Jun 15, 2018
I feel that, after the week that has just transpired, this was probably the movie I needed to watch when all along. I ended up picking two movies that, really, didn't end up doing much for me. One was a horror-comedy in Idle Hands and the other was an action-horror in the "last" Resident Evil movie. I watched these two mostly because I had a week-free trial to Starz on Amazon Prime. Yes, you can get an additional streaming service to your streaming service. Though, to be fair, you can choose to subscribe to just the channel you want (there's a lot of them) from HBO, Starz, Showtime, Cinemax without having to be subscribed to Prime. Can you imagine having to pay $8.99 for HBO, as an example, while paying $12.99 for Prime. If I was rich, I'd probably subscribe to all the channels I want, but I'm not, so I don't. Always better to have more options available to you. Regardless, I needed something resembling a straight up comedy more than I needed the last two movies. Perhaps that's why, and maybe I'm just in a forgiving mood given everything that's happened, I found this to be a perfectly decent little movie. If you thought I was gonna say that this was good, then you would have been wrong. Even with the reviews being as...middling as they were, prior to me watching it, I was interested in watching this. Kate McKinnon is a national treasure, I kinda have a crush on Zoe Kravitz, Jillian Bell is great comedic actress, Scarlett Johansson is pretty damn underrated at comedy as well and Ilana Glazer who, honestly, I know very little about outside of the fact that she co-created Broad City, but I liked her in this movie as well. So, honestly, I was with the movie when I saw the cast. Of course, however, you can't just cast these women in your movie and give them nothing to do. As talented as these women were, I don't think any of them can be called miracle workers in that they can work without a script and have it be an entertaining movie. I don't know, the movie touches on something real, even if it's an outplayed concept, of friends growing apart after high-school/college. Alice (Jillian) plans out this bachelorette weekend for her best Jess, who's running for senate but can't seem to connect with people. This bachelorette weekend includes 2 of Jess and Alice's friends from college, Blair and Frankie (who used to be an item). Jess surprises the girls by bringing in Pippa, a friend she made when she spent a semester in Australia. Alice, immediately, starts treating Pippa like shit. Essentially, Alice is jealous that Jess has made a friend outside of their own little group and how Jess seems to be closer and more at ease with Pippa than herself. Of course, the movie's not just about the dynamic of this new person coming in into an established group of friends. It's about everything during this bachelorette weekend going absolutely wrong. Alice accidentally kills a person they believe to be a stripper by slamming his head into the edge of the fireplace when she jumps on him while he's sitting in a chair. Turns out this guy isn't a real stripper, but he's part of this crew, whom he proceeded to betray, that robbed some diamonds. Reason he came to the house was to stash the diamonds to retrieve later. Anyway, this happens much later in the film. Essentially, a big chunk of the movie deals with the women trying to find ways to dispose of the body. Each and every one of these attempts fails and they have to regroup and attempt some other thing. I think this is one of the biggest problems in the film, while this is all set-up for the women to do crazy shit with the body, it just gets a little repetitive after a while. Not that there's anything wrong with it, but you kinda want them to just move on after a while. There's certainly a few laughs here, to be sure, but it was the law of diminishing returns. It's basically the same joke over and over again with slight changes. The punchline is always the same and the situation starts over again when their plans fail. It is what it is, but it's a clear flaw. Jess' fiance also figures into the equation as, after the murder of the 'stripper', Peter calls and Frankie slams her phone on the floor causing Jess to say no. Prior to this, Peter had asked Jess if she really wanted to get married. So Peter journeys to his woman in Florida or wherever. Peter's journey, honestly, is nothing more than filler. Seeing Peter's side of the movie, in my opinion, ruins what could have been a good surprise at the end, when he drives through the front door of the house to kill one of the guys that were looking for the diamonds. He has a diaper on, he's methed out of his mind, has been drinking Red Bull all night to be able to stay up. And, in my opinion, seeing a quick flashback of that would have made for a funnier moment. Maybe that's just me. Another issue I had is that this is a wildly inconsistent movie. There's nothing wrong with this movie, but there was potential here, with the casting, and a better script, to make this into an enjoyable, if not particularly memorable, movie. I guess you could say that I enjoyed my time watching this, but that's mostly because of how terrible I've felt since early Sunday morning. I was just about to say that I'd have probably enjoyed Grown Ups 2. But, let's be honest, Grown Ups 2 would only make me feel worse. Let's take a step back admire how bad Grown Ups 2 was. That's neither here nor there. I don't know if it's just me, but ever since what happened on Sunday happened, I feel as if my reviews have not been the same. I find myself struggling to think about what I saw and how to put it into words. My reviews have always sucked, let's be honest, but I feel they've been worse since Sunday. I don't know, maybe it's just me. Regardless, I don't really know what else to say about this. There was obviously potential with this movie and there's definitely some funny moments here, even if I've already forgotten them, but I just think its attempts at broad humor aren't always the most consistent. Some repetitive jokes also end up hampering the experience. The cast is great, I can't complain about that, in the slightest, but everything else, eh, not so much. Can't exactly recommend it, but it fulfilled the purpose that I wanted it to. I just wanted to not think about stuff for a little bit and, while not a good movie, it certainly helped me do that. This is the very definition of a mixed bag.
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