Luca

Year 14, Day 112 - 4/22/22 - Movie #4,115

BEFORE: Jack Dylan Grazer carries over from "Ron's Gone Wrong" - again, I could have skipped yesterday's film and come here straight from "The Mitchells vs the Machines", but I suppose my decision to drop in another film was a happy accident, because it's bumped today's film, which is about the oceans and sea creatures and such (from what I've heard) on to Earth Day, April 22, and I wasn't even thinking along those lines - it's not a holiday I usually try to program for.  Anyway, why not make the most of it and acknowledge the tie-in?  I can still make Mother's Day on time, because I actually have THREE Mother's Day films this year that all link together, so as long as one of them lands on the right day, I'm fine with it. 

I've had some good luck in the past week, in that there turned out to be a way to link to THREE of the animated features that got Oscar nominations this year (for last year), which for me is a great sign of progress being made. That just leaves "Raya and the Last Dragon", which I passed on in January, but has been rescheduled for mid-June, and "Flee", which is a Danish film with an Afghani voice cast, nearly impossible to link to.  I mean, I love a challenge, but COME ON!.

THE PLOT: On the Italian Riviera, an unlikely but strong friendship grows between a human being and a sea monster disguised as a human.  

AFTER: I feel like crap today, I've got a head cold which I don't THINK is COVID, but I guess these days you can never be sure, the newer variants supposedly feel more like a cold than a life-threatening illness.  If only there were some kind of test available...  JK, we have four home test kits, but I hate to waste one on what I'm pretty sure is just a cold.  Still, my BFF was going to hit town today and stay with us for the weekend, and I felt the need to warn him that I'm sick and not at my best, so he made other arrangements at the last minute. Sorry.  

Immediately after watching "Luca" on Friday night (yes, I am catching up), I had to sleep for a solid eight, which is not my usual routine, but new circumstances call for new agenda items - sleep became a necessity, followed by coffee and then more sleep.  After eight hours on the sofa, I isolated myself in the basement, again, just to be on the safe side.  Now I'm taking generic cold medicine every four hours (not the name-brand orange stuff, so I call it "Fake-Quil", yes, even when I'm sick I remember to be funny) and I'll have to fight through the fog to post a review of "Luca".  

There are two movies that this animated film reminded me of, one of course is "The Shape of Water" since several characters are aquatic humanoids, either a genetic offshoot or a separate species, it hardly matters.  And I know you're thinking I'm probably going to say "The Little Mermaid" next, because the "mermen" stop looking like sea monsters when they come on land, then they look like regular dry humans, but still sort of look like themselves.  And I realize this is what happened to Ariel in that "other" Disney film, but that was an enchantment, and this feature seems to be built right into their DNA.  No, the other film this reminded me of is "Call Me by Your Name".  Crazy, right?  

I know, these characters are kids, so they're not to be sexualized, not in any way, nope, no how, not gonna happen, not in a Pixar (Disney) film.  But think about it - the setting is Italy, and there's a younger boy who meets an older boy, and that older boy knows more about how the world works, they form a clear bond and they talk about riding off together on a Vespa and leaving their old lives behind.  It's friendship, sure, but it also seems kind of romantic, in a certain, probably non-intentional way.  I'm a bit surprised there wasn't a point in the film where they ate peaches, as a bit of an "Easter egg".  

It's also a bit of a love-triangle, only, again without the love, because the two boys form a racing team with a girl named Giulia, and it seems like Luca and Giulia might have a thing going, at some point in the future maybe, when they're older (again, KIDS), and I could have sworn that Alberto seemed a little jealous at the thought of this notion.  And it's OK now to have gay characters (or potentially future gay characters) in animated films now, just look at "The Mitchells vs the Machines" - after a couple weeks at college, Mrs. Mitchell asked Katie if she and Jade were "a thing" yet, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.  Good for her (but is Mr. Mitchell down with it, or just clueless?). Besides, the current theories on sexual orientation - sorry, I think it's polysexual gender identity now - I got dinged at work for calling someone "she" instead of "they", but I just can't get the new grammar right sometimes. I'm trying.  The current theories say that somebody doesn't "turn" gay or bisexual or omni or whatever, it's that they were always that way and maybe didn't understand it yet.  So Luca and Alberto could certainly be THAT way and just not express it yet.  

(OK, rant over. I could insert a tangent here about how DisneyCorp is in a damned-if-they-do, damned-if-they-don't situation - they have to be gay-friendly if they want the LBGTQ+ crowd to keep coming to Orlando, but they also have to kiss up to the Florida state government if they want to keep their special government status as their own legal business entity within the confines of the amusement park. If nothing else, it will be interesting to see what side they take on this "Don't say gay" bill in Florida, which is just the latest attempt to legislate sexual behavior, but since gay marriage and gay rights are the law of the land now, you can't unring that bell, and my guess is that the bill will be struck down as unconstitutional, eventually if not soon.)

Let's get off the topic, because this is a kids movie made for kids.  Once Luca and Alberto get to the fishing town of Portorosso and make a friend and an enemy, they join a racing team with their friend, Giulia, to take down their enemy, Ercole, a couple of pegs.  For some reason, Ercole is a twenty-something man with a mustache who still competes in this race against a bunch of kids. (Sixteen? His facial hair is probably sixteen...). The easiest way to beat this guy, if you ask me, is to just get him disqualified because he's too old to compete.  There, problem solved, movie over I guess.  But no, for some reason he gets a pass.  Now, the event is something called an "Italian Triathlon", where the three events are swimming, biking up a mountain and down again, and eating a big plate of pasta.  I can't be sure, but I THINK this is somehow offensive to Italians, even more than the exaggerated accents throughout the film. 

A real triathlon, of course, is swimming, biking and running a marathon - IN THAT ORDER.  And I think the reason for that is if people get too tired while swimming, they could drown, so that should go first.  Also, if you see a shark in the water that would probably be an incentive to go faster, and then bike away from the beach as quickly as possible.  Just me? The weird thing here with this "Italian Triathlon" is that it all three events could be done by one person, or there could be a team of three, with each person doing one event.  Now, Luca and Alberto can't do the swimming leg, or they'd turn back into sea monsters, so Giulia has to do it, and that means Luca has to do the biking, but Giulia is a much better biker, and of course both Luca and Alberto are naturally better swimmers.  So, what's more important, maintaining their secret, or winning the damn race?  

I know that marathoners tend to fuel up with a lot of pasta, but that's usually the night BEFORE the marathon. Making it a PART of the race is interesting, though again, probably offensive to Italians.  (What's a German triathlon? Eating a plate of sauerkraut, drinking a stein of beer and then invading Poland? I can tell this joke because I'm of German descent, mostly. Also, the Germans don't have triathlons because they don't believe in the mixing of the races...). This combination of three different sports - swimming, eating and biking - actually seems like a decent challenge for one person because it requires different skills for each segment, kind of like the winter biathlon (cross-country skiing and target shooing) or chess boxing. Yes, that's a thing.  Two people spar in a boxing ring and beat each other about the head, then have to sit down and play chess, which at that point could be rather difficult. 

While Luca is enjoying his new life among the humans, and training for the race, his parents have also come to Portorosso to find him (shades of "Finding Nemo"?) and now they pass for humans, too - but they're not sure what their own son looks like as a human person, so they have to run around town and find excuses for dunking kids in the fountain, dropping water balloons on them or slipping with a watering can.  NITPICK POINT: Even the girls?  They know they have a son, right?  Do why do they have to get all the little girls in town wet, too?  Unless the sea monsters can change their gender when they transform?  Again, let's not even go there, it's too controversial. 

My other chief complaint is that there were too many times where Luca and/or Alberto got wet and started to transform, and had to hurriedly find a way to dry off and turn back to looking like a human.  It was interesting maybe the first couple times, but after a few hundred the joke really started wearing thin.  Eventually the plot decides that this gag has gone on way too long, and so the characters are forced to reveal their species status, and the town's citizens are forced to confront their prejudices against sea monsters.  It's a fine message, but it just took too long to get there. 

OK, and Giulia swearing with the names of cheeses ("Santa Mozzarella!  Santa Gorgonzola!"). That's definitely derogatory toward Italians, right?  I'm surprised nobody complained about this - I mean, I know you can't have characters swearing in a Disney movie, but surely there must have been a better solution than THIS. 

Also starring the voices of Jacob Tremblay (last seen in "Doctor Sleep"), Emma Berman, Saverio Raimondo, Maya Rudolph (last heard in "The Mitchells vs the Machines"), Marco Barricelli, Jim Gaffigan (last seen in "The Last Blockbuster"), Peter Sohn (last heard in "The Good Dinosaur"), Lorenzo Crisci, Marina Massironi, Gino La Monica, Sandy Martin (last seen in "Some Kind of Beautiful"), Giacomo Gianniotti (last seen in "Race"), Elisa Gabrielli (last heard in "Shock and Awe"), Mimi Maynard, Sacha Baron Cohen (last seen in "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm"), Francesca Fanti, Jonathan Nichols, Jim Pirri (last heard in "Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay"), Enrico Casarosa. 

RATING: 7 out of 10 types of pasta (turns out there are over 600 kinds, according to the interwebs)

Ron's Gone Wrong

Year 14, Day 111 - 4/21/22 - Movie #4,114

BEFORE: Ah, this was a bit of a last-minute decision - this animated feature could go HERE, or I could use it later to connect two other animated films, "Turning Red" and "Tom & Jerry", ugh, that's a tough one.  Because it seems to somewhat be thematically connected to yesterday's film, both are about malfunctioning robots, so I guess it belongs here?  I could just as easily delay it to connect those other films, because "The Mitchells vs the Machines" also shares an actor with tomorrow's film.  But so does THIS one, so I guess screw it, I'm dropping it in, schedule be damned.  I'll make it up over the weekend, I'm going to get to Mother's Day either way. Olivia Colman carries over from "The Mitchells vs the Machines".  

THE PLOT: The story of Barney, an awkward middle-schooler and Ron, his new walking, talking digital device.  Ron's malfunctions set against the backdrop of the social media age launch them on a journey to learn about true friendship. 

AFTER: You'll often find two or more animation studios releasing films in the same year on similar themes - remember when every major animation studio had a penguin movie, and "Happy Feet", "Surf's Up" and "The Penguins of Madagascar" all came out around the same time?  Or "Antz" and "A Bug's Life"?  "Finding Nemo" and "A Shark's Tale"?  Two years ago it was all Bigfoot and Yeti movies, like "Missing Link", "Smallfoot" and "Abominable"?  Yeah, either these things go in stages, or Sony and Dreamworks have corporate spies who research what the other studios are up to, so they can be first to market. 

I got a bad vibe from this film last year, when I was working at an AMC and I saw the teaser poster - I won't post it here because it was a close of Ron the robot wearing his little winter cap, and not knowing much about the movie, to me that looked very much like, well, a very pale part of the male anatomy, let's say - with a colored condom on top with a reservoir tip.  Sorry to be crude here, but look up that poster online and tell me that's NOT what that looks like. They've since changed the poster, at least on IMDB, so I'm betting I wasn't the only one who saw that in the image. I guess that wasn't enough to keep people from bringing their kids out to see this film, it made a fair amount of money last year, $23 million in North America, that's more than "The Mitchells vs the Machines", which went straight to Netflix, so technically, no box office grosses. 

The two films share a lot of DNA in common - both films start out with a tech company CEO telling an audience about the fantastic new innovative device that his company is releasing - and in both movies, that's a young-ish and black-ish cool guy named Mark (or Marc) with good intentions.  But it's only "Ron's Gone Wrong" that has a second tech guru, behind the scenes, who looks a lot like a pudgy Steve Jobs.  And then both movies show personal tech - cell phones or PDAs used for evil purposes, either to take over the world or to spy on kids, steal their personal information and sell them things, which is essentially the same thing if you think about it.  And then of course both films have nerdy, awkward, unpopular kids or teens as their main characters, just in "Mitchells" it's a college-age teen girl interested in filmmaking, and in "Ron" it's a pre-teen (?) boy interested in, umm, rocks?  The pitch is the same, both films set their targets on the kids who don't fit in, because at some point, that's every kid.  Pretty sneaky...

What's weird here is that the film with the most outlandish plot - a cell phone OS commanding robots to imprison EVERY human and put them a rocket to outer space, somehow feels more connected to reality?  That can't be right - but the plot of "Ron's Gone Wrong" takes off from a different place, where a new Personal Device shaped like a giant egg is somehow bought by EVERY middle-schooler everywhere, and I'm not really sure what the appeal of the device is, so that seems more unbelievable somehow?  It's just like a Furby crossed with a Tamagotchi or something, and it plays music and videos and VR simulations for the kids?  Yeah, but there's no Wordle or Candy Crush, so I don't see kids giving up their cell phones for these "B-Bots" anytime soon.  It's too bad that screenplays are mostly written by adults who don't understand the kids - I'm not saying that I do, I don't understand kids at all.  But some screenwriter had to GUESS what kids would want in a digital device, and I really doubt that THIS is it. 

What's more, Barney gets picked on at school because he doesn't have one, his father runs a failing novelty item business, so he can't afford the hot toy for his son.  But then Barney's weird grandmother buys him a broken B-Bot from somebody in an alley, and then Barney gets picked on because he HAS a B-Bot.  Well, come on, this kid can't catch a break, he gets bullied for not having one, then he gets bullied for HAVING one?  And once again, a movie aimed at kids demonstrates the absolute WORST advice for how to deal with a bully, only this time it's not "Fight back", it's "Have your robot fight back for you."  Umm, no, Hollywood, this is not an acceptable answer.  Pity your bully, have your bully arrested or expelled, bribe your bully or make friends with your bully, all of these are better tips than the ones you tend to land on, again and again. 

The one redeeming part of this story is the depiction of social media as a double-edged sword - sure, kid, you're riding high with 27 million followers on the Insta - but then when you accidentally post something embarrassing during a live-stream, you've gone viral for the wrong reasons.  Now you're "pee boy" or "vomit girl" or worse, and it's out there now, you can't take it down if it's spread to other people's feeds, now you have to disappear for a few years until everyone forgets about you.  OR that hot new app is secretly recording your conversations so that companies can target you with ads - remember that scandal years ago when the Furbys started asking kids about their parents' household income?  Or you had to tell Teddy Ruxpin your mother's maiden name before it would tell you a story?  Now you see Facebook posts asking you to tell everyone your porn name, which is the street you grew up on, followed by your credit card expiration date, I don't know who falls for this but somebody does. 

Anyway, the broken Ron-bot turns out to be just the exact weird sort of charming, clueless presence that Barney needs in his life - but by contrast, I can't quite figure out what the other kids are doing with the B-Bots that DO work correctly, because the movie doesn't really even GO there.  Ron's the anomaly, he learns to become Barney's friend a very different way, and this is portrayed as somehow more "genuine", but is it, really?  Again, no explanation given for how the malfunction somehow makes the bot work "better", because that would require showing us the other bots for contrast, and the film just can't be bothered to do so.  What are the other 99.9% of kids doing with their bots?  I bet it's something nasty...  

We've been told for decades that robots would be designed with protocols in place, according to Asimov's rules that they should never be allowed to hurt humans, or allow humans to be hurt in any way.  So, umm, what happened to this, who decided it was a bad idea to scrap this?  All it took in "The Mitchells vs the Machines" was for a Siri-like program to just, I don't know, switch this off?  It shouldn't have been possible, but if it weren't, then we wouldn't have a movie, I know.  And here in "Ron's Gone Wrong", the malfunctioning Ron doesn't have his safety protocols installed because he's not able to connect to the "Bubble Network", but these safeties should be HARD-WIRED into any robot built, whether they're on-network or in roaming mode.  RIGHT?  Then when the bullies learn Ron has no safety protocols, they just have him bump into other B-Bots, and then THEY suddenly have no safety protocols?  This is madness, part of having the safety protocols in place should be that they CAN'T be turned off, because then all roads lead to killer robots and then Skynet taking over. 

And it's the interaction between Barney and Ron that somehow teaches a robot how to laugh - sorry, that's not possible either.  This isn't "Star Trek", with Data just getting an emotion chip placed in his brain - the very definition of the robot brain belies the ability to HAVE emotions in the first place, because those are the things that make us human.  Humans can make other humans, but they can't make robots that act like humans, the best they could ever do is program robots with human emotion-like reactions, and that just isn't the same thing. It could get CLOSE over time, but it will never, ever be robots with real emotions, God willing, just simulated ones. 

Don't even get me started on Barney's immigrant Bulgarian grandmother, who carries a live chicken everywhere and doesn't understand anything. I'm not even Bulgarian, but found this depiction offensive on their behalf. 

Also starring the voices of Jack Dylan Grazer (last seen in "It Chapter Two") Zach Galifianakis (last seen in "Tulip Fever"), Ed Helms (last seen in "Father Figures"), Rob Delaney (last seen in "The Hustle"), Justice Smith (last seen in "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom"), Kylie Cantrall, Ricardo Hurtado, Cullen James McCarthy, Ava Morse, Marcus Scribner (last heard in "The Good Dinosaur"), Thomas Barbusca, Ruby Wax (last seen in "The Borrowers" (1997)), Sarah Miller, Krupa Pattani, Megan Maczko (last seen in "A Hologram for the King"), David Menkin (ditto), Bentley Kalu (last seen in "Judy"), John Macmillan (last seen in "Hanna"), Iara Nemirovsky, Liam Payne. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 unsent party invitations

The Mitchells vs the Machines

Year 14, Day 110 - 4/20/22 - Movie #4,113

BEFORE: Well, I got the Easter candy I wanted yesterday, I made a deal with myself that if I worked a few hours on entering film festivals for my new client, then I would go online and track down the candy I wanted, which turned out to be easier than I thought. I used one of those grocery-shopping sites with free delivery for new members, they hooked me up with a drugstore in Brooklyn that had leftover candy available, and I got all the good flavors of creme eggs, like raspberry and maple and coconut, for like 40 cents each, so I bought five of each, to make the delivery minimum.  I won't go crazy eating them, I'll probably dole them out to myself over the next few months, but the good news is that I only spent about thirteen bucks to get what I wanted, it wasn't too dear, and I allowed myself (for once) to get what I wanted. So a win all around, and I never have to use that delivery service again, maybe next year for more Easter candy, plus, score one more point for technology and the internet, which I think is on them considering today's movie, which details the robot apocalypse.  

Fred Armisen carries over from "How It Ends".  

THE PLOT: A quirky, dysfunctional family's road trip is upended when they find themselves in the middle of the robot apocalypse and suddenly become humanity's unlikeliest last hope. 

AFTER: The other news I have is that the last animated feature I worked on got accepted into the Tribeca Film Festival, which is a huge deal.  For the director, sure, but I'd also like to think this is a feather in the cap of anyone who worked on the film, because a rising tide lifts all boats, and all that.  But I didn't work on the last year of the film's production, because of the pandemic, and I didn't work on entering festivals for that film, so there's this weird dichotomy where I hope the film does well, of course, but it feels a little weird because I was also technically fired from that production, so in the end I don't know exactly how to feel.  The animation industry is a bit weird because everybody sort of knows everybody else, and you want your friends to do well, sure, but then there's a small jealous part deep down, I think, and you wonder why your film didn't do as well as theirs, or what that producer or director knows that you don't, and so on.  I guess nobody really talks about the down side of having friends who are having success when you're not.  (I bring this up today because I know one of the producers of today's film, he's one of the "Lego Movie" and "Spider-Verse" creators, and I wish him well, I really do.)

It took me almost a year to get around to watching this film, it was released on Netflix April 30 of last year - linking being what it is, but also I have to deal with other people having more success and more connections than I do, and maybe I'll never work on a big blockbuster animated feature like this one, unless I make some radical changes in my life and lifestyle, and that's just not easy for me to do. So I've put myself in this position where I often celebrate the success of others, and I guess that's slightly easier in the long run.  

I get where this film is coming from, it wants to celebrate the quirky, unusual people, some of whom grow up to become filmmakers, and I think all of this comes from a well-intentioned place.  Apparently the family is based on a real family, or real enough, or perhaps it's just based on an amalgam of all families, how they can be full of odd and anxious and self-defeating characters, who mostly get along but then also have complex disagreements sometimes about life and career and sacrifice and whether it's a good idea to leave home and go to college, and go out in the world and find a new family and new things to do. Maybe there's an odd connection here to "The Croods: A New Age", which covered some of the same territory - we're all still as cavemen, really, and we have to deal with the break-up of the tribe at some point. 

Dad's clueless when it comes to computers, Mom tries to bake cupcakes and also hold the family together, little brother likes dinosaurs and is awkward around girls, and the dog can't do anything right.  This is one family, but it's also every family, I suppose, or any family could see themselves in THIS family perhaps.  It's specific but also so very generic at the same time - the kids spend way too much time using their phones, nobody really talks about their problems, and if they do it turns into a fight, their interests are making them spend more time apart and less time together, and suddenly it's time for Katie to go to college and they have to deal with that.  

The father's "answer" is to cancel her plane ticket, and do one last family car trip across the country before they have to deal with the break-up of the family.  It's a terrible answer, because it makes the daughter a week late for orientation, however it's necessary to set up the situation of them being out in the world when the robot take-over starts to happen.  

It's an adult's worst nightmare - a corporate tech guy decides that the operating system on his enormously popular cell phone brand needs an upgrade, so he turns the cell phones into robots, who will cook and clean for the humans, giving everyone lives of leisure.  This turns the old OS, named "PAL" in a clear "2001" reference, into the film's villain and starts the process of capturing all seven billion humans into energy hexagons and stacking them into vertical rocket ships that will launch and never return.  OK, a couple little NPs here, first of all, is the upgrade from cell phone to robot really viable if the robot doesn't play any of the games we've become addicted to?  OK, great, the robot's going to organize my bookshelf and load the dishwasher, but I can't play "Words with Friends" or "Candy Crush" any more, and that's a big problem.  Secondly, how is capturing people and transporting them to rockets an efficient way to take over, it's much much harder than, say, killing all the humans.  Plus all that energy to launch rockets, how is this an efficient solution?  

I know, I know, on some level this isn't meant to be taken seriously, it's more of an allegory of sorts, and I'm overthinking it, but that's what I do. It all has to happen this way so that this one family has the chance to be heroes, so they can learn the ways of the robot, learn how to evade the robots, and eventually learn to defeat the robots.  If the robots had killed everyone else, then it's too late, no chance to fix anything - so it just HAD to be this way, but it's not the more efficient way that robot overlords probably would take over, we've seen that in the "Terminator" films, and it's not pretty.  

I've got other questions, though, beyond the logistics of the robot take-over.  Late in the film, through watching home movies, Katie learns that her parents once had a very different lifestyle, they were actually cool, quirky outsiders who dressed funny and lived in a cabin that he built.  Then after she was born, they changed their lifestyle, moved to a house and he had to get a better job, I guess this makes sense, but also WHY?  They could have continued living in the cabin, I'm a little unclear on why he had to give up on his dream just because he had a daughter. I mean, sure, I get that parents have to sacrifice part of their lives because they want the best possible life for their kids, but specifically why did they have to move out of the cabin, I'm sure kids have been raised in cabins in the past, it's not the weirdest possible life.  He could have had his dream and also raised a daughter, why couldn't he realize this? 

It just seems like maybe another specific case where one filmmaker brought in another specific detail from their own life, and didn't properly explain it, because it already made sense to them, but not the audience.  This film really scored, however, when it chose to depict a gay character and didn't make that the focus of the conflict with her father - they argued over other things, but not THAT.  Plus this made her sexual orientation just a fact, not a problem, or even a major story hurdle, plus her parents seem to be cool with it, and those are all good things in the long run.  There's also some good messaging about the effects of social media, like what happens when you follow that "perfect" family on Instagram, who always seems to be taking better vacations than you, and what that does to your psyche - hint, it's not good.  Just be yourself, love what you love, love WHO you love, and don't give up on your dreams, and maybe it will all work out, if the robots don't take over first. 

Also starring the voices of Abbi Jacobson (last seen in "Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising"), Danny McBride (last seen in "Zeroville"), Maya Rudolph (last seen in "CHIPS"), Mike Rianda, Olivia Colman (last heard in "Locke"), Eric André (last heard in "The Lion King" (2019)), Beck Bennett (last seen in "Bill & Ted Face the Music"), Chrissy Teigen (last seen in "Between Two Ferns: The Movie"), John Legend (last seen in "Coming 2 America"), Charlyne Yi (last heard in "Trolls 2: World Tour"), Blake Griffin (last seen in "The Female Brain"), Conan O'Brien (last seen in "Clear History"), Melissa Sturm (last heard in "The Emoji Movie"), Sasheer Zamata (last seen in "I Feel Pretty"), Elle Mills, Alex Hirsch, Jay Pharoah (last seen in "Top Five'), Jeff Rowe, Zeno Robinson, Grey Griffin (last heard in "Onward"), Doug the Pug. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 evil roombas (I KNEW it!)

How It Ends (2021)

Year 14, Day 109 - 4/19/22 - Movie #4,112

BEFORE: There are two films with this same title, and both are on my watchlist.  I can only link to one of them now, the other one may have to stay on the list for a while.  But luckily this is the one that fits better into my recent themes, I'm thinking of futuristic films like "Robot & Frank" and end-of-the-world movies like "Greenland" and "Geostorm". 

Bradley Whitford carries over again from "The Call of the Wild".  

THE PLOT: Liza embarks on a journey through L.A. in hopes of making it to her last party before it all ends, running into an eclectic cast of characters along the way. 

AFTER: Of the two recent films titled "How It Ends", this is the one that is the comedy (umm, allegedly) and the other one is an action-thriller.  Been there, done that - the hot trend now is apocalyptic comedies, like "Don't Look Up" and tomorrow's film (I think).  There was also "Moonfall", which I don't think is a comedy, and last year I only watched a couple big "disaster" movies, like "Godzilla vs. Kong", and maybe "Bill & Ted Face the Music" qualifies. I was busy watching a different kind of "disaster" movie last year, like the "Scooby-Doo" films.  But other recent entries in this genre have included "Seeking a Friend for the End of the World", "This Is the End" "Rapture-Palooza" and "The World's End". 

Specifically, this is about how Los Angelenos might deal with the end of the world, the disaster in question here is once again a comet, only it's not really about the comet, it's about how people choose to spend their last 24 hours.  It's a done deal, we can't stop the comet, so the world ends at 2 am - are you going to spend your time trying in vain to run away, or are you instead going to try to get really high, get laid and take advantage of your last chance to party?  The lead character(s) here go with the second option, but getting across L.A. is difficult because someone stole her car - they must have needed it to try to outrun the comet.  So on her way to the last party ever, Liza takes the opportunity to visit her father, her former best friend and her mother, in the hopes of settling some accounts, and coming to some kind of closure.  

Liza's companion is her younger self, it seems that the impending doom has caused everyone to operate on some kind of "higher frequency", and for a select few, their inner child has become visible, and possibly real.  "Little Liza" is surprised to learn that the guy Liza wants to buy drugs from can see her, I guess previously she was only visible to her older self?  Along they way the pair also meet the younger self of a 92-year old man who's housebound, and "Young Manny" is just happy to be able to get outside, enjoy a muffin and be seen by other people.  

Now, young Manny is played by Fred Armisen, who is known for his penchant for improvisation, and that's when I started to realize that the vast majority of this film, perhaps all of it, was improvised.  This explains a lot, perhaps one actor had the idea of interacting with their younger self, and the whole film just kind of ran with that.  The two Lizas also encounter a woman who's decided to do stand-up comedy out in the street for her final day on Earth, and another woman who's sitting out on the street with her guitar, doing a free concert for the same reason.  I've got to say, these L.A. people are pretty chill considering that they've all only got a few hours to live - in other cities people are probably running around all crazy, killing each other, looting and raping, but in Los Angeles, people are making bold career moves at the last minute!  

Liza also stops by the apartment of an ex-boyfriend, Larry, but she's not the only one.  Women have been dropping by all day to confront Larry over the way he cheated on them or ended the relationship with them, OK, so Larry's had a busy, interesting life and he can't even keep all his stories and excuses straight, with so many women looking for resolution.  And then there are the two men arguing about recycling, and one turns out to be an environmentalist who also is a science-denier, so I guess it takes all kinds.  But the fact that these men are standing so far apart really shows that this is the type of film that was getting made during the COVID-19 pandemic, you'll notice that the actors were all practicing social distancing, and Liza encounters them all one at a time, they never all join up, like the characters in "The Wizard of Oz", she just meets each one and then heads on back down the road, alone.  Well, except for her younger self. It's also telling that there are NO cars driving around - in L.A. - which only makes sense if everyone is at home, quarantining, so I guess the film couldn't have been made during any other time in history.

She finally makes it to the party, which turns out to be a bit of a non-starter because the hostess took too many drugs, and the most famous person there is Pauly Shore - who's just happy to still be alive, because by his own account he should have died years ago.  I honestly can't tell if this bit is tongue-in-cheek or too close to reality to count as comedy.  But in the end Liza decides it's best to face the comet at home, just with her younger self and a pair of 3-D glasses. (Only, last-second NITPICK POINT, how did she get back home in time?)

I hope that I can link to "Don't Look Up", sometime in August or September, or even November.  Because with three films about world-ending comets in one year, then that becomes a theme...wait, I forgot about "The Tomorrow Man", I think I'm already at three.  OK, so let's try for four.

Also starring Zoe Lister-Jones (last seen in "State of Play"), Cailee Spaeny (last seen in "On the Basis of Sex"), Helen Hunt (last seen in "The Night Clerk"), Olivia Wilde (last seen in "Life Itself"), Fred Armisen (last seen in "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny"), Lamorne Morris (last seen in "Yesterday"), Nick Kroll (last seen in "Operation Finale"), Logan Marshall-Green (last seen in "Spider-Man: Homecoming"), Finn Wolfhard (last seen in "The Goldfinch"), Whitney Cummings (last seen in "Made of Honor"), Tawny Newsome, Glenn Howerton (last seen in "The Hunt"), Rob Huebel (last seen in "How to Be a Latin Lover"), Paul Scheer (last seen in "The Last Blockbuster"), Colin Hanks (last seen in "Get Over It"), Charlie Day (last seen in "Going the Distance"), Mary Elizabeth Ellis (last seen in "Masterminds"), Bobby Lee (last seen in "Keeping Up with the Joneses"), Sharon Van Etten, Ayo Edebiri, Paul W. Downs (last seen in "Like Father"), Angelique Cabral, Raymond Cham Jr., Pauly Shore (last seen in "Sandy Wexler")

RATING: 3 out of 10 pancakes in a giant stack

The Call of the Wild

Year 14, Day 108 - 4/18/22 - Movie #4,111

BEFORE: Bradley Whitford carries over again from "Three Christs", and now I'm falling further behind - not on my movie watching, just on my posting.  "The Call of the Wild" is my Monday movie, which I started watching late Monday night, but because I had to work Tuesday morning, afternoon and night, (umm, yeah, I started another gig but it's freelance, just a couple hours twice a week, entering film festivals for a friend) my posting may lag a little behind in the days to come.  Because, why not burn that candle at both ends, and also in the middle?  Feeling exhausted is one way to feel alive, right? RIGHT? 

I tried to work this one in last December, but, funny story, I kind of ran out of December right there at the end.  It was a choice of either linking to this one for the final film of the year, or another Christmas movie, and I went with the Christmas movie - so it took me almost four months to reschedule this one, not too bad, all things considered. But it's been on my DVR since January 2021, so it's past time to clear it. 

THE PLOT: A sled dog struggles for survival in the wilds of the Yukon. 

AFTER: You may notice that there's no listing for the dogs in the credits of this film - usually if there's a lead animal, they mention that animal's "real" name, as if dogs have real names, but you know what I mean - starring "Fluffy" as "Marmaduke" or whatever.  But I realized right from the get-go that there were no real animals in this film, so this is largely an animated film, or a mixture of live-action and animation, or whatever you want to call that.  It's a hybrid, a mutt of sorts - not animated enough for most people to think of it as an animated film, but it is.  \

It's probably not cheaper these days to use CGI dogs instead of real dogs, but it probably solved more problems than it created - an important part of Jack London's story is showing Buck being beaten by cruel men to learn his place, and you just can't do that these days.  If there was any hint of animals being beaten on set, or if a film didn't run that disclaimer at the end, there would be a boycott for sure.  Another advantage of using CGI dogs is being able to get the exact right performance from all of the dogs, really, it's just programming - and plus, you don't have to pay or even feed the CGI actors.  I guess you still have to feed the programmers - sorry, digital artists - though.  

To me, this is a double-edge sword, though - the expressions that Buck gives the camera are almost TOO good.  Forget that, they ARE too good. I know that dogs are lovable, but most of them are not great actors, because they don't understand the human concepts behind complex emotions, and here the digital Buck gives us everything we need from him, so yeah, that's great but it's also fake as hell. And Buck is a BIG dog, he's like half St. Bernard, so he should be HEAVY, and leave imprints in the mud and the snow, and remember what I said about BIG things after watching "Geostorm" and "Greenland"?  Big things move slower, it's just the way things are, and here Buck is a big dog who also moves very quickly, and in my mind, that just doesn't 100% work.  His movements needed to be slightly slower than the other dogs, just because he's bigger, more muscular, there's more to move around, so he can't be as fast. When they showed the CGI bear, that bear moved more slowly than, say, a wolf, and the same principle needed to be applied to Buck, or else I'm always going to be aware I'm looking at a CGI dog.  

That being said, I'm glad somebody took on Jack London's classic story, for the first time since like the mid 1930's, the version with Clark Gable. (OK, I stand corrected, I guess there have been a few adaptations over the years, but are they even worth watching?) It's an important story about the Gold Rush in the Yukon territory and Alaska (before it was a state).  There's a lot of sadness and cruelty in the story, sure, but there's sadness and cruelty in life, and we've got to deal with it at some point.  They took some liberties with the story, cut some of the adventures short, conflated a couple of tales into one, but I actually think this works BETTER than the novel, and I rarely say that.  In the Jack London novel Buck works as a sled dog for the post office, then for a couple of cruel prospectors who don't know how to work a sled dog team properly.  He's saved by John Thornton, and outdoorsman, but the rest of Buck's dog team stays with the clueless prospectors, and we presume that they all fall into the river and die, because they ignored Thornton's advice. 

In the novel, Thornton and Buck go prospecting with Pete and Hans, and encounter trouble with a tribe of Native Americans.  But in this film, Thornton and Buck go prospecting alone, and one of the clueless prospectors survived, and comes looking for them out in the Alaskan wilderness.  Jack London probably wishes he'd thought of that wrinkle, it's an interesting callback that also simplifies the second half of the story - why introduce new characters so late in the game?  

This film encountered some bad luck - it was due to be released at Christmas time in 2019, but that release got delayed after the acquisition of Fox by Disney, and rescheduled for February 2020.  Yep, the pandemic struck again, it only got a few weeks of release before theaters all shut down for several months. Ironically, or perhaps fittingly, I found a lot of meaning in Buck's story - he was separated from his family and forced into a new career as a sled dog.  Then when the telegraph replaced the mail delivery, he was out of work again and had to pull a sled for prospectors.  How many of us also had our careers changed by the pandemic, I know I got forced into a new line of work, so I feel the symbolism in Buck's story.  

John Thornton is also forced by tragedy to live apart from his wife, he doesn't feel he can return to her after the loss of their son. Buck also went through several masters, and even when he became the leader of his own pack, he still returned from time to time to the places he'd lived before, just to remember the fallen masters.  There's poignancy all over this story, you just have to feel for it. 

If I've got a NITPICK POINT here, it's the fact that in the novel, I think Buck was the only member of the sled team who wasn't a husky - there's a reason why they use huskies to pull sleds up in Alaska, they're sort of bred and built for it.  Here there was only one husky, the lead dog, Spitz, and the rest were a mix of breeds.  I know WHY they did it this way, so we can tell all the dogs apart, but it's just not the way that sled teams work. 

Also starring Harrison Ford (last seen in "Spielberg"), Omar Sy (last seen in "Inferno"), Dan Stevens (last seen in "The Man Who Invented Christmas"), Karen Gillan (last seen in "Gunpowder Milkshake"), Jean Louisa Kelly, Michael Horse (last heard in "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron"), Micah Fitzgerald, Adam Fergus, Colin Woodell, Cara Gee, Scott MacDonald, Brad Greenquist (last seen in "Pet Sematary"), Aria Lyric Leabu (last seen in "Replicas"), Salem Meade. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 gold nuggets

Three Christs

Year 14, Day 107 - 4/17/22 - Movie #4,110

BEFORE: This is going to count as my Easter film - I tried to link to "Paul, Apostle of Christ" this year, since last year's Easter film was "Mary Magdalene", but it wasn't possible. The linking just wasn't there - maybe next year. 

Bradley Whitford carries over from "Tick, Tick...Boom!", where he played Stephen Sondheim. I'm sorry if you thought I was going to follow the Andrew Garfield link to "The Eyes of Tammy Faye", since that film is about preachers, but I realized too late that would also have been a cool idea that would have fit in with a church theme.  I will get to that film, it's high on the priority list and currently scheduled for late May or early June.  So there will be at least three or four films this year with Andrew Garfield, but they just won't be all together.  Peter Dinklage had a BIG Movie Year in 2021, no pun intended, with five appearances, but so far in 2022, just two. 

I'm posting late on Monday, but this still counts as my Easter Sunday film - I hope to catch up some later this week when I get back on animated films, which tend to be shorter. 

THE PLOT: Dr. Alan Stone is treating three paranoid schizophrenic patients at the Ypsilanti State Hospital in Michigan, each of whom believes they are Jesus Christ.  

AFTER: So by now, as I write this, it's the day AFTER Easter - mea culpa, I'm trying to catch up.  But we had a pretty low-key Easter, we didn't really leave the house all weekend, except I went out once to get bagels. I'd worked late on Good Friday, which is USUALLY the day we go out to eat at a Brazilian churrascaria in Queens, because there's less competition for meat, it being a fasting day for the religious folks. (I thought of this a few years back, it's kind of genius.)  And I'm no longer a practicing Catholic, so I didn't go to church, just stayed in and caught up on my sleep.  

I had a little bit of Easter candy last night, mostly Russel Stover egg-shaped chocolates with different fillings, and I figured I'd load up on them at a drugstore on Monday, when they're usually 50% off - BUT I tried five different drug-stores in Manhattan and couldn't find any, the shelves were all cleared!  And I know they didn't pack them up to make room for Memorial Day candy, because that's not a thing!  Where did all the candy go?  Well, I've got a couple of guesses - first off, this is the first real Easter in three years where people can full-on interact with each other, so my guess is that it all got sold, people having parties and get-togethers, post-Covid (so it's going to be a CRAZY summer, I think...).  The other possibility is that there were supply chain issues, maybe the stores didn't get all the candy they wanted - mostly Peeps were left today, and I hate Peeps.  It's also possible that since the pandemic hit in March 2020, nobody left the house to buy Easter candy in April (I still saw some on the shelves in late May) so some stores packed up what didn't sell and tried to sell it again in 2021, which meant they had to order less new candy to fill the shelves, and then in 2022, the store managers didn't want to go too crazy, or were lazy and just repeated the order from the previous year, which means they didn't order enough.  All I know is, I was only able to get a few creme-filled or marshmallow chocolate eggs, plus one Reese-ster Bunny (yeah, it's a thing, peanut butter filling a chocolate bunny) so I've got to check online tonight to see if I can still get some more candy somewhere, somehow. 

But let's get to the movie, allegedly based on a true story, about three men in a mental hospital who all believe that they're Jesus - and the doctor who, for some reason, thought it would be a swell idea to put all three men in the same room, to see if they'd be cured of their delusions, or maybe he wanted to see them fight each other - like Jesus Highlander, maybe there can be only one. Jesus may have been a man of peace, so if they fight, well, that would also prove that they're just not him.  

Look, I'm no psychiatric expert, so I have to rely on the film to clue me in here - what this doctor did in putting these three patients together was not recommended, the treatment of forcing mentally ill people to confront their delusions was radical back in the late 1950's.  But this doctor saw it as less dangerous than shock therapy (now called ECT) - but he'd heard of a case where two different women believed they were the Virgin Mary, and after they were roommates in a psychiatric hospital, one recovered from her delusion.  OK, but that was women, if you put three guys together who all believe they're Jesus, there's probably going to be a fight, because each one would declare the other two to be blasphemers and impostors, while of course, claiming to be the genuine article himself. 

Unfortunately, the doctor's methods didn't really work here - he noticed that the three men were writing letters to various people that were never answered, so he wrote fake letters back to the men, in one case pretending to be the psych hospital administrator.  Umm, don't lie to Jesus, dude, I think that's breaking one of the commandments, and Jesus won't be happy when he finds out.  MIlton Rokeach (the real doctor, not the one in the film) wrote a book about the unique therapy, and in the book, while he claimed that while he didn't cure the three Christs of their delusions, he was cured of his own godlike delusion that he could manipulate them out of their beliefs.  Yep, the doctor was the only one who became more aware, but also lost his own faith in the psychiatric process, isn't that an ironic twist? 

It just feels like there's something MISSING here, because the film never really even tries to get into WHY these men think they're Jesus, or WHAT the implications are of all that.  Do they even have the same reason for their delusions, or do they maybe have three different reasons?  I can't even tell, because the film never even goes there. So, then, umm, what's the point of even telling this story, if we can't even get a grasp on what it all means?  

There's a bit of a throwaway scene where Dr. Stone, played by Richard Gere, is interacting with his daughters, one of whom is being called names at school.  He deliberately mixes up the names of his two daughters, Shirley and Molly, to make a point - no matter what he calls them, it doesn't change who they ARE.  Therefore, it doesn't matter what any kids at school call them, for the same reason. That's brilliant, and good parenting to boot.  So, umm, why can't we see this same guy applying similar logic and reasoning to help cure his patients? 

There's plenty of stuff to work with - one of the Jesuses is a Little Person, so there's the possibility of him overcompensating with a God complex.  This one also listens to opera and asks to be returned to England, a place he's never been.  Another Jesus keeps taking showers because he's trying to get rid of a constant stench, but one that only he can smell.  His wife died after a botched abortion, so there's probably a lot of guilt driving his actions.  The third Jesus is the quiet one, but it's always the quiet ones you have to look out for, right?  He's the son of an abusive religious fanatic, so I don't know, maybe start looking into THAT?

But then the film gets distracted by SO many other things - the battles with the hospital administrators, the back-story of the attractive young research assistant that all the Jesuses have the hots for, and the social drinking of the doctor's wife, which probably increased when she saw the attractive young research assistant that her husband was hanging out with, because she remembers when SHE was the attractive young research assistant.  

The movie gets so bogged down in all of THAT that it never really gets around to any of the WHY of the God complex, and then, before you know it, the movie's over and overall, we haven't really learned anything.  What a shame, there's just no Third Act here and it just stops, with the doctor getting fired, therefore his therapies are discontinued. But if you weren't going to finish the story, maybe it would have been better to never start it in the first place. 

Also starring Richard Gere (last seen in "Shall We Dance?"), Julianna Margulies (last seen in "The Upside"), Peter Dinklage (last heard in "The Croods: A New Age"), Walton Goggins (last seen in "Tomb Raider"), Kevin Pollak (last seen in "She's All That"), Charlotte Hope (last seen in "Allied"), Stephen Root (last seen in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"), Jane Alexander (last seen in "Feast of Love"), James Monroe Iglehart, Julian Acosta, Danny Deferrari (last seen in "Private Life"), Chris Bannow (last seen in "Not Fade Away"), Kathryn Leigh Scott, Christina Scherer (last seen in "The Intern"), Nancy Robinette (last seen in "Serial Mom"), Ripley Sobo (last seen in "Steve Jobs"), Ava Gallucci, 

RATING: 4 out of 10 verses of the "Chock Full O'Nuts" jingle

Tick, Tick...Boom!

Year 14, Day 106 - 4/16/22 - Movie #4,109

BEFORE: Lin-Manuel Miranda carries over to make a cameo in this film that he directed, and also introduced at the NYC theater where I work, a special screening where he did a Q&A.  Now, I'm not supposed to engage with the celebrity guests, the most I can do is interact with them a bit as I'm cuing them to take the stage.  I follow the rules, plus it's so much cooler to not be blown away by them when I'm breathing the same air as them, in the same room. Eh, you've seen one celebrity, you've seen them all (OK, not really...).  I've encountered perhaps more than my fair share of famous people, and only been struck speechless and bowled over twice - and one of those times was interacting with "Weird Al" Yankovic.  I mean, I respect LMM but Al is the real musical genius - and I think those two hang out with each other. 

If I hadn't dropped in "Vivo", then two actors would have carried over from "In the Heights" - the chain would have worked either way, it's funny like that sometimes.  But you may wonder, why didn't I include the filmed version of "Hamilton"?  Yeah, that would have made some sense here, but that's really just a filmed version of the staged play, not a true filmic adaptation - so I could have made it work, but part of me doesn't really think it qualifies as a "film".  Still, I've reviewed filmed versions of rock concerts, so there's an argument for it, but still, a film version of a play performed on stage just seems like it doesn't fit in.  I wouldn't really be judging the movie, I'd be rating the play, and sure, "Hamilton" is great, it doesn't need my help.  

This is NOT my Easter film, now I'm running a bit behind but I can still fudge the numbers a little bit and count the next film as my Easter film...

THE PLOT:  On the cusp of his 30th birthday, a promising young theater composer navigates love, friendship and the pressures of life as an artist in New York City. 

AFTER: I kind of have to read between the lines here, because this film doesn't give a lot of information away, pretty much the director is expecting that if you're watching, you're coming in with a ton of background information about who Jonathan Larson was and how he lived and worked, writing in a crappy apartment in the Village with a revolving door of roommates and people crashing there to help pay the rent. And then he finally got his break, a musical revue called "Tick, Tick...Boom" which was all about how hard it is to be a writer, with songs based on the things that happened to him during the struggle to write about how hard it is to be a writer.  This naturally leads me to think, "Geez, get OVER yourself already,,,"  This film partially focused on the AIDS epidemic of the 1980's and 90's, but it's almost as if the much more devastating disease ravaging the artistic community was the dreaded writer's block, they're essentially equivalent here. 

I was late to the "Rent" party, so I wish I enjoyed that film more, I wish I knew more about Jonathan Larson, but it's not really my world.  People now hold up Larson as something of a sacred cow in the theater world, because "Rent" really connected with so many people, and because he died just before its premiere.  Would the play "Rent" have been as successful had he lived?  Would he have produced something bigger and better after "Rent", or was that it for him?  Remember, also, that the story seen in "Rent" isn't an original one, he cribbed a lot from Puccini's "La Boheme", so that's kind of cheating, in a way, isn't it?  Steal from the best, I guess, or am I not supposed to point this out?  OK, the songs were original in "Rent" at least, so there's that, but how am I supposed to hold this guy up as some kind of genius if so much of the story was borrowed?  They put on Shakespeare plays all the time in New York, and very rarely do any of them get praised for their originality - maybe that version of "Hamlet" they did a couple years ago with a woman playing "Hamlet", but that's still just a twist on an old play, not a new one. Making the next play that's as important as "Hamlet", that's much more of a challenge. 

So I feel like I would have preferred to see a film about the making of "Rent", but then of course that film would have to admit that Larson just modernized "La Boheme", which is legalized theft.  That was his biggest success, so leaving it out seems like a rather glaring omission - watching him struggle and doubt himself just can't be as interesting, plus I've seen "writer's block" films a hundred times, and I no longer care for them. But showing the struggle, I get it, that's the point - however I think it also MISSES the point.  If we don't see the success after the writer's block, then something by definition is lacking. This is why I'm not a writer, because after a decade of failure I wouldn't keep trying, or more likely I would have given up after five years and found a new line of work, something honest like accounting or stocking grocery shelves. 

To be fair, Larson worked at the Moondance Diner, for over a decade - yep, that's honest work, especially on busy Sundays in Manhattan, where the brunch line was out the door.  But as his character says here, if you haven't made it on Broadway, then after a certain period of time, you're just a waiter with a hobby.  His words, not mine - so I argue that Larson was exactly that, but he got lucky at the end and then died in true rock-star fashion, and now he's venerated in much the same way we hold up Jim Morrison and Sid Vicious and Kurt Cobain on pedestals, as if all their work was phenomenal, and all I'm saying is, I'd like to see the proof of that. I've got respect for writers, especially successful ones, and I understand that almost nobody becomes successful overnight, it's a long, tedious process - but still, I wish some writers could find something to write about other than how hard it is to be a writer. 

The format here is also quite confusing, especially if you don't know much about Larson's career.  The "TTB" musical revue is the framing device, and then all the other scenes from his life leading up to that are peppered in between the songs, but since he's trying to write and preparing for a show during all of those scenes, it took me a while to realize he wasn't writing for the revue that we're also seeing, he was preparing for a sneak peek table read of "Superbia", which was a musical drama set in the future that was about fame and technology...and I'm guessing it was terrible.  But the format doesn't really work here unless you go into it with some kind of knowledge about which thing he's trying to write at each particular time. 

My guess here is that "Rent" became so huge over time, with its cult following, that the filmmakers here were very limited over what they could use, the songs were obviously out, so they had to go back into Larson's catalog and find other things.  Footage - forget about it, there's just a quick clip of one cast member dedicating the first performance (and all future ones) to Larson.  And there's probably a whole behind-the-scenes doc on the making of "Rent", so that ground couldn't be re-traveled here.  Yet by this film's own admission, that's what Larson was known for, that's the big hit that he was trying for, that's the justification for the years of working in the diner and struggling to make ends meet.  But this is the trend now, there's a new online series about the making of "The Godfather", there was a whole film about the making of "The Disaster Artist", there was "RKO-281" about the making of "Citizen Kane", and so on. We can never just have one thing now, eventually there will be a Netflix series that fictionalizes the making of every movie ever made. 

Also starring Andrew Garfield (last seen in "Spider-Man: No Way Home"), Alexandra Shipp (last seen in "Shaft" (2019)), Robin de Jesus, Vanessa Hudgens (last seen in "The Frozen Ground"), Joshua Henry, Jonathan Marc Sherman, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, Ben Levi Ross, Judith Light, Bradley Whitford (last seen in "The Cabin in the Woods"), Laura Benanti, Danielle Ferland, Micaela Diamond, Utkarsh Ambudkar (last seen in "Free Guy"), Gizel Jimenez, Kate Rockwell, Aneesa Folds, Joel Perez, Judy Kuhn, Danny Burstein (last seen in "The Family Fang"), Lauren Marcus, Richard Kind (last seen in "A Serious Man"), Tariq Trotter (last seen in "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping"), Ryan Vasquez, Joanna P. Adler (last seen in "Down to You"), Jelani Alladin, Chris "Shockwave" Sullivan.

with cameos from Roger Bart (last seen in "The Stepford Wives"), Chuck Cooper, André De Shields, Renée Elise Goldsberry (last seen in "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks"), Joel Grey (last seen in "Cabaret"), Wilson Jermaine Heredia (last seen in "Rent"), Beth Malone (last seen in "Brittany Runs a Marathon"), Howard McGillin, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Bebe Neuwirth (last seen in "Jumanji: The Next Level"), Adam Pascal (also last seen in "Rent"), Bernadette Peters (last seen in "Alice"), Phylicia Rashad (last heard in "Soul"), Chita Rivera (last seen in "Chicago"), Daphne Rubin-Vega (last seen in "In the Heights"), Phillipa Soo (last heard in "The One and Only Ivan"), Alex Lacamoire (last heard in "Vivo"), Marc Shaiman (last seen in "The Wedding Planner"), Stephen Schwartz (last seen in "Love, Gilda"), Christopher Jackson (also last seen in "In the Heights"), Luis A. Miranda Jr., and Vanessa Nadal, archive footage of Anthony Rapp (also last seen in "Rent"), Idina Menzel (last heard in "Frozen II"), Jonathan Larson and the voice of Stephen Sondheim.

RATING: 5 out of 10 books sold back to the Strand.