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!
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.
Richard’s CP24 reviews for “Straight Outta Compton,” “The Man from UNCLE,” and “I Am Chris Farley” with Nneka Elliot.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard’s “Canada AM” reviews for “Straight Outta Compton,” “The Man from UNCLE,” and “I Am Chris Farley.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Lorne Michaels, creator and guiding light of “Saturday Night Live,” said he was, “infuriatingly talented.” David Letterman called him “the human thunderball” while Dan Aykroyd noted his, “automatic charisma.” The “he” is Matt “I live in a van by the river” Foley and “Tommy’s Boy’s” main character, Chris Farley, the heavy-set comedian and subject of a new documentary, “I Am Chris Farley.”
Executive produced by Farley’s brother Kevin, this loving tribute is an affectionate look at the guy who “always looked like he was having the most fun.” Michaels and Aykroyd are joined by Adam Sandler, Mike Myers, David Spade, Bob Odenkirk and a variety of childhood friends to paint a picture of a man who was ruled by his excesses.
After an all American upbringing in Madison, Wisconsin he joined a local improv group and later trained at Chicago’s fabled Second City, where he fine-tuned his wild, out-of-control style under the tutelage of improv king Del Close, who gave him the same advice he gave another of his famous students, “Attack the stage like a bull you have that power.”
And attack he did, quickly becoming a star on “Saturday Night Live” and in films like “Wayne’s World” and “Tommy Boy.” Offstage his behaviour was as frenetic as his onscreen persona. Spade and others say whatever Farley did he did wholeheartedly. If he liked you, he loved you. If he went for a laugh, he would do anything to get it. By the same token, when he let loose, he attacked the bottle, and later drugs, with the same gusto. He was, as one talking head says, “a sweet guy before midnight.”
It’s hard not to compare Farley to another doomed “Saturday Night Live” cast member. John Belushi was another similarly driver performer who left scorched earth behind, on stage and off. Both men died at age 33, the victim of their own overindulgences.
“I Am Chris Farley” doesn’t have the same gut-wrenching impact as “Amy,” the recent doc about the tragic life and death of singer Amy Winehouse. That film has less warmth, and is more an examination of how Winehouse’s world spun out of control. The Farley doc has a kinder, gentler tone and doesn’t dwell on his final moments. Perhaps it’s just as well. As the film makes clear, Farley lived to make people laugh. He wouldn’t want to leave behind a legacy of heartbreak and misfortune.
The old saying, “They got bigger, but they didn’t grow up,” perfectly applies to this new Sandler and Company movie. It’s ninety minutes of middle-aged men, urination gags (too many to count) and cleavage shots. So while the actors may have matured (chronologically at least) the jokes haven’t.
Question is, Is it funny?
I didn’t really think so, although I have to say Shaquille O’Neal’s big-guy-Andre-the-Giant schick made me laugh.
“Grown Ups 2” picks up where the last movie left off. Lenny (Adam Sandler in his first ever sequel) has relocated his wife (Salma Hayek) and kids back to his hometown to be closer to friends and family. It’s the last day of school, and as the kids are packing up their books, their fathers (Kevin James, Chris Rock and David Spade) grapple with growing up, growing old and a gang of frat boys (lead by “Twilight’s” Taylor Lautner) who think the four old friends are WAY over the hill.
The movie comes equipped with an all-star comedy cast. In addition to the above-the-title actors there’s cameos by everyone from Colin Quinn, Tim Meadows, Georgia Engel and Steve Buscemi to name a few. In fact there may be more recognizable faces here than true laughs.
That’s not to say there are no laughs at all. James’ deadpan dumb kid who can’t add or spell is a funny running gag, Hayek does a pretty good Sofía Vergara imitation and O’Neal’s oversized antics are fun but for a movie about growing up it is all so juvenile. I didn’t expect a searing meditation on aging but I did think they might touch on the fact that they were growing old with more smarts than lines like, “I used to buy ten cases of beer for my parties, now I get ten cases of juice boxes.”
There’s nothing wrong with a good silly movie and “Grown Ups 2” had the chance to be just that, but I just wish it was silly AND about something other than a moose urinating on Sandler’s unsuspecting family, and by extension, the audience.
The once edgy comics of “Saturday Night Live” have gotten older and a little rounder in the middle but judging by their work in the ironically named “Grown Ups” they haven’t actually grown up.
Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, David Spade, Kevin James and Rob Schneider star in this celebration of arrested adolescence as five friend s reunited at the funeral of the beloved high school basketball coach. All married, except for the childlike Spade, they are at different stages of their lives. Schneider is a new age guru with a much older wife, Rock is a henpecked house husband, Sandler the hottest agent in Hollywood, with the hot wife (Salma Hayek) and James is the fat guy who falls down a lot. Like, a lot a lot. To spread their coach’s ashes they head to a cottage by a lake to spend the weekend, reconnect and endlessly trade good natured jibes. Over the course of the Fourth of July weekend their spoiled kids learn to live without cell phones, the boys play a dangerous game with a bow and arrow and ogle Schneider’s babelicious daughters.
“Grown Ups” isn’t quite rude enough for the Apatow crowd, but yet, not quite family friendly enough for grandma and the kids. For every outrageous joke about breast milk there’s a faux emotive or cutesy kid moment. The one liners come fast and furious—these guys only seem to be able to communicate by busting one another’s chops—but for the first hour there is precious little in the way of real jokes. It’s titter worthy rather than laugh out loud funny.
The guys have good chemistry, which they should, having spent years doing live television together, but it looks like the kind of movie that might have been more fun to make than to watch. These are (mostly) likeable actors but they’re not doing their most likeable work here. Sandler, for instance ruins a funny moment when his daughter says, “I want to get chocolate wasted!” with a snorting reaction that steps on the joke.
In the second hour Sandler is in heart warming mode but even this comes off as false. He spends the whole movie shrugging off his “Mr. Hollywood” nickname, but then in the climax—and I’ll be careful not to give anything away here—acts like a rich city slicker doing the local yokels a favor.
Luckily Sandler regular Steve Buscemi and the mangling of the name of a Canadian city provide some silly laughs.
“Grown Ups” is lowbrow with warm and fuzzy aspirations but misses the mark.
When I was a kid I had a Halloween joke book packed with gems like, “What do skeletons say before they begin dining? Bone appetite!” I pulled that book out every October for years, but hadn’t thought about it in years. For years, that is, until I saw “Hotel Transylvania,” the new animated kid’s movie starring the voice of Adam Sandler as Dracula. It seems I wasn’t the only one with a well-loved Halloween joke book. A bagel with scream-cheese, anyone?
In the world of “Hotel Transylvania” Dracula is a single father—he’s a bat-chelor—so desperate to keep his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) away from the human world he builds a hotel for monsters far away from living, breathing people. With the slogan, “Human Free Since 1898,” he caters to guests right out of Universal Pictures’s heyday— Murray the Mummy (voice of CeeLo Green), Frankenstein (Kevin James) and Griffin, the Invisible Man (David Spade). Every year on Mavis’s birthday they all gather to throw a fang-dango of a party, but on her 118th b’day she’s behaving like a spoiled bat (see what I did there?). She wants to leave the hotel and see the world, but her dad won’t allow it. However, when a young traveller brings some life to the hotel of the undead she gets a glimpse into the lives of humans.
Like my joke book, (here’s another sample: “What type of coffee do vampires prefer? Decoffinated!”) “Hotel Transylvania” leans toward the silly rather than scary. Unlike “ParaNorman,” another recent horror themed movie for kids, this one won’t give the little ones nightmares. In fact the only people it might make a little batty are parents who’ll have to listen to jokes like, “Invisible Man! Nice to see you!” me, I thought those lines were funny… but then you already know how I feel about jokes like, “Who is a vampire likely to fall in love with? The girl necks door!”
The animation is top notch, stylized and colorful, with cute creatures that should catch kid’s eyes.
“Hotel Transylvania” is ghoul movie for kids that’s family friendly and, like Baron Frankenstein will have you in stitches.
