Live And Let Laugh

Year: 2018
Director: Susanna Fogel
Cast: Mila Kunis, Kate McKinnon, Justin Theroux
Run Time: 1 hour 57 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

The wacky female-led spy comedy sub-subgenre has already reached its peak with the first and previously only entry: Paul Feig's Spy, one of my favorite films of 2015. There was no way The Spy Who Dumped Me could have matched the galvanizing comic energy of that film, but let's not pit movies starring women against each other. Give me a Kate McKinnon, a female director, and a bucket of hot dudes, and I'm first in line for your movie no matter what.

Plus, if you put that Kate McKinnon in suspenders, I'm already 30% more invested.

In The Spy Who Dumped Me, Audrey (Mila Kunis) is devastated when her boyfriend Drew (Justin Theroux) breaks up with her via text message, but she's even more devastated when she finds out that he was secretly a CIA agent and now she's involved in a major international imbroglio with her roommate Morgan (Kate McKinnon). The two besties embark on a globetrotting (but mostly continental Europe-trotting) adventure and attempt to work their way through a heaping helping of spy movie scenarios without actually having any clue what they're doing.

Along the way, the match wits with MI-6 agents Sebastian (Sam Heughan) and Duffer (Hasan Minhaj), Eastern European torture gymnast Nadedja (Ivanna Sakhno), and plenty of undercover agents so thick on the ground you can't trust anybody.

TripAdvisor is definitely going to hear about this one.

Look, The Spy Who Dumped Me is an August release, given the slot for movies that are budgeted high enough to be summer releases but don't inspire studio confidence enough to get the actual good release weekends. It was never going to set the world on fire, and it doesn't. But it's more than good enough to be an enjoyable couple hours in the air conditioning (which is extra helpful in Southern California, considering the state is ablaze again and the heat was brushing 90 last week - come to think of it, maybe The Spy Who Dumped Me IS setting the world on fire).

Unfortunately, it's also one of those comedy movies where the review is gonna be much shorter than anticipated, because there's absolutely nothing to dig into. You slide right off the surface of The Spy Who Dumped Me because it's impenetrably bland. It's really only funny on the strength of the charisma of its stars rather than any actual jokes it attempts to make. It's not un-funny I suppose, but there's not a single joke that pushes the envelope, to the point that even its obligatory single male nudity gag feels less like a shock and more like one tick in a box on your R-rated comedy bingo card.

But those stars sure are worth spending time with. Mila Kunis is easy to like in anything she does (she's not easy to love, but there's only so much one can ask for in an August comedy), and Kate McKinnon is a comedy firecracker that brings sparks of joy to any role. Unfortunately this particular role is a rather shallow one who doesn't get much emotional life beyond "friends with Mila Kunis," and never feels truly connected to the stakes of the narrative. But McKinnon playing a role is always 150% more interesting than anybody else playing it, and she pulls out some inimitable line readings that would be almost impossible to express on the page.

As I've been saying since Ghostbusters, Kate is comic anarchy, and the movies she finds herself in could sure use a bit of that.

Actually The Spy Who Dumped Me doesn't seem to have the time to devote to any character dynamic. Even the titular spy doesn't get enough screentime to establish what their relationship was like and why she might be so devastated by its loss and the revelation that key aspects of it were all a lie. WE literally see or hear about two days of their relationship: the first and the last. It's not enough for us to care one speck about the couple, and it really undermines an emotional sequence late in the film like a gopher in a golf course.

But one thing I will say about this particular spy comedy is that there really are life-and-death stakes, and many many people meet a grisly, violent end. That's not to say that it's gruesome or gory or anything, but it does commit to its premise, and that is a very good thing. In the third act, there's even a wonderful gross-out gag with a dead body that belies what a sterling dark comedy this could have been if it wasn't more committed to being a buddy adventure movie.

However, it's not like that buddy adventure movie is the worst. It's not a movie I think I'd particularly recommend to anybody, but it's not a toxic waste of time like a lot of the stuff that'll be piling up in theaters this August, so why not give it a shot if you've already seen all the littler releases that you should prioritize like Eigth Grade or BlacKkKlansman.

TL;DR: The Spy Who Dumped Me is a totally fine way to escape from the summer sun, if not a particularly awe-inspiring effort.
Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 888

Turn Down For What?

Year: 2016

Director: Josh Gordon & Will Speck

Cast: Jason Bateman, Olivia Munn, T.J. Miller 

Run Time: 1 hour 45 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A great cast doesn’t always equal a good movie. If it did, Valentine’s Day would have swept the Oscars. But damn, Office Christmas Party has a great cast. Jason Bateman is the perfect asshole straight man, T. J. Miller is a standout member of the preternaturally superb Silicon Valley ensemble, Jennifer Aniston is so charming she survived The Bounty Hunter and We’re the Millers, Kate McKinnon has been the shining light of comedy this year, Jillian Bell has been hilarious I everything I’ve ever seen her in, Vanessa Bayer has swiftly proven herself as one of the strongest members of the new SNL cast, and Randall Park has been my underrated idol for forever.

Office Christmas Party might be the exception to that rule. It’s literally the most basic, featureless R-rated comedy ever created (c’mon, it might as well be called Office Party Script Title TBD), but it survives on the strength of its excellent ensemble just being themselves and working their established personalities to the hilt.

Thanks again, Mr. Park.

So, here’s the plot, as if this movie needed one. And it’s quite needlessly complicated, at that. Clay Vanstone (T. J. Miller) is the head of the Chicago branch of Zenotech, a tech company that does yadda yadda synergy. His jealous sister Carol (Jennifer Aniston) has become interim CEO after their dad died and is threating to close the branch unless they can close a major deal with Walter Davis (Courtney B. Vance). She’s slashed their budget and forbids them from wasting money by having their annual Christmas party. But Davis wants them to prove their company culture is vibrant and exciting, so Clay and his freshly divorced right-hand man Josh (Jason Bateman) plan a party behind Carol’s back to woo him.

Things get out of hand as the party grows out of control and various office personalities clash, including the straight-out-of-the-90’s hacker tech queen Tracey (Olivia Munn) – who Josh has the hots for – unlucky-in-love secretary Allison (Vanessa Bayer), and buttoned-up HR weirdo Mary (Kate McKinnon).

Thanks again, Ms. McKinnon.

It’s not fun to watch other people party. It’s just not. That’s why I turn off New Year’s Rockin’ Eve after the ball drops. Watching Fergie and anonymous party people dance around is excruciatingly dull. Office Christmas Party attempts to do something a little different, pulling comedy from the image of more normal, office-esque people doing the same things, but come the f*ck on. Jennifer Aniston is one of the leads. Having one or two frumpy extras with Junie B. Jones bangs doesn’t count as “realism.”

Anyway, I digress. Watching people debauch is boring, which is presumably why they injected so much plot into the godforsaken thing. Unfortunately they overfilled the thin little wisp of a movie and that plot oozes through every crack, threatening to drown the whole thing in sloppy sentimentality. Frankly, it’s idiotic, and the plot moments are played too earnest for them to even pretend they were being intentionally absurd when the going gets hyperbolic. 

Bateman and Munn’s improbable romance is bad enough (especially during a period of anti-drama that requires everyone to act like squealing infants), but when the theme of taking risks and making innovations blossoms into Star Trek technobabble about making the Internet out of electricity or something, it goes too far. If they played it like an homage to 80’s films that treated computers like they were omnipotent sorcerers, it might be amusing, but it’s just plain stupid, as if the business model it’s shackled to (“We’ll give people free Internet and become billionaires somehow! Science!”).

Damn, is that a difficult plot to sift through. It’s a sticky sweet mess that gums up everything it touches. It’s a whirl of inscrutable motivations and trite yet labored setups that are so howlingly forced they distract from the comedy at hand. And yet… that comedy’s still pretty good. 

Thanks again, improv.

Nobody is turning in bad work in this film, all the way down to the smallest bit parts (an Uber driver played by Fortune Feimster is downright hilarious. Even though Kate McKinnon is only paying a one-note sketch character, she pulls from her seemingly endless reserves of offbeat and captivating line readings, Jennifer Aniston proves that she can hold her own against more out-there comedians, and Jillian Bell especially creates a wonderfully unpredictable vibe with her standout performance.

This is a fun cast, and it’s a delight just to watch them mess around with each other. Luckily, that is one thing this movie has to offer in spades. As much as it doesn’t resemble an actual feature film in any way, it actually does resemble an office party. The plot mills about, letting you hang out and celebrate the holidays with some friends, and that’s really not the worst thing a movie can offer.

TL;DR: Office Christmas Party is a passable R-rated comedy thanks to its cast and that alone.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 846

I Ain't Afraid Of No Girls

Year: 2016

Director: Paul Feig

Cast: Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon

Run Time: 1 hour 56 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Man alive, am I glad the remake of Ghostbusters is in theaters so people can finally shut up about it. This needlessly divisive remake has had the one-two punch of taking on the mantle of a virulently nostalgic property and igniting the raging misogyny of certain online cave dwellers, so it has not been a fun time being a member of the horror community. 

As pointless and awful as many remakes are, I’m always willing to give them a chance. Especially when they’re from the team behind Spy, my favorite comedy of last year. Not to mention the fact that Ghostbusters is an iconic franchise with a series of major narrative flaws spiderwebbing across its surface, making it a more or less perfect property to update, if we have to reboot movies at all.

Hollywood certainly seems to enjoy it.

Ghostbusters doesn’t recreate the original plot so much as it sets it back to square one with different characters and sees where they go from there. These characters are Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig), a meek doctor of particle physics who has attempted to suppress her belief in the paranormal in a weak stab at getting tenure; Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy), her high school best friend and a true believer who has dedicated her life to paranormal research; Jillian Holtzman (Kate McKinnon), a dubiously sane engineer with an anarchistic flair for creating extremely dangerous, untested machinery; and Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones), a subway worker who is the Ghostbusters’ first client and quickly becomes a part of the team.

As the Ghostbusters jet around New York City investigating apparitions, spirits, and grim grinning ghosts, they realize that a sinister someone is creating devices the amplify paranormal activity (which might explain why it got five sequels). They must figure out his plan and stop him before it’s too late.

Probably how most people felt when they heard this film was in development.

Is Ghostbusters better than the original? No. If you’re here on a hate odyssey, this is your cue to stop reading.

OK, now that the angries are gone, I’m safe to tell you that the remake is actually pretty good! As it should be. This is Paul Feig and Melissa McCarthy, not some anonymous music video director and Tiger Beat’s plastic Teen of the Week. Just like the original four Busters, these ladies weren’t chosen because they were sexy, of-the-now superstars. There’s a reason they didn’t cast Margot Robbie, Gal Gadot, Olivia Munn, and hell, Jennifer Lawrence, why not. They cast genuinely funny women who can sell a joke like it’s a Pokémon Go in-app purchase.

And Ghostbusters really is funny. That’s its greatest strength, which is probably good news considering it’s a comedy film. Obviously, humor is in the gut of the beholder, and the jokes are in a vastly, almost unrecognizably different vein from the original, but there’s a lot of great stuff at work here. Chris Hemsworth is an obvious standout because every line he’s given is a joke, but his ditzy receptionist nabs the best scene in the movie, a job interview-cum-Abbott and Costello routine that is delivered with diamond-sharp comic timing. Kate McKinnon is also a magnetic presence, presenting a spectacularly offbeat, unpredictable set of line readings that are always bizarrely fascinating. 

Probably the best overall performance is Wiig’s, because she effortlessly finds the po-faced wackiness in her straight-woman character while maintaining enough of an emotional throughline that she provides us an easy access point to the more out-there characters and developments.

Everyone else is good too, but I can’t just copy-paste the cast list here and call it a review.

Ghostbusters is very funny from beginning to end, but here’s the thing. At a certain point in the second act, it kind of stops trying to be funny. When the jokes come, they’re mostly just as solid, but during the course of its typically vast Feigian run time it slowly starts to kind of take itself seriously, presenting lots of ghostly action and the series’ traditional deus ex machina climax with hardly a glimmer of irony.

Then it attempts to tie a goopy little bow around everything with a series of character moments that strain to pump raw emotion from a one-dimensional well. These characters are great to watch as they quip and bounce off one another, but only Erin and Abby’s arcs have any meat on their bones. Everyone else is far too weak to support the more dramatic turn the film abruptly shifts into in the middle of the finale. Hell, even Erin and Abby are given a scene so heavy with melodrama and a wailing Schindler’s List score that it topples face-first into the dirt.

But after a bit, Ghostbusters remembers what it is and course corrects. It never fully recovers from that massive hit, but it’s still a sprightly, amusing popcorn picture. Once again, the trailers for this Feig comedy dreadfully undersold what it had to offer, so while it was better than I worried it might be, it wasn’t really as great as I’d hoped. Oh sure, it’s unique and hilarious enough to stand on its own two feet in the Ghostbusters canon and its fun cameos mostly avoid incessant pandering (mostly), but it’s not a resounding success to the tune of a Spy or a Bridesmaids.

The only thing I will concede to the haters is that the FallOut Boy cover of the Ghostbusters thing is truly dreadful (they also donated the worst song of 2014 to Big Hero 6), but the filmmakers know what’s up and they give Ray Parker, Jr. more than enough airtime. Anyway, go see it! It’s a dizzy, fun summer movie the likes of which haven’t really been packing multiplexes this year.

TL;DR: Ghostbusters is a wholly decent remake that isn't better than original but offers a unique enough entry to be worth watching.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1003

Reviews In This Series
Ghostbusters (Reitman, 1984)
Ghostbusters II (Reitman, 1989)
Ghostbusters (Feig, 2016)