Movie Review: A Simple Favor

A Simple Favor **** / *****

Directed by: Paul Feig.

Written by: Jessica Sharzer based upon the novel by Darcey Bell.

Starring: Anna Kendrick (Stephanie), Blake Lively (Emily), Henry Golding (Sean), Andrew Rannells (Darren), Linda Cardellini (Diana Hyland), Rupert Friend (Dennis Nylon), Jean Smart (Margaret McLanden), Ian Ho (Nicky), Joshua Satine (Miles Smothers), Bashir Salahuddin (Detective Summerville), Eric Johnson (Davis), Glenda Braganza (Kerry Glenda), Kelly McCormack (Stacy), Aparna Nacherla (Sona).

 

A Simple Favor is, quite simply, a riot. This is one of the most purely enjoyable films of the year with pitch perfect performances, a story that takes increasingly insane twists and turns as it moves along, and quite simply knows precisely what it wants to be, and is as good of a version of that as possible. Directed by Paul Feig, who is known for his female centric comedies (Bridesmaids, The Heat, Ghostbusters, Spy) he has made a comic version of Gone Girl here, which still operates as a thriller, but also a comedy, and also house/clothing porn. It embraces every cliché, every contrivance with reckless abandon – and has two great performances at its core, with a smart ensemble cast all around them. If all you want to do is have a blast at the movies, you could do a lot worse than A Simple Favor.

 

The film stars Anna Kendrick as Stephanie, a “mommy vlogger” – a widow living in an upscale Connecticut neighborhood, raising her five-year-old son Miles alone since an accident that killed not only her husband, but also her beloved brother. Stephanie doesn’t have a lot of friends among the other parents in the school – she is that kind of annoying, overly perfect mother who volunteers for everything, and is seemingly perfect. From the start though, you sense something is not quite right with her – something is just, well, off, about her. When she meets Emily (Blake Lively) she is instantly intimidated – Emily is brash and confident, sexy and refined. She works in PR for a fashion designer in the city, has seemingly the perfect house, and the perfect husband, Sean (Henry Golding) and a kid in Miles’ class. The kids are friends, so the moms end up friends as well – in part, because both of them are outside the normal “mom” clique in the room. There is an undercurrent of homoeroticism running between them as well. Things seem to be going fine, until one day when Emily asks Stephanie to pick up her son from school – and then just vanishes. As the hours turn to days, no one has seen her – and they start to get more and more worried. And Stephanie and Sean start to grow closer and closer to each other. But then strange things start to happen, and Stephanie decides to do some digging.

 

The film is based on a book by Darcey Bell, which is a good enough read, but plays it far straighter than the film does, and while it has many twists and turns as the film does – and ones that are equally as loony – they aren’t nearly as satisfying as what screenwriter Jessica Sharzer comes up with for the movie. The tone the movie strikes as lighter – more campy – and it doesn’t take itself as seriously as the novel does. As such, the movie is better able to handle the ridiculousness of the plot – in fact, it almost demands a plot this strange.

 

The two main performances in the movie are great. Lively has never been as good as she is here – she walks into the movie, and pretty much takes over. There is a sexy confidence to her here that I have never seen in one of her performances before. Her character is the reason the film gets compared to Gone Girl – but she’s kind of like that character if she told you right from the start she was going to fuck you over, and still managed to win your devotion. What Kendrick does, in what is the lead role (she’s hardly never not onscreen) is in its own way even trickier than Lively. Outwardly, this is the adorably awkward shtick Kendrick has perfected over the years (her rapping in the car is a delight), but the role is stranger than that. There is some real darkness here, some real bone deep strangeness that Kendrick pulls off effortlessly. The supporting cast is good as well – Golding is in good form as the clueless nitwit of a bad husband and Bashir Salahuddin is having a blast as the cop investigating the disappearance. Even the small roles are well cast – especially Linda Cardinelli in a one scene wonder of a performance, as an artist who paints knives.

 

The fall movie season is usually about serious movies – Oscar movies, as if audiences have decided they don’t want fun anymore because it’s not summer. Here is a movie that will likely be better than many of the more serious movies this fall, and is certainly a hell of a lot more fun than many of the summer movies. It was an unexpected delight.

Movie Review: Ghostbusters

Ghostbusters

Directed by: Paul Feig.

Written by: Katie Dippold & Paul Feig based on the 1984 film directed by Ivan Reitman and written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis.

Starring: Kristen Wiig (Erin Gilbert), Melissa McCarthy (Abby Yates), Kate McKinnon (Jillian Holtzmann), Leslie Jones (Patty Tolan), Chris Hemsworth (Kevin), Cecily Strong (Jennifer Lynch), Andy Garcia (Mayor Bradley), Charles Dance (Harold Filmore), Michael Kenneth Williams (Agent Hawkins), Matt Walsh (Agent Rorke), Neil Casey (Rowan North).

 

Let’s get this out of the way off the top – yes, as a child, Ghostbusters was one of my favorite things in the world – right alongside the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I loved the movies, and I especially loved the Ghostbusters animated series – for which I had all the toys, and spent many happy hours engaged in make believe ghost battles with those action figures. Ghostbusters definitely had, and still does hold, a special place in my heart and in my childhood memories, long after I’ve let most of those nostalgic feelings for the entertainment I loved as a child go (there was a time I tried to re-capture some of that magic by watching old Transformers cartoon episodes that I loved as a child, only to realize that they were, in fact, shit). Ghostbusters, then, certainly does mean something to me – and when I heard they were doing a reboot, I wasn’t overly surprised or thrilled about it – not because I view Ghostbusters as some sort of sacred cow that must never be tampered with (this is hardly an artistically pure franchise after all), but because it was yet another reboot of a 1980s franchise, instead of Hollywood coming up with a new idea (as I am fond of saying, you’re never going to get the next Star Wars by making the next Star Wars). But then I heard that the cast would be four women – and I was honestly more intrigued and excited about the idea. Why the hell can’t the Ghostbusters be women after all? And isn’t it preferable to try to do something new with the franchise, rather than have to suffer through a movie in which, inevitably, some young actor failed miserably to try and play Peter Venkman the same way Bill Murray did? Does every movie have to follow the Star Wars model, of having old and new characters beside each other? Does every reboot essentially have to be fan fiction – even if, in the case of something like The Force Awakens, it’s really good fan fiction? The reaction to Ghostbusters casting women in the lead roles has mystified me. I mean, even if the new Ghostbusters was horrible, how can that possibly effect the 1984 original or anyone’s feeling towards it. The outcry over the new movie exposed a very ugly side of fandom that is always present, but perhaps not always this visible.

 

The 2016 Ghostbusters is not, it must be said, as good as the original film is. The original had the advantage of being, well, original – something this film could have used a little bit more of. Despite the fact that new film does cast four women, playing four distinct characters (not female versions of the male characters), and in a new situation, the film is still overstuffed with callbacks and references to the old film – including cameos from all the major cast members of the first film (except Rick Moranis, who didn’t want to, and the deceased Harold Ramis – who still does show up as a bust) – most which don’t add very much of anything interesting to the new film (inarguably, the two best ones are by Annie Potts and Sigourney Weaver). The film certainly does acknowledge the trolling by the film received before a frame of footage was shot, but it also bends over backwards to appease fans of the original film – which can be amusing when used sparingly, but here felt a little bit like overkill.

 

Yet, for the most part, I found this film to be immensely enjoyable - and almost the entire reason for that are the lead performances by the four women who are now Ghostbusters. I liked Kristen Wiig’s quieter performance here as Erin – a rather shy member of the group, who has tried to go respectable, and that ends badly. Wiig can, of course, go BIG – and she does at a few moments, but for the most part here she creates a portrait of a woman trying to do what’s expected of her, until she breaks free of that. Melissa McCarthy is always funny – even if the movies she is in are often not – and here, she smartly doesn’t go as big as she’s capable of being either. Her Abby is a true believer- she cedes some of the wackiness to those around her, while still being quite funny. Leslie Jones is, essentially, playing the Leslie Jones comic persona she does so well on SNL – and since it’s funny there, it’s funny here as well. The star of the quartet is easily Kate McKinnon as Holtzmann, a strange comic character who is a genius (in some ways, I wondered why she needed the rest of them, since she seemingly does all the hard work), who is wholly, uniquely strange in a way that feels inspired. And as a unit, the four of them are even better together – they have an effortless chemistry that just fits together perfectly. The other highlight performance is, surprisingly, Chris Hemsworth as their receptionist Kevin – who is so gloriously stupid, you’d think he was a Coen brothers character.

 

The movie has some plot and structural issues to be sure. It really does take a long time for the plot to get going – for the villain to be introduced, and for things to really get going. The big special effects sequences are also not particularly great – especially an overly cluttered climax, that tries to do too much, and unfortunately continues the trend of having the entire city on the verge of an apocalypse (seriously, not every movie has to have a threat to the entire world). The film works best when it simply lets the four leads – and Kevin – interact with each other, which provides the most memorable moments, and the most enjoyment for the film.

 

So while this Ghostbusters reboot is far from perfect (the original, it should be noted, is also far from perfect – even if it seemed like it was to me as a child), it is still an extremely enjoyable film – and one that, yes, did tap into some of those nostalgic feelings I have for the original. My hope is that they get to now make a sequel to this film, in which they can leave that nostalgia behind, and create a fully new path for these Ghostbusters. They certainly deserve it – and by doing so, they may actually make an even better film.

Movie Review: Spy

Spy
Directed by: Paul Feig.
Written by: Paul Feig.
Starring: Melissa McCarthy (Susan Cooper), Rose Byrne (Rayna Boyanov), Jason Statham (Rick Ford), Jude Law (Bradley Fine), Miranda Hart (Nancy B. Artingstall), Allison Janney (Elaine Crocker), Morena Baccarin (Karen Walker), Bobby Cannavale (Sergio De Luca), Michael McDonald (Patrick), Peter Serafinowicz (Aldo), Björn Gustafsson (Anton).

Melissa McCarthy is never not funny. Even when she’s in dreck like Identity Thief, she has a few moments when she breaks free of the material for a few moments and gets some laughs. Spy is not dreck like Identity Thief – in fact, it’s one of McCarthy’s best films to date. Director Paul Feig – making his third film with McCarthy following Bridesmaids and The Heat – gets McCarthy, and knows she works best when he lets her off the leash – and lets her riff. What works best about Spy is that freedom seems to have extended to the supporting cast as well, who follow McCarthy’s lead, and seem more relaxed and free flowing. The price of this freedom is that often the movies lack some focus and structure – and tend to run a little too long. At two hours, Spy is too long – and it begins to run out of steam down the homestretch. But at its best, it is one of the funniest films of the year so far.

In the film, McCarthy stars as Susan Cooper – a CIA agent, who is stuck in a basement at Langley, helping a real spy, Bradley Fine (Jude Law), do his job. But then some bad things happen – Rayna Boyanov (Rose Byrne) gets her hands on a suitcase nuke, and is willing to sell it to the highest bidder. She also knows the identity of all of the CIAs field agents, meaning they need someone completely new to go into the field. So, of course, they call in Susan – who heads off to Paris, and then other exotic locales, to try and stop the sale.

There are a lot of wonderful supporting characters in the field – none better than Rose Byrne, who continues to be the funniest woman in mainstream comedies not named Melissa McCarthy. She has a wall of hair, a ridiculous accent, and is seemingly willing to do anything to get a laugh –and gets a lot of them. Jason Statham is surprisingly good as one of the CIA Agent’s whose cover has been blown, but refuses to stop anyway. Statham plays it straight, which makes every ridiculous thing he says even funnier – especially coming from him, who has done most of the stuff his character claims in other movies. The best surprise in the supporting cast has to be Miranda Hart, as Susan’s best friend, and fellow basement dweller – who steals many of her scenes.

The movie belongs to McCarthy though – who, like in the past, grabs hold of the movie and will not let go. She is great in the early scenes as the meek, shy woman hiding her violent inner self –and perhaps even better later, when she lets that side out. The movie is basically a non-stop stream of jokes for McCarthy – and the average of those that work compared to those that do not is surprisingly high.

The film itself is not as good as McCarthy or Byrne, or the rest of the supporting cast, but its pretty close. Feig doesn’t shy away from violence in the film – it’s surprisingly gruesome at times, which is at odds with the comedic tone, but somehow works for the most part. The violence works best in short bursts however – the finale drabs on a little too long, and gets us away from the comedy, but it’s a small complaint.

Spy comes the closest of any movie to using McCarthy’s talents to their fullest potential – but I still don’t think it matches them. McCarthy is a talented, and versatile actress – just see her work on Gilmore Girls or in the under seen The Nines for proof. Spy lets us see a few different facets of what she can do – but still stays in her comfort zone. It’s clearly the movie her fans want – and it is hilarious. Still though, I would like to see a movie that truly lives up to her talent.

Movie Review: The Heat

The Heat
Directed by: Paul Feig.
Written by: Katie Dippold.
Starring: Sandra Bullock (Ashburn), Melissa McCarthy (Mullins), Demian Bichir (Hale), Marlon Wayans (Levy), Michael Rapaport (Jason Mullins), Jane Curtin (Mrs. Mullins), Spoken Reasons (Rojas), Dan Bakkedahl (Craig), Taran Killam (Adam), Michael McDonald (Julian), Tom Wilson (Captain Woods).

Melissa McCarthy seems to be at her best when she’s the least scripted. She was the best thing about Judd Apatow’s This is 40 last year, despite her limited screen time, and as her the extended scene of her over the end credits shows, she seemed to be making it up as she went along, leaving her co-stars laughing as her increasingly insane rant goes off in a million different directions. It’s at moments like these that her immense comic talent is truly at its best. There are moments in The Heat when that side of her comes out – but unfortunately not as many as I would have liked. For the most part, she is shoehorned into a buddy cop comedy alongside Sandra Bullock that simply isn’t up to her level (nor Bullock’s for that matter).

The movie stars McCarthy as Mullins, a Boston PD detective, who takes her job of cleaning up the streets very seriously – so seriously in fact, that she has no problem running people down with her car. That she bears no resemblance to how a cop in the real world would have to operate goes without saying. A drug dealer she has just arrested comes to the attention of the FBI, who thinks he may be the key to a bigger kingpin – so they send in Ashburn (Bullock), to question him – which, of course, infuriates Mullins. Neither of these women play well with others – they do not have, nor want, partners. But for seemingly no other reason than because the screenplay needs them together, they are partnered up on this case to crack this drug ring.

I have to admit, that even now – not long after I watched the film, the details of what the plot of the drug dealers actually is in the movie has already started to grow hazy. It doesn’t really matter though – the movie really isn’t about its crime plot, but rather about putting these two women, who in the time honored tradition of buddy comedies start out hating each other and then grow to become best friends forever, in absurd comic situations. If nothing else, The Heat shows just how much chemistry McCarthy and Bullock have together. Bullock has the “straight” role, something she hasn’t done often before, but she excels at it here. She’s a stick in the mud that needs to loosen up, and let others into her life, or else she’s destined to be alone forever. Because Bullock is so good at playing it straight here, it allows McCarthy to go bat shit insane, which is when she is at her best. The movie gives her more space to run wild than the abysmal Identity Thief did earlier this year, and McCarthy makes the most of it.

Unfortunately, other than the two leads, there really is nothing else in the movie that is at all interesting. A talented supporting cast – including Oscar nominee Demian Bichir, Marlon Wayans, Jane Curtain, Spoken Reasons (with a name like that, he has to be a rapper, right? Or perhaps a slam poet – do they still have those?), Michael Rapaport, Dan Bakkedahl and Taran Killam (slowly becoming the most consistent performer on SNL every week) – are pretty much wasted. They get steamrolled by Bullock and McCarthy. And Paul Feig, a colleague of Judd Apatow shares Apatow’s inability to cut his movie to an appropriate length. Like his last film, Bridesmaids (which I quite liked – but not as much as many did), his film goes on far too long, and grows slack. By the end, it has worn out its welcome.

I liked parts of The Heat more than the whole. Bullock and McCarthy are as good as they can be in the movie – and it is refreshing not only to see a mainstream, buddy cop movie center around two women, but also have neither one need a man to make them complete. They’re both single – and neither is given a love interest (although the running gag of McCarthy’s past lovers is pretty amusing) – and neither need one. But in the end, a movie like The Heat rises and falls on just how funny it is – when you’re movie is basically just a clothesline in which to hang jokes, the jokes better be funny. Some are, most aren’t. The movie probably goes 1-for-3 in terms of good jokes to bad – which may be good in baseball, but in a movie, that’s a whole lot of jokes falling flat.

Movie Review: Bridesmaids

Bridesmaids ***
Directed by: Paul Feig.
Written by: Kristen Wiig & Annie Mumolo.
Starring: Kristen Wiig (Annie), Maya Rudolph (Lillian), Rose Byrne (Helen), Melissa McCarthy (Megan), Wendi McLendon-Covey (Rita), Ellie Kemper (Becca), Chris O'Dowd (Rhodes), Michael Hitchcock (Don Cholodecki), Jill Clayburgh (Annie's Mom), Jon Hamm (Ted).

The one problem I have had with many of the movies that Judd Apatow has either directed or produced is that often, the male characters are so interesting and complex, where the female characters are either complete bitches or absolute saints. The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Funny People, Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, etc are some of the best comedies in recent years, but to a certain extent they’ve all suffered from that problem. The men are interesting, and the women are quite simply there. The latest films Apatow produced, Bridesmaids, isn’t so much a corrective of that – that would imply that both the male and female characters are interesting and complex – but the opposite. This time, the women are interesting and complex and the men are either dicks or saints. Beggars can’t be choosers I guess, and it was refreshing to see the females in a movie like this actually be funny, flawed and complex. Sooner or later, I hope he brings it altogether.

The film stars Kristen Wiig (who also co-wrote the screenplay) as Annie, a woman in her late 30s, who has just seen her bakery go under, has no boyfriend, lives with a very strange British brother and sister combo, and has little going on in her life. She sometimes sees Ted (Jon Hamm), but he is a complete asshole. Her best friend is Lillian (Maya Rudolph), who has a better job, and has just gotten engaged and asks Annie to be her maid of honor. Annie loves the idea, but soon meets the other bridesmaids – including Helen (Rose Byrne), the wife of Lillian’s fiancé’s boss, who is super rich, and seemingly perfect in every way, and who seems to have decided that she really should be Lillian’s maid of honor. Instead of simply sucking it up and moving on, the two of them get into a tug of war for Lillian’s affections that spins wildly out of control. In movies like this, the main character needs a love interest, and Annie finds one in the sweet cop Rhodes (Chris O’Dowd) who pulls her over one day. But Annie is screwed up, and as with everything else in her life, she may just screw this up as well.

Since Wiig co-wrote the screenplay, she was able to tailor the film to meet her comic stylings. Anyone who has seen her on SNL in the past few seasons know what that entails. There are moments where she goes wildly over the top, and other moments where her voice retreats to barely over a mumble. This can be really effective on SNL, and for much of Bridesmaids, it works as well. I do think she has to learn be a consistent comic performer for movies – which are of course wildly different than sketch comedy – but for her first real starring role in a movie, she’s pretty good. I enjoyed Maya Rudolph as well as her friend, pulled between Annie, her old life, and Helen, her new life, trying to make everyone happy, which is of course the quickest way to ensure that she is the one who ends up miserable. And Rose Bryne, who last year proved to be an extremely gifted comic performer with her hilarious, but small, part in Get Him to the Greek is quite good as well. The rest of the cast fills in nicely.

Ultimately, I do not think that Bridesmaids is quite as good as many of the other films that Apatow has been involved in. It is a little too long (as all of them have been), but also a little too scattershot at times. Gags that start out promising get pushed to the limit – beyond the point where they are funny. The movie also feels dragged out at times.

And yet, at the same time, Bridesmaid is hilarious at parts as well. It was refreshing to see women acting like as big of jackasses as men are always allowed to act like in comedies. That for once, the women are allowed to be stuck in a state of arrested development, and the men had to be the ones who were patient and supportive. That never happens in movies. Ultimately, I think Bridesmaids is a good movie – not a great one – but a good first step for Apatow and company on the road to making a truly great female centric comedy.