Netflix And Chill: Family Switch (2023)

Jennifer Garner is Jess, a busy mother with a successful career. She doesn't really like her daughter, CC (Emma Myers), focusing on playing football matches ahead of other ways to fill her time. Jess is married to Bill (Ed Helms), and neither of them seem to realise how their son, Wyatt (Brady Noon), is doing at school. Wyatt is a very smart young man, but he's very uncool and a bit miserable. There's also a baby. And a dog. This is the family at the heart of Family Switch, a film in which a familiar Freaky Friday scenario happens to the mother and daughter, to the father and son, AND to the baby and family dog.

Based on the book "Bedtime For Mommy", by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Family Switch is brought to the screen by writers Victoria Strouse and Adam Sztykiel, and director McG. While none of these names tend to instil pure joy in the hearts of most film fans, I would say that all of them have had times when they have managed to deliver decent entertainment (and McG has been working particularly well on Netflix projects). Sadly, Family Switch fails in almost every way it tries to work.

It’s a Christmas film that doesn’t make any decent use of the holiday, a bodyswap movie that mistakenly assumes more is better, and a star vehicle that wastes the more established names in the cast. And you just know that everyone involved thought they were making something in line with the classics of this particular sub-genre, which explains the scene in which the characters onscreen cheekily reference a number of other titles that are all much better than this.

Garner and Helms get the worse end of the stick, perhaps simply due to them having to act like teenagers for most of the runtime, but both Noon and Myers improve every scene that they’re in. Both of the younger screen stars are likable and funny, and I will look forward to whatever is next for them much more than I will look forward to whatever Garner and Helms line up. There aren’t many standouts in the supporting cast, although both Rita Moreno and Matthias Schweighöfer have fun in their small roles, and the less said about the CGI helping to visualize the swapped behaviour of the baby and the family dog the better.

There are a couple of laughs here and there (I don’t mind a heavily-signposted fart gag on occasion), a dance number that feels shoe-horned in to remind you of other dance numbers we have seen in this kind of fare, and a very safe and predictable finale you could almost write up once everything has been set up in the earliest scenes.

Not a good Christmas movie (I really wouldn’t even count it, considering the lack of holiday spirit, and I am very easygoing with movie labels), not a good bodyswap movie, and not a very good comedy. It’s just not good.

3/10

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Netflix And Chill: Coffee & Kareem (2020)

Is it just me or have there been a lot of comedies lately falling back into the well-worn tropes of the buddy cop genre without both leads being cops. There ARE movies with two mismatched cops (at least two of the better ones star Melissa McCarthy), but we now have cops dragging innocent civilians into their dangerous escapades (e.g. Central Intelligence, Stuber), couples trying to prove their innocence by diving into the underworld (e.g. Date Night, The Lovebirds), and adults teamed up with kids (My Spy, this). Of course, the familiar formula has been reworked with various combinations over the past few decades, nothing new there, but it feels as if there's been a recent resurgence, with it already becoming almost as tired and word as it was by the time Whoopi Goldber was partnered up with a talking dinosaur.

Ed Helms plays a police officer, Coffee, who doesn't seem to be too good at his job. He's enjoying his new relationship with Vanessa (Taraji P. Henson) though, although things may be a little tense with her son, Kareem (Terrence Little Gardenhigh). In fact, Kareem pretends to want some bonding time with Coffee, all to set a plan in motion that he hopes will get the man a beating. Things go wrong though, and Coffee and Kareem end up running for their lives. There are some dangerous baddies hot on their tale, and there may be some corrupt cops also involved.

The first feature from writer Shane Mack, this is very much a paint-by-numbers example of this kind of film, with the added "bonus" of one of the protagonists being a foul-mouthed kid. Mack sets everything up as you would expect. People being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the leads not getting on for the majority of the movie, but working together when necessary, and the obvious reveal of the main villain (revealed quite early on, to be fair, and not presented as a big "gotcha" moment). It's nothing special, but it's not bad, and there are a couple of good scenes making use of Helms being a desperate man while not wanting to be perceived as racist.

Director Michael Dowse (who also helmed Stuber, funnily enough) goes through the motions. He's not a director with any kind of voice, he just tends to work as well as the material that he's given. Coffee & Kareem is just okay, mainly because it is dragged down by the fact that Kareem isn't as hilarious a character as those making the movie think he is.

Gardenhigh isn't necessarily to blame for the way his character comes across, but it's easy to imagine things playing out a bit better with someone else in the role, perhaps someone who can better play up the attitude while also staying likeable enough to root for. Helms is doing the kind of stiff everyman he has done so many times before, and he's good at it, and Henson is disappointingly underused. Betty Gilpin takes on another movie role in her seemingly ongoing attempt to find something cinematically that will best showcase her talent, and she's definitely a highlight. It's just a shame that the middling nature of the rest of the movie means that this is another role that won't really stand out in her filmography.

Coffee & Kareem is okay, and that's all. You can watch it once and forget about it soon after, or you can avoid it completely without any fear of missing out. It's a shame that they decided to try and wring most of their laughs from Kareem being "hilariously profane". That's not where the better comedy lies, and it's only the other gags that help to make this average, as opposed to truly awful.

5/10

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Tag (2018)

Based on a true story, to a degree, Tag is a comedy all about a group of friends who have tried to stay young at heart by competing in an ongoing game of, as you may have guessed, Tag. It happens every year, throughout the month of May. That last one who is tagged as "it" is the person who has to spend a whole year knowing that they were the loser. One member of the team (Jerry, played by Jeremy Renner) has never been tagged, but this is the year when that changes. It's also the year of his wedding.

Marking the feature directorial debut of Jeff Tomsic,  Tag is about as middling as mainstream comedies get. I'm not going to deny that I laughed a few times, which is a few times more than I expected to, but a lot of the humour here comes from the cast, who elevate the fairly weak script by Rob McKittrick and Mark Steilen.

Renner is a lot of fun here, his ultra-serious approach to covering all of the bases to avoid being tagged a highlight of the film, and the rest of the team do well. Ed Helms is the one who seems to have things planned out best, Jon Hamm looks to be a viable threat at times, Jake Johnson is in unfocused stoner mode, and Hannibal Buress amuses with a number of timely, but unhelpful, observations. Isla Fisher is very good, playing the wife of the character played by Helms, her intensity turned all the way up to 11 for many of her scenes, Leslie Bibb isn't bad as the bride-to-be, and Annabelle Wallis follows the group to get an unexpected story for her newspaper, the Wall Street Journal. Rashida Jones is always a welcome presence, but she's shoehorned in here as a distraction for two of the main male characters, and subsequently given nothing decent to work with.

I'm surprised that we don't get a selection of upbeat pop hits but, otherwise, this ticks all of the expected boxes. You get flashbacks to the characters playing the game as kids, you get a number of tag-related set-pieces, there are some underhand tactics, and you also get a secret revealed towards the back end that is supposed to underline everything with some additional emotion and poignancy (although it doesn't). Fisher aside, the women onscreen are mostly sidelined by the men running after one another and being big kids, and it's all presented as a wonderful way in which friends stay bonded over the years and hang on to their youth.

It's a shame that this is so mediocre throughout, but then it's also hard to see how it could have been anything more than that. How, after all, do you flesh out a film that is based around such a silly, and lightweight, concept? Maybe you decide that it's not really film-worthy and move on to something better instead.

Some may, of course, like this more than I did. Many may liked it even less. Aside from the lack of major laughs, I just found myself often watching the carnage onscreen and wondering just why these people were being celebrated for being selfish men-babies who didn't care about the damage they were causing to bystanders and property as they raced to tag one another. That may just be a sign that I am now officially middle-aged. Or it MAY be that these characters aren't really worthy of a whole movie.

5/10

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They Came Together (2014)

As it's Galentine's Day, this review can appear here today.

Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd star in this spoof of romantic comedies that manages to have its cake and eat it, thanks to the mix of smart gags, fun performances, and moments of extreme silliness.

Poehler is Molly, a typical rom-com lead. She's a bit of a klutz, runs a little candy store, and is mostly content with her life. Rudd is Joel, also a typical rom-com lead. He's "handsome, but in a nonthreatening way. Vaguely but not overtly Jewish." He also works for CRS, a major company that's just about to potentially put Molly out of business. The course of true love is not destined to be smooth for this couple, and the film shows their ups and downs.

Directed by David Wain, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Michael Showalter, this gets everything right when it comes to emulating the style of the movies being spoofed. New York is a major character, as pointed out a number of times, the protagonists start off by disliking one another, assorted friends are pigeonholed as nothing more than varying viewpoints for the leads to use as sounding boards, there's a montage or two, and the climax involves a bit of a race against the clock, a standard for most rom-coms.

This is all well and good, but the masterstroke comes from the fact that the movie is presented as a tale being told by Molly and Joel while they enjoy a dinner date with two friends, Karen (Ellie Kemper) and Kyle (Bill Hader). This allows for plenty of comments on the unfolding events, and also one or two details that we discover may simply be the result of overactive imaginations. 

Poehler and Rudd are both perfect in their roles, of course, and Hader and Kemper both have fun either pointing out, or sometimes missing, the obvious while being told this particular love story. Jason Mantzoukas and Melanie Lynskey play the two friends who think that they're about to bring two lovely people together to form one lovely couple, Teyonah Parris is the one woman working for Molly who also offers helpful advice, and there are a few great cameos to make you smile. Christopher Meloni is the big boss at CRS, and shows once again how great he is at comedy, Michael Ian Black is a grade-A douchebag (and a lot of fun with it), Cobie Smulders is the girl with Rudd at the very start of the movie, and Ed Helms is someone who may try to win over Poehler's character, despite not really having any chemistry with her. At all.

Not all of the gags hit, which is almost inevitable in a comedy like this, but you're never far away from something that could make you laugh out loud. Fans of those involved will certainly have a good time, and fans of romantic comedies may also find that there's still enough here to keep them amused, even as the conventions and cliches are being mocked at every turn. 

7/10

http://www.amazon.com/They-Came-Together-Christopher-Meloni/dp/B00KVFHBLK/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1415555914&sr=1-2&keywords=they+came+together

Stretch (2014)

It's the kind of thing that we've seen many times before. A film that features a character having one helluva bad night. This particular misadventure is written and directed by Joe Carnahan (who hasn't done wrong by me yet), and stars Patrick Wilson as the poor sod whose night just looks set to go from bad to worse to absolute worst ever.

Wilson is a stretch limo driver, hence the name of the movie. He actually wanted to be an actor but that doesn't seem to be panning out for him. Which leaves him driving a limo, struggling to make enough from each pay check to pay back the debts that he incurred when he was addicted to alcohol and gambling. As someone new has taken over the ownership of those debts, Stretch (as he is nicknamed) suddenly has until midnight to get together $6,000. Or things will be broken. That's not good. His one chance to make some big money lies in keeping a big customer satisfied. Roger Karos (a bearded Chris Pine) is an eccentric who can often drop some major tips. Unfortunately, he also requires people to sometimes go way above and beyond the call of duty to earn their money. Which leads to Stretch getting thrown in to a few dangerous situations. Perhaps his acting skills can actually start to help him now.

Stretch starts off strong and never really lets up once the premise is established. Carnahan has obviously set out to have as much fun as possible, and that fun is infectious, thanks to the direction, pacing, and cast. It plays out, I guess, much like an action comedy created by John Hughes. This is wish-fulfilment stuff, but that doesn't make any of it any less satisfying. The soundtrack, often sounding like some alternate tracks considered for Drive, also helps to make this an easy pleasure.

There are a couple of fantastic cameos (including one that I can't possibly mention here because the surprise factor helps it to be even funnier than it already is), a rare decent turn from Jessica Alba, playing the main office controller trying to help Stretch achieve his goals for the night, and James Badge Dale is perfectly fine as Laurent, a man who could either help or seriously hinder Stretch in his attempts to keep Karos happy. The two performances from Pine and Wilson allow them to go over the top and entertain in a way that they haven't really been allowed to before now. Okay, Pine had his fantastic turn in Smokin' Aces, which this film should remind you to check out, but I've not enjoyed Wilson this much since he made such a strong impression on me in Hard Candy. Ed Helms, playing the spirit of a deceased limo driver, also does well, despite the fact that his character feels like one quirk too many.

Don't think, however, that I'm overlooking its flaws. Oh no. I've just mentioned that "one quirk too many" problem, which will irritate others much more than it bothered me, and there's also the feeling of overfamiliarity with this kind of scenario. Also, the ending is just a bit too neat and tidy, another factor that makes this feel like a John Hughes movie aimed at an audience just a bit older than the usual selection of teenagers.

Judging by the word of mouth, Stretch is finding a decent little fanbase since arriving in download/shiny disc form. It deserves it. Nothing ground-breaking, by any means, but there are plenty of laughs provided here. And that's all it really sets out to do.

7/10

http://www.amazon.com/Stretch-Patrick-Wilson/dp/B00NG3YQXU/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1419278908&sr=8-2&keywords=stretch+movie

Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (2008)

Just like the first Harold & Kumar movie, this has grown on me since my first viewing. It just hasn't grown on me all that much. I think it's pretty funny in places, sure, but it's not as good as the first film by quite a margin.

Despite the title, the plot doesn't actually revolve around our two leads (once again played by John Cho and Kal Penn) escaping from Guantanamo Bay. Oh, that actually does happen but it happens for only a few minutes. The rest of the movie consists of the boys staying ahead of the zealous law enforcement official (Rob Corddry) who believes them to be terrorist scum. And that's really all you need to know.

Following on immediately from the events of the first movie, the direction is this time handled by writers Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, there's plenty here that will entertain fans of the original. It's just a shame that most of it is recycled from the first film with the whole thing having an longer runtime and lesser gag ratio.

Some moments still stand out: Neil Patrick Harris is hilarious once again, Christopher Meloni returns to play a Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan, an attempt to draw information out of Harold and Kumar's parents allows Ed Helms to have some fun and Rob Corddry is almost always funny when onscreen (something that can't be said of most of his other movie roles).

While the script isn't as sharp this time around and while the concept may feel like they've already slightly outstayed their welcome, the movie is raised up by yet another great collection of actors all joining in with the fun, even for the smallest of cameo roles. As well as our leads, NPH, Corddry, Helms and Meloni we get David Krumholtz and Eddie Kaye Thomas returning, Roger Bart is good fun, Beverly D'Angelo is always a pleasure to see onscreen (is there anyone who grew up in the 80s who didn't have a crush on her as Ellen Griswold?) and James Adomian shows a lighter side to George W. Bush.

The sad fact is that this makes some mistakes common to most sequels but, thankfully, it also still has enough to keep things watchable and amusing. Just.

6/10.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Harold-Kumar-Escape-Guantanamo-Bay/dp/B001B8CBPC