How Iannucci would have done it

I was pretty harsh on the milquetoast Fly Me to the Moon, which I thought could have used a lot more bite and a lot less earnestness.

Like, how Armando Iannucci would have done it.

I name-checked Iannucci in my review (which you can read here), specifically mentioning his projects Veep and The Death of Stalin. I mentioned the former because I haven't seen it but because I assume it's good, and the latter because I've seen it and I know it's good. I haven't liked some of Iannucci's other projects, specifically In the Loop, so I didn't mention that. But my most recent impressions of Iannucci have been good ones, first The Death of Stalin and then, to a far lesser extent, The Personal History of David Copperfield. So I guess you could say I am late in coming to appreciate Iannucci's specific brand of acidity (which, I should say, is not on display to the same extent in the latter film).

I'd been thinking it was time to see The Death of Stalin, my #18 of 2018, a second time, but something that happened on Friday night clinched it.

We were watching the third? fourth? episode of the most recent season of Only Murders in the Building, and Steve Martin's character is trying to convince his fellow castmates of Martin Short's snakebitten play to continue on with the project despite the death of the leading man (Paul Rudd). He says something about how "no one wants anyone to die," and then amends it to include welcome deaths like Hitler. And Stalin.

When the universe speaks, you should listen.

So I queued up The Death of Stalin after we finished the show, having had to look at four other streaming services before I found it on Netflix. (You'd think that's where I would have looked first, but Netflix seems a lot more biased toward new content, with even a six-year-old movie possibly struggling to make it into their offerings.)

I probably didn't enjoy it quite as much as the first time -- I remembered laughing more than I did this time -- but it definitely confirmed my sense that Iannucci could have given Fly Me to the Moon more of the tone I wanted from it.

You probably haven't seen Fly Me to the Moon yet, since it was only just released, so I won't spoil too much. I will say, though, that the trailers are a bit misleading about how much of the movie actually revolves around the faked space landing. They try to get in some good jokes about that, mostly delivered by a very Iannuccian sort of player in Jim Rash, but not as many of them land as they should. And the movie just doesn't have the courage to make many, or really any, of its characters wicked, the way they would be in an Iannucci treatment of the material.

The Death of Stalin has a lot of wicked characters, but the thing I found interesting about it is that they are wicked within the context of realism. You wouldn't think there would be much realistic in a movie that features Steve Buscemi as Nikita Khrushchev, but what I like about an Iannucci movie is that it portrays politicians and others in a way a lot of historical films would not see it fit to depict them: foul-mouthed, petty, and in turns both shrewd and myopic. They certainly bumble, but they don't bumble as broadly as you might expect -- and subtle bumbling is a lot funnier than broad bumbling.

A movie starring Channing Tatum and Scarlett Johansson could probably never afford to have done that. These are big box office stars and in order to get audiences to go, the conventional wisdom seems to be to make them sympathetic. They try to go there a bit with ScarJo's character, a con woman, but they can't leave her on the Iannucci side of the audience's rooting interests. She has to be good at her core.

The real problem with Fly Me to the Moon is that it doesn't have enough content to make a 2 hour and 12 minute movie about just the faking of the moon landing, so it fills up the rest of the time on a budding romance between Tatum's and Johansson's characters and some more standard inspirational material about space flight. That stuff is never going to be as good as other movies that make it their primary focus.

But now I'm just repeating my review, which I already linked.

I guess there is no guarantee that I'd like Iannucci's version of this significantly better. I didn't care for In the Loop, after all, and not caring for In the Loop is the main reason I didn't even watch Veep.

But he at least would have given this material teeth and balls, which the milquetoast Fly Me to the Moon doesn't have. 

... and then some weeks I just review five movies

In recent months, my movie reviewing has become, shall we say, nominal.

Sometimes you just aren't into something you've been doing for more than 25 years (closer to 30 in fact). Sometimes it feels like more of a drag than others. That's probably especially the case with a sisyphean task like reviewing movies. 

Consider my recent output.

I tend to think of reviewing movies as a week-to-week thing, as in, how many movies am I giving my readers this week? And since I follow what I believe is considered to be general internet wisdom by not posting on the weekends, the week is defined as Monday to Friday.

Ideally, I would review two movies in that period, maybe three on a busy week. One is considered an absolute minimum, without which I am falling down on the job.

Well, it's been a long time since I've reviewed two movies with any regularity. In fact, some weeks, even one was a struggle.

Let's look back:

July 1st to 5th: Reviewed one film, A Quiet Place: Day One, on Tuesday the 2nd.

June 24th to 28th: No reviews.

June 17th to 21st: Reviewed one film, Ultraman: Rising, on Friday the 21st.

June 10th to 14th: Reviewed one film, Hit Man, on Wednesday the 12th, though at least I did post reviews from two other writers on the Thursday and Friday.

June 3rd to 7th: Reviewed one film, The Watchers, on Friday the 7th. 

May 27th to 31st: Reviewed one film, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, on Wednesday the 29th. 

May 20th to 24th: Reviewed one film, IF, on Monday the 20th. 

May 13th to 17th: Reviewed one film, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, on Monday the 13th.

May 6th to 10th: Reviewed one film, The Idea of You, on Monday the 6th.

April 29th to May 3rd: Reviewed one film, The Fall Guy, on Thursday the 2nd.

April 22nd to 26th: Reviewed two films, Rebel Moon - Part 2: The Scargiver on Monday the 22nd and Challengers on Thursday the 25th.

I'll stop there. I had gone ten weeks without reviewing what I consider to be the correct number of movies in a week. That obviously tells you something.

Well I must have surprised the hell out of my readers this week, because I posted a review every single day. And since I never post more than one in a day, that was the maximum. 

That's right, with each linked for your perusal, on Monday I reviewed Space Cadet, on Tuesday I reviewed Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, on Wednesday I reviewed The Bikeriders, on Thursday I reviewed Fly Me to the Moon and today I reviewed Twisters.

The ratings were all over the spectrum: one 9/10, one 7/10, two 5/10s and one 2/10.

Now of course, this is necessarily an ebb and flow thing, based in part on what's going on in your life. Some weeks I have a hard time getting out to the movie theater, in part because it doesn't seem like they've released anything new, or at least not anything new that I would ever plan to review. (I'm sorry, I'm not going to review the latest Garfield movie.) Then you have travel and other things that can interfere. 

But I think as this summer season has gone on, it has gained clear momentum. This may be an oddity of the Australian release schedule specifically, but yesterday saw the release of four movies that a person might be interested in prioritizing, albeit for different reasons: Twisters, Fly Me to the Moon, MaXXXine and Kinds of Kindness. In fact, I chose Twisters as my second film on Thursday, after my family finally got out to see Inside Out 2, because my wife claimed interest in both MaXXXine and Kinds of Kindness, and none in Twisters. (I'd already seen Fly Me to the Moon at an advanced screening on Monday, which she was supposed to attend but couldn't.)

The number of four new releases in a given week is a couple standard deviations away from the mean. Most weeks it seems there is one new release, or maybe one movie for the adults and one for the kids. Obviously it increases in intensity at different points of the year, but even what should be a busy summer movie season has felt quiet this year, allowing me to slip down to just one review a week, and sometimes needing the streamers even to accomplish that.

So this probably also means next week will be busy, as I'll want to see at least one of MaXXXine or Kinds of Kindness to review it in a timely way for my readers.

Of course this busy week was not just a function of increased new releases in theaters. Three of my five reviews were recent theatrical releases, but the latest Beverly Hills Cop movie, released to Netflix, seemed something my readers would want to hear my take on, and then the movie I actually got to first, Amazon's Space Cadet, was something that hadn't even been on my radar, but beat Axel F to press after I watched it on Sunday and disliked it so much that I essentially started writing a vitriolic review immediately afterward.

I guess the larger takeaway on this is, I'm not burnt out yet. This week has reminded me that I can still write a large quantity of critical content in a short period of time, and it's not merely out of obligation. With so much on my plate, clearly I could have just not written one or even more than one of the reviews. In fact, the only review I had to write was Fly Me to the Moon because it was fulfilling my obligation by attending the free screening.

Twisters was the 599th review I've written for ReelGood, meaning I'm on the precipice of another milestone. When I reached the last milestone at 500 -- which was Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, so early 2023 -- I wondered if I should use the round number to just close up shop. Yes, I considered, however briefly, just quitting this whole thing as recently as 16 months ago.

A hundred reviews later, I've just written five in one week.

I guess I'm here for a bit longer. 

Creature (in space) double feature

There are certain movies I can tell I'm going to review, just by looking at them. Certain movies that exist at a middle- to low-brow level of appeal, that I've made my bread and butter over the years. I take a certain pleasure in pointing them out to my wife. And six months to a year later, sure enough, there I am, seeing them and dutifully submitting a review a couple days later. Hey, it's work.

Such movies usually bear the following traits: They are not hip enough for the regular staffers to want to review, and they have some humorous quality that I think would be fun to tease and prod in a review. If I haven't told you before, it's much easier to review a movie that's stupid than a movie that's smart. Sometimes, you have a good opening line even before you've popped in the DVD.

Within a month last summer, I twice had this premonition of my own reviewing future, with two very similar seeming movies: Space Chimps and Fly Me to the Moon. I found it odd that two movies with such similar themes, aimed at such similar demographics, would come out just four weeks apart (July 18th, August 15th). Usually they have the decency to avoid each other by at least a couple months (see Deep Impact/Armageddon, Dante's Peak/Volcano, etc.).

So when I was approved to review these movies about three weeks ago, naturally, I decided they would make a perfect double feature. A perfectly ghastly, terrible, torturous double feature.

Well, at least they'd each be under 85 minutes.

Sunday was the day, so I bunkered in for the double feature, with a Red Sox-Yankees game in the middle to cleanse my palate.

Without further ado, a side-by-side comparison of the movie about chimps in space and the movie about flies in space.

Title: Space Chimps sounds like a movie title you'd find in a movie that satirizes the movie industry. You know, kind of like Beverly Hills Chihuahua. (Oh wait, that's real too). Fly Me to the Moon, however, is a clever pun that also allows the playing of a Frank Sinatra classic during the opening credits. (Let's ignore the fact that the title probably inspired the script, and not vice versa). Advantage: Flies.

Celebrity vocal talent: Space Chimps boasts SNL star Andy Samberg, Curb Your Enthusiasm's Cheryl Hines, animation stalwart Patrick Warburton and Jeff Daniels. Fly Me to the Moon settles for over-the-hill Christopher Lloyd, Nicolette Sheridan, Kelly Ripa and Tim Curry. Advantage: Chimps.

Total number of astronauts: Three flies, three chimps. Tie.

Credibility of premise: Even though NASA's paranoia about contamination would make it unlikely, it's feasible that three flies could hitch a ride on Apollo 11. More so than three chimps being sent through a wormhole to a planet on the other side of the universe. Even if such a wormhole existed, and even if NASA could determine that the ship had made it safely through, they'd only need to send one chimp to test whether the trip could be survived by humans. Advantage: Flies.

Credibility highly strained: Assuming you accept that there's a planet populated by pink and purple aliens on the other side of the universe, it's still a bit much to accept that they speak English, or that a communication device in the shape of a banana -- designed by one of the monkeys -- would be enough to send transmissions across the universe. On the other hand, since the flies' decision to catch a ride on Apollo 11 was rash and last-minute, how the hell did they get little fly-sized space suits? Advantage: Flies.

Usage of chimpanzees: Fly Me to the Moon shows "historical footage" of a chimp blasting off, and an older fly trying to sneak inside his helmet before liftoff. Space Chimps ... well, there are chimps throughout. Advantage: Chimps, on sheer volume alone.

Usage of comic fainting: An Indian NASA scientist faints several times in Chimps; in Moon, the mother of the main fly, Nat, faints whenever she hears the newest danger threatening her son. The scientist's glasses fly off when he faints, so that's funnier. Advantage: Chimps.

Inevitable references to 2001: A Space Odyssey: A close-up on the eyes of Ham III, the main chimp, as the ship goes through the wormhole, and a horizon of strange colors rushes toward him. Moon is less subtle and more extended, as the flies do a zero-G dance to the tune of Richard Strauss' Also Spracht Zarathustra. Advantage: Chimps.

Ways it's too babyish: The aliens are too cutesy, especially one voiced by Kristin Chenowith that looks like an actual baby with a large head. Then again, all the fly characters are ridiculously cutesy with their big bulging eyes, which stand out against the photo-realistic backgrounds. Advantage: Chimps.

Ways it's surprisingly un-babyish: In Moon, characters briefly discuss drinking, and a fly refers to a dung ball as "full of crap." In Chimps, one alien has to exit the stomach of another through its anus -- though it's more implied than shown. Advantage: Flies.

Ways it's old: Each movie has a salty old graybeard lending wisdom. In Chimps, it's an old chimp named Houston, who buddied around with Ham's grandfather. In Moon, it's an old fly named, well, Grandpa, who flew across the Atlantic with Amelia Earhart, and prevented her plane from crashing by flying up her nose to startle her awake. Advantage: Flies.

Puns: Ham III says he's a "chimp off the old block." Nat's mother says "Oh my lord of the flies." Both are awful, but at least Chimps has a running gag about the use of chimp-related puns. Advantage: Chimps.

Stupid villains: Chimps has a megalomaniacal alien named Zartog who commandeers a piece of downed NASA equipment and uses its articulated clenching devices to dip his fellow inhabitants in silver goo that freezes but does not kill them. Moon has a team of Russian spy-flies that try to use firecrackers to damage the equipment at Cape Canaveral and prevent a successful return of the Apollo 11 mission. Neither is good, but points to Jeff Daniels for giving his all on Zartog's voice. Advantage: Chimps.

Quality of animation: Both are better than you'd think, with Chimps being more consistent across the board with its generally similar look throughout, and Moon caught between the extremes of its cheap-looking character design and brilliant-looking backgrounds. Advantage: Flies, just for how great everything but the flies looks, and how good I'm sure it would have looked if I'd actually seen it in 3-D.

Final analysis: The biggest shock about watching these movies is that I (gulp) liked both of them. I know, I know, I'm losing my edge. But seriously -- generally good animation, totally harmless, totally inoffensive, and written with a modicum of cleverness. Sometimes maybe you shouldn't write that first sentence in your head before you see the movie.

Slight overall advantage: Space Chimps.

God help me, I'll never be able to show my face at the next film critics' convention.