Speed 2 Month Day 666 -- Busting Some Ghosts

SPEED 2: CRUISE CONTROL had a budget of (probably) 160 million American dollars. It raked in $48 million in the national release, with another $116 million overseas. Dead on arrival it wasn’t, but it certainly bled out as the weeks progressed. Over the years it’s become increasingly difficult to discover a perfect comparison film, as the criteria used is perpetually stretched to the limits for the sake of the skewed chuckle this annual event has become. Thankfully, 2016 offered up the best thing SPEED 2 Month has had on its plate since INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL, and it’s a whopper.

It has long been the hope of certain film fans that director Ivan Reitman would gather together the three comedic writer/actors and one journeyman once more, as he had done in 1984 with much, much success. Sure, he did it again in 1989, but most people agree that the sequel was just a little lacking. Would it happen? Could it? Most of the actors agreed at one point or another that none would do it, though that changed time and again, particularly as nostalgia films became the go-to for Hollyweird in hopeful buckets of cash for little effort. GHOSTBUSTERS was not going to happen as fans and internet critics wanted, especially after incomparable writer Harold Ramis passed away far too soon.

This past Saturday, I had a few hours to kill and avoid the heat before a work shift, so I chose to utilize the time wisely, by discovering something worthy for this ridiculous column. (Hundreds of years from now, people will go to the grave site of John Amenta and wonder at the epitaph: “He liked SPEED 2”.) The newest GHOSTBUSTERS film is not a sequel, not a new chapter, and not even liked long before it got finished. Most readers are already going to be aware of the hate spewed out on the interwebz regarding the rebooted story, with all new characters and a wholly female main cast, so delving into that won’t forward this and most assuredly will just bore us all.

This new GHOSTBUSTERS had a budget of $144 million. At present, it’s collected about $50 million in its opening weekend, with another $15 million overseas. It’ll likely break the $200 million mark, not quite the hit all had expected and certainly not the smash that the original was. I am not here to compare the new version to the original, though. It’s been viewed to attempt to best SPEED 2 as the worst movie of all time (that I’ve seen, with a bloated budget). The new GHOSTBUSTERS does it’s very hardest to become Lord of the Midden Heap, but just can’t quite claim it, however much it may want to.

Now, I saw the trailers long before the movie came out and found them unfunny and almost horrifyingly bad at trying to get me in the theatre. As the last film I watched on the silver screen was originally released in 1940, you can see how little I go. After all the hubbub and stupidity regarding the movie had long driven me to drink terribly named liquors, I decided to go watch the movie and prove that it wasn’t nearly as bad as the trailers made it out to be. Yes, I went in with eyes open and brain shut off. After an hour in that theatre, I was texting John Amenta to tell him I wanted to leave.

The movie actually starts quite well, with a cold open that had me laughing out loud to Zach Woods’ tour guide in a historical New York mansion. Kristen Wiig had me chuckling and quite happy to watch as her performance, at least in the opening shots, was entertaining and funny. Enter Melissa McCarthy, who pretty much irritates from the second she appears, and quirky Kate McKinnon, who either annoys you or not as she chaotically explores the camera space during every shot. Essentially, as the movie progresses, it gets more and more annoying. This is a note I took while watching the movie, at a particularly facepalming moment: “clumsy, unmitigated mess of pithy lines and reaction shots”. This movie is just a series of tropes, with a terribly thin framework of a story lifted from the original script. It’s horribly acted, it’s loaded with terribly unfunny jokes, it’s chock full of “Easter Eggs” for the obnoxiously loud fans of the original movie in hopes to make them all shut the hell up, and it’s just not that good. Much of what occurs is nearly slapstick in nature, which irks me. If you’re going to do slapstick, just go all the way, don’t give me half-assed. I wanted to call the movie a big cartoon, but that would be doing a disservice to the Real Ghostbusters cartoon of the 1980’s. I spent nine bucks on this hideous movie in the afternoon and it just had me in pain… which was probably due to my hair pulling, but hey. It’s that bad of a film.

 I have to place the majority of the blame on the writers and the director, Paul Feig. Feig has some kind of director-ly love relationship with Melissa McCarthy, which is fine, if he could get some sort of pathos out of her at some point. The constant close ups of characters or shots of other cast members as someone else is speaking off camera is a nightmare of filmmaking. Get the name of that editor and make sure they get their job at the Dairy Queen back; they’re going to need it. This movie blows. It’s bad. I was slapping my face in shock, it gradually got so bad. Still, it’s no SPEED 2. Some of the effects are good, as are the sets. It starts good, which SPEED 2 doesn’t do. It has a few laugh out loud moments and it has tons of guest appearances, which are fun, even if they sometimes burden the overall story. To be specific, this is a freshman effort from people that are much better than this movie grants the viewer. Bad, people. All of you feel my virtual hand slap. Feel it? Good. Now do yourself a favor and go watch GHOSTBUSTERS 2, which is better than this over examined, eyesore of a movie.

(No, I’m not ignoring Leslie Jones’ participation – she’s really new to film and is quite funny at times elsewhere. I expect she’ll get more parts after this but I’m not expecting Angela Bassett-level ability from her. The movie really, really fails her character, which could have been a much more interesting part, given a better director.)

HonestTrailers did a great review of Ghostbusters II.

Speed 2 Month 2016 Day One -- Fighting in the Streets

It’s a few days into SPEED 2 MONTH, which I delayed due to some personal conflicts of the greatly chaotic 2016. Of course, it’s Independence Day here in the States, where we all enjoy blowing up small parts of the land in celebration of a divorce from our best friend in the world. I suppose I should start this year’s exploration with the movie that steals the holiday’s name, but that would be too easy. Plus, no matter what you say about it, INDEPENDENCE DAY (ID4) was so far superior to SPEED 2 that it’s just not worth the exercise. Instead, I’ll go into a movie I recently retched... er, watched, STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI.

I will assume readers are all aware of Street Fighter, the video game or at least, the manga and comics. Chun Li is one of the principal characters of the storyline in all aspects of the game and subsidiary product, as well as one of the most popular. She’s a Chinese national, at least in most interpretations, with pseudo-traditional dress to make her stand out. In the video game she has a signature fighting style that made her fun to play, pushing her to heights of pop culture nobility far exceeding the games.

The video game is pretty simplistic storytelling, getting dense when you explore character backgrounds. It was pretty much the grand daddy of all character driven fighting games, setting the stage for many, many, many others. I’m guessing that the simple story of the game is generally why any live-action production garnered from the game attracts so many dungflies.

Street Fighter has had two English-language films based off of it, the second of which is LEGEND OF CHUN-LI. I’ll maybe handle the first movie next year, because two Street Fighter movies during this month might break my already fragile psyche. In fact, if I wasn’t drinking right at this moment, reliving LEGEND OF CHUN-LI might make me run out and burn down a building. Awful is the name of the game here, people. It’s the prettiest, most bad-ass, tv-actor-to-movie-actor-filled slugfest of total boredom I’ve ever seen. O yes, it’s terrible. Not as terrible as the ineptitude of the King of All Crappy Movies, SPEED 2, but hey, that’s a tall mountain to climb.

Where does STREET FIGHTER: LEGEND OF CHUN-LI fail? Well. Let’s start with the lead. Kristin Kreuk, late of the CW series Smallville, where she did her level best to ruin the hearts of fans as the lovely Lana Lang, takes on Chun-Li as a Chinese-American. Fail one. Chun-Li, at least in the games and other supporting material, is a very strong personality. Here, it’s an origin story and not a good one. It takes most of the movie for the real Chun-Li to finally appear, which, if this was to be a franchise builder, would not necessarily be a bad thing. Sadly… I kept waiting for Ming-Na Wen to show up. That’s a pithy, pop-culture reference that some of you might get. Google it if you need to.

Neal McDonough is the big baddie, M. Bison. He is usually lots of fun to watch, but here it ain’t happening. If he took the role for a new roof, I get it. Even actors have to pay bills. Well, most of them do. He brings nothing to the role, which was handled so much better in the previous Street Fighter film by a very sick Raul Julia, which is even more displeasing, as I personally enjoy McDonough in everything, even stinkers like WING COMMANDER. Fail three.

To assist our hapless heroine, we get a Mortal Kombat film veteran, Robin Shou. I didn’t even recognize him in this oxygen-stealing stinker. His fight scenes were weak and poorly clapped together, a failure if there ever was one as he was arguably the best athlete in the MK movies. To add to this, most of the fight scenes were not well done, so fail five.

Fail six: Chris Klein.

Where is the movie good? It’s pretty, as stated before. Kreuk is one helluva looker for film and she does gain some great headshots from this celluloid clunker. Some of the chase scenes are fun and action packed, a few of the fight scenes are okay and Shou and Kreuk actually do have some bond going on screen that makes their time together watchable. But the ONE, SINGLE THING that makes the movie so, so much better than SPEED 2: Cheng Pei-Pei. Likely best known for her role as the misguided character Jade Fox in CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON, she eats up every scene she gets in every movie she appears in. Just for this alone, STREET FIGHTER: LEGEND OF CHUN-LI stands apart from SPEED 2. Do yourself a favor and watch anything this great actress has done. You won’t be sorry.

SPEED 2 Month 2016 Day One: Taken down by a video game adaptation. Maybe this will be video game movie month vs. SPEED 2. Maybe.

More tomorrow, with an explanation of all things SPEED 2.

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SPEED 2 Month Day 22: Just Horrible

Sequels make up a good portion of SPEED 2 Month largely due to the fun of attacking terrible attempts at making a cheap buck off the original. During 2014’s SPEED 2 Month, an in-depth report on HIGHLANDER 2: THE QUICKENING explored the positive outcome of thoughtless money grubbing, regardless of quality or intelligence. You can read it here, if you missed it. Today, A Leaf on the Wind will be eyeing a similar idea, if only in the vein of sequel driven drivel.

HORRIBLE BOSSES, a 2011 film starring Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis, with Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell, Jamie Foxx and Kevin Spacey in supporting roles, was a breakout success. Regardless of how amusing the movie was (or wasn’t, in the valued opinion of A Leaf on the Wind), it hardly deserved a sequel. Bateman didn’t do a whole lot beyond his continuing role as straight man; Day was annoying and Sudeikis boring. Aniston went way, way beyond her “good girl” role, which was likely a large portion of the audience draw here. Other than Spacey, little more is noteworthy for this drudgery of stupid Hollywood selling lots of stupid to stupid people shelling out 10 bucks to see stupid. So, why not make a sequel, right?

A horrible depiction of who is in the film

HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 stumbled its stupid way to the stupid… er, silver screen Thanksgiving weekend of 2014, with the hopes people still dulled by their overeating of turkey and tryptophan would not notice how dumb the movie was. Once again, Bateman, Day and Sudeikis return to a script that has as little to do with the original movie as possible, in hopes to light some magic under the spotty asses of those involved. Aniston comes back again, with dialogue straight out of a higher budget porn, with Spacey stealing scenes from his imprisonment (his character was jailed at the end of the original flick). Jamie Foxx returns as well, with new characters from the excellent Christoph Waltz and the not-Captain Kirk Chris Pine. About 20 minutes into the plot of HORRIBLE BOSSES 2, I stopped listening and started flipping through potential other movies for SPEED 2 Month. HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 wasn’t just stupid in the way the first film was, it was excruciatingly stupid. It was tediously boring. It was everything the first movie was, quintupled for the added benefit for the addicted movie goer.

The incomperable Christoph Waltz

To explain the plot that’s trying to be complex, the three principals have gone into business for themselves, making a rather stupid product. They then sell that stupid product to Waltz and Pine’s company, who them dick the threesome over. The trio then tries to get even with the help of Foxx, who they’d hired in the first film to help them do the stupid things they did then. They’re so dumb this time, even Foxx’s character has to explain to them, and the audience, that they’re so fucking stupid they should be institutionalized just on that alone. Things get dumber and dumber and dumber, involving Aniston in part, as well as Pine’s character trying to get even with Waltz. By the time the movie concludes, you’re in pain just trying to get away from it. It is in the opinion of A Leaf on the Wind that if you were to drink six bottles of Jeppson’s Malort, you would lose less brain cells than if you watch HORRIBLE BOSSES 2.

Let us do a complete comparison: SPEED is to HORRIBLE BOSSES as a smallish budget (30 million for SPEED, 37 million for HORRIBLE BOSSES) is to high profits (350 million and 208 million respectively). SPEED 2 is to HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 as a terrible idea made through dollar signs is to a quickly made shitstorm (less than three years for both movie sequels from their original film). If A Leaf on the Wind was outfitted with mathematical geniuses, an algebraic formula could probably be put together for Hollyweird to use when determining profitability of potential sequels. Hell, if Billy Beane could make it work for baseball, why not make it work for the film industry? That is, unless they’re actually doing this already and we the public are getting tortured with more Adam Sandler movies than we need. Damned math.

HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 is better than SPEED 2. It is, really. First, the budget wasn’t increased to an astronomical amount and second, it didn’t exactly lose money. It pulled in 102 million off a 42 million dollar output, far surpassing SPEED 2 in the box office. It doesn’t have Jason Patric in it, so that’s a plus. Christoph Waltz makes pretty much anything he’s in better, so that helps. If he has put some of the creepy nastiness into his character here that he did in INGLORIOUS BASTERDS, it might have been even more entertaining. Regardless, he was fun to watch, as I think he enjoyed playing the character for what it was. Pine wasn’t bad either, honestly. At the end things went way off the rails, as a stupid “comedy” tends to do when the plot just doesn’t stick, but he was fun to watch if you pay attention, which A Leaf on the Wind admittedly didn’t. The final thing that makes HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 better than SPEED 2 is this: Naughty Aniston!

Next up, superheroes!

A gratuitous shot of Jennifer Aniston, not from HORRIBLE BOSSES 2.

SPEED 2 Month 2015 Day 19: The Heat of Mediocrity

On Day 4 of SPEED 2 Month, A Leaf on the Wind focused on the popular Sandra Bullock, star of both SPEED and the puerile sequel. Within it, her amazing amount of successful films was shown to far outweigh her dogs, regardless of creative opinion. One of her more recent ventures was the 2013 release, THE HEAT, with popular comedic actress Melissa McCarthy.

THE HEAT theatre poster, with an image that never occurs in the movie

THE HEAT is a plebian “buddy cop” picture with little to no entertainment factor outside of McCarthy being a foul-mouthed Boston police detective. Bullock is an anal, over competitive, overbearing FBI agent trying to get a promotion and ends up having to work alongside McCarthy to locate a mysterious drug lord. In the middle of that, there’s a lot of stupid jokes, near-cameo appearances from known actors, lots of movie cliché’s and a plot that will put you to sleep. If you’re having a bout of insomnia, this movie is for you, believe it.

The film does have some amusing bits, most of which come from McCarthy. The “slowest chase scene in movie history” is particularly funny, as is her incredibly foul comments throughout the movie, regardless of who they’re pointed at. Michael McDonald is cast against type as a vicious criminal and does not disappoint while Jane Curtain and Michael Rapaport are terribly underused as McCarthy’s mother and brother, respectively. Tom Wilson is great as McCarthy’s overworked captain, but does not get nearly enough screen time as he deserves. This flick is totally about Bullock and McCarthy being the Odd Couple of the chick-police, no matter how boring their personality conflict might be. It’s a shame that other actors suffer from being a part of the story that really goes nowhere. I also don’t understand this perpetual need to have high impact violence as part of a comedy movie, regardless of setting. BEVERLY HILLS COP worked because a lot of the violence was off-screen or not in your face. In THE HEAT, there are at least two head shots with red mist spray in a graphic show of “shocking” violence. A Leaf on the Wind hopes that someday, this sort of wanton need to shock will no longer be a part of certain types of films, as is the way of Hollyweird.

Michael McDonald, not as he appears in THE HEAT

THE HEAT was made for 43 million dollars and was a big hit, pulling in 160 million in the States and 229 million overall. Usually this would beg for a sequel, unless you’re a smart producer and just take the profit and apply it to something different with what worked in the movie: McCarthy. As is well known at this point, she’s gone on to make quite a few comedic flicks, some hotter than others. At present, McCarthy has a movie in theatres by the same director of THE HEAT, Paul Feig. It’s currently at #2 behind JURASSIC WORLD, the biggest blockbuster in years. Regardless of how good THE HEAT might not have been, it was popular enough to make a good income and give McCarthy and Feig another shot. Will you?

Next up, horrid work situations.