Movie Review: Jumanji: The Next Level

Jumanji: The Next Level *** / *****

Directed by: Jake Kasdan.

Written by: Jake Kasdan and Jeff Pinkner & Scott Rosenberg based on the book by Chris Van Allsburg.

Starring: Dwayne Johnson (Bravestone), Jack Black (Dr. Sheldon “Shelly” Oberon), Kevin Hart (Mouse Finbar), Karen Gillan (Ruby Roundhouse), Awkafina (Ming), Danny DeVito (Eddie), Danny Glover (Milo), Nick Jonas (Alex), Alex Wolff (Young Spencer), Morgan Turner (Young Martha), Madison Iseman (Young Bethany), Ser’Darius Blain (Young Fridge), Colin Hanks (Young Alex), Rory McCann (Jurgen the Brutal), Rhys Darby (Nigel).

 

The two new Jumanji films from the last couple of years are basically inoffensive fun – action comedies for the whole family, that you can go in and enjoy. It has also been an actors showcase for the four stars – who of course, are not playing themselves, but playing teenagers in adult bodies. The first movie had the biggest action star in the world Dwayne Johnson having to embody a nervous, un-athletic teenage boy, who has to take some time to get used to the power his new body affords him. It has Karen Gillan play an insecure teenage girl, uncomfortable in her own body, now having to play a knockout in not very much clothing, and having to get comfortable there as well. Jack Black was basically playing a bubbly teenage cheerleader. Kevin Hart probably had to stretch himself the least – while the teenager in his body was a hulking football player, frustrated to be in a small body, it still required him to basically me a motor mouthed comic relief.

 

In the new film, appropriately subtitled The Next Level, the filmmakers push this even further. There was only gender swapped character in the first film, and for the most part, people didn’t cross racial lines either. This time though, everything is swapped all over the place – and most of the actors playing the video game avatars have to inhabit two different characters throughout the course of the movie. I don’t think the movie does all that much with all this gender and racial swapping – but its interesting just the same that they are doing it.

 

I won’t bore you with how the characters get sucked back into the video game Jumanji – it’s the least interesting aspect of the film. But basically, Spencer (Alex Wolff) heads back in first – and his friends follow to try and rescue him. When they get there though, there are some surprises. Fridge, who was Kevin Hart last time, is now Jack Black. Martha is still is Karen Gillian’s body. Bethany is nowhere to be seen – and it’s a while before they find Spencer. But they are joined by two new characters – Spencer’s grandpa Eddie (Danny DeVito) and his former best friend and partner Milo (Danny Glover) have been sucked in as well – and DeVito is no Dwayne Johnson, and Glover is Kevin Hart. Eventually another new avatar – played by Awkafina – will join them.

 

What follows is more of the same. The Next Level is bigger than the first film, the missions are harder. And the actors are clearly having more fun. Johnson seems to be loving playing Danny DeVito – a man who all of sudden feels good, for the first time in a long time – no aches and pain, and more power than ever. Kevin Hart slows his delivery way down to be more like Danny Glover, and is hilarious. Jack Black has some fun too – without pushing things too far. Gillian probably has the most thankless role – she doesn’t get to stretch, and has to be the voice of reason. Newcomer Awkafina is a delight – especially in her second incarnation.

 

The film moves quickly, with a lot of humor, and a lot of action adventure style action sequences that are a lot of fun – a herd of ostriches, a pack of monkeys, a climax involving the new villain appropriately named Jurgen the Brutal. The movie is light and quick, funny and entertaining from beginning to end. They could push deeper I presume if they wanted to, but they want to keep it that light – and keep having making them. In the audience, I had fun watching it. I’ll likely forget it all by the time the third film comes out – but these films deliver exactly what they plan on – and just a little bit more.

Movie Review: Sex Tape

Sex Tape
Directed by: Jake Kasdan.
Written by: Kate Angelo and Jason Segel & Nicholas Stoller.
Starring: Cameron Diaz (Annie), Jason Segel (Jay), Rob Corddry (Robby), Ellie Kemper (Tess), Rob Lowe  (Hank), Nat Faxon (Max), Nancy Lenehan (Linda), Giselle Eisenberg  (Nell), Harrison Holzer (Howard), Sebastian Hedges Thomas (Clive).

The premise of sex tape – that a long married couple with two kids film themselves having sex, and then have to get copies of the video back from all their friends and family – promises a raunchy, offensive sex comedy. This is doubly true when you consider that the two stars and the director made Bad Teacher together – which wasn’t a great movie, but certainly went for broke in terms of potentially offensive, sexual humor. The most shocking thing then about Sex Tape is how utterly it is. The film goes through the motions of being daring and sexual, but is basically just a rather lame slapstick comedy where the talented stars are stuck with a bunch of lame gags that generate very little in the way of laughs. What makes matters worse is there are a few moments – mostly small, quiet ones, that hint at the comedy this could have been had it went for it.

The film stars Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel as Annie and Jay – and like every other married couple with kids in the comedies of this sort, they have really cool jobs - she’s a blogger, about to sell her blog for big money, he works for a record label, or radio station, or something – it’s music related anyway. As the movie opens, the movie flashes back to college (I think) when Annie and Jay first meet and screw like rabbits – any time and any place – until she gets pregnant, and they get married. And then, of course, their sex lives grow dull and stagnant. So one night to get the groove back, they film themselves having sex, Instead of erasing the tape, Jay accidentally syncs it the cloud – and it goes to all the iPads they have given away (which is apparently a hell of a lot – why the hell don’t I know anyone who is giving away iPads. Because apparently neither of them have any idea how technology works, they believe they have to physically get back their iPads. That leads the pair to do some humiliating things – and of course learn some lessons, grow together, etc.

Diaz and Segel are fine comedic actors – and they give the movie their best shot, but the film never really gels. Most of the movie moves at such a rapid pace that the pair never have a chance to create characters that are realistic and natural together. The rapid pace could have worked except for one major problem – nothing much happens, it just happens really fast. The film moves from one unfunny set piece to another and goes nowhere.

The best moments are mainly throwaway, isolated incidents – I loved all the paintings that adorn Rob Lowe’s walls for example. Lowe, as the head of the company who wants to buy Annie’s blog, is actually probably the best one in the movie – even if he is essentially riffing on his Parks & Recreation persona. It can still be funny though.

But most of Sex Tape just never really works – is never really funny. I think a funny movie could be made out of the same basic material of Sex Tape, but it would require the movie to take itself a little more seriously. Like most Hollywood movies, it has a rather infantile view of sex – sex as imagined by teenagers who have never really had sex. If it took itself a little more seriously and given the comedy more of an edge – any edge really – perhaps it could have been funny. Diaz, Segel and director Jake Kasdan are capable of doing that. With Sex Tape, they simply didn’t deliver.

Movie Review: Bad Teacher

Bad Teacher ** ½
Directed by: Jake Kasdan.
Written by: Gene Stupnitsky & Lee Eisenberg.
Starring: Cameron Diaz (Elizabeth Halsey), Lucy Punch (Amy Squirrel), Jason Segel (Russell Gettis), Justin Timberlake (Scott Delacorte), Phyllis Smith (Lynn Davies), John Michael Higgins (Principal Wally Snur), Dave Allen (Sandy Pinkus), Jillian Armenante (Ms. Pavicic) , Matthew J. Evans (Garrett Tiara), Kaitlyn Dever (Sasha Abernathy), Kathryn Newton (Chase Rubin-Rossi), Igal Ben Yair (Arkady), Aja Bair (Devon), Andra Nechita (Gaby), Noah Munck (Tristan).

Bad Teacher really wants to be a movie like Bad Santa or the original The Bad News Bears. The concept is simple – take a profane, crude, completely inappropriate grown in a position of responsibility deal with children and let the hilarity ensue. This worked for Bad Santa, because Billy Bob Thornton was brilliant in his role as the worst department store Santa in history, and the direction of Terry Zwigoff, along with the screenplay, was pretty much pitch perfect. The rest of the cast followed Thornton’s lead, and what you ended up with was one of the funniest comedies in recent years, no matter how inappropriate it all was. Bad Teacher doesn’t come close to rising to that level.

The movie stars Cameron Diaz as Elizabeth Halsey, who took a job as a middle school teacher for a year as she prepares to marry a rich doofus. But then the doofus, egged on my mom, dumps her and so she is stuck going back to school once again to mold young minds. She doesn’t care about her students, and makes that abundantly clear from the beginning. She shows movies to class every day – everything from Stand and Deliver to Lean on Me to Dangerous Minds to Scream (hey, that does have some action in a school). She mainly sleeps and gets stoned in the parking lot. She is trying to save up enough money to get a boob job, to help her attract another rich doofus. She thinks she may have found the proper rich doofus in the new substitute teacher, Scott Delacorte (Justin Timberlake), who comes from an extremely wealthy family, and teaches because he enjoys it. He has also made a nemesis of Amy Squirrel (Lucy Punch), an overly perky teacher across the hall, who thinks, correctly, that Elizabeth is a horrible teacher. Then there’s the gym teacher, Russell Gettis (Jason Segal), who shares Elizabeth’s cynicism, but likes teaching gym. They are more attuned to each other, but he’s not rich. Things change only when Elizabeth finds out that the teacher, whose class gets the highest marks on the state wide test, gets a bonus. That would pay for her boob job – but of course, her kids don’t know anything, because she hasn’t taught them anything.

There are moments in Bad Teacher that work – that are hilarious (I still laugh every time I think of Jason Segal arguing with a student about whose better – Jordan or LeBron, even though I’ve seen it dozens of times now in the previews). For her part, Diaz throws herself into the role, and is actually quite good here. In fact, the whole cast is. Lucy Punch is perfectly suited to play the perky nemesis, Justin Timberlake makes a surprisingly convincing dork and Jason Segal is charming and funny as the gym teacher. The supporting cast, including Christopher Guest regular John Michael Higgins, as the dolphin loving principal and The Office co-star Phyllis Smith, as the only teacher who actually likes Elizabeth have some nice notes as well.

So why then, is Bad Teacher nowhere near as good as it should be? I think the real problem is that the movie missed its best opportunity. There are far too few scenes with Diaz and her students – none of whom ever really become characters in the story. Bad Santa mined many of its laughs because of the way Thornton interacted with the loser kid he started to stay with. That was really the heart of the movie. The rest of it was colorful, wonderful background. Here, that’s about all there is. There is something funny about grownups being completely inappropriate around children – at least to me – but grownups acting like assholes around other grownups simply isn’t quite as funny. In addition, while some of the one liner are great, many quite simply fall flat. The cast is game, but the screenplay never quite rises to their level.

I’m not going to say that Bad Teacher is a horrible movie. It isn’t. It works as a distraction, and is mildly enjoyable. It has its moments, and I was never really bored by it. But, the film just never quite gets to the level it needs to be at to be truly successful or memorable. This cast deserved better.