Richard’s “Canada AM” reviews for “The Intern” with Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway, Adam’s Sandler’s “Hotel Transylvania 2” and “Sicario,” starring Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
“We don’t have time for zingers!” says Count Dracula (Adam Sandler) midway through “Hotel Transylvania 2.” No time for zingers, indeed. The sequel to the 2012 kid friendly animated horror comedy is short on laughs but long on sentiment.
Like all of Sandler’s movies—no matter how outrageous the characters—the new one is all about family. It picks up after Drac’s daughter, vampiress Mavis (voice of Selena Gomez) married human Jonathan (Andy Samberg). In a twist on “Twilight,” the vampire mother and human father soon have a child, Dennis (Asher Blinkoff). The question is, which side of the family will it take after, the monster or human?
“Human. Monster. Unicorn. As long as you’re happy,” Drac says to his daughter, while secretly hoping the child will inherit the vampire genes. On the eve of the child’s fifth birthday the boy still hasn’t shoed any signs of vampiric behaviour—“He’s not human,” says the Prince of Darkness, “he’s just a late fanger!”—so Drac and friends—Frankenstein (Kevin James), Wayne the Werewolf (Steve Buscemi), the Invisible Man (David Spade) and Murray the Mummy (Keegan-Michael Key)—take Dennis to their old haunts to teach him their scary skills.
“Hotel Transylvania 2” features great kid friendly monsters designs (that will make equally cool toys) like zombie bellhops and Blobby, a gelatine creature that looks like Grandma’s Gazpacho Aspic come to life but the creativity that went into the creatures didn’t extend to the script.
It’s a sweet enough, amiable story about acceptance and family, but the jokes barely rise to the level of the “101 Halloween Jokes for Kids” book I had when I was ten-years-old. If calling Murray the Mummy “talking toilet paper” makes you giggle, then perhaps this is for you, but by the time they have explained why Drac is called “Vampa” for the second time, you get the idea that Sandler and co-writer Robert Smigel know they should have driven a stake through the heart of this script.
The appearance of Mel Brooks as Great Vampa Vlad simply brings to mind “Young Frankenstein,” one of the funniest horror comedies of all time.
The biggest laughs come from the background, the sight gags that keep things visually frenetic in the first hour.
“Hotel Transylvania 2’s” family friendly scares won’t give kids any nightmares, but it won’t make them laugh either.
It’s been a while since a Saturday Night Live movie has been something to get excited about. Ladies Man and Stuart Saves His Family weren’t exactly laugh riots but a new film, Hot Rod, starring Andy Samberg may bring back the funny to the sagging SNL brand.
In Hot Rod Samberg, the slacker comic behind Lazy Sunday, one of SNL’s most talked about pieces of recent years—it was downloaded over one million times the day after it originally aired—plays amateur stuntman Rod Kimble. He’s a terrible stuntman, but is possessed of an inordinate amount of confidence, which keeps his dream of becoming the next Evel Knievel alive.
His biggest problem is his stepfather Frank (Deadwood’s Ian McShane). Frank is an ex-Navy Seal who treats Rod like a punching bag. In their weekly sparring sessions, scheduled to toughen Rod up, Frank mercilessly beats the youngster with his fists and weapons like Rhodesian fighting sticks. Rod willingly submits to the punishment hoping that his fighting skills will impress Frank and earn his respect. When Frank falls ills before Rod has a chance to beat him the dare devil hatches a plan to perform his most incredible stunt to date and raise money for Frank’s lifesaving operation. Once Frank is healthy and healed Rod plans to beat the crap out of him.
It’s a strange little story, one that ten years ago would have starred Adam Sandler as the revenge happy stuntman. This time out it’s Samberg and while the comparisons to Sandler are obvious, he makes the character of Rod his own. He’s more bizarre than Sandler has ever been on screen, (with the possible exception of Little Nicky), but he’s also quite sweet. Sandler made his bones playing characters who flew into rages, Samberg’s style is more gentle. I don’t know if he has any range, but he fits this role like a glove.
Hot Rod is a very silly comedy. It stretches the frat pack style of humor to the limit, milking every joke for everything it is worth. For instance, a scene where Rod falls down a mountain lasts forever. It’s funny at first, then not so funny, and then funny again just because of the sheer commitment the movie has to its gags. It’s not for everyone, but the audience I saw it with ate it up.
Hot Rod is a throwback to the SNL-inspired movies of yesteryear like Billy Madison. It’s childish and harebrained but it will make you laugh.
At the screening of the new R-rated—for raunchy and redundant, no doubt–movie “That’s My Boy” I felt like I witnessed something special. But not special in a good way. I can’t help but think that what we saw wasn’t so much a movie, but more some kind of performance art where people who should know better do awful things and charge you ten buck to watch. I hope this is some kind of postmodern art project, ‘cuz a comedy it ain’t.
Sandler plays Donny Berger, a party animal who, at age thirteen, engaged in extracurricular activities with his homeroom teacher (Eva Amurri). When their lovemaking interrupted the graduation ceremony, she was sent to jail, and he was left to raise their baby Han Solo Berger (Andy Samberg), with disastrous results. Cut to present day. Father and son are estranged, and Donnie glory days are behind him. He needs $43,000 to pay off back taxes or he’s going to jail. He turns to the one person he knows might have the money, his son, now a wealthy businessman on the eve of getting married.
With the release of “That’s My Boy” Adam Sandler turns the corner from tiresome to embarrassing. It’s hard to image a lazier rehashing of all the man-children he has played in the past. There’s shades of Mr. Deeds, Billy Madison and Happy Gilmour here, all topped off with a grating New England character voice that sounds like a cross between a can opener opening a can of Boston Baked Beans and screeching tires. By the time Sandler trades lines with a dirty old oven mitt, you realize his performance makes The Three Stooges look refined.
Not that he’s got much to work with. The “script” is simply a collection of spit takes, curse words and an old dignified looking woman forced to do and say outrageous things. Instead of writing jokes screenwriter David Caspe has simply found the most inappropriate way to forward a scene and run with it.
There are a couple of giggles, although the ratio of laughs to awkward audience silence is low in this 114-minute movie. There’s a strip joint that serves breakfast called Bacon & Legs, a god Charlie Sheen line and (SPOILER ALERT) a good gag involving a couple of Sarandons, but many of the jokes are ruined by clumsy writing.
The tattoo gag in the trailer—Han shows off a now stretched New Kids on the Block back tat he got when he was in grade three—is a funny visual joke that is muted by Donnie’s yelping, “It’s all distorted! The heads are huge!” We get it. The joke is obvious and funny and doesn’t need to be explained, especially in that annoying voice.
Vanilla Ice, cast as Han’s uncle, is a novelty. He’s a porn movie level actor, which works well here because the movie has a porn movie twist. The less said about it the better. There will be no spoilers here.
If “Billy Madison” wasn’t immature enough for you, or you though “Happy Madison” should have been more infantile then “That’s My Boy” may be for you. All others beware.
