Netflix And Chill: Superbad (2007)

Did I have any specific reason for suddenly wanting to revisit Superbad? Yes. I wanted a reminder of the time when I enjoyed the work of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. The pair of them have been receiving a fair bit of praise recently for their latest TV show, The Studio, and I don't know what others have seen in that show that I am missing. It's smug, absolutely relies on some great cameos to make it work, and feels like what you would get if someone wanted to make The Player, but with no teeth and someone in the lead role who has 1000% less charisma and presence than Tim Robbins. But I seem to be in the minority with that opinion. Ah well, I knew I could revisit Superbad with a sense of optimism. It may have been some time since my last viewing of it, but I hoped that it held up.

Phew. It holds up. There are issues with some of the language and attitudes, but that's par for the course with almost every teen movie. This holds up a LOT better than many others I could mention.

Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera) are besties about to go on different life paths after high school. That inspires them to do try their hardest when they get a surprise invite to a party that should have both alcohol and girls present. Although they have to supply some of the alcohol, which they hope to do with the help of their friend, Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), owner of one fake ID that has him named as McLovin. As they try to get the alcohol and make their way to Becca (Martha MacIsaac) and Jules (Emma Stone), our young leads end up plagued by problems. There's a robbery, a couple of friendly cops (played by Rogen and Bill Hader), and a guy named Francis (Joe Lo Truglio) who drives as poorly as he interacts with others in his own age group. 

There's nothing really special about Superbad. It's a typical teen movie, in many ways, but also avoids feeling too familiar because of the moments that choose to focus on the co-dependent nature of the friendship between Seth and Evan. It IS funny though, which is a big bonus, and the timing worked out well for it becoming a fantastic showcase for a wide variety of performers. Although not his first feature, director Greg Mottola also did a lot of TV work, some of which had him working with a number of the main individuals featured here.

Hill and Cera have a great rapport with one another, the nervous energy and crudity of the former nicely complementing the quiet anxiety of the latter.  Mintz-Plasse is almost a combination of the two of them, with an extra helping of unfounded confidence added in to the mix, and having the three of them approach their teen troubles in their own unique ways helps to make the film more interesting and fun than it otherwise would be. Rogen and Hader are a blast as the friendly young cops, MacIsaac is sweet enough, Stone is very cool and adorable, and Lo Truglio is a lot of fun as he helps to fill out a large supporting cast that also includes Kevin Corrigan, Dave Franco, Martin Starr, Clark Duke, and a few other familiar faces.

If you don't like any of the main players involved with this then I would advise you to give it a miss, especially if you have somehow never got around to seeing it before now. If you think you don't like some of the main players, but also remember a time when you might have found them much more enjoyable and entertaining than they are today, then you may want to put it on your viewing schedule. I'm glad I did, and I could happily rewatch it any time. It almost felt like a cool drink of water after tolerating the disappointing comedic desert of The Studio.

8/10

 If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews
Or Amazon is nice at this time of year - https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/Y1ZUCB13HLJD?ref_=wl_share

Prime Time: Get A Job (2016)

Written by Kyle Pennekamp and Scott Turpel, and directed by Dylan Kidd, Get A Job is, in many ways, exactly the standard comedy that you think it is. And yet, in other ways, it inadvertently stands out as a melting pot of attitudes and ideas that many people (myself included) want to see changing.

Miles Teller is Will Davis, a young man who thinks he has his life sorted. He has just graduated, his girlfriend (Jillian, played by Anna Kendrick) has got herself a great job, and his friends seem to be poised to fall upwards. Unfortunately, the job that he thought would be there for him, after a lot of hours put in as an unpaid intern, isn’t. Which means he has to decide between doing what he loves and doing what he has to do in order to earn a decent wage. And things get even worse for his father (Bryan Cranston), who finds himself unemployed for the first time in decades.

Work needs done. We al know that. Not every job is going to be fulfilling. But that doesn’t mean anyone should be undervalued. If anything, the “unskilled” jobs that are seen as less desirable should pay just as much as some of the more enviable, cushy, numbers that we see people striving for in movies. Get A Job doesn’t consider that though. It is too busy working with the motto of “find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” This is a fantasy film, basically, but it accidentally scatters some reality throughout it.

Here are the positives. You get a reminder of how crappy it is to have someone in an unpaid role. You get a reminder of how disposable you are to any big company (shown in the way that Cranston’s character so suddenly finds himself adrift with no idea of where he might be able to go next). You get to see someone applying themselves to fully show what they are capable of, albeit often in a way that also has them feeling a bit restricted and very bloody tired. And, arguably best of all, you get a nice mockery of that whole “I’ll make sure you never work in this town again” attitude that some employers still think can work. Having been on the receiving end of that line of bullshit myself some time ago, I can assure you that it’s very rarely a serious threat. It is the flailing claws of a wounded predator used to being at the top of the food chain, and you should never let fear of repercussions from an employer stop you from valuing yourself enough to move to a better position (for any reason, be it pay, location, working environment, etc).

The cast do well enough, although the supporting players are a very mixed bag. As the friends of our lead, Brandon T. Jackson is easily integrated into the awful world of stock market trading, Nicholas Braun is a teacher who would rather spend his time getting stoned and playing videogames, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse has a plot all about creating an app that is basically every stalker’s wet dream. These three aren’t great, but there are much better turns from Alison Brie, Bruce Davison, Jorge Garcia, Marcia Gay Harden, Greg Germann, and Iohn C. McGinley, all playing a variety of adults already established in their respective workplaces. Kendrick is completely wasted in her role, which amounts to little more than 5-10 minutes of screentime, but both Teller and Cranston are very good, with the latter having some great moments with a local barista (Cammy, played by Mimi Gianopulos) who turns out to be more supportive than any official employment advisors.

Predictable, cheesy, but also fun, I won’t ever feel the need to rewatch this, but I enjoyed it well enough while it was on. The technical side of things is competent enough, the plotting fits everything together in an amusingly snug way for the third act, and it at least serves as a reminder that you should give your loyalty and time not to a job you may feel worn down and frustrated by, but to the people you care about.

5/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews

Trolls (2016)

I think it's always important when discussing a movie aimed at children to remind people of how immature and childish I can be. When people tell you to try remembering how it felt like to be a wide-eyed child . . . I'm already there. I'm not going to compare a children's movie to, say, Casablanca (although some are gold-plated classics in a different way from that Bogart vehicle), but I am still going to expect it to do a certain job.

Trolls is an odd film in almost every sense. First of all, it's based on those little troll dolls that I thought had faded out of our shared consciousness back in the 1990s (the last thing I remember about them was a console game on the Sega Mega-CD, I want to say). Second, it's a film that patches together a number of horrible cover versions of songs, almost as if every main scene was initially planned to be the standard finale/credit sequence we've seen in dozens of other big animated releases. Third, the story is a bit wild, being all about a race of creatures that believe eating the trolls is the secret to happiness.

You find that out at the very start of the movie. The Bergens are about to have their annual feast of trolls, served up by the Chef (Christine Baranski), but they find that the trolls have escaped. Some years pass by, trolls live in a new area, they sing and dance (which is what they do), and have hug time every half an hour. Poppy (Anna Kendrick) is a most vocal fan of all of this stuff. Branch (Justin Timberlake) is not. He's too busy worrying about when the Bergen will find them and whisk them all away to be eaten. And so, when a load of the trolls are found by the Bergen and whisked away to be eaten, Poppy and Branch head off to rescue their troll buddies.

It's bright, it's full of excerpts from popular songs (with the main theme being that they're all upbeat singalong favourites, from what I can recall), and it has enough to keep younger viewers entertained. But that doesn't make it actually any good. It makes it passable, average, it's the bare minimum to be expected from a mainstream animated release from a major studio. Director Mike Mitchell has films on his CV that prove he can do much better than this. Co-director Walt Dohrn, on the other hand, will have to work harder on future projects to make me forget his name is attached to this.

Writers Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger have been involved with some treats (the Kung Fu Panda movies stand out from their filmography). This seems like a thankless task for them. The characters aren't too bad, although often defined by one main trait, but the script is simply required to hop from one peppy song moment to the next.

The voice cast almost make up for the rest of the negatives. Kendrick is always someone I enjoy onscreen, and her personality is perfectly suited to her character here. Timberlake is very good, and Baranski is superb as the mean Chef. Chriostopher Mintz-Plasse is a grumpy young King, Zooey Deschanel is a staff member who is smitten with the King, Russell Brand is a guru type of troll, Kunal Nayyar voices someone very glittery, and there's a turn from James Corden that is small enough to have him be almost tolerable.

Trolls is average, at best. It's easy to see why kids will enjoy it. The tunes, the bright colours, the cute characters. It's also easy to see that it was put together without any of the care or detail that goes into so many other movies looking to capture the attention of the same demographic.

5/10

Here's a shiny set available.
Americans can buy this disc.

Bonus Review: Bad Neighbours (2014)

Bad Neighbours (or just Neighbors, as it was originally titled in America) is one of those all-too-common cinema releases, a comedy that packs all of the best bits into the trailer. And, as is also all-too-common, it's all the more frustrating because it had the potential to be so much better.

Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne play Mac and Kelly Radner, a pair of adults who are trying to hang on to their youth and spontaneity. Viewers know this from the very first scene, which shows the couple trying to have some fun, spicy sex while the blissfully ignorant gaze of their baby daughter proves to be too off-putting. Perhaps the two will just have to accept that their adults now, with all of the responsibilities that entails. In fact, they have to act like real adults when the house next door to them is turned into a fraternity house (led by Zac Efron, as Teddy, and Dave Franco, as Pete). Mac and Kelly initially try to be cool, and even join the youngsters at their first big party, but it's not long until they realise that they have to do whatever it takes to ensure that the parties don't carry on. Teddy and Pete, of course, will do whatever it takes to keep the music loud and the alcohol flowing, and so begins a battle of wills.

Director Nicholas Stoller makes Bad Neighbours very much a party movie. There are loud tunes, neon-infused moments of drunken dizziness, and scenes that focus on general shenanigans. "Isn't this fun?" it seems to say. But those moments jar when the tone shifts, when it becomes clear that it's not as fun as it looks, when it's all about people partying or fighting because they don't know what else to do to reassure themselves of their position in life.

The blame lies squarely with writers Andrew J. Cohen and Brendan O'Brien, who just don't seem to be able to navigate the territory that they themselves laid out. Being unsure about how to mix the laughs with the darker moments wouldn't be so bad if the laughs were funny enough, but they're not. Instead, we get a lot of typical Rogen lines from Rogen, and lots of juvenile gags about penises. I like Rogen, but his character in this movie really needed to be more removed from his usual persona, and it isn't.

When it comes to his performance, Rogen is fine. If you like Rogen (which I do). Rose Byrne is also fine, although she's not treated as well by the script. Ike Barinholtz and Carla Gallo create some laughs as their friends, a couple now separated from one another, which makes for some obvious friction when they have to be in the same space. Dave Franco, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Halston Sage, and Craig Roberts also do just fine in their range of roles; a well-endowed frat member, the girlfriend of Teddy, and a poor, bullied lad nicknamed Assjuice. The worst person onscreen here is Zac Efron, which shows how badly his character is written.

I like Zac Efron, I really do. In fact, if it was anyone else in the role that he has in this movie then the whole film would rate even lower. He manages to improve things slightly thanks to his charisma and, well, sheer force of will. But this role may be the worst that he's ever been handed in his career, so far. He's the antagonist, but he's also given too little depth too late in the proceedings as the writers try to layer the whole film with some meaning that isn't required. This is a film in which the funniest moments include the misappropriation of airbags. Okay, comedies can be layered with drama, but when things are shoehorned in as clumsily as they are here . . . . . . . . it just doesn't work out.

I wanted to enjoy this movie. I'm often a sucker when it comes to any cinema experience. Despite my years of experience, and disappointment, I still watch a well-edited trailer and think "yes, can't wait to see that". And, as many people know, I am easily pleased. It would have only taken one BIG laugh, or a better balancing act between the comedy and the slightly darker undercurrent, and I would have at least thought of this as a worthwhile way to pass some time. Sadly, that wasn't the case.

4/10

http://www.amazon.com/Neighbors-Blu-ray-DVD-DIGITAL-UltraViolet/dp/B00K89VBV0/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1401224051&sr=1-2&keywords=neighbors