Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to do a high five! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the wild ‘n wacky “A Minecraft Movie,” the doggie drama of “The Friend” and the rom com “A Nice Indian Boy.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “A Nice Indian Boy,” a new rom com starring Karan Soni and Jonathan Groff, and now playing in theatres, an Indian American doctor introduces his white boyfriend to his traditional parents.
CAST: Karan Soni, Jonathan Groff, Sunita Mani, Zarna Garg, Harish Patel, Peter S. Kim, Sas Goldberg. Directed by Roshan Sethi.
REVIEW: Adapted from the 2014 play of the same name by Madhuri Shekar, “A Nice Indian Boy” feels like “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” with a cultural twist.
You may get a sense of déjà vu while watching the set up for “A Nice Indian Boy,” which takes a handful of rom com conventions and molds them into something that feels new, yet old-fashioned.
Karan Soni plays Naveen, the kind of rom com character we’ve seen many times before as the story’s anchor. He’s a timid Indian American doctor, from a traditional family, who spends his off hours obsessing about his exes. “I guess you’ve been eating an apple a day because you’ve kept this doctor away,” he says in a message to a former fling.
He’s given up on finding love—”I don’t want to hear sweeping notions of love. It’s 2024, the world is burning!”—until he’s booked with photographer Jay (Jonathan Groff) to update his hospital headshot.
Jay, a white man adopted and raised by an Indian family, hence his last name Kurundkar, just may be the one to crack the shell Naveen has constructed around himself.
First though, the new couple must meet Archit and Megha (Harish Patel and Zarna Garg), Naveen’s traditional parents.
The basic plotting and romantic hurtles Naveen and Jay must traverse are straight out of Rom Com 101. But what sets “A Nice Indian Boy” apart isn’t just the queer and South Asian twists, but the warm hearted brush with which Calgary born director Roshan Sethi paints this portrait of love and family.
Soni and Groff have great chemistry and are ably supported by a cast who add comedy to the romance. As Naveen’s BFF Peter S. Kim is the perfect foil to friend’s shyness. As his sarcastic sister, “GLOW’s” Sunita Mani provides a few laughs and a poignant pregnancy subplot. But it is Patel and Garg as his parents, the latter of whom hilariously explains the meaning of the film “Milk” to her gay son, who steal the show.
“A Nice Indian Boy” doesn’t go anywhere you don’t expect it to go, but despite its predictability, it’s a charming sit-commy diversion.
I doubt that “Spirited,” the new Will Ferrell Christmas musical now streaming on Apple TV+, will give people the same holiday feels as his stone-cold Yuletide classic “Elf,” but Ferrell and co-star Ryan Reynolds work as hard as Santa’s reindeers on Christmas Eve to spread goodwill.
In this modern twist on the 1843 novella “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens—it’s “like the Bill Murray movie and every other adaptation nobody ever asked for,” says Jacob Marley (Patrick Page)—the story focusses on the haunters, not the haunted.
For almost 200 years, under the guidance of Marley, the afterlife spirits, the Ghost of Christmas Present (Ferrell), Ghost of Christmas Past (Sunita Mani) and the Ghost of Christmas Yet-To-Come (voice of Tracy Morgan), scare one Scroogey type—a “perp” they call them—into changing their lives for the better.
“That’s what we do,” says the Ghost of Christmas Present, “we change a person into a better person, and then sing about it.”
Trouble is, after almost two centuries of the work—there’s a year-round research process before the actual haunting—G.C. Present wonders if he wants to continue transforming the lives of strangers. He could retire, get his gold watch, Sephora gift card and return to life as a mortal in present day, but he has his eye on one more client.
He wants to redeem the unredeemable. Clint (Reynolds) is a slick spin doctor who works for politicians and corporations, and, with help from assistant Kimberly (Octavia Spencer), digs up damning dirt on their competitors. Between them they’ve ruined more lives and careers than you can shake a Yule log at.
The charismatic but evil Clint—“He’s like the perfect combination of Mussolini and Seacrest,” says G.C. Present.—turns out to be a challenge. “So, out of all the people on the planet, murderers, people who thrown gender reveal parties,” he says, “I’m the guy you choose to haunt?”
As G.C. Present works to reform Clint, the specter finds himself falling in love and questioning his own path in the afterlife.
“Spirited” is worth the monthly Apple TV+ fee for the Dickensian duet “Good Afternoon” from songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (Oscar-winners for “La La Land”). Based on the worst insult you could say to someone in 19th century London, it is a showstopper, funny and perfectly suited to the talents of Ferrell and Reynolds.
Both bring their well-established personas to the film. Ferrell’s finely crafted goofiness contrasts with Reynolds’s sardonic character. They’re not exactly Hope and Crosby, but, as funny, all-singing-and-dancing combos go these days, they’ll do. They have great chemistry and riff off one another in a jaunty, good-natured way. It’s lighthearted, very aware—they often break the fourth wall to comment on what is happening in the scene—stuff that updates the 179-year-old story with subplots about the dangers of on-line life in addition to the more traditional themes of the importance of forgiveness, generosity and compassion.
“Spirited” owes a debt not only to “A Christmas Carol” but also, in its modern take, to “Scrooged,” the 1988 Bill Murray movie that shares the same DNA. Like “Scrooged,” “Spirited” finds a way to make an old story, feel fresh and that is its biggest gift to the audience.
“Save Yourselves!,” opening in theatres across Canada this weekend, is a whole new genre of movie. A mix of romance and aliens, it is, as far as I can recall, the first apocalyptic rom com.
Young Brooklynites Su and Jack (“Glow’s” Sunita Mani and John Reynolds of “Stranger Things”) are at a crossroads in their lives. Their jobs are unfulfilling and when they bump into an old friend who now runs a company that makes sustainable 3-D printed surfboards out of algae, they realize their lives aren’t contributing to society at large.
To get their heads together and figure out a path forward they go off the grid, disconnect from their devices and spend a week hibernating at a cabin in the mountains. The lack of technology doesn’t bother Jack, but Su has a harder time cutting the iPhone and laptop cord. When she sneaks a listen to a strange voicemail from her mother, she doesn’t register that something really weird is happening in the world outside of their idyllic getaway.
When an alien creature, imagine one of “Star Trek’s” Tribbles, or as jack says, “a tiny, furry footstool,” shows up on the property, they must fight for their lives. Trouble is, as Su says, “We don’t have any skills.”
What they do have, however, is each other.
“Save Yourselves!” is a slight but enjoyable rom com with a quirky premise but some real chemistry between the characters. Su and Jack are what may kindly be called cidiots, people who think anything north of 125th Street is Upstate New York. Unprepared for any crisis outside of a Starbucks pumpkin spice shortage, they are forced to adapt and engage with their new surroundings.
It’s here the movie works best.
Mani and Reynolds bring the funny during the crisis but the humour is always grounded in some sort of situation that recalls the issues in their relationship that pushed them to visit the cabin in the first place. Director/writers Eleanor Wilson and Alex H. Fischer have crafted a story about two hapless folks trying to improve their lives without a clue of how to do it. It has humour and heart and despite a lull in the middle, “Save Yourselves!” is goofy good fun.
