Tag: Ike Barinholtz

Snatched Movie Review

Amy Schumer burst onto the film scene two summers ago with Judd Apatow’s Trainwreck. It was a solid vehicle to showcase the comedienne’s raunchy yet intelligent humor. Snatched is the follow-up. It’s occasionally raunchy, but it’s rarely intelligent and it struggles to even fill the 90 minute runtime with memorable material.

The pic also marks Goldie Hawn’s return to the silver screen after a decade and a half. She looks great, but it’s a shame she’s saddled with the overprotective mother role and given little chance to expand it. Schumer is Emily and she’s recently single after her rocker boyfriend dumps her when he realizes the fringe benefits of success. Emily is also unemployed and holding onto two non-refundable tickets to Ecuador for what was to be a romantic getaway with her departed beau. Enter Linda (Hawn), Emily’s mom who lives a quiet life with her cats and agoraphobic son (Ike Barinholtz). Despite her reluctance, mom joins daughter in South America.

While Linda is content to read her magazines and novellas in the hotel room, Emily is looking for some wild vacation times. She thinks she’s found it with a hunky dude who takes her to a rave and then agrees to show her and Linda around the next day. That’s when the pair are indeed snatched.

What follows is a rather surprisingly laugh free experience that is over in about an hour (it takes a third of the 90 minutes to get to the actual snatching). Some familiar faces pop up including Wanda Sykes and a mute yet deadly Joan Cusack as vacationers who assist the nabbed duo. Christopher Meloni turns up as a very poor man’s Indiana Jones.  Barinholtz has a couple funny moments as the bizarre shut-in son.

Yet it’s not encouraging when the bit that made me chuckle hardest involved a tapeworm and is a sight gag that lasts about a minute. Schumer’s stand-up work and her Trainwreck role showcases a refreshing honesty and sexuality that used to be reserved for just the boys onstage and onscreen. There’s nothing about Snatched where the word refreshing is warranted. It’s not necessarily bad, but it is often excruciatingly ordinary and these leads deserve better.

** (out of four)

Snatched Box Office Prediction

Nearly two years after she broke through on the silver screen in a major way, Amy Schumer is back with Snatched next weekend. The action comedy teams the comedienne with Goldie Hawn, making her first film appearance in almost 15 years. This duo play a mother/daughter (which was the working title of the pic) on a vacation that goes all wrong. Jonathan Levine (who made 50/50 and The Night Before) directs and the supporting cast includes Ike Barinholtz, Joan Cusack, Wanda Sykes, and Christopher Meloni.

In the summer of 2015, Schumer’s Trainwreck rode a wave of great buzz to a $30 million debut and $110 million overall domestic gross. The fact that this is her follow-up should automatically get a substantial number of her fans out there. It also doesn’t hurt that Snatched is being unveiled on Mother’s Day weekend and it should serve as decent counter programming to the second weekend of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (in which Hawn’s longtime beau Kurt Russell costars).

Even with those clear pluses, I don’t feel the anticipation for this as there was for Trainwreck. I expect Snatched to grab a high teens to low 20s beginning.

Snatched opening weekend prediction: $21.1 million

For my King Arthur: Legend of the Sword prediction, click here:

https://toddmthatcher.com/2017/05/03/king-arthur-legend-of-the-sword-box-office-prediction/

Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising Movie Review

As has been discussed on the blog before, comedy is typically the genre that lends itself least to sequels. A major reason: most of ’em aren’t made with a planned follow-up in mind and therefore contrivances must be invented for them to exist.

This general rule applies to Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, which arrives two years after the success of the original. In 2014, the teaming of Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne vs. Zac Efron’s wild frat next door was a mostly effective raunchy pic with a couple of gags (air bags) that soared. $150 million domestic later, returning director Nicholas Stoller and his stars picked a pretty simple premise for another installment. Put a sorority there instead of a frat and watch similar hijinks ensue!

This happens when college freshman Shelby (Chloe Grace Moretz) goes to pledge at sororities and discovers they aren’t allowed to hold the wild bashes that their male counterparts are. So she enlists some other girls and Beastie Boys’s it beside the Radners (Rogen, Byrne) who are now expecting their second child. Kappa Nu is formed with an assist from Teddy (Efron), who’s still a bit salty from what went down when he inhabited the property. He’s also painfully still a man-child and the screenplay does get some decent mileage out of that (his changed friendship with frat bro Dave Franco is an example).

As with the first Neighbors installment, games of one upmanship (or upgirlship I guess) go down. The Radners are terrified because the house is in escrow as they’re set to become suburbanites and the new tenants might not appreciate the newly minted party pad. Shelby and her newfound sisters are determined to stay. And if that all sounds a lot like 2014, it is. Same story, different gender.

Rising gets a some solid chuckles out of exploiting the physique of both Mr. Efron and Mr. Rogen. The best moments come from our lead couple acting as de facto parents to Teddy, yet they’re few and far between. This is due to the familiar tale of Kappa Nu and their schemes that involve some serious felonies that the frat guys would’ve balked at.

There have been plenty of comedic #2’s far worse than this. The trio of Rogen, Byrne, and Efron do give it their all and don’t just go through the motions. Still – this one feels mostly uninspired despite the talent involved and keeps that general comedy sequel rule intact.

**1/2 (out of four)

Suicide Squad Movie Review

Suicide Squad is the latest in DC’s attempt to Marvelize its cinematic universe in considerably darker shades. It’s noisy and messy. It’s filled with some top-notch performances and fascinating characters mixed with utterly forgettable ones. In a pic filled with villains, there’s weak ones and strong ones. Yes, it’s what we’ve come to anticipate in a series that continues to follow what Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice started.

David Ayers directs this tale of super villains who are charged with saving the world. This is an idea hatched by government official Amanda Waller (a typically solid Viola Davis) and the team she assembles is an unknown one unless you’re an avid comic book reader. It includes master marksman Deadshot (Will Smith), loony tunes temptress Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), flame thrower with a fiery temper El Diablo (Jay Hernandez), Aussie Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), disfigured Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje) and sword expert Katana (Karen Fukuhara).

We get back stories on them all – some more detailed and worthy of screen time than others. Will Smith gives a decent performance, even though his subplot of being a bad hit man who’s also a really dedicated dad (!) is as stale as it sounds. Still he acquits himself well, even if he’s done the dour anti-hero thing before in Hancock. The El Diablo story is helped by Hernandez’s work, even though his flashback info is a bit too serious for everything else happening here. Quite frankly, many of the others aren’t even worth mentioning.

The other that is? That would be Ms. Quinn, played with gusto and a Stockard Channing like Grease accent from Robbie. Her wise cracks land more often than not. She’s the highlight here and her road to villainy involves her romance with the granddaddy baddie of them all, The Joker (Jared Leto). Their story is one that works well, partly due to Leto hitting his mark in a role that’s obviously been well-played before. His screen time is limited (probably wisely) and I look with anticipation to seeing him again.

Where Squad fails majorly is with a dull main villain and that’s Enchantress (Carla Delevingne),  an archeologist turned witchy woman with world domination on her mind. In a movie filled with bad guys, the one they’re chasing shouldn’t be a bore. She is and so is her soldier boyfriend – Colonel Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) – from her pre-spell life.

The action sequences are a mixed bag, especially when Ayers films them in such darkness that it’s hard to tell what’s happening. This is an issue that has pervaded other DC adaptations. We expect CG to look pretty decent in everything now and that holds true here, though nothing really stands out.

For the first half or so, Suicide Squad is a bit of depraved fun. A lot of that is Robbie’s doing with some credit to Smith. After about the halfway mark, the feeling sets in that we aren’t terribly invested in what’s occurring and that the Squad goals of taking down the witch seem inconsequential. Batman v Superman was a bit of a mess as well (its main villain issues – aka Jesse Eisenberg – were also there). Yet I somehow left that experience ready to see the Justice League formed. Here – I’m indifferent to Squad seconds. Now if Harley wants to join her main man to battle Superman, Batman, and the others – that’s cool.

**1/2 (out of four)

Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising Box Office Prediction

Seth Rogen, Zac Efron, and Rose Byrne are back experiencing homeowner drama in a hopefully funny way with Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, out next weekend. This time, it’s the ladies turn to wreak havoc on Mr. Rogen’s famiy with Chloe Grace Moretz leading the way. Nicholas Stoller returns to direct with Dave Franco and Ike Barinholtz back in supporting roles.

Two years ago, Neighbors turned into a major summer hit with a $49 million opening and $150 million domestic gross. A sequel was quickly greenlit and here we are today with the follow-up hoping to match its predecessor’s numbers.

It could be tough to do. There is some genre competition with Russell Crowe/Ryan Gosling’s The Nice Guys opening on the same day. Additionally, many comedic sequels open under the original in general. The fact that only two years has passed could help though. Reviews have been decent as it stands at 66% on Rotten Tomatoes, just under the 73% of the first.

I’ll predict Neighbors 2 rises to just under $40M, about $10M less than what came before it and it’ll probably manage to just reach triple digits when all is said and done.

Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising opening weekend prediction: $38.2 million

For my The Angry Birds Movie prediction, click here:

https://toddmthatcher.com/2016/05/11/the-angry-birds-movie-box-office-prediction/

For my The Nice Guys prediction, click here:

https://toddmthatcher.com/2016/05/11/the-nice-guys-box-office-prediction/

Sisters Movie Review

The effortless chemistry of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler worked like a charm on Weekend Update but generated a disappointment in their first feature, 2008’s Baby Mama. Sisters is a generally more satisfying experience that finds its stars (specifically Fey) playing against type. The pic rarely wants to be anything more than a raunchy party comedy and it works well enough on that level, even while we know these players are capable of much more.

Sisters casts Poehler as Maura, a nurse who’s always trying to help and inspire people, often to a “bit too much” degree. Fey is Kate, an irresponsible stylist whose own teen daughter doesn’t wish to be around her very often. When the siblings parents (James Brolin and Dianne Wiest) decide to sell the Orlando home where the girls grew up, they don’t take it so well. Their frustration eventually results in one last blowout party like they had in high school. This time though, Maura decides to let her freak flag fly while Kate is dubiously tasked with being the responsible one.

The screenplay by SNL writer Paula Pell occasionally gets emotional with messages about family and Fey and Poehler help greatly in selling it. As mentioned, however, this is content to be a fun R rated laugher complete with some sex, drugs supplied by John Cena, and early 90s hip hop like “Informer” by Canadian rapper Snow. There’s an obligatory romantic subplot for Maura with handyman James (Ike Barinholtz) that feels slightly forced but does produce a memorable moment with a music box. The script also finds some amusing moments for its stellar supporting cast, including Maya Rudolph as Kate’s old high school nemesis, Rachel Dratch as an eccentric old classmate, and Bobby Moynihan as that old friend constantly telling lame jokes. And a shout out to Greta Lee as nail salon worker Hae Won, who shines in her small role and has one of the pic’s funniest scenes with Poehler. On the other hand, John Leguizamo’s loser ex classmate role may have been the victim of the cutting room floor as he has little to do. And while Fey is always stellar, I’ll admit that I never fully bought her in this role.

We have seen both lead actresses do seriously terrific stuff on TV, whether on SNL or their shows “30 Rock” and “Parks and Recreation”. Sisters doesn’t match those achievements but provides two hours worthy of their talents and provides a party worth checking out.

*** (out of four)

Sisters Box Office Prediction

Nearly eight years after they had a decent size hit with Baby Mama, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler team up again for Sisters, out next Friday. The modestly budgeted $30 million comedy also stars Maya Rudolph, John Leguizamo, Ike Barinholtz, John Cena, James Brolin, and Dianne Wiest.

Universal Pictures is hoping that Sisters will appeal to a female demographic that may not be chomping at the bit to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which this bravely opens against. The two stars certainly have their fans and the strategy may work. 2008’s Baby Mama earned $17.4 million out of the gate and an eventual gross of a sturdy $64 million.

Based on the competition alone, I feel Sisters will struggle to reach that opening number next weekend yet it could manage close to Mama’s grosses if it performs well over the subsequent holiday weekends.

Sisters opening weekend prediction: $13.9 million

For my Star Wars: The Force Awakens prediction, click here:

https://toddmthatcher.com/2015/12/08/star-wars-the-force-awakens-box-office-prediction/

For my Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip prediction, click here:

https://toddmthatcher.com/2015/12/10/alvin-and-the-chipmunks-the-road-chip-box-office-prediction/