Corporate Animals

There is no “I” in team but there IS meat…

(2019) Comedy (Screen Media) Demi Moore, Jessica Williams, Ed Helms, Isiah Whitlock Jr, Karan Soni, Martha Kelly, Dan Bakkedahl, Calum Worthy, Jennifer Kim, Nasim Pedrad, Frank Bond, Wendy Meredith, Britney Spears, Courtney Cunningham, Chris Harding, David Phyfer, Richard Beal, Tobiah Powell, LynNita Ellis.  Directed by Patrick Brice

 

There is something inherently funny about corporate life. From the platitudes that are meant to inspire to the team-building exercises that are more an exercise in wasting time to the gorilla in a velvet suit venality of corporate politics, it’s a wonder that the subject hasn’t been mined more often for the comedy gold that is clearly there. Maybe it just hits a bit too close to home for most of us.

Lucy (Moore) is the high-strung platitude-spewing CEO of a company that makes edible cutlery. The corporate culture is supposed to be diverse and inclusive but below the surface of civility there is an awful lot of discontent. Perfect time for a team-building session, right? Of course, right.

Brandon (Helms) is their guide as he attempts to get the group to move a stone sphere that is clearly too heavy for the group to budge until the intern Aidan (Worthy) is injured, but that’s just the warm-up. The main event is spelunking in some deep caves in New Mexico. When the group comes to a fork, Lucy insists that they take the more difficult “advanced” route despite everyone else – including Brandon – trying to dissuade her.

At first, it looks like Lucy might have been on to something when the group reaches the majestic Cathedral Cavern but what little triumph the group can muster is quickly quashed when an earthquake buries them in the cavern and kills one of their number. Bummer.

Finding a way out doesn’t seem to be much of a priority for Lucy who is confident that there will be a rescue party finding them shortly; after all, she had left an itinerary with the ranger’s office and as soon as they’re listed as overdue the cavalry will be coming. When it soon becomes obvious that they are going to be trapped for more than a few hours, it becomes clear that the problem of survival is going to start with the fact they have no food and no water.

This is very much a dark comedy with elements of parody meant to take on the aforementioned subjects of office politics and corporate culture. Brice, who previously helmed the much better comedy The Overnight works off of a script by Sam Bain which is too scattershot for its own good. There are too many subplots, including the rivalry between Jess (Williams) and Freddie (Soni) who were both promised a big promotion by Lucy, Lucy’s sexual harassment of Freddie and the fact that Lucy’s incompetence has left the company nearly bankrupt, a fact her workers are ignorant of.

Lucy is definitely the centerpoint here and the movie could have used an actress with a deft comic touch. Demi Moore is a lot of things, but she has never been known for her comic timing. She ends up coming off as vile and venal, self-absorbed and arrogant who believes herself to be superior in all ways to those who actually do the work that keeps the company going. One has to wonder if Moore was cast because she had a similar role in the drama Disclosure which was also a far better movie than this one. One imagines that Ms. Moore cashed the check as quickly as she could and moved on to something a bit more challenging.

Someone who does have a deft comic touch is Jessica Williams who is note-perfect as the long-suffering assistant Jess who is far more competent than anyone else in the workplace. Anyone who has seen her in the Netflix film The Incredible Jessica James knows what Williams is capable of and the career path in front of her is bright and shiny indeed. I look forward to seeing her in more movies.

By necessity the movie is dimly lit over long stretches and while the cavern set is pretty decent, it also looks like a set. While apparently some of the film was lensed in the famed Frankfurt Caverns of Kentucky, the rocks look like papier machė. The movie would have benefitted from a little more focus and fewer subplots. The critics have pretty much savaged the film so don’t expect there to be much of an audience for it but adventurous readers who are interested can take a chance on it when it hits home video in a few months.

REASONS TO SEE: Jessica Williams is absolutely stellar.
REASONS TO AVOID: This has been done better elsewhere.
FAMILY VALUES: There is plenty of profanity, some drug and sex references, a bit of violence and some gruesome images.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Sharon Stone was originally cast as Lucy but had to bow out due to a scheduling conflict. Demi Moore stepped into the role instead.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 9/22/19: Rotten Tomatoes: 31% positive reviews: Metacritic: 31/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Severance
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Moonlight Sonata: Deafness in Three Movements

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People Places Things

A meaningful look shared.

(2015) Romantic Comedy (The Film Arcade) Jemaine Clement, Regina Hall, Jessica Williams, Stephanie Allynne, Michael Chernus, Aundrea Gadsby, Gia Gadsby, Derrick Arthur, Celia Au, Paul Castro Jr., Jason DarkChocolate Dyer, Catherine Cain, Charles Cain, Brandon O’Neill, Alexa Magioncalda, Gavin Haag, Jordan Edmondson, Kiowa Smothergill. Directed by Jim Strouse

Sometimes life deals us a bum hand out of left field. We’re just thinking we’ve got things figured out and Blammo!, we discover we haven’t had a clue all along.

Will Henry (Clement) is a successful graphic artist who is deliriously in love with his twin daughters (played by the real life twins Aundrea and Gia Gadsby) who are throwing a party in honor of their fifth birthday. He goes off into the house looking for his wife Charlie (Allynne) for some party business or another. He finds her all right; in their bedroom having sex with sad sack Gary (Chernus). Will is of course upset, but Charlie turns things around and makes herself out to be the aggrieved party. She wants a divorce and custody of the kids.

A year later Will is still suffering from depression over the whole sordid affair. He has begun teaching graphic arts at a New York-area college, having moved to Astoria in Queens which is a long train ride into the City. He sees his girls on weekends and leads a fairly lonely existence. At this point, Charlie announces she is marrying Gary – because she is pregnant with his kid. She also wants to take an improv class, so she needs someone to watch the kids and as Gary is too busy doing his monologues off-off-off-Broadway, Will is the next best choice. Will likes this idea very much; he needs to be around his kids more often than just the occasional weekend.

In the meantime, Kat (Williams), one of the students in his class, takes a romantic interest in him – not for herself but for her 45-year-old mom Diane (Hall), a lit professor at Columbia. Against all odds, they hit it off, despite Diane’s disdain for the graphic novel format in general. The two begin dating.

Then things start to go sideways for Charlie. She’s getting cold feet, and she explains to Will that she doesn’t want to make the same mistake as she did the first time – which leads Will to believe that she regards their marriage as a mistake. But she still has strong feelings for Will and he for her – so where does that leave Diane? Or Will, for that matter?

Strouse has a bit of a checkered resume, with movies that are close but no cigar on it (like Grace is Gone) but here he finally makes the checkered flag. While the story does not exactly break new ground in the busted relationships genre, it is told well and given much life thanks to some strongly written character and some fine performances.

Chief among them is Clement, who is quickly developing into one of the strongest comic actors in the world. His dry, deadpan delivery is hysterical all by itself but where Clement excels as he did in HBO’s Flight of the Conchords. One of his strongest traits is that he can take an everyday guy, put him in an everyday situation and find something funny to mine out of it. He’s not the guy who makes us laugh hysterically; he’s the guy that makes us quietly chuckle to ourselves because we can find so much common ground.

Williams is a comedy star on the rise, and although her role here is fairly brief, she makes it entirely memorable. Williams is as hip a performer as there is and she looks as good on the big screen as she does on the small; only bigger, if you catch my drift. It wouldn’t surprise me if she becomes as big a star as I believe Clement is going to be, which is one of considerable size if you ask me.

]There is kind of a mopey hipster vibe here that I found myself not liking so much at first. It took me awhile to decide that I like the movie, but it is worth the effort to stay with it. Yeah, it’s got that New York indie ‘tude that I sometimes find stupefying but there is heart at the center of the movie and most of it belongs to Clement who continues to impress after the earlier this year What We Do in the Shadows.

Again, not entertainment that is going to rock your world or change your views on life. Quietly though, it gets under your skin and stays there, maybe the perfect indie romantic comedy in that regard. And we all know how vapid indie romantic comedies can be. This one is anything but that; it is surely smart, quietly funny and undeniably well-written. Those sorts of films tend to be few and far between while the mercury is still hitting the high notes during the last dregs of summer.

REASONS TO GO: Clement’s dry delivery is intoxicating. Some nice New York images.
REASONS TO STAY: A little too indie hipster douche in places, particularly early on.
FAMILY VALUES: There is a bit of foul language, some sexual references and brief nudity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Williams is a regular correspondent on The Daily Show during the Jon Stewart era and continuing into the Trevor Noah era.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 8/21/15: Rotten Tomatoes: 76% positive reviews. Metacritic: 68/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Motherhood
FINAL RATING: 7.5/10
NEXT: Mateo

Hot Tub Time Machine 2

The requisite non-drug user accidental drug ingestion sequence.

(2015) Sci-Fi Comedy (Paramount/MGM) Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson, Clark Duke, Adam Scott, Gillian Jacobs, Chevy Chase, Collette Wolfe, Bianca Haase, Jason Jones, Kumail Nanjiani, Kellee Stewart, Josh Heald, Gretchen Koerner, Lisa Loeb, Jessica Williams, Bruce Buffer, Mariana Paola Vicente, Adam Herschman, Kisha Sierra, Olivia Jordan. Directed by Steve Pink

Second chances don’t come easily or often. We generally have one shot at making the right choice. Being human, we don’t always make the right choice, which is where the need for second chances come in.

After having gone back in time and in the process changing their lives for the better, the three buddies are beginning to get a little, well, bored. Lou (Corddry) is a former metal God and tech mogul who’s search engine “Lougle” has slowly been losing market share and is in danger of going under, although Lou – hopelessly coked out, drunk and hooked on whatever drugs he can get his hands on – stays the blissfully ignorant course.

Nick (Robinson) has become one of the biggest recording artist/producers in the world using songs other people wrote – before they wrote them, such as the Lisa Loeb hit “Stay (I Missed You)” (the bespectacled singer makes a cameo as a cat wrangler who confides to Nick that every time she hears his version of the song she feels oddly violated). However, he continues to be somewhat henpecked by his wife Courtney (Stewart).

Jacob (Duke) is essentially Lou’s butler as well as his son and is headed down a similar road as Lou has taken. The relationship between the two continues to be strained.

Then at a party, a mysterious figure shoots Lou in the crotch. Jacob has somehow managed to secret the hot tub time machine in a hidden room in the house. Figuring out that someone had used the time machine in the future to come back and assassinate Lou, they head to the future to try and discover who – among many suspects – would want to murder Lou.

In 2025 they meet Adam (Scott), the son of their fourth member who has apparently disappeared into a dimension all his own. In an era where the loser of a high school classmate Gary Winkle (Jones) has become wealthy because Lou was a dick to him in 2015, where reality TV game shows include virtual anal rape, where smart cars can be homicidal, and where masturbation has gotten the ultimate high tech aid, the crew bumbles through trying to locate the man who shot Lou and stop him from carrying out the plan, leaving Lou to wink out of existence.

The first Hot Tub Time Machine was an example of a movie in which I had low expectations for and was pleasantly surprised; the sequel is an example of a movie in which I had high expectations for and was sadly disappointed. This is nowhere near as funny as the first movie and definitely suffers for the lack of John Cusack who was essentially the anchor of the first film. Corddry, Robinson and Duke were more or less supporting characters and now have to take center stage. Corddry, who was especially good in the first movie, really doesn’t have anywhere to go with his one-dimensional character other than performing the same kind of actions. It’s not as good the second time around.

There are some laughs to be sure, but the movie needs an anchor. A lead character who the action swirls around. Instead we have hear a selection of supporting characters waiting for a straight man. Having Adam Scott – a very talented comic actor – in the mix is a good move, but he doesn’t really have a story line and in the end is essentially another supporting character. Corddry is the ostensible lead but his character functions better on the outside.

I was hoping this would be hilarious (it was originally slated for a Christmas release) but it simply isn’t funny enough. It’s decently entertaining but little more which I suppose is fine for this time of year but definitely makes me yearn for a few months hence when we’ll start to see a better caliber of movie from the studios. For now, this will have to do.

REASONS TO GO: Some sly time travel movie in-jokes. Funny in places.
REASONS TO STAY: Not funny enough. Doesn’t really build on the first movie. Needed a lead character; more of a collection of supporting characters.
FAMILY VALUES: The humor is fairly crude throughout with plenty of sexual references. There’s also some graphic nudity, drug use and foul language as well.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: John Cusack, who starred in the first film, has said in interviews that he was never approached or received an offer to appear in this film; there are photographs of him that appear in one scene.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 2/24/15: Rotten Tomatoes: 13% positive reviews. Metacritic: 30/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Click
FINAL RATING: 5/10
NEXT: Wish Me Away