Trouble In Paradise

Year: 2016

Director: Jake Szymanski

Cast: Zac Efron, Adam Devine, Anna Kendrick

Run Time: 1 hour 38 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Zac Efron is killing it this year. He’s starred in no fewer than three R-Rated comedies in 2016 (four, if The Disaster Artist is ever set free from the James Franco vault), and with heartthrobs like him, quantity is always more important than quality. Which is great news, because the only semi-decent movie he’s been in all year is Neighbors 2. Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates isn’t as flagrantly despicable as Dirty Grandpa, but there’s no universe where I’d call it a “good” movie.

I mean, come on! He only takes his shirt off ONCE!

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates takes place in a world where the phrase “wedding date” is used in casual conversation waaaaaay more frequently than our own. Mike (Adam Devine) and Dave Stangle (Zac Efron) are brothers who love themselves a good debauch. When their parents (Stephen Root and Stephanie Faracy) force them to bring dates to their sister Jeanie’s (Sugar Lyn Beard) Hawaii wedding in order to curtail their antics, they put out a Craigslist ad looking for nice girls to bring so they don’t ruin the wedding. The ad goes viral (this part actually happened in real life) and they end up on Wendy Williams, where they catch the eye of local girls-about-town Tatiana (Aubrey Plaza) and Alice (Anna Kendrick).

The hard-drinking duo fake being respectable so they can econ their way into an all-expenses-paid Hawaii vacation. Antics ensue and they’re at least a little less racist and homophobic than Dirty Grandpa.

So there’s that.

Obviously, that’s a high bar for offensiveness, so Mike and Dave still has plenty of room to muck about in frivolous bigotry and general stereotyping. I will say this: The stereotypes they use here are some deep cuts, so your average moviegoer won’t’ have as much of a problem with them as I do, but that doesn’t make them any less ill-advised. We get a predatory lesbian, a black side character who only acts as a hype man for the white people’s antics, a genuinely baffling cross-dressing sequence that would have been stale in the 90’s, and Kumail Nanjiani’s first truly bothersome Indian role. But they do depict an interracial wedding and restrict themselves to only one joke about it, so they get a gold star for that, I guess.

Honestly, I’d be able to overlook these patches of cliché crassness if there was anything else in the movie to latch onto. The comedy is a relaxing, genial sort that keeps you comfortably above the boredom line without actually reaching for any big laughs. While it’s certainly diverting, it’s far from memorable. It’s not bad, it just immediately slips from your mind like a fistful of sardines.

The comedy here does what every establishing shot shows: coasts. All four of the leads here are charismatic young stars and that counts for a lot, but they lean heavily on their established personas to do all the work here. Devine is the sputtering, half-improvised jackass. Efron chugs along with his surprisingly sharp comic timing and his baby doll eyes that never seem to focus on anything. His mouth and body move, but his eyes just stare vacantly into the middle distance like he’s having an apocalyptic premonition. It’s kind of frightening. And then of course there’s Plaza with her sardonic bravado. Only Kendrick is creating any sort of character here, but the role is a meek little dishrag that doesn’t bring anything particularly interesting to the table.

It’s like if you put a chipmunk’s brain in a human body.

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates is just too easygoing. It lets its performers noodle around while the spinning plates of the plot fall to the floor one by one and shatter into a million pieces, using exhausted clichés to rush through an ill-thought-out scenario (of course Zac Efron dreams of being a graphic novel artist). The central conceit (bad girls faking being good girls) loses gas long before the midpoint, sputtering and stalling after about two and a half scenes (in fact, this slippery conceit is eerily similar to Efron’s earlier easily-distracted opus That Awkward Moment). If Charles Lindbergh had tried to fly across the Atlantic using Mike and Dave, he would have crashed in the New York Harbor.* And then the final 20 minutes pretend we’ve been watching an actual story the whole time and drown us in a deluge of unearned character development.

Oh, and did I mention this film indulges in some of the most frustrating trends of modern comedy? We get some of that alarmingly violent slapstick that non-Paul Feigs love to dole out on Melissa McCarthy. Then there’s a lovely selection of half-hearted post-Hangover gross-out body humor. Oh, and then there’s a dash of sitcom setups just for bland flavor (they don’t realizes their microphones are on! What a pickle!). And the film’s occasional feints toward absurdism wither make less than no sense or completely dismantle a character (The script never does manage to establish whether Dave is a drooling idiot or the vastly more intelligent straight man for his brother’s antics. Maybe it’s both, come to think of it.) Like I said, it’s enjoyable enough, but it’s just so unambitious.

So, all in all, Mike an Dave Need Wedding Dates isn’t, like, a deplorable waste of your time. Just a milquetoast one. And it’s still the second best Efron comedy of the year, so if you loved Dirty Grandpa, have at it. You have my blessing, though I mostly feel like cursing that I spent money on this.

*This has nothing to do with Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, but it’s far more interesting. I was doing a spot of research on Lindbergh, and a glance at the list of his children led me through a mind-boggling array of discoveries. After fathering six children by his wife, it was discovered on his deathbed that he had seven more children spread between three secret families. Two of his secret European brides were SISTERS. He didn’t cross the Atlantic to break records, he just wanted to get some. It’s like an American Pie prequel up in here.

TL;DR: Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates is mildly amusing, so it's never a chore, but it fails entirely to impress.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1067

Slash From The Past

For our podcast episode about this film, click here!

Year: 2015

Director: Todd Strauss-Schulson

Cast: Taissa Farmiga, Malin Akerman, Adam DeVine

Run Time: 1 hour 28 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

I’ve been waiting for so long to tell people about The Final Girls. Sergio and I got the chance to watch it at a preview screening way back when in freaking January, and I feel like the NDA we signed has been branded on my heart, searing me with every beat. But now The Final Girls is here for all the world to see! I mean, in limited theaters, because distributors are too busy patting themselves on the back about Star Wars to bother putting effort into an indie horror-comedy. But VOD is a thing, so you can still watch it.

Oh, happy day!

If you haven’t seen The Final Girls yet and you are in any way a fan of slashers, horror, comedy, or movies in general, please ignore me and go watch it right now. Go in unmarred by any spoilers or expectations, thank me later. If you still need convincing, I’ll drum up a little review for you:

In The Final Girls, Max (Taissa Farmiga) is a high schooler living in the Valley. Her mother, Amanda Cartwright (Malin Akerman) is a struggling actress whose biggest credit is appearing in the 1986 cult classic slasher Camp Bloodbath. Unfortunately she doesn’t get do live out her dream and dies in a tragic accident. 

Cut to three years later. On the anniversary of her mom’s death, Amanda is coerced by her friend Gertie’s (Alia Shawcat) brother Duncan (Thomas Middleditch) to make an appearance at the movie theater where he works, which is hosting a Camp Bloodbath double feature. When a fire breaks out, the three of them plus Max’s crush Chris (Alexander Ludwig) and his crazy ex-girlfriend Vicki (Nina Dobrev) attempt to escape through the screen, which transports them into the world of the movie.

Now, this “classic” slasher might be fictional, but it’s still 1986, so let’s revive that Census Bloodbath standby and Meet the Meat of Camp Bloodbath. There’s Kurt (Adam DeVine), the horny jock in a crop-top; Blake (Tory N. Thompson), the New Waver with plenty of flair on his suspenders; Tina (Angela Timbur), the ravenous slut; Paula (Chloe Bridges), Camp Bloodbath’s über cool Final Girl; and Nancy (Amanda Cartwright), the shy girl who gives Kurt her flower and gets murdered. To escape the film, the teens need to make it through to the end, surviving the onslaught of masked killer Billy Murphy (Dan B. Norris) and making sure he gets slaughtered by the Final Girl.

Their appearance alters the natural course of the movie, leading to Paula’s death. A new Final Girl must be appointed, and Max sees this as an opportunity to save Nancy, the character her mother played, from yet another grisly demise.

You know, the usual lighthearted horror comedy stuff.

The Final Girls does many things, nearly all of them very well, but the one that’s foremost on my mind is that it has solved the problem of the post-Scream slasher. After the subgenre’s death in 1989, it faced a resurgence thanks to Wes Craven’s pop horror masterpiece, but the wave of slashers that followed inadequately forced themselves into that postmodern, self-referential framework. Then the genre was drowned beneath a tsunami of dour remakes, making hardly a peep since them.

TV shows like MTV’s Scream reboot and Ryan Murphy’s Scream Queens are attempting that same winking style in a long form medium with varied success. People have tried, but the knowing slasher has prevented the genre from being traditional or particularly good. But The Final Girls slips right into that framework while keeping it totally fresh by marrying the leering satire to a genuine love for the genre, an organic incorporation of classic tropes, and a heartfelt, incredibly impactful storyline.

The Final Girls is a dazzling effort, cobbling a wholly original film from age-old tropes and situations. But context and structure be damned, it’s just plain good. It’s far more of a comedy that it is a horror film, but it’s a pretty funny one. With an exquisite cast at the wheel, the laughs flow freely, the best zingers coming from Middleditch (as the Randy-esque horror nerd, AKA me) and DeVine (whose over-the-top portrayal of the worst kind of stock character reminds one of the time that Jim Carrey used to be truly great). The fish-out-of-water antics come at the viewer from two angles (the characters don’t realize that they’re fictional and they’re trapped in the 80’s, history’s largest exporter of disposable pop culture), lancing their funny bones at every opportunity and incorporating familiar film conventions in unexpected ways.

The direct parody of the slasher genre is also effective, avoiding the pop culture-laden clunkiness of other entries in the genre. It does reference specific films (including, astoundingly, Pieces – these people know their stuff), but in a subtle manner that doesn’t obviously call itself out. Slasher veterans will intuitively recognize these clever nods, but it won’t distract from the overall narrative. This quality is decidedly important because, though it is undoubtedly funny the truth strength of The Final Girls lies in a surprising dimension.

Dun dun dun…

The beating heart of The Final Girls is the mother-daughter storyline that drives it. It’s an unflinching, heartbreaking look at loss and grief that hides tender emotion beneath the glittering comic sheen. While all slasher necessarily depict death, this is one of the only ones in history that’s actually about death. [SPOILERS/AWESOME MIND-BLOWING ANALYSIS In a way, The Final Girls is a slasher analogue to last year’s Big Hero 6 – a young protagonist (Max, Hiro) loses a beloved/hot family member (Amanda, Tadashi), then encounters a surrogate for them (Nancy, Baymax). Through the loss of this surrogate, they learn to cope with their grief and accept the tragedy (Nancy sacrifices herself to save Max and end the movie, Baymax is launched into an evil space portal, saving Hiro). Where Big Hero 6 has a cop-out happy ending, The Final Girls is a heart-wrenching parable that has me crying real man tears.]

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a horror-comedy as sensitive and meaningful as The Final Girls, nor one that juggles those three disparate tones so well. Nor one that makes me want to listen to “Bette Davis Eyes” on repeat quite so much.

That said, as much as I passionately adore this film, there are some minor issues that need airing out before we move on. First, the movie hobbles itself by taking on a PG-13 rating, which prevents it from really digging into the sex and violence inherent to the slasher genre. The story it tells is absolutely good enough that this absence doesn’t derail it, but they missed a big opportunity to really dive into bloody goodness. There’s also two extremely shoddy pieces of FX work, both of which mar the all-important opening scene, which sets the tone for the entire piece. One is just some cheap but blissfully brief CGI, but the other is the ludicrously unconvincing wrinkle makeup requited to get Malin Akerman to look her own age.

That woman is an immortal goddess.

Those aren’t damning flaws by far, though they’re enough to knock my rating down a point or so. But you can’t knock down my heart. Or my eyes. Because, damn does The Final Girls have some visual splendor. The film is shot like a fairy tale, with a bold color palette, a lush forest tapestry showered with glowing daffodils and cheerful fecundity, and slick camera work that elegantly frames even the simplest of shots. And those shots that aren’t so simple? Some of them are frankly breathtaking works of art.

Just look at this! I think about this shot every night before I go to sleep in the hopes that my dreams are this gorgeous.

I love The Final Girls. I don’t know what more I need to say. A film this sweet, silly, and impeccably spectacular deserves to be seen and I hope I got through to you. Make this your Halloween treat and you won’t be disappointed.

TL;DR: The Final Girls is an utterly impressive horror-comedy, mixing sentimental heart with strong laughs.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 1372