Culture Representation: Taking place in New Jersey, the comedy/drama film “Bugonia” (based on the film “Save the Green Planet!”) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans, Asians and Latin people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: Two cousins, who are conspiracy theorists, kidnap a famous and powerful CEO of a medical company because they think she’s an outer-space alien who plans to destroy Earth.
Culture Audience: “Bugonia” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, and oddball movies that have serious messages cloaked in dark comedy.
Stavros Halkias in “Bugonia” (Photo by Atsushi Nishijima/Focus Features)
“Bugonia” is more than a dark comedy about conspiracy theorists kidnapping a high-powered CEO and hiding her in a house. It’s also a sly and subversive warning about an emergency that’s in plain sight but is often ignored. “Bugonia” can get a bit repetitive with the wacky conflict scenes between the kidnappers and the CEO, but viewers who are patient enough watch the entire movie won’t be fully prepared for the impactful way that this movie ends.
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and written by Will Tracy, “Bugonia” is based on the 2003 South Korean movie “Save the Green Planet!,” written and directed by Jang Joon-hwan. “Bugonia” had its world premiere at the 2025 Venice International Film Festival and its North American premiere at the 2025 Telluride Film Festival. The movie’s story takes place in New Jersey, but “Bugonia” was actually filmed in London, Greece and Atlanta.
The conspiracy theorists/kidnappers are domineering Teddy Gatz (played by Jesse Plemons) and passive Don (played by Aidan Delbis), two ne’er-do-wells who kidnap Michelle Fuller (played by Emma Stone), the CEO of Auxolith Medical, a company worth billions. Teddy works for Auxolith as a package processer who scans delivery packages. Teddy (who is the bossy leader of the duo) and Don (who is seems to have autism and learning disabilities) believe that Michelle is really an outer-space alien who is planning to destroy Earth.
Michelle is famous enough to be on the cover of magazines such as Time and Fortune. She has a brittle personality that she often masks by being professionally cordial when she has to be. Michelle is 45 years old, but she looks like she’s in her 30s. The reason why she looks much younger than 45 is explained in the movie. In the beginning of “Bugonia,” Michelle is seen filming a public-relations video in response to a recent Auxolith scandal, which is also revealed in the movie.
Most of “Bugonia” shows what happens when Teddy and Don keep Michelle captive in Teddy’s dilapidated house that is in an isolated rural area. It’s a battle of wits that also involves physical fights and torture. One of the first things that Teddy and Don do to Michelle is shave off all the hair on her head and cover her body in antihistamine cream.
Michelle isn’t the only one subjected to degrading and painful acts. Near the beginning of the movie, Teddy orders Don to ingest a toxin that will do a chemical castration of Don’s genitals because Teddy says that Don can no longer be allowed to procreate. Teddy has also ingested this castration chemical.
The disappearance of Michelle makes big news. A local police officer named Casey Boyd (played by Stavros Halkias) investigates the disappearance. Viewers will have to suspend disbelief that this type of cop is the only law-enforcement official in the movie who’s seen doing any real investigating for such a high-profile case. Casey has a connection to Teddy because Casey used to be Teddy’s babysitter when Teddy was a child.
Alicia Silverstone has a supporting role in “Bugonia” as Sandy Gatz, Teddy’s ailing mother, who is in a coma at a hospice. Sandy is seen in a few dream-like flashback scenes that show a brief glimpse of what Sandy was like before she was in a coma. The reason why she’s in a coma is mentioned in the movie.
“Bugonia” (which has compelling performances from Plemons and Stone) keeps viewers guessing about how much truth could be in the seemingly bizarre theories that Teddy and Don are convinced are real. The movie pokes fun at society’s tendency to be paranoid about “outside enemies,” when much of the harm and danger can come from within that society. “Bugonia” has a twisted and unconventional way of making the statement that it does at the end of the movie, but there’s no ambiguity about what that powerful message is saying.
Focus Features will release “Bugonia” in select U.S. cinemas on October 24, 2025, with an expansion to more U.S. cinemas on October 31, 2025. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on November 25, 2025.
Culture Representation: Taking place in New York City (and briefly in Paris), the dramatic film “Pretty Thing” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Latin people and black people) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A 33-year-old restaurant server begins a steamy affair with an upper-middle-class businesswoman in her 40s, but when she wants to end their fling, he refuses and begins to stalk her.
Culture Audience: “Pretty Thing” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and superficial movies about romantic entanglements that turn into dark obsessions.
Karl Glusman and Alicia Silverstone in “Pretty Thing” (Photo courtesy of Shout! Studios)
Even though the drama “Pretty Thing” has committed performances, the main characters are underdeveloped and the story seems unfinished. This shallow movie does nothing new in an over-used plot about an obsessed lover who refuses to accept a breakup. “Pretty Thing” is a mildly sexually explicit version of a Lifetime movie.
Directed by Justin Kelly and written by Jack Donnelly, “Pretty Thing” takes place primarily n New York City and briefly in Paris. (The movie was actually filmed in New Jersey.) “Pretty Thing” begins with showing how the two lovers at the center of the story meet. Elliot (played by Karl Glusman) is a shy 33-year-old server who works at a hotel restaurant/bar, where a business cocktail party is taking place. Sophie (played by Alicia Silverstone), who is in her late 40s, is a confident businesswoman who is at the party.
Elliot catches the eye of Sophie, who looks like she wants to devour Elliot as her next meal. Elliot notices Sophie ogling him, and he likes what he sees too. When Elliot is on a break and smoking a marijuana joint in the back alley of the restaurant, Sophie suddenly shows up. They share the joint. And she gets straight to the point when she says,”Hi. I’m in Room 706.”
Elliot nervously shows up at her hotel room with a bottle of champagne that he stole from the restaurant. They make small talk. Sophie asks Elliot what his age is and is surprised that he’s 33, because she thought he was younger. Elliot asks Sophie if she’s visiting and is surprised to find out that she lives in New York City but is just renting the hotel room to have a temporary break from her regular life.
The inevitable happens. It’s the beginning of a torrid sexual affair. The second time that they meet up, they have dinner first, and Sophie plays coy when Elliot asks her if she’s married or has kids. She finally admits that she’s not married and does not have any children. After some initial reluctance, Sophie also tells Elliot what she does as a job: She’s a partner in a pharmaceutical firm, where she’s a marketing executive.
Elliot, who lives in an apartment, isn’t exactly forthcoming about everything in his life either. He doesn’t tell Sophie that he lives with his overprotective and emotionally needy mother Peggy (played by Catherine Curtin), who has some health issues, including agoraphobia. Elliot spent the night with Sophie for their first sexual encounter, but he lies to Peggy by denying it when she asks him if she’s dating anyone.
The third time that Elliot and Sophie hang out together, she invites him to stay with her for the weekend in Paris, where she is on a short business trip. Elliot, who is unsophisticated and unaccustomed to traveling, is flown to Paris on a private plane. Sophie pays for everything, including a camera that she gives to Elliot as a gift when she finds out that college dropout Elliot has a passion for photography.
Elliot, who acts like a teenager in love, thinks this trip to Paris is an indication that Sophie sees him as more than a fling. He’s about to find out that he’s very wrong about that assumption. “Pretty Thing” ambles along with more sexual hookups between Elliot and Sophie. The cinematography is dreamy, but the movie (including any attempt at being erotic) is really just style over substance.
The turning point for Sophie is when Elliot takes her to see his friend Sam (played by Britne Oldford) perform in an off-Broadway play. After the play, Elliot introduces Sophie to Sam and Sam’s boyfriend Dan (played Kyle Bary), and they all have a conversation that is friendly but very uncomfortable for Sophie. It’s not just because of the generation gap between Sophie and the others but it’s also because Sophie sees how deeply Elliot has fallen for her. You can easily figure out the rest of how “Pretty Thing” is going to go after Sophie breaks up with Elliot, and he becomes obsessive about getting back together with her.
In addition to “Pretty Thing” having an abrupt and disappointing ending, one of the biggest problems with the movie is that is barely tells who Elliott and Sophie are outside of this toxic relationship. In a scene where Sophie has dinner with her nosy sister Amanda (played by Tammy Blanchard), it’s unsurprisingly revealed that Sophie is addicted to having flings with younger men. The scenes with Elliot and Peggy show that he is a mama’s boy who has mental health issues. This type of story has been done so many times before (and much better) in other movies. “Pretty Thing” might as well have been called “Pretty Boring.”
Shout! Studios released “Pretty Thing” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on July 4, 2025.
Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed U.S. city from December 31, 1999 to January 2, 2000, the sci-fi/horror/comedy film “Y2K” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans, Latin people and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A group of high school students and other people battle against machines and gadgets that have become homicidal on January 1, 2000.
Culture Audience: “Y2K” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, filmmaker Kyle Mooney, and silly horror comedies where teenage characters are the main focus.
Fred Durst, Lachlan Watson, Jaeden Martell, Daniel Zolghadri and Rachel Zegler in “Y2K” (Photo by Nicole Rivelli/A24)
The horror comedy “Y2K” is about people versus machines that go on a homicidal rampage during a Y2K electronic crisis. The real haywire mess is this entire dimwitted movie that cares more about resurrecting Limp Bizkit’s old hits than having a good story. Unfortunately, “Y2K” takes what could have been a potentially great concept for a horror movie and squanders it on a bunch of mindless scenes, most of which are neither funny nor scary.
Former “Saturday Night Live” cast member Kyle Mooney makes his directorial debut with “Y2K,” which he co-wrote with Evan Winter. “Y2K” had its world premiere at the 2024 SXSW Film and TV Festival. The movie takes place in an unnamed U.S. city but was actually filmed in New Jersey, in Ringwood, Chatham Borough, and Clark.
“Y2K” is based on the real-life scare that people around the world had in the late 1990s, when computers and other electronic-operated machines were predicted to malfunction on January 1, 2000, because the machines supposedly weren’t programmed for any year past 1999. That massive electronic meltdown didn’t happen in real life, but the plot of “Y2K” speculates what would have happened if machines didn’t just melt down but also went on a killing spree. The production notes for “Y2K” say that Mooney thought of the movie’s concept “in the haze of a New Year’s hangover.” And unfortunately, the ends results are “Y2K” looks like a movie that was written and directed in a brain-addled haze.
“Y2K” uses a lot of the same, tired clichés that are found in many horror movies where the main characters are teenagers. Cliché #1: A nerdy and introverted protagonist with a more outgoing best friend both want to be accepted by the “cool kids” in their school. In “Y2K,” these two outsiders are shy Eli (played by Jaeden Martell) and goofy Daniel “Danny” Bannon (played by Julian Dennison), who are both juniors (16 or 17 years old) at the same high school. Eli and Danny share a passion for pop, rock and electronica music, so expect to hear a lot of songs that were mainstream hits in the 1990s, such as Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping” and Fatboy Slim’s “Praise You.”
Cliché #2: The geeky protagonist has a secret crush on a pretty and popular student, who already has another love interest. In “Y2K,” the characters who are the couple in this love triangle are Laura (played by Rachel Zegler) and Soccer Chris (played by the Kid Laroi), who are supposed to be the “it couple” of the school. Chris (who is called “Soccer Chris” because he’s a star on the school’s soccer team) is predictably an arrogant jerk, while Laura is predictably nice to everyone. It’s all a movie contrivance for audiences to root against Chris and root for underdog Eli to get together with Laura.
Cliché #3: The protagonist and his sidekick are bullied by other students. In “Y2K,” the school bullies are a bunch of stoners who listen to hard rock/heavy metal. They include a loudmouth leader named Farkas (played by Eduardo Franco) and an androgynous follower named Ash (played by Lachlan Watson), who is an aspiring filmmaker and an avid fan of rock band Limp Bizkit. Ash constantly carries a portable video camera, which becomes a source of contention later in the movie.
And here comes another teen horror movie cliché: The teen house party that goes horribly wrong. “Y2K” begins on December 31, 1999, when Eli and Danny plan to crash an unsupervised house party held at Chris’ house. Eli, who is an only child, lives with his parents Robin (played by Alicia Silverstone) and Howard (played by Tim Heidecker), who are in the movie for less than 10 minutes. Eli gets embarrassed and uncomfortable when his parents reminisce about how Robin taught Howard how to French kiss during the couple’s college romance.
Even though Eli and Danny are best friends, Eli is still hurt by something cruel that Danny did to Eli: In a desperate attempt to get attention from the “cool kids,” Danny told a lie to other students that Eli drank Danny’s urine. Danny told Eli that he was sorry for fabricating this disgustng story, but Eli is still being bullied over this lie. It’s a sore spot in the otherwise solid friendship of Danny and Eli.
Before Eli and Danny go to the house party, they visit their older friend Garret (played by Mooney), who is a clerk at their favorite video store. Garret openly abuses drugs (he has a fondness for marijuana and psychedelics) and is a walking stereotype of a spaced-out weirdo. Garret is harmless, but “Y2K” viewers have to sit through many bad jokes that Garret tells in this movie. Danny smokes some marijuana with Garret in the video store’s storage/employee room, while Eli declines the offer to smoke and only seems interested in drinking alcohol.
At the house party, many of the teens are aware of the Y2K scare but are unconcerned about it. Danny tries to liven things up by playing a homemade CD of his favorite songs and dancng to the music. Danny’s fun-loving personality attracts the attention of a pretty girl named Madison (played by Ellie Ricker), and it doesn’t take long before Danny and Madison start kissing each other. Eli somewhat mopes around and tries not to notice how the relationship between Laura and Chris is still going strong. Chris has figured out that Eli has a crush on Laura and angrily tells Eli to not make any moves on Laura because “you’re a dud.”
As the clock strikes midnight for January 1, 2000, all hell breaks loose in the house. Machines and gadgets—such as a microwave oven, a toy jeep and a blender—suddenly turn deadly. This review won’t go into too many details about who gets killed and who survives. However, it’s enough to say that there’s a “chief villain” machine that can best be described as looking like the original “Lost in Space” robot, with a computer monitor for a head.
Some of the teens escape from Chris’ house, including Eli, Laura, Ash and an aspiring rapper named CJ (played Daniel Zolghadri), who says he’s in a hip-hop group called Prophets of Intelligence. And you know what that means: Expect to see a scene in “Y2K” of CJ and his horrible rapping.
The teens spend most of their time outside, trying to hide from the chief villain robot and other deadly machines that could be on the loose. The teens bicker over things such as whether or not Ash’s portable video camera will turn against them as a weapon. And then, they encounter Limp Bizkit lead singer Fred Durst (who plays a version of himself) hiding somewhere by himself, and “Y2K” continues its downward spiral into stupidity and plot holes.
During all of this chaos, the teens don’t think about seeing if they get help from authorities. They also don’t try to get in touch with their parents or other family members. Is it because there’s no electricity or phone communications during this apocalypse? No, because a pivotal scene in the movie shows someone being able to easily use the Internet on a desktop computer. Remember, this movie takes place during a time when accessing the Internet was done mostly by dial-up phone connections.
Because “Y2K” is partially a tribute to Limp Bizkit (Ash’s devotion to the band is a huge part of Ash’s character), it should come as no surprise that Durst performs Limp Bizkit songs from the late 1990s, such as “Break Stuff ” and Limp Bizkit’s cover version of George Michael’s “Faith.” These performance scenes will no doubt have “Y2K” viewers rolling their eyes at the cheesiness of how these scenes are staged. Everything looks forced and phony.
The cast members perform adequately, but the “Y2K” screenplay is so relentlessly sloppy and moronic, there’s almost no suspense or real amusing moments. “Y2K” also has some empty preaching about the dangers of becoming addicted to electronic devices/machines. If this “Y2K” movie were a computer, it would be a computer afflicted with a bug that causes it to repeatedly malfunction.
A24 released “Y2K” in U.S. cinemas on December 6, 2024. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on December 24, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in the Los Angeles area, this musical remake of the 1983 romantic comedy “Valley Girl” has a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans, Latinos and Asians) representing the middle-class.
Culture Clash: A sheltered San Fernando Valley “good girl,” who’s about to graduate from high school, has a romance with a “bad boy” musician from Hollywood, much to her friends’ disapproval.
Culture Audience: “Valley Girl” will appeal mostly to fans of the original “Valley Girl” movie or fans of 1980s pop music, but they will probably be disappointed in this musical remake, which is too slick for its own good.
Camila Morrone and Alicia Silverstone in “Valley Girl” (Photo courtesy of Orion Classics)
The 1983 romantic comedy “Valley Girl” (starring Nicolas Cage and Deborah Foreman) is the kind of movie that doesn’t need to be remade/re-imagined/rebooted for a modern audience, because it’s a movie about a particular youth subculture that’s meant to stay in the past and shouldn’t be resurrected. Although the 2020 musical remake of “Valley Girl” (directed by Rachel Lee Goldenberg) wisely chose to make the movie primarily as a flashback memory to the ’80s, almost everything about this musical smacks of an inauthentic, forced recreation of the effortless 1980s charm that made the original “Valley Girl” movie a cult classic.
In the beginning of the “Valley Girl” musical remake, a pouty, young woman named Ruby (played by Camila Morrone), who’s in her early 20s, stumbles out of a nightclub and asks her mother (whom she still lives with) to come pick her up from the club. Ruby is apparently too tipsy to drive and apparently doesn’t want to call a taxi or ride-sharing service. When they get home, Ruby tells her mother Julie (played by Alicia Silverstone) that she’s in a bad mood because she just broke up with her boyfriend.
The mother is supposed to be the Julie Richman character who was the teenage titular protagonist in the original “Valley Girl” movie. Julie is now a middle-aged fashion designer, who has fond and rosy memories of her teenage years in California’s San Fernando Valley, where she still lives.
As a San Fernando Valley teenager in the ’80s, Julie’s life was like a carefree bubble that revolved around school, going to shopping malls (like the famous Sherman Oaks Galleria), dating, hanging out at the beach, and going to parties with other teens, usually at someone’s house. (Frank Zappa’s 1982 song “Valley Girl,” featuring vocals by his then-teenage daughter Moon Unit Zappa, inspired the idea for the 1983 “Valley Girl” movie. The Zappas were not involved in the movie, and Frank Zappa lost a lawsuit that he filed to prevent the film from being made.)
When she was a senior in high school, Julie fell in love for the first time with a slightly older Hollywood rocker named Randy, who was played by Cage in the original “Valley Girl” movie. As for who Ruby’s father is, he’s mentioned but not seen in the “Valley Girl” remake, which reveals at the end of the film whether or not Randy and Julie ended up living happily ever after.
Julie is very sympathetic about her daughter’s boyfriend breakup, but Julie also starts to tell Ruby about the “good old days,” when her name was Julie Richman and she was a very sheltered teenager in the early-to-mid-80s. (Although the original “Valley Girl” was released in 1983, the ’80s music in the “Valley Girl” musical remake was released in or before 1984. Only true music trivia buffs would notice this change in the movie’s soundtrack.)
Julie’s daughter tries to pretend she doesn’t care about her mother’s nostalgic memories, by groaning to her about her boyfriend problems: “You wouldn’t understand!” And that’s when Julie launches into her “let me tell you about when I was young” story. The rest of the movie occasionally cuts back to the middle-aged Julie and her daughter for exposition purposes, but the majority of the film consists of the flashback memories of Julie, with the characters from the ’80s often singing their dialogues, since this is a musical.
Here we go. Get ready for the cheesiness. Although Jessica Rothe as the teenage Julie does a fairly good job as a singer, she is not convincing at all as a naïve, straight-laced high schooler, which is what Julie is supposed to be. Rothe looks like she’s graduated from high school years ago, instead of someone who’s supposed to still be in high school. Putting her in cutesy and frilly ’80s outfits doesn’t make her look like a teenager.
Deborah Foreman, who played the teenage Julie in the original “Valley Girl” had a mix of innocence and sexiness that made her irresistible to a lot of guys in her orbit. Rothe (who was in her early 30s when she made this “Valley Girl” remake) looks like she’s playing dress-up as a teenager. Because she looks way past the age of a student in high school, it looks ridiculous for her to play such a sheltered goody-two shoes teen. It’s not quite as bad of an age miscast as Olivia Newton-John in the movie “Grease,” but it’s pretty close. At least “Grease” was a great musical. This version of “Valley Girl” is most definitely not.
As for “bad boy” rocker Randy, the original “Valley Girl” had Cage playing him as a kind of a misfit weirdo who didn’t care about the social taboos of a sheltered high school girl from the San Fernando Valley dating a “freak” from Hollywood. In this musical version of “Valley Girl,” there’s nothing quirky, dangerous or even edgy about Randy, who’s played by Josh Whitehouse, in a very bland performance and with very limited singing talent.
In this remake, Randy looks more like he wants to be a heartthrob teen idol (like John Stamos was back in the early ’80s), instead of being a slightly scuzzy, down-on-his-luck rocker, which is what the Randy character is supposed to be. Even the tattoos that the Randy character has in this “Valley Girl” remake look fake, because they probably are. Randy in both “Valley Girl” movies is supposed to be slightly older than Julie, which is one of the reasons why their relationship is slightly taboo. While in the original movie, Cage looked the part, Whitehouse actually looks younger than Rothe, which he is in real life.
The nightclub scenes in this remake also don’t look real at all. You can tell it’s a movie set, compared to the original “Valley Girl” which filmed on location at a real nightclub. The nightclub where the original “Valley Girl” was filmed was called The Central back then, but it became more famous in the 1990s when it was renamed the Viper Room. In the original “Valley Girl,” there was a scene with The Plimsouls performing their song “A Million Miles Away” at the club. In the remake, the female rock duo Deap Vally performs the song.
In fact, almost everything about the “Valley Girl” remake (written by Amy Talkington) feels overly sanitized. It scrubs out all the adult content from the original movie (in other words, some of the funniest scenes) and turns this film into a too-cutesy musical. The only nudity in the remake is when some male students briefly moon someone at the high school. There’s no drug use in the remake, and sex is hinted at but not shown.
The costumes in the “Valley Girl” remake also look very much like costumes (and some of it is intentional, since many of the movie’s scenes take place at a costume party), while the movie’s hair, makeup and production design for the San Fernando Valley scenes are overly exaggerated in pastels and neon. Perhaps this “movie set” look to the film serves a purpose, since it’s supposed to represent the glossy memories of someone nostalgic about their teenage years in the ’80s. But people who’ve seen the original “Valley Girl” (which was directed by Martha Coolidge) will be turned off by this remake’s glibness.
Although the remake removed the gritty and realistic aspects of the original “Valley Girl,” the plot of the original “Valley Girl” is mostly the same in this musical remake, with some notable differences. In both “Valley Girl” movies, Julie (who’s a popular girl at her school) breaks up with a guy that most people expect someone like her to date: a preppy jock who’s also popular at school. But he also happens to be very self-centered, cocky and possessive, which is why Julie breaks up with him. He swears that she’ll regret it, and he arrogantly predicts that she’ll beg him to take her back.
In both movies, Julie meets Randy shortly after the breakup. And it’s the kind of scene where they look at each other in a way that’s obvious that they’re attracted to each other and will eventually get together. In the original “Valley Girl,” Randy and Julie meet at a house party, where he’s shown up uninvited. In the remake, Randy and Julie meet briefly on the beach, and then have their first major flirtation later at a house party.
In the original “Valley Girl,” Julie’s obnoxious ex-boyfriend was named Tommy (played by Michael Bowen). In the “Valley Girl” remake, the ex-boyfriend is named Mickey Bowen (get it?), and he’s played by YouTube star Logan Paul, who’s famous for also being obnoxious in real life, so there doesn’t have to be a lot of acting from him. It’s unknown if the character was named Mickey before or after the filmmakers decided to put Toni Basil’s hit “Mickey” as a big musical number in the film. Yes, it’s as cringeworthy as it sounds.
The choreography by Mandy Moore (of “La La Land” and “So You Think You Can Dance” fame) is actually one of the better aspects of the “Valley Girl” remake. It’s just too bad that the watered-down story and corny dialogue make this movie much more inferior to the original. The remake is essentially a “jukebox musical” with a lot of ’80s hits stuffed into the plot.
There are a few modern updates to the “Valley Girl” remake. The cast is a little more diverse than the first “Valley Girl” film. In the original, all the girls in Julie’s close circle of friends are thin and white. In the remake, Julie’s clique includes an African American named Loryn (played by Ashleigh Murray), whose dream is to be a dancer in music videos, especially for her idol Janet Jackson; plus-sized Stacey (played by Jessie Ennis), who’s unfortunately the butt of jokes and not treated very well by some of her so-called “friends”; and petty-minded Karen (played by Chloe Bennet), who ends up dating Mickey after Julie breaks up with him.
In the original “Valley Girl,” Julie’s friend Loryn (played Elizabeth “E.G.” Dailey) is the one who fools around with Julie’s ex-boyfriend at a party, and they keep their short fling a secret. In the remake, Mickey and Karen openly date each other after Julie has dumped him. His rebound relationship with Karen essentially ends Karen’s friendship with Julie.
But in both movies, all of the San Fernando Valley girls in Julie’s clique still have the same stuck-up attitude about Hollywood, which they think is a place for freaks and weirdos. This social snobbery is why Julie’s friends pressure her to break up with Randy and get back together with her ex-boyfriend. If you know the formula of romantic comedies, you can guess how Julie handles this conflict and how it gets resolved in the end.
Both movies also have teen parties that are chaperoned by adults. Fun fact: Original “Valley Girls” co-stars Foreman and Dailey have cameos in the “Valley Girl” remake. Foreman plays someone who compliments Julie in a store that sells prom dresses (how very meta), while Dailey plays a drunk parent at one of the teen parties. However, the remake doesn’t have the original “Valley Girl” subplot of a “Mrs. Robinson”-type character trying to seduce the teenage guy whom her daughter wants for herself.
Julie’s parents are very different in each movie. In the original “Valley Girl,” Julie’s former hippie parents are much more lenient (her father also smokes marijuana in the movie) than Julie’s parents in the “Valley Girl” remake. For example, in the original “Valley Girl,” Julie’s parents Steve and Sarah (played by Frederic Forrest and Colleen Camp), who run a health-food restaurant, were okay with her staying out all night and dating Randy. In the remake, Julie’s parents Steve and Diana (played by Rob Huebel and Judy Greer) are much more conservative (Steve is a corporate business type), much more protective of Julie, and they don’t approve of her dating Randy.
Another big difference is that in the original “Valley Girl,” Randy’s family is not seen or mentioned at all. But the “Valley Girl” remake goes more into the backstory of Randy’s family, when he reveals that his father abandoned him, and his mother kicked Randy out of their home. And the original “Valley Girl” never showed the bachelor pad where Randy lived (which made him kind of mysterious), whereas the remake shows that Randy (who’s a wannabe rock star) lives in a dumpy apartment in Hollywood with his two band mates: a lesbian bass player named Jack (played by Mae Whitman) and a kooky drummer named Sticky (played by Mario Revolori). Jack is Randy’s best friend/sidekick, which was the role of Fred Bailey (played by Cameron Dye) in the original “Valley Girl” movie.
The “Valley Girl” remake also gives Julie career ambitions, which she did not have in the original movie. In the musical remake, Julie is an aspiring fashion designer who dreams of going to the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, but she’s pressured to conform and go to California State University at Northridge, a school that many of her peers from high school also plan to attend.
The other girls in Julie’s Valley Girl clique only have ambitions to go to college so that they can find a husband. As Loryn says to her friends while they’re sunning themselves at the beach, “If I’m not married by the time I’m 23, I’ll kill myself!” If that sounds like an outdated mindset, even for 1980s California, consider that a lot of teenage girls and young women still think this way in very conservative communities.
The “Valley Girl” remake’s hokey dialogue and mediocre acting might be forgivable, but the movie does something that’s pretty unforgivable for fans of the original “Valley Girl” movie. It changed the plot so that Modern English’s “I Melt With You” (the signature song from the original “Valley Girl” soundtrack) is supposed to be written by Randy for Julie. In other words, that means Randy and his band play “I Melt With You” in a serenading scene that’s as dumb as you think it is. Pure garbage.
Since the “Valley Girl” remake ruined “I Melt With You,” here’s a list of ’80s songs that the movie’s cast members remade for the musical scenes, in a less offensive but still fairly cheesy way: Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”; Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation”; a-ha’s “Take on Me”; The Cars’ “You Might Think”; A Flock of Seagulls’ “Space Age Love Song”; The Cure’s “Boys Don’t Cry”; Queen and David Bowie’s “Under Pressure”; and a medley of Depeche Mode’s “Just Can’t Get Enough,” Madonna’s “Material Girl,” Hall & Oates’ “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do),” and Soft Cell’s cover version of “Tainted Love.”
There are also some songs in the movie that are the original artists’ studio recordings, such The Cars’ “Magic,” Duran Duran’s “Rio,” Men at Work’s “Be Good Johnny,” Run-DMC’s “It’s Like That” and Men Without Hats’ “Safety Dance.” It’s obvious that the filmmakers spent a great deal of the movie’s budget on licensing these hit songs, because there doesn’t appear to have been much of the budget invested in creating a quality film.
Orion Classics released “Valley Girl” in select U.S. drive-in theaters, on digital and on VOD on May 8, 2020.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Los Angeles, the dark comedy “Bad Therapy” has a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans and Asian Americans) representing the middle-class and upper-class.
Culture Clash: A middle-aged married couple go to a relationship therapist, who’s actually a manipulative, toxic person who tries to break up the couple.
Culture Audience: “Bad Therapy” will appeal mostly to people who like to see movies about troubled marriages or unhinged characters, but the film’s uneven tone and sloppy, predictable screenplay make this movie a disappointing waste of time.
Michaela Watkins in “Bad Therapy” (Photo courtesy of Gravitas Ventures)
“Bad Therapy” (directed by William Teitler) is supposed to be a dark comedy or a comedy/drama or a dramedy, but the movie’s three lead actors have such contradictory styles in their performances that it makes the entire tone of this poorly written film look completely out of whack. Nancy Doyne adapted the “Bad Therapy” screenplay from her novel “Judy Small,” which was the original title of the movie. However, the “Judy Small” book isn’t even listed on Amazon, so it might be difficult for viewers to find out how the movie differs from the book.
Judy Small (played by Michaela Watkins) is the name of the family/relationship therapist who wreaks havoc on the lives of a Los Angeles married couple—real-estate agent Susan Howard (played by Alicia Silverstone) and TV executive Bob Howard (played by Rob Corddry)—who are both in their early 40s and have been married for three years. Living with the couple is Susan’s rebellious 13-year-old daughter Louise (played Anna Pniowsky), who does things like smoke marijuana and defy her school’s dress code. Louise is Susan’s daughter from Susan’s first marriage, which tragically ended when her first husband (who was her college sweetheart) died in a fishing accident. Bob has apparently adopted Louise, since her last name is also Howard.
At the beginning of the story, Susan is feeling restless and discontented in her career and in her marriage. Being a single mother for five years has left her constantly worried about financial security, while Bob is the exact opposite and doesn’t think they need to worry about money. (It’s revealed later in the film that Bob is head of programming at a network called the Nature Channel, where he makes $125,000 a year.)
Bob suggests that they have a biological child together, but Susan doesn’t really like the idea because it would be difficult for her to conceive a child at her age, and she’s feeling uncertain about where the marriage is going. “I want a break from all the drudgery!” she wails at one point in the movie.
There are also indications that Susan is a worrisome control freak. She nags at Bob (who’s not overweight) about what he eats, by warning him that he could have a heart attack. During breakfast, after Susan leaves for work, he throws his bran oatmeal in the garbage disposal and orders a cholesterol-heavy meal over the phone from a local restaurant. Later in the story, it’s revealed that Susan has forbidden Louise from taking public transportation, presumably because she doesn’t think public transportation is safe enough for her 13-year-old daughter.
It’s clear that one of the reasons why their marriage has hit a rough patch is precisely because Bob and Susan are total opposites in their outlooks on life. Susan is someone who’s the type of person who’s very judgmental and likes to have specific goals and plans (and she tends to get anxious if things don’t go her way), while Bob is more of a “go with the flow” easygoing type of person. In the beginning of the movie, before they begin therapy, Susan also expresses regret that she and Bob didn’t properly discuss the issue of them having a child together. And now, Bob wants Susan to have a child with him, but she doesn’t share that same wish.
One day, Susan has lunch with her close friend Roxy (played by Aisha Tyler), who’s a materialistic and shallow trophy wife to a wealthy business mogul. Roxy tells Susan the happy news that she’s pregnant with triplets after going through fertility treatments. Roxy also mentions that she and her husband have been seeing a relationship therapist. Susan asks Roxy for the name of the therapist, because Susan says that she and Bob might need marriage counseling.
When Susan brings up the idea of marriage counseling to Bob, he is extremely reluctant, but Susan eventually persuades him. “If it will make you happy, we’ll try it,” says Bob. It won’t be long before Susan and Bob regret that decision.
Judy Small works in a small office in a strip mall—the first indication that her practice is not very successful. She starts off the couple’s first session by getting Susan and Bob to talk about themselves and why they think they need counseling. Susan does most of the talking during this first session, while Bob admits to Judy that he really doesn’t want to be there.
Susan tells Judy what her first marriage was like (it was very happy, she says), but her marriage to Bob is on shaky ground: “I want our marriage to be the real thing,” Susan says of her relationship with Bob. “For some reason, I don’t feel satisfied.” On the other hand, Bob doesn’t think their marriage is in trouble.
Susan actually does too much talking during that first session, because she reveals something that is news to Bob: She’s worried that Bob might start having inappropriate thoughts about Louise, now that Louise has hit puberty age. Susan bases this suspicion on how she thinks Bob has been looking at Louise recently. Bob vehemently denies that he thinks about Louise sexually, and he tells Susan how hurtful it was for her to think he could do something so heinous. Judy suggests that Louise join them in their next therapy session so that she can observe their family dynamics.
However, enough was said in this first session for Judy to see the cracks in the Howards’ marriage and to use those vulnerabilities to her advantage. One of the first clues that Judy might intend to cause trouble is how she openly flirts with Bob in front of Susan, by saying how extremely attractive he is and that he must get a lot of female attention. Of course, Susan misses this big red flag because she tends to be self-absorbed and is the type of person who loves to hear herself complain about her life.
Judy sees even more ways to manipulate the couple when Louise reluctantly joins them for the next session, and Judy sees that Louise resents Susan for being overprotective. And then, Judy’s devious machinations really start to kick into high gear when she suggests (and Susan readily agrees) that she counsel Susan and Bob alone in separate sessions. During these separate sessions, Judy uses information that they tell her to drive a wedge of distrust between Bob and Susan, especially when it comes to a past cheating fling that Bob had while he was dating Susan. (He lets this information slip during a solo session with Judy.)
As the therapy sessions continue, it becomes pretty clear that Judy wants to seduce Bob. And she encourages Susan to have an affair with another man, but Susan completely hates the idea and doesn’t want to do it. Because Bob and Susan have separate sessions with Judy, she’s able to manipulate them into thinking that they’re falling out of love with each other.
“Bad Therapy” has some dialogue and lines that are downright cringeworthy. At one point in the movie, Judy says to Bob: “Trust is like a muscle. Once it’s torn, it’s difficult to repair.”
It should come as no surprise that Judy has a dark past, which is revealed in the movie. There are also people from her past—including someone named Dr. Ed Kingsley (played by David Paymer)—who can threaten to expose Judy and her secrets. What could have been the most suspenseful part of the film is actually handled in a very clunky and unrealistic way.
In addition to the screenplay’s flaws (some of Bob and Susan’s actions make no sense after they see more of Judy’s true colors), the movie’s three main actors deliver performances as if they’re in three different movies.
Silverstone portrays Susan as an over-emoting neurotic who’s in a wacky comedy. (In “Bad Therapy,” she gives Jim Carrey a run for his money with rubber-faced expressions.) It’s by far the most annoying, worst performance in the movie, which is a shame because Silverstone is capable of doing better acting. (Her small but tragically impactful role in the horror film “The Lodge” is a recent example of how she can show good acting talent.)
Corddry is playing Bob as if he’s in straightforward drama, which this movie is most definitely not. Because Bob has cheated on Susan before (prior to their marriage), the movie drops major hints that he’s capable of cheating on Susan again, especially since she’s become a bit of shrew in their marriage. Unfortunately, Corddry (who was such a comedic scene-stealer in “Hot Tub Time Machine”) has almost no sense of humor at all in portraying Bob. It’s too bad that Corddry plays Bob in such a bland, forgettable way because Bob is a character who reacts to things, so the character had great potential for comedic possibilities, but it ended up being a missed opportunity.
As for Watkins, she comes closest to the movie’s intended dark comedy. But the way she portrays the unhinged Judy is as a hollow, not-very-smart villain. Even with some of the terrible dialogue in the movie, there was a way for Watkins to elevate the character’s “femme fatale” appeal, but she didn’t. Instead, Judy just comes across as creepy and weird, when charm and intelligence would be needed for this type of corrupt therapist to fool people.
One of the odd things about “Bad Therapy” is that it spends too much time veering off into subplots that are not necessary to the story. There are several scenes that show what teenage Louise does at school and in her free time that didn’t need to be in the film, except for one scene that takes place on a bus. While on the bus, Louise (defying her mother’s orders not to take public transportation) and her best friend Zooey (played by Paris Bravo) happen to see Judy walking down the street. It’s a scene where Judy shows her demented side.
And there’s another unnecessary subplot involving Bob’s co-worker Reed (played by Haley Joel Osment), who confesses to Bob that he’s had an office fling with someone in the accounting department named Annabelle (played by Sarah Shahi), who left her husband because of the affair. And now, Annabelle wants to run off with Reed and move to Mexico. Reed, who wants to break up with Annabelle, has a live-in girlfriend who’s eager to get married. Reed has no intentions of breaking up with his live-in girlfriend and moving to Mexico.
Reed tells Bob that he’s afraid that if he ends the relationship with Annabelle in the wrong way, she might accuse him of sexual harassment later to get revenge on him. Bob has no business getting involved, but he does anyway, by volunteering to talk to Annabelle about it. And where does he have this private and sensitive discussion with Annabelle that’s supposed to prevent a possibly messy #MeToo situation? In a bar, where Annabelle promptly puts the moves on Bob.
It’s not really a spoiler to reveal this subplot about Bob’s colleagues Reed and Annabelle, because it really has no bearing on what happens in the rest of the movie, which has one too many filler scenes. And the scenes that are necessary are just substandard and often dull, with awkward performances from the three lead actors. How bad is “Bad Therapy”? It makes Lifetime movies (which are often about troubled romances and crazy/evil women) look like masterpieces.
Gravitas Ventures released “Bad Therapy” on digital and VOD on April 17, 2020.
