Category: humor

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bad review revue

The Bad Review Revue

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil: “An example of the most soul-sucking viewing that I’m forced to endure.” — Charles Koplinski, Illinois Times

Charles Angels “[F]orget heaven, these angels will take you to purgatory.” — Howell Davies, The Sun (UK)

21 Bridges: “21 Bridges is a movie that will almost immediately disappear, falling through the cracks as prestige pictures and holiday blockbusters fill up local screens…this is a bridge that likely won’t be crossed again.” — Allen Adams, The Maine Edge

Midway: “One of the best things Roland Emmerich has ever touched. This is not, as compliments go, a very good one.” — Tim Brayton, Alternate Ending

Last Christmas: “Leads have no chemistry. Jokes lame. Twist painful. Ho-ho-no.” — James Verniere, Boston Herald

Categories
bad review revue

The Bad Review Revue

Rambo: Last Blood: “[It] is less an escapist action movie and more a dramatized manifestation of the most notorious sentences from Donald Trump’s presidential campaign announcement speech.” — Matthew Rozsa, Salon.com

The Addams Family: “There’s little fresh here and of the star-studded vocal cast only Oscar Isaac and (especially) Nick Kroll (Uncle Fester) get the spirit of their characters right. Worse, the very core of Addams Family magic – the highly charged eroticism of the Gomez and Morticia marriage combined with their offbeat parenting skills – is nowhere to be found.” — Laura Clifford, Reeling Reviews

Gemini Man: “The literal cinematic equivalent of ‘chasing your own tail'” — Don Shanahan, Every Movie Has a Lesson

Jexi: “Jexi is like Spike Jonze’s 2013 masterpiece Her, only dumb.” — Hope Madden, Columbus Underground

Lucy in the Sky: “Lucy in the Sky has no diamonds.” — Gary Wolcott, KXL-FM (Portland, OR)

Categories
bad review revue

The Bad Review Revue

Overcomer: “There’s about half a movie in ‘Overcomer.’ The other half or so is a pretty half-hearted sermon. Neither half is particularly worthwhile, and the whole is cheap, cheesy, and, to put it charitably, churchy.” — Mark Dujsik, rogerebert.com

Charming: “Kids probably won’t pick up on the forced, pro-feminist theme here, but the film unspools like something that’s been politically corrected to within an inch of its life.” — Jim Schembri, 3AW

UglyDolls: “Points for honesty: most feature-length toy commercials aren’t so brazen as to actually make ‘buy toys’ the explicit driving force of the narrative.” — Tim Brayton, Alternate Ending

The Art of Racing in the Rain: “Unfortunately, ‘The Art of Racing in the Rain’ feels more like scraps than a juicy steak.” — Josh Terry, Deseret News

Where’d You Go, Bernadette: “Where’d you go, Bernadette? Eh, who cares.” — Benjamin Lee, The Guardian

Angel Has Fallen: “The franchise has fallen and it can’t get up.” —
Claudia Puig, FilmWeek

Don’t Let Go (Relive): “It would be bad enough for Relive to just be dumb. Unfortunately, though, it seems to think that its audience is as well.” — David Bax, Battleship Pretension

Categories
bad review revue

The Bad Review Revue

The Lion King (2019): “Some of these remakes have been more inspired than others, but few have felt quite as futile as The Lion King. This isn’t the circle of life; it’s more like a creative dead end.” — Justin Chang, NPR

Stuber: “With apologies to Foghat, this latest effort is a slow ride; perhaps Stupor would have been a better title.” — Matt Brunson, Film Frenzy

The Secret Life of Pets 2: “Insert the obligatory you-can’t-teach-an-old-dog-new-tricks reference here, and even at 83 minutes, the three mini movies that are The Secret Life of Pets 2 struggle to keep the laughs going.” — Julie Crawford, North Shore News

Men in Black International: “One of those memory-erasing flashes would be nice right about now, please.” — Adam Graham, Detroit News

Aladin (2019): “In short, it’s a whole old world.” — Anthony Lane, New Yorker

Categories
humor Politics

Electability on McSweeney’s

caricatures of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump
DonkeyHotey [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)]

I Don’t Think a Woman Is Electable In 2020 Because Last Time Around the Female Nominee Only Got Three Million More Votes Than Her Opponent by Tom Smyth

Now don’t get me wrong, I love Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris. But as great as they and the other female candidates are, I think Democrats should be focusing more on a sure-fire nominee who can beat Trump. Electability should be our number one priority, and I’m just not sure if America is ready to embrace a female candidate yet — especially considering that Hillary Clinton only got three million more votes than Donald Trump in 2016.

Categories
bad review revue

The Bad Review Revue

The Hustle: “Even with a running time of 93 minutes, The Hustle felt about an hour too long.” — Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun Times

Dumbo: “I felt warmly toward Dumbo, but not ‘Dumbo.'” — Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

Little: “Little is no Big.” — Max Weiss, Baltimore Magazine

The Intruder: “If the protagonists in this film were any more dense, they would only exist as a thick fog.” — Matt Brunson, Creative Loafing

Categories
entertainment humor

David Sedaris at the MAC

I’m lucky enough to be married to an extremely observant woman. While we were touristing around downtown Lahaina, Maui, my wife saw a poster for David Sedaris doing a show at the Maui Arts Center in just a few days. She knows I’m a fan and asked if I wanted to go. I was hesitant to put up the money just to hear an author read — but who am I kidding, I love David Sedaris and have since the first time I heard him on This American Life so many years ago.

It turns out, it was money well spent, because Mr. Sedaris didn’t take long before he was sharing his list of money making ideas.

I was in my Sussex kitchen not long ago squinting at what was either a pheasant or an armless troll racing across the road in front of the house when I got the idea for prescription windows.

It would be perfect for people like me who don’t want to wear glasses indoors and so I mentioned it to my friend Ingrid who said, “Oh, that’s brilliant.” She’s one of those women who will support you in just about anything you do. Slap some cheese between two slices of bread and it’s “My God, you’re amazing!” Calm down I sometimes want to say. I didn’t invent the sandwich — I just did what other before me have. This time though, I felt the praise was justified. And so, I put prescription windows on my list of million dollar ideas, realizing hours later that what works for me would not work for Hugh, or any of our frequent house guests who have different prescription problems or none at all. Still they might be good for a near-sighted loner who never has any company so I left them on the list. Right below cigarette butts with seeds in them.

And after a brief segue from some other million dollar ideas into stories about how cheap some people can be, he finished with a short digression about how his husband doesn’t like to admit how much he appreciates their wealth but that when it comes to million dollar ideas maybe his husband could give it a try. It was a brilliant story.

After the applause began to wane he slyly added, “You never want to say this before you read something… I wrote that today!”

Brilliant.

Categories
bad review revue

The Bad Review Revue

Venom: “Michelle Williams, near the very end, [says what] feels like the most sincere heartfelt thing anyone says in the entire movie: ‘I’m sorry about Venom.'” — Bob Chipman, Geek

The Grinch: “It accomplishes nothing more than what the 1966 adaptation accomplished, despite taking more than three times longer to do it. In short: You’re an unnecessary one, Mr. Grinch.” — Mike Scott, Times-Picayune

The Girl in the Spider’s Web: “Salander is still typing furiously and retains a taste for black clothes and vengeance, but her running and gunning now suggest a Goth cosplaying James Bond.” — Manohla Dargis, New York Times

Nutcracker and the Four Realms: “The only thing that younger and older audience members will be able to share here is a sense of boredom.” — Joey Magidson, Hollywood News

Nobody’s Fool: “I’m getting a headache from this movie.” — Korey Coleman, Double Toasted

Categories
bad review revue

The Bad Review Revue

Night School: “Night School is a lesson that often feels more like punishment.” — Wenlei Ma, news.com.au

The Nun: “At one point a character rips a burial crucifix right out of the ground hoping it will ward off these malevolent forces; I’m beginning to think I need one of those for lacklustre horror films such as The Nun.” — Robert Kojder, Flickering Myth

Peppermint: “Peppermint is not some model of equality, it’s just violent escapism that happens to have a woman in the lead role.” — Lindsey Bahr, Associated Press

The Predator: “Watching this movie is as close to what I imagine going insane is like.” — Dan Murrell, Screen Junkies

Hell Fest: “You’ve seen it all before, and better: A blade to the chest, an axe to the leg, a syringe to the eye.” — Keith Uhlich, Hollywood Reporter

Categories
bad review revue

The Bad Review Revue

The Meg: “It’s not fun, it’s not serious, it’s not scary. It is stupid.” — Johnny Oleksinski, The New York Post

The Happytime Murders: “A few critics are calling it the worst movie of the year. Unfair! This R-rated look at a serial killer running wild in a puppet-populated L.A., has what it takes to be a contender for worst of the decade.” — Peter Traverse, Rolling Stone

Mile 22: “If the nonstop reign of skull crushing, eye gouging ultra violence isn’t enough to exhaust you entirely, trying to keep track of what’s important and why definitely will.” — Meg Downey, CBR

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom: “Is there any future in the Jurassic Park franchise? They were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they didn’t stop to think if they should.” — Clarisse Loughrey, That Darn Movie Show

Slender Man: “This tawdry, shoddy stinker is a movie of rare and total incompetence, literally unwatchable thanks to some of the worst cinematography in film history.” — Jim Lane, Sacramento News & Review