BEFORE: Finally making some progress on getting my Netflix list down to a manageable size, this makes three nights in a row streaming, but after this I'm going to switch over to Academy screeners so that Steve Carell can get me close to the end of January.
Joel McHale carries over from "Adult Beginners" to play (you'll never believe this...) Joel McHale in today's film. Seems like a bunch of cameos in this one, with stars playing themselves - not much of a stretch.
THE PLOT: Three friends are on the verge of getting their video game financed when their benefactor is taken hostage by terrorists.
AFTER: Sometimes it really is all about tone, like it's hard to tell if you agree with how spoof-y a spoof should be. This sort of came up after watching "A Futile and Stupid Gesture", the difference between a film like "Airplane", which just can't be taken seriously at all, and "Caddyshack", which only gets about halfway to total parody, so it still functions as a coherent story, provided you buy into it and believe in it. (puppet gopher aside, obviously) So I guess that consitutes a farce, rather than a spoof? In the same vein, this can't really be a spoof of "Die Hard", because there just aren't any one-to-one comparisons to be made, like there's no direct John McClain or Hans Gruber analogs, so therefore this can only be a farce based on the ideas suggested by films like "Die Hard", you follow?
I never watched the show "Workaholics", which is good because as a result I don't have any pre-conceived notions about these three actors and the characters they play, but it's also bad because I'm not used to their unique brand of humor, and I found it hard to get into their groove. I mean, sure, nothing here can really be taken seriously either, but there was just way too much "bro"-ing around among these guys and hardly any focus on the tasks at hand. Really, terrorists have taken over the building you're in and you're going to take THIS exact moment to hash out long-standing arguments based on your personality quirks? When the crap hits the fan and people are called upon to do extraordinary things, or people face incredible danger and must find a way to survive, those are the things that really should get tabled for later discussion.
It's so obvious that when these guys pitch their idea for "Skintendo Joysuit", a wearable video-game controller that as a by-product allows a remote user to move the wearer around, that this is going to be very important before the end of the film. It's, like, super-telegraphed, because why else would these characters talk about it every few minutes?
There's so much obvious humor here, from the gay jokes to the poop jokes and the jokes where people's heads and other things explode, and most of that feels like it's pandering to the absolute lowest common denominator, and that's a real shame. There could have been a funny comedy buried under all this nastiness, and not just a gross one. I don't find exploding cute animals to be funny, and I don't think anyone else should, either. For shame. Find another way. Same goes for jokes about having sex with animals, even dead animals. Aim higher.
A surprising amount of male frontal nudity, too. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Also starring Adam DeVine (last seen in "Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates"), Anders Holm (last seen in "How to Be Single"), Blake Anderson (last seen in "Neighbors"), Utkarsh Ambudkar (last seen in "Pitch Perfect"), Aya Cash (last seen in "The Wolf of Wall Street"), Daniel Stern (last seen in "Whip It"), Neal McDonough (last seen in "Paul Blart; Mall Cop 2"), Jamie Demetriou, Rhona Mitra (last seen in "The Life of David Gale"), Sam Richardson (last seen in "Office Christmas Party"), Steve Howey, Mac Brandt, Geno Segers, Roe Hartrampf, Andrew Santino, with cameos from Shaggy, Sugar Lyn Beard, Jere Burns, Fred Armisen (last seen in "Zoolander 2"), Steve-O, Donald Faison (last seen in "Wish I Was Here"), Action Bronson, Chris Pontius, Mark Cuban, Jillian Bell (last seen in "Rough Night"), Chloe Bridges, King Bach.
RATING: 4 out of 10 used condoms
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