Uncle Drew (2018) review

Many folks of my generation will no doubt be familiar with the 1996 sports comedy flick Space Jam. Starring the legendary basketball icon Michael Jordan as himself, the film saw him teaming up with Bugs Bunny and the rest of the Looney Tunes in a basketball game against a group of aliens. Upon its release, the film grossed over $230 million worldwide, becoming both the highest-grossing basketball film of all-time and one of the most famous (or infamous, depending on who you ask…) cult classics of the 90’s. But what some folks may not know is that the film was inspired by a Nike commercial that Jordan had done in which he played basketball with Bugs Bunny, which initially aired during Super Bowl XXVI. The only reason why I bring both this and Space Jam up is because today’s film, Uncle Drew, is a lot like it as far as its inception is concerned. It all began with a series of commercials in 2012 for the product Pepsi Max that starred current Boston Celtics star Kyrie Irving as the titular Uncle Drew, an elderly man who taught ‘youngbloods’ how to ‘get buckets’. These commercials proved to be a very big hit, and thus, now we have a feature film based around Irving’s character. The film is brought to us by veteran director Charles Stone III, who also helmed another notable sports comedy, the 2004 Bernie Mac vehicle Mr. 3000 (he also created the famous ‘Whassup?’ advertising campaign for Budweiser). And while this film is exactly what you’d expect from a sports film that was based off a soda product, it is also a genuinely enjoyable crowd-pleasing comedy.

In the city of Harlem, a young man named Dax (Lil Rel Howery) constantly finds himself dealing with bad luck ever since he was blamed for losing a high school basketball game. Despite his best efforts to recruit a team of skilled basketball players to participate in a local streetball tournament, he ends up losing all his players to Mookie (Nick Kroll), his longtime rival who was also the one who embarrassed him in that high school game years back. If that wasn’t enough, Mookie even steals Dax’s girlfriend Jess (Tiffany Haddish) as well. As Dax grows increasingly desperate about trying to win the tournament and collect its $100,000 prize, he ends up crossing paths with the most famous streetball player of all-time, Uncle Drew (Kyrie Irving). Amazed at how the aging Drew is still able to hold his own against much younger and agile players, Dax manages to convince him to headline his new team on the condition that Drew can recruit his old teammates as well. Thus, the two embark on a crazy cross-country road trip to reunite Drew with his pals; martial-arts instructor Big Fella (Shaquille O’Neal), aptly named church minister Preacher (Chris Webber) and his wife Betty Lou (Lisa Leslie), blind sharpshooter Lights (Reggie Miller), and wheelchair-confined Boots (Nate Robinson).

Now to be perfectly blunt, folks, this is a sports film that has all the usual trappings that come with the genre. Its plot is extremely predictable in terms of where it goes with its characters, from Drew and Big Fella dealing with an incident from their past that caused a colossal rift in their friendship to Dax overcoming that embarrassing moment from his past. In short, this is not the film to go into expecting a layered plot, especially since it’s based off a series of Pepsi commercials. But as far as being a simple little sports comedy, this film at least succeeds at being just that. After an admittedly slow start (i.e. it takes a little while before we even see Uncle Drew himself), this film maintains a decently consistent track record throughout with its humor, which is all thanks to its entertaining cast. For being his first major foray into acting, Kyrie Irving’s got some nice comedic timing, and the same goes for the other NBA stars (WNBA in Lisa Leslie’s case) as well. The film’s non-NBA stars get some solid material to work with as well, especially Lil Rel Howery (AKA Rod the TS-mother****ing-A agent from Get Out) in his first major leading role as the straight man to all the crazy shenanigans that Drew and his friends get into. Because of all this, while there may not be that much to write home about with this film, Uncle Drew is still a good time to be had at the theater, with a nice, uncynical tone that thoroughly respects the old-school ways in which the game of basketball is played.

Rating: 3.5/5

Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie (2017) review

Now, I know what some of you might be thinking; why the heck am I reviewing a film called Captain Underpants? Seems ridiculous, doesn’t it? Well, it isn’t that ridiculous to me, and that’s because, like many kids of my generation, I grew up with this film’s source material. Yes, what we have here is a film that’s based off a popular book series of the same name by author Dav Pilkey. The Adventures of Captain Underpants: The First Epic Novel, a story about a pair of elementary school students who unintentionally turn their principal into a superhero, was first published in 1997 and was a major best-seller. It would ultimately go on to spawn a full-blown series, with the most recent (and final) entry, book #12, released back in 2015. At the same time, though, the books have often been banned in school libraries due to their [admittedly] juvenile humor. Still, they’ve been a big hit with their target audience, having sold over 70 million copies worldwide. And now, the famous superhero who’s ‘faster than a speeding waistband, more powerful than boxer shorts, and able to leap tall buildings without getting a wedgie’ stars in his own feature film; Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie. This new film comes courtesy of DreamWorks Animation and is notably their last feature film released through their current distributor, 20^th Century Fox, before they begin their new partnership with Universal in 2019. And as surprising as it may seem, this adaptation of a book series about a principal who turns into an underwear-themed superhero every time someone snaps their fingers and is only reverted to normal when doused with water… is one of the most faithful book-to-film adaptations in recent memory.

Like the books that they’re based on, the film follows the adventures of fourth graders George Beard (Kevin Hart) and Harold Hutchins (Thomas Middleditch). These two best friends spend most of their time creating their own comics and causing all sorts of pranks at their elementary school, Jerome Horwitz Elementary, to provide their classmates with a temporary reprieve from the grim goings-on that occur there daily. However, this soon ends up attracting the attention of their mean principal, Mr. Krupp (Ed Helms), who threatens to put the two boys in separate classrooms if they get caught again. To prevent this from happening, George and Harold try to hypnotize him with a ‘3-D Hypno-Ring’ that George got from a cereal box. To their surprise, the ring does indeed work, allowing them to make Mr. Krupp do whatever they want. This culminates in them commanding Mr. Krupp to act like the main protagonist from their comics, Captain Underpants, a superhero who literally only wears his underpants along with a red cape. However, this joke soon turns into a serious dilemma when Mr. Krupp begins to go around the city acting like a superhero… even though he doesn’t have any real superpowers. As such, this forces George and Harold to keep an eye on him so that he doesn’t hurt himself. And things get even more complicated when a scientist named Professor Poopypants (Nick Kroll; and yes, that’s his name, Professor Poopypants) comes to town intent on ridding humanity of the part of the brain that causes them to laugh as revenge for the years of ridicule that’s he endured over his ridiculous name.

Even though it’s been a while since I’ve read these books (I stopped reading them during the time when the series was on a temporary hiatus due to author Dav Pilkey taking time off to care for his father, who died in 2008), I found this film to be a highly faithful adaptation of its source material. The plot is, basically, a combination of elements from various installments. In other words, while the main plot generally follows the same structure of the first book, the film’s main villain, Professor Poopypants, first debuted in the fourth book, Captain Underpants and The Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants, the evil sentient toilets from the second book, Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets, make an appearance, and there are several Easter eggs throughout that tie into various other entries of the series. Ultimately, though, the film does a fantastic job of capturing the overall feel and tone of the books. It never takes itself too seriously and it maintains the same general style of self-aware humor. Heck, they even managed to incorporate the iconic ‘Flip-O-Rama’ sections from the books, in which readers flipped pages back and forth to simulate action scenes, into the narrative. On that note, the screenplay by Nicholas Stoller is full of hilarious bits of dialogue. I mean, admittedly, I wouldn’t say that this film is an absolute comedic riot. And, yes, the humor is often just as juvenile as it was in the books so it won’t go over well with everyone. Still, there are plenty of great jokes as well as some hilarious visual gags throughout that satirize the superhero genre. At the same time, there’s also some surprisingly heartfelt moments in this as well, namely through the friendship of the main characters.

Unlike most DreamWorks Animation films, this film’s animation was handled by a different studio, Mikros Image. This allowed the film to have a cheaper budget compared to DreamWorks’ other projects in the wake of some of their more recent efforts underperforming at the box-office. And, overall, the animation in this film is solid. It’s very reminiscent of what Blue Sky Studios did on The Peanuts Movie, managing to establish a 2-Dish feel in this computer animated film. And just like The Peanuts Movie, this is a great way to pay homage to the original source material as, in this instance, it feels like a comic book coming to life. Heck, they even have a whole sequence done with sock puppets. As for the voice cast, the film assembles a solid group of voices to fit each role. It may seem a bit weird at first to hear famous voices like Kevin Hart and Thomas Middleditch portraying fourth graders, but they both do excellent jobs in the roles of George and Harold, respectively. But perhaps most importantly, the two have phenomenal camaraderie, doing justice to the friendship of these two classic characters which, as mentioned earlier, is ultimately the heart of the film. Meanwhile, Ed Helms is a nice pick for the dual role of Mr. Krupp AKA Captain Underpants. He provides the right amount of diabolicalness for when Krupp’s his normal self but then switches seamlessly into a charismatic persona when he’s the friendly but admittedly dimwitted superhero, Captain Underpants. And, finally, Nick Kroll gets some great bits of humor as well in the role of the main villain Professor Poopypants, mainly due to the exact reason that you’re thinking about (i.e. his name). I mean, between this and Sausage Party, Kroll does quite a great job when it comes to animated villain roles.

I cannot believe that I’m saying this but… Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie is one of the most satisfying adaptations that I’ve ever seen. I mean, let’s face it, you don’t often get a film like this that is THIS faithful to the source material. And yet this film very much succeeds in capturing the spirit of the Captain Underpants books, right down to the implementation of their iconic running gags like ‘Flip-O-Rama’. Seriously, even though it’s been years since I’ve read these books, watching this film legitimately made me feel like a kid again, reading through these books and going on these wacky adventures with George and Harold. But, aside from that, the film’s just a fun superhero adventure through and through. The animation’s nice and colorful, excellently representing the visual style of the books, and the screenplay by Nicholas Stoller is full to the brim with great humor. At the same time, though, there’s also some unexpectedly heartfelt moments in this as well, primarily through the great friendship of George and Harold. Ultimately, it’s just a great feel-good film that celebrates imagination through the crazy antics that George, Harold, and Captain Underpants get into. Thus, to make a long story short (See what I did there? It’s a nod to the books, which always had one chapter that tied up all loose ends in just one sentence, hence why they’re always titled ‘To Make a Long Story Short…”), who would’ve guessed that an adaptation of a book series that has, no joke, been around for two whole decades now (Feel old yet?) would turn out this good? 

Rating: This may seem crazy, but… 5/5!

Sausage Party (2016) review

(Disclaimer: I don’t usually do this but there are going to be some MAJOR SPOILERS at the end of this review following the rating as I will be delving into how much the film has changed since I saw it at SXSW. Also some of you might have recently heard of the controversies surrounding this film’s production, namely the fact that some of its animators were overworked and underpaid. It’s certainly a troubling situation but I will not be bringing it up in the review.)

It’s time once again to talk more about one of the films that I got to see early at SXSW in Austin, Texas this past March. And this one, Sausage Party, is a particularly noteworthy one because when it premiered there on March 14^th, it wasn’t finished yet. It was shown in ‘rough cut’ form, with some of the animation being unfinished. It so wasn’t finished yet that there was actually a scene that was just storyboards and apparently it had actually been screened sometime prior to that as nothing but storyboards. So because it was only a ‘Rough Cut’, I decided not to give it an official rating in my 2016 SXSW Recap Post. However, now the film is finally out in its finished state, meaning that I now have the opportunity to review it properly. Sausage Party is certainly a unique entry in the animated genre. While it may seem like your typical Disney/Dreamworks affair, namely in regards to the cartoony designs of its main characters that would certainly fit in any other animated film, believe me when I say that this is not an animated film you’re going to want to take your kids to. This is a very much R-rated animated flick that is as crass and filled to the brim with sexual innuendos and pot as you’d probably expect from the duo behind it; Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. But if you can look pass all of the juvenile references, sex talk, and pot jokes, Sausage Party is actually a rather smartly written animated flick that very much takes advantage of its more mature rating, though maybe a bit too much at times, to produce a hilariously dark spin on what, on the surface, would seem like something you’d see in a Disney film.

The film mainly takes place within the confines of a supermarket called Shopwell’s. In this supermarket, its various food items are living beings who dream of being taken by ‘the gods’ [humans] and brought out of the store into ‘the Great Beyond’. One of these foods is a sausage named Frank (Seth Rogen) who dreams of being chosen along with his girlfriend, a hot dog bun named Brenda (Kristen Wiig), so that they take their relationship beyond ‘just the tips’. As fate would have it, they do end up getting chosen together by a female shopper during Fourth of July weekend. However, a jar of Honey Mustard (Danny McBride) that had been previously brought to ‘the Great Beyond’ but was then returned to the store warns them that the ‘Great Beyond’ is nothing but a bunch of BS and jumps off of the cart to his death, ultimately resulting in Frank, Brenda, a lavash named Kareem Abdul Lavash (David Krumholtz), and a bagel named Sammy Bagel Jr. (Edward Norton) falling out of the cart as well following a collision with another cart. Now on their own as the store closes for the night, the quartet decide to journey back to their aisles, all the while dealing with a douche (Nick Kroll, and by ‘douche’ I mean the feminine hygiene product) that seeks revenge against Frank for getting his nozzle bent. It is during this time that Frank begins to learn more about what Honey Mustard was talking about and through a meeting with the ‘immortal’ non-perishables led by liquor bottle Firewater (Bill Hader), Frank finally learns the truth about the ‘Great Beyond’; it is a lie. Even worse, when food is taken by humans, the humans end up “killing their asses”, resulting in Frank having to try and reveal the horrible truth to his peers before it’s too late.

The humor in Sausage Party is very much what’d you expect from Rogen and Goldberg; it’s full of sexual innuendo, pot jokes, etc. And in the case of this film, that also means quite a lot of food-related puns. Pretty much any food pun that you can think of is probably in this film. Now as far as the humor is concerned, I must say that this film actually has a really solid gag-to-laugh ratio. It will legitimately have you guffawing throughout and while on the surface it may seem like a really stupid food version of Toy Story, the writing is actually much more complex than you think. Yes, amidst all of the f-bombs, marijuana use, and many, many, MANY stereotypes that are represented in food form, there’s actually quite a bit of in-depth social commentary in this film, namely in regards to religion as represented by the food of Shopwell’s being led to believe that nothing bad ever happens to food, which of course isn’t true in their cases. Instead, the film promotes unity amongst cultures and taking control of your own life. So yeah… this film basically gives the idea of religion the middle finger. With that said, admittedly sometimes the film can be a little too crass for its own good. I mean, sure, I get it, it’s an R-rated animated film so they do have much more creative leeway to get away with stuff that you would NEVER see in something from Disney, Pixar, or Dreamworks. Still, there are times where it does feel like they’re just relishing in the fact that it’s R, meaning plenty of f-bombs thrown out here and there really for no real reason other than they can. Thankfully, that only happens a few times in the film.

Animation-wise the film is perfectly fine as a film made by a non-Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks studio with a low budget. It’s nothing special, for the record, but it does definitely deserve some credit for the ways in which it brings this world of food to life, mainly through its character designs. It also certainly does its job in giving the film a Disney-esque style with its own cartoonish and colorful style. Heck, they even got Alan Menken, the man who has brought us countless iconic Disney songs over the years, to do the film’s opening musical number. Needless to say all of this gets really hilarious when the filmmakers start to do more adult stuff with the animation, namely in the ending which, without giving anything away, is something that truly needs to be seen to be believed. The same can be said for scenes in which food characters are brutally killed by humans. Obviously it isn’t graphic in the same way that scenes like this would be if they involved humans but it does still provide a hilariously disturbing sight. As for the voice cast, pretty much every one is spot on for their respective roles; Seth Rogen as Frank, Kristen Wiig as Brenda, Jonah Hill and Michael Cera as some of Frank’s fellow sausages with the latter being viewed as a runt due to him being a deformed sausage, Edward Norton as the Woody Allen-ish Sammy Bagel Jr. (no joke, some people at the SXSW screening didn’t even realize it was Norton until the end of the film), Salma Hayek as a lesbian taco shell who harbors feelings for Brenda, etc. Admittedly most of the characters are rather one-note save for a few (e.g. Cera’s character Barry) but the cast does make it all work in the long run.  

Now like I said before, when I first saw this film I didn’t give it a rating at the time because it was only a ‘Rough Cut’. Plus, because the SXSW crowd was so into it (I’m pretty sure there were a few stoners in there… this is a Seth Rogen/Evan Goldberg film, after all), sometimes I couldn’t even hear the dialogue. So now I’ve finally seen the film in its final form and overall I must say that it really is a solid animated flick. For one thing, the film is absolutely hilarious from beginning to end; most of the jokes, even some of the obviously offensive ones, do hit. And while on the surface this whole premise of food learning of their true purpose in life may sound really silly, and let’s be honest that’s exactly what it is, the writing can actually be rather smart at times, namely through how it comments on religion and the beliefs that one has through said religion. Pair that with the hilarious mash-up of Disney-style animation with the messed up crap that goes on in this film and the absolutely spot-on voice cast and you just have one absolutely crazy but still highly entertaining animated feature. Like Deadpool and superhero films earlier this year, perhaps Sausage Party will open the door for more R-rated animated films. Clearly people are open for films like this that aren’t afraid to be a bit more mature despite being part of a genre that’s mostly seen PG-rated stories. I’ve seen quite a few great R-rated animated films before; South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, Team America: World Police, etc. So hopefully thanks to this film, we’ll be seeing more down the road, including the certainty that is a sequel to this film, which ends on quite an interesting note that will no doubt set up an even crazier follow-up.  

Rating: 4/5

****

SPOILER SECTION (IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE FILM YET, READ NO FURTHER!!)

So as I’ve been saying throughout this review, when I saw this at SXSW not all of the animation was finished. Some scenes were in the early stages of rendering and some of them didn’t even feature full character animation yet. This was primarily the case during the opening song number and pretty much most of the finale, including the scene in which Frank tries to rally the supermarket food to fight ‘the Gods’ and, yes, even the infamous orgy scene. There was also one additional scene that didn’t end up in the theatrical cut. After the food have their massive orgy, Frank and friends learn from Firewater that they are actually only ‘cartoons’ brought to life by animators and voiced by celebrities like Seth Rogen and Edward Norton. The wise figure that is Gum then reveals that he has built an inter-dimensional device that would allow them to travel to their creators’ world. Frank and co. decide to enter it and they end up in Los Angeles right across the street from a diner where Seth Rogen, Michael Cera, and Edward Norton are having lunch. As the trio talk about doing an animated film about talking food, Frank and friends storm into the diner through the window to attack them. Now for the record I don’t know if this was actually intended to be in the film. The animation in this scene was completely non-existent; it was literally just the 2-D models of the characters on a 2-D plane set against the live-action footage. I mean personally I think it would’ve been a funny little ending tag seeing Rogen, Cera, and Norton get attacked by the food but it’s probably for the better that they didn’t use this scene. Instead, the film ends as Frank and his friends go into the portal. With that said, though, perhaps this scene will be featured on the Blu-Ray. It would certainly set the stage for what will no doubt happen in the sequel as Frank and co. interact with ‘their creators’.