Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)

Tobe Hooper's original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is often heralded as a classic part of the horror genre. The movies that followed it, on the other hand, have been all over the place in terms of quality. Between the sequels, the prequels, the 2003 remake, and the 3D reboot, the saga of Leatherface and his family has been nothing short of weird.

And things just got a bit weirder with the release of a new entry in the franchise having just landed on Netflix. Another "re-quel," as the fifth Scream movie would call it, this new Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie is a direct sequel to Hopper's movie from 1974. And I won't lie to you: you're better of skipping it altogether.

Welcome to Harlow, a ghost town in Texas that has caught the eye of young entrepreneur Dante Spivey (Jacob Latimore). He and his colleague Melody (Sarah Yarkin), along with Dante's girlfriend Ruth (Nell Hudson) and Melody's sister Lila (Elsie Fisher), have traveled to Harlow with plans to auction off the town's abandoned buildings and turn it into a hip, trendy, gentrified neighborhood. But things don't always go to plan, do they?

Dante and Melody discover an elderly woman in the town's orphanage, and she swears she's the rightful owner of the building. The subsequent argument causes the woman to have a heart attack and die, something that doesn't sit well with the orphanage's other resident: the masked murderer Leatherface (Mark Burnham). He goes back to doing what he does best, drawing the attention of Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré) in the process. Sally was the sole survivor of Leatherface's killing spree in 1974, and she's spent the last fifty years dedicated to finding and killing him. But as the original movie asked, who will survive and what will be left of them?

This is not a good movie. There's no beating around the bush. It's a dull plodding effort that has a lot of gore but not much else going for it. It isn't scary, the characters are unbelievably bland, and is pretty much borrowing ideas wholesale from the 2018 Halloween, but didn't even do anything cool with the idea.

Director David Blue Garcia doesn't really do much to make the movie feel special. There's precious little that stands out or brings anything to the franchise. It's just a generic, paint-by-numbers slasher movie that lucked into having Leatherface as its main villain. There are no real scares, no suspense, nothing to make it worth watching beyond its name. Garcia does give us a couple of slick moments, but they're so few and far between that one would almost swear they were imagining them.

The movie also suffers from a very, very, very weak script. Credited to Chris Thomas Devlin, from a story by  Fede Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues, the script doesn't really tell any story worth following. Nobody is going into a movie titled "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" expecting Hemmingway-level writing, but it could've been so much better. The characters are all either boring, unlikable, or infuriatingly stupid, to the point that you don't want to root for anyone to survive. But that's not the worst of it.

For starters, one character is stated to have survived a school shooting. Was this something that got added to make the movie feel somewhat topical? Because using something seriously tragic like that as the backstory for a character in a crappy Netflix slasher movie just screams "poor taste."

And I can't mention stupid things in this movie without mentioning the bus scene. I've seen this scene brought up in numerous discussions about the movie, and I'm not surprised. It's probably the movie's most impressive set piece. But my problem is what happens just as the scene begins. Leatherface climbs aboard a party bus full of hipsters live-streaming the whole thing on social media, and this lumbering brute covered in blood, carrying a chainsaw, and wearing someone's face as a mask is told by someone, "Try anything and you're canceled, bro." Holy crap. I think we actually found something that can rival "do your thing, cuz" from Texas Chainsaw 3D for one of the goofiest things I've ever seen in a horror movie. I can forgive some of the "woke" parts, like characters wanting to remove a Confederate flag from one building. But this "cancel culture" joke just came off as the stupidest thing in a movie full of stupid things.

I also thought the idea of bringing Sally Hardesty back could've been handled a lot better. It's already bad enough that they're ripping off Halloween, but the character is only in the movie for roughly ten minutes. Her scenes weren't nearly as interesting as Laurie Strode's in Halloween, lacking a lot of the emotional weight her scenes probably should've had. You actually care about Laurie because she actually feels like she has a personality in all her appearances, as opposed to Sally. When the late Marilyn Burns played her in 1974, all she had to do was run and scream, that's it. This time around, the Sally played by Olwen Fouéré doesn't get to do much beyond hate Leatherface. And honestly, the whole thing was done way better earlier in the franchise, all the way back in the second movie in 1986. I can't be the only one that remembers Dennis Hopper's crazy performance as Sally's uncle, a Texas Ranger who went toe to toe with Leatherface and his family?

But maybe the cast could overcome the rest of the movie's faults? No, no, a whole lot of nope. There isn't a single solitary performance among the cast that rises above mediocre. I did think Mark Burnham had an intimidating presence as Leatherface, and I'd have liked to see more of what Olwen Fouéré could have done as Sally had she been given more than ten minutes of screen time. But everybody else is just disposable cannon fodder and it seems like the cast knew it. Was there nobody here that could've done a little bit more with what they were given? I know it's a straight-to-Netflix slasher movie, but that isn't too much to ask, is it?

I won't lie, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies have never really been up my alley. I do like some of them, but they've always been overshadowed in my mind by the ones I didn't like. And this was one of the ones I didn't. Outside of some impressive gore effects, everything about it felt like generic retreads of things that had been done better in other movies. It gives off the impression that someone at Legendary Pictures said, "we've got the rights, we've gotta do something with it or we've spent all that money for nothing," before just dumping it on Netflix. It's a short watch, only 74 minutes before the credits roll. But what an unimpressive 74 minutes that is. After the last few movies, maybe the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise should just be left alone for a while.

Final Rating: **

Jackass Forever (2022)

When it was released in 2002, I assumed that Jackass: The Movie was going to be their grand finale, where they'd finally be able to do all the ridiculous R-rated shenanigans that they wouldn't have been able to air on their MTV show before riding off into the sunset. But here we are, over two decades since the show began, talking about the fourth in a line of Jackass movies. (Or even the fifth, if you want to count Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa in there.) It's been twelve years since we last saw this group of weirdos and daredevils in Jackass 3D, and I honestly thought that we'd never see them in this capacity again. But considering how weird the last two or three years have been, nothing should really surprise me anymore.

But there are a few surprises out there, and some of them are in Jackass Forever. Much of the original gang — Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Chris Pontius, Dave England, "Danger Ehren" McGhehey, Preston Lacy, and Jason "Wee-Man" Acuña  — are back for more, and they've brought along newbies Sean "Poopies" McInerney, Zach Holmes, Jasper Dolphin, Rachel Wolfson, and Eric Manaka to help them out. The whole group of daredevils are here to perform more of the dangerous, outrageous, and sometimes disgusting stunts that we know and love Jackass for. And truth be told, some of these stunts are taken to a much higher, sometimes scarier degree than we've seen from them in the past.

I can't quite put my finger on it, but I don't really know if this particular movie was quite as funny as what we've seen in the past. Yeah, it's got some moments that are laugh-out-loud hilarious, but they didn't feel as if they came as often as what we might've seen in the first three Jackass movies or the TV show. I honestly spent more time worrying about the cast's safety than I did laughing. Seeing Johnny Knoxville strapped to a stretcher and carted to a waiting ambulance with broken bones and a concussion, or briefly catching a glimpse of Steve-O with his arm in a sling (from a stunt that didn't even make it into the final cut of the movie!) seem more scary than they might've been twenty years ago when Jackass first got started. And then there's the fact that you can only see someone get hit in the testicles so many times before the humor wears off, right?

Some of the stunts are them recreating bits from the show and first movie but amped up to a more extreme degree, for better or worse. A lot of times, it just comes off like they're just doing things that were funnier earlier. It's like the kid in school who gets a laugh out of something, and keeps doing it over and over until you're tired of it.

The group's passion for their work and the camaraderie between them is more than evident, which makes a lot of the movie just as heartwarming as it is funny and gross. But at the same time, the absences of Bam Margera and the late Ryan Dunn are definitely felt here, and I didn't feel like the rookies made quite as big an impact as they could've. Rachel Wolfson in particular barely feels like she's in the movie at all, beyond two or three scenes. Zach Holmes and Poopies (what an unfortunate nickname that is!) seem to be given more than the rest, though I'd have really liked to see more of the whole group of them rather than just once in a while.

There's some genuinely funny moments to be had in Jackass Forever, especially if you're already a fan. And there's plenty of silliness to be found as well. But something about it just didn't feel the same as it used to. Maybe the time for Jackass has finally passed? I don't know if I'm the one to say that, and I won't lie, I'd totally see a fifth movie if they made one. But there's just something about this particular one that feels like it's missing, and I don't really know what it is. Maybe Jackass is funnier in my memory? But I'd probably just recommend Jackass Forever to the hardcore fans, and that's it. If you're not a fan, this probably won't convert you. And the haunting thing? I could probably see them doing this all again in another ten years. God help them if we ever see Jackass 5.

Final Rating: **½

Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin (2021)

When the Paranormal Activity movies seemingly came to an end in 2015, part of me hoped that the franchise would stay dead and buried. As much as I enjoyed the first three, the later sequels were so unbearably bad that the whole thing just stopped being fun to watch. And I don't think I'm the only one that felt that way, considering the continually diminishing box office returns of each successive entry into the series.

You can't always get what you want, however. Six years after The Ghost Dimension brought Toby the demon's found footage adventures to a close, the Paranormal Activity name has been resurrected with a movie released exclusively on the Paramount+ streaming service. And truth be told, I'd have had no idea this new chapter, subtitled Next of Kin, was even being released at all if I hadn't seen someone mention it on Twitter this morning. I haven't seen that first commercial or advertisement or anything for it. So between that and my displeasure with what the franchise turned into over time, I can't say I'm actually really excited for it. But what the heck, it's the spooky season, after all. So why don't we check it out and hope for the best?

The movie centers around Margot (Emily Bader), a young woman from Arizona who was abandoned by her mother when she was a baby. She's spent much of her life wondering about her biological family she's never known, wondering why her mother gave her up, and has spent much of her life searching for answers. She eventually makes some progress, however, when she's contacted by Samuel Bailer (Henry Ayers-Brown), who has recently left the Amish community he grew up in. Samuel discovered that Margot is his cousin through an online DNA testing service and offers to take her to his old community in rural New York so that she can finally meet her biological family.

Accompanied by cameraman Chris (Roland Buck III) and sound guy Dale (Dan Lippert) so that she can make a documentary about the search for her past, Margot travels to New York and is introduced to Jacob (Tom Nowicki), the Bailer family patriarch and her biological grandfather. Jacob offers them a room for a few days, and while Chris and Dale try capturing some of the local flavor, Margot goes off in search of answers for questions she's had all her life. But the deeper she digs, the closer she comes to learning that some mysteries should stay unsolved.

Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin is not a particularly good movie. It takes cues not just from the past movies in the series with the occasional cheap jump scare, but from the horror flicks released by A24 in recent years. Movies like Robert Eggers' The Witch or Ari Aster's Hereditary and Midsommar, flicks that are less dependent on jump scares and more focused on building an esoteric sense of dread. (And cults, can't forget the cults.) The big difference is that Next of Kin isn't nearly as good as either of those movies. Any effective scares to be found are few and far between, and the rest is nothing that hasn't been seen in a hundred other horror movies. It doesn't even bring anything new to this franchise beyond changing the setting from suburban California to a farm in New York. It's a dull, ultimately pointless movie that's only worth watching if you've run out of any other scary movies to watch this Halloween weekend.

Director William Eubank doesn't really do much to garner any sort of enthusiasm, or suspense, or any sort of reaction at all from the audience. I'm not even really sure Eubank knew what kind of movie he really wanted to make. There's a ton of odd editing choices, a handful of scenes (especially during the climax) that suddenly go into slow motion for a few seconds, and even a bit near the end of the movie that looks like it was shot traditionally instead of in the handheld "found footage" style.

I can't emphasize that last part enough, either. The movie already looks really slick thanks to it being established that the characters are using high end cameras instead of consumer grade camcorders like in the other movies, but there are times where the "found footage" concept is betrayed with camera angles that they couldn't possibly have gotten had the cast been shooting it themselves like the cast would have you believe. That's jarring enough, but when we get to one sequence near the end of the movie where nobody is holding a camera (as far as I could tell, anyway) and things are still shot perfectly for about sixty seconds, it takes me right out of the movie. I can forgive a movie like Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon for shifting from a mockumentary style to being shot traditionally because it fits the movie's narrative and is actually addressed by the characters. But here's it's painfully out of place and makes Eubank look lazy.

He isn't helped by the lackluster script, either. Writer Christopher Landon has worked on four of the movies in the series, so you'd think he could come up with something, anything, to shake things up. If you're gonna reboot the franchise, give us something fresh. But nope, he doesn't. Outside of the change in setting I've already mentioned, Landon doesn't give us anything new. The characters are either boring or forgettable (or both), with only Dale the sound guy having anything even remotely resembling a personality.

There's also very little time given to building any sort of nuance or depth to the villains' master plan. It just goes from Margot and Chris discovering some a few strange clues and saying "huh, this is kinda weird," some more clues that prompt a "this is really weird" reaction from Margot, and then we immediately run into the climax with no real build toward anything outside of one or two throwaway lines about what's happening as we're running at 100 miles an hour towards the conclusion. Combining this with a predictable open ending, you get the feeling that Landon just figured he'd give us the bare minimum and fill in the blanks if he has to write a sequel rather than giving us a fully fleshed-out story.

And then there's the cast, who are pretty much as forgettable as everything else in Next of Kin. Dan Lippert has a few fun moments as the movie's comic relief, and that's the best thing I can really say about anybody. Emily Bader does an okay enough job despite her character having practically no depth whatsoever, and the vibe I got from Tom Nowicki was that they wish they could've hired Clancy Brown to play the role instead, and that's about all I really have to say about the cast. They're all just kinda there.

If you've seen literally any of the other Paranormal Activity movies, even the Japanese spinoff or the Asylum's ripoff, you've seen Next of Kin too. There's absolutely nothing here that improves or builds upon the same old formula that was worn out when the last movie came out in 2015, nothing that reinvents the series or makes this particular one worth watching. It seems appropriate that this went directly to a streaming app without much fanfare, because it's exactly the kind of movie that would have gone straight to video and faded into obscurity while collecting dust on a shelf at Blockbuster twenty years ago. If you're desperate to watch any scary movie, give this a watch, I guess. But take my word for it, you're not missing anything if you don't.

Final Rating: **

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

After her scene-stealing theatrical debut in Batman v Superman, Wonder Woman got the limelight all to herself with her own movie in 2017. The movie was a big fat hit with both audiences and critics, grossing over 800 million dollars at the worldwide box office and earning a 93% (as of this writing) on Rotten Tomatoes. Its success was such that it vaulted the then relatively unknown Gal Gadot into the Hollywood A-list as well. After all of that critical and financial success, we were bound to get a sequel eventually. (Not counting her appearance in Justice League, that is.) And three years later, here we are with Wonder Woman 1984.

And while it's been a movie I've been hotly anticipating all year, I also have to admit that it was one of the biggest cinematic disappointments I've seen in a while. There were some things I liked about WW84, as it's called in the movie's promotional material, but it certainly wasn't the spectacle I spent all year hoping for either.

As the title implies, the movie takes us to the year 1984. Calling herself Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) so she can blend in with the world outside Themyscira, she continues to fight crime as "Wonder Woman" while working as an anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institute. She keeps her coworkers at arm's length for the sake of her privacy, but eventually befriends Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig), a meek, insecure woman who is constantly overlooked by everyone.

After Wonder Woman breaks up a robbery at a jewelry store, the FBI brings a set of black market antiquities recovered from the robbery to the Smithsonian to be identified. Among these pieces is the Dreamstone, a mysterious gem that is believed to grant the wishes of whomever holds it. This ends up proving true, as both Diana and Barbara inadvertently make wishes that are mystically granted. Barbara becomes as strong, beautiful, and confident as Diana, while Diana's long-dead lover Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) is brought back to life in the body of another man.

The Dreamstone itself was bought on the black market by Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal), a failing businessman hoping to use the stone's power to prove that he's not the loser his company's investors believe him to be. He sweet-talks Barbara into letting him into her office, where he acquires the Dreamstone and wishes to become the stone itself.

But the powers of the Dreamstone have one catch: for every wish granted, there is a terrible price to pay. Diana sees her powers becoming diminished, while Barbara's loses all sense of compassion and empathy as her jealousy for Diana consumes her. And as for Maxwell, he travels around the world granting wishes to the rich and powerful so that he can accumulate more power for himself. But his machinations cause so much sociopolitical disruption that it pushes the world to the brink of World War III. Diana and Steve are forced into action, desperate to stop Maxwell before he causes the Cold War to become a nuclear war.

Santa Claus left a big pile of mediocrity and disappointment in my stocking this Christmas, and it came wrapped in a big box labeled "Wonder Woman 1984." As much as the first movie got right, the sequel gets just as much wrong. It's unnecessarily long, much of the special effects are questionable, and the worst part of all is that it's just kinda dull. I honestly hate to say it, but with the exception of the cast, Wonder Woman 1984 is a wholly unremarkable movie.

There's no one specific thing about Wonder Woman 1984 that drags it down, but rather several things that combine into a big cocktail of letdown. Let's start, as I usually do, with the direction. Behind the camera once again is Patty Jenkins, who I'd hoped would be able to replicate the magic of the first movie. But alas, the sequel suffers from an inconsistent pacing that leads to long stretches where nothing happens and action scenes that are nowhere near as thrilling or awe-inspiring as the ones we saw in 2017.

The movie is 151 minutes long, and there is absolutely no reason for it to be that long. Watching it at home on a streaming device or a tablet is one thing, since you can at least fast forward during the dull parts. But you shouldn't have to do that. After a prologue that sees a young Diana competing in a race on Themyscira (an 11-minute sequence that should've been no more than five if it had to be in the movie at all), we have a scene where Diana stops a robbery at a mall before the movie slows to a crawl for the rest of the first hour. Things perk up a little around the 45-minute mark when Chris Pine enters the movie, but so little happens for such a long period that it's easy to tune out for much of the first half of the movie.

The movie also suffers from some of the worst special effects I've seen in a long time. There's the obvious usage of green screens, shots of Diana running that look like someone is learning how to use a marionette, and a few moments where the Lasso of Truth looks like a glowing golden cartoon. And let's not forget a scene where Diana saves some kids from being ran over during a car chase, and the kids are as fake as fake can get. It looks like Diana is swinging in and rescuing that marionette I was talking about a few sentences ago.

As I was sorting through the notes I'd written as my prep for this review, I saw discussions on social media and Reddit debating that the bad effects may be intentional, that they're supposed to make the movie be something of a throwback to Christopher Reeve's Superman movies from the '80s. I'm not sure if I believe that because the movie being set in 1984 becomes completely irrelevant about halfway into the movie. Yeah, the President looks kinda sorta like Ronald Reagan, Maxwell Lord looks kinda sorta like Donald Trump circa 1984, there's the fashion and a reference to the "Star Wars" missile defense system. But they never really lean into the '80s aesthetic. Stranger Things and the 2007 version of It do a way better job of capturing that vibe.

I also have to question the strength of the movie's screenplay. Credited to Jenkins, Dave Callaham, and renowned comic book writer Geoff Johns, the script is best described as "weak." The story isn't nearly strong enough to support the long running time, and the characters aren't done any justice either. Everything feels paint-by-numbers, with no real passion behind anything.

And I had more issues with the script beyond that. For starters, I wish they'd done something crazy with the whole wishes thing. Am I to believe that nobody wished for something really stupid or bizarre? Couldn't we get at least one throwaway gag where somebody wished for a pet dinosaur? Or wish that their dog could talk? We did have one brief moment where we see someone wished to be a farmer and got a herd of cattle in the park across from his apartment building, but things could've been a lot more off the wall. Sure, it might've ended up like that one episode of Supernatural from 2008 where a little girl wished for her teddy bear to be alive. But I'd have laughed my butt off if they'd done something ridiculous with it.

I also felt conflicted about Barbara Minerva, whom comic book fans know as "Cheetah." Not only is the character written like a half-assed version of Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman in Batman Returns, but I couldn't find any real redeeming qualities for the character. There's no catharsis factor when Diana eventually defeats her in their climactic battle, because there's literally nothing to Cheetah other than "she's a loser that turned into a jealous mega-bitch." There's nothing deep or complex about her. Maxwell Lord at least has a young son that he adores, but is blinded by his greed. Cheetah has nothing beyond her own selfishness and envy. That's why I said there's no catharsis, because we never get to see any chinks in her armor, never get to see anything that could redeem her.

That said, there's one scene near the beginning of the movie where she gives a dinner plate to a homeless man she's friendly with. The man turns up later when she beats up an attempted rapist, but none of this adds anything to Cheetah's arc since it's never referenced beyond these two brief moments. The Dreamstone stealing all of Cheetah's empathy and compassion feels hollow when when we only get to see it for about ten seconds. And to be honest, you probably could've cut her out of the movie entirely and outside of one scene where she helps Maxwell avoid being captured by Wonder Woman, it wouldn't have hindered the movie in the slightest. It just seems like they wanted someone for Wonder Woman to physically fight, and that was it.

Another thing that I thought was weird was that throughout the movie, Wonder Woman saves numerous people and asks them not to tell anyone about her. She played a role in World War I, with pictures of her to prove it. Am I to believe that nobody has ever told anyone else about the gorgeous woman with superpowers in the sixty-six years between the first movie's events and WW84? At one point we see a picture of Diana with an elderly lady I'm assuming is Etta Candy from the first movie, and I'm supposed to believe that nobody asked why Etta's friend hasn't aged a day since 1918?

If she pulled a "Connor MacLeod in Highlander" and kept a low profile while changing identities every so often so nobody noticed her, that'd be one thing. But when you're running around fighting crime with a glowing golden lasso while wearing a red and blue Xena: Warrior Princess costume, that's not exactly keeping a low profile. Maybe she pulled some strings and got her participation in the war buried and didn't break out the Wonder Woman stuff again until just before the events of WW84, I don't know. The whole thing just seems a little odd to me, y'know?

And then there's the climax itself. There's a moment where Diana delivers a soliloquy about how beautiful and important the truth is. It's framed in such a way that it looks like she's speaking directly to the audience, and combined with the hamfisted dialogue, it's all quite awkward. It feels like they were trying to sneak in an indictment of the whole "fake news" thing that's popped up over the last few years. And even if it isn't, it feels very forced, and it damn near took me out of the movie altogether. And honestly, the whole "Gal Gadot talking to the camera about how lying is bad" thing is a really stupid way to end your superhero movie.

But at least the cast is strong despite the less-than-stellar writing. Kristen Wiig's casting still feels odd to me, considering she's primarily known for her work in comedy. It'd be like hiring Kate McKinnon to play a villain in a horror movie. But Wiig isn't bad at all, being especially good during Cheetah's awkward, nerdy phase. And while it's odd seeing her play a selfish bitch that's consumed with envy, Wiig pulls it off well.

Chris Pine, meanwhile, returns to the role of Steve Trevor and once again does a great job. He and Gal Gadot have an electric chemistry together, and his awe at seeing the evolution of aeronautics and discovering that space travel had been invented is adorable.

I also really liked Pedro Pascal as Maxwell Lord. He plays the character like a drug addict that's hooked on power, so much so that it's literally killing him. But he needs that next fix, that next rush, that next bit of anything that will make him feel whole. Pascal is awesome in the role; the fact that villains quite like Maxwell Lord aren't that common in superhero movies helps him give a unique performance that I was really impressed by.

And last but most certainly not least is Gal Gadot. A few dodgy line readings aside, Gadot once again shows why she was the perfect actress to play Wonder Woman. She is utterly fabulous as the all-loving, kindhearted idealist and ferocious warrior. Gadot is wasted playing the role in such a mediocre movie, something that makes me wish WW84 had been better and hoping that a third movie that improves on this one's mistakes can be made in the near future. Gadot and the character deserve so much better.

Truth be told, the audience deserves better as well. You want people to sign up for HBO Max or go to a theater on Christmas Day (and during a global pandemic, no less) to see your movie, and this is the best you can give them? I know DC doesn't have the best cinematic track record over the last decade or so, but the first Wonder Woman movie was so fantastic that one would be justified in getting their hopes up for a sequel. And it sucks seeing that sequel squander all of its potential by being such a colossal disappointment. Of all the ways to close out the terrible year that was 2020, I'd have liked to have ended it with a good movie. But we didn't get it with Wonder Woman 1984. Here's hoping that 2021 will be better, and that Warner Bros. and DC can come up with something to redeem Wonder Woman in the future

Final Rating: **

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020)

Saying that 2020 has been a very weird year would be a wee bit of an understatement. Even if you look solely at American pop culture, this year has been wild. The COVID-19 pandemic pretty much killed the summer blockbuster season and is continuing to wreak havoc on Hollywood's scheduling. We've also seen a third Bill & Ted movie three decades after the second one, and The New Mutants finally got a theatrical release after it was originally supposed to have been released in 2018. But perhaps most surprisingly, 2020 has seen the unexpected return of Borat.

Yes, Borat, the wacky Middle Eastern journalist that pretty much everyone was imitating or quoting for a lot of 2006 and 2007. He was pretty much to the early '00s what Austin Powers was to the latter half of the '90s. But never did I expect to see a sequel to that movie. In the aftermath of the movie's runaway success back in 2006, the character was essentially retired due to his popularity making it harder to pull off his usual antics. Besides, you can only catch lightning in a bottle once, right?

But here we are in 2020, and I just watched Borat Subsequent Moviefilm on Amazon Prime Video. And after all this time, Borat hasn't lost a step.

Fourteen years ago, the government of Kazakhstan sent journalist Borat Sagdiyev (Sasha Baron Cohen) to the United States to film a documentary about life in America. What it got was something that went completely off the rails. The finished product ended up as a highly successful comedy in America, but turned Kazakhstan into a global laughingstock that landed Borat doing hard labor in a gulag for the rest of his life as punishment.

Nearly a decade and a half later, Kazakh Premier Nursultan Nazarbayev (Dani Popescu) pulls Borat out of the gulag and tasks him with taking "Johnny the Monkey" — a chimpanzee that is both the country's Minister of Culture and its most renowned porn star — to the United States as a gift for Vice President Mike Pence in an attempt to redeem himself and earn the country some respect.

But thanks to a rather unsettling mix-up, Borat arrives in America not with Johnny the Monkey, but his estranged 15-year-old daughter Tutar (Maria Bakalova). And without Johnny the Monkey, Borat is facing execution once he returns to Kazakhstan. But a TV news report about Donald Trump's connection to Jeffrey Epstein leads to Borat reasoning that Tutar would be a much more suitable gift. Tutar herself loves the idea, wishing to become a beautiful princess like she believes Melania Trump to be. So she and her father hit the road, traveling across the country, getting to know one another better and discovering just how much the United States has changed since his last visit.

Much like the first movie, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is most certainly not for everyone. It is extremely scatological at times, and plays up questionable cultural and racial stereotypes at other times. And it never misses an opportunity to be as crude and lowbrow as possible. But the absurd behavior of its two primary characters only serves to make the awkward situations they find themselves in even more bizarre, and thus much funnier than they would've been normally.

I'll confess that I didn't know if there was a place for Borat in the year 2020. It's not that there's nothing for Sacha Baron Cohen to work with. Considering how much has been going on in America since George W. Bush was in office and the early days of the War on Terror, there's a lot more for Baron Cohen to have a jab at than he did back in 2006. But not everything is quite the same as it was back then, either. Times change, after all. Not only are quite a few of the people Borat and Tutar interact with far more subdued and understanding than the gaggle of loudmouths and weirdos seen in the first movie, but political satire is so much more common now than it was fourteen years ago. The Daily Show, John Oliver's Last Week Tonight on HBO, Alec Baldwin's appearances as Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live, and the monologues of pretty much every late night talk show, have pretty much cornered the market on it, especially since Trump's administration is such an easy target. It's low-hanging fruit, y'know?

But maybe that's not so bad after all. Instead of jingoistic doofuses and sex-crazed frat boys, we've got jackasses on Facebook and Twitter claiming the Holocaust never happened and spewing conspiracy theories and false truths about the pandemic. Those idiots rightfully should be mocked, and that's why I'm glad to see Borat's resurrection.

Watching the movie, it feels like Baron Cohen hasn't been away from his most famous character for as long as he has. He easily slips back into the role, once again playing Borat as utterly wrong and misinformed about pretty much everything, but still likable and amusing. Unless you're predisposed to disliking this style of comedy, it's not hard to enjoy Baron Cohen's performance as Borat.

And I also can't say enough good things about his costar, Maria Bakalova. As far as I know, this is the first American role for the Bulgarian actress, and I'm excited to see more of her work in the future. She and Baron Cohen have a believable, enjoyable comedic chemistry together, and Bakalova herself is quite charming in the role. Even at Tutar's most crude, naive, and backwards, Bakalova makes the character adorable in her own way. I was also impressed with how well she handled herself, stepping in for Baron Cohen in situations where people may have recognized him and ruined the bit. She handles these moments like an absolute pro, and if it leads to more roles for Bakalova, she's earned them.

I honestly thought we'd seen the end of the Borat character in 2006. I figured maybe Baron Cohen could break him out for the occasional one-off joke somewhere, like when he showed up as Ali G at the Oscars in 2016. But I think now is the perfect time for the character to have made his return. Between the ridiculous stories we've heard about the Trump administration over the last four years and the American reaction to the pandemic, we kinda needed this lovable idiot to point and laugh at the insanity of it all. And I'm right there with him on it.

Final Rating: ***½