Video review: "Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw"

I didn’t know that a movie franchise could “present” a spinoff, but I’m not sure if anybody would buy a ticket to “Hobbs & Shaw” if they didn’t know it was part of the “Fast & Furious” universe. But it made its pile of money, helped by the branding as well as the star power of Dwayne Johnson and, to a much lesser extent, Jason Statham.

They played late-addition fringe characters next to Vin Diesel and his company of street racers, and here get their own 2-plus-hour movie to smack people around and toss strangle-throated one-liners and occasionally drive cars.

I pretty well loathed “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw,” because it’s a totally uninteresting garbage movie. The silliness of the title, complete with dueling ampersands, only adds to the reasons to mock it.

Personally I would’ve called the movie “Bald Guys Grunt and Kick People” and be done with it.

Johnson is Hobbs, a U.S. government badass who gets loaned out for all sorts of tough jobs. Statham is Shaw, a criminal turned British MI6 agent who appreciates the finer things in life. They’re thrown together to track down Snowflake, a viral weapon with the potential to kill everyone on Earth.

Idris Elba plays the villain, Brixton Lore, who’s been cybernetically augmented so he’s more than a match for Hobbs and Shaw in hand-to-hand combat, even together. Vanessa Kirby plays Shaw’s sister, a capable agent in her own right who gets in between the two alpha dudes.

There’s a car-chasing-a-helicopter scene that’s not too bad, and later on the gang travels to Hobbs’ homeland of Samoa so they can have an old-school beat-down against the bad guys using medieval weapons and traps.

This is an egregiously dumb, ugly movie. I’m torn between laughing at it and hating it.

Bonus features are in inverse proportion to the quality of the film. There’s a feature-length commentary track with director David Leitch; extended and deleted scenes; an alternate opening; and a baker’s dozen of documentary shorts focusing on various aspects of production, from the star duo pairing to the stunt coordination.

Movie: D-
Extras: B+

Video review: "The Secret LIfe of Pets 2"

Movies like “The Secret Life of Pets 2” are a perfect fit with home video, because they’re the sort of thing that kids will love and parents can use to buy themselves 86 minutes of precious free time.

I didn’t much care for either the first CGI animation film or this sequel, which basically takes the “Toy Story” concept and applies it to doggies, cats and a few other pet varieties. It’s a look at the adventures they have while we leave them at home.

Max, the Jack Russell Terrier voiced by Patton Oswalt, is more or less the protagonist, though Kevin Hart puts in a challenge as Snowball, an excitable rabbit who dresses like a superhero and starts to imagine he is one, too. Each goes off on their own adventure through the big city, with a third story thread headlined by Gidget, the snooty Pomeranian voiced by Jenny Slater.

I won’t belabor you with a plot summary, other than to say there’s a lot of chases, slightly scary encounters with some tough circus animals and more than a little gastrointestinal humor.

It’s middle-of-the-road moviemaking expressly aimed at kids.

I’m not advocating for skipping movies at the theater, which would render my endeavor rather moot, or with letting your television act as a 24/7 babysitter. What I am saying is that you should spend quality time with your kids, while acknowledging there will be times you need a break from them and a grandparent isn’t around.

Bonus features are quite good, and get better the higher up the price scale you go. The DVD edition includes two short films and accompanying making-of featurette; four deleted scenes; character “pods” highlighting each of the critters; a making-of documentary short; a puppy training school trip with Kevin Hart; tutorials on drawing and making a flip book; and a pets-themed “Yule Log” for the holidays.

Upgrade to the 4K/Blu-ray version and you add “The Further Adventures of Captain Snowball,” a motion comic highlighting the further adventures of the ersatz hero. Digital access-only content amounts to four more documentary shorts.

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Review: "Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw"

My gosh, it just keeps going and going, doesn’t it?

Officially the runtime of “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw” -- and yes, Hollywood title insanity has reached the point of two ampersands -- is two hours and 15 minutes. But it feels much, much longer. If it’s possible to be bored by a movie in the middle of slo-mo explosions, then here it is.

For my money, the secondary characters of Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) were the least interesting of the F&F universe. The latter is a thief/mercenary turned British MI6 agent, while the former is a badass agent of the Diplomatic Security Service (Google it, it’s a real thing) who is often loaned out to the CIA.

They clashed in some of the earlier movies, or so I’m told, those movies coming so fast and so furious -- and ever further afield from a simple story of street racers -- that they long ago became a blur in my mind.

The gig is they’re brought together on a job, and spend that 135 minutes sneering and snarling at each other, in between a whole lot of beat-downs, the aforementioned explosions and some occasional car chases. Of course, we know they’re going to bond in the end.

Watching this movie play out is an exercise in foregone conclusions. We know there will be some early double-crosses. There will be a beautiful woman they can fight about. There will be a bad guy who somehow seems more than a match for two action-movie heroes. And Dwayne Johnson will wear T-shirts three sizes too small for him, with one obligatory shirtless scene for the two weeks he was doing extreme water weight cutting.

I had high hopes for Johnson once. He was doing quirky comedic roles in “Be Cool” and developing into an interesting performer. Somewhere along the way he got obsessed with being a 1950s-style screen muscleman. His body has become a grossly swollen mass of veins. His star persona is indelibly linked to freakishness now.

I guess it gets box office, but he’s lost something along the way -- realism and relatability, to start.

Vanessa Kirby plays a rogue MI6 agent accused of stealing CT17, aka Snowflake, a deadly virus that could kill everyone on Earth. Actually, she was set up by the evil Eteon corporation, and injected herself with the virus to keep it from falling into their hands. Hobbs and Shaw are brought in to locate her and secure the MacGuffin.

Idris Elba plays Brixton Lore, a cybernetically enhanced villain who actually refers to himself as “the bad guy.” Later on he brags to our boys that he’s “black Superman.” Certainly he seems to have the upper hand in their early encounters.

I usually enjoy Elba in just about anything, but he doesn’t see to be having much fun here. Before every fight he says something cryptic and then his eyes briefly glow amber to let us know he’s Terminator Lite or something.

Director David Leitch piles on the shaky-cam like a 4-year-old put in charge of dispensing the whipped cream. Screenwriters Chris Morgan and Drew Pearce ladle in copious one-liners, our two bald badasses growling in that strangled croak all action heroes seem to use now.

Where will it all end? Are we going to keep getting Fast & Furious movies -- and now spinoffs -- until absolutely everyone in the world objects? As long as people keep buying tickets, or Johnson’s pecs finally fall or fast cars are outlawed.

Review: "The Secret Life of Pets 2"

"The Secret Life of Pets 2" is not made for me, or thee -- unless one of us is under the age of 10. In which case, I'll endeavor to keep the cursing in this review to a bare minimum.

Like the original film from three years ago, "Pets" is specifically and intentionally made for little kids to enjoy, and for parents to endure. During the screening whenever I started sighing or feeling my thoughts start to wander, I just looked over at my two boys, smiling and laughing their heads off.

Eighty-six minutes of intensely cute and predictable storytelling is not too much to endure for your children.

If anything, I like the sequel a little more than the first one. It splits up the action into three separate storylines, so just when one is getting a little tiresome it switches things up.

The main role of Max, voiced by Louis C.K., is taken over by Patton Oswalt (for #MeToo reasons). He's an excitable Jack Russell Terrier who's resistant to change. Duke, the big shaggy doofus voiced by Eric Stonestreet whose introduction into Max's household formed the basis of the first film's story, gets relegated to the backburner here.

A few years have passed and their woman has married and produced a baby, Liam, to whom the dogs are very attached. When the New York City family goes off for a vacation in the country at an uncle's farm, it sets all sorts of activities in motion.

Gidget, the cultured Pomeranian (voice of Jenny Slate) who pines for Max, is put in charge of his favorite toy, Busy Bee, but quickly loses it into the intimidating lair of the old lady downstairs who has a literal regiment of scary cats. To infiltrate this den of hiss, Gidget must disguise herself as a feline and learn the ways of the cat from her too-cool neighbor, Chloe (Lake Bell).

Meanwhile, uppity rabbit Snowball (Kevin Hart), who's really committed to playing super-hero dress-up with his girl, goes on his own mission. Befriending a Shih Tzu named Daisy (Tiffany Haddish), they rescue an albino tiger from a nasty circus owner (Nick Kroll). Then, of course, they've got to find somewhere to stash it.

Out on the farm, Duke and Max are impressed with the farm dog, Rooster, voiced with delicious gruffness by Harrison Ford. He's everything they are not: self-reliant, authoritative and master of other critters.

Rather than a typical movie dynamic, where Rooster resents the urban invaders and then gradually warms up to them, the country dog is more or less benevolent from the start. He's clearly annoyed by their lack of skill in essential dogginess, like herding sheep and howling at the moon. But Rooster sees Max not as a city slicker to be dismissed so much as a youngster in need of tutoring.

It's about as close to a blue state/red state bonding as we're apt to see in the movies these days.

Director Chris Renaud and Brian Lynch continue to ride their "Minions" formula: slapstick mixed with fart jokes and doe eyes. It's unsophisticated filmmaking for a kiddie audience, nothing more and nothing less.

You can bemoan that this type of movie exists, or pony up to the ticket booth and make your young'uns happy.

Video review: "The Upside"

“The Upside” is a film of modest ambitions but obvious charms. It stars Kevin Hart doing his adorable false bravado thing, though with a role boasting more shadings than he’s been given before. And it shows off the under-utilized comedic skills of Bryan Cranston, best known for his dramatic roles. (This despite first coming to fame as a sitcom dad.)

Cranston plays Phillip Lacasse, a billionaire investor-turned-author whose life has been on a downward spiral the last few years, losing his wife to cancer and his mobility to a leisure sport accident. Worse yet, his will to live is at a low ebb, despite the bucking up of his faithful executive, Yvonne (Nicole Kidman), who runs his enterprise and watches out for him.

So when it’s time to hire a new “life auxiliary” -- aka personal assistant -- Yvonne knows right away that Dell Scott (Hart) is all wrong for the job. An ex-con who’s only halfheartedly looking for a job; he says and does all the wrong thing. But he impresses Phillip with his attitude, and lands the gig.

You can probably guess where things go: initial disaster followed by bare competence, which grows into a budding friendship that’s due for a major fracture right at the end of the second act. Director Neil Burger and screenwriter Jon Hartmere play things strictly by the numbers, with story beats and emotional catharsis timed down to the audience-tested minute.

And yet, it works. The trio of main actors share genuine warmth with each other, playing character who each have trouble connecting with the greater world in some way.

“The Upside” is a prototypical laughter-and-tears dramedy, a remake of a better French film. It won’t surprise you, but it will entertain.

Bonus features are middling-to-good. They include deleted scenes, a gag reel and five documentary shorts: “Onscreen Chemistry: Kevin and Bryan,” “Creating a Story of Possibility,” “Bridging Divisions,” “Embracing Divisions” and :Presenting a Different Side of Kevin Hart.”

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Review: "The Upside"

I did not expect to enjoy "The Upside" as much as I did. It's an American adaptation of one "The Intouchables," of the highest-grossing French films of all time, which in turn was inspired by a documentary about a real wealthy man who is quadriplegic and bonded with a caretaker of African descent with a troubled past.

It's been "Hollywooded up" to the nth degree, filled with easy emotional entry points and cathartic moments you can almost time with a stopwatch.

And yet, doggone it, I couldn't help being engrossed by the story.

It stars two accomplished funnymen, Kevin Hart and Bryan Cranston, who are at different stages of seguing into more dramatic material. Cranston was known -- and dismissed -- for years as "the dad from 'Malcolm in the Middle' before going dark in "Breaking Bad." After a recent Oscar nomination, he's now pretty much universally regarded as a serious actor.

Hart is just taking his first steps along such a path, but I like his stride so far. I wonder if he would ever completely leave behind his stand-up comedian roots in the way that, say, Robin Williams did. I tend to doubt it. But I liked watching him stretch for something more than a laugh.

Hart plays Dell Scott, who's been in and out of prison most of his life. He's currently half-heartedly looking for a job. Asked at a burger joint what his greatest accomplishment is, he says getting out of bed this morning. He's more interested in collecting signatures to prove to his parole officer that he made an effort than actually securing employment.

He wanders into a swanky apartment building after a janitor job and winds up in the penthouse, where billionaire investment expert/author Phillip Lacasse (Cranston) and his right-hand executive, Yvonne (Nicole Kidman), are interviewing candidates to be his "life auxiliary." This is fancy rich-people talk for a 24/7 caretaker, who will do everything from dress, bathe and feed Phillip to being his companion when he goes out in public in his high-end electric chair.

Phillip became a quadriplegic years earlier in a parasailing accident -- if ever there was a quintessentially wealthy person's endeavor, it's parasailing -- and lost his wife to cancer around the same time. Although he has an incredible penthouse, a best-selling book ("The Lateral Way"), a garage full of fancy cars and every wall has expensive art on it, Phillip doesn't have much zest for living anymore.

He impulsively hires the puckish Dell because he's the worst person for the job, and Phillip is looking to die. He instructs Dell about his DNR, immediately followed by explaining what a DNR is.

Dell is an interesting character. He's a guy who has never had much demanded out of him in life, and has fallen down to people's expectations. He's estranged from his son, Anthony (Jahi Di'Allo Winston), and ex-wife, Latrice (Aja Naomi King). Kicked out of his pad and way behind in child custody payments, he steals a book from Phillip's library to give to his son for his birthday.

"Which one?" Anthony demands, knowing that his father probably isn't even aware when it is.

Things go from there. Phillip and Dell slowly form a bond based on harsh truth-telling, which goes both ways. Phillip introduces him to opera and Dell helps him get funky. Yvonne is the hardcase looking for any excuse to fire Dell, but gradually warms up.

There's an implication of a potential romance between Yvonne and Phillip, which they both strenuously deny. The movie, directed by Neil Burger from a screenplay by Jon Hartmere, toys around with the idea without ever giving it a complete workout. I'd like to think they could share a deep and abiding friendship without there having to be romantic entanglements involved.

Meanwhile, Phillip does have a female pen pal he corresponds with, exchanging lovely poetry and sentiments. Phillip dubs it an "epistolary relationship," which is how smart, rich people pronounce "pen pal." Dell encourages him to take the friendship to a new level, but he worries that she'll be put off by "the chair," as he calls it. 

Being a famous mega-wealthy billionaire is kind of a hard thing to hide from Google, which Dell is quick to point out.

If it's possible to really like a movie without necessarily respecting it, then "The Upside" is it. I recognize its shortcomings and lack of higher ambitions. But Cranston, Hart and Kidman are marvelous together. There's genuine chemistry and, eventually, affection between them. I think of the scene where Phillip has been persuaded to attend his own birthday party, and Dell coaxes the wallflower Yvonne to dance. 

The look on Phillip's face as she comes out of her shell is one of pure joy. Rather than lamenting his inability to join in (other than a little melodic wheeling), he's filled with happiness for her chance to express herself in a way normally denied her.

It's hard to be happy for yourself if you can't be happy for others. Even a modestly agreeable flick like "The Upside" understands this.

Review: "Night School"

I wasn't even going to bother to write up a review of "Night School." It's a complete waste of time of the people who made it and the people who are unlucky enough to watch it. I already invested over three hours into it, including driving to and from the theater, and figured why compound it with more wasted ticks of the clock?

But bad movies are part of the gig, so I'm going to at least dash out a few thoughts.

This film, starring Kevin Hart and Tiffany Haddish, is not to be confused with the excellent documentary set in Indianapolis from a couple of years ago. That's currently streaming on Netflix, and I highly recommend you see it. It followed the journey of three Indianapolis adults attempting to obtain their GED high school equivalency degrees. It's a sobering and uplifting look at people trying to improve their lives despite massive roadblocks.

The new film is the cartoon version of that. Hart plays Teddy Walker, a 35-year-old high school dropout who is living above himself financially because he has a beautiful, successful fiance and feels the need to impress her. He drives a Porsche and lives in a swank apartment, but it barely getting by as the top salesman at a BBQ grill store. When the place blows up, he's out of work and without prospects.

In an absurd opening sequence, all the actors pushing 40 portray themselves as teenagers taking the SAT. Teddy finds himself unable to concentrate and blows off the test. The film doesn't seem to realize that you don't need to take the SAT in order to graduate from high school. Maybe he walked out of school, too, but the movie doesn't bother to show that.

Anyway, his best buddy says he'll hire him as a financial analyst at his firm if he gets his GED. So Teddy enrolls in the night program for adults at his old high school, where his nemesis is now the principal. Haddish plays the wise-cracking teacher who refuses to put up with Teddy's attitude and BSing.

The other students are the usual array of broad types. There's a snooty teen girl who got in trouble, a white doofus who can't work in the warehouse anymore because his back and knees are shot, a conspiracy-loving Muslim, etc. Mary Lynn Rajskub is the only one who makes any kind of impression as a harried mother who's very schizophrenic about how she feels about her role. She's the sort of woman who brings something to every church bake sale and then rolls her children into a lake.

You can pretty much guess the plot yourself. There will be capers, conflict, bonding, initial failure followed by inevitable success. The screenplay lists no less than six writers, including Hart, and I suspect there were many more adding to this mishmash gumbo. Director Malcolm D. Lee takes the approach of throwing everything up against a wall and seeing what sticks.

Not much does. "Night School" is a chronically unfunny movie. You know how in most comedies there are a few maudlin moments that you can't wait to be over? Here, I actually got more engaged by the sappy stuff than the attempts at comedy.

Hart has a built-in audience and Haddish is an emerging star, so I'm sure the movie will make bank. I like both of their screen presences, but this movie uses them poorly. "Night School" doesn't pass the old Gene Siskel test of whether you'd rather watch the cast having lunch and chatting than the movie they made.

Not only does it not get a passing grade, you actually feel dumber for having seen it.

Video review: "Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie"

When a mainstream movie doesn’t get screened for critics, it’s usually an indication the studio knows it has a dog and its hands, and figures no publicity is better than bad publicity. They’re wrong, of course: My own observation is that films that get dumped into theaters with no fanfare or press disappear even quicker than those that got negative reviews.

But every now and then, a decent movie gets this treatment for mystifying reasons. Lately, many of these have been family- or kid-oriented fare like the wonderful “Paddington” from a few years ago.

“Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie” isn’t quite that good, but it’s an amusing and rather clever kiddie flick that had my two boys, ages 4 and 6, rolling with laughter almost the entire time. And even grumpy old dad chortled not a little.

The clever set-up is that the two protagonists, George and Harold (voices by Kevin Hart and Thomas Middleditch), are fourth-grade cut-ups and budding cartoonists themselves. They spend most of their time creating comic books and pulling pranks on Mr. Krupp, their anger-absorbed principal. One of their favorite subjects is Captain Underpants, about a super-powered hero who only wears a cape and his undies.

Through a little hypnosis, the boys actually convince Mr. Krupp (Ed Helms) that he is Captain Underpants, leading to much hilarity as their tubby educator galivants about town in his tighty-whities. Of course, he eventually wakes up and wonders where his clothes are. Later, the Captain manages to obtain actual super-powers to go with his delusion.

Nick Kroll provides the voice of Professor Poopypants, a substitute teacher who turns to evil villainy out of consternation for mockery of his name. It all builds up to a dizzy battle with giant robots and such.

The animation has a deliberately simplistic sort of sheen, interspersed with cut scenes consisting of motion comics from the boys’ illustrations.

Based on the novels by Dav Pilkey, “Captain Underpants” didn’t do so well at the box office. (See section above re: no vs. bad publicity.) It’s definitely worth a look on video, though, as it’s chock-full of boy-centric humor and gross-outs.

Maybe if we do get a sequel, it won’t try to fly under the radar.

Bonus features are pretty good, anchored by six making-of featurettes, including one where Hart and Helms pull real-life surprises on fans. There are also deleted scenes, gallery of stills, music videos including one with theme song writer/performer “Weird All” Yankovic, and a “Tightey-Whitey Q&A with the Stars.”

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Review: "The Secret Life of Pets"

Colorful, boingy, copious critters, a robust emphasis on gastrointestinal humor -- if that’s not the perfect recipe for a little kids’ movie, then I don’t know what is.

Note I said “little kids’ movie,” not “family film,” because while “The Secret Life of Pets” is a strong entry in the former, it is not much in the way of the latter. What it mostly is is a sorta-sequel to “Minions,” made by the same people, with cartoony dogs and cats (a few birds and reptiles, too) swapped out for the lil’ yellow dudes.

Well, except these guys are understandable. It’s a “Toy Story” -ish conceit, about the adventures our pets go on when we’re not around. To humans their speech just sounds like barks and yelps and what have you, but they can all understand each other -- no inter-species language barrier here.

The story focuses on two dogs, Max and Duke, voiced by Louis C.K. and Eric Stonestreet. Max is a fun-loving little dude who has a cozy life in New York City with his owner, Katie (Ellie Kemper). But then one day she brings home Duke, an enormous brown ball of fluff from the shelter, and all bets are off as they vie for title of apartment alpha dog.

Through a whole lot of implausible contretemps, they’re lost in the city trying to find their way home. Meanwhile they are pursued by two groups. The first is a rescue mission led by Gidget (the adorably squeaky Jenny Slate), the white Pomeranian from across the way who secretly adores Max.

She throws together a ragtag group that includes Max’s other dog friends, a fat and lazy cat (Lake Bell), a parakeet, guinea pig and even a hawk (Albert Brooks), who tamps down his predatory instinct to help creatures he would usually snack on.

And that’s actually the normal team. The other, more antagonistic one is the Flushed Pets, a gang of discarded creatures who’ve sworn revenge on the human world that shunned them. They have a tattooed pig, a hairless and holey cat (Steve Coogan), several alligators, assorted lizards and fish and a large one-fanged viper. Their leader is Snowball (Kevin Hart), an excitable former magician’s rabbit with the heart of William Wallace and the combat skills of… a poofy little hare.

“Liberation forever, domestication never!” is his clarion call.

Director Chris Renaud, co-director Yarrow Cheney and screenwriters Ken Daurio, Brian Lynch and Cinco Paul pitch the material straight at the 3- to 8-year-old audience. For instance, there’s a dog party where they walk in a circle sniffing each other’s butts while exchanging pleasantries. (“Enchanté!”) A high point is a sequence where the dogs break into a sausage factory and gorge themselves, leading to pork-induced hallucinations and a musical number.

“The Secret Life of Dogs” is well-made, unambitious entertainment. It’s the sort of thing you appreciate being able to let your kids enjoy, while at the same time wishing it were permissible to go off and do something else.

(Drop-off theaters with supervised double-features of this and “The Angry Birds Movie”? Now that’s an upcharge parents would happily shell out for ahead of 3-D.)

Review: "Central Intelligence"

I like both Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson. They have winning personalities, beaming smiles and great screen presence. I’m not sure if either one of them is nearly as funny as he thinks he is, though.

It’s the same way with “Central Intelligence,” their new buddy cop comedy. It’s an agreeable picture with some outrageous jokes, wacky setups and a few harder-edged action scenes to spice things up. A laugh riot it is not.

Most of the attempted humor comes from Hart playing his type and Johnson playing against type. Hart, by virtue of his diminutive height and comedic personality, is always the nervous nelly trying to front that he is cooler/tougher than he really is. Johnson, playing a lot of hyper-masculine action roles lately, is a dweeb who loves unicorns, fanny packs and cinnamon pancakes.

This really is part of his cover as CIA agent Bob Stone. Formerly the fat kid in high school who was the subject of a cruel prank -- Johnson’s body is digitally morphed onto another actor’s body for the flashback -- he’s grown up into a tower of muscles who can take out a handful of bad guys without even blinking.

There’s no cockiness to him, though, and in fact Bob is in awe of Calvin “The Golden Jet” Joyner (Hart), the BMOC in high school who everyone looked up to. Flash forward 20 years and his promising life has turned into disappointment, a nowhere job in forensic accounting, a fantastic wife (Danielle Nicolet) but no kids. He’s just… stuck.

Bob shows up out of the blue and invites Calvin for drinks, which turns into a bar fight, which turns into a sleepover, which turns into CIA agents showing up on his doorstep claiming Bob is a rogue agent trying to sell vital intelligence to the highest bidder. From there the movie is a series of chases as Calvin tries to decide if Bob is on the level or not, in between fistfights and shootouts.

Amy Ryan plays the grim head spook who leads the hunt, and Jason Bateman turns up in an uncredited role as one of Bob’s former teenage tormentors who seems to have experienced a change of heart.

Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber from a screenplay he co-wrote with Ike Barinholtz and David Stassen, “Central Intelligence” is all broad humor and telegraphed punchlines. For instance, when Bob encourages Calvin to replicate the backward flip he was famous for back in the day, we just know it’s going to come in handy during a pivotal fight scene.

They do manage to sneak in a few clever throwaway jokes, such as Bob calling Calvin a “snack-size Denzel” for his performance in fooling some bad guys. I also liked the quip where Calvin, after first witnessing Bob in action, refers to his non-badass attire, dubbing him “Jason Bourne in jorts.”

I can’t quite recommend this movie, but I didn’t hate it. It just needed to be funnier and not take aim at the most obvious jokes possible. Sass and charisma will only take you so far.

Video review: "Get Hard"

“Get Hard” is the sort of comedy you laugh at, then feel bad about it later.

This buddy flick from Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart is about as politically incorrect as you can get. It contains all sorts of stereotypes about black people, white people, gay people, incarcerated people … basically, people.

Yet it’s also undeniably funny.

Ferrell plays James King, a high finance type who’s been convicted of securities fraud, and has a few weeks to prepare before going off to maximum security prison. He’s innocent of his crimes, but guilty of being an over-privileged jerk. James hires Darnell (Hart) to help toughen him up because, well, he’s essentially the only black guy he knows.

Darnell is actually a hardworking young business owner with a family – if anything, he’s kind of a squeamish nebbish. But he’s happy to play the gangbanger for pay.

Soon Darnell is running James through his concocted prison boot camp, turning the latter’s mansion into a simulated prison, with his servants happily playing the oppressors. James learns how to front a “mad dog face” and hide contraband in, uh, dark places.

“Get Hard” won’t win any originality awards – it’s basically an unauthorized remake of “Trading Places.” But if it wallows for its laughs, it still earns them.

Video extras are pretty good, though you’ll need to buy the blu-ray combo pack to get most of them. The DVD comes only with a gag reel.

The combo comes with deleted scenes and a bunch of featurettes – some touching on production, others just opportunities for more comedy. Consider some of the titles: “Twerking 101,” “Bikers, Babes and Big Bangs” and “Put Your Lips Together and Blow.”

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Review: "Get Hard"

"Get Hard" wins zero points for originality, or subtlety. It's basically a rip-off of "Trading Places," with Will Ferrell as the snooty-yet-decent rich white guy who gets wised up to the hard knocks of life by a wiseacre black man, Kevin Hart, who pretends that he's more ghetto than he really is.

This comedy relies on multitudes of stereotypes, homophobic fears about prison rape, and a heaping helping of just plain old raunch to get its laughs. Yet get its laughs it does.

This is the sort of movie that you roar with laughter at, then feel ashamed about it afterward.

Ferrell plays James King, a young(ish) master of the universe who's about to move from being really rich to disgustingly rich. It's basically the line between people who have cavernous homes with servants around 24/7 and those who own their islands.

James has just been made partner at Wealthrop Fund Management, Los Angeles' top investment firm, and he's marrying the daughter (Alison Brie) of the CEO (Craig T. Nelson) to boot. He treats those around him as chattel, not out of innate meanness but just because that's the world he was brought up in. It's the 1 percent of the 1 percent, where you pull yourself up by your own bootstraps ... with help of $8 million in seed money from your daddy.

One of those underlings he occasionally hobnobs with is Darnell (Hart), who owns Hollywood Luxury Bubbles, the low-rent car wash company that services the chic fleet of James and company. Darnell needs a $30,000 loan to launch his own storefront and get his family out of a crappy neighborhood, but James would rather dispense condescending advice than startup money.

When James is arrested and convicted of securities fraud, however, he's forced to reevaluate his priorities. The silver spooner is facing 10 years of hard time in maximum security -- "I'm going to be attending San Quentin," is how he puts it in his fey way. Petrified by the prospect of becoming the target of gay sexual overtures, he hires Darnell to toughen him up before his stint begins.

Darnell is actually a striving family man with an adorable wife and daughter (Edwina Findley Dickerson and Ariana Neal, respectively) who wears khakis and has never had so much as a parking ticket in his life. But if the rich white dude is willing to shower him with money, he's happy to act the gangster. He gets by through borrowing the plot of "Boyz in the Hood" for his own life story, and copping tips from his cousin Russell (T.I.), who really is a scary gangbanger.

Things go from there, with the two bonding over Darnell's concocted training regimen, which includes turning James' mansion into a simulated lockdown, with his servants acting as his oppressors. (They are only too happy to comply with the play-acting.) James learns about "mad dog face," shivs and "keistering" any necessary contraband.

At various points they infiltrate a white supremacist gang and a gay hangout, since Darnell surmises that because James is so hopeless at self-defense, he either needs to recruit someone to protect him or, ah, learn how to be a people-pleaser.

Directed by rookie Etan Cohen, who also wrote the screenplay with Jay Martel and Ian Roberts, "Get Hard" is a gleefully un-politically correct comedy that doggedly pursues humor no matter what dark crevice in which it may hide. Ferrell and Hart do amiable variations of their familiar character types, and share good onscreen chemistry and comedic timing.

You may cringe while watching this movie, but it'll be with a smile on your lips.

Video review: "About Last Night"

“About Last Night” is self-consciously different from the Rob Lowe/Demi Moore romantic comedy/drama from nearly 30 years (!) ago. The locale has moved from Chicago to L.A., and the white cast has been transposed with a black one. But fundamentally it’s still the same story.

It’s about lonely people who hook up for a brief fling and unexpectedly find it turning into a real relationship. By virtue of the fact that one of the stars is hyperactive funnyman Kevin Hart, this remake is infused with a lot more humor than the original.

There are enough laugh-out-loud moments to make it worth a rental. And if the somber moments don’t exactly carry much emotional heft, they at least don’t slow things down so much it saps energy from the funny stuff.

Hart plays Bernie, a motormouth charmer who has recently hooked up with a Joan (Regina Hall), an out-there personality with a quiet mouse of a roommate, Debbie (Joy Bryant). They fix her up with Bernie’s best friend Danny (Michael Ealy), and the two couples spend the next year falling in and out of love.

“About Last Night” may not offer any great insights into the modern dating game. But it’s the rare remake that doesn’t sully the name of the original.

Video extras are rather slim. The DVD comes with only a single featurette, “An Un-Romantic Comedy.” Upgrade to the Blu-ray edition and you add three more featurettes: “About Last Night Advice,” “I Love You?” and “Word on the Street.”

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Review: "About Last Night"

 There's a moment in "About Last Night" in which the characters are actually watching a video of the 1986 film with Rob Lowe and Demi Moore, and argue about whether it's a chick flick or a guy's movie. It's a tacit but still brave acknowledgement that yes, this is a remake of a seminal '80s movie, which in turn was based on a play by David Mamet.

The new movie is funnier than the original, while still engaging in plenty of heavy moments as we explore two sets of best friends who hook up with one another on a one-night stand, and then spend the next year negotiating the treacherous territory that comes with being in a relationship -- and even debating whether they're in one.

The leading cast is gorgeous and engaging, and they're also all black, whereas the '86 cast was Caucasians. The movie uses this to its advantage without ever really getting hung up on the change in skin tone. Just as the characters quarrel fruitlessly about whether the original was primarily intended for men or women, it's wrongheaded to think of this as a "black movie," even if African-Americans are the primary targeted audience.

It's much the same way the film has switched scenery from Chicago to Los Angeles. Even though the original conception was very much about the Midwest metropolis -- Mamet's play was called "Sexuality Perversity in Chicago," after all -- the 2014 iteration gets its mood and groove from L.A.

The four main characters are all at that stage of life where they believe in working hard and playing harder, when going out to bars every night is seen as a duty, and the thought of being tied down by entanglement is anathema. It is, in other words, the life of many people in their early- to mid-20s, which Lowe and Moore were back in 1986. Here the actors are closer to 40, so their antics have a whiff of desperation about them.

Kevin Hart is seemingly everywhere these days, including riding the box office wave of "Ride Along" from just a few weeks ago. Here he's relegated to the wingman role of Bernie, an uber-confident chattermouth. His best bud is Danny (Michael Ealy), a quiet type who Bernie jokes is too good-looking to appreciate the women a guy like him has to work hard to turn into conquests.

Bernie has just landed another, Joan (Regina Hall), a bigger-than-life woman with an outsized personality and mood swings. Her roommate is Debbie (Joy Bryant), a smart businesswoman who's seemingly opted out of the romantic game. Pushed by Bernie and Joan, Danny and Debbie soon become a couple, much to the consternation of their friends, who chide them for rushing into anything serious.

The story plays out in a series of vignettes spread over the seasons -- who says "I love you" first, moving in together, holiday events blown up by jealousy, temptations from old lovers, etc. A subplot follows Danny in quitting the sales job he hates, only to end up bartending at the place owned by his deceased dad's best friend (Christopher McDonald).

This movie is sweet and cute, buoyed by Hart's frantic comedic persona. The screenplay by Leslye Headland is reminiscent of "(500) Days of Summer," and director Steve Pink keeps things loose and easy. The more dramatic sections slide in and out readily, not carrying a whole lot of emotional freight but never weighing down the proceedings too much.

Maybe in another 28 years, another remake of "About Last Night" will come, perhaps centering on Latinos in Miami, and they'll watch a snippet of this movie, and the memory will not be an unpleasant one.

Review: "Ride Along"

"Ride Along" is one of those aggressively dumb movies that almost make you feel bad for it, if it weren't vacuuming 10 bucks out of your pocket and an hour-forty of your life.

The set-up makes not a lick of sense, the characters do nonsensical things unburdened by the laws of man or science, and it tries to skate by on the personalities of its stars, Kevin Hart and Ice Cube.

Hart is a young, short, dizzyingly energetic comedian whose onscreen presence resembles early Eddie Murphy on speed. Ice Cube is not so young anymore, known for his surly sneer, and rather shrimpy himself, though sufficiently taller than Hart for his character to crack all sorts of wee-man jokes on him.

Cube plays James, a tough Atlanta street cop, while Hart's Ben is a high school security guard and police wannabe who happens to be dating James' sister (Tika Sumpter). Ben convinces James to take him on a ride along so he can prove he's worthy of his sister's hand in marriage, while James is out to embarrass Ben enough to wash him out of law enforcement before he's even enrolled in the police academy, and hopefully out of his sister's life, too.

Director Tim Story and his quartet of screenwriters cue up every sticky situation imaginable, with James throwing Ben under the bus in various scenarios where he's expected to resolve the situation without even the benefit of a badge or a gun. This includes wrestling a honey-smeared man acting crazy at the farmer's market and confronting a gang of bikers, with one of dubious gender.

Never mind that in an actual ride along you'll be lucky if the police even let you get out of the car, let alone face down psychotics and stick-up men.

There's some vague plot machinations about dirty cops and a mysterious crime boss named Omar whom nobody as supposedly ever seen. Of course, he soon shows himself in the form of Laurence Fishburne, affording the audience a rare opportunity to witness an Oscar-caliber actor slumming in some really poor writing, and somehow making it seem even worse than it is.

I'm not sure what's harder to watch; the fact that Fishburne is called upon to deliver incredibly overwrought gangsta speech, or that he's very, very bad at it.

There are a couple of laughs in "Ride Along," mostly tied to Hart's manic, sporadically funny shtick. But this is one trip worth skipping.

Review: "Think Like a Man"

And here begins a new trend in movie-making: fictional films based not on novels, or even works of nonfiction, but on self-help books. "Think Like a Man" is adapted from a tome of relationship advice aimed at women written by comedian/game show host Steve Harvey. (The movie drops the first part of the book's title, "Act Like a Lady.")

Coming in May: "What to Expect When You're Expecting," advice for pregnant women turned into an ensemble comedy about a bunch of horndog daddies and their respective mama wannabes.

(What's next -- "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" turned into an action/thriller? "Be Proactive and light that motha up!!")

"Think Like a Man" is pleasant enough, with a gorgeous-looking cast of would-be couples clashing and romancing. There are lots of funny throwaway lines, one or two misty moments to bring a tear to the eye, and some enjoyable buddy-buddy scenes.

It doesn't really add up to much, since the characters are (literally) divided up into stereotypes: The Player, The Mama's Boy, The Dreamer, etc. With such a large cast -- six guys, four gals plus supporting players -- it's impossible to flesh any one of them out into three dimensions ... or sometimes even two.

Perhaps the one who comes closest is Taraji P. Henson as Lauren, a corporate executive who can feel her biological clock ticking, but refuses to settle for anyone less than her equal. To her, that means a power player who makes six figures and drives a car worth more than the average U.S. house.

"All this waiting for better, it's making you bitter," a friend observes.

Eventually Lauren falls for Dominic (Michael Ealy), a starving restaurant worker who dreams of becoming a chef. Of course, when she first meets him he's valet parking a $155,000 sports car, so it's a matter of time before the truth butts in. Lauren finds herself genuinely falling for him, and decides to fudge on her high standards.

On the other end of the spectrum are Zeke (Romany Malco) and Mya (Meagan Good), two players who try to see if they can make a go of a real relationship. Mya is trying out Harvey's 90-Day Benefits Rule -- aka, Zeke has to stick around for nearly three months before he gets "the cookie."

Jeremy (Jerry Ferrara) is a guy stuck in a college time warp, still dating his girlfriend Kristen (Gabrielle Union) after nine years and not any closer to putting a ring on it. Michael (Terrence Jenkins hasn't cut the apron strings from his mother, and single mom Candace (Regina Hall) insists that she be the #1 woman in his life.

The cast is rounded out by Bennett (Gary Owen), the happily married guy, and Cedric (Kevin Hart), the even happier recently divorced guy -- or so he tells himself. Hart's a pint-sized comedic pistol, and gets many of the movies best lines.

Director Tim Story broke out with "Barbershop," so it's no surprise that the movie's best scenes are the ones involving the sextet of guys hanging out, cracking on each other mercilessly and talking about women. Screenwriters Keith Merryman and David A. Newman give the dialogue a light, improvisational feel.

It's a fun group to hang out with, and even includes a couple of white guys in a majority black cast. The black dudes occasionally make jokes about the white dudes, who return fire happily, but there's a circle of trust and warmth there.

The filmmakers make a curious choice of including author Harvey for awhile, who pops onto the screen spouting lines from his book. It does make the movie seem more like a commercial for the book, but also acts as a clever framing device. Then Harvey just disappears about halfway through.

They should've gone for the Full Harvey, or none.

2.5 stars out of four