Author Archives: jjcwn

Movie Review: About My Father

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In August of last year, the movie “Easter Sunday” was released, about the family and especially the mother of Jo Koy, a very good standup comedian who uses stories about his mother as part of his act. The producer of this film was none other than Steven Speilberg. The problem with Easter Sunday is that Koy’s humor in his standup act did not translate to the screen. The screenplay was also bad and the entire story was about Koy handling high-stress conflicts in his life, ending with attempted humor with his controlling mother. This film was low-rated on both Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB.

The new movie “About My Father” is another attempt at taking a standup act, for Sebastian Maniscalco and translating it into a film. This attempt fails even worse than Easter Sunday, mainly because the screenplay is so bad. There is no noticeable story within these two hours, just a series of events, that try to be funny, and mostly all fail. The worse failed funny scene is when Sebastian, played by Maniscalco, is on a water jet and his bathing suit falls off, and none of this is funny and its only purpose was to add a shocking scene to the movie trailer.

What probably happened here is that producers were trying to capitalize on the popularity of Sebastian Maniscalco, then when the script (co-wrote by Maniscalco), was found to be not good enough they called in a favor from Robert De Niro, in the slim hope to rescue the box office. From my experience as an avid moviegoer, this strategy never works. This is because a bad movie is simply a bad movie and cannot be rescued by throwing someone respected and famous into the cast.

I was surprised about how bad this movie was. There was no flow or continuity, just a series of scenes. This film also stars Leslie Bibb as Ellie Sebastian’s girlfriend and Kim Cattrall and David Rasche as Ellie’s parents. I would have thought, given one of the writers is Maniscalco, that there would be something that works comedically in this film, but there is nothing funny in the entire two hours – always the cardinal sin of all comedy films.

In 1999 and 2002, Robert De Niro made two good comedy movies with Billy Crystal – “Analyse This”, and “Analyse That”. Unfortunately, most of the other comedy movies he has made since then, including the very bad “Dirty Grandpa” and this movie are failed attempts at comedy. Hopefully, De Niro will steer clear of comedies and continue with dramas. Not even the great actor Robert De Niro can have too many movies this bad on his resume.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating of a very low 29% is correct this time around, with my rating of 15% and a recommendation to not waste two hours with this mess of a surprisingly bad comedy movie.

Hulu Movie Review: White Men Can’t Jump

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Somewhere in a typical Hollywood producer’s office, there might be a checklist to determine the criteria for deciding to do a remake of any movie. One criterion might be the passage of time, the popularity of the movie, the times the movie has been shown on Cable TV, the references to the movie on social media, and its box office profits when it was first released.

For those of us who remember the original “White Men Can’t Jump” released in late March 1992, it’s impossible to believe that 31 years have passed. This original movie is one of the best sports movies ever made, and probably the best of its kind ever produced about Basketball. White Men Can’t Jump starred, Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes and their personal friendship was evident in their chemistry during this story. The basketball scenes during this film were also outstanding, showing some of the impressive basketball skills of both Harrelson and Snipes during the many contests and games. Actress Rosie Perez was also outstanding in her role as Harrelsons girlfriend and dealing with his constant gambling. The IMDB rating for the original White Men Can’t Jump is 6.8 out of 10.

Unfortunately, the IMDB rating for this new version is only 3.9 out of 10. The reason for this is while there are some good ideas in this new film and it is not just a duplicate of the original, the story, and humorous dialogue are not strong enough to compare favorably to the original movie. One of the checklists missing in this remake attempt is that the screenplay was not good enough to even consider making this remake from the start.

This new version stars rapper Jack Harlow, and Sinqua Walls as the two main characters. They have OK chemistry together but nothing memorable. I did appreciate the decision to use some of the same famous Los Angeles venues for this remake but the most surprising thing about this remake is that the basketball scenes are not nearly as good as they are in the original film.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this remake are way too low 29%, with my rating around 50% and a pass.

Movie Review: Fast X

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This time around, the latest installment of the Fast and Furious Franchise “Fast X” is not one movie, but 7 sub movies that are all interlaced throughout the 2 1/2 hours with each one standing alone with different parts of the cast. The obvious problem with 7 smaller movies at the same time and cutting to each one of them, is that many of the main characters are separated and this eliminates the chemistry and funny scenes that are some of the best parts of this franchise. This new extreme idea does not take away at all from the expected and once again, incredibly stupid stunts and special effects that defy all logic and laws of physics. Why the Fast and Furious producers and directors feel the need to go so over the top with action scenes like these probably has more to do with creating an exciting movie trailer than any other reason.

As far as idiotic action scenes, there is a giant rolling bomb that destroys city streets, huge stone stairways, and monuments all throughout Rome. The main character Dominic Toretto, played by Vin Diesel, stops the bomb in one of the craziest ways imaginable. There is a scene later in the film with Dominic in a car with his son at the edge of a giant Dam. Once surrounded, as Dominic has done in the past, he just drives the car over the edge and is followed by gigantic explosions and somehow, despite 100% certain death, manages to survive, yet again. Yes of course this is an action movie, but the problem with these movies is making the action scenes so crazy-dumb-make-no-sense that it actually insults the very audience they are trying to attract. There is no reason to go this far with these scenes, but it seems that the goal is to surpass the action of the last movie no matter what.

In this new installment, which is a 2 part movie, due to the 3 extreme cliffhangers at the end, all of the major cast members return with the new addition of the daughter of Mr. Nobody, played by Kurt Russel (who is not in this movie), Tess, played by Brie Larson – who I am surprised took this small part in a movie of this low quality.

Jason Momoa plays Dante, who is the main villain in this film and is the son of another villain from a Fast movie 10 years ago. Dante wants to take his revenge on Dominic and his entire family for killing his father. What makes no sense, is after months of planning, meetings with producers and the director, and millions of dollars spent, Mamoa decided to play this part like he is a Liberace-like gay comedian. This entire crazy-funny and gay personality, in my opinion, was a huge mistake and did not work with this role.

Charlize Theron returns again in her role as Cipher, and her sub-movie with Letty, played by Michelle Rodriguez, makes very little sense, all the way to the end, where they both somehow wind up in Antarctica. This entire screenplay seems to have been written by a stream of consciousness on the fly method, without regard to continuity or connections to any of the other sub-movies.

Cameos include Rita Moreno, who plays some kind of a family matriarch at the beginning of this story, and considering how absurd this movie can be at times, she seemed out of place. Pete Davidson appears later in the film as an owner of a computer store, when the cast is looking for new computer equipment. It is amazing to see how far someone like Davidson has come in his career and his current popularity.

As this almost 2 hours and 30-minute film winds down, into 3 shocking cliffhangers to be resolved in the next movie “Fast X: Part 2”, released in 2025, there is an appearance of yet another character in this series, thought to be dead for a long time. This was also done in the last installment, once again insulting the intelligence of the audience. This is because this character was definitely killed in an earlier movie. Enough of this already, once someone is obviously killed, bringing them back to life is just ridiculous.

For those millions of die-hard fans of this movie series, having to wait 2 years to see the resolution of the cliffhangers, will be painful for them, but I can certainly wait. This is mostly because while the special effects are always amazing, the screenplay and just plain stupid action scenes are at times, very hard to sit through without laughing.

Despite a huge 350 million dollar budget and spectacular special effects, for this 10th movie in this highly profitable movie franchise, the Rotten Tomatoes ratings are a low 56%. I agree with this low number, based on the continuing and very unnecessary inane illogical action scenes. This movie is only for die-hard Fast and Furious fans and unfortunate professional movie bloggers like me.