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College Prep

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Booksmart

by Hope Madden

Every generation has its pivotal high school graduation film: Superbad, Say Anything, 10 Things I Hate About You, Grease, High School Musical 3.

I mean, not all of them can be classics. Making her feature debut behind the camera, Olivia Wilde hopes to join the ranks of the classics with her smart, funny, raunchy yet quite loving tale of two besties preparing to go their separate ways, Booksmart.

Amy (Kaitlyn Denver) and Molly (Beanie Feldstein) approach the last day of high school with a certain earned swagger. Both have been accepted into the Ivy League by dedicating their previous four years to little more than study and each other.

And every other soon-to-be graduate? As Molly’s morning ritual self-help tape says, fuck them in their fucking faces.

So, this movie is very definitely R-rated, FYI. But it never loses a sweet silliness, rooting its episodic adventures in a believable bond between two true talents.

The catalyst for their one wild night? Molly realizes at the last possible minute that her classmates all seem destined for just as much post-high school greatness as she, and they also managed to have fun. They had it all, while she had only study and Amy.

And there is just one night left to rectify that wrong.

From a script penned by four (Susanna Fogel, Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins and Katie Silberman), Wilde spins a female-centric story without abandoning the fun, the idiocy or the laughs you hope to find in this very specific kind of film.

Wilde’s confident direction leans on her leads’ chemistry to drive what could otherwise be a string of sketches. Instead, taken together they provide a riot of color, laughter and misadventure that celebrates sisterhood.

She and her leads are helped immeasurably by one of the strongest casts assembled for a teen party movie. Billie Lourde (Carrie Fisher’s daughter) steals every scene she’s in. Meanwhile Skyler Gisondo and Molly Gordon are both very solid while adults Jason Sudeikis, Will Forte, Lisa Kudrow and Jessica Williams all deliver in small roles.

Some of the bits—Williams’s teacher trajectory, in particular—feel too random, an overall tone that occasionally threatens the narrative. But Wilde’s instinct to keep each situation invested more in the friendship than the sketch pays off.

There are definite missteps. For as much thoughtfulness as the film directs toward the emotional longing of its lesbian protagonist Amy, the movie’s gay male characters are exaggerated stereotypes. Disappointing.

Comparisons to Superbad are unavoidable, particularly since Feldstein’s brother Jonah Hill starred in Greg Mottola’s 2007 high water mark. And while Booksmart may not quite hit that target, Wilde’s comedy is the most fun flick to join the party since McLovin and the Lube.

For Your Queue

I Don’t Want to Go Out – Week of May 20

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The year’s first real candidate for the best animation Oscar is available to watch at home, so do yourself a favor and take advantage! Couple of others, too – we’re here to help you make tough choices.

Click the film title to read the full review.

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hiden World (DVD)

The Upside

Isn’t It Romantic?

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Not All Dogs Go to Heaven

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A Dog’s Journey

by Cat McAlpine

An alcoholic single mother (Glow’s Betty Gilpin) falls out with her dead husband’s family and struggles to juggle her floundering music career and responsibilities with her precocious young daughter (Abby Ryder Fortson, and later Kathryn Prescott). Is this a harrowing tale about the resilience of women and the litany of roles they must play?

Nope. This is A Dog’s Journey, sequel to the controversial 2017 hit A Dog’s Purpose. And the single mother is the bad guy – for many reasons, but largely because she doesn’t like dogs.

The film is based on the book sequel of the same name by W. Bruce Cameron. Cameron also penned the adaptation for film, with the help of three other writers. It took four people to write this movie.

I’m a strong believer that you should judge a movie within the genre it exists. A dog movie, for example, probably shouldn’t be judged against the same standards as, say Mad Max: Fury Road.

And yet, I can’t work A Dog’s Journey into a sphere where it achieves any kind of quality. This script reads like the bullet points from a rejected Hallmark channel feature. This film has less compelling dialogue and character development than Netflix’s notoriously bad A Christmas Prince.  The human action only exists to serve up easy hits for a dog’s inner monologue about butts and bacon, but the action somehow also needs to be compelling enough that a dog’s spirit continually reincarnates.

To trick you into thinking this film is emotionally developed, they kill the dog at least four times, because anyone will cry at a dying dog. That’s the schtick in this series. If a dog loves you enough, it never truly dies, it simply returns as another dog.

What is this world, where it’s always golden hour and the river bank is littered with perfect clusters of sunflowers? Do these characters actually exist in a purgatory – where despite a perfect pastoral backdrop, nothing can truly die, and all living creatures remember their last violent death?

There’s an opportunity for a third movie which takes a sharp left into existential sci-fi horror, but I doubt that script would resonate with the crowd at my showing who repeatedly chuckled at Bailey (voiced by Josh Gad) rooting for romance with his catch phrase “Just lick faces already.” Maybe the existential sci-fi horror was that I had to watch this film in a room full of people who enjoyed it.

The reality is, people did and will enjoy this movie. It’s filled with easy to identify archetypes. It’s clear who the bad guys and the good guys are. There’s a bad mom, childhood hijinks, an abusive boyfriend arc, a car chase, a move to New York to “make it”, and a cancer scare and recovery all in 108 minutes.  This movie requires zero brain power to consume because it’s a bland amalgam of all the unremarkable scripts that came before it – but with Gad’s sickeningly sweet puppy voiceover throughout.

I don’t know if dogs go to heaven, but I do know I’ll be seeing this film in hell.

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Rules & Consequences

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John Wick: Chapter 3—Parabellum

by Hope Madden

John F. Wick.

You have to tip your hat to a filmmaker who understands his strengths and plays to them. For Chad Stahelski, I think you just have to take the hat off entirely.

Kickboxer turned stunt man turned stunt coordinator turned helmsman of a phenomenon, Stahelski returns for his third tour with Keanu Reeves as dog-loving assassin widower John Wick for Chapter 3—Parabellum.

The great thing about chapters is that no one expects them to tell a whole story, and since storytelling and acting are not the strongest suits in this franchise, Stahelski wisely sharpens his focus on what is: action.

A breathless Act 1 (with a truly inspired use of the New York Public Library) picks up the moment John Wick 2 ends, mercifully dispensing with the need for exposition. In its stead, balletic mayhem.

The plot of sorts: Wick is in trouble with the guardians of the world’s assassin guild, approximately every third human in NYC is a hired killer, and there is a $14 million bounty on his head. Where can he go? What can he do?

These are questions Stahelski and his army of writers have fun answering with ludicrous, violent, exhausting, carnage-strewn glee.

Inside of 10 minutes it was clear that this is the best film of the trilogy.

Welcome new faces Anjelica Huston and Asia Kate Dillon cut impressive figures, though Halle Berry feels out of her depth and a clear sound stage representation of Morocco is the only clunky set piece in the movie.

Ian McShane, Lance Reddick and Laurence Fishburne return. Wisely, Stahelski lets these guys mete out most of the dialog. I’d wager Reeves utters fewer than 30 lines total.

Again, play to your strengths.

Dan Lausten’s camera ensures that you know when Reeves does his own action, most of which is choreographed and captured in long, fluid, serpentine shots with a lot of broken glass. Man, their easy-shatter glass budget must have been through the roof!

The Fast and Furious franchise didn’t become tolerable until it embraced the fact that it was a superhero series, abandoning all reason and logic and just jumping cars from the 100th floor of one building to the 100th floor of another. Luckily, it didn’t take John Wick six films to take flight.

For Your Queue

I Don’t Want to Go Out—Week of May 13

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Bunches of movies out this week in home entertainment, and a couple of them are quite amazing. Here’s the whole run down.

Click the film title for the full review.

Apollo 11

Her Smell

Meow Wolf: Origin Story

Fighting with My Family

Cold Pursuit

Charlie Says

Happy Death Day 2U

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Pika Pika

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Pokémon Detective Pikachu

by Hope Madden

When my son was small and we played pretend, I made believe I was Snorlax so I could lay on the couch and do nothing. Does that make me a bad parent? Well, a lazy one, anyway, but the point is, I logged countless hours on that couch watching all manner of pocket monster.

I was dragged unwillingly into the world of Pokémon. No, I am not exactly the target audience for Pokémon Detective Pikachu (read: I am in no way the target audience for this movie). But, when Pikachu (voiced by Ryan Reynolds at his Ryan Reynoldsiest) says, “Mr. Mime is the worst,” I know enough to understand that shit’s the truth.

So, there is a plot. It involves loads upon loads of daddy issues, primarily (but not exclusively) those that hang over Tim Goodman (Justice Smith). In looking for his father he falls into a mystery involving a Pikachu who is not only adorable (he admits as much himself at least twice), but is also connected to Tim. Tim can understand him.

For the uninitiated, Pokémon just repeat their own names over and over and over again in a manner that makes you want to take your own life, and yet you tolerate it because you really do love your son.

But not this Pikachu! Sure, others can only hear his cute “pika pika,” but Tim can hear actual words, and those words are telling Tim, in a humorously snarky way, that he needs to unravel this mystery and work on his interpersonal skills.

Bill Nighy shows up as an entrepreneur/philanthropist/genius. Meanwhile, Ken Watanabe languishes with bafflingly limited screen time as a detective who is, let’s be honest, not very good at his job.

Kathryn Newton is a plucky would-be investigative journalist, her trusty Psyduck in tow. (Note: Psyduck is also the worst.)

Part of the entertainment value here is the genuine fondness for the content director Rob Letterman and his army of screenwriters bring to the table. Good looking CGI, committed performances and a solidly comedic but not too ironic tone also help.

The film doesn’t shoot over the heads of the youngest fans, does embed scads of references and homages for those there for nostalgia, and throws around enough kid-friendly Reynoldsisms to entertain parents who mercifully missed out on Pokémon Gen 1 and 2.

Is it a colossal waste of Ken Watanabe’s talent? Oh God, yes. Terrible.

But honestly, otherwise I don’t have a lot of complaints.

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Gimme an A! A! R! P!

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Poms

by Christie Robb

At a time when movies are pushing three hours, it feels weird to want one to run longer, but at just over an hour and a half, Poms feels way too short. It’s like a long SNL sketch.

A female-centric comedy about a retired teacher aching for one last shot at her childhood dream of becoming a cheerleader seems like a good option for Mother’s Day weekend—especially for the Boomers and their kids. The cast looks solid: Diane Keaton, Jacki Weaver, Pam Grier, and Rhea Perlman. Poms coming “from the studio that brought you Bad Moms” appears promising.

But it’s all just perfunctory.

Director Zara Hayes and writer Shane Atkinson, both TV veterans making feature debuts, introduce characters via montage and then give them little to do or say.

People become strange antagonists, set on denying the senior cheerleading squad practice/performance time for no discernible reason. Folks burst into tears or have 180 degree shifts in perspective simply because the plot demands it.

Still, Keaton’s performance of a woman striving to live in the moment while hiding terminal cancer is effective. The chemistry between Keaton’s snarky Martha and Jacki Weaver’s bubbly Sheryl is cute. And when they are performing, the women look like they are having a nice time.

You just wish that there was more of a story there, more character development, more cheerleading even. The cast is way too good for this.

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Charlie’s Angels

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Charlie Says

by Hope Madden

It’s been 50 years since Charles Manson and his family effectively terminated the 1960s. Filmmaker Mary Harron (American Psycho) joins Daniel Farrands and Quentin Tarantino in commemorating the anniversary.

Earlier this year, Farrands unleashed the grim and quickly forgotten The Haunting of Sharon Tate, while Tarantino’s next likely cultural phenomenon, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,  promises to shine some of its spotlight on the Manson family crimes as well.

Harron’s film, Charlie Says, follows Leslie Van Houton (Hannah Murray), Susan Atkins (Marianne Rendon) and Patricia Krenwinkle (Sosie Bacon), three years after their incarceration, as they reflect on Manson’s promises and their own actions.

The aptly titled film is as concerned with the women’s brainwashing as it is the crimes themselves, although it unfortunately provides no real insight into either.

Harron spends about half the film in the California Women’s Correctional Facility, where the trio is taught by dedicated grad student Karlene Faith (Merritt Wever, portraying the author of the book that inspires the film).

The eerie chorus of “Charlie says…” greets nearly every question Wever lobs at her students, which generally spurs a flashback to time on the ranch with Charlie (Matt Smith).

Here we hit a snag, because Smith lacks the charisma, the hatred, the ugliness or the psychotic aura to pull of Manson. He is never terrifying, never seductive—never convincing.

In fact, most of the flock lacks the weather beaten conviction we recognize from police tapes. The period detail and tone lack degrees of authenticity as well.

Harron’s film opens strong, but it quickly loses its footing and never really finds it again. Working from Guinevere Turner’s screenplay, Harron brings up some interesting themes—particularly questioning the point of breaking through to these women, knowing that puncturing their fantasies only means their clear-eyed horror whether looking backward or forward.

But she doesn’t really land any punches. The film never feels particularly queasying, especially enlightening or even very memorable.

I guess we still have Tarantino. Or maybe it’s just time we all moved on and stopped obsessing over what Charlie had to say.

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Wild Thing

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Wild Nights with Emily

by Hope Madden

Here’s a fun trend in recent indie filmmaking: let’s revisit our historic “spinsters”, shall we?

Craig William Macneill gave Lizzie Borden the treatment last year with Lizzie, offering a pretty speculative and yet decidedly clear-eyed plausibility. But Madeleine Olneck has actual history to back her up.

Plumbing Harvard University Press’s stash of Emily Dickinson’s poems and letters, Olneck suggests a different, funnier, slyer image of the “recluse poet.”

Wild Nights with Emily plays almost like an episode of Drunk History, although no one seems to be drunk. Olneck simulcasts two parallel retellings of the life of America’s most beloved female poet, and among its most beloved poets, regardless of sex.

Wild Nights does not disregard sex, though.

One storyline—the one you’ll recognize—is dictated by Mabel Todd (a delightful Amy Seimetz in a rare comedic performance). As she stands in her cotton candy pink dress and hat, she regales a rapt audience with stories of the Emily Dickinson she knew.

Well, “knew” seems to be a strong word.

Todd was, indeed, the first to publish Dickinson’s work aside from a stray newspaper editor here and there. And why was that? Because Dickinson was a recluse who shunned publication, as Todd defined it and history was so quick to embrace it?

Or because Dickinson’s rule-defying work was ignored by the literary establishment of her time and because she shunned Todd?

The offsetting narrative explores a different view of Dickinson, warmly and beautifully portrayed by Molly Shannon. Her relationship with lifelong friend, expert reader, fierce proponent and sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert (Susan Ziegler), fuels a poignant and funny story.

Is a likelier reading of Dickinson’s work and letters that of a passionate, lifelong love affair with Gilbert? Olneck’s consistently entertaining narrative certainly believes so.

This is a specifically political film, one that begs with outrage that we reexamine the stories we’ve been told about women in history—this one woman, in particular.

It’s also a mash note to the breathtaking originality and talent of the poet, whose words flow through the film without burdening it by self-importance or pretentiousness. No, Olneck’s audacious wit and Ziegler and Shannon’s performances—alongside spot on comic turns from Seimetz, Brett Gelman, Jackie Monahan and Kevin Seal—guarantee the film never bends toward anything remotely stuffy.

Instead, Wild Nights with Emily offers a refreshing and awfully entertaining new way of seeing an American treasure.

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Hello Dolly

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UglyDolls

by Hope Madden

We open on what is essentially the Island of Misfit Toys. This is the moment when the adults in the UglyDolls audience need to make a choice: accept these notions stolen from far superior toy-related children’s fare as homages, or bristle at inferior product skating by on copy-catting.

It’s your choice, but your kids will mainly see a perfectly sweet, upbeat and unimaginative tale of an ugly duckling. Even better, an ugly duckling who doesn’t need to become a swan to be happy.

That duck, or that blobby pink thing, is Moxy (voiced by Kelly Clarkson). And she lives happily in Uglyville with other merrily misshapen beasties (Wanda Sykes, Blake Shelton, Pitbull, Leehom Wang, Gabriel Iglesias). But Moxie yearns for more.

On a songtastic adventure to fulfill her dream, Moxy and gang run afoul of the pretty dolls, whose leader, Lou (Nick Jonas) intends to keep them from finding the boy or girl who will love them.

Will that stop Moxy? No! She yearns for her very own Andy.

I feel safe in saying that because there’s no question director Kelly Asbury (Shrek 2) and screenwriter Alison Peck (working with characters created by Su-min Kim and David Horvath) have seen Toy Story.

Man, that was a good movie, eh? The whole series, actually. In fact, there’s one scene in Toy Story 3 that made me cry harder than any scene in any film ever. It obviously made an impact on Asbury and Peck as well, because it is lifted shamelessly for the emotional climax of UglyDolls.

When it’s not distracting you with its borderline plagiarism, UglyDolls is sledgehammering its theme. Janelle Monáe voices Mandy, a pretty doll who might be ugly deep down (a good thing). She helps beat the point home that we do not need to conform to be happy. Which is a great theme, and one that a well-made film (like, say, Shrek) can deliver without losing sight of storytelling.

The big screen leap for these critters amounts to a sweetly mediocre marketing strategy for some unattractive (but lovable!) toys.