My Spy (2020) * * 1/2

Directed by:  Peter Segal

Starring:  Dave Bautista, Kristen Schaal, Chloe Coleman, Ken Jeong, Parisa Fitz-Henley

There isn't anything about My Spy that isn't telegraphed in the trailer, so it doesn't earn any points for originality.   However, the movie nearly overcomes its predictability with some inspired performances and some cute laughs.    Bautista (formerly of WWE and lately of Stuber and Guardians of the Galaxy) displays more comic gifts by not trying too hard to be funny.   He's an ideal straight man whom comic situations can revolve around, and doesn't mind being the butt of the joke.

Bautista is CIA agent JJ, who kicks a lot of ass during the opening scenes in a sting operation gone haywire.   JJ destroys things, but doesn't achieve his objective of capturing the bad guy. 
JJ returns home and is saddled with a safer assignment.   He and his new partner, the inexperienced, but enthusiastic Bobbi (Schaal), are to perform surveillance on a Chicago nurse and her nine-year-old daughter.   Why?   Because the baddie is the former brother-in-law of the nurse, and she may be unwittingly hiding an important flash drive.   Flash drives are the go-to item spies are chasing after all over the globe these days.   Memo to bad guys: copy whatever is on the flash drive fifty times over if need be, so you don't have to harass such nice people over a tiny drive. 

JJ's cover is blown rather quickly by the precocious nine-year-old Sophie (Coleman), who thinks it's cool that a spy has moved in next door.    Rather than potentially losing his job because his cover was blown so easily, JJ agrees to mentor Sophie in the ways of spying, and accompany her to places her overworked mom can't, like an ice skating rink.   Is JJ a good skater?   No points for guessing no. 
The introduction of Sophie to JJ's life is a mixed blessing.   She wants to hook him up with her lonely mother, and the closed-off, quiet JJ has to learn how to communicate if he wants this blossoming romance to work.   The bad guy is thankfully kept off screen during most of this. 

Bautista and Coleman have sweet comic chemistry, which is the heart of My Spy.   Once JJ learns to open up after being a spy for many years, he displays a quiet vulnerability which works.   Coleman isn't an overly cute young girl, just a smart one who at times can outsmart her hulking new friend. 
Their performances nearly elevate My Spy past its mundane story.   Nearly. 

Goliath (Season Three-2019) * * (showing on Amazon Prime)

Starring:  Billy Bob Thornton, Nina Arianda, Dennis Quaid, Amy Brenneman, Beau Bridges, Graham Greene, Diana Hopper, Paul Williams, Julia Jones, Tania Raymonde, Griffin Dunne, Sherilyn Fenn, Shamier Anderson, Delanna Studi, Ana de la Reguera

In the last paragraph of my review of the first two seasons of Goliath, I suggested season three should go back to the show's roots and focus on what made season one work so well:   Billy Bob Thornton and the inherent drama of courtroom proceedings.   Season three decided to wade further out into the ocean and fill Goliath with so many drug-induced interludes, detours, tangents, and dead-ends that Thornton must feel like a guest star in his own series.   Somewhere in between the diversions, there is room carved out for a class-action lawsuit in which Billy McBride (Thornton) takes on billionaire farmers who are hoarding a northern California county's water supply at the expense of the area's poorer residents.

The David Lynch-inspired nonsense doesn't add to Goliath as much as bloat it.   We have the intelligent, resourceful, albeit wounded Billy pulling himself up by the bootstraps in the aftermath of a tough stretch for him.    A former girlfriend (Fenn) from his law school days is killed after a sinkhole opens a giant chasm on her vineyard.   Her widower (Dunne) believes the sinkhole was caused by the weakening of the soil by nearby farmers using all the county's water during a prolonged drought.    Billionaire neighbor Wade Blackwood (Quaid) offers to buy the land at a very cheap price, causing Billy to look up the county water board, which is not coincidentally run by Blackwood and other rich land owners whose businesses thrive while most residents have to buy bottled water because they can't get any from the tap.   Billy persuades county residents to file a class-action lawsuit while trying to discover the contents of a shady non-disclosure agreement between Blackwood, his partners, and the state of California allowing Blackwood to control the county's water rights.    Another party involved is someone from Billy's not-too-distant past.

Knee deep in all of this is Wade Blackwood's sister Diana (Brennaman), who runs a cosmetics website and may or may not be engaging in an incestuous relationship with her brother.   This is more than hinted at in the form of one watching the other take an almond milk bath and making toast (which I suppose is to symbolize climax when the toast pops).    It's a tribute to the veterans Quaid and Brennaman that they are able to rein in their eccentricity-heavy characters and make them watchable.  Quaid, as always, has a way with a grin that suggests maliciousness and the joy of indulging in such.

Billy, just like in the final chapters of season two, allows himself to suddenly act stupidly when he should be on his toes.   He stays at an Indian reservation casino/hotel run by one of Blackwood's partners and frequented by Wade and his cronies to engage in some serious dope smoking.    Billy is drugged at least twice to the point of near incapacitation, yet he still stays there despite his life being put in danger repeatedly. 

Goliath's season three is overloaded with quirks and weirdness, including two hallucinatory musical numbers which do nothing more than kill time.   When the show finally gets down to the business of courtroom drama, (around episode five), Goliath is at its best.   Hopefully season four will give us more of the main event and less of the irrelevant sideshow theatrics.    Somehow, I doubt it. 

Goliath (Season One) * * * (Season Two) * * (showing on Amazon Prime)

* Contains spoilers

Starring:  Billy Bob Thornton, Maria Bello, William Hurt, Olivia Thirlby, Mark Duplass, Ana de la Reguera, Nina Arianda, Lou Diamond Phillips, Diana Hopper, Molly Parker, Tania Raymonde

Between the first season of Fargo (2014) and Goliath, Billy Bob Thornton has turned in his best work in years.   In Goliath, Thornton plays Billy McBride, a down-on-his-luck, boozing attorney ousted from the prestigious law firm he co-founded.    Now living in a motel and frequenting the bar next door, Billy's prospects are dwindling when he is tracked down by inexperienced lawyer Patty Solis-Papagian (Arianda).   Patty has a case for Billy:   A boat exploded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean killing its only occupant.   The man's employer is a huge arms manufacturer which also happens to be the highest profile client of, drum roll, the same firm Billy co-founded: Cooperman/McBride, now run by Billy's ex-wife Michelle (Bello) and the reclusive, sinister Donald Cooperman (Hurt), scarred over half his body by burns and who nurses a burning hatred for Billy.

Battling his former firm's sharp legal minds, their unlimited resources, and the shrewd and devious Cooperman, who is not above buying cops and creeps to make Billy's life miserable (not to mention try and have him killed), Billy plays the underdog role has he attempts to use his nerve and sharpness to stay one step ahead.    It is a daunting challenge, but it has lit a fire under him for the first time in ages.   Season one focuses on the lawsuit against the criminally negligent corporation.   When Thornton first appears, we think are getting a Bad Santa retread performance, but this isn't the case.  Thornton is vulnerable, wounded, filled with guilt and self-doubt.   He's not a mope, but human, smart, and resourceful.

William Hurt, as Billy's former partner and now bitter enemy, seethes from his dark office in the bowels of his law firm.   We don't know exactly what caused his burns, but he sure does blame Billy for them. 

Season one works best as a courtroom drama and procedural which makes the Thornton-Hurt feud the center of its universe.    What happens between the two men is left open-ended, so we will likely see a continuation in the future.   When Goliath strays from this formula, it suffers a bit, but not fatally so.    Season two begins with a gripping first five episodes that ungainly segues into yet another drug cartel story.    Billy, fresh from his lucrative win in season one, is still drinking and guilt-ridden about his lover's death from season one.   A friend who works at his watering hole (Phillips) comes to him with a family crisis.    His older sons were involved in gangs and drug dealing and were shot dead.   His youngest son Julio stands accused of murdering two men while seeking vengeance.    The kid insists he's innocent and Billy takes the case, especially after the father is gunned down on his way to a preliminary hearing. 

Mayoral candidate Marisol Silva (de la Reguera) knows Julio and would like to see him exonerated, but there is a vast conspiracy afoot involving a Mexican drug lord who has a history with Marisol, and a top LA real estate agent (Duplass) who stands to lose a lot if Marisol does not win the election.  Fine so far, but then the season is bogged down with this cartel business.    Drug cartels have become the go-to villains these days, and the problem is each cartel seems to have to up the ante in terms of viciousness and ruthlessness.    The whole subplot derails the story.    Do we really need to see people have their limbs surgically removed?   Do we need to see gruesome blood and guts, decapitated heads, and one character's bizarre sexual perversions?    It's disheartening to see the normally astute Billy go completely dumb on us and fail to realize something shady is going on while attending a party in the drug lord's house.   How could he not suspect he is in the presence of a drug lord?  Didn't the bodyguards with automatic weapons give it away?    It is here when the series stops being about Billy and more about contrived plotting.   It's all kind of depressing.    Let's hope season three bounces back and gives us what Goliath does best. 

Jerry Seinfeld: 23 Hours to Kill (2020) * * (showing on Netflix)

 

Directed by: Joe DeMaio

Starring:  Jerry Seinfeld

I enjoyed Seinfeld, I really did, though I have not placed it in such an exalted status as others may have.    The show was quirky, cute, and its characters did not change much in the show's ten-season run.   I liked Seinfeld without loving it.  If I were to pass it while channel surfing, I may pause and watch for a minute before checking to see if Friends was back from commercial yet.  Now that I've written my mini-review of Seinfeld, on to 23 Hours to Kill, a meandering and unmemorable Jerry Seinfeld comedy special streaming on Netflix.

Jerry Seinfeld finds humor in everyday things others wouldn't think to find humor in.   He has never seemed as approachable as a Rodney Dangerfield, Chris Rock, or a George Carlin.   I sense a thin, invisible wall separating Seinfeld from the audience.   There's a hostility coming from Seinfeld as he discusses restaurants, texting, family life, etc.   He seems to approach this special with a curmudgeonly edge.   His earlier stand-up reflected a puzzled bemusement at mundane items we take for granted.    Seinfeld attempts to recreate the same effect, but to little avail, because he seems a bit less patient than the guy we first met forty years ago.   He reminds me of the formerly energetic old friend who complains constantly now about his arthritis. 

23 Hours to Kill is a one-hour special leaving me to wonder if one hour is too long these days for comedy specials.    Seinfeld seems to strain to find material to fill the time (this is not an issue exclusive to Seinfeld), and once in a while finds a laugh.   Who among us doesn't find "K" an annoying text response?   Like Jerry pondered, is it really that much of a Herculean effort to add the o?   How much time are you actually saving by excluding the "o"? 

There are a few amusing observations in 23 Hours to Kill, but not nearly enough of them to justify an hour-long special.    I found my attention waning, and that's not the desired response for a comic's act.

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988) * * *

Directed by:  David Zucker

Starring:  Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley, Ricardo Montalban, OJ Simpson, George Kennedy

The comedy team that brought you Airplane! (1980) and the short-lived series Police Squad! brings us The Naked Gun.   All three projects starred Leslie Nielsen, who had a gift for delivering one-liners with a stone face and maintaining unflappability in the face of comic chaos.    Nielsen's best comic performances came when he seemed dropped in from another drama filming nearby.   There was one comedy Nielsen starred in (which I'm sure very few people besides me saw) called Repossessed, a "sequel" of sorts to The Exorcist played for laughs and found very few of them.    One of the movie's problems (of which there were myriad), was Nielsen desperately trying to create laughs by delivering lines in a funny accent or making faces at the screen.    He was trying much too hard to be funny, and the results suffered.

Nielsen plays Lt. Frank Drebin, who at the beginning of the film thwarts a plot in the Middle East by America's enemies and returns home to an enthusiastic welcome...for "Weird Al" Yankovic, who arrived on a nearby plane.    The unexpected falls from the sky in these movies.   We are assaulted by sight gags, puns, one-liners, and bathroom humor if needed, and we are barely able to catch our breath.  Most of the jokes work, some bomb, and there's a plot in there somewhere also, which involves billionaire Vincent Ludwig (Montalban), who hatches a plot to assassinate the queen of England at an Angels baseball game.   Reggie Jackson, who played for the Angels in the twilight of a Hall of Fame career, is involved as a would-be assassin. 

Drebin stumbles onto the plot and then mucks up everything before somehow foiling it at the last minute.  Some of the funniest moments arise because of the crude behavior exhibited around the queen as she sits in her royal box.   (There's a guy sitting in the wrong seat, someone screams "kick him in the balls", you name it)    All the while, Drebin doesn't seem to realize he's in a comedy, and that makes him even funnier.    The gags fly at you from all angles, and you find yourself almost ducking. 

Young Frankenstein (1974) * * * *

Directed by:  Mel Brooks

Starring:  Gene Wilder, Peter Boyle, Marty Feldman, Teri Garr, Madeline Kahn, Kenneth Mars, Cloris Leachman

Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder approach Young Frankenstein with gleeful, manic zeal.   They aren't really doing a send-up of the old Frankenstein movies as much as recreating one with a comic twist. 
Young Frankenstein is not about the original mad doctor, but his grandson Frederick (Wilder), who so wants to live down his family name he chooses an alternative pronunciation, ("That's Fronk-en-steen").   Frederick is a medical school professor with students who seem more interested in his grandfather's work than reflexes and central nervous systems.   But he saunters on, until the executor of his grandfather's will comes calling with news that is a mixed blessing:   Grandpa Victor has bequeathed his Transylvania castle and all of its contents to Frederick, and Frederick is now headed to the same place where the good doctor reanimated a dead body many years ago.

Despite his own misgivings, Frederick attempts to recreate his grandfather's experiment with help from Igor (Feldman), who pronounces his name "Eye-gor", Inga (Garr), a busty blonde assistant, and Frau Blucher (Leachman), whose very name causes horses to whinny in fright.    Frederick finds his way to his grandfather's secret lab, which is now full of cobwebs draped over equipment unused for decades, and now he must know if he can live up to his family name and bring another corpse back to life.

Frederick chooses the hulking body of a recently hung convict (Boyle) and the brain of a "scientist and saint".   Igor messes up the simple task of retrieving the saint's brain and instead uses an abnormal sized brain to plop into the big guy's head with potentially disastrous (and hilarious) results.   One of the funniest scenes in Young Frankenstein is how Frederick coaxes a confession out of Igor that he mistakenly picked up the abnormal brain instead of the intended one, using a facade and calm and poise.  ("I will NOT be angry").

One thing Frederick lacks is calm and poise, especially when confronted by the local police magistrate Kemp (Mars), who questions whether another Frankenstein is up to the family's old tricks in order to appease the town's very nervous citizens.   Kemp speaks in a nearly impenetrable German accent and a prosthetic right arm inspired by Dr. Strangelove.    And he cheats at darts. 

It will not come as a spoiler that Frederick successfully recreates his grandfather's experiment, and the Creature, who is only capable of grunts, escapes the lab and roams the countryside where he encounters a lonely blind man (Gene Hackman in a terrific cameo) who accidentally scalds the big man with soup and lights his thumb on fire.    The nonverbal comedy by Boyle here is something to behold.   He does what is not easy to do, perform mostly using his eyes and expressions.   And yes, he and Frederick do a pretty good version of "Puttin' on the Ritz" to the amazement of other scientists.

Young Frankenstein is not a laff-a-minit comedy, but one which is properly paced and earns its laughs from a variety of unexpected sources.    The cast is clearly enjoying itself and the black and white cinematography adds to the atmosphere.   This is not a movie to be shot in color, and Brooks wisely did not do so.   Young Frankenstein remains Brooks' masterpiece, mostly because we feel for the movie's two most pathetic characters, the Creature and Dr. Frederick himself. 

Billions Season Five...so far (2020) * * 1/2 (airing on Showtime). Second half from 2021: * * *

Starring:  Damian Lewis, Paul Giamatti, David Costabile, Maggie Siff, Jeffrey Demunn, Asia Kate Dillon, Dan Soder, Corey Stoll, Frank Grillo

Billions has now morphed into a show about the art of the deal instead of how the deal affects the characters.    As enthusiastic as I was about the show's first four seasons, I cautioned that the myriad double crosses, back stabbings, back door deals, and eleventh hour swerves may start to grow tiresome.  There is little character growth among any of the leads, except maybe they've grown even more calculating and heartless.   Bobby "Axe" Axelrod (Lewis) is forever trying to win monetary battles for the sake of retaining his title as the toughest guy on the block.   His latest adversary is Michael Prince (Stoll), a rival billionaire who at least appears to have some semblance of scruples.  By the conclusion of episode seven, Axelrod goes on a vicious tirade about destroying Prince, yet another in a series full of such tirades.   

This is the first season which featured a mid-season finale.    It is likely the next episodes, when the season resumes, will deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and how it may reduce Axe from a multi-billionaire to a mere billionaire.   Oh, the horror.   On Axe's tail once again is New York state AG Chuck Rhoades (Giamatti), whose uneasy alliance with Axe fell apart at the end of season four. 
Rhoades is still corrupt, but still fancies himself more moral than Axe, so he doesn't see any hypocrisy in going after Axe full tilt.   Not as much in the middle anywhere is Chuck's now estranged wife Wendy (Siff), who still works for Axe but also may be the object of his desire after long last.
Her relationship with an artist (Grillo) on Axe's payroll inflames his jealousy.   There has always been a "will they or won't they?" vibe under the surface between Axe and Wendy, and if it were up to Axe, it would be a "will they" and soon.

We are now at the stage of Billions where we wonder why Axe doesn't just take his billion dollar ball and go home.   The stress must be killing him.   Four seasons worth of these dealings with millions or sometimes billions of dollars on the line may soon cause a serious case of PTSD.   And what about Chuck?   His wife left him, his string-pulling father needs a kidney, and he is forever scheming to get what he wants.   Isn't this exhausting after a while?    The details of the schemes in which either Chuck or Axe tries to enrich himself are a blur after a while.    They all come down to the same thing.   Both men want to win with a scorched earth policy and collateral damage be damned. 
For the first time in the series' history, I find my attention wandering and my patience waning.
This is straying from delicious soap opera to CNBC. 

Update:  The second half of season five premiered on Showtime in 2021.   The emergence of Mike Prince as Axe's bitter business rival trying to walk a fine line between riches and morality gives the show a needed boost from its repetition.   A major character exits the show at the end and Prince is there to fill the void as a rich man trying to stick to his morals in a dog-eat-dog world of finance.   My curiosity is now piqued for a sixth season with Corey Stoll in charge of Axe Capital.  

Crisis in Six Scenes (2016) * * (showing on Amazon Prime)

 

Directed by:  Woody Allen

Starring:  Woody Allen, Elaine May, Miley Cyrus, Rachel Brosnahan, John Magaro, Joy Behar

Crisis in Six Scenes was the first project Woody Allen created when he inked his now-cancelled deal with Amazon.  The six-part series details the turbulence of the 1960's crashing headfirst into the content life of writer Sidney J. Musinger (Allen) in the form of fugitive Lennie Dale (Cyrus), who is wanted for various acts of domestic terrorism in the name of fixing social injustice.

Lennie, the daughter of a friend of Sidney's wife Kay (May), breaks into Sidney's suburban home and begs to stay a while in hopes of avoiding the police and figuring out her next move.    Kay is welcoming, since Lennie's parents once helped her out in a time of need, while Sidney is naturally hesitant to shelter a fugitive.   As weeks progress, Sidney grows more and more perturbed at Lennie eating him out of house and home.

Complications arise, as to be expected.   Alan, a son of a family friend staying at Sidney's while attending NYU, falls in love with Lennie mostly because she ignites a fire in him to become a social justice warrior, although surely not to Lennie's extreme.   Alan, engaged to the WASPish Ellie (Brosnahan), questions whether a sheltered, wealthy suburban life is really for him when there is so much turmoil in the world.    Kay is so on board with Lennie's radicalism that she passes out the works of Karl Marx and Chairman Mao to her book club.    Everyone in Sidney's life has his or her inner radical awakened by Lennie's diatribes about the big brother government and its attempts at oppression of the masses.    Sidney just wants something to eat and to sell a sitcom to network executives.

This all plays like Woody Allen light.   Allen once again plays the kvetching, put-upon nebbish whose life is turned upside down by a sudden turn of events.   He protests, he mutters, he argues, and he complains, but soon finds himself helping Lennie in her quest while fighting it every step of the way.  Allen isn't quite on autopilot here, but he brings the energy of a rock star performing his signature hit for the millionth time in concert.    Cyrus recites her lines with the proficiency of a fourth grader who was happy enough simply to memorize her part in the school play.   There is no inflection, and she almost shouts every word.   Cyrus knows the words but not the music. 

One of the brilliant aspects of Allen's work is his ability to start with a germ of an idea and flesh out its comic possibilities in unpredictable ways.   Crisis in Six Scenes doesn't provide any surprises or any hint of spontaneity.    What happens is mostly what's expected, as if Allen couldn't reach next level thinking with the material.    Even the conclusion, in which all of the characters somehow find themselves in Sidney's foyer and all of the conflicts are neatly resolved, seems rather lazy and uninspired.    It has been a while since I said that about a Woody Allen work. 

Beverly Hills Cop II (1987) * * 1/2

Directed by:  Tony Scott

Starring:  Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Brigitte Nielsen, Jurgen Prochnow, Dean Stockwell, Allen Garfield, Ronny Cox, Gilbert Gottfried

Beverly Hills Cop isn't among the elite Eddie Murphy movies, but it worked as an amusing action comedy.    Cop II recycles the same formula (Detroit cop works undercover in Beverly Hills to solve a crime and gain revenge), but relies more on the action sequences than the comic possibilities of a black Detroit cop cutting through the wealthy, snobby Beverly Hills denizens.    This may be a blessing in disguise, because just like in the first film, Murphy's Axel Foley relies on subterfuge and pretense to gain access to places where he isn't permitted.    However, in Cop II, these sequences are overlong and cringeworthy, not funny.    Murphy either shouts at the unsuspecting folks he has to outwit in order to enter a gun club, nightclub, etc., or he carries on an inane role play which far outlasts our patience.    Watch the scene where Axel gains entrance to the villain's gun club by pretending to be a courier delivering ammo in a paper bag which may explode if you breathe on it wrong.   Uh huh.

Tony Scott, whose California (and Detroit) are shot in what appears to be eternal sunset or sunrise, knows how to direct an action sequence.   There are plenty to be had in Beverly Hills Cop II.   The chases and gunplay are slick and professionally handled, with Axel and his Beverly Hills counterparts wisecracking their way from one scene to the next.    The plot centers around a gang of European villains who perform lucrative heists of wealthy establishments to fund their weapons shipments to Central America.    Axel becomes involved when the villains attempt to murder Axel's friend, Beverly Hills' police captain Andrew Bogomil (Cox), because he is hot on their trail.   

The baddies, led by zillionaire Maxwell Dent (Prochnow) and his lover Karla (Nielsen), are about as inconspicuous as a red wine stain on a white rug.   It takes Axel about thirty seconds to figure out the scheme, while Bogomil was apparently laboring tirelessly trying to determine who and what these criminals were doing and why.    The bad guys may as well have been wearing baseball caps with "VILLAIN" emblazoned on them.   The plot itself may not hold up under scrutiny, but it will do as an excuse to hang slick action sequences on them.  

Murphy mostly seems to be amusing himself this time.    The comedy doesn't gel with the hyper action, and while Cop II isn't unwatchable and does contain a couple of laughs, it is mostly unnecessary except to capitalize on the runaway success of the first film.   However, if you want to kill two hours watching an action comedy, Cop II will fill the bill. 

Space Force (2020) * * (showing on Netflix)

 

Starring:  Steve Carell, John Malkovich, Noah Emmerich, Jane Lynch, Lisa Kudrow, Diana Silvers, Ben Schwartz, Don Lake, Jimmy O. Yang, Fred Willard, Tawny Newsome

If the term "Space Force" lingers in the back of your mind and you can't recall where you heard the term before, it is one an idea our current administration has to spend billions on protecting...space?

Or something like that.    Space Force, the Netflix ten-part series, is a satire based on this concept.  Or is it?   Space Force hasn't figured out its identity yet.   Is is political satire?   Or slapstick?   Or poignant dramedy?  There are times the viewer can encounter whiplash caused by the show's frequent changes in tone.

Created by Greg Daniels (The Office) and Steve Carell, Space Force stars Carell as General Mark Naird, who was just made a four-star general and is put in charge of the newly created Space Force program.    Naird and his family are less than thrilled with this appointment.    They have to move to Colorado and Naird is tasked by POTUS (Trump is not named) to have Space Force put "boots on the moon" by 2024.   Soon, and it is not explained why, the general's wife Maggie (Kudrow) is serving forty years in prison, and daughter Erin (Silvers) is left to fend for herself as her father puts in long hours at his new job.

Naird's sidekick is Dr. Adrian Mallory (Malkovich), a scientist who tries in vain to be the voice of reason in this madness.    The doctor's friendship with the general is push/pull, and provides some of the better moments.    Rounding out the supporting cast are:  Angela Ali (Newsome), Naird's personal helicopter pilot who longs to be an astronaut, F. Tony (Schwartz), the squirrely public relations manager, and mission control specialist Dr. Chan Kaifang (Jimmy O. Yang, formerly of Silicon Valley), whose brilliant mind is used primarily to bail out his superiors when they try and perform one absurd mission after another.

Carell's General Naird is not a million miles removed from Michael Scott from The Office, although thank goodness he doesn't speak directly into the camera which is ostensibly being used to shoot a documentary.   Naird is more reserved in his quest to disprove that he is out of his depth.    He expected to be made Secretary of the Air Force, but thanks to his Washington enemy General Kick Grabaston (Emmerich), the poor general is relegated to running this startup branch of the armed forces.

Aside from some intermittent smiles, Space Force never propels itself into the stratosphere of television comedies.    It is too timid to decide what it really is.    It isn't scathing enough to be a satire of the government's knack for wasteful spending in the military (and just about everyplace else), and most attempts to deal with the general's topsy-turvy personal life are hardly groundbreaking. 
General Naird is a nice guy thrust into a pressure-cooker position he is ill-equipped to handle, but he is trying his best.   Space Force is a mixed bag at best, and the show slyly hopes we'll stick around for season two to find out why Maggie is suddenly serving a forty-year prison sentence.    That may be too high a price to pay to satiate what little curiosity we have left for Space Force.

City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly's Gold (1994) * *

Directed by:  Paul Weiland

Starring:  Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern, Jon Lovitz, Jack Palance, Patricia Wettig

Here is the wholly unnecessary sequel to City Slickers, the 1991 hit film where three lifelong friends go on a Western adventure to find their inner happy.   They succeeded, and part two picks up one year later.   Remember the calf Crystal helped deliver in the first film?   He has grown into a cow, and accompanies Crystal's character Mitch on jogs. 

Only two of the three friends return for the sequel, with Bruno Kirby's Ed noticeably absent from these proceedings.   He is replaced by Glen (Lovitz), Mitch's ne'er-do-well brother who can quote lines from The Godfather chapter and verse.    Lovitz does what he can, but he can't quite replace what Kirby brought to the table in the first film.    Bringing Kirby back might not have mattered anyway, because City Slickers II is primarily interested in finding long lost gold buried somewhere in Nevada by the father of Curly, the unforgettable trail boss who died in the first movie.

Curly is dead to be sure, but Palance returns as Curly's twin brother Duke, who joins Mitch, Phil, and Ed on the quest for the millions in treasure.    Duke sounds and looks like Curly, but is meaner and perhaps more sinister.    Or is he?   He arbitrarily oscillates from nice to mean at the drop of a hat.   One thing I know about Duke:   Curly, he ain't.    So, what we have in City Slickers II are a bunch of guys trying to enrich themselves with long dialogue exchanges and bloated action sequences thrown in to kill time.    There is even a tiresome stampede where Mitch and Glen nearly drive their horse-drawn wagon off a cliff.   The map (which was tucked under Curly's hat which Mitch saved as a keepsake after burying him in the desert) is forever in jeopardy of being burned, blown away, or lost.  Yawn. 

Do we even care if the gold is found?   City Slickers II isn't a continuation of the original story, but an innocuous tangent.    The ending leaves open a possibility of a third film, but after twenty-six years, I think we can safely assume there won't be one. 

























Directed by:  Paul Weiland

Starring:  Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern, Jon Lovitz, Jack Palance, Patricia Wettig

City Slickers (1991) * * *

Directed by:  Ron Underwood

Starring:  Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern, Bruno Kirby, Jack Palance, Ron Underwood, Helen Slater

City Slickers takes what could have been a typical fish-out-of-water story and infuses it with the right amount of humor, observation, action, and sentimentality.    Three lifelong buddies: Mitch (Crystal), who hates his job selling air time at a radio station, Phil (Stern), a supermarket manager who hates his insufferable wife, and Ed (Kirby), who hates the fact that he's getting older, have lost their inner happy and go on vacation out west to lead a cattle drive.  Mitch and Phil are far less enthusiastic about this than Ed, who is forever trying to capture the Fountain of Youth in the form of high-risk vacation ideas.    As City Slickers opens, the three are running with the bulls in Pamplona and Mitch is gored in the rear end by one of them.

Mitch mopes around observing that is in a life rut.   His wife Barbara (Wettig) is fed up with his kvetching and urges him to go on vacation.   ("Go and find your smile").   Phil's wife kicks him out after she learns of his affair with a co-worker.   Since poor Phil fakes being asleep most times to avoid any contact with her than absolutely necessary, this is a blessing.   Ed has taken on a much younger wife, but can't rid himself of his own nagging insecurities.    The cattle drive is supervised by Curly (Palance), a surly trail boss who doesn't much care for "city folk".   Palance won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for this role, a role which may seem one-dimensional, but Palance slowly peels away his gruff exterior to reveal a quiet man of dignity and principles.   He even stubbornly grows to like Mitch. 

Will the three friends work out their issues and finish the cattle drive a lot more fulfilled than when they started?    It isn't a spoiler by answering yes, because otherwise, what would be the point? 
Because we like these three men, we hope they find their way, and City Slickers surprises us with its heart.   Crystal, Kirby, and Stern have impeccable comic chemistry, and Palance nearly steals the film while uttering far fewer words than anyone else. 

The Lovebirds (2020) * 1/2

Directed by:  Michael Showalter

Starring:  Kumail Nanjiani, Issa Rae, Paul Sparks

Kumail Nanjiani and Issa Rae can do better than starring in a dimwitted, predictable comedy like The Lovebirds.   I know.  I've seen that they can.   Ever since 2017's charming The Big Sick (written by and starring Nanjiani and directed by Michael Showalter), Nanjiani's stock as a comedic actor has plummeted with last year's bomb Stuber and now The Lovebirds.    He and Rae play a couple on the verge of breaking up who are swiftly drawn into a bad situation on the way to a dinner party.   They accidentally run into a bicyclist, and then a guy purporting to be a cop (Sparks) commandeers their car and runs over (and then backs over) the bicyclist after a brief chase through the streets of New Orleans.  The cop leaves the scene, and witnesses assume Jibran (Nunjiani) and Leilani (Rae) are the culprits, causing the bickering couple to go on the lam. 

Other than the opening minutes of The Lovebirds, when their relationship is in the honeymoon phase, Jibran and Leilani motormouth their way through one silly scenario after another.    They try to steer clear of the police while trying to figure out why this bicyclist was killed.    They bicker, they fight, they reconcile, and then they start up again.   The couple is in a pickle, and everyone but them seems to know it.    It is little wonder they are breaking up before the guy on the bike entered their lives, they ramble on incessantly about everything and get on each other's (and our) nerves.

We care little about Jibran and Leilani, since we know how all this will turn out for them, and we care even less about the plot their in, which involves an Eyes Wide Shut-inspired sex cult, blackmail, homicides, kicking horses, and the threat of scalding baking grease to the face.    Jibran and Leilani are thrust into action hero mode, and manage to go mano a mano with a cop and drive in high speed chases through the streets with James Bond-like proficiency. 

What else can be said about The Lovebirds?   It won't score any points for originality, but not every movie needs to if even an overly worn story can find a way to be told with freshness and energy.  Nanjiani and Rae try their best to supply that energy in the form of incessant dialogue between one another.    Back around the Lethal Weapon days, having the leads cutely bicker their way through deadly gunfire and violence was new and entertaining.   After three Lethal Weapon sequels and countless retreads, it is now trite and wearying.   I read a review of The Lovebirds which dedicated twelve (yes 12!) full-length paragraphs to a movie which will likely be long forgotten in a month.
The Lovebirds isn't Casablanca folks.   Heck, it isn't even Lethal Weapon 4.