I never thought I would ever see a movie rated as low as the new movie starring Kate Upton, entitled “The Layover”. This movie got a 0% approval on Rotten Tomatoes but I do not agree that this movie was that bad as I would have given it a 20 or a 25% rating. I have seen worse movies than this one over the years, much worse. Of course this is not a good movie, its stupid, the story is dumb and contains decisions and action that normal people would never do. Its embarrassing for the two actresses who play best friends, Kate Upton and Alexandra Daddario who make fools of themselves competing for this one guy they meet at random on a plane. You just have to wonder if these 2 actresses ever read this script or did this movie only to remain in the public eye as an actress or as a favor to a friend or for any number of other bad reasons. With ratings this low, you have to think that perhaps Kate Upton has ruined any chance of having an acting career and then wonder if Daddario has hurt her acting career too severely by making this bad movie. Equally amazing is that the great actor William H. Macy directed this bad movie. What was he thinking? Did even he read this script for this bad movie? Considering how bad this film is, he either didn’t read it or just wanted a movie directing credit and didn’t care how bad the screenplay was.

Fundamentally the story for any movie has to make sense and this movie just does not make any sense. Two very attractive women who have been close friends for years destroy their friendship doing a series of stupid things to either impress or make the other look bad for some random man they met on an airplane. This one central part of the story for this film was never believable, funny or made any sense. The layover from an East Coast plane trip to Fort Lauderdale Florida was diverted to St Louis because of a Hurricane, which also makes no sense. Then, after spending about 2 days in St Louis they all decide to drive 17 hours from St Louis to Ft Lauderdale, just to make sure the plane is not delayed again, even after they were told that the weather had cleared. Four people would never do something this stupid. There are other stupid story lines in this bad movie that also make no sense, but the movie is not worth elaborating too much more about, given all the things that everybody would agree is bad about it.

I saw this movie because of the blog but I recommend everybody else stay away.

Aubrey Plaza has one of the most unusual names I have seen in many years and her name perfectly suits her effortless comedic personality. Plaza can just make some kind of an absurd comment, or make a face or do something very subtle with her eyes and you cant help but laugh and most of the time its not even obvious that she is trying to be funny, she just is. Her comedic abilities have always seemed effortless and the best comedy is always that way; never anything that you see coming at you that is ever obvious, at times something surprising and always flows without any noticeable effort.

As far as her new unusual movie “Ingrid Goes West”, its all about social media and how it affects normal people or the main character in this film, Ingrid, played by Plaza who is a bit mentally disturbed. Social Media can make shy people not shy and lonely people have many friends, or it can have a reverse effect where a person who has mental problems can manipulate people through social media to create a fake person that doesn’t even exist to trick someone, in this case Elizabeth Olsen who is the somewhat famous person Ingrid tries to trick into being her friend. This movie is funny in some places, pathetic in some other places and ultimately depressing as you feel for Ingrid who is trying to rescue her lonely life and doing everything wrong to achieve her goal.

The ratings for Ingrid Goes West on Rotten Tomatoes are very high and I found this to be very surprising given that I thought that this was just an above average movie that I do recommend.

The movie “The Hitman’s Bodyguard”, does have ton of action, explosions and special effects. What it doesn’t have is anything new, or something unique that has never been done before. The constant cursing dialogue has been done in many movies before, along with the car chases and this movie is mostly about 2 guys being chased around by criminals, with accompanying explosions and gunfire. So none of this new.

In the theater I was in, the director Patrick Hughes was in an opening segment, thanking the audience for paying to see his movie and then ratting off amazing statistics about 1200 people who were employed to make this film, in about 3 countries for about 9 months. I was amazed to learn that it takes 1200 people to make a movie like this, but not too amazed about the story of this film, or the fact that we have all seen this kind of movie too many times before. In order to make a hit in movies today, you have to create something innovative, otherwise the film is considered run of the mill, as the low ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and D- rating from Richard Roper for this movie prove (see Richard Roper’s review below).

The Hitman’s Bodyguard stars Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson and Selma Hayek and Gary Oldman and is so typical and run of the mill that I cannot recommend it, but I do not agree that the movie is as bad as Roper’s review below.