M3GAN: After sitting through a lot of awards titles that either dealt with serious subject matter or were aiming for intellectual stimulation over the final weeks of 2022 and the initial few days of 2023, it felt great to sit in a theater and just bask in the warm trashy embrace of M3GAN. This campy horror dark comedy backed by Blumhouse and James Wan's Atomic Monster Productions fully celebrates the silliness of having a 4-foot tall humanoid AI doll (physically played in certain scenes by Amie Donald, voiced by Jenna Davis) become the companion of a young girl who is forced to move in with her aunt (Allison Williams-who remains a little too good at playing smug, condescending characters) in Seattle following the death of her parents in a car accident that eventually gets a little too protective of the young girl's emotional and physical safety.
By rooting itself with a sense of humor that combines morbidity and complete randomness, M3GAN displays a keen understanding of what its target audience of young, online shitposters will find no real AI could ever replicate. There are numerous scenes here of M3GAN wreaking havoc, taunting her victims and then doing something so far out of left field that are just spectacular comedy bits for the specific set of people they are aimed at. The success of M3GAN is naturally going to spawn legions of copycats trying to make another zeitgeist-capturing horror comedy that appeals to a younger audience, but writer Akela Cooper's through understanding of how to write stuff that hits that sweet spot between sadistic and playful is a rare gift that many other scribes brought into write these films will not have.
Where M3GAN stumbles a bit with its disheartening insistence on mirroring several major plot points (the quick progression from good-natured AI companion to bloodthirsty killing machine, the doll's first victim, the final shot) from the 2019 Child's Play reboot. This is a bit disappointing since the Chucky movie executed these beats better and Cooper just showed off the full power of her twisted creativity on Malignant. Ultimately, I'm not going to get too worked up over its heavy borrowing from another recent film when the rest of the film is so amusing and entertaining. When Universal goes back to the M3GAN well in 2025, I'll be there.
Grade: B
House Party: Even as someone who didn't really enjoy the 1990 original (the homophobia in it is nauseating even by 90's standards), this very loose remake of House Party struggles to find reasons to justify its existence. While the three leads (Jacob Lattimore, Tosin Cole, Karen Obilom) are magnetic enough to carry a movie and there are some inspired, unexpected bits of absurdist/surrealist humor (Kid Cudi's gonzo portrayal of himself in a truly warped subplot that surfaces at the start of the final act is legitimately fantastic) baked into a film that is otherwise pretty straightlaced, music video director Calmatic-who is making his feature debut here-struggles to make the debauchery portrayed on screen feel raucous or look like the type of good time that would make an audience jealous that they weren't there in real life and the film eschews attempts at humor in favor of playing things straight far too often for something that runs only 100 minutes with credits. Maybe Calmatic will fare better on his remake of White Men Can't Jump-which is due out later this year-or maybe we'll be left with just another reboot of a 90's comedy that's only real triumph will be failing to win over fans of the original and the people who hadn't seen it.
Grade: C
Plane: Want evidence as to why 2023 is providing the world with the first proper January movie slate since at least 2019? A Gerard Butler movie is on the dance card. Plane sees Butler playing Brody Torrance, a Scottish pilot based in Singapore who's sparsely populated New Year's Eve flight is directed into bad weather by some corporate fatcat who wanted to save on fuel costs. Bad news for Torrance and the stooge that didn't permit him to fly an alternate route: the plane gets struck by lightning shortly after takeoff and crash lands on a small island off the coast of the Philippines. Even worse news: The island is run by a brutal highly skilled militia group that has overrun the Filipino army so many times in combat that the government refuses to send troops there anymore. Now, Torrance and the convicted murderer (Mike Colter)-who might actually be an alright guy-that was part of the small group on board have to find a way off the island and keep the rest of the passengers and flight crew safe by any means necessary.
Outside of a roughly half hour stretch between the crash and the introduction of the militia that is mostly dedicated to the survivors bickering about supplies and trying to find a working phone in order to get help sent to their isolated location and a tone that is probably a bit too serious for a movie with such a brilliantly stupid title, Plane pushes the right workmanlike action thriller buttons. Butler and Colter have the charisma, grit and selflessness to make for a good unlikely hero pairing, there's some solid, tense action sequences that feature a lot of exclamation point-worthy kills (let's just say that sledgehammer Colter wields in the trailer is put to good use) and at a runtime of 107 minutes, it crosses the finish line with plenty of gas left in the tank. May Butler be allowed to make these kinds of movies until the day he retires from acting.
Grade: B-
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