Category Archives: Comedy

In Your Dreams

In Your Dreams                 4 stars

From Netflix comes the new animated film, In Your Dreams, that follows the adventures of twelve-year-old Stevie and her little brother Elliot as they venture into the world of dreams. This film arrives after Netflix’s wildly successful KPop Demon Hunters and may not have nearly its marketing or its originality of music, but it does have an impactful message that will appeal to a wide audience. Viewers of course will recognize some favorite tunes in the film including Mr. Sandman, Sweet Dreams and Enter Sandman that are woven into the story. Stevie seems to have a near perfect life with her two parents (Simu Liu and Cristin Milioti) but must put up with annoying little Elliot who came along a few years after her. She becomes concerned when there are signs of trouble in her parents’ marriage and she fears they could split up. One day the siblings discover an old book in a thrift store titled Legend of the Sandman, that tells about the Sandman who can make dreams come true if they believe in him. The two of them try out the instructions in the book and upon falling asleep, they enter the bizarre world of dreams where objects come to life, such as a bed they ride like a horse, breakfast cereal and Elliot’s favorite toy Baloney Tony, a stuffed giraffe who spouts wisecracks (played by Craig Robinson). The promise is that if they can find the Sandman he could make dreams come true and for Stevie this is getting her parents to stay together. The problem is they have to face dangerous situations in the dream land without waking up, something that proves very difficult. In one scene they must do battle with a giant teddy bear. It is all rather amusing but could have the potential of scaring young children. When they finally do find the Sandman (Omid Djalili) he shows them that if they can stay asleep long enough their dream can become reality, so Stevie is determined to make this work. And it does for a while; that is, until it all seems too good to be true. They also meet Nightmara, the creator of nightmares who tells the children that nightmares are there to help us face the bad things in life, but the Sandman wanted to avoid them and make dreams pleasant instead. The movie becomes a life lesson in facing the things that make life difficult and loving each other in spite of the problems that go with being part of a family. There is plenty of color and high intensity action as well as occasional fart jokes that should entertain the youngsters. At an hour and a half, it is about the right length. The writer/director is Alex Woo who previously worked for Pixar. This is his first effort in the director’s chair and I hope we see more to come from his vivid imagination. The movie is available on Netflix.

Ella McCay

Ella McCay          1 star

I was looking for a movie one afternoon, so I was limited to matinees in nearby theaters. I settled on the new comedy Ella McCay by writer/director James Brooks. Brooks is known for such classic comedies as Broadcast News, Terms of Endearment and As Good As It Gets. Ella McCay includes some top actors like Jamie Lee Curtis, Woody Harrelson and Ayo Edebiri, so that seemed promising. Oh, how wrong that is! Most of the characters are one dimensional and involved in one ridiculous subplot after that are disconnected and go nowhere. The idea is that Ella McCay (Emma Mackey, who is the only mildly interesting character in the movie) is the youngest Lieutenant Governor ever in the state and she is about to get promoted to Interim Governor when the Governor (Albert Brooks) is tapped to become a member of the new administration’s cabinet. Ella has a passion for improvement of many issues that the state is facing and has some big plans. The problem is that she is a lousy campaigner and gives boring speeches. Her biggest problem is her messed up family that interferes in her life at the worst moments. Her father (Woody Harrelson) was fired over some sexual harassment claims (while he was married to Ella’s mother). Harrelson is not very funny and doesn’t appear in many scenes. Her husband (Jack Lowden) is a moron, and it has taken sixteen years of marriage for Ella to figure that out. Her younger brother, Casey (Spike Fearn) is agoraphobic, but is a sports betting genius and rich, but is afraid of how to approach his girlfriend (Ayo Edebiri, one bright spot in the whole mess). Lucky for Ella she has Aunt Helen (Jaimie Lee Curtis, in a wasted role) who always has good advice, if only Ella would listen. Rebecca Hall shows up only briefly as Ella’s mother before she quickly dies and disappears. Then there are the brief scenes with Kumail Nanjiani who is on Ella’s state police security detail. That’s another wasted talent. So poor Ella must deal with each crisis while she is supposed to be governing. It doesn’t take long before a scandal erupts. A nosey reporter is threatening to reveal that she has been having trysts with her husband on state property if she doesn’t give him what he wants. How scandalous! I found the whole thing to be boring and was hoping it would soon be over. There is also the matter of aging in the movie or lack of it. Mackey looks virtually the same when her character is sixteen as when she is thirty-four. Obviously, the budget didn’t allow much in the way of makeup or CGI effects. James Brooks has clearly not given this movie the effort he put into his earlier projects in the eighties and nineties. It looks like it is time for him to retire. Let’s hope that Emma Mackey finds some better roles soon. This is easily the worst movie I have seen this year.

Cats

Cats                                       1 ½ stars

I am sure that everyone has heard about the screen adaptation of the Broadway musical Cats that recently hit theaters.  There has been plenty of controversy about it mainly about the CGI effects making the cast look like some sort of human-cat hybrids.  So I had to see it for myself and it was something of a shock.  There are plenty of stars on the screen in a story that is confusing at best.  I will try to give some description of what is going on.  The story concerns a tribe of cats called the Jellicles that hang out around an abandoned theater in London.  One night a new cat called Victoria portrayed by ballerina Francesca Hayward, is tossed on the street where she is introduced to an array of felines that all have their own stories.  It happens to be the annual night of the Jellicle Ball when the old cat Deuteronomy (Dame Judy Dench) makes the choice of which of the eligible cats is worthy to be chosen to ascend into the Heaviside Layer and be rewarded with a new life.  Each of the possible choices gets a featured performance involving music and dance which includes Rebel Wilson’s fat and comical Jennyanydots, James Cordon’s Bustopher Jones, Jason Derulo’s Rum Tum Tugger, Ian McKellen’s Gus the Theater Cat (in one of the best performances), Jennifer Hudson’s Grizabella, who sings the powerful “Memory” and Laurie Davidson as the classic Mr. Mistoffelees, the mysterious magical cat.  Unfortunately, there is a scheming villain, the evil Macavity (Idres Elba) who uses his magic powers to exile each of the felines onto a boat in the Thames where his henchman Growitiger (Ray Winstone) holds them all prisoner.  This way Macavity plans to be the one to achieve the coveted Heaviside Layer for himself.  Macavity is enabled by his associate, Bombalurina, a wily cat played by Taylor Swift who puts her own spell on the Jellicles using her own brand of catnip.  Can the Jellicles overcome these magic spells and defeat Macavity?  By this time does anybody care?  The CGI costumes are very distracting with the cat ears, cat tails and other features applied to the cast.  And then there are the miniature creatures featuring dancers representing the mice and cockroaches that the cats are hungry for.  I felt the film may have had more success if it was just treated as a stage production on film without all the special effects.  They could have saved themselves a lot of money besides.  So now you know what Cats is all about.  Now you will be able to save yourselves the torture of enduring this mad spectacle.

Feels Good Man

Feels Good Man.   5 suns

For anyone interested in politics or the dark side of the internet,  Feels Good Man is a documentary you must see.  It covers a cartoonist who created a comic character called Pepe the Frog some 20 years ago that was part of a mildly amusing comic strip about a group of friends living together.  We then learn of various underground groups on the internet who used the character in memes to promote whatever bad message they wish to share.  The means of distribution is called 4chan, sort of an underground version of Instagram.  All of this was completely foreign to me, but perhaps some of you have heard about this.  The type of individuals doing this are characterized as young men living in their parent’s basements with no job who spend all their time on the internet denigrating people they disapprove of.  They even have a name.  They are called NEET or Not in Education,  Employment or Training.  They are the type that live on the fringes of society and are very angry over their situation.  Around the time of the 2016 presidential election,  Pepe found his way to white nationalist groups and became a hate symbol that even got the attention of the ADL.  This was all terrible news for the creator of Pepe who just saw Pepe as a symbol of friendship.  Finally,  this all blew up on the internet with the frog actually helping Trump to get more votes among the white racists and young NEETs.  It all seems like too much to believe but there are national news organizations that covered the story as real.  The film was in the works for at least for years and was just seen here at Sundance for the first time.  It was a fascinating story and was done very well with many interviews and news footage to back it up.  I would be interested to learn from any readers who were aware of this while it was happening.

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery          4 ½ stars

Rian Johnson’s third installment of his iconic Knives Out murder mystery series, Wake Up Dead Man is out, and one thing is certain. He has hit a winning formula by casting Daniel Craig as the southern gentleman crime solver who is a master at working through some of the most convoluted murders this side of Sherlock Holmes. Johnson’s two previous films of the series, Knives Out and Glass Onion, were set in a mansion and a billionaire’s island retreat. This time around he gives up the usual extravagant location and cast of detestable rich people for a gothic church and a small flock of loyal church goers. The mystery to be solved is just as complicated and full of possible suspects as those earlier outings and with some misdirection’s. We start by meeting Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor who we remember from Challengers), a young priest who just assaulted a church deacon. His superiors must find a new parish for him so send him to Chimney Rock, New York, the location of Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude. There he meets Monsignor Wicks (Josh Brolin), who he is to serve under. Wicks is not your normal priest. He is a real firebrand and has a style of preaching that is all about anger toward the world, something that poor Father Jud doesn’t find very comforting as he is more about serving the world. (He also goes to extreme lengths in confessing his masturbation habits to Father Jud.) Wicks tends to turn newcomers away from the church, leaving him with only a handful of dedicated worshippers. Without going into details about all the characters and giving much away, I’ll say that we have an all-star lineup of a cast that includes Glenn Close, Jeremy Renner, Mila Kunis, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Thomas Hayden Church and Jeffrey Wright. The story requires us to have a little background information that includes Wicks’ grandfather who served the church as priest and died at the altar many years ago, Wicks’ mother who was a harlot and Glenn Close’s character, Martha Delacroix, who has served the church for sixty years. It is after Wicks suddenly falls dead during the Good Friday service, and the police are stumped by the crime that sleuth Benoit Blanc is brought in to solve the murder. At this point I will not give away any spoilers and will just say there are plenty of clues the viewer learns of along with Blanc. It is not so much about identifying the murderer as about the how it was accomplished and the motive that really keeps things interesting. Of course, much of the entertainment value comes from the performance that Daniel Craig puts on with his dramatic way of speaking making him the modern-day Sherlock Holmes. I hope we don’t see the end of this series for a long time to come. It’s a really fun ride.

Yesterday

Yesterday            3 stars

Recently we have been getting a string of movies that honor musicians of the past.  See Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman and Blinded by the Light.  Last year’s Yesterday was Danny Boyle’s tribute to the music of The Beatles which imagines what it would be like if the legendary British rock group never existed.  In this movie an alternate timeline suddenly appears where nobody remembers The Beatles except for one struggling British musician, Jack.  After a mysterious bus accident when the lights go out all over the world, Jack discovers that he is the only one who can remember the band’s songs.  Thus, he has moved into an alternate timeline where not only the Beatles, but also Coke and cigarettes do not exist.  Jack is so obsessed with remembering and recreating the songs that after singing them he goes a step further and claims that he actually the songs himself, a move that brings him wide acclaim and fame.  He even gets the aid of singer/songwriter Ed Sheeran who appears as himself.  In the end though the thing that is most important to Jack is his manager, Ellie, who he has known since childhood.  Thus, the movie becomes more of a romantic comedy than an exploration of what made the Beatles so great.  There is really no exploration of the group or the times that their music was born in.  I understand that the original script was more about the occurrence of the alternate timeline and less of a romantic comedy.  I can’t help but wonder what an interesting movie that would have been.  Nevertheless, it was very entertaining to hear many of the Fab Four’s great hits again.

Hustlers

Hustlers                               4 stars

Hustlers stars Constance Wu and Jennifer Lopez as strip club dancers who come up with a scheme to get even with their rich clients and former employers who have been taking advantage of them for years.  It stars Jennifer Lopez as an exotic dancer is probably the best role of her career.  What is there not to like about that?  How did Jennifer not get an Oscar nomination for this?

Missing Link

Missing Link                                        4 stars

Missing Link is yet another animated stop motion effort by Laika Studios, the company that made Coraline, Boxtrolls, Paranorman and Kubo and the Two Strings.  This time they take us on an adventure to find the legendary Bigfoot in the American Northwest.  Sir Lionel Frost, voiced by Hugh Jackman, wants to be accepted by an elitist club in London and thinks the way to do this is to discover an unknown giant creature.  When he receives an anonymous letter telling him where to find the legendary Sasquatch, he is off on an adventure, only to discover that the creature is not at all what he imagined.  The Sasquatch is a mild, friendly, educated giant furry creature that is lonely and only wants to be among his own kind.  In an interesting twist the voice is that of Zach Galifianakis, not exactly the loud tough guy type.  The rest of the movie has our characters traveling across the globe while being pursued by enemies and accompanied by Lionel’s old flame, Adelina, voiced by Zoe Saldana, trying to reach their destination of the Himalayas where the yeti are reputed to live.  The animation is first rate like the previous Laika movies, as the characters seem alive and there is plenty of intense action.  Missing Link may not be as off beat as the previous efforts, but it is definitely worth seeing.

Emma.

Emma.                                   4 ½ stars

The latest adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel Emma by director Autumn de Wilde is full of wit and social satire as it takes a look at the life of one Emma Woodhouse (Anya Taylor-Joy), the attractive and mettlesome daughter of a rich landowner (Bill Nighy) in a large country estate.  Since Emma is rich and “had lived nearly 21 years in the world with very little to distress or vex her”, she spends her time manipulating those around her, trying to pair people up or breaking them up according to her own liking.  There are plenty of parties, dances and picnics for the gentile, rich upper class that give Emma the chance to work her devilish charms on those she takes an interest in.  This film is more comedic than most Austen based movies as the characters often express themselves without being too direct about their intentions.  The one exception to this rule is performed by Mr. Knightley (Johnny Flynn), Emma’s friend from childhood who is often direct to Emma about her schemes and their effect on the lives of others.  Taylor-Joy’s mannerisms and expressions are perfect for role of Emma as one always gets the impression that there is a scheme going on behind those wide eyes.  And I cannot fail to mention the incredible costumes and hairstyling that plays a major part in the film.  All Jane Austen fans should definitely go see Emma.

Sorry, Baby

Sorry, Baby         4 stars

I had heard of the title Sorry, Baby from when it played at the Sundance Film Festival but didn’t know anything about it before seeing it this past week. The film is written by, directed by and starring Eva Victor, a standup comic and improv player. Victor stars as Agnes, a full English professor at a New England liberal arts university who lives alone in a house outside of town with her cat. One weekend she is visited by her friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and Mickey 17) who she knows from her graduate school days at the same college. The two are very close and loyal to one another. They can talk endlessly about all sorts of subjects including men. During the visit Lydie reveals that she is pregnant and expecting a baby with her partner. This is a happy occasion except that Agnes wants to make sure that Lydie will still love her, not the expected response. They go out to see other friends from grad school for dinner at their house, when we get the sense that something is not right with Agnes. She has a panic attack and must excuse herself. At other times she is wary of her surroundings when alone. This film is a character study that focuses on one character, someone who makes us wonder what is going on with them as they seem to be alternately strong, then weak. We then go back in time a few years to the time when Agnes and Lydie are both still graduate students working on their theses in the same mentor group. They share the same mentor, an older man named Preston Decker (Louis Cancelmi) who is a handsome academic type. He is very impressed by Agnes’ writing and tells her so. There is a convenient reason for Agnes to stop by Decker’s house for more consultation on her thesis, where we find out the reason for all her anxiety. We never see anything happening. The only hint is a very long shot of the exterior of the house, until Agnes leaves looking disturbed. She then drives home in a reckless matter. From then on, we watch as Agnes deals with the trauma with Lydie’s support, following all the prescribed actions when one has faced an attack. For the remainder of the movie Agnes must go about her life but her interactions with other people are always affected by what she went through. She has moments of rage hoping for some form of retribution and at other times she is in need of reassurance, even at one time from her cute guy neighbor next door, Gavin (Lucas Hedges of Boy Erased and Manchester by the Sea), who she asks rather graphically for sex. The title of the film is indicative of things we say to people going through something difficult that may or may not be genuine. Don’t get the wrong impression of the movie. Despite the heavy subject matter it has many moments of comedy that will generate laughs. The final scene of the movie is especially heart wrenching. A few weeks ago, I saw another film on a similar subject, After the Hunt. Sorry, Baby is far superior as it has characters that seem very real and that the audience can relate to.