Movie Review The Big Sick

The Big Sick (2017) 

Directed by Michael Showalter 

Written by Emily V. Gordon, Kumail Nanjiani 

Starring Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan, Ray Romano, Holly Hunter

Release Date June 23rd, 2017 

The Big Sick broke my heart into a million little pieces and slowly pieced it back together throughout its gentle, sweet and very, very funny 120 minutes. Featuring an unconventional but brilliant lead performer, a radiant love interest and two of the best possible supporting players anyone could ask for, The Big Sick is, thus far, the best movie of 2017.

Kumail Nanjiani stars in the mostly true story of his love story with real life wife Emily Gordon, who also co-wrote the screenplay for the film with Kumail. The unconventional love story finds Kumail struggling to balance the demands of his traditional Pakistani born family with his desire to live outside the strictures of religion and in a more conventional style of American, big city life.

Still discovering who he is and what he believes in, Kumail stumbles into a romance with Emily, played by Zoe Kazan, equally thoughtful and searching young person. While each playfully and sarcastically discusses their unwillingness to become attached to the other the attraction becomes something neither can deny as they discover in each other pieces of themselves that they didn’t know existed.

Click here for my review of The Big Sick at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Spoiler Alert

Spoiler Alert (2022) 

Directed by Michael Showalter 

Written by Michael Showalter

Starring Jim Parsons, Ben Aldridge, Sally Field, Bill Irwin 

Release Date December 9th, 2022 

Published December 12th, 2022 

Spoiler Alert stars former Big Bang Theory star Jim Parsons as television critic Michael Ausiello. Michael lives for TV having grown up in a broken home and watching daytime soap operas with his mother. As we join Michael's story, it's 2004, and Michael is deeply neurotic, laden with anxiety and insecurities, and generally working endless hours to avoid life. Then, a friend drags him out to a bar for a night out. As Michael very unnaturally wears a Yankees cap, it's jock night at the bar, he manages to lock eyes with Kit (Ben Aldridge), and sparks fly. 

Initially, it's just a hook up, Kit claims to prefer the occasional fling. However, both men start to catch feelings rather quickly and a romance begins to bloom. The only thing standing in their way are their equally formidable emotional hurdles. For Michael, this includes a host of things he must talk to a therapist about. As for Kit, he has not told his parents, Marilyn and Bob (Sally Field and Bill Irwin), that he's gay. Michael's mom is... a lot, and telling her could be an ordeal. 

Another obstacle is Michael's crippling addiction to the cartoon The Smurfs. In a very funny early subplot, Michael comes up with absurd reasons to keep from having Kit over to his apartment. This is because Michael has one of the foremost collections of Smurfs memorabilia on the East Coast and he's rightfully concerned that Kit might find this fetish for little blue people off-putting. It's actually a kind of perfect test for their relationship. If Kit can accept Michael at his most Smurf-y, he can accept him for anything. 

The lovely romantic comedy portion of Spoiler Alert lasts longer than you might expect. That's because anyone who has read Michael Ausiello's best seller, Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies at the End, knows that Kit develops cancer and the rest of the story is about Michael and Kit repairing their troubled romance just as Kit is dealing with stage four rectal cancer. So many movies don't know what do when the outcome is already so well known, there is a tendency for movies like this to spin their wheels. Spoiler Alert, thankfully, is carried by a wonderful cast and a quirky sense of romance and humor. 

Jim Parsons is working hard to escape the shadow of his beloved TV persona, Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory. Roles such as this are a very strong step in the right direction. Though similar to Sheldon in that Michael is a big bag of tics and untended neuroses, it's a much less mannered and far more human performance in Spoiler Alert. Parsons is working a lot of actorly muscles that he never trained on his hit sitcom, reaching moments of genuine romance, sexuality, and humor that his television persona was built without. 

That Parsons never misses a beat in Spoiler Alert is a testament to the actorly range we are only now experiencing following his twelve seasons on a hit TV series. His romance with Ben Aldridge's Kit is wonderfully realized. The two men have a strong romantic chemistry that is true to both of their hang ups and anxieties while fostering their connection wit honesty, romance and intimacy. I adored this couple and the ups and downs of their too short romance, cut short by tragedy, are deeply endearing. 

Click here for my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review: Wet Hot American Summer

Wet Hot American Summer (2001) 

Directed by David Wain 

Written by David Wain, Michael Showalter

Starring Paul Rudd, Janeane Garofalo, David Hyde Pierce, Elizabeth Banks, Ken Marino 

Release Date July 27th, 2001 

Published January 15th, 2002

A few weeks back theatres were infected with the inept, unfunny, teen movie sendup Not Another Teen Movie. An exercise in stupidity, it quickly disappeared from theatres. To see how a teen movie sendup should work, see the new to video and DVD Wet Hot American Summer, a hysterical take on the teen movie sub-genre, the summer camp movie.

Summer is the brainchild of David Wain and Michael Showalter, better known as members of the comedy troupe The State whose short-lived MTV sketch show mastered the art of teen movie parody. Showalter also stars in the film as the nerdy camp counselor who on the last day of camp is going to win over the hottest girl. Janeane Garofalo also stars as the head counselor who is romancing David Hyde Pierce as a nerdy scientist. Indeed all the great camp movie cliches are in place, save for the evil rival camp whose owner wants to takeover the camp, a cliche that is referred to but then knowingly dismissed in one the movies funniest scenes.

The films best moments are provided by Law and Order SVU star Christopher Meloni as the camp cook, whose best friend is a can of mixed vegetables. Anyone who ever saw Meloni on HBO's Oz will laugh hysterically everytime he's onscreen.

If anything keeps Wet Hot American Summer from being a great movie instead of a good movie, it's Garofalo. At times, she can't seem to keep up with her costars outrageous-ness. It's not her fault, all the members of The State, Showalter, Ken Marino and Michael Ian Black have been together a long time and have a chemistry that can't be picked up in the time it takes to shoot a movie.

Wet Hot American Summer is everything Not Another Teen Movie wasn't. It's funny, intelligent and over the top in ways that don't involve excrement and bodily functions. Let's hope Michael Showalter, David Wain and the other members of The State get the chance to make more movies, though the film's box office makes that unlikely.

Movie Review: The Eyes of Tammy Faye

The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021) 

Directed by Michael Showalter 

Written by Abe Sylvia 

Starring Jessica Chastain, Andrew Garfield, Vincent D'Onofrio, Cherry Jones 

Release Date September 17th, 2021 

Published December 24th, 2021 

A trope that has become overused in biopics is the necessity to provide a literal explanation for something that becomes part of the life of a famous person after they become famous. With that in mind, I was prepared with a heavy sigh and an eye roll while watching the biopic, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, all about the life of Tammy Faye Bakker, played by Jessica Chastain. As I started the movie, I girded myself for a very literal explanation of why Tammy Faye began wearing garish clown-like makeup. 

What a surprise then to see that the main explanation of Tammy’s love for makeup was simply because she liked makeup. The backstory of Tammy Faye’s makeup gets a very brief scene at the very start of the movie and is mostly left behind as Tammy’s true obsession is revealed to be religion and being completely oblivious. Credit goes to director Michael Showalter who makes many smart choices in how to bring the unusual life of Tammy Faye Bakker to the big screen. 

The Eyes of Tammy Faye stars Jessica Chastain in the role of Tammy Faye Bakker and Andrew Garfield as her husband, con-man conservative Christian talk show host, Jim Bakker. The two met at a bible college in Minnesota. Here, Jim preached prosperity gospel, much to the dismay of his professors but to the great delight of his classmate, Tammy Faye. It was, and likely remains, Jim Bakker’s belief that God wants certain people to have great wealth and anyone with great wealth is therefore blessed by God. 

Never mind all of that stuff Jesus said about the poor, Jim Bakker was not one who believed that there was divinity in poverty. Thus he set out to be rich by any means necessary. After marrying Tammy Faye, Jim took Tammy Faye on the road where they preached the gospel and Jim took out loans and raised money for their personal needs via the many church congregations that accepted him as a guest preacher. 

Meanwhile, Tammy Faye also had her eyes on the horizon, searching for her big break. That break comes when Tammy Faye incorporates a puppet show into their preaching and singing and it gets seen by leaders of the Christian Broadcast Network, owned and operated by Pat Robertson (Gabriel Olds) and Jerry Falwell (Vincent D’Onofrio). They jump at the chance to bring the young and talented Jim and Tammy Faye aboard for a kids show but Jim has bigger plans. 

After finding success with children, Jim pitches himself as the host of a late night religious talk show that would be called The 700 Club. This comes at a cost however, to his marriage as a pregnant Tammy Faye is left off of the show and sulks at home. Before long Tammy Faye is demanding that Jim spend time with her while also getting in his ear about how they should be making more money. It’s Tammy Faye who plants the seeds that would become their crowning achievement, PTL, Praise the Lord the cable channel. 

Here is where Jim and Tammy Faye would find multi-million dollar success but also eventually find their grave downfall. As successful as the PTL was, Jim’s dedication to prosperity gospel drove him to constantly spending more than the PTL was bringing, especially spending it on himself while allowing Tammy Faye to shop to her heart’s content. While Jim desperately chases every dollar, Tammy Faye quickly comes to recognize the emptiness of their lives and the conflict between Jim and Tammy Faye eventually spills into their very public downfall. 

It’s a good story but not one that translates easily to a film narrative. Despite what The Eyes of Tammy Faye might want you to believe, Tammy Faye is not an entirely sympathetic character. Some might be able to buy Tammy Faye as a naïve innocent, as Jessica Chastain plays her, but reality also indicates that Tammy Faye was as or even more ambitious than her husband. Even as she may have been a victim of her husband's duplicitousness, she very much indulged and enjoyed the lifestyle trappings that his scheming made possible. 

The Eyes of Tammy Faye quite often tips into hagiography, as if the filmmakers and star Jessica Chastain were striving to make Tammy Faye a martyr and a counterpoint to her con-man husband. I say that but I don't say it with a great deal of confidence, especially after a final scene that appears to push the film into an area of camp that seems to both deify and deflate the legacy the film had been building for Tammy Faye. The final moments highlight a problem with The Eyes of Tammy Faye that's difficult to explain. 

For most of the movie, it doesn't appear that the film has a sense of humor regarding Tammy Faye, she's not being pitied or parodied. The final act, and especially the final scene of the movie, are the first time we get a sense of what I know I was looking for in the film, a slightly more savage and unrelenting look at Tammy Faye. In the final scene, the film reaches a remarkable climax that is both high camp and genuinely emotional. It's a moment where the potential of The Eyes of Tammy Faye emerges. Sadly, it emerges to late to rescue the movie and instead serves to highlight the tone that was missing from the first two acts of The Eyes of Tammy Faye. 

Ultimately, I am mixed on The Eyes of Tammy Faye. I adored the ending and I loved elements of Jessica Chastain's full bodied performance as Tammy Faye. The problem, for me, appears to be that Chastain started to like Tammy Faye and feel protective of her. That appears at times to be at odds with the tone that director Michael Showalter is going for. The disconnect between her desire to do justice to Tammy Faye and Showalter's high wire act attempt to bridge Chastain's performance into his more savage send up of Tammy Faye, ultimately short circuits both Chastain and Showalter's efforts.