BROS

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

I really wanted to love Bros. And I did like it—it even made me laugh more than most comedies do. And I am a genuine fan of Billy Eichner, his overt obnoxiousness on Billy on the Street being a definitive part of his brand and appeal. And Bros is made for people who love romantic comedies, and even quite knowingly moves through all the same beats as any mainstream film of the genre. This is a film made for everyone lamenting the decline of romantic comedies, and it manages to scratch that itch by being just as serviceable a specimen as any other.

I just wanted it to be better than “serviceable,” which is, admittedly, a tall order. How many “great” romantic comedies are there out there, really? When Harry Met Sally… (1989) is arguably the best ever made; Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) seems largely lost to history and now rendered criminally underrated (seriously, if you’ve never seen that one, find it and watch it). Moonstruck (1987) is a straight up masterpiece. How long has it been since another romantic comedy came even close to the quality of these examples? Even the American Film Institute’s top 10 romantic comedies lists nothing more recent than 1993 (and Sleepless in Seattle is fun, but, if that makes the top ten of all time? this is not a genre known for most people’s best work).

How does Bros compare within a 21st-century context, then, which, frankly, lowers the bar? Four years ago Collider compiled a list of the best romantic comedies of the 21st century, and a lot of them are better films. The crucial difference with Bros is, of course, that it centers a same-sex couple instead of a straight one. And a whole lot has been made of how that breaks new ground, this being “the first American gay romantic comedy from a major studio featuring an entirely LGBTQ principal cast”—which is, it must be said, a lot of qualifiers. After all, Fire Island was already released this past spring, and it fits all but one of those same qualifiers, the only difference being it was released on Hulu. And that movie is certainly as good as Bros; some might say it’s better (on average I liked them about the same, for slightly different reasons) and they would have solid arguments to stand on. Hell, that one stars Bowen Yang as one of the principal characters, and he’s also in this movie.

And not for nothing, but Fire Island has a leg up on Bros in that its principal characters are mostly people of color. Bros is a little self-conscious about its “diversity casting” (a loaded term if ever there was one) while never directly addressing how it still centers white characters—which in itself is not necessarily something to criticize it for, except for how it quite blatantly “checks all the boxes,” or at least all the boxes it can, in its supporting cast. Eichner’s Bobby character is the Executive Director of an LGBTQ+ museum (was it absolutely necessary for him to the the Executive Director?), but the rest of his Board consists of two trans women (one White and one Black), a Black non-binary person, a White bisexual man, and a White lesbian. This is a knowing nod to the obsession with “covering all the bases,” like the self-conscious diversity of models on a college brochure, while still managing to actually check a lot of the boxes. (Incidentally, this Board does not include any people of color who aren’t Black, nor does it have any intersex or asexual people—which, I would bet anything, it would if the movie were made another ten years from now.)

The museum itself is a clear way for the film to “educate” viewers on queer history, which I have mixed feelings about. On the one hand, this aspect of Bros did not teach me anything I didn’t already know, which made it feel kind of like a movie made to educate straight people. On the other hand, plenty of queer people also don’t know their own history, and if this movie teaches them anything at all, I’m not going to complain about that. That said, Eichner has so many extensive monologues in this movie—this guy talks, and talks—that a lot of the time, in the museum scenes, he’s throwing out so much information so fast that it often feels, again, like checking off boxes.

Bros opens with one of Eichner’s monologues, by the way, his being a podcast host (of course) offering an excuse for an introduction consisting of a large amount of voiceover. This opening bit kind of goes hard, though, which Eichner’s delivery that’s both rapid and extensive, and I got a little stuck on the idea that a solo podcast host, who evidently doesn’t even have guests on, would be a wildly popular one with a million subscribers. Bros barely gives an indication of the basic premise of his podcast (again, queer history), then mostly shows him waxing poetic about his frustrating sex life, what it’s like being gay these days, or answering live listener calls. Why the hell would so many people be listening to this?

It should be noted that Bros may be a gay story in which all the queer characters are (quite pointedly) played by queer actors, and all of that is indeed stuff to be proud of. But the director, Nicholas Stoller, is not gay, and I think this actually makes a difference, Eichnier having co-written the script with him notwithstanding. (Side note: Fire Island was directed by Andrew Ahn, an openly gay Asian American man.) There’s been an element of a lot of the press and buzz for Bros that feels a lot like straight guys patting themselves on the back for helping their queer friends get their movie made. And it’s not to say they have no reason to be proud of this movie, but there has been this widespread industry expectation that the movie will be a hit, and its opening weekend earned 40% less than projected. There is already hand-wringing about whether this means audiences aren’t “ready” for a movie like this, but there remains the possibility that the film just isn’t as great as everyone who made it thought it was.

And I know I’ve spent a lot of time picking it apart here, but I must stress that I did enjoy this movie. The more salient point is, I enjoyed it about as much as any average romantic comedy—the key word here being “average,” although I would even say this was above average, not that there’s a high bar there either; it doesn’t take much for a romantic comedy to rise just slightly above mediocrity. And to be fair, there’s a lot of things I did love about Bros, not least of which was its acknowledgment of how gay relationships are actually different from straight ones (yet no less valid); its sex scenes just as frank as any in a romantic comedy about straight people; and its unusually honest depiction of day to day queer life. (Although, and I’m sorry for constantly making the comparison in spite of its inevitability, Fire Island has a lot more casual drug use. Bros does depict the use of poppers in a sex scene, though, treating it as just a normal part of it, which for many it is.)

Plus, Bros does have a lot of very effective punch lines, and I laughed a good amount at it—albeit a little further into the film than I would have preferred; that opening sequence with the podcast-host voiceover really had me worried the movie would be actively bad. Thankfully, although there are many valid criticisms, the movie is actively good. And to be fair, it’s not trying to be anything it isn’t, either; the film itself doesn’t seem to think it’s any paragon of cinema, and only tries to offer what fans of romantic comedies want. And by and large, what those fans want is something of a specific formula, which this very much is.

Eichner’s love interest is Aaron, played by Luke Macfarlane, a guy largely known for Hallmark Channel romantic comedies—so, another example of slightly in-joke casting. Eichner plays a character I would likely find insufferable in real life, but these two men have genuine chemistry, which alone goes a long way toward making Bros work overall. It’s heartening to see even two perfectly attractive men (granted, one is much “hunkier” than the other) struggling to overcome very different insecurities, and sort of tentatively succeeding. Honestly, I would happily watch Bros again, and would likely enjoy it even more a second time, having already gotten the criticisms out of my system and allowing myself just to give into it without intellectualizing what is just meant to be a fun time at the movies. Which, to be fair, is exactly what this is in the end.

It’s unapologetically queer, unapologetically romantic, and unapologetically formulaic.

Overall: B

SEE HOW THEY RUN

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B-

There’s historically a bit of a problem with star studded ensemble casts—which is to say, they always disappoint under the expectation of their star power. In the case of See How They Run, the movie poster highlights fully twelve people in the cast, but the star wattage is basically limited to Sam Rockwell, Saoirse Ronan, Adrien Brody, and David Oyelowo. Your mileage may vary with the rest of the cast, as with Ruth Wilson, or if you were a big fan of “Moaning Myrtle” in a few of the Harry Potter films, Shirley Henderson pops up in a delightful performance as Agatha Christie.

Which immediately brings me to my other point: I can remember when I first learned what “meta fiction” was, after having it defined in my own creative writing in a college class. At the time it was a gimmick not widely discussed, and it was a point of pride. Now, every writer and their mother seems to be making their work “meta” in one way or another, and See How They Run hops right on that bandwagon. Most of the time it’s mildly amusing, and to the film’s credit. it never crosses the line into annoying.

Still, there’s no getting around that this is a movie with a large ensemble cast that is clearly very amused with itself, which is rarely a recipe for success. What I can say for this example is that, at the very least, it’s not a failure.

See How They Run is a “whodunnit” regarding a murder amongst the people in or involved with an Agatha Christie play called The Mousetrap, running in 1950s London’s West End. They play is also a whodunnit, and of course director Tom George and writer Mark Chappell offer us a movie with cleverly knowing beats that mirror those of the play. There is some debate among the players as to how the play should be adapted into a film, and the initial murder victim figures prominently into the discussion.

Even the opening voiceover narrator turns out to be surprisingly relevant. See How They Run has relative unpredictability going for it; I don’t think it’s easy for the average viewer to suss out who the murderer is—and, as always in stories like this, there’s a veritable crowd of suspects. I just wish that opening voiceover didn’t go on for quite as long as it does, or the movie itself for that matter: this film has a slight editing problem, even at only 98 minutes in length. This is a kind of movie that would benefit from much tighter editing, and keeping it at an even 90 minutes would alone have made a notable difference. This is clearly intended as a comedy, and it gave me a great many chuckles, but there’s a few too many lulls between them.

Still, See How They Run has surprisingly artful cinematography for a film of its sort, and the performances are as good as you could ask for across the board. I do find myself wondering if this would even have been considered for production without the success of the far superior Knives Out, which has its own highly anticipated sequel coming this winter. See How They Run certainly has its own tone and sensibility, but it’s not particularly memorable either. I had a nice time with it, at least. It’s amusing enough.

Inspector. Constable.

Overall: B

BODIES BODIES BODIES

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

Depending on what social media circles you travel in, you might think the most well-known thing about Bodies Bodies Bodies is that it was described as “a 95-minute advertisement for cleavage” by gay New York Times film critic Lena Wilson, who declared star Amandla Stenberg, who is also gay, “homophobic” for DMing her with the message, “Maybe if you had gotten your eyes off my tits you would’ve watched the movie!”

Now, let me get this out of the way: I generally enjoyed this movie. But, and this is why I bring it up here, it’s not a great look for the movie itself when a star’s clapback about a comment in a critic’s review is easily the funniest thing about the movie. Which does have several legitimately funny moments.

Some of Stenberg’s comments about her intentions regarding the DM ring as disingenuous, honestly. But in her defense, her cleavage really doesn’t get that much screen time. I know I am (also) gay and all, but after all this, I went in looking for it! And trust me, when cleavage is actually gratuitous, I notice it and am occasionally even annoyed by it. Had this never been a topic of discussion, Stenberg’s breasts would never have even registered while I watched this film.

It would have been a sweeter revenge if the movie itself were better. Bodies Bodies Bodies isn’t a “great film” by any stretch, but it is . . . fine. It’s fun, in a self-consciously Gen-Z zeitgeisty way. There is a plot turn at the end that you see coming a mile away—which is saying something, because I rarely predict plot twists, because I don’t ever try. To say that the film’s title is apt is an understatement, and how it gets to that point is basically a metaphor for these rich kids’ vapidness.

Which brings me to another crucial point: Not one of these characters is someone any sane person would want to hang out with, and yet director Halina Reijn expects us to spend roughly ninety minutes with them. That may not sound like a lot, but it’s long enough for us to start rooting for more of them to drop dead. I am reminded of the 2008 film Cloverfield, which also had exclusively vapid, mostly twenty-something characters. At least that movie was scary and exciting.

Bodies Bodies Bodies does have its moments. They do get largely nullified by what is ultimately revealed to be the pathetic, if still mostly lethal, source of all their fears, as this group of old friends has a “hurricane party” (take that literally) at a remote family mansion. The race and gender politics of this group is ripe for discussion, given the core group is four twenty-something young women, two Black and two White, yet the two men in the cast are both White and, well, doofy: Pete Davidson, still in his twenties but barely, plays what is never explicitly explained but seems to be older brother to Stenberg’s Sophie; Lee Pace (also gay! but playing straight here) is the forty-something new boyfriend of Alice (Shiva Baby’s Rachel Sennott). It’s the, let’s just say bodies, of these two men that set off most of the story, Davidson’s quite early on.

This movie seems to be trying to say something about wealth and privilege, and it’s interesting to note that two of the wealthy young women are Black, but one of them is an addict and the other is a noted bitch. The one real outsider here is Sophie’s new girlfriend Bee (Maria Bakalova), who is an Eastern European immigrant and the only one there without wealth. The film stays with her the entire time and is thus told from her perspective, lingering on her clear insecurities as an outsider. This makes her subject to passive-aggressive derision as well as, soon enough, suspicion.

None of these so-called “close friends” truly trust each other, though, and ultimately they are all equally dangerous by turns in the eyes of the others. Bodies Bodies Bodies gets in a lot of amusing lines that reveal how typically lacking in self-awareness the wealthy can be. Plenty of it is effectively tense, as the hurricane ultimately knocks out the power in the house and has them all running around in the dark using the flashlight apps on their phones.

In other words, Bodies Bodies Bodies is genuinely entertaining. But, that’s all it is, and the movie clearly thinks it’s got something bigger to say. In the end it’s just as vapid as its characters, but at least we get to see them all stumble over their own dipshittery.

I mean, it’s not even that much cleavage!

Overall: B

I LOVE MY DAD

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

If “cringe comedy” is a thing, then I Love My Dad is its poster child. And I’m not usually one for deeply uncomfortable stories, but I find myself impressed with this one nonetheless, and able to get fully behind it. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

That does not mean it’s not without its flaws. But, the flaws are minor. A last-minute minor twist, something that functions more as a punch line really, which really doesn’t stand up to any real scrutiny. But, in the moment, it’s effective and amusing. Such is the case with this entire movie.

Let’s cut to the chase: this is a movie about a guy who catfishes his son, posing as a young woman online in a desperate attempt at staying in his son’s life after he’s been blocked on social media. It’s sort of like Mrs. Doubtfire for the 21st century, only far less mainstream a release and, crucially, fully acknowledging all of the ways in which it’s problematic.

In fact, it’s entirely the point. Chuck is a deadbeat dad, someone who is never there for his son, who has recently attempted suicide. Fanklin blocking him on social media is described by Franklin himself as “setting healthy boundaries.” It’s a moment when Chuck is forced to face his lifetime of unreliability.

The miracle of I Love My Dad is how Patton Oswalt manages to make Chuck both pitiful and likable at the same time. That is an incredible trick. In fact, I have long been such a fan of Oswalt as a comedian, I really thought it would be hard to stop thinking about how I was looking at Patton Oswalt. (Oswalt is also currently voicing Matthew the Raven on Netflix’s The Sandman, and I am regularly distracted by his distinctively recognizable voice.) And yet, somehow, within minutes I forgot I was looking at Patton Oswalt the actor, and fully accepted him as Chuck the deadbeat dad who nevertheless really loves his son.

Much more importantly, Franklin is played by 32-year-old James Morosini, who I literally just discovered while writing this was also the writer and director of this film. And here I had just been impressed with his eminently convincing, subtle, and nuanced performance as a young man with mental health issues. This is clearly a man with stunningly ample talents and I pray we get to see much more of his work in the years to come.

The supporting cast is rounded out by Transparent’s Amy Landecker; Wine Country’s Rachel Dratch; Get Out’s Lil Rel Howery; and relative unknown Claudia Sulewski as Becca, the young woman Chuck is pretending to be—based on a real Becca from the diner in his Maine hometown.

Chuck is never intentionally creepy or gross, however. He’s just stunningly boneheaded in his decision making, and quickly gets in over his head, as his son falls in love with the woman he’s pretending to be. A plot like this could very easily go off the rails very quickly, but Morosini’s script pushes the envelope just far enough to be somewhere within the gray area between horrifying and devastating. It’s a line that, somehow, is often very funny. This is the kind of movie that will have you laughing out loud at the same time it makes you want to crawl under your chair.

I Love My Dad surprises in all the right ways. Just when you’re afraid it will go to a place that’s not just bad but unforgivable, it pivots to a place that’s still painfully awkward, but somehow tolerable. Given the fraught tone it’s going for, it really exceeds all expectations.

They might drive you right into lethal embarrassment.

Overall: B+

MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B+
Animation: B+
Special Effects: A-

I just wanted to see a movie today. I checked the listings at my local AMC Theater, noticed a title I had never heard of called Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, checked to make sure the score on MetaCritic worked for me, and thought: that’ll do.

And I’m so glad I went, even though it became clear pretty quickly that what i was watching was the culmination of an internet phenomenon I had not been aware of—but, take it from me, that knowledge is not in any way necessary to being thoroughly charmed by the little, one-inch toy shell with a single eyeball, an animated mouth, and, as the title indicates, standing on a pair of tiny little shoes. Marcel is lent a slightly intensified, even more childlike voice by the truly distinctive Jenny Slate, although one of the most deeply impressive things about this production is the naturalistic dialogue between Marcel and director and co-writer Dean Fleischer-Camp, who plays himself, mostly from behind the camera.

The conceit of the film is that Fleischer-Camp is doing a documentary, focused on Marcel while he stays in the AirBnB space where Marcel lives. After some introductory sequences that establish a tone of mild but unique enchantment, we learn that with the exception of Marcel’s shell grandmother, his entire family and community has disappeared from a sock drawer they had all designated as a safe space. Over the course of the film, the search for Marcel’s loved ones results in a prime time news program interview. There are certain delights I do not want to spoil here, such as the delightfully left-field cameo in the part of the TV journalist, or even who voices the grandmother shell, Nana Connie.

Honestly, if at all possible, I would recommend going into Marcel the Shell as blind as possible. For a bit I just found it moderately amusing, wondering vaguely it this really needed to be stretched into a feature-length film—and then it blindsided me with several truly hilarious gags, unique in execution and thus transcending its “quirkiness.” Listening to Marcel talk is like listening to the most hilariously original ideas coming from a four-year-old.

Of course, as this film makes clear, there will be many people for whom going in totally blind will be impossible. I didn’t even know who Marcel the Shell was, and there are tens of millions of people who do. It should be noted, though, that there is a vast difference of sophistication between that first YouTube video from 2010 and this film, although it should also be stressed that all of it is in the best way. On a technical level, I was consistently impressed by this film. There’s a sequence in which Marcel rides on the dashboard of Fleischer-Camp’s car, while standing on a map. The combination of stop-motion animation with seamless shifting light and shadow patterns on the map, the kind of thing most viewers probably aren’t even paying attention to, left me in awe. For all I know, it was an effect achieved through some simple means. Or maybe it was some massive technical achievement. Either way it looked incredible.

This brings me back to the dialogue between Fleischer-Camp and Marcel, usually with Fleischer-Camp speaking from behind the camera. It all comes across as totally natural and real, but there clearly had to be a lot of meticulous planning involved, in order to create animation that synced with it convincingly, That this film could be made with such considerations and still be so charming—and, surprisingly, poignant—is something I find legitimately astounding. This is one of those lucky instances where something so clearly a labor of love resulted in something its audiences can easily love just as much.

And whether you know Marcel the Shell already or you don’t, I am loathe to reveal any more about it. It’s such a delightful surprise on its own terms, every audience deserves to experience that surprise as thoroughly as possible.

Marcel has an eye opening experience on the internet.

Overall: B+

FIRE ISLAND

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

There’s a lot to love about Fire Island, this year’s first major “Pride Month Movie” release, streaming on Hulu since its release yesterday (June 3), and most of it has to do with representation. Written by and starring comedian Joel Kim Booster, and co-starring viral sensation and SNL cast member Bowen Yang, this is a movie clearly aimed to be a “mainstream release,” itself no longer unusual for a story focused on queer people—what sets it apart is its unapologetically plausible and realistic representation. This is definitively not a “family-friendly” movie, and not because it happens to be about a group of gay friends, but because it includes frank depictions of gay sex and casual drug use.

To be clear, though, the overall plot is surprisingly chaste, largely because it’s a modern adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice—very much in the vein of the classic 1994 high school adaptation of Emma that was Clueless. Granted, Fire Island has no chance of becoming the cult classic that Clueless did, but that’s just because of how much the movie industry has changed in the past thirty years.

Anyway, the casual observer might be forgiven for thinking the story is only about Howie (Bowen Yang), and his sweet, budding relationship with Charlie (James Scully), initially at the behest of Howie’s best friend Noah (Booster), who is so intent on getting Howie laid on an annual friends-group trip to Fire Island that he’s committed to not having sex with anyone himself until it happens. But, Charlie’s own group of friends are a much wealthier group, who overall rub Noah the wrong way, particularly a lawyer named Will (Conrad Ricamora), who Noah quickly writes off as a snob, responding in ways that only increase tension between them. Spoiler alert! By the end, this movie becomes just as much about the predictable trajectory of the slowly evolving relationship between Noah and Will.

If you are at all familiar with Pride and Prejudice, identifying which characters parallel those from the novel becomes a fun game. Noah is narrator Elizabeth; Will is Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy; Howie is Elizabeth’s sister Jane; Charlie is Jane’s love interest Charles Bingley. The diverse group of friends along the ride with Noah and Howie are, broadly speaking, the Bennet sisters.

The overall plot points of Fire Island do hew incredibly close to those of the novel, which is why, for instance, most of the time none of the aforementioned sex is ever centered in the plot. Noah and Will spend most of the story annoyed with each other, and Howie and Charlie spend most of it innocently getting to know each other. The unusual frankness comes in as background, sometimes as part of a punch line, such as when Noah crashes a bedroom orgy while looking for Howie, and all the guys stop their fucking just quickly enough to look around politely to see if there’s a Howie in the room. There is another scene in which Noah takes a potential hookup into a back room also filled with sex at a party, and yet another in which the group of friends are taking stock of their relatively pathetic collective stash of recreational drugs.

The great thing about all these details is just this: none of it is ever looked upon with judgment. It’s just, part of these gay guys’ world, secondary background details that they may or may not partake in depending on the circumstances or the mood. There is no self-loathing to be had in this movie, at least not as a result of one’s sexuality (they do discuss body image issues, in some cases in a way that’s a bit of a stretch, considering the conventional fitness of many of these guys who apparently feel out of place on Fire Island). There’s no tragic subplot about addiction, and there’s no hand-wringing or grappling with homophobia, a fact made easy by the convenient setting in one of the nation’s few small-town gay utopias. This story could just have easily been set in Provincetown or Key West.

All that said, if you strip away all these trappings that set Fire Island apart, and look strictly at its simple plot arc, as well as most of it’s dialogue, and it’s reduced to something little more than adequate. I can’t quite call this film “exceptional,” much as I really would love to. If I had my wish, it would be something with the staying power of The Birdcage, just without the conservative judgmentalism used for punchlines. Fire Isand could have been a great movie about gay guys on vacation, or it could have been a great modern adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, but apparently it can’t be a great combination of both.

Don’t get me wrong, though: I still thought it was a fun, worthwhile way to spend a couple of hours at home. I might even have enjoyed seeing this in theaters. That said, the “house mother” who owns the place this group of friends goes to every year is played by Margaret Cho, whose comic talents are criminally underused and whose presence seems only to serve as “gay icon cred.” And although the guys who round out Noah’s and Howie’s group of friends are diverse in both ethnicity and—critically—body type, their existence as a bunch of flamboyant femmes seems a little too amped up at times. This is a movie clearly meant to feel unusually grounded, but then at times the wrong “camp knobs” seem to get cranked up to 11. At least Will is unusually quiet and reserved—elements that are used by Noah to judge him.

It’s wonderful to see a movie like this, not just made by and about gay people, but gay people of color: the director is Andrew Ahn, whose short film First Birthday was made as a means of coming out to his Korean parents. I’ve been a fan of Joel Kim Booster as a comedian for a short while (ditto Bowen Yang, but given his rising fame that’s less surprising), and I do think he has talent. But, this script focuses more on the Pride and Prejudice angle than on the humor that could have been added; it did make me laugh several times, but the script still could have used some punching up. It could be argued, actually, that the whole Pride and Prejudice thing is more of a distraction than it needs to be, and the movie would have been better served just as a wholly original story about gay friends on Fire Island.

This is the movie we got, though, and it still works for what it is, and the significance of what its very existence represents cannot be overstated. The more broadly the queer community sees themselves in film, and the more films are made with that in mind, the better off we’ll all be.

You’ll have a generally good time.

Overall: B

THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT

Directing: B-
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B

I have to admit, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is not quite as self-referential as I expected, or perhaps even that I wanted. It would be a mistake to expect a movie in which Nicolas Cage plays himself as an overly self-absorbed and ambitious actor to go to far into a surreal dimension. Being John Malkovich, this is not, and I learned the hard way that it’s a mistake to expect anything even close to that.

In fact, that is arguably the oddest thing about The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent—how straightforward, at times almost earnest, it is. Cage is known for making crazy acting choices, particularly late in his career, and the craziest thing about this is how not crazy it is. It’s relatively clever, to be fair, although its title is easily the most clever thing about it. And that alone sets an expectation that the film does not meet.

The script, co-written by director Tom Gormican, barely manages a handful of passing references to Cage’s past movie titles, out of a filmography of well over a hundred films. It’s gotten to the point that it feels like Nicolas Cage will just take any acting role that gets offered him. Given that Gormican has only one other motion picture to his credit (some terribly reviewed 2014 movie called That Awkward Moment), even this role, in spite of a premise that makes it sound exceptional, fits into that mold.

None of this is to say that I did not enjoy The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. I did. It just doesn’t feature anything close to unbearable weight or showcase anything remotely close to massive talent. It’s just a silly diversion, which may not meet its massive potential, but is still fine. I had a good time and got a few good laughs.

There’s not even as many cameos as you might expect. In the trailer, in which Neil Patrick Harris is prominently featured, it was easy to assume Harris was playing himself. He’s actually playing Cage’s talent agent. Tiffany Haddish and Ike Barinholtz play CIA agents Vivian and Martin, who throw a wrench into the plot by telling Cage the rich Spanish bachelor (Pedro Pascal) whose birthday party he’s been hired to attend is a dangerous mob criminal, and ask him to spy on him. This element of the film is what makes the plot wildly contrived, which I suppose is the point. Unfortunately, Haddish in particular gets saddled with a ton of expositional dialogue, and she is given no opportunity to let her well-known comedic talents shine.

Aside from Cage himself, who commits to this role with as much vigor as he does any, my favorite casting choice is actually that of his fictionalized ex-wife, Olivia, played by Sharon Horgan. Horgan is a reliable source for elevating whatever material she is given, and in this part, even though it constraints her talents as well, she still doesn’t disappoint.

The sort of full circle irony is that Nicolas Cage himself is what makes The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent worth watching. He forges a friendship with Pascal’s character, Javi, and the plot revolves around their relationship—while they also work on a movie together, about a friendship between two men, in which they feel compelled to add action sequences in order to “get people into theaters.” Cage and Pascal have an unusually wholesome chemistry, and they are a big part of how this movie is, if not quite as hilarious as I hoped, surprisingly sweet.

Cage also regularly talks to an imagined, younger version of himself, with a CGI de-aged face I could have lived without. On the upside, it’s a kick to see Nicolas Cage give himself a giant kiss.

I just wish there were more moments like that. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent suffers from an almost shocking aversion to risk. That seems to be partly what the film itself is meant to be commenting on, except that every single thing this movie tries to do, Adaptation did better, precisely twenty years ago. That includes the movie itself veering into the very kind of storytelling on which it’s commenting. It’s no accident that Adaptation had been co-written by the brilliant Charlie Kaufman, of which this movie is a cheap imitation.

Maybe just try not to think too much about that, or that it could be argued Adaptation was Cage’s last truly great performance (seriously, just go rewatch that movie). It’s not fair to compare The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent to an actual masterpiece. In a vacuum, this movie is entertaining enough, if not great enough to justify the money and effort to see it in a theater. Fake-Cage and Javi would be so disappointed to fall short in that ambition. But then, they would also be convinced their movie is better than it is.

“It’s . . . grotesque,” says Nicolas Cage, in a movie that should have been more grotesque.

Overall: B-

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

Directing: A-
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A

There’s an infinite number of reasons to love Everything Everywhere All at Once, which means I cannot count them all.

In the absence of such an option, I can start with Michelle Yeoh, the 59-year-old woman, also an international movie star, who serves as the action heroine at the center of this beautiful mess of a story. I can continue with the choice itself, of casting someone so unusual for a central role of this sort. Yeoh’s Evelyn Wang is the Chinese-American wife and mother, struggling to cope with being audited at the laundromat she owns and runs with her husband, barely managing to acknowledge the fact that her daughter is bringing her girlfriend to a planned party for Evelyn’s father.

And once the multiverse figures into the plot, each one of these four family members winds up playing a uniquely pivotal role, all of them delightful and surprising. And, sure, you could say co-directors and co-writers Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert are jumping on a “multiverse bandwagon” with this movie, but to their eternal credit, they manage to put an unparalleled spin on the concept. It’s repeatedly inventive, wildly imaginative, consistently clever, often hilarious, and most crucially, ultimately moving in a way that reveals the multiversal element supports a greater storytelling purpose rather than the other way around.

Kwan and Scheinert’s previous collaborative feature film project was Swiss Army Man (2016), starring Daniel Radcliffe as a corpse companion to a marooned Paul Dano. That movie was fine, its greatest asset being that it was not just unlike any other movie ever made, but in a bonkers way. Everything Everywhere All at Once is also both utterly unique and bonkers—there’s a particularly memorable scene in which office trophies are used as butt plugs as a means of accessing other universes—but is far more than just a fun gimmick. This movie has layers, broad metaphors, and subtly constructed themes. They all have to do with family relationships: father and daughter; wife and husband; most significantly, mother and daughter. There is a lot more to this movie than its uniquely clever construction.

It just happens also to be a wild ride, a skilled portrait of universal chaos, an action fantasy that is thoroughly entertaining from start to finish. There was a film adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in 2005 that featured a hilarious sequence with the “infinite probability drive.” Everything Everywhere All at Once is like a full film adaptation of just that sequence, only with a stunningly coherent narrative thread. In the universe of this film, there are infinite universes, including one in which everyone has hot dogs for fingers. Kwan and Scheinert must really love that one, because they keep returning to it. Or, Evelyn does. At the behest of Kwan and Scheinert, really. You get it. There’s another one in which Evelyn and her daughter, Joy, are literally just rocks. This is the only universe, in fact, in which Joy is not played by Stephanie Hsu.

The inspired casting of supporting parts around Yeoh cannot go unmentioned. Also high on the list of reasons to love Everything Everywhere All at Once is Jamie Lee Curtis, a bona fide movie star in her own right, takiing on a role that would normally go to a usually-unrecognizable character actor. (To be fair, Margo Martindale would have been just as delightful in the part.) She plays Deirdre, the frumpy woman from the IRS performing the audit. But, as happens with all the other characters, she also gets overtaken by a more sinister version of herself from parallel universes. It’s complicated, you need to watch the movie. Suffice it to say, Curtis is wonderful.

Maybe the most fun surprise is Evelyn’s husband Waymond Wang, played by Ke Huy Quan. Now fifty years old, Quan stopped acting after 2002, only returned to it with a Netflix release in 2021, and Everything Everywhere All at Once is his first role in a theatrical release in twenty years. He had previously been a child actor, best known for his roles as Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and Data in The Goonies (1985). As an older man now, he has a peculiar mixture of both confident skill and vulnerable sensitivity that makes him perfect for the part, particularly for a docile and good-natured man sometimes overtaken by a combat-ready version of himself from alternate dimensions.

I have to admit, I had somewhat mixed feelings about the performance of Stephanie Hsu, as Evelyn’s daughter Joy, who winds up being important to the story in a way I can’t spoil here. She also gets a wide range of versions of Joy to portray, some of them vulnerable and sad, some of them over the top to the point of campy. When I realized she also plays Mei, Joel’s Chinese girlfriend on the Prime Video series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, it hit me how impressive her range actually is.

All that said, it still all comes back to Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn, the most emotionally defeated of all multiversal versions of herself. This turns out to be key to her role in bringing “balance” back to the infinite cross section of dimensions. Kwan and Scheinert take this exceptionally well edited representation of all possible versions of all things, and brings it back to pretty simple notions of familial love and how it can bring meaning to an otherwise meaningless and inconsequential existence. It’s ultimately pretty typical in terms of Hollywood movie concepts, but that seems to be part of the point. And if nothing else, it’s fantastic to see such things couched in the context of a relationship between an older woman and her daughter. The successful integration of thematic substance into a movie that is so inventive and so much fun can’t really be overstated. Everything Everywhere All at Once is ironically a singular experience, or at least it is in this universe.

There’s so much more going on than you even know.

Overall: A-

THE ADAM PROJECT

Directing: B-
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B
Special Effects: C

Watching a Ryan Reynolds action comedy is like the cinematic equivalent of eating an off-brand Hostess cupcake: clearly inferior, but tasty enough in the absence of something better. This is a pretty consistent element of Reynolds’s career, although the quasi-novel thing about The Adam Project is the inspired casting of 11-year-old Walker Scobell as Reynolds’s scrawny, 12-year-old self. This is Scobell’s first acting role, and he nails the signature Reynolds snark, just a preteen version of it.

Indeed, The Adam Project would not have been nearly as fun as it is—and it’s arguably more fun than it deserves to be—of not for the many funny quips in the dialogue, particularly between Reynolds and Scobell. Conceptually, the script of this movie is utter garbage, but I found it relatively to overlook due to the fairly consistent laughs it got out of me.

It does have a bit of a “straight to video” vibe to it. I realize that’s now an outdated phrase, but people who remember what that meant will get what I mean better than if I just call it “straight to streaming,” which is what this is. The thing is, in the streaming age, even Oscar-worthy fare sometimes gets released on streamers at the same time as their theatrical release. This has occurred with everything from Dune to The Power of the Dog. The Adam Project is nowhere near in the same league as those films, nor does it try or even pretend to be. Still I was surprised to discover it did get its own limited theatical release: it’s actually playing at the Cinemark Lincoln Square Cinemas in Bellevue.

I wonder if it plays better in a theater? Perhaps it does. It doesn’t change the definitively low-rent special effects, or the wildly derivative science fiction concepts. The plot involves time travel, an idea always rife with problems no matter how it’s approached in film. And this script, with four credited writers, goes out of its way to make its characters discuss the dangers of breaking “the rules” of time travel, then they openly break them all.

So much for meeting yourself in the past being any kind of problem. Reynolds and Scobell both play the same character, Adam, with older Adam (42, apparently) crash-landing his plane from 2050 in the woods around his childhood home in 2022. When younger Adam meets the older one, there’s about five seconds of shock, and then in practically an instant they’re both just cool with being around each other, knowing who each other is, and getting on with the task of moving the plot forward.

Here’s a curiously convenient plot point: another time jump occurs, when both Adams take the plane back to 2018. (The plane is configured to his DNA signature but won’t let him fly when he’s injured; thus, he needs young Adam’s fingerprints.) This four year gap allows The Adam Project to have its Covid cake and eat it too: it can completely ignore the pandemic without presenting an alternate universe in which it never existed. For now, anyway: the way things are going right now, in March 2022, the maskless 2022 we see in the movie feels plausible. We’ll see how things are going in another six months.

When the time jumps back to 2018, Adam’s father comes into the picture, played by Mark Ruffalo. We see Adam’s mother, played by Jennifer Garner, in both 2022 and 2018. We get a brief glimpse of 8-year-old Adam in 2018 but only long enough to see him playing video games; this movie is evidently not all that interested in Adam at that age. Further convoluting things is Catherine Keener as the villain, Maya Sorian, whose future self has gone back in time to tell her younger self, Biff-in-Back-to-the-Future-style, how to become rich and then harness time travel technology and somehow wind up controlling it all in a deeply dystopian future that is only ever referred to vaguely. “We’ve seen The Terminator, right?” older Adam says to his younger self. “That’s 2050 on a good day.” With the exception of an opening sequence of his plane in space above Earth before the first time jump, that’s all the insight we get about that future.

Speaking of Back to the Future, The Adam Project is rife with references to it. There are also clear visual homages to the fern-covered forest floor seen in E.T.; the obligatory direct references to Star Wars; and clear influences from The Matrix. There really isn’t a single even remotely original idea in this movie. I still feel compelled to give the script credit because of its consistently funny and clever dialogue, which is always just entertaining enough.

There’s also a casual charm to the chemistry between Reynolds and Scobell, if not so much between Reynolds and Zoe Saldana, who plays his wife in a thanklessly small part. It’s also notable that Catherine Keener is usually excellent, at least when cast well, but she feels bizarrely shoehorned into this movie, and to say she’s phoning it in is putting it mildly. In other words, the performances are kind of all over the place, which means they even out to being just a bit better than fine.

I’m trying to imagine someone with genuine scientific knowledge trying to swallow this movie. They’d have to be exceptionally skilled at turning their brain off. I’m no scientist myself, but I’d like to bran a little that I can be quite good at turning my brain off. With a movie like this, it’s more important to relax into the mindless entertainment it is than to pick it apart pointlessly. If you want 2001: A Space Odyssey, go watch that movie. To The Adam Project’s credit, it knows what it is and makes no claims or promises otherwise. Which is to say, it’s a cut-rate action comedy released to a streamer that will fade into the algorithmic ether within a week or two. But for now, it’ll do.

Strap in … to your couch. With a blanket maybe.

Overall: B-

TURNING RED

Directing: B+
Acting: B
Writing: A
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+
Animation: B

Turning Red is simultaneously about adolescent friendship and about mother-daughter relationships, and it handles both fantastically. The premise seems simple, in which a 13-year-old discovers she transforms into a giant red panda whenver she gets too emotionally excited, but it winds up being a great allegory for multiple shared experiences at once. There’s the idea of “harnessing your inner beast.” There’s acknowledging your “messy side.” There’s the literalness of the title, when an adolescent goes beet red with embarrassment. There’s even a brief sequence in which it effectively stands in as a symbol for when a girl has her period for the first time: “I’m a gross red monster!” One might thing I’m reaching with that one—except it literally happens when Mei’s mother, not yet understanding the true nature of the situation, is trying to offer her pads.

Things like this are surely why Turning Red is rated PG. It’s also the third Pixar movie to be released directly to Disney+, although it’s arguably the first not to be done out of necessity. That said, after having watched it, this film feels right for an at-home streamer. Perhaps we’ve just been spoiled by 27 years of Pixar Animation’s visual excellence, where in many cases the animation largely made up for somewhat waning story quality. Turning Red flips the script, so to speak, and offers animation that is . . . fine. It’s the story that truly elevates it, and makes for a wonderfully cozy, adorable, funny and moving at-home watch.

This movie happens to be the second Pixar film directed by a woman (the first was Brenda Chapman, though she co-directed Brave in 2012 with two men), the first to be solo directed by a woman, and the first to be directed by a woman of color. Domee Shi, who also co-wrote this delightful script, was born in China but grew up in Toronto, and having written largely based on her own family experience, thus provides the explanation for the film’s Toronto setting. Characters mention the city of Toronto regularly, and there are many establishing shots of the Toronto skyline, always with the CN Tower figuring prominently. I just found myself wishing those shots were rendered with a little more depth and personality; instead, they sometimes feel a little like a cartoon version of old movie matte painting backdrops.

Admittedly, this sort of thing was why it took a few minutes for me to really feel hooked into the story of Turning Red. The visual design of the characters themselves are a little “cartoonier” than normal for Pixar, and for the first several minutes we see the establishment of setting and the introduction of characters, particularly Meilin (voiced by 16-year-old newcomer Rosalie Chang) and her diverse group of three best friends (voiced by Ava Morse, Hyein Park and Maitreyi Ramakrishnan). We see them quite pointedly and realistically acting like giddy, sometimes shrill, 13-year-old girls, and for a moment there I wondered if I would be able to tolerate this movie.

But, then we get introduced to Mei’s perfectionist mother, Ming (Sandra Oh), and we understand the central conflict of the story, which is a tension between Mei’s love for her mother and her love for her friends. Domee Shi and her two co-writers, Julia Cho and Sarah Streicher, write about these relationships exceedingly well, never painting anyone involved as inherently malicious. They are just people who make mistakes, who sometimes make misguided decisions in the service of the people they love.

By the time Meilin’s red panda is unleashed, Turning Red takes a quick turn, becoming equal parts entertaining and surprisingly layered, both with thematic meaning and cultural tradition. I love the diversity of both the characters and the voice cast here, not just for its own sake, but more importantly, because it accurately reflects the city in which it’s set: Toronto is one of the most multicultural and cosmopolitan cities in the world, more than half its residents belonging to a visible minority group, and just under half being immigrants born outside the country.

Mei’s family is well established, though, both her and her mother speaking with American accents; only Mei’s grandmother, Wu (voiced by Wai Ching Ho), speaks with a Chinese accent. Cantonese is regularly spoken, particularly when Grandma Wu arrived with reinforcements—both herself and other family members, presumably aunts, who have all at one point participated in a ritual that breaks the family spell of the red panda.

I also love how centered this story is on women and girls. Turning Red is written and directed by a woman, largely based on her childhood experience with several girl friends, and nearly the entire principal cast is girls or women. The most notable male character is Ming’s husband and Mei’s father, Jin (Orion Lee), and even he is written with more dimension than typically found with a part of that size. Which is to say, he doesn’t get a huge amount of screen time, but he is well woven into the fabric of the story.

The focus here, though, is on Mei’s relationship with the girls and the women in her life: her three best friends; her mother; her grandmother. The story even gets into how that mother-daughter relationship is informed by Ming’s relationship with her own mother—an idea relatable to a great many daughters and mothers, regardless of ethnic or cultural background. Were Turning Red made in an earlier cinematic era, most of the story would have revolved around Mei trying to keep her red panda spell a secret. Instead, Mei’s mother, her friends, and most of her classmates learn about it surprisingly early on. What follows is a struggle for Mei to control it, and her mother’s insistence that it needs to be locked away completely. There’s a lot to unpack here in terms of accepting ourselves—and our children—as who they really are, and not so much taming but learning to live with the beast within.

There is a climactic sequence in which an even more giant panda terrorizes a stadium during a boy-band concert, and it’s a little like a red panda version of Godzilla. If that were all it was, I might have rolled my eyes at it. But there is so much depth to this story, even a showy sequence like that works really well. Given Pixar Animation Studio’s increasingly spotty record in recent years, and the somewhat surprising choice to release straight to streaming, Turning Red exceeds expectations on nearly every level . . . except the animation itself. But, as with our relationships with our children and our parents, we can’t always expect perfection.

This is so embarrassing!

Overall: B+