Bella Thorne Archives – CULTURE MIX

Review: ‘Measure of Revenge,’ starring Melissa Leo and Bella Thorne

April 9, 2022

by Carla Hay

Bella Thorne and Melissa Leo in “Measure of Revenge” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment)

Directed by Peyfa

Culture Representation: Taking place in New York City, the dramatic film “Measure of Revenge” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans and Latinos) representing the working-class, middle-class and criminal underground.

Culture Clash: A fairly well-known Broadway actress is out for deadly revenge against the people who supplied a dangerous drug to her musician son and his pregnant girlfriend, who both died from an overdose of this drug.

Culture Audience: “Measure of Revenge” will appeal primarily to fans of mindless vigilante movies, because nothing about this movie is appealing, interesting or well-done.

Jake Weary and Melissa Leo in “Measure of Revenge” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment)

The crime drama “Measure of Revenge” is such an atrocious dud, no one wants to be listed as the movie’s screenwriter. And it’s easy to see why. It’s a heinous story about a Broadway actress who becomes a murderous vigilante on a rampage because she wants revenge for the drug overdose deaths of her musician son and his pregnant girlfriend. Directed by Peyfa (the alias of Peter Wong), “Measure of Revenge” is nothing but a complete embarrassment to everyone involved in making this pathetic excuse of a movie. “Measure of Revenge” was filmed on location in New York City, which is probably the only thing that looks authentic in this very awkwardly acted and fake-looking film.

What makes “Measure of Revenge” so cringeworthy is that the movie tries to look artsy by throwing in various themes and characters from William Shakespeare plays. “Measure of Revenge” sullies, trashes and insults Shakespeare’s legacy in ways that are even more offensive than the phony-looking murders that take place in the movie. Believe it or not, the unhinged vigilante in “Measure of Revenge” commits one of her murders during an intermission for a play where she’s performing on stage as the Ghost in “Hamlet,” without bothering to change her clothes or disguise herself during the murder. She then goes back to her dressing room, as if no one would notice that she committed the murder while decked out in the same costume and makeup as she wore on stage in front of an audience.

Get used to a lot of this type of silly nonsense in “Measure of Revenge,” which is a movie that’s hard to watch not just because it’s so moronic, but also because it takes itself so seriously. Maybe the filmmakers thought that having an Oscar-winning actress in the cast (Melissa Leo) would automatically improve the movie’s quality. Wrong. Leo gives a lackluster performance as vigilante actress Lillian Cooper, who doesn’t garner much sympathy for her vengeful actions because they’re so ludicrously stupid.

During the course of the story, Lillian appears in various revisionist productions of Shakespeare plays that wouldn’t be worthy of a Broadway stage in real life and certainly wouldn’t pass muster in any reputable performing arts school. In other words, expect to see amateurish, almost laughable versions of “Macbeth” and “Hamlet” in “Measure of Revenge.” The movie’s horrible ending takes this Shakespeare theme to an idiotic and corny level that proves that there was no hope in redeeming this creatively bankrupt flop.

In the beginning of “Measure of Revenge,” Lillian (who’s a widow) happily welcomes her wayward son Curtis Cooper (played by Jake Weary) into her apartment, where he will be staying with her after getting out of rehab for addictions to drugs and alcohol. Curtis is a semi-famous musician/lead singer of a rock band called Red Drums. Curtis’ addictions have caused the band to cancel an upcoming tour.

Curtis’ rehab counselor Mike (played by Michael Gruenglas), who drops Curtis off at Lillian’s home, gives her this advice about Curtis: “Don’t let him out of your sight. The first few days [out of rehab] can be very delicate.” Curtis’ father/Lillian’s husband Raphael Cooper died in 1997, at the age of 36, long before Curtis grew up to become a famous musician.

Lillian’s home (which looks like a two-bedroom apartment) is about to get more crowded, because Curtis’ loving and supportive girlfriend Olivia (played by Jasmine Carmichael), who’s a nurse, is moving into Lillian’s place too. And soon afterward, Lillian finds out that Olivia is pregnant and that Curtis plans to propose marriage to Olivia. Curtis shows Lillian the engagement ring. Lillian approves of these marriage plans.

However, Curtis’ life after rehab isn’t going that smoothly. One day, Lillian is in a diner to meet Curtis for lunch. She looks out the window and sees Curtis in an angry confrontation with some of his band mates. She can’t hear what the argument is about, but she sees Curtis hit one of the men with the guitar that Curtis is carrying. When Curtis goes in the diner, all he will say to Lillian about his band situation is this: “I can’t go back to that world right now. It’s not for me.”

Not long after that, Lillian’s world is shattered when she comes home to find Curtis and Olivia dead. The medical examiner reports list the official cause of their deaths as an accidental overdose of a drug called PMA, which is described as being like Ecstasy (MDMA), but more toxic. Of course, Lillian doesn’t believe the overdoses were accidental. She’s certain that Curtis and Olivia were murdered, or at least that whoever supplied the drugs should be held responsible for these deaths. The police—including a dismissive cop named Detective Eaton (played by Michael Potts)—are of no help, so Lillian decides to take matters into her own hands.

Along the way, Lillian encounters a jaded photographer named Taz (played by Bella Thorne, giving a very stiff performance), who sells drugs, including PMA. Taz knew Curtis because she did album covers and portrait photography for him and his band. Lillian goes back and forth on whether or not she can trust Taz, who has a gun and gets menacing when Lillian tries to threaten her with a knife.

Taz knows a lot more than she’s telling, but she still gives Lillian enough information to point Lillian in the direction of the people who are Taz’s PMA suppliers. Lillian also has conflicts with Red Drums manager Billy (played by Ivan Martin); band member Ronin (played by Benedict Samuel); record company executive Claude (played by Kevin Corrigan); and a drug lord named The Gardener (played by Jamie Jackson), who has that nickname because he slit a man’s throat using gardening tools. Predictably, not everyone Lillian comes in contact with makes it out alive.

“Measure of Revenge” also has a love quadrangle as a weak subplot. Lillian finds out that before Curtis and Olivia became an official couple, Olivia was romantically involved with Ronin, but Olivia cheated on Ronin with Curtis. Meanwhile, Taz had her own secret affair going on with Curtis when he was dating Olivia. It’s all just another sordid aspect to this cheap and tacky movie.

During her murder spree, Lillian finds time to still do her Shakespeare plays, including her role as the Ghost in “Hamlet.” (And fittingly, early on in the movie, Lillian plays one of the three witches in “Macbeth.”) She also become increasingly disturbed and starts having hallucinations, such as thinking that she’s Gertrude from “Hamlet.” Not surprisingly, Lillian gets no enjoyment or satisfaction from her sloppy and dimwitted crimes. The same can be said for anyone who experiences “Measure of Revenge,” a sloppy and dimwitted crime against cinema.

Vertical Entertainment released “Measure of Revenge” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on March 18, 2022.

Review: ‘Masquerade’ (2021), starring Bella Thorne, Alyvia Alyn Lund, Skyler Samuels, Mircea Monroe and Austin Nichols

October 17, 2021

by Carla Hay

Skyler Samuels and Alyvia Alyn Lind in “Masquerade” (Photo courtesy of Shout! Studios)

“Masquerade” (2021)

Directed by Shane Dax Taylor

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed U.S. city, the horror film “Masquerade” features a nearly all-white cast of characters (with a few Latinos) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: While her parents are away from home, an 11-year-old girl is menaced by masked intruders.

Culture Audience: “Masquerade” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching badly made horror movies that have stupid and gimmicky plot twists.

Austin Nichols, Bella Thorne and Mircea Monroe in “Masquerade” (Photo courtesy of Shout! Studios)

“Masquerade” is a trashy film with a gimmicky twist ending that tries to put a different spin on “home invasion” horror movie stereotypes. However, the movie’s conclusion misses the mark because it’s a half-baked and sloppily executed idea. Until viewers get to the ending (assuming that viewers make it that far in watching this terrible movie), “Masquerade” is a tedious slog about home invaders who inflict terror on an 11-year-old girl who’s trapped in the house. Meanwhile, there’s a simultaneous storyline of a married couple being driven home by a party catering employee who has sinister intentions for them.

Written and directed by Shane Dax Taylor, “Masquerade” begins with an upscale fundraising party at a restaurant in an unnamed U.S. city. (“Masquerade” was actually filmed in the Kentucky cities of Louisville, Prospect and Goshen.) The party guests are encouraged to wear masquerade-type masks. The party hosts are happily married couple Daniel (played Austin Nichols) and Olivia (played by Mircea Monroe), who are in their late 30s or early 40s.

A server in her early 20s named Rose (played by Bella Thorne) has been closely observing Daniel and Olivia at the party. At one point, Olivia and Rose happen to be in the restroom at the same time. While they stand near the restroom mirror, Rose compliments Olivia by saying that Olivia has a “dream life. You actually remind me of my mom. She passed away several years ago.” Rose then says she’s sorry for making such a depressing comment at what’s supposed to be a festive occasion, but Olivia is gracious and tells Rose that it’s okay.

Meanwhile, two intruders are lurking in a wooded area as they prepare for a home invasion. These intruders, who are dressed entirely in black, aren’t wearing ordinary masks. They’re wearing helmets with meshed face coverings that are similar to what beekeepers would wear. The home invaders are also wearing devices that disguise their voices.

The intruders are a man (whose identity is later revealed) and a woman (played by Skyler Samuels), who are targeting a well-to-do family’s home that’s near the woods. Inside the home are an 11-year-old girl named Casey (played by Alyvia Alyn Lind) and her babysitter Sophia (played by Joana Metrass), who are watching a horror movie before Casey goes to bed. The burglars are there to steal some valuable art. Most of the movie is about what happens when the intruders break into the home.

Meanwhile, it’s shown early on that Rose is up to no good. During the party, Rose sneaks into a back room of the restaurant to make a secretive phone call, where she tells the person on the other line to disable a house’s security system by cutting the power line. When the party ends, Rose offers Daniel and Olivia a car ride back to the couple’s home because Rose says she needs the money. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Rose is setting up this couple for some type of crime.

When “Masquerade” isn’t showing what happens with Casey trapped inside the house, it shows what’s going on with Rose and her attempts to delay bringing Daniel and Olivia back to their home, in order give her accomplices more time. Rose gets text messages from her cronies asking her to keep stalling Daniel and Olivia. The movie makes it obvious early on that Rose is involved in planning a home burglary. But, without giving away any spoiler information, it’s enough to say that all is not what it first appears to be in “Masquerade.”

Some ridiculous things happen, such as the idiotic burglars deciding to take too much time inside the house to mess around with the art that they’re supposed to be stealing. Instead of finding the art, stealing it, and getting out of the house as soon as possible, they increase their chances of getting caught by overstaying in the house. And of course, things get complicated when the burglars find out that Casey is a witness. The fact that these burglars didn’t make sure ahead of time that no one was in the house before they broke in is all you need to know about how stupid these criminals are.

All of the characters in this movie are very hollow and written with generic and often-insipid dialogue. Lind makes some effort to bring some suspense as the terrified Casey. But so much of “Masquerade” is just bland horror cliché after bland horror cliché. The most intriguing character is supposed to be Rose, but Thorne isn’t a good-enough actress to convincingly portray a mysterious person. Instead of depicting someone who’s enigmatic, she comes across as lethargic.

Most viewers are really going to hate the ending of this movie. When secrets are revealed, it will feel like 95% of the movie was a just a poorly conceived manipulation. Casey isn’t the only person who will feel trapped in this “Masquerade” fiasco. This entire movie holds viewers hostage with its dull and substandard filmmaking. It’s a horror film that ultimately fails at the most basic thing that a horror movie is supposed to do: Be scary.

Shout! Studios released “Masquerade” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on July 30, 2021.

Review: ‘Time Is Up’ (2021), starring Bella Thorne and Benjamin Mascolo

October 3, 2021

by Carla Hay

Benjamin Mascolo and Bella Thorne in “Time Is Up” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment)

“Time Is Up” (2021)

Directed by Elisa Amoruso

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed U.S. city and in Italy, the romantic drama “Time Is Up” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: At an unnamed high school, a “good girl” who’s an aspiring physicist falls for a “bad boy” who’s a rising star on the school’s swim team, even though she already has a boyfriend who’s on the same swim team.

Culture Audience: “Time Is Up” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching cliché-ridden, badly acted dramas about teenagers.

Sebastiano Pigazzi and Bella Thorne in “Time Is Up” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment)

“Time Is Up” is an example of what happens when filmmakers think that all you need for a romantic drama are some pretty actors and a scenic trip to Italy. It’s too bad they forgot about actually making a good movie. This substandard film is like being in a car wreck of teen drama clichés. And that’s not just because the movie actually does have a car wreck, which causes the female protagonist to experience amnesia soon after she has fallen in love with someone new.

“Time Is Up” is also one of those movies that has a trailer that gives away 85% of the plot, including the amnesia part of the story that doesn’t happen until the last third of the movie. There’s only one plot twist in the movie that isn’t in the trailer: It involves a secret same-sex affair of two people whose reputations would be ruined if the secret got out.

“Time Is Up” director Elisa Amoruso co-wrote the movie’s atrocious screenplay with Lorenzo Ura and Patrizia Fiorellini. The movie attempts to go for the tone of an epic romance, but in reality, “Time Is Up” is a cheesy teen soap opera. One of the movie’s biggest flaws is in its casting: The main actors who portray high schoolers look too old to be in high school.

We’ve seen this formula too many times before: A “good girl” in high school falls for a brooding “bad boy.” If he goes to the same school, he’s usually a new student who’s a mysterious and troubled loner. There’s usually some obstacle that prevents them from getting together right away. (The obstacle is usually a love triangle.) And so, the would-be couple will spend a lot of screen time pouting and eyeing each other lustfully before one of them makes the first move.

“Time Is Up” is a parade of pouting by cast members who know how to look sullen and bored more than they know how to act. Vivien (played by Bella Thorne) is in her last year in high school in an unnamed U.S. city. She’s an aspiring physicist (with a preference for quantum physics), who spouts this laughable, pseudo-physics mumbo jumbo in a voiceover narration in the beginning of the film:

“In the void, pairs of particles are continuously created. Their only destiny is to meet and disappear into each other. When two particles that have interacted with each other are separated, they are no longer distinct particles. The same thing happens when two people fall in love. Even when life pulls them apart, they’ll always carry a trace of the other person inside.”

As soon as you hear this silly schmaltz, you know you’re going to have to brace yourself for more as this movie plods to its very predictable end. Vivien attends an unnamed private high school, where most of the students come from privileged families. Her boyfriend Steve (played by Sebastiano Pigazzi) is a star of the school’s male swim team. Vivien has a sassy best friend (played by Bonnie Baddoo), who seems to be just a token character because the filmmakers never bothered to give her character a name.

Also on the school’s swim team is a new student named Roy (played by Benjamin Mascolo), a heavily tattooed rebel who lives in a trailer park. Roy has a swimming scholarship to attend the school. He has the talent to be the best swimmer on the team. Roy was born in Italy and moved to the U.S. with his family when he was in middle school, so he still has an Italian accent.

But when Vivien and her best friend attend a swim practice, it looks like Roy could be putting his scholarship in jeopardy. Roy has been slacking off during practice, so he gets yelled at by the team’s coach Dylan (played by Nikolay Moss). Dylan warns Roy that if Roy doesn’t improve, Roy won’t be chosen for the swim team’s competitions, and he could lose his scholarship.

Roy shouts back at Dylan: “What are you? My dad? I already have one! I fucking hate him!” Meanwhile, Steve smirks nearby when he sees this conflict between Roy and Dylan, because Steve wants to be considered the team’s best swimmer. Steve feels somewhat threatened that Roy (who’s a better swimmer) could outshine Steve on the team.

One day, Steve, Vivien and Vivien’s best friend are riding in Steve’s car when Roy becomes the topic of the conversation. Vivien’s best friend thinks that Roy is very attractive, and she mentions that she wouldn’t mind having a one-night stand with Roy. She asks Steve for more information about Roy. Steve says that Roy mostly keeps to himself.

Vivien and Steve seem to have a solid relationship on the outside. But lately, Steve has been very preoccupied and doesn’t have time for Vivien in the way he used to have time for her. He’s also not as affectionate with her as he used to be.

Vivien’s best friend notices that the romance between Vivien and Steve has cooled down. Even though Vivien insists that she’s happy with Steve, her best friend comments, “You’re not happy. You’re serene, which is totally different.”

The romantic spark has also apparently dwindled in the marriage of Vivien’s parents. Early on in the film, Vivien (who is an only child) finds out that her mother Sarah (played by Emma Lo Bianco) has been having an affair with another man. Vivien’s businessman father (played by Giampiero Judica), who doesn’t have a name in the movie, is away from home a lot because of his work.

As for Roy’s family, he lives with his widowed father (who’s a mechanic) and pre-teen sister in a dumpy and cluttered trailer. Roy’s father is American, and Roy’s late mother was Italian, which is why Roy and his parents lived in Italy for the first 11 or 12 years of his childhood.

Roy later tells Vivien that one of the reasons why he has hard feelings toward his father is because Roy didn’t want to leave Italy, but it was his father’s decision to move to the United States after Roy’s mother passed away. Roy eventually reveals to Vivien how Roy’s mother died. (Antonella Britti portrays Roy’s mother in this brief flashback.)

At a costume party at a student’s house, Vivien and Roy see each other across the room and they start dancing together. And because this movie is filled with teen movie clichés, a fight inevitably breaks out at the party. You don’t have to be a psychic to know who ends up in the brawl.

Vivien and Roy have another encounter when she’s in the parking lot of a restaurant at night. It’s the same restaurant where Vivien saw her mother on a date and kissing another man. In the parking lot, some young thugs start to harass Vivien. But lo and behold, Roy shows up and comes to Vivien’s rescue.

It turns out that Roy knows these troublemakers because he’s been involved with some criminal activities with them. Later in the movie, Roy is shown committing burglary by breaking into a house with one of his hoodlum pals. They don’t get caught, and the burglary is never mentioned in the movie again.

Vivien’s problems at home and her problems with Steve have upset her to the point where she starts doing her own version of rebelling. There’s a scene where she shows up in a classroom where the teacher is handing out a test to the students. Vivien doesn’t even sit down before she decides she’s going to walk out of the class without taking the test. She doesn’t just walk out. She has to do a dramatic, pouty saunter, as if she’s on some kind of fashion runway.

And what do you know: The swim team is traveling out of the country to go to a swimming competition. And guess where they’ve gone? Italy. Vivien wants to bring the passion back to her romance with Steve. And so, she decides to go to Italy to surprise Steve at the hotel where the swim team is staying.

For reasons that won’t be revealed in this review, Steve isn’t available for most of the trip. But guess who’s available to show Vivien around this part of Italy? You get the gist of what happens in the movie’s trailer. There are no real surprises in how Roy ends up courting Vivien, even though he tells her in a not-very-convincing way that he doesn’t want to fall in love.

Vivien and Roy get together, of course, and they even have (cliché alert) a couple’s signature song: Frankie Valli’s 1967 hit single “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You.” Expect to hear this tune played multiple times in the movie.

“Time Is Up” is plagued by a lot of uneven acting. Thorne can sometimes rise to the occasion in the melodramatic scenes. But too often, she recites her lines in a wooden and emotionless way. Mascolo is even worse, since his acting is very stiff and unnatural in too many parts of the movie. He’s an example of an actor who was hired more for his physical appearance than anything else. The fact that Thorne and Mascolo became a couple in real life doesn’t help their lackluster acting skills in this movie.

The rest of the cast members are adequate in their performances, which are overshadowed by the cringeworthy dialogue throughout much of the movie. The cinematography often tries to make “Time Is Up” look glossy and glamorous, but mostly the movie comes off looking like a badly edited and cheap-looking romance novel. And worst of all for a romance movie, the main characters have personalities that are as plastic as Ken and Barbie dolls. At least Ken and Barbie aren’t as forgettable as this lazy and unimaginative film.

Vertical Entertainment released “Time Is Up” for one night only (via Fathom Events) in U.S. cinemas on September 9, 2021. The movie was released on digital and VOD on September 24, 2021.

Review: ‘Chick Fight,’ starring Malin Akerman, Bella Thorne and Alec Baldwin

December 9, 2020

by Carla Hay

“Chick Fight”

Directed by Paul Leyden

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed U.S. city, the comedy film “Chick Fight” has a predominantly white cast (with a few African Americans and Latinos) representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: A woman who’s going through a financial crisis reluctantly gets involved in an underground all-female fight club.

Culture Audience: “Chick Fight” will appeal primarily to people who like dumb, crude and predictable movies.

Malin Akerman, Kevin Connolly and Dulcé Sloan in “Chick Fight” (Photo courtesy of Quiver Distribution)

When a movie has a title like “Chick Fight,” you know going in that it’s already got some level of stupidity. Even with expectations lowered, “Chick Fight” still manages to be a time waster by being relentlessly vulgar in its pathetic attempts at comedy and completely unimaginative in its weak attempts at serious drama. It’s very possible for entertainment to have foul-mouthed comedy that actually works well if there’s some insight or wit to the comedy. That doesn’t apply to “Chick Fight,” which is just a tacky, dull mess.

Directed by Paul Leyden, “Chick Fight” has an entire plot built around a warped idea that women who beat each other up for fun are doing something admirable and that this type of demented bullying is supposed to be therapeutic for them. It’s all just an excuse to show women getting bloodied and injured while trying to pretend that this type of violence is not misogynistic at all. After all, the filmmakers seem to be saying, if men can have underground fight clubs, why can’t women?

The problem is that a movie like “Chick Fight” (written by Joseph Downey) still perpetuates unrealistic, sexist stereotypes that portray women who fight as not to be taken as seriously as male fighters. Movies about men who have underground fights usually depict the realistic, long-term physical and psychological harm that these fights can bring. In a moronic movie like “Chick Fight,” viewers are supposed to believe that these female fighters can just wipe off their bloodstains, put on their makeup, and go about their regular lives when the vicious fight is over. And that phoniness is not just insulting to the female characters but also to the viewers’ intelligence.

For example, the movie has a ridiculous plot development where the main character Anna Wyncomb (played by Malin Akerman, who is one of the producers of “Chick Fight”) is completely shocked to find out that her late mother Mary (played by Julie Michaels in flashback scenes) started an underground female-only fight club. Mary was one of the club’s top fighters for many years, starting from when Anna was a teenager. (Anna is now supposed to be in her late 30s or early 40s.)

And yet, Mary was able to kept this secret from Anna the entire time that Mary was alive. When this story begins, Mary has been dead for nine months and Anna found out this secret only after Mary dies. Viewers are supposed to believe that Anna, who was very close to her mother, never saw any of her mother’s fight injuries during all of those years that her mother was involved in the fight club.

Even in the flashback scenes, Mary looks too pristine to be a “legendary” underground fighter, who realistically would be more bashed-up and bruised than Mary is. It’s an example of how the filmmakers still don’t want to depict women as capable of getting as down and dirty as men when it comes to these fights. The lack of realism when it comes to physical injuries is one of the biggest of many big problems in “Chick Fight.”

“Chick Fight” takes place in an unnamed city that’s supposed to look like somewhere in a U.S. state with a lot of palm trees, but the movie was actually filmed in Puerto Rico. At the beginning of “Chick Fight,” Anna’s life has been going on a downward spiral. Anna owns a coffee shop that’s failing financially. She’s so heavily in debt that one day, she wakes up to find that her Prius is being repossessed.

Anna desperately pleads with the middle-aged tow-truck operator (played by Norman Grant) not to take her car. “I can show you my boobs,” she tells him. He replies, “Yes, you could, but unless you’ve got $1,000 attached to each nipple, I’ve still got to take the car.” That’s what’s supposed to pass as comedy in this movie.

The crass and unfunny jokes about female body parts continue throughout the film. And the filmmakers have Anna’s best friend Charleen (played by Dulcé Sloan), who happens to be a cop and a lesbian, as one of the worst offenders of objectifying women, by portraying Charleen as a borderline sexual predator. Charleen is also the epitome of the formulaic stereotype of a large-sized African American woman being a loudmouth sidekick.

In one of the movie’s early scenes, Anna and Charleen (who are both single with no kids) are hanging out at Anna’s coffee shop and talking about their love lives. Anna says that she’s going through a “self-imposed abstinence,” while Charleen is scolding Anna for being celibate. Charleen ogles a pretty and innocent-looking barista at the coffee shop, who’s about 10 to 15 years younger than Charleen.

Charleen tells Anna: “I’m going to have her. I don’t even know if she’s straight or not, but I’m going to make that girl yell so loud, that only dogs are going to be able to hear her.” Charleen then sticks out her tongue, lecherously flicks it back and forth, and says to Anna: “See how fast I am with my tongue. I’m going to set her pubes on fire!” Anna doesn’t seem at all concerned that her best friend wants to sexually harass one of Anna’s employees.

That evening, Anna spends time with her widower father Ed (played by Kevin Nash) at his home. They’re seated in the backyard and talk a little bit about how much they miss Mary. Suddenly, Anna hears what sounds like someone in the house, even though Ed lives alone. She quickly figures out from Ed’s reaction that he’s got a new lover who’s in the house.

Ed admits it, but says that he’s not ready to introduce this person to Anna yet. However, Anna is too curious not to find out who it is. She walks quickly in the house, with a nervous Ed following her. And that’s when Anna meets her father’s new lover: a sassy man named Chuck (played by Alex Mapa), who looks young enough to be around Anna’s age. In addition to their age difference, Ed and Chuck have a height difference, since Ed is about eight inches taller than Chuck.

After Ed awkwardly introduces Chuck and Anna to each other, Ed tells Anna that although he loved his late wife Mary, he is pansexual and was in the closet about it during the marriage. With Mary’s passing, Ed says he can now feel free to express his true sexual identity. Anna is shocked, but she immediately accepts the situation and tells Ed and Chuck, “That’s great. I’m happy for you.”

Anna decides to make a hasty exit. But before she goes, she asks Ed and Chuck about their big height difference when it come to sex: “How does this even work?” Chuck replies, “Oh honey, it’s like a Great Dane trying to mount a Chihuahua.”

Although Anna has reacted with a friendly and very tolerant demeanor to what she’s discovered about her father, deep down she’s shaken to the core. She calls up Charleen and tells her to meet her at the coffee shop because she wants to tell Charleen some bombshell information and she needs someone to vent to about it.

Anna and Charleen meet up at the coffee shop, which is closed for the night, and Anna tells Charleen about her father’s confession that he’s pansexual. Charleen’s reaction is to laugh and say that Ed can now openly be part of the LGBTQ community. Anna and Charleen also discuss Anna’s messy life while sharing a marijuana joint. Charleen says she got the marijuana by stealing it from police evidence. Anna jokes that Charleen is the “worst cop ever.”

But what do you know, in a dumb movie like this, before Anna and Charleen leave the coffee shop, they just carelessly toss away the joint, which is still lighted, on the floor of the coffee shop. And the lit joint falls right into a puddle that happens to be an unidentified flammable liquid, thereby causing a fire that burns down the entire coffee shop. Predictably, Anna doesn’t have fire insurance.

Needless to say, Anna’s life goes from bad to worse. With her coffee shop gone, she struggles to find other work. Charleen tries to cheer up Anna one night by taking her to the female-only underground fight club, which is in a seedy area of the city in a dirty, warehouse-styled building. Anna later finds out that her mother Mary was the person who started this fight club.

The fighters do not use boxing gloves or wear mouth guards, although they can cover their hands with cloth or other fabric. The rules are that they can do anything during the fight, except for hair pulling, biting and eye gouging. Everything else is fair game. Every time someone wins a match, a dollar bill gets put up on the wall.

Charleen introduces Anna to a burly and tough woman named Bear (played Fortune Feimster), who manages the fight club with Charleen. Bear says she got her unusual name as a child because she was born with a lot of body hair. Later in the story, Anna finds out that Bear considered Anna’s mother Mary to be Bear’s mentor and biggest inspiration—so much so, that Bear keeps a poster and lots of mementos of Mary in Bear’s one-room apartment, which is in the same building and right next to the room with the boxing ring.

After a horrified Anna witnesses a brutal and bloody fight in the ring, Bear tells Anna that it’s a tradition for anyone visiting the fight club for the first time to fight someone in the club during that first visit. Bear also tells Anna that she has a choice to fight either Bear (who looks like she could do serious damage) or a terrified-looking woman with a slight physique who’s sitting in a corner by herself. Bear says that the other woman’s name is Carol (played by Marissa Labog), who’s a schoolteacher.

Anna predictably chooses Carol, who looks like she’ll be a much easier opponent than Bear. But (surprise, surprise) Carol turns out to be a tough fighter, who pummels Anna in the ring while using her legs to put Anna in a headlock. Anna is humiliated but also relieved because she thinks she doesn’t have to go through that experience again. But there would be no “Chick Fight” movie if she walked away that easily.

The fight club has a doctor named Roy Park (played by Kevin Connolly), who happens to be Bear’s brother. (Cue the joke about Bear’s full name being Bear Park.) Roy and Bear being siblings sort of explains why he’s the only man allowed in the room during the fights and why he would be willing to do medical exams for this illegal fight club as a favor to his sister. Roy examines Anna after the fight and determines that she’ll be okay.

But since Roy is the only man who’s allowed into the fight club room on a regular basis, you know what that means in a catfight movie like this: He’s going to be the center of a love triangle between two of the female fighters. And sure enough, after Anna gets the deluded idea that she’s going to honor her mother by becoming an underground fighter, Anna ends up taking on the fight club’s toughest competitor: Olivia (played by Bella Thorne), who’s about 15 to 20 years younger than Anna and who is also attracted to Roy.

This insipid movie puts up a fake front of being a feminist empowerment film, so it’s no surprise that “Chick Fight” reduces the story to the old cliché of two women fighting over a man. Olivia is supposed to be a tough-talking badass, but she’s actually a one-dimensional “mean girl.” Olivia has two sidekicks: Noel (played by Vitoria Setta) and Veronica (played by Ekaterina Baker), whose only purpose in the movie is to make Olivia look like she’s got some kind of posse. Anna is supposed to be “empowered” by taking on the challenge of fighting Olivia, but it’s actually quite pathetic that a supposedly mature woman who should know better is catfighting with someone who looks like she’s barely out of high school.

And really, the underlying motive for Anna and Olivia’s rivalry is that they both want to prove who’s more sexually attractive to Roy. However, Roy’s personality is extremely bland and he’s not very well-suited for either Anna or Olivia. And so, viewers can only conclude that Roy’s doctor salary has a lot to do with the attraction that Anna and Olivia (two very different women) have to Roy. And once again, it plays into outdated gender stereotypes that women need to find a man who makes more money than they do in order to have a happy love life.

At any rate, Anna needs a trainer. And fast. You’d think that with this female fight club existing for so many years, there would be some talented female alumni who still live in the area who could possibly mentor or train Anna.

But no. The filmmakers refuse to consider that qualified women could ever train other female fighters, because they make Anna go into training with a drunken and boorish has-been named Murphy (played by Alec Baldwin), whose main claim to fame is that he used to be the trainer of “Sugar Ray,” according to Charleen and Bear. Viewers are supposed to assume that “Sugar Ray” means Sugar Ray Leonard, but we can also assume that, for legal reasons, the filmmakers couldn’t use his full name, in order not to have Sugar Ray Leonard’s name associated with this crappy movie.

There’s also a not-very-funny subplot of Charleen being threatened by a female fighter named Betty (played by Nicole Paone), whose teenage son (played by Brian Dean Rittenhouse) was recently busted by Charleen for drug dealing to students. (The drug bust is shown in the beginning of the film.) Betty wants revenge on Charleen by challenging her to a fight. It should be noted that Paone, Akerman and Feimster also worked together in the 2020 comedy film “Friendsgiving,” another stinker of a movie with self-centered, obnoxious characters.

Sometimes, a bad movie is a little more tolerable if at least one of the main characters is appealing or if the acting is better than the material. But there’s almost nothing to like about this annoying group of characters in “Chick Fight,” and the acting is mediocre at best. The fight scenes are very unrealistic, because it’s easy to spot the difference between the stunt double and the actor. “Chick Fight” is so idiotic and unpleasant to watch that viewers will feel like it’s an assault on their time, patience and common sense.

Quiver Distribution released “Chick Fight” in select U.S. cinemas and on digital and VOD on November 13, 2020.

Review: ‘Infamous’ (2020), starring Bella Thorne and Jake Manley

June 12, 2020

by Carla Hay

Bella Thorne and Jake Manley in “Infamous” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment)

“Infamous” (2020)

Directed by Joshua Caldwell

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed small town in Florida, the crime drama “Infamous” has a predominantly white cast (with a few African Americans) representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: Two young lovers go on a robbery crime spree and post videos of their escapades on social media.

Culture Audience: “Infamous” will appeal primarily to fans of Bella Thorne, who makes a lot of trashy, lowbrow entertainment.

Bella Thorne in “Infamous” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment)

It’s easy to imagine how writer/director Joshua Caldwell probably pitched the story idea for “Infamous,” this painfully dull and dreadful mess of a movie: “It’s like ‘Bonnie and Clyde,’ but for the social-media kids.” But what the “Infamous” filmmakers forgot is that young people who use a lot of social media tend to have short attention spans and actually want to see things that are entertaining. In that regard, “Infamous” fails on almost every level.

The movie begins with a young woman, who appears to be in her late teens, sitting down in a room. She has blood on her face, as she says in a monotone voice, “I believe the universe has a plan for me, for you, for everybody … So my question is, ‘Is this my destiny?’ Is this what I’ve been fighting for?”

Meanwhile, there’s a dead guy sitting in a nearby chair, there’s a gun on the ground, and she speaks directly to the camera: “Hi, my name is Arielle. And for as long as I can remember, I knew I was going to be famous.” Then, in slow motion, a SWAT team bursts into the room, as the cops make their way toward this blood-spattered female, and a gun is pointed in her face.

Now that the movie’s opening scene pretty much gave away what’s going to happen to Arielle (it’s also shown in the movie’s trailer), viewers then get a flashback to what led up to that scene. Arielle Summers (played by Bella Thorne) is a bored and rebellious teen who lives in an unnamed Florida town, where she works as a waitress in a local diner. She’s been saving up her money to go to Hollywood in California and become “famous.” Arielle doesn’t seem to have any talent, so presumably she wants to be famous on social media or reality TV.

And it’s no wonder she wants to change her life. She sure doesn’t like living in the dumpy apartment that she shares with her single mother Janet (played by Marisa Coughlan), who works as a bartender in a nightclub. Janet has been dating a sleazy guy named Bobby (played by Joey Oglesby), and Arielle can’t stand him. When Bobby asks Arielle for some of her marijuana, she just flips him her middle finger and curses at him.

Arielle is not only a foul-mouthed stoner, she’s also a brawler. While she is dancing with a guy at a party, another girl comes up to Arielle and sucker punches her. Ariel isn’t going to just take it, so she ends up getting into a big catfight with the girl on the floor. People at the party start recording the fight on their phones.

A video of the fight is posted on social media and goes viral. And then, the next thing you know, enough people see Arielle’s catfight video for Ariel to gain 147 new followers on social media the next day. It boosts her confidence because she’s gotten a taste of what a viral video can do for her popularity.

While she’s walking home one day, she sees a guy with bleach-blonde hair doing repairs on a car in his driveway. They start talking and she finds out that his name is Dean Summers (played by Jake Manley), who has recently moved to the area because he’s on parole for robbery and assault. His parole requires that he stay with one of his parents, so Dean is living with his father Michael (played by Damon Carney).

After some back-and-forth flirting, Arielle and Dean start hanging out together, and they open up to each other a little bit more about their lives. Dean tells Arielle that his father is a “mean drunk and he’s bigger than me.” Arielle tells Dean that she doesn’t know her father, who abandoned her and Arielle’s mother because Arielle was an unplanned pregnancy.

It doesn’t take long for Arielle and Dean to hook up and then become lovers. Arielle’s straight-laced friends don’t approve of the relationship because Dean is an ex-con, but Arielle doesn’t care. It’s obvious that Arielle is intrigued by this “bad boy” and sees him as her ticket out of a monotonous life. And then the next thing you know, Dean and Arielle are doing target practice with a .45 caliber gun.

Arielle also sees firsthand how abusive Dean’s father is, which leads to a series of events where Arielle and Dean end up going on the run and committing robberies (mostly at convenience stores) along the way. The first time that they rob a store together, Arielle video records it, and posts the video on social media under an anonymous account where the IP address is blocked.

But this IP blocking is pointless when Arielle and Dean don’t do much to hide their identities during the robberies: They cover the lower half of their faces with bandanas, but they don’t disguise their voices, their mannerisms and their body types. And they don’t wear gloves during the robberies, making it easy for them to leave their fingerprints behind.

After her first robbery with Dean, Ariel immediately gets 3,000 followers on social media, so Arielle then becomes addicted to getting more and more followers. Dean obviously doesn’t want to go back to prison, but he’s so dimwitted that, despite his protests, he ends up going along with what Arielle wants. Their relationship is based mostly on lust, and Arielle just seems to be using Dean to become famous on social media. Therefore, viewers of this movie shouldn’t expect anything that resembles a genuine romance between Arielle and Dean.

But that’s not the movie’s real problem. The entire film is poorly acted, with Thorne alternating between over-emoting or acting like a person with a dead soul. It’s like she wasn’t given much direction on how to play Arielle and basically just showed up and played the character according to however she felt like that day.

Not that Arielle has much depth anyway. During the course of the movie, Arielle becomes so obsessed with getting famous from the crime spree, she makes a lot of dumb decisions, thereby making it easier for Arielle and Dean to get caught. Manley fares a little better in his portrayal as Dean, who actually seems to have some empathy about all the mayhem that he and Arielle are causing. Arielle is just plain selfish.

“Infamous” would have worked better as a comedic satire of the shallow, celebrity-obsessed culture of people who want to be famous just because they film themselves and post the videos on social media. Instead, the movie takes itself way too seriously, considering the film’s overall tackiness.

Amber Riley (of “Glee” and “Dancing With the Stars” fame) has a small role in “Infamous,” as a driver named Elle who gets carjacked by Arielle and Dean. This movie is a waste of Riley’s talent, because her scenes are really just filler to the inevitable end of this terrible movie.

Vertical Entertainment released “Infamous” on digital and VOD on June 12, 2020.