Readers of a certain age may remember the Morecambe & Wise film where our heroes unwittingly become involved in espionage shenanigans*1 and dark-edged hilarity ensues. Well, suffice to say that The Spy Who Dumped Me is The Intelligence Men for the Bad Moms generation.
So: Something something, pair of slacker friends who get drunk and make dick jokes; something something asshole boyfriend who is really an untrustworthy CIA operative; something something, going on an impromptu whistle-stop tour of Europe to try and save the world from a terrorist organisation while the authorities look on in comedic consternation; something something, we haven't written a punchline for this scene I'm sure you'll be able to figure something out on the day…
Mila 'Friends With Benefits' Kunis and Kate 'Office Christmas Party' McKinnon star in the resulting action-caper where director Susanna Fogel encourages the pair to ad-lib their way around a bare-bones screenplay, while frenetic action scenes play out periodically. Their improvisation is patchy, lacks cohesion and is still far stronger than the scripted dialogue. Yet bizarrely, the action choreography here is pretty outstanding and saves what's left of the movie. The 15 certificate awarded by the BBFC for the multitude of profanities also allows for some pretty brutal fight scenes, and they're executed with far more vigour and flair than the po-faced thrillers who claim to be doing this sort of thing for a living.
Kunis and McKinnon are great screen presences of course, and have a fairly strong chemistry together, but they're utterly wasted on a movie which feels like it was (half) written for Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell. And while it's certainly a step in the right direction having a female co-writer and director for the outing, dropping everyone into pedestrian fare like this threatens to drag a more progressive phase of studio-comedy back into the current one.
Ladies. Don't try to beat the guys at their own game.
The game already sucks.
Just be better.
Well it's more enjoyable than Spy and Zoolander 2, admittedly, although you could quite comfortably keep all three movies on the same shelf.
This is a £4 DVD in ASDA.
Actually even better, just stream it yeah?
It isn't.
Quite possibly, if you're one of the patrons in my screening who openly guffawed at a man getting some documentation out of a desk. Yeah, more than one person did this. So I mean, the stationery-retrieval aspect of the movie is clearly working for some audiences, and that's a notoriously fickle comedy-niche....
*1 Okay, I know that's not quite the exact setup of the The Intelligence Men, you don't have to go on about it. But I promise you, in comparison with The Spy Who Dumped Me it's close enough. [ 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.
Wow, is it Christmas already? No. No, it isn't. It's the start of November. That an actual Christmas film with actual Christmas actually in the actual title has been released so far away from the event itself suggests - on a very real level - that even Christmas wants nothing to do with this.
I know exactly how Christmas feels.
Now I may not have been the biggest fan of Bad Moms, but I at least saw some merit in the film and appreciated that the three lead performers were far too good to be involved. A little over a year and one shoddy, unasked-for festive sequel later, and I have to admit that maybe they're not. If anything, the largest bone of contention I had with the first one was the saccharine ending in which the cast talked in overly-earnest terms about their own mothers. Well, around 80 minutes of this film undercuts those 10 minutes effortlessly, as The Bad Moms*1 shriek at Their Bad Moms for almost the entire film, for little-to-no discernible reason until The Crying Bit*2. Any good work on the part of either the cast or crew of the previous entry is left out by the bins as our three heroines and their antagonistic parents stumble through the run-time, just verbalising everything which happens in lieu of actual jokes.
Int. Day.
First character falls over.
Second character: Oh my fucking god, you just fell over!
First character: I can't believe I just fell over! Fuck!
Third character holds up something which looks vaguely like a penis, then ad-libs line with the word "penis" in it.
Twice.
And on it strides, for the best part of two hours; a screenplay with nothing to say, determined to say it at the top of its voice. Repeatedly. A Bad Moms Christmas is a hateful, twee, self-congratulatory, feebly manipulative, sanctimonious excuse to cash-in an expired cheque, too lazy to even properly reach for the buttons it knows it should be pushing. It runs like someone's won a bet by piecing together a film from the improvised out-takes that didn't work on set. It's like a first-draft script written by an intern who's heard of festive shoehorn-sequels, but has never seen one, for the kind of audience who can't enjoy themselves unless someone yells in their face every five minutes telling them what a good time they're having.
A Bad Moms Christmas is like a copycat hen party organised by a guest from the first one who blacked out during the second round of drinks but has convinced themselves they had a great time, even they have no idea what they're trying to replicate, and now they keep blankly smiling and trying to flirt even though they're covered in someone else's sick. It is witless, charmless and utterly devoid of merit. Justifying the existence of A Bad Moms Christmas by saying "oh, but the guys get to star in this sort of thing!" is like taking care of your friend who's downed a bottle of vodka by necking a bottle of scotch yourself. It's messy, harmful and demeaning for everyone.
I didn't expect to like this film, but I didn't expect to hate it.
Int. Night.
Christine Baranski Character: Amy, the kids want a great Christmas, you can't just phone it in!
Mila Kunis Character: Mom, I'm not just phoning this in…
And with that, dear reader, any fragile veneer of self-awareness was torn asunder, irreparably rupturing the yuletide goodwill as the howling void burst forth and screamed through the auditorium, shredding what remained of my soul.
Just remember, the word "bad" is in the title. And like everything else here, that's no joke…
I have no idea what it sets out to do and I still say it doesn't.
No.
Well, have a guess…
There isn't.
Level 2: This film's got Susan Sarandon in it, and she performed voice-work in the 'Pickle Rick' episode of Rick and Morty, as did Peter 'Voice of Maul Serafinowicz.
I was prepared to give this a 2/7 on the basis that other people were laughing in the room, but then they sullied Mötley Crüe's name by including them on the soundtrack.
Is this what our lord and saviour Nikki Six died for? (for two minutes)
WELL, IS IT??
*1 Right, while I'm on though: the idea of the first film being called Bad Moms was that the three central characters were the mothers of children, yeah? Am I remembering that right? Their children were sort of part of the film since the moms in question knew each other from doing the school run and awful meetings with the PTA. At the school. The school where their children go. So why is it that in this film, we see The Mila Kunis Character's kids fairly often, we see The Kathryn Hahn Character's idiot son about twice, and we see The Kristen Bell Character's offspring not once? I know the focus this time is on the generation above The Moms, but did I miss a line of expository dialogue where Kristen Bell says that her child/children (I honestly don't remember, sorry) had been incinerated by a zeppelin crash or abducted by aliens, or something? I honestly don't even remember the situation being mentioned. And at one point, The Kristen Bell Character is in the school making some kind of gingerbread monstrosity, so they're still letting her in there. Answers on a postcard, please… [ BACK ]
*2 Okay seriously, the guy on his own across the aisle from me found this film not only amusing, but fucking hilarious. He guffawed at every snipe, every pratfall and every time one of the characters said "vagina". Every. Time. And y'know what? That's fine. He was getting more of his money's worth than I was. But then in The Crying Bit that takes place in a church at midnight-mass and a tearful Mila Kunis tells Christine Baranski exactly how much she means to her even though they're always fighting - he was still laughing. It appears that this film is successful with people who have recently had some kind of serious cranial trauma, because I can't think of any other reason you'd find that scene funny. Imagine what else is going on in this guy's life that A Bad Moms Christmas is a good time by comparison… [ 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.
Bad Moms Cert: 15 / 101 mins / Dir. Scott Moore & Jon Lucas / Trailer
I'd long suspected it, of course, but it appears that The Hollywood Corporation™ actually has a dedicated department (of rolling-staff) whose sole function is to pen distinctly substandard screenplays, then title them with the word "bad" followed by the description of the main character(s) in a self-effacing attempt to just ride that shit out. Neighbours, Grandpa, Teacher, Education. Each one with the adjective-part of the title serving as a direct warning.
Is it a warning I heed..? Of course not.
I'll be completely upfront, while that trailer didn't fill me with confidence, I really wanted to like Bad Moms as it's got a great central cast. Mila Kunis and Kristen Bell are on top form*1, and Kathryn Hahn deftly steals every scene she's in. Christina Applegate tries her damnedest to make the most of 'generic evil PTA mom', and pretty much everyone else is a cardboard cut-out with the words "Insert characterisation post-prod" written where the face should be.
As is par for the course these days, the aforementioned trailer outlines the film far more thoroughly than it should, but far from spoiling the best gags, the final cut actually features many less-funny variants and ad-libs*2 of the lines we've seen several times, undercutting its own attempts to bring the trailer-watching audience something fresh.
Perhaps the most insulting thing about this ode to dysfunctional motherhood is that it's actually written and directed by two guys. Not just any two guys, but the two guys who wrote The Hangover. Now, I like the Hangover movies, but they are very much what they are; blokey films for blokes by blokes. So there's a part of the equation in Bad Moms which doesn't really hang together. It appears that Messrs Moore and Lucas toyed with crafting a spiritual cousin of Bridesmaids, but ended up knocking out an oestrogen-flavoured Hall Pass instead.
Now obviously, this film wasn't aimed at me, and I by no means hated it. But it loses a point for the final twenty minutes, which are so excruciatingly patronising that they make Emma Roberts' anarchist-mollifying crescendo in Nerve look like James Dean spitting at a vicar's mum. Every misty-eyed, head-tilting, single-tear, standing-ovation-sparking, group-hugging, forced-nostalgia moment, (from Mila's rousing appearance at the PTA election night to the credits-accompanying footage of the cast sitting on sofas with their real-life mums and talking about how simply wonderful everything is) has been calculatingly laid out to convince the audience they've watched something emotionally worthy, rather than just over an hour and a half of dick-jokes and chronically lazy stereotyping.
Credit where it's due though, the rest of tonight's advance-screening audience found the film audibly and regularly amusing. They're either nowhere near as jaded as I am, or the glue-fumes blowing through the air-conditioning units just didn't reach as far as seat F11.
The Bad Moms DVD will, of course, be a staple fixture on the 'Mother's Day Gift Ideas' supermarket display-stands from next year until around the time the Earth goes hurtling into the Sun. And after the last twenty minutes of this movie, I probably wouldn't mind if that was sooner rather than later…
Bad [x] films.
And bad films.
Only if you're desperate to see it as soon as possible and can't wait until it's on the £3 DVD rack.
No.
No.
Amazingly, no.
No.
Level 2: This film's got Jada Pinkett Smith in it, who also starred in 2008's The Women alongside Carrie 'Leia' Fisher.
*1 Although the placement of Kunis and Bell in particular is the second time in as many days that I've been reminded I'd rather be watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
*2 Several featuring my second-favourite kind of ad-libbing, where one character delivered a combination feed/punch-line, then someone else on-screen basically describes what just happened and why it's funny. To wit, one character falls over while another stands and winces, saying "oh, that hurt!", their role existing purely to deliver the explanation. Alternatively, one character repeats what another character says for comic effect. The second character berates the first character for repeating them, also for comic effect. Then twenty minutes later, the whole thing is re-enacted again in a different scene. #Comedy
*3 And let's look on the bright-side here. With Jupiter Ascending now fully out in the wild, it's not like any new movie can be Mila Kunis' worst one, right..? (and if you're reading this Mila, that's not a challenge)
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.
Oh, it's all very well saying that Jupiter Ascending is "from the creators of The Matrix trilogy". So, if you remember, was two thirds of The Matrix trilogy*1.
So February knocks on the door of 2015's party bearing the gift of a galaxy-spanning sci-fi film written and directed by the Wachowskis, and it's a pretty piss-poor fairytale where The Princess is also The Adventurer, and still needs rescuing every twenty minutes. Mila Kunis looks bored, Channin Tatum looks confused, Eddie Redmayne looks embarrassed and Sean Bean looks thoroughly unrepentant at turning up and playing himself. Again.
It's not that the film is forgivable 'dumb-and-fun', but more that it's two hours of incoherent and unwanted exposition joined together by things exploding. Jupiter Ascending is trying so hard to establish an ongoing, pan-galactic mythos that it's forgotten it needs to be a good movie first.
The ethos of style-over-substance is undoubtable (unsurprising, even), but that style is patchworked together more from the very worst sci-fi/fantasy movies you've seen, and less from the best. It's like some horrible, horrible Comic Relief crossover between The Matrix, John Carter and Cinderella. The Wachowskis also have the fucking audacity to riff on Terminator and Back To The Future, too.
No matter how impressive the visuals get (they're very Shiny™ and far too busy, but well implemented), you can't shake the feeling that you're being told a story by someone who only watched their first sci-fi film the day before, and felt obliged to have a crack at it themselves. Because you know you're in trouble when Channing Tatum's been awarded the mantle of delivering bursts of exposition every half an hour (ably assisted by Sean Bean of course, who's always on hand to make a bad thing worse. "What? Oh, don't worry about the accent Sean. Hmm? No, we're not going to ADR it, but the rest of the film makes so little sense that your Yorkshire-Space-Warrior won't even be on the audience's list. They'll be far too busy raising their eyebrows at people with bits of tin-foil stuck on their faces, that we're saying are The Aliens, trust me.")
Even the out-of-the-blue script reference to 27b/6 lands with the grace and subtelty of a Wilhelm Scream in an empty room (there is no Wilhelm Scream, btw).
I suspect that the film's coda, mirroring its opening act, is indicative of the central theme about acceptance of the cyclical futility of endeavour. Although I also think this because Jupiter Ascending brings us the very worst performance from Eddie Redmayne (channeling his best Lord Voldemort) a mere month after his best, like a sort of Alpha and Omega of cinematic acting.
A sci-fi actioner so indelibly stupid that it makes Highlander 2 look like Looper, re-inventing The Matrix never seemed so desperate...
The worst part? A group of marauding alien assassins in single-pilot attack vehicles chased a man in hover-boots through the sky, blowing up a Chicago skyscraper in the process, and I was bored. Bored.
Is it bollocks.
Rent it if you must, but you'll begrudge spending the money.
Not for the actors, not for the directors, not for the composer. I'm sure there was a tea-boy on the crew who probably peaked here, though.
Not even close.
I will. I BLOODY WILL.
Not that I heard (although with the in-auditorium volume set to BASTARD-LOUD, I could well have missed one).
Jupiter Ascending has an appearance from Terry Gilliam, who of course wrote and directed Time Bandits featuring everyone's favourite Astromech droid, Kenny Baker.
The film's visuals and Michael Giacchino's score save it from bottom marks, but only by a CGI'd hair's breadth.
*1 That was a cheap joke, for which I apologise. I am one of around twelve people in the world who actually enjoys all three Matrix films. Still thought it was a joke worth saying, though ;)
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.
Spectacularly dull. Not in a 'Oh, that was terrible', sort of a way, but more in a 'You mean Disney, the dream factory, have got the rights to make a prequel to one of the most-loved films of all time, one of the films that you acknowledge as a classic even if it doesn't tick your boxes, and in an age where nothing is unfilmable this is the finished product?' sort of a way.
That probably sounds more dramatic than it's intended*1, but there's a real is this it? vibe throughout the movie. I love the black-and-white opening act, and on a visual level most of the rest is very good. Obviously you'd expect a Disney film in 2013 to look 'very good', but there seem to be a couple of clanging BLUESCREEN! moments, particularly during the final battles. In fact, I'm assuming it's a deliberate choice on the part of the film-makers, but it never feels like you leave the soundstage. Even the larger sets are claustrophobically limited, and the lighting just seems like… well, lighting.
I'll say now that I liked Michelle Williams' performance very much, and Joey King's China Girl injects more personality and emotion than the rest of the film combined. But James Franco has been horribly miscast as Oz, and I didn't buy his portrayal of a scoundrel at the start, a hero at the end, or the transformation in between. On par with this is Mila Kunis, who's initially doing a fine job as Theodora, but as soon as the green gets slapped on seems to lose the plot entirely, largely down to the fact that she really doesn't have the right face-shape for the prosthetics they've applied to her (seriously, she can't speak properly in the first couple of scenes with her 'new nose').
But it's not all bad, it's just not great. Now if I'm not convinced (and trust me, I carry no baggage when it comes to The Wizard of Oz), I can't work out what the actual fans will make of it. It comes off as insincere, more like a passing homage thematically than an actual prequel. In fact, I spent more time noticing camera-shots from Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films and comparing the fight scenes to Star Wars and Harry Potter than I did trying to link Oz to its classic predecessor.
Oh, and did anyone else get the first look at the Emerald City and instantly think of Green Goblin's armour from Spiderman (another Raimi/Franco collaboration)?
Far from great and less than powerful. There's less feeling than the camp, schmaltzy forebear it claims to love.
Oz could be worse, but it could be so much better.
Yeah.
Not really.
Not really.
DVD.
No.
Probably not.
No*2.
*1 More dramatic than the film, that's for certain.
*2 Come on, plenty of opportunities, no excuse. Tch.
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.
