Comedy – Page 8 – Movie Meister Reviews

October 8, 2023 leebutler Comedy, Horror, Review

Totally Killer (2023) – Tubular

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 6th October
Seen: 7th October

One of the most fun additions to the horror genre recently has been when someone takes a classic supernatural comedy film and throws a serial killer in the middle of it. Groundhog Day with a serial killer? You get Happy Death Day. Freaky Friday with a serial killer? You get Freaky. It’s insanely simple to pull this off, half the work was done in the 80s so changing it from a zany comedy to a camp slasher is a fun new addition that we need a lot more of. There’s also some upcoming stuff like Caddy Hack, a horror version of the classic comedy Caddyshack and something called Time Cut which sounds like it’s going to be a spin on Back to the Future but with a serial killer… but apparently, that film has been waiting too long because it got beaten to the punch by Totally Killer and the bar is now set pretty damn high.

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October 6, 2023 leebutler Comedy, Fantasy, Horror, Review

Renfield (2023) – Bitingly Funny

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 6th April
Seen: 6th October

Ever since Bram Stoker printed his legendary novel Dracula, people have been doing wild and crazy things with the character. He’s one of the true greats of horror literature, the first Universal movie monster and a blueprint for pretty much every vampire that’s been used in modern media. He’s been the star of films, TV series, video games and even a musical. The uses for the character are endless and constant, hell a single chapter of the book ended up being made into The Last Voyage of the Demeter which is one of the best horror films of the year so it’s fair to say that there’s a lot of great ways to utilize this character and his world… and now, finally someone looked at the books and said “Wait, what about an entire film about Dracula’s butt monkey, Renfield?” and thus we get the absolutely glorious, sadly underseen, Renfield.

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September 23, 2023 leebutler Comedy, Drama, Family, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Review

Haunted Mansion (2023) – Rich

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 31st August
Seen: 21st September

The Haunted Mansion is probably one of the most famous theme park attractions of all time. It’s so well known that even people who have never actually visited the park it’s built in at least know a few of its iconic visuals, like the ballroom full of ghosts or the elongating rooms. It’s such an iconic ride that it was inevitable that it’d inspire a movie and in 2003 it ended up doing so with The Haunted Mansion, a film that was certainly financially successful but was critically panned and not looked back on fondly by most (though it does have a cult following). The property would remain untouched in cinematic form for years until 2021 when the Muppets took a crack at it and, while their version only lasted a little under an hour, it was still well received by a lot of people and maybe gave Disney confidence they needed to really believe in another cinematic version of Haunted Mansion… and it’s a good thing they did because the new version is surprisingly good.

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September 17, 2023 leebutler Action, Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Review, Sci-Fi

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023) – COWABUNGA!

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 7th September
Seen: 13th September

By now the story of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and their creation is well known. From its start as an underground comic designed to parody superheroes to the legendary cartoon series that gave us the theme song that you are inevitably humming right now to the first movie that not only was a defining action film for a lot of childhoods but allowed New Line Cinema to go from a little independent company to one that was big enough that it could eventually make the Lord of the Rings movies. It’s an absolute phenomenon of a franchise that’s had several iterations over the years with various visual styles and tones that range from the dark and serious to the light and comedic. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem leans more towards light and comedic but also might be the best take on the franchise since the 1990 film.

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September 12, 2023 leebutler Action, Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Netflix, Review

The Monkey King (2023) – Royalty

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 2nd February
Seen: 9th September

Journey to the West is a 16th-century Chinese story that follows the adventures of four major characters, Tripitaka, Pigsy, Sandy and The Monkey King. This story is regarded as one of the greatest Chinese novels of all time, has been translated into an abridged English language version, is the subject of multiple adaptations in every medium you could think of and is a truly important piece of work that I haven’t read or even heard about before doing background research for this review of the Netflix animated film The Monkey King, which adapts that characters specific story from the original text. It’s important to tell you that I have not read the original text because I cannot tell you if this is a faithful adaptation of it (though based on the Wikipedia description, it seems to get the core beats of the story correctly) but I can tell you if it’s a good kids movie… which it is.

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September 1, 2023 leebutler Action, Adventure, Comedy, Review

Vacation Friends 2 (2023) – Vacation Acquaintances

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 25th August
Seen: 31st August

In 2021 there was a half-decent little comedy called Vacation Friends, it was fun enough but also pretty average. Mostly it was a showcase for a quartet of comedic actors who managed to make for a pretty enjoyable time. Indeed that main quartet of actors is so objectively great that I may have said that I wanted a dozen more films with that exact set of actors because they had such great chemistry… and then a finger of the monkey’s paw curled slowly and my wish was granted. Stupid me forgetting to add “but not another film in this specific franchise” when I was wording that wish.

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August 31, 2023 leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review, Romance

Love Again (2023) – Think Twice

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 11th May
Seen: 30th August

Celine Dion is arguably one of the world’s best singers, even if you don’t enjoy her music it’s hard to deny the raw power of her voice. She was one of the biggest artists in the 90s for a reason and has managed to maintain a huge fanbase for almost 40 years because when she’s in her element there are few who could compare. What’s kind of surprising is that despite her voice accompanying some of the biggest films of all time, she’s done very little on-camera work in the film world. Before now it’s been a couple of cameos in TV shows and singing backup for Miss Piggy in Muppets Most Wanted, that’s kind of been it until Love Again came along and said “What if we took our cute little romcom and made it have several scenes dedicated to exclaiming how great Celine Dion is?”

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August 29, 2023 leebutler Comedy, Review, Romance

Red, White & Royal Blue (2023) – Charming

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 11th August
Seen: 28th August

Not too long ago, I started making a spreadsheet. Not the most exciting thing in the world to begin a review with I’ll admit but I promise this is relevant because the spreadsheet takes every single film that has been reviewed on this blog and keeps track of how many LGBT characters are in it. Over the course of the last 6-7 years of writing reviews I have seen about 966 films, most of them fairly mainstream. Now obviously each year there has been some fluctuation but in total since the start of this blog, 36 of those films have featured a lesbian woman, 86 have featured a gay man, 23 had a bisexual in them and a whopping 24 had a trans person in them at some point.

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August 28, 2023 leebutler Comedy, Drama, Horror, Review

Beau Is Afraid (2023) – Creepy and Kooky

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 20th April
Seen: 27th August

Ari Aster is one of the most fascinating filmmakers in the horror genre today, one of the people who rode the wave of the recent trend of “Elevate horror” with his fascinating films Hereditary and Midsommar. His films are known for being strange, dark, twisted nightmares with leading performances that get horrifically snubbed whenever award season comes around (The fact that Toni Collette didn’t get an Oscar for Hereditary is a crime that will be dealt with by the Hague when the time comes). With two hit films under his belt and being somewhat of a darling at A24, it stands to reason that Ari has built up more than enough clout to get away with a film that would normally never get made because it was too weird, even for A24. Ari seems to have used that clout to get Beau Is Afraid made and no matter what you might think about it, the fact it got made at all is something special.

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August 27, 2023 leebutler Action, Comedy, Review, Thriller

Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023) – Ruse of Ritchie

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 12th January
Seen: 26th August

A few years ago, Guy Ritchie released a film called Wrath of Man which I may have called the most average Guy Ritchie film ever made, a film that just takes all the tropes one thinks of when they think of a Guy Ritchie film and does them as casually as possible. It felt especially average since it was the first film that the director made after The Gentlemen, which is still one of the most enjoyable films in his filmography. Well turns out there might be some competition for the title of “Most average Guy Ritchie film” with Operation Fortune: Ruse De Guerre… though it absolutely wins the award for stupidest film title, so there’s that.

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