Giving over the joystick to the young’uns for a day sounds like a every child’s dream but will the parents enjoy it at all? That’s the question asked by “Yes Day,” a new family comedy now on Netflix, that sees strict parents lighten up and give control to the kids.
Jennifer Garner is Allison, a former free spirit who found Carlos (Edgar Ramirez), her “partner in yes,” while travelling the world. “Yes,” she says, “was the theme of our relationship.” They said yes to bungee jumping, wild adventures and, ultimately, marriage. Burt when the kids came along no became the new yes. Saying no to misbehaving kids is “called parenting,” Allison says. Carlos is a softer touch. “I’m a bad guy all day at work… but when I come home, the kids actually smile when they see me.”
When daughter Katie (Jenna Ortega) writes a haiku for English class describing herself as a caged bird and her mother as a captor, and son Nando (Julian Lerner) makes a video about mom’s oppression—”It’s like 1984 in this house, Mother is always watching!”—they hit on the idea of a Yes day, twenty-four hours where they say yes to everything their kids want. The rules are simple, says yes to everything except murder and anything in the future.
Liberated form the word no and phones and laptops, Allison, Carlos and kids, including six-year-old Ellie (Everly Carganilla), embark on an adventure. Complete with an ice cream eating challenge, water balloons, angry birds (and not the video game kind) and a sopping wet carwash their day is every kid’s wildest fantasy.
But this movie isn’t just about kid chaos. Teachable moments abound and the family is brought together with a new sense of self-confidence and the understanding that sometimes it’s OK for parents to say no.
Based on the children’s book of the same name by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld, “Yes Day” is kind of a “Liar Liar” for kids. A silly, one joke premise, it’s about as engaging as Dolli Dimples, Chuck E. Cheese’s piano playing hippopotamus. That is to say, fun for a minute but as soon as you begin to question the entertainment value of the hippo, the game is up. Same with “Yes Day.” The action leading up to the inevitable moral is kept afloat by likable, peppy performances from Garner (who also produced) and Ramirez, but nonetheless feels contrived and too safe, even for a kid’s flick.
“Food Club,” a new Danish comedy about a trio of lifelong friends, and now on VOD, feels like a mix of “Eat Pray Love,” “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” with a side of “Under the Tuscan Sun.”
Marie (Karoline Hamm), Vajna (Kirsten Lehfeldt) and Berling (Stina Ekblad) have been friends since youth, even if they don’t see one another as much as they’d like these days. Now in their 70s, Marie is devastated by her Christmas Eve break-up from her husband, Berling’s life looks good from the outside looking in but a difficult relationship with her daughter troubles her and Vanja has never gotten over the death of her husband.
In an effort to move on and “seize the day” as they did in their youth, the three travel to Puglia in Southern Italy to take a cooking course. Their guide, Alessandro (Michele Venitucci) guarantees they will know how to cook beautiful Italian dishes by the end of the week, but, like Stanley Tucci on his televised tour of the country, they dig deeper, discovering the power of not only pasta to heal the soul, but also of friendship.
“Food Fight” is an engaging but slight movie. The revelation that friendship conquers all is straight-out-of Hallmark 101 and you wouldn’t need Columbus to guide the trio’s journey of self-discovery, but the theme of moving on from heartache is nicely handled. The characters are more textured than your typical coming-of-old-age flick, and the messages of embracing friends and the time you have left, while frayed around the edges, brings uplift.
Sharing something you’ve made, a poem, a song, a painting, food, whatever, takes audacity. In this video I tell you a story about a brave performance that has stayed with me for decades… even if I can’t quite remember what it was. Click HERE for the story!
This week on the Pop Life Podcast with Richard Crouse we meet best selling author Darin Strauss. “The Queen of Tuesday,” about Lucille Ball, a thrilling love story starring Hollywood’s first true media mogul, it’s Strauss’s follow-up to the National Book Critics Circle Award winner “Half a Life,” mixes fact and fiction, memoir and novel, to imagine the provocative story of a woman we thought we knew.
Then we ask the Pop Life panel, stand up comedian Debra DiGiovanni, Second City alum Darryl Hinds and Just for Laughs co-founder Andy Nulman, to discuss influences in comedy.
Film critic and pop culture historian Richard Crouse shares a toast with celebrity guests and entertainment pundits every week on CTV News Channel’s talk show POP LIFE.
Featuring in-depth discussion and debate on pop culture and modern life, POP LIFE features sit-down interviews with celebrities from across the entertainment world, including rock legends Sting and Bob Geldof, musicians Josh Groban and Sarah Brightman, comedian Ken Jeong, writer Fran Lebowitz, superstar jazz musician Diana Krall, stand-up comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell, actors Danny DeVito and Jay Baruchel, celebrity chefs Bobby Flay and Nigella Lawson, and many more.
This is Spider-Man like you have never seen him before. “Cherry,” a new drug drama based on the novel of the same name by Nico Walker and now available on Apple TV +, features Tom Holland in his grittiest role to date.
The fresh-faced Holland is the unnamed title character, let’s call him Cherry for ease of explanation, an underachieving college freshman from an affluent family, head-over-heels for Emily (Ciara Bravo). Based on author Nico Walker, he’s a jittery collection of insecurities who finds a soul mate in Emily (Ciara Bravo), a young woman whose decision to move to Montreal to go to school sends him on a downward spiral. Impulsively, he quits school and joins the army.
Turns out Emily was bluffing, but it’s too late. They marry before he ships out, but he leaves the one good thing in his life behind for a tour of Iraq.
Woefully unprepared for the military, the death, despair and drugs take their toll and he returns to civilian life a hollow shell, riddled with PTSD. He finds comfort in drugs, and is soon swallowed up and spit out by Ohio’s opioid crisis. Financially drained and disenfranchised, he robs banks to support his heroin addiction, losing Emily and what was left of his self-respect.
It does not reveal a major plot point to let you know that “Cherry” was written while Walker was in jail, serving an eleven-year sentence. Negotiations for the film rights actually broke down when Walker, still behind bars, ran out of prison phone minutes. He’s out now, and is apparently using the money earned from the book to pay back some of the money he stole.
But back to the film.
Directed by the Russo brothers, the dynamic duo behind a good chunk of the Marvel Cinematic Universe—”Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” “Captain America: Civil War,” “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame”—the movie is a departure for them. Like their other films it’s slick and stylish, but there’s a darkly humorous tone that’s been absent their best-known work. It’s the spoonful of sugar that makes the tragic events of the main character’s life palatable but make no mistake, this isn’t a comedy. While the Russos find the funny in some very bad situations, this is a bleak film. “Sometimes I feel like I’ve already seen everything that’s going to happen,” Holland’s character says, “and it’s a nightmare.”
It’s also a rather long film. At two-and-a-half hours it luxuriates in the ambitious set-up of the story, creating a vivid sense of the character’s search for purpose in a life that feels cut adrift. The early moments feel acutely observed, but as the movie gets grittier the visual flair overwhelms the story, engaging the eye but not the brain. Ideas of toxic masculinity, the destructive nature of opioids and he very nature of war are soon abandoned in favor of a more standard crime biopic approach.
Keeping us interested is Holland, who grounds the high-flying coming-of-age story with a career best performance that never loses sight of the film’s basic premise, that this is a young man, out of his depth in almost every way.
“Cherry” is ambitious and raw but the scope of the story is too wide to be truly effective.
“Boogie,” a new film directed by TV host, chef and author of “Fresh Off the Boat: A Memoir” Eddie Huang and now playing in theatres, is a universal story of hoop dreams set within the Asian community of Queens, New York.
The son of Chinese immigrants, (Perry Yung and Pamelyn Chee), Alfred Chin (Taylor Takahashi)—“I prefer my stripper name,” he jokes, “Boogie.”—has dreams of playing in the NBA. He’s got game, but his family is divided. His father and uncle want him to take a big payday from an Asian team, an offer that will ruin his chance of going pro with the NBA. Mom is more academically minded. To that end she enrolls him in a fancy prep school in hopes a scout for a college team will discover him there, smoothing his way to a scholarship.
Trouble is, Boogie is more interested in hanging out with his best friend and teammate Richie (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.) and wannabe romantic interest Eleanor (Taylour Paige) than he is in studying “Catcher in the Rye.”
On the court he’s a maverick, skilled but a bit of a wild card. He a trash talker who doesn’t respect his teammates—he describes the then collectively as “hot trash”—or the guidance of his coach. As a beef with rival player Monk (Bashar “Pop Smoke” Jackson) smoulders off court and on, Boogie learns important life lessons about team work, respect for himself and others and the millstone of expectation.
One of Boogie’s teachers tells the class, “Whether you know it or not, right here, right now, you are a coming-of age-story.” And that it is, a story of finding first love, navigating the emotional ups and downs of his parent’s rocky relationship and getting his footing as a young man entering the world. More importantly, it is also a story of representation and expectation.
We’ve seen the up-coming athlete story before, but what makes “Boogie” compelling is Huang’s handling of the material. From flipping the typical high school movie seduction scene on its head by allowing Eleanor guide Boogie through a sexual encounter to weaving subtextual, personality defining cultural references throughout, Huang defies expectations. Eventually the typical sports movie template kicks in, dampening the film’s novel approach and feel but up until then “Boogie” is an authentic and intimate portrait of a young man entering manhood.
“Boogie” is a strong directorial debut from Huang. It’s a lively, complex film that almost transcends its sports movie roots.
In “Come Away,” now on VOD, Julia Sarah Stone plays Sarah, a young woman with a sleeping problem. A teen runaway, she splits her time between crashing at her friend Zoe (Tedra Rogers) and sleeping in the park. No matter where she lays her head she never gets enough sleep. Terrible nightmares keep her awake, leaving her on the brink of exhaustion all the time. No amount of coffee can keep her eyes open, and she’s even started dozing off in class, earning jeers from her classmates.
Tired of waking up tired, she signs on for a month-long university sleep experiment. Not only will it provide a comfortable place to sleep every night but she’ll also make some money acting as a guinea pig for a team of graduate students, including Jeremy (Landon Liboiron) and the mysterious Dr. Meyer (Christopher Heatherington). Outfitted with futuristic looking head gear, she settles in each night and at first she feels more rested than before. But as the experiment goes on the nightmares take hold, opening up a terrifying window into her psyche as she begins to wonder what the point of the science project actually is. “I think your science project is f***ing me up,” she says.
If you are someone whose worst nightmare is waking up next to someone who says, “I had the weirdest dream last night,” and proceeds to tell you all about, “Come True” might not be your cup of Ambien. If, however, the existential horror of a mind run amok during sleep fascinates you, then seek it out.
Director Anthony Scott Burns takes an icy, voyeuristic approach to the material, staging scenes of nightmarish terror and the clinical reaction to the patient’s deepest thoughts with an aloofness that relies on atmospherics to create the film’s uneasy vibe. It is ethereally effective, particularly when coupled with Burns’ eerie composed score.
The dreamscape scares are cerebral. Imagine if David Cronenberg had directed “Nightmare on Elm Street” instead of Wes Craven and you’ll get the idea, but the film is let down by an ending that doesn’t do what came before it justice.
“Jump, Darling,” now on VOD, is a family drama that looks at three generations through the lens of three very different characters.
Russell Hill (Thomas Duplessie) is a young Toronto man whose dreams of being an actor are put on hold while he pursues a career in drag. His longtime boyfriend Justin (Andrew Bushell) doesn’t approve. He thinks the drag shows are a variety act, beneath Russell’s talent. “He wanted to be an actor and now his fear of ambition has become bar star.” One break-up later, Russell packs up and moves to rural Prince Edward County in Eastern Ontario to bunk with his sickly grandmother Margaret (Cloris Leachman).
It’s an adjustment. Margaret has dementia, his domineering mother Ene (Linda Kash) is a dark cloud—“I barely hear from you,” she says, “and now you’re squatting with your grandmother.”—and Hannah’s Hovel is the only gay bar within a hundred clicks. Ene wants to put Margaret in a care home, a safe place where she can be cared for or fall down the stairs. Margaret doesn’t want to trade her home for “a prison,” and certainly doesn’t want to live with Ene.
To keep Margaret out of a home, and himself in one, Russell becomes the elderly lady’s primary caregiver as he navigates like in his new small town.
The feature debut of writer/director Philip J. Connell revolves around a trio of characters. Ene is given the least to do, stuck as she is, trying to manage both Margaret and Russell, but Kash brings humanity to the tightly wound character.
The stars of the show are Duplessie and Leachman in her final leading role.
As Russell, Duplessie subtly portrays the pain that brought him to this point in his life. It’s nice, charismatic work that finds an interesting duality between Russell and his drag character Fishy Falters. What could have been a fish-out-of-water story is elevated by a performance that is about courage, empathy and staying true to your passions.
Like Duplessie, Leachman finds the vulnerability in Margaret, creating a character who is at once frail but driven by the strength of her convictions. It is a tremendous late-in-life performance that doesn’t rely on old codger tricks. Instead, Leachman allows subtlety to fule her performance. Quiet but feisty, her facial expressions tell her story as much as the dialogue.
“Jump, Darling” features a couple of show-stopping musical numbers from Fishy Falters but succeeds because of its focus on the family and their dynamics.
This week on the “Pop Life” we meet “Relax! Dammit” author and law professor Timothy Caulfield. Host Richard Crouse and Caulfield talk about life during the pandemic, how to manage stress and what advice to listen to, and which to ignore.
Then the “Pop Life” panel, sleep expert Amanda Jewson and founder/ chef of ‘The Nomad Cook’ Travis Petersen, discuss the myths and misconceptions that cloud our decision making.
Film critic and pop culture historian Richard Crouse shares a toast with celebrity guests and entertainment pundits every week on CTV News Channel’s talk show POP LIFE.
Featuring in-depth discussion and debate on pop culture and modern life, POP LIFE features sit-down interviews with celebrities from across the entertainment world, including rock legends Sting and Bob Geldof, musicians Josh Groban and Sarah Brightman, comedian Ken Jeong, writer Fran Lebowitz, superstar jazz musician Diana Krall, stand-up comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell, actors Danny DeVito and Jay Baruchel, celebrity chefs Bobby Flay and Nigella Lawson, and many more.
