Freakier Friday

Disney has adapted Mary Rodgers' novel Freaky Friday to film four times already. Some might remember the 1976 film with Jodie Foster & Barbara Harris but even more remember the 2003 take with Lindsay Lohan & Jamie Lee Curtis, the latter now has its own sequel. So, what happens in Freakier Friday?

It’s been years since Tess & Anna Coleman (Curtis & Lohan) had their Freaky Friday. These days, Tess is a successful podcaster and author, while Anna is a music producer and single mom to Harper (Julia Butters). Harper and her new classmate, the British Lily Reyes (Sophia Hammons), hate each other. The same can’t be said for Anna and Lily’s dad, Eric (Manny Jacinto); they’re about to marry after six months.

As the future stepsisters dread their lives together, they and the elder Colemans get separate seances with the eccentric Madame Jen (Vanessa Bayer). These seances instigate another Freaky Friday, where Anna switches with Harper, and Tess switches with Lily. As their elders go back to school, the stepsisters navigate the adult world. The girls also scheme to split their parents apart, which involves bringing in Anna’s High-School boyfriend Jake (Chad Michael Murray). Of course, things go wrong until they go right again. That’s pretty much it. 

This sequel only requires a tertiary knowledge of the first film's plot. If you haven't seen the first film, this one will give you enough context to know the returning supporting cast. Besides Jake, we have an antagonistic teacher (Stephen Tobolowsky's Mr. Bates), Anna's stepfather Ryan (Mark Harmon), and Anna's high-school bandmates Maddie & Peg (Christina Vidal Mitchell & Haley Hudson). Pei-Pei (Rosalind Chao), whose mother's (Lucille Soong) magic fortune cookies caused the previous body-swap, only appears during the fateful bachelorette party. But since they're uninvolved with a plot, something they point out, you won't feel lost if you don't recognize them.

Director Nisha Ganatra, who replaces the first film's Mark Waters, works with a script by Jordan Weiss & Elyse Hollander. There's plenty of hilarity as the four leading ladies work out their body-swap situation. It's kind of fortunate that they're kept in pairs following the switch, otherwise it might be way difficult to discern them all. Instead, it's slightly confusing. Anna-as-Harper and Tess-as-Lily goof around when they're not accidentally irritating "their" classmates (long story). Harper-as-Anna & Lily-as-Tess, however, get a pivotal subplot as they lend sympathetic ears to Ella (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), one of Anna's clients. It's quite devastating when the breakup scheme succeeds, but again, it all ends well.

Of course, the four leading ladies' performances sell the body-swapping. As soon as they wake up, each pair feels like the other. I wasn't watching Lohan & Curtis as Anna & Tess; I was watching them as Harper-as-Anna & Lily-as-Tess. The same goes for Anna-as-Harper & Tess-as-Lily. Lohan gets believably silly when Harper-as-Anna tries to impress Jake (who, for his part, doesn't antagonize Eric). Curtis gets some of the best acted moments as Lily-as-Tess comes to terms with her late mom's death and realizes her selfishness. It's believably heartwarming when the "elder" Colemans connect with the "girls." Let's move on before it gets actually confusing.

What else does it have? When the body-swaps happen, everything spins around for a good while. It's quite dizzying, but it's also pretty impressive how seamless it all looks. For all I know, maybe it was done in-camera! Amie Doherty gives us a decent score, but you'll most likely remember the various pop songs on the soundtrack. A few highlights include Better Than the Last One, which is deliberately tasteless in context, and Baby, which is pivotal for Harper & Anna's reconciliation. Finally, we have a pretty likable supporting cast, with Eric & Ella being notable highlights. Particularly, Eric is sympathetic when he breaks up with Anna, while Ella is endearingly bathetic when she sulks over a breakup while dressed as a strawberry (long story?).

A lot of the jokes in Freakier Friday especially tickled the seniors in my audience. You won't need any body-switching to get their perspectives; there's something for everyone in this sequel. There's plenty of hilarity, yes, but there's plenty of resonant themes, too. This will surely join the first film on the watchlists of many a household in no time. You might see why if you check it out now.

BTW, did you know that the original novel had its own sequels? Two of them, A Billion for Boris and Summer Switch, actually have their own obscure film adaptations. Who knows if the third, Freaky Monday, might ever get considered for an adaptation? Are their legal issues involved?

War of the Worlds

 When Orson Welles broadcast his take on HG Wells’s The War of the Worlds in 1938, mass panic followed. If those same audiences were somehow able to watch director Rich Lee’s take, which Universal just released through Amazon Prime, mass confusion would follow instead. It certainly won't fool modern audiences either. Let's see why.

Will Radford (Ice Cube) keeps tabs on everyone for the Department of Homeland Security. As a side-project, he also keeps tabs on his adult kids, Faith (Iman Benson) and David (Henry Hunter Hall). A normal workday is disrupted by a worldwide meteor storm, followed by an alien invasion. As mechanical Tripods blast away, it’s up to Will to get his kids to safety. That’s practically it.

Oh, yeah, everything unfolds from the comfort of Will’s monitor. We see Will look through security cameras, Zoom-conference with family & co-workers, watch choppy footage of the Tripods’ attacks, and even scroll through Amazon in the climax. It’s not the first film to do this, but it’s probably the first of these films based on a famous novel. It’s a fine approach heat-rayed into oblivion by its execution.

First, let me talk about the visual effects. The ultra-storms that precipitate the Tripods’ arrival are appropriately freaky. The visualization of the Tripods, however, pale in comparison to the effects utilized by Byron Haskin and Steven Spielberg for their films’ alien war-machines. The obviously CGI Tripods’ rampages are made worse by city-scenes that barely acknowledge their existence. There's barely any mass panic or destruction, just an average Sunday. When Will hacks into a Tesla for Faith, the video feed shows nothing out of the ordinary. Even the ineptest monster movies have characters who actually believe they're being attacked by something unspeakable. What does this have?

Now, let’s talk about the characters. Will reacts to just about everything, even several fake-out deaths, with mild annoyance. He’s slightly more emotional when the invaders delete his late wife’s Facebook page (more on that later). He gets rather animated when Earth fights back, then zips back to dull disappointment when the invaders counterattack. Meanwhile, Faith, a science major who creates an anti-invader virus, takes a rebar to the leg at one point, and decides taking it out will stop the bleeding. Surprise, it doesn’t, but she survives with plot armor! Most of the other supporting cast, including Clark Gregg as the DHS director, and Eva Longoria as Will’s NASA contact, are not much to write home about.

Midway through the movie, it’s discovered that the invaders eat data! Yes, you and your loved ones’ Facebook pages are just four-course meals, as Will finds out. Their data munching even renders military vehicles and passenger planes useless! It later transpires that they're specifically here for Goliath, a MacGuffin of a Surveillance Program. So, why did they need to open their invasion with their war machines? It sounds more like a job for extraterrestrial subterfuge. The film never bothers to explain how any of this works. 

So, what does work? I'll have to admit that its climax, where Will races to upload the kill virus before bombers blow-up DHS headquarters, is pretty tense. Sure, most of the movie kept me detached from Will's situation, but the climax had me on edge. The sound design, at least, tries to sell us on the impending apocalypse as air raid sirens fill the air. The Tripods' war cry is nice and loud, even if I prefer the mechanized digeridoo which vocalized Spielberg's Tripods. Finally, it's pretty nifty how the film works in both the novel's Tripods and Flying Machines, rather than keep them to one type. It might not make a difference for some, but I find it a good touch.

And finally, should you watch it? Spielberg's film is infinitely more competently made, but it's one of the most harrowing sci-fi films ever made. This film is worth a few good unintended laughs. See it with a few friends and you might get a few good heckles in. It's a quick and easy ninety minutes, which is slightly longer than Haskin's film. But I'm sure you might have better uses of that time. I'll understand if you do.

Weapons

As you may recall, I skipped out on Companion when it opened earlier this year. That film's producer, Zach Cregger, is back already with Weapons, which he wrote, directed, produced and co-composed the moody score with the Holladay Brothers. I didn't skip that one.

One morning, at Maybrook Elementary School, Mrs. Justine Gandy (Julia Garner) walked into her third-grade class, and found only one student, Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher). Hours earlier, at 2:17 am, the rest of the class all ran out into the night. Naturally, most of the adults have questions, and they think the mousy Justine has all the answers. A month later, Principal Marcus Miller (Benedict Wong) places Justine on leave, partially for her own protection. An unseen stalker harasses her at one point, while a creepy clown lady haunts her dreams. She soon turns to alcohol ...

Meanwhile, Archer Graff (Josh Brolin), the father of one of the missing kids, starts sleuthing around. He eventually realizes the kids may have all been running in the same direction. Justine, meanwhile, notices Alex has been acting strangely for a while. It seems Alex knows a lot more than what he's telling the police. It seems that someone, or something, is behind it all. Justine and Archer team-up to get the answers.

The screenplay is divided into six chapters, each with a different main character. Besides the aforementioned, we also get chapters for Paul Morgan (Alden Ehrenreich), a police officer and James (Austin Abrams), an inept burglar. Throughout it all, certain events play out at least twice, while each chapter is usually capped off by an enticing cliffhanger. Each shocking turn sits with you while the mystery unfolds over the course of 128-minutes. It's a fun experience, even if I'm a bit bemused not all aspects were explained by the credits. No, I don't mean some of the supernatural stuff, I mean some of the mundane stuff. But that's just me.

The film also arms itself with a great cast. Justine quickly levels-up in assertiveness to cope with the madness but never loses her audience likability. She tries to check on Alex's well-being, despite rules on decorum, so there's that. Archer, meanwhile, is quite compelling as he manages his grief, even in misdirected ways. I almost thought Brolin would have the best acted scene in the movie, where Archer lets out his insecurities in a nightmare scene. That was before the film brought along its big bad, Gladys (Amy Madigan), who owned every single second of her screentime. Alex, meanwhile, is quite compelling once we realize him as the true hero of the piece.

Did you know that it's also pretty funny? Paul and James's animosity is played up more like a one-sided sitcom rivalry than a serious police procedural. By that, I mean that it's mainly due to Paul's bad luck and ineptitude. It's pretty good comic relief, which is made sillier when James almost becomes the accidental hero. Further levity is provided by Marcus and his husband, Terry's (Clayton Farris) happy home life, until Gladys comes calling. Marcus makes for a reasonable and likable authority figure, which makes his fate rather disturbing. But the film sometimes plays its scares for ridiculousness. It makes it enjoyable, in more ways than one, when Gladys is finally defeated.

What else do we have here? Whether they're being serious or silly, the film's scariest moments are constructed perfectly by editor Joe Murphy. You'll be on edge as Justine is harassed by the stalker, whose identity is all but spelt out a while later. The cinematographer, Larkin Seiple, gives us some wonderfully eerie visuals, the best of which come when he leaves the camera running. These moments are perfectly accentuated by the aforementioned score, as well as a pristine sound design. I must also take time to highlight the makeup team for their hard work in evolving Gladys and devolving her possessed victims. I might have said too much already.

Weapons' spectacular use of selective omission and overall craziness makes it a unique horror film. If anything, Gladys might be one of the best new horror villains ever. I struggled to avoid giving too much away when I wrote this review. So, I'll just leave it to you to see it all for yourself. I was impressed with what I saw, and I think you might be too. 

That's it for now.

The Naked Gun

Have you ever thought about life’s little mysteries?

Who was Jack the Ripper? What’s the meaning of life? Or, one of the newest ones, why does Lt. Frank Drebin Jr., who’s apparently in his thirties, look like 73-year-old Liam Neeson? Have any of them crossed your minds?

Fortunately, I have answers for the last one. The first is that it’s who director Akiva Schaffer and producer Seth MacFarlane cast in their new legacy sequel, The Naked Gun. The second is that it’s funny, the same logic that the Zucker Brothers and Jim Abrahams used throughout their works, including the film’s source show Police Squad.

Anyway, Frank is on the case when a dude turns up dead in an electric car. He thinks it’s suicide, but the dead man’s sister, Beth Davenport (Pamela Anderson), disagrees. A little, actual police work leads Frank to the dead man’s employer, Richard Cane (Danny Huston). Cane, unsurprisingly, is the big bad, whose literally named P.L.O.T. Device makes people needlessly violent. It’s up to Frank to stop Cane from using the device on New Year’s Eve. It’s also up to Frank to, maybe, convince city hall from shutting down Police Squad. Yeah, that’s also a thing.

These filmmakers, much like the ZAZ trio, never waste an opportunity for a joke. Whatever's funny, even a tangent with a killer Frosty the Snowman, is the logic of the day. A take-off on a certain scene in Mission Impossible: Fallout was especially enjoyable. Speaking of Mission Impossible, longtime series composer Lorne Balfe's often serious score is great contrast to the lunacy. Granted, not all of them can be winners (a variation of a certain Austin Powers gag went on too long), but nearly all of them hit. I can't give away too many of them, because, as The Joker once said, "if you have to explain a joke, there is no joke!" You'll have to see them all for yourself.

Of course, Neeson's ridiculous attitude and dead-serious delivery is the film's best joke. To put it one way, it's as if his Frank thinks he's in Taken instead of The Three Stooges. He's hilariously petulant when Chief Davis (CCH Pounder) reprimands him for his cowboy cop ways ("since when do cops have to follow the law?"). Still, that moment is surprisingly profound - even for a minute. I would complain about his tragic backstory being just exposition if the film didn't treat it as a joke. It's an amusing one, by the way. He has great chemistry with Anderson, who makes for an equally silly femme fatale parody. Huston, meanwhile, is a wonderfully smug villain who thinks he's all that, but he's really not. 

What else do we have? Well, it's semi-disappointing that the older films' police car opening gag wasn't reprised here. In its place, however, there's a great title gag, and an impressive end credits gag. We also get a few good supporting players with cop Ed Hocken Jr. (Paul Walter Hauser), henchman Sig Gustafson (Kevin Durand), and a nameless bartender (Cody Rhodes). That's not going into all the celebrity cameos, including one blink and you'll miss it cameo in the end. Sadly, I blinked.

 I was already watching the first Naked Gun plenty of times before I was ten. Sure, I didn't understand most of it, but I understood its wackiness a bit. Now that I'm older, I think that this Naked Gun does right by its famous franchise and its creators. Some folks might disagree, but anyone who wants nothing but laughs for 85 minutes will get their money's worth. And then some. Now, I can say that's it for now.

Sit back, because next time, I don't think I'll be reviewing something funny.

The Bad Guys 2

 Here come The Bad Guys, again.

That’s right, Aaron Blabey’s literary animal crew is back for another kid-friendly crime caper. Let’s see what they have to offer in The Bad Guys 2.

The film opens with Ms. Tarantula (Awkwafina) on her first mission with The Bad Guys - Mr. Wolf (Sam Rockwell), Mr. Shark (Craig Robinson), Mr. Snake (Marc Maron), and Mr. Piranha (Anthony Ramos). You’d think that she’d be the main character with that spotlight. But, no, it’s just a way to introduce the crew, as well as some guy who shows up for another scene. Okay.

After that, we see the now Good Guys trying and failing to get legitimate jobs. A Phantom Bandit starts up a crime spree, and everyone thinks that maybe the former Bad Guys did it. They decide to help now-Commissioner Luggins (Alex Borstein) find the real crook. They suspect, with good reason, that it’s Mr. Snake, but soon find him with his new girlfriend, Susan (Natasha Lyonne). Alas, Susan is a mean bird who nabs the crew for her cohorts, Kitty Kat (Danielle Brooks) and Pigtail Petrova (Maria Bakalova).

Kitty Kat and her Bad Girls want The Bad Guys to help them steal the Moon-X Rocket. Otherwise, they’ll leak Gov. Diane Foxington’s (Zazie Beetz) former secret identity as the nefarious Crimson Paw. Mr. Wolf, who’s semi-dating Diane, can’t let that happen, so the crew’s in. The Bad Guys try to outwit The Bad Girls, but they’ll have to settle their differences in space. That’s pretty much it.

The screenplay, by returning writer Etan Krueger and his new accomplice, Yoni Brenner, offers up some clever twists in a seemingly formulaic kid's movie. Some of them involve the cons within cons The Bad Guys pull on their targets, whether they be Mr. Moon (Colin Jost) or The Bad Girls. I was admittedly taken in by Mr. Snake being a red herring, so that's a good twist. It kind of strains when Mr. Wolf breezes through the commonality of the "Phantom Bandit's" loot. It's not that the commonality is called - get this - MacGuffinite, but how he suddenly realizes it. Maybe I'm overthinking it too much. 

The Bad Guys are still the same likable crew from the last movie. It’s fun watching them pull of a few capers during the film’s 104-minutes. It’s also fun watching Diane pull a few capers of her own to investigate the Phantom Bandit. It’s even more fun watching her and Wolf’s relationship play out. But it can’t all be fun and games. You'll feel bad for them as they come up short during a montage of unsuccessful job interviews. You'll feel especially bad for them, and Diane, when they all reach their darkest hour. It makes it all the more satisfying to see them one-up the Bad Girls. One final dark swerve is actually part of the film's best joke.

What can I say about the antagonists? Kitty Kat's smooth voice, ferocious temper, and lack of "thieves' honor" makes her a suitably menacing villain. She gets out of her depth a few times, though the film doesn't dwell too much on the inherent flaw of her masterplan. As for her cohorts, Petrova is considerably nicer than Kitty, while Susan (aka Doom) takes quite a bit longer to show her good side. Overall, the Bad Girls are all right, while returning villain Rupert Marmalade (Richard Ayoade) has a few surprises. Commissioner Luggins, while not truly evil, is very much an antagonist. But, in due time, we see how much a big lug she can be.

What else do we have here? The first film's 2D-style CGI aesthetics are alive and well in this installment. Heck, some of the best gags involve sudden art shifts to plain-old 2D. The action scenes, from the opening car heist to the later wedding heist, are as entertaining as the accompanying Daniel Pemberton score. When the climax hits, we are treated to perhaps the best visualization of outer space in an animated film. It had me thinking of Gravity as a fully animated film, which is a pretty exciting prospect. Still, I don't imagine that film would involve flatulence, which Mr. Piranha supplies plenty of here, but these jokes didn't bother me too much. It's surprisingly as relevant as Mr. Shark's jumpiness.

After nearly a year's wait, The Bad Guys 2 is out to steal your time. Let it, and you might be impressed by its clever twists. Let it, and your kids will surely be amused by its cartoon antics. Let it, and you'll distract yourself from the heat with a fun family action matinee. It's a harmless film, so I say go right in. Is that it for now?

No, for as you see, this film and the next one I'm reviewing were short enough that I doubled-up on them a few days ago. The second feature of my second ever theatrical double feature is coming soon. It might even come just seconds after I post this one. Wait for it, and ...

Shari & Lamb Chop

After a few years of playing the festival circuit, the documentary Shari & Lamb Chop finally makes its public theatrical debut. Lisa D'Apolito's chronicle of a woman and her puppet is pretty much worth the wait. So, how about we get to it?

Shari Lewis, the children's entertainment pioneer, grew up in a loving Jewish home in the Bronx. She wasn't raised on fairy tales like Cinderella, as her mother Ann wanted her to be her own woman. Her father, Abraham Hurwitz, meanwhile, was a professor, who was also the magician Peter Pan the Magic Man. He taught her showmanship, up to and including ventriloquism. She eventually took her act to the Captain Kangaroo show, which is where she conjured up her other half, the puppet Lamb Chop. 

Over several TV shows, Shari introduced Lamb Chop’s other puppet friends - Charlie Horse, Hush Puppy and Wing Ding. Her self-titled show, in particular, beat Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and Sesame Street to the air by nearly a decade. But NBC didn't give her much credit; they didn't even tell her in-person when they cancelled the show in 1963. Afterwards, Shari and Lamb Chop took their act wherever they could. Shari sometimes went without Lamb Chop, but not for long. It all culminates in their triumphant return to TV in 1992 with Lamb Chop's Play-Along.

How about a few highlights? For starters, its chronicle of Abe Hurwitz gives us a fascinating look into his organization, F.A.M.E. (Future American Magical Entertainers), a club for aspiring magicians. It makes it look like a rather fun after-school program, and all the more essential for it. Its history lesson on ventriloquism, as well as watching Shari work, makes the craft enticing, even for a few minutes. An interviewee tells us how she performed a full act at a carnival to a less than packed house. As much as it's cool to watch her operate two puppets at once, or even dance with a full-puppet Fred Astaire, it's even cooler watching her professionalism at work. 

 I have residual memories of Play-Along, particularly from its intro and its entertainingly annoying outro, The Song that Doesn't End. I don't think I've ever realized how funny Lamb Chop could be outside of children's entertainment until now. It's quite unforgettable as we watch Lamb Chop drunk or even sass her own puppeteer! A few interviews with Mallory Lewis (Shari's daughter and Lamb Chop's current puppeteer) and Megan Piphus (muppeteer for Gabrielle on Sesame Street) paint a good picture of the duo's significance. Its most profound moment comes late in the film, as we look behind the scenes of Shari's final TV episode (this past Saturday marked twenty-seven years since her death).

What else do we have? I went in knowing a little about Shari's second husband, Jeremy Tarcher, a publicist and author. I didn't know much about their married life, particularly how they made it last forty-years. I knew even less about her first husband, Stan Lewis, a major figure on several TV quiz shows until that scandal. Suffice to say, I found the pictures painted of both her marriages to be rather vivid. There's quite a bit of ground that the film doesn't cover, such as the time she and Tarcher wrote an episode of Star Trek (Season 3's The Lights of Zetar). Still, what we get out of her life and career here is already thorough enough, so any omissions aren't that bothersome.

There's quite a lot to learn about Shari & Lamb Chop in this documentary. When it's all done, you might not help but tap your foot once The Song that Doesn't End kicks in at the credits. That's what I did; I didn't even move from my seat until the song finally ended. Whether you've last played-along with its subjects sixty, thirty or even ten weeks ago, Shari & Lamb Chop makes for quite a compelling documentary. It's worth a watch at any price. Tune-in soon.