Tag: Melissa McCarthy

Ghostbusters (2016)

Ghostbusters Poster 2016Turns out all those misogynistic Internet trolls were really worrying for nothing. Paul Feig’s “Ghostbusters” hardly remakes the original comedy classic and instead invents new characters and themes to serve the same concept. The fan service may even be the film’s weakest aspect. And guess what nerds? The girls in this movie are pretty funny after all.

Rather than try and fail to recreate Dr. Peter Venkman and company with a younger cast or with women, gone are Venkman’s playboy charms, his slacker attitude and his sarcastic one-liners that only Bill Murray can do. Instead, Feig’s All-Female “Ghostbusters” finds ways for women to be funny in the way they do best. Feig plays to the strengths of Kirsten Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones. Wiig plays equal parts awkward, timid and crazy as she would on SNL. McCarthy has the aggressive boisterousness and physical comedy necessary for such a wacky story. Jones gives the film a much needed black presence and down to Earth, angry attitude. And McKinnon proves to be the true breakout, a real weirdo constantly wearing a fiendish smirk, raised eyebrows, hair gone awry and a sense of mystery in her voice. She honestly might be possessed by a ghost. Continue reading “Ghostbusters (2016)”

Spy

Melissa McCarthy reteams with her Bridesmaids director Paul Feig for their latest spy spoof.

SPY_1SHEETPaul Feig’s “Spy” bills itself as a spy movie parody right in its title, but it veers closer to a traditional action-comedy vehicle for Melissa McCarthy than an out-and-out spoof. The elements are all there for a classic, but it lacks the tongue-in-cheek homages to cinema and zaniness of the OSS:117 movies or the sheer stupidity of even the Austin Powers movies. That said, Melissa McCarthy might be a shoo-in for the next James Bond once Daniel Craig steps aside.

Feig starts to reinvent the spy genre by imagining the other side of James Bond’s innate talents. Bradley Fine (Jude Law, donning a convincing American accent against expectations) is the suave CIA operative leading a sting on a Russian terrorist wielding a nuke. But he only manages to get so far because of who is speaking in his ear, Susan Cooper (McCarthy). Susan is Chloe O’Brien if she was stuck in Michael Scott’s office, where even at the CIA there are rats pooping through the ceiling and co-workers having loud birthday parties in the break room while Fine faces life and death stakes.

The Russian agent’s daughter Rayna (Rose Byrne) takes possession of the nuke, murders Fine and reveals she knows the identity of every other in-the-field CIA agent. Feeling responsible for his death, Cooper volunteers herself to track Rayna and intercept the nuke in her possession, with the hope she can remain anonymous.

It’s maybe more plot exposition than a spoof like this actually needs, but Feig quickly gets to the juicy spectacle of seeing McCarthy act. Some of her roles, even her breakout role in Feig’s “Bridesmaids”, have seen her go broad, vulgar and aggressive to a fault. But in “Spy” she plays the chipper and naïve Midwesterner that gives McCarthy her star power off screen. It’s that much more of a shock when she flips a switch and effortlessly hurls insults about people looking like a bag of dicks or dead hookers.

As Genevieve Koski put in her Dissolve review, it’s more than “fat lady go boom” jokes as the trailers have made it out to be. But Feig still offers up a bad mix of lazy stereotypes of slimy, Italian misogynists as well as gags simply at the expense of McCarthy’s ludicrous disguises.

As with many of these films, it’s the supporting cast that does all the heavy lifting. Rose Byrne continues to be a standout, earning the line of the movie when she flatly declares at one of Susan’s worse puns, “What a stupid fucking retarded toast.” Jason Statham as a rival agent arguably gives his most intense performance to date, endlessly one-upping himself with increasingly ridiculous secret agent feats he can’t seem to actually perform. And British comic Miranda Hart is poised as the breakout, a goofy looking best-friend type with about a foot on Rebel Wilson but all of her awkward charm.

“Bridesmaids” opened doors for actresses like McCarthy and Byrne to do just about anything, including make a goofy spy movie previously reserved for men. But then “Spy” isn’t exactly “Bridesmaids”, and Feig might’ve just gotten more mileage out of “Bridesmaids 2”.

3 stars

This is 40

Do you finally become the person you were always meant to be at the age of 40? Judd Apatow is now 45, and “This is 40,” his fourth film, is him struggling with his mid-life crisis. Apatow is finally showing his colors as a filmmaker, and the result is an unfinished, messy movie.

Maybe that’s life, or more specifically marriage, full of incomplete projects, spontaneous and tumultuous emotions and a life that seems to go on forever. But there are rocky, yet healthy relationships and then there are relationships when it’s really best to just pull the plug.

Something about “This is 40” is missing. Apatow knows how to write a good script, and he can create effortless chemistry between Paul Rudd and Apatow’s wife Leslie Mann because he’s writing so close to the heart. But when the film is another jumble of obscure pop culture minutiae (is “Lost” still a thing?), hipster weirdness (Charlyne Yi?), stream of consciousness vulgarity, nonsensical cameos (Billie Joe Armstrong?) and overwrought drama, all of which were problems in his last film “Funny People,” the act just starts to get old. And if this is film is about anything, it’s that getting old sucks.

Rudd plays Pete, who is turning 40 in a few days, just around the same time as his wife Debbie (Mann). Debbie chooses to lie about her age under the pretense that she doesn’t suddenly want to start shopping at Ann Taylor Loft, just one example of how Apatow’s film likes to throw out “40 stuff.”

Even the vulgarity, not just the pop culture references, is slated at an older audience. Annie Mumolo gets a big laugh talking about how she can no longer feel anything in her vagina, as does Melissa McCarthy during the film and during the credits as she spouts profanity to the school principal in defense of her son, but none of it has the outrageous appeal of an actual set piece that we might’ve seen in something like “Bridesmaids” or even parts of “Knocked Up.”

Apatow even stages these scenes as clearly improvised riffing, constantly cutting away and back for individual punch lines without actually weaving the comedy into the narrative.

So as Pete struggles with a failing record label and Debbie attempts to discover how $12,000 is missing from her clothing store, “This is 40” wallows in the minutiae of white people problems. Having high cholesterol or playing iPad games in the bathroom for too long sometimes earns about as much weight as the revelation of a surprise pregnancy.

Important and interesting characters like Pete’s father (Albert Brooks) or Debbie’s personal trainer (Jason Segel) come and go. Discussions about money, health and romance erupt into enormous, mounting conflicts and then dissipate into inconsequential drama about pop music the next.

Apatow doesn’t capture the feel of a generation or being a certain age as well as something like HBO’s “Girls,” which Apatow produces. It’s full of lovely, funny and charming moments, but is it a movie you’ll want to live with and cherish when you’re Apatow’s age?

2 ½ stars

Bridesmaids

Kristen Wiig is the funniest woman in the movies today, and one of the best character actors too. Such has long been the position of a number of critics, and her breakout comedy “Bridesmaids,” which she co-wrote, definitively proves it.

Wiig is a real trooper. She simply knows how to be funny and make anyone laugh, not just women. Her film, and yes, this is her film even though Judd Apatow produced it, knows how to be goofy, silly, smart, stupid, raunchy, vulgar and even heartfelt. It finds the perfect middle ground between bad chick flick and offensive bromance.

What “Bridesmaids” is not is “Sex and the City” at a wedding. Wiig’s Annie is a kind-hearted woman with a protective instinct and a competitive edge, especially when it comes to her childhood best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph). She differs from the bitchy and gossiping foursome on HBO’s hit show with a disdain for men, other women and children. She just shows an inherently believable female instinct to preserve her friendship in an awkward, yet civil manner. Continue reading “Bridesmaids”