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: Cop Out

Cop Out (2010) 

Directed by Kevin Smith

Written by Kevin Smith

Starring Bruce Willis, Tracy Morgan, Rashida Jones, Michelle Trachtenberg

Release Date February 26th, 2010 

Published February 25th, 2010 

Let's get one thing straight, I am in fact a Kevin Smith apologist. I have loved all of Kevin's movies, yes even Jersey Girl, loved it. Thus, I remove any thought of objectivity from this review of Cop Out. I am a Kevin Smith fan and I liked Cop Out. While other critics seem to delight in trashing this harmless, filthy mouthed throwback to 80's buddy cop movies, I sat back and laughed uproariously.

Cop Out stars Bruce Willis and Tracey Morgan as detectives Jimmy Monroe and Paul Hodges. They seem like total opposites; Jimmy is laid back yet menacing while Paul is wild and outlandish. Yet, they have been partners for years with a notable reputation, good cops who tend to find trouble.

The latest trouble involves getting an informant killed and blowing a major undercover drug sting. This gets them suspended for a month. Meanwhile, Jimmy is trying to find the cash to pay for his daughter's (Michelle Trachtenberg) wedding and Paul suspects that his wife (Rashida Jones). These subplots offer funny sidelights for Jason Lee and Sean William Scott.

The meat of the plot unfolds when Jimmy gets robbed of a valuable baseball card and he and Jimmy set out to retrieve it. Naturally, the card lands in the hands of the drug dealer who they were after in the first place and none of this is really all that interesting or important. The plot of Cop Out is secondary to Smith, Willis and Morgan hamming it up in homage to the great buddy cop movies of the 80's.

Kevin Smith is the perfect director for Cop Out. The film is both a send up of and a loving tribute to goofball buddy cop movies. Smith being a virtual pop culture almanac delivers on every beat of the buddy cop movies we love right down to a synth pop score that only Harold Faltermeyer could really appreciate.

Kevin Smith, Bruce Willis and Tracey Morgan dive headlong into the parody fun not with obvious, Naked Gun style gags but by doing exactly what an 80's buddy cop movie did but with Kevin Smith style language, filled with plenty of four letter words and references that will someday make a great drinking game.

Is Cop Out a great movie? No. The plot is slapdash the subplot payoffs are meaningless and don't even start on the continuity errors. None of that however, really matters because Cop Out is what it sets out to be, a goofball tribute to the buddy cop movies that dominated the 1980's. Forget the Filmmaker Magazine critiques; this is fun stuff for an audience seeking a mindless toss back to the movies they loved in the 80's.

Movie Review Little Man

Little Man (2006) 

Directed by Keenan Ivory Wayans 

Written by Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans

Starring Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Kerry Washington, Tracy Morgan, Chazz Palminteri 

Release Date July 14th, 2008 

Published July 14th, 2008

The Wayans' brothers brand of lowbrow humor is undeniably popular. Having driven the cross dressing comedy White Chicks to box office heights no one expected, the brothers were also the minds behind the Scary Movie franchise before branching out on their own. The Wayans brothers joint is another high concept comedy with a transformational twist. In Little Man Marlon Wayans transforms from a 6 foot 2 inch, rail thin, stick figure to a 3 foot tall, barrel chested criminal dwarf. It's a shockingly good special effect. If only the film's comedy were as impressive.

Fresh from prison Calvin (Marlon Wayans) and his pal Percy (Tracey Morgan) have already landed a new criminal gig. They are to steal a giant diamond from a jewelry store and deliver it to a gangster (Chazz Palminteri) in exchange for 100,000 dollars. To get the diamond Percy packs the diminutive three foot tall Calvin into a gym bag and lets him loose in the store while he distracts the employees.

Things don't go as planned and soon the pair are being chased by the cops and must ditch the diamond. Calvin drops the rock into the bag of a newlywed couple, Darryl (Shawn Wayans) and Vanessa (Kerry Washington), in a grocery store in hopes of snatching it back after the cops have left. Unfortunately for Calvin, the couple leaves the store before the cops and now he and Percy must find a way to get the diamond back without simply busting down the couple's door.

So Calvin launches a complicated plan. Having overheard Darryl and Vanessa in the grocery store arguing about having a baby, Calvin decides he will give them a baby. With Percy placing him in a basket with a note, Calvin will become baby Cal and infiltrate the home and when Darryl and Vanessa aren't looking he will steal back the diamond and make his escape.

Of course if the plot were that simple there would be no movie. Thus, we get scenes of Calvin being changed -surprisingly large penis for a baby, ha ha-, Calvin being nursed -he's got a full set of teeth, hee hee- and a disturbing scene where Vanessa awakens having been fully, hmm, satisfied and finding Calvin in bed next to her, Ugh.

The jokes are the typical low brow variety that the Wayans' brothers have made bank off of in each of their previous efforts so why change now. Just because I don't find anything in Little Man all that funny doesn't mean there is not an audience for this brand of humor and the box office returns for the far more abysmally unfunny White Chicks prove that.

This is why I don't hate Little Man,  I just don't care anymore. The Wayans' have desensitized me to this level of gross out, low-brow humor. So Calvin posing as a baby is inferred to have had sex with Vanessa, I don't care. So, there are numerous diaper changing jokes, I really don't care. The Wayans' brand of humor has become so mundanely offensive that apathy has set in.

The one thing that surprised me and even roused my imagination for a moment during Little Man was the interesting special effects used to turn the 6 foot 2 inch Marlon Wayans into a three foot tall criminal.  On a technical level it's so good that I was able to forget about it and return to being bored into a stupor by the rest of the film very early on. That is impressive in some way.

Keenan Ivory Wayans is not a bad director, just a director with a low standard for humor. A veteran of years of sketch comedy and now several features, Keenan knows how to develop a strong rhythm and coherence to his stories. Now if the stories were funnier maybe his skill in crafting a feature comedy might be easier to recognize.

In the end, Little Man is not awful enough for me to trash in the worst movie of the year kind of way. It is, however, not nearly good enough for me to recommend even to the most forgiving moviegoer. My general feelings towards Little Man are ones of apathy. I simply did not care about the movie enough to like it or dislike it. Critics don't often offer such dispassionate opinions but I offer you one here. I simply don't care about Little Man.

Movie Review: Are We There Yet?

Are We There Yet? (2005) 

Directed by Brian Levant

Written by David N. Weiss

Starring Ice Cube, Nia Long, Jay Mohr, Tracy Morgan

Release Date January 21st, 2005 

Published January 20th, 2005

Is Ice Cube attempting to shed his gangsta image in favor of being Martin Lawrence's understudy? It's a fair question when you see him choosing scripts like the one for Are We There Yet, clearly a role that  Martin Lawrence or even Cedric The Entertainer managed to turn down. Are We There Yet is brutally awful. An absolute utter mess of mean spirited physical humor and demonic child characters with a tacked on sappy and sentimental ending.

Honestly, this movie couldn't be worse if it had been inspired by a video game and directed by Uwe Boll.

Nick (Ice Cube) hates children. So bad luck for him when he falls in love at first sight with Suzanne (Nia Long), the mother of two small children. Nick's luck is worse than he knows because even before meeting him the two kids, Lindsey (Aleisha Allen) and Kevin (Philip Bolden), have it in for him. For Lindsey and Kevin no man is good enough for their mom, except their dad who has left the family.

Despite his hatred of children Nick really wants to get some, so of course when Suzanne needs someone to ferry her kids from her home in Oregon to Vancouver, Canada where she has to work on New Years Eve, Nick is the first to volunteer. At first they were supposed to fly in, but the kids set him up for Homeland security, putting the kibosh on the plane flight.

They try a train but once again the kids have it in for him. So they are left to drive in Nick's brand new Lincoln Navigator. No points for guessing what happens to this gorgeous vehicle thanks to these two evil children. Poor Nick is then subjected to every form of hack screen writer kind of human torture, from the classic kick in the groin to every form of gross-out humor imaginable.

The film attempts to establish a broad comic tone that might justify it's flights of gross-out humor and over the top elements like Nick's talking bobble head. However the film loses that attempt by tacking on scenes of import such as when the kids are forced to confront their no good father and find out he's never coming back. Such a weighty subject has no place in a film in which a child peeing on an innocent woman is a big comic moment.

And the film manages to get worse. For some reason beyond the comprehension of any right thinking movie watcher, Nick has a Satchell Page bobble head doll. If that is not indignity enough for the legendary Mr. Page, the doll talks to Nick in the voice of former SNL star Tracy Morgan. Why the four screen writers , who shall remain nameless, and hack Director Brian Levant, the auteur behind classics like Jingle All The Way and Snow Dogs, chose to denigrate Mr. Page in this way is anyone's guess. But why does Nick talk to the bobble head and it talk back, is the character supposed to be insane?

How does Director Brian Levant keep getting work? His films have managed to get worse every time he makes one. Jingle All The Way, Snow Dogs and now Are We There Yet are a triumvirate of films that on one resume should mean automatic dismissal. Instead he's already at work on another project. God help us if there is another bobble head or child in the vicinity.

Movie Review G-Force

G-Force (2009) 

Directed by Hoyt H Yeatman Jr. 

Written by Cormac Wibberly, Marianne Wibberly 

Starring Zach Galifianakis, Nicolas Cage, Penelope Cruz, Tracy Morgan, Will Arnett, Steve Buscemi 

Release Date July 24th, 2009 

Published July 23rd, 2009 

The star of The Hangover, the foul mouthed lowbrow road comedy sensation of summer 2009, Zach Galifianakis, changes gears completely in the family adventure comedy, G-Force. Going from debauchery in Vegas to daring do alongside computer generated guinea pigs, Galifianakis may have one of the most successful and schizophrenic summer movie seasons of any actor ever.

In G-Force Zach Galifianakis plays Ben, the head scientist in a secret government lab that trains animals as spies. Ben started by training cockroaches to carry bugging devices (HA!). His greatest breakthrough however is inventing a way for guinea pigs to speak and then perform tasks. Sending them into the field for the first time, Ben has G-Force, as they come to be called, infiltrate the home of a wealthy industrialist (Bill Nighy) with alleged ambitions for taking over the world. G-Force is made up of Darwin (Sam Rockwell), Blaster (Tracy Morgan), Juarez (Penelope Cruz) and Speckles (Nicolas Cage). Speckles is a mole and a computer expert.

G-Force unfortunately fails their first mission. The evidence they thought they found was corrupted. This leads to the team being taken away from Ben and the whole operation getting shutdown by Agent Killian (Will Arnett). G-Force ends up in a pet shop but eventually their training kicks in and they are soon back on the case, even as their own government chases them down. Will they stop the tycoon from taking over the world? Do you care?

OK. You likely don't care and neither, really, will the target audience of children. What matters in G-Force are the little pleasures like a touch of the lowbrow humor, a waste of time car chase involving giant SUVs and tiny plastic hamster balls, and the sight of star Zach Galifianakis so convincingly interacting with CGI rodents.

G-Force, as most kids movies these days, is in 3D and while it adds very little to the proceedings, G-Force at least can slightly justify the use with some big time, flying at the screen action set pieces. The 3D isn't as forced as a lot of the modern 3D films and because G-Force is not a colorful or visually dynamic movie the 3D doesn't harm the experience like it did with animated films like Coraline and Up.

Is G-Force a good movie? Eh, not really. But, by the lowered standards of the kiddie flick it's not bad. Zach Galifianakis makes the most of his limited screen time and he's become a very welcome presence in movies. Bottom line is, as 3D kiddie fare goes, I can recommend G-Force even if I have already begun to forget it.