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Mike Schulz, Dave Levora, and Darren Pitra continue a prior discussion of their mutual fondness for Marcia Strassman, of Welcome Back, Kotter and MASH fame,
- The Fall Guy, directed by David Leitch and starring Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Hannah Waddingham, Teresa Palmer, Stephanie Hsu, and Winston Duke. An adaptation/update of the Lee Majors TV series of the Eighties, the film leans into its stunt-heavy/CGI-minimum action, but that’s about as much as the film has to offer. If you go looking for a story, you will hurt your brain.
- Tarot, directed by Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg (in their directorial début) and starring Harriet Slater, Adain Bradley, Avantika Vandanapu, Wolfgang Novogratz, Humberly González, Larsen Thompson, and Jacob Batalon. “Tarot-ble” is Schulz’s decree. Moving on. . .
- The Idea of You, directed by Michael Showalter (friend of the show!) and starring Anne Hathaway, Nicholas Galitzine, and Ella Rubin, the film flips the usual script of the May-December romances, where Hathaway is the older, more experienced partner and Galitzine the younger, hormone-addled participant, and points out the numerous ways and prevailing attitudes to which such a romance would fall prey to prevailing attitudes. We should never forget the ineffable qualities that Hathaway brings with her to her films, particularly as she’s still around and only getting better in her profession.
- Unfrosted, directed by Jerry Seinfeld and starring Seinfeld, Melissa McCarthy, Jim Gaffigan, Max Greenfield, Hugh Grant, and Amy Schumer. Christophe Beck, the film is streaming on Netflix — which sounds like a good thing, given Schulz’s disdain for it: “It’s been years since I’ve seen something that completely moronic.” Would you have wanted to pay to see that? Okay, it’s on Netflix, so you’re already paying for it — but you have the option to bail on a given film whenever it starts to wear out its welcome. Movie theaters don’t allow you that luxury! Now, this was a judgement hard come by for Schulz, who sounds like he really wanted to appreciate a new work by Seinfeld. The fact that Unfrosted is a satire of a burgeoning genre of film, which we might call “The Origin of That Thing,” seems to offer promise, as Seinfeld’s timing is spot-on. So does his cast, which is front-loaded with comic talent (Schumer excepted). Unfortunately, Unfrosted treats its talent with all the wit and grace of the Battle of Verdun. As director, Seinfeld sets his actors up just so he can mow them down with a Maxim gun full of bad material. One has to believe that he did this to them on purpose, because who would otherwise be so foolish as to lead actors, flush in their prime of their lives, into such an abattoir unwittingly? Given Seinfeld’s recent remarks about the deleterious effect the political Left has had on modern comedy — an argument that was tired and shagged-out when people were calling woke-ist sentiment “political correctness” — such crimes against humanity seem well within his abilities. One might speculate further that Seinfeld realized what a piece of crap he was offering people, and he thought perhaps he might distract them beforehand with his idiotic old-man remarks about how comedy used to make people laugh back in his day, and allow Unfrosted to squeak on through his résumé like a dull fart. One might speculate thusly — if only Unfrosted were an event that just happened. You know, like Tunguska. But no: Human agency was definitely what felled the tall timber within this film. Unlike Michael Richards’s Laugh Factory spazz-out, Seinfeld cannot plead temporary insanity with any plausibility.
As for coming attractions, there is but one:
- Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, directed by Wes Fall and starring Freya Allan, Kevin Durand, Peter Macon, and William H Macy. Not a reboot, thank Christ.