If Beale Street Could Talk

If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

Starring KiKi Lane, Stephan James, Regina King, Teyonah Parris, Colman Domingo, Brian Tyree Hill, Michael Beach, Aunjanue Ellis, Ed Skrein, Emily Rios, Finn Wittrock, Diego Luna, and Dave Franco

Directed by Barry Jenkins

Written by Barry Jenkins

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating: B

Movie Review - Nerve

Nerve (2016)

Starring Emma Roberts, Dave Franco, Colson Baker, Emily Meade, Miles Heizer, and Juliette Lewis

Directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman

***This film is currently streaming via Amazon Prime***

A mindless teen thriller, Nerve conjures up its titular online game in which players must perform increasingly more intense dares in order to earn money.  This community of players and watchers grow to frighteningly crazed proportions one evening in New York City and things get out of control very quickly.  At the center of the game is high school senior Vee (Emma Roberts) who is anything but a risk taker.  However, with the school year winding down and her good friend Sydney (Emily Meade) taking part in the game, Vee takes a chance and joins the game one night.  Her first dare is to kiss a random stranger in a local diner.  The recipient of her smooch is Ian (Dave Franco) who also happens to be taking part in the game and the two team up to try and get as far in the game as they can.

Taking place over the course of one evening, Nerve is quickly paced and doesn't overstay its welcome with its quick ninety minute runtime.  It tries much too hard at the end to create a social commentary about our technology-addicted society and the group-think snap judgment bully mentality that media websites like Twitter bring to the table and that's where it falters a bit when it nears its conclusion.  Still, for strictly entertainment purposes, Nerve is moderately successful.  Emma Roberts and Dave Franco are decent together and if you're in the mood for a throwaway teen flick, Nerve works in that regard.

The RyMickey Rating:  C

Movie Review - Unfinished Business

Unfinished Business (2015)

Starring Vince Vaughn, Tom Wilkinson, Dave Franco, Nick Frost, and Sienna Miller  

Directed by Ken Scott

***This film is currently available on HBO Now***

I wasn't expecting much from Unfinished Business...and boy did it deliver!  There is not a single redeeming thing about this film with the exception being that Sienna Miller is easy on the eyes and that alone is not worth a damn thing.  The premise revolves around businessman Dan Trunkman (Vince Vaughn) who leaves his job at a major company after his boss (Sienna Miller) demands he take a pay cut.  Refusing to agree to this request, Dan sets out to form his own small business to compete against the job he just left.  With the help of an older employee who was also let go (Tom Wilkinson) and a young man who failed to get a job at the bigger company (Dave Franco), Dan and his two employees head around the world to try and secure that "one big get" that will put them on the map.

Horribly directed (it's one of those movies where the camera is behind a person and you hear them talking, but their mouth is obviously not moving), horribly written (one of the running jokes is that Dave Franco's character's last name is "Pancake" -- funny?), and acted in a ho-hum manner (presumably because the cast knew what utter dreck this was), Unfinished Business is truly one of the worst films of 2015.  Admittedly, I almost stopped watching this one halfway through in order to allow it to live up to its title, but I decided to finish it so I could give it the worst grade possible.

The RyMickey Rating:  F

Movie Review - Neighbors

Neighbors (2014)

Starring Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne, Zac Efron, Dave Franco, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and Lisa Kudrow

Directed by Nicholas Stoller

Despite proving to be funny at times, Neighbors is a one-joke movie that wears old fast.  About 25 minutes in, I found myself looking at the clock as I was having a difficult time determining how there could be any more plot to milk from this simple story of married couple Mac and Kelly (Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne) who have their world turned upside down when a fraternity headed by Teddy and Pete (Zac Efron and Dave Franco) move in next door in their quiet suburban neighborhood.

I was willing to forego the notion that not a single other neighbor is disturbed by the raucous parties that take place at the newly formed frathouse.  (Yes, the film attempts to explain this off, but it's an utterly ridiculous explanation.)  The problem is that the premise of this flick is so simplistic that even at a ninety-minue runtime, it can't flesh out the plot because there's nothing to flesh out.  Frat guys do crazy things and married couple -- who were hoping to be hip enough to be buddies with the frat -- get angry when they realize they're not as young as they used to be.  There's not much more than that.  While some of the frat's raucous pranks and the married couple's reactions are funny, they're just comedic bits that don't really add up to much of a plot.  As an ongoing skit on SNL, this may have worked, but forming an overall movie from this is a bit weak.

That isn't to say that Neighbors didn't make me laugh -- it did so multiple times thanks to the good performances from Seth Rogen (who is essentially playing Seth Rogen), Rose Byrne (who has a nice comedic deadpan style to her), and Dave Franco (proving as of late that he's less smarmy oncreen -- and that's a good thing -- than his more famous brother James).  Color me surprised, however, that the star of the show is Zac Efron whose frat president Pete is suave, debonair, yet also sneaky and underhanded.  Presumably Efron's been trying to break away from his High School Musical image over the past several years and he's surprisingly good as he makes fun of his toned body and spotless image.

Director Nicholas Stoller does have some inspired moments -- a rave party showcased some nice directorial flourishes -- but Neighbors unfortunately doesn't amount to much despite the good stuff it has going for it.

The RyMickey Rating:  C

Movie Review - Warm Bodies

Warm Bodies (2013)

Starring Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer, Rob Corddry, Dave Franco, Analeigh Tipton, and John Malkovich

Directed by Jonathan Levine

Romeo and Juliet with zombies is the overarching theme of Warm Bodies, director and screenwriter Jonathan Levine's comedy about a United States that, in the near future, is overpopulated with zombies, forcing the remaining humans to live behind giant manmade walls in order to protect themselves.  Having stepped out of those walls one night in search of supplies, Julie (Teresa Palmer), her boyfriend Perry (Dave Franco), and her best friend Nora (Annaleigh Tipton) have a run in with a pack of the walking dead, one of whom -- a teenage zombie named R (Nicholas Hault) -- kills Perry and eats his brain which gives R all of Perry's thoughts and immediately has him fall in love with Julie.  When another zombie tries to kill Julie, R whisks her away to safety where the two find themselves realizing that they're not so different after all despite what others may have them believe.

Warm Bodies starts off rather ingeniously.  Mostly through humorous voiceover, R tells us his feelings about his new life as a zombie -- something we don't usually ever bear witness to in zombie films.  Nicholas Hault does a nice job of comedically countering a vivacious voiceover with a catatonic physical state.  The juxtaposition creates more than a few laughs.  Unfortunately, after the initial set-up detailed above, the film sort of wallows in nothingness.  The love story aspect of Warm Bodies just isn't as creative as the concept of finding out what zombies are really thinking behind their empty, human-hunting eyes.  (This makes sense, I guess, seeing as how we've had umpteen adaptations of Romeo and Juliet grace the silver screen.)

Across the board, the acting is above the level we typically see in teenage love stories with Teresa Palmer and Analeigh Tipton making the most of their underwritten characters and Rob Corddry managing laughs as R's best zombie friend.  Unfortunately for everyone other than the character of R, I found myself not really caring about their story lines.  Perhaps it's because the R's voiceovers throughout the film endear him to us more than the other characters, but these other character's plights just didn't register with me.

That said, Warm Bodies is decent.  It certainly is much more grown-up than most teenage romances and the rather ingenious take of making us privy to a zombie's inner thoughts creates an incredibly amusing first act.  I just wish the remainder of the film could've lived up to the opening's promise.

The RyMickey Rating:  C+ 

Movie Review - Now You See Me

Now You See Me (2013)

Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco, Mélanie Laurent, Common, Morgan Freeman, and Michael Caine

Directed by Louis Leterrier

I've always had a problem with Robin Hood stories.  Maybe it's the Republican in me shining through (a trait that I always have to suppress when it comes to the entertainment industry), but someone who robs the rich (simply because they have money) to give to the poor strikes me as an unspoken tenet of liberalism.  So perhaps in the deep recesses of my mind, Now You See Me -- a flick that revolves around a group of magicians who perform a series of heists to give money to their "deserving" audiences -- was destined to disappoint.  However, even if you take the repressed political aspect out of the equation, you're met with a film that had some modicum of potential except for the fact that it's saddled with a main plot that leaves too many gaping holes and an ending that feels like a cheat rather than magic.

I'm all for movies that have you root for the bad guys -- just look at my favorite movie of all time for proof of that.  However, when a movie presents a group of people as saintly good guys when they're absolutely doing things that are tremendously and justly illegal, I have a tough time buying into the premise as a whole.  If you set the quartet of magicians up as nasty guys, I'd have bought into the concept a little more willingly, but the characters portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg, Isla Fisher, Woody Harrelson, and Dave Franco are supposed to be good folks.  To me, good folks wouldn't be doing what this movie tasks these characters to do and this fundamental difference between what the movie wants me to believe and what I actually believe created quite a schism that it couldn't overcome.

That isn't to say that Now You See Me isn't slickly directed.  Louis Leterrier keeps the whole thing moving and it never lags for a second.  In addition, Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson in particular are certainly engaging.  (The less said about Isla Fisher and Dave Franco the better, and I'll avoid all discussions about Mark Ruffalo except to say that this actor whom I once liked has grown increasingly more obnoxious to watch over the recent years.)  Still, the positives aren't enough to overcome a final act that terribly disappoints.  I'm not quite sure the last time I've been so let down and upset by a third act twist that still has me aggravated a week after watching it.

While the first paragraph of this review was meant to be humorous, there is certainly truth in it in terms of my opinion about the overall concept of the film.  Your mileage may certainly vary when it comes to Now You See Me simply because it had to overcome an already self-imposed bias on my part to succeed.

The RyMickey Rating:  C-

Movie Review - 21 Jump Street

21 Jump Street (2012)

Starring Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, Brie Larson, Dave Franco, and Ice Cube

Directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller

2012 seems to be the year of Channing Tatum, but 21 Jump Street is only the fourth time I've ever seen him act.  I'm not quite sold on the guy, finding him to have an onscreen presence that's rather arrogant and cocky, and the flick didn't really change my mind on the newfound star.  Still, this comedic reinvention of a dramatic 80s tv show (that I never watched once) has enough laugh-out-loud moments to make this worth checking out.

In 2005, Morton Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Greg Jenko (Channing Tatum) are both in their senior year of high school, but they are definitely on two different sides of the tracks when it comes to popularity.  Jenko is the popular school jock, while Schmidt can't find a date to prom.  Their lives barely intertwine and when they do, it's only for Jenko to throw a slightly demeaning joke Schmidt's way.  Cut to six years later and both young twentysomethings find themselves in the same class of recruits at Metropolitan City's police academy.  With Jenko failing miserably at the written exams and Schmidt bombing the more physical tests, the two team up to help one another and become good buddies.

Unfortunately, Jenko and Schmidt aren't given much respect and are relegated to patrolling on bikes through a typically serene park.  When they perform a drug bust that goes a bit awry, the young duo is sent on an undercover mission headquartered at 21 Jump Street in which Jenko and Schmidt will act as high schoolers in order to try and find the source of a new drug that is making the rounds amongst the teens in the area.

Though we get the standard comedic go-to's like mistaken identities, drug-induced hallucinations, and a bit of gross-out humor, 21 Jump Street is really a buddy comedy that works thanks to Hill and Tatum's chemistry with one another.  While I may not care much for either actor overall, together they are surprisingly appealing to watch.  Sure, I never got any sense that they were anything other than "Jonah Hill" or "Channing Tatum," but they both bring a nice sense of comic timing (a first for Tatum to display) to the affair.

What's perhaps most impressive and also quite promising is that directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller's only other feature film is the charming and hilarious Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.  For 21 Jump Street to be their first foray into live action is moderately astounding.  Yes, the movie isn't perfect -- a few of the scenes with the high schoolers fall a bit flat, some of the supporting cast like Rob Riggle as a gym teacher are a bit too over-the-top, and the whole thing runs about ten minutes too long -- but it's a darn good first try at live action.

The RyMickey Rating:  B