Category: Home Video

What We Do in the Shadows by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi is the best mockumentary I have seen since ‘This is Spinal Tap’.  I laughed the whole way through.  The absurdity and the awkwardness of old-school vampires sharing a flat in Wellington New Zealand is just awesome.  The boys from Flight of the Concords really know their comedy.

This movie just gets everything right.  Like the fact for the most part no one thinks it is strange that a camera crew is following around a group of vampires, and how the vampires are completely clueless as to how modern society works.  It is a slow motion train wreck of comedy in the best possible sense.  I couldn’t believe some of the gags they put on screen.  Great stuff all around!

Of course this movie wouldn’t have worked without the actors’ complete commitment to being absurd, and these guys really do commit.  I am not sure how they got through any of their scenes with a straight face.  It must have taken them months to film What We Do in the Shadows just due to all the laugh-takes.

Most importantly this movie didn’t outlast its premises.  It is short, but I think too many comedies suffer because they try and pad the running time, but What We Do in the Shadows is eighty-five minutes of fun!  They only left in the really funny bits.  Other comedy directors should follow their example.

Quick note, this movie does earn its ‘R’ rating with gore and some swearing, so if those things offend you be warned.  For everyone else, if the thought of ‘This is Spinal Tap’ with vampires sounds funny, I can assure you that it is, and I can’t wait for the sequel ‘We’re Wolves’!  Though from what I hear it may be a long wait since all of these talented fellows now find themselves ‘in demand’.

You would have thought I would have learned my lesson about watching 80’s cartoon movies based purely on nostalgia with the She-Ra/He-Man Christmas Special, but no, when my wife and I were looking for a movie for Lil’ Shmee to watch we saw that the Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation was free On Demand and thought, “This will be fun!”.  It was not fun.  It was an hour’s worth of visual punishment.  Nothing about this ‘film’ made any sense, and it was some of the worst animation I have ever seen.

The ‘movie’ tells the origins of the titular Care Bears and their Care Bear Cousins while introducing the two founding Care Bears: True Heart Bear and Noble Heart Horse.  Meanwhile Dark Heart (pretty much Satan) is terrorizing the world’s longest and least supervised summer camp.  I can only guess that the camp counselors all died of boredom.  I mean the Care Bears and their Cousins grow up while these poor kids are still at camp.  Anyway, the Care Bears need to stop Dark Heart from making this camp exciting or something otherwise the world will fall under his influence.

I think my description of Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation makes it sound much more coherent than it is.  This ‘movie’ couldn’t follow a plotline if you held a gun to its figurative head.  Now I know this ‘film’ was pure advertising for two new Care Bears and Baby Care Bears, but it is bad when a He-Man Christmas movie has more artistic merit.  If I was the director and I read the ‘script’ I think I would have told to the writer, “Hey, I think you can do better!”  I mean, I know the ‘movie’ had a writer, I looked him up on its Wikipedia page.

I guess what I am saying is, if you have fond memories of Care Bears related media, your probably shouldn’t re-watch any of it.  It makes the stuff the kids watch today look like Shakespeare.  If the Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation is anything to go off of the 80’s were a cartoon sinkhole that should be filled in.  This ‘movie’ should not be watched under any circumstances.

I am going to be upfront, I am reviewing Exodus: Gods and Kings from the point of view of a Christian that believes in the Bible’s version of the Exodus, but I am pretty sure that if I was a skeptic, I still wouldn’t have liked or understood it.  Leaving me to wonder who this movie was for.  People that kind of believe in the events of Exodus?  Maybe ones that want a Moses that isn’t sure of what God is up to?  I don’t know, and I don’t think this movie does either.

If you have ever heard the Bible story of Moses (Christian Bale) and the plagues of Egypt, you will kind of know what is going on in this movie.  I say kind of because they change up the events quite a bit, and mostly for pointless reasons.  Well, I should say that I didn’t see the point.  I would love to hear Ridley Scott’s reasoning.

Here is the deal, if they were going to change up the story so that the plagues or the Exodus were less miraculous, I could understand it.  I wouldn’t like it, but I could understand the story the writing team was trying to tell.  With Exodus: Gods and Kings, they kind of do that, but then made it so that it would still be impossible without God’s help and intervention.  If you are going to make a movie about miracles, you should just tell the Biblical version.  If not, leave God out of it.

The odd story changes aside, had the movie been interesting or gripping, I probably would have let it all slide for the sake of entertainment.  Sadly Exodus: Gods and Kings is a pretty boring flick.  They go through all the plagues pretty matter-of-fact-ly (even if incorrectly), and they never build any tension.  Plus, they turned Moses and God in to jerks, so they are hard to empathize with.  Meanwhile, the Pharaoh is a spoiled brat, so it is not like they were trying to turn the story on its head either.  They just made everyone unlikable.

I am not a huge social justice crusader, but it does stick out that none of the main characters of Gods and Kings are Jewish or Egyptian.  It feels like in the twenty-teens we could find some actors of the proper ethnicity to fill at least some of these roles.  I like Christian Bale and Joel Edgerton (Pharaoh) quite a bit, but they are odd choices for the leads in this film.

Had Exodus: Gods and Kings been good, I probably wouldn’t have been so hard on it for its crazy story and curious casting choices, but it wasn’t, so all I could think about while watching this movie is why Moses was a self-centered jerk and what all theses British people were doing in Egypt.  A big screen Exodus could have been a lot of fun, but someone forgot to tell Ridley Scott that.