Netflix And Chill: The Wrong Missy (2020)

Tyler Spindel is an actor who has recently built up his filmography with a number of directing jobs (including Father Of The Year, a film with the same lead). I don't think it's really fair to dismiss his potential talent just yet, because he at least shows a minimal degree of competency behind the camera, but it's fair to say that he needs to pick some better projects to work on if he wants to improve in his field.

The Wrong Missy is a star vehicle for David Spade. And I know that sentence is enough to scare away many sane movie fans. But it gets worse. The plot is all about how his character, Tim, somehow accidentally invites the wrong woman, Missy (Lauren Lapkus), along to a work retreat he is attending in Hawaii. Spade is trying to make a good impression, of course. He has an unbelievable attractive ex, of course. And if you are already starting to suspect that Missy may be annoying and disruptive in a way that leads to some valuable life lessons and potential resolutions for the characters then give yourself a cookie.

Unlike many people, I tend to enjoy the screen presence of people such as Spade. I still watch Adam Sandler movies (and not just Uncut Gems), I'll throw on some older Rob Schneider film if wanting something undemanding that will give me occasional chuckles, and Spade is part of that group. I can see why every single one of them would annoy people, but they frequently do enough to keep me moderately entertained. It's a low bar, I know, but it is what it is.

The Wrong Missy is pretty bad, even for a David Spade movie. He hasn't done anything solid in many years now (perhaps Joe Dirt being the last one that made me laugh enough to actually consider it one I enjoy, and own), and I have no reason to believe that he's suddenly going to start worrying about the quality of his output while being paid for crap like this. He's not helped by the weak script, from Chris Pappas and Kevin Barnett, and the film also suffers from the fact that it doesn't compensate for the leads, and material, with a better supporting cast. Schneider appears in a small role, Nick Swardson has a main role, and they're really the only ones worth mentioning. Oh, Sarah Chalke is the gorgeous ex, and always a welcome presence.

Although Spade is doing his usual stuff, it's all the more irritating when juxtaposed alongside the nonsense from Lapkus. I cannot recall seeing Lapkus in much, and this has not made me a fan. Her characters is made to be far too grating, unbalancing the whole film because you cannot believe that anyone would give her more than a minute of their time. By the time you get to the expected changes of heart in the third act, it's all just too hard to swallow.

If it wasn't clear enough already, I do not often have high standards when it comes to mainstream comedy movies. This film didn't even manage to meet those.

3/10

https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews

June-Claude Van Damme: Knock Off (1998)

Knock Off doesn't know what it wants to be. That is the first problem it has. It also pairs Jean-Claude Van Damme up with Rob Schneider. That is the second problem. The fact that the action sequences aren't all that good doesn't help either.

Here's the plot. In fact, no. The plot is so cringe-inducing and risible that I can't bring myself to detail it here. Let's just say that Schneider and Van Damme run a business that sell knock off jeans and they get involved in a scheme that involves the CIA, murder, treachery, and dangerous jeans that have been laced with powerful explosives. Yes, this is a film based around exploding jeans.

Director Tsui Hark obviously thought that he could put things together in a way that would recreate the messy fun of Double Team but he ends up misfiring. There's one pretty good action sequence at about the halfway mark, the rest of the film is a damp squib. Visually ugly, never as amusing as it thinks it is, and lacking any character that you could care for.

Writer Steven E. de Souza should take a large portion of the blame. His script is consistently awful from start to finish. Not only does it lack decent dialogue and characterisation, it devolves into an utter mess after the first 20 minutes or so. It's hard to believe that this is penned by the man who gave us so many other modern action classics.

Van Damme flashes his smile here but it feels, in line with the film, lazy and insincere. He's selling a screen presence that isn't there, sadly. As for Schneider, I won't automatically dismiss him from movies because I don't mind him in the right role. This isn't the right role. Nobody here is in a role that feels right for them, not even Paul Sorvino as a stern CIA agent, and that's the kind of thing that Sorvino could probably do in his sleep. Wyman Wong does okay with his small role, and Lela Rochon tries her best, but this is not a film designed to showcase the talents of the actors involved.

If you want to see one action movie about exploding jeans then I can heartily recommend this as being the film for you. Otherwise, avoid it at all costs. It's STILL not the worst film in the Van Damme filmography (that one is still to come, from the many I have already seen) but it's definitely a contender.

2/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can pick up this pack.

Ani-MAY-tion Month: Top Cat: The Movie (2011)

If you remember the original cartoon, and if you can still sing along with the theme song, then you should do yourself a favour and avoid Top Cat: The Movie. It's a stinker.

The plot concerns T.C. (voiced by Jason Harris) being framed for a crime he didn't commit and then being thrown into Dog Jail. The gang are at a bit of a loss without him, while Officer Dibble (Bill Lobley) is busy being mistreated by his new boss, Lou Strickland (Rob Schneider). Oh, and Strickland has also replaced the rest of the police force with robots, thinking that they can't be fooled. That may change if/when T.C. gets out of jail.

It's a running gag for many people that I am too kind in my movie reviews/ratings, and there's often some truth to that. I can be easily pleased, and I always try to look for the good in any project, especially anything made with more heart than technical nous. Top Cat: The Movie is a soulless, soul-sapping, lazy, horrible film. And that's me being kind. It's saved by the lowest score possible by a small degree of competence that I had to grudgingly acknowledge, but only just.

The animation is sub-par and quite ugly at times, which would be okay if it was ironically emulating the occasional crude style of the old TV show, but it isn't. It's also just feels cobbled together. For example, look at the scene with T.C. and his cohorts trying to get into a concert that has been sold out. Sold Out. It's stated quite clearly. Yet, moments later, when the gang are all inside, viewers can see a theatre that is quite clearly almost empty. Okay, that's not something that the youngest viewers will note, but there's no excuse for so little effort being made.

The script, in line with everything else, does the bare minimum - broadly sketching out the characters and lighting up each plot point like a neon sign - but it does it all with no sense of fun. Just because something is aimed at younger viewers doesn't mean that it can't contain some interesting developments for them.

The only good points I can mention are the vocal performances (which aren't great, but at least try to repeat the familiar tones of the characters from how people will remember them) and that small degree of competence that allows the whole thing to play out as a feature from start to finish, with a proper beginning, middle, and end.

One to avoid if at all possible. To use a potential innuendo: Top Cat hits bottom!

2/10

http://www.amazon.com/Top-Cat-Rob-Schneider/dp/B00DBPBQ72/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1399502381&sr=8-5&keywords=top+cat

April Fools: InAPPropriate Comedy (2013)

Movie 43 was a bad movie, as almost everyone knows by now. Yes, some people liked it, but some people also like eating grapefruit. People are weird, but I digress. The main point I wanted to make was that Movie 43 was bad. So it's difficult to imagine a movie that would want to, seemingly, emulate Movie 43*. Unfortunately, that is the case with InAPPropriate Comedy. It doesn't have too much star power, but it does have Lindsay Lohan, Adrien Brody, Michelle Rodriguez and Rob Schneider in small roles.

The devil is playing around with his tablet and clicks on various apps. Those apps bring up a number of sketches, all with one common factor. They're painfully unfunny. There's also only about seven main apps that are used, which means that viewers get the dubious pleasure of watching for a second or third time something that they didn't find all that great the first time round. Here are the various sketch templates.
Brody is Flirty Harry, a cop who shoots criminals while uttering nothing but double entendres.
Rodriguez and Schneider are a couple of movie critics who review porno flicks.
A bunch of black men horse around and play sorta-Jackass stunts in . . . . . . Blackass.
Ari Shaffir is The Amazing Racist (and the only actual good element of the entire movie - the sequence with him insulting learner drivers is hilarious, even if it's too obviously set up with actors).
A psychiatrist (Schneider again) works with a sex-obsessed young woman (Noelle Kenney) and gets himself quite worked up, despite the young woman wanting to change her ways for the better.
And there's something you'll never see - a young, beautiful woman dating a poor, old man.
That's it, barring the framing device that has the devil waiting to see up Lindsay Lohan's skirt as she walks over an air vent a la Marilyn from The Seven Year Itch.

Just reading over what I've written makes me wonder how I ever got through to the end credits. Director Vince Offer, who co-wrote the movie with Shaffir, Ken Pringle, and input from some others, just throws things together with little thought for quality or consistency. The end result is a painful mess.

If you're VERY easily amused then you may find more chuckles here than I did. But I advise giving it a miss. Check out the many sketches involving The Amazing Racist that are readily available online instead.

*Of course, I was a bit unfair earlier when saying that this movie wanted to emulate Movie 43. There's every chance that Movie 43 was just emulating Offer's own 1999 outing, The Underground Comedy Movie. That was also a number of short sketches stitched together to make a movie. Whether or not it is any good is another matter, but, based on what I saw here, I'm certainly not going to rush to see it.

2/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Inappropriate-Comedy-DVD-Adrien-Brody/dp/B00GV7MQX0/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1396991308&sr=1-1&keywords=inappropriate+comedy

Eight Crazy Nights (2002)

Why do I do it to myself? Well, because, deep down, I love it. I love bad movies almost as much as I love good movies. It's rewarding to watch the end credits roll on a stinker and start sharpening the knives while you ponder just what to type up in review form. And Eight Crazy Nights is a stinker, a movie so misjudged that it becomes almost amusing to watch it limp from one ineffectual scene to another.

There's snow all around, gifts being given to one another and a general feeling of holiday goodwill for most people but this isn't a Christmas movie. Well, actually, it IS a Christmas movie but it's much more predominantly a Hanukkah movie (hence the eight nights of the title, crazy or not).

Adam Sandler plays a number of characters in animated form. His main character is Davey Stone, an alcoholic grump who keeps getting himself in trouble with the law as he rebels against the holiday season. After his latest misadventure he is given a chance to redeem himself if he helps an elderly basketball referee named Whitey (also voiced by Sandler). Whitey is a lovely, generous soul and tries his best to help Davey and to remind him of the cheerful kid that he used to be before something tragic happened. What was that tragedy? Is it an excuse for Davey becoming a complete ass? Will viewers care by the time it is revealed?

The usual group of Sandler alumni are on hand here to add to the unfunny material - Rob Schneider narrates, Kevin Nealon has a role as the mayor, Jon Lovitz has a very small role and there are a number of people involved who also have the surname of Sandler - and so the material is infused with the usual air of something made just for people to get together and fool around while getting paid for it. I don't dislike these individuals every time that I see them but I do dislike when they work together to create such worthless inanity.

Speaking of getting paid, there are also a disgustingly high number of product placements, especially for an animated movie. There are one or two scenes set in a shopping mall that feel like little more than an excuse to  showcase plenty of brand names. Y'know, in case one of them sees the movie and then thinks about throwing the guys a few freebies.

There are unfunny songs, unfunny insults, unfunny moments of toilet humour and some unfunny narration from Schneider. The whole thing has a moral, of course, but it's a moral that is thrown at the audience with no care at all. In fact, everything is simply wrapped up in a rushed and clumsy manner in a way that highlights the way in which nobody involved with this movie seemed to care. In the slightest. The writers - Sandler, Brad Isaacs, Brooks Arthur and Allen Covert - seem to have written out some lines on Post-It notes, screwed them all up, tossed them in a waste bin, added a load of beer and then poured out the resulting sludge and called it a script.

A version of The Hanukkah Song plays over the end credits and that's the highlight of the whole movie, seriously (just watch it here instead to save you any unnecessary pain). At this time of writing, director Seth Kearsley hasn't been at the helm of any other original feature movie. Let's hope things stay that way.

2/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Eight-Crazy-Nights-Adam-Sandler/dp/B0000DG5ML/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

Judge Dredd (1995)

I think it's pretty widely acknowledged nowadays that Judge Dredd was a bit of a letdown for fans of the character. I still like it more than a lot of people but even I must admit that Dredd spends far too much time not wearing his iconic headwear and there's a bit too much screentime given over to the comic relief AKA Rob Schneider. Anyway, let's start with the good stuff.

Judge Dredd has a great cast, including Sylvester Stallone in the title role. When he first appears onscreen he's fantastic in the title role. Stallone may not be the best actor in the world (though he certainly has his moments) but he's surrounded by a quality cast. There's Diane Lane, Max Von Sydow, Armand Assante, Jurgen Prochnow and the great James Remar (although he's, sadly, not in it for long). There are also small roles for Ian Dury, Ewen Bremner and Scott Wilson. And then there's Rob Schneider.

The plot sees the most infamous peacekeeper in Mega-City One being accused of murder. It's unbelievable but all the evidence clearly points to Dredd as the perpetrator. Dredd is to be sent away for a long time but that doesn't quite go to plan thanks to a big fight on board a vehicle full of prisoners that leads to a crash that leads to Dredd and a hapless criminal named Herman (Rob Schneider) stuck in some waste lands and needing to deal with some bad folks before finding their way back into Mega-City One and clearing Dredd's name. Meanwhile, it turns out that the real villain is someone very close to Dredd with his own warped reason for revenge. Even better, he's played by Armand Assante, in superb eye-rolling form.

Michael De Luca may have managed to come up with the story with William Wisher but it's Wisher and Steven E. de Souza who crafted the final draft of the screenplay and due credit must also, of course, go to the many fine folks who have written stories for Judge Dredd during his long-running stint in the mighty 2000 AD. The story, and the backstory (both that which is revealed and that which is just known to fans of the comic), is solid and the direction from Danny Cannon isn't that bad at all. The film simply starts to fall apart when Judge Dredd stops seeming like Judge Dredd and that happens, as silly as it may sound, when the helmet comes off. And when it stays off for most of the movie. It's not true to the character and it just leaves viewers with a half-decent Sylvester Stallone action movie. There are already plenty of those, thank you very much.

Judge Dredd is fun. It has one or two enjoyable set-pieces (one that involves James Remar, one involving the delightfully demented Angel Family and almost any moments that involve Assante), I don't hate Schneider as much as some people and it's good to see so many big names involved with what is, essectially, pulp fare. It's just not a great JUDGE DREDD movie and that is, ultimately, a big black mark against it.

6/10

This Bluray plays  in the USA AND the UK - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Judge-Dredd-Blu-ray-US-Import/dp/B008C0C1Y8/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1348590005&sr=8-8

Big Stan (2007)

How can you make any Rob Schneider movie even funnier? If you immediately thought of adding a few fight scenes and lots and lots of jokes about male rape then Big Stan is the film for you.

I have a bizarre viewing relationship with the films of Rob Schneider. Part of me knows that his movies are always crass and stupid and part of me still ends up enjoying them. Jeesh, I used to OWN The Animal and I cannot promise you that I would never buy it again if it was on a shelf in front of me at a bargain price (as of this moment, I have hastily closed the Amazon page to resist temptation). The movies may be pretty easy to criticise but they also have at least one or two moments that are pretty easy to laugh along with.

Big Stan is almost exactly the same as his other movies in that respect. The central concept isn't too bad - Schneider plays Stan, a man about to be sent to jail for fraud who invests his limited free time before the big day in getting his body trained to perfection (by David Carradine) - but then we get the jokes about male rape. And more jokes about male rape. And even MORE jokes about male rape. Now, I am far from the easily offended type, and I do believe that humour should have no boundaries, but rape of any kind is a hard subject to wring humour from and many of the jokes here just fall flat. Thankfully, the rest of the movie showing Stan being trained and then asserting his authority in the prison is pretty amusing. Scott Wilson (probably best known lately for his role in "The Walking Dead") is good as the scheming warden and Jennifer Morrison does just fine as Mindy, the woman who stays in love with Stan through thick and thin. There's also a very funny turn from M. Emmet Walsh as seedy lawyer, Lew Popper.

Written by Josh Lieb, and directed by Schneider, there is plenty here to enjoy if you're a fan of the main star. He runs through his usual range of witticisms and comedy faces (both of which I enjoy) and the supporting cast all add to the fun but there's just that bad taste left in the mouth by so many of the gags that detracts from the overall fun factor.

The main idea of a weak con man building himself up to be the biggest and baddest mofo in the prison is a good one and Schneider is, surprisingly, convincing enough when he kicks ass (okay, he's not going to launch an action movie career but he shows that he can pull off a few moves) but the film is half a good movie sewn into half a bad movie. Hence my rating.

5/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Big-Stan-DVD-Rob-Schneider/dp/B00175VIMG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341656067&sr=8-1