Will ‘The Home’ Find a Home in Your Eyeballs?

July 29, 2025

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Pete Davidson is home, sweet home (CREDIT: Roadside Attractions)

Starring: Pete Davidson, John Glover, Bruce Altman

Director: James DeMonaco

Running Time: 95 Minutes

Rating: R

Release Date: July 25, 2025 (Theaters)

Sometimes new movies get an ostensibly wide theatrical release from a major distributor, but they still somehow completely slip through the cracks. They get hardly any promotional push, and then they disappear from multiplexes after just a week and end up shunted to on-demand streaming soon thereafter. Most of these movies aren’t secret masterpieces or anything like that, but a lot of them are at least kind of interesting.

One such flick is The Home, co-written and directed by James DeMonaco and starring Pete Davidson as a super at a retirement community. You might think that Davidson would have enough star power and Purge franchise creator DeMonaco would have enough horror cachet to get this a more premium treatment. But no such dice.

Anyway, this review is mainly a PSA to get the word out to audiences who might still be possibly ever so slightly interested. Maybe The Home is already completely out of theaters by the time you’re reading this. (In which case, keep an eye out for it in your living room.) Or maybe there’s a showtime at the picture house in 15 minutes. (In which case: go, go, go!)

But will you actually enjoy any of it? To be clear, I’m certainly not raving. The twist, while interesting, is kind of predictable, and the script could have benefitted from at least one more revision. But it’s just unique enough for me to be satisfied that The Home is right at home in my viewing diary.

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Retirees

Is it a Yes or a No, ‘Dog Man’?

January 29, 2025

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What’s up, Dog (Man)? (CREDIT: Universal Pictures/DreamWorks Animation)

Starring: Peter Hastings, Pete Davidson, Lil Rel Howery, Lucas Hopkins Calderon, Isla Fisher, Ricky Gervais, Cheri Oteri, Billy Boyd, Stephen Root, Poppy Liu, Laraine Newman, Melissa Villaseñor, Kate Micucci, Maggie Wheeler, Pearce Bunting, Max Koch, Rahnuma Panthaky

Director: Peter Hastings

Running Time: 89 Minutes

Rating: PG for The Typical Animated Mayhem

Release Date: January 31, 2025 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Officer Knight and his canine companion Greg are one of the best crime-fighting duos in the city. That is, until a major accident renders Knight’s head and Greg’s body unusable. So their doctors decide to make lemonade and fuse the two of them together to form the titular Dog Man (barks and whines provided by writer-director Peter Hastings)! That would seemingly make him the perfect foil for the incorrigible feline criminal Petey (Pete Davidson), but alas, Dog Man gets off on the wrong foot with his Chief (Lil Rel Howery) and the Mayor (Cheri Oteri) and ends up having to stay on desk duty. Meanwhile, Petey obtains a clone of himself named Lil’ Petey (Lucas Hopkins Calderon), who may just soften his heart and convince him to become a doting father instead of a criminal mastermind.

What Made an Impression?: You Got to Be Silly: Dog Man is based on the graphic novel series of the same name by Dav Pilkey, who’s probably best known for Captain Underpants, which got its own big-screen adaptation back in 2017. I’m familiar with Pilkey’s output via pop culture osmosis, but this is my first time actually diving into what he has on offer. And now that I’ve been exposed, I must say: I hope I have kids soon so that we can fully explore the Pilkey-verse together. Simply put, this is silly sophomoric humor done cleverly and colorfully. Dopey wordplay and visual gags abound, befitting a world in which a canine-human hybrid is the hero.
Family Matters: Considering all the unabashed silliness on display, you might be surprised to learn that Dog Man also isn’t afraid to get heavy. To be clear, it’s not like it’s an unrelenting tearjerker about cancer and/or addiction. Nevertheless, you might find yourself shedding a tear or two. For example, after Officer Knight and Greg become Dog Man, they’re unceremoniously abandoned by Greg’s wife, who apparently couldn’t bear to ever see her husband and fur baby fused together. Meanwhile, Petey’s villainy seems to be entirely fueled by his abandonment issues with his own deadbeat dad (Stephen Root). These themes don’t weigh down the wackiness, but they certainly make themselves known. So if you want a steady stream of ultra-silly laughs with a side of genuine family therapy, Dog Man has you covered.

Dog Man is Recommended If You Like: Weird Al, Looney Tunes, “Cat’s in the Cradle”

Grade: 3 out of 5 Copz

Jeff’s Wacky SNL Review: Pete Davidson/Ice Spice

October 15, 2023

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Ice Spice with my little Ice… (CREDIT: NBC/Screenshot)

Oh, hey there! Well, the WGA strike is over, and the SAG strike doesn’t apply to every single show on TV. So it’s time for Saturday Night Live Season 49 to commence! Fast food is the theme of the guest list for the first show, what with Pete Davidson hosting and Ice Spice providing the tunes.

And I’m still doing the wacky reviews! I’m also in the midst of marathon training, so let’s make this quick and do one-word assessments for each sketch.

More

‘Dumb Money’ is Smart Storytelling

September 13, 2023

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So Dumb (CREDIT: Sony Pictures/Screenshot)

Starring: Paul Dano, Pete Davidson, Seth Rogen, Shailene Woodley, America Ferrera, Nick Offerman, Anthony Ramos, Sebastian Stan, Dane DeHaan, Myha’la Harold, Rushi Kota, Talia Ryder

Director: Craig Gillespie

Running Time: 104 Minutes

Rating: R for Dumb Profanity and Cheeky Nudity

Release Date: September 15, 2023 (Limited Theaters)/September 29, 2023 (Expands Wide)

What’s It About?: STONKS! I could attempt to continue to write the rest of this review of Dumb Money in the lingua franca of the r/WallStreetBets subreddit, but alas, I’m probably not well-versed in it enough to produce something coherent. So I’ll instead keep it generally prosaic. Back in 2020 and early 2021, r/WallStreetBets was the social media hub for something rather strange happening in the stock market. Based on the advice of a chicken tender-obsessed financial analyst named Keith Gill (Paul Dano), a whole cadre of amateur traders decide to go all in on the retail chain GameStop. Meanwhile, Wall Street types like Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen) and Kenneth Griffin (Nick Offerman) are fairly confident that they should do exactly the opposite by short selling GameStop stock, what with the general decline of in-person retail video game sales. But the meme-fueled enthusiasm of working class folks like a nurse (America Ferrera), a couple of college classmates (Myha’la Harold and Talia Ryder), and even a GameStop cashier (Anthony Ramos) ensures that Opposite Day will be arriving very soon.

What Made an Impression?: Cutting Through the Malarkey: If you feel that the financial markets are a rigged game, it’s probably because their rules are too intricate and incomprehensible to anyone who can’t afford to spend hours poring over them every day. So it’s a bit of a minor miracle that Dumb Money is so easy to understand despite all that. It certainly helps that it’s based on a story that was widely covered by the media. And the underlying concepts are straightforward enough that you don’t have to sweat the details. But maybe we’ve also become more financially literate as a society since the days of Occupy Wall Street and the other populist movements that followed in its wake, along with the democratizing rise of the Robinhood stock trading app, which plays a major role in this story. But also, it comes down to simple storytelling skills: the characters are compelling, so it’s easier to pay attention to what’s going on.
A Busy Pandemic: Recent history is a major part of popular cinema, and if that trend is going to continue, then we can’t ignore the COVID-19 of it all. As this story takes place during the height of the pre-vaccinated pandemic, there are a lot of face masks. That was a time of heightened anxiety, but it was also a time of doing whatever the hell else was part of your life, whether that meant surreptitiously texting in class, trying not to curse in front of your kids, or even trying to run that sub-4:00 mile you could never quite pull off in college. Buying stocks that become worth millions of dollars isn’t cool, you know what is cool? Making billion dollars’ worth of memories that you’ll cherish forever.
What’s Behind the Screen?: Context is king. Dumb Money relies on a fair amount of pre-existing news footage, as well as clips of real politicians from Congressional hearings. This mix of documentary and dramatization equals illumination. The events of this story initially played out behind Zoom screens and Internet-speak, and now we get some juicy peeks into how those scenes might have played out in the flesh. They’re filled with the high-stakes foibles of humanity, offering an irresistible mix of voyeurism but also sympathy, as well as savagery but also a dollop of optimism. If the Almighty Dollar remains king, we’ll all remain dumb for it, but hopefully we can still blast through the status quo a bit in the meantime.

Dumb Money is Recommended If You Like: The Social Network, The Big Short, Memes

Grade: 4.5 out of 5 STONKS

Does ‘Transformers: Rise of the Beasts’ Rise to the Occasion?

June 8, 2023

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Beast Mode (CREDIT: Skydance/Paramount Pictures)

Starring: Anthony Ramos, Dominique Fishback, Luna Lauren Vélez, Tobe Nwigwe, Dean Scott Vazquez, Peter Cullen, Pete Davidson, Liza Koshy, Cristo Fernández, John DiMaggio, Ron Perlman, Michelle Yeoh, David Sobolov, Tongayi Chirisa, Peter Dinklage, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, Colman Domingo

Director: Steven Caple Jr.

Running Time: 127 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Metal Injuries

Release Date: June 9, 2023 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Hey, remember the 90s? The makers of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts sure do, because they went ahead and set the latest adventure of these extraterrestrial morphing robots in the era of g-funk and baggy jorts. But besides the occasional Wu-Tang or LL Cool J needle drop, that setting is mostly besides the point, as Rise of the Beasts is primarily concerned about the quest for a MacGuffin. That would be the Transwarp Key, a device with the power to allow Optimus Prime and the rest of the Autobots to return to their home planet of Cybertron after years in exile on Earth. Of course, if it instead falls into the wrong hands, it means that their enemies could destroy even more worlds. In their efforts to secure it, they recruit some human allies in the form of struggling family man Noah (Anthony Ramos) and museum intern Elena (Dominique Fishback). When they touch down in Peru, things get especially hairy, as they meet up with the breed of animalistic Transformers known as the Maximals.

What Made an Impression?: I know I’m not the only one who abandoned the Michael Bay-directed Transformers at a certain point. And with that in mind, the highest compliment I can pay Rise of the Beasts is that it continues the trend that began a few years ago with Bumblebee in which these movies’ climaxes are no longer incomprehensible onslaughts of metal clanking against metal. You can actually tell who’s talking! Distinct personalities can be detected! And some of those personalities are decently entertaining! Director Steven Caple Jr. and his screenwriting team don’t reinvent the mold at all, but you could imagine this movie actually coming out in 1994, when clarity and an adventurous spirit were valued as a matter of course.

While I appreciate that the Rise of the Beasts crew focused on the fundamentals, they didn’t exactly inspire me to become a diehard Transformers devotee. I’m about ten years too young for their original heyday, but anyone who’s more steeped in the lore than I am will probably find plenty to appreciate. And it certainly helps that you’ve got dignified actors like Michelle Yeoh and Peter Dinklage bringing their voices to life. But I’m mostly focused on Pete Davidson’s lil-stinker performance as the hologram-projecting Mirage. It’s the sort of comic relief that on paper seems like it would be a step too far for the Transformers status quo, but instead it’s just the hit of mustard needed to make the whole course palatable.

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is Recommended If You Like: Some Transformers, but not too many Transformers

Grade: 3 out of 5 Maximals

Jeff’s Wacky SNL Non-Review: Pete Davidson/Lil Uzi Vert

May 7, 2023

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Strike! (CREDIT: NBC/Screenshot)

The 19th episode of the 48th season of Saturday Night Live was supposed to air on May 6, 2023, with host Pete Davidson and musical guest Lil Uzi Vert. But alas it’s been canceled due to the Writers Guild of America strike. I would’ve been using this space to review that episode, so instead I’ll voice my support for the writers, who as far as I can tell just want to be compensated fairly.

Two other episodes were also booked for later this May, with hosts Kieran Culkin and Jennifer Coolidge, and musical guests Foo Fighters and Labrinth. Those look like they’ve been canceled as well, so the Ana de Armas/Karol G episode appears to now be the de facto season finale.

I’ll have more to say about the best of the entire season soon. But in the meantime, here’s my message for the showbiz industry: please don’t make any more new SNL (or any new TV in general) until the writers are treated with a little more respect!

‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’ Will Have You Laughing, But Not for Long, Because Things Get Stressful Quick, But in an Edifying Way

August 4, 2022

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Bodies Bodies Bodies (CREDIT: Eric Chakeen/A24)

Starring: Amandla Stenberg, Maria Bakalova, Myha’la Herrold, Rachel Sennott, Chase Sui Wonders, Pete Davidson, Lee Pace

Director: Halina Reijn

Running Time: 95 Minutes

Rating: R for Generally Raucous Vibes That Make Everyone Ill-Prepared for the Bloodbath

Release Date: August 5, 2022 (Limited)/August 12, 2022 (Expands Wide)

What’s It About?: What’s the best thing to do during a hurricane? Hunker down for a house party, maybe? Eh, even if the building is sturdy enough to prevent any permanent damage, things could get messy. Which is to say, the characters of Bodies Bodies Bodies are putting themselves at risk. Emotional, physical, potentially lethal risk. The group of seven hanging out at the mansion are a mix of longtime friends and new lovers, as well as plenty of uninvited secrets and passive-aggressiveness. When the storm forces them inside for the night, they decide to play the titular party game, in which one person is assigned to play the “killer” who must be sussed out by the other players. But when one of them actually winds up dead, an impromptu murder investigation begins. And instead of banding together, they all find ways to be suspicious of each other.

What Made an Impression?: Like other great killer mystery thrillers, Bodies Bodies Bodies does a fine job of convincing us that everyone is a legitimate suspect. Just when I thought I’d identified the most secretive and cruel individual, somebody else does something equally thoughtless. Based on what we see, these are not very good friends. I was most reminded of 2015’s Unfriended, in which a Skype session turns deadly as each of the callers reveal just how profoundly awful they are. But the Bodies Bodies Bodies crew aren’t quite that terrible. Instead, they’re insecure young adults trying to figure out what to do with their lives, and they’re not finding any useful support from the other insecure people around them. If you add buckets of windy rain and a dead body to that powder keg, it’s not going to be a fun night.

It all resolves in a gut-punch of an ending that will have you going, “It’s just a movie. I should really just relax.” Because if you don’t, you’ll be stressed out for days, or potentially months even. These people shouldn’t be partying, they should be in therapy. (Well, maybe they can rage every once in a while if they maintain a healthy therapy schedule.) What if the sequel were a visit to a psychiatrist during a hurricane? I would definitely check that out. Anyway, if nothing else, Bodies Bodies Bodies is very much a warning that we should all come up with a plan ASAP for what to do if any of our friends suddenly winds up inexplicably dead.

Bodies Bodies Bodies is Recommended If You Like: Unfriended, Scream, Ready or Not

Grade: 4 out of 5 Machetes

How Well Does ‘I Want You Back’ Handle Its Manipulative Premise? Let’s Find Out!

February 9, 2022

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I Want You Back (CREDIT: © 2021 Amazon Content Services LLC)

Starring: Charlie Day, Jenny Slate, Gina Rodriguez, Scott Eastwood, Manny Jacinto, Clark Backo, Omar Gooding, Dylan Gelula, Isabel May, Pete Davidson, Jami Gertz

Director: Jason Orley

Running Time: 111 Minutes

Rating: R for Adults Behaving Hot and Bothered

Release Date: February 11, 2022 (Amazon Prime Video)

Plenty of romantic comedies feature highly manipulative, perhaps even psychopathic behavior, and I Want You Back is just the latest example. That feature of the genre isn’t in and of itself a bad thing. It all just depends on how you present it. If you’re going for something cynical or a heightened/surreal vibe, then this behavior fits perfectly. If however you want to conclude with the sweet-as-treacle traditional happily-ever-after, then the message might end up a whole heck of a lot darker than intended. In the case of I Want You Back … it’s complicated. It features likable actors who can go vicious or weird if that’s what’s asked of them, but this time they’re aiming for something more grounded and thoughtful. But they’re not perfect either. They make some bad decisions, eventually they have to deal with the consequences, and the narrative grapples with how to move forward from those consequences.

Here’s the setup: Peter (Charlie Day) and Emma (Jenny Slate) are both blindsided when they’re dumped from their respective long-term relationships. Breakups are always hard, but these ones are especially tough, because these two mortal fools have convinced themselves that their now-exes (Scott Eastwood, Gina Rodriguez) were The Ones for them. So when they have a chance encounter in the office building where they both work, they hatch a scheme wherein they will rip apart the new relationship of the other’s ex so that they can be reunited. Along the way, they get up to a few shenanigans, deliver some chuckle-worthy dialogue, forge some unlikely friendships, and learn a little bit about themselves. But the clock is ticking, and The Truth Bomb is just waiting to go off…

Let’s jump ahead to discuss the point when Peter and Emma’s scheme fully unravels. Predictably, everyone who’s been an unwitting pawn is so aghast at the lack of forthrightness and integrity when they thought everything had been genuine. It would be realistic if everyone remained angry with each other for weeks, months, or even years afterward. But instead, they talk it out. Is it enough to justify a happy ending? Maybe, maybe not. I’m not personally sure myself. But I am certain that it’s ultimately healthiest to address these emotionally distressing situations head-on. It may be supremely difficult, but settling on anger most likely means allowing these situations to fester into something even more toxic. Since I Want You Back recognizes that, it mostly wins my approval.

I Want You Back is Recommended If You Like: Sitcom Stars in Movies, Quarter-Life Crises, Abortive threesomes

Grade: 3 out of 5 Airplane Safety Masks

‘The Suicide Squad’ is Silly, Violent, Imaginative, and Easy Enough to Follow

August 4, 2021

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The Suicide Squad (CREDIT: Warner Bros./Screenshot)

Starring: Idris Elba, Margot Robbie, Viola Davis, John Cena, Joel Kinnaman, Sylvester Stallone, Jai Courtney, Peter Capaldi, David Dastmalchian, Daniela Melchior, Michael Rooker, Alice Braga, Pete Davidson, Nathan Fillion, Sean Gunn, Flula Borg, Steve Agee, Storm Reid, Taika Waititi

Director: James Gunn

Running Time: 132 Minutes

Rating: R for Various Body Parts Getting Torn Apart, a Full Roster of Potty Mouths, and a Little Bit of Nudity

Release Date: August 5, 2021 (Theaters and HBO Max)

The Suicide Squad feels like it came from another dimension. It shares a few characters with 2016’s (no “the”) Suicide Squad and has essentially the same premise. It’s ostensibly a sequel to that earlier effort, but it’s effectively a do-over. There are plenty of reboots every year at the multiplex, but rarely do we have such an unabashed mulligan. The multiverse theory posits that there is an infinite number of realities with any number of minor or major variations, and it seems that we’ve somehow been visited by the one in which James Gunn directed a Suicide Squad movie instead of David Ayer. Adding to this surreal state of affairs was the fact that I was in a bit of a fugue state while watching The Suicide Squad. It was a 10:00 AM screening, my first morning trip to a movie theater post-pandemic. My body was confused by the lack of sunlight at the early hour and thus my brain was unsure if it should be waking or dreaming. Either way, heads were always fated to explode.

The Suicide Squad takes a cue from Suicide Squad by having multiple beginnings, but this time it’s a cheeky bit of purposeful misdirection instead of stinky studio manipulation. Suicide squads are famously expendable, and it turns out that there are degrees of expendability, as one squad is introduced with plenty of fanfare only to serve as a diversion. Everyone involved clearly wanted to feature as many characters as possible to essentially say, “Can you believe all of the colorful ridiculousness that has actually appeared in DC Comics?” The team that we spend most of our time with consists of the ever-popular Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), a couple of sharpshooters (Idris Elba, John Cena), a queen of rodents (Daniela Melchior), and a guy who shoots polka dots out of his mouth (David Dastmalchian). They’re sent to the fictional South American island nation of Corto Maltese for some top secret political meddling, but a date with the fantastical awaits them.

I wasn’t prepared for the Big Bad in The Suicide Squad to be a giant starfish, but that is indeed what awaited me. And quite frankly, I’m glad that that’s what we got. I can take or leave the gleeful over-the-top violence; it’s good for a few laughs, but after a couple of hours, I’m exhausted by the fact that I’m not really meant to care about any of these characters (although a few do manage to find a small place in my heart). So I’m grateful that there’s a surplus of visual imagination to appreciate. Way too many extraterrestrial cinematic CGI creatures of the past 15 years or so are some variation on big bad bugs, so a massive starfish that squirts out hundreds of smaller starfish is a relief. I’d be happy to see Starro rolling around every future corner of the big-screen DC universe, whether or not the reject crew is around.

So in conclusion, if you like kooky superpowers at their absolute kookiest and rats getting their time in the spotlight, you’ll probably have a decent time with the Suicide Squad.

The Suicide Squad is Recommended If You Like: The trailers for 2016’s Suicide Squad, bodily mutilation played for laughs, Mouse Hunt

Grade: 3 out of 5 Rats

Entertainment To-Do List: Week of 6/12/20

June 12, 2020

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CREDIT: Mary Cybulski/Universal Pictures

Every week, I list all the upcoming (or recently released) movies, TV shows, albums, podcasts, etc. that I believe are worth checking out.

Movies
–Artemis Fowl (Streaming on Disney+)
–Da 5 Bloods (Streaming on Netflix) – Da latest Spike Lee joint.
–The King of Staten Island (On Demand) – Pete Davidson teams up with Judd Apatow!

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