This Is a Movie Review: Indie Rom-Coms Continue Chugging Along with Demetri Martin’s ‘Dean’

May 31, 2017

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This review was originally posted on News Cult in May 2017.

Starring: Demetri Martin, Kevin Kline, Gillian Jacobs, Rory Scovel, Mary Steenburgen

Director: Demetri Martin

Running Time: 87 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for A Little Bit of Language, A Little Bit of Relations

Release Date: June 2, 2017 (Limited)

If you look at Demetri Martin – the moptopped, artistically inclined comedian whose Wikipedia page once listed Socrates as an influence – and think “romantic comedy lead,” then chances are that you and I would get along famously. And wouldn’t you know it, we now have the perfect topic to discuss: Dean, a minor-key charmer serving as Martin’s directorial debut.

Martin plays the title character, a Brooklyn illustrator living through with the fallout of his mother’s death and a breakup with his ex-fiancée (Christine Woods). Instead of dealing with all that, he flies out to Los Angeles to meet with an ad agency interested in using his drawings. Alas, the pitch and the hipster-bro vibe put him off. (SNL’s Beck Bennett is perfect as the exec who remains on his office treadmill the entire scene.) At this point, Dean really should head back home and sort out matters with his father (Kevin Kline), who is eager to sell their house. But he finds himself too entranced by La La Land to head home, because he meets this girl named Nicky, and she is played by Gillian Jacobs, a Pittsburgh native who often inhabits West Coast gals who inadvertently knock the lead characters out of their stupors and makes it look effortless (it’s not a Manic Pixie Dream Girl thing, it’s a chill vibe thing).

Spoiler alert: this budding romance does not exactly end happily. But that does not mean there is no satisfying resolution to be had. The reason the title is Dean as opposed to “Dean & Nicky” or “Millennial Love Story” is because it is about the individual. (Dad, also gets his own storyline, a suitably engaging romance with his realtor, played by Mary Steenburgen.) There are plenty of stories about looking for love and growing up, and this one is hardly groundbreaking. But they keep being told because new storytellers keep creeping towards their thirties and forties. What we as viewers humbly request of them along the way is that they find honesty and individuality in their voice. And in the guise of Dean, I am happy to hear from Demetri Martin has to say.

Dean is Recommended If You Like: Demetri Martin’s illustrations, (500) Days of Summer, Celeste and Jesse Forever

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Pubic Clown Wigs

This Is a Movie Review: ‘Baywatch’ is Gratuitous, Shameless, and in Search of a Purpose

May 25, 2017

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CREDIT: Frank Masi/Paramount Pictures

This review was originally posted on News Cult in May 2017.

Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron, Alexandra Daddario, Priyanka Chopra, Kelly Rohrbach, Jon Bass, Ilfenesh Hadera, Rob Huebel, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II

Director: Seth Gordon

Running Time: 119 Minutes

Rating: R for An Obsession with All Body Parts

Release Date: May 25, 2017

Baywatch follows the 21 Jump Street template: take a TV show from a couple decades ago that people remember but nobody is especially attached to, then blow it out to something bigger, brasher, and maybe a little meta. It may not be the most ambitious formula, but Jump Street proved that it could result in a clever commentary on the nature of reboots. Baywatch is less interested in that, or any pretensions. Instead, it mostly wants to just hang out and do its own thing. Which is fine! The film makes a go at capturing the cheeky spirit of the original on a larger, less discreet scale – it might leave you feeling a little naughty, but everyone is indulging. Alas, it ultimately descends into just the latest gross-out comedy crossed with a derivative action spectacular.

The most representative shot of Baywatch of Kelly Rohrbach’s jiggling butt while she administers the Heimlich maneuver. Rohrbach is C.J., the bubbly blond bombshell filling in for Pamela Anderson, and the choking victim is Ronnie (Jon Bass), the chubby trainee who is inexplicably recruited to the lifeguard crew. This odd couple obviously ends up together, even though Ronnie is sure C.J. is out of his league, but she knows what she wants and she does not even need to the dance moves that Ronnie learned at Hebrew school to be won over. The schlubby guy/hot girl pairing might be cliché, but the specific details in this case are actually kind of encouraging. There is something inspiring about how the guy who gets his privates stuck between the slats of a beach chair is more Casanova than laughingstock. Everyone loves Ronnie!

In fact, the great charm about Baywatch is how well everyone on the team gets along. The other major romance, between trainees Brody (Zac Efron) and Summer (Alexandra Daddario), at first appears like it will be distressingly conflict-driven but instead evolves into a much more palatable game of playful one-upmanship. Really the only conflict of any significance is the one between head honcho Mitch (Dwayne Johnson, taking over for the Hoff) and Brody. The latter is a gold-medal winning Olympic swimmer looking to repair his image after a Ryan Lochte-esque scandal, and he is only on the team because Baywatch administration wants to boost its p.r. Naturally, Mitch must teach this lone wolf the importance of teamwork. But even here, the dynamic is sympathetic and silly, with Mitch letting the homeless Brody crash at his place and pranking him with a corpse’s genitals.

The majority of this review sounds rather complimentary, even though only about 25% of the film is worth recommending. But it is that 25% about which I have the most to say. Theoretically, Baywatch could be perfectly enjoyable if it were just a plotless hangout movie, with the lifeguards saving civilians by day and porking each other by night. Instead, there must be a standard-issue action plot about a Bond-type villainess (Priyanka Chopra) with the entire town in her pocket pulling off a drug-smuggling ring. The Baywatch crew takes it upon themselves to investigate the mysterious substances and dead bodies washing up on their shores, but since they are not law enforcement, they have no authority to do so, which the actual police keeps reminding them about

Indeed, they are not law enforcement. Nor are they superheroes, which this film so desperately wants them to be. They are mortal human beings who may be highly skilled at what they do, but there is no compelling reason to believe that they can be ominously superhuman saviors. It takes the absurd stake-raising of multiple sequels to get to that point. Viewers for this style of popcorn fare are like that metaphorical frog sitting in gradually boiling water. If the stakes go up bit by bit, we do not realize until after the fact that we have forever departed any semblance of reality. But if they are jacked up to 11 right from the start, we rightfully scoff.

Baywatch is Recommended If You Like: Tight Bodies and Explosions

Grade: 2 out of 5 Slo-Mo Bouncing Breasts

This Is a Movie Review: Stuck in a Teenage Girl’s Bedroom, ‘Everything, Everything’ Has a Teenage Heart and Soul

May 18, 2017

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This review was originally published on News Cult in May 2017.

Starring: Amandla Stenberg, Nick Robinson, Anika Noni Rose, Ana de la Reguera, Morgan Saylor

Director: Stella Meghie

Running Time: 96 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Artfully Shot Sickness and Tastefully Shot Teen Sensuality

Release Date: May 19, 2017

Everything, Everything is a teen romance fantasy in a vacuum. The good and bad thing about vacuums is that they keep everything out – in this case, both the distractions that can get in the way of a genuine connection but also the context and experiences that deepen that connection.

18-year-old Maddy Whittier (Amandla Stenberg) has been housebound nearly her entire life, due to her Severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), a disorder that leaves her deathly vulnerable to all the infections of the outside world. She has managed to carve out a decently satisfying routine in her domestic prison: writing mini reviews of all the books she reads, assembling dioramas of the places she cannot visit, and having game/movie nights with her mom (phonetic Scrabble and Moonstruck are a couple of favorites). But when prototypically cute boy with a hardscrabble home life Olly (Nick Robinson) moves in next door, her desire to break free can no longer be so easily contained.

This is the type of movie in which a character 100% earnestly says, “I loved you before I knew you” (to which the response in real life should always be, “That is not how love works”). But when it comes to the outsize emotions of adolescence, such a sentiment is understandable and can often make for thrilling stories about first love. Everything, Everything wants to be that type of story, and the physical entrapment in its premise is a potent formula for a big tension release, but the trouble is, the chemistry between Stenberg and Robinson is supposed to be self-evident, but in fact it never really clicks.

The lack of passion is a shame, because the design around the lovers is striking. Their conversations are mostly through text or online messaging, but they are sometimes presented as taking place in life-size versions of Maddy’s dioramas – a lovingly designed diner or library occupied just by them, but in which they dance around each other’s orbit, never really in the same spot, representing both the effort to protect Maddy and their emotional distance. When the two are finally allowed to meet in person, their dialogue is accompanied by subtitles representing their inner thoughts (a la Annie Hall), which is insightful enough to make up for the lack of chemistry, but alas that technique lasts only that one scene.

Eventually Maddy decides that she simply must take the risk of leaving home, which ultimately leads to an alarming twist that re-contextualizes the entire film. Suddenly, Everything, Everything is filled with so much more depth than it has been letting on, but there is not enough running time left to fully grapple with all of the implications of this reveal. What at first appears to be (and in fact largely is) a shamelessly mushy love story transforms into an examination of grief and the lengths that people go to protect themselves. These are two sides of a coin that could very well complement each other, but it is hard to be satisfying when one is so much more heavily weighted than the other.

Everything, Everything is Recommended If You Like: The Space Between Us, The music of Ludwig Göransson

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Astronauts

 

This Is a Movie Review: Sequel-Prequel ‘Alien: Covenant’ Follows the ‘Prometheus’ Template and Adds a Few Bizarre Details of Its Own

May 15, 2017

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This review was originally published on News Cult in May 2017.

Starring: Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride, Demián Bichir, Carmen Ejogo, Amy Seimetz

Director: Ridley Scott

Running Time: 123 Minutes

Rating: R for the Usual Chest-Bursting Shenanigans

Release Date: May 19, 2017

When horror movies are successful enough to merit sequels, the follow-ups can either repeat the same scares or expand the mythology. They usually do both, with the latter generally growing in prominence as the series drags on, with the diminishing returns on the former become clearer and clearer. (They can also try to summon entirely new scares, but that is one of the most difficult tasks in all of moviemaking.) Ridley Scott’s Alien is pure horror, despite its sci-fi setting. When other directors took over for the first batch of sequels, their genres may have tended more towards action, but the mythology certainly blew out as well, what with cloning Ripley and hurtling hundreds of year into the future.

Now that Scott has taken back the reins, he has apparently decided that if crazy ideas are going to be the name of the day, he might as well underpin the franchise with his own peculiar philosophizing. Because otherwise, this would just be a rehash of intrepid spacefarers treading too far on the edge and getting ripped apart by lethally invasive extraterrestrials. That approach is not necessarily terrible, and Alien: Covenant does not avoid it entirely. Chest-bursting can no longer be as iconic as it was the first time, but it still packs a sickening kick, and there are other body parts to slice off and wear away with acid blood. And there are also some larger-scale action sequences, demonstrating Scott’s still vibrant eye for scale and knack for properly calibrating tension.

But Covenant truly excels when it gets weird. It bridges the gap, both temporally and thematically, between the original Alien and 2012 prequel Prometheus. The latter film started to answer the question of what made the original attack on the Nostromo possible, a question that nobody really ever asked. Covenant continues to answer the question, and while it is still unnecessary, the backstory on display is fascinating enough to justify itself.

The actors playing the human crew of the Covenant fulfill their duties, but it is android Michael Fassbender who is pulling the strings. Prometheus and Covenant are explicitly about creation myths and the limits of human ambition, and these fundamental themes of existence are represented and mercilessly toyed with by humanoid beings created by humans. Certain revelations come out squarely tsk-tsking against hubris, while other moments are more impenetrable with their messages. But that is no criticism. Traversing across the universe should be stunning, humbling, and mysterious, perhaps even to the point of incomprehensibility. What is the purpose, for example, of Fassbender teaching himself to play the flute? I cannot genuinely say that I know, except that it makes Alien: Covenant unforgettable.

Alien: Covenant is Recommended If You Like: Prometheus But Wish It Had Been Better, Even If You Thought It Was Good

Grade: 4 out of 5 Fingers

This Is a Movie Review: Guy Ritchie Adds Some Cockney Flair to Camelot with ‘King Arthur: Legend of the Sword’

May 12, 2017

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This review was originally published on News Cult in May 2017.

Starring: Charlie Hunnam, Jude Law, Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey, Djimon Hounsou, Aidan Gillen, Erica Bana

Director: Guy Ritchie

Running Time: 126 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Stab Wounds That Seem to Only Happen During Thunderstorms

Release Date: May 12, 2017

The King Arthur legend has been told and re-told countless times over the centuries. On film, it has been fantastical, animated, “realistic,” romantic, and explicit. Could Guy Ritchie, that purveyor of stylish British gangsters, possibly have anything new to add to the mythos? Based on Legend of the Sword, the answer is: apparently there were options that we were never even considering.

The bare bones of the plot of this edition play up the similarities between Arthurian legend and the biblical tale of Moses. Uther Pendragon (Eric Bana) places his infant son Arthur in a basket in a river to escape the grasp of his power-mad brother Vortigern (Jude Law), who murders Uther to ascend to the throne. Arthur then grows up in a brothel to become Charlie Hunnam, and he promptly draws the sword Excalibur from the stone. So far, so sticking to the script. The rest of it, however, is Ritchie’s unique vision – surprisingly fascinating, intermittently satisfying.

With phrases like “honey tits” and nicknames like “Kung Fu George,” this is basically the cockney version of Camelot. The archaic aesthetic is not committed to fully, though, but that oddly leads me to somewhat admire Ritchie’s restraint. There is, however, complete commitment to editing the film like a heist caper, rendering the future Knights of the Round Table a sort of Pendragon’s Eleven. The plan to topple Vortigern is not exactly a matter of trickery (at least no more so than any rebellious maneuver is), but I guess you have to get your kicks in somewhere. Legend of the Sword leaves its most lasting stamp in its fetish for oversized, foreboding animals. They are not quite as visionary as the eels in A Cure for Wellness, say, and I have no idea what purpose they serve (beyond the maxim “critters accompany magic”), but I have to give some props to a summer blockbuster with such strange, gooey visuals.

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is Recommended If You Like: Slimy, Scaly Creatures

Grade: 2.75 out of 5 Mages

This Is a Movie Review: ‘Snatched’ is a Miscalculated Vacation in More Ways Than One

May 12, 2017

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This review was originally published on News Cult in May 2017.

Starring: Amy Schumer, Goldie Hawn, Ike Barinholtz, Wanda Sykes, Joan Cusack

Director: Jonathan Levine

Running Time: 97 Minutes

Rating: R for Sloppy Partying and Surprisingly Deadly Slapstick

Release Date: May 12, 2017

Amy Schumer’s acting instincts dictate that she make her characters immature to the point of straining as much credulity as possible. She has no time for the trope of the professionally successful, but emotionally unstable woman. Instead, everything spirals out of control for her all at once, although that implies that things were ever in control in the first place. For Snatched’s woman-child protagonist Emily Middleton, the latter is almost certainly not the case. After losing her job and her boyfriend, she crawls back into the warm embrace back home with mom Linda (Goldie Hawn), where she can spill ice cream on her shirt and whine like a teenager. This is the Platonic ideal – or Platonic nadir, as it were – of a Schumer performance. How Emily was ever able to move out on her own is a mystery.

Linda’s troubles are much less extreme and thus more relatable. In the decades since separating from her husband, she has never gone back to dating, or even really left the house for that matter. So when her daughter insists that they travel to Ecuador together, she is unsurprisingly hesitant, partly because she is so scared to let loose, but perhaps even more so because she knows better than anyone that following Emily only leads to trouble. Even if the premise were not right in the title, it would be clear so quickly that she is the type of person who would skip right into a kidnapping scam. That Emily and Linda survive mostly unscathed makes them either improbably lucky or impossibly superhuman; both options are exhausting after an hour and a half.

While Schumer commits too hard to being pathetic, there is fun to be had among the supporting performances, where caricatures can be more functional. Wanda Sykes gets the majority of the zingers as an outgoing fellow traveler who recognizes the very real dangers of kidnapping, despite her tenuous grasp of statistics. As Sykes’ platonic life partner, Joan Cusack is weirdly perfectly cast in a completely silent role. And Christopher Meloni is the biggest highlight as an adventurer in way over his head, demonstrating that joie de vivre is often essential to making incompetence sing on screen. Schumer could take some pointers from him, though I suspect she enjoys being stuck in the muck.

Snatched is Recommended If You Like: Women behaving just as badly as men-children, Gene the Chef from Wet Hot American Summer

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Tits Out

This Is a Movie Review: Aaron Taylor-Johnson and John Cena Evade an Iraqi Sniper Behind ‘The Wall’

May 10, 2017

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CREDIT: David James/Amazon Studios

This review was originally posted on News Cult in May 2017.

Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, John Cena 

Director: Doug Liman

Running Time: 90 Minutes

Rating: R for Sniper Bullets Whizzing By and the Expletives You Yell When Blood Mixes with Sand

Release Date: May 12, 2017 (Limited)

The Wall feels like the type of movie that should have been released at the end of the George W. Bush era, as the national tide was becoming significantly less supportive of any Middle East military efforts. But considering that the War on Terror and nation-rebuilding operations tend to have no end in sight, the premise is unfortunately evergreen. It is 2007 in Iraq, Bush has declared victory, and the war is supposedly winding down. American soldiers Isaac (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Matthews (John Cena) find themselves at the mercy of the deadly Iraqi sniper Juba, with only a makeshift brick wall to serve as protection.

The film mostly consists of a battle of wits between Taylor-Johnson and Juba, who hacks into the Americans’ local radio. Juba is in control of the situation, and he is mostly toying with Isaac until what is almost certainly an inevitable execution, making for essentially the combat version of Phone Booth. Regarding how this plays out as a cinematic thrill ride, there is certainly constant tension, but there is also constant labored breathing from Taylor-Johnson, and that is never the ideal sound mix.

The most universal truths are often best expressed in the most intimate stories, and that micro-macro metonymy is at the forefront of the tightly composed The Wall. Juba somehow knows the most relevant details of Isaac’s story, taunting him about how he just cannot leave a complete mission well enough alone. His personal struggle mirrors his country’s boondoggle. Taylor-Johnson is not the most compelling actor to bring this point across (he excels more in something more depraved like Nocturnal Animals), but a devastating conclusion ensures that The Wall gets its point across. This film is not exactly anti-war, and not even necessarily anti-Iraq War, but rightness or wrongness does not account for much when all you stand for and behind is crumbling around you. 

The Wall is Recommended If You Like: Lone Survivor, Phone Booth, the ending of Night of the Living Dead

Grade: 3 out of 5 Poetic Snipers

This Is a Movie Review: ‘Lowriders’ Could Stand to Inject Some More Clarity Into Its Engine

May 9, 2017

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This review was originally posted on News Cult in May 2017.

Starring: Gabriel Chavarria, Demián Bichir, Theo Rossi, Melissa Benoist, Tony Revolori, Eva Longoria

Director: Ricardo de Montreuil

Running Time: 99 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Petty and Felonious Lawbreaking

Release Date: May 12, 2017

A motion picture is a fine method for introducing the masses to a subculture’s rituals and personalities. Thus the intriguing nature of the specimen that is Lowriders. Cars with amped-up hydraulic systems that allow for the vehicle to bounce up and down have served as set dressing in plenty of films, but they have never really been the main attraction. There is admirable moxie to titling something after an entire pastime, thus implying that it is encapsulating the whole culture. Unfortunately, Lowriders does not do the legwork to illuminate newcomers, nor it does not care to let them in.

Danny (Gabriel Chavarria) is a young graffiti artist caught between two worlds that should be one: the traditional lowrider-obsessed space of his father Miquel (Demián Bichir) and the renegade lowrider-obsessed realm of his ex-con brother Francisco (Theo Rossi), nicknamed “Ghost” for the years he gave up to the law. This is a stock family conflict and thus not particularly unique. Chavarria, Bichir, and Rossi commit passionately, but the conflicts – while believable – are not compelling. Specific details must be added to issues like drinking problems and familial abandonment to make them pop.

Lowriders’ means of letting viewers into its world is primarily accomplished by the perspective of Danny’s new girlfriend Lorelai (Melissa Benoist, the current go-to all-American girl). She is a photographer, eagerly snapping up all that Danny introduces her to. Alas, the film never really explains what she has learned. When a winner is declared at the lowrider competition, it is a key moment that sets up the stakes for the rest of the film. Trouble is, it is not clear what the rules of the contest even are, and thus it is hard to be invested in the rightness or wrongness of any victory. That lack of clarity is a plague throughout: subplots are resolved way too cleanly, there is a weakly attempted swipe at the art world, and at least one character’s motivations are impossible to track. Without attending to the story engine properly, the end result just sputters out.

Lowriders is Recommended If You Like: Shortcuts

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Public Urinations

This Is a Movie Review: If ‘The Dinner’ Has Its Way, You Will Lose Your Appetite

May 5, 2017

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This review was originally published on News Cult in May 2017.

Starring: Steve Coogan, Laura Linney, Richard Gere, Rebecca Hall

Director: Oren Moverman

Running Time: 120 Minutes

Rating: R for Children Getting Up to No Good and Their Parents Yelling About It

Release Date: May 5, 2017 (Limited)

Steve Coogan, Laura Linney, Richard Gere, and Rebecca Hall invite you to a very special evening. Coogan and his wife Linney are on their way to meet Coogan’s brother Gere and his wife Hall at the fanciest restaurant in town. Coogan is dreading the evening and would much rather stay home, but alas, there is no wiggling out. This is family, and there is an outstanding issue that must be addressed. Coogan is caught snooping around his son’s cell phone, so that should tell you something about what sort of father he is. It should also be noted that Gere is a politician in the middle of an all-consuming campaign, so that just gobbles everything in its vicinity.

The deal is that both couples’ teenage children have gotten themselves into extraordinary trouble. Far be it from me to reveal any specifics, as the film’s whole raison d’être is gradually revealing the details. But suffice it to say that the event in question has legal and ethical implications that are unavoidably disturbing. They are the kinds of consequences that no child should ever force their parents to face, especially when mental illness, the public eye, and years of seething resentment are in the mix. The formula is set for the most unpleasant outing ever for this foursome and for the audience. It is thrilling to watch a quartet of thespians like The Dinner’s volley vitriol back and forth, but ultimately this meal is more frustrating than anything else.

The Dinner is designed to be challenging, as any story with a clinically depressed character at its center should be. It is unreasonable to expect a cheerier arc, or even necessarily some possibility of relief. But what there ought to be is a chance for understanding. The structure consists of frame devices within frame devices, as flashbacks fill out the motivations forged over the past several weeks and the past several years and lifetimes. When in the outermost frame, The Dinner is naggingly difficult to pierce, but when it opens up to its deepest core, the viewer can say, “I accept you for who you are.”

The Dinner is Recommended If You Like: Having Your Stomach Knotted Like a Fist

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Courses

 

This Is a Movie Review: Transgender Rights and Family Drama Fuel the Ho-Hum ‘3 Generations’

May 3, 2017

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This review was originally published on News Cult in May 2017.

Starring: Elle Fanning, Naomi Watts, Susan Sarandon, Tate Donovan

Director: Gaby Dellal

Running Time: 92 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for The Facts of Life

Release Date: May 5, 2017 (Limited)

It is great when the stories of minority and discriminated groups are portrayed on the big screen, as they are granted greater visibility via the transportive power of cinema. But it is not so great when those stories are boring, because then the experience is less transportive. Teenage Ray (Elle Fanning) is a transgender male hoping to quickly start his gender reassignment treatment, and the reason this film is entitled “3 Generations” as opposed to something like “Ray’s Story” is because it is really about his relationship with his single mother Maggie (Naomi Watts) and grandmother Dolly (Susan Sarandon), whom he lives with together inManhattan. These are three talented ladies, and none of them phone it in, but ultimately 3 Generations feels like little more than spending a couple of hours with a family other than your own.

Teenage transgender transition stories offer the reliable dramatic hook of attempting to secure parental permission. Ray’s decision must be approved by both his mother and long-absentee father Craig (Tate Donovan). And therein lies the rub, as Maggie and Craig are not exactly on good terms, to put it mildly. It is enough to make you scream. Ray certainly does. Donovan is a captivating screen presence, and he has the necessary anti-chemistry with Watts, but again this mostly boils down to: families of transgender people can be just as dysfunctional as everyone else’s.

A constant source of tension for Ray is his grandmother’s difficulty accepting his identity. Dolly is far from conservative. She is a lesbian, but just because your sexuality is not mainstream does not mean you cannot also be closed-minded. There is an edge to Ray and Dolly’s interactions that is unavoidable, but also fascinating. A version of 3 Generations pared down to grandmother/grandson buddy comedy could be a winning formula. The obligations of familial love can be in a constant battle with the plague of misunderstanding/ I think that is the valiant thesis of this film, but it struggles to put its own spin on that age-old conundrum.

3 Generations is Recommended If You Like: The Kids Are All Right, Being an Elle Fanning Completist

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Fire Escapes

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