Director: John Ridley
Writer: John Ridley
Stars: Regina King, Terrence Howard, Lance Reddick

Synopsis: A reformed criminal tries to live an honest life, when his past catches up with him and he his forced to do whatever it takes to protect his family.

“What do you want me to tell them? Fight hard but not too hard?” — Shirley Chisholm

John Ridley’s Shirley belongs very much to the Colman Domingo starring Rustin biopic, in the sense that it concentrates mostly on one era of the subject’s life. Fill in the blanks with other characters giving exposition or the protagonist making statements which come directly from their speeches and writing. Find an unassailable and powerful lead and enough decent supporting players and you have a film about a mostly forgotten pioneer in the American political arena. In this case it is Congresswomen Shirley Chisholm (Regina King) who wanted to give politics back to the people. To be a catalyst for change. To give voice to the disenfranchised across America while Vietnam was still raging, there was extensive violence across America, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., had just been shot, and the rise of second wave feminism and campus activism was in full swing. 

The film gives you the statistics. The number of women and Black people working in congress when schoolteacher Shirley St. Hill Chisholm was elected in 1968. The number of representatives before Shirley who were both black and a woman? Zero. Chisholm represented New York’s 12th congressional district centered mostly in Brooklyn’s Bedford–Stuyvesant area. A vibrant but often troubled melting pot of Black Americans, “Chicanos,” and working-class people and immigrants. Shirley, herself a Brooklyn resident and Barbadian American, was a longtime activist in her community before seeking any official office. 

The familiar beats play out. Shirley is photographed on the steps as part of the 91st congress. She is the only woman in the picture. Once she steps inside the hallowed halls belonging almost entirely to men or the occasional White woman, she is reminded of her “place” by a man who can’t believe she makes the same salary as she does. After shutting him down, she meets with her longtime friend and congressman, Ron Dellums (Dorian Missick) who tells her what her portfolio is. She’s not having it and goes straight up to the Speaker of the House and tells him exactly what she wants.

At home she speaks with her husband Conrad (Michael Cherrie), formerly a private investigator and industrial compliance officer. He listens to her frustration and does his best to assuage her. “It’s your first term. Wait and I’m sure you’ll do great things. Just give it time.” Shirley’s retort is, “You want to give Richard Nixon time?” Conrad ensures her, “You’ll find a way to fit in.”

Fitting in is not on Shirley’s agenda. However, she’s aware that to fight the system she must be a part of it. She believes in democracy and the Democratic Party for their ability to enact meaningful change. She’s just aware that without people like her all the promises in the world mean little. She is there to hold people in power to account.

A small jump in time and Shirley has been working in congress for three years. She’s been motivating change and staying true to her word. One such word is that she would put her name on the Presidential ticket if a certain amount of money was raised in Florida. Not only was it raised, but it was also double the amount expected. Shirley Chisholm, along with her advisor Wesley McDonald “Mac” Holder (Lance Reddick), her long-time friend Arthur Hardwick (Terrence Howard), and a former intern now Cornell law student Robert Gottlieb (Lucas Hedges) are going to self-fund a bid which could ruin her financially and anyone who invests in her. It is a massive risk, especially when the campaign will be challenging more popular Democrats and fighting on multiple fronts including sexism and racism. Proudly Caribbean-American Shirley, who still speaks with a Bajan patois is one of the most unlikely candidates in United States political history.

Stanley Townsend (Brian Stokes Mitchell) the man brought on to manage her campaign says Shirley is very “of the moment.” With the Black power movement and civil rights being integrated with youth culture, anti-war sentiment, and feminism, Shirley just might win some hearts and minds with her “Unbossed and Unbothered” campaign.

One of the hearts she does reach is Barbara Lee (Christina Jackson). A single mother and University student who believes voting is a bourgeoise construct unhelpful to true revolution. Barbara is already tired of having to constantly fight just to put food on the table for herself and her child. Shirley laughs and tells her, “Little girl, if you don’t vote you don’t have a say. If you are yelling from the sidelines that is where you’ll stay. Outside.”

Shirley charts Shirley as she makes her own heartfelt decisions. Her quiet nemesis is Civil Rights activist and “favorite son” campaigner Walter Fauntroy (André Holland). Her loud one is Alabama segregationist politician George Wallace (W. Earl Brown). Perhaps her true nemesis is her inability to properly play the game. Yet that inability is also a strength. Chisholm refuses to admit that going against well considered advice is sometimes unhelpful. She refuses to say anything she doesn’t mean, even if it sets her back.

When the issue of school district busing comes up, Chisholm says she doesn’t agree with it because it doesn’t fix educational inequalities for Black and poor children. Building better schools and creating infrastructure does. When she is asked about the Black Panthers, she says she regrets their existence but understands why they are needed. When she is asked about abortion, she endorses Family Planning but attempts to give nuance to the conversation. Nuance is not what the media wants, and it makes her an easy target for her opponents.

Eventually, the cracks in her marriage start to widen. Conrad, who in nineteen years of being with Shirley, finds himself so in her shadow he’s forgotten what it’s like to be visible. She is chastised by her sister Muriel (played by Regina King’s actual sister Reina King) for making her life and the life of her mother difficult as they have to put up with the gossip and dislike of Shirley within the more conservative Baptist sections of the Brooklyn community.

People walk out on Shirley. They steal from her. They give up on her campaign and the strategies she employs. She’s fighting the good fight but often in a manner which causes friction and frustration amongst her supporters, and outright murderous hatred from her detractors. There was more than one attempt on her life.

Shirley meets Diahann Carroll (played with uncanniness by Amirah Vann) who is quietly active as a supporter of the Black Panthers. Carroll arranges a secret face to face with Huey P. Newton (Brad James). “I’m putting thunder and lightning together,” says Diahann. Shirley is both but she is not a convicted murderer like Newton. When questioned by Newton why a woman who is “just a schoolteacher” thinks she has the right to speak for Black people she reminds him that “Harriet was just a slave, and Rosa was just a domestic,” and asks him what his job is. She gets the endorsement.

Even with the ability for people of the age of eighteen to vote for the first time in a Presidential election, and even with Shirley’s rallying and inspirational cries, almost everyone but Shirley accepts she is running a campaign she can’t win. However, just in the fighting she is changing laws with the FCC, (thanks to a lawsuit she has Robert Gottlieb file because television stations would not let her debate). She’s making progress with the ERA. A hospital visit to George Wallace after he is shot means that in the future the racist politician turned judge gives her support on a major bill. The hospital scene itself is a little too fanciful to be particularly convincing.

One might not understand how voting colleges work, or how getting the support of delegates is essential. American politics can often be opaque even for Americans. What is easy to understand is how formidable Shirley Chisholm is. At one stage she says to Arthur, “I’m not naïve.” He points out, “You aren’t realistic either.” She is the dreamer she is accused of being by people she trusted, but she is not the fool. She is practical, tactical, but driven by her oftentimes conflicting instincts. When she is asked why she keeps going she responds that she doesn’t know how to stop.

“Men are so used to being in control, that equality to them feels like chaos.” Shirley says to Diahann. She also says in different ways to Conrad, Muriel, Arthur, and Mac “I don’t think I’m special. I’m just how I am, and I don’t know any other way to be. I’m sorry.”

Shirley feels she is beyond making Conrad feel inadequate, but she also doesn’t treat him as well as she should. Her husband she says is “200 pounds of patience,” he exists only to watch her. If Shirley were a man in the period, the question wouldn’t arise as to her domestic life and gender politics. Yet, she also won’t bend for Barbara and almost has her leaving politics out of disillusionment. She was treated differently to the other St. Hill sisters. Her Papa recognized her genius and encouraged her while letting the other three languish. It wasn’t her fault that he showed her favoritism, but it also didn’t hurt her the way it did Muriel and her mother.

Putting a groundbreaking figure like Shirley Chisholm back on the map is a worthy endeavor. The direction is sometimes flavorless, although rich in period detail. The script is written specifically to highlight all of Chisholm’s best inspirational speeches: she gives them in diners, she gives them while eating McDonalds, she gives them in almost every interaction she has. Because it is Regina King telling people “Don’t be humble – false humility is a kind of arrogance,” one can almost forgive some of the contrivances.

Regina King is the reason Shirley manages to get across the line and hold power. King expertly portrays a woman who doesn’t know what the word “No” means, who is complex, and not always right. A woman who demands loyalty and respect but is surprised by being truly loved.

Shirley is also sustained by stand out performances from the late Lance Reddick with his stately intelligence and humor. André Holland as Fauntroy – bringing with him both the charisma and necessary manipulation of a seasoned political animal. Christina Jackson is perfect as the young Barbara Lee who later becomes a major political force (the real Barbara Lee appears at the end of the film). 

In Shirley, there is one thing of which the audience can be sure; Regina King is going to elevate a moderately rote and intermittently contrived biopic by delivering emotional and empowering screen magic. 

Grade: B-

Directors: Eshom Nelms, Ian Nelms
Writer: Jonathan Easly
Stars: Orlando Bloom, Andie MacDowell, Garret Dillahunt

Synopsis: A reformed criminal tries to live an honest life, when his past catches up with him and he his forced to do whatever it takes to protect his family.

A tattooed and shirtless Orlando Bloom emerges from his cabin in the woods, he lights up a smoke and grimaces. Immediately, he commences what we presume is his daily routine of push-ups and pull ups before going about his work on the family farm. This opening scene does a solid job of indicating what sort of world we are going to inhabit in Red Right Hand. Zero frills, stripped back, and, above all, gritty. 

Cash (Bloom) is a reformed alcoholic and drug addict with a past as an enforcer for the local crime boss, Big Cat (Andie MacDowell in fine scenery chewing form). Now going straight, Cash lives a clean life helping out on his Brother-in-law’s farm and being the doting uncle to his teenage niece, a capable bookworm with a bright future. 

As is often the case in films like this, the farm runs into financial trouble and Cash’s Brother-in-law struggles to pay back a loan to Big Cat. If Cash wants to help his family out, all he has to do is come back in to the fold for three more jobs. Three jobs and he is out, once and for all. Of course, things don’t quite go to plan and Cash comes to blows with Big Cat and her litter of hillbilly enforcers. 

The plot of Red Right Hand is pretty familiar territory then. In fact, I would go so far as to say there is nothing on screen here that you haven’t seen done elsewhere. For the most part, however, that’s not a problem. Audiences sitting down to watch this are unlikely to be looking for innovation or thought provoking filmmaking. What we are looking for is a likeable protagonist, a compelling villain, and good enough action sequences to keep us entertained through the runtime. For the most part, Red Right Hand delivers on these minimal requirements. 

Bloom does a serviceable job as Cash. He certainly looks the part and to my untrained ear, he seems to do pretty well with the Southern accent required. It’s nice to see him playing against type, especially compared to the roles that marked his early career. He plays it very straight, however. It’s unclear what is down to the script and what is performance, but Cash is quite one dimensional. You get the impression that Bloom was reaching for a more naturalistic, down to earth performance, but compared with the more exaggerated Big Cat of his co-star MacDowell, Cash ends up coming off a little bland. 

So how about those action scenes? For the most part they land, and there are one or two genuinely gripping moments where it’s not clear exactly how the scene will play out. By the end of the film there is a pretty extensive body count but it never crosses the line into feeling frivolous. Each death feels sufficiently weighty, and the stakes throughout are high. Of course, the end is never really in doubt, with good triumphing over evil, as it always does in this kind of film, but that triumph does not come cheaply.

The biggest complaint I have for Red Right Hand is that it feels like it was only a scene or two away from being more than a down the line genre movie. For example, much of the plot centers on the reformed Cash having found God as an important part of his sobriety. However, he never seems to really wrestle with the fact that he is committing a mortal sin by taking out Big Cat’s gang. It’s not the sort of detail the plot demands, but it could be something that would elevate this beyond its genre conventions. For the most part, all of the characters end the film the same people as they started it, assuming that is that they made it as far as the end credits. 
Red Right Hand is a solid genre movie. It’s well put together and successfully takes the audience through some gripping sequences. At times it comes close to being more than just solid but just doesn’t quite seem to have enough confidence in itself to stretch beyond its genre trappings, which is a bit of a shame.

Grade: C-

Director: Thea Sharrock
Writer: Jonny Sweet
Stars: Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Timothy Spall

Synopsis: When people in Littlehampton–including conservative local Edith–begin to receive letters full of hilarious profanities, rowdy Irish migrant Rose is charged with the crime. Suspecting that something is amiss, the town’s women investigate.

Shakespeare would be rolling in his grave. The bard who coined the phrase ‘brevity is the soul of wit’ would likely find himself reeling at the many tangential, bric-a-brac ways in which the subjects of Wicked Little Letters manage to insult each other. Yet for all it may seem to be striving for subversiveness, or to evoke a shock factor that can only come from hearing British icon Olivia Colman call someone a  “f**king old steaming bag of wet, leaking sh*t”, Wicked Little Letters – beyond the foul-mouthed tirades which are undoubtedly the USP for the marketing department – is actually a safe, paint-by-numbers affair. None of that is to say it’s not a good movie. Anchored by game performances from both Colman and Jessie Buckley, and featuring a number of supporting acts from the likes of Timothy Spall, Anjana Vasan, and Hugh Skinner, Wicked Little Letters is a fun, light-hearted experience that probably won’t last long in the memory.

Based, incredibly, on true events, Wicked Little Letters tells the story of Edith Swan (Colman) a simple, devout woman living with her parents in the sleepy town of Littlehampton in the 1920s. Edith tries to be a good daughter, a good neighbor, and a good citizen. She helps out in her community, attends church on Sundays, and has a smile for everyone she sees. This is in direct contrast to her new neighbor Rose, a belligerent Irish woman who uses curse words like punctuation, and whose sexual liberation is at odds with Edith’s own pious nature. It’s unsurprising, then, that the two women eventually find themselves at odds with each other.

What’s perhaps more surprising are the poison pen letters which appear through Edith’s door. Each letter, and the movie begins at letter 19, features crude remarks and rants aimed at Edith’s character, and soon a distraught Edith contacts the local constabulary, who immediately suspects Rose. What seems like an open and shut case, however, is challenged by Woman Police Officer (yes, that’s her title) Gladys Moss (Vasan) who suspects that not all is quite as it seems.

Wicked Little Letters makes a solid attempt to satirize the sort of British eccentricity you don’t see in traditional period pieces such as Downton Abbey, but screenwriter Jonny Sweet is perhaps too reliant on this aspect. Although the letters are mildly amusing and creatively written, the novelty wears off quickly. We’re left with an overly quirky set-up that can’t sustain itself throughout its runtime, however much its cast attempts to lift the material. Strangely enough, Wicked Little Letters performs better in its backdrop of social upheaval in the wake of World War I. The small attempts at social commentary – a woman police officer who wants parity of esteem; the suffrage movement – bring a sharper color to the world than anything front and center to the narrative.

Colman is the MVP here: with her rise to stardom it’s easy to forget her background in British comedy staples such as Peep Show, where she made her breakthrough. Her natural comedic talent shines through here and helps lift the material. Buckley, by contrast, has the lesser role as Rose, a liberated woman unafraid to be confrontational, but still brings an easy naturalism to the part. Elsewhere, Timothy Spall is excellent as a hard-hearted father outraged at the ‘modern world’ he sees as having given women too much control; Lolly Adefope and Joanna Scanlon are decent comic folsl, though given limited screen time; and Anjana Vasan gives a good performance as an exhausted female officer trying to be taken seriously in a field dominated by men.

Everything is fairly perfunctory and well acted, and there are amusing moments – mostly from Colman – but due to its repetitive nature and over-reliance on its central conceit mean Wicked Little Letters will likely fade in the memory.

Grade: C

Directors: Sam H. Freeman, Ng Choon Ping
Writers: Sam H. Freeman, Ng Choon Ping
Stars: George MacKay, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Aaron Heffernan

Synopsis: Follows Jules, who is targeted in a horrific homophobic attack, destroying his life and career. Some time after that event he encounters Preston, one of his attackers, in a gay sauna. He wants revenge.

When I saw the short film Femme at the 2021 SXSW Film Festival, I remember being shaken both by its striking filmmaking and its story involving a drag queen experiencing discrimination that plays into the struggles drag queens face in real life, whether it’s in the form of attempted anti-drag club legislation or physical altercations. The newest feature-length film of the same name, by directors Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping, adapting their own short, is a more heightened experience in terms of tension. 

The synopsis involving a drag queen forming a connection with a closeted drug dealer remains the same, while the short’s neon-drenched visual panache shines through. However, in place of Emmy nominee Paapa Essiedu and Harris Dickinson, who played the leads in the short film, are Nathan Stewart-Jarrett and George MacKay, respectively, who both won last year’s British Independent Film Award for Best Joint Lead Performance. 

In Femme, Stewart-Jarrett stars as Jules, a drag queen whose stage name is Aphrodite Banks. While on a nighttime stroll after doing a show, Jules becomes the victim of a vicious beating by a group of crooks led by their closeted leader, Preston (MacKay). Months later, after being left traumatized by the assault with his performing passion taken out of him, Jules has a chance encounter with Preston at a gay sauna that leads to a connection built mainly on sex and physicality. For Jules, it also becomes an opportunity for revenge and reclamation. 

To call Femme a doomed romance is an arguable stretch because there’s no exchanging of rapturous gazes or tender body language between both men during the many scenes of them getting physical. While Jules willingly submits himself to Preston’s raw aggression during their sexual encounters, Jules ponders as to whether he should film said encounters and post them online as his form of retaliation. 

The struggle becomes more apparent when witnessing the anxiety that Preston persistently experiences. Along with his intimidating tall stature and heavily tattooed body, Preston uses his short temper to put up a hyper-masculine facade when in the company of his similarly chauvinistic comrades. Yet, underneath the surface is Preston’s deep-seated fear of being found out, shown through his looking over his shoulder everywhere he goes. Preston’s nearly wordless fragile masculinity is expertly brought to life by lead actor George MacKay, who – between this, 1917, and Pride – is making a case as one of his generation’s best talents.

Meanwhile, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett similarly astounds as the protagonist, Jules. Appearing unassuming through his hunched posture and how he always keeps his head down, the way he grins as he scrolls through a gay porn site, contemplating the idea of outing Preston there by filming and uploading a filmed encounter, stresses his deceptive nature. Similarly, during a scene where he ends up mingling with Preston’s friends at his place, his sly smile while fighting each of them on a game of Street Fighter gives him feelings of fulfilled retribution, even if there’s no physical fighting involved, and they don’t know he’s the one they victimized.

Whether it’s Jules being in the same company as his perpetrators or Preston glancing around him as he goes out in public, apprehension is present in nearly every scene. Thanks to the expressive leading performances and the meticulous screenplay by directors Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping, it is in the characters’ faces and actions that we see their anxieties shine through more than the use of exposition. Furthermore, the costume design by Buki Ebiesuwa reflects how the two leads must put on a mask for the world, like how Jules wears casual attire around Preston’s friends to ensure they don’t recognize him out of drag. 

Similarly lush in visual aesthetic as the short of the same name, Femme enriches the source material by offering a deeper exploration of gender identity and putting a queer spin on the heteronormative noir genre as its central lead engages in sensual double-crossing. Sexy, discomforting, and visually sumptuous, Femme makes its case as one of the year’s best movies.

Grade: A

Director: Doug Liman
Writers: Anthony Bogarozzi, Chuck Mondry, R. Lance Hill
Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Jessica Williams, Conor McGregor

Synopsis: Ex-UFC fighter Dalton takes a job as a bouncer at a Florida Keys roadhouse, only to discover that this paradise is not all it seems.

The film follows Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal), a former UFC middleweight fighter, as he runs away from his personal demons. The movie starts with Dalton walking into an underground fight club, ready to rumble with Carter (Post Malone), who quits before the match begins because of Dalton’s reputation alone. Frankie (Shrinking’s Jessica Williams), a businesswoman who owns a bar in the Florida Keys, immediately offers him a job of $5,000 a week for one month’s work, plus room and board, to be her bouncer.

Frankie’s establishment is called The Road House, a dive bar on the beach where live music has to play behind chicken wire because of the numerous fights that continuously break out. (You know, Blues Brothers style.) She has a loyal staff, including an adorable bartender, Laura (Why Women Kill’s B.K. Cannon), and some young muscle in Billy (How to Blow Up a Pipeline’s Lukas Gage), who lacks experience. After initially rejecting the offer, Dalton accepts the position after demolishing his car.

The script by Anthony Bagarozzi (The Nice Guys) and Chuck Mondry (Play Dirty) works well enough initially, mainly because Gyllenhaal revels in the role of Dalton, beating his enemies to a pulp with a switchblade grin and a clipped sense of humor, which is infectious. In particular, when he takes on a group of bikers led by JD Pardo and provides comic relief alongside Arturo Castro, driving them all to the hospital after some bone-crunching antics. This is all mindless fun, where a tough but flawed individual stands up for those who cannot help themselves. Everyone is good-looking, the music is distinct, and the mood is infectious.

Doug Liman directs Road House, an adaptation of the Patrick Swayze 1980s cult classic. Essentially, his version follows the path of a throwback Western, where the virtuous walk into a town defending those who cannot protect themselves, like Shane or The Pale Rider. In this case, you have a handful of over-the-top, cartoonish villains. One is Ben Brandt, played by the go-to yuppy antagonist Billy Magnussen, who tries to match Gyllenhaal’s comic relief but becomes tedious. 

Then you have Conor McGregor’s Knox, whose insanity is so extreme that you forgive any of his antics. Additionally, Joaquim de Almeida, the town sheriff, goes by the nickname “Big Dick” and has a connection to Dalton’s love interest, which is a classic, lazy trope. That is Daniela Melchior’s Ellie, who plays a local physician. She goes from detesting Dalton within seconds to wanting to get him in the middle of the ocean to what I imagine is an area called “Coral reefs of Passion.” I mention all of this because, for a two-hour film, Liman struggles to fit in so many supporting characters, and none of them interact or function in a believable way.

There are complaints that this Road House is ultraviolent, but by action or horror film standards, it’s tame. In fact, the fight scenes are highly digitized, particularly the first fight with Post Malone. However, the film doesn’t suffer from its bare-knuckle action. Still, after an thirty extra minutes, it deals with its mindless plot about the real reason Dalton was hired, which involves trying to take over the roadhouse because of its premium placement.

I hate to be cynical, but have these bad guys never heard of “Eminent Domain”? Or just building around the restaurant and having the property taxes rise so much that they must sell? Or, with all the fights, would the insurance premiums be through the roof? Finally, how can Frankie make enough to afford to pay Dalton all that money? These are all eye-rolling moments like Dalton telling Billy that one guy has a knife, and when he pulls it, just take a step back and punch him. He offers this type of on-the-job training while sitting behind a bar where he can’t jump in to help save the kid if something goes wrong.

You can let that thoughtless storytelling slide, but it’s when the movie goes into secret agent mode, with Dalton taking a boat (and setting off explosives, blowing it up, with no explanation) to become a superhero, that it becomes tedious and overblown. This leads to a final showdown between Dalton and Knox, where you have to ask yourself how one guy knew where the other would be to begin with.

Doug Liman’s Road House worked better as a minimalist barfly film between the small cast of characters that would have significantly benefited from focusing on Dalton’s backstory and developing intimate relationships. Instead, we have an overstuffed action film that struggles with tone and overstays its welcome. Then, it loses a charming Jake Gyllenhaal performance, which is the sole reason to watch, to begin with.

Grade: C-

Director: Dean Israelite
Writers: John Gatins, Susan Orlean
Stars: Brooklynn Prince, Simon Khan, Kelly Reilly

Synopsis: Follows a 13-year-old girl who is dragged into the world of pigeon racing as she deals with her parents’ divorce and the impending loss of her home.

Little Wing is a classic case of a coming-of-age film that doesn’t quite know what it truly wants to be. Sure, you’ll enjoy the punk rock Generation Alpha main character, who is energetic, lively, and spirited. You may appreciate how the story involves an unusual hobby to help an adolescent navigate a turbulent time—even the bond of the mother-daughter relationship. However, the premise surrounding the bond between an unlikely friendship between a child and an older adult male fails the film almost entirely. 

And that’s a shame because the streaming Paramount+ film Little Wing had real feel-good potential. 

The story follows Kaitlyn McKay (Brooklynn Prince), a young woman whose moodiness we have come to find charming. Kaitlyn is going through a tough time. Her parents have just divorced, and her father has moved out. Her older brother, Matt (newcomer Simon Khan), hasn’t spoken since it happened. Their mother, Maddie (Kelly Reilly), is a police detective in the Portland, Oregon area and has trouble making ends meet, specifically with the mortgage payment. 

Maddie’s boss, rather strangely, gives Kaitlyn some racing pigeons as a gift. Yeah, this is a girl who has posters of Major Motoko Kusanagi and Hit-Girl Mindy Macready. Besides offering her a cell phone or sacrificing Regina to the Mean Girls, nothing will win her over. However, her best friend, Adam (Me Time’s Che Tafari), tells her how cool they are, and a famous one called “The Guardian” is in the area and is worth $100,000. What a coincidence! It would cover the entire loan left on her childhood home.

Little Wing was directed by Dean Israelite (Are You Afraid of the Dark?), who works with a script from a surprising pedigree. It was penned by Academy Award-nominated scribe John Gatins (Flight), who adapted the film from a news article by Susan Orlean, the writer of The Orchid Thief, whose book served as the source material for Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation. Initially, the film functions as a coming-of-age black teen comedy, highlighting Prince’s Kaitlyn and her bold, rebellious attitude. This includes a humorous scene where she volunteers as a human dodgeball sacrifice in gym class.

Another noteworthy scene involves her stealing The Guardian from its owner, Jaan Vari (Brian Cox). While this action may seem outlandish, it’s forgivable given the context of the fact that this is a narrative film. However, Jaan discovers evidence implicating Kaitlyn and Adam in the theft of the prized bird, as these situations tend to go. While I can suspend disbelief for the sake of comedy, it becomes pretty absurd when Kaitlyn sells the bird to the Russian mafia, who have a penchant for pigeon racing. For $25,000, it’s peculiar how Little Wing’s story decides to convey the idea that it takes a village to raise a child.

Then, Jaan approaches the little thief’s home. Instead of explaining to the mother, he finds a bag with the daughter’s name and address. Does he tell Maggie he saw them, including Adam, and now the bird is missing? No, he keeps the ruse, telling the mother that she reached out to the old man and he was returning the garment bag. Does Maggie question this as a woman in blue and as a mother? No, she will never qualify for officer or mother of the year.

Then, Jaan’s wife knows the girl stole the bird but is grateful they can move to Arizona. These people live in an apartment with pigeon coops on the roof. Do they not need $125,000 for retirement or bills? Jaan, who is understandably upset, frequently snaps at Kaitlyn and towers over her, demanding the bird back, but when Maggie walks in the room, Jaan plays it off that he is just arranging a time for him and Kaitlyn to meet up. My God, is there no social worker in the Portland area? There are subplots, such as when attempting to steal The Guardian back, where no one is worried about CCTV or the fact that the Mafia just allows the bandits to leave.

Little Wing is a family film for those who don’t put too much stock into detail, which is fine. However, while hardly offensive, the film really teaches poor values, like it’s fine to steal and befriend strangers you don’t know and then lie to your parents. Yes, there are some heart-tugging moments, but overall, the experience lacks thoughtfulness and replaces it with patronizing manipulation. 

Grade: C-

Director: Simon Cellan Jones
Writer: Michael Brandt
Stars: Mark Wahlberg, Simu Liu, Nathalie Emmanuel

Synopsis: An adventure racer adopts a stray dog named Arthur to join him and his team in an epic endurance race.

Unfolding like a thematic cross between Nyad and one of the many recent find-and-replace titles like A Dog’s Way Home, or Journey, or Purpose, or Dream, or Will, or Tale, or — you get it, yes? — there isn’t anything particularly special about Arthur the King. It’s an adventure film, one so easy to pin down you’ll feel as though you’ve seen it before. One you know the beats of before it begins, one you’d be hard-pressed not to predict, a movie with a one-track mind that is more interested in tugging at your heartstrings than telling an original story. Maybe that’s because it’s based on a true story, which is to say that a single cursory Google search will tell you whether or not the titular dog dies at the end. I won’t spoil that here, but I also wonder if doing so would really tilt the scales of your interest in seeing this movie in the first place.

That’s also not to say, despite its telegraphed narrative and cloying efforts to get you to shed a tear, that there’s anything particularly wrong with Arthur the King, either (Apart from, you know, its racist star’s penchant for hate crimes, sexism, et. al. But he found God!). Director Simon Cellan Jones’ follow-up to 2023’s The Family Plan, which seemingly got him hooked on Mark Wahlberg, or vice versa, is as by the numbers as it gets, an underdog tale about a group of adventure racers discovering the value of man’s-best-friend-ship, all while overcoming adversity in the form of rough terrains, battered egos, and the “insurmountable” odds stacked against them. Whether or not the central team wins their race isn’t the point; this film is hell-bent on making you feel something, one way or another.

Perhaps that feeling is anger, for having spent two hours of your life subconsciously rooting for Wahlberg (who plays Michael Light, an Americanized iteration of the real-life Swedish adventure racer Mikael Lindnord, on whom the film is based). Or perhaps you’ll find genuine inspiration watching the periodic triumphs of Light’s team, a murderer’s row of seasoned adventure movie tropes — we have the climber (Nathalie Emmanuel), the navigator (Ali Suliman), and the Instagram-famous comedic foil (Simu Liu). Michael is widely considered to be one of the best to never win his sport’s top competition, and he’s all-but aged out of prime contention for the Adventure Racing World Series. 

Yet he can’t escape the itch, an inkling that if he had just one more shot at the title, along with the right team by his side, he’d be able to come out on top. So, Michael convinces his wife Helen (Juliet Rylance) that this will be his last ride, and he finds enough sponsors to fund his training for one last brush with his perilous passion. The crew packs their bags with enough water and frozen meatballs for a journey through the Dominican jungle; along the way, they encounter a stray dog, whom they call Arthur. He loves their meatballs, while the ever-softening Michael loves his company. It’s a match made in heaven from the jump. 

Many will find it difficult not to roll their eyes at the film’s hokey framework, and yet I can’t deny instinctually pumping my fist whenever this underestimated crew made some sort of strive toward potential victory. I also can’t deny the existence of the titular canine, reason enough to latch onto Arthur’s otherwise-predetermined structure. And although these sorts of stories tend to be my kryptonite — I’m happy anytime a dog appears on screen; sue me — there is more to Arthur than a recognizable narrative, cast, and the existence of its central mutt.

Arthur The King is far from perfect, but at least it effectively harnesses the power these movies rarely neglect yet never master: Being infused with hope, no matter the adversity the characters face. When it comes to garden variety sports movies, straying from the stock formula is more likely to drive typical audiences away as opposed to steering viewers in a given film’s direction. What separates the sports movies that are “fine” and those that are “straight-up bad” — great sports films are few and far between these days — often boils down to talent in front of the camera and/or a steady hand behind it. Thematically, you can find quite a few similarities between Remember the Titans and Next Goal Wins, but only the former starred Denzel Washington. The latter was mailed in by Taika Waititi and not even Michael Fassbender could keep Next Goal Wins above water.

Stylistically, I can imagine Baltasar Kormákur’s version of this film, a slightly darker rendition of the same story that leans more into the danger these adventurers face on a daily basis while treating their fifth teammate as a furry sidekick deployed only when necessary, and then placed front and center during the final act when Michael has to choose between glory and loyalty. But the choices Cellan Jones makes in Arthur the King arguably better serve a film of its ilk due to their emphasis on sentiment. Sure, Arthur lays its heart on a little heavy at times, but you’d rather that than be stuck with a film that is okay leaving every ounce of warmth on the cutting room floor in favor of needless stunts and weightless action.

Grade: C+

Director: Henry Nelson
Writer: Henry Nelson
Stars: Tim Blake Nelson, Chloë Kerwin, Grant Harvey

Synopsis: Asleep in My Palm explores the nature of parenthood and class as a father and daughter live off the grid in rural Ohio where they must confront the challenges of her sexual awakening as he escapes a violent and conflicted past.

Henry Nelson’s Asleep in My Palm is almost as heartbreaking as Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace. The comparison is naturally going to be made between the two films as both feature a father and daughter duo living off grid because of the father’s intense military service-related PTSD. Granik’s film is a masterpiece and Nelson’s work will exist in its long shadow. However, Asleep in My Palm distinguishes itself by shifting the focus to the self-imposed predicament created by Tom (Tim Blake Nelson) as one based in uncontained rage at the world. His only balm is Beth Ann (Chloë Kerwin), now sixteen years old and beginning to find herself curious about the world beyond the one created by him.

The film begins with Tom giving Beth Ann his interpretation of Disney’s Chicken Little. Not the original short made for American wartime propaganda, but the panned 2005 movie. His version is a tale he’s telling about himself. A “bespectacled homunculus” chicken who no one believes or likes, who maybe lives in Paterson, New Jersey. One who is bullied and ostracized by the community and later forms a gang to take them down. He doesn’t have to because everything does go to shit. This Chicken Little “Looks up and he’s happy because he’s been dead for years, and the last thing he’s going to see is those fuckers eating shit.” Maybe he saw the crack and what others can’t see.

Beth Ann questions his story with a sleepy kindness and tells him to be safe as he leaves their tiny storage unit which doubles as their home. Despite the sodden and slushy Ohio snow, the storage unit is still a “home.” Whatever Tom is doing, and most of it is criminal, his focus is keeping Beth Ann wrapped warm and tight.

But how tight can someone like Tom really hold on to a young woman who is beginning to wonder about the world beyond the two of them? Tom has given her a better education than most college kids would get. They are living near the famous Oberlin College; a place where a month’s tuition would keep Tom and Beth Ann alive for years. Yet, Beth Ann has never been to a party. She’s committed crimes – she can break and enter like a professional, but she’s almost a total innocent.

Tom is used to the exhausting hustle. Along with Jose (a strange incel type played by Jared Abrahamson) he steals whatever he can from the college dorms. Jose believes that women liking Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ is an act of cultural appropriation. He’s an idiot Tom tolerates but seemingly doesn’t care about. His manic energy and ridiculous statements weary an already weary man. 

Tom is cynical and jaded about the modern world and has kept Beth Ann from it. No phones, no television, no computers. An itinerant life where they can just move on once a place no longer serves its purpose or gets “too hot” — if he was in a Michael Mann film he’d almost be considered urbane. But Asleep in My Palm is not Heat.

Tom is an enigma, perhaps even to himself. The audience knows he was in Desert Storm, but who was he before that? Who did he become afterwards? How is a man living hand to mouth able to debate metaphysics or give a quick lesson on the Stoics? When he meets a bunch of bored college kid “Satanists” he’s able to break down the philosophy of “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,” as espoused by the Thelemites and Aleister Crowley.

Crafting an imaginative world filled with joy and small wonders for Beth Ann has filled his aching loneliness. Beth Ann’s mother is simply, “gone.” But Beth Ann can’t stay forever the urchin and waif — the Paper Moon lifestyle of modern-day panhandling and swindling has an end point. That end point is sexual maturity and adult curiosity.

Chloë Kerwin plays Beth Ann with vulnerability and curiosity. She adores Tom, she wants to protect him as much as he wants to protect her, but she meets people who show her that there is a world she’s been forbidden to explore. One that can be as ugly as Tom warned her, but one which also contains beautiful and enchanting women such as Gus Birney’s rich girl Millah, who likes the idea of slumming it with Grant Harvey’s ‘Dark Mortius.’ A single kiss from Millah and some time spent being seen by someone else and Beth Ann is smitten. 

Just as Tom (Thomasin McKenzie) says to Will (Ben Foster) in Leave No Trace, “The same thing that’s wrong with you isn’t wrong with me” Beth Ann has to tell her father “No one’s going to remember me. Just you. There are no pictures of me.” It’s not enough for her any longer to be invisible from the institutional monsters. She has the one thing Tom wishes she would never have, desire. Not a desire for the material, but for some form of autonomy — which ironically is what Tom was striving towards himself but can’t manage.

Henry Nelson captures life on the outskirts with humanity and sometimes almost absurd humor. He doesn’t pretend that it is a life anyone would truly desire unless they were broken by uncaring systems. When Millah tells Beth Ann that she is more adult at the age of sixteen than she will ever be, she means it. They have a shared envy of each other’s lives. But Millah eventually will just fall into a safety net of privilege. She will live a small life but a safe one. College is the time she gets before she ends up married and doing charity events.

Asleep in My Palm is a film which documents the small American tragedies. The world of poverty is still around the rust belt next to generational wealth. Asleep in My Palm is a lyrical film with extraordinary performances by Nelson and Kerwin. It is patiently and expertly shot which makes the interspersed violence all the more impactful. The only real criticism that can be leveled is an extraneous mystery and solution at the end of the film which brings up a question no one was asking. 

Asleep in My Palm is an outstanding debut by Henry Nelson, and he has the great fortune to be directing his father, who is one of America’s finest character actors. Love is complex and families even more so. Asleep in My Palm gives grace to two people just trying to find a place in the world — one who will never truly belong because he has never healed his trauma, and one who has a chance to fly higher and see if the sky really is falling in.

Grade: B+

Director: Luc Besson
Writer: Luc Besson
Stars: Caleb Landry Jones, Jojo T. Gibbs, Christopher Denham

Synopsis: A boy, bruised by life, finds his salvation through the love of his dogs.

Roger Ebert said of Nicolas Roeg’s Track 29, “Somebody asked me if I liked this movie, and I had to answer that I did not, but then I realized once again what an inadequate word “like” is. The reason I didn’t like it is that the film is unlikable – perhaps deliberately so. But that doesn’t make it a bad film, and it probably makes it a more interesting one… it is bad-tempered. But not every film is required to massage us with pleasure. Some are allowed to be abrasive and frustrating, to make us think.” Ebert’s quote would be germane to Luc Besson’s DogMan if the film was setting out to make the audience think. However, Besson decides on unlikeable, frustrating, and doing all the “thinking” for the audience. DogMan is blunt-force abrasive, but it is possible at least to find sections interesting.

Douglas (Caleb Landry Jones) is a man whose tortured existence means the only pack he can trust are his preternaturally clever “children” — a motley crew of smooth criminal canines. Brought up in a strangely timeless Newark by a violently dysfunctional family, Doug has more ‘anti-hero’ origin stories than a continually re-written comic book character. Was it the moment he was caught feeding scraps to the dogs his father bred for fighting? Was it when his slack-jawed ultra-religious brother had him locked in the cage with the dogs for most of his childhood? Was it when his beloved mother finally left the cradle of filth that was his home neglecting to let him out of the cage as she departed? Or was it when his father decided to shoot the puppies Doug was protecting but instead shot off one of Doug’s fingers and left a bullet lodged in his spine which will one day kill him?

Doug is arrested in full Marilyn Monroe drag trying to flee the scene of a gang war massacre with his beloved babies, and it is up to Doctor Evelyn Decker (Jojo T. Gibbs) to work out the enigma of the fluid and adapting Dog Man through his baroque narration of his life.

Doug is polite, educated, and so well versed in the Bard his history is Shakespearean. Is he Viola, Richard II, Falstaff, or Iago? Is he Hamlet or Juliet? Avenging angel or demon from the bowels of hell? Perhaps he is all three of Macbeth’s witches? The only thing that is certain is that he is weaving constant illusions to avoid being uncovered. That, and he regards humanity as a blight because they believe they have transcended their animal instincts. “The weak are killed in nature. But they survive in humanity. For a while. God always finds his own.”

A bizarre Bildungsroman, DogMan chronicles Doug’s life as an institutionalized child who falls in love with his guidance counselor and drama teacher Salma Bailey (Grace Palma) who takes the broken boy through the whirlwind of make believe which he first experienced reading his mother’s hidden ‘Women’s Magazines.’ Through Salma, he becomes a wheelchair using Richard Burbage, Will Kemp, and Margaret Hughes. Makeup and make-believe transport him from his isolation. He is seen and admired by his previously bullying peers, but not for being himself — for being someone else. Eventually, Salma heads to Broadway leaving a heartbroken boy who will eventually find his way back to the ones he cannot abandon, and will not abandon him, his dogs.

Doug’s journey through the callousness of reality is echoed by the strays he cares for. He has no home — they have no home. He doesn’t train his children to do tricks, they simply understand what he wants. Instead, he trains himself to perform. Unable to find a job despite having a degree, Doug holes himself up in an abandoned high school with his ever-expanding fur family and by chance becomes a drag artiste doing swirling renditions of Édith Piaf (an extraordinary scene) and Marlene Dietrich in “Lili Marlene” mode. Community supported by Annie Lennoxes, Madonnas and Chers, Douglas finds liberation behind illusion. He also has a successful side hustle in high end jewelry theft carried out by his crew. None of it is about the money – he just needs enough to keep his family fed.

Insurance investigators and Latino gang-bangers all try to take Doug down and meet a grisly end. It is Willard without the horror, or Doctor Dolittle as Duela Dent. Grisly, gritty, and stylishly captured, the essence of Besson’s cinema du look heightens the choreographed violence. Fetishistic in extremis, but also peculiarly sexless.

There is God’s law and dog’s law; Douglas is an adherent to both. God sent him dogs as a panacea to soothe his suffering. “Dogs only have one flaw, they love humans.” One suspects Besson decided to make the whole film in English and film it in “America” because chien spelled backwards means nothing.

Doug’s confession to Evelyn serves a purpose to prove his existence before it is erased and to alleviate her pain. An exhausted single mother with a violent father and similarly violent ex-husband, she can’t keep from her young child; Evelyn is also in need of protection. Hence the man behind a thousand curtains comes into the light to send her an angel before he meets his fate. 

DogMan should be, in some manner, entertaining. It is darkly funny, but Besson enjoys torturing the audience through Doug’s misfortunes too much. The philosophical and ethical discussions between Doug and Evelyn are exhaustingly exposition heavy. Besson shows and over tells, never getting the balance right. For example, we see Christopher Denham’s venal and sweaty insurance adjuster stalking Doug thinking he’s captured the femme fatale; but Doug has already told Evelyn (and shown in flashbacks) his knack for manipulation and dog-eat-man war. We know exactly what is coming.

If not for Caleb Landry Jones’ wounded but bravura performance, DogMan would be near insufferable. Jones is a compelling and beguiling presence. It’s not surprising he has been previously scooped up as a villain in Jordan Peele’s Get Out. He’s also a fragile romantic interest in Neil Jordan’s Byzantium. His best roles are the ones where he is an oddball outsider such as Brandon Cronenberg’s Antiviral. His best role to date has been the titular character in Justin Kurzel’s Nitram. There’s something indefinable about his screen charisma. He’s a less beautiful Cillian Murphy or Christopher Abbott but whatever those two have, he also has.

Besson has never opted for subtle nor is he beyond self-plagiarism. He’s made La Femme Nikita essentially three times (the original which spawned a two remakes and two television series), as evidenced by Lucy and Anna. His best loved science-fiction film The Fifth Element he cannibalized for Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. As for subtlety, although gorgeous, Les Aventures extraordinaires d’Adèle Blanc-Sec required two cuts. One to appeal to the younger aged adventure and Gaslamp enthusiasts, and one which had our fearless heroine very often unclothed just because she’s beautiful. An entire paragraph can be written just about the Taxi and Transporter franchises. Léon: The Professional is again a topic too large to be here within encompassed.

DogMan could be construed as mash-up of Le Dernier Combat and Subway. DogMan is low budget Besson off his leash after the massively expensive flop that was Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. It has style to burn but substance is either blatantly telegraphed or scant.

If you crave Luc Besson’s mysteriously religious, ultra-camp, and ferocious style with Caleb Landry Jones (and the junior version of Doug) being caked in mud, blood, or pancake makeup while devising schemes like an obsessive scrapbooker and master chef: then by all means DogMan is there for the taking. Also, there are the wonderful dogs working like a finely tuned orchestra. However, be warned, the antihero revenge wish fulfilment fantasy is often sickly and sloppy. It is more a tatty wig and obvious scars than genre hybrid genius. 

Grade: C

Director: Peter Farrelly
Writers: Jeffrey Bushell, Brian Jarvis, James Lee Freeman, Peter Farrelly, Pete Jones, Mike Cerrone
Stars: Zac Efron, John Cena, Jermaine Fowler, Andrew Santino

Synopsis: When three childhood best friends pull a prank that goes wrong, they invent the imaginary Ricky Stanicky to get them out of trouble. Twenty years later, they still use the nonexistent Ricky as a handy alibi for their immature behavior.

One of my bigger gripes with streamers unceremoniously dumping genre fare on their platforms with all the fanfare of a traffic jam is how well many of those films would play in a theater. Of course, many recent titles landed on streaming services partially due to the impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on the moviegoing experience (oh, how I wish I could have seen Palm Springs in a packed picturehouse). But even in the years since cinemas reopened en masse, movies of ostensible theatrical quality have fallen by the wayside in regards to the attention they should receive due a streaming release. 

Think about a film like 2022’s Prey, a fresh offering under the Predator umbrella; it was a sneaky hit on Hulu, yet I can’t help but think about the way it would’ve looked on the big screen. Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, a Netflix original, is a curious case study. It received plenty of acclaim, not to mention seven Academy Award nominations, but as someone who saw the film both in a theater and at home, I can confidently assert that it plays significantly better when projected rather than displayed on a television or laptop. I have serious fears for Richard Linklater’s Hit Man, a sexy, uproarious rom-com that premiered to much acclaim at festivals last fall, yet will land on Netflix on June 7 with no accompanying theatrical release, per usual. That film is simply so alive; it begs to be seen with a crowd.

Ricky Stanicky does not.

There’s a bit more to it than that. But perhaps the best way to summarize its potential for such status is by noting that a lot of what Ricky Stanicky feigns to be — not just be about, but be in substance — it screams “theatrical comedy”, provided that we’ve traveled back in time to 2007. I can envision a cast featuring Paul Rudd, Jason Segel, and Danny McBride, or actors of that ilk, playing a trio of successful jamokes who, in their youth, invented an imaginary scapegoat and have let him live on into the present. They have jobs, wives/partners, and adult responsibilities, all of which they are willing to abandon on the condition that they won’t be faulted for said abandonment. Of course, that’s because the blame always falls on Ricky Stanicky. I can see Judd Apatow or Adam McKay mining humor out of this premise, the aforementioned actors making lemonade out of the outwardly-lemonish dick jokes they’ve been served on a platter, and audiences eating it all up. 

Maybe these visions of mine carry more weight because that was the intention for the project back when it landed on the 2010 Black List, thus deeming it one of that year’s best unproduced screenplays. Since then, Jim Carrey, James Franco, and Joaquin Phoenix (?!) were all in line to play Ricky, a dubious honor that ultimately went to John Cena. And it’s even more evident that the script has gone through an incessant slew of revisions over time, to the point where it now has six credited writers, as well as two separate “story by” credits for David Occhino and Jason Decker. It’s a patchwork piece at best, which is too bad, considering how much fun Cena is clearly having (and willing to have), and the fact that, in better hands and at a different time, I can genuinely imagine it making just north of a nine-figure box office return. 

Instead, it’s 2024, so Ricky Stanicky is littered with stand-up comedians who don’t act so much as they play renamed versions of themselves, directed by Peter Farrelly, and plopped on Amazon Prime, right around the corner from the discount toilet plungers. (I can only assume that a poop joke was left out of Ricky Stanicky’s final cut, though a pee joke made it through the edit alive.) Its footprint, solely digital; its jokes a return to form for Farrelly, who made Green Book and The Greatest Beer Run Ever; and clearly felt he’d done his duty for sincere-ish storytelling and wished to retreat to his dick joke haven. 

Zac Efron (Dean) stars as a nothingburger of a hedge fund bro who, along with Andrew Santino (JT) and Jermaine Fowler (Wes), have a get-out-of-jail-free-card for just about anything in the form of the titular character. One of the first examples we see is Dean and JT itching to ditch  JT’s baby shower in favor of a Marc Rebillet concert in Atlantic City. How do  they get out of the shower? Ricky’s cancer is back; the boys have to head to Albany to be present when he gets out of surgery.

When the dudes are forced to leave their weekend getaway early when JT’s wife goes into labor — darn! — they return to an entourage of dubious family members, who called every hospital in Albany trying to get a hold of one of the guys (they turned their phones off so they couldn’t be tracked), and there was no record of any Ricky or Stanicky anywhere. So, in an effort to keep up appearances with their loved ones, Dean comes up with a bright idea: Why don’t they hire the alcoholic actor they met while at a bar in A.C.? His name is “Rock-Hard” Rod, and while he might not be the best bet at convincing their families of Ricky’s legitimacy, our main men aren’t exactly swimming in options.

Enter Rod, who is just as committed to the bit of being Ricky as Cena is to playing him, but the whole sham these morons cooked up is a disaster waiting to happen. Especially because Rod enjoys being Ricky so much that he won’t take the money and run. Once the gig is up, Rod’s method acting persists; he even gets hired by Dean and JT’s boss, and swiftly receives a title with higher status and pay than the aforementioned duo. Nevermind that Rod’s only true skills are finding ways to sexualize the lyrics to popular rock songs for his one man show — it didn’t make me laugh, but I’d kill to see Peter Frampton’s reaction to Rod singing, “Ooh baby, I masturbate, everyday yeah, yeah”, — because “Ricky” is a jack of all trades. The more Rod hams it up, the further into chaos Dean, JT, and Wes’ lives are thrown.

If only this chaos was handled with any sort of regard for real humor rather than a rapidly-unspooling thread of stale quips and gags. This is the sort of film that is more concerned with how a line reads than how it lands or even relates to the plot; I recall Wes mentioning, “Sometimes I feel like I’m in a gay Handmaid’s Tale”, but what that referenced is of less import to the script than the fact that Wes mentioned a recognizable streaming property. The point — both of this line and the movie as a whole — isn’t to reinvent the wheel, but you’d think it might at least try to split the difference between There’s Something About Mary and Hall Pass. 
All this is made infinitely worse by it being the Efron performance immediately following his outstanding turn in last year’s The Iron Claw, a prestige project that saw the otherwise-solid actor reach unforeseen dramatic heights. Not even he can support the movie-stealing work of Cena, an up-for-anything performer who grows as an actor every time he appears on screen. Yet despite his best efforts, the Academy Awards will go down as the funniest thing Cena appears in this month. Somehow, more work went into crafting a gag to accompany the presentation for achievement in Costume Design than into a new feature film from an Oscar winner. If only that was as much of a sham as this.

Grade: D