BEFORE: We're just about at the end of April now, one film left after tonight, and I've already got my May all mapped out. I sort of noticed too late that I could have dropped the animated film "The Bad Guys" in here, that film features the voices of Sam Rockwell, which would have linked it to "Trust Me", and also Awkwafina, which would have linked to today's film. There's already a link between those two films, so "The Bad Guys" didn't HAVE to go in-between, but it could have. I was saving a space for that film in June, so I'm just going to stick with that plan, because I'm done with animation for the moment, and that will put "The Bad Guys" next to another animated film, I'll be back on that topic then.
Look, it would work out either way, but I'm already cutting things too close in May, I had to double up in April just to hit Mother's Day on the nose, and I just got things aligned again, so I don't want to mess with that. As I always say, we're gonna get there. Instead, Allison Janney carries over from "Trust Me".
THE PLOT: A woman takes advantage of her growing celebrity status when the police and the public think her dead husband is just missing.
AFTER: Just the other day, I took issue with "Igby Goes Down" for a scene in which two teen boys are charged with killing their mother, and I just couldn't justify this, even after all the story-based gymnastics that the screenplay went through to bring this plot point about. Nope, not a good idea, try again.
Standard SPOILER ALERT here, because I think there's no way to talk about this film without getting into what takes place, so if you haven't seen this one, turn back now. This one is kind of in the same boat as "Igby Goes Down", because it really wants to bring us to a place where it's OK for Sue Buttons to kill her husband. She's having a bad day, it's her birthday and everyone seems to have forgotten that, including her sister and her husband, who can't wait for an excuse to buy flowers, but they're for his mistress that he's meeting at a motel. (After, of course, accepting a large satchel full of cash that some criminals want him to launder through his bank, but that's kind of a separate issue.)
So when Sue follows her husband and catches him in the act of cheating on her, and again, it's her birthday, maybe some wives WOULD kill their husbands - but that's not what happens here, it seems like he dies from the shock of getting caught in the act, so we've reached the same result, only we got there in a somewhat more elegant way, and now we don't hate Sue Buttons, at least, not as much. She's still pretty messed up by this experience, and messed up overall, with her daily affirmations and her obsession with local daytime talk TV. I'm just not certain if we're SUPPOSED to like her, or root for her, or just appreciate how messed up she is, or maybe feel sorry for her, I just don't know HOW to feel about her, I guess.
And that's kind of a problem if you're going to do one of these "Fargo"-esque crime stories, which wants to be one part black comedy, one part crime thriller and overall just a collection of oddball characters. I'd throw "murder mystery" into the mix, except there wasn't really a murder and there's no real mystery over what happened, not to the audience anyway. Also, there's a bit of a spin here on the "missing persons" genre of true-crime TV, along side Sue's "missing" husband, there's an obsession over a missing young girl named Emma Rose, and it's clear this is meant to evoke JonBenet or Jessica who fell down the well, or any of the other missing children who have taken over the news cycle in years past.
There's an ambitious police detective who's sure that Sue knows more than she's letting on about her husband's disappearance, a couple of competing local TV reporters who want to mine this disappearance for ratings, one of whom is Sue's half-sister, and then the missing man's brother, who's a professional thief trying to go straight, only half of the lesbian couple who run the furniture store where he works wants to commit more robberies with him, and then there's a pair of local gangsters, the ones who have been laundering money through Karl's bank, and they want to know where that satchel is. It's a weird bunch of connections between these people, though - the thief has to rob a jewelry store with his boss in order to get the ransom money to pay the criminals, who are pretending to hold Karl hostage, only they don't know where he is, either, but they somehow think that if they collect the ransom from his brother, they'll be able to figure out where Karl really is? I don't think that makes any proper sense, does it? And then after a while Karl's mistress gets back into the mix and threatens to tell everybody what really happened to Karl, and that's not really good for anybody.
Even if Sue didn't kill him, she's still responsible for improperly disposal of his body, and she causes so much more harm than good by burying that money with him, that sets off a chain of events that's quite unfathomable, and it doesn't end well for most of the characters. This could have been a whole season of the "Fargo" TV series, all those twists and causes & effects, crammed into one 90-minute movie, so it's no wonder that if all feels a bit rushed and hyper, and maybe not well thought-out.
Well, that theme of alcoholic parents didn't really make it through the week - but still, it's been quite a week, with abusive relationships and demanding casting directors, rival electricity magnates, cruel cryptid hunters, non-productive love triangles and invasive TV reporters. So, really, it's all about man's inhumanity to man, but isn't it always? One more film that I think stays on topic here, and then the week is over, the month is over and May is here, with Mother's Day on the horizon.
Awkwafina update - I've railed about her before in this space, how I just don't think she's funny, she's far from a great actress, and she's always making that face, like she just smelled something bad. Then I watched her in "Shang-Chi" and "The Farewell" in January and I didn't mind her so much - but now after "Breaking News" I hate her again. Maybe she just shouldn't do comedy, maybe that's the problem, it causes her to "ham it up" way too much.
Yet another film that got its release delayed by the pandemic - when it did come out in February 2021, it made under $200,000 - so either people weren't ready to go to back to the theaters yet, or they were just staying away from this one in droves. Geez, when the pandemic does you a favor and keeps a movie like this from getting released, maybe you should take that as a sign, the universe may be trying to tell you something. As with "Trust Me", I like a lot of these actors, and I like a lot of movies that these actors have been in, but I'm just not sure I like THIS movie that they're all in.
Also starring Mila Kunis (last seen in "Get Over It"), Regina Hall (last seen in "Shaft" (2019)), Awkwafina (last seen in "The Farewell"), Wanda Sykes (last seen in "Snatched"), Ellen Barkin (last seen in "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks"), Matthew Modine (last seen in "Too Big to Fail"), Jimmi Simpson (last seen in "Seraphim Falls"), Keong Sim (last seen in "Hillbilly Elegy"), Juliette Lewis (last seen in "Catch and Release"), Clifton Collins Jr. (last seen in "Running With the Devil"), Samira Wiley (last seen in "Nerve"), Bridget Everett (last seen in "Trainwreck"), T.C. Matherne (last seen in "Godzilla: King of the Monsters"), Dominic Burgess, Chris Lowell (last seen in "The Help"), Michael Newcomer, Elizabeth Elkins, Lucy Faust (last seen in "Mudbound"), CC Castillo, Sampley Barinaga, Jock McKissic (also last seen in "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks", Virginia Patterson.
RATING: 4 out of 10 smashed TV sets (they go back to this bit just a few too many times)
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