Tag Archives: Paul Wernick

Outtakes

Wrapper’s Plight

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Balls Up

by George Wolf

Is it funny to see Mark Wahlberg and Paul Walter Hauser bust out a lightly choreographed karaoke version of Goyte’s “Someone That I Used to Know?”

It is. But are there enough solid laughs in the rest of the film to make Balls Up a thumbs up?

Not quite.

Wahlberg is Brad from sales, and Hauser is Elijah from design, both reporting to boss lady Burgess (welcome delight Molly Shannon) at the Regal Blue condom company.

Elijah has designed a revolutionary condom that extends far enough to wrap the testicles, and Brad just landed the pitch to make “Balls Up” the official condom of the 2025 World Cup in Brazil!

“Raw Dog? Nah Dawg!”

The..ahem… head of the World Cup committee (Benjamin Bratt) is impressed enough to set the guys up with VIP treatment at the tournament. But things go so wrong so fast that Brad and Elijah become branded as “The Stupids,” two American villains on the run from a drug cartel kingpin (Sacha Baron Cohen) and any number of Brazilians who’d love to see them dead.

Speaking of drugs, this entire premise sounds like something two guys thought was freaking hilarious while they were high.

I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese have scripted funnier movies. Like Zombieland, or Deadpool, or Deadpool & Wolverine. In comparison this one feels like something that could have been abandoned when they sobered up.

Hauser has the dim-witted schlub act down cold, but as talented as he is, he’s not enough of a comic presence to offset Wahlberg’s struggles with timing and delivery. The Other Guys worked because Wahlberg’s contrast with the effortlessly funny Will Ferrell was instantly engaging. This pairing is constantly in search of real chemistry, and director Peter Farrelly seems helpless to uncover it.

Farrelly has certainly had success with below-the-belt comedy (Kingpin, Dumb and Dumber, There’s Something About Mary), but Balls Up becomes just the latest streaming effort to string together inane antics and hope for the best.

This one just gets worse as it is goes, and after an hour and forty minutes of unfunny, you give up that hope.

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It’s Alive!

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Zombieland 2: Double Tap

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

“It’s time to nut up or shut up.”

“That line is so 2009.”

There you have it. A horror film that recognizes its desire to wallow in its former glory as well as its need to find something new to say.

We had our worries about the sequel to one of the all-time best zombie action flicks, Zombieland. Horror sequels so rarely work and Zombieland: Double Tap is slow going at the start, to be sure. But don’t give up on it.

Everybody’s back. Director Ruben Fleischer – who’s spent the last decade trying to live up to Z-land‘s promise – returns, as do writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese, along with newbie Dave Callaham, who’s written a lot of really big, really bad movies.

Still, it was enough to draw the most important elements—all four leads. Among Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, Jesse Eisenberg and Abigail Breslin are seven Oscar nominations and one win. That’s a lot of credibility for a zombie movie.

They reprise their roles, now ten years on as a heavily armed and somewhat dysfunctional family. Little Rock (Breslin), in particular, longs to leave the nest, get away from a smothering Tallahassee (Harrelson) and find people her own age. Wichita (Stone) may be feeling a little smothered in her relationship with Columbus (Eisenberg), though he remains blissfully unaware.

Things pick up when the girls take off, the guys brood, a new survivor enters the picture (Zoey Deutch, scene-stealing hilarious), and a sudden road trip to Graceland seems like it might reunite the family.

The filmmakers spend plenty of time simultaneously ribbing and basking in previous success. So there is plenty here to remind us why we loved the first Zombieland adventure so much (especially during the credits), although Double Tap doesn’t come to life until it embraces some fresh meat.

A run-in with near-doppelgangers (Luke Wilson, Thomas Middleditch) leads to an inspired action sequence inside the Elvis-themed motel run by Nevada (Rosario Dawson). A pacifist commune stands in for the amusement park from part one, letting everyone poke some blood-splattered fun at the culture clash between hippies, survivalists, and of course, the undead.

An underused articulation of the way zombies have evolved over the decade could have offered the biggest update. Still, after a 10 year wait, this revival offers just enough fun to not only avoid a let down, but instantly become Fleischer’s second best film.

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Dead Again

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Deadpool 2

by Hope Madden

Machine gun fire gags, self-referential comments, foul language, meta laughs, gore for the sake of comedy and fourth-wall bursting—it appears the sequel to 2016’s surprise blockbuster Deadpool cometh.

Since we left Wade/Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds), the avocado-faced super-anti-hero spends his days dispatching international criminals and his nights snuggling tight with his beloved Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). When tragedy strikes, Wade spirals into suicidal depression and finds himself in the titanium arms of X-Man Colossus (voiced by Stefan Kapicic), by the side of troubled adolescent mutant Russell (Julian Dennison, Hunt for the Wilderpeople), and then in the path of time-traveling mercenary Cable (Josh Brolin, having a good year).

In the midst of all this, Reynolds never stops cracking wise on every comic book or pop cultural reference that can be squeezed into two hours. Bursts of laughter pepper the film’s landscape like mines. It’s fun. Hollow, but fun.

Origin stories are tough, but following a fresh, irreverent surprise of an origin story might be even tougher. Deadpool’s laughs came often at the expense of the gold-hearted, furrow-browed, money-soaked superhero franchises that came before it. Now a cash machine of a franchise itself, riffing on that same bit is a difficult sell. Deadpool 2 has essentially become the butt of that very joke.

Writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick return, sharing the pen with Reynolds this go-round. Atomic Blonde director David Leitch takes the helm, promising the inspired action that made his Charlize Theron spy thriller so very thrilling.

But Leitch’s action feels saddled and uninspired, and Reese and Wernick’s screenplay is basically a reimagining of a truly excellent time-travel flick from a few years back (that will remain nameless to avoid spoilers).

Deadpool 2 is very funny, often quite clever, and sometimes wrong-minded in the best way. An Act 2 parachuting adventure feels magical, and the new blood brings fresh instinct to the mix. Dennison straddles humor and angst amazingly well, and Zazie Beetz brings a fun energy to the film as the heroically lucky Domino.

Brolin, for the second time in a month, commands the screen with a performance that has no right to be as nuanced and effecting as it is.

Ryan Reynolds is Ryan Reynolds, but he’s just so good at it.

The film’s cynical, hard-candy shell makes way for a super-gooey inside that Reynolds doesn’t have the capacity to carry off. Worse still, it undermines the biting sensibility that made the first Deadpool such an antidote for the summer blockbuster.

But I guess that’s what happens when you become the thing you mock.