“Argylle” - The Cat in the Pack.

There are many right and wrong ways to write a screenplay. Here is the way Argylle was probably written, complete with director’s notes (in this case, Matthew Vaughn or MV here) and SPOILERS. 

Title: Not Another Kingsman Movie.

MV: I see what you did there. We’re doing another quasi-spoof spy movie that isn’t Kingsman. Har-har.

Title: Argylle

Screenplay by: Jason Fuchs

MV: I mean, it’s not NOT another Kingsman Movie. I’ll explain later.

Premise: Spy novelist Elly Conway is caught up in a real-life spy thriller that mirrors her books.

MV: We need a hook. This premise has been done before. I know this because I finally got around to watching The Lost City. I wonder if we can get Sandra Bullock to play Elly?

Movie Poster: Features a backpack with a cat in it.

MV: Great hook. People love cat videos and the cat will be the lynchpin of the entire movie.

Note to MV when he reads this: The cat has nothing to do with the plot. It’s not even named Argylle, which is what people will think when they see the poster. The cat is just going to be the butt of a few jokes, at least one of which might be funny and several of which will be based on the fact that the cat is still there.

MV: Sooo...the cat isn’t a spy? Or a bomb? Or some kind of gadget?

*Sigh*

PROLOGUE.

Undercover, Secret Agent Argylle enters a club in Greece. He walks to the table where Lagrange sits. Lagrange is wearing a cocktail dress that leaves little to the imagination, distracting Argylle’s attention. <Insert cheesy dialogue that leads to them dancing>. They dance.

MV: I imagine Argylle as Henry Cavill. He has John Travolta’s hair from Face/Off and Broken Arrow, but taller, flatter, and more pointy. Like he could cut glass by tilting his forehead forward.

Lagrange knows Argylle is really a spy and everyone in the club points a gun at Argylle. Argylle’s tech gal Keira helps him escape and defeat the crew, but Lagrange escapes. Chase scene ensues. Argylle’s other partner Wyatt thwarts Lagrange and the three sit down for a chat.

MV: What if, and I’m just spit-balling here, Wyatt is played by John Cena and he literally lifts Lagrange off a speeding motorcycle as she tries to speed by? And he’ll just hold her there dangling for a minute because he’s John Cena and the audience will know it’s THAT kind of movie.

ACT I

Fade to black and crosscut to a bookstore where a crowd applauds Elly as she finishes reading an excerpt from her latest spy novel, Argylle.

MV: Ooohhh! Super early twist. Me likey.

Ten minutes of filler establishing Elly is a recluse living in a mountain cabin, loves her cat, and is putting the finishing touches on her upcoming fifth Argylle book.

MV: Sandra Bullock won’t return my calls.

Elly hops on a train to Denver to go to her parent’s house to work out the ending of her book. Her mom did not like the ending. A man, Aidan, sits down across from Elly. Before she knows it, Aidan says he’s a spy and is battling a bunch of people he labels the bad guys. Action scene ensues. Elly is freaking out, but also literally imagining Aidan is Argylle. Elly’s cat is there, too, in her backpack. They escape and board a private jet to London.

MV: You get me. We’ll shift between Aidan and Argylle while the fight is happening. Argylle will smirk and wink and suave while fighting it out. Elly will be confused. I’ll get Sam Rockwell to be Aidan. He is the opposite of Henry Cavill in the muscle and hair department.

Next scene. Aidan explains that Elly’s books have predicted the spy world’s future and everyone, good and bad, has been monitoring her as she writes her next book. “Tell me where the <insert MacGuffin> is to take down THE DIVISION.” They land in London, Elly puzzles out their next location, they find a clue there, another shootout ensues. Elly suspects a double-cross.

MV: The Division. What a great name for an evil organization. The Division. I just like saying it. The Division.

Note to MV when he reads this: Stop saying The Division.

MV: Sorry. Let’s get Bryan Cranston to be the evil mastermind in charge of The Division. We’ll call him Ritter. And another twist with the double-cross. Love it. LOVE. IT.

ACT II

More twists. More action. More exposition. Everyone’s a spy! Aidan isn’t double-crossing Elly, he just wants his soulmate (and spy partner), back. Cat still there.

MV: I can’t believe Sandra Bullock gave me a fake phone number. Good thing I just watched The Help and Jurassic World back-to-back. Like sane people do. Watching Bryce Dallas Howard kick off her heels and tie her shirt in a knot is more than enough to convince me she is believable as an action star. This won’t be like that time we thought Kristen Stewart could be a Charlie’s Angel (probably).

Elly remembers where <insert MacGuffin> is. Alfred Solomon (Aidan’s boss) says “time to dress the part” and sends them to see “The Keeper of Secrets.” Dun. Dun. Dun!

MV: Weird tonal shift in Jason Fuchs’ screenplay. If I hadn’t read Jason’s screenplay for the original Nickelodeon movie Rags, I’d almost think Jason is a crazed AI.

ACT III

Ritter’s secret headquarters is an oil tanker.

MV: That’s odd. How did Jason know I wanted to name the villain Ritter? Jason, are you an AI?

Squirrel!

MV: Where?!

Rit...I mean, evil villain tortures Aidan for location of Alfred. Villain has Elly’s cat in his office. Elly shoots Aidan. Three more twists. Shootout in belly of tanker. Elly ice skates on floor covered in oil, killing every henchman as she zooms and twirls.

MV: LOVE!! IT!!

If you love that, how about mashing in a scene where Aidan and Elly do a dance number in a corridor filled with a menagerie of different colored smoke while killing a bunch of henchmen?

MV: You really do get me, Jason.

It’s J-AI-son.

MV: Sorry.

Climax featuring final battle and one more twist. And cat.

MV: Did we forget about that whole juxtaposing the characters from Elly’s book over the real characters? I feel like that was a really fun story device. Is that the final twist?

Squirrel!

MV: Where?

The End.

MV: Add a mid-credit scene that is definitely not related to The Kingsman. *snickers*

Rating: Ask for all of your money back and for screenplays to always be written by humans.

“The Suicide Squad” - Let’s try plan B.

It’s pretty clear by now that the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) is essentially toast. Or, it’s a giant mess of barely connected movies that nobody has bothered to plan out, but really, it’s both. And that is how we got a sequel to Suicide Squad that is actually a remake, but, no just kidding, it’s actually a reboot. See what I mean? Just know that adding the word “the” to the title took six people working twelve hours a day for two weeks.

Perhaps the funniest question I got when friends asked me about The Suicide Squad was is it better than the first Suicide Squad? There are two ways to answer that question. One is, does a bear shit in the woods? The other, and the one I went with is, if I say yes, it doesn’t really tell you if it was any good; the first one was atrocious. Then, they nod and we start the conversation over with a better question. What did I think of The Suicide Squad?

(Mild SPOILERS ahead, or B-Spoilers if you will.)

The best way to describe The Suicide Squad is it is basically the movie that would have happened had Deadpool’s X-Force (from Deadpool 2) survived their skydive and had a full movie. Another way is do you remember Mystery Men? Yet a third way is that it is the most expensive B-movie ever made. What all three of those have in common is that the movie is a violent-gore fest that doesn’t take itself seriously and is finally in on its own joke.

For starters, The Suicide Squad is rated-R. Like Deadpool, this is the only way this kind of movie works. The protagonists are a bunch of violent criminals asked to go on a mission with an extremely high chance of death. Of course they are going to curse and violently kill their opponents. The first Suicide Squad was PG-13, which isn’t one of the top five reasons that movie sucked, but did help it suck more. The R-rating also allowed for a much wider range of jokes and allowed certain actors to really spread their wings. Did you ever wonder what it would look like if Idris Elba yelled at a teenage girl “fuck you” and that same girl yelled “fuck you” back at him through the clear plexiglass of a prison phone/visitor room? And, that girl is playing his daughter? Yeah, I laughed my ass off during that scene, mostly because it was Idris Elba.

Then, there is John Cena. Like Dwayne Johnson, Cena is really coming into his own as a comedic action star. Cena plays a character called Peacemaker, who “will kill as many people as it takes for peace.” Sound like any country you know? And you thought this movie wouldn’t have any political commentary. Anyway, Cena does a fantastic job delivering a character who the audience is simultaneously disgusted and entertained by. If he’s not standing in the middle of a jungle in tighty-whities, he’s noting that a starfish is a slang term for a butthole and wondering if that is relevant to their mission. And, naturally, he also delivers spectacularly in the fight/action scenes.

(Side note: Margot Robbie and Idris Elba were also their typical, exceptional selves. Incidentally, this made it hard not to notice that Joel Kinnaman is not good and Viola Davis has no idea what to do with her character due to how poorly her Amanda Waller is written.)

It was also great to see this movie poke its predecessor right in the eyes by immediately doing what the first movie should have - kill a bunch of C-level villains. Yeah, that means you Boomerang. The Suicide Squad starts off by introducing us to a planeload of villains that would fit right in with all of the B-villains listed off at the beginning of The Lego Batman Movie. Boomerang, Weasel, TDK, Mongal, Blackguard, Javelin, and Savant. Yes, those are really all their names and yes, they are the diversion for the real team when the movie starts. This scene perfectly captures the essence of the film with a bunch of grisly killings accompanied by hilarious jokes making light of those killings. You will laugh and cringe and breathe out a sigh of relief that this isn’t another dead-serious DC movie that is only trying to satisfy itself.

All of this wouldn’t have been possible without James Gunn, the director who came to prominence by delivering a ridiculously entertaining Guardians of the Galaxy. With The Suicide Squad, Gunn was able to let everything breathe. Actors, language, jokes, blood, action, and more blood. Lots of blood. Buckets and buckets of blood. Between all of the bloody deaths and exploding body parts, Gunn made up for the entire MCU’s bloodless body count. Combined with a gigantic alien starfish destroying a city, Gunn made a B-movie with A-movie money. And it was glorious. That’s not to say that the movie isn’t without some pretty glaring plot holes and head-scratching creative ideas (like when a bunch of flowers start showing up during a Harley Quinn action sequence despite there being no setup for said flowers), but, like Guardians of the Galaxy, the film is so over-the-top enjoyable that you can easily forgive those choices. Despite the film doing nothing to bring any kind of coherence to a greater DCEU (and it wasn’t trying to), it is easily the best DCEU to date. While that doesn’t say much compared to the rest of the DCEU, it finally is saying something.

Rating: Do not ask for any money back. Yeah, I’m surprised too.

“F9” - Dumb a thousand times.

F9 is one the dumbest movies I have ever seen. It was so dumb, rather than waste brain cells and precious time thinking about this travesty, I considered just writing the word “dumb” one thousand times and calling it a review. That is what this movie deserves. But, the entire franchise is that stupid and I have somehow never managed to screen one of these movies in the past. Considering people still plunk down billions of dollars of their hard-earned money for every subsequent movie in the franchise, it felt like a cop out to write dumb, dumb, dumb, etc. So, here goes.

(SPOILER ALERT - This movie will kill some of your brain cells and it will hurt.)

Full disclosure: Of this entire insipid franchise, I have seen the first and eighth films, as well as the spinoff Hobbs and Shaw. I tried to watch the fifth one on a flight once and I lasted about five minutes before I prayed for the oxygen masks to deploy. I have missed them for a variety of reasons, one of which was probably because I was washing my hair. And don’t think it’s for film snob reasons. The entire franchise is the equivalent of Days of Our Lives slipping a roofie to Grand Theft Auto. No amount of car stunts can make up for the terrible acting, beyond-cartoonish plots, atrocious music, and cringeworthy dialogue.

I knew going in that F9 was going to be hot garbage; I was just hoping it would be entertaining from an action movie standpoint. And it was very much not entertaining. There were parts where I laughed out loud, not because something intentionally funny happened, but because something so mind-numbingly stupid was said or done that my brain had to make my body do something. As an example, in the climax, they turn a Pontiac Fiero into a space ship by doing nothing more than attaching a rocket engine to it. My friend, who has seen every movie in the franchise, kept turning to me and saying, “Okay, this one really is pretty bad.” There were even kids talking during the film and I did not care at all, whereas usually I’m plotting their murders.

Again, I went into the film just wanting to shut off my brain for two hours to watch action-packed nonsense, but F9 just wasn’t having it. I’ve seen lazy movies, but this movie took laziness to whole new levels. For much of the run time, it kept reminding the audience how dumb this movie was. Early on, Tyrese Gibson’s character (Roman) is surrounded by fourteen bad guys with machine guns, including some in an elevated position. All of them empty their magazines at him and he not only kills them all, but exits completely unscathed. He then proceeds to spend the rest of the movie trying to convince two of his friends that they might be invincible by pointing out how they should all be dead. I half expected the cast of Lost to wander on screen to point out that the Torettos and friends actually are all dead, which is why they continue to have elaborate spy missions despite starting out as DVD/VCR thieves (incidentally, the first film in the franchise has aged exceptionally badly).

Since the movie decided to indulge in discount Deadpool theater, nothing prohibited it from reining in completely ridiculous and wholly unbelievable action sequences, papered over by a plot not even Dom’s mother could love. Not only were Dom (Vin Diesel) and friends surviving things that should have turned them to jelly or human popsicles or swiss cheese, but they weren’t even getting scratched in the process. Not only were they doing things with vehicles that would make Bugs Bunny blush, the vehicles were usually still functioning despite surviving stunts so absurd they could only be accomplished with CGI. Not only were Dom and team not dying on multiple occasions, but they were even bringing dead characters back to life by talking it away by saying Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) is “really good at making people look dead.”

By now, I would normally have spent some time on the plot, but it really was just dumb on top of stupid on top of much more dumb. Something about magnets and a MacGuffin and a human MacGuffin and a green ball thing with a computer virus that is going to destroy the world unless two dipshits in a space-Fiero drive into an orbiting satellite. It’s the kind of dumb that puts Harry and Lloyd to shame. Suffice it to say, I was not entertained. F9 is the kind of movie that makes you think that maybe Covid lockdowns aren’t so bad. Just so dumb.

Rating: Seriously - just so, so dumb. Yeah, I’m talking to you if you paid to see this film.