Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: SPACE JAM – A NEW LEGACY (Spoilers Ahoy, Mateys!)

READY PLAYER SPACE JAM….errrr, I mean CYBERSPACE JAM…errr, I mean SPACE JAM: A NEW LEGACY is going to do to your kids in 2021, exactly what the original did to you as a child in 1996. They will see one of the most legendary sports players of all time going toe to toe with their favorite Looney Tunes characters to play the ultimate game of basketball with sight gags and cartoonish violence aplenty. They will instantly develop memberberries and claim that this film was their childhood in a bottle. But then in 25 years, that will be the year…2046? FUCK. In 2046, they will realize the movie doesn’t hold up, at all. And they will start to question not only their childhood sanity, but their current one.

Just to set things up, I watched the original Space Jam last week in preparation for today. I thought I remembered 1996 just like it was yesterday: seeing this film in the theater, in awe of how Michael Jordan reacted to cartoon drawings, loving all the zany antics & hilarity. Not knowing that Bill Murray’s 5 minute cameo would be what I would ultimately only remember vividly about the film. Ladies and gentlemen and children of all ages…SPACE JAM DOES NOT HOLD UP. It has a bittersweet beginning with Michael Jordan and his father…it was emotional and sweet then in 1996 but it is now a bit bitter knowing that Jordan’s father was tragically murdered three years prior (our parents rightfully kept this sad shit from us when we were young).

But after that well done little opening, the film is all over the place. It’s not a terrible film by any means. When the film gets to Toon Town and the ‘ultimate game’, the entertainment ramps up to a watchable little romp. The new character of Lola Bunny was too cool for school and didn’t take any shit from bugs. The villain MonStars had a actual character arc. It pokes a little fun at Jordan wanting to play baseball. It has some other memorable scenes here and there (mainly Bill Murray). But…

Michael Jordan can’t act his way out of a paper bag. He shows a little charm in some scenes but ultimately he looks like he doesn’t know what he’s doing, having a hard time interacting with what amounts to a green screen and tennis balls.
The opening credits shamelessly put Jordan on a pedestal (small nitpick but I started rolling my eyes as a 35 year old adult when I re-watched it last week)
There isn’t that much character development with anybody: Jordan realizes…teamwork? And maybe not to play baseball? The Tunes learn to…believe in themselves? I guess? Even though they believe in themselves in the old cartoons that they previously did?
When compared to Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, which came out 8 years earlier, the animation and live action isn’t very impressive, especially on the court at the final game.
Any scene with Newman from Seinfeld is unfunny, annoying, and you just want to punch him in the face.
It needed more Danny DeVito voice work. And it needed more Looney Tunes focus & action (but is a masterpiece of focus when compared to this sequel)

I’m sure there is more but I’m trying to do a review of the sequel, so let’s get into it. To be fair, let’s just list the few positives this film has:

POSITIVES

Don Cheadle
The animation and live action blending here looks decent and uses modern technology to its fullest advantage.
A Michael Jordan cameo that subverted expectations made me chuckle.
A Rick and Morty 10 second cameo elicited the biggest laugh of the whole movie for me (I’m a huge fan)
The film does have a couple of set ups and pay offs that worked, specifically dealing with an initial glitch in the son’s game he is designing at the beginning of the film.
A couple of Looney Tunes sight gags here and there made me chuckle (one with the big red hairy Looney Tunes character and one with Wild E. Coyote made me laugh out loud).
Don Cheadle

And that’s about it. I listed Don Cheadle twice because he looks like the only human participant in this picture that looks like they want to be there. He hams it up in every single frame he’s in and he looks like he’s having a grand old time. If he’s not, someone please give him a supporting Oscar nomination, because he could’ve fooled me. He’s also the only actor in the film that looks like an absolute pro talking to what is essentially a green screen and tennis balls.

Now, let’s list off the many, MANY negatives this film has:

This movie is basically a giant Warner Bros. IP ploy. It just bukake’s everything under the WB logo and sun with every pop culture movie and tv character/property their banner owns. They show up EVERYWHERE. AND IT GETS VERY DISTRACTING. The attention is supposed to be on ‘the big game’, full of life and death stakes, but instead, character’s from The Mask, IT, Game of Thrones, Batman & Robin, Hanna Barbera, etc, etc, etc, show up and are clearly visible in the background that I ended up pointing them out to myself so much that I had to rewind the movie on HBO Max and make myself focus on what was happening on the court. How bad does it get? EVEN FUCKING RICK AND MORTY SHOW UP IN THIS FILM! At least the original film only had one pop culture reference that I didn’t get at the time, and that was to what is now my favorite movie of all time: Pulp Fiction. If you weren’t a fan of Ready Player One, the book and/or movie, because of the constant callbacks to other properties, prepare to REALLY, REALLY loathe this film.
That being said, most of the movie relies on the Looney Tunes incorporating themselves into famous scenes and situations from Warner Bros. movies and tv shows like 8 Mile (the rap battle here is so fucking stupid), The Matrix, Casablanca, FUCKING MAD MAX FURY ROAD, the hard R rated film from George Miller, The Cartoon DC Universe etc. etc. etc. Not a spec of originality comes from the Tunes until the big game and even that was drowned out by all the sploodging of WB IP all over my fucking face.
LeBron might have been one of the standouts of the Amy Schumer film Trainwreck, but here, he’s a literal trainwreck. He can’t act his way out of a smaller paper bag than Michael Jordan’s, and he doesn’t really seem like he wanted to be doing this. It screams paycheck. I know Michael Jordan can’t act but some charm at least seeped through in the original that showed he wanted to be in a movie that put him up on a pedestal. LeBron seems like he could care less as long as more money shows up in his hand at the end of it all.
The opening credits, yet fucking again, puts LeBron up on a pedestal. I rolled my eyes twice as much as I did in the original Michael Jordan pedestal opening credits.
There is literally no fucking character development here. What little there is, is just, “I need to pay attention to my son more, a son who doesn’t really want to play basketball. I also need to let him do his dream which is designing video games and not be such a hard ass.” And even that little message is muddled with all the Ready Player One bullshit that was going on around it.
At least the MonStars in the original movie had an arc. They each had distinct personalities and realized they were being controlled by cartoon Danny DeVito too much and needed to branch out as toons on their own. Here the ‘Goon Squad villians’ have no story, no arc, they just show up for the final game with their God like special powers and say a few quips. That’s it. The villains in this, other than Don Cheadle, are completely ignored. And I understand that the villain players are basically just made up on the spot videogame entities created by LeBron James’ fictional son, but come on, some more humanity and back story go a long way. One of the few charms of the original film is that the MonStars steal the talent of real NBA players. And while the NBA players go on stupid hospital/therapy antics when they lose their talent in that movie, at least that was something. Here, it’s completely nothing.
I like Zendaya as a person, actress, and celebrity but her voice does not match the character of Lola Bunny at all here. And it makes me enraged to think that the original voice actress for her (the one that voiced Lola in 1996) had recorded all of the dialogue as this film was being made, only to be dumped post production last minute and replaced by an A-List celebrity. For shame, Warner Bros. Let Zendaya do her Spider-Man and Euphoria thing and have ACTUAL VOICE TALENT VOICE YOUR FUCKING CARTOON CHARACTERS. You didn’t learn your lesson with last year’s SCOOB! and you certainly didn’t learn it here. They don’t need to be well known, they just need to be right for the part. Zendaya is on the opposite end of the spectrum from the right voice for the right character.
Why the fuck is this movie even called Space Jam? At least the first movie they fucking played in FUCKING SPACE against SPACE ALIENS!!! Is it still called Space Jam because it’s supposed to be how much God damn server space that Warner Bros. has on all their IP properties? Why didn’t they just call it CYBERSPACE JAM?!? Either way, fuck that, I’d rather watch blood in my stool.
Our lovable Looney Tunes are mostly in the background in this movie, in the deep deep shadow of Lebron James’ ego. In the original movie, all the main characters had a scene or two to shine. Not here. They are all amusing at times background screensavers as Lebron James doesn’t act right in front of our eyeballs.
As one review on twitter put it: “Some of the reviews of SPACE JAM: A NEW LEGACY are missing the point. This movie wasn’t made for grown ups, it was made for kids. And if there’s one thing that kids today love, it’s references to Casablanca and A Clockwork Orange.” The reason why I see that a lot of kids might not like this film is the references that will go way over their head like the one above. I understand you can’t put in anything that references Disney but surely you could mention something more updated in these times for the younger crowd…
Ummm…the movie gets very close to saying some naughty words that wouldn’t really fit the rating of this movie. Terms like “son of a glitch” is uttered (when uttered by Daffy Duck I honestly thought he said bitch for two seconds there). And there is one part where Don Cheadle is bleeped as he curses but I could almost clearly read his lips…And this was supposed to be a kids movie?
Speaking of MonStars, they have a 2 second cameo that ruins their character development from the first movie, as they sigh and look depressed when the villains start to lose.
LeBron James’ heartfelt climax speech to his son about his acceptance of his kid wanting to do other things other than basketball and also realizing he’s a shitty father is so cringe worthy it is sure to earn him a Razzie Nomination by the end of the year.
There’s a “death”, “sacrifice”, what have you, that one of the main Looney Tunes characters make in order to win the big basketball game. Basically they risk deletion from the WB Server’s for good. At the beginning of the movie, a son does a specific basketball move with one of his players he created in the videogame he is making, and that move causes the game to crash and the character gets deleted. That is a set up for a pay off at the end of the movie to have a different character do that same move to win the game, but then get deleted. They set it up like LeBron James is going to sacrifice himself, but I knew one of the toons were going to take over and do it and I was seriously hoping it was going to be Pepe Le Pew. You didn’t see him the whole movie and then for him to just pop in the middle of the game would’ve been BOLD. That would’ve been a FUCKING BRILLIANT commentary on cancel culture and a smart and unique way to get rid of that character for good. But no, it’s another main toon. And that “death”, that “sacrifice” is completely null and void not 5 minutes later. You have this emotional scene with a character sacrificing sacrificing him/herself for his/her family (no, it’s not Dominic Toretto) and then act like it is permanent, only for the character to show up two scenes later and just shrug it off spouting, “I’m a cartoon, there’s no getting rid of me!” PATHETIC.

This review has gotten way too long, so let me end it with the following: If you are just a casual moviegoer that doesn’t get bothered by petty things, maybe one with a couple of young children to watch this with, or if you are still a no shame fan of the original, or if you suck down memberberries like Daniel Day Lewis does a hypothetical milkshake in There Will Be Blood, you might find some enjoyment out of Space Jam: A New Legacy.

But if you hated the constant memberberries ejaculating on your face in Ready Player One (novel or movie), if you hate LeBron James, if you didn’t care for the original film back in 1996 and/or don’t care for it present day when you finally grew a brain and learned better, if you are wanting just a bunch of fun and entertaining Looney Tunes antics like you’ve been getting with the charming HBO Max television reboot that has two seasons thus far on the streaming service (please watch that instead)…then you are going to want to avoid this like the Delta variant of COVID-19.

Grades for Both Films:

Space Jam – A New Legacy: 3 out of 10

Space Jam: 9 out of 10 (in 1996), 6 out of 10 (on a re watch in 2021)

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: FREAKY

FREAKY is the exact kind of movie that I needed to come out in a movie theater right now, pandemic and all. Not just me, but probably one that all horror fans also needed. And some comedy fans as well. Freaky is a scary, blood and guts bonanza of a good time with some big, big laughs that mixes horror and comedy quite masterfully. Some critics are calling writer/director Christopher Landon a future master of the horror genre, eventually joining the likes/ranks of Wes Craven, James Wan, David Cronenberg, Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter, etc., but I’m going to disagree with that…to a degree, and put him in a whole different category of his own: he’s the new master of flipping the horror genre on its head. That title was previously held by Wes Craven when he defied expectations and went meta ‘before its time’ with New Nightmare in 1994 and then it was accepted more just two years later in 1996’s Scream. Unfortunately for Wes, those are really the only two movies where he did that successfully, as each Scream sequel failed to light a candle to the wit of the original, and then he had some regular horror clunkers in between like My Soul To Take and co-writing the sequel remake of The Hills Have Eyes 2. Christopher Landon has flipped the horror genre on its head successfully multiple times now and he keeps getting better. He started all the way back in 2007 with the Shia LaBeouf starring, new take on the ‘Rear Window’ movie, Disturbia. He then involved himself with the Paranormal Activity movies, which flipped the horror found footage genre on its head, and right after that he flipped the zombie horror genre on its head with Scouts Guide to The Zombie Apocalypse. More recently, he flipped the Groundhog Day ‘do-over’ genre on its head, giving it a fresh horror spin with Happy Death Day, and then flipped it yet again with the more sci-fi than horror sequel, Happy Death Day 2U. Now here comes Freaky, which flips the horror genre on its head yet again by mixing it with the done to death ‘body swap’ comedy genre, to masterful results.

IMDB describes Freaky with the following, “After swapping bodies with a deranged serial killer, a young girl in high school discovers she has less than 24 hours before the change becomes permanent.” The only question I asked myself after seeing a trailer to this movie, and the question you probably also asked yourself was: how is it no one thought of this sooner? Seriously, I’m very surprised someone didn’t attempt this about a decade ago, but here we are now, and this film is near perfect. After having seen the movie, I can’t imagine anybody else in the deranged serial killer role that suddenly inhabits the soul of a teenage girl other than Vince Vaughn. I called his comeback a few months ago when he had his best comedic performance since Wedding Crashers, in Hulu’s original film The Binge, and now Freaky just solidifies my claims. Forget The Binge, THIS IS NOW HIS BEST PERFORMANCE OVERALL since that 2005 masterpiece with Owen Wilson. When Vince Vaughn isn’t phoning it in, and when you can tell he wants to be in a project and is having the time of his life, that’s when movie magic happens. In Freaky, he lights up the screen, and he does so even before he inhabits the teenage girl’s spirit. Why hasn’t anybody made Vince Vaughn some kind of horror icon until now? This movie puts his tall height and frame to good use, making him look like a horrifying presence with the strength and determination of Jason or Michael Myers. I wonder if Vince Vaughn was Landon’s one and only choice for the role. It wouldn’t surprise me. If I had one complaint about this movie, there is a scene where you’ll really have to suspend some belief when Vince Vaughn and a teenage boy are flirting in a car. It’s a little cring-ey and not that believable, but the scene was written primary for laughs and a big “ewwww”, which it definitely got out of me, so that suspension was quickly forgiven.

And the movie isn’t all Vince Vaughn. The movie has a great earned jump scare of an opening scene. The movie also has snappy dialogue, some great gory and unique kills with tons and tons of blood, great editing, great directing by Landon, great consistent laughs, great supporting characters and performances (especially the teenage girl’s gay guy friend and black girl friend, who flip their genre character tropes on their heads) and the movie even subverts expectations with not having the movie end how I expected it to. In fact, I would say this is one of the most satisfying horror movie endings I’ve seen in my lifetime. The movie also wouldn’t be what it is without the other half of the body swap duo, the teenage girl who is played by Kathryn Newton. When her body inhabits the soul of Vince Vaughn’s deranged serial killer, her acting gives us a master class in what to accomplish in a body swap movie of its type. Switching personalities within a film can be hard to do, but just like Nicholas Cage and John Travolta in Face/Off, Vince Vaughn and Kathryn Newton pull it off like it’s a walk in the park. I cannot wait to own this movie and watch it again and again, I was that thoroughly entertained and I bet you will be too. You don’t even have to be a fan of the horror genre to get something out of Freaky, as my wife, who HATES horror movies, liked this one quite a bit as well. Movies like Freaky were made for the theater, to share laughter or jump scare frights with strangers in a dark and quiet auditorium. It was nice to see that this movie had the most audience members in attendance since I saw Tenet for the first time back in September. Let’s get more stuff like this back into theaters, so that we can save the movie going experience, and not just be fat asses at home on our phones, not paying attention to the straight to PVOD drivel we have mostly gotten since April.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: SYNCHRONIC

How am I supposed to talk about a movie so great, that’s only in theaters right now, when I can’t really talk about it? If I talk about it at all, I’ll ruin the psychedelic trip, and I’ll ruin all the surprises. I guess I could talk about how well the story is told combined with some neat visuals that were done on a relatively small budget, but I just said it, and if I elaborated on it more, yet again, I would just ruin everything. The poster to this movie is beautiful, for some unbelievable reason the trailer doesn’t give anything away, and neither does the description of the film on IMDB: “Two New Orleans paramedics’ lives are ripped apart after they encounter a series of horrific deaths linked to a designer drug with bizarre, otherworldly effects.” It stars The Falcon from the MCU himself Anthony Mackie and Fifty Shades of Grey’s Jamie Dornan, the former giving his best performance since The Hurt Locker, and the latter giving his best performance ever for me, even though I have never watched that critically acclaimed TV series he’s in called The Fall. It’s one of my favorite films of the year so far and while I’m glad I just went, took a chance on it, and saw it, I’m kind of depressed it was released during a pandemic. I don’t think it made shit last weekend and is likely to be out of the theaters next week if not the week after. I am just hoping upon hope that this is discovered when it hits video, ends up as something like the movie Equilibrium with Christian Bale. That film was in the theater for a week before it was pulled, but became a massive hit on home video. Maybe Synchronic’s fate will end up in sync with that.

BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, just go see it, or see it when it hits your bubble. I won’t make fun of you scaredy cats this time as long as you discover and gives this a chance when you have a chance to watch it at home. The storytelling in this is perfect, it doesn’t overstay its welcome at a lean one hour and forty minutes, the visuals complement the storytelling and are even more impressive considering the budget wasn’t all that big. I’m not familiar with writer/directors Justin Benson and Aaron Morehead, but apparently they got their visual and storytelling flair with a 2017 movie called The Endless, which I’m going to try to find on streaming and give a chance soon. The movie has several deep layered messages within it that were fun and moving to discover. AAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNDDDD…shit. I’m done with my review. I mean, what more is there to say other than these two writer/directors need to make more movies, Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan need to be given more movie roles like this, and the fact that original movies are still being made and released such as this, even though its in the middle of a butt fucking shitty year, makes me happy. I wish I was hyped up on this more before hand like I was Tenet, then again, I am very happy that Synchronic took me by surprise. Let’s hope the world gets more in sync soon with regular movie releases so we can start to all get back to normal as Synchronic was a masterful trip while 2020 has been the nightmare trip of a lifetime.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: HONEST THIEF

HONEST THIEF honestly stole ninety minutes of my life. This is one of Liam Neeson’s low tier action thrillers, down there in the cold depths of hell with Taken 2 & 3. And those three are the only ones that I haven’t watched multiple times, as others such as Run All Night, A Walk Among The Tombstones, Cold Pursuit, The Commuter, Non-Stop, fuck.. even Unknown I’ve enjoyed more than one viewing. Honest Thief looked cheap and felt cheap, and there didn’t even seem to be an effort to cover the cheapness up. There is 5 second establishing shot that was obviously stock footage of an overview of a city and it was so God damn grainy, pixelated, and old looking that it looked as though it was shot in the mid-90s with a camcorder. I literally laughed out loud…at STOCK FOOTAGE. The film has an interesting idea, in which IMDB describes with the following: “Wanting to lead an honest life, a notorious bank robber turns himself in, only to be double-crossed by two ruthless FBI agents.” But the execution of it feels like a high end college student film, complete with one of the worst on screen explosions I have ever seen in the theater, the fire still crackling on the debris looking like an add on from a graphics computer still running on Windows 95. Scenes take way too much time and drag, Kate Walsh’s character is one of the biggest on screen morons of 2020, and that’s including the dumbest onscreen villains of 2020 so far. Yet somehow, this isn’t one of the worst films of the year, as it was still nice to see something in an actual movie theater, and I would take it over the fifty-something-odd piece of shit direct to streaming “films” I have had to endure because of the cocksucker known as COVID-19.

After Tenet and Broken Hearts Gallery, it seems like movies that were supposed to be in theaters are put into five categories:

If a supposed theatrical release is pushed back multiple times, and we still have yet to see it, it is likely that movie is actually great.
If a supposed theatrical release is dumped onto streaming with not much marketing behind it, and dumped for free along side the streaming service you already pay for, it is most likely a piece of shit.
If a supposed theatrical release is dumped onto streaming with a shit ton of marketing, but it costs you an extra $20 to $30 bucks to either rent it for 48 hours or to own it, it is either great, or it’s a giant Mulan piece of shit.
If a movie that was supposed to go straight to streaming, but then ends up snagging a theatrical release due to there being no new releases because New York Governor Andrew Cuomo keeps theaters closed in his state but restaurants and gyms open, and due to the fact he’s an egotistical moron on the spectrum…then that means the studios have no confidence in said film for even streaming and it’s probably a giant piece of shit.
If a movie that was supposed to go theaters still makes its release date at this time, it’s either very meh or a giant piece of shit.

Honest Thief is easily a #5, riding that fence from either falling into a giant pile of regular soil or a giant pile of elephant shit. This should’ve been a direct to streaming movie in the first place. Both the five second grainy stock footage, Kate Walsh’s character, and the house explosion fall into the pile shit while the rest falls safely onto the soil for the rest of the movie. So….meh, but with a little shit on its lip if you wanted me to paint a clearer picture. Liam Neeson at least seems to be always game for all these kinds of films and never phones it in, and that is always appreciated, but everyone else, including recognizable faces Kate Walsh, Jeffrey Donovan, Robert Patrick, and Jai Courtney, seem bored, know what kind of film they’re in, and knows the paycheck coming at the end of it. I’m surprised Kate Walsh said yes to this picture. Her character is literally the most naive dumb ass I have seen in a film recently, and I’ve seen Hubie Halloween. There is this part of the movie where she comes upon and surprises the two dirty FBI agents loading boxes from her boyfriend’s (played by Neeson) storage garage, and even the most generic screenplay would have her character ask false questions and give false answers to see if the agents out right try to lie to her so she can tell Neeson what is going on. But no, she gives out all accurate information that they just agree to and just believes all their bullshit, even though the two actors playing the FBI agents looked bored and don’t even try to sell said bullshit. I slapped my head about 10 times in the theater during that 5 minute scene. The co-writer and director of this movie, Mark Williams, is more well known for being a halfway decent producer of television projects, like Ozark, not writing and directing feature films, hell, not writing and directing at all. He should go back to just producing, as he doesn’t know what the fuck he is doing. This movie is as generic as a generic film can get, let alone a Liam Neeson actioner. It stole my interest with a misleading marketing campaign and theatrical trailer that looked action heavy, and instead was just a straight and cheap drama with a couple of action beats that would honestly make Michael Bay want to kill himself.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: THE WAR WITH GRANDPA

THE WAR WITH GRANDPA is the worst thing since AIDS. It’s more embarrassing than when I went to the theater with my dad in 2005 and saw Brokeback Mountain. I swear to you…you have my personal guarantee, that watching the likes of Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, and Uma Thurman try to skate their way through this garbage was more embarrassing than watching The Joker buttfuck Mysterio in a tent, in a dark movie theater, with my father sitting next to me. At least Brokeback was a good movie. fThis film was shot over three years ago and had several release dates in 2017, but it was shot under The Weinstein banner, which was destroyed when #MeToo happened the back half of that year. I really wish someone there would’ve burned the original negative while the studio was in a disarray or deleted the digital copy off the servers forever. I wish the machines in Tenet were real as I would enter one, literally sit in a room for three years by myself, inverted, until I got to when the movie was finished, re enter a Tenet machine, and then destroy all copies of the movie…only then would I warn top officials of of COVID. Or wait, since The War With Grandpa and coronavirus already happened, does that mean I’ll be unsuccessful in my inverted time trip? Fuck, that’s a head scratcher. What isn’t a head scratcher is that this is easily one of the worst films of 2020, and the only reason I saw it is two fold: 1. I still want to somehow support the theater even though they aren’t releasing any blockbusters and 2. I had to get rid of a free movie pass before it expired. I might as well have ripped it in two than use it.

IMDB describes The War With Grandpa with the following: “Upset that he has to share the room he loves with his grandfather, Peter decides to declare war in an attempt to get it back.” One example of how I can automatically convince you how fucking stupid this movie is: when the grandfather accepts that he and his grandson are going to war over the room, they list rules, and rule #1 of the prank war is NO COLLATERAL DAMAGE, meaning their pranks and other ways to make the other concede cannot and must not hurt other people or their property. That rule is thrown out the window not five minutes later and the characters and the screenplay itself just ignore it and everyone moves on. So if a screenplay can’t figure out a way to obey its own rules…WHAT’S THE POINT OF THE FUCKING MOVIE? This is like a remake of Home Alone meets Jackass and the script was written by Trump after he got autistic for taking experimental drugs after contracting the coronavirus. You also get:

A stupid green screen dodge ball fight.
Pranks that could really cause physical harm or death but instead the characters are unharmed in Looney Tunes like violence.
An awfully paced and edited Christmas themed birthday party climax where people just stand around like fucking idiots watching dumb shit happen all around them.
Repeated heart to heart conversations where others only listen if someone really almost was killed.
Uma Thurman throwing coffee and eventually a snake on the same police officer, where they happen to meet at the same time twice, at the same intersection.
Laura Marano (beautiful as ever but she’s 24 now and cannot pass as a young teen) literally only in the movie for reaction shots of when Uma Thurman, who plays her mother, catches her just making out with a secret boyfriend.
Godfather and Deer Hunter endless references and jokes galore because hey, why not make a cheap joke or a hundred because you got De Niro and Walken in the same movie?
Grown men seeing old man penis jokes…TWICE!
Unrealistic slapstick violence over and over and over and over again
An old man that can’t even work a grocery checkout register who can suddenly learn not only how to work a drone from a 5 year old girl but can also create an online account to an MMRPG and ruin his grandson’s castle in the game that he’s been working on for almost three years.

This is what you get when you adapt a film from an actual kids book, and the guys you hire to do it also wrote the abysmal FAILURE TO LAUNCH. And we can also blame director Tim Hill, who is still depressed after making the Alvin and the Chipmunks and Garfield 2 movies, and he didn’t sky rocket to film making stardom, so he keeps going all in dumber and dumber, with the awful looking new Spongebob Squarepants movie, and now this. He is on “I don’t give a shit” autopilot here. Maybe he always was. If you happen to stay during the end credits like my dumb motherfucking ass did, you’ll see that Laura Marano only signed the dotted line to do this movie if she could write and sing a new single for it. She’s a good singer, but the song sucked balls. Rob Riggle looks like he wanted to kill himself three years ago when making this as well. And Jane Seymour was in this too? How embarrassing. The only sense of snuggle-y warmth I got throughout the movie was that there were quite a lot of people and kids at my late 9:30 at night Saturday screening, and they seemed to enjoy it as dumb families together, so maybe the theater going experience isn’t dead after this cunt year. If movies like this are the ones to slowly and quietly get people to go back to the movies, so be it. But for me, unless it was free like this one was, keep me far away from it, or I’ll start to really wage war on the pussy studios that keep holding back all the good stuff back.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: THE LAST SHIFT

THE LAST SHIFT has one of those messages we’ve seen many times before in movies: what are you going to do with your life before it’s too late and you waste your potential? Depending on your age, is it ever too late to change? The only reason this “one time watch” movie worked for me is because of the performances, especially Richard Jenkins, who just left a bad taste in my mouth in the overrated and awful Kajillionaire before this. A big 3rd act incident happens near the end of the movie that doesn’t quite make sense in normal human logic, but that would be my only other complaint other than the familiarity of it all. This is one of those movies, that back in the 90s/early 2000s if you found on a movie channel at one in the morning, while sober, with a midnight homemade or fast food snack in hand, you’d probably watch until it was done at three am. “That was nice but I probably wouldn’t seek out to watch it again.” That kind of feeling. IMDB’s log line summary for the film is as follows: “Stanley’s last shift at his fast food job takes an unexpected turn.” Sigh, come on IMDB, what am I going to do with you? Stanley has been working at this chicken and fish place called Oscar’s for the past 38 years and he wants to move his mother out of the home his brother and him put her in and do something more with the last remaining years of his life. So he needs to train his replacement before he goes, a mild slacker named Javon, who may or may not end up teaching Stanley and/or himself that expectations are overrated and you are just going to walk the same path eventually that you try to divert from, depending on who you are and the color of your skin.

That’s the movie in a nutshell. The film mostly takes place inside the restaurant, with a couple of late shift shenanigans and weird and asshole customers. If you want a straight up comedy in this vein just stick to Waiting… which just hit Netflix this weekend. Their conversations inside the fast food joint are about life that feel realistic and don’t get too preachy. Married With Children and Modern Family’s Ed O’Neil is a supporting player in this, providing some comic relief and also there to get away with saying the R word that you barely have heard in movies this past decade. But it’s the Richard Jenkins and Shane Paul McGhie show here, as their performances make the movie. Jenkins plays an actual a character in this, unlike he empty shell in this week’s Kajillionaire. And McGhie plays a unique slacker with a hidden heart of gold. It takes a pro to pull off that kind of character and it seemed to just come naturally to this new big screened talent. Looking up writer/director Andrew Cohn, this seems to be his first big screen venture, as his career is filled mostly with nonfiction documentary and documentary shorts. I’d say this is an about average is not a little above, fictional big screen debut for him. He seems to possess the traits of a good actor’s director…but maybe he should direct someone else’s screenplay. A minor spoiler, but one of the two gets into a bit of trouble in their job near the end of the movie, and the rational and thought of the district manager I thought was a bit bullshit and unrealistic for the kind of situation that presented itself, especially if you factor in the color of both her and Javon’s skin and Stanley’s situation. Surely the catalyst to the climax could’ve been handled better. But hey, I laughed and was entertained throughout the nice, tight and short 90 minute run time. I am also quite happy that my last new movie viewing this weekend was in a theater and wasn’t a terrible piece of shit streaming film like Kajillionaire or the Secret Society of Second Born Royals, so there’s that.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: KAJILLIONAIRE

KAJILLIONAIRE gave me (an my wife) a kajillion headaches. Not because it was confusing but it was a slog and a half (considering the 1 hr and 47 minute run time) to get through. A quirky film just for the sake of being quirky, which made it overwhelmingly quirky and unbearable. And a really annoying and bizarre performance with an annoyingly bizarre low tone of voice by Even Rachel Wood. There are only really two scenes of actual levity and earnestness in the film, one that doesn’t happen until the last 10 minutes of the movie, and one in the middle that lasts only about 10 seconds before it goes back to being monotonous. This comes out in theaters today (only really Alamo Drafthouse and other independent theaters), and then streaming VOD in about a month, and I am here to tell you to save your fucking money and your fucking time no matter how it’s available to watch to you (even if free). I won a free digital 72 hour screening from Focus Features and decided just to get it out of the way last night. This is supposed to be a comedy (really a dramedy) yet neither my wife nor I laughed once. And when I put on a 2005 comedy that definitely couldn’t be made today (Waiting) and laughed more in the first minute than the atrocity to cinema I just watched…then something is truly wrong. You may go on Rotten Tomatoes and see the critic score to this is in the low 90s, which is a really good score, but I no longer ever trust Rotten Tomatoes, because I think most critics are high off of being able to stay home and avoid COVID-19, so they are giving anything a good review based on that bias.

And you may be saying, “Zach, maybe you just don’t like quirky movies?” Not true, I’m going to review another film later today that just came to Hulu but was released earlier in the year called Babyteeth, where its quirky-ness was in contribution to the story and wasn’t just there to be there. It’s all about context people. Me, movies, and context. If you haven’t gotten that by now with all of my reviews that I write then I don’t know what to tell you. I even warn you whenever I throw context and my brain out the window and just enjoyed what I was watching, so I can’t be any more blunt with you than I usually am. To put this all in another way you’ll understand, Kajillionaire sucked to me. Per IMDB, it describes the movie as: “A woman’s life is turned upside down when her criminal parents invite an outsider to join them on a major heist they’re planning.” This whole family is filled with terrible, terrible con people. Terrible not jut morally, but that they also execute all of these “cons” terribly. What was really offensive about this film to me isn’t just its fake, unearned quirky-ness, it’s also it feels like a cheap knock off of a very good international film that came out a couple of years ago called Shoplifters. That movie even got nominated for an Academy Award. I’ll scoff if this does and protest. Richard Jenkins and Debra Winger are completely wasted as Evan Rachel Wood’s (who is the main protagonist by the way) parents, and they are completely unlikable characters from the get go. Evan Rachel Wood is supposed to be likable but her bizarre bat shit performance made her extremely unlikable to me.

The actress that sort of saves this from being a complete clusterfuck (even though this film right now is in my top 20 worst of the year list) is Gina Rodriguez. She plays the stranger in IMDB’s description of the film above. Her quirky-ness in this film almost works, and she saves a little bit of the movie by being the focus of the two only earnest moments in the movie (These moments are technically spoilers, but you’ll know them when you see them). She is the only one unscathed in this production. I have never seen writer/director Miranda July’s other “quirky” movies or short films, and this movie definitely will not have me search any of them out, any time soon. I mean, this film is just weird to be weird without any context. They live in a cheap little place that overflows with bubbles (they clean this place constantly that’s why the rent is so cheap) from the ceiling because it’s an attachment to a bubble factory called Bubble, Inc. No explanation to what they do other than make bubbles apparently. I understand the films message about family and human attachment, it just went about it in a very awkward, non pleasing, and off putting way. It is very slow pace, with a major heist that in all honesty didn’t make a lick of sense to me. If you watch this movie and end up enjoying it like the critics did, I won’t hark on you. Clearly this movie just wasn’t meant for me. I didn’t connect with it on any emotional level, and the only emotion I shed during it were the kajillion tears of joy that I wept once the movie finally got to the end credits.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: INFIDEL

INFIDEL is…okay…I guess? With the production value, ho hum direction, some awkward moments and an out of place action climax, it seems like it should’ve been a mediocre HBO or Showtime Original movie. But I’m guessing it is getting released in theaters because there is absolutely no competition right now and it thinks it can maybe make more money that way? I don’t know. In better hands, this could’ve been an amazing film. It could’ve been an audacious, riveting and soulful religious thriller. Instead it focuses way too much on its ideological agenda where the tension is completely void in the scenes where it is supposed to be. The film has great acting and it has some great quiet moments that are much better than the loud ones to be sure, but it just feels like a weird mixture of tones that didn’t quite work for me, but would work for a lot of other people that are not necessarily that into motion pictures. If that makes any sense to you. Per IMDB, Infidel is described as such: “An American man, played by Jim Caviezel, is kidnapped after a friend invites him to Cairo to speak out about recent militant uprisings. His wife heads to the city after hearing the news, determined to get him back.” What is so frustrating is that near the beginning of the film, Infidel has a much more interesting story inside of it, that is resolved much later in the movie with a few lines of exchanged dialogue. You’ll know what I mean when you see it. Also, the film kind of irked me at the very, very beginning by showing a scene that takes place later in the narrative, but then rewinds and shows what happened leading up to it. If you are one of my constant readers, you know that is a cardinal sin in motion pictures for me.

The main problem for me is that the film really doesn’t have much tension. I never felt like Jim Caviezel was really in that much danger or torture. The movie is rated R yet feels like a tamed PG-13 direct to video forgettable piece of cinema. The film has a very, very out of place action sequence climax that is edited really awkwardly which makes the pacing a bit slow when it should be frantic and insane. It’s hard to explain, it just felt like the climax should’ve been more covert and subtle. The acting and the story itself is the only thing that really holds the film together from being a complete disaster. Jim Caviezel is excellent as always and the woman that plays his wife, Claudia Karvan, is quite good as well. And the story of a journalist being kidnapped and tortured for his beliefs will always make for an interesting string of events on the big screen. But it just needed a better writer and director. Cyrus Nowrasteh, whose work I’m not familiar with, who looks like he is trying, I just think he’s out of his element directly behind the camera. He should just stick to writing and even then maybe collaborate with someone that could spruce up some of the more awkward sequences. And an action director he is definitely not. Or a director that knows how to film and edit tension. That’s what a film like this needs as its main ingredient and unfortunately I don’t think there was even a teaspoons worth to write home about. The most interesting thing is that this movie was filmed before coronavirus yet mentions it in here, saying some prisoners that Caviezel is around has it…suspiciously though it sounds like ADR, as that line of dialogue you don’t see a single mouth move with it. This film feels so awkward, I wouldn’t be surprised if that is the case.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: THE BROKEN HEARTS GALLERY

The star of this movie, Geraldine Viswanathan, reminds me so much of my first love at the end of high school and most of college that it actually is pretty funny. And heartfelt. Even though I was the reason for the breakup (I was an entitled asshole) I have nothing but fond memories of that relationship because she is one of the sweetest people I’ve known on this planet. The character of Lucy, that Geraldine plays, is so eerily like her, looks and all, and her performance alone is why I highly, highly, highly, highly recommend THE BROKEN HEARTS GALLERY. I know it is playing in theaters and a lot of you are not comfortable going to the theater right now, because virus, blah, blah, blah, just make sure you give it a chance once it hits home media. It is absolutely delightful. And the story is decent too. The chemistry and the relationship between the two leads, the male protagonist is played by newer Red Power Ranger and Billy on Stranger Things’ Dacre Montgomery, is so good, realistic, and memorable, is because it TAKES. ITS. TIME. Usually romantic comedies like this find a way to get the two people together way too early and the climax doesn’t work because it doesn’t feel earned due to the fact that we’ve already seen them in a relationship for most of the movie. Shit, I forgot to give you IMDB’s log line for the film itself to describe it: “After a break up, a young woman decides to start a gallery where people can leave trinkets from past relationships.” The movie takes place in New York, and the gallery is taking place inside the male protagonists Hotel he is trying to get a loan for and set up as a business because him and Lucy keep bumping into each other, and he needs help to get the hotel ready in time.

Instead of focusing on the romance between them, the movie correctly goes down the path of Geraldine’s refusal to let go of her sentimental trinkets from past relationships and her refusal to just move on. And the movie correctly has an underlying reason why she doesn’t want to get rid of those memories, and when that reason is revealed, there won’t be a dry eye in your watch party. It also focuses on the relationship right before Lucy meets Nick and it gives us a good glimpse into why she is the way she is. The unpredictability of everything besides you knowing that Lucy and Nick will eventually get together is why the movie is instantaneously watchable. It doesn’t dumb itself down into that ooey-gooey cliched bullshit that a lot of couples eat up when they watch a movie that is not of this caliber. I’ve said this before: it’s a movie that doesn’t treat its target audience as if they were idiots. The dialogue is snappy, it isn’t bogged down in situations where we’ve heard it before, and it makes characters out of everyone, even the supporting ones that don’t get a lot of screen time, like the silent boyfriend to Molly Gordon’s friend to Lucy character. Lucy has another friend that gets a lot of screentime in the movie, played by Hamilton’s Phillipa Soo, and together the three of them make really great friends that you could compare it to the friendships you have in your own life. Writer/Director Natalie Krinsky, has had plenty of writing experience, she’s written for Gossip Girl, Grey’s Anatomy, and Red Band Society. She doesn’t waste those talents either and seems to have learned some director skills being on set of those shows, as the film is shot and looks better than most romantic comedies of this caliber. It was not just point and shoot crap we get nowadays. It’s just a really sweet, funny, realistic romantic film that I’m certain will not break your heart.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: BILL & TED FACE THE MUSIC

BILL & TED FACE THE MUSIC is eerily similar to a release of a third film in a franchise that came out earlier this year, Bad Boys For Life. Both of them are my least favorite of the series thus far, but saying that is definitely non-heinous. Both films have actors that haven’t been in their roles for a long time. Both films actually have more plot than their previous entries in the series. The movies have sweet messages that are very much needed in this nightmare world we are living in right now. However, both movies are a bit awkwardly directed and maybe someone else should’ve been picked for the job, but hey, you get what you pay for, and these sequels were made on relatively smaller budgets than their first entries. But I mean, even on a small budget, it shouldn’t be THAT hard to get the same actor in dual roles in one frame of a shot, instead of doing a shit ton of shot/reverse shots…right? It sounds like a minor complaint, but considering the Bill & Ted series has to do with time travel, confronting different versions of yourself & that the previous movies were able to get both Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter in one frame when they were interacting with those dual versions…doesn’t that seem a bit…unforgivable? There are so many quick cut shot/reverse shots in this it was starting to give me a bogus headache. But I digress, the rest of the movie is quite excellent, it’s well acted, it’s funny, it ends the series on a pitch perfect climax and has one of the best after credit scenes I’ve ever seen. Highly recommend that you face your wallet and that you try and take this journey or adventure whenever you’ve got the time, and if you haven’t seen any of the series yet, what are you waiting for?

This series is unique by the fact that both Bill & Ted are just lovable, dumb, clueless, yet sweet goofballs that always do their best to try and do the right thing. They don’t really get mad at anybody, they don’t hold grudges, they don’t curse anyone out or fight anyone. IMDB describes Face The Music as such: “Once told they’d save the universe during a time-traveling adventure, 2 would-be rockers from San Dimas, California find themselves as middle-aged dads still trying to crank out a hit song and fulfill their destiny.” In the third entry, they still are very much in love with their princess wives and interact and love their offspring who are just smarter girl versions of themselves (same mannerisms and all). They have spent three decades trying to save the world, and when we finally see them again, 29 years after the last movie, they haven’t given up. They are still that loyal to the cause. That’s what makes this film unique, is that any other franchise sequel would’ve had them estranged from their wives, turned them into jerks so that they could have a redemption story line, and/or be awful parents and then try to turn them into good parents by films end. Nope, none of that, their only real problem in this is that they only have seventy something minutes to write the song that saves the world, and each time they travel into the future to try and steal the song from themselves, they just get further and further from their goal it seems. It’s quite a simple story, but it is one that ties up everything from the first two films and ends the series pretty much perfectly. Speaking of writing and playing the song that is supposed to unite and save the world, everybody and their mom watching this movie knows that the screenplay writers (Ed Solomon & Chris Matheson wrote all three entries thankfully) could never ever write a good enough song to save the world, so how is this movie going to solve that realistic dilemma without cutting to black right before they play it, a cheap move that a lot of other movies would’ve done to get around that narrative problem? Don’t worry, I won’t reveal what the film does, but needless to say, I didn’t see their solution to that problem coming.

At first I was worried that Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter would’ve seemed off when they first appeared on screen, having not played those roles in 29 years. But they haven’t missed a step. They ARE Bill & Ted, and from minute one you know they are going to be the same lovable duo you grew up watching when you were a kid. I won’t reveal much of their adventure here, but needless to say, it tries to combine the adventures from the first and second movies, mix it together, and make them unique for the third, and I say that everyone pulled it off pretty well. When Reeves and Winter aren’t on screen and stealing the show, it’s the actresses that play their daughters, Samara Weaving & Brigette Lundy-Paine that do. They got all of Bill & Ted’s mannerism and ways of speaking down pat. And when all four of them aren’t on screen, Anthony Carrigan, who plays NoHo Hank on HBO’s Barry, steals it out from under everyone else. I dare not reveal who his character is, but he is the most unrecognizable one of the bunch. And other than the too many shot/reverse shots, the special effects work well enough within the context of the film (definitely better than the first two for sure), and I thought the climax was a bit visually stunning. It’s just a solid good film that maybe could’ve been perfect if they had had a different director and bigger budget. Sorry Dean Parisot, but your one great film, Galaxy Quest, will always be #1 in my heart…but then again you had more money there. Bill & Ted Face The Music is just a nice, sweet movie with a good heart that we need right now, because in 2020, unfortunately no one is excellent to each other, and people keep partying on in a bad way, trying to ignore a virus for political and selfish reasons. I can bet we are all wishing for a phone booth time machine right about now to get out of this hellhole. For now, this film will do.