Category: Recap

Collateral Beauty Recap

Jamie

So far I’ve found (unsurprisingly) that we’ve done a pretty damn good job at covering a lot of the best (read: worst) films of any given year. Particularly recent years like Collateral Beauty’s 2016. I don’t have too many suggestions for replacements and the Will Smith masterclass in Oscar baiting is perfect for something that has always tickled our fancy, but never found a spot in a cycle. However… the mere fact that both Max Steel and Monster Trucks are 2016 films is a little mind blowing. These are two films that are only memorable because I recall seeing the trailers and giving a double “what thuuuuu.” Sure kids films come and go, but who was asking for Max Steel (apparently based on a toy line and series of television shows) and Monster Trucks (based on the concept of monster trucks)? These were major releases? Why? I kinda wish we could have doubled those up, but honestly they are so forgotten that they can’t compete with Will Smith… if only the original casting of Taylor Lautner in Max Steel had held. Then we’d have something to talk about.

To recap, Will Smith is sad. Once a charismatic leader of men he is now just a big ol’ saddo. He lost his daughter and he himself is lost, building dominos all day and otherwise sending letters to the concepts of Love, Death, and Time. We’re on a normal one here. His partners at his advertising firm want to sell. They all have their reasons (mostly having to do with *gasp* love, death, and time), but it’s also cause without powerhouse Will Smith they are just a bunch of dummies. Enter three actors in need of some money. They agree to join with these assholes and do a truly terrible thing by pretending to be Love, Death, and Time and make him think he’s crazy. That way he can be deemed not of sound mind and they can go over his head for the sale. This essentially goes off without a hitch. In response to thinking he’s crazy, Will Smith starts to go to a group meeting for those grieving the loss of children. There he starts to talk with the head of the group, but still can’t come to terms with his loss. It’s only after meeting with the board of his company (where he admits he’s crazy and signs away his stake in the company) that he finally is able to accept the loss and we find that the woman he’s been talking to is actually his estranged wife (what a twist!). Perhaps there is hope for all of us after all. THE END.

My general sentiment about Collateral Beauty is that if everything you saw in this film was translated to a high school drama about the captain of the football team getting tricked by his friends using the drama club to try to snap him out of his daze before the big game then we’d have a Here on Earth on our hands. The earnestness… the wrongheadedness of not just the situation but of the entire structure of the film… it a perfect recipe for me to be rolling through the aisles. There is something about all this happening to an adult dealing with the loss of his child that makes it a bit less savory though. In some ways it’s like The Circle. I love how seriously it takes its insane plot and how flippant it is about having people do crazy, terrible things… but ultimately it’s more tragically bad rather than hilariously bad. Anyway, on a funnier note I started this up being like “can’t wait for the jellyfish part,” only to remember after the film ended that that was the other overwrought Will Smith drama Seven Pounds.

Hot Take Clam Bake! The actors aren’t real! They are in fact abstract concepts. They are in fact invisible. They didn’t need to use advanced AI technologies to remove them from the videos the PI took of Will Smith yelling at people in the street. They just cut out the scene where the PI asks “wait, I thought you said there was supposed to be someone talking to Will Smith when I shot the scene?” and then Edward Norton’s eyes grow wide. Or they go to see the computer whiz to congratulate him on a job well done and he’s like “What do you mean? There wasn’t anything to do. The videos were empty.” and then Edward Norton’s eyes grow wide. But alas that wasn’t the case… right? They were just actors… right? RIGHT?! Hot Take Temperature: Heartwarming. 

Patrick? 

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Are we talking about saddo Will Smith being all sad and playing with dominos? Let’s go!

I mean, need I discuss this further? Will Smith is a saddo playing with dominos. Open and shut case, book ‘em.

Within this movie is a pretty touching film about a person going through something, who through the magical realism of film manages to confront his past demons and come together with his friends and family to start life anew. This movie ain’t that.

Instead it is a movie about three horrible friends who want money and the main thing stopping them is their profoundly sad friend going through a serious mental health crisis. So they decide to hire three actors to further stoke his descent into madness, doctor some videos, and lie (certainly some serious financial fraud going on here, what the fuck?). But don’t worry guys, in the end he makes up with his family and yada yada yada s’all good (except Michael Pena is definitely going to die of cancer soon).

This is the plot of the film. I can’t get over the fact that right after the movie ends Will Smith is definitely going to run into one of Love/Time/Death and realize what his friends did and those three go to prison for financial crimes as they fraudulently represented evidence against Will Smith during an acquisition negotiation. Like definitely against the law right?

The movie looks nice though.

And some of the acting is okay if a bit over the top.

I will say that about a third of the way through the film Pena coughed and it was like the film opened like one of those corpse flowers. Like suddenly I was like “Oh he has cancer, and he’s working it out with death, and the other guy is working out his issues with love, and Winslet with time. And Will Smith’s wife is the grief counselor … I get it.” And I did. Never before has a single quiet cough immediately revealed so much about a movie. 

But you are a liar if you say you didn’t at least tear up a bit. It was pushing those buttons hard.

A huge Setting as a Character (Where?) film for NYC. And a solid Secret Holiday Film (When?) as the film takes place exclusively around Christmas. And a Worst Twist (How?) for the ultimately reveal that the actors were ghosts the whole time, maybe, I think, but also probably not. It was confusing. The film is halfway to a Here on Earth, but the issue is it is too genuinely grim. So I have to give it a Bad as it is just generally unpleasant.

Hear about the crazy sequel to this film (and to another 80s classic) in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

The New Mutants Recap

Jamie

Ah, the year 2020. Quite something for BMT and movies writ large. Particularly interesting for our BMT film The New Mutants, which got labeled a “cursed” film after moving release dates to avoid first Deadpool 2 and then Dark Phoenix and then again after Disney bought Fox. That took it from the safety of a 2018 release all the way to a fourth delay due to COVID. We weren’t really doing BMT Lives at the time (for obvious reasons), but if we had been this would have had a good argument. Franchise Man would have insisted we watch it. Not much more to say about 2020 other than 1) see yah, wouldn’t want to be yah and 2) the last in theater experience we had before the pandemic was Bloodshot (released the day I started remote work), but I think I was behind on BMT at the time and ended up watching it on Amazon when they released it early to digital… so that kind of sucks as a BMT memory.

To recap, these mutants are funky fresh. Dani is sent to a mysterious hospital after her reservation is attacked by an unknown beast. She is told that she’s a mutant and that Dr. Reyes is there to help her learn to control it before heading off to the X-men school. There are a bunch of other misfit mutants at the school including Rahne (who Dani likes… and I mean like likes), Illyana (who is kind of a bully), Sam (who is poor), and Bobby (who is rich). Dani is pretty ready just to kill herself, but Rahne convinces her not to and starts to show her all the kind of nice things at the hospital (including herself). At the same time some mysterious and kind of spooky things start to happen at the place. Each of the kids start to see what amounts to their greatest fears. It’s clear that it’s somehow coming from Dani and so Dr. Reyes gets an order from above to terminate Dani. You see, this isn’t connected to the X-men at all. It’s actually an evil corporation that captures mutants and turns them into weapons. But Dani is too powerful and uncontrollable. Once they figure all this out Rahne helps to free Dani, but they are caught and all nearly killed by Dr. Reyes. That is until Dani’s uncontrollable fear monster (a giant bear) is conjured and totally eats the good doctor. But Dani can’t control it and soon they are all under attack. It isn’t until they all work together and Dani regains control that they are able to defeat the monster and head back out into the real world as… The New Mutants. THE END.

Oh, poor poor The New Mutants. There are a number of recent films where I was ready and willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. I liked the trailer for this one and thought, “well maybe this just breezed over people’s heads because of all the delays and the pandemic.” Ehhhhh, not quite. It ended up reading like a two-part television pilot that was eventually released as a TV movie. How many establishing shots of the school can you possibly do? It’s like I was watching an episode of Seinfeld or something. Anyway, it looked like shit and the acting was not good. Overall poor effort. However, I will give the film some credit because I thought the issues that the teenagers were dealing with felt real and were handled nicely. Really could have worked as a TV drama or something. Just not as a big comic book movie.

Hot Take Clam Bake! So we’re saying that Dani controls a giant monster bear once and we’re all good? Nah, all the kids are dead by sunrise when they wake up to find that Dani has totally conjured another big demon bear. I also want to point out: Sam, Bobby, and (arguably) Rahne do not have control of their powers and so it totally makes sense they are at the hospital. Illyana, though… she’s just dope and seems to have no problem doing whatever the hell she wants with her fantasy sword and little purple dragon friend. Her powers are so weird and she definitely didn’t need to be at the hospital anymore. I call bullshit on that. Hot Take Temperature: Sunspot.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! The New Mutants? I barely know the old mutants! Let’s go!

This is maybe the most famous example of a film almost not coming out. For years they talked about it. There were trailers maybe three years prior to it actually releasing. Rumors swirled that it was shelved completely. And all the actors in it ended up in totally different spots than they were when the movie came out. It is a really weird situation.

The thing I remember was that this was supposed to be a Marvel/horror thing, and I think they completely pulled the punch. The main actress should have been the villain. What a twist’em’up! And then the people who are all kind of dicks to her end up having to join up to defeat the horror world she creates? Seems decent. Even probably sets up the whole Mutant Suicide Squad they were teasing throughout.

But alas, instead we got a bad looking and not very interesting film.

I almost wanted to say the young actors were good … but actually they were all quite bad. It didn’t help that there were some abominable accents mixed in here for no reason.

Yeah, not much else to say except it gets us one step closer to having watched every single superhero film ever. It actually isn’t as hard as I would have thought, I’ve seen so many already.

I maybe can mention that I find it quite odd when comic book films end up just making up new stuff. In this case Magik (Anya Taylor-Joy) has a kind of cool background. You don’t have to go into it in the movie, but she is the sister of Colossus (who is in the Deadpool films at least) and there is a whole explanation of how she rules Limbo. Again, you don’t have to get into it. But … the Smiling Men? A vague allusion to her getting sex trafficked as a child? Uh … no thanks. I spent a good amount of time trying to figure out if these weird demons are in the Marvel Universe, but nope. They aren’t. Just made up … why? Just pick something random from Limbo. Why add this weird shit to the film?

I think we only have a Worst Twist (How?) for the ultimate reveal that the facility isn’t run by Professor X but instead by someone I can’t recall the name of to instead make them all assassins. This movie is Bad because it is boring.

Read about my sequel though in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Black Adam Recap

Jamie

There was never a question whether we were going to do Black Adam for 2022. It’s not just that there isn’t a huge number of qualifying films that we haven’t done from the year (we did quite a good job covering the major disasters), but because I’m Franchise Man and Black Adam was necessary to sustain my life. Amidst what was a real turn in DC’s (critical) fortunes, Black Adam represented the downfall of the Snyder era that has given us so much. Now it’s all in James Gunn’s hands and it could spell doom for Franchise Man. As we all know, in Franchise Man lore bad franchise movies are much more nourishing to his lifeforce. Without qualifying franchise films he would surely cease to be. So we must consume Black Adam like a bear preparing for hibernation and begin to search elsewhere for food. Perhaps Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire will prove a fruitful hunting ground for our Franchise Man… maybe Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire… maybe some other Empire heretofore unknown. Only time will tell.

To recap, we open in Kahndaq, a country that has been oppressed throughout time due to the presence of the valuable metal Eternium in its territory. Currently they are under the control of a criminal organization known as Intergang. All this has happened since a long time ago when a champion rose against a tyrannical king and tore him down with the power of Shazam. Anyway, a group of rebels led by Adrianna are tracking down a powerful object, the Crown of Sabbac, in order to keep it out of the hands of Intergang. In doing so they are cornered by the gang and only by awakening the champion, known as Teth-Adam, from his grave are they able to survive. US government official Amanda Waller deems him a threat and sends in the Justice Society to take him out… no, not the Justice League. This is the Justice Society… you know, with like Hawkman… and Doctor Fate… and, you know what… nevermind. It isn’t really important. They go after Teth-Adam but he’s not your daddy’s Superman. He kills people… he probably fucks too, but we don’t see that. Anyway, the Justice Society convinces him to help them get Adrianna’s son Amon back from the bad guys. In doing so he kills their leader, Ishmael, and badly injures Amon. Teth-Adam reveals that he’s really not your daddy’s Superman. In fact he wasn’t the champion at all, but rather was saved by the true champion, his son, who sacrificed himself for his life. He knows he’s not worthy and gives himself up to be held in a prison for superheroes. Meanwhile they realize that Ishmael wanted to die. He becomes the champion of the demons in death and rises again to take the crown and bring Hell to Earth. Doctor Fate knows that the only way to win is to sacrifice himself and use his… uh… Fate abilities or whatever to free Teth-Adam and have him totally own this demon dude. He does. THE END.

Quick recap of the DC films I watched in preparation for this one. Shazam (OK, it’s a kids film), Bird of Prey (didn’t like it as much as I thought I would), The Suicide Squad (loved it), Wonder Woman 1984 (wow, nope. Not into it). That’s a lotta movies. As for this one, when it started I thought it was absolutely terrible. It’s like a knock-off Wakanda, redoing stuff we already saw in Shazam, and with a bunch of Justice Society heroes no one cares about. The Justice Society should really only be presented in a comedic way because they are impossible to take seriously. The only thing that seemed right was Dwayne Johnson doing a thousand video game, slow mo action scenes. So overall it was just occasionally OK and otherwise baffling. To briefly put on my Franchise Man helmet, give me more please. I actually do think there could have been a cool sequel. Black Adam teams up with The Suicide Squad to infiltrate the arctic jail he was held in. Black Adam actually fits nicely in Suicide Squad cause he’s not your daddy’s Superman.

Hot Take Clam Bake! I’m just gonna say it. I think Black Adam is your daddy’s Superman. What did we even see him do? Kill some people? So what? Superman snapped a dude’s neck in Zac Snyder’s Superman film. So Zac Snyder already made Superman not your daddy’s Superman, thus making not your daddy’s Superman Superman. Get it? We also didn’t see Black Adam fuck. If I saw that then I would admit… that’s not my daddy’s Superman. But we didn’t and until we do I just think he’s kind of your daddy’s Superman (although, he’s definitely not my granddaddy’s Superman. That we can agree on). Hot Take Temperature: Heat Vision.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Surely I wouldn’t watch six films in a week in order to watch Black Adam. Surely … right? Let’s go!

Let’s get the five mini-reviews out lickety split. Aquaman: aggressively dumb, did not like it and I don’t find Mamoa amusing. Shazam!: charming, although the first half with him learning his powers is far better than the dumb shit Mark Strong was doing. Birds of Prey: I like Harley Quinn, but the film was kind of a mess and she was the only actually compelling thing in it. Ewan McGregor seemed to be having fun. Wonder Woman 1984: The length of this film is criminal, but I found it more charming than I expected, but probably because Jamie bad mouthed it right before I saw it. The Suicide Squad: Pretty solid, and the typical Gunn humor I find somewhat grating in Guardians when coming out of mostly good people we are meant to somehow pretend are bad, actually kind of works when coming out of actually bad people doing bad things. Only four more DCEU films (and I guess Zack Snyder’s Justice League 4-part black and white miniseries?) to go. Looking through the whole oeuvre I have Superman and the Mole Men (1951), Swamp Thing, The Return of Swamp Thing, Constantine, and Joker as far as live-action DC adaptations go. I mean … I should just push to that right? As a guy who can’t help but catch ‘em all, that seems like something. Filling out the DC Region Pokedex.

Ah finally, this film. This film is quite weird. Exclusively set in a fictional country that I imagine is supposed to evoke Afghanistan or Egypt in the DC universe? In reality it gives off heavy Wakanda vibes. I would have figured that given that Black Adam predates Black Panther that so would Kahndaq and Eternium predate Wakanda and Vibranium (which I would have pegged for the 60s, which is true, all of the Black Panther stuff debuted in 1966). Nope. Kahndaq? 2006. Eternium, just a few years prior in 1998. So uh … what the fuck dudes? You don’t see a problem with this? You don’t think people are going to notice the complete rip off that this entire idea is? It is completely mind blowing that this was pitched and approved of by the powers that be at DC and further that I had never heard of people making fun of this film for it. It is absurd.

The Rock is fine. He is charismatic as usual. He did read a bit old in this one. It isn’t surprising, he’s 50. But if they wanted to maybe suggest slightly younger then they should have given him a love interest. Instead they lean HEAVILY into his Dad Energy. It’s fine. It is what RDJ eventually had with Peter Parker in the MCU. It works. Just interesting to have a giant blockbuster where literally no one seems to view The Rock as a sexual being. Perhaps it was intentional to give more of a “he’s a borderline alien” vibes. Less of a “hey Zack Snyder, pump the brakes on Superman jumping Lois Lane’s bones in the bathtub” energy and more of that Iron Man “I’ve been borderline married to Pepper Potts even though she is only in one out of every three films at this point” energy.

Otherwise I have to agree with Jamie: Baffling. The be-all-end-all of this film existing is as a vehicle to deliver images of The Rock directly into my brain and to take money out of my pocket. But that’s every movie! You cry. Nay. A lot of movies have artistic merit and exist because humans are natural storytellers. This exists as a corporate advertising campaign for the charisma of The Rock and the continued existence of the DC brand of comics that have existed for a hundred years. Cynical! You cry. Nay. It is not I who is cynical, but the core of the movie/advertising complex. This is my manifesto (part 1 of 1000, check out the series over the course of the next 20 years of BMT).

Goddamn if the brother was just a bit more inept we would have had a true Planchet on our hands. I’m going to throw out a Product Placement (What?) because the funnier one is one character chowing down on Lays Baked Potato Chips in one scene, but also, looking online, FedEx is inexplicably on like four billboards scattered throughout the action scenes which seems gross and intentional. Fictional Country (Where?) for Kahndaq. Incredible (award winning?) MacGuffin (Why?) for The Crown of Sabbac which everyone wants without knowing it makes you a literal demon until the very end. And a Worst Twist (How?) for the ultimate reveal that it was not The Rock who was the original Black Adam, but his son. I think this has to be in the Bad category, while amusing in how much it rips off other films, it isn’t amusing enough to warrant the homework and length involved.

Read about my sequel to Black Adam in the quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

The Happytime Murders Recap

Jamie

I’ve been impressed while researching these cycles at our recent hit rate of BMT films. A big part of that is the decline in the raw numbers, but still… we’ve watched a lot of films that make me go “Oh yeah, we watched that, didn’t we?” That said there are still some we will be missing from 2018 even after picking up The Happytime Murders. Robin Hood is almost certainly the most significant. I forgot how bad the reviews for that were, so I can’t believe we haven’t caught it yet. Peppermint starring Jennifer Garner is a Death Wish knockoff that happened to come out the same year as the Death Wish reboot, which is interesting. Finally, fitting right in with the franchise theme of the year would have been The Cloverfield Paradox. So why The Happytime Murders? We were in the market for a comedy and I recall this being a big time swing and miss. I’m also always curious when the pedigree of something like this is so high how exactly it went wrong. That being said… I think I’d rather be watching Robin Hood.

To recap, Phil Phillips is a former puppet cop now working as a P.I. Twelve years earlier he washed out as the first puppet detective after it was deemed that he purposefully missed shooting a puppet criminal resulting in the death of a bystander. When a new client, Sandra, comes in, a beautiful puppet claiming that she’s being blackmailed, he knows she’s going to be trouble but takes the case anyway. The clues she gives him leads him to a porn shop where, while he’s collecting evidence, someone comes in and shoots up the place killing an acquaintance of Phil’s. This gets him mixed back up with his former partner, Melissa McCarthy. Soon after, Phil’s brother is ripped to shreds in what looks like an accident, but Phil and McCarthy know better. Phil’s acquaintance and brother both worked on a kid’s show called The Happytime Gang. Each time they track down another of the former stars of the show they coincidentally are there right when the puppet gets killed. Or is it a coincidence? Seems not, as Phil is soon implicated in the murder when his former flame, and only human member of the show, is killed in a car explosion and Sandra points the finger at him. Phil is arrested, but McCarthy teams up with his secretary to find evidence that Sandra is actually the daughter of the man Phil accidentally killed using the frameup as revenge. After the evidence is destroyed, she breaks Phil out of jail so that they can stop Sandra before she flees the country. They get to the airport just in time and Phil is able to shoot Sandra without any collateral damage (starring Arnold Schwarzenegger). THE END

If that recap seems bereft of jokes that’s partly because the film also was oddly serious. All the jokes were visual puppet gags or a serious line meant to evoke a laugh because a puppet is saying it. I can’t tell if McCarthy is improvising lines trying to get some jokes in there or if she’s just saying what is written. Regardless, the jokes mostly boil down to “Idiot say what?” and then someone saying “what?”. It feels bad saying that the film isn’t funny because it is ridiculously impressive. If this was just an attempt by Brian Henson to prove that you could make whatever movie you want using puppets it’s mission accomplished. The best part of the film ais the behind the scenes stuff they put in the credits. I could have watched a full documentary of that. The problem is almost everything else about the film is below average. 

Hot Take Clam Bake! Phil actually did do it. Think about it. He’s clearly still in love with his ex-flame. Turns out she didn’t die at all, but instead it was all a ruse to get all the Happytime Gang out of the way so she and her new lover Sandra could take the money for themselves. Sandra never kills her though. She just knocks her out as she tries to make her escape. So guess who gets that sweet cash when all is said and done? Phil and her were in cahoots! You might be like “but Jamie, didn’t he ask his secretary out at the end?” Sure, but doesn’t he have to? He can’t go smooching his gal until she’s let off the hook for being Sandra’s unwitting pawn. What a dastardly plan by Phil. (Hey, it makes as much sense as the actual plot). Hot Take Temperature: Miss Piggy.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Are we talking about puppets having sex and cursing and that being the entire premise of a film?! Let’s go!

Slight buddy-cop comedies are usually pretty fun, because there is a lot to poke fun at with old-time noir films and it is easy to riff on the beats of those old films as they can be quite peculiar and specific. I had fun with that aspect of the story.

I also get that the film isn’t funny. It isn’t. I don’t know if I laughed once. There are clever moments. And there are reasonably amusing improvised bits by McCarthy (her snatching a charger off a guy’s desk and saying it is her charger and he never asks for it for example) which kind of work because she’s good at improvisation. But otherwise you are left wondering a little bit how such a nothing script was created for a complicated film.

It would be like if the central mystery of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was just a nothing mystery that you barely had to care about, with a dumb villain and a dumb resolution. The very complicated construction of putting live action into cartoons would suddenly seem like a waste.

That’s what happens here. Everything is incredibly complicated and incredibly well put together, but it all seems like a waste because in the end the story is a nothing story and there aren’t any funny jokes.

Perhaps the idea should have been similar to Roger Rabbit. The puppets are second class citizens who live in a segregated part of town, and the mystery involves a question of what a human was doing in the puppet town in the first place. The issue of course is that puppets aren’t wacky cartoons, and Jim Henson spent decades with the Muppets who ultimately just seem like regular people with regular jobs. So I don’t know.

Regardless, vaguely amusing, but a waste and not really worth one’s time sadly.

As a New Years’ resolution I’m not going to highlight dumb product placement anymore, and so this didn’t have any good ones. Setting as a Character (Where?) for Hollywood in general. I’m going to throw a MacGuffin (Why?) in there as the contract for syndication money related to Happytime being the main motivator for the events in the film. And a true Worst Twist (How?) nominee for the extremely obvious bit whereby the original Femme Fatale is the bad guy and also that the car explosion was faked, instantly knew both when they happened, couldn’t have been any other way. The film is closest to Bad, very much a not-recommend from me in general.

Hear about my new idea for a Muppet parody film in the quiz though. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

The Exorcist: Believer Recap

Jamie

I have obviously seen the first Exorcist a few times over the years. Always great. I didn’t find The Exorcist scary, really, but I liked the tone and the effects. It was high brow crossed with genre. Anyway, I had never seen the second or the third. The second has the reputation of being one of the worst films of all time. For the first thirty minutes I didn’t disagree with that. It is hilarious. A shoddy moneygrab designed to ruin a franchise. But then this kind of wild Africa storyline started and I was turned around a little. It was just different and looked pretty cool with particular filmmaking flourishes that I dug. It’s not good (it ruined the franchise for a reason) but it wasn’t the worst of all time. As for the third, I was surprised I didn’t like it more. I enjoyed some horror aspects that felt more modern than other entries in the series… serial killers popping out of places and stuff. The problem is that it’s a little schlocky. George C. Scott is well past his prime and just chowing down on the scenery. So it plays like it’s made-for-TV. Felt a little cheap, beyond the studio-forced ending that everyone disliked. So that’s where I was for The Exorcist: Believer reboot attempt (we left the prequels for later).

To recap, Victor is a single dad raising his daughter Angela. He has lost faith after losing his wife in the 2010 Haiti earthquake, but Angela wants to feel connected to her. She goes out in the woods with a friend, Katherine, in order to summon her spirit but instead they summon something else. After several days missing they show up largely unharmed, but behaving strangely. That’s only the beginning as each girl exhibits all kinds of strange marks on their bodies and behavior once they are taken home. With the help of some neighbors, Victor tracks down Chris MacNeil, who wrote a book about exorcisms. She agrees to help them, but when she goes to see Katherine she is stabbed repeatedly in the eyes and ends up in the hospital. The parents and neighbors decide to do the exorcism themselves, even when their local priest is told by the church that he can’t participate. Things… don’t go well. The priest comes in and is killed immediately. The neighbor who decided to take on the exorcism is immediately like “oh shit, I don’t know what I’m doing.” When the girls, under the possession of the demon, propose that they must choose a girl to live and one to die, they are all aghast. They panic except for Victor. It seems like he has finally given in to belief in the divine, as well as belief that the demon is a liar. But Katherine’s father isn’t as calm and ends up dooming his child by choosing her. Katherine is sucked into the demon realm, while Angela awakens unharmed. THE END (or is it? I genuinely don’t know). 

I’m gonna come out strong on this one. I think it’s terrible. Feels to me like one of the many subpar demon possession horror films that come out regularly every year. Except this one also has a bunch of random Exorcist elements shoehorned in so that it gets the honor of being included in the series. But it’s not better than those films and only suffers with those strained connections to the series. I can’t even tell if they added the Exorcist stuff in at the end or if they cut a bunch of it out… or maybe this is how it was supposed to be. But given the way they connected it to the series, the film really only works if you make up some larger Exorcist story that it will eventually exist within. But that also means that it doesn’t work on its own and now with the film doing so poorly there would really be a question of whether the rest of the films will even be made. What a disaster.

Hot Take Clam Bake! One little problem with the film. Demonic possession isn’t real. So the girls are obviously faking it and the people would all be indicted for murder (for both the priest and for Katherine). This is actually my biggest problem with horror in general. It’s not real… so why am I scared? People just need to remember that and they’ll be fine. Don’t even get me started on Science Fiction. It’s got “fiction” in the name, people. Get a grip. Hot Take Temperature: Hellfire.

Patrick? 

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Are we talking about a legacy-quel of what some people consider to be the greatest film of all time, but totally botched and borderline offense? Let’s go!

I have a few reviews to do as there was quite a bit of homework. I saw the original Exorcist years ago and loved it. Mainly I liked the interplay between the truly frightening depiction of the hospital and equipment that the men of science are using to try their own “exorcism” of disease, and the religious supernatural and the acceptance of it by Chris. I don’t necessarily think it is particularly scary, but that seems to depend highly on whether one was religious growing up.

The second is kind of a mess with a huge own goal in trying to involved Regan again when that feels totally unnecessary. Either you can deal with a different iteration of Pazuzu, a different demon, or an anthology version of things with a world whereby the exorcist exists in the mind, but dealing with a different idea. They choose none of those and instead make a direct sequel in which we have to buy into Regan being some supernatural healing avatar and Pazuzu specifically targeting those people. There is some nice stuff with Africa and locusts and James Earl Jones. And I’m probably in the minority in which I thought the hypnotism machine was an interesting extension of the theme of science vs religion from the first film, even though they overused it. Overall, it isn’t a great film, but it didn’t seem as big of a disaster as some of the reviews suggested.

The third though I can see why people dig it even though I’m pretty sure I watched the theatrical cut (and my understanding is the director’s cut is where it is at). Written and directed by the writer of The Exorcist and based off of his third book in a trilogy about exorcism ist takes the third route. Set in the same world it posits that at the moment of Father Kerras’ death on the famous staircase at the end of the first film Pazuzu placed the soul of a serial killer killed that very night called the Gemini Killer (and based off of the Zodiac Killer). Fifteen years later a detective and friend of Kerras starts seeing the M.O. of the Gemini Killer in the murders of others with a name that starts with K. In the end it is revealed that Gemini, in the guise of Kerras, has been in a lunatic asylum as it has taken 15 years for him to regain the ability to talk and move. Over the years he has developed a supernatural ability to commune with and manipulate dementia patients to do his bidding and so that is how several people are killed. In the end there is something like an exorcism as the detective shoots the undead Kerras in his cell and stops Gemini from killing again. The film is really quite interesting with new themes and an interesting take on the serial killer thriller. The main issue? Not scary and, as a matter of fact, unintentionally funny whenever the director tries his hand at being scary. Almost certainly an issue with this only being his second film. But he does, obviously, understand The Exorcist and I kind of dug it in the end.

Which then brings us to Believer … it is just one of those things where it seems like to me that Green and McBride probably understood what they were doing and the theme they were going for was effectively: the church is dead, so what do you do when there is nowhere to turn in a time of great religious need? And I think the ultimate conclusion was going to be the father (an atheist of sorts) saves his daughter with faith and love of his own kind (while the other child, the child of what could be construed as evangelicals, is not returned). If I were to field a guess this movie was noted to death and the producers flat rejected what they thought would be an antagonistic message. This is all speculation though, Green and McBride are from the South, so maybe they were going for something a bit more that speed. I wouldn’t know. It just seems like the film was cobbled together from a thousand mixed messages and ultimately doesn’t work.

Setting as a Character (Where?) for Georgia as that plays into some of the religious themes of the film. Let’s go for MacGuffin (Why?) for the dead mother motivating the entirety of the seance and subsequent possession by The Deceiver. And Worst Twist (How?) for obviously making the choice of who to save ultimately dooms that child. The movie is Bad I think, kind of boring, muddled, and fails as an entry in the Exorcist franchise.

I feel like there is an Exorcist legacy-quel hidden in here … I’ll write it up in the Quiz, but sure, it definitely also sucks. Why do we try this dumb stuff? Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Fool’s Paradise Recap

Jamie

Sigh, what are we going to do with you, Chain Reaction. You have survived 70 actors (without repeats, mind you). You constantly get us into trouble. We’re always like “Gah! How can it be that no one in Furry Vengeance was in a qualifying film based on a book?!” (or something). Ultimately we end up having to pick some movie that no one has ever heard of, that was released in 601 theaters, and has four good reviews out of eleven just to move to the next cycle. Then when we get there we realize that the film we used is actually a tiny nothing film filled with nobodies that did nothing and we are scrambling around again like a couple of scrambling people… … … not saying that that happened here… but how can it be that no one in Angels in the Outfield made a better qualifying film in 2023?!

To recap, an anonymous, mute fool is held in an asylum only to be released as they can’t pay for his treatment. He’s dropped in LA where almost immediately he is recognized as the spitting image of a notoriously difficult method actor currently holding up a big Western. In quite the coincidence he is given some work shooting some scenes in the film at the same time the actor goes a little too method and kills himself. Soon he’s been given the name Latte Pronto and has agents and handlers out the wazoo. He’s thrust in a whirlwind romance with the love interest in the film, into starring in a clearly terrible superhero film, and into some violent situations by his costar. This all comes crashing down immediately and he gets a divorce, loses his representation, and loses all his friends… except… Lenny. Lenny is a super down on his luck PR guy who just needs that one client to make it in the biz. He stands by Latte the whole time even though they are both terrible at their jobs. He tries to get Latte a job, but it turns out to be a porno and Lenny (feeling terrible for being so terrible) has a heart attack. Latte feels for his friends, but through circumstances he is led to believe Lenny has died so he goes out to wander the street. He stumbles into saving the life of a homeless man, getting coerced into politics, and then coerced back out of politics until finally he finds Lenny similarly wandering the street. They reunite and Latte for the first time speaks, showing that Lenny’s friendship is beginning to cure him. They walk away together to take on the world. THE END.

Ho boy, we should not have watched this. This isn’t a patented BMT Existential Crisis (BMTEC), a la Fear, but it got close. If only because there is a complete lack of “Why?” to the film as well as a “How?”… as in ‘how did this end up as a wide release film?’ I just really don’t understand why it appears that Charlie Day cashed in all (and maybe more) of his chips in Hollywood to make this film. I could see if the movie had some message that was really close to his heart, but the message is all muddled. So maybe Day just really likes friendship, maybe that’s the message he really wanted to get across in this… Hollywood satire?… Is it a satire? I can’t tell. Anyway, I’ll end by saying that I actually think some of the acting in this is pretty good. Adrien Brody is fun and I generally don’t like Ken Jeong in anything, but this is the best I’ve seen him act in a film. So that helps bring it up from a total zero.

Hot Take Clam Bake! Day is a time traveler. The act of time traveling addled his brain so what we see in the beginning is him coming from the future. At the end he goes off to take on the world with Lenny. What they end up doing is inventing the time machine. They then concoct a plan to go back in time and make Lenny’s dreams come true. Unfortunately they don’t realize the dangers of creating a TIME LOOP and Day’s mental state is fractured and Lenny is killed as they create a TIME CRISIS. The root of this crisis is the fact that the addled Day is taken from the hospital and the original Day, a method actor and future time machine inventor, sees him. This is impossible to handle and he kills himself. Thus sticking the addled Day in a continuous TIME LOOP CRISIS or TLC. Hot Take Temperature: TLC.

Patrick? 

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Are we talking about a first time director given a blank check for no reason and producing what looks like an old-timey Chaplin film with a thousand famous people? Let’s go!

The film is truly wild. It is hard to tell what exactly they were going for. Like, there is a strange mix of both anachronistic stuff (specifically that the big film being produced is a soundstage western, indicating post-war, probably the 50s) and modern stuff (the clear indication that he is tapped for a minor superhero in an MCU equivalent). He is effectively a silent film era actor, but existing in explicitly the modern world complete with takes off of Angelina Jolie etc. It is such a muddled mess that it is no wonder it was at first shelved and ultimately critically panned.

I think the movie would have been far far better served playing it as a joke on old Hollywood, with Day being a quintessential silent film star.

I also was quite confused because the doctor at the beginning basically said he could be led around like a dog, and then for the rest of the film everyone struggles to get him to do anything. It would have worked better if it was specifically more directly about that: a joke on how the Hollywood Machine consumes young actors, makes them into stars by manipulating them, declares them geniuses, and then spits them out. That message is kind of there, but everyone knows Pronto is terrible at acting and is quite frustrated by it. It would have been funnier if they were like “move there and say this” and then when he did they were like “brilliant!” and then the ultimate joke is while they are all smelling their own farts and loving his acting (i.e. their acting) audiences hate him and they can’t figure out why. You see … basically poking fun at the Hollywood Machine and the finicky nature of trying to understand the audience’s whims and wants.

And ultimately you would think a part of the film would be the cycle of consuming actors, chewing them up, and spitting them out via a final scene in which Day returns to the mental institution and they reveal that he’s actually come and gone a few times now, and they don’t know where he goes, and thus Latte Pronto is just one iteration of the world taking in and manipulating him.

It alllllllmost sounds like I’m defending the film, but if you squint you’ll notice I’m actually describing a different, maybe better, film. Fool’s Paradise is a mess and while the actors are game the whole thing never really coalesces around a message and so you end up wondering why you are wasting time on this film in the first place.

Also the film is 100 minutes when it could have and should have been 85 with credits merely by cutting out all of the bad bits involving Charlie Day’s friends, but I can see why he would be resistant to that. It is crazy though, it is a veritable who’s who of actors who are frequent guest stars on It’s Always Sunny passing through each scene.

Obviously a Setting as a Character (Where?) for Hollywood which the film is gently making fun of throughout. And I think the film is closest to Bad as it is just so long and not funny and weird as to be unpleasant.

Uh … I guess I’ll make a sequel to Fool’s Paradise? That’s in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Haunted Mansion (2023) Recap

Jamie

Yo yo yo, ghost house with the most house! This movie isn’t really meant to be scary. Or at least I hope not. It’s for little kids. Sure there can be some spooky looking ghost and some kids might not like that, but I remember liking ghostbusters as a kid and that has a load of crazy, creepy ghosts everywhere. That can be fun. So creepy stuff? Yes. Actually scary? No. It did get me thinking whether I’ve ever seen a scary ghost movie. While I’m not a horror fanatic in part because I do get creeped out by them on occasion, those occasions in reality are pretty rare. Insidious? The Conjuring? Those spookify me for sure. But a ghost film? I’d have to say the scariest ghost film I’ve ever seen is… Ghost. Because isn’t the scariest thing in this world lost love? Awwww.

To recap, Ben is a super genius mourning his lost love. One day he is called upon by Kent, a priest who heard he invented a camera that can see ghosts. In need of some cash he agrees to head out to a mansion owned by Gabbie and Travis and take some pictures. Once inside, though, he is dismayed to find that not only are ghosts real, but by stepping inside he is now haunted. Uh oh! Soon they are gathering a whole gang together to figure out what’s going on with this haunting. You ready? Turns out that a man named William Gracey summoned all the ghosts there in a futile attempt to talk to his dead wife. This included Alistair Crump, a super evil ghost aiming to collect enough souls to escape back to the world of the living. He just needs one more soul (bum bum bum) and the soul has to go willingly. But who could be mourning someone they lost so much that they would give into that?… who could it be? Hmmmmm. Oh right, our main character. Anyway, they track down all the clues and find Crump’s hat, which serves as a “possession” that they can use to destroy him. But they quickly realize that Ben’s not the only one in mourning. Travis lost his dad and almost gives into Crump, but Ben rescues him. Then Ben is lured to the edge of giving into his grief, but ultimately flips it on Crump and kicks him back into the underworld. The house is exorcized and Ben and Gabbie smooch. THE END.

Haunted Mansion is a long and kind of boring movie. I think it suffers mostly by leaning too heavily on a cast that just can’t hold your attention through a flimsy script. At times it appeared like they were improvising a la Curb Your Enthusiasm. Often scenes would just end with a character saying they should look in the attic or something with no prompting or reason, as if they plumb forgot to improvise that part. Patrick is right, they should have had them do a seance or something to try to get a ghost to help them in battle and instead they get a bumbling coward ghost. Something fun to look at and to give us some laughs and to help the story from point A to point B. Anyway, the one highlight of the film is that the ending is very sweet and emotional. I actually had tears in my eyes (no lie) when Travis and Ben were trying to overcome their grief and not succumb to Crump’s temptations. They find hope in friendship and family. It’s sweet. Just wish the rest was a little funnier and fun. As for Ghosted, it has the worst first 15 minutes I can remember with some truly dire Apple product placement. After that you get a solid 70 minutes of cute, kinda funny action rom com. Music was terrible and the ending did an unnecessary rip off of John Wick, so overall it kind of shook out as merely mediocre. I expected much, much worse.

Hot Take Clam Bake! They were all dead the whole time! JK, obviously the ghosts were dead. But yeah, Ben was definitely also dead the whole time. Didn’t you think it was odd when Ben taught Gabbie to sculpt oddly phallic vases in the middle of the movie? Or the unexpected money laundering plot? Or when Whoopi Goldberg showed up and won an Oscar? Alright, fine Whoopi Goldberg didn’t win an Oscar for this. She just won a Golden Globe. But the other things definitely happened. Hot Take Temperature: Ghost Fire with the Most Fire. 

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Are we talking about the third Haunted House film and the most soulless one yet? Let’s go!

When I watched this trailer I legit thought it kind of seemed good. I liked bringing in Wilson and Devito, it seemed fun, and there is something about colorful ghosts flying around in an explicitly non-scary horror-adjacent kids film.

Watching it there is a fundamental flaw that tripped the whole movie up: too few ghosts. For the first half of the film (more honestly) you basically see no ghosts. And when you do “see” a ghost it is instead a trash non-picture produced by a magic camera.

The back half is better than the first and you can kind of see where they should have gone the whole time. Ghosts and ghosts and ghosts and ghosts. They still needed more visualization of said ghosts, but at least there were some ghosts in this haunted mansion finally.

The ending got me a bit as well. Grief, a husband mourning his wife, a child mourning his father. That’s some feelings. The whole thing resolves quite cleanly, but definitely the most fun part of the film.

Hot take: They should have had more Casper-like stuff in this. Like … a machine that makes a ghost into a human or some junk. That stuff is fun and nonsense and would be a motivation for Leto (oh yeah he’s in this movie), the kid, and the main character to maybe butt heads about who should (and whether anyone should) use the machine. Especially once they reveal that the machine must consume 1000 souls for eternity to work. See? I think I actually made this already nonsensical movie better by adding more nonsense.

This film was desperately yearning for a Planchet ghost. Alas. There is so much Product Placement (What?) in this film, it is crazy. Burger King is prominently displayed, but the vertical integration of Marvel action figures and (blurg) a Marvel Comics Monopoly set really takes the case. Setting as a Character (Where?) for New Orleans. Secret Holiday Film (When?) since the film ends on Halloween. Wild Coincidence (Why?) alert for them just so happening to stumble onto the house reaching its 1000 ghost milestone just as our heroes arrive. And naturally Worst Twist (How?) for the reveal that the kid’s father has been dead the whole time. I still think this movie is closest to Good despite being kind of soulless and nonsensical, mostly due to Wilson and Devito who are just fun enough to float the more serious roles some of the others are saddled with.

For the friend this cycle we kind of had to do the biggest streaming disaster of the year. I think Ghosted fits the bill. If only this was about g-g-g-g-g-ghosts like The Haunted Mansion. Instead it is about Chris Evans’ constant pursuit of vertical integration between his Apple iPhone and Apple AirTags. Meanwhile Ana de Armas is a spy who then has to drag Evans’ clingy character around on a world tour trying to disarm a bioweapon peddled by Adrian Brody in one of two BMT performances this year (the other is the upcoming Fool’s Paradise). The film eventually gets a bit fun, but it is let down by (1) the initial scene involving the Apple advert is maybe the worst thing I’ve ever seen and instantly soured me on the film, and (2) the music is awwwwwwwwful. I’m mostly convinced the music was actually generated by an algorithm which analyzed songs that play a lot on Apple Music. The needle drops were constant and bizarre and the entire soundtrack was poppy weird inappropriate music. It was truly weird. Also weird that I can’t find a single critic who has a similar complaint, I would have thought it would stick out like a sore thumb there. Anyways, C- I think in that it is harmless, but also soulless and completely void of any reason to watch or ever think about ever again.

Might as well make a fourth one. Read about it in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Five Nights at Freddy’s Recap

Jamie

As we churn through films (and particularly as the year’s crop gets decimated by the Good Review Plague sweeping the BMT movie fields) sometimes we have to look in the mirror and ask… wait… shouldn’t we just do the best (read: worst) movie available? It’s amazing to look back and see how we valiantly stayed the course through the storm that was straight-to-streaming releases. We (mostly) avoided dipping our toes too far onto that slippery slope and years later it looks like the storm may have passed and it’s a beautiful story of courage. But now it’s not the theaters that are too empty, but rather the pockets of the reviewers are too full (only kinda kidding). Luckily this time the changes we can implement involve watching better (read: worse) BMT films. So for “Achievement” we originally put in the remake of House Party. It vaguely fit the category and yet… why? If the crops are so lean, shouldn’t we pick the best fruit available instead of, you know, eating rotten fruit. A+ analogy. 

To recap, Mike is having a tough time. His parents died leaving him in charge of his kid sister Abby. Add a conniving aunt looking to take custody of the girl and an inability to keep a job due to his obsession with the long past kidnapping of his younger brother and things are looking rough. In a last ditch effort to keep Abby he agrees to take a job as the night security guard at a defunct Chuck E. Cheese style restaurant called Freddy Fazbears’s Pizza. The place is creepy, filled with giant animatronic robots, and a police officer lady Vanessa is all up in his business, but as they say, “It’s a living.” (or is it… the opposite? Bum bum bum). As part of his obsession, Mike lucid dreams about the day his brother was kidnapped and finds that in Freddy’s he interacts with a bunch of kids that claim they can find his brother’s killer. Add on top of this that when he brings his sister he finds that the animatronic animals are actually “alive” and she can talk with them and they love her. We know this is bad news though, as the aunt hired a bunch of vandals to break into the Freddy’s and we see the robots rip them to shreds. Vanessa is pissed. He has to take this seriously. Mike leaves Abby with the aunt one of the nights and dreams about the kids. He accepts their offer to take Abby in exchange for having the younger brother back and in real life we see the robots (really the ghost kids) kidnap Abby. He returns to Freddy’s and is able to stop the robots, but his employment officer shows up and reveals that he’s the killer of the kids (and Mike’s brother) and that Vanessa is his daughter (what a twist!). He aims to kill them all, but Abby is able to draw pictures for the robots that reveal the evil of the man. They turn on him and everyone lives happily ever after (besides all the people who died). THE END.  

Horror is in an interesting spot. This and M3gan were the two big smashes of the year and they are simply not scary. But I think that is kind of the point. They are baby horror. The audience isn’t there to throw up in the aisles. They are there to get a few scares while also getting their daily dose of memes (the FDA now recommends at least two memes a day for anyone under 17 years of age). So that’s one problem with the movie. The other is that the ending doesn’t make much sense. Matthew Lillard was obviously the bad guy (you don’t get MLil on board for nothing) but his motivation and plan are nonsense. Anyway, the point is that this is not a good horror film, nor is it a good film film, but… I still liked it. It’s fun. Interesting story, fun big robots (especially the cupcake), and Hutcherson does a good job. I had a good time watching it. I thought it was actually quite a bit better than M3gan because the setting, situation, and characters were more interesting and likable. So take that, M3gan! I like Five Nights at Freddy’s better!

Hot Take Clam Bake! It was all a dream, duh. You guys didn’t get that? I mean, the whole film is about a kid who lucid dreams about solving his kid brother’s murder. So you think he does that with the help of a bunch of ghosts in the Chuck E. Cheese machines? You think that makes sense? Dreams never really make sense when you think through the logic and details and check out the ending? Does Matthew Lillard’s motivations and plan make sense? Nope. It’s a dream. You just got tricked by a dumb dream movie. Hot Take Temperature: Pizza.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Are we talking about a plotless game being made into a film only fans of said game like because it isn’t scary and mostly confuses people? Let’s go!

Kind of fun.

But only kind of.

Because (checks notes) it isn’t scary and mostly confused me. Joking about the second, the story is really straightforward. But no, it isn’t scary.

I think I need to steal Jamie’s bit for a second. Hot take: this isn’t a horror film. As a matter of fact, I think a lot of horror films (of the bad variety mostly) aren’t really horror films. They are thrillers. M3gan fits the bill as well. It is like calling Meg 2: The Trench a horror film. Are creature features horror films? I guess. Is Jaws a horror film? I guess. But really they are something else because they aren’t meant to scare, but rather to shock and thrill. M3gan is like a techno-thriller, although that is a little closer because it gets close to slasher. But once you cross the rubicon and reach to expand your audience I think you can easily cross over from slasher (horror) to serial killer film (thriller). Is Silence of the Lambs a horror film? I guess it could be classified as such.

My point is that horror has become too large of a tent. We need to be much clearer about what we are getting. This film is closer to a serial killer thriller than a slasher I think, partially because the body count is too low, and partially because the primary focus of the film is the investigation and pursuit of a serial killer. As a serial killer thriller it also sucks because it doesn’t thrill and the serial killer isn’t interesting. It suddenly tacks into the supernatural, when the serial killer itself should be far more specifically what the film is about. Also, as a small supernatural-adjacent serial killer thriller The Black Phone is superior (and also distinctly flawed).

Come at me. I love genres, and I think there needs to be more of them. And when you cross genre bounds and become a mix (like a horror-comedy) either both sides of the genre equation have to be good (rare), or it has to be more specifically one (like Shaun of the Dead, which is obviously a comedy, not a horror film really). This is more of a thriller and it sucks at it really, but it takes way too long to get to the point where you realize it is a serial killer film anyways.

The actors are game though and the young cast in particular were fun. I would be interested to see any of them in anything else.

Let’s go with MacGuffin (Why?) for the missing brother which motivates the main character’s entire arc. And Worst Twist (How?) for the obvious reveal that the only other major character (played by Matthew Lillard) is the murderer, duh. This film is closest to Good I think, despite being not scary it is a halfway decent thriller film in the end.

I’m going to try and make a version of this movie that is more my speed in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 Recap

Jamie

Ah, the BMT double. It’s not an easy thing to do. There have been times when Bonus films were more regular (or maybe I’m just remembering it that way). But back then we also didn’t write much (or really anything) about the movies we watched. Our thoughts, our jokes, our thokes (those are thoughts that also act as jokes) were lost to the sands of time. To preserve our thoughts, though, makes a double quite the burden, so you know when we do it it’s probably because it’s a really, really good BMT film. *Looks over at My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3* Or maybe we just want to burn through this franchise and hope it doesn’t rise from the dead in 2030.

To recap, the Portokalos’ are back, Jack! Well at least some of them. A bunch of the family was quite old so of course some have passed and others have incurable neurodegenerative diseases (fun!). So when the family gets a letter about a reunion in their father’s village in Greece they set up a trip for them to go and represent their deceased father. Off they jet for Greece and we are treated to many beautiful vistas before arriving in what seems like a ghost town. Turns out the town has suffered and the reunion is more of a gambit to revive the town. Toula is trying to track down her father’s three childhood friends to give them his journal, but can’t find them anywhere. This issue is quite easily resolved as Toula’s husband chats with a local who is like “oh yeah, here’s where they all are.” Meanwhile, they discover a previously unknown half-brother from their father’s former flame who has a son who wants to marry a refugee (read: non-Greek). This also turns out OK as everyone is like “oh… uh, sure.” Invitations go out, the childhood friends are found, and the town is revived in time for the (you guessed it) impromptu wedding. As one final parting plot we find out that Toula’s daughter Paris is failing college because she partied too hard and so she’s resisting getting into a relationship with a boy she likes. But then she’s like YOLO and they make out. Oh and they decide to scatter their father’s ashes in Greece. THE END.

Oh boy. I’ll start with the good news. The film looks quite beautiful. I read that this is because Vardalos (who directed this one) insisted that they film on real film because Greece is so beautiful that she felt like digital wouldn’t do it justice. Good on you. It does look beautiful. In particular there are some night shots that look really nice. Alright, now for the bad news. This film is a mess. Shots don’t go with other shots. ADR is needed just to make scenes make sense. There is a scene on a rooftop where continuity is broken in almost every shot and I thought I was going crazy. There’s a joke that only works if the punchline isn’t in subtitles so instead of not doing any subtitles they do subtitles for the first part of the conversation and then drop them part way through… I thought the DVD was broken. But no, the joke was just broken. It’s insane directing. I also love Patrick pointing out that the film takes place less than a year after the second. Half the family has died… it’s been a tough year.

Hot Take Clam Bake! We aren’t done. You can take that to the bank. There is just no way we don’t have a “Paris is getting married” fourth film. It’s the natural conclusion. My prediction is that Aristotle (the beau from this film) has an even crazier Greek family. It’s a crazy Greek family face off. Literally Face/Off. They take each others’ faces… off. Toula exchanges faces with Aristotle’s mother in order to make sure Aristotle’s heart is pure. Hot Take Temperature: Started out as cool as the Mediterranean Sea and ended like a scorching Athens summer.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Time to make yo money! That’s right, we have to make this guy a vacation hot spot so that we can get money from the tourism board and also go on vacation while pretending to make a comedy. Let’s go!

Yeah so this film is weird. You’d think there would be like … a wedding in it? And there is. Don’t get me wrong. But it is buried so deeply within this Russian nesting doll of a movie it is hard to even recall who got married. I need to do my own recap just to convince myself this film is real.

The family is going to Greece because the father died and he wants his notebook given to his like … childhood friends he hasn’t seen since literally like the 40s or something? Meanwhile the mother straight up has dementia which is basically not resolved.

An aside: everyone looks really old in this film despite it literally taking place six months after the first film … that’s a mistake, but whatever. Why they didn’t just jump to the daughter’s wedding is beyond me.

They get to the village and outside of it there are all these migrants from Syria, and inside of it no one lives except a weirdo who is mayor and an old lady and her son who it turns out is their relative. Cool.

Yada yada yada they wander around a bunch, they reveal the daughter pretty much failed out of NYU, Joey Fatone and the other sister fly out to Greece and wander around, and the husband befriends a monk who just tells him where to find the people they are looking for, a little Deas Ex Monkina (heyyyyooooooooooo).

Regardless, can you tell this film is nonsensical? It looks great. But it makes no sense. Which is mostly what they key in on in all of the reviews.

But for real … why are we watching the long lost cousin marrying a Syrian migrant in Greece when we could instead be watching the daughter get married to someone in like Los Angeles and that be the whole culture clash instead. Then we could save the Greek trip for the fourth (Which I would call My Big Fat Greek Family Reunion or something).

I have to put a Product Placement (What?) for Greece, but also Tostitos which is so in your face it makes the trailer. And yeah, Setting as a Character (Where?) for Greece as well. They manufacture a ridiculous MacGuffin (Why?) in the form of the journal which no one should at all care about. And why not, Worst Twist (How?) for the reveal that the brother brought the dad’s ashes over to spread on some thinking tree in Greece or whatever. I think this is an actual BMT film, although it is close to maybe just being kind of good. I just feel like it is BMT because it is totally ridiculous while also not necessarily being the worst thing I’ve ever seen which is kind of a recipe for being a little entertaining at least.

Finally, although now for the My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Father of the Bride crossover we’d been waiting for! That’s in the quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 Recap

Jamie

Hey there, it’s me, Franchise Man. The superhero the world doesn’t want (but I know they need). I’m here to just remind you that franchises are great (It’s my superpower). Usually they start small, the plucky little upstart horror movie that blossoms into a fully realized world filled with self-conflicting lore. It’s beautiful. What is Jason? (you might ask) Well the Friday the 13th movies are there to give you several different answers to that question. What is Greek? That’s where the My Big Fat Greek Wedding franchise steps in. Every 8 years or so they drop one on us to remember that families exist, they can be Greek, and are there to ruin your life. As Franchise Man I don’t endorse the messages of all franchises, I only endorse their continued existence. So sit back, relax, and enjoy.

To recap, the Portokalos’ are back, Jack! They couldn’t stop Toula’s wedding in the first movie so now they are stuck with her half Greek family in the mix. But that’s not the point of this movie. No, the point is… wait, isn’t this supposed to be about a wedding? Not yet. See, the family is getting older, relying more on Toula and this puts strain on her family. This is particularly important as their daughter, Paris, is looking at colleges and they dearly want her to stay in Chicago. At the same time her father Gus decides to prove to the world that he is in fact related to Alexander the Great. In doing so he finds that, uh oh, he and his wife were never actually married. In the hurry to get to America the priest never signed the marriage certificate. Gus finds this funny, but Maria decides to hang it over his head as she feels like he doesn’t appreciate her. This creates a lot of kooky situations, but ultimately when he has a fall and has to go to the hospital he realizes his error and pleads for her to marry him again. In prepping for the wedding the planner quits because the family is insane and so they all work together to make sure the wedding goes off without a hitch. Or at least almost no hitches. Ultimately, Paris gets accepted at both NYU and Northwestern and ends up realizing she really does want to leave. Everyone understands and it’s fine. THE END.

Starting with the first film (which I had never seen), I thought it was very cute. I particularly liked how Toula realized she wanted to be a better version of herself, put in the work, and made it happen… that’s the beginning of the film. The love interest doesn’t even really show up until a third of the way through the film. Sure, the dad was legitimately mean to his daughter and it kind of made me sad to think that that is a real thing for people in the world, but besides that I liked it. The second film seemed to think that the kooky family was the only thing people liked because they cranked that up from 40% to 80% and left the plot in the dust. It still didn’t quite feel like a BMT film, though, as it was still a pleasant watch. Possibly it suffered by comparison (even if it is clearly considerably worse than the first film).

 Hot Take Clam Bake! This is a minor point, but throughout the whole movie Paris is like “get out of my beeswax, I’m not going to Greek Club, stop pressuring me to date a Greek boy.” All while crushing on a boy in her class… who turns out to be Greek. Bullshit. There is no way this girl would be eyeing the kid and not know he was Greek. Even if she didn’t go to Greek Club she would still have seen him at some big Greek festival at some point, or in the Greek School, or in a load of places. Also, shouldn’t he have a giant family trailing him at all times? I’ve been led to believe that is standard operating procedure for a Greek family. My conclusion? That kid ain’t Greek. Just a liar. Hot Take Temperature: Piping Hot Spanakopita.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Are we talking about a long awaited sequel to a beloved classic where we just run it back and it just isn’t nearly as charming as we remember? Let’s go!

I obviously watched the first film prior to viewing this, so let’s start there. That film was pretty charming. And they did quite a good job turning the main character into “Frump Girl” and in the end her relationship to her eventual husband kind of rings true because you can tell the character is initially charmed by her, and then is charmed again without even knowing it is the same person. That is funny.

I’ve known a lot of Greek people in my day, but unlike Jamie none of them really resembled the characters in the film. Sure … a few were genuine weirdos with weird attitudes about their work and stuff, but I always thought that was because they were weirdos. … Was it not? Hard to tell.

And ultimately the only issue with the first film really is that the father’s character has aged like milk. What a crybaby. Oh my daughter isn’t going to marry a Greek person. It’ll kill me. Get over it! And in the end he does. But still, I feel like there is a level of “okay Boomer” that maybe applies here that would come from a genuine place and be like … yeah, we probably don’t need to pay attention to that old guy telling his 20-something year old daughter that she looks old and crying about her not marrying a Greek guy. Just saying. Still, the first film was super fun in the end.

The second film isn’t as much. I think they picked a good storyline. I think it probably should have been a different wedding though. In reality it was right there. Joey Fatone. He’s gay and he wants to get married but can they even have a Greek Gay Wedding? Sure why not. That’s what I would have done. Dang … I might have spoiled the Quiz movie now that I think about it. I’ll get more into Fatone there though and also tell the story of how Joey Fatone performed at my Bachelor Party though so you can have fun with that.

The film is far too similar to the original though and it ends up just begging the question as to why it even exists. This is the thing though … Fatone! We need a new angle. And gay wedding is definitely that angle. What a missed opportunity, and it was sitting right there for them.

The ever present Product Placement (What?) for Windex which seems like a far far too specific thing that was just about the main character’s father and no one else. These films all have decent Setting as a Character (Where?) here for Chicago. I kind of love the Totally Ridiculous Reason (Why?) for the film to even exist in that the parents weren’t actually married years and years ago, like what is that? Nonsense. I think the movie is closest to Good, but I do that reluctantly and only because I still found the main couple quite charming.

Alright, My Big Fat Gay Greek Wedding is in the quiz. Then we’ll deal with the fourth one in the next recap. Cheerios,

The Sklogs