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Holiday Film Review: Beyond Tomorrow (dir by A. Edward Sutherland)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I’m standing at the edge of tomorrow
And its all up to me how far I go
I’m standing at the edge of tomorrow

I’ve never seen such a view before
A new world before my eyes
So much for me to explore
It’s where my future lies

Today I’m standing at the edge of tomorrow
From here the future looks bright for me
And it’s all up to me how far I go
It’s my time to break away
I’m standing at the edge of tomorrow
Today

Beyond Tomorrow is a strange film from 1940.  Technically, it is a holiday film.  It takes place during the Christmas season and there’s a lot of very peppy scenes featuring people celebrating the holidays.  I watched the movie with my friends in the Late Night Movie Gang.  We’re a pretty sentimental group but even we felt that some of the characters went a bit overboard with the holiday cheer.  The film is also comedy and a romance and a musical and a ghost story and a melodrama and finally an oddly sincere meditation on life and death.  That’s a lot of weight for one film to carry and there were more than a few times that Beyond Tomorrow seemed like it might collapse in a heap of Christmas ambition.  Fortunately, the film always righted itself and, in the end, it actually managed to be …. well, definitely more interesting than what any of us were expecting!

The film opens with three businessmen (Harry Carey, C. Aubrey Smith, and Charles Winninger) living in a mansion with their Russian housekeeper (played by Maria Ouspenskaya, who was also the old gypsy lady in The Wolf Man).  As almost something of a lark, the three men arrange for James (Richard Carlson) to meet Jean (Jean Parker).  Jean is a teacher.  James is a singing cowboy from Texas.  Together, with the encouragement of the three businessmen, Jean and James get together.  Awwwww!

Unfortunately, the three businessmen are then all killed in a plane crash.  However, their ghosts remain on Earth and watch over the growing love between James and Jean.  Unfortunately, James become a singing sensation on the radio and soon, he’s being tempted to cheat.  Meanwhile, Jean’s ex-husband is running around with murder in his heart and a gun in his hand!  This romantic comedy has suddenly taken a very dark turn!

While the three ghosts look after James and Jean, they consider why they’re still on Earth and not in the afterlife.  One ghost is eventually greeted by his son, who died during the Great War.  Another one of the businessmen is haunted by vaguely defined sins and, even in death, he refuses to repent because he feels that he doesn’t deserve to go to Heaven.  Instead, he continually walks off into the darkness.  The last businessman continually tries to push James and Jean on the right path but it turns out that it’s not easy for the dead to talk sense to the living.

You can probably give yourself whiplash trying to keep up with the film’s tonal changes.  It starts out with romance and comedy and then suddenly, it’s turns into an existential rumination of love, forgiveness, and guilt.  Once the three businessmen die, it becomes a totally different story.  Suddenly, soldiers are returning from the dead and the gates of Hell are beckoning.  And, on top of that, James keeps breaking out into song every few minutes!

It’s a very strange film.  Unfortunately, from the start, the pacing feels off.  By today’s standards, Beyond Tomorrow gets bogged down in all of the songs and the scenes of holiday mirth-making.  That may not have been as much of a problem for audiences in 1940 but I have to say that, speaking as someone trying to watch this film in 2020, Beyond Tomorrow made my ADD go crazy.  If not for my friends and their patient willingness to inform me what was going on in the film, I probably wouldn’t have been able to follow the film’s storyline.

That said, the film was fairly well-acted and the final scenes, with the heavenly gates in the sky, are undeniably effective.  Speaking as a history nerd, I found it interesting to see how the shadow of World War I still hung over a film that was made 21 years after that war ended.  As the scenes in which one of the ghosts is a reunited with son showed, America was still dealing with trauma and horror of the first modern war.  (One year after the release of Beyond Tomorrow, Japan would bomb Pearl Harbor and America entered World War II, a conflict that many hoped to avoid precisely because they remembered the all of the men who didn’t make it home during the previous war in Europe.)  Messy though the film may be, Beyond Tomorrow functions well as both a historical document and a bit of sentimental wish fulfillment.

Compared to holiday classics like the original Miracle on 34th Street and It’s A Wonderful Life, Beyond Tomorrow is relatively unknown.  Certainly, it’s no classic.  But, for fans of both Christmas and old movies, it’s still an interesting trip into the past.

Film Review: Small Axe: Red White and Blue (dir by Steve McQueen)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Red, White, and Blue opens with a very young Leroy Logan (Nathan Vidal) standing on a London street corner.  Behind him is the school that he attends.  He’s wearing a school uniform.  As the other students walk past him, they say hi and acknowledge the very obvious fact that Leroy is a student who is waiting to be picked up by his parents.

That, however, doesn’t matter to the two white police officers who walk up to Leroy and start to interrogate him as to why he’s standing on the street corner.  They inform Leroy that there have bee several burglaries in the area and that the burglar is a young, black male.  They start to search Leroy.  The only thing that stops them is the arrival of Leroy’s father, Ken (Steve Toussaint).  Ken reprimands the police for harassing his son.  While driving Leroy home, Ken tells Leroy that he expects his son to do two things for him.  Leroy is never to become “a roughneck” and he’s never to bring the police to his front door.

Jump forward several years and Leroy Logan (now played by John Boyega) is now grown up and working as a forensic scientist.  When his father is beaten by two police officers who claim that Ken was blocking traffic and that he was resisting arrest (neither is true), Leroy decides to channel his anger into something productive.  He applies to join the police force, hoping to bring about change from within.

Needless to say, that turns out to be more difficult than even Leroy was expecting.  At first, Leroy finds himself being used as a prop.  Knowing that they’ve got to fix their public image, the police uses Leroy as a part of their latest public relations campaign, featuring him in advertisements and news stories.  But on the streets, Leroy finds himself an outsider.  His fellow cops, the majority of whom are white, refuse to have his back and welcome him to the force by writing racist graffiti on his locker.  Meanwhile, the members of his community now distrust Leroy, accusing him of selling out and calling him a traitor.  Leroy became a police officer believing that he could be an agent of change but he soon discovers that no one is interested in changing.

At the heart of the film is Leroy’s relationship with his father.  Though Leroy joined the force to try to make life better for men like his father, he didn’t tell Ken about his decision.  In fact, Ken doesn’t find out until two police officers show up at this doorstep, checking to make sure that Leroy put the correct address on his application.  Ken believes that the system cannot be changed.  Leroy disagrees.  The film leaves it to us to decide which man is correct.

Red, White, and Blue is based on a true story.  Leroy Logan was one of the first blacks to join the London Metropolitan Police and he joined for the same reasons that are shown in the film.  Eventually, Leroy would work his way up to being a superintendent and he would help to found and later chair the Black Police Association.  Interestingly enough, the details of Leroy’s eventual success are left out of Red, White, and Blue.  Instead, the film ends with Leroy and his father at the kitchen table, still wondering if things can change.  It’s an ambiguous ending, one that’s hopeful because, even though he’s disillusioned, Leroy hasn’t given up but, at the same time, it’s also one that accepts that it’s going to take more than just one man to change the culture of the police.  It’s an ending that suggests that racism is so ingrained in society that the only way to vanquish it might be to just start all over again from the beginning.  It’s an ending that manages to be both low-key and revolutionary at the same time.

Red, White, and Blue is the third film in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology.  It’s a deceptively simple film, one that kind of sneaks up on you and takes you by surprise.  The minute that you start to think the film is going to be just another well-intentioned liberal plea for tolerance, McQueen will throw in an unexpectedly honest scene that will shake your expectations.  For instance, when Leroy tries to help a prisoner who has been brutalized by a bunch of racist cops, his help is rejected and Leroy discovers that the prisoner hates him even more than he hates the cops who were beating on him.  The prisoner takes it for granted that the white cops are going to be brutal but he saves his most vicious scorn for someone whom he consider to be a traitor to his race.  McQueen directs in a matter-of-fact but enthralling style, emphasizing the bleak coldness of the London landscape.

John Boyega and Steve Toussaint both anchor the film with ferocious performances.  Leroy spends the majority of the film having to hold back his anger and, sometimes, his despair and Boyega does a wonderful job suggesting what’s going on behind Leroy’s outward calmness.  Boyega does get to do some yelling, of course.  When he confronts his follow police officers for refusing to respond to his calls for backup, Boyega doesn’t hold back.  But his best moments are the quiet ones, where Boyega subtly but powerfully suggests that anger and the pain that Leroy has to deal with every day.

Red, White, and Blue is a short but powerful film.  Check it out on Prime.

Holiday Film Review: Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus (dir by Charles Jarrott)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The year is 1897 and eight year-old Virginia O’Hanlan (Katharine Isabelle — yes, that Katharine Isabelle) has a problem.  All of her “little friends” say that there is no Santa Claus!  When she asks her father (Richard Thomas) about whether or not there’s a Santa Claus, he suggests that she write a letter to the New York Sun.  “If you see it in the Sun,” he says, “it must be true!”  The letter ends up on the desk of a gruff editor (Edward Asner) who assigns Virginia’s question to Frank Church (Charles Bronson), an alcoholic who is still mourning the deaths of his wife and child. Conquering his own cynicism and depression, Church writes an editorial reply that goes on to become not just a holiday classic but also the most frequently reprinted editorial in history.  Yes, Virginia, Church begins, there is a Santa Claus….

This 1991 film is a sweet-natured retelling of the famous story of Frank Church’s editorial.  Of course, it takes considerable liberties with the actual story.  Here’s just a few examples.

In real life, the editorial was published in September.  In the movie, it’s published on Christmas Eve.

In real life, Virginia’s father was a doctor and she came from a middle class family.  In the movie, Virginia’s father is an Irish immigrant and laborer who is so poor that the O’Hanlan’s might not be able to afford a Christmas!  They live in a tenement and Virginia’s father is frequently harassed by not only the cops but also corrupt labor officials.

In real life, Frank Church was a notoriously cynical atheist who reportedly had little use for Christmas and specifically didn’t sign his name to his famous editorial because he didn’t think much of it.  At the time that he wrote the editorial, he was also a bachelor.  He did marry shortly after the editorial was published but he never had any children.  In the film, Frank is a widower who rediscovers his zest for life and who smiles broadly while listening to Virginia’s father read it aloud.

And, of course, in real life, it’s very probable that the letter was written by Virginia’s parents because how many eight year olds would actually write something like, “Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.”  In the movie, however, Virginia writes the letter herself.

In other words, this is a nice movie that just happens to be terrible history.  The film does end with a disclaimer that clarifies that “certain events have been fictionalized.”  Actually, the entire story has been fictionalized, with the exception of the content of Church’s editorial.  That said, this is a sweet-natured and generally likable movie.  If nothing else, it’s a film that means well and, as tempting as it may be to roll your eyes at the film’s unabashed sentimentality, it’s sincerity feels right for the holiday season.  It’s a made-for-TV movie from the early 90s so don’t expect any surprises but it’s nicely acted and even Charles Bronson seems to be in a good mood by the end of it.

As far as movies about journalists lying to children are concerned, this is a good one.  Just don’t watch it for a history lesson.

The Films of 2020: After We Collided (dir by Roger Kumble)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The worst film of 2019 gets a sequel and the end result is one of the worst films of 2020.  If nothing else, you have to appreciate the consistency of it all.

At the end of After, Tessa (Josephine Langford) and Hardin (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) had broken up, despite obviously being meant to be together.  They broke up because Tessa discovered that Hardin only went out with her to win a bet.  When After We Collided picks up their story, a few weeks have passed.  Hardin is now sleeping in his car and getting new tattoos.  Tessa is starting an internship at Vance Publishing.  It doesn’t take long for Tessa and Hardin to get together and once again become the most boring couple on the planet.

Everyone warns Tessa about Hardin and, of course, Hardin spends a lot of time drinking and brooding and getting tattoos.  But Tessa is now more independent and …. eh, who cares?  I mean, even if Tessa is now a stronger and more confident character and Hardin is now more honest about his emotions, they’re still just as boring as ever and, if possible, Langford and Tiffin have even less chemistry in the sequel than they did in the first film.  Langford has mastered one facial expression (a sort of low-energy smirk) and Tiffin is constantly screwing up his features whenever Hardin is supposed to be feeling emotional but neither one of them actually seems to be a living, full-blooded human being.  Instead, they feel like bots, created to mouth repetitious dialogue and to go through the motions of the same plot over and over again.  Everything they do seems to be pre-programmed.  There’s not a spontaneous thought or moment to be found.

When Tessa isn’t flirting with Hardin and reading her favorite books (like Madame Bovary, because Tessa is edgy, y’all), she’s working at Vance Publishing.  Her co-worker, Trevor (Dylan Sprouse) is in love with her but he’s too shy to come right out and say it.  He does warn her that Hardin is just going to hurt her.  Because the film is so ineptly edited, it’s hard to keep track of how much time passes.  However, it does appear that Tessa becomes a valued and important member of the office in what seems to be just a matter of hours.  Of course, everyone in the film loves Tessa because this is basically fanfic and a Mary Sue by any other name is still a cringey trope.

Speaking of fanfic, the author of After and its sequels has a cameo in this film.  Anna Todd appears in a nightclub scene.  A woman asks her what books she’s written and Todd smirks before saying, “Oh, this and that.”  This inspired me to yell, “Fuck you!” as I looked for something to throw at the screen.  Seriously, it’s one thing to be responsible for something terrible.  It’s another thing to brag about it.  Add to that, the cameo was so poorly executed that I half expected Todd to look straight at the camera and wink after delivering her line.  In fact, it probably would have saved the scene if she had.  At the very least, it would have at least suggested that the film was inviting us to laugh with it as opposed to at it.

That said, I will say that After We Collided is a slight improvement on After.  In After, Josephine Langford actually tried to give an emotionally honest and consistent performance and, as a result, she was kind of boring because Tessa is an incredibly dull character.  In After We Collided, Josephine Langford is just as bad as everyone else and it leads to a few unintentionally amusing moments.  Unlike the rather stolid After, the sequel at least has a few moments of accidental camp.

My favorite moment was when a frustrated Tessa told Hardin that she needed to go for a walk to straighten out her thoughts.  When Tessa returns, Hardin has his earbuds in and is listening to music so he can’t hear her.  That still doesn’t stop her from standing behind him and repeating his name a few dozen times.  Is he deliberately ignoring her or is the music just that good?  The film never tells us but Tessa and Hardin are such annoying characters that it’s fun to think about all of the passive aggressive ways that they can make each other miserable.

After We Collided is reportedly going to be followed by two more sequels so we’ll eventually get to see if Hardin and Tessa can somehow become even more boring than they’ve already been.  It’s not going to be easy but I think they might just pull it off.

Holiday Film Review: Collateral Beauty (dir by David Frankel)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Occasionally, you see a film that is so misjudged and so poorly executed that it leaves you wondering whether or not the entire production was meant to be some sort of elaborate practical joke.  Perhaps not surprisingly, these films are usually a mix of comedy and drama and they tend to try to deal with the big issues — life, death, love, and all the rest.  These films are fueled by a mix of ambition, sincerity, and a total inability to understand how people actually think and live.  Invevitably, these films come out at Oscar time and they tend to have surprising twists that are designed to tug at the heart strings but to also make you think.  They’re usually have titles that sound good but don’t make much sense and they often feature the type of talented actors who really should know better.  Audiences should also know better but all of these films have devoted fans who insist that the rest of us are just too cynical or jaded to really appreciate a good story.

2016’s Collateral Beauty is one such film.

Set during the Christmas season, Collateral Beauty tells the story of Howard Inlet (Will Smith).  Howard was an advertising genius but then his daughter died and he sunk into a deep depression.  In this film, being clinically depressed means that you ride your bicycle a lot.  It also means that you spend a lot of time building domino chains.  Because Howard is too depressed to do anything, his advertising firm is on the verge of going bankrupt.  His partners — Whit (Edward Norton), Claire (Kate Winslet), and Simon (Michael Pena) — all want to sell the firm but they have to get Howard to sign off on it and Howard refuses to talk to anyone.

However, his three business partners come across letters that Howard wrote to the abstract concepts of Death, Time, and Love.  And, realizing that Howard had some issues with those concepts, they decided to hire three actors to pretend to be those concepts so that they can film Howard talking to them.  The plan is to film Howard talking to the actors and then use digital technology to erase the actors from the footage so that Howard will look like he’s talking to himself, which will make it easier to prove that Howard is not mentally stable enough to run the company and….

What?  Yes, that’s the plot.  Undoubtedly, it seems like there should be an easier way to prove that Howard is not mentally fit to run his company but the three business partners decided to go with the plan that makes absolutely no sense and the film applauds them for doing so.  It does seem like, if they really cared about Howard, they would have instructed the actors to provide some sort of comfort to Howard but apparently, no one in this movie has seen It’s A Wonderful Life or read A Christmas Carol.  The film assures us that making a suicidal man think that he’s gone legitimately insane is definitely the humane way to deal with this situation.

Anyway, the three actors are played by Helen Mirren, Jacob Latimore, and Keira Knightley.  And, in order to study Howard, each spends time with his business partners and we learn about everyone’s life.  For instance, Whit has a daughter that he needs to connect with.  Claire is depressed because she wants a child.  Simon is dying, which means that he spends the entire movie vomiting.  Amazingly, no one but Helen Mirren notices.  Not only does the actors help Howard but they help his partners as well.  Awwwww!

After the actors all visit him, Howard is so upset by the encounters that he goes to a support group that’s run by Madeline (Naomie Harris), who lost a daughter (just like Howard!) and who is divorced (just like Howard!) and who has a note from her ex-husband in which he says that he wishes they could act like strangers again and hey, guess who her ex-husband is!?  (Yes, it’s Howard.)  Anyway, some mysterious woman once told Madeline that, even as her daughter was dying, she should always celebrate the “collateral beauty of it all” and I have no idea what that was supposed to mean but Madeline sure does talk about it a lot.

I like to think that Collateral Beauty shares the same cinematic universe as The Book of Henry and Life Itself.  It’s a universe where simplistic thoughts are held up as being extremely profound and where no one actually does anything that makes sense.  Just as The Book of Henry asks us to be touched by an annoying little brat insisting (from beyond the grave, no less) that his mother to assassinate their neighbor, Collateral Beauty asks us to appreciate all the effort that goes into tormenting an already seriously depressed human being.  Just as Life Itself insists that life being an unreliable narrator is somehow a mind-blowing concept, Collateral Beauty insists that everything will be okay as long as we appreciate the “collateral beauty of it all.”  It may feel like a parody but Collateral Beauty not only takes itself seriously but it also seems to be convinced that you’ll take it seriously as well.  There’s something rather presumptuous about the film’s insistence that it actually has something unique or interesting to say.

Amazingly enough, a truly great cast signed up to appear in this film.  Most of them turn in performances that are either forgettable or regrettable.  Edward Norton gives a performance that is so annoyingly mannered that it’s hard not to be reminded of the rumors that he was basically playing himself in Birdman.  Considering that she’s one of the greatest actresses around, Kate Winslet is shockingly bad.  Helen Mirren appears to be having a laugh.  Will Smith actually gives a good performance but it’s a waste to cast such a great talker as someone who barely speaks.

Collateral Beauty came out in December of 2016.  Before it was released, it had Oscar buzz.  After it was released …. well, let’s just say that it didn’t.  Critics hated the film but it did well at the box office and it has its fans.  I’m not one of them but perhaps someday, I’ll appreciate the collateral beauty of it all.

Lifetime Film Review: Killer Dream Home (dir by Jake Helgren)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oh Hell yeah!

Now, this is a good Lifetime film!

Basically, Killer Dream Home tells the story of Jules (Maiara Walsh) and Josh Grant (John DeLuca).  They’re young.  They’re married.  They’re hot.  Josh never wears a shirt, which is kind of nice.  They’ve just bought a gigantic house that they’re planning on flipping, though there’s no way I would ever give up that house because it’s seriously one of the best that I’ve ever seen.  I mean, the pool alone is bigger than my back yard.  They invite their friend, Bliss (Brooke Butler), to come live with them.  You know that you’ve made it when you’ve got a blonde friend named Bliss.

They also end up hiring an interior designer named Morgan (Eva Mauro) but it turns out that Morgan might not be as perfect as their new house.  First off, it turns out that Morgan’s entire portfolio was made up of pictures that she cut out of magazines.  As soon as Morgan shows up, the first thing that she does is scare away the gardener, with whom she appears to have some sort of deep, dark history.  The second thing she does is suggest to Jules that Josh might be cheating on her with Bliss.  The third thing she does is get undressed while Josh is watching.  Morgan attempts to seduce Josh and Josh is all like, “Just because I don’t own a shirt, that doesn’t make me a man whore!”

And so it goes.  It all leads to murder, of course.  It always does.

Killer Dream Home has everything that you could possibly want from a Lifetime film.  It features beautiful people, beautiful houses, a lot of sex, and a few murders.  (Morgan doesn’t hold back when it comes to killing people.  Just as Jake is apparent allergic to shirts, Morgan is allergic to following a moral code.)  Jake Helgren has directed a lot of these films and he definitely knows not only what the audience wants but also how to deliver it.  Some might complain that Killer Dream Home is not a particularly realistic film but realism is not what we watch films like this for.  We watch films like this for handsome husbands who never wear a shirt and dangerous femme fatales who wear scandalous bathing suits while using the pool.  Lifetime films, at their best, create their own sort of alternative dream world and that’s certainly what Killer Dream Home accomplishes.

Killer Dream Home is a film that you experience more than you watch.  It’s a journey into the heart of Lifetime melodrama, where every house is big and everyone is sexy and every stranger has a mysterious past.  Watch this film for the house and the clothes and the wonderfully arch dialogue.  Watch it for Eva Mauro’s unapologetically intense performance.  Watch it for the scene where Morgan narrowly misses Bliss with a nail gun and then attempts to laugh it off. That nail gun gets quite a workout in Killer Dream Home.  I should probably pick one up because they seem to be very useful.

Killer Dream Home is Lifetime at its best!

Film Review: What If…. (dir by Dallas Jenkins)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

2010’s What If…. is a likable, religious-themed twist on the It’s a Wonderful Life formula.

It tells the story of Ben Walker (Kevin Sorbo), who years ago abandoned his girlfriend and his dreams of entering the ministry so that he could be a business executive instead.  15 years later, he’s a ruthless businessman who gives heartless speeches and thinks nothing of running other people out of business.  Fortunately, a guardian angel (John Ratzenberger) pops up and punches Ben into unconsciousness.  When Ben wakes up, he’s a preacher, he’s married to Wendy (Kristy Swanson), and he’s got two daughters!

Yes, it’s basically a take on It’s A Wonderful Life.  Instead of seeing what the world would be like if he had never been born, Ben gets a chance to see what the world would be like if he hadn’t abandoned Wendy.  He would be poor, though he would still live in a pretty nice house.  However, he’d have a family and he’d have a preaching career.

You can probably guess what happens.  Ben refuses to accept that any of this is real.  He keeps saying that it’s a dream.  He stumbles through his first sermon.  He tries to return to the office where he works, just to discover that no one knows who he is.  Eventually, he comes to learn that his alternate life isn’t that bad and that, in many ways, it’s actually better than his real life.

And, to be honest, it’s kind of a sweet movie.  I mean, obviously, some of how you react to this film will depend on how you feel about religion in general.  If you’re a hardcore atheist, this film will probably make you throw a shoe at someone.  Don’t watch this film is you’re a hardcore atheist.  (Hardcore Democrats might want to avoid it as well, since the film basically stars everyone in Hollywood who voted for Trump.)  That said, Kevin Sorbo and Kristy Swanson both give earnest and likable performances and they have a really nice chemistry.  The scene where Ben gives a clueless sermon actually is funny, as are the various reactions to the listeners.  (One woman thinks Ben is a disgrace while her husband is just happy that the sermon was short.)  Much as he did with The Resurrection of Gavin Stone, director Dallas Jenkins manages to tell his story without getting too preachy.  He manages to avoid the traps that most other religious films fall into.

As I said, it’s not for everyone but it’s still a sweet-natured film.  I do have some issues with the ending because — SPOILER ALERT! — it ignores the fact that real world Ben is starting his family fifteen years later than alternative world Ben did — SPOILER END! — but it’s still a likable twist on the Wonderful Life formula.

Film Review: A Very Brady Sequel (dir by Arlene Sanford)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“I’m tripping with the Bradys….” Roy Martin (Tim Matheson) announces shortly before he passes out in the 1996 film, A Very Brady Sequel.

And indeed, Roy is!  That’s what happens when Alice (Henriette Mantel) discovers a bunch of hallucinogenic mushrooms in your luggage and decides to use them for dinner.  It not only leads to Roy suffering through a cartoon Hell with the Bradys but it also causes Alice to disappear inside of the refrigerator.  The Bradys, however, don’t really seem to find any of it to be strange.  Safely hidden away in their home, the Bradys aren’t aware of things like drugs and bad trips.  They’re more concerned with potato sack races and Cindy’s lisp and Jan’s imaginary boyfriend, George Glass.

A Very Brady Sequel is, as the title suggests, a sequel to The Brady Bunch Movie.  In this one, conman Roy Martin shows up at the Brady House and claims to be the first husband of Carol Brady (Shelley Long).  “This is Carol’s first husband,” Mike (Gary Cole) explains, “He’s not dead like we thought.”  Mike might have mixed feelings about Roy being alive but he’s still determined to be a gracious host.  That’s the Brady way.

Roy wants to steal a priceless artifact that’s sitting in the Brady house.  It’s kind of a silly plot but then again, it’s a silly movie.  The important thing is that it eventually leads to the Bradys flying to Hawaii, where we discover that Carol’s husband was a professor and he disappeared during a three-hour tour and apparently, there’s no chance that he could have washed up on an island somewhere.

A Very Brady Sequel never quite gets the love that the first Brady Bunch movie does but I enjoy it.  Admittedly, it doesn’t have quite the same innocence as the first film.  The focus is much more on Roy and his attempts to swindle the Bradys and, as a result, A Very Brady Sequel can sometimes feel a bit more mean-spirited than the first Brady Bunch film, in which the focus was on the Bradys and their eternal (some would say infernal) optimism.  A lot of the jokes that felt so natural in the first film feel a bit forced in the sequel.  That seems to be the way that things usually go with comedy sequels, to be honest.

That said, there’s enough funny moments in A Very Brady Sequel that it’s a worthy continuation of the Brady story.  For instance, how can you not smile at the Bradys dancing on the airplane while totally oblivious to how annoyed the rest of the passnegers are with them?  How can you not enjoy Jan’s attempts to convince everyone that George Glass is real?  The cast is still likable and Gary Cole still has a talent for delivering the most absurd dialogue in the most deadpan style imaginable.

Add to that, Hawaii looks as beautiful as ever!  Seriously, if you’re ever going to get stuck with a bunch of weird, 70s sitcom characters, Hawaii is the place to do it!

A Very Brady Sequel was followed by The Brady Bunch In The White House, which I would recommend avoiding.

Film Review: The Brady Bunch Movie (dir by Betty Thomas)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Put on your Sunday best, kids.  We’re going to Sears!”

I’m probably like a lot of people, in that I hate The Brady Bunch as a television show but I love the 1995 film version.  Of course, the film version acknowledges a lot of the things that make the TV show so difficult to sit through.  For instance, whenever I watch the TV show, I’m stuck by the fact that Robert Reed’s Mike Brady is kind of a jerk and he really doesn’t seem to know what he’s talking about half of the time.  Fortunately, in the movie, Gary Cole plays Mike Brady as being kind of a jerk who really doesn’t know what he’s talking about.  On the TV show, I’m always amazed that no one ever points out how dorky Greg Brady is or how no one ever seems to notice that Jan is slowly losing her mind.  The movie, however, is all about how dorky Greg is and how Jan is slowly losing her mind.

“Marcia Marcia Marcia!” Jan (played by Jennifer Elise Cox) exclaims and the audience is instantly divided between neglected middle children and those of us who were maybe a little bit spoiled when we were growing up.

“Johnny Bravo was just Johnny Rotten,” Greg (played by Christopher Daniel Barnes) confesses and it’s tempting to tell Greg not to be too hard on himself but it’s true.  That clown song really sucked and I don’t blame everyone for running away whenever Greg started to sing.

“Your father’s right, kids!” Carol (Shelley Long) says after every one of Mike’s long-winded soliloquies and the film hints that Carol might actually understand that Mike is rarely right but Carol is determined to do whatever needs to be done to keep the Bunch moving forward.  Myself, I’m more concerned by how long it’s taking Carol to read Jonathan Livingston Seagull.  My aunt owns a copy of that book and, if I remember correctly, it’s pretty short.

All of the Bradys (and Alice, too) get a chance to show off what they can do in The Brady Bunch Movie.  They’ve all pretty much got the same quirks as they did in the series but what made them so annoying on television actually makes them rather endearing in the film.  Of course, the film finds the Bradys living in the 90s, surrounded by crime, pollution, loud music, and a dastardly plot to steal their house.  (That’s what they get for living next door to veteran comedy villain Michael McKean).  The thing is that, while the rest of the world is a mess, the Bradys themselves still act and dress like they did on their television show.  They’re literally a family out of time.  That’s not a problem with Marcia, who all the boys love despite the 70s fashion sense and the belief that a hand on the knee is moving too fast.  But the rest of the family definitely sticks out, like a sore but always cheerful thumb.  And yet, because everyone around them is so obnoxious, it’s hard not to appreciate the Bradys and their nonstop earnestness.  They’re an antidote to everything negative in the world.  All they had to do was remain clueless about everything happening outside of their front door.

The Brady Bunch Movie makes me laugh every time I watch it.  It’s one of those films that I watch whenever I’m feeling extremely down.  It’s impossible not to be cheered up when the Bradys start dancing through Sears, amazed by the sight of their faces on television while Mike and Carol carefully examine a virbator in the background.  I’m thankful for this film.  It makes me laugh.

Every day is a sunshine day with the movie Bradys.

The television Bradys can go to Hell.

 

Lifetime Film Review: InstaPsycho (dir by Nick Everhart)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Social media!  It’s murder!

That seems to be the main message behind Instapsycho, a Lifetime film that is designed to appeal to the fear of every mother who worries that her daughter is spending too much time online.  It takes place at a high school divided by social media.  Who do you follow?  Who do you listen to?  Who gets your likes and your retweets and your shares?  Is it Sasha (Kara Royster), who is rich and popular and who seems to have her entire life ahead of her?  Or is it Kelly (Makenzie Vega), who dresses in all black and has a sarcastic wit and who owns a #NoFilters t-shirt?

Me, I would probably follow Kelly because, when I was in high school, I used to dress in all black and I wrote a lot of emo poetry and I tended to toss out random quotes from books that I hadn’t read, all in an effort to make myself seem even smarter than I was.  That said, I don’t think that I would be totally supportive of some of the things that Kelly does to win more followers.

For instance, Kelly poisons her stepfather and then does a video about suicide awareness, one that goes viral and wins her a lot of new fans.  And it’s true that Kelly’s stepfather was a total perv who totally deserved to die but still, I don’t know if I would risk getting sent to prison for murder just to go viral.  I know a lot of people disagree with me on that but …. no, no murders for me.

Of course, Sasha remains a threat to Kelly.  “She’s using your own hashtag against you!” someone announces at one point.  Even after Kelly manages to get all the cheerleaders to do a special “You suck, Sasha” cheer during lunch, it still appears that Kelly might need to do something extra to hold onto her social media crown.  Fortunately, Kelly has plenty of other friends she could kill.

That’s bad news for Maddie (Laura Wiggins), who is Kelly’s best friend. Maddie’s a bit disturbed by Kelly’s new evil side but you have to do what you have to do….

As I said at the start of this review, InstaPsycho is specifically designed to appeal to mothers who, when they’re not watching Lifetime movies, are worrying about what their children are doing online.  This is a good example of a “Social Media is the Devil” type of film but it never descends into Reefer Madness territory, largely because social media actually is the devil.  Plus — and this is key — InstaPsycho actually has a sense of humor about itself.  It may be campy but it’s deliberately campy.

I loved Makenzie Vega’s devilish performance as Kelly.  She rips through the film like a tornado and it’s a lot of fun to watch.  In fact, despite the film’s warnings about what too much social media does to people, you actually kind of find yourself hoping the best for Kelly.  When she points out that her online life is the only thing that she basically has, she does have a point.  Though she may have taken things a bit too far by killing people, it’s hard not to have a little bit of sympathy for her.

InstaPsycho!  Watch it the next time you’re tempted to post or like something just for the clout.