Doolittle: Bad Accents and Bad Writing

Dolittle is another attempt to reinvent a franchise long dormant. Doctor Dolittle were books from the fifties, then a musical movie with Rex Harrison in 1967, and finally a remake in 1998 starring Eddie Murphy which spawned four sequels. The movie from 1967 was silly and a product of the sixties. While the movie from 1998 was a contemporary take on the story and the best version in my opinion. So when the new Doolittle came out it looked like a remake of the story form the sixties but it was far less of a movie.

Robert Downey Jr. stars as Dr. Dolittle and he is attempting a Welsh accent and it’s absolutely atrocious. It was he own choice to do the accent but it really hurt the performance. This movie is aimed at children but instead of writing clever smarter jokes for children, the writers resort to poop and fart jokes and internet lingo to appeal to kids. It was a little insulting. Michael Sheen, who plays a rival doctor is really having fun with his role and is easily the best part of the movie. He is chewing scenery and jamming it up and it’s wonderful. The animal voices which include John Cena, Rami Malek, Kumail Nanjiani, Jason Mantzoukas, Emma Thompson, Octavia Spencer, Ralph Fiennes, and Tom Holland. Nanjiani, Fiennes, and Mantzoukas are easily the two funniest voices.

The writing and plot as a whole is frustrating in Dolittle because the opening sequence is beautiful. It explains the backstory and exposition in a wonderfully animated sequence and I wish the whole movie was animated like that. But the rest of the movie is just action set piece after action set piece. But the biggest plot point that’s just really dumb and childish is SPOILERS. Dolittle needs to get to a tree guarded by a dragon. The dragon is angry because she is constipated and Dolittle uses a leek to unplug the dragon ass and then pulls out knights armor and a set of bagpipes. Then the dragon farts in Dolittle’s face. This movie was a poor attempt to revitalize a franchise. 🍔 and 1/2 🍔

Just Mercy: Justice over Prejudice

Just Mercy is about a lawyer trying to free a wrongfully accused black man in Alabama. The lawyer is played by Michael B. Jordan and the accused is played by Jamie Foxx. Unfortunately there is still a lot of prejudice and racism in the south, especially in Alabama. An eighteen year old white girl was murdered and Jamie Foxx was accused and convicted with little evidence and only one supposed witness. This movie is about bringing justice to those who deserve it and people realizing that doing the right thing is most important.

What was very fascinating about Just Mercy was when Michael approached Jamie in prison about trying to help him, Jamie was hesitant because previous lawyers had tried to help him and failed. Plus because of the color of his skin and where they were, he himself was skeptical about a chance of freedom. Michael also has the mayor played by Rafe Spall give him trouble because he is worried about what the town will say if the conviction is overturned. Michael has to talk to the eyewitness whos statement gave the conviction and its another convict played by Tim Blake Nelson. He was promised a reduced sentence for his statement. The town was trying to influence these people to give closure to the murder and satisfy the town despite the lack of justice.

There is also a mystery to this movie about what really happened and all the performances are excellent. This movie shows how people will eventually do the right thing despite their previous convictions. This is based on a true story and took place in the late eighties to early nineties. I originally thought this was in the sixties or seventies but it's scary to think that it was so recent. 🍔🍔🍔🍔

Bad Boys for Life: After 25 Years, Still Bad Boys and Still Awesome

The first Bad Boys came out in 1995 and did well. Bad Boys 2 came out in 2003 and the audience jumped right back into the lives of Marcus Burnett played by Martin Lawrence and Mike Lowrey played by Will Smith. Michael Bay directed the first two but this time director's Adil and Balil step in and they do a great job.

Bad Boys for Life takes place in the middle age stage of Marcus and Mike's life. Even though the audience hasn’t seen these characters in seventeen years, when you first see them on screen together nothing has changed between them. Will and Martin still have great chemistry and Martin is still a great improve genius. This movie is more focused on Will Smith this time. After getting injured in the line of duty he wants to get back in the game. There is a new police unit called AMMO with younger cops. They do the whole old school vs new school schtick and it’s funny. Martin talks about retiring as always. Joe Pantoliano plays the police captain once more and his yelling and cursing at both cops is just as funny as previous movies. It seems like he ad libbed some of his famous rants. Due the the amount of time between the installments of this franchise it's refreshing to see the characters again as time has past and seeing them at different stages of life.

Bad Boys for Life has some great character development in this movie. Martin Lawrence is the Danny Glover character from Lethal Weapon, the family man that wants a quiet life. Will Smith is the Mel Gibson character, the ladies man who does reckless things and has no family. You can really see the bond that these characters have shared over the past twenty five years. The villain is well developed and relatable. I was surprised how developed an action movie villain was. The action is great and is intense because it’s spaced out through the movie. There are only a few big action scenes and some shootouts but they are complimented with dialogue and character scenes with the main characters. There is a nice balance or action and plot.

Usually I am skeptical about sequels made over ten years after the previous movie and to be honest the trailer for Bad Boys for Life didn’t get me all that excited. But this movie sticks to its strengths, which is the chemistry between Smith and Lawrence, and the action. The Bad Boys franchise has a formula that works. After twenty five years, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. 🍔🍔🍔🍔

1917: A Nonstop Ride from Beginning to End

1917 is set during WWI and is about a soldier's journey to deliver an important message. Sam Mendes did an amazing job directing and Roger Deakins did the cinematography. This movie keeps going and doesn’t give the audience a lot of time to catch their breath.

The camera work is amazing in 1917 because the entire movie looks like one continuous shot. The cuts in scenes are hidden very well. The landscape shots are breathtaking. The audience feels like they are in the battlefield with the main character. This is the best live action adaptation of a Call of Duty or Battlefield game. It’s like the audience is watching a mission from a video game.

There are some big name stars in 1917 including Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Richard Madden. When the main character meets each actor it’s like a checkpoint in a game. This movie is meant to be seen in theaters and a big format. I saw 1917 in Dolby Cinema and the auditorium was rumbling. This is a must see! 🍔🍔🍔🍔

Like a Boss: When the Supporting Characters Shine Over the Main Characters

Like a Boss stars Rose Byrne, Tiffany Haddish, and Salma Hayek and has a great supporting cast. There are a lot of jokes in the movie and many of them come from the supporting cast and Salma Hayek, but not as many from the two main characters as one would expect.

While Rose Byrne and Tiffany Haddish are the stars of the movie, their characters aren’t all that interesting and they have only some jokes. Tiffany Haddish in particular is very toned down. Normally the writers and directors let her ad lib a lot of lines but I guess in this movie they wanted her to stick to the script. She has one or two really funny lines but she’s kind of annoying the rest of it. Rose Byrne was way funnier with the weirder goofier dialogue. These two characters are also not really interesting in my opinion.

The supporting characters are really memorable and hilarious. There is Billy Porter, Jennifer Coolidge, who work at Rose and Tiffany’s makeup store, and Karan Soni, who is Salma Hayek’s assistant. Jennifer Coolidge has probably the funniest line in the movie. Her jokes are just so odd they make you laugh. Billy Porter is so over dramatic that he steals the scenes he is in. Karan Soni plays Hayek’s assistant and while he talks down to Rose and Tiffany and mediates for Hayek he has slight disgust for his job and hates working for her. This tone is so subtle but effective. Then there are Rose’s other friends, played by Ari Graynor, Jessica St. Clair, and Natasha Rothwell. A lot of their jokes are about being moms and successful. They kind of rub it in Rose’s face and their sarcasm is great.

Salma Hayek’s character owns a big makeup company and offers to help Rose and Tiffany out and tries to steal their company. She is so funny and has good jokes. If she was ad libbing then she definitely excels at it. Her acting was very spontaneous and that work well for this role. Hayek has to try and split up Rose and Tiffany to get their company and her mind games are genius. Whether it’s pitting the two against each other or spreading rumors, she always has a plan. When the two don’t fall for one of her tricks she comes up with a more subtle one. So while this movie was enjoyable, I feel more jokes could have been given to the main characters and they could have been more developed. 🍔🍔

Underwater: Visually Pleasing but Lacking in Plot

Underwater is a deep sea monster movie. While the visual effects and production design look great, the plot could have been written better and less cliche. Kristen Stewart stars as the main protagonist as part of the deep sea research crew. The movie has two writers, Brian Duffield and Adam Cozad. Duffield has written Insurgent and The Babysitter. Cozad has written The Legend of Tarzan and Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. Both have written a decent movie and a not so decent movie. So why does it seem Underwater was written so cliche? Was it lazy writing or an homage to earlier movies?

This script seems to be predictable and reminiscent of early creature features. People start dying immediate but the audience doesn’t get to know many of them long enough to really care if they live or die. Kristen Stewart is the smart, resourceful heroine, who reminds me of Ripley from Alien. She is alone in the world and must save the rest of the crew. The only problem is the movie cuts away from her for about twenty minutes and the movie is only ninety five minutes long. She’s great as the protagonist but the plot should have been more focused on her.

There is the comic relief played by T.J. Miller and he is not overdoing it with the jokes but he’s also doing nothing memorable. Everything feels very by the numbers. I’m sure Miller got to improve somewhat but it could have been more original. The comic relief wasn’t overdone though and never felt out of place. What really felt cliche was the kill order of the characters. It was reminiscent of the eighties and nineties slasher movies.

Now the visuals and production design are where this movie shines. From the look of the sea lab, to the underwater pressure suits, to the look of the sea creatures. The effects of the sea lab getting damaged look great also. Now unfortunately good effects aren’t always enough to make a good movie. You have to have developed characters and a good script which this doesn’t really have. While I was mildly entertained during this movie, I won’t be thinking about it in a month. But if anyone is a fan of the cartoon Sealab 2021, you might notice a familiar ending and try to imagine the Sealab 2021 theme song over this movie. 🍔🍔

Little Woman: The Subtleties of Acting That Go a Long Way

Little Women has been adapted for the big screen many times before. This one was well done and had an amazing young cast. Saoirse Ronin, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, and Eliza Scanlen play the four sisters. Timothée Chamalet plays a young neighbor who has feelings for some of the sisters. Everyone is a great actor in this movie but it’s the subtle acting moments that really stand out.

It's the subtleties of acting that really say alot. Saoirse Ronin has a moment when she has gotten in an argument with Florence Pugh and Florence does something really horrible to Saoirse and Saoirse has such a facial expression the next morning that screams her anger with such little expression. It’s truly amazing. Eliza Scanlen has her own similar scene when she discusses how much she loves the piano. She hadn’t really spoken a lot up until now in the movie but this was her great scene with such a quiet but powerful performance.

This is the first performance I’ve seen with Timothée Chamalet, and he is wonderful. He can be subtle and powerful at the same time. He is involved with two sisters in particular and you love and hate his character at the same time. The supporting cast includes Laura Dern, Meryl Streep, and Chris Cooper. They all have their big scenes as well, whether it’s a big speech or subtle moments. Meryl Streep isn’t in the movie for very long but when she is she commands the screen without taking away importance from the other actors.

The one thing that bothered me about the movie was the jumps in time. The movie would flash back to seven years prior but sometimes the characters looked so similar that it was hard to differentiate the time periods. This made the movie drag on a bit. This adaptation of Little Women should be seen for its young cast and subtleties in acting. 🍔🍔🍔 and 1/2 🍔

Spies in Disguise: Surprisingly Funny with Jokes for all Ages

Spies in Disguise stars Will Smith as a spy turned into a pigeon and Tom Holland as the lab agent who turned him into one. The trailer for this movie didn’t thrill me at first. The premise seemed very lowbrow and unimaginative. But when I saw the movie I was pleasantly surprised.

First off the movie has a good overall message about not using violence to solve problems. Tom Holland’s character builds devices that are non-lethal but effective. Also that fighting violence with violence creates a vicious and nonstop cycle. This is a good lesson especially in a children’s animated movie.

The jokes in this movie are very clever and thought out. There are jokes about bird cloacas and how birds pee and poop from the same place. In the trailer you see Will Smith pigeon lay and egg from getting startled and the movie explains why it’s possible because he’s a male. It’s important the children’s movies have jokes for the adults as well that way the whole family can enjoy them. Especially if the adult jokes go over the kids heads.

There are many moments when the animation really stands out in Spies in Disguise. There is one device that deflates people and the animation is so amazing and creepy at the same time. When people talk their mouths are spread all over and it’s the most visually interesting sequence in the movie. I recommend Spies in Disguise for families to see. It has something for everybody. 🍔🍔🍔

The Irishman: Does the Conclusion Justify the Runtime?

The Irishman is Martin Scorsese’s latest film and it was released in theaters for a limited time and then on Netflix. It’s Scorsese’s longest film running at three and a half hours. Long movies are fine if they are compelling enough to keep the audience interested for that long.

The Irishman stars Robert De Niro as a hitman for a crime family. Joe Pesci is someone he works for and they both are shown as young men. They use digital de-aging technology on both actors and while it’s better than other versions of this it is still noticeable. It’s like their faces are made out of clay and it’s distracting. De Niro also has these blue contact lenses in and they don’t look natural.

Al Pacino plays Jimmy Hoffa and he is wonderful. I feel he is the best part of the movie. De Niro works for him for awhile and this I feel these are the best parts. This movie should have been about Hoffa I feel because it’s a more interesting story. To be honest there is enough material for two movies. One about Hoffa, and one about De Niro’s character.

It is established that De Niro’s character isn’t the best father or has extreme methods of dealing with family problems. The movie tries to resolve this at the end but this theme isn’t established enough throughout the movie to give the conclusion the meaning its supposed to have. It feels a bit tacked on at the end. This movie is good but not as good as I feel everyone else is praising it for. It’s also just too long and not interesting enough to justify three and a half hours. Scorsese has done plenty of long movies, some hitting the three hour mark that have kept the audience interested throughout like The Wolf of Wall Street and Silence, but The Irishman I feel isn't one of them. I’m glad it was on Netflix because I can imagine sitting through this in theaters. 🍔🍔 and 1/2 🍔

Cats: A Computer Generated Fever Dream that Terrifies and Traps the Audience

Cats has been one of the longest running broadway musicals around. It started in the early eighties and is still going strong. So you would think a movie adaptation would be successful and loved. There was great success with the recent movie adaptation of Les Miserables. So when the Cats trailer came out people were shocked and horrified by what they saw. So what went wrong?

The way they filmed Cats was not traditional motion capture suits, but the actors faces are superimposed on computer generated cats, and it looks terrifying. The computer effects are inconsistent, the ears on the cats don’t match the actors eyes and feelings. The ears move independently from the actors and it’s very noticeable. The faces are just so off putting, especially when the characters look directly at the camera often and it’s like they are looking into the audiences soul. The faces are incredibly distracting. There’s one cat character who has a collar and it is so poorly rendered that it is sometimes in the characters neck. There is also a few shots with matte paintings of London that just look atrocious.

This movie doesn’t really explain the plot as well as it should. The audience gets bits and pieces of the plot. The biggest problem here is that the writers assume everyone has seen the original play so they feel they don’t have to give a lot of exposition. The audience has to decipher the plot from the five minutes of actual dialogue in the movie. It’s just musical number after musical number without giving the audience anytime to catch their breath. The audio mixing in the beginning of the movie is terrible. The score and music are so loud that the audience can barely hear the actors singing for the first few songs.

Cats has an allstar cast including Judi Dench, Idris Elba, Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellan, Rebel Wilson, James Corden, Taylor Swift, Jason Derulo, and Ray Winstone. A few of them are Oscar winning actors and after this movie, they should give them back. The acting is over the top and ridiculous. Rebel Wilson and James Corden are the butt of many fat jokes. No one is “good” in this movie. There aren't nearly as many cat puns as I expected and I was disappointed. This movie also has a lot of sexual overtones for cat people. It’s also hard to believe that no humans see or hear these cats sing and dance. Normally I wouldn't complain about something like this but the movie establishes that there are humans in this world.

There is a lot of campy value in Cats. Watching this is like an acid trip. It might actually improve the movie to be high while watching this. This movie is like the equivalent of being dragged down a street covered in broken glass while being on acid. It truly is a horrifying experience but it should be seen to be believed. I recommend Cats for comedic value only, but if you’re a fan of the broadway show it probably isn’t for you. 🍔