Archive for the ‘Comedy/Laffs’ Category
Thursday, October 8th, 2026
The unanswerable question: is it called READY OR NOT: HERE I COME, or READY OR NOT 2: HERE I COME? Depends if you ask the opening credits or the closing credits. I guess we get to pick.
Would you believe there was a seven year gap between this sequel and the first READY OR NOT? I was surprised it had been that long. But I suppose directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett have since made SCREAM, SCREAM VI and ABIGAIL*, so the math does add up. The fact that I found all of those to be perfectly fine, not great, may have contributed to me not getting around to this one in theaters (even though I did get to the in-some-ways-similar THEY WILL KILL YOU). But it’s also why seeing it now I’m surprised at what a solid and enjoyable sequel it is. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: David Cronenberg, Elijah Wood, Guy Busick, Kathryn Newton, Kevin Durand, Maia Jae, Masa Lizdek, Matt Bett, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Olivia Cheng, R. Christopher Murphy, Radio Silence, Samara Weaving, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy, Tyler Gillett, Varun Saranga
Posted in Reviews, Action, Comedy/Laffs, Horror | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, September 22nd, 2026
I come bearing good news: the new RESIDENT EVIL movie is a very fun time, even if you never played one of the games in your life, even if you wouldn’t notice that it “feels like game play,” even if “a more faithful adaptation of the games” does not remotely sound to you like a good alternative to 14 years of trend-chasing Paul W.S. Anderson joints about Milla Jovovich doing flips and stuff. I mean come on. How ya gonna keep e’m down on the farm after they’ve seen Milla flying around doing Matrix shit in 3D? Or at least, how are ya gonna keep me. I wasn’t looking for RESIDENT EVIL without the main thing that RESIDENT EVIL means to me. If not for some theories I’ve heard about auteurs I would not have gone to see this reboot on opening day.
Let’s face it, as a never serious, long retired game player, there is almost no chance I will ever play or see somebody play these games. It’s honestly none of my business what they’re about. Don’t even tell me, I’ll cover my ears. But I respect the games for the movies they’ve inspired. I really got a kick out of four of the six Milla joints (just not the first and last ones), and I thought the unrelated WELCOME TO RACCOON CITY was fun too.
But this is probly the best one. It’s directed by Zach Cregger, in what sounds in interviews like risky nerd dream fulfillment more than a sellout. I honestly thought the brand name would be a deterrent, but it’s his biggest opening to date. It’s simpler and more straight ahead than BARBARIAN or WEAPONS, but it moves, rips, etc., and it’s funny as hell. He told the Hollywood Reporter that “people really liked the movie, but they thought it was too funny. So over the course of my testing, I stripped out as much of the jokes as possible.” I believe it, actually, because this has that rare, perfect EVIL DEAD II tone: so many laughs from the lead character and the absurdity of the situations, but not at the expense of the horror. Not a horror-themed comedy, but legit horror with a great sense of humor. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andrea Miltnerova, Austin Abrams, Dariusz Wolski, Johnno Wilson, Kali Reis, Paul Walter Hauser, Sara Paxton, Shay Hatten, video games, Zach Cregger, zombies
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Horror | 22 Comments »
Monday, September 21st, 2026
August 30, 1996
As I often say, writing about comedies can be hard, because humor is so subjective. I always end up listing parts that I (and not necessarily you) think are funny. And today I’m trying to write about a comedy that was universally shat upon. It was nominated for Razzies for Worst Picture, Worst Director and Worst Picture, and I could not find any positive reviews from the time; I couldn’t even find any that didn’t call it “painfully unfunny” or similar. It was also a flop, making around a 7th of its budget in theaters. I am not aware of it ever being subject to any kind of re-evaluation, and when Nathan Rabin wrote about it in 2011 he classified it as a fiasco. But my objective today is to try to explain why, since 1996 and continuing through 2026 and the foreseeable future, I have found THE STUPIDS, directed by John Landis (in his follow up to BEVERLY HILLS COP III), to be extremely laugh out loud funny. I sincerely can’t fathom why a normal, joyful person would have a reason to look down on it, and not find it at least a little amusing. But they don’t. And I have to try to convince them to change their ways. Wish me luck! (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alex McKenna, based on a picture book, Brent Forrester, Bug Hall, Chiodo Brothers, Christopher Lee, Christopher Young, Frankie Faison, Jessica Lundy, John Landis, Mark Metcalf, Matt Keeslar, Tom Arnold
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs | 31 Comments »
Monday, August 31st, 2026
It’s not that high of praise to say COYOTE VS. ACME is the best Looney Tunes movie. So how about the only Looney Tunes movie they should make?
I mean I think SPACE JAM is kind of funny, they’re not all DAFFY DUCK’S MOVIE: FANTASY ISLAND, but these characters were made for shorts. The feature length HOW THE EARTH BLEW UP: A LOONEY TUNES MOVIE really couldn’t match the energy of the brilliant show by the same people, and it’s even worse when they pretend all these characters are friends and have them standing around together like The Muppets. But this new one is different. Instead of setting out to come up with a new Bugs Bunny movie or whatever it comes from a 1990 New Yorker article by Ian Frazier about what would happen if Wile E. Coyote tried to sue the Acme Corporation over all the defective products he’s bought from them.
It’s a rock solid concept combining the joke conventions of the Road Runner cartoons with the format of a court room thriller, or an ERIN BROCKOVICH type whistleblower drama. I knew the idea going in but I still got such a good, deep laugh from the way it’s laid out: Wile E. (as everyone calls him), fresh from another day of catastrophically failing to catch the Road Runner using various contraptions, returns to his cave, where an ad on the TV catches his attention. The questionable attorney Kevin Avery (Will Forte, LIFE OF CRIME), who specializes in cartoon law, is asking if you’ve ever experienced things like pushing a detonator but the detonator blows up, or pulling a ripcord and only silverware comes out – things we see in flashes of classic Wile E. Coyote shorts. If so, you could be entitled to compensation.
The trouble is Kevin isn’t ready for a case like Wile E.’s. He believes he can quickly settle for $300 over faulty rocket skates, but Wile E. – who communicates through gestures and “a limited number” of signs – has a literal mountain of other failed Acme products. When, to Kevin’s horror, the petition goes to Acme’s intimidating head counsel Buddy Crane (John Cena, 12 ROUNDS), he’s offered what would be his biggest settlement ever… but Wile E. literally tears it up and sets it on fire. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: court room drama, Dave Green, James Gunn, Jeremy Slater, John Cena, Lana Condor, Looney Tunes, Luis Guzman, Martha Kelly, Tone Bell, Will Forte
Posted in Reviews, Cartoons and Shit, Comedy/Laffs | 15 Comments »
Thursday, August 27th, 2026
TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA is the third movie from writer/director Jane Schoenbrun. I haven’t seen WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR (2021), but I did see I SAW THE TV GLOW (2024), which was released by A24 to great acclaim and adulation.
I confess I didn’t get that one. Didn’t even feel qualified to review it. I love its look, and I was impressed by its creation of a ‘90s tv show called The Pink Opaque that its characters are obsessed with. It’s like the show Videodrome would make in response to the popularity of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But I struggled with watching Justice Smith, who was so charismatic on The Get Down, play such a charmless, passive lead. I’ve read that’s because it’s a trans allegory and the character is repressed, and that’s another thing: there is no way on earth that I would know this was a trans allegory without reading about it. It’s interesting to read about, and it’s a movie that means so much to so many (including plenty of cis people I know), but I simply can’t decode it. I can appreciate the vibes, but in that case it wasn’t enough.
CAMP MIASMA is another trans allegory, but it’s more on my frequency. Maybe some of the very specialized things it’s about are also more universal, or maybe it’s just that it’s funnier. But it sure doesn’t hurt that it’s about slasher movies. Up and coming young indie director Kris Williams (Hannah Einbinder, Hacks) has been hired to reboot a long-running, now moribund summer camp slasher series called CAMP MIASMA. The opening credits have a very detailed montage of franchise history, with 14 movies that mostly line up with the FRIDAY THE 13TH sequels, except there’s a Christmas one and an ARMY OF DARKNESS one and I think a HALLOWEEN 6 thorn cult reference. The most important inspiration, though, is SLEEPAWAY CAMP, with the killer’s psychosis attributed to being raised as both a boy and a girl. Kris says they hired her, a known lesbian, in a cynical attempt to launder the problematicness out of the i.p. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Dylan Baker, Gillian Anderson, Hannah Einbinder, Jack Haven, Jane Schoenbrun, Jasmin Savoy Brown, meta-slashers
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Horror | 18 Comments »
Monday, August 24th, 2026
July 26, 1996
You know I love THE CABLE GUY, and there’s another favorite coming up, but to me there’s no doubt that KINGPIN is the comedy of 1996. In fact, I think it’s somewhere in my personal top ten comedies of all time, somewhere beneath PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE, THE BLUES BROTHERS, THE BIG LEBOWSKI and TALLADEGA NIGHTS.
It’s the second film from Peter & Bobby Farrelly (now a team directing a script by Golden Girls writers Barry Fanaro & Mort Nathan), and definitely my favorite of theirs. I think of them as a little cheesy now, but the filmmaking in this one is strong, and that’s part of why it works. It’s stuffed with broad, rapid fire jokes, but it looks and feels like A Real Movie. It’s way funnier and sillier than the average comedy, but at the end when it acts like I care about the characters mending their relationships and getting what they want, it’s not being presumptuous. I really do! It’s a very precise tone that I rarely see pulled off this successfully.
I gotta give some credit to cinematographer Mark Irwin (SCANNERS, NIGHT SCHOOL, THE PROTECTOR, THE BLOB) and also to costume designer Mary Zophres (PCU), who did FARGO the same year and later returned to bowling wear for THE BIG LEBOWSKI. She creates such a world out of polyester and dagger collars, riding the exact line between sort of cool ‘70s swagger and completely out of touch loser. This is a movie where you can have a combover that almost counts as a separate character, yet feel confident putting Elvis Presley or Evel Knievel style showmanship in your outfit.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Murray, bowling, Farrelly Brothers, Lin Shaye, Randy Quaid, Rob Moran, Vanessa Angel, Woody Harrelson
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Sport | 18 Comments »
Tuesday, August 18th, 2026
July 26, 1996
I talked earlier in this series about HARRIET THE SPY and how it was a Nickelodeon production that sort of had its roots in an interstitial-turned-special-turned show made by quirky, creative people with vision. A major cable network farm-teaming artists and giving them opportunities. Now we have JOE’S APARTMENT, the first theatrical film from Nick’s older-sister network MTV, expanded from a CableACE Award-winning 2-minute short they’d used as filler. Writer/director John Payson had worked on the animated intros to MTV shows including Remote Control, The Big Picture and Just Say Julie, plus been a producer on Liquid Television and the Henry Selick short Slow Bob in the Lower Dimensions. That’s great work and an incredibly cool world to come out of, but does it translate to knowing how to write and direct a mostly live action feature film?
In this case no. Maybe yes in other cases, I don’t know.
In the feature version the titular Joe is played by Jerry O’Connell (STAND BY ME) in only his fifth movie, even including “uncredited kid at beach” in POLICE ACADEMY 5: ASSIGNMENT MIAMI BEACH. He’s a hapless dork who takes the bus from Iowa to New York City and has kind of the “Living For the City” experience.There’s a joke that he’s narrating his trip as a letter to his mother but he gets interrupted by three different muggings.
The movie is premised not only on the city’s reputation as a crime-ridden hellscape, but also as a refuge for art weirdos thanks to rent control. Joe meets a guy named Walter Shit (Randee of the Redwoods himself, Jim Turner) of the band Shit by being the only person to check on him laying on the sidewalk in a pool of blood (as an art project). It’s Walter who finds Joe the titular apartment because they happen to be walking by when an old lady is thrown to her death out of her window and Walter pushes Joe to pretend he’s her son. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bam Bam Bigelow, BD Wong, Billy West, Blue Sky, Carol Spier, Carter Burwell, Chris Wedge, Don Ho, Jerry O'Connell, John Payson, Megan Ward, MTV Productions, Nick Zedd, Pepa, Peter Deming, Rick Aviles, Robert Vaughn, Tim Blake Nelson
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs | 6 Comments »
Thursday, July 30th, 2026
July 17, 1996
MULTIPLICITY is the Michael Keaton clone movie. I remembered it being okay at best, but Keaton being very good at playing multiple characters who are distinguishable from each other just based on his mannerisms. Yes, I was correct about all that.
It’s directed by Harold Ramis, who I hold in high regard because of GROUNDHOG DAY, but I don’t think any of his other movies reach those heights. Certainly not this one.
Doug Kinney (Michael Keaton the year before JACKIE BROWN) is some kind of manager at an L.A. construction company, he’s forced to work long hours, doesn’t see the family enough, all that. I was impressed that at least he misses his daughter’s Campfire Girls graduation instead of the standard Little League game or piano recital. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andie MacDowell, Anne Cusack, Babaloo Mandel, Brian Doyle-Murray, Eugene Levy, Glenn Shadix, Harold Ramis, Harris Yulin, John de Lancie, Julie Bowen, Lowell Ganz, Michael Keaton, Richard Edlund, Richard Masur
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs | 9 Comments »
Wednesday, July 29th, 2026
KAZAAM is one of those movies we all know as a punchline because “Shaquille O’Neal as a rapping genie” sounds more like a fake movie inside another movie than an actual thing that exists. The only one that’s guaranteed less existent is the other genie movie starring Sinbad that somehow became a shared delusion of millennials? I don’t even want to think about that shit.
But until now I hadn’t actually seen KAZAAM. It’s as ridiculous as I imagined and no higher in quality, but I suppose kind of different in some ways, so I found that mildly interesting. What I didn’t know from the reputation and the poster is that it follows in the tradition of some of the ‘80s comedies where it’s ostensibly a kids movie about baby shit but also it has crime and violence treated seriously, like an action movie of the time. Or at least the criminals are treated seriously. There’s a fight scene with genie Shaq throwing people through walls and it’s obviously pretty cartoony, but I noticed the stunt coordinator was Jeff Imada (RAPID FIRE, THE CROW) and stunt performers in the movie include Billy Blanks, James Lew and Jeannie Epper (seen earlier in the summer in the re-release of SWITCHBLADE SISTERS). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ally Walker, Da Brat, Fawn Reed, Francis Capra, James Acheson, Jeff Imada, John Costelloe, Marshall Manesh, Paul Michael Glaser, Shaquille O'Neal, Spinderella
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Family, Fantasy/Swords | 15 Comments »
Monday, July 27th, 2026
July 17, 1996
WALKING AND TALKING is the debut film from writer/director Nicole Holofcener (the warden in MI VIDA LOCA). Like the last movie I reviewed, DON’T LOOK BACK, it opens with its protagonists as little kid best friends, but this is a much more female perspective of the world, so instead of establishing their life long friendship with playing swords and becoming blood brothers the two girls are sneaking a peek at The Joy of Sex, giggling and calling it disgusting. Unspecified years later they’re still best friends, but at different places in their other relationships, which will create a strain.
Amelia (Catherine Keener, SURVIVAL QUEST) is the most outwardly messy of the pair. A while back she broke up with Andrew (Liev Schreiber right before SCREAM; this was released by Miramax, and they were really pushing him as their new product at the time). They’re still friends and co-workers, they even grocery shop together, but I don’t know, the smile she gives after telling her therapist (Joseph Siravo, CARLITO’S WAY) she’s totally over him made me think she’s really not. Either way, things fall apart when she finds out Laura (Anne Heche, MILK MONEY) got engaged to Frank (Todd Field, EYE OF THE EAGLE 2: INSIDE THE ENEMY). I mean they seem to have been together forever, they already live together, they’re all close and it’s great. But making it official like that makes Amelia panic. And right after she decided to quit therapy. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anne Heche, Catherine Keener, Kevin Corrigan, Liev Schreiber, Nicole Holofcener, Todd Field, video stores, Vincent Pastore
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Drama | 12 Comments »
