Movie Review – Blockers

Blockers is more satisfying than expected, but could certainly do with some clarity.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Zachary Cruz-Tan

Blockers is a confused little movie. It seems to think sex and toilet humour are somehow connected. That in order for us to fully appreciate the natural art of love-making, we must first see a really big guy gulp a bottle of beer through his butthole. How about if we didn’t have the butt-gulping? Or the testicle-grabbing? What if Blockers had been an earnest comedy about growing up, exploring sex and freaking out your parents?

I enjoyed much about this movie, and I didn’t think I would after seeing its early trailers. They had the stench of Dirty Grandpa. Even its beginning was somewhat problematic. But then the characters slowly took shape, the actors filled out their shoes and against my better judgement, I began to care about them.

Perhaps it’s because all six leads are thoroughly beguiling. Kathryn Newton plays Julie, who vows to lose her virginity to her boyfriend on prom night. Her two best friends, Kayla (Geraldine Viswanathan) and Sam (Gideon Adlon), end up doing the same, not out of love, but of the social pressure of having to keep up. The screenplay is right in allowing them room to discover why that’s a bad idea.

This is the story’s catalyst. The plot involves their three parents inadvertently discovering their sex pact and going on a frantic goose chase to prevent the index fingers from entering the OK signs, or the eggplants from entering the donuts, or whatever. What we end up with are essentially two stories, one about the teens and their evening of debauchery, and one about the Leslie Mann, John Cena and Ike Barinholtz behaving like dorks.

The strength of Blockers is that all six actors are supremely enjoyable, and in the midst of ridiculously unappetising gags, they actually seem like real people, and not just robots programmed to do stupid things. The movie’s writers, of which there are five, take great pleasure in making the adults clueless and backward, and the teenagers remarkably progressive.

Viswanathan is an absolute treat; beautiful, charismatic, in utter control. Adlon’s Sam is graced with the complexities of teenage homosexuality, and she has a scene with her dad near the end that is one of the truest, most moving conversations I can remember in a studio comedy. Even Newton’s Julie, who kick-started the whole thing, is clearly in love with her boyfriend and not merely desperate to get in his pants. There’s an edge to these girls. We get the feeling they know what they’re doing, and this makes their story work.

And yet Blockers strikes a most disconnected tone. It’s as if the studios and the writers didn’t think anyone would give a damn about three girls losing their virginity and decided to blanket their individuality with crude jokes that feel have to get more outrageous with every scene.

There is a proper movie in here somewhere, desperate to get out. All the fat just has to be skimmed off the top. It’s wonderful that a raunchy studio sex comedy can be helmed by a female director in Kay Cannon. Now she needs to trust that her characters will see her through, because this bunch definitely can.

Blockers is available in Australian cinemas from March 29 

Image (c) Universal Pictures 2018

Salute, mi familia – Deconstructing the Popularity of the Fast and Furious Films

Like a torpedo fired from a Russian nuclear submarine, The Fate of the Furious has gone off like a rocket at the box office. But what factors have gone into transforming this series from humble beginnings to the titanic takings its currently enjoying?

Rhys Graeme-Drury

If someone slipped into a coma back in 2001 and only just woke up this week, there would be a lot of stuff that would feel alien to them. Since then, real estate mogul Donald Trump has transformed himself into a reality TV star before becoming the leader of the free world, Star Wars has both concluded and been revived, and the Apple iPod has gone from a radical and expensive concept to essentially redundant.

But perhaps the strangest development in the world of pop culture and cinematic trends is the emergence of the Fast and Furious franchise from niche Point Break rip-off to the gargantuan box office behemoth that it is today. Since first zooming onto cinema screens back in June 2001, The Fast and the Furious has spawned a string of sequels that currently total eight and may surpass 10 by the time Universal has squeezed every last drop of milk from its increasingly lucrative udder, not to mention the proposed buddy cop spin-off with Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham.

In its first weekend in cinemas, The Fate of the Furious blew past even the most generous industry expectations to notch up the largest international opening weekend ever, with a total of US$532.5 million (AU$702 million) in just four days, positively racing past the previous record set by Star Wars: The Force Awakens (US$529 million) in 2015.

How has this happened? How did the series go from a relatively straight-forward first film about street racing through Los Angeles to the most recent entry, The Fate of the Furious, which sees a sprawling ensemble cast that includes two Academy Award winners enact vehicular mayhem through Havana, New York, Berlin and a Russian nuclear submarine base?

There are a multitude of factors working in tandem to get us to this point, the first and potentially most important of which is the wholehearted and natural inclination towards inclusivity and diversity.

You only need to take a cursory glance at the cast list of the Fast and Furious franchise to see that a lot of work has gone into shaping a culturally and racially diverse ensemble. Aside from Paul Walker‘s heartland America blonde hair and blue eyes, the cast has recruited the likes of Tyrese Gibson, Michelle Rodriguez, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Gal Gadot and Sung Kang, not to mention that fact that Diesel himself comes from a mixed race family. It’s the same story behind the camera, with Justin Lin, James Wan, John Singleton and F. Gary Gray on directorial duties.

According to Box Office Mojo, American viewers on opening weekend were 41 per cent Caucasian, 26 per cent Hispanic, 19 per cent African American and 11 per cent Asian. Audiences were skewed in favour of men, but the crossover appeal generated by The Rock’s biceps was evident, with 42 per cent of the audiences being female. The cast is reflecting the diversity of its audience back at themselves and finding success in the process – an aspect that should cause studio execs to sit up and take notice.

The next strand is the explosive action with which the series is synonymous. The great thing about action is that you don’t need a translator or subtitles to understand or enjoy what is unfolding up there on the big screen. Understanding and appreciating action is universal, and since hitting it big with the transformative fifth entry Fast Five, the Fast and Furious series has only gotten more imaginative and outlandish in how it stages and executes said action.

You could also argue that the series has gradually begun to adopt a soap opera style of narrative storytelling, another element that is easily relatable and recogniseable for international audiences in Latin America, Japan or Korea who live and breathe telenovelas, dorama or K-drama series’ respectively.

Whether it’s characters like Letty (Rodriguez) returning from the dead with amnesia, villains like Deckard Shaw (Statham) undoing past misdeeds by switching sides or previous lovers like Elena (Elsa Pataky) resurfacing with a baby that turns out to be Dom’s, the Fast and Furious franchise thrives on soap opera plot twists and reversals that are easy to digest, owing to their familiarity to the same long-form storytelling in primetime television. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was revealed that Dom was separated from his evil twin brother at birth in the next movie.

Unlike Star Wars and to a lesser extent Marvel, Fast and Furious isn’t steeped in lore or encumbered by deep mythology that spans 50 years. There is depth to be found when viewed in its entirety, but the series can also accommodate newcomers, even in its eighth installment. The characters are broad enough that they don’t require backstory; the plot is action-packed enough that the tech jargon, to a certain degree, doesn’t matter.

Lastly, the series is built on a bedrock of values and themes that translate easily to audiences who speak English as a second language. The number of times someone says the word ‘family’ in these films is something of a cheesy running joke to some, but to international audiences it’s something to latch onto and identify with. Family comes first; supporting them is sacred; always respect your rivals, and so on and so forth.

As the Fast and Furious juggernaut rolls inexorably onward, it becomes increasingly evident this series is pitching itself as the encapsulation of what modern blockbuster cinema should be, for better or for worse. It’s diverse, broad, high-octane and vastly appealing to wide range of demographics across the globe.

It’s the ultimate 21st century film series in every sense of the phrase. Love them or hate them, the Fast and Furious films have built themselves up as the go-to mainstream blockbuster films for a range of audiences across the globe, almost certainly readjusting the compasses belonging to many a Hollywood studio in the process.

Image (c) Universal Pictures 2017

Movie Review – The Magnificent Seven

The Magnificent Seven delivers good feelings and professional entertainment value, but does little to distinguish itself from its formidable forebears.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ½
Zachary Cruz-Tan

The worst scene in The Magnificent Seven comes right at the end; undoing what the rest of the movie worked so hard to achieve. The point of this story – first envisioned in Kurosawa’s sprawling masterpiece, Seven Samurai (1954), later reimagined in countless other tributes and remakes (including Pixar’s A Bug’s Life) – is selflessness in the line of honour. The samurai were honourable warriors, bound by bushido. Cowboys were bound by their egos. What they shared in common was the rejection of self-gain. The 1960 Magnificent Seven understood this. This new Hollywood remake, directed by Antoine Fuqua, tacks on a closing scene that converts its guns-for-hire into immortalised heroes, effectively gut-punching itself.

And what a pity that is, because the rest of it feels like a solid Western. It’s not limp or dated. Its production values are convincing. It comes meaty, ready for a fight. In an age where filmmakers favour CGI shortcuts, Fuqua has made the right decision to root his film in solid ground. The town of Rose Creek is actually there, built with wood and nails. Explosions are rigged and timed. Stuntmen tumble off rooftops and plough through windows. Physical action gives the movie weight and visual depth, a leisure that’s no longer easy to come by.

Denzel Washington plays Sam Chisolm, the Yul Brynner character from the original remake, and doesn’t so much chew up the scenery as stand back and admire it. Washington is always reliable, but here he seems too passive to be the leader of a troupe of gun-slinging, macho monkeys. I can’t remember a single impressive thing he does in the entire film.

Elsewhere, the cast tries to be as diverse as politically and financially possible. It introduces a Korean knife-thrower (Lee Byung-Hun); a Mexican outlaw (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) in full cabrón mode; and throws in a Comanche archer (Martin Sensmeier) for good measure. The problem is, by the time the big old gunfight thunders its way around the corner, none of these “interesting” characters do anything worth noting. And the gunfight, as impressive as it is, resembles a chaos party hosted by anarchy. It’s hard to tell what’s happening, and to whom. There are so many bad guys for our heroes to gun down that you might begin to suspect they’re growing out of the soil like potatoes.

But for what it’s worth, this Magnificent Seven is a good, harmless time. The interplay between the characters is often electric and the way the screenplay whittles down the ensemble cast shows restraint and diplomacy. It is, however, still a movie that need not have been made. But it has, and we’re neither better or worse off for it. I just wish the final scene had been omitted. It reeks of studio interference. I don’t want to have to wait for a home release to catch an alternate ending.

The Magnificent Seven is available in Australian cinemas from September 29

Image courtesy of Sony Pictures