Multiplex Madness
Busboys
⭐️
Genre: Comedy
Director: Jonah Being old
Starring: David Spade, Theo Von, Tim Dillon
Almost any amount of words feels like too many to describe Busboys, a comedy about David Spade and Theo Von taking jobs as busboys in hopes of getting promoted to a lucrative waiter position to pay for a sex change operation for Von's mother, only to get caught up in a drug trafficking ring. Busboys looks and feels like a movie made by people who long for the heyday of Happy Madison productions. But when you go out of your way to make an off-brand Adam Sandler movie, don't be surprised that your homage to mediocrity ends up being sub-mediocre. The film mostly seems like a push for Von to break his comedy into movies, funding the film entirely himself and penning the screenplay with the help of Spade. The difference between the two is that Spade, a longstanding film comedy veteran, feels like he knows what he's doing and is constantly comfortable in his position. Von does not, playing his role as if he's attempting to be a long belated replacement for Spade's late comedy partner Chris Farley. He plays the role like an inexperienced performer who is modeling his performance of off nostalgic love of Tommy Boy and Dumb and Dumber without understanding what made those films work. I've always maintained that comedies centered on idiocy can be funny but there needs to be a semblance of a moronic character's mental logic, otherwise it's just word salad and inconsistent outbursts. Von's character has no consistent behavior except standing in place, looking in the distance with a slack-jawed expression. Even outside of Von's performance, the movie isn't much of anything but a series of humdrum attempts at being outrageous. Hell, for a movie called Busboys, there are very few scenes relevant to them being busboys. It's just a sleepy-eyed comedy that jumps up and down for the audience's amusement. I've seen worse but that doesn't make it better.
The Mummy
⭐️⭐️1/2
Genre: Horror
Director: Lee Cronin
Starring: Jack Reynor, Laia Costa, May Calamawy, Natalie Grace, Verónica Falcón, Shylo Molina, Billie Roy
Blumhouse continues their modern reinterpretation of classic Universal monster legacies, passing the torch onto Evil Dead Rise director Lee Cronin to do an entirely fresh spin on The Mummy, probably the franchise that is currently most toxic since the Dark Universe fiasco in 2017. This movie seems to be a less "Too many cooks" production than the last one, being solely the vision of Cronin and Blumhouse just letting him go nuts. This movie still got undercut by Universal announcing a new sequel to the 1999 film that starred Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz, with Ready or Not directing duo Radio Silence at the helm, prompting pressure to retitle this film in post-production to avoid brand cross-contamination. The compromise seems to have been calling it "Lee Cronin's The Mummy," though the tiny font used in the film's title screen seems to indicate that nobody really wants to call it that. I'm not really one to follow such a vain title scheme anyway. Only tools refer to something fully as "John Carpenter's Halloween" or "Wes Craven's New Nightmare."
One would assume a new Mummy movie would be about a reanimated corpse, like all previous Mummy films. This one is a bit more...imaginative. A little girl goes missing in Egypt, only to be recovered eight years later trapped in a sarcophagus, somehow still alive. She returns home in a traumatized state, though her behavior begins growing more unnerving as her parents try to understand what has happened to her. Not a traditional type of mummy for this film, though I supposed technically this girl was mummified, so it probably counts. Going from the likes of Imhotep and Kharis to a little girl named Katie feels a little jarring, but Natalie Grace is uniformly excellent throughout the movie, so if the goal was quality creepy kid horror cinema, they found an excellent creepy kid. Cronin borrows his "not even children are safe" vibe from his Evil Dead Rise, effectively making it known that those usually immune to horror violence are still not safe in his new film, getting even the other children of the family in on the carnage. If there is nothing else I can say in this film's favor, it's that it keeps you guessing whether or not a happy ending is possible and it still will surprise you with what it chooses to do, even if it is the conclusion that makes the most sense in retrospect. In that sense, the movie is a satisfying horror ride. It's just one with a great poker face but a mediocre hand.
The movie can be unwieldy, because this conceptual reimagination is so complicated that it requires a lot of setup and it also jumps through hoops in explaining is own mystery. It's easy to get impatient with it, but its core is nominally effective. Because of that, I find myself forgiving of the movie, even when it's taking to long to regain its momentum after a slowdown period. The movie is two hours and fifteen minutes, which is an eternity for a genre that likes to keep itself tight (bonus note: the film actually tops The Mummy Returns as the longest Mummy film). There is always content to fill that time, but the puzzling thing is why they created a movie this complex to require it. A basic horror movie usually requires action and reaction, which is why the majority of them keep at a constant ninety minutes, because exposition gets in the way of both. The Mummy isn't just exposition heavy, it's mystery heavy, questing through questions that lead to more questions and finally giving answers just as the finale is about to kick in. It gets pretty exhausting because its mystery is a drag while its horror is top-tier bleak and relentless. The movie just can't balance the two, unlike a comparable film like Malignant, which struck a symbiotic nature between the two aspects and kept both wildly entertaining.
But it's worth checking out for horror nuts, though fans of solely the Brendan Fraser series will want to pass because it's an entirely different kind of movie. Of all the movies that are just titled "The Mummy" (and there will be a lot more when the 1932 film hits public domain in a couple years), this one is probably third best, behind the original and 1999 adventure film. The 1959 Hammer film has its fans, though personally I've never vibed with it, while the 2017 film speaks for itself. And as far as Blumhouse reinventions go, it's a step above Wolf Man but is not even close to touching The Invisible Man. I don't regret giving Cronin a chance to just get weird. It made for some interesting viewing, if nothing else.
Normal
If Hot Fuzz were made with more sincerity and less irony, you'd have Normal. Bob Odenkirk continues his evolution into aged action hero as an interim sheriff in a small, mundane town who discovers it's actually a front for the Yakuza. Cue action scenes that are sometimes just a domino effect of violence that almost make the film half a Final Destination movie. Despite attempting its own vibe of comedic chaos, comparisons to a beloved Edgar Wright classic are likely inevitable, and while Normal is charming and fun in its own way, it lives underneath a mighty shadow. But redundancies have rarely actually hurt the action/comedy genre. The question usually is whether or not it's gets the job done. Guns go off, people explode, laughs are had, and you're in-and-out in ninety minutes. What more can you ask of it?
Normal
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Comedy, Action
Director: Ben Wheatley
Starring: Bob Odenkirk, Lena Headey, Henry Winkler, Reena Jolly, Brendan Fletcher, Jess McLeod
If Hot Fuzz were made with more sincerity and less irony, you'd have Normal. Bob Odenkirk continues his evolution into aged action hero as an interim sheriff in a small, mundane town who discovers it's actually a front for the Yakuza. Cue action scenes that are sometimes just a domino effect of violence that almost make the film half a Final Destination movie. Despite attempting its own vibe of comedic chaos, comparisons to a beloved Edgar Wright classic are likely inevitable, and while Normal is charming and fun in its own way, it lives underneath a mighty shadow. But redundancies have rarely actually hurt the action/comedy genre. The question usually is whether or not it's gets the job done. Guns go off, people explode, laughs are had, and you're in-and-out in ninety minutes. What more can you ask of it?
Project Hail Mary ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie ⭐️⭐️1/2
You, Me & Tuscany ⭐️⭐️
New To Digital
Alpha ⭐️⭐️1/2
Reminders of Him ⭐️⭐️
Slanted ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Undertone ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Coming Soon!
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