Tag Archives: andy garcia

“It’s called karma … and it’s pronounced ‘ha!'” Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again

22 July 2018

14 Comments

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Is it fashionable to hate Mamma Mia!, the international ABBA-stage musical sensation that was parlayed into the biggest box office film-musical of all time ten (!) years ago, starring Meryl Streep? Seems that way. Maybe it’s misogyny or sour grapes or a general critical agnosticism toward anything big, silly, and fun. Maybe people don’t want to admit how much they love infectious Swedish pop songs with nonsensical titles and lyrical metaphors that appear to have been crafted by a roomful of monkeys with typewriters.

Whatever. I liked it. Mostly.

Well, let me equivocate. I appreciated the gaga joy that the original film’s cast seemed to be having – a group of award-winning pros (Streep, Christine Baranski, Julie Walters, Amanda Seyfried, Dominic Cooper, Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgard) who didn’t give a flying fig that they were working from a junk script with a cringe-worthy concept (who’s your daddy?). These talented souls could read an appliance repair manual aloud and make it seem zippy. So what happens when you offer them some catchy-as-eff songs and throw them on a plastic back-lot set designed by Olive Garden with a sound-stage-blue sky that makes your heart ache? Cinematic genius.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Franchise newcomer (is this a franchise yet?) Ol Parker takes over direction from Phyllida Lloyd on the nobody-asked-for-it sequel Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. He does some spectacular reverse engineering to give us an actual film that is just as loopy as before but, you know, gives us characters and motivation and something resembling a plot (sort of).

Since this second entry is basically a greatest hits of a greatest hits package, some songs from the prior film get repeated; some B-side deep cuts you never knew existed (nor wanted to) are employed; and, as a score, all of the numbers are more seamlessly integrated into the story line … which is basically TWO storylines.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

First, Sophie (a luminous Seyfried) is (spoiler alert!) mourning the passing of her mother Donna (Streep, who adds to her odd gallery of beyond-the-grave “angel” characters here), and re-opens the picturesque Greek hotel as a tribute.

Second, in parallel, we learn through flashbacks how young Donna found her island retreat, slept with three different dudes in rapid succession (Jeremy Irvine, Hugh Skinner, Josh Dylan – all Abercrombie & Fitch adorable and completely disposably interchangeable), and subsequently declared, “To hell with all of ya!”

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

A crackerjack Lily James (Cinderella, Baby Driver) portrays young Donna. She effortlessly channels and brilliantly reinvents the madcap essence of Streep … despite the fact that the two don’t look one whit alike. Lily is brilliant in the role – unapologetic and fiery. By far, the smartest thing the filmmakers did was casting her. She makes the film. Jessica Keenan Wynn and Alexa Davies are a hoot as her pals (the younger versions of Baranski and Walters, respectively), and the trio present a compelling and believable dynamic as pals making their way in a world and era (1979) where their free-spirited agency ain’t exactly celebrated. (The more things change…)

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

In the present day, we also see the addition of a criminally underutilized Andy Garcia as the hotel’s concierge/handyman ridiculously named, yes, Fernando. He seems to exist primarily as a narrative device for Cher who literally helicopters in for the last twenty minutes of the movie, phoning in an absolutely brilliant approximation of Cher at her Cher-iest, to croon one of ABBA’s most beloved tunes.

For some illogical reason, Cher, who is only three years older than Streep, plays Streep’s mother. She is about as believable (pun intended) playing Streep’s mother as I would be. Hell, I’d be more believable. “Do you belieeeeeve, in life after love … love … love?” But who cares? In the Teflon-coated Mamma Mia universe, all things exist in servitude to hedonistic joy. And you don’t get more hedonistic nor more joyous than Cher singing “Fernando,” as exquisitely escapist as a big movie moment can be. I adored the sequence and hated myself for doing so the next day.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Check your brain at the door, drink in the images and sounds, and enjoy the best party of the summer with Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. Yes, I laughed, I sang, I danced, I cried, and I’m not ashamed to admit that. Much.

Postcript …

There were four lines in the film that I jotted down as potential review titles. They are indicative of why this film is such simplistic, absurdist genius in our meme-happy culture. I chose one – spoken by Julie Walters (I think) – which seemed to perfectly reflect the position this sequel takes in relation to its most vocal critics: “It’s called karma, and it’s spelled ‘ha’!” For the curious? The other three options were as follows: “Be still my beating vagina.” “It’s not easy being a mother. If it was, fathers would do it.” AND “I judge a person’s heart by the way they treat animals.” Go see the film, have a ball, and tell me if I chose my title … poorly.

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[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital). In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

 

 

“I don’t know if it’s a race thing or a lady thing, but I’m mad as hell.” Ghostbusters (2016)

5 August 2016

7 Comments

Ghostbusters_2016_film_poster

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

This summer’s Ghostbusters reboot/reimagining/sequel-non-sequel/whatever-it-is benefits and suffers from the wobbly foundation of opportunistic Gen X nostalgia upon which it is built. If, like me, you saw the film in 1984 as part of Mike Babbitt’s birthday-sleepover extravaganza – one of your first memories of feeling like a “grown-up” and seeing a movie in a communal glow a bunch of your farting, burping, snickering, supremely immature buddies – the original Ghostbusters is a classic. However, if, like someone else in my house (ahem, John), you view the original film from a different lens as the messy, self-indulgent, hammy ground zero for a whole host of similarly inept high-concept fantasy comedies that continue to infest multiplexes to this day, Ghostbusters is, well, meh. I suspect John is in the right, but don’t tell him I said so.

Paul Feig (Bridesmaids, The Heat, Spy) has assembled an A-list crew of comedy dynamos for the 2016 outing: Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Jones, Kate McKinnon, and, yes, Chris Hemsworth (Thor is funny, y’all!). The plot – or what lightly resembles a plot – is more or less the same as the original Bill Murray/Dan Aykroyd/Harold Ramis/Ernie Hudson version. At least from what I recall … to be honest, I think the only time I actually saw that movie was at the aforementioned birthday party.

In the original film, someone is unleashing spectral Armageddon on Manhattan and a ragtag band of misfits in jumpsuits with laser guns overcomes their condemnation to a life of marginalia in order to save the day. Annie Potts, Rick Moranis, Sigourney Weaver all put in appearances doing … stuff. There’s a skyscraper-sized menace made of marshmallows and a big purple swirly cloud above the Empire State Building. As the credits roll, that ubiquitous Ray Parker, Jr.-led theme song (sounding copyright-infringibly close to Huey Lewis’ “I Want a New Drug”) trumpets the arrival of a new breed of hero to NYC: The Ghostbusters. Pre-9/11, seeing Manhattan torn to ribbons and healed by the power of pop music was a more entertaining enterprise.

Feig’s version is pretty much the same damn movie, which is both bold and kind of lazy. Without a doubt in my mind, Feig’s cast is sharper, more incisive, and a helluva lot more identifiable than the original band. Fanboys, I don’t care what your social media cronies believe. It’s the truth.

This version of Ghostbusters was rife with such opportunity to import the anarchic, political raunch of Bridesmaids into a PG-13 manifesto on the power of diversity, individualism, and being funny as hell. Instead, it’s a bit toothless. A bunt when it could have been a home run, to mix my metaphors.

That said, I laughed. I laughed a lot. (John…laughed once. I think.) I thought the comically queasy uncertainty of characters fighting for a world that didn’t much want them in it was a pip. McKinnon (literally) chews the scenery as the group’s wild-eyed weapons master. And that was fine by me. Jones, who seems a bit out-of-her-depth (or maybe just bored) with sketch-acting on SNL, is dynamite here – crisp, zippy, focused. As she jumps into a metal-head mosh pit, expecting to be crowd-surfed on her way to exorcising a winged demon, she, instead, is unceremoniously dropped to the ground; Jones nails one of the film’s best and most timely zingers: “I don’t know if it’s a race thing or a lady thing, but I’m mad as hell.”

McCarthy, believe it or not, is impressively understated as the team’s whip, and only Wiig seems to get lost in the shuffle as a the mild-mannered heart of the group. She may have played one milquetoast too many at this point in her storied career. Hemsworth, as the Ghostbusters’ receptionist, is comically objectified for his Aussie sparkle in a welcome role-reversal. And, no, that is not “reverse sexism” – which is not a thing. It’s satire of the rampant and insidious male gaze…which is a thing.

There is an endless parade of self-referential cameo appearances. I found them all unnecessary, distracting and, worse, unfunny. Andy Garcia and Cecily Strong – as the oily mayor and his obsequious assistant – can stay. Everyone else? You gotta go!

That Love Boat-load of guest stars would be an example of where nostalgia bites this production on its collective behind.  I wish Feig had been liberated by the corporate powers-that-be at Columbia Pictures to make the itchy, twitchy film that is lurking under the surface of this new Ghostbusters. Alas, all the product placement – from Papa Johns to Bill Murray – might suggest Feig was in servitude to a paycheck, not an artistic vision. That’s a shame.

Wiig, McCarthy, Jones, and McKinnon as the Ghostbusting quartet are clearly having a ball playing summertime action figures. Yet, their fun never quite becomes our fun. The ad-libbed scenes have crackling moments but never quite add up to coherent narrative. The stakes never seem that dire (perhaps because of the familiarity of the plot), and consequently the film has no urgency or agency. In the year of #ImWithHer, Ghostbusters is serviceable allegorical escapism, when it could have been timeless, seismic revelation.

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[Image Source: Wikipedia]

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital).  In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan.  My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

An entertaining perp walk to its inevitable credit sequence blooper reel: Let’s Be Cops

15 August 2014

6 Comments

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Let’s Be Cops is a throwback to a simpler, sunnier, dumber movie era … and that is not necessarily a bad thing. There was a time, not that long ago, when the summer movie season was not so populated with postmodern irony and self-aware/self-important superheroes. Rather, it was an unyielding series of big, silly, high concept buddy flicks like Shanghai Noon or Bad Boys. (This summer’s 22 Jump Street is the exception that proves the rule.)

Let’s Be Cops has neither the wit nor the budget of any of those films, but it is like their not-so-bright cousin: pleasant and nice to hang out with at the family reunion, but ultimately rather forgettable.

Ryan O’Malley (New Girl‘s Jake Johnson) and Justin Miller (Happy Endings‘ Damon Wayans, Jr.) are two friends/roommates who move to Los Angeles to find their dreams after college (Purdue University no less, though both drive cars with Columbus, Ohio license plates – do the filmmakers not know where Purdue is?). These partners in arrested development have hit their 30s and are at a financial/social/life dead end. Think Romy & Michelle’s High School Reunion without the whimsy … or the Post-Its.

Their upcoming college reunion for some reason is a masquerade ball (WTF?) which O’Malley mistakenly believes means a costume party. Miller, a video game designer who is developing one based on real-life experiences of policemen, just happens to have two authentic police uniforms in their apartment. So, of course, they wear these costumes to the party, à la Elle Woods’ cringe-worthy bunny outfit in Legally Blonde. Embarrassment ensues when these boys in blue are faced with college classmates bedecked in evening gowns, tuxedoes, and glittery commedia dell’arte masks (again, WTF?).

The cheekiness finally kicks in when the boys, dejected and mortified by their reunion experience and still wearing their cop gear, wander the streets of L.A. and suddenly realize every passer-by regards them with fear, adoration, respect, or some combination thereof.

Expectedly, the power goes to their heads, and O’Malley starts to take it all too seriously, embroiling them both in a gang bust of some clichéd, B-movie Russian mobsters who are harassing the local pizzeria. (‘Cause of course that’s what Russian mobsters in L.A. would do.)

The film has potential to say something interesting about the abuse of power we see among some uniformed officials – certainly (and sadly) a timely concept. What kind of folks are drawn to this profession in the first place. Is this career-choice motivated by noble intent or a power trip or both? The movie’s script isn’t sharp enough to tackle that concept, which, if explored, could have taken this slight though entertaining film to more interestingly satiric comic levels.

However, the movie is fun. That is pretty much all it has set out to be, and that is just fine, aided and abetted as it is by a well-rounded cast. Any time Rob Riggle shows up (though he seems consigned now and forever to play police officers or gym teachers), you know you’re in good hands. Andy Garcia (!) of all people also makes an appearance, as does James D’Arcy, better than he should have been, saddled with the part of a Russian thug whose primary character trait is chewing (and spitting) gum. Key & Peele‘s Keegan-Michael Key, playing to his broad comic wheelhouse, is a hoot as a wide-eyed, childlike gangbanger.

The leads (Johnson and Wayans) have great, sparkling chemistry. Johnson, who seems like the love-child of Owen Wilson and Mark Ruffalo, is scruffy and charming in all his sweaty desperation to be somebody. Wayans, as his (somewhat) straight-arrow friend, shows surprising range, given the circumstances. He finds more notes to play than actually exist in the thin script, wringing comic gold as a neurotic fish-out-of-water, who is neither as neurotic nor as out of his depths as he initially seems.

Even its artless title is a giveaway that Let’s Be Cops is not taking itself terribly seriously. For all intents and purposes, this zippy trifle is two hours of two little boys playing dress-up in the backyard. Once the high (low) concept rumbles to life, the narrative is an entertaining perp walk to its inevitable credit sequence blooper reel.

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Reel Roy Reviews is now a book! Thanks to BroadwayWorld for this coverage – click here to view. In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the book currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.