THE BIG SICK (2017)

Rated: R

STARS: Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan, Holly Hunter, Ray Romano
DIRECTOR: Judd Apatow
GENRE: Romantic Comedy/Drama

There is plenty of irony, even in the title: The Big Sick. A young woman lies in a coma, fighting for her life. But there is another kind of sickness that permeates all of society--in every culture--and it's called prejudice. Here, though, we have a different twist. Instead of white folks being the bigots, it's a Pakistani family living in the USA that absolutely will not accept the idea of their son falling for an American girl--and a blonde, at that! Arranged marriages are their thing, and mom recruits a cadre of comely Pakistani ladies who just happen to "drop by" during dinnertime to meet her sitting duck son, Kumail.

But Kumail (Kumail Nanjiani), a stand up comedian, is smitten by Emily--an affable, quirky kind of girl--qualities brought out in spades by the delightful Zoe Kazan. Emily is so American that she believes couples should fall in love first, and proceed from there. This sets up a classic clash of cultures, as Kumail is chicken to reveal Emily's presence to his family for fear of the consequences. He's caught in the middle, and now, as Emily lies in a medically induced coma in the hospital fighting a life threatening infection, Kumail has her parents (Ray Romano and Holly Hunter) to contend with as well. What's a funny man to do...laugh it off?  Hardly.

It's a bit peculiar to See Ray Romano playing it straight as the concerned dad, though it's not that much of a departure from his normal deadpan style. Just the punchlines are missing. Who knows, maybe he'll morph into the next Steve Carell! And director Judd Apatow surely knew that Holly Hunter was a show stealer when he brought her aboard. Here he looks the other way as she commits grand larceny in a supporting role with a powerful and nuanced performance. 

The only thing that didn't ring true (to me) is that we we watch Kumail blow off all of these beautiful Pakistani women (and I cringed) in favor of his American crush. Hey, I would have found a way to fit some of them in...

But that's me. 

I almost didn't see The Big Sick (based on a true story) due to its highly misleading trailer. They took what comedic punchlines there were and stuck them all into the trailer, making the film appear to be lighthearted romantic fluff. It's MUCH more than that. Serio-comic would be the appropriate term. Thought-provoking would be another.  Damn good would be another. 

Bring tissue.

Grade: A


JILL'S TAKE

How I love to be right! And this time, at my insistence, Tim finally broke down and went to see The Big Sick. I'd seen it in California and knew he'd like it. A lot. Having spent many years in Vancouver, BC, where the Pakistani culture flourishes, I had witnessed a mother who actually pretended to be her own daughter, signing her up on a Pakistani dating site and corresponding with potential husband material. (I kid you not!)The Big Sick uses this arranged marriage business in wonderfully humorous ways. But in real life honor killings are no joke.

The story is based on the real life of stand-up comedian Kumail Nanjiani, whose role as Dinesh on the HBO series "Silicon Valley" made his face a familiar one to TV viewers. His comic timing is impeccable and some of the lines he utters in The Big Sick (I won't ruin it for you by repeating them here) are guffaw-makers. If you want a taste of his understated brilliance check out this YouTube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_EOB2KE_ys

Or this one:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe9tpTZIceY

The only criticism I could come up with was too much medical stuff, too many specialists. My west coast movie buddy Hank was quick to point out that some of those actors-turned-doctors were, in reality, fellow comics. (Good for Kumail for casting them in cameos...) I also want to mention that this same movie buddy agreed with Tim. He felt the pack of potential Pakistani wives, especially the last one, were far more appealing than his coma-induced American cutie. The Big Sick is layered, thought-provoking and a cinematic gem. No wonder it's been held over in movie theaters here for six weeks straight.

Grade: B+

TRAINWRECK (2015)

Rated: R

STARS: Amy Schumer, Bill Hader, Tilda Swinton, LeBron James, Amare Stoudemire
DIRECTOR: Judd Apatow
GENRE: Romantic Comedy

If anything, the Amy Schumer vehicle, Trainwreck, will be remembered as the movie that turned sports legends LeBron James and Amare Stoudemire into comedic actors!  They pick up a surprising amount of "playing time" in this satirical romantic comedy written by Schumer and directed by Judd Apatow (Knocked Up, Bridesmaids).

As of late, Amy Schumer has grown in stature (if not baby fat) to be one of our most popular comics, her onstage routines embracing all things sexual and perverse in that deadpan self-deprecating style. She blows the cover off the blonde all-American girl next door to reveal what we secretly suspected all along--that she has a dirty mind. Trainwreck is her attempt at branching out from being typecast as a potty-mouthed one trick pony into something of a serious (at times) actor, with mixed results.

Not all of the humor flies, but enough of it does to keep theater audiences tittering at regular intervals. Schumer--playing a girl named Amy--is a writer for a Cosmo/National Enquirer type magazine, assigned by her snarky boss (Tilda Swinton) to do an interview piece with sports surgeon to the star athletes, Aaron Conners (Bill Hader). The stage is set for these two to fall for each other, but Amy has been a boozer and a naughty girl, going through men like they were bon-bons on Valentine's Day, and she naturally begins to mistrust her unaccustomed feelings of giddy attraction.

One of the cuter sketches is where Schumer turns the tables, doing a parody on men who can't stand to spend the entire night with their one night stands. Placing a pillow between them to mark her territory after she and Conners have officially become bed-buddies is just the start of some clever and funny OCD playing out between them.

NBA mega-star LeBron James heads up a contingent of sports personalities who are clients of Conners.  James displays some decent acting chops along with his phenomenal athletic prowess in some extended screen time that shows Amy Schumer did not intend to train the spotlight solely upon herself.  Amare  Stoudemire also gets more than a cameo role, in a scene where a distracted and addled Conners is preparing to operate on the athlete's knee, but Stoudemire decides he wants no part of it and clambers out of his hospital bed, staggering down the hall and going BOOM!

Another surprising sketch has tennis legend Chris Evert, Matthew Broderick, sportscaster Marv Albert, and LeBron James all together riffing off one another. CHRIS EVERT EVEN UTTERS A NAUGHTY WORD!  

Never saw that train coming.  


Grade:  B

JILL'S TAKE

Wow. Tim pretty much covered all the bases in this R-rated romp. If he hadn't already gone there, I was planning to praise LeBron's acting chops. He had a lot of zippy dialog and interacted well with both Hader and Schumer. Trust me, it won't be the last time we see him on screen. (Let's hope he's better at it than former athlete-turned-actor Jim Brown!)

I was also planning to mention Schumer's zaftig bod – well not exactly zaftig – as a realistic alternative to the usual anorexic actresses we watch doing the sexy. (Or, god forbid, Melissa McCarthy!) Her character's potty mouth and one-night-standish behavior may not be the norm but her figure sure is.

I guess the only other thing Tim didn't mention was Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl," played throughoutTrainwreck, because it's   Hader's character's favorite song to perform during surgery. Wonder what BJ got paid for letting them use it?

Sadly, I didn't enjoy this flick nearly as much as director Judd Aptow's other two contenders: The 40-Year-Old-Virgin and Knocked Up. It felt forced in places and played-for-laughs rather than reality. Maybe my objectivity was compromised because I couldn't find parking for nearly half an hour! (God bless southern California...)

Grade: C +

THE FIVE YEAR ENGAGEMENT (2012)

Rated: R
STARS: Jason Segel, Emily Blunt, Rhys Ifans, Chris Pratt, Alison Brie
DIRECTOR: Nicholas Stoller
PRODUCER; Judd Apatow
GENRE: Romantic Comedy


Romantic comedies typically are about two people on the verge of hooking up, while fate and one thing or another prevents them from becoming fully committed until the end. The Five Year Engagement centers primarily on the period after our couple has said "I will," as a precursor to saying "I do." So what we get instead of that romantic tension is the letdown of things beginning to unravel when their careers and other factors are pulling them in different directions. Kind of an anti-romcom in romcom's clothing.


What was hard for me to fathom from the outset was why--other than co-writer and co-star Jason Segel inserting himself opposite Emily Blunt again--these two are together. Segel is chef Tom Solomon, and his betrothed is Emily Blunt's Violet Barnes, a grad student in psychology. Tom is kind of a meatball--not quite on the scale of Kevin James in the TV sitcom King of Queens--but close, because he too is paired with a woman who is way out of his league.(The exquisite Emily Blunt is near the top of the food chain not only in looks, but certain intangibles that you can't quite put your finger (or fingers) on, but would like to!) So I don't buy them as a couple, appearance wise, and I didn't feel that on-screen chemistry either, which can often transcend the surface factors and render them believable.


Tom leaves a promising gig as a chef in San Francisco to follow violet to the frozen tundra of the University of Michigan, where she is in line for a post doctoral position in the psychology department. (Where they think they can draw conclusions about the emotional makeup of test subjects by whether they will or won't eat semi-stale donuts).It's only supposed to be for two years, so they will delay their nuptials a while. But as the film title has already revealed, that time frame will stretch on and on.


The only work in his field Tom can find in Michigan is making sandwiches at a local deli. You can sublimate your own dreams and self-esteem for the benefit of a mate for only so long before some resentment is bound to surface. And when Violet starts spending too much time with her advisor, the pontifical Winton Childs, (Rhys Ifans) and he makes a move on her, that's a recipe for disaster. 


Tom and Violet begin to second guess their commitment to each other, and that would have been a good place to end The Five Year Engagement, because these two weren't compatible to begin with. But Judd Apatow productions (Bridesmaids, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, et al.) have developed a reputation for having excess fat that maybe should have been trimmed--and true to form, The Five Year Engagement stretches into a seven course meal that makes us feel bloated at the end, as it slouches toward the conclusion we've already anticipated.


Not to imply that there aren't some laughs here. But the humor is so offbeat--peppered with all the obligatory F-bombs, whether they flow naturally from the material or not--that sometimes the audience laughed, and other times showed no reaction to what was obviously "supposed" to be funny.


Chris Pratt, as Tom's best friend, Alex, and Alison Brie, as his wife, (and Violet's sister) each give good turns here. They are both zany, and seem like two people who are better suited to being together.


But I think what I liked the best was Emily Blunt doing her impression of The Cookie Monster.


Grade:  C + 










  

BRIDESMAIDS--2011

Rated: R

Stars: Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, Chris O'Dowd, Melissa McCarthy

Director: Paul Feig

Genre: Comedy

For Hollywood these days, gross-out translates to gross receipts at the box office. And every gross-out comedy appears to be trying to outdo the previous one. Even if the story line is halfway believable, the rules of this one-upmanship dictate that certain scenes have to be played over the top silly, outrageous, or cringe-worthy--because it's a contest, you see. What's remarkable about the Judd Apatow produced Bridesmaids is that it's a chick flick, written by women, but pulling no punches when it comes to raunch and bodily excretions emerging at inopportune times. Men have always secretly known (or probably hoped) that women were just as gutter-mouthed and sex minded as we are. Now we have Bridesmaids as exhibit "A."

There's no denying that the movie is bust-a-gut funny. The opening grabs you right off the bat, (think Kama-Sutra) and it's a wild ride from there on out. But some of the scenes play like over the top sketches from Saturday Night Live, where two of the film's stars-- Kristen Wiig (also the co-writer) and Maya Rudolph--cut their chops. The trouble with that is that from a believability standpoint, these movies are like musicals, where people are talking and going about their mundane lives--when suddenly an unseen orchestra starts playing and the characters break into song in the middle of some smelly garbage dump. Then everything reverts back to normal and we're not supposed to notice that something implausible has just occurred. Beneath it all, though, there's a sweet little story about feelings of inadequacy, jealousy, and the true nature of friendship.

Annie (Kristen Wiig) and Lillian (Maya Rudolph) are best friends from way back. Lillian announces that she's getting married and wants Annie to be her maid of honor. But subsequent events bring out the worst in Annie. She's in a superficial sex-buddy relationship with this superficial dude (Jon Hamm) who, as they're lying there in bed, says stuff like, "I want you to leave but I don't know how to say it without sounding like a dick."

So maybe, underneath her outward expression of joy for Lillian, Annie is jealous of what her friend has. That jealousy rears its head in a bigtime rivalry (and spoof on the stereotypical cattiness of women) with Helen, (Rose Bryne) the groom's wealthy sister who is financing the lavish wedding and all its preparations. Annie is incensed that Helen is trying to claim best friend status with Lillian, and each tries to one up the other in a scene where they are mouthing platitudes to the lucky couple into a microphone...on and on and on...because each of them wants to have the last word. This scene (unlike most of the movie, thankfully) leaves one cringing and feeling embarrassed for both of them.

Annie reveals herself as mentally unstable when she gets boozed up and goes berserk on a plane flight, and gets hauled in by the authorities after an unscheduled landing, in what is the funniest scene in the film. But the next shot shows her driving down the highway, apparently turned loose with just a slap on the wrist for behavior that, in the real world, would get anyone in BIG time trouble. Reminds me a little of Sandra Bullock's character in All About Steve, who is obsessed with this news reporter and stalks him all over the country...and in the end we're supposed to believe she's not a psychopath--just misunderstood.

I guess I'd be remiss if I didn't describe some of the gross-out stuff, so you can decide for yourself if Bridesmaids is for you: The entourage of gals who will be maids at the wedding get struck by some apparent food poisoning. While one of them hangs her head over the toilet, another hops butt first onto the sink to gain some relief. Another gal rushes in and barfs on the hair of the one who is stationed over the toilet. Lillian runs out of a shop, desperately trying to find an unoccupied rest room. She doesn't make it, and has to take a dump right in the middle of the street--in the expensive wedding gown she was trying on.

ALL THIS AND A MUSICAL CAMEO BY WILSON PHILLIPS TO BOOT!

Bridesmaids also disturbingly reminds a practical-minded guy like myself of how delusional people are--spending obscene amounts of money on an event which last for a few hours--as if they've accomplished something, when they haven't proven anything to the world yet about making it work over the long haul. Stay together for a couple years, THEN have a big celebration.

You've earned it.

GRADE : B (I'd be a traitor to my gender if I rated a chick flick any higher!)