Out in Theaters: SPY

June 11, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Allison Janney, Bobby Cannavale, Jason Statham, Jude Law, Melissa McCarthy, Out in Theaters, Paul Feig, Reviews, Rose Byrne, Spy Leave a comment

Like Funyuns, Melissa McCarthy is an acquired taste. In her least delicate projects, she vaults around the frame, sharting and cursing to the apparent delight of squealing audiences that I just don’t relate to. Even in Paul Feig‘s Spy – a film that affords her at least an attempt at a three-dimensional character – a wide margin of the comedy is rooted in McCarthy’s heft and just how riotous it is to see a fat lady try to do normal lady things. Tee-hee. Read More

SXSW Review: SPY

March 17, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Jude Law, Melissa McCarthy, Paul Feig, Reviews, Rose Byrne, Spy, SXSW 2015 Reviews 1 Comment

As with McCarthy projects past, Spy projects a cipher of reality in which fantastical things transpire in the name of “comedy.” McCarthy attempts to mount a European motorbike but it flops over. In footage showing her spy academy training, she flips and rolls with the best of them before punching nuts like a cracked-up monkey. She even fails to glide over the roof of an automobile in a scene literally aped from Feig’s The Heat. It’s funny because she’s fat and little more. I wish there were more to it than that, but there’s not.

With Bridesmaids, The Heat and now Spy behind them and Ghostbusters on the horizon, Feig and McCarthy have cooked up some kind of unbreakable collaborative bond. Their partnership is odd to say the least – being betwixt an aged, three-piece wearing gentleman and a scuzzy, willing-to-do-anything plumpette – but like other talented individuals who have failed to see their way out of a faltering relationship (ahem, Johnny Depp and Tim Burton), Feig and McCarthy continue to be just the bee’s knees to one another. Feig’s gushing introduction of McCarthy at the SXSW premiere (“My favorite person in the world”) left little to doubt as to the kinship shared between the two. It’s all good to be BFFs but maybe a skosh of constructive criticism wouldn’t hurt.

Consider the face-palming failure that was McCarthy’s long-gestated dream project (Tammy). With that in mind, I for one have serious doubts for McCarthy’s comic sensibilities and with what I’ve seen of her – from Identity Theft to Tammy – I just don’t see the comic star that some envision her as. It’s true that Feig once lead her to a (totally undeserved) Oscar nomination but maybe it’s time for this red sea to part ways. Because underneath the failures of Spy is evidence that both McCarthy and Feig have the ability to thrive, if only they could get out of each other’s way.

The film opens with an extremely on-the-nose James Bond tip-of-the-hat with agent Bradley Fine (Jude Law) tossing a well-populated mansion in search of a nuclear weapon. From a distance, McCarthy’s Susan Cooper provides tech support – altering Fine of incoming henchmen and advising him which rooms to duck into for cover. When Fine uncovers the big bad, he pulls a Vince Vega and accidentally turns the man’s brains to crimson mashed potatoes. For what it’s worth, the sequence is disarmingly cutesy and sinfully hilarious and it reminds one why Law was once considered to play James Bond.

Throughout the film, Feig’s actions sequences are surprisingly strong in their glossy execution but, unlike celebrated contemporary Edgar Wright, Feig doesn’t know really know how to pull off physical comedy on camera. Rather, his shots supposedly attain comedic effect because McCarthy’s too big to be pulling off the stunt or she pukes after she does them. While Wright uses clever visual cues, camera movements and framing to deliver a rare form of in-camera comedy, Feig’s films just throw in the kitchen sink, crams his camera in the space and lets it roll without a taste for subtlety or a mastery of his craft.

You likely wouldn’t believe me if I told you but the comic king of Spy comes in the shape of Jason Statham – an agent who talks a big game but lacks almost entirely in follow through. His lofty opinion of himself has him showering us with a list of prior accomplishments – “I was dead for five minutes one time,” “I once had my arm ripped completely off…and reattached it with my other arm,” etc. – and, surprising though it may be, he pulls off the deadpan bit with hearty aplomb.

Miranda Hart, Allison Janney and Bobby Cannavale all bounce in and out of the picture at one point of another, providing very little in terms of actual comedy while Rose Byrne as an ice-cold vixen with an atom-bomb up for sale actually packs in a few nice laughs. A brief interlude with Zach Woods make me grin and showed that Feig was maybe even willing to challenge his status quo with a little gore but it’s a promise that stands unfulfilled. Over and over again, Feig returns to McCarthy and how she looks like a lonely cat lady, or a mini-van driving mom, or a coupon-clipper and ha, ha, look she’s trying to do something not totally lame! Let’s point the camera and laugh at her. Were I McCarthy, the oft mocking material would slice a chink in the ol’ self esteem armor and, personally, it’s hard to watch her knocked down again and again even if we know redemption is surely in the cards.

In large part due to smarmy secondary characters the likes of Law, Statham and Bryne, Spy does slip in some low laughs, sometimes even at the hands of McCarthy. And though I get the sense that this is supposed to be empowering – as if McCarthy score one for the girls when she doesn’t inevitably f*ck everything up – but, if we’re being honest, I don’t know if I buy it. As Melissa McCarthy and Miranda Hart celebrate their victory with a “girl’s night out”, the intention to pander towards female audiences is grossly obvious in what is essentially a reheated formula of the Feig/McCarthy machine that we’ve seen before. Having digested Spy, I feel as if I can forecast exactly what is in store for the all-female Ghostbusters; fat jokes, slightly funny improv comedy and female failures turned female success stories. And maybe a kitten sweatshirts or two for good measure.

C-

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Out in Theaters: NEIGHBORS

May 9, 2014 by Chris Bunker Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Dave Franco, Frat Pack, Lisa Kudrow, Neighbors, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Rose Byrne, Seth Rogen, Zac Efron 1 Comment

I invited my good friend Matt to see Neighbors with me on Tuesday. Matt, was my fraternity’s president last year. I figured if there was anyone to watch this movie with, it’d be him. We’ve lived in the fraternity together long enough to see the pitfalls and the benefits of a lifestyle predicated on brotherly love and often times poisoned by alcohol. But, more than beer bongs and beer pong, Matt and I have come to learn that the stereotype associated with fraternity living is misplaced and disillusioned.

Total Frat Move and the bullshit that pervades today’s society are just facades: guys with small units and smaller brains trying to emulate a lifestyle that was only realistic in the ‘70s. Fraternity living is about the bond that’s shared between boys as they become men and the values and experiences that join them together. Guys who call themselves “frat” aren’t fraternal: they’re idiots. The folks who made Neighbors rely heavily upon the latter. They probably never stepped into a fraternity house in college.

Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne (Bridesmaids) are the Radners, new parents of a young daughter Stella, live in a small cul-de-sac close to a local college. They take bad parenting to the next level: Rogen smokes weed at work, they have sex in front of their baby, and they try to take Stella to her first rave. Yet, they’re completely upset when Delta Psi Beta, a group of new-age frat bros, moves in next door. Had the casting director chosen Katherine Heigl instead, this might just be a Knocked Up sequel

DFB, led by the incessantly frustrating Zac Efron and the brother who got the bad alleles, Dave Franco, are Cro-Magnons who stumbled upon a Brazzers account instead of fire. DPsiB might as well stand for Douchebags & Pretty Boys. Their composite is riddled with guys named Scoonie (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, whose “enormous penis” is cashed in for at least 20 jokes), Garf, Thumbsucker, Assjuice, Jizzface and Balldrop.

Their fraternity’s values bog down to how much one can smoke and drink without dying. Efron’s goal is to live up to past Delta Psi’s. Fun cameos from Lonely Island, Workaholics and Jake Johnson show famous Delta Psi’s who “invented” such fratty traditions as beer pong, the toga party and the boot & rally. Like any fraternity member, Efron wants to craft his own legend and put his name up on the wall.

In order to fraternize with the new neighbors, the Radners head over to party with the bros. Rogen does a ton of mushrooms, Byrne straps a baby monitor to her belt and hits the dance floor. Efron entertains them in an attempt to get them on his good side. When Rogen betrays him and calls the frat on the cops for being too loud the next night, Efron makes things personal.

Neighbors relies on the ridiculous situations that emerge when frat is pitted against innocent local middle-aged family. Efron and his crew rip the airbags out of their car, Rogen and Byrne try to start a hazing scandal. Rogen and Byrne flood the frat’s basement, Efron and his crew start a dildo fundraiser disguised as a bake sale to raise money to fix the damage. It turns into Neigh-Bros. The film feels longer than an hour and a half. Through all that, I didn’t even get to witness a beer-bong or shotgun. Disappointing.

Somewhere in the middle, Rogen’s hilarious wisecracks and the frat’s shenanigans go from raucous to atrocious. Director Nicholas Stoller, a Harvard grad who knows better, flushes the comedic toilet and clogs it with dick humor, offensive fraternity stereotypes and puke-worthy gross-out moments. They turn hazing into a joke, rape into a punch-line. At one point, Byrne spews milk from her veiny breasts. Delta Psi rips a guys’ pubes off. Then, the Radner baby fits a condom in her mouth and their doctor jokes that the baby has HIV. No laughs. The only thing that threatened to come out of my mouth was stomach acid.

Rogen makes raunchy paunchy. He’s by far the best part of this movie and the only redeeming factor that kept it from disaster. His chubby physique is pasted everywhere in this film, but sadly he doesn’t have enough weight to carry it by himself; too often he’s reduced to using his heft as a punchline like Vince Vaughn uses his height. We see him bent over his wife, or modeling in front of an Abercrombie. His ass is everywhere. He’s funniest smoking a joint and cracking wise with his buddies, but we don’t get to see nearly enough of that.

The male form has taken on a new comedic identity, seemingly since Jason Segel flopped his good-looking member out in Stoller’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall. But it’s hard to rationalize that the same person who made Five-Year Engagement, Get Him to The Greek and the aforementioned, made this poo-poo platter of unfunny, homoerotic, gross-out dick comedy. Somewhere along the way, he lost track of who he was. It’s just hard to believe someone this hilarious could make something as laughable as a Tyler Perry movie. I was half-expecting Adam Sandler to play the baby. Maybe that would’ve been funny.

Nevertheless, Rogen and Byrne have great chemistry, and his charm even helps humanize the atrociously bad Efron, who hasn’t gotten any better since That Awkward Moment. Cool cameos from comedians like Lisa Kudrow, Jason Mantzoukas (The League), and Natasha Leggero help the shit float, and there are some great laughs in here—notably Franco 3D-printing his penis and the frat’s careful airbag placement.

By the end, it was too traumatizing to enjoy. Normally one for gross-out raunch, this caught me off guard. Maybe it hit too close to home. Or maybe rape and hazing and dick jokes and projectile breast-milk are about as funny as domestic violence. I’ve seen one too many penises in my day. I’m on penis overload. No homo.

At the end, Rogen turns to Byrne and tells her, “things have changed… I like old people shit now.” And maybe that’s my problem. Rogen’s outgrown this dreck, and so have I. Give me a good book to read or some Game of Thrones. A younger, more impressionable Chris might have loved Neighbors, but I’m turning 20 in four days and this stuff just isn’t as funny anymore. As much as hazing and rape and ragers and alcohol addiction and guys nicknamed Spoonfeeder might be realities in the Greek world, they’re far from what fraternities stand for, and they’re way too personal issues to be remotely funny. Neighbors crosses the line into scary territory. If you’re trying to live vicariously through assholes, go ahead and read Total Frat Move.

I’ve got enough fraternity experiences to write two books. None of them resemble what I saw Tuesday night. Hell, my fraternity chapter was shut down in ’04 for being the most dangerous in the country. They had nothing on DFB. Matt gives Neighbors two stars out of five. I have to agree with him.

C-

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