Interestingly enough, all three movies I’ve seen since my
last post were certified “rotten” on Rotten Tomatoes.
Goes to show there’s a first time for everything. I won’t waste too many words on them even
though I’m much more forgiving on two of the three.
Bad Assistant
In our age of smartphones and tablets, it is only inevitable that someone would take the conceit of a raunchy, foul-mouthed and misbehaving AI Virtual Assistant and make it into a slightly less than 90-minute comedy (84 minutes to be exact). ‘Jexi’ (voiced by Rose Byrne), a not-quite-portmanteau of Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri, has its share of cringeworthy moments, but it is also very funny as she makes the life of her master (Adam DeVine) a living hell. Think Scarlett Johansson’s “Samantha” (in the Joaquin Phoenix movie ‘Her’) being very, very bad.
In our age of smartphones and tablets, it is only inevitable that someone would take the conceit of a raunchy, foul-mouthed and misbehaving AI Virtual Assistant and make it into a slightly less than 90-minute comedy (84 minutes to be exact). ‘Jexi’ (voiced by Rose Byrne), a not-quite-portmanteau of Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri, has its share of cringeworthy moments, but it is also very funny as she makes the life of her master (Adam DeVine) a living hell. Think Scarlett Johansson’s “Samantha” (in the Joaquin Phoenix movie ‘Her’) being very, very bad.
Grade: B- (14% on RT)
My Own Worst Enemy
Will Smith's latest is the long-awaited sci-fi actioner ‘Gemini Man,’ a project that’s supposedly 22 years in the making. Part ‘Universal Soldier’ and part ‘Mission: Impossible II,’ this tale of a perfect Defense Intelligence Agency soldier (warning, spoiler ahead!) cloned to take himself out in the future is entertaining enough, packed with copious amounts of gunplay, chases and explosions via director Ang Lee’s tightly focused third-person shooter-esque camerawork (accompanied with suspenseful music in its slower moments) to make us overlook the fact that it doesn’t have much of a plot to speak of in spite of its delicious irony.
Grade: B (25% on RT)
Space Case
The last critically panned movie of the week is ‘Lucy in the Sky,’ a movie which borrowed the name of a Beatles song (later covered by Elton John) about floating on the clouds of LSD’s (Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, get it?) in its depiction of an accomplished female NASA astronaut who suffers a nervous breakdown. Inspired by the true story of Lisa Nowak: The Nutty Astronaut, even Natalie Portman’s considerable talents cannot hope to salvage this (space) disaster of a movie about a seemingly well-grounded naval aviator/astronaut’s gradual psychological and emotional unraveling in the midst of an ill-fated love triangle. A crashing and burning cautionary tale of what spurned love and jealousy can do to even the most exemplary of women?
Grade: D (23% on RT)
The last critically panned movie of the week is ‘Lucy in the Sky,’ a movie which borrowed the name of a Beatles song (later covered by Elton John) about floating on the clouds of LSD’s (Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, get it?) in its depiction of an accomplished female NASA astronaut who suffers a nervous breakdown. Inspired by the true story of Lisa Nowak: The Nutty Astronaut, even Natalie Portman’s considerable talents cannot hope to salvage this (space) disaster of a movie about a seemingly well-grounded naval aviator/astronaut’s gradual psychological and emotional unraveling in the midst of an ill-fated love triangle. A crashing and burning cautionary tale of what spurned love and jealousy can do to even the most exemplary of women?
Grade: D (23% on RT)
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