February Film Babble: JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2 & FIST FIGHT

And now, a few new movies that I saw a bit back but am only getting around to babbling about now:

JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2

(Dir. Chad Stahelski, 2017)

I was among those who were surprised at how much they liked the first JOHN WICK. I didn’t have any expectations going in, but found it to be thrilling, funny piece of high octane action cinema. Now Keanu Reeves, and stuntman turned director Chad Stahelski, are back for a second round of frenetically edited sequences crammed with gunshots to the heads of countless attackers.

As it begins right after the previous entry ended, with Reeves’ Wick tracking down his ‘69 Mustang coupe at a chop shop owned by Peter Stormare as the brother of the mob boss villain from the first one, it feels as much like an extention as it is a sequel. That’s fine by me as Stahelski, working with returning screenwriter Derek Kolstad, keep the original’s dark humor and ultra violent vibe going smashingly.

Sure, the plot is contrived – Wick retires from the assassin’s life for a second time, even reburying his weapons, but when he refuses a new job from a dapper Italian gangster (Riccardo Scamarcio) his house gets blown up (luckily his new dog, the pittbull he got in his first film, doesn’t get killed) and he’s pulled back into the criminal underworld game – but I was highly entertained throughout by how far the filmmakers stretched the limits of their stylized stunt choreography scene after scene.

And, sure, it doesn’t have the freshness of the first, but in Common as the bodyguard of Wick’s mark (Claudia Gerini), it has a worthy foe for our hero to fight, which a killer set-piece at the Rome Continental proves punch after powerful punch. It’s also a bit of a kick to have Reeves re-united with his MATRIX co-star Laurence Fishburne, as a brutal crime lord named The Bowery King, who comes to Wick’s aid.

JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2 is a solid follow-up that, for the most part, soaringly transcends its status as being a retread. It’s also a much better example of the form than how the Tom Cruise/JACK REACHER franchise is unfolding. Now there’s crossover mash-up I’d like to see: Wick vs. Reacher. But, of course, only if Wick wins, which, for sure, would be the only way it could really go down.

FIST FIGHT (Dir. Richie Keen, 2017)

Walking out of the screening for this film, I heard somebody say “I’m surprised this isn’t a summer release!” I chuckled to myself because I found the slapdash comedy, FIST FIGHT, to be a perfect release for the dumping ground season of February.

It’s got a slight premise –Ice Cube as an angry history teacher challenges Charlie Day as a meek English teacher to a fight on the last day of school – a B-list cast (no offense to Tracy Morgan, Dean Norris, Christina Hendricks, and Jillian Bell, but c’mon, who we kidding?), and a sloppy screenplay by first timers Van Robichaux and Evan Susser, so its slotting this season is dead on.

That said, I laughed more than I thought I would. Much like last December’s OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTY, there are too many funny people on screen for there not to be a least some hilarious hi-jinks.

The use of over dramatic music to enforce the severity of Ice Cube’s threat to Day is a great gag at first, but like every other running joke – the drawing dicks on everything shenanigans of “Prank Day,” Day’s constant attempts to weasel out of the showdown (hard to root for him when he plants drugs on Ice Cube to frame him), and the creepiness of Bell’s character wanting to sleep with her students – it wears thin really fast.

FIST FIGHT is something that I’ve deemed many a movie that’s dropping during these off seasons – a throwaway matinee at best. With this one though, only check it out if you’ve seen absolutely everything else at the multiplex. Otherwise, stay home and watch some random episodes of It’s Always Sunny in Philadephia, that’s where Day and director Keen have put in much, much funnier work together.

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Ed Helms Helms New Slightly Amusing VACATION Reboot/Sequel

Now playing at a multiplex near you:

VACATION (Dirs. John Francis Daley & Jonathan Goldstein, 2015)

“I’ve never even heard of the original vacation,” protests James Griswold (Skyler Gisondo), when his father Rusty (Ed Helms) pitches to his family that they should drive cross-country to Walley World just like he did with his parents and sister over 30 years ago.

“It doesn’t matter. The new vacation will stand on its own.” Helm’s Rusty declares, but despite that being a solid meta joke, sadly it’s not true. This new reboot/sequel contains so many call backs to the original VACATION that there’s no way to forget it at any point during this film’s 99 minute running time. Queue Lindsay Buckingham’s “Holiday Road” and we’re off!

For the fifth film in the VACATION franchise (there’s also a TV movie, NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION 2, and a 14 minute short film, HOTEL HELL VACATION, but let’s not count those), Helms and Christina Applegate as his wife Debbie take over from Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo as the next generation of Griswolds to make the hellacious trek to the fictional theme park, and I give major kudos for that excellent casting.

Continuing on the meta joke above, Rusty says: “My vacation had a boy and a girl. This one has two boys. And I’m sure there will be plenty of other differences.” Those two boys are Skyler Gisondo as the sensitive, guitar playing James, and Steele Stebbons as the foul mouthed bullying younger brother Kevin. The comic premise that the younger, much smaller brother bullies the older one isn’t as funny as the filmmakers think it is, and it joins many jokes here in that regard.

Remember the Wagon Queen Family Truckster Station Wagon in the first one? Well, this time the Griswolds are driving an Albanian rental minivan called The Tartan Prancer loaded with confusing features (its key device has a bunch of buttons with inexplicable symbols on them, including a swastika). And that’s one of the better running gags.

But just like Chase and D’Angelo who both put in welcome cameo appearances reprising their iconic roles as Clark and Ellen Griswold now as owners of a bed and breakfast in San Fransisco, don’t count the Family Truckster out – it too shows up. Sadly, despite a passing reference to Cousin Eddie, Randy Quaid is nowhere to be seen. That alone would’ve taken this to the next level.

I did chuckle a lot throughout this new VACATION – I lightly laughed at a scene where they visited Applegate’s old college sorority in Memphis and it’s revealed that she used to be a wild party girl (“Debbie Do Anything”), I snickered a bit at Helms trying to get his family into a car sing along of Seal’s “Kiss From A Rose,” and I came the closest to actual audible laughter when Charlie Day of It’s Always Sunny in Philadephia popped up as a rafting guide who starts out all super positive but then gets suicidal when his fiancée breaks up with him over the phone.

It’s essentially and predictably a series of farcical road trip sketches, some of which more match the crude cringe comedy tone of recent fare like WE’RE THE MILLERS or IDENTITY THIEF than the more relatable vibe of the VACATION movies I knew as a kid back when they were still under the National Lampoon banner.

And I wasn’t really into the sequence where they stay with Rusty’s sister, now played by Leslie Mann, who’s married to Chris Hemsworth (THOR) as “up and coming anchorman.” Helms being threatened by Applegate’s attraction to Hemsworth is clumsily handled, and Mann is barely given anything to do.

I also disliked the callback to Christie Brinkley's role as “The Girl in the Red Ferrari” who flirted with Chase in VACATION '83, in which up and coming supermodel Hannah Davis fills in as “Ferrari Girl” to flirt with Helms, but has an especially crude and unfunny fate. 

But overall writer/directors Daley and Goldstein have largely captured the endearingly lowbrow spirit of the famously hapless Griswold family’s “quest for fun” as Chase famously called it in the first one.

When I was a kid, and a big fan of comedy and Chase (back when those things weren’t mutually exclusive) I saw the original in the summer of ’83 and loved it. I even read John Hughes’ short story, “Vacation ’58,” which Hughes adapted into the screenplay and had the movie poster on my bedroom wall (yes, I was that kind of comedy geek, but that poster, painted by Boris Vallejo, is pretty awesome). That said, I really don’t regard it to be a comedy classic (or any of the VACATION movies for that matter). They are in the category of films that I consider just funny enough to get by.

Daley and Goldstein’s homage to the vacation house that Hughes, Harold Ramis, and Chevy built has a fair amount going for it mostly in Helms’ and Applegates’ go for broke performances, a smattering of one-liners and gags that land, and a few surprise guest appearances, but it really suffers from way too much gross-out humor. There’s vomit aplenty in the aforementioned college sorority event skit, and in the movie’s most disgusting moment, the family goes bathing in a raw sewage treatment area that they mistakenly thought was their own private hot springs.

To be fair, that’s exactly the level of crassness that the other VACATIONs often reveled in. But then they had bigger, more genuine laughs, and an actual heart beating behind it. As it stands, VACATION ’15 may elicit some laughter from audiences, but it sure won’t make them whistle “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” out of their assholes.

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HORRIBLE BOSSES 2: A Tediously Tiresome Thanksgiving Turkey

HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 

(Dir. Sean Anders, 2014)

Okay, so yeah, the first film was a fluke – a one-off throwaway that was just funny enough to recommend. But the sequel, opening everywhere today, is a tiresome rehash that wears out its welcome before it even hits the 10 minute mark.

However, up to that point, with its inspired use of the Clash’s cover of Eddy Grant’s “Police on My Back” to take us into a crudely amusing opening scene featuring Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, and Jason Sudekis promoting their new invention, a bathroom accessory named “The Shower Buddy,” on a morning TV talk show, the movie seems like it could possibly match the original.

But this misguided mash-up of 9 TO 5, which they reference several times so it’s okay to steal from I guess, and BACHELOR PARTY goes downhill fast from there once its incredibly uninvolving and annoyingly familiar plot kicks in.

This time, our returning comedy trio trying to strike out as their own bosses gets screwed over by Christoph Waltz (seemingly loving slumming it here) and Chris Pine (Captain Kirk from the J.J. Abrams’ STAR TREK re-imaginings) as a father-son pair of wealthy, conniving corporate investors who steal the product and re-name it “The Shower Pal” (“That’s a better name, too,” says Sudekis).

So Bateman, Day, and Sudekis plan to kidnap Pine and collect ransom from Waltz, but guess what? Things don’t go down as smoothly as they hope.

In lame attempts to rekindle the comically criminal shenanigans of the first time around, the bickering buffoons visit Kevin Spacey, reprising his role as one of the horrible bosses, in jail for advice; Jamie Foxx, reprising his role as “Motherfucker Jones” in the same seedy bar for more contrived consultation; and Jennifer Aniston, reprising her role as a sex-addicted dentist, who has the most regrettably creepy lines to spout throughout this mess.

The so self consciously twisted scenarios the fellows get tied up in, via the screenplay co-written by director Anders and creative partner John Morris (who also both co-wrote the currently playing DUMB AND DUMBER TO), just go in circles with a clear lack of momentum.

These guys can be very funny - the stressed out Day and the all too smug Sudekis play off each other effortlessly while Bateman deadpans some choice one-liners - and amid their wacky scrapes I chuckled maybe a dozen times, but there was nothing resembling a big genuine laugh to be found.

If you stitched together these guys’ individual appearances on late night TV talk shows into a feature length 90 minutes or so it would be much funnier than this. Especially as it wouldn’t have the tired as hell kidnapping tropes (code name gags ‘n all) that all fall horribly flat here.

And there’s also the unfortunate and badly timed (because of the Cosby controversy) rape jokes that Aniston’s character, puts forth that left a disgusting taste in my mouth. As well, it’s weird that Pine puts forth some dramatic acting about dealing with his dad Waltz not loving him – in what movie does he think he’s in?

It would be a critical cliché to say that HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 is a cinematic turkey delivered just in time for Thanksgiving, but if they’re going to so blatantly trot out such a lame retread, then so am I.

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HORRIBLE BOSSES: The Film Babble Blog Review

HORRIBLE BOSSES (Dir. Seth Gordon, 2011)

As the most recent in a spate of crude R-Rated comedies, HORRIBLE BOSSES is just funny enough to recommend. Although maybe just as a matinee.

Anybody who clicked on this review surely knows the plot, but I'll state it anyway: 3 guys who want to murder their bosses concoct a plan to do so with comical results.

As the 3 guys we've got Saturday Night Live's Jason Sudekis, It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia's Charlie Day, and Arrested Development's (as well as the everyman in every other comedy movie made these days) Jason Bateman.

The bosses are Colin Firth with a combover as a chemical company coke-head who takes over Sudekis's workplace after his father (Donald Sutherland) dies, Kevin Spacey as a corporate asshole (shades of his likewise character in SWIMMING WITH SHARKS) who denies Bateman a promotion, and Jennifer Anniston playing against her girl-next-door type as a dentist who sexually harrases Day as her dental assistant ("Yours doesn't sound so bad" Sudekis says about Day's predicament).

Think STRANGERS ON A TRAIN + THROW MOMMA OFF THE TRAIN (both of which are referenced in this movie), with a sprinkling of 9 TO 5 thrown in for good measure. It takes a bit to really get going, but when it does the frantic scheming of the 3 leads makes for some big laughs especially from Day doing his patented screaming, not-the-sharpest-knife-in-the-drawer, It's Always Sunny stuff.

Sudekis with his sex-snarkiness seems so much like his character in HALL PASS that I kept expecting him to call his wife back home, and Bateman is playing the same nice-guy notes he has in many a movie, but these guys' recognizable and relatable personas all anchor the movie nicely.

Spacey, Firth, and Aniston have fine funny moments, but none is funnier than Jamie Foxx who steals every scene he's in as a "murder consultant" the guys seek out in a seedy bar when they are looking for somebody to do their dirty work.

Scripted by John Francis Daley (who played protagonist Sam on Freaks and Geeks), and Jonathan M. Goldstein, the film feels oddly restrained at times - like it never quite goes over the top.

However when it busts out a car chase/phone sex climax it's gets mighty close.

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