comedy

From The PG Era to a Solid R: John Cena’s Promising Career in Raunchy Comedies

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There weren’t that many surprises for me in the new Amy Schumer-penned romcom Trainwreck. As was typical with almost all Judd Apatow comedies, the film was generally pleasant and supported a wealth of great gags & a wonderful cast, but also was in desperate need of some third-act editing. Recent over-exposure to Schumer’s more unrestrained writing on her sketch comedy TV show had me looking for something a little more (excuse the pun) off the rails from Trainwreck than the usual Apatow fare, though, so my expectations for something more unconventional were more than a little off base. I liked it; I just wasn’t caught unprepared for most of its content.

However, I was taken aback by the comedic performance of pro wrestler/in-the-flesh superhero John Cena. My surprise with Cena began before even the opening credits, when a trailer for an upcoming Amy Poehler/Tina Fey comedy called Sisters featured the typically clean-cut wrestler decorated in neck tats & a beanie, informing a hot-to-trot Fey that his safe word is “keep going”. That was just the start. In Trainwreck itself, Cena is even more subversive in dismantling his squeaky clean persona by appearing as he normally would in public, but with much raunchier content backing him up. It was difficult to determine from the film’s trailer how just how much of Cena we’d be seeing outside of that quotable “Mark Wahlberg” one-liner, but it turns out that we get to see way more of him than most people would’ve asked for. His character, Steven, engages (with varying degrees of success) in dirty talk, fully-nude on-screen lovemaking, undercutting questions about his own sexuality, and an intense pantomime of an ejaculation that will . . . not . . . end. As a fan of raunchy sex comedies, I found these gags just the right tone of playfully amusing. As a pro wrestling fan, I found them downright shocking.

For anyone who (understandably) has not been paying attention to the WWE since the creative heights of its so-called Attitude Era of the late 90s/early 00s, John Cena has more or less dominated the company’s narrative for the past decade. Shifting away from some of the more gruesomely violent & overtly sexual content of yesteryear, WWE sorta-unofficially promoted Cena as the face of the company. With his classic military looks & his character’s (almost) forgotten beginnings as a white rapper, Cena has been scripted within the ring to be more or less a superhero for young children to look up to. His stubborn refusal to “turn heel”, constant sloganizing about never giving up & always being respectful, and his never-ending championship victories appeal directly to younger fans, which drives a lot of older, nerdier smarks to disgust, deeming his reign as The PG Era. This behavior has spilled outside the ring as well. In his WWE Studios movies, Cena has always played the unblemished hero, like in his action movie vehicle The Marine, or a superhero version of himself, like in the Scooby-Doo/WWE crossover where he defeats a robotic ghost bear & an Indiana Jones style bolder with his bare hands. Then, there’s the fact that he in “real life” has more Make-a-Wish Foundation charity work than any other celebrity on record. In short, he is a ludicrously wholesome persona inside the ring & out.

The thing about Cena is that he really is likeable. There’s just way too much content out there about him being likeable. If you religiously follow WWE’s two flagship shows, Raw & SmackDown, (God help you) then there’s six hours of content on a weekly basis about how likeable John Cena is. And that’s not even counting the monthly Pay-Per-Views or the reality shows. That’s gotta wear even the most enthusiastic viewers down after a few years. Fortunately, though, things seem to be (gradually) changing. Cena’s niche at the company has been looking more like a respectable midcard position for the past few months (although, as I’m typing this now it looks like they’re pushing another championship match for him at this year’s SummerSlam) and he’s been putting in some of the best in-ring work of his career & helping get over lesser-known talents through his recent John Cena’s U.S. Open Challenge angle. What’s even more remarkable, though, is how he’s subverting his spotless image through comedies like Sisters & Trainwreck.

I first noticed this shift during the last few episodes of the now-legendary NBC comedy Parks & Recreation, where Cena appeared as himself on the episode “The Johnny Karate Super Awesome Musical Explosion Show” (one of my favorite episodes of the series). Cena did little to taint his superhero image in that appearance, but there was a spark of hope there in his willingness to make a fool of himself, when he so often manages to land on top. It also helped that Parks boasted a deep roster of talented comedians that could land Cena bit parts in worthwhile bigscreen comedies through networking. It’s tough to say whether it was Poehler’s Parks connection that helped Cena land his part in Sisters or the odd fact that Amy Schumer once dated pro wrestler Dolph Ziggler that helped him land his persona-shedding role in Trainwreck, but it couldn’t have hurt in either situation. No matter what the cause, Cena now seems to have his foot in the door for a life on the bigscreen (as opposed to WWE Studios’ straight-to-VOD dreck) and his career could be at a pivotal point because of it.

It’s a very rare feat for the WWE to successfully launch a career in Hollywood. Hulk Hogan is certainly the earliest example, but even he had a tough time making a lasting go of it after his ridiculous start in titles like No Holds Barred & Rocky III. Outside of a couple 90s goof-offs like Suburban Commando & Mr. Nanny, he hasn’t made much of a memorable mark outside the ring. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, on the other hand, has been a much clearer success story with his roles in franchises like The Fast & The Furious and G.I. Joe. Even The Rock’s been struggling to branch out & express himself as an artist, though. Despite a few wildly off-the-wall turns in films like Southland Tales and Pain & Gain, he’s been landing a lot of roles he would have been typecast in over a decade ago. Schlock like Hercules & San Andreas aren’t nearly enough of a step-up from his days as The Scorpion King, considering the talents he’s put on film in his his stranger roles.

Both The Rock & Hulk Hogan have long struggled to expand the scope of their acting careers once they got their foot in the door and now it’s John Cena’s turn to fight that battle. Starting his career in major films by degrading himself in raunchy comedies is honestly a brilliant first step in that direction. Cena’s showing us that his spotless superhero persona does not necessarily define him as a talent. Let’s face it; a lot of the kids who would’ve latched onto the original version of his current “Hustle, Loyalty, Respect” routine in its initial run would be in at least their late teens now, so it makes total sense that his content would grow up with them. I could be wrong & Cena could be slipping back into his old ways (starting as soon as SummerSlam next month), but there’s at the very least a glimmer of hope for change in his roles in Sisters & Trainwreck.

I’ve recently grown to like Cena despite my initial misgivings. His repetitive nature really isn’t all that unique within the world of pro wrestling, after all, and he can be really entertaining when he puts in his best work. Besides, it’s really difficult to deny the power of those Make-a-Wish numbers. I’d just also like to see him continue to branch out into these filthy, degenerate characters in goofy comedies until it’s no longer jarring to the audience. It might be his best chance at establishing himself outside of his roles as a “sports entertainer” and an eternal “good guy”. As Hogan & The Rock have proved time & time again, the WWE ring will always be there with open arms for whenever he needs it. There’s no reason, then, not to go out there & make himself vulnerable in a gross-out comedy or two. Judging by his work in Trainwreck alone, he’s already off to a great start.

-Brandon Ledet

Hot Rod (2007)

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fourstar

Although I’ve only ever heard good things about the Andy Samberg vehicle Hot Rod, I’ve been avoiding actually watching it, because, you know, Andy Samberg. I used to find Samberg occasionally funny on Saturday Night Live, but it was difficult to imagine him being tolerable for more than just a few minutes at a time. With the enthusiasm & self-restraint of a toddler hopped up on sugar, Samberg sounded like he could be a chore (babysitting, specifically) at a 90 min stretch. Having now actually seen Hot Rod, I can confirm that Samberg can be occasionally exhausting within the film, but his antics are broken up & balanced by enough other comedic voices that it’s not really a problem. Also, it helps that the movie is damn funny from start to finish.

It’s tempting to attribute Hot Rod‘s success to its supporting players (scene-stealing doofuses Bill Hader & Danny McBride, a ludicrously violent Ian McShane, Will Arnett as a perfect 80s cad- right down to the sunglasses & convertible, etc.), but this is unmistakably Andy Samberg’s movie. Playing an overgrown man-child who wants to be a daredevil just like his deceased father, Samberg’s general mode here is slapstick comedy. Often missing jumps on his dirtbike & puking from the pain, Samberg’s titular Rod is far from the Evil Kineival Jr. he imagines himself to be. There’s a lot of solid humor derived from the disparity between Rod’s confidence & his actual abilities, which allows you to have a good laugh even while he drowns, catches fire, or explodes. I went into the film not sure that I could handle a feature length project from Samberg, but I left wishing there were more just like it.

If I had to pinpoint Hot Rod‘s exact subgenre, I’d place it somewhere in the self-aware dumb comedy category. Titles like MacGruber, Tammy, and Gentlemen Broncos all come to mind in consideration of just how dumb & low class the film intentionally is. More than aware that it’s mostly good for a long string of non sequitur gags, Hot Rod tends to poke fun at itself whenever it has to actually become a real movie. For instance, most of the film boasts a killer 80s synthpop soundtrack, but towards the climax when Rod’s crew has their inevitable third act falling out, the score suddenly switches to melodramatic string arrangements. There’s also lines like “Have I ever shown you a picture of my dad? You gotta see it. He’s super dead,” and the fact that the entire plot is anchored in Rod’s attempts to raise money for his stepdad’s lifesaving surgery, just so he can get healthy enough to get his ass kicked. With Hot Rod, Samberg found the perfect vehicle for his manic toddler aesthetic and what could have easily been a chore turned out to be a thoroughly hilarious & surprisingly self-aware comedy I can see myself rewatching way more often than I should.

-Brandon Ledet

You and the Night (2014)

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twostar

I recently praised The Overnight for finding a surprisingly effective homogeneous blend of the black comedy & the light sex romp and now I appreciate it even more after watching the same blend fail so miserably in You and the Night. Where The Overnight utilizes its small cast & budget to enhance its own sense of uncomfortable intimacy, You and the Night points to its own financial shortcomings intentionally as a source of would-be humor. You and the Night is embarrassingly bad in a try-hard, underfunded art-house way that somehow makes an orgy hopelessly boring. At times it feels like a stage play and in other moments it could be mistaken for an oldschool horror anthology (with a lot more prosthetic cocks than usual), but the effect is the same either way. You and the Night tries to point to its own artificiality as a form of campy amusement, but the result is more embarrassing than it is funny.

The few moments that actually succeed happen when the film drops its own bullshit sense of detachment & sincerely tries to create something worth looking at. There’s a nice dream logic to its individual anthology segments that leads to some great shots like a green screen motorcycle ride, an Alice in Wonderland style ballet, and a trip to a phantom movie theater. These scenes feel just as fake as the too-cool-to-be-sincere orgy set-up that binds them, but they actually leave a lasting impression that the rest of the film is unlikely to.

A lot of You and the Night feels like a French comedy spoofing the nature of French comedies. It presents an exaggerated sense of detachment & coquetry that’s difficult to react to in any way outside a scoff. If I had caught this movie on late night cable as a teen I might’ve gotten a little more out of it. The idea of a dark comedy set at a pansexual fuckfest still holds a lot of drawing power for me now, which is how I ended up lazily watching it on Netflix in the first place. It’s unfortunate that You and the Night can’t deliver on the promise of that premise, though, and holds all sincerity & genuine effort at arm’s length. Even a few intense images & an incredible, synth-soaked score from M83 can’t save this film from its own sardonic self-amusement.

-Brandon Ledet

The Overnight (2015)

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fourstar

Usually, filmmakers have a tendency to keep their dark comedy & their sex romps separate. Full-blown sex comedies are usually mindless entertainment more concerned with raunchy gags than existential contemplation & while a black comedy might lighten the mood with an occassional sexual diversion (last year’s sadistic Cheap Thrills comes to mind), it’s rare that sex is its main focus. Even the recent raunch fest Wetlands, which I absolutely loved, kept its dark streak separate from its hedonism, a difficult task for a movie mostly remembered for its ungodly volume of on-screen semen. There might be a reluctance in blending the sexual with the menacing both because it’s awkward to take sex seriously & because sexual menace is difficult to play for a laugh for reasons that should be more than obvious without explanation.

In The Overnight, we have a surprisingly successful homogeneous blend of the black comedy & the sex romp, one where both elements are fused together completely instead of played off each other for a contrasting effect. The movie strikes a consistently terrifying tone through its depiction of underhanded sexual coercion, but somehow never loses grasp of the sillier raunch tangents you’d expect in a typical sex comedy. The effect of this powerful combination is that the sex gags are twice as funny as they’d normally play, thanks to the way they relieve overbearing tension of the the film’s sexual menace. In a lot of ways The Overnight follows the typical party out of bounds story structure of classic black comedies like The Exterminating Angel & Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? where in-over-their-heads guests feel compelled to remain at a social function even though the mood has soured, but the four characters at the center of this particular party out of bounds & their surprising tenderness for each other are unique to the genre. It’s a very well-written example of a very familiar story that I have a huge soft-spot for.

Besides the deft balance & gradual escalation of the razor sharp script, The Overnight‘s strongest asset is its cast. Adam Scott & Taylor Schilling are fantastic as the befuddled North Westerners struggling to decide if their Los Angeles party hosts are just having a California-style good time or if they’re swingers trying to take their newfound friends to bed. Jason Schwartzman & Judith Godrèche steal the show as the film’s sexual menace, making both sly & overt sexual advances through maneuevers as simple as a hand on a knee and as ludicrous as an art studio packed with abstract paintings of buttholes. It’s difficult to decide through most of The Overnight whether the L.A. couple is taking advantage of their more uptight out-of-towners guests or if they’re apparent sweetness is genuine. The tension between those two competing readings is a great dynamic and both tones could be read in some of the film’s best scenes, like in a stoned, strobe-lit dance party or in a literal dick-measuring contest by the poolside. It’s a testament to the film’s effectiveness that what lingers in your mind after the credits is not the film’s individual sex gags, but rather the implications of the relationships that form between the film’s two central couples. It’s both an equally fun & terrifying experience, as well as a must-see for fans of Jason Schwartzman at his most mischievous.

-Brandon Ledet

Spy (2015)

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fourstar

The absurdist genre-spoof comedy that hit its apex with cult classics like ZAZ’s Airplane & Top Secret has sadly become a dying art in recent years. Titles like Not Another Disaster Movie & Scary Movie 19 have tarnished the genre’s cultural cachet and more or less reduced its target audience to twelve year old boys who are emotionally stunted even for twelve year old boys. There have been a couple great exceptions in the past decade that give me hope for the genre’s future, though. The Judd Apatow comedy Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, while posed as a spoof of the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, was a brilliant take-down of the entire biopic genre. Walk Hard somehow included every single biopic cliché & American genre of music into one silly, but intellectually extensive spoof. The Will Forte vehicle MacGruber did more or less the same thing with the violent action flick genre that saw its heyday in the 1980s. The difference is that instead of limiting itself to brilliant send-ups of films like Commando & Cobra, MacGruber went a step further and created one of the most vile, pathetic protagonists in all of cinema. Both Walk Hard & MacGruber breathed fresh air into the genre-spoof, but they’re just two titles in a sea of bad examples.

After a single viewing of Spy at the theater, I’m already confident enough to include it along with Walk Hard & MacGruber on the list of the best spoof movies of the past decade. Sure, the James Bond international spy genre has been spoofed before in movies like Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Casino Royale (1967), and Our Man Flint, but Spy distinguishes itself from its predecessors by feeling distinctly modern. There’s a self-aware, crass irreverence to the film that feels distinctly 2015. Although it’s riffing on an entirely different genre, Spy is very much in the vein of MacGruber more than it is in the very 90s Austin Powers. Besides the general crassness of its script & general improv-enhanced vibe of its sense of humor, Spy also continues MacGruber’s undermining of alpha male action movie types that turns the typical hero (this time as a frivolous side character hilariously played by Jason Statham as opposed to MacGruber’s central protagonist) into vile worms of the lowest order. As Statham’s misogynist prick brags to the main character that he is immune to 179 varieties of poison & can water-ski blindfolded, it’s easy to see how an exact MacGruber successor would’ve been born if he was the central character, but Spy is smart to leave him sidelined while the more morally-palatable, but just as crass Melissa McCarthy serves as a much more relatable audience surrogate.

McCarthy hit her creative peak for me last year with the goofy road trip comedy Tammy, which felt like a wonderful culmination of everything she’s been building towards since Paul Feig’s breakout comedy Bridesmaids. Feig, who also worked with McCarthy on the similarly crass buddy cop comedy The Heat, finds an entirely new kind of role for her to play in Spy. In Tammy, McCarthy was a complete mess, more raccoon than human in her thoughtless pursuit of laze-about surface pleasures. While I found that character incredibly charming, she was a far cry from the in-over-her-head every-woman McCarthy plays so well in Spy. There are flashes of Tammy’s feral nature in Spy, but they’re dialed back enough to allow McCarthy to shine though as a relatable human being. With Spy, Feig has not only created a modern classic in genre spoofery, but also helped to open a door for an incredibly talented comedic actress who’s more or less hit a typecasting wall she hasn’t been able to sidestep since her wonderful turn on Gilmore Girls nearly a decade ago. Let’s hope he can keep the productive streak going when he works with her on their fourth film in a row together, the all-female cast Ghostbusters reboot.

-Brandon Ledet

Top Five (2014)

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three star
Sometimes a single, ill-advised scene can destroy an entire movie-going experience. There’s such a moment in the (excuse the pun) back end of Chris Rock’s magnum opus Top Five that involves hot sauce, a tampon, and a butthole. Without getting any further into the particulars, the scene begins with moderately cringe-worthy views on bisexuality & heterosexual prostate play that then veer into vile, regressive, homophobic territory almost immediately. In a dumb Farrelly Brothers comedy from over a decade ago the scene might be somewhat excusable or at least easy to ignore. In 2015, however, it just sours what was otherwise the most impressive work of Rock’s career so far.

What hurts so much about Top Five’s brief foray into casual homophobia (besides the hot sauce) is that the movie that surrounds it is so smart & so funny. Even once the sting of the horrendous gay gag wears off, there’s still an underlying sense of “they really should’ve known better” hanging in the air.  The rest of the film does a lot to cover up this ugly blemish, though. The movie’s single-day structure & use of flashbacks & interviews to piece together ideas about racial identity, sobriety, the nature of stand-up comedy, the highs & lows of fame, and the vulnerability of falling in love is a refreshing turn for a comedian whose talents have always been far too pronounced to be reduced to roles in dire films like Down to Earth & Grown Ups 2. Chris Rock wrote, directed, and headlined Top Five and you can really tell his heart was in this one. It’s the clearest his own voice has been outside of his stand-up specials & acclaimed sketch comedy show. That’s why it sucks so much that a single gag is its Achilles heel.

Of course, Rock has always been a button-pusher & there are bound to be people who can willfully overlook or even take pleasure in the regressive moment that soured the film for me. There’s certainly a lot to love. From the Hammy the Bear action-comedy spoofs to the beautiful image of Jerry Seinfeld making it rain inside of a NYC strip club, Top Five is packed to the gills with smart comedy writing and occasional gut-busting one-liners. The film itself even struggles with whether or not a movie’s surface pleasures can be overwhelmed by its political implications, supposing that “Sometimes a movie is just a movie,” a sentiment that is later countered with “It’s never just a movie.” Somehow, though, this level of self-awareness just makes its misstep hurt even worse.

I liked a lot of Top Five. The chemistry between Rock & co-star Rosario Dawson was lovely, the script was both intricate & refreshingly loose, the meta-text of Rock’s protagonist’s struggle with art & entertainment was on-point, the sequence where Rock’s protagonist bottoms out in Houston was gleefully dark, etc. It’s just a shame that a two minute sequence was enough to knock the whole thing down from Fantastic! to Pretty Okay for me. I guess I ended up siding with the “It’s never just a movie.” argument, a position I’m honestly not used to taking. It’s just difficult to ignore a fault so stupid in a film this smart. Also, after a long life of unhealthy Southern living, I’ve been accustomed to hot sauce being a trustworthy companion, a best friend, a culinary guiding light. It’s never been used to burn me so harshly before. That’s another offence worth getting chafed over, I assure you.

-Brandon Ledet

Hits (2015)

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twostar

Earlier this year, when I was complaining about the Academy Awards’ most recent Best Picture winner (Birdman), as people often do, I said “Pitch black misanthropy has worked for comedies like Happiness & Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in the past, but those movies are also, you know, funny. When a film hates all of humanity and only roughly 20% of its jokes land, it’s a remarkably dire experience. Just ask That’s My Boy or Nothing but Trouble. […] If you’re going to believe yourself to be above everyone & everything, you probably should at least succeed in the most basic requirements of your genre.” I still believe that to be true, but my resolve on the subject was somewhat tested by cult comedian David Cross’ directorial debut Hits. Hits was just as misanthropic as Birdman, lashing out at so many different kinds of people that there was seemingly no one left that it didn’t hate, but it was at least occasionally funny, something I didn’t find while watching Birdman. I’m not sure how to consolidate those two reactions & the resulting experience was more discomfort than anything.

“Based on a true story that hasn’t happened yet,” Hits employs a hugely talented cast (including Matt Walsh, David Koechner, Amy Sedaris, and Michael Cera) to attack basically everyone living in America. From right wing, small town yokels who drive big trucks & dream of being interviewed by Ellen Degeneris to mushy, liberal big city “citiots” who sell “feminist theory onesies” & artisanal cardboard, Hits hates everyone. It’s a scathing view of modern American culture where small town men are macho Tea Party dolts, big city liberals are effeminate hipsters, and women are obsessed with conceiving children or selling a sex tape as a means to become famous. Everything is scathing in Hits, but the film can be occasionally funny in its way. How can it not be? There’s too much comedic talent involved for all of the jokes to fall flat. It’s just hard to shake the feeling that the whole thing is hopelessly mean. For example, when a talentless white rapper is embarrassed by his peers (and then the world at large) on YouTube, the movie asks you to laugh. Instead, I felt bad for a teenager being bullied online. Maybe I’ve taken the anti-online bullying sentiment of The DUFF & Unfriended a little too close to heart. Or maybe I’m just not the bitter, hateful person Hits wants me to be.

I think the main problem with Hits’ hateful humor is that no one in the film ever seems even remotely like a real person. The idea of parodying modern Americans’ thirst for Internet fame could play well for black comedy, but when everything feels as fake and two dimensional as it does here, the idea just comes off as cheaply mean. What David Cross loses sight of in Hits is that every personality type depicted in the film, from bleeding heart liberals to secretly racist small town yokels, are actually real people. There’s no humanity in this hateful worldview . . . just hate. Sometimes its hate can be amusing, but without any sign that there’s anything worth being positive about in the world, and with the idea that everything is hopeless & cheap, Hits fails to mean much of anything. Instead, “like a wounded animal, it lashes out at every target within reach.” Even though it’s a lot less expensive & visually ambitious, Hits has what I’ll probably refer to as Birdman Syndrome from now on. The two films have very little in common structurally, but it’s easy to imagine them bitterly complaining to one another in a late night barroom about how the world has gone to shit. Hits just has the slight advantage of being the funnier of the vitriolic pair.

-Brandon Ledet

Apartment Troubles (2015)

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three star

Apartment Troubles is billed as a comedy, which makes sense in some ways. It certainly has a few cameos from comedians of note in it (specifically Jeffrey Tambor, Will Forte, and Megan Mullally). It’s got some typical indie comedy quirks, right down to the struggling artist profession of the protagonists & the CoCoRosie song on the soundtrack. It’s even got some great jokes from time to time, especially from Mullally, who is a hoot as a wealthy drunk who is really into gigantic wine glasses. On the other hand, it’s not an overwhelmingly funny movie, but more of a low-stakes drama that aims more for humorous melancholy than knee-slapping quips & gags. Apartment Troubles might be dressed up like a comedy, but it’s more quietly sad than anything.

The story begins with two NYC roommates confronted with eviction & the sudden death of a pet. As an aspiring actress & a visual artist with wealthy parents, the pair occupies a strange space between well-to-do & dead broke. These are people who can take a private jet to vacation in Los Angeles on a whim, but have to claim that they’re not eating because they’re “cleansing”, when the truth is they can’t afford food. While in LA, the two best friends start to bicker & rub each other the wrong way like an old married couple. At the beginning of the film they’re comfortable enough to ask for the shirt literally off each other’s backs (“Can I wear the shirt that you’re wearing?”), but by the end they’re sickened by each other’s mere presence (“If I feel your breath on my skin for one more minute, I’m going to vomit.”). It’s definitely easier to read this progression as a somber break-up story (between friends) than a riotous indie comedy.

In a void, Apartment Troubles is a pretty okay, low-key movie with some memorable performances in its fleeting Jeffrey Tambor, Will Forte, and Megan Mullally cameos. However it’s difficult not to draw comparisons to other emotionally-stunted NYC twentysomethings media that have been produced lately. If nothing else, I found myself wishing that I was watching Appropriate Behavior a second time instead. I realize this kind of direct comparison is completely unfair & it’s something I already said while reviewing the recent break-up drama X/Y, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Appropriate Behavior was something really special. Apartment Troubles is from the same funny-melancholy NYC break-up wheelhouse, but feels just okay at best. It’s the kind of film that’s pleasant, but destined for lazy afternoon Netflix viewing rather than the big accolades I’m hoping Appropriate Behavior garners.

-Brandon Ledet

The DUFF (2015)

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fourstar

Every time a teen clique comedy is released it suffers by comparison to the towering examples that came before it. By now it’s pretty much been accepted that Heathers was the genre’s prime example of the 1980s, Clueless ruled the 90s, and Mean Girls stole the heart of the 2000s. But what of the current decade? What’s the 2010’s link in that evolutionary chain? Who will step up & take the teen clique torch? Although it’s received little love since its release I was pretty enamored with the 2013 sex comedy The To Do List. It was smart, crass, and above all hilarious, but that doesn’t seem like the exact logical choice. Set in the summer after high school (in the 90s), The To Do List was more concerned with the sexual self-discovery of one character instead of the hierarchal structure of an entire student body. If anything The To Do List was a descendent of the raunchy teen sex comedy, following films like Porky’s & American Pie, and probably the best example of that genre yet. So what of the teen clique flick?

Enter The DUFF. Much like with Heathers, Clueless, and Mean Girls, The DUFF’s main concern is how petty & mean-spirited high school hierarchies can be and just how easily they can be broken down. The only problem with its secession in that chain of teen clique media is that it is very conscious of updating the genre for the 2010s, instead of letting the connection happen naturally. Using cultural markers like YouTube, Instagram, and Tumblr, The DUFF is seemingly dating itself in its own time period on purpose. It also intentionally looks back & borrows so many tropes from high school teen comedies of the past that I’m tempted to say it’s doing it for a laugh. Not only is the protagonist tutoring The Hot Guy in exchange for a makeover that will reveal that their really is a beautiful girl under all the geekery, but there’s also a Big Dance at the end, the Hot Guy totally falls for her, AND she’s writing a big expose about the entire experience for the school paper. Instead of aping just one teen comedy trope, The DUFF goes all in and tries to capture every single one it can.

That’s not to say that the film isn’t funny or original in its own right. With a little help from the always-dependable Allison Janney & the frequently funny Ken Jeong, The DUFF star Mae Whitman has found herself a breakout role here. She is just so damn funny in this movie. After years of watching Whitman kill it in small background roles, (literally fading into the background in the case of Arrested Development), it’s refreshing to see her get so much screen time here. And she owns it. Even with all of the high school movie clichés determining a rigid structure for the film, Whitman finds a way to make it work. A lot of people will be understandably turned off by the idea of the wonderfully talented Whitman starring in a film with a title that translates to “The Designated Ugly Fat Friend”, but the term is treated as an ugly thing within the film and Whitman does not take that shit lying down. When it’s revealed that she is the DUFF of her social circle, less because she is “fat” or “ugly” (she’s not and the movie doesn’t try to make her out to be) and more because she’s a B-Movie dork who’s obsessed with folks like Vincent Price & Bela Lugosi, she strikes back. She breaks off from her group & attempts to find herself with the help of her dumb, hot jock neighbor & eventual love interest.

The meanness of the film’s title matches the meanness of high school in a lot of ways & the script has a smart way of making light of it. Whitman isn’t the only DUFF in the film. There are also goth DUFFs, car DUFFs, and all kinds of DUFFs really. Once the protagonist discovers what she’s believes herself to be seen as, she starts to see other DUFFs everywhere. Her path to self-discovery may be a mere collection of throwback genre clichés, but it’s a tried & true formula that mostly serves as a platform for an onslaught of hilarious jokes. Sure, Whitman gets a makeover she didn’t need (including a straight-faced trying-on-clothes-at-the-mall montage), but she also threatens to murder & castrate anyone who tries to block her path to getting the life & the boy she wants. She’s bullied online, threatened by peers, and told to accept her place, but none of it kills her spirit. In the long run it’s hard to tell if The DUFF will be remembered as a decedent of the Heathers & Mean Girls pedigree (it certainly didn’t make a huge splash at the box office) or of admirable, but lesser teen clique fare like She’s All That & Ten Things I Hate About You, but it’s an easy pick for the best candidate at least since 2010’s Easy A.

-Brandon Ledet

Welcome to Me (2015)

/ swampflix / 1 Comment

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fourstar

A few years back there were frequently broadcast infomercials advertising a strange novelty product called The Perfect Polly. Polly, in case you somehow don’t remember, was a small plastic bird that would sing & move its head whenever prompted by its motion-activated sensors. The commercial was memorably amusing in the way infomercials sometimes are, especially in its assertions that Polly was a life-like substitute for real parakeets (it wasn’t), but there was more to it than that. It was also deeply sad. A lot of the ad consisted of lonely-looking people, mostly the elderly, interacting with the plastic bird as if it were their only friend in the world. As the narrator cheerily chirps, “By the window or on the shelf, with Perfect Polly you’re never by yourself!” the tone is decidedly dark. It makes total sense, then, the first image you see in the dark comedy Welcome to Me is a television playing the Perfect Polly ad in a lonely woman’s apartment.

An unmedicated recluse with borderline personality disorder, Welcome to Me’s protagonist Alice Klieg spends most of her days memorizing VHS recordings of old Oprah broadcasts alone in her apartment. She has a surprisingly strong support group that includes her parents, her ex-husband & his lover, and an unbelievably selfless best friend, but Alice is still for the most part alone in the world. This changes when she wins the lottery through a magical turn of events (the numbers on her winning ticket are announced in their exact sequence) and rashly decides to spend her new-found fortune by producing her own Oprah-like talk show at a local television station. The station is more than happy to oblige (read: take advantage of) her. Alice’s ambitions are realized and her own self-obsessed talk show, also titled Welcome to Me, begins to snowball in terms of scale & production costs. Described by her mother as an “emotional exhibitionist”, Alice uses the platform to recreate & interact with emotionally traumatic events from her past as well as offer a charmingly blunt brand of TMI like the tidbit, “I’ve been using masturbation as a sedative since 1991.” At first it’s expected that people will react to Alice’s exhibitionism like a jokey, Tim & Eric type of programming, but instead her brutal honesty cuts through the laughter and leaves her audiences stunned, especially by the time she’s cathartically performing veterinary surgeries live on the air.

Much like the Pretty Polly ad that kicks it all off, Welcome to Me starts off as oddly amusing, then goes pitch black in tone, then brings it back around to find a surprisingly strong balance between the two. Kristen Wiig’s central role as Alice might be her greatest performance on record, building off of her usual awkward brand of humor, but tempering it with a nuance that makes Alice deeply empathetic (kind of the way Melissa McCarthy’s schtick culminated in something special with last year’s Tammy). It helps that Wiig is surrounded by a stacked cast of character actors here. Produced by Will Ferrell & Adam McKay, Welcome to Me features supporting roles from Linda Cardellini, Wes Bentley, Jason Marsden, Tim Robbins, Alan Tudyk, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and a delightfully crass Joan Cusack as a no-nonsense television producer. In lesser hands the film could’ve devolved into empty, pointless indie quirk, but instead a much darker sense of humor is struck here and it’s one that hits a lot closer to home than you’d expect, given some of Kristen Wiig’s past work, which is often hilarious, but not always this touching.

-Brandon Ledet