Bride Hard: Stop Trying To Make Rebel Wilson A Thing

Amy Schumer better watch out Rebel Wilson is trying to steal her spot as the number one for slop on Netflix aimed at women.

This time Ozempic Wilson, as we will call her for the rest of the review, is a secret agent who has brought a group of civilians with her unknowingly in order to steal a bio weapon, whilst also being the maid of honour at a bachelorette party. Cut to painful cringe comedy.

The idea that Ozempic can take down a group of guys is just laughable, and not in a good way, the fact she does it all with a face straight out of the Alaqua Cox school of acting makes it funnier. Perhaps this is the death throws of the girlboss genre, they say as a genre dies it begins to parody itself and this certainly feels like that.

The thing is this sort of film was once funny, but that isn’t the case now, now you get a few unbelievable action scenes, a few sassy yaaaaaaaaaas queens from the friends, then cut to credits.

Overall, this is low rent female slop from Netflix, as it thinks this is what women want. However, much like Mel Gibson in a much better film from decades prior they don’t really know what women want.

0.5/5

Pros.

It is short

Cons.

It isn’t funny

Rebel Wilson should go away

It is slop

It is repetitive

The action is awful

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Stranger Things Season 5 The First Batch: Without Stakes

Summary

Stranger Things begins its final season.

Really, I think this should have been released all at once rather than in parts, the issue with this approach is I can’t really feel favourably to the first batch of episodes, as it feels like they are building to something that never comes. The Vecna fight is cool I guess when he destroys the military, but it also makes how easily the gang beat him in season four seem incredibly poorly conceived.

The big ‘epic’ reveals of this batch are mostly either pretty meh, one of the bad kids Eleven hung out with in season two is back, or cringe such as Will feeling okay in himself means he gets psychic powers. Neither of these things land.

Then you have the fact that like most seasons the series would rather focus on other people rather than developing out the cast we already have, herein represented by the focus on Holly Wheeler, you need to have a child character so the kids can still watch it even though they don’t. As well as Linda Hamilton who seems to be playing Sarah Conner from Terminator Dark Fate. You could have given those roles in the story to Erica and possibly a somehow alive Brenner and it would have made much more sense.

The hellfire stuff was dumb and boring last season and should have been scrapped the fact it is still being rehashed here, as they can’t think of anything else for Dustin to do is a further show of bad writing.

Overall, it moves the pieces around the board and has some good moments, but it can’t give us surprises we care about and feels the need to force in yet more boring needless characters.

2.5/5

Pros.

Finally giving the Wheelers something to do

Having all the characters in one place

A darker feel

Cons.

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Strangers Things Retrospective: Slop Hidden In Plain Sight

Summary

Stranger Things is often held up as one of the great modern series, but upon watching it back a second time you see the power of Netflix and the hype people, to really overblow something to the nth degree.

The conspiracy ideas of the show are interesting, however, it is far too derivative, concepts like how Vecna kills people in season four, or the entire mystery of the first season feel like carbon copies of other things from the period such as the works of Stephen King and The Nightmare on Elm Street films.

The series as a whole doesn’t seem to want to know who it is for either, it has mature elements for adults, yet packs the story so full of melodrama that it could be called a YA show just as easy. The issue with the series as it aged is the fact that it really started to drink its own cool aid, and started to have these big pompous episodes on for far longer than a lot of prestige tv shows, and the reason they were so long, not because they were trying to unpack weighty issues and themes but because of all the filler.

The characterisation and the character writing in terms of motivation feel so inconsistent, characters change massively over the course of the show and not in consistent ways that makes sense for them, almost as though the writers forgot who they were between seasons and just decided to start over. They also flanderise characters, look at Will, people said from the very first episode he was gay, yet as the series progressed that is all he became. The whole of the fourth season was him whining as his straight friend wasn’t into him, it gets to a point where the characters becomes a cliché.

I think with Stranger Things to which I watched all four seasons in the lead up to this final season over the last month, it becomes very clear that if you stripped out the nostalgia, the premise and the soundtrack and just viewed it as a show based on its characters, writing, and themes that it was always slop. The nostalgia and the premise made you think it wasn’t so bad, but it was always slop we just didn’t see it.

Overall, the show is pretty mediocre.

2/5

Pros.

The soundtrack

The mystery as a concept, the more and more they explain of it the worse it gets.

Cons.

The character writing

The pace

The shallowness of it

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Back To The Future: Marty’s Mother Is Sexually Abusive

Summary

A classic doesn’t hold up.

I recently watched this film after not having watched it in years, it was not a great experience.

Some films from the Eighties hold up and pass the test of time and some don’t I would argue this is the latter. Firstly, the stuff with Marty and his mother which is played for laughs is really quite an odd choice and is creepy. Marty is being constantly sexually harassed and at times quasi assaulted and yet this is not a big deal and if anything is just a humorous misunderstanding, lets flip the genders and see if it is still a comfortable viewing experience.

Following on from that is the aggressive amount of product placement that is everywhere. Whilst this could be viewed as gimmicky or a funny thing to laugh at it actually is quite distracting and the more and more it goes on and the more you see the worse it gets. It feels less like you’re watching a film and more like an advert.

The smoking gun for this revisionism is that Marty himself is insufferable, not only is he overly cocky and smug a lot of the time, he doesn’t treat those around him well he treats his dad, back in the past, with contempt for being nerdy, and he takes his girlfriend, in the future, for granted, worse yet he never really gets called out for being the way he is. However, when you watch it back you think if Marty was erased from existence the world wouldn’t be so bad.

Overall, a movie that does not hold up.

2/5

Pros.

It is watchable

It has a good soundtrack

Cons.

The stuff with his mother

The product placement

Marty is not a nice person

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Diary Of A Wimpy Kid Christmas Cabin Fever: Worse Than Book Burnings

Summary

I returned to the Disney version of the Diary Of A Wimpy Kid franchise and was a bit sick.

So lets get one thing very clear, Greg is a good kid but also a fundamentally flawed one with his schemes often getting him into trouble, he is not the sort of kid to give away the present he most wants to help those in need, the idea was so American and sickening that I almost turned it off. This idea of the great moral virtuoso is fake kids don’t behave like that.

In addition this film above all others in the space made me hate current day animation and long to return to the two dimensional hand drawn kind of years prior. Everything about this was so ugly, the models how they moved around the space, the way they interacted with the environment, the environments themselves were hideous.

Moreover, Greg’s families personality was just one emotional state the entire film, there was no nuance or development for his family in anyway they started off the film one way and ended it the same.

Overall, this is some of the most soulless animation you might ever see.

1/5

Pros.

It is short

Cons.

The animation is ugly

It feels fake and overly moral

The family has no personality

It is not funny or relatable

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Christmas Karma: London That Famous Latin Location

Summary

Raj from the Big Bang Theory gets political.

So this was the first film I have ever watched on Plex and I have to say it was a good system, better than some streaming services for sure. I am glad this did not come out in the cinemas where I am, as I cannot imagine sitting there and watching it all in one go. I had to take breaks to get over the cringe.

So a lefty luvvie filmmaker that can seemingly only make films about people from South East Asia, think she can reverse the populist rise in the UK by making a film about immigration. She repeats all of the left wing talking points you would expect, immigrants only immigrate due to forced displacement, ignoring economic migration, that the locals are always angry white people, rather than plenty of people who welcome immigrants and want to integrate with society. This is the sort of film that makes people become right wing, by over simplifying a complex topic and present a very basic moral argument between good and bad.

Also this film decided that A Christmas Carol really needed a latina ghost, really? This film is supposed to be set in the UK, why would there be a latina ghost? The number of Latin people in the UK is miniscule. What seemed like to me was an effort in box ticking, they needed to get every group they could think of ticked off the list, they even gave some token white representation by having Danny Dyer be a dumbed down goofy version of himself to go see white people we don’t hate all of you.

The plot is your standard play on A Christmas Carol with the above politics mixed in for flavour, the issue however, is that A Christmas Carol has been done to death and mixing in some race baiting elements isn’t what the film needs to feel fresh.

Overall, I am sure the group this film was made for will like it, but sadly I was not a part of that group. My takeaways from this experience is that Plex is great Christmas Karma not so much.

1/5

Pros.

It has some unintentional comedy

Cons.

It isn’t funny on purpose

It is preachy

It over simplifies things

The moral of it is so obvious throughout

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The MCU Is Dead

In this edition of Cinema Issues we will be talking about the MCU and how we got here.

So firstly lets take stock, the MCU has this year put out three films that all failed to break even, released a few tv series no one talked about, Born Again had worse ratings than Agatha, and moved the big prize of an Avengers film further and further away. Disney as a company has also had a reckoning with their audiences and are now moving away from the message and towards entertainment again. There has been senior people in Marvel leaving or stepping down, audiences have not connected with a lot of the phase four and five, and there is a real possibility that Doomsday may not break a billion dollars.

Let’s look at the year ahead as well before we begin, Doomsday is the big ticket item, though a push to the year after next wouldn’t be a surprise. Then you have Spider-Man which will do well as people like the character, he is probably the most popular remaining MCU character, but each time a Spider-Man film is made Disney has to pay Sony and involve them, which they don’t like. Then you have TV series like the second season of Born Again which could be good but I wouldn’t hold my breath, and then TV shows no one cares about such as Wonder Man and more of their animated stuff. There is a real chance that Spider-Man will be all Marvel has that makes a dent next year if they delay Avengers again.

Marvel went from a studio that seemed untouchable to one that looked like it was falling off, as the kids say real quick.

What got us here and what can be done, at this point I would argue that a reboot is needed. I think that whilst yes you can bring back variants of popular characters, it does not work long term and undermines death as a concept in the MCU. I think a real issue is that the characters brought in the later phases have simply not connected in the way Marvel thought they would, and whilst you can blame a rush to the M-She-U, or the fact that a lot of these were girlbosses without proper arcs, you can ultimately just point back to the fact that a lot of these characters, Riri, Ms Marvel, Kamala Khan, are not popular characters and the comics have been saying that for years. In a sense Marvel thought it was too big to fail and so it could push ahead with whatever agenda you want to think they had and that people would stick around when they didn’t. Rebooting things now and bringing back popular characters can fix the character issue but there are broader things at play.

Within certain sects of Hollywood talent there is a need to be outspoken in a progressive way and to insult your audience or attack them for not liking your progressive masterpiece, this has been seen at Marvel on both a talent, as in actors, and behind the scenes level. A fictional entertainment world should never have been making allegories to the real world as blatant as the MCU, and the crew and staff employed knew making very noticeable political statements online would hurt the audience, but they didn’t seem to care. Particularly amongst the phase four and five stars there has been a need to tell people how to think and to insult those who came up with Marvel since the earliest days of the MCU. I am not going to insult your intelligence and explain why this is a bad business move, but I will say that you can bet your money that Marvel now cares a hell of a lot about their lost audiences and plunging viewing figures. This is why you are seeing very obvious attempts to mend fences, with actors who are making insulting statements slowly being pushed out of the MCU and more and more talk of multiversal cameos to bring back characters fans like. The thing that they don’t seem to get is that whilst the people who made those comments who did the things are still employed, a lot of them are, then people aren’t coming back. Marvel as with all studios needs to do an ideological cull, they need to say right we are an entertainment company anyone that wants to run their mouths about the audience or about politics there is the door, and they need to remove the people who have made the comments in the past as well.

Then you have the major issue that exists in the background to the two other things we have discussed, genres come and go, the Western is a tired comparison but an apt one. Increasingly Marvel releases be them shows or films follow the same structure him the same plot beats, explore the same themes, and where this can work more so in comics wherein you are reading every week to find out what a specific character is doing, it doesn’t work so well in a multiconnected universe wherein you have to see everything that comes out.

As such we find ourselves possible witnessing the death of a titan. I don’t believe any amount of cameos, or even a reboot can save it. What would need to happen is three fold, firstly an entire overhaul of the brain trust and writing teams, apologies made for behaviour that alienated fans, the increased presence of liked characters like Spider-Man and a direction away from it being this big interconnected thing. Even then death may find a way.

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Zootopia Two: China To The Rescue

Summary

Disney Animation could not get more generic if it tried.

The first film felt paper thin with the idea of the predators vs the prey metaphor working as a stand-in for race relations, everyone could see the very obvious message of not judging others by what they are but rather the content of their character. Yet this film feels the need to push a worn out and frankly reductive metaphor further forward as it has nothing to say otherwise.

In many ways this is the very worst kind of sequel not one that exists due to a need to, but rather one that is just done for profit. Everything feels a bit more low rent, the humour a bit more stale, the voice cast sound like they are going through the motions, they have the woman from Abbot Elementary basically being an animal version of her character from that show, it all feels very low effort.

Finally wherein Disney films of old used to have a clear moral message that the film would teach over the course of its runtime, there is nothing like that here, maybe it is the reliance of shades of grey rather than actually having established heroes and villains or the need to make everything morally complex that leads to this issue it is hard to tell.

Overall, this is just more animated slop that brings down the tone of the whole genre.

1.5/5

Pros.

It is watchable

It has a few unintentional laughs

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A Very Merry Pooh Year: Bring Back Hand Drawn Animation

Summary

Pooh and friends celebrate the holidays.

I needed a pallet cleanser after all of the horrible three dimensional animation I have seen recently for a project I was helping a friend with, so I thought some classic hand drawn animation was just the ticket. Seeing this makes me think about what we have lost, hand drawn animation has so much more heart and soul, even when it combines with three dimensional characters or elements.

I like that this is not just a Christmas film but rather a film that reflects the whole period, there are not many animated New Years films so that was a nice change. I thought that this special did a lot to not only make it feel like Christmas but show how each individual character interacts with the season. The Christmas magic really gave the sweetness of Pooh an extra something.

I would challenge you to watch this special and not even feel a little bit Christmassy, it shows the true meaning of the season and has a wonderful message that is relevant no matter who is watching it or when.

3.5/5

Pros.

It is sweet

It is novel

It is nice to see the different character interact with Christmas

The animation

Cons.

It is slow at times

It has almost a melancholy feel at times

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Only Murders In The Building Season 5: A Quest For Meaning

Summary

The murders trio are back.

I have to say whilst very watchable I think this season was weaker than some of the others and had a number of needless asides and B stories. Straight off the bat the focus on Lester the doorman was a bit bland, the murder itself wasn’t all that interesting. The mobster stuff was always reliable throughout the season and could perk up any episode. I thought that this was mainly due to Bobby Cannavale and Tea Leoine really brought it in terms of Murder’s guest stars.

The billionaires who like to play board games were a lot of fun and once again brought the season up. Widely I would say that it is the central trio who brought the season down and that everyone else was doing a hell of a lot of the heavy lifting. Charles is having a loneliness arc and questioning where he will end up, I feel like the show has been through this with him before, and it was a huge missed opportunity to not have him get with Leoine and have her remain at the Arconia with him. Then Oliver is debating leaving the building which again feels like its been done before yet you know he won’t actually leave. Disney needs to decide if they want to give Meryl Streep more money and make her a regular. Then you have Mabel who has a jealousy arc which just feels like giving her something to do.

Overall, this season feels like a series going through the motions trying to find a reason to carry on, but the Tina Fey stuff next season seems interesting.

3/5

Pros.

The guest characters

Some good jokes

The billionaires

Cons.

The main cast feel like they are going through the motions

It feels a bit aimless

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