Review: Horrible Bosses 2

by Trevor Kirkendall

★

Sequels, sequels and more sequels. When will it end? It never will. Especially when movies that were relatively decent don’t necessarily require a second serving. I could watch Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy go back out for another story in a sequel to “The Heat,” but that’s looking less and less likely to happen. Never once did I think that I wanted to see more of Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day’s characters from “Horrible Bosses” again, despite liking that movie. But here we are.

After escaping jail time from their antics in the first film, Nick (Bateman), Kurt (Sudeikis) and Dale (Day) have decided they want to be their own bosses. They’ve come up with a product fit for Skymall called the Shower Buddy, which automatically dispenses shampoo and soap onto your person in a effort to cut shower times down. But they need investors to make it happen.

Enter Burt Hanson (Christoph Waltz) and his son Rex (Chris Pine) who place an initial order for 100,000 units. The guys borrow money from a bank to make the order and finish it ahead of schedule. But then Burt cancels it, steals the idea and announces his intention to make their product himself under a different name. The guys are furious, so they cook up a plan to kidnap Rex and hold him ransom for the amount of money they’re going to owe the bank. The only variable they didn’t count on is that Rex wants to be kidnapped so he can take part in this dastardly plot and pocket some of his dad’s money too.

While the original “Horrible Bosses” was certainly enjoyable, the follow up falls into the typical traps that doom most Hollywood sequels. While some filmmakers have figured out how to avoid these issues – many sequels have been pretty decent over the past few years – others have not. Director Sean Anders is a filmmaker who has not, which is surprising given that he’s responsible for the scripts to “Hot Tub Time Machine” and “We’re the Millers,” two very respectable comedies. I guess working off of someone else’s material is much harder to do.

There are two things wrong with “Horrible Bosses 2” and both are cardinal sins when it comes to making a successful sequel. The first is repeating the previous installment’s plot points. Since the majority of the audience saw the first film and liked it enough to pay to see the sequel, the theory is that they’ll enjoy this one if it retains some similarities of the first. But that just shows lazy writing. If you played “Horrible Bosses” alongside “Horrible Bosses 2,” all the plot points would happen at the same time. This is the same aspect that doomed “The Hangover Part II.” These are the exact same movies we’ve seen before.

The second sin is an over embellishment of the character’s personalities. These writers have made everyone a ridiculous caricature of themselves. For example, Sudeikis’ Kurt showed the least amount of smarts in the original. He wasn’t an idiot, but would have been ranked third in the group of three on an intelligence-ranking list. In the sequel, he’s a straight up moron. The things he says in this film will induce many facepalms among the audience. I’m embarrassed for Sudeikis. Then there’s Day’s Dale, who couldn’t stop talking in the first film. Here, he never shuts up and rambles on about the most asinine things. He was so annoying I wanted to slap him.

You can tell these actors were here for a paycheck. All of them looked so uncomfortable doing this film, especially Bateman. I thought he was smarter than participating in a film for such an obvious cash grab. His successful directorial debut earlier this year – “Bad Words” – shows that he has the brains and the talent to accept better roles and work on better stories that this garbage. I guess everyone needs to pay the bills somehow, even Hollywood millionaires.

Furthermore, the presence of two-time Oscar winner Waltz gave this movie a bit of intrigue from the advertisements, but he’s completely misused in every aspect. He’s given one scene where the dialogue sounds like complete swindles of his lines from Tarantino films; it’s very out of place. Then he only appears in about three more scenes. That’s a horrible waste of talent.

While the first “Horrible Bosses” was enjoyable and relatively entertaining, it hardly deserved a sequel. I guess it’s a cheap enough concept so the risk of losing money is rather slim. Truthfully, though, the only person losing money here will be you when you shell out the funds to watch this abomination. I understand that it’s supposed to be mindless and humorous fun. It is indeed mindless, but humorous? Hardly. It’s that awkward laugh you make when a friend tells you a joke that’s not funny, but he’s had such a bad day already that you can’t help but give him a little morale boost by laughing back. This is a quick throwaway film. Seriously, I saw it two days ago and I’m already wracking my brain trying to remember exactly what happened in it. And by the time you read this, I will have already forgot I saw it entirely.

Review: Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

by Trevor Kirkendall

★★½

“Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” is a reboot of the famous Tom Clancy character who has already appeared on the silver screen four other times. While I generally balk at the idea of reboots because they demonstrate a complete lack of originality or willingness to take a risk from the Hollywood studios, this is one I was actually kind of interested in seeing. The result? It’s quite enjoyable despite it’s boring script.

Since this is an origin story, “Shadow Recruit” opens with Jack Ryan (Chris Pine) back in college working on his PhD in England in 2001. He watches the horror of the 9/11 terror attacks unfold and decides to abandon his studies and join the Marines. Sometime later, Lieutenant Ryan is serving in Afghanistan when a helicopter he’s in is hit with a missile. He survives, but spends a great deal of time learning to walk again at Walter Reed. He’s being helped by a medical student, Cathy Muller (Keira Knightley). Ryan likes her, but she won’t date a patient; famous last words during a typical meet-cute like this.

Keeping a close eye on Ryan’s recovery is CIA operative Thomas Harper (Kevin Costner). He’s read Ryan’s college essays and thinks he’s smart enough to assist the CIA in counter terrorist measures. He asks Ryan to return to school and complete his PhD, after which time they’ll covertly place him into a Wall Street firm where he will monitor foreign accounts to see who is funding terrorist cells.  This brings us to the present, ten years later. Ryan works for a firm in New York. He lives with Cathy, who is now a doctor. They’re engaged to be married but she’s not ready to commit (since when is it the woman who isn’t ready to commit in movies?). And since they’re not married, Ryan can’t tell her he secretly works for the CIA.

One day, Ryan notices an abnormality with some holdings from a Russian firm they oversee. The firm is run by Viktor Cherevin (Kenneth Branagh). His suspicions are correct because it turns out Viktor hates America and wants to destroy it by selling off trillions of dollars in holdings which would plunge the United States into a second Great Depression. This would be timed perfectly to follow a massive terror strike on the US by a Russian sleeper cell. Ryan raises his concern with the CIA who tells him to go to Moscow himself for an audit. Once he gets there, things get ugly. Cherevin’s company suspects his reason for coming to Moscow rather than doing this over the phone and takes all the necessary measures to eliminate the threat they think Ryan poses.

The Jack Ryan character is certainly an interesting one and Tom Clancy left behind a wealth of material for Hollywood to draw on, but “Shadow Recruit” comes from none of those stories. Instead, writers Adam Cozad and David Koepp take the characteristics Clancy gave Ryan in the novels, updated it for 2014 and created a brand new story line. They’ve also given Ryan a little bit of the Jason Bourne DNA by making him more of an action hero instead of a pencil pusher.

We’ve seen the character already in four other movies, all based on Clancy novels: “The Hunt for Red October” in 1990 with Alec Baldwin as Ryan, “Patriot Games” in 1992 and “Clear and Present Danger” in 1994 with Harrison Ford, and “The Sum of All Fears” in 2002 with Ben Affleck taking over the role. I personally think Baldwin played it best and “Red October” is the best of all the Ryan films, including “Shadow Recruit”. In each of these films, Ryan isn’t an action hero. He’s just an analyst dropped into difficult situations. That all changes here.

And it’s not necessarily a bad thing either. The story is a bit thick and a maybe a little too complex. Focusing the primary conflict on economics isn’t exactly the easiest way to win over your audience. The story tries to make the stakes incredibly high for Ryan and the CIA, but half the audience might be lost in the processes. It’s not until about halfway through the second act when things start to pick up. Once they do, the whole economic destruction premise is tossed out the window in favor of high octane action sequences and other suspenseful moments.

Director Branagh is a competent action director, already evident from his work on “Thor”. He doesn’t really improve on anything with “Shadow Recruit” but he does maintain his consistency as a big budget studio director. These types of films are obviously slightly more involved than the Shakespeare adaptations we’re used to seeing from him. Even the best directors out there show their inexperience with filming big action sequences for the first time (see Christopher Nolan’s hand-to-hand combat scenes in “Batman Begins” and compare them to “The Dark Knight” – vast improvements). Branagh shows no learning curve.

He’s also solid on the other side of the camera too. Again, this is no surprise. The man is a natural talent. I had no concerns about him as an actor in this film. I did have reservations about Chris Pine though. I was worried he might play this role similar to that of James Tiberius Kirk, but he does not. He’s an acceptable action star, although I would have never guessed that a few years ago when he was doing things like “Just My Luck” and “Blind Dating”. He’s comfortable here, but he’s not given much to work with in the way of actual dramatic acting. If sequels follow, I wonder if they’ll continue to make Ryan a Bourne-like action hero, or if they’ll play into his back story and relationships more the way the early films and (presumably) the novels show.

There’s nothing groundbreaking being done in “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit”. It’s just a relatively enjoyable action film with a mediocre screenplay. That’s pretty typical of just about every action film we’re given each year. The screening I saw for this film was on an IMAX screen which added very little to movie. Knowing that, this is probably very doable on your own TV; you won’t miss much seeing it on a smaller screen. Furthermore, I’m not sure audiences are going to leave this film clamoring for any kind of follow up. If they give us one, I’m sure it’ll be enjoyable, but I’m not going to be hoping for one. And I’m sure I’m not going to be alone with that thought either. 

Review: Star Trek Into Darkness

by Trevor Kirkendall

★★★

“Star Trek Into Darkness” comes at us four years after J.J. Abrams rebooted the series with the simply titled “Star Trek.” That film reset the whole story line that everyone thought they knew from the television series and the six original movies. It was an action packed film that opened up the franchise to a whole new audience without alienating its dedicated fan base (no easy task given the dedication of the Trekkies). A sequel to such a big film needed to exceed the scale and excitement of its predecessor. Despite many flaws throughout, “Star Trek Into Darkness” does deliver enough to make this a really enjoyable experience.

The film opens with the crew of the Starship Enterprise on a distant planet attempting to save an entire civilization from a soon to erupt volcano. When the life of Spock (Zachary Quinto) becomes threatened, Captain James Kirk breaks protocol to save him. He finds himself in some hot water back at headquarters, especially in the eyes of his mentor Admiral Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood).

Meanwhile in London, a terrorist has attacked a Starfleet archives building which in turn leads to an attack on headquarters. The mastermind of this attack is a former Starfleet Commander named John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbach). He’s tracked to a Klingon occupied planet, and Kirk seeks permission from Starfleet Admiral Alexander Marcus (Peter Weller) to go after Harrison. Marcus arms Kirk with an arsenal of torpedoes and instructions to kill Harrison.

It’s easy to see why J.J. Abrams was selected to resurrect this franchise. No other filmmaker working within the Hollywood studio system has a better grasp on movies of this size and scale than him. The look and feel of this film alone is breathtaking. Abrams seamlessly blends the live action and the computer generated images into a unified life like amalgamation.

There are hundreds if not thousands of effects shot put together in this film, and none of them are overdone or overused. In order to boldly go where no one has gone before, massive amounts of effects are required, and Abrams is able to sell it with near perfection. If this is what his forthcoming “Star Wars: Episode VII” will look like in 2015, we are in for a treat, to say the least.

Abrams is so good that he’s only about two or three shows away from having a monopoly on network television. The reason for that is his ability to find and tell good stories that keep people wanting to come back each week. Unfortunately, a sound story is what “Star Trek Into Darkness” lacks. The script, from frequent Abrams collaborators Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, along with Damon Lindeolf (who worked with Abrams on “Lost”), starts out relatively strong but quickly unravels.

From the beginning, it seems that we are going to get a movie that won’t only excite us, but also tell up a little more about who these characters are. In the 2009 reboot, we were introduced to all the characters; for the younger generation, it was the first time they were introduced to the crew of the Enterprise. Here, we begin with such promise to learn more about the crew. Maybe we’ll see Kirk grow up a little, or maybe they can advance the relationship between Spock and Uhura (Zoe Saldana), which was first established in the reboot. Then there’s the rest of the crew: the comic relief of Scotty (Simon Pegg) or the serious Mr. Sulu (John Cho).

A few subplots are set up and explored in the beginning, particularly Spock and Uhura. Once the action begins, however, all advancement of character ceases to continue. No one grows. No one changes. That’s an important part of story, one that all three of these writers should know given their highly regarded track record.

There’s really no point in digging too much deeper into the film’s flaws. What more does anyone expect from this? It’s another installment into a hugely popular science fiction franchise. It’s about good guys going after bad guys, which ultimately features battles in outer space. If that’s all you expect from it, than consider your expectation more than met.

Fans of the “Star Trek” franchise will no doubt love it. The film continues on with a new story path established in the reboot. Some parts are pretty disconnected, but you shouldn’t even be paying attention to that too much when you sit back and look at the screen. It’s an engrossing experience that takes you to a different place. And isn’t that the goal of the movies anyway? To escape? Despite its flaws, this isn’t a throwaway film. It’s another addition to an already illustrious film franchise, and one that will end up being one of this summer’s most exciting movie going experiences.