The Hitman’s Bodyguard

The Hitman’s Bodyguard

Posted on August 17, 2017 at 5:02 pm

C
Lowest Recommended Age: Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating: Rated R for strong violence and language throughout
Profanity: Extended very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs: Alcohol, drugs
Violence/ Scariness: Constant peril and violence, guns, explosions, assault weapons, chases, car crashes, knives, many characters injured and killed, many disturbing bloody images
Diversity Issues: None
Date Released to Theaters: August 18, 2017
Date Released to DVD: November 21, 2017

Copyright 2017 Summit Entertainment
If they’re not going to waste time coming up with a story, I’m not going to waste time trying to explain it. The title says it all. There’s a hitman named Darius (Samuel L. Jackson). There’s a bodyguard named Michael (Ryan Reynolds). They have a history. And they quip, shoot, and punch their merry way through a buddy-cop action comedy so generic it may have been created by algorithm. More thought went into the various set-pieces, the chases, explosions, shoot-outs, and hand-to-hand combats than into the story, something about transporting Darius to the Hague so he can testify against a dictator charged with genocide.

This may not be the moment for violent and lethal mayhem as lighthearted summer fun, including the execution of a man’s wife and child as he watches in horror. A lot of heads explode when they are hit by bullets and the fact that we don’t know most of them because they are all faceless guys in riot gear does not make a difference. So, stipulating that the premise is dumb, the plot makes no sense, the genre has been played out endlessly over the years, sometimes worse but sometimes much better, including with these two actors, and that it is especially dispiriting to see Salma Hayek wasted in a silly spitfire role, I will share a couple of thoughts about the two stars.

Ryan Reynolds: I don’t know why you would want to give this movie any more of your time, but if for some reason you sit through the very long credits (lots of locations, lots of stunts), you will see a brief extra scene that will give you an idea of what a talented professional Ryan Reynolds is. He had just one job in that shot, to have a particular facial expression that matched the expression in another scene. He was ready to go when the shooting had to be held up because loud church bells began playing nearby. We hear someone from the crew yell out that they are holding for the church bells, and we see Reynolds hold that expression and that mood as the bells keep ringing and then keep ringing some more. He keeps it together for an impressive length of time, then finally gives up, wipes his eyes, and makes a quip. But it gives you a sense that even in a silly shoot-em-up like this piece of forgettable fluff, he holds himself to the highest standard. Also, the character here is designed around his strengths. He is at his best when he is playing a decent guy who is frustrated and snarky. The script doesn’t give him much to work with — the yadda yadda about his triple A rating is especially tiresome and the romantic complications are inane. But he makes the best of it with great timing and essential decency.

Samuel L. Jackson: Lord knows, he could phone it in by now. He’s done this exact role more times than even he can count. But he brings it, snapping out every one of those MFs like he’s been waiting to do it all his life and creating a character with no help from the script. He even has to sing. One smart move made by the screenwriter is giving Darius two impediments, one emotional, one physical to make it believable that Michael could be a match for him. Kind of like in “Batman vs. Superman,” when they had to kryptonite-ize Superman but not too much to make it an even fight.

Someday, when this movie comes on cable, just check it out long enough to see not why we pay these guys the big bucks but why they’re worth it.

Parents should know that this film includes constant peril and violence with chases, explosions, shoot-outs, assault weapons, knives, various other weapons, many characters injured and killed, graphic and disturbing images including bloody wounds and heads exploding, very strong language, drinking, drugs, brief nudity, and a brief glimpse of a prostitute.

Family discussion: Who was right about what makes a bad guy? Why was it hard for Michael to believe Amelia?

If you like this, try: “Midnight Run,” “Mr. Right,” “Die Hard with a Vengeance”

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Despicable Me 3

Despicable Me 3

Posted on June 29, 2017 at 5:33 pm

B
Lowest Recommended Age: Kindergarten - 3rd Grade
MPAA Rating: Rated PG for action and rude humor
Profanity: Some schoolyard language
Alcohol/ Drugs: None
Violence/ Scariness: Extended cartoon-style peril and violence
Diversity Issues: None
Date Released to Theaters: June 30, 2017
Date Released to DVD: December 4, 2017

Copyright 2017 Universal Pictures
It does not achieve the delirious delight of the first in the series, but it is better than the second. “Despicable Me 3” is meandering and uneven.

The problem with making the title character into a happily married good guy who loooves his three girls is that he is not despicable any more. He is therefore much less interesting than the actually despicable villain of the movie, Balthazar Bratt (Trey Parker, co-creator of “South Park”), an 80’s child star embittered because he has been forgotten. Whenever Bratt is not on screen, the film deflates. It is a cute, fun, and sweet-natured family treat, but overstuffed at just 90 minutes with too many distracting detours.

Formerly despicable Gru (Steve Carell) is now working with Lucy (Kristen Wiig) at the AVL (Anti-Villain League), and Lucy is also trying to learn how to be a mother to the three girls, serious middle-schooler Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), mischievous Edith (Dana Gaier), and sweet, unicorn-loving Agnes (Nev Scharrel).

Gru and Lucy stop Bratt from stealing the world’s largest diamond, but he gets away, and the new, very ambitious, head of the AVL (Jenny Slate) fires Gru. Lucy quits in protest. As they begin to think about finding new jobs and Agnes sells off her beloved fluffy stuffed unicorn to help out, Gru finds out for the first time that he has an identical twin brother. “Parent Trap” style, when their parents split up, they split the babies up, too. An emissary from Gru’s brother, Dru (also Carell) invites them for a visit to Freedonia, presumably the country responsible for their accents and certainly the country where the Marx Brothers created memorable mayhem in “Duck Soup.”

Dru is identical to Gru except for luxuriant blond hair. And it turns out he wants to be despicable, like their late dear old dad. The brothers go for a wild joyride in Dad’s crookmobile. Bratt has now successfully stolen the world’s biggest diamond, and so Gru tells Dru they will steal it from him. Dru thinks they will keep it, but Gru plans to return it so he and Lucy can get their jobs back.

Meanwhile, the minions are performing Gilbert & Sullivan on a TV reality show and being thrown in prison. Lucy is still not sure how to connect to the girls. Agnes thinks she can find a unicorn. And Bratt is getting ready for the ultimate revenge on the Hollywood that rejected him.

The film flags whenever Bratt is off-screen. He is an inspired creation, with lots of 80’s references for the parents and just the right touch of whiny entitlement to seem quite timely. He just about makes up for the slow patches. The snatches of the terrific Pharrell Williams score from the first film serve as a reminder that this, too, is mostly just an inferior copy, we hope, the last.

Parents should know that this film includes cartoon-style peril and violence, mostly comic, crotch hit, some potty humor, and brief minion nudity.

Family discussion: Why didn’t Lucy know when to say no? What made Margo trust her? Why did Gru’s parents tell their sons they were disappointments?

If you like this, try: the other “Despicable Me” movies and “Megamind”

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The Big Sick

The Big Sick

Posted on June 22, 2017 at 5:53 pm

B +
Lowest Recommended Age: Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating: Rated R for language including some sexual references
Profanity: Strong and explicit language
Alcohol/ Drugs: Alcohol
Violence/ Scariness: Very serious illness
Diversity Issues: A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters: June 24, 2017
Date Released to DVD: September 25, 2017
Copyright Amazon 2017

The more specific the story, the more universal. This is a very specific story. Indeed, you are unlikely ever again to see a romantic comedy with one of the pair spending half of the film in a coma. And that is not the couple’s biggest obstacle. Kumail Nanjiani (“Silicon Valley”), plays a character named Kumail Nanjiani in a story based on his relationship to Emily V. Gordon (played by Zoe Kazan and called Emily Gardiner in the film), who is now his wife and the co-screenwriter of the smart, touching, heartfelt and very funny film. It is beautifully directed by Michael Showalter, as always unsurpassed in meticulous casting of even the smallest roles.

Real-life Nanjiani and his movie alter ego are Pakistani immigrants from traditional families. Every time he visits his parents for dinner, an unmarried Pakistani woman “happens to drop in.” They have made it very clear that they expect him to marry a woman who is Pakistani and Muslim. Gordon is neither; she is white and from North Carolina. Just after they break up because he could not say that they could have a future together, she suddenly becomes critically ill and is placed in a medically induced coma.  He gets the call when she is hospitalized and has to be the one to call her parents. He meets them for the first time in the hospital waiting room, where they are understandably frosty (he broke their daughter’s heart) and preoccupied (she’s in a coma).

They would rather that he not be there. And his parents find out that he has not been honest with them and they tell him they cannot accept his feelings for Emily. So, in the second half of the movie there is another kind of love story, about the love between parents and their children and the partners their children choose.

It is also a story about a man learning to be honest with himself about who he is and what he wants. What lifts this out of the recent glut of arrested development movies is its compassion for all parties (the film nicely acknowledges that Nanjiani’s brother has a very successful and satisfying marriage arranged the traditional way and presents as one of the candidates a woman so seemingly perfect for him that we almost root for her) and Nanjiani’s thoughtful, self-deprecating but confident performance. The best stand-up comics mine their own lives for material, with observations that make us see our own lives, and especially our follies and irrationalities, in sharper relief — that’s relief in both senses of the word.

Best of all, the movie itself is proof that they lived happily ever after.

Parents should know that this movie includes strong language, sexual references and non-explicit situations, family conflict, and very serious illness.

Family discussion: Why didn’t Kumail tell Emily about his family’s concerns? How should you decide what traditions to keep and which ones to leave behind?

If you like this, try: “Ruby Sparks” (also with Kazan, who wrote the screenplay) and “50-50” with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen, also based on a true story

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White Chicks

White Chicks

Posted on June 23, 2004 at 4:58 am

C
Lowest Recommended Age: High School
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for crude and sexual humor, language and some drug content
Profanity: Very strong language for a PG-13
Alcohol/ Drugs: Drug humor, drinking, smoking
Violence/ Scariness: Comic violence including guns, characters shot but no one badly hurt
Diversity Issues: A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters: June 23, 2004
Date Released to DVD: October 26, 2004

Appealing performers and a couple of very funny moments don’t make up for a lazy and generic script in this predictable farce about two black male FBI agents who go undercover as spoiled rich white girls. I knew we were in trouble when there was a “Hammer Time” joke in the first few minutes, a reference way past its sell-by date. And a Bjork swan-dress joke? In white chick terms, that’s so yesterday.

Copyright Columbia Pictures 2004

In rap music terms, this movie samples characters and plots from many other movies, including the already vastly over-used (attractive and principled but do-things-their-own-creative-way law enforcement types always getting chewed out by choleric superiors until one of their wacky schemes pays off and they get to be heroes) and the already done so brilliantly and distinctively that no one should ever try them again (whoever thought of appropriating the “Junior” plot twist from Some Like it Hot should be sent to the screenwriter equivalent of solitary confinement).

Even the movie doesn’t even appear to paying attention to its plot. Movies don’t have to be logical; they don’t even have to make sense. But sloppy inconsistencies like the ones here become a distraction that interferes with the ability of the audience to enjoy even the jokes that work.

Shawn and Marlon Wayans, apparently both the Zeppo Marxes of the talented Wayans family, play FBI agents Kevin and Marcus Copeland. It is typical of this movie’s problems that no one had the energy to give these characters anything resembling a personality. They are almost indistinguishable from each other except that one has a hysterically jealous wife and the other has a goatee and is single.

After they bungle a drug bust, they are assigned to escort the Wilson sisters (think Paris and Nicky Hilton), who may be targets for a kidnapper. They are on their way to a weekend at the Hamptons where they hope to be photographed for the cover of a magazine. A minor car accident on the way there leaves them with scratches on their faces and they refuse to be seen that way. So, the Copelands call in the FBI’s crackerjack undercover make-up team to transform them into the Wilsons. Conveniently, they both already have earrings.

Despite the fact that they are taller than the girls and the latex masks applied to their faces make them look like victims of Botox overkill, no one in the Hamptons seems to notice anything significantly different about “the girls” (one friend guesses that they’ve had collegen treatments to turn their lips from “Cameron Diaz to Jay-Z”). The Copelands squeal and giggle, shop with the girls, go all mean girls on the snooty rich snobs, and participate in a fashion show and a dance-off (okay, that dance-off is pretty funny). They also go out on dates, Marcus in drag with a smitten athlete (the very funny Terry Crews) and Kevin as a man but pretending to be someone else to impress a pretty reporter.

Gender and race-switching are inherently funny but the situations and jokes in this script do very little to build on that energy and sometimes actually get in the way. There are predictable culture clashes, as when the society girls sing along to Vanessa Carleton’s “1000 Miles” and the Copelands have to pretend to know the words. Then, when the rap song comes on…well, you know where this is going. (A twist on this scene later on provides the movie’s most sustained laugh.) There is a lot of gross-out humor involving various body parts and functions, and some leering double entendres. There are also predictable life lessons as the Copelands develop more empathy for women and encourage the society girls to have more self-respect, to insist on the best for and from themselves. Too bad the Wayans forgot to learn that lesson themselves; the insights are delivered with no more enthusiasm, sincerity, or imagination than the comedy.

Parents should know that the movie has very crude and vulgar material for a PG-13, with comedy based on sexual references (including a game where players have to choose between two unappealing sexual encounters), drug jokes, insult humor, and a lot of graphic potty humor. Characters use strong language, not just the usual “almost-R” words but also terms that may concern parents like “yeast infection,” “coke whore,” “bitch fit,” and the n-word. Racial insults and stereotyping are intended to be comic. The movie has some comic and action violence, meaning that a lot of punches are thrown and a few shots are fired but no one is seriously hurt.

Families who see this movie should talk about what Kevin and Marcus learn from pretending to be white women. Why was it so hard for Karen, Lisa, and Gina to feel good about themselves and their relationships?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy the better movies it borrows from, like Some Like it Hot, which was first on the American Film Institute’s funniest movies of all time, and Tootsie, which was second. They may also enjoy Martin Lawrence in drag as an undercover cop in Big Momma’s House. The freshest and funniest Wayans film is still I’m Gonna Git You Sucka.

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