Movie Reaction: The American Society of Magical Negroes

Formula: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind / The Legend of Baggar Vance

Satire in film is a funny thing. There’s a “bite the hand that feeds you” element to them which creates dual valid responses to them. Last year, Barbie was praised for being both too feminist and not feminist enough. It called about male dominated society enough to make some uncomfortable while also being a wave or two behind on current feminist literature. American Fiction also had to balance how accusatory vs. inviting it chose to be to audiences. The American Society of Magical Negroes (ASMN) is having a similar conversation as American Fiction. They aren’t very similar as films, but both do tackle the idea of the white response to black people. Being in the white male demographic (and one with an inflated enough opinion of my thoughts that I’m posting this as though anyone cares), I struggle with what to think of my reaction to these films. I loved ASMN. So, my first response is to pat myself on the back for being a white person who “gets it”. Then again, this is a film with a wide release by a major distributor. To reach that point, it has to be a sanitized version of its message. It’s a film that is made to be palatable in its messaging so that someone like me can laugh at the jokes and come away believing that I got the message. And, without getting ahead of myself, I’ll say that’s why the end of the movie really packed a punch.

Let me back up an summarize a bit. ASMN is a film about a 27-year-old African American failing artist named Aren (Justice Smith), who is recruited to, well, a magical society of black people tasked with ensuring white people remain comfortable enough to not go taking their frustrations out on black people. The commentary is on the nose and it knows it. Aren's first task is to restore the ego of a frustrated programmer, Jason (Drew Tarver). This eventually leads to Aren having to decide if he can let go of a co-worker he has fallen for, Lizzie (An-Li Bogan), since Jason likes her as well. Oh, and if Aren does decide to put himself first, he risks of of the American Society of Magical Negroes losing their powers and dooming all black Americans. 

Frankly, I loved the movie, because in the middle of all the satire is a pretty straightforward and delightful RomCom, which Smith and Bogan are perfectly equipped for. There are some decent jokes throughout the movie, but it's not as laugh out loud funny as even American Fiction. It's far more aiming for clever, which I found to be the better tone for it anyway. Aspects of the end felt more unresolved than I cared for. A bit like writer/director Kobi Libii felt the limits of the metaphor. David Alan Grier, as Aren's recruiter to the Society, does a great job selling the logic of the group. Taver and later Michaela Watkins and Rupert Friend maybe make it a little too easy for people to not see themselves in the performance. I certainly thought, "I'm not perfect, but I'm way better than Taver's character". The cleverness of the premise and Smith and Bogan's chemistry really make the whole thing work.

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

After the Credits (i.e. spoilers)

OK. The ending. It turns out Lizzie is part of her own magical society - SOSWAG (Society of Supportive Wives and Girlfriends). At first, I thought it was just a coy little joke, but the more I've thought about it, the more it alters my entire perception of the movie. I was personally so focused on Aren's racial struggles, that I hadn't really thought about how much Lizzie was an idealized love interest. This even opens the question of who her target was: Aren or Jason? That could change everything about the movie depending on the answer. I already really enjoyed the movie, that stinger at the end made me so excited to watch this again.  

 

 

Movie Reaction: Madame Web

Formula: Spider-Man (2002) - Spider-Man (the character)

The thing about Madame Web is that it's kind of fun. It's not successful at what it's doing. It has oodles or squandered potential. It makes baffling decisions that surely stemmed from Sony not understanding what the movie is. But, it's kind of fun. I hate using phrases like "so bad it's good", so I'll say that most movies that get as much wrong as it does are not nearly as watchable.

This movie is a prequel to a movie that will never be made in an extended universe that doesn't really exist. Dakota Johnson plays Cassie, a FDNY ambulance worker. She's an orphan who lost her mom in childbirth while hunting a rare spider in Peru. After a near-death experience, Cassie starts seeing visions of the future which leads her to saving three teens played by Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O'Connor from a many with superpowers who is trying to kill them. There's a whole reason and it actually ties to Cassie's mother 30 years ago. I'd get into the details, but that would pressure me into making an "intricate web" pun.

A lot of the reasons why this movie is getting so panned or mocked is how entirely unsubtle it is about everything. Cassie is a co-worker and friend of Ben Parker (Adam Scott) who is about to be an uncle. The movie is set in 2003, maybe 15 or 16 years before Captain America: Civil War. At one point a character references a connection between having power and responsibility. If you don't see all the things I'm hinting at, then congratulations tuning out the last 20 years of Marvel movies. Even the dialogue that does directly relate to a certain webslinger is so obvious that I can't tell if they were actively trying for camp in the movie.

It's interesting the movie is set in 2003, because it really would fit better had it been made in 2003. It's from that era of superhero movies. You know, the age when the X-Men weren't allowed to wear their traditional costumes because execs were afraid of scaring off all the normal people. The time when directors like Sam Rami and Ang Lee got to experiment with styles to literalize the comic book feel. Madame Web was made to be in theaters at the same time as Daredevil. Frankly, all of those movies had some groaner comic book references like Madame Web, but it was before 20 years of inundation to the point where even casual movie-goers can pick up on them. 

Had Madame Web leaned completely into that, it would've been great. Watching a movie that they made pretending it was 2003. The problem is, it's made by 2024 studio executives with 2024 intentions. So, Madame Web is made like a first installment. It prepares an audience for a lot of really cool things to come. It does this because every superhero movie has to be a launchpad for an extended universe. It used to be that a superhero movie was made as though they might not be able to make another. They'd get to all the best ideas right away. They are in costumes in a half hour. The marquee villain shows up. We get the big fight. Unfortunately, no one gets a costume in Madame Web except in visions of a cooler future. It takes half the movie for Cassie to begin to get a grasp on her powers. 

It's a shame, because you know what movie I'd really like to see? A movie where Dakota Johnson leads a team of Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O'Connor doing badass superhero stuff, delivering cheesy one-liners and not worrying about how it might affect a Spider-Man shared cinematic universe that can't really exist in the MCU anyway for contractual reasons. 

I love the cast though and it's competently made. Like, I see where the budget went. I hope some people find a way to enjoy it. If nothing else, I hope films like this and Morbius (which is so clearly worse than Madame Web) convince Sony to just think one movie at a time with these.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Movie Reaction: Argylle

Formula: Kingsman: The Secret Service – Stranger Than Fiction

Circa 2015, Matthew Vaughn had a strong case as covertly once of my favorite directors. Not knowing he was the same director for all of them, I really liked Stardust, Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class, and Kingsman: The Secret Service. They weren’t all even the same kind of movie except for his recurring genre subversion. Since he started revisiting the same ideas though, I’ve struggled to enjoy his movies much. Kingsman: The Golden Circle completely turned me off, like all his clever ideas on the spy movie topic were spent in the first Kingsman. Then The King’s Man, despite having a solid twist, felt like rehashing the same idea. Even still, the man pulls casts that I can’t turn down, which made me curious about Argylle. Despite not loving the last two Kingsman movies, my memory of all of them was of them being low aspiring, frenetic, and fun movies that don’t have a significant bar to clear in order to be good although hard to be great.

In that respect, Argylle is fine, I guess. He revisits the stylized spy genre again, this time with the story of a spy novelist (Bryce Dallas Howard) who finds herself in the middle of an actual spy story inspired by the events in her book. A real spy, Aidan (Sam Rockwell) saves her, reminiscent to Knight & Day. Others like Henry Cavill, John Cena, Ariana DeBose, Bryan Cranston, and even Dua Lipa show up along the way. If nothing else, Matthew Vaughn is excellent at gathering A-list talent.

The movie does deliver on the promise of comically over-the top action and a stylized world that simply can’t be real. Everyone is playing big characters. It’s a silly enough movie that it’s hard to get that worked up about it.

This is a hard movie to pull off. On a script level, it relies on establishing a very convoluted premise while still working in twists. It’s buckles under the challenge of it. The twists can be painfully obvious and the lengths the story has to go to get around them really hurt the pace and structure of the movie. It’s hard to get too deep into what I mean without spoiling some of the fun. Bryce Dallas Howard is a great example of the overall issue though. She has to play both a timid author and an action star at different points, and it’s never that clear how much of one or the other the movie needs her to be at many points. The end result is a performance that isn’t really able to work at either level.

Side Rant: I don’t know why this specifically bothered me so much, but for most of Howard’s biggest set pieces, they give her a blonde wig. I really disliked that. I’m not sure if it was the implication that she couldn’t be glamorous with her normal hair or just that it really didn’t look right on her.

Basically, Argylle could’ve been significantly more fun had it not been bogged down with so much plottiness and serving a twist that doesn’t really make it more interesting than revealing it right away. It’s a weird movie where my audience seemed receptive to it as we left the theater (I heard several “I liked that”s or “That was pretty good”s), yet some of the biggest moments – like one that features a cover of a Snow Patrol song – I couldn’t hear a single person laughing.  Watchable, but missing the manic magic that Vaughn captured in Kick-Ass or the first Kingsman movie. It’s a shame too, because much of the cast was perfectly suited for the idea of the movie, and this could’ve been a really fun use of Bryce Dallas Howard in a rare actual leading role.

Oh, and despite all of the marketing, don’t expect Dua Lipa in more than a decent sized cameo role.

Movie Reaction: Mean Girls (The Musical...but don't tell anyone)

Formula: Mean Girls + Music

 

I had a much longer version of this. Let me take it back to basics instead. You know Mean Girls: the 2004 comedy that established Lindsay Lohan as a teen queen, gave Rachel McAdams her first of two breakout roles that year, and proved that Tina Fey’s writing could work beyond SNL. It’s a great movie with a crazy deep cast. No one should read any further if you haven’t seen it.

 

The 2024 Mean Girls is an adaptation of the musical version that was a Broadway hit. I don’t have the time or energy to determine why the fact that the movie is a musical has been so hidden from the advertising. I will note that a whole-ass musical version of the 97-minute 2004 film is only 15 minutes longer.

 

In other words, 2024 Mean Girls is massively-stripped down on a story level to the point that I wonder how much one could follow it without knowledge of the original movie. It’s very important to note that this is a musical adaptation though and not a remake. It is very beholden to the specific jokes, scenes, and structure of the original. So, when they aren’t singing, expect exactly the movie you remember although with a different cast.

 

The main issue with this Mean Girls is that I didn’t love the music. And that’s a problem for a musical. Ideally, you’d want someone coming out of a musical asking “How’d they do the ‘Fearless’ number on the screen?” not “How’d they do the Halloween party scene?” Not perfect comparison, but for example, when people talk about “Wicked” they want to know about “Defying Gravity”, not the flying monkeys or yellow brick road.

 

I even think on an execution level, the movie is a success. The cast could prove to rival the original when we look back a decade from now. Angourie Rice (Cady), Renee Rapp (Regina), Auli’i Cravalho (Janis), Jaquel Spivey (Damian), Avantika (Karen), Bebe Wood (Gretchen). They’re all really good at recreating those characters. The choreography and design of the musical numbers do a pretty good job of leaving the stage. It’s just that I don’t like the songs as much as the parts of the original they had to remove to fit the songs in.

 

Finally, I will fully accept any accusations that I have nostalgia blinders for a movie that came out when I was 16, and that maybe this new version will speak to 16-year-olds now in the same way. I doubt it. But I acknowledge the possibility. But overall, Mean Girls: The Musical – Good but not as good.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Night Swim

Formula: Oculus + Water

The first horror movie of the year is a fun entry to any calendar. It's this weird space that is understood to make surprise hits but also seen as a dumping ground for films that don't work. It's counter-programming for the holiday releases that are still largely dominating the box office. I don't think we've had any stone-cold classics released in this window. We did get M3gan and Scream V that last two years, and those were fun. 

 

This year, horror's big winter hope is Nigh Swim. It's a movie about a family who move into a house with a haunted pool. The nature of how it is haunted and why they don't all just agree to not use the pool are for the movie to answer. It's most notable as Kerry Condon's first paycheck from her Oscar clout and for reminding me that Wyatt Russell, who I feel like was in college movies not that long ago, is actually old enough to have teen children. 

I can't say the movie is anything worth going out of your way to see. First-time feature director Bryce McGuire executes some nice thrills in the water. It could definitely unnerve someone already afraid of the water. The origin of the haunted pool is nicely looney and not over-explained. The screenplay is best to not put under a microscope, because some parts don't hold together. None of the actors stand out from each other. Russell pulls off the "former athlete" part of his character much better than "concerned father". At first, I thought that was just my take as someone who mainly knows him from Everybody Wants Some!! and Lodge 49, but during a couple key dramatic moments in the movie, I heard some other people giggle at Russell's line delivery. So, I guess others agree that he was odd casting.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Movie Reaction: Anyone But You

 Formula: Ticket to Paradise * I Want You Back

 

There’s one thing to remember when talking about the moderately expensive RomComs of the 90s and early 00s that we all remember and long for. They weren’t all great. Even the ones we now love, at the time, were only warmly received by critics. Many bombed with audiences and gained esteem with distance.

 

Even more than I want Anyone But You to be great, I want to exist in a film environment where Anyone But You could be just OK. I want RomComs with decent budgets to come back badly. I want there to be enough of them coming out that many can be disposable. Where I could dislike one and know there will be another in a month. I think it’s good to go into Anyone But You with that in mind. Because, Anyone But You is fine. It’s fine in a way that I enjoyed and would like to see again. It is a highly imperfect film of low ambition yet I’m very glad I watched it.

 

In terms of premise, it’s standard RomCom fare. Sydney Sweeney plays Bea. Glen Powell plays Ben. They have a meet-cute at a coffee shop that leads to the best date of their lives, ending with them falling asleep in each other’s arms. The next morning, a series of miscommunications and poor decisions leads to each thinking the other person actually had an awful time and they mutually ghost each other. Months later though, Bea’s sister (Hadley Robinson) and Ben’s friend (Alexandra Shipp) start dating and eventually have a destination wedding in Australia. So, Bea and Ben are forced to be around each other despite now hating each other. Or do they?

 

The movie satisfyingly checks off many RomCom boxes. The movie shoots the hell out of Australia and the many sights and houses that the characters’ affluence affords them. It’s a deep cast of familiar RomCom types who all happily go along with however many or few lines they get. It’s all pleasant in the way that draws so many people to the Hallmark movies but with a level of polish that makes it feel like a real movie.

 

I also appreciate how unapologetically sexy the movie is. Sweeney and Powell are gorgeous people. So are Shipp and Robinson. Everyone in this cast is nice to look at. The movie knows it. Everyone in the cast knows it. It’s a movie that says it’s OK enjoy seeing pretty people on screen. Does it focus on a narrow definition of attractiveness? Sure. If that bothers you, I don’t know what to tell you. That points back to the problem I mentioned at the top. There are so few of these movies anymore, that it won’t be able to be everything for everyone. That’s a feature of the movie but a bug in the state of the film industry.

 

Unfortunately, my main issue with the movie is a big one. Sweeney and Powell as they are deployed in this don’t work. I’m tempted to lay a little more blame on Sweeney. And, to be clear, I love Sydney Sweeney. I think she’s a great actress with more range than she gets credit for. Just looks at her 2018: very different roles in Everything Sucks!, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Sharp Objects. Or how she rose to prominence with one HBO show (Euphoria) and swerved with a totally different character in another HBO show (The White Lotus). Anyone But You just doesn’t play to her strengths. This role asks for her to be a put-together mess. Someone who always looks flawless but is kind of a mess but not in a manic kind of way. Maybe she’ll grow into that or maybe I need to blame the script more. But she just didn’t do that thing that Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts always make look effortless. I may also be giving Glen Powell too much of a pass just because I saw him do this kind of character before (Set It Up). He excels at being quick and quippy. I imagine this same movie with him and Zoey Deutch and immediately see how it works better. Perhaps the move is to make both Powell and Sweeney a bit less lovable. Make them a problem for those around them; two flawed people who only work well together. That actually leans into things that both are better at. As is, they are pretty faultless (thus, boring) characters. Sweeney is freshly out of a long-term relationship that ended because they got along too well. Powell is supposedly a “fuck boy” but the only dating history we know about him is that he had a girl he loved who didn’t want something more serious. There’s so little for these two to overcome to make it work.

 

I’ll stop there before I go on too long describing the way I’d rewrite the movie.

 

This movie is very charming. Light on real laughs, which is true of a lot of RomComs. It’s well-made. Everyone seems invested in making it good. I like both leads, although the movie struggles to find a spark between them as a couple. I’d watch a dozen movies just like this if they made them.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend