White Men Can't Jump: Calmatic ended up going 2 for 2 in his quest to make loose, mediocre remakes of 90's comedies this year. While the charisma of leads Sinqua Walls and Jack Harlow (making his acting debut) and some energetic basketball scenes are enough to make it an agreeable watch, the movie just simply isn't very funny. For a "modern" spin on White Men Can't Jump, it's awfully reliant on writing lazy punchlines that play into broad racial stereotypes that were tired in 1992 when the original came out. The fact that Harlow plays a vegan hippie that is oblivious to black culture instead of a B-Rad from Malibu's Most Wanted-esque aspiring rapper caricature is the closest the script from Kenya Barris and Doug Hall comes to being clever and by the 20th time somebody makes a joke about the smoothies he's drinking or his love of meditation, whatever minimal creative points they earned go out the window. If studios are going to keep insisting on remaking cult classic comedies from 30+ years ago, they need to at least hire people that are capable of writing jokes and characters that have some actual creativity behind them or we're going to be doomed to a fate of being subjected to a couple of so-so lazy Sunday watches like White Men Can't Jump and House Party every year that draw no strong opinions outside of gatekeeping fans of the original before they permanently disappear from the public consciousness.
Grade: C
Kandahar: Kandahar is a bit of a change of pace for Gerard Butler as it's more of a political thriller/war film than a straight-up action vehicle. Coincidence or not, this slight deviation from his standard fare also happens to be one of the better movies he's starred in over the past decade. While it's clear that this is his first foray into screenwriting from the uneven handling of some of the secondary narrative threads, retired military intelligence officer Mitchell LaFortune does a very good job of constructing an endearing story about an M1-6 agent on loan to the CIA (Butler) whose forced to flee Afghanistan with a translator (Navid Negahban) that had just joined him for an upcoming job after his cover is blown following an unnamed American whistleblower revealing his role in the recent destruction of an Iranian nuclear weapons plant.
The plot has sharp observations about just how much of a rapidly-evolving, greed-driven entity war in the Middle East has been over the past several decades and how the people of these nations ultimately pay the steepest price for the endless violence that Western nations gladly help escalate from afar directly baked into it, which provides Kandahar with a melancholic backbone that gives the film a much more grounded feel than the typical American-backed, Middle East-set movie. LaFortune's even-handed portrayal of "modern" warfare is complemented by Ric Roman Waugh's confident direction that balances the quiet dramatic moments with the big action pops quite well, a strong performance from Butler as an elite special forces officer whose excellence in the field has come at the expense of a completely deterioration of his personal life back in the UK and an even stronger one from Negahban as an Afghan refugee who has mixed emotions about returning to his homeland after so many years away. The aforementioned sketchy handling of the subplots prevent Kandahar from being truly great, but it's an entertaining flick that has some real substance and that's something that's always worth celebrating in my book.
Grade: B
You Hurt My Feelings: You Hurt My Feelings is built around a very simple yet uncomfortable fact: Couples lie to each other about petty things to either avoid conflicts or not hurt their partner's feelings and catching them in the act can launch a full-blown existential crisis that causes the affected party to question the very foundation of their relationship. Examining this "betrayal" represents the full extent of the narrative stakes and that will unquestionably lead to some viewers feeling that this is a pointless watch, but I felt it was a very enjoyable slice of life movie. The primary cast (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tobias Menzies, Michaela Watkins, Arian Moyaed, Owen Teague) give authentic performances as vain people who are in professional ruts that don't realize that they are dealing with similar problems at home and Nicole Holofcener's ability to spotlight how all of this shit would be easily avoidable if humans didn't have such fragile egos and write funny dialogue that fits each character really helps make every beat of this film feel wholly believable. On top of that, it successfully sets up, examines and resolves its thesis statement in roughly 90 minutes! I'll fondly look back on the storytelling efficiency of You Hurt My Feelings the next time I sit through a needlessly bloated movie.
Grade: B
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