Too many Hollywood comedies, Office Christmas Party included, seem to expend all their creativity in the casting office. Filmmakers assemble these impressive lineups acting talent — and Office Christmas Party has as good a collection of actors as any comedy this year — and then sets them adrift in dumb stories with no jokes, hoping their evident charisma and endless improvisations will deliver enough laughs to fill out a decent trailer. The people in this movie are funny, but the movie would be a lot funnier if it gave those people some clever material to perform.
There’s no silence quieter than the one in a movie theater during an bad comedy. At times during Mother’s Day, director Garry Marshall’s newest debasement of a beloved holiday, a hush fell over the theater to rival the quietude at a Benedictine monastery. When the laughter finally came, it’s always at the movie’s expense. This disaster is less deliberately funny than the last movie titled Mother’s Day, and that was a violent horror film.
In what will probably result in a much more amusing film than the last time the two appeared on screen together, Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman are reuniting for a new comedy titled Significant Other. Bateman will direct, produce and co-star in the upcoming film with Aniston, who will also serve as executive producer. Based on the strength of Bateman’s directorial debut, Bad Words, we can at least take comfort knowing that this has to be better than The Switch, right?
Having already planted his flag of squeaky-clean ethnically homogeneous courtship on New Year’s Eve with New Year’s Eve, Valentine’s Day with Valentine’s Day, and America’s most tragic hour with 9/11 Remembrance Day, Garry Marshall will expand his Holiday Cinematic Universe with Mother’s Day this spring...
The Age of Revivals spurred along by the likes of Netflix’s Fuller House or whatever NBC drags out of the dumpster next has many hopeful that Friends will finally get its oft-discussed reunion. Nope! Co-creator Marta Kauffman bluntly states “reunions suck,” at last putting an end to speculation.
Jimmy Fallon's 'Lip Flip' must be stopped. It has to end. Sure, the technology that drives this particular 'Tonight Show' segment is vaguely impressive (there are lips! and then they get flipped!), and Fallon and his various guests appear to have a good time pretending to talk out of each other's mouths, but the final execution is so terrifying, so weird, that it can only do one thing: cause nightmares.