Beau Is Afraid (2023)

Beau Is Afraid is a three-hour monster of a movie. I wanted to see it when it came out in April 2023 but I was still having eye issues and there was no way I was going to make it through a three hour movie. Well, now that my eye is doing better, let’s see if this is worth it.

Beau (Joaquin Phoenix) is an anxiety-riddled man who lives in a rather dangerous part of town. As he gets ready to take a trip to visit his mother, Mona (Patti LuPone), both his suitcase and the keys to his apartment are stolen. He calls his mother to both cancel his trip and figure out what steps he should take. Mona resigns to the fact that he is not coming to visit and hangs up on him. Beau calls back, only to have a random UPS guy pick up the phone. The UPS man tells Beau that his mother is dead. Now Beau has to figure out how to get to his mother’s house for the funeral.

This description barely scratches the surface of what happens in Beau Is Afraid. So much weird stuff happens that I kept waiting for the big twist that explains everything. But that twist never comes. I still don’t know how to interpret this movie. It feels like they were trying to make a movie like Big Fish, where we are supposed to assume the main character’s tales are unreliable only to find out they aren’t. However, we don’t get that sort of sense here. Fantastical stories are told that we are supposed to believe are true. But, seriously, there is a giant penis-monster locked in an attic. Am I supposed to believe that the monster is real or that it’s a allegory for an actual person? There isn’t anything that happened previously in the movie to tell me which way to go.

So, I don’t know. I didn’t hate it but it is way, way, way too long and parts of it were way too boring. I do know that I can’t recommend this movie to anyone. That feels like torture.

Rating: D+

Mean Girls (2024)

Mean Girls started off as a movie in 2004 with Lindsay Lohan and Rachel McAdams. In 2018, Mean Girls hit Broadway as a musical with Erika Henningsen and Taylor Louderman. On January 12, 2024, the musical version was released as a movie with Angourie Rice and Reneé Rapp. I have seen all three versions so let’s talk about the newest one.

Homeschooled Cady Heron (Rice) and her mother (Jenna Fischer) have moved from Kenya to Illinois so Cady can attend high school. At North Shore High school, Cady realizes that she does not have the necessary social skills to survive. She meets Janis (Auliʻi Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey) who introduce her to the various cliques, including The Plastics: Karen (Avantika), Gretchen (Bebe Wood), and Regina (Rapp). Regina decides to take the new girl under her wing, making Cady understand just how mean girls can be to each other. Janis convinces Cady to get revenge on Regina, which causes all sorts of chaos in the halls of the school.

I was already in my late 20s with a 2-year old daughter when the original Mean Girls movie came out. So while I was never the intended audience for the movie, I did enjoy it. Then in 2019, we saw the Broadway musical with most of the original cast. Let’s just say I’m very familiar with all of the various versions of the story. The 2024 movie made a lot of changes to the musical. Unfortunately, not all of the changes were very good.

First, they cut a LOT of songs. Including reprises, fourteen songs were cut for the movie. I would say fifteen were cut since “Meet The Plastics” only includes Regina’s part of the song and cuts both Karen and Gretchen’s parts. They also added a new song for Cady “What Ifs.” This completely replaces “It Roars,” which I think is the better song. (The second new song, “Not My Fault” by Rapp and Megan Thee Stallion, is only used during the credits so I’m not counting it.) I get that these songs were cut for time (the musical is 2 1/2 hours long, the movie version is just under 2 hours) but some of these songs would have made the movie so much better.

Second, a lot of the songs that they had were very flat. The movie felt like it was entirely focused on Rapp’s singing until about halfway through when they realized that Cravalho is also a powerful singer. All of Rice’s songs had zero emotion or personality. Songs that should have been filled with emotion were just flat.

Finally…I’m not sure how to explain this. The movie just felt off. Some of the costuming was weird, the usage of real life influencers in the social media montages took me out of the movie, and of all of the possible makeup/beauty brands they could have partnered with, they chose e.l.f. cosmetics? Regina literally references Louboutin shoes but she uses makeup you can buy at Target? I don’t buy it.

There were good things about the movie - even three years later, Rapp is still amazing as Regina; Spivey’s Damian made me laugh out loud; Cravalho’s version of “I’d Rather Be Me” put the biggest smile on my face; and all of the dancers absolutely ate every scene they were in. (Shout out to Kyle Hanagami’s choreography!) I just wish that they didn’t scrimp on the rest of the movie. Unfortunately, this was the first feature length movie for the directors, Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr., and it shows. I would love to say that this is a good replacement for the Broadway musical but it’s not. If you get a chance to see a live performance of the musical, please go see it. It deserved so much better than this.

Rating: C

Xbox Live + Netflix = Fun!

I'm sure many of you know about this now. I'm going to talk about it anyway. If you have an Xbox 360 that is Live enabled and a Netflix account, you can stream movies and television shows right to your television. And it's not just a huge list of crappy movies either. My daughter is a big fan of Hannah Montana so we've queued up the entire first and second seasons of the show for her. My husband likes Red Dwarf so we have the last three seasons set up for him. I love Japanese dramas and anime so there's things like R.O.D. the TV on my list. It's a great way to spend a relaxing weekend - catching up on old TV shows or watching movies. If only there were more hours in the day for me to work through our queue!

Spoiler Warning!

Welcome back! I hope all of our US readers had a lovely holiday and didn't get trampled my Black Friday shoppers. To start us off again, I give you 100 Movie Spoilers in 5 Minutes:

Game review: Cinema Tycoon 2: Movie Mania

A long time ago, I played the first Cinema Tycoon game. I tend to have a weakness for Tycoon games but this one was fairly boring. Basically, you are given a movie theater and you need to run it. You pick what movies will play, how much tickets cost, the type of advertising you'll use and even what you'll sell at the concession stand. The problem is that once the day started running, there wasn't anything for you to do. So you spent a lot of the time fast-forwarding through the day. Cinema Tycoon 2: Movie Mania isn't much different. You seem to spend a lot of time just picking out what movies to show and restocking the concession stand. The rest of the options don't seem particularly necessary. Definitely a boring game.

Harry Potter and The Order Of The Phoenix

On Sunday morning, the family went to see the new Harry Potter movie. I haven't read any of the books but my husband has so we tend to walk away from these movies with two completely different opinions. To me, this movie seemed a bit jumbled. There was a lot going on and it didn't seem like anything really truly got explained. Things seemed to happen suddenly then they ended just like that. There were some very good and very entertaining parts (the Weasley twins just need an entire movie dedicated to them) but I'm hoping that this movie sets up a lot of stuff for the next one. I think I'd like it a lot better if I thought of it as a prequel to the next movie instead of a sequel to an already established world.

Movie Stuff

On Sunday, the family went to the movies to see Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. It wasn't an amazing film but it was pretty good. Though I'll admit that I had some problems with Sue's hair being too blonde and her eyes seemed weird too. I know Jessica Alba is wearing contacts but these contacts seemed different from the ones in the first film. The Silver Surfer was awesome. Overall, not a terrible movie. Last night, the husband and I saw Transformers. This movie was amazing. I think a lot of people were expecting too much from it though. The Transformers cartoon was made to sell toys. If you think that there is "more" to them, you are definitely looking for something that isn't there. The live-action movie (since there is a cartoon movie, I'll make the distinction) doesn't have any deep meanings hidden in the plot. Heck, the plot itself is pretty much "Find the cube before the bad guys." It has wonderful graphics, some really good acting and a great soundtrack. Despite what many people think, it's not going to "rape my childhood" and I wish people would stop using that phrase.