The Suicide Squad: A Review and Commentary

****THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!! THIS IS NOT A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!***

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A significant upgrade over 2016’s Suicide Squad, this movie is a stylized, at times amusing, blood-soaked comic book comedy that boasts a shockingly subversive political message at its heart.

This article contains spoilers to ‘The Suicide Squad’.

Despite garnering mostly good reviews and generating positive word of mouth, I didn’t watch director James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad when it hit theatres and HBO Max on August 5th here in the U.S.

I was, pardon the pun, ‘gun-shy’ about the film because I’d suffered through the previous cinematic crucifixion that was Suicide Squad, the David Ayers directed movie monstrosity from 2016.

Still bearing the scars from the Suicide Squad atrocity, I expected Gunn’s new pseudo reboot, oh-so-creatively titled The Suicide Squad, to be more of the lifeless, corporatized, Pentagon approved propaganda that passes for blockbuster entertainment nowadays.

That expectation was based on the fact that Warner Brothers is notorious for squeezing the artistic life out of their superhero movies and that leaked documents revealed that the Department of Defense were, not surprisingly, nefariously involved behind the scenes in the making of The Suicide Squad, no doubt assisting in extraction of anything remotely interesting from the final product in exchange for the use of military members as extras and the use of an Osprey aircraft.

But then a funny thing happened when I watched The Suicide Squad, I actually found a shockingly subversive movie wrapped in the usual corporate comic book cloak.

Now maybe I’m wearing my tinfoil hat too tight, but it seems to me that Gunn’s greatest accomplishment with The Suicide Squad was sneaking its remarkably subversive political message past his controlling corporate overlords and censorious Department of Defense bureaucrats.

How else to explain a mainstream comic book film that boasts ‘9-11 was an inside job’ symbolism at its narrative heart, and anti-American imperialism at its sub-textural center?

The plot of The Suicide Squad is that two ‘suicide squads’ of super-villains are taken out of Belle Reve prison in Louisiana and sent on a mission by the U.S. government to invade a small island off of South America, Corto Maltese, which was ruled by an American-friendly dictator now deposed by a hostile military coup.

The first group of suicide squaders hit the Corto Maltese beach like the Bay of Pigs invasion force, and meet a similarly gruesome fate.

In another tinfoil hat moment, during this initial ‘Bay of Pigs’ type invasion fiasco, Blackguard (Pete Davidson) storms the beach and gets his brains blown out by a high-powered rifle, just like JFK did in Dallas, and yes, both of their heads went “back and to the left”.

When supervillain Savant (Michael Rooker) tries to run away from the fray, U.S. government official Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) detonates an explosive device implanted in his head in a Stalinesque lesson to the others to never retreat.

This is not exactly standard issue Pentagon propaganda.

This invasion is simply a distraction so a second suicide squad, led by Bloodsport (Idris Elba) and made up of Peacemaker (John Cena) – a super patriot and psychopath, Ratcatcher (Daniela Melchior), Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian) and King Shark (Sly Stallone), can arrive unnoticed on Corto Maltese.

As the Suicide Squad go on their odyssey, they mistakenly massacre a group of rebels intent on overthrowing the anti-American military junta due to Ms. Waller’s order to “kill anything they see”.

Again, not exactly the usual pro-America message the Pentagon prefers.

The Squad’s mission is to break into a heavily fortified tower named Jotunheim that houses a powerful, one-eyed Sauron-esque alien named Starro, which can control entire populations of people by taking over their brains.  

The U.S. were complicit in capturing Starfish from space and now that an unfriendly government has taken over Corto Maltese, they want the Suicide Squad to blow up Jotunheim and kill Starfish.

The Suicide Squad eventually get to Jotunheim and, hold onto your tinfoil hats, they place C4 explosives on each floor of the tower. But the plan goes awry and the explosions happen too early, thus the tower only partially collapses.

The visual similarities of the demolition of the Jotunheim to the WTC towers collapsing on 9-11 are pretty blatant, and one doesn’t have to be a “conspiracy kook” to notice them.

For instance, Bloodsport escapes the tower’s initial collapse and finds himself atop what is left of the Jotunheim, but then the floor he’s standing on collapses to the floor below, which begins a cascading collapse where each floor pancakes onto the one below with Bloodsport surfing the crumbling building to the bottom.

The symbolism when Bloodsport arrives at the bottom of the tower is striking, as he finds super-patriot Peacemaker poised to execute Ratcatcher at the behest of the American government so as to keep a computer file detailing the U.S.’s involvement in Project Starfish from ever coming to light.

Donning an Izod shirt and short shorts, and brandishing a flag-waving, violent self-righteousness, Peacemaker is Reagan’s America incarnate, who’d do anything to maintain America’s ‘shining city on a hill’ image.

In the aftermath of the tower’s collapse, Starro escapes and sets out to control or kill the entire population of Corto Maltese but the U.S. government doesn’t care as long as America’s connection to the alien is forever hidden.

Speaking of hidden, in a nod to Operation Paperclip, Jotunheim was built by Nazis who escaped Europe after World War II, which is not the only Nazi symbolism in the film. Javelin, part of the first suicide squad invasion force, is a former Olympian who uses his javelin as a weapon. He’s German, a model of Hitler’s dream of Aryan supermen, and Harley Quinn, who has a crush on him, uses his javelin to pierce the eye of Starfish and ultimately destroy the alien, with the help of hordes of hungry rats (it’s a long story).

As for Starro, the beast released by the tower’s destruction, it’s symbolic of the mindless militarism and neo-conservate group think belched up by America after the twin towers were destroyed. Similar to America’s militarism and neo-conservatism, which led to the disastrous and failed wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen, Starfish’s invincibility is punctured by a rag-tag group with primitive weapons (javelin) assisted by the reviled that live in the shadows (rats).

With an authoritarian, deceptive, murderous American government slaughtering friendly rebels and shrugging at the massacre of innocent women and children, a super-patriotic sociopathic serial killer, Nazis and implying 9-11 government nefariousness, this movie is definitely not the usual Pentagon approved propaganda.

The Suicide Squad is, like most comic book movies, a corporate money grab and commercial for future corporate money grabs, but it’s also a movie with a gloriously subversive political message hiding in plain sight. That’s either a testament to James Gunn’s creative stealth or to the winless-in-wars-over-the-last-80-years Pentagon beginning to slip in the propaganda department too. Regardless of how the message got there, the reality is that the film’s alternative politics are one of the things that make it at least a somewhat interesting and worthwhile watch.

All Gunn had to do with the The Suicide Squad was make it not as awful as Ayer’s Suicide Squad. A major step in the direction for the project was jettisoning the abysmal dead weight of the always dreadful Will Smith as Bloodsport and casting Idris Elba in his stead. Elba is an actor, Will Smith is a poseur.

The rest of the cast acquit themselves well enough, with Margot Robbie and John Cena as the standouts. The elevation of the acting can be attributed to Gunn as Viola Davis was utterly abysmal in the first film but actually does pretty well in this one.

The bottom line is this, I’m no Gunn fanboy, but it’s obvious he succeeded in his task by making a very stylized comic book comedy with a rip-roaring soundtrack that is best described as a foul-mouthed, blood-soaked, raucous romp akin to a second or maybe third-rate Deadpool…and I guess that’s good enough.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

HBO's 'The Prince' Animated TV Series: A Review

HBO’s new animated series ‘The Prince’ ruthlessly cuts the very deserving target of the British royal family down to size.

No doubt delicate viewers will find it repugnant, but the flawed show is funny enough to overcome what some may deem offensive.

HBO’s new aggressively irreverent animated series The Prince, which debuted on HBO Max on July 29th, sets its comedy sights on the target rich environment of the British royal family and relentlessly fires a ferocious fusillade of mockery at the monarchy.

The series, which is made up of twelve, 13-minute episodes and features such notable actors as Orlando Bloom, Allen Cumming and Sophie Turner, was first scheduled to premiere in the spring but HBO pushed that back out of sensitivity regarding Prince Philip’s death in April.

After having watched The Prince, which savagely lampoons all of the royals, I don’t think that deferential gesture will ease any hurt feelings among the Windsors.

The Prince’s caricatures of the royals are relentless and vicious. For instance, the Queen is a cruel, foul-mouthed, farting crime boss, and Prince Philip, a decrepit near cadaver.

Prince Charles is a spineless, big-eared, mealey-mouthed coward who berates his bride Camilla, a horse-faced mute, to get in the good graces of his mother.

Prince William and his wine-hound wife Princess Kate, are absolutely miserable and headed to divorce, are indifferent parents, and are incapable of doing even the most intimate of things without servants.

Speaking of servants, all of the royals are absolutely brutal towards ‘the help’. This is best portrayed by the devoted butler Owen (Allen Cumming), a sad-sack widower, and the two gay butlers, all of whom must delicately navigate the ever-shifting minefield of the monarchy or else find themselves fired…or worse.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are two of the more hysterical royal portrayals on the show, maybe because the caricatures of them seem more realistic due to their being such cartoonish people in real life.  

On The Prince the two of them are living in Melrose Place in Hollywood, and are subtly cross-eyed, which for some reason made me chuckle.

Meghan is a talentless actress and social climber leading the clueless Harry around by the nose, while Harry (voiced by an utterly brilliant Orlando Bloom) is such a dolt he cannot remember the name, or gender, of his baby, is astonished by the magic of refrigerators, and is so dumb as to be virtually unemployable.

That doesn’t stop him from trying though, as he reveals to Meghan that as a little-boy he dreamt of being a massage therapist, to which Meghan replies that as a little girl she too had a dream…of being a princess. A dead-eyed Harry then declares, “you kinda fucked that up”. Yes she did.

Meghan’s acting failures lead her and Harry to the Hollywood gutter of reality tv and The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, and then she brings reality tv to the royals, which culminates in a fistfight between the Queen and Lisa Rinna over a perceived slight to Ms. Rinna’s husband Harry Hamlin.

Then there’s Meghan and Harry’s HGTV show “Royally Screwed”, where they try and fix up houses on a budget for regular people. It goes about as well as you’d expect.

Considering the roasting Harry and Meghan receive on The Prince it’s no surprise that the show is on HBO as opposed to Netflix, as Harry and Meghan have a deal with Netflix rumored to be worth $100 million, and no doubt flex their royal muscles to squash the series and “protect their brand” if given the chance.

The main protagonist of The Prince though is Prince George, the 8-year-old heir to the throne and son of Prince William and Princess Kate, who is portrayed as an effeminate and obliviously and obnoxiously entitled child.

Prince George is basically Stewie Griffin from Family Guy but just a few years older, which should come as no surprise since the creator of The Prince is Gary Janetti, a writer for Family Guy.

And that is the biggest problem with The Prince, that it’s derivative of Family Guy.

The Prince follows the Family Guy formula with children acting like adults, adults acting like children, an extended musical number, and when mixed with Machiavellian palace intrigue, it all feels like ‘Family Guy Goes to Buckingham Palace’.

That’s not to say that the show isn’t funny, just that it isn’t original.

Some have been offended that The Prince is targeting a real-life 8-year-old, Prince George, with its comedy, and I suppose there’s some legitimacy to that. William and Kate are certainly displeased with the show, but to be honest, and maybe this is the Irish in me, I’ve a very hard time accepting a British royal, regardless of age, as a victim in any circumstance. It’s like with the Oscar winning movie The King’s Speech where we’re supposed to feel bad for the King George VI because he’s some stuttering, muttering jackass. No thank you.

Overall, The Prince is a mindless, quick watch. The episodes are short (13 minutes), don’t ask for much mental effort, and occasionally make you laugh…there are worse things in life. While I found it certainly could’ve been better, I also found it to be funny often enough.  

The best way to judge if The Prince is worth watching is to answer the question, do you like Family Guy? If Family Guy is a bridge too far for you, then The Prince is not a journey worthy of taking. But if you like exceedingly irreverent comedic shots taken at all things royal, then The Prince may very well be your cup of tea.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota Episode 44 - Bo Burnham: Inside and the State of Comedy

Knock, knock. Who's there? Barry and I, that's who, and we're here to talk about comedy! On this episode we start out by sparring over comedian Bo Burnham's Netflix special Inside, and then end the program by giving our somewhat dire State of the Comedy Union address.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota Episode 44 - Bo Burnham: Inside

Thanks for listening!

©2021

America: The Motion Picture - A Review and Commentary

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes and 22 seconds

America: The Motion Picture is so stupid it actually thinks it’s smart, just like the country it parodies.

The movie is dreadful and relentlessly unfunny, but it’s unintentionally a perfect representation of the clownshow that is modern American culture.

America: The Motion Picture is a new animated feature film on Netflix that parodies the founding fathers and the American revolution.

The film, directed by Matt Thompson and written by Dave Callahan, boasts a stellar voice cast of Channing Tatum, Bobby Moynihan, Will Forte, Olivia Munn, Simon Pegg and Andy Samberg among many others, and some imaginative animation.

But the most distinguishing feature of America: The Motion Picture is also the most distinguishing feature of the country whose founding it parodies, and that is its condescending, blindly arrogant belief that it’s so smart despite the obvious fact that it’s so egregiously, relentlessly stupid.

Just to give you a taste of the absurdity and idiocy on display in this film, here’s a brief rundown of the plot.

George Washington and Abe Lincoln are best friends, and when Benedict “Cosby” Arnold, who is a werewolf, slaughters the signers of the Declaration of Independence, steals the document, and then murders Lincoln at the Ford Theatre, Washington vows revenge and to stop the British Empire from taking over the world.  Oh, and Washington has chainsaws that pop out of his arm like a founding father Wolverine when he does battle.

Washington then gets his team together, which include Geronimo, Thomas Edison – who is a Chinese woman, Sam Adams – who is a party hound frat bro, and Paul Revere – who is friendless and quite possibly a human/horse hybrid, to fight back.  

The plot staggers around like a drunken hobo from one extraordinary inanity, like King James coming to America on the Titanic to finish his super weapon, to another, like Paul Bunyan boxing with Big Ben as double decker buses transform into Imperial Walkers.

Of course, that all sounds incredibly stupid, but the stupidity is the point. The filmmakers are trying to not only make a parody of the American myth, but also satirize the historical ignorance of the viewing population.

As intentionally absurd as the plot of America: The Motion Picture is, the joke is that there are probably lots of people who will think, Washington’s Wolverine chainsaw hands aside, that it’s somewhat true, no doubt duped by the official “based on actual history” tag that opens the movie.

Polls show that only four out of ten Americans would have enough knowledge of history to pass an American citizenship test. The only state in the country that has a majority of residents who’d pass the citizenship test is…Vermont, and I’d be willing to bet a majority of Americans don’t even know Vermont exists.

The problem with America: The Motion Picture isn’t its endless adolescent humor, which includes a plethora of sex jokes, gay sex jokes and inter-species sex jokes, or that it makes fun of the founding fathers, anyone sensitive about sacred cows like Washington and Lincoln being comedically desecrated is ridiculous, but that it’s so condescending enough to think that only the “other side” is filled with ignoramuses.

This bias, which caricatures only the American myth believing fools, flag wavers and rednecks who spontaneously sing the national anthem at Walmart as the idiots, is the movie’s glaring ideological blindspot.

Yes, those that buy into the star-spangled myth are, in my opinion, worthy of being mocked, as they often reflexively take a short cut to thinking and buy into America’s militarism and belligerent foreign policy, and adorn themselves with buffoonish bumper sticker slogans like “these colors don’t run” and “love it or leave it”.

But let’s not kid ourselves, no side in the American cultural and political landscape has a monopoly on stupid. Too cool for school liberals are just as moronic as their conservative counterparts.

For example, it was liberals who screeched about Trump’s “war on the press” but then cheered Julian Assange’s imprisonment and torture. It was the liberals in the media that shouted down any talk of the lab leak theory as racist. It was liberal medical professionals and scientists who declared that gathering in crowds during Covid lockdown was deadly, unless it was to protest for Black Lives Matter. It’s woke liberal jackasses who think the solution to their imagined pandemic of anti-black racism is to force everyone to identify with their race – even though America is an overwhelmingly white country. It’s these same liberals that over-estimate police killings of black people by over 10x, 100x and some even 1,000x the actual rate.

And remember, it was the majority of Americans, both left and right, that, unlike me, wholeheartedly embraced the disastrous and murderous Iraq War, Reagan and Clinton’s financialization of the economy and free trade - which gutted the working and middle class, and who fell for not only Bush’s normalizing trade relations with China but also his post 9-11 War on Terror scaremongering, as well as Barack Obama’s smoke and mirrors marketing campaign known as Hope and Change.

The bottom line is that while Covid has slowed down, the pandemic of stupidity in America is accelerating at an astonishing rate across party, ideological, racial and class lines.

As for the dopey America: The Motion Picture, it’s a perfect representation of America because it’s so stupid it thinks it’s smart. By the way, the movie isn’t just dumb, it’s dreadful and gratingly unfunny, so like American lectures on “exceptionalism” and “democracy”, you can skip it. You’d be better served watching Mike Judge’s prescient 2006 film Idiocracy, which at this point feels like a documentary.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Friends: The Reunion

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 49 secodns

The one they shouldn’t have made: Friends’ pointless, self-aggrandizing reunion delivers neither nostalgia nor laughs

The long-waited reunion of one of TV’s most successful shows is a missed opportunity. The aging cast should have been brave enough to reprise their beloved roles instead of just reminiscing about their glory days.

The often-delayed and much-hyped ‘Friends: The Reunion’ finally premiered on HBO Max on Thursday. The end result of this rather slick, self-aggrandizing, hour and 43-minute long commercial for itself was a bevy of ambivalent shrugs and a collective “who cares?”.

‘Friends’ burst on the scene on September 22, 1994 and with its beautiful and talented cast of Jennifer Aniston, Courtney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc and Matthew Perry, it quickly became a cultural phenomenon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRXVQ77ehRQ

Like some sort of sitcom Beatlemania, ‘Friends’ became part of the cultural zeitgeist, with its catchphrases (how YOU doin’?), storylines (Ross and Rachel) and style (the ever-present Rachel hairdo) dominating mainstream entertainment discourse for a decade until its finale on May 6, 2004.

The show was enormously successful as the top-rated television comedy for six of its 10 years, averaging a whopping 25 million viewers an episode in America.

Even after it rode off into the sunset and was relegated to reruns, the show still garnered much attention, as it was consistently among the most streamed programs on Netflix, and has been watched over 100 billion times over all platforms over its lifetime.

The staying power of ‘Friends’ is why WarnerMedia were so keen to get their hands on the show in order for it to be the cornerstone of their new streaming service HBO Max, and shelled out $425 million for the privilege.

The ‘Friends’ reunion, only the second time in 17 years the cast has been in the same room together, was meant to be the big draw to HBO Max when it opened for business in May of 2020, but due to Covid, the filming of the reunion was pushed back not once but twice. And now it is now finally here.

The idea of a ‘Friends’ reunion where the characters Rachel, Ross, Monica, Chandler, Phoebe and Joey returned had the potential to be pretty great.

The opportunities were endless for the show’s creators. They could have opted to have Ross and Rachel bitterly divorced, Monica addicted to meth, Chandler embracing his true trans nature, Phoebe homeless playing guitar on the subway, and Joey facing homicide charges, and it would’ve been interesting if not entertaining. ‘Friends’ could have been daring and deconstructed, if not self-destructed, its rather monotonous middlebrow milieu.

Instead, the new episode is like a reunion at a high school you didn’t attend, where you’re left out of the conversation and have to watch the cool kids reminisce about their awesome lives.

The problem with the reunion is that fans only care about Aniston, Schwimmer, Cox, Perry, Kudrow and LeBlanc because they were Rachel, Ross, Monica, Chandler, Phoebe and Joey. But Rachel, Ross, Monica, Chandler, Phoebe and Joey aren’t in the reunion, only Aniston, Schwimmer, Cox, Perry, Kudrow and LeBlanc are. A ‘Friends’ reunion only has power if it’s bringing those characters back together, not just bringing the cast back together.

Watching them sit around and recount funny stories and do some minimal table reads isn’t the slightest bit interesting or entertaining. It’s sort of like reassembling a famous band and having them talk about when they used to play music together, as opposed to actually having them play some music together.

To make things worse, the show is sometimes hosted by James Corden, and the only good thing about James Corden is when Ricky Gervais makes fun of him. For instance, at the 2020 Golden Globes Gervais gloriously quipped, “this year the world got to see James Corden as a fat pussy…and he was also in ‘Cats’!”  Sadly, the ‘Friends’ reunion has no Ricky Gervais, only James Corden.

Also unfortunate is having to watch David Beckham, Kit Harrington, Malala Yousafzai and Mindy Kaling tell us their favorite episodes, or Lady Gaga sing ‘Smelly Cat’, or Justin Bieber, Cara Delevingne and Cindy Crawford model silly ‘Friends’ costumes, or a relentlessly ‘diverse’ and ‘inclusive’ bunch of ‘Friends’ fans share how much the show means to them. All of which is just as awful and self-congratulatory as it sounds.

Ultimately, the ‘Friends’ reunion isn’t so much a testament to its greatness as it is a monument to the ravages of age. Father Time is still undefeated and proof of that is on the bloated, surgically supplemented faces of the cast. Lisa Kudrow aside, the entire cast has aged dramatically and dreadfully.

Courtney Cox and Jennifer Aniston were two of the most luminous beauties on television during the show’s heyday, but now if you saw them and their contorted faces in your bathroom at four in the morning, you’d think your house was haunted.

Both women constantly dabbed the corners of their eyes with tissues throughout the reunion, but it seemed less like they were crying and more like they were leaking from a deficient surgical seam.

In addition, Matt LeBlanc looks like he’s eaten a whole Joey and Matthew Perry looks like something is very wrong with him. I don’t mean that as a joke, Perry looks genuinely ill to the point of it being very disconcerting.

Regardless of the ravages of age on the cast, people have always watched ‘Friends’ for the escapist dopamine hit of some soft sitcom humor, but ‘Friends: The Reunion’ doesn’t have that, and is also shockingly devoid of even the dopamine hit of nostalgia.

In conclusion, ‘Friends’ hasn’t done anything interesting or worthwhile since the show ended in 2004, and some would argue the same was true during the show’s run. Rest assured, the unimaginative ‘Friends: The Reunion’ keeps that streak resolutely intact.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Elon Musk and SNL

Elon Musk’s comedy debut crashes and burns on the SNL launch pad, but the mission was ultimately a success for him.

Musk haters were afraid his appearance on the iconic comedy show would humanize the “problematic” billionaire…and that’s exactly what happened.

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk guest hosted Saturday Night Live last night and if laughs were rocket fuel, he wouldn’t make it to New Jersey never mind Mars.

To Musk’s great credit, he was totally out of his element but gave it his all and even poked fun at himself, but sadly, he was painfully unfunny. From the opening monologue, which included not only some stale O.J. jokes but an admission that he suffers from Aspergers and struggles to act human, Musk came across like some bizarre Andy Kaufman character.

To call Musk an awkward on-screen presence would be the height of understatements. His various roles on the relentlessly humorless show included a Gen Z slang speaking doctor, a horny Icelandic tv producer, a cryptocurrency expert, Wario the video game character, LeRon the genius cowboy and Elon Musk founder of SpaceX, and as game as he was, none of them actually worked.

Unfortunately, being the second richest man in the world and a genius at making cars and rockets does not translate into being funny, which was uncomfortably evident on Saturday night. On the bright side, Musk’s lack of comedic ability meant he fit right in with the rest of the SNL cast, which is a who’s who of “who’s that?”, and features some of the most talentless dopes and dullards imaginable.

It isn’t Elon Musk’s fault that last night’s show sucked. The once mighty SNL has been consistently abysmal for some time now. Long gone are the John Belushi, Gilda Radner and Bill Murray glory days, and comedy powerhouses like Eddie Murphy and Will Ferrell are not walking through that door at 30 Rock anymore. Instead, the dreadfully unfunny Kate McKinnon is the big star of the current cast, which is the comedy equivalent of having a one-legged hobbit be the best player on a basketball team.

When it was announced that Musk would be the guest hosting the show it generated a tsunami of controversy on twitter and in the media.

That negative narrative was further propelled by cast members Bowen Yang, Aidy Bryant and Chris Redd when they sent out snarky tweets denigrating Musk (which were later deleted) and producer Lorne Michaels letting it be known that cast members could opt out of scenes with Musk if they chose.

Ultimately no cast members boycotted scenes with Musk on Saturday night, and the show seemed not only lame but tame as far as controversy is concerned. But that doesn’t diminish the absurdity of SNL’s being so hyper-sensitivity regarding any unorthodox thinkers or alternative, contrarian viewpoints. The pre-Musk show uproar only highlighted how far the old comedy warhorse of SNL, which used to be subversive, anti-establishment and edgy, has fallen, and shows how it is now the type of stuffy, sensitive, entitled, pampered lap dog to the establishment it used to rightfully lampoon.

Musk is definitely a polarizing figure, but I have to admit…I don’t exactly understand why. I am unquestionably no fan of the billionaire class but the goofy, bizarre, loose-cannon Musk is the version of a billionaire I prefer over the super-creepy, serial killer looking types like Zuckerberg, Gates and Bezos.

Make no mistake, Musk is an oddball and egomaniac, but unlike the narcissistic charlatans running the rigged Wall street casinos that socialize losses and privatize gains, or the self-righteous Silicon Valley overlords who exploit people while suffocating free speech and toxifying the culture, Musk isn’t predatory and actually builds tangible things, like electric cars and reusable rockets.

I assume Musk’s appearance on the show and the controversy swirling around it will probably lead to a slight bump in the ratings, which was obviously the whole point of having him on in the first place. And no doubt there will be Musk haters slamming him for his dreadful performance and cursing Lorne Michaels and SNL for giving Musk a platform.

The greatest concern of these Musk haters though was summed up by late night comedy veteran Daniel Kellison when he told the Washington Post that the problem with Musk’s appearance on SNL is that it “humanizes problematic people”. God forbid we commit the sin of “humanizing” someone deemed “problematic” by the hordes of hysterical woke inquisitors forever shouting on Twitter.

Well, I hate to tell Kellison and the other Musk haters, but as bad as Musk was on the show, and he was bad, it definitely did “humanize” him. He was so awkward and uncomfortable on screen it was surprisingly sort of endearing. Musk came across not as some slick billionaire blowhard who is too cool for school, but rather as some regular nerd who gets super anxious and nervous talking to people and being on tv.

So despite Elon Musk being terribly unfunny and the show being as devoid of laughs as the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, Musk’s appearance was actually a big success for Musk. While he failed at comedy, he did succeed in exposing his haters for their pettiness and in getting me to root for him. I just hope he is better at getting humanity to Mars than he is at getting me to laugh.  

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

7th Annual Mickey Awards™®: 2020 Edition

Estimated Reading Time: Ever prone to narcissistic indulgence, expect this awards show article to last, at a minimum, approximately 5 hours and 48 minutes.

Is everybody in? Is everybody in? The ceremony is about to begin…

After what seems like an endless year, the pinnacle of cinematic achievement, the Mickey Awards™®, is finally upon us.

The Mickeys™® and its shadow award the Slip-Me-A-Mickey™®, are always the final awards of the awards season, but since everything was pushed back due to covid, we are in the unprecedented situation of giving out awards in May. I realize this seems odd, and while the Mickey™® committee considered giving out our awards sooner, we decided to stick to tradition so as to not make the other awards (looking at you Oscar) even more irrelevant than they already are.

To be blunt, 2020 was not an a good year for movies. While there were certainly some good movies, none of them were great. This is especially apparent when contrasted with the stellar output of movies in 2019, which featured a murderer’s row of cinematic heavyweights.

On the bright side, at least some smaller movies got the spotlight this year, I just wish those movies could have been more convincing in making a case for others to join me in the cult of the arthouse.

Regardless of all that, the God of Cinema declares we must give out Mickey™® awards. For those of you who are unfamiliar…here is a quick rundown of the rules and regulations of The Mickeys™®. The Mickeys™® are selected by me. I am judge, jury and executioner. The only films eligible are films I have actually seen, be it in the theatre, via screener, cable, Netflix or VOD. I do not see every film because as we all know, the overwhelming majority of films are God-awful, and I am a working man so I must be pretty selective. So that means that just getting me to actually watch your movie is a tremendous accomplishment in and of itself…never mind being nominated or winning!

Winners of Mickey™® Awards receive an appropriately socially distanced meal at Fatburger and/or Shake Shack…on me! And yes, you can order a shake for your beverage! And the sterling conversation with me is included with the meal! You’re welcome.

Now that all that is out of the way…buckle up…IT’S MICKEY™® TIME!!

Best Cinematography

The nominees are…

Mank - Eric Messerschmidt : Gloriously shot film that utilized a luscious black and white and also featured a visual aesthetic that was an homage to its famous subject matter.

Nomadland - Joshua James Richards: Used gorgeous shots of vast, sparse and beautiful landscapes to set an intriguing mood and propel the story.

The Vast of Night - M.I. Litten-Menz : On a shoe string budget this movie looks like a big budget project and its intricate camera movements were astoundingly complex.

THE WINNER IS…. Mank. Messerschmidt won the Oscar with his crisp bleck and white cinematography but now he reaches the ultimate summit of cinematic excellence with his first Mickey award.

Best Adapted Screenplay

The nominees are…

Nomadland - Chloe Zhao: A solid integration of the original subject matter into a loosely coherent mood piece.

The Father - Florian Zeller: A fantastic adaptation of his own stage play that actually elevates the material instead of denigrating it, which is a rarity.

THE WINNER IS… The Father: The Father is an absolutely phenomenal script and Zeller justly deserves his first Mickey Award.

Best Original Screenplay

The nominees are…

Mank - Jack Fincher: An unruly behemoth of a story that is wrestled and transformed into a brutally insightful political statement. Astoundingly impressive piece of screenwriting.

Another Round - Thomas Vinterberg: A story about a mid-life crisis and death that focuses on life and manages to make its day drinking protagonist sympathetic and compelling.

Sound of Metal - Darius Marder: On the surface this is the most predictable and mundane of ideas…but Marder turns convention on its head and discovers profundity.

THE WINNER IS… Sound of Metal: From the mundane to the magical and the predictable to the profound, Darius Marder so fleshed out this story as to never write a cliche or false note. A well-deserved Mickey Award is his reward for excellence.

Best Supporting Actress

The nominees are…

Sierra McCormick - Vast of Night: A nobody from nowhere, McCormick absolutely crushed a role that was mind-bogglingly complicated and did it with enormous aplomb and magnetism.

Olivia Colman - The Father: The most intricate work of Colman’s career, she fills every scene and every shot with unstated meaning and anguish.

Amanda Seyfried - Mank: Who knew that Amanda Seyfried could be so good? As Hollywood starlet Marion Davies she looks amazing and matches her beauty with a nuanced and inspired performance.

Maria Bakalova - Borat: An absolutely balls to the wall performance that only she could pull off.

THE WINNER IS… Sierra McCormick: There’s an extended scene in The Vast of Night where nothing happens except McCormick talks and listens on a telephone…it is utterly mesmerizing, and is a testament to her talent, skill and craft.

Best Supporting Actor

The nominees are…

Daniel Kaluuya - Judas and the Black Messiah: Kaluuya is deliriously magnetic as Chairman Fred Hampton and completely owns the role and the film. It isn’t quite Denzel as Malcolm X, but it is still electrifying to behold.

Bo Burnham - Promising Young Woman: Burnham is fantastic in the darkly comedic/rom-com portion of this movie, and his chemistry with Mulligan is believable and charming.

Kingsley Ben-Adir - One Night in Miami: Ben-Adir masterfully avoids imitation and mimicry as he re-creates Malcolm X as less a cocksure firebrand and more an insecure outsider yearning for acceptance. A truly brilliant piece of acting.

Chadwick Boseman - Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom: Boseman has always been more movie star than great actor, but in Ma Rainey he taps into an energy and emotion that he had avoided in previous roles. This is far and away Boseman’s greatest performance.

THE WINNER IS… Daniel Kaluuya: Kaluuya is fast positioning himself as one of the best actors in the business…and his resume just got a tremendous boost with a prestigious Mickey Award.

Breakout Performance of the Year - Sierra McCormick: I had never heard of McCormick before The Vast of Night, but her unforgettable performance impressed me no end. I am willing to bet it impressed other Hollywood big wigs too…and I hope we get to see a lot more of her in movies that matter going forward.

Best Foreign Film - Another Round: Thomas Vinterberg is a great director and Another Round is a gloriously Vinterbergian film. Complex and layered yet darkly funny and philosophical, Another Round is unpredictable, satisfying and the type of movie that keeps you thinking about it and talking about for days afterward.

Best Actress

The nominees are…

Carey Mulligan - Promising Young Woman: Mulligan is one of the best actresses of her generation and she brings all her powers to bear on this absurdist and twisted dark fantasy. Impossible to imagine any other actress pulling this off.

Frances McDormand - Nomadland: McDormand gives a rare nuanced performance as Fern, the grieving wanderer searching for something out there on the fringes of society. I think McDormand is over-rated as an actress, but this is one of her very best performances.

Vanessa Kirby - Pieces of a Woman: The luminous Kirby gets down and dirty in this misfire of a movie, but her performance is powerful and poignant. I hope we see much more of this Vanessa Kirby going forward.

THE WINNER IS… Carey Mulligan: Mulligan’s versatility is extraordinary and is on full display in Promising Young Woman. In lesser hands this role is a disaster, in her skilled mitts it is artistry…and the Mickey Award is rightfully hers.

Best Actor

The nominees are…

Riz Ahmed - Sound of Metal: Ahmed is one of the best actors out there, and he brings all his talent to Sound of Metal. Ahmed has the uncanny ability to fill himself with an inner life that is vibrant and dynamic and it shows on screen. A stellar piece of acting.

Anthony Hopkins - The Father: Hopkins, ever the master of controlled fury, gives arguably his greatest performance in The Father, as he unravels the character with each passing scene.

Gary Oldman - Mank: Oldman brings a sloppy slice of life to the Hollywood legend and it makes for a combustibly cantankerous experience. Few, if any, actors would even attempt this, nevermind pull it off as well as Oldman.

Mads Mikkelson - Another Round: Mikkelson transforms throughout this film from a burdened, defeated man to a confident king, to a struggling sad sack. Mikkelson is one of the great under appreciated actors of his time, and Another Round is evidence of his brilliance.

THE WINNER IS…Anthony Hopkins: Hopkins is one of the very best actors of his generation, and his stunning work in The Father, filled with precision and specificity, has now given him the most prestigious award in cinema, The Mickey™®.

Best Ensemble - Mank - Gary Oldman is the straw that stirs Mank’s drink, but the cast is loaded with solid actors giving career best performances. Amanda Seyfried, Arliss Howard and Charles Dance in particular do stellar work that elevate the film.

Best Director

The nominees are…

David Fincher - Mank : Fincher’s fearlessness is on full display in Mank as he throws caution to the wind and makes a dizzyingly complex film that is a thumb in the eye to his corporate overlords.

Chloe Zhao - Nomadland : Zhao’s comfort with silence and space make Nomadland the film that it is, and lesser directors would have scuttled the ship.

Florian Zeller - The Father : Zeller masterfully puts his audience through the horror of dementia by relying on his exquisite script and his stellar cast. This movie was no easy task and Zeller proved himself a formidable filmmaker.

Darius Marder - Sound of Metal : Marder brought all the craft of old school movie making to Sound of Metal. A fundamentally brilliant bit of directing that drew the most out of his cast and his crew.

Thomas Vinterberg - Another Round : Vinterberg is one of the most interesting directors around, and Another Round is him at his most accessibly artistic.

Andrew Patterson - The Vast of Night: Patterson’s feature debut is stunning for its confidence and technical audacity. I truly cannot wait to see what he does next.

THE WINNER IS…Darius Marder : Marder’s artistic courage, commitment and deft directing touch brought his profoundly unique vision to life on Sound of Metal…and now he’s got a Mickey Award!

Best Documentary - Can’t Get You Out of My Head : Director Adam Curtis is the best documentarian in the business and has been for nearly two decades. His newest project is a six part series that debuted on BBC in February. Like Curtis’ other revelatory series Century of the Self, The Power of Nightmares and HyperNormalization, Can’t Get You Out of My Head is brilliant for taking a sprawling subject matter and profoundly transforming it into the psychological and personal. it is currently available on Youtube, and though it may feel impenetrable at first, I highly recommend you watch every episode.

Best Picture

9. One Night in Miami - Four excellent performances propel this stagey drama and make it a worthwhile watch.

8. Promising Young Woman - Director Emerald Fennell wraps a disturbing revenge fantasy in a bubblegum aesthetic, and though it is flawed it possesses an intriguing cinematic power.

7. Judas and the Black Messiah - An uneven but captivating film that highlights two fantastic performances from Daniel Kaluuya and LaKieth Stanfield.

6. The Vast of Night - This is a little movie with big ideas and it nearly pulls them all off. A staggering piece of technical filmmaking that boasts an intricate and detailed performance from Sierra McCormick.

5. Nomadland - An arthouse meditation on the dark side of the American dream that somehow manages to be decidedly corporate friendly. Despite its shallow philosophy, the film is well-made and well-acted and very well shot.

4. Another Round - A compelling Danish drama that is gloriously acted and exceedingly well directed. This movie not only has a sense of humor but a deep sense of the profound.

3. Mank - Mank got lost in the shuffle this year, and although it isn’t a perfect movie, it is a very good one. Filled with solid performances and Fincher’s brilliance, Mank gets better upon each re-watch.

2. The Father - I expected little from The Father, and got a whole hell of a lot. This movie is like a horror film as it traps viewers inside the experience of dementia, and it makes you pray you never suffer that fate. An exquisitely jarring cinematic experience.

1. Sound of Metal - A pretty basic movie and idea that is phenomenally well-directed and acted. A quiet movie that finds profundity in the silence.

Most Important Film of the Year: Nomadland

Nomadland is the most important film of the year…but not in a good way. What makes Nomadland so important is that is symbolizes an artistic acquiescence to corporate power and reinforces working class impotence.

As I’ve written before, it is shocking that Nomadland is a story about people who are victims of American capitalism but the movie entirely ignores that reality, and in fact bends over backwards to portray the corporate behemoths (like Amazon) that cause the suffering we see in the film, as the good guys. The film might as well have been produced by Gordon Gekko or the Koch brothers.

It isn’t an accident that Amazon were so happy to let Nomadland shoot in their workplace and create the impression that working there is a wonderful experience where they treat you well, you make new friends and you make good money. Of course, the reality is much, much different.

The thing that is so horrifying is that Hollywood, and most importantly - the artists in Hollywood, refused to speak up against Nomadland’’s deception and Amazon’s evil. The film, its director and lead actress won a bevy of awards and yet not once in their acceptance speeches did they hold Amazon to task for their poor treatment of workers or anti-union practices or even speak up about those left behind by American capitalism.

Just think, Sally Field once iconically held up a “Union” sign in Norma Rae, and now Frances McDormand shits in a bucket while swearing that anti-union Amazon is a terrific place to work. What a sign of the very bad times.

Last time McDormand won an Oscar, the brassy actress shouted and touted diversity and inclusion…but this time around she was as quiet as a church mouse in regards to Amazon and unionization and its poor treatment of working people. Funny how McDormand was so courageous when it costs her nothing but so cowardly when biting the hand that feeds would be the right thing to do. Class act that McDormand…loud when she can self-aggrandize but silent when it matters.

Nomadland and the universal and uncritical love for it, signals an end to artists pushing back against corporate hegemony, and instead genuflecting to corporate power. This new era feels Orwellian, as the only thing that matters now is identity politics. If Nomadland hadn’t been written and directed by a “woman of color”, I doubt it would’ve received so much critical love, or avoided the Amazon controversy.

And so…this is why corporate America is attached at the hip with woke politics, it is a means to a dastardly end. Corporate America can be as evil as it wants and can exploit its workers all it wants, just as long as it spouts woke platitudes about diversity and inclusion and “black lives mattering” or whatever other politically correct smokescreen it wants to use…and as Nomadland proves, this distractionary measure will work…and cinema, art and humanity will all suffer.

On that very down note….thus concludes an uninspired Mickey™® awards for an uninspired year of movies!! Congratulations to all the winners and to all of my readers for surviving this decidedly heinous year. Keep an eye out for the Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® Awards…which will be coming soon to celebrate the very worst in cinema and culture!

Here’s to a better 2021! See you next year!

©2021

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. Not a great film by any stretch, and not as good as the original Borat, but it has some cringe-induced laughs and a gloriously balls to the wall performance from Maria Bakalova.

Borat Subsequent MovieFilm, directed by Jason Woliner and written by Sacha Baron Cohen and a cavalcade of others, is the sequel to the 2006 mockumentary Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakstan. The new film once again documents intrepid foreign tv personality Borat as he journeys through America. The film stars Sacha Baron Cohen as Borat with a supporting turn from Maria Bakalova as Borat’s daughter.

Sacha Baron Cohen came to prominence in 2002 with Da Ali G Show , which showcased his distinct brand of cringe comedy . Cohen’s dim-witted Ali G convinced regular and famous people alike into taking his buffoonery seriously and it made for some hysterical moments.

Da Ali G Show also featured two other Cohen characters, Bruno, a gay Austrian fashionista, and the aforementioned Borat.

Cohen brought Borat to the big screen and reaped a box office bonanza in 2006 with Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakstan, instantly becoming a cultural icon and meme generator. Cohen followed up that success with Bruno in 2009, which wasn’t as big a hit as Borat but still was a massive box office success.

Since 2009 Cohen has gone away from his signature mockumentary style cringe comedy and has tried to find success in more orthodox movies, both comedy and drama. That success has been somewhat elusive, in part because Cohen is so identified as being Borat. For instance, it is difficult to watch him star in the serious Netflix drama The Spy because you keep expecting him to do something inappropriate and say “niiiice!” Although things might be changing for Cohen as he was just nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his work, which I thought was atrociously bad, in The Trial of the Chicago 7.

Regardless of all that, I was surprised that Cohen came out with a new Borat movie now. It seemed like both the Borat cultural moment had passed and that dredging it up would only further hamper Cohen’s attempt at becoming a “legitimate” actor.

So when Borat Subsequent MovieFilm premiered on Amazon Prime in October of 2020, I made no effort to watch it. After months of putting it off I have finally taken the plunge.

Borat Subsequent MovieFilm is not as good as the original Borat…but it will certainly satisfy those who have a taste for Sacha Baron Cohen’s particular brand of comedy.

The movie is a shameless piece of anti-Trump propaganda (which is probably why it is nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar - which is absurd), but just because it is propaganda doesn’t mean it isn’t funny. The movie is, at times, uproariously funny. The most remarkable thing about it though is that Sacha Baron Cohen is totally outshined in lunacy by his fearless co-star Maria Bakalova. Bakalova, who plays Borat’s maligned daughter Tutar Sagdiyev, is ferociously funny as she sheds all inhibitions and even leaves her famous co-star looking a bit shell-shocked.

Bakalova is nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance, which is unbelievable not because she is undeserving but because the subject matter of the film is so outrageous. What sets Bakalova apart is her unabashed courage at diving into the most absurd and often repulsive scenes. The father-daughter dance at the Dallas debutante ball is so horrifying as to be gloriously amazing, and if she wins the Oscar I hope she recreates that dance when receiving her statuette.

In terms of the propaganda power of the movie, it seems more cathartic than persuasive. I mean, if you loved Trump and watched the movie it wouldn’t change your mind. Liberals will adore the movie’s political perspective and will no doubt only have their beliefs further reinforced, which isn’t necessarily a healthy thing, but this is life in 21st Century America. With all that said, I must admit that the movie felt very dated me just five months post-election.

Oddly, some of the things that Cohen uses to attempt to show Trumpists as morons and monsters actually does the reverse but he and his target audience are probably too enraptured by their own self-righteousness to be aware enough to recognize it. For instance, Borat stays with two Trumper/MAGA hat wearing men during the pandemic and uses that opportunity to show how bigoted, close-minded and hateful they are…but all that is undermined by the fact that these supposed bigots actually took a foreigner in during a pandemic and are patient and respectful towards him and go to great lengths to help him out.

Of course it should be stated that it is doubtful any of the stuff filmed in the movie is actually real. Cohen’s mockumentary style is easily manipulated and “real” moments are few and far between. But with that said, the biggest scene in the movie, and the one that got the most attention, involves Rudy Giuliani in a hotel room with a young woman. As a former New Yorker who lived there under his reign and absolutely hates Giuliani with the fury of a thousand suns, I have to say that the “gotcha” moment in this scene feels contrived and cheap. Giuliani is certainly a liar, creep and scumbag, but to imply he was playing with himself or whipping his miniscule, aggressively impotent tiny pecker out is pretty hyperbolic.

The bottom line is that Sacha Baron Cohen’s outrageous comedic style is an acquired taste, and to be frank, I have acquired it. I didn’t love Borat Subsequent MovieFilm, but it did make me laugh out loud a bunch of times, and that ain’t nothing. The film is worth watching for the laughs and to enjoy watching Maria Bakalova devour every scene she inhabits.

If you like Da Ali G Show, Borat and Bruno, you’ll like Borat Subsequent MovieFilm…but if Cohen’s style is not your cup of tea, I recommend you don’t even attempt to take a sip of this raunchy, rancid and ridiculous brew.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 32 - Coming 2 America

On this episode of everybody's favorite cinema podcast, Barry and I return to Zamunda for Coming 2 America, the Eddie Murphy led sequel to his 1988 comedy classic Coming to America. Topics discussed include backyard skunks, Eddie Murphy's faded star and the trouble with today's comedy. As an added bonus this episode features a return of the insanely popular segment - "Let's Pretend We're Studio Execs", where we play Hollywood bigwigs and recast the movie!

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: episode 32 - Coming 2 America

Thanks for listening!

©2021

Coming 2 America: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This movie proves that Eddie Murphy’s comedy fastball is a faded, distant memory, which transforms this movie from a limp comedy into a devastating tragedy.

There was a time when Eddie Murphy was the biggest comedian and movie star on the planet. In the 1980’s he had a string of comedy blockbusters, 48 Hrs. (1982), Trading Places (1983), Beverly Hills Cop (1984) and Coming to America (1988), that made him the epicenter of comedy culture. Back then it was Eddie’s world and we were all just living and laughing in it.

Murphy’s meteoric rise to fame began on Saturday Night Live , where he debuted in 1980, at the tender young age of 19, and hilariously held court until 1984. Murphy was a electrifying presence on the show and an equally dynamic stand up comedian, as evidenced by his stand up comedy specials Delirious (1983) and Raw (1987).

Coming to America (1988), directed by John Landis, was an intriguing film as it showcased Murphy’s scintillating talent, his abundant charisma and his remarkable versatility. The film was rated R so Murphy’s more profane comedic edge could be spotlighted, but it also had a love story at its heart, which allowed Murphy to mine his more sweet and good-natured side.

Coming to America was an original and captivating comedy that seemed to portend Murphy’s star growing even larger. But unfortunately, instead of being the launching pad to even greater heights, Coming to America ended up being the last good thing Eddie Murphy has ever done. Yes, there were some mildly acceptable movies that came after it, such as The Distinguished Gentleman (1992) and Bowfinger (1999), but these banal efforts pale in comparison to Murphy’s glorious mid-80’s apex.

33 years later Eddie Murphy and company are back with a Coming to America sequel. Coming 2 America, which premiered on Amazon Prime Friday, March 5th, is the 30 years too late Coming to America sequel that no one was asking for and that none of us deserve.

The film, directed by Craig Brewer, is a rehashing of the 1988 original, with Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall back reprising all their iconic roles. The problem though is that Eddie Murphy long ago lost his comedy fastball and his comedy caddy Arsenio Hall never had a fastball to begin with.

Another obstacle for the film is that cultural shifts over the last 33 years have created an audience of fragiles too delicate to handle any raunch, so the bare breasts and R rating from 1988 are history and now Eddie Murphy is forced to live in a rather tepid PG-13 world which is woke approved.

The end result of all this is that Coming 2 America is egregiously and remarkably unfunny. The lone bright spot in the nearly two-hour endeavor is the brief scene when Murphy and Hall don the make-up and bring back their famous barbershop alter egos and take some digs at the absurdity of the woke world we all inhabit, but besides that minor bit of humor, there isn’t a laugh to be found.

A big reason why there are no laughs is because there are a lot of painfully unfunny people in the movie.

For example, Leslie Jones plays a long lost and forgotten one night stand from Prince Akeem’s old days, and she is beyond dreadful. Ms. Jones’ career success is one of the great mysteries of the modern age as she has never, ever been funny…not even by accident. To her credit, at least she is consistent in being aggressively awful.

Jermaine Fowler plays Akeem’s bastard son LaVelle and seems like a survivor of charisma bypass surgery. Fowler is so uninteresting and embarrassingly unfunny on-screen I would rather watch my own autopsy than suffer through watching him “act” again.

The gorgeous Kiki Layne plays Akeem’s princess daughter, and spearheads the girl power narrative that drives this jalopy right off the cliff. Layne is a beauty but she is as wooden and dull an actress as you’ll ever come across. Every scene she appears in comes to a resoundingly screeching halt as her dead eyes act like black holes sucking the life out of everything in their orbit.

There is no point in criticizing any of the forced plot points or the film’s groveling social politics, because none of those things would have matter if the damn thing were just funny. But sadly, Eddie Murphy is just not able to reignite that elusive comedy and charisma spark that propelled him to the heights of the entertainment industry nearly forty years ago.

Murphy is unimaginably rich, so he didn’t make Coming 2 America because he was short on the mortgage payments. I think Murphy made Coming 2 America and 2019’s underwhelming Dolemite is My Name, because he actually wanted to do something worthwhile once again.

I think the wheels began to come off the Murphy wagon when he stopped doing stand up comedy back at the end of the 80’s. Murphy was such a star that he became detached from real people and reality and it was easier not to do the hard work of being good at stand up…which takes a lot of hard work.

For years I’ve heard stories from dozens of people about Murphy’s could not care less work ethic on films in the 2000’s and early 2010’s. It’s not uncommon to hear actors and crew bitch about a star they’ve worked with, but the stories I kept hearing all told the same story. According to these folks Murphy was a lazy, entitled, ego maniac who did barely the bare minimum on movies. He even used to insist that a double be used for every shot he was in where he didn’t have dialogue…we aren’t talking over the shoulder stuff, we are talking Eddie wide shots and reaction shots stuff. Even for spoiled movie stars, this sort of thing is outrageous. T be clear, I don’t know if these claims are true - they might just be the result of the usual jealous sniping and bitching against stars, I just know I’ve heard them quite a bit.

In this context, it becomes apparent that Eddie Murphy stopped giving a shit about thirty years ago and only started giving a shit again in the last few years because his star had faded to the point where he wasn’t telling punchlines, he had become one. But during those decades of aggressively not giving a shit, Murphy lost the spark that made him so special back in the day, and now he can’t reignite it.

I think that sucks because the world is a better place when Eddie Murphy is Eddie Murphy and not some comedy eunuch churning out flaccid garbage like Coming 2 America. Sadly, I don’t think we are ever going to see Eddie Murphy be great again, and Coming 2 America is a prime exhibit making that case.

In conclusion, I really wanted Coming 2 America to be great but I would’ve been thrilled if it just boasted some quality Eddie Murphy moments. Sadly, the film isn’t anywhere near great, in fact, it is terrible. And worst of all Eddie Murphy looks entirely incapable of being Eddie Murphy anymore, which transformed Coming 2 America for me from being a bad comedy into being a profundly sad tragedy.

©2021

Death to 2020: A Review and Commentary

In a year ripe for satire, Netflix’s predictable mockumentary ‘Death to 2020’ is proof of comedy’s calamitous demise

The film’s tepid and establishment friendly comedic takes on 2020 feel like the final nail in comedy’s coffin.

Death to 2020 is the new Netflix mockumentary that sets out to humorously sum up the nightmare that was 2020. The film, which premiered on the streaming service on December 27th, recounts the actual terrible events of the past year and has fake experts played by actors such as Samuel L. Jackson and Lisa Kudrow on as talking heads to comedically comment upon them.

The makers of Death to 2020, Charles Brooker and Anabel Jones, are best known in the U.S. for their terrifically terrifying and unnervingly prescient sci-fi horror show Black Mirror. But U.K. viewers first got to know them from their more comedy-oriented projects like the “Wipe Series”.

Death to 2020 is much more like the Wipe Series than Black Mirror as it attempts to be a comedy. Unfortunately, it fails in that endeavor.

What makes Death to 2020 so irritating is that it has nothing unique to say and it doesn’t even say the same tired old stuff uniquely.

Granted, some of the jokes are mildly amusing, and some of the performances are good, Tracey Ullman as Queen Elizabeth II, Hugh Grant as a stuffy and ornery British historian and Diane Morgan as one of the top five most average people in the world, are well done. Others, such as Leslie Jones as a behavioral psychologist and Lisa Kudrow as a conservative spokeswoman, are decidedly not.

Ultimately the film has the comedic heft, impact and staying power of a snide and snarky tweet.  At best it resembles a high-end, star-studded 2020 version of one of those silly Best of the 80’s clip shows on VH1.

The biggest problem with Death to 2020 though is the problem with most comedy nowadays, in that it is such a suffocating and stultifyingly safe and painfully predictable exercise as to be frustrating and fruitless.

If you have seen a single monologue in the past year by any of the sanctimonious, self-righteous serfs to the establishment on late night tv, such as Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Bill Maher, Trevor Noah or John Oliver, then you’ve experienced the same impotent comedy of Death to 2020. 

The tired formula of the late night comedy eunuchs, where they flaccidly recite establishment-approved witticisms devoid of insight and edge, is dutifully replicated here just in mockumentary form.

The result is, not surprisingly, that there’s not an ounce of originality or profundity found in the hour and ten-minute film that is too long by roughly an hour.

Also clearly lacking from Death to 2020 is any semblance of comedic testicular fortitude as the usual safe targets are held up for ridicule. Of course Trump is pilloried because he is a walking punchline, as is clueless Joe Biden, who, amusingly, is referred to both as a “prehistoric concierge” and a ”civil war hero”, but obviously none of that is even remotely daring.

“Karens”, conservatives and anti-lockdown activists are also the butt of many jokes, but the equally golden opportunity to lambaste the illiberal left for laughs is never taken. For instance, the comedy rich environment of the Black Lives Matter movement is not mocked, and the “protestors” looting and burning businesses in the name of George Floyd don’t get taken to task either.

But most telling is that also absent from the comedy firing line are celebrities, like the highly hysterical dopes and dullards who vomited out the repugnantly self-serving “Imagine” and “I Take Responsibility“ videos.

By ignoring these subjects Death to 2020 reveals itself to be little more than just another pandering video compliantly committed to kissing the right asses and devoutly dedicated to never biting the hand that feeds it.

As George Carlin famously once said of the powerful in America, “it’s a big club and you ain’t in it!” But the establishment court jesters who made Death to 2020 either are desperate to become members or are already in the club, as their resolute refusal to challenge the status quo is a perfect representation of the sad state of comedy in 2020.

Yes, there are some notable exceptions, Dave Chappelle and Bill Burr being the most prominent, but beyond that, whether it be Stephen Colbert weeping on air like one of the buffoons he used to belittle, or Jimmy Fallon castrating himself with a cowardly apology for an allegedly offensive blackface bit from twenty years ago, or John Oliver’s pathetic pandering to wokeness, or Saturday Night Live’s fierce commitment to anti-comedy or any of the other mainstream comedians who have groveled and genuflected to those who hold the power in our culture, 2020 has been the absolute nadir for contemporary comedy.

The bottom line is that 2020 has been a most brutal year that may have changed our world forever but it is also rife with profound opportunities for humor. Unfortunately for us, 2020 may also have killed comedy, and Death to 2020 is its decidedly unoriginal and unfunny death knell.

My Rating: 2 our of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Although at times mildly amusing, there is nothing original or noteworthy to see here.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Bill Burr Battles the Karen Dragon on SNL

Comedian Bill Burr hosted SNL this weekend and masterfully sent the woke into a fury with his brazen and insightful monologue

Saturday Night Live has became a haven for limp, politically correct comedy, but this past weekend Bill Burr burned down the house with his no-holds-barred comedic approach.

Bill Burr, a brilliant and curmudgeonly stand-up comedian who refuses to kowtow to the politically correct, went scorched earth in his SNL monologue Saturday night by taking on cancel culture, self-serving white women and their performative woke posturing and Gay Pride Month being longer than Black History Month. 

Burr’s monologue was apparently so incendiary the New York Times felt it needed a trigger warning, “Burr used his opening monologue to mock some sensitive topics — feel free to skip this section if you find that style of comedy distasteful”.

The monologue took flight when Burr ranted about people trying to cancel the long dead John Wayne for an interview he gave in 1970, which was met with a confused smattering of applause. Apparently, the SNL audience, like New York Times readers, aren’t used to comedy that isn’t entirely p.c., impotent and toothless.

Things then got really spicy when speaking of the woke movement, Burr observed, ““It should’ve been about people of color… somehow white women swung their Gucci-footed feet over the fence of oppression and stuck themselves at the front of the line.”

The studio audience met that insightful bit with cold silence while the house band behind Burr were frozen in woke shock,  never laughing, clapping or moving once throughout his monologue.

Not surprisingly Karens on twitter had a conniption in response…which of course just made Burr’s point for him. This is like the old joke, “hey, I resemble that remark!” made manifest.

One woman tweeted, “That just looks like misogyny to me. I would respect that if it came from a black woman and not a white dude…”

Another snowflake courageously tweeted, “Bill Burr's opening monologue is just obnoxious and misogynstic. It's 2020. Someone tell him calling women "bitches" isn't funny”.

Burr’s final assault on the woke brigade came when he brought up the injustice of Gay Pride Month being all of June while Black History Month, which is for people “who were actually enslaved”, is in February, the coldest and shortest month of the year.

Burr joked, “These are equator people give them the sun for 31 days. There’s gay Black people, they could celebrate from June 1, June 31… give them 61 days to celebrate”.

This was met on twitter with charges of homophobia as one dullard tweeted, “Cool so bill burr went from misogynistic to homophobic. Time to go to bed.”

Burr’s crime of whiteness arose once again when someone tweeted, “hey bill burr i don’t think you should push the racist homophobic agenda on an snl sketch coming from a straight white male it’s not funny”.

The woke poseurs claiming Burr is racist either don’t know or don’t care that Burr’s wife is black…which should maybe blunt charges of his being racist.

The type of white people who love the safe comedy of SNL and hate Burr are the kind that adore Kamala Harris because they want a black female president for no other reason than identity politics and thinking it makes them not racist, even though Kamala Harris is loathed by actual black people.

The Karens outraged by Burr’s blunt truth-telling live safe, suburban lives and use tears and tantrums to get what they want…which is a cozy cocoon of silence and obedience. They refuse to have their vapid ideology confronted and will never engage in debate, only shrieking and wailing. Burr did us all a favor by tearing down their farcical façade.

Some might say the audience and band’s dismissive reactions and the outrage on twitter mean that Burr comedically failed…I think it actually signals his unparalleled success.

Burr went into the woke lion’s den and poked the evil beast right in the eye. While he didn’t get many laughs in the studio, he got a ton of them in my living room and no doubt in other living rooms across the country.

Unfortunately, SNL has devolved from the height of its powers under the manic genius of John Belushi, the edgy brilliance of Eddie Murphy and the cartoonish buffoonery of Will Ferrell, into its current flaccid form, which is a cesspool of insipid anti-comedy that prefers to be safe and politically correct than to being daring and funny. Well, safe and politically correct is not how Bill Burr, or any great comedian, rolls.

The woke twitterati and others bemoaning Bill Burr’s bludgeoning of political correctness on SNL are the same type of people who would’ve scolded George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce and Billy Connolly out of existence.

One need only watch the rest of the show with its inane and unfunny sketches as well as its overly long and painfully tedious cold open, to see that Burr’s monologue was the only thing on the entire program with a pulse (Jack White’s scintillating musical performances aside).

Sadly, there is no way Bill Burr will ever be invited back on SNL, which is a shame, because his aggressive, take no prisoners, tell-it-like-it-is type of energy is exactly what makes for great comedy, is the secret ingredient that made the once iconic show successful in the first place, and is the only thing that could ever return it to prominence once again.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

The Only Thing Dumber Than the #HandsOffAnastasia Twitter Furor is the Dreadful Movie That Sparked It

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 28 seconds

Some Russians have taken offense at Anastasia Romanov’s cartoonish depiction in a low-budget movie released earlier this year. They shouldn’t waste their energy on a criminally stupid piece of film making.

In case you haven’t heard, #HandsOffAnastasia is the outrage du jour on Twitter. If you were unaware of this controversy, I deeply envy you. Here is a quick breakdown of how #HandsOffAnastasia came to be. 

In Spring of this year a terrible movie titled Anastasia: Once Upon a Time came and went and no one cared because it was laughably low budget and hysterically awful. The film is a live action kids movie that tells a fantastical tale of Anastasia Romanov time traveling, with the help of a wizardly Rasputin, from Russia in 1918 to Madison, Wisconsin in 1988 in order to evade Vladimir Lenin and Yara the Enchantress’s malevolent grip. To give you an indication of the caliber of movie that Anastasia: Once Upon a Time is, here are some highlights…Rasputin has a break dance battle at a mall, plays video games and models in a fashion show, there are some absurdly random musical numbers, and a Filipino comedian plays Lenin.

I am no expert on Russian history, but I am pretty sure the film is not entirely historically accurate. And this is where the outrage comes in…apparently some Russians are up in arms that “Hollywood” would denigrate Russian history and besmirch a Sainted Russian figure like Anastasia Romanov, who was brutally murdered by Bolsheviks at age 17 with the rest of her family, by comically re-imagining her tragic tale…thus #HandsOffAnastasia was born.

More kindling on the #HandsOffAnastasia fire is a clip from the film circulating online that shows Anastasia eating spaghetti with her hands, thus implying she, and all Russians, are uncivilized barbarians.

Sadly for me, this whole #HandsOffAnastasia situation forced me to watch this stupid movie. My assessment is this…how do you say “much ado about nothing” in Russian?

First things first…Anastasia: Once Upon a Time is obscenely amateurish and ridiculously imbecilic…but it doesn’t make Anastasia out to be some Neanderthal anti-princess. The spaghetti eating scene isn’t mean spirited or even “anti-Russian”, it is just unconscionably lazy movie making.

The other thing, and this is the most important point, is that this film is so inconsequential as to be absurd. Why anyone, anywhere would care what it says or does is beyond me.

This is not some “Hollywood”, big budget operation backed by the marketing muscle of Disney. The movie was produced by Congolomerate Media and distributed by Freestyle Digital Media…not exactly Hollywood heavyweights…in fact they don’t even qualify as flyweights…or Hollywood, which is why no one has ever heard of this film until this silly controversy.

The budget for the film is bare bones, and it shows in the locations, cheap special effects and shabby costumes. Whatever money they did have seems to have been almost entirely spent acquiring the rights to the Cindi Lauper song “Time After Time”, which it uses liberally (without Lauper’s pricey vocals) throughout the film for no discernible reason.

If I could point to one remarkable thing about Anastasia: Once Upon a Time it would be that it boasts the largest collection of the worst Russian accents ever captured on film at one time. The biggest star in the movie is Brandon Routh who plays Tsar Nicholas II. Once upon a time Routh played Superman on the big screen, and in Anastasia he reveals his kryptonite is twofold…acting and a Russian accent.

The film is produced by Armando Gutierrez, who also did no one a favor by casting himself in the critical role of Rasputin. The film would have been better served casting an inanimate carbon rod in the role instead of Gutierrez.

On the bright side, there is exactly one good performance in the film, and that comes from the talented Amiah Miller, a young actress who played Nova in War for the Planet of the Apes.

Besides that the only interesting thing about this movie is that on its IMDB page it actually lists Anastasia Romanoff as one of the screenwriters. That is an intriguing marketing ploy but simply cannot be true because if the real Anastasia ever had to watch this dreadful movie she would run into the basement and shoot herself just to end the misery and embarrassment. I am sure that last joke offended some people…but here is the thing, if you have the time and energy to get upset about that lame joke or about this nonsensically preposterous movie, then you really need to get a life.

This isn’t to say that Hollywood, like the rest of America, isn’t Russophobic. It certainly is. It isn’t to say that Americans aren’t historically illiterate about Russia and ignorant about Russians. They certainly are. It is to say that this third rate clownshow of a movie is so laughably trivial that it should never ever generate any emotion, be it positive or negative, from anyone, anywhere.

#HandsOffAnastasia is, like so much of Twitter culture, a function of people with too much time on their hands searching high and low, far and wide for something, anything about which to be offended.

In conclusion, the hypersensitive Russian woke folk of #HandsOffAnastasia desperately need to keep their hands off Twitter and go out and re-connect with their heritage by doing truly Russian things…like competing in a break dancing battles at the mall, or modeling in impromptu fashion shows, or eating spaghetti with their hands.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

UNpregnant: A Review and Commentary

****THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SOME MINOR SPOILERS!!! THIS IS NOT A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!****

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This stillborn comedy is a mess of a movie but it does succeed as a piece of pro-abortion agitprop

Last week was a good week if you crave poorly crafted movies designed to trigger culture war clashes, but a bad week if you’re a cinephile more interested in quality cinema than political posturing.

On September 9th, Netflix defecated Cuties, the controversial French film that hypersexualizes 11 year-old girls, onto an unsuspecting and uncomfortable public.

The very next day, September 10th, HBO Max picked up the gauntlet of inappropriateness and released UNpregnant, its teen girl, road trip, abortion buddy comedy.

Thankfully UNpregnant is rated PG13, which means the scantily-clad, twerking 11 year-olds of Cuties only have a two year wait before they can watch the movie-version of the abortion handbook that is UNpregnant.

UNpregnant is the story of Veronica (Haley Lu Richardson), a 17 year-old over-achiever in Missouri who asks her misfit former friend Bailey (Barbie Ferreira) to give her a ride to New Mexico for an abortion.

Missouri and its surrounding states all have laws against minor’s getting abortions without parental consent, and Veronica is afraid to tell her “Jesus freak” Catholic parents, so she needs to hit the road to the Land of Enchantment for the no-strings, underage abortion at the end of the rainbow.

In mythical girl power fashion, Veronica and Bailey’s journey is undertaken in a Pontiac Firebird, because like a phoenix, these girls will rise from the ashes of the patriarchal society that oppresses them…or something like that.

Unfortunately, UNpregnant is a painfully conventional and relentlessly dull film. It’s ironic that a movie burdened with such flaccid performances and impotent comedy should be about a pregnancy borne out of unrestrained virility.

The film’s dreadful script, which is in part written by Ted Caplan and Jenni Hendriks and is based upon their book of the same name, reads like the exposition Olympics, and Rachel Lee Goldenberg’s direction is abysmally amateurish.

The two leads, Haley Lu Richardson and Barbie Ferreira, try as hard as they might, lack any comedy chemistry whatsoever. Both of them push so hard to make something funny happen that you’d think they were actually in labor…but the fruits of that labor never appear as apparently the comedy in their performances was aborted too and never had the chance to grow beyond a miniscule fetus.

UNpregnant wraps itself so tight in liberal political correctness it could pass for a social justice mummy. The movie has all the right heroes and heroines and all the proper enemies to appease the woke faithful.

For instance, the film exerts a great deal of energy proving it isn’t racist by having every single black person in the movie be wonderful allies to the abortion cause.

Yes, these black people, like Peg, the pawn shop owner with the heart of gold, Jarrod, the local cowboy with the heart of gold, and Bob, the apocalyptic conspiracist with the heart of gold, are all edgy and dangerous, but ultimately, due to their previously mentioned hearts of gold, end up being kind and extremely helpful to Ivy league bound, suburban white girl Veronica in her abortion quest. 

And just in case viewers were confused about the cultural politics of the movie, there’s a superfluous lesbian romance thrown in too.

As for the villains, there’s Kevin, Veronica’s white, empty-headed yet controlling, stalker boyfriend, who intentionally failed to reveal the condom broke. Like all straight white men in Hollywood movies nowadays, Kevin is simply no good.

The most deplorable villains in the movie though are a family of pro-life, white Christians who are the personification of evil. This family is meant to represent the pro-life movement, as unsubtly indicated by their secret “pro-life” room in their home, and by their mobile pregnancy and ultrasound equipped recreational vehicle, which they use to chase down Veronica and Bailey.

The sequence with the evil pro-life family is so farcical and tonally out of step with the rest of the movie, it feels like it is intentionally placed there for no other reason than to denigrate and inflame Christians.

Needlessly ridiculing Christians is not exactly a sound marketing strategy if, like UNpregnant, you are trying to make a popular movie and not some niche arthouse film. Proof of this is that UNpregnant currently has a 40% audience score at Rotten Tomatoes, which makes total sense since 65% of Americans identify as Christian.

The film does currently boast an 85% critical score at Rotten Tomatoes, but I think that has everything to do with it being a shameless advertisement for abortion and woke utopian wet dream of anti-Christianity for establishment liberals rather than any honest analysis of its artistic or entertainment merits.

As a cinematic venture, as a comedy and as a piece of entertainment, UNpregnant fails miserably, but as a piece of agitprop that normalizes abortion, which I believe is the movie’s ultimate intention, it thoroughly succeeds.

Abortion in UNpregnant is depicted as a gateway to freedom and truth and an undeniable good. Abortion is portrayed as this wondrous and physically, mentally and emotionally painless procedure that leaves girls emphatically relieved and joyously buoyant in its wake. As post-abortion Veronica sums up to her mother at movie’s end, “I don’t feel bad…”

I’m glad at least someone didn’t feel bad at the end of the movie, because I sure did, and not because of UNpregnant’s political stance on the complex issue of abortion, or its ham-handed cultural politics, but because it is an unfunny, cliché-ridden, mess of a movie that is poorly written, acted and directed.

In conclusion, UNpregnant is a stillborn cinematic dud that should have taken its own advice and aborted itself in the first trimester of its creative process.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

New HBO Max Teen Comedy UNpregnant Seems to Suggest Abortion is Nothing but a Barrel of Laughs

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 24 seconds

UNpregnant appears to ignore the moral complexity of abortion in favor of promoting an insidious amorality on the issue. 

UNpregnant is the controversial new abortion buddy comedy movie set to premiere on HBO Max on September 10th.

The film, based on the novel of the same name, tells the story of Veronica, a pregnant 17 year-old girl, and her friend Bailey, as they go on a wild and whacky road trip from Missouri to New Mexico so that Veronica can get an abortion.

In its trailer, UNpregnant sells itself as a zany road picture where hilarity ensues when a goofy odd couple of teenage girls steal a car and try to hop a train on their epic odyssey down the yellow brick road to abortionland.

The road picture narrative is a long time Hollywood staple, think Bing Crosby and Bob Hope with their numerous “road to” musical comedies of the ‘40’s and ‘50’s…except in UNpregnant, Crosby and Hope are teenage girls crossing state lines to get an abortion. Hilarious!

It is easy to see why pro-life advocates are up in arms over UNpregnant as the trailer makes the film appear to be a piece of pro-abortion agitprop specifically designed to antagonize them by making light of abortion and demonizing Veronica’s Catholic parents as “Jesus freaks”.

2020 has been a banner year for decidedly pro-abortion films with UNpregnant, the critically acclaimed drama Sometimes, Always, Never, Rarely, and the indie dramedy Saint Frances, which all have an amoral attitude toward abortion, all being released.

Notice I described these films as pro-abortion and not pro-choice, that is because pro-choice implies a grappling with the moral gravity of the abortion decision, whereas pro-abortion removes any moral dimensions at all, and reduces abortion to being akin to getting a nose piercing.

This amoral approach to abortion is perfectly summed up by Kelly O’Sullivan, writer and star of Saint Frances, who told Time magazine, “I wanted to write a story where it’s a non-traumatic depiction of abortion. It’s ordinary and light and sometimes funny…”

Yes, because if abortion is anything it is ordinary, light and sometimes funny.

Hollywood has not always been so devoid of nuance in its depiction of the extraordinarily complex issue of abortion.

In 2007, Juno, Knocked Up and Waitress all portrayed their female protagonists wrestling with an unwanted pregnancy and highlighting the choice part of the pro-choice position, with each ultimately choosing to not have an abortion.

These films were wildly successful, with Juno and Knocked Up raking in $231 million and $219 million respectively, and Waitress pulling in a respectable $22 million with just a $1.5 budget.

Juno also garnered four Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress, while winning for Best Original Screenplay.

The commercial and critical success of these films was a result of their mirroring American’s extremely conflicted feelings on the subject of abortion.

Polling shows that a majority of Americans are pro-choice in some form, but as Barbara Carvalho of Marist Poll told NPR, “People do see the issue as very complicated, very complex. Their positions don't fall along one side or the other. ... The debate is about the extremes, and that's not where the public is."

In the thirteen years since Juno, Knocked Up and Waitress hit big screens Hollywood has abandoned the nuance and dramatic complexity of American’s view of abortion in favor of the extremist pro-abortion message of UNpregnant.

Tinsel Town is no longer interested in connecting with as wide an audience as possible but rather prefers to signal their self-professed virtue with cultural propaganda that directly targets underage girls while preaching to the minority of pro-abortion zealots in their midst.

Most troubling for movie lovers is that internal moral conflicts are what make for the most interesting drama and comedy, and to ignore them in favor of self-aggrandizing political posturing is self-defeating for both artists and the movie industry.

An example of a mainstream filmmaker successfully embracing morally complex issues, including abortion, is Knocked Up director Judd Apatow, who has made a career of wrapping moral debates in his signature raunchy humor.

Apatow’s films, which include 40 Year Old Virgin, This is 40, Funny People and Trainwreck, are “conservative” comedies where adult protagonists face moral dilemmas and though tempted to make the libertine choice, eventually make the difficult but responsible one instead.

As Hollywood’s cultural politics become ever more strident, Apatow’s formula, which has made him a gazillionaire, will become anathema in the movie industry and “get woke, go broke” will most assuredly be made manifest in La La Land.

The UNpregnant trailer, which boasts such cringe-worthy dialogue as “it’s my life, my choice” and the insipid tag line “when life gets off track, forge your own path”, makes clear the popular 2007 approach of entertaining adults with moral complexity is now abandoned in favor of indoctrinating kids with extremist agitprop.

Maybe when UNpregnant comes out we’ll discover that it’s a terrific film and more morally complex than its trailer suggests…or maybe it is the canary in the cultural coalmine reflective of how the new, grotesquely woke Hollywood is desperate for its cancer of vapid amorality and decadent depravity to metastasize to the next generation of girls and young women. My bet is on the latter.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Spitting Image, BoJo's Penis, and Fear of a Black Puppet

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 37 seconds

Spitting Image, the savagely satirical puppet show from the 80’s and 90’s, is making a comeback in Autumn. But already it’s on the defensive due to a hyper-sensitive climate where there’s always someone offended about something.

Spitting Image, the satirical television puppet show which made a name for itself on ITV from 1984 to 1996 for its brutal caricatures of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, John Major and the Royal Family among many others, is attempting a comeback on BritBox UK this Autumn. 

Now would seem a perfect time for the show to re-appear, as there is an abundance of prime comedy targets among the world’s politicians and celebrities.

In an era that boasts the buffoonery of Boris Johnson, Trump and the dead-eyed rambling of Joe Biden, as well as the relentless narcissism of the entertainment industry elite, one would think that satire should thrive.

But navigating the minefield of comedy in today’s hypersensitive age of suffocating political correctness is a perilous venture bordering on a suicide mission, and if early reports are any indication, Spitting Image is doomed to wind up legless in the graveyard of comedy failure.

Just this week it was revealed that Spitting Image produced a short trailer for their overlords at ITV that featured a scene where Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin wrestle naked in a sauna.

In the scene, BoJo and Trump are revealed to have tiny puppet peckers while Putin has the python-esque appendage of a Russian Dirk Diggler, which sounds both hysterically funny and most likely phallically accurate.

That scene of presidential and prime ministerial penises, or penii, or gaggle of penis, whatever the proper term may be, horrified the stuffed shirts at ITV who quickly gave it a hard no…demanding re-shoots sans genitalia.

The censoriousness of the corporate clowns at ITV is not the least bit surprising, and is actually something that the creatives at Spitting Image can use to their advantage, but the real comedy calamity for the show will be its own self-censorship.

An example of which came earlier this month when reports surfaced that the show’s producers had a ‘curious meeting’ with their ITV bosses to talk about how to properly depict black celebrities in order avoid a “racism row”.

Spitting Image’s raison d’etre has always been fearlessly cutting comedy combined with grotesquely distorted puppets caricaturing to humorous heights. But now the show is preemptively acting to make sure that its depictions of black celebrities like Kanye West, Beyonce and Meghan Markle are delicate enough to be palatably un-offensive? Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

This sort of self-censoring is and always will be the death of comedy. How can you effectively be funny if you’re constantly looking over your shoulder afraid of offending someone, somewhere over something?

If comedy were a fistfight…and it often times is, Spitting Image is heading into the brawl having tied one hand behind its own back out of racial deference, with the other hand tied by ITV out of corporate cowardice.

It is ironic that Spitting Image has run afoul of ITV with its depiction of Boris’s tiny Johnson, because with the show’s self-censorship it is definitely proving it no longer has balls.

There is no shame in being censored by ITV, hell it should be a badge of honor for any comedian or comedy show, but Spitting Image should be ashamed of neutering its own comedy instincts to the point of impotence with its paternalistic double standard when it comes to the black celebrities it means to caricature.

If the show can’t eviscerate famous people of different races and ethnicities with its caricatures with equal aplomb, then what is the purpose of it?

The satire of Spitting Image does serve a purpose…it helps to humble public figures who think they are God’s gift to the populace, and assists the hoi polloi in blowing off steam by laughing at the foibles and frailty of their supposed betters.

But when the show attempts to appease the delicate sensibilities of certain people or groups of people, then it just becomes a flaccid exercise in safely controlled, establishment-friendly, pseudo-comedy.

Yes, there will be jokes, but the comedy no longer reveals any greater truths or higher purpose…it simply maintains the status quo and reinforces the protective barriers around whatever the culture considers a sacred cow.

Spitting Image, like all comedy, should be in the business of slaughtering sacred cows and transforming them into delicious meals of highbrow filet mignon or lowbrow burgers, both of which satiate certain audience’s hunger for humor.

Without its signature devil may care attitude when it comes to offending its political and celebrity targets, Spitting Image might as well be The Muppets discussing how gentrification has ruined Sesame Street…a self-indulgent, toothless and useless comedy exercise.

Testicular fortitude has always been a necessity for comedy greatness. Monty Python, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Billy Connolly, Ricky Gervais, Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr and Frankie Boyle all had or have it in abundance.

Spitting Image used to have it, but between the quick trigger finger of the censors at ITV and the show’s own Orwellian self-censoring, it may have castrated its own comedy bollocks.

Hopefully it hasn’t, because without their comedy bollocks, Spitting Image doesn’t stand a chance of regaining its relevance, which would be tragic since the world could sure use a good laugh.

 A version of this show was originally published at RT.

©2020

The Monty Python Classic 'The Life of Brian' Relentlessly Mocked Christianity Forty Years Ago, Comedy Needs to Do the Same Thing to the Church of Wokeness Today

Estimated Reading Time: 3 Minutes 33 seconds

The woke are winning the culture war and comedy needs to step up and expose these ludicrous fools for their fanaticism before it’s too late.

The Life of Brian, Monty Python’s classic cinematic mocking of Christianity, was so scandalous for its blasphemy back when it was released in 1979, that it was actually banned by some British theatre owners, while others gave it the scarlet letter of an X-rating.

An X-rating in those days was the movie rating equivalent of being stoned to death for saying “Jehovah!”

As a sign of how dramatically the culture has shifted in the last forty years, the BBFC now rates The Life of Brian a very warm and fuzzy 12A – suitable for viewers 12 and up.

The film isn’t considered dangerous for its blasphemy anymore because Christianity doesn’t much matter anymore…and I say that as a practicing Catholic.

Christianity with its endemic corruption, devout fanatics and exuberant magical thinking has been usurped in our culture by a newly ascendant religious force even more severe in nature.

That force is wokeness, which is accompanied by its own inquisition and enforcement wing – cancel culture.

If you doubt that wokeness is the new dominant cultural religion, consider this…in most places in the U.S. you aren’t allowed to go to church because of coronavirus but are wholly encouraged to attend Black Lives Matter protests - which apparently confer some magical and mystical powers of immunity upon attendees.

Meet the new religion…same as the old religion.

Monty Python were such a brilliant comedic force they not only obliterated the old religion in The Life of Brian, but also ridiculed the new one too, forty years before it rose to power.

In the film there is a scene - which would never get made in today’s stultifying p.c. environment - that deals with transgenderism.

Set in the Coliseum of Jerusalem, the scene shows the People’s Front of Judea…not to be confused with the Judean People’s Front…comprised of Stan (Eric Idle), Reg (John Cleese), Francis (Michael Palin) and Judith (Sue Jones-Davies), meeting to discuss their goals.

When Stan keeps interjecting feminine pronouns into the proposed language…he is asked by Francis why he keeps bringing up women?

Stan -  “I want to be one….I want to be a woman….from now on I want you all to call me Loretta…It’s my right as a man.”

Judith – “Why would you want to be Loretta, Stan?

Stan – “I want to have babies…It’s every man’s right to have babies if he wants.”

Reg - “You can’t have babies!”

Stan - “Don’t oppress me!”

Reg - “I’m not oppressing you Stan, you haven’t got a womb! Where’s the fetus gonna gestate? You gonna keep it in a box?”

After some hemming and hawing, Francis chimes in with a solution.

Francis (to Stan) - “We shall fight our oppressors for your right to have a baby, brother…ooops…sister, sorry.”

Reg - “What’s the point of fighting for his right to have babies if he can’t have babies?”

Francis – “It’s symbolic of our struggle against oppression!”

Reg – “It’s symbolic of his struggle against reality.”

It is impossible to imagine any comedy of today having the testicular fortitude to do a scene as brutally honest and savagely insightful as that.

“Symbolic struggle against reality” is the perfect definition of wokeness and this is why we need a new Monty Python-esque group to make a film eviscerating wokeness as exquisitely and relentlessly as the The Life of Brian did Christianity…maybe call it The Life of Karen.

Wokeness, with its incessant self-righteousness, aggressive illogic, absurd preferred pronouns and ridiculously insufferable p.c. jargon, is a gloriously target rich comedy environment.

Sadly, there’s no Monty Python equivalent in our times comically capable of dismantling the new Church of Wokeness. The most prominent sketch comedy show today is Saturday Night Live, and they’re shameless, politically correct lap dogs.

In stark contrast to the ballsy comedy bravado displayed by Monty Python forty years ago, watching SNL’s impotent, flaccid, woke-approved humor is like getting a scolding from a Methodist temperance movement a hundred years ago.

SNL is so neutered by wokeness, in 2019 they actually fired comedian Shane Gillis before he ever appeared on the show because he offended the Cancel Culture Centurions and Tiny Torquemadas of Twitter…the horror!

Besides suffocating the comedy of today, the woke are actively scouring tv and film history searching for retroactive blasphemers to silence.

The Office, Community, 30 Rock, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Scrubs and Fawlty Towers, among others, have all had episodes scrubbed from streaming services for their past politically incorrect sins.

Let us pray to our Lord and Savior Brian and his Sacred Shoe and Holy Gourd, that Monty Python’s glorious canon is not next on the cancel culture crucifixion list.

By today’s woke standards they’d certainly deserve it for their insightful dismantling of transgenderism, their mockery of speech impediments in the form of ‘pwonouncements’ by Pilate and his ‘fwiend’ Biggus Dickus, and for the crime of having men play female roles!!

“On the bright side”…if Monty Python does get crucified at least they’ll go out singing!

The bottom line is this…wokeness must be stopped and I believe the best way to stop it is to mock it. Sadly though, the Church of Wokeness is winning the culture war because unlike Monty Python forty years ago, today’s comedy hasn’t found the courage to tell the unvarnished, hysterical truth…and we are all worse off because of it.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

We Need a New, Anti-Woke TV Channel To Stave Off Comedy’s Impending EXTINCTION at the Hands of Cancel Culture

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 48 seconds

We Need a New, Anti-Woke TV Channel To Stave Off Comedy’s Impending EXTINCTION at the Hands of Cancel Culture

With political correctness running roughshod over Hollywood, now is the perfect time for a billionaire to invest in a streaming service that prioritizes entertainment over wokeness.

We now live in an age where the Cancel Culture Clan routinely don their white robes of self-righteous totalitarianism and roam the comedy landscape of today and yesteryear searching for any heretics who have violated the ever changing rules of the Church of Wokeness.

It was either Sir Isaac Newton, Huey P. Newton or Fig Newton, I can’t remember which, who once famously said, “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”…and so it is with the politically correct panic of our time. 

This is why I believe that anti-wokeness is poised to be a major growth sector in the entertainment industry in the coming years.

My idea to cash in on the current woke hysteria is to start a comedy streaming service dedicated to being resolutely anti-woke.

I call this streaming service…F.U.T.V.

Instead of the fear of offending the delicate sensibilities of the most fragile among us being our guiding principle, F.U.T.V. will make the unorthodox decision to actually treat viewers like adults and let them decide for themselves whether they choose to watch whatever “offensive” comedy has been targeted by the snowflake Savanarolas looking to fuel their bonfire of inanities.

We just need a rich bastard with enough testicular and fiscal fortitude to fund this noble venture. There has to be some billionaire entrepreneur out there who realizes that as the corporate behemoths of Hollywood cave to the incessant bitching of the p.c. mob by casting aside controversial comedians, shows and movies, a gaping void is being opened, and an anti-woke streaming service can profitably fill it.

For instance, in recent years a cavalcade of wildly popular sitcoms such as Friends, Seinfeld, The Office, 30 Rock, The Simpsons, Family Guy, and South Park have all been branded with the scarlet letter of “P” for problematic, due to various woke infractions regarding insensitivity towards race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference and diversity.

“Problematic” is always and every time the first step on the journey down the very slippery slope that inevitably ends with crucifixion by the centurions of corporate cancel culture.

These tv shows are huge money-making properties but in short order they will be available for pennies on the dollar because the weak-kneed buffoons in corporate Hollywood, who are scared to death of the tiny Torquemadas of the Woke Inquisition, will gladly sacrifice their comedy golden gooses on the altar of political correctness in order to appease the angry gods of social justice.

Stand up comedy will fare no better as venues such as Netflix, which have branded themselves the home to comedy, have already begun to cower to the Robespierres of the Woke Revolution and pulled a variety of “racially offensive” comedy shows.

The thing to understand about the woke mob is this… their greatest fear isn’t that someone, somewhere is being offended, it is that someone, somewhere is actually enjoying themselves.

No matter what you do to appease these dour and depraved scolds, it will never be enough, for they are voracious and insatiable in their appetite to destroy anyone and anything that makes them feel uncomfortable.

Netflix has given an inch, and I guarantee you these totalitarian tools will take a mile, and won’t relent until Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr and Ricky Gervais’ heads are on a platter.

Comedy history too will be raped and pillaged by these woke barbarians as they inevitably push for greats like George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks and Billy Connolly to be purged from cultural memory for the crimes of wrong-think and political incorrectness.

The goal of comedy fans everywhere should be to extend a giant middle finger to all these repugnant woke simpletons by supporting comedians doing what comedians are supposed to do…rebelling against the small, closed minds in the culture that are trying to censure, censor and suffocate them.

In conclusion…here is a top six ranking of some of the comedians and their routines that are no doubt on the endangered species list in this toxic age of wokeness. Let’s hope F.U.T.V. can get funding and stave off the incessant waves of woke whiners and bring to a halt comedy’s impending extinction.

6. Bill Burr

Burr stomps on the toes of political correctness and jokes about sexual assault…both hanging offenses in the People’s Republic of Wokestan.

Sexual Assault

PC Culture

5. Richard Pryor

One of the greatest stand up comedians of all-time would have a woke bulls-eye squarely on his back if he were around today. This penitentiary routine would certainly have raised the ire of the social justice Bolsheviks and their demand to “abolish the police”.

Penitentiary

4. George Carlin

It is a tragedy Carlin isn’t around to obliterate the insipid vacuity of the woke brigade. There is no doubt that in 2020 the p.c. police would vastly alter his iconic routine of “words you can never say on television” by expanding it to be more “socially conscious” and applying it to every day life.

“Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television”

3. Chris Rock

Speaking of words you’re not allowed to say…the electrifying Chris Rock and his blistering take on racial issues from 1996 sure as hell wouldn’t fly in 2020.

Bring the Pain

2. Louis C.K.

If Louis C.K. hadn’t already been cancelled back in 2017, he certainly would’ve been if he tried these routines in 2020.

The “N” word

Child Molesting

1. Dave Chappelle

I’ll give the last word to Chappelle, who is public enemy number one of the woke because he is so brilliant at eviscerating their vapid, emotionalist drivel. In 2019 his Sticks and Stones wowed audiences but P.C. critics deemed it “regressive”, which must be another term for “honest and funny”…I’ll let you decide.

Chinese

Women Equality

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Comedians Must Never Apologized if Comedy is to Surivive in the Age of Cancel Culture

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 27 seconds

Jimmy Fallon, Leigh Francis and other feckless comedians cowering to appease cancel culture are committing artistic suicide. They should look to comic masters for inspiration and courage.

As America and the U.K. have devolved to become little more than a diabolically sensitive human resources department devoted to cancel culture, comedy has become a decidedly tricky proposition.

It is within this stifling comedy climate that the question has often been raised…should a comedian ever apologize for offending someone?

None of the greats, such as Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks, Chris Rock or Dave Chappelle, have ever, or would ever, apologize.

It would seem to me that if a comedian isn’t offending somebody, they probably aren’t doing it right, and being unapologetic about that is a basic requirement to achieve comedy greatness.

For instance, in a recent interview on the BBC, legendary Scottish comedian Billy Connolly weighed in on this topic in regards to his allegedly controversial anti-religious routines back in the 1970’s. Connolly declared, “I refused to apologise and I refuse to this day to apologise.”

In contrast, this week comedian Leigh Francis and Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon both bent the knee and tearfully apologized for offending with past comedy bits.

Francis apologized for having worn latex facemasks in 2002 to portray black celebrities like Michael Jackson, Craig David and Trisha Goddard, while Fallon apologized for having worn blackface while imitating fellow comedian Chris Rock in a short skit on Saturday Night Live…TWENTY YEARS AGO.

Performative Groveling

One can think blackface is a bad idea while also being repulsed by both Leigh and Fallon’s performative groveling in order to desperately avoid being canceled by time-traveling P.C. police retroactively enforcing the woke doctrine of today on comedy bits of yesteryear.

Fallon’s apologizing is like a dog neutering itself, leaving it sans testicles and, although it still has teeth, consistently lacking the instinct to bite.  

Fallon has long been a comedy lap dog though, so it was no shock he put his tail between his legs and whimpered out a mea culpa for having made a mess on the comedy carpet twenty years ago.

Unlike the greats, who are fueled by the need to be respected, Fallon is desperate to be liked – a poison pill for any comedian. Fallon’s overwhelming need to be liked is what compelled him not only to apologize, but don blackface in the first place.

Another albatross around Fallon’s and other vulnerable comedian’s necks are the big corporate dollars upon which they have become addicted.

In recent years TV hosts Bill Maher and Samantha Bee have also genuflected in apology to the cancel culture clan in hopes of avoiding financial decapitation at the hands of their corporate overlords.

Fallon, Maher and Bee kept their cushy jobs, but apologizing never guarantees you avoid cancel culture’s axe.

For example, arguably the most successful comedian in the world right now, Kevin Hart, lost his gig hosting the 2018 Oscars even after he apologized for homophobic tweets he wrote back in 2009.

D-List hack Kathy Griffin apologized for the photo of her holding a bloody, decapitated Trump head in 2017, but she still lost her job hosting CNN’s New Years Eve celebration.

Loss of Integrity

For any comedian, apologizing is like committing seppuku, it may seem like an honorable thing to do, but it only ends with their integrity in a pool of blood with a knife sticking in the belly of their artistry.

The biggest reason not to apologize is that the apology strips the comedian of their edge, defiant power and artistic bravado, and only reinforces the conventions, norms, boundaries and limitations that comedians are supposed to be pushing back against.

The admission of error is a submission to the constrictions created by the perpetually indignant captains of cancel culture and will inevitably lead to self-censorship and a stifling of the comedian’s creative impulse.

All is not lost though, as the suffocating self-righteousness of cancel culture may snuff out the less hearty of comedic talent, it also makes for the perfect foil for those with the courage and skill to navigate the minefield.

For example, last year the P.C. police came for the scalp of Dave Chappelle after his controversial stand up special Sticks and Stones hit Netflix.

In the special, Chappelle insightfully eviscerates all sorts of woke dogma…and socially conscious critics loathed him for it, sticking the show with a 35% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences though, couldn’t get enough and rated the show a blistering 99%.

Comedy unafraid to offend

Chappelle’s success is proof that intelligent and unapologetically cutting comedy that isn’t afraid to push, probe and offend is something audiences appreciate even when the hypersensitive scolds don’t.

As evidenced by Chappelle’s and also Bill Burr’s recent success at hysterically breaching the woke barricades in their Netflix specials, the more rigid the boundaries and delicate the sensibilities of a society, the more target rich an environment it becomes for comedians with the talent and testicular fortitude to exploit it.

Unlike Chappelle, Burr and their great comedy forefathers, the apologetic comedian, like Fallon, is the comedian who gives audiences what they want instead of giving them all that they have, who gives rote answers instead of raising unruly questions, and who spoon-feeds audiences instead of challenging them.

The apologetic comedian is the worst thing any comedian can ever be…safe. And safe comedy is bad comedy.

As Ricky Gervais explained last year, “as a comedian you can’t please everyone. If you try you’ll end up pleasing no one and saying nothing.” Sounds like an apt description of the feckless Jimmy Fallon.

The bottom line is this, apologizing may make a comedian a good person, but it will definitely make them a very bad comedian.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020