Comedy

The Invite

  • Title: The Invite
  • IMDb: link

Easily comparable to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, both in its subject manner and its origins and staging from a stag play, The Invite is nothing more or less than an evening two couples spend together leading to arguments, arousal, suffering, and, ultimately, something nearing understanding. Although at times uncomfortable, it’s an evening you don’t want to miss.

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Minions & Monsters

  • Title: Minions & Monsters
  • IMDb: link

The seventh movie of the Despicable Me franchise, and the third to focus squarely on the odd yellow henchmen, takes one tribe of Minions (after a brief history lesson) to Hollywood during the Roaring Twenties. All voiced by writer/director Pierre Coffin, the most important Minions of the film are James (the dreamer and storyteller), Henry (James’ best friend), the hearing impaired Ed, and, to a lesser extent, the dickish leader of the group appropriately named Dick.

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Herbie Rides Again

  • Title: Herbie Rides Again
  • IMDb: link

Made six years after The Love Bug, Herbie Rides Again brings back the willful Volkswagen Beetle, and the setting of the firehouse, but nothing else. With Jim Douglas having left to race in Europe. Herbie has been left in the hands of his landlady Mrs. Steinmetz (Helen Hayes) who he seems to enjoy driving around and who is the last holdout preventing Alonzo A. Hawk (Keenan Wynn) from demolishing the area to build a new skyscraper.

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Spaceballs: The Movie Review

  • Title: Spaceballs
  • IMDb: link

Released 5 years after the conclusion of the original Star Wars trilogy, and long before any glimmer of new Star Wars films ever being made, with Spaceballs writer/director Mel Brooks lampooned the cultural phenomenon along with countless other sci-fi properties including Star Trek, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien, and others. Although Brooks would go on to do other parodies in a similar vein, arguably learning the wrong lesson from the film, Spaceballs marks the end of the director’s better work which peaked far earlier in the early 1970s.

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1997 – The Love Bug

  • Title: The Love Bug (1997)
  • IMDb: link

Largely forgotten, the 1997 entry in the Herbie franchise was a TV-movie which premiered on The Wonderful World of Disney. Perhaps the first requel, The Love Bug follows the same structure of the original film with Herbie falling through the hands of a villain (John Hannah) and into the possession of a mechanic and failed race car driver who has seen better days. While confused by the odd things which happen in the car, Hank Cooper (Bruce Campbell) refuses to acknowledge its sentience, or Herbie’s help in winning a race, leaving his wacky best bud (Kevin J. O’Connor) to be the one who first connects with the car. And, just for good measure, we get a romantic story thrown in as well.

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