Comedy – Page 20 – Movie Meister Reviews

August 8, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Uncategorized

Peter Rabbit 2 (2021) – Fine Furry Family Fun

Released: 25th March
Seen: 7th August

In 2018 the film Peter Rabbit came out to a fairly mixed response. Personally I thought it was fine, James Corden hadn’t quite become full cinematic poison just yet (though he had just done The Emoji Movie, so he was getting there) and the film itself had enough silliness and charm to be fine for the little kids. It was cute but I was fine with it sticking to just a single film, a feeling I grew more sure of the more my general disdain for the lead actor grew (the man did Cats, Superintelligence AND The Prom within a year, a trilogy of performances that should end careers). Now having finally seen the sequel… It’s a bit of an improvement on the original, but I can also be done with this series at any point now.

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August 3, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Buddy Games (2021) – No Fun!

Released: 7th January
Seen: 2nd August

Gross out comedy is one of the more difficult kinds of comedy to pull off. Done right it can be absolutely hysterical, films like the influential Pink Flamingos or the 90s monster hit American Pie prove how good this subgenre can be. However, if done wrong (and oh god is it often done wrong) then you just get a disgusting film with nothing really redeeming about it beyond maybe a few performances here or there.

…So, Buddy Games is a disgusting film with nothing really redeeming about it beyond maybe a few performances here or there.

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July 25, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Jolt (2021) – Shockingly Silly

Released: 23rd July
Seen: 24th July

The idea of an objective review is, to put it bluntly, misunderstanding the way media criticism works. It’s impossible to just objectively state if a film is good or bad because what works for some people might not work for others. I’ve been doing this now for a few years and have seen films that I would consider as close to objectively bad as possible have some incredible defenders. I once had someone tell me that you couldn’t criticise Cats if you hadn’t seen and enjoyed the original stageplay and even then, if your critique was negative, it didn’t count… FOR CATS! Cats, a film that I don’t wanna say is responsible for the coronavirus but the fact that it was the last big thing to come out before that virus hit is certainly not helping it.

All of this is to say that I’m aware that Jolt is not a technically good movie but god damn it, I enjoyed myself with it and will now try to justify that for a few paragraphs.

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July 21, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Love, Weddings and Other Disasters (2021) – Uggh

Released: 28th January
Seen: 19th July

So, currently, my home state is going through a lockdown thanks to covid, which means that I’m basically relegated to only reviewing movies I can see from home… and because I’m Australian that means anything that WB releases is not available for streaming down here, so that’s why you’re not seeing a Space Jam 2 review and might not even see a Suicide Squad review (unless I somehow find a way to make HBOMax work from down here which feels like too much effort for those films). This means I’m going to have to review Netflix movies or films that are cheap on Google Plus and that’s what led me to Love, Weddings and Other Disasters which is a film so painfully bad that it makes me regret almost everything in my life up to this exact second.

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July 20, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Long Story Short (2021) – Too Late

Released: 11th February
Seen: 18th July

I really do wish that I got to review a lot more Australian films here, it feels like I should because there should be a lot more of them available but unfortunately (due to a complex series of issues surrounding tax laws and funding bodies) there just aren’t that many made. Hell, the closest I’m gonna get to really doing Aussie films is whenever I talk about films that use us as a backlot. An actual Australian film with a fully Australian cast and crew feels rare these days (I believe the last one I did was The Dry way back at the start of the year) so when I find something like Long Story Short I feel excited to get to share a piece of Aussie culture that might have slipped through the cracks… and then I watch it and realise that it probably fell through the cracks because it’s threadbare and can fit through those cracks very easily.

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July 19, 2021 leebutler Review

Barb And Star Go to Vista Del Mar (2021) – A Great Trip

Released: 12th February
Seen: 15th July

A good comedy is hard to find nowadays, it almost feels like every joke’s been told and you have to really do something pretty different to stand out among the crowd. Heck, sometimes doing something remarkably different might mean you just get released unceremoniously to VOD where people can just not notice you, despite you being a film that stars several of the biggest film stars in recent history which would’ve probably been wonderful to see in a cinema… oh well, at least Barb And Star Go to Vista Del Mar is so unique that it’s probably going to work for audiences whenever they discover it, no matter how long that takes.

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July 17, 2021 leebutler Review

Vicious Fun (2021) – Campy Out

So because it’s about time I got back on the saddle, I went off and wrote a review of the campy slasher flick Vicious Fun over on Soda and Telepaths. You know the drill, head on over there and read it so that I can look as good as possible

July 16, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Good on Paper (2021) – Blank Page: The Movie

Released: 23rd June
Seen: 13th July

When a stand-up comic takes their act and turns it into a movie you can have a few different results. If you want a really good example of a comic’s act made into a pretty good movie, Trainwreck took Amy Shumer’s set and created a fairly fun film with enough jokes to make it through. You could also just film a particularly important set and release it, like Kathy Griffin did with her most recent comedy special that revolved around her recent controversy… third option is to take one specific joke from a set, make it into a film and forget to put jokes in there completely. Sure, that idea might sound good on paper but in practice you get… well, the film Good On Paper.

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July 9, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Tom & Jerry (2021) – Slap-Stuck

Released: 1st April
Seen: 8th July

Ever since Who Framed Roger Rabbit, there have been a lot of attempts at putting animated characters into the real world. No film has ever really come close to Who Framed Roger Rabbit in terms of making that combination work, but where a lot of them falter has been the story. You notice how a lot of these films really lean on the main characters travelling cross country in a car with whatever B-list actor they could hire that month. Recently there’ve been more bad attempts at this with Sonic the Hedgehog being bad (sorry, it was) and some pretty good attempts like Detective Pikachu. So, on the spectrum between Sonic and Pikachu, where does Tom & Jerry fall? Right smack in the middle, perfect mediocrity.

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July 7, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

America: The Motion Picture (2021) – America, F**k Meh?

Released: 4th July
Seen: 5th July

You know, I probably should’ve watched this one on the 4th of July. Would’ve been more appropriate to watch a film supposedly celebrating America to watch on the 4th of July, even if I did release the review days later. Well, little behind the scenes trivia for you, I did try to watch it on the 4th of July but at the halfway mark I fell asleep so I figured I should probably watch it again when I was more awake.

Well, I have now done that and it turns out the problem wasn’t that I was too tired, but that America: The Motion Picture is just kind of boring.

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