Comedy

Vacation Friends

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  • Title: Vacation Friends
  • IMDb: link

Vacation Friends movie reviewVacation Friends offers your usual odd couple pairing when Marcus (Lil Rel Howery) and Emily (Yvonne Orji) meet the outrageous Ron (John Cena) and Kyla (Meredith Hagner) through a series of misadventures while on vacation in Mexico. Wackiness ensues. After having a far crazier vacation than they had planned, Emily and Marcus leave Mexico with no plans to ever see the other couple again until they show up months later uninvited at their wedding looking for their “best friends.”

Filled with equal amounts of laughs and groans, and just enough charm to keep you watching, the wacky Vacation Friends offers a nice (if obvious) message about how sometimes the people you least expect can become your closest friends (and not just a fun vacation story). Most of the movie features Marcus and/or Emily freaking out by what the other couple has done next only to realize their embarrassment over Ron and Kyla is blinding them to what the pair bring to their lives (aside from the chaos) and that the couples are better when they are in each other’s lives. It’s not something I’d recommend, but the right audience may have fun with Vacation Friends.

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Jungle Cruise

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  • Title: Jungle Cruise
  • IMDb: link

Jungle Cruise movie reviewGiven Disney’s adaptation of Pirates of the Caribbean it’s hard not to see similarities with Jungle Cruise as the studio attempts to turn another theme park ride into a motion picture. Jungle Cruise feels like a mix of Pirates with a bit of The Mummy (and several other films) thrown in for a wacky adventure in the Amazon.

We’re first introduced to Dr. Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt) and her brother McGregor (Jack Whitehall) who steal an artifact from the London Historical Society to search for a legend deep in the Amazon. Lily hopes to find the Tree of Life whose blossoms are rumored to be capable of curing any disease. Enlisting the help of an untrustworthy steamboat captain (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) the trio race to find the tree before a German aristocrat (Jesse Plemons) or centuries-old cursed jungle explorers (led by Édgar Ramírez).

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Paddington

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  • Title: Paddington
  • IMDb: link

Paddington movie reviewThrowback Tuesday takes us back to 2014’s Paddington, written and directed by Paul King who succeeded in adapting Michael Bond’s character into one of the most complete, magical, and lovable family films of the 2000s. The term “family film” can often be a derogatory phrase for a movie that cuts corners, goes lowbrow, or oversimplifies in an attempt to hit an all-ages market. Paddington, not unlike classic Disney films, reminds us of what the genre can be.

The story follows a talking bear (a thoroughly believable CGI character voiced by Ben Whishaw) from Darkest Peru to London in hopes of finding a new family. Discovered at Paddington Station, the renamed Paddington is taken in the Brown family while more permanent accommodations are arranged. Despite the concerns of Mr. Brown (Hugh Bonneville) and the various trouble a bear gets into while trying to make sense of his new surroundings, he quickly wins over the rest of the family (Sally Hawkins, Madeleine Harris, and Samuel Joslin) providing enough time for the bear to search for the explorer (Tim Downie) who met his family decades ago and seems like the most viable suspect to give Paddinton an home.

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The Boss Baby: Family Business

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  • Title: The Boss Baby: Family Business
  • IMDb: link

The Boss Baby: Family Business movie reviewThe sequel to 2017’s The Boss Baby picks up the story where an adult Tim (James Marsden) and Ted (Alec Baldwin) are recruited back into action by Tim’s baby daughter (Amy Sedaris) to save the world from a villain’s (Jeff Goldblum) evil plot. The story involves the pair getting turned back into the younger versions of themselves from the first film and infiltrating the local school. The film opens with the idea that schools, and learning/growing, are evil, something that it only grudgingly pulls back from. In a world where an entire segment of the population mistakenly cherishes this belief, using a family motion picture to, in any way, promote that idea is criminally negligent.

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Tango & Cash

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Tango & Cash
  • IMDb: link

Tango & Cash home video reviewThrowback Thursday takes us back to the last film of the 1980s. Tango & Cash is the ridiculous, balls-to-wall, over-the-top pairing of Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell as rival super cops forced to work together after they are framed for murder. Stallone stars as the upscale Ray Tango while Russell’s Gabe Cash is more working man. Without realizing it, both men have been cutting into the business of Los Angeles’ hidden kingpin Yves Perret (Jack Palance in full scene-chewing mode) who frames the super-cops for murder, gets them relocated to a different prison than they were sentenced, and attempts to have them killed behind bars.

The film was plagued by production issues including multiple script revisions and the firing of director Andrey Konchalovskiy. The last film to be released in 1989, Tango & Cash is a glorious homage to the action movies of the decade. Dumb as rocks, with a script full of plot holes, it nevertheless entertains. Teri Hatcher, who makes use of her dance background as Tango’s younger sister, Brion James, James Hong, Marc Alaimo, and Michael J. Pollard, as Cash’s goofy weaponsmith, round out the cast.

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