Another weekend, another movie and tonight Robbie's Reviews is hitting the comedic flick of the week with a few of his family members and friends. In a made for television name, tonight's film promises the possibility of some scenes that are going to be funny, but probably cringe worthy at the inappropriate scenarios at hand. As usual though, I'm happy to share my thoughts on the subject matter. So enough chatter, time to review:
Title: Blockers
Director: Kay Cannon
Writers:
Brian Kehoe, Jim Kehoe
Stars:
Leslie Mann, John Cena, Ramona Young
LIKES:
-Pace: Many comedy movies have issues with pacing, often falling to the extremes and spoiling the atmosphere of the movie. Blockers manages to keep much of the movie nicely balanced, spending enough time to deliver laughs, but escape drawing it out for too long to grow stale. The story continues to move, keeping the movie fun and manages to avoid dragging.
-Story/Layout: Cannon's direction finally returns to the quality I have longed for since Pitch Perfect. Breaking from the series, this directors was able to lay a nice story down as the foundation, anchoring the comedy to a relevant point and thereby maximizing the laughs. Too balance the chaos though, the movie actually drops some character development into the mix, helping evolve the characters from simplistic idiots with extreme flaws and have you like them in the end. Then to throw some morals into the mix, some of which have some class and heart to them, to help pull you into this...adventure in parenting.
-Dynamic Comedy: A comedy has to have pizazz, remain engaging, and often take a few turns to really remain entertaining to me. Blockers, despite all the wrong moments, managed to accomplish this for the audience and me chuckling/laughing through much of the movie. This movie pulls no punches, spreading the humor amongst the genres of sexual promiscuity, slapstick humor, comedic banter, college antics, the awkwardness of sex, and surprisingly a lot of popular culture references. With the writing keeping all these antics adequately mixed and pertinent to the story, they delivered a very fun film to deliver on the promise of laughs, laughs, laughs.
-John Cena: For this reviewer, the real champion of this film was the wrestling legend himself. Cena accomplished so much in this film in the way of comedy, managing to take the over-the-top writing of a naïve, overprotective parent and make it more humorous than annoying. His delivery has that tone that adds that necessary factor to maximize laughs, and seeing his facial expressions as he continues to fall into the strangest traditions only helps to leave you chuckling so hard you might drown out the speakers.
Dislikes:
-Lazy Writing: While much of the writing is well done, filled with wit and pizazz, the one element that fails is the language aspect. While cursing may not be as annoying to other fans, having some of the words aimlessly thrown around just isn't my cup of tea. It's lazy to throw in cursing as much of the sentence fillers and Blockers fails this challenge at times.
-Banter Comedy/Annoying Moments: Banter comedy is a mixed bag of tricks for me, but seldom has a movie found banter to make me laugh. Blockers had a few moments, but there are times where the banter is drawn out too long to remain entertaining. Even more so, some of the banter lacked that comedic magic the rest of the film had, resorting to mundane arguing that dragged on a little to long for me, adding unnecessary length.
-Inappropriate Moments: Rated R movies continue to push the envelope for what can be on screen, and Blockers shows plenty of private areas in situations I never want to see again. Still, this film is all about strapping on a pair and getting ready to see things that twenty years ago would never land in a theater showing, some of which make Fifty Shades scenes look like child's play. While not the worst I've seen, there were plenty of uncomfortable moments that weren't so humorous as disgusting to me.
-Some Story Flops: Past the comedic portion though, the only other major dislike I had was some of the story choices they made. There are a lot of moving elements in this movie, and unfortunately the writing/directing dropped some major plot points. Ike Barinholtz's character's story elements take the biggest hits of the bunch, elements that merely tease at a deeper/richer tale that could be relevant to many. In addition, there are some other components that are somewhat forced into the mix, most of these being gross stereotypes of American lifestyle that are semi-entertaining, but nothing more than a visual representation of how superficial we can be. There were even a few characters not needed for this film, so that more annoying moments could sneak in (I'm looking at you wife of Ike).
The VERDICT:
Blockers is by far one of the better comedies to move back into theaters for the longest time. While not the wittiest tale to grace the theaters, it does accomplish a lot of over the top moments to bring laugh after laughs, thanks again John Cena. Even better, is the story to keep this dynamic comedy moving, with a pace that is incredibly structured to maximize everything they wished to bring this. Yet, the movie still suffers from lazy writing at times, going down lackluster dialogue, overdone banter, predictable plot lines, and some incidents that cross way over the line. Still, the movie accomplishes the goals of superficial laughs and a cute, weird tale earning it some bonus points. Worth a trip to the theater? Would say no, but it really works for a group movie so can be good to visit in this case, otherwise, stay home for this film.
My scores are:
Comedy: 8.0
Movie Overall: 6.5-7.0
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