Tag: the filmennial

Life is Strange: True Colors Review

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Hey good people of the internet!

So it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that I haven’t been seeing many new movies lately…and by lately I mean for like a year and a half because ya know #pandemic and all–but you know what I have been doing a lot of??

Playyyyyyin VIDEO GAMES

So without further ado (and know that eventual rebranding of the blog is on the way), I will now be reviewing both movies AND games on here!! Huzzah!!

To start us off here, none other than Deck Nine’s latest and quite literally emotional adventure: Life is Strange: True Colors.

So let me preface this by saying that I am a big fan of the Life is Strange series, therefore I had been counting down the MINUTES until this one came out, and oh BOY WAS IT WORTH THE WAIT.

Deck Nine has given us a gorgeous, heartfelt, lovely story and I think whether you’re a longtime fan of the series or you’ve never even heard of it till now, I highly recommend you check it out (especially if you like crying. Or if you just like games with stunning graphics. Or if you like crying.)

LET’S DIVE IN, SHALL WE

(Spoiler alert now in effect!! If you’re even slightly on the fence about this but you’re thinking of checking it out, this is your sign to please do so! If you’re kind of like me and you don’t mind a bit of spoilers before heading in, feel free to continue, but trust me–this is absolutely something you should experience on your own accord. If you’ve already played it and you’re here to fangirl with me, WELCOME. LET US CRY TOGETHER.)

THE PLOT

As per Life is Strange tradition, we begin by following a totally normal character starting their totally normal day in their totally normal life (no really that’s it that’s the game I promise nothing funky going on here).

Haha just kidding–as per ACTUAL Life is Strange tradition, there’s more to Alex Chen than meets the eye. As she’s been struck with “Life is Strange protagonist syndrome,” she has a special ability that the player can utilize throughout the game. Alex has a sort of “super empathy” skill, where she can see emotional auras around other people if they’re feeling something strongly enough. As the player comes to discover, sometimes these auras affect Alex, especially in the beginning before she really explores what she can do with this ability.

Initially, Alex is pretty unhappy with this power of hers, and with good reason–negative emotions of others can sort of infect her and take over, making her react to situations in ways she maybe normally wouldn’t. As the player learns early on, this has gotten Alex into some unfortunate situations in the past.

Now though, she’s on her way to the quaint and idyllic Haven Springs, Colorado, to live with her older brother Gabe. It’s been years since the siblings have seen each other, so they’re still working out how to be around each other–it’s a situation that involves a lot of awkward and extremely heartfelt moments. As Gabe brings Alex on a mini tour of sorts around town, the player gets to meet some of the other key characters to the story–namely, the two potential love interests, Steph and Ryan (they’re both super pretty, send help).

There are hints dropped that someone in town by the name of Mac has been looking for Gabe, and that he’s…less than thrilled with Gabe right then, for whatever reason. Eventually Alex and Gabe end up back at Gabe’s apartment, above the Black Lantern Bar where Gabe works. After a (potential, depending on player choice) super cute air jam session with the siblings, there’s a knock at the door, and none other than the aforementioned Mac barges in. Immediately both the player and Alex are aware of a pulsing red aura around Mac, indicating his anger. In a tense scene, as Mac starts accusing Gabe of sleeping with his girlfriend and then attacking the defenseless Gabe, Mac’s anger sort of takes over Alex, and she shoves him off of Gabe and into the hallway, proceeding to beat the crap out of him. When Gabe tries to pull Alex off of Mac, she swings around and hits Gabe instead, Mac’s anger still controlling her.

As one can imagine, things are then pretty tense between the siblings, and after Alex has a chance to prove herself as a server at the Black Lantern and meet some more of Haven Springs’s delightful residents, Gabe and Alex meet up on the rooftop garden of the bar to talk. It’s a sweet little scene, and the player has the choice of having Alex tell Gabe the truth about her past in the foster care system, or the truth about her ability. Either way, the siblings deepen their bond, and just when it’s looking like things might start to be okay, Ryan announces that Ethan (Gabe’s girlfriend’s son) is missing.

The rescue squad (Gabe, Ryan, and Alex) make their way over to the old abandoned mine in the mountains near the town. Depending on player choice, the knowledge that Ethan is there could be offered up earlier in the chapter or only after Ryan acknowledges that Ethan is missing. Regardless, Alex manages to piece together Ethan’s likely location thanks to his genuinely delightful comic book, and Gabe says he’ll call the mining company, Typhon, to ask them to hold off on the evening’s scheduled blasts until they can locate Ethan and get out of there.

Once Ethan is located, Alex is able to use her ability to tap into his fear and encourage him to cross a ravine back to safety with her. Unfortunately, right as Ethan is rescued, warning sirens go off–indicating the imminent mining blast, despite Gabe’s call to the safety guard earlier. Suddenly a loud explosion can be heard, and a massive boulder from the ensuing rock slide takes Gabe out and over the cliff. In an instant, everything Alex had come to know that day is gone.

What follows is a truly heartfelt tale of a small town, brought together by Gabe’s sudden death. Alex can choose to use her ability to really get in the heads and hearts of the residents of Haven Springs, whether to try and unravel the truth behind Gabe’s death (was it really just an unfortunate accident?) or just to help them out and be kind. Along the way, the player can have Alex start to view her ability as more of a gift or a curse, use it to help (or not) the people she meets, and of course…romance Ryan or Steph.

It’s genuinely a tough decision okay, this game’s tagline should be “BI PANIC: THE GAME”

THE CHARACTERS

I’ve seen a couple reviews now mention that one of the things they love about this game in comparison to the first few entries in the series is that there is so much development put into the side characters, and I agree. I think the reasoning behind this is in part because getting to know the other characters can literally be woven into Alex’s story with her ability if the player chooses to do so, but also I think because it serves to really build up this whole “small town” setting of Haven Springs. This is further emphasized with the “MyBlock” app Alex can access on her phone–a far more pleasant version of the real app, “NextDoor.”

What I really appreciate about the characters in the game is that they felt real, and their problems felt real, and their relationship (or lack thereof) with Alex felt real. I’ll talk more about it in the section about Alex’s ability, but I loved how many times Alex could hear a character talking and then she could read their emotion and their thoughts and learn that what they were portraying on the outside was completely different from what was going on inside–I mean, how realistic is that??

As much as I adore the characters in this game and how they are presented in such a way that we as the player can really get to know them, I do think it does them a bit of disservice to compare them to the side characters in the previous games in the series. I mean, do we get to know the side characters more in this particular game? Yes, of course! But again, I think part of that is due just purely to the setting of this game and the tie-in to Alex’s ability. For example, in the first Life is Strange, sure Arcadia Bay (RIP, I definitely destroyed it and I will never live it down) was sort of presented as a small town somewhat akin to Haven Springs, but the focus of that game was Max discovering her powers AND rekindling this friendship with Chloe. Because of that, much of the gameplay time was devoted to having the player learn about Max’s power right along with her as well as fixing (or breaking, I suppose) this relationship with Chloe. While the setting was filled with different side characters in a town where everyone pretty much knew each other, there was more of a laser focus on Max’s ability and especially Max and Chloe’s relationship–it wasn’t as necessary in that story to focus on and build up all of the side characters (arguably). Then you have Before the Storm, which followed a very similar track. Though it took place in a small town and did have side characters who filled out that world, the primary focus was Chloe’s personal journey and her relationship with Rachel, so it wasn’t (arguably) necessary to fill out the details of the side characters. Life is Strange 2 feels even more appropriately episodic than the previous entries–each chapter is a brand new setting with brand new characters and interactions. There were definite snippets of side character interactions and getting to know them, but because the whole story was this grand “on the run” narrative, Sean and Daniel could never stay in one place long enough to really explore relationships with anyone they met (with some exceptions depending on player choice). There were lovely moments of that found family, small town aesthetic during different points–the campfire scene with the people on the weed farm and the morning spent exploring the mom’s desert community in particular are lovely. Again though, the primary focus of that game is Sean and Daniel’s relationship and how Daniel’s ability comes into play.

With this game, that sibling relationship is presented as key at first, and then that rug is absolutely ripped out from underneath the player at the end of the first chapter–both Alex and the player are flung into this town they barely know full of people who knew and loved Gabe but don’t know anything about Alex beyond what Gabe has told them. Establishing relationships with the other characters in the town is key in order to restore some of that relationship with Gabe that Alex was robbed of, but it’s also key just to provide some stability for Alex where there previously has been none. The other characters are absolutely woven into the very fabric of the game itself, and it just wouldn’t be the same without them, which is not an argument I think you can necessarily make for the previous entries in the series. Which is wonderful, and not a bad thing in the slightest! What I love about this series is just how many different types of stories can be told with this sort of format, and I love exploring each world presented to me and getting to meet the people who live there.

(“They’re not real people they’re digital characters–” “THE EMOTIONS ARE REAL, OKAY.”)

I could discuss the specific characters and their stories at length, and I will be thinking about them for quite a while still. Eleanor, Riley, Duckie, Jed (more on my problematic fav later), Mac, Charlotte, Ethan, Diane, Guy Friend and Gal Friend, Guy who lost his dog, Birdwatcher, that poor ice cream couple, THE WRITER BOYFRIENDS, the list goes on and on. By the end they all truly felt like a family for both Alex and me as the player, and I dreaded finishing the story because I knew I’d be saying goodbye to them all. I mean I know I can play it again and make different choices and see them all again but like…I had a good playthrough and felt like I really helped them, I don’t wanna change anything! This is the only problem I can see in designing these characters to feel so real–I don’t want to try out different choices because I don’t want to hurt or disappoint any of them! YOU’VE PLAYED YOURSELF, DECK NINE.

But wait, aren’t there a couple characters I’m forgetting about mentioning specifically…?

THE ROMANCE

hi yes I need some help I am desperately in love with both of them yes I know they’re not real leAVE ME ALONE

*ahem*

So yes there are love interests! As per Life is Strange tradition, of course! I know based on the choices in the world stats right now that Steph is the majority pick and listen, I get it, I destroyed an entire town so that Max could kiss Chloe and go on a roadtrip with her, I avoided the cute dialogue about the bracelet so that Chloe and Rachel could kiss, and yeah I went along with an absolutely harebrained scheme so that Sean and Finn could kiss and end up in Mexico together.

But Ryan started talking about bird calls and I was GONE.

In all seriousness, though, I sincerely applaud Deck Nine here for giving us two really wonderful and equally delightful love interests. Usually in a game like this it doesn’t take long for me to meet the love interests and immediately decide “ah yes I would like this one” and I really don’t regret sticking with that decision. But dang, it was actually really tough to choose between Ryan and Steph–different as they are, they’re both incredibly dynamic and well-built characters, and Alex has wonderful chemistry with both of them.

The problem I run into now is that I would like to romance Steph next time, but does that mean Ryan is gonna be sad?? Like it was hard enough learning that Steph was sad I had Alex say Ryan should be the hot distraction, how am I supposed to live with this??? THEY BOTH DESERVE ALL THE LOVE IN THE WORLD. Their absolute dedication to the LARP in drastically different ways?? I ADORE THEM.

I also just have to discuss the scene after the Spring Fest where, if you have Alex meet Ryan on the roof, the man plants a tree for her. And his delightfully awkward “…it’s a tree!” after he presents it?? I can’t. AND THEN THE ENTIRE TREE BLOSSOMS IF ALEX AND RYAN KISS AND THE HAPPY AURA FROM THEM BOTH I JUST.

I need a minute.

(I’ve seen gifs of the Steph and Alex kiss and GAH THAT SCENE LOOKS JUST AS AMAZING. DECK NINE PLEASE HAVE MERCY)

THE ABILITY

Ah yes and now a topic that is a STAPLE of a Life is Strange protagonist–dealing with some sort of funky magic power thing!!

Unlike previous entries, Alex is aware of her ability prior to the start of the game (it’s also implied that Dr. Lynn may know as well?? But we block her early on so like pfft get outta here with that). The player does have choices throughout the game that encourage Alex to consider her ability to be a gift or a curse, and she does learn to control it more as she explores using it to help various residents of Haven Springs.

I will admit that as excited as I was about this super empathy skill from pretty much the minute it was announced, I was a little curious about how it would translate into gameplay. The answer–SUPER WELL. The emotion auras provide a lovely visual cue to tap into throughout the game, and in such a story-driven experience, there’s something really lovely about being able to read into the emotions and thoughts of other characters and use that information to help them (or, in Diane’s case…guilt-trip them). I also think one of the major reasons the whole end confrontation at the council meeting works so well is specifically because of Alex’s ability and how it’s presented and used in the game.

It’s just…it’s so lovely. The introduction of it, presented as picking up on Gabe’s aura of fear at messing up this meeting with his estranged sister despite how confident he appears on the outside, is so simple but so powerful. It works in bigger moments, like Ethan’s fear of the ravine when Alex rescues him and Charlotte’s improbable anger at the various people in her life and their connection to Gabe’s death, and it works in smaller moments, like choosing to dance with Duckie through his sadness on the night of the Spring Fest and reading the miscommunication between the ever star-crossed Guy Friend and Gal Friend to help them get together (finally).

My favorite part, though? It really brings up some fascinating discussions, like previous entries in the series do. How far is too far when it comes to using these powers? Is there a time when you shouldn’t use them? And can we talk about how traditionally in these games the character with the power is part of a typically marginalized community, and how that affects their story?

I just…I really love these powers/abilities as a mechanic in these games and I have a lot of feelings about it (ha. HA. get it. because Alex’s ability is all about feelings.

k bye)

THE TWISTS

I adore how this game is like “you…you want plot twists? Twists are what you want?? WE’VE GOT TWISTS” but like not in a bad way!! I mean, again, in true Life is Strange tradition, there are plot twists a plenty and they work wonders…for the most part, I think.

The initial twist comes to smack you in the face at the end of the first chapter, and it shouldn’t be a surprise because it was all over the advertising for the game pre-release BUT JUST IN CASE THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO BACK OUT IF YOU REALLY WANT TO BE SURPRISED

So anyway–Gabe’s death at the end of Chapter 1, even if you know it’s coming, still feels like it comes in out of nowhere and just hits you upside the head. I mean, it works though, because just as the situation would be in real life, it’s sudden and shocking and absolutely miserable. Extreme extreme EXTREME kudos to Erika Mori for her absolutely heartbreaking screams as Alex in that moment, I love sobbing, thanks Erika. Chapter 1 served to introduce both the player and Alex to the world of the game, and just when both of you start to get comfortable with that, it’s absolutely RIPPED out from under both of you. You start Chapter 2 in the exact same space Alex is, and it makes for a fantastic setup!!

Arguably there’s another plot twist in the form of “ohhhh man Gabe’s death may not have been an accident and the giant mining corporation might be behind it!!” but like…c’mon, we all saw that coming, of COURSE it’s the giant mining corporation. Corporate Sabotage the Game YES PLEASE.

I would argue as far as big plot twists go, the next one is the reveal about Jed and it’s closely tied with the reveal about Alex and Gabe’s father.

My mom and I sort of jokingly called out Jed as the villain early on, mostly because we learned from the first game that you can’t trust literally anyone apparently. I mean it was either Jed or Eleanor, so…

The reveal about Jed is heartbreaking on a number of levels, and it serves to really show off just how good the writing for this game is. Jed is this perfectly wonderful guy who sort of adopts Gabe and then sort of adopts Alex in turn. He’s kind and gracious to everyone, and is always looking out for others. Like Ryan says in a text to Alex following the council meeting, Jed was a hero in the eyes of everyone in town. I think it’s set up so that even if you can tell the twist is coming, even once you reach the point of “ohhhhh Jed…noo….” as he takes Alex out to the old mine, it’s still sad to watch.

It’s frustrating then to watch him during the council meeting denying all of Alex’s claims, because you know there’s good in him, you’ve seen it, and that can’t be a lie, right? The final moment between Jed and Alex, when she looks inside and lays down everything for him, putting words to thoughts he’d long since buried (liKE THE MINERS HE LEFT BEHIND AHAHAHHhhhhh…yikes…) is so incredibly powerful. That buildup to the decision to forgive or condemn him? MMMM. I’m not sure what the scene looks like if Alex condemns him because like…I couldn’t do it fam, but the way he just breaks down when Alex forgives him? Again, kudos to Stephen F. Austin for that breakdown from Jed, I love sobbing, I love it a lot.

The other twist that comes in around this time is the reveal that Alex and Gabe’s father, John Chen, was one of the miners Jed left behind in the mine. At the time of writing, it’s probably the only twist in the game I’m just…not sure about. It’s not that it doesn’t work–the reveal is well-written, the symbolism of the locket works well, and it does serve to connect why Gabe was in Haven Springs in the first place. Generally I’m just…not sure how necessary it was, ya know? John Chen is presented and remembered as like, kind of the Worst. So it’s already hard to feel that same gut punch about his reveal than it is about Jed–Jed has known these kids for way less time and has been fantastic to them, so the twist about his betrayal HURTS. John Chen was like, already not awesome and we only really saw him for part of a chapter, not the whole game. It’s hard to know how we’re supposed to feel about his death, or the fact that he carried that locket with pictures of his kids to work with him and, eventually, to his grave.

I get why the twist about John Chen is in there, I just think the game and the story didn’t need it. I mean, I really had no problem believing that Gabe was in Haven Springs just because he wanted to be there, not necessarily because he was searching for his dad or anything. I mean, I want to be in Haven Springs just because like, look at it, so I was totally like “yeah I see why Gabe lives here.” I didn’t need a different reason for his choosing to be there, but that’s just me! Again, I get why it’s in the story and it’s not that I don’t think it works, I just kinda…meh.

SHOULD YOU PLAY THIS GAME FOR YOURSELF?

YES YES YES A THOUSAND TIMES YES. This game is a heartwarming journey from start to finish–even when it hurts, it hurts GOOD.

That sounds weird. Anyway.

There’s a LARP section.

A LARP SECTION.

If that won’t convince you, I don’t know what will.

(Okay in all seriousness–genuinely the whole LARP thing is absolutely one of my favorite moments in a game like, ever. It’s so well done, it’s fun, the constant little updates from MyBlock are FANTASTIC, and that last segment where Alex taps into Ethan’s emotion and she sees the final battle of the LARP through his eyes and it’s like, high end fantasy RPG suddenly??? ICONIC. Absolutely joyous and wonderful, 15/10)

If story-driven games are your thing, this game is for you. If you’re a longtime fan of the series, this game is for you. If you tried but didn’t love the other entries in the series but you’re intrigued, I think this game could be for you. If this isn’t your genre at all and you’re not interested even after my telling you there’s an entire LARP section…I’m not sure why you read this far, but hi! I still think you should try this game out if you get the chance–I think it’ll surprise you!

All in all, I give Life is Strange: True Colors…

5/5 EMOTION AURAS!!

Listen we only got 4 in the game so I went with the only other color that was on that brain poster in the Silver Dragon okay

FAVORITE MOMENT:

Ahhhhhh I have so, so many…that first moment we see a happiness aura and it’s around Ryan and this absolutely goofball moment he had with Gabe, the entire fear sequence for Eleanor, the LARP (have I mentioned the LARP), the romance scenes of course, and absolutely hands down mxmtoon’s beautiful cover of “Creep.” This game is just full of beautiful, funny, and lovely moments and I can’t pick just one bye

MECHANIC I WISH WAS EXPLORED MORE:

A brand new section here for games!

There are a couple moments where it’s sort of implied that Alex can sort of “talk” to the dead, or at the very least, read the emotions of them and hear them. It starts when she sees Gabe again during a dream sequence when she’s blacked out from being shot into the mine shaft (#thanksJed), and then she hears the voices of the dead miners who were left behind, linked to the strong emotion of anger coming from the locket her father held onto. Then Alex gets to speak with Gabe again before she makes her final choice about staying in Haven Springs or leaving. There’s also a missable moment with Duckie near the end where Alex can hear the voice of his dead wife Tabitha linked to specific memories Duckie has of her. Nothing is set in stone about what this could mean, whether it be more hallucinatory in nature (she had to have gotten hit on the head so hard when she fell down that shaft!!) or explicitly linked to her powers. I think it’s super fascinating, and I wish it had been explored more!! What a lovely way to keep people with us, if Alex is indeed able to do that to some degree.

I’m not saying they should make an Alex sequel where she explores her powers more and potentially solves more mysteries by talking to dead people and/or piecing together what happened thanks to their memories linked to emotions in objects but uh……….I mean…………….

“OOF” MOMENT:

I don’t think the twist about John Chen qualifies exactly, so what comes to mind is having to pick between Ryan and Steph for the hotter distraction. Deck Nine please I am just a stressed-out bisexual, please don’t make me do this.

Also that entire foosball game I was stressed out and screaming.

GAMES TO LOOK OUT FOR:

I am, of course, absolutely thrilled for the remaster of Life is Strange and Before the Storm, so I’ll definitely cover those. Who knows, I may even NOT destroy Arcadia Bay this time!

(…I will definitely probably still destroy Arcadia Bay this time)

In non-LiS news, we are awaiting any sort of crumbs about Breath of the Wild 2 and Dragon Age 4. Whenever. We get those. Maybe.

Also awaiting news on the sequel to Oxenfree and Fullbright’s Open Roads!

And that about does it for this review! Again, I cannot recommend this game enough. In a world right now that’s full of just really depressing news around every corner, it’s refreshing to escape for a few hours and immerse yourself in a deeply heartfelt story about emotions, the people around us, and how the little things can end up meaning the most. Plus, couldn’t we all use some happy endings right now?

(Yes, it’s true, though I haven’t played through each ending myself, from what I can gather, every ending is basically happy and good, which is really kind of refreshing–don’t get me wrong, I love a bittersweet ending as much as the next person, but by the end of this I just really wanted Alex to get that peace she so deserves. Plus Haven Springs didn’t get destroyed, so no one can make fun of me for destroying another town–HA!)

Joker REVIEW

PlayerOneLeave a comment

*deep inhale*

Good people of the Internet.

Occasionally with my A-List thing, I have gone to see a movie that I would never have seen otherwise. Sometimes, this has paid off very well for me (Booksmart, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Us, Escape Room) and sometimes, I have been filled with almost nothing but regret (Alita: Battle Angel, Pet Sematary, Avengers: Endgame, Toy Story 4). Nonetheless, I’ve had a fun time breaking down why exactly I’ve enjoyed some movies more than others, or why some had an effect on me while others didn’t.

I, generally, like superhero movies. So like a week ago, I took myself to the movies and I saw Joker, which…is…a movie. That I saw. Yep.

Mhm. It’s definitely a film. And I certainly saw it.

THE PLOT

The film follows Arthur Fleck, who starts as a clown for hire and ends up as just a clown 🌝

Okay, okay, plot. The plot.

Arthur Fleck is a “troubled” individual with an interesting brain thing that means occasionally he will go into fits of uncontrollable laughter. He has laminated cards that explain this that he can hand to people if it happens.

Arthur lives with and takes care of his ailing mother, who idolizes Thomas Wayne (resident Rich Guy Who Makes TV Appearances Often and Talks About The Greater Good) and believes that “if he only knew how we were living, he would help us.” Arthur doesn’t really believe this, but he loves his mother and humors her about this.

The point of the film is to follow Arthur and attempt to explain what sent him into the downward spiral that led to him being known as the infamous Joker. That’s about it.

I can’t really say much more without spoiling things (if you’re someone who cares about that for this movie, I mean…he’s…he becomes the Joker I don’t know how much more obvious it could be) and I really don’t want to hold back my opinions anymore SO without further ado…

THE REVIEW

Like I said above, I, generally, like superhero movies. I was intrigued by the idea of a solo Joker movie because I think Joker is a fascinating villain, and I think there’s a lot you can do with his backstory–while still making it crystal clear that he is a villain.

I really, really disliked this movie. I wanted to like it, I really did, but I just don’t. I can’t.

I took some time getting this review out partially because I bought Breath of the Wild recently and wow that game is fantaaaaaaastic, but also because I wanted this to be as objective as possible. My first draft of this review was scathing and unfair and without any thought to the other side. I’m sure much of it is still like that, despite my best efforts, but fun fact: it’s my movie blog, and if you disagree, you’re welcome to write your own review. Cool thanks.

I can and will give a plethora of reasons for disliking it, believe me. I walked out of that theater feeling cheated and gross and just bleh. I continue to think that it’s such a shame, because it’s a beautifully shot film. The cinnamontography is absolutely incredible, and Joaquin Phoenix does an amazing job as the lead. It’s stunning acting work and stunning camera work and it’s a SHAME that it’s wasted on whatever the hell this movie is.

Like…we have ANOTHER Alita: Battle Angel you guys. With the exception that I don’t think there was any necessarily stellar acting in Alita, but I digress. For the moment.

I guess there’s no better way to put it than I was disappointed. It’s very similar to how I felt walking out of Endgame, except this one makes me fear for what people who “relate” to Arthur Fleck will do. But both films made me feel stupid for ever thinking some profound, good storytelling could come out of superhero stories.

And it really sucks because it is possible: Black Panther, Thor: Ragnarok, Into the Spider-Verse, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, the very first Iron Man, these are examples to me of how profound, good storytelling can come out of superhero stories. I, admittedly, don’t follow any of the comics (there are so many oh god how do I even start ahhhhhhh), but from what I hear from people, there is some amazing storytelling at work there.

So, wow, it really feels like a letdown when we get a movie like this.

Now, normally, I would break down such elements as the music, the characters, the ending, so on and so forth, but I don’t think that would get us anywhere with this one, and it’s not really what I want to talk about anyway, so things will be divided up a little differently this time.

Without any further ado, let’s dive into…whatever the hell Joker is.

Also, spoiler alert now in effect. Although anything I say that might sound surprising and plot-twist-y might get proved false later and leave you sitting there like “…wait, what?” And that’s pretty much how the whole movie goes, so you’re welcome.

THE MENTAL ILLNESS THING

So let’s start with probably the most obvious thing: the Joker is like, not…well?

I mean, kind of a “no shit, Sherlock” moment but hear me out: this is a very, very big deal in the movie. Arthur Fleck, a.k.a., Joker, is mentally ill somehow. I don’t think we ever learn how specifically, it’s just a general “Mental Illness” thing. Whatever it is, he hallucinates, isn’t super great in social situations, feels zero remorse about killing multiple people, and paints his own blood on his face at the end. So. Yeah.

He’s also aware that he has a mental illness. I mean he sees some sort of health worker/therapist whatever before the funding gets cut, he knows the laughing thing isn’t normal, and he writes in his notebook the very, very profound “the worst part about having a mental illness is that people expect you to act like you don’t” (or something very similar to that) Oh. Wow. So profound. Much deep. *confetti or whatever*

Here’s why this is an incredibly generic route for the movie to take and also why it doesn’t work: it’s been done before. It’s the kind of general “mental illness is eeeeeevil” plot that you could have expected out of a movie in 2010, maybe, but this is 2019, ya fools (and now it’s 2020 even!!). Writing off the main villain’s issues as “general mental illness” is just bland, not to mention incredibly insensitive. Portraying a bad guy as mentally ill? Wow, way to vilify an entire large chunk of the human population yet again. It’s the same thing you do when you code your villain as gay–it’s been done countless times before, and all it does is further solidify the narrative that that group of people is subhuman and in contrast to “heroes.” Good work, y’all.

(“But wait!” I hear you say, “Batman doesn’t even make an APPEARANCE in this film, it’s just child Bruce Wayne, so you can’t even say there’s anything TO contrast Joker with because there is no hero!”

To which I say “Unfortunately, as we will delve into later, that was kind of the point. This is supposed to be an “anti-comic book movie” whatever the hell that means. Which like, cute, but as has been established before in many different adaptations: you cannot have the Joker without Batman, and vice versa. They complete each other. It’s so ingrained into our culture that when you think of one, you automatically think of the other. So even though Batman doesn’t make an appearance in this film, per se, you still think of him. You still watch his origin just as much as Joker’s. The very idea of Batman haunts Joker as a character even here, so there is always something to compare him to.

Now, sit down and finish your chips while I finish the review.”)

Now, here’s the thing, the elephant in the room: the Joker as a character in general is not well, like I said earlier. I don’t bring up this topic to insinuate that the Joker should be presented without a mental illness of some sort because, I mean one, that would maybe be even more horrifying, and two, it just wouldn’t make sense. But when you have a character like this who is well-known in his mythos as a villain, you have to keep presenting him as such. Sure, be honest about his mental state, but make it clear that it doesn’t excuse any of his behavior.

The Joker here is applauded for being a murderer. He’s glorified for starting a violent movement he didn’t even mean to. He’s turned into a symbol for a revolution that riots and kills in the streets. By the end, the Joker is shown that he’s fully and wholly accepted for who he is, which sounds sweet and endearing until you remember all the people he murdered in the film. It’s what he always craved, but it’s disgusting to watch.

Maybe that’s the point. But didn’t the Aurora movie theatre shooter claim he was dressed as the Joker? Mm. Yeah. How do we feel about all those people who claim they relate to the Joker from this film now?

(“But wait!” I hear you say, again, “is that even true? And I’m sure that wasn’t the intention of the filmmakers!”

“First of all,” I respond, “you are correct on both counts: the quote about him comparing himself to the Joker has since been debunked. But as this article discusses, one of the parents of the victims said that “Joker, which centers on the isolated and mentally ill antihero who becomes Batman’s eventual archnemesis, is ‘like a slap in the face.'”

Regardless of intention of the filmmakers, this was a real-life event that will always be tied to the franchise. Seems a little tasteless to uphold and justify violence, especially gun violence, as the film does. Warner Bros. Can claim that it “believes that one of the functions of storytelling is to provoke difficult conversations around complex issues” as much as it wants, but at the end of the day, this character is accepted by society for murdering multiple people. Warner Bros. Made a lot of money off this film, and really? That’s what they care about. That’s all they care about.

You want more proof? Because Joker made almost $1 billion on opening weekend, there are already talks about a sequel.

So much for “provoking difficult conversations.”)

THE “PLOT TWISTS” THING

Ugh.

So, you know how media lately is doing this thing where it’s like: “plot twists that absolutely no one sees coming are more important than a plot that makes sense and characters that act the way we wrote them originally??? :D”

It’s gross, but Joker doesn’t do that. At least, I don’t think it did? Maybe? I’m still trying to figure it out.

It felt very much like the film was trying to primarily be a “character study” of sorts, which meant the character-building scenes like Fleck chasing down and then being beaten by the kids in the beginning, handing the card that explains his laughter condition to the woman in the bus, and rehearsing his appearance on the talk show all set a certain tone, and they all belonged in that tone. It’s slow and layered and filled with subtext; it says so much more in the silence than it does in the lines from the script. Most of the film is like that. Fleck dying his hair messily? Yep. Fleck dancing down the stairs in full Joker regalia? Yep. Fleck crying in his clown makeup? Mhm. It’s all very artsy, character-driven, and slow.

Which is why it felt so out of place to suddenly have scenes filled with random, out-of-nowhere plot twists. Guess what?? Fleck is actually the secret brother of BRUCE WAYNE!!! Ooooooh!! Oh–no, wait, maybe he isn’t….becAUSE HIS MOM ACTUALLY ADOPTED HIM AND SHE’S EVEN MORE INSANE THAN HE IS!!!!! Did she ever have an affair with the head of Wayne Industries??? Who cares, that’s not important. Oh ALSO–remember his girlfriend?? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH HE ACTUALLY IMAGINED THAT ENTIRE RELATIONSHIP AND THEY’VE BARELY SPOKEN TWO SENTENCES TO EACH OTHER. WOW.

Once the plot-twist bug bit, the entire second half of the film felt like whiplash. Scenes of sudden and intense plot-development were interspersed with those calmer, character-driven silent scenes, and just when you got used to that, BAM. SLAPPED IN THE FACE WITH ANOTHER PLOT TWIST. WOW.

There’s a time and place for all of that, and I think there’s way to have a largely character-study-driven film involve all of that, but it never felt consistent here. It largely felt like the director wanted you to be just as confused as Arthur Fleck was, and like I guess if that was the point then good job? But it didn’t make for an enjoyable experience, and I’m also not entirely convinced that was the point. It feels like that would take some real forethought and based off of interviews with the director, I’m not sure much of that went into this film.

THE POLITICAL ALLEGORY THING

Hooooo boy.

We live in a time of political turmoil. Them’s just the facts. This climate is echoed in Hollywood in various ways, and sometimes I think it works, aaaaand sometimes I think it doesn’t.

The thing about including a political allegory in your film is that you kinda have to make it clear which side you’re on. We live at a time when there are two very staunchly opposed sides to every argument, and if you’re not going to clearly pick one, you have to at least make the allegory obvious regardless so it actually comes across like you intended. Or maybe you had zero intentions and just wanted to make a “not-comic book movie” because ha ha, the Joker is ~cool~ and ~edgy~.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark was very clearly on one particular side, it made it clear, and del Toro has not shied away from his intention in interviews. Us was filled with so much that it was intentional for the viewer to work out all the various allegories and theories on their own. Jojo Rabbit made its point clear in probably the most blatantly obvious way possible: Hitler is literally Sparta-kicked through a window!

What constantly annoys me about Joker is that it felt like it was really trying to play around with this whole political allegory idea, but without being too obvious about it–that or it wanted to stuff so many different allegories and ideas into one plot line that the whole thing just emerged as a muddled mess.

For example–one of the topics you could say that it tackles is the lack of funding and awareness for mental health. Cool, okay…but what’s the point? What is it saying is the answer? The loss of his therapist certainly didn’t help Fleck, but it also didn’t serve as the tipping point, either. Is it meant to just be one building block? Okay, but then why spend so much time on it? Why have his therapist even be a character at all, considering she barely did anything–her whole point was to sit at a desk so that Fleck could have someone to bounce his insane ideas off of, but he could have just as easily been talking to himself, that’s how helpful she was. So is the idea that if Fleck had had access to better help for his mental state, none of this would have happened? Okay, but that wasn’t clear at all, because he still had the issue of the gun he was given, his horrendous coworkers, his total lack of social life, his idealization of a famous person….

Okay, so then maybe what the film tackles is this whole rich vs. poor narrative. After all, the rich people in this film were total assholes, right? Fleck emerged as a sort of evil Robin Hood clown to save the people! Cool, sure, except there are problems with that narrative, too: Fleck murdered people. Lots of people. Not all of them rich assholes. And are you really saying that the environment in Gotham was such that that many poor people celebrated the murder of three innocent Wall Street-esque workers? Or, is that your point, that poor people are so dangerous and soulless that they will completely relish in the murder of the rich, so much so that they will start an entire clown movement?

(Yeah, it’s not lost on me that the poor people rioters were all wearing clown masks at the end–haha, they’re all clowns for following the Joker, hilarious)

Hmmm, okay, so maybe what it’s really digging at is that mental illness is the problem, not the guns. Okay. Yeah….except, as stated in the film, Fleck has been mentally ill his whole life. He didn’t murder anyone until he got his hands on a gun.

Well, okay, maybe it didn’t intend to have any sort of political allegory at all.

That’s my best answer at this point, except there was so much scattered throughout the film that could easily be labeled AS political allegory, it doesn’t feel like an accident.

But it’s certainly not clear–it’s a mess. And it’s a damn shame, because as I’ve stated, Joaquin Phoenix did amazing work for this. Damn.

THE “ROMANCE” THING

This is a minor thing in terms of plot, but I just have to get it out there: A huge chunk of the film, we are led to believe that Fleck is carrying on a successful, steamy relationship with one of his neighbors.

One of the big “plot twists” I guess is that oh, oh wow, he imagined that entire thing??? Whaaaaaaa??? (I assume it’s supposed to be surprising because there’s an entire slow motion montage that reveals it)

But like, I assumed from the get go it had to be fake or she had to be crazy, because I’m sorry, but it’s so incredibly unbelievable that a woman living alone with her daughter, let alone a woman of color living alone with her daughter, would ask absolutely no questions about her neighbor she’s spoken to twice and maybe flirted with once showing up at her doorstep looking completely bedraggled and covered in clown makeup AND THEN HE STARTS MAKING OUT WITH HER AND SHE’S LIKE “THIS IS FINE.”

But, sure, oh wow how shocking I did not see that coming at allllllll.

THE COMIC BOOK THING

So here’s the thing about the Joker: he’s a comic book character.

Wow, I know we all knew that, but anyway.

I don’t claim to be a DC expert by any stretch of the imagination–I watch the movies sometimes, I remember watching the animated Batman series in the morning before Winx Club or something, but I don’t really follow the comics.

Still, I was curious about how “accurate” this movie was to the original lore, and, shocker, it’s not. Or, well, not…really?

Apparently, from what I can gather, the Joker doesn’t really have a “set” backstory. There’s no universal explanation for why he is the way he is, unlike Bruce Wayne (rich, parents killed in an ally, ~the batcave~, etc.). In fact, apparently he is quoted saying in The Killing Joke (apparently a controversial graphic novel version of a potential origin story for the Joker) “Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another…if I’m going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice!”

Which, sure, that’s funky and interesting for one of the most iconic villains of all time. I can get down with it. And in that spirit of things, really any attempt at an “origin story” for the Joker can have almost entirely free reign, can’t it?

Every quote I’ve seen from the charming director of this film has had the same spirit of “I didn’t actually want to make a comic book movie, I didn’t bother reading anything about the character, hahah I guess that will make people mad oh well” (he must be suuuuper fun at parties). There are two interesting things about this mindset:

1. THE JOKER IS LITERALLY A COMIC BOOK VILLAIN??

You literally cannot make a movie about a villain, from comic books, without it being a comic book movie?? Sure you can take out the DC logo and make it all “dark and broody and dramatic and character-driven” BUT HE’S STILL A COMIC BOOK CHARACTER AND ALWAYS WILL BE.

If you want to make some sort of dramatic character study story about someone dealing with mental illness that focuses on classism and violence and whatever else but you don’t want it to be a “comic book movie” MAKE YOUR OWN ORIGINAL STORY THEN?? Clearly you have ideas so use that?? Do you not trust that your own ideas would get you very far? RIP to you I guess???

2. Joke’s on you (pun intended) because you literally STILL made a comic book movie

Despite the insistence that no attention was paid to the lore of Gotham or Batman or whatever, there’s a whole lot in here. The Joker, once stepping into that role by the end, looks exactly like you expect from the comics, there are no changes. There is still a huge point made to show Bruce Wayne’s own origin story. Still set in Gotham. It’s a dark tale, certainly, but it doesn’t stray far enough from the lore to be considered “not a comic book movie.” It is. Through and through.

Oops?

THE “STORY” THING

Despite the amazing cinnamontography and the incredible work done by Joaquin Phoenix, I still left the theatre feeling like I’d wasted a good couple hours of my life.

Here’s the thing about an origin story for a well-known character: the ending is spoiled from the get-go. We don’t go to these movies wondering how it will end, because we know. We go because the how is so much more powerful. We go to see what changed in Tony Stark’s life to lead him to fight the very weapons he grew up endorsing. We go to see what exactly made Wonder Woman defend humanity when she started out knowing so little about it. We go to see (hopefully) what simultaneously made and broke Black Widow.

We go in already knowing a big chunk of the story, but we don’t have the full picture. We want it, though, because we want answers. We want to know why someone behaves the way they do. We can guess, sure, but it’s so much more satisfying when there’s an explanation set in stone, especially one with twists that may be surprising but ultimately make sense in the end.

I don’t know what I was hoping for from Joker, but it felt ultimately like a letdown. It was like they looked at the character, thought “okay, so we have to explain this”, and then promptly took the easiest route. Why is the Joker insane? Because #mentalillness. That’s it.

Obviously the Joker has some kind of mental illness, something is clearly not right, but we never learn exactly what that is from this film. The whole thing felt like a cop-out, because it was predictable from the get go. Of course he gets fired from his shitty job. Of course the talk show host makes fun of him. Obviously he’s imagining the romance. No duh he starts killing people with the gun he was given.

The one moment of the story that felt fresh was the idea that the Joker and Batman were actually BROTHERS. But they couldn’t even let us have that because soon it was revealed that oh, no, that’s a lie actually, all made up by Fleck’s also-insane mother. How is he gonna handle this?? He kills her, obviously. Duh.

I wouldn’t even be as bothered by the cop-out if it didn’t also feel like the film was trying to make some bigger statement about…something. But what? What exactly is the commentary on society??

As mentioned before, if the commentary is meant to be classism, it doesn’t do this effectively because our main character is imprinted in our brains as a villain. You can say it’s not a comic book movie, but he is a comic book character. He’s a comic book villain. So are we supposed to root for the poor people? The ones he represents? The ones who cheer for him murdering people on live TV? Or are we supposed to cheer for the rich, the ones who get slaughtered mercilessly? But they were mostly assholes throughout the entire film??

If your goal is to make some sort of classism commentary, in our society, you have to pick a side. If your goal is to present the rich as the villains, then you have to make your comic book villain one of them.

Think of all the rich asshats in power right now. Think of the things they say and get away with. It’s confusing and frustrating and all we can think is that something has to be wrong with them, right?

Imagine, if you will, a Joker origin story where the Joker is a well-off rich kid. Something is still wrong with him, because, you know, it’s the Joker, but he’s rich, so he always gets away with things. He has easy access to weapons because he has money. He dresses as a clown and no one questions it because he has money. In fact, people applaud him as a “self-made man” because of it. Sure he shoots people on live TV, but what about those rioters in the streets protesting him?? How DARE they???

If the Joker doesn’t even know his own origin story, that’s a route you can take with it, isn’t it?

“But doesn’t it make Batman and Joker’s rivalry less powerful since they’re both rich now?” Oh, I’m sorry, I thought this “wasn’t a comic book movie” so why are we even asking about Batman? But if we are, wouldn’t it just frustrate Joker even more if Batman was just as rich as he but actually liked by people? Wouldn’t it encourage us even more if there was a rich guy who WASN’T an asshat?

“But how would I relate to the Joker then??” Uh, please don’t?

“But…but the lore!” If someone who doesn’t care at all for the lore can make a movie like this, so can I.

“Okay fine so just make your own movie then!!” Okay.

SHOULD YOU TAKE YOURSELF TO SEE THIS MOVIE?

If you can separate the acting and the cinnamontography from the awful and confusing story, then sure.

Otherwise, skip it. I have yet to hear or read a convincing argument in favor of this movie. We all have different tastes, sure, I acknowledge that. I genuinely think I may have enjoyed this more if it wasn’t a Joker movie. Or if it was a Joker movie that actually added anything to the lore.

But I swear if this gets Oscar-picked over Us, Knives Out, and Booksmart, I will organize clown riots in the streets.

But nothing matters except for money, so it will win awards. And there will be sequels. And lots of people talking about how “dark” and “risky” and “impressive” they all are. Yaaaaaaay.

(EDIT: published without posting the rATING THAT’S THE BEST PART WHY AM I LIKE THIS)

All in all, I give Joker…

1/5 UNIMPRESSED CLOWNS!!

FAVORITE MOMENT

Either the opening with Fleck putting on his clown makeup and faking a smile while a tear rolled down because wow, why wasn’t the whole movie like that, or when Fleck sneaks into his neighbor’s apartment and it’s revealed by her reaction that he’s imagined their entire relationship. It was the one moment that was actually believable. Also, he didn’t kill her, so yay.

“OOF” MOMENT

Everything else, really.

TRAILERS TO WATCH OUT FOR

Perhaps none of these, really, but let’s talk about them.

I guess it should have been a red flag that basically all of the trailers felt like they were for complete and total male power fantasies, but I’m a hopeful person.

Tenet is the next Christopher Nolan thing, so I’m actually slightly hopeful. Not incredibly, but at least slightly.

Ford v Ferrari is bound to be the next male-led, safe-topic, unoriginal Oscar winner, so while I likely won’t be seeing it anytime soon, I’m sure I’ll have to talk about it eventually. Cars fast.

Jumanji: The Next Level has the potential to be either really good, or really meh.

If I have to see one more trailer for 1917, I may riot. It’s another glory-war movie that will win all the sound design awards for some reason–because ooOoOOOOoooh, wAr.

While I have no real desire to see Uncut Gems, I will say that it actually looks kind of fascinating idea-wise. I mean, good on Sandler for bringing some goofiness to a rather serious-looking role and have it…work?

What is The Gentlemen. Why is it happening. It’s all guns and gangs and violence but it’s okay they all have well-pressed suits and have beautiful women on their arms, therefore it’s “gentlemanly.” Talk about a male power fantasy?? ALSO MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY AND COLIN FARRELL WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN THIS MOVIE. STOP IT. NO.

Well, that does it for this review! Next we’ll be touching on some other flicks I’m late on, like Last Christmas (crying), Frozen 2 (more crying), Jojo Rabbit (SO MUCH CRYING), and Knives Out (wowowowowowow).

Look, if you like Joker, that’s fine. We probably won’t be best friends anytime soon, but who knows if we’d even want to be. I don’t know you, I don’t know your life.

I mean maybe you also really liked Alita: Battle Angel in which case I really don’t think we’d be friends, so…

MINIVIEWS TAKE TWO

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I think somewhere along the line I swore to myself that I’d never let it get to the point where I do a bunch of miniviews again but…here we are.

Same rules as last time: I will discuss my main thoughts on the film, choose a standout element, say whether or not I think you should see it, and rate it. And then I’ll make some cute promise about not doing this again. 🌝

(This time I blame real life and also the release of Luigi’s Mansion 3. HAVE Y’ALL PLAYED THAT YET IT’S SO GOOOOOOOOD)

Lessgoooooooooo:

MINIVIEW 1: DORA AND THE LOST CITY OF GOLD

MY THOUGHTS:

I can honestly say that I never thought in the year of our lord 2019 I would be writing about a movie that is a live-action adaptation of Dora: The Explorer and be saying that it’s…really, really good.

I mean like even the trailers had me like “wow that looks…decent??” And uh…it was???

But more than that, the movie is, as I like to say, a damn good time. If you grew up with the TV show like I did, it’s such a funky little love letter to everything we loved and hated about the show. My poor parents knew like nothing about it and I may or may not have made them a presentation on Dora basics so they knew what they were signing up for by going with me to see this.

It’s genuinely so much fun–it has great characters, a pLot TWisT, a lovely story, JUNGLE PUZZLES!!!, and even a really cool moral. It knew exactly how ridiculous it was and just ROLLED WITH IT.

I mean y’all someone literally made a movie of that College Humor skit from YEARS AGO…AND IT WAS GREAT.

STANDOUT ELEMENT:

Y’ALL DORA LITERALLY USED A YO-YO AS A WEAPON I–

I started learning yo-yo tricks this year (or as we in the in-crowd say, I started “throwing” this year) and I keep trying to tell people that a yo-yo could be a seriously good weapon, I mean do you know how many times I’ve whacked myself this thing is a hazard??

AND SHE LITERALLY USED IT AS A WEAPON I CANNOT–

Also I loved whenever Dora spoke to the camera or whenever she talked to people like “Hi! I’m Dora!” Like she’s a ray of sunshine and I love her.

SHOULD YOU TAKE YOURSELF TO SEE THIS MOVIE?

PLEASE DO. It’s just so much fun. Also–a Latinx-led cast!

Also stay tuned for my essay on how Dora and Alita went through very similar character arcs in their respective films but Dora’s actually worked and developed her character more and she’s literally DORA THE EXPLORER–

Haha just kidding.

…unless? 🌝

All in all, I give Dora and the Lost City of Gold…

5/5 DEADLY WEAPON YO-YOS!!

MINIVIEW 2: BLINDED BY THE LIGHT

MY THOUGHTS:

Lemme preface this by saying that Bend It Like Beckham is one of my favorite movies of all time, and the same people worked on this movie, so I was already really excited about it.

And like, I was not disappointed at all.

This movie is a delight from start to finish. The characters are lovable and well-rounded and the story is just so fun and heartwarming. There’s a little bit of drama, a little bit of romance, a lotta friendship, a lotta Bruce Springsteen music, and a whole lot of family love. There’s kinda something for everyone in this movie.

(I mean hey, if you’re a blood-and-gore action fan, there’s even a protest that interferes with a wedding party and someone gets injured and you see the blood, so–yay there you go I guess!)

My biggest complaint is the girlfriend character. Don’t get me wrong, she’s super cute and a delight, but at least in my view, her whole character was just: Girlfriend. That’s it. What music does she like? We don’t know. Her family? We don’t know. Favorite color?? WE DON’T KNOW.

Granted, she’s not the main focus at all, but they spent a whole lot of time developing our leading man, his ex-best friend and his new best friend, so like…if they all get development…….can my girl get some development too……..

I mean it’s like you could switch out her and Alita and neither of their movies would change very much….I’m just sayin…….🌚

STANDOUT ELEMENT:

By far the incorporation of Springsteen’s music. Just like you saw in the trailer, they had the lyrics appear onscreen in real time and it was such a fun little thing to do–I mean don’t we all feel a little like that when listening to music??

No???? Just me???????? Cool.

Also that whole scene where they takeover the radio booth at school and then dance around the streets and go crazy? So fun to watch.

SHOULD YOU TAKE YOURSELF TO SEE THIS MOVIE?

Generally? Yes. And I’m speaking as someone who knew absolutely none of the songs used in the film. So if you’re worried about that, please know that you’ll still really enjoy it.

But I also know that this is my type of movie…it’s a character drama about relationships and the power they can have in our lives (also, music) and I ABSOLUTELY eat that shit up. If it’s not your kind of thing, you probably won’t like this movie.

But if you’re home one night and just want a feel-good drama with some great tunes, I definitely recommend you check this movie out.

All in all, I give Blinded by the Light…

4/5 CASSETTE TAPES!!!

MINIVIEW 3: DOWNTON ABBEY

MY THOUGHTS:

*sniff* SO THE ROYAL SERVANTS ARE MEAN AND ANNA AND BATES WORK TOGETHER AND THEY’RE HAPPY FOR ONCE *sob* AND CARSON COMES BACK BECAUSE MARY NEEDS HIM *deep inhale* AND THOMAS OH GOD MY SWEET BABY THOMAS IS HAPPY *long sniff* AND THE SCENE WITH MARY AND MAGGIE SMITH AT THE BALL OH GOD–*all-out-crying*

Uh so yeah it was okay.

I think what I really, really loved about this was that it never tried to be anything more but an elongated episode of the tv show. Like it didn’t try to be anything that would draw in a different audience because it trusted that all of us would be absolute SUCKERS and come back for these dorks AND IT WAS RIIIIIIIIIIGHT WE ALL FELL FOR IT DAMMIT.

I’m not mad about it though tbh like it was fantastic. I didn’t even get fully caught up on the show and I STILL loved it. I feel like every character had a good arc and had their moment to shine, and it was all interwoven in a really lovely way.

I’m bitter that everyone was so quick to accuse Branson about being a political problem again but that’s because he’s my favorite (also can we all collectively mourn the fact that Branson and Mary never got together I just–) but anyway, I digress.

It was so heartwarming and fulfilling and such a lovely, sweet farewell to these amazing characters that captivated me for years and years. I will miss them all so much but I adore where their story ended.

STANDOUT ELEMENT:

THOMAS’S ENTIRE STORYLINE I’M GONNA CRYYYYYYYY

Thomas has always been such a fascinating character and now he got a really good, happy plot and I’m so happy for him?? It was heartbreaking watching him try to “fix” himself near the end of the show and now he’s out here kissing cute boys in the kitchen??? What an icon. I love him.

Also again, Maggie Smith’s final scene at the ball with Mary was absolutely heartbreaking in the best way possible. It was so sweet watching those two connect in such a vulnerable way I’m GONNA CRY AGAIN.

SHOULD YOU TAKE YOURSELF TO SEE THIS MOVIE?

Please do absolutely if you are a Downton fan. Please please please. If you aren’t a Downton fan, first of all what are you doing with your life, secondly yeah, okay, maybe this movie isn’t for you.

It’s still good though.

Better female character development than some other movies I could and will mention ruthlessly *cough*ALITABATTLEANGEL*cough*.

All in all, I give Downton Abbey…..

4.5/5 CRYING BOWTIES!!!!!

MINIVIEW 4: THE GOLDFINCH

MY THOUGHTS:

So like, I know this book was a really big thing for a while but uh, I never read it. I don’t know why, I think I was just solely in my YA dystopian fiction phase when it came out and I was just like…meh.

(Tbh I’m still in that phase but it’s more out of spite now because I will defend YA dystopian fiction till my last breath thanks)

So I guess the main thing I’ll say is that wow seeing the movie made me really, really want to read the book.

Overall, the movie is beautifully shot and acted, and wow Ansel Elgort does an amazing, amazing job. I love him in basically anything but that’s beside the point.

Actually like all the acting? Really wonderful.

It’s an interesting, really gritty tale, and I was a little surprised by how much I did like it. But like…I dunno if I would watch it again? At least not until I read the book. Because like, the movie was good. But it just makes me wonder if the book is fantastic.

STANDOUT ELEMENT:

Oh the cinnamontography for sure. That entire scene where our main boy wakes up in the gallery after the bomb is stunning and super eerie and beautifully done.

Also–it’s super gay, y’all. I genuinely don’t care what they’ve said in interviews, it’s gay. That kiss was not platonic. That forehead touch was not platonic. THEY ARE NOT PLATONIC. If you watched that and said “wow, that’s just like me and my friends!” BOY DO I HAVE SOME NEWS FOR YOU.

Also Nicole Kidman is the light of my life, thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

SHOULD YOU TAKE YOURSELF TO SEE THIS MOVIE?

I mean…maybe?? Again, I really really liked it, I just think the book might be better and maybe we should all go read that instead I’m just saying…….

But, if you were on the fence about it or think you do want to see it, I absolutely think you should because it is really good. Also like, I cannot get over how much I thought they were going to end on a really depressing note and I was about to be SO MAD and then WOW that sudden plot-twist turn-around in the last 10 minutes or so was iconic. So that’s another thing: if you’re worried about a depressing ending, it isn’t.

Also I mean if for some reason you’re like “wow my only two options for movies tonight are The Goldfinch and Alita: Battle Angel…” watch The Goldfinch.

All in all, I give The Goldfinch…

3.5/5 PUDGY LITTLE GOLDFINCHES!!!

MINIVIEW 5: THE ADDAMS FAMILY (2019)

MY THOUGHTS:

If you saw the trailers for this and you, like me, were like “oh boy I hope that’s actually good!” DO I HAVE SOME NEWS FOR YOU BECAUSE YES. YES IT IS.

It is absolutely a fun family flick about the best family in the world, and I want to watch it again purely to be able to catch all the dorky little details they threw in because there are so many. You can tell they had so much fun making this and I’m glad, because I had a lot of fun watching it. The animation is a delight, the voice-acting is incredible, THE REMIX OF THE THEME SONG IS ACTUALLY REALLY CUTE, and the message about family and accepting who you really are and how being different is a good thing is super sweet.

So many of the characters had a really fascinating arc and it was fun to watch how those arcs were mirrored in some of the new original characters. Also YOU GET TO SEE MORTICIA AND GOMEZ’S WEDDING AND IT’S RIDICULOUS AND AMAZINGGGG

STANDOUT ELEMENT:

So fun fact: apparently all the character designs for this movie were based on the ORIGINAL designs from the ORIGINAL COMIC STRIP. YEAH. I didn’t even know that there was a comic strip before there was a TV show?? But there is! And the movie designs really look like the comic designs just walked off the page, it’s kind of really impressive.

Also Snoop Dogg voices Cousin Itt I–

ALSO the end credits are shot like the TV opening and the ENTIRE AUDIENCE DID THE SNAPS WHEN IT HAPPENED.

SHOULD YOU TAKE YOURSELF TO SEE THIS MOVIE?

Honestly, yeah. I mean if you’re already kind of an Addams fan, I recommend going to see it. It’s super heartfelt and very sweet and fun.

If you just like quirky movies, yes.

If you want a whole lotta bloodshed I mean…uhhhh I’m sure there’s blood somewhere I forgot, I mean, it’s the Addams family.

All in all, I give The Addams Family…

4.5/5 BOMBS!!!

(I was gonna do swords because that’s a big thing but I realized that bombs works much better in honor of Puggsley and his whole character arc about being true to himself. It makes sense, I swear.)

TRAILERS WE HAVEN’T DISCUSSED YET: (I THINK…SOMETIMES I DON’T TOTALLY REMEMBER TBH OH WELL)

Crash course trailers HERE WE GOOOOO

Arctic Dogs is….a movie. That’s uh…really all I can say about this one.

Charlie’s Angels looks super good and I really hope it is good and I cannot WAIT to see itttttt

Last Christmas is a movie I have seen already and BOY are we gonna talk about that one. After I stop crying.

Brittany Runs a Marathon looks like it could be really decent. Or really preachy. Or both.

Ford v Ferrari looks like a real Oscar-bait of a movie but maybe it’s actually good. I dunno. I have such mixed feelings about racing because like I mean eh, also it’s really dangerous, but on the other hand….FAST CARS COOL.

Harriet looks beyond absolutely incredible.

Dark Waters looks so, so good and amazing. Mark Ruffalo is already the love of my life and this story looks incredible. I’m real excited.

Western Stars looks really sweet and uh…yeah.

Just Mercy looks…wow. I have a feeling it does not end happily at all but it looks incredible.

Doctor Sleep…okay look. I love Ewan MacGregor. I would do almost anything for him. EXCEPT see a Stephen King horror movie I will not do that for him I’m sorry Ewan.

Jojo Rabbit looks FANTASTIC and I’m SO EXCITED to see it I am adding Taika Waititi to the list of movie makers who own my soul thanks.

And that does it for the Miniviews!! I really enjoyed this batch of films. This will be in stark contrast to my next planned review because…well I saw Joker. And uh…yeah we’ll get to that.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark REVIEW

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Guillermo del Toro and Jordan Peele own my soul and tbh, I’m completely fine with that.

So now that it’s November and almost Thanksgiving, it’s time to finally talk about spooky things!!

So…a while ago, idk, I took myself to the movies (because all my friends are WIMPS jk I love them) and saw Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.

Like many others, I have fond, fond sleepover memories of staying up late to read from the classic books and then not sleeping at all because…well, yeah. Those drawings alone were nightmare fuel for WEEKS.

So I was already excited when the trailer first dropped for this movie, but then I learned that Guillermo del Toro was involved??? And all of the monsters were being done with practical effects and costumes and makeup and very little CG???? Ahhhhhhhh??????????

So I was like, mildly excited I guess.

I actually did some research before going to see this, mostly to watch how the actors were fitted into their monster costumes so I wasn’t completely horrified when I saw it in the theatre. I was still mildly horrified, but it helped to know that there was a contortionist in there somewhere instead of just an actual monster. I think.

THE PLOT

It’s Halloween in a small town, which means all the best and worst stuff happens. We follow a ragtag group of misfit kids–Stella, Ramón, Auggie, and Chuck (eventually joined by Chuck’s older sister Ruth) as they prank local jerk boy Tommy and manage to escape, hiding out in a haunted house, of course. The legend of the house surrounds a girl named Sarah Bellows, who apparently wrote scary stories in blood in order to punish those who wronged her or made fun of her or were basically just rude (and then the stories became REEEEEAAAAAAL).

Naturally, because Stella is an aspiring writer and lover of scary stories, she takes Sarah’s legendary book with her when they leave the house. It’s all fine and dandy until Stella notices that new stories are appearing…and they’re about people she knows.

What follows is a race against time as Stella works to solve the mystery of what was really going on with Sarah Bellows and her family before Sarah steals everyone Stella loves and turns them into nothing more than various scary stories to tell in the dark.

THE REVIEW

I can very happily and very seriously say that I genuinely loved this movie. It felt like all my favorite parts of Stranger Things, IT, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Goosebumps, Until Dawn, and The Final Girls combined. There’s just something about kids banding together to work out why creepy things are happening and to hopefully save everyone they can. I think it’s one reason why I like YA dystopian novels so much–nothing proves quite so well how powerful young people are than showing them facing off against the impossible and winning.

I’ve seen some mixed reviews for this film, and I get it. I think if you’re unfamiliar with the source material books, you don’t have quite the same experience watching it. I mean the first time they showed the scarecrow? I instantly knew how many people in the theater had read the books because of that reaction alone. That’s the first monster we see, and it’s literally like they ripped him right off the page and stuck him on the screen.

It’s absolutely horrifying and completely amazing.

I’ve also seen some complaints about the ending (we’ll get to that) and the political commentary (we’ll get to that as well). All valid points, I understand, but also like…y’all did you SEE the Pale Lady??? How can you complain about anything ever again after seeing her????? She’s precious????????

But I digress.

I loved this movie. I really did. So what about it specifically made me enjoy it so much?

(I also introduced the idea in my The Lion King 2019 REVIEW that a good category for some movies is simply “a damn good time” and I think I’d also argue that this one falls in that category as well–I think there’s a little more to be said for this one, and I think you can pull much more from it, but I also understand why someone wouldn’t necessarily be wild about it. I don’t get it personally, but I understand)

THE CHARACTERS

All of these kids are precious beans and I love them with all my heart. Protect them!!!

Stella is a delightful protagonist. Can we talk about how she wears glasses?? And how she wears glasses the entire time??? She’s a romantic interest and a leading lady with GLASSES????? And the detail in the final confrontation where she lost her glasses and we saw how everything was frustratingly blurry through her eyes and you had no idea where or what the ghost was because of that???????? AHHHHHHHHH?????

I started to write a separate blurb for each of the kids and realized I was just saying the same thing. Ramón? Precious bean. Protect him. Auggie? Precious bean. Protect him. Chuck? Precious bean. Protect him. Ruth? Precious bean. Protect her.

That’s not to say that I don’t feel like each of the kids wasn’t a good separate character. They each clearly had their things–Auggie is a tall bean who was initially more of a scaredy-cat (also, he should really stop eating toes), Chuck was more of a prankster before his initial haunted house encounter and then I just…protect him, Ruth was a little more obsessed with being the popular, cool girl (but then everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked–I MEAN when her brother disappeared) and Ramón….IS PRECIOUS AND AMAZING AND SO STRONG FOR A KID AND PLEASE DON’T MAKE HIM GO TO VIETNAM, PLEASE.

…I’m fine. This is fine.

The other characters I generally enjoyed as well. We’ll get more into Sarah Bellows when we discuss that horrific haunted house scene with Stella, but I generally felt like I liked and cared for all of the characters, and I wanted them to be okay.

Except for Tommy. I mean maybe he didn’t deserve getting all scarecrowed, but he was the worst.

THE MUSIC

The MUSIC. FAIR TOWNSPEOPLE, THE MUSIC.

The full score album is finally showing up on Spotify, and it looks like everything was composed by Marco Beltrami and Anna Drubich, and it’s AMAZING.

There’s a delightfully eerie music box theme that plays primarily where Sarah Bellows herself is concerned, and it’s GREAT. The first track in the soundtrack plays a lot of that theme, and then it transforms into this whimsical extravaganza that reminds me a lot of something Danny Elfman would write.

Of course, the music also involves some non-score songs, most notably two different versions of “Season of the Witch” which is FANTASTIC.

I mean…not to be that person that just says over and over that it’s GREAT but like…genuinely…it’s so good, y’all. Please look it up and enjoy it for yourself. Listen to it while you read the rest of this review!

THE MONSTERS

BRUH. THE MONSTERS.

Like I mentioned earlier, I watch a little “behind-the-scenes” clip that showed the various actors getting into costume for the monsters, so I was semi-prepared, but WOW. Seeing them on the big screen? Delightful. Horrifying, but delightful.

I think part of it was just my prior experiences with the books, but oh wow, I felt like a kid again watching those monsters come to life. So much love and attention went into each and every creature, and the setting that surrounded them, and the story they came from, it was almost like a different episode of a show when each monster arrived because the tone would change so much.

Each monster was delightfully unique even in the ways they moved (part of which I’m sure was just the costumes, but oh wow did it really add to things). I just…like I can’t even pick a favorite because they were all so delightful in different ways.

…okay, delightful may be a weird way to describe them, but the work that went into them just…AHHHHHH.

Anyway. In my opinion, the monsters were incredible. In some ways I feel like Sarah Bellows herself was the least scary monster–which I actually think is appropriate, considering her backstory.

Speaking of…

THE REAL MONSTERS

Just like our favorite cartoon involving a bunch of kids solving mysteries and a talking dog, the real monster was the awful side of humanity all along. Whether it was Sarah’s absolutely horrendous family, Resident Mean Kid Tommy and his goon gang, or just the charming reality that was the Vietnam War and the draft, the scariest and saddest parts of the film were the actions taken by the human characters. Sure, the toeless corpse dragged Auggie into the void under his bed. And yeah, the Pale Lady hugged Chuck into…oblivion, and sure, Tommy got turned into a scarecrow.

But you go into it knowing all of that is fake. You know they’re just what the title announces–scary stories to tell in the dark. But the Vietnam War? That was real. The racism that fuels Tommy and his friends to bully Ramón and anyone who interacts with him? That is real. Even Sarah Bellows, a fictional character, was inspired by true stories of her time, and we’re forced to experience it as if it was real because we see her story through Stella’s eyes.

Stella is a character we have been with from the very beginning of the film, so we are, in essence, forced to relate to her and feel for her. Sure, she makes a really, really poor choice by taking the haunted book in the first place. She spends the rest of the film desperately trying to make up for it, and every time she loses someone, we feel that, too. We want her to make it out if only because by the end, she’s lost almost everything. So when she gets transported to an alternate reality where she has to experience life as Sarah Bellows, we feel it that much more. The way she gets treated as Sarah is jarring because we know it’s a real experience for some kids–getting dragged off screaming, her hair pulled out as she’s ripped away from safety, tossed into a cold, dark room to rot…and all because she wanted to tell the horrible truth of what her family was really doing to get their money.

I think it’s important to note another crucial difference between the supernatural monsters like the Jangly Man and the Pale Lady and the human ones:

It is heavily implied that the supernatural monsters do not kill anyone. As noted at the end of the film, Stella is going on a quest to find Auggie and Chuck and bring them back because they’re still out there somewhere. They’re alive, despite their direct contact with the various beasts. “But what about Tommy?” I hear your skeptical brain saying, “doesn’t he get turned into a scarecrow?” Yep. He sure does. And you could definitely make the argument that if he is dead, he kinda deserves it because wow, what a horrible person. But really, we don’t know if he’s alive or dead. He looks just like the scarecrow who turned him. Maybe he is still alive. Maybe he isn’t. The film doesn’t explicitly say.

The human monsters, on the other hand? They do kill. Sarah’s horrendous family are directly responsible for her death. The Vietnam War? Yeah. That goes without saying.

I find it endlessly fascinating that the fates of the various boys throughout the film serve as a metaphor for what happened during the Vietnam War–children going missing all over the place, and sometimes, maybe it felt like nobody cared.

Perhaps the saddest thing that all this implies is that while Auggie, Chuck, and maybe even Tommy are somehow alive and well (okay, maybe not “well”), Ramón is the only character we see go off to war.

Despite facing the Jangly Man and winning, he still ends up going to war. And because of what we know of history, it’s safe to say that Ramón may be the only character actually in danger of dying. The Vietnam War wasn’t some supernatural beast you could write off in a magical book. Despite everything, and despite Stella’s best wishes and hopes, it’s likely he’ll die.

That’s the true horror of this scary movie. And maybe that’s why it’s received less-than-favorable reviews–it forces you to think about the violence you’re facing and maybe even enjoying onscreen by making you really think about a real-life horrific event. We don’t want to think about all that when we go see a scary movie, we just want to think about jumpscares and fake characters who won’t last and dorky monsters and so-so special effects! No reality for us, thanks!

It’s kind of sad, honestly. And it’s a shame that potential, true works of art like Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark are suffering for it because critics would rather rave about “Tony Stark’s incredible sacrifice, and why are all the feminists complaining again when there was an entire like 30 seconds of just the female superheroes onscreen doing absolutely nothing but damn did it look cool?” Or “this movie about a robot girl treated her like an object the entire time and then just proved its point about women even more by having her literally refuse to feel things ever again because oh god no her boyfriend died like seven times but wow was it pretty” *cough*ALITABATTLEANGEL*cough*.

We don’t want to like movies, books, or any type of entertainment where we see ourselves reflected in the monsters. But it’s only when we do that that we’re able to grow and change and prevent senseless things like the Vietnam War from happening ever again. We can save Ramón–we just keep choosing not to.

SHOULD YOU TAKE YOURSELF TO SEE THIS MOVIE?

Despite your personal problems with the film (which I’ve seen range from “it wasn’t scary enough!” To “they shouldn’t have tried so obviously to set it up for a sequel” to “I didn’t get it”), you have to admit that what was attempted was a beautiful, intricate, interwoven plot that tried to blur the lines between the fake monsters and the real ones. It tried to be more than just a typical scary movie full of jumpscares, fake effects, and a plot that makes no sense (I’M LOOKING AT YOU, PET SEMATARY). Now, maybe for you, it didn’t read quite right. Maybe it didn’t work. That’s totally fine and understandable, because it’s going to be a different experience for everyone. For me, it read really, really well. The parallels between today’s political environment and that of the time around the Vietnam War was jarring and impressive, and I appreciated them. Maybe you didn’t.

When I started this review, I was of the mindset of “yeah, I really loved it, but I can see how it wouldn’t be for everyone.” I’m still of that mindset, but it’s nevertheless frustrating when a movie you really enjoyed gets written off so easily. And maybe some people feel that way when I constantly make fun of Alita: Battle Angel. That’s fair.

I think what I would say is that if you’re someone who normally decides what to see based off what the mainstream critics say, maybe don’t this time. Now, if you know about yourself that you don’t like scary things? That’s something else. You do you, boo. But if this was one that maybe you were excited about and then the reviews came out and you kinda went “oh…never mind, I guess…” I would ask you to give it a chance. It’s lovely, in an eerie, creepy sort of way.

Overall, I give Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark…

4.5/5 HAUNTED STORYBOOKS WRITTEN IN BLOOD!!!

Because of COURSE they’re written in blood.

FAVORITE MOMENT

Will I ever be over Ramón and Stella fighting to get back to each other in the same house but trapped in different dimensions/times? No.

“OOF” MOMENT

Listen. That stupid pimple story that is actually spiders? The worst thing ever. The moment where she pulls on it and a gazillion spiders swarm out of her face? -27/10, do NOT recommend.

TRAILERS TO WATCH OUT FOR:

Have I already talked about IT: Chapter Two? If not, here it is: I won’t be seeing it. In concept I’m all about creepy shapeshifters and kids fighting them off with friendship or something, but hey how about that slaughter of gay people in the opening scene??? Yeah???? Yeah??????? No.

When the trailer for Knives Out first started, I genuinely thought they’d finally made a good movie of my favorite book. Alas, that was incorrect, but it looks cool nonetheless and I’m interested. Unless I missed it. Did I miss it? Probably.

Black and Blue looks absolutely fascinating. Not a relaxing outing to the movies by any means, but maybe a really important one.

Don’t Let Go looks like the kind of supernatural-ish thriller that will make me sob. There are GHOSTS. Or maybe it’s just time travel. Anyway, what a fascinating concept–I hope it’s good!!

That about does it for this review!! Please consider giving Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark a chance–it truly is a beautiful and rather poignant scary story (if you are worried about the scare factor, I would say if you like Stranger Things, you’ll definitely like this film–I’d rate them about the same on the Scare Scale. I don’t actually have a Scare Scale but it sounds cool).

The Lion King (2019) REVIEW

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Alright it is time for Disney live-action remake numberrrr…a lot.

A couple weeks ago (Actually by now it was a lot of weeks ago, like, months ago…THANKS, REAL LIFE), I took myself to the movies and saw The Lion King!

Listen–I have a plethora of feelings about all these remakes, okay? On the one hand, there is a whole assortment of movies that I think would make great live-action remakes, and then there are the most profitable ones. For example–live-action remake of Atlantis: The Lost Empire? Iconic. Amazing. Please stop ignoring my baby Atlantis. Instead, we’re getting a lot of princess movies because everyone loves princesses (KIDA IS ALSO A PRINCESS YOU IMBECILES I’m fine) and now we’re getting Big Cats.

I feel like no one really knew how to handle this when it was announced. I mean, on the one hand…why? This is unnecessary? On the other hand…

But we’ll get into details later. For now, let’s start with the basics:

THE PLOT

For any Lion King or Shakespeare newbies, let’s discuss.

We start with all the animals in Pride Lands going to Pride Rock to see the…crowning? Christening? Announcing? Of the new baby lion king, Simba. Simba is tiny and adorable and pure. I sure hope nothing happens to destroy that innocence of his!

We are introduced to a whole slough of key characters: Zazu, the king’s assistant or something (played blessedly by John Oliver); Mufasa, the lion king himself; Sarabi, the lion queen (if you ignore actual lion biology and behaviors); Scar, Mufasa’s brother and perpetually bitter about not being lion king; Rafiki, spiritual monkey dude who doesn’t say much; Nala, apparently Simba’s intended and a general sweetheart; and of course, Simba, the little lion prince himself.

Scar, having no soul I guess, is determined to get rid of Simba and Mufasa so he can be king (if you know the plot of Hamlet, you know where this is going), so he hatches a plan to lure Simba to the dreaded Elephant Graveyard so that he can become hyena chow. Simba and Nala take the bait because…well, plot, and they sing a song in order to get rid of Zazu and head to the Elephant Graveyard.

Once there, they do indeed almost become hyena chow, but Mufasa himself shows up (alerted by Zazu) and he saves the two little punks. Mufasa and Simba have a Conversation about responsibility or whatever, and then they talk about the kings of the past living on in the stars (this will be important later).

It is revealed that Scar is in league with the hyenas (and everyone pretended to be shocked) and he promises them actual status in the Pride Lands once he gets rid of Mufasa and Simba and becomes king. The hyenas are skeptical until Scar sings a really, really watered-down version of the classic villain song “Be Prepared,” and Scar hatches a new plan.

He leaves Simba down in a ravine to practice his roar, telling him this is what all future kings do. He then has the hyenas initiate a stampede. Scar runs to retrieve Mufasa, who of course leaps down into the stampede to save his son. Mufasa manages to get Simba to a safe location on the side of the steep cliffs, but struggles to climb back up on his own (why did he not also just wait it out like Simba instead of trying to get back to the top? BECAUSE PLOT). Simba doesn’t see this, but when Mufasa reaches the top, Scar actually shoves him back down into the stampede.

Everyone’s favorite heartbreaking moment happens as Simba finds his dad’s body and asks him to please wake up. Scar confronts Simba and tells him to run far away and never return (since he totally killed the king and all). Simba totally believes him because PLOT and runs away. Scar takes over the Pride Lands. The hyenas overhunt. Simba is found by Timon and Pumbaa and raised without a care in the world far away from the troubles of the Pride Lands and his past.

Until one sunny day when Nala comes stumbling into the oasis and tells Simba he has to go back to confront his uncle and take his rightful place as king. But Simba can’t go back and face everything that happened…can he?

THE REVIEW

So here’s the thing: I liked it. I really did.

Is it unnecessary? I mean…kinda, yeah.

We’ll get into this more in detail below, but the basic fact is that there is a lot to discuss when it comes to these remakes. Are they necessary? Is it a requirement that they add anything new? Should they stay completely faithful to the original source material? Does this story even work in this new medium? Why are we continuing to be okay with Disney owning our souls? So on and so forth.

Regardless of all of this, the fact remains that when the sunrise began onscreen and the first notes of “The Circle of Life” started playing, I was damn excited.

Were there things I was unhappy with? For sure.

Were there things I totally loved and appreciated? Absolutely.

I guess what I need to do is create a new category for movies like this: will they win any awards? Not necessarily. Do they contribute anything on a larger scale? Not necessarily. Do they make the audience ponder something, or think and discuss it afterwards? Not necessarily.

Is it a damn good time?

ABSOLUTELY.

Spoiler alert ahead! (If you somehow don’t know The Lion King…or Hamlet)

THE MUSIC

Listen. It’s Lion King. It’s my boy Hans Zimmer. The music is fanTASTIC.

I’m fully up to arguing about it with you but you’re not likely to change my mind tbh.

Spotify made a playlist with all the music from the new movie specifically, if you’re interested, so go check it out!

Like I briefly mentioned above, my one little…problem, I guess, is the changes specifically made to “Be Prepared.” That song is such an iconic villain theme, and it’s just not present in all its glory here.

(Also like…fam…Beyoncé.)

THE CHARACTERS

I feel like any large change in major characters was due more to the animation choices when it comes to facial expressions rather than anything else related to actual character…like, Simba wasn’t as emotional? Y’all, his face barely moved in this version. I’m sure he still felt things.

…Probably.

Zazu has always been memorable, of course, but I would like to thank and also sell my soul to whatever stars aligned to allow us to have John Oliver as Zazu. I am not even exaggerating. To some degree, he almost feels out of place since he’s everyone’s favorite comedian in a surprisingly serious Disney movie (more on the tone later) and maybe I’m biased as a huge John Oliver stan, but…I don’t care, y’all. He was fantastic. It is disappointing to me that we didn’t get to hear him sing snippets of “It’s a Small World” and “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts” (is that the name of the song? It is now), but again…more on the tone later.

In the complete opposite corner, we have Scar. Scar is…a character. I feel like the biggest change for him comes in the form of being angrier. Original Scar felt like he dealt with his issues by covering it up with sarcasm and witty retorts–he was still the villain, but he knew he was more cunning than he was physically strong. This Scar, while certainly still cunning, doesn’t cover up any of his issues or insecurities with humor. This Scar has allowed everything that happened to him to harden him as an individual, so while he’s certainly a villain, he’s a lot less fun than the original.

Rafiki’s change was…fascinating. But I’ll get into that later.

Many of the other characters didn’t change much (with the exception of less facial expressions, of course). Timon and Puumba are voiced by different comedians, so their whole thing is slightly different, but the same idea is there.

Overall, the characters weren’t that different comparatively. So what did change?

THE COLOR

As much as watching the original is painful because nothing will ever be okay when Simba is asking Mufasa to wake up (and now I’m crying), the overall tone of the original was just…playful.

It was a serious story, for sure, but it was tempered with fun all throughout. The colors are bright and boisterous. The self-aware jokes abound. Yet it still sells itself as perfectly serious when it needs to be.

So how does that work?

Well, if you’ll allow me to dive way too deep into a kids’ movie (as I adore doing)…the movie begins with bright colors and a cheery mood. It’s still a realistic palette, because it’s “reality,” but it’s warm and cheery, just like Simba’s life at the start. Then, during “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King,” the colors explode in an unrealistic fashion to match the song and the choreography where animals do things they normally can’t. This is a stark contrast to the Elephant Graveyard that immediately follows, full of grays and purples. There is danger here, a realistic danger, not like the fantasy world Simba had just come from. Scar’s fantastic villain song, “Be Prepared,” is all greens and blacks, shadows and eeriness. Like many of the other songs, the colors shift to be just a little unnatural, but it’s still not as out there as Simba’s song. Anyway, the colors shift again during the stampede and following it. The warm colors from the beginning are suddenly too bright and harsh, and it frames Simba’s exile well. Then, when Simba meets Timone and Puumba, the bright colors from “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King” return because essentially, Simba has found his fantasy world again. The bright, somewhat unnatural colors of paradise are a perfect setting for “Can You Feel the Love Tonight,” and it’s a perfect contrast to the wasteland the Pridelands have become. Simba’s conversation with Rafiki about his destiny and his dad are all the cool, toned-down colors of night. The battle between Simba and Scar is fiery, so the palette returns to those unnatural warm colors from the stampede scene. Once Scar is defeated, it rains, and the harsh warm colors from both the battle and the memories of Mufasa’s death wash away to return to the cool palette of night that we saw when Simba talked with Rafiki. It ends where it began–the colors are a realistic, gentle palette again as Simba’s daughter is introduced to the world, and the circle of life continues.

Clearly, I could talk about color theory forever. And I will. One of the endlessly beautiful things about the Disney renaissance films especially is their stunning use of color, and it’s used so gorgeously in The Lion King.

When you adapt an animated film to live action, you naturally lose that use of color. Animation is a medium that excels in the use of color, but live action doesn’t have that, and that’s just a fact. You can make up for it somewhat in settings, framings, and especially in costumes, but it won’t ever be quite the same as the entire screen exploding with color like you see in the animated films.

I think it’s why the live action Cinderella and Aladdin work for me a little more than the live action Beauty and the Beast and, yes, The Lion King. The characters from Cinderella and Aladdin, while played by “live action people” (I can’t say “real” people because voice actors are real people, too, I promise), are still set in a fantastical world that wasn’t established to be grounded in reality. Cinderella takes place in a kingdom, sure, but where? When? We’re never told. We don’t have to know. Because of that, they can get away with more color. The green of the leaves and the forest can be just a little too bright. The gold of the palace can be just a little too shiny. The garish colors of the ball gowns can be just a little too, well, garish. It’s fantastical and it fits. It’s the same thing with Aladdin–it has a general overall setting, but it’s never fully grounded in time or place, so everything can be just a little too enchanting.

Beauty and the Beast, on the other hand, tethers itself to a specific location (France) and a specific time period (late 18th century). That immediately limits what you can do because the audience expects some sort of reality amidst the fairy tale. It can work, of course, but it just takes some of the magic of the animation away–there’s no way around it. The costumes and the hair and the setting have to be specific to the time period and location you’ve established–you’ve immediately limited yourself.

The live action Alice in Wonderland, hated as it is (why are people so angry at movies all the time?), I think is a good example of this because the creative minds behind it used the plot point of a magical world to still give us all that over-the-top fun from the animation while still grounding it in reality. It’s a fun trick, because you as the audience, like Alice, can never be sure if you were dreaming or not. Alice’s reality is boring and bleached of anything remotely fun, but when she enters her dream world, the colors explode, characters behave like they are animated, and even when she returns to her reality, everything looks just slightly more magical.

I think there’s a way you could have done something similar with The Lion King, but despite the fact that this is a live action animated film (I mean it’s technically CG so we can’t even call it live action I guess?), it feels like everyone was so focused in grounding things in reality. It’s a movie about talking lions, but heaven forbid they show facial expressions. The colors are toned down to, I suppose, recreate reality, but I think the movie suffers for it. The fiery battle with Scar at the end followed by the rain still happens, but the brilliant color scheme is lost–sacrificed for the sake of reality.

In some ways, I think the movie did a good job with this. “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King” is no longer an over-the-top fantasy sequence where animals dance and sing with Simba, but a boisterous romp through the watering hole. Simba and Nala turn the whole situation into their own sort of jungle gym as they weave in and out of animals to escape from Zazu’s watching eyes. I think the scene is beautiful and fun, even if it is drastically different from the original.

In others, I think they really missed out. The rather lackluster “Be Prepared” has no element of playful fun to it at all, unlike the original. It’s purely dark–both in tone and in the colors onscreen. It’s unsettling, sure, but that’s about it. We already know that Scar hates Mufasa and is jealous of him, but establishing that is about all this scene does in this version. In the original, “Be Prepared” was fun. It was still a villain song, but it established how cunning and dangerous Scar really was. All we’d seen of him up to that point was how lazy and disenchanted he was–“Be Prepared” was where we first got the hint that something far, far bigger was going on underneath the sarcastic surface.

This ties into part two of the big change, which like I mentioned above, is:

THE TONE

I think one thing I’ve always loved about the original film is that I knew I was in for a good time. Some scenes are devastating to watch, this is true, but above all else, the animated movie always held a tone of whimsy and fun. The point was to be an enjoyable, beautiful story. With talking animals. Comedic relief abounded, and good thing, too, because…it’s pretty dark if you think about it too much.

I feel like the change in tone is most evident when it comes to a couple specific characters.

1. SCAR

Poor, sweet, beautiful Scar…what did they DO to your villain anthem??

I think how I would best describe animated Scar is that he’s an enjoyable villain. Many of the Disney renaissance villains are ones I would categorize as such–Scar, Hades (though I guess Hades isn’t technically renaissance because Hercules technically isn’t but he’s one of my favorite so he stays haHA), Ursula…you get the idea. We kind of love to hate them. They’re terrible people for sure, but look at their designs!! Their songs!! Their memorable quips!! They’re all such a perfect balance of fun while also being absolutely awful. They’re fun to watch but you wouldn’t necessarily want to deal with them yourself–and always without fail their humorous moments are tempered beautifully by their horrific actions. Ursula’s all good fun until she steals Ariel’s voice and uses it to steal her prince (#rude). Hades is relatable AF, but we don’t love him for laughing about Meg’s death and releasing the titans to destroy everything. Scar is the funky distraught uncle until he straight-up murders his brother and convinces a CHILD that it was his own fault and should be banished.

Along with the loss of vibrant color theory play, this enjoyable villain thing is something I feel like the live-action remakes have generally missed. Like a lot. I would argue that Cate Blanchett’s delightful stepmother in Cinderella is the closest they’ve come–she’s classy and delightful to watch, but you’re furious with her for smashing the glass slipper and scheming the way she does. Is she the absolutely horrifying Lady Tremaine of the shadows from the animated version? No, but she’s still good. On the other hand, you have Jafar from the live-action Aladdin, who was just…he was just pure villain. You at least got the impression in the animated movie that Jafar at least had fun every now and then (also Iago? I love him), but this live-action Jafar was just dark and evil and cruel through and through. He wasn’t as interesting that way, just…dark.

This, unfortunately, carries over to Scar in this version of The Lion King. Scar used to be sarcastic, overly dramatic, and delightfully snarky. He was clearly outmatched physically with Mufasa, so he made up for it with a quick wit and dramatic schemes. This new Scar is just like the new Jafar–any semblance of fun or enjoyment has been torn away from him, and what we’re left with is a bitter, angry character with no redeeming qualities.

Interestingly, the 2D animated Scar felt like much more of a well-rounded, three-dimensional character than the one we got in the live-action film. He’s still Scar, he still goes through all the motions, but without any of the heart or fun.

2. THE HYENAS

I group the hyenas together, but there is a disclaimer here–my main issue is with how they changed Shenzi.

Of the three main hyenas of the original story, Shenzi has always been the more competent, but like Scar, she still had an element of fun to her. She was goofy and ridiculous, and she messed up a lot. This, I think, made everything so much more meaningful when she led the final charge against Scar at the end. She finally stood up to him and showed she was plenty smart and cunning, thank you.

The Shenzi we got in the live-action film is still interesting, sure, but also like the new Scar, she’s so much darker. She was even more of a goofball than Scar in the animated film, and here, she’s even more evil. She’s much more silent and reserved–I don’t even remember if she still leads the charge against Scar because it doesn’t mean as much. Her character change here made her much more of a chained-up dog waiting to pounce than she used to be. Scar’s hold on her was a lot more tentative here, which means the surprise of her attacking him (if that even did happen) was lost–you expect it throughout the entire movie.

The other two hyenas are still a sort of comic relief, but not in the same way. This movie is so much more serious than the animated version, so any sort of attempt at comic relief honestly feels a little flat. The two somewhat silly hyenas seem very out of place now, where before they used to fit the puzzle perfectly.

3. RAFIKI

I love puppets. Like, a lot.

I promise this is related.

When I was a relatively new theatre-nut as a kid, my parents and I were able to go see the stage version of The Lion King, which is kind of famous in the theatre world for being a full-length musical done with a whole lotta gorgeous, stylized puppets (this was before Avenue Q, okay?…I think)

Now Rafiki in the stage show is one of the few non-puppets, and Rafiki is also typically played by a woman. Rafiki sings one of my favorite musical theater songs ever (“He Lives in You (Reprise)”) and is just generally wonderful. This is a delightful new take on a character I already enjoyed for being a complete mystical goofball in the original animated movie.

So yeah, I got a little bit of a soft spot for Rafiki. I generally don’t like monkeys, but Rafiki is the one exception for me.

I was excited to see what they’d do with Rafiki in the live-action adaptation. Would he be as much of a goofball as I remembered? Would they pull some sort of inspiration from the stage show and have Rafiki be played by a woman? Would Rafiki sing my favorite song????

The answer is uh…none of the above. I realize it’s been a few weeks (months) since I’ve seen the movie at this point, but uh…Rafiki didn’t do anything in this movie, y’all.

Not only did he barely appear, but I genuinely don’t think Rafiki said a single damn word.

This was such a weird change for me because I cannot for the life of me understand why this change was made. They kept in the classic scenes of Rafiki holding Simba the cub up on Pride Rock, him drawing baby Simba and then crossing him out when he’s presumed dead and gone, so on and so forth. I think he fights at the end?

One of my favorite scenes from the animated movie is when Rafiki speaks with Simba when he’s at his lowest. It’s why I like “He Lives in You (Reprise).” Rafiki shows Simba that Mufasa is alive–in him. He doesn’t tell it to him outright, but he helps him realize it in possibly the most vague and frustrating way imaginable. And isn’t that how life is?

Rafiki, Shenzi, and Scar are characters who, while they are definitely more than that, are silly. They’re comedic as well as crucial. They add to the animated film’s tone of lightness when it’s needed–and enhance it to be even more. The live-action movie took all of that away from them, and it’s a real shame.

The live-action movie, for some reason, decided it needed to take the more serious elements of the original film and enhance them by about a billion, and these characters prove that. Any element of fun was stripped from them and replaced with something else (or nothing else, in Rafiki’s case). Is it bad? Not necessarily. With the exception of Rafiki, I still think it’s executed well. It’s just…different. Unfortunate, if you know the source material, but not necessarily bad.

SHOULD YOU TAKE YOURSELF TO SEE THIS MOVIE?

Listen, if you expect something groundbreaking and breathtaking and the best thing in the world like…Black Panther, this movie ain’t it, chief.

On the other hand, it’s also not something confusing, disappointing, but still visually appealing, like…*cough*ALITABATTLEANGEL*cough*

This movie, like The Meg, Late Night, and arguably Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, is just a damn good time. Maybe it doesn’t add anything new or say anything incredibly profound and life-changing, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad.

And who knows, maybe some people did get something new and profound and amazing out of this film–and that’s awesome!

For me, I don’t think it necessarily adds anything to the original animated story (unlike Cinderella and Aladdin and I guess Maleficent? I always forget that’s technically the live-action Sleeping Beauty…I mean it’s GREAT though), but it’s still enjoyable. It’s definitely still a fun time, and it’s still gorgeous to look at. It’s just…different.

But if all you want is a damn good time at the movies, I think I can recommend this to you. Unless you’re someone who is continually offended by the live-action remakes–you may be too blinded by love of the original to see anything good in this one. And I get that, believe me! So maybe this one isn’t for you, and that’s just fine.

As I like to say, I don’t know you, I don’t know your life.

All in all, I give The Lion King…

3/5 REALLY AWESOME DRAWINGS OF BABY SIMBA!!!

What are you talking about, this is exactly what they looked like in the movie.

FAVORITE MOMENT:

I really do love the “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King” sequence, but also can we please talk about changing the distraction joke from Timon wearing a hula skirt and singing to Timon putting on a horrible French accent and singing “Be Our Guest”? Iconic.

I mean, I love you Ewan McGregor, but…yeah.

“OOF” MOMENT:

As discussed above, the changes made to Rafiki really irked me, and I’m still not over what they did to “Be Prepared.” Big frowny face from me, y’all.

TRAILERS TO WATCH OUT FOR:

Playing With Fire looks so, so bad. And it’s a shame, because I think if they took it seriously, it could be an interesting story. But because it’s aimed at kids, it’s going to be filled with stupid humor. Because kids aren’t smart enough to understand anything else, right? (I should say though, that the last time I saw this trailer in a theatre full of adults, THEY were all laughing at it. These were adults who came to see the Downton Abbey movie. DOWNTON. ABBEY. WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THE WORLD.)

Listen. Listen. Cats is unironically my second favorite musical and you bet I am going to see this movie at least once and be unironically excited about it. Were interesting choices made? 100%. Am I still going to see it because Taylor Swift is a cat? Without a doubt.

Mulan is…happening. I’m so torn. This may be the remake that breaks me. Because on the one hand, I’m thrilled they’re changing things so that it stays more faithful to the original Chinese legend. On the other hand…”I’ll Make a Man Out of You” 😦 (then there’s all the drama with the lead actress making public her support for the Hong Kong police which is a whole other barrel of worms…are there any more updates about that? Does anyone know?)

And that about does it for this review!

Is it the best Disney movie ever? Definitely not, that honor belongs to Tarzan and Atlantis: The Lost Empire…although I guess Black Panther is technically a Disney film, too, because Marvel…? So fine, that one can stay, too.

But it’s still good. It’s still fun. And y’all…it still has BEYONCÉ.

Yesterday REVIEW

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In a drastic genre change from our last film, let’s talk about the Beatles!

So a while ago, I took myself, the fam, and some friends to the movies (okay, technically the friends took themselves and we all met there, but I have to keep up the intro for continuity’s sake) and we saw Yesterday, a movie that answers a question I don’t think any of us even asked: what would happen if literally everyone except maybe like three people just…forgot about the Beatles?

I say this in a gently mocking tone because yeah, the movie’s premise is kind of ridiculous. I mean…what?

But with the exception of the included music by the Beatles, Yesterday is a brand-new story not based on anything except wacky imaginations and for that, it already has a good score in my book.

The rest of the good score it earned by being lovable, fun, heartwarming, thought-provoking, and a damn good time.

So what exactly happens in this movie?

THE PLOT

We start the film by following Jack (Himesh Patel), a “struggling musician” as the IMDB plot refers to him, and I mean yeah, he’s not exactly paying the bills with his music but he’s making time to do something he loves and that’s important, okay?

(This review clearly being written by a struggling artist herself, leave me alone)

Jack is close in particular with his best friend and manager, Ellie (Lily James!!! I love her!!! So much!!!!!). The two of them go around playing less-than-stellar gigs while bantering and being generally adorable.

One night, when Jack is on his way home from a festival, a world-wide blackout occurs and Jack is thrown off his bike by a bus. He wakes up in the hospital with Ellie telling him that while he is okay, he did lose his two front teeth in the fall and therefore people will definitely be laughing at him *shrug emoji*.

At his coming home party, Jack gets a few presents from friends, including a brand-new guitar from Ellie (she!! Is!!! The best!!!!). Jack plays it and sings a snippet of “Yesterday” by the Beatles, of course, but nobody recognizes it. Ellie asks him when he wrote that song, and when Jack says he didn’t…it’s by the Beatles….it’s one of the greatest songs of all time by one of the greatest bands of all time….one of his friends says, hilariously, “well it’s not Coldplay. It’s not ‘Fix You.'”

Jack has somehow woken up in a world where the Beatles never existed (along with a few other things. This is probably one of my favorite elements of the film, as Jack keeps discovering things that are now nonexistent–Coca-Cola, cigarettes, Harry Potter, so on and so forth). So now…I mean, what does he do? He’s been presented with a golden opportunity: he is the only person (so it seems) who knows all these incredible songs, and he’s always wanted to be a famous musician…

Or has he? As Jack becomes more famous with these “stolen” songs, he learns more and more what fame is really like, and he’s not sure it’s all it’s cracked up to be–especially when it costs him his best friend and the love of his life.

THE REVIEW

Y’ALL.

Because the premise is genuinely just so…huh? I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect going into this film, and I was beyond pleasantly surprised. Yesterday has so much going for it, and it touches on so many things without ever becoming overwhelming or like, bad, in any way.

It’s been getting less-than-favorable reviews from what I’ve seen, which is a shame if you’re someone who only sees movies based off of what famous reviewers say. Like…listen, I love and support most of my fellow critics, but I think in the case of this movie, we all need to chill out a little.

Here’s Hollywood giving us a dorky, original storyline and y’all are like…”IT’S A BEATLES MOVIE WITHOUT THE BEATLES!!!” Like…..duh? That’s…that’s the point?? What…what did you expect??? I…I have concerns.

One review complained that the movie focused too much on Jack and not enough on Ellie, that it pushed women to the side too much. And to be fair, this movie could have had a female protagonist and nothing would have changed, I don’t think. But can we take a breath and appreciate that the movie has a POC protagonist? And that’s never presented as anything other than completely normal? Also–mixed-race romantic relationship?? ANYONE???

Look, we all have things that push us over the edge when it comes to movies. I mean…just look at my Toy Story 4 review. I get it and I admit I have that, too! But I think we need to calm down and stop cancelling things entirely just because they don’t have one thing that we think is important.

I mean, I can’t help you if your main complaint is that the Beatles weren’t in this movie because…I…that’s the whole…plot? But if your complaint is about women being pushed aside (she’s?? A major character??) or something of the like, let’s appreciate things the movie does right–because if we cancel everything that comes out of Hollywood because it doesn’t have all representation at all times, we’ll never get anything. It’s a sucky fact, but there it is.

The point is, this movie has so much to offer and I think everyone should give it a chance. If you’re still skeptical (WHERE?? ARE THE BEATLES??????) then let’s take a journey to an alternate universe together and dissect what exactly it is that makes this movie such a unique gem.

Spoiler warning is now in effect!!

THE MUSIC

Most of the music is, in fact, songs by the Beatles so we know it is, just as the movie says, great. Even my dad who admits to not being the biggest Beatles fan (please don’t come after him, it’s not his fault) still liked the movie and how it presented everything.

I guess the major complaint people have is that the songs were not played in their entirety, or something.

Which…um…I don’t know how to tell you this…this is…this is a movie? It’s….it’s not a concert? It never marketed itself as a movie musical that would feature full-length songs? And, dare I say it, the songs aren’t actually the point?

I mean, I do get it. Both Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman featured mostly full-length if not full-length versions of the songs we know and love, but the difference is that Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman were both marketed as biopics about those artists. Yesterday isn’t a biopic, it’s a quirky movie that happens to involve a plot point that uses songs by the Beatles. Did we all get this offended when Across the Universe came out??

I mean…maybe we did, I was in middle school when that movie came out and I wasn’t really down with the movie scene times.

The fact is, any time a project uses someone or something well-known and loved that has a cult following, people are going to jump on it and call it imperfect no matter what–it’s just the nature of the beast. There have been bad reviews for Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman, and now Yesterday because Queen, Elton John, and the Beatles are all beloved icons and everyone has an opinion about how their stories should be represented, and there’s just no way to please everyone. We’re all very picky people, unfortunately.

Now, I get wanting a biopic about the Beatles–and that’s great! But that’s not what this movie is, so maybe we all need to take a step back and stop criticizing it for something it’s not.

I have read that some people seem to be miffed because Himesh Patel sings the songs and not…the Beatles themselves, but again that’s…that’s the point? The fact that he’s singing songs that aren’t actually his is the entire plot of the movie.

All this to say, look–the music itself is the Beatles (with fun cameo songs by Ed Sheeran!) so it’s great, and it’s all sung by Himesh Patel (Lily James helps a little in the beginning) and it’s good!

All of the little instrumental interludes written by Daniel Pemberton are also great.

THE CHARACTERS

As I’ve said before, I personally can’t get behind a film if I don’t love the characters, and this movie is great at presenting a plethora of characters to love…even when they’re idiots sometimes.

Jack, our main man, is fantastic. He fits the struggling artist bill perfectly, and I didn’t find him unlikeable in any way. Is he a bit dense? For sure! But you can see why Ellie’s been in love with him forever. He’s charming, quirky, a complete dork, filled with anxiety…he’s great millennial representation, basically. Even when he gets famous and starts being really stupid, you just get the feeling that he’s overwhelmed and truly doesn’t know how to handle it all (plus he’s constantly plagued by the fact that the songs that made him famous are not his own lol #rip). In my opinion, Jack is a great protagonist to follow–this is a tricky story, because again, the Beatles are beyond beloved for the modern audience, and to have a character just steal all their songs and get famous off it is like, a crime against passion and art and beauty or whatever!!! But Jack is genuinely sympathetic. He’s a mess of a human being, and really, wouldn’t we all do the same if we were in his shoes?

(Don’t try to be all high and mighty and say you wouldn’t.)

Jack knows that the Beatles are beloved and are considered musical geniuses and icons–he says as much every time he gets interrupted when playing one of their songs. He gets the indignity of the entire situation, but he also sees an opportunity, one he’s waited for his entire life…Can we blame him, really? Plus it makes him all the more lovable when he gives the Beatles credit near the end and puts out all their songs for free for everyone. What a guy!

Ellie is perfection personified.

…alright maybe I’m biased because I’m genuinely in love with Lily James, but I really, really like Ellie as a character. Am I also biased because I, too, have been in love with an idiot for years only for it to lead to nothing because he is, in fact, an idiot? Yeah, probably. But listen–all that aside, Ellie is still just…she’s great. She’s cute, she’s confident, she’s fun, she’s supportive and smart, she’s everything Jack could want but he’s too much of an idiot to see it!! I think Ellie’s arc is really beautiful and really well done. She’s been sidelined by Jack for years, and when he continues to do that to her, she’s the one who says enough is enough, I’m tired of this, I love you but I’m moving on. She pursues a relationship with a guy who actually treats her like the goddess she is. She’s the one who stops the potential tryst with Jack in the hotel because she knows him, she knows he won’t pick her over his music. Ellie is incredibly strong and a great backbone for the movie.

Because the film is primarily a character drama focused on Ellie and Jack, the other characters don’t really mean as much. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Ed Sheeran playing himself is fantastic, and he does great. I mean he had to say “why not change the title of the iconic Beatles song Hey, Jude to Hey, Dude” with a straight face. Amazing. Iconic. 11/10.

Kate McKinnon shines as the evil, money-obsessed producer/manager that kind of answers the question “what if fame had gotten to Ellie like it did to Jack?” And it’s fantastic. She’s playing a caricature because that’s what her character is, and let’s be real, that’s what McKinnon really shines at.

Jack has a friend who steps in as manager on tour and I do not remember his name and I feel bad, but he was funny.

THE QUESTION

I will now attempt to dive deeper into all the various themes the movie covered, but again, I really think you have to see this one for yourself to fully grasp it all, because it tackles a lot in its 116-minute runtime.

So the most obvious question that even the trailer brought up: is it the music that makes the person famous, or is it the personality behind the music that brings the fame? The movie tackles this question in kind of an interesting way, and they just happen to do it with one of the most beloved bands of all time.

(How many times have I described the Beatles as “beloved” already? Is someone tallying?)

The movie suggests that it’s the music itself that is the pull, that it’s the music that is the important thing. Jack became incredibly famous as a solo artist singing songs by the Beatles. His personality didn’t matter–it was all thanks to the music. We see how much of a failure Jack was with his own songs, and it wasn’t until he started performing Beatles songs that he got noticed, got an album recorded, got noticed by Ed Sheeran, so on and so forth.

We live in kind of an unfortunate time right now, where artists and creators we love and claim to know are being accused of horrific things left and right. We’re left behind with the work they created and we have to ask ourselves…can I still enjoy this thing? Am I able to separate the creator from the creation?

Yesterday suggests that this is not only possible, but important. While a piece of the creator is always attached to whatever the creation is, it’s crucial to realize that there is something enjoyable and beautiful in the creation itself.

After Jack admits he stole all the songs and releases them for free, we see him teaching “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” to a bunch of students who are having the time of their lives. It suggests that even though Jack smothered his own name and became known as a fraud, the songs themselves remained popular and important to the culture as a whole. The world separated Jack from the music because it had to, he didn’t really give them a choice, and enjoyment could still be found.

Is this even a point the movie was trying to make? Eh, maybe not. But it’s something you can definitely glean from it, and it’s a question we have to tackle as more and more creators get famous.

We cannot idolize anyone because nobody is perfect, but that does not mean that we cannot find something beautiful in what they give us.

THE FAME

Every time another news story breaks about another Hollywood star going to rehab, or killing someone, or just being a general complete mess, my mom and I love to discuss fame as a whole. Specifically, her favorite question is this: do we naturally idolize messed-up people, or does fame take nice people and mess them up?

Yesterday suggests, thankfully, that fame tends to mess up nice people. While Jack certainly doesn’t begin perfect, he’s a nice enough person and thankful for what he has. But he’s always craved fame, and once he gets it, it absolutely destroys him and the most important relationship in his life: Ellie.

Being constantly fawned over, obsessed over, talked about, it all so easily went to his head that by the time he realized that wasn’t actually what he wanted and he wasn’t even happy? It was too late.

Every time something bad comes out about an artist we’re particularly fond of, we’re all Ellie. We think we know them, we praise them, we love them, and then suddenly, they’re not who we thought they were at all. It’s a personal blow (it actually is to Ellie because she does actually know Jack, but it feels like a personal blow to us because we feel like we actually know them).

It’s established early on that all Jack wants is to be a famous musician because he’s convinced that will make him happy. Anyone who’s ever wanted to be famous for something understands that, because the glorification of fame and famous people convinces us that that will make us happy. But when he does have all that stuff? He’s miserable.

I do think that it may have been different if he’d gotten famous off his own work rather than stolen work, because then the guilt wouldn’t have been at play as much, but the fact remains: he was still doing what he loved, and he wasn’t happy.

This all comes to a head in a really beautiful scene where Jack goes to the home of, wait for it, JOHN LENNON (played wonderfully by Rumplestiltskin himself, Robert Carlyle). Because the Beatles never existed in this alternate timeline/universe/whatever, Lennon was never famous. Instead, he spends his days in his quiet beach house, painting. Jack and Lennon have a real low key, sweet conversation about happiness. When Jack sees that Lennon is truly happy, even though he doesn’t even know what he’s missing out on in the timeline/universe/whatever where he is a Beatle and all, Jack gets it. He gets what he’s been missing out on, too.

He admits he’s a fraud. He gives away all the Beatles songs for free. He runs off with Ellie into the sunset. He becomes, I’m assuming, a music teacher. He and Ellie have kids. He’s truly and genuinely happy for…pretty much the first time the entire film.

Now, of course, I’m sure there are celebrities who are perfectly nice and wonderful and are actually happy, but…we don’t know that, do we? We don’t know anything about them except for the face they show us.

No one in the film, really aside from Ellie, knew Jack at all. They continued to not like any of the songs he actually wrote, only becoming obsessed with the Beatles songs. And that messed him up.

THE ROMANCE

So remember how in my really snarky Toy Story 4 review, I was real miffed about how the trailers really highlighted Gabby and especially Forky as key characters, and then that wasn’t really the case and it was something else entirely? A romantic drama movie masquerading as something else?

Yesterday did the complete opposite–this movie advertised as a funky little story about nobody remembering the Beatles, and then SURPRISE it’s actually?? A romance???

I mean Ellie was heavily featured in a lot of the promotional art, but I just?? Wasn’t expecting this???

What’s beautiful about the romance in Yesterday is that it actually serves a purpose. It’s a crucial part of the plot for Jack to realize how he feels about Ellie because that helps him realize what actually makes him happy and what he actually wants out of life–it completes his arc.

As cynical as I was about the romance over friendship arcs featured in How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, Avengers: Endgame, and Toy Story 4, I loved the choices made in this film to feature a romance. Like I’ve said–I’m a huge sucker for a good romantic plot when it’s done well.

What’s especially nice here is that I think it is done well. There was never a question of romance vs. friendship because it’s established from the beginning that Ellie and Jack are best friends for life first. It was developed in such a way that we knew and supported both of these characters. We weren’t robbed at all because we didn’t have to watch Jack say goodbye to his friends and run off into the sunset with some girl who got 20 minutes of screentime. Ellie and Jack have a great love story that is everything we should want–they’re best friends as well as romantic partners. And it makes sense to root for them.

It’s even realistic in that Ellie pines for him, Jack is an idiot, Ellie tells him, Jack is an idiot, they kiss but Ellie stops it going further, Jack is an idiot, Jack goes to stop her from leaving and she’s hopeful for a moment, but then Jack is an idiot, Ellie tries to move on with someone who actually thinks of her that way, Jack is an idiot, so on and so forth. I do think that a story could have been told without all the romantic drama, but it couldn’t be the same one. Ellie and Jack are so much more than romantic partners–they’re just partners. They’re best friends and soulmates. The drama is crucial for Jack to realize what it is he really wants and what it is that will actually make him happy in life.

Say what you will about cliches and romance being unnecessary, I get it. But I don’t think you could have told the same story without it. Ellie and Jack are both flawed, likable characters, and their relationship is a joy to watch from start to finish.

THE ENDING

In a time where happy endings and happy characters are not allowed in tv shows, it was like a true breath of fresh air to watch Yesterday. Jack abandons everything he thought would make him happy to embrace what truly does. He finds meaning in the people and music in his life. He knows just how soul-sucking fame can be, so he’s all the more grateful and appreciative of what he has as a teacher. He and Ellie marry, have a family, and most importantly, have each other. Jack’s picture perfect happy ending isn’t the happy ending for everyone–marriage and romance isn’t as important to some people as it is to others. But what we should focus on taking away from the ending is that finding and focusing on whatever makes you truly happy is worth more than anything.

In kind of a funny twist, the timeline never gets fixed. Or explained. Why did Jack and two other random people get transported to an alternate world where the Beatles never existed? *shrug emoji*

Why do Coca-cola, cigarettes, and Harry Potter also not exist in this world? *shrug emoji*

What…happened? *shrug emoji*

I dunno. Maybe in another timeline, I’m really pissed off about that never being explained, but here? I don’t really mind it all that much. It suggests that there’s a version of the world where everything can work out, where you can pursue happiness and actually find it…and I like that. So maybe on my own bad days, I can focus on the idea that somewhere, somehow, some version of myself is doing just fine.

Is that reading too much into it? Probably.

But I prefer movies that make me think about stuff like that, instead of stuff like “why did the dog have to get killed there was literally no reason for that also why did she paint dog blood on her face why is she like this.”

*cough*ALITABATTLEANGEL*cough*

SHOULD YOU TAKE YOURSELF TO SEE THIS MOVIE?

This is one of those movies where I completely understand if it isn’t for you. It’s weird. It’s quirky. THEY DON’T PLAY THE FULL-LENGTH VERSIONS OF BEATLES SONGS!!! NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

But I think if you give it a chance, you may just really enjoy it.

Or not. I don’t know you, I don’t know your life.

This movie is refreshing. It’s an original, zany idea, with good characters, and lots to think about. It’s funny. It’s ridiculous. It’s over-the-top.

Ed Sheeran is incredibly self-aware and it’s a little frightening, but good.

The scene with Robert Carlyle as John Lennon will probably make you cry.

It’s just…it’s unique. And I think Hollywood needs that right now.

Overall, I give Yesterday…

5/5 BEETLES!!!

I tried to make them look cute and appealing but they kind of just look like they want to steal your soul. just like fame wants to steal your soul.

Lily James’s outfits make up one whole beetle of that rating. Lily James herself makes up another whole beetle. Lily James is a delight, okay?

FAVORITE MOMENT:

I have?? So many??

But there’s something about that John Lennon beach house scene. It’s beautifully shot and delightful. There’s also something to be said for the scene where the only other two people who remember the Beatles confront Jack but it’s only to thank him because they miss the Beatles’ music and neither of them can sing.

“OOF” MOMENT:

When Jack left Ellie in the diner. You fool!!! Imbecile!!!! THAT WAS YOUR CHANCE YOU ABSOLUTE MONGOOSE.

Nothing against mongoose (mongeese?).

TRAILERS TO WATCH OUT FOR:

So we start off with The Peanut Butter Falcon which looks like it might be really super good but also could potentially be really super depressing and emotionally draining and I just have to prep for that.

Ad Astra just gets more confusing every time I see a new trailer for it. What is it about? What is happening? Space????

The Goldfinch looks absolutely incredible. I never read the book, but now I really want to. I hope it’s good.

And that about does it for this review! If you are looking for a night of escapism to a quirky, feel-good world with good characters and have I mentioned Lily James, I definitely recommend you check out Yesterday.

Toy Story 4 REVIEW

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It’s cute how this poster lies to you by making you think all these characters are actually super important in the movie

So, a while ago, (in my defense–it was Shark Week) I took myself and the fam to the movies, and we saw Toy Story 4.

Which is…a film.

I will freely admit that although I tried to go in without any expectations, I still had a lot. I mean, it’s PIXAR. And…it’s Toy Story.

So while it’s safe to say that it’s certainly a well-done movie, I just…I have feelings about it.

THE PLOT

We pick up right where we left off in Toy Story 3, with all of Andy’s toys now belonging to Bonnie, and–

…wait, we don’t do that?

Oh…okay.

We ACTUALLY pick up in a sort of flashback. It was briefly mentioned in Toy Story 3 that somehow, our favorite group of ragtag toys lost Bo Peep sometime during the years when Andy was growing up. While it’s certainly sad, I mean Woody and Bo were like…aw, she’s not the only toy they’ve lost over the years. Again, while it’s sad, it’s something they’ve dealt with before, but the important thing is that they all stuck together because they are each other’s family.

Oh, jeez, I’m sorry, I’m going on and on about the consistent message the past three films were giving us, about the importance of finding who you are based off of the people who care about you and not what society tells you, about overcoming sadness and heartbreak by facing it and moving forward with your family who loves you because you’re never alone in anything, about how found family is just as powerful if not more so, about how friendship can always win…

Anyway, Toy Story 4 basically answers the question none of us asked: why is it that these movies are so focused on friendship when we all know romance is the TRUE superpower??

…plot. Yes. We’re talking about plot.

Andy’s younger sister Molly grew tired of her Bo Peep lamp, so the family decided to give her away (I initially assumed to some sort of collector, but it sounds like she did go to another family with a kid first before ending up in the antiques shop). After performing a daring rescue to save RC Car from the gutter during the rainstorm, Woody heads back outside to save Bo Peep as well.

Bo gently points out that she’s not Andy’s toy, so there’s no need for him to try and keep them all together or something like that. So Bo and Woody have a heartfelt goodbye in the rain, Andy freaks when he realizes Woody is outside somehow, and life goes on.

Now we finally catch up to where we left off perfectly in Toy Story 3. All our favorite toys now belong to Bonnie, and life carries on as usual. The only problem is, Bonnie never actually plays with Woody, and she leaves him in the closet all the time.

This gives Woody a bit of an identity crisis because, I mean, he’s a toy!! He should be played with!!! He’s the leader!!!! So he breaks all the rules and sneaks inside Bonnie’s bag to accompany her to kindergarten. Bonnie is, heart-achingly, scared of kindergarten and doesn’t want to go. She’s shy and doesn’t easily make friends, and when she tries to, her art supplies get thrown out. Woody sees this and magically gets the art supplies back on her table. Bonnie, now determined, makes herself a friend: Forky.

(Sidenote: it drives me crazy that Forky is actually a spork. I know that’s part of the joke, but like…he refers to himself as a spork…other characters refer to him as a spork…JUST CALL HIM SPORKY. You’re telling me Bonnie didn’t know what the difference was between a fork and a spork?? I learned that when I was younger than Bonnie and it was my favorite fact in the world. Anyway. Back to the plot.)

Forky is a little, uh…he’s a little lost. He keeps trying to throw himself away because…I mean he’s a plastic spork, but Woody won’t let him. He tells everyone that Forky is “the most important toy to Bonnie right now” so he has to protect him.

Bonnie’s family ends up going on a road trip, and of course, Forky escapes on the road. Woody jumps out of the RV to go find him and bring him back, and then they get side-tracked because Woody sees what he thinks is Bo’s lamp in the window of an antiques shop. This is where they meet Gabby Gabby and her weird army of silent puppet minions, and also where, yes, you guessed it, Woody and Bo are reunited.

The adventure unfolds, new friends are made, and while Woody’s consistent goal is to get back to Bonnie, he has to keep asking himself…does he really want to?

(Yes. Well, the old Woody would. I don’t know this new guy.)

THE REVIEW

OKAY, now that the plot’s out of the way, I get to be as snarky as I want to.

I really wanted to like this movie.

I always have high expectations with Pixar, and even though I’m not the biggest fan of sequels (and Pixar has certainly had some less-than-stellar sequels…lookin’ at you, Finding Dory and Cars 2…), I’ve loved all of the Toy Story movies. In fact, as I was ruminating on what I would say about this movie, I realized that the second Toy Story is actually my favorite of the bunch!

What I appreciated is that every addition to the Toy Story franchise brought something new that added to the world and the characters and almost never felt redundant or unnecessary–the first is about coming to terms with being a toy and learning how to deal with not being a favorite anymore, the second is about second chances and trust and also about legacies vs. friendship, and the third is all about growing up, change, and facing hardships together.

None of the major plot points in Toy Story 4 are new, with the exception of Forky’s creation, which just brings about so many questions about how inanimate objects even work in this universe. Even then, Forky’s entire plot line is thrown to the curb not even halfway through the film, because despite the advertising, he’s not the main focus of the story at all–Bo Peep is.

Look–I could go on and on, and trust me, I will. While I certainly have nitpicks as well as just general overall problems with the film, I still will say that it’s a good movie. It just is. It’s absolutely gorgeous, for starters, and some of the new characters are delightful additions to the franchise (Ducky, Bunny, and Gabby in particular). I still cried like a baby during the entire last act. I still liked it.

That doesn’t change the fact that I left feeling disappointed. And I know, because I’ve said it in many of my reviews, that not all movies are for everyone. That’s one of the most beautiful things about cinema as a whole–there are so many options, there’s bound to be something for everyone. Just because I, and a very select few others, were disappointed with the film and have some issues, doesn’t mean everyone feels the same way. Lots of people loved the film and were so happy for Woody and Bo, and that’s great.

I guess what hurts is that I grew up with this franchise and these characters. I got used to seeing Pixar as a studio that, ultimately, could make stories that mostly everyone could enjoy. I got used to this franchise that stuck to its main theme of friendship being so much more powerful and important than we are normally taught it is. I got used to this weird sense of entitlement with these stories, and I get that these movies are not for me.

It’s just…it always felt like they were.

So what is it exactly that set this movie apart in such a weirdly negative way?

If you’re still with me, let’s charge ahead!

WHO’S READY TO OVERANALYZE A KIDS’ MOVIE????

THE ART

Like I mentioned previously, this is a gorgeous movie. It just is. The animation is just…it’s jaw-dropping. And the attention to detail? Just ridiculous. Pixar goes above and beyond to make this a beautiful experience if nothing else, so credit where credit is due: those animators and those artists deserve so much love and attention for their work on this film. It’s so detailed and realistic it’s sometimes hard to remember that this is supposed to be a kids’ film and an animated movie…

I…yeah. I mean the only way to really appreciate it all is to go and see the film for yourself. Despite my personal feelings about the rest of it, I do genuinely think it’s worth seeing for the art alone.

The music is, for the most part, delightful. Again, it’s Toy Story, it’s Randy Newman, it’s wonderful.

…with the exception of the re-use of the classic theme “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” but we’ll get to my beef with that later.

Don’t get attached to any of these lovable friends, they’re barely in the movie

THE CHARACTERS

…let’s start with the new characters before I get into…other things.

Forky is a precious summer child and I love him. All the jokes about him being the perfect representation for people finally because…he’s trash (and so are we all) are hilarious. He’s adorably naive about everything since he’s only been alive for a couple days, but I don’t think it ever gets annoying at all. He vexes Woody, sure, but it’s more adorable than obnoxious. Once he understands Bonnie’s attachment to him and how important he is, his determination to get back to her is super sweet. We only experience a portion of it because, again, despite all advertisement he is not the focus of the film, but I digress.

Ducky and Bunny are a pair I was convinced would be annoying, kind of like the little alien in MIB: International, but they were surprisingly lovable. The various “plush rush” jokes were fantastic, and the fact that their “hands” were sewn together and therefore they constantly had to move like that was super great. My main quip with them is that they were introduced with this whole plot line of “we’re mad at Buzz because he ruined our chances to be won as a prize and go home with a kid!” And then it was just suddenly dropped in favor of the whole Bo x Woody thing. Like, whoops, my bad, I thought we were playing by the previous Toy Story rules of “everyone joins our found family group” haha SILLY ME.

Gabby Gabby is by far my favorite part of this film. I mean she was heavily advertised as the villain, and they do present her and her minions that way. When we learn about her from Bo’s point of view, we accept she is the villain. What’s fascinating about Gabby is that she’s just like every other toy (except for Bo): she just wants a kid. In fact, she has her heart set on one kid in particular, and when we learn this about her, it only makes her more endearing. It is genuinely heartbreaking when she is rejected by the shop owner’s granddaughter. We are genuinely happy for her when she gets to go home with the girl who was lost at the fair. Hers is the one plot line I would say is genuinely unique (besides Forky’s, perhaps) and even then, there’s some overlap. Anyway, I love Gabby and I wish her the best of the best.

Bo Peep is by far the star of the film, and that’s fine. She was never my favorite toy from the previous films, but I’m not holding that against her. I like the idea of her making a comeback (though I still think it’s an unnecessary storyline since Woody had definitely moved on from her, but we’re apparently getting rid of everything the past films taught us anyway so moving on) and having changed into a sort of kick-ass vigilante type. To give credit where it’s due, Bo’s transformation to lost toy was very believable and effective, and I think it suits her character well. I do believe that despite her strength during their flashback goodbye, she would definitely still have feelings about Woody and would miss him. They were great friends and inferred great loves. That’s all fine.

What’s not fine is Woody, but I think I need an entirely different section for that.

I can’t even talk about any of the other characters because they don’t get enough screen time to justify it. Keanu Reeves voices a Canadian stuntman doll who’s a great source of comedic relief, but that’s about it.

THE WOODY PROBLEM

How do I put this without sounding like a complaining child…I honestly don’t know if I can. This is a kids’ film after all, and continuity and great characterization are generally low on the list because it’s just for kids after all, who expects that?

But the problem is that Pixar built an entire foundation on getting us to expect things like that. Each previous Toy Story sequel took what was already good about the previous film and built on it. This film knocked over the entire tower.

Woody has always been a fun protagonist in the sense that he’s not perfect–far from it! The films don’t shy away from that. He’s selfish, easily jealous, passionate to a fault, an unrealistic dreamer, and sometimes just a flat-out jerk. It was always refreshing, then, to see him grow and change with every film. In the beginning, he had to wrestle with the idea of being replaced (or at least not being the favorite anymore), something we can all relate to. Then he had to struggle with choosing fame and legacy over friends and family (admittedly, not something that’s as easy to relate to, but somehow the film still presented the struggle in a sympathetic light). Then he had to struggle with the massive change that comes with growing up, and even at one point, coming to terms with death (something we all will have to relate to at some point). While Woody was always presented as the protagonist, he never dealt with anything alone. These films always pushed friendship and found family above all else, which has always been an incredibly refreshing take.

Woody learned how to make peace with not being the favorite toy, he learned how to show compassion for and learn about someone he initially didn’t like, he learned how to come to terms with a legacy that can easily overshadow him and take him away from what’s important, he learned that family and friends who fight for you no matter what are more important than anything, he learned that dealing with loss is a fact of life but one you never, ever have to face alone, he learned that sometimes the people who seem the nicest hide the cruelest intentions, he learned that life goes on even when we lose people, even when they grow and change…

And we learned all those things with him.

This is why it felt wrong for Woody to fall back into old habits from the first movie and suddenly be jealous about not being the favorite toy again. This is why it felt wrong for Woody to so easily and without question abandon the friends and family he’d sworn over and over again to fight for and be present for. This is why it felt so wrong for him to just choose romance over lifelong friends and family.

Rather than moving forward with the beautifully and intricately weaved plot over the years, this movie felt like it took 17 steps backwards, or even just created an alternate universe entirely. While the lost toy plot and choice is an interesting one, it’s a story that didn’t have to be Woody’s. Woody’s story was so neatly wrapped up in Toy Story 3 that it didn’t need all this extra out-of-character fluff. Give the plot line to RC Car–maybe the trauma of the rain gutter rescue really got to them and they decide they want to go around saving other toys or helping them so they never feel the way RC Car did. It would develop a character that we hardly heard anything from in this movie, but still be a good story about family and friendship.

Speaking of…

THE ENSEMBLE PROBLEM

It’s rare to find a series that does such a good job as a true ensemble piece. Sure, Woody and Buzz are in essence the “lead characters,” but we know and love the other characters just as much as them because they are all just as developed. We love Rex, Jessie, Bullseye, Slinky, Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, Sarge and the guys, RC Car, Hamm, and all the rest of them just as much as our two leads because they also get screen time.

This was an element that, although blatantly present in all past installments, was blatantly absent in this film. So much emphasis was put on Woody and Bo and all of…that, that the rest of the ensemble (WHOM WE ALSO KNOW AND LOVE) got barely any screen time.

It felt hollow when Woody said goodbye to Buzz and the gang because we’d hardly seen them that film, just as Woody had hardly seen them. Rather than being thrilled to be united with them again (LIKE THE REAL WOODY WOULD HAVE BEEN), he had very little trouble just leaving them. Forever. It’s like….I mean….WHAT.

It’s called Toy Story. Not Woody Story. And I get that Pixar has had some major staffing renovations or whatever, I don’t follow drama if I can help it because then I just get sad *cough*THEMAGICIANS*cough*, but…this just felt way out of left field. For a series that used to preach on and on about how important and powerful friendship is, this just felt like a punch in the gut and in the childhood. And me and like, maybe two other people didn’t appreciate it.

THE ROMANCE PROBLEM

Now, listen. LISTEN.

I am a huge romantic. I fully admit and embrace this. Proposal videos make me cry. A sweet, well-executed romantic moment in a show, movie, or book will also make me cry. The scene in Ever After when Henry comes to save Danielle and calls her by her true name for the first time makes me SOB. EVERY. DAMN. TIME.

And maybe it’s because moving to a new state and losing a lot of really good friendships will do this to you, but I’ve grown to appreciate good depictions of healthy friendships just as much as healthy romance. It’s why I’ve grown to love series like Toy Story even more as the years go by (yeah, I know, “shut up ya 22-year-old millennial”).

While I can appreciate the sweet relationship that Bo and Woody have, I don’t prefer it to the friendships by any means. As cute as they are, Bo and Woody had barely any screen time and development over the course of the series compared to Woody and Buzz, Woody and Jessie, Woody and Andy, Woody and…literally almost anyone else. While I can believe that Woody would be nostalgic for Bo and what could have been, I can’t believe that he would abandon his family for her.

For some reason, 2019 seems to be the year of media friendships being literally shoved aside and tossed into the fires of “who cares I guess” to make room for romance that like…okay, I guess.

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World was the first example of this that I can think of, and even though I praised the film for its depiction and inclusion of the realism of life or whatever then, I’m rethinking my stance a little. A great friendship was still ruined in favor of romance, and the Light Fury was even less-developed than Bo Peep. I do appreciate, however, that the reasoning behind the choice was at least well-thought-out. It wasn’t really a conscious choice on anyone’s part–it was presented as the unfortunate reality of the world they lived in. The only way to stay truly safe was to separate. Does it still suck and am I still a little bitter about it, looking back? Yeah. 100%.

Then we had Avengers: Endgame. I dunno if they were just trying to appease all their older, comic-book-loving white guy fans (assuming they cared about appeasing the fans at all #burn), but there is something genuinely wrong with the way Steve just up and abandoned Bucky and Sam. This is a case that I think is a lot more similar to the Toy Story situation than HTTYD is. Even though Steve was shown to fight for Bucky and Sam (but like, especially Bucky) and their friendship in movie after movie, for some reason, the first chance he gets to time travel, he goes back and stays with Peggy. Now don’t get me wrong, Peggy is great and I love her, but Steve had canonically moved on. Was it still sad? Absolutely. But Steve had great friends and family to surround himself with, and then suddenly he just noped out of there without even explaining to his so-called friends what he was doing. It, too, felt like a punch in the gut because it’s almost like it was saying (since he is Captain America after all) “the true American dream is getting married and living out a romance, forget all those friendships you have, they don’t matter.”

And it’s not just movies pushing this romance-over-friendship narrative–TV shows have been guilty of it this year as well (although some shows seem to be taking the complete opposite road and just not giving anyone any happiness ever because it’s “subversive” or whatever). I don’t know what is in the air this year, but I don’t like it.

Look–romance is fine. Romance is GREAT. When done well, it can absolutely serve as a tremendous plot point that both adds to the story and the overall narrative (as we will discuss in the movie Yesterday, coming soon to a blog near you!). But the narrative point of Toy Story has always, always, been friendship. I mean, even when they brought in Jessie, a perfect female counterpart to Woody, they didn’t force the two together. Sure, Woody already had Bo Peep here, but that’s not the point. The point is that they created a perfect partner for Woody, it was a perfect setup for romance…and they didn’t go that route. She’s his partner alright…HIS PARTNER IN CRIME.

Woody helped Jessie heal from her past trauma and found her a family and a kid to give her a new purpose, while fully realizing that he is an essential part of that family, too.

And yeah, Jessie and Buzz get all romanced in Toy Story 3, but that’s still not the point of the movie. Just as Woody and Bo have never before been the center plot, Jessie and Buzz weren’t either. The scene we all remember from the third movie is when they all hold hands and stay together, resigned to their fate in the incinerator. The message there isn’t romance above all–it’s friendship. It’s family.

There is nothing wrong with romance…except when it overshadows the point.

This is why I’m upset with them using the classic “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” song. That’s a friendship song. That’s Woody and Buzz’s song. You don’t get to use that song if you focus on romance the whole time and tear apart the two best friends that the song IS ABOUT. THAT’S RUDE.

THE THEME PROBLEM

So what is the theme of Toy Story 4?

….anyone?

Anyone?

Yeah.

You could argue that it’s all about finding your purpose, and I’d be inclined to agree with you, except then I’d say “but that was also tied into Woody’s character arc in the first movie, Jessie’s arc in the second, and the whole group’s arc in the third. It’s an arc that was so satisfyingly fulfilled at the end of the third movie, it’s beyond beating a dead horse in this movie (sorry Bullseye).” Can it still be the movie’s theme? Yeah, sure–when it comes to Gabby and Forky. But again, they’re not what this movie is about (even though the trailers would have you believe otherwise and YES, I WILL KEEP COMPLAINING ABOUT THAT).

You could argue that it’s about friendship, like all the films have been! After all, Woody made new friends and made it his life’s purpose to help other toys find friendship. Great! Except then I’d tell you, “how on EARTH can you argue this movie is about friendship when Woody said goodbye to not only his best friends in the world (not that you could tell from how much damn screen time they got in this movie, i.e., PRACTICALLY NONE) but also Buzz?? BUZZ FREAKIN LIGHTYEAR, HIS PERFECT FOIL, HIS PARTNER, HIS BEST BEST FRIEND, HIS GOOD BUDDY WHO HAS CHASED HIM DOWN AND TALKED SENSE INTO HIM AND BROUGHT HIM BACK HOME TIME AND TIME AGAIN?? Yeah. Yeah this movie is really aaaaaallllll about friendship. Right.”

You could argue that who the hell even cares, it’s a kids’ movie, and it’s not like it’s a bad kids’ movie, stop overanalyzing it. To which I’d say “yeah, I get it. Believe me. EXCEPT YOU CAN’T SERIOUSLY EXPECT ME TO OVERLOOK THAT WHEN THEME HAS PLAYED SUCH A CENTRAL ROLE IN EVERY DAMN TOY STORY MOVIE UP UNTIL NOW. YA CAN’T JUST RAISE THE BAR SUPER HIGH AND THEN BE SHOCKED WHEN I THEN GET UPSET BECAUSE THE BAR BARELY GOT OFF THE GROUND WITH THIS MOVIE.”

Or, you could argue that the theme of the movie is, of course, romance. It’s a perfect “ending” where Woody bids farewell to the family and friends he claims are most important to him (just like we’re supposed to do, we should be saying goodbye to these characters just like Woody is, real freakin’ subtle Pixar LEAVE MY CHILDHOOD ALONE) to spend the rest of his days uniting toys and kids with a romance he had already gotten over just like we had. Don’t we all feel fulfilled???

No.

But that’s the theme. That’s the winner. It’s a romantic drama that masqueraded as a family fun adventure film with a focus on friendship and love saving the day. First of all, rude. Second of all, RUDE.

Yes pls leave and bring back the true Woody, thanks

SHOULD YOU TAKE YOURSELF TO SEE THIS MOVIE?

Look. I know, okay? I get it.

It’s a kids’ movie. I’m not the target audience (even if I did grow up with these characters). It’s not meant to be graded as anything other than a movie for children about talking toys. I do understand that, believe it or not.

And even though I think the previous films form a perfect trilogy that really set the stage for what family films can be, and that this one doesn’t even come close to the same league as the other three, I can’t deny that it’s still a good film.

It’s gorgeous. It’s funny. It’s heartbreaking. It’s meaningful.

And if you’re not as offended by continuity errors and the whole cash-grab-esque nature of it all like I am, you’ll probably love it.

Trying to explain to people in a short sentence why exactly I had so many problems with this movie is not an easy task, because so much of it is under the surface of a good film.

“But it’s Toy Story 4, how can it be bad??”

That’s just it–it’s not bad. It’s almost insulting how good it is, because it’s even harder to defend myself on why I dislike it so much. And that’s frankly rude of you, Pixar.

I guess all I can do is look at people and say “look. It’s no Wall-e. It’s no Ratatouille.” And hope they understand.

(They won’t of course, because for some reason no one likes Ratatouille? The nerve of some of y’all…)

Pixar established itself early on as a company that cares. Genuinely. They took a medium that was established in America as being for kids only, and turned it into something more. The movies they make are for kids, sure, but it’s more than that–they’re for everyone. They rarely pandered to you with characters or a message that was anything less than incredible. I think that’s why Cars 2 was such a disappointment–because that was a kids’ movie more than it was just…a movie. Pixar used to care about continuity, about creating a world and characters we can genuinely care about, because they cared about them, too.

But now that Disney owns them? It’s starting to look hopeless. Gone is the love and care and attention to detail (unless it comes to the specific stitches in Bo Peep’s outfit). Disney as a company now only cares about one thing: your money. And they keep getting a lot of it by playing off of established, well-loved franchises and characters.

The results have been…less than ideal. Not all the time! I stand by the live action Cinderella, Incredibles 2, and even Aladdin (which should really be called Jasmine).

But overall?

They’re putting out less-than-stellar work because they don’t think they have to do anything more than that in order to get people’s money. And we’re letting them get away with it.

It’s kind of disgusting, and all the more reason we should absolutely support smaller studios and any animated movie that is not Disney, basically, like the incredible Into the Spider-verse movie and the Laika animation studio.

BASICALLY–all my personal bitterness aside, go see Toy Story 4 if you want to. You’ll probably like it, and it is good.

But if you left the theater after watching Toy Story 3 feeling satisfied and fulfilled at these wonderful characters’ arcs and the amazing completion of the storyline, I’d probably stay away from it. Toy Story 4 doesn’t answer any lingering questions, doesn’t fill any annoying plot holes, and doesn’t make you feel good after watching it. It leaves so much more open than the third movie does, trust me. You might leave feeling like you watched something good, but you probably won’t leave satisfied.

Or maybe you will. I don’t know you, I don’t know your life. I know I’m in the minority on this. Whatever.

Plus, on the other hand, apparently a whole bunch of moms wanted to boycott the movie because in one like, maybe 4-second shot, a child is shown with two moms. So I take it back, go see this movie and then only talk about how fantastic that particular scene is just to anger people and also show Disney we want more stuff like that, please.

Overall, I give Toy Story 4…

3/5 SPORKY’S!!! (Because he is a SPORK, not a FORK, DAMMIT)

Look, the whole thing reads like a fan fiction of Toy Story where someone was bitter about Bo Peep’s “missing” status in the third movie, rather than an official installment.

I probably could have just said that about it rather than my long ranting review up there. Oh well. No regrets.

FAVORITE MOMENT:

When Gabby showed herself to the girl crying at the fair. That was much more genuine and much less forced than Woody and Buzz’s goodbye, which in my mind didn’t even happen anyway, so. The movie actually ended after this scene. Crazy, huh?

“OOF” MOMENT:

To everyone saying that “Bonnie’s just a kid and kids are fickle with toys!! Don’t blame her for forgetting Woody and her promise to Andy to look after him!”

Exactly. Kids are fickle about toys. So you can bet one day that Bonnie’s gonna remember Woody and go looking for him…only to find him gone.

Yeah. This is potential canon now. Thanks, Pixar.

TRAILERS TO WATCH OUT FOR:

Spies in Disguise has the GREATEST premise I have seen in a long time and I am SO EXCITED FOR IT. Will it be a mess? Very likely. But it just looks like a good time and I am here for it.

Trolls World Tour is a movie that is actually happening…for some reason.

Onward is the first new original Pixar film in YEARS which means I’m naturally thrilled for it. Here’s hoping I don’t have to be talking about Onward 2: Electric Boogaloo in a couple years. But I probably will be.

And that’s it!

Again, odds are you will go see Toy Story 4 and you will like it, and that’s fine. Not every movie can be Black Panther. But we should expect movies to at least make an effort, right? We should want movies that are both visually stunning and filled with thought-provoking plots and delightful characters?? Not just movies that are pretty much only visually stunning??? *cough*TOYSTORY4 AND ALITABATTLEANGEL*cough*.

*shrug emoji*

A Collection of Mini Reviews (Miniviews)

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OH HEY EVERYONE.

So like I mentioned when I started this blog, I have that AMC A-List thing which means I have the opportunity to go see quite a lot of movies!

Which is super fun until I have absolutely no motivation to review them and then the other parts of my life start kicking up and then I get distracted by other things (namely, and I’m 100% serious: My Singing Monsters Composer. #notsponsored)…yeah.

So I finally sat down to do a tally this morning, and realized that I have seen SIX movies lately that I haven’t reviewed. Like a FOOL. Now because I don’t know how to say anything concisely, those six full-fledged reviews would take a loooooooong time. And I realized that of those six, there aren’t really any that stood out in such a significant way that I’d want to write a full-fledged review about them (with the exception of Booksmart because…Y’ALL. But in that case, just take my word for it and go see it because I cannot fully put into words how delightful it is).

So this post is a catch-up of sorts: I’m gonna do a mini review (or miniview if you will, because…reasons) for each of those six films and just crash-course them to the essentials. So without further ado, let us go!

MINIVIEW 1: BOOKSMART

MY THOUGHTS:

I cannot say enough about this movie. I have seen it three times now and I will be seeing it many more. It’s clever, it’s funny, it’s raunchy (but not too much), it’s an absolute delight from start to finish. The acting is amazing, the directing is great, it’s so beautifully shot, and the music?? THE MUSIC?? Spotify has something called “The Official Booksmart Playlist” which features all the songs used in the film plus little commentary clips from composer and arranger Dan the Automator and director Olivia Wilde, which is ridiculously fun if you’re a mega nerd like me. It’s just so obvious that so much love and care was put into this film, and it feels like a love letter to high school and buddy cop movies alike. Plus, it’s incredibly quotable. I know that I was skeptical because the trailer made it seem like…I mean it could be good, but…it could also be really not good. But it’s so, so good. Please do yourself a favor and see it. It does exactly what movies should do: allow you an escape alongside characters you can love in a story you can enjoy and appreciate.

There are so many little things that I love: the casual all-gender restroom scene, the main relationship focus being a positive and supportive female friendship, Amy doesn’t have a plot line about discovering she’s gay and dealing with that it’s just who she is, Molly doesn’t have a plot line about being plus-size and dealing with that it’s just who she is…I could go on and on forever.

Plus–IT’S AN ORIGINAL STORY!!! It’s not a remake!! It’s not a sequel!! It’s not based on a book!!! IT JUST EXISTS!!!!!!!!!!

STANDOUT ELEMENT:

The movie is shot and written in such a way that you judge all of Molly and Amy’s classmates the same way they do, so that when each classmate’s story is revealed by the end, you’re kind of ashamed of yourself for judging them like Molly and Amy do…because you experience everything with them, you feel everything with them, too. When Molly and Amy come crashing into graduation and all their classmates cheer? Iconic. You want to cheer as well. When Molly talks about each classmate and how she’s learned who they really are? You have, too! It’s such a fun way to experience the story and I just love everyone and I’M FULL OF FEELINGS.

Every character has a story that serves to flesh them out as an individual and make them likable…Unlike, say another movie I could mention…….

*cough*ALITABATTLEANGEL*cough*

Also–that underwater scene at the party????? I CANNOT.

SHOULD YOU TAKE YOURSELF TO SEE THIS MOVIE?

YES.

Overall, I give Booksmart…

6/5 SCHOOL BOOKS!!!

Seriously, it’s such a good time, and it suffered at the box office opening weekend because it came out alongside Aladdin (we’ll get to that) and John Wick (we will not get to that). We want more movies like this, fam.

MINIVIEW 2: UGLYDOLLS

MY THOUGHTS:

I struggled with what to say about this one because I know it got a lot of negative reviews when it came out. I was excited because I’m generally a sucker for musical movies, I’m very nostalgic for Uglydolls, and Janelle Monáe is in it. Once I saw it, I guess the reason I didn’t relate to all the negative reviews is because like…this is very clearly a kids’ movie. You can’t review it like a movie movie because it never presents itself as such. Unlike, say, the How to Train Your Dragon franchise. HTTYD is a series for kids based off a bunch of kids’ books, sure, but it is presented in such a way with serious themes that it’s a family film, rather than a kids’ film. Uglydolls never tries to invoke serious themes like HTTYD does, or like most Pixar movies do (….most). If you just appreciate it for what it is, it’s a very well-done kids’ movie. It’s not a great adult/family movie because it never tries to be: it’s a kids’ movie, guys. Chill out.

Am I biased because Kelly Clarkson and Janelle Monáe are in it? Most definitely. But this is a solid, fun, feel-good movie.

STANDOUT ELEMENT:

The animation is to die for, but what really stands out to me is the overall message of the film: beauty standards are dumb.

This film serves as such a huge kick in the teeth to the beauty industry and society as a whole that I just have to applaud it? I mean the main antagonist is a white, blonde guy who decides what makes everyone else beautiful even though he looks nothing like most of them. There’s a girl who needs glasses but she’s afraid to wear them because she’s been told they make her less beautiful. All of the Uglydolls are told they’ll never be wanted because they’re not perfect enough. And even then, when they try to conform to the ridiculous beauty standards Nick Jonas’s character sets, he still doesn’t accept them. The good ending only comes when they all realize that they’re beautiful and perfect just the way they are–do you even know how important it is for kids to hear messages like that in the media? They’re growing up in a world where fat-shaming, photoshopping, and racism in the beauty industry run rampant and are hardly ever called out (although they are more so now). The more kids learn to be comfortable with exactly who they are and how they look, the less power the beauty industry has over them. And that’s phenomenal.

And to the reviewer who complained that the message of the movie was completely contradicted because the Uglydolls aren’t actually ugly, they’re adorable? That’s the whole damn point, my dear. The Uglydolls represent everyone who has been told by society that they are not enough for whatever reason, but they are enough. They’re not ugly, of course they’re not. No one is ugly. Society tries to tell us there are people who are ugly and people who are perfect, but the point is that that is not true at all: everyone is beautiful and wonderful just the way they are, no matter what.

Plus, super fun songs. I mean, Kelly Clarkson’s Moxie singing to herself “look how much you weigh! And you couldn’t look better!!” WE STAN A QUEEN.

You know what movie doesn’t have fun songs to get the message across??

…okay a lot of them don’t, but SPECIFICALLY *cough*ALITABATTLEANGEL*cough*

SHOULD YOU TAKE YOURSELF TO SEE THIS MOVIE?

Look, it’s super cute and fun. It’s sweet and pure and has really cute and genuinely funny moments (Gibberish Cat gets me every damn time) and I do think that if you have kids, they’ll enjoy it, and you might, too. Please teach the kids in your life that they are beautiful and smart and brave and wonderful just the way they are.

Overall, I give Uglydolls…

4/5 UGLYDOLLS!!!

I personally didn’t think it was the mess that reviews made it out to be. Could I be biased? 100% absolutely. So decide for yourself. AND REMEMBER THAT YOU ARE GORGEOUS, WITH OR WITHOUT GLASSES OR WHATEVER.

MINIVIEW 3: DETECTIVE PIKACHU

MY THOUGHTS:

I KNEW EVERYONE WAS CRYING ABOUT THE BULBASAURS BUT THAT STILL DIDN’T FULLY PREPARE ME AND I WAS SOBBING ABOUT BULBASAURS

*ahem* So anyway.

I think Uglydolls and Detective Pikachu are similar in that they both very specifically knew their audience. Where Uglydolls was directly aimed at kids, Detective Pikachu was directly aimed at kids obsessed with Pokémon as well as adults like me who grew up with Pokémon and are fully willing to cry about Bulbasaurs.

So with all that in mind, I thought it was absolutely delightful. It was cute, well-animated and well-acted, and I just…Ryan Reynolds. As Pikachu. I never knew I needed that.

Was the plot twist completely predictable? Of course. Was it cheesy and goofy and unrealistic? 112%. But it was so much fun and just…I loved it?

STANDOUT ELEMENT:

I think what made the movie work, despite the ridiculousness and the predictability and the goofiness is that it truly was a love letter to the franchise. Remember when Pokémon Go came out and we all lost our collective minds because oh my god there’s a Squirtle in my living room??! They captured that magic yet again with this film, but tenfold. So much love and care was put into every Pokémon that appeared, down to how they interacted with the modern world around them in the most minute ways. Their designs were faithful to the original but adapted just enough to make them fit in (unlike, say for example completely randomly……Sonic the Hedgehog…..)

It was literally like watching my childhood come to life on the big screen and it was just…it was amazing.

SHOULD YOU TAKE YOURSELF TO SEE THIS MOVIE?

It really depends. If you love Pokémon, absolutely. It’s so fun and precious and wonderful. But if you have no idea what Pokémon is and the entire thing about Bulbasaurs confused you, I think you can skip it. The downside of this film is that I really don’t think it has anything to offer anyone who’s unfamiliar with the franchise. But that being said, it never promised to and it doesn’t have to. It was made for people that are already fans of the franchise, and for once, it’s an adaptation that is both faithful and completely new. It’s filled with love and that is so nice to see, especially when compared to…The Sun is Also a Star. Or probably like, say, *cough*ALITABATTLEANGEL*cough*. Although I don’t know for sure on that one since I came in completely unfamiliar with the source material. I just like bringing it up whenever I can.

Overall, I give Detective Pikachu….

4/5 POKÉMON THAT MADE ME CRY!!!!

Seriously. Look at that Bulbasaur. Look at his little green Bulbasaur face.

MINIVIEW 4: ROCKETMAN

MY THOUGHTS:

Let’s establish that I was probably completely biased coming into this film as well because Taron Egerton, first of all, and the love of my life Jamie Bell. That is all.

This movie is incredibly well done. I loved the framing element of Elton John being in AA as we cut back and forth to his life story, and all the music scenes with the dancing and just…it was all super fun.

I do know (because this is just what people do I guess) that a lot of people have compared this to last year’s Bohemian Rhapsody and the general consensus seems to be that Rocketman is somehow better. I genuinely think the only way you can compare these films is to mention that they’re both a form of biopic documenting some iconic musicians, and also both Freddie Mercury and Elton John were in incredibly abusive relationships with their managers at one point (and they both overcame it!). But Bohemian Rhapsody was explicitly shot like a concert whereas Rocketman is explicitly shot like a movie musical, or even a music video. They have completely different points and reasons for the story being told, and one isn’t necessarily “better” than the other one. You’re welcome to like one more than the other, of course, but they’re both good movies. Bohemian Rhapsody was swarmed in controversy because of the director, but a movie is so much more than its director, and if that’s the reason you’re dismissing it, you need to rethink it. Both these films are incredibly well-done and amazing. Elton John himself had good things to say about Rocketman, and Queen themselves worked right alongside everyone for Bohemian Rhapsody.

They’re both good films, everyone. Enjoy them for what they are and form your own opinions of course–but don’t compare these two films and raise one up for the sake of knocking the other one down.

Compare them to Alita: Battle Angel and knock that one down.

(Kidding, sort of…I know lots of people really liked Alita and that is…so great for them)

STANDOUT ELEMENT:

I have a huge weakness for self-love plotlines, so the whole scene near the end where Elton John got to confront everyone in his life including his own past self had me bawling. It’s a beautifully shot scene and it’s such a satisfying way to lead in to the end of the story.

Also, in general all the over-the-top dancing for the musical scenes. Super fun and ridiculous and I loved every second of it.

Also also, Taron Egerton and Jamie Bell. MY SONS.

SHOULD YOU TAKE YOURSELF TO SEE THIS MOVIE?

I think so. Even if you’re not a huge Elton John fan, you’ve likely heard at least a couple of his songs, and it’s just a good story that’s told in a beautiful and fun way.

Plus like….Taron Egerton……y’all.

(Fun Fact: this is actually the second time Taron Egerton has sung “I’m Still Standing” for a movie! I think this should be a career requirement for him from here on in)

Overall, I give Rocketman…

4.5/5 ELTON JOHN SUNGLASSES!!!

These by no means match the most fun ones both in existence and in the film, but it’s a fun taste. Go see the movie to see more of them!!

MINIVIEW 5: MEN IN BLACK: INTERNATIONAL

MY THOUGHTS:

So I will freely admit that I haven’t read reviews for this one since I wanted to go in blind, and I only saw it…last week? I think? Anyway. But I guess it’s getting bad reviews because I got a YouTube notification that was something like “why MIB: International completely bombed” and I…wasn’t aware that it had?

I went with a couple friends and we were in a BIG theatre that was completely full, and everyone was laughing and enjoying themselves. This might be another example of “critics hated it because they have no souls but audiences generally liked it” (wait–do I have to count myself as a critic now? NOOOO DON’T LUMP ME IN WITH THEM).

Here’s the thing: it’s not the original movie. It can’t be. The original is iconic and hilarious and wonderful and nothing can ever be that one. What I appreciate is that this film never tries to be the original, and maybe that’s why people didn’t like it? I dunno. It is completely and fully its own story, with its own characters and own aliens and own conflicts. It’s original and unique and goofy.

It’s an incredibly fun time. All the characters are likable and fun, and I totally thought I knew the twist and I thought they were hinting at it and THEN THEY SWITCHED AROUND THE TWIST ON ME AND IT WAS SOMETHING ELSE ENTIRELY SO THAT’S GREAT.

Is it a standout, knockout, over-the-top amazing film? Nah.

But it is well-done and a damn good time.

STANDOUT ELEMENT:

There’s a light hint of it, but I am proud to report that there is absolutely no romance between Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth’s characters. Huzzah! More than anything, they have an incredible friendship and an incredible partnership.

The special effects are absolutely incredible.

Tessa Thompson wears a suit just like all the other agents (although she does have some kickass fun combat boots).

Emma Thompson is in charge of the American branch and she’s killin it.

Tessa Thompson’s character stops a fight by using relationships and a prior friendship, but she can also hold her own in a fight and she’s probably a lot more capable than Chris Hemsworth–

Ooooooooohhhhhhhhhh.

Is this why everyone was mad? Because Tessa Thompson saved Chris Hemsworth multiple times and was probably a better agent than him? Because Emma Thompson is in a position of authority?

Ahhhhhhh it all makes sense now. It was more a Women in Black film than a Men in Black film, and that’s why people are pissed…

I mean no one seemed to be mad about Alita being all kickass and whatever in her movie…is it because her character was presented in a much more sexualized way than the women in MIB: International were? Yeah. Yeah that’s it probably.

SHOULD YOU TAKE YOURSELF TO SEE THIS MOVIE?

Yep. Not only is it a fun time, it’s also pissing off older white guys because it has powerful female characters! So go support it!!

(Also–if you were worried like I was that Kumail Nanjiani’s mini alien character would just be annoying the whole time, rest assured that he was genuinely entertaining and extremely lovable and fun)

Overall, I give Men in Black: International…

3.75/5 MIB SUNGLASSES!!

I know I did sunglasses for Rocketman but like…it’s MIB…I couldn’t not…..

MINIVIEW 6: ALADDIN

MY THOUGHTS:

Like many of Disney’s upcoming live-action remakes (Lady and the Tramp??? REALLY???) I was convinced this was completely unnecessary and I was not excited for this…like at all.

I knew I should see it probably, but I kept avoiding it because like…eh. I really love the original animated movie, and this just didn’t look like it offered anything new.

Maybe it’s because I went in with such low expectations, but I’m happy to report that I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. It wasn’t like, absolutely amazing by any means, but I actually kinda liked it.

This is mostly due to Naomi Scott’s Jasmine, but we’ll get to her.

The additions to the story and the costumes are both beautiful, and if anyone can perform the genie instead of Robin Williams, it’s Will Smith. It’s a fun, quirky time and a really lovely film. Not incredible, but definitely good, actually. Again, though, I set the bar real low going into it.

Oddly enough, I think one of the low points of the film was actually Aladdin himself? Not that he wasn’t great, Mena Massoud did an excellent job, but the character himself was just kinda…there. Plus–have you seen Massoud’s natural curly hair?? So much better than what we got in the movie. I think they were trying to make him look like the animated version, but they already changed so much else, just let us have his natural curly hair!!! He is so lovely!!! GIVE US THE CURLS!!!!!

STANDOUT ELEMENT:

NAOMI SCOTT’S PRINCESS JASMINE. HANDS-DOWN.

I mean, she was good during the whole of the story, but when she sang “Speechless” and literally disintegrated all the men in her life telling her what to do?? ICONIC AND AMAZING AND SHE IS EVERYTHING.

Unsurprisingly, the guys who wrote “Speechless” also wrote the songs for The Greatest Showman (YAAAAAAAS) and La La Land (…meh). It’s an incredible standout power ballad that takes Jasmine’s character from decent to incredible. She takes center-stage in the best way, and all the little girls that wanna be Jasmine for Halloween this year? It’s gonna mean something completely different–it’s gonna mean being a princess who will not be silenced and will take power to do good.

Genuinely by the end I didn’t want Jasmine to end up with Aladdin because she doesn’t need him?? Like they can be bros I guess but she quite literally don’t need no man. This film should have been called Jasmine. She 100% stole the show and turned it into something else entirely in the best way possible.

Unlike, say, another movie named after the main girl….*cough*ALITABATTLEANGEL*cough*

Also–lots of fun political commentary if you know where to look. Especially if you wanna make parallels between Jafar and…someone else…

SHOULD YOU TAKE YOURSELF TO SEE THIS MOVIE?

Actually, yeah. This movie did what a remake should do (if remakes should do anything, that is, since many are unnecessary): it pays homage to what made the original so good while also adding something completely new that both makes this version good, too, while setting it apart as something different.

It’s a good time, and if you were skeptical like I was, you may just find yourself pleasantly surprised.

Also–you have to experience “Speechless.” You don’t watch or listen to “Speechless”–you experience it. No, really.

Overall, I give Aladdin (which should really be called Jasmine)…

3.5/5 HAPPY GENIE LAMPS!!!

Like I’ve said for some past films, it’s good. It’s not great, but it’s good.

TRAILERS WE HAVEN’T DISCUSSED YET:

K, crash course trailers, here we go:

1. Sonic the Hedgehog–release has been delayed because of the public outcry over Sonic’s…unique design. Fingers crossed they treat the animators/designers fairly and let them eat during all of this, but probably not. Jim Carrey as Eggman looks worth the price of admission alone, I love my son.

2. Godzilla: King of the Monsters–I know we have discussed this one, but there’s a new trailer where one of the scientist guys introduces Godzilla by breathily saying “Zillaaaaaaaaa” and it’s just…it’s the strangest and funniest thing ever.

3. Yesterday–I’m going to see this hopefully soon!! I love the premise and I hope it’s really good and fun like it looks. Plus, Lily James ❤

4. Blinded by the Light–uhhhhhhhh a movie by the team that made Bend It Like Beckham???? I AM SO THERE?????

5. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil–I’m curious to see what they do with this one because a sequel is so incredibly unncessary?? This is like if they announced a sequel to Toy Story 3, I mean, all the loose ends were tied up in a perfect way and it’s so good the way it is, what could you possibly–…oh, wait.

6. Crawl–Yeahhhh this is a big nope from me. This is like Anxiety: The Movie, and I’m not about that life. I barely survived watching Pet Sematary alone you guys, how on earth do you expect me to do survival-crocodile-jumpscare movie?? I do really like how the music for the trailer is all made by like, rhythmic water drips and flashlight-winding. That’s kind of fun.

7. Child’s Play–WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?? Really though, it looks like they updated the idea so that Evil Doll Chucky is connected to a sort of smart-home system, so it’s like…they update the horror story so it’s relevant to right now?? Fascinating. Also, absolutely horrifying. I don’t care how much I love you Mark Hamill, I refuse.

8. Where’d You Go, Bernadette–This is probably better than the trailers make it seem (also, that last trailer gives away?? Everything??). I love me some Cate Blanchett, and this just looks like a really delightful and fun heartwarming story about family or whatever.

9. Angel Has Fallen–I think this is the one where the president is attacked and the guy who saves him is under arrest for some reason and there were a lot of explosions?? I guess this is a sequel, and I honestly have no desire to see either one of these.

10. The Art of Racing in the Rain–YO CATCH ME CRYING IN THE THEATER WHEN THIS MOVIE COMES OUT, THIS BOOK IS SO INCREDIBLY GOOD AND I AM SO READY TO SOB ABOUT A DOG WHO LOVES RACE CARS ALL OVER AGAIN!!!!!!!

11. Judy–I don’t have strong feelings about this one, but I’m sure it’s another well-made biopic about an icon and all that. I’ll probably see it.

12. The Kitchen–this looks like it could be really good and fun (but like, also violent) and I think I’ll try to see it.

13. Terminator: Dark Fate–mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm no.

14. Maiden–This looks absolutely fascinating. I’m all about stories of women who blazed the trail in a male-dominated field for other women. Also like–boats!!

OKAY. That should be everything so we’re all caught up now. I think I’m gonna try to see Toy Story 4 this afternoon, or possibly tomorrow, and then that review WILL BE UP BY THE END OF THE WEEK, I SWEAR. REALLY I DO.

If these films are still playing where you are, check them out! I don’t regret seeing any of them, and they’re all enjoyable in their own way (particularly Booksmart).

The Sun is Also a Star REVIEW

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*deep inhale*

Okay.

So a while ago (opening weekend, actually, so that tells you how long this has been…#oops) I took myself and the parents to the movies to see The Sun is Also a Star.

Lemme just get it out of the way right now that my mom and I read the book first and LOVED IT so we were incredibly excited for the movie.

…

We’ll get to that.

I mean, um…it’s…it’s certainly a movie. Yep.

THE PLOT

We start the film with Natasha (Yara Shahidi), a high school student whose family is being deported the next day. She is determined for that to not happen, so she’s on a quest for whatever appointments and lawyers will delay the deportation. Her first stop is a big failure before she begs the guy she meets with, and he gives her the number of a lawyer who I guess is an expert at these things. So Natasha has a new mission now! She manages to set an appointment during the guy’s lunch.

Then, we catch up with Daniel (Charles Melton), also a high school student who is off to go interview for a recommendation for…one of the Big Colleges. Daniel’s mom is really concerned about it, but Daniel’s older brother and Resident Worst Human Being Ever Charles (Jake Choi) makes lots of snide comments about it. Daniel meets up with his Best Friend With No Name who is Never Seen Again (Camrus Johnson? I think? I have no idea) and they have this weird hobby of lounging up in the walls of Grand Central Station to people-watch or something, I guess it’s supposed to be whimsical and relatable.

Anyway, Daniel notices Natasha amongst the crowd because she’s looking up at the ceiling. Daniel like, freaks out because “no one ever looks up!!” And then Natasha turns around and her jacket says “deus ex machina” which is the title of the poem he’d written that morning, so he freaks out times twelve and goes chasing after her.

He loses her, of course, and gets on the train to head to his interview. BUT SURPRISE NATASHA IS ALSO ON THE SAME TRAIN!! He follows her and ends up stopping her from walking out into the street as a car screams past. They chat (as a thank-you for saving Natasha’s life, I guess) and it’s brought to light that Natasha doesn’t believe in love and Daniel is the Most Romantic Sucker Ever.

The rest of the movie is basically Daniel on a mission to make Natasha fall in love with him in one day while she continues to try not to get deported. Just your average modern American love story, am I right.

THE REVIEW

Ugggggghhhhhhhh….

Okay, look. I know we all like to make fun of people who go see movies and then all they can say afterwards is “THE BOOK WAS BETTER!!”

But please trust me when I say that 100% definitively…the book was better.

While the cute teen romance is certainly the center of the book’s story, it’s not the only thing the book is about. See, while the book certainly follows Natasha and Daniel and all their romantic exploits, it also gives little side-chapters to various side-characters and this is a cool mechanic for a variety of reasons that I will get into later.

The book created this beautiful narrative about how interconnected all us humans really are by taking time to focus on characters we normally don’t give a second thought to when reading and/or watching something. The closest the movie comes to this is with some (albeit beautifully shot) scenes of New York spliced in between the scenes with Daniel and Natasha. It’s a cool concept, really…but it could have been so much more.

Honestly, that’s how I felt about the entire movie. It’s a cool concept. It’s decent. It’s okay. BUT IT COULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH MORE.

Lemme say here that if you’ve never read the book, it’s possible you’ll like the movie. My dad liked it, and I actually felt like my mom and I had a hard time convincing him why the book was actually better (or it’s just that my dad likes being contrary to everything). Regardless of specifics, it’s still a cool story filled with love and hope and whatever.

But…

The story the book presents isn’t just cool and filled with love and hope. It’s bursting at the seams with it. It takes your expectations and slams them into the ground. It reminds you that not all humans are perfect, that sometimes things still don’t work out and we may never know the reason why, that what seems like an ending is sometimes just the beginning, that sometimes the most seemingly insignificant action can change absolutely everything for the better.

While the movie is a nice, heartfelt escape for a couple hours, the book is a complete emotional journey all on its own. I kept wanting to enjoy the movie for what it was, but I couldn’t not compare it to the incredible source material. I mean they ended up changing so much, I don’t get why they didn’t just make a completely new story. They’d already taken out the heart and soul of the source material, so…I dunno, man. Hollywood, I guess.

So all that being said, let’s dive into exactly what made the movie so lackluster compared to the book, and the beautiful movie we could have had.

Spoiler warning now in effect!! And by that I mean, please read the book because it’s phenomenal, then read my review to learn why you absolutely should not see the movie.

THE MUSIC

It’s cute.

I mean, it’s the soundtrack to a cheesy teen love story to a T.

(There might be more to the soundtrack, I admittedly for once wasn’t really paying attention to the music because I was too distracted watching one of my favorite books absolutely be torn to shreds on the big screen. Anyway.)

HOWEVER…

There’s a scene where Daniel takes Natasha to norebang, (Korean karaoke). It’s a crucial scene in both versions of the story because it’s the scene where the barriers finally break and Natasha finally admits she has Feelings, and the two kiss for the first time. Since it’s karaoke, music is kind of a crucial element!

In the movie, the song Daniel sings is “Crimson and Clover” which is aight, and while it starts out with him singing, it slowly melds into the actual recorded version of the song because by that point we’ve entered Montage Land. The montage is basically Natasha and Daniel’s entire romantic future. It’s sweet and beautifully shot, and probably serves to make up for the lack of montage that was supposed to occur when Natasha and Daniel met (like what happens in the book). Near the end of the song, the makeout session happens, Natasha gets a reminder about her appointment and promptly leaves, so on and so forth.

In the book, the song Daniel sings is “Take a Chance on Me” which is very on the nose and that’s the entire point. While Daniel croons to Natasha in both scenarios, there’s something in the book that is sadly missing from the film–Natasha’s singing.

Natasha is a huge music fan in the book. Specifically, she’s very into Nirvana and Soundgarden. The song she chooses to sing in the norebang is “Fell on Black Days,” and there is truly nothing more endearing than reading Daniel’s POV about how Natasha is an awful, awful singer–but she gives it her all because she loves the song.

I get that we’re against making girls in movies look/act like anything other than completely desirable because that’s what sells I guess, but COME ON. It’s not Daniel’s crooning that leads to the makeout session in the norebang–it’s Natasha’s awful singing filled with pure bliss that leads to a connection that leads to the makeout session in the norebang.

There’s also an entire scene in a record store that got cut for the movie. There’s a very crucial plot point with Natasha’s phone case, a Nirvana album cover on the case, that got cut for the movie.

The music used for the film is fine, it really is, but it ignores everything that made music so important in the story in the first place. Natasha may be cynical and a lover of science, but what captivates Daniel initially is her passionate connection to music. While Natasha still has big bulky headphones that get broken when Daniel saves her life, the movie never touches on her deep connection to music, which means we never get introduced to Irene’s connection to the same music, so on and so forth.

“But wait, who’s Irene?” I hear you asking, “there wasn’t anyone in the movie named Irene!”

Precisely.

THE CHARACTERS

Like I mentioned earlier, the book focuses on other characters and their stories just as it follows Natasha and Daniel. If you saw the film, the narrated slideshow sections that discuss the history of Korean-owned black hair care stores and Natasha’s parents’ romance is a brief taste of what the book offers in that sense. I kept thinking that they could easily have done the short chapters that focus on extra characters in the same way, but alas, they did not.

But let’s start out just by talking about the characters the movie does give us.

Natasha Kingsley is preeeetty close to her book counterpart. She’s a no-nonsense girl who loves science and space and has truly grown up in America, so it makes perfect sense why she doesn’t want to leave. We get a sense she has a strained relationship with her parents (though not nearly as much as in the book) but overall, despite claiming she doesn’t believe in love, her life is filled with it. There are other characters in the book that help to develop her character but are absent in the movie. Her best friend in the world is gone, although we get short snippets of scenes where Natasha is with a small group of friends. Her terrible ex-boyfriend is gone, which is unfortunate because he has a fun scene in the record store that doesn’t exist in the movie, and he has an important conversation with Natasha about their relationship. Overall Natasha is basically the person she is in the book (although she’s even more resistant to Daniel in the book) and that at least was fun to see come to screen. It’s unfortunate that the people and relationships that help define her were so toned down, but more on that later.

Daniel Jae Wong Bae is an interesting dude. He, too, is relatively close to his book counterpart, although I would offer that Movie Daniel is a lot more suave and put together than Book Daniel. Book Daniel is a bit of a dork who overthinks everything, and he’s anything but confident about how things will go with Natasha (anything he says about “I’ll make you fall in love with me” is a front in the book for a true disaster child who likes a pretty girl and wants to keep being with her. This element is not really present in the movie). I don’t know why Daniel’s friend character in the movie is even a thing since he…truly serves no purpose, but whatever. The relationship that really defines Daniel is his relationship with his brother Charles, and this is another thing the movie is sorely lacking.

Even the chapters in the book that talk about Charles confirm that he is basically the Worst Human Being Ever. Book Charles is snarky and merciless and while you can tell it probably stems from some deeper issues, he is largely completely irredeemable because he chooses to be. Movie Charles is a bit of an asshole, sure, but he has some form of redemption in the movie because he wants it–normally I’d be all over this, but it’s weird here because I know what Book Charles is like. It’s strange to see a character who actively chooses to be terrible in the book get turned into someone who suddenly chooses to be and do better. For example, the only reason Book Charles gives Natasha Daniel’s number is because, like Natasha points out, Daniel’s family will not be happy about him dating a black girl. Finally, the heat will get taken off of Charles and his parents will be disappointed in Daniel for once. The narrator points out that this is the last decent thing Charles ever does for his brother. It’s dynamic. It’s fascinating. It’s a little malicious. Movie Charles, on the other hand, gives Natasha Daniel’s number because she “really likes him, right?” And it’s presented as some kind and decent act because he loves his brother. Book Charles may have once loved his brother–he doesn’t any more, and that’s very real. We want to believe in the perfect, accepting family no matter what…but that’s not real.

“But it’s a fictitious story–” YES I KNOW.

Jeremy Martinez (changed from Jeremy Fitzgerald in the book) is the lawyer who can supposedly fix Natasha’s whole situation…except that he can’t. The story we get in the movie is that Jeremy Martinez was biking to work on the Day Everything Went Down when he was hit by a car. His injuries weren’t serious, and he was able to meet Natasha and conduct Daniel’s interview, but there’s something else–he met his future wife in the hospital that day. It’s a sweet story, for sure, and it’s the movie’s way of trying to make up for ruining everything else, I guess. More on him and his story later.

Daniel and Natasha’s families are present, and they show up occasionally for cringe purposes or to make us sad, but they’re not developed nearly to the extent they are in the book. But again…more on that later.

And then we have Daniel’s weird best friend who exists for exactly one (1) scene before vanishing into…somewhere.

The movie doesn’t give us Irene. Or Hannah. Or Joe. The movie cuts out exactly what made the book not “just another” teen romance story–the side characters and how they connect to our two leads.

I can’t even find pictures of side characters because WE ONLY CARE ABOUT NATASHA AND DANIEL I GUESS

THE SIDE CHARACTERS

Let’s start with our most important side character–Irene the security guard. We are introduced to Irene fairly early on, she’s the security guard Natasha always runs into when she’s going to a meeting about immigration. Natasha thinks Irene is weird because Irene always touches everyone’s stuff when they go through the security scanners. In fact, on the Morning When Everything Happened, Natasha is late for her appointment because Irene was inspecting her phone case (the Nirvana one that didn’t matter in the movie). This is important, because Natasha being late for her initial appointment is what led her to meeting Jeremy Fitzgerald/Martinez.

In Irene’s separate chapter, we learn that Irene purposely touches people’s stuff in the security line so they’re forced to look at her and interact with her because Irene is dangerously and cripplingly lonely. So much so that when she notices Natasha’s phone case, she looks up Nirvana and Kurt Cobain and it is his story that convinces her to end her own life the following day.

Later in the story, after Natasha has accepted her feelings for Daniel and it looks like she might be able to stay after all, she calls the office where Irene works and asks them to thank Irene for her; because without Irene making her late, none of the following day would have even happened.

We don’t meet Irene again until the end of the book, but we learn that Irene got the message and the thank you, and because of that, decided not to end her own life. She switched careers and became a flight attendant, and she is extremely happy.

…we’ll get back to her.

Our next important side-character is Hannah Winter, the secretary for Jeremy Fitzgerald/Martinez. When we first meet her, she seems a little…eccentric. Natasha immediately assumes that Hannah is in love with her boss, that she’s devastated about the accident with the car. Daniel meets her later and finds a kindred spirit who believes in the magic of love.

In Hannah’s separate chapter, we learn that she is indeed a hopeless romantic who is very much in love with her boss. She has gone her whole life feeling like the side-character, the best friend rather than the leading lady. She believes in fairy tales, and with Jeremy, she feels like finally she found her own.

This segues nicely into Jeremy Fitzgerald. He’s super nice and well-meaning, and here’s what we learn about him: he is also in love with Hannah Winter, but he is married with kids. The Day Everything Happens, he comes back to the office from the hospital and takes Hannah to a hotel and spend the afternoon with her there.

He decides he has to end the affair with Hannah.

Hannah leaves.

Through Daniel, Jeremy is encouraged to maybe not give up on love and maybe, just maybe, go after Hannah.

We learn that Jeremy leaves his wife and his kids. His wife marries again, and divorces again. His kids grow up not believing in love and they, too, marry…and divorce. Multiple times. Hannah and Jeremy get married and have kids of their own. Hannah and Jeremy’s kids believe in love and grow up to have happy, healthy marriages of their own.

In the book, Jeremy is only unable to postpone Natasha’s deportation because he spent the afternoon with Hannah. It was a simple phone call he didn’t make because he was having an affair. Natasha and Daniel never learn this. But we do.

In the movie, Jeremy is just simply unable to postpone it, but we never learn why. Hannah Winter is present, but she’s nothing more than a secretary. There is no torrid, secret affair that results in broken families as well as happy and healthy ones.

Another side character is the driver of the car that almost hits Natasha and, in the movie at least (it’s never confirmed in the book), does hit Jeremy. The driver is frazzled and disoriented because he lost his teenage daughter to a drunk driver.

The waitress from the Korean restaurant who forces Natasha to use chopsticks is bitter because her son got married and her husband wouldn’t let them go to the wedding. Her son didn’t marry a Korean girl.

The security guard who lets Natasha and Daniel on the roof does so because he remembers his wife and how they would have done the same thing. His wife who always told him to quit smoking, just like Natasha did.

The taxi driver who takes Natasha and Daniel to the airport doesn’t comment or talk to them because he knows what damage looks like.

Everyone is important.

Everyone has a story.

Everyone behaves the way they do because of something else.

No one is alone in anything.

This lovely element is missing from the movie in every way imaginable.

THE FAMILY STORIES

While this is lightly touched on, it’s much more detailed in the book.

In the book, we get a taste of just how important it is to Daniel’s parents for him to go to a good school and be well-off. Daniel’s dad lived in absolute poverty, and if it’s possible for his son to avoid that, he wants that desperately. To the point where if Daniel decides to go somewhere else and do something else with his life, he will be cut off.

In the book, we get a really intense look at how broken Natasha’s family is and why. In the movie, Natasha’s family is being deported because there was a random raid at the kitchen where Natasha’s dad works. It’s unfortunate and unfair, but it’s not necessarily tragic in the sense that it is in the book.

In the book, Samuel Kingsley wants to be an actor. He goes to America first to work on pursuing this dream. At first, it seems like things are going well. But no one will cast him. Finally, Natasha’s mom moves to America with Natasha so they can all be together. Samuel keeps auditioning, and he keeps getting rejected. At some point, Patricia Kingsley goes out to get multiple jobs just to keep the family afloat in their one-bedroom apartment. She’s bitter and disillusioned, so that when Samuel does finally get cast in something, she refuses to go.

The night of the play, Natasha and her little brother Peter go. They go home alone because Samuel wants to stay and celebrate with the other actors. He’s drunk when he tries to drive home. He gets pulled over for a DUI and ends up telling the officer that he and his family are undocumented.

In the book, they are getting deported pretty much solely because of Samuel Kingsley. Because of this, Natasha has an extremely complicated relationship with her father. She has a heartfelt confrontation with him near the end of the book when she brings Daniel home before they have to leave. It develops and rounds out not only Natasha’s character, but her father’s as well.

I kind of get why the movie changed this element. To some extent, it becomes “too many stories to tell” and we don’t want to pull away from Natasha and Daniel or something. Plus, having his deportation be completely not his fault does highlight how ridiculous immigration stuff is in America.

But here’s the thing with that!

When you read the book, the family stories and the side stories never detract from the main love story–they only add to it. By taking all that away, you’re hollowing out Natasha and Daniel’s characters, and the story suffers greatly for it.

Not as much as it does when we get to the ending, however…

Why do they spend the whole night in a park again? Just why? Also why do they LOOK like they DIDN’T spend a whole night in a park? CURSE YOU, HOLLYWOOD!!

THE ENDING

Ughhhhhhhhhhhhh OKAY.

In the book and the movie, Natasha and her family get deported. The book makes it clear that Natasha and Daniel tried to stay in contact at first, but they just naturally grew apart. The movie sort of shows this to some extent.

The movie then picks up 5 years later, in the same coffee shop where Natasha and Daniel first met. Natasha is meeting our buddy Jeremy Martinez/Fitzgerald, and she asks if he by any chance remembers Daniel and might know anything about him. She explains that she’s back in the U.S. on a student visa, and she leaves for San Francisco (I think) in the morning and she’d hoped to find him before she left. Jeremy, being incredibly unhelpful, is all “nah bro, but I do remember that day because that’s when I met my wife! She was the nurse who attended me when I got hit by that car!” And Natasha’s all “cool I guess, not what I asked but whatever.”

She stands up to leave, and the camera moves to show that none other than Daniel himself is walking next to her, but neither of them recognize each other. Just as Natasha goes to open the door to leave, Daniel takes over the open mic and says “this is a poem about the sun.” Natasha slowly turns, they make eye contact, they reconnect, nobody in the coffee shop even reacts because that’s definitely realistic, end of movie.

Now, the BOOK.

The actual end of the book is just that Natasha and Daniel grew up and grew apart. That’s it.

The real ending comes with the Epilogue.

Remember Irene?

The epilogue is another of Irene’s POV chapters. See, after she got the call about Natasha thanking her, Irene decided not to end her life. Instead, she got the help she needed, quit her job, and got a new job as a flight attendant. She loves her new job. For the first time, we hear about Irene being truly happy and not lonely anymore.

We catch up with her on one particular flight, where she’s walking down the aisles doing final checks and she recognizes Natasha in one of the seats. Now, in the book, this is 10 years later. Irene asks Natasha if, by any chance, she recognizes her. She wants to thank Natasha for how she changed her life. At first, Natasha seems a little wary, but she does recognize her.

At that moment, someone else on the plane says “Natasha?”

Irene describes how Natasha sees, a few rows ahead of her and across the aisle, a Korean boy. Irene describes Natasha smiling as she says “Daniel.”

That’s the end.

I feel like while both the book and the movie keep the general idea of impossible reunion years later against all odds, the book’s take is–you guessed it!–better. By putting us in Irene’s POV for the final reunion, we take an outsider’s perspective, which is what we’ve truly been all along. We no longer have access to Natasha and Daniel’s thoughts. We are another passenger on the plane, seeing this reunion that shouldn’t have happened. Somehow the reunion feels all the more impossible when we’re viewing it like Irene is–someone who may not have the full story behind these two, but can tell that somehow, what’s happening is amazing.

It’s a realistically hopeful take on a love that the world says should not work out.

Yet it does.

The movie’s ending is okay–really it is. Daniel reading a poem about the sun being the thing that causes Natasha to turn around is cute. The point that they reunite is still evident.

But there’s something beautifully poetic about Natasha and Daniel only reuniting because Irene says Natasha’s name on the plane. Maybe they would have run into each other at the airport…maybe not. But because Natasha made one phone call to thank a security guard because she decided without that security guard, she never would have met Daniel…because of that one phone call…that security guard turned flight attendant is what allows them to meet again 10 years later.

The book ends before we discover if they rekindled anything between them. We don’t know what their circumstances are or where they’re headed or why. But we do know that miraculously, they were given a second chance together. Maybe their tragic parting was all so their reunion could be that much sweeter–maybe they can be together now where they couldn’t years before. The truth is we don’t know for sure. And I actually like that more. It’s up to the reader to interpret what exactly is the end of Natasha and Daniel’s story. If there even is one. Maybe it’s still playing out, in all of us, every time we are kind to someone else when it seems insignificant.

You never know where that act of kindness might lead, or why.

But it’s kind of fun to think about.

THE SUMMATION

Look–like I said before, I clearly have a bias here. I read the book and fell in love. I was transported to some version of our universe where despite everything, love wins. I fell in love with every character we met and I loved knowing every little piece of their story I was given. I loved getting to see how everything connected by the end, despite everything.

The movie is, solely and entirely, a love story. It’s not a bad love story. It still focuses on immigration issues and family pressures and the injustice of it all. But it never strays too far from its focus: the love between Natasha and Daniel.

It’s why their reunion at the end of the movie, though very watered-down from the book, works. Because that reunion is perfect for what it is: a love story.

I would argue that while the movie tells a love story, the book tells a story about love–all different kinds. That’s why I think it’s so powerful. That’s why I think if you’re looking for some beautiful love story, you should really read the book.

Really.

I read it in a day. Partly because I had a deadline since we’d already bought tickets for the movie, but really though. It’s a quick powerful read that will make you feel all sorts of things. In a good way. I mean I definitely cried. A lot.

But like…wouldn’t you rather deal with a story that made you cry and feel things because you loved the characters, rather than tried to make you cry with all its superficial symbolism and angst and poorly-dealt-with female robot characters?

(*cough*ALITABATTLEANGEL*cough*)

Anyway.

SHOULD YOU TAKE YOURSELF TO SEE THIS MOVIE?

So if it wasn’t abundantly clear by now–no.

I mean…ugh. Look, if you’re not a book person, that’s…fine…I guess, but please please please, if the trailer for the movie looked intriguing, read the book. It tells Natasha and Daniel’s story so much better than the movie does.

However, if that’s not your thing, which I don’t personally get but whatever I don’t know you, I don’t know your life, you might like the movie. My dad didn’t read the book and he thought the movie was great (despite my mom and I trying to convince him otherwise by constantly going off with “AND ANOTHER THING…”).

The movie tells a good story. It’s not a bad movie by any means.

But it could have been so much more.

Which is why I give The Sun is Also a Star…

2/5 BITTER SUNS!!!

Because the sun may also be a star, but it deserves a better movie than this.

TRAILERS TO WATCH OUT FOR

The only new friend we have to talk about is My Spy which I just figured out stars the guy who plays Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy. Hopefully I like My Spy more than Guardians (OOOOoooooooOooooOOOOH SHE DOESN’T LIKE GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY OOOooooOOooOOOH yeah yeah shut up). Best part of the trailer is when the girl knocks the fish bowl over to cause a distraction and he just “*GASP* LITTLE BLUE!!!!” Because same.

That about does it for this review!! The movie is…fine.

But please, please do yourself a favor and READ THE BOOK.

Long Shot (2019) REVIEW

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So maybe a week ago? Two weeks ago? Whatever time isn’t real.

Anyway, I took myself (and the parents) to the movies and we saw Long Shot.

I did mention Long Shot in the “trailers to watch out for” section of…something. Again, time isn’t real.

I desperately wanted this to be good because there have been so many not great romantic comedies recently and I really, really wanted one.

This one? This one is good. This one is real good.

THE PLOT

So we start off by following Fred Flarsky (Seth Rogan), a no-nonsense journalist who is currently in the middle of going undercover at a white supremacist meeting/rally thing to try and expose them. In the middle of getting a swastika tattoo, his cover is blown and he has to escape–right out a window. Somehow, he survives this incident (this is a theme throughout the movie, Fred is made of some crazy indestructible materials apparently) and is able to escape successfully.

(sidenote–can we talk about how amazing it is that normally in a romantic comedy, the trope is for the girl to be the journalist and the guy to be some successful something or other? The roles are switched here and it’s GREAT)

We then catch up with Charlotte Field (Charlize Theron), the current Secretary of State, as she goes about her normal morning routine of doing the impossible all at once and flawlessly. Seriously, it’s kind of uncomfortable watching her do a phone interview while on an exercise bike. How.

Charlotte is called in to meet with the current president, President Chambers (Bob Odenkirk). Chambers is an…unconventional president to say the least, and in one of my favorite moments, he compliments her on being a great secretary (“…of State.” She adds), and she is able to get him to say he will endorse her for future president while making it seem like it was his idea and a good thing for him to do all at once. Seriously, she’s amazing, and she knows how to play the game.

Charlotte’s employees, Maggie Millikin (June Diane Raphael) and Tom (Ravi Patel) sit with her while they are meeting some other team members to go over Charlotte’s numbers. Of course, most of the numbers are about her likability rather than her policies because this is America and that’s how we judge women. The main number she needs to work on currently is sense of humor, so Maggie suggests some speech writers for Charlotte to interview who will help with that.

Meanwhile, Fred quits his job because the company gets bought out by Parker Wembley (Andy Serkis). Wembley is…not a great guy, to say the very least, and Fred complains that much of the company’s goals at least originally were to expose people like Wembley. But in true capitalistic fashion, money wins, and Fred quits.

Fred’s bestie Lance (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) gets him into a fancy party in an attempt to cheer him up, and that’s where Fred and Charlotte meet again for the first time in years. Charlotte used to babysit for Fred when she was in high school, and they haven’t seen each other since. Charlotte calls him over because she feels like she remembers him, and the two have a very adorable meet-cute which is promptly interrupted by Fred confronting Wembley, which is promptly interrupted by Fred flying face-first down the stairs (I’m telling you, he’s indestructible).

Later, Charlotte looks up some of Fred’s writing and likes it enough that she tells Maggie to bring him in. Maggie is less than thrilled about this, but Fred ends up getting the job as speechwriter.

What follows is a surprisingly heartfelt exploration of modern romance, women in the political field, and what it means to be a public figure vs. maybe what it should mean.

THE REVIEW

This movie is great. Really.

I mean I was hoping I would like it, but I really wasn’t prepared to actually love it?

I’m generally not a Seth Rogen person, but he was delightful in this film. He did a great job at playing this quirky little dork of a character with a lot of heart, and it was genuinely heartbreaking watching him doubt himself and end things in order to not compromise who he was.

Also Charlize Theron?? Gorgeous. Stunning. I love her.

I mean, I was laughing out loud, crying a lil’ bit, and thinking a lot. This movie is incredibly politically self-aware, and I applaud it for not shying away from that at all? It definitely isn’t slap-you-in-the-face obvious about it, and it’s clear that the romance and the relationship is in the spotlight, but it also deals with so much more than that in a really smart way.

It’s a clever character study that also shines a light on our current political climate and also like…society as a whole? Like the more I think about this movie the more I’m genuinely impressed with how much it crammed in there. And not crammed in a bad way either, everything was connected and it never felt like too much.

Now, of course, this is a Seth Rogen movie so there’s a fair amount of raunchy humor. I would argue that it never steals the spotlight and I wouldn’t categorize it as a raunchy comedy flick because, again, it’s so much more than that. It’s incredibly clever and endearing.

Okay, I could be vague forever, but what is it exactly that makes this movie so genuinely good?

Spoiler warning now in effect! Although…I mean it’s a romcom so like…I dunno. I say it just to be safe but there’s nothing really to spoil, I don’t think. Anyway.

THE MUSIC

So good and pure and just fun.

I can’t find the official soundtrack on Spotify, but there’s one cinematic orchestra piece in particular that I remember, and it’s from the scene pictured above where they’re working in Charlotte’s room before the attack happens. It was just really sweet and lovely sounding, and it kind of reminded me of the music from The Holiday (HANS ZIMMERRRRRRRRR I love him).

Other than that, there’s of course the party scene where Boyz II Men performs, which is super fun, and of course…the scene where Charlotte and Fred slow dance in the kitchen during the party because they can’t dance in public and I just…Fred plays “It Must Have Been Love” from the Pretty Woman soundtrack (the fact that their romance is like a gender bent Pretty Woman is something Lance brings up earlier on) and it’s SO. PURE.

It also foreshadows their breakup later on which is super sad, but it’s a romcom so like everything ends up fine, I promise.

THE CHARACTERS

One of my favorite elements of any romcom are the well-developed characters all around, and this movie, thankfully, is no exception.

Fred is like a giant human puppy and I love him. He’s funny, of course, but he’s also devoted and clever and opinionated and doesn’t compromise for anything, tough as it may be. Rogen does a really, really great job at portraying such a wholesome character. I mean given his comedian background and the rest of his filmography, I was expecting Rogen to crush the comedy element, but he also does a brilliant job with the more serious scenes. I mean, when he tells Charlotte that he can’t go through with the character training in order to be her public partner because he won’t compromise who he is?? ICONIC. It’s so clear that he is so much more than just “the funny guy the pretty girl falls in love with,” and I really appreciate that. Is he still an idiot guy with raunchy jokes and moments? Oh for sure. But he’s not only that.

Charlize Theron brings so, so much to the part of Charlotte. In some ways I think Charlotte is really the main character more than Fred, which I love. One of my absolute favorite scenes is when Charlotte announces she’ll be running for president–and so much of that is Theron’s acting. You can see the physical change in her when she goes from straitlaced, perfect public figure to actual human being and sad girl in love, and it’s actually amazing. Charlotte is, thankfully, a fully-developed, incredible female character. She has reasons for everything she does, and if she doesn’t, we see her figure out her reasons. She’s strong and brilliant just as much as she is emotional and powerless. Seeing her battle the political climate is heart wrenching, and then seeing her overpower it and win? I. LOVE. IT.

Yet again, we have a beautiful example of a fully-fledged female character who is relatable and lovable because we see all sides of her, and not despite it *cough*ALITABATTLEANGEL*cough*.

I’m not sure I’ll ever get over that.

Anyway, Lance is another really wonderful character. He’s the best friend who knocks sense into Fred whenever necessary, but he also has a fair amount of development? One of my favorite, favorite scenes is when he reveals that he’s a Republican and a Christian. The scene is played out in such a way that it defines his character, but it also…doesn’t? His character is presented in such a way that you as the audience member probably had your own prejudices and assumptions about him that get absolutely smashed in that one scene. You get called out just as much as Fred does. But Lance is so wholesome about it? He’s still the same character you knew from the beginning of the film. Now you just know a little more about him. I appreciate it. I love him. I want him to be my friend.

Maggie and Tom (but Maggie especially) are also great characters. This movie is almost like a version of Pride and Prejudice with how much it tackles those subjects. Maggie is so scared of and obsessed with public opinion that she does all she can to politely separate Fred and Charlotte, but when she sees everyone’s positive reaction to them as a couple? You take a deep breath with her. You are happy and relieved just like she is. Your prejudice about humanity being judgmental is changed just like hers is. As much as you may want Fred and Charlotte together, you also fear for the public reaction just as much as Maggie does. As frustrating as Maggie can be, she’s never unlikable because it’s easy to see yourself in her, and her mini arc is just as satisfying as the romantic one.

Parker Wembley is a terrible human being, but he’s supposed to be, so he’s a great character. Also–he doesn’t win. SO SATISFYING.

President Chambers is such a cheeky take on the presidency that you can’t help but love him. I mean you want to shake him sometimes, but he’s also such a cleverly written character that you have to appreciate him to some degree. Also–he doesn’t win. ALSO SO SATISFYING.

Pretty much every character you meet is developed and has a story and reasons for behaving the way they do, and it’s such a refreshing sight.

THE ROMANCE

So you know how with some romcoms, everything else is really good but the actual romance itself is just kinda…eh? Like the plot is good, the characters themselves are great, the idea is awesome, and then the couple is just…ehhhhhh?

But then there are some romcoms where the romance steals the show. Your heart is full, your skin is clear, and your crops are watered…everything is perfect.

This romance? Iconic.

What makes the movie work so well is that just as it advertises, Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen should not work. I mean…look at them.

But again, these are so much more human and real than they are just characters. Fred is more than just a bumbling goofball, and Charlotte is more than just a beautiful woman. Fred has his serious, beautiful moments just as much as Charlotte has her over-the-top ridiculous moments. There’s something about the way it’s written that just…works. I can’t really describe it, and I truly think you have to see it to believe it. It’s an experience.

What I love, too, is that the more lighthearted romantic moments are just as meaningful as the more serious ones. I mean, the two of them watching movies together is just as cute as the two of them slow-dancing in a kitchen. The two of them getting high and dancing at clubs is just as heartwarming as the two of them spending quiet moments together on planes.

And don’t even get me started on the super serious sad scenes. We never see Charlotte scared because she can’t be a scared woman in politics, but when she suggests that Fred change his character in order to be with her in public? When she comes to his apartment and cries about how much she loves him and wants to be with him? IT’S SO SWEET AND HEARTFELT I WILL CRY FOREVER.

The romance is so endearing because it’s so, so hopeful. Movies aren’t really hopeful anymore. Romance is now used for cynical plots in stories, or never brought up at all. Couples don’t get to be happy anymore. It’s exhausting.

But this story? Fred and Charlotte are best friends as much as they are lovers, and we all know that couple in our lives. Sure, modern romance is like, impossible. But we know it exists. I love that this movie gave it to us, and showed us that it can win.

Also I’m a diehard romantic so this was RIGHT UP MY ALLEY, OKAY. LEAVE ME ALONE.

THE COMEDY

As much as I laughed at Adam Sandler’s SNL jab at the movie for being about a dorky guy and beautiful woman since Sandler’s done that plot so many times before, I liked this movie better. Like, don’t get me wrong, 50 First Dates is one of my favorites forever and Just Go With It has one of my favorite romantic scenes ever–but this movie has all of that without falling back on typical adult, raunchy humor. Again, there are moments of that! But it’s always for a purpose and never just to get a reaction out of the audience. Sandler’s comedies are filled with that stuff because that’s his brand, but this movie?

Fred pulling out all his drugs during the security check comes back later because that’s how we know he’s able to get drugs for the crazy party night with Charlotte. Their first sex scene where they “don’t last long” is funny and uncomfortable all at once because it seems real. It’s not played up for laughs, but played up for endearment. Fred’s unfortunate video that gets shared to the public is hard to watch and yeah, it’s like the ultimate raunch moment, but it’s a key plot point for a reason: Charlotte calls out the public for judging because “you all do it.” It’s humanizing them rather than characterizing them.

The comedy in the film is never used in a degrading way. It’s always genuinely funny because it’s real, it’s clever, and it’s got heart. Empty comedy never sticks with you or means as much as comedy filled with heart does. It’s good for a quick laugh, sure, but it doesn’t mean anything.

It was so fun to laugh out loud during this film, and there were so many moments that did that. I mean, the evolution of Fred’s tattoo, the one that was going to be a swastika? AMAZING. The entire scene where Charlotte saves a hostage over the phone while she’s high? COMEDY.

The comedy never takes away from the plot and romance, it only adds to it, and it works so, so well.

THE WHOLE

This movie is enjoyable on so many levels, and I’ll try to explain it best as I can, but I really think it’s better to see it to fully grasp it.

1. Everything Charlotte has to put up with as a woman in politics is really well-handled. She has a public face she puts on that is such a fake smile, it actually hurts to watch. All of her team is concerned with her public appearance because that’s how she’ll be graded. She’s willing to compromise her climate change proposal so it’s less useful but looks good and has more people onboard. She has to be funny and strong-willed and beautiful but not too much so. When the president tells her to change her proposal to suit investors or he won’t endorse her and she breaks down, it’s sad to watch. When she is blackmailed into changing her relationship with Fred and ultimately losing it, it’s so, so sad to watch. However, when she takes a breath and tells the public that she loves Fred, deal with it? It was like taking a deep breath and like, physically relaxing to see. She has to do so much more as a woman and the movie doesn’t shy away from the reality of that at all. The best part? She wins. SO SATISFYING. INCREDIBLY SATISFYING.

2. The political commentary as a whole is on the nose but also not at the same time? It never calls anyone out…directly, per se, but if you’re looking for it? The commentary is everywhere, and it’s delightful. President who used to be on a tv show? Yep. Sleazy capitalist guy who looks like…a certain someone everyone knows? Yep. Climate change proposal getting shot down and changed because of big companies? Yep. It doesn’t take away from the film at all, and if you’re not focused on it, it just adds to the realism. But if you’re looking for it? It’s satisfying. So, so satisfying.

3. The scene between Lance and Fred near the end where they talk about Lance being Republican and Fred being racist is incredible. There is so much you can unpack in that one scene that, again, you really have to experience it to fully understand it. It’s just…it’s so well-written, I can’t say enough about it.

4. THE ENTIRE ENDING SEQUENCE WHERE CHARLOTTE BECOMES PRESIDENT AND FRED BECOMES FIRST MISTER AND HE’S SO EXCITED ABOUT IT?? I was crying. I mean part of it was because we finally got to see a woman get sworn in as president (even though it’s fake) and that just really broke something in me, but it’s also like the ultimate victorious hopeful ending. It’s just so uplifting. I’m filled with joy just thinking about it. MY HEART IS FULL AND I AM CRYING AGAIN.

5. I love how much it makes you question political/public figures and the public’s relationship to them. Fred and Charlotte are clearly in love, but they have so much trouble being a couple because everyone’s so afraid of the public reaction and it’s just like…who are we to decide who someone can love? We have no right to this to begin with? Why are real people suddenly our own personal soap opera?? Why is humanity like this.

FAVORITE MOMENT

I loved so much of it, but I am especially obsessed with the scene where Charlotte saves the hostage while high and then announces her victory with a big victory scream and pose, and then of course the scene between Fred and Lance near the end.

“OOF” MOMENT

Look, Fred’s masturbation video is uncomfortable to watch. It just is. But it’s played up in such a genius way for the plot that I actually appreciate it. It’s still uncomfortable, but it’s used so well.

What is an “oof” is the scene where Wembley blackmails Charlotte. It’s sucky. It’s awful.

But he doesn’t win HAHAHA!!

SHOULD YOU TAKE YOURSELF TO SEE THIS MOVIE?

YES. PLEASE.

I do think I can see how this movie wouldn’t be for everyone, but please believe me when I say it is so incredibly heartfelt and witty and clever. It’s just such a feel-good time that also makes you think about society and the political climate but like not in an over-the-top way? It always stays so classy??

I genuinely can’t recommend this movie enough. It’s so good.

I give Long Shot…

5/5 COMEDIC POLITICAL SPEECHES!!

That last one is just all emojis, you have to read them out loud.

TRAILERS TO WATCH OUT FOR

Late Night looks really, really good and I hope it’s just as good as it looks. Plus I just love Emma Thompson a lot. I’m not a huge Mindy Kaling person but maybe this movie will change that!

Stuber looks like it could be good, but it could also not. Trailers sometimes make it impossible to tell. But this at least looks like it could be a lot of fun.

Shaft doesn’t really look appealing to me, but maybe it’s better than I think it looks. Who knows!

Anna…looks like a movie. Sometimes action movie trailers are all like “action!!! Explosions!!! Gunfire!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!” But like…what is the movie about? Is it just gunfire for two hours? Is there a story?…please?

That about does it for this review!!

If you need a feel-good movie, if you need a good romantic comedy with a lot of modern commentary, if you need to feel hopeful, if you love Charlize Theron in really pretty outfits (saying that, I realize how much that is not the point of the movie since the whole thing is about how much we judge women based on looks…) but also playing a really badass character (fixed it), please take yourself to the movies to see Long Shot!

Like, this almost had to be a shorter review because I can’t fully do it justice. There’s so much about it to appreciate by seeing it in person. It’s a good escapism to a version of the US with a lot of hope. So…I mean you may not like it if you’re really conservative…but then again, maybe hearing Seth Rogen’s in it already made your decision for you, I don’t know you, I don’t know your life.