"Mother Mary" - Wake me up before you go girl.

Up until the screening of Mother Mary, I had seen three of director/writer David Lowery's films. Here is what I said about them in my year-end reviews.

·       A Ghost Story (2017) - This movie could be the new title of my "A Waste of Time" category as it is literally 85 minutes of Casey Affleck in a sheet doing and saying nothing.

·       The Old Man and the Gun (2018) - What if elevator music robbed a bank?

·       The Green Knight (2021) - A very weird movie, with possibly the most shoulder-shrugging ending I’ve ever seen. And not weird in an intriguing way, but weird in that same shoulder-shrugging way.

I didn't know Lowery wrote and directed Mother Mary until ten minutes ago. In other words, I didn't go into the film expecting weird, boring, or weird and boring due to seeing those other three films. In fact, I wasn't expecting anything because I only knew three things about the movie beforehand - the title, starring Anne Hathaway, and the synopsis of the film saying a pop star reunites with her former costume designer. The obvious question now is if Mother Mary is weird and/or boring.

On the first count, yes, it's weird. It's not remotely as weird as The Green Knight, but it's definitely weird. Just look at the movie poster. It depicts a red sheet skewering a falling Hathaway. And there are two other versions of the poster that say "This is not a love story" and "This is not a ghost story." It's weird that a movie poster has to tell you what it's not. Twice. That's a pretty good sign that the movie is going to be confusing. Incidentally, the poster with the ghost story disclaimer was displayed on the screen of our theater prior to the film starting and my immediate thought was "wait, there's a ghost in a movie about a dress? That's weird."

Hathaway plays pop star Mother Mary. Mary is starting a comeback tour following an on-stage accident and she needs a dress that is "her," to put it in Mary's words. She decides that only one person knows her well enough to create such a dress - her former friend and designer Sam Anselm (Michaela Cole). Mary shows up at Sam's estate to make the request, Sam reluctantly agrees, and the rest of the movie takes place in Sam's studio, which is a repurposed barn. And when I say the rest of the movie, I mean all but two minutes of the entire one hundred twelve-minute runtime.

On the surface, that sounds really boring. And it very well might be. Mary and Sam have been estranged for ten years after Mary unceremoniously dismissed Sam as her costume designer. Now that Mary has come back begging, Sam takes the opportunity to talk everything out. And I do mean talk. Like, the entire movie. With the exception of one scene, the two practically never stop talking. They even talk when the movie shows us flashbacks of various events in Mary's career. And they aren't just talking like normal people. Sam insists on speaking in cryptic metaphors. At one point, Mary even calls Sam out on it, asking "are you going to keep speaking in metaphors? Because it's exhausting." Amen, sister.

I'd like to say the movie stops being boring when it gets weird, but even a couple of seances and an actual ghost can't save this movie's tedium. Neither can two great performances from Hathaway and Cole break the ennui. It isn't just the speaking in metaphors or being stuck in a barn that makes the movie a challenge to stay interested in. Much of the dialogue is delivered in a sing-song way that threatens to the lull the audience into a sleep-like trance. On paper, lyrical-sounding dialogue is an interesting idea, but Lowery fails to pull it off. It doesn't help that the lighting in every scene is dark and shadowy, including the flashback concert scenes. Put those things together and you have a recipe for a very soothing nap.

If there was one thing I was very interested in was that same preshow screen promising songs performed by Hathaway (written by various artists like Charlie XCX, FKA Twigs, and Jack Antonoff). And they didn't disappoint, at least the bits that actually played during the film. All of them are weird songs, but in ways that really appeal to me. So, you can sympathize at how annoyed I was when the movie would move on before much of the songs got played. If there was anything that would break through the boredom, it's good music, but I guess that would have taken too much time away from the barn scenes. The answer to our question is pretty boring and weird in the mostly the wrong ways.

Rating: Ask for twelve dollars back and don't be weird about it.

"The Sheep Detectives" - Wait, did you say sheep?

The Sheep Detectives isn't a story about human detectives investigating sheep. It's about sheep investigating the murder of their human shepherd, George (Hugh Jackman). It's a silly premise, but it's exactly the kind of story that gets made into a PG-rated film. The remarkable thing about this film isn't that a studio greenlit a project about sheep detectives, it's that the finished film doesn't treat its target audience - families - as complete idiots.

It could be that this film is smarter than typical family films because the (German) novel it's based on - Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story by Leonie Swann - isn't a children's book, but a regular adult mystery novel (set in Ireland). I haven't read the novel, so I can't speak to its contents. Since the movie doesn't feature over-the-top absurd characters or poop or fart jokes, I can only assume the book doesn't have those things either. And I'm very, very glad for that.

With such a silly premise, it's easy to assume the movie wouldn't take itself seriously at all. That's what I assumed. The preview all but told me to make that assumption. One example is the preview makes Emma Thompson (playing George's lawyer Lydia Harbottle) come off like every ridiculous family-friendly villain. That's not to say she is or isn't the murderer, but when seen in the full context of the film, Lydia is quite the opposite of ridiculous. In fact, she might be the best non-ovine character in the film, if not the best character altogether. Emma Thompson is taking this movie seriously (while also clearly enjoying herself in this film), as is the rest of the cast and crew.

Don't worry though, there is a little bit of silliness in the film. Once again, the sheep are the detectives. For this to work, a couple of conceits must be made. One conceit is that the sheep have a complete understanding of the entire English language, which they seem to have gotten mostly from George reading them mystery stories every evening. While the humans in the movie still only hear baaaa, the sheep are speaking English for the audience. Another conceit is that nobody in the town is surprised when sheep are roaming around town or behaving in weirdly human ways. I've spent a good amount of time in places where sheep are a significant industry and never once saw sheep wandering around town, let alone inside hotels or pubs. Of course, I've never been to Ireland, so maybe sheep are more free there.

On the serious side, the movie is a straight-forward whodunit. The movie introduces us to George, a bunch of individual sheep, and a handful of locals, and then George dies. The smartest sheep, Lily (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is convinced that George was murdered and determines that they must find the killer. Much of this revolves around giving hints to various humans, including the town's only cop, Tim (Nicholas Braun). Shortly after George's death, Lydia arrives in town to read the will, which in all mysteries means gathering all of the suspects. Clues and motives are revealed until the killer is finally unmasked. And like all fun mysteries, the clues are such that anybody paying attention can deduce the killer's identity before the obligatory unmasking in the climax.

The best way to know that the film isn't pandering to the lowest common denominator is that it sprinkles some fairly heavy social themes into the story and treats them respectfully. The obvious one is life after death, but from a sheep's perspective. Another good one is dealing with tragedy, though this one comes with an odd detail. The sheep can choose to literally forget things, which I don't recall being a stereotype of sheep. Several times in the film, the sheep decide they must forget bad things so they don't feel sad or other seemingly negative feelings. The forgetting doesn't play into the main plot, but the issue of coping with life events comes to a head late in the film and is dealt with really well.

I'm as surprised as you that this movie ended up so good and so adult. If you are skeptical because you also saw a preview, I promise you the preview does not do this movie justice. The mystery is fun, Jackman and Thompson give their usual great performances (with an assist from the very likable Braun), and the movie really is good for the entire family. And all on the idea of sheep detectives. Yes, I said sheep.

Rating: Worth your money for the entire family.

“The Devil Wears Prada 2” - Off the rack.

In the eighteen years I’ve been reviewing movies, I’ve seen plenty of sequels that should not have been made. I’m sure there’s a timeline in the multiverse where Super Troopers 2 was hilarious and Independence Day 2 wasn’t embarrassingly stupid. We are in neither of those timelines. Nor are we in the timeline where someone made a version of The Devil Wears Prada 2 that didn’t make you go “why?”

It’s been twenty years since The Devil Wears Prada was released in theaters. That’s plenty of time for someone to have written an interesting sequel, show it to their friend, and their friend to roll it up, smack that writer upside the head with it, and say “no.” The Devil Wears Prada was a really good movie and a surprise smash at the box office. And it certainly didn’t leave any questions at the end for audiences to wonder about for two decades.

The biggest mistake when making sequels is misunderstanding why audiences loved the originals. The Devil Wears Prada didn’t appeal to audiences because of a fictitious fashion magazine or pretty clothes, it appealed to audiences because of the characters themselves. Both the hero, Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), and the villain, Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), were exceptionally well-written and well-developed characters. And the way the movie ends both of their story arcs is perfection. If the original movie had been called The Devil Wears Rawlings, Miranda was the general manager of a Major League baseball team, and Andy was Miranda’s young assistant, the rest of the movie could have unfolded the same way and been just as well-received.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 falls right into the trap of thinking the fashion magazine part matters. Now a seasoned journalist, Andy is hired back to the magazine to run the features section to rehabilitate the magazine. Except this time, Andy has no arc. She learned everything she needed to learn in the first movie. Now, she’s just trying to figure out how to save the magazine because it’s 2026 and nobody reads any more.

Same goes for Miranda. Her arc in the first movie was all about establishing and proving how devilish she was. Yes, she showed a teeny, tiny affection for Andy by the end, but that was out of respect for Andy growing a spine. In the sequel, Miranda is still head of the magazine, but she’s far less mean because the screenwriter thought it would be funny if Miranda was forced to be more politically correct and nicer. Just, gross.

Another sequel trap it falls into is trying to retread parts of the first film. The sequel tries to rekindle the same dynamic between Miranda and Andy, the tyrannical boss and terrified subordinate, but it falls flat for the reasons mentioned above. Not to mention Andy isn't a fresh college grad eating shit as a glorified intern just for a good recommendation for later employment. And, like I said, Miranda is being forced to be nicer, literally by her first assistant Amari (Simone Ashley), which not something any of us want to see. Other retreads that hit in much weaker ways are Nigel (Stanley Tucci) picking outfits for Andy, a sequence where Andy is trying to make the impossible happen (actually, two sequences), and Miranda trying to dismiss Andy's work on multiple occasions.

But the scene that proved how little the filmmakers understood of what made the first movie great was when Andy shows up for her first day of work. She walks into Miranda's office with a huge smile on her face, practically squealing with delight, and she greets Miranda and Nigel as if they are close sorority sisters Andy hasn't seen in years. There was no scenario where Miranda was going to light up with glee at the sight of Andy and Andy would never behave like this because Andy isn't an idiot. It's mindboggling to think that the director (David Frankel) and screenwriter (Aline Brosh McKenna) of this sequel served in those same roles for the original.

And in case you were wondering, Emily (Emily Blunt) returns in this film as well. Now, she's a senior executive at Dior and just as spicy and dry-witted as ever. The film tries to involve her where it can while also trying to establish a budding friendship between her and Andy. But like everything else in this film, there just doesn't seem to be a lot of heart behind it. Some of that has to do with the direction they take her character and how it plays into the larger plot. But it seems more like the filmmakers didn't embrace the possibilities of that direction and just sort of settled for something decidedly meh.

The entire effort of this movie reminded me of when people try to recapture the magic of something that happened spontaneously by trying to force it to happen again. (And it never works.) You know what I'm talking about. A blowout college party happens and some people try to recreate that same party. A night out on the town where you and some friends woke up the next morning on a famous person's yacht. Or even just a family vacation where everything went exactly according to plan, the kids had tons of fun and zero fights, and nobody wanted to push an in-law off a ledge. In other words, I can see that the filmmakers thought they could, but nobody asked if they should.

Rating: Ask for thirteen dollars back, not because you could but because you should.

"Normal" - It's all over our faces.

In a movie like Normal, you can't help but smile some of the time. Not because it's a well-written movie. Not because of stand-out performances. And certainly not because of a title that is so blatantly tongue-in-cheek its subtitle should be a rimshot. You'll smile because you'll recognize it as a guilty pleasure movie within sixty seconds of the movie's beginning. Assuming, of course, your guilty pleasure movies center around action and novelty deaths. See? You're smiling right now, aren't you?

If you aren't smiling, here's the premise of the film. The Yakuza (Japanese mafia) are hiding a fortune in a bank in the tiny town of Normal, Minnesota and have paid off the entire town's population (roughly 1,800) to keep it a secret. A new, temporary sheriff is hired to fill in for a few weeks and knows nothing about that secret. I never said your smile couldn't be accompanied by a massive eyeroll.

In the opening scene, the film establishes exactly what kind of movie Normal will be. Three underlings are brought before their Yakuza boss and ordered to cut off a finger to atone for some unknown failure. Two of them do it, while the third tries to fake it. After taking in the (intentionally) silly attempt at subterfuge, the boss cuts the underling's head off with a sword, a spray of blood flying across the wall. He then orders the remaining two men to Normal, end of scene. With that knowing smirk on our faces, we can expect lots of blood, lots of deaths, lots of action, and lots of jokes that don't quite land.

 

None of which is surprising if you are familiar with the writer of this film, Derek Kolstad. Blood-soaked action flicks filled with plenty of dud jokes are Kolstad's bread and butter. He wrote the first three John Wick films and both Nobody films, all of which feature those elements in spades. And since the Nobody films starred Bob Odenkirk as their main character, it's also not surprising to see Odenkirk take on another Kolstad main character role. The only difference is, this time, Odenkirk plays a regular sheriff instead of a retired CIA assassin. Yes, I know - it's a distinction without a difference.

Odenkirk plays Sheriff Ulysses, who has been hired by the town to temporarily fill in as sheriff after the sudden death of the previous sheriff. The first half of the film is filled with Ulysses performing routine tasks, responding to stereotypical problems found only in small towns, getting to know some of the townsfolk, and noticing odd things here and there. None of that matters to the plot at all, nor does Ulysses' own troubled past. It's all just one long, obvious setup for a punchline to the movie's title. They're not normal. Get it?!

 

Luckily, the film's ninety-minute runtime (which was actually eighty minutes by my watch) demands that the non-action go on for only so long. The action mercifully kicks into gear about halfway through the movie when a pair of bank robbers, Lori (Reena Jolly) and Keith (Brendan Fletcher), demand to be let in the vault of Normal's bank. When Ulysses and his deputies show up at the bank, Ulysses goes into the bank to diffuse the situation, only to find his own deputies shooting at him. Seemingly the entire town, including the mayor (Henry Winkler), shows up to kill Ulysses and the pair of thieves, and the mayor reveals the town's secret to Ulysses. Ulysses teams up with the Moira and Keith and the remainder of the film becomes a series of shootouts and fights frequently punctuated with grisly and/or comical deaths. This is when our smiling truly begins.

For the remaining forty minutes, we're treated to some very creative deaths and plenty of them. Some are of the Rube-Goldberg/Final Destination variety and others are of the shockingly abrupt variety. Without spoiling any kills, there is one quote from Deputy Blaine Anderson (Ryan Allen) that delighted the entire audience, "he's all over my face." The pleasure taken from that line more than makes up for Lena Headey's cringeworthy performance as bartender Moira...and the unanswered question of why Kolstad (and Odenkirk, who received a story credit) went with Yakuza in Minnesota...and the failure to make use of Ulysses' ability to catch an ejected pistol round with one hand...and a random moose. Like I said, it's okay to smile, even if the smile is sometimes in derision.

Rating: Ask for six dollars back, if only for the novelty of it.

“The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” - This is the Bad Place.

When asked what I thought of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie after the movie ended, I nodded my head at a five-year old girl exiting the theater and said, “her opinion is the only one that matters.” Five-year olds haven’t yet developed complicated or nuanced views of pop culture, certainly not movies. Their taste in films begins with BRIGHTER!! and ends with LOUDER!! As for me, I thought it was bad. So bad, in fact, that it’s the kind of shirt they torture people with in the Bad Place. I said, shirt. Why can’t I say shirt? Oh, this is the Bad Place.

I’m not going to sugar coat anything here. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is an audio-visual assault of non-stop fan service that will leave you with a migraine at best and brain damage at worst. And when I say fan service, heavy emphasis on service. To paraphrase Star-Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy, if you shine a black light in the theater after this film concludes it will look like a Jackson Pollock painting.

The amount of fan service makes sense when you realize how incredibly lazy the filmmaking was. With the barest semblance of a plot, zero character arcs, and absolutely no development of new or returning characters, it makes sense to try to fill that void with enough easter eggs to clog every toilet in every world. That’s how the Bad Place works.

In fact, there are so many easter eggs they’re not even limited to the world of Super Mario. Fox McCloud (Glen Powell) from the Star Fox games appears as a glorified cameo/supporting character because why the fork not? There’s also a T-Rex for the same reason. Wait, I said fork, not fork. Ugh. Stupid Bad Place.

I would never accuse The Super Mario Bros. Movie of having a great plot, but at least it had one that was coherent. What little plot there is in Galaxy is Bowser Jr. (Benny Safdie) kidnaps Princess Peach’s (Anya Taylor-Joy) sister Rosalina (Brie Larson) to suck Rosalina’s stardust power into a weapon that will destroy the universe. And he does this because he’s trying to impress his dad, Bowser (Jack Black). Hey dumbash, you and your dad are part of that universe.

That may sound like a straight-forward plot, but Rosalina is kidnapped in the very first scene of the movie. All Junior has to do is fly to his own private Death Star...I mean Starkiller Base...I mean, weirdo-planet-with-giant-gun-thingy and fire away. But then the movie would be over and we’ve only seen three of the billion easter eggs so far. Instead, the movie goes full ADHD, jumping between random planets to random characters, each with its own meaningless subplot that has no bearing whatsoever on Junior’s evil plan.

You may have noticed that I haven’t mentioned Mario (Chris Pratt) or Luigi (Charlie Day) yet. That’s because they are barely supporting characters in this mess. Same goes for Bowser. And Toad (Keegan-Michael Key). Mario and Luigi spent the vast majority of the movie wrangling Yoshi (Donald Glover), a little green dinosaur they found clogging a pipe, while trying to catch up to Peach and Toad. Toad is accompanying Peach because every hero (Peach) needs a sidekick (Toad) for comedic relief. Remember this as the two of them chase an easter egg who stole Toad’s easter-egg-filled backpack through a giant easter egg filled with other easter eggs. It’s funny because they need the easter eggs in the backpack to hire Fox McEasterEgg to fly through the remaining easter egg levels to get to the final easter egg boss.

If this movie has any redeeming qualities, it’s that (1) Jack Black doesn’t get to sing another horrific song at us (“Peaches” from the last film was the worst), and (2) that it’s so transparently geared exclusively toward preschoolers that we don’t have to put up with insulting attempts to pander to other ages. Don’t get me wrong, you’ll still feel cinematically violated by this film, just as you would by a swarm of butthole spiders. That’s how the Bad Place works.

Rating: I don’t care how much your five-year-old enjoys this film; ask for all of your money back.