The Movie Cricket

Movie reviews by Sean P. Means.

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In “Bruised,” Halle Berry, right, who directed, plays Jackie Justice, an MMA fighter seeking a comeback in a match with the champ, called “Lady Killer” (Valentina Schevchenko). (Photo by John Baer, courtesy of Netflix.)

Review: In 'Bruised,' Halle Berry's performance as a grizzled MMA fighter is the best thing in her uneven directing debut

November 22, 2021 by Sean P. Means

In “Bruised,” Halle Berry has finally found a director who can challenge her, to push her to a performance that rivals her Oscar-winning work in “Monster’s Ball” 20 years ago — and that director’s name is (checks notes) Halle Berry.

Berry plays Jackie Justice, an MMA fighter who once had a promising career, with 10 wins and no losses before a catastrophic fight where she climbed out of the ring. As the movie begins, Jackie is cleaning rich people’s houses, and living with her abusive boyfriend/manager, Desi (Adan Canto), hiding booze in a spray bottle under the sink. 

As her life is hitting rock bottom, two things re-enter her life. One is Manny (Danny Boyd Jr.), the child she gave up as a baby, who’s back because his daddy was killed. The other is a shot at returning to the UFC, the main league for MMA fighters, thanks to a charismatic promoter, Immaculate (Shamier Anderson), who wants to sign Jackie for a shot at the flyweight champ.

Jackie works to juggle caring for Manny while committing to sparring sessions with Immaculate’s top trainer, Buddhakan (Sheila Atim). Dealing with both forces Jackie to examine the worst parts of her life — namely, her arrangement with Desi and her relationship with her mother, Angel (Adriane Lenox). She quickly realizes that what’s most important is protecting Manny, who, like Jackie, has seen his share of trauma in his six years on this planet.

In her directing debut, Berry shows she can place a camera well and let scenes play out for maximum dramatic impact — particularly in the climactic fight scene, which is expertly staged. Berry also has an eye for casting, particularly in picking Atim, a Ugandan-born British actor whose striking beauty and dramatic intensity suggest big things in her future.

The weak link is the script, by rookie screenwriter Michelle Rosenfarb, which recycles every boxing and child cliche this side of Wallace Beery in “The Champ” (1931), as well as every poverty and addiction trope a semi-knowledgeable movie buff can recognize.

The best thing about “Bruised” is that Berry, deglamorizing herself to show the bumps and cuts of being an MMA fighter, delivers a performance that’s powerful both in its physicality and its emotional impact. It will be fascinating to see what Berry’s got up her sleeve for her follow-up.

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‘Bruised’

★★1/2

Opened Wednesday, November 17, in theaters; available for streaming Wednesday, November 24, on Netflix. Rated R for pervasive language, some sexual content/nudity and violence. Running time: 129 minutes.

November 22, 2021 /Sean P. Means
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Lady Gaga plays Patrizia Reggiani, who marries into wealth and power and wants more, in “House of Gucci.” (Photo courtesy of Metro Goldwyn Mayer.)

Review: 'House of Gucci' is trashy and campy, with a larger-than-life central performance by Lady Gaga

November 22, 2021 by Sean P. Means

Like the knockoff merchandise by which most people know the brand, director Ridley Scott’s “House of Gucci” is a gaudy, garish, tasteless exercise in excess — and, yet, I can’t say I wasn’t entertained.

There’s a lot to be said for camp value, and Lady Gaga’s central performance delivers that by the truckload. In this based-on-a-true-story crime drama, Lady G plays Patrizia Reggiani, who is introduced here in Milan, 1978, as an accountant for her father’s trucking firm. Patrizia aims for the good life, though, which is why she and a friend are at a ritzy party where she meets Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver), a member of the family behind the Gucci fashion label.

Patrizia and Maurizio fall in love, but his father, Rodolfo (Jeremy Irons), is suspicious of anyone from the lower classes circling around the family fortune. But Patrizia charms the old man, while also consulting a TV psychic, Pina Auriemma (Salma Hayek), who provides pearls of encouragement about following her heart and making good things come to her.

Rodolfo runs Gucci with his brother, Aldo (Al Pacino), whose main contribution to the business is slapping the company’s double-G logo on coffee mugs and other cheap merchandise. When Rodolfo dies, Aldo encourages Maurizio to be his second-in-command — bypassing Aldo’s buffoon of a son, Paolo, played by Jared Leto under a ton of prosthetics. Paolo fancies himself a fashion designer, though his designs are so garish that Aldo fears they would ruin the Gucci reputation.

Maurizio isn’t a strong business leader, and Patrizia is quick to fill the managerial vacuum. Soon, Patrizia is appealing to Paolo’s vanity to trap him into selling his share of the family’s stock — a power play that puts her and Maurizio in firm control of the company. That’s the first of many twists of the tale, in a story that includes infidelity, divorce, bankruptcy, double-dealing and, eventually, a murder.

Scott, on the heels of his powerful medieval drama “The Last Duel,” goes over the top through much of “House of Gucci,” with every plot point and ‘80s needle drop coming together like an 18-car pile-up. The script — by Becky Johnston (“The Prince of Tides”) and Roberto Bentivegna (his first screenplay credit), adapting Sara Gay Forden’s book on the case — dances perilously close to comedy, a parody of “The Godfather” where every man in the Corleone family is a Fredo.

Driver gives a solid, understated performance, which means he’s completely lost amid this gaggle of scenery chewers. It says a lot when Pacino doesn’t give the biggest, hammiest performance in a movie, but he wasn’t conjuring with Leto pulling out the stops to play the balding, heavy-set Paolo with the aid of a talented make-up team and a series of ugly track suits.

Gaga, in her first leading role since her breakout turn in “A Star Is Born,” struggles with finding the humanity in the cartoonish depiction of Patrizia, as she cycles through several of the deadly sins — lust, avarice, envy, pride and wrath — largely unchecked. Clearly Scott has told Gaga to go big or go home, and she goes big in every scene, until the law of diminishing returns takes her and the movie down. But it’s a wild ride along the way.

——

‘House of Gucci’

★★1/2

Opens Wednesday, November 24, in theaters. Rated R for language, some sexual content, and brief nudity and violence. Running time: 157 minutes.

November 22, 2021 /Sean P. Means
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Pre-teen Phoebe (McKenna Grace, right), aided by her friend Podcast (Logan Kim), tries out her late grandfather’s proton pack, in “Ghostbusters: Afterlife.” (Photo courtesy of Sony / Columbia Pictures.)

Review: 'Ghostbusters: Afterlife' is too haunted by its franchise's history, and its fans' limited imaginations, to deliver anything truly exciting

November 17, 2021 by Sean P. Means

I can pinpoint the exact moment when I gave up on “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” when I knew that director Jason Reitman had no intention of creating something original within the universe begun with his dad Ivan’s 1984 action comedy.

I’d say “spoiler alert” here, but it’s hard to spoil a moment that’s the focus of the movie’s marketing campaign. It’s the moment where They show up — and you know exactly who They are, because everything that Jason Reitman and his co-screenwriter, Gil Kenan, have laid in place sets us up for when They enter the picture.

It’s too bad, because the idea that starts this film showed the promise of taking the familiar franchise in an interesting direction — just as intriguing as director Paul Feig’s unfairly maligned 2016 variation, and with as much potential for laughs and excitement.

Callie (Carrie Coon) is a single mom with two sharp kids — perpetually mortified 15-year-old Trevor (Finn Wolfhard), and 12-year-old science nerd Phoebe (McKenna Grace). The family is broke, and their last hope is an inheritance from Callie’s estranged and now deceased father: A dilapidated farm in the middle of nowhere in Oklahoma. We are not supposed to know who Callie’s father was, though it’s pretty obvious just looking at Phoebe’s curly black hair and oversized eyeglasses.

The clues pile up when Phoebe finds a still-functioning PKE meter, which guides her to her grandfather’s underground workshop, where a proton pack awaits repairs. Meanwhile, Trevor goes out to the barn and finds a rundown old car — a Cadillac hearse with a familiar red circular logo on the doors and the ECTO-1 license plate.

These Easter eggs and many others will make the diehard “Ghostbusters” fans feel right at home. So will Paul Rudd’s appearance as a summer school teacher who provides plot exposition to tell Phoebe about the Manhattan ghost appearances of the 1980s, thwarted by the OG Ghostbusters (Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson and the late Harold Ramis), whose videotaped exploits live forever on YouTube.

When Reitman focuses on the kids, the movie soars. There’s a great action set piece where Trevor is driving the Ecto-1, while Phoebe wields a proton pack from the vehicle’s gunner seat — a surprise to Phoebe’s ghost-obsessed new friend, Podcast (Logan Kim), as much as it is to us — as they chase a ghost through the streets of their new Oklahoma town. If the whole movie could be like that, this would be a fun and exciting thrill ride.

For a minute, even the grown-ups bring something to the table. Rudd does his patented funny Everyman thing, which still works like a charm. And Coon brings some real emotion to bear, dealing with her pent-up grief and anger at the father she never knew. But Coon and Rudd get sucked into the nostalgia machinery, starting when Rudd’s character is menaced by tiny marshmallow-based creatures in a WalMart.

The rabid fans of the original “Ghostbusters” won’t care — they get to see their beloved franchise just the way they like it, without trying to add anything fresh like the 2016 version where all the Ghostbusters were, gasp, women. That version, those fans declared, ruined their childhoods, but “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” does something worse: It traps those fans within their arrested childhoods, giving them everything they want and nothing they don’t expect.

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‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’

★★

Opening Friday, November 19, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for supernatural action and some suggestive references. Running time: 124 minutes.

November 17, 2021 /Sean P. Means
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Tennis coach Rick Macci (Jon Bernthal, left) drills prodigies Serena and Venus Williams (Demi Singleton and Saniyya Sidney), while the girls’ dad and first coach, Richard Willliams (Will Smith), looks on, in a scene from “King Richard.” (Photo by Chiabella James, courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.)

Review: 'King Richard' highlights Will Smith and other strong performances, in a straight-ahead account of Venus and Serena Williams' early tennis days

November 17, 2021 by Sean P. Means

Even as it stays carefully within the lines of a standard sports biography, “King Richard” delivers its emotional punch in some unexpected ways — thanks largely to the performances by Will Smith, Aunjunue Ellis and two promising newcomers.

Smith plays Richard Williams, a former athlete living in Compton, Calif., in the early 1990s with his wife, Brandy (played by Ellis), and their large family. Williams, a tennis coach who obsessively studies every famous coach’s tapes, is pouring everything he knows into two of his daughters — Venus (Saniyya Sidney) and Serena (Demi Singleton). Knowing those names, you already know how this story ends, with the stellar careers of two of the greatest tennis players to ever pick up a racquet.

Director Reinaldo Marcus Green (“Joe Bell”) and first-time screenwriter Zach Baylin look at what happens before that. It shows Richard taking his family to the cracked concrete tennis courts in his neighborhood, drilling Venus and Serena while their siblings do their homework — then getting home so Venus and Serena can get their homework done, as well. 

The movie also shows the elder Williams trying to convince top-level coaches to take the girls in as prospects. First, he convinces coach Paul Cohen (Tony Goldwyn), who’s worked with the likes of John McEnroe and Pete Sampras, to teach Venus. 

It’s Cohen who convinces Richard to let Venus compete in some juniors tournaments, where she tears up southern California’s pre-teen tennis hierarchy. At one point, Serena sneaks behind Dad’s back and registers for a juniors tourney — and she shows herself to be as strong a competitor as Venus. “You got the next Michael Jordan,” someone tells Richard at one point, and he replies, “I got the next two.”

Later in the story, Richard gets a recruiting pitch from Rick Macci (Jon Bernthal), who’s developed a tennis academy in Florida, and wants the Williams family to relocate so Venus and Serena can train there. Macci lures the family to Florida, but he soon grows frustrated with Richard’s opinions, and his demand that Venus and Serena drop out of juniors tournaments, and focus on Venus turning pro at age 14.

Baylin’s script, a 2018 honoree of The Black List (a Hollywood industry compilation of the best unproduced screenplays), lays down some sharp commentary about the tennis world, from the self-loathing pre-teen players display when they lose a point to the high stakes gamesmanship of athletic shoe contracts. First and foremost, though, it’s a solid story about family, and the sacrifices Richard and Brandy make to ensure their children’s future is better than their present.

Smith gives a powerful performance, capturing the human dynamo that Richard Williams is (as evidenced by the unnecessary closing-credits video of the real Williams), a blend of paternal love and cagey calculation. He’s nicely matched by Ellis (so memorable in “Lovecraft Country”), who fights to protect her girls from anyone who might impede them — even if that might be Richard. And newcomers Sidney and Singleton balance the intensity of Venus and Serena with the joy of being kids who know that their parents love them, no matter how they fare on the court.

——

‘King Richard’

★★★1/2

Opening Friday, November 19, in theaters everywhere, and streaming on HBO Max. Rated PG-13 for some violence, strong language, a sexual reference and brief drug references. Running time: 137 minutes.

November 17, 2021 /Sean P. Means
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Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne) watches on a film set, as she prepares to make her first student film, in director Joanna Hogg’s “The Souvenir: Part II.” (Photo courtesy of A24.)

Review: 'The Souvenir: Part II' continues director Joanna Hogg's beautiful exploration of a young woman confronting her grief and finding her artistic voice

November 17, 2021 by Sean P. Means

Two years after she made one of the best coming-of-age dramas in recent memory in “The Souvenir,” writer-director Joanna Hogg does it again with the well-observed and beautiful “The Souvenir Part II” — which is, as you may have guessed, a continuation of the same story.

It’s helpful to watch “The Souvenir,” because Hogg picks up where the first movie left off, and she frequently references what happened in the earlier film. That movie ended — unavoidable spoiler coming — with shy ‘80s London film student Julie Harte (Honor Swinton Byrne) reeling from the death by suicide of her boyfriend Anthony, who hid his heroin addiction for much of their relationship.

After some time retreating to her parents’ home, where her mum (Swinton Burke’s real mother, the great actor Tilda Swinton) and dad (James Spencer Ashworth) try to be understanding. Mum also tries to distract Julie by talking about her latest hobby, making pottery.

Eventually, Julie returns to university — borrowing more money from Mum first — and joining her classmates in working grunt work at a movie studio in between shooting their own short films. This allows Julie to meet a brooding actor (“Stranger Things’” Charlie Heaton) with whom , and to talk to Patrick (Richard Ayoade), the music-video director who knew of Anthony’s addictions long before she did.

After feeling aimless, Julie decides the way to understand why Anthony killed himself, and how he hid his addiction so long, is to make a movie about their time together. At first, Julie’s floundering. Her professors say her script is too vague, without enough simple directions. Her producing partner (Jaygann Ayeh) is flummoxed that she rejects the actors he suggests, casting instead a French film student, Garance (Ariane Labed), as her character — and Garance complains that the character is “too naive, too fragile.”  Meanwhile, her other classmates, who become her crew, berate her for being indecisive.

Thus, Hogg manages a thoughtful twofer: Examining Julie’s processing of grief, and following the way an artist finds her voice. She does so by expanding the small, detailed canvas of the first “Souvenir” — which focused tightly on how Julie molded herself to fit Anthony’s mentorship — and gives Julie room to discover who she really is as an adult.

Amid a strong supporting cast, notably Swinton as Julie’s eager-to-comfort mom and Ayoade as an untethered filmmaker, Swinton Byrne shines. She turns Julie from a receptacle for other people’s ideas — her mom’s, her therapist’s, her classmates’, and those of Anthony’s memory — into a fully blossoming woman who takes that input and creates her own reality.

The collaboration between Hogg and Swinton Byrne is so sharply focused that it raises an intriguing question: Would we want a “Part III,” to follow the next part of Julie’s story? Or should they leave things as they stand, and start afresh on a different story? The thought-provoking beauty of “The Souvenir: Part II” is that either option sounds like a good one.

——

‘The Souvenir Part II’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, November 19, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for some strong sexuality, and language. Running time: 107 minutes.

November 17, 2021 /Sean P. Means
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Mirabel Madrigal (voiced by Stephanie Beatriz) takes in the wonders of fireworks over her family’s magical casita, in a scene from Disney’s “Encanto.” (Image courtesy of Disney.)

Review: Disney's 'Encanto' creates a magical house, and a fascinating set of characters to inhabit it

November 15, 2021 by Sean P. Means

The bright and breezy “Encanto” is, we’re told by the studio logo, the 60th animated feature to come out of the Walt Disney Studios — and it carries the hallmarks of that brand, of a simple story told beautifully.

In a picturesque valley in Colombia, everyone comes over to see what’s happening with the Madrigals, the most prosperous family in the village. The Madrigals arrived in the village 50 years ago, on the run from bandits, according to the matriarch, Abuela Alma (voiced by Maria Cecilia Botero), and her three babies each were given a magical gift: Pepa (voiced by Carolina Gaitan) changes the weather with her moods, Julieta (voiced by Angie Cepeda) can heal with her cooking, and Bruno (voiced by John Leguizamo)… well, “we don’t talk about Bruno,” as it says in one of the bouncy songs written by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

The gifts go down to the next generation. Julieta’s daughter Luisa (voiced by Jessica Darrow) can lift a dozen donkeys at once, while her middle daughter Isabela (voiced by Diane Guerrero) makes flowers appear wherever her perfect hair swishes. Only Julieta’s youngest daughter, Mirabel (voiced by Stephanie Beatriz) is without a magical gift, so she tries to compensate by being as helpful as she can — even under Abuela’s disapproving eye.

When Mirabel’s cousin Antonio (voiced by Ravi Cabot-Conyers) is about to undergo the ceremony where he receives his magical gift, Mirabel has a vision of the Madrigal casita developing cracks and threatening the candle that is the fount of the family’s magic. Abuela doesn’t want to hear it, and doesn’t believe Mirabel, which makes the girl even more determined to figure out what’s going wrong. Mirabel is sure the answer lies in the family’s most enduring mystery: What happened to Bruno?

Directors Jared Bush and Byron Howard (who filled the same jobs on “Zootopia”) create a rich color palette for the Madrigal’s casita — and for the fanciful animation during several of the musical numbers. The sharpest animation work is in depicting the casita, whose floorboard and roof tiles move in rhythm, keeping the Madrigal family on time and on task throughout their busy days.

The script, by Bush and co-director Charise Castro Smith (a playwright making her movie debut), is smart and soulful. It takes the story into some unexpected directions, and finds both the dark and light in several of the main characters — aided by Miranda’s song score, which deliver the clever wordplay, tricky rhythms and emotional punch one expects form the man who wrote “Hamilton” and “In the Heights.”

“Encanto” is, as its name suggests, quite enchanting in its depiction of a family dealing with external crises and internal strife — but weathering them together, to the beat of the music.

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‘Encanto’

★★★1/2

Opens Wednesday, November 24, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for some thematic elements and some mild peril. Running time: 99 minutes; plus a 7-minute short, “Far From the Tree.”

November 15, 2021 /Sean P. Means
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Andrew Garfield plays Jonathan Larson, the musical-theater composer, in “tick, tick… BOOM!,” a musical autobiography depicting Larson’s days before he wrote “Rent.” (Photo courtesy of Netflix.)

Review: Lin-Manuel Miranda lets his theater-kid flag fly in 'tick, tick... BOOM!,' adapting the late Jonathan Larson's pre-'Rent' autobiography

November 14, 2021 by Sean P. Means

I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me so much sooner — maybe the first time I listened to my “Hamilton” CD or saw the movie adaptation of “In the Heights” — that Lin-Manuel Miranda is perhaps the most famous Broadway nerd in America, no matter how many hip-hop passages or Nuyorican rhythms he apples to his work.

Miranda gives his theater-kid side free rein in his movie directing debut, the quarter-life musical ’tick, tick… BOOM!” — the story that Miranda has said in interviews inspired him to keep pursuing a stage career when he was a struggling college student.

The movie begins with a big spoiler, when it shows itself to be the musical autobiography Jonathan Larson, written before his blockbuster musical “Rent” premiered on Broadway, then won a Pulitzer and several Tonys. Larson, though, wasn’t there to enjoy it; he died from an aortic aneurysm on the day of “Rent’s” first preview performance, a couple weeks’ shy of his 36th birthday.

Miranda doesn’t hide this information — not that he could, since it’s the stuff of Broadway legend — but uses it to add a layer of tragedy to the story, in which Larson (played by Andrew Garfield) describes to a theater audience the story of his life just before his 30th birthday.

It’s the start of 1990, and Larson is feeling the pressure of his birthday odometer clicking over from his exuberant 20s to his have-to-be-an-adult-now 30s. He has been writing a dystopian science-fiction musical for years, and is days away from having it performed at a workshop where important producers — and his idol, the composer Stephen Sondheim (Bradley Whitford) — will see it on its feet for the first time, and his agent (Judith Light) won’t return his calls. Also, he’s missing a strong song for his female lead for Act II, and is running out of time to write it.

Larson’s also feeling the pressure from his girlfriend, Susan (Alexandra Shipp), a modern dancer who’s been offered a teaching job in the Berkshires and wants Larson to commit to leaving his rattrap Manhattan apartment to be with her. Meanwhile, his best friend, Michael (Robin de Jesús), has taken a corporate job with an ad agency — and Larson isn’t sure whether to stick to his art or sell out for the money. Also, Larson is watching many of his gay friends falling to the AIDS epidemic, and the fear being stoked by right-wing politicians, and feels like a real artist would be writing about it.

Miranda and screenwriter Steven Levenson (who also wrote the book and screenplay for “Dear Evan Hansen,” but don’t hold that against him) build up the artistic and personal tension in Larson’s life and work masterfully, usually grounding the musical numbers in reality, either with Garfield’s Larson singing and performing at the piano with his show-within-a-show’s cast — led by Vanessa Hudgens and Joshua Henry, both brilliant — or with Garfield in soliloquy. 

The one number that’s an exception is a self-contained masterpiece of Broadway love, “Sunday,” a bravura life-in-a-day number depicting Larson’s work as a waiter at a New York diner during the Sunday brunch rush. What’s spectacular is the roster of diners, a Who’s Who of Broadway legends including Bernadette Peters, Chita Rivera, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Andre de Shields, Joel Grey, “Hamilton” leading ladies Renee Elise Goldsberry and Phillipa Sou, and three members of the original cast of “Rent”: Adam Pascal, Daphne Rubin-Vega and Wilson Jermaine Heredia. Surely, a combination of Miranda’s reputation and Larson’s memory brought everyone out to be a part of it.

The supporting performances by de Jesús and Shipp are first-rate. Hudgens, who’s been singing since her “High School Musical” days and keeps improving, steals every scene she’s in — particularly in a motormouthed duet with Garfield, “Therapy,” that describes Larson’s arguments with Susan. 

Garfield, though this is his first time singing in a movie, throws himself whole-heartedly into the role, and the results are wonderful. Even when Larson is at his most selfish and navel-gazing, Garfield brings warmth and humanity to the moment.

It may be cruel to assign a movie’s faults to a dead man, but the weakness in “tick, tick… BOOM!” is Larson’s story and song score. In a story about an artist finding his voice, we’re constantly reminded of other characters, most of them LGBTQ and suffering from AIDS and government-sanctioned homophobia, whose voices are relegated to the background. Larson may get to those characters, as he did in “Rent” — and your mileage may vary on how well he succeeded in that much-lauded rewrite of “La Bohème” — but he’s too much in the foreground here.

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’tick, tick… BOOM!”

★★★

Opens Friday, November 12, in select theaters; streaming on Netflix starting Friday, November 19. Rated PG-13 for some strong language, some suggestive material and drug references. Running time: 115 minutes.

November 14, 2021 /Sean P. Means
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Archie Yates plays Max Mercer, an obnoxious kid who gets left behind during his family’s Christmas trip to Tokyo, in “Home Sweet Home Alone,” a remake of the 1990 comedy that made Macaulay Culkin famous. (Photo by Philippe Bosse, courtesy of 20th Century Studios.)

Review: 'Home Sweet Home Alone' is a hopelessly misguided remake of the Christmas classic

November 11, 2021 by Sean P. Means

It’s a bold move, I suppose, to remake a beloved Christmas comedy and invert the roles — where the pre-teen hero is now the loathsome villain, and the scummy bad guys are now sympathetic characters. Doomed, but bold, as “Home Sweet Home Alone” demonstrates with every terrible step.

We will leave unresolved the discussion about whether the 1990 comedy “Home Alone” is a good movie or merely a much-loved one. At least in the original, one could forgive young Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) for being a little needy and attention-starved as his chaotic family was preparing for a Christmastime trip to Paris — because it was clear he was being bullied by his older brother Buzz (Devin Ratray). (In a failed attempt at social commentary, the new movie reveals that Buzz, the only character from the original to appear here, grew up to become a cop.)

In this movie, 10-year-old Max Mercer has no such excuse. Played by Archie Yates, the hapless young sidekick in “Jojo Rabbit,” Max is an obnoxious brat, constantly making life hard for his mom, Carol (Aisling Bea), as the family prepares to leave suburban Chicago during the holidays.

And the Mercers, living in their McMansion and with the means to fly to Tokyo, have it easy compared to another family, the McKenzies. Pam McKenzie (Ellie Kemper) is a teacher, husband Jeff (Rob Delaney) is a recently unemployed tech dude, and they’re desperately trying to hide from their children (Katie Beth Hall and Max Ivutin) that they’re selling their house.

The McKenzies — while entertaining Jeff’s rich and jerky brother Hunter (Timothy Simons) and Hunter’s high-maintenance wife, Mei (Ally Maki) — then learn that a porcelain doll Jeff inherited from his mom could be worth $200,000, seemingly an answer to the family’s money problems. When the doll goes missing, the McKenzies suspect that bratty little Max stole it when he and Carol checked out their open house. 

Thus sets up the premise, in which the McKenzies try to break into the house, only to find Max — left behind by his family — has set up booby traps aplenty. Cue the cartoonish mayhem.

A whole lot of people can share the blame for this trainwreck. Let’s start with the screenwriters, “Saturday Night Live” cast member Mikey Day and “SNL” writer Streeter Seidell, whose only contributions to John Hughes’ original are some elbow-in-the-ribs jokes about remaking old movies and a toothless finale that waves away the preceding destruction of the Mercer front hallway. Equally culpable is director Dan Mazer (“Dirty Grandpa”), who tries for the Roadrunner-vs.-Coyote spirit that the original’s Chris Columbus brought out, but doesn’t have the slightest idea how to execute the gags.

Kemper and Delaney, two usually reliable comic talents, are left with nothing to do but make faces as they succumb to the many pratfalls. Meanwhile, several talented comic performers, including Kenan Thompson, Chris Parnell and Andrew Daly, are given nothing funny to do. 

Worst of all, Mazer never allows young Yates to display any of the self-deprecating charm that made his debut in “Jojo Rabbit” so memorable. This kid would have been better off if he had been left home alone. 

——

‘Home Sweet Home Alone’

★

Available for streaming starting Friday, November 12, on Disney+. Rated PG for slapstick violence, rude material and some language. Running time: 93 minutes.

November 11, 2021 /Sean P. Means
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