The summer of Ayo Edebiri continues. She's a damn star, obviously.
I'd recommend going in cold to this if you can - but, fair warning, it took me a beat or two to understand the world and the logic (or lack thereof). Once you're in, you're in. A really fun ride full of laugh out loud lines and gags, and really just unlike pretty much anything you've seen.
Slight spoilers ahead.
It really has this It Follows quality to it - you really don't know what time period you're supposed to be in. The only technology to speak of is one flip phone. The fashion feels very much all over the place, but ultimately feels like it's a catch all for high school movies.
It was not at all what I expected - and honestly, I don't know what I expected. But a really fun ride. Highly recommended.
Oh, and Marshawn Lynch is, expectedly at this point, funny as shit. Stick around for the blooper/outtake reel.
Frank Longo Member since Nov 18th 2003 86672 posts
Thu Sep-07-23 10:18 AM
4. "I think Bottoms will be a hit compared to those two." In response to Reply # 2
Their slow-roll-out model is really smart. It's allowing word of mouth to grow.
It also is just helped by how fucking good it is. I thought Joy Ride was pretty good, and I thought The Blackening was... fine (thought it fell into the "not funny enough to be a memorable comedy, not scary enough to be a memorable horror" category, but I respected what it was going for), but neither one screamed to me "this is a movie that *everyone* who sees it will tell their friends to check out." Bottoms definitely fits that bill imo. The theater I saw it with was in hysterics.
At some point the host asked, why isn't there a Bloomhouse for comedies with a production house just cranking out 5M comedies that are guaranteed to make money with the occasional breakout.
Evan Goldberg made the point that the problem is a 5M comedy is just as hard to make as a big budget comedy which makes sense but in this day and age, if a 30M comedy from Seth Rogan's team isn't guaranteed to make it's money back, I don't know what's sustainable.
I guess the streamers can make up the difference but it seems like the model is broken.
Don't forget BTW, Swingers was made for 250k.
********** "Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson
Frank Longo Member since Nov 18th 2003 86672 posts
Thu Sep-07-23 10:28 PM
6. "The problem with Joy Ride's budget is the scope." In response to Reply # 5
It's a lot of characters and a LOT of settings. Something like Swingers is basically 4-6 characters and relatively limited settings. There's a practicality issue at play.
I think it's possible to make cheap comedy, you just need motherfuckers that are actually funny. Macgruber's budget was 10 million. Popstar, which had a TON of people and settings, was 20 million. And those didn't make money initially either.
10. "Saw Bottoms tonight....really the best comedy I have seen in years" In response to Reply # 0
I also saw Joy ride at home this week and it was perfectly nice thing to watch at home on a rental. It felt like an early 2000s formula swapping out white guys with Asian women.
This felt like something very new and fresh. This is a comedy worth watching in a theater with other people laughing out loud.
Great pacing and the leads are natural born funny people. The surrealism was dope.
It did feel like a generational shift in comedic sensibilities.
There are a couple of plotholes I want to discuss when more people have seen the movie but folks should go see this in the theater.
It is still disappointing that a comedy with a 96% percent rotten tomatoes score, great word of mouth, magazine covers, buzz only does around 10M at the box office. I mean I sure this movie will be a win for everyone at the end of the day but it kind of makes me feel will never see again a comedy like the Hangover making blockbuster type of money.
********** "Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson
It's pretty clear subplots were excised so things get a bit wonky pacing character-wise sometimes but i'll take that over a 2 hour 30 minute comedy 9 times out of 10. It does have some of the worst continuity errors I've seen in a movie in a long time but whatever (see: the bleacher scene with Edibiri, Sennott, and Cruz where they hatch the plot for their club)
The cast was incredible and there's so much great prop/background comedy in this and the production design is amazing and full of great jokes.
This will hold up on rewatches for sure as there's so many jokes (spoken and visual), references and so much chemistry between everyone.
A really fun movie that deserves to build a following due to word-of-mouth
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A lot of you players ain't okay.
We would have been better off with an okaycivics board instead of an okayactivist board
12. "This was completely insane and made absolutely no sense" In response to Reply # 0
There’s a moment in the climactic sequence that made me say, out loud, “WHAT!?”’
They double down on the insanity when nobody so much as mentions it.
Spoiler
A football player gets impaled on a motherfuckin sword during an already batshit battle between one schools misfit girls and the rival school’s team.
In the aftermath, the two mains banter on some, “you killed a guy, no YOU killed a, that guy is definitely dead lulz”, but nobody is like “yo, did someone get stabbed to death with a sword?”.
It’s bonkers fun.
-Sig-
“Why didn’t you do this in your own god damn country?"
-All Stah's view on undocumented immigrants wanting to be treated like human beings.
13. "Awesome, might be the funniest movie I’ve seen in a few years" In response to Reply # 0
The absurdity of everything is great. Kept waiting for someone to address why the tough guy is standing in a cage, and nope! So many tiny little jokes packed in, even the posters and chalkboard writing in the background, and yet they don’t linger on it or overexplain the joke. Fantastic. I’m sure I’ll notice a few more things on every rewatch.
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