NEXT GOAL WINS

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

We’ve been told for centuries never to judge a book by its cover, so maybe don’t judge Next Goal Wins by its opening shot, which features director Taika Waititi as an American Samoan priest, dressed in a campy robe, and donning what might be the most ridiculous fake mustache ever put onscreen. Waititi as the priest also narrates, very briefly, but effectively sets the tone when he says this is a true story, “with a couple of embellishments.” It’s an amusing acknowledgement of artistic license, and cuts down any sense that this movie is going to be way over the top.

On the contrary, Next Goal Wins is packed to the gills with a winning, goofy sweetness which, somewhat surprisingly, really works. I laughed a lot, and the laughs are consistently borne of a uniquely innocent comic sensibility.

I’d really be interested in what the citizens of American Samoa think of this movie. One could argue that this film grossly oversimplifies their people and culture. On top of that, I’m not sure how to unpack exactly where the “white savior” concept plays into this, what with a White an coming to guide a soccer team of Brown people to victory, which is based on an actual White man who did just that—and the film is directed and co-written by a Brown man (co-witten with Iain Morris, a White man).

There’s also a trans woman on the American Samoan soccer team in this film, which was also the case in real life—the first openly trans athlete to compete in a FIFA World Cup qualifier—played by nonbinary Samoan actor Kaimana. There was a curious thing to realize watching this, seeing how beautiful Kaimana is. Even when trans actors are cast in trans roles, they get the Hollywood glow-up. That’s . . . progress? Side note: the actual trans athlete in question, Jaiyah Saelua, apparently has complicated feelings about this film, which tells part of her story—and the stories of a few of the other team members—while placing the narrative focus on the coach, Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender, here bleached blond). You know . . . the White guy. There it is!

We seem to be still in an era where we take what we can get, and I still have to say, it’s deeply refreshing to see a story like this, in which a trans person exists in a traditional cisgender, particularly male space, and is widely accepted. In fact, “trans” isn’t even quite accurate here, as Jaiyah makes multiple references to fa’afafine, a third gender that is unique to Samoa and widely accepted there. Well, this film is clearly made for American audiences, where that is definitively not the case, and yet here we get a movie that shows how easily these things can work.

I suppose it does complicate some of the narrative choices in Next Goal Wins, particularly when Rongen deliberately deadnames Jaiyah (a sincere apology and reconcilation occurs shortly thereafter), and Jaiyah’s decision to go off hormones so she can continue qualifying to be on the team.

This gets into some sticky stuff when you drill deep below the surface of Next Goal Wins, which Waititi clearly wants us to take in on a fairly surface level. And to Waititi’s credit, he establishes and maintains a precariously sweet and goofy tone in this film, which almost never steps into outright stupid (the aforementioned mustache being a notable exception). He cast a whole bunch of Samoan actors who are collectively full of charisma and charm, while bringing in marquee names for the FIFA staff characters, including Elisabeth Moss (her character also being Rongen’s separated wife) and Will Arnett. Waititi also throws a bone to fans of Our Flag Means Death with a small part given to Rhys Darby.

In terms of plot arc, Next Goal Wins could not be more of a standard underdog sports movie. These may be the biggest underdogs in history, having suffered the biggest loss of any FIFA World Cup qualifying game. But it’s hardly a spoiler to say that, eventually, they get a win, and the movie cuts to several different groups of characters in different locations jumping for joy at their TV sets. I’d say we’ve seen all this before, except we’ve never seen it dressed in lavalavas.

Match that with the Taika Waititi sensibility, and you’ve just got an incredibly winning, feel-good movie. I was giggling early on, and continued to consistently through the end. This film is getting somewhat mixed reactions, but it honestly exceeded my expectations. I really enjoyed it. Then, of course, I came home and thought about how to pick apart its narrative choices.

Okay let’s talk about optics.

Overall: B+

THE PERSIAN VERSION

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

The Persian Version had me at the start, and then it lost me almost completely, and then it pulled me back in again. It was kind of an emotional roller coaster, from fun to total confusion to moving warmth.

I’m not sure this movie intended to take me on this particular journey. It seems much more intent on telling the lighthearted story of how an estranged mother and daughter found a way to connect, with mixed results. It can’t seem to decide what character’s point of view it’s taking, being mostly narrated by the young but grown daughter, one of nine children, until suddenly, in a flashback to the mother’s youth, the young Shireen (Kamand Shafieisabet) suddenly yells out that she wants to be the narrator of her own story.

This is maybe halfway through the movie, and Shireen proceeds to tell (and show) us how she and her husband made their way from an incredibly remote village in Iran to the United States in the late sixties. This goes on for quite some time, during which I realized I had no clue where this movie was going. It does eventually come to a pivotal point, which connects to Shireen’s relationship with her now-grown daughter, Leila (Layla Mohammadi).

This involves a pretty major revelation, but when the narrative cuts back to Leila’s point of view, there is no indication whatsoever as to whether they have any subsantive discussion about it. A bit later, at the wedding of one of her countless brothers, Leila makes a reference to it to Shireen, and it’s clear Shireen knows she knows. It feels like there was a lot of important stuff there in the middle that just got skipped over. What’s more, Leila is an aspiring writer and filmmaker, and the flashback to Shireen’s childhood is presented as an account written by Leila, until Shireen takes over the narration. Who is actually telling this story is frustratingly never made clear.

On the upside, the undeniable onscreen charisma of both of these women makes up for a lot. And to be clear, it does have to make up for a lot—Shafieisabet and Mohammadi are both great, but the acting of some of the supporting characters is at times abysmal. Most of the young men playing Leila’s brothers, who are so numerous that none of them get very many lines, are wooden at best. I found myself wondering where the hell writer-director Maryam Keshavarz even found the woman who plays Leila’s father’s doctor. She sounds like she’s barely even sure she knows her lines.

We also get flashbacks to Leila’s own childhood, and both that actor (Chiara Stella) and the young Shireen (Kamand Shafieisabet) are charming enough—although the young Shireen has little time for charming as she carries multiple babies before she’s even fifteen. The fact that Shireen is married off to a young man of 22 when she was 13 is presented with neutrality, and cultural differences notwithstanding, I don’t know how I feel about that. Being told that “we were intellectual equals” does little to mitigate it. The background does, however, inform the nature of Shireen as a hard working, crazily tenacious middle-aged mother.

And it’s very easy to engage with both the adult Shireen and the adult Leila whenever they are onscreen. Leila’s sexuality is handled with awkwardness at best, a big part of her estrangement with her mother, but we learn that Leila’s selfishness played a part in her marriage to and then divorce from another woman. (A scene in which they have a conversation in a department store while Leila has a gorilla mask on really doesn’t work.) Leila consistently self-identifies as a lesbian, but then has a one night stand with an apparently mostly-straight man who happens to be playing the lead in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and ax (Tom Byrne) declares, upon learning of Leila’s pregnancy, that he wants to try making a go of a relationship. Leila seems oddly open to this. I thought she was supposed to be a lesbian? Sure, yes, sexuality is fluid—except The Persian Version never gets even cose to interrogating such ideas. Like so many other things in this movie, I could not figure out what to make of it.

And still: even in the midst of all this mess, the two leads deliver winning performances, which broadly won me over. I was moved and cried a little at the end. There’s a lot about being children of immigrant parents here that I’m sure many can relate to, and I can only guess how nice it must be for Muslim or Iranian audiences to get this kind of fun representation. I don’t want to conflate Iranians with Palestinians, but Americans are unfortunately prone to such things, and right now more than ever, anything that humanizes Muslims as nuanced individuals can only be a good thing.

I just wish the execution had been a bit cleaner. This movie has some bad editing, in one instance cutting right when one of Leila’s brothers appears to start saying something to someone in a direction that makes no sense. Was the actor about to say something to a key grip or what?The more I write this very review, the more I wonder why I think I liked it even as much as I did. How did it win me over? Well, it won me over with two standout performances in a sea of confused ineptitude, captured with incongruously competent cinematography.

These two might win you over. Maybe. We’ll see.

Overall: B-

THE HOLDOVERS

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

It would seem that director Alexander Payne and star Paul Giamatti are a reliably magical combination. I loved their last collaboration, 2004’s Sideways, and two decades later I love The Holdovers just as much—if not even more so.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a film so thoroughly heartwarming. There’s something about the script, by first-time feature writer David Hemingson, with its characters who are cynical and wounded, but we only get to watch them work through those challenges. Where other writers would give their characters a sudden, renewed hardship or mistake to overcome or get past at a prescribed point in the story, in The Holdovers you only continue growing more fond of them. There is nothing flashy about this movie, and yet its storytelling is deceptively unconventional.

Payne does like to give his movies odd little flourishes, as in this one, set in the year 1970, and given utterly 1970s-style production company logos at the start of the film, complete with visual graininess to make it look like a film that was actually shot fifty years ago. At first I thought this was a little unnecessarily cutesy, but Payne successfully plants you into the fully realized world of this movie.

Paul Giamatti is a peculiar movie star, a guy with a storied career, and an undeniable charm and screen presence that belies his longstanding frumpy look. Now at the age of 56, he’s perfectly cast as a longtime rural private school teacher with a lazy eye and a penchant for solitude. This is the kind of part we have seen a zillion times in movies, and Giamatti manages to make Paul Hunham utterly his own. Paul has a warmth to him that surfaces naturally, under the right circumstances.

In particular, the circumstances here involve him being roped into chaperoning the “holdovers” of the movie’s title: five kids who are unable, for various reasons, to go home for Christmas break and have to spend it at the otherwise abandoned school. One of these kids is Angus Tully, played by impressive newcomer Dominic Sessa. The school these kids attend has a lot of students from very rich families, and when one of the “holdover” kids gets invited home for a ski trip and invites all the other kids, Angus is the only one whose parents can’t be reached, leaving Mr. Hunham and Angus to themselves, alongside grieving school cook Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph, currently more likely than anyone else in this film to be nominated for—and win—an Oscar).

It’s difficult to put into words how wonderful I found The Holdovers. It filled my heart. I tried to think of other descriptors that could work. There’s an element of sweetness, I suppose, but that’s not really what the movie is. Maybe “wholesome” is the right word. Yes, I think that’s it: many “feel-good” movies of the 21st century are self-consciously bawdy with a “wholesome” subtext that just rings false. The Holdovers is the kind of movie that is never bawdy although it can be slightly vulgar when it wants to be, and it gets its tone of wholesomeness exactly right. It brings to mind old family dramas like Terms of Endearment—except movies like that are what I would call “comic tearjerkers,” and The Holdovers is neither as comic (although it’s often funny) nor nearly as much of a tearjerker (although I did cry a little).

It would seem that Alexander Payne is in a class of his own. His movies are about the people who connect in spite of familial challenges of almost pointed specificity. These characters are expertly drawn, complete people. The best I can tell you is to watch The Holdovers and see for yourself. Maybe it won’t bowl you over, as it’s not designed to be. But it spoke to me at a deep level.

An unlikely trio make for a cozy found family of wounded souls.

Overall: A

WHAT HAPPENS LATER

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

For a split second I found myself thinking: wouldn’t it be great if Tom Hanks had been cast in this movie with Meg Ryan? But then I got a few minutes into What Happens Later, Meg Ryan’s second directorial feature film and her first film acting role in eight years, and I realized Tom Hanks wuold have been horribly miscast in the part. For the character of Bill, a man who displays a playful cynicism, David Duchovny is perfectly cast. We can just hold out hope for a another pairing of Meg and Tom in some other movie before they die.

In the meantime, Ryan and Duchovny have fantastic chemistry, and it’s great fun to see them onscreen together, in a film that charms in a way few romantic comedies manage. Some might find What Happens Later to be too cute for its own good, and those people might have solid arguments. Personally, I rather enjoyed it, and found this movie to exceed my expectations.

Granted, Meg Ryan’s direction does eventually take us to a few moments a little too deep into the “magical thinking” that Bill consistently scoffs at, particularly in a scene where Bill and Willa (Ryan) take turns shouting at the universe from inside a snowed-in regional airport. The two characters have indeed endured a long series of irritations up to that point, but the level of outburst on both their parts feels unearned.

Such a moment is just a temporay speedbump, however, in the infectiously engaging dialogue that otherwise permeates What Happens Later, co-written by Ryan, Kirk Lynn, and Steven Dietz, the playwright upon whose 2008 play, Shooting Star, is based. It’s always a delight when a film based on a play actually works, and this one works so well as an adaptation, with filming locations in an actual airport, that it’s difficult to imagine it working as well on a live stage.

Ryan and Duchovny are both casually naturalistic performers, and are thus quite believable as a couple of aging, sometimes cranky ex-lovers who run into each other during passing layovers at the same airport. Usually romantic comedies are amusing at best, not eliciting a lot in the way of genuine laughter, but I laughed more than usual at this one—largely on the strength of its two lead performers. Well, them and the third of only three speaking parts in this film, the airport announcer (“Hal Liggett,” a credit apparently a pseudonym), who consistently respoonds to Bill and Willa’s questions in subtly funny ways.

Holing an audience’s attention for an hour and 45 minutes with only two characters is no easy task, but What Happens Later makes it seem easy. I had a lovely time just hanging out with these two, and appreciating the telling of a story like this with older actors. Although we learn that they had been in a serious relationship in their twenties, we never do learn their current age, although there is a sarcastic reference to Bill being “well into my fifties.” The two actors are in their early sixties, both looking their age and looking good—a rare Hollywood combination.

Ryan, for her part, plays a character less flightly than in her previous romantic comedy parts, in spite of Willa the character being, as Bill puts it, into “magical thinking,” putting her faith in “woo woo,” unscientific ideas. But, at her age, Willa is also hardened a bit, worn by the ups and downs of life, as is Bill, and the two characters catch up on the decades they’ve missed in each other’s eyes, as well as reexamine their previous relationship with each other, what worked about it and what didn’t.

In a fairly refreshing way, What Happens Later—a title that is both frustratingly vague and perfect for this story—ends without the typical burst of romance that ends most romantic comedies. It still ends on a charming note, with a bit of hope for these two and their connection to each other. I’d say it gives me hope for the movies, except that I was literally the single person watching it in the movie theater—because, these days, this is the type of movie audiences see no need to eventize in cinemas. Which is to say: this will be one to watch for when it hits a streamer near you.

It’s a good time just hanging out with these two.

Overall: B+

DICKS: THE MUSICAL

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

Dicks: The Musical is definitely the filthiest rip-off of The Parent Trap you’ll ever see. Strangely, even as it goes further with certain taboos than any other movie ever has—this is very much the point—I’m sort of disappointed it wasn’t any filthier. Get this: there aren’t any actual dicks in this movie. No genuine full-frontal nudity whatsoever! This feels like false advertising. If it weren’t for the endless amount of times someone says “fuck,” this movie might have gotten a PG-13 rating. Okay, probably not.

One of the many meta gags about this movie is that the “Dicks” of the title actually refers to the personalities of the two leads, Craig and Trevor (Josh Sharp an Aaron Jackson, on whose original 2015 UCB show this is based; they are also co-writers of the script). We’re told in opening title cards how “brave” it is that these two gay actors are playing straight characters—who are, you guessed it, both dicks. They display such a camp level of narcissism and misogyny that it circles all the way back around to delightful.

There was a moment early on in Dicks: The Musical when I was finding it so genuinely hilarious, I actually thought to myself: Is this the 21st century’s answer to AIRPLANE? Alas. If only.

As Craig and Trevor discover they are “identical twins” (even though the two actors don’t look anything alike aside from being a cuple of brown haired White guys) and hatch a plan to trick their estranged and bonkers parents (Megan Mullaly and Nathan Lane, milking this movie for all the moderate value that it’s worth), the potential is there. There’s a scene with Nathan Lane and his two janky puppet “Sewer Boys” that had me laughing so hard I was in tears. You’ll never look at a bag of ham the same way again.

And then there’s Megan Thee Stallion, cast as the CEO of the company both Craig and Trevor also discover they work for, and are tied for the top sellers of parts for autonomous vacuum cleaners. Getting such a wildly random name into this movie is fun, right? She even gets a pretty elaborate song and dance number. The problem is that her song is merely slightly amusing, and doesn’t elicit any genuine laughs, and in that failure kind of stops the momentum of bonkers hilarity dead in its tracks. And although there are certainly genuinely funny moments after that, Dicks: The Musical never fully recovers.

Megan Thee Stallion’s song isn’t even the only issue, musically—it’s just the best example, of how a movie like this works far better if the music is as exceptional as its humor. The Book of Mormon, for example, has much greater success at this. (To be fair, The Book of Mormon has never been adapted to film, and there’s no guarantee that it would adapt well.)

Dicks the Musical also features a pointedly flamboyant Bowen Yang as God, with mixed but fun results. I won’t spoil the specific depravity “God” winds up fully endorsing, which I have mixed feelings about, even as irreverent comedy. I don’t even necessarily take issue with it as a comic idea, but rather the manner in which it’s presented here. It’s simply not as funny as Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson want us to think it is.

Megan Mullaly’s vagina falling off and running away, though? We don’t even see that happen, we get to watch Aaron Jackson as Trevor describing it to his brother—and it’s fucking hilarious. And that’s the thing: I laughed a lot at Dicks: The Musical. Unfortunately, like way too many other comedies, it’s front-loaded with the funniest gags, which means it starts to lose steam about halfway through. And this movie is all of 86 minutes long.

The performers across the board are clearly having a great time, and that alone keeps the filthy depravity a fun time, punctuated with some great outtakes during the end credits. It just moves from a movie that feels wildly underrated at first, to one where you consider its mixed reviews and think: that tracks.

You won’t see any actual dicks but you’ll see some guys singing about them.

Overall: B

DUMB MONEY

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

I’m honestly surprised no one has titled a movie Dumb Money before now. This movie itself informs us that “dumb money” refers to investments made by individual, non-institutional investors. Here that money is represented, first and foremost, by Keith Gill, a regular guy who inspired an investment revolution aimed at hitting hedge fund managers where it hurts.

This is the GameStop story you likely remember from the news—from literally just two years ago. It’s not often that a true story gets optioned, greenlit, produced and released to theaters with that kind of turnaround time. The height of the GameStop buying frenzy occurred in March 2021, and this film’s script writers were hired the following May.

What curious timing this film has. On the one hand, it tells the story incredibly soon after it actually happened—in movie production time, two years is not a lot. On the other hand, early 2021 was also the height of the covid pandemic, with most people working from home unless they were essential workers, and right now that feels like an entire world away.

It’s worth noting that more people are seen walking around in face masks in Dumb Money than any other wide release film I can think of. The way director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya) represents mask-wearing in this movie is strange inconsistent and sometimes outright odd. Of course, any director wants his actors’ faces to be visible wherever possible, so for instance, we see hospital staff removing masks when only two people are in a room together, even though at the time hospital staff would be masking around anyone at all. A bar waitress removes her mask to gawk at Keith Gill’s stock portfolio on his phone. A GameStop store manager is constantly telling his employee to wear his mask properly, which is actually right and correct, and yet we are meant to think of the manager as a nag and the employee as the one to root for. We get it, the whole mask thing was annoying. Does it make sense to subtly villainize the people insisting on doing the right thing to actually save lives?

Dumb Money isn’t so much concerned with the details of a pandemic, however—only with the “little people” who stuck it to the man while one was happening. It’s relevant that many companies raked on record profits at the expense of essential workers, and kind of odd that no one in this movie ever mentions it.

Still, the whole business, in this particular context, is undeniably fascinating, and kind of surprisingly fun. Given the time in which the story occurred, we don’t get any crowd scenes, yet Dumb Money features a large ensemble cast, of people mostly existing in separate locations. I find myself wondering if Keith Gill and his actual family are as colorful as depicted onscreen here, with Keith played by Paul Dano; his brother Kevin played by Pete Davidson, and his parents played by Clancy Brown and Kate Burton. Having Kevin employed as a DoorDash delivery guy who constantly grabs bites out of the food he delivers is an odd detail. Anyone whose OCD was exacerbated by the hygiene practices of peak covid are certain to be triggered by that.

A lot of other stars are featured among the rest of the supporting staff. A couple other random “regular guy” investors, among a handful, are represented by America Ferrera and Anthony Ramos. Shortsighted billionaires are played by Nick Offerman and Vincent D'Onofrio; a multimillionaire by Seth Rogen. Shailene Woodley is Keith’s wife, Caroline, here depicted as uniformly supportive.

The pacing moves at a steady clip, keeping the runtime at a tight 105 minutes, although it relies heavily on YouTube and TikTok clips, not to mention memes. On the whole, Dumb Money is unexceptional, but I enjoyed it. It’s certainly a unique story worth being told. I can’t say it commands viewing in a theater, much as I advocate for the theatrical experience. This is a movie worthy of an eventual couple of hours on your television.

Well this guy was not as dumb as he looked.

Overall: B

BOTTOMS

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

If you want to be truly impressed by some acting talent and versatility, watch Nicholas Galitzine as posh gay Prince Henry in Red, White and Royal Blue on Prime Video, and then go see him as meathead football player Jeff in Bottoms. To be fair, neither movie is exactly “highbrow” and neither seems especially challenging for its performers—but, these two characters are wildly different from each other, almost opposites, and yet Galitzine embodies them both believably, He’s the kind of actor whose talent you don’t truly realize until you’ve seen him in multiple roles.

To be fair, Red, White and Royal Blue and Bottoms do have a couple of key things in common: they both have two gay protagonists (gay men in the former; lesbians in the latter), and both put their own unique stamp on modern camp. That very thing is what makes both films worth watching.

There’s a lot more to Bottoms to recommend it, not least of which is equally (if not more so) versatile Ayo Edebiri, whose Josie in Bottoms is also wildly different from her Sydney in Hulu’s The Bear. (Josie is a bit more similar to Janet in Theater Camp, another surprisingly delightful comedy from this year.) It’s also great to see two gay main characters who are lifelong platonic friends, and this story is not about them having sex or falling in love with each other. In fact, there is an old-school sex comedy element to this, as it is about them aiming to get laid. Just, with other people. It’s like a typical sex comedy with dudes trying to get pussy, replacing the dudes with ladies . . . trying to get pussy.

They’re also incredibly socially awkward, which Rachel Sennott (Shiva Baby), as PJ, plays just as well as Edebiri. It’s a delight to see a movie like this that acknowledges the continued existence of homophobia but only in a cursory way, and instead characterizes a sort of evolution of how characters like these get sidelined in high school—not just for being gay, but for being “gay and untalented.”

I should stress here that Bottoms goes out of its way to be over-the-top silly, in a way that almost miraculously works. I may want to watch it again just to catch more of the gags in the details and in the background. Many times a funny detail comes and goes so quickly it can easily be missed, making it a potentially rewarding rewatch.

It doesn’t hurt that we also get a winning performance by none other than Marshawn Lynch as Mr. G, the unlikely teacher duped into serving as teacher “advisor” to the self-defense club devised by PJ and Josie as a scheme to get under some cheeleaders’ skirts. Lynch plays a doofus who is only sexist until some high school girls prove that they can be badasses.

Now, I must admit to a certain amount of disappointment, particularly in the nature of this club that becomes a surprisingly violent “fight club.” The trailer made me expect a lot more comedic ultra-violence, and I suppose I should be grateful that director and co-writer Emma Seligman uses it more sparingly than expected. I just thought this would be a bit more of an action comedy, based on the marketing, but it’s really more of a campy teen comedy. By those standards, though, Bottoms still succeeds, and is consistently funny. What more should I want from it?

Besides, there is a fantastic brawl between the fight club and an adversary I won’t spoil here that serves as the climactic sequence of the movie, and it’s kind of worth the wait. I had a somewhat odd experience with Bottoms, leaving the theater feeling like I enjoyed it but still wished it had been better, or funnier. But the more I’ve thought about it since, the more I’ve decided I placed unfairly high expectations of it, and on its own terms, it delivers on its promise.

Sometimes it’s shocking what some people do in pursuit of pussy.

STRAYS

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

Strays falls prey to its marketing campaign in a very conventional, almost traditional way: it burns through a lot of its funniest bits in the trailer. I have to wonder how much more fun I might have found this movie if I didn’t already know what was coming several times—gags I did laugh pretty hard at, the first of the half dozen times or so I already saw them.

But, what are you going to do? You have to share some of it in order to market a movie as something with the tone it has—which is to say, an “animal adventure” film crossed with a raunchy comedy. These are talking dogs, which also say “fuck” and “shit” a lot.

This supposed tonal dissonance is hardly new in itself, considering movies like Paul (2011) and Ted (2012), respectively about a stoner alien and a foul-mouthed Teddy bear, came out more than ten years ago. The biggest surprise with Strays is that it didn’t get made sooner.

But, here’s the thing. How much you enjoy Strays is absolutely going to depend on how much of an animal lover you are. If you have any appreciation whatsoever and also love dogs, you are going to have a blast watching this movie, which is about a small dog (voiced by Will Ferrell) making his way back from the city to a suburban human (Will Forte) he doesn’t realize doesn’t actually care about him. He befriends three other strays along the way, voiced by Jamie Foxx, Isla Fisher and Randall Park, who form a sort of “chosen family” pack with him and assist on his quest.

Much hijinks ensues, as you can easily predict. A lot of it is very entertaining, a good portion of it very funny. A movie like this really needs more “laughs per minute” than it actually has, which essentially means it would be far more effective as a film short. But, who the hell watches film shorts, outside of film festivals? It’s a bit of a catch-22, having to spread an otherwise great premise thin just so it can have some hope of an actual audience.

Still, I’m trying not to spoil too much here, so that if you should decide to check this movie out, you’ll have a better experience with it. The less you know going in, the better. All you really need to know is that it takes what is traditionally a kids’ genre and runs it through the prism of R-rated comedies. You can just imagine all the foul language they use and all the inanimate and/or inappropriate things they hump.

The voice work is decent. The CGI moving mouths, barely rendered better than they were in the Babe movies from the nineties, indicate adequate visual effects work. I’m probably the only person in the audience thinking about this, but a small dog’s body visibly rising and lowering from the effects of panting doesn’t quite fit with calm delivery of dialogue, no indication of it being out of breath. I realize it’s a little extra to be nitpicking the “realism” of a movie about talking dogs. It would have been a note I would have given during production nonetheless.

Strays does have an undercurrent of genuine sweetness to it, and Will Ferrell’s Reggie, the main protagonist, has a charming naiveté about him. Bug is the streetwise stray who befriends him, another small but high strung dog, and Jamie Foxx clearly had a good time voicing him. And I’ll give it this much credit: Strays goes for broke in its climactic sequence in a way that is never even hinted at in the trailer, and borders on shocking. These are dogs that would be flipping their middle finger to the establishment, if they had any fingers. Let’s say they’re shitting on the face of the establishment—with mixed results. I had a good enough time with it, anyway.

It’s all fun and games and then you come across some mushrooms.

Overall: B

BARBIE

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

One might not be blamed for ambivalence about the movie Barbie, which is the latest in a long line of “movie adaptations” that seem far from intuitive ideas, perhaps starting with the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie twenty years ago. The flip side of this notion is that Pirates of the Caribbean turned out far better than anyone could have expected a movie based on an amusement park ride to be; and Barbie proves that, with the right director, the right writers, and the right casting, really any movie concept can be great if it’s done right.

And, to be clear: the sole reason I had interest in Barbie from the start was that it was directed and co-written by Greta Gerwig, who previously gave us fantastic works like Lady Bird (2017) and Little Women (2019). Barbie is her third film as a solo director (fourth when counting a co-directing gig), and hardly anything anyone would guess based on her previous offerings. But, her name on the project gave it both specific and unparalleled pedigree that made it something that had to be seen.

It is co-written by her longtime partner, Noah Baumbach, also an unusual and fascinating choice. These are both voices of critical independent films of the past decade or so, and in both cases Barbie qualifies as their first bona fide blockbuster film. I’m not sure anyone expected Barbie to be this huge when it was first greenlit, but this movie based on Mattel’s most famous toy has been the beneficiary of a marketing push the likes of which we haven’t seen in ages, and it’s one that has worked. A year ago, I would have expected Barbie to be the modest success and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer to be the blockbuster. Instead, almost certainly to the surprise of the makers of both movies, who no doubt opened them on the same weekend regarding them as counter programming, “Barbenheimer” became a thing, and a stunning number of movie-goers have committed to seeing both movies on opening weekend, making this almost certainly the biggest box office weekend of the year. What’s more, Barbie is tracking to be the biggest earner of the two.

You might think that comparing these movies is like comparing apples and oranges, but they do have a surprising amount in common, each with a protagonist who deal with the paradigm-shifting consequences of their actions, forever altering the universes that they live in. And from that perspective, I would argue, actually, that Barbie is the better movie.

A different director could have made a film version of Barbie that was every bit as fun, and maybe even worth seeing, but only Greta Gerwig, with the help of her expertly curated ensemble cast, could so successfully pack the movie with subtext. Even better, viewers with no interest in the subtext can just as easily enjoy the movie on a surface level—this doesn’t have to be an intellectual pursuit, or something you have to analyze or deconstruct. Gerwig’s genius is in how she makes that possible without making it necessary.

Barbie does indeed owe a certain debt, in premise, to movies like Toy Story or The Lego Movie (which really just ripped off Toy Story), in which toy characters live in the world of imagination created by those who play with them. Barbie is simply more dense with both meaning and humor. The humor part should really be stressed, because this is a very funny, wildly entertaining movie. Barbie manages the rare feat of taking ideas that were successful before, and making them better.

With a standard three-act structure, Barbie takes place in Barbieland in both the first and third acts, and this is the preferable setting, the more fun place to be. Barbie and Ken’s journey to The Real World is crucial to the plot, however, and this is where the second act takes place—and where I still very much enjoyed myself. I was charmed and impressed by everything in, and everything about, this movie.

Margot Robbie could not possibly have been better cast in the lead role, as what we come to discover is “Stereotypical Barbie.” Few other actors could pull off the balance of wide-eyed innocence and undiscovered pathos. Ryan Gosling is brilliantly cast as Ken, the would-be boyfriend who follows Barbie into The Real World only to discover the patriarchy that exists there, and then bring it back to Barbieland. This theme of patriarchy becomes a huge part of the movie, which will likely rub a lot of men the wrong way—the very men Greta Gerwig clearly wants to rub the wrong way. And those of us all-in on this movie from the jump are here for it.

A diverse array of other women play other Barbies, the ones long known as associated with a specific profession or particular personality trait. Amusingly, no fewer than eleven women are credited with just the same character name “Barbie,” among them Issa Rae (who plays the President of Barbieland), Kate McKinnon (for a while referred to as “Weird Barbie”), Emma Mackey, Hari Nef, and Dua Lipa, among others. Emerald Fennell even appears as Midge, the short-lived pregnant doll that apparently came across as a little creepy. Similarly, several men are credited as “Ken,” including Simu Liu (who is Gosling’s primary rival), Chris Evans and even John Cena. Michael Cera plays Allan, the onetime doll introduced in the sixties as Ken’s buddy, now a bit of an oddball outsider.

As can be expected with a movie like this, Barbie is also cram packed with visual gags and references to “Barbie” characters, careers, outfits and dollhouses throughout the toy’s history, none of which was I particularly familiar with and thus most of which I was unable to catch. But the magic of Barbie the movie is how it pokes fun at all of this, while also acknowledging the nostalgia that still exists for it, as well as the critiques of what the doll has been perceived to represent for women in society. These ideas only get underscored by Barbie and Ken’s journey into The Real World, where the meet America Ferrera as a mother with fond memories of playing Barbies with her now-teenage daughter (Ariana Greenblatt), as well as Will Ferrell playing the Mattell CEO—alongside a cadre of doltish male board members—as a bumbling fool but whose intentions are in the right place.

Given the wide range of perspectives on this doll, not by any means all of them positive, it’s almost extraordinary that Mattel actually signed off on the film as is. There has been some coverage of certain scenes that Gerwig refused to cut as requested, and a bit of hand wringing about the movie’s undeniably corporatized nature regardless of how much it satirizes. I am here to tell you, though, that Barbie is a genuine cinematic achievement, something that transcends its myriad ways of becoming a pop culture phenomenon. It’s actually a great film, an incredibly fun couple of hours constructed and designed by great minds and delightful performers alike. I genuinely look forward to seeing it again so I can catch some of the fun details I missed the first time around.

Barbie discovers that self-doubt and thoughts of mortality will break the spell.

Overall: A-

JOY RIDE

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

The surprising irony of Joy Ride is that it’s when it gets earnest that it actually works best. There are moments of seriousness, and even more moments of genuine sweetness, that really land, and endear us to every one of the four lead characters, who are on a road trip in China.

It’s in the comedy that Joy Ride falters, about half the time. The gags are spotty at best, with punchlines landing effectively maybe half the time. The writers, comprised of a team of three, seem to have taken a kitchen-sink approach, throwing in seemingly every idea they’ve got, without a lot of honing. The result is a comedic mixed bag. This means there actually are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, and if you’re willing to just roll with it all, you’ll have a good time. But, because of the rapid-fire nature of the comedy, plenty of it also falls flat. At least there’s never enough time spent to linger on the flatness, as we quickly move on to the next attempt.

I never want to say this about a movie, but I actually feel like Joy Ride could have benefited from some focus groups. On the other hand, how the hell they could find a representative sample of who they think is this movie’s target audience, I have no idea.

Part of it is the marketing, which bills this movie as a “raunchy comedy”—which, to be fair, it is. But, the trailers really don’t indicate that there’s a lot more to it than that. What’s more, Joy Ride actually avoids the pitfalls of countless “raunchy comedies” from the early 2000s, which persisted in revealing a supposedly wholesome core, which always felt disingenuous. Nothing about Joy Ride feels disingenuous, even though a lot of it is pretty contrived. No one is learning any lessons that feel shoehorned in from a totally different tone of a movie.

These characters grow and develop, rather than learning lessons, per se. And the best thing about them is the actors who play them: Ashley Park as Audrey, an Asian girl adopted by White parents; Sherry Cola as Lolo, Audrey’s very sexually liberated best friend since childhood; Stephanie Hsu as Kat, Audrey’s roommate from college; and Sabrina Wu as Deadeye, Lolo’s socially awkward cousin. When lifelong overachiever Audrey is sent on a business trip to China to close the deal, Lolo tags along as her ostensible interpreter; Deadeye tags along as a hanger-on; and they meet up with working Chinese actress Kat while there, even though Lolo and Kat don’t get along (for now).

The plot gets a little more convoluted as it goes along, with Audrey only finally being convinced to track down her birth mother as a means of impressing the guy with whom she’s meant to close a business deal (played by Malaysian comedian Ronny Chieng). The foursome of delightfully brassy young women travel by plane, by bus, by train and by boat, from Seattle to Beijing to rural China to Seoul, South Korea—all of which are represented by location shots in and around Vancouver, B.C.

There’s a fair amount of sex along the way. Plenty of genuinely hot men come and go in smaller parts. The core cast of four have real chemistry with each other, and Joy Ride has a refreshing amount of diverse representation in it—both across the Asian nationalities and across sexuality and gender lines. By the end of the film, Deadeye is being referred to casually with they/them pronouns, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that get worked into a film’s narratively so subtly and organically.

All of which is to say, there is a lot to like and enjoy about Joy Ride. It’s just that the comedy isn’t always one of them, which is a bit unfortunate given that the comedy is supposed to be the reason to see it. In other words: you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll occasionally think it’s a bit lame. I wanted, and kind of expected, a laugh-a-minute riot. I’ll settle for what I got, which was a good laugh every ten or fifteen minutes, with some sweet connections between friends in a silly movie.

Filthy minds and golden hearts: the foursome of JOY RIDE.

Overall: B