Wanda Sykes

  • The Hot Flashes (2013)

    The Hot Flashes (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2021) Older stars don’t quietly fade away in supporting grandmother roles any more: In the best cases, they get vehicles that openly acknowledge their age and take advantage of it. So it is that The Hot Flashes reunites a number of middle-aged actresses and get them to play their age as an impromptu basketball team competing against high-schoolers to raise money for a breast cancer detection truck. (Yes, it sounds far-fetched, but those are the stakes that this small-town comedy goes for.)  Brooke Shields stars as the hobby-seeking housewife who tries to correct a lapse in judgment by leading the fundraising effort, but she regularly gets outclassed by the supporting cast:  Wanda Sykes remains a reliable scene-stealer as a woman wondering what basketball will do for her mayoral campaign, while Camryn Manheim incarnates a cannabis enthusiast and Virginia Madsen plays the town trollop (or so others say) with a considerable amount of charm. This being a film focused on women, it’s not surprising if nearly everyone gets a self-empowerment dramatic arc, from the lead character confronting her no-good philandering husband (an inglorious turn from Eric Roberts) to the lesbian character coming out, to characters regaining their confidence and beating down the arrogant teenagers. It’s not meant to be a very deep film — the clichés fly fast even when they’re being subverted (the small town is called “Burning Bush,” for goodness’ sake) and director Susan Seidelman is more interested in an accessible middle-of-the-road comedy than anything else. The Hot Flashes feels very familiar, even in its occasional hints of so-called subversion: the idea of older people embracing young people’s things has been frequently exploited over the past few years, and the feminist message of the film is not particularly progressive nor well-executed. But there’s something to be said for older actresses finding good solid age-appropriate roles even as Hollywood tries to discard them as past decades’ flavours — those films may be familiar, but they can be worth a look.

  • Pootie Tang (2001)

    Pootie Tang (2001)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, July 2020) I’m about a generation too late at the Pootie Tang party, and a lot of it has to do with its reputation as a terrible movie. It’s not wholly undeserved, but the film itself is a great deal funnier than expected. Stemming from sketches from The Chris Rock Show and directed by then lesser-known Louis C.K., Pootie Tang is the kind of absurd satirical comedy that either falls flat or strikes a chord. It’s ingeniously dumb, as it revolves around a character (Pootie Tang!) meant as a parody of multi-hyphenates artists in the wake of the blaxploitation era. Pootie Tang (and please decline any drinking game in which the mention of the name is a trigger for alcohol consumption) is a rapper, actor and positive role model whose appeal is largely inexplicable to viewers but deeply felt by the characters in the film’s reality. Lance Crouther is pretty good in the lead role, while Robert Vaughn deliciously shows up at the antagonist, Jennifer Coolidge and Wanda Sykes provide some decent sex appeal, and Chris Rock goofs around in a variety of roles—plus many cameos big and small. Pootie Tang is almost aggressively stupid at times, but darn if I didn’t giggle during a good chunk of it: I liked the anti-corporate message, the semantic tour de force presented by the title character’s dialogue and the unapologetic weirdness of its humour. Don’t go in Pootie Tang expecting an ordinary, let alone good movie: you will know within moments if the absurdity of it all will grab you.

  • Snatched (2017)

    Snatched (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2019) The issues with Snatched start from the first title card, where a wittier “The kidnappers were also to blame” was replaced by a much cruder and dumber formulation. But so it goes throughout the entire film—while the premise and structure aren’t bad, the execution rushes to irritating, gross and dumb material every chance it gets. For an actress as polarizing as Amy Schumer, it’s not the best decision to spend the first five minutes of the film establishing the maximally irritating nature of her character. Much of the film goes on in much of the same vein, with Schumer’s vulgar comic persona harming whatever strengths Snatched may have. Not that she’s the sole irritating character in a film that has another character (her brother) also defined by his self-absorbed annoying nature. The film does get a few laughs and has a few high points, mind you: There is a certain welcome unpredictability to the adventures along the way, as plans go awry for both prey and pursuer. Much of the film’s go-for-broke humour should have been reined in, though: the tapeworm sequence depends on an amazing disregard for human biology, is grosser than funny and never leads to a worthwhile laugh, petering out into an unrelated next scene rather than ending on any kind of note high or low. (I suspect that improv is to blame — actors goofing off on a set are far less adept at crafting a punchline as screenwriters tying away with a plan.) And so it goes for the rest of the film. While Wanda Sykes is quite funny (alongside an unrecognizable Joan Cusack), while it’s actually good to see Goldie Hawn making a comeback after fifteen years, while Schumer can manage an occasional moment of comedy, Snatched as a whole is just dumb, exasperating and hypocritical in its attempt to be heartfelt, and far from being as good at it could have been.

  • Evan Almighty (2007)

    Evan Almighty (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, October 2015)  I’m genuinely perplexed at Evan Almighty, and not for any single one reason.   I’m perplexed, for instance, at the film’s insistence at tying itself to Bruce Almighty through a tenuous set of coincidences (as in; a minor character of the first film becoming a congressman and seemingly changing personalities entirely –this makes more sense when you know that the script was developed as its own thing and was then retrofitted to become part of a series)  I’m perplexed at the guts it must have taken to take an explicitly religious topic (as in; God telling the protagonist to build an ark, because a flood is coming) and turn it in an expensive special-effects-driven mainstream comedy film.  I’m perplexed at the inclusion of political content in the story.  I’m perplexed at the way the film builds itself up to a biblical catastrophe… only to deliver a relatively modest disaster.  I’m perplexed at the practical scale of the film’s sets… and the moderate results delivered by the script.  Thanks to Steve Carell and director Tom Shadyac, Evan Almighty does have its share of comic moments, although it has just as many exasperating scenes and lulls as the film underlines everything two or three times.  It doesn’t help that the story aims for profundity but falls into mediocrity: For all of its sanctimonious attitude, Evan Almighty forgets that audiences will forgive anything in an entertaining film, and condemn everything in a dull one.  Evan Almighty has serious tonal issues (Wanda Sykes is relatively entertaining, but she seems to be playing in a different film than Morgan Freeman) and scatters itself in too many directions to be successful.  The result is, as I’ve mentioned, perplexing: Why does this movie exist, and what exactly were they trying to accomplish with it?