Tag Archives: Comedy

2025

“Happy Gilmore 2” an Abject Calamity

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Kyle Newacheck’s legacy sequel Happy Gilmore 2 (D-) has such a “grip it and rip it” feel, it almost doesn’t even qualify as a movie at all. Undoubtedly a documentary about making this film would have yielded more laughs than those captured and presented on the streaming screen. Slapshot direction meets a scattershot script as the title character played by Adam Sandler returns nearly three decades later to battle alcoholism, incidental deaths on and off screen and a new extreme league of his adopted sport of golf. There’s nary a real threat, a funny gag or a compelling subplot to add to the first film in any substantive way. It just feels like the makers are casually marking time because they know there’s an appetite for more fun on the fairways with a character they’ve grown to love. Fan service flashbacks and throwbacks fill much of the bloated run time, with strained sequences on parade so Netflix can clock viewer eyeballs for a smidge longer. Adam Sandler exudes little of the rowdiness or rage present in the title character before, and his story arch about getting his life turned around and funding his daughter’s dance dreams prove quite incidental. A flurry of real golf stars largely ill-equipped to add to the comic or dramatic timing round out a cast of many actors from the original. It’s an indictment when Bad Bunny appears to be acting the hardest as Gilmore’s new caddy. This outing is a mulligan from nearly any perspective. 

2025, Rent It Tonight

Celine Song’s Smart “Materialists” a Heavenly Match for Hollywood Trio in NYC

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Writer/director Celine Song conjures career-best performances out of a trio of popular actors and serves up a sophomore triumph of a “rom dram” in the marvelous Materialists (A). The auteur with an eye and ear for the art of companionship delivers fresh takes on the nature of love and gives audiences many reasons to care while consistently questioning the conventions of coupling. It’s all more complicated than its seemingly routine log-line implies, as it’s ultimately an incredibly profound meditation on life and love. A young New York City matchmaker played by Dakota Johnson finds her business and personal life getting complicated as she finds herself torn between the perfect match, Pedro Pascal as a wealthy private equity exec, and her imperfect ex, Chris Evans as a struggling actor). The story takes its time to hit effective beats and positions its characters with precision to cast its spell. Johnson is wonderfully empathetic in the lead role, funny and vulnerable and so evocative of her famous mom Melanie Griffith in Working Girl. Lushly photographed by Shabier Kirchner who also lensed Song’s Past Lives, the heroine’s unexpectedly lonely travails in Manhattan are brilliantly  juxtaposed against the bevy of brides and brides-to-be celebrating blissfully in various backgrounds. Her character is obsessed with brokering relationships leveraging the math of modern dating, and the film questions many of the equations with pluck and logic. Song superbly stages dialogue-heavy sequences with spark and has a delicate way of depicting characters making connections as if they are the only two people in the whole world, which is quite a wonder in the concrete jungle. Pascal and Evans are both incredibly charming, despite the suspension of belief needed by viewers to imagine Evans without confidence. They both provide lots to love. Prepare for a few trick endings and some surprisingly moving subplots. This is a great summer date film for adults. After becoming the prominent purveyor of the modern love triangle, it will be fascinating what she does next.

2025

Comedy “Friendship” Depicts Bonkers, Botched Buddy System

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Lead actor Tim Robinson is honorary jester of the cringe festival that is writer/director Andrew DeYoung’s dark comedy Friendship (B-), often more interesting for its twisty takes on a funny theme than any passing resemblance to reality. Robinson plays a suburban husband and dad who falls hard for a charismatic new neighbor played by Paul Rudd. A series of increasingly unfortunate – and often quite funny – events threatens to send the burgeoning bromance asunder. The premise is a hoot, that modern men have lost the ability to properly forge functional friendships, but the details in the detours offer a decidedly mixed bag. Rudd is quite enjoyable in his role and Kate Mara is solid in a thankless part as wife of Robinson’s absurd protagonist but much of Tim’s schtick feels overly engineered for awkwardness. There’s comedy gold in many of the embarrassing episodes; a recurring joke about Marvel movie spoilers, physical pratfalls involving spontaneous singing and a curious incident opposite a psychedelic toad stand out in the askew stew. Ultimately the threadbare lead character doesn’t give the ensemble much to work with in terms of truly plumbing the insights of the film’s premise. It’s amusing but could have been more.

2025

Jason Mamoa Salvages Comic Gold from Mayhem of “A Minecraft Movie”

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Director Jared Hess, cult auteur of films such as Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre, helms a high-concept studio movie based on what’s considered an “open sandbox game,” meaning he could choose his own adventure and use IP freely in the box trot of world building. Hess generally fares better in sequences set in his already off-kilter human world, even though most of the plot stays firmly planted in the cubic region. His approach is as tentative as the title: Sure, he’s ostensibly made A Minecraft Movie (C) populated with denizens, domiciles, atmospheres and accessories which a nostalgic generation will find familiar, but equal parts whimsy and writer’s block make quicksand of the situation. Of the misfit protagonists who journey Jumanji-style into the unknown, only Jason Mamoa gets an interesting character: As a paunchy, washed-up gamer-bro from the days of standing arcade championships, he is channeling a go-for-broke humor that lifts most of his sequences to a higher plane. Alas the child actors don’t stand out with inert characters amidst low-stakes peril. Jack Black brings only the screech of high decibels, and a game Danielle Brooks does what she can with a cheery throwaway role. Always funny Jennifer Coolidge makes the most of her divorced schoolmaster character on a date with a “Villager,” and her scenes feel like they’re as much from a different universe as he is. The movie has fun with creative crafting and contraptions, and there are a few funny and exciting sequences leveraging science and gadgetry, especially a flight of fancy with Black riding Mamoa’s back Pegasus-style through a sky battle. The subtext to make stuff not war and to wield one’s imagination to solve challenges has occasional appeal, but the jaundiced journey and strained visual pallet reeks of warmed-over Super Mario Bros., which looks like a high watermark in comparison. Black’s half-baked songs show further desperation in a meandering story that at least answers the question about whether pigs will fly (they do). Despite its box office potential, this is a bricklayer of the bracket season when it comes to much appeal for the adults who accompany the little ones who will undoubtedly will want to see it.

Note: “The Creeper” echoes this review on TikTok at FilmThirst.

2025, Rent It Tonight

“A Nice Indian Boy” Works Wonders

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It’s official: The romcom of the year is a gay Hindu love story hot off the film festival circuit. Roshan Sethi’s A Nice Indian Boy (A-) is an utter delight, with Karan Soni as a repressed doctor falling in love with a sentimental photographer played by Jonathan Groff. This sweet romance told in five sharp chapters disarms aspects of the central culture clash by making Groff’s character the adopted son of Indian parents, aligned in faith with an otherwise star-crossed lover. Soni’s droll, deadpan running meta commentary into his own courtship provides such an intensely cynical world view that he seemingly can only be conquered by Groff’s sunny demeanor. Two supporting women also steal the show including Sunita Mani as the protagonist’s lone sister and Zarna Garg as their mom. Garg in particular is hysterical in her attempts to understand her son’s orientation; she is wonderfully affecting in the role. The movie is full of lush colors with enjoyable music and Bollywood styled rituals. Its comedy is tinged with heartfelt and bittersweet lessons about how one can discover the love of a lifetime when least prepared. Even viewers with clinched hearts will find new capacity to love this movie and its lively characters.

Note: Thanks to Atlanta’s Out on Film and Tara Theatre for the early screening for an enthusiastic crowd!

2025

Hearty Foal Becomes Party Foul for Quirky “Death of a Unicorn” Denizens

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Protruding from its mythical head is a dubious “L.” A24’s anticipated creature feature debuted at South by Southwest; and in one sour swoop this mediocre movie diminished both the lure of an infallible indie studio’s track record and the lore of its buzzy film festival launchpad. A vehicular collision with a mighty beast possessing a horn of plentiful power presents complications for an ensemble of morally dubious characters in Alex Scharfman’s comic cautionary tale Death of a Unicorn (C). It’s a film that rarely lives up to the convictions or creativity of its outrageous high concept, despite some initially funny flourishes. As father and daughter at the movie’s core, both Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega fail to showcase why they are usually regarded as such agreeable stars. Their uninspired characters could no sooner train a dragon or drain a unicorn of its majesty than deliver a compelling line of dialogue. Thankfully two supporting characters living a life of leisure, mother and son played by Téa Leoni and Will Poulter, understand the assignment and provide the story’s main laughs with outrageous affronts to dignity and decency. Scharfman rarely sharpens the teeth or social commentary of his “eat the rich” and “don’t mess with Mother Nature” parable platforms, simply rehashing Jurassic Park style chases but with underwhelming visual effects. He ultimately abandons the wit of the successful first act for a series of stunts and silly sequences representing diminishing returns. A few fun kills provide brief thrills, but the movie lacks imagination and surprises. The film’s novelty is initially nifty but then is revealed for what it is: all horned up with no place to go. 

Note: Our partner TikTok channel FilmThirst features a brief review of this film as well.

2025, Rent It Tonight

“Novocaine” Painlessly Pulls Off Action with Charm and Surface Fun

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Doused with deliberate doses of both sweet and sadistic sequences, co-directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen’s action comedy Novocaine (B) offers constant injections of surface fun in a high-concept package. Durable actor Jack Quaid plays a bank executive with a rare condition: he is incapable of feeling physical pain. He’s also smitten with his co-worker and emerging girlfriend played beautifully by Amber Midthunder, but the burgeoning courtship is hastily interrupted by the actions of a criminal ring led by the very charismatic Ray Nicholson. Spidey saga sidekick Jacob Batalon is also effective as the film’s amusing wingman. Quaid fully commits to the peculiar physicality of the role, and the story keeps upping the ante in terms of its Everyman ensconced in epic urban action. Mostly the story is outrageous, but the joke of being immune to a constant cavalcade of tortures keeps delivering. Early sequences between Quaid and Midthunder portend a more romantic, possibly better film; but pain is so close to pleasure as silly adventure ensues. It’s a giddy, guilty pleasure experience.

Note: Our partner TikTok channel FilmThirst features a brief review of this film as well.

2024

Aside from Sly Keaton and Spry Ortega, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” is a Double Negative

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Director Tim Burton raises an undead franchise with a story so sputtering it seems more like a merciless cash grab than a creative revisit to the ghastly scene of the crime. Despite the nostalgia factor reserved for the 1988 original film, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (C-) offers too little too late as characters return to their countryside home for more adventures in and out of the afterlife. The big surprise is Michael Keaton, three decades after originating an iconic mischievous performance as the titular demon, doesn’t miss a beat in picking up where he left off in his high jinks; he’s largely an underused comic delight and gets to partake in a gaggle of fun gags including one in a foreign language. Winona Ryder (her character now a reality show ghost hunter) and Catherine O’Hara (still a dotty artist and stepmom who is rarely home alone) reprise their roles too with flickers of gusto but are overshadowed by Jenna Ortega as a new protagonist with some far fresher takes. The first hour of the film suffers from exposition overload, with obtuse explanations – some pithy and some prolonged – as to why certain characters aren’t present in this episode. The second hour is largely unexpurgated madness and mayhem, with frivolous plot points featuring Willem Dafoe and Monica Bellucci going absolutely nowhere fast. Thankfully sight gags and sing-a-longs are stitched together in the final act for old times’ sake, equal parts fringe and cringe. The humor and gore are sometimes a bit darker than the first, but the movie’s devil-may-care spirit consistently conveys it’s not working all that hard to impress. There’s a twist or two and a bit of novelty at the very end that stand out, but mostly the movie feels like returning to one’s old haunts where nothing is functioning as effectively as it did before. Even Danny Elfman’s music only comes alive when riffing on past themes. After all these years, Burton still loses track of story in service of shiny objects, even if some are clever indeed. This sequel may appear in some ways like a dead ringer full of zingers akin to the first film; but it mainly plays like a sketch stretched out to feature movie length.

2024

Critical Dud “Despicable Me 4” Still a Box Office Blockbuster

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Discerning adult viewers may find themselves waiting all too often for a once-in-a-Minion moment of inspiration in this summer’s barely passable kid-friendly animated sequel. Chris Renaud and Patrick Delage’s Despicable Me 4 (D+) finds reformed supervillain Gru (voice of Steve Carrell) on the run with his family from revenge-seeking criminal mastermind Maxime Le Mal (voiced by Will Ferrell). The film is basically a patchwork of vignettes involving shape-shifting cockroaches, a surly baby, witness protection hijinks and a fleet of silly yellow henchmen gone wild in new and exotic shapes. Without a through-line of compelling story or a major comic touchstone, the film basically limps along to minimum babysitting length. The animation is fine but not particularly distinctive. It’s noisy and largely unfunny and will make buckets of money. 

2024, Rent It Tonight

June Squibb Shines as Spunky Senior in Sundance Comedy “Thelma”

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This is a last great gasp of mainstream Sundance Film Festival cinema in which a feisty independent-living grandma treks across L.A. to get even with a telephone fraudster who almost got the best of her. Josh Margolin’s Thelma (B) features a mighty performance by the wonderful June Squibb and another by the late, great Richard Roundtree as a friend from a neighboring nursing home with one last great adventure left in him as well. Fred Hechinger is a hoot as her technology enabling grandson, but Parker Posey and Clark Gregg don’t have much to do as his parents. The film is at its clever best as it follows a sleuthing spy type storyline, with hearing aid volume controls and GPS identity bracelets subbing in for the kinds of gadgets Q used to whip up in the lab. As Thelma, Squibb is a fully rounded character with spunk, sass and a sharp mind. The film fully humanizes her character, even though the script and story could have been much stronger. Still, it’s a fun lark and a great chance to watch Squibb and Roundtree whoop it up.

2024

Popcorn Action of “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” Could Kick-Start Summer Box Office

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Sometimes it’s nice to witness a summer movie that’s simply an easy, breezy escape. Bad Boys: Ride or Die (B-), helmed by the director duo collectively known as Adil & Bilall, is as routine as a buddy action movie comedy can possibly be, and yet it moves briskly among some fun set pieces and showcases its protagonists and ensemble well with adventure and humor. It’s a bit of a return to form for Will Smith (fittingly slapped repeatedly at one point as a karmic full-circle moment after his real-life awards show behavior) whose appealing cop character is paired again with Martin Lawrence, who has been “too old for this sh*t” for four films and shows no signs of taking mandatory retirement. Martin’s character’s experience with a brief brush with death grants him a strange new near-immortal state of being, which is the recurring almost-joke throughout this installment. The two cheeky Miami detectives find themselves on the run after some cartel bosses posthumously frame their late police captain friend, forcing them outside of the law to clear his name. There’s bromance and trash talk aplenty as the characters embark on comedy romps between races and chases. The movie does no favors to female characters including Tiffany Haddish in a small role but provides a solid showcase for a slew of additional bad boys including Jacob Scipio as Smith’s character’s ex-con son joining forces with the central pair, Alexander Ludwig as a funny data guru and Eric Dane as a stone-cold villain. There are funny bits with junk food, wedding roasts, a singleminded Marine and a hungry gator at an abandoned amusement park. This sequel doesn’t exactly qualify as a guilty pleasure; but for a fun night out and in a summer thirsting for a born-again franchise, this movie definitely does the trick.

2024, Rent It Tonight

Richard Linklater and Glen Powell Play with Identities in Entertaining “Hit Man”

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Note: This film is superb on the big screen, where it plays a limited run in big cities before its June 7 Netflix premiere.

Director Richard Linklater is renowned for shaping revelatory performances reflecting on and rhapsodizing about the questions we ask and the stories we tell ourselves to reveal identity as a coping mechanism in a world marked by mighty constructs of time and perspective. He has long observed suburbanite denizens growing, adapting and changing as catalytic forces in the vast universe, and his terrific true crime romantic comedy hybrid Hit Man (A-) displays his contemplative daydreams in one of their most spry, shrewdly entertaining vessels yet. Charismatic star Glen Powell, who also co-wrote the script with Linklater, is pivotal to unlocking the Big Think with Everyman gusto as he portrays a mild-mannered professor and tech guy turned undercover police contractor posing as a hit man. It’s a little on the nose that our hero teaches philosophy; but like Indiana Jones, his side hustle building on arcane fascinations is really what makes the man. One of the film’s great features is the protagonist’s pleasure in trying on different personas; with costumes, wigs, prosthetics, novelty teeth and Powell’s acting alchemy, each of his hired guns embroiled in sting operations plays out like an apt allegory for finding himself. The film is funny and confounds expectations from the get-go, but it really gains its juice when the hit man for hire encounters a potential client in the form of gorgeous relative newcomer Adria Arjana, whose character wants her abusive husband dead. Sexy sparks fly, and it’s a free-for-all about what roles these magnetic stars will play as they maneuver a series of escalating trials of their own personal peculiarities in action. The screenplay crackles with insights and wry dialogue but soars on the hypnotic talents of Powell, who has never been better, and Arjana, who manages to steal scenes in her own right within a talented cast that also includes plum roles for Austin Amelio as a sleazy rival and spunky comedienne Retta as a witty teammate. Linklater could have more adeptly leveraged the film’s New Orleans locale, killed the darlings of a few redundant escapades and curtailed a few of the meta metaphors, but his fabulous film is largely the kind of fun adult Hollywood blockbuster they just don’t make anymore. At one point, the auteur includes a montage of glorious assassin sequences from cinematic history, and by golly this film creatively zigzags its way into that hallowed continuum with buoyant, unpredictable and seemingly effortless charm. As the film’s title character creates his own myth through moonlighting, galvanizing his alter ego in various forms toward the self of his destiny, it is tremendous fun to join him on this journey.