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Movie Review: Babes

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The new movie “Babes” is another one of those films that walks a fine line between what is funny, and what might be funny because it is raunchy. Some comedy movies go the raunchy route, believing that if it is disgusting, then enough people will laugh and word of mouth will carry the movie in the box office. This movie is at times raunchy and then dials back for a while, and then is raunchy again – sometimes too much and other times, just enough.

The story is about two close friends Michelle Buteau who plays Dawn and Ilana Glazer who plays Eden. Dawn is married and at the start of this movie is about to give birth along the way to the hospital, which creates some opportunities for some raunchy scenes that involve water breaking and the pain of childbirth. At one point Dawn even crawls into an elevator, while in labor and on the way to the hospital. The scenes of Dawn giving birth provide a second barrage of raunchy dialogue and scenes, that many would consider both unnecessary and more importantly – not funny. Later in the story, after a fling with someone she met on a subway, Eden also gets pregnant and for the rest of the movie – the medical issues involving her pregnancy follow – with once again, several over the top raunchy scenes.

Overall, the story of these two close friends and their ups and downs included good dialogue for the most part and solid acting. This is not a high-quality comedy movie like “When Harry Met Sally” or “My Cousin Vinnie”, it’s overall just OK, but not good enough to be long term memorable.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating for this movie is way too high 92%, with my rating 75%, mainly for some of the acting and a moderate recommendation.

Movie Review: Furiosa A Mad Max Saga

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For the latest Mad Max movie “Furiosa A Mad Max Saga” the most impressive parts of this film have nothing to do with the screenplay or the acting. This movie is all about sand dunes, old beat-up cars, dune buggies, tractor trailers, and insane special effects. This movie was shot in the deserts and barren locations of Austrailia in the hot sun, where filming had to be a day by day nightmare, of cars breaking down and sand getting into the engines and transmissions of all the vehicles that were driven hard and destroyed within this story. The heat for the actors during so many hours of filming had to be extremely difficult to work in, reminding all of us who are movie fans that movie making is very often not the easy road many think it is most of the time.

This movie stars Anya Taylor-Joy as the lead character Furiosa, who starts as a young girl who loses her mother to a group of criminals and animals. She then grows up to be a great fighter who battles insane gangs in a world that is rapidly coming to an end. Her nemesis is an insane evil character Dr. Dementus, played by Chris Hemsworth. Unfortunately, the story is boring in too many areas and once again, this movie is way too long at 2 hours and 28 minutes.

This is yet another example of special effects and action scenes over a great screenplay – which is always the hardest thing to accomplish within any effort to produce and direct a new movie. The “Mad Max” name recognition is the reason why the producers think “who cares about the story, lets create explosions and car crashes in a huge desert, nobody cares about the story”.

I have never been fan of any of the Mad Max movies, often wondering why anyone likes a movie like this, with characters who are dirty and disgusting and barely alive in a world that is barely worth living in.

The Rotten Tomatoes high ratings of 89% – once again – make no sense, with my rating of 60% and a big pass for this film.

Movie Review: Back to Black

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The problem with being hugely successful at a young age, especially in the show business industry is if you realize that you are extremely depressed, even though you are world-famous, rich, and have won several awards – the only place you can go is down. This has happened to far too many celebrities in the music industry, including Elvis, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix. Most recently the downturn of the life of Brittany Spears has been almost daily celebrity news for years.

The new movie/biopic “Back to Black” is about the life and tragic death of Amy Winehouse, who died in July 2011 at only 27 years old. Her tragic and untimely death was after she had a huge hit album, received 6 Grammy Awards, and was world famous and wealthy. Despite great success, what Amy really wanted to be married and have children. From Amy’s perspective, her world famous career had her believe that it was all causing her to miss out on what she wanted the most.

Like Whitney Houston, Amy’s alcohol and drug abuse was caused by dating and then marrying the exact wrong man, who caused her nothing but frustration and misery. Amy’s only way of coping with her personal life was to drink heavily, which eventually caused her to die of alcohol poisoning at the young age of 27 – after being sober for a long period of time after rehab. Losing her mother from lung cancer was another huge cause of pain in Amy’s life and despite this, Amy continued to chain smoke non stop throughout this story.

This movie stars Marisa Abela as Amy, Lesley Manville as Amy’s mother Cynthia and Eddie Marsan as Amy’s father Mitch. Abela’s acting and singing in this movie is very good, making the overal quality of story, more unfortunate, wasting what otherwise would have been a more recognized acting performance.

The reason for the low critical score of only 36% for this film is that the screenplay was not worthy of Amy Winehouse’s life story. There were too many boring and unnecessary diversions and depressing scenes of Amy’s life and struggles and not enough on her singing career and musical performances. There were holes in the story, especially with the details on why her husband went to jail. A better screenplay should give equal time to a young woman who skyrocketed to fame and fortune so early in life along with the downsides that far too often follow the very few in the world to seem to be so lucky and have it all.

My rating is not as low as the very low critical ratings of only 36, with a 70% and a marginal recommendation.