Next Stop, Christmas

 Next Stop, Christmas (2021)

Starring Lynsey Fonesca, Chandler Massey, Eric Freeman, Erika Slezak, Paige Herschell, Matt Walton, Lea Thompson, and Christopher Lloyd

Directed by Dustin Rikert

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating:  B+

Addams Family Values

Addams Family Values (1993)

Starring Angelica Huston, Raul Julia, Christopher Lloyd, Christina Ricci, Christopher Hart's Hand, Carel Struycken, Jimmy Workman, Carol Kane, Joan Cusack, Dana Ivey, David Krumholtz, Peter McNicol and Christine Baranski

Directed by Barry Sonnefeld

Written by Paul Rudnick

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating: B

The Addams Family

 The Addams Family (1991)

Starring Angelica Huston, Raul Julia, Christopher Lloyd, Elizabeth Wilson, Christine Ricci, Judith Malina, Dan Hedaya, Carel Struycken, Paul Benedict, Christopher Hart's hand, Dana Ivey, and Jimmy Workman

Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld

Written by Caroline Thompson and Larry Wilson

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating: B-

Mr. Mom

Mr. Mom (1983)

Starring Michael Keaton, Teri Garr, Ann Jillian, Christopher Lloyd, Jeffrey Tambor, Frederick Koehler, Taliesin Jaffe, Courtney and Brittany White, Graham Jarvis, Miriam Flynn, Carolyn Seymour, and Martin Mull

Directed by Stan Dragoti

Written by John Hughes

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating: B-

Clue

Clue (1985)
Starring Eileen Brennan, Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn, Christopher Lloyd, Michael McKean, Martin Mull, and Lesley Ann Warren
Directed by Jonathan Lynn
Written by John Landis and Jonathan Lynn

Click here for my Letterboxd review

Click here for my previous RyMickey's Rambling review

The (current) RyMickey Rating:  C+

Movie Review - Anastasia

Anastasia (1997)

Featuring the vocal talents of Meg Ryan, John Cusack, Kelsey Grammer, Christopher Lloyd, Hank Azaria, Bernadette Peters, Kirsten Dunst, and Angela Lansbury

Directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman

***This film is currently streaming on Netflix***

First, let's dispel the notion that Anastasia is a Disney movie.  Upon its release in 1997 and in subsequent years after, the public often assumes that this Don Bluth/Gary Goldman directed feature is a Disney film.  Admittedly, the film arrived at the end of Disney's 1990s animation renaissance and Bluth and Goldman tailored the flick to mirror Disney's successes in that era.  Our title character looks like a mash-up of Ariel and Belle.  The film opens with a song sung by the townsfolk.  The typical fairy tale storyline is certainly present.  But Anastasia is not a Disney film.

That being said, this flick is actually better than I remember it being and, with the exception of one fairly major problem area, Anastasia is a success.  Granted, it simplifies the tale of the Russian Romanov family whose dynasty was overthrown by public revolt, but considering this is a film aimed at children, I'm okay with that notion.  The film weaves its tale around Anya (voiced by Meg Ryan), a teen girl who ten years prior showed up at an orphanage unaware of who she was or how she became abandoned.  It turns out that Anya is the only surviving daughter of the Romanov clan, but she has no clue of her legacy.  Out for a quick buck, young Dimitri (John Cusack) and older Vladimir (Kelsey Grammer) have set out to find a young girl who can pass for the missing Anastasia and present her to the girl's grandmother -- the Dowager Empress Marie (Angela Lansbury) -- to earn reward money.  Little do Dimitri and Vladimir know that Anya truly is Anastasia.

I must admit that I liked the plot above.  I found the premise intriguing and the internal conflicts of the above characters surprisingly mature for a film of this type.  Unfortunately, feeling the need to spice up the plot, the film flounders hugely by throwing in an unnecessary villain in Rasputin (Christopher Lloyd).  Here, Rasputin has sold his soul to the devil and is essentially dead and living in hell where is various body parts fall off for purportedly comedic effect.  Rasputin's one mission in life is to end the Romanov blood line and he'll utilize a variety of witchcraft and sorcery from his underground lair in order to achieve this.  The film doesn't need him whatsoever.  There's plenty of surprisingly emotional conflict to be had without his fake magical powers.  By placing Rasputin at the crux of the flick's denouement, the film falters greatly and ends in a disappointing fashion.

Animation-wise the film is solid, but I don't think it can really compare to the Disney films of the era (although I'll soon find that out as we continue on our Disney Discussion journey).  However, I appreciated the voice acting, particularly that of John Cusack who admittedly isn't doing much else other than being the stuttering John Cusack who we all know, but for some reason proves successful.  I found the songs and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty quite good as well and much better than I remembered them being.  While it's certainly true the songwriters and screenwriters are following the Disney formula, it's a formula that works.

I must say that I didn't go into this expecting to enjoy it at all, but I found Anastasia a surprisingly solid animated film with an admittedly major flaw.  Remove that and the flick would've been great, but with it, it just ends up lukewarm.

The RyMickey Rating:  C+

Movie Review - Piranha DD

Piranha DD (2012)

Starring Daniele Panabaker, Matt Bush, Katrina Bowden, David Koechner, Christopher Lloyd, and David Hasselhoff 

Directed by John Gulager

"Josh cut off his penis because [a piranha] came out of my vagina."

I start with that line because that sums up Piranha DD (or Piranha 3DD as it was titled in the very few theaters it actually played in), the sequel to the so-bad-it's-enjoyable Piranha 3D.  This movie is awful and it's dialog like the line above that add to the sheer absurdity.  Unfortunately, while the film does fall into the same so-awful-it's watchable category as the first film, this sequel doesn't do a thing different and ultimately makes it a pointless retread without any merits for actually existing.

What little plot there is begins shortly after the events in the first film in which piranhas invaded Lake Victoria, Arizona.  It won't come as the biggest surprise to hear that the man-eating fish have resurfaced, but with a newfound sense of intelligence that allows them to get into man-made water systems to conveniently possibly invade places like The Big Wet waterpark, half-owned by wacky entrepreneur Chet (David Koechner).  Chet co-owns the park with his stepdaughter Maddy (Daniele Panabaker) who returns home from college to discover that Chet has turned The Big Wet into an adult funzone where nudity is encouraged and projected onto giant screens via the underwater Cooch Cam.  [I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.]  Of course, this is simply an attempt to throw as many naked bodies onto the screen as possible and it succeeds in that venture.

But where Piranha DD doesn't succeed is in being original.  Granted, I recognized the flaws in the first film, but in this sequel, we get absolutely nothing new and it simply cheapens whatever brand the filmmakers were attempting to create.  At times, it's almost a literal scene-by-scene repeat with the film even stooping so low as to having a piranha latch on once again to a guy's penis (as referenced in that glorious quote above) only to have said appendage be chopped off.  While that may have been grossly funny the first time around, here it just reeks of laziness on behalf of the writers.

"Lazy" is just a good all around word to describe this thing.  It's not that it's a whole lot worse than the first film, but Piranha DD doesn't even attempt to do anything new and resting on its already shaky laurels wasn't the way to go with this one.  I can't lie and say I didn't have a good time watching this -- talking back to screen with other people can certainly make this more enjoyable than it has any right to be -- but if you wanna see a crappy movie, you're better off just renting the first one and watching that again.

The RyMickey Rating:  D+

Movie Review - Piranha 3D

Piranha 3D (2010)

Starring Elisabeth Shue, Jerry O'Connell, Ving Rhames, Christopher Lloyd, and Richard Dreyfuss

Directed by Alexandre Aja

I don't quite know where to go with this one.  Let's just start by saying that Piranha is not a good movie.  Nor does it have any intentions of being one.  It knows full well that it's awful.  The question then becomes does it reach the level of "so bad, it's good" which is the goal it sets out to achieve.

The answer is "it depends."

The problem with a movie like Piranha is that it isn't good or worth your time unless you're able to watch it with a group of people who can talk back to the screen.  Sitting and watching this flick in a theater with folks who are "forced" to be quiet is going to seriously dampen your fun...and it's going to make you realize that the movie doesn't quite hit the heinously hilarious levels it hoped it would.

When a pack of prehistoric-era killer piranhas is unleashed due to a seismic event (triggered -- no joke -- by a beer bottle falling into a lake), the town of Lake Victoria is in for some trouble.  Of course, it's Spring Break and tons of college hotties who are perfectly fine with dancing topless are ready for a dip in the town's lake.  There's really no point in explaining any more plot...killer piranhas attack senseless and obnoxious college students.  You don't need to know anything else.

We're treated to a who's who of has-been actors -- Elisabeth Shue, Ving Rhames, and Christopher Lloyd -- who are all surprisingly decent.  Thankfully, the director realized that watching a movie riddled with horrible actors like the obnoxious Jerry O'Connell would have been painful to sit through, so he actually cast a few decent people to counter the awful ones.

On one hand, it's nice that director Alexandre Aja recognized he was going for pure camp.  There's a scene towards the beginning where two buxom ladies strip down to nothing but flippers and swim through the surprisingly clean waters of Lake Victoria while proceeding to hump one another.  This scene goes on for at least two minutes and it's all set to a classical opera aria.  Alone, the nude ladies would have been just nude ladies, but set to classical music, it becomes a somewhat hilarious scene.  Aja at least has an eye for the corny and it certainly is necessary in a film like this.

The 3D -- which was a conversion and not shot in the format -- was disappointing.  It created a dark tone at times where it became nearly impossible to see what was going on.  In the end, the corniness would've been perfectly acceptable in 2D.

Even after writing this review, I'm still not quite sure where to go with the rating here.  I enjoyed myself, but I'm well aware that this movie sucks.  If I watched it alone at home, I would think it was one of the worst movies I'd seen this year.  In the setting in which I watched it, however -- with a group of seven talking back to the screen -- it was an enjoyable diversion.

In the end, just know what you're getting into with this and maybe you'll come out of it with some moderate enjoyment.

The RyMickey Rating:  C+