The Morning Show - TV Review

Starring Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Steve Carell, Billy Crudup, Mark Duplass, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Nestor Carbonell, Karen Pittman, Bel Powley, Desean Terry and Jack Davenport.

An interesting timely approach. In the wake of Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose, this examines what it's like for a Today-like morning program that has to deal with the fallout when their main male anchor (Steve Carell) is fired for sexual misconduct. Jennifer Aniston plays the head female anchor who was barely holding it together when the scandal broke, and Reese Witherspoon is a small-town reporter who has one of her stories go viral and gets an opportunity to join the show. Made me think of what it was like for Savannah Guthrie, Gayle King, Norah O'Donnell, etc. 

Fantastic cast, with Billy Crudup the Emmy-winning stand-out as the network executive who seems to like the chaos and may or may not want Aniston to fail so he can fire her and get a clean slate of leads on the show. 

The genius of casting Carell for this part is that he has this lovable persona and he's famously one of the nicest off-camera guys around. So to see him as this character be accused of these things, it makes the viewers secretly deep down hope some of these accusations are false.

The pace of the season is expert. When I take it as a whole, you can see the creators had a grand idea from beginning to end how this was going to go. Some actors in there seem like they don't have a lot to do and then the episode comes where we see just how important their role is in the grand scheme of things.

I'm very interested to see where Season 2 goes from here. With COVID, production was delayed and the season was rewritten to incorporate that into the show, but it should be out before the end of 2021. It's on AppleTV.

We're the Millers - Movie Review

Starring Jennifer Aniston, Jason Sudeikis, Emma Roberts, Will Poulter, Nick Offerman, Kathryn Hahn, Ed Helms, Molly Quinn and Luis Guzman.
Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber.

★★

This send-up of the heartland image of the American family can't decide on a tone. Is it just slapstick?  Farce?  Realistic?  You can't have a character go for heart-string tugs ten minutes after he winked right at the camera.

Jason Sudeikis, who announced he won't be back on Saturday Night Live this fall, plays a pot-dealer named David.  David just loves his life of living alone, dealing drugs, and being free.  Other than that, we don't get a lot of depth to him. We know he's cynical and a smart-aleck, the type of role Chevy Chase would've played 30 years ago.  After he gets robbed, he has to come up with $43,000 for his boss, who offers to forgive his debt and pay another $100,000 if he'll go down to Mexico and pick up a "smidge" of marijuana.

In one of those movie strokes of genius, he decides to hire a fake family and pretend to be dorks on vacation, another type of role Chase would've played 30 years ago.  David recruits Rose (Jennifer Aniston), a stripper who lives in his building; Kenny (Will Poulter), a nerdy 18-year-old who also lives in his building with a mom who's gone for weeks at a time; and Casey (Emma Roberts), a homeless runaway.

It has some funny moments, but it's more miss than hit. For instance, we don't need 12 different shots of ths spider to get that it's crawled up Kenny's leg.  Why does Rose even have a strip number in the middle of the movie, if only to gratify Aniston's ego that she's still got it? And at the end, when it goes for mushiness, it just reeks of falsehood.  The movie did nothing to earn it, and yet it tries to grab it.

Nick Offerman and Kathryn Hahn, both from Parks & Recreation, are energetic in their roles as the nerdy couple who try to befriend the Millers.

It passed $100 million this week, so if they want to make a sequel, it's set up for one.

Butler wins weekend

1. The Butler - $25.01 million - 1 wk (Wein)
 . . . 2933 screens / $8527 per screen
2. We're the Millers - $17.78 ($69.51) - 2 wks (WB) -32.7%
 . . . 3325 / $5347
3. Elysium - $13.6 ($55.91) - 2 wks (TS) -54.4%
 . . . 3284 / $4141
4. Kick-Ass 2 - $13.57 - 1 wk (U)
 . . . 2940 / $4615
5. Planes - $13.14 ($45.09) - 2 wks (BV) -40.9%
 . . . 3716 / $3536
6. Percy Jackson 2 - $8.38 ($38.9) - 2 wks (Fox) -41.8%
 . . . 3080 / $2719
7. Jobs - $6.7 - 1 wk (OR)
 . . . 2381 / $2814
8. 2 Guns - $5.57 ($59.22) - 3 wks (U) -50.5%
 . . . 2471 / $2255
9. The Smurfs 2 - $4.6 ($56.91) - 3 wks (Sony) -50.7%
 . . . 2349 / $1958
10. The Wolverine - $4.43 ($120.46) - 4 wks (Fox) -44.9%
 . . . 2058 / $2150
11. The Conjuring - $3.91 ($127.86) - 5 wks (WB) -41%
 . . . 2001 / $1954
12. Despicable Me 2 - $3.78 ($345.99) - 7 wks (U) -36.1%
 . . . 1818 / $2080
13. Paranoia - $3.5 - 1 wk (Rel)
 . . . 2459 / $1423
14. Blue Jasmine - $2.36 ($9.49) - 4 wks (SP) +.6%
 . . . 229 / $10,301

I know its official title is Lee Daniels' The Butler, but that's only because Warner Bros. decided to be jerks about rights to the title.  The Butler is a showcase for Oprah Winfrey (reminding us all she was an actress first) and a parade of extended cameos portraying Presidents and First Ladies through the decades. I haven't seen it yet, but at best, this is Forest Whitaker's Remains of the Day opportunity.

This is a summer where half the sequels are just not living up to their predecessors.  Kick-Ass 2 swapped Nicolas Cage for Jim Carrey, but Carrey decided a few months ago he's had a change of heart about violence in film and therefore wouldn't promote the movie.  Percy Jackson 2 and Smurfs 2 are also films where their business isn't justifying their greenlighting, but I suppose they rely more on families buying the DVDs or renting VOD to make their money back.  Red 2 can't leave theaters fast enough.

Jobs wound up being a trifle.  Paranoia completely squandered the talents of Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman.  These movies might have fared better opening in September.

In holdovers, We're the Millers is the surprise hit of the summer and could make its way to $100 million.  A 32.7% drop in week 2 is a sign that audiences are disagreeing with critics.  It occurs to me that it reunites two of the stars from Horrible Bosses (Jennifer Aniston, Jason Sudeikis), the slightly less surprising hit from its summer.

Neill Blomkamp's Elysium isn't quite doing the business of District 9.  Its going to need to be a hit overseas if it wants to make a profit.

Planes had a mere $50 million budget, so it's proving to have been worth a theatrical run.  In fact, Planes: Fire & Rescue will be hitting theaters next summer.

In limited release, Austenland had a $10,650 per screen average on 4 screens.

Weekend Box Office - 8/11/13

1. Elysium - $30.4 million - 1 wk (TS)
 . . . 3284 screens / $9257 per screen
2. We're the Millers - $26.56 ($38.04) - 1 wk (WB)
 . . . 3260 / $8146
3. Planes - $22.53 - 1 wk (BV)
 . . . 3702 / $6085
4. Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters - $14.6 ($23.46) - 1 wk (Fox)
 . . . 3031 / $4817
5. 2 Guns - $11.13 ($48.52) - 2 wks (U) -58.9%
 . . . 3028 / $3675
6. The Smurfs 2 - $9.5 ($46.6) - 2 wks (Sony) -45.9%
 . . . 3867 / $2457
7. The Wolverine - $8 ($111.99) - 3 wks (Fox) -62.5%
 . . . 2867 / $2790
8. The Conjuring - $6.7 ($120.75) - 4 wks (WB) -48.6%
 . . . 2650 / $2528
9. Despicable Me 2 - $5.75 ($338.31) - 6 wks (U) -43.3%
 . . . 2395 / $2400
10. Grown Ups 2 - $3.7 ($123.8) - 5 wks (Sony) -53.4%
 . . . 2102 / $1760
11. Blue Jasmine - $2.52 ($6.22) - 3 wks (SPC) +35.7%
 . . . 116 / $21,750
12. Turbo - $2.25 ($75.02) - 4 wks (Fox) -63.9%
 . . . 1771 / $1270

Four new releases this week, and the only real disappointment was Percy Jackson.  Maybe the studio hoped interest would be there for a second installment.

Elysium, meanwhile, is a modest success.  Modest considering its $115 million production budget.  We're the Millers had a much smaller budget and will wind up doing about the same domestically.  Planes had been intended as a straight-to-DVD spinoff but the theatrical release paid off.

Random Movie Stuff - 2/18/12

- Nonso Anozie (The Grey) has joined the cast of Ender's Game, which is now slated for a March 15, 2013 release date.  It stars Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford, Viola Davis, Ben Kingsley, Hailee Steinfeld and Abigial Breslin.


- Gael Garcia Bernal (Amores Perros, Letters from Juliet) will star in Zorro Reborn, a sci-fi twist on the Mexican legend that puts him in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.


- Anna Friel (Limitless) and Imogen Poots (Fright Night) have joined the cast of Michael Winterbottom's King of Soho, starring Steve Coogan as Paul Raymond, who became one of England's wealthiest men by building an empire of nude theaters, gentlemen's clubs and porn magazines.


- Jennifer Aniston, Dennis Quaid and Ty Burrell have joined John Hawkes and Yasiin Bey in Switch, the prequel to Jackie Brown.


- Malin Akerman (Watchmen) has joined the cast of ABC's The Smart One.  It stars Portia de Rossi (Better Off Ted) as a brilliant, successful businesswoman who has to go to work for her ditzy younger sister, now the mayor.  Jean Smart (24) will play their mother.


- While The Office is still NBC's highest-rated show on Thursdays, it no longer can buoy the night. It fell to a series-low 4.3 million viewers (2.2 rating).  30 Rock's doing even worse than Community did at the 8/7 hour with 3.6 million viewers and a 1.4 rating.

Just Go With It - DVD Review

l 1/2

Starring Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston, Nicole Kidman, Brooklyn Decker, Nick Swardson, Dave Matthews, Bailee Madison, Griffin Gluck, Dan Patrick and Kevin Nealon.
Directed by Dennis Dugan.

I used to be a Sandler fan. And I still hold out hope each time that his next movie will be genuinely funny. Although I would usually wait until The Waterboy or The Wedding Singer to hit the $1 theater, I still had a good time seeing them. But he's been more miss than hit lately, and truly lately, it's been getting bad. And if I see Dennis Dugan's directing, I just have no faith.

But even if the quality's going down, his movies keep making over $100 million. When he stretches himself with other writers/directors (Funny People, Reign Over Me, Spanglish, Punch-Drunk Love) it never makes as much. So as a cold-hard capitalist, Sandler knows what's he's doing, even if it means the movies' quality will be questionable.

So this time around, Sandler plays Danny, a single plastic surgeon who gets a lot of one-night stands out of pretending to be an unhappily married man. Then one day he meets Palmer, a model - I mean, schoolteacher - who really does it for him. She can tell when he's lying. The problem with that is after that first night, she's incredibly gullible and can't tell when he's lying. So it kills the initial hook of her character.

When Palmer finds his prop wedding ring, he reverts to his usual lie about a horrible wife he's about to divorce. Well, his girlfriend wants to meet her. So Danny asks his friend/co-worker Kate (Jennifer Aniston) to pretend to be this wife. The lie, naturally, snowballs when Palmer learns Kate, and therefore Danny, has kids. Now Kate's kids are brought in to pretend Danny's their father.

So the lies grow and become more and more unbelievable, but Palmer swallows them all. Somehow they all go to Hawaii (even though the magic of green-screen shows they weren't really in Hawaii), and at the 55 minute mark, Kate meets her old high-school nemesis (Nicole Kidman). And the lies continue.

It never really elevates. The easiest joke is always used. For example, at least twice, Danny gets hit in the crotch. It has the other usual Sandler trappings (product placement, former SNL buddies, an Allen Covert appearance), and it's all to lazy minimal effect. At least when Sandler's been in rom-com mode, especially with Drew Barrymore, the romantic part's been sweet. Here, I believed Danny and Kate were buddies, but the part where they fell in love seemingly got skipped. I guess it was when Danny first saw Kate in a bikini. What a message.

Horrible Bosses - Movie Review

lll

Starring Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell, Jamie Foxx, Donald Sutherland, Julie Bowen, Wendell Peirce and Iaon Gruffudd.
Directed by Seth Gordon.

If The Hangover was Zack Galifianakis's introduction to the mainstream, then this movie will serve as Charlie Day's. He's primarily known as the guy from FX's It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I've never watched that show, but this makes me want to put Season 1 in my Netflix queue. I mainly know him as the guy from Going the Distance. He and Jason Sudeikis served as the two best friends to Justin Long, which was fine and dandy but to not much effect. Here the two have more to work with and make the most of it, but I focus on Day because he gets the biggest laughs in the movie.

He plays Dale, a dental assistant with a nympho boss (Jennifer Aniston) who likes to do all sorts of wrong things over the bodies of her drugged-unconscious patients. Dale's happily engaged and doesn't want to endanger that, but his boss doesn't care; she likes sexually harrassing him on a daily basis.

Then there's Nick (Jason Bateman), who's the first to arrive and the last to leave his job, under the thumb of the company's menacing president, but he takes it all because he's been led to believe he's up for a promotion. When the promotion doesn't happen and threatens to quit, his boss (Kevin Spacey, most horrible of the bosses, and I mean that in a good way) lets him know he'll trash his reputation to ensure he'll never work in this town again.

Lastly there's Kurt (Sudeikis) who loves his job at a chemical company until his boos dies. The boss's cokehead son (Colin Farrell) becomes the new president and starts using company funds as his own piggy-bank.

None of the three feel they can quit, but eventually they come up with a plan thanks to "murder consultant" Dean 'M.F.' Jones (Jamie Foxx, in an effectively funny supporting role) - they decide they will kill each other's bosses. Naturally they suck at it.

The chemistry between the three leads is great, and there are several chuckles throughout the movie. It never broke into that magical realm where comedies become classics. It's funny enough that it's worth seeing. ("How's that for a pull quote, Abbott?")

The Switch - DVD Review

l 1/2

Starring Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman, Patrick Wilson, Jeff Goldblum, Juliette Lewis, Thomas Robinson and Todd Louiso.
Directed by Josh Gordon & Will Speck.

I thought this was supposed to be a comedy. It's actually a sappy 45-minute melodrama. Oh, it's 90 minutes? Well, they stretch it out with mournful, contemplative piano chords.

Aniston and Bateman play platonic best friends. She decides she wants a baby and hires a sperm donor. She even has a party at her house to celebrate the insemination. Bateman gets drunk and depressed and on a whim, trades the donor sperm with his own. He's so drunk, though, that he doesn't remember it the next day. Meanwhile Aniston moves away.

Six years later she moves back, and heck if the little tyke doesn't remind Bateman of himself. Well, that's an hour of the movie gone. You can guess where the last half-hour goes.

I can say I liked Bateman's performance. He never felt like he was trying to be funny. But then, the script rarely asks him to. It sounds to me like this premise could have gone the farcical route, but instead it lays there like a dead fish. How many more bad movies can Aniston put her name on before producers stop shelling out the dough?