BEFORE: Kevin Hart carries over from "DC League of Super-Pets". I should have known, after a Dwayne Johnson chain, that a couple Kevin Hart films would be in store. They've made a lot of movies together. Also, just about a year ago (minus one day) I was using Kevin Hart as a link to go from "Fatherhood" to "The One and Only Dick Gregory". It's not that Father's Day was later last year, it really wasn't, but I had programmed a week about fathers (mostly) and "Fatherhood" was the back-up Father's Day movie, in addition to being my transition into the Summer Doc (& Rock) Bloc chain.
I went and double-checked my links for the summer, and I ran into something of a snag - there's a debate over whether a certain mega-star made a cameo in a certain Marvel movie, or not. News reports are mixed - I don't want to spoil a cameo for anybody, so I won't mention the star or the movie, but the only way to confirm for sure is to go and see the movie - then if I find out that star did NOT make a cameo, I'll be in trouble, because I was counting on using that as a link. Just to be on the safe side, I'm going to flip two movies around, add a new film on Netflix that I accidentally learned about the other day, and somehow MISSED adding it the month it came on the service. Then I just have to move one film from the September chain (where it was the middle films in a three-movie chain with the same actor) up to the July chain, to make a stronger link to that Marvel movie. There, I can sleep better now, and I can start going to the movie theater next week as planned. Just keep "The Flash" in theaters for a few more days, that's all I ask, even if it's under-performing, because I can't drop it.
I still have to double-up some time on July 4 weekend, but that should be done easily. Spacing the rest of July's films out to include six skip days, that's more difficult for me.
THE PLOT: The world's deadliest assassin and New York's biggest screw-up are mistaken for each other at a vacation rental cabin.
AFTER: I'm so used to seeing Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson together, and the size discrepancy being used for comedic purposes, that it makes me wonder if this film was written for the two of them, and then "The Rock" wasn't available. That would make some sense. Woody Harrelson is a great substitute here for the "tough guy" role, the special agent, the guy who's usually brought in to torture people for information, but also has a secret soft side that develops over time. Maybe Dwayne had a problem with the torture scenes, who knows?
It's the same comedic premise, though, as "Central Intelligence" or "Jumanji", one guy is big and strong and tough, and the other guy is smaller and weaker and talks a lot. Though they kind of flipped it in "Jumanji", didn't they, by using avatars that weren't like the humans behind them. However, if you just look at the avatars, then the casting of those two actors certainly worked, and it's the same basic idea here.
Kevin Hart plays Teddy, who's screwed up so many times that his friends and family just use his name as a shorthand verb for making a mess of things. "Boy, you really Teddy'ed that one..." He's been trying for years to move ahead in his sales job at Marty's Fitness and his latest idea is contact-less boxing, so you get all of the workout but suffer none of the damage, and his boss just absolutely hates the idea. Plus, he printed up hundreds of flyers without putting the gym's address or phone number on them. NITPICK POINT: There's a simple solution here, just print up a sticker with the gym's address, those flyers could totally be saved and used. But nobody asks me, do they? It's a symbol, however, of all the times he's screwed up - he just doesn't follow through on things, and I feel his pain. (I've made a whole list of things to get done this summer, including job-hunting, and now that I've made the list, I've started avoiding everything on it. It's a process, though.)
Teddy screws up again by not replacing the toner in his printer, so even though he bought a wonderful getaway spa resort package for his wife's birthday, he can't read the print-out of the address for the Virginia cabin he rented, and so while she's at the spa, he goes to the wrong cabin and gets mistaken for the hitman/torture expert from Toronto who's due to interrogate the prisoner in the basement, and get the information from him that somebody really shady needs.
NITPICK POINT #2: Again, there was a simple solution, the address was in the rental registration that probably got e-mailed to him, if he just checked the e-mail on his phone to find the address, really, there was no need to print out the reservation at all. But again, nobody asks me when they write these scripts if the plot points work.
This is what's needed to create the identity confusion, though, and this puts Teddy in touch with FBI agents who realize very quickly that he's not the Man From Toronto, but they still need him to pretend to be him, because the guy they arrested has connections, and there's a second phase of information that needs to be extracted. Also, because Teddy wasn't operating in stealth mode, someone took a photo of him entering the cabin, and now he's identified online as the hitman in question. This might be important later.
But of course, the real Man from Toronto shows up, and inserts himself into the operation to find out who is masquerading as him, and why he's not getting paid for the operation which has been royally screwed up (Teddy'ed) by somebody. The real hitman sneaks on to the plane heading to Puerto Rico and he presents himself to the client, coming face to face with Teddy, who's just been pretending. Can these men with opposing temperaments and skill sets work together to get the information for the client, and maybe come to an understanding in the process? More to the point, can Teddy get back to his wife in time and also explain why he lied about getting fired from his job? What could POSSIBLY go wrong with that plan?
Thankfully, Teddy's wife's best friend shows up to keep her company at the spa, and also there are plenty of extra FBI agents to escort her around to stores and spa treatments while Teddy works with the real Man from Toronto to complete the mission. Which is a bit far-fetched, by the way, it's got something to do with blowing up an embassy, or preventing an embassy from being blown up, and interrogating four men to determine which one has the necessary secret codes.
Along the way, they have to contend with the Man from Miami, the Man from Tokyo, the Man from Moscow, and the Men from Tacoma. I'm not sure how all those guys got to the Washington, DC area so fast, unless there was a hitman convention taking place nearby. Just saying - I realize that they don't all necessarily live in the cities they're originally from, but still, it takes time to get across the country or across the globe, and this film all seems to take place over a single weekend.
A lot of good comedy here, mixed with impressive action scenes, so I'm inclined to be nice again today with my rating. Like many films, this one had its production delayed by the pandemic, and it was originally scheduled for release in November 2020, but then in April 2021 it was back on the schedule, with a release date in January 2022. Considering what went down for two years I of course understand this, but I wonder if Hollywood has now caught up and released just about everything that got made late, because of course a lot of films got released in the past 12 months, and now we're looking at a summer schedule with several more blockbusters coming out - so when does the slowdown come, or are the studios spacing out the releases to cover the current writers strike? I'm just wondering when they're going to run out of material, so I can plan ahead for that.
Also starring Woody Harrelson (last seen in "After the Sunset"), Jasmine Mathews (last seen in "The Tomorrow War"), Kaley Cuoco (last heard in "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip"), Pierson Fode, Ellen Barkin (last seen in "Breaking News in Yuba County"), Jencarlos Canela, Ronnie Rowe (last seen in "A Simple Favor"), Alejandro De Hoyos, Lela Loren (last seen in "Snitch"), Rob Archer (last seen in "Undercover Grandpa"), Kate Drummond, Martin Roach (last seen in "Little Italy"), Patrick Garrow (last seen in "Robocop" (2014)), Jason MacDonald, Kyle Gatehouse, Marqus Bobesich, Alejandro Ampudia, Darrin Baker (last seen in "My Spy"), Vijay Mehta, Philip Yang, Daniel Kash, Felipe Aukai, Tig Fong, Al Vrkljan, Gene Abella, Byron Abalos, Patricia Casey, Tomohisa Yamashita, Oleg Taktarov (last seen in "Den of Thieves"), Glenn Ennis (last seen in "Cold Pursuit"), Justin Howell, Nathaniel Shuker, Bart Badzioch, Kyle James Butler,
RATING: 7 out of 10 orders of durian sorbet
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