Movie Reaction: Bullet Train

Formula: Free Fire * Pulp Fiction

Bullet Train is a strange movie in that on paper, I love nearly everything about it. It’s a bumbling criminal movie. I love movies that deflate the invincible assassin myth. It’s a movie set in a confined space. I often talk about my love of movies like Free Fire that put a lot of good actors/characters in one place then see how they bounce off each other. It’s an accomplished action movie. It’s directed by Dave Leitch, who has quickly established himself as one of the premier action directors in Hollywood thanks to his stunt background. It’s a movie that plays with time structure and plotting like a giant puzzle. Going back to how favorably I talked about Dorm Daze, I have a deep respect for a movie that needed a flow chart to write it. Lastly, fun cast. Yet, something held me back from fully embracing the movie.

 

Let me back up. Bullet Train is about a reformed assassin, codename Ladybug (Brad Pitt), who takes what he assumes is a harmless job: he has to take a briefcase from a bullet train and leave at the next stop. This is a movie and not a short film though, so you can guess that things go wildly awry. It turns out there are several other assassins on the train with conflicting orders. There’s a kidnapped warlord’s son, a poisonous snake, and more vendettas than you can shake a poisonous snake at. The movie is quick to jump to a montage of a past mission or interactions that led to a specific moment in the film. It’s a very chaotic movie in a way that I really should eat up.

 

Most of the enjoyment of the movie comes from the really eclectic cast. Brad Pitt over the years has figured out that he can be funny by being less competent than his good looks would imply. Historically, a leading man with his looks and screen presence only got roles with dignity. The fun of Ladybug is that he’s a mess. He feels bad about his past actions and is obsessed with what his therapist says. He only survives the film because of luck, which the film calls out repeatedly. I enjoyed him a lot in this, although his character does often feel like a passenger in the movie: someone to have things happen around. I like the brother assassins played by Bryan Tyree Henry and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Henry’s fascination with Thomas and Friends actually plays a substantial role in the film. Joey King plays a young assassin who, let’s be honest, mostly functions as a sight gag for most of the film: someone to put on the poster to show how eclectic the cast is. She’s good though. Bad Bunny is in this. Apparently, he’s a thing in the music world. Really, there’s just a lot of cast in this, including a few surprises or hiding in plain sight cameos. Remember, this is from the same director who put together a crew for Deadpool 2, put them in the advertising, and had them make press appearances, only to kill them off early in the film as a joke. That’s how you should look at the casting in this.

 

As an action movie, this is unsurprisingly successful and over the top. Leitch stages several good fight scenes and uses the location to his advantage. For example, the Pitt/Henry fight in the quiet car of the train has been all over the advertising. There’s a lot of that, and with the ridiculousness of the premise, there’s a “go for broke” attitude to the whole thing, where nothing feels off limits.

 

I think the main reason the movie didn’t work as well for me as it should’ve is overstimulation. This movie throws a lot at the audience. It’s a bit like watching a PowerPoint presentation that uses all the different slide transitions. It’s not just enough for a character to be odd. He also has to dress distinctively, and he has to get a colorful cut away to his background, and he gets a bizarre interest, and something odd happens to him unconnected to the rest of the things. The movie often feels like the film equivalent of using 20 words when 5 would do.

 

I’m not sure where I land on the film’s use of luck. It’s a recurring motif if not explicit reference throughout the film. Some characters believe they are naturally lucky. Other believe the opposite. Several beats of the story or fortuitous breaks get attributed to luck. I do appreciate the film calling that out. That’s better than not acknowledging it at all. It still feels a bit like a narrative cheat. I get annoyed when someone write themselves out of a corner by having something lucky happen. It’s lazy writing. I thought Leitch’s Deadpool 2 had a smart and playful use of luck with the Domino character. He seems to have doubled-down on it here and it didn’t work as well.

 

Ultimately, I did like the movie. It’s fun. Good cast. Good action. I respect any filmmaker trying something ambitious like this over taking the easy path. I’m only annoyed that I could see the outline of a film I would love in this and I didn’t quite get it. Who knows? Maybe this is one of those movies that I’ll see again one day and like a lot more because I can focus on the actual product and not the potential.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Prey

Premise: A Predator lands in the 18^th Century Comanche Nations and wreaks havoc.

Can I just say this movie is cool and be done with this?

 

I’m not the best person to talk about the representation aspects of the movie. I’ll just say it’s good. I’m bummed this didn’t get a theatrical release, but I’ve accepted that streamers are just going to start getting more movies that belonged in theaters. What I do know is that I’ve liked Amber Midthunder since she popped up in Legion as a badass twin. At the time, I thought it was meant as a fun contrast to make this skinny 20-year-old an enforcer character*. It turns out, that’s just who she is. Now 25, I’m hoping Midthunder gets to be an action movie star as much as she wants. Apparently, her father is a stunt actor (as well as casting director for Reservation Dogs), and that makes a lot of sense. Midthunder has great physicality. In this movie about her trying to get taken seriously by the men in her tribe, I never got the feeling that she was outmatched or being edited to seem implausibly formidable. She is what will either make or break this movie for you and, frankly, I can’t see anyone being unimpressed by her.

 

*I’m avoiding using words like “funny” or “joke” for fear that they will sound wrong. As Kerry in Legion, I always took her character seriously, but I imagine she was cast to play on an audience’s expectations.

 

The movie overall is about what you’d expect. A Predator (The Predator? I’m never sure how to phrase it) shows up on Earth. It starts killing the warriors in Midthunder’s tribe and eventually some French settlers before going head-to-head with Midthunder, who has to use her ingenuity to defeat it. The fun of this installment in the uneven Predator franchise is the period setting. There aren’t that many Native American action movies. The setting and technological limitations make the threat more daunting despite being the same as in the original movie.

 

What do you want me to say? It’s a well-made Predator movie with a star making lead performance.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: My Fake Boyfriend

[Note: This is part of a project I'm calling "A Century in a Month". The idea is that I'm going to start with a movie from about 100 years ago and pick a series of connected films until I get to the present. The rules I set this time are release years, per IMDB, can't be more than 5 years apart. I can't repeat the same connection although I can reuse the same type of connection. That means if I use "movies directed by Scorsese" to connect two, I can't use Scorsese as a connection again but I can use a director as a linking element again. I'm not really sure why I'm doing this, but it seems like a fun game.]

Connection to The Wedding Year: Both star Sarah Hyland

 

Premise: To get him out of a toxic relationship, a young man’s friend builds a fake influencer boyfriend for him.

 

When I started this “Century in a Month” project, I imagined it would be a way to find under-discussed films from masters of the medium or flawed but enjoyable star vehicles of different eras. Pretty soon though, with the limitations I set, mixed with streaming availability, I realized I’d probably end up on a movie like My Fake Boyfriend. That’s not to say I haven’t enjoyed the bizarre selection of films or that I disliked My Fake Boyfriend. It’s just funny to think how I got from Safety Last! To Nicholas & Alexandra to My Fake Boyfriend. Enough musing on the project though. It was fun but too much for one month. I’ll do a version of this again but loosen the restrictions.

 

Anyway, My Fake Boyfriend is dumb and enjoyable in a way that a proper RomCom can be. The idea is absolutely stupid. Dylan Sprouse builds a digital boyfriend for Keiynan Lonsdale and that fictional boyfriend becomes an internet sensation that spirals out of control. The core of the movie though - Lonsdale makes up a lie to get out of a bad relationship, and it gets in the way of a potential new relationship with Samer Salem – is a classic RomCom scenario.

 

Unsurprisingly, I have some of the same praise and problems as I do with most films of this ilk. I’m annoyed by how much of the drama could be solved by having one or two short discussions as real humans. That distracts me throughout the entire movie. Otherwise, the rest is fine. Lonsdale is a good RomCom lead. Dylan Sprouse and Sarah Hyland are fun as the best friend couple. Samer Salem is a very charming love interest. Marcus Rosner is a very satisfying smug ex-boyfriend/villain. I appreciated the added tension of if Salem’s chef character is even gay. That’s an additional wrinkle that Gay RomComs get to use that doesn’t feel artificial the way many other RomCom complications do.

 

The movie falls flat on a lot of the social media commentary and the Hollywood industry backdrop is a little thin, but what do I care? It’s a RomCom.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Wedding Year

[Note: This is part of a project I'm calling "A Century in a Month". The idea is that I'm going to start with a movie from about 100 years ago and pick a series of connected films until I get to the present. The rules I set this time are release years, per IMDB, can't be more than 5 years apart. I can't repeat the same connection although I can reuse the same type of connection. That means if I use "movies directed by Scorsese" to connect two, I can't use Scorsese as a connection again but I can use a director as a linking element again. I'm not really sure why I'm doing this, but it seems like a fun game.]

Connection to Goodbye to All That: Both Star Anna Camp

 

Premise: A commitment-phobic women gets put to the test when her longtime boyfriend and her get invited to numerous weddings within a year.

 

I get annoyed when people talk about the death of the RomCom as if people aren’t still making them. It’s true that they aren’t a force in the box office anymore. The leads aren’t often A-list stars, and they definitely can’t reach A-list status by starring in RomComs. The budgets aren’t the same as they used to be. But, it doesn’t take a lot of looking to find a half dozen movies like The Wedding Year that hit all the right beats and star a half dozen actors you recognize.

 

That said, I do think the RomCom has run into a problem similar to the multi-cam comedy. Since the mid-2000s, the laugh track comedy, shot on a sound stage in front of an audience has largely disappeared. There are only a few network hold outs. If you watch the few that are left, they aren’t very good. Not compared to the days of Friends or Cheers or Everybody Loves Raymond. What happens is that fewer people make that kind of sitcom, so fewer people know how to make that kind of sitcom. Institutional knowledge that was once passed down from I Love Lucy to The Mary Tyle Moore Show to Family Ties gets lost. So now, if someone actually does want to make a good multi-cam sitcom, there are fewer people around to learn from.

 

I think the same has happened to RomComs in a lot of ways. Even when the casting and the beats are right, something feels off. They don’t look right or the chemistry is off just a little. I liked The Wedding Year, even though it has the feel of a picture that was copied, then the copy was copied, and that copy was copied, etc.

 

The important thing is that Sarah Hyland and Tyler James Williams are winsome enough leads. Both have sitcom backgrounds and know how to hit their marks. I think Tyler James Williams is better at it but not distractingly so. The nature of the movie means the cast is big and most actors aren’t needed for more than a couple scenes. I enjoyed Wanda Sykes injecting some life into it a couple times. Anna Camp and Matt Shively are solid RomCom sidekicks. I don’t have strong feeling about the movie. You’ve seen versions of it before. But it’s a 90-minute RomCom that works like a RomCom should.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Goodbye to All That

[Note: This is part of a project I'm calling "A Century in a Month". The idea is that I'm going to start with a movie from about 100 years ago and pick a series of connected films until I get to the present. The rules I set this time are release years, per IMDB, can't be more than 5 years apart. I can't repeat the same connection although I can reuse the same type of connection. That means if I use "movies directed by Scorsese" to connect two, I can't use Scorsese as a connection again but I can use a director as a linking element again. I'm not really sure why I'm doing this, but it seems like a fun game.]

Connection to The Extra Man: Both star Celia Weston

 

Premise: A man tries to get back into the dating scene after his wife abruptly leaves him.

 

I’m starting to think people don’t know what a dramedy is supposed to be. They treat it like a lazy word when it’s actually a disciplined word. Yes, a dramedy is a movie that is part comedy and part drama. That gets wildly misinterpreted though. Some use it for a drama that happens to feature a lot of comedic actors. Others use it for any movie with a sad part and a funny part. Most commonly, it’s used for any movie someone doesn’t want to define. However, a proper dramedy is really supposed to use both the drama and comedy intentionally. It should be funny. The humor shouldn’t step on the drama though. Perhaps it’s an intentional release for the dramatic moment. Or maybe the dramatic moments ground the comedy. This is why a lot of black comedies work as dramedies. The jokes cope with the hard truths in the film.

 

Goodbye to All That is a drama, albeit one with low stakes and a few mildly comedic moments. I can see why it’s called a dramedy. Paul Schneider was fresh off Parks & Rec. Melanie Lynskey, Anna Camp, and Heather Graham work in a variety of genres, but if I was ever told they were in a movie, ‘comedy’ would be my first guess. Michael Chernus and Amy Sedaris are comedy people. The movie has enough slapstick to stick in a trailer. But, really, it’s about a guy forced into a mid-life crisis after his wife left him. He doesn’t know what he’s doing anymore. He’s struggling with custody for his kid. There’s even a random side-plot about how if he keeps running, he could lose his foot.

 

The problem is, I don’t really know what the movie is trying to do. The comedy is rather forcefully stuck in, like there was a mandate to include it. The divorce stuff felt a lot like a screenwriter working through his own feelings about a divorce. Melanie Lynskey essentially just wants out of the marriage because Paul Schneider is boring. Meanwhile, we see her ambush him with the divorce in a therapy session*, will barely explain anything to him, is callous about keeping their daughter away from him, and was carrying on an affair. I don’t know. It seems like they could’ve approached the divorce from a place that didn’t make Lynskey such a villain. Anna Camp’s character is way broader than the rest of the movie only for it to use her as a third act voice of reason, sort of. I felt pretty duped by how little Heather Graham was in the movie. Her placement on the poster gave me the wrong impression.

 

*Side Rant: The therapist scene is a great example of how the balance of the comedy and drama is all wrong here. The scene in which the therapist essentially breaks up with Schneider for Lynskey is meant to be darkly funny. That sets up a more absurdist perspective to the film, yet it then switches back to expecting the audience to take it all seriously at other points, when it’s convenient.

 

Yeah, I didn’t like this movie much. I think it may be that I just don’t care for Angus MacLachlan as a filmmaker. He also wrote (but didn’t direct) Junebug which I had similar issues with. I like few of the characters and the conflicts feel artificial.

 

Verdict: Strongly Don’t Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Extra Man

[Note: This is part of a project I'm calling "A Century in a Month". The idea is that I'm going to start with a movie from about 100 years ago and pick a series of connected films until I get to the present. The rules I set this time are release years, per IMDB, can't be more than 5 years apart. I can't repeat the same connection although I can reuse the same type of connection. That means if I use "movies directed by Scorsese" to connect two, I can't use Scorsese as a connection again but I can use a director as a linking element again. I'm not really sure why I'm doing this, but it seems like a fun game.]

Connection to As You Like It: Both star Kevin Kline

 

Premise: A young man moves to New York City after losing his job and rents a room with an odd, failed playwright.

 

I’m on the home stretch of my “Century in a Month” project at this point. By 2010 and beyond, I’ve seen a lot of the movies I want to see. The options start to get thin. I’ll take anything that gets me closer to the end, and I’m likely to find out why I never sought the films out before.

 

I hated The Extra Man, and in hindsight, that should not have been much of a surprise. It’s adapted from a Jonathan Ames book. I don’t know a lot about Ames. I know that I checked out immediately from his HBO show, Bored to Death, because the humor didn’t work for me. I recall reading some columns of his in Playboy*. He felt pretentious in those. The Extra Man carries over the exact tone that bothered me from my other exposure to Ames’ work.

 

*I had a subscription for several years as some sort of statement that I actually read the articles. I’ll add this to the list of reasons why I must’ve been insufferable in college.

 

This leans into all of Paul Dano’s worst “sad boy” instincts. The story about him being an aspiring crossdresser didn’t sit well with me. It felt like it was written by a non-crossdresser trying to imagine what a crossdresser’s motivation was. It reminded me a bit of in high school when a straight kid would ask a gay kid if he ever looked as his own penis and got aroused” * He clearly just isn’t getting it. Kevin Kline is instructed to go buck wild throughout the film. It’s reminiscent to a poorly-written Frasier Crane. Making a high-minded or obscure reference is only funny if it is crafted around a joke. In Frasier, people aren’t laughing because they get his opera reference. They laugh because it’s delivered like a joke and the punchline is that he sounds full of himself. As a result, Kline is just insufferable from beginning to end. He’s making smart comments whimsically, not comedically. This is a 1h48m movie and I was checking how much time was left 30 minutes in.

 

*I’m not trying to absolve myself there. I made many comments to gay friends that I thought passed as wit at the time.

 

I’ll be generous and suggest that there’s a very specific audience this movie will work for. I was not that audience. It very much had the feeling that I was someone’s ‘plus one’ at a medical convention where the keynote speaker kept cracking med school jokes.

 

Verdict: Strongly Don’t Recommend

Delayed Reaction: As You Like It

[Note: This is part of a project I'm calling "A Century in a Month". The idea is that I'm going to start with a movie from about 100 years ago and pick a series of connected films until I get to the present. The rules I set this time are release years, per IMDB, can't be more than 5 years apart. I can't repeat the same connection although I can reuse the same type of connection. That means if I use "movies directed by Scorsese" to connect two, I can't use Scorsese as a connection again but I can use a director as a linking element again. I'm not really sure why I'm doing this, but it seems like a fun game.]

Connection to Texas Rangers: Both star Alfred Molina

 

Premise: The Shakespeare play As You Like It but transplanted to 19^th century Japan.

 

By now, I think I’ve made my stance pretty clear about Shakespeare adaptations. Basically, I’m tired of films trying to strike a balance. Either use the story and release yourself from the shackles of the dialogue or embrace the fact that we are watching a play. I appreciated what the 1944 Henry V does, literally starting as a stage production so we can appreciate it as an audience in his time would’ve. It then drifts into something more cinematic. It fully embraces the theatricality. What I struggle with are the adaptations where they try to bring life to Shakespeare’s language in a real-world setting. The characters are speaking in verse. I’m sorry. By design that’s not supposed to sound natural. I find it tedious.

 

I do appreciate that As You Like It moved the setting of the film. That late 19^th century period in Japan when it rapidly tried to embrace the modern world looks cool and isn’t explored enough in film. I liked the epilogue, where Bryce Dallas Howard addresses the camera directly from the film set. I would’ve appreciated more of that throughout the film. As long as everyone is speaking the Shakespeare language, the audience isn’t going to forget that this is a play in the same way that while characters sing an audience won’t forget something is a musical. So, embrace that this is a play with a budget that a play would never get. Be a Romeo + Juliet.

 

All that said, I suppose if someone is going to do another Shakespeare film, Kenneth Branagh has the credentials. While I don’t understand the decision to avoid casting many Asian actors, the actors they did get provided a good variety. Bryce Dallas Howard, Kevin Kline, Janet McTeer, Alfred Molina, and David Oyelowo all carry themselves like they’ve done Shakespeare productions before. The movie does look pretty. In a world where I wasn’t so tired of Shakespeare adaptations, this would be ok.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Texas Rangers

[Note: This is part of a project I'm calling "A Century in a Month". The idea is that I'm going to start with a movie from about 100 years ago and pick a series of connected films until I get to the present. The rules I set this time are release years, per IMDB, can't be more than 5 years apart. I can't repeat the same connection although I can reuse the same type of connection. That means if I use "movies directed by Scorsese" to connect two, I can't use Scorsese as a connection again but I can use a director as a linking element again. I'm not really sure why I'm doing this, but it seems like a fun game.]

Connection to Big Bully: Both directed by Steve Miner

 

Premise: A group of young men are recruited to be Texas Rangers and stop a band of criminals in the Wild West.

 

Here’s what I find most entertaining about this movie. I am confident that most people who kind of remember this movie actually don’t. They do remember a 2001 movie about the Wild West with a cast of young stars and a modern sensibility. That movie is American Outlaws, starring Colin Farrell, Scott Caan, and Ali Larter. That’s the one that got a healthy nationwide release and ad campaign. Texas Rangers came out a few months later and bombed hard enough to make American Outlaws look like a success. We love to talk about the Hollywood production siblings like Dante’s Peak and Volcano or Deep Impact and Armageddon. We tend to forget the times when both movies tanked, like Texas Rangers and American Outlaws.

 

Texas Rangers is bad in a nearly kitschy way. It’s got James Van Der Beek, Rachael Leigh Cook, Ashton Kutcher, and Usher, which may make it the most 2001 cast ever. And Dylan McDermott being the veteran of the group, cresting on The Practice success even dates it. That’s a lot of people who have achieved a level of fame and don’t know what to do with it. Van Der Beek and Kutcher are trying to turn TV roles into leading man careers, as Leonardo DiCaprio, Will Smith, and George Clooney had done that decade. Cook was looking for the project that would cement her status after She’s All That. Usher was making one of his many attempts to move from singing to film. There’s a hunger to all of them that shows.

 

It doesn’t help that director Steve Milner is about as journeyman as it gets. His early fame was from Friday the 13^th sequels and directing episodes of The Wonder Years. I don’t know how to explain this, but it shows. He was my connecting point to get from Big Bully to Texas Rangers for “Century in a Month”. He directed both. TV was made fast back in the days of The Wonder Years, the rare single-cam comedy of the era. You forgive a lack of detail in a show. The period clothes aren’t going to be as worn. The house doesn’t always look that lived in. The same can be said about horror. It’s made quick and cheap in most cases. The focus isn’t on the detail work. Someone who starts a career like this (horror and TV) can get used to shortcuts that don’t work elsewhere. That’s why there’s a “kid who just made his first PowerPoint presentation” feeling to this movie. The shots and transitions call a little too much attention to themselves. The sets and costumes look like they were borrowed from a Wild West theme park. There’s an artificiality to the movie that’s not helped by the stars all looking very modern. All the pieces together combine into a movie that works so poorly that there’s almost a charm to it. Like, if the movie had embraced how anachronistic it felt, it could’ve worked a lot better. This was the same year as A Knight’s Tale. That’s the Texas Rangers template that could’ve worked. Not this glorified extended pilot.

 

Verdict: Strongly Don’t Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Big Bully

[Note: This is part of a project I'm calling "A Century in a Month". The idea is that I'm going to start with a movie from about 100 years ago and pick a series of connected films until I get to the present. The rules I set this time are release years, per IMDB, can't be more than 5 years apart. I can't repeat the same connection although I can reuse the same type of connection. That means if I use "movies directed by Scorsese" to connect two, I can't use Scorsese as a connection again but I can use a director as a linking element again. I'm not really sure why I'm doing this, but it seems like a fun game.]

Connection to White Sands: Both produced by Berber & Robinson

 

Premise: An author returns to his home town and runs into his childhood bully, who resumes torturing him.

 

One thing that became quickly apparent as I watched Big Bully was that I’d absolutely seen this movie before. That happens sometimes. I’ve spent hundreds of hours tracking and recalling movies I’ve seen, but it’s hard to recall every movie I caught when I was 10 on HBO at noon, after Fox Kids was done and I refused my parents’ pleas to do something outside. In general, if I’m not 90% certain I’ve seen a movie, I err on the side of caution and don’t count it. So, for the purpose of this “Century in a Month” project, this still counts as an eligible movie.

 

I hate to “only 90s kids will understand” a situation, but I do think it’s true that the 90s were particularly lousy with a type of theatrical film that had no interest in appealing to the adults. It was a mix of conditions. The invention of PG-13 in the 80s fractured the landscape, ghettoizing the G and PG space even more. The rise of Nickelodeon by the 90s created a profitable landscape for targeting only children. By the 2000s, outlets like Disney Channel were making their original movies and the major studios leaned even more heavily into animation. By now, with the disappearance of the film budget middle class (only blockbusters and indies) and the rise of streaming, it’s hard to come by a Big Bully anymore*.

 

*I’m saying the 90s, but the era I’m talking about is more accurately late 80s-late 00s.

 

This is a bad movie that almost accidentally stumbles into some really interesting stuff. There’s a lazy Stand By Me riff at the beginning that goes on a little too long. Then it moves to Rick Moranis and Tom Arnold as adults. And that’s where the interesting ideas pop up. I like that Moranis and Arnold’s kids swap places, with Moranis’ son bullying Arnold’s son. The film starts with them fulfilling the lie every bullied kid’s parent tells them, with Moranis as a reasonably successful author and Arnold’s life going downhill since his days as a bully. Arnold has turned into a nice guy over the years, but something in his brain snaps when he sees Moranis again. He realizes that life was good when he was a bully, so he decides to be a bully again…And his life does improve. The movie never reckons with that really striking idea: bullying improved his life. Really though, it’s tied to confidence more than bullying. Moving back home is a ding on Moranis’ pride that opens him up to bullying again. Arnold gets confidence from the power he feels bullying. Both are looking for the same thing but from different ends.

 

The movie ultimately does nothing with this. Instead, it’s a bunch of childish pranks and characters not taking the 15 seconds required to diffuse any situation. This isn’t surprising. It is a rightfully forgotten movie from 1996, aimed only at children, so there’s no reason to expect more. It was weird though watching this and realizing they actually stumbled onto some good stuff.

 

Also, can we take a second to talk about how weird it is that Rick Moranis was a big star in the 90s? The only reason he doesn’t have the same string of increasingly disappointing family movies as Steve Martin and Robin Williams is because he specifically stepped back from his career. That guy was a top of the poster star though. Let’s just say Big Bully wasn’t the best use of him.

 

Verdict: Strongly Don’t Recommend