Tag Archives: Comedy

Wolfs – Movie Review

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TL;DR – This is a film that should have knocked the ball out of the park home run; instead, it just felt like a safe walk most of the time.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is a mid-credit scene.

Disclosure – I paid for the AppleTV+ service that viewed this film.

Brad Pitt and Georgy Clooney draw guns on each other.

Wolfs Review –

Some films just excite you when you hear who has been cast in it. Some actors have built this reputation that if you see both in the same movie, then you know it is going to be good. For example, you know if N. T. Rama Rao Jr. and Ram Charan appear in the same film, it will cause a stir. Well, today, we look at a movie that should have captured that same vibe but instead just fell flat.

So, to set the scene, we open with the sound of a crash, a scream, and then a string of obscenities, as something has clearly gone wrong. What could be so bad, you say, how about a recently dead body of the Kid (Austin Abrams)? Well, after an appropriate length of time freaking out, Margaret (Amy Ryan) phones a contact that she was given years ago, one that can make things disappear. That man is Jack (George Clooney), a cleaner. The only problem is that the owner of the hotel, Pamela Dowd-Henry (Frances McDormand), also witnessed what happened and hired her own cleaner, Nick (Brad Pitt). Now, the two of them must work together as this relatively simple case starts falling apart.  

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Divorce (Rozwodnicy) – Movie Review

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TL;DR – This was a delightfully fun look at trying to work your way through many layers of church bureaucracy.  

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for the Netflix service that viewed this film.

the school band plays in hard hats.

Divorce Review –

If there is one area that deserves a little comedic exploration, it is religion. However, it might also be the most fraught area to explore. To pull it off, you have to have an intimate understanding of the subject matter because it needs to hit home in a realistic manner. Today, we look at a film that might do just that as it explores trying to get a divorce, sorry, an annulment, in Poland.    

So, to set the scene, Małgosia (Magdalena Popławska) and Jacek (Wojciech Mecwaldowski) have been divorced for a long time. So long that Małgosia has married again to Andrzej (Tomasz Schuchardt). Małgosia is struggling to relate to her daughter Ala (Oliwia Drabik), who has a defiant streak. But when her ex-husband Jacek wants to get re-married, he needs a favour. Because his new in-laws want a church wedding, and that means not just a civil divorce, but Andrzej needs the church to sign off on an annulment in an Ecclesiastical Court. It is clear that the marriage has broken down completely and irretrievably, and Małgosia has re-married, so it should be easy … right?    

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My Old Ass – Movie Review

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TL;DR – This is a film that swims through the nostalgia of youth when significant changes are about to come, and you don’t know what the future might hold

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I was invited to a press screening of this film.

Elliott (39) talks to Elliott (18)

My Old Ass Review –

Today, we look at a slightly sweet film that tries to ride the line between a bombastic juvenile comedy and a quieter coming-of-age work. It is a very fine line to walk because there is not a lot of safe ground between those two points. Indeed, I know people who have entirely disagreed on where this film landed. I think I am more in that first category, but that might be just because this film is laser-targeted on who I am.

So, to set the scene, Elliott Labrant (Maisy Stella) has just turned 18, and in just 22 days, she is going to leave the life she has lived on a lake in Canada harvesting cranberries on her family’s farm to move to the big city. But before she leaves, she wants to have one more trip with her friends Ro (Kerrice Brooks) and Ruthie (Maddie Ziegler) out to an island on the lake to camp, chat, and, oh, maybe dabble in some hallucinogenic mushroom. While her friends see many interesting things like rabbit orchestra, nothing quite prepares Elliott to look over and see her 39-year-old self (Aubrey Plaza) looking back at her. They talked about life and love, and her older self warned her not to fall in love with Chad. “Well, that was an odd trip”, thought Elliott, until she found Chad (Percy Hynes White) working on her dad’s farm as a summer farmhand. Oh, and someone put a new contact ‘My Old Ass’ in her phone.

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Jackpot! – Movie Review

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TL;DR – This is a fun film, anchored by a charismatic cast, but you could also feel it was a bit of missed opportunity.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There are mid-credit scenes and end credit scene.

Disclosure – I paid for the Amazon Prime service that viewed this film.

Katie win the Lotto.

Jackpot! Review –

There are a lot of ways you can anchor a film, and one of those ways is through an interesting narrative hook. Today we wonder: what would happen if a government authorised a state-wide Hunger Games that was completely opt-in? When you have a good premise, its very existence invokes questions that you want answered, which is what we will do today.


So to set the scene, during the Great Depression of 2026, governments were desperately looking for a way to make money. Enter The California Grand Lottery©. You can be the winner of the jackpot, that is if you can survive until sundown. Until then, you are free game from anyone, and if they kill you, they take your winnings. Just no guns. It is Los Angeles in 2030, and a winner just got taken out by a grandma. But as the jackpot hits $3.6 Billion, child actor Katie (Awkwafina) has just arrived back in town on Lottery Day to try and get back into the business. But when Katie accidentally touches a lottery ticket and wins, then all of Los Angeles turns against her, bar maybe Noel (John Cena) who is protecting her … for money.

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Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F – Movie Review

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TL;DR – This is a film that entirely knows what it wants to be and completely nails that delivery. How much you will like that will depend on how you gel with the premise.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I paid for the Netflix service that viewed this film.

Detroit Jacket.

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F Review –

Well, here is a blast of the past, and even in our reboot-obsessed culture, this feels like a deep cut. Well, that is, until you hear the music, and then you 100% understand why. However, it had been 30 years since the last entry, and that is a lot of ground to make up for. There is only so much that synth can do, but let us see if there is a story that can work, given the shifts in the police force since the last outing.

So, to set the scene, Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) is still a cop who is completely fine with causing mass destruction to capture his crooks in Detroit. However, times have changed; a snowplough is indiscriminate in its chaos, and this is the last time Jeffrey Friedman (Paul Reiser) can cover for him. But when an old friend (Judge Reinhold) lets him know that his estranged daughter Jane’s (Taylour Paige) life has been threatened in Beverly Hills. Axel takes the first flight back to his old stomping grounds, and they discover that they might be more alike than they want. They both know Detective Sam Abbott (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), but Billy is missing, and it might be time to cause some mayhem in Beverly Hills.      

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Hundreds of Beavers – Movie Review

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TL;DR – It was a completely wild ride from start to finish. I am not sure I have ever seen a film like this before, and I doubt I will ever again.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I was sent a screener of this film.

Jean Kayak pops out of a hole.

Hundreds of Beavers Review –

For the last year, I kept hearing rumblings of this weird Beavers film that everyone needed to see. It is super low budget, weird in every way, yet utterly engaging. It is the sort of film that never gets a theatrical realise in Australia; well, that is, it does not usually get one. I was fundamentally surprised to see this was not the case here, but more than that, I was excited to see just how a film like this could come together, and I am not sure if anything prepared me for this.  

So, to set the scene, deep in the 19th century, Jean Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) is an applejack producer, a very alcoholic liquor that everyone near and wide travels to, given how good it is. However, a stray beaver damages the giant kegs storing the Applejack, destroying the store and orchard in the process. Jean has only one option: get even with the beavers. The only problem is that he will have to survive first, which might be easier said than done. It is not like it is a brutally cold winter, and he has nothing to his name but the clothes on his back and the ability to carve interactive sculptures out of wood with his teeth.  

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Despicable Me 4 – Movie Review

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TL;DR – Look, the kids started laughing with the title card and stopped with the end credits, and I am not sure that anything more than that truly matters in the grand scheme of things.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There are mid credit sequences but you don’t need to stay for them.

Disclosure – I was invited to a press screening of this film.

Minions in a pool.

Despicable Me 4 Review –

Well, it is time to get the banana papayas out because it is Minions time. Look, I have generally liked these films because there is an almost charm to the slapstick comedy that permeates every frame. Also, while my mother is not a fan of this, I don’t have any kids, so I only have to watch this film once—my deepest sympathies to those well into the double-digit viewings. But now we are six films deep into this world, can there be any more fun to be found? Well, that is what we will find out today.   

So to set the scene, Gru (Steve Carell) is still working for the Anti-Villain League, and this time, his mark is Maxime Le Mal (Will Ferrell), a heavily ‘French’ accented villain and former classmate of Gru. Indeed, Gru takes him down in the middle of their class reunion. Things are also looking up at home, where he and Lucy (Kristen Wiig) have welcomed a new child into the family, Gru Jr. But when Maxime escapes and threatens to ‘cockroach-ize’ the baby, well, the whole family has to go undercover to keep safe. You better hope your new neighbours are not secret supervillain fans.

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The Fall Guy – Movie Review

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TL;DR – It’s a wonderful romp, full of pomp and circumstance, and a desperate need for an extra edit.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is a sequence in the credits and a mid-credit scene.

Disclosure – I was invited to a press screening of the film.

Filming a car chase.

The Fall Guy Review –

Today, I am looking at a film that is genuinely quite odd. It is an Action-Adventure, Romantic-Comedy, Mystery, Adaption of an Old TV Show, that is also making a meta-commentary on how Hollywood treats people who work on the stunt team. Yet with all of that, they made it work, and a blast of fun at that.

So to set the scene, Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) is a suave and super-confident stuntman who knows how to take a fall while on fire and thrown into a rock. When he is not being blown up, he is flirting with the very professional camera operator, Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt). However, when his incompetent actor Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who could not do his own stunts in his dreams, wanted a stunt done again because they saw ‘too much face’. But the stunt goes wrong, and Colt breaks his back. Eighteen months later, Tom’s Producer, Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham), calls Colt, who is now a valet. She needs him to come back to Sydney because Jody has her first director role, and they need his stunt prowess. But did anyone ask Jody?

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Drive-Away Dolls – Movie Review

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TL;DR – It is a wild but somewhat inconsistent ride that will bring the laughs but probably does not have the lasting effect they were going for.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I was invited to a press screening of this film.

Love is a sleigh ride to HELL.

Drive-Away Dolls Review –

The early 200s was a wild time for the raunchy road trip film, with gems like Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle and EuroTrip. For a while, they had fallen out of fashion, maybe because the old focus of those films no longer ran true for modern audiences. However, in the last few years, we have started to see a resurgence in this genre, and it is just such a film that we are looking at today.  

So to set the scene, we opened in Philadelphia in 1999 on the cusp of the new Millennium or, as it was known at the time, the Willennium. Here, there are two good friends, Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan), who could not be more different. But when Jamie breaks up with her girlfriend Sukie (Beanie Feldstein), well more, she gets dumped after multiple cheating incidents. Jamie decides to tag along on Marian’s trip to Tallahassee, Florida, to help Marian get some. The only problem is that Jamie persuades Marian to use a service to cut down on the cost by driving a car down there for free (a drive-away). The only problem is that something else might be taking the trip with them, a something that many people want.

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Kill Me If You Dare (Zabij Mnie, Kochanie) – Movie Review

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TL;DR – It is an incredibly silly film, but if that is the vibe you are after, then it nails it.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I paid for the Netflix service that viewed this film.

A knife falls to the floor.

Kill Me If You Dare Review –

I think there is one thing that is almost universal across most cultures: what would you do if you won the lottery, or as we call it here, the lotto? Just asking that question probably provoked a number of thoughts as to what you would do with such a large amount of money. But what would you do if you were married and things were not as good as they could be?

So to set the scene, we open in this grand romantic gesture as Piotr (Mateusz Banasiuk) races to catch Natalia (Weronika Ksiązkiewicz) before she leaves on the train. But while he misses the train, he does not miss the love of his life, and he instantly proposes. Five years later, the love is not as strong as it once was, but maybe a shock lotto win might change that. Well, perhaps not if each other thinks the other wants to murder them and take the money for themselves.

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