This week on the Richard Crouse Show Podcast we meet Haley McGee, a Canadian living in London, England, who has written a book called “The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale,” a memoir about her attempt to pay off credit card debt by selling gifts from her exes. In the book she tries to calculate exactly how much romantic relationships cost in time, money and effort.
Then we’ll get to know Celeste Bell, co-director of a great new music documentary called “Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliché.” It’s the story of Bell’s mother, legendary punk rock singer Poly Styrene, whose band X-Ray Specs were one of the first punk rock bands to find commercial success with their album “Germfree Adolescents.” The documentary is a rarity, a movie about punk rock that casts its eyes beyond the musical anarchy to portray the real person behind the music.
Finally, we chat to Clark Backo. You know her as Wayne’s love interest Rosie, on the television series “Letterkenny.” You can now see her in “I Want You Back,” a very funny rom com now playing on Amazon Prime.
Each week on the nationally syndicated Richard Crouse Show, Canada’s most recognized movie critic brings together some of the most interesting and opinionated people from the movies, television and music to put a fresh spin on news from the world of lifestyle and pop-culture. Tune into this show to hear in-depth interviews with actors and directors, to find out what’s going on behind the scenes of your favourite shows and movies and get a new take on current trends. Recent guests include Ethan Hawke, director Brad Bird, comedian Gilbert Gottfried, Eric Roberts, Brian Henson, Jonathan Goldsmith a.k.a. “The most interesting man in the world,” and best selling author Linwood Barclay.
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“I Want You Back,” a new rom com starring Jenny Slate and Charlie Day and now streaming on Amazon, begins with dueling break-ups.
Noah (Scott Eastwood) and Emma (Slate) have been together for 18 months. She’s comfortable and content. He’s an A-Type on the hunt for the next thing in life, who happens to appear in the form of Ginny (Clark Backo), the statuesque owner of a local pie shop.
Peter (Day) and Anne (Gina Rodriguez) are six years in when she blindsides him. He’s too complacent, she says as she dumps him. She wants a bigger life, one filled with excitement and she thinks she’ll find that with local theatre director Logan (Manny Jacinto).
Emma and Peter are dumped and devastated.
This is a rom com, so it is inevitable that the grieving Emma and Peter will meet cute. Turns out, they work in the same office tower and spend time in the same stairwell, crying and longing for their exes. When they finally meet, she is smeared with mascara, he has the toilet paper he used to wipe away his tears stuck to his face. They respond to each other’s pain and begin a platonic friendship.
They sing “You Oughta Know” at karaoke, get drunk and attempt to make one another feel better. “Dying alone is not so bad,” Emma says. “Having someone to watch you die is embarrassing.” They go to the movies, have lunch, lurk on their exes’ Instagram and hatch a plan. Emma will infiltrate Anne and Logan’s relationship as Peter makes friends with Noah and Ginny, both trying to drive a wedge in the new relationships. “They might not know they should be with us,” Emma says, “with all these new shiny people around.”
“It’s like ‘Cruel Intentions,” Peter says, “but sexier.”
“How is it sexier?”
“It isn’t.”
The chemistry Slate and Day share, as actors and characters, (NOT A SPOILER, JUST THE WAY ROM COMS WORK) make it clear who should be partnered with who by the time the end credits roll. This is, after all, a rom com so the outcome isn’t a secret. It’s all about the journey, how the two most likeable characters in the movie will finally find their happily ever after. “I Want You Back” offers up a fun journey that travels ground most rom coms have voyaged before, but does so with laughs and heart.
There are hijinks and farce—a proposed three-way tryst, a very uncomfortable hiding spot and unrequited love—but the clichés of Katherine Heigl-style rom coms are blunted with edgy humor topped off with a helping of romance. The movie allows Slate and Day to bring their unique comic gifts to the material while keeping it on the rom com straight and narrow.
“I Want You Back” doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but the eager cast keeps the predictable parts of the story interesting and very funny.
“Kajillionaire,” a poignant comedy from director Miranda July and now playing in theatres, is an absurdist tale of survival and control.
The Dynes, Robert (Richard Jenkins), Theresa (Debra Winger) and daughter Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood), are a crime family struggling to survive. They live in a low-rent abandoned office next to a bubble factory, where pink bubbles overflow through the vents into their space. Clip artists, they eke out a living by pulling low level scams that are often more work than they’re worth. Even their daughter’s name is part of a con job. They named her after a homeless man who won the lottery in the long shot hope that he would notice and write her into his will.
When Old Dolio wins a trip to New York they concoct a luggage and travel insurance swindle that could finally put them in the bigtime… or at least allow them to pay their back rent and avoid eviction.
Like all their stings, things don’t go as planned but they do meet Melanie (Gina Rodriguez), an outgoing young woman with the makings of a good grifter. Despite Old Dolio’s misgivings about bringing an outsider into their tightly knit group, the Dynes and Melanie set about to separate easy marks from their money.
What begins as an unconventional crime story soon turns into Old Dolio’s story of self-discovery as she comes to realize that her upbringing has left her unprepared for the world outside the petty criminality that has been her life.
Jenkins, Winger and Rodriguez bring something unique to each of their characters. Jenkins and Winger exude desperation as the rumpled, bumbling small timers, while Rodriguez is all charm and warmth as their protégée but it is Wood who steals the show.
Wood transforms completely to play Old Dolio. With waist-length straw hair obscuring her face she drops her voice an octave or two and adopts the physicality of someone who learned how to walk from reading books. It’s a wonderfully nuanced comedic character but there’s more to her than awkward behaviour and a silly name. Wood keeps Old Dolio’s emotions under wraps for much of the film, but there’s an apparent inner life that becomes more and more apparent as she begins to wake up and make a connection with someone whose last name isn’t Dyne for the first time in her life.
Intentionally stilted and oddball, Wood makes Old Dolio the beating heart of “Kajillionaire,” a story that derives its emotional stability from a character whose parents were never emotional or stable with her.
“Smallfoot,” a new animated film starring the voices of Channing Tatum, James Corden, Zendaya, Common and LeBron James, does a flip flop on the regular Bigfoot legend. Instead of humans wondering if Sasquatches are real, in this musical fantasy it’s the ape-like Yetis who doubt the existence of humans.
Migos, voiced by Tatum, a giant white-haired Sasquatch lives, in with his clan in the Himalayas, high above the clouds. He, like all the Yetis—they look like distant cousins to Rankin & Bass’s Abominable Snowmonster of the North—believe they fell from the butt of the great sky bison, that they live on a giant ice island supported by mammoths and that a glowing sky snail illuminates their world. Their laws are literally written in stone and kept by tribal leader the Stonekeeper (Common). What they don’t believe in are humans. “Everyone knows the Smallfoot isn’t real.”
One day, while training for his new job of gongmaster—the Yeti who wakes the village every morning—he overshoots the gong and tumbles into the snowy distance where he sees—or at least thinks he sees—a Smallfoot. Excited, he rushes back to his village with the news. He is met with equal parts wonder and anger. “If Migos is saying he saw a Smallfoot,” they say, “he is saying the stone is wrong.” His heresy gets him banished but soon he connects with a secret group, the S.E.S. (Smallfoot Evidentiary Society) run by the Stonekeeper’s daughter Meechee (Zendaya). A small collection of artefacts—like a tiny toilet paper rolls they think is a “scroll of invisible wisdom”—has convinced them of the existence of humans. Together they challenge their belief system to find the truth about Smallfoot. “It’s not about tearing down old ideas,” says Meechee, “it’s about finding new ones.”
Meanwhile in a nearby mountain town a wildlife television show host Percy Patterson (Corden) sees the Yetis as a way to improve his sagging ratings. It would be the scoop of a lifetime but at what price?
“Smallfoot” feels stretched to feature length. The animation is solid, there are jokes to make young and old laugh and Migos even revives a few of Tatum’s “Magic Mike” moves. The trouble lies in the music. It feels wedged in. This isn’t a musical by any stretch but its littered with generic pop songs—and one truly nightmare inducing version of “Under Pressure”—that are nicely realized but add little to the overall experience except for a few minutes of running time.
Better are the ideas. Wedged in between the singing and slapstick are good messages about communication and authenticity—“The truth is complicated and scary,” says Meechee, “but it is better than living a lie.”—and questioning authority. “Questions lead to knowledge,” says Gwangi (LeBron James), “and knowledge is power.” It’s about acceptance, about celebrating our differences and co-existence. In troubled, divided times these are powerful messages even when delivered by a giant Yeti.
“Smallfoot” is a big splashy movie stuffed with important ideas. Unfortunately propping those ideas up is only about an hour’s worth of story padded with songs and silliness to an hour and forty minutes.
One of the most enduring children’s tales of the 20th century was written in a single afternoon in 1936. Author Munro Leaf says it only took “25 minutes on a rainy Saturday” to pen The Story of Ferdinand, which he planned as a make-work project for his friend, illustrator Robert Lawson.
This weekend John Cena, Kate McKinnon and Bobby Canavale lend their voices to the animated Ferdinand.
The story about a big bull with an even bigger heart has been popular with readers for generations. In 1938 Life magazine raved, “Ferdinand is the greatest juvenile classic since Winnie the Pooh” and urged adults to “buy the book largely for their own pleasure and amusement.”
The success of the book took people by surprise, including Leaf’s widow who told Publisher’s Weekly, “What happened with Ferdinand is still a mystery. After Christmas, sales increased every week, and within 13 months, eight editions had been published. Ferdinand appeared as a giant balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade; a Ferdinand song made the hit parade; and in December of 1938, The Story of Ferdinand nudged Gone with the Wind off the top of the bestseller lists.”
The book has never gone out of print and has been translated into more than 60 foreign languages, including a Latin version called Ferdinandus Taurus. Luminaries like H. G. Wells, Gandhi and Franklin Roosevelt approved of the book’s story of a bull that prefers smelling flowers to bullfighting and it was the only American children’s book available in Stalin-era Poland, but it wasn’t universally loved.
Released nine months before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, supporters of Francisco Franco thought it promoted dangerous pacifist ideas. As a result it was banned in Spain and remained so until 1975. Others suggested the book promoted fascism, anarchism and communism. The Cleveland Plain Dealer even ranted that the book was “corrupting the youth of America.” The New York Times, however, rejected the political metaphors, praising the book’s message of being true to oneself.
Adolf Hitler called it “degenerate democratic propaganda” and ordered all copies burned. In reaction, at the end of the Second World War, 30,000 copies were rushed into print and distributed to Germany’s children as a symbol of peace.
Walt Disney loved the story and commissioned a short film, Ferdinand the Bull, in 1938. In addition to producing the movie, Disney supplied the voice of Ferdinand’s mother and was the model for the Matador character. The short was a big hit, winning the Oscar for Best Short Subject. The film is particularly popular in Sweden where it has aired every Christmas Eve since 1959 as a segment on the annual Disney show Donald Duck and His Friends Wish You a Merry Christmas. In 1982 the Christmas tradition was broken when Ferdinand the Bull was replaced with The Ugly Duckling on the annual broadcast. The switch caused collective national Yuletide outrage and Ferdinand was returned to the show the next year where he has remained ever since.
No one is exactly sure why Ferdinand has had such a long-lasting impact, although one scholar suggests it’s because it crosses gender lines, offering up a character that appeals to boys and girls.
Adolf Hitler called “The Story of Ferdinand” “degenerate democratic propaganda” and ordered all copies burned. In spite of that or perhaps because of that, the story of the big bull with an even bigger heart became a publishing phenomenon, outselling ”Gone with the Wind” in 1938. The children’s book has never gone out of print and still sells in healthy amounts today.
Those sales will likely increase with the release of “Ferdinand,” a colourful animated 3D movie starring the voices of John Cena, Kate McKinnon and Bobby Canavale from the folks who brought us “Ice Age” and “Robots.”
As a calf being raised at Casa del Toro to be a fighting bull Ferdinand (voice of Cena) asks his father, a fearsome bull, “Can I be a champion of not fighting?” More into carnations than combat, he doesn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps, chasing
Matadors in bullfighting arenas. When his father is killed in the ring Ferdinand hoofs it, running away to live on a flower farm.
He grows to be a fearsome looking bull, all chest and pointed horns, but remains the same sweet tempered creature he always was. Recaptured, he’s sent back to Casa del Toro and groomed for the ring or the slaughterhouse. Fight or food, those are his options. Selected by bullfighter El Primero (Miguel Angel Silvestre) Ferdinand, along with a goofy goat named Lupe (Kate McKinnon)—“ I’m here to calm you so you can maim and gore later,” she says.—and three devious hedgehogs named Uno, Dos and Cuartro (Gina Rodriguez, Daveed Diggs and Gabriel Iglesias), he plans his escape.
The book is only 32 pages long but director Carlos Saldanha and team flesh out the story to feel organic to author Munro Leaf’s original vision of passive resistance in the face of violence. Pulled to ninety minutes, the story shows some stretch marks but remains likeable with lots of heart and plenty of gags.
The free-to-be-you-and-me anti-bullying messages are cleverly woven into the fabric of the tale. Ferdinand challenges the status quo, defying others to put him in any kind of box. It’s a powerful and timely lesson of acceptance wrapped in a colourful package that should delight kids. It should be noted that while the bull in a China shop gag will elicit giggles the scenes in the meat packing plant and the climactic bullfight might be too intense for very little children.
The voice work is lively and fun. As Lupe, McKinnon brightens things up in every scene she’s in but is underused in the latter part of the film.
“Ferdinand” could have used more Spanish flavour on the soundtrack. Bland pop songs fill the ears when flamenco might have been more evocative of the time and place but by and large this is an engaging no bull kid’s story with a valuable upfront message.
Director Peter Berg makes manly-men movies about tough guys willing to sacrifice all in the service of others. Films like “The Kingdom,” based on the 1996 bombing of the Khobar housing complex and “Lone Survivor,” his look at the unsuccessful United States Navy SEALs counter-insurgent mission Operation Red Wings, are loud action movies bound together by testosterone and sentiment.
His latest, “Deepwater Horizon,” based on the worst oil spill in US history, fits comfortably alongside “The Kingdom” and “Lone Survivor.” All three are true life tales, ripped from recent headlines, and each of them are loud, in-your-face movies that feel more motivated by muscle than brains.
Mark Wahlberg is Mike Williams, husband to Felicia (Kate Hudson), father to an adorable little girl and the chief engineer of the offshore oil drilling rig Deepwater Horizon. In April 2010 he left for a routine twenty-one day stint aboard the rig that turned disastrous when an uncontrollable gusher of crude oil caused an explosion that ultimately left 11 of the 126 crew members dead.
It takes an hour of getting to know everyone, like British Petroleum executive Donald Vidrine (John Malkovich), no-nonsense crew chief Jimmy Harrell (Kurt Russell) and rig mechanic Andrea Fleytas (Gina Rodriguez), before disaster strikes, both literally and narratively. When the rig blows it takes with it any semblance of storyline, replacing with plot with forty minutes of relentless, fiery action.
Berg doesn’t just want to show you the hellish circumstances that destroyed Deepwater Horizon, he wants you to leave the theatre feeling as though you were there. Fireballs light up the screen as the sound of twisted, breaking metal fills your ears. It’s effective, if a little repetitive after thirty minutes or so. The characters get a little lost in the commotion and are frequently hard to see through the plumes of smoke that decorate the screen.
As an action movie and a story of resilience “Deepwater Horizon” is a visceral experience. As a tribute to the men who lost their lives in the blast it feels less thought through. The In Memoriam roll honours those lost, but feels tacked on after the bombast that precedes it.
Also strange by its absence is any comment on the devastating ecological consequences of the event.
“Deepwater Horizon” is a showcase for Berg’s muscular filmmaking but could have used a little more nuance.
This week on the Richard Crouse Show Podcast we meet Haley McGee, a Canadian living in London, England, who has written a book called “The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale,” a memoir about her attempt to pay off credit card debt by selling gifts from her exes. In the book she tries to calculate exactly how much romantic relationships cost in time, money and effort.
