Review: Theater Camp

Theater Camp
Cert: 12A / 93 mins / Dir. Molly Gordon & Nick Lieberman / Trailer

Well, the trailer for this made me want to gouge my own brain out with pins, but I went to watch Theater Camp anyway because I'm a sucker for giving a film an even break (look, if I don't watch it then how can I tell anyone who'll listen how awful it is?). Theater Camp is awful. Proving that if there's one thing worse than needy actors it's needy actors playing needy actors, at some point this was pitched as an underdog comedy, then someone forget to write in likeable characters. Or comedy. Instead we get mawkish, cack-handed, overly earnest yet cripplingly insincere tosh like some early 80s Hallmark daytime-movie which has made its way onto BBC2 during the summer holidays when you were hoping for Fast Times At Ridgemont High but you asked your nan for the television especially and she's in the room so now you've got to watch it and pretend you're interested. As plot-devices go, "we've got to save the theatre by putting on a show!!" is so hackneyed that the literal Muppets were sending it up as a cliché over a decade ago. For reasons I can't fathom this is presented as a low-budget documentary (the kind that's constantly filmed on four separate cameras), even though it's filled with actors you clearly recognise from other films and TV shows. And hey that's okay, Spinal Tap was presented as a documentary too, except that leaned into the comedic ridiculousness of the docu-format whereas Theater Camp plays it entirely straight. Perhaps the weirdest surprise is that although the film is filled with kids, they are in no way the annoying factor(s) here, that honour is owned fully and shamelessly by the atrocious adult cast who are doing it all on purpose. Who is this for? Theatre people are going to see the movie as condescending or insulting, while non-theatre people are going to see it as the reason they don't go to the theatre. So who's winning here? Not the audience, that's for sure. I think the last time I took against a film as vehemently as this was Bodies Bodies Bodies, and at least with that there was the threat of imminent lethal violence. Here, I was just praying for that...

Best line, show-runner Amos (Ben Platt):
"I apologise... waiting for entertainment that's expected is painful."

Well, quite.

Correct: zero stars.

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Strays

Strays
Cert: 15 / 89 mins / Dir. Josh Greenbaum / Trailer

So if 2023 has brought you to the place where you need The Incredible Journey meets The Secret Life Of Pets meets Ted, then director Josh Greenbaum has got you covered. This R-Rated pup comedy does exactly what it says on the tin, in a movie where the dogs saying fuck is the primary joke for an hour and half. It works well enough as a concept, and there are frequent chuckles from Dan Perrault's script but no real guffaws. If that's all you want for an hour and a half, knock yourself out.

In all fairness, the central quartet of characters voiced by Will Ferrell, Jamie Foxx, Isla Fisher and Randall Park is well balanced and reasonably fleshed out. The mix of live-action and CGI is nicely accomplished and the voice-cast is enthusiastic, but at its core the film is tired before it's properly begun. This is third studio-comedy in as many months which feels like a Judd Apatow script that's been found in a drawer after fifteen years and put into production because there was nothing else on the board.

Dick-jokes aside (so many dick-jokes), this movie is actually about the innocence of abandoned dogs, loss, companionship, trust and rising above abusive relationships, so it periodically tries to pull on the heart strings. But Greenbaum doesn't have the sincerity or courage of his convictions to do that properly*¹, and the only real enthusiasm here comes from the shrieking profanity on display in the trailer. Strays just isn't smart enough for the message it thinks it wants to convey and has little to emotionally justify its existence. But the dogs are (largely) real *² here, so it's already head and shoulders above The Meg.

Oh, but I'm taking points off for that accelerated greatest-hits montage of the most Outrageous™ gags just before the finale. If you need to tell your jokes twice to assure an audience they've enjoyed themselves, those weren't good enough the first time...

*¹ And rest assured, I am Dog-People™ and susceptible as fuck to all that. Strays just doesn't have it. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² The main dog is very cool, though. Not Will Ferrell who voices Reggie (obviously) but Sophie, the border terrier who plays him. ^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: The Machine

The Machine
Cert: 15 / 112 mins / Dir. Peter Atencio / Trailer

So wait, are we back to just taking the piss out of the Russians, now? Honestly, I can’t keep up. The Machine is American comedian Bert Kreischer, playing a heightened fictionalised version of himself in a tale that expands on his 2016 true-story*¹ standup routine of the same name, about the time he visited Russia through college and ended up with the mafia robbing a train. The film is set a decade after this, with mobsters tracking Bert down in the US to recover an antique watch which was stolen with the hoard. WIth his family in jeopardy, Bert has to travel to Russia and locate faces from his past to save him from gangsters of the present, so that he can have a future.

The first ten minutes of this film are essentially Bert Kreischer telling you how great Bert Kreischer is, before the other characters come on to spend the majority of the film telling you otherwise. I know who I believe.

FAVOUR

Mark Hamill (yes, that one) is along for the ride as Bert’s father Albert like he’s repaying a favour, a swathe of Eastern European performers fill out Russian Mafia roles with accents culturally insensitive enough to rival Black Widow, and Bert himself basically yells his way through the script like a competition-winner who can’t believe he’s on a film set, describing visual jokes after they’ve just occurred and using fuck-bombs to end scenes where writers Kevin Biegel and Scotty Landes*² couldn’t come up with a punchline.

And fair play to Jimmy Tatro who plays young-Bert in the flashback segments, because his comic timing is even worse than his older counterpart’s.

UNDER FIRE

There’s the seed in here of a story about societal expectations, male bravado and toxic masculinity, and how they often combine in a digital age where people feel they have to be constantly in performance-mode, the curators of their own existence in a quest for the dopamine of adulation. That seed is not watered, though. Instead, it must have been a slow Friday in the Sony offices when they decided to bankroll what is essentially a mashup of a shit Melissa McCarthy comedy from ten years ago, and a shit Liam Neeson thriller from ten years ago.

A handful of decent gags (the majority of which are slapstick anyway) can’t make up for distractingly quirky subtitles, incoherent storytelling*³ and an artless screenplay.
The Machine is broken.

*¹ The general rule with standup of course is that when a comic tells you something is a true story, it almost certainly isn’t. They are devising, exaggerating and embellishing for comic effect. That’s okay, it’s their job. It only becomes a problem when they repeatedly insist that it’s all true. So let’s just file this one accordingly before it’s even begun.
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*² That’s right, Kevin Biegel and Scotty Landes are the only credited writers in this. Not Bert Kreischer. If The Machine had been his story - his true story - Bert Kreischer would have got a writing credit. But he didn’t. Because this didn’t happen. Bert Kreischer is lying. For money. That’s what his job is.
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*³ Even if this was true (and remember, it’s not), The Machine would effectively be Bert Kreischer making a feature-length therapy-session roleplay to publicly absolve himself of his appalling behaviour in both the past and the recent-present, while only ‘succeeding’ in the nuts-and-bolts plot of the film by doubling down on his poor reputation rather than growing as a character. Precisely the sort of thing you’d expect in an Adam Sandler movie. Bert Kreischer is a shit Adam Sandler. There. Put that on the poster.
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DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.