Mickey Rourke Archives

Review: ‘Not Another Church Movie,’ starring Kevin Daniels, Vivica A. Fox, Lamorne Morris, Tisha Campbell, Jasmine Guy, Mickey Rourke and Jamie Foxx

May 10, 2024

by Carla Hay

Kevin Daniels in “Not Another Church Movie” (Photo courtesy of Briarcliff Entertainment)

Directed by Johnny Mack

Culture Representation: Taking place in Savannah, Georgia, the comedy film “Not Another Church Movie” features a predominantly African American cast of characters (with some white people) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Jack-of-all-trades Taylor Pherry (a parody of Tyler Perry) tries to launch a career as a screenwriter.

Culture Audience: “Not Another Church Movie” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of Tyler Perry, but even his fans will be turned off by this pointless and obnoxious movie.

Jamie Foxx in “Not Another Church Movie” (Photo courtesy of Briarcliff Entertainment)

If you think most of Tyler Perry’s movies are bad, they look like masterpieces compared to “Not Another Church Movie,” which is a painfully unfunny and trashy parody of Tyler Perry and his movies. Any money spent on this horrid junk is money that is wasted.

Written and directed by Johnny Mack, “Not Another Church Movie” is nothing but abysmally written skits thrown together, in a feeble attempt to look like real movie plot. Mack makes his feature-film directorial debut with “Not Another Church Movie.” His previous experience has been in television, as a writer for BET’s “Real Husbands of Hollywood” and several BET Awards ceremonies.

That might explain why “Not Another Church Movie” looks like a rejected sitcom idea or a vapid joke at a third-rate awards show. It might explain the movie’s low quality, but it doesn’t excuse it. There are many children who are amateur comedians on social media who are a lot funnier and smarter than “Not Another Church Movie,” which is nothing but bottom-of-the-barrel dreck.

Don’t let some of the celebrity names in the cast fool you into thinking “Not Another Church Movie” is worth watching. This isn’t the first bad movie for any of these celebrities, but it’s one of their worst. “Not Another Church Movie” is also a “bait and switch” fraud because the biggest stars in the movie—Jamie Foxx, Mickey Rourke and Vivica A. Fox—are in the film for less than five minutes each. “Not Another Church Movie” is terrible on every single level and is a humiliating failure for everyone involved.

The movie’s so-called “plot” is that a “jack of all trades” character named Taylor Pherry (played by Kevin Daniels), who lives in the Georgia city of Savannah, decides to become a screenwriter, while various mishaps and annoyances happen to him and to people who know him. (“Not Another Church Movie” was filmed on location in Savannah and other parts of Georgia.) A running joke that quickly gets tiresome is that the “p” in Pherry is silent, so Taylor constantly has to tell people how to correctly pronounce his last name.

“Not Another Church Movie” opens with a scene showing Taylor as a successful filmmaker, while the rest of the movie shows how he got to where he is. Taylor proudly tells viewers that before he became a filmmaker, he held several day jobs at the same time, including being a public defender, a surgeon and a pizza delivery person. It’s a dull parody of how the real Perry struggled for years in various jobs before he became a hit filmmaker.

Meanwhile, a rich and famous TV talk show host named Hoprah Windfall (played by Luc Ashley), who’s a parody of Oprah Winfrey, announces to her studio audience that even though her latest movie was a flop, she still has her wealth. Hoprah says she’s ready to retire from her talk show. She’s gotten a little tired of her protégés Dr. Bill and Dr. Loz (in other words, Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz), so she’s looking for a new protégé to be her next “pet project” and possibly her successor.

And that’s where Taylor supposedly will conveniently fit into the story, except Hoprah disappears for most of the movie. Instead, “Not Another Church Movie” becomes an annoying hodgepodge of messy ideas thrown together. And the results are not funny at all.

“Not Another Church Movie” is a low point in the career of Oscar-winning actor Foxx, who portrays a buffoonish, motorcycle-riding character named God, who is supposed to help Hoprah search for her successor. God is the one who tells Taylor to become a writer. The only other things that this God character does is ride his motorycle and has boardroom meetings in the clouds with 10 sycophant angels. During these meetings, God (wearing a very cheap-looking wig) tells horrible racial jokes.

At least Foxx has scenes where he’s actually in the same room as some cast members. Rourke plays the Devil like someone in a stupor reading wall graffiti. It’s obvious that Rourke did all of his acting for the movie without any other cast members there. He’s just “dropped” into the movie with some very sloppy visual effects that try to make the Devil look like he can suddenly appear wherever he wants. This Devil character should have been one of the funniest characters in the movie, but he just utters a bunch of forgettable lines, like an incoherent drunk person who’s not capable of saying more than six sentences in a row.

Taylor’s aunt is MaDude (also played by Daniels), who is a parody of Perry’s sassy and elderly Madea character. MaDude’s brother is a grouch named Moe Himms (played by Wayne Stamps), a parody of Perry’s Joe Simmons character in the “Madea” movies. Mo Himms’ only purpose in “Not Another Church Movie” is to insult MaDude and pass gas for idiotic fart jokes. MaDude and Moe Himms bicker a lot in several unfunny scenes throughout the film.

Some of the worst scenes in the movie take place at the courthouse where rude and incompetent Judge Loreal (played by Fox)—who hates men and white people—presides over family law cases and criminal cases. A truly atrocious sequence takes place during a divorce trial where a man named Darnell (played by T’Shaun Barrett) brings three blonde women named Karen to the courtroom. Darnell announces that they are his mistresses, and they gave him money for his legal fees “because that’s what white women do.” Darnell also collectively calls these Karens the “KKK.”

Darnell’s estranged wife Ellen (played by Brittney Jefferson) is Taylor’s cousin. Ellen and Darnell are going through a bitter divorce. Taylor is Ellen’s divorce attorney. Even though Darnell treats Ellen badly and wants the divorce, Ellen pathetically wants Darnell to get back together with her. The judge awards half of Darnell’s assets to Ellen, which leads to a deplorable scene of MaDude showing up to the former couple’s home with a chainsaw. You can easily predict what happens next.

Several of Perry’s movies are spoofed and/or namechecked in “Not Another Church Movie.” The 2007 film “Daddy’s Little Girls” is parodied with several moronic scenes featuring a single father named Monte Carlo (played by Lamorne Morris), who is raising three underage girls: Not Precious (played by Zaleigh Jackson), Less Precious (played by Kennedy Weston) and Least Precious (played by Zoë Parks), who don’t talk much in their scenes.

Many of Perry’s movies (take your pick) are about single women struggling to find true love and getting involved with the wrong men. Those movies are parodied too. A newly divorced Ellen gets back into the dating scene and meets a vain loser named Tallahassee (also played by Barrett), a one-joke character who is obsessed with how he looks, especially his painted-on, rock-hard abdomen. Tallahassee drives a truck for his small business called Tally Hoes Moving and Storage. That’s all you need to know about what type of obnoxious character Tallahassee is.

Taylor has a colleague who is a successful district attorney named Julie (played by Kearia Schroeder), who needs a car driver. Taylor recommends Monte for the job, and Monte is quickly hired. Monte is rude to Julie on the job, by calling her names like “sugar tits,” “stupid” and “bitch.” In this loathsome and misogynistic movie, Julie doesn’t fire Monte and does nothing about these insults. The filmmakers of “Not Another Church Movie” want the audience to think all of this is hilarious.

Taylor has a family member named Beverly (played by Kyla Pratt), a middle-aged single mother who is financially struggling. Her teenage son Michael (played by Jaden L. Miller) has grown up not knowing who his father is, but he finds out in the movie. Beverly is so broke, she flashes her breasts at a bus driver named Tyrone (played by Pierre Edwards) so that she can get a free ride on the bus. (There is no nudity in “Not Another Church Movie,” but the movie uses the “joke” of a woman flashing naked body parts more than once.)

Perry’s 2009 film “Madea Goes to Jail” is imitated with a sequence where MaDude gets in a car chase with police and ends up getting arrested. Guess who’s the judge in her courtroom appearance. There are also a few silly scenes parodying 2016’s “Boo! A Madea Halloween” and the even-worse 2017 sequel “Boo 2! A Madea Halloween.”

Perry’s 2008 film “Meet the Browns” (which spawned a TV series of the same name) is spoofed with the married characters Flora Black (played by Tisha Campbell) and Mr. Black (played by Yves B. Claude), who are mindless stereotypes. Flora has an artificially large behind that is literally the butt of some of the movie’s awful jokes. Mr. Black is supposed to be so stupid, he accidentally sets himself on fire at a family cookout. Jasmine Guy has a weird and out-of-place cameo in the movie as a cleaning lady named Miss Mildew.

“Not Another Church Movie” is so unfocused, it also spoofs the Oscar-nominated 1991 drama “Boyz n the Hood,” which is about three teenage friends affected by gang violence in South Central Los Angeles. Needless to say, the only awards that are suitable for “Not Another Church Movie” are Razzie Awards because it’s by far one of the worst films of the year. And for a movie called “Not Another Church Movie,” hardly any of it takes place in a church. The only real church scene is at the end. The end of “Not Another Church Movie” can’t come soon enough for any viewer who endures this onslaught of foul filmmaking.

Briarcliff Entertainment released “Not Another Church Movie” in U.S. cinemas on May 10, 2024.

Review: ‘Take Back,’ starring Mickey Rourke, Michael Jai White, James Russo and Gillian White

September 5, 2021

by Carla Hay

“Take Back”

Directed by Christian Sesma

Culture Representation: Taking place in Coachella Valley, California, the action film “Take Back” features a cast of African American and white characters (with a few Latinos and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: An attorney’s past comes back to haunt her as she and her husband become involved in vigilante justice for a sex trafficking ring that has kidnapped their daughter.

Culture Audience: “Take Back” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching low-quality and ridiculous action flicks.

Mickey Rourke in “Take Back” (Photo courtesy of Shout! Studios)

“Take Back” is a good way to describe the “I want a refund” regretful response of viewers if they have the misfortune of buying or renting this atrocious action flick. You have to wonder what this movie’s producers were thinking to waste money on such an obvious junkpile flop that’s embarrassing to everyone involved. “Take Back” is yet another female exploitation film that tries to look nobler than it really us, just because there’s a vigilante mother who’s one of the main characters. There’s absolutely nothing worth admiring about this movie, unless you think it’s admirable to see Mickey Rourke as a gangster who adores his pet Pomeranians. A sleepwalker has more energy than the “I just don’t care anymore” performance that Rourke has in this awful dreck.

Directed by Christian Sesma and written by Zach Zerries, “Take Back” fails on almost every level of filmmaking. The acting is terrible, the plot and dialogue are beyond stupid, and even the action scenes in this movie are pathetic. Everything is sloppily filmed. About the only thing that the movie has going for it is it that has a few cast members with name recognition, such as Rourke and Michael Jai White, who both have been making trashy, low-budget movies for the past several years.

“Take Back” (which takes place in California’s Coachella Valley) opens with the kidnapping of two drunk women in their 20s who stumble out of a bar, flirt with each other, and then get abducted by men driving by in a van. The men are part of a sex trafficking ring led by a slothful thug named Patrick (played by Rourke), who spends half of his screen time lying on a bed and stroking his Pomeranians. It’s later revealed that Patrick’s real name is Jack, and he has a past connection to one of the movie’s protagonists.

The kidnapped women, one of whom is named Veronica Sanders (played by Emily Unnasch), are taken to a locked and dirty shed in a remote part of the valley, where they are held captive with about five or six other young and pretty women. The goons who are their captors are shown physically harassing and attacking the women in more than one scene. Patrick occasionally checks in on the kidnapping victims, but he lets his henchmen do most of the work in guarding the terrified women. Patrick uses the words “the merchandise” to describe these women.

Meanwhile, married couple Brian (played by Michael Jai White) and Zara (played by Gillian White) are spending their seventh wedding anniversary by boxing each other in a gym for fun. Brian is a martial arts instructor, while Zara is a successful real estate attorney who works for a private law firm. (Michael Jai White and Gillian White are married in real life.)

Zara is Brian’s second wife and the stepmother to Brian’s bright and obedient daughter Audrey (played by Priscilla Walker), who’s about 15 or 16 years old. Audrey’s mother is Brian’s ex-wife, who is not seen in the movie, but there’s a minor subplot where the ex-wife dies of cancer. Michael Jai White is the only cast member in this train wreck movie who seems to make an effort to have believable acting, but it’s still comes out looking corny. As for Gillian White’s acting, let’s just say that “Take Back” is proof that nepotism in getting a movie role can actually make a movie worse.

Now that viewers know that Zara and Brian have fighting skills, Zara is next seen in a small coffee shop, where she puts some of those skills to use when she gets involved in a harrowing incident. A very angry and mentally unstable man has come into the coffee shop, where he begins yelling at the barista (played by Lucia Romero), who seems to be the only employee in the shop. Apparently, the barista was in a relationship with this furious ex, and now he’s threatening her with gun.

And just like that, Zara goes into action by disarming this creep and holding him until he can get arrested. Another customer in the shop has videorecorded the whole incident on his phone. The video soon goes viral and gets more than 1 million views in a short period of time. A woman from Zara’s past has seen this video and is about to pay an unwanted visit to Zara at Zara’s law office.

The woman is named Nancy (played by Jessica Uberuaga), who looks like she’s more comfortable hanging out at a truck stop than at a law firm. She wears garish makeup, a revealing tank top and ripped denim shorts. And she’s often seen vaping. What are the odds that she knows Patrick the pimp?

Nancy also seems to know Zara too. When she shows up at Zara’s office without an appointment, she insists on talking to Zara. Nancy tells Zara that she saw Zara’s viral video and says she knows that Zara’s real name is Kim. Zara insists to Nancy that her name isn’t Kim. Zara also claims that she’s never seen or met Nancy before, but Nancy says that Zara is lying.

Zara tells Nancy to leave the office, by yelling, “Leave me the fuck alone!” But you just know that Zara and Nancy are going to see each other again. This unexpected visit seems to have unnerved Zara, which means that she’s got a big secret that will eventually be revealed. The secret is not surprising at all, considering this movie is as subtle as a bulldozer in a junkyard, which is kind of like how you could describe the abominable acting in this film.

Less than 48 hours after Zara disarmed the crazed gunman in the coffee shop, she goes through another violent experience. While she’s home alone one day, a thug named Cisneros (played by David Will No) breaks into the house with the intent to kill her. Zara is able to fight off her attacker in the living room, and she kills him with a samurai sword that conveniently happens to be in the room. Before this attack, Cisneros was seen talking on a phone to a boss who ordered this home invasion. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who this boss is.

All this trauma in a short period of time has left Zara with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The PTSD comes out in an incident where Zara agreed to help Brian with potential new students at a boxing demonstration at a dojo. However, Zara has a flashback freakout and starts pummeling Brian too hard during the demonstration, and then she abruptly runs out of the building.

This PTSD puts a strain on Zara and Brian’s marriage. And then Brian’s ex-wife dies of cancer. And just so more bad things can happen to this family, Brian and Audrey are driving in Brian’s car when they get carjacked. Brian is tasered while Audrey is kidnapped. What are the odds that Audrey was kidnapped by the sex-trafficking ring that’s run by Patrick?

The kidnapping is reported to law enforcement, but Zara and Brian think that the cops won’t be of much help. And so Zara and Brian take the law into their own hands and go on a mission to find and rescue Audrey themselves. You know exactly how this is all going to end.

There are three characters connected to law enforcement who play a role in this predictable story. Anthony DeMarco (played by Nick Vallelonga) is a former detective who knows a lot about Patrick because he was tasked with investigating Patrick years ago. Detective Frank Schmidt (played by James Russo) and his cop partner Detective Perez (played by Jay Montalvo) are investigating the recent kidnappings.

Another supporting character is Jerry Walker (played by Chris Browning), one of Zara’s clients. Jerry owns a vast park called Lake Cahuilla that he inherited from his father. The scenes were actually filmed at Lake Cahuilla Veterans Regional Park, a 71-acre property owned by California’s Riverside County and located near the Santa Rosa Mountains. Jerry’s property ends up being a part of this movie’s very flimsy plot. “Take Back” is time-wasting trash that should be avoided at all costs, unless you’re a masochist who is compelled to see all of Rourke’s horrible movies in the final years of his career.

Shout! Studios released “Take Back” in select U.S. cinemas, digital and VOD on June 18, 2021.

Review: ‘Adverse,’ starring Thomas Nicholas, Lou Diamond Phillips, Sean Astin, Penelope Ann Miller and Mickey Rourke

April 28, 2021

by Carla Hay

“Adverse”

Directed by Brian A. Metcalf

Culture Representation: Taking place in Los Angeles, the crime drama “Adverse” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some Latinos and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and criminal underworld.

Culture Clash: An ex-con, who’s now a rideshare driver, goes on a vendetta rampage after his teenage sister is harmed because of a $20,000 debt she owes to a drug lord.

Culture Audience: “Adverse” will appeal primarily to people who want to see a violent movie and don’t care if it’s tacky and terrible.

Thomas Nicholas in “Adverse” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)

“Adverse” is the type of rage-filled, mindless vendetta movie that’s so bad, it verges on parody. Unfortunately, the movie takes itself way too seriously to be considered something to laugh at, and the action scenes (the main attraction of the movie) are filmed in an amateurish way. There’s absolutely nothing original about this uninspiring movie that is ultimately a giant bore.

Written and directed by Brian A. Metcalf, the title of “Adverse” is a perfect way to describe what this movie is, when it comes to creating a memorable and entertaining movie. People who’ve seen plenty of action movies will immediately see that “Adverse” can’t even meet basic standards of suspense and exciting energy. The killings are done such a robotic way that they didn’t really need live actors for this movie. “Adverse” looks more like a tedious video game.

In “Adverse,” Ethan Locke (played by Thomas Nicholas, who is one of the film’s producers) is an ex-con in his late 30s or early 40s who’s trying to get his life back on track as a rideshare driver. The car that he uses for his job was given to him by his late mother Nicole (played by Penelope Ann Miller, in flashbacks), who was stricken with an unnamed terminal illness. Ethan is the legal guardian of his rebellious 16-year-old half-sister Mia Locke (played by Kelly Arjen), who has been hanging out with a druggie crowd.

Ethan and Mia have different fathers who are not in their lives. Mia’s father died years ago, while Ethan’s father abandoned the family when Ethan was young and hasn’t been in contact ever since. Ethan doesn’t even know if his father is dead or alive.

Ethan spent time in prison for armed robbery, but he turned his life around before his mother died, which is why he was able to get guardianship of Mia instead of her being put in the foster care system. As part of his parole requirements, Ethan meets regularly with Dr. Daniel Cruz (played by Lou Diamond Phillips), a clinical social services professional who tells Ethan that he wants to help him. However, Ethan is aloof in their meetings because he doesn’t seem to trust anyone who’s part of “the system.”

One day, Ethan comes home to his shabby apartment and finds Mia and three other people smoking dope in the living room: Lars (played by Jake T. Austin) is Mia’s drug-dealing boyfriend, and the other two party friends are sisters Chris McMillan (played by Shelley Regner) and Jessica McMillan (played by Ayla Kell). Ethan is on parole and can’t be around drug users, and he’s also concerned about Mia’s welfare, so he angrily orders Mia’s druggie pals to leave the apartment.

Mia isn’t happy about it and she tells Ethan that she’s probably going to drop out of high school. Ethan says that he could lose custody of Mia and she could be put in foster care, but she yells at him that it doesn’t matter because at least she wouldn’t have to answer to him anymore. Their arguing is cliché, and it’s at this point you know that Mia’s rebelliousness will bring trouble to the family.

Ethan also doesn’t approve of Lars because he suspects that Lars has been abusive to Mia. And Ethan is right. There are some flashback memories that Mia has that shows how Lars bullies her and physically roughs her up. But like a lot of people in abusive relationships, Mia is too scared to end the relationship.

And speaking of relationships, Ethan has a mild flirtation going with his next-door neighbor Chloe (played by Kate Katzman), who just happens to look like a bombshell blonde actress. Since this movie takes place in Los Angeles, having a neighbor who looks like Chloe isn’t entirely far-fetched. But since “Adverse” only portrays females in this movie as eye candy and/or damsels in distress, no one should be surprised that the “Adverse” filmmakers make Chloe a very superficial, two-dimensional character.

One night, Ethan gets a rideshare customer named Kaden Stern (played by Mickey Rourke), who says that his job is lending people money. But Kaden is more than a loan shark. He’s also a murderous drug lord who doesn’t hesitate to have people killed if they can’t pay their debts to him.

But Ethan doesn’t know at first that Kaden is really a drug boss. While Ethan drives Kaden to his destination, Kaden asks Ethan if he’s looking for a full-time job. Ethan says no, because he’s a full-time rideshare driver, which is a job that he likes because “I work when I want.” Of course, this won’t be the last that Kaden and Ethan see of each other.

Kaden has various henchmen doing a lot of dirty work for him, including a small-time drug dealer named Dante (played by “Adverse” director Metcalf), who’s also a cocaine addict. Dante is tasked with being a “middle man” who collects the debts that people owe to Kaden. In the movie, Dante is shown only in a back room of a sleazy club called The Velvet Room, as if he has nowhere else to be. or because this low-budget film couldn’t be bothered to do anything creative with its set design.

It should come as no surprise that Mia and Lars are among the people in debt to Kaden. One night, Mia confesses to Kaden that she and Lars owe $20,000 to Dante. According to what Mia says, she and Lars originally borrowed $10,000 to run away together and start their own business. But instead, they used to money to buy drugs. And with interest added to their debt, their total debt is $20,000.

The timing couldn’t be worse for Ethan to hear this news. He’s been suspended from his rideshare job after getting false complaints from two customers—one who accused him of overcharging, and the other who accused him of sexual harassment. Ethan’s boss Frankie (played by Sean Astin) tells him that Ethan won’t get the $10,000 salary owed to him until the outcome of the company investigation into these complaints.

But since this is a silly movie about an ex-con on a rampage, Ethan storms into Frankie’s office and uses physical intimidation get the $10,000. And conveniently, Frankie has all of the $10,000 in cash right at his desk, and he quickly and fearfully hands over the cash to Ethan. And because Mia told Ethan where to find Dante, the next thing you know, Ethan barrels his way into the back of The Velvet Room, and growls at Dante to take the $10,000 and consider Mia’s debt paid in full.

But if things ended there, there would be no “Adverse” movie. Through a series of circumstances, Mia is kidnapped, and Ethan goes in full-on, crazy vigilante mode. Along the way, he encounters three more goons who are in Kaden’s inner circle: Jake (played by Matt Ryan), who’s a ruthless Brit; Jan (played by Andrew Keegan), who’s a typical scuzzy lowlife; and Kyle (played by Luke Edwards), who’s a stuttering, simple-minded thug.

The acting in this movie is all over the place (and not in a good way), ranging from stiffly empty to melodramatic garbage. There’s a heavy-handed musical score from Alex Kharlamov that’s very mismatched and self-important, because it sounds like it’s supposed to be for a major adventure epic instead of what this movie really is: B-movie schlock.

There are fight scenes where you can literally see the fake punches that aren’t really hitting anyone and the cartoonishly overwrought sound effects added in later. And there are continuity and editing problems in the chase scenes. For example, someone is seen being chased by someone else who’s right behind (less than a foot away), but then a split second later in the same scene, the person doing the chasing is several feet away. It’s physically impossible, and this isn’t a sci-fi movie were someone has the ability to teleport. But really, it’s all such sloppy filmmaking.

As the chief villain Kaden, Rourke isn’t doing anything that he hasn’t done before in his other recent movies where he usually plays a villain. In fact, Rourke seems so bored and jaded with the role that you could have propped up a wax dummy and used visual effects to get more life out of the performance. Nicholas’ Ethan character shows glimmers of humanity in the beginning of the movie, but by the end of the film, Ethan is a not-very-believable killing machine who uses only a tire iron to slaughter a bunch of people. And don’t be fooled by the top billing that Phillips, Miller and Astin get for this movie, because the “Adverse” screen time for these three actors is about five minutes each.

“Adverse” might be entertaining to people who have anger issues and like to see dimwitted movies about a vigilante going on a vicious murder spree in a story that ultimately goes nowhere. But “Adverse” doesn’t even try to have any creativity whatsoever in the action scenes. And just like the body count that generically piles up in the movie, “Adverse” will be relegated to the disposable pile of deadweight movies with no soul and nothing to say.

Arcangelo Entertainment released “Adverse” in select U.S. cinemas on February 12, 2021. Lionsgate released “Adverse” on digital, VOD and DVD on March 9, 2021.