BEFORE: Well, talk about a movie coming along at the right time - this one's only been on Hulu since November 3 of last year, so for me to get to it in just two months is me working at a really good rate, I'd say I'm catching up but I think we all know that catching up is impossible, the best I can do is just not be too far behind. I'm not even a week into 2024 but I've already covered a wide variety of movies - a few festival favorites, a foreign film, a documentary, and a big Disney remake. Now I can free-form a bit and start to have a little fun. I think the big movies for me this month might be "John Wick: Chapter 4", "The Whale" and "Babylon", then I've got a lot of connective tissue, namely films on Netflix and Hulu and Prime that I'm just looking to clear out, but I've got hundreds of films waiting in the wings to fill up the empty slots on my lists.
I'm due back at the theater today, for a screening of "Rebel Moon: Part One". I had to ask my sci-fi fan friends what this was, I'd never heard of it before. It's a Zack Snyder film that he once pitched to George Lucas as a potential "Star Wars" movie, but Lucas went a different direction for Episode VII (?) and eventually Snyder just made the film on his own - it's on Netflix already so I can just add it to the watchlist and maybe I can get to it in 2024, maybe I can't, we'll have to wait and see. Tomorrow there's a screening of "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom" and that's a little tempting, but it would mean coming into Manhattan on my day off, and I'm not inclined to do that, especially if we get snow tonight, and not if the film's going to be airing on HBO and MAX in, I'm guessing, just two months' time. I'd have to double-check, but I don't think it links to anything in my planned chain between now and St. Paddy's Day, so again, I'll just put it on the list and try to connect with it down the road, in April or thereafter. There's at least 300 films I'm saying that about, probably closer to 500 when I consider both lists, the "I have a copy on hand" list and then "It's streaming on one of the services I can access" list.
Awkwafina carries over from "The Little Mermaid" (2023). And Paul Reubens is listed in the credits for this film, that's great because I sent out my (really) long-distance dedication to him on January 1, meaning this whole year of movie-watching is done in his memory, and then he shows up posthumously five days later? That's kismet. The linking dictates all the possible directions, but I'm free to choose the direction that I want, or the one that links up best with the calendar, if I so choose. I have more freedom to control the path than you might think, in the end.
THE PLOT: A game-show-obsessed woman and her estranged sister work together to help cover their mother's gambling debts.
AFTER: Well, it's not a slam dunk tonight, but it's a pretty funny comedy, or maybe it's a tragi-comedy, I'm not sure what they were intending. Any personal feelings I have against Awkwafina and the types of characters she tends to play were kind of negated by all the self-deprecation inherent to Anne, and the topic of being on a popular quiz show, and all the comedy that came along with that. I don't exactly live in that world, because I'm not Asian and I don't have a screwed-up deadbeat sister, but I'm as consistently hardcore about watching "Jeopardy!" as Anne is about watching her show, "Can't Stop the Quiz". Because of course they couldn't use a real quiz show, they had to create one, and they had to make it different, both for legal reasons and to stand out as its own narrative.
Look, Awkwafina is free to carve out whatever nerdy Asian niche she wants to fill in the film industry, I've got no issue with that. If you want to think of her playing a certain "type" of nerdy self-deprecating Asian-American in "Neighbors 2", "The Farewell", "Ocean's Eight" and "Nora From Queens", it's fine, roll with it if that's working for you. If you get to do a animal's voice in an animated film like "The Angry Birds Movie 2" and that leads to similar roles in "The Bad Guys, "The Little Mermaid" and "Migration", whatever, let one job lead to another - I wish I had the balls to quit my job and focus on voice acting, but I'm too chicken, so it's just something I do on the side when the opportunities present themselves. Maybe I'll never be a famous v/o artist, because I'm not willing to take the risk. So probably it's just my hang-up, and I'm jealous that she gets to be in movies while I'm stuck behind the scenes helping to make them.
Risk is a big thing for me, and the topic comes back when you start to talk about game shows. In the world I DO live in, I've passed the Jeopardy! test maybe five or six times over the years, but never made it to the show. Let me clarify - I've passed the WRITTEN test or the ONLINE test five or six times, but then there is a second stage, which is playing a mock game live in front of the show's scouts. They're looking for a number of things - are you vibrant, are you personable, are you talkative, do you have interesting stories about yourself to tell, and then during the game, if you get a question right, do you pick the next clue right away to keep the game moving? I know I can do the last thing, but when it comes time to be friendly, vibrant, talkative and interesting, I tend to panic and shut down, which makes me none of those things. Once or perhaps twice I've managed to fake it, and I got to the stage where they take my photograph and tell me that they COULD call me over the next few months, so I should be ready to drop everything and fly to California on a few days notice. However, both times that call never came, which only feeds that feeling that I'm just not good on camera, either in appearance or in my mannerisms. So yeah, I've felt all the things that Anne Yum goes through here, the self-doubt, the performance anxiety, the feeling that even if I'm good at trivia the odds will somehow be stacked against me, and with my luck they'll put me up against a long-time champion who can't be dethroned, and I'll just be another loser in a long line of losers who lost to THAT player who was either decidedly better or in the middle of a hot streak.
(Similar experience with "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire", I passed the written test three or four times, no problem, but when it came to being vibrant, animated and excited, that's when I couldn't break out of my shell and be someone who I'm not, except that one time where I really focused on faking THAT instead of answering the questions, and it almost worked. They also took my photo and told me I was in their files, and I might get a call over the next few months, but it never came.)
What I understand about the "Jeopardy!" process, should I ever try out again and be so lucky to get called for the show, is that there's a network of talent coordinators who've made the process as easy as possible for the contestants, like there's a hotel where all the contestants stay, there's a shuttle bus that takes them to the set each day, there are hair and wardrobe people so that contestants can just focus on playing the game. They tape five games in a day so if you win three or four times, that still could just be one day of your life on set instead of nearly a week. And the third place contestant wins $1,000 now, which could easily be greater than the cost of a return flight to L.A. and two nights hotel, so really, there's no reason to NOT do this, because even if you lose, your travel expenses will be covered. The travel costs only build up if you win more than five games in a row, and by then you should theoretically have enough money to cover it, even if that means going back to L.A. a few times. And if you win 10, 20, 30 games, then who gives a crap because you're a real player and you're rich, you can take a leave of absence or quit your job and not worry about things for a while.
So what I have to do is to work up the confidence to try out again, and not just be like Anne, who never misses the show and calls out all the answers at home. Obviously like me she would be GREAT at answering the questions, but being on the show also means that people will SEE you on TV, people will then KNOW that you're a freak, you'll hear from friends and co-workers you lost touch with years ago, and then the people who didn't know you before, well, they're all going to laugh at you, aren't they? And then it's just grammar school all over again, isn't it? You're too fat, your voice sounds weird and you do that strange nervous thing with your hands. Even if you manage to work out that timing thing with the buzzer and you should do well for a while, then you're going to get a Daily Double, the camera's going to be focused on you and you could blow it, right there, in front of the whole world, you're going to forget who Zachary Taylor's VP was, even though you wrote an essay about how Millard Fillmore became President for U.S. History class in 10th grade, you idiot.
Anyway, enough about my hang-ups. There's so much more to like about this film that it ended up winning me over - Anne's got a pug dog named Mr. Linguini that pretty much steals the whole movie. The dog gets pet-napped by Chinese bookies because Anne's mom owes them so much money, and she's flown off to Macao with her new boyfriend, and the tongs still want to collect that money. So Anne's either got to sell her eggs for cash, or face her fears and try out for the game show that she's watched every night since she was a small child. Anne's sister, Jenny, who showed up thinking that their mom was dead, not just AWOL, is there to act as Anne's life-coach-slash-support system-slash-drug dealer, even though her own life is a mess and she's currently living out of her car. But isn't that just the way, that people who become life coaches don't always have their own lives in order? (See also: Jackie from the "Roseanne"/"The Conners" show)
Sure, the film falls back on Asian stereotypes a lot - the older Asians are addicted to gambling, the younger ones desperately want their parents' approval but since they're not doctors or lawyers they can't ever GET it, they're terrible drivers, they either drift through life without purpose or get stuck in dead-end jobs with no hope for advancing. Yeah, all that and more. It's maybe a bit hard to say where the stereotypes leave off and the individuals' problems start, but hey, at least the stereotypes save a lot of time when it comes to fleshing out these characters.
Sibling rivalry, career delusions, fear of failure, fear of success, stressing out over money, having anxiety over having a pet instead of children, having anxiety over LOSING that pet, so really the movie is all one big ball of stress from start to finish, but isn't life like that sometimes?
There's also the "Can't Stop the Quiz" game itself, and come on, we know from the start that Anne's going to end up on the show, one way or the other. There's a contestant on the show who's got the show's third-longest winning streak, and he's so entrenched that he's got winning down to a science, and it's not hard to see that the film's going to come down to a showdown between him and Anne. Writers call this "parallel storylines", which is really a misnomer, because in geometry parallel lines never meet, but parallel storylines always do, or if they don't, then the story feels incomplete and the audience feels unfulfilled. So the film finds its third gear later on, when Anne finally gets that call to come out to L.A.
You can think of Anne's opponent, Ron Heacock, as sort of a Ken Jennings-type, only he's much more of an a-hole. Ken, of course, became one of the game's longest-running champions after they changed the rules to allow more than five victories on "Jeopardy!" and now he hosts the show, and he does a great job. (Remember that the show's former producer, Mike Richards, tried out a number of potential hosts before selecting HIMSELF, and then got called on the carpet for that, and rightfully so. Actually he got cancelled because of harassment lawsuits from models on "The Price Is Right", but he SHOULD have been fired for auditioning dozens of hosts and then selecting himself, it was a blatant conflict of interest.) Or maybe Ron Heacock could remind you of "Jeopardy James" Holzhauer, who was even more of an a-hole, your choice. Will Ferrell plays the show's Alex-Trebek-like host, Terry McTeer, which makes sense because Ferrell played Trebek several times on "SNL", despite not looking or sounding much like him. Here the host is a much more sympathetic character, of course because we all miss Alex so much, and anything people maybe DIDN'T like about him has been ignored or forgiven since he died.
There's only one Jeopardy!-like part of this quiz show's three sections, and it's called "The Blitz". The second round is very different, where contestants have to name all of the possible answers in a set of things (multiple Super-Bowl winning teams, or one-syllable words with no rhymes) and this, of course, is what Anne is the best at, even if she blanked out for most of Round 1. And then the third round is "Say it or Show It", which is a lot like charades, and this sets up the potential for something akin to her "Slumdog Millionaire" moment, if she's willing to take the chance and put herself out there, looking quite ridiculous on camera, but simultaneously getting on the same page as her sister and mending that relationship at the same time. It's a bit too simplistic perhaps, but also a brilliant way to tie everything together. Ron is revealed as the petty a-hole that he really is, Anne gets revenge on her annoying next-door neighbor, and Paul Reubens shows up, who cares if he's confused with another actor, it's just good to see him one last time. Anne gets a new job, Jenny gets a place to live and Mr. Linguini gets a new companion - it's all maybe a little too perfect, but hey, sometimes a risk pays off.
Now I have to wonder if the universe is sending ME a message - the first film this year was about someone changing careers several times, and now there's a film about someone facing their fears and finally going on that game-show she'd been practicing for YEARS to be on, and that's pretty much where my head is at, too. Maybe it's time for me to try the Jeopardy! online test again. If I don't do it now, then when else am I going to do it? My concern is that I'm not up on current music and such, so maybe it's better for me to wait until I'm eligible for the Seniors Tournament, which, honestly, isn't that far off for me.
Also starring Sandra Oh (last heard in "Turning Red"), Will Ferrell (last seen in "The Ladies Man"), Holland Taylor (last seen in "Gloria Bell"), Jason Schwartzman (last seen in "Asteroid City"), Tawny Newsome (last seen in "How It Ends"), Paul Reubens (last seen in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"), Jon “Dumbfoundead” Park (last heard in "Raya and the Last Dragon"), Camrus Johnson (last seen in "After Class"), Angela Trimbur (last seen in "Horse Girl"), Tony Hale (last seen in "Clifford the Big Red Dog"), Justin Davis, Davina Reid, Jodi Hou, Shirley Chen, Christine Lin, Alan Heitz, Betsy Holt, Matt Cordova (last seen in "80 for Brady"), Amy Tolsky (ditto), Jane Kim (last seen in "Thor: Love and Thunder"), Luke Kim, Sarah Grace Welbourn, Hailey Perng, Dave Beaudrie, Charles Green (last seen in "Irresistible"), Ammie Masterson, Derek Roberts (last seen in "Term Life"), Ned Yousef, Joe Chrest (last seen in "Assassination Nation"), Maria Bamford (last seen in "The Bubble"), Annie Karstens, Al Bayan, Atul Singh, Nicole Appleby, Esme Salzman, Larry Weissman, Eddie Davies, Blake Rosier, Choppy Guillotte (last seen in "First Man"), Mary Claire Smythe, Heather Alexander and the voice of Phil LaMarr (last heard in "The Lion King" (2019)).
RATING: 6 out of 10 hair extensions
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