Freshman Orientation

Year: 2016

Director: Richard Linklater

Cast: Blake Jenner, Tyler Hoechlin, Ryan Guzman 

Run Time: 1 hour 57 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

I dug Boyhood, my first foray into the Oscarbait half of Richard Linklater’s filmography. So I was excited to check out Everybody Wants Some!!, his entry into the college movie subgenre, a personal favorite of mine. It also didn’t hurt that it featured two actors I like, one for unrecognized talent reasons (Glenn Powell, whose Scream Queens performance I determined the best of 2015) and one for… personal reasons (Ryan Guzman of The Boy Next Door). Boyhood was a slice of life narrative that said what it had to say, albeit in a very relaxed manner, so I was intrigued to see how he could follow it. Turns out, he did the exact same thing, only way more scatterbrained and self-indulgent.

Though I can’t complain about certain indulgences…

Everybody Wants Some!! details the weekend before class starts at a Texas college in 1980. We follow a baseball team living in an off-campus house, mostly via the entry point of freshman Jake (Blake Jenner), who strikes up a tentative flirtation with theater girl Beverly (Zoey Deutch). The boys that pack this film include McReynolds (Tyler Hoechlin), a sore-losing alpha jock; Willoughby (Wyatt Russell), a laid-back stoner; and Finnegan (Glenn Powell), a fast talking  know-it-all whose faux-intellectual bravura just barely obscures his crippling self doubt. The rest of them blend together in a miasma of sun-baked testosterone. So… that’s pretty much it.

If you’re coming to a Linklater flick looking for plot, just watch School of Rock again.

Richard Linklater loves his cultural signifiers. In Boyhood, pop music and developing technology form a rich tapestry of time over which he presents his story. In Everybody Wants Some!!, he wants to remind everyone that the music scene was so very cool in 1980, wasn’t it? It’s more mix tape than movie, and the prioritization of capturing the look and feel of the period causes the rest of the story to suffer.

The truly frustrating thing about this is that so much of Everybody Wants Some!! is so good. Or at least, it has so much raw potential. The act of looking back on the movie is far more pleasurable than actually sitting through it, because it encompasses a lot of important themes about life, youth, and identity.

And weirdly, not baseball. Like, at all.

As the boys head out each night to different bars and parties trying to get some (which, as rumor has it, they all want), they view themselves as the most desirable men in the world. They play baseball. They have a future. An exciting one, not like all those future office drones around them. Only Finnegan seems aware of the bitter truth that college baseball won’t last forever. And their habit of constantly dressing up to fit the requirements of whatever bar they’re visiting that night (cowboy hats and boots for swing dancing, leather and studs for a punk club) prove that they’re just blank slates with no personality of their own. Of course, Linklater has Jake point this out in a hideously clanging piece of dialogue that smashes the subtlety to smithereens, because he really doesn’t seem to care all that much about his story.

Given this lackadaisical attitude toward the storytelling, it becomes more and more difficult to actually give a crap about the characters. If the director isn’t doing it, then why should I? Look back at my plot summary for this film. I described exactly three boys, because those are the only ones I could remember from this cast of over a dozen. I wish I could pretend Finnegan was the protagonist because Glenn Powell is the best performer and has his hands on the most interesting material, but no. We have Jake, the blandest cypher this side of a Tobey McGuire movie, and most of the cast gamely plays the wallpaper behind him.

I’ve never been this disinterested in a movie full of shirtless men.

Everybody Wants Some!! is best described as a hang-out movie, but there’s nobody here I would remotely even consider being friends with. They’re just a gaggle of hormone-addled über-morons who are nipping like chihuahuas at the heels of life. If you’re a white, heterosexual male between the ages of 25 and 45, this movie might just speak to you, but let’s be honest. Do we really need any more of these?

A word that a film reviewer should always be cautious about throwing around is “boring,” but I must honor my truth. I was bored to tears by the hedonistic antics of this motley crew, as much as I desperately wanted to be on their side. They’re unpleasant and occasionally engaging, but they’re mostly just dull as watching paint grow. I don’t need two hours with these people. I’d rather spend my time listening to the soundtrack in a dark room. And I don’t even like The Knack all that much.

TL;DR: Everybody Wants Some!! has some solid potential, but it's too dull and meandering to make it work.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 853

Glamour And Glitter, Fashion And Fame

Year: 2015

Director: Jon M. Chu

Cast: Aubrey Peeples, Stefanie Scott, Juliette Lewis

Run Time: 1 hour 58 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

As is so often necessary in this modern Hollywood epoch of renewing and rebooting old properties, I must lead with a disclaimer. I have never seen the popular 80’s cartoon series Jem, from which the film Jem and the Holograms is loosely adapted. From what I’ve heard, hardcore fans of the show would have been better off pretending they’ve never seen it either if they wanted to avoid a deadly clot of frustration. Although, all things considered, the statistical likelihood that anybody reading this has actually watched the film is extremely low.

You see, Jem and the Holograms is now the record holder for worst wide release opening weekend of 2015, the fourth worst of all time (it’s only behind Delgo, The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure, and the genuinely embarrassing Saw 10th anniversary re-release). It made back approximately half its production budget and was pulled from cinemas after just two mortifying weeks. And even if you’re someone who wanted to see it (a demographic of pretty much just me), you couldn’t. It took me five different Redbox excursions to actually find the disc, and the exuberantly misinformed idea to price the retail DVD at $20+ could be the subject of the next Michael Lewis book. This kind of high profile disaster is music to my bad movie-loving ears, so of course I had to give it a look. Here’s my field report.

After procuring a pink wig and covering my natural scent by rolling in a pile of glitter, the Holograms are finally beginning to accept me as one of their own.

In Jem and the Holograms, Jerrica Benton (Aubrey Peeples) is your average teen girl from the “least likely” place ever: The Valley. After her father passed away, she and her sister Kimber (Stefanie Scott) moved in with their Aunt Bailey (Molly Ringwald for some reason) and became a part of her Polly Pocket Dream house family. Bailey owns a costume shop (because nobody in this universe is, like, a dentist or something), and her foster daughters Shana (Aurora Perrineau) and Aja (Hayley Kiyoko) are a fashionista and a gearhead respectively. Nobody seems to be interested in Netflix or videogames or have homework to do.

Yadda yadda yadda, Molly Ringwald is about to get evicted because the costume shop business ain’t what it used to be. But! After Jerrica puts on a wig and makeup and performs a song as Jem, which gets uploaded to YouTube, she becomes a viral sensation. Because if movies are to be believed, literally anything uploaded to the Internet will spread like wildfire, something this blog provides evidence against. She is being courted by record executive Erica Raymond (Juliette Lewis), and the money she’s offering could pay their bills! Jem insists that her sisters come along to be her band, and thus begins a month-long rocket to superstardom. The buzz from the original acoustic video is so huge that they already have a national fanbase based on that one song. Naturally, nothing they play is ever acoustic ever again.

But! Erica wants Jem to be a solo artist for some ill-defined reason. Will this cause a rift between her and her sisters? Will her secret Jem identity consume her soul? Will she ever get to make out with Erica’s super hot son Rio (Ryan Guzman), with whom she has so little chemistry that their atoms seem to actively repel one another? Also! Her dead dad left behind a robot called Synergy, which is leading her on an epic musical scavenger hunt across LA to learn about herself and her values or some crap.

Yeah, that sci-fi element sure worked its way into the story organically. What a triumph of naturalistic storytelling!

The truly weird thing about Jem and the Holograms is that it’s still manifestly a Blumhouse picture. Along with cherry-picking the rhythm of Whiplash and the teen savvy of Unfriended, with some occasional dips into the scavenged source material of Paranormal Activity, it also features some prominent new cast members from the Blumhouse stable: The Boy Next Door’s Ryan Guzman and Insidious: Chapter 3’s Stefanie Scott and Hayley Kiyoko. Plus, the entire film – a relatively massive budget for them – takes place on about six sets, spending at least an entire half hour in just a single suburban house. It’s an extremely odd effect, like watching a Disney Channel Original Movie being strangled before your eyes.

The whole film exists in this perpetual limbo, trapped between the extravagant glitzy lunacy it strives for and the low key realism it can afford. Normally I would watch a movie with an over-the-top teen angst girlgroup boilerplate plot that gets frequently derailed by an inexplicable subplot and abruptly swerves into a heist movie for a couple scenes in the third act and call it a fever dream masterpiece. However, the camp quality is cut off at the knees by the too-serious production, at least until the robot hums to life and overloads the system, sending the movie into its bizarre plot seizures.

You see, no matter how tempered the actual content frequently finds itself, the way it is presented is patently deranged. A solid years worth of story is compressed into less than a month, so any time a character mentions “that day by the pier” (yesterday) or “all this time” (one week), it’s an inexhaustible well of unintentional comedy. Drama arises offscreen and gets resolved instantly, sometimes within seconds, plot device explode into the frame without even considering being set up, and shots from the perspective of a security camera constantly undermine every last ounce of tension.

Also, dad apparently forgot that Kimber existed when setting up his Jigsaw-esque scavenger hunt.

Do you see the bind I find myself in? Jem is mostly not a good movie. Aubrey Peeples is a kind of non-presence, delivering a voiceover narration as devoid of nuance or emotion as a concrete brick, and the other girls are spunky but only vaguely etched out (and Aurora Perrineau might as well be an extra for all the focus she’s given), so there’s really nothing concrete in the A-plot to grab onto. However, a much livelier piece of bubblegum trash is constantly oozing out around the edges.

This movie is jam-packed (or should I say Jem-packed? No. I shouldn’t.) with microscopic appearances from actors I really adore (including Party Down’s Ryan Hansen, looking like an actual adult – a handsome adult), hilariously vacant and catchy pop music masquerading as True Art with a Message, and messily overstaged musical performances that only perpendicularly intersect with reality. And did I mention there’s a dress-up montage with people nodding or shaking their head to outfits, presented completely unironically? All while they’re supposed to be at a location across LA in 20 minutes? It’s magical. 

All this is ruled over by Juliette Lewis vamping her bones out of their sockets. She acts like she’s actually in the Jem cartoon, sashaying through every set with the hyperbolic malice of an evil queen, even before she is revealed in any way to be an antagonist. Shes utterly captivating any second she’s onscreen, and if every element of the film were keyed up to her level, Jem would be an instant cult classic.

As it stands, Jem and the Holograms is a generic, vaguely manic shell of a pop musical, scraped clean of meaning. Juliette Lewis and a shirtless Ryan Guzman edge it just enough over the line to recommend it, but it’s a movie you catch on TV, not one that you own. However, it must be said that it’s certainly not worse than most of the crap that gets foisted on the viewing audience on a weekly basis. Hell, it’s a whole lot better than Sinister 2. It didn’t deserve its box office whipping, but hopefully its martyrdom will help it find the right home on DVD. As soon as it ends up in dollar bins. That home is not with me, but it so could have been with just one or two adjustments.

TL;DR: Jem and the Holograms isn't the campy thrill ride it could have been, but it's fun enough in its ludicrous messiness.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1386

The Wrath Of Achilles

For our Scream 101 episode about this film, click here.

Year: 2015

Director: Rob Cohen

Cast: Jennifer Lopez, Kristin Chenoweth, Ryan Guzman

Run Time: 1 hour 31 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

What makes a movie good? Production values? Performances? Layered subtext about the Irish potato famine? These questions get infinitely more complex when you dive into the world of genre films. Many of you may have noticed my adjusted scale slasher movies, which is the only possible explanation for Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter and Gravity getting the same score. So how do I come to these impossible conclusions?

The new J-Lo thriller The Boy Next Door is an excellent illustration of the process. This little cheese puff has over-baked performances, dialogue so wooden you could kill a vampire with it, and a thoroughly trashy sensibility. But the film is so sincerely, effortfully committed to producing a perfectly disposable morsel of popcorn movie magic that it's beyond reproach for being exactly that. Its goals are far from lofty, but it accomplishes them with aplomb.

It's not quite clever enough to earn itself a truly reputable score even on my scale, but The Boy Next Door captures the spirit of the Dance. Sure, every plot beat is predictable from the opening credits. But the pleasure of the film comes from enacting that exact generic formula in a way that's just different enough to be exciting. Sometimes an audience just wants to sit back, turn off their brains, and have a good time, which this film faithfully delivers. 

Also included on the delivery list: perfect sideburns.

The plot, insofar as it matters, goes as follows: high school teacher Claire Peterson (Jennifer Lopez) is unhappily married to a cheating husband (John Corbett of United States of Tara), who she can't quite bring herself to separate from. When her son Kevin (Ian Nelson) befriends the hunky next door neighbor Noah (Ryan Guzman), she finds herself irresistibly attracted to him although he's a student in her class.

Don't worry, he's "20". We wouldn't want this to be too illegal and/or un-hunky.

After a disastrous double date with her BFF/vice principal Vicky (Kristin Chenoweth), the vulnerable Claire gives in to temptation and hops onto Noah's ark. After a steamy, unforgettable night, Noah becomes obsessive, attempting to seduce, menace, and blackmail Claire into running away with him. His violent temper soon threatens to destroy everything she holds dear.

Between several surprisingly high tension action sequences held together by a wing, a prayer, and a handheld camera (possibly operated by a bungee jumper) lies howlingly trite dialogue like "I'm not following you... I live next door." A bully who looks like Ed Sheeran attempts to sound threatening while name dropping Wizards of Waverly Place. There is equal screentime allotted to thematic throughlines wrangled around both Homer's The Iliad and a plate of cookies. So, North by Northwest this ain't. 

The power of The Boy Next Door lies in the fact that it throws caution to the wind to embrace its pedigree. Nothing in this film is meant to be taken seriously on any level other than unadulterated fun. It might not be quite as exhilarating as it wants to be, laboring as it does under a first act in which the plot is a little more lethargic and Lopez acts like she's a Barbie that has just been brought to life via a gypsy curse. However as the plot picks up and the actress shakes off the slick MTV fairy dust, the film really comes into its own as a pitch perfect disasterpiece.

That dude sure loves belly buttons. He kneeled all the way down there just to- oh.

While The Boy Next Door is a generic, glossy thriller at best, it has some remarkable idiosyncrasies that help it rise to the top of the heap. First, coming as it does from Blumhouse Productions, the film abruptly veers toward gory psycho horror in the final act, even including an honest-to-goodness Spring-Loaded Cat scare. Of course, this also means that Claire makes her share of bad horror movie decisions, which only ramps up the audience investment in the implacable formula of the film. Sometimes you just gotta yell at that lazy-ass character who forgets to double tap - it's human nature.

In addition to this surprising turn of events, The Boy Next Door is almost shockingly shot from a female perspective. Although the director is a man, the writer and star are both women, and the film's content is a magnetic reversal of common genre tropes, objectifying its male antagonist into oblivion. That's right, Ryan Guzman gets the full Bond Girl deluxe treatment. The camera lingers on his taut, muscular flesh, barely hidden beneath thin, exposing layers of fabric. You can almost see the sweat beading on the camera lens. 

This is not a screengrab from the movie, but it ain't too far from the truth.

And I won't get too into this because it's not like the movie has any similar inclinations, but the entire driving plot is centered around the idea of male entitlement gone wrong. Every problem in the film is caused by either a cheating husband or a petulant, greedy boy. It's important to note that it is not Claire's sexual transgression that brings the hammer down upon her and her family, but rather Noah's mind having been poisoned by unrealistic expectations. It's fascinating, to say the least.

And there's even another cherry on top of all of that. Although the thriller elements of the plot feel like they are pitched squarely toward the relatively wholesome teen audience, this film has an R-rating for a reason. It could never in a million years be considered a hard R, but the film sets low expectations for itself and exceeds them with gusto. Claire and Noah's night together is about as explicit as a film can get without actually showing nipples. I definitely saw fingers going places that would not be permitted in a PG-13. Let's just say that whatever drama Claire went through afterwards might actually have been worth it. It's a steamy, steamy scene and an utter shock to the system in this bland slate of January programming we've been getting in 2015.

Also there's cursing and gore, so I feel right at home.

All that's missing is a chainsaw and a scene at a drive-in.

OK, some quick thoughts before we wrap up. First, Kristin Chenoweth is the clear standout, providing a generic Sassy Best Friend role with some real fire and panache. Second, modern technology is integrated more successfully than ever here, including a scene that somehow turns deleting files into an action-packed extravaganza. You know how much I love my tech not uncomfortably shoved into the narrative (*cough cough* The Fault in Our Stars).

All in all, The Boy Next Door is shameless fun, recommended to anyone who doesn't want to think to hard but still feel like they got their money's worth of soap bubble entertainment. Hollywood hasn't made an idiotic film this airy in a long time, so please don't just write it off. Respect the genre. Enjoy yourself.

TL;DR: The Boy Next Door is pulpy trash, but who says that has to be a bad thing?

Rating: 7/10

Should I Spend Money On This? As long as you know what you're in for, I'd give a resounding yes.

Word Count: 1223