Culture Representation: Taking place somewhere on the West Coast of the United States in 2020, the comedy film “The Disappearance of Toby Blackwood” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Latinos) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, a man decides to distract himself by searching for a former schoolmate who has become a semi-famous “doomsday” conspiracy theorist and who has disappeared during the pandemic.
Culture Audience: “The Disappearance of Toby Blackwood” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching boring and idiotic comedies that use a deadly pandemic for cheap and unfunny jokes.
Cast members in “The Disappearance of Toby Blackwood,” Pictured in top row, from left to right: Joe Ahern, Ashley Spillers and Arjay Smith. Pictured in bottom row, from left to right: Annie Karstens, Eddie Alfano and Grant Harvey. (Photo courtesy of Freestyle Digital Media)
“The Disappearance of Toby Blackwood” is yet another unimaginative and repetitive movie with a COVID-19 theme. Viewers are stuck with the vapid and obnoxious characters, just like these characters are stuck quarantining and use it as an excuse to be stupid. This poorly made comedy is only 74 minutes long, but it feels like longer. There’s barely enough of a story to fill a short film, which is why it’s a chore to watch all of “The Disappearance of Toby Blackwood.”
“The Disappearance of Toby Blackwood” is an independently financed film that you can tell was made by frequently unemployed actors who decided to give themselves jobs by making a terrible movie. It explains why the director and co-writers of this dreadful dud have cast themselves as stars in the movie. “The Disappearance of Toby Blackwood” director Joe Ahern gets the most screen time as the film’s protagonist: a lackluster, middle-aged sad sack named Wes Crowley. Ahern co-wrote the movie’s atrocious screenplay with Doug Mellard, who plays the completely irritating Toby Blackwood.
Watching the misguided Ahern and Mellard as these two cretinous characters is like watching the polar opposite reasons why actors fail in their roles. Ahern is very listless and flat, while Mellard over-acts. “The Disappearance of Toby Blackwood” also commits one of the worst sins of a movie with a COVID-19 pandemic lockdown theme: It’s mostly a series of very insipid and increasingly annoying phone calls and videoconference chats.
The gist of this very limp story (which takes place somewhere on the West Coast of the U.S. in 2020) is that Wes is bored at home while quarantining during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, so he and a few friends decide to find out what happened to Wes’ former schoolmate Toby, who has recently disappeared. Wes and Toby haven’t seen each other in about 20 years, but Wes knows that Toby has become a semi-famous “doomsday” conspiracy theorist. It’s mentioned early on in the film that Toby has 200,000 Twitter followers and 130,000 YouTube subscribers.
There’s a subplot about Wes being bitter because his wife Courtney (played by Natasha Hall) has left him and taken their dog Iggy Pup with her. Courtney also served divorce papers to Wes, in case it wasn’t clear that their marriage is over. Courtney left the dog bowl behind, and Wes whines in an early scene in the movie: “I don’t have the heart to throw it away, so I just stare at it all day.”
Throughout the movie, Wes does video chats with five of his closest friends: Luke Dalton (played by Grant Harvey), Carrie (played by Annie Karstens), Wendy (played by Ashley Spillers), Mike (played by Eddie Alfano) and Keith (played by Arjay Smith). Luke is the loudmouth jerk of the group, so you know he’s going to get the most screen time. Keith is the only one in this group who comes close to sounding like he’s the voice of reason, so course he gets the least screen time out of these five pals.
Luke is actually the one who comes up with the idea to look for Toby. Luke persuades a reluctant Wes to start an investigation, and eventually Wes becomes more interested in finding out what happened to Toby. It should be noted that Luke and Wes also drink a lot of beer during their investigation shenanigans, which might explain why their judgment is impaired but doesn’t explain why this movie is so horrendous.
“The Disappearance of Toby Blackwood” wastes a lot of time showing Luke and Wes talking to various people (usually Toby’s mentally ill followers), who have various theories about why Toby has gone missing. None of the theories is even remotely close to being amusing. “The Disappearance of Toby Blackwood” is filled with a lot of drab dialogue, such as this comment that Wes says that’s supposed to make viewers laugh: “Between my divorce, the quarantine and these bizarre conspiracy theories, I think I’ve aged 10 years in three days.”
A few fairly well-known actors make cameos as these weirdo followers of Toby. The cast members making quick appearances in this embarrassing movie include Simon Pegg, as a paranoid fan named Garth Arthur, who rambles on about alternate realities. Other actors portraying fans of Toby include Lamorne Morris as Gerald Meacham and Luis Guzmán as Chester Mendoza, who both have babbling, forgettable lines of dialogue. All it proves is that the filmmakers called in some favors to get these well-established actors to be in this awful movie.
Why hasn’t anyone contacted the police to report Toby missing? It’s explained early on in the movie that Wes and Luke don’t want to contact the police because Toby has enough guns (many probably illegal) to arm a militia, and they don’t want Toby to get in trouble with law enforcement. Why hasn’t anyone contacted Toby’s family members? Wes and Luke don’t want to alarm these relatives because Toby hasn’t officially been reported missing, and no one knows yet if Toby voluntarily disappeared, or if there was foul play involved.
“The Disappearance of Toby Blackwood” is just a tedious slog of these witless conversations. A low point is a segment showing terribly stereotypical depictions of Italian Americans: The brother characters of Vinny Balducci (played by Joseph Russo) and Paul Balducci (played by Jeremy Luke), who are in their 30s, talk about a grudge involving a murder and veal scallopini (don’t ask), as if they’re Super Mario Bros. wannabe mafia types. Other not-funny-at-all segments show a urine filtration device salesperson named Larry the Urine Guy (played by Rick Gomez) and an unhinged priest named Father Delgado (played by Rudy Mungaray).
A conspiracy fanatic named Mandy Prescott (played by Dana DeLorenzo), who says that she is Toby’s girlfriend, insists that Toby went to meet Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates at Area 51, because Toby thinks Gates created the COVID-19 pandemic so that Gates could put microchips in COVID vaccines. The movie also over-uses a so-called “joke” that some of Toby’s fans, including one named Gilbert Muldoon (played by Todd Giebenhain), think Area 51 is really located underneath the Denver International Airport. Don’t expect there to be any hidden cleverness to this “joke.” There is none.
Interspersed with these stale and vacuous conversations are scenes showing some of Toby’s conspiracy theory videos, so this movie’s viewers can see what type of garbage content he’s been spewing out into the world. There’s nothing original about what Toby says or does when he rants about government spying and “end of the world” predictions. “The Disappearance of Toby Blackwood” presents everything as a weak and uninteresting parody of real-life conspiracy theorists. All of the footage with Toby will just make viewers wish that Toby would stay permanently missing so that he stays far away from humanity. If you care about being entertained, you’re better off staying far away from “The Disappearance of Toby Blackwood.”
Freestyle Digital Media released “The Disappearance of Toby Blackwood” on digital and VOD on December 20, 2022.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Stonebridge, England, in 1290, the comedy/drama film “Catherine Called Birdy” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few black people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A 14-year-old girl resists her father’s attempts to marry her off to any wealthy man who is the highest bidder and who can erase her father’s debts.
Culture Audience: “Catherine Called Birdy” will appeal primarily to fans of the novel on which the movie is based; filmmaker Lena Dunham; and slightly unconventional movies about female empowerment in the medieval era.
Joe Alwyn and Bella Ramsey in “Catherine Called Birdy” (Photo courtesy of Alex Bailey/Amazon Content Services)
Just like the movie’s titular protagonist, “Catherine Called Birdy” can be petulant, repetitive and irritating, but it’s also got enough flashes of wit and comedy to be entertaining. Writer/director Lena Dunham creatively puts a modern spin on a medieval story. “Catherine Called Birdy” (which had its world premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival) is not going to appeal to everyone, but it does not try to be that type of movie.
Dunham adapted the “Catherine Called Birdy” screenplay from Karen Cushman’s 1994 novel “Catherine, Called Birdy.” It’s about a free-spirited teenage girl named Catherine, who prefers to be called Birdy (because she loves birds), and her attempts to assert her independence in the medieval era of England, when women and girls were treated as property regarding marriage and many other things. In the movie “Catherine Called Birdy” (which takes place in 1290, in Stonebridge, England), Catherine/Birdy (played with great enthusiasm by Bella Ramsey) is 14 years old and is expected to get married, much to her dismay. She’s also the constant narrator of the story, which takes place during at a time when the average human life expectancy was much shorter, and getting married at 14 years old was not only legal but it was very common.
Birdy does not want to get married not only because she doesn’t feel like she’s ready for marriage but also because her 41-year-old, greedy, alcoholic and conceited father Lord Rollo (played by Andrew Scott) is essentially auctioning her off for marriage to the highest bidder. All of Birdy’s “suitors” are men who are old enough to be her father or grandfather. Birdy’s 36-year-old mother Lady Aislinn (played by Billie Piper) is thought of in the community as “wise of spirit and fair of face,” according to Birdy. Lady Aislinn, who is pregnant for much of the movie, is incredibly patient with her loutish husband.
The other people in Birdy’s immediate family are her two older brothers: Edward the Monk (played by Archie Renaux), who is 21, is described by Birdy as “more fun than most monks.” Robert (played by Dean-Charles Chapman), who is 17 years old is “abominable,” according to Birdy. Robert and Birdy often get into nasty quarrels with each other, usually instigated by Robert, who likes to bully and insult Birdy.
Birdy’s three closest friends are also teenagers. Her best friend is 16-year-old Aelis Sidebottom (played Isis Hainsworth), an aristocrat who attracts a lot of male attention because of her good looks and family name. Then there’s 14-year-old eccentric Perkin (played by Michael Woolfitt), whom Birdy describes as someone who “likes to sleep in the hay, runs fast despite his limp, and farts a lot.” Her other close pal is 18-year-old dairy maid Meg (played by Rita Bernard-Shaw), who is modest and unassuming, compared to outspoken and gregarious Birdy.
Birdy says near the beginning of the film that her favorite activities include avoiding her chores, causing harmless mischief in the village, and eavesdropping. Her brother Edward advises her to write down her thoughts, which is why much of Birdy’s voiceover narration sounds like diary entries. When Edward gives her a book about saints, Birdy says in a voiceover, “Saints are just dinguses I’ll never meet.”
Even though Birdy comes from an aristocratic family, and she is a rare female in medieval times who knows how to read and write, she is still ignorant abut some basic facts of life. For example, when she gets her menstrual period for the first time, she thinks she’s dying. However, Birdy smart enough to figure out the meaning of menstruation, and she hides her bloody rags from her father, because she doesn’t want him to know that she’s physically mature enough to get pregnant. Birdy knows that her father would use that information in his attempts to find a rich husband for her.
However, Birdy is still not completely knowledgeable about sex and human conception. Early on in the movie, Birdy credits the family’s sassy Scottish maid Rowenna (played by Lesley Sharp) with teaching Birdy about how babies are made. Birdy says that babies are made by a man taking a heated iron poker, sticking it up a woman’s nose until there’s a hole big enough for his thumb. Then, he puts seeds in her brain, until they trickle down into her intestines, where they take root. When the baby is ready to be born, Birdy says the baby comes out of a woman’s rear end.
Birdy thinks of herself as fun and fearless. But she can also be tactless and insensitive. Her lack of manners and mischievous nature are often part of the film’s comedy. One day, Birdy tells Perkin: “You’re so lucky your father is dead.” Perkin replies, “Birdy, I’m still upset about that.”
There are many reasons why Birdy and her father do not really like each other. One of them is because he disrespects her. Lord Rollo calls Birdy a “leper.” And in a conversation with his wife Lady Aislinn, he tells her that the family is financially broke and “Birdy is our real currency, so we’re in real trouble.” He also seems to care so little about Birdy that he asks her what her age is because he can’t remember.
It’s easy to see why Lord Rollo has been irresponsible with the family’s money. He buys frivolous things, such as a tiger imported from Siberia. The tiger does not survive the trip. Because he has put the family in a dire financial situation, Lord Rollo is desperate to get Birdy married to a wealthy man as soon as possible. Her suitors include Finneas the Steward (played by Akemnji Ndifornyen); a middle-aged man from Kent who’s described as a “simple wool merchant” (played by Russell Brand); John of Normandy (played by Christophe Tek); Lord Rolf of Saxony (played by Douggie McMeekin); Godfrey of Glardenmere (played by Lawrence Hodgson-Mullings); and Balthasar of the Low Country (played by Bola Latunji).
Every time Birdy is introduced to a potential husband, she does something that she thinks will turn him off and make him lose interest in her. These tactics include pretending she has a virus, dressing as a “bogwitch,” and acting like she’s inseparable from her pet birds. The more that Birdy drives these suitors away, the angrier and more frustrated her father gets. In one scene in the movie, Lord Rollo physically abuses Birdy by beating her on her hands.
Birdy’s best friend Aelis also has family issues. Aelis’ 81-year-old father Lord Gideon Sidebottom (played by David Bradley) has a 25-year-old wife named Lady Berenice Sidebottom (played by Mimi Ndiweni), who despises him. Aelis’ stepmother Lady Berenice is just one of many examples of young women and girls in “Catherine Called Birdy” who are expected to marry older, wealthier men.
One of the reasons why Birdy finds so many of these suitors unattractive is that she’s smitten with her mother’s 28-year-old brother George (played by Joe Alywn), who is charming, good-looking, and everything that Birdy thinks she wants in a future husband. The movie doesn’t make it look like Birdy wants to commit incest with George, but instead portrays George as Birdy’s intense crush and an ideal for the type of man she would want to marry someday.
Things get complicated whn Aelis develops a crush on George too. Meanwhile, George shows a romantic interest in an older widow from Devon named Ethelfritha Rose Splinter (played by Sophie Okonedo), who has a 9-year-old son. And then, Birdy gets introduced to a lecherous, elderly and rich suitor named Sir John Henry Murgaw VIII (played by Paul Kaye), also known as Shaggy Beard, who won’t take no for an answer.
“Catherine Called Birdy” has a lot of fast-paced, snappy banter where people trade sarcastic barbs with each other. Birdy can be an annoying, self-centered brat, but she can also be perceptive and compassionate when she want to be. In other words, her flaws make her realistically human. Still, some viewers will find this character too hard to take and not be able to finish watching the movie.
The production designs and costumes are fairly accurate to this period of time. However, Dunham infuses a contemporary sensibility to the movie in some of the dialogue and with the choice of the movie’s soundtrack songs, which are all pop and rock tunes from the 20th century and 21st century. Misty Miller performs cover versions of Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You,” Rod Stewart’s “Young Turks,” Supergrass’ “Alright,” Piper’s “Honey to the Bee,” “Elastica’s “Connection,” the Angels’ “My Boyfriend’s Back” and Alicia Keys’ “Girl on Fire.”
With its breezy tone that has a little bit of edge, “Catherine Called Birdy” is mature enough to appeal to adolescents and whimsical enough to appeal to adults. The movie also benefits from having a talented cast who can keep up with the dialogue and the pace of the movie in a way that looks natural, instead of overly rehearsed or awkward. “Catherine Called Birdy” has an ending that is radically different from the book. Considering what Birdy is all about, the ending is a delightful surprise, and what some people might say is an improvement on the original story.
Amazon Studios released “Catherine Called Birdy” in select U.S. cinemas on September 23, 2022. Prime Video premiered the movie on October 7, 2022.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Ziro, India, the horror comedy film “Bhediya” features an all-Indian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A land developer, who is employed by a company that intends to construct roads in a rural area, becomes a werewolf and is suspected of going on a killing spree of humans.
Culture Audience: “Bhediya” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching predictable horror comedies with stale jokes and substandard acting.
Pictured clockwise from bottom left: Varun Dhawan, Paalin Kabak, Deepak Dobriyal and Kriti Sanon in “Bhediya” (Photo courtesy of Jio Studios)
“Bhediya” is a horror comedy that is neither scary nor funny. It’s a silly werewolf movie where a “surprise reveal” is too easy to predict. The visual effects in Bhediya are overrated and can’t make up for a weak story with too many plot holes.
Directed by Amar Kaushik and written by Niren Bhatt, “Bhediya” (which means “wolf” in Hindi) is just scene after scene of the horror diluting the comedy, and the comedy diluting the horror. The end result is a movie that’s a tonal mess, made worse by the overly exaggerated acting by the principal cast members. The movie’s slapstick comedy is very basic and juvenile, which undermines the serious message environmental protection that “Bhediya” wants to convey.
It’s a movie that tries to do too much in balancing absurdity with real-life issues, but ultimately fails by not being able to do any of it very well. In the beginning of “Bhediya,” two land development employees in their 30s—self-assured Bhaskar (played by Varun Dhawan) and his goofy cousin Janardhan (played by Abhishek Banerjee), nicknamed Jana or JD—go on a trip to visit the small town of Ziro, India. The purpose of this trip is to convince the local people to let the land development company construct a road through Ziro’s forest.
During this trip, Bhaskar (who is the “alpha male” of this duo) and Janardan get acquainted wth two men from Ziro: Jomin (played by Paalin Kabak), who is in his 30s, meets the cousins at the airport and becomes their unofficial tour guide. Panda (played by Deepak Dobriyal) is the liaison officer who has lived in Ziro since he was a child. Therefore, Panda knows a lot Ziro’s secrets.
Bhaskar will soon find out the hard way that one of Ziro’s secrets is that the area has been plagued by werewolves. One night in the woods, Bhaskar gets bitten on the rear end by a black werewolf, which runs away after attacking him. Jomin tells Bhaskar and Janardan that Bhaskar needs immediate treatment from a local veterinarian named Dr. Anika Mittal (played by Kriti Sanon). Bhaskar and Janardan never question why they don’t go to a doctor for humans. It’s one of many sloppily written aspects of “Bhediya.”
It isn’t long before Bhaskar finds out that the werewolf bite has caused him to turn into a werewolf. The rest of “Bhediya” is a drawn-out, redundant caper where Bhaskar is suspected of a series of murders, and he tries to hide his secret identity as a werewolf. Who finds out this secret and when are entirely formulaic in the movie. As for the identity of the black werewolf and why this werewolf bit Bhaskar, the answer to that mystery is also very predictable.
Unfortunately, “Bhediya” has a total running time of 156 minutes, which is excessively too long for a movie that doesn’t have much of a plot. Expect to see a lot of nonsense, including clownish JD shrieking (he has a tendency to scream for his mother when he gets frightened); Bhaskar saying stupid things; and an over-used gag that Bhaskar wears boxer underwear when he becomes a werewolf. As an example of the dimwitted dialogue in “Bhediya,” Bhaskar tries to convince Panda that the werewolf virus can be wiped out by “herd immunity”—as if a pack of werewolves in the community, instead of one or two werewolves, will suddenly make things better.
The action scenes aren’t too interesting because the visual effects look so phony. And because much of the movie wastes time in repetitive scenarios and annoying performances, “Bhediya” quickly becomes a chore to watch. The movie tries to turn into a tearjerker drama in the last 30 minutes, but it just makes “Bhediya” look inconsistent, because it tries too hard to be a wacky comedy for most of its duration. No one is expecting “Bhediya” to be award-worthy, but a movie like this should be more fun to watch instead of being just a long-winded, mindless bore.
Jio Studios released “Bhediya” in select U.S. cinemas and in India on November 25, 2022.
Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed small city in the United States, the comedy/drama film “Sam & Kate” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A man and a woman in their 30s start dating each other at around the same time that their elderly single parents show a romantic interest in each other.
Culture Audience: “Sam & Kate will appeal primarily to people who are fans of stars Sissy Spacek and Dustin Hoffman and are interested in watching a movie about intergenerational relationships.
Jake Hoffman and Schuyler Fisk in “Sam & Kate” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment)
Dull conversations and lackluster scenes prevent “Sam & Kate” from being the great romantic dramedy that it wants to be. The acting is admirable though, and the film’s best moments make up for any flaws. The movie is better at depicting grief than romance.
“Sam & Kate” is the first feature film written and directed by Darren Le Gallo, whose film credits are mostly as an actor. (Le Gallo has an acting cameo in “Sam & Kate,” where he has a brief speaking role as a customer in a coffee shop.) As a concept, the movie sounds like a sure-fire charmer: Two Oscar-winning actors (Dustin Hoffman and Sissy Spacek) portray single senior citizens who develop a romantic interest in each other at the same time that his son and her daughter start dating each other. And to give it sense of authenticity, Dustin Hoffman’s real-life son Jake Hoffman and Spacek’s real-life daughter Schuyler Fisk portray the children of these elderly characters.
However, “Sam & Kate” ends up being hit-and-miss in the movie’s dialogue and pacing. Some of the scenes (especially toward the end of the movie) work very well, while other scenes are a slog that will induce boredom. The movie’s tag line—”It’s hard raising parents”—implies that the children are more emotionally mature than the parents. It’s a misleading tag line because that doesn’t really describe the movie’s plot at all.
The story is told from the point of view of the least emotionally mature of the four people at the center of the story. Sam (played by Jake Hoffman), who is in his late 30s, is a cynical and mopey slacker who’s an assembly line worker at a chocolate factory in an unnamed small city in the United States. (“Sam & Kate” was actually filmed in Thomasville, Georgia.) Sam doesn’t really like his job, because he would rather be a professional illustrator, but working at the chocolate factory seems to be the only job he can find at the moment. When Sam is on his work breaks, he goes outside to the back of the building and smokes marijuana.
The movie begins in late December, during the end-of-year holiday season. The city where the movie takes place is Sam’s childhood hometown. He has recently moved back to this hometown to help take care of his widower father Bill (played by Dustin Hoffman), who’s been having some health issues that aren’t detailed until later in the movie. Sam, who calls his father by his first name (not Dad or Father), feels a little bit like a failure that he’s had to move back in with his father because Sam can’t afford his own place.
Not much is told about Sam’s mother, except that she died a few years ago. Sam’s parents had a happy marriage. It’s also mentioned that Sam grew up in an interfaith household, because his mother was Christian, and Bill is Jewish. Therefore, Sam celebrates Christmas and Hanukkah.
There’s some friction between Sam and Bill, mostly because Bill doesn’t think Sam has lived up to his potential in life. Bill doesn’t discourage Sam from being an artist, but he thinks Sam hasn’t tried hard enough to make a living as an artist and hasn’t considered better career options, in case Sam never becomes a professional artist. Sam will soon meet someone who is also put artistic dreams aside to work at a more job that can offer a steady income.
One day, Sam is walking past a bookstore when he notices an attractive female employee through the window. He immediately goes in the store to try to talk to this mystery lady, who is about the same age as Sam. Later, he’ll find out that her name is Kate (played by Fisk), and there’s more to her than his first impression.
Sam is awkward and nervous around Kate. He tries to make small talk and pretends to be interested in buying a book, until he blurts out that he went into the store just because he wanted to meet her. She’s polite but a little standoffish.
He doesn’t notice until he gets to the cash register that the book he’s picked out is $125, which is a price that Sam can’t afford, but he doesn’t want to say that out loud. Kate can tell he doesn’t want to pay that price for a book, so she points him in the direction of a table that has books on sale. Sam then gets up the courage to ask her on a date, but she turns him down nicely by saying, “I’m not dating right now.” A dejected Sam then leaves the store.
But what a coincidence: While Sam and Bill are at a Christmas Eve service at a local Christian church, Sam sees Kate with her mother Tina (played by Spacek) sitting in a nearby pew. After the church service, Tina’s car can’t start. And what a coincidence: Sam and Bill just happen to be nearby and can jumpstart the car for Tina, who asks for their help.
And that’s how these parents and children all meet each other. Kate already knows that Sam is attracted to her. He eventually finds out that Kate owns the bookstore where she works, and she used to be a folk musician who would go on tour. Kate’s past life as a musician is a sore subject for her.
Eventually, Kate warms up to Sam’s earnest attempts to court her, and they start dating each other. Bill and Tina get to know each other better too. And then, Bill and Tina also start dating each other. One of these romances heats up more than the other.
A lot of “Sam & Kate” sort of ambles along (particularly in the middle of the movie) with scenes that just aren’t very interesting. Viewers find out that Tina quit the church choir before the movie takes place, because she’s “not ready to go back” to the choir. Tina’s church friend Beth (played by Elizabeth Becka) is disappointed in this decision. Sam has a co-worker friend named Tom (played by Henry Thomas), who’s about 10 years older than Sam and who moonlights as a musician. Sam and Tom have some forgettable stoner conversations.
Viewers also find out that Bill and Sam get on each other’s nerves. Bill is very demanding, opinionated and a little bit of a weirdo. Bill does things such as ask Sam to drive him to a 24-hour Kmart-type of store late at night (after midnight), just to buy non-essential items, such as a hat. At the store, Bill goofs around and somehow gets on the public-address system to praise the store manager. This type of late-night trip is shown in the movie’s opening scene. Sam is annoyed, but he feels obligated to accommodate Bill, because Sam is living rent-free in Bill’s house.
Bill doesn’t let Sam forget it. The first argument that Bill and Sam have in the movie is when Bill and Sam are at home. Bill starts to lecture Sam about working at a low-paying, dead job, by telling Sam that he needs to grow up and be a man. In response, Sam tells Bill, “I think you need to get laid.” Bill says about Tina, “You think I have a shot?” And then just as suddenly, Bill cries a little bit and says, “I miss your mother.”
That scene is an example of how the movie tries and doesn’t always succeed in having a balancing act between the grief and the romance that propel the storylines for the four main characters. Sometimes this balancing act is handled in a clumsy way that doesn’t look believable, while other times the balancing act is handled in a seamless way that looks very authentic. Even with the great acting talent of Spacek and Hoffman, their respective Bill and Tina characters don’t seem fully developed.
It isn’t until about halfway into the movie that viewers find out more about Tina and Kate. Kate’s father/Tina’s ex-husband abandoned the family when Kate was a baby, and he hasn’t been heard from since. Tina never remarried. Tina is also a hoarder, and the movie shows how Bill reacts when he finds out about Tina’s hoarding. Kate is embarrassed by her mother’s hoarding, but she helps her mother when Tina is ordered by the local health department to clean up and de-clutter Tina’s house.
Kate has her own heavy emotional issues, which are also revealed in the movie, perhaps a little too late in the story to make the impact that it should have had. Kate has been keeping a big secret from Sam after they’ve become a romantic couple. Everyone else who’s close to Kate, except for Sam, knows that Kate hasn’t told him. It seems a little hard to believe Sam wouldn’t have heard about this secret in this small town, where a lot of people know everyone else’s business and gossip about it.
“Sam & Kate” tries very hard not to be a lightweight story, because the tone of this uneven movie switches into tearjerker mode in the last 20 minutes. There’s a plot development in these last 20 minutes that feels a little rushed into the movie, but these last 20 minutes also have the movie’s best scenes. “Sam & Kate” gives the impression that it’s a film whose screenplay started out with some great scenes in mind, and then a lot of filler was written around those scenes.
Up until the last 20 minutes of “Sam & Kate,” Jake Hoffman’s portrayal of Sam comes across as a neurotic with a self-defeating attitude that’s stuck in a rut. Fisk is perfectly fine in her role as pleasant-but-guarded Kate, who encourages Sam’s dreams of becoming a professional artist. Spacek shows the most range in her role as Tina, but the movie doesn’t answer some significant questions about Tina, such as how long she’s been a hoarder and what else she has going on her life. In the late stage of his career, Dustin Hoffman has been doing a lot of “cantankerous old man” roles, so he’s essentially perfected that persona at this point.
As the movie’s title indicates, the relationship between Sam and Kate gets most of the screen time, which doesn’t leave equal time for viewers to get to know Bill and Tina better. Some viewers might not like how this movie ends, but considering the meandering vibe of the rest of “Sam & Kate,” it’s not too much of a surprise. As long as viewers don’t expect “Sam & Kate” to be a wacky comedy or an award-worthy film, there shouldn’t be too much disappointment, because the most meaningful scenes carry this movie.
Vertical Entertainment released “Sam & Kate” in select U.S. cinemas on November 11, 2022. The movie was released on digital and VOD on November 18, 2022.
Pictured from left to right: Alex Hassell, Edi Patterson, Alexis Louder, Leah Brady and David Harbour in “Violent Night” (Photo by Allen Fraser/Universal Pictures)
Culture Representation: Taking place in Greenwich, Connecticut, the comedic action film “Violent Night” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans, Latinos and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: Santa Claus goes on a rampage to rescue a family held hostage during a home invasion.
Culture Audience: “Violent Night” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching dark and violent action comedies that still have a sweet and sentimental side.
David Harbour and John Leguizamo n “Violent Night” (Photo by Allen Fraser/Universal Pictures)
People who watch “Violent Night” are better off knowing in advance that it’s not a horror movie, but it’s a dark satire of greed during the Christmas holidays, with Santa Claus as an unhinged vigilante during a home invasion. The violence is over-the-top, but the movie doesn’t take itself too seriously. The tone of “Violent Night” ranges from intentionally goofy to mischievously cruel. “Violent Night,” as the title indicates, was made for viewers who have a high tolerance for bloody gore but want some comedy to balance out the gruesome scenes.
“Violent Night” director Tommy Wirkola’s filmography includes directing the Norwegian-language films “Dead Snow “(2009) “Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead” (2014) and “The Trip” (2021), as well as the 2013 English-language film “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters.” What all of these movies have in common is satire mixed with action, with varying degrees of violence and horror. The “Violent Night” screenplay was written by Pat Casey and Josh Miller, who both previously collaborated on writing the screenplays for the live-action/animated films “Sonic the Hedgehog” (2020) and “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” (2021), which are both based on the popular video game series. All of this might explain why “Violent Night” often has a cartoonish/video-game quality to it that will either entertain or turn off viewers.
“Violent Night” begins with showing Santa Claus (played by David Harbour) starting his long night of delivering presents on Christmas Eve. This Santa Claus in “Violent Night” (who is destined to be ranked as one of the all-time best “bad Santas” in movies) is not supposed to be someone in costume. This Santa Claus is supposed to be the “real deal.” And to prove it, he’s got a magical scroll listing the “naughty” and “nice” people of the world.
Santa Claus is actually a drunken grouch on this particular Christmas. He’s unhappy because Mrs. Claus has died. He’s also become disillusioned by how avarice and materialistic commercialism have taken over the Christmas holiday season.
Instead of having a bellyful of jolly laughs, this Santa Claus is more likely to have a bellyful of a digested meal that he will vomit on someone while he’s high up in the air on his magical sleigh. And that’s exactly what Santa Claus does early on in the movie, when an unlucky elderly woman goes outside to watch Santa Claus riding through the air, and he spews vomit all over her. It sets the tone for more mayhem that will happen in the movie.
Meanwhile, a fractured family is getting ready to spend time at the mansion of the family’s wealthy matriarch in Greenwich, Connecticut. Jason Lightstone (played by Alex Hassell) and Linda Lightstone (played by Alexis Louder) are separated but have decided to spend Christmas together for the sake of their 7-year-old daughter Trudy Lightstone (played by Leah Brady), who wants her parents to get back together. Jason and Linda’s marital problems have a lot to do with assertive and intelligent Linda wanting mild-mannered and passive Jason to be more independent of his dysfunctional and domineering family.
When Jason, Linda and Trudy arrive at the mansion, it’s easy to see why Linda wants to keep her distance from Jason’s side of the family. Jason’s mother Gertrude Lightstone (played by Beverly D’Angelo), the family’s foul-mouthed matriarch, is rude, crude and the epitome of cold-blooded greed. How vile is Gertrude? Trudy’s real name is Gertrude (she was named after her grandmother), but Trudy prefers to be called Trudy as a nickname. And when Gertrude finds out, she snarls at Trudy about her nickname: “That makes you sound like a whore.”
Jason’s older sister Alva Lightstone (played by Edi Patterson) isn’t much better than Gertrude. As soon as Jason arrives, Alva lets him know she can’t wait for their mother to die, so Alva can take over the family business for herself. And if Jason wants to have any control of the business, Alva is going to put up a fight. Alva also insults Linda by making this insensitive comment to her in a snide tone: “You’ve gained weight.”
Alva is divorced and has a narcissistic son named Bert (played by Alexander Elliot), who is obsessed with filming himself for social media. Alva either ignores Bert or treats him as a nuisance. For this family gathering, Alva has also brought her vain and shallow boyfriend Morgan Steel (played by Cam Gigandet), who’s an actor and filmmaker. It’s mentioned later that Morgan is only with Alva because he wants Gertrude to finance his next movie.
The expected bickering ensues when these family members get together during a formal dinner party where the and the servants dressed as elves are the only ones in attendance. These elves include Krampus (played by Brendan Fletcher), Candy Cane (played by Mitra Suri) and Sugarplum (played by Stephanie Sy), with Krampus as the one who’s the most full of surprises. The Lightstone family feuding gets interrupted by a group of home invaders, led by a wisecracking cynic whose name is listed in the movie’s end credits as Scrooge (played by John Leguizamo), who has been planning this robbery for months.
The servants dressed as elves are really Scrooge’s accomplices. And they are all there to steal the $300 million in cash that Gertrude has in a hidden vault inside the mansion. It’s eventually revealed how and why Gertrude is hiding this fortune. Much later in the movie, while the chaos of this robbery is still happening, a no-nonsense leader named Commander Thorp (played by Mike Dopud) shows up in military fatigues with his team members that are also in matching military outfits. Their roles in the movie are also eventually disclosed.
It just so happens that Santa Claus has arrived at the Thornton mansion just as the home invasion robbery has taken place. His reindeers have taken off with his sleigh, so he’s essentially stranded. When he looks inside the house and sees that the family has been taken hostage, at first he doesn’t want to get involved. But he has a change of heart when he sees the terror on innocent Trudy’s face. And the robbers will soon find out it’s a big mistake to get Santa Claus mad.
“Violent Night” is often a series of slapstick comedy scenes immersed in a lot of viciousness that’s intended to make people laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. The movie (which had its first public showing at New York Comic Con on October 7, 2022) is well-paced and can hold people’s interest, even though the plot is generally simplistic and predictable. Trudy’s Christmas gift from her parents is a walkie talkie that Jason tells her can is “a direct line to Santa.” This walkie talkie is used as a comedic plot device and as a source of hope when things start to look grim for the hostages.
Harbour is perfectly cast as this roguish and boorish Santa Claus, who channels his inner action hero to help this family, even when he bumbles and fumbles along the way. Leguizamo and D’Angelo are also standouts for how Scrooge and Gertrude try to one-up each other in proving who’s the bigger badass. And although the rest of the adult actors in the movie have their memorable moments, Brady’s portrayal of Trudy ends up being the heart of the film.
There will no doubt be comparisons of Trudy Lightstone to the Kevin McCallister character (played by Macauley Culkin) in the 1990 comedy blockbuster “Home Alone,” a movie that’s also about a seemingly harmless kid who becomes resourceful in fighting back against robbers during a Christmas home invasion. It just so happens that Trudy has recently seen “Home Alone,” which inspires her to do certain things in “Violent Night” that will remind people of “Home Alone.” The “Home Alone” references are examples of the type of cheeky comedy in “Violent Night.”
But make no mistake: The grisly brutality in “Violent Night” makes it a far different movie than the relatively squeaky-clean “Home Alone.” The dialogue and jokes in “Violent Night” are sometimes a little stale, but people interested in “Violent Night” aren’t expecting it to be an intellectual film. It’s all about seeing how a grumpy, “loose cannon” Santa Claus acts when he has to fight some people who’ve been very naughty—and how Santa gets some heroic help from a girl who adores him.
Universal Pictures will release “Violent Night” in U.S. cinemas on December 2, 2022.
Culture Representation: Taking place mostly in Kottarakara,India, the comedy/drama film “Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey” features an all-Indian cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A woman trapped in an abusive marriage fights back by beating up her husband after he beats her, and she gets a reputation for being someone who can defeat men in physical fights.
Culture Audience: “Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in movies about how women handle domestic abuse, but “Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey” sends a lot of wrong messages about female empowerment and heinously treats domestic violence as slapstick comedy.
Darshana Rajendran and Basil Joseph in “Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey” (Photo courtesy of Icon Cinemas)
“Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey” is disgracefully irresponsible with its intended messages about female empowerment and overcoming abuse. This strange mess of a movie grossly mishandles the serious issue of domestic violence by portraying self-defense against this abuse as cartoonish comedy. It’s not funny at all.
It also ignores the fact that psychological healing from abuse is needed. The movie wants to dismiss the reality that not all domestic violence victims can become self-defense experts. The idiocy of “Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey” is made worse by the movie’s overly long run time (140 minutes), which shows tedious repetition of the same scenarios for most of the movie.
Directed by Vipin Das (who co-wrote the movie’s atrocious screenplay with Nashid Mohamed Famy), “Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey” (which takes place in India) tells the story of Jayabharathi, nicknamed Jaya (played by Darshana Rajendran), an intelligent, ambitious and independent-minded woman in her 30s. Jaya wants to go to Mar Ivanios College (a private college in Thiruvananthapuram, India) to get a bachelor of science degree in anthropology, but her dreams are discouraged by her patriarchal middle-class family.
Her parents think that Jaya’s top priority in life should be to get married, be a subservient wife, and have children. Jaya’s uncle (her mother’s brother) Mani Annan (played by Sudheer Paravoor) angrily tells her that the men make the decisions in the family. And he thinks that if Jaya wants to go to college, she has to go to a college that costs less money and is closer to their home than Mar Ivanios College. And so, with great reluctance, Jaya goes to the less-prestigious MSS College, where Jaya’s family has pressured her to study Malayalam, instead of anthropology. She is shown looking very bored in her school classes that she thinks aren’t up to the standards of what she thinks she deserves.
The beginning of “Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey” shows a flashback to Jaya’s childhood, when she was about 11 or 12. Back then, she was thought of as the family’s overachieving “golden child,” compared to her older brother Jayan, who was thought of as an underachieving screw-up who wasn’t expected to go to college. Jaya’s father (played by Biju Kalanilayam), a clothing workshop supervisor, had such big dreams for her, he encouraged Jaya to think about becoming India’s next female prime minister, with Indira Ghandi as a role model.
An early scene in the movie shows the children’s father using a stick to hit a teenage Jayan for not taking good care of Jayan’s school books. Jayan asks his parents why Jaya isn’t being punished for the same thing. His mother replies, “Are you the same person [as Jaya]?” It’s a scene that shows how Jayan felt like Jaya was getting special treatment by their parents. (These two parents don’t have names in the movie.) Meanwhile, Jaya enjoys being the preferred sibling who seemingly can do no wrong.
Flashing forward to the present day, Jayan (played Anand Manmadhan) is still somewhat living in Jaya’s shadow, because their parents and uncle are preoccupied with finding a husband for Jaya, who still lives with her parents. However, whatever sibling rivalry that Jaya and Jayan had when they were younger is not as bitter as it used to be. That’s because Jaya has been irritating her parents and her uncle because of her stubborn refusal to get married at this point in her life. Jaya says she only wants to get married after she becomes an anthropologist and has established her own career.
What happened to Jaya’s father, who encouraged Jaya to become India’s next female prime minister? It seems like Jaya’s father now thinks what’s more important is the stigma he’s feeling for having a never-married daughter in her 30s. Instead of caring about Jaya’s feelings and goals, he cares more about not having an image of being a “failure” as a father, just because his daughter isn’t married yet. Viewers will notice that Jayan, who is also unmarried, is not under the same pressure as Jaya to find a spouse.
At JSS College, Jaya begins dating one of her professors named Karthikeyan (played by Aju Varghese), who’s about 10 years older than she is. The movie never really addresses the murky ethics of this relationship, but the college apparently doesn’t have a policy prohibiting the school’s teachers from dating their students. It’s obvious that this relationship is doomed when Karthikeyan shows that he’s an abuser who’s very possessive of Jaya.
Karthikeyan tells Jaya to limit her friendships with other men. He also wants to control all of her social media accounts. Karthikeyan yells at Jaya for changing her profile picture on social media without telling him first. And he also becomes physically abusive. During an argument with Jaya in public, he slaps her hard on her face. Witnesses who see this abuse do nothing to stop it and do nothing to help Jaya. Eventually, Jaya and Karthikeyan break up.
At home, Jaya gets more pressure than ever before to find a husband. She tearfully tells her parents that she doesn’t want to get married, but they don’t care about her feelings when it comes to marriage. Jaya’s uncle disapproved of her dating Karthikeyan and thinks this professor-student relationship damaged Jaya’s reputation, so he tells Jaya that she needs to get married soon to restore her reputation. Jaya’s parents and meddling uncle think the only way she can find a suitable husband is if they do matchmaking for her.
It isn’t long before Jaya is introduced to a poultry farmer named Rajesh (played by Basil Joseph), who meets Jaya for the first time when Rajesh, his parents and his younger sister visit the home where Jaya and her parents live. Jaya’s parents, brother and uncle are also at this family gathering. Rajesh and his family are from the town of Kottarakara, which isn’t too far from where Jaya and her parents live.
Jaya spends part of this get-together in the kitchen, preparing and then serving the tea that everyone has, so she doesn’t hear the parts of the conversation where her parents and uncle have told Rajesh how they have Jaya’s marriage plans all mapped out for her. It’s a very telling moment in the movie, because it shows that even though Jaya is an educated woman in her 30s, she still has very little control over decisions that have to do with her getting married. The movie tries to make some kind of feminist statement about the cultural restrictions that Jaya experiences, but this statement is terribly bungled and ends up making Jaya into a caricature.
Rajesh and Jaya eventually get a chance to talk in private. From the beginning, there’s no romantic chemistry between them, or even the type of chemistry that could suggest that Rajesh and Jaya can become good friends. Rajesh is a little socially awkward and asks Jaya what she knows about poultry farming. She admits she knows nothing about it and has no interest in it. He seems like a “nice guy” who’s very nerdy about poultry farming, because he starts to ramble to Jaya about things she doesn’t care about, such as the current wholesale market price for chickens.
Jayan shows that he’s a supportive brother when he tells Rajesh that if Jaya and Rajesh get married, she wants to continue her college education and get her bachelor’s degree in anthropology. Rajesh seems open to that decision, but he never fully commits to agreeing to that decision by the time that Rajesh and Jaya begin dating each other. Soon after Rajesh and Jaya have their first meeting, their parents decide that Rajesh are Jaya are a good match and should get married.
Jaya and Rajesh have a very short engagement before getting married in a festive ceremony where Jaya looks doesn’t look happy to be there. And believe it or not, her macho uncle Mani, who was pushing so hard for Jaya to get married, ends up crying at the wedding. After the wedding, Jaya moves to Kottarakara to live at Rajesh’s poultry farm (which is called Raj Poultry Farm), where they share a house with Rajesh’s parents and sister.
It isn’t long before Jaya founds out that the mild-mannered man she thought she married is actually a nasty-tempered and controlling abuser. First, Rajesh tells Jaya that she has to drop out of college so that she can be a full-time housewife who can help out with the farm. Not long after that, Rajesh begins beating Jaya if he thinks she isn’t doing exactly what he wants her to do. Sometimes, he beats her for no reason at all. Rajesh is not only horrible to Jaya, he’s also a terrible boss to his employees, whom he often berates and treats unfairly.
Jaya doesn’t have her family nearby or any friends to turn to for support. Rajesh’s physical abuse of Jaya causes injuries that are impossible to ignore, but the psychological damage is not really acknowledged in the movie, which turns the physical abuse into comedy. The movie’s tone is very off-kilter and clumsy, because it’s an odd mix of weepy melodrama that’s intended to be depressing, mismatched with kitschy fight action that’s intended to be comedic.
In contrast to Jaya feeling isolated in her abusive environment, Rajesh has a support system of people who completely enable him and his abuse. These enablers include Rajesh’s father, Rajesh’s mother (played by Kudassanad Kanakam), Rajesh’s sister Raji (played by Sheethal Zackaria) and Rajesh’s cousin Ani (played by Azees Nedumangad), who all do nothing to try to stop the abuse or help Jaya. Their attitude is that since Rajesh is Jaya’s husband, he has a right to treat her any way that he wants.
When Jaya tells her family about the abuse, her parents say that she just needs to adjust to it. Jaya’s brother Jayan is more sympathetic and concerned about her being abused. He visits Jaya and tries to protect her and stand up for her as much as he can. But there’s only so much he can do when he’s not living in the same household as Jaya. At one point in the movie, Jaya says that it’s been six months since her wedding, and Rajesh has beaten her 21 times.
One day, while Rajesh is giving Jaya another beating, he is absolutely shocked when she physically fights back and wins. This leads to a series of increasingly exaggerated fight scenes where Jaya suddenly acts like an expert in boxing and martial arts, and she gives Rajesh brutal beatdowns that she always wins. Her punches, kicks and shoves do a lot of damage to Raj and their house. For example, during a fight, she throws Raj on furniture that gets broken.
The word gets out around town that Rajesh is getting beat up by Jaya, and he becomes a laughingstock, especially with the local men. The people who laugh at Rajesh don’t really seem to care that Jaya is acting in self-defense to domestic abuse. All they perceive is Rajesh being emasculated by his wife. This humiliation makes Rajesh become even more resentful and angry toward Jaya.
Rajesh’s father tells Jaya that she’s overreacting to Rajesh’s abuse and mutters to himself, “This is what happens when women are over-educated.” Rajesh’s father also gives Rajesh some awful advice on how to “control” Jaya: He tells Rajesh to get Jaya pregnant, which he says will lessen her chances of leaving Rajesh. Rajesh agrees and says, “We have to stop her arrogance.”
On another occasion, Rajesh’s father says that in order for Rajesh to seduce Jaya into getting her pregnant, he should make an apology to Jaya by writing a song for Jaya. Rajesh’s pathetic attempt at songwriting and his off-key singing are treated as one big joke in the movie. The problem is that it’s a joke that falls flat, but it’s stretched out and repeated in a desperate attempt to make audiences think that it’s funny.
After Rajesh’s father convinces Rajesh to get Jaya pregnant, Rajesh suddenly pretends to be a perfect husband. He’s profusely apologetic and goes out of his way to be extra-nice and deferential to Jaya. Jayan is very suspicious of this sudden change in Rajesh’s attitude, and he warns Jaya not to fall for it.
As over-the-top and unrealistic as the movie can be in its fight scenes, “Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey” does have some realism in the cycle of abuse, where the abuser turns on the charm and begs for forgiveness from the abuse victim. The abuser also promises that the abuse will never happen again. Until the abuse does happen again. And then, the cycle repeats itself and ends with one of three outcomes: the abuse victim leaves, the abuser really stops the abuse, or someone in the relationship ends up dead.
None of the acting in this movie is noteworthy or special. Rajendran’s portrayal of Jaya veers from someone who has glimmers of a bright personality in the beginning of the film to someone who becomes a cold-hearted fighting machine by the end of the film. If the movie’s intention is to make Jaya a relatable character to abused women, it’s a miserable failure.
Manmadhan is perfectly adequate as Jayan, the only character in the movie who seems to be the most realistic. All of the other cast members portray hollow stereotypes, and they act accordingly in these roles. Unfortunately, “Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey” wants to trick people into thinking that it’s cool to laugh at the sight of a woman beating up a man who has abused her. But it’s a very misguided way of addressing domestic violence, because it never acknowledges the harsh realities of how escalating violence can make the problem worse.
“Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey” wants to poke fun at misogyny and the vicious cycle of domestic violence. But the fight scenes, even when Jaya acts in self-defense, are overly staged to make audiences laugh, when these scenes aren’t worth laughing at all. The movie also thoughtlessly promotes a fantasy that the best way for a woman to stop a partner from abusing her is to inflict the same abuse back on the partner. It’s a fantasy that can get people killed in real life. And that is why “Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey” is a disgustingly careless exploitation of this very harmful societal problem.
Icon Cinemas released “Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey” in select U.S. cinemas on November 11, 2022. The movie was released in India on October 28, 2022.
Culture Representation: Taking place in 2020, mostly on an unnamed island in Greece and briefly in the United States, the comedy/drama film “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African American and Asians) portraying the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: Southern gentleman detective Benoit Blanc is invited to the private Greek island of a technology billionaire, who is hosting a murder mystery party, where at least one person gets murdered for real.
Culture Audience: “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of 2019’s “Knives Out,” star Daniel Craig, and murder mysteries that are also incisive social satires.
Edward Norton, Madelyn Cline, Kathryn Hahn, Dave Bautista, Leslie Odom Jr., Jessica Henwick, Kate Hudson, Janelle Monáe and Daniel Craig in “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” (Photo by John Wilson/Netflix)
Simply put: “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” is a sequel that’s better than the original movie. This comedy/drama is a fantastic follow-up to 2019’s “Knives Out,” another comedically dark murder mystery with its central location being the home of a wealthy person. Both movies, which are self-contained stories written and directed by Rian Johnson, deliciously skewer arrogant, rich elitists and other people with bad attitudes, while American Southern gentleman detective Benoit Blanc (played by Daniel Craig) solves the murder mystery. “Glass Onion” had its world premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival.
Johnson has said in many interviews that his greatest inspirations for his “Knives Out” movie series are Agatha Christie mystery novels and movie adaptations of these novels. In that respect, Benoit is like an American version of Christie’s “world’s greatest detective” Hercule Poirot from Belgium—someone who can deduce and reveal complex details and secrets about other people’s lives, but his own personal life remains a self-guarded mystery. (Craig is British in real life, but you can tell he has fun with doing a leisurely American Southern accent when he’s in the role of Benoit.)
Because the “Knives Out” movies are self-contained, it’s not necessary to see the first “Knives Out” movie to understand “Glass Onion.” However, seeing “Knives Out” can give viewers a better appreciation of how “Glass Onion” is an improvement from the first “Knives Out” movie, which is enjoyable but more predictable than “Glass Onion.” (“Knives Out” received several accolades that comedic murder mystery movies rarely receive, including an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay.)
In “Glass Onion,” several people from different parts of the U.S. have each received in the mail a mysterious box from American technology billionaire Miles Bron (played by Edward Norton), a pretentious blowhard who loves to name drop and show off his wealth. Miles, a bachelor who lives alone, has made his fortune from co-founding a company called Alpha Industries. The box that he has sent contains an elaborate puzzle that reveals an invitation to go to Miles’ private island home in Greece for a murder mystery party. In the invitation, Miles says that he will play the murder victim.
Benoit is one of the people who receives this box as a mail delivery. Later, when he gets to the party, he finds out in an awkward way that Miles didn’t actually invite Benoit. But now that Benoit is at the party, Miles doesn’t want Benoit to leave, because Benoit is just another celebrity whom Miles can brag about attending one of Miles’ parties. Who sent Benoit that box? That answer is revealed in the movie.
“Glass Onion” begins on May 13, 2020—the day that the boxes are delivered. It’s just a few short months into the COVID-19 pandemic, before a vaccine was available, and when mask-wearing and social distancing were becoming a way of life for people who cared to take those precautions. Some of the party guests are more concerned about the pandemic than others.
Before going to the party, Benoit is seen having a relaxing bath at his home. He’s on a videoconference call with an eclectic group of famous friends, such as Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim (who died in 2021), classical musician Yo-Yo Ma, actress Angela Lansbury (who died in 2022), retired basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and actress Natasha Lyonne, who all make these quick cameos as themselves in the movie. It’s in this scene that viewers see that Benoit likes to play quiz games with his friends during the pandemic.
The only other peek into Benoit’s personal life is when he’s on a videoconference call with a man named Philip (played by Hugh Grant), who seems to know a lot abut Benoit and his personal life. In this scene, viewers can speculate how close Benoit and Philip are to each other and what kind of relationship they might have. Ethan Hawke makes a brief appearance in the role of an unnamed Miles Bron employee, who sprays a COVID-19 medical screener inside each guest’s mouth when they arrive at Miles’ Greek island home. The implication is that this screener can make any possible COVID-19 symptoms disappear, and Miles is so rich, he can afford this medical treatment before it’s legally sold to the public.
Miles’ party guests have been transported by a private boat to the island, whose biggest building is a high-tech mansion that Miles has named Glass Onion. The property’s centerpiece is a giant glass structure shaped like an onion and located inside a glass atrium. (The onion can also be seen as a symbol of the story’s layers that get peeled to reveal the truth. The Beatles song “Glass Onion” is played during the movie’s closing credits.) Inside this nouveau-riche home are dozens of glass sculptures and gaudy indications that Miles is a narcissist, such as a giant portrait painting of a shirtless Miles that makes his physique look more athletic than it really is.
In addition to Benoit, the other people at this party are:
Claire Debella (played by Kathryn Hahn), a progressive Democratic politician who is very image-conscious and currently running for re-election as governor of Connecticut.
Lionel Toussaint (played by Leslie Odom Jr.), an experimental scientist who has recently been testing a mystery product called Klear that Miles wants to sell, but Lionel has been warning Miles not to send this “volatile substance” on a manned airplane flight.
Birdie Jay (played by Kate Hudson), a controversial former supermodel who is now a fashion entrepreneur, who says and does racially offensive things on social media, and who is currently embroiled in a scandal about her fashion company using an exploitative sweatshop in Bangladesh.
Peg (played by Jessica Henwick), Birdie’s always-worried assistant who constantly has to clean up Birdie’s messes and prevent Birdie from doing more damage to Birdie’s reputation and career.
Duke Cody (played by Dave Bautista), a very sexist and gun-toting loudmouth who has become a famous social media influencer and “men’s rights” activist promoting the belief that men are superior to women.
Whiskey (played by Madelyn Cline), Duke’s airheaded girlfriend/social media sidekick who doesn’t seem to be doing anything with her life but being a hanger-on/gold digger/social climber.
Andi Brand (played by Janelle Monáe), Miles’ former business partner, who lost a bitter lawsuit against him, in which she claimed that she came up with most of the ideas for Alpha Industries, and she accused Miles of stealing her share of the company from her.
It’s eventually revealed in the story that Miles, Andi, Claire, Lionel, Birdie and Duke all knew each other from 10 years ago, when they were struggling to “make it” in their chosen professions. Andi was the one who introduced Miles (who was unlikable even back then) to the rest of the group. They all used to hang out at a bar called Glass Onion.
Miles is a big talker who is very good at making people believe that he’s smarter than he really is. For example, he makes up words that don’t exist. His incessant namedropping becomes an ongoing lampoon in the movie. He mentions how he got famous composer Philip Glass to write original music for him. Miles also brags about his other connections to celebrities, such as getting a personal gift from actor/musician Jared Leto and getting invited to a recent birthday party for CNN anchor Anderson Cooper.
As the story goes on, cracks begin to show in many of the party guests’ façades. Birdie wants people to think that she’s confident, but she’s actually very insecure about being perceived as unattractive and a has-been. Peg, who appears to cool-headed and logical, is actually on edge and desperate, because she has spent most of her career with loose cannon Birdie, so anything that destroys Birdie’s career will probably destroy Peg’s career too. Lionel is uncomfortable with being paid by Miles to approve this mystery product Klear that Lionel says is too dangerous to approve.
Claire, who prides herself on being a “take charge” control freak, is worried about how wild this party might get and how it could affect her reputation in this crucial election year. Duke becomes uneasy when he sees that Whiskey is openly flirting with Miles, who does nothing to stop this flirtation and seems to be enjoying it. Andi, who is the most mysterious guest, keeps her distance from the group for a great deal of the movie, and she seems to be tough-minded and occasionally rude, but her emotional vulnerabilities are eventually exposed. When Andi arrives at the island, Miles tells her that he’s surprised that she accepted the invitation.
Of course, Andi appears to be the one who has the biggest grudge against Miles. She is also different from the other guests because she was the only one who didn’t bother to figure out the box puzzle but just smashed the box instead and found the invitation. In a group of characters with larger-than-life personalities, Monáe delivers a complex performance that is one of the highlights of “Glass Onion.”
It would be revealing too much to say who actually gets murderded in “Glass Onion,” but it’s enough to say that the movie has more twists and turns and than “Knives Out.” The comedy in “Glass Onion” has much sharper edges that result in some intentionally hilarious moments. The dialogue and scenarios portray in stinging accuracy what can happen when people try to impress each other too much and wallow in self-centered pretension.
Peg and Benoit are the only people at the party who don’t show any completely obnoxious qualities, for different reasons. Peg, who seems like a decent person overall, is at the party in the capacity of being a subservient employee who’s afraid of losing her job. Benoit, as always, is a keen observer of people and doesn’t really jump into action until there’s a murder to be solved. Craig, who seems born to play the role of this sly and sarcastic private detective, has no doubt found his next big movie franchise after retiring from the role of James Bond.
Also turning in very good performances are Norton as billionaire jerk Miles and Hudson as spoiled celebrity Birdie. These two characters have some of the best lines in “Glass Onion,” which makes them the type of characters whom viewers will love to hate. However, if we’re being honest, Norton and Hudson have played these types of unlikable characters in other movies before, so people might not be as surprised by these performances. Monáe shows a range in “Glass Onion” that she hasn’t had a chance to show in her previous movies. The rest of the principal cast members in “Glass Onion” have characters that are a bit shallow and underdeveloped.
The production design of “Glass Onion” (which was filmed on location in Greece) is quite striking and has more originality than the “old money” mansion setting of “Knives Out.” Johnson’s screenplay and direction for “Glass Onion” are sharp, witty and thoroughly engaging, even when the characters are saying and doing awful things. “Glass Onion” also benefits from having less characters than “Knives Out” had, thereby making the “Glass Onion” story less cluttered than “Knives Out.” Most of all, “Glass Onion” admirably avoids one of the biggest mistakes that most movie sequels make: It doesn’t try to copy its predecessor. To put it in baseball terms: It swings big in its ambitions and hits a home run.
Netflix released “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” for a limited one-week engagement in U.S. cinemas on November 23, 2022. The movie will premiere on Netflix on December 23, 2022.
Culture Representation: Taking place in India and Pakistan, the comedy film “Phone Bhoot” features an all-Indian cast representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: Two housemates/best friends start a paranormal investigation business, they meet a seductive ghost who offers to help them if they help her, and a series of ghostly misadventures ensue.
Culture Audience: “Phone Bhoot” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s stars and don’t mind watching mindless horror comedies that are not scary at not very amusing.
Ishaan Khatter, Katrina Kaif and Siddhant Chaturvedi in “Phone Bhoot” (Photo courtesy of Viacom18 Studios)
“Phone Bhoot” is an intentionally silly “Ghostbusters” ripoff that isn’t nearly as funny as it thinks it is. This mindless movie needlessly drags out to 130 minutes, which is excruciatingly too long for its flimsy plot. “Phone Bhoot” is nothing but a bunch of scenes where two bungling paranormal investigators find themselves in dumb predicaments (usually of their own making) while they are at the beck and call of a very seductive female ghost.
Directed by Gurmmeet Singh and written by Ravi Shankaran and Jasvinder Singh Bath, “Phone Bhoot” (which takes place mostly in India and partially in Lahore, Pakitsan) begins by introducing the two dimwitted clowns who decide to launch a paranormal investigation business. Galileo “Gullu” Parthasarthy (played by Ishaan Khatter) and Sherdil “Major” Shergill (played by Siddhant Chaturvedi) are unemployed best friends in their late 20s who share a one-bedroom rental house in an unnamed city in India. Gullu and Major are big fans of horror entertainment. They also pray to a fictional god named Raka and have a life-sized statue of Raka in their home.
One night, Gullu has a nightmare that Major is taking a shower in blood. It’s an example of one of many scenes in “Phone Bhoot” that have no real purpose and are just there to fill up time. Gullu has started a paranormal channel on YouTube called BhootTube (“bhoot” means “ghost” in Hindi), but the channel is not a success because of its low number of subscribers and viewership. Most of BhootTube’s subscribers are fake accounts created by Major. Gullu and Major pray to Raka to help them out of their bleak financial situation.
One night, Gullu and Major get electrocuted when they try to reignite the statue of Raka. The two pals fall into state of unconsciousness. When they appear to wake up, they go to a Fright Night party at an abandoned warehouse. It’s an event similar to a Halloween party, where people dress up in costumes.
At this party, Gullu and Major meet a mysterious woman who’s about 10 years older than they are. They are immediately attracted to her beauty. Gullu and Major both have instant crushes on her, but Gullu eventually becomes much more infatuated. Before the two pals even find out this woman’s name, all of the people at the party suddenly disappear, except for Gullu and Major.
And it happens right at the same time that police officers show up to tell Gullu and Major that this party was illegally held on public property, so Gullu and Major are arrested. This arrest is an unnecessary plot development because the consequences of this arrest are never mentioned for the rest of the movie. Gullu and Major try to explain to the arresting officers that they weren’t responsible for the party and that there were a lot of other people there, but the cops don’t believe them.
The sudden disappearance of all the othe party attendees except for Gullu and Major should be a big-enough clue to Gullu and Major that something ghostly or supernatural happened. Long after viewers of “Phone Bhoot” will have it figured out, Gullu and Major will have no idea that they can see ghosts, until these two buffoons literally have to be told this information by a ghost. Until then, “Phone Bhoot” wastes some time showing Gullu and Major involved in more stupid shenanigans.
The movie then abruptly shifts to a scene of Major driving himself and Gullu in a car on a fairly deserted road, when Gullu irresponsibly decides to give Major a pill of an unnamed psychedelic drug. Gullu takes the same drug at the same time. They both hallucinate that the car has turned into an airborne plane.
Their minds quickly leave the hallucination when the car accidentally hits a middle-aged woman on the road. Viewers later find out that her name is Lady Diana (played by Nidhi Bisht, wearing ghoulish makeup) and should not be surprised that she is a ghost who can manifest herself in a physical human body. The woman flies off into the air and into a nearby tunnel. (The visual effects in “Phone Bhoot” are very tacky and unrealistic.)
And then, the movie wastes time with a not-very-funny sequence of Gullu and Major thinking that the woman is dead and planning to bury her body. Major and Gullu begin twisting the feet of the woman to make her body easier to bury, but she’s screams out in pain. This slapstick scene has low-quality sound effects.
Major says as a joke when he hears the woman screaming in pain: “She must have polio.” This is the type of garbage comedy that “Phone Bhoot” wants viewers to think is hilarious. Lady Diana then crawls away and hides. She shows up again later in the film to get revenge.
The mystery woman from the Fright Night party then shows up at the house where Gullu and Major live. Her name is Ragini (played by Katrina Kaif), and she tells Gullu and Major that she’s a ghost. Major says, “Ghosts aren’t sexy.” To get back at Major for this insult, Ragini temporarily invades his body and makes himself hit his groin repeatedly with a paddle. He’s suitably humbled.
Ragini explains that she’s a “wandering spirit” who doesn’t have full control over all of her movements. She wants Gullu and Major to help her with something that only living humans can do. Ragini says she will tell them all the details later, but they have to promise to help her, no matter what she asks of them.
In exchange, Ragini says that if Gullu and Major start a paranormal business where the two pals charge money to do exorcisms of people and haunted places, she will help make the business a success. The business will also include Gullu and Major claiming that they can contact people from the dead and can pass on messages to the dead people’s loved ones. To make up for the business being a money scam, Ragini makes Gullu and Major promise to donate any proceeds they earn from the business to charity.
Gullu and Major name their business Phone Bhoot. They set up a phone hotline and launch an app, so potential customers can contact them. With Ragini’s help, Gullu and Major are able to convince people that they have special powers to control demons and contact ghosts. The business becomes a success, but the scenarios presented in the movie are mostly dull and unimaginative.
A scene were Gullu and Major are called to perform an exorcism on a girl named Dolly (played by Shreya Lodhia), who’s about 7 or 8 years old, relies heavily on showing Dolly levitating and hitting Gullu and Major with a stick. It’s not nearly as comedic as it could have been, mainly because this move is polluted with bad acting and terrible dialogue.
The last half of this long-winded dud of a movie involves Gullu and Major having to keep their end of the bargain to Ragini. It has to do with Ragini wanting to reunite with her boyfriend, a prince named Dushyant Singh (played by Armaan Ralhan), who became suicidal after Ragini died in a car accident caused by Dushyant. Ragini was the passenger in a car that Dushyant was driving, when he momentarily took his eyes off of the road to propose marriage to her. Dushyant feels responsible for her death. He plans to kill himself at the site of the accident on the two-year anniversary of Ragini’s death.
This subplot becomes jumbled up in another subplot where a demonic underworld lord named Atmaram (played by Jackie Shroff), who rules over other evil ghosts, becomes jealous of Gullu and Major because the Phone Bhoot business is ruining Atmaram’s business. Lady Diana is one of Atmaram’s minions. And what a coincidence: Atmaram also has a grudge against Dushyant and wants Dushyant to die. It all just leads to the inevitable showdown of good versus evil, with a lot of badly staged fights and even more stupidity.
The movie wastes considerable time in yet another subplot of Gullu and Major feuding over Ragini’s affections. “Phone Bhoot” has some joke gags that might bring a few chuckles, in the way that people laugh at small-minded and cheesy jokes. But “Phone Bhoot” overloads on this moronic comedy without the foundation of an interesting story. The end result is a completely obnoxious and boring movie.
Viacom18 Studios released “Phone Bhoot” in select U.S. cinemas and in India on November 4, 2022.
Culture Representation: Taking place in India and in London, the comedy/drama film “Double XL” features a predominantly Indian cast (with some white people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: Two plus-sized women in their 30s—one who’s an aspiring sportscaster, the other who’s an aspiring fashion designer—become fast friends in London, where they are pursuing their dreams but experience discrimination because of their body sizes.
Culture Audience: “Double XL” will appeal primarily to people interested in movies centered on plus-sized women and issues about weight discrimination, but the movie mishandles those issues with far-fetched situations and sappy solutions.
Huma Qureshi, Zaheer Iqbal, Mahat Raghavendra and Sonakshi Sinha in “Double XL” (Photo courtesy of T-Series Films)
“Double XL” wants to preach about body positivity and female empowerment, but this inept dramedy is overloaded with witless clichés and irksome performances. Weight prejudices and low self-esteem are used as silly gimmicks in many unrealistic scenarios. Instead of making women look independent and capable of handling their own career decisions, “Double XL” sends a very contradictory and socially backwards message that women need love interests who can help women with their careers.
Directed by Satram Ramani, “Double XL” had the potential to be a good movie, based on the overall concept: Two plus-sized women meet by chance, quickly become friends, and encourage each other to pursue their career dreams, despite being discriminated against because of their weight. “Double XL” is pretending to be that type of female-empowerment movie. But it’s really a messy junkpile of bad rom-com platitudes pushing the misgyonistic belief that men have to set examples for women on how to be confident and make the right decisions.
“Double XL” (with an uninspired screenplay written by Mudassar Aziz and Sasha Singh) is just another lazy and outdated movie that follows an over-used formula of women acting like whiny ditzes until they have male love interests who come to their rescue and help make their dreams come true. The women scream, cry or pout when things don’t go their way. Their male companions are the voices of reason who give pep talks to the women to help boost the women’s self-esteem and give them advice about their careers.
It should absolutely be applauded when people are emotionally supportive of each other and help each other with their careers. But when a movie defines it along gender lines, as one gender being “smarter” (intellectually and emotionally) than another gender, that’s when it’s sexist and problematic. People who have the misfortune of watching “Double XL” will see that the women in the movie are always seeking advice and help from men, but men don’t seek advice or help from women. And that’s why “Double XL” is a fake feminist film.
“Double XL” begins with the biggest stereotype of stereotypical romantic comedies: A woman having a fantasy about meeing a handsome Prince Charming. In this opening scene, Rajshri Trivedi (played by Huma Qureshi) is in her bed, dreaming about being at a fancy gala, where cricket star Shikhar Dhawan (playing a version of himself) sees her and asks her to dance. Her dream is interrupted by the shrieking of her demanding mother (played by Alka Kaushal), who is in the room and ordering Rajshri to wake up.
Rajshri, who is in her mid-30s, lives with her parents and paternal grandmother (played by Shobha Khote) in the rural town of Meerut, India. Rajshri’s father (played by Kanwaljeet Singh) is passive and quiet—the complete opposite of his wife. Rajshri’s mother is the worst stereotype of an angry and pushy mother who demands that her daughter should be a wife and mother by a certain age. And if the daughter can’t meet this demand, she will be considered a failure.
Rajshri knows that she’s not ready to get married at this point in her life, but her mother won’t listen to her and insists on matchmaking for Rajshri. Needless to say, Rajshri has not found a good match with any of the suitors who are introduced to her. The movie shows her having an awkward “date” with a guy named Tito, who is visiting the Trivedi home in a matchmaking setup from Rajshri’s mother.
When Rajshri asks Tito what his dreams and goals are, he says he wants to open a ball bearing shop. Rajshri tells Tito that she wants to be a TV sportscaster (cricket is her favorite sport), and she shows him some test sportscasting videos that she wrote and directed herself. Tito then tactfully tells Rajshri that he’s not attracted to her body size. And then, he bluntly tells her that if she wants to be a TV sportscaster, “you’ll have to lose weight for that too, because the rest of the world is an idiot like me.”
Meanwhile, in New Delhi, another plus-sized woman in her 30s is in a clothing store, where she’s trying on a blouse that’s size XL. She’s an aspiring fashion designer named Saira Khanna (played by Sonakshi Sinha), who is very outspoken about her opinions. Sara wears a lip ring and has green streaks in her hair, so she doesn’t look like a traditional fashion designer. Her tacky choice of clothes that she wears is also questionable for someone who wants to be taken seriously as a fashion designer, but that’s a whole other issue.
The blouse that she’s trying on is too small for her arm area, which causes the blouse to rip. Saira is infuriated because she thinks any blouse labeled size XL should automatically fit her. She marches over to the store’s sales clerk, tells him why the blouse ripped, and she yells at the sales clerk for mislabeling the blouse as XL. Saira also refuses to pay for the ripped blouse because she says that it’s the store’s fault that the blouse didn’t fit her.
It’s misplaced anger, because more than likely it was the blouse’s manufacturer, not the store, that mislabeled the blouse. As an aspiring fashion designer, Saira should know that, but this movie makes the leading female characters look very ignorant about the industries where they want to have professional careers. Saira lectures the store clerk about how she’s a fashion designer, and she would never label a blouse as XL if it’s too small for her to wear. The store clerk sheepishly says he’s sorry and admits that maybe the blouse size was mislabeled.
After going on that ill-tempered rant, Saira gets some good news at home: A company is interested in investing in her work so that she can possibly start her own fashion label. She has to go to London for this job opportunity, and she accepts this offer with no hesitation.
Saira is next seen at a house party while she’s still in India. Her boyfriend Viren (played by Danish Pandor) is also at the party, and she can’t wait to find him to tell him the good news. While he’s in another area of the house, Saira overhears a younger woman named Nomi (played by Isha Dhillon) cattily tells some female friends that Viren is just using Saira for money and sex, and that Saira can’t get a better man because of Saira’s physical appearance. Saira looks hurt by these remarks, but she doesn’t let Nomi know she overheard this insult.
Saira has a best friend named Meera (played by Dolly Singh), who doesn’t approve of Viren and thinks Saira should break up with him. At the party, Saira finds Viren and tells him the good news about the job opportunity in London. He is very happy for her and congratulates her. But Saira looks like she’s secretly bothered about what she heard Nomi say about her.
Meanwhile, in Meerut, Rajshri can no longer take the pressure from her mother to find a husband. During a heated argument, Rajshri finally tells her meddling mother that she wants to have a career as a TV sportscaster, and she’s going to pursue this career in London. Her mother thinks it’s a foolish dream.
But they both make a compromise and a bet with each other: If Rajshri can accomplish her goal of becoming a professional sportscaster within a year, then her mother will stop pressuring Rajshri to get married. If Rajshri can’t accomplish this goal within a year, then Rajshri has to move back to India and let her mother find a husband for Rajshri.
Saira and Rajshri both end up in London, but they don’t meet each other immediately. Saira has an older brother (played by Sachin Shroff) who lives in London, so she stays with him while she’s there. Rajshri is staying with her married aunt named Rolie Mausi (played by Swati Tarar), who welcomes Rajshri with open arms.
As soon as viewers find out that Saira has a best friend who doesn’t like or trust Saira’s boyfriend, it should come as no surprise what happens next. Saira has to end her trip to London sooner than she expected. When she’s back in India, she goes over to Viren’s home for an unannounced visit. He looks very surprised to see her and is reluctant to let her inside.
Saira insists on going inside and is suspicious about why Viren is nervous. He tells her nothing is wrong, but she goes from room to room, to find out if Viren is hiding anything from her. And sure enough: A woman is hiding outside on the bedroom balcony, wearing nothing but a blanket. This no-longer-secret lover is Nomi, the woman from the party who was insulting Saira.
Saira predictably has a screeching meltdown, while Viren tries to appease her. His lies and pleas don’t work. Saira, who thought she was going to spend the rest of her life with Viren, breaks up with him. And then she says out loud that she should’ve listened to what her best friend Meera said about Viren.
Saira goes back to London, where she is rejected to be the director of a fashion travelogue because of her physical appearance. Around the same time, Rajshri goes on an open audition to be a sportscaster, but she’s also rejected because of her body size. It also doesn’t help that Rajshri doesn’t dress like a professional sportscaster during a job interview but dresses more like she’s a frumpy schoolteacher or a nanny.
After these rejections, Saira and Rajshri end up sobbing in the same public restroom. They tell each other why they’re crying and find out that they’ve both experienced discrimination because of their body sizes. And just like that, Saira and Rajshri decide that they’re going to become friends who will help each other fulfill their career dreams.
Saira’s brother works at a TV station, so that’s how Saira meets mild-mannered Srikanth Sreevardhan (played by Mahat Raghavendra), a camera operator who is Tamil and barely fluent in Hindi. Saira has decided to do a video fashion shoot of her fashion designs, so Srikanth has been recommended to her as the camera operator. Srikanth has a co-worker friend named Zorawar Rahmani (played by Zaheer Iqbal), nicknamed Zo, a line producer who is a hyper and talkative partier. Srikanth and Zorawar are both bachelors who don’t have girlfriends.
Even though “Double XL” is ostensibly about Saira and Rajshri helping each other, all the big breaks they get are only because of actions taken by their new male companions. Rajshri unrealistically gets to interview real-life, retired cricket star Kapil Dev (playing himself in the movie) because Zorawar set up the interview. “Double XL” makes a point of mentioning that it was Zorawar’s idea for Rajshri to do the interview, and he took the initiative to arrange for the interview to happen, so that he could give Rajshri a pleasant surprise.
But this accomplishment is tainted, because in order to get the interview, Zorawar lied and said that Rajshri operates an orphanage for 150 children. Kapil thinks he’s doing an interview for a charity. This interview (which is not on TV but recorded for Rajshri’s intended demo reel) becomes the source of some ridiculous hijinks that complicate Rajshri’s sportscaster dreams.
Meanwhile, the storyline about Saira’s fashion career becomes a time-wasting drag where her biggest “challenge” is filming models on the streets of London without a permit. She only chooses slender models for her first fashion shoots. And then, Saira has an “a-ha moment” that you know is coming as soon as the movie had that scene with Saira getting angry about trying on a size XL blouse that was too small for her.
“Double XL” is very lopsided in presenting the storylines of Saira and Rajshri, because Rajshri’s storyline takes up the bulk of the anxiety-ridden “drama” in the movie. Saira has a lot more self-confidence than Rajshri has. Saira’s career struggles aren’t as bleak, because she has a talent to create things on her own and just has to find enough people to buy her designs. Fashion designers (unless they are also models) are not judged as harshly for their physical appearance as people whose job is to be in front of a camera.
By contrast, Rajshri’s TV career goal is entirely dependent on being a hired by a mainstream media company that will judge her on how she looks, including her body size. And there’s also the matter of Rajshri being from a rural area and getting used to living in a big city. Saira has been a resident of a big city for a long time, so her adjustment to being in London is a lot easier than Rajshri’s adjustment. The movie has plenty of moments where Rajshri is depicted as a naïve “country bumpkin.”
With “Double XL” focusing almost all of the career problems and self-confidence issues on Rajshri, Saira’s storyline looks less significant in comparison. The biggest thing that Saira does for Rajshri in her career is predictably give her a fashion makeover. But what does Rajshri really do for Saira’s career? Not much, except tag along at her fashion shoots because Saira asked her.
Because’s Saira’s storyline become so uninteresting and limp—literally limp, because Saira sprains her ankle during a photo shoot—”Double XL tries to spice it up by making Saira annoyed with Zorawar and his irresponsible ways. And when a formulaic movie like “Double XL” has two unmarried people of the opposite sex who get irritated with each other but have to spend a lot of time together, you know where everything is going with this contrived relationship.
Rajshri is so caught up in trying to get a job as a TV sportscaster, she doesn’t notice that Srikanth has quietly become attracted to her. He opens up to Rajshri that his dream is to become a feature-film director. Srikanth says that his father encouraged this dream but didn’t live long enough to see Srikanth fulfill this goal. Srikanth eventually makes a huge move to show his affection and admiration for Rajshri.
One of the major problems with “Double XL” is that the characters are more like caricatures. Viewers with enough life experience and common sense will have a hard time connecting to the four main “Double XL” characters, who all are very immature for their ages. They act more like people in their early-to-mid-20s rather than in their 30s. Rajshri’s storyline is much worse than Saira’s because of all the “only in a movie” fakeness in her plot developments.
Rajshri is also hopelessly ignorant about how the sportscasting industry really works. “Double XL” tries to make this ignorance look like Rajshri is just a sweet, innocent ingenue. But in reality, her ignorance makes her look unprofessional and undeserving of all the lucky breaks that she expects to rapidly come her way, just because she’s in London.
Rajshri gives up too easily, but Srikanth is there to tell her all the right things and improve her confidence. Rajshri knows that her body size could be an obstacle to getting certain jobs, but the movie makes Rajshri use her body size as a self-defeating crutch/excuse for every single failure that she has in life. After a while, this self-pity becomes pathetic. Rather than portraying Rajshri as enterprising and clever, “Double XL” makes her into a “damsel in distress” who needs a man to rescue her—in other words, the opposite of female empowerment.
The movie’s dialogue is very trite and mostly not very funny at all. The acting isn’t much better, although Sinha (as Saira) fares the best out of all the principal cast members when it comes to comedic timing and delivering her lines in a way that tries to look natural. All of the other characters in the movie are either too bland or too obnoxious.
“Double XL” has predictable scenes of Saira and Rajshri complaining to each other about how society can body shame women, especially women who are plus-sized. And what do Saira and Rajshri do to further wallow in their misery? They go to a fast-food place and order as much junk food as they can on the menu.
It’s supposed to be an act of defiance, but what are they trying to prove? No one else in the movie cares that Saira and Rajshri want to binge on junk food. This gluttony scene is the type of “comedy” that “Double XL” is desperately trying to convince viewers is funny, but it’s really a thinly veiled mockery of plus-sized women. “Double XL” gets worse as it goes along until it eventually becomes a thinly veiled mockery of real female empowerment.
T-Series Films released “Double XL” in select U.S. cinemas and in India on November 4, 2022.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Hong Kong, the comedy/drama film “Table for Six” features an all-Asian cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A photographer has a very awkward dinner with his two younger brothers and their girlfriends when he finds out that his middle brother’s new girlfriend is a woman he used to date, and he hasn’t completely gotten over their breakup.
Culture Audience: “Table for Six” will appeal primarily to fans of romantic comedy/dramas that look like they could be stage plays, but the movie tends to try too hard with its slapstick comedy and mushy dramatics.
Pictured clockwise, from upper left: Stephy Tang, Louis Cheung, Ivana Wong and Chan Charm Man in “Table for Six” (Photo courtesy of GSC Movies)
“Table for Six” awkwardly mixes slapstick comedy and sentimental drama with uneven acting. It’s a trite movie where people get angry and uncomfortable about romantic relationships. The movie’s central conflict eventually becomes very stale and tiresome in a film that did not need to drag out for nearly two hours.
Written and directed by Sunny Chan, “Table for Six” (which takes place in Hong Kong) starts out as a jumbled mess as it introduces the six characters who are at the center of the story.
Steve Chan (played by Dayo Wong), a middle-aged photographer who used to be famous, is the eldest of three bachelor brothers. He lives in an apartment that used to be a barbeque pork factory, which he inherited from his deceased parents.
Bernard Chan (played by Louis Cheung, also known as Louis Cheong Kai Chung) is Steve’s stepbrother, who is in his early 40s. Bernard’s biological mother was married to Steve’s biological father.
Lung Chan (played by Chan Charm Man, also known as Peter Chan Charm Man), an aspiring e-sports star in his 30s, is the younger half-brother of Steve and Bernard. Lung and Steve have the same biological father. Lung and Bernard have the same biological mother.
Monica (played by Stephy Tang), a marketing executive, is Steve’s ex-girlfriend and is now Bernard’s girlfriend.
Josephine (played by Ivana Wong), an aspiring chef, is Lung’s girlfriend of 12 years, and she has grown frustrated that he hasn’t proposed marriage to her yet.
Meow Ah (played by Lin Min-Chen), originally from Taiwan, is a model who is a cat enthusiast (she likes to dress in cat-decorated clothes and costumes), who is hired by Lung to be a mascot, and she becomes Steve’s casual girlfriend.
With a few exceptions, “Table for Six” takes place mostly in Steve’s apartment, where he has a home photography studio. Steve prides himself on being an excellent cook who likes to prepare the meals when he has dinner parties. The main conflict in the movie happens at one of these dinner parties.
Before that fateful dinner party happens, “Table for Six” has a flurry of activity that is scrambled together with a lot of sniping back and forth between Lung and Josephine. Lung wants to get rich from e-sports, but so far, he’s basically unemployed and nearly financially broke. “My e-sports team is headed for glory,” he tells Steve. “All we need is funding.”
Josephine is upset because Lung doesn’t have a steady income, which means they can’t really afford to get married. She nags him about it and keeps hinting that she’ll break up with him if he doesn’t find a steady job and propose marriage to her. Lung gets angry because he thinks Josephine doesn’t have enough faith and patience.
Meanwhile, Lung sees that Meow is a popular influencer on social media, so he comes up with the idea to hire her to be the mascot for his e-sports team. He asks Meow to come to Steve’s place for a photo shoot. During this photo shoot, where Meow poses with a kitchen container (which doesn’t make sense if she’s supposed to be an e-sports mascot), she flirts with Steve because she’s had a crush on him since she was a child.
Steve then remembers fan mail that Meow wrote to him years ago, when she signed the letters as Kitty Cat. It’s obvious that Meow wants to date Steve, but he tells her up front that he’s not ready to be in a relationship. That’s because Steve is still heartbroken over the end of his relationship with Monica, whom he considers to be the love of his life. One of the few scenes that takes place outside the apartment shows that Monica is a hard-driving employee who yells at her co-workers if things aren’t up to her standards.
One evening, Steve has a small dinner party with Bernard, Lung and Josephine as guests. But an uninvited guest shows up: Monica. And she drops some bombshell news. She is Bernard’s girlfriend. Monica and Bernard have been dating each other for an unspecified period of time. It’s the first time that Steve finds out about this relationship.
Naturally, Steve is upset, but then he pretends that’s he’s okay with Monica and Bernard dating each other. (Deep down, Steve really isn’t okay with it.) Bernard tells Steve that he’s sorry that he didn’t tell Steve earlier about being in a relationship with Monica. Steve appears to forgive Bernard, but during the course of the movie, Steve’s lingering romantic feelings for Monica, as well as Steve’s resentment toward Bernard, eventually come to the surface.
Because of Lung’s financial problems, Steve generously lets Lung and Josephine move in with him, on the condition that they work for Steve as his assistants. He’s in for a shock when he finds out that Josephine is a huge collector of Hong Kong decorations and trinkets, which she brings with her when she and Lung move into the already cramped apartment. Steve’s surprise about Josephine’s collection is supposed to be a funny sight gag in the movie, but the joke just falls flat.
Most of “Table for Six” is about the love triangle between Steve, Monica and Bernard. Steve has been pining for Monica, and he wants to win her back. Monica seems to show hints that she’s interested in Bernard and Steve. Up until a certain point, Monica keeps people guessing about which brother she will choose. Meanwhile, Lung and Josephine continue to bicker about where their own relationship is headed. As for Meow, she shows up once in a while like a fangirl who wants any type of attention from Steve, even though she eventually finds out that he’s still got feelings for Monica.
All of these love entanglements could have been made into a well-written comedy/drama with clever dialogue, but the movie’s scenes are either very mediocre or they try too hard to have over-the-top physical comedy. There’s a very unrealistic sequence where, during a very petty argument, everyone in the room suddenly starts smashing things. It only seems to be in the movie for some slapstick comedy that looks very ill-placed.
Another problem with this movie is that the chemistry isn’t very believable or appealing between the cast members portraying the couples, who are all mismatched characters. Monica seems to be too selfish and flaky for Bernard and Steve. Meow (who’s about 25 to 30 years younger than Steve) is infatuated with Steve, based more on fan worship than a real romance. Lung and Josephine are the type of argumentative couple who probably shouldn’t get married because they just aren’t very compatible with each other.
What makes “Table for Six” grating is that it becomes repetitive very quickly. It doesn’t help that the conversations are witless and forgettable. None of the acting by the cast is special. The entire movie might have been better as a short film.
After trying to overstuff the plot with the back-and-forth contrivances and friction over the story’s love triangle, “Table for Six” then takes complicated issues and turns them into over-simplified resolutions and schmaltz. It leaves the movie with a tone that’s very off-balance. Some viewers might enjoy this disjointed movie, but others who are looking for a more compelling story, interesting conversations and engaging characters will not be as impressed with “Table for Six.”
GSC Movies released “Table for Six” in select U.S. cinemas on October 28, 2022. The movie was released in China, Hong Kong and Singapore on September 8, 2022.
