Posts Tagged ‘Vanessa Hudgens’

BAD BOYS RIDE OR DIE: 3 ½ STARS. “breathless back-and-forth is as funny as ever.”

LOGLINE: Detectives Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) become fugitives from the law when they are forced to bend the rules in their investigation into corruption in the Miami PD and their former captain’s (Joe Pantoliano) alleged involvement with the Romanian Mafia. “You’re my bad boys,” says Capt. Conrad Howard on a video. “Now clear my name.”

CAST: Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Vanessa Hudgens, Alexander Ludwig, Paola Núñez, Eric Dane, Ioan Gruffudd, Rhea Seehorn, Jacob Scipio, Melanie Liburd, Tasha Smith, Tiffany Haddish, Joe Pantoliano. Directed by Adil & Bilall

REVIEW: A classic odd couple, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, maintain the chemistry that has fueled this franchise for almost three decades, and “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” is all the better for it. They’ve slowed somewhat, but their breathless back-and-forth, usually while they’re under fire from all directions, is as sharp, and funny as ever.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that much of the movie feels like an exercise in nostalgia. The directorial style, courtesy of Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, pays homage to the frenetic style of original director Michael Bay. To reinforce their debt to the franchise’s former director, they even give Bay a quick cameo.

There’s nothing much fresh about “Bad Boys: Ride or Die.” Old characters are brought back (sometimes from the dead), the only thing more generic than the villain feels is the dialogue (eg: “You’re playing a game and don’t know the rules.”) and with the exception of a hungry, giant alligator, the peril is same old.

Cudos, however, to whoever came up with the idea of Smith taking a (Oscar) slap (or three) to the face in a scene that suggests he’s open to atonement for his mistreatment of Chris Rock.

“Bad Boys: Ride or Die” delivers what you expect from the franchise, which is a crowd-pleasing mix of action and comedy. The story may be implausible but the chemistry that drives it is completely tangible.

FRENCH GIRL: 2 ½ STARS. “leans heavily into the genre’s conventions.”

The Quebec-set “French Girl,” now playing in theatres, may be the only rom com to feature Mixed Martial Arts as a plot point. Other than that, it’s a standard romantic comedy, heavy on the romance but light on real comedy.

Zach Braff plays Gordon Kinski, a Brooklyn, New York born-and-raised high school English teacher, who has never wandered outside the neighborhood he was born into. He lives close to his eccentric writer father (William Fichtner) and teaches at the school he attended as a teen.

He’s forced out of his comfort zone when his live-in chef girlfriend Sophie (Evelyne Brochu) gets the chance to work in a fancy hotel kitchen, run by world-famous chef Ruby Collins (Vanessa Hudgens), in her Quebec City hometown.

Bags packed, he goes along for the ride. Trouble is, Gordon, a bundle of anxiety and insecurity, tries a little too hard to impress Sophie’s French-Canadian family. On top of that, unbeknownst to Gordon, Sophie and Ruby were once a couple, and the flame of attraction may still be burning.

The CanCon rom com “French Girl” is a fish-out-of-water story that leans heavily into the genre’s conventions. You know how it will end—if you don’t, give up your RomComCard—so it is important to make the journey to the end credits as entertaining as possible.

Braff does yeoman’s work bringing as much charm as possible to Gordon. His photo should be next to the word “neurosis” in the dictionary, and after a time, his ability to put his foot in his mouth becomes almost as tiering for the audience as it does for Sophie’s family.

Brochu, in a fairly thankless role, has good chemistry with Braff, but really shines when she is interacting with the members of her family.

Hudgens plays Ruby as a ruthless chef with a passion for perfection. It’s a stereotype straight out of “Hell’s Kitchen,” which might have had more impact if we actually saw her prepare some food, and not just dip her finger into a sauce with an unkind word on her lips and a sneer on her face.

Romantic comedies can be comforting in their cliches. Like a great meatloaf or mac ‘n’ cheese, they are unpretentious, don’t demand much and in return provide a warm happy feeing. “French Girl” has the comforting traits of the genre, but in the end is mostly empty calories.

RICHARD’S CTV NEWSCHANNEL REVIEWS FOR NOV. 26 WITH ANGIE SETH.

Richard joins CTV NewsChannel and anchor Angie Seth to have a look at new movies coming to VOD, streaming services and theatres including the wild Ron Perlman flick “This Game’s Called Murder,” the Netflix musical biopic “Tick, Tick… Boom,” the documentary “Brian Wilson, Long Promised Road” and the arthouse sequel “The Souvenir Part II.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

tick, tick … BOOM!: 4 STARS. “equal parts reverence and joy.”

Tailor made for fans of musical theatre, “tick, tick…BOOM!,” Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Netflix autobiographical musical about “Rent” composer Jonathan Larson, is a celebration of the creative process and the following of dreams.

“Everything you are about to see is true… except for the parts Jonathan made up.”

It’s January of 1990 and Larson (Andrew Garfield) is a wannabe composer, working at a restaurant to pay the bills. He’s also about to turn thirty. Older than Stephen Sondheim when he wrote his first musical. Older than Paul McCartney when he wrote his last song with John Lennon.

Eight years writing a futuristic rock musical “Suburbia,” a satire set in the future on a poisoned earth, he’s feeling the pressure to succeed. “I’m the future of musical theatre,” he says, but his girlfriend Susan (Alexandra Shipp) wants to leave New York and his best friend Michael (Robin de Jesús) gave up, leaving the stage for a job at an advertising company, making “high five figures.”

Jonathan is struggling to finish his musical in the days leading up to a workshop of the show before a select audience of Broadway luminaries. He’s broke and being pulled from many different sides, but confident. “When ‘Suburbia’ gets produced,” he says optimistically, “I will be getting paid for my music.”

In his personal life his friends and theatre colleagues are dying of AIDS. Professionally he’s distracted, struggling to finish the show, feeling anxiety at the passing of time and his failure to break through on Broadway.

“There’s not enough time,” he says. “Or maybe I’m just wasting my time. And the time keeps ticking, ticking, ticking and I have three days left to until the workshop. Three days left to write this song and if the song doesn’t work, the show doesn’t work. And then it has all been a waste of time.”

Larson’s preoccupation with time, about finding success and not being “a waiter with a hobby,” is made all the more poignant with the knowledge that he passed away at 1996, at the age of 36, on the day of “Rent’s” first Off-Broadway preview performance.

“tick, tick…BOOM!” is kind of meta. It’s a musical about another musical, wrapped up in a movie musical. It follows Larson through the workshop for “Suburbia,” the writing of the songs for the off-Broadway show that gave the movie its title and the experiences that lead to the writing of era-defining show “Rent.”

Music takes center stage, with exuberant performances of the song-and-dance number “No More,” he catchy “Boho Days” and the powerful “Come to Your Senses” and the heartbreaking “Real Life,” but this is a musical whose dramatic scenes aren’t simply links between the tunes. Garfield not only captures Larson’s angst, but his passion as well. This is a story of following a dream, and the mix of aspiration, determination and desperation in Garfield’s performance is palpable. His face as his agent Rosa (Judith Light) tells him, “You keep throwing them against the wall and eventually hope that something sticks,” encapsulates the realization that every creative person must face.

As good as Garfield is, the real stars of “tick, tick…BOOM!” are Larson and Lin-Manuel Miranda. The composer’s more obscure songs are given a deserving showcase and Miranda, brings Larson’s story to life with equal parts reverence and joy.

On a side note, the film, finished and released before the death of Stephen Sondheim, presents a warm tribute to the legendary composer, who offered support and grace to Larson when many others didn’t.

BAD BOYS FOR LIFE: 3 ½ STARS. “feels like a tribute to the Michael Bay films.”

The boys are back town.

Almost seventeen years after “Bad Boys II” Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) and Mike Lowrey (Will Smith), are longer in the tooth but still ready for some over-the-top action in a one-last-job movie. “I’ve never trusted anybody but you,” says Lowery says to Burnett in “Bad Boys for Life.” “I’m asking you, man. Bad Boys, one last time?”

Once “bad boys for life,” the team of Burnett and Lowrey is coming apart at the seams. Middle age and career aspirations have sent the once inseparable team in opposite directions. Burnett, now a grandfather, is one the edge of retirement—”Mike, we got more time behind us than in front,” he says.—while Lowery is still hungry for the adrenaline rush that comes with police work. “I’m going to be running down criminals till I’m a hundred,” he says.

Their lives have led them in different directions but when Armando Armas Tapia (Jacob Scipio), a drug kingpin and son of a man Burnett and Lowery took down years ago, resurfaces looking for vengeance, the two cops put the band back together. “Family is the only thing that matters,” Burnett says to Lowery. “I’m not letting you go on this suicide mission alone.”

“Bad Boys for Life” doesn’t feel so much like a sequel or a reboot as it does a tribute to the Michael Bay films of the o-so-many-years-ago. The patented “Bad Boys” high style feels like nostalgia for the 1990s when movie violence came with dark humor and buddy cop charisma. The story of a vengeful drug dealer is about as deep as a lunch try but directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, who have clearly worshiped at the altar of Bay, understand that the success or failure of a “Bad Boys” movie isn’t about the story but the sparks generated by Smith and Lawrence. The pair, now aged 51 and 54 respectively, fall back into their roles effortlessly, having some fun with their middle-aged selves. “Bad boys ain’t really boys anymore.”

One effectively staged scene compares and contrasts the partners and their stages of life. It’s a funny sequence that intercuts Lowery putting on his Ray Bans with a flourish while Burnett struggles to get his reading glasses on his face, etc. It’s a nice light show-me-don’t-tell-me scene that sets up the dynamic between the two.

The wild action scenes that follow tend toward orgiastic videogame style shootouts, particularly the climatic battle, but succeed because the CGI is kept to a minimum and the gunshots are punctuated by Lawrence’s quips.

“Bad Boys for Life” keeps the camera in constant motion, filling the screen with equal parts over-the-top violence and humour, breathing new life into a franchise that was declared dead when George W. Bush was still president.

SECOND ACT: 2 STARS. “story of second chances that won’t up to a second viewing.”

“Second Act,” starring Jennifer Lopez and Leah Remini, isn’t a startlingly novel idea. We’ve seen the story of a person who transcends class and education to change their lives in everything from “My Fair Lady” and “Working Girl” to Amy Schumer’s “I Feel Pretty” and Lopez’s 2002 rom com “Maid in Manhattan.” Part fairy tale, part study of   class discrimination, “Second Act” breathes new life into an old trope.

Lopez plays Maya, a New York supermarket clerk who, despite her keen work ethic, gets passed over for a promotion because the other candidate has a college degree and she doesn’t. “Arthur got his MBA from Duke,” she is told. “He’s the best man for the job.” Irritated, she grumbles to her friend Joan (Remini), “I just wish we lived in a world where street smarts equalled book smarts.”

To help in her job search Joan and computer whiz son Dilly (Dalton Harrod) fabricate a resume, pumping up Maya’s credentials to include a degree from Wharton Business School and special skills like mountain climbing and fluency in Mandarin. “I gave you a completely new identity,” Dilly says. “You said you wanted to be fancy, so I Cinderella’d your ass.”

The resume does the trick and she soon lands a job as a consultant for a large skin care company. Surviving on a combo of enthusiasm and street smarts she bluffs her way through despite opposition from the boss’s insecure daughter (Vanessa Hudgens).

Like a Successories poster come to life “Second Act” is an attractively photographed bit of uplift complete with handy dandy inspirational message. “Our mistakes don’t limit us, our fears do.” It’s also rather boring. After a promising start with some giggles provided by Remini’s razor sharp line delivery and some quirky work from Charlyne Yi, the predictable tale of second chances takes a sharp U-turn into melodrama and never recovers.

What might have been a tale of class designations washed down with a joke or two becomes an uncomfortable hybrid of a soap opera and fairy tale.

“Second Act” sees Lopez doing her best with a script that requires little more from her than sitting on the subway looking introspective. This story of second chances won’t hold up to a second viewing.

DOG DAYS: 1 ½ STARS. “you may wonder, not who, but why let the dogs out?”

In the dog days of summer comes “Dog Days,” starring a cast of folks including Vanessa Hudgens, “Stranger Things’s” Finn Wolfhard and Eva Longoria brought together by their canines. Expect bastardized cover versions of pooch songs like “Walking the Dog” and “Who Let the Dogs Out?” and more easy sentimentality than you can shake a dog bone at.

Set in modern day Los Angeles the story follows a litter of characters. There’s the host of a TV morning show (Nina Dobrev), her co-host (Tone Bell), a dog rescue owner (Jon Bass) with eyes for a barista (Hudgens) who has a crush on the vet next door (Michael Cassidy). That should be enough, but there’s also a couple (Thomas Lennon and Jessica St. Clair) who leave their unruly dog in the care of her even more unruly brother (Adam Pally) while another family (Longoria and David Cross) whose family is completed by a stray. Meanwhile, in another part of town, an elderly man (Ron Cephas Jones) and his pizza delivery boy (Wolfhard) bond over the love of a pug. Eventually, everyone finds either love or a sense of purpose or both through their dogs.

“Dog Days” is so predictable it’s as if the studio forced a bot to watch hundreds of hours of rom coms and Garry Marshal movies and then sat back as the machine spit out a script based on all the data. Beat for beat it telegraphs what is coming next as though any deviation from the form will result in a case of ringworm.

On the plus side, the dogs in “Dog Days” do not speak. If they could, they might say things like, “Call my agent! What am I doing in a movie as bad as this?”

You will not be bow-wowed by “Dog Days.” Instead you may wonder, not who, but why let the dogs out?

BANDSLAM: 3 STARS

Bandslam is three-quarters of an entertaining movie. It’s too long and has three too many dead spots, but given the low expectations I had going in to see a rock and roll high school fable headlined by two Disney stars, I was pleasantly surprised. It’s not a complete waste of time and the Bowie songs on the soundtrack rock.

At the beginning of the film Will Burton (Gaelan Connell) is a loner with a David Bowie fixation. His high school career has been spent either being bullied or ignored by his classmates and his long e-mails to Bowie’s fan site are the only thing that keeps him on an even keel. When he moves to a new school in a new state it looks like it will be same old until he meets Charlotte Banks (Aly Michalka) and romantic interest Sa5m (Vanessa Hudgens), two classmates who recognize that he has something to offer. Charlotte asks him to manage the band she wants to enter in Bandslam, the annual battle of the bands. How popular is the event? “It’s like Texas High School Football big,” says one character. Charlotte is determined to beat her ex-boyfriend’s band and Will is the kind of Phil Spector musical wiz kid that might be able to give her the edge.

Bandslam is part Disney show, part Monkees, part music video and part Mickey and Judy. There’s a lot going on here, and not all of it is good, but the stuff that is good is worth a peek.

First the bad. Bandslam is half-an-hour too long. Some montage chopping would have worked wonders to bring down the occasionally bordering-on-torturous hour and fifty minute running time. The end could have been tightened up considerably. The battle of the bands sequence drags on and on and not only does it feel extended, the bands look far too old and far too slick to be high school students.

Next is the music. Early on the soundtrack rocks; nicely selected cuts by Bowie, The Velvet Underground and Nick Drake are unexpected and ear friendly, and even one of the fictional band’s tunes called Amphetamine tunes it up to eleven, but as time wears on the music begins to sound a bit too Tin Pan Alley for a rock flick.

There is also a tone problem and I don’t mean as in pitch. The movie can’t seem to decide whether it wants to be a Disney movie or a teen indie flick with a good soundtrack. It often has the attitude and look of an indie but careens into Disney land when it over sentimentalizes the kiddie romance. The mushy stuff is a little too Mickey Mouse, not enough Bowie.

Having said all that I have to point out that most times when the movie begins to slip into cliché and cheese it rights itself with a snappy line or an unexpected plot twist.

Add to that a very appealing performance by newcomer Gaelan Connell as outcast Will and you have a movie that I was determined to hate but couldn’t. Bandslam is a surprisingly fun little music movie that is just a couple of notes away from being completely in tune.

BEASTLY: 2 STARS: 2 STARS

“Beauty and the Beast” has been adapted many times. There‘s the famous Disney animated account, a Viking version and even a werewolf retelling but the new Vanessa Hudgens film, “Beastly,” places the story of not judging a book by its cover where it belongs, in the most judgmental place on earth—high school.

Based on Alex Flinn’s 2007 teen romance novel of the same name, “Beastly” stars Brit heartthrob Alex Pettyfer as Kyle Kingson, a wealthy high school senior with a nasty streak. When he disses a teen witch (billionaire fashionista Mary Kate Olsen) at a school function she casts a spell on him that makes him “as aggressively unattractive on the outside as he is on the inside.” Transformed into a half-human, half-“Enemy Mine” looking creature with Mike Tyson-esque facial tattoos, beastly Kyle is given one year to find his beauty, a true love, or he will look that way forever. Enter Lindy (Vanessa Hudgens), a girl from the wrong side of the tracks who might be able to help him break the spell.

The early 2000s may go down as the heyday of the human – supernatural teen romance movie. Vampires, werewolves, aliens and, well, whatever Kyle is, as the otherworldly Casanovas in movies like “Twilight,” “I Am Number Four,” and now “Beastly,” are perfect analogies for the way that many disaffected teens feel in high school, but honestly, what happened to girls who fell for the school’s quarterback? Catching a ball isn’t angsty enough anymore I guess.

“Beastly,” however, has a corner on the teen angst that makes up much of young adult entertainment these days. In one scene Kyle deactivates a social networking site with the words, “I am no more.”  It isn’t until he takes guidance from a flamboyant tutor (Neil Patrick Harris) who leaves the readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmatic to the eggheads and focuses on teaching his student about being a decent human being that Kyle begins to understand that life “isn’t about how others see you, it’s about how you see yourself.”

Good messages in an uneven movie that has some very effective moments early on but gets more ridiculous as the credits approach.

Hudgens is a likeable leading lady and Neil Patrick Harris tries to insert some spark into the proceedings, but the Beast’s new tribal make-up is rather silly and his transformation from Alex Pettyfer to Alex Prettyfer isn’t a big enough payoff to have any real emotional impact.