What Happens When Big Names with Big Personalities Spend ‘One Night in Miami…’? Let’s Find Out!

December 21, 2020

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

One Night in Miami (CREDIT: Amazon Studios)

Starring: Kingsley Ben-Adir, Eli Goree, Aldis Hodge, Leslie Odom Jr., Lance Reddick, Nicolette Robinson, Michael Imperioli, Joaquina Kolukango, Beau Bridges

Director: Regina King

Running Time: 114 Minutes

Rating: R for Language (There’s a Lot of Dialogue)

Release Date: December 25, 2020 (Theaters)/January 15, 2021 (Amazon Prime Video)

On one particular day in February 1964, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown spent an evening together in Florida and the makers of One Night in Miami… thought we might like to see how that may have played out. First this idea took the form of a 2013 play written by Kemp Powers. Now he’s adapted it into a screenplay, with Regina King making her feature directorial debut. (Spoiler alert: you can tell that it started out as a play.) Are these African-Americans titans of the 20th century just as interesting together as we knew them to be individually? Although of course, the more relevant question is: do the actors playing them do them justice, and can they find the right chemistry for their little powwow? The answer probably won’t blow your mind, though it might satisfy you.

Reporting for duty on this night are Kingsley Ben-Adir as X, Eli Goree as Ali (actually still going by Cassius Clay at the time), Aldis Hodge as Brown, and Leslie Odom Jr. as Cooke. Odom’s casting makes the most sense to me, because he can sang. He can be musical anyway you want him to, so summoning the majestic voice behind “Chain Gang” is no problem for him. Meanwhile, Ben-Adir commands most of the attention, and he’d better, because Malcolm had plenty to cover that he thought was pretty damn urgent, and he wanted everyone to hear him. Goree and Hodge, alas, fade a bit into the background. That might mean that the promise of the premise isn’t fully fulfilled, but the others pick up on the slack as this ultimately becomes the “Malcolm & Sam Show” more than anything else. Everyone, especially Malcolm, picks on Sam for not carrying his weight in the civil rights fight, while Sam fires back that he’s actually figured out part of The Man’s formula for getting a piece of the pie and he’s in fact been sharing it with his associates. In conclusion, they’re all doing their part!

Whenever people with big personalities are having passionate debates about the issues of the day, you can pretty much guarantee that there will be at least something satisfying. But I did find myself wondering throughout much of One Night in Miami… why I wasn’t finding it as dynamic as I thought I would. It probably boils down to the fact that I would rather watch these famous guys do what they’re famous for, rather than watching them talk. To be fair, Malcolm and Muhammad were partly famous for their wordsmanship, but playing to a big crowd and having an intimate conversation are two very different situations. We do get to see some of Muhammad in the ring, but we don’t get to see any of Jim on the football field or roughing up Martians. At least we get a decent amount of Sam onstage. Letting Leslie Odom Jr. loose with the Sam Cooke songbook is hardly a groundbreaking revelation, but it gets the job done enough when we need it to.

One Night in Miami… is Recommended If You Like: Movies That Walk and Talk Like Plays

Grade: 3 out of 5 Close-Cropped Haircuts

 

‘Sister of the Groom’ Cranks Up the Angst Way Past 11

December 15, 2020

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Sister of the Groom (CREDIT: Saban Films/YouTube Screenshot)

Starring: Alicia Silverstone, Tom Everett Scott, Jake Hoffman, Mathilde Ollivier, Mark Blum, Charlie Bewley

Director: Amy Miller Gross

Running Time: 92 Minutes

Rating: R for Language, Casual Nudity, and Molly in the Wedding Cake

Release Date: December 18, 2020 (Theaters/Digital/On Demand)

Alicia Silverstone is an immensely charming person, and yet somehow Sister of the Groom has the temerity to ask her to be immensely un-charming. She plays Audrey, the titular sister of the groom, and that’s not an individual who should be commanding attention on the wedding day. But typically a movie’s main character does indeed command the most attention, so we find ourselves at an impasse immediately. That’s not a place I like to find myself with Silverstone, but actors should certainly be allowed to stretch themselves beyond where they’ve been pegged. In this case, that stretch is quite the challenge, and the end result lays bare the difficulty of delivering on it.

Audrey has a lot of stressors in her life, perhaps more than most people do, but she also has a way of behaving, particularly during her brother’s matrimonial weekend, that mainly serves to amplify all that stress. She’s trying to get back into the swing of her architecture career, so she doesn’t appreciate that her bro Liam (Jake Hoffman) has hired her ex-boyfriend for a job she assumed was hers. She also is no big fan of his significantly younger French fiance Clemence (Mathilde Ollivier), but you kind of get the sense that she might not approve of any potential sisters-in-law. On top of all that, she’s viscerally insecure about her pregnancy-altered belly. At least she seems to be affectionate with her husband Ethan (Tom Everett Scott), although it’s not much of a surprise when it becomes clear that there’s actually a lot of strife bubbling barely beneath the surface there.

If you’re a fan of angsty cinematic family gatherings like The Family Stone or Home for the Holidays or (to keep it wedding-themed) Rachel Getting Married, Sister of the Groom might offer something to entertain you. But from my vantage point, it leans too hard into the unpleasantness and struggles to tease out any profundity. I’ve got to at least give Silverstone credit for so thoroughly stripping herself of any emotional vanity. Alas, though, she didn’t convince me that that was a good idea.

Sister of the Groom is Recommended If You Like: Unrelenting angst

Grade: 2 out of 5 Chuppahs

‘Promising Young Woman’ Fulfills Its Promise, and Then Some

December 14, 2020

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Promising Young Woman (CREDIT: Focus Features)

Starring: Carey Mulligan, Bo Burnham, Laverne Cox, Clancy Brown, Jennifer Coolidge, Alison Brie, Connie Britton, Alfred Molina, Chris Lowell, Max Greenfield, Adam Brody, Sam Richardson, Molly Shannon, Christopher Mintz-Plasse

Director: Emerald Fennell

Running Time: 113 Minutes

Rating: R for Twisted Jokes, Drug Spikings, Discussions of Sexual Violence, and Some Up-Close Acute Violence

Release Date: December 25, 2020

Promising Young Woman hooked me immediately with its trailer, seemingly telling me everything I needed to know. When I finally saw the actual movie, it somehow still had plenty of opportunities to surprise me. It fits one of my favorite formulas for all-time great movies: simultaneously exactly what I was hoping for and so different from what I was expecting. Carey Mulligan is a knockout, in every way you can imagine. She plays med school dropout Cassie Thomas, a black widow who lures entitled men into this intoxicating trap she’s cooked up. She pretends to be blackout drunk at bars so that someone will not-so-gallantly bring her home to take advantage of her, at which point she drops the charade and spooks like them like a zombie popping out of the grave. She has her own history with assault, but she’s also an avenging angel taking on the entirety of rape culture.

More

John Patrick Shanley Turns Back on the Classic Romantic Charm in ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’

December 9, 2020

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Wild Mountain Thyme (Credit: Kerry Brown/Bleecker Street)

Starring: Emily Blunt, Jamie Dornan, Jon Hamm, Christopher Walken, Dearbhla Molloy, Danielle Ryan

Director: John Patrick Shanley

Running Time: 102 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Mild Adult-ness

Release Date: December 11, 2020 (Theaters and On Demand)

Do you despair at the lack of nakedly emotional romantic movies nowadays? Have you spent the past 33 years wondering when the next Moonstruck is going to finally come along? Do you believe it’s time to send Jon Hamm to Ireland? Well has John Patrick Shanley got just what you asked for! The screenwriter behind “Snap out of it!” and “Why do men chase women?” has taken his talents to the Emerald Isle for Wild Mountain Thyme, a windswept tale about two people who sure appear to be very much in love, though it takes them quite a while to fully consummate their passion. As with Moonstruck, the fun is less about wondering whether or not they end up together and more about how emotionally discombobulated they become by resisting where their passions obviously lie.

As the film begins, Christopher Walken intones, “Welcome to Ireland,” and I’m thinking, “I’m pretty sure Mr. More Cowbell is definitely not Irish, but I nevertheless feel as welcome as possible.” Walken plays Tony Reilly, father of Jamie Dornan’s Anthony (the “h” is silent and everyone hits that “t” as hard as they possibly can). The elder Tony is in a financial bind, so he’s set to sell the family farm to his American nephew Adam (Jon Hamm). That puts a damper on Anthony’s seemingly inevitable marriage to Rosemary Muldoon (Emily Blunt), who had envisioned the two of them enjoying wedded bliss in the countryside. Anthony and Rosemary have basically been in love ever since they were kids, and everyone knows this. But for some reason Anthony cannot bring himself to pop the question, and honestly I’m not sure what his problem is. But I suspect that’s kind of the point. The best explanation the movie offers us is that he’s suffering from the vaguely defined familial strain of “Kelly madness” (Kelly being the surname of his grandfather).

Anthony’s dithering is so extreme that anyone watching is liable to wonder why Rosemary doesn’t just move on. And she’s not lacking for options, as there’s a scene that begins with her announcing “Today’s the day,” which leads to her making an impromptu trip to New York City (to the tune of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake score, no less) where she meets up with Adam and develops a quick natural repartee with her beloved’s cousin. And when she returns to Ireland, Anthony even attempts to push her in that direction. But somehow I am ultimately convinced by Shanley’s machinations and Blunt’s sheer force of will that Anthony and Rosemary really are going to make it work somehow. The way he digs in his heels should be disqualifying, but the situation only gets sillier and sillier, and thus more and more charming. Maybe we could all use a little bit of Kelly Madness in our lives.

Wild Mountain Thyme is Recommended If You Like: Moonstruck, Taking a while to snap out of it, Ireland, Jon Hamm-centric subplots

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Farms

For All of My Life, I See a Lot of Movies. ‘All My Life’ is One of Them.

December 3, 2020

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

All My Life (CREDIT: Patti Perret/Universal Pictures)

Starring: Jessica Rothe, Harry Shum Jr., Kyle Allen, Chrissie Fit, Jay Pharoah, Marielle Scott, Keala Settle, Ever Carradine, Mario Cantone, Jon Rudnitsky, Josh Brener

Director: Marc Meyers

Running Time: 94 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Typical Brief Language-Related Reasons

Release Date: December 4, 2020

My biggest emotional connection with All My Life came at the very end when we saw footage of the real Jennifer Carter and Solomon Chau, the couple whose story inspired the film, as it made me go, “Oh yeah, it said, ‘Inspired by true events’ at the beginning.” In between, I had pretty much forgotten the real life aspect, as nothing particularly stranger-than-fiction appeared to be happening. Perhaps the real Jenn and Sol’s romance was just as pedestrian as what ended up on screen, although I’m sure it didn’t feel unremarkable to them. Seeing as their story caught the attention of big-time Hollywood executives, it surely must have been passionate somewhere along the way. So I kind of wish I could have watched their entire wedding video instead, because what I actually watched felt like it was written by an Algorithm instructed to create “Generic Heterosexual American Rom-Com 2020.”

Surely it didn’t have to be this way, as we have a couple of fine leads in the form of Jessica Rothe as Jenn and Glee alum Harry Shum Jr. as Sol. Rothe is of course preternaturally charming in the Happy Death Day movies, and while Shum hasn’t broken out on quite the same level as some of his New Directions colleagues, we know that he’s a bona fide song-and-dance man. Let these two kick loose, why don’t you, All My Life! What I haven’t mentioned up until this point, but what is pretty crucial to the premise, is that this story pivots on a malignant cancer diagnosis that interrupts wedding preparations. So tragedy is hanging over the whole affair, but clearly this movie nevertheless wants to be about living life – ALL OF YOUR LIFE! – while you still can.

We need to see these characters doing just that, and we also need to be able to enjoy it vicariously. Now I can’t speak for everyone, but I can tell you what I was feeling, and it wasn’t vicarious enjoyment. Rather, it was a mix of confusion, digestion (or indigestion) of banality, and just a profound sense that I’m not connecting to these people. Jenn eats Ding Dongs for dinner at one point, I guess because it’s supposed to be goofy and quirky? At another point, Jenn and Sol dance in a water fountain, I guess because Friends is part of our collective cultural memory? Eventually Sol loses his sense of taste as a side effect of his cancer treatment, and that’s a big deal because he’s a chef, and that’s one of the few moments that I genuinely understand. This movie seems to have selected its name from the “Department of Generic Titles,” but I think a better idea would have been to go with the moniker “Loss of Taste” and then set everything in motion from that starting point.

All My Life is Recommended If You Like: Generic covers of Oasis songs

Grade: 1.5 out of 5 Meet-Cutes

Movie Review: Rachel Brosnahan Assures Everyone, ‘I’m Your Woman’

December 2, 2020

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , Leave a comment

I’m Your Woman (CREDIT: Wilson Webb/Amazon Studios)

Starring: Rachel Brosnahan, Arinzé Kene, Marsha Stephanie Blake, Bill Heck, Frankie Faison, Marceline Hugot

Director: Julia Hart

Running Time: 120 Minutes

Rating: R for Deadly Gunshots and Tough Guy Language

Release Date: December 4, 2020 (Select Theaters)/December 11, 2020 (Amazon Prime Video)

Do you think you would be entertained if someone told Rachel Brosnahan that she needed to leave her house immediately and then gave her a gun just in case, even though she’s never handled one before? Surely, there are plenty of people who believe that “woman on the run + gun” is a foolproof formula for quality cinema. When that woman is the star of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, it turns out that she is more than up for the task. Did I mention that there’s also a baby in the mix? Because that’s pretty important. As very frustrated housewife (or house-less-wife) Jean, Brosnahan spends a significant portion of I’m Your Woman with a baby in one hand and a gun in the other. She’s not quite sure how she ended up in this mess, and neither are we, but goshdangit if she doesn’t convince us that we’re all going to make it through together unscathed.

It all kicks off as an unholy mix of The Godfather and Raising Arizona dressed up in the most 1970s of full-length trench coats. We meet Jean when she’s been struggling through miscarriage after miscarriage, but then one day her husband Eddie (Bill Heck) shows up at their front door with a random infant in tow. Soon after, he’s closing a door on her so that he can talk shop with some guys in private in much the same way that Michael Corleone kept Kay shut off from his business. While Jean never quite learns what Eddie is up to, she does know that it is very, very bad, as Eddie’s associate Cal (Arinzé Kene) soon shows up to whisk her and the baby off to a series of safe houses. Eventually Cal’s family joins in on the mission as well, and Jean basically becomes reborn as the ultimate survivor.

Structurally, I’m Your Woman works in fits and starts, kind of by design. There are significant stretches of Jean just sitting around watching TV and nodding off in the middle of the afternoon, occasionally waking up to look over her shoulder. These segments are rather numbing, but we’re meant to absorb her simmering anxiety. They’re surrounded by a series of high-tension car rides, nightclub shootouts, and good old-fashioned running towards some semblance of safety. Consistently carrying us through both all the numb and all the exciting is Brosnahan’s steely resolve. It’s a big ask to give any lead actor that much cinematic responsibility, but she’s ready to take care of us.

I’m Your Woman is Recommended If You Like: Focusing on the characters who are usually given short shrift, Long Tan Trench Coats, Aretha Franklin covers

Grade: 3 out of 5 Secrets

‘Zappa’ Provides the Story of the Man Behind the Mustache

November 24, 2020

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , Leave a comment

Zappa (CREDIT: Roelof Kiers/Magnolia Pictures)

Starring: Frank Zappa and Friends

Director: Alex Winter

Running Time: 129 Minutes

Rating: Unrated (But I’d Go with a Light PG-13, for Semi-Indulgent Rock Star-ness)

Release Date: November 27, 2020 (Theaters)

Zappa is like a lot of rock docs, but different. Which makes sense, as its subject is Frank Zappa, who was in many ways very similar to other rock stars, but in other ways, very different. Directed by Bill & Ted star Alex Winter, Zappa follows the standard playbook by relying upon archival clips mixed with interviews with the people who knew the man, while establishing its unique appeal through unlimited access to the Zappa family trust. If you’re a fan of Behind the Music and its ilk, you will surely find something to enjoy here. If, however, you prefer that documentaries try to be at least a little formally inventive, you might be disappointed by the straightforward approach. But it’s impossible to be completely let down by the story of someone who absolutely refused to be pinned down by any categorization.

Zappa the Film keeps pounding away at the message that Zappa the Man was full of contradictions. Unlike so many other rock stars, he was totally straight-edged when it came to drugs, though he supported decriminalization. There was a thoroughly goofy streak to his artistry, but he was also constantly giving off a self-serious vibe. He mixed rock with jazz, or jazz with rock, and whatever else was bouncing around his head, but it would be too simplistic to consider his discography any clearly defined fusion of those genres. As one interviewee perfectly sums it up, “What the hell is it? It’s Zappa.” After watching this movie, you probably won’t be able to peg him any more easily than before, and that’s kind of the point.

Those contradictions extend right through to Zappa’s personal life. This film is no hagiography. Many times, it had me thinking, “Zappa was an interesting guy, but I wish he had been a better husband and father.” In one clip, he pretty much justifies his infidelities by saying that he is a human being who spends plenty of time on the road. We do see his love for his wife Gail and their four kids, but it seems like he tends to get bored of them after a while. It’s ironic then that perhaps the biggest hit of his career was the novelty track “Valley Girl,” a collaboration with his then 14-year-old daughter Moon that more or less defined a stereotype.

Frank Zappa gave the world plenty that we should be thankful for: weird and undefinable music, anti-censorship crusades, appreciation for his musical forebears. But as always, it’s important to be aware that the story behind all that is a lot messier than we might want it to be.

Zappa is Recommended If You Like: Contradictions

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Mothers of Invention

‘Sound of Metal’ Review: Riz Ahmed Fights to Retain His Hearing and Sobriety

November 18, 2020

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , Leave a comment

Sound of Metal (CREDIT: Amazon Studios)

Starring: Riz Ahmed, Olivia Cooke, Paul Raci, Lauren Ridloff, Mathieu Amalric

Director: Darius Marder

Running Time: 130 Minutes

Rating: R for Language, Mainly

Release Date: November 20, 2020 (Theaters)/December 4, 2020 (Amazon Prime Video)

The premise of a rock ‘n’ roll drummer rapidly losing his hearing offers plenty of storytelling possibilities. But when you also throw in prior drug addiction, well then, it’s pretty much a guarantee that the story is headed in one particular direction. In Sound of Metal, Riz Ahmed plays Ruben Stone, the drummer in question, who is robbed of his most important sense suddenly and instantaneously. His bandmate girlfriend Lou (Olivia Cooke) is worried about him, but she’s more freaked out when he steps out to smoke a cigarette, as it could portend a relapse into something a lot more fatal. Ruben soon finds his way to a sober living program for deaf people, run by Joe (Paul Raci), a Vietnam veteran who lost his hearing from a combat explosion and then chased away his family with his alcoholism.

At the core of Sound of Metal is a question of trust, or rather, several questions of trust. Can Ruben buy into the system he suddenly finds himself thrust into? Can Joe accept into his fold someone who’s so resistant to his program? Ruben is clearly more interested in fixing his ears than his head, while Joe’s agenda is very much the inverse. But with a cochlear implant costing tens of thousands that Ruben doesn’t have and no other deaf-targeted sober programs anywhere, he doesn’t have any other good options. Eventually, a moment comes in which Joe tells Ruben that he’s irrevocably broken his trust, and while I believe that Joe sees it that way, I have my doubts that Ruben deserves the full blame, as the strict standards were never the best fit – or any fit – for him.

If you choose to see Ruben and Joe as two reasonable people who just aren’t working together (as I do), then Sound of Metal‘s conflict becomes less about the untrustworthiness of the addicted mind and more about how water and vinegar may not mix, but they can co-exist. Ruben’s ending is so surprisingly happy that I initially thought I must have missed something. He recovers his hearing as best as he can, he and Lou remain together, and Lou reunites with her semi-estranged father (Mathieu Amalric). It’s almost like they’re a perfectly happy and healthy family! But it’s not quite perfect, or at least it’s not as natural a fit as it once was. The music career is in flux, and while Ruben’s hearing may not have disappeared completely, he does have to learn how to adjust it to a new reality. It’s an askew conclusion because it’s actually an awkward beginning

Sound of Metal is Recommended If You Like: Navigating thorny life crises

Grade: 3 out of 5 Decibels

Romanian Documentary ‘Collective’ Gets Incisive on a Tragic Scandal

November 17, 2020

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , Leave a comment

Collective (CREDIT: Magnolia Pictures)

Starring: Journalists, Doctors, and Government Officials

Director: Alexander Nanau

Running Time: 109 Minutes

Rating: Unrated (It would probably be a PG-13-level for graphic medical images)

Release Date: November 20, 2020 (Theaters and On Demand)

I have a confession to make: I didn’t realize that Collective was a documentary until after I finished watching it. (The press notes had touted it as Romania’s Oscar entry for Best International Feature Film, which I had neglected to realize could include docs.) I’ll go ahead and turn that into a compliment by saying that I was impressed by its strong sense of verisimilitude. That’s not always easy to accomplish when telling a true story on screen, whether it’s in the form of a docudrama or an actual documentary. Collective presents a story of government and corporate corruption and medical malfeasance in Southeastern Europe, but if you’ve been alive  anywhere in the world in 2020, you’re surely acutely aware of the scourge of those ills no matter where you live. The fight to expose all of the terrible decisions is kind of Sisyphean, but it’s reassuring to know that there are still people who are willing to fight that fight.

The tragedy that sets everything off is a fire at a Romanian nightclub that killed about a couple dozen people from burns and smoke inhalation, with the number of the dead more than doubling in the hours and days following the conflagration. It quickly becomes clear that a lot of these deaths could have been prevented if not for common dangerous practices at the medical facilities, as multiple fatalities are tied to disinfectants that were diluted to save money, thus allowing bacteria to spread to dangerous levels. We discover what this means in quite stark terms with the shot of a human body crawling with maggots on a hospital bed. Amidst it all, a group of journalists keep asking the questions that need to be asked for the public to hear. They’re hardened by the corruption, but not numb to it; widespread incompetence is the day-to-day muck they know that they have to wade through.

There is a clinical, procedural approach to the material in Collective that is quite dry, but it gets the point across. There’s a lot of talk about “pyocanic bacteria,” surely more than in any other movie I’ve ever seen. (You might think that surely this tone would have tipped me off to the fact that this was a documentary. I guess I just assumed that this was the Romanian way, or at least the way of director Alexander Nanau.) If you’re tired of getting outraged at the scandals in your own country but still want to be angry, Collective offers you plenty to get worked up about. It won’t assure you that this world will be fully redeemed anytime soon, but you might come away a little optimistic that redemption is somewhat possible at some point in the future.

Collective is Recommended If You Like: Real-life journalists doggedly reporting on the worst of humanity

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Epidemiologists in the Pocket

Vince Vaughn and Kathryn Newton Get ‘Freaky,’ and a Bloody Silly Time Will Be Had By All

November 11, 2020

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Freaky (CREDIT: Brian Douglas/Universal Pictures)

Starring: Vince Vaughn, Kathryn Newton, Katie Finneran, Celeste O’Connor, Misha Osherovich, Uriah Shelton, Alan Ruck

Director: Christopher Landon

Running Time: 101 Minutes

Rating: R for Stunningly Over-the-Top Gore and Bluntly Disturbing Profanity

Release Date: November 13, 2020 (Theaters)/December 4, 2020 (On Demand)

When the elevator pitch for a movie is “A serial killer swaps bodies with a teenage girl,” how could its title be anything other than “Freaky Friday the 13th”? Maybe litigiousness was a concern, or perhaps brevity really is the soul of witty knifeplay, as co-writer/director Christopher Landon and company ultimately settled on the shorter moniker Freaky for this breezy and deadly concoction. Landon is best known for mashing up slashers and time loops in Happy Death Day and its sequel, and now he’s got another unlikely complement for his preferred horror subgenre. The hallmarks of the two formulas mix together mostly seamlessly, as mystical mumbo-jumbo and a race to a point-of-no-return countdown are punctuated by buckets of gore.

The teenage girl in question is Millie Kessler (Kathryn Newton), who’s been going through life in a bit of a daze ever since her dad died about a year ago, while the serial killer (Vince Vaughn) is known as the Blissfield Butcher, and that’s pretty much all you need to know about him. Freaky‘s slasher approach is most directly inspired by the Friday the 13th franchise, particularly the early sequels in which the be-masked Jason Voorhees’ motivation gradually drifts away from revenge and more towards a general unquenchable thirst for killing. For Newton, that means playing the Butcher in Millie’s body as mostly a silent stalker, while occasionally dropping piercingly vulgar threats of violence. If the Butcher is motivated by anything, it’s shiny objects, as he is positively entranced by a beautiful kitchen knife, while his fashion sense leads him to outfit Millie’s body in a striking blood-red jacket.

Vaughn has a much more effervescent role to play, which he tackles with a level of relish that is always ready to be tapped whenever he’s given the right material. With arms akimbo and his heart on his sleeve, he nails the looseness of someone who suddenly finds herself a foot taller and about one hundred pounds bigger. Millie’s fascination with all the nooks, crannies, and appendages of her new body is infectious and an inspiration for all of us to celebrate the vessels we’re currently living in, body swap or no. Good on Vaughn for being so fully up for anything!

As for the actual story, Freaky lacks the emotional oomph present in the best of the body swap genre (or the best of the slasher genre, certainly). The thematic heft of the body swap tends to be driven by the swappers ultimately coming to an understanding with each other, but that’s not exactly going to work when one of them is basically an embodiment of pure evil. So we must be sated by the goofball charm, of which there is plenty, and the absurd graphic violence, of which there is even more. Landon is clearly here to revel in the most baroque excesses of the slasher world, as the Butcher utilizes the likes of a toilet seat and a tennis racket in profoundly lethal ways. Also there’s apparently a cryogenic chamber in a high school locker room. All that AND there’s a “Que Sera Sera” needledrop. Quite frankly, I think Freaky knows exactly who its audience is.

Freaky is Recommended If You Like: Friday the 13th Parts 3 through 6, Grindhouse-style gore, The continued relevance of Vince Vaughn

Grade: 3 out of 5 Magic Daggers

Older Entries Newer Entries