Movie Review Spirited

Spirited (2022) 

Directed by Sean Anders 

Written by Sean Anders, John Morris 

Starring Will Ferrell, Ryan Reynolds, Octavia Spencer, Sunita Mani, Tracy Morgan 

Release Date November 11th, 2022 (Apple TV) 

Published November 11th, 2022

Imagine that the three ghosts that visit Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, are part of an elaborate business that specializes into scaring bad people into good people, all while singing very on the nose show tunes, and you have the movie Spirited starring Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds. This musical comedy posits that Ebenezer Scrooge (Will Ferrell) became the Ghost of Christmas Present after his life ended. Now, Scrooge along with his old pal Marley (Patrick Page), the Ghost of Christmas Past (Sunita Mani), and the Ghost of Christmas Future (Tracy Morgan), works to redeem those in needing redemption. 

For their latest case, the Ghosts and Marley are targeting a big fish, a so-called 'unredeemable' human being named Clint Briggs (Ryan Reynolds). Briggs is a bad guy. We meet him as he is making a presentation to owners of Christmas Tree Lots and he is encouraging them to demonize those that don't use real Christmas trees as hating Christmas. Briggs' job is all about creating chaos and division in order to sell narratives that protect brands and rich elite jerks. Marley is convinced that Briggs cannot be saved. Scrooge however, sees some of himself in Briggs and emotionally links his own redemption story to that of this awful jerk. 

From here we watch as Scrooge and company stage the life of Clint Briggs. They recreate his childhood home and bring his late sister to life. Clint has a lot of guilt and complicated feelings about his late sister, a saint who took care of him as a kid while their mom was a comical jerk. When the sister dies, Clint refused to take on her daughter, instead leaving the daughter to stay with his loving but bumbling younger brother, Owen (Joe Tippett). Naturally, Scrooge will use this moment to tug on Clint's heart strings but as happens throughout Spirited, Clint is not an easy nut to crack. 

For his part, Clint sets about sewing chaos in the meticulous plot to redeem him. He starts by seducing the Ghost of Christmas Past and then by twisting Ferrell's Ghost of Christmas Present/Scrooge into knots with endless questions about his past, why what he does is necessary and why Clint himself is happy to be seen as Unredeemable. Of course, we all know where this is headed. There is no surprise o be found in Spirited and thus the movie has to rely on gags, comical songs, and the strength of the cast to sell this overly complicated and yet predictable story. 

Spirited kind of works. This is undoubtedly Will Ferrell's best performance since 2010's The Other Guys, the last time he earned really big laughs on screen. In the last decade, Ferrell has made some of the worst movies going and thus I was happy to be able to laugh with him again. I've missed the Will Ferrell that wasn't a desperate, flailing, sweaty mess. His Scrooge is a strong combination of his Elf persona with his dramatic, adult performances in Stranger Than Fiction and Everything Must Go. The wistfulness and longing in this character give a genuine quality to his energetic, desperate for the joke side and that goes a long way toward making the performance tolerable and even entertaining. 

Ryan Reynolds sparks well with Ferrell as Scrooge. Reynolds' playful approach to being a massive jerk provides a strong arc for the character, even as it is a supremely predictable arc. Reynolds is funny, charming, angry, and rounds into genuine kindness in a real and enjoyable fashion. Strange as it seems for such a broad comedy, it's among the most genuine and enjoyable performances from Reynolds in some time. Somehow, getting to sing has enlivened Reynolds after several recent rather bored performances. 

Click here for my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review Horrible Bosses 2

Horrible Bosses 2 (2014) 

Directed by Sean Anders

Written by Sean Anders, John Morris 

Starring Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Jennifer Aniston, Jamie Foxx, Chris Pine 

Release Date November 26th, 2014 

Published November 25th, 2014

Streaming on HBO Max 

“Horrible Bosses 2″ is a strange experience. While it was happening I laughed and it seemed to be working. I step away from it however,  and time is unkind. “Horrible Bosses 2″ unravels like a homemade Christmas sweater when placed under a critical eye.

Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day are back in the roles of Nick, Curt and Dale and out from under the yoke of their horrible bosses that they attempted to kill in the 2011 original. Striking out on their own they have an invention that they hope will make them their own Bosses. Unfortunately, though the product does attract financiers, our heroes’ business instincts leave them in the hole and forced once again to extreme measures.

2 time Academy Award winner Christoph Waltz is the big bad Boss this time who quickly hoodwinks the trio out of their invention. Waltz’s Bert Hanson takes little time outwitting our heroes leading to the scheme that is the center point of the film: kidnapping Hanson’s son Rex (Chris Pine) in hopes to score enough ransom to save the company and the dream of not having a boss.

Starring Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, Charlie Day, Jamie Foxx, Chris Pine, Jennifer Aniston and Christoph Waltz

Energy is the main reason why “Horrible Bosses 2″ works in the moment but does not sustain itself in memory. The laughs that the film generates come from the immediate energy with which Bateman, Sudeikis, Day and Pine interact. Each segment of “Horrible Bosses 2″ plays out the same way: a scene begins with one character introducing a plot point and then the other actors riff on it until things get loud enough for Bateman to throw cold water on the whole thing as the straight man.

Scene after scene in “Horrible Bosses 2″ plays out in the exact same fashion and eventually the law of diminishing returns kicks in. As a change up, the third act turns nasty with an unexpected murder and the return to the plot of Jennifer Aniston’s sexpot and Jamie Foxx’s hustler each to lesser levels of excitement and humor.

I’m being hard on “Horrible Bosses 2″ and yet I really did laugh a lot during the movie. Bateman, Sudeikis and Day can’t help but be funny together and the obvious freedom they have to invent their dialogue allows them to bounce off each other in the colorful and familiar fashion of real friends.

Those interactions however, even as they are funny in the moment, don’t have a lasting quality. Nothing about “Horrible Bosses 2″ resonates long after you see it. The energy of the moment dissipates quickly after the movie ends and what remains is the vague memory of laughs and some of the nastier parts of the plot that failed to enhance the humor.

Movie Review Instant Family

Instant Family (2018) 

Directed by Sean Anders 

Written by John Morris, Sean Anders

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Rose Byrne, Isabela Merced, Margo Martindale, Octavia Spencer 

Release Date November 16th, 2018 

Published November 17th, 2018 

I have struggled genuinely with how I feel about the comedy Instant Family starring Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne. This family comedy about a childless couple who decides to become foster parents to three orphan siblings is at times maddeningly, cringe-inducingly hard to watch. Characters occasionally drift into an area of being inhumanly silly. And yet, at the end of the movie, the uplifting message kind of works, to the point where I teared up. 

Did I tear up because the movie is that effective or because Instant Family is based on a true story and is, in many ways, a commercial for a charity of the same name, Instant Family, that works to unite orphaned kids and foster parents? I deeply admire the message of Instant Family and the few human moments that the movie gets right, it gets very right but did the movie cheat? Or is it actually good? 

Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne star in Instant Family as Pete and Ellie. Pete and Ellie own their own house flipping business where he handles the carpentry and she handles the design. Their lives are perfect but they’ve been so busy with business, they’ve neglected the notion of family. With Ellie’s sister Kim (Allyn Rachel) and her husband, Russ (Tom Segura), talking about having kids, it gets Pete and Ellie thinking about it. 

Both Pete and Ellie agree that they don’t want to be old parents, that they are passed the idea of having a baby. They are however, the right age for a 5 to 8 year old kid and thus adoption enters the equation. After Pete looks at a website of kids in foster care he is overwhelmed by the cuteness and the two enroll in an 8 week course to determine their fitness to be parents. Comedian Tig Notaro and Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer are the heads of the adoption agency. 

After several bad comedy scenes of Pete and Ellie and a group of colorful but not too colorful extras failing and succeeding at the basic necessities of being parents, the couples are ready to choose their kids. For Pete and Ellie, they fall for Lizzy (Izabella Moner), a teenager who they feel pity for because no one even talks to kids Lizzy’s age about adoption, she’s 15. Lizzy has more reasons why she’s been hard to place, she has two younger siblings, Juan (Gustavo Quiroz) and Lita (Julianna Gamiz). 

Challenged by the adoption agents, Pete and Ellie decide to take a big swing and agree to become foster parents to all three kids. Now the question becomes, can they actually handle having an instant family? And what about the kids’ mom, a former alcoholic who is just out of prison and in a program in hopes of perhaps getting her kids back? Will the forced drama ever cease and allow the movie to have a genuine moment. 

Instant Family was co-written and directed by Sean Anders whose taste for low brow humor and gag focused nonsense, led to the creation of terrible movies such as That’s My Boy, Sex Drive and Daddy’s Home 1 & 2. I recognize that some people like the Daddy’s Home movies, but I do not and by extension, I really don’t care for Instant Family either. I was wondering throughout why the shrill, awkward, and unfunny gags of Instant Family felt so familiar, then I looked at the director’s resume. 

Anders has a hard time trying to bring a real moment to the screen. He’s so focused on terrible jokes that he loses track of trying to tell actual stories with relatable characters. His taste for broad and crude caricatures sinks what little good there is about Instant Family. Mark Wahlberg, Rose Byrne, and co-stars Margo Martindale, as Wahlberg’s mom, Tig Notaro and Octavia Spencer, appear to be trying to get to the heart of his material but the director and the script keep interrupting with nonsense. 

There is a running gag in Instant Family where the son, Juan, keeps getting hurt. It’s never funny but it just keeps happening where he’s hit in the face with any sporting equipment nearby, he steps in broken glass, he gets a nail in his foot. Why would anyone think this is a funny running gag for a child in a movie? Especially a child in foster care who may or may not have a history of abuse? 

There are occasional moments where the characters are allowed to be real but they are drowned out by moments of shrill hysterics such as a dinner scene that begins with a minor disagreement and ends with the kitchen table on fire and Wahlberg trying to put out the fire with ketchup. That sounds much funnier than it plays in the movie. In the movie it’s a lot of yelling and chaos and zero laughs. 

So why did I cry at the end of Instant Family? Because the film ends on a genuine note with Lizzy realizing that her new parents do really love her and her brother and sister and then the film cuts to a picture of the real family the movie is based on. And then it’s a montage of photos of families that the charity Instant Family has united over the years. You’d have to be some kind of soulless monster not to be moved by these photos. 

Does that mean the movie succeeds? No, it’s definitely cheating, even if it is cheating for a good cause. The movie is mostly bad but it does have its heart in the right place. I don’t recommend it as a movie but I do recommend Instant Family as a charity. It’s nice that Hollywood was kind enough to make a 100 plus minute commercial for Instant Family but that doesn’t mean the movie is worth your time. 

Instead, why don’t you google Instant Family Charity and look at the pictures of newly united families. You will have a far more moving experience without having to have this movie shout shrill gags in your ear for nearly two hours.