Tag Archives: Melissa McCarthy

Worst Movies of 2021

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Welcome back! As promised, here is my list of the Top 10 Worst Movies of 2021.

As I did with my Best Movies List, I’m placing an asterisk next to this one, as once again, the pandemic has prevented trips to the movie theaters from being a safe activity, and so with this in mind, I know we haven’t all seen the same movies since we are not all heading out to the movie theaters to see the same national releases. I know there are plenty of movies I missed this year.

Okay, let’s get on with it. Without further hesitation, here is my list of the Top 10 Worst Movies of 2021:

10. CRY MACHO – probably the dullest movie I watched all year. Clint Eastwood directs and stars in this tale of a former rodeo star (Eastwood) who goes to Mexico to bring back his boss’s teenage son to the States, and along the way, the two form a bond in this underwhelming buddy movie. While I am in awe of Clint Eastwood, who at 91 years old, is still making quality movies, the story here in CRY MACHO doesn’t do him any favors. The storytelling is muddled, and Eastwood seems to be playing a character who is much younger than 91, although the script never makes this clear. Not much to like about this one, even for Eastwood fans.

9. FEAR STREET: PART TWO – 1978 – Yeah, I know. For a lot of folks, this second installment in the Netflix FEAR STREET horror movie trilogy was the best of the lot, but for me, it was the worst. Each part served as an homage to a particular horror movie genre, and here in FEAR STREET: PART TWO – 1978 that genre is the FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH movies. I’m going to ruffle more feathers here as well when I say honestly that I’ve never liked the FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH movies and have found them all to be particularly bad. FEAR STREET: PART TWO does a nice job capturing the feel of these movies, but at the end of the day, it’s yet another variation of teenagers at a summer camp being slaughtered in the most unrealistically gruesome of ways. If that’s your cup of tea, you probably love this movie. But it’s not mine. I prefer intelligence in my horror.

8. GODZILLA VS. KONG – Again, this is one that a lot of people really liked, but for me, even as a fan of giant monster movies, especially King Kong movies, and Godzilla movies as well, this one was simply bad. I find it difficult to understand why this movie has so many fans when its script is so weak. The human characters are all forgettable, the situations unrealistic and uninspiring, and the dialogue is pretty poor. So, all you have left are the giant monsters in combat. And even those scenes didn’t do much for me. I know the argument is out there that that’s how the old Toho Godzilla movies all were. That’s a fair argument, up to a point. What always saved the Toho films was that Godzilla and his friends all had personality. The monsters in these modern-day versions do not. Plus, movies like KING KONG (1933) and THEM! (1954) did have superior scripts. These new giant monster movies do not. Instead, the modern-day giant monster movie (mostly Godzilla and Kong these days) has been reduced to special effects only, without any interest in creating any kind of a story worth telling.

7. COMING 2 AMERICA – the original COMING TO AMERICA (1988) starring Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall was very funny. This sequel, in spite of the return of Murphy and Hall, is not. Next movie…

6. TYGER TYGER – this was a movie that I fully expected to like, because it was so different and quirky, with a sense of style that I thought would make it a winner. But this tale of a pair of selfless robbers who kidnap a drug addict before they all find themselves hiding out in a bizarre psychedelic city is probably better enjoyed when you’re high! Seriously! The longer this one went on, the less sense it made, and by the time it was all over, it largely had become a wasted opportunity. No pun intended!

5. THE LITTLE THINGS – in spite of the presence of Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, and Jared Leto this one just doesn’t work. Washington plays a former detective who’s called in to help with a serial killer case, and the character he plays is known for spotting the little things others miss in these cases. Trouble is, the script barely shows him doing this. Malek plays the hotshot detective who calls in Washington for help, but the choices he makes throughout the movie make him seen anything but a hotshot detective. And Leto plays the man they suspect is the serial killer. This one should have been awesome. Instead, it’s a muddled meandering tale that gets worse as it goes along with a particularly weak ending.

4. WITHOUT REMORSE- With a script by one of my favorite screenwriters, Taylor Sheridan, I fully expected to like this adaptation of a Tom Clancy novel, but instead it proved to be Sheridan’s first real misfire. Michael B. Jordan plays an elite Navy Seal who’s gone rogue to solve the murder of his wife, only to find— of course— that it’s all part of a larger conspiracy. What. A. Surprise. Yawn.

And now, the drum roll please. Here are my Top 3 Worst Movies from 2021:

3. SWEET GIRL -Hands down, the worst action movie of the year. Jason Momoa plays a man who vows revenge against a pharmaceutical company after its “business decision” pulled a drug from the market which could have saved his terminally ill wife. So, hubby goes insane and plots to kill the heads of this company, who, while they are undesirable, probably don’t deserve to be killed. So, there’s that initial problem. But wait, there’s more! There’s a larger conspiracy! Of course, there always is. Plus, Momoa’s character against his better judgement is constantly bringing his teenage daughter with him and training her to protect herself and be an assassin vigilante like him… and then, thanks to a bizarre plot twist, his character disappears from the second half of the movie. So, yes, you have an action film headlined by Jason Momoa, that halfway through ditches its star. Ugh.

2. MADRES – the worst horror movie of the year. This tale of a Mexican American couple who move to a new community in 1970s California that seems to have a weird sinister secret involving pregnant women, doesn’t know how to get out of its own way. The film aims for a ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968) and THE STEPFORD WIVES (1975) vibe but fails on both counts. This one is based on true events, and its reveal at the end is actually very good, but the problem is the film tries so hard to hide this reveal with a supernatural tale that is so lame it makes the movie completely ineffective. Had the filmmakers chosen to focus on what this film is ultimately about, it would have been a far darker, more memorable movie.

And now, drum roll please, the Worst Movie of 2021:

1. THUNDER FORCE – by far, the worst comedy of the year. Melissa McCarthy plays a woman who inherits superpowers thanks to her scientist friend played by Octavia Spencer. They then take on the world’s supervillains. Should have been funny. But it’s not. Jason Bateman fares the best as a supervillain known as The Crab. Written and directed by McCarthy’s husband Ben Falcone.

And there you have it. My picks for the Top 10 Worst Movies of 2021. Now, let’s move on to 2022.

As always, thanks for reading!

—Michael

THUNDER FORCE (2021) – Latest In Long Line of Unfunny Movie Comedies

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I was really in the mood for a comedy this weekend. I needed to unwind and laugh and was looking for a movie to help me do just that.

Sadly, I chose THUNDER FORCE (2021), the new Netflix superhero comedy starring Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer.

THUNDER FORCE is the latest in a long line of movie comedies that simply aren’t funny. I’ve said this many times, but it bears repeating: the movie comedy right now is the one movie genre that is in the most trouble. You just don’t see many good ones any more. Where have all the great comic geniuses of the world gone? They’re not out there making movies, that I can tell you!

THUNDER FORCE also isn’t helped by its plot, the idea that every day people suddenly inherit superpowers and become superheroes. This theme has been overdone in such recent films like UNKNOWN ORIGINS (2020) and PROJECT: POWER (2020), two serious superhero movies that also weren’t all that good.

But the biggest problem with THUNDER FORCE is it is simply not that funny. Director/writer and Melissa McCarthy hubby Ben Falcone has written a script that includes potentially humorous scenarios but without clever crisp jokes to pull these scenes off, leaving the audience with nary a chuckle. I barely laughed. In fact, within the first few minutes of this one, I was seriously bored, and the film runs a very long one hour and forty six minutes. That’s an excruciatingly long time to not be funny.

And to be bored by a movie which stars Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer, two actors I really enjoy, says a lot!

McCarthy and Spencer play best friends Lydia and Emily, and they’ve been friends since high school, and the movie actually spends a good chunk of its opening minutes playing out their entire back story, which is as dull a way to open a superhero comedy as one can imagine! You have to wait 10-15 minutes before McCarthy and Spencer even show up. They live in Chicago during a time when evil super powered Miscreants terrorize the world. Spencer’s Emily lost her parents to Miscreants, and she has vowed to defeat them in her parents’ name. Hmm. Where have I heard that before? I’m surprised she doesn’t live in a cave and have a butler named Alfred. Anyway, Emily has worked her entire life on finding a way to give ordinary people superpowers, and one day while hanging around inside her best friend’s lab, Lydia accidentally receives those powers, and the next thing you know, she and Emily are a pair of unlikely superheroes who go by the name of Thunder Force taking on the city’s villainous Miscreants, led by the corrupt politician The King (Bobby Cannavale) and his henchmen The Crab (Jason Bateman) and Laser (Pom Klementieff).

Yawn.

Actually this plot would have been fine had the jokes been funny. But they’re not. This is as unfunny a comedy as I’ve seen in a while. If you want to understand the level of humor here, it reminded me of another awful Netflix comedy which also used Force in its title, the excruciatingly mundane TV series SPACE FORCE which starred Steve Carell and John Malkovich. Both of these projects are prime examples of forced humor!

This is also about as unfunny as I’ve seen Melissa McCarthy, and I’m a fan. She has a few minor moments here and there, but that’s about it. Octavia Spencer pretty much plays it straight, which means she fits in with the overall tone of the movie, which in spite of supposedly being a comedy, can’t seem to garner a laugh.

The villains fare the best, which isn’t saying much. Bobby Cannavale as The King is at least interesting to watch, even if the running gag of him not knowing his henchmen’s names is never all that comical. Jason Bateman enjoys the best moments in the movie as The Crab, a human Miscreant hybrid with crab claws for hands. He gets some of the better lines in the movie, and he pulls them off with ease, and his scenes with Melissa McCarthy were about the only times in the movie where I felt compelled to pay attention. The rest was a snore fest.

If Pom Klementieff as Laser looks like she walked off the set of a Marvel superhero movie, that’s because she plays Mantis in that Cinematic Universe, and the two characters resemble each other. She’s actually funnier as Mantis.

Melissa Leo is completely lost in a nothing role as Allie, the third member and behind the scenes operative of Thunder Force.

Ben Falcone has written and directed other Melissa McCarthy movies. I didn’t see their most recent collaboration, SUPERINTELLIGENCE (2020), but their film before that, LIFE OF THE PARTY (2018), which also opened to negative reviews, I actually liked and laughed quite a bit. Not so here with THUNDER FORCE. Too much time is spent on the super hero plot, which is lame and forgettable, and not enough time is spent on honing the humor.

If you are looking for laughs, you’ll need to keep on looking because you won’t find them in THUNDER FORCE. It’s one of the dullest comedies I’ve seen in a long time.

—END–

Worst Movies of 2018

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the happytime murders poster

Here’s a look at my Top 10 Least Favorite movies from 2018:

10. OCEAN’S 8 – I’ve never been a fan of the OCEAN’S movies starring George Clooney and company, and this new all-female version starring Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett didn’t do anything to change my opinion. Forced and contrived, this one just never won me over.

9. ADRIFT- Shailene Woodley and Sam Claflin play two free spirits who meet, fall in love, and decide to sail across the ocean together, but their plans are thwarted by a massive hurricane which threatens their lives. Sounds better than it is.

8. BAD SAMARITAN – David Tennant plays an ultra evil baddie who likes to keep women chained in his home. When his house is broken into, the thieves discover his secret, but they can’t go to the police because they’re thieves, so they decide to save the day on their own, but he doesn’t like that very much.  A completely over-the-top thriller that strains credibility.

red sparrow

7. RED SPARROW -Ridiculolus thriller wastes the talents of Jennifer Lawrence and Joel Edgerton. Lawrence plays a Russian spy, Edgerton a CIA agent, in a tale that is muddled from start to finish.

6. UNSANE – Steven Soderbergh shot the entire film using an IPhone 7 Plus, which ultimately, doesn’t really add much to this lamebrained thriller. Claire Foye is enjoyable in the lead role, but ultimately a bad script does this one in.

5. INSIDIOUS: THE LAST KEY – Enough with the INSIDIOUS prequels already! True, Lin Shaye is enjoyable to watch as Elise Rainer, but since the character was killed off in the very first INSIDIOUS movie, these continuous looks into her back story just aren’t all that compelling.

1517 to Paris poster

4. THE 15:17 TO PARIS – Clint Eastwood made the fateful decision to film this re-telling of the true story of three Americans who thwarted a terrorist attack on a train in Paris by hiring the three young men to play themselves rather than use actors. It’s a decision that didn’t really work, as these three guys on screen are dull and boring. There’s a reason movies employ professional actors.

3. THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS – An R-rated raunchy comedy starring Muppets and Melissa McCarthy sounds like a funny idea, but unfortunately, this film directed by Brian Henson doesn’t deliver. It does start off pretty darn funny, but it all goes downhill from there. My least favorite comedy of the year.

2.THE NUN – And here’s my least favorite horror movie of the year.  With its on-location filming in Romania, the film looks great! But the story and dialogue are dreadful. Part of the CONJURING universe. A lot of people liked this one, but I thought it was bottom-of-the-barrel horror.

Peppermint-Movie

1.PEPPERMINT –  And my pick for the Worst Film of 2018 goes to PEPPERMINT, an abysmal thriller starring Jennifer Garner. Garner plays a vigilante going after the people who killed her family. Plays like a female version of the DEATH WISH movies. Things are so bad here that even the vengeance scenes fall flat. By far, the most boring movie I saw this year.

And there you have it, my list of the Top 10 Worst Films from 2018.

Thanks for reading!

—Michael

 

THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS (2018) – Not Such A Happy Time

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the happytime murders poster

The idea sounds funny enough: an R-rated raunchy Muppet comedy starring Melissa McCarthy.

I like Muppets, and I like Melissa McCarthy, and the notion of foul-mouthed Muppets sounds just refreshing enough to make this one something special.

Now, I realized this movie was getting dreadful reviews, but Melissa McCarthy’s previous film, LIFE OF THE PARTY (2018) also got poor reviews, but I actually thought it was pretty funny. So, I headed off to the theater to catch this adult puppet comedy.

And it is a puppet comedy.  I know I called it a Muppet comedy, but they’re referred to as puppets here, even though, yes, they look exactly like Muppets, and the film is directed by Brian Henson, the son of the late great Muppet creator Jim Henson, and director of two Muppet movies himself.

THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS takes place in a world where puppets and humans co-exist, but not equally. In fact, humans treat puppets rather poorly. What a surprise!

Puppet private eye Phil Philips (Bill Barretta) finds himself at the center of a murder investigation when the former cast members of an 80s puppet TV show, including Phil’s brother and some of his friends, are murdered one by one. Phil is a former LAPD officer, and his former partner Detective Connie Edwards (Melissa McCarthy) is on the case.

Phil left the force under tragic circumstances when he failed to make a shot against a fellow puppet and his stray bullet shot and killed an innocent bystander. The notion became that puppets couldn’t be police officers because they couldn’t be trusted to shoot their own kind.

When Phil himself becomes a suspect in the Happytime murders, he and Connie work together to help Phil elude the police and find the real killer.

The biggest problem with THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS is that the script doesn’t hold up. For starters, the story here is structured like a million other cliché private detective storylines with the Bogart-like private eye gloomily commenting on the proceedings with a film noir voice-over. For such an overused trope like this to work, the script would have to be incredibly good and creative, and sadly, it isn’t. So, the story becomes boring long before the film’s 90 minutes are up.

Admittedly, THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS gets off to a pretty funny start. Watching crude vulgar puppets swear at each other and worse, is hilarious at first, but without enough jokes to sustain it, the novelty of the whole thing wears off fast. That being said, there are a couple of laugh out loud moments, one involving an octopus and a cow in one of the wackiest sexual images you’ll ever see, and another involving an obscene sex sequence that takes advantage of the fact that you’re watching puppets. It shows things you wouldn’t see outside a pornographic movie but since the figures on-screen are puppets, the filmmakers can get away with it.

The film definitely earns its R rating. The jokes are lewd and crude, and they’re funny.

At first.

But then strangely they disappear. The first half of THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS is definitely the best half.  The second part of the movie simply isn’t as creative, and the laughs become pretty nonexistent.

It’s simply not a very strong script by Todd Berger. The jokes aren’t there, and neither really is the story. For the whole puppets in a human world storyline to work, there has to be some depth. We see humans being cruel to puppets, for instance, but only briefly and the whole thing comes off as incredibly superficial.  I didn’t believe anything about this puppet world at all.

The film only works when the jokes are funny, and this only happens early on. And the jokes are all of the vulgar variety, which I didn’t mind, but if you’re not into very raunchy humor, especially humor that is sexual in nature, you’ll want to avoid this one.

The cast doesn’t really help either.

The story is built around the main puppet character Phil, and he is a complete bore, which really drags the film down. Bill Barretta does an adequate job voicing Phil, and most of the time he comes off sounding like Robert De Niro, which only made me wish the real De Niro was playing the role.

Melissa McCarthy does her thing, but she’s simply not that funny here. She has a couple of okay scenes, but having seen a lot of her movies, this is one of her least comedic performances. I definitely enjoyed her more in LIFE OF THE PARTY (2018).

But I’m still a fan. She was hilarious in BRIDESMAIDS (2011), THE HEAT (2013), and SPY (2015), to name just a few of her movies, and she’ll be back again in top form I’m sure. Here in THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS she was simply okay and really didn’t have much of an impact in this movie.

Elizabeth Banks is stuck in a thankless role as Jenny, Phil’s former love interest and the one human star of the Happytime TV show.  Maya Rudolph, who has co-starred with McCarthy before, in LIFE OF THE PARTY (2018)  and BRIDESMAIDS (2011) admittedly does enjoy some humorous moments here as Phil’s secretary Bubbles.

The rest of the human cast is rather dull, and the puppets don’t add much either.

In spite of the potentially clever concept, THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS is pretty bad. In fact, it just might be the worst movie I’ve seen all year.

The film starts off funny, if you don’t mind your humor crude and rude, but then the jokes pretty much disappear, and the second half becomes a monumental bore.

In spite of its title, THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS isn’t much of a happy time.

—END—

Books by Michael Arruda:

TIME FRAME,  science fiction novel by Michael Arruda.  

Ebook version:  $2.99. Available at http://www.crossroadpress.com. Print version:  $18.00. Includes postage! Email your order request to mjarruda33@gmail.com. Also available at Amazon.com.

IN THE SPOOKLIGHT, movie review collection by Michael Arruda.

InTheSpooklight_NewText

 Ebook version:  $4.99.  Available at http://www.crossroadpress.com.  Print version:  $18.00.  Includes postage. Email your order request to mjarruda33@gmail.com. Also available at Amazon.com.

FOR THE LOVE OF HORROR, short story collection by Michael Arruda.  

For_the_love_of_Horror- original cover

Print cover

For the Love of Horror cover (3)

Ebook cover

 Ebook version:  $4.99.  Available at http://www.crossroadpress.com. Print version:  $18.00.  Includes postage. Email your order request to mjarruda33@gmail.com. Also available at Amazon.com.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LIFE OF THE PARTY (2018) – Melissa McCarthy Comedy Surprisingly Lively and Funny

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LIfe of the Party

LIFE OF THE PARTY (2018), the latest comedy starring Melissa McCarthy, possesses a positive vibe that makes it livelier and funnier than most critics are giving it credit for.

Then again, maybe I was simply influenced by the audience. I saw it in a very crowded theater, where the majority of people in the seats were women, and the loud and frequent laughter was nothing short of contagious. The folks in the theater definitely enjoyed this one.

LIFE OF THE PARTY tells a simple, albeit far-fetched, story. Right after housewife Deanna (Melissa McCarthy) drops off her daughter for her senior year of college, she learns that her husband wants a divorce. Devastated, Deanna decides to go back to college to earn the degree she gave up on when she decided to start a family.

She enrolls at the same school as her daughter, and before you can say “Toga!” she and her daughter and her daughter’s friends are all best buds and living the college dream together.

As I said, this one is definitely far-fetched. But it’s also definitely funny, as most of the jokes work, and for a comedy, you can’t really ask for more than that.

I saw this one because I’m a fan of Melissa McCarthy, and I generally enjoy her work. I have to say, she’s more than up to the task of carrying what otherwise would have been a mediocre and very silly movie.  She imbues Deanna with likable characteristics that make you root for the character, but more importantly, she’s simply very funny.

When she goes to a college party and tries to fit in, the scene has all the makings of a terrible cliché, but yet McCarthy pulls it off and the audience is laughing. When she finds herself in a sexual relationship with a young college hunk, it’s ridiculous, but because of McCarthy, it’s also hilarious.

That’s one place where this film could have been much better, if it had simply been more believable. This lighthearted comedy is so unbelievable it’s nearly a fantasy, but it’s heart is in the right place, as is it’s funny bone.

And the comedy has to work on a good-natured level because the film is rated PG-13, not R, and so this isn’t a raunchy gross-out college comedy. It plays like a throwback to some of the classic comedies of yesteryear, the silly comedies of the 1960s which used to feature Doris Day. Think “Doris Day Goes Back to College” and you’ll have the right idea for how this one plays out.

McCarthy wrote the screenplay with her husband Ben Falcone, who also directed. This is their third film together, following TAMMY (2014) and THE BOSS (2016).

In spite of this one not being believable, it does get some things right.  It nails the relationship between Deanna and her daughter Maddie (Molly Gordon). Maddie is not too keen at first about her mother being on the same campus and hanging out with her friends, but it doesn’t take her long to change her mind and really go along with things. Their relationship is not cliché. They really do like each other, which is something you don’t see every day in a movie. And Molly Gordon is excellent as Maddie.

As is the rest of the cast. Maya Rudolph has a field day as Deanna’s best friend Christine, and she has some of the best laugh-out-loud moments in the movie. The mediation sequence is a keeper, as is the scene with Deanna and Christine on the racket ball court.

The actresses who play Maddie’s friends all stand out, especially Gillian Jacobs as Helen, known as “Coma Girl,” as she had awoken one day after spending several years in a coma.  Character actors Stephen Root and Jacki Weaver are hilarious as Deanna’s parents. And Chris Parnell is on hand as Deanna’s former classmate and now professor, who obviously has a thing for her.

The film also captures Deanna’s delight at being back in college again. It’s as if she has turned back the clock for herself.

LIFE OF THE PARTY certainly doesn’t rank with my favorite Melissa McCarthy movies. For example, THE HEAT (2013) with McCarthy and Sandra Bullock was a much funnier movie. But I’d heard this one was awful, and it really isn’t.

The best part of LIFE OF THE PARTY is it is indeed funny.  I laughed a lot. The audience of women I saw it with laughed even more.

I didn’t believe any of it for a second, but since the film avoided the pitfall of associating stupidity with humor, in that it retained a sincere mood throughout, even if its situations were often far-fetched and suited more for fantasy than for a comedy, it worked, making it that rare example of a movie that I can’t say I believed but I can say that I liked.

LIFE OF THE PARTY is lively, energetic, and fun. It truly is the life of the party.

—END—

 

Melissa McCarthy Is Hilarious In SPY (2015)

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MOVIE REVIEW:  SPY (2015)spy poster

By Michael Arruda

 If I laugh a lot during a comedy, that’s usually a good sign, and SPY (2015), the latest comedy starring Melissa McCarthy, made me laugh quite a bit.

In SPY, Melissa McCarthy plays a desk bound CIA agent named Susan Cooper who spends her days speaking into the headset of suave CIA agent Bradley Fine (Jude Law), providing him with intel when he’s in the field, and generally saving his butt on a regular basis.  Of course, since he’s drop dead handsome and she’s overweight and not model-pretty, she’s secretly in love with him, and he pays her no attention.

When Fine is killed in the field by the villainous Rayna Boyanov (Rose Byrne), who reveals to the CIA that she knows the identities of all their agents, it prompts CIA director Elaine Crocker (Allison Janney) to make the unusual decision of sending in an agent Rayna and her people have no chance of recognizing.  Crocker, of course, selects Susan, who aggressively volunteers for the assignment because she wants to seek revenge for Bradley’s death.

This decision infuriates fellow agent Rick Ford (Jason Statham) who wants the assignment for himself, and when he doesn’t get it, he quits and goes rogue, shadowing Susan in the field, constantly reminding her that she’s not good enough to get the job done, and that he’s going to get it done on his own.

Of course, the “job” involves locating a nuclear weapon, which Rayna has somewhere in her possession, and she plans to sell it to the highest terrorist bidder.

So, Susan sets out to save the world, and with the help of her best friend and fellow agent Nancy (Miranda Hart) who at first is on a headset back at headquarters, supplying Susan with valuable information but eventually joins Susan in the field, she spends the rest of the movie trying to infiltrate Rayna’s organization so she can find the bomb before Rayna sells it to terrorists.

The plot of SPY is completely inane, but you don’t see this movie because of its plot.  You see it because of Melissa McCarthy, who happens to be one of the funniest people working in movies today.

McCarthy enjoys a lot of side-splitting moments here in SPY.  She’s funny early on as the shy, super intelligent desk agent who goes unnoticed and without respect.  There’s a hilarious scene where she’s berated by her boss Elaine because she has pink eye.  Later when she’s in the field she shows off her physical comedy skills, and towards the end of the movie, she goes into full-fledged over-the-top Melissa McCarthy mode as Susan becomes a take-charge save-the-world agent who has to rely on every aspect of her being to get the job done.  McCarthy has some of her funniest moments in these latter scenes.

And while McCarthy gets to play off co-stars Jude Law and Jason Statham with amiable results, she doesn’t share quite as much chemistry with them as she did with Sandra Bullock in the hit film from two summers ago THE HEAT (2013).  In THE HEAT, Bullock played a complete character who held her own with McCarthy.  Here in SPY, both Law and Statham play caricatures rather than characters, and so their scenes with McCarthy don’t resonate as well.

That being said, Jason Statham is really funny throughout this movie, and he has some of the funniest bits in the film.  He plays super tough agent Rick Ford, a guy who believes he’s invulnerable.  Trouble is, he can’t seem to stop telling people just how invulnerable he is.  The scene where he spouts off all the ways he has cheated death is one of the more hilarious moments in the film and had me laughing out loud.

Jude Law is less interesting as Agent Bradley Fine, a character that is a one joke caricature of the dashing handsome spy.  Miranda Hart fares better as Susan’s friend and co-worker Nancy.  The scene early on where the two of them go out for a drink at a bar and encounter a beautiful operative who they’re insanely jealous of is priceless.  And later, when Nancy joins Susan in the field, they’re pretty funny together, more so than when McCarthy pairs with Statham or Law.

Allison Janney makes for a convincing hard-ass CIA director.  Rose Byrne as the Cruella-De Vil-ish Rayna Boyanov is okay, although it’s a one-note performance.  Boyanov is the spoiled rich girl gone wrong.  Yawn.  Boyanov is also the phoniest character in the entire movie, and she becomes harder to take as the movie goes along.  I enjoyed Byrne much more when she played Renai Lambert, the mother in the first two INSIDIOUS movies.

Writer/director Paul Feig, who directed earlier McCarthy hits BRIDESMAIDS (2011) and THE HEAT (2013) infuses this one with lots of oomph, energy, and style.  The opening credits sequence is right out of a James Bond movie, specifically the recent Daniel Craig Bond films.  The action sequences here are decent.  While the chase scenes are average and played strictly for laughs, the fight scenes actually look pretty good.  They even sport some realistic blood.

More importantly, the humor remains sharp for most of the movie.  McCarthy stays funny throughout, and Jason Statham surprisingly steals nearly every scene he’s in.

It’s not until the third act of the film that SPY staggers, running out of steam for the simple reason that it goes on too long.  A running time of 120 minutes for this kind of comedy is a bit much.  At this length, it’s difficult to sustain the laughs, and SPY definitely struggles with this.  Shave off about 20 minutes and the comedy would have worked better.

As it is, it reaches the point where you realize that what you’re watching has stopped being funny and has delved head-first into mindless silliness.  There are way too many plot twists near the end, and rather than appear clever, they come off as “we’re not sure how to end this movie so we’ll keep on going till we get it right.”  The film definitely could have used a tighter ending.

SPY still works though.  I laughed throughout most of the movie, and even though it deteriorates somewhat towards the end, it wasn’t enough to stop me from liking it.

Melissa McCarthy is hilarious, and she receives fine support from Jason Statham, who’s surprisingly funny for most of the movie, and from Miranda Hart as her friend and co-worker Nancy.  McCarthy is one of the funniest actors working in film today, and she’s the main reason to see SPY.   I can’t wait to see what she does next.

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Bill Murray Lifts Predictable ST. VINCENT

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St. Vincent posterMovie Review:  ST. VINCENT (2014)

By

Michael Arruda

 ST. VINCENT just might be the most enjoyable trite, cliché-ridden, and predictable movie I’ve seen in a while.

It’s all three of these things, which usually spells doom for a movie, but in this case, excellent performances by Bill Murray and newcomer Jaeden Lieberher, who’s just eleven years old, and fine support by a subdued Melissa McCarthy, make this one much better than it should be.

Bill Murray plays Vincent, a cranky cantankerous old man who is having a rough go at life and is fine letting everybody know that he is.  He also hits the bottle regularly, often drinking far more than he should, and he bets on the horses, and loses, so much so that he owes some dangerous men a decent chunk of money.

When the movers moving in his new neighbors, a single mom Maggie (Melissa McCarthy) who’s smack dab in the middle of a divorce and a child custody battle, and her young son Oliver (Jaeden Lieberher), accidentally smash into the tree next to his house, severing a branch which crushes the top of his car, Vincent is quick to demand payment from Maggie for damages, something she promises to take care of soon.

After having a deplorable day at school, where he’s bullied cruelly, to the point where his clothes are stolen, including his house keys, Oliver returns home wearing only his gym clothes. Locked out of his house, he asks Vincent if he can use his phone to call his mom.  Vincent is none too happy about letting Oliver into his house, but he does, and he’s even more put out when Maggie asks if Oliver can stay there until she comes home from work.

The afternoon goes well, and Vincent finds himself enjoying Oliver’s company, even though he won’t admit it.  He also sees an opportunity, and he offers to watch Oliver every day after school while Maggie is at work, because he is in desperate need of the money.  Maggie agrees— which I found nearly impossible to believe since they had just moved there and she doesn’t know Vincent from a hole in the wall, and yet she trusts this man with her son?— and so just like that Vincent and Oliver are suddenly spending every afternoon together.

There’s little need to describe the rest of the plot because you can see it all coming a mile away.  In fact, by far, the worst part of ST. VINCENT is its predictable plot.  I so much wished this one had had a completely different story.  However, amazingly so, due to the strong performances, this movie works, and I can’t deny that I really enjoyed it from beginning to end.

As Oliver and Vincent get to know each other, Vincent helps Oliver with his bully problem, teaching him how to defend himself, and Oliver learns that Vincent’s wife is sick with Alzheimer’s in a nursing home, and that Vincent visits her nearly every day and does her laundry for her, even though she doesn’t remember who he is.  Of course, Vincent also takes Oliver with him to the horse races and also to his favorite bar where he drinks freely in front of the boy.

When Vincent suffers a stroke, Oliver and Maggie are quick to visit him and help him get back on his feet. And when it’s time for Oliver to write a presentation at his Catholic school about “saints among us” guess who he chooses to write about?  I told you this one was predictable.

And it is, terribly so.  But somehow it didn’t seem to matter.

First off, Bill Murray is terrific in this film, and he’s the number one reason this movie works so well.  I could pretty much watch Murray in anything, and he’d make it good, which is exactly what he does here.  Heck, in the opening montage of this movie, he enjoys more fine moments in the first five minutes than a lot of other actors do in an entire movie.  He brings Vincent to life immediately, and sets the tone for the rest of the movie.

While Murray is always funny, and he’s certainly is here in ST. VINCENT, his finest moments are actually of the dramatic variety.  In scenes where he learns that his bank account is empty, and when he receives awful news about his wife, the expression on his face resonates deep hurt and disappointment.  Murray comes off as weathered, seasoned, and frustrated by life.  I saw NIGHTCRAWLER the same weekend I saw ST. VINCENT, and I applauded Jake Gyllenhaal for his terrific performance in that film and said it was Oscar-worthy, and it was.  Likewise, Bill Murray might be receiving some Oscar consideration for his role here in ST. VINCENT.  He’s that good.

And just as good as Murray is young Jaeden Lieberher as Oliver.  Lieberher plays such a likeable little kid, it’s easy to see why Vincent enjoys spending time with him.  Oliver is wise beyond his years, and as cliché-ridden as his saint project is, it still is a moving moment in the movie, because Lieberher laces it with an incredible amount of sincerity.  In spite of the predictability of their relationship, I completely bought the friendship between Vincent and Oliver.

Melissa McCarthy has only a small role here as Oliver’s mom Maggie, and compared to her usual performances, she’s very subdued.  Yet, she still remains relevant.  Like Murray, her best moments in this film are the dramatic ones.  Sure, when she goes on about how hard her life is as a single mom, and that she has to work extra hours to make ends meet, and how she’s in a vicious custody battle with her ex-husband over their son, I could hear the violins playing and I wanted to gag.  It was a little bit much for my liking.  I half-expected to see a man in black knocking at her door demanding rent money.

But again, McCarthy, like Murray, rises above the material and makes it work.  She also gets to fire some zingers at Murray, putting him in his place for taking her son to a bar, for instance. McCarthy cuts Murray down to size and is believable doing it, which is no easy task.

Only Naomi Watts seems out of place as Vincent’s Russian stripper girlfriend Daka, who is crass and blunt and speaks her mind with regularity, and because of her difficulty with the English language, often says things that come out wrong, and this is supposed to be funny.  In fact, her character is pretty much completely played for laughs.  It was an odd role for Watts, and unfortunately I never really bought her Russian accent, or her character.

ST. VINCENT was written and directed by Theodore Melfi. I have mixed feelings about the script. On the surface, the story is pretty bad.  Crabby old man befriends a likeable young boy, does nothing for me as a story idea, and some of the story elements don’t work either.  I thought the majority of the scenes at Oliver’s Catholic school were unrealistic in terms of how schools and classrooms are run, and the dialogue in these scenes was trite and oftentimes ridiculous.  The subplot with Vincent and his Russian girlfriend Daka was weird and hard to fathom, especially when we see Vincent still so in love with his ailing wife.

And yet, most if not all of Vincent’s dialogue is spot-on.  When life throws him daggers, Vincent lashes out and the things he says are both funny and sad, but more importantly, make sense.  The scenes with Vincent and his wife are wonderfully done, as are the later scenes when Vincent has to deal with the effects of his stroke.

I have to give credit to Melfi as a director because he certainly gets the most out of Bill Murray, Jaeden Lieberher, and Melissa McCarthy.  I don’t think that all three of these actors delivered topnotch performances by accident.

The main reason though to see ST. VINCENT and ultimately why it’s so enjoyable is because of Bill Murray.  In ST. VINCENT, Murray gets to be hilariously funny, touchingly dramatic, especially in those scenes with his wife, and finally he gets to play a stroke victim, and you know what?  He’s fantastic in all three of these elements.

Bill Murray was one of the highlights in the George Clooney World War II drama THE MONUMENTS MEN (2014) which came out earlier this year, and he’s the main attraction here in ST. VINCENT.  We haven’t seen a lot of Bill Murray in the movies in recent years, but hopefully his appearance in these two movies in 2014 means he’ll be showing up more often.

Not everybody can take a mediocre story and turn it into an enjoyable experience.  In ST. VINCENT, Murray does just that, and he does it with ease.

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