JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL (2019) **

Jumanji:  Welcome to the Jungle was a surprise blockbuster in 2017.  That was partly because of the nostalgia ‘90s kids had for the original, but it was largely thanks to the inspiration, wit, and charm of the performers and filmmakers.  They took an old premise and breathed new life into it while also making a statement about gender identity and including a positive “Be Yourself" message.  I don’t think anyone associated with Welcome to the Jungle dreamed it would’ve made over $400 million at the box office.  However, when it came time to make Jumanji:  The Next Level, it’s apparent the only thing they were dreaming about was the box office. 

As a fan of Welcome to the Jungle, I am dismayed to report that Jumanji:  The Next Level is a lifeless retread that lacks the heart, spark, and fun of the original.  Video games usually get harder once you progress to the next level.  I guess that’s true because The Next Level is particularly hard to get through. 

The nerdy guy from Welcome to the Jungle goes back into the video game.  Why?  Because if he didn’t, we wouldn’t have a movie and Sony wouldn’t have another $400 million.  His friends try to go back in after him, but problems arise when the kid’s crochety grandfather (Danny DeVito) and his former friend/business partner (Danny Glover) wind up in the game instead. 

The movie has essentially one joke:  The Rock doing an impression of Danny DeVito.  Two, if you count Kevin Hart doing an impression of Danny Glover.  It’s not a terrible joke, honestly as it’s somewhat amusing in the early going.  However, the joke quickly gets beaten into the ground.  It’s especially painful once you realize that’s the only trick the movie has up its sleeve. 

Yes, other than that, it’s the same old shit.  It’s made even worse by the fact that the adventure this time out is severely underwhelming.  The set pieces are weak (stampeding ostriches, moving bridges, baboon attack, etc.) and the villain is a lame Viking/Barbarian guy who has nary a shred of menace.  Things proceed to get repetitive about halfway through when everyone switches back into the same bodies they had in the first movie.  From there on out, it REALLY feels like a cash-in. 

Just when you think it can’t get any worse, the always annoying Awkwafina shows up.  Then, once the body-switch thing happens, she becomes the Danny DeVito character, and things go further into the toilet.  I mean, when The Rock did it, it was OK, I guess.  However, once she cranks her already grating voice to match DeVito’s cadence, The Next Level goes to the next level of irritating. 

The biggest bright spot:  Karen Gillan is once again having a ball playing her Tomb Raider-style character.  If any of the characters in the film deserve their own spin-off, it’s her because she steals many scenes out from under her co-stars. 

I guess I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to see the next one.  The set-up for the sequel at the end certainly holds promise.  At least, enough promise that I haven’t entirely written off the franchise… yet.  Then again, if the sequel is just as bad (or worse) than this one, it might be Game Over.

BAD BOYS FOR LIFE (2020) *** ½

Well, the Bad Boys aren’t exactly boys anymore, are they?  That’s actually the good news in this surprisingly strong belated sequel.  While the first two Bad Boys movies have their moments, they are, by and large, loud and obnoxious.  Kind of like the main characters themselves.  I’m glad to report that bad boys Will Smith and Martin Lawrence have matured into their roles nicely, and the film itself is far less abrasive than the previous Michael Bay-directed installments. 

While Smith is out helping Lawrence celebrate the birth of his grandson, he is shot during a drive-by shooting.  The gunman is the son of a drug kingpin who is motivated by revenge (Smith killed his daddy) and a domineering mother.  After a lengthy recovery, Smith is itching for some payback, but Lawrence, unwilling to see Smith in a hospital again (or worse) turns in his badge and retires.  It’s then up to Smith to take down the villains alone.

Smith and Lawrence have never been better together.  Their dramatic scenes are what give the movie its unexpected power.  I’m not saying this is a Logan deal or anything, but the movie has a lot to say about confronting growing old, and even death.  Lawrence is particularly strong during his moving speech where he reveals to Smith he has retired.  Who knew underneath all the decades of tomfoolery there was a serious actor waiting to get out?  (That said, he still gets a number of big laughs throughout the film.)  Smith is equally fine and does a terrific job in his solo scenes where he briefly ditches his partner and sets out on the road to revenge solo.

The new directors, Adil and Bilall wisely tone down some of the more Michael Bay-centric qualities while still making it feel like part of the traditional Bad Boys universe.  In fact, the opening scene pokes a little fun at the conventions of the series, and Bay’s trademark camerawork, which lets the audience know up front that this one is going to be a little different.  The action is impressive too.  Adil and Bilall know how to film action without resorting to the shaky-cam bullshit, and reserve the slow-motion for the big hero moments.  Although the big finale is a bit hard to swallow, it’s not enough to derail the movie or anything.  That said, the rest of the action sequences throughout the film are aces.  I especially enjoyed the chase scene featuring a motorcycle with a machine gun-mounted sidecar that made me simultaneously think of The Dark Knight AND Duck Soup.

My only real gripe is the title.  Bad Boys for Life?  This is the third movie in the series.  Shouldn’t they have named this one Bad Boys 3 and called the next one Bad Boys 4 Life?  Do I have to think of everything, Hollywood? 

MEN IN BLACK INTERNATIONAL (2019) **

 

Some Sony executive saw Thor:  Ragnarok and thought, “Oh, Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson are delightful together!  We really must put them in a Men in Black movie.”  And you know, it isn’t the worst idea in the world, especially when you consider the impetus for Men in Black 3 was, “Hey, Josh Brolin can do a wicked Tommy Lee Jones impression!  Let’s do a Men in Black movie where they go back in time and Brolin plays a younger version of Jones!”  At least director Barry Sonnenfeld was able to stretch that thin premise out and kind of make it work.  The same can’t be said for Men in Black International helmer F. Gary (The Fate of the Furious) Gray as the weak script (by Iron Man screenwriters Matt Holloway and Art Marcum) leaves the usually talented performers high and dry.

The problem is, Hemsworth isn’t give much of a character to play.  He’s basically a reckless himbo alien pussyhound.  Thompson has a little bit more to work with as her character has a stronger arc (she’s always wanted to be a Man in Black ever since she was a little girl).  However, once they are teamed up, there aren’t a whole lot of sparks.

The villains are weak too.  Rebecca Ferguson, who was one of the highlights of Doctor Sleep, gets outacted by her obnoxious wardrobe.  It looks like the character was intended to be played by Lady Gaga, but she refused, so they just stuck Ferguson into the outfit and said, “Have at it”.  It also doesn’t help that her gimmick is lame.  (She has three arms.)  The aliens are really derivative too as the twin baddies look like the dudes from The Matrix Reloaded but equipped with the liquid metal powers from Terminator 2.  At least Liam Neeson and Emma Thompson are around long enough to give the proceedings a little bit of class as senior Men in Black agents.

I never thought I’d say this, but I missed Will Smith.  As much as I like Hemsworth and Thompson in other movies, they just don’t have what it takes to carry a Men in Black flick.  We do get at least one hilarious sight gag at the expense of Hemsworth’s most iconic role.  Other than that, the laughs are few and far between, the aliens are unmemorable, the plot is forgettable (it’s another save-the-Earth-from-total-annihilation deals), and the special effects are just fine.

If you love the Men in Black movies, you’ll probably eat this one up, as at the very least it offers you a chance to see the MIB universe expand a little bit.  I like them OK, I guess.  After this ho-hum entry, it’s going to take a lot to get me excited for the next one.

LUCKY (2020) *

Hey, guess what? 

What? 

Shudder played a top-secret horror movie on Halloween night. 

Oh, that’s cool.  What was it, a hard-to-find horror classic?  A highly anticipated sequel to a beloved franchise?  A masterpiece of the genre?

Nope, it wasn’t any of those things.

What was it?

Lucky.

I haven’t seen it.

HA!  LUCKY YOU!

You mean it wasn’t any good?

Fuck no!

What was it called again?

Lucky.

What the fuck is Lucky?

Imagine Happy Death Day done on a low budget as an indie drama. 

Ok…. 

Now strip down the premise even further, almost to the point where it could play out as an eight-minute short and still feel too long. 

Whatever you say. 

Now make it eighty minutes. 

Yikes. 

To add insult to injury, give it an extremely lethargic pace, so it feels a helluva lot longer than that. 

Why would I even…

Now imagine that idea, except it’s done with zero wit, style, or imagination. 

I’d rather not. 

Top it off with a little bit of nightmare logic that is similar to mother! as the heroine is perpetually put down, condescended to, dismissed, and/or generally treated like garbage. 

I guess that could work if…

Except do it in a really ham-fisted manner, and make sure you hammer home all the obvious points so even the dummies in the cheap seats get the message loud and clear.  

Geesh. 

Want me to give you an example? 

No. 

Like, the heroine, she writes these self-help books, but she can’t even… wait for it… help herself! 

Oh boy. 

Do you like your horror movies? 

Sure, we all do. 

Do you like them gruesome and scary? 

Of course. 

Well, forget about.  This ain’t that. 

Oh. 

I’ve had hangnails with more blood than this movie. 

What’s it called again? 

Lucky. 

Well, who’s lucky? 

Certainly not the audience, that’s for damned sure. 

ESCAPE ROOM (2019) *

In my Haunt review, I told you all how much I hate walk-through haunted houses.  Allow me to begin my review of Escape Room by expounding on the idiocy of escape rooms.  They’re even higher than walk-through haunted houses on the list of shit that annoys Mitch.  They’re like a millennial version of murder mystery dinner theater, except they’re more annoying and there’s nothing to eat.  I’m sorry, I’m not gonna spend my time locked in a room trying to solve riddles and shit with people I can’t stand.  Now, I don’t want to waste too much time on the subject, but then again, Escape Room is so bad that I’d rather talk about literally anything else besides the movie.  Well, as they say… the only way around it is through it.

Six strangers receive Hellraiser-style puzzle boxes anonymously in the mail.  Once they solve them, they are given instructions to report to an escape room with the promise of a cash prize.  They soon find out the rooms are deadly, and they will all certainly die if they don’t work together to solve the riddles of each room. 

Escape Room is wall-to-wall typical predictable horror movie shit.  It’s basically a dressed-up version of Saw for millennials.  Yes, it’s another one of those deals where the characters are all atoning for their past sins, as each room is themed to their various misdeeds.  (A giant oven, a snowy wilderness lodge, an upside-down poolhall, etc.)

None of this really matters because you never care about any of the characters.  What is downright criminal is that the movie manages to waste to talents of the great Tyler Labine, who has the thankless role of the good ol’ boy of the group.  Only Deborah Ann Woll makes an impression as the soldier with PTSD.  Unlike Labine, she makes the most of her screen time and feels like the only character who has a pulse.  She’s also front-and-center during the film’s lone memorable set piece where she makes like an American Ninja Warrior and climbs on the ceiling… err… floor of the upside room.  Once her character plummeted to her doom, my interest in the flick pretty much plummeted too. 

This might’ve passed with a * ½ rating, but the ending totally sinks it.  It’s here where the villain, “The Games Master” (Yorick van Wageningen) shows up, and man, he is weak AF.  I mean even a strong and engaging villain (like Gregg Henry, who had a similar role in The Belko Experiment) couldn’t have saved the movie.  However, a decent villain would’ve at least ended things on a positive note, instead of leaving a sour taste in your mouth. 

In short, Escape Room needs a sign that says, “Do Not Enter”.

AKA:  Escape Game. 

FANTASY ISLAND (2020) **

 

No one asked for a big-screen, horror-tinged reboot of Fantasy Island from Blumhouse, but we got one anyway.  It wasn’t really a hit or anything, but because of COVID, it’s currently sitting on the list of the top ten highest grossing movies of the year with a paltry $27 million at the box office.  I tell you, 2020 is wild, y’all. 

Tourists come to the remote titular destination to live out their fantasies.  A pair of brothers want to party it up.  A woman wants a second chance at love.  A soldier wants to reconnect with his dad.  Fairly standard stuff.

Most of the horror aspects come from the girl who wants revenge on the bully who made her life miserable in high school.  These torture porn scenes eventually lead to zombie attacks, phantoms with black goop drooping out of their eye sockets, and some typical Monkey Paw/Faustian Bargain bullshit.  All this is surprisingly watchable for the first half or so, but everything begins to fall apart once the guests’ fantasies start to become interconnected.

The biggest problem is the length.  Seriously, there’s no way a horror movie version of Fantasy Island needed to be nearly two hours long, especially when the last act is practically a never-ending series of plot twists.  They could’ve easily lost a half-hour out of this thing and no one would’ve noticed. 

Another problem is that Michael Pena is sorely miscast as Mr. Rourke.  I mean nobody could top Ricardo Montalban, and Pena doesn’t even try.  He plays things way too seriously, and without his usual comedic energy he flounders, particularly when he’s trying to be subtly sinister.  The noticeable lack of the Tattoo character further helps to tarnish the memory of the original show.

It’s also hard to care about most of the guests or their fantasies, save for Maggie Q, who clearly thinks she’s starring in a different, better movie.  Heck, the flick even manages to waste Michael Rooker, who plays a detective who knows the island’s secret.  What a disreputable feat that is.

For my money, the greatest Fantasy Island spin-off was Daffy Duck’s Fantastic Island, and you can’t convince me otherwise. 

AKA:  Nightmare Island.

THE RETURN (1980) * ½

When Cybill Shepherd was a small girl, she saw a UFO fly over a hick New Mexico town.  Cybil grows up to be a scientist, and while she’s on the road researching extraterrestrial phenomenon, she winds up in the same little town twenty-five years later.  With the help of a drunk deputy (Jan-Michael Vincent), who just so happened to see the same UFO way back when, they try to get to the bottom of some cattle mutilations that’s spooking the local residents.  Eventually, they realize they’ve been brought together for a reason.

Directed by Greydon (Final Justice) Clark and co-written by Ken and Jim Wheat (who would later go on to write Pitch Black), The Return was riding on the coattails of the UFO craze of the late ‘70s as it touches on everything from alien abduction to cattle mutilation.  It also blatantly rips off other, better movies from the era.  The spaceship looks a lot like the one in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and one character brandishes a sawed-off version of a lightsaber. 

Because the Good Ol’ Boy genre was still in effect, there’s also a gratuitous car chase in the early going to pad out the running time and cater to the rednecks in the audience.  It’s not a terrible scene, but Clark uses way too much slow motion throughout the rest of the picture.  I guess he was trying to disguise how little action there really was.  Either that, or he was trying to draw things out until he got the movie to ninety minutes.

The Return starts off well enough, but it gets downright laborious in the middle section.  That wouldn’t have really mattered if Clark rallied the troops together for a big finale.  Instead, he delivers a damned Irritating non-ending that’s just downright insulting.  I mean the aliens wait twenty-five year to collect Vincent and Shepherd only to… drop them back off again?   What the hell?

Shepherd was only four years removed from Taxi Driver and she was already slumming in a Greydon Clark movie.  Vincent looks like he’s going the Method acting route during the scenes where he’s drinking six packs.  It’s nice when you can stay in character by staying drunk.  I guess he was trying to make up for the fact he had zero chemistry with Shepherd. 

The two leads aren’t much to write home about, but the supporting cast is kind of fun.  Martin Landau (who was also in Clark’s Without Warning) is kind of funny as the sheriff who tries to dunk his donut in his beer.  You can also have a ball watching Raymond Burr sleepwalking through his role as Cybill’s dad (and boss) as he apparently used a teleprompter to deliver his lines (and it shows).  Although I can’t recommend it by a longshot as it is dreadfully dull and mostly stupid, I insist that if you ever wanted to see Vincent Schiavelli stab Neville Brand through the face with a lightsaber, then you came to the right place.

Clark also has a cameo as one of Schiavelli’s victims. 

AKA:  The Alien’s Return.