Movie Review Back on the Strip

Back on the Strip (2023) 

Directed by Chris Spencer

Written by Eric Daniel, Chris Spencer

Starring Spencer Moore II, Tiffany Haddish, Wesley Snipes, J.B Smoove, Bill Bellamy, Faizon Love 

Release Date August 18th, 2023 

Published August 23rd, 2023 

Why is this movie called Back on the Strip? That's a rhetorical question that I am merely using as a jumping off point, don't try to answer it. The main character of Back on the Strip has a role that fits neither of the two meanings the title implies. Merlin (Spencer Moore II) is not back on the strip in Las Vegas, he's never been there before. And Merlin has never stripped down as a professional stripper before. Thus, he can't be 'Back on the Strip.' I call him the main character because the movie revolves entirely around Merlin and yet you can sense that no one involved in the making of this movie has any interest in Merlin or confidence that lead actor, Spencer Moore II can carry this movie. 

Back on the Strip should just be called Merlin, or you could call it 'Magic Merlin' and hope that people get that it is a reference to Magic Mike. That would make far more sense than the actual title. Then again, considering that Back on the Strip is a slapdash, slipshod, nonsensical movie to begin with, why does it matter if the title is also nonsense. I'm spending time complaining about the title because complaining about the actual movie is a deeply unappealing obligation that I have. Here we go... 

Back on the Strip is about a dreamer named Merlin. As a kid, Merlin fell in love with magic and dreamed of being a professional magician. Unfortunately, his earliest attempt at achieving his dream was a disaster of epic proportion. Mostly, this failure introduces the running gag and theme of the film, Merlin has a giant penis. I'm not merely saying he has a giant penis, I'm saying his penis is a medical anomaly. The entirety of Back on the Strip hinges upon revealing his secret giant penis and then returning to that as a gag and plot point throughout the rest of the movie. 

Find my full length review at Filthy.Media 

Movie Review Haunted Mansion

Haunted Mansion (2023) 

Directed by Justin Simien 

Written by Katie Dippold 

Starring LaKeith Stanfield, Rosario Dawson, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson, Danny Devito, Chase W. Dillon, Jared Leto, Jamie Lee Curtis 

Release Date July 28th, 2023 

Published July 31st, 2023 

There is a lovely idea at the heart of Haunted Mansion that gets lost among the muck of trying to make a wide appeal blockbuster family movie. At the core of Haunted Mansion, director Justin Simien, creator of the ingenious, Dear White People, appears fascinated by the concept of grief and the ways it manifests in negative ways for many people. Losing someone you love is a life altering event, it can lead to any number of negative manifestations if it is not dealt with and processed in a healthy fashion. It manifests in Haunted Mansion via LaLeith Stanfield's Ben, an astrophysicist who gave up everything after his young wife died. 

Stanfield is unquestionably an actor who can handle this kind of heavy material but the heavy nature of Haunted Mansion unfortunately drags on what is otherwise intended to be a summer blockbuster version of a Disney theme park ride. While Simien is working in the emotional space of Stanfield's grieving widower, the rest of the movie appears to be going for something broad, campy, scary and yet family friendly and the tonal dissonance is a big part of the overall failure of Haunted Mansion. By attempting to serve a number of ideas, the film ends up serving none of those ideas particularly well. 

Ben (Stanfield) was once a very successful and happy Astrophysicist shyly using his unique profession to hit on women. One of those women is Alyssa (Charity Jordan), a tour guide who leads haunted tours through New Orleans. Ben, being a man of science, doesn't believe in ghosts but he still falls hard for Alyssa and the two end up getting married at some point, we don't see that part. What we do see is that Alyssa is no longer with us, a mystery that will be unsatisfyingly resolved later in the film, and Ben is floundering. Having given up all aspects of his previous life, Ben now leads Alyssa's tours while drunk and being entirely uninterested in indulging and any notions of ghosts being real. 

Ben's trajectory is altered forever by the arrival of Father Kent (Owen Wilson). Kent knows Ben by reputation. He knows that Ben had, years earlier, invented a camera that could theoretically, take pictures of the dead. He has a job for Ben. A single mother, Gabbie (Rosario Dawson), has moved into a decrepit mansion on the outskirts of New Orleans. Gabbie, and her son, Travis (Chase W. Dillon), are also dealing with the fairly recent loss of Travis' father, a loss that neither mother or son has fully processed. The parallel of both Ben and Gabbie having lost someone is used as something of a shorthand to bring them together as love interests but the love story feels rushed and forced. 

That's the thing about Haunted Mansion, I am this far into this review and I haven't mentioned any ghosts. That's because none of the ghosts or scares in Haunted Mansion are very memorable. Jamie Lee Curtis is perhaps the most interesting of the spooks. She plays a dead psychic who was killed and her spirit was trapped inside of a crystal ball. The visual of Curtis's head in the crystal ball isn't bad but its not very elaborate. It's fine, like far too much of Haunted Mansion is fine, it's there, it exists, but it doesn't have much of anything interesting about it. 

The big bad of Haunted Mansion is the Hat Box ghost, played by Jared Leto. The Hat Box Ghost is a remarkably weak villain. The ghost's real name is Crump and the lame comparisons between Crump and Donald Trump are not stated out loud but are very clear. It's a lame non-joke, clearly intended but not well executed at all. It stands out as a bad idea because Leto's performance as Hatbox Ghost is half-hearted at best. The same can be said of the weak CGI look of the character which is scarier in a single drawing by a sketch artist in the movie than it ever is alive and moving around in Haunted Mansion. 

Incidentally, the Police sketch artist in Haunted Mansion is played by Hasan Minaj, a very funny man who is wasted in a nothing performance. Minaj is there to skeptically poke fun at Stanfield and Devito's claims about a ghost and he's offscreen in less than 3 minutes. And, Minaj isn't the biggest waste of talent in Haunted Mansion. Dan Levy and Winona Ryder both make appearances in Haunted Mansion and you are left to wonder if they owed someone a favor and that favor was being in this movie. Levy, one of the most dynamic comic personalities working today gets less than 2 minutes of screentime and his outfit is funnier than anything his character does. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media

Movie Review Nobody's Fool

Nobody's Fool (2018) 

Directed by Tyler Perry

Written by Tyler Perry 

Starring Tika Sumpter, Tiffany Haddish, Whoopi Goldberg

Release Date November 2nd, 2018

Published November 3rd, 2018

Nobody’s Fool is marketed as a platform for the brilliant Tiffany Haddish, one of the breakout stars of the last two years. The trailer for Nobody's Fool would have you believe that Haddish is being set loose in the kind of the leading role that plays to her strengths as a force of nature style performer who dominates the scene by being more alive than everyone around her. Finally, after the promise of Girls Trip and all of the buzz about how much Haddish is the next big thing we were supposed to see Tiffany Haddish step forward into the spotlight.

Nope! Tiffany Haddish is not actually the lead actress in Nobody’s Fool. Tika Sumpter, a nice actress in her own right, is actually in the traditional romantic lead of Nobody’s Fool. Haddish is, instead, a proxy for writer-director-executive producer Tyler Perry who employs Haddish as an avatar for his Madea character. Little of what Haddish does in Nobody’s Fool is anything Perry hasn’t done with Madea in other movies and as you can imagine, that’s a pretty big waste of Tiffany Haddish.

Nobody’s Fool is the story of Danica (Sumpter), a successful, sexy, young woman who we meet when she rolls out of bed and dances to Janet Jackson’s Miss You Much, a song appropriate for the fact that she misses her boyfriend Charlie (Mehcad Brooks), who she’s never actually met in person but is in love with. Danica may not see her boyfriend but thankfully she’s not short on male attention as Frank (Omari Hardwick) from the coffee shop next to her office romances her everyday with free coffee and a rose.

Danica’s happy, well-ordered life of privilege is thrown for a loop when her sister Tanya (Haddish) is released from prison and their mother, Lola, played by Whoopi Goldberg, forces Danica to take Tanya in. Tanya then immediately gets a job at Frank's coffee shop and sets about screwing up every aspect of her little sister’s life. First she figures out that Danica is getting Catfished by Charlie by literally getting the guys from MTV’s Catfish to investigate Charlie.

Then she manipulates Frank and Danica into bed together where they begin falling in love only to have a major monkey wrench thrown into the story that I won’t spoil if you still want to see this despite my not recommending that you skip it. It’s an unpredictable twist to be sure but it is also incomprehensibly stupid. I can’t fully go into how dimwitted this twist is without spoilers, all I can say is that an utterly embarrassing cameo by Chris Rock is the rotten cherry on top of all the bad decisions that culminate in this twist.

Where to begin with the misguided mistakes of Nobody’s Fool. The most egregious from my perspective comes in how Tyler Perry uses his supposed star, Tiffany Haddish. Haddish’s foul-mouthed, supernova charisma made her a star in Girls Trip but here, that same nasty charm is used to make Tanya an avatar for the awfulness of Tyler Perry’s usual Madea schtick. Every line out of Tanya’s mouth could be lifted from past Perry movies where his drag character Madea is little more than a series of unfunny, dirty, non-sequiturs that go on for seemingly hour after pointless hour.

Haddish still manages to shine through the box that Perry is shoving her into because she’s far more talented than the hacky character she’s being forced into. The charisma monster of her Girls Trip persona cannot be contained and occasionally in Nobody’s Fool we get a little of that character such as a scene where she is offered a job at the coffee shop and can’t resist offering the owner some sex as a thank you. It’s horribly inappropriate but it’s delivered with a devilish energy that is irresistible.

Sadly, that type of scene is limited in Nobody’s Fool. Surprisingly, Haddish is kept offscreen for a great deal of more time than you expect also. I mentioned before that we were suckered into thinking she was the lead character in Nobody’s Perfect, and we were. She’s unquestionably in a supporting role here despite being multiple times more interesting than the sweet but otherwise bland Tika Sumpter.

That’s not Sumpter’s fault really, Tiffany Haddish is simply not a performer who melts into the background of an ensemble. It would be like having Bugs Bunny in a scene and having him just stand there and listen while someone earnestly explains the plot of the story. That simply doesn’t work, not for Haddish whose character lacks the patience to be in the background and not for the movie which casts her and asks us to accept when she’s not out front. All we can think is, when is Tiffany going to do something wild?

That’s a perception problem created by us and by the movie. It’s our fault for expecting Tiffany Haddish to be a particular way as an actress but it is also the fault of the marketing team that put her front and center and made promises that the film does not keep. We were promised a Tiffany Haddish movie and we got a Madea movie minus Madea. Tiffany Haddish is way better than Madea boo. A Madea movie is still no prize, even without the sight of Tyler Perry in drag.

If you do decide to see Nobody’s Fool despite my warning just remember that I told you so. Tiffany Haddish is not the star of this movie. She tries, and occasionally, she overcomes Tyler Perry to find a joke that works, but mostly she’s stuck playing out tired Madea gags with an energy and life that are commendable on her part as a professional but misguided because this movie doesn’t deserve Tiffany Haddish.

Movie Review: The Lego Movie 2

The Lego Movie 2 (2019) 

Directed by Mike Mitchell

Written by Lord and Miller 

Starring Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Tiffany Haddish, Stephanie Beatriz, Allison Brie

Release Date February 8th, 2019 

Published February 7th, 2019 

Has the magic of the Lego movies already worn out? The last Lego movie, Lego Ninjago, was a strong indication of the limits of the franchise. That film was so remarkably dull for non-fans of Ninjago, like myself, that I walked out halfway through the movie. I hadn’t laughed one time during the first 45 minutes of the movie and I had the distinct impression that what I was missing was something that perhaps only Ninjago fans would understand. Then again, I didn’t hear many of them laughing either as I took my early exit. 

I assumed however, that Lego Ninjago was just a case of a too insular, fandom servicing, cult piece that I was not meant to understand. The Lego Movie 2 however, is supposed to be welcoming. The first film roared out of the gates with a wide appeal story about an every-man, named Emmett (Chris Pratt), learning to become a hero in a world with actual heroes including Batman (Will Arnett) and Wildstyle aka Lucy (Elizabeth Banks). 

The broad pop culture burlesque of The Lego Movie proved to be an unexpected delight that Lego then capitalized upon with the equally unexpected and ingenious, Lego Batman. That film took the gags of The Lego Movie and turned the absurdity up to 11 and, in the process, exposed the all too seriousness of the DC Movie Universe by creating arguably the best characterization of The Caped Crusader not played by Christian Bale. 

Much of the success of those two films however, is owed to creators who would not be taking part in either Lego Ninjago or The Lego Movie 2: The Second One. Phil Lord and writing and directing partner Christopher Miller may have writing credits on The Lego Movie 2 but the film is distinctly lacking in their anarchic genius. Instead we get Mike Mitchell whose middle of the road vision has given us Trolls and Shrek Forever After, a pair of mostly forgettable efforts with just enough easy to process laughs to be passable. 

The Lego Movie 2: The Second One (and what an inspired title that is) picks up the story of Emmett and his pals, Lucy and Batman, just after the action of the first Lego Movie. Finn (Jadon Sand) is informed by his dad (WIll Ferrell) that his little sister will also be allowed to play with the legos in the basement and the two will have to get along or neither will have legos to play with. Five years later, with brother and sister at odds, our heroic lego characters are no longer city dwellers in a place where ‘Everything is Awesome.’ Instead, the lego world is a dystopian wasteland at odds with the aliens of the Sistar System. 

One day, the alien General Mayhem attacks and kidnaps Emmett’s pals and he must go on a journey through the dreaded ‘Stair-Gate’ and into the Sistar System to rescue them. Aiding Emmett on his journey is a newcomer who calls himself Rex Dangervest (Chris Pratt, again). Rex is introduced more than once by an announcer who puts over his Barbie-esque ability to master many, sometimes mundane, activities. 

The voice cast of The Lego Movie 2 is as spectacular as the original with Pratt, Banks and Arnett terrific in their memorable roles from the original and backed up by equally brilliant newcomers, Tiffany Haddish, Richard Ayoade and a cameo that I won’t spoil as it is the best runner in the entire movie. Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, and Will Ferrell also reprise roles from the original Lego Movie but these are little more than cameos. 

I can’t sit here and tell you I didn’t enjoy The Lego Movie 2: The Second One, because I did laugh plenty during the movie. I am however, a little letdown. The spirit is definitely lacking in this sequel. The premise is not nearly as consistently funny and inventive as the original. There is an over-reliance on pop references that feels lazy here even as it felt fresh and funny in the original. The lack of Lord and Miller’s anarchic spirit is definitely felt here. 

The Lego Movie 2: The Second One feels worn out, a little tired. The look is less exciting, the humorous Mad Max inspired animated dystopia has promise but is abandoned quickly for the excess of a space setting that is less inspired. Tiffany Haddish’s character, a Queen who can shape-shift into almost any character design, is not fully taken advantage of and becomes little more than a plot device by the end. 

There are still enough laughs in The Lego Movie 2: The Second One but much like that lazy subtitle, the tiredness of The Lego franchise is showing. Instead of Lego Ninjago being a one off flop in this budding animated franchise, it now appears to have been a warning that this once flavorful franchise has already run out of juice. The uninspired title The Second One proves to be as much of a warning. They put no effort into giving the film a title and only slightly more effort into making something reminiscent of the first one.