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Movie Reviews

Earth Girls are Easy (1988) Review

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What can I say about this movie except that if you haven’t seen it, you definitely should. It isn’t the gripping story arch, in depth character development, nor its attention to detail world building that makes this a great movie. This movie has very little, if any, of these elements. Instead, it is the explosion of 80’s nostalgic madness that you have the pleasure to experience. And this movie is 80’as fuck! From the music to the set and costume design, you will get your nostalgia fix.

Aliens on a search for women find themselves at Earth’s doorstep. Specifically, in the pool of the main character Valerie Gale. Valerie has had her world turned upside down after discovering that her fiancé, the man who she was to marry in two weeks, is a cheater. Distraught and alone, she throws herself a pity party when the aliens come and interrupt it. Quickly realizing they are aliens’ shenanigans happen until they can communicate with Valerie that they are friendly. A quick changing montage musical number later and boom they are transformed into human men. The idea that these furry creatures can be turned into good looking men with the help of pounds of make-up is comical and is akin to the tone of the movie, but I digress. Now, the newly human aliens must wait for the pool to be drained so that they can leave earth and continue their search. In the meantime, they get to experience Californian culture as tourists. And this of course is the cause of a lot of shenanigans.

Sure, it is a bit slap sticky, and the bits drag on longer than they should in some points, but the ride is well worth the trouble. If it isn’t enough to ogle at a shirtless young Jeff Goldblum, you will get a lot of silly musical numbers as well as a reminder of aspects form the 80’s you probably haven’t thought about since the 90’s. The music in this movie is pretty great and echo the film’s lack of seriousness. Everything is bouncy, upbeat and erratic as if the film itself is fueled by the same mountains of cocaine that were used to write and direct it. And all of this madness and chaos just works!

Be forewarned however, this movie might be offensive for modern audience. I can see where it can be problematic and sexist, but this isn’t a movie that should be taken seriously. And it shouldn’t. This spastic journey into Southern California culture through the lens of aliens is just something fun you put on when you don’t want to follow a complicated plot or travel through back to the wackiest parts of the 90’s.

I definitely recommend this movie not for its groundbreaking impact it has on cinema, it has non, but for the fun ride you will get to experience. It is incredibly cheesy and over the top though, so if that isn’t your scene, then this isn’t the movie for you. In conclusion, Valley girls are easy.

Movie Reviews

Stuber (2019) Review

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It’s another buddy cop movie, and not a very good one at that. Even worse, it’s an update to the movie Taxi. Same general idea but surprisingly not as good. If you can get this one for free, go for it. It isn’t a terrible sit, but I wouldn’t pay for this movie because It’s not really worth it. It is incredibly generic save for the forced politically correct jokes that it will interrupt the flow of the movie with. There are scenes where they will play these jokes as an odd nod to millennials and it does not work. Is this a new trend? I saw a lot of this in the newest Men in Black movie and it was honestly distracting. I do not have an issue with these types of jokes mind you, but I do have an issue with how they are delivered in these movies. Often times it will be in the middle of a random scene where the politically correct token character will stop the scene in order to correct something insensitive that was said. Once in a while, sure this might be a funny jest and get a decent chuckle but when it happens every time it loses it’s effectiveness. And in this movie, it becomes a little preachy. I don’t want to be preached at when I am watching a comedy.

Kamail Nanjiani is a token in this movie. His role could have been casted by anyone with a similar build. He is wasted in this film. The acting is not terrible, and you will get some chuckles out of it, but you will not remember watching this movie. The movie does very little to stand out, save for constantly mentioning uber. Batista plays a big dude and they will take every opportunity they get to point that out. Nanjiani is a skinny loser and they will take every opportunity to make sure you know that he is. Like every other movie, they will not get along but because of their journey together they will ultimately forge a lasting meaningful friendship. That is to say, they will become friends because the script says they should.

There isn’t anything deeper to this film and I know that I shouldn’t have gone into this film expecting such but I at least expected some kind of story. Instead what you get is just these caricatures being moved from joke to joke as they are forced to grow closer to one another as is tradition with this genre of film. All this is loosely inter-weaved into some drug case that I honestly forgot was a thing until the very end. The driving force behind this whole adventure merely comes forth in small segments in between all the jokes about uber and bickering between the lead. In the end, several plot points are breezed by and some of them are forgotten if not hastily tied together because they have to remind you what UBER is again.

All in all let’s call this film what it really is, a giant commercial for UBER. The films will stop multiple times to explain different aspects of the app on both the rider and driver side. Take these out and the PC jokes and the movie sadly becomes hollow because there is nothing more to this movie. Who wants to pay money to watch an UBER ride? All in all it is not the hardest sit, there are worse out there, but don’t pay money for this. This is a movie you throw in the background while you do chores or Netflix and chill if that is still a thing.

Movie Reviews

Little (2019) Review

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              Where can I start off with this movie, if you can even call it that. Little is one of those comedies that you just have to sit through. This movie will name drop better movies of its genre, making you regret not being home watching those instead. If you’ve seen the movie “Big”, you’ve seen the better version of this movie. Hell, if you have seen the trailers for this, you’ve seen the better version of this movie as it does not add any new jokes. You aren’t missing much.

              First of all, this movie is incredibly shameless about its product placement. You can’t miss it because every scene stops in order to plug in its product placement. Lyft should seriously have a bigger acting credit than Regina Hall as it has more screen time than she does. It is a shame that movies, at least the shameless popular ones, seem to be giant advertisements and are losing their ability to tell a story effectively. I understand that a movie like this probably wouldn’t get enough funding with out such shameless product placement, but when it is this bad, just don’t make the movie.

              The jokes don’t always land, and yes you will have to sit there through entire scenes that are not funny because they had to pad out the run time somehow. And the few moments that do make you laugh are not enough to merit a viewing at the theater. How this movie got a theatric release astounds me. This should have been a Netflix original.

              Don’t waste your time or money and skip this movie. This isn’t even a fun bad movie to make fun of. It is just a bad long commercial with few barely funny jokes sprinkled throughout. Just watch the trailers or watch big as it will be a better sit. If you are curious and want to watch this movie, wait till you can stream it. Cheers.

Movie Reviews

Next Gen (2018) Review

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Next Gen is a poor man’s Big Hero 6, and given the choice, you should probably go watch that instead. This more poorly written knock off is a Netflix original that you probably won’t miss if you don’t watch it. This movie attempts to be an edgier version of Big Hero 6 through its plot, design and music, it fails to entertain. It doesn’t push the envelope hard enough and has more holes in its plot to make it work. Granted I might not be the target audience, but you can still make a movie geared for kids that is still entertaining to other groups.

This is a movie about a trouble teen, Mai, who lives in a world where robots are a part of everyday life. The problem is that she hates robots. The movie suggest that her dislike of robots is due to her distant mother’s obsession with robots. The movie will suggest a lot to give the illusion of plot and character development. As these movies go, she is also troubled by a past you get in small bits of dialogue and flash backs. Because her father left at a young age for whatever reason, she is now unable to trust anyone and therefore forces herself to be alone. Her sad past is what makes her destined to be this movie’s hero. And as this movie’s hero, nothing bad will happen to her.

This is one of those movies where things happen because shitty writing. That is to say that they will make shit up to write themselves out of all the plot holes and it isn’t subtle. For example, her encounter with the robot of the movie, Project 77, as so credulous. She is able to sneak past all of these security robots which makes me believe that robots in this universe are useless if they can’t stop a single little girl from sneaking into a secret lab. Even more troubling is the lack of consequences in the movie. Just reaching Project 77 she causes enough property damage where she should have at least been fined, but of course nothing ever comes of it. Maybe they forgave her because they knew she was destined to save the world.

Then you get the weirdest abusive relationship in cartoon history. Project 77 imprints on Mai and the rest of the movie is Project 77 trying to break through Mai’s hardened character. The issue is that Mai only keeps him around to hurt the ones who hurt her. This is one of those movies where the character has to have the saddest life so everything is wrong with her. Now project 77’s quirk is that he only has a limited amount of memory and he must erase certain memories to keep making new ones. And you never really care because Mai isn’t a nice person. You can argue that her past, the one that was poorly written for her, made her act this way, but I didn’t feel bad for her. I didn’t want to follow her around. She was extremely generic, as characters of this genre often are, and the relationship between Mai and 77 wasn’t captivating like that of the Iron Giant or Big Hero 6.

The other big issue with this movie is the plot. The villain of the movie is ridiculous. His plan to take over the world is to mass produce these robots that he gives to everyone. He plants bombs in these and his plan is to activate them to blow up and destroy humanity. The problem is that these explosions do so little damage that by the end of it you wonder if it was even necessary for Mai and 77 to get involved. Like I have mentioned before, this movie has no consequences and therefore, you will never really care for this movie.

This movie is bland. Netflix seems to be pumping out movies for the sake of pumping them out. These knock offs are not content and instead we get our feed bombarded with crap they keep labeling as original. I wish that instead they would spend more time between releases, so they can make watchable content. They have the ability, I have seen some Netflix content that I didn’t mind but lately it just seems like they are churning cheap rip offs of shows and movies that were successful. The problem with this is you get content with very little substance that panders and it is getting harder and harder to justify paying for the subscription when good content is diluted with this crap. Skip this so they don’t keep making crap like this.

 

Movie Reviews

Murder Party (2007) Review

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Murder Party is the film you’ve never heard of that should have stayed a play. The movie starts off with a man finding a mysterious invitation to the murder party. It name drops within the first five minutes of the film. The man decides to go to the party without knowing anything about it. There a lot of obvious warning signs that the man shouldn’t go to this party, the biggest being that it is being held in the outskirts of town. There is a moment when he runs through the empty creepy streets to some abandoned warehouse. Little does he know that the party was a plot by the most pretentious art students to commit a murder. It is when he gets to the party that the shenanigans begin as he is going to be the victim of this murder party. But, luckily for him, the killers are idiots and are picked off one by one by terrifying slap stick. Now you get to watch as the group unravels as they fail to go through with the murder.

This film feels like a community theater play. Not a terrible one, but one that shouldn’t have been put to video. A lot of the acting, dialogue, the scenery all belong on stage. The acting is over the top, and while I have seen places where it works, it gets annoying real fast in this film. I get that the over the top acting fits the tone of the movie, but it makes the already unlikable characters less likable. The characters in this movie are archetypes of eccentric art students, each one representing a unique quirk. The problem is that none of the characters are likable and spend most of the time arguing. The movie gets hard to sit through when you don’t care about the characters. Most of the dialogue is frivolous bickering and don’t really add anything to the plot. And this movie forgets it’s plot for the sake of this bickering and of course the slap stick.

The worst part is the slap stick. This movie has to invent silly ways for the characters to die so the innocent man can escape. It is because of their incompetence that they all meet their ends. One characters dies form catching fire after dousing himself with alcohol when he was drinking. None of these characters posses the ability to function in normal society.

This movie also makes a statement about the art community, I think? All the people who are in this mysterious warehouse are pretentious art students working on their art. They will argue amongst themselves constantly about their art and will talk about a huge project that they are working on. This whole film seems like a pretentious art project made by someone in this film. It tries way to hard to be dark, and funny, and gross that it doesn’t really tell a good story. I wouldn’t mind the acting and cheap production if the movie told a good story. Instead you get to follow a bunch of characters you don’t like being annoying. There are whole scenes where all they do is bicker. This isn’t plot.

If you like weird movies, check this out. It is something you have to see to know that it exists. I do not recommend this for the average viewer because it is way too artsy and pretentious. I’d say skip this if you are looking for something entertaining to watch. I give this a 3 out of 10. I did like a few scenes and I appreciated that it is different from all the other movies I have seen, but it is not for everyone.

Movie Reviews

The Meg (2018) Review

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The Meg starts off in the same fashion as other movies in the genre. It sets up a sad back story for the trouble and rugged hero and it cuts to modern day where scientists are doing science. As these movies go, science goes too far and they release the Meg into the modern world and now they must not only survive the Meg, but destroy it before it causes too much damage to the world. Sprinkle in a pointless love plot, some action scenes, and some comic relief and you have this generic movie.

I do not recommend going to watch this in theaters, you have seen way better from this genre and you’d be wasting your money. Instead, I urge you to wait till it comes out on Netflix, you aren’t missing anything. That being said, it isn’t a terrible movie, it’s just not worth theater price. First off, the characters in this film don’t help the movie. If this movie is meant to be a horror film, it has too much comic relief. This movie spends more time trying to be funny that it does trying to be suspenseful or scary. This is not a bad thing because I got a few chuckles from it, but if you are looking for a serious monster movie, look elsewhere. This is one of those movies where you will not remember character names, or even whole characters. There are characters in this movie who you will forget are in this movie until it is their turn to get eaten. And when the Meg eats, it will look terrible on the big screen.

The other issue with the movie is the chemistry between the characters. They kill off the only characters with any real chemistry really early on. The rest of the cast are poorly written archetypes that are put in the move to feed the Meg. The two leads are of course in love because the plot demands it. Their scenes together are my least favorite because they lack the most chemistry. While I do believe that there may be physical attraction, I do not believe that it is the deep seeded love the movie tries to convey. This movie will stop the plot to show you the two leads in an awkward interaction and tell you that they love each other repeatedly. This for me takes away from the film because I didn’t care for this plot line and cuts the time we get to spend with the real star, the Meg.

This movie has a lot of padding. I felt like the Meg was barely in the movie, and that is the whole reason I went to watch it in the movie. I wanted to watch a monster shark eat people. Instead you get a bunch of unassay scenes such as all the love plot scenes. The little girl was probably the worst padding for the film as she had no real purpose for being in the film. Cut her character out of the film and the movie doesn’t suffer from any drastic change. Instead she is there to provide comic relief and be cute in order to pander. Like most characters in this movie, she becomes a gimmick that doesn’t really work with the tone of the movie. She was in it to be cute and that was it. But by far my biggest complaint is that the Meg doesn’t kill enough people. This was the least violent monster attack I have ever seen.

This movie isn’t terrible. It is flawed but not the worst thing that has come to theaters this year. It has a certain charm to it that will be lost on a second viewing, but you won’t be completely bored with it. This is one of those movies you can only watch once and you will probably forget you watched it later. I do not recommend paying            theater price. Wait till it gets on Netflix. I give this movie a 5 out of 10.

Movie Reviews, Uncategorized

The Intern (2015) Review

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The intern is the buddy comedy starring Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway that no one asked for. The plot is simple enough. You start out the movie with De Niro narrating how his life has become boring routine since his Retirement. We learn that this narration is part of his interview for a job as an intern at a successful online retail company. This is immediately contrasted against Anne Hathaway’s character who is a fast-paced business woman in charge of an extremely successful business. The movie wants you to know that they are opposites and will be the focus of the movie. Naturally De Niro gets the job and is paired up with Hathaway’s character because she must be the example for the company. As the movie progresses, we get to see their relationship grow as Hathaway learns to slow down and soften up thanks to the persistence and good nature of Robert De Niro. It’s a basic plot so there isn’t too much to say on it.

The film starts off quirky. The character interactions, the music, the scenes. Unfortunately, it loses this quirk 20 minutes in after all the introductions are settled. It gets dull. A lot of the plot is contrived and forced just for the sake of having plot points. De Niro’s love interests, his friendships, the whole reason that he end’s up at the company in the first place is a reach. After you get past the quirky intro, it turns into a generic story that you will forget instantly. Granted, I might not be the target audience so that might contribute why this story wasn’t compelling, but it’s just too simple for my taste.

The acting in this movie is good. The chemistry between the two characters, and even the rest of the cast was great. I believed De Niro and Hathaway’s relationship. I thought it was cute, but the acting and the chemistry can’t save the boring narrative you have to sit through. I don’t have too much to say about this movie because it was just generic. I don’t see this movie lasting too long because it will be dated soon. A lot of the quirks get old fast and they will repeat the same joke too many times. I lost interest early on because it becomes a gimmick almost. It is jokes about De Niro adjusting to the tech world and jokes about Hathaway learning to slow down and enjoy her life. It is too easy.

It’s not a terrible film, it has good moments. The acting is great. The production is good. It just wasn’t made for me. It is story no one asked for and we really don’t need but it was done well enough. I rate a 4 out of 10, while I didn’t like the film personally, it’s not a harmful flick and it isn’t a terrible time. For the right audience, it’ll be a great sit.

Movie Reviews

The Package (2018) Review

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The Package is a raunchy buddy comedy that comes to us from our good friends at Netflix. As far as plots go, this movie doesn’t have one. The premise is simple enough, a group of friends go into woods for a camping trip and one of them cuts off his dick. The rest of the movie involves shenanigans as they the group of friends try to reunite the penis with its owner.

If you are looking for a movie that is engaging and with a narrative, look elsewhere. This movie feels like a series of improvised skits edited together. They do not feel natural and almost seem improvised. The dialogue is iffy in this film. Sometimes you will get decent banter, but most of the time it was unnatural, forced, and awkward, almost as if there was no script. At least not a good one.

As a comedy, it doesn’t always work. The jokes are easy and a lot of the time I knew the punch line to the joke before it was even set up. The movie spends more time trying to gross you out and make you uncomfortable that I at least lost interest a lot of the time. You will see a lot of penis. That being said, I had a couple laughs out of this, so it isn’t a terrible comedy, I just wouldn’t recommend watching this sober.

Because of the genre, every scene must involve the group and shenanigans. This becomes forced as they just move from one mishap to the next. There is no plot, there is no story, just a bunch of slap stick. There also is no character development. There is no growth and all the characters end up where they started in the movie, but this time with girlfriends. I can’t tell you a single name from memory because they were so generic and bland.

Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this movie. Although not terrible, it is one of those movies you will forget you watched. Even if you do watch it and enjoy it the first time through, the film loses the little charm it has the second time around. As far as Netflix releases go, this is not the worst one by any means. But it does feel like a Netflix film. Cheap, easy, and forgettable. At least this one wasn’t offensive.

Final score, I give this a 4 out of 10. It wasn’t bad to sit through, but I wouldn’t watch it again.