Category: Movies

I’ve had the same film bro favorite movie since 6th grade, though it wasn’t basic or film broey at the time. I was 11 when I first watched “Interstellar” because I’d seen it was about space and I liked that sort of thing. We were on vacation at the beach and I was on a pull-out couch where I watched it on my brand-new phone under the covers for all 3 hours with my janky headphones. It’s hard not to understate how blown away I was. I’d been reading books about galaxies and astronomy and the far reaches of our telescopes and to stumble upon this movie that none of my friends had seen made it feel like it belonged to me. It was the right movie at the right place at the right time. 

This love for astronomy evolved into an obsession with cosmology and astrophysics. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Stephen Hawking, and Carl Sagan books littered my bedroom floor as I searched for something that could make me feel like I had all the answers I required, but I hit a wall: I’m really bad at math. That didn’t stop me from getting into quantum physics and exploring the different theories surrounding the makeup of reality, though over time, I got frustrated and moved on to microbiology and neuroscience. 

My love for space and the physics of reality has stayed strong despite mental obstacles, but for the past 7 years, I’ve had two favorite movies: “Interstellar” and “Center Stage.” Two pretty different movies, and yet they always hit the spot. Well, this changed about two months ago when I saw “Everything, Everywhere, All At Once” with my twin and my best friend.

We laughed (a lot), we cried (a lot), but even in the moment, all I could feel was that (at least for now), I had all the answers I needed. After trying to read dense science and science fiction over the years where authors refuse to explain a second of their books, I’ve come to appreciate stories that take a magical sci-fi concept like the multiverse and have as much fun as possible. It feels like there are new psych thrillers or mind-bending movies more often than people taking both sensational emotions and a sense of humor and making something that manages to be heart-wrenchingly profound, despite its best efforts. 

The ability to not take yourself too seriously is priceless. It’s worth everything when it comes to making something as vulnerable and layered as a movie like “Everything, Everywhere, All At Once.” You enter understanding that this movie is about the multiverse, but it’s endlessly more than a movie meant to confuse people that don’t like to think much during movies or are above the age of 50. 

The characters themselves are tragically human, to the point where I feel like there is no antagonist in the entire movie simply because you can relate to whoever’s on screen no matter what. With a cast headed by Michelle Yeoh, you know you’re in for some of the most complex and effective acting of your life. But let me tell you, Stephanie Hsu gives one of my favorite performances of all time followed closely by her on-screen father, Ke Huy Quan. They both played their roles with an honest and a soul-deep understanding of their respective stories that I went back to the theater alone at 9 pm just because I wanted to experience their parts of the movie again. Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Lee Curtis, and James Hong were obviously highlights, but to see two phenoms getting the kinds of roles they deserve makes me so happy. Also I’m obsessed with Stephanie Hsu, but that’s more of a biased point of love for this movie. Do any of you have a “Be More Chill” bootleg downloaded on their twenty-pound Mac laptop from the early 2000s? No? That’s what I thought. Know that I am both smug and deeply embarrassed. 

I could never stop talking about the visuals and the costuming. There were so many moments when even with everyday clothing, it felt so right for the character. Everything felt so intentional and cared for with no detail left to rot in uncertainty. The editing, the sound production, the set design, the fight choreography, THE SCRIPT, THE DIALOGUE, THE EDITING, THE ENDING, STEPHANIE HSU. The bagel. The endless gorgeous shots. The everything bagel at the center of everything. The bagel that beckons us and the people that rescue us. STEPHANIE HSU.

I need to take a breather.

I love it deeply. As someone that loves dimensions and galaxies and parallel universes and strings of reality, I love it. As someone that thinks poop jokes and chugging a carton of half & half is funny, I love it. As someone that has had a lifelong crush on Stephanie Hsu, I love it. As someone that loves good movies, I love it.

I adore this movie and it has more than earned its spot among the singularities of “Interstellar” and the broken-in ballet slippers of “Center Stage.” WATCH THIS MOVIE, PLEASE. IT’S NOT A REQUEST, IT’S A DEMAND BUT I’M NICE SO I ADDED A PLEASE.

Take a deep breath in… And out… Thank you for listening to my rant about  “Everything, Everywhere, All At Once.”

You read the title right. I have made this claim and I will die on this hill, head held high. Know that I mean every word of this article. Every. Word. The only reason this article is in humor is because no one is ready to understand that this is the truth, and I am sorry in advance to anyone that loves “Lady Bird” or “Inception” (both are truly exceptional films) but you are wrong.

“Scooby-Doo” (2002) is the greatest movie ever created.

I need to warn you in advance; you’re about to have your mind blown. Whatever you thought you knew about Scooby-Doo, I need you to forget it. Throw it out the window, discard the Scooby snacks, and throw caution to the wind. You will leave this article a different person, I guarantee it.

Before I explain the plot of the movie, I would like to insert the fact that James Gunn wrote this screenplay. Yes, the director of both “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies (he’s also set to direct the confirmed upcoming third installment of the franchise) and “Suicide Squad” contributed his talents to this movie. Now that that’s out of the way, let me explain the plot. Buckle up.

The movie opens with the seemingly haunted toy factory under the siege of the Luna Ghost– but don’t worry, the gang is on it! After a kerfuffle and several plan-related mishaps, Mystery Inc. manages to solve the mystery (spoiler-alert, it’s Old Man Smithers– the creepy janitor!). This scene brings back the classic nostalgic feel of the gang taking down a small town mystery, which sets a tone of a simpler time in order to contrast the later independent tones of the movie.

However the conflict is far from over… there’s trouble in paradise with the Mystery Gang. Velma feels underappreciated, Fred feels threatened by the possibility of the fixation of a power imbalance, and Daphne is sick of being the damsel in distress. Despite Shaggy and Scooby’s attempts to patch up these concerns, Fred, Daphne, and Velma walk away from mystery solving with their noses in the air. What will Shaggy and Scooby do now?

The movie leaps forward two years where Shaggy and Scooby are living in the Mystery Machine, eating and chilling– the dream! However, they are approached by a representative of millionaire Emile Mondavarious. They are offered ten thousand dollars and the chance to eat at an all-you-can-eat buffet in exchange for the solving of a mystery on his spooky-themed amusement park island, Spooky Island.

All of a sudden, paths converge and the Mystery Gang is back in the same place! Velma is NASA scientist, Fred is an accomplished author, and Daphne is a lethal black belt. However, nothing is as it seems, and the gang can’t seem to find their footing as a team after Mondavarious offers a juicy mystery: the college students visiting the island are acting strange, and Emile suspects foul play. There’s no way these students could be this aggressive and brooding after spending time on Spooky Island.

The island’s lore discusses a vibrant culture and wild species of monsters before Emile Mondavarious built his amusement park, so the individual members of the gang start with exploring the island for clues– except something magical has happened. Shaggy has met the love of his life, Mary Jane! Scooby feels jealous and is desperate to find some way to receive attention.

After receiving a call advertising free burgers from an anonymous speaker, Scooby wanders into the middle of the woods to be attacked by the native monsters of the island! Lost in a panic, Scooby reconvenes with Shaggy only to be told that he was hallucinating by all members of the gang.

Eventually, all five members end up at the abandoned castle of horrors at the top of the island. They find evidence of not only an inside conspiracy, but also evidence of a brainwashing cult’s presence on the island! The biggest clue they find, however, is a small pyramid-shaped artifact: the Daemon Ritus.

After that scary night of clue-searching, the gang finally feels like there might be a chance of reuniting. Velma begins to study the Daemon Ritus and deduces that its purpose lies in some sort of ancient ritual. After befriending another island partier, Velma also reveals that there was previously a sixth member of the gang: Scrappy-Doo, an ambitious and tiny dog with a gland issue. He had been exiled from the group for being a nuisance, and was now a mere memory of the gang. But don’t look now– the island monsters converge from all directions, dragging away the party-seeking college students into the night!

With Fred and Velma among those taken by the monsters, Daphne, Scooby, Shaggy, and Mary Jane desperately search for an end to this madness and fall asleep on the beach while waiting for help from the Coast Guard (though their behavior is also being controlled by the ancient monster’s ability to possess people). Except when they wake up, nothing from the night before remains. Everyone that was taken is back and ready to party– but they’re just not themselves.

Not to mention, 2000’s pop music icon Sugar Ray makes an appearance and is down to party, which is yet another point as to why it is the best movie of all time.

Things quickly turn south when it is revealed that everyone taken has been possessed by the monsters. Unbeknownst to Shaggy, Mary Jane has also been possessed, though Scooby figures it out and demands she expose herself as a poser.

After an intense argument in which Shaggy accuses Scooby of making up Mary Jane’s monstrous affliction out of jealousy, Scooby is captured by the inside members of the monster-takeover operation. In an act of courage, Shaggy infiltrates the underground base of evil only to find a massive vat of the protoplasmic souls belonging to the possessed college students and island attendees. Shaggy briefly chats with Velma’s protoplasmic self before releasing her to find her body, later also releasing Fred and Daphne.

While Velma finds her way back to her body and discovers the monsters can be killed by sunlight, Fred and Daphne end up in each others’ bodies. After using the Daemon Ritus for a good-ole’ switcheroo to get back in the right bodies, the gang figures out that the monsters are possessing the college students to protect themselves from the sunlight during the day. A native of the island reveals that the monsters and men behind the mystery are preparing the Darkopalypse ritual in order to take over the world and enslave humanity; however, the only way they can do that is with the sacrifice of a pure soul to the Daemon Ritus… aka Scooby-Doo.

Following even more expert detective work, the gang figures out that Mondevarious must be the man behind the ritual. Determined to rescue Scooby, the four set out to execute a complicated plan to take down the plot to end the world. Though Scooby’s soul briefly leaves his body, Shaggy foils Mondevarious’ plan and frees Scooby. Velma and Fred find out that Emile Mondevarious is no power hungry millionaire– he’s actually Scrappy-Doo in a realistic robot body who’s starved for revenge on Mystery Inc. Now a massive and unstoppable monster beefed up with protoplasmic energy from the ritual, Scrappy is determined to capture Scooby to complete the ritual to its deadly fruition.

Each member faces off a symbolic image of their own areas of improvement: Velma and Fred share their brains and brawn to fight off ritual participants, Daphne battles it out with a burly Telemundo wrestler providing his muscles to protect the ceremony, and Shaggy and Scoob rely on their friendship to keep the ritual from finishing. In a final domino sequence of success, all members manage to stop the ritual and save the college students from becoming eternal slaves.

With the mystery solved, one piece of the puzzle literally crawls from out of the ground: the real Mondevarious slithers out of a sewer that he’s been locked in for two years when Shaggy hears him banging on the door. It turns out that Scrappy had been playing the long game by living up to his name. Mystery Incorporated has finally saved the day thanks to their meddling and their talking dog!

If that play-by-play didn’t convince you enough, there is no word I could use to the sense of humor applied generously throughout the film other than “nuanced.” Each joke adds to the next and yet they are thrown out by the cast’s excellent performance with reckless professionalism, only adding to the comedy. Each joke’s hilarity is like a slap in the face until tears are streaming down your face.

(Plus any movie with the tag line “Doo happens” is automatically one of the greatest movies of all time.)

The character’s relationships do not feel forced in the slightest and are captivatingly genuine with respect to the characters’ histories. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the actors playing Fred and Daphne (Freddie Prinze Jr. and Sarah Michelle Gellar, respectively) fell in love on set and are still married to this day.

Also, don’t lie to yourself, you’ve never heard of a plotline like this. Admit it. There comes a spark of respect for those that create stories to entertain not only the children that watch but the adults as well, and for the plot to be this imaginative makes it a diamond in the rough. Usually adults think it’s enough to stick an iPad with Cocomelon on the screen in their kid’s face and call it a day, but this movie is so unique and stimulating for children and yet simultaneously entertaining for adults that it can’t be ignored. Imagination is a commodity best served ridiculous, and this movie proves it.

Additionally, the actor that plays Shaggy, Matthew Lillard, is a defining contributor to the magic of this movie. Obviously Freddie Prinze Jr., Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Linda Cardellini (the actress that plays Velma) all shine as convincing and enthusiastic attributes of the movie, but no one brings it like Shaggy himself. Lillard was made to play Shaggy. I genuinely believe that his divine purpose on this planet was to bring this character to life in both animation and live action productions. His performance is completely flawless, and his dedication adds an extreme sense of commitment and genuineness to such a silly and heartfelt movie.

Another fan of the movie and a completely unbiased human being that is also my sister agreed with my admiring opinion of Lillard’s performance as she said, “He truly transcends what was asked of him on this project. I’ve never seen someone so dedicated to his craft, and I have to believe there is some magic involved, some outside force at work. Maybe even a divine force.”

The 2002 adaptation of “Scooby-Doo” is the best movie ever made. I’m not sorry at this point, and I will keep defending my point forever, no matter the controversy. Polarization doesn’t scare me. The enigmatic wonder that fills this movie is palpable and makes the film all the more elite as compared to other movies. Doo happens, as I always say!

Rom-coms have both the power to destroy humanity and to also help us flourish. Ella Enchanted– flourish. 27 Dresses– destroy. The Lost City– flourish. The Wedding Planner– destroy. It’s a simple claim corroborated time and time again with all of your problematic faves and all of your wholesome re-watches, though specifically romantic comedies. I have found another rom-com that could potentially at least put a smile on your face and at most resurrect Aristotle. This movie is HBO Max’s triumph, Moonshot.

Its description on HBO Max is: “In a future where Mars is terraformed, two college students sneak onboard a space shuttle from Earth to Mars in order to be united with their significant others.” I simply describe it as a fun time and a silly, goofy movie.

Lana Condor and Cole Sprouse headline as the two main characters and are both alums of my childhood, as both a frequent watcher of X-Men: Apocalypse and an identical twin. My twin also LOVES Jenny Han’s books, so it’s safe to say I am a huge fan of Lana Condor after To All the Boys ruled my years in middle school. Even my English teacher was in love with Peter Kavinsky.

Moonshot surprised me so much. I already knew that I would love Condor, but Cole Sprouse is great when he isn’t in a bolted contract that borders on UN level restriction. Sprouse’s character is a manic-pixie-dream-boy barista that wants to go to Mars and be like his idol, which is Elon Musk but played by Zach Braff, but also just wants to find love with his ideal manic-pixie-dream-girl. Condor is an ambitious woman hell-bent on achieving the life she knows she should want with the guy she should want, but is it all really what she wants?

As someone that has grown up in a time where school means almost nothing until you get past grad school, participate in dozens of extracurriculars, carefully plan out your academic career to match your future career, and map the human genome so you can then find a job, the conflict of struggling between what you should want and what you do want is ever-present. Elevating this level to at least a college level adds some integrity to the plot, which means that at least one production of recency has deviated away from the chokehold that high school media has held on almost all media for decades. It’s a small win, but it’s a win all the same.

With Sprouse’s character, he feeds into the parallel struggle of feeling guilty when doing the things you want instead of the things you should do. I may be blowing this up more than necessary, but intertwining these two situations into a romance is exactly what I love about rom-coms. Romance is something that people often criticize as two-dimensional within plotlines, but having the intersection of personal ambition relating to not only the proper way to be successful, but also the complexity of feminine ambition and how restrictive it can feel. Though I don’t want to spoil too much, this movie focuses more on what Condor’s character, Sophie, deserves and what Sprouse’s character, Walt, can learn from. 

Rom-coms often put the men in the movies as the ones that don’t need to really change, they just need the girl. The women however, often have to undergo some kind of emotional or physical makeover where the only difference is that they now focus less on their careers and more on their fairy-tale man. There could be nothing wrong with this, except most movies make it seem like she needed that push, that learning lesson to get her to the spot where she should be. It feels condescending that she’s an outlandish bitch until she finds a guy that mellows her out. In this movie, however, Walt is the outlandish and unemployed bitch that struggles to learn the difference between ambition and selfishness while Sophie tries to learn how to start following her instincts and control her ambition while also making time for herself.

This movie is funny, heartwarming, entertaining, and (most importantly) has a pretty good soundtrack. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, and you can feel like getting lost in the ridiculousness without your brain melting. If it took itself too seriously, it’d be Jerry Maguire, and I tend to side with Lego Batman on that movie. I highly recommend this curveball to anyone looking for a laugh and a love that can help them get through a Monday night. Also, Lana Condor, I love you. 

Seat B9, my sister in B10. We can barely contain our excitement as we eat the surprisingly delectable AMC food and curl our toes with pure anticipation to see the infallible actor, Jared Leto, take the screen by storm. 

Nicole Kidman is about to tell us how amazing AMC is, so I’ll report back after the movie ends. All I know about this movie is what can be gleaned from the trailers and the literally endless amount of TikToks begging me to not waste my time watching it and telling me how absolutely God awful this is, but I’ve seen almost every Marvel movie in theaters so I thought I could just hate watch it for kicks. 

Jared Leto is a sicko, so I’ll keep an eye out for moments when I don’t think he’s acting. I’ll let my sister take the mic:

Charlotte’s POV:

I’ve got a goblet of nectar (red icee) in one hand and a hot dog in my other, so there’s little that could make me unhappy at this moment. I know I’m going to see Nicole Kidman in her best role ever, the AMC ad, so I’m pretty pumped about that. Jared Leto scared the bejeebies out of me, and I’m worried I’m only going to be able to think about the cult he runs while I watch Morbius; even so, I’m looking forward to making my own evaluation of this Twilight fanfic.

POST-MORBIUS

I have so many words to say about this movie that I need to create a second language with twice as many words that can cover what is going through my brain after being subject to those heinous hours of my life in which I watched an endless string of scenes where Jared Leto wore the exact hair-dos that I wear to school every single day.

The entire movie felt like a multi-hour trailer. I kept waiting for characters to make deep connections, to grow, to be dynamic. I was sorely mistaken, because this isn’t that type of movie. Every single scene felt like it was written by a different person. In one scene, Jared Leto would be nice and funny. In another scene, he would be stark and egotistical. Maybe that was just Jared Leto not knowing the camera was rolling, but I’ll blame it on the writers.

Most of all, nothing made sense. You don’t go to a Marvel movie for it to make sense, but this truly could have been a work of surrealism at Sundance. If it had been marketed as surrealism, I think it would have been inserted into the Oscars and would have stolen the award from an actually good movie because it was completely incomprehensible. He has this unnamed disease and he wants a cure and apparently it’s really hard and experimental to find, but then he goes to a cave and gets a bunch of bats and then dissects one and then tosses the liver in some saline and then injects that solution directly into a mouse and then the mouse dies and then it comes back to life. Like what the heck?

How did it take him multiple years of experimenting if all he had to do was put a long-dead, shriveled-up bat liver into salty water and stick it in a mouse? And why didn’t the mouse get powers?

How does he have the ability to echolocate when none of our organs can do that? Do bats have more facial muscles and that’s how he looks like the Sam Raimi Green Goblin? Why did they just toss in Michael Keaton at the end? 

The comedic relief was God awful. That could’ve been the one redeeming thing about this movie, but no. I actually did laugh a lot, to the point where my sister hit me in the arm and told me to shut up or forever hold my peace, but it wasn’t at the jokes. From the moment a bunch of bats flew out of a cave and around Morbius, I giggled. Then, when he injected himself with the serum and had abs, I giggled. When he drank artificial blood for the first time, I snorted. When he drank the woman he’s supposed to be in love with’s blood right after she died in his arms, I almost cried. That actually sent me over the edge.

Let’s actually switch to his powers. I know I mentioned echolocation, but I want to dissect the best part about this movie, which is the way they depict his enhanced strength. It looks like he’s becoming a little baggie of Crystal Light, and while that looks cool, how on earth are the Marvel people going to justify that? What about bats makes them dissipate into Crystal Light?

How can he hear very specific conversations from miles away? How can he fly with no propulsion when bats have wings and he doesn’t? Does he turn hollow? Are his bones now hollow? What happened to his blood? Does he have bone marrow?

Does he have telekinesis? Why couldn’t Doctor Who also communicate with or control the bats? Do bats have super-strength? How did both of them get super-strength? Why isn’t Morbius rich if he created fake blood? How would injecting DNA into a middle-aged man make his entire body change?

I’m sorry I’m asking you questions. Neither of us know the answers, so it’s pointless. I’ll let you go, but only if you promise me to never see this movie. Ever. Please don’t. I know we just met, but I think I owe it to you. Don’t see this movie.

If you think this review is scattered and disorganized, you should (but seriously don’t) watch Morbius. This’ll look like the Bible after that.

CHARLOTTE’S POST-MORBIUS POV:

I tried SO HARD to stay onboard with this movie, and to be honest, I didn’t mind the movie’s quirks for a good while. The frequent and random slo-mo shots of vamp-Morbius and confusing plot developments just made me view the movie as a potential comfort film that was probably over-bullied online.

However, and that is a vicious however, an unthinkable plot development in the movie’s final act made me sit with my mouth agape for five minutes. I can only describe my emotions during the last ten minutes as “agog.” I was bewildered at how they chose to initiate and resolve the boss battle, switching the villain from sadistic and insane to misguided and sentimental in about .25 seconds. The post-credit scenes made me laugh out loud because I couldn’t believe the dumpster-fire I was seeing.

I stayed up for a little while last night, just trying to process what I had just witnessed/the trauma this movie departed on me. I rarely view a movie as “bad” (I am a huge proponent of guilty pleasures and accepting a movie’s campiness) but once they made that final-act decision, I was gone. Jared Leto, you sicko, of course you signed up for this movie, it’s just as big of a let-down as you, you weirdo. The one concession I can give is that the love interest is hot, though a bad actress. No more questions, please, I want to wipe this experience from my brain forever.

****

I rarely ever write about things that I don’t like on this blog. I have more fun writing about things I enjoy than listing all the reasons I hate something. But this experience called for a civil service to spread one important message: Don’t see Morbius. Don’t do it. We were fools for thinking the world might be wrong. Don’t see it. See The Lost City. See CODA. See The Batman. See Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. Don’t see Morbius.

I love rom-coms of all types. If it’s dumb and romantic, I eat it up. The problematic ones from the ‘80s, the slightly less but still problematic ones from the ‘90s, even the somewhat problematic ones from the early 2000s– they’re all delectable and unrealistic. Considering I am 17 and haven’t held hands romantically since I was 14 and skinny, this genre is one of the singular connections to romance that I intentionally maintain and intend to maintain. 

However, in recent years, people have let the magic of rom-coms dwindle into nothing but self-aware millennial dating-app existentialist remake cash grabs that almost always include leads that have little to no chemistry. A gal like me that lives vicariously through unlikable size 0-2 women from movies like 27 Dresses, 10 Things I Hate About You, and Miss Congeniality several times a week needs fresh content after the dry spell that was almost the entire 2010s, but no one seems to get that rom-coms can be both cash grabs and enjoyable.

That is, until The Lost City dropped on March 25, 2022.

So much about this movie felt so catered to me that I couldn’t care less if anyone else didn’t like this movie.

THE CAST

I am a diehard fan of Sandra Bullock in literally any rom-com ever, as she plays the “not like other girls” girl to perfection– whether that means a business lady, a fed, or an author in this movie, she’s a working woman that doesn’t play with her heart.

Channing Tatum has been a member of the Anna’s Heart-Throb Club ever since I laid eyes on him in She’s the Man as a himbo jock with an earnest heart and a questionable sexuality. It’s the role he plays best, and it’s the role he played in The Lost City.

If I could be stranded on an island with any celebrity, it would without a doubt be Daniel Radcliffe. Every role he’s in is magic because you know he wanted to be there, and he is so underratedly hilarious. Plus, if I had a nickel for every time that Daniel Radcliffe played an eccentric millionaire that kidnapped a specialist in a niche field that suited his own particular ambitious goal, I’d have two nickels. And I’d keep those nickels forever (he was a rockstar in the second Now You See Me). He’s such a great weirdo villain. I just love the guy.

I have been going through a massive Ocean’s Trilogy phase, and with that has come an unavoidable obsession with America’s mothers’ favorites, George Clooney and Brad Pitt. Before those movies, I knew Brad Pitt from Megamind, Happy Feet 2, and Troy. I had a relatively neutral stance on him, maybe a little overrated. Not anymore. I am truly aware of the fact that he is likely an insufferable person, but right now, I can’t be deterred.

The aforementioned cast had such strangely fantastic chemistry, and I was riveted by every moment that any of them were on screen. Having a random dance scene in the middle of the movie that was SO GOOD with CHANNING TATUM. I couldn’t have planned it better myself. It’s truly a commendable scene that is sure to put women over 44 in heat. Bullock and Tatum could hate each other. They could loathe each other to the point that security is ever present on set. I wouldn’t care. Nothing can ruin this for me. I have also been stalking Channing Tatum’s TikTok enough that I should be on an FBI watchlist, and all of the behind-the-scenes videos of the cast have convinced me that they’re all friends and I should love the movie forever and ever like I plan to. It’s so strange to me when A-listers are actually funny because I feel like they had to have sold their soul to the devil in order to achieve celebrity status (which would obviously include their ability to have a sense of humor), but everyone killed it. Brad Pitt, you made me laugh so much for all of your screen time. But you probably suck and that makes me sad.

THE PLOT

I won’t reveal too much of the magic, but the plot was digestible and hilarious compared to the dumpster fires of the last decade. Sandra Bullock’s character Lorretta is a reclusive author mourning the fading (but still smarting) loss of her husband, an archeologist to match her love of history. She made her fame on writing steamy romance novels featuring the character Dash, whose likeness is portrayed on the covers by Channing Tatum’s character and flaming dum-dum, Alan, who has maintained a small crush on Loretta for the years he’s known her (she also hates him, to make things interesting). When Alan sees Loretta being kidnapped from her own book tour, he vows to be the one to rescue her in order to show that he’s more than just a cover model. Meanwhile, Loretta discovers that she has been kidnapped by an equally reclusive millionaire played by Daniel Radcliffe, who needs her help to find the legendary lost treasure she had written about in her recent novel.

It’s such a wonderfully dumb plot filled with so many opportunities for fun within the writers’ room, and boy, did they take them. The jokes aren’t super millennial-humored (they’re starting to learn, thank God) and tend to be geared toward more of a twenty-something age range rather than 30s and up, though I saw this movie with my mother and she had only nice things to say about it. She’s not alone, as my sister and I were literally rolling with laughter from the first time Channing Tatum entered the shot to the very last second of the post-credit scene (which is a must, by the way).

****

I wholeheartedly recommend this film for anyone that enjoys rom-coms and perhaps needs a break from all of the actually good, pretentious films that have been winning awards and stuff. If I had to choose between The Batman or The Lost City to watch on a ten hour loop… Well, you know the answer to that scenario. This movie makes me feel a glimmer of hope that perhaps the rom-com genre can return to the bounty it one yielded. But be warned, Channing Tatum’s entire butt is on screen for a solid 8-10 minutes. If you are with your mother and would like to avoid that, heed my words.