Ballerina (aka Leap!) movie review: lowering the barre
Cheesy Euro ballerina-porn cartoon is full of dated animation, cringeworthy attempts at humor, bizarre anachronisms, and a terrible message for little kids.
comedy
The Hitman’s Bodyguard movie review: protection racket
Reluctant-buddy action comedy feels like unfunny, warmed-over ’90s leftovers. Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson look like they’d rather be elsewhere.
Fun Mom Dinner movie review: stay at home, moms
Stereotypes and contrived shenanigans don’t seem to actually offer much catharsis for harried moms seeking escape. And the dads inevitably butt into their me-time.
Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie review: a brief look at the long and the shorts of it
Sweet, subversive, and absolutely hilarious, at once a snarky superhero sendup and an unironically joyful celebration of friendship and imagination.
Spider-Man: Homecoming movie review: boys and their alien toys
Thoroughly charming. Spider-Man’s signature light comedy works surprisingly well even as this story is uniquely steeped in the darker Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The House movie review: burn it down
The hint of a seed of a bitter satire is buried under inept, momentum-free comedy. They should have developed the script’s rough first draft instead of shooting it.
Lost in Paris (Paris pieds nus) movie review: French kicks
An exquisite miniature puzzle-box pop-up-book of a movie. All is color and light and exhilaration here, a fantastical lark that is sheer mischievous joy.
The Wedding Invitation movie review: regrets only
This strained comedy might have been progressive in the 1960s, but today it reeks of an infantilization of women that warrants squashing, not celebrating.
Baywatch movie review: sun’s out, dumb’s out
A beach-slap to anyone with a brain. Embodies everything that is wrong with Hollywood today. It is proudly dumb. It is proudly sexist. It is proudly pointless.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge (aka Dead Men Tell No Tales) movie review: yo ho no
The franchise finally overstays its welcome with this cacophony of CGI spectacle, a contrived and confusing plot, and a newly cruel and stupid Jack Sparrow.
