Arrow In The Head: Training Day

Year: 2016

Director: Tate Taylor

Cast: Emily Blunt, Haley Bennett, Rebecca Ferguson 

Run Time: 1 hour 52 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Read my full review at Arrow in the Head.

Additional Notes: Would you bet a million dollars that the soundtrack and score of The Girl on the Train is packed full of train sound effects? That’s a very safe bet, I can assure you. Just like its soundscape, director Tate Taylor’s first full-blown thriller is a wee bit overwrought. It’s so excited to make choo choo noises that it doesn’t really plumb the obvious metaphor at the center of the story: about women who want to escape their lives and the different things the train represents to them.

A lot of really valuable elements are left by the wayside, which makes the film wind up a little disappointing. And I don’t even want to talk about one scene’s flagrant abuse of the 180 degree line! The cast is solid, even the comedy actors Allison Janney and Lisa Kudrow, who sell their small parts with aplomb. Maybe I should just stop complaining and enjoy it for what it is: a muddled, but enjoyable mystery.

TL:DR: The Girl on the Train is a decent, if befuddled thriller.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1004

Popcorn Kernels: Two-Stop Shop

In which I share mini-reviews of two comedies I watched over the course of a weekend with Sergio. He fell asleep during both of them, but I was only upset about it once. The other time I was jealous that he managed to escape.

Marci X

Year: 2003

Director: Richard Benjamin

Cast: Lisa Kudrow, Damon Wayans, Richard Benjamin

Run Time: 1 hour 24 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A Jewish-American heiress struggling to protect her father’s reputation attempts to bond with an out-of-control rapper who is tanking his music label.

I love Lisa Kudrow. I think she is an underappreciated comic genius whose work on Friends was just the beginning of a career that included the farcical heights of Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion and the caustic, improbably hilarious The Comeback. But there’s a thing that happens when the peak of your fame was in the 90’s. Somehow, some way, the fates will conspire to dump you into a project like Marci X, a film that makes Soul Man look like a carefully thought-out racial tract.

The film is such a gargantuan miscalculation that it overflows the “offensive” reservoir almost immediately, spilling over everything until it pools around the “adorably quaint” drain. This might be a more effective defense if it had come out 43 years ago instead of 13, but it’s a perfect time capsule of Hollywood’s most embarrassing proclivities: Lisa Kudrow raps in the movie, you guys, and it is tremendous. If you approach this movie as a huge slice of camp rather than a film attempting to reflect any sort of truth about any ethnic or minority culture, it becomes a little easier to swallow. You’re still ingesting a whittled-down turd, but at least you’re not choking on it.

The real troubling thing is that I had so much fun watching Marci X. It’s a truly ludicrous movie, and its ability to completely ignore every last stricture of logic and decency makes for a madcap hullaballoo of completely unpredictable, off-the-rails filmmaking. It helps that pretty much everyone in the cast is genuinely talented. Damon Wayans might not be operating at the top of his game, retreating into half-assed, breathy line deliveries like a turtle hiding in his shell, but look at the comedy cavalry that’s assembled: Kudrow, 30 Rock’s Jane Krakowski, a very young Matthew Morrison, Christine Baranski, Richard Benjamin (who also directed)… No, it’s no Ghostbusters line-up, but they’re charming performers who convert a surprising amount of material into genuinely fun humor. 

Marci X is probably at its best when lampooning one-percenter socialite culture, not only because these moments are free of the lingering shame residue that comes any time the film even glances in the direction of hip-hop, but because it’s intentionally, satirically, successfully amusing. These upper class bubbleheads parade around disabled children at charity balls, assume they understand minority plights even better than the minorities do, and generally attempt to solve all the world’s problems without realizing that they are one of them. It might be low-hanging fruit, but they pluck it with vim and vigor.

Of course, in the third act the plot loses its goddamn mind and spirals blindly down a hundred narrative dead-ends before just sort of giving up and plastering over its missing ending with another ill-advised rap sequence. It’s a steaming bowl of nonsense, but the music (co-written by Marc Shaiman of Hairspray and Smash) is an apt stylistic parody of the worst of late 90’s pop (the flick may have premiered in 2003, but it was made in 2000 – I wonder what could possibly have held them up?), the fundamental misunderstanding of the rap scene is pitifully endearing, and the secret abundance of genuinely good jokes hiding in the wings make it a must-see masterpiece of Hollywood crap.

Rating: 7/10

Clerks

Year: 1994

Director: Kevin Smith

Cast: Brian O'Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Marilyn Ghigliotti 

Run Time: 1 hour 32 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Two clerks at a convenience store and a video store bond over the course of an extremely long shift.

Indie flicks were such a Thing in 1994. Pulp Fiction immediately became the biggest movie in the galaxy and Clerks toddled along to prove that anyone could make a movie. Literally anyone. Kevin Smith was a convenience store clerk from Ass Nowhere, New Jersey, and he made himself a megahit using a cheap camera on his off-hours. It’s a truly inspirational story, and it wouldn’t have worked if Smith wasn’t an incredibly savvy creative mind, but damn if Clerks isn’t a slog.

Fans of cheap movies are used to forgiving such films their many technical flaws, but Clerks isn’t even a movie. It’s a staged reading of a screenplay. The screenplay is admirably sharp, to be sure, restaging Dante’s Inferno as a miserable day shift and casually tossing off some incredibly tight comic vignettes as it putters along. But there’s literally nothing else to Clerks. The camera is either hibernating on its tripod or whipping back and forth between its subjects like a rabid squirrel. The black and white cinematography is not a choice but a necessity, and it makes a drab, uncomplicated set look even less interesting. Which I guess emphasizes the theme of the narrative, but that’s certainly not on purpose.

With the script front and center and nothing waiting in the wings to prop it up, every tumble it makes violently topples the film. And let me remind you, this is the first script Smith ever produced. It’s inherently composed of stumbles. The dialogue tends to be both overwritten and underperformed, women are treated like interchangeable hogs on a spit, and certain chapters (oh yeah, the film is divided into nine segments with different titles) just dump a bucket of words on your head, hoping there’s a joke in there. And I’m sorry to say it, but Jay and Silent Bob are not commanding presences at this juncture in their lives.

There’s some genuinely funny stuff in Clerks (my favorite being an anti-smoking advocate inciting an in-store riot), but when it lulls as most comedies tend to do, there isn’t a white of redeeming quality to lean on. It’s a treacherous slog to get to the good stuff, and the good stuff is too laconic to really boost your energy and recharge your interest. It’s a clever debut film, but it wears its amateur status on its sleeve, which it then tears off and drapes over its entire face.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1078

Girls Next Door

Year: 2016

Director: Nicholas Stoller

Cast: Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne, Zac Efron

Run Time: 1 hour 32 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

As you may recall, the frat comedy Neighbors landed on my Top 10 list of 2014. It’s a movie that really resonated with me, what with my love of college movies and shirtless Zac Efrons. But more than that, it was a definite surprise: a genuinely funny comedy that was from the Apatow school of filmmaking yet had a hilarious woman up front and center with the man-children. That woman was, of course, Rose Byrne, who proved in neighbors what she would cement in stone and toss into the river with Spy: that she is a tremendously gifted comic talent, capable of delivering outrageous punchlines with deadpan certainty.

As you might imagine, I brought a lot of baggage to Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising. I won’t say the movie completely hefted the load, but it certainly called over a bellboy to pick up a suitcase or two and help me upstairs. But enough with this needlessly elaborate metaphor! Let’s let the movie answer for itself.

Well-spoken, Neighbors 2.

In Neighbors 2, Mac (Seth Rogen) and Kelly Radner (Rose Byrne) are living a quiet life (literally quiet since the frat next door moved out) with their daughter. When Kelly gets pregnant, they decide to move into a bigger home, but they skimp on the escrow, meaning that they have 30 days to keep the potential buyers convinced that they’re making the right decision, or else they will end up with two homes and empty bank accounts.

Unfortunately, as is wont to happen in comedy sequels, this is the exact time that a group of hard-partying sorority girls led by Shelby (Chloë Grace Moretz) decide to move in next door, frustrated by the American university system’s refusal to allow sororities to throw parties in official sorority houses. They are being mentored by Teddy (Zac Efron), the ex-frat president who is trying to find a place where he belongs now that his friends are all growing up, getting careers and fiancés and whatnot.

Now that we’ve plugged the requisite “man-child who needs to learn to grow up” into the Apatowian formula, let’s get this review rolling.

Basically, the fulcrum on which Neighbors 2 is balanced is sexism: what it is, how it works, what to do if you get it. This is most likely a knee-jerk response to Ann Hornaday’s wildly misguided claim that films like Neighbors promoted misogyny, more or less directly leading to the tragic shooting at UC Santa Barbara back in 2014. Obviously, I’m not here to defend Judd Apatow’s work as un-misogynist, having leveled that complaint against the man myself, but Neighbors (a production in which Apatow held no official role) was very unfairly caught in the crossfire.

However, the film’s use of feminist themes and lessons give depth to what is otherwise a pretty standard comedy sequel plot. It allows its protagonists a new avenue in which to grow rather than undoing their previous character arcs, thus continuing their story in a satisfying, organic manner. One drawback to this approach is a rather overstuffed cast list (between the Radners, the real estate people, the frat bros, the sorority girls, and the crammed-in cameos that waste returning players like Lisa Kudrow, the population of Neighbors 2 is higher than my hometown’s), but that’s a small price to pay for an actually interesting comedy part 2.

One admirably strange side effect of this approach is that it evokes the work of Russian director Sergei Eisenstein. His films, including the famous Battleship Potemkin, have no discernible characters - focusing on the exploits of the collective rather than the individual. And such is the case here. Rather than any one character rising from the pack, it’s just an old collective vs. a young collective. This is not a compliment, but it’s too odd to be quite as frustrating as it could be.

However, the fact does remain that the sorority sisters, as the only major characters that are entirely new to the film, are given no opportunity to develop a real backstory or personality. The character moments for anyone are few and far between, but the girls really do get the short end of the stick, acting as mouthpieces for the film’s feminist themes rather than genuine, unique personalities, skating through a plot that we’ve seen a million times and thus doesn’t feel the need to go into too much detail.

Chloë Grace Moretz does manage some interesting work, ingraining her overconfident bravado with a vulnerable fear about finally being out on her own for the first time and not really understanding how the world works. But overall, her performance falls back a little too often on hers standard, shouted line readings to really assert itself.

By the way, if possible, I’d like some kind of plaque to acknowledge that I’m the first person to ever compare a Zac Efron movie to Battleship Potemkin.

I suppose that, buried beneath the dissertation on sexism, there’s a comedy movie in there somewhere, so let’s talk about it. Neighbors 2 opens with a surprisingly delightful scene that adds a fresh tag onto a totally predictable joke, breathing new life into its gross-out humor and proving that this sequel will have the exact same crude sensibility that made it such a gonzo comedy the first time around.

Obviously, the humor is a notch or so lower than the original, such is the price of sequeldom. But all things considered, Neighbors 2 is a bit of triumph, maintaining much of its comic potency thanks to Rose Byrne’s continuing excellence in the field of machete sharp comic timing and Zac Efron’s continuing willingness to poke fun at himself, adding an element of giddy darkness to his role this time around. If Dirty Grandpa didn’t hang on his filmography like a malignant lump, I might say hew was improving by the year.

There are a lot of genuine laughs in Neighbors 2, especially if your sense of humor is as sophomoric as mine tends to be in my shameful heart of hearts. Only one gag truly rankles, a bit on police racism that scrapes across the film like a jagged edge, capsizing the comedy’s tone with a whiff of too-grim hyperviolence. But other than that, neighbors is a peculiarly solid sequel, never matching its predecessor but always defeating the middling expectations of a comedy continuation.

TL;DR: Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising is an excellent continuation of the original film that's a little too overstuffed to have any real characters but nevertheless funny.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1104

Reviews In This Series

Neighbors (Stoller, 2014)

Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (Stoller, 2016)

Beat It, Essay: The Comeback Of The Comeback

Like I said before, finals are a killer. And once I vanquish them, a veritable waterfall of terrific content is going to cascade over you all. But luckily for me, some of my work can double as blog posts, seeing as how I'm required to write insightful and analytical essays. Which is pretty much what I do every day over here. Anyway! Here's my newest essay for my Broadcasting class, exploring HBO's terrific show The Comeback.

The Prompt

Analyze one television show from the post-classical network period of modern television in order to illustrate how the show reflects the social, cultural, industrial, and historical moment of its production.

 The Comeback of The Comeback: False Reality and the Duplicity of Celebrity

Ever since the inception of the pay cable network HBO, the company has sought to air counterprogramming to traditional network TV. During its early years in the 1970’s, this meant airing programs like first-run movies, sporting events, and comedy specials to counterbalance the traditional television styles and genres of the classical network system. However, after competition began to increase, HBO shifted from a utility brand to an identity brand and began producing its own programming. These original television shows took the format of traditional genres like the sitcom or the hour-long drama, but continued the spirit of counterprogramming, typically using their recognizable style to comment on and satirize the state of current network television.

Shows like The Larry Sanders Show and Curb Your Enthusiasm tossed vicious barbs in the direction of late night talk shows and sitcoms, but 2005’s The Comeback is perhaps one of HBO’s most acerbic and biting programs, using its first season and its currently airing second season to take jabs at the rise of reality television. The Comeback wickedly satirizes the artifice of early reality programs and – in turn – the manipulation of image employed by celebrities both toward the public and themselves, using the arc of an aging sitcom actress’ journey to depict the changing tides of popular media.

From its very first episode, The Comeback sets its sights on the new Renaissance of reality TV, a genre that rose to prominence with 2000’s Survivor and 1999’s Big Brother. These shows were inexpensive and widely popular, depicting real people and actual events, but viewed through a cleverly edited lens to create heightened drama (Hilmes 398). The Comeback, presented as the raw footage of a reality show starring Valerie Cherish – played by Lisa Kudrow of Friends fame – an aging sitcom star who is looking to get back into the limelight, immediately presents an argument against the reality of “reality.” By blurring the lines between reality and fiction with its realistic presentation and a character mirroring Kudrow’s own career, The Comeback cleverly highlights the artifice of the shows it imitates (Williamson 109).

By presenting the unedited footage of what will eventually become a reality program, The Comeback depicts just how boring and ordinary Valerie Cherish’s life proves to be. She has petty arguments with her husband, goes shopping for linens, and has muted, human responses to even the good things in her life. In fact, in the first episode – “The Comeback” - Jane, the show’s producer, asks Valerie to play up her reaction to getting a part in the sitcom Room and Bored, saying “I just think that your reality can be more excited.”

This strategic manipulation of Valerie’s true self is the only way to have the show be exciting and get heard above the noise of its dozens of peers. In the episode “Valerie Demands Dignity,” Charla, another reality show star, astutely tells Valerie that “This is reality TV! You have to make it happen!” Although Valerie never reaches true understanding of this fact, the producers and editors of her show create something out of nothing, transforming Valerie’s quiet, unexceptional life into a dramatic roller coaster of a narrative. By presenting the show to us in this particular “behind-the-scenes” format, HBO and the creators of The Comeback thoroughly deride the unreality of reality programmers and those who are foolhardy enough to star in them.

In addition to depicting the artificiality of the program itself, The Comeback indicts the false face of its very own central figure. Valerie Cherish, though the apparent protagonist of both The Comeback and “The Comeback,” the reality show-within-a-show, is a deeply flawed, emotionally stunted woman who seeks to control every visible aspect of her life. Years of living in the spotlight have warped her mentality, causing the face she shows to the cameras and her true face to collide. She has built an artificial world for herself, shielding herself from the messiness of life behind a false, cheery personality.

The persona that Valerie Cherish displays is not her reality, but rather the expression of who she dearly wants to be. Her false self is determined, optimistic, and generous. She bakes cookies for the writers, gives gifts to the cast, and personally thanks everyone involved in creating the show. In the episode “Valerie Stands Up for Aunt Sassy,” she even states that “I’m the one who buys gifts for all the crew. That’s who I am.”

Valerie insists that her expressed personality is a reflection of her true self, but the reality TV camera reveals the chinks in her armor. Under close scrutiny, it becomes apparent that nearly every single aspect of her personality is specifically gauged to address one selfish need or another. She bakes cookies for the writers so she will get a storyline to herself and gives gifts to the cast because she wants to be well-liked. The camera lingers over her initial reluctance to perform any open-hearted task and captures the precise moments that her genial mask is affixed over her true face.

Simultaneously, the reality camera reveals the grim artificiality of her personality and the stark truth of her average life. This multi-layered approach taken by The Comeback highlights both the flaws in the making of reality television and those of the people who desperately wish to be seen on them. In combination with one another, both elements negate all potential for true “reality,” as The Comeback points out, making it the most spirited reversal of television tropes on the HBO counterprogramming lineup.

In addition to its startlingly up-front indictment of reality programming, The Comeback’s multi-layered satire has a thriving undercurrent depicting the fall of the sitcom in the face of the new wave of reality TV. The figure of Valerie Cherish, a former sitcom darling who is rapidly aging out of the industry, represents this transition (Poster 162). She attempts to run her show “with dignity” and manipulate her image in the manner of a 90’s sitcom, constantly butting heads with the young producer who knows that dignity is exactly what current audiences will not want to see.

The Comeback ceaselessly seeks new ways to highlight the age gap between Valerie and her young co-stars. She tries to get one of them to do the robot onstage, sings a series of songs none of them have ever heard of, and is constantly faced with ire from the writers, who provide dialogue for her character that ages her even further, making her seem like an ancient, sexless grandmother. As Valerie herself says in “Valerie Relaxes in Palm Springs,” “That’s Hollywood for you. Anyone over 22 – mandatory hip replacement.”

Valerie’s struggle quite obviously mirrors the waning popularity of the traditional sitcom format. In the mid-2000’s, in response to the rise of “quality television” like Lost and Mad Men, sitcoms had already begun shifting to a more elegant and refined single-camera format, losing the laugh track along the way. The multi-camera, live audience world that Valerie once knew and ruled was now being viewed as a symbol of tacky excess. The old sitcoms were now seen as something to be derided and dumped from the schedule, as evidenced by the network’s manhandling of Room and Bored. The producers frequently interfered by adding new crowd-pleasing elements and – in one key moment – shutting down the entire production to retool during the middle of its very first season in response to low ratings.

In the new world of television where reality is king, the industry has no place for traditional formats or entertainment veterans. The popular stars of the age weren’t even celebrities at all, merely real people with big personalities who arrived on the national stage practically overnight. This world is the one in which Valerie Cherish – and her supposed comeback – languish. Her age and her refusal to bend the morals of her rigidly artificial personality set her apart from the oncoming generation.

Without The Comeback, she has nothing, but she desperately clings to the old-format Room and Bored, viewing that as her true return to the spotlight. But, as her director wisely states in “Valerie Bonds with the Cast,” “Why are you worrying about [Room and Bored]? This is not your show. [The Comeback]’s your show. This show is the car that takes you to that show.” Valerie never truly realizes the truth of this statement, as she is so focused on clinging so desperately to the television that she knows. But through clever editing and a series of dramatic challenges, The Comeback is a success, inadvertently providing her with the very success she thought she was going to achieve through her traditional means.

To Valerie Cherish and to HBO, The Comeback is many things. It’s a shattering portrayal of the duplicity of reality TV and the realities of celebrity as well as a tragic tale of an outdated model of entertainment slowly drowning beneath the currents of a new format. The Comeback is also counterprogramming at its finest, stripping away the veneers of TV’s tropes and genres to take a good look at the life and lies pulsing underneath. Although HBO would shortly thereafter send The Comeback to an early grave, the show remains one of its most important and astute criticisms of today’s entertainment environment, using its tragic central figure to track the changing trends and attitudes of modern media for the first – and certainly best – time.

Word Count: 1677
Works Cited
Hilmes, Michele. Only Connect: A Cultural History of Broadcasting in the United States. 4th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2007. 397-399. Print.
Poster, Mark. "Swan's Way: Care of Self in the Hyperreal." Configurations 15.2 (2007): 151-75. Print.
Williamson, Lisa. “Challenging Sitcom Conventions: From The Larry Sanders Show to The Comeback.” It’s Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-Television Era. Ed. Marc Leverette, Brian L. Ott, and Cara Louise Buckley. New York, NY: Routledge, 2008. 108-122. Print.

Boys Next Door

Year: 2014

Director: Nicholas Stoller

Cast: Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne, Zac Efron

Run Time: 1 hour 36 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Sure, Apatow comedies are funny enough. But after a couple years of increasingly bland fare like Wanderlust, The Five-Year Engagement, and This Is 40, it has been getting harder and harder to produce enthusiasm for what were already typically overlong and haphazardly misogynistic films.

What makes Neighbors interesting is that, for all its Apatow DNA (director Nicholas Stoller, co-producer Evan Goldberg, writers Andrew J. Cohen and Brendan O'Brien, and stars Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne, Christoper-Mintz-Plasse, and Carla Gallo), Judd himself is nowhere to be found. Sure, his ghost is present in the framework, but this is an Apatow-free zone and, to tell you the truth, it turned out pretty great.

I can not promise that this isn't creating bias.

At a brisk hour and a half, Neighbors is about what separates the men from the boys (and the women from the girls) in one of the most thematically relevant comedies from this group to date. Seth Rogen plays Mac Radner, a new parent who has just moved into a suburban neighborhood with his wife Kelly (Rose Byrne). Despite their attempts to stave off maturity, they can't help but be annoyed when a fraternity moves in next door, keeping them up late with their wild partying and loud music. 

Although the Radners initially intend to bond with fraternity president Teddy (Zac Efron) and vice president Pete (Dave Franco) and feel young again, they eventually turn the frat against them when they call in a noise complaint. This initiates an escalating series of pranks as the Radners try to get the frat kicked out of their neighborhood and the Delta Psi brothers seek revenge.

All I can say is hooray for R-rated comedies. If slapped with a PG-13 rating, Neighbors could have been a delightful but routine affair. As it stands, however, it is a sharp, biting comedy that isn't afraid to go the extra mile in depicting the basest of human emotions and activities.

I mean, come on, this is a fraternity. PG-13 has no business here. 

Although the gross-out humor of this film's peers is certainly present and active, Neighbors is eminently less disgusting and crude than many of its predecessors, instead opting for character-driven comedy that comes from what seem like actual human beings, instead of the sketchy one-note constructs of your typical frat comedy. 

And the gross-out stuff that we do get is delightfully as far from misogyny as any film about a fraternity can get. There's penis humor galore and nary a wanton breast to be seen, except in the most plot-specific scenarios. Kelly has more of a character than "Mac's Nagging Wife," and there's even an entire scene devoted to deconstructing that character stereotype. Go Neighbors!

The characters are well fleshed out, getting at least as realistic as they can within this sort of scenario, all with their own motivations and goals. It's telling that the film continues to be interesting and compelling even when it dives into its more forthrightly dramatic scenes, usually an obligatory but shallow addition to this sort of comedy.

The central theme of the film is the terror of growing up and facing responsibility and each of the protagonists faces it in a different way. The Radners are afraid of losing their youth and being tied down in the suburbs with a kid when they could be out exploring the world. The frat brothers, especially Teddy, are frightened of what the world is going to be to them once the protective veneer of the fraternity is stripped away by graduation.

And that's not the only thing that will be stripped away.

So we have characters and moments with unusual resonance, comedy with unusual bite and snark, and on top of all that we get the most unusual thing of all - modern references that actually land. Because films take so long to produce, those that fill themselves with current technology and pop culture references tend to become dated even before they are released.

That's how we ended up with comedies still making MySpace jokes long after the beginning of the Zuckerberg Dynasty. Every modern touch here (including a solid Game of Thrones reference and a ponderous preponderance of FaceTime) will admittedly be dated at some point, but during this month of this year has absolute currency, proving that Hollywood is finally making a solid attempt to connect to the younger crowd instead of the feeble gimcrackery of past comedies that insist that people are still amused by the Harlem Shake.

We were never amused.

The comedy is consistently splendid, raising the question of why Rose Byrne isn't allowed to do this kind of thing more often. She is the absolute standout of the film, always halfway between her "Decent Mother" instincts and the wild impulses that make her a loose cannon, far more than any of her male cohorts. Her timing is pitch perfect and her line deliveries are consistently hilarious and Hollywood needs more Rose Byrne comedies right now!

The only other cast member who can even approach her caliber is Dave Franco, who absolutely owns his secondary role, grounding even his most emotional moments in an untouchably hilarious comedic performance. The subtlety of his role plays a large part in humanizing the entire fraternity, although the other actors do their best as well.

Including, oddly enough, the baby.

Rogen and Efron aren't standouts, but they work just as well as they need to and their later action sequence is one of the funniest moments committed to film in 2014. Other standouts are Lisa Kudrow, who shines as a pithy dean, and Randall Park as a representative at a job fair.

Kudrow has long since proven her worth as an actress, at least to me, with cult hits like Web Therapy and The Comeback, delighting in once again playing a caustic woman of authority. But Park is one of the most consistently under-appreciated comedy actors around today. I was lucky enough to get the chance to work with him on the web series Awesome Asian Bad Guys, which is the only reason I've even heard of him.

Despite his comic chops and astonishingly pleasant demeanor, he has only been given small insignificant roles for nearly his entire career. It's disappointing that he isn't getting leads (although hopefully his recently picked-up pilot Fresh Off the Boat will help him with that), but he always shines bright. And he is everywhere. 

He is on episodes of The Office and New Girl. He was in Larry Crowne and Dinner For Schmucks. Community. The Five-Year Engagement. ER. Reno 911!. iCarly. There's no escaping his circle of influence (including upcoming comedies They Came Together and Sex Tape), but nobody remembers his name.

Remember his name. I beseech thee.

So, yeah. Neighbors is a surprisingly excellent comedy about growing up with stellar performances at every level. I wasn't expecting to enjoy it as much as I did, but then again I wasn't expecting a comedy with so much Apatow influence to be so kind-hearted and full of joy. It was definitely a worthwhile experience, despite being deceitfully packaged as throwaway entertainment.

TL;DR: Neighbors is surprisingly funny and has enough thematic resonance to keep the entire film afloat, even during the more overtly dramatic sequences.

Rating: 8/10

Should I Spend Money On This? Yeah, absolutely! You won't regret it. And I should know something about regret. I spent money on This Is 40.

Word Count: 1258

Reviews In This Series

Neighbors (Stoller, 2014)

Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (Stoller, 2016)

High School Never Ends

Year: 1997

Director: David Mirkin

Cast: Lisa Kudrow, Mira Sorvino, Janeane Garofalo

Run Time: 1 hour 32 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

It's only fitting that I cap off my week of Friends tributes with hands-down the best film Lisa Kudrow ever starred in. I would even go so far as to say that Romy and Michele's High School Reunion is even the best comedy of the 90's if I thought anybody would agree with me. 

Aw, screw it. Romy and Michele's High School Reunion is the best darn comedy film of the 90's.

And it definitely couldn't be from any other decade.

Romy (Mira Sorvino) and Michele (Lisa Kudrow) are living the life. They have a lovely apartment in LA where they can rewatch Pretty Woman as many times as they like, they create their own unique clothing designs, and they have been best friends since high school. But when they're invited to their 10 Year High School Reunion, they are forced to look at their lives and find them wanting. After all, neither of them have boyfriends or careers. And they could stand to lose a little weight (this was the 90's, the only decade in which anybody could reasonably believe that Kudrow or Sorvino needed to lose a little weight).

After feverishly working out for two weeks, they embark on their road trip back to Tucson armed with fancy businesswoman suits and a lie about inventing Post-It Notes, all set to blow the socks off of their old high school classmates, especially the titanic foursome that ruled the halls with an iron fist. They were the Plastics before the Plastics, led by Queen Bee Christy Masters (Julia Campbell).

You see, they weren't exactly the coolest kids in school.

Based on a play by Robin Schiff, the film has an incredibly simple storyline that allows for the humor to grow naturally out of the interactions between Romy and Michele as well as those between them and the world. There is no high stakes conflict whatsoever. Sure there are quite a few wrenches thrown into their plan and Romy and Michele briefly split up during a fight, but the movie has no intentions of ever truly allowing harm to befall these poor girls.

The tradeoff here is that the comedy is constantly bubbling over the edges of the film as Romy and Michele's quip their way through increasingly absurd scenarios as they struggle to maintain the image they have created for themselves accompanied with a layer of classic 80's pop tunes as thick as the 16-pound heels they wear to the gym.

The soundtrack is superb (opening with No Doubt's Just A Girl and never slowing down as it blows past one hit after another), the supporting cast is unrealistically terrific (standouts are Alan Cumming as lovesick nerd turned billionaire, Jeanane Garofalo as a surly outsider, and Camryn Manheim as a living caricature of the abstract concept of School Spirit), and the humor escalates way too far to be contained within a fragile human body. The absurdity and hilarity increase one's internal pressure to such a degree that it can only be released with explosive guffaws.

This isn't even the funniest image in the film. I KNOW.

In addition to being just darn laugh out loud enjoyable (with a grand finale that comes out of nowhere like a sledgehammer to your funny bone - I shan't spoil it here), Romy and Michele tackles a variety of topics relevant to high school graduates everywhere. The two friends struggle through boyfriends, job hunts, dieting, and trying to outlive high school trauma.

These topics are funny and lighthearted, but there's also an undercurrent of deep feeling and meaning beneath the entire storyline, probably left over from the script's days as a play. The medium of film is certainly capable of subtle thematic resonance, but it's not exactly a touchstone of the Hollywood comedy, so it's just another reason that Romy and Michele rises above the rest.

Tucked within all the fun and high school intrigue is a sober look at the state of society and the facades put up to impress others. You see, Romy and Michele aren't the only ones carrying a lie to their high school reunion. People use the trappings of class - wedding rings, salaries, and nice cars - to disguise the fact that their lives are just as much a shambles as the two losers they seek to mock.

Romy and Michele's High School Reunion is all about the hazards of judging oneself by other people's standards rather than your own, something that nearly drives the two friends apart throughout the course of the film. And above all it is about the importance of female friendship, a topic that even 17 years later is shockingly rare in popular comedies.

Studios should learn that some people would always rather watch Lisa and Mira look through their yearbook than see Ryan Reynolds piece his way through yet another cardboard romcom.

The film and its deeper themes are entirely reliant on the chemistry between its title characters, something Kudrow and Sorvino provide in spades. Kudrow's performance can't quite separate itself from the bundle of quirks that is Phoebe Buffay, but her masterful physicality can incite laughter with a single twitch of the lip. And Sorvino wows as the deadpan Romy, using an affectation that's nigh on impossible to place.

It's somewhere in the neighborhood of Valley Girl. Or at least it's on the same paper route. But it has a magically strange quality utterly perfect for the character, someone who has never really found a place for herself in the world as it stands.

This film is so dead perfect (in the goofiest register possible; it isn't exactly a triumph of visual cinema) that I only have one single complaint to lodge against it - an dream sequence is extended far too long. Other than that, nothing. Watch this movie. Goodness knows not enough people have.

TL;DR: Romy and Michele's High School Reunion is a touchstone of the 90's - a lighthearted and deliriously goofy comedy about the value of female friendship.

Rating: 10/10

Word Count: 1020

My Friend Phoebe

Everybody remembers the classic song "Smelly Cat," but the other songs of the illustrious Phoebe Buffay never get as much ink as they deserve! Enter Brennan

The Top Ten Phoebe Songs

#10 "Best Day Ever / Don't Take No For An Answer"

Episode: "The Last One" (S10:E17)

In the final episode, many of the series' running gags came back to play, first and foremost Phoebe's songwriting. In this episode she attempts to create a musical out of Ross and Rachel's life but keeps getting interrupted whenever she really gets into it. It's a disappointment for her and for us because I have a feeling these songs in full could have been a ton of fun.

#9 "Argentina"

Episode: "The One with Rachel's Dream" (S9:E19)

Although Phoebe would be the ideal entertainment for any party I was hosting, Monica doesn't seem to appreciate it when she performs for the long line outside of her five star restaurant. Goodness knows why when they can take in this lilting melody about the black market for human organs.

#8 "Shower Song"

Episode: "The One with the Baby on the Bus" (S2:E6)

Although Phoebe's guitar playing had been a facet of the show since episode one, it wasn't until this episode, featuring Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders that it was brought to the forefront. The main story of this episode is Phoebe getting kicked out of her performance time slot in favor of a professional singer despite providing Central Perk with such essential melodies as this song, which she wrote in the shower.

#7 "Babies"

Episode: "The One with the Birth" (S1:E23)

First off, I'm sorry for the unforgivably crappy video. I have not yet achieved a high enough Thetan level to be able to find stellar quality clips of everything I desire. But this song designed to help comfort Ross during his ex-wife's birthing process is totally worth the one or two pixels used to display it.

#6 "Holiday Song"

Episode: "The One with the Girl From Poughkeepsie" (S4:E10)

Have you ever tried to write a poem about your girlfriend or boyfriend? Has their name ever been something like Morticia or Oliver? Then you know Phoebe's struggle when she tries to write a holiday song about all of her friends but gets caught up on finding a rhyme with "Chandler." The final product is absolute magic.

#5 "Two of Them Kissed Last Night"

Episode: "The One with the List" (S2:E8)

Phoebe's songs are rarely major plot points, but she really got her chance to shine in Season Two. This one is all about Ross' illicit smooch with Rachel during his relationship with Julie. Only it's expertly coded by Phoebe so that nobody would ever be able to uncover its true meaning. One of the most hilarious moments of the season that put Friends on the map to supernova stardom.

#4 "Snowman"

Episode: "The One with the Monkey" (S1:E10)

Once the period where the writers were still solidifying the characters was over, the show allowed for such hilarious moments as this cheerful holiday song about her mother's suicide. Thank you, writers!

#3 "The Woman Smelled Like Garbage"

Episode: "The One with Rachel's Dream" (S9:E19)

Another song from Phoebe's performance outside of Monica's restaurant! This is one of my absolute favorites because of the juxtaposition of her society lady outfit with her vigorously uncouth songwriting material.

#2 "Another Thing That You Don't Wanna Do"

Episode: "The One After the Super Bowl" (S2:E12)

As Tommy Wiseau says, love is blind. I suppose love is deaf as well because one of Phoebe's many boyfriends allowed her to sing this song to children at his library. Not that I mind, but maybe next time he should hire with his brain and not with his... swimsuit appendage.

#1 "Smelly Cat"

Episode: "The One with the Baby On the Bus" (S2:E6)

OK, maybe I sold out. But this song is classic for a reason! Check out the high quality music video Phoebe had put together by a potential record label!
Word Count: 678

I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends

In the deluge of Friends related articles posted all over the internet yesterday, one of my favorites was this interactive post about which friends shared the most scenes together. Check it out!

As you can probably easily guess, Friends is very important to me. Unfortunately the show was born the same year I was, so I was far too young to watch it during its first run, but I had an equally influential experience with it. The summer before my freshman year of high school, I watched the DVD my parents had of season one on a whim.

I fell in love and with each successive allowance payment (Remember allowance? I miss it), I bought the next season, watching every episode in order on my tiny portable DVD player lying on the floor of my bedroom and loving every minute of it. That summer I watched every single one of the show's 236 episodes. I continued to watch the show every morning while I ate breakfast for a period of about three and a half years. So although I missed out on the first run, I did get the experience of viewing them all in order and a lifetime's worth of reruns, so I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything.

And all of this makes me the utmost authority on describing...

The Top Ten Friends Seasons

#10 Season Nine

Started: September 26, 2002

Ended: May 15, 2003

Highlight Episodes: "The One in Barbados," "The One with the Soap Opera Party," "The One with Phoebe's Birthday Dinner"

Although Season Nine had its fair share of comedic moments (the final episode in Barbados especially), it was bogged down with a bit too much plot. The series was drawing to a close at this point, so the show runners needed to stir the pot to provide momentum for the grand finale. Phoebe met, dated, and broke up with Mike, Rachel fell in love with Joey, and Ross started dating a beautiful paleontologist. Although it was all entertaining enough, each of the plots was clearly setting up for something much bigger so it was more anticipatory than actually telling a story.

#9 Season One

Started: September 22, 1994

Ended: May 18, 1995

Highlight Episodes: "The One with George Stephanopolous," "The One with the Dozen Lasagnas," "The Pilot"

Although Season One is responsible for making the world fall in love with Chandler, Monica, Phoebe, Joey, Ross, and Rachel, like many TV sitcoms, it was still finding its feet at first. Although the clever writing was still there, the show didn't find many of its best gags and relationships until it had time to fully develop the characters and their plot lines. And this is the season where Ross gets a monkey, and I haven't met a single person who was pleased with that development.

#8 Season Seven

Started: October 12, 2000

Ended: May 17, 2001

Highlight Episodes: "The One with Chandler's Dad," "The One with All the Cheesecakes," "The One Where They're Up All Night"

Season Seven was still coasting on the high of the Friends Golden Age, which would end somewhere around Season Eight. Although the show would consistently put out a slate of stellar episodes and was by all accounts a massive success, the ratings wouldn't ever really be the same. This season might be slightly responsible for that because, for all its slickness and humor, it feels like more of the same before all the weirdness of the later seasons came in to spice things up again.

#7 Season Two

Started: September 21, 1995

Ended: May 16, 1996

Highlight Episodes: "The One with the Lesbian Wedding," "The One with the Baby On the Bus," "The One with the Prom Video"

Looking back on the show as a whole, Season Two is great but it almost feels like a different show. The cast was still settling into their roles somewhat and the design and writing were still a little stuck in the 90's. But this is the season in that cemented in the show as a major hit despite the atrocities committed by Courteney Cox's bangs.

#6 Season Ten

Started: September 25, 2003

Ended: May 6, 2004

Highlight Episodes: "The One Where Joey Speaks French," "The One with Princess Consuela," "The One Where Ross is Fine"

Season Ten was plagued with wacky scheduling and budgetary constraints and was truncated by about six episodes, but the writing team pulled together to send out the beloved show with a tremendous hurrah, resulting in some of the funniest half hours of television of the decade, although things at this point were a little too polished and modern to have the supernova charm that the show maintained throughout the late 90's.

#5 Season Eight

Started: September 27, 2001

Ended: May 16, 2002

Highlight Episodes: "The One Where Chandler Takes a Bath," "The One with the Secret Closet,"The One Where Joey Dates Rachel"

Perhaps this one is a more personal choice, but I adored Season Eight. The writers found themselves breaking out of their rut and starting playing more with the characters, pushing them every which way to see what they could do. Although Rachel's pregnancy was an odd journey, the antics of the Friends around her were enjoyable as ever.

#4 Season Five

Started: September 24, 1998

Ended: May 20, 1999

Highlight Episodes: "The One with All the Thanksgivings," "The One Where Everybody Finds Out," "The One in Vegas"

Season Five was Friends at its serialistic best. At this point, it was more than a mere sitcom. The show was allowed to have continuing story lines across episodes because who the hell wasn't watching Friends in 1998? Some of the series' most enduring comedy comes from Chandler and Monica's interactions with their Friends as they try to keep their blossoming a relationship a secret. This was the season that introduced the series' most stable intra-Friend relationship, providing a hilarious counterpoint to the ever-rocky ground that Ross and Rachel found themselves on.

#3 Season Four

Started: September 25, 1997

Ended: May 7, 1998

Highlight Episodes: "The One with the Embryos," "The One with the Jellyfish," "The One with Chandler in a Box"

Handcuffs! Thanksgiving! Free porn! Season Four had it all and, in fact, includes my very favorite episode of the entire series. Although not much plot of import happened in the long run, this season had a series of hilarious episodes that would become eventual classics.

#2 Season Six

Started: September 23, 1999

Ended: May 18, 2000

Highlight Episodes: "The One Where Ross Got High," "The One That Could Have Been," "The One Where Phoebe Runs"

The Season Six writers were on their game, providing creative avenues for the Friends' misadventures including the utterly genius alternate timeline of "The One That Could Have Been." This season cemented in the relationship of Chandler and Monica, who had surprisingly become the center of the show's romantic tension. Their heartwarming engagement in the finale kept fans on their toes and laughing.

#1 Season Three

Started: September 19, 1996

Ended: May 15, 1997

Highlight Episodes: "The One at the Beach," "The One with the Flashback," "The One Where No One's Ready"

Season Three was where the show really hit its stride as the zeitgeist hit of the decade. This season depicted the most Ross and Rachel action across the entire series and introduced mountains of callback jokes and beloved recurring characters. 30% of my top 10 episodes came from this season alone and the series was still fresh enough for every next show to feel new and exciting. This season is responsible for the success of the entire series and the reason we all remember it even an entire decade later. Thank you, Season Three.

Word Count: 1287