Movie Review: Sing Street

Sing Street

Directed by: John Carney.

Written by: John Carney.

Starring: Ferdia Walsh-Peelo (Conor), Lucy Boynton (Raphina), Jack Reynor (Brendan), Aidan Gillen (Robert Lalor), Maria Doyle Kennedy (Penny), Kelly Thornton (Ann), Ian Kenny (Barry), Ben Carolan (Darren), Percy Chamburuka (Ngig), Mark McKenna (Eamon), Don Wycherley (Brother Baxter).

 

Like his previous films, Once and Begin Again, John Carney’s Sing Street is a sweet, entertaining film about the power of music. The film is certainly steeped in nostalgia, and Carney has perhaps tried a little too hard to make the film into a slick crowd pleaser. Overall though, Sing Street is a film that is enjoyable throughout – a film in a minor key, that earns both the laughs and tears it eventually draws from the audience. And, like the previous two films, the music is terrific.

 

It’s the 1980s, in Ireland and 15 year old Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) is being pulled out of his school, and being sent to learn with the Catholic Brothers – his parents are struggling financially, and their marriage is falling apart. Conor is miserable at the new school – that is until he spies Raphina (Lucy Boynton) standing across the street from the school. She’s a year older, has an even older boyfriend, and informs Conor that she is a model – and will be heading to London soon. Conor says she should star in a music video for his band before she goes – and she agrees. The only problem – he has no band, cannot really play an instrument, and has never written a song before.

 

The movie then becomes about Conor gathering that band, and learning how to write a song and perform. Their influences are many and varied – mainly because Conor seemingly doesn’t know much about music at first – so whatever band his slacker older brother, Brendan (Jack Reynor) introduces him to, that is what their next song sounds like. The two main relationships in the film are between Conor and Raphina – that, like the relationships between Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova in Once and Mark Ruffalo and Keira Knightley in Begin Again may never actually involve romance, but starts to grow deeper than that. The difference here is that it is clear that Conor is in love with Raphina, and as the movie progresses, maybe she feels the same way. Until she makes her decision however, she advises Conor to find “happiness in sadness” – which is what love really is.

 

But, as is appropriate for a film that is dedicated to “Brothers Everywhere”, the best relationship in the film is between Conor and Brendan. Reynor, who has been building a solid resume in the past few years (and did a Transformers movie), at first makes Brendan into the personification of the “cool”, older brother, guiding their younger brother into the world of great music. As the film progresses, though Brendan gains more depth – there is a deep sadness to him. He’s only in his early 20s, and yet he seems to have given up – he is living vicariously through his younger brother. It is something that truly, I wish the movie concentrated on this relationship even more – we’ve seen lots of movies about young teenage love (even if Sing Street handles that aspect well) – fewer with a brotherly relationship like this at its core. The moment that made me cry is all Reynor – it’s his final shot in the movie, and it’s a great one.

 

Then, of course, there is the music. Carney has always been able to fill his films with great, memorable original songs – in Once, it all comes from Hansard and Irglova, but Carney has become more involved in it as the films progressed. No, I don’t believe that any high school band would or could write songs this good – especially from where they start (the film isn’t like the charming Swedish film, We Are the Best – where the song they come up with is good – but also believably comes from the girls in the band) – but when the music is this memorable, that seems like a minor complaint.

 

Yes, Sing Street is perhaps a little too slick and sheen – a little too engineered to be a crowd pleaser, and you can feel it at times. But, the film is still a crowd pleaser regardless of that. Carney may not be stretching himself with each new film – but he knows what he does well, and in Sing Street, he delivers it.

Movie Review: Nerve

Nerve

Directed by: Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman.

Written by: Jessica Sharzer based on the novel by Jeanne Ryan.

Starring: Emma Roberts (Vee), Dave Franco (Ian), Emily Meade (Sydney), Miles Heizer (Tommy), Kimiko Glenn (Liv), Marc John Jefferies (Wes), Machine Gun Kelly (Ty), Brian 'Sene' Marc (J.P.), Samira Wiley (Hacker Kween), Juliette Lewis (Nancy). 

 

There is a darker version of Nerve to be made, by some brave filmmaker and studio, that would have the potential to be great – or at least dangerous and disturbing. Nerve isn’t that film – it doesn’t take long to figure out its based on a Young Adult novel because it feels very much like one. In this case, what that means is that it takes an interesting premise, but doesn’t push it to its darkest level – it skitters along on the surface, teasing you that its going to go to some nasty places that it never really gets to, before wrapping things up in a nice, neat little package with an ending that is, quite frankly, awful – and lets everyone off the hook far too easily. Yet, I have to admit – I liked Nerve a lot more than I probably should have – that ending is awful, but even while I was aware of how much better the film could be as I watched it, the cast is so likable and winning, and the film so entertaining that you can forget what the film isn’t doing, and concentrate on what it’s doing well. Yes, it has the easy, black and white morality of a YA novel – but it does have some interesting things to say.

 

The film is about an online game called Nerve – users can either sign up to be a Watcher – and pay a fee – or a player, who will actually get money if the complete the dares the users give them. You fail or bail, you lose. You try and tell the cops, well, Snitches Get Stitches, the game informs the users. How all this works doesn’t really make a lot of sense – and frankly, I don’t care (the last thing the film needs is a 20 minute seminar on how it would work) – because the film uses its premise to simply take what is already happening online now and take it up a notch – basically, young people doing incredibly stupid stuff and posting videos online of them doing it. In fact, the fact that the teenagers are doing all the stupid stuff they do in Nerve actually more sense than it does in real life – at least in the movie, they’re getting paid.

 

The movie focuses on high school senior Vee (Emma Roberts – seriously, is Roberts STILL playing high school girls – it feels like I’ve been watching her do that for a decade now), who is Hollywood’s version of a nerd girl – that is she takes pictures and reads Virginia Woolf, and only her nerd friend Tommy (Miles Heizer) realizes she’s a knockout. She’s embarrassed one day at school – especially after her best friend, Sydney (Emily Meade) calls her “repressed” – and heads home and logs onto Nerve – the game Sydney has been playing, and said Vee wouldn’t have the guts to do. Of course, Vee starts playing – and the dares keep going up. On her first dare, she meets Ian (Dave Franco) – another player, and since the Watchers like them together (and you cannot have a YA story without a meet cute and love story taking over, no matter what the rest of the story is about) and start playing together. It starts out innocently enough – “Kiss a Stranger for 5 seconds” – and then eventually gets to the level of life threatening stunts.

 

To be honest, most of the stunts the Watchers give the Players are fairly innocent - seriously, this is the internet full of horrible people, and yet nothing sexual beyond the kiss comes up? I have a hard time believing that more people who vote for some of the death defying stunts rather than that, but I get the movie doesn’t want to push things into the truly uncomfortable zones for its target audience. It wants to keep everything a little cleaner than that. It’s not hard to imagine though just how messed up this game could become in real life – which is kind of the movie I would have rather seen.

 

Nerve doesn’t go that dark – but on a surface level, the film works. Roberts and Franco are both quite charming in the film, and have an easy screen chemistry together. Having said that, I think the relationships between Vee and Sydney is more complex, and liked how the movie at least attempted to explore that. I would have rather nerd boy Tommy to function a little bit more as a character and a little bit less as a plot device however.

 

Nerve is fun. Directed by Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost – who made Catfish, and therefore know a little something about the dangers of the internet, the film has a glossly sheen to it (as did Catfish actually), but for the at least an hour, the film works. Yes, it flies off the rails in the end – wanting to give everyone a happy ending, and letting everyone get away consequence free – which I think does kind of go against the rest of the film. Maybe just leave at that point, and imagine your own, darker, better ending.

Movie Review: Jason Bourne

Jason Bourne

Directed by: Paul Greengrass.

Written by: Paul Greengrass & Christopher Rouse based on the characters created by Robert Ludlum.

Starring: Matt Damon (Jason Bourne), Tommy Lee Jones (CIA Director Robert Dewey), Alicia Vikander (Heather Lee), Vincent Cassel (Asset), Julia Stiles (Nicky Parsons), Riz Ahmed (Aaron Kalloor), Ato Essandoh (Craig Jeffers), Scott Shepherd (Director NI Edwin Russell), Bill Camp (Malcolm Smith), Vinzenz Kiefer (Christian Dassault), Stephen Kunken (Baumen), Gregg Henry (Richard Webb).

 

I’ve been thinking a lot about two interviews Matt Damon has given in the two days since I saw Jason Bourne. The first, around the time of 2007s The Bourne Ultimatum, was that if he returned for a fourth Bourne movie, they’d name it The Bourne Redundancy, because both he and director Paul Greengrass (who directed the second and third Bourne movies) thought the story of Jason Bourne was done. The second interview, given just recently, had Damon – like many before him – bemoaning the death of the mid-budget movie, that he said used to be his bread and butter. I cannot help but think that those movies becoming rarer in the last decade led directly to both Greengrass and Damon returning to the story of Jason Bourne after nine year away. The studios love franchises, and although The Bourne Legacy, with Jeremy Renner playing a different character in the same universe (and not directed by Greengrass) did okay at the box office, it wasn’t anywhere near the hit – or as loved – as Damon’s stint as Bourne. With Damon’s bread and butter movies becoming harder to make – not just for him, but probably for Greengrass as well, another Bourne movie probably seemed like a good idea.

 

Jason Bourne isn’t a bad movie, per se – it just seems like a movie without a real reason to exist. The best sequels feel like they are necessary extensions of the films that came before them. Jason Bourne seems like the type of film where it was decided they wanted to make another film in the franchise, and had to come up with a story to justify it. The film is basically a retread of the previous films, expanding the conspiracy theories that were revealed in the previous trilogy in ways that stretch credibility. It somewhat works because the big bad guy is the CIA Director, played by Tommy Lee Jones, one of those actors who is good regardless of how silly the story becomes, and because the film introduces a new character – played by Alicia Vikander, a CIA computer analyst, who at first seems like a replacement for Julia Stiles (also back) – but is perhaps something more sinister. Vikander is fine in the film – her accent is weird (seriously, where the hell is she supposed to be from) – but I also like weird, unplaceable accents in movies.

 

But for Greengrass and Damon, it seems like they are both just going through the motions. Greengrass is usually the only director working that can make the shaky, handheld camera and rapid fire editing action sequences work – he’s the exception that proves the rule that directors shouldn’t use this style in action sequences. For the most part, that’s true here as well – although there are times when the action verges on the incoherent, and he overuses the handheld look in some none action sequences (like a weird one, where a computer genius, played by the talented Riz Ahmed – who is wasted by the way – is giving a speech, and the camera never settles down). Damon has decided to make Jason Bourne even quieter and more unreadable than ever before – he’s pissed, but there is also a lot of chatter from Vikander that perhaps he just wants to come back in. You’d get none of that from Damon – you don’t get a lot of anything actually. To give Damon some credit, he is still a fascinating screen presence, even when he’s doing nothing.

 

This has been a summer in which unnecessary sequels and reboots have dominated the box office, without really generating all that much passion from either critics or audiences. Everything seems to have just a little bit less money than expected. I cannot help but think that it’s because for the most part, the films have been mediocre. Sure, a lot of the films are entertaining in fits and starts, and for the most part are not a bad way to spend an evening at the movies. But the films have also all been fairly forgettable. Jason Bourne is like that as well. If you saw the other Bourne movies, then you’ve already seen everything in this new film, done better.

Movie Review: Lights Out

Lights Out

Directed by: David F. Sandberg.

Written by: Eric Heisserer based on the short film by David F. Sandberg.

Starring: Teresa Palmer (Rebecca), Gabriel Bateman (Martin), Alexander DiPersia (Bret), Maria Bello (Sophie), Billy Burke (Paul), Alicia Vela-Bailey (Diana).

 

Lights Out is a horror movie with a simple concept that works because of its direction and performances. It is based on director David F. Sandberg's short film – that while only 3 minutes long, was so well received, that he got $5 million for James Wan (director of The Conjuring, etc) to turn it into a feature. The film is about a deranged, spirit woman named Diana who has attached herself to her friend, Sophie (Maria Bello), who is her only connection to this world, and will do anything to protect that connection. One husband is has already run off, and another dies in the film’s opening sequence. Her two kids – Rebecca (Teresa Palmer) now in her 20s, has distanced herself from her family, and has tried to put her own childhood run-ins with Diana out of her mind. She is drawn back in out of concern for her 10 year old half-brother, Martin (permanently wide-eyed Gabriel Bateman). Oh, and Diana can only attack in the dark – she disappears as soon as light hits her. You would think this would make it easy to beat her – and you’d be wrong.

 

The original short film had no explanation for its demon woman character, and in the feature, that is the weakest part of the film. There is a lot of psycho-babble and talk of experiments, and blah blah blah – no one cares. I really wish more horror movies would take the tactic of The Babadook or It Follows, who doesn’t really feel the need to explain where the monster comes from, because there is literally no one to explain them that doesn’t sound ridiculously stupid. What matters in horror movies is that the scares are real, and that you actually care about the characters in jeopardy. In that regard, Lights Out is two-for-two.

 

To be fair, you could complain that many (perhaps most) of the scares in Lights Out are of the BOO! moment variety – where a character appears from nowhere to scare the crap out of the audience. These are, more often than not, both effective and cheap – the work in the moment, but don’t stay with you in the way the truly terrifying movie moments do. What sets the moments in Lights Out apart is that they actually do stick with you. Lights Out exploits our natural fear of the dark – not an overly original fear to exploit, I know, but an effective one. You can never quite tell what Diana is going to do – she isn’t always there to try and kill or hurt someone – something it’s just to stoke their fear. Sandberg mixes up the types of scares he puts on the audience.

 

Perhaps more importantly, he also makes us care about the three main characters as well (he is a little less effective at making us care for Rebecca’s floppy haired boyfriend, but, he seems nice). Bello and Palmer are perfectly cast as mother-daughter (from the previews, which didn’t reveal much of the story, I actually thought Palmer was playing a younger version of Bello – and thought that was perfect as well). Bello’s role is the type that allows actors to over-the-top if the choose – but Bello does something lower key – her mental problems are clearly there, but she doesn’t go wide eyed manic. It’s a more effective performance than it probably should be. Palmer is excellent as well – playing a woman trying to overcome her past and her own issues, at the same time, trying to be a good sister. She is a typical horror movie heroine in some ways, but she grounds her fear in the real world.

 

Lights Out isn’t a great horror movie – it doesn’t come close to the levels of the aforementioned It Follows or The Babadook. But as far as mainstream horror movies go, it’s effective and scary and memorable. In a summer of sequels and reboots, it’s a welcome relief from the bloat and excess of those films.

Movie Review: Ice Age: Collision Course

Ice Age: Collision Course

Directed by:  Mike Thurmeier.

Written by:  Michael J. Wilson and Michael Berg and Yoni Brenner and Aubrey Solomon.

Starring: Ray Romano (Manny), Denis Leary (Diego), John Leguizamo (Sid), Queen Latifah (Ellie), Adam Devine (Julian), Jennifer Lopez (Shira), Keke Palmer (Peaches), Simon Pegg (Buck / Pythagorus Buck / Robo Buck), Josh Peck (Eddie), Seann William Scott (Crash), Wanda Sykes (Granny), Stephanie Beatriz (Gertie), Robert Cardone (Freaky Bobby), Neil deGrasse Tyson (Neil deBuck Weasel), Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Shangri Llama), Max Greenfield (Roger), Jessie J (Brooke), Nick Offerman (Gavin), Melissa Rauch (Francine), Lilly Singh (Misty / Bubbles), Michael Strahan (Teddy), Chris Wedge (Scrat).

 

Was there any demand for a fifth Ice Age movie? In the past 14 years, we have followed Manny the Mammoth, Sid the Sloth and Diego the Sabretooth Tiger and their ever expanding flock through one misadventure after another. To be honest, none of the films have been very good – but up until this one, none have been all that bad either. They have mostly been forgettable, generic animated adventures (to be fair, I thought I had seen all five films, but I just double checked my big list of movies, and apparently, I missed the third installment – so maybe that sucked, or was the high point of the series – I’m not racing to find out). The one memorable part of the movies has always been Scrat, that lovable squirrel, who wants nothing more than to get and keep his acorn. Somewhat miraculously, Blue Sky Studios has resisted the urge to give Scrat his own standalone movie – which probably would have been as painful as the Minions movie last year, as a little Scrat goes a long way. Nevertheless, as I have an almost five year old, and I want to get her into the habit of going to the movies, I plan on taking her to see every kids movie there is (for the record, for the those paying attention, the reason there has been no review of The Secret Life of Pets, is because my lovely daughter completely freaked out when the snake made an appearance – she hates snakes – and try as I might, I could not settle her down. I liked what I saw – and will catch up with the whole movie when it comes out for home viewing options). On the plus side, my daughter liked the movie. Her succinct review of the film was basically "It was funny when the squirrel fell on his butt". Touché – that was kind of funny.

 

The rest of the movie wasn’t really very funny or entertaining. By this point in the series, there are so many characters that the film either has to introduce or reintroduce, that it feels that half the movie is over before the main two plots really kick in. The whole crew has to go on a journey to a mountain, because Buck the Weasel, says there is a giant asteroid hurtling towards that mountain that will wipe them all out. If that wasn’t enough, Peaches, the daughter of Manny and his wife Ellie, has announced that she is getting married to Julian – a goofball of a mammoth, that Manny doesn’t much like, and worse that the two plan on moving away. It’s a whole Father of the Bride of the Mammoth world that is handled, like the rest of the movie, rather lazily. The rest of the cast have various subplots – the nadir of which has to be Diego and his wife Shira, wondering if they would make good parents – it is shoehorned in, for no other reason than if it wasn’t, than Diego and Shira wouldn’t have anything to say for the rest of the movie. Sid the Sloth is still looking for love, and his wisecracking Granny is still wisecracking. The two annoying comic relief rodents are still annoying comic relief rodents. There are also a family of dinosaur birds, still hanging around for some reasons, who want to kill Buck. And eventually, the herd will end up in a hippie commune, led by the Shangri-Llama. That’s about the level of cleverness were dealing with here.

 

Scrat it responsible, of course, for that asteroid hurtling towards Earth – as his subplot takes him into space (not kidding). Oddly, considering how much time he spends on Twitter bitching about EVERY science fiction movie around, Neil deGrasse Tyson shows up playing a weasel version of himself to explain the science side of things – which even he admits is stupid.

 

Hopefully, this is the end of this franchise. It was never all that good, but I guess it kept making money (apparently even more overseas than in North America). The box office so far for this film hasn’t been all that good – so perhaps this series will be put out of their misery. The film labors under all the characters, and the writers clearly are barely even trying anymore. When the only thing a five year old will say about the film is that it was funny when the squirrel fell on his butt, it’s time to put an end to things.

Movie Review: Miles Ahead

Miles Ahead

Directed by: Don Cheadle.

Written by: Steven Baigelman & Don Cheadle and Stephen J. Rivele & Christopher Wilkinson.

Starring: Don Cheadle (Miles Davis), Ewan McGregor (Dave Braden), Emayatzy Corinealdi (Frances Taylor), Keith Stanfield (Junior), Michael Stuhlbarg (Harper Hamilton).

 

The formula for the musical biopic is well-established – and has been for decades. Musicians who get biopics made about them usually share quite a bit in common – struggle in the beginning, success, success that is then threatened by a life of excess – drugs, alcohol, sex, etc. – that the performer either conquerors – often with the help of a beautiful woman (because the artists who get these films made about them are almost always men), and moves on to a new chapter in their career, or doesn’t overcome, and whose life ends tragically young. You get the idea. Some good movies have been made using this formula – actors in particular love them, because it allows them to do an impersonation of a famous person, which is often a way to get an Oscar nomination. But in recent years, there has been a welcome few movies that really do try and do something different with the formula. Todd Haynes I’m Not There about Bob Dylan in the best of these – a film that has multiple actors play Dylan at different stages of his life and career, which explains a lot about him, but leaves the enigma in place. Last year’s Love & Mercy is another one – with two actors playing Brian Wilson at different points in his life as his struggles with mental illness. Don Cheadle’s Miles Ahead, about Miles Davis, isn’t as good as either of those films – but in the film, he really does try to do something different than the typical musical biopic. It doesn’t always work – the structure of the movie doesn’t always make sense, but it’s an ambitious project for the actor’s first film as a director. It’s clearly a labor of love, so it’s hard to be too hard on the film – which is fascinating, flaws and all.

 

The majority of Miles Ahead takes place over a single day in the late 1970s. Davis has been on hiatus since 1975 – he has said that health concerns have kept him from playing, but part of the blockage could be mental as well. On this particular day, he is visited by a Rolling Stone journalist – Dave Braden (Ewan McGregor) who wants to do a story about Davis, and his issues. Davis is currently arguing with his record label – he has recorded some new material, and they want to hear it – and he doesn’t want to let go of the tape. An ambitious, and sleazy, music manager Harper Hamilton (Michael Stuhlbarg) thinks if he can get the tapes, it will be good for him – and Hamilton’s young protégé, Junior (Keith Stainfield), a horn player like Davis (who also has drug issues like Davis) may be the person who can get it. As the day progresses, certain incidents bring to Davis mind things from his past – which we experience in flashback – most of them having to do with his now former wife, Frances Taylor (Emayatzy Corinealdi), a relationship Davis clearly wishes he didn’t scream up. Strangely for a biopic, Cheadle and company haven’t hidden the fact that most of the movie – at least the stuff over that day and night in the late 1970s, is completely made up. There was no Rolling Stone journalist, there probably wasn’t a Junior, and there was no car chase and gunfight as happens in the movie. It hardly matters – Cheadle and company aren’t really making a movie about the facts – but about Davis and his state of mind during that period, where he was paralyzed by fear that he could never be what he once was. Maybe he was right.

 

It should come as no surprise that Cheadle delivers a great performance as Davis – it’s his best work in years really, as he has basically spent the last half decade making his TV show House of Lies or else playing James Rhodes aka War Machine in the Marvel movies. Watching him as Davis reminds you of how electric an actor he can be – the guy who was so good in Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), Boogie Nights (1997), Out of Sight (1998), Traffic (2000), Hotel Rwanda (2004) or the little seen Talk to Me (2007). He has an ensemble as garish as anything in Boogie Nights – complete with huge sunglasses, and strange hair, along with a raspy voice constantly sounds as if he’s just fed up and tired. He has a tough guy persona, without actually revealing himself to be very tough – he doesn’t need to. He’s Miles Davis after all, and even if it’s been a few years, everyone still knows who he is. It’s a great performance.

 

No else in the movie can really match Cheadle. Stanfield, as the jittery, nervous Junior comes closest. McGregor is just along for the ride – fitting, since his character is as well. Emayatzy Corinealdi takes the usually rather thankless role of the wife in the musical biopic, and adds some humanity. We never really see what finally ended their relationship – but we see enough to know why.

 

I don’t think Cheadle ever really gets a handle on the structure of the film. The scenes in the past and present don’t really gel together in a meaningful way (why this incident in the present, brings to mind that memory from the past usually makes no sense). The film drags at times, and is outright silly at others – the aforementioned car chase and gunfight for example. As a director, I know Cheadle is trying to do something other than the same old biopic material – fictionalizing the story in a rather daring way. He leaves at least as many questions unanswered as he answers – that doesn’t strike me as an attempt to be unambiguous however – rather than just ill thought through.

 

No matter what though two things get you through from scene to scene – Cheadle’s performance and Davis’s music, which is heard throughout the film, and is great. Flaws and all, Miles Ahead is worth seeking out.

Movie Review: The Boss

The Boss

Directed by: Ben Falcone.

Written by: Ben Falcone & Melissa McCarthy and Steve Mallory.

Starring: Melissa McCarthy (Michelle Darnell), Kristen Bell (Claire), Peter Dinklage (Renault), Ella Anderson (Rachel), Tyler Labine (Mike Beals), Kathy Bates (Ida Marquette), Cecily Strong (Dana Dandridge), Mary Sohn (Jan Keller), Kristen Schaal (Scout Leader Sandy), Eva Peterson (Chrystal), Timothy Simons (Stephan), Aleandra Newcomb (Mariana), Annie Mumolo (Helen), Presley Coley (Hannah), Ben Falcone (Marty), Margo Martindale (Sister Aluminata), Michael McDonald (Bryce Crean).

 

Melissa McCarthy is one of the biggest movie stars in America right now – and deserves to be. She has a unique comic persona, who is at her best the more unhinged, and off script, she goes. She understands her appeal, and embraces it. Yet, I cannot help but think that she is, at least to a certain extent, under estimating her own skillset. More often than not, films starring McCarthy just aren’t very good, that she keeps afloat almost singlehandedly, with her force of will. So it is with The Boss – a film that, like her previous film Tammy, she co-wrote with her husband, Ben Falcone, who also serves as director. McCarthy is almost the sole reason to see the film – it’s a middling, mostly unfunny comedy about a wealthy woman, Michelle Darnell (McCarthy) who goes to jail for insider trading, loses everything – and when she gets out, starts to stay with her former assistant, Claire (Kristen Bell) – and sets her sites on rebuilding her empire. Her plan? To start her own version of the Girl Scouts, and cut into their cookie sales.

 

Darnell is the type of larger than life character that McCarthy specializes in. At her best, McCarthy is able to find the humanity in these characters that in lesser hands would be little more than a caricature. In order to do that however, the screenplay has to give McCarthy something deeper to work with – which the screenplay for The Boss never does. Darnell is over-the-top at the beginning, and remains so throughout the film. Yes, the movie takes the expected path and makes Darnell go from greedy and selfish to something resembling a sympathetic character in the end. It’s an unconvincing transformation, but it’s hardly the point of the film. The film exists to allow McCarthy several set pieces in which she can rant and rave and carry on, and a few chances for physical comedy. She does all this, and does it well to be sure. The film is at its best when it ignores the story and simply allows McCarthy loose. The only other actor who comes close to matching McCarthy is Peter Dinklage, who plays her rival, who is also in love with her. Dinklage completely commits to his characters strange insanity – and steals most of the scenes he’s in.

 

What is unfortunate about The Boss is that it spends far too much of its time on everything else. Kristen Bell is a fine comic actress, but she is given nothing to do as Claire except be a stick-in-the-mud. It’s the straight man role, but rarely has a straight man been this boring. A love story subplot between her and Tyler Labine goes nowhere and pretty much drags the movie to a stop every time it starts. Slightly better are supporting performances by Kristen Schaal and Annie Mumolo, as the soft spoken Girl Guides leader, and a very loud mother respectively, but they are barely in the film.

 

The Boss certainly has its moments. McCarthy is talented enough that she’s going to make you laugh at least a few times if she’s trying – and if nothing else, she seems to be trying very, very hard. Yet I cannot help but think that McCarthy, who after all co-wrote the movie, is underselling herself. She`s more talented than The Boss allows her to be. Yes, she can go big and get laughs – and she does. But there’s more to her than that – it’s there in a film like The Nines, which she made before she was a movie star - and it’s something I wish she'd tap into more often.