Tag: Comedy

Clerks III (Kevin Smith, 2022) Review

Spoiler Warning: This discussion contains some spoilers. It could be an entire gag from a comedy or in-depth conversation concerning events in the second act.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.
"I always thought you could have made a cool movie."

Kevin Smith’s career is one of the great mysteries of indie American cinema; his trajectory from Clerks to Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is something of a tragedy. The guy never really moved out of his lane (his junction was a good twenty years ago), so here he is, just replaying his only hit single and making references to the few other relative successes that came after. That being said, Clerks III is a significantly better text than the aforementioned masturbatory reboot of his two most recognisable stoners. There’s a passionate attempt to make something of value here, despite how rough it is around the edges. It does not escape that ‘for fans only’ feel Smith continues to irresponsibly think is a suitable method of storytelling, but if you are a fan, it’s ninety minutes you can probably spare.

The harsh reality of Clerks III is that Kevin Smith is no longer an exciting filmmaker. Arguably, he never was, Clerks is mostly a series of static shots with a screenplay that makes it a masterpiece; nevertheless, his directing and editing here are abysmal. He often just opts to shoot with two stationary cameras at once so he can cut sporadically and unfashionably between the two. It makes most of the standard dialogue sequences uneven or even just uncomfortable to look at for literally no visual or metaphorical gain. The lighting is lazy; the set design and costume are pre-established icons of the 90s Miramax canon. It feels like a lot of the elements of actual filmmaking are discarded for no real reason other than Smith not bothering to think about them or, worse, not caring enough about how his text looks.

It’s lovely to see Brian O’Halloran and Jeff Anderson return to play Dante and Randal, especially given the well-documented falling out between the latter and Kevin Smith. Regardless, it becomes pretty obvious why they never took up acting full-time, only ever getting a gig when Smith whipped his camera out. In Clerks, they were these unenthusiastic kids with chips on their shoulders and the world on their backs; they were bound to be miserable, sardonic, cynical bastards. The script suited their ability – Smith asks considerably more of them here, and sometimes it harms the movie. It’s not all that obvious until Rosario Dawson makes an appearance and, with minimal effort, puts in the best display of the film. The same goes for everyone – this semi-pro acting doesn’t work for the heartfelt semi-autobiographical tragedy-drama-comedy concoction. The cameos are as forced as they are in Jay and Silent Bob Reboot.

Despite all of these issues, there’s a place in my heart for this. Clerks is one of the films that got me to where I am today; without it, I don’t know if I’d be watching half the stuff I am these days. The homage the third instalment pays to the original gives me goosebumps; the final act, whilst mawkish, is Kevin Smith at his best. The idea is crazy, but it’s clear Smith is working through something with what he’s written, which is cathartic at its peak. I can’t say this is great, but I can leave it for what it is; it takes nothing away from the first one that means so much to me.

If the names Dante Hicks and Randal Graves mean anything to you, then checking out (assumedly) their final chapter is going to bring back a wave of nostalgia you were not expecting. This is Smith’s most rewarding film in the best part of two decades that may leave you with a lump in your throat but is bound to make you smile at least a couple of times. It’s difficult to hate Clerks III because Smith clearly put so much of himself into it, even if some of the consequences of that are unapologetically ignorant and reductive to the rest of the people that made his career what it is now. There’s no getting around the shitty filmmaking – I could understand how that might ruin a hardcore fan’s experience – but this has enough heart to fill an arena, and sometimes, I can’t help but love a film for that. Certainly no Clerks, but then again, whatever will be?

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (Akiva Schaffer & Jorma Taccone, 2016) Review

Spoiler Warning: This discussion contains some spoilers. It could be an entire gag from a comedy or in-depth conversation concerning events in the second act.

Rating: 4 out of 5.
"Nowadays, if you don't sell out, people will wonder if nobody asked you to."

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is a film I have been trying to see since 2016, completely evading me at every turn until today. I love the Lonely Island, and their cinematic output ranges from Hot Rod to Palm Springs, so I was ecstatic to find this landed on the upper end of that scale. This now cult comedy is one of the most tragic commercial failures in modern cinema because it averages way over a laugh a minute, knows its 90-minute runtime is perfect and outperforms almost every other comedy of the decade for absurd, lewd, deadpan, wordplay, farcical, and observational writing in one of the best mockumentaries of the genres relatively short lifespan.

Andy Samberg is brilliant, one of the best to come out of SNL; his comedic delivery and timing are spectacular here. The ridiculous Lonely Island songs that comprise the albums are at once both side-splittingly funny and freakishly catchy – Finest Girl, Mona Lisa, Equal Rights, Incredible Thoughts are all disgracefully funny. Its commentary on modern music stars is just the right level of ridiculous that it prevents itself from being condescending. The lunacy of using Anne Frank’s toilet becomes somehow tame when compared to Seal performing at your proposal, only to be mauled by giant wolves for the sake of resetting the public image.

It nails the white text on black background moments, the camera cutting but microphones staying on, whilst also squeezing in a sign-my-dick gag that had me howling. The talking head interviews are often great little gags alongside the writing, and at the risk of just listing funny moments, some of my favourite moments come in these sections. Ringo Starr’s confusion about Equal Rights in his unfiltered Scouse accent amongst all the Americanness sticks out here.

Given the current circumstances in the UK (a general depressing malaise across every media form), Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping was more than enough to lift my spirits. Give us more filmmakers who understand and appreciate genre filmmaking, like Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone, and the producers of this movie, more often, please. This is not some two-bit Justin Beiber parody. It is at the zenith of mockumentary filmmaking alongside the greats: This is Spinal Tap, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, and What We Do in the Shadows.

Check out the soundtrack here:

An American Pickle (Brandon Trost, 2020) Review

Spoiler Warning: This discussion contains some spoilers. It could be an entire gag from a comedy or in-depth conversation concerning events in the second act.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.
"What is he selling? Is it pickles, or is it hate?"

I read something not long ago that following the new ownership of Warner Brothers, a number of HBOMax products were in line to be axed for tax cuts. The Batgirl controversy took centre stage, but I wondered: how I could continue my life if I never saw the Seth Rogen pickle movie if it got pulled from public access? Hence, An American Pickle at 10pm on a summer Saturday evening.

Pickle is a strange combination of screenwriter Simon Rich’s biting American commentary with Rogen’s usual crew of producers and visual collaborators. The result is a vaguely interesting idea shot down by an overexposed hunk of flat shots and tedious New York location shooting. Veteran comedy cinematographer turned director Brandon Trost is thrown into the deep end here, with not much to work with visually and the pain of ensuring Rogen could be re-edited into each shot. The editing is typical for a comedy, attempting to squeeze in all the faux drama around what is a silly feature-length skit; it just eeks on for its runtime without much pace or momentum to it.

The film has its highlights, with some genuinely amusing gags ranging from seltzer water to impromptu runs for office. Rogen carries a great deal of this on his back, occupying both of the leading roles; he has the charisma and nouse to pull off a ridiculous Eastern European accent for Herschel and the experience to act like a millennial disappointment as Ben. The costume department does a great job in that respect also, again playing up to the generational sensibility of loving Herschel’s 100-year-old garments. The expectation vs reality comedy about what America is expected to be and what it actually is, works well but gets old pretty quickly. I can imagine that, with time, this will feel like less of a comedy and more like a time capsule of the contemporary feeling about America’s political situation.

The conclusion? You can almost certainly go the rest of your life without seeing An American Pickle without much of a loss. If you’ve seen all the really good 90-minute comedies and want something new, this is certainly not the worst you can find in the genre’s crowd of average-to-slightly-above-average texts. However, it’s also pretty forgettable, a little too wrapped up in state-of-affairs America with very little more than its Trump satire or online political commentary.

Jackass 4.5 (Jeff Tremaine, 2022) Review

Spoiler Warning: This discussion contains some spoilers. It could be an entire gag from a comedy or in-depth conversation concerning events in the second act.

Rating: 4 out of 5.
"That bit was like a bruised dick: you just can't beat it."

The newest Jackass integer found its way out this week as a Netflix exclusive (despite being a Paramount movie) and serves as the newest half documentary half deleted scenes movie that the series has now made a tradition. It’s more bodily punishment, brotherly camaraderie and painful belly laughter for the (unconservative) family. I love these films; they bring back such a gigantic wave of nostalgia, and Jackass Forever turned out to be their most outrageous and strangely wholesome production yet. These behind the scenes offer a good look into why.

There is so much hysterical shit in here. There were tears in my eyes more times than I care to admit, but a few notable highlights would be another entry into Danger Ehren’s brutal cup test gag, Dark Shark’s skydive, and the boys collectively pouring hot sauce directly into their rectums. It’s not even the most disgusting gag in the movie! If that doesn’t make you interested to watch Jackass 4.5, then avoid it at all costs. The entire crew is pretty relentless, and as always, the stuff they cut is as brutal as the stuff they didn’t. There are just as many penises on display as the main text.

I do also think that the behind the scenes of the process is super interesting because they shift so easily between the grassroots style of the MTV show with someone knocking a ladder out from underneath their own feet to a multi-million dollar sequence on the Paramount backlot. It’s genuinely very cool to see how far this entire team has come without cutting out its cameramen and director. The interviews are all so wholesome, full of love for the movie and the crew of people making it. The anecdotes are insane and just as funny as the bits at times.

Jackass 4.5 is a wonderful little companion piece to Forever. It’s charming. Needless to say, if you hated the other movies, then this will not be up your alley. However, if you do want to see a man nearly tear his own penis off by attaching it to a brick and dropping it off some scaffolding – boy, have I got the movie for you.

Dazed and Confused (Richard Linklater, 1993) Review

Spoiler Warning: This discussion has very few spoilers: some set up from the first act, a general idea of the narrative at hand.

Rating: 5 out of 5.
"I think they're just worried that some of us are having too good a time."

Anytime someone asks for my favourite film, it’s like asking what my favourite Beatles song is. It changes week to week, but there is always an answer that I am married to as a default answer. It’s Something, by the way. However, more importantly, right now, Dazed and Confused is always my reply to that daunting question. I literally got a Dazed and Confused tattoo yesterday, so there felt like no better time than right now to tune in to Linklater’s very best yet again.

I’ve already said so much about this movie; I love every frame. I think the best way for me to get this across is by enthusiastically saying that I had the best time sitting reciting lines with Pink, Wooderson, Mike, Darla, both Kramers and the rest of this class of Texan teens. The screenplay is just so brilliant, managing to balance so many characters who all have different dynamics with each other and embody different characteristics of high schoolers, all without seeming like dull stereotypes or generalisations of groups. The athletes smoke as much weed as the stoners and dropouts. The freshmen try and keep up with the seniors. The nerds get invited to the parties and get along with the star quarterback. It moves away from the John Hughes outlook of the 80s and moves into this new vision of what adolescence could be.

It’s also the best needle drop movie of all time. I have 3LPs worth of soundtrack music to Dazed and Confused and despite all of that, it’s still missing Hurricane. I mean, setting your opening credits scene and establishing the text’s environment to Sweet Emotion doesn’t get much better for a movie set in ’76. It keeps the whole film moving at this really comfortable pace that manages to make the 100-minute runtime feel like less than an hour. The costume is some of my favourite of all time; the way that Pink’s purple shirt slowly becomes more and more unbuttoned as the night carries on or Wooderson’s white shirt/pink pants combination with his cigarettes rolled into his t-shirt sleeve.

I will always come back to Dazed and Confused, and I don’t think it will falter me over time. I’ve marked my body with this movie for the rest of my life, so I know that it’s never leaving me. It’s my ultimate comfort film; there’s a part of me in it; there’s a part of it in me. I honestly already can’t wait for the next day in my life that feels like a Dazed and Confused day. It could be tomorrow, for all I know.

Previous Reviews of Dazed and Confused:
Dazed and Confused (Richard Linklater, 1993) Review
Dazed and Confused (Richard Linklater, 1993) Review
Check out the soundtrack here:

Man on the Moon (Miloš Forman, 1999) Review

Spoiler Warning: This discussion features some important narrative information that could spoil the text for you. It does not necessarily spell out the film’s conclusion, but it does talk about events in detail.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
"Who are you trying to entertain? The audience or yourself?"

Miloš Forman and Jim Carrey’s bizarre little love child, Man on the Moon is something I’ve been trying to watch for years now. I watched the documentary Jim and Andy: The Great Beyond when it came out in 2017 and was so captivated by the disturbing, near-psychotic level at which Carrey embodied Andy Kaufman to be insane. I had to see what it had produced and what that culture on the set did to the final product.

It’s almost what you would expect – it’s super fucking weird. Forman lends a strange amount of sophisticated experience when directing a film about a nutcase genius comedian and plays the comedy as straight as the drama. It is hardly the most elegant Forman movie out there, but it is considerably more playful than you might expect from the man behind One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus. The opening credits or the scale of Kaufman’s Memphis showdown with Jerry Lawler are just two examples that spring to mind when thinking about how Forman adds more than his fair share of legitimacy to this biopic.

Carrey is clearly the draw here; God knows he made it about himself with the extravagant (if you want to use a superlative rather than a pejorative) method acting approach he used here. It’s a good performance, definitely capturing the manic energy of Kaufman and matching the fluctuation of the screenplay; it’s extremely obvious that it is intentionally all over the place. It does slip into the dangerous ‘best of’ mindset that biopics can have where it feels like it has to show every famous moment no matter the distance between events. It gives a marked amount of time to Taxi and then drops it like a bad habit at the cusp of the third act. I think this gets away with it more than most because they address it in that cute opening credits sequence. It works for the kind of product they wanted here.

Man on the Moon is an odd little film. It relies quite heavily on you at least understanding the comedy that Andy Kaufman used in his short life. There is no introduction to the bizarre, idiosyncratic talent that he had, nor does it try to do one. It has a strong cast, and its touching sentimental tribute to Kaufman is not found in a black and white credit montage, but an insane piece of comedy filmmaking which is worth some merit. It’s totally unlike anything I’ve seen before, and even if some of it didn’t work, I really admire what it was trying to do.

The Big Lebowski (Joel Coen, 1998) Review

Spoiler Warning: This discussion features some important narrative information that could spoil the text for you. It does not necessarily spell out the film’s conclusion, but it does talk about events in detail.

Rating: 5 out of 5.
"That rug really tied the room together."

To mark my birthday, I decided to return to a classic; The Big Lebowski is inarguably one of the funniest comedies of all time. The Coens’ wandering little stoner bowling movie come farcical kidnapping thriller is so relentlessly entertaining that it is difficult to compare to anything else out there.

There is rarely a week that I go without quoting something out of this, sometimes inadvertently before I realise what I’ve done. Rugs, opinions, Lenin being the walrus, abiding, aggression not standing are just a small selection of the moments that make me howl on every watch. It’s so disgracefully funny, viciously vulgar, and so innately laid-back at the same time. I’ve never seen a film treat a kidnapping with such laxness, never mind putting it into a film where a character’s ashes are spread from a pot of instant coffee and spliced between multiple trip sequences.

Everyone embodies their roles with such joy; it was clearly such a fun shoot, and it comes across in every scene. Jeff Bridges creates his most iconic role out of a college-dropout hippie bowling enthusiast in a catalogue of performances other actors would die for. John Goodman and Steve Buscemi bounce off of each other wonderfully; Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, John Turturro, Sam Elliott, Peter Stormare and a few others add rich features to these strange unforgettable supporting roles. This is one of the all-time great comedy casts.

I would highly recommend watching The Big Lebowski on any celebratory day of the year – the only thing that could have made my birthday a little better is if I had a White Russian to sip on whilst I watched this. It’s one of my favourite movies on the planet, almost a yearly excursion at this point, and long may that tradition continue. The Dude abides.

Previous Reviews of The Big Lebowski:
The Big Lebowski (Joel Coen, 1998) Review

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (Tom Gormicon, 2022) Review

Spoiler Warning: This discussion contains some spoilers. It could be an entire gag from a comedy or in-depth conversation concerning events in the second act.

Rating: 3 out of 5.
"Nic fucking Cage."

Potentially the strangest cinematic wide release of the year, Nic Cage’s leading performance as a parody of himself in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is one of the best things in movies this year. It’s something of a shame that the film doesn’t know what to do with him after thirty minutes. Despite that, I think the good outweighs the mediocre here by some distance and is an indie worth seeing, especially given its (expected) box office underperformance.

There isn’t a great deal to say about the film because it is just a vehicle for Nic Cage to do Nic Cage things. It is a loving homage to his turbulent career with moments as high as The Rock, featuring some line deliveries beckoning back to Vampire’s Kiss and an innate love for Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. It features an egocentric movie star persona that Cage talks to about his career choices, donning a Wild at Heart promotional tee and a 90s era Cage haircut. It’s truly bizarre but also wonderfully comical in some spots when it really balances the adoration with clever writing. Everything featuring Cage and co-lead Pedro Pascal is a bucket of fun, embarking on acid-fuelled adventures and wholesome brainstorming ideas for a meta-screenplay about the pair’s friendship. I would happily have had another twenty minutes of their bonding at the expense of the rather silly narrative that takes up the rest of the film.

There is only so much to say about The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent because it’s kind of a one-trick pony. If you are a fan of Nic Cage or generally like seeing someone make light of their own public perception, then this gets it bang on. However, there is also an entire subplot about evil cartels and the CIA that feels wildly out of place next to Cage working through his own personal problems and attempting to repair his family relationships. There’s a really good comedy in here that works in some interesting drama about Cage’s psyche, but this gets lost in an attempt to recreate some 90s action magic and does nothing as cool or ridiculous as Con Air and Face/Off. It’s great to see some mainstream love for Cage; the guy is a treasure.

Harold and Kumar Get the Munchies (Danny Leiner, 2004) Review

Spoiler Review: This discussion features some important narrative information that could spoil the text for you. It does not necessarily spell out the film’s conclusion, but it does talk about events in detail.

Rating: 3 out of 5.
"Did Doogie Howser just steal my fucking car?"

Classic stoner comedy Harold and Kumar Get the Munchies is a film I probably should have watched about four years ago; I probably would have loved it. Alas, it felt wrong, having seen so many bad stoner movies, to not have seen one of the canonical greats (Cheech and Chong are next up). In the end, sober, it’s an average comedy with some hilarious gags and a slow, plodding comedy narrative that isn’t all that special.

I think easily the best part of the film are John Cho and Kal Penn as the titular characters. They both subvert what a stereotypical American stoner might look like and make this adventure entertaining with their numerous gags about their quest for White Castle branded burgers being a prototypical example of the American Dream. John Cho’s more self-serious square-ish Harold allows him to explode out of that box at the right times for copious laughs. He pairs nicely with Penn’s laidback manchild Kumar, who often says the more ridiculous dialogue whilst also somehow managing to maintain a level of intelligence to his immature performance. Neil Patrick Harris makes a notable cameo that all but revived his career and is funnier than any episode of How I Met Your Mother that I have ever seen.

Technically speaking, there is not anything to shout about here with flat direction, simple costume design and some atrocious early 2000s special effects. Yet, that adds a lot to the value of what this is trying to be. I don’t want flashy cinematography or experimental editing; simple setup and payoff comedy is what this needs and achieves. I found the final White Castle sequence to be pretty amusing and the never-ended pursuit of more weed to be consistently fun. I never thought I would see a cheetah smoking marijuana in a major motion picture, I have to say.

I’m not surprised Harold and Kumar Get the Munchies did well with 2000s audiences and has maintained a fairly popular audience on the home video circuit ever since. It’s on the upper scale of stoner comedies with a simple premise and no easy solutions, some diversification from the bland product this genre of movie had been pumping out, and a general mood that is difficult to dislike.

The King of Staten Island (Judd Apatow, 2020) Review

Spoiler Warning: This discussion has very few spoilers: some set up from the first act, a general idea of the narrative at hand.

Rating: 3 out of 5.
"You're going to make me babysit your kids? I'm on drugs."

The King of Staten Island feels like Pete Davidson’s personal piece of filmmaking despite being one of three credited writers and leaving the director’s chair to be filled by comedy panjandrum Judd Apatow. There’s just so much of Davidson in this, and it is that very authentic personal touch that makes this feel like a genuine attempt to make a comedy with some heart to it.

Sure, it does not work the entire time, and it feels a little long for its own good, dragging out the same themes it has established already. However, the attempt is certainly not without credit. This is not your average ‘stand-up-comedian-jumps-into-film’ kind of picture. It’s not Melissa McCarthy in Tammy or Amy Schumer in Snatched or an awful supporting role in a studio project that every stand-up comedian (including Pete Davidson) has done. It’s a really thoughtful character piece about a guy in his mid-20s struggling to move onto the next chapter of his life – whatever that may be. I think this is where Davidson’s voice shines through at its clearest, clearly using his own experiences as the basis for his character.

I think this is where the film is at its best. Davidson using the film to tribute his father in some elements of the story and characters creates his weird sense of second-hand pride and fulfilment. I’m not saying Davidson hasn’t come to terms with some of the stuff he has publicly addressed, but it feels like he is working through a lot of his thoughts vicariously through this film. Does that make it the best film of 2020? Not even close, but its’ got more passion behind it than any other studio comedy of the year; I’ll give it that in a heartbeat. I’ve seen everyone in the film do better work, but nobody is putting in a bad shift either.

I’m surprised with The King of Staten Island. It has some genuine laughs along the way; I love the silly tattoos and self-deprecating New York jokes. I think most of all, though, it’s a sweet personal project with some nicely done dramatic elements in a story that is surprisingly family-focused. I think Judd Apatow does a pretty good job with the film itself, definitely his most interesting project (even if it isn’t his funniest). If this were 20 minutes shorter, I’d be talking about how underappreciated this is, but the fact that it dawdles around for as long as it does detracts from the effectiveness of its storytelling at times.