Dolittle

Year 13, Day 135 - 5/15/21 - Movie #3,840

BEFORE: There are always going to be movies that I'm putting off - with such a huge watchlist, any time I say, OK, I'll watch THIS movie, the other side of that is, I'm NOT going to watch any of THOSE 499 other movies tonight.  So, it's all about priorities - what do I think I might like, three weeks from now, or three months from now?  It's an impossible thing to predict, so that's why I have my lists and my plans, using the holidays as benchmarks.  I may, from time to time, watching something that I'm merely curious about, because it helps get me where I'm going.  I'm just using this film in that form today, it gets me one step closer to where I want to go, which is to "Tenet" and "Bohemian Rhapsody" and something for Memorial Day.  So Jessie Buckley carries over from "Judy" and gets me closer to all of that.

In another sense, this clears up some room on the DVR, and also frees up a slot for something else to be added to the main watchlist, and then I can move one more movie from the secondary watchlist to the main watchlist, so everything's progress.  And the definition of "progress" has really changed in the last year, having this framework in place has been invaluable for mentally getting through the pandemic, where most every day has been much like the last and the next.  At the very least, every day means a different movie, so there's that, it's like I'd been preparing for the year-long lockdowns, without even knowing that I was.  

Mentally, it's still tough, and even though restrictions are being relaxed, getting back to "normal", or even "normal-ish", is going to take time.  When is it OK to just go out and do something fun again?  Meeting with friends, or family you haven't seen in a while, when is that OK?  And just because it's safe, what if you're not mentally ready to do that yet?  I'm just now talking to my sister about going up to visit my parents for my Dad's 80th birthday, which is next weekend.  Now I've got to see if I've got movies planned for those days that I can bring with me, or watch on my phone, and then Amtrak up to Massachusetts on Friday night and come back on Monday morning.  Sure, it's a hassle, but I've only seen my parents twice since April of last year, and we missed Christmas together, so perhaps another visit is in order - get out of NYC for a couple days, clear my head, try to cheer myself up a bit.  Sounds like a plan.  

THE PLOT: A physician who can talk to animals embarks on an adventure with a young apprentice and a crew of strange pets to find a legendary island.

AFTER: It's still Mental Health Awareness Month, something I tried to tie into with "My Dinner With Hervé", and I suppose "Judy" as well, because Judy Garland was possibly the poster child for people with mental health issues.  Famous people are just as screwed up as regular people, if not more, after all.  Today we've got Dr. Dolittle battling depression and loneliness because he's still reeling from his wife's disappearance and death - and at the start of the film he's a shut-in, interacting with all of the animals on his compound, wary of any human visitors, and he's unkempt and there are probably hygiene issues - the animals are probably all cleaner than he is, and that's saying something.  (Who's taking care of all the animal dung?  This place probably stinks to high heaven...)

Updating a piece of classic literature is always a tricky thing, because there are so many ways to go, striking the right tone is a delicate balance - the last few "Dr. Dolittle" films went for a full, modern update, with Eddie Murphy playing a veterinarian who could talk to animals, and while they were funny, the films bore little resemblance to the original novels.  This most recent update/reboot tried to have it both ways, to keep the original time setting in the 1800's, with all those old-timey costumes and such, but then mix in modern-day effects, complete with CGI talking animals, and wild stunts to really make it a marvel, like a big wide, Disney-ish film.  Oh, and a lot of modern-time speech, like the animals call each other "Bro" and there are other current-ish slang phrases floating around, maybe kids won't even notice this, but for me this just didn't work.  

It's oddly like a super-hero film, because the relationship between Dolittle and Stubbins reminded me of Downey's appearance in "Spider-Man: Homecoming", but then it's got bits of "Aquaman", and "The Hobbit" mixed in, along with a whole lot of "Zookeeper", in the style of Downey's "Sherlock Holmes" movies, which doesn't really make for a great combination.  Mixing things up like this produces something like that version of "Gulliver's Travels" with Jack Black in it, and in a similar fashion, this became something of a big mess.  Sure, they went back to the second "Doctor Dolittle" novel to find an epic adventure story that could be adapted, and then some screenwriter went through the plot and changed every single element of that story, so then, umm, what was the point of adapting THAT book, then?  

What resulted was really one bad idea after another, in a protracted sequence that ended up not making any sense at all - not that a fantasy film HAS to make sense, you can have a lot of wild, crazy ideas, but I struggled to find any internal logic at all.  Queen Victoria is ill, and somehow only Dr. Dolittle can help her, by traveling around the world by ship to an uncharted island, where the Eden tree is, and there, guarded by a dragon, is some fruit that can save her.  There's a lot more nonsensical fragments to this story, but these are the basics - really, what are the odds that this weeks-long trip can be completed on the timetable of the Queen's health, which is failing rapidly?  Well, of COURSE they're going to get it all done, just in time.  But who cares?  (Look, we all know Queen Victoria's going to get old and reign for a long time, so was the outcome ever really in doubt?)  Still, the million possible stories that can be told, and THIS is what somebody really wanted to make?  It boggles my mind...

Look, I've said it before and I've said it again, just because you can use modern technology to make a talking polar bear that can dive off a ship and rescue a drowning ostrich, that doesn't make doing that a great idea. (Or, you know, I've said words to that effect...)  You need to START with the great idea, then use the technology you currently have to make that happen, or appear to happen. They've tried TWICE now to adapt "The Golden Compass" and/or "His Dark Materials" (speaking of talking polar bears), and it's failed twice, I believe, because it's NOT a good idea.  People hear "demons", even if it's spelled "daemons" and they think the story is somehow Satanic, and not good for kids.  (Just stop using that word, try a different one...) A terrible story is still a terrible story, and if you need to change it up for modern audiences, try to make it better, not worse, that's all.  

But what is "better" and what is "worse", anyway, isn't that subjective?  Well, sure, but if you really want to adapt book 2 of Lofting's "Dr. Dolittle" books, then adapt it, at least TRY to make it better, and if you find yourself changing every single element of the story, for whatever reason, supposedly to make the whole story "better", then maybe ask yourself why you need to break the whole thing down, what was "good" about the story to begin that, and is there a way to retain the foundation before you tear down the entire house?  To continue the renovation project analogy, first check to see if you can just repaint the interior, maybe tear down ONE wall to open up the space, before you call in the bulldozer to raze the entire structure.  Keep what works, jettison what doesn't work, and replace it with something that might work better.  If you don't do this, then it creates a sort of paradox, where this film simultaneously both IS and ISN'T an adaptation of "The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle". 

Among the many NITPICK POINTS I have today are these: there's an entire sequence of Dr. Dolittle talking to several different CGI animals in turn, supposedly in their animal "languages", before they transition to an easier mode where we, the audience, can understand all the animals.  But this means there's three solid minutes of Robert Downey just making animal noises, and that's problematic, to say the least.  It calls to mind the infamous "Star Wars Holiday Special" where one November, U.S. TV audiences endured about 20 minutes straight of Wookiee growls from Chewbacca's family, with no translations and no subtitles.  People just tuning in at that point who didn't know "Star Wars" probably thought they were dreaming, on acid or there was something wrong with their TV sets.  

The low point here was probably Dolittle removing a "blockage" from a mythical animal's, umm, lower passageway.  If you find this interesting in any way, then I really feel sorry for you.  This is something vets have to do for cows and horses, I understand, but come on, this is a kid's movie and there's no need to be vulgar.  Also, dragon farts are not a thing, nor do they represent high comedy in any possible way.  It's just one more random piece of rubbish among the many that got strung together here, not forming any kind of coherent plot at all, least of all a fantastical one, it's just a big pile of "stuff that happened".  At least one actor appeared anonymously, and I can kind of understand why.  Well, at least it was fairly short, just over 100 minutes, so it didn't waste TOO much of my time. 

Bringing it back around to the issue of mental health - what if Dolittle is, in fact, insane?  What if he only THINKS he's talking to animals, and we're all just seeing/hearing what's going on inside his mind, which makes no sense at all, it's just some grief-induced dream?  This doesn't really work, either, because his new young charge learns to talk to animals, too, but perhaps the insanity is contagious?  Nah, it's unlikely but this would explain a lot.  

Also starring Robert Downey Jr. (last seen in "Lucky You"), Harry Collett, Antonio Banderas (last seen in "Life Itself"), Michael Sheen (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2"), Jim Broadbent (last seen in "The Borrowers" (1997)), Carmel Laniado, Kasia Smutniak, Ralph Ineson (last seen in "The Battle of Buster Scruggs"), Joanna Page (last seen in "Love Actually"), Sonny Ashbourne Serkis, Elliot Barnes-Worrell, Oliver Chris (last seen in "Emma."), Clive Francis (last seen in "Official Secrets"), Joseph Balderrama

with the voices of Emma Thompson (last seen in "Late Night"), Rami Malek (last seen in "Ain't Them Bodies Saints"), John Cena (last seen in "Fighting with My Family"), Kumail Nanjiani (last seen in "Duck Butter"), Octavia Spencer (last seen in "Instant Family"), Tom Holland (last heard in "Locke"), Craig Robinson (last seen in "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot"), Ralph Fiennes (also last seen in "Official Secrets"), Selena Gomez (last seen in "The Dead Don't Die"), Marion Cotillard (last seen in "A Good Year"), Frances de la Tour (last seen in "Mr. Holmes"), Jason Mantzoukas (last seen in "John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum"), Will Arnett (last seen in "Hot Rod"), Nick A. Fisher, Tim Treloar, Jim Carretta, Ranjani Brow, Scott Menville, David Sheinkopf, Matt King

RATING: 3 out of 10 suits of armor. 

Judy

Year 13, Day 134 - 5/14/21 - Movie #3,839

BEFORE: Sorry about the thematic whiplash - I probably should have mentioned that even though this week started out being about complicated family relationships and secrets, but it wasn't ALL going to be about that - it's also about famous actors and their self-destructive behavior, umm, and also farm animals.  After watching the last days of Hervé Villechaize, I'm back on the circling-the-drain celebrity beat with this film about Judy Garland, and then tomorrow, I'm back on to talking animals, you see how that all connects, right?  

Andy Nyman carries over again from "A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon". 

THE PLOT: Legendary performer Judy Garland arrives in London in the winter of 1968 to perform a series of sold-out concerts. 

AFTER: The Oscars, right, THAT should be the common thread between yesterday's film about farm animals and aliens and this one.  "Farmageddon" was nominated this year for 2020's Best Animated Feature, and Renée Zellweger won for Best Actress LAST year for 2019's "Judy".  Whew, I feel a lot better now, I'm not just jumping around randomly, turns out I'm just knocking off the recent Oscar-nominated films that I haven't seen.

Did she deserve it?  Aw, hells yeah.  By the time she gets around to "Over the Rainbow" (which they save for the end, natch) you barely know where Zellweger ends and Judy Garland begins - so, umm, where's the Oscar for Pete Dinklage channelling Hervé or Jim Carrey becoming Andy Kaufman?  All Carrey got was a Golden Globe, and now he probably has to send that back in protest over their lack of diversity.  Same goes for Taron Egerton in "Rocketman" (full disclosure, I dubbed "Judy" to the same DVD as "Rocketman", because I'm funny that way - two biopics from 2019 about gay musical icons, get it?).

"Judy" would have us believe that the deck was stacked against Judy Garland from the start - her early years in Hollywood, making pictures with Mickey Rooney, were filled with uppers, downers and publicist wranglers telling her that she could never eat any food or have any fun.  Plus she had Louis B. Mayer managing her career, and it seems like maybe he was the Harvey Weinstein of his day, in all the bad ways.  The film falls JUST shy of saying that anything untoward happened between them, but we see him fawn over her, almost touch her inappropriately and then belittle her to make her feel fat, ugly, all-around "less than" because it suited him to do so. But there's no possible way that all that could have screwed up her later relationships with her husband(s) and children, right?  Oh, but of course it did.  

The former Frances Ethel Gumm (seriously...) was married five times, to David Rose, Vincent Minnelli, Sid Luft, Mark Herron, and Mickey Deans - this film barely mentions hubbies 1, 2 and 4, and chooses to focus on her interactions with #3, Sid Luft, because while her financial state forces her to travel to London for a 5-week run at the Talk of the Town nightclub, Sid also wants custody of their two kids, and since the kids can't travel to the U.K., everything just sort of works out here, at least for a while.  Before leaving, Judy meets Mickey Deans at a party at her daughter Liza Minnelli's house, and then he surprises her in London, soon becoming husband #5, with a plan to open up Garland movie theaters around the U.S. and get her out of debt.  

(Honestly, it's a good thing this film decided to narrow the focus to just a few months out of Judy's life, because from what I just read on Wikipedia about how many affairs Judy had in Hollywood, the list of actors is so long that any film about her life and relationships would quite quickly become a mini-series, at least.  Glenn Ford? Orson Welles?  Judy got around - but no, remember, this is all Louis B. Mayer's fault, for making Judy feel like she was never good enough, thus craving the attention of so many men over the years, or something...)

Really, though, I don't know too much about Garland's music - "Over the Rainbow", sure, and I know "The Trolley Song" from "Meet Me in St. Louis", too.  And they even found a way to sneak in that version of "Get Happy" where it's sung in counterpoint to another song, I know she performed a duet/mash-up of that with Barbra Streisand singing "Happy Days Are Here Again", obviously they couldn't get Babs, so Zellweger sings that here in the apartment of a gay couple who came to her show, who she ends up cooking eggs for, because I guess Judy never slept, not like a normal person anyway.  I suppose I knew "For Once In My Life", but then once the film got to "Come Rain or Come Shine", "San Francisco" and "By Myself", I was a bit out of my depth.  And then you just GOTTA end the film with "Over the Rainbow", just like the Rolling Stones HAVE to play "Satisfaction" as an encore.

Judy's shows in London go well, but only until she starts drinking again - then they sort of became famous for being infamous, with Judy passing out on stage or heckling the hecklers, and eventually she's replaced by Lonnie Donegan, who really was the biggest star in the U.K. music scene before the Beatles ruined everything for him.  Who can forget his big smash hit, "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose its Flavour (On the Bedpost Overnight)" and I swear, I'm not making that up, that was a real hit novelty song in the U.K., look it up.  Donegan is just about to take the stage, when Judy (who just showed up to watch Lonnie sing, and if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you...) asks politely if she can do one number before he begins his set.  Don't be a fool, man, once you let Judy Garland have the stage, you'll never get it back again!  

I've got one more celebrity bio-pic to get to this month, next week I should be able to link to "Bohemian Rhapsody", at long last.  Hmm, Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, Hervé Villechaize, Judy Garland and Freddie Mercury, all in the same month?  Hey, I'm down for it if you are. 

Also starring Renée Zellweger (last seen in "Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond"), Jessie Buckley (last seen in "I'm Thinking of Ending Things"), Finn Wittrock (last seen in "If Beale Street Could Talk"), Rufus Sewell (last seen in "Paris, Je t'Aime"), Michael Gambon (last seen in "Victoria & Abdul"), Fenella Woolgar (ditto), Richard Cordery (last seen in "The Wife"), Bella Ramsey (last seen in "Holmes & Watson"), Darci Shaw, Royce Pierreson, Phil Dunster (last seen in "All Is True"), John Dagleish (ditto), Daniel Cerqueira (last seen in "The Woman in Black"), Arthur McBain, Gemma-Leah Devereaux, David Rubin, Lewin Lloyd (last seen in "The Aeronauts"), Gus Barry, Tom Durant-Pritchard, Adrian Lukis, Lucy Russell (last seen in "Tristan + Isolde"), Bentley Kalu (last seen in "Stan & Ollie"), Martin Savage, John MacKay, Natasha Powell (last seen in "About Time"), Tim Ahern (last seen in "Phantom Thread"), Ed Stoppard (last seen in "Youth"), Arthur McBain.

RATING: 5 out of 10 blackouts

A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon

Year 13, Day 133 - 5/13/21 - Movie #3,838

BEFORE: The first "Shaun the Sheep" movie came out in 2015, but I didn't get around to watching it until 2019, that's how hard they are to link to.  But 2019 ended up being my first "perfect year", so maybe there's a reason for everything.  I had to wait for another Aardman movie, "Early Man" to come along, just to get some linking possibilities going.

And then, of course, a few days after I watched the first film, they announced there would be a sequel - and that one's just as hard to link to, I have to have Andy Nyman carry over from "Death at a Funeral" (2007) and then put another Andy Nyman film as the outro just to pull this off.  But in a way that makes things a bit easier, because it's the only plan, there aren't a bunch of forks in the road, there's just the one road to travel on.  

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Shaun the Sheep Movie" (Movie #3,181)

THE PLOT: When an alien with amazing powers crash-lands near Mossy Bottom Farm, Shaun the Sheep goes on a mission to shepherd the intergalactic visitor home before a sinister organization can capture her. 

AFTER: I know some people who were rooting for this film to win the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, somehow it qualified even though it was released in the U.K. in October 2019.  Then it was supposed to be released in the U.S. in December 2019, but then it wasn't - I'm not sure what happened there, because that was pre-pandemic and theaters were still open.  But for whatever reason, it premiered in the U.S. in February 2020 on Netflix, and I know that the Oscar rules for 2020 movies were very lenient about streaming, which was unusual.  Right now I'm trying to figure out if that's going to continue, or if the Oscar rules are going to revert to what they were before, where films have to screen theatrically to qualify - it could be important to know for an animated short my employer is making now.  (Yes, it's about the pandemic but we hope to get it completed and in festivals before there are 7,000 other short films about COVID-19...)

Anyway, this stop-motion film is about an entirely different disaster, an alien invasion - only it's just one alien, and she's a child and very cute.  Lu-La looks a bit like a rabbit when her ears are up, and a little more like a dog when the ears are down.  She's actually visited Earth by accident, she left her parents on her home planet and went for a joyride in their "zoom-zoom", only to find that it was pre-programmed to make the voyage to Earth.  Now she's alone on a very strange world, and she's already caused some fuss by landing her flying saucer in the woods, when an old man and his dog were walking.  

Meanwhile, the sheep on Farmer John's farm are very bored, and trying to pass the time by playing frisbee, going for a joyride of their own in the farmer's harvester, ordering pizzas and doing other mischievous things that the farm dog, Bitzer, forbids one-by-one with signs depicting each activity and a big circle with a line through it.  Shaun finds Lu-La in the barn, and introduces her to the rest of the flock, and after Lu-La imitates them and they all get on the same page, somehow the sheep figure out who she is and that she wants to get home.  Also meanwhile, Farmer John reads about UFO activity in the area and decides to turn his whole farm into a cheap rip-off theme park called "Farmageddon".  Now, I'm all for puns and portmanteau words, but isn't it a bit of a leap from a UFO sighting to armageddon? One spotted UFO doesn't necessarily mean it's the end times.  (Couldn't there have been a better name for the theme park, one more closely associated with something alien?)

The story's just a bit too much like the plot of "E.T.", though, just with farm animals helping the lost alien, instead of kids, and just taken a few more steps to an illogical conclusion.  Also, as Lu-La "phones home", the signaling device she wants to use can only be used from a great height - so, NITPICK POINT, it can send a hyperspace signal to another planet, but for some reason it needs to be 12 stories closer to that planet?  That doesn't make much sense, unless it also needed power, but an object's location wouldn't determine how much power it has.  It sort of works like a cell phone that isn't getting a signal, but it doesn't need to receive a signal, it needs to SEND one, so this just didn't really make sense. 

Also, the head agent in charge of looking for aliens, what's her motivation?  At first it seems she's just determined to catch aliens in order to protect Earth, or perhaps just to prove their existence, but then her reason-for-being changes near the end, and it's just a little too close to what we saw in "Men in Black: International", if you ask me. 

Still, I know how much work goes into a stop-motion film of this length, so it was probably a great effort, and probably once they started and then other films with similar plot points came out, they couldn't change, because reshoots are expensive.  There were probably a zillion little joke references and Easter eggs, but I only caught a few of them - I'm going to go look for a list of them now. 

Also starring the voices of Justin Fletcher, John Sparkes, Kate Harbour, Richard Webber, Simon Greenall, Emma Tate (all last heard in "Shaun the Sheep Movie"), Amalia Vitale, David Holt, Chris Morrell, Joe Sugg, Ron Halpern, Mohammad Nayem. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 pizza crusts

Death at a Funeral (2007)

Year 13, Day 132 - 5/12/21 - Movie #3,837

BEFORE: Peter Dinklage carries over from "My Dinner with Hervé", and he was also in the 2010 version of "Death at a Funeral", which I watched just 12 movies ago.  So why not put the two versions of the same film together, with Dinklage carrying over?  Ah, that WAS the original plan, but then Mother's Day got in the way.  Sure, I could have flipped this part of the chain over, kept the Dinklage chain (Linklage?) going right after May 1, but then I don't think "Otherhood" would have landed in the right place - anyway, the 2007 version has a link to tomorrow's film, an animated feature I've been trying to schedule in, but one that's been mostly difficult to link to.  

(There were two other films with Dinklage I could have dropped in here, and I'm a bit curious about them - "Three Christs" and "I Think We're Alone Now".  They both look intriguing, but if I included them here, even if that helped me hit Mother's Day on target, then they'd interfere with the next holidays, Memorial Day and Father's Day.  One way or another, I'll try to include them later, but I just can't do that now.)

So this one sort of HAD to go at the end of the Dinklage chain, another reason to split up the original film from its remake - though I'm watching them in the wrong order, and I'm not really sure what the end result will be.  I'll have to look back through years past to see if I EVER watched two versions of the same film so close together before.  I don't think it will be that positive of a venture, because, well, why would you?  If you've seen one version, you've seen them all, right?  The same story repeated with a mostly African-American cast is still the same story, right?  I guess I'll find out...

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Death at a Funeral" (2010) (Movie #3,825)

THE PLOT: Chaos ensues when a man tries to expose a dark secret regarding a recently deceased patriarch of a dysfunctional British family.  

AFTER: Well, this is NOT the closest that I've watched two versions of the same film - I almost forgot about "The Borrowers", I watched two versions, released in 1997 and 2011, in January of 2020.  I'd gotten some bad information from Wikipedia that suggested they shared an actress in common, Ruby Wax, and then I found out this wasn't true. The error (?) is still posted on Wiki, and according to the IMDB she's only in the 1997 version - so I had to scramble quickly to find a film that would connect the two films, and that turned out to be "Tristram Shandy", which was not a terrible film, so these things sometimes have a funny way of working out, as I always say.  So I watched "The Borrowers" twice, different versions, two days apart - and there were significant differences between the two films.

That's not the case with the two versions of "Death at a Funeral", the 2010 version is nearly a shot-for-shot remake of this 2007 film, which was directed by Frank Oz. The 2010 version was directed by Neil Labute, who also directed "Lakeview Terrace", and both men are, I think, known for stage directing as well as film directing, which may explain why both versions sort of feel like they might be based on a play.  Just me?  Of course, the 2007 version has an all-white mostly British cast, and the 2010 version has a mostly-black American cast, but almost everything else is identical.

Umm, I think - both versions feature a funeral in the family patriarch's house, which I maintain is quite unusual.  Maybe it's a British custom?  For the story to work, it sort of had to be, because the family home has bedrooms, a second story, a drawing room with a bathroom, all of these things are important to the comedy bits.  The 2010 version features an additional subplot about the lead couple trying to have a baby, and the wife is ovulating during the funeral, so she's practically begging her husband for sex during his father's funeral - this seems weird, insensitive and somewhat kinky, but not in a good way.  If your wife wants to have sex during a family funeral, I'd start to wonder if she's gone a little crazy, because that's not a thing.  

Both casts have the same characters, essentially, though they changed the names for the later version, Uncle Alfie became Uncle Russell, for example, but he's still an old man in a wheelchair who HAS to use the downstairs bathroom.  And there's a similar love triangle between the guy who accidentally takes hallucinogenic drugs, who's with the niece of the deceased, and there's an ex-boyfriend who turns up at the funeral who tries to win her back. In today's British film that's Simon, Martha and Justin, but in the remake it's Oscar, Elaine and Derek.  This sets up some odd contrasts, with Alan Tudyk naked on the roof in one film and James Marsden in the other, and is Luke Wilson somehow the American version of Ewen Bremner?  Somehow I don't think so.  Peter Dinklage is the only constant, as the unexpected guest who shows up, claiming to have had a relationship with the deceased, only he's called "Peter" in one film and "Frank" in the other.  Either way, I guess that guy gets around...

At least this time I knew all the major story points that were going to happen, but that's not always a good thing - essentially, there were no surprises.  I knew all the upcoming comedy bits, because both films used the same script, more or less, they probably just did a find/replace on all the names.  The drugged guy imagines that he sees the coffin moving, this leads to a bit, which sets up ANOTHER bit later in the film.  People rush around never really finishing conversations with each other, the Reverend keeps trying to get the service to start up again, and four men in the drawing room are tying up a dwarf. It makes sense when you see it, or rather, it makes comic sense when you see it again for the second time, which is really the first time.  

I suppose I screwed up, I should have found a way to watch this version first, it might have had more comic impact that way.  I was almost bored this time around, and that's just because the two versions were so similar.  I'll never say that I wasted a slot, because I can learn something from any film, even a bad one, but honestly while there may have been a reason to MAKE the film twice (appealing to different markets), there's very little point in WATCHING the film twice - for your own sake, just pick the cast you think you might enjoy more, for whatever reason, and just watch that one.  If you enjoy Britcoms like "Fawlty Towers", this 2007 version's probably more your style.  

I (sort of) met Frank Oz on the street a couple years ago - November 2015.  As you may know I have a large collection of autographed "Star Wars" 8 x 10 photos - over 120 now, but only 94 at that time. I had JUST treated myself to a birthday present, and at first I couldn't decide between Frank Oz and another actor (I forget who) but landed on Oz, because I'd never seen him signing at a convention, and who just bumps into him on the street?  Just three days after the package arrived, I was walking down 40th St. in Manhattan after leaving the comic book shop, and there was a Broadway-based bookshop there, where Frank Oz had just given a lecture, and he was outside signing Yoda photos, with some enterprising person selling them from a book. (In retrospect, this kind of feels like it was sort of a set-up.)  Some guy offered me the chance to get two photos signed, provided he could keep one and I could then have the other, but I didn't want to spend money on something I'd just bought.  I was almost too stunned by being in the man's presence to take a photo, but somehow that's what I did, and I figured that the autograph at home, plus my candid photo of him on the sidewalk signing other photos was good enough.  Later, when I came down from the thrill, I thought, why did I settle for one autographed photo, when I could have had TWO?  Plus the one obtained from a personal encounter could have been more meaningful, like maybe he could have added my name, too. I'm not always thinking clearly when I'm in the presence of a "Star Wars" actor, apparently. Usually I say as little as possible to avoid sounding like a stupid fanboy, while inside I'm freaking out. (This applies only to the top-tier cast, like Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Natalie Portman - I've had good conversations with actors in the next level down, though.)

I've got almost all the autographs I can get now, at least from the original trilogy and the prequels.  A few actors have been elusive, like James Earl Jones and Jimmy Smits - once I have some disposable income again, someday, I'll try to remedy that. 

Also starring Matthew Macfadyen (last seen in "The Reckoning"), Ewen Bremner (ditto), Rupert Graves (last seen in "Emma."), Andy Nyman (last seen in "The Brother's Bloom"), Kris Marshall, Keeley Hawes (last seen in "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story"), Daisy Donovan (last seen in "I Give It a Year"), Jane Asher (ditto), Alan Tudyk (last heard in "Aladdin" (2019)), Peter Vaughan (last seen in "The Remains of the Day"), Thomas Wheatley, Peter Egan (last seen in "The Wedding Date"), Gareth Milne. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 incriminating photos

My Dinner with Hervé

Year 13, Day 131 - 5/11/21 - Movie #3,836

BEFORE: I've got the cable guy coming out to the house today - again - because my DVR's been doing that thing again where it crashes every 20 minutes or so, which makes it very frustrating to try and watch - or record to tape - a full movie.  I've been trying to dub "Bad Times at the El Royale" to DVD for three days now, and every time I start it, it crashes 20 or 30 minutes later, and I have to start again.  This is not helping to clear space on my DVR, which acted up like this last year - and of course the cable company's first solution is to just swap out my DVR for a new one, but then if I let them do that, I'll lose about twenty or thirty movies that are stored there, so that's out. I paid for those movies over time, and just because I haven't gotten around to watching them, that's no reason why I should lose them.  (Why they can't transfer the contents of my old drive to a new drive, I don't quite understand.)  

So, hopefully the problem's with the signal coming in to the house, or possibly some new software system that was downloaded to my DVR in the middle of the night, with no notice - because they do that from time to time - and the new software doesn't work on the old DVR, and nobody's reported any problems yet, so they don't know that some kind of patch or signal needs to be sent to the DVR to make it work right.  I really should just watch everything and try to clear the box, but that would work against my OCD-based viewing order system.  At least the DVR is only 69% full right now, I've had it as full as 80% and at that point, it could be the lack of space causing problems.  But it's probably new software, that's what I remember it being last year, and the machine stopped crashing after a couple of weeks.  I think. Look, I don't care if it crashes once a day, in the middle of the night or whatever, I just can't have it crashing every 20 minutes. 

If I knew for sure every movie I want to see is available somewhere else, on one streaming service or another, I could drop the cable box entirely and save a lot of money - but then I'd miss the few network shows I watch, and also I'd STILL need to keep paying for internet, because that's how I access all the streaming services, so I guess I can't really make any big changes after all.  What am I going to do, STOP watching a movie almost every day?  I've come too far now to stop, it's become my thing, a big part of who I am.

Peter Dinklage carries over from "I Care a Lot". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Fantasy Island" (Movie #3,787)

THE PLOT: A look at the life of French actor Hervé Villechaize, co-star of the hit 70's TV series "Fantasy Island", who took his own life in 1993 at the age of 50. 

AFTER: There's a lot to be said for movie magic, also TV magic.  What we see on the screen becomes our reality, even if that's just for a half hour, we're immersed in what we see and we're not distracted by what we don't see.  We don't see the crew lingering just out of camera range (usually) and through the magic of editing (and costuming, and continuity) we don't realize that by stepping inside a building, an actor maybe just moved from one location to another one hundreds of miles away.  Back in 2018 my wife and I visited Southfork Ranch in Dallas, where they filmed parts of the TV show "Dallas".  She's seen every episode, and that was her reality, only it wasn't reality at all.  They only filmed the outdoor scenes there, the interiors were sets in Los Angeles - it makes sense when you see behind the curtain, the ranch needs to look like a ranch, which it is, but interior sets need to be a certain way, to allow space for cameras and sound equipment, and on some shows even a live audience, so there are usually three walls to a room instead of four, every room is custom built to order, there are set designers and decorators and costumers who all work to make things look a certain way, and mostly the audience at home has no idea how much work goes into making that reality look like nobody built or designed it at all, it just IS.  

When I was a kid, I didn't understand any of that - through "Star Wars" I learned about much of this, because I figured out they didn't really go into space with a bunch of cameras and film what happened, it was all built and manufactured and decorated to look a certain way, and once my brain learned what goes on behind the scenes, a mental adjustment was made, but after that I could never quite turn that off and believe 100% again, though better CGI came along to help with that.  I'm still finding myths from my childhood that need to be dispelled, because I watched "Love Boat" and "Fantasy Island" before that - at the time, I really thought that the cast of "Love Boat" went on a cruise every week, not realizing that they mostly used stock footage of Caribbean islands and the cast worked on a set in L.A. that resembled the Lido Deck.  By the same token, there were exterior shots at the start of "Fantasy Island" designed to make you think that this week's guest stars were in that plane heading to Hawaii (or whereever) but it just wasn't true - that was the same exact footage of a seaplane, week after week.  You never saw the actors getting into the plane, just stepping out of it, just like you never see a magician trading places with his assistant via the trapdoor in a box.  

So, that building exterior from each week's opening of the "Fantasy Island" show is the Queen Anne Cottage, and it's in the L.A. County Arboretum and Botanic Garden.  There's a lagoon behind it, where they built a fake plane for the guests to "arrive" at the island, and after that point, the filming moved on to interior sets, which could have been anywhere - yep, mostly Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, with exteriors shot at the nearby Warner Ranch.  This means that Hervé Villechaize, the actor who played Tattoo, only had to climb the bell tower, ring that bell and shout "Da plane!  Da plane!" ONE time, and they used that same footage every week.  It also means that actors are basically treated as meat puppets, executives don't care if they have to travel between, say, Dallas and Los Angeles to shoot both interiors and exteriors, or hundreds of people have to work really hard to remove all evidence of how the sausage is made.  All that matters is what shows up on the screen, that it makes sense and that it looks nice.  

Of course, Hervé ended up saying "Da plane! Da plane!" a lot more than once, because people wanted him to say it anywhere and everywhere.  He even said it in a famous Dunkin' Donuts commercial, where he couldn't decide what type of donut to order, chocolate, no wait, cinnamon, then suddenly had an epiphany ("Da plain! Da plain!") and Dunkin was able to tap into that lucrative market of customers who simply love homonyms when they order food.  But what of the man himself?  What effect did this have on him, to be suddenly recognized everywhere, known and loved instead of hated or ignored, paid more money than he thought he ever would, and welcomed into America's homes each week by the magic of TV?  He blew it, that's what.  

Maybe it's an all-too-common story - because fame and recognition are always fleeting, to some degree, and the IMDB is filled with actors who were once on top of the world, made sitcom money for five or six years and then had long gaps in their careers, or were in a series of hit movies and then reached a point where they'd take just about any job, or become that guy who makes you say, "Hey, it's THAT guy!" when you see him in a small role.  You can talk about ageism, sexism, racism or Hollywood's general ability to dispose of people when they're deemed no longer useful, but you also have to consider any one person's inability to keep their ego in check or save their money, plus there's all kinds of temptation out there in La-La land, drink and drugs and casual sex and stop me if you've heard this story before, maybe a hundred times over. 

Hervé Villechaize was born in France, and after being bullied for his short size while growing up, he showed promise as an artist - he studied at the École des Beaux Arts when he was 16, and was the youngest person at the time to have work displayed at the Museum of Paris.  But he wanted to act, and got his break in the James Bond film "The Man with the Golden Gun", playing Nick Nack, a diminutive assassin, whom Bond defeated by locking him into a steamer trunk.  The Bond films were always a bit ridiculous this way, and maybe nobody clued Hervé in on the joke or something, but he saw this as the first step in an acting career that was sure to be long and fruitful.  Yet he was living in his car when his agent brought him the script for "Fantasy Island", and then after three years on this hit show, he was propositioning actresses on the set and arguing with the producers.  Finally he demanded more money, a salary equal to the one Ricardo Montalban was getting, and this got him fired and got Mr. Roarke another assistant.

This led to, well, not much - a couple guest star roles on TV, one movie role in 1988 ("Two Moon Junction", well known by fans of "Twin Peaks" actress Sherilyn Fenn) and a lot of inactivity and regret, I assume.  Also, what this film depicts, him giving what would become his last interview to a magazine writer, which really happened, though the name of the writer's been changed.  The writer of that article eventually wrote the screenplay that became this film, and I usually HATE seeing a writer writing something at the end of a film that becomes the film we're all watching, it's just too meta and cutesy, but here it's all true, and kind of the only way to end it.  Villechaize shot himself a few days after giving that interview, and so that leads to the question over whether he'd been planning this for some time, or whether the interview dragged up all those old regrets and made him feel all the pain of his life choices again.  

It's National Mental Health Awareness Month, not an occasion I usually mark, but this is a perfect opportunity to mention it - if you're having thoughts of suicide, please talk to someone or seek professional help.  Maybe that's my loose theme for the week, "Otherhood" was all about male adults having relationships with their mothers, and getting everything unspoken out for discussion, that's like a form of therapy.  All those sons were screw-ups, and Hervé Villechaize was a screw-up - face it, we're all screw-ups in some form or another, and with the pandemic year we've had, people out of work, people quarantining and feeling disconnected from others during lockdown, then feeling anxious over health issues, dealing with unemployment, paranoid over unseen viruses and don't get me started about politics, we're all pretty frazzled. We all may need to ask for help at various times in our lives, and with everything going on in the world, if you're having trouble dealing with it all, please check yourself before you wreck yourself. 

What I was most concerned about, going in to this, was seeing Peter Dinklage - or, rather, HEARING Peter Dinklage play Hervé, who had a particular way of speaking, which I now realize was a French accent, though I didn't think of it as such back then.  He also had a rather limited acting range, to be honest, though I think in his mind he thought he deserved to be called the greatest French actor of his generation. (If only he'd stuck around to see Gerard Depardieu get taken down by the #metoo movement...)  Dinklage did a HELL of a job here, though, he nailed the Villechaize voice, plus he's a damn fine actor.  I'd say one of the greatest, pound for pound, if only that didn't sound like a little person joke.  And I promised, none of that.  But I still wonder if a hotel room's minibar is considered a full-sized bar to a shorter person.  (Can I say that? I want to still be P.C. about this.)

One of the few reality shows that I watch is "Little People, Big World", and it's just returned for season (good God) 22. Yeah, I've watched that all - I think at first because I knew the parents in the Roloff family had played Ewoks in "Return of the Jedi", but they weren't named characters, so I never collected their autographs.  But I did get hooked into the family drama, and I'm glad that this TLC show has subsidized the family's income from their Oregon farm over the years, but at some point, this show's got to end, right? RIGHT? 

Also starring Jamie Dornan (last seen in "Robin Hood" (2018)), Andy Garcia (last seen in "Smokin' Aces"), Mireille Enos (last seen in "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot"), Oona Chaplin (last seen in "Quantum of Solace"), Harriet Walter (last seen in "Rocketman"), David Strathairn (last seen in "Godzilla: King of the Monsters"), Daniel Mays (last seen in "1917"), Alex Gaumond (last seen in "Hampstead"), Félicité Du Jeu (last seen in "A Good Year"), Wallace Langham (last seen in "Ford v Ferrari"), Mark Povinelli (last seen in "Water for Elephants"), Helena Mattsson (last seen in "Seven Psychopaths"), Alan Ruck (last seen in "Captive State"), Michael Elwyn, Ashleigh Brewer, Mark Umbers (last seen in "A Good Woman"), Robert Curtis Brown, Jim Sturgeon, Laurence Ubong Williams, Savannah Stevenson, Doug Cox (last seen in "The Hero"), Adam Shapiro (last seen in "The Female Brain") with archive footage of John Wayne, Jack Barry, Bob Eubanks. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 hot dogs from Pink's 

I Care A Lot

Year 13, Day 130 - 5/10/21 - Movie #3,835

BEFORE: Coming out of Mother's Day, Damian Young carries over from "Otherhood". My next holiday target is Memorial Day, and I should get there right on time, as long as the chain holds and there are no surprises, or temptations to add any more films along the way.  If I'm going to visit my parents some weekend in late May or early June, I should just check to make sure I have the films for those days on DVD or they're on Netflix or Hulu.  A trip like that just takes me away from access to my DVR.  We're also planning our first real trip since the pandemic started, to go to Chicago for a couple days in June, but I've already blocked those days out on my schedule, I can take three days off from movies and still hit July 4 on target. 

THE PLOT: A crooked legal guardian who drains the savings of her elderly wards meets her match when a woman she tries to swindle turns out to be more than she first appears. 

AFTER: Whenever I see a city in a film, naturally I want to know what city that is, so I tend to always check the "filming locations" section on every film's IMDB page - if it's a city where I've been, like San Diego, or New Orleans, or Nashville, for example, of course I keep an eye out for anything familiar.  But when a film shot in Boston and the surrounding suburbs, well, that's when I start looking up addresses.  Exactly one year ago, I watched "We Don't Belong Here" as my Mother's Day film, and the locations felt so familiar that I just had to check - there was a nature reservation and a lot of large, mansion style houses so it COULD have been shot in my hometown - but it wasn't.  I recognized the old Norwood, MA movie theater, though, and that was just one town over from where I grew up.  While watching "I Care a Lot" I felt the city skyline was a bit familiar, and sure enough, that was Boston.  And they shot out in the suburbs, like Wellesley and Natick and there's a key scene at the Medfield Auto Center, on Route 109 - I know EXACTLY where that is, that's also one town over, and I've got an uncle who lives in Medfield, about five minutes from the house two of the characters hide out in.  It's great there are so many web-sites now that get even more specific than the IMDB does, usually with photos from the film side by side with the locations.  

So the nursing home seen in this film is really a Conference Center on the campus of Babson College in Boston, and the courthouse scenes were filmed at the Norfolk County court in Dedham (I also know Dedham very well, but thankfully not the courts), some of the office buildings and the steakhouse restaurant are in Wellesley, and the jeweler's store and hospital are in Natick (I had an aunt who lived in Natick for a time).  This may not mean much to you, unless you're a Masshole or fellow ex-Masshole, or you've got a particular interest in Boston office buildings in the Seaport District.  My Dad's the same way, he can spot Boston buildings and streets right away, which is why I wanted to show my parents "Spenser Confidential" on my last trip to visit, but we didn't get around to it.  Next time.

My parents are sort of grappling with the idea of entering some kind of assisted living, both of them are turning 80 this year - they've got their affairs in order to the point where if one or both of them require medical care, they'll be able to make some kind of transition and it's all paid for already.  But I'd still probably have to travel up and take care of their house and belongings to some degree, I'm just not sure how much time and effort that's going to involve for me.  But that's what made "I Care a Lot" so scary for me, because it depicts a woman who functions as a legal guardian for seniors, and she uses medical diagnoses and the court system to essentially get custody of older people, move them into elder care facilities and then sell off their houses and their valuables, while paying herself a salary on their behalf, despite their intentions to stay in their houses and grow old alone.  Kind of like Tom Selleck with that whole reverse-mortgage scam (it's a scam, right?) only way more serious and a lot faster.  

Marla doesn't want the old people to die, because then she'd have to stop paying herself from their accounts - but she definitely wants them out of the way, and into a facility where they're medically sedated to some degree, can't access their cell phones or receive visits from family, and don't really have any more legal rights regarding their future care.  And maybe you thought nursing homes were depressing already, this makes them seem downright creepy, and this was filmed before the pandemic, even.  I'm not sure who exactly we're supposed to root for her, certainly not the lead character, because she can't really even qualify as an anti-hero if we just despise everything she stands for.  She reminds me a bit of that blood-test inventor, Elizabeth Holmes, because she seems nice at first, but slowly you realize that you can't believe a single thing she says, and she's really just a predator taking advantage of everyone around her to always come out on top.  Also, more is never enough for her. 

But one day, she shuffles the wrong woman into a nursing home, and whereas her patients' (marks') relatives usually have no say in what happens to them, Jennifer Peterson missed some kind of monthly meeting, and now a rather small (only very big in importance) shadowy figure starts trying to find out where she is, and what happened to her.  He seems to have some very bad men working for him, so he may be the head of some kind of criminal organization, and that spells trouble for Marla.  Honestly, I thought this was just going to be about a dishonest woman running a scam, which it is for the first part, but then I wasn't expecting the whole second part, or even the third part, for that matter. 

So this became a rather unusual, unpredictable battle of wills, as two nasty people kept raising the stakes to get what they wanted, or perhaps to hold on to that little piece of the world that they thought they controlled.  Again, hard to find somebody to champion here, but maybe that's the point - the film mentions that every person is either a sheep or a wolf, perhaps that's a bit too simplistic, but this is what happens when two wolves start fighting over the same territory - it probably won't end well for somebody. 

Also starring Rosamund Pike (last seen in "Doom"), Peter Dinklage (last seen in "Death at a Funeral"), Eiza Gonzalez (last seen in "Baby Driver"), Dianne Wiest (last seen in "Darling Companion"), Chris Messina (last seen in "The Giant Mechanical Man"), Isiah Whitlock Jr. (last seen in "Da 5 Bloods"), Macon Blair (last seen in "Logan Lucky"), Alicia Witt (last seen in "Cecil B. Demented"), Nicholas Logan (last seen in "Instant Family"), Liz Eng (last seen in "Can You Ever Forgive Me?"), Georgia Lyman, Moira Driscoll, Gary Tanguay (last seen in "Knives Out"), Lizzie Short, Kevin McCormick (last seen in "Spenser Confidential"), Michael Malvesti (last seen in "Moonrise Kingdom"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 safe deposit boxes

Otherhood

Year 13, Day 129 - 5/9/21 - Movie #3,834

BEFORE: Sure, anybody can make a list of movies to watch and then chip away at it every day.  And probably anybody could, if they wanted to, link all those movies together by making sure that every consecutive pair shares an actor or actress (or archive footage of a famous person).  But it takes a special kind of nutjob, I believe, to also make sure that the resulting chain honors the calendar, and all of the year's notable holidays. 

If I'm being honest, this part of my process makes the whole thing possible, because it does two things for me - there are probably a near-infinite number of ways to arrange all of the films on my watchlist, but insisting that I pay tribute to holidays reduces that to a more manageable several thousand, or so I've led myself to believe.  Also, creating a 300-film chain is very difficult, and the film roster is always changing, so there's no point in setting something up that will be outdated in six month's time.  But arranging a smaller chain that gets me to the next holiday is much easier - and so I've created ten (or so) benchmarks that make it easier for me to get through the year - Valentine's Day/February, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Mother's Day, Memorial Day, Father's Day, the 4th of July, Back to School/Labor Day, Halloween/October, and Christmas.  Any time my films sync up with other occasions, like Thanksgiving or Tom Cruise's birthday, that's a bit of a bonus, and I'll take them if they happen, but I tend not to plan those.

It's Mother's Day, and I'm sitting pretty, with a clear path to the next three benchmarks on the list - plus I've got a great plan for October, I just need to close that gap and figure out how to get to Christmas, but that's a chore for another day.  Angela Bassett carries over from "Malcolm X". 

THE PLOT: This film about three mothers and their adult sons explores the stage after motherhood, Otherhood, when you have to redefine your relationship with your children, friends spouse and most importantly, yourself. 

AFTER: It should be a better Mother's Day all-around than it was last year, because at least vaccinated people stand a chance this time of getting together without putting themselves at risk or accidentally infecting Mom or Grandma over a shared brunch.  I just spoke to my Mom and let her know the card's on the way, but since I mailed it on Friday she'll probably get it on Tuesday - I can plan a weekend to take the train up to Massachusetts, but it might be closer to my Dad's birthday and/or Father's Day.  I used to send my mother plants in lieu of flowers on Mother's Day, but I don't think she gets outside to do much gardening any more.  

But basically, I'm a screw-up, with my card arriving late - she's come to expect that, I suppose.  That's the point of this film, adult males are screw-ups, so the three young men in their twenties who grew up together all think that calling their mothers, or even just texting them on Mother's Day is enough. (It's not.)  The mothers are still close friends, even if the three men aren't - they all moved from Poughkeepsie to NYC, but only see each other once in a while.  So the mothers get the idea after a bourbon-fueled shared brunch to pile into the car and ambush their sons on Mother's Day.  This is a terrible idea for several reasons, not the least of which is, they were all just drinking bourbon, which is bound to affect not only their decision-making but also their driving. (Mothers FOR Drunk Driving?  Bad idea.)

Also, dropping in on their sons unexpectedly naturally leads to all sorts of awkward possibilities - what if their son had a hot date with a girl the previous night?  He might not even be home... What if their son had a hot date with a GUY the previous night?  Yeah, this movie goes there, but it's a bit like it's trying to be all-inclusive, work in every possible scenario in order to increase the audience appeal, like those holiday commercials that try just a bit too hard.  Two years ago every TV commercial had a gay couple in it somewhere, and last year interracial couples were the hot trend - look how liberal we're all being!  Yeah, I see you, and once you notice the trend it's hard to NOT notice it, but are they really trying to reflect the heart and soul of the nation or just pandering?  It's tough to tell.  

So this results in an all-inclusive Mother's Day film where one family is black, one's Jewish, one mother is a widow, one's divorced and one's remarried.  One son is gay, another very serial-hetero and the third just broke up with his long-time girlfriend.  This gives each mother opportunities to meddle after the ambush, which in all the cases is apparently what's been missing in their lives, and is probably also the reason why all three sons moved away from home in the first place.  They all want to live their own lives as best they can, and 2/3 of them think they've got a handle on things, but then 100% of the time, their mother's advice turns out to be not helpful, and then, of course, extremely helpful.  

Again, is this really trying to reflect reality, or just pandering?  It's like somebody did a focus group and asked a bunch of mothers what they'd like to see in a film, and naturally that turned out to be scenarios where a mother really does know what's best for her kid, even if that advice is unwanted at first, ultimately she's got to be seen as the smartest, most useful individual.  Watch this movie with your mother, and eventually you'll hear, "A-HA!  See that!  The mother was RIGHT about everything!"  OK, that's one way to look at it, I guess, but does that justify a visit without a phone call first?  Worse, each mother packed a bag, as if they were naturally going to stay with their son for a week or more.  Umm, most NYC apartments don't have guest rooms, who can afford to have an extra bedroom with no roommate sleeping in it?  (To be fair, at least two of the mothers chicken out and stay in hotels instead, which makes more sense.  They realized their initial plan was terrible, or that their sons' apartments were not livable.)

Along the way, all their personal problems come to the surface, and the three mothers have to deal with things they've been putting off - one has to finally deal with her divorce, one with her dead husband's infidelities, and the third has to play matchmaker for her son and accept the girlfriend she didn't like before.  Hey, change isn't easy, but it's the only way that personal growth and acceptance can happen.  Although, a few NITPICK POINTS, like throwing your husband's personal items in the swimming pool doesn't solve anything, especially if he's dead and now you have to get the pool cleaned.  Why not just throw them in the trash?  And learning that your son doesn't like you meddling in his personal life creates a problem that is solved, time and time again, by (wait for it...) MORE meddling.  Sure, just keep digging that hole deeper.

I get it, because inaction would be a better solution, but it's a lot less cinematic.  And remember, the target audience here is moms, no doubt, so their ways are ultimately going to the best ways, even if they don't represent true change and/or piss everybody off more in the long term.  

This film was supposed to have been released in April 2019, in time for Mother's Day probably, but that college admissions scandal that one of the actresses got caught up in delayed it until August of that same year.  Well, at least it got on Netflix before Mother's Day 2020, when everybody was celebrating over Zoom and FaceTime, just to be safe.  This is definitely a film that will make you want to call your mother, even if that's just to tell her to mind her own business. 

Also starring Patricia Arquette (last heard in "Toy Story 4"), Felicity Huffman (last seen in "Big Game"), Jake Hoffman (last seen in "She's Funny That Way"), Jake Lacy (last seen in "Obvious Child"), Sinqua Walls (last seen in "The 15:17 to Paris"), Heidi Gardner (last seen in "Life of the Party"), Stephen Kunken (last seen in "Bridge of Spies"), Damian Young (last seen in "The Trial of the Chicago 7"), Afton Williamson, Frank De Julio (last seen in "A Walk Among the Tombstones"), Becki Newton, Mario Cantone, Emily Tremaine (also last seen in "Obvious Child"), Molly Bernard (last seen in "Sully"), Tim Bagley (last seen in "This Is 40"), Elizabeth Cappuccino, Kate Easton (last seen in "Can You Keep a Secret?"), Kelcy Griffin, Rosanny Zayas, Eve Lindley. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 slices of New York pizza