Author Archives: jjcwn

Movie Review: Freakier Friday

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The new movie “Freakier Friday”, the sequel to “Freaky Friday” released in 2003, is one of those bad movies that you are embarrassed to tell people you actually saw. I only saw this movie because the theater for the film I wanted to see had a broken projector, so I sat through this horrendous waste of two hours for this blog.

This entire story about people who swap bodies was so poorly done that for most of the movie, you are trying to figure out who swapped into who, all along hoping that this nightmare would be over soon. There is a series of filler side stories, entirely designed to make this movie last two hours, where the goal should have been to end this mess in 80 minutes.

Freakier Friday stars the same two main actors from the previous movie, Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan as Tess Coleman and Anna Coleman, and two new characters who are also swapped, Julia Butters and Sophia Hammons, who play Harper Coleman and Lily Reyes. After the initial screaming scene where they all found out they were swapped, it seemed that the swapping after effects were ignored in favor of other stories to fill out the two hours. It’s hard to believe that a bad movie from 2003 was greenlit for a sequel 22 years later. With millions of dollars at stake, what were the producers thinking with this disaster?

The Rotten Tomatoes average rating of 73% is way too high with my rating 10% and a run from this mess at all costs recommendation.


Movie Review: Weapons

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In another effort to stand out, the new movie “Weapons” had a starting time of 2:17 PM, to coincide with a pivotal moment in the movie. This is definitely an idea I have never seen before. For a horror movie, this one has more than its share of over-the-top, way too violent scenes, including one where an insane man crashes his head into the head of another man, way too many times. Is it necessary to kill another person several times over? We get it, this person is dead.

This story is about 17 children who ran from their homes late one night and are missing for weeks, with a narrative that is told out of order, reminiscent of the storytelling method in “Pulp Fiction” (1994). There is a very old witch-like woman, played by Amy Madigan, who casts spells using blood and old tree branches, and can put people in a coma-like state, ordering them to kill other people, or sit at a dinner table, while stabbing their faces with a fork (another scene that went on way too long). This film is insane, disturbing, crazy, and overly violent, and is not a movie for kids who are not older than 17.

Weapons stars Julia Garner as Justine Gandy, the schoolteacher whose students have gone missing, Josh Brolin plays Archer Graff, one of the parents of a missing child, who harasses the police to investigate and eventually investigates what happened to the 17 missing children himself. The ending of this horror movie involves one of the most disturbing scenes I have ever seen in any movie, once again, way too much and way over the top, unnecessary.

For some reason, the Rotten Tomatoes rating is a ridiculously high 96% for a movie that should be at best 75% only for some original ideas. My rating is 75% and a small recommendation only for the most die-hard horror movie fans who like to see an extreme gore-fest.

Movie Review: The Naked Gun

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There have been three previous Naked Gun movies made; the last one, “Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult,” was released in 1994. These movies are supposed to be ridiculous and stupid. The problem with the latest reboot, “The Naked Gun”, starring Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr, is that it is too stupid, too over-the-top, and ridiculous. Towards the end of these two hours, the whole experience becomes far more annoying than it is funny. I found this experience similar to the Fast and Furious franchise, which, over time, gave us special effects and stunts that were far more idiotic than they needed to be. The concept of “less is more” makes sense for movies like these, when overkill can ruin the entire experience.

The new movie “The Naked Gun” also stars Pamela Anderson as Beth Davenport, who becomes involved after a series of stupid crimes with Drebin. Early in the movie, some of the stupid slapstick was working, but the quality of the sight gags started to degrade midway through this mostly unfunny film. The positive news is that it was good to see Liam Neeson in a major mainstream movie for the first time in many years since the last of the Taken movies was released in 2014. Neeson’s career has been mired in in and out of the theater B movies for about a decade.

This is also a major movie appearance for Pamela Andersonon, who has been experiencing a career resurgence since last year’s “The Last Showgirl” (2024). Anderson was good in her role, which consisted mostly of insane slapstick and word comedy like “take a chair”, where her character drags a chair out of the police department. A scene like this might be amusing once or twice, but throughout an entire two-hour movie, it gets old around the 3rd time.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings of 90% are about as insane and ridiculous as this movie, which violates the comedy movie rule of an unfunny film calling itself a comedy. This movie is not funny, and I do not recommend it, with a rating of 50%, which is generous.