Comedy

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

  • Title: Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
  • IMDb: link

Popstar: Never Stop Never StoppingLet’s face it, if you are paying to see Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping you know going in exactly what you are getting. Written by The Lonely Island Trio Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone, the celebrity mockumentary is variations of one joke stretched to 86 minutes. Lampooning celebrity by highlighting former boy band singer Connor4Real (Samberg) turned solo star adjusting to the unexpected criticism of his new album, it takes shots at everything from vapid celebrities to the media obsessed with them.

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping isn’t a great movie. Like it’s lead character, it lacks the brains or ambition to make the most out of its talent. That said, even over-stuffed with real-life celebrities playing themselves and jibes at TMZ, the movie does produce several humorous moments. Not all the jokes land but enough do to to keep the train rolling. An 86-minute running time might seem rather short, but for a script with so little to say it’s actually a tad long.

The film’s creators bring their music parody skills to bear here. However all of Connor’s songs, both the hits and horrific misfires, all sound pretty much the same (bad and ridiculous). That’s a problem when the entire plot hinges on some being vastly better than others.

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The Nice Guys

  • Title: The Nice Guys
  • IMDb: link

The Nice GuysIn his latest film writer/director Shane Black returns to a formula he knows well. Set in the 1970s, The Nice Guys delivers on the buddy-cop genre by pairing hired thug Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) with drunk private detective Holland March (Ryan Gosling) on a case involving a missing girl (Margaret Qualley), a murdered porn star (Murielle Telio), political activism, and the United States Justice Department.

The Nice Guys is an attempt to recapture the brilliance of Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang by similarly throwing together an unlikely pair to solve a case involving a missing woman. The Nice Guys lacks the snappy dialogue of Black’s best film and the pulp detective and noir elements add an entire layer to Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang which is missing here. Given their similarities, it’s impossible not to compare them, but even if his latest doesn’t quite measure it still delivers in its own ways.

Gosling and Crowe work well together, but it’s the addition of Angourie Rice (as March’s daughter Holly) that ultimately makes the pairing work. Even if the murder plot is a bit convoluted, it’s a joy to watch them slowly uncover the truth.

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The Big Bang Theory – The Viewing Party Combustion

  • Title: The Big Bang Theory – The Viewing Party Combustion
  • wiki: link

The Big Bang Theory - The Viewing Party Combustion

For an episode centering around the group gathering together to watch Game of Thrones “The Viewing Party Combustion” has little to do with the HBO series. The viewing party is basically just an excuse to gather the group together as small fights, beginning with Leonard‘s (Johnny Galecki) railing at Sheldon (Jim Parsons) for another stipulation in the roommate agreement, break them into two separate factions.

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The Intern

  • Title: The Intern
  • IMDb: link

The InternNancy MeyersThe Intern is a fun, if lightweight, affair casting Robert De Niro as the unlikely new intern at an online fashion company who, of course, turns out to be the perfect man for the job. Immediately loved by everyone else in the company, it takes longer for the company’s CEO (Anne Hathaway) to take to the firm’s newest employee.

The Intern succeeds mainly on the likability of its stars, although the script gets into trouble with an ill-conceived heist sequence and a rather awful girl’s night out hotel bonding sequence between the pair late in the film.

Also troubling is that for the smart, successful businesswoman Hathaway portrays she’s incapable of making the easiest (and most obvious) decision in the entire movie which she needs the help of not one but two men (both her intern/new best friend and her less-than-trustworthy cheating husband portrayed by Anders Holm) to make for her.

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The Ice Pirates

  • Title: The Ice Pirates
  • IMDb: link

The Ice PiratesWhile I admit for a 9 year-old boy the tongue-in-cheek space adventure about a motley crew of smugglers stealing the universe’s most valuable resource (water) was a hell of a lot of fun, it’s equally hard to ignore as an adult that The Ice Pirates is a mess of a movie. The PG-rated movie offered funny castration jokes, space herpes, odd robots and aliens, and a time-displaced climactic battle. It also offered bad writing, cheesy special effects, and nearly as many groans as laughs.

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