Tag: Romantic Comedy

Fly Me To The Moon (2024) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: NASA is struggling to make people give a shit about them, so they hire a marketing expert.

I remember as a stupid teen not being entirely sure of what a “director” did. “All they do is point the camera and film it”, which may have had something to do with me discovering Kevin Smith movies. I’m older (definitely) and wiser (debatable) now, so I know better. It’s with that knowledge I can say that Greg Berlanti was the wrong choice to direct Fly Me To The Moon (FMTTM, pronounced Fem-toe-Tom). He’s not a bad director, he’s actually really good and it would be foolish to suggest otherwise. But it doesn’t matter how good someone is, sometimes it’s just not a good fit. It doesn’t matter how talented a guitarist Jimi Hendrix was, I wouldn’t hire him to remodel my back garden (partly because he’s dead). And just because Berlanti is a good director, doesn’t mean he was the right choice for this. It’s obvious why he was chosen, he has a background in romantic comedies so knows how to craft them to make them believable (the “meet-cute” between the two leads in this is brilliantly done, it has to be said), but he directs very slowly; shots linger, characters stay still, there’s a lot of blank space in the background. Meanwhile, the dialogue is quick and almost Noël Coward-esque. So you have incredibly quick-witted characters stuck in a directorial style that doesn’t really suit them.

I was somewhat disappointed by how FMTTM wastes its satirical possibilities. It says nothing about life or the politics of the time. A large portion of the runtime is focused on the “making a fake moon landing in case the real one doesn’t work” part. Which is silly. There was a lot of silliness in international politics around that time, especially regarding the moon. Fun fact, at one point the US planned to nuke the moon. That’s not mentioned here, nor are the multiple other mindblowing moments of stupidity that were everywhere at the time. It doesn’t even attempt to lampoon the society and politics of the time. It’s as biting as a gummy bear.

The performances are fine. I will admit this isn’t Channing Tatum’s best work, Scarlett is fantastic though; showcasing her talent with accents. The rest of the cast is fine, and they’re talented enough that this would work as an ensemble piece if they wanted to make it a television show instead so they could focus on the background characters more. The focus is definitely on the two leads, and it works for this genre. They share a definite chemistry, the kind where even when they’re not saying anything it feels like they’re flirting with each other just by being in the same room. That’s difficult to do because Kelly (Scarlett’s character) isn’t the best-written character. Sometimes, she’s supposed to come off as dynamic and forceful but just as incredibly rude and condescending. She’s written like a Bill Murray character, and let’s face it, most of them are annoying pricks when you think about it.

I was a bit mean about Berlanti earlier, but it has to be said that whilst his style doesn’t suit the script, it is slick and stylish as hell. It’s helped by the costume design, but a lot of the reason the film feels like it genuinely takes place in the period it’s set in is down to how Berlanti shot it. A sense of nostalgia permeates every inch of the screen. It could do more with the music. I can only remember two pieces of music from it, one is Fly Me To The Moon being sung by Woody at the end (and you just KNEW they were going to play that), the other is To Love Somebody by the Bee Gees, which is a ducking fantastic piece of music, but isn’t a song that inspires a sense of nostalgia. Put it this way, there’s no way they could sell a soundtrack album to this, which feels like a waste.

In summary; a good film, but you can’t get past the sense of both wasted opportunity, and how “made by committee” the whole thing feels. This is film as product, not as art.

Your Place Or Mine (2023) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: A drunken hook-up leads to a lifelong friendship between Debbie and Peter. Twenty years later, Debbie is a single mother who is overly cautious regarding her son, and Peter is working hard at a New York job making dough but it makes him blue. They both end up crying a lot so they decide to move…….to each other’s houses for a few weeks.

So, a few years ago I transitioned this site from “occasional reviews/musings once a week” to “REVIEW EVERYTHING! (new)” where I mention everything I see at the cinema, as well as notable streaming releases. But therein lies the issue, how do we define a “notable” streaming release? There’s a lot of shit put on Netflix etc, so I need some form of internal quality control before adding it to the to-watch list. This isn’t a policy based on external reviews or budget or stars, it’s almost entirely on “Does this interest me?”. Sometimes what interests me is the plot, sometimes it’s a sequel to a film I loved, and sometimes it’s just because a lot of people have spoken about it and I feel I need to check it out.

Your Place Or Mine (or YPOM, pronounced Yup-pomb) was none of those things, it was led by two performers (Reece Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher) who I feel ambivalent towards, the plot is a generic rom-com, and it’s received bad-to-middling reviews. So why did I watch this? Like all things in life, it’s because of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. That’s one of my favourite sitcoms of all time, and yes a lot of that is down to Rachel Bloom, but it is also down to the co-creator, Aline Brosh McKenna. This is her feature directorial debut, and I was curious as to how it would be.

So, how is it? Well, the fact that I went on that long opening tangent gives a good indication as to whether I loved it or not. I wanted to like it, I really did. Despite my apparent dismissiveness of romantic comedies earlier, I do love a well-written one (my issue with the genre is that a lot of them AREN’T well-written and are just a bucket of cliches).

YPOM is doomed by its concept. The two characters engage in a quick house swap for a short while. It’s a good way to show the differences (and similarities) between the two characters, and provides some decent “fish out of water” moments, as well as allowing them to kind of explore each other’s personalities. But do you what it means we don’t get? The two interacting with each other face-to-face. With the exception of the opening 2 minutes, and the closing 5 or so, they only speak to each other via phone calls or through a third party. A romantic comedy depends on good chemistry between the actors, and this doesn’t allow us to see if they have any. This kind of approach (where you purposely keep them apart so that the audience is waiting for them to meet) can work. It’s the concept of the absolutely SUBLIME television series Love Soup. But it takes a lot of talent from everybody for it to work, it also needs a bit more time than this film gives it. If YPOM was a television series it might have worked, but tackling it one go makes the whole thing slightly unsatisfying. YPOM starts with a split-screen conversation between the two, and I would have LOVED it if THAT was the film. If the whole film was split-screen and we see both characters going through an individual story at the same time, then the closing is the split disappearing and the two appear together. It would have been incredibly difficult to write and perform (both characters would have to spend time “doing nothing” but making it look believable), but it would have been interesting and would have given the film a hook.

I’m not sure it’s helped by the performances, Witherspoon and Kutcher just don’t come off as a natural couple, and their presence together makes it feel weirdly dated. This is not the best work from either of them, with both performances feeling slightly phoned in. Witherspoon, in particular, gives a performance which isn’t bad but is painfully generic and not good enough for someone with the background and career she has.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot to like in this. The way it shoots phone calls is a creative way of showing how in sync the two characters are. The argument at the end taking place while the characters are on two opposing moving walkways provides a lot of creative and fun visuals, plus adds a weird physical dynamic nature to it. There are also moments where it seems to spoof generic romantic comedies, making fun of the tropes and conventions. The best example of this is the ending, where we see the following text:

“they lived happily ever after. Just kidding, marriage is hard, but they had a good life”.

It takes guts to end a romantic comedy like that, and moments like that show the potential this film had if it was let off the leash. But it’s too often trapped in the net of its own conventions.

So in summary, an ambitious attempt, but one that doesn’t quite work.

Long Shot (2019)

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

I think I’m at the point where “new film by Jonathan Levine” will sell me on a movie. 50/50, Warm Bodies, The Night Before, and now this. I mean, it won’t be enough to make me pay full price for a DVD of a film I haven’t seen by him, I mean, he did still make Snatched which was pretty woeful and a waste of Goldie Hawn. This film is entertaining as hell and well worth a watch. Everything works well and flows together in this film, it’s a great example of everybody working well to create something great. The director brings the best out of everybody, Theron and Rogen have great chemistry, the ensemble cast work well together, the soundtrack is fun, and the script is superb.

Actually, I’ll give more about the script here because it really deserves plaudits, yeah the dialogue is a little too “Seth Rogen” at times, but mostly it’s a pleasure to sit through. The comedic set-pieces are hilarious, some of the dialogue is razor sharp, and when it uses the film to state something about the world, it does it in a way that is unsubtle enough for you to notice, but subtle enough that it doesn’t smash you over the head with it. It says a lot about modern news, modern politics, and modern gender. “The woman who stays with the man who has cum in his beard gets more flack than the man with cum in his beard” (I’m paraphrasing I think) is a gross way to make a very pertinent point. That’s what this film is GREAT at, focusing on what modern women have to put up with on a daily basis from a supposedly post-feminist world. A world in which “but women are equal” is said five minutes before “We can’t have a female president, what about when she’s on her period?”. And that is this world btw, make no mistake about it, it definitely is. Female politicians get described in one of two ways: icy and unemotional, or hysterical and emotional. If they show any form of passion they get slated, if they show none they get slated too. Think of how many of the criticism of Hilary Clinton were based ENTIRELY on her gender. Things like that annoy me, because I think Theresa May is an awful person, but it’s not based on gender, it’s based on the fact she seems to hate evidence-based policies and instead focuses on things to gain headlines. This is probably the most satirical film Rogen has been involved in since The Interview, but whereas that was focusing on large-scale politics, this focuses more on day-to-day stuff which effects everybody in modern countries; from the aforementioned gender issues, through to news all coming from one giant conglomerate, it takes a lot of shots, and hits like 81% of them. There are a few which probably won’t date well. Actually, considering a large part of this film is about Theron becoming the first female president, I really hope this film becomes outdated quickly.

This film isn’t perfect at all, it’s a bit too long and formulaic. The length is a definite issue, the opening spends too long setting up the characters so obviously that it doesn’t make them seem real, it only really tells us what we need to know, and doesn’t leave anything unsaid either, as such you feel like these characters don’t really exist outside of this film. Also, you can basically plot out the entire film from the opening. But I suppose that’s not the point with this film, it’s not about where it takes you, it’s about how it takes you there. It’s a bit like a really good cover song, whilst it’s not original, it does something different with what you already know to create something wonderful. So yeah if you get the chance, go see this, and not just because it features this song, which is one of my favourites and genuinely made me slightly squee when I heard it in the film. Also, Andy Serkis is delightfully disgusting in it. It’s also delightfully sweet and lovely, but gross in parts, a bit like having sex with someone who doesn’t wash.