at a local theater and had the chance to see it before the Academy Awards. It has been showing on Apple TV+ and before that it was at Sundance where it won multiple awards. For those who haven’t heard of it before, this is the movie about a young girl who is a CODA; that is, Child Of Deaf Adults. Ruby, played by Emilia Jones loves to sing, but she only does so privately, such as when we first see her singing “Something’s Got a Hold On Me” on her father’s fishing boat. Her parents, (Troy Kotsur and Marlee Matlin) as well as her brother Leo are all deaf leaving high schooler Ruby as the only hearing person in the family making her indispensable as a way for the family to communicate with the world. The conflict is set up when Ruby joins the high school choir and the music teacher recognizes her talent and encourages her to try for entrance in an elite music school. The question then becomes whether her family can recognize Ruby’s desire to pursue something they cannot even hear and allow her to leave the family and the fishing business, something she has been a part of her whole life. It is a story using a formula that makes it a family hit and is aided by fine performances including those of Jones, Kotsur and Matlin. Eugenio Derbez is also effective as the music teacher who spends time coaching Ruby after school. Derbez is a well-known actor in his native Mexico. Everyone should see this favorite from Sundance that many have predicted to be the Academy Award Best Picture winner. And surprise! Last night CODA went on to win the Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actor in a Supporting Role Oscars.