BEFORE: Just a few days away from October 1 now, and a few days away from having just 30 films left to watch in 2019. Unfortunately, as soon as I get rolling on horror films, I may need to take 2 days off for New York Comic-Con. I may spend Friday working sun-up to sundown at the convention, and then half of Saturday working, and half exploring the convention. I probably won't have time for movies between Thursday and Sunday, because that would keep me up too late and I need to be there EARLY to set up and beat the crowds. It's OK, I factored a few free days into October, but I was saving them for the end of the month - I can burn a couple in the first week and still finish the month on time.
Melissa McCarthy carries over again from "The Happytime Murders" - I did say she'd be around most of this week.
THE PLOT: A titan of industry is sent to prison after she's caught insider trading. When she emerges, ready to rebrand herself as America's latest sweetheart, not everyone she screwed over is so quick to forgive and forget.
AFTER: If I thought that "The Happytime Murders" was very light on the details with regard to how the puppets think, talk and move around by themselves, that pales in comparison to this film, where some screenwriters didn't let the fact that they didn't understand business AT ALL when making a film about a high-profile businesswoman. First off, what sort of business is she in, and I mean EXACTLY? For the whole first part of the film, there's simply no mention of what she DOES for a living, other than make rock-concert type lectures to crowds of fans, and bark random orders at her staff. Is she an entertainment mogul, does her company manufacture something, is she in publishing or aerospace or finance? Because those are all vastly different industries, and just having a business degree or calling yourself a "businesswoman" isn't enough. She makes "deals", whatever that means, and she gets nabbed for insider trading (trading WHAT?) and loses her empire (which was what kind of empire?). It's maddening how light this is on the details. You might as well make a boxing movie and never mention what weight class the main character is in, or show any of his fights.
Apparently it's not important, what matter is that she serves her time, learns her lesson, and comes out on the other side, ready to rebuild. Only she doesn't learn any lesson at all from her conviction and incarceration, she gets out of prison just as spoiled and entitled as she was when she got in, if not more, because now she feels like the world owes her something for the added inconvenience. She clearly takes advantage of her employees, doesn't even care about the personal lives of her personal assistant, and casually forgets every promise she ever made about salary increases and other benefits. Then she shows up on the doorstep of her former assistant after getting out of jail, and expects to be given a place to stay and some help getting re-established. Now I'm confused, am I supposed to like this character?
Even when she gets an idea for how to get back on top, by turning her former assistant's family brownie recipe into an industry that competes with Girl Scout Cookies - oh, that's actually a good idea, those supposedly "helpful" cookie sales have been operating for years without any decent competition. It's only recently that other cookie companies have taken steps to make cookies SIMILAR to the ones sold by the Girl Scouts - hey, it's a free market, don't hate the player, hate the game - and if you think about it, why do supermarkets allow Girl Scouts to sell cookies RIGHT outside their doors, doesn't that hurt the sale of cookies INSIDE the supermarket? Don't get me wrong, when my niece sells cookies I'm right there, and my wife and I are probably good for about a dozen boxes between us - but I have to wait THREE MONTHS for cookies? The store around the corner has cookies NOW! Ah, who am I kidding, I'll probably buy cookies now AND cookies that arrive in three months.
But the lead character here comes up with a way to undercut the Girl Scouts, by giving the young girls selling them 10% of the proceeds of each box, and putting another 10% into a college fund. Umm, take that, Girl Scouts, whose members don't see ANY of the money from the cookies, except that it helps to fund their educational field trips and the ever-increasing costs of merit badges. This might have worked very well as a plot point, if Michelle Darnell didn't do what she supposedly always does, which is to screw over anybody she's partnered with, especially if they get too close to her emotionally. Kids raised in orphanages or those who encountered multiple adoptions don't fare very well here, the implication is that someone not raised by their birth parents can't possibly understand or appreciate the concept of having a family. Which is not true, and casts a whole bunch of good people in a bad light, I think.
A lot more gets glossed over here - I'm no expert at starting up a business in the food industry, but I'm thinking that there are a lot of steps to that - like filing papers of organization, going through proper methods of sanitation and industrial food preparation, figuring out the cost of supplies and labor when setting the price of a sack of brownies, and so on. What about collecting sales tax, what about the cost of promotion, what about signing an official contract or agreement between the two partners? This last bit sort of gets covered in the film, namely if you didn't sign a partnership agreement, even if someone promises you 50% of the business, legally you haven't got squat.
What isn't sort of half-explained here just ends up being really silly. Oh, let's break into a corporate mogul's modern office, with all its high-tech security, because we somehow know that he hasn't made an electronic copy of the contract, he probably just left it in a desk drawer and DIDN'T put it into a safe, and since it's Saturday there's no chance of the contract being legalized until Monday. Umm, nope, nope, and hell nope. Then for some unknown reason, let's have a sword fight with a little person on top of a skyscraper.
Most painful of all is a 5-minute (overly long) gag where the two female leads adjust each other's breasts. Is this some part of friendship between women that I'm not aware of? It seems like some writer's odd fetish, and honestly, I've seen enough of those this week already, from Bonnie Hunt getting splashed with a gallon of orange juice in "Cheaper By the Dozen 2" to an octopus milking a cow in some kind of puppet porn in "The Happytime Murders". Screenwriters, y'all have some freaky weird fetishes, which is fine when you're alone, but do you have to put them into the movies that I'm watching?
Maybe I'm just not reading between the lines enough here - a character who has some shady business dealings, nobody seems to know what line of work they're really in, and they use too much self-tanner, who does that sound like? Right, the commander in chief, who's had several failing businesses, claims to be knowledgeable on the "art of the deal", and has also screwed over everyone he's ever been in business with. Was this character created as a female stand-in for Trump, or am I seeing the similarities where none really exist? Man, I'm trying very hard not to get excited over today's news of an actual impeachment inquiry, which means that the House Democrats have finally agreed to start the process of investigating whether it's a good idea to initiate proceedings that might determine whether impeaching this rat bastard is worth their time. Here's hoping. I can't really understand why it's over one phone conversation he had with the leader of Ukraine, and not the 300 other shady things he's done since getting elected, but hey, I guess you've got to start somewhere.
Also starring Kristen Bell (last seen in "Burlesque"), Peter Dinklage (last seen in "Avengers: Infinity War"), Ella Anderson (last seen in "The Glass Castle"), Chandler Head (ditto), Tyler Labine (last seen in "Flyboys"), Kathy Bates (last seen in "The Highwaymen"), Timothy Simons (last seen in "Goosebumps"), Annie Mumolo (last seen in "This Is 40"), Kristen Schaal (last heard in "Toy Story 4"), Cecily Strong (last seen in "Love, Gilda"), Cedric Yarbrough (last seen in "The House"), Mary Sohn, Eva Peterson, Presley Coley, Aleandra Newcomb, Margo Martindale (last seen in "Wilson"), Ben Falcone (also carrying over from "The Happytime Murders"), Michael McDonald (ditto), Steve Mallory (ditto), Damon Jones (ditto), Larry Dorf, Vivian Falcone, Isabella Amara, with cameos from Gayle King (last seen in "Get Me Roger Stone"), T-Pain.
RATING: 3 out of 10 too-high turtlenecks
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