A few days ago I saw Matt Damon on “The Late Show with James Corden” and he described his new movie “The Great Wall”, while averting his eyes downward as “a series of attacks on the Great Wall of China by thousands of lizard-like creatures” and incredibly, that is entirely what this movie is all about. Rather than making this very bad mess of a film the producers could have come up so many better ideas that involve the Great Wall of China. This could include a documentary about the Great Wall, narrated by Matt Damon. A recreation of a major battle many centuries ago that involve the Great Wall. Perhaps a documentary that goes through the entire process and the decisions that were made for probably close to 2 years, that lead to the producers to make this ridiculous movie. A narration by Matt Damon where he explains how or why he ever decided to make this movie in the first place would be a better idea than making a movie this bad. Did Matt Damon owe someone a favor to did he lose a bet? On top of all this, making this bad movie also included moving for a long period of time to China to make perhaps the worst movie in his career.

There are a series of action scenes in this movie that summarize the absurdity of the whole 2 hours. On many occasions, Chinese soldiers in an attempt to kill these lizard creatures who are trying to climb up the Great Wall, bungee jump while holding a spear in an attempt to kill them, even though thousands of them are on the ground and climbing the wall and just about every attempt to kill these creatures using this stupid method, resulted in some soldier being eaten alive. You would think that after perhaps 2 futile attempts like this, they would figure out that this idea was not working? This is the same type of thinking that allowed for this movie to be produced in the first place. The idea of creating creating action scenes with CGI no matter how absurd is never going to rescue any bad movie.

When you consider the total budget for this film is 150 million dollars and hopefully this huge figure includes all of those costumes that had to be made its a wonder why any producer after reading this very bad script would be able to raise this amount of money to market a concept that is this bad. Essentially, the entire plot of this movie is: Matt Damon and his friend are attacked by a strange lizard creature, then they kill the creature and cut off its arm. Later they wind up captured by Chinese soldiers at the Great Wall of China and then are attacked by thousands of these creatures, several times. There is a small rock they find that is some kind of a magnet that they find has some control over them, and other than this there is really nothing more to this story.

This movie should have gone immediately to the DVD shelves. I am very surprised that Matt Damon decided to make this movie and as far as I have seen this is the worst movie of Damon’s career. This film is yet another example that special effects will never be a band-aid for a bad script or a bad concept. Do yourself a favor and run from this waste of 2 hours.

It is a rare thing in my experience that two actors were so perfectly cast for their parts in the same movie and occurs in the new film Fist Fight. Charlie Day is the perfect actor to play a very mild-mannered teacher in a nightmare school that has violence, constant pranks during what the movie called “senior pranks week” and over the top raunchy events that sometimes almost work, but most of the time, I heard nobody laughing in the audience. The actor Ice Cube is also perfectly cast in his role as the character he seems to play in all the movies he is in; a very angry bullying type of guy who always looks like he is a few seconds away from fighting someone. Underlying the main story of this movie, which is Ice Cube wanting to fight Charlie Day at the end of the school day is the subject of bullying that Day’s 10-year-old daughter is also facing at her grammar school. It doesn’t take this light, sometimes entertaining comedy movie about a bad high school to remind all of us, that bullying takes place in schools and also when you are an adult and have to make a living working for and with other people.

The fact that this movie is “all in” and entirely about one thing, an end of movie fight between two teachers is not enough of a strong premise to recommend this movie as an effective comedy and overall it is at best average because of my acid test for all comedy movies, which is, “did people laugh in the audience?” From the audience I was in, this movie got very few laughs, unfortunately. The appearance of Tracy Morgan is also not enough to rescue this movie as his lines were only mildly funny at best.

The scene at the end of the movie where Day’s 10-year-old daughter performs a Big Sean rap song that his laced with profanities I thought was in bad taste, much like the end of the recent film “The Comedian” where a young girl is using the worst kind of foul language during her comedy act at a school.

Considering the few moderately funny moments in this film and the majority of the scenes that did not work, I cannot recommend this movie.

The movie “Working Girl” that was released in 1988 is arguably the best role that Melanie Griffith ever had in her career. It is also one of the few roles that Harrison Ford ever made during this era where he was not the lead actor and in this movie; he played the eventual boyfriend of Melanie Griffith’s character. When I was experiencing this movie for the first time almost 30 years ago I was reminded why I go to the movies as often as I do. Firstly, because of my ambition to be a screenwriter, which is a very difficult profession to break into but mostly to relate to life situations that we all face every day.

The movie Working Girl captured the frustrations and outrage of a young woman trying to rise above herself because of her belief that she deserved better than her lot in life regardless of the opinions of other people who were deciding her fate because she had to make a living as a secretary. The problem with working for companies and other people is that your ability to advance is directly correlated to your ability to impress others and not just to complete your work every day. It is not enough that you complete a task very well, it must then follow that other people have to recognize what you have accomplished and then have the integrity to step aside and allow you to take credit for what you did. More simply stated, when you work for someone else, then your future is in the hands of someone else and no longer in your control. This is the fundamental message behind the movie Working Girl.

Sigourney Weaver played an evil, condescending, backstabbing and credit stealing boss of Melanie Griffith better than anyone I have ever seen in any movie. The great thing about movies is that we recognize characteristics and evil in the characters and relate them to people we know in our own experiences. Movies are also great because very often then have a satisfying ending where the hated antagonist gets what they deserve in the end and this unfortunately, does not happen very often in real life.

One the scenes that impressed me the most with Sigourney Weaver’s part in this movie was the moment where she found out that Melanie Griffith’s character had taken back her own idea and was going to present it at a meeting after she was injured in a skiing accident. Weaver’s outrage at this moment was an outstanding representation of the extent of evil in people like this. She was seethingly angry that her secretary took back the very idea that she stole from her in the first place. After this, the story took some believable twists and turns and eventually lead to an extremely satisfying conclusion that we all wish we could either live through ourselves or witness first hand.

If you have never seen Working Girl, you owe it to yourself to see one of the best movies ever made about the realities of life and having a job.