Category: Movie Reviews

The Creator – Darn that eternal optimist in me

If any of you follow my reviews you probably figured out that I try to be an optimist, realist and truth-seeker. Those things often seem to be irreconcilable these days. It helps to be an over-thinker. So when I saw the amazing previews for The Creator I leaned over to Mrs Average Dude and whispered ‘I’m IN’. I was excited about this movie that seemed to have a spark of originality and some amazing special effects. When, oh when, will I ever learn to temper my expectations. That’s rhetorical. The answer is never. I will never learn.

The Creator was directed by Gareth Edwards, a veteran of grand scale sci-fi movies (Rogue One, Godzilla, The Last Jedi). I loved Rogue One, but Godzilla could have been a lot better. And don’t even get me started on The Last Jedi. So much evidence to the contrary, I still had hope that Edwards was trending in the right direction.

Still waiting for Frisbee: the movie

I’ve long opined that there is really nothing new coming out of Hollywood. Receipts: when they make movies out of the childhood favorite games Battleship (c’mon, man!) and Rock Em Sock Em Robots (Real Steel, which I actually liked a lot) you can’t be faulted for coming to that conclusion. And even though The Creator kind of parallels the movie ‘A.I.’ (an under-rated Spielberg piece) it still felt like a story angle that had not been beaten to death. Maybe it’s more fair to say that it combined elements of A.I./Terminator/The Matrix and then added a dash of Platoon/Commando/Apocalypse Now. Point is, there were a lot of ingredients going into this sci-fi gumbo. And, as I’ve learned, sometimes a good gumbo can be a bit overwhelming.

I’m kind of at a loss to explain why The Creator didn’t quite work. My best analysis says that it had so much really awesome CGI and special effects that it had to sacrifice too much human character development. Or cyborg character development. But it’s more than that. It feels like the message of this movie is that AI Life Matters, which I’m not afraid to say might be the biggest WTF moment since…well, don’t get me started on that, either. Unsure if Edwards truly believes that or if he just found a new MacGuffin. If it was the latter, bravo. That’s some out of the box thinking. If it’s the former…seek help.

A parallel of downfalls

One of the parallels of The Creator and A.I. is that they both wanted to be kind of artsy-fartsy. I like a good artsy-fartsy movie, don’t get me wrong. But sci-fi and artsy-fartsy do not usually mix well (was Clockwork Orange artsy-fartsy? I think maybe).

Additionally, I am very much NOT a fan of the whole ‘chapters within a movie’ shtick. Having a black-screen pop up and tell me the movie is shifting focus/timestamp/character arc only reminds me that I’m sitting in a theater. And I’ve said it thousand times, I want to immerse myself in a the movie to the point where the rest of the world falls away for a couple of hours. For me, seeing a new chapter placard is jarring.

I was powerless not to get choked up

What I liked about The Creator: Madeleine Yuna Voyles. Wow, what a little actress. In a movie that struggled to evoke emotions that it so desperately tried to evoke, she was the only one to do it. MYV was so charming and vulnerable you could not help but get invested in her journey.

I also really liked the battle setting of ‘New Asia’. the Creator is reminiscent of all the powerful Vietnam-era war movies that we love and superbly updated with tech that’s fresh, sleek and cool. In the sci-fi/CGI world where tech of gargantuan size has become yawningly common, Edwards managed to put it in an uncommon setting and shoot it in a way that actually made it look impressive again.

After much thought, I’m giving The Creator a 3 out of 5. This could have easily been a 4.5/5 if not for the aforementioned misses. A near miss and a disappointment, no doubt. But certainly not without some really great redeeming qualities.

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ADMR – Dumb Money is TOTALLY worth the money

As promised, Average Dude is giving you a twofer this week and I am happy to be able to heartily recommend Dumb Money for your consumption.

This story should be fresh in everyone’s memory, as it happened a mere two-ish years ago during the height of the pandemic. Dumb Money is the story of a lone content creator named Keith Gill (Paul Dano), who went by the online sobriquet ‘Roaring Kitty’. He had some small following as an ‘everyman’ stock market educator, sharing his routine and methods on how to research and track stocks (all disclaimers were issued, btw). He always showed his receipts after market closing. Roaring Kitty seemed to be on the level as a truly good guy, fully transparent.

NERDS UNITE!

And so it happened that one day, he saw a stock that he believed to be undervalued and sank his life savings into it (something like $50k). Using a service called Robin Hood run by Vlad Tenev (a marvelously douchy performance by Sebastian Stan), which purported to allow stock transactions with no fees, Gill invested in GameStop (GME) and posted his purchase and reasons for the decision on his podcast (‘I like the stock!’). And that’s when things got interesting. Really, really interesting.

According to the movie (and all news stories that I can remember) GameStop stock became the focal point of an amazing little guy movement. Using the Robin Hood app, small investors (which have been dubbed ‘Dumb Money’ by the big investment firms) started investing in GameStop. Like, a lot.

And the little guys made money. Like, a LOT.

This caught the attention of one of the big hedge fund firm managers Gabe Plotkin (played by Seth Rogen) who saw an opportunity to make money by basically betting on GameStop to lose (called shorting the stock). The more money the giant hedge fund poured into GameStop, the more little guy investors bought and held the stock. A true organic uprising of the masses standing their ground and refusing to ‘take the money and run’.

Inspiring stuff

So, the crux of this story is ‘who will prevail? The little guy(s) who battle the established financial elites? Or Melvin Capital and their big hedge fund cronies, with all their expertise and money and power?’ If you followed this story at all, you already know the answer to this. The story seemed to catch the world’s attention for a hot minute and then the MSM moved on to the next shiny object. This movie gives us all the closure that we had forgotten we wanted. We got to see some resolution to the epic. And I have to say, it was really satisfying.

A perfect analogy for movies in general

Was Dumb Money enough to give the Average Dude hope that we – the unwashed masses – can triumph over the elitists of the world? Not really. The game is just too rigged against us. The best that we can hope for is an occasional lightning strike like Roaring Kitty to give the big shots a well-deserved black eye. It may not change the overall outcome but man, is it satisfying in the moment.

I’m giving Dumb Money a heartfelt 4 out of 5. Everybody (except for the Coriolanus Snows of the world) loves an underdog. And Dumb Money is a real-life underdog story that literally could have happened to any of us. That is comforting and some tasty food for thought.

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This week’s offering is on A Haunting In Venice. But first…

All apologies to my readers…I was AWOL last week. I try very hard to hit the pleather seats and chomp corn every single week. Sometimes life intervenes. In this case, we were all hands on deck to prepare for a massive engagement party at Average Dude’s house…which included finishing out the Average Dude’s Mancave (which we have dubbed ‘The Screening Room’). It was a big task and a big hit. Average Dude is very proud.

But my dedication to you is resolute. Look for a second review later in the week.

Mrs. Average Dude is a crafty lass (not in the derogatory way). She absolutey is in her element when decorating for an event. And Halloween is her unchallenged favorite event. To help her get into the spirit of the Season of the Witch (see what I did there?) she wanted to go see a scary movie. She’s not big at all on splatter movies (nor am I, tbh) so she chose A Haunting In Venice to satisfy the craving. I’m not sure that her craving was sated. Mine sure wasn’t.

Hercule! Hercule! Hercule! (did it again, somebody is going to have to stop me…)

A Haunting in Venice was directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot, a French detective of great renown. You might think of him as France’s weak answer to Sherlock Holmes. And yes, I know Poirot appeared in 86 works by Agatha Christie. I did not even know the name Hercule Poirot before this movie so I said what I said.

In honesty, I had no idea this was an Agatha Christie movie. If I had, my expectations might have been different. But the end result would probably have been the same, maybe worse. Christie is widely considered the gold standard of ‘whodunnit’ fiction. If I had plopped down in my seat with that in mind, I might have turned my analytical knob up to 11 (I did it again…can’t help myself).

So, was A Haunting in Venice a quality whodunnit? This is where the ‘meh’ comes in. It wasn’t the worst I’ve ever seen, but guessing the culprit was just that, a guess. There were definitely not enough ‘clues’ to allow us to piece it all together. Not even close. Scooby Doo did it just as well.

Giving A Haunting in Venice a bit of a break here…it’s got to be nigh impossible to do a proper whodunnit these days. We as an audience have become so used to forgiving plot holes, editing oopsies and suspension of disbelief that pretty much any of the clues could have been overlooked as mistakes. The quality bar has been set appaullingly low. We have nobody to blame but ourselves for allowing it to happen.

I’ll spare you all a rundown of individual cast members. I’m sure they will thank me later…

So, was there anything to truly like about A Haunting in Venice? Nothing that comes easlily to mind, I’m afraid. The dialogue seemed over-rehearsed, if that makes sense. Branagh rattled off his lines in a decent French accent, but the words sounded too polished, too perfectly metered. Is that a characteristic of Poirot? Maybe. But in the moment, it all just felt rushed, like a bad actor would do. I don’t think Branagh is a bad actor so I have to assume it was a director’s choice. And it seemed to be a contageous quirk, because Tina Fey fell into the same habit. So, if it was a director’s choice, it missed badly. For the Average Dude, at least.

If pressed to find a positive in this, I’d have to say that at least I’ve now been warned that Agatha Christie movies are not going to be given the attention they deserve as far as writing goes (and it goes a long way, obviously). In a world that has become okay with sub-mediocre writing in our entertainment, a true artist like Christie is just not going to thrive. Sad but true, I think.

I’m giving A Haunting in Venice a 2 out of 5 and will say that, unless you are a ride or die fan of Agatha Christie or Hercule Poirot, skip it. At any time. Even when it shows up on streaming (should be a couple of weeks from now, I’m guessing).

Let’s just put this one behind us and move on to the second helping of Average Dude Movie Reviews, coming tomorrow. I promise you, it will be worth your time and corn!

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So…the Average Dude is many things…writer, artist, movie afficionado extraordinaire, golf hacker, budding entrepreneur, fantasy football demi-deity and so on. But what I am most in life is a family man. I love my family above myself. So when Mrs Average Dude was excited to go see My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3, how could I say no? She has so very dutifully accompanied me to see almost every movie I’ve reviewed (she skipped Fast X and I continue to remind her that she missed out). And to be fair, I did see MBFGW 1 &2. I didn’t pay to see them in theater, of course. But I remember that I didn’t hate them.

(And, I’m not saying that I spray Windex on lots of stuff you wouldn’t normally spray it on, but I’m also not saying that I don’t. Full disclosure, as always.)

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 is the sequel that we never cared enough to know we didn’t need

MBFGW was released over two decades ago (in 2002) and the first sequel released 14 years later. For a long awaited (ahem) second helping of souvlaki (I looked it up…think gyro without the pita) it was not too bad. Focusing on Gus and Maria was nice because, frankly, Toula and Ian were the least interesting characters of the lot. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 arrives in theaters in 2023 and it is amazing that a lot of the original cast were still around and able to participate. Sadly, one of the missing was the very heart of the Portokalos family. RIP, Gus. I truly loved you.

Heart and Soul

With the heart that holds the family together gone, apparently the soul departed as well. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 was all over the place and never found any real identity. Was it about who would now lead the family? Was it about honoring Gus’s memory (on multiple fronts, apparently)? Was it about connecting with distant family? Was it about young love? Old love? Forbidden love (x2)? An existential soul-search? Believing in yourself? Finding yourself? Was it about saving the past or evolving? Immigrant rights or overcoming bigotry? Was it about how to care for an elderly loved one with some stage of dementia? Yes to all of thee above. And unfortunately, none were done well.

SURPRISE, SURPRISE, SURPRISE!

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 was a master class in trying to cram way too much into a movie and giving nothing time to flourish. So many plates spinning that I can’t even list them all. Every single character seemed to have their own mission, secret or internal dilemma. And in the final reel, they all were resolved – weakly – because ‘the movie is ending sooo SHAZAM! RESOLUTION!’

As disappointing as that was, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 also shoe-horned in a whole handful of new characters that had their own storylines to flesh out. One of which was apparently meant to check a certain box. The ham-fisted inclusion of the whole trans question only served to make what could have been an interesting character shallow. That sounds contradictory but it isn’t.

In fairness to Mrs Average Dude, I should tell you that she liked MBFGW3. Am I missing something? Some emotional disconnect inherent in the male mind? Maybe. I am a dude after all so probably. But since I didn’t hate MBFGW 1&2, I feel like I have sufficient cred to be able to say that My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 was a big fat Greek mess and doesn’t add anything to the quirky characters we loved and, in fact, detracted from them. I’m giving My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 a shakey 2 out of 5. I’m glad now that Gus wasn’t in this movie. I don’t think even he could have weathered this unscathed.

Oh, and just btw, they managed to jam an actual Greek (sort of) wedding in at the finish line. Otherwise, they would have had to call it My Big Fat Greek Vacation…that would have worked, actually. They need to have me on speed dial. Seriously.

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Blue Beetle bugs me

I’m not going to pull any punches here, gonna hit you with it right out of the gate. Blue Beetle is not a good movie. It’s not horrible (see the Meg 2 for horrible). It’s just…not good. And in its not goodness, it exposes an awful – and hopefully brief – direction for Hollywood. I’m putting this hot take out there and it might get me in trouble. But that’s okay. It’s not said with any malice whatsoever and predicated on my iron-clad promise to tell the truth.

Blue Beetle was created primarily with the Latino community in focus. To back up that assertion, I would point out that there was, as far as I could see, one single non-Latino star – Susan Sarandon (we’ll get to her later). There were countless references and asides that went over my head and who knows how many I didn’t even know I should be wondering about. Even the credits were overwhelmingly – almost exclusively – Latino talent. I’m not saying that Latino actors and industry workers are bad. There are tons of movies featuring Latino talent that are amazing. Encanto, the two Spiderverse movies, Stand and Deliver, both Zorros, I could go on and on. I’m saying that aiming it at them is not necessarily a recipe for success. It feels like pandering and it often excludes the largest viewing demograph out there, which almost always results in lower box office numbers.

But it gets worse. Blue Beetle tried to make this movie about Latinos by drawing from elements of other successful movies. This only served to give it a terminal identity crisis. When I say it is a mish-mash, I’m not kidding. Here are those receipts as promised:

The Green Beetle

At first, I felt like I was watching a retelling of Green Lantern. Okay, not a successful movie, granted. But the comparison is fair. An alien artifact drops to earth and gets to decide who it wants as its champion. At least the costume was mostly not animated. On the downside, it clearly looked rubber. Pick your poison, I guess.

Iron Beetle

The aforementioned Blue Beetle scarab was technological in nature. Once selected, our hero has to learn how to fly and appropriately use his new tech. He also has a Jarvis-like AI entity attached (literally) that he talks to in his very Iron Man like display in his helmet. Or mask. Or nanotech. Whatevs.

The Blue Panther

What seemed to me to be the most glaring and out of place ripoff was the spiritual plane that Jaimie Reyes (Xolo Maridueña) entered to chat with a relative. Where the ‘Great Veldt’ from Black Panther was applicable to the culture and adequately fleshed out, Blue Beetle seemed to randomly jam it into the story. It was unexpected and didn’t quite fit the ‘family’ narrative for this movie. Not that more was needed. The importance of family was well established early on.

Milagro-fina

Jamie’s sister Milagro Reyes (Belissa Escobedo) was a wise-cracking second banana that possessed all the annoyance of Awkwafina without any of the charm (there was a moment of literal bathroom humor that I’m only slightly ashamed to say I laughed at).

As for the rest of the movie, Blue Beetle clearly followed the superhero formula. Soulless villain pursuing world-conquering power (Iron Man, Winter Soldier, Black Panther, Age of Ultron, need I go on?) In Blue Beetle, the villain was corporate in nature and portrayed by Susan Sarandon in a performance as lacking in effort as I have ever seen. Was it really that awful? I’m afraid so, Janet. Funny how the only caucasian person in the movie was evil and rich but whatevs. It’s kind of cliche at this point.

So, what was there to like about Blue Beetle? There were a couple of mid-points (I can’t really call them high points). George Lopez played Uncle Rudy, a seminal MacGuffin on which much of the plot relied. I dig him because he’s not affraid to make fun of himself and Latino tropes without debasing them. We should all be so self-effacing and willing to laugh at ourselves.

There is also Nana Reyes (Adriana Barraza) who first seemed like a very generic throw-away character but was a clever reminder to not judge a book by its cover and also respect the wisdom and experience of your elders. That’s all I’ll say about that. I’ll let you discover this gem on your own.

There’s not much else to say about this hodge-podge of other superhero flicks except to say that, in every instance, it was done much better. Once again, the sum of the refurbed parts does not a greater whole make. Even though I saw this coming, I still feel like I’ve been crane-kicked in the face.

And also, it’s not bad to make a movie highlighting an underserved segment of society. But this movie didn’t do it well. That’s its greatest downfall. I’m giving Blue Beetle a 2/5. And will someone please explain to me what was going on with the claymation and why it should have been entertaining? Thanks in advance.

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Post Review comment: A lot of reviewers I follow (ALWAYS after my own review, btw) have given this movie high marks. I don’t get that, myself. But since I am open to considering all opinions (especially conflicting ones), I wanted to present that to you all. In the end, I think I’m more ‘One Of You’ than they are (or have become, maybe that’s more accurate). And being one of ‘us’, I’m invested in not being swayed by anything other than ‘what do we enjoy?’ Challenge me in good faith and we’ll discuss! ~ Average Dude

The Meg 2: The Trench ain’t deep

Rodman Philbrick is an American author whom I had never heard of until I Googled quotes about bad things. He once wrote “I don’t suppose anybody really knows how bad a thing can be until it actually happens.”. A generic truth that could have been written specifically about The Meg 2: The Trench. Me sitting through this movie actually happened and I didn’t really know how bad it could be. But oh, how I know it now.

Full disclosure, I suspected badness from the git-go. I saw Meg the first back in 2018. It was an August movie, which was strike one. Everyone knows that movies released in August and February are almost exclusively poop-trash (with the notable exceptions of Guardians of the Galaxy – August 2014, and Deadpool – February 2016). Those months are the movie ‘dead zone’. The Meg was as ‘meh’ as ‘meh can get, a total throwaway show. I literally only remembered that Jason Statham and a big shark were in it. But, because I love you all THIS MUCH, I took a bullet for you with The Meg 2: The Trench. Greater love hath no man…

Because of legal representation…

The Meg 2: The Trench again starred Jason Statham and Cliff Curtis (and a few others that I’ve been informed by their lawyers I must keep out of any reference to this movie). Once again, they are called to ‘the trench’, a super deep pit with a layer of super-cold water that keeps the super shark from menacing the oceans, lakes, streams and public swimming pools of earth. That’s science. This time around, the intrepid gang has somehow captured a female meg and is keeping it in a lagoon like Shamu. For study, of course. And apparently training. And this is the point where I knew things were going to go terribly, terribly wrong for me.

The Meg 2; The Trench starts out as a fairly benign, formulaic monster movie in the vein of Rampage, Kong and the like. Well-meaning scientists want to study this wonder of nature because climate. Nefarious forces embedded in the group of good-guys scheme to subvert the science for financial gains. Deckard Shaw/Handsome Rob/Lee Christmas/Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham always plays the same guy, which I’m totally good with) just happens to be visiting his Meg the First pals when the evil cabal plans come to fruition. Hi-tech adventure ensues (which was a total waste of Statham’s kick-@$$ action style, which I am NOT good with) and the evil cabal is thwarted. The End.

Except it wasn’t. To the detriment of everyone involved.

Had The Meg 2: The Trench ended there, it would have been exactly what I expected from a B movie second pass released in August. But for reasons unimaginable, the movie devolved into Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus. I’m guessing here…I never saw that Sci Fi channel masterwork even though it starred Debbie Gibson (Shake Your Love) and Lorenzo Lamas (star of I have no frickin’ idea).

To further up the ante, we have a school of super sharks threatening a nearby vacation paradise. Now, I know it seems illogical to point out that being ON LAND would be kryptonite to the salt water assassins (there are some other trench-dwellers that have legs and can breathe oxygen because science). But we watchers had long abandoned anything like logic. Or coherent story-telling expectations. Or self-esteem.

I could truly go on and on with examples that seem to suggest that this movie was actually written by a 5th grade class’ suggestions pulled from a hat. I think you all get the point. The overuse of conveniently available MacGuffins is mind-boggling. Worse, these MacGuffins were also created by 5th graders who got D’s in science. If I hadn’t already checked out by the third reel…

RIP Handsome Rob…

I love me some Jason Statham. Even though he is the same guy in all of his movies, I still take notice when I see his name on the marque. I loved Hobbs and Shaw. Fight me. So, seeing Statham jetison every ounce of work integrity he had by signing on for this chum bucket movie just hurts the heart. I don’t know how or if he can bounce back from this. Maybe if he saves the life of Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell.

Sometimes bad is good. But not today

I watched the movie Machete way back in 2010 (Sept 3, which is still in the Dead Zone). That was a rare, rare bad movie that was so bad it was good. It’s a highly subjective category but I feel safe in proclaiming Machete as such if viewed under the right circumstances. It almost feels like that’s what The Meg 2: The Trench was going for. Sadly, that was never going to work.

If I am pressed to find something that I liked about this movie experience, I’m going to have to cheat just a little. I saw this on Cheapskate Tuesdays at the 10 AM showing. I was one of two moviegoers in the building that early and the only one in my theater. It was nice. The smell of old and new popcorn. The squeak of my arm on cool theater seats. The whisper of my sneakers on the carpet. The muzak that sounded overloud in the empty lobby. All of these things were memories of the best jobs in my youth. So awesome.

I am giving The Meg 2: The Trench a .5 out of 5 (if there had been even one gratuitious boob in it, the number would be 0). At least the little yorkie in reel 3 survived and that’s worth a .5. I implore you…if you like Jason Statham movies at all, avoid this at all costs. Together, we might be able to save a career.

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Like almost everyone else on planet earth and parts of the known galaxy, I’ve heard the outraged opinions about the Barbie movie from both the right and the left. And to be fair, there is some truth to a lot of it. I will do my very best to avoid that. I mean, enough is enough, right? I do not subscribe to the tribalist mindset. Not only do I believe we can bring both tribes together, I think we have to. If we are going to survive as a country and a species, we have to find our way back from the edge.

In so saying, I appreciate a lot of what the Barbie movie had to offer. Did I like it? Parts of it, I did. Were there parts that were poop-trash? Yeah, there were, for sure. But try, if you can, to set aside your biases and pretend that this is just a movie about a child’s doll. Because at its core, that is exactly what it is.

Check your lenses at the concessions stand

Advice to the right-wing Barbie movie haters…you need to stop viewing this through the lense of the problems of current culture. Remember, movies are (for the most part) supposed to be an escape from those things. If you do that, there is a movie here that has some redeeming qualities.

Offering advice to Hollywood about excising woke from their movies is a lesson in futility. And, in this case, the clash of political ideolgies only served to sell more tickets for Barbie. Was it part of the plan for this movie to become a standard-bearer for wokeness? Don’t know. What I do know is that this movie contained a metric shite-ton of wokeness even as it overtly ridiculed same. I found this to be curious, hilarious and disheartening in turn. Everything about this movie is appealing to a certain sub-culture of society. Again, this is a child’s toy. Specifically, a female child’s toy. That there are a lot of adult men excited for this movie is…well…insert eye-roll here.

Okay, now that I have that all out of the way, lets look at the things I liked about Barbie. From the git-go, this movie reminded me of Wreck-It-Ralph…an inanimate thing (or block of code that has not achieved AI status…yet) that has now realized that there is a bigger existence than previously imagined. This part was fun. Toy Story did it better, but whatever.

‘There is no Ken without Barbie’

The status of Ken as an accessory of Barbie and his existential angst over that was hilarious. And in the world of Barbie, totally true. Nothing to get bent out of shape over. Or to cheer for. Remember…it’s Barbieworld. The world of a little girl. Feminists who love this as a champion of their cause or right-wing anti-wokers alike are overlooking the fact that Kenneth Sean ‘Ken’ Carson has been a Barbie accessory for 62 years. Stop trying to coopt him for your respective causes. Jeez.

Then Barbie took a page from Pleasantville. Societal norms are tested and shattered by this new truth. Cartoonish emotional reactions ensue: fear, disgust, denial, rejection. Margo Robbie portrayed a sentient child toy’s journey through all these stages quite well. Again, we saw it done to perfection with Buzz Lightyear, but whatever.

Sometimes less is more

Finally, the Barbie movie shoehorned Pinocchio in. Having seen and heard too much, Barbie couldn’t be happy with her life of ease and excess and perfection. The fog of illusion was dispersed. No closing Pandora’s box (giggety). Adding this element is a lot to digest in one movie and something had to suffer. In retrospect, it might have been a good idea to explore this path in Barbie 2: the Awakening. But whatever.

There is a lot more that could have been left out of the Barbie movie that would have made it so much better and so much less of a controversy. The woke-embracing, angry, entitled bully-child was cliche’ and unnecessary. Worse, it was poorly done. Same thing with the Mattel boardroom filled with corportate suckups headed by a man-child (played by a completely un-funny Will Ferrell). Totally gratuitous. And don’t get me started on the mega-cringe anti-patriarchy diatribe spewed in the final reel. Puh. Leez.

To try and sum it all up and failing miserably…

I get that maybe adult women would want to see Barbie. Nostalgia. Fashion. Girl stuff. Even a reminder that women can achieve greatness in their own right. Not that anyone needed that reminder. It’s common knowledge at this point and Barbie over the decades had something to do with that. Much in the same way, dudes love seeing a Transformers or G.I. Joe movie. Cool tech toys come to life. ‘Splosions. Good childhood memories. It’s not quite the same but you get the point.

Trying to turn Barbie into a woke commentary on patriarchy fails utterly because in doing that you have to recognize that Barbieworld is a matriarchy on steroids. Or estrogen. Or whatever. You can’t really promote the one without recognizing the other. That would be blatant hypocrisy. Sadly, this movie tried to do exactly that. Even the most dishonest intellectual observation has to acknowledge this. Just a gentle scratch of the surface on the Barbie movie reveals so much that is antithetical to woke ideology that it melts my brain. Which brings me to my final point…

It kind of annoys me when I see the major right-wing talking heads trying to brow-beat us with the anti-woke battle cry. My dudes, we get it. We got it a long time ago. Believe it or not, we are smart enough to see what you all see and brave enough to take appropriate action. And we are smart enough to watch the Barbie movie and not get unconsciously indoctrinated into the ranks of woke. Let a word to the wise be enough and trust us.

After all of this, I’m giving Barbie a 3/5. There’s a lot of fun in this movie. Unfortunately, it gets blunted or outright abandoned in the third reel (that’s an ancient projectionist term. Look it up). Enjoy it if you dare. Remember that doll and movie alike are pretty much just plastic. And sorry for the Pandora’s box (giggety) joke. Couldn’t help myself.

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Okay, I admit that I am as susceptable to movie marketing blitzes as anyone, even while being fully aware of them. So given a monumentally difficult choice* between seeing Oppenheimer and Barbie, I chose the one I heard the most positie buzz about. I saw Oppenheimer.

*Dude’s note – that is a facetious statement. I am putting off seeing Barbie until Tuesday ‘Cheapskate Day’ at my local moviehaus. I am not looking forward to this. I do it for you. You’re welcome.

Oppenheimer is a biopic helmed by the awesome Chris Nolan and starring the equally talented Cillian Murphy as Robbert ‘Bobby’ Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer is the titular head of the Manhattan Project, the US entry in a horserace with the Germans to create an atomic bomb. The media blitz focused primarily on Murphy’s role, with a smattering of Matt Damon and Emily Blunt thrown in for variety’s sake. What I didn’t know, however, was that those three were just the tip of the iceberg. Oppenheimer is literally exploding with talent unheralded. I will go as far as to say that some of these performances were the best of this movie.

I am…RDJ.

To wit, I point out the spectacular performance of one Robert Downey Jr. RDJ expertly played not one, but two different shades of Lewis Strauss, a Jewish-American philanthropist who eventually became a member of the US Atomic Energy Commission and who, for unclear reasons, became an advarsary of Oppenheimer.

Flo Pugh does it all. Literally.

The next pleasant surprise was Florence Pugh, powerfully playing Berkley student and card-carrying communist Jean Tatlock. Tatlock was Oppenheimers romantic obsession/sexual fixation and Pugh did indeed play the part with…ahem…gusto. I’ll never look at Black Widow’s sister the same again.

Do you really want me to point them all out for you?

Other very notable players in this movie were Josh Hartnett (good to see him again), Casey Affleck, Kenneth Branagh, Jack Quaid, David Dastmalchian, Mathew Modine, Scott Grimes, Michael Angarano and even Rami Malek had a tiny part that was fun to see. I could go on for a minute, but you get the point. And I love unannounced cameos. I may even someday do a blogpost of my favorites over the years. But I digress. The point is, it almost seems like Chris Nolan sat outside the sound stage sipping a mojito and just grabbed any actor that happened to be walking by and threw them in. I like it a lot.

So, the magnificent star-power aside, on to the movie itself. I kind of felt like it was having trouble finding itself. It was a biopic, sure. But in trying to add a little something – I guess? – to make a tough-topic biopic like Oppenheimer his own, Nolan added some stuff that I genuinely had me asking myself ‘whut the whut?’ Unnecessary to say the least. If there were more moments like…I don’t even know what to call them…the sureality?…then maybe they would have worked. But they were too few and far between and does that kind of thing even belong in a biopic? Soooo…nope. Swing and a miss.

Likewise, the aforementioned sex scenes between Oppenheimer and Tatlock were pretty graphic and, in my opinion, unnecessarily so. The relationship may have been true to actual events but honestly didn’t do anything to add to the story as a whole. If we want to tell the actual story of Oppenheimer then I get it. But if that, then why take the focus off of Oppenheimer and tell the backstory of Strauss (which was a real treat, I might add). It just seemed fractured to me.

Also, amid a firestorm of great performances (RDJ, Damon, Tom Conti and of course, Emily Blunt) it felt like Cillian Murphy’s turn as Robert Oppenheimer was kind of one-note and bland. It could be that the portrayal was an accurate characterization, I’ll grant that. But it would not be the first time Hollywood changed the personality or demeanor of a real life character to punch up a movie. I mean, were the sex scenes strictly adherent to history? Just sayin’.

Was Oppenheimer a blast…or a bomb?

Answer: Neither. Am I glad I saw Oppenheimer? Sure, if only for the surprise of seeing a new cameo every 5 minutes. Was it all it could be? Nah, not even close. It didn’t go far enough into the underbelly of the Manhatten Project, the politics (of which there are plenty) and the players. I’m sorry, but Oppenheimer the man just didn’t come off as that interesting a character. And having a one dimensional focus character makes the 3 hour run-time a slog at times. So, a little bit of a dud, not an actual bomb. Is that irony? Not really but it sideswipes it. As biopics go, I wont be rewatching this on the regular like I do Cinderella Man. Giving it a3.5/5.

And…I’m going to see Barbie at the bargain shoppers cheapskate show tonight. Sometimes feeling something…anything…is better than feeling nothing.

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