Culture Representation: Taking place in New York City in the summer of 2020, the comedy film “Stress Positions” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few black people, Middle Eastern people and Latin people) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A gay man, who’s in the midst of a bitter divorce, is visited by his young adult nephew, who temporarily stays with him, as the nephew’s presence becomes a source of gossip and intrigue with the man’s best friend and other people in his social circle.
Culture Audience: “Stress Positions” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in movies about the middle-class queer community in 2020s New York City, but this movie has a lot of unrealistic and silly dialogue.
Qaher Harhash in “Stress Positions” (Photo courtesy of Neon)
“Stress Positions” is the type of aimless and smug indie comedy that exists so the movie’s characters can aggravate each other and annoy viewers. The movie’s diverse LGBTQ representation deserves better than this incoherent story. It isn’t until the last 15 minutes that “Stress Positions” finally gets around to a part of the story that should have happened earlier. But by then, it’s too late to save this pretentious mess.
Written and directed by Theda Hammel, “Stress Positions” is Hammel’s feature-film directorial debut. She is also a co-star in the movie, where she portrays a gossipy and demanding transgender woman, who starts off as a supporting character and then turns into a co-lead character. (Hammel is a transgender woman in real life.) “Stress Positions” had its world premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
The movie is unfocused and confused about which character’s perspective has the story’s main point of view. One person narrates the first half of the movie, while another person narrates the second half of the movie. It gives the impression that Hammel’s screenplay writing was such a jumbled process, she didn’t bother to make the screenplay more cohesive because she also directed the movie. Maybe another writer/director could have salvaged this story into something that was more entertaining to watch, because the movie’s concept had potential to be made into a much better film than “Stress Positions.”
“Stress Positions” takes place in New York City’s Brooklyn borough in the summer of 2020, the period of time when COVID-19 infection rates were among the city’s highest of that year. The narrrator for the first half of the film is a transgender woman named Karla (played by Hammel), who says in the beginning of the movie that Terry Goon (played by John Early), who also lives in Brooklyn, is her best friend from college. Karla explains that Terry is a homemaker who’s in the middle of a bitter divorce from his husband Leo, who used to be Terry’s boss when Terry was an intern. (Leo’s occupation is not mentioned.)
Leo left Terry for another man and has been encouraging Terry to also find a new love. In the meantime, because Terry can’t afford his own place, he’s been staying in the former spouses’ apartment until the divorce is final. Karla also mentions in the voiceover that Terry has very limited work experience, because he quit his internship to become a homemaker in the longtime relationship that Terry had with Leo.
Terry is very high-strung, but the COVID-19 pandemic and the divorce have made him even more stressed-out and jumpy. Terry is so paranoid about getting infected with COVID-19, he sometimes wears a gas mask inside his house if he’s around people he doesn’t know are infected or not. Terry also makes an unexpected house guest wear a gas mask sometimes.
Terry’s unexpected house guest is his nephew Bahlul (played by Qaher Harhash), who has an American mother (Terry’s sister) and a Moroccan father. Bahlul was born in the United States but was raised in Morocco. Bahlul has done work as a model. He has arrived at Terry’s place with a broken left leg that was injured in a scooter accident. Therefore, Bahlul is mostly seen recovering in a bed, on a sofa or in a wheelchair.
Bahlul says his mother sent Bahlul to Terry’s place for a very good reason. As soon as Bahlul says this, you know exactly where this movie is going to go, since almost everyone in Terry’s socal circle is a member of the LGBTQ community. The only neighbors shown in this somewhat shabby walk-up apartment building are also queer. When Karla first meets Bahlul, he doesn’t say what his sexuality is, but she asks him if he’s ever dressed as a woman because he would make an attractive-looking woman.
Karla identifies as a transgender female lesbian. Her live-in girlfriend is a sarcastic and jaded author named Vanessa Ravel (played by Amy Zimmer), who is a politically active progressive feminist. Vanessa is somewhat self-conscious about originally being from suburban Larchmont, New York, because this suburb doesn’t fit her current image of being an urban hipster. Vanessa is also frustrated because she hasn’t been able to finish her second book. Vanessa’s first book is a novel called “Paulette,” whose title character was mainly inspired by Karla.
Karla has mixed feelings about the book. One the one hand, Karla brags to people that Vanessa wrote a book about her, and Karla sometimes autographs copies of “Paulette.” On the other hand, Karla feels resentment that Vanessa used her as the basis of the book, which apparently depicts Paulette as an unlikable character. Maybe the truth is a little to close for Karla’s comfort because Karla really is unlikable.
Karla is overly intrusive, rude, racist and xenophobic. Before Karla meets Bahlul and finds out that he is Terry’s nephew, she describes Bahlul as a “little brown kid” to Leo and wrongfully assumes that Bahlul is Terry’s lover. Whenever Karla meets people who aren’t white, Karla asks where they are from, because she expects them to give an answer that describes what their ethnicity is. If the person says that they are from somewhere in the United States, she asks the person where their family is from, to find out the family’s ethnicity or country of origin.
Karla does this type of interrogation when she meets a Grubhub delivery guy named Ronald (played by Faheem Ali), who delivers some Greek food to Karla one evening. Karla and Ronald strike up a flirtation. And it soon becomes clear that maybe Karla isn’t quite the “lesbian” that she says she is. Ronald’s bicycle becomes a pointless subplot in the movie.
The big “event” in “Stress Positions” is a Fourth of July barbecue party hosted by Terry in the apartment building’s tiny back courtyard. The movie doesn’t really explain how Terry goes from being so fearful of getting infected with COVID-19 that he wears a gas masks to Terry hosting an intimate gathering when COVID-19 infection rates are high, there’s no COVID-19 vaccine available at this point in time, and people won’t be wearing masks at this party. Two of the party guests are Terry’s obnoxious, cocaine-snorting, soon-to-be-ex-husband Leo (played by John Roberts) and Leo’s fiancé Hamadou (played by Davidson Obennebo), who politely asks Terry to sign the divorce papers so that they can all get on with their lives.
Terry (who has some slapstick scenes where he falls down more than once in the kitchen) is a stereotypical neurotic New Yorker. However, Terry’s story arc fades into the background as Karla and Bahlul (who is the narrator in the second half of the movie) have storylines that take over and dominate the movie. As Terry, Early clearly has the best comedic skills in the “Stress Positions” cast, so it’s a mistake that his talents are somewhat sidelined in the movie.
Bahlul talks mostly about his childhood in his tedious voiceovers, in which he comments on his mother almost as much as he talks about himself. (Bahlul is obviously a “mama’s boy.”) Even with all this talk, very little is revealed about who Bahlul is as a person, except when he tells Karla he’d like to write a book. Karla advises Bahlul to have more life experiences that he could put in a book.
“Stress Positions” has an irritating attitude that seems to say, “Showing a bunch of eccentric New York characters will be enough to make a good movie.” One of these eccentrics is Coco (played by Rebecca F. Wright), a mute upstairs neighbor who lives alone and appears to be a drag queen. Terry tells Ronald at one point in the story: “Coco’s not trans. She’s mentally ill.” Coco has only one pivotal scene in the film. Otherwise, she’s just in the movie to so a catty snob like Terry can make snide remarks about her.
“Stress Positions” will probably find a certain number of fans who automatically want to gush over anything that can be described as “quirky indie filmmaking,” while ignoring huge flaws in the filmmaking. (A lot of the movie has amateurish dialogue and unimpressive technical production.) The truth is that if you take away the underrepresented “diversity” in “Stress Positions,” it’s just another poorly made beginner film that is often dull. The identities of the characters are not reasons enough to care when their personalities and the story are so hollow.
Neon released “Stress Positions” in New York City on April 19, 2024, with an expansion to more U.S. cinemas on April 26, 2024.
A scene from “Unsung Hero.” Pictured in back row, from left to right: Paul Luke Bonenfant, Daisy Betts, Kirrilee Berger and Joel Smallbone. Pictured in front row, from left to right: Tenz McCall, JJ Pantano, Angus Caldwell and Diesel La Torraca. (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)
Culture Representation: Taking place from 1991 to 1993, in the United States and briefly in Australia, the dramatic film “Unsung Hero” (based on true events) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few black people and Asian people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: Financially broke music promoter/manager David Smallbone, his pregnant wife Helen Smallbone, and their children relocate from Australia to the U.S. city of Nashville, and go through various hardships as they try to launch the music career of daughter Rebecca.
Culture Audience: “Unsung Hero” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of Rebecca St. James, for KING & COUNTRY, and faith-based, family-oriented movies about persistence and hope during hard times.
Kirrilee Berger in “Unsung Hero” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)
“Unsung Hero” takes place in the early 1990s, but this reliably inspirational biopic about the Smallbone showbiz dynasty has timeless themes about the power of family love and loyalty. It’s a faith-based drama that isn’t preachy about religion. The movie’s competent filmmaking and credible performances make “Unsung Hero” appealing to viewers who are inclined to watch these types of movies. What makes “Unsung Hero” stand out from other similar biopics about male-dominated families is its clear focus on telling the story from the perspective of the family matriarch, who is the namesake of the movie.
Written and directed by Richard L. Ramsey and Joel Smallbone, “Unsung Hero” takes place in mostly chronological order, from 1991 to 1993. The Smallbone family is originally from Australia. Joel Smallbone and his younger brother Luke Smallbone are the members of for KING & COUNTRY, a Grammy-winning contemporary Christian duo. Their older sister is Grammy-winning contemporary Christian singer Rebecca St. James, also known as Rebecca Jean. Their siblings are also in the entertainment business. Their father David Smallbone was a concert promoter and is a longtime manager in the music business.
“Unsung Hero” begins in September 1991, with a scene of the Smallbone family being detained at a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol station at Los Angeles International Airport, where the family needs to get on flight from Los Angeles to Nashville. (St. James has a cameo as a flight attendant in “Unsung Hero.”) David Smallbone (played by Joel Smallbone) and his wife Helen Smallbone (played by Daisy Betts) have attracted a lot of attention from customs officials because the Smallbones are a large family. Also part of this travel entourage are the children of David and Helen: 14-year-old daughter Rebecca (played by Kirrilee Berger); 13-year-old son Daniel Smallbone (played by Paul Luke Bonenfant); son Ben (played by Tenz McCall), who’s about 10 or 11; 7-year-old son Joel (played by Diesel La Torraca); 5-year-old son Luke (played by JJ Pantano); and son Joshua, nicknamed Josh (played by Angus Caldwell), who’s about 3 or 4 years old.
The Smallbones have traveled from their former hometown of Sydney to start a new life in the United States. During this airport scene, the movie briefly flashes back to the less-than-ideal circumstances under which David and Helen decided to leave their family and friends behind in Australia for an uncertain future in America. For years, David was a successful Sydney-based concert promoter with a specialty in Christian music. A flashback scene shows David holding Joel on stage as David introduces a concert by the Christian heavy metal band Stryper.
However, in 1991, David’s fortunes took a steep downturn when Australia was hit with a recession. David promoted singer Amy Grant’s Australian tour that year and expected to make a lot of money from it. A scene in the movie shows Amy Grant (played by Rachel Hendrix) performing a concert on this Australian tour, and the auditorium is only about half full with audience members. David lost about $500,000 on the tour, which wiped out his family’s finances. In addition, the tour tarnished David’s reputation in the Australian music business, so he had trouble finding work in Australia.
David wants to continue to work in the music industry. And so, he decides the best thing to do is start over in the United States, specifically in Nashville, even though David and Helen don’t have any family or friends in Nashville. Helen, who is pregnant with their seventh child, reluctantly agrees and says they should give it a try for two years. And if things don’t work out after those two years, Helen thinks they should consider going back to Australia. David, Helen and their children just have a six-month visa at the beginning of their relocation to America.
The family members of David and Helen don’t want David, Helen and the kids to leave Australia. These relatives have varying degrees of acceptance about this relocation to America. David’s father James (played by Terry O’Quinn) is the most optimistic, while Helen’s mother Jean Francis (played by Roslyn Gentle) thinks this relocation is an unwise decision and keeps urging Helen and her Smallbone family to come back to Australia. “Unsung Hero” has a lot of the expected ups and downs of family struggles during this two-year period.
“Unsung Hero” also has an accurate depiction some of the crushing disappointments that can happen in an instant in the music business, even with a promising deal in place. David’s plan in Nashville was to start a record label with a well-known American artist, whose contract with another record company was ending. However, that plan falls through when the artist accepts the record company’s offer to renew the contract.
With no job prospects lined up, David struggles to find work. The Smallbone family members get some help from a friendly married couple they meet in church: compassionate Jed Albright (played by Lucas Black) and perky Kay Albright (played by Candace Cameron Bure), who generously give their van to the Smallbone family and offer to pay a few of the Smallbone family’s bills. Hillary Scott, the lead singer of Lady A (formerly known as Lady Antebellum), has a small role in “Unsung Hero” as Luanne Meece, the song leader of the church.
David and the older kids earn money by going around the neighborhood and doing low-paying jobs, such as mowing lawns. Eventually, the Smallbones operate a small home-based business doing house care services for other people, including interior cleaning. However, it’s not enough to get the Smallbone out of their financial pit. Although they are never homeless, the Smallbones often go hungry because they don’t have enough money for proper meals. David and Helen also decide to homeschool their children.
David, Helen and some of the kids end up getting a house care job at the mansion of Christian rock star Eddie DeGarmo (played by Jonathan Jackson), an artist who was rejected by David for an Australian tour when Eddie was part of the duo DeGarmo & Key. At the time, David thought he was too successful of a concert promoter to do a DeGarmo & Key tour, and he set his sights on an Amy Grant tour, which turned out to be a disaster. David is somewhat humiliated (and humbled) when he finds himself cleaning Eddie’s toilets as part of David’s current job.
Rebecca shows she has above-average musical talent as a singer and songwriter, so there are attempts to get her a record deal, but those attempts come with their share of rejections. “Unsung Hero” has some very good performances, particularly from Joel Smallbone and Betts, who skillfully anchor the movie as parents David and Helen. The immigrant family members persist against seemingly insurmountable obstacles, even when they have moments of self-doubt and naysayers telling them to give up. The cast members do their own singing, including a cover version of Rebecca St. James’ “You Make Everything Beautiful.”
No one in the family is depicted as “perfect” or too good to be true. The movie realistically shows some of the family arguments that can happen during this tension-filled time. David’s pride also gets in the way of some of his decisions that cause some alienation. In addition, Helen (the more patient parent) has moments where she struggles to hold on to her dignity and her temper in situations where many people would lose both. The movie is a worthy depiction of how Helen was the family’s source of strength in many ways.
Some of the dialogue in “Unsung Hero” can get a bit corny, but they are delivered with a lot of sincerity. In an early scene in the movie, David says when he tells Helen why they should start over and Nashville so he can continue to work in the Christian music industry: “I can’t sing, and I can’t play, but I can connect people to something higher and greater from the here and now. This is it. This is my last chance.”
Viewers should also keep in mind that the end result of the two-year period depicted in “Unsung Hero” is not typical of what most people experience when they want to be successful in the music industry. For most people, it takes much longer than two years to achieve what the Smallbones achieved in the two-year period shown in the movie, with the Smallbones having the added challenge of being recent immigrants to the United States.
There are several scenes where Helen and the children talk about praying, but the movie can still be relatable to viewers who are not religious because the story has an overall message of hope. “Unsung Hero” pulls at heartstrings in all the right places but doesn’t feel manipulative. This real-life story is made all the more meaningful in its message that hard work, talent, luck and the right connections can lead to success, but that success is better with the support of a loving family.
Lionsgate will release “Unsung Hero” in U.S. cinemas on April 26, 2024. A sneak preview of the movie was shown in select U.S. cinemas on April 24, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in India, Dubai, France, Africa, and the United States, the dramatic film “Ameena” (based on the 2016 movie “Yahan Ameena Bikti Hai”) features a predominantly Asian cast of characters (with some black people and white people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: An actress, who is starring in a play as a real-life teenager who committed suicide after being raped, goes on a revenge killing spree after she is also raped.
Culture Audience: “Ameena” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching terrible movies that are based on real-life tragedies.
Rekha Rana in “Ameena” (Photo courtesy of Kumar Raj Productions)
“Ameena” tries to look like a female empowerment film, but it’s sloppily made exploitation of a real-life tragedy. This horrible drama’s jumbled plot is about a play based on rape injustice and the play’s star actress going on a vigilante killing spree. The movie jets around to some glamorous-looking international locations, but all this jet-setting is really just putting a glossy sheen on some very unappealing and horrendous filmmaking.
Directed by Kumar Raj, “Ameena” is based on Raj’s 2016 feature film “Yahan Ameena Bikti Hai,” a movie that was Cameroon’s official entry for the Academy Awards category that was then known as Best Foreign Language Film. There’s nothing Oscar-worthy about “Ameena,” which is jaw-droppingly terrible and tone-deaf. “Ameena” mishandles two storylines (one based on real life, one completely fiction) in such a clumsy way, the real-life story didn’t need to be part of the plot at all.
“Yahan Ameena Bikti Hai” (based on a true story) is about a teenage girl named Ameena in Hyderabad, India. Ameena’s parents sold her into marriage to a Saudi Arabian man who was old enough to be her grandfather. Ameena was raped by three teenage boys in India and committed suicide after the rapists were acquitted because they were underage.
In “Ameena,” a teenage actress named Meena (played Rekha Rana) is starring as Ameena in a dramatic play titled “Yahan Ameena Bikti Hai” at the Prithi Theatre in India. (Meena is never convincining as teenager in her everyday life. She always looks and acts like she’s in her 20s.) The play is happening 32 years after Ameena’s suicide, but the play changes the timeline and describes the present year as 15 years after the tragic events. The play is nothing but some awkward-looking, incoherent and melodramatic stage scenes.
Meena is portraying Ameena at 15 years old. Ameena is distressed about being sold by her parents to marry a 65-year-old Saudi Araban man. Anant Mahadevan, who has the role of the unnamed playwright of “Yahan Ameena Bikti Hai,” just sits on stage and makes nonsensical comments as this playwright. Ameena’s ghost (also played by Rana) appears to the playwright to give him commentary and advice. All the scenes with Ameena’s ghost scenes are among the worst things about this very tacky film.
Near the begninning of the movie, Meena is shown in a police interrogation room, which is an obvious reveal that she’s going to be arrested for something later in the story. Meena defiantly says in voiceover narration that she is a criminal, and her crime is being female. Most of “Ameena” then has flashbacks to show how Meena ended up in this interrogation room.
One night, after leaving the Prithi Theatre to go home, Meena is kidnapped by three men, who rape her and viciously assault her. She is thrown into an open shallow grave and left for dead. Meena is found and brought to a hospital, where she is in a coma, but she eventually recovers.
During her recovery, Meena has a lot of time to think about the crimes that happened to her. And she decides she’s going to get revenge by killing her rapists and their gang boss Raghu Verma (played by Abeer Goel), who had ordered his thugs to kill Meena. Meena spews some nonsense about not only avenging herself but also teenage rape victim Ameena. It’s an illogical and lousy excuse to become a murderer.
Meena says her killing spree is a way to bring awareness of the injustice of Ameena’s rapist not being punished. (Conveniently, Meena seems to forget that her rapists are adults and wouldn’t be held to the same legal standards as the underage teenagers who weren’t held accountable for Ameena’s rape.) And how is she really helping herself if she gets arrested for murder?
Before she goes on her killing spree, there’s a silly-looking montage of Meena training as if she’s training to be become a mixed-martial arts fighter: She lifts weights, learns how to box, takes martial artist classes, and she goes on outdoor obstacle courses. The movie makes a point of showing that Meena is doing much of this training in a Los Angeles gym, with no explanation for why she’s in Los Angeles.
Meena gets some help and encouragement in her training from her love interest Ashish Shrivastav (played by Utkarsh Kohli), who occasionally shows up in the story. Ashish, who is very religious, is seen praying a lot by himself, almost as much as he is seen with Meena. Ashish is not seen for large chunks of the story, but then he shows up at the end of the movie for a very corny scene.
Meena’s travels also take her to Senegal, Togo, Dubai, and France. She stays at upscale hotels and hires some local men to help her hunt down her targets. Who is paying for all of these vigilante activities and trips? That answer is rushed into the end of the movie. While Meena is in France, she goes to the Cannes Film Festival, where she obtains a fraudulent festival pass, which she then exchanges for a gun. Yes, this movie really is that stupid.
After she murders certain people (in very cringeworthy and unrealistic action scenes), Meena feeds the corpses to wild animals, such as lions and alligators. While she’s in Africa, there’s a very upbeat hip-hop video-styled musical interlude that looks extremely out-of-place in this movie that is supposed to be about such a serious subject. The movie gets worse as it goes along.
And what exactly is law enforcement doing about these unhinged vigilante murders? Police Commissioner Bhupan Joshi (played by Kumar Raj) is leading the investigation into the murders that happen in India. The very unrealistic outcome of Meena’s arrest is also shown in the movie.
The acting performances in “Ameena” are downright awful and at times hard to watch. The overall technical aspects of the filmmaking are very amateurish, including shoddy film editing and an ill-suited film score. “Ameena” director Raj is also a producer of this garbage. It’s such a waste of money, not just for anyone who made this film but also for anyone who has the misfortune of paying to see this junk. The real-life story deserves better than the tawdry and pointless version that’s in “Ameena,” which is an abomination to cinema.
Kumar Raj Productions released “Ameena” in select U.S. cinemas and in India on April 19, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in the Indian cities of Mumbai and Ooty, the dramatic film “Do Aur Do Pyaar” (a remake of the 2017 movie “The Lovers”) features an all-Asian cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A husband and a wife—who are bored with each other and are contemplating divorceafter 12 years of marriage—each has a lover, but then the spouses rekindle the passion in their marriage, which makes their lovers jealous and suspicious.
Culture Audience: “Do Aur Do Pyaar” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and romantic dramedies that have realistic depictions of messy relationships among adults.
Pratik Gandhi and Vidya Balan in “Do Aur Do Pyaar” (Photo courtesy of AA Films)
“Do Aur Do Pyaar” is a mature and non-judgmental look at a husband and a wife who each has a lover outside the marriage. This emotionally complex remake of 2017’s “The Lovers” has more drama than comedy and admirably does not have a stale, formulaic plot. However, with a total running time of 137 minutes, “Do Aur Do Pyaar” is a little too long for what the movie ultimately shows what happens to the story’s entangled relationships by the end of the film.
Shirsha Guha Thakurta makes her feature-film directorial debut with “Do Aur Do Pyaar,” which has an adapted screenplay written by Suprotim Sengupta, Amrita Bagchi and Eisha Chopra. Thankfully, “Do Aur Do Pyaar” (which means “two plus two is love” in Hindi) is not a complete copy of the American movie “The Lovers”—the overall concept is the same, but many of the elements for the plot and characters are very different. “Do Aur Do Pyaar” takes place mostly in Mumbai (where a few of the characters still refer to the city as Bombay) and partially in Ooty, India.
In “Do Aur Do Pyaar,” the married couple are Kavya Ganeshan (played by Vidya Balan) and her husband Anirudh “Ani” Banerjee (played by Pratik Gandhi), who are both 38 years old and have been married for 12 years. Kavya is a dentist who thinks of herself as a strong and opinionated independent woman. Ani, who works at a cork factory, is the more passive partner in this marriage.
The movie has some flashbacks, but most of the story goes back and forth between showing the present-day relationships between Kavya and Ani and their extramarital lovers. Kavya and Ani have lost a lot of love for each other because they were never that passionately in love in the first place. They seemed to have a “friends with benefits” relationship that turned into marriage when Kavya proposed to Ani, who accepted the marriage proposal because Kavya’s job as a dentist had financial security. Kavya and Ani eloped, which has repercussions for Kavya later in the story.
Before Kavya and Ani got married, Ani was dating an aspiring actress named Nora (played by Ileana D’Cruz), and they continued to see each other after Ani got married. However, Nora has become very impatient because she thinks Ani is long overdue to get a divorce and fully commit to Nora. Even though they all live in Mumbai, Nora has not met Kavya in person when the story begins. For much of the story, Kavya does not know about Nora, who uses the alias Rosie, the name of a ghost character that Nora auditioned for in an acting job.
Kavya’s lover is an international photographer named Vikram, nicknamed Vik (played by Sendhil Ramamurthy), who is of Indian heritage but he grew up in the United States. Vikram used to live in New York City, but he moved to Mumbai to be closer to Kavya, who is often called Kavs by Ani and Vikram. Vikram is very much in love with Kavya and knows that Kavya is married.
Because Vikram’s job requires him to do a lot of traveling, it’s been easier for Kavya to keep her extramarital affair separate from her marriage than Ani has been able to keep his affair separate from his marriage. Still, Vikram is also showing signs that he wants Kavya to eventually choose between him or Ani. Kavya has been able to keep her affair a secret from Ani.
Kavya told Ani before they got married that she does not want to have children. It’s mentioned at one point in the movie that Kavya had an abortion during the marriage, and Ani knows about the abortion. However, there’s a scene later in the movie when Ani seems to doubt his decision to not become a parent, even though he knows Kavya won’t change her mind about not having children. As already shown in the trailers for “Do Aur Do Pyaar,” Nora (who is about five or six years younger than Kavya) has an argument with Ani when she blurts out that she thinks she might be pregnant.
In “The Lovers,” Tracy Letts and Debra Winger portray the unhappily married husband and wife who have lovers outside the marriage. In “The Lovers,” much of the plot is about the spouses getting a visit from their adult son and the son’s girlfriend. It’s a tension-filled visit because the son knows that his parents’ marriage is falling apart, but he is surprised to see during the visit that his parents are actually affectionate with each other. Meanwhile, the lovers of the spouses become increasingly insecure.
In “Do Aur Do Pyaar,” the drama from outside relatives comes from Kavya’s Ooty-based family, which is the only family shown in the movie. Kavya has “daddy issues” with her domineering father Venkat (played by Thalaivasal Vijay), who doesn’t approve of the marriage, for various reasons, including because Venkat thinks that Ani’s caste is “beneath” Kavya’s caste. Venkat is still angry that Kavya and Ani eloped before Venkat had a chance to meet Ani. Kavya’s mother Savitri (played by Rekha Kudligi) doesn’t say much and tries to keep the peace when Kavya and Venkat argue with each other.
When the father of Venkat dies, Kavya and Ani apprehensively go to Ooty for the funeral. At this point, Kayva had already visited a divorce lawyer in Mumbai, and Kavya was ready to serve divorce papers to Ani. However, they both agree to pretend to her family that Kavya and Ani have a happy marriage. There are various aunts, uncles and cousins at the funeral, but they do not any real bearing on the overall plot. The only family member who has a significant role is Kavya’s father Venkat.
Kavya and Ani feel like outsiders in the family, which creates a bond between Ani and Kavya and rekindles their passion for each other. They start having sex again. (The sex scenes in the movie are very tame, and there is no nudity.) Ani and Kavya also become friends again, after a long period of time of treating each other like barely tolerated roommates.
Naturally, Kavya and Ani have to navigate how this unexpected change in their marriage will affect the relationships they have with their respective lovers. Kavya and Ani now feel like they’re “cheating” on their lovers, who are both under the impression that Kavya and Ani will soon start divorce proceedings. As Kavya and Ani make excuses not to end the marriage, their lovers get jealous and start raising the stakes in these love entanglements.
Kavya (who can be demanding and hypocritical) could easily have been the movie’s biggest “villain,” if she had been written or performed a different way. However, there are no “villains” in this story—just people caught up in love relationships that confuse them when feelings change over time. “Do Aur Do Pyaar” also authentically shows that what people want out of love, marriage and other relationships can start out one way and end up a different way, based on a variety of circumstances.
Kavya represents the type of woman who wants to be liberated from conventional ideas of how a wife should be but she also wants to be loved on her own terms. She struggles with this often-difficult balance in her personal life. As someone who is a high achiever and craves her father’s approval the most, Kavya has some deep-seated issues that have nothing to do with Ani. Because Kavya is the only character who is shown to have a family, she is the only character where viewers get a sense that having a failed marriage will be a big stigma for Kavya in her family.
Thanks to Balan’s standout performance, the movie is able to show the nuances of these two love triangles in ways that do not reduce Kavya to being the “shrew wife.” Neither is Nora a stereotype of a “homewrecking mistress.” Ani and Vikram are also not Lotharios who callously use women as sexual conquests. In fact, in “Do Aur Do Pyaar,” the men make considerable efforts to be sincerely romantic to their partners. Kavya is actually the most selfish one out of all four of these lovers.
One of the best things about “Do Aur Do Pyaar” is that it shows how important timing is when it comes to having healthy love relationships that last and how feelings for a lover can run hot, cold or somewhere in between, depending on the people and circumstances. The movie doesn’t need to lecture about the damaging consequences of lying and cheating in relationships, because guilt also has an effect on people who secretly do things to harm the people who are close to them. The movie pokes some fun at the absurd lengths that some people will go to in hiding an extramarital affair.
Unfortunately, “Do Aur Do Pyaar” falls very short in telling or showing viewers anything about the backstories for Ani, Nora and Vikram. Gandhi as Ani does a very good job of balancing comedy and drama in his performance, but very little or nothing is told about his family or relationship history. D’Cruz and Ramamurthy are stuck playing underdeveloped characters and can only do so much with these limitations. Vikram in particular is a character where almost nothing substantial is revealed about him from the beginning to the end of the movie.
The movie could have done more to show that Kavya, Ani, Nora and Vikram have friends. And only Kavya is shown interacting with a co-worker who has a name in the movie. There’s an amusing scene where Kavya and her co-worker Lata (played by Hitha Chandrashekhar) clean a female patient’s teeth while talking to each other about sex and using the term “hit the jackpot” instead of saying “have an orgasm.” At other times, some of the movie’s dialogue resembles a very trite soap opera. For example, in the last third of the film, Vikram has an emotional monologue that is utterly cliché.
Despite some of the movie’s flaws, “Do Aur Do Pyaar” should keep most viewers interested in finding out what will happen to the tangled relationships in the story. The movie is most accurate in showing how these situations do not always have easy solutions, and people cannot just turn off emotions like a faucet. As it stands, “Do Aur Do Pyaar” is a worthy watch for people who want to see adult relationships portrayed in ways that are closer to real life than the trite and often-unrealistic scenarios that are in most movies about romance.
AA Films released “Do Aur Do Pyaar” in select U.S. and in India on April 19, 2024.
Culture Representation: The documentary film “High & Low – John Galliano” features a predominantly white group of middle-class and wealthy people (with a few black people and one Asian) who are interviewed about controversial British fashion designer John Galliano, who has worked for fashion brands such as Givenchy, Christian Dior (also known as Dior) and Maison Margiela.
Culture Clash: In 2011, Galliano had a fall from grace after a December 2010 video surfaced of him going on an antisemitic and racist rant, but he has attempted to clean up his reputation since then.
Culture Audience: “High & Low – John Galliano” will appeal primarily to people interested in documentaries about the fashion industry and controversial famous people.
John Galliano in “High & Low – John Galliano” (Photo courtesy of MUBI)
When all is said and done, “High & Low – John Galliano” is really about answering this question: “Does someone who was exposed for being antisemitic and racist deserve to make a career comeback?” This biographical documentary works better as a “where are they now” story than as a convincing argument that disgraced fashion designer John Galliano deserves to make a comeback. The movie has indications that Galliano’s sincerity can be doubted. Even with some celebrities praising Galliano in the movie, what really matters is what Galliano has done to make amends for the harm that he has caused and prove that he is truly reformed.
Directed by Kevin Macdonald, “High & Low — John Galliano” (which has exclusive interviews that were filmed from January 2022 to March 2023) includes the participation of Galliano, who ostensibly agreed to do this documentary so that it could be a showcase or platform for what he clearly wants to be his full redemption. According to the production notes for “High & Low — John Galliano”: “Galliano and Macdonald started talking on Zoom during the first lock-down in the summer of 2020. They first met in person in the spring of 2021 and that led to a ‘trial interview’ in August 2021.” “High & Low — John Galliano” had its world premiere at the 2023 Telluride Film Festival and made the rounds at several other film festivals that year, including the Rome Film Festival and BFI London Film Festival.
Born in the Britsh territory of Gibraltar on November 28, 1960 (as Juan Carlos Antonio Galliano), he was at the top of the fashion industry as artistic director of fashion brand Christian Dior when he was fired in 2011, after a December 2010 video surfaced of Galliano making antisemitic and racist remarks to a stranger at an outdoor cafe in Paris. It wasn’t an isolated incident. When asked about other bigoted comments that that he allgedly made in public, Galliano admits in the documentary that it’s possible he could have made other hate speech comments in his life, but those incidents weren’t recorded. Using drunken blackouts as an excuse, Galliano says he doesn’t remember a lot of horrible things that he’s done that people said that he did.
In the antisemitic rant that was caught on video, Galliano said to a woman whom he thought looked Jewish: “I love Hitler … People like you would be dead. Your mothers, your forefathers would all be fucking gassed.” For his antisemitic and racist rant that was caught on video, Galliano made public apologies, partially blaming being drunk at the time that he made these hate speech comments.
Because making antisemitic commentary is illegal in France, Galliano was charged with this crime and went to trial in 2011. He was found guilty and got a sentence of €6,000 in suspended fines. Galliano also talks about voluntarily receiving sensitivity training and education from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). This information is confirmed in the documentary by former ADL director Abraham Foxman, who says he was one of the few ADL leaders who wanted to meet with Galliano.
After getting fired from Dior for this bigotry scandal, Galliano became a pariah in the fashion industry for a few years. And then, he was hired in 2014 to be creative director of Maison Martin Margiela, now known as Maison Margiela. Although Galliano was able to crawl back to the industry for this lower-profile job, it’s obvious from watching the documentary that he wants to be back among the A-list designers. It’s unlikely he will ever return to the career heights that he had when he torpedoed his career.
“High & Low – John Galliano” will give viewers a lot of information about Galliano’s personal life and career, which the documentary tells in chronological order. Galliano admits that he’s a recovering alcoholic who’s been sober for “years.” (Galliano doesn’t get more specific about how long he’s been allegedly sober.)
He also hints at having many other addictions (he admits to abusing cocaine during the height of his career), but alcoholism, plastic surgery and a physical workout craze are the only addictions he fully admits to on camera. Even with these admissions, it’s hard to be convinced that Galliano is truthful in his claims to be clean and sober, when he is sometimes slurring his words and appears glassy-eyed and occasionally unfocused during his interviews in this documentary.
Galliano also apparently never personally reached out to say he was sorry to the people who were the targets of his illegal insults in that notorious December 2010 rant. Galliano claims that he was advised by his attorney at the time not to speak to the victims before the case was resolved. However, the court case has been resolved since 2011. He’s had plenty of time to make these amends, but he hasn’t done that, according to Philippe Virgitti, a dining companion of the woman who was the target of Galliano’s antisemitic and illegal rant in the December 2010 video.
Virgitti, who is interviewed in the documentary, was dining with this woman when Galliano spewed this bigoted hate in that December 2010 incident, so Virgitti saw firsthand what happened. Virgitti says that what wasn’t caught on video was Galliano saying other racist and antisemitic things to Virgitti (who has Asian heritage) and Virgitti’s dining companion. Although Galliano claims that he eventually made personal apologies to his victims by reaching out to them privately, Virgitti and Virgitti’s attorney Jean-Bernard Bosquet-Denis say that claim it isn’t true, and Galliano never made these private amends. Virgitti says the only apologies that he and his female companion got from Galliano were public and impersonal statements, which Virgitti believes are insincere apologies.
To the documentary’s credit, the movie’s very first scene addresses the controversy about Galliano by showing the notorious video. In an interview for the documentary, Galliano says of his antisemitic rant: “It was a disgusting thing, a foul thing that I did. It was just horrific.” Macdonald (who is also one of the documentary’s producers) can be heard off-camera asking, “Can you tell me how you ended up in that place?” Galliano replies, “I’ll tell you everything.” Galliano then pauses to light a cigarette and says, “I’ve got the shakes, so I need a cigarette.”
It’s compelling way to start the documentary, which then goes into telling the story of Galliano’s career rise, fall and attempted comeback. What emerges is a portrait of someone who’s had issues with addiction and anger for years—even before he was famous—but he was enabled by too many people because of his artistic talent, because he had a very charismatic side to his personality, and because he was making tons of money for a lot of people. In the documentary, Galliano says his workload was insane at the height of his career, and he turned to various addictions to cope.
Galliano grew up in a family consisting of his father Juan Galliano (of Italian heritage), who was a plumber; John’s mother Ana “Anita” Guillén (of Spanish heritage); and John’s two sisters. The family moved from Gibraltar to the United Kingdom when John was 6 years old. John’s older sister Rosemarie Husband, one of the people interviewed in the documentary, remembers their childhood this way: “I always had to look after John. He was quite disruptive. He wanted attention all the time.”
John says that he knew from a very early age that he is gay. One of the earliest indications of his interest in fashion was that he used to wear his mother’s makeup and clothes when he was a boy. John had a troubled relationship with his father, whom John describes as “very straight” and physically and emotionally abusive. John says his father could be violent if “I stepped out of line.” John remembers an incident when his father beat him up after John made this offhand comment about a young man he saw on TV: “Oh, he looks gorgeous.”
Just like many LGBTQ people with homophobic family members, John found a family of friends who accepted him and his sexuality. John’s first “found family” was in the fashion and artistic community in London, in the early-to-mid 1980s, when he attended and graduated from St. Martin’s School of Art. It was a life-changing experience for him.
John explains in the documentary: “During the [Margaret] Thatcher years, I wasn’t joining marches and things like that. I was into sketching and drawing. I ended up prepping a portfolio for St. Martin’s School of Art. They took on few people. The competition was really strong, but they gave me a place and a grant. I saw like-minded people. It was like, ‘My God, I’m not the only one.'”
David Harrison, a painter artist who was one of John’s friends at St. Martin’s School of Art, remembers: “He was very shy when I first met him. And I sort of loosened him up a bit. I always felt like I was his big sister.” (John claims that former Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren had once wanted Harrison to be the lead singer of the Sex Pistols, but Johnny Rotten, now known as John Lydon, ended up with the gig.)
Harrison says that he influenced John to go from having very suburban, designer-label taste in fashion to wearing vintage clothes. Harrison also talks about the dark side of John as an “out-of-control drunk. You’d have to sort of look after him.”
It was during his years at St. Martin’s School of Art that John says he became obsessed with the 1927 documentary “Napoleon,” directed by director Abel Gance. Napoleon Bonaparte and the 1800s fashion during this French leader’s reign also heavily influenced John’s fashion aesthetic for years. John took the advice of a St. Martin’s School of Art teacher to cut clothes like he draws, which is how John says he learned how to be a fashion designer.
His 1984 graduation fashion show “Les Incroyables” (“The Incredibles”) showed these influences in genderless clothes. The show was a big hit and got John noticed by many influential people in the fashion industry. In the documentary, fashion journalist/editor Hamish Bowles describes “Les Incroyables” as “one of the top five fashion shows I’ve ever seen. It was absolutely astonishing … You thought, ‘Here’s someone who was touched with genius.'”
Suzanne Von Aichinger—a former model who says she was John’s muse for years—makes a comment about John that probably inspired the title of this documentary: “He really had the high/low [sense of fashion]. He really knew how to balance the two.”
Even with some financial rough patches in the early years, high-profile work came fairly quickly for John, who worked as an in-demand independent designer with his own label, which he maintained, even after he was hired as the director of corporate-owned fashion brands. In 1989, he relocated to Paris, where his career soared to new heights. He became the head designer for Givenchy from July 1995 to October 1996, when he was named artistic director for Christian Dior, also known as Dior. Givenchy and Dior are both owned by luxury goods corporation LVMH.
But behind the glitz and glamour of this success, John still had a reputation for being a hellraiser with a nasty temper. Marie-Sophie Wilson, a former model who was one of John’s friends in the 1980s and 1990s, says that when he moved to Paris, she gave him a place to stay with her because he couldn’t afford rent for his own place. “He camped on my settee and destroyed my washing machine,” Wilson remembers.
Wilson comments: “There are definitely two Johns. There is a shy John and there is a quite mad John. He was a bad drunk. He really wants to get wasted until he drops.” Fashion editor Tim Blanks remembers John urinating on people without their consent in a nightclub. “He was just so off it,” Blanks says. “I just thought, ‘Boy, this guy is unhappy.'” Later in the documentary, John admits that even after he became a rich and famous designer, he was permanently banned from some hotels because of the awful things that he did.
Despite all of these warning signs, John continued to thrive in the industry. And it’s easy to see why. The documentary has several people who make excuses for him or won’t comment on his troubling actions that would get most people arrested if they don’t have fame, wealth and connections. Most of the people who have a financial incentive to praise John do nothing but praise John in the documentary.
One of his most vocal supporters is Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of the U.S. edition of Vogue and chief content officer of Condé Nast, who has her own problematic history of self-admitted racism. She says, “If you think of the great designers who really changed the way women dressed or look or how we think about fashion, immediately, you knew what John was doing. You realize he was one of them, so you had to help him.”
Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and Amber Valletta are among the past and present supermodels who consider themselves to be John’s fans and say so in the documentary. Adding their commentary are Oscar-winning actresses Charlize Theron and Penélope Cruz, who just stick to flattery about John’s fashion designs. Also interviewed are several of his former business associates. They include Sidney Toledano, CEO of Dior from 1998 to 2018; Katell Le Bourhis, former advisor to LVMH founder/chairman/CEO; and Johann Brun, who describes himself as John’s first financial backer.
Other people interviewed in the documentary are DJ/musician Jeremy Healy, who found brief fame in the early 1980s as a member of the British pop duo Haysi Fantayzee; jewelry designer Vicky Sareg; John Galliano publicist Mesh Chhibber; Vogue editorial executive Edward Enninful; New York Times fashion director Vanessa Friedman; fashion writer Colin McDowell; fashion editor Sally Singer; John’s personal assistant Evelynne Tissier; John’s agent Anne Nelson; Condé Nast chairman Jonathan Newhouse; psychiatrist Boris Cyrulnik; addiction special Dr. Phillipe Bates; and John’s friends Paul Frecker and Tricia Ronane.
John’s personal life is described as a lot of co-dependent relationships, although he seems to have found contentment with his longtime love partner Alexis Roche, who is also interviewed in the documentary, but he doesn’t say anything insightful. It’s not surprising because most live-in partners or spouses are not going to say something brutally honest in a documentary that could ruin their relationships. John does not mention the names of any other significant lovers he’s had in his life.
The documentary has stories about Steven Robinson, John’s design assistant who died of a cocaine overdose in 2007, at the age of 38. Robinson (who worked with John for more than 20 years) is described by various people in the documentary as an intensely loyal gatekeeper, cocaine addict, and John’s best friend, who was in love with John, but they never had a romantic relationship. John’s personal assistant Tissier says of the relationship that Robinson had with John: “This co-dependency had some very toxic aspects.”
Parts of the documentary are meant to pull at the heartstrings. There’s a scene where John describes his mixed emotions over the end of his father’s life. John claims that his ailing father, who rarely expressed his approval of John, told John that he loved John before he died. However, John’s sister says in the documentary that she had to beg John to attend the funeral because John was busy with fittings for his next big fashion show. John says he took a private jet to the funeral and flew right back to work as soon as he could.
A “dramatic” part of the documentary is toward the end when John is invited to look at a special Dior archive collection. It’s the first time that he’s been allowed to set foot in this part of Dior headquarters since he was fired in 2011. John is visibly nervous and emotionally touched, but he also expresses pride and wonderment when he looks at the Dior clothing that he designed.
Viewers can look beyond these misty-eyed moments and lavish praise of a celebrity to see the heart of the matter. The measure of someone’s true character isn’t how talented that person is or how much money that person can make but how that person treats others and how that person reacts when caught doing something wrong. By those standards, people who watch “High & Low – John Galliano” can make up their own minds on what type of character he really has and how sincere he is.
MUBI released “High & Low – John Galliano” in select U.S. cinemas on March 8, 2024. MUBI will premiere the movie on April 26, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed dystopian society, the action film “Boy Kills World” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some black people and Asian) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A deaf and mute man, who was raised as an orphan and trained to be a warrior by a shaman, goes on a revenge mission against the tyrannical dictator whom he blames for killing his family.
Culture Audience: “Boy Kills World” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of videogame-styled action movies that have some offbeat comedy and don’t take themselves too seriously.
Famke Janssen in “Boy Kills World” (Photo courtesy of Roadside Attractions)
“Boy Kills World” is a cartoonishly violent revenge flick with touches of psychedelia and self-deprecating comedy in a dystopian society. The story drags with repetition in the middle of the movie, but a plot twist makes up for this occasional banality. This plot twist is not as predictable as another plot twist that happens around the same time.
Directed by Moritz Mohr, “Boy Kills World” was written by Tyler Burton Smith and Arend Remmers. “Boy Kills World” had its world premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. The movie is based on director Mohr’s unreleased short film “Boy Kills World,” which has a similar concept.
In the feature-length “Boy Kills World,” which takes place in an unnamed dystopian society, a young man whose name is listed in the credits Boy (played by Bill Skarsgård) goes on a revenge mission against a tyrannical dictator named Beatrice Van Der Koy (played by Famke Janssen), whom he blames for murdering his mother (played by Rolanda Marais), his father (played by Ashley Dowds) and Boy’s younger sister Mina (played by Quinn Copeland) when Boy was about 13 or 14 years old and when Mina was about 9 or 10 years old. The teenage Boy is played by twins Cameron Crovetti and Nicholas Crovetti. Beatrice is the leader of the Van Der Koy family, who have several members who also abuse their positions of power to intimidate and kill people.
Every year, this bleak society has a mass murder event called the Culling, where Beatrice orders the military to go after enemies and kill innocent people on live TV. Boy’s family got caught in the Culling crossfire. Flashbacks show that he witnessed his mother’s murder. Boy was able to escape but became deaf and mute from the attack. He was rescued and taken to a remote wooded area by a mystic whose name is listed in the credits as Shaman (played by Yayan Ruhian), who raised him in isolation and trained Boy to become a warrior skilled in martial arts.
Boy does not talk out loud in the movie, so his inner thoughts are heard with the voice that he says was the voice of his favorite video game character. (H. Jon Benjamin does Boy’s voice in the movie.) Talent Digital Art has a free-to-play 2.5D fighting video game titled “Super Dragon Punch Force 3,” which is described in a press release as a “real world sequel inspired by the fictitious 2D fighting game franchise” depicted in “Boy Kills World.”) Even in the flashback scenes where Boy is literally a boy, his voiceover is that of an adult man.
Boy’s inner thoughts show that he can be self-deprecating and frequently sarcastic. Boy says of the city that he left behind when he was rescued by Shaman: “This was never a great city. Hilda Vander Koy took it from us. She has a list of all of her enemies. If you’re on it, she’ll find you.” Boy adds, “Hilda took everything from me. And when I become the ultimate warrior, I’ll return the favor.”
Several scenes in “Boy Kills World” show that part of Shaman’s training includes blowing smoke from a hallucinogenic substance into Boy’s face. As a result, Boy often has psychedelic hallucinations. Boy says early on in the movie that there’s a state of being between reality and dreams. The visual effects for the psychedelia are among the more memorable aspects about this sensory overload film.
Boy frequently has visions of Mina appearing to him and talking to him and looking the same way since the last time he saw her. Boy and Mina had a very close and fun-loving relationship before their lives were torn apart. Even in his life as a vengeful warrior, Boy still gets teased and playful scolding from Mina, whom he sees as the only person in his life who truly made him happy.
During his vendetta quest, Boy encounters other members of the Van Der Koy family, including Hilda’s ruthless sister Melanie Van Der Koy (played by Michelle Dockery); Hilda’s arrogant brother Gideon Van Der Koy (played by Brett Gelman); and Melanie’s buffoonish husband Glen Van Der Koy (played Sharlto Copley), who is dominated by Melanie. (It says a lot that Glen took the Van Der Koy surname.)
The Van Der Koy family has a security chief named June27 (played by Jessica Rothe), and programmed assassin who wears a helmet and who might or might not be human. She has almost superhuman-like strength and becomes a formidable and elusive opponent to Boy. Meanwhile, Boy forms an alliance with two rebels: wisecracking Basho (played by Andrew Koji) and resourceful Bennie (played by Isaiah Mustafa), who both join in on the mayhem. Boy encounters many dangerous foes, leading to several brutal and bloody battles.
Skarsgård is quite skillful in combining the action and facial expressions required for this character who is supposed to be deaf and mute. Melanie the villain who is the most fun to watch in the movie, thanks to Dockery’s prickly performance. Janssen’s Hilda is a fairly generic and predictable villain, while Gideon and his bad jokes quickly become annoying.
“Boy Kills World” is by no means an intellectual movie, but some of the quips are amusing enough to keep most viewers entertained. One of the movie’s plot twists is very predictable, while other plot twists are not as easy to predict. The movie’s most surprising “reveal” has some imagination, which saves “Boy Kills World” from being just another violent action flick that’s a checklist of death and destruction.
Roadside Attractions and Lionsgate will release “Boy Kills World” in U.S. cinemas on April 26, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place from 2006 to 2019, in various parts of the U.S., the dramatic film “Challengers” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A love triangle set in the world of tennis becomes a high-stakes game of loyalty and career ambitions during a tennis challenger tournament.
Culture Audience: “Challengers” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, director Luca Guadagninoand suspenseful movies about love triangles and tennis.
Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor in in “Challengers” (Photo courtesy of Niko Tavernise/Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures)
Set in the competitive tennis world, “Challengers” is a stylish and tension-filled depiction of games played on and off the court during a longtime love triangle. It’s a well-acted drama with twists, turns, and teases leading to an unpredictable ending. How the movie ends will either intrigue or disappoint viewers. “Challengers” is not a typical tennis film, but it does have some predictable clichés about a seductress who plays two men against each other for her own selfish reasons.
Directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by Justin Kuritzkes, “Challengers” is Kuritzkes’ first feature film as a screenwriter, after years of experience as a playwright. The story is best suited to be on screen, not just because of the tennis matches depicted in the movie but also because the story jumps back and forth in a timeline that spans from 2006 to 2019. Some viewers won’t like how this story is told in non-chronological order. However, these flashbacks and flash forwards are necessary to unfold the layers of the story’s love triangle in a suspenseful way.
“Challengers” begins in 2019, by showing an intense tennis match for men’s singles at the New Rochelle Challenger in New Rochelle, New York. The players are Art Donaldson (played by Mike Faist) and Patrick Zweig (played by Josh O’Connor), two former best friends whose lives and careers have gone in very different directions. Watching apprehensively in the stands is Tashi Donaldson (played by Zendaya), Art’s wife, who is also Patrick’s ex-girlfriend. Flashbacks that begin in 2006 show exactly what led up to this match and what is at stake.
In the production notes for “Challengers,” Kuritzkes says a big inspiration for the “Challengers” screenplay was the controversial 2019 U.S. Open match between Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka, when Williams was accused of getting coaching from someone in the audience, among other violations. Throughout the movie, it’s made obvious that Tashi (who is Art’s tennis coach for most of the story) likes to be in control and often manipulates people to do what she wants. “Challengers” keeps viewers guessing about not only who will win this match but also who will really “win” in getting what they want in life.
As the various parts of the story emerge in a non-linear way, viewers have to put together the story like pieces of a puzzle. It’s enough to say some details in this review without giving away too much information. Tashi, Art and Patrick met in 2006, when they were all 18 years old. Over the next 13 years, their lives intertwined, clashed, and drifted apart in many ways. The New Rochelle Challenger match is a culmination and a crucial turning point for Tashi, Art and Patrick.
At the time the people in this love triangle met in 2006, Tashi was a student at Stanford University and a rising star on the U.S. college tennis circuit. Tashi (whose maiden surname is Daniel) was considered a tennis prodigy and expected to eventually become a high-ranking professional tennis player and probably a superstar in tennis. Instead of becoming a professional tennis player right out of high school, Tashi decided to go to a university to learn to do other things in her life besides tennis. However, it’s obvious that tennis is her only real passion.
Of the three people in this love triangle, only Tashi (who has no siblings) is seen with her family members. Her parents, whose names are not mentioned in the movie, are very involved in her career and seem to be loving and devoted parents in a solid marriage. Tashi’s father (played by Naheem Garcia) is her coach, while her mother (played by Nada Despotovich) seems to provide administrative support. Both of Tashi’s parents are only tangential characters to the story, which is mostly focused on the Tashi, Patrick and Art.
Patrick and Art, who attended a tennis boarding school together, were best friends and friendly rivals since they were 12 years old. Before Patrick and Art became estranged from each other, they had a relationship that they described as “brotherly.” In boarding school, Patrick and Art excelled in doubles tennis and were nicknamed Fire & Ice. It’s easy to tell who is the “fire” and who is the “ice” in the relationship.
Patrick is outgoing, impulsive and rebellious. Art is reserved, disciplined and obedient. Although Patrick has a “bad boy” personality and Art has a “good guy” personality, they both work well together and treat each other like family members. But there comes a time when their relationship becomes so broken, they eventually no longer talk to each other. This estrangement has mostly to do with Tashi.
It’s revealed much later in the movie that Patrick comes from a wealthy family, so his teenage plans to be a professional tennis player isn’t so he can become rich. Art’s family background is not mentioned at all, but it’s implied that Art’s tennis goals are much more motivated by money than Patrick’s tennis goals. Patrick and Art want to be famous tennis champions, of course, but Art proves to be more ambitious in his career than Patrick.
By the time Patrick is doing this New Rochelle Challenger, he’s so broke, he can’t even afford a motel room and is too proud to ask anyone he knows for financial help. Patrick (who is a bachelor with no children) sleeps in his car, or he resorts to picking up women whom he meets on dating apps, in order to find a place to stay for the night. One of the biggest flaws in “Challengers” is that it doesn’t show Art, Patrick or Tashi having any close friendships in their lives except with each other. The movie looks a bit unrealistic because of this ommission.
Observant viewers will notice in the scenes where Art and Patrick are teenagers, they move with the exuberant energy of young people who are very optimistic about their futures. Patrick and Art also tend to move in sync, like best friends or siblings who are very close to each other. As they get older, the body language movements of Art and Patrick change to being more world-weary and more cynical about life. It’s an example of the admirable acting by Faist and O’Connor how they can convincingly portray the physical and emotional metamorphoses of these characters over a 13-year time span, from late teens to early 30s.
Tashi is portrayed as someone is who obsessed with tennis as a sport and as a business, to the point that she has made tennis the most important thing in her life. She is calculating and power-hungry, but she’s not an evil person. Although she began playing tennis at a very young age, Tashi doesn’t appear to be someone who was brainwashed by her parents to let tennis take over her life. There are choices she makes as an adult that reflect the domineering personality that she has, with or without tennis.
When Patrick and Art are 18 years old, they see Tashi play and win the 2006 U.S. Open Junior championship. Art and Patrick are instantly smitten with Tashi and want to meet her. They get their chance at the after-party to celebrate Tashi’s victory. She can instantly sense that Art and Patrick are attracted to her and will most likely compete with each other to win her affections. She uses this rivalry to her advantage.
At first, Tashi is coy and flirtatious with Art and Patrick. A pivotal scene is during the night that they all meet each other, when Tashi surprises Art and Patrick by showing up at their hotel room, after she initially declined their invitation to meet up at the hotel after the party. What happens in that hotel room sets the tone for the rest of this love triangle.
The trailers for “Challengers” make it look like this could be a sexually explicit movie, but it’s actually not sexually explicit, although the movie is definitely geared to mature audiences. There is no nudity during any love scenes. And the “erotic” content is mostly people kissing passionately, sometimes scantily clad. There is no threesome sex between Tashi, Art and Patrick. And the nude scenes are brief non-erotic shots of male nudity in a locker room and a sauna.
What “Challengers” does to make the love triangle look interesting is keeping viewers on edge to see that Tashi will do next. It’s eventually revealed that Art fell in love with Tashi almost immediately, but Tashi chose to date Patrick instead during their late teens and early 20s. Art enrolled in Stanford University (no doubt to be closer to closer to Tashi), while Patrick skipped a college education to became a professional tennis player.
Patrick and Art are close, but there are some things that they don’t openly talk about with each other. For example, when Patrick and Tashi start dating each other, there’s a scene where Art and Patrick are playing tennis together, Art wants to know if Patrick and Tashi have had sex but Art doesn’t want to know all the details. Art tells Patrick that if Patrick and Tashi had sex, Patrick should serve the tennis ball in Art’s signature way: by putting the tennis all in the center at the top of the racket handle before serving the ball. This signature move becomes an important part of the story later in the movie.
As Patrick’s tennis career was taking off, his relationship with Tashi started to crumble. And it wasn’t because Patrick was probably cheating on Tashi with other women. Tashi doesn’t seem to care if Patrick is monogamous or not, but she does have a goal of her and Patrick possibly being a power couple in tennis. Ever the control freak, Tashi began to give Patrick unsolicited advice on how to handle his career. It leads to an argument where Patrick hisses at Tashi, “I’m your peer, not your fucking groupie or student!”
Later, Tashi has a career-ending leg injury during a college tennis match. Patrick is too busy with his career to really be there for Tashi, who goes through difficult and frustrating rehab therapy. Meanwhile, always-supportive Art gets closer to Tashi and becomes her best friend during and after her physical recovery.
Unlike Patrick, Art welcomes Tashi’s tennis advice. And when Tashi faces the reality that she can’t become a professional tennis player, Art asks Tashi to be his tennis coach, and she says yes. Art and Tashi eventually get married and have a daughter together named Lily (played by A.J. Lister), who is about 5 or 6 years old in 2019.
By 2019, Art is ranked in the top five worldwide in professional men’s tennis. Art and Tashi (who is Art’s coach/manager) are also a famous power couple in tennis. However, she is clearly unhappy in their marriage. None of this spoiler information, since it’s already revealed in the “Challengers” trailers that Art and Tashi are unhappily married and she had an injury that prevented her from becoming a pro tennis player.
What isn’t revealed in the “Challengers” trailers but what is necessary to know is why Art is playing at the lower level of this New Rochelle Challenger, which is a part of a tournament meant for second-tier professional tennis players who aren’t ranked in the top 100. It’s shown in an early scene in the movie that in 2019, Art has won almost every major tournament—the Australian Open, the French Open and Wimbledon—but has never won the U.S. Open, which is the last tournament in the Grand Slam calendar.
In professional tennis, a Grand Slam champion is someone who wins the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in one year. Art is thinking about retiring when his tennis matches are over for the year. Tashi is determined to have Art become a Grand Slam champion before he retires. However, on the U.S. Open tour in 2019, Art has been on a losing streak.
Tashi comes up with the idea for Art to boost his confidence by playing a challenger match, where it’s expected he can easily win against less-talented, lower-ranked players. Art thinks this type of challenger match is beneath him, but he reluctantly agrees to it since he always does what Tashi wants. Tashi has the type of personality where she tells Art he can decide what he wants to do, but she makes it clear which decision that he makes will satisfy her the most.
Tashi knows that Patrick has been on the challenger circuit for years, since Patrick never reached the career heights that Art did. What Tashi probably did not anticipate is that Patrick would advance far enough in the New Rochelle Challenger to end up playing Art in this particular match that is the linchpin for this story. During this match, the past and present for this love triangle collide.
Zendaya gives a riveting performance as the emotionally guarded but scheming Tashi. It’s left up to interpretation if Tashi is really capable of true love. She is a caring and attentive mother to Lily in the short scenes where Tashi is shown interacting with her daughter. Tashi also seems to have a good relationship with her parents. But did Tashi ever love Art or Patrick?
One of the most noticeable flaws about “Challengers” is that it barely shows or tells anything about who Art is apart from his relationships with Tashi and Patrick. There are multiple scenes of what Patrick does when he’s on his own, but that’s not the case with Art. It might be the “Challengers” filmmakers’ way of depicting Art as having a co-dependent personality, but it still makes his character not as well-developed as Tashi and Patrick. The movie has many unanswered questions about Art, his family and his background.
“Challengers” is more concerned about showing that there’s some unresolved sexual tension between Art and Patrick. Tashi can sense it when all three of them meet for the first time. During this first meeting, Tashi jokes that she doesn’t want to be a “homewrecker” for whatever relationship Art and Patrick are having. Patrick and Art quickly assure Tashi that they are interested in dating women, not men.
However, when all three of them meet up in the hotel room later that night, their three-way makeout session (which doesn’t turn into three-way sexual intercourse) shows that Patrick and Art might be sexually attracted to each other but won’t say so out loud. (This makeout session is already partially revealed in the “Challengers” trailers.) Patrick’s and Art’s possible unacknowledged bisexuality or queerness adds another layer of rivalry that Patrick and Art have over Tashi. When Tashi inevitably choses one guy over the other, are Art and Patrick jealous of each other, or are they jealous of Tashi?
Issues of class and race, which have big implications in an elitist sport such as tennis, are barely acknowledged in “Challengers.” On the night that Tashi, Patrick and Art first meet, Patrick and Art tell her about their shared background of going to the same boarding school and being roommates for years. Tashi quickly mentions that even if her parents could afford to send her to a boarding school in her younger years, they wouldn’t want to because it wouldn’t be safe for her. Patrick and Art both look confused by this comment, until Tashi (whose father is black and whose mother is white) gives them a look as if to say, “Because I would have to deal with entitled and harmful racists if I went to your type of boarding school.”
Later in the movie, when Tashi and Patrick are both 31, she has a conversation with him where she says, “I’m taking such good care of my little white boys.” It’s a remark that’s meant to be an insult but it comes across as empty and flippant, considering Tashi doesn’t even talk about being biracial or African American. And because there is no information about the socioeconomic status of Art’s family (such as if Art’s family could afford his boarding school expenses, or if his family needed financial aid), it’s not really clear how being a multimillionaire as a tennis star has affected or changed Art.
“Challengers” has a techno/electronica-heavy music score by Oscar-winning composer Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. This score is a mixed bag and is most effective in ramping up the tension in many of the scenes. However, there are times when the score music becomes too loud and interrupts a scene in ways that don’t always fit the mood of the scene.
The tennis matches in “Challengers” are engrossing but filmed in inconsistent ways. Most of the matches are filmed similar to what might be seen on a sports telecast, without sports commentators. In a climactic scene at the New Rochelle Challenger, the match is filmed from the perspective of the players, so what’s seen on screen looks like what it would look like if the players were wearing cameras somewhere on their heads. The “Challengers” cinematography from Sayombhu Mukdeeprom might get mixed reactions, but it’s bold, and it takes risks that give this movie an artistic edge over most other tennis films.
Guadagnino and Zendaya are two of the producers of “Challengers,” which is Zendaya’s first movie where she is portraying someone in her 30s. Tashi’s age changes throughout the story, but she is emotionally stagnant when it comes to what she wants out of life: From the ages of 18 to 31, she is still obsessed with achieving greatness in tennis, by any means necessary. Beyond the usual questions about who will win in this New Rochelle Challenger and what will happen in this love triangle, “Challengers” invites viewers to ponder if the cost of letting your identity become consumed by one thing is worth it if you lose yourself in the process.
Amazon MGM Studios will release “Challengers” in U.S. cinemas on April 26, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed U.S. city, the sci-fi/fantasy/comedy film “Villains Inc.” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: Three bumbling villains and an “intern” who’s under “techno hypnosis” try to take over the world with a convoluted plan.
Culture Audience: “Villains Inc.” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching silly, low-budget comedies that are easily forgotten.
Trey Warner in “Villains Inc.” (Photo courtesy of Purdie Distribution)
Incoherent and unappealing, “Villains Inc.” looks like an amateur sketch comedy idea stretched into a messy feature-length movie. It’s a witless story about irksome villains and a shallow superhero who are as incompetent as this film. Don’t try to make sense of what you’re watching in “Villains Inc.,” because even the characters in the movie don’t really know what they’re doing.
Directed by Jeremy Warner, “Villains Inc.” (formerly titled “Villains Incorporated”) was co-written by Warner, Jason Gray and Matt Moen, who all have small and inconsequential acting roles in the movie. The story in “Villains” is so convoluted yet empty, it’s like watching people getting lost in a maze that they made for themselves. What makes everything worse is that “Villains Inc.” has a very off-putting smug tone, as if the filmmakers think the movie is funnier than it really is.
“Villains Inc.” is about three villains who think they are underappreciated for being “lowly” assistant villains to their more powerful boss. They don’t want to be overshadowed and want the fame and power they think they deserve. And so, these three misfit villains decide to team up and take over the world. Along the way, they enlist the help of an “intern,” whose mind is controlled by “techno hypnotism.” It sounds like a potentially good idea for a madcap comedy, but the way the story is told in this movie, it just becomes time-wasting, frequently dull garbage.
“Villains Inc.” takes place in an unnamed U.S. state but was actually filmed in Utah. A scene early on in the movie shows that the U.S. Constitution in this story has added a 28th Amendment that makes superpowers a human right. There is nothing in “Villains Inc.” that comes close to being an entertaining story about people with superpowers.
The leader of this villainous trio is talkative and annoying Beatrix Bennington (played by Mallory Everton), who comes up with a nonsensical plan for world domination. Beatrix wants to open a chain of stores called Killer Petco, where pets will be sold to the world’s most powerful villains. The pets will be secretly trained to kill their villain owners. Through fine-print clauses on the Killer Petco sales contracts, the dead villains’ assets will be inherited by Beatrix and her cohorts.
Beatrix’s sidekicks are dimwitted Harold (played by Colin Mochrie) and pessimistic Cain (played by Jason Gray), who is the one most likely to doubt that Beatrix’s plans will succeed. The movie’s opening scenes shows that Beatrix, Harold and Cain feel liberated after they watch their boss Winter General (played by Gabe Casdorph) die in a fight with a lunkhead Superman-like character named Captain Justice (played by Trey Warner), who pops in and out of the story at inexplicable moments.
Beatrix, Harold and Cain try unsuccessfully to profit from their boss’ death by attempting to gain access to his power and wealth. Instead, this bungling trio is forced to do tasks assigned to them by a villain employment agency, where they interact with a sassy unnamed agent (played by GloZell Green), who thinks Beatrix, Harold and Cain are idiots. Some of the tasks the trio is forced to do include poison testing, holding up target practice signs, and being night security guards, electricians and lab technicians.
There are moronic scenes where Beatrix goes through a villain “tryout” course and lies about having superpowers. Whether or not her lie gets exposed is supposed to be a big part of the story. Beatrix, Harold and Cain eventually cross paths with the aforementioned intern: a naïve flunky named Alex (played by Billy Mann), who becomes available after his previous villain boss Megadeath (played by Matthew Meese) is killed.
There are almost no laugh-out-loud moments in “Villains Inc.,” which careens from scene to scene with not much interesting happening. Everton gives a committed performance where she tries to be funny in every scene that she’s in, but the other cast members just go through the motions with unimpressive performances. The people who might enjoy this dreadful film the most are people who are too intoxicated to care what they’re watching.
Purdie Distribution released “Villains Inc.” in select U.S. cinemas on April 19, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Colorado and Arizona, the dramatic film “Hard Miles” (based on true events) features a racially diverse cast of characters (white, African American and Latino) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A social worker at a youth penitentiary for teenage boys recruits four of them to be on an informal bicycling team and leads them on a bicycling marathon from Denver to the Grand Canyon in Arizona.
Culture Audience: “Hard Miles” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and well-acted movies about athletic challenges that test physical strength and result in personal growth.
Jahking Guillory, Damien Diaz, Matthew Modine, Jackson Kelly and Zach Robbins in “Hard Miles” (Photo courtesy of Blue Fox Entertainment)
“Hard Miles” is not going to be considered a classic movie about underestimated marathon bicyclists. However, this sentimental drama has good acting performances and an inspiring message that outweigh many of the corniest moments. Because the movie is based on true events, it makes the story much easier to take as an overall life observation, even though there are scenes that were obviously fabricated for the movie.
Directed by R.J. Daniel Hanna, “Hard Miles” was co-written by Hanna and Christian Sander. “Hard Miles” (which is a vague and bland title for this movie) had its world premiere at the 2023 Bentonville Film Festival. The outcome of the movie is entirely predictable, but the journey is watchable, even though it sometimes drags with repetition.
“Hard Miles” begins by showing social worker Greg Townsend (played by Matthew Modine) at a court hearing for one of the inmates at a youth penitentiary in Denver called Ridgeview Academy. (In real life, Greg Townsend worked at a youth penitentiary Ridge View Academy Charter School, in Watkins Colorado.) Greg, who works at Ridgeview Academy, is in this courtroom to advocate for leniency for a 16-year-old inmate named David Alvarez (played by Jesus Venegas), who’s in trouble for getting into a physical fight at Ridgeview.
Greg tells the magistrate (played by Jerry Boyd) that the fight would’ve been worse if David had not intervened to help stop the fight. The magistrate is not moved by Greg’s testimony and orders that David get transferred to another penitentiary, with six months added to his sentence. David is not seen or heard from again in the story.
This opening scene exists to show that Greg firmly believes in rehabilitation and reform with compassion but without coddling. It’s then shown early on in the film that Greg has a passion for marathon bicycling. One of his favorite marathons is the Tour de Grand, which is cycling to the Grand Canyon. (“Hard Miles” was actually filmed in California.)
A penitentiary social worker named Haddie (played by Cynthia Kaye McWilliams), who is one of Greg’s co-worker friends, jokes with Greg: “Only in this job would someone think that a 1,000-mile bike ride is a vacation.” Greg corrects Haddie by saying that the bike route from Denver to the Grand Canyon is actually 762 miles.
Greg does this type of verbal correction a few more times in the story, including to his co-worker friend Skip Bowman (played by Leslie David Baker), who is the manager at Ridgeview. Greg’s nitpickiness is an indication of what type of personality Greg has: He is enthusiastic about what he believes in, but he can also be self-righteous and stubborn. Greg can also get caught up in forcing his views on other people instead of really thinking about how they feel.
Flashbacks in the movie show that Greg had an unhappy childhood, when his father Scott Townsend physically and verbally abused Greg, who feels like he never really got his father’s approval. Greg has a younger brother named Doug. It’s implied that Doug probably got abused too, but Greg got the worse abuse from their father. The mother of Greg and Doug is not seen or mentioned in this story.
In these flashback scenes, Jaxon Goldenberg portrays childhood Greg, Judah Mackey has the role of childhood Doug, and Charles Ambrose depicts Scott as a young man. Ambrose also has the voice role of adult Doug, who is never seen on camera. Doug is incarcerated at a state prison in Sacramento, California, and he is only heard when he calls Greg from the prison.
In the present day of the story, Scott (played by Patrick Anthony Mullen) is now an elderly man with dementia and living in a hospice. Doug calls Greg to ask what Greg wants to do about visiting their father and making the necessary end-of-life arrangements. Greg (who is a bachelor with no children) has mixed feelings about it all. Greg is reluctant to visit his father and avoids returning calls from hospice workers who have already told Greg that his father Scott is very close to dying.
Meanwhile, Greg has something that ends up consuming his attention for most of the story: doing the Tour de Grand with four of the Ridgeview Academy residents. He teaches a machinist class, where he has four students: tough Atencio (played by Damien Diaz), brooding Rice (played by Zach Robbins), nerdy Smink (played by Jackson Kelly) and volatile Woolbright (played by Jahking Guillory), who is the most “antisocial” one in the group. Smink is the most mild-mannered and is unlikely to start a fight.
One day, Greg is inspired to bring four stationary bicycles to the class to share his interest in marathon biking with these students. Greg has a friend named Speedy (played by Sean Astin), who owns a bike shop. Greg convinces Speedy to donate professional bikes for the students to use.
Greg decides that these four students could all be on an informal Ridgeview cycling team that should do the Tour de Grant marathon with him. Greg chooses roles for each student on the team: Smink is the climber, Atencio is the puncher, Rice is the sprinter, while Woolbright (who is the only one reluctant to join the team) is assigned domestique duties, which is another way of saying it’s a rider who isn’t in the competition but is just there for support, such as carrying water bottles. Woolbright quickly changes his mind and joins the team because he doesn’t want to be a lowly “water boy.”
Greg also gets a company called Banda Di Cantene to sponsor the trip. And although Greg gets some skepticism from Heddie, Skip and some high-level bureaucrats in charge, Greg gets permission for this team to go on this trip by saying it’s part of inmate rehabilitation. This part of the story looks very “only in a movie” rushed and too easy for Greg. All of the movie’s performances are good, but Modine and Guillory are the obvious standouts in their roles as two people who seem to be complete opposites and clash with each other but find some common ground that changes each of them for the better.
“Hard Miles” wisely sticks to having just four people for Greg to lead on this marathon, in order for the movie to not be cluttered or confusing with too many characters. (It’s also a low-budget movie that probably couldn’t afford a large cast anyway.) However, very little is told about the young guys on the team, since most of the focus is on Greg being their role model.
Atencio opens up a little and says he was arrested for gang-related activities and that the gang he belongs to expects him to continue gangbanger crimes after Atencio is released from prison. Woolbright, who has a lot of anger issues, is serving his current penitentiary sentence because he was sent back to prison for driving without a license. The criminal records for Smink and Rice get little or no mention.
This team didn’t start out a friends. All of them have some type of conflict with each other before and durng the journey. Near the beginning of the movie, Atencio and Rice get into a physical brawl in a penintiary hallway. Haddie is nearby and accidentally gets injured in this fight. It results in Haddie having a sprained left foot and needing to use a walking boot and crutches. Inexplicably, despite these injuries, she volunteers to be the driver of the backup van that follows this biking team in case of an emergency.
As an example of how tone-deaf Greg can be, when he sees Haddie for the first time wearng her walking boot, he asks her in genuine surprise: “You don’t have to wear that?” She sarcastically replies, “No, it’s a fashion statement.” Although Greg and Haddie like and respect each other, they have very different opinions on many things.
In this very male-dominated movie, Haddie is the only woman who has a significant speaking role. Her character is written in a way that is baffling and sometimes annoying. She is often depicted as a nag who doesn’t add much to the story but getting into arguments with Greg over how he’s handling the marathon.
The movie never gives a believable explanation for why someone with a sprained foot and in need of crutches would want to driving a van for several hours a day, for weeks, for this grueling marathon. For a long stretch of the movie, Haddie does nothing but limp up to Greg and the team to scold Greg for pushing the team members too hard. And then, after being the Debbie Downer skeptic for most of the movie, Haddie suddenly has a cheerleader attitude at a certain point. This abrupt transformation looks very fabricated for a movie.
It’s revealed early on in “Hard Miles” that Smink (who is very skinny) actively has an eating disorder. This is another part of the “Hard Miles” that comes up short in crediblity. Why would Greg put someone with this serious health issue in a very risky health situation, where Greg pushes this team to the point where they vomit from exhaustion? Dehydration and heat stroke also major dangers, since the movie makes a big deal of showing how much desert territory is part of this marathon, which takes place during intense daytime heat.
Haddie likes to remind Greg that she has a college degree in psychology and Greg doesn’t, so Haddie thinks she’s the better person to know how to deal with Smink’s eating disorder. However, there’s no evidence that Greg or Haddie has any real medical training to deal with the risks of someone doing this type of marathon while in the throes of an eating disorder. There are a few scenes in the movie where Smink refuses to eat, which means he isn’t really in recovery. It seems medically irresponsible that Smink was approved to be in this marathon, no matter how much Smirk wanted to do this marathon of his own free will.
It’s perhaps the biggest failing of the movie not to address these health issues that are casually brought up and then sort of ignored when these health issues get in the way of the narrative that Greg is supposed to be the knight in cyclist uniform, determined to “save” these wayward young people. And as soon as Greg clutches his heart during a certain part of the marathon, you know what’s coming. But even that health scare is sort of glossed over in a way that looks very fake.
“Hard Miles” has the expected “push through the pain” pep talks and the predictable bickering among the team members. And it should come as no surprise that the person on the team who appears to be the “hardest” is the first one to have an emotional breakdown during the marathon. Greg also makes a decision about his father in one of the more poignant scenes in the movie. “Hard Miles” is not a movie to watch if you want a realistic and detailed look at the physical and health realities of doing this type of marathon. It’s a movie that works on the level of showcasing the belief in “mind over matter,” overcoming challenges, and surpassing expectations.
Blue Fox Entertainment released “Hard Miles” in select U.S. cinemas on April 19, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Los Angeles, the comedy film “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” (a remake of the 1991 film of the same name) features a predominantly African American cast of characters (with some white people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: Four siblings under the age of 18 go unsupervised after their widowed mother goes away on a two-month trip, the kids’ babysitter dies, and the eldest sibling lies about her age and qualifications to get jobs when the kids run out of money.
Culture Audience: “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the original movie and are interested in watching an unimaginative remake with no surprises.
Simone Joy Jones and Nicole Richie in “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” (Photo courtesy of Iconic Events)
“Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” is comatose with a lack of imagination. This unnecessary remake of the 1991 film is in many ways worse than the original film because the remake adds terrible racial jokes and more moronic scenarios. The acting performances from the cast is very uneven, ranging from mediocre to painfully bad.
Directed by Wade Allain-Marcus and written by Chuck Hayward, the 2024 remake of “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” is based on the 1991 movie of the same name. Christina Applegate starred in the original 1991 movie, which was directed by Stephen Herek and was written by Neil Landau and Tara Ison. This unimpressive reboot is geared to adults (even though the central characters are children) and is more vulgar than the original 1991 version, due to more cursing and more explicit depictions of drug use, mostly marijuana. However, the 2024 version of “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” doesn’t do a very good job of using this adult-oriented tone by making anything edgy or clever. Instead, it rehashes the original movie in tired and lazy ways that are definitely not improvements from the original.
In the 2024 remake of “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead,” there are four siblings at the center of the story, instead of five siblings that were in the original 1991 movie. The eldest child, who is the chief protagonist, is a 17-year-old girl who has recently graduated from high school. With few exceptions, the names of the main characters and prominent supporting characters are the same in the original and in the remake of “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.”
In the 2024 remake of “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” (which is a production from BET Studios), most of the updates are references to social media that didn’t exist in 1991. However, the overall concept is the same in both movies: The kid siblings are left alone for two months because their single mother is away on a retreat vacation during the summer season. The eldest sibling is resentful because she wanted to take a summer vacation with her friends, but she now has to spend the summer with her younger siblings.
A cranky and strict elderly babysitter has been hired to look after the children and live in the house with them, but she unexpectedly dies of natural causes just a few days after she arrives. The kids get rid of the babysitter’s body and keep the death a secret because they don’t want their mother to cut her vacation short and because the kids want to be unsupervised for the two months that their mother will be away. The comedic situations in the movie have mostly to do with what happens because the kids are keeping this secret.
Through a series of circumstances, the siblings run out of the money that their mother left for the babysitter to spend on the children. They decide the eldest child is the most likely to earn the most money by getting a job. The eldest child pretends to be about 10 years older than she really is and creates false qualifications in order to get a job at a fashion apparel company, where she has a demanding boss who is dating a sleazy marketing executive at the company.
The eldest sibling also has a situation where her love life overlaps with her work life: She starts dating a guy who’s close to her age, and she finds out later that he is the younger brother of the woman who is her enemy at her job. The teen imposter employee doesn’t want her new boyfriend and his sister to find out that she knows both of them. Many hijinks ensue as the amateur teen con artist struggles to keep up several charades while trying to maintain a stable household.
In the 2024 remake of “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” (which takes place and was filmed in the Los Angeles area, just like the 1991 original movie), the protagonist siblings are 17-year-old Tanya Crandell (played by Simone Joy Jones), who is outgoing and resourceful; stoner skateboarder Kenny Crandell (played by Donielle T. Hansley Jr.), who’s about 15 or 16; angsty technology whiz Melissa Crandall (played by Ayaamii Sledge), who’s about 13 or 14; and nerdy intellectual Zack Crandell (played by Carter Young), who’s about 11 or 12. Their widowed mother (played by Patricia “Ms. Pat” Williams) doesn’t have a first name in the movie. Tanya, who is set to go to Howard University in the fall, had planned a summer vacation in Spain with friends, but she’s now had to cancel her vacation to stay home with her younger siblings.
In the 1991 original movie, the mother was going on a vacation retreat for relaxing self-care and so she could have this free time to herself. The 2024 remake plays into “angry black woman” negative stereotyping by showing the mother having an irate and violent meltdown at her office job. (She pushes down a heavy piece of furniture while losing her temper in a conference room meeting before she quits the job.) As a result, this volatile mother decides she’s going on a two-month retreat (to Thailand) to work on her anger management issues. The awful racial stereotyping doesn’t stop there, as there are unnecessary and not-funny-at-all racist and sexist jokes polluting the movie, including people saying the “n” word and black females being called “bitch.”
The black people aren’t the only ones who look bad in the 2024 remake. The white babysitter who’s been hired to babysit the Crandell siblings is a blatant racist, who is depicted as a conservative, Bible-carrying Christian. Her name is Mrs. Sturak (played by June Squibb), who shows herself to be mean-spirited and oppressive after the children’s mother leaves for the retreat. Mrs. Sturak is the type of racist who says things such as, “Hip-hop ruined the blacks.” Mrs. Sturak also shoots a gun outside and tells the Crandell kids: “I know how to discipline you. I watch Madea [Tyler Perry] movies.”
Tanya and Kenny decide to rebel and have a house party. They lie to Mrs. Sturak and say that it’s really a gathering of a Bible study group where Christian hip-hop will be played. Kenny (who is cliché of a pothead) invites a lot of his druggie friends, so the party predictably becomes a loud and raucous bash. Mrs. Sturak sees the chaos and looks like she’s about to have a heart attack, but she doesn’t do anything about the party, which doesn’t make sense since she’s the type of person who would call the police to break up the party.
The next morning, the Crandell kids find out that Mrs. Sturak died in her sleep. It’s a slightly different lead-up than the original 1991 movie, where there was no house party to upset Mrs. Sturak. In the 1991 movie, the kids just found out one morning that she was dead in her bed. The way that the kids handle disposing the body is also different in both films.
In the original 1991 movie, the kids drove Mrs. Sturak’s body to a mortuary and anonymously dropped off the corpse in a trunk at the front door, with a note saying that she died of natural causes. In the 2024 movie, the body disposal problem is handled in a way that’s even worse. Melissa says, “It’s not 1991. There are cameras everywhere,” which is the movie’s flimsy way of explaining why they don’t drop the body off at a mortuary.
First, the Crandell kids decide to put Mrs. Sturak’s body in a spare refrigerator in the garage. The movie is so stupid, it leads to an awkward scene where a cop just happens to be passing by the house’s open garage door and asks the kids what they are doing and why they are unsupervised. Kenny is able to talk the cop out of investigating further by saying their mother is out for a few hours at a spa appointment.
The plan for the body disposal then switches to putting Mrs. Sturak’s body in Mrs. Sturak’s car, driving the car to a remote lake at night, and then pushing the car into the lake. Not only is this a more complicated solution, but it also now makes this illegal body disposal an even worse crime than it was in the first movie. And the filmmakers would like viewers to forget that security cameras on the street still work at night.
Mrs. Sturak apparently had no one in her life who cared about her because, in both movies, no one comes looking for or reports her missing during the entire story. Every time the Crandell kids’ mother calls to check up on the kids (which isn’t very often), they tell their mother that Mrs. Sturak is not available to talk on the phone because she’s out doing an errand. In real life, most parents would then start to wonder why the babysitter is leaving the kids alone every time they call, or the parents would ask the babysitter to return the call and would get suspicious if the babysitter doesn’t call back. But movies like this aren’t concerned with those realistic details.
When the Crandell kids run out of cash, Tanya gets a job as a rideshare driver. While doing this job, she meets a customer in his late teens named Bryan (played by Miles Fowler), who books Tanya to drop him off and pick him up at what appears to be a wedding or engagement party. Bryan is an aspiring architect who has recently graduated from high school and has plans to attend Syracuse University in the fall.
During their time together, Bryan and Tanya have romantic chemistry and they end up dating each other, even though there’s nothing in the movie to show that they have a relationship built on honesty from Tanya. Tanya leads Bryan to believe that she’s older than 17. The minimum age to be a rideshare driver is 18 years old, which is why Bryan assumes Tanya is at least 18. Tanya also tells Bryan many lies, some through omission.
When Bryan asks Tanya why she’s so evasive about certain personal details throughout their relationship, Tayna is very abrupt and defensive to Bryan. Their conversations are also fairly shallow and uninteresting. When Bryan asks Tanya what her favorite building is, she answers, “The Grove,” which is a shopping center in Los Angeles. Bryan is an attentive and romantic boyfriend. Tanya is very self-absorbed and not as intelligent and charismatic as Sue Ellen Crandell (the eldest sibling, played by Applegate) in the original 1991 movie.
The rideshare job is Tanya’s first job. She’s shocked at how much of her payment is reduced by commissions, taxes and expenses. With help from Zack, Tanya does some math and figures out that she won’t be able to make enough money as a rideshare driver to feed a household of four people, so she quits the rideshare job.
In the original 1991 movie, Sue Ellen initially had a job at a fast-food restaurant, but she quit not just because of the low wages but also because she disliked the creepy boss and she hated doing the messy food work in the back rooms. Sue Ellen meets her love interest Bryan (played by Josh Charles) because he works at the same fast-food joint. Bryan also drives the restaurant’s delivery truck, which becomes a running gag in the movie when the Crandell car gets stolen by drag queens, and Sue Ellen often has to get rides from Bryan in this gaudy fast-food truck.
A turning point comes in both movies when the eldest Crandell sibling sees an ad for a job opening as a receptionist for a fashion company that sells low-priced apparel. In both movies, she fabricates a résumé to apply for the job. In the 1991 movie, she does it on her own. In the 2024 version, Tanya gets help from her more tech-savvy sister Melissa, who also creates fake social media profiles for Tanya.
Both movies show how the teen imposter gets hired immediately at the company—not as a receptionist but as the administrative assistant to a high-ranking company executive named Rose Lindsey. That’s because this executive is impressed by the qualifications listed on the résumé, and the executive doesn’t like the receptionist who expected to get promoted to this administrative assistant job. In both movies, the receptionist is very rude to the teen imposter when they first meet. The receptionist (who is Bryan’s older sister) becomes the teen imposter’s bitter rival when she finds out that this newcomer got the job that the receptionist wanted.
In the 2024 remake of “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead,” the receptionist Caroline (played by Lantha Richardson) is a two-dimensional “villain,” although Richardson has fairly good comedic timing in some of the scenes. Caroline’s office sidekick is openly gay Bruce (played by Gus Kenworthy), who doesn’t want to get involved in Caroline’s scheming, unlike the 1991 movie’s Bruce character(played by David Duchovny), who was Caroline’s cohort with a dislike for Sue Ellen because Sue Ellen doesn’t let Bruce talk down to her. Kenworthy has a small role in the 2024 movie, but he and Richardson are two of the few cast members in the movie who give consistently capable performances.
The same can’t be said for Nicole Richie, who has the role of Rose Lindsey, the hard-driving CEO of Libra, a fast-fashion company whose target audience consists of teenage girls. Richie delivers her lines stiffly in too many scenes. You never forget that Richie is acting, unlike Joanna Cassidy, who had a more natural and convincing performance as Rose Lindsey in the original 1991 movie.
The 2024 remake of “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” has several references to the original 1991 movie. At one point, it’s revealed that Tanya’s middle names are Sue Ellen. There’s a scene in the remake where Kenny, Melissa and Zack are watching TV in their living room, and the movie they are watching is the original “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.”
And there is the not-too-surprising cameos from some of the original “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” cast members. Cassidy makes a very brief appearance toward the end of the movie, in a scene where she introduces herself as Joan to Richie’s Rose character. This cameo appearance from Cassidy is so quick (less than one minute) and has no bearing or effect on the overall story, so it’s not spoiler information to say that she’s in the movie. Other cast members from the 1991 movie who make very brief cameos as different characters in the 2024 remake are Keith Coogan (who was stoner Kenny in the original movie) and Danielle Harris (who was tomboy Melissa in the original movie), whose appearances in the 2024 remake are also unimportant to the plot.
One of the reasons why the 2024 remake of “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” doesn’t work very well is because the movie’s plot is too outdated. In 1991, it would be much easier for an underage teenager to fake an identity to get this type of job. Nowadays, this type of fakery would be much easier to expose—especially since Tanya used her real name and went to a high school in the same area where she got the job. The 2024 movie tries to address these issues by showing Caroline finding out fairly early on that Tanya lied about her qualifications. However, Rose doesn’t seem to care when Caroline tells Rose because Rose genuinely likes Tanya and wants Tanya to succeed.
As for the underage issue, which is more of a legal issue for the company, the original 1991 movie handled it better. In the 1991 movie, someone on the job finds out Sue Ellen’s real age by temporarily taking her driver’s license from Sue Ellen’s unattended purse and making a photo copy of the driver’s license. In the 2024 movie, it’s discovered that Tanya lied about her age when someone finds her high school yearbook, which actually doesn’t prove she’s underage because someone could be 18 or 19 (or even older, in some cases) when they graduate from high school.
Another issue that is handled in a sloppier way in the 2024 movie is a subplot about the younger Crandell siblings gong on a spending spree to buy things they don’t need (such as high-end home entertainment equipment) by using the company’s expense account that the eldest Crandall sibling has access to through her job. In the 1991 movie, the money was from a petty cash account, with the cash kept in a drawer where Sue Ellen had the keys and could write fake receipts to cover up the taken cash. Sue Ellen took the cash home to buy groceries and had the intention to replace the stolen cash (before anyone noticed the missing cash) with money that she was expecting from her next paychecks.
In the 2024 movie, Tanya is given a company credit card that is used by her younger siblings for the spending sprees. Using a credit card instead of cash would actually make it harder to cover up the purchases that the Crandell kids bought by using the stolen money. But the filmmakers of the 2024 remake of “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” don’t care about those details because this movie treats viewers like idiots.
In both movies, Rose is openly dating a co-worker marketing executive named Gus, who is a and playboy. John Getz had the role of Gus in the 1991 movie. Jermaine Fowler (no relation to Miles Fowler) is Gus in the 2024 movie, which makes Gus one of Rose’s subordinates. Rose considers herself to be an independent, liberated woman who doesn’t feel the need to get married. However, Rose and Gus have decided to have a monogamous relationship. Rose hopes that Gus will eventually ask her to live together.
This is what the 2024 movie is trying to pass off as “comedic lines of dialogue”: Gus tells Tanya that he’s “VP [vice president] of pleasing Rose.” Rose tells Tanya in a separate private conversation why she’s dating Gus, who’s about 10 years younger than Rose: “Always date younger men—[they have] more stamina, less opinions.” She also compares Gus to being like a foster puppy if they live together. Rose seems to be fond of Gus, but only because of the sex that they’re having and the control she thinks she has in the relationship.
Because Gus is a serial cheater, he predictably tries to make moves on Tanya, who rebuffs his advances. Tanya also sees Gus kissing another woman, and Tanya handles it in a way that’s kind of cringeworthy. In the 1991 movie, Gus is much more aggressive and blatant with his sexual harassment, which Sue Ellen handles with a certain amount of grit and maturity that people might not expect from a 17-year-old. The 2024 version “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead,” in this #MeToo era, plays it very safe when it comes to sexual harassment issues.
Instead, the movie is much more “in your face” with obnoxious racist comments that the movie is trying to pass off as jokes but often miss the mark. There’s a scene early in the 2024 movie, where Kenny says a ridiculous comment that he and his siblings get to have the whole house to themselves like “white kids”—as if black kids are never home alone. The movie briefly acknowledges that the Crandells have middle-class privileges, but then it’s back to the unfunny racist jokes.
In the original 1991 movie, the clothing company was called General Apparel West, selling drab worker uniforms. The 2024 movie mentions environmental and social issues that the general public is much more conscious of for fashion companies in the 21st century, compared to 1991—such as sustainable manufacturing, vegan clothing and using underpaid sweatshop workers. However, these buzzwords in the movie are just empty window dressing to a recycled movie plot that doesn’t do anything creative.
Jones does a serviceable job as Tanya, but she is never convincing as a teenager when Tanya is at home and doesn’t have to lie about being older. As for the younger kids, the 2024 version of “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” makes the same mistake that a lot of bad comedies do, by making pre-teen kids or kids in their early teens talk like smart aleck adults, which just makes their dialogue sound even phonier. That’s what the movie does with Melissa and (to a certain extent) Zack. (Kenny is still an underachieving stoner in both movies.) At least the kids in the 1991 “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” talked like genuine children appropriate to their respective ages.
One of the worst things about the 2024 version of “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” is how the issue is resolved regarding Tanya covering up her secret double life from Bryan. The 1991 version had much more realistic portrayals of how Bryan was affected by his girlfriend’s secrets and lies. The 2024 version literally resolves the issue in less than a minute in a such a superficial way, it’s really insulting to Bryan and to audiences watching this dreck.
Even worse is the last scene of the 2024 version of “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead,” which is changed from the 1991 movie. Without giving away too many details, the 2024 version shows the Crandell mother’s reaction to certain information. Her reaction is heinous and plays once again into negative stereotyping of black people. The original 1991 “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” wasn’t a very good movie, but at least the movie had better acting and more authenticity in showing some very absurd situations involving children.
Iconic Events released “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” in select U.S. cinemas on April 12, 2024. BET+ will premiere the movie on May 16, 2024.
