Review: "Stuber"

Since “Stuber” isn’t so much a coherent movie as a collection of (allegedly) comedic elements, let’s do this review in bullets.

• Dave Bautista isn’t funny unless he’s trying not to be funny, a la the deadpan Drax in the “Guardians of the Galaxy” flicks.

• Kumail Nanjiani plays a harried Uber driver… which he also played in his breakout hit, “The Big Sick.” Hopefully this will be his last such role, otherwise he will be the victim of the weirdest typecasting in Hollywood history. “I know, let’s get that rideshare guy!”

• I can only imagine the pitch for this movie: “Let’s do a buddy cop movie where the tough one just had LASIK so he can’t see and the other guy’s a touchy/feely wimp.”

• This isn’t actually how laser eye surgery works. You’re light-sensitive for a while, but can see clearly right after. If you’re functionally blind post-procedure, call an ambulance and a lawyer.

• A prologue scene shows the partner of Vic (Bautista) getting killed due in part to his losing his thick glasses during a fight, hence the LASIK.

• The title comes from the fact Nanjiani’s character is named Stu, and his noxious bro-dude boss (Jimmy Tatro) at his day job at a sporting goods store attaches the Uber appellation to mock him. Stu actually prefers “FIVESTAR,” the license plate on his electric Nissan Leaf. He’s obsessed with maintaining a high star rating from his riders, which doesn’t work out so well.

• Vic crashes his car trying to hunt down the drug dealer, Teijo (Iko Uwais), who killed his partner while doing lots of parkour. Despite being unable to see well enough to work his phone the entire rest of the movie, Vic somehow manages to use it to summon Stu, and then basically kidnaps him for the rest of the way on “official police business.”

• Stu repeatedly mentions that his car is a lease, especially as it gets progressively blasted apart by gunfire and crashes as the movie goes on. This seems unwise, since Uber drivers put a tremendous amount of miles on their cars and leases nearly always include strict mileage riders.

• Stu’s dream is to save up enough money so he can partner up with his friend Becca (Betty Gilpin) on a women-only spin gym to be called “Spinsters,” which is an even worse moniker than Stuber. 

• Stu secretly pines for Becca, and is prevented from hooking up with her by Vic forcing him to ferry him around, beating up criminals and otherwise treating the Bill of Rights like toilet paper.

• Vic is having problems relating to his daughter (Natalie Morales), because he’s always about the job and never there. Clichéd Screenwriting 101 courtesy of Tripper Clancy.

• Bautista is an intriguing physical specimen for the screen. He seems twice as wide as a normal human, could arguably claim to be a member of any race, and has a scant, mangy head of hair that seems to be at least 40% Toppik. He actually looks more normal in the Drax getup.

• While otherwise having the look and feel of a slightly cheeky comedy, the movie is rated “R” for short bursts of violence and peen. 

• Yes, I should’ve said “bullet points” at the beginning of this review, but since it’s a surprisingly bloody shoot-em-up, that was a joke. Not a very good one, I’ll admit. But still funnier than anything in “Stuber.”

Video review: "Smallfoot"

“Smallfoot” is a better idea than movie. The twist is that in this story, bigfoots really exist, except to them we’re the mythological and frightening creatures. It’s a cool concept that gets watered down into a standard kiddie film with boingy action and a slathered-on life-lessons theme.

Channing Tatum voices Migo, a young yeti who is about to take over the prestigious job of gong-ringer. This means making the sun rise by catapulting himself across their Himalayan mountain village and slamming his head into a massive gong. His dad (Danny DeVito) has held the position for many years, and has literally shrunk in the job.

A lot of the things the yetis do are like that -- they’re fun but don’t make much sense. Still, it’s a bustling place with a lot of joy.

They have some strange laws, though, enforced by the stoic Stonekeeper (Common), who wears a robe consisting of stone tiles, each one inscribed with a law known to be true. One of them reads, “There is no such thing as a smallfoot.” Odd that they would have a word and a rule for something that supposedly doesn’t exist.

Soon enough Migo stumbles across a real smallfoot, aka human, in the form of Percy Patterson (James Corden), a down-market wildlife television personality who has come to the Himalayas in order to fake a bigfoot sighting and pump up his ratings. Then he runs into the real thing, they become fast friends and Migo takes him back to his mountaintop village.

This puts him in conflict with the Stonekeeper and the yetis’ entire belief system. But with a few musical numbers and antics, everything will turn out all right.

“Smallfoot” is animation for the whole family, or at least the sort under age 10. It’s a perfect movie for home video, since parents can hit the ‘play’ button and then find something better to do.

Video extras are decent, and include a new animated short, “Super Soozie,” about a yeti toddler. There’s also a sing-along mode, three music videos and a couple of making-of featurettes.

Movie: 
 


Extras:

Review: "Smallfoot"

Everybody’s a monster to somebody.

In this age of peak tribalism, people tend to cluster in like groups and don’t question the precepts of what they’re told. Especially for those whom life is good, it’s easy to stay in the bubble and enjoy. Everyone else is a potential enemy.

That’s the message of “Smallfoot,” a modestly entertaining animation flick that will certainly thrill wee ones more than adults. I found the themes heavy-handed and the pacing rather draggy.

I bet kids under age 10 will love it, though, and that’s who it’s aimed squarely at.

Channing Tatum, really reaching for the upper register of his voice, plays Migo, a young yeti -- as in bigfoot, sasquatch, etc. It turns out bigfoots (feet?) are real, and living in bliss at the top of a cloud-covered mountain the Himalayas. Daily life is a pleasant grind of chores, some of which make little sense, and good times.

Migo goes about 20 feet tall, has luminous ivory-colored fur, no nose and two horns on his head, one broken. He sort of resembles a distant cousin of Sully from the “Monsters Inc.” movies.

Migo’s dad, Dorgle, is the head gong-ringer, whose job is to be catapulted across the top of the village each daybreak and smash his head into the giant gong that beckons the emergence of the sun, which in their lore is a sun-snail traveling across the sky. (Sounds loopy, but it isn’t worse than some human mythology I’ve heard.)

Time has taken its toll: Dorgle is rather short for a yeti -- Danny DeVito does the voice; get it? -- but used to be taller than the towering Migo. Soon he will pass the mantle to his enthusiastic son.

The yetis have their laws written in stones, quite literally. Their leader is the Stonekeeper (Common), who wears tiles of stones formed into a robe, each one inscribed with a truth that goes unquestioned. The weight of the law is a real thing in this case. “It takes a strong backbone,” Stonekeeper says.

Chief among their laws is, “There is no such thing as a smallfoot,” which is their word for humans. You might think it odd that there is a law just to disprove a negative, and there are a few quiet naysayers amongst the yeti. Among them is Gwangi, the largest of their kinds voiced quite well by LeBron James, and secretly their leader is Meechee (Zendaya), the Stonekeeper’s daughter.

Migo meets up with a smallfoot but his claims are discredited and he is banished. In his exile he journeys to the human town below the mountain and bumps into Percy Patterson (James Corden), a schmaltzy British wildlife broadcaster. Think Steve Irwin, but less brave and more annoying.

His plan was to fake a yeti sighting to save his fading career. So when Migo carries him back to his village as proof, it’s a boon to them both.

I liked how screenwriters Clare Sera and Karey Kirkpatrick (the latter also directed) handle the language barrier. To the humans, yetis sound like roaring bear-lions; to the yetis, humans make squeaky mouse-talk.

There are several songs in “Smallfoot,” though I’d call this more a movie with musical interludes than a straight-up musical. By far the best is “Let It Lie,” with Common rapping out the hidden history of the yeti.

A middling bit of animation, “Smallfoot” is built for small children to love and parents to endure. Business proposal: movie theaters start featuring double bills in which grownups drop off their kids to see this in a supervised theater while they pop next door for something more to their tastes.

Review: "22 Jump Street"

If you're tempted to make a joke about "22 Jump Street," the sequel to the hit comedy starring Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill, continuing with future iterations of "23 Jump Street," and so on, don't bother. The movie has already beaten you to the punch at poking fun at itself.

In fact, one of the most refreshing thing about this reboot of the 1980s TV show is that it gleefully wallows in its own crass commercialism. It's a wicked send-up of not only the whole buddy-cop genre, but of itself.

Our film comedies have now reached the level of ironic detachment where the snake is eating its own tail. Nothing we see is meant to be taken at face value. So the stars aren't playing the roles of undercover cops posing as college students -- one the brainy dweeb and the other the lunkhead bruiser -- but the parody versions of them.

At one point, Hill and Tatum walk into their new "undercover" police headquarters, which happens to be right across the street from their old one. Next door, the "23 Jump Street Apartments" are currently under construction.

If you think that's hip and hilarious, wait till the end credits, which takes the same joke and runs it into the end zone, spikes the ball, bursts out of the stadium into the parking lot, and keeps going.

After inept rookie cops Schmidt and Jenko (Hill and Tatum, respectively) managed to break up a huge high school drug ring, they're tasked with doing the same thing again at MC State. When Schmidt tries to suggest other approaches, their deputy chief (Nick Offerman) sternly enforces the rule of sequels: do exactly the same thing as last time.

This they do, with the socially awkward Schmidt struggling to fit into the college party scene, while Jenko makes the football team as a walk-on and bonds with their charismatic quarterback (Wyatt Russell), who may or may not be lynchpin of campus narcotics trafficking.

The specifics of the plot are so tiresome that co-directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller and their trio of screenwriters barely even bother to pay attention to them. The movie mostly jumps from scene to scene, generally involving Hill and Tatum spewing out motormouth gibberish, making fools of themselves while also commenting on the proceedings as they're unfolding. The movie doesn't so much do jokes as stages uncomfortable situations.

This is the comedy of embarrassment. Much of this is painful to watch, and in seeing our boys squirm we are intended to derive laughs.

And there are a lot of them, though there are long stretches in the middle where we feel more sorry for the people we're following than amused by them.

The lead actors are both in their 30s, and look it, and one of the running gags is that absolutely no one they meet believes they are college age.

"I'm 19," Schmidt says, straight-faced.

"Nineteen minutes late to the pinochle game?" a snarky girl responds.

After awhile, though, the shtick starts to wear thin and we know everything that's going to happen -- like that no gunfight can commence without an extended back-and-forth of insults and quips between the antagonists.

At nearly two hours long, "22 Jump Street" far outstays its welcome. Like an actual college party, it's raucous and intoxicating for awhile, but after 90 minutes you've seen all there is to see, and the music shuffle starts to repeat.