The Smashing Machine (5/5 Stars)

The Smashing Machine takes its name from an early 2000s HBO documentary about the Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighter Mark Kerr. I found it in an odd place, Facebook, which makes me think like it won’t be there for very long. Having glanced at the documentary, I noticed several scenes that find themselves in the movie, so many that it is probably accurate to describe this movie as a dramatic adaptation of the documentary. The movie uses the scenes in the documentary as set pieces and then fills in the gaps where a documentary crew can’t go.

In a lot of ways, Mark Kerr is a man ahead of his time. He was one of the best mixed martial arts fighters at a time when the sport was very much in the shadow of boxing. There was a lot of potential in the sport, for instance it better answered the question of which man was the better fighter because it allowed so many fighting styles and relaxed so many rules. In boxing, all you can do is box. With mixed martial arts, you can be fighting karate, or boxing, or ju-jujitsu or something else. Mark Kerr, from Toledo, Ohio had a background as a free-style wrestler. And upon that basis he added a bunch of other things you can’t do in wrestling, like head-butting, and eye-gouging, and kneeing someone in the face. MMA would soon ban some of the more extreme moves, but while they are allowed, in the early days when it was a bloody free-for-all, apparently Mark Kerr was very good at it.

Mark Kerr also developed an addiction to pain-killers about twenty years before the opioid epidemic. So he was ahead of that trend too. When the documentary came out, it included scenes of Mark shooting up and also scenes of him in the hospital after an overdose knocked him unconscious. These scenes were apparently shown to Mark before the documentary was finalized and Mark was given the choice as to whether they would be included (I know this from Mark's recent interview with Joe Rogan). He okayed the inclusion of all the embarrassing stuff thinking that if people saw it they may not make the same mistakes that he did. He was a brave guy.

The movie was written and directed by Benny Safdie and stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Mark Kerr. This is Benny Safdie first feature film directing alone. He previously directed movies with his brother Josh Safdie. I've seen two very good movies from them, Good Time (2017) and Uncut Gems (2019). Interestingly, Josh Safdie has his first feature film without Benny coming out at the same time, Marty Supreme starring Timothee Chalamet. I have not seen that one, but I will soon and I expect to write a review about it. 

The Smashing Machine feels like it was made by people who admire Mark Kerr and want you to know more about him. Certainly, someone like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, one of the highest paid action stars in the world, does not need to take part in a small movie like this. He is doing it because he believes in the story. I’ve said this before about Dwayne Johnson: that he probably is a good actor, but it is hard to tell since his physical nature makes him hard to write a good role for. He is too physically imposing to be your stereotypical leading man but too nice looking to be a villain. Mark Kerr is one of those rare roles that are tailor made. Mark Kerr was a smashing machine but also, apparently, a soft-spoken nice guy outside the ring. There is a very good scene here where Dwayne Johnson strikes up a nice conversation with an elderly woman in a doctor’s office. I think there is credit to be given to certain actors that can pull off roles that very few other actors can even attempt (I’ve argued for more recognition for Jim Carrey in the past with this logic). Who other than Dwayne Johnson could have played this part? And not only that, keep in mind that Dwayne Johnson and Mark Kerr are about the same age so when Dwayne plays Mark, there is a quarter-century age difference. What over fifty-something actor can plausibly take on a twenty-something role, without a shirt and in tight pants. I’m not saying give him an award but let’s not dismiss this very exceptional thing we are witnessing here.

If Dwayne is playing well within type, albeit in a dramatic and not action-oriented role, his romantic counterpart, Emily Blunt, is playing decidedly against type. Here is an actress that has played Queen Victoria and Mary Poppins, who is now playing Dawn Staples, the girlfriend of Mark Kerr, a well- meaning but immature American. We have to give her a break because she is also twenty-something and doesn’t quite understand what Mark Kerr is going through, mostly because Mark is not the type of person who can really articulate why all of this is so important to him. They have the type of conversations that unnecessarily turn into fights because they aren’t successfully communicating with one another. It is a testament to the writing, yes, but especially the acting, because although the characters aren’t connecting, the audience at the same time understands that they are not and why they are not.

Shakespeare is great not simply because he used fancy words better than anybody else, but because he so successfully communicated what his characters were feeling. For the same reason, these scenes between Dwayne and Emily are great because the audience understands so much of what is going on. That the characters themselves can’t quite see it lends the scenes a certain tragic quality to it.

For those like me who did not know anything about Mark Kerr before watching this movie, the ending was a surprise. I didn’t know whether or not he won the big fight or how the result may have happened. The best sports movies do not rely on the outcome of the big contest. After all, movies simply cannot compete with real live sporting events in this regard, (Why watch something contrived to turn out a certain way, when you can watch real sports and actually feel the suspense) so great sports movies use contests to get at something deeper than the result of the same. And The Smashing Machine is no exception. This entire movie is a relentless pursuit of competition at the highest levels and all the trials and tribulations that come with it. And the ending here, well, it is a sigh of relief, a relaxation. All your love and all your hate and all your memories and all your pain. You tried your best. It's time to let go.

The movie ends with a scene of the real Mark Kerr shopping for groceries on a bright sunny day in Arizona. He looks healthy. He looks happy.

Jumanji: The Next Level (3/5 Stars)

I had written in my review of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle that it was the type of movie that you had to take a step back and shake yourself into realizing it was a great film. Jumanji: The Next Movie is the same concept, with the same actors, and the same director, but it is not a great film. Again, one has to take a step back and contemplate what exactly is the different since there is so much in common.

The most obvious difference is the disappearance of the original writers: Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers. I sung their praises before so I will not dwell on their greatness here. Notice instead how this movie lacks the sheer efficiency and ingenious character development of the first movie. In particular, the game itself was more fully realized (and more obviously a video game) in the first movie. Here, the video game’s plot is not so clearly constructed. It is hardly to imagine the various scenes as video game levels. Still, this movie has a few good ideas and does its best to exploit them to their most enjoyable.

The best idea of this sequel, and a further confirmation into what made the first movie work so well, is to fully lean in on the actors doing impressions of other actors. Regardless of what the plot is doing, I always find this interesting. This sequel introduces two more real-life characters: Uncle Eddie played by Danny Devito and his ex-business partner Milo Walker played by Danny Glover. When the real people are sucked into the game this time, Danny Devito inhabits of Dr. Smolder Bravestone, played by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Likewise Danny Glover inhabits Moose Finbar, played by Kevin Hart. Both are fun impressions. I would give Kevin Hart the upper hand on his though. (Favorite line: “Did…I just kill Eddie…by talking…too slow…just like…he always said I would).

Dr. Shelly Oberon, played by Jack Black, who was the avatar of the mean girl in the first film, is now the avatar of Fridge, the black football player. So Jack Black's impression this time around is a complete 180. This is one of those things that might seem controversial but much like Robert Downey Jr.’s performance in Tropic Thunder has inexplicably not raised eyebrows. Also joining the cast is Awkwafina as another avatar player character in the video game. Near the end she  switches places and becomes the avatar of Danny Devito. She does a great job (dare I say better job than The Rock) in acting like an old short fat outspoken Italian man.

The acting shenanigans are the most interesting part of this movie. So much so, that the action sequences, though packed with special effects, feel like they are get in the way of the performances. In the original movie there was more of a balance (or at least the action sequences seemed to be more intertwined with the character development). What is also lacking from the original movie is any particularly interesting development in the original four teenage characters. The pathos of this movie belongs entirely to the characters of Danny Devito and Danny Glover who have had some bad blood in their previous business break-up and are seeking away to heal old bonds. In effect, this makes them the main characters as they have the more emotional territory to cover. Unlike the first movie, there is not enough for all the characters to do, less balance between the character plots and the character's skills/weaknesses do not pay off as well.

Overall, Jumanji: The Next Level is a decently good movie. It is what a sequel should be in a way: the same, but more of it. I got enough of exactly what I was looking for.

Hobbs and Shaw (4/5 Stars)

I have never had the opportunity to admit this in my movie review blog, but I have actually seen several of the Fast & Furious movies. I forget exactly which ones, but it hardly matters. They are all the same. Alpha males, fast cars, good-looking women. Oh and family, every single Fast & Furious movie is about family.

You need to be a good sport to watch a Fast & Furious movie. They are stupid, but if you play their game, well the stupid works. In this movie, a kidnapping takes place in a skyscraper. The bad guys bust through the window about fifty stories up and haul off a woman down the side of the building using very long ropes. Shaw decides to take the elevator down. Hobbs decides to jump out the window. His plan is to use gravity to catch up on the escaping bad guys heading down the ropes, to grab a hold of one to stop his fall, punch him in the face, and then jump to the next bad guy etc. This plan is stupid but it works. One must lend a lot of credit to the actors, in particular Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, who is one of the best at keeping it straight in the face of endless absurdities.

This movie is shameless. It stars a few of the newer stars of the Fast & Furious movies, Jason Statham (“Shaw”) and Dwayne Johnson (“Hobbs”) and adds the one and only Idris Elba (“Black Superman”) and a kick ass lady named Vanessa Kirby. The bad guy introduces himself as “Bad Guy”. He has a plan to spread a super-virus that will wipe out most of the world in an attempt to weed out the weak and kickstart human evolution. One of the better scenes involves a scientist explaining a real easy way to stop the plot (kill one person who is the room) and a really really hard way to stop the plot (infiltrate the bad guys lair in the middle of an army base in a completely different country within 12 hours). The World is at stake. The first option is not seriously considered. Another great scene involves a car mechanic trying to repair a complex biological contraption with no training and no special equipment while Hobbs and Shaw yell at him to hurry up. Amazingly, the yelling helps and the car mechanic gets the contraption to work. Shameless. During the climatic battle, our guys Hobbs and Shaw realize that the way to beat the bad guy is to work together as a team. Shameless, shameless, shameless.

The most enjoyably shameless part of these movies is the Fast & Furious physics. Cars can’t do this shit. You can’t shoot people from the cab of a jeep while its doing a barrel roll, but there it is up on the screen proving your sense of reality and logic wrong. The director of the movie is David Leitch, who is more of a stunt coordinator that has been converted into a director. His one previous movie  was the very good Deadpool 2. You can tell because he fills out the supporting cast with actors from that movie: see Eddie Marsan, Ryan Reynolds, and Rob Delaney. I’m beginning to like the idea of stunt coordinators becoming directors. The other good movie this year that was directed by a stunt coordinator was John Wick 3. The fight scenes were of a higher caliber in John Wick 3, however, this movie however is funnier. The jokes are a bit clunky in the first half of the movie, but as everyone settles in, they start coming out smoother. Then Kevin Hart shows up and is hilarious for about forty seconds.

Let me give you a test: The movie relocates to Samoa for its third act for no particular story reason. The only conceivable reason it happens is to provide an excuse to see Dwayne Johnson dress in traditional Samoan warrior club and have a traditional Samoan brawl with a traditional Samoan warrior club. Before the climatic battle, The Rock stands on a bluff and with a totally straight face states, “I can’t believe this is where we’re going to save The World.” If that makes you chuckle, I’ve got a direct commercial flight from Moscow to Samoa to sell you.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (5/5 Stars)

One has to step back and shake oneself into believing that “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” is one of the year’s best films. After all, the movie itself does not make this kind of demand on its audience. It is marketed and feels like a good time family comedy that aims only to please, not enlighten. But when a movie accomplishes what it sets out to do so well, it is important sometimes to try to deconstruct how it does what it does. There are many levels to “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” and they interact with each other seamlessly to an extent that puts this movie on par with such other great comedies like “Hott Fuzz” and “Tropic Thunder”.

“Jumanji” was written by Erik Sommers and Chris McKenna, both alumni of the TV show “Community”. In particular, it was Chris McKenna who was credited for writing the Emmy nominated episode “Remedial Chaos Theory”. That brilliant episode, and “Community” in general, works in much the same way as “Jumanji”. Here, like in “Community”, the characters are deliberately stock characters. We have four high-schoolers, a nerd named Spencer, a jock known as Fridge, a mean girl named Bethany, and a sarcastic girl named Martha. They find themselves for various reasons in detention, a plot set-up that seems to deliberately recall “The Breakfast Club”. Detention involves cleaning out the school’s basement, wherein the four find a video game named “Jumanji”. Using the plot conceit of a previous “Jumanji” movie from 1995, itself based on an early 1980s board game, the game comes to life as the kids are playing it. In the 1995 version, the game came into the real world. In the 2017 version, the four are sucked into the game.

While in the game the four stock high-schoolers are transformed into archetypical video game avatars that they unwittingly chose before playing the game. The nerd is transformed into Dr. Smolder Bravestone, played by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and strong, courageous, and intelligent archeaologist (think “Indiana Jones” type). The jock is transformed into Franklin “Mouse” Finbar, played by Kevin Hart, a side-kick and zoologist. The mean girl accidentally chooses the Avatar “Shelly” Oberon, curvy genius, thinking it to be beautiful woman and not a fat middle-aged man, played by Jack Black, who excels in cartography and other sciences. And finally the sarcastic girl is transformed into Ruby Roundhouse, played by Karen Gillan (the blue robot in “Guardians of the Galaxy”), a scantily-clad femme fatale (think “Lara Croft”) who excels at Karate, Tai Chi, and Dance Fighting.

The video game they inhabit also has its rules. They have to work together with their character’s strengths and weaknesses to find their way through various levels, solve mysteries, and beat bosses in order to win the game and leave. Anyone who has ever played an old Nintendo game will immediately recognize the set-up. One of the cleverer ways this is played out is through a character named Nigel Billingsley, played by Rhys Darby, who serves as an explanatory character that, because of his programming, can only say certain things in response to certain things. This is annoying to the characters and funny to us.

Like “Community”, “Jumanji” uses cliches as a launchpad, not a crutch. By using tropes, it constructs a base of familiarity which it then exploits by developing the story through realistic character choices. We can predict how a stereotypical jock will react in a situation and we can predict how a stereotypical sidekick will react in a situation, but we are less familiar with how a stereotypical jock trapped in the body of a stereotypical sidekick will react. “Jumanji” presents eight familiar characters within four characters and stays true to all of them. Brevity is the soul of wit, and the rate of information thrown at the audience is amusingly efficient.

And how it does this is not just an achievement in writing, but in casting and acting. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is so good at playing a sensitive teenager that the shear believably of it is in and of itself amusing. Kevin Hart, a diminutive comedian who excels at large in-your-face comedy, seemingly didn’t have to change his personality at all in order to believably play the jock in the side-kick role, which in turn itself is a humorous take on his style of comedy comedy. But the best example of the possibilities of combining teenagers with video game avatar is Jack Black’s impersonation of a self-absorbed teenage girl. Not only is it pitch-perfect going one way, Jack Black sounding exactly like a teenage girl, it is pitch-perfect going the other way, a self-absorbed teenage girl inexplicably possessing larger-than-life intelligence. Remember that the teenagers now inhabit the special powers of their avatars. The Jack Black avatar Sheldon "Shelly" Oberon is a curvy genius. This does not make Bethany less self-absorbed, but it does make her especially articulate about her behavior in a way that is almost never seen with this particular stock character trope. This is a great example of how using otherworldly premises with their own special rules of reality can help develop the character of a real person in a way that regular drama cannot. Upon finding herself sucked inside a video game, Bethany complains about not having her phone anymore. The sarcastic girl chides her for being so self-absorbed. Jack Black’s response is so exceedingly reasonable and well thought out you wonder why nobody else is complaining about their phones being missing. Jack Black’s acting in this movie is worthy of an Oscar nomination. There is absolutely no chance of that happening because it is unthinkable that this type of role would result in such a thing. However, I would put this performance alongside Steve Martin’s in “All of Me” as a performance so unexpectedly good, one has to take a moment to realize just how underrated it is.

Finally the movie has great teamwork. There is not a character here that does not have a good role and the movie, directed by Jake Kasdan, seamlessly gives everyone something to do. Even the sarcastic girl who was transformed into the usually thankless role of the femme fatale, has her own touching developments. There is this one particular scene where Martha and Spencer within the bodies of smoking hot Karen Gillan and Dwayne Johnson act in the age-old awkward teenager “I like you” exchange. It is just something special. It is so recognizable, but as it is coming out of middle-aged movie stars, it is also very funny. This movie is something special and can be shown to anyone anywhere.  

Baywatch (4/5 Stars)

The best and longest running joke in “Baywatch” takes place over lifeguard lunch wherein the cocky new guy, Matt Brody, played by Zac Efron, is being quizzed on what it takes to be part of the Baywatch family (yes, it’s called a family by the head guy Mitch Buchanon, played by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson). Matt Brody apparently thinks that being a lifeguard stays at saving beach goers from drowning. The lifeguard lists off several scenarios they encountered just the last week: a hoard of jellyfish, sand-grifters, and various criminal conspiracies. “The situations you are describing sound like scenes from an entertaining though far-fetched TV show,” remarks Brody before insisting once again that the lifeguards should probably just call the police in these situations.

What makes this joke work so well is the deadpan absolute seriousness that Dwayne Johnson brings to his character’s mission to “Protect the Bay.” This man really believes that these sorts of things, including the main plot of trying to bring down a drug kingpin, is his responsibility. It is absurd but Dwayne Johnson makes it work to the point of hilarity. This performance reminded me of the performances of the late great Leslie Nielson in the “Naked Gun” and “Airplane” franchises. The movie is crazy but “The Rock” anchors it by playing the part so straight.

The feel and tone of this movie comes from the “21 Jump Street” mold. The original TV series was, on the surface at least, a drama that took itself seriously. “Baywatch” as much as it deals in the superficial pleasures of the show (hot woman in swimsuits running in slow motion) makes fun of the TV show as well. A good gag is when Mitch Buchanan pulls out his keys to the lifeguard shack. On the key ring is a “Good Luck!!!” message from the previous “Mitch Buchanan” played by David Hasselhoff. Apparently this particular bay has been run by two separate Mitch Buchanan for the past forty years.

Some gags work better than others. I could have done without the morgue scene, but overall, like “21 Jump Street” the relationships and jokes make sense and it is fun watching these characters interact with each and go undercover in various costumes at the smallest provocation.

In one area, this movie does much better than others. There is a subplot involving a chubby nerd played by Ronnie Greenbaum who has a crush on C.J. Parker, played by Kelly Rohrback in the orginal Pamela Anderson role. Normally I don’t find the nerd chases hot girl story lines all that interesting. I never feel like the nerd really earns the hot girl. In this movie, I feel like Ronnie Greenbaum earns the hot girl, probably in the scene where he creates a diversion at a party by putting on a show-stopping dance number.

I liked this movie. The director, Seth Gordon, previously made one of my favorite documentaries named the “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters,” which can rightly be said to be the best documentary about people obsessed with the old “Donkey Kong” stand-up arcade game. I only mention it to recommend it. It’s good.

Pain and Gain (4/5 Stars)

You may think you have seen this movie from director Michael Bay before. You may have taken a look at the trailer, noticed the macho men, the strippers, and the conspicuous consumption of fast cars, big houses, flashy clothes. You’ve seen it before glorified and sensationalized in other Bay movies like the “Bad Boys” franchise, “Armageddon,” and the “Transformers” franchise. And yes “Pain and Gain” has all of that but there is a fundamental difference here. “Pain and Gain” does not glorify any of that. Instead it has contempt for the arrogance, greed, and stupidity that all of the above. It’s like Michael Bay grew a conscience about the types of movies he was making or something. There is morality in this picture. This movie, like his previous, is still heavily tasteless of course. It contains gratuitous violence, heavy substance abuse, and a cast largely made up of beefcakes and supermodels, sure, but it is not an amoral movie. The message is clear: The characters being portrayed here are, to borrow a direct quote from the movie, really “fucking dumb,” and the movie quite successfully makes much humor out of their stupidity. That is of course before they get so stupid that people start dying. Then the laughs kind of peter out and one watches the movie in what must be described as a state of awe.

This is a true story. The screenplay was based off of a series of Pete Collins’s news articles in the Miami New Times. Now what does that matter? For anyone who has seen Michael Bay’s “Pearl Harbor” we all know he would gladly and immediately sacrifice the truth if it means he could use more explosions.

(One of my favorite movie critic anecdotes belongs to a man who took it upon himself to listen and rank every single audio commentary in the Criterion Collection. Apparently the best one ever consists of the science advisors from the inexplicable inclusion of Michael Bay’s “Armageddon” sharing anecdotes about how they kept on telling Michael Bay that none of what was on the screen was good science or remotely possible and Michael Bay ignoring their advice in favor of more explosions.)

And it is true that Michael Bay still does not care about the truth. I had the pleasure of looking up the news articles and finding out that about half of what is on screen never happened. But here is the best part: The story is so wacky and bizarre that I bet you would not be able to tell just by watching the movie which parts were made up. You may as well flip a coin for true or false on every unbelievable thing you see. That is after all the reason the real police (as they do in the movie) did not believe the story and refused to investigate even in the face of an incredible amount of evidence left over by really dumb criminals. Imagine my shock when I learned that Michael Bay did not add any explosions. That one explosion happened. It did.

Mark Wahlberg stars as Daniel Lugo, the manager of Sun Gym. He is the type of guy who believes big muscles and the right attitude as opposed to say an education or honest work is the key to success in America. He attends get-rich-quick seminars from a Tony Robbins-like personality named Johnny Wu, played by Ken Jeong. Johnny believes in the American Dream and it isn’t the old 1950s consumerist fantasy of a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence, two cadillacs, a wife, and a couple kids. His American Dream is a mansion bigger than your neighbors, a flashy speedboat in addition to a flashy car, and the ability to pick up the most expensive golddiggers at the most expensive strip club. “I had a wife and kids,” says Johnny, “then I stopped being a loser. Now I have seven honies to pick from.” And Johnny points to seven supermodels in the front row. Daniel Lugo nods his head and thinks, “Man, this guy totally gets me.” To my great delight he also references the Al Pacino character in 1983’s Scarface as one of his role models. Like I’ve said before, no other statement in a movie or in real life will so easily certify a person as a Grade-A moron. What is Johnny Woo’s golden advice: “Do be a doer. Don’t be a don’ter.” This mantra will be repeated throughout the movie to justify kidnapping a millionaire, torturing him in a warehouse for several weeks, forcing him to sign over all his assets, and then attempting to murder him. And then doing it again to an unluckier soul once the original money is all gone.

Nobody has played dim more successfully in more good movies than Mark Wahlberg has (Boogie Nights, The Other Guys, Ted) and I’m trying to phrase that in a way that sounds like a compliment to his acting ability. After all playing stupid convincingly requires the intelligence to know why what you are doing is stupid and the humility required with the knowledge you are doing is something stupid. Tack on that the many scenes where Wahlberg is either shirtless or in a kiss the cook apron and I think you can say this is a pretty brave performance. The role of Daniel Lugo could have very easily taken a dark turn and in doing so sacrificed much of the humor in this picture. For instance at one point Daniel Lugo decides it is a good idea to take back a malfunctioning chainsaw to Home Depot for a refund. The chainsaw is malfunctioning because human hair has gotten stuck in the chain. Only halfway through the conversation with the return desk cashier does Lugo realize it might not have been a good idea to return a chainsaw with human hair and blood on it. The scene is macabre but Wahlberg’s performance never allows Lugo to be a more frightening presence than he is a laughable one.

Of course stealing scenes left and right is Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in what is perhaps the first and only decent role he has landed in his entire movie career. He plays the third and most innocent wheel of the Sun Gym Gang: a body builder of enormous size and recently sober and born again Christian. He is roped into helping Lugo and his partner Adrian Doorbal (Anthony Mackie) because he really needs the money and is dumb enough to believe Lugo when he promises there will no be violence in the operation. The man is a huge contradiction but then again so is Dwayne Johnson, which is at least my theory as to why he has never had a good movie role before. The man is incredibly hard to write for. Because he is such a huge guy, you would think that he would be perfect for action blockbusters. The problem is that he does not have a tough looking face. In fact, it can be described as angelic, which would explain why he has done a lot of children’s movies. So the perfect role for this guy would seem to be a really shy body-builder. And guess what? Pain and Gain is one of those rare movies that contain such a non-cliché character. Dwayne Johnson plays his character with as much humility as Mark Wahlberg. In fact, I would say the action sequences are better characterized as physical comedy routines, especially when Johnson tries to rob an armored car and the bank bag explodes green slime in his face in the midst of a crowded beauty salon. That was funny.

This is Michael Bay’s best movie. It is not totally without flaw however. You may at several points think to yourself, say isn’t this movie running a bit long. Such is always the problem with Michael Bay. He generally does not understand that simply because he can do something with a camera, that it does not mean he should. Each shot taken as itself looks good but there are too many superfluous scenes that taken in whole extend the movie at least a half hour past where it should end. I am still of the belief that one of the best things Michael Bay has done was achieved when he still made commercials. He is after the creator of the first “Got Milk” commercial; a true achievement in how much information can be conveyed in a one-minute time frame. The important thing about this movie though is that Michael Bay limited himself to 25 million dollars and almost no special effects. As such, the movie is far more interesting to watch than the epics of catastrophic proportions known as all his other movies. I swear the more limitations put on the man, the better his movies will be. When he gets several hundred million to make his movie and creative control as well they turn into three hour long gargantuan messes. Pain and Gain succeeds where his other movies fail more because of what he is not doing (focusing on robots and special effects) than what he is doing (characters and story). I hope he makes more small movies in the future.

It is at a time like this when the death of Roger Ebert comes into full focus. Ebert never wrote better reviews than when they were aimed at a Michael Bay feature. I would have loved to read his review of this movie. Perhaps we can imagine his surprise when he found out he did not completely hate it. 

The Other Guys (4/5 Stars) August 12, 2010

The most recent collaboration between comedian Will Ferrell and writer/director Adam McKay (Talladega Nights, Anchorman, and Step Brothers) is a stereotypical action adventure movie about an odd couple of N.Y.P.D cops. One is a take charge tough guy played by Mark Wahlberg, and the other is a nerdy desk mammal played by Will Ferrell. They are known as the Other Guys as opposed to The Popular Guys who are played by Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Those Guys specialize in the types of car chases and action packed machismo you see in run of the mill superhero/cops movies. Wahlberg, relegated to being Ferrell’s partner because he accidentally shot Derek Jeter, bemoans his sorry existence and takes it out on his partner. He calls Ferrell a “fake cop,” kidnaps him at gunpoint, hijacks his Prius and they both head out into the world to fight crime like The Popular Guys. Can Will Ferrell man-up and stop being such a pussy? Watch and find out!

The most recent collaboration between comedian Will Ferrell and writer/director Adam McKay is a sly social commentary that isn’t as much a parody of regular cop movies as it is a veiled insult to the entire demographic the earlier paragraph (and this movie’s marketing campaign) would appeal to. Out on the beat fighting petty crime, Ferrel and Wahlberg stumble assbackward into something much bigger. The only problem is that they have no idea what it is. It involves a sleazy Wall Street type played by Steve Coogan (Hamlet 2) and a huge investment bank named Llendl Corporation. Llendl’s company motto is “Were into Everything.” Wahlberg persistently assumes that drugs are involved. But as the movie points out, he only does this because he’s an idiot. It is the Will Ferrell character that figures out that they are witnessing a $32 billion dollar theft from unwitting investors in order to make solvent the huge investment bank. (In contrast, that high speed chase involving the Popular Guys at the beginning of the movie achieved nothing but the arrest of a couple of Jamaican’s selling marijuana). The Will Ferrell character is routinely bullied by the other cops (Rob Riggle amongst them) and called a pussy, a queer, a bitch, and several other epithets. His Prius, which gets great mileage, is also routinely derided for its unmanliness. This is all done in Ferrell/McKay style. So the insults are clever and we are invited to laugh at Ferrell. But then the movie’s plot does something quite extraordinary. It gives Ferrell’s character a smoking hot wife played by Eva Mendes and has him almost single-handedly solve an enormous crime that has as much complexity as the scheme in “Chinatown.” So was it wrong to laugh at Ferrell? Am I the idiot for having done so? 

The most recent collaboration between comedian Will Ferrell and writer/director Adam McKay is an absurdist comedy where realism is abandoned at every whim in order to get laughs. This is most evident in the presence of several ridiculous characters. One is a mild-mannered police chief played by Michael Keaton who moonlights at Bed, Bath, and Beyond and inexplicably quotes song lyrics from TLC. Another is Dirty Mike and the boys, a gang of homeless men that like stealing Priuses and having orgies in the back of them (“Soup Kitchens” I believe they’re called). There are also a host of very funny comic situations like a whisper fight at a funeral, Ferrell’s back-story as an accidental pimp, and the deaths of the Popular Guys via mind-blowing stupidity. Finally there is plenty of funny dialogue, the best of which is an argument about whether a lion or a tuna would win in a fight. The big question though is whether you can still take a movie seriously once the writer/director casts himself as Dirty Mike. Does Adam McKay want us to think? Or is this all for shits and giggles?

Perhaps this movie’s biggest fault is that it is intent on being all three movies. This makes the movie feel like it is constantly interrupting itself. Near the end when one of the movies becomes a little more interesting than the others (for me it was the social commentary) it seemed like a distraction when it changed course again. The parts of this movie are all very good, but there are too many parts and makes the movie seem overlong at points. This is a small complaint though. I would rather a movie gave me too much than too little and there is quite a lot here. 

Given the movies that Will Ferrell and Adam McKay have collaborated on, one might get the impression that they specialize in portraying arrogant alpha males behaving badly, but that would be an oversimplification. Alpha People are entitled to be arrogant to a certain degree if they actually know what they’re doing and are better at it than most people. What Ferrell and McKay are particularly good at conveying is Overconfidence. They know inside and out the type of guy who acts like he’s Alpha without actually being better. This type of guy is oftentimes confused with the Alpha Male because, at first impression, they both display a stunning amount of confidence. But there is usually a way you can tell them apart. In my opinion the main giveaway is if the guy equates his ignorance and stupidity with being manly. For example, it is common overconfident man-knowledge that the manliest beer in the bar is always the worst tasting god-awful swill you can find. Now if you knew anything about beer you might confidently point to a better brand. But it certainly takes more confidence to adamantly proclaim that the worst is the best. You may even go so far as to say that anyone who likes his alcohol to taste good is a pussy or fag. By the way, just the act of calling a guy a pussy is also very bold. Pussy, as we all know signifies feminine traits. So to call a guy a pussy in a derogatory sense is like insulting every woman in the room. If the main goal of your night out drinking is to get laid it should follow that you wouldn’t go out of your way to insult women. BUT, wouldn’t it also signify the enormity of your self-confidence to do exactly that and then be as forward as possible. I mean only someone who is truly better than other people, an Alpha Male, could get away with that sort of thing. So the logic goes around like this: You aren’t better than anybody. But to give the impression that you are better, you do something incredibly stupid because only a truly better person could afford to get away with it. And people do fall for it. Take for example, the death of the two Popular Guys. If they had actually survived their idiocy (which action movie stars do all the time), would you think they were stupid or badass? Why are some women attracted to bad boys? I mean that’s just retarded.

This line of logic leads to the sort of hilarious idiocy that is on full display in Ferrell/McKay comedies and especially in “The Other Guys.” The NYPD is full of officers that take macho pride in cracking down on petty crime while their very livelihoods are being put into risk through complicated financial schemes they find to boring and faggy to understand. A $32 billion theft is huge, but nobody besides the Will Ferrell character cares about the case. The Other Guys are ordered to turn over all the evidence to SEC, only to find out that the SEC agent is also the lawyer of the Wall Street scumbag he is supposed to be investigating. I assume that the makers of this movie we’re angered by the Wall Street fiasco of the past years. They wanted to make a movie about it but, at the same time, wanted to stay true to their chops of action/comedy. So in effect, what we have here is a subterfuge movie like Blood Diamond or Quantum of Solace. The audience walking into the theater has been promised silly action and comedy. The movie delivers on this promise but has an ulterior purpose. In this case: veiled ridicule for society’s idealization of ignorance. Of course the funny thing about making fun of overconfident people is that they won’t ever admit they’ve been insulted. They take the insult and brag about it. You can trick them, insult them, and laugh at them all you want but you will never win the argument. Take that Wall Street. 

Oh and by the way, Ferrell and McKay are huge pussies by having the safe, competent accountant married to an incredibly hot doctor. I mean she actually likes him and there is even a comic riff about them having great sex which apparently they enjoy equally. What fags.