“Mean Girls” returns to theatres with some fetch songs and performances in a new version that updates the story of high school cliques and comeuppance for a new generation.
Angourie Rice plays teenager Cady Heron, the role made famous by Lindsay Lohan in the original film. Homeschooled in Kenya by her zoologist mother (Jenna Fischer), she experiences culture shock when thrown into the wilds of the North Shore High School in suburban Illinois. Helping her to navigate the school’s treacherous social structure are Janis ‘Imi’ike (Auliʻi Cravalho) and Damian Hubbard (Jaquel Spivey), who also serve as the story’s narrators.
They tell her about the school’s various cliques, the theatre kids, the Matheletes, the stoners and, Regina George (Reneé Rapp) and sycophants Gretchen (Bebe Wood) and Karen (Avantika), the popular girls known as the Plastics, because they’re “shiny, fake and hard.”
Regina is the undisputed leader of the group, a sharp-tongued meanie (“Her love language is anger,” says Gretchen.) who sings, “I am a massive deal. I will grind you to sand, beneath my Louboutin heel.” The Plastics embrace the unassuming Cady, inviting her to join their group. “You could be really hot,” says Regina, “if you change, like, everything.”
Just as Cady is getting tight with her new friends, she falls head-over-heels for Aaron (Christopher Briney), the cute boy who sits in front of her in calculus class. “I’m astounded and non-plussed,” she sings. “I am filled with calcu-lust.”
Trouble is, Aaron is Regina’s ex, and, as such, makes Cady a target for the full fury of the school’s apex predator. With the help of Janis and Damian, Cady launches a preemptive strike to unseat Regina as high school queen bee, but soon realizes she has become just like her enemy.
The new musical “Mean Girls,” and it is very much a musical despite what the talky trailers suggest, holds up well in comparison to the classic, original film. Many of the same elements appear. Tina Fey and Tim Meadows both reprise their roles, the Burn Book is a key plot element and the hierarchy of high school life is very clearly and effectively defined. What’s different are the updates in the film’s deft handling of diversity, the open discussions of sexuality and, of course, the showtunes.
The songs are nicely integrated into the story. Co-directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. find a balance between the stage and the screen, blending highly stylized dance moves straight out of Broadway with a cinematic, and occasionally, even social media spin on the cinematography and choreography. That, mixed with an enthusiastic theatre kids vibe, allows the songs to forward the story, act as the inner thoughts of the characters and give Janis and Damian some tuneful narration opportunities.
Standouts include Rapp, who recreates the role from the original Broadway run, and Cravalho, best known for providing the voice of the title character in Disney’s “Moana.” Both deliver powerhouse performances, although Avantika’s spirited rendition of the Halloween tune “Sexy” is probably the film’s most memorable number.
“Mean Girls,” from its beginnings as Rosalind Wiseman’s 2002 book “Queen Bees and Wannabes,” through to Tina Fey’s film and stage adaptation, connected with audiences because of its authentic portrayal of high school life. The new version, adds more than just songs to the source material. It’s a joyful celebration of self-respect, anti-bullying and even the importance of STEM-based education. It has plenty of Easter Eggs for fans of the first film but has plenty to offer to all fans, old and new.
After a short break caused by COVID, Kenneth Branagh’s handsome Agatha Christie adaptations, “Murder on the Orient Express,” “Death on the Nile” and now “A Haunting in Venice,” have become an annual tradition. Like fruit cake at Christmas, or those Halloween Molasses Kisses that stick to everything they come in contact with, the movies are a sweet treat, but are quickly forgotten.
Branagh returns as both director and elaborately mustachioed detective Hercule Poirot. When we first see the world’s best, and most famous sleuth, he is in self-exile in Venice, living alone with only his bodyguard (Riccardo Scamarcio) for company and as protection from the crime groupies that pester him when he leaves the house.
He is burned out, tired of staring into the abyss of the worst of human behavior. Instead, he passes his time ensconced on his rooftop patio, enjoying the sun and the best pastries Venice has to offer.
His idyll is interrupted when an old friend, possibly his only friend, Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey) drops by. She is the author of a string of detective novels based on Poirot’s exploits, and has a case she thinks will lure him out of retirement.
She convinces him to attend a Halloween night seance at the allegedly haunted palazzo of Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly), a mother grieving the tragic death of her daughter Alicia. The detective, a man of science, is skeptical, but agrees to attend, if only to expose the proceedings as fakery.
When people start dying, Poirot’s instincts kick in as he sorts through the red herrings, ghostly happenings and the backgrounds of each guest, including the pious housekeeper Olga Seminoff (Camille Cottin), the shell-shocked Dr. Leslie Ferrier (Jamie Dornan) and his precocious son Leopold (Jude Hill) and psychic medium Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh), to get to the bottom of the case. “There have been two impossible murders,” he says, “as if the living have been killed by the dead. No one shall leave this place until I know who did it.”
“A Haunting in Venice” is the most gothic of Branagh’s Christie adaptations. Tilted camera angles and extreme close-ups lend a claustrophobic, and welcome weird vibe to the murder mystery. Add to that some jump scares and hallucinogenic imagery, and you get the jitteriest of Branagh’s Christie films. The rest of it, from the stunt casting to the big reveal at the end, feel more familiar, like ghostly spectres left over from the other films.
Branagh directs and performs with vigor, but the mechanics of the investigation sap much of the film’s energy and tension. Despite good performances— Cottin and Yeoh are standouts—the talky nature of Poirot’s interrogations, even when broken up by slick editing and inventive photography, slow the movie’s pace to a crawl.
Worse, the cross examinations don’t reveal much in the way of usable clues for the audience. One of the treats of a murder mystery as a viewer is the opportunity to follow along, to arrive at a conclusion based on the information provided. “A Haunting in Venice” cobbles together a series of clues, obvious only to Poirot and screenwriter Michael Green. It feels like a cheat when the great detective reveals an arcane fact not even hinted at in the narrative.
“A Haunting in Venice” is a beautiful looking film, with exquisite, gothic production design and some fun performances, but as a thriller, it feels as lifeless as one of the movie’s murder victims.
“For Madmen Only: The Stories of Del Close,” a new documentary now on VOD, is about the best-known funny man you’ve probably never heard of. Tina Fey says he taught her to be bold in life. Mike Myers says he learned the connection between comedy and bigger ideas from him and Robin Williams campaigns for a Church of Del. Del Close is called a living legend by Amy Poehler and yet, as the movie says, this Zelig of comedy has the same name recognition as a third-tier fast food chain.
As one of the pioneers of a new kind of theatre called improvisational comedy Close, along with a handful of others like Elaine May (who close calls a supernatural figure) and Mike Nichols, created the form and the rules of performing comedy without a net. Some were intellectual. “Always work at the top of your intelligence,” and “Don’t deny, respect the other person’s reality.” Others practical. “Remember where the object are,” and “Don’t do mime.” Most important of all, “You’re not locked into this like an actor with a script.”
Using recorded interviews with Close, who died of emphysema at age 64 in 1999, and newer interviews with many of his friends and students, like the names I listed above and Tim Meadows, George Wendt, Bob Odenkirk among others, plus recreations, (which have a “Closeness” about them because director Heather Ross based on Close’s autobiographical comic “Wasteland”), and archival footage and photographs, a story emerges of a self-destructive rebel who put human nature onstage in an attempt to explore why we behave the way we do.
By the end of the film, it’s a portrait of a complicated man whose window into human nature was both a gift and a curse. He was, as Dave Thomas describes him, “a delicate basket of eggs destined to break at any moment.” He was brilliant, but as Adam McKay points out, also a “bit of a baby sometimes.”
What remains is his pioneering work teaching improv (with a big leg up from Charna Halpern). His “Harold” teaching method, the structure used in longform improvisational theatre, is both rigid—there are a set of strict rules—but also freeing in a way that made his students, as Myers says, “get in touch with their higher selves.”
“You have a light within you,” he would tell them. “Burn it out.”
You can draw a straight line from Close to most folks who have made you laugh in the last thirty years. He was a guru, who never reaped the rewards or the recognition many of his students enjoyed but the film aims to correct the latter.
As often happens in biographies, the legend sometimes looms larger than life. Did he really give L. Ron Hubbard the idea to start a religion to circumvent taxes? Did he really volunteer to have his dreams monitored by the US government while high on LSD, leave the project early and then sent a letter saying he owed the government one more dream?
Who knows? They’re good stories though. Fact and fiction, it seems are the two sides of the coin that inform the legend of Del Close.
Like life itself, “Soul,” the new Pixar film now streaming on Disney+, is a messy and chaotic affair; a big bang where the physical and metaphysical collide.
“Soul’s” afterlife adventures begin on an earthbound plane. Joe Gardener (Jamie Foxx) is a seventh-grade music teacher who gets the big break he’s always dreamt of when he aces an audition to play piano in the band of a legendary jazz saxophonist (Angela Bassett). “Music is all I think about,” he says. “From the moment I wake up in the morning. To the moment I fall asleep at night. I was born to play. It’s my reason for living.”
He leaves the club on cloud nine, not knowing that he would soon, literally, be on cloud nine. On his way home he falls in a manhole. Knocked out, his soul separated from his body, he enters The Great Before, a strange and serene place where his spectral being—imagine Casper the Friendly ghost with a fedora and glasses—is greeted by The Counselors. They run the joint, and assign Joe to mentor a rambunctious yet-to-be-born soul called 22 (Tina Fey). “I’ve had thousands of mentors who have failed,” 22 says, “and now hate me.” Joe’s job is to find the spark, the missing part of 22’s personality, that will complete her as a person. “You can’t crush a soul here,” 22 tells Joe. “That’s what life on earth is for.”
The next step is a big one. The odd couple dive into the astral plane, plummet toward earth where 22 winds up in Joe’s body as Joe takes the form of the therapy cat assigned to his comatose body by the hospital. Trapped in the wrong bodies, the pair set off to discover the meaning of life.
Like the jazz music that dots the score, “Soul” is free-form, inventive and sometimes just a little hard to understand. It’s an existential riff on a buddy comedy. Or maybe “Freaky Friday” as directed by Frank Capra. Either way, it has a lot on its mind although it never digs too deep. Ultimately the ethereal action boils down to a simple message of mindfulness, of being aware of the simple joy life offers.
Along the way you have an imaginatively animated movie, earnest in its storytelling, laden with interesting details and nice voice work from Foxx, Pixar’s first African-American lead and Fey, who gives 22 a sardonic but philosophical edge.
Despite typical cartoony touches, like a toffee-nosed accountant soul and some feline slapstick, “Soul” is a life-affirming, poignant look at what it means to be human.
Amy Poehler’s feature directorial debut, “Wine Country,” is the story of friends brought together for a birthday but it is also a real-life comedy reunion. Poehler and co-stars Tina Fey, Maya Rudolph, Ana Gasteyer and Rachel Dratch made their comedy bones on “Saturday Night Live” and reunite now in an ode to female friendship.
Poehler plays Abby, the under-employed a-type organizer of a Napa getaway for her therapist friend Rebecca’s (Dratch) 50th birthday. “I want this to feel like a regular vacation,” says Rebecca. “We’ll sit around, talk, wear muumuus and somewhere in there I’ll slide into 50.” Of course, it won’t be that simple. Abby’s perfectionism, not to mention her minute-by-minute itinerary, doesn’t sit well with the others who have their own issues. Entrepreneur Catherine (Gasteyer) is a workaholic, always checking her cell phone. “Life’s a juggle,” she says. Jenny (Emily Spivey, who also co-wrote the script) is agoraphobic and doesn’t want to leave her room while mother of four Naomi (Rudolph) is avoiding her doctor’s phone calls and Val is involved with a much younger woman.
They came together to rest, relax and reconnect but as the weekend progresses the words of Tammy, owner of their Airbnb appear to come true. “Just remember,” says Tammy (Fey), “whatever gets said is probably what the person has always thought and alcohol just let it out.”
Before it gets to its ultimate “it’s later than you think” message “Wine Country” is a charming collection of physical humour—it’s always funny when somebody falls down—mom jokes—“I thought MDMA was that extreme fighting where they do cocaine and fight,” says Val.—and some very specific in-jokes—“Life is too short to wait for the paella.”
Poehler plays much of this for laughs but doesn’t forget to create memorable moments. A long close-up on Abby’s face as she makes a decision is both funny and telling of her state of mind. The bickering between the friends as secrets come to light has a delicate touch but underneath the gags are real insights about the life events that drive wedges between lifelong besties. Light but heartfelt, it’s a celebration of adult female friendship in all its forms from Naomi’s enthusiastic “let’s party till our panties fly off” call to arms to the film’s more tender moments.
“Wine Country” is at its best when it showcases the chemistry of the performers. Pop psychology and pratfalls aside, it’s great fun to spend time with these women as they figure out their lives and relationships.
“To be a good journalist you have to be a bit of a chameleon,” says Kim Barker. “You have to be accepting of different cultures, different languages and different situations. I have always been the kind of person who feels like they can go into any situation and fit in.”
In real life, Barker is a journalist who worked at the Chicago Tribune as a reporter and volunteered to become a foreign correspondent in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In reel life, she’s played by Tina Fey in Whiskey Tango Foxtrot as an expatriate television journalist addicted to the rush of living and working in a war zone.
Whiskey Foxtrot Tango plays like Animal House with warlords, or maybe Fear and Loathing in Afghanistan, but Barker describes the reality of her time there in more poetic terms.
“In Afghanistan everything looks like a picture,” says Barker. “Everything is so beautiful. The people are beautiful. The landscape is beautiful. You are surrounded by mountains when you’re in Kabul. (The people) are very friendly, very direct with very good sense of humour. Also Afghanistan has men with long beards and pick up trucks and guns who hate the government. That is familiar to me. I grew up in Montana.”
At the beginning of her time abroad Barker was a fish out of water but soon learned to culturally adapt and love the country.
“I remember on my second trip there meeting a guy who asked if I wanted to go fishing with him. I grew up fishing but fishing in Afghanistan is a little bit different because it usually involved throwing a grenade into the lake and stunning the fish or blowing them out of the water or using generator wires to electrocute them. That just doesn’t seem very sporting to me.”
Barker’s book, The Taliban Shuffle came to Tina Fey shortly after a New York Times review mentioned Barker’s similarity to the comedic actress.
“Tina Fey saw it,” Barker says. “I think her people probably showed it to her or my people. I don’t really have people but my agent sent it over to her people. She read the book and within two weeks of that review coming out she pushed Paramount and Lorne Michaels (who produced the movie) to option the book and make it into a movie.
“(People) said, ‘Who’s going to play you?’ I said, ‘A smart funny woman in Hollywood,’ and everybody was like, ‘Tina Fey?’ It was everybody’s first answer.”
Barker describes having her life turned into a film as surreal.
“It’s hard to even think about,” she says, “people seeing this in a theatre. They are going to equate me with Kim Barker even though (that) Kim Barker is a version of me. It’s fictionalized.”
She says the film screenwriter Robert Carlock told her early on that they would have to “Hollywood this up.” Changes to the basic story were made, and when they sent her a final copy of the script in 2014 she couldn’t bring herself to read it. Finally her best friend read the script “to make sure it is not going to embarrass you.”
“She read it and said, ‘It’s fine. It’s good. It’s really good. You’re probably not going to like parts of it because it makes you seem more heroic than you think of yourself.’ She was absolutely right. I’m not that brave.”
Kim Baker (Tina Fey playing the real life Kim Barker) needed to turn her life upside down. “I wanted out of my job,” she says in the new black comedy “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. “I wanted out of my mildly depressive boyfriend. I wanted to blow everything up.” And blow everything up she did… as bombs blew up around her.
When we first meet Baker she’s a New York City based cable-news journalist tiring of “writing copy for pretty people.” Eager for a change, both personally and professionally, she agrees to a three-month stint as a war correspondent in Kabul, Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. The “Ka-bubble,” the alcohol-fuelled world populated by expatriate journos and media types, soon seduces her and she becomes addicted to the rush of living and working in a war zone. Her three-month assignment stretches to four years as she begins a relationship with a charming Scottish photographer (Martin Freeman) and chases that elusive one big story.
Question is, when will she go home? Answer: When it all starts to feel normal.
“Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” breathes the same satiric air as “M*A*S*H” and “Catch 22,” but never rises to the level of social commentary attained in either of those films. There are as many jokes about Baker’s appearance—she is, apparently “Kabul Cute”—as there are about the war. It sidesteps any direct political stance. Instead it’s simply content to make the point that outsiders will never have a bead on how to fix the problems in this part of the world. “This war is like [making love to] a gorilla,” says US Marine Corps Col. Hollanek (Billy Bob Thornton). “You keep on going until the gorilla wants to stop.” It’s not a revolutionary idea but it is brought to vivid life as seen through Barker’s eyes.
The film is being billed as a comedy but it’s not always laugh-out-loud-funny. The jokes are styled to add to the atmosphere—Kabul international Airport, for instance, is referred to as K.I.A., which is also an acronym for “Killed In Action.”—which sits squarely in Tina Fey’s wheelhouse. She plays Baker as a mostly bemused—and frequently hung over—presence, able to keep the funny bits believable while bringing enough emotional heft to sell the serious parts.
“Whiskey Foxtrot Tango” is kind of like “Animal House” with warlords, or maybe, “Fear and Loathing in Afghanistan.” When it is firing on all cylinders, it hits its satirical mark—“Hearts and minds,” says one soldier, “the two best places to shoot somebody.”—but spends most of its running time elsewhere on Barker’s personal journey.
Tina Fey and Amy Poehler have such great chemistry together it’s almost as if they’re sisters from different misters. I guess that’s why their new movie, “Sisters” feels like a natural fit. Seeing the pair together it feels inevitable that one day they would move beyond sharing the stage at award shows and on to playing siblings.
They play Jane and Maura Ellis, middle-aged sisters at different places in their lives. Jane is a single mom who can’t hold on to a job. Maura is a nurse who always tries to help people… even if they don’t want her help.
When their parents (Dianne Wiest and James Brolin) decide to simplify their life, sell the family home and move into a senior’s complex in Orlando, the girls are called home to clean out their rooms. Being in the house dredges up memories of the past so they decide to revisit their glory days by throwing one last blow out before they turn the house over to the new owners.
“Sisters” feels a bit like a “Saturday Night Live” reunion. Ex-SNLers Maya Rudolph, Kate McKinnon, Rachel Dratch and Bobby Moynihan all make appearances in a movie that has about as much story as the average SNL skit. The laughs are there, particular when the action heats up midway, but “The Blind Assassin” this ain’t. It’s a simple comedic premise squeezed for giggles by a likeable cast.
At the helm of “Sisters” are Fey and Poehler, comic actors who play the material broadly but still manage to ground Jane and Maura in reality. On the other hand Moynihan goes full bore into a part Chris Farley might have played and while the movie is more fun when the cast run out of control, it’s Fey and Poehler’s rare quiet moments that humanize the story.
“Monkey Kingdom,” the new film from Disneynature, begins with “(Theme from) The Monkees” on the soundtrack. The actual monkeys in the film—a tribe of toque macaques—however, don’t sing, but they do monkey around.
This time Mark Linfield and Alastair Fothergill, the co-directors of Disneynature’s “Earth” and “Chimpanzee” show us a family of monkeys living in ancient ruins in the jungles of Polonnaruwa in Sri Lanka. It’s a complex society built around the hierarchy of the stone structure and a tree. Those at the top, like alpha male Raja, enjoy blazing sunlight and all the ripe fruit they can eat. Like a feudal lord Raja carefully guards his place and the rank of the other “high-borns” from interlopers.
Under him are “the sisterhood,” red-faced (not embarrassed monkeys, they are literally red-faced) moms and aunties who are the next in charge. “These ladies get what they want,” says narrator Tina Fey. They are brutal and uncompromising. Think “The Walking Dead’s” Carol and you get the idea.
In this world a jackfruit isn’t just food, it’s a political tool used to assert prominence and humiliate underlings.
Born at the bottom of the tree, figuratively and literally, is Maya, a “low-born” toque macaque and single mom of Kip. Like a simian Kitty Foyle all she wants is to make a better life for herself and move up the social ladder. When a warring clan overruns their home Raja and company are forced to leave and relocate in a nearby city. Urban life stands in stark contrast to the rural kingdom they left behind, but it is here Maya thrives and improves her standing in the macaque community.
A mix of education and entertainment, “Monkey Kingdom” is filled with useful information, beautiful imagery and ape anecdotes. Fey’s narration blends learning with light-hearted joshing—like a parent reading a picture book to a child—and images guaranteed to appeal to up younger viewers. Is there anything cuter than a snoring monkey? I’ll answer that for you. No there isn’t, and I’m sure your kids will agree. The voice over occasionally tries a bit too hard—describing Maya’s mate as “fifteen pounds of hunky monkey” is too cute by half—but as a vocal tour guide to the story Fey is an agreeable presence.
“Monkey Kingdom” does feature some mild “circle of life” scenes but focuses most of its kid-friendly 77 minute running time on the familial lifestyle and complicated relationships of these fascinating creatures.
