Netflix And Chill: Me Time (2022)

A slick comedy star vehicle from John Hamburg, the director of Along Came Polly, I Love You, Man, Why Him?, and a few other projects (in film and TV), you will probably already know whether or not you want to watch Me Time when you see that it stars Mark Wahlberg and Kevin Hart. I wasn't exactly rushing to see it, but I am glad I did. It's silly, it's predictable, it allows Wahlberg and Hart to feel characters that are very much within the normal range of their performances, but it's also a decent bit of fun.

Hart plays Sonny Fisher, a loving and happy husband who loves organising everything for his kids (Dashiell, played by Che Tafari, and Ava, played by Amentii Sledge) while his successful wife (Maya, played by Regina Hall) keeps developing her career. It's time for Sonny to have some "me time" though, something his wife encourages when he is asked by his old friend, Huck (Wahlberg), to join him for a massive birthday celebration trip. I am sure you can pretty much write the rest of this. Sonny joins Huck, things get messy, and there are also some attempts by Huck and Sonny to recapture glorious moments from their youth.

I'm not sure if writer-director Hamburg actually put any thought into this, or whether he instead just fed some details into a program that auto-generates modern mainstream comedies. It feels like the latter, with the amusing set-pieces, the occasional gross (but very tame) moment, and a finale that feels rushed and unearned, but maybe that makes me an even bigger sucker for laughing as often as I did. I didn't laugh all the way through it, and I often rolled my eyes at the same time as I laughed, but the film basically worked on me in the way it was intended to.

Hart does what he usually does. He gets stressed out by things and rages ineffectively against them. Wahlberg is the one able to push him into action, and he does that by playing the standard Wahlberg character, one lacking any self-awareness or worries about the possibility of anything going wrong. Tafari and Sledge are both very good in their smaller roles, and I always like to see Hall onscreen, even if she's relegated to really just being "the wife" for this film. Andrew Santino is a lot of fun, playing another family man who goes from zero to one hundred as soon as he decides to join in with the partying, and Ilia Isorelýs Paulino steals a couple of scenes as a driver who ends up involved in a very fun set-piece about halfway through the movie. Jimmy O. Yang and Shira Gross are also fairly amusing, and there's a fun celebrity cameo to enjoy, as well as very small roles for John Amos, Anna Maria Horsford, Diane Delano, and one or two others.

Although advertised as a film about someone finally getting to have some fun again, with the risks that can entail (depending on what the fun involves), it's actually your standard tale of someone misunderstanding a situation so badly that it jeopardises their relationship with loved ones, which leads to a bad situation that needs fully remedied before the end credits roll. While the stars are just lazily repeating themselves, there's still fun to be had with their interplay, the supporting cast, and the strangely comforting factor of it all being so obviously designed to "preach to the choir". I doubt I'll ever rewatch it, but I wasn't in pain while it was on (and at 101-minutes, it also gets a bonus point for not feeling unnecessarily bloated).

6/10

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

Netflix And Chill: Love Hard (2021)

Nina Dobrev plays Natalie Bauer, a young woman who writes a popular column about her disastrous dating life. Her luck looks set to change when she connects online with the handsome Tag (Darren Barnet). She's so smitten that she decides it will be a good idea to travel all the way to his home town and surprise him for Christmas. That's when she finds out that she's been catfished by Josh Lin (Jimmy O. Yang). Josh obviously didn't expect Natalie to meet him, certainly not yet anyway, and he's very different from the way he has portrayed himself in his photos. Maybe the two can help each other through the holidays though. Having Natalie as his girlfriend would help Josh look a bit better in front of his family during the holidays, and he knows enough about the real Tag to help Natalie get close to him, and maybe have the date she was so looking forward to. As comedy hijinks ensue, Natalie and Josh try to maintain their facade while being reminded of why they got on so well throughout their many text conversations.

A Christmas rom-com that actually does a great job of delivering both the romance and the comedy, Love Hard (the title coming from a difference of opinion over great Christmas movies) is a genuinely enjoyable bit of holiday cheer that combines everything you expect from a Christmas movie with some smart updates to the formula. This might be due to the fact that writers Daniel Mackey and Rebecca Ewing have very few credits to their name, which can sometimes be a major negative. Knowing the various story beats they want to hit, however, allows them to satisfy viewers seeking comfort while also having fun with a number of commonplace modern Christmas conversations (including the movie discussion, and how some people nowadays view the lyrics of "Baby, It's Cold Outside").

Director Hernan Jimenez keeps everything moving along nicely. Although not exactly swimming in baubles and hot chocolate, he works well with a script that nicely slots together the traditional Christmas movie elements (carol singing, time spent/stuck with a large family, etc) and the comedy. It's a film that doesn't need to spend much time outside the small town that Natalie visits and Jimenez doesn't try to awkwardly expand anything unnecessarily.

Dobrev is a cute lead, whether she's being adored by her main co-star or falling over in standard rom-com slapstick fashion. Yang is great fun, from the introduction that reveals his lie to a third act that forces both central characters to be more honest with themselves. Barnet is playing someone who isn't actually very interesting, and isn't actually the catch that some might think he is, and he does a good job, wandering through proceedings with an amusing lack of self-awareness. There are plenty of other enjoyable performances from everyone in a supporting role, but the obvious highlights are Matty Finochio, playing the wryly amused boss of Dobrev's character, and Harry Shum Jr., playing a sibling so awful that you just know he would be best friends with the character played by Adam Scott in Step Brothers.

It doesn't ever quite soar, despite coming close, but Love Hard absolutely does what it sets out to do. It's cute, it's quite clever in places, and it throws one or two attempted curveballs on the way to a comfortably predictable ending. An extra set-piece or two, some better use of the soundtrack choices, and maybe one more supporting character throwing a spanner in the works, and this could have been truly great. It's still good though, sometimes very good, and I wouldn't be surprised if some viewers consider it a new seasonal favourite.

7/10

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

Fantasy Island (2020)

Do you think it would be fun if someone decided to make a movie version of The Love Boat, but then decided to take the basic premise and twist it into a slasher movie? I am guessing probably not, at least not if you are familiar with the show, and have a fondness for it. The same goes for Hotel, although that was much more of a soap opera. But the same might go for Fantasy Island, a film based on a brand name that will satisfy neither fans of the TV show nor younger viewers who won't know what they're letting themselves in for.

The plot starts off simply enough, after a prologue scene showing someone being terrorised. A bunch of people arrive at Fantasy Island, where they hope that their fantasies will come true. There's Gwen (Maggie Q), a woman who thinks that her fantasy will allow her to make up for a past mistake, Melanie (Lucy Hale), a woman who wants revenge on a school bully (Sloane, played by Porita Doubleday), Patrick (Austin Stowell), who wants to play soldier, and brothers Brax (Jimmy O. Yang) and J. D. (Ryan Hansen), who just want to party hard. Michael Peña is Mr. Roarke, the head of the island, and the one ensuring that people stay the course as their fantasies play out, even if they turn into something unexpected.

Re-uniting some of the people who gave us the much more enjoyable Truth Or Dare (director Jeff Wadlow, who also helped to write the screenplay with Jillian Jacobs and Christopher Roach again, and Hale in a central role), Fantasy Island is just about the most ridiculous and pointless mainstream thriller/horror I can think of in recent years. I guess there's a vein of black comedy running through it, which may help viewers who respond to it more, but it certainly wasn't enough to help me find everything more bearable.

The cast are an admirably diverse selection, I guess, but the one thing they have in common is a level of blandness that doesn't help lift the weak material. Maggie Q ends up becoming the foremost character, working things out ahead of others and trying to change the situation for the better, but that doesn't make her any more interesting. Hale is good though, and she's someone I tend to enjoy in the main roles I have seen her in, and Yang and Hansen work well together, bringing more of the fun moments in the first half of the film. Stowell is saddled with an annoying strand that shows him desperate to have a moment of heroism, and Peña speaks in platitudes while smiling enigmatically. Thankfully, Doubleday is another person I just tend to automatically enjoy onscreen, and there are supporting roles for the always-welcome Michael Rooker and Kim Coates.

It just goes to show you that you can pretty much do anything you like with a well-known brand name and nobody will question you if they think enough teens will go to see it. This makes all the wrong choices, from the lack of characters you want to root for to the downright stupid final act, but thinks all will be forgiven when it moves along slickly enough while occasionally winking at those who remember the TV show. All is not forgiven. And my fantasy has now changed from me being locked in a room with Scarlett Johansson and twelve jars of strawberry jam to simply never having to endure a sequel to this.

3/10

https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews