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

Delayed Reaction: Spoonful of Sugar

Premise: A young woman taking experimental medication with LSD gets a job as a caretaker for a family of a young boy with some strange ailments.

This is really more psychological thriller than horror. It's as much The Hand That Rocks the Cradle as anything. There's enough haunting imagery that I won't gripe too much about calling it horror though. I mainly saw this for Morgan Saylor anyway. After doing a batshit crazy movie like White Girl, I'm on board for whenever she decides to pick an intense role. She goes all in. I mean this next comment as a compliment: She looks like someone frazzled by drugs. She's also nearly 30 but could still pass as a high-schooler in a pinch. That age uncertainty works well for a role like this where she has to have too much and too little life experience in different ways.

I've seen enough variations of this movie that nothing truly surprised me in it. It's like how there are only so many ways a boxing match can end, but they can still be exciting to watch in a movie. The direction Spoonful of Sugar goes is nice in a "who are the real monsters in this movie" way. The fact that Saylor is on drugs and hallucinating for most of the movie means it's always interesting to look at.

All in all, I was hoping it would be a bit spookier, but it mostly worked in the ways it was supposed to.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Quick Reaction: From Black

Sometimes, you just watch a Shudder horror movie because you recognize an actress in it and want something straightforward and scary. From Black just barely met me at that level. There is nothing special about this supernatural occult film. In fact, it's overly familiar. Anna Camp isn't ideal for this role. She never really reads as a recovering addict trying to put her life back together. She's always an attractive actress who died her hair dark. At the end of the day though, I set low expectations and this mostly met them.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Movie Reaction: Fool's Paradise

Formula: Being There * Bowfinger

It takes a lot for me to come out of a movie praising Being There as doing something the right way. I really hated Being There. I think it's toothless social commentary that pats itself on the back for being prescient, when it's actually making the same point every generation makes about society. Fool's Paradise is very much Being There except that it specifically targets Hollywood.

It is the feature directorial debut of Charlie Day. Day plays a mute man who is incapable of forming his own thoughts. After he's thrown on the street due to no health insurance, he's hired onto a movie as leverage against a movie star he looks identical to. He ends up replacing that star, getting the name Latte Pronto, and going through all the stages of stardom. I mean all of them. Rise to fame. Fall from grace. Whirlwind romance. Swift divorce. Franchise films. Good press. Bad press. Getting a big-time agent. Getting passed off to a junior agent. Friendships and fallouts with big stars. Every stereotypical Hollywood beat you can think of happens to him. And quickly. The only constant is Lenny (Ken Jeong), a struggling publicist who latches onto Latte early on for a quick buck but does seem to be the one person actually looking out for him.

There's a decent amount of this that sounds pretty funny. On paper, Kate Beckinsale and Adrien Brody as different flavors of method, vapid Hollywood stars sounds pretty funny. Day has a lot of friends willing to check in for quick scenes and stupid gags. Day himself is pretty good at wordless acting. He's honed his foolishness for years.

The problem is that a movie moves from one unfunny, unclever beat to the next for 98 minutes before just ending. The strangest thing is that the movie doesn't know what era of Hollywood it's skewering. The production design often evokes an older Hollywood of the 50s or 60s. The soundstages and films he's in certainly look more like the movies churned out back then. But it definitely is set in the modern day. So what is it making fun of? I'm not even convinced that Charlie Day believes the commentary he's making about Hollywood. I came away from this baffled by the decision to make this at all. As much as I dislike a movie like Being There, I at least know what point it was trying to make. I understand what humor it was going for. It did understand the society it was satirizing. Fool's Paradise literally feels like the same kind of poorly considered, overly-noted, uninspired movie that Latte Pronto would star in. And not in the meta, self-satirizing way.

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Premise: A widow goes through her daily life and becomes bored by her routine.

I remember when I first heard about this movie a few years ago. I thought it sounded fascinating. It's a movie about watching the repetition of a woman's life and searching for the small cracks as her sanity unravels. I can really get into a good slow-play. Schindler's List works because of the detail of Liam Nesson's performance slowly changing. Paris, Texas blew me away by how its slow pacing paid off huge by the end. When Jeanne Dielman surprisingly came in first on the latest Sight and Sound poll*, that pushed the movie even higher up my watchlist.

*The 100 Greatest Films of All-Time. Assembled once every decade.

Sadly, I hated this movie.

It's a problem I run into a lot with movies. There's a difference between doing something well and making something that's good. Jeanne Dielman is a fantastically executed experiment. At well over 3 hours, it really takes its time. Nothing rushes the film. Delphine Seyrig makes so many small choices in her performance. I applaud the execution of the film.

The audacity of time spent is not a feature I care for though. To me, it feels like the art is putting the onus on me much more than on itself. For example, if I watch 100 episodes of a bad TV show, by the end, I'll end up feeling something for the characters. The familiarity is inescapable. By the hundredth episode, if something happens to a character, I'll have a reaction. That's not a sign of great performance or great writing. That’s just the familiarity anything earns from time spent. Similarly, there isn't anything particularly interesting about the filmmaking or performances in Jeanne Dielman. It's a lot of static shots. There's little dialogue. There isn't anything particularly special about the ways in which Delphine Seyrig acts slightly more frazzled as the film continues. There are a lot of movies that could make me feel something after 3+ hours with it. That Jeanne Dielman does take that long to play out doesn't make it special. So yeah, this was a big waste of time.

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Peter Pan & Wendy

Premise: The Peter Pan story...again.

I'd like to formally announce my self-nomination for the position of Movie Czar. I'll be running on a single-issue platform. My proposal is this. Before anyone is allowed to make another version of either Pinocchio or Peter Pan, they must get unanimous approval from a select committee of the grumpiest movie fans to prove that there is sufficient interest for another version of the story to be told.

For whatever reason, those two stories are the ones that all filmmakers or producers seems to have in their back pocket as a dream project. So, when these filmmakers get a blank enough check and enough wistful nostalgia, they present their take on the movie and it's pretty much the same take you've seen before

By all means, I should love Peter Pan & Wendy. I enjoy the animated movie. I think David Lowery quietly made one of the best Disney classic remakes with his Pete's Dragon in 2016. Between A Ghost Story and The Green Knight, Lowery has established himself as one of my favorite working directors. If anyone could find a good slant on the Peter Pan story, it's probably him.

Alas, I just plain didn't like this movie. It was the same Peter Pan story I've seen a dozen times before, with enough of the problematic elements sanded away to not ruffle any feathers. Alexander Molony lacks the charisma to make Peter work. To be fair, virtually no child performer can pull the role off. Ever Anderson isn't a particularly memorable Wendy either. I could see a Raffey Cassidy or a Mackenzie Foy playing her better 5 years ago. I was surprised how little fun I had watching Jude Law as Captain Hook. This should be the kind of weirdo supporting role he's relished getting in the last decade.

I'll admit right here that most of my assessment isn't that objective. Perhaps the movie plays better with younger audiences. Perhaps my Peter Pan fatigue was too much for the movie to overcome. I don't know for sure. I just know that I was too bored to ever get into this movie.

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Heaven's Gate

Premise: Some land barons fight some European immigrants in 1890s Wyoming.

Most movies I talk about on here only exist as movies. Dead Again is just this two-hour movie I liked watching and that's the full story. I don't know about its production. I don't have to think about its box office or stars. I can just talk about the movie and that's it. However, there are some that can never just be about the movie. The Crow is the movie in which Brandon Lee died while shooting. All the Money in the World is the movie that had to be reshot to replace Kevin Spacey. The Interview is the movie that caused Sony to be hacked.

Heaven's Gate is one of the latter movies. It is the epic Michael Cimino passion project that nearly broke a studio and hastened the end of the New Hollywood era. It was considered such a flop upon release that after four decades of positive reassessment, it still can't shake the stink of being a disaster.

I can't really rate Heaven's Gate. I watched all 3+ hours of it from the perspective of someone who knew it went over budget and knew it was a nightmare to make. My notes for this were things like "That scene looks like a lot a money went into that", "That's so many extras for that", and "How hard was it to get that shot?"

It's a very good-looking movie. I can see how it went over budget, and a lower budget version of this would've been pretty bad. I like the cast. It's not the first person I would've thought of for any of the roles and that works for it. It's better that it's Kris Kristofferson and not a movie star like a Burt Reynolds. I like that it's Isabelle Huppert and not Jane Fonda with a French accent.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t enthralled enough by the visuals, performances, or conflicts to stay interested for the incredible run time. There's a difference between a story needing some time to breathe and simply taking up too much time. My go to example is when I read the abridged The Count of Monte Cristo and the unabridged version years later. I adored the abridged version when I read it. Unabridged is a thousand pages longer yet I couldn't tell you a single story beat that wasn't in the abridge version. The only thing the unabridged version offered me was more pages. That's how Heaven's Gate felt to me. I truly don't understand how there isn't a 2- or 2.5-hour version of it that could be just as good. There are long movies that do need that length; one's I don't even love. Once Upon a Time in America is an OK movie, and it really does need its length. Heaven's Gate is simply bloated by ambition. Or maybe that's its reputation still informing me 35 years later.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 3

Formula: Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 2 + sadness

I don't know how much I buy into the idea of "Marvel fatigue". I think we get enough evidence every year or two that, if the idea if good enough, audiences will come out in droves to see it. What I'll say instead is that the MCU has gotten too big. The problem isn't even too many movies or too many characters, necessarily. The problem is that there is too much to juggle now. The thing that made the Infinity Saga work so well was that between Avengers movies, we didn't have to wait that long for another standalone installment for a character. 2 and 3 years between Iron Man movies. 3 and 2 between Captain America movies. The 4 years to get from Thor: The Dark World to Ragnarök was the exception. Since Endgame though, they've been spending so much time trying to create new franchises without sunsetting the old ones. The result is much longer waits. 5 years between Ragnarök and Thor: Love & Thunder. 5 years between Ant-Man movies. 6 years between Dr. Strange movies. 6 years between Guardians of the Galaxy sequels. Hell, we're even looking at 6 years between Avengers movies. Black Panther was only 4 years, although you could argue continuity on that one, given Chadwick Boseman's death. I don't think it's a coincidence that the largest over-performer of the post-Endgame era was Spider-Man: Now Way Home, which came only 2 years after the last Spider-Man movie.

The thing that made the MCU successful in the first place was that it applied the same serial principles that audiences were adapting to on TV and applying them to movies. So, once or twice a year, they'd give a new installment. People never had to wait that long to check back in with a character. And, it turned out the audience turnover was negligible. It's getting harder to do this though. I remember watching Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and having to remind myself what Strange's deal was. Why was Rachel McAdams there? Who are the other Strange-specific side-characters I need to remember?

All this is preamble to say that I sure wish Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3 could've come out a couple of years ago*. I sure felt like I'd lost track of what the gang was up to. It didn't help that I hadn't seen the Holiday Special, I suppose.

*Yes. I’m aware COVID is also to blame for the delay.

Volume 3 is the Rocket movie. The inciting event is a powerful artificial being coming to take Rocket back to his creator - a scientist known as the High Evolutionary. Rocket gets hurt, and most we see of him for much of the movie is in flashbacks to his origin story. These flashbacks are my favorite part of the movie, however I also think they hurt the movie overall. The flashbacks introduce a bunch of cute animal experiment friends for Rocket who I immediately loved. The film finally gets to the pain that Rocket has never been open about before.

On the other hand, this puts present Rocket out of commission for a lot of the movie, and he's a key cog to make this machine work. The balance is already off with Peter (Chris Pratt) depressed about losing his Gamora (Zoe Saldana). The new Gamora is an outsider instead of part of the group. Nebula (Karen Gillan) does fill Gamora's role in some ways, but it's not quite the same. Groot (Vin Diesel) is closer to full adulthood now, which is nice. Drax (Dave Bautista) and Mantis (Pom Klementieff) are consistently who they've always been. It's weird having Rocket either not in the movie or as an emotional center of it rather than the wildcard though.

This is one of my more scattered Reactions because I really don't know what to say about the movie. It still has the same stars and creative team, so it delivers what I expect out of a Guardians movie. It's funny and in a slightly more pointed way than other MCU movies. The space action is big and fun. It's striking to compare how much better a mostly CGI world looks in this versus Quantumania. This movie is the end of the Guardians though and it knows it from the start. There's a lot of sadness in the relationships between Peter, Gamora, and Nebula. Rocket has to face demons from his past. There's a feeling in the group that maybe they've stagnated together, and it is ultimately about them going their separate ways. Unfortunately for me, I could feel that going into the movie, which makes it harder to invest in 2.5 hours of it.

I do hope that this is a sign that Disney realizes it's time to contract the universe some. Not in terms of fewer galaxies and multi-verses though. I'm fine with there being a quantum realm. If they are going to keep bringing in Shang-Chis, Eternals, and Marvels, let some Guardians, Thors, and Ant-Mans retire. Or at least don't make me wait 4+ years to see what happens next with them.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend