The ghost played by David Harbour in the new Netflix movie “We Have a Ghost” may not be quite as friendly as Casper, but that’s only because his life, and afterlife, were grave affairs.
An adaptation of “Ernest,” a “socially mediated ghost story” by Geoff Manaugh, originally posted in Vice, the new film begins with Frank (Anthony Mackie) looking of a new start for his family, including his lonely, guitar obsessed son Kevin (Jahi Winston). A rambling old home appears to be calling out for a new family, but there is one problem. The place is haunted by the spirit of Ernest (Harbour), a restless, bowling-shirt wearing ghost who, attracted to Kevin’s guitar playing, materializes in the home’s attic.
“You moved into the house of death?” asks Kevin’s neighbor (Isabella Russo) incredulously.
Ernest can’t speak, but the two connect, sensing the trauma that has touched each other’s lives.
When Frank finds Kevin’s video of Ernest he senses a chance to make money off the wayward spirit. He sets up a YouTube channel, and soon Ernest’s story has attracted the attention of millions of viewers, a television psychic (Jennifer Coolidge) and a C.I.A. agent (Tig Notaro) determined to get to the bottom of this ghostly story.
What begins as a way for Frank to make some quick cash becomes a heartfelt investigation into Ernest’s life before the afterlife.
“We Have a Ghost” is not really a ghost story. It’s more a story of fathers and sons, of tragedy and truth, of connection and disconnection, with a side order of the supernatural. The set-up sounds slapsticky—“There’s a ghost in the house!!”—but soon settles into its own vibe, part introspective, part bittersweet and part “Scooby-Doo. The elements don’t all easily fit side-by-side like puzzle pieces, but Harbour binds them together with a silent performance that brings both pathos and absurdity to Ernest.
The hard shifts in tone give “We Have a Ghost” an uneven feel. It feels scattershot, as though it is trying to make up its mind about what it is trying to be. The mash-up of horror, comedy and family friendly never gels, but there are highlights like Jennifer Coolidge, who brightens things up as a parody of an ambitious television psychic.
With its teen leads, sentimental underpinnings, paranormal experiences and family dynamics, “We Have a Ghost” aims for an Amblin kind of feel. It misses the mark, but provides enough good fun—although not for the youngest members of the family—to earn a recommend.
At the movies, the days leading up to Valentine’s Day are filled with meet cutes, misunderstandings, complications, wacky neighbors and swanky apartments. “Your Place or Mine,” a new rom com starring Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher and now streaming on Netflix, is chock a block with all that, plus the star power of its leads.
Twenty years ago Debbie (Witherspoon) and Peter (Kutcher) had a wild one night stand that blossomed into a lifelong platonic friendship. These days, she’s a high-strung single mom to teenager Jack (Wesley Kimmel), living, working and going to school in Los Angeles,
New York based Peter is into branding for big companies. Self-possessed and cocky, he is the polar opposite of Debbie, who thinks he is irresponsible and terrible with women. Nonetheless, they are besties who tell each other everything.
Or almost everything.
When Debbie’s babysitter cancels on the eve of a trip to New York City, Peter offers to swap places. She’ll stay at his luxury NYC apartment and he’ll look after Jack in Los Angeles.
Over the week the city swap opens windows into each other’s worlds. It soon becomes obvious they have more has gone unspoken in their relationship than they ever could have imagined.
“Your Place or Mine” is the rare rom com that keeps its main characters across the country from one another. They don’t gaze into one another’s eyes, don’t hold hands and rarely even share the same frame.
Imagine a bi-coastal “When Harry Met Sally.”
For most of the running time their relationship is long distance and it is a testament to the strong cast that “Your Place or Mine” is as much fun as it is. The end point is predictable, as it is in all rom coms, but the journey to the ultimate destination is a pretty good ride. Even their take on the patented airport rom com run is given a fresh treatment.
Witherspoon cuts through this light comedy like a hot knife through butter. She brings an effortless charm that helps make this 90s style rom com as buoyant as it is.
Kutcher, who like Witherspoon, has a few rom coms under his belt, displays a way with a line—“I’m just a lonely guy with outstanding hair,” he says.—and carries his side of the equation, particularly in the scenes he shares with Kimmel and the deadpan Tig Notaro as one of Debbie’s friends.
“Your Place or Mine” succeeds because it understands what it is, a rom com tilted just slightly to create something that provides nostalgia for 90s romantic comedies and something new and just a little different for Valentine’s Day.
Richard Crouse makes a Corpse Reviver Number 2, the perfect cocktail to enjoy while having a drink and a think about “Army of the Dead,” the new zombie movie from director Zach Snyder.
Richard joins Ryan Doyle and Jay Michaels of the NewsTalk 1010 afternoon show to talk about the history of the Screwdriver cocktail. Not just for brunch, it actually dates back to Turkey in the 1940s. We have a look at the Netflix zombie-palooza “Army of the Dead,” and ask out loud the question that everyone is thinking: Why can movie theatres be safely opened in Quebec, but not Ontario.
If I was to categorize “Together Together,” a new movie starring Ed Helms and now on V.O.D., I guess I’d have to create a new category, the non rom com. It’s a relationship comedy that has some, but not all, of the hallmarks of a romantic comedy, but walks its own path.
Helms is Matt, a 45-year-old single man who wants to start a family. When we first meet him he’s awkwardly interviewing 26-year-old millennial Anna (Patti Harrison) for the job of surrogate. She has snappy answers to his questions—Have you ever stolen anything?—and gets the job. Matt is eager to begin his new life as a single dad but Anna, who gave a baby up for adoption years before, sees it as a gig, a transaction with a $15,000 fee.
Divided into trimesters, as story unfolds Matt and Anna’s relationship grows. They share meals, watch “Friends,” which she has never seen, and take prenatal classes together. They even attend a kind of couple’s therapy, even though their relationship isn’t romantic. It’s more complicated than that. They aren’t a couple but their relationship is intimate on many levels and it leads to misunderstandings that threaten their personal and business relationship.
“Together Together” often feels like it is turning the corner to becoming a Hollywood rom com and then, just as often, does a u-turn. It constantly defies the traditional rom com journey, while allowing the characters to have an interesting connection.
Writer/director Nikole Beckwith has crafted a movie about a platonic relationship between a man and a woman, fringed with humour, melancholy and warmth. Helms brings his trademarked nerdy awkwardness to the role, expertly playing off Harrison’s more sardonic take on Anna. They are a compelling couple, even if they’re not actually a couple.
“Together Together” is a different take on “When Harry Met Sally,” providing an updated and rather sweet answer to that movie’s famous query, “Can men and women be friends or does sex always get in the way?”
Richard interviews Sean Anders, the director of “Instant Family.” Anders shares how he wanted to change the narrative when it comes to adoption and foster care.
More on Anders: He co-wrote and directed the 2005 film “Never Been Thawed,” the 2008 film “Sex Drive,” the 2014 film “Horrible Bosses 2,” the 2015 film “Daddy’s Home,” and its 2017 sequel “Daddy’s Home 2.” He also directed the 2012 comedy “That’s My Boy.”
Richard’s review of “Instant Family”: In future edition of your Funk & Wagnalls the entry for ‘heartfelt’ may well be illustrated with the poster for “Instant Family.” For better and for worse the new Mark Wahlberg film is an earnest and deeply felt look at adoption out of the foster care system.
Wahlberg and Rose Byrne are house flippers Pete and Ellie. Childless, they are forty-somethings with a well-appointed, orderly life. When the subject of kids comes up, raised by Ellie’s sister, Pete worries about being an ”old dad.” He jokes about adopting a five year old so “it will be like I got cracking when I was thirty-six years old.” That one off hand comment triggers something in Ellie who researches the stats on foster kids and is immediately inspired to help by welcoming children into their home. Pete isn’t as sure. “People who take foster kids are special,” he says. “The kind of people who volunteer when it isn’t even a holiday. We’re not that special.” Later, after looking at a website of photos of kids available for adoption he relents. “This is what we do,” he says, “fix things up. We’ll scrape off their emotional popcorn ceiling.”
The couple attend Foster Parent Classes run by social workers Karen (Octavia Spencer) and Sharon (Tig Notaro) and, when at a Child Fair they meet the forceful fifteen-year-old Lizzy (Isabela Moner) and her siblings, accident prone Juan (Gustavo Quiroz) and the sweet but screechy Lita (Julianna Gamiz). Drawn to them, Pete and Ellie knew their “cosmic connection” was much more than a hunch; that this group must somehow form a family. That’s the way we they became, well, not exactly the Brady bunch, but a family with all the good and bad that entails.
There are parts of “Instant Family” that will make you laugh and parts that will make you cry. Then there are the other parts. Director Sean Anders—who, in real life adopted three children from foster care—clearly cares about making a difference with this film. As the writer of “Hot Tub Time Machine” and “We’re the Millers” he’s comfortable with finding humour in situations, and he’s explored family dynamics in as the writer and director of “Daddy’s Home.” Here he adds in a third element, the Public Service Announcement.
Spencer and Notaro are tasked with delivering the cold hard facts and figures that shine a light on the difficulty of children in foster care, and they do the best they can with it, but early on it often feels as though you are reading an informational pamphlet from one of their Foster Parent Classes and not enjoying a family dramedy. Once past that you’re left with a pleasing story of a hard-earned connection between adoptive parents and their new kids.
“Instant Family’s” heart is in the right place and that goodwill goes a long way. The relationship between Wahlberg, Byrne and the kids isn’t all sunshine and roses. They have real problems and work through them by trail and error, sometimes with hilarious results, sometimes not. Either way they feel universal—every parent has had to calm a tantrum in public, etc—even though the story is very specific.
In future edition of your Funk & Wagnalls the entry for ‘heartfelt’ may well be illustrated with the poster for “Instant Family.” For better and for worse the new Mark Wahlberg film is an earnest and deeply felt look at adoption out of the foster care system.
Wahlberg and Rose Byrne are house flippers Pete and Ellie. Childless, they are forty-somethings with a well-appointed, orderly life. When the subject of kids comes up, raised by Ellie’s sister, Pete worries about being an ”old dad.” He jokes about adopting a five year old so “it will be like I got cracking when I was thirty-six years old.” That one off hand comment triggers something in Ellie who researches the stats on foster kids and is immediately inspired to help by welcoming children into their home. Pete isn’t as sure. “People who take foster kids are special,” he says. “The kind of people who volunteer when it isn’t even a holiday. We’re not that special.” Later, after looking at a website of photos of kids available for adoption he relents. “This is what we do,” he says, “fix things up. We’ll scrape off their emotional popcorn ceiling.”
The couple attend Foster Parent Classes run by social workers Karen (Octavia Spencer) and Sharon (Tig Notaro) and, when at a Child Fair they meet the forceful fifteen-year-old Lizzy (Isabela Moner) and her siblings, accident prone Juan (Gustavo Quiroz) and the sweet but screechy Lita (Julianna Gamiz). Drawn to them, Pete and Ellie knew their “cosmic connection” was much more than a hunch; that this group must somehow form a family. That’s the way we they became, well, not exactly the Brady bunch, but a family with all the good and bad that entails.
There are parts of “Instant Family” that will make you laugh and parts that will make you cry. Then there are the other parts. Director Sean Anders—who, in real life adopted three children from foster care—clearly cares about making a difference with this film. As the writer of “Hot Tub Time Machine” and “We’re the Millers” he’s comfortable with finding humour in situations, and he’s explored family dynamics in as the writer and director of “Daddy’s Home.” Here he adds in a third element, the Public Service Announcement.
Spencer and Notaro are tasked with delivering the cold hard facts and figures that shine a light on the difficulty of children in foster care, and they do the best they can with it, but early on it often feels as though you are reading an informational pamphlet from one of their Foster Parent Classes and not enjoying a family dramedy. Once past that you’re left with a pleasing story of a hard-earned connection between adoptive parents and their new kids.
“Instant Family’s” heart is in the right place and that goodwill goes a long way. The relationship between Wahlberg, Byrne and the kids isn’t all sunshine and roses. They have real problems and work through them by trail and error, sometimes with hilarious results, sometimes not. Either way they feel universal—every parent has had to calm a tantrum in public, etc—even though the story is very specific.
Richard sez… “Thanks to JFL 42 for giving me the best seat in the house for the In Conversations at Second City with Trevor Noah, Jim Jefferies, Tig Notaro and Sinbad. It was a blast. Insights were made, zingers were dropped and the audiences were entertained.”
