Movie Review Ferdinand

Ferdinand (2017) 

Directed by Carlos Saldanha 

Written by Robert L. Baird, Tim Federle, Brad Copeland 

Starring John Cena, Kate McKinnon

Release Date December 15th, 2017

Blue Sky Animation is the home of the truly mediocre in modern animation. The house that the awful Ice Age movies built is back again and apparently attempting to hide their latest bit of sub-par animation by opening Ferdinand opposite Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Smart move, Blue Sky. Burying Ferdinand is definitely the right call. No, the movie isn’t terrible, it’s just mediocre. And in a world where Pixar still rules, it’s not a bad idea to drop your more modestly ambitious products where few audiences will see it.

Ferdinand tells the story of a young bull, voiced by WWE legend John Cena. Young Ferdinand has decided at a very early age that he wants nothing to do with being a bullfighter. Ferdinand, you see, dear reader, loves flowers. That’s all the explanation you are going to get about young Ferdinand’s nature: he loves flowers. When his father, voiced by Jeremy Sisto, doesn’t return to the stable after facing down a matador, Ferdinand decides his best bet in making a run for it.

Through luck and guile, Ferdinand manages to get aboard a train and winds up outside of town and on the farm of a local gardener known for his fantastic flowers. Ferdinand is adopted and loved by Nina (Lily Day) and grows up with her until he becomes a 2,000 pound behemoth. No longer able to hide, Ferdinand gets himself captured when he can’t resist attending the local flower festival and ends up back on his old farm where he is now the biggest bull in the yard, and the one that the new matador has his eye on.

The animation in Ferdinand is good. It’s not Pixar good, but it’s good. The characters have a rubbery exterior that thankfully doesn’t press into the uncanny valley, but it’s also not particularly pretty, either. It’s just OK. The best animation is likely the three hedgehogs, voiced by Gina Rodriguez, Daveed Diggs and Gabriel Iglesias. The spiky hedgehogs are beautifully rendered, but they’re also underwritten and rarely ever funny, which is surprising given the talented voices behind them.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review: The Spy Who Dumped Me

The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018) 

Directed by Susannah Fogel

Written by David Iserson, Susannah Fogel

Starring Mila Kunis, Kate McKinnon, Sam Heughan, Hasan Minaj, Justin Theroux

Release Date August 3rd, 2018

Published August 3rd, 2018

The Spy Who Dumped Me stars Mila Kunis as Audrey, an underachiever working a menial job and celebrating her 30th birthday. Audrey is sad about the state of her life, not just the job but also her now ex-boyfriend, Drew (Justin Theroux), who dumped her via text message. Things aren’t all bad however as Audrey has a best friend, Morgan (Kate McKinnon) who is a constant source of support and great entertainment.

Audrey’s meaningless existence is changed forever when Audrey is thrown into the back of a truck with a pair of secret agents, Duffer (Hasan Minaj) and Sebastian (Sam Heughan), who inform her that Drew is a C.I,A Agent and he’s gone missing. When he pops up at her apartment he tells her that he has a mission she must help him with; she must travel to Vienna and deliver a package to another spy named Vern in order to save the world.

When Drew is left unconscious, Audrey and Morgan decide to actually go to Vienna and try to carry out his mission with the CIA hot on their tale. Once in Vienna, the two end up in gun battles, getting tortured, and facing off against some of the world’s greatest spies. The film travels to Prague and eventually to Paris as the globetrotting and gun toting get going the film gets really, quite funny.

Director Susanna Fogel does a great job of taking good advantage of her talented stars. The story of The Spy Who Dumped Me is a tad thin, so much of the film relies on the clever riffing of Kunis and McKinnon. Fogel smartly gives them room to roam within this goofball adventure to search for as many funny, and often quite dirty jokes. A lesser cast, actors without the ability to riff would unquestionably expose how thin this silly plot truly is.

Mila Kunis continues to grow into a reliable leading lady. Where it once seemed like she was destined to be outshined by funnier supporting players, like Kathryn Hahn in Bad Moms, here Kunis is able to hang in and be as funny as her co-star. Perhaps it’s her improv background, but Kate McKinnon comes off as quite a generous scene partner. It’s clear that McKinnon is capable of dominating a scene, and she certainly takes over a few scenes, but for the most part she is matched riff for riff by Kunis.

That said, McKinnon does star in my favorite sequence of The Spy Who Dumped Me. The scene is late in the movie and involves a Cirque Du Soleil style routine on a trapeze, McKinnon in a wacky costume and a icy contract killer played by Ivanna Sakhno. The scene is high level goofy and McKinnon earns big laughs throughout with some terrific physical comedy. Sakhno is pretty great to having to play completely straight opposite McKinnon’s clowning.

The Spy Who Dumped Me is terrifically funny if a tad uneven. The movie is mostly riffing rather than story but when the riffing is this good it’s hard not to appreciate it. Kunis and McKinnon have remarkable chemistry and the fun they’re having is infectious. I could complain about predictability and the stop start nature of the pacing of the film but The Spy Who Dumped Me is far too fun for such complaints.

The Spy Who Dumped Me opens nationwide on August 3rd.

Movie Review: Yesterday

Yesterday (2019) 

Directed by Danny Boyle 

Written by Richard Curtis 

Starring Himesh Patel, Lily James, Joel Fry, Ed Sheeran, Kate McKinnon 

Release Date June 28th, 2019 

Published June 27th, 2019

Yesterday was a complete delight. Directed by the ingenious Danny Boyle, Academy Award winner for Slumdog Millionaire, and Love, Actually writer-director Richard Curtis, Yesterday is charming, romantic, and quite funny. The acting is wonderful as well with a core duo of newcomer Hamish Patel and Lily James providing romantic and friendly chemistry that leaps off of the screen. All of that, and some of the greatest music of all time and Yesterday becomes irresistible. 

Jack Malik (Patel) has spent 10 years trying to make his music industry dreams come true with no success, but with his trusted friend and manager Ellie (James) always at his side. Despite Ellie’s constant support, Jack finally appears ready to give up his dream and return to teaching when something dramatic happens. On his way home from his last gig, Jack gets in an accident just as all of the electricity on the planet goes out for 12 seconds. 

When Jack wakes up in the hospital the following day, minus his front teeth, he makes a reference to The Beatles that Ellie dismisses in unusual fashion. Later, after Ellie gives Jack a guitar to replace the one he lost in the accident, Jack goes to play “Yesterday” by The Beatles and his friends react as if they have never heard the song before. A confused Jack returns home in a rush and begins googling The Beatles only to find that they no longer exist in any way. 

Apparently being the only person on the planet who remembers The Beatles songs, Jack decides to start performing Beatles songs from memory, not without a serious struggle, as if he had written them. Jack finds success in a fashion not unlike the Fab Four, with a brief struggle and then a massive breakout, all while Jack wrestles with his conscience over the decision to capitalize off of someone else's art and his relationship with Ellie which he has misjudged for the past 20 years. 

Director Danny Boyle is a directorial chameleon, leaping from genre to genre, country to country and masterwork to mediocrity. Yesterday, thankfully, is in the masterwork category. While the movie is minor in social relevance, unlike his Steve Jobs or Slumdog Millionaire, it is masterful as a work of genre. Yesterday is gloriously, ridiculously, heart on its sleeve romantic in ways that modern Hollywood has struggled to be for decades. 

Much of the credit, of course, goes to screenwriter Richard Curtis, who has been at the forefront of the romance genre since the 90’s and the release of his Four Weddings and a Funeral. Curtis is a genius at giving a unique spin to the romantic cliches that are at the heart of the romance genre dating back to the early days of sound in film. What makes Yesterday even more unique is Curtis teaming with a visual master like Danny Boyle who places Curtis’s big romantic ideas into a wonderfully visual, eye-catching package. 

Of course, both Boyle and Curtis are helped by the fact that they have somehow secured the chance to use some of the greatest music of all time to tell their story. It’s famously not easy to get the rights to use the music of The Beatles in a project but the team of Boyle and Curtis were apparently enough to get this movie a break. Of course, I am sure, $10 million dollars in rights fees also helped their case. 

The music in Yesterday isn’t used as you might think. You might assume that Jack deploys the songs in a specific fashion related to his place within the story. Instead, the movie subverts expectations by having Jack simply record Beatles songs in an almost random order, just as he is able to remember them. It’s a clever approach that allows the story to exist outside of The Beatles. Was this done in case the producers could not get the rights to The Beatles and they acted accordingly in building the story? Perhaps, but the approach works nevertheless. 

The supporting cast of Yesterday is exceptionally well chosen. Kate McKinnon of Saturday Night Live fame plays Jack’s new, high powered manager who treats him like dirt even as she is giving him worldwide fame. McKinnon’s oddball dialogue which combines radical honesty with a sociopathic zeal, rarely fails to get a laugh in Yesterday. It’s a brilliant comic performance. McKinnon is backed up by pop star Ed Sheeran who sheds all pop star ego to play himself as a fan of Jack who is willing to compare himself to Salieri to Jack’s Amadeus in one particularly great scene. 

Yesterday, as I said at the start, is a complete delight. It’s a delight for any audience that gives it a chance but it is a special treat for fans of The Beatles. Yesterday is a love letter to The Beatles that balances idolatry and fandom without becoming overly precious. Yes, the film is entirely uncritical of The Beatles but it felt to me like a genuine appreciation and not overly worshipful. The Beatles are only part of this story and not the entirety of it. 

The heart of Yesterday is the romance between Jack and Ellie and the struggle to escape preconceived notions of romance and friendship. There is a warmth and complexity to Jack and Ellie’s relationship that I bought into simply because I loved these two actors so very much. Hamish Patel and Lily James are just wonderful together and I fully believed in their choices, from Jack being blind to Ellie’s feelings to her heartache and his revelation. It’s a simple but well portrayed arc and I think everyone who loves a good love story will appreciate it as much as I did. 

I was a little worried by the trailer for the film that Yesterday would simply be a movie with a clever premise and little more. What a wonderful thing to have all of my worries dashed in the first few scenes and then to grow more and more comfortably immersed in this movie as it unfolded. Yesterday invites you in and if you are open to it, especially if you love this music, and you simply fall in love with it. Yesterday is just so darn charming.