Emmanuelle Chriqui

  • Cosmic Dawn (2022)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) Ugh, what a terrible film. I don’t expect other people’s reaction to Cosmic Dawn to be quite as negative as mine, but it just happens to push a few of my buttons. For one thing, I’ll remind everyone again about the inverse relationship between serious SF fans and paranormal credulity – one of the reasons why SF fans enjoy the genre is that they know fully well the distinction between reality and woo-woo: It’s hard to find more skeptics than those in attendance at a Science Fiction conference. So, when you’ve got something like Cosmic Dawn merrily making a film about alien abduction that clearly believes in alien abduction (as writer-director Jefferson Moneo affirms in the film’s promotional material), there’s little space for dramatic tension. But that stance could have been excused had it led to something more gripping in its execution. Alas, it takes the patience of a saint (or a true believer) to sit through Cosmic Dawn’s purple-tinged duration, whether it’s an endless prologue about a girl whose mother gets abducted, repetitive scenes of weirdness in a cult housed in northern Ontario, or an overdone ending that has no surprises whatsoever. I did like a few things – most notably the idea of a used bookstore run by Emmanuelle Chriqui. But in many ways, I see in Cosmic Dawn an unimaginative deployment of several low-budget Science Fiction film clichés – weird visuals without coherence, fake-ambivalent plot developments that merely prolong a foreordained ending, a pretentious tone that is absolutely not justified by its content, “clever” twists that don’t hold up to closer scrutiny, and half-baked ideas offered as meditative. Cosmic Dawn is obnoxious when it’s not being boring, and a disappointment when it doesn’t lead to anything.

  • Super Troopers 2 (2018)

    Super Troopers 2 (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2019) The Troopers are back for more silliness in Super Troopers 2, with the Broken Lizard comedy troupe offering more of their specific sense of humour. This time, nothing less than national sovereignty is at stake, as an old surveying error leads to the American border being repositioned to take up a slice of Canadian land. In the meantime, the disgraced Troopers are asked to set up a Highway Patrol outpost in the contested zone. While the plotting has a few moments (“passive smuggling” is a clever concept), the point of Super Troopers 2 is, once again, the low-brow humour milking the Trooper’s stupidity, propensity to pranks and overall sociopathy. Those who loved the first film will like the second, even though it feels more calculated and less funny than it could have been. As a Canadian viewer, I had a lot of fun with the various unflattering stereotypes and dumb jokes playing off the difference between the US and Canada—even if some of the details ring patently false. As a low-budget film, it’s best not to expect too much from the result, although director Jay Chandrasekhar does manage a few convincing set-pieces along the way. I suppose I could make a half-hearted cultural representation argument that few of the French-Canadian actors are played by French-Canadians, but I don’t even believe that to be a problem, especially not when steps in Rob Lowe and Emmanuelle Chriqui (who, upon verification, was actually born in Montréal). Super Troopers 2 is not meant to be watched for a nuanced take on cross-cultural issues when there are dumb jokes to be made, and the best we can say is that it’s definitely in the same vein as its predecessor, often funnier than the similar French-Canadian Bon Cop Bad Cop 2, and entertaining enough if you’re in the right mindset.

  • Wrong Turn (2003)

    Wrong Turn (2003)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, February 2017) It’s kind of amazing that Wrong Turn spawned five sequels (and counting), given how much of a generic hillbilly horror film it is. Featuring college-aged protagonists pitted against murderous cannibal hillbillies, Wrong Turn delights in macabre gags, makes no secret of its affection for its monsters rather than its human victims, and feels like a cynical attempt to churn out just another clichéd horror film. It’s a film that doesn’t have much of a reason for existing, even while we’re watching it for the first time—it’s obviously following conventional genre formula, and it’s not particularly well executed enough to rise above the muck. Eliza Dushku and Emmanuelle Chriqui have featured roles (poor them), but that’s nowhere near enough to justify seeing the film. Wrong Turn’s meanness will be repulsive to anyone who’s not a convinced gore hounds, while not offering anything more than straight-up genre thrills.

  • Girl Walks Into a Bar (2011)

    Girl Walks Into a Bar (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2014) One of the benefits of being an omnivorous cinephile is that you never know when an oddball piece of cinematic knowledge is going to come in handy. In this case, Girl Walks Into a Bar‘s quirks makes far more sense when considered against writer/director Sebastián Gutiérrez previous films such as Elektra Luxx: the lead role of Carla Gugino (Gutiérrez’s girlfriend), fragmented script, interlocking subplots, varying tonal shifts, generally clever dialogue and presence of several good actors. It’s all meant to be a series of related stories set in various Los Angeles bars during one busy night, but it’s just as well-considered as a vignette film, with segments that don’t necessarily need to co-exist harmoniously in a coherent whole. There are highlights: Emmanuelle Chriqui’s world-weary monologue about the life of a stripper, Zachary Quinto’s clueless dentist trying to get his wife assassinated; Rosario Dawson as an employee of a nudist ping-pong club and a captivating presence for Robert Forster. While the film was conceived to be freely distributed on Youtube (although just for Americans…), it’s now making its way to specialty cable channels and can be caught there as a pleasant diversion. While Girl Walks Into a Bar is not particularly memorable, it does have a good cast, better-than-average dialogue and its inherent quirkiness makes it more interesting that most of the average fare out there.