Richard sits in on the CTV NewsChannel with news anchor Marcia MacMillan have a look at the weekend’s big releases including the live action remake of “Aladdin,” the wild and wooly “Booksmart” and a doc about the life and times of a Canadian legend, “Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard has a look at the new movies coming to theatres, including Will Smith in the live action remake of “Aladdin,” the wild and wooly “Booksmart” and a doc about the life and times of a Canadian legend, “Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind” with CFRA Morning Rush host Bill Carroll.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Four hundred years ago when Shakespeare wrote, “To thine own self be true,” he could not have imagined that his words would provide the bedrock of a raucous teen comedy and yet here we are. “Booksmart,” Olivia Wilde’s feature directorial debut, is both high and low brow, touching and sentimental in its look at female friendship.
Molly (Beanie Feldstein) and Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) are best friends. Inseparable, they are class president and vice-president, Michelle Obama acolytes who listen to self-empowerment tapes. “You’ve worked harder than anyone and that’s why you are a champion. Stand at the top of the mountain of your success and look down on everyone who has ever doubted you.” Molly is a perfectionist who corrects the grammar on bathroom wall graffiti while Amy is off to Botswana to “help women make tampons.”
On the eve of their high school graduation, they have Yale and Columbia in their sights but when Molly realizes her slacker schoolmates are also going to Ivy League schools she isn’t happy. “We chose to study so we could get into good schools,” she says. “They didn’t choose.” After semesters of prioritizing academics over socializing they attempt to cram four years of fun into one night. “Nobody knows we are fun,” Molly says. “We are smart and fun. What took them four years were doing in one night.”
There’s only one big problem; they don’t have the address of the hip graduation party and no one is answering their texts. “We have never hung out with any of these people except academically,” Amy says. “They probably think we’re calling about school.” After some misadventures on a tricked-out yacht and at a murder mystery party they use their academic skills. “How will we find out where next party is? By doing what we do best, homework.”
“We are 8A+ people and we need an A+ party.”
The plot synopsis of “Booksmart” sounds like it could have been lifted from any number of other high school comedies but director Wilde simply uses the of high school graduation party set-up as a backdrop for her hilarious study of female bonding. The premise may be familiar but the charm of the movie is all in execution and the connected chemistry between the leads.
In her feature debut Wilde is so self-assured, staging big party scenes, a dance number and even car chases but never allows the focus to drift from Molly and Amy. Even when the supporting cast—the cosmically free-spirited Gigi (Billie Lourd), rich kid Jared (Skyler Gisondo), the much-talked-about AAA (Molly Gordon) or the very theatrical drama club members Alan and George (Austin Crute and Noah Galvin)—gets showcased in increasingly outrageous ways Wilde never lets their humanity trump the humour. In other words, it’s funny because it’s based in truth; real human behavior.
Feldstein and Dever are the film’s beating heart. Both have crushes on other people—Molly likes party boy Nick (Mason Gooding), Amy has her eye on skater girl Ryan (Victoria Ruesga)—but deep down they are soul mates. They click, whether it is through their banter or the knowing looks they exchange, and by the time “Unchained Melody,” that ode to unconditional love, spills from the theatre’s speakers there’s no doubt that Molly and Amy are bound to be connected forever, or at least until adult life gets in the way.
Like its main characters “Booksmart” is true to its self, an overachiever that knows how to have a good time.
Richard sits in on the CJAD Montreal morning show with host Andrew Carter to talk the new movies coming to theatres including the all-singing, all-dancing, all-powerful Genie in the live action remake of “Aladdin,” the wild and wooly “Booksmart” and a doc about the life and times of a Canadian legend, “Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
“Men, Women & Children” is a sprawling ensemble drama that I suppose is meant to shed some light on the widening gap between analogue parents and their iphone toting kids, but comes off more as a high tech “Reefer Madness.” Someone needs to jiggle director Jason Reitman’s cord and reboot.
The movie, based on the Chad Kultgen novel, suggests that social media, video games and texting are the root of all modern evil. Anorexia, the shameless pursuit of Kim Kardashian style fame, teen pregnancy and even adultery, it seems to say, can be traced back to a key stroke or two.
It’s a remarkably clumsy observation from a director who has treated us to a searing look at downsizing in “Up in the Air” and a satiric look at lobbyists on “Thank You For Smoking.” Leading the charge against internet interaction is Patricia (Jennifer Garner), a mom who monitors her daughter’s every text and post and hands out pamphlets on the dangers of the selfie. She’s a hardcore crusader, the Mary Whitehouse of the anti-internet crowd. You expect her to yell, “Get off my URL,” at any moment. In any other Reitman movie she’d be played for laughs, the center for the satire, but here we’re supposed to take her seriously and that decision lies at the heart of what is very wrong with “Men, Women and Children.”
Instead of mining the rich vein of satire in the disconnect between kids and parents, Reitman pitches the tone in the area of an afterschool special. The listless direction and inability to answer any of the questions it raises, coupled with the tiresome cliché of texts and posts popping up all over the screen, overshadows some engaging work by the actors—particularly Judy Greer as a momanger to a teen wannabe, and Ansel Elgort and Kaitlyn Dever as a couple struggling to cope with their mothers.
Given the film’s attitude “Men, Women and Children” might have been better off with a title like “Old Folks Just Don’t Understand.”
