Jason Sudeikis Archives

November 3, 2024

by Carla Hay

Pickles (voiced by Lilly Singh) and Hitpig (voiced by Jason Sudeikis) in “Hitpig!” (Image courtesy of Viva Pictures)

Directed by Cinzia Angelini and David Feiss

Culture Representation: The animated film “Hitpig!” features a cast of characters portraying humans and talking animals.

Culture Clash: A pig, who works as a bounty hunter of animals, is hired to track down and capture an elephant that has run away from doing an exploitative performance show in Las Vegas, and the pig becomes conflicted about completing the job when he finds the elephant and becomes friendly with the elephant.

Culture Audience: “Hitpig!” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s voice cast and derivative animated films.

Lobster (voiced by Charlie Adler), Lola (voiced by Hannah Gadsby), Letícia dos Anjos (voiced by Anitta), Hitpig (voiced by Jason Sudeikis), Polecat (voiced by RuPaul) and Super Rooster (voiced by Charlie Adler) in “Hitpig!” (Image courtesy of Viva Pictures)

“Hitpig!” (about a bounty hunter pig) is a messy and unimaginative animated film with absolutely no surprises and no clever comedy. This flaccid flop has too many shallow or annoying characters. The animation is mediocre-to-bad, with manic editing that still manages to be dull. Anyone who appreciates good animation will have a hard time staying interested in the sloppy and derivative “Hitpig!”

Directed by Cinzia Angelini and David Feiss, “Hitpig!” has a screenplay written by Berkeley Breathed, Dave Rosenbaum and Tyler Werrin. The movie is based partially on Breathed’s 2008 children’s book “Pete and Pickles,” about the unlikely friendship between a pig named Pete and a runaway circus elephant named Pickles. In “Hitpig!,” the male pig is named Hitpig (voiced by Jason Sudeikis), which is supposed to be a shortened version of Hit Pygmy Elephant, even though this animal is pig, not an elephant.

Does this make sense to you? Of course not. It’s an example of many unnecessarily moronic things about this movie. Hitpig is not a pig version of a hitman. Instead, Hitpig is a bounty hunter who captures wild animals that have usually escaped from people who want to imprison these animals.

It’s explained in the beginning of the movie that Hitpig worked with a human mentor named Big Bertha (played by Lorraine Ashbourne), and most of the animals they collected/captured were reptiles. Big Bertha had a passion for cooking and taught Hitpig how to make omelettes and other meals. Hitpig’s cooking skills are the flimsy basis of a poorly written subplot about his secret desire to quit being a bounty hunter to become a chef. Flavor Flav (best known as a former member of the rap group Public Enemy) has a voice cameo as an emcee for a chef talent contest.

Early on in “Hitpig!,” Big Bertha dies when she gets an assignment to capture a lizard, but the lizard turned out to be a crocodile that immediately ate Big Bertha. Years later, Hitpig is on his own as a bounty hunter. He uses a high-tech vehicle called a CatchVan (voiced by Shelby Young) that has its own computer voice. At the Perfectly Fine Nuclear Power Plant, a polecat named Polecat (voiced by RuPaul) escapes and has an unusual quirk: Because of living in a nuclear power plant, this polecat has a body that glows, and Polecat’s farts have nuclear power that can be used as weapons.

When Hitpig encounters Polecat and finds out about Polecat’s farts literally having nuclear-levels of toxicty, Hitpig says to Polecat: “Some guys cut the cheese. You destroy the cheese.” (Yes, it’s that kind of movie.)

Hitpig gets an assignment to find and capture a former circus elephant from India named Pickles (voiced by Lilly Singh), who is now owned by a greedy and corrupt show promoter named Leapin’ Lord of the Leotard (voiced by Rainn Wilson), who plans to use Pickles for an ongoing animal show residency in Las Vegas. Leapin’ Lord offers to pay a $1 million bounty to Hitpig if Hitpig can return Pickles to Leapin’ Lord in time for the debut performance of this Las Vegas show, which will take place in just a few days. It’s an offer that Hitpig can’t refuse.

Along the way, Hitpig meets a motley crew of characters, including an animal rights activist named Letícia dos Anjos (played by Anitta), who is also looking for Pickles, because Letícia wants to take Pickles back to India and set Pickles free in Pickles’ native country. Talking animals who get involved in these shenanigans include Polecat; a sassy koala named Koala (voiced by Hannah Gadsby); a lobster named Lobster (voiced by Charlie Adler); and a celebrity chicken named Super Rooster (also voiced by Adler). Leapin’ Lord also has a sidekick crocodile named Fluffy (voiced by Dennis Leonard), who doesn’t talk but makes other noises.

The race against time to find Pickles leads to a trip to outer space and more “madcap” hijinks that aren’t very funny or adventurous. It’s a jumbled and utterly predictable movie with unimpressive voice performances. Anitta in particular has a very flat delivery of her dialogue lines—an indication that she needs more acting lessons.

“Hitpig!” is not an agressively horrible movie, but it’s got an incredibly lazy story with no real effort into making these characters anything other than trite and generic. The onslaught of idiotic jokes don’t help. The movie’s weak comedy, just like the rest of “Hitpig!,” is easily forgotten because there’s nothing special about this utterly trite and muddled film.

Viva Pictures released “Hitpig!” in U.S. cinemas on November 1, 2024.

August 11, 2023

by Carla Hay

Kate Beckinsale, Charlie Day and Ken Jeong in “Fool’s Paradise” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions)

“Fool’s Paradise” (2023)

Directed by Charlie Day

Culture Representation: Taking place in the Los Angeles area, the comedy film “Fool’s Paradise” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans Asians and Latinos) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A mostly mute man goes from being patient at a psychiatric facility to impersonating a famous actor while also hanging out with a con-man publicist.

Culture Audience: “Fool’s Paradise” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, because their name recognition is the only thing that this embarrassing dud has going for it.

Charlie Day and Adrien Brody in “Fool’s Paradise” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions)

“Fool’s Paradise” is more like viewer’s hell, for anyone expecting this comedy to be funny. It looks like the type of flop whose all-star cast members are there because the director begged them to be in his movie, instead of the screenplay being good. Not only is “Fool’s Paradise” painfully unfunny, but it’s also relentlessly boring.

Written and directed by Charlie Day, “Fool’s Paradise” is Day’s feature-film directorial debut. Day has made a name for himself by mostly doing comedies on TV and in movies. (He’s one of the stars of the long-running comedy TV series “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”) You’d think that someone with all of these years of experience in comedy would’ve learned how to make an entertaining comedy film. “Fool’s Paradise” looks like a movie directed by a complete amateur who convinced several famous people to be in the movie.

There isn’t much to the rambling and garbage plot of “Fool’s Paradise,” which takes place in the Los Angeles area. Day portrays two characters in the movie: the constantly confused main character Latte Pronto and look-alike difficult actor Sir Thomas Kit Bingsley. Someone who buzzes around like an annoying insect in the movie is a con man named Lenny (played by Ken Jeong), who has decided he’s going to convince people that he’s a publicist in the entertainment business. Much of “Fool’s Paradise” is about the silly antics that happen after Lenny meets Latte.

“Fool’s Paradise” begins by showing Lenny in a tense meeting at a diner with an unnamed comedian (played by Andrew Santino), who is furious because he hired Lenny to introduce him to agents and managers, but Lenny hasn’t delivered on that promise. Lenny makes weak excuses, but this angry client has had enough of Lenny and fires him on the spot. With no more clients to deceive, Lenny goes on the hunt for his next scam victim.

Meanwhile, at a psychiatric facility, two unnamed doctors (played by Peter Mackenzie and Christine Horn) decide that they have to discharge one of the patients at the facility. The first doctor says about this hapless patient (played by Day): “The patient is a nobody. He has no family or friends. He has the mind of a 5-year-old or a Labrador retriever.” The doctor adds that the state won’t pay for any of Latte’s therapy, “so we’re going to put his ass on the first bus downtown.”

While this displaced man is now homeless walking on a street, he’s spotted by an unnamed producer (played by Ray Liotta), who is driving by and immediately notices that this person on the street looks identical to hard-drinking actor Thomas. The producer is frustrated because Thomas has been acting like a spoiled, alcoholic diva on the set of the producer’s latest movie, which is a Western.

The producer decides to meet this stranger and hire him as Thomas’ double whenever Thomas is too drunk to work. Even though this stranger seems incapable of telling anyone who he is, the producer decides to go through with the plan. The producer invites the stranger to be on the movie studio lot. During a lunch with the stranger, the producer orders someone to get him a “latte, pronto.” And that’s how the stranger begins to call himself Latte Pronto.

The problem? Latte has lost his ability to speak. That’s supposed to be the movie’s main gimmick, but “Fool’s Paradise” is so stupid, it does away with that gimmick by showing that Latte is mute, except when he has to deliver his actor lines when he’s impersonating Thomas. His co-star in the movie is Chad Luxt (played by Adrien Brody), who plays the villain character Black Bart in the producer’s Western movie.

Before the movie can be completed, Thomas is found dead from self-asphyxiation. At the producer’s urging, Latte takes over Thomas’ identity completely, in order to finish the movie. The producer doesn’t want to lose his investment in the film. Latte then begins to live the life of a movie star, including having Lenny as his publicist. Also in Latte’s entourage are an agent (played by Edie Falco), an attorney, a stylist and an intern (played by Shane Paul McGhie).

An actress named Christiana Dior (played by Kate Beckinsale) starts off in the story as Chad’s girlfriend, but she dumps Chad to marry Latte. Christiana is a shallow trophy wife and one of the worst-written characters in “Fool’s Paradise.” Jason Sudeikis has a brief supporting role as a movie director. Jason Bateman makes a cameo as a special effects technician.

John Malkovich and Tom O’Rion portray wealthy businessman brothers Ed Cote and Dartanon Cote, who are heavly involved in political campaigns. It’s an obvious spoof of the real-life Charles Koch and David Koch. Hip-hop star/actor Common has a small supporting role as a homeless guy named The Dagger. Most of the characters in “Fool’s Paradise” do not have names.

There are some really awful movies where you can tell that at least the cast members were having fun. That’s not the case with “Fool’s Paradise,” which is the type of dreadful misfire where the principal cast members look like they know they’re stuck in a horrible movie, and they all (including Day) give lackluster performances. The sluggish pacing makes this cinematic cesspool of bad comedy even worse. The only good thing that might come out of “Fool’s Paradise” is that if Day directs another movie, hopefully he’ll learn from this colossal failure of creativity, and he won’t make the same mistakes again.

Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions released “Fool’s Paradise” in U.S. cinemas on May 12, 2023. The movie was released on digital and VOD on June 2, 2023.

Tag: Jason Sudeikis

Review: ‘Hitpig!,’ starring the voices of Jason Sudeikis, Lilly Singh, Anitta, RuPaul, Hannah Gadsby, Flavor Flav and Rainn Wilson

Review: ‘Fool’s Paradise’ (2023), starring Charlie Day, Ken Jeong, Kate Beckinsale, Adrien Brody, Jason Sudeikis, Jason Bateman, Common and Ray Liotta