Movie Review: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

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The latest installment of the 10-movie Planet of the Apes movies, “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” is another one in the series that seems more like a compilation of scenes with Apes and Humans, running for their lives, trying to kill each other with reminders of the first movie, “Planet of the Apes”, released in 1968. This new movie is supposed to be a prequel of the original movie and there are several references at the end of this movie, inside a cave that have many reminders of the original film.

There is nothing in these two hours that we all have not seen before, with a story that seemed to go nowhere and an ending that at best was illogical. From the original story, Apes are now the intelligent species with the implication that this was caused by a nuclear war. In this film, there is mention of a man-made virus that destroyed the intelligence and speaking skills of Humans and made Apes intelligent – not a nuclear war.

One of the main characters in this movie is named Nova, who can talk, but the Nova character in the original Planet of the Apes could not talk. So the woman in this film named Nova, is by coincidence not the woman named Nova in the original movie that is supposed to be the sequel to this movie? This is another example of this illogical screenplay.

This movie has mostly unknown actors, with the exception of William H. Macy who plays a human named Trevathan – who is part of a scene with Nova at the end of this story, that for me, made absolutely no sense.

This movie is also way too long at 2 hours and 25 minutes, and way too boring and slow in too many places.

As far as so many Planet of the Apes movies, there should be a documentary made about the life of any actor who has to endure hours of makeup application and removal, every day for 12+ hours a day, wearing an extremely hot costume for months. All of these movies have always been a bonanza for makeup artists for decades since the release of the original film. I would find a documentary about the making of these Ape movies more interesting than the majority of the movies themselves – including this one.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this movie are too high 80%, with my rating 70% and a marginal pass.

Netflix Movie Review: Unfrosted

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The story of the new Netflix movie “Unfrosted” reminds any screenwriter or standup comedian that writing a screenplay is just about the most difficult art form, but writing a comedy screenplay is about twice as difficult as just writing a screenplay.

Unfrosted, which is a parody of the creation of Kellog’s Pop-Tarts, is the first movie Jerry Seinfeld has written, directed, and starred in. He is arguably one of the most successful and prolific standup comedians of all time – but writing jokes for a standup act is not the same as writing a comedy screenplay. In the history of movies, only one comedy, Annie Hall, released in 1977 has won best picture. In my opinion, in the last 50 years only two other movies can be considered outstanding comedies at the level of Annie Hall; “My Cousin Vinnie”, released in 1992 and “When Harry Met Sally” released in 1989. A great movie comedy is extremely rare and hard to write.

Seinfeld wrote Unfrosted with two other screenwriters Spike Feresten and Andy Robin and while watching this extremely bad movie, I was amazed considering 3 screenwriters and a very large list of known actors that nobody noticed how extremely unfunny this entire film is. It seemed that nobody dared to say, “This is not working, this is not funny”. The dialogue and situations seem to be more about an attempt to force bad jokes on the audience, and less about creating a creative, funny and interesting comedy movie. There is a scene where Jerry Seinfeld runs through a barn with flatulating cows on both sides of him. Why would someone like Jerry Seinfield think this is either funny or appropriate?

The best review of this film that I have read is from critic Richard Roper who wrote: “Jerry Seinfeld’s Netflix movie “Unfrosted,” an astonishingly unfunny, deeply weird, live-action cartoon that is so clear-the-room dreadful it almost plays like a horror movie. “Unfrosted” is so consistently awful it makes the aforementioned “Flamin’ Hot” seem like “The Social Network.” If there was a thing called the IMDB Witness Protection Program whereby you could get your name taken off the credits of a particular project, this would be that project. “Unfrosted” is one of the worst films of the decade so far. Unfortunately I agree 100% with all of these comments.

This movie stars many former alumni of Saturday Night Live, Mikey Day, Kyle Mooney, Fred Armisen and Bobby Moynihan and a very large supporting case including Jim Gaffigan, Christian Slater, Sarah Cooper, Amy Schumer, Max Greenfield, Melissa McCarthy and Sebastian Maniscalco. I found this large and famous cast even more insane when you realize this many people agreed to make this movie, and nobody read the script?

I agree that the words “Pop Tart” sound funny, but to make a 2-hour movie parody about the invention of the Pop Tart in 1963 entirely because the words sound funny, makes no sense. Hopefully Jerry Seinfeld will get another chance at a new film and hopefully will co-write it with an experienced and great screenwriter like Aaron Sorkin or even his close friend Larry David. Unfrosted is one idea and screenplay that never should have been greenlighted in the first place and is one of the worst comedy movies of all time.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for Unfrosted are a too high 43%, with my rating only 10% and a run for your life miss this waste of two hours.

Movie Review: The Fall Guy

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The new movie “The Fall Guy” is another one of those bad films where the more interesting story is how so many people, for so many months and years, can collaborate and then create something this bad. Considering how much money and time is involved with creating a big budget movie like this one, its almost impossible to believe that this movie exists.

The screenplay for this movie is so bad, it is almost as if there was no screenplay, where disjointed and idiotic scenes are slapped together thinking that because of two well-known stars, Ryan Gossling, and Emily Blunt, there is no need to spend money and time to write and then re-write a coherent script. “All we need are some special effects and two well-known actors, who cares about the screenplay or anything else”. This seems to be the mantra of too many movies in recent years, and over time the movie going public is going to get sick of of this and demand quality over numerous explosions.

There is no recognizable plot here, other than the main character, a movie stunt man Colt Seavers, played by Ryan Gosling and a stunt coordinator Jody Moreno, played by Emily Blunt are making an action movie and slowly become more than friends. Within 30 minutes of this, most of the audience will go into “what is going on black-out mode” hoping that the whole nightmare will be over soon. Then realizing that with a too-long running time of two hours and six minutes, that a decision (which I almost made about 10 times) to leave early is the number one thought on your mind – no longer the bad movie.

This film could also be another example of a production studio manipulating the critics ratings on Rotten Tomatoes to a ridiculously high 83% for a movie that should get only 50% for the stunts and special effects. My rating is 40% mainly due to the two well known actors, rating this a huge miss at the very start of the blockbuster movie season.