Cleanup On Aisle 69

Year: 2016

Director: Greg Tiernan & Conrad Vernon

Cast: Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Michael Cera

Run Time: 1 hour 29 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

I can take or leave Seth Rogen. When he’s doing Neighbors or plying himself in The Comeback, I’m all in. When he’s working with Judd Apatow, I’m 50/50. I’ve never disliked a performance of his, nor have I been utterly enamored of one. But when it comes down to his producing and writing choices, I can’t deny that he’s hit his stride. While I haven’t adored every movie in his recent string of films (This is the End, The Interview, Neighbors 2), he’s unafraid of being conceptually audacious, and I have heaps of respect for that.

Which brings us to the latest entry in his oeuvre: Sausage Party, an R-rated twist on the Pixar ethos. While he comedy’s juvenile at best, the script has no right to be as thematically sharp and satirical as it is. He can put one more notch in his belt because, no paper, this one’s another win.

Butcher paper, that is.

In Sausage Party, the food in the grocery store is sentient, and all they want is to be taken home to the Great Beyond by us, the Gods. They believe we will grant them an eternity of happiness and sensual pleasure. However, when Honey Mustard (Danny McBride) is returned by a customer having become a shuddering wreck, hot dog Frank (Seth Rogen) begins to have doubts about the Great Beyond. His antics cause him and his devout bun girlfriend Brenda (Kristen Wiig) to fall out of their cart, forced to find their home aisle before they lose their freshness.

Brenda wants her journey to lead her home, and Frank wants his journey to lead to the truth. They’re joined by Kareem Abdul Lavash (David Krumholtz) and Sammy Bagel Jr. (Edward Norton), two walking stereotypes that act out the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for some godforsaken reason. Also there’s Barry (Michael Cera), a stunted hot dog who has seen the truth about the Great Beyond – that kitchens are essentially less-fun Jigsaw traps for groceries – and struggles to return to the store to warn his friend. Oh, and a douchey Douche (Nick Kroll) wants to destroy Frank and Brenda for accidentally bending his nozzle.

I don’t know whether it’s the fault of the middling-at-best, horrifyingly-inelegant-at-worst animation or my blissful ignorance, but I definitely thought he was a toilet brush for like 15 minutes.

Do you think cartoon characters cussing is the funniest thing in the world? Then you should just pre-order your special edition quadruple disc Blu-Ray now, because you are going to love the s**t out of Sausage Party. As expected, the film has one foot firmly plated in the sophomoric at all times, but it’s the other foot that’s going interesting places.

This whole script is a feature-length allegory about the creation of religion, the horrible things it makes people to to one another and themselves, and why we shouldn’t be so quick to cast judgment on people who subscribes to different belief systems than us. Also, the moral is that raging hedonism is our only defense against our inevitable mortality, so it’s pretty much like Toy Story 3. I know, right? You got your subtext all over my R-rated comedy! How did this get in here? It’s an incredibly clever story that has heck-all to do with naughty hijinks, but whatever. I’m there.

It’s to the point that I can actually see somebody’s life philosophy changing to some degree after a screening of Sausage Party. As alarming as that sounds, that honestly might just be a good thing. I’m physically upset by how deeply I respect the intellectual cogs spinning behind the movie’s colorful cartoon façade. And then, of course, the rest of the movie is mostly super racist.

Thanks, everybody. I was getting too deep into liking this movie.

Not only is the humor desperately crude, which I’m fine with, it gives in to its urge to pattern every ethnic food after the most revolting racial stereotypes that can be produced by a screenwriting cabal of white dudes. Shock humor is all well and god, and the film does manage to convert the hideously insensitive Lavash and Bagel arc into something sweet and then appropriately twisted, however most of the racial humor is not only distasteful, but kind of lazy.

It doesn’t take more than a teaspoon of thought to make Grits (Craig Robinson) an angry black stereotype or to name your Native American liquor character (Bill Hader, why) firewater. So it’s pointless as well as disrespectful. This is humor that’s older than anyone reading this, and it’s certainly not funny today, if it ever was to begin with.

I’m terribly sorry to have such bad news to report about that aspect of the humor, because a lot of Sausage Party is really fun. When it goes whole hog depicting violence or sexuality, the film is at its best, and I’m not just saying this as a horror fan. Watching a film so gleefully unafraid to push the envelope of Hollywood sensibilities is a massively liberating experience. It’s certainly not for everyone, but as a cartoon about food, it’s enough degrees separated form human experience that even non-gorehounds should be able to get a kick out of it.

So much of Sausage Party is fun and intelligent and so much of it is crass and low-rent that it’s difficult to synthesize a proper score for the monstrosity. What I’ll say is this: Go see t if you have a high threshold for fratty, tasteless comedy. If you don’t, who cares. Have a nice day.

TL;DR: Sausage Party is mostly irreverent, weirdly intelligent fun despite its unfortunately prevalent racism.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 962

Amazing Amy

Year: 2015

Director: Judd Apatow

Cast: Amy Schumer, Bill Hader, LeBron James

Run Time: 2 hours 5 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Fall to your trembling knees, peasants! The great Judd Apatow has returned to the director’s chair at long last, after a long period of cinematic drought, in which hardly any overgrown manchildren were foisted upon an unsuspecting public! Perhaps you detect a hint of irreverence here. It might interest you to know that I feel the man peaked as a director with The 40-Year-Old Virgin. It’s all downhill from here, folks.

Now, Trainwreck is certainly the most intriguing recent film of his directorial oeuvre for two reasons: 1) The script was not written by himself, and 2) the script was written by and stars a woman, Amy Schumer, 2015’s red-hot comedian. Both of these things are a first for Apatow and I respect his branching out.

Probably as a reaction to the heavy-duty misogynist accusations I leveled against him naught but last Monday. He works fast.

In Trainwreck, Amy (Amy Schumer) is a commitment-phobic purveyor of harlotry. While she sleeps her way through the Manhattan phone book, her job at a bro-y magazine sends her to interview Aaron (Bill Hader), a well-to-do sports physician. Despite her congenital hatred of sports and monogamy, they begin to fall in love of all things. How will these two crazy kids ever make it work?

Trainwreck pretty closely adheres to the Apatow ill-adjusted manchild formula, just copy-pasting a vagina where applicable. It’s well-worn territory and it falls prey to the exact same pitfalls as every other of his films, but with a new voice at the wheel of the script, at least the jokes feel fresh.

Though it must have taken years to clear out the odor of stale pot fumes.

“Yes, that’s all fine and dandy,” you say, tapping your well-manicured fingernails on your desk, “But here’s the important thing: Is Trainwreck funny?”

If you’re really in a hurry, I’ll give it to you straight: Yes. And your cuticles look great.

Alright, now that we’ve got those pushy, well-groomed bastards taken care of, let’s dive into things in a little more detail, shall we? There are a lot of laugh-out-loud funny moments in Trainwreck, some irreverent, some ribald, some just plain surreal, but the two funniest people in the film –Schumer and Hader – are woefully underserved by the script, Hader especially. His considerable talents are poured into what must be the Guinness world record holder for most skim milk, white bread, boring ass straight man role ever conceived, and Schumer keeps on forcing herself into prototypical rom-com scenarios, only occasionally managing to convince us that she isn’t enjoying herself.

The real standouts of the film are a variety of Apatowian fringe regulars (including my BFF Randall Park) and three utterly shocking, bewildering, and unrestrainedly hilarious, left-field performances from (in ascending order) John Cena, LeBron James, and Tilda “Motherf***ing Space Queen” Swinton. Cena pulls out all the stops in a fearless turn as Amy’s clueless musclehead boyfriend, James effortlessly switches between intimidating mountain lion and doe-eyed screwball as Aaron’s best friend, an Swinton is sharp as a tack and unrecognizable with laceratingly perfect comic timing as Amy’s acid-tongued boss.

Thus, in typical Judd fashion, does the comedy seep in from around the edges of the film instead of naturally flowing from the center. It’s a flawed, herky-jerky delivery system but it gets results.

Kind of like when I go bowling.

So, yes, Trainwreck is funny, which is pretty essential for any comedy (It’s nuggets of cinematic wisdom like this that keep my avid readers coming back). But when the film lunges toward treacly emotion, it stumbles. Much like Katherine Heigl in Knocked Up before her, Schumer proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that she has the acting chops to pull off the dramatic scenes that are handed to her on a silver platter, but fails to satisfactorily answer the question of why they’re there in the first place. Their sheer profusion bites into Trainwreck like a rabid dog, tearing its pacing to shreds and rendering its tight, generic plot periodically aimless, hopelessly unspooling past the two-hour mark.

Brevity is the soul of wit, and 125 minutes is the soul of making my damn bladder implode. If nobody gets on Apatow about his grotesquely overlong comedy run times soon, I’m going to have to go vigilante and sneak into his editing bay with a giant electromagnet to cull what I possibly can. But hey, Trainwreck is an alright time at the movies, even if it’s a longer one than you may have bargained for.

TL;DR: Trainwreck is overlong and generic, but features some terrific, out-of-left-field performances from unexpected actors.

Rating: 6/10

Should I Spend Money On This? Sure, grab a matinee. Movie theaters have free air conditioning.

Word Count: 806

Feeling Myself

Year: 2015

Director: Pete Docter & Ronaldo Del Carmen

Cast: Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Richard Kind

Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

Pixar Short: Lava

As you well know, all Pixar features begin with a short film. These range from the cute and cuddly Partly Cloudy to the downright revolutionary animation masterwork Day & Night. Unfortunately, they can also apparently be deathly dull, aimlessly derivative wet farts based around an irritating acoustic noodle that centers on one of the worst puns in modern history.

Like, fine. Lava is a cute story. But it's utterly predictable, terribly cast, and arbitrarily bleak before the climax. Perhaps it wouldn't be so devastatingly disappointing if it hadn't come from Pixar. It would be a great senior thesis animation film, but it's a bog-standard bore in the context of the company. Lava is inane and pointless in the extreme. And I don't want to waste any more time thinking about it. 

Any of you got the remote? I'd like to switch this off.

Inside Out, on the other hand, is just plain terrific. The film tells the story of 11-year-old Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) following her family's move from their hometown in Minnesota to a small property in San Francisco. This life change shakes everything around her up considerably, but nothing compares to the shake-up that's happening inside her mind. Her emotions, which manifest as anthropomorphic beings in the headquarters of her brain, are controlled by Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader), Digust (Mindy Kahling), and Anger (Lewis Black).

Joy is the de facto leader of this crew, and the emotion whose capacity is valued above all others in giving Riley the best possible life. However, following the move, Sadness finds herself going a little haywire. She can't resist touching Riley's memory spheres, infecting them with her sadness. Joy tries to stamp out this behavior, but their constant infighting leads to Joy and Sadness being sucked right out of headquarters with Riley's core memories (happy memories that power different facets of her personality) and dumped unceremoniously in long term memory. Thus begins a wild adventure through Riley's imagination and memory as Joy and Sadness team up with Riley's old imaginary friend Bing Bong (Richard Kind) and attempt to bring the core memories back to headquarters before it's too late.

Meanwhile, Riley, left with only Anger, Disgust, and Fear, is struggling to adjust to her new school, new house, lack of new friends, and parents who don't seem as invested in her as they used to be. They still love her, but the stress of the move has put a strain on her Mom (Diane Lane), and her Dad (Kyle MacLachlan) has been buried in work, preventing him from spending much time with her.

It doesn't help that the excessively gray production design positively aches for you to punch yourself in the eyes.

The underlying metaphor couldn't be clearer if it was in a Claritin commercial: Riley's rough transition damages her delicate pre-pubescent emotional equilibrium as she struggles to grow up just a little bit, learn to manage her emotions, and find her new place in the suddenly scary and unfamiliar world that surrounds her.

There are quite a few things that Inside Out does best. The first of these is humor, which takes a great heap of universal experiences, whips them into a lather, and spreads it liberally across every surface of Riley's mindscape. Inside Out is really a fabulously funny movie, whether you're an idiot six-year-old with your finger reaching halfway to your brain through your nasal passage or an immensely intelligent, startlingly handsome adult like certain film bloggers I might mention. It completely avoids the pitfalls and inclinations of most family comedy: slapstick and scatological humor is scattered to the birds, replaced with warm character-driven humor and endlessly clever variations on what it really means to exist inside a person's mind.

The second of these things is (quelle surprise) the emotion of the story. This is no deep shock, seeing as Pixar has made a name for themselves as the world's leading purveyor of psychological torture to children, but for a film in which half the characters are literal physical manifestations of emotions, Inside Out is keenly focused on beating yours to a bloody pulp. In pursuit of its deepest themes about stress, change, loss, and memory, the film puts your mind through the wringer with adept skill and infinite compassion.

She's practicing for the Oscar.

Third and finally (Well, at least for the confines of this review. If I covered every minute detail of why Inside Out is a great film, we'd be here until Toy Story 4), Inside Out boasts supremely skilled animation. The aesthetic is uncomplicated, but the film is no less valuable for it. The emotions and their surroundings are soft, inviting, and awash with color, contrasting sharply with the stark, Spartan design of Riley's world.

The emotions themselves are also little miracles of character design. Generally defined by a single color, the emotions provided an enormous challenge to animators, but the infinitely variable texturization of their hair, skin, and eyes provides a stunningly simple answer to the problem of keeping them from blending into themselves like the world's most confusing chameleon.

The boundlessly creative world building that dominates the film provides Inside Out with its heart and soul. Riley's mindscape is a world where anything can happen, and frequently does with aplomb. It's an animated film that, for the first time in forever, embraces the energy and life available to the medium, wrapping its viewers up in an enormous, glowing embrace.

Also, you'll want to own plushies of every single character. It's just a fact of life.

The only element of Inside Out that comes remotely close to being a genuine flaw instead of a "not perfect" is the storytelling, which is remarkably light. The heft, humor, and subtext come out in glittering droves, but the film lacks a fair amount of vigor when it comes to crafting an actual adventure story with stakes, conflict, and drive.

So Inside Out is a little bit slack as an actual narrative, but it makes no excuses for it. The film is about the profound power of emotion, not sumptuous storytelling. It's pure and simple, and it distills that power into a heady, unforgettable, hilarious, tragic, utterly recommendable concoction.

But seriously though, Lava sucks.

TL;DR: Inside Out is an immensely simple story, but an effervescent and powerful one.

Rating: 8/10
Should I Spend Money On This? If you don't, you'll be sad forever.
Word Count: 1099

The Gruesome Twosome

Year: 2014

Director: Craig Johnson

Cast: Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, Luke Wilson

Run Time: 1 hour 33 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

After forcing Sergio to watch the entire Saw franchise pretty much back to back, I owe him a debt of gratitude that I am slowly paying back by watching a couple thousand movies of his choice. So expect the unexpected, dear readers. In between Census Bloodbath reviews and the upcoming [REC] retrospective (my RECrospective, if you will) leading up (or, more likely - following) the release of the fourth and final installment, don't be surprised if some very idiosyncratic pieces begin to show up here and there.

Assuming Sergio doesn't just elect to make me watch House of Cards until I pass out in a flush of sexy political exhaustion. Anyway, this is all just a pointlessly long way to introduce today's topic, a refugee from 2014, the year that was: The Skeleton Twins.

And no, this is not a spinoff of The Simple Life.

The Skeleton Twins is about two estranged siblings who are reunited after a pair of failed suicide attempts. Milo (Bill Hader) comes to live with Maggie (Kristen Wiig) and her uncannily perfect husband Lance (Luke Wilson) in New York state after a failed attempt at making an actor of himself in Los Angeles. While Milo attempts to find his place and reunite with Rich (Ty Burrell), the schoolteacher he had an affair with as a teen, Maggie struggles to overcome her dissatisfaction with what by all accounts should be a perfect marriage and gamely attempts to swallow her attraction for her fine-as-hell Australian scuba teacher (Boyd Holbrook).

Literally his only flaw is that the actor playing him is American, which means he's a liar.

Despite a string of serious indie-type scenarios, The Skeleton Twins is more comedy than drama, though Wiig and Hader are more than up for the task - he filled with bitter verve and sarcastic bite, she slathered in a heaping helping of wan ennui. Second time director Craig Johnson, however, is a little too wet behind the ears to keep the two slippery genres firmly in his grasp. The bigger comic moments and weepy dramatic crescendos appear in too-quick succession and crash into one another like a pilot's Newton ball toy during turbulence. They sometimes work together in harmony, but mostly ping off of each other and clatter wildly in all directions.

The film's tone is low-key enough in its ambitions that this effect is less disastrous than it could be in a more flamboyantly soapy picture (like, say, Blue Jasmine or any film with Meryl Streep on its casting shortlist), but it doesn't lead to a sense of overall cohesion. It's not film-killing, but it certainly makes it more of a challenge to pay rapt attention.

Although the Drag Halloween scene does its best to keep spirits high. Also - don't you think he looks a little bit like Elsa Mars in Freak Show?

The film's biggest strength is the chemistry of its two leads. No matter how hard the warring tones might try and smash together, Hader and Wiig form a strong caramel center for their unostentatious surroundings. Every peak the film reaches is due solely to their dedicated work, striking comedy gold when they're allowed to let their hair down and stray from the self-important faux-indiecool dialogue (because, honestly, does the whole "it's kind of my thing to screw up" self-sabotage thing appeal to anyone outside of teenagers in the late 90's?).

The Skeleton Twins, to be fair, has its share of genuinely funny moments, including a Jefferson Starship sing-along, a delicious dinner table scene with their negligent mother, and surprise cameo-that-I-can't-call-a-cameo-because-she's-not-famous-but-I-like-her-so-screw-it from Kathleen Rose Perkins (who is notable for being a welcome ray of light in the massively unenjoyable timesuck known as the BBC-Showtime co-production Episodes). And let's make it clear that no part of the film is a chore to watch, not even the most structurally inept missteps. 

It's just that, as a whole, The Skeleton Twins is like a Listerine strip. It's a little tricky to get ahold of at first, it has a moment of strength, and it dissolves from the tongue so quickly you almost forget it was ever there.

Although I would get married to Luke Wilson in a bulky sweater any day, so maybe I'm just not on this film's wavelength.

But credit where credit is due. Director/co-writer Craig Johnson's strange fixation on fish throughout the film both begins as a quick-and-dirty symbol for shifting character relationships and matures into a deeper rumination on the film's theme as it goes along. The sheer presence of fish throughout the narrative sparks active audience participation and brings to mind the so-called fishbowl effect, in which everything looks normal from an outside vantage point (like peering into a fishbowl), but appears strange and twisted from the inside.

This is the perfect metaphorical bookend for The Skeleton Twins, which is all about the absurdity and hypocrisy present in the trappings of a "typical" happy life (ie. great husband, great job, plans to add a baby to the whole arrangement...) and how people frequently pretend to be OK when a firestorm of emotion is whirling around inside. This is present in every character and every subplot and is by far the most commendable cinematic element in a film that, for better or for worse, plants its flag in its actors rather than its aesthetics.

All in all, The Skeleton Twins is a decent way to laze away a dull afternoon, especially if you've been missing Kristen Wiig or Bill Hader now that they've told SNL that they were going to the corner store for cigarettes and never returned. It won't stick around in your mind, but not every film has to. It might have its flaws, but it's a low-key good time for the suitably emotionally bereft.

TL;DR: The Skeleton Twins is a decent, low-key comedy that lives and dies on the chemistry of its central performers.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1004

When Harry Met Silly

Year: 2014

Director: David Wain

Cast: Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler, Cobie Smulders

Run Time: 1 hour 23 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

As I make my way through the cinematic landscape of 2014, I'm beginning to notice a pattern. For every tepid comedy film released in 2014, there seems to be a similar and better comedy waiting on the horizon. For every irritating and pointless Zac Efron's That Awkward Moment there's a sprightly and effervescent Zac Efron's Neighbors. For every funny but average Date and Switch (review pending) there's the delightfully twisted They Came Together, our topic for today. And what exactly is that special element that makes all the difference between these sets of paralells?

Randall Park.

Hello.

OK, maybe the films don't live and die on his performances because he's only ever given bit roles. But I continue to maintain that this man is one of the most underutilized Hollywood performers working today. I'm excited for his appearances in the upcoming comedies The Interview and Sex Tape, despite the fact that every time I see his face I will be reminded of the time I walked into a screen door and sliced my nose open when helping him look for his shoes on the set of Awesome Asian Bad Guys (That's right, I just name dropped. Right in front of your face. What are you gonna do about it, punk?).

Anyway I love the guy and I think that any casting director who agrees with me is worth their salt, making any movie with his presence a more well-cast film across the board than its compatriots. See? I was going somewhere with that.

Because jumpin' bananafrass is They Came Together well-cast. This romantic comedy parody would perish without Amy Poehler's sharp-as-a-tack skewering of clumsy leading ladies and Paul Rudd's beatific smile. The overwhelming sincerity of their performances gives the film the straight face it needs in order to avoid drowning itself in winking, clumsy meta humor.

Although goodness knows I love that too.

They Came Together tells the story of two lovers telling the story of how they met. Molly (Poehler) and Joel (Rudd) are two typical romantic comedy protagonists. He, the successful corporate drone with a cheating girlfriend (Cobie Smulders), she the quirky and klutzy owner of a small candy shop in NYC. When Joel's company, Candy Systems & Research, decides to open up a massive shop across the street from Molly's, this complicates their already reluctant love-hate relationship even more.

This plot provides the basic structure for a battalion of cameos from TV actors including New Girl's Max Greenfield, SNL's Bill Hader and Kenan Thompson, 30 Rock's Jack McBrayer, and The Office's Ellie Kemper and Ed Helms. Much in the vein of the slightly less successful but equally buoyant 2013 comedy The To Do List, the film acts as a sandbox for these actors to break out of their established characters and just have some fun playing around in a feature.

The film begins with its most meta moments, which are frequently its weakest. Although it's funny in small doses, nearly the entire setup for the parody is comprised of winking reminders that this is, in fact, a corny romantic comedy. Now, I love self-aware humor, especially in this vein, but even the most delicious chicken risotto would be ruined by the chef standing over your shoulder and whispering "It's chicken risotto. Go on, taste it. It has all the qualities of a chicken risotto. Look, there's the chicken. There's the risotto. Put those together and guess what you get? Chicken risotto!"

In this case Paul Rudd is the chicken and Amy Poehler is the risotto. If you can't see why, you clearly need to get on my level of sophistication in film analysis.

I'll repeat, this is funny, but just a little wearying, like some of the more blatant "IT'S THE SAME" moments in 22 Jump Street. Luckily, as the movie settles into its narrative, it relaxes and allows itself to explore the winding avenues of absurdist humor and sight gags that populate the genre.

But this is no flimsy Meet the Spartans production here. Somewhere significantly closer to Airplane! (my absolute favorite film comedy of all time) than Date Movie, They Came Together delights in lampooning tropes of the genre rather than merely name dropping specific films and hoping people go "Hey! That was a movie I saw! I guess that means I should laugh." It is at this level on which the film operates at its most inspired, including a scene hilariously mocking a cliché I saw naught but four days ago in The Fault in Our Stars.

For there is practically no other film genre more prone to excessive adherence to formula and rife with trite banality than the romantic comedy. This allows They Came Together to set up gags in the vein of some of the strongest humor from the Golden Age of The Simpsons (which will probably come up a lot on this blog, because I've been watching the entire show for my job), meaning that a familiar joke or story beat will be set up, but subverted at the last second with a bit of twisted humor or negated entirely by literalizing the setup in the most preposterous scenario imaginable, provoking incredulous (and inexorable) laughter at every turn.

One might say it metaphorically throws the leaves in our faces.

With an absurd streak visible from space, the film is certainly one to remember. After a decade and change of increasingly anemic pop culture spoofs, They Came Together might just be the film to set Hollywood pop comedy on the right track again.

It's not perfect. It falls prey to an ill-advised scatological gag and the first half is certainly less promising than the second, but if it doesn't blindside you with wickedly sharp satire and keep you cracking up faster than a glacier in an Emmerich film, I'll eat my keyboard.

TL;DR: They Came Together is a breath of fresh air and one of the best genre spoofs since the parody heyday in the 80's.
Rating: 8/10
Should I Spend Money On This? I think you should. only It's 7 bucks on Amazon VOD! Fun for the whole family! You don't even have to put pants on!
Word Count: 1042