Review: ‘Jayeshbhai Jordaar,’ starring Ranveer Singh

June 6, 2022

by Carla Hay

Ranveer Singh, Jia Vaidya and Shalini Pandey in “Jayeshbhai Jordaar” (Photo courtesy of Yash Raj Films)

“Jayeshbhai Jordaar”

Directed by Divyang Thakkar

Hindi with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Gujarat, India, the comedy film “Jayeshbhai Jordaar” features an all-Indian cast of characters representing the working-class and middle class.

Culture Clash: An expectant father of an unborn baby girl goes on the run with his wife and daughter because his sexist father doesn’t want another girl born into the family. 

Culture Audience: “Jayeshbhai Jordaar” will appeal primarily to fans of star Ranveer Singh and absurdist comedies about overcoming anti-female sexism.

Boman Irani in “Jayeshbhai Jordaar” (Photo courtesy of Yash Raj Films)

How far will a father go to save his unborn daughter from a cruel and sexist patriarch, who doesn’t want another girl born into the family? That’s the premise of the absurdist comedy “Jayeshbhai Jordaar,” which makes up for an uneven start with a wacky adventure and positive messages about gender equality rights. It’s movie with a lot of slapstick gags that work well more often than not.

“Jayeshbhai Jordaar” (which takes place in Gujarat, India) is the feature-film debut of writer/director Divyang Thakkar. The movie is a memorable but not outstanding effort, indicating that Thakkar has potential to improve as a filmmaker. In “Jayeshbhai Jordaar,” the title character is Jayesh Patel (played by Ranveer Singh) is a happily married father of a precocious daughter named Siddhi Patel (played by Jia Vaidya), who’s about 7 or 8 years old. Jayesh and his wife Mudra Patel (played by Shalini Pandey) have been married for nine years and are about to expect their second child together. They know from a pre-natal sex determination test (which is illegal in India) that the unborn child will be a girl.

However, Jayesh’s domineering and sexist father Pruthvish Patel (played by Boman Irani) is the village chief who disapproves of another girl being born into the family. How much does he disapprove? He frequently yells and insults Jayesh for not having a son. If that attitude sounds extreme, consider how many societies still teach that boys born into a family are much more important than girls.

Jayesh loves and respects his wife and daughter, but he also lives in fear of his father. Pruthvish has such control over the family that Jayesh is certain that Pruthvish will force Mudra to get an abortion when Pruthvish finds out the unborn child is a girl. Jayesh’s mother/Pruthvish’s wife Jia Vaidya (played by Jashoda Patel) is predictably passive and goes along with whatever her husband wants.

And if it isn’t made clear enough that Pruthvish has misogynistic beliefs, it’s shown in a scene that takes place with a gathering of citizens in the village square, where Pruthvish hears concerns from the villagers and decides what to do about these concerns. A teenage girl stands up and voices a complaint about girls at her school being harassed by drunk boys near the school. The girl suggests that alcohol be be banned. Pruthvish’s horrific response is to say that soap should be banned instead. “If our girls use fragrant soaps, it’s bound to arouse our boys,” he declares.

One of the not-very-funny-aspects of “Jayeshbhai Jordaar” is how Jayeshbhai pretends to commit domestic violence on his wife, in orderto give his father the impression that Jayeshbhai has “control” over his marriage. Mudra and Siddhi are complicit and participate in this deception. Fortunately, this awkwardly staged domestic violence angle is not a big part of the movie.

Domestic violence is also brought up because Jayesh’s sister’s Preeti (played by Deeksha Joshi) is trapped in an unhappy marriage where her husband Dhaval physically and emotionally abuses her. Preeti later plays a valuable role in a pivotal part of the movie. Needless to say, she’s not the meek and passive person that some people in the village might think she is.

Because “Jayeshbhai Jordaar” is a screwball comedy, a lot of hijinks and hysteria ensue over what is going to happen to this unborn baby. Jayesh and Mudra very much want this child, but Jayesh is terrified of being disowned by his father and of any harm coming to the baby. And therefore, Jayesh comes up with a plan to go into hiding with Mudra and Siddhi.

It’s enough to say that Jayeshbhai pretends to be kidnapped by Mudra, but he actually goes on a road trip with Mudra and Siddhi. Thinking that Jayesh has been kidnapped, Pruthvish and other men in the village go in hot pursuit. There are more antics (some more amusing than others) where Jayesh tries to keep the lie going, including creating a new identity called Jayeshbhai Jordaar.

“Jayeshbhai Jordaar” has very good casting, which is one of the main reasons why this movie can appeal to audiences. Singh, Vaidya and Pandey are very believable as this trio of “runaway” parents and their daughter. Their comedic performances have great timing and nuances. They also handle the more dramatic scenes impressively.

As the main antagonist, Irani portrays Pruthvish as a cartoonish villain. However, the movie has just enough realistic characterizations of Pruthvish to make a point that there are many men who really do have the same demeaning attitude toward women—and it’s not an exaggeration for the movie. Rather than condemn Pruthvish as completely evil, “Jayeshbhai Jordaar” wants people to understand that men with this misogyny aren’t strangers, but they can be in anyone’s family or community.

Pruthvish can be laughed at or disliked by viewers, but can he be redeemed? The movie answers that question in ways that are predictable, but “Jayeshbhai Jordaar” seems to be making a sincere effort in its message of taking a stand against gender discrimnation—even if it will make some loved ones uncomfortable. “Jayeshbhai Jordaar” has a lot of over-the-top comedy to convey that message, but it’s one that viewers can take to heart and also get some laughs from the intended jokes.

Yash Raj Films released “Jayeshbhai Jordaar” in select U.S. cinemas and in India on May 13, 2022.

Review: ‘F3: Fun and Frustration,’ starring Venkatesh Daggubati and Varun Tej

June 6, 2022

by Carla Hay

Venkatesh Daggubati, Varun Tej and Mehreen Pirzada in “F3: Fun and Frustration” (Photo courtesy of Sri Venkateswara Creations)

“F3: Fun and Frustration”

Directed by Anil Ravipudi

Telugu with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Hyderabad, India, the comedy film “F3: Fun and Frustration” features an all-Indian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: Two men with financial problems come up with “get rich quick” schemes, but their plans keep getting ruined for various reasons.

Culture Audience: “F3: Fun and Frustration” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching hyperactive silliness in a two-and-a-half-hour movie.

Murali Sharma in “F3: Fun and Frustration” (Photo courtesy of Sri Venkateswara Creations)

“F3: Fun and Frustration” offers very little fun and a lot of frustration. It’s a witless comedy, manically told with terrible acting, in an irritating story that’s overstretched to two-and-a-half hours. What makes this movie even more difficult to watch is that it has no self-awareness about how bad it is. “F3: Fun and Frustration” tries to cram in as many dumb ideas as possible, thereby making the story lurch around from one horrible subplot to the next.

Written and directed by Anil Ravipudi, “F3: Fun and Frustration” is a sequel to the 2019 film “F2: Fun and Frustration.” Unfortunately, “F3: Fun and Frustration” gets trapped in a pitfall that plagues many sequels: In trying to surpass its predecessor, the sequel overstuffs the plot with too many things, thereby lacking a real focus and leaving major plot holes in its wake.

“F3: Fun and Frustration,” just like its predecessor, is supposed to be a wacky comedy. But “wacky” should not mean “incoherent.” The only consistent thing about the movie is that two friends named Venky (played by Venkatesh Daggubati) and Varun (played by Varun Tej, also known as Konidela Varun Tej) are still two buffoons who get caught up impersonating people as part of their foolish schemes. In “F2: Fun and Frustration,” Venky and Varun had false identities in order to prevent their love interests from getting married to other people. In “F3: Fun and Frustration,” the two pals assume fake personas as part of a con game to get rich quick.

In the beginning of “F3: Fun and Frustration” Venky is an agent working for the Regional Transport Office in Hyderabad, India. He’s married to Harika (played by Tamannaah Bhatia), who has a large and meddling family whose surname is Chambal. Venky has a strained relationship with his father (played by Goparaju Ramana) and his father’s second wife (played by Tulasi), who have four other children together. Venky’s mother died when Venky was a child, so Venky feels resentment about his father’s second marriage and the new family that his father started with Venky’s stepmother.

Venky lost almost all of his money when he invested in a restaurant owned by Harika’s family. As shown in a brief flashback, the day that restaurant opened, it had the misfortune of a food inspector eating at the restaurant and getting food poisoning. Venky says, “Our opening day became our closing day.”

Meanwhile, Venky’s best friend Varun is also having financial problems because he invested in the failed restaurant too. Varun is a fairly successful businessman who has won awards for his business skills, but his reputation becomes tainted because of his association with a criminal uncle named Katthi Seenu (played by Sunil Varma), a local thug and extortionist. In order to ease his financial woes, Varun decides he needs to find a rich woman to marry.

This is where the movie starts to get stupid: Varun meets a woman in a restaurant named Honey (played by Mehreen Pirzada), whom he thinks is a rich woman. Because Varun has a stutter, he asks Venky to pose as a rich business heir named Varun, in order to court Honey. Venky has night blindness, so when he meets Honey for a date at night, he doesn’t recognize that Honey is Harika’s sister.

Meanwhile, a police officer named Nagaraju (played by Rajendra Prasad) becomes a local hero for discovering an illegal election fund in cash worth two crores, which is about $258,000 ( U.S. dollars) in early 2020s money. Many people in the story end up competing with each other to find the cash after it gets stolen. Take a wild guess who two of those people are.

“F3: Fun and Frustration” also has moronic plot developments involving a successful businessman named Anand Prasad (played by Murali Sharma), who owns a toy manufacturing company called JK Industries. Varun and Venky see Anand doing a TV interview lamenting over his son, whom he says ran away from home 20 years ago, when the boy was 10 years old. Anand says that his son has been missing ever since.

It doesn’t take long for Varun and Venky to come up with a plan to impersonate the son. But these two dimwits end up impersonating the son at the same time, along with Harika (who’s disguised as a man) and a few other people who show up at Anand’s palace pretending to be the long-lost son. It gets worse. Anand apparently can’t decide which of these very different-looking people could be his son, so he decides these people claiming to be his long-lost son will enter a toy-making contest for JK Industries. Whoever sells the most toys will be all the proof he needs of who is his son.

And what about the mistaken identity of Honey? What about the cash that Nagaraju found and has now gone missing? These subplots get tangled up with others until everything because a giant mess that’s made worse by the entire cast mugging and over-acting for the cameras in desperate attempts to be funny. Absolutely no one in the cast does a performance that can save this train wreck of a movie.

It would be an understatement to say that the overly long “F3: Fun and Frustration” has atrocious editing. This horrific movie seems to go on and on with more idiocy piled on top of more idiocy, until all hope is buried that this movie will find some way of being coherent and engaging. It’s as if the filmmakers think that distracting viewers with more plot twists that insult viewers’ intelligence somehow will make the movie funnier. After trying and failing to be a hilarious screwball comedy for most of the movie, “F3: Fun and Frustration” has a sappy and maudlin ending that’s as phony as the personas used in the movie’s pathetic con games.

Sri Venkateswara Creations released “F3: Fun and Frustration” in select U.S. cinemas and in India on May 27, 2022.

Review: ‘Amalgama,’ starring Manolo Cardona, Miguel Rodarte, Tony Dalton and Stephanie Cayo

June 5, 2022

by Carla Hay

Miguel Rodarte, Tony Dalton, Manolo Cardona and Stephanie Cayo in “Amalgama” (Photo courtesy of Soul Pictures)

“Amalgama”

Directed by Carlos Cuarón

Spanish with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Mexico’s Mayan Riviera region, the comedy/drama film “Amalgama” features an all-Latin cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: During a trip to attend a dental convention, four dentists share a beach house and have conflicts over past and present rivalries and jealousies.

Culture Audience: “Amalgama” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s cast members, but even these fans’ patience will be tested by this movie’s messy and uninteresting story about adult relationships.

Miguel Rodarte, Tony Dalton, Manolo Cardona and Stephanie Cayo in “Amalgama” (Photo courtesy of Soul Pictures)

Utterly pointless and often tiresome, “Amalgama” is a comedy/drama that fails to be funny or intriguing. It’s essentially about four annoying dentists who play mind games and argue with each other while sharing a beach house during a business trip. Too many scenes in “Amalgama” seem to be building up to something interesting, but then ultimately go nowhere or just end up falling flat.

Possibly the best thing about “Amalgama” is the gorgeous beach scenery, since the movie was filmed on location in Mexico’s Mayan Riviera region. The movie’s insufferable characters and their time-wasting self-indulgences ruin the movie because of the film’s lousy screenplay and lackluster direction. Carlos Cuarón directed “Amalgama,” a forgettable flop that he co-wrote with Luis Usabiaga.

In “Amalgama,” an annual convention for dental professionals is taking place on the Mayan Riviera. The movie begins with convention attendees gathered for a speech by Dr. Hugo Vera (played by Miguel Rodarte), who also gives a visual presentation about a groundbreaking procedure to replace rotting teeth. Dr. Vera’s presentation is very well-received by the clapping audience, until he’s interrupted by a younger dentist named Dr. Avelino Magaña (played by Francis Cruz), who angrily stands up in the crowd and accuses Dr. Vera of stealing his treatment idea.

Dr. Vera vehemently denies it, but the presentation comes to an abrupt and awkward end. This accusation becomes the talk of the convention. Unfortunately, this intriguing part of the story gets completely ignored for most of the movie until it’s rushed in again as an afterthought and addressed in a flimsy and not-very-believable way.

After this speech, several of the convention attendees attend a cocktail party at a restaurant/bar. Four of these party attendees end up talking to each other and decide to share a beach house for the remainder of their business trip. At this beach house, these four dentists (and people who watch this movie) go through various levels of discomfort. It doesn’t help that all four of these dentists are unlikable in different ways. The more time that viewers spend with these four egomaniacs, the less likable these characters become.

Here are the four blowhards at the center of the story:

  • Dr. José María Chema Gómez (played by Manolo Cardona) is a talkative neurotic who is either bisexual or who doesn’t put a label on his sexuality. It’s mentioned in the story that he’s had romances with men and women. He’s currently in a relationship with a very jealous and possessive live-in boyfriend named Omar (played by Alejandro Calva), an older man who is paranoid that José is going to cheat on him. Omar and José have been together for 12 years, and their relationship has reached a crossroads because of Omar’s mistrust.
  • Dr. Elena Durán (played by Stephanie Cayo) is a bachelorette having an affair with her married boss Conrado Barona (voiced by Mario Cersósimo), who is also at the convention but is never seen in the movie. Elena and Conrado communicate by phone calls or text messages throughout the movie. Elena doesn’t think that being Conrado’s mistress means that she can’t get involved with anyone else. Elena (who thinks she’s quite the seductress) openly talks about being interested in dating other people.
  • Dr. Saúl Bravo (played by Tony Dalton) is a married father who loves his wife Tamara (played by Ximena Herrera), nicknamed Tammy. But ever since their young son Ricky was born, the couple’s sex life has dwindled. Saúl has a wandering eye and seems to be thinking about cheating on his wife. During the course of the movie, Saúl (who’s the only one of the four dentists who’s married and a parent) gets teased by the others for being the “boring husband and father” in the group. At times, Saúl tries to prove them wrong.
  • Dr. Hugo Vera is a bachelor who can be considered a “mama’s boy.” He lives with his ailing mother, who has Hugo at her beck and call. A home nurse aide helps take care of the mother’s medical needs, but Hugo and his mother are extremely co-dependent on each other for emotional needs. During the course of the movie, Hugo and his mother call each other multiple times. He’s worried about her health, while his mother always wants to know what Hugo is doing. Needless to say, Hugo’s close attachment to his mother has negatively affected his love life. He often gets teased by Saúl because Hugo is a lovelorn bachelor who has a mother with too much control over him.

Hugo and Saúl have resentments and rivalries that go back several years. This tension has to do with Saúl and Hugo competing over the same woman and the same job in the past. Therefore, expect to see several scenes with Hugo and Saúl bickering as their bad feelings toward each other frequently erupt.

José and Elena are acquaintances who know each other from attending this convention and seeing each other at other professional events. On this particular trip, they flirt with each other and show a definite sexual attraction to each other. In fact, at various points in the story, all three men show a sexual attraction to Elena, who uses this lust to manipulate them.

At the cocktail party, all four of these dentists end up talking together in a group when Saúl mentions that he’s staying at a great beach house (with private access to a beach) that’s owned by a friend who’s letting Saúl stay in the house while the friend is away. Saúl tells the other three dentists that there’s plenty of room in the house for all four them and that the house is a much better environment than a boring hotel. The other three eagerly accept Saúl’s invitation and go to the house, which is on a private island, so they have to travel by boat to get there.

Once they get to the house, the ego posturing starts between all four people. Elena knows she’s a very attractive woman, so she delights in getting the men sexually aroused when she’s walking or lounging around in a skimpy bikini, sometimes topless. Hugo and Saúl have several arguments, where they make digs at each other about their personal lives. Meanwhile, José and Elena flirt with each other some more, in a tedious “will they or won’t they hook up” subplot.

During this heavy flirtation, José is troubled by a series of phone calls that he gets from insecure Omar, who becomes enraged when he finds out about José’s change of plans to stay at a beach house with three people whom Omar doesn’t know. Omar irrationally accuses José of being at the house for orgies with these other dentists. This overblown drama with Omar leads to some occurrences that go from bad to worse.

Before the melodrama kicks into overdrive, there’s a badly staged plot contrivance of the four temporary housemates getting stranded on a boat that doesn’t have an emergency radio. They get stuck in the ocean when the boat’s engine suddenly stops working, and there’s no one else or any land in sight. Foolishly, these four dentists didn’t bring enough food with them in case they could get stranded for several hours, but they have enough alcoholic beverages to quench their thirst. And, of course, getting stranded on a boat while drinking alcohol leads to more arguments about how they’re going to get out of this predicament.

And there’s also a dull subplot about Elena’s boss/lover Conrado trying to get in touch with her because she has documents that he needs her to email for his upcoming lecture at the convention. But surprise! This remote beach area doesn’t have WiFi access, and the cell phone service is erratic and unreliable. Conrado’s wife (who’s never seen in the movie) has also unexpectedly shown up at the convention, so that affects how he’s communicating with Elena, who starts to wonder if its worth it to stay in this affair with Conrado.

“Amalgama” could have been a much better movie if there had been more purpose to the story than showing four people arguing a lot, with much of the conflicts coming from sexual tension. The movie predictably has some secrets that are revealed, but those secrets are utterly predictable and underwhelming. None of the acting in this movie is special. “Amalgama” is about four people who went to this getaway island for a retreat, but viewers of “Amalgama” will want to get away from these four unpleasant people as fast as possible.

Soul Pictures released “Amalgama” in select U.S. cinemas on April 15, 2022. The movie was released in Mexico in 2021.

Review: ‘The Phantom of the Open,’ starring Mark Rylance, Sally Hawkins and Rhys Ifans

June 2, 2022

by Carla Hay

Mark Rylance in “The Phantom of the Open” (Photo by Nick Wall/Sony Pictures Classics)

“The Phantom of the Open”

Directed by Craig Roberts

Culture Representation: Taking place from the 1970s the mid-1980s, in various parts of England and briefly in the United States, the comedy/drama film “The Phantom of the Open” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few black people) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Based on a true story, middle-aged golf enthusiast Maurice Flitcroft, who’s not very good at playing golf, cons his way into playing in various golf tournaments, often under various alias and disguises. 

Culture Audience: “The Phantom of the Open” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Mark Rylance; British movies that blend comedy and drama; and well-done movies about underdog sports stories.

Mark Rylance, Sally Hawkins, Christian Lees and Jonah Lees in “The Phantom of the Open” (Photo by Nick Wall/Sony Pictures Classics)

“The Phantom of the Open” tells the real-life story of British golf rogue Maurice Flitcroft with a charming mix of droll comedy and heartwarming drama. It’s not really an “against all odds” story but more of an “against elitist institutions” story. That’s because Flitcroft (who was not a talented golf player, by his own admission) knew he was unlikely to win any of the tournaments that he entered. He just wanted to prove that someone like himself deserved a chance of getting into these tournaments in the first place.

Directed by Craig Roberts and written by Simon Farnaby, “The Phantom of the Open” is a “root for the underdog” movie that’s led by a thoroughly entertaining performance by Mark Rylance as working-class Flitcroft, who schemed up different ways to enter golf tournaments, even when he was banned from them. The movie’s screenplay is based on the 2010 nonfiction book “The Phantom of the Open: Maurice Flitcroft, the World’s Worst Golfer,” written by Scott Murray and Farnaby. “The Phantom of the Open” movie touches on issues of social classes and the barriers involved in becoming a professional golfer. However, the story is mostly about the lengths that some people will go to if they’re very determined to pursue their dreams, and they come up against a system that wants to exclude them.

“The Phantom of the Open” takes place from the 1970s to the mid-1980s, an era before the Internet as we know it existed. It’s one of the reasons why Flitcroft was able to get away with a lot of his shenanigans when he disguised himself and used various aliases to enter golf tournaments where he was banned. It would be hard to imagine anyone being able to get away with the same things at professional golf tournaments now, when computer technology and information on the Internet can be used to verify people’s identities.

And that’s why the movie has a quaint tone to it, because it’s very much a story of a bygone era. “The Phantom of the Open,” which has voiceover narration from the Maurice Flitcroft character, begins by showing a brief introduction of his first claim to fame: He entered the British Open in 1976, and became notorious for being one of the worst-scoring players ever in that tournament.

The movie then segues into Maurice, who has an uncomplicated and soft-spoken personality, talking about his background in his hometown of Barrow-in-Furness, England. (He was born on November 23, 1929, and he died at the age of 77 on March 24, 2007.) At the time of Maurice’s golf antics, he worked as a crane operator/driver at a shipyard. Maurice says that he was raised to believe that working in the shipyard was his main job option, because it’s the same type of job that employed his father and Maurice’s paternal grandfather.

Maurice’s teenage years were interrupted during World War II, when he was sent to live with relatives in Scotland, because Maurice’s parents thought it would be safer for him to live in Scotland instead of England. (Tommy Fallon portrays an underage Maurice in these flashbacks.) After World War II ended, Maurice moved back to Barrow-in-Furness and started working as “shipyard fodder,” which he thought was his destiny.

While visiting an employment agency, Maurice met an agency employee named Jean Patterson (played by Sally Hawkins), a mild-mannered romantic, who eventually became his wife. The movie breezes through their sweet and simple whirlwind courtship, where Maurice tells single mother Jean that he is happy to raise her son Michael as his own son. At the time Maurice and Jean began dating and got married, Michael (played by Austin Griffin) was about 6 or 7 years old.

Jean is grateful for this acceptance because she’s often been shamed by other members of society for having a child out of wedlock. Jean tells Maurice that the teachers at Michael’s school would often call Michael a “bastard” and describe Jean as a “whore.” Michael’s biological father (who is not named in the movie) is described as a deadbeat dad who abandoned Jean and Michael and is no longer in their lives. Maurice and Jean get married and have two biological children together: identical twins named Gene and James. In her spare time, Jean runs a theater group for wayward and underprivileged children.

The movie then fast-forwards to 1975. Maurice is now 45 years old. Michael (played by Jake Davies) is now in his 20s. Twin brothers Gene (played by Christian Lees) and James (played by Jonah Lees) are in their late teens. Michael has a college degree and is working as a manager at the shipyard. Gene and James have become obsessed with disco dancing and are determined to win as many disco dancing contests as possible.

Maurice will soon have his own obsession: golf. While watching Tom Watson win the 1975 Open Championship on TV, Maurice becomes fascinated by the game. It’s Watson’s first major golf title. And it’s a transformative experience for Maurice, who soon begins to have fantasies of being a professional golfer. These dreams inspire Maurice to set a goal of winning the 1976 British Open.

It’s perhaps not a coincidence that Maurice starts thinking about becoming a golfer when he hears that there will be layoffs at the shipyard because the shipyard will becoming nationalized under the British government. Because of his age, Maurice assumes that he will be one of the laid-off employees who will be considered “redundant”—and not even having a son as a shipyard manager can save Maurice’s job. While bracing himself for possibly losing his shipyard job, Maurice becomes more and more fixated on becoming a professional golfer.

Jean has this to say to Maurice about his golf dreams: “I know you made sacrifices for us, Maurice. It’s your turn now.” Maurice asks her, “For what?” Jean answers, “It’s up to you now. I can’t think of everything.” Jean also encourages Gene and James to pursue their dreams of becoming world champion disco dancers.

A major problem for Maurice is that he needs to be sponsored by a certified golfing membership club in order to be eligible for a tournament. And all the golfing clubs have fees that he can’t afford. He also can’t afford a coach, so Maurice decides to teach himself golf. When Maurice tries to practice at the Cumbria Country Golf Course, he’s essentially kicked out by the members who don’t want him there and because what Maurice is doing is considered trespassing.

Maurice might be quiet, but he has a steely determination of going back to places where he’s not welcome and finding a way to do what he wants. It’s a personality characteristic that defines Maurice’s repeated pattern of sneaking into golf tournaments as a player. Maurice gets help from Gene, James and a shipyard co-worker friend named Cliff (played by Mark Lewis Jones), who all act as Maurice’s caddies at various times. However, as Gene and James get more involved in competitive disco dancing (and the twins win quite a few contests and go on tour), they have to travel and become less involved in Maurice’s golfing activities.

At the 1976 British Open, Maurice has a spectacularly bad performance at this tournament that gets him a lot of media attention. After his losing scores eliminate him from the tournament, Maurice, Jean and the twins have a house party with Maurice’s friends, to celebrate that Maurice made it to the British Open. But the party is marred by bad news when Michael shows up to inform Maurice that Maurice has been laid off from the shipyard.

People start to look into how Maurice got into the British Open in the first place, including Lloyd Donavan (played by Ash Tandon), a reporter from The Sun who interviews Maurice for a big story. And that’s how it’s discovered that Maurice lied on his British Open application by saying he’s a professional golfer. This lie is enough to get Maurice banned from other golf tournaments.

Predictably, there’s a chief antagonist who wants to make sure that Maurice remains permanently banned. This nemesis is Keith MacKenzie (played by Rys Ifans), secretary of the Royal and Ancient Golf Society, who is a golf judging official at several tournaments in England. Keith has a like-minded colleague named John Pegg (played by Tim Steed), who is also a golf judging official.

During the 1976 British Open, Keith saw how badly Maurice was failing and urged him to quit the tournament, but Maurice refused. As far as Keith is concerned, Maurice is making a mockery of professional golf and is an embarrassment to the sport. However, Maurice becomes somewhat of a folk hero with the general public, and this notoriety fuels his desire to keep entering these golf tournaments.

“The Phantom of the Open” then shows Maurice’s antics when he enters these golf tournaments under different alias and disguises. His laughably bad wigs, moustaches and fake accents are jokes unto themselves. He inevitably gives himself away by continuing to score badly in these tournaments. The movie gets a little messy and unfocused when it goes into a subplot of how the twins’ dancing competitions are almost parallel to Maurice’s golf misadventures.

What’s more interesting and handled in a more touching way than the twins’ disco dancing is the increasingly fractured relationship that Maurice and Michael have because of Maurice’s golf hijinks. Michael wants to move up the business ladder in his shipyard management position, so he’s embarrassed by what Maurice is doing. Michael also seems to be ashamed of his working-class family, since he downplays or tries to hide his working-class roots when he’s in the company of the shipyard executives who come from more privileged backgrounds. At times, Michael also denies that he’s related to Maurice, even though Flitcroft is a very uncommon surname.

Whether or not Maurice and Michael are able to mend their relationship is shown in the movie. All of the cast members give admirable performances, but the supporting characters essentially are written to react to whatever Maurice is doing. And because Rylance gives a compelling and engaging performance, most of what makes “The Phantom of the Open” watchable has to do with him. It’s not a movie that’s going to change the world, but it’s a story that provides amusing and uplifting entertainment in telling this story of a very unique person.

Sony Pictures Classics will release “The Phantom of the Open” in select U.S. cinemas on June 3, 2022. The movie was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland on March 18, 2022. “The Phantom of the Open” will be released on digital and VOD on July 8, 2022. The movie is set for release on Blu-ray and DVD on August 30, 2022.

Review: ‘Fire Island’ (2022), starring Joel Kim Booster, Bowen Yang, Conrad Ricamora and Margaret Cho

May 31, 2022

by Carla Hay

Pictured clockwise, from left to right: Bowen Yang, Tomás Matos, Matt Rogers, Torian Miller, Margaret Cho and Joel Kim Booster in “Fire Island” (Photo by Jeong Park/Searchlight Pictures/Hulu)

“Fire Island” (2022)

Directed by Andrew Ahn

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily on New York state’s Fire Island, the comedy film “Fire Island” features a racially diverse cast of LGBTQ characters (Asian, white, Latino and African American) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A group of gay male friends, with some help from their older lesbian friend, navigate issues related to social class and race in the dating scene of Fire Island, a longtime vacation destination for LGBTQ people. 

Culture Audience: “Fire Island” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in LGBTQ romantic comedies that mix classic story themes with modern and adult-oriented sensibilities.

James Scully, Nick Adams and Conrad Ricamora in “Fire Island” (Photo by Jeong Park/Searchlight Pictures/Hulu)

The smart and sassy comedy “Fire Island” doesn’t hold back in portraying dating issues from the perspectives of gay men who are often racially underrepresented in mainstream American movies. “Fire Island” is loosely inspired by Jane Austen’s 1813 novel “Pride and Prejudice,” but the movie is bound to become its own kind of classic for how it vibrantly depicts the real Fire Island’s hookup culture and the families by choice who flock to the island for fun and pleasure-seeking. The movie’s talented and appealing cast—along with assured direction from Andrew Ahn and an engaging screenplay from “Fire Island” co-star Joel Kim Booster—will make instant fans of this hilarious adult-oriented comedy that serves up uncomfortable truths with some sentimentality about love and friendship.

People with even the most basic knowledge of “Pride and Prejudice” know that its protagonist character (Elizabeth Bennet) prides herself on being strong-willed and independent-minded. She isn’t looking for love, but she finds it with Mr. Darcy, whom she intensely dislikes when she first meets him, because she thinks Mr. Darcy is standoffish and rude. Meanwhile, wealth and social class affect how Elizabeth, Mr. Darcy and other people in their world go about looking for love or arranged relationships.

In “Fire Island,” the protagonist/narrator is Noah (played by Kim Booster), a strong-willed and independent-minded nurse who has a close-knit found family that he vacations with at New York state’s Fire Island, a well-known gathering place for LGBTQ people. Noah is single and not really looking for love, but he’s open to finding love. He’s also open about not believing in monogamy.

Noah and all of his closest friends are openly queer, and they go to Fire Island as an annual tradition. Noah’s Fire Island pals are in the same 30s age group as he is, except for Erin (played by Margaret Cho), an outspoken “lesbian queen” in her 50s, whom Noah and his gay male friends think of as “the closest thing we have to a mother.” Erin owns the house where they stay on Fire Island. All of the people in Noah’s Fire Island clique are also single and available.

The other men in the group include introverted Howie (played by Bowen Yang), who is a graphic designer at a tech startup company in San Francisco; fun-loving Luke (played by Matt Rogers); flamboyant Keegan (played by Tomás Matos); and easygoing Max (played by Torian Miller). Noah is closest to Howie, whom he’s known longer than anyone else in the group. Howie used to live in New York before moving to San Francisco for his current job. Noah mentions that he and Howie were once both kicked out of the same theater group. A flashback also shows that Howie and Noah also used to be servers at the same restaurant.

Howie is the only one in the group who doesn’t live in New York state, so Noah and Howie try to make the most of the times that they are able to see each other in person. Noah and Howie both talk openly about their experiences of being Asian in environments where there are mostly white people. As Noah says in a voiceover near the beginning of the movie, “race, money and abs” are what separate the classes of gay men—and he says that’s especially true for Fire Island.

Howie, who is 30 years old when this story takes place, is shy and inexperienced when it comes to dating. Howie (who rarely dates) often laments that he’s never had a serious boyfriend, and he often feels that he isn’t physically attractive enough to get any of the men he wants. By contrast, Noah considers himself to be a gay dating expert who’s confident about his dating skills and personality. During this vacation, Noah tells anyone who’ll listen that he will find a way to make sure that Howie “gets laid” during this Fire Island vacation. Noah advises Howie, “You don’t need a boyfriend. You just need to learn to protect yourself.”

Fire Island is home to many affluent people who throw big parties. When Noah and his friends travel by ferry to Fire Island, Noah mentions in a voiceover what the social constructs are at Fire Island and how he and his friends are perceived by certain people. Noah is well-aware that he and his group of friends would be considered “poor” by the standards of many Fire Island people, because Noah says that he and his friends have very little chance of owning property, based on their salaries.

And the race issue comes up many times in subtle and not-so-subtle ways when Noah and his friends go to parties where most of the people are white. The movie makes a point of showing how some white people at these parties stare at Noah and his friends as if they’re party crashers who don’t belong there. Some of the snobs snootily ask, “Can I help you?,” which Noah says is code for people really not wanting to help but wanting to know why you’re there.

And on the other end of the spectrum, there are “race queens,” which is a term for gay men who have a fetish for a certain race and chase after men of that race for these fetish reasons. An occasional joke in the movie is how a white guy, who’s fixated on Asian culture, keeps trying to pick up Howie, but Noah warns Howie to stay away from this “race queen.” Noah and Howie also talk about how being Asian affects who might be interested in them as partners.

Noah makes sarcastic jokes to himself and to other people about the racism at these social events, but it’s pretty obvious that many of these incidents are hurtful to him. He masks this emotional pain by appearing to be over-confident and ready to berate people whom he thinks are being snobbish to him and his friends. Noah is proud of who he is and doesn’t like to be judged on his race and social class, but his stubborn tendency to think that he’s always correct often leads to him misjudging other people.

Not long after Noah and his friends arrive at Erin’s house, she tells them some bad news. It will be the last Fire Island get-together they’ll have at the house. Erin is losing the house because she can no longer afford the mortgage due to being an “early investor in Quibi.” It’s an inside joke among the “Fire Island” filmmakers, because Kim Booster was originally going to make “Fire Island” for the Quibi streaming service, which went out of business in less than a year in 2020, after a high-profile launch. Kim Booster was also a co-host of Quibi’s reboot of the dating contest “Singled Out.”

One of the Fire Island rituals is a Tea Dance party, where Noah and his friends meet a doctor named Charlie (played by James Scully), who seems to be attracted to Howie, based on how Charlie is looking at Howie. Charlie’s closest friends during this Fire Island trip are a brand manager named Cooper (played by Nick Adams) and a lawyer named Will (played by Conrad Ricamora), who lives in Los Angeles. Cooper makes it clear to anyone he meets that he’s very status-conscious and elitist. Will is quiet, and his personality is very hard to read.

Noah notices almost immediately that Charlie is checking out Howie, who can’t believe that someone like Charlie would be interested in him. And just like in a teen rom com, some awkward introductions ensue. Noah is thrilled that Howie might find a Fire Island hookup, but arrogant and vain Cooper isn’t shy about expressing that he thinks Noah and Noah’s friends are “lower-class” and not fit to mingle with Charlie’s group. Because Will doesn’t say much when all of this snobbery is taking place, an offended Noah assumes that Will feels the same way as Cooper.

At one point, Noah tells Howie about Charlie and his clique: “These are not our people.” But it’s too late, because Howie becomes infatuated with Charlie. Howie doesn’t want a casual fling with Charlie though. Howie wants real romance that starts off chaste. And what does Charlie want? Noah begins to doubt that Charlie has good intentions for Howie. That suspicion causes more conflicts between these two groups of friends.

When Howie tells Noah about the platonic dates that Howie and Charlie have together, Noah can’t believe that Howie and Charlie haven’t even kissed each other on these dates. Noah lectures Howie by telling him that Howie needs to be more sexually forward, but Howie starts to resent Noah for these lectures. Viewers can easily predict that at some point, Noah and Howie will have a big argument about their different approaches to dating.

Meanwhile, Will (who is obviously Noah’s Mr. Darcy) continues to intrigue and frustrate Noah. A turning point comes when Noah and Will both find out that they both love to read literature, and they’re fans of author Alice Munro. However, other things happen in the story that cause misunderstandings, jealousies and rivalries among Noah’s clique and Charlie’s clique. One of them is the arrival of an ex-boyfriend of Charlie’s named Dex (played by Zane Phillips), who quickly shows that he’s sexually interested in Noah. Will intensely dislikes Dex for a reason that is eventually revealed in the movie.

“Fire Island” has a contrivance early on in the movie, when Noah’s cell phone (which isn’t waterproof) falls in Erin’s swimming pool when Max accidentally bumps into Noah. And so, for most of the movie, Noah doesn’t have use of his cell phone. It leads to a letter-writing part of the story that will be familiar to “Pride and Prejudice” fans.

Although much of “Fire Island” is about the pursuit of love and sex, the friendship between Noah and Howie is the soul of the story. As a result, the performances of Kim Booster and Yang are the standouts in a movie where all of stars in the cast give good performances. If there are any glaring flaws in “Fire Island,” it’s that Max is a little sidelined as an underwritten character, while Luke and Keegan come very close to being shallow caricatures of partiers.

One of the best things about “Fire Island” is how the movie doesn’t gloss over or water down its bittersweet subject matter. The movie covers a lot of issues that are not only universal to any singles dating scene but also specific to LGBTQ culture. Kim Booster’s talented screenwriting strikes the right balance of being lighthearted and serious with a great deal of authenticity. Ahn’s direction also skillfully calibrates the tones and moods in each scene, which is not an easy task when this comedy takes a few dark turns.

The intended viewers of “Fire Island” are adults who like snappy conversations and often-amusing scenarios with characters who have very identifiable personalities. As such, the movie doesn’t treat subjects such as sex and social prejudices as topics that need to be discussed in coy or cutesy language. There’s a lot of raw and raucous dialogue and scenes in “Fire Island” that are a reflection of why people go to Fire Island: to let it all hang out, unapologetically. If you’re up for this type of ride, “Fire Island” is a very memorable and entertaining experience with a lot of heart and emotional intelligence that open-minded adults can enjoy and want to watch again.

Hulu will premiere “Fire Island” on June 3, 2022.

Review: ‘Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2,’ starring Tabu, Kartik Aaryan and Kiara Advani

May 29, 2022

by Carla Hay

Kiara Advani and Kartik Aaryan in “Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2” (Photo courtesy of T-Series Films)

“Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2”

Directed by Anees Bazmee

Hindi with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in the Indian cities of Bhawanigarh and Chandigarh, the horror comedy film “Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2” has an all-Indian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: In order to get out of marrying a man she doesn’t love, a young woman and her new love interest pretend that she died in a bus accident, while he pretends to her family that he’s a psychic who can communicate with her spirit, and the woman hides in the family palace that is believed to be haunted by an evil female ghost.

Culture Audience: “Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the stars Tabu, Kartik Aaryan and Kiara Advani; the 2007 movie Bhool Bhulaiyaa; and engaging movies that skillfully blend horror, comedy and musical numbers.

Tabu in “Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2” (Photo courtesy of T-Series Films)

A horror comedy is a difficult subgenre to make entertaining because there could be problems with blending tones of being scary and funny, but “Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2” succeeds on almost every level. The movie’s plot twists and musical numbers are intriguing. Unlike a lot of horror comedies that hold back on being terrifying, “Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2” doesn’t skimp on ghoulish footage (which has impressive visual effects), while still maintaining a comedic edge in the story for several laugh-out-loud moments.

Directed by Anees Bazmee and co-directed by Pankaj Kumar, “Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2” is a sequel to 2007’s “Bhool Bhulaiyaa” but viewers don’t need to see “Bhool Bhulaiyaa” to understand “Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2.” (The words “bhool bhulaiyaa” translate to “labyrinth” in English.) That’s because both movies have entirely different stars, with the only thing both movies having in common is a female ghost named Manjulika Chatterjee, who is haunting a family palace.

“Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2” (which was written by Aakash Kaushik and Farhad Samji) begins with an evil female ghost raging through a palace in Bhawanigarh, India. The palace is owned by the well-to-do Thakur family, and priests eventually capture this malevolent spirit, trap the ghoul in a room, which is sealed. Because the ghost is a direct threat to the Thakur family, they abandon the palace and find another place to live. At the time this haunting incident occurred, one of the members of the Thakur family is a girl, who’s about 7 or 8 years old, named Reet Thakur.

“Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2” the fast-forwards about 15 years later. Reet is a recent college graduate who is engaged to be married to a man named Sagar (played by Sparsh Walla), whom she does not love. However, it’s an arranged marriage, and Reet is being pressured by her father Vijender Singh Thakur (played by Milind Gunaji) to go through with the wedding. She is traveling by bus from Chandigarh back to her hometown of Bhawanigarh to reluctantly prepare for the wedding.

During this bus trip, Reet meets a handsome and flirtatious bachelor in his 20s named Ruhaan Randhawa (played by Kartik Aaryan), who almost immediately asks for Reet’s phone number. Even though Reet tells him that she’s engaged to be married, and her wedding is in a matter of days, Ruhaan is undeterred in showing a romantic interest in Reet, especially since she says she doesn’t love her fiancé Sagar. Reet is obviously attracted to Ruhaan too because she gives her phone number to him.

However, Reet plays hard-to-get during much of the time that she and Ruhaan spend together. Ruhaan (whose family is never seen in the movie) can sense that Reet is independent-minded and doesn’t want to be forced by her family to do things that she doesn’t want to do. And so, Ruhaan tells her that she should just abandon this trip to Bhawanigarh and go with him to a music festival instead. Reet quickly agrees.

Reet and Ruhaan have a lot of fun at the music festival, as their attraction to each other begins to grow. But then, they find out some tragic news: The bus that they were supposed to be on crashed, and there were no survivors. Reet’s family members are devastated, because they think she died in this bus crash. Viewers will have to suspend disbelief for this part of the movie, because Reet’s body would have to be found, in order for her to be declared dead. Perhaps another woman’s unidentified body could have been mistaken for Reet’s, but even that is a stretch of the imagination, since DNA tests and/or dental records would realistically determine a dead body’s identity.

Reet decides to use this bus crash as an opportunity to hide from her family and start a new life with Ruhaan. In the meantime, Reet and Ruhaan decide to hide in the Thakur family’s abandoned palace in Bhawanigarh. While they are in hiding, Reet overhears in a phone call that her fiancé Sagar and her cousin Trisha (played by Mahek Manwani) have been secretly in love with each other. Because the family thinks that Reet is dead, Sagar and Trisha decide to go public with their love affair and get married to each other. Reet is surprised by this news, but ultimately, she’s happy for Sagar and Trisha, because Reet never wanted to marry Sagar.

The Thakur family decides to have Sagar and Trisha’s wedding celebration at the palace, which has been in a state of neglect for years. And so, preparations are made to clean up the palace to prepare for the wedding. Members of the family also believe that there’s a chance that Reet’s spirit has returned to the palace. Reet and Ruhaan don’t know yet that their hiding place is about to be visited by members of Reet’s family and people who work for them. But this “fugitive” would-be couple will soon find out that they won’t be left alone in this hiding place.

Ruhaan is discovered on the palace property, but he is able to avoid getting in trouble as an intruder, by convincing the Thakur family and he is a psychic friend of Reet’s who can communicate with her from the dead. It’s a lie that Ruhaan makes up on the spot, and the rest of the movie is about him going through with a charade that he’s a psychic who can talk to Reet and other spirits. While Ruhaan is able to talk his way out of being kicked off of the property, Reet has been hiding in the palace, but she’s able to see much of what’s going on from where she hides. Ruhaan also fills her in on the details.

Meanwhile, Reet supplies Ruhaan with personal information about herself and her family so that he can appear to be a convincing psychic. There are many comedic scenes where Ruhaan makes over-the-top statements and gestures, in the movie’s obvious parody of psychics. Ruhaan even says, “I can see dead people,” in an obvious spoof of the famous line from the 1999 movie “The Sixth Sense.” News of Ruhaan being a psychic eventually spreads through the community. He becomes a local celebrity and is given the nickname Rooh Baba.

Of course, Ruhaan and Reet desperately keep the lie going and go to great lengths to keep Reet hidden in the palace. However, some people begin to suspect that Reet is still alive, or at least that her spirit is haunting the palace. Ruhaan finds out the story of Manjulika, so he tries to blame any suspicious activity on Manjulika. Other family members who are involved in the story include a cousin named Uday Thakur (played by Amar Upadhyay); his wife Anjulika (played by Tabu); and a boy named Potlu (played by Samarth Chauhan), who’s about 9 to 11 years old.

The village’s senior priest (played by Sanjay Mishra), his wife (played by Ashwini Kalsekar) and the village’s junior priest (played by Rajpal Naurang Yadav) all become skeptical about Ruhaan’s psychic abilities. They also think that Reet might still be alive. And so, the three skeptics hatch a plan to “expose” Ruhaan.

All of the cast members rise to the occasion by playing their roles well. Aaryan has to do a lot of comedic lifting in the movie, since his con game is frequently the focus of the movie’s jokes and shenanigans. Tabu is also very good in the movie, where her acting gets more prominent as the movie progresses. Yadav’s performance as the buffoonish junior priest is strictly for comic relief.

Most of the twists and turns “Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2” are in the last third of the movie, which has a much darker tone than the previous two-thirds. It’s no surprise that Reet and Ruhaan fall in love with each other. What might surprise people is how the movie ends. “Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2” has some moments that are more predictable than others. The unpredictable moments are where the movie shines the most.

T-Series Films released “Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2” in select U.S. cinemas on May 20, 2022, the same date that the movie was released in India.

Review: ‘Family Camp,’ starring Tommy Woodard, Eddie James, Leigh-Allyn Baker and Gigi Orsillo

May 28, 2022

by Carla Hay

Gigi Orsillo, Eddie James, Tommy Woodard and Leigh-Allyn Baker in “Family Camp” (Photo courtesy of Roadside Attractions)

“Family Camp”

Directed by Brian Cates

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed part of Oklahoma, the comedy film “Family Camp” has a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans and Latinos) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Two families, who have to share a yurt during a Christian vacation camp, become fierce rivals in the camp’s physical competitions, and then the family patriarchs both get lost in the woods together.

Culture Audience: “Family Camp” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in faith-based comedies that have no creative imagination and a lot of predictability.

Tommy Woodard and Eddie James in “Family Camp” (Photo courtesy of Roadside Attractions)

“Family Camp” is a dreadfully unfunny ripoff of other comedies about families at a vacation campground. The kid characters are nice, but their annoying parents unfortunately get most of the screen time. “Family Camp” is a faith-based movie, but people looking for entertaining comedic talent in this repetitive and predictable tripe will have their faith and their patience thoroughly tested and then completely obliterated, if there’s any hope that the movie will get better as it goes along. “Family Camp” is formulaic junk that goes from bad to worse.

Directed by Brian Cates (who co-wrote the abysmal “Family Camp” screenplay with Rene Gutteridge), “Family Camp” is essentially a thinly veiled vanity project for the Skit Guys, the comedy duo consisting of longtime friends Tommy Woodard and Eddie James. If “Family Camp” is the first time that people will be introduced to the Skit Guys, then it will put a lot of viewers off from seeing anything else that the Skit Guys have to offer. The movie is supposed to be about two families, but the last third of the movie is pretty much about the feuding characters played by Woodard and James getting lost in the woods together.

“Family Camp” (which is set in Oklahoma) is so simple-minded, at least it’s very easy to follow the plot. Too bad the plot is so stupid, your brain will feel numb from the experience of watching all the corny, awful and boring scenarios that the “Family Camp” filmmakers are trying to pass off as comedy. Most of the movie’s adult characters are whiny, fake or aggressively obnoxious.

The beginning of “Family Camp” shows married couple Tommy Ackerman (played by Woodard) and Grace Ackerman (played by Leigh-Allyn Baker) in church with their two children: Hannah Ackerman (played by Cece Kelly) and Henry Ackerman (played by Jacob M. Wade). Hannah is 16 years old, while Henry is about 11 or 12 years old. Grace is annoyed with Tommy because he showed up late for this church service.

But that’s not the only thing she’s irritated about when it comes to Tommy. Grace thinks that Tommy, who works as a senior investment strategist, is too much of a workaholic who’s been neglecting his family. When the church’s Pastor Dave (played by Mark Christopher Lawrence) announces to the congregation some details about an annual Christian family retreat at a place called Camp Katokwah, Grace tells Tommy that if he wants to make up for all the time that he missed with his family, their family needs to go on this week-long camping trip. (Camp Katokwah is a fictional name. “Family Camp” was actually filmed at Central Oklahoma Camp in Guthrie, Oklahoma.)

Tommy is very resistant to taking this trip, because it’s coming at a time when he’s being considered for a job promotion. Tommy is in a bitter rivalry for the promotion with a cutthroat co-worker named Bramburger (played by Brandon Potter), who doesn’t hesitate to lie, cheat and steal to get what he wants. Tommy and Bramburger have been trying to get the same client, named Mr. Kapoor (played by Mathew Chacko), who is a wealthy businessman.

Tommy thinks that going on this camping trip will put him at a distinct disadvantage to get the promotion. The movie has some time-wasting scenes where Tommy uses his phone to keep track of Bramburger and his sneaky ways of trying to win over Mr. Kapoor. One of Bramburger’s backstabbing tactics includes impersonating Tommy in an in-person interview with Mr. Kapoor. It makes no sense for Bramburger to pretend to be Tommy in this interview, since Bramburger wants to be the one to get the credit for signing Mr. Kapoor as a client. It’s an example of how poorly written the “Family Camp” screenplay is.

Even though Tommy doesn’t want to spend time away from his job, there would be no “Family Camp” movie if Tommy didn’t agree to go on this trip. He does so reluctantly, and he immediately regrets it when the Ackerman family gets to Camp Katokwah and finds out that the camp never got the Ackermans’ last installment of the required payment. All of the cabins on the campground are sold out, so the Ackermans have to share a yurt with another family. It’s a yurt with no WiFi service and no air conditioning.

The other family sharing the yurt also consists of a married couple with two underage children. Eddie Sanders (played by James) and his wife Victoria Sanders (played by Gigi Orsillo) have fraternal twins: son Ed Sanders Jr. (played by Elias Kemuel) and daughter Barb (played by Keslee Grace Blalock), who are both about 11 or 12 years old. Eddie is a loudmouth chiropractor, who always wants people to think he’s the biggest “alpha male,” but he’s really an insecure buffoon with terrible social skills. Victoria is a stereotypical younger “trophy wife” who’s obsessed with the family’s image on social media.

One of the first things that Eddie tells Tommy is that Eddie and his family are the reigning champs of Camp Katokwah’s physical challenge tournament, where the winning family gets a trophy. The tournament consists of families competing in challenges such as obstacle courses, archery, pie-eating contests with hands tied behind their backs, and body-slamming competitions where people are encased in giant plastic bubbles. As soon as Eddie brags about his champion status, you know that a lot of this movie is going to be about the Ackerman family versus the Sanders family in these challenges.

And sure enough, the movie has several scenes where these two families face off against each other in these challenges. Grace and Victoria become competitive with each other. But their rivalry is nothing compared to how Eddie and Tommy take the competition to a super-personal level, as if they have to prove their manhood, and as if their reputations as husbands and fathers depend on winning this superficial trophy. To make matters worse, since the Sanders family and Ackerman family have to share living quarters at this camp, they can’t really get away from each other, so any hard feelings about winning or losing start to fester and boil over.

The movie has some not-very-funny jokes about the Sanders family being strict vegans, and the Ackerman parents ridiculing the Sanders family’s eating habits. And there’s a silly scene in the camp cafeteria where Tommy chokes on his food, but he’s saved when Eddie does the Heimlich maneuver on Tommy. Eddie gets a standing ovation from the cafeteria crowd because of it. The praise just fuels Eddie’s already overblown ego.

Eddie is by far the most repulsive of these four parents. He often grabs people to give them uncomfortable chiropractic crunches without their consent. When Eddie notices that Henry is not very athletic and has a tendency to become afraid, Eddie taunts Tommy over it and says that Henry will probably grow up to be a socially inept hoarder. It’s a cruel thing to say about a harmless kid. Eddie also plays the harmonica when no one really wants to hear him play. And that means he’s a blowhard in more ways than one.

Meanwhile, Victoria and Grace, who seem to be homemakers since they don’t talk about having their own careers, end up confessing to each other some of the problems they’re experiencing in their respective marriages. In other words, it all comes back to the narrative really being about Eddie and Tommy. “Family Camp” makes a half-hearted attempt hinting that Victoria might want some independence from her husband, but the movie never details what she wants to do with her life that would make her more independent.

The kids are sidelined so that the story can mainly be about the egotistical adults in the Ackerman and Sanders families. Hannah has a brief and inconsequential storyline of meeting a teenage guy named Corbin (played by Clayton Royal Johnson) at the camp and getting a mild crush on him. Corbin charms Hannah by playing acoustic guitar and telling her that she’s the prettiest girl at Camp Katokwah.

Later, when Corbin tries to kiss her, Hannah has to show him she’s “not that kind of girl.” And when he immediately loses interest in her, Hannah gets revenge by pushing Corbin over a bridge walkway and into a lake. It’s not spoiler information, because this push is in the movie’s trailer.

The movie’s Camp Katokwah employees are very forgettable. The leader of Camp Katokwah is named Joel (played by Robert Amaya), who isn’t shown doing much except emcee the camp’s competitions and entertainment. The camp’s chief cook is named—get ready to groan—Cookie (played by Heather Land), who doesn’t do much but stand around in the kitchen and share emcee duties with Joel.

The last third of “Family Camp” reaches putrid levels of stupidity when Eddie and Tommy get lost in the woods together, which means more bickering from these two bozos. There’s no mention of why they didn’t have their cell phones with them when they went into the woods. Henry gets lost in the woods too, but an underage child who goes missing is not as important in this movie as giving a lot of screen time to two men acting like insufferable brats. It gets tiresome very quickly.

And there are two more adult dolts in the woods: loathsome and cretinous reality TV stars who are named Slim (played by Myke Holmes) and Beef (played by Weston Vrooman), whose main claim to fame is being on a TV series showing Beef and Slim looking for the legendary creature Big Foot. Viewers can easily predict what will happen when Slim and Beef encounter Eddie and Tommy, especially when Eddie always seems to find a way to mouth off and get people angry.

In addition to the poorly written screenplay, “Family Camp” (which is Cates’ feature-film directorial debut) has terrible editing and substandard visual effects. One of the worst parts of the movie is a very fake-looking beaver in the woods. This beaver has human-like characteristics and mannerisms, which are supposed to make the beaver look cute and cuddly, but it just looks creepy and phony.

There’s also a scene where idiotic Eddie rips a slab of honeycomb from a tree and gets stung all over his face by a swarm of bees that were on the honeycomb. Tommy gives Eddie an emergency injection of epinephrine that Eddie just happens to have with him. Just a few minutes after this injection, Eddie’s bee stings have magically and unrealistically disappeared, and the bee stings are never mentioned again in the movie.

No one is expecting a movie like “Family Camp” to be Oscar-caliber, but a movie like this doesn’t have to constantly insult viewers’ intelligence. And even if a comedy has a mindless plot and mediocre acting, it should at least have some central characters that people will care about in a way to maintain viewer interest. “Family Camp” made the colossal mistake of having repugnant boor Eddie as the focus of the terrible jokes. He’s worse than the bees that stung him because viewers are stuck with him for the entire movie, which is polluted by the stink of lazy and low-quality filmmaking.

Roadside Attractions, K-LOVE Films and Provident Films released “Family Camp” in U.S. cinemas on May 13, 2022. Lionsgate Home Entertainment will release “Family Camp” on digital and VOD on June 28, 2022.

Review: ‘Tankhouse,’ starring Tara Holt, Stephen Friedrich, Richard Kind and Christopher Lloyd

May 21, 2022

by Carla Hay

Pictured from left right: Sarah Yarkin (in back) Luke Spencer Roberts, Joe Adler, Nadia Alexander, Tara Holt, Stephen Friedrich, Devere Rogers and Austin Crute in “Tankhouse” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment)

“Tankhouse”

Directed by Noam Tomaschoff

Culture Representation: Taking place in Fargo, North Dakota, and briefly in New York City, the comedy film “Tankhouse” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and one Latino) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: After being blacklisted from the New York City theater scene, engaged actor couple Tucker Charlamagne and Sandrene St. Jean go to Fargo, North Dakota, to enter a performing arts contest where the winner will get a residency at the newly restored Fargo Theatre.

Culture Audience: “Tankhouse” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of satirical comedies about theater people, but the movie’s silly tone wears thin very quickly.

Stephen Friedrich and Tara Holt in “Tankhouse” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment)

The performing arts parody “Tankhouse” isn’t nearly as funny as it thinks it is. The movie’s broadly written characters are hollow. The comedy too often misses the mark. Hint: Shouting witless dialogue doesn’t make it more amusing. And there’s a lot of shouting in this movie, as the cast members were apparently told that their characters have to yell for no good reason for about half of their screen time.

Directed by Noam Tomaschoff (who co-wrote “Tankhouse” with Chelsea Frei), “Tankhouse” is based on a short film of the same name written by Tomaschoff and Frei. Both “Tankhouse” movies take inspiration from the real-life New York City theater experiences of Tomaschoff and Frei, who both took an opportunity to go to a smaller city to stage a production. It’s essentially a similar story for the “Tankhouse” protagonist couple—Tucker Charlamagne (played by Stephen Friedrich) and Sandrene St. Jean (played by Tara Holt)—two down-on-their-luck actors who are engaged to be married and who stage a production in Fargo, North Dakota, after their careers falter in New York City.

In the “Tankhouse” feature film production notes, Frei says that Sandrene and Tucker are “absurd versions” of herself and Tomaschoff. In the case of Tucker, you can also add the description “extremely obnoxious.” That’s because Tucker (who talks the most in this movie) is a rude and pretentious twit who wants to be the “alpha male” of everything, but he ends up making a mess of things, more often than not. Because so much of the “Tankhouse” narrative is given to Tucker, the movie becomes as blustering and buffoonish as Tucker.

“Tankhouse” is also one of those movies that pulls a “bait and switch” on audiences, by giving well-known actors top billing, but those actors aren’t in the movie for very long. Fans of actor Christopher Lloyd (who’s best known for his roles in the “Back to the Future” movies and the sitcom “Taxi”) will be disappointed to find out that his total screen time in “Tankhouse” is less than 10 minutes, with all of his scenes happening in the first third of the movie. Notable character actor Richard Kind (best known for his roles in the TV comedy series “Mad About You” and “Spin City”) also shares top billing for “Tankhouse,” but his screen time is limited to less than 10 minutes too.

The “Tankhouse” movie poster also shows Kind, Holt, Friedrich and Lloyd all peeking out together from a stage curtain. It’s a misleading image, because it suggests that all four of them are equal co-stars in “Tankhouse.” The reality is that Lloyd and Kind barely have supporting roles in the movie, and their roles are basically just playing cranky know-it-alls, which is the type of character they’ve played many times already in movies and TV. Can you say “typecasting”?

“Tankhouse” has some whimsical-looking animation for some flashback scenes, including an early scene in the movie when narrator Tucker explains how he met and fell in love with Sandrene. (Her real last name is Rothstein. St. Jean is her stage surname.) Tucker says that shortly after getting his bachelor of fine arts degree at an unnamed university, he was directing an off-off-Broadway movement piece in New York City when Sandrene walked into the show.

Sandrene was doing research for a cop TV series called “Rookie Badge” that she was about to co-star in, but her role ended up being drastically reduced. Sandrene and Tucker began dating and have been a couple for an unspecified period of time. Tucker is the type of actor who looks down on TV work. He believes that an actor’s true merit and talent can be found doing work on stage. Tucker’s snobbery toward television is something to keep in mind during a plot development later in “Tankhouse.”

Now in their 30s, Sandrene and Tucker are engaged to be married. And they’re still struggling actors in New York City. However, a possible bright spot in their careers is that Tucker and Sandrene have been put in charge of the Artist Atelier Acting Studio, an avant-garde performing arts group founded by Buford Slezinger (played by Lloyd), who has been Tucker’s mentor. Buford stepped down as the leader of the Artist Atelier Acting Studio because his chronic battle with gout has resulted in him using a wheelchair.

It’s implied that Buford is an “old school” sexist, because one of the first things that he’s shown doing is barking out his “rules” for success to the small group of people in this theater troupe: “I have two notes: (1) A worthy actress must always carry a fan; (2) If you want to make it in this business, you’ve got to immediately lose 10 pounds.”

Buford likes to think that he’s a highly respected guru of the New York theater scene, but he doesn’t have a large following. The Artist Atelier Acting Studio has a very small number of actors: only seven, including Tucker and Sandrene. And this small theater group often gets an even smaller audience for performances. Even though Buford has stepped down from his leadership position for the Artist Atelier Acting Studio, Buford stays involved in the group by being a consultant/advisor.

Tucker likes to talk in flowery speech to make it sound like he’s a theater-trained actor who’s always the smartest actor in the room. However, his social skills are horrible, since Tucker frequently loses his temper and berates the people around him. Sandrene is usually spared Tucker’s wrath because she passively goes along with almost everything he wants to do.

Adding to Tucker’s pompous and ridiculous persona, he styles his hair and wears clothes like he’s a trying to be a combination of a Brooklyn hipster and “Pirates of the Caribbean” character Captain Jack Sparrow. For example, Tucker is the type of man who will wear flowing scarves with a black leather jacket. And his fashion choices for his theater troupe are questionable at best, since he makes the troupe members all wear unitards or onesies in their performances.

It’s at one of these performances that leads to the downfall of Tucker and Sandrene in the New York City theater scene. The Artist Atelier Acting Studio troupe is doing a rooftop performance in the Bronx, with only six people watching the show. The performance involves spontaneous interaction with the audience members.

One of the audience members is a wheelchair-using elderly woman (played by Bunny Levine), who ends up having a heart attack during the vigorous audience interaction part of the show. As a result of the heart attack, she dies during this performance. And there happens to be a theater critic in the audience named Jax Wynn (played by Rebecca Sohn), who (not surprisingly) gives the show a very negative review.

The woman who died during the show wasn’t just any audience member. Her name was Doris Feinstein. She was the “nana” (grandmother) of Artist Atelier Acting Studio member Asher (played by Carlos R. Chavez), and she was the Artist Atelier Acting Studio’s only financial backer. With their principal benefactor now deceased, the group has an emergency meeting with Buford observing.

Sandrene expresses her condolences to Asher about his grandmother’s death, but insensitive Tucker exclaims about Doris’ last moments: “Doris lived as she never lived before! Nana’s death: It’s the circle of life!” And this callous comment is not the only thing that causes alienation. The rest of the group members express their anger at Tucker and Sandrene for the couple making the group members do extreme performance tactics, such as having unsimulated sex and using real guns during a show.

Tucker and Sandrene are informed that the rest of the group has voted to oust Tucker and Sandrene as leaders of the Artist Atelier Acting Studio. Buford agrees that the majority of the group should decide this matter. And so, Tucker and Sandrene no longer have a theater group. When they try to get work elsewhere, they find out that they’ve been blacklisted because of the death that happened during that rooftop performance.

With their money running out and their rent due, Tucker and Sandrene are visited by Sandrene’s parents Deirdra (played by Joey Lauren Adams) and Bob (played by Andy Buckley), who still live in Sandrene’s hometown of Fargo. Tucker and Sandrene tell her parents that they have a great idea to start a theater troupe, but they need Deirdra and Bob to invest some money in it. Deirdra and Bob have been helping Sandrene financially, but this time, they’ve had enough of financially supporting her, so they say no to this pitch.

However, Deirdra tells Tucker and Sandrene that the Fargo Theatre has been recently refurbished and restored. And the city of Fargo is having a performing arts contest where the winner will get a residency at the Fargo Theatre. Theater snob Tucker is dead-set against the idea, because he thinks going to a place like Fargo is far beneath his talent. Sandrene is more open to the idea, especially since her parents offered their ranch house to Sandrene and Tucker to stay rent-free in Fargo, while Deirdra and Bob go on a safari in Tanzania.

Tucker asks Buford for his advice in this matter. To Tucker’s surprise and dismay, Buford suggests that Tucker and Sandrene go to Fargo for this opportunity. Buford tells Tucker that Tucker and Sandrene need to expand their actor experiences outside of New York City and that they can learn from these experiences. After some unsuccessful attempts to get enough cash to pay their rent, Tucker reluctantly changes his mind and goes to Fargo with Sandrene so that they can enter the contest.

Before going to Fargo, Sandrene was selling some of her clothes at a vintage store when she encountered a friend named Brian (played by “Tankhouse” director Tomaschoff), whom she hadn’t seen in a long time. In this scene, Sandrene and Brian catch up on what’s been going on in their lives, but Sandrene doesn’t tell him about her recent career problems. Brian tells Sandrene that he’s now a talent coordinator at a big agency called United Talent International.

Brian offers to help find actor work for Sandrene, who is thrilled. But the timing couldn’t be worse, because she will soon be going to Fargo, for who knows how long. Still, she’s open to opportunities where she can audition with video recordings. Sandrene doesn’t tell Tucker about it though, because she knows that this agency is most likely to find her a job in TV or in movies, and Tucker disapproves of any actor work that isn’t on stage.

Tucker also has a very jealous side to him. It comes out when Tucker and Sandrene go to Fargo, and they encounter Sandrene’s ex-boyfriend from high school. His name is Hank (played by Alex Esola), and he seems to still be in awe of Sandrene. At an Open Mic night at a local bar, Tucker becomes even more irritated when Hank invites Sandrene to sing with Hank during an acoustic guitar performance. She enthusiastically accepts the offer, and Tucker watches their duet while seething with annoyance.

Somehow, a bar fight ensues that lands Tucker and Sandrene in jail, where they meet an eccentric, wannabe actor named Uther (played by Devere Rogers), who always wears sunglasses because he claims to be legally blind. After getting out on bail, Tucker and Sandrene decide they’re going to form a theater group to enter the contest. Their biggest competition is a theater group named Red River Players, formed by Morten Mortensen (played by Kind), who used to be Sandrene’s drama teacher in high school.

Tucker and Sandrene then assemble a theater group that consists of Uther and five young bar patrons who saw Sandrene perform with Hank. These five other Fargo misfits are mild-mannered tech nerd Nina (played by Sarah Yarkin); Viking-obsessed Scandinavian immigrant Yorick (played by Joe Adler); militant feminist Leah (played by Nadia Alexander); and semi-closeted gay couple Jack (played by Austin Crute) and Brady (played by Luke Spencer Roberts), who have a “coming out” scene that is awkward at best. The group’s rehearsal space is a place called Tankhouse, a warehouse-styled building that Yorick has turned into a makeshift moonshine distillery. The expected hijinks ensue in a movie where the characters want to win a contest, but these shenanigans are a lot duller than they should be.

As the optimistic but often-flaky actress Sandrene, Holt gives the best performance out of all the “Tankhouse” cast members, because she comes closest to not letting the character become a caricature. Tucker is just a train wreck abomination for most of the movie, and Friedkin seems to be doing the best he can with portraying an insufferable jerk. Any transformations that Tucker might experience to improve his personality are very abrupt and crammed in as an afterthought to make him look redeemable. However, all of the characters in “Tankhouse” ultimately are very shallow and written as “types” instead of fully formed personalities.

“Tankhouse” isn’t a completely horrible movie. There are sporadic moments that should bring some laughs, such as a “musical theater” verbal battle (similar to a rap battle), with Sandrene and Tucker versus Morten in performing “The Pirates of Penzance” song “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General.” Tucker the lunkhead also has some moments that should make viewers laugh, such as his habit of unwittingly mispronouncing words. His bungled linguistics are supposed to be ironic, considering that Tucker wants to have an image of being a highbrow actor with a strong command of the English language.

But these occasionally comical moments in “Tankhouse” are overshadowed by all the moronic posturing, dimwitted character scheming and the aforementioned unnecessary shouting of mediocre lines that pollute “Tankhouse.” The movie’s musical score—written by Craig McConnell and clearly inspired by 1980s sitcom music—alternates between sometimes sounding appropriate for the scenes, and other times just being downright aggravating. The middle section of the movie drags monotonously, even when “Tankhouse” attempts to have a high-energy, slapstick tone throughout the movie.

Physical comedy works best if the dialogue and characters are interesting too. Unfortunately, “Tankhouse” falls short when it comes to having dialogue and characters that are truly engaging. Watching “Tankhouse” is like being stuck in a room with people manically telling mostly bad jokes for about 90 minutes, and the people telling the jokes mistakenly think that they’re hilarious. The “Tankhouse” filmmakers also do not present the story in a consistent way, because “Tankhouse” tries and fails be both a lighthearted comedy and a dark farce. And some of the “gags” just don’t work and add nothing to the movie, such as a joke about Sandrene’s father Bob pressuring vegan Tucker to eat some bison beef jerky.

Supporting characters such as Fargo theater actress Mackenzie Billingham (played by Rachel Matthews) and Jack’s police captain mother Pauline Mikkelsen (played by Carolyn Michelle Smith) are very underwritten and are only used as plot devices to drop some surprises on the Tankhouse group. Although the ending of “Tankhouse” does not take a completely predictable route, it’s still too little, too late. “Tankhouse” might be trying to get the type of cult-audience status of director Christopher Guest’s classic 1996 community theater mockumentary “Waiting for Guffman,” but “Tankhouse” lacks the wit and the charm to gain a notable cult following.

Vertical Entertainment released “Tankhouse” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on May 13, 2022.

Review: ‘Badhaai Do,’ starring Rajkummar Rao and Bhumi Pednekar

April 25, 2022

by Carla Hay

Rajkummar Rao and Bhumi Pednekar in “Badhaai Do” (Photo courtesy of Zee Studios)

“Badhaai Do”

Directed by Harshavardhan Kulkarni

Hindi with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed city in India, the comedy/drama film “Badhaai Do” features an all-Asian cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A gay man and a lesbian, who are both in the closet about their sexualities, decide to get married to each other to throw off suspicion from their families, but complications ensue when they both meet real love partners. 

Culture Audience: “Badhaai Do” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in stories of how LGBTQ people live in India, where homophobia is encouraged and practiced by much of society.

Chum Darang, Bhumi Pednekar and Rajkummar Rao in “Badhaai Do” (Photo courtesy of Zee Studios)

“Badhaai Do” is a rare LGBTQ Bollywood film that achieves a balancing act of comedy and drama. It’s about the damage caused by homophobia and the courage it takes to live authentically. The main cast members’ charismatic performances make this movie a winner. It’s a story that’s both sobering and heartwarming.

Directed by Harshavardhan Kulkarnia, “Badhaai Do” (which translates to “Felicitations Due” in English) is a witty, often-sarcastic and engaging film that has a brisk pace that doesn’t make it seem like the movie is really two hours and 27 minutes long, even though it is. Kulkarnia co-wrote the “Badhaai Do” screenplay with Suman Adhikary and Akshat Ghildial. There are some parts of the movie that have a heightened tone of a screwball comedy, but the movie does not veer too far off from reality, except for the expected Bollywood musical interludes where the characters begin singing and dancing to their dialogue.

In “Badhaai Do” (which takes place in an unnamed city in India), a gay man and a lesbian get married to each other, because they’re hiding their true sexualities from almost everyone they know, including their families who have been pressuring them to have heterosexual marriages. The two people in this closeted couple are police officer Shardul Thakur (played by Rajkummar Rao) and physical education teacher Suman “Sumi” Singh (played by Bhumi Pednekar), who are both in their early 30s.

Shardul comes from a large family of women, including his unnamed widowed mother (played by Sheeba Chaddha), who are all pressuring him to get married to a woman. As expected, Shardul’s female relatives have also been playing matchmaker by trying to set him up with women whom they think could be a suitable wife for Shardul. He pretends that he’s interested, even though he knows that he’s not sexually attracted to women.

Sumi was once engaged to a man, who died six years ago in a tragic accident. She hasn’t had a serious boyfriend since then, but her conservative parents Prem Singh (played by Nitesh Pandey) and his wife Mrs. Singh (played by Loveleen Mishra) are expressing concerns to Sumi that she hasn’t moved on and found someone else to marry. Sumi and her brother Naman Singh (played by Vyom Yadav), who is 10 years younger than she is, still live with their parents. Naman has a bratty and sexist attitude about Sumi being an unmarried woman at her age, and he often makes snide comments to her about her marital status.

Even though Sumi can’t bring home any women she dates, Sumi still tries to find a love partner. She has been talking to someone on a lesbian dating app. But when she meets this possible love interest in person, she finds out that it’s really a young man, who tries to get Sumi to date him.

Sumi refuses to date him, so he starts harassing her and threatens to tell her family and friends that she’s a lesbian. Sumi is a feisty person who’s not afraid to stand up for herself, so she goes to the police to report this harassment. It’s how Sumi ends up meeting Shardul, who takes the report. It’s also how he finds out that Sumi is a lesbian. Shardul gets rid of the harasser by smacking him around—not bad enough where medical treatment is needed, but enough to scare away the harasser.

At work, Shardul is so fearful about revealing that he’s gay, he overcompensates by saying homophobic things. For example, early in the movie, Shardul and a police co-worker are in a local park when they catch two men who are about to be in a compromising sexual situation. Shardul and his colleague interrupt this tryst before things go further and tell the men to leave. Shardul makes a big show of expressing disgust with gay people, as if to say, “I’m not one of them!”

It just so happens that Sumi is nearby in the park at the same time. Shardul sees her sitting on a park bench by herself and strikes up a conversation with her. They end up talking about how their families are pressuring them to get married. And so, Shardul then confesses to Sumi that he’s gay and in the closet.

Shardul suggests to Sumi that they pretend to date each other and then get married, in order to “get our families off of our backs.” Shardul also says that he and Sumi can live like roommates. And because Shardul is a police officer, he tells Sumi that he can probably protect her better than most other people could.

Sumi is skeptical about this idea at first, but she eventually agrees. Shardul and Sumi’s short “courtship” soon turns to marriage. The movie’s wedding predictably has the most elaborate musical scenes in “Badhaai Do.”

But there are some big problems to living this lie of a phony marriage. Around the time that Sumi and Shardul concoct their fake romance, Sumi meets and begins dating Rimjhim Jongkey (played by Chum Darang), a confident woman who works as a hospital employee who processes lab samples. (The movie has some scatalogical comedy because Rimjhim deals with stool samples. Sumi meets Rimjihm because Sumi dropped of her own stool sample at the hospital.)

Sumi and Rimjhim have an instant mutual attraction, they begin dating, and they end up falling in love with each other. Rimjhim knows almost from the beginning that Sumi is pretending to be in a romance with Shardul. Rimjhim doesn’t really approve of this deception, but she goes along with it because she understands what’s at stake: Sumi’s family could disown Sumi if they found out that she’s a lesbian. (None of this spoiler information, because it’s in the movie’s trailer.)

Rimjhim lives openly as a lesbian/queer woman because she says that she doesn’t have any family members living in India. If she did, Rimjhim says that she would probably have to hide her true sexuality too. After Shardul and Sumi get married and move in together, Rimjhim spends so much time in their apartment, she essentially starts living there too.

If anyone notices that Rimjhim has spent the night at the apartment, Shardul tells people he knows that Rimjhim is Sumi’s cousin, while Sumi tells people she knows that Rimjhim is Shardul’s cousin. It’s a flimsy lie that’s bound to unravel if people who know Shardul and Sumi start talking to each other about Rimjhim.

As for Shardul’s real love life, his is more complicated than Sumi’s. When Shardul and Sumi met, he was already in a long-distance romance with a man who’s about 10 years younger: a graduate business student named Kabir (played by Deepak Aurora), who might not have the same feelings for Shardul that Shardul has for him. Kabir meets up with Shardul (at Shardul’s invitation) at the resort where Shardul and Sumi are having their “honeymoon.”

Soap-opera-styled drama ensues, as well as some hilarity when Shardul and Sumi desperately try to fool their family through staged photos that Shardul and Sumi are on a romantic vacation together. More backstory about Shardul’s love life is revealed which somewhat explains the patterns of mistakes he makes in his relationships. And then, things get more complicated when Shardul meets and has a mutual attraction to an attorney named Guru Narayan (played by Gulshan Devaiah), who is an obvious better match for Shardul than Kabir.

During this fake marriage, Shardul and Sumi sometimes clash with each other over certain issues. One of those issues is about parenting. Sumi says she has always wanted to be a mother, and she’s thinking about adopting a child. Shardul is adamant that he’s not ready to become a parent. Sumi accuses Shardul of being selfish and immature. Shardul accuses Sumi of being demanding and unreasonable.

They also bring some emotional baggage to the relationship. Although Sumi wasn’t romantically in love with her fiancé who died, she loved him as a friend. And so, Sumi is still dealing with grief over his death. Shardul has some unresolved issues with how his first big love affair ended and why it’s affected his fear to live openly as a gay man.

The movie’s plot has a few twists and turns, some of which are more expected than others. Rao and Pednekar give admirable performances that will make audiences root for Sumi and Shardul in the highs and lows of their unconventional relationship. (The realistic homophobia shown in the movie is heartbreaking, but it’s balanced out with moments of LGBTQ pride and self-confidence.) “Badhaai Do” shows in exemplary ways that no matter what people’s sexualities are, everyone deserves a chance to be happy, wherever they can find their personal joy that doesn’t hurt anyone else.

Zee Studios released “Badhaai Do” in select U.S. cinemas on February 11, 2022, the same date that the movie was released in several other countries, including India, Australia, Singapore, France and Ireland. “Badhaai Do” is also available on Netflix.

Review: ‘¿Y Cómo Es Él?,’ starring Omar Chaparro, Mauricio Ochmann and Zuria Vega

April 22, 2022

by Carla Hay

Omar Chaparro and Mauricio Ochmann in “¿Y Cómo Es Él?” (Photo courtesy of Pantelion Films)

“¿Y Cómo Es Él?”

Directed by Ariel Winograd

Spanish with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in various Mexican cities, including Puerto Vallarta and Mexico City, the comedy film “¿Y Cómo Es Él?” features an all-Latino cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and criminal underground.

Culture Clash: An angry cuckold decides to get revenge on the taxi driver who is his wife’s lover, and the two men take an unexpected road trip together.

Culture Audience: “¿Y Cómo Es Él?” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching silly and unimaginative comedies about men who complain about relationships with women.

Mauricio Ochmann and Omar Chaparro in “¿Y Cómo Es Él?” (Photo courtesy of Pantelion Films)

Dreadfully boring and sloppily made, the cinematic dud “¿Y Cómo Es Él?” is as about as fun as getting a flat tire, which is one of many predictable things that happen in this road trip movie pretending to be a wacky comedy. “¿Y Cómo Es Él?” is based on the very flimsy idea that a man intent on getting revenge on his wife’s lover (who’s a taxi driver) will decide to take a road trip with him instead, while the taxi driver gets both of them into all sorts of trouble. That’s essentially the entire plot of this vapid garbage. The wife at the center of the love triangle shows up on screen occasionally, almost as an afterthought.

That’s because “¿Y Cómo Es Él?” is just a pathetic excuse to promote sexist beliefs that men who commit adultery by sleeping with married women are just giving in to their male sex drives, while married women who commit adultery are doing it to punish their husbands. One of the movie’s two main characters—a selfish and misogynistic cretin named Jero (played by Omar Chaparro)—literally uses it as an awful excuse for why he’s promiscuous and doesn’t care if the women he sleeps with are married or not.

Jero says in the movie that husbands cheat on their wives because they can, while women cheat on their husbands for revenge. In other words, this sexist fool thinks that husbands should be more offended if their wives cheat on them than wives should be offended if their husbands cheat on them. Women literally don’t have much to say in this very outdated and male-dominated movie, whose lead actress has less than 15 minutes of dialogue.

Directed by Ariel Winograd and written by Paul Fruchbom, “¿Y Cómo Es Él?” (which takes place in Mexico) is based on the 2007 South Korean movie “Driving With My Wife’s Lover,” which was a dark comedy and a far superior movie. “¿Y Cómo Es Él?” (which translates to “And How Is He?” in English) takes all the edge out of the original movie and turns it into watered-down junk that just re-uses the same tired formula of dozens of other forgettable movies about two opposite people who find themselves on a long trip together. Every possible road trip cliché is used in this film, with results that are irritating and unamusing.

In the beginning of “¿Y Cómo Es Él?,” cuckolded husband Tomás Segura (played by Mauricio Ochmann) is on a plane to Puerto Vallarta. He’s on this trip because he knows that his wife Marcia (played by Zuria Vega) and her lover Jero (short for Jeronimo) are in Puerto Vallarta for an adulterous rendezvous. Tomás also knows what Jero looks like because he stares jealously at a photo of Jero that Tomás has on his phone.

At this point in the story, Tomás thinks that Jero is a rich and successful businessman, based on the photos that Jero has of himself on social media. Meanwhile, Tomás is unemployed. Tomás has lied to Marcia by telling her that he’s taking this trip to go to Monterrey for a job interview.

On the plane, a woman sitting next to Tomás asks him if the photo he’s looking at is Tomás’ boyfriend. He says no. The woman doesn’t believe him and says that she’s open-minded about gay people. Just to get her to stop pestering him, Tomás blurts out that the photo is of the man who’s having sex with his wife. This scene is supposed to be funny, but it just comes across as awkwardly performed.

Upon arriving in Puerto Vallarta, Tomás secretly stalks Marcia and Jero at the resort where the two lovers have been staying. Tomás sees for himself that they are indeed acting like lovers in public. Tomás then furthers his mission to get revenge. Marcia works at a data company, so when the rendezvous is over, she goes back to where she and Tomás live, while Tomás stays behind in Puerto Vallarta and follows Jero.

That’s when Tomás finds out that Jero isn’t rich but works as a taxi driver. Throughout this mindless movie, Tomás keeps in touch by phone with a friend named Lucas (played by Mauricio Barrientos) to give updates to Lucas on what’s happening and to get advice. Lucas encourages Tomás to rough up Jero, and Lucas wants to hear all the details if it happens.

Tomás has fantasies of harming Jero in various ways. He follows Jero to a dumpy outdoor fast-food restaurant. Tomás has a taser that he looks like he’s going to use on Jero when he sneaks up behind Jero. There are plenty of other people nearby who could witness the assault that Tomás plans to inflict on Jero. But at the last moment, Tomás changes his mind and runs away.

Instead of tasing Jero, Tomás decides to do some damage to Jero’s taxi that’s parked outside the restaurant. Tomás takes a knife and cuts a deep, long scratch on the driver’s side of the car. And then, Tomás repeatedly stabs the left front tire while he’s standing up, but he’s such klutz that he accidentally stabs himself in the leg.

Tomás passes out from the pain, and then he wakes up to find himself in the back seat of Jero’s taxi while Jero is driving. Jero mistakenly thinks that Tomás was attacked by the person who damaged Jero’s taxi and that Tomás scared off this vandal. Tomás goes along with this wrong assumption. Tomás asks Jero if he can drive him to Mexico City, and Jero says yes.

Tomás still wants to get revenge on Jero, but the movie’s excuse for why Tomás has decided to go on this long road trip with Jero is because Tomás wants to get to know Jero, in order to find out what Marcia sees in Jero. And what do you know: In one of the movie’s very phony-looking scenes, while Jero and Tomás have their first conversation together, Marcia ends up talking to both of them on the phone at the same time without knowing it.

Not surprisingly, Tomás spends a lot of time in the movie desperately trying to hide his true identity from Jero. However, Jero notices how distressed Tomás looks on this trip, so Jero gets Tomás to admit that Tomás is upset because he found out that his wife is cheating on him. Jero, who thinks of himself as a desirable playboy, then brags to Tomás that he can seduce and have sex with practically any willing woman, and Jero doesn’t care if they’re married or not.

Not once does dimwitted Jero think that maybe a jealous husband might come after him for revenge. And one of those jealous husbands could be the same person who just admitted to Jero that he’s angry about his wife cheating on him. Instead, clueless Jero advises Tomás to beat up the lover of Tomás’ wife. This is what’s supposed to pass as comedy in this witless drivel of a movie.

Meanwhile, the filmmakers of “¿Y Cómo Es Él?” try to make the audience feel sympathy for lecherous Jero when he eventually tells Tomás that he’s divorced. Jero blames the collapse of the marriage on his ex-wife. According to Jero, when they were married, she cheated on him with Jero’s then-business partner, who owned a mattress company with Jero. It’s a lousy excuse for why Jero has no guilt or qualms about committing adultery by having sexual flings with married women. Jero is the last person who should be giving marriage advice, but there he is stinking up much of the movie by giving unsolicited and irresponsible marital counseling to Tomás.

This is one of the odious comments about marriage that Jero says to Tomás: “Women forgive adultery. Men don’t.” Jero also says that by the time a married woman commits adultery, her marriage is already dead. But according to Jero, a married man who commits adultery just sees it as a physical act that’s meaningless and separate from love. With this women-hating mindset, it’s no wonder that Jero can’t find true love with a woman.

Tomás isn’t much better than Jero when it comes to being a backwards-thinking dolt. During the course of the movie, Tomás wants to prove how macho he is by trying to inflict serious physical harm on people. In one scene, Tomás tries to poison Jero with antifreeze. In another scene, Tomás punches a doctor in the face when he’s taken to a hospital to treat his self-inflicted stab wound. These slapstick scenes aren’t funny, and they look utterly stupid.

When Tomás and Jero go to a brothel, because Jero says Tomás deserves to cheat on Tomás’ wife, Tomás is reluctant to commit adultery. But Tomás weirdly wants to impress Jero, so when he’s in the bedroom with the hired sex worker (played by Consuelo Duval), Tomás asks her to assault him into unconsciousness and do whatever she wants with him, so it will look like they’ve had sex. Tomás also gives her the option to do nothing, so they can just talk.

In an idiotic movie like “¿Y Cómo Es Él?,” you already know which option she’s going to take, because this movie is filled with ill-conceived scenarios where Tomás and Jero get banged-up, bloodied and bruised. (The prostitute ends up hitting Tomás on the head with one of her high-heeled shoes.) And why should Tomás care so much about what Jero thinks Tomás might be doing in a room with a sex worker? So much of “¿Y Cómo Es Él?” expects viewers to be as dumb as the movie’s characters.

Jero is a big talker who tells Tomás that he’s invested in several business, including a fleet of taxis. Tomás is too simple-minded to ask Jero why Jero is doing regular taxi driver duties if Jero is such a successful business owner. What Tomás finds out the hard way is that Jero owes money to a ruthless investor named Francisco “Frank” Estevez (also known as El Cuate), who has sent some of his goons to track down Jero and get the money back by any means necessary. You know what happens next: generic chase scenes and shootouts. All of the action scenes in “¿Y Cómo Es Él?” are terribly edited.

And where is Marcia during all these shenanigans? She’s seen mostly on the phone with Tomás, who keeps lying to her about where he is and what he’s doing. It all just leads to a very formulaic and unoriginal conclusion that’s easy to predict within the first 10 minutes of the movie or by watching the movie’s trailer. The acting in the film isn’t as bad as the screenplay and direction, but there’s no cast member in this movie who gives an admirable performance. Watching “¿Y Cómo Es Él?” is like eating junk food that leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

Pantelion Films released “¿Y Cómo Es Él?” in select U.S. cinemas on April 22, 2022. The movie was released in Mexico on April 7, 2022, and in Australia in 2020.

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