These sleazy riders receive a citation and a C- for being decidedly middle of the road. Dax Shepard wrote, directed and stars as Jon opposite Michael Peña’s Ponch in the buddy comedy film based on the vintage TV show CHiPS, and the West coast chill vibe is so pervasive that the movie nearly forgets to identify a protagonist or conflict. By the time it introduces eyebrow-raising vulgarities and daredevil motorcycle stunts, the flourishes seem largely superfluous. Peña is the comic find here, playing against his usual stoic dramatic type to quite enjoyable effect. Shepard exerts occasional wit and flair behind the camera and proves a deft physical comedian. Together the central duo has good chemistry but not much to do. 21 Jump Street did this same shtick better.
Director Chris McKay shows audiences exactly where a famous caped crusader gets those wonderful toys in the whimsical mini-fig laden animated feature The LEGO Batman Movie (B). A spinoff of 2014’s similarly hilarious 
John Hamburg’s Why Him? (B-) is an amusing entry into a fairly tired “family versus fiancé” formula, thanks to strong casting in plum parts for the Christmas-set comedic ensemble. James Franco plays the Silicon Valley mogul at the film’s heart, relishing the role with his trademark wide-eyed wit and devil-may-care vulgarity. Enter the nuclear family as fish-out-of-water in his world: Bryan Cranston and Megan Mullally as the parents, Griffin Gluck as the impressionable little brother and Zoey Deutch as the daughter smitten with Franco’s man-child but still loyal to her pop. Keegan-Michael Key also has a funny role as Franco’s assistant/sherpa, trying to keep the rejuvenile in line. There are a variety of inventive gags, several somewhat believable set-ups and laughs aplenty as the holiday gathering culminates into full-scale calamity. Cranston and Mullally are fun in the straight man roles; and although the story gets a bit belabored, it’s generally the definition of “a fun rental.”
Oh, coming-of-age ensemble dramedies: let me count the ways I love them! Mike Mills’ semi-autobiographical 20th Century Women (A) is a blissful slice of life as characters on the cusp of change in freewheeling 1979 Santa Barbara craft an unconventional family. Central to the film is the relationship between never-been-better Annette Bening as an eccentric divorced chain-smoking single mother and her only son, played with perception by Lucas Jade Zumann. Buoyed by before-their-time left coast sensibilities, Bening’s character enlists three kindred iconoclasts as spiritual guardians of her son’s angsty adolescence. Elle Fanning is brittle brilliance, Greta Gerwig a luminous and tender spirit and a weathered Billy Crudup an unlikely boon companion. Mills intersperses flashbacks, flash-forwards, historical archives and literary snippets, coloring the story in lovely context. There are sequences of majestic intimacy between characters as they tumble, stumble, dance and glance through life’s foibles. The film is a tribute to the mother-son bond, anchored by resplendent female performances and a lens into the many portraits of womanhood. Bening centers the film with a marvelous mix of misanthropy and repartee; she is perfection in the role. Roger Neill’s spry music, plus songs showcasing the rise of an emerging West coast punk scene, accent this love letter to shifting mores and the enduring power of familial love.
Comedians gathered in their cubicle lair, but hijinks and laughter were so rarely there in Will Speck and Josh Gordon’s amateurish lark Office Christmas Party (C-). Granted it’s hard to maintain an anarchic spirit for a full feature film even with talented actors (last year’s listless Sisters was similarly tedious), but this Party rarely gets the proper spike in its egg noggin. T.J. Miller and Jennifer Aniston play sibling opposites battling over the family business; Jason Bateman and Olivia Munn are technologists repairing botched client relationships and a misbegotten corporate social; and Courtney P. Vance is the strait-laced prospect sniffing out signs of lively office culture as the holiday shindig gets out of hand. Each member of this ensemble is phoning it in like a conference call. The reliable Kate McKinnon has some amusing moments as the HR lady, and Jillian Bell steals the show as a trigger-happy pimp who prompts some of the party fouls. Mostly it’s a wall to wall gag fest, with fewer of the pratfalls delivering the goods. Even the pranks involving sex, flatulence and drug-induced delirium – usually surefire bets in this kind of comedy – fail to land. As moviemakers, Speck and Gordon are babes in toyland squandering shiny objects all around them. Their potential watercooler wonderland becomes a bit more like entering your time-sheets.
There are three reasons to see Kelly Fremon Craig’s The Edge of Seventeen (C+): the continually wondrous Hailee Steinfeld doing her darnedest with the film’s frustrating and frumpy front-woman role, Woody Harrelson in an understated supporting part as her high school teacher and part-time consigliere to her darkest impulses and newcomer Hayden Szeto as her awkward admirer. Much of the film’s content feels like a ho-hum homage to Sixteen Candles minus most of the comedy; in the pantheon of cinema, however, Edge does correct a blemish of Sixteen by casting Asian-American actor Szeto as an attractive and full-developed love interest. Steinfeld’s character’s central conflict involves her brother (Blake Jenner, playing his usual milquetoast Golden boy) starting to date her one best friend (an amenable Haley Lu Richardson). Most of the movie feels like a series of unfortunate first-world problems for a central character who purports to be an old soul. Her disdain for fellow millennials just seems like an excuse for the screenwriter to write wittier zingers for her character than her classmates. Compared to John Hughes classics or even turn-of-the-millennium high school comedies such as Clueless, Ghost World or Mean Girls, this entry just doesn’t deliver many revelations or comedy gems. Steinfeld gives it all’s she’s got, but she’s filling awkward shoes.
Usually the mere thought of a new entry into the mockumentary series pioneered by writer/director Christopher Guest brings a sly smile to the face. Alas the funny auteur’s Mascots (D+), a direct-to-Netflix take on furries who get fans in a frenzy, doesn’t get animated nearly enough. Perhaps after exploring theatre, dog shows, movie awards and folk music, the format is getting stale. The overall ensemble lacks energy, and the story has a paucity of punch. The lack of central protagonists or and major plot momentum lead to a ho-hum competition devoid of drama. Jane Lynch and Ed Begley Jr. get some of the best moments; but like all the others, their character arches aren’t sustained. Favorites Parker Posey and Jennifer Coolidge are wasted. Guest even uncorks his own cherished on-screen character from 
Jesse Plemons and Molly Shannon might not be anyone’s first casting choices as a gay comedy writer and his dying mom, respectively; but boy are they a moving and marvelous duo in Chris Kelly’s alternately hilarious and heartbreaking melodrama Other People (B+). Plemons, masterfully playing a sad sack hybrid of Matt Damon and Philip Seymour Hoffman, anchors the film as a young man having a very bad year, unlucky in love and work and summoned home from NYC to Sacramento to care for his ailing mom. Molly Shannon is a force of nature as an idiosyncratic and intuitive mother fighting an aggressive bout with cancer. The film’s structure is basically a year in the life, but it colors outside the lines in splendid and droll ways. Like Terms of Endearment and other classic tearjerkers, the ache is earned. Folks will appreciate Bradley Whitford as the stoic father and June Squibb and Paul Dooley as eccentric grandparents. A smart script and surprising characters make this an offbeat indie worth watching.
It’s an inspired idea indeed to have celebrated actress Meryl Streep perform in a most meta Emperor’s New Clothes style homage as an infamous no-talent. But as the titular character, a songstress oblivious of her pronounced vocal limitations, in Stephen Frears’s 1944-set biopic Florence Foster Jenkins (B), Streep’s seriocomic riffs are often on the mark even while the notes are all over the map. It is clear Frears finds his mercurial Manhattanite subject endlessly fascinating; and like Ed Wood, Bullets Over Broadway, Grey Gardens or The Producers, he finds fits of dry wit amidst the Schadenfreude. Hugh Grant as Florence’s conflicted husband is serviceable and occasionally sentimental, despite the actor’s limited range. Simon Helberg is a bit of a misfire as the songbird’s pianist, registering on the nebbish scale somewhere between Alan Cumming and Jason Schwartzman but with little of the charm. Nina Arianda is funny as a gangster moll type but is given strange motivations during a critical sequence. At the film’s heart is Streep herself, demonstrating with droll doses of heart and high-note heinousness that throwing yourself into an artistic passion with gusto, even when all the pieces aren’t altogether effective, can still be somewhat satisfying.
At this point watching Woody Allen’s late-career films is a mild act of punishment, and the auteur’s latest Café Society (D+) is a pretty package of nothing. It’s got all the elements of a Woody Allen but no pulse. Set in the Golden Age of Hollywood and Manhattan, the film wins points for art direction and costumes; but alas it’s all dressed up for going nowhere slowly. Jesse Eisenberg is a remarkably dull leading man who falls in love with two women named Veronica – one in L.A. at the start of his career and one in his native New York where he returns to run a nightclub. The two ladies are played by the better-than-expected Kristen Stewart and the pleasant but bland Blake Lively. Allen fails to build any sustained momentum for some mild subplots about love and infidelity and has very little new to say about his go-to subjects. Moreover, there’s precious little to care about about the protagonist’s would-be career either. Steve Carell barely registers as a glib movie mogul, although perhaps he’s as bored as the man behind the camera seems to be. The only surprise in the whole movie is that, despite the delight that it’s actually over, Allen also delivers an unsatisfying ending. When you’re left pining for that Woody Allen film starring Jason Biggs, you know you’ve hit pretty close to rock bottom.
Despite being loosely based on a tale told better more than three decades ago, Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters: Answer the Call (B-) doesn’t necessarily lack for ideas. In fact, this all-female makeover of the let’s-capture-ghosts-run-amok-in-Manhattan story is a whirling dervish of special effects and fun gadgetry evoking a mash-up of a haunted Disney dark ride, Q’s invention laboratory and a whack-a-mole carnival gone mad with technicolor Pokemon-style gymnastics. As summer escapist fare, it’s a loud and overstuffed adventure with primary charms provided by Kate McKinnon who, armed with an occasional quip or queef for comic relief, is a welcome Willy Wonka type character entry into the franchise’s pantheon. It’s a bit like she’s working in another dimension from the other collaborators. The film’s biggest disappointments include squandering the talents of Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy with rather bland roles, relying too heavily on throwback cameos that distract from forward momentum and unspooling lame and labored origin story elements. Once the action gets underway, however, the frantic pace glosses over many of the sins of the so-so screenplay. Leslie Jones and Chris Hemsworth are solid in supporting roles, and New York itself – in both a modern and retro dual universe – provides a pleasurable playground of practical effects for spectral warfare. The film rarely crosses the expected streams into the suck, and it’s still a rush to watch a ghost get boxed. This movie is strictly for your inner 13 year old, and the mostly fulfilled “girl power” promised by this reimagining gives enough reason to not give up the ghost.
A genre hopping film about being lost in the wilderness and summoning the courage that only a best friend can help you achieve, Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan’s Sundance discovery Swiss Army Man (A-) is the year’s cinematic curiosity as well as a mild revelation. Paul Dano turns in a superb performance as a young man seemingly stranded on an island until he is joined by a one-of-a-kind companion played by Daniel Radcliffe, who brings with him an unexpected sense of magic and utility. A dramedy filled from beginning to end with flights of fantasy and a dreamlike approach to storytelling, the film’s furtive lessons will reward adventurous moviegoers. Prepare to be startled and astonished in equal doses in this rather wondrous parable. The lively and affecting a capella score by Manchester Orchestra is nearly a character as well. Too much description of what goes on would be reductive; but suffice it to say you’ve seen nothing like it, and its filmmaking craft is nothing short of life affirming.