Kate McKinnon

The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018)

The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Video on-Demand, December 2019) On one level, The Spy Who Dumped Me feels intensely familiar. There’s been quite a few female-centric R-rated action comedies lately, and this film fits right -in-between Spy and The Heat and Bad Moms and Ghostbusters and so on. Here we have two thirtysomething underachievers being swept in international spying intrigue after the ex-boyfriend of one of them is revealed to be a secret agent. On one level, the film can be a bit of fun: Mila Kunis plays the straight girl, while Kate McKinnon once again steals the movie thanks to a far more uninhibited character. There’s a classic dynamic at play here, and as they traipse throughout Europe trying to remain ahead of the shadowy forces after them, it’s an excuse for a few action set-pieces. Where the film limits its appeal, unfortunately, is in an over-the-top amount of gore and violence that stop the viewers from enjoying the film on a purely PG-13 rated level. (Let me rephrase: the sweet spot of such movies is with PG-rated violence with R-rated verbal comedy.)  In having this issue, The Spy Who Dumped Me is also very similar to other recent comedies going too far in gory violence: You can name The Hitman’s Bodyguard and Pain & Gain as two semi-recent films with that exact same problem.  At some point we must wonder—how did we end up here, in that a gag in which the putative protagonist cuts off a dead man’s thumb to activate his phone (and stores it in a lipstick tube) is considered acceptable? The film would have been far more accessible in toning down the sometimes-gratuitous deaths that litter the story, and focus on the innate chemistry between Kunis and McKinnon. It does move quickly, has a steady rhythm of jokes but something off-putting in the ever-increasing amount of gore in comedies that leaves me concerned, and The Spy Who Dumped Me is as good an example as many at how it limits the appeal of the result.

Office Christmas Party (2016)

Office Christmas Party (2016)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, December 2019) There’s a Christmas movie ghetto that may limit some movies from getting the attention they deserve the other eleven months of the year. In most respects, Office Christmas Party is as good as R-rated comedies got in the mid-2010s: An efficient script, an escalation of madness that justifies the adult rating, a great soundtrack, tight editing, and especially a solid ensemble cast doing what they do best in their usual screen persona. The plot is right there in the title, as a corporate Christmas Party gets wilder as its stakes go up. There’s some perfunctory narrative to wrap up the madness and bring comic personalities together (something to do with a brother and sister fighting to keep a technology company open despite a dearth of big clients and low morale) but let’s not fool ourselves: the high point of the film is in its third-quarter, when everyone goes wild in the corporate party of the century-so-far. (In a decent example of the directors Will Speck and Josh Gordon’s cinematographic craft, there’s a great pullback shot of the company’s two floors engulfed in wild partying as the rest of the office building is shut down for the night.)  If you’ve seen any of the contemporary R-rated comedies, you know what to expect from Office Christmas Party. Still, when it works it works: Jason Bateman is once again the level-headed straight man of the bunch, holding the core of the film alongside the always cute (and sensible!) Olivia Munn. Jennifer Anniston adds another unsympathetic comedy character to her repertoire in the footsteps of the Horrible Bosses movies. Other known comic quantities such as T. J. Miller, chameleonic Kate McKinnon, Jillian Bell, Rob Corddry, and others all contribute their part to the anarchic mess. Given that it ends on Christmas, there’s some techno-magic to save the day. Office Christmas Party is great good fun, fully lives up to its name and should provide raucous entertainment for anyone driven to distraction by their own dull office Christmas celebrations. But it’s sufficiently upbeat that it remains decent viewing for the rest of the year— this Office Christmas Party is worth attending even in January.

Ferdinand (2017)

Ferdinand (2017)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, February 2019) Considering that I’m usually game to watch any kind of animated movie, I took a surprisingly long time to make my way to Ferdinand, a talking-animal comedy about a bull destined to a matador bout. That’s not exactly the most heartwarming premise for a film, but it does work. The key is in making the title character as nonviolent a protagonist as possible, and surrounding him with oddball characters. By the time we have a car chase throughout Spanish highways and city streets, we’re in very familiar, very funny territory. The film may be by-the-numbers in overall plot terms, but what makes it shine are the comic details and supporting players. Who cares if the formula is followed as long as we get plenty of chuckles along the way? (I’m still giggling over the arrogant horses calling Ferdinand a “silly moo-moo”.) John Cena is featured as the title bull, but Kate McKinnon predictably steals the show through her hilarious goat character. It may not be a great, classic or groundbreaking movie, but Ferdinand is up to what we’ve come to expect from contemporary animated movies.

Rough Night (2017)

Rough Night (2017)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, December 2017) Nearly twenty years ago, I had the misfortune of catching a free advance screening of Very Bad Things, a film so vile in its black humour that even a certain competency of execution couldn’t shake the stomach-churning reprehensibility of its subject matter. I bring it up because, for a horrifying moment, Rough Night seemed to be headed in more or less the same distaff direction, as a group of bachelorettes accidentally kill what they think is a male stripper and then try to cover up the crime. Despite the combined comic talents and good looks of comediennes such as Scarlett Johansson, Kate McKinnon, Jillian Bell, Ilana Glazer and Zoë Kravitz, the film seems intent of revisiting the same awful places—how are you ever going to get laughs out of that situation, with a guy bleeding to death on the floor? Fortunately, writer/director Lucia Aniello isn’t quite so sadistic and misanthropic, and as Rough Night advances, it ends up clarifying that the death was actually preemptive self-defence and so we can all have a good laugh about it. Whew. I have no qualms blowing part of the film’s third act revelations in those circumstances, as knowing how it turns out may help a few viewers make it through the film’s middle section. It will help that the actors are doing what they do best—Jillian Bell is the flamboyant centre of attraction, while Kate McKinnon brings a recognizable dose of absurdity to an eccentric character. Scarlett Johansson chooses to play her character as the level-headed one. In smaller roles, Demi Moore and Ty Burrell show up a sex-crazed neighbours. While the film does suffer from the usual excesses of contemporary R-rated comedies (far too much profanity substituting for wit or actual comedy) and loses itself in scattered subplots that could have been tightened up, my opinion of Rough Night at the end is far more positive than it would have been at the dull start or the far-too-violent middle. As an entry in the “girl comedies can be R-rated” subgenre that sprung up in the wake of Bridesmaid, it’s passable but forgettable.

Masterminds (2016)

Masterminds (2016)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, July 2017) I may be overdosing on criminal comedies featuring idiots, explaining my tepid reaction to Masterminds. On paper, it does sound promising: What if an idiot working for an armoured car company found a way to steal a considerable amount of money … only to be stalked and targeted by equally idiotic accomplices? Throw in a cast including such notables a Zach Galifianakis, Owen Wilson, Kirsten Wiig, Leslie Jones or Kate McKinnon and you’ve got the making of a good-enough comedy. But it takes more than comedians and a premise to make a film, and as Masterminds lurches from one mildly amusing set-piece to another, there’s a feeling that director Jared Hess is up to the kinds of tricks that made his previous films (Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre, Gentlemen Broncos) so divisive. Masterminds makes the classic blunder of keeping an unfunny gag running for as long as possible, sapping audience goodwill at periodic intervals. There are clearly attempts at making something amusing in this film, and some of them even succeed. But the overall result is not particularly funny, and the criminal plot of the film really isn’t strong enough to pick up the slack. Owen Wilson seems a bit lost in a role that robs him of his usual genial nature, and Wiig is up to more or less the same kind of awkward comedy that either works or not. This being said, Gallifinakis is not bad, and comic-chameleon Kate McKinnon continues her prodigious streak of disappearing in the roles she’s given. Masterminds doesn’t exactly deserve a spot on worst-movie list, but it certainly disappoints.

Ghost Busters (2016)

Ghost Busters (2016)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, February 2017) I’m not that much of a Ghostbusters (1984) fan, so the news of a gender-swapped reboot didn’t trouble me much beyond my usual “eh, I’d much prefer if they did original movies”. The reactionary nerd rage at the film’s release was troubling insofar as was a reflection of the current unhealthy outrage culture—but let’s face it: people who get worked up about a female Ghostbusters movie are exactly the kinds of people who wake up every day being offended at anything that makes them uncomfortable. Given the track records of movie reboots, it was almost a given that the end result would be a mildly entertaining piece of fluff. So it is: This Ghostbusters (2016) is a technically accomplished but far more mechanistic version of the 1984 original. Both Kirsten Wiig and Melissa McCarthy play up to their persona in the movie, although McCarthy seems thankfully more restrained in a movie in which entire sequences are storyboarded for special effects. Wiig is up to her usual neurotic persona, which works relatively well here. The same can be said for Leslie Jones, likable in a stock role. The real surprise here, though, is Kate McKinnon, stealing nearly every scene as an eccentric scientist—again, it’s not an original character, but she makes it work. Meanwhile, Chris Hemsworth probably gets the biggest laughs as a scatterbrained hunk. Director Paul Feig keeps getting better every movie, and if his style is still generally bland, he’s able to keep up with the demands of a special-effects-driven production. His conscious decision to avoid glamorizing his character works well, even if some other intentions—such as limply incorporating original 1984 cast members—end up being more irritating than anything else. The upshot is a generally watchable film, even if it never steps too far away from the original film or from the basic special-effects-driven comedy template. This Ghostbusters is all surface and flash, with minimal character work and even shallower thematic concerns. It’ll do for an evening’s worth of entertainment, but I have a hunch that the original will remain the definitive edition.