Tag: Lamorne Morris

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: DESPERADOS (Netflix)

Good God, can it be next weekend already? Where two new streaming films, The Old Guard & Palm Springs, premiere literally a day before my birthday…and they’ve both already gotten decent reviews? Other than Hamilton on Disney+ this weekend…this new Netflix film…DESPERADOS premiered. And no, it’s not a foreign language film with subtitles. It’s a just a regular, stupid, cheap unfunny, masturbation gag a minute, sex joke romantic comedy about a trio of women looking for something more out of life than they have. And it’s mainly just the three of them, yelling and screaming out dirty stuff every half minute for the entire hour and 45 minute run time. It’s like an R rated version of Ghostbusters 2016, where women who are usually funny in other things improv too much and just yell random shit to see what sticks. And again, none of it does. It literally gave me a headache. And it is disappointing that former Saturday Night Live star Nasim Pedrad would accept this kind of role to play the lead…she must’ve really been desperate (pun intended) to land a job ever since her stint on New Girl went away a couple of years ago. She was great on Saturday Night Live, she maybe should’ve never left, as leaving for that John Mulaney failure of a sitcom was one of the worst career choices I’ve seen out of anyone. This movie is even worse. Speaking of being unable to get separated from New Girl, her love interest in this is the same guy (Lamorne Morris) that she ends up with in the series finale of that show. Did both of them just walk across the studio once the showrunners announced a series wrap for them? Anyway, here’s how to determine if this movie is for you or not: at one point mid way through, Nasim Pedrad gets humped by a dolphin at the edge of a boat and then the dolphin jumps and smacks his giant red aroused sea cock across her face. Did you laugh? I hope not.

Per IMDB, Desperados is described as: “A panicked young woman, with her reluctant friends in tow, rushes to Mexico to try and delete a ranting email she sent to her new boyfriend.” That new boyfriend is played by Robbie Amell, who looked like he did the filmmakers a favor and came over for a couple of breaks while shooting Amazon’s Upload. Completely wasted here. So are Nasim Pedrad’s two friends played by Barry’s Sarah Burns and Pitch Perfect’s Anna Camp. Their plot b and c stories of the former not being able to have a baby with her husband and going to a white woman shaman that’s supposed to give her medicine and/or advice to succeed and then the latter’s decision whether or not to leave her cheating husband are solved in seconds and then thrown to the side just as quickly. The white woman shaman is played by Heather Graham who looks like she doesn’t want to be there, and the ultimate climax (you’ll see pun intended) of the scene that happens between her and Anna Camp didn’t make any sense and was a little tasteless. The main plot of Nasim Pedrad trying to delete Robbie Amell’s e-mail was completely unbelievable and would never have happened. See the reason she wrote the hateful e-mail, is right after they have sex, it seems like he ignores her for 5 days. Instead, right after the e-mail is sent, he calls her and reveals he had an accident and was in a medically induced coma for 5 days. Oh but get this, the doctors don’t want him on the internet or for him to have his computer at all or his phone for a couple of days and just want him to rest and not stress out. The screenplay writers must’ve known this set up was a little hammy, as every few minutes they remind the audience through dialogue and just keep repeating he needs rest over and over. Never mind the fact that there are probably other people worried about him, he needs to rest. Fucking please, even I can’t come up with a way in which it could’ve worked. So Nasim Pedrad has a couple of days to find his phone or computer at the Mexico resort he was staying at, and really stupid shit keeps getting thrown at her so she can’t complete her goal, and that the movie isn’t so short. And she has time to “happen” to bump into a previous bad date at this resort (played by New Girl’s Lamorne Morris) and then start to have great adventures and conversations with him…you see where the movie ends up don’t you? I hope you do.

One of the scenarios that keeps Pedrad from her goal, is that she keeps running into a 12-13 year old that wants to have statutory rape sex with her and then that kids mom shows up a few seconds behind and yells and tries to beat Pedrad’s ass. And she keeps running into them and keeps running into them. It gets very old, very fast. The only decent part in the movie is the chemistry and conversations between Pedrad and Morris. They don’t lose a step going from being charming together in New Girl to being charming together in this, even though he plays it straight, and she’s the mess, where on the Fox show it was vice versa. Lamorne Morris is the best part of this movie, as he’s down to Earth and plays a pretty cool character. This is the second movie he’s stolen out from everyone, even in this shitty year of COVID-19, the first film being Bloodshot. They should give him more stuff to do, and that stuff needs to be in better films. Anyway, this movie is a complete waste of time unless you are an obnoxious woman or man that laughs at this low brow crude and crass comedy that isn’t even smartly written, and your men or women friends are just as stupid and obnoxious as you are. The woman who wrote this hasn’t done anything other than writing for THE FUCKING FAILURE SHOW THAT WAS THE JAMIE KENNEDY EXPERIMENT WAY BACK WHEN. No wonder. The director is a nobody too. Sorry I sound salty, this movie was just a completely waste of talents for everyone involved, and a complete waste of time for an audience that decided to press play. How can Netflix be that desperate (again, pun intended) to put horse shit like this on their platform? This is just one sliver better than Netflix’s The Wrong Missy…but not by much. One of the worst films of 2020.

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Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: BLOODSHOT

Well, my last movie in the theater for awhile. My reviews will continue with new film streaming content, but I just saw my last movie in the theater for an undetermined amount of time because of COVID-19’s delays on every new release among the horizon, and I’ve seen and reviewed everything else, and I’m not seeing that religious bullshit I Still Believe where the girl dies of cancer at the end. Oh…sorry…spoiler alert for that film I guess (**snickers**). So with it being my last theatrical experience for awhile…I’m quite torn on BLOODSHOT, Vin Diesel’s new attempt at sucking his own ego dick. Because on one hand, if this had just been another movie on another ordinary weekend, would I have completely bashed it and thought it was trash? And is it only because I tried to enjoy my last movie theater visit that I actually kind of enjoyed it in a “so bad it’s good” kind of way? While watching it I was so desperately wanting something else to rip another new asshole into, but when struggling to put it on my mostly blank worst of the year list, I found myself…entertained…to a degree. So what am I saying? Am I saying to take my review with a giant grain of salt? Or am I recommending it, and asking you to trust my recommendation, even though the film has so many fucking problems, because I enjoyed my experience, some of the action, and two specific performances? It’s up to you, but I think you need to ask yourself. Do you like Vin Diesel and most of his movies, even though his acting range is shorter than Adam Sandler’s? If the answer is yes, you’ll love this God damn thing. If you can’t stand Diesel, quarantine yourself as far away from this film as you can.

Because if you look at it, Bloodshot is a superhero remake of A Man Apart. And if you know anything about Vin Diesel’s Hollywood Contract for every action film he does from now on, you know he can’t really ever lose in a fight. Well, he can lose at the beginning but if he overcomes everything in the end. And I don’t think he’s allowed to die anymore. So how am I supposed to fill tension anymore in a Vin Diesel movie when I know he won’t be hurt at the end? Take that one step further, add superhero indestructible powers…how the fuck am I supposed to relate to him or his character and find him likable. The answer? His talk of “family” is supposed to win your heart or you can’t and you just have to accept that the movie exists. Anyway, the film is based of a Valiant Comic of the same name, and I have no clue what the comic was about or what changes to it the movie made (which I’m sure was alot) so don’t ask. To borrow from Sony Pictures Entertainment’s website because I really don’t want to describe this myself: “After he and his wife are suddenly assassinated, Marine Ray Garrison (Diesel) is brought back to life by a team of scientists. Enhanced with nanotechnology, he becomes a superhuman, biotech killing machine. As Ray first trains with fellow super-soldiers, he struggles to recall anything from his previous years. But when his memories flood back and he remembers the man that killed both him and his wife, he breaks out of the facility hellbent on revenge, only to discover that there’s more between what he originally feels and to a conspiracy.”

The first and foremost problem with this movie is that almost everything is shown in the trailer. The trailer is a linear of events, and it shows basically everything except the very last brief scene. I understand that they need to show a bunch of action bits to peak people’s interest, but there was plenty that they could’ve shown and yet kept a bunch a surprise so that way there was more to unexpectingly look forward to in the movie. Even if they hadn’t revealed the whole plot, they could’ve at least held back all the deceiving plot line twists, even though without being told or shown it you could’ve spotted it all coming from ten billion miles away. Sometimes the CGI is really good, but most of the time it is quite shaky, especially, although every entertaining, two sequences in particular, a foot chase a little more than halfway through the film and then the final Doc Ock (you’ll see what I mean) elevator tall building jamboree brawl. Also, way too much shaky cam. Except for one excellent choreographed scene that involves flour, a lot of the color red, and a tunnel, this director (his first feature) clearly doesn’t know how to shoot action, as it is just a bunch of shaky cam the rest of the hour and 50 minutes to hid the fact that he doesn’t know where to focus the camera, and the need to pull back and not be so up close in shots. The editor probably got himself a giant non COVID-19 headache just trying to put the damn thing together.

And while Vin Diesel is Vin Diesel, I wouldn’t be recommending the film if it wasn’t for two great performances/characters and really the only two reasons why I recommend this film beyond it is “so bad it’s good” entertainment. And that would be the very sexy Eiza Gonzalez (the girlfriend of Jon Hamm in the movie Baby Driver) as LT, a bio engineered survivor that might or might not have a heart of gold, and Lamorne Morris (the black guy in New Girl) as Wilfred Wiggins, a genius coder. Gonzalez steals every scene she is in, and then shares the spotlight with Morris, who doesn’t even come into the picture until it is already about a little more than halfway over. They are fantastic in this, especially Morris, who shows he can do more than just be weirdo roommate Winston in Zooey Deschanel’s television show. Seeing Gonzalez in this, and then in baby driver, and then her bit role in Hobbs & Shaw, just makes me wish she was in more things. Guy Pierce is the main antagonist in this, and its Pierce almost basically playing the same bad guy he was in Iron Man 3. He was okay. And that sexy main redhead dude from Outlander is in this as well, but unfortunately, the screenplay doesn’t give him much to do other than grunt and growl out his very cliched dialogue. Oh yeah, all the dialogue in this is extra cringe worthy, except somehow Gonzalez and Morris manage to transcend the awfulness and make it tolerable with their performances.

Would I watch Bloodshot again? Oh yeah, I was entertained all right. Just compare it to Vin Diesel’s last “so bad it’s good” film, XXX: The Return of Zander Cage. Both movies are so shitty, but are so entertaining that even though you can nitpick them both until kingdom come, you end up forgiving its faults in the end because you don’t want to seem like some old grumpy prick. Looking at who wrote the film, I can see why I am being pulled into whether or not I wanted to give this film a recommendation. It was co written by Eric Heisserer, who has given us great films as Final Destination 5, Lights Out, and the masterpiece that is Arrival. But then also Jeff Wadlow wrote the film, who ruined the Kick Ass series with the very lackluster sequel, and also wrote one of the worst films this year already, Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island. You can definitely tell which parts were written by which screenplay writers on this. I just wish that I didn’t know that Vin Diesel wasn’t such a diva all the time on set, and maybe I wouldn’t bash his limited acting range so much. And like I said in the opening paragraph, I could’ve probably just liked the movie more because I knew it was my last go for awhile because of COVID-19 being a fucking asshole right now to this planet. You gotta take what you can get. What did I take from this? That I will watch whatever Eiza Gonzalez is in no matter how shitty the film. She’s actually a decent actress, and is so sexy to look at, I would have my eyes go bloodshot before I stopped looking at her.