Review: No Hard Feelings

Every now and again, Hollywood decides to dust off a time-honoured genre and take it out for a spin, just to see if there's any interest out there in anything that isn't horror movies or superhero sagas. Here's a tip: always see these movies. 

Why? Because they're put together by people actively trying to make a good movie and not just serving up another product from the assembly line. Even if the subject doesn't seem to be up your alley, you'll find a care and attention to detail that's often lacking in something that might seem like more of a sure thing. 

Not to mention they're usually working from a large database of examples that worked: if you're going to make a teen sex romp in 2023, it's not like you're short of classic examples to borrow from. Plus you hardly have to worry that someone else is making a rival that'll come out two weeks before yours and steal your raunchy thunder.

(note to self: write script titled Raunchy Thunder)

In case you'd hadn't picked up on it, No Hard Feelings is one of these films, a test sample released into the wild to see if there's any life left in the teen sex comedy - a genre that dominated the low-budget end of the box office for three decades in living memory but today largely seems like an embarrassing accident everyone would like to pretend never happened. Heard anyone mention Porky's in polite company lately?

The twist here is that while the set-up is pure classic sex comedy - a wimpy guy's rich parents hire a mature hottie to, uh, "guide him into manhood" and give him some vital experience-slash-self-confidence before he heads off to college  - the focal character is not the wimp or his sleazy mates (he doesn't even have any sleazy mates), but the hottie, Maddie (Jennifer Lawrence).

Working in a resort town in Upstate New York, Maddie is financially struggling under the weight of property taxes she can't pay off without working over summer as an Uber driver, and she can't work as a driver because her car's just been impounded because of the unpaid taxes. The solution? Seems some rich locals are running an ad on Craigslist offering a free (old) car to any woman who will "date" their son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman), and away we go.

Pretty much all the obvious questions in 2023 are handled with impressive efficiency: no, lonely boy isn't gay (his parents have seen his porn), and he's not some undatable incel either - just socially stunted due to school problems and helicopter parents and being named Percy. 

Maddie herself is refreshingly upfront about the deal: she needs a car, women have sex for all manner of unromantic reasons (the list includes not wanting to be murdered by your date), so as long as the kid isn't a monster, it's a deal.

You'd think that'd pretty much be the end of the movie right there. What heterosexual eighteen year old is going to throw up roadblocks with Jennifer Lawrence hitting on him? But it turns out that she's really, really bad at hitting on guys outside of drunken bar hook-ups (we've already learned she's not big on commitment either), while he is refreshingly sensible and wary about the bizarre situation he finds himself in. Looks like they're going to have to get to know each other first.

Even at their sleaziest, many of the best teen sex comedies had a heart; it was more about finding a connection and love than just getting it on. Here it rapidly becomes clear that Percy is already 95% of the way towards being a decent guy (he even has girls his age interested in him) and what Maddie has to offer isn't really going to get him over the line. 

Maddie, on the other hand, is secretly (and not-so-secretly at times) a bit of a wreck, and Lawrence is perfect at making Maddie seem messed up enough to get herself into this situation without tipping over into being a comedy trainwreck. She's not incompetent, she just has issues (and a blunt sense of humor that doesn't really mesh well with the phone-obsessed puriteens that are Percy's peers).

The core of why No Hard Feelings works so well is that both leads are believable, likable, often funny characters you want to see succeed. Even when the jokes don't work there's still reason to keep watching; when the jokes do - and they do most of the time - it's a winner. 

The slightly shabby realism of the setting helps ground things further; even the big comedy moments still feel plausible in a way that reinforces the characters' struggles. They might go flying off car bonnets or run naked out of the ocean to punch drunk teens stealing their clothes, but there's no easy answers for the problems they face. 

Even when the problem is "I want to have sex and this attractive older woman is throwing herself at me for some unknown reason".

- Anthony Morris

Review: Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

Every new Transformers movie starts with a question. Will this finally be the film where a robot transforms with a human inside and crushes them to death? Of course not. But Transformers: Rise of the Beasts poses an all-new question: why would transforming robots on another planet take on the form of animals from Earth? Especially when they're giant sized robots that could in no way be confused for the thing they're trying to imitate?

Our story begins with the long-awaited arrival of planet-eating-planet Unicron (Colman Domingo in a role originated by Orson Wells) who sends his underling Scourge (Peter Dinklage) onto an alien world to get the Transwarp Key, a device that will enable Unicron to travel anywhere in the universe. Scourge and his sidekicks wreak havoc, only to find the Key's animal-style transformer guardians the Maximals have escaped with it (so Unicron eats the planet). Smash cut to Earth, that unknown backwater that transforming robots just can't stay away from. 

The year is 1994, the place is New York, and while museum intern Elena Wallace (Dominique Fishback) studies an ancient statue that in no way resembles the Transwarp Key, Noah Diaz (Anthony Ramos) struggles to find a job despite his skill with electronics - especially when it comes to getting free cable TV.

When Elena breaks open the statue to reveal the Key (well, half of it) it sends out a pulse that alerts boss truck Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen, back again), who summons a collection of autobots that includes Bumblebee and fellow car Mirage (Pete Davidson). Mirage is in the middle of being stolen by Diaz, but as Mirage is the kind of transformer that likes humans - unlike Optimus Prime, who is pretty much a space racist for much of this film - he brings him along on their mission to grab the key before Scourge and his evil crew turn up.

Obviously the Maximals, notably their gorilla leader Optimus Primal (Ron Perlman) and the falcon-like Airazor (Michelle Yeoh), are going to turn up, but not until a bunch of fight scenes and setbacks sees everyone head to Peru for more fights and setbacks. It's a mcguffin-driven movie that's all about ancient relics and lost tombs; they even make an Indiana Jones joke.

With Michael Bay now out of the transforming business, the series - both this and 2018's Bumblebee were prequels to Bay's run of films - has lowered its sights a little, preferring to build up the human characters and keep the fight scenes to a semi-plausible scale and length.

The result is undoubtedly more satisfying on a basic storytelling level: these are solid films, in contrast to Bay's garbled brain-vomit. Unfortunately, they also lack the impact and sheer insanity that Bay brought to the story of giant alien transforming robots that turn into cars and trucks then trash the planet.

On the up side, now the humans are playing actual plausible human beings, while the robots come across as real characters distinct from each other. The stakes are no less enormous and over-the-top, but now the characters' struggles in the shadow of armageddon have at least some dramatic weight: when somebody dies, it means more than just one less mass of pixels gyrating around on screen.

Director Steven Caple Jr (Creed II) serves up a perfectly respectable and often exciting tale of giant transforming robots and the humans who love them, but there are times when Bay's demented approach to what is always going to be the violent adventures of giant toys feels sorely missed. Who can forget the time Shia LeBeof and Megan Fox made out on the bonnet of a transformer while another transformer watched? And now the transformers are sending heartwarming messages to sick kids. 

Hollywood needs to transform back into a pit of depravity before they start thinking a wholesome Barbie movie is a good idea oh wait.

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: The Flash

Super-speed has always been one of the more obvious super-powers. Who wouldn't like to be able to get things done in one one-thousandth of the time? And yet The Flash goes for 150 minutes; guess even when you can travel so fast you go back in time, there's always one more thing to do.

The Flash as a character has been around in various forms since the 40s (DC has had three separate main Flashes, plus an entire family of spin-offs and sidekicks), so they've had plenty of time to come up with new twists on his super-speed. Time and dimensional travel is one; being able to vibrate his molecules so he can move between solid objects is another. Throw in some lightning bolts and you'd have a pretty effective fighting machine if Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) wasn't so much of a dork.

Treated as a joke by his co-workers at CSI Central City and used as something of a last resort by the Justice League - with Alfred (Jeremy Irons) handling the disaster relief scheduling - Allen's mostly a goof who's funny largely by accident. But he's deadly serious when it comes to trying to free his father (Ron Livingstone), currently in prison for murdering his wife / Allen's mother (Maribel Verdu) in a crime that seems to have been a case of the police arresting the first person they saw and saying "yeah, he'll do".

When Allen accidentally discovers the ability to run so fast he can travel back in time (via a visually interesting temporal amphitheater where past events circle around him like 3D frames of film - the closer in time they are, the nearer they get to him) he's tormented enough by the possibilities to have a brief chat with Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck), who advises him that the past has made him who he is today. Unfortunately, the past has made Allen into someone who wants to mess with the past, and so back to save his mother he goes.

It's no surprise that time travel only makes things more complicated, and not just because now there are two Allens - "our" version and a teenage one who never lost his parents and might not gain his powers unless Allen gets him in the right place at the right time. Then General Zod (Michael Shannon) shows up just like he did in that Superman movie, only there doesn't seem to be a Superman handy and when the Allens go ask for Batman's help it turns out this Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton) isn't the one our Allen was expecting.

Like all multiverse movies, the whole point is that there's a lot to take in. Having two Barry Allens works well for Miller, as he gets to play up the comedy side with the younger version while the older one is slightly more tortured (and annoyed at his younger self). The traditional superhero angst here is largely kept simmering in the background but it's well used when it comes to the fore, making for one of the more solidly satisfying DCU movies to date.

The always-reliable Keaton is basically the third lead once he shows up. His version of Bruce Wayne gets enough of a character arc (and a very cool batcave) to make his appearance feel worthwhile and not just a nostalgia cash-grab trap for Tim Burton fans. Sadly Zod and Supergirl (Sasha Calle) are basically glorified cameos. Everyone else? Pretty much action figures.

The story moves fast (sorry) and the action scenes are thrilling, but the big surprise here is how funny it often is. Some scenes - most notably a big early rescue based on a "baby shower" pun - go for a more over-the-top and cartoony take than we've seen in the DC movies (aside from new boss James Gunn's The Suicide Squad, so the DCU's new direction possibly starts here). The DC films have often distinguished themselves from the Marvel pack by actually putting in some thought as to cool things you could do with superpowers, and there are a number of decent gags (and a few dramatic moments) based on Allen's connection to the Speed Force.

The recent Spider-verse film might have stolen some of the multiversal thunder, but The Flash is more about the ideas and possibilities of an interactive multiverse. Here it's Barry Allen's actions and choices that create the parallel worlds as a reflection of his drive to change his own circumstances - they're not just a setting that enables him to meet a bunch of different versions of himself.

He meets a bunch of different versions of the more popular character Batman instead. 

- Anthony Morris

Review: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Considering how far animation technology has come in the last few decades, it's a shame we haven't seen bigger leaps in how animated films actually look. Especially as one of the many reasons why 2018's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was such a hit was because it wasn't afraid to mix things up a little (or a lot) visually. The directors may have changed but the goal remains the same: the animation style of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is often so busy you might need a second to figure out where best to let your gaze rest in some of the more frenetic scenes.

"Busy" is probably a good way to describe the latest animated Spider-adventure in general. Opening with a focus shift to the super-powered parallel world version of Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), drummer and somewhat depressed teen after the death of her version of Peter Parker (and her cop father's determination to hunt down the masked menace he thinks killed him), we're swiftly introduced to a pan-dimensional Spider-Society charged with tracking down menaces to the cosmos.

Meanwhile "our" Spider-Man, the now fifteen year-old Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) is doing... not bad. Which is off-brand for a Spider-Man, as their character arcs usually revolve around tragic loss and isolation. Actually, there is a bit of isolation going on, as while school is ok and crime-fighting is working out well - even if current "villain of the week" portal-potholed bad guy The Spot (Jason Schwatzman) is a little trickier than he looks - Miles wouldn't mind someone he could really talk to. Someone like Gwen, last seen months ago returning to her home dimension he has no way to access.

If you remember the ending of the previous film you know where this is going (turns out that movie's finish was set a third of the way into this one), but the idea of jumping across dimensions making wise-cracks while fighting bad guys isn't quite as fun as it seems. 

For one, Gwen (and everyone else) seems strangely reluctant to get Miles involved. And when he doesn't take no for an answer - meeting up with Spiders Jessica Drew (Issa Ray), the extremely cool Spider-Punk (Daniel Kaluuya), and the angsty, humourless boss Spider behind the dimensional defence team, Miguel O'Hara (Oscar Issac) - things quickly take a turn for the extremely serious. Even if old friend and mentor Peter B Parker (Jake Johnson) also shows up. And he's got a baby!

It's the extremes that make Spider-Man work as a character. He's good with a quip; he's also constantly being put through the emotional wringer. This film happily spins both sides of the coin, being packed with jokes and easter eggs while also going really hard on both Gwen and Miles' teen angst. One of animations big advantages is that you don't have to be constrained by human limitations; here even the script has taken that to heart.

As for the animation itself, it looks great, pinballing from relatively sedate and serious to near impressionistic (the backgrounds sometimes degrade to near-abstract in big emotional moments), with characters from various dimensions often having striking different visual styles. Throw in the wide range of looks of the dimensions themselves and an approach to action sequences best described as "chaotic" (without ever becoming confusing) and this isn't so much a feast for the eyes as the kind of banquet you stagger away from feeling like you won't need to eat again for a week.

Miles and Gwen's struggles are firmly grounded even as everything around them seems to be in violent flux for the full 140 minute run time (and this is only the first half of the story: the rest is due in a year or so). Which is probably the point: as a metaphor for general teenagedness - and unlike most movie Spider-men who inhabit the usual "they're in high school but they're clearly in their early 20s" zone of movie "teens", Miles is firmly 15 and still under his parents (loving) thumb - having a broken heart be your anchor in a world constantly exploding around you is a lot better than most.

Which handily is also where Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse falls on the superhero movie scale.

- Anthony Morris