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buckythewonderhorse
Reviews
Wishing Out Loud (2015)
Nice idea but done badly.
We found this on Tubi and I was all set to turn this off half way, but since my wife insisted on watching it to the bitter end, even though she was disappointed in it, I might as well write this review to offset the positive reviews. I get that this is fairly low budget and everyone in it tried hard; but still, I warn you, it's just not interesting enough to be worth it.
The idea is nice enough: Sophie wants to ask her best friend Aaron to the school dance, but one of the mean girl trio (why are mean girls always in groups of three?) has asked him instead. Meanwhile her grandma has given her this magic car (why do teenagers get given cars for their birthdays?), and she ends up wishing famous teen actor "Drake" into her car, and gets to take him to the dance.
So what SHOULD have happened were funny moments hiding Drake, and some sort of reconciliation with Aaron. Instead... it goes all strange. Drake has a dorky cheeriness, which provides most of the movie's few good moments. But Sophie insists on being negative to everyone; which not only saps out the humour, but makes it hard to like her and so also hard to like the movie.
Eventually she asks her grandma why the car is magic, and this is where the movie really goes off the rails, with grandma going off on a rambling story which almost sent me to sleep. I won't spoil the ending, other than to say it is a letdown. Not because everyone doesn't end up happy, but because the resolution comes from nowhere.
Irish Wish (2024)
It's a romcom and it delivers
I am puzzled by the low rating. I have a bit of a weakness for Hallmark-style romantic movies: the better ones are pleasant and deliver a happy ending. This is far better than almost any Hallmark-style movie, and most romantic movies in general, so why it is rated lower than many Hallmark movies? I assume too many viewers came expecting something else.
Yes it is pretty obvious how it is going to pan out. But that's ok! We're not here for a shock twist, we're here for the journey and the happy ending. At least I am. And unlike so many romantic movies, there are actually some interesting plot elements to drive the story along, mainly the magic wish and how it will be resolved.
For those who care, there is no sex or nudity; there is an engaged couple sharing a bed but there is no hint of sex in those scenes, quite the opposite!
So if you want a happy and interesting rom-com, with a bit of magic and some lovely scenery, this one certainly delivers. If you want adventure, sex or major plot twists, this probably isn't for you.
Duplex (2003)
Truly awful and with a terrible ending.
This film has appeared on Netflix. Do yourself a favour and do not watch it.
There are meant to be shenanigans when a young couple buy an apartment which is a duplex, with an annoying old lady leasing the upstairs apartment. It's potentially funny except (1) none of the jokes or incidents are even mildly amusing; and (2) none of the characters are likeable: the old lady is annoying, and the young couple end up trying to kill her (yes, literally try to kill her, I am not making this up), we lose all empathy for them.
There is no plot development. The couple find nothing about what is really going on, they just struggle from disaster to disaster and lose more and more money.
Finally, the ending is very unsatisfying. Don't keep watching in the hope that it will improve, because it doesn't.
Christmas at Castle Hart (2021)
One of my favourite Hallmark movies, because it actually has a subplot
I am surprised by the number of bad reviews here. This is one of my favourite Hallmark movies.
The things about Hallmark movies (and romantic movies in general) is that apart from the obvious "man and woman fall in love" plot, they need a subplot to drive the story alojng. Too many Hallmark movies have a really lame subplot like "organising a Christmas play" or "renovate an old hotel". There's no suspense, so no interest, at least not from me.
But Christmas at Castle Hart has a couple of interesting subplots. The main one is that the main character has to pretend she is a major events planner. This leads to a lot of awkward and funny situations. We know she will get found out eventually, but we don't know how. That adds tension and interest. Yes it's unrealistic, but who cares, it's a movie.
Then there are a few other subplots: will they find any relatives of their father? Will the brother and sister who own the castle resolve their differences? We know what the final answer will be, but the way it all pans out makes for a very happy ending. And isn't that what we want when we watch a Hallmark movie?
And as for the bad CGI effects (like horse riding through the snow and leaving no footprints) - ah well, it just adds to the dorky charm.
Christmas Land (2015)
Worst Hallmark ending ever.
As most other reviews have said, what started out as a reasonable movie (by Hallmark standards) got totally butchered by a terrible ending: greedy developer (Richard Karn, aka Al Borland from Home Improvement) sells the property back to the protagonist (Jules) and makes himself a $1.3 million profit. Jules finds $850,000 in sponsorship but still ends up $450,000 in debt, not to mention walking out on her high flying marketing job in New York. Even if she has one lawyer boyfriend for a slightly taller and more handsome lawyer boyfriend, how the heck is that a happy ending? Except for greedy developer Al!
Kath and Kim: Our Effluent Life: 20 Preposterous Years (2022)
No new material, don't waste your time.
Do not waste your time on this. At least the first 20th anniversary special had a small amount of new material. This has none.
So how do they fill in an hour? Mainly with a bunch of C-list celebrities telling us how great Kath and Kim was, plus a few bloopers.
OK, they do get former prime minister Julia Gillard, which is a nice coup, and I'll give it 1 star for her, and another star because some of the bloopers are moderately amusing (though I have heard they are also on the DVD set). But the rest of it is just bland and boring. The original series was wonderful; this is just a money grab
Don't look at this. It's not unusual and it's not different.
Admission (2013)
Interesting middle, terrible ending
This film has an interesting premise, where Tina Fey's character (Portia), an admissions officer at Princeton University, is convinced by a school teacher (John, played by Paul Rudd) that a potential student (Jeremiah) is the son she once gave up for adoption. She sights a birth certificate in which the place, time of birth and even the mother's date of birth match up. So surely she is! This leads to a number of heartwarming scenes where her maternal instincts come through when she interacts with him and with others.
Then the movie turns weird, and in a painstakingly long and pointless scene of a staff meeting, she pleads Jeremiah's case, to no avail. She turns extremely unprofessional (to put it mildly), downplaying other students' cases to make him look better, and then she unethically gets him admitted anyway.
OK, now for the big spoiler: he's not her son anyway. (Somehow John, who was very close to Jeremiah and knew that he wanted to meet his birth mother, was never got told that Jeremiah HAD met his birth mother). So there's a happy upside you ask... no. Portia (quite rightly) loses her job, tries to get in touch with her actual birth son and fails, and then... the movie ends. Perhaps the book develops all this, but the movie just falls flat.
Christian Mingle (2014)
Doesn't really work either as a romance or as a Christian movie
The problem with "Christian Mingle" is it seems unsure whether to be a Christian movie or a comedy-romance, and it ends up being not particularly good as either.
I can understand it not wanting to get too full-on Christian and preachy, but the result is that the Christian message is so diluted that the Christians coming off looking pretty bad. So if they were trying to make a good advertisement for Christians, they failed.
When not-so-Christian Gwyneth meets the church friends of her new boyfriend Paul, they immediately assume she know dozens of Bible verses off by heart, and begin smelling a rat when she doesn't. Not only it is cringey, but it's unrealistic.
But the trouble is there is just enough explicitly Christian content for this to work as a romance either, because it's also (clumsily) about Gwyneth's journey to faith.
Finally, the Mexican village scenes. Other reviewers have commented about how inauthentic they were. I don't know enough about Mexico to comment, but I will say it was hard to take it seriously when it looked so much like the village from The Three Amigos!
Undercover Grandpa (2017)
OK premise, weak execution... just doesn't work
The premise is ok: teenager Jake finally gets to take his crush (Angie) to a party, but first has to take home his grandpa, who can't stop talking about the things he used to do in the military. But when Angie mysteriously disappears, Grandpa says she's been kidnapped. So instead of Jake taking Grandpa home, Grandpa calls on his retired military connections to help rescue Angie.
Now I don't mind a B grade comedy-action movie (I really enjoyed the kids saving the day in The Sleepover (2020)), but this just didn't work. It all moves slowly, and doesn't have any real charm (I can't think of any good jokes), And when the action happens, it is either lame, or over-the-top silly (like grandpa single handedly fighting and taking out 3 bad guys with his bare hands).
I was going to give is a 3, but I bump it up to 4 for actually keeping to its comedy-action genre and not getting too violent. So it was not actually unpleasant, just meh.
Love Jacked (2018)
surprisingly good, nice twist on the "pretend to be couple" trope.
The "pretend to be a couple and then actually fall in love" trope has been done many times. But Love Jacked manages to inject some different elements, and made for an enjoyable movie.
I must warn, the first 15 minutes or so were confusing, I think because it was not clear which man was destined to become the main male character. But eventually we get to the setup: Maya has dumped her African fiance but has told her family she is still engaged, while Malcolm is on the run from a bad guy and needs to hide. Solution: Malcolm pretends to be the African fiance and stays with her family. So in with the "pretend to be a couple" movie we've got the "pretend to be a foreigner when you're not" and "on the run from someone who wants to kill you" movies.
And somehow, it works. The plot delivers plenty of laughs, a bit of suspense, and has a few twists on the way to its mostly predictable happy ending.
That's Amor (2022)
no laughs, and not enough charm
The first thing that annoys me is that Netflix lists this as both a "Comedy" and a "Romantic Comedy". It's neither. It is certainly not a comedy, and there are no laughs so I don't see how it can be classed as a romantic comedy. If they were trying to inject a few laughs, they failed miserably.
It's a fairly standard romantic movie plot: girl loses job and breaks up with cheating boyfriend, and soon meets a handsome man (in this case, at a cooking class), and they eventually fall in love. Now I don't mind a romance movie, and this might have worked if there were some funny moments, or some cute sweet moments between the couple, but there are barely any of either. It doesn't help that for the first half of the film the girl is pouting at her mother for enrolling her in this cooking class.
We are also subjected to cooking class scenes which are far too long: this is meant to be a romantic movie, not the cooking channel.
(minor spoiler coming)
Eventually it picks up and they fall for each other, before the inevitable twists and finale, but it just didn't have enough sweetness or laughs for me. Also (minor spoiler) there is a sex scene which comes out of the blue and doesn't fit the tone of the rest of the movie.
Dave (1993)
wonderful 90s movie
If you're looking for an older movie to watch, you can't do much better than "Dave". I finally caught it for the first time in 2022.
Kevin Kline plays both President Bill Mitchell - a womanising, cynical politician - and his lookalike Dave. The president gets Dave to fill in on a public appearance while he is having sex with a staffer. But when the president has a stroke and it incapacitated, suddenly Dave finds himself acting as president full time.
You've got to suspend disbelief here - this all happens with only 2 staffers, 1 bodyguard and a few paid-off medical staff knowing the truth; and somehow Dave manages to fool (almost) everyone he works with, even the President's personal doctor. But the plot is slick and the cast carries it so well, especially Kline, and Sigourney Weaver as the President's wife. Then the ending, while again rather far-fetched, it very satisfying.
Pottersville (2017)
Entertaning; I don't understand the poor reviews
I am puzzled that this movie has mainly bad critic reviews. It's not the best movie you will ever see, but it is entertaining.
One night, small-town shopkeeper Maynard (Michael Shannon) gets depressed and drunk, runs around in a gorilla costume, and starts a Bigfoot craze, which revives the town's failing economy. He then goes out night after night, managing to be seen by nearly everyone in town, but never caught. OK, you have to suspend disbelief a bit here - doesn't anyone suspect it's just a guy in a costume, or see him sneaking in or out of his store? Anyway, eventually a Bigfoot hunter arrives in town (Thomas Lennon) with an accent which is a horrible mash-up of Australian, New Zealander and South African(fortunately, that is played for laughs); and a Bigfoot hunts ensues.
The movie is both silly, and with a bit of heart. The ending is a bit rushed, but otherwise it was very enjoyable.
2 Hearts (2020)
only watch if you're into tear jerkers
I feel like this was a bit of a bait-and-switch: a pleasant romantic story (or pair of stories) suddenly veers into a very sad movie. If you're into sad movies, this might be for you. If you want something pleasant or uplifting, look elsewhere.
Spoiler: kind of weird and unpleasant is the way they do it. I thought I knew what was would happen, but then the star pulled through in hospital, married, had a kid, and I was wondering where the twist was. Well, the twist was "the last 20 minutes of the movie didn't happen, in fact he died in hospital" I felt like they strung us along for far too long. A minute or two, fine, but 20 minutes of movie and a good (at least) 5 years of life? Weird.
Christmas in the Wild (2019)
predictable but enjoyable
The funniest thing about watching this movie is that my wife told me what was going to happen almost every time. Yes, every plot "twist" was predictable to someone who has watched enough romantic movies.
That said, it was very enjoyable. It's a nice romance with no bitterness, no really nasty characters (except for elephant hunters, who we never see), no sex or nudity, and a happy ending. I would have given it a 6, but I've got to add an extra star for the elephants and the wonderful scenery.
La familia perfecta (2021)
not a comedy - synopsis and trailer are misleading
(To avoid spoilers, only read the 2 paragraphs after this one)
After watching the trailer, I thought this could be fun: rich boy gets engaged to working class girl, and a funny clash of cultures between the families follows, as in e.g. My Big Fat Greek Wedding. And for the first 20 or so minutes, that is what we get.
Then it turns strange. The boy and girl become background characters, and it becomes a romantic drama about the mother of groom, torn between her feelings for the energetic father of the bride, and her loyalty to her rich but boring scientist husband. And it becomes more light drama than comedy.
OK, now the spoiler:
the boy and the girl happily marry, but the affair between the mother of the groom and the father of bride causes both their marriages to break up, leaving all four of them single. I know life is sometimes like that, but having two marriages break up is not what I call an enjoyable romantic comedy.
Man vs Bee (2022)
painful rather than funny
I once heard/read an interview with Rowan Atkinson, where he said he can basically do two sorts of comic characters: those who are smarter than they appear (like Mr. Bean) and those who are not as smart as think they are (like Johnny English).
It's a pity he didn't take his own advice, because his character "Trevor" in Man versus Bee is neither.
Trevor is a rather ordinary, unsuccessful middle-aged man, apparently recently divorced, and gets a job house-sitting while a very wealthy couple takes a vacation. Then while fighting a bee, he proceeds to destroy nearly everything in their house. But because Trevor is neither overconfident (like Johnny English), nor able to comiucally solve his problems (like Mr. Bean), it just isn't funny. It's just painful watching this rather nice guy destroy things and have his life go further down the tube. I gave up after 3 episodes.
Moms' Night Out (2014)
Lots of laughs, not over the top Christian
Some of the negative reviews here are a bit unfair. Yes it is a Christian-based movie. But the Christian message is not hammered too hard: there are only a couple "message moments", the times where the pace slows down and two characters have a heart-to-heart. And the message is not about faith itself, but about affirming mothers, which hopefully is something everyone can agree with. (Yes I am a Christian, but of the more liberal kind, and not one to normally enjoy "Christian movies").
There is also some gentle fun poked AT Christianity, such as the too-perfect church woman, and Christian bumper stickers.
Anyway, on to the film itself. Think "Date Night" but without bad guys and guns. It's a lot of fun as a mothers' night out goes horribly wrong: first their restaurant booking falls through, then the fathers take their car without telling them, and there is a lot of running around as a young mother tries to track down who is minding her baby. There are plenty of laughs along the way and a happy ending, which is all I want for a movie night in.
The Starling (2021)
Not a comedy-drama, just a drama
I watched this because it was labelled a "comedy-drama" and starred two fine comic actors, Melissa McCarthy and Chris O'Dowd (The IT Crowd). But it is not comedy in any sense. It is a drama movie with many sad and a few touching moments. But it gave no laughs and only the odd smile.
McCarthy and O'Dowd play two parents who have lost their only child to SIDS, and O'Dowd has spent the last year in a psychiatric hospital because he wasn't coping, and McCarthy is barely coping. Through the antics of a starling, and a kindly psychiatrist-turned-vet (wonderfully played by Kevin Kline), ... well without giving too much away, things slowly change.
If you want a touching drama and feel like a good cry, this might be for you. But don't go there in the hope of seeing any wry humour, from McCarthy, O'Dowd, or anyone else.
Rescued by Ruby (2022)
Pleasant and a very satisfying ending
A pleasant movie for a night in, based on a true story. It dragged a bit in the middle, but had a wonderful ending. Make sure you watch the bloopers in the credits, then afterwards look up and see just how much of this actually happened - most of the main details seems to be accurate.
June Again (2020)
Very fine film, funny and not too sad
A very fine film, dealing with the subject of dementia with sensitivity and humour. The threads in the film mostly tie together very well, for a satisfying ending, a little sad but also joyous. Many Australian films start promisingly but don't quite hit the mark, but this is one of the exceptions.
Playtime (1967)
Simply not entertaining
Maybe this is well made and film students will like this, but for the average viewer this is simply not worth it. There is no plot, and the film literally meanders along. Don't persist after the first few minutes in the hope that it picks up. It does not; it's just 120 more minutes of the same.
There are a lot of visual gags, supposedly many hiding in every scene, but most of them are not very funny by 21st century standards. They also come out of nowhere and disappear just as quickly.
If you want to see if you enjoy it, I suggest watching the last scene first, roughly the last 10 minutes in the drug store and the roundabout outside it. Since the film has no real plot, there is only one very minor spoiler if you do that. That scene probably has the most gags so is best way to sample the movie.
Frantic (1988)
Disappointing
Harrison Ford as a ordinary guy caught in the middle of the bad guys... it sounded very similar in vein to The Fugitive so I gave it a watch. The film starts with suspense and intrigue, but just doesn't deliver. The "twists" are not really that surprising or original, and the ending is disappointing.
OK not every film needs a happy ending, but the ending of this film was such a letdown. To have a major character die, it leaves a "this sucks" feeling instead of "the hero prevailed" feeling.
Would I Lie to You? (2022)
1st episode not bad
The first episode was better than expected. It is hard not to compare to the UK version, but they did alright. Some of the stories were very good, and it's always easy to laugh at Frank Woodley.
I'm not sure about the length though. The UK version is 30 minutes, this was over an hour (counting ads). I think the show works better when kept shorter.
The Bounty Hunter (2010)
textbook example of gaslighting
This was never a great film, but watching it in 2021... it does not age well at all. Gerard Butler's character's treatment of Aniston's is classic abuse and gaslighting: he lies to her, says one thing and does another, disputes her memory of events (especially the casino scene), and uses his position of power to tease her and wear her down (moving the car when she's trying to get in, ramming her bicycle with his car). In other words, classic examples of gaslighting and of an abuser.
This works neither as crime thriller, comedy or romance. The crime thriller has too many plot holes, there is not enough comedy, and Butler's character is far too abusive and unlikable for this to work as romantic comedy. On the plus side, Aniston does well and gets in a few funny moments, and Jason Sudeikis provides some much-needed lighter moments as her dorky co-worker.