Hotshots Movie Reviews
Hotshots Movie Reviews by Dan Culberson
22 Jump Street “Lowbrow As It Gets”
Jun 24th
(“Lowbrow As It Gets”)
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
22 JUMP STREET is the sequel to the 2012 21 JUMP STREET, which in turn was a spoofy adaptation of the 1980 TV series, all of which just keeps on proving that Hollywood has run out of ideas.
Once again, Jonah Hill stars as Schmidt and Channing Tatum stars as Jenko, Schmidt’s partner as they go undercover yet again to bust up a drug ring.
“Wait a minute!” you say? “Didn’t they do that in the first movie?” you say?
Well, yes, but in the first movie they pretended to be high-school students, whereas in this movie they pretend to be college students, which makes the running joke of their looking too old to be students a little less jokey this time, especially the more often we hear it.
Also, their offices in an old Korean church at 21 Jump Street have changed, because the Koreans bought the church back, and so they were moved across the street into an old Vietnamese church at 22 Jump Street, which also leads to a mildly entertaining sequence at the end of the movie for the possibility of more sequels than you can shake a nightstick at.
The explanation that the partners receive is that they got lucky on 21 Jump street, and so the budget was increased and now they’re to do the same as last time and everyone will be happy, which leads Jenko to believe they have Cate Blanchett to do what they want.
They will have the same identity and the same assignment, except that they will be in college instead of high school.
So, Jenko, the more dim-witted of the two, says, “I’m the first person in my family to pretend to go to college.”
Well, in an attempt to blend in with their fellow college students, Jenko becomes friends with a fraternity leader and football star, and Schmidt becomes friends with an art-major coed.
Jenko’s buddy, Zook, says that they are like Batman and Robin, except that they are both Batman.
And Schmidt becomes so “friendly” with Maya, the art major, that it causes problems during parents weekend when Maya’s parents meet Schmidt.
The humor is so lowbrow that when Jenko suggests maybe they should start “investigating” other people, you might miss that he’s implying “seeing.”
22 JUMP STREET is as lowbrow as it gets.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
The Fault In Our Stars “LOVE STORY for Teenagers”
Jun 12th
(“LOVE STORY for Teenagers”)
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
THE FAULT IN OUR STARS takes its title from Shakespeare’s JULIUS CAESAR and not ROMEO AND JULIET, which would be more appropriate, except that this movie comes nowhere near the quality of any Shakespeare work.
In fact, the movie is based on the highly successful novel for young adults by John Green, and keep that in mind if you are any sort of adult other than the “young” kind.
Otherwise, you might be sucked into the story that you have seen many times before and think “Been there, seen that, took out my hanky.”
Shailene Woodley stars as Hazel Grace Lancaster, who is 17 years old and has thyroid cancer, which causes her to wheel around an oxygen tank with her wherever she goes.
However, don’t feel sorry for Hazel, because she certainly doesn’t, and in her narration she says, “Depression is not a side effect of cancer; it’s a side effect of dying.”
We learn that Hazel takes eight prescription drugs three times a day and that support groups are not her “thing,” although she is persuaded to attend one for other teenagers with cancer, because the reason she does anything these days is to make her parents happy.
Hazel’s mother is Frannie, played by Laura Dern.
At the first group meeting, Hazel meets Augustus Waters, played by Ansel Elgort, who takes an immediate interest in Hazel and flirts with her.
Gus used to be a basketball star before he lost his leg to osteosarcoma, and he makes jokes about everything, claiming that he is at group meetings only in support of his best friend, Isaac, who lost an eye to cancer and is in danger of losing his remaining eye.
Hazel and Gus become close friends, avoiding any talk of love, and they exchange their favorite books for the other to read, Hazel’s being AN IMPERIAL AFFLICTION, about a girl with cancer that ends infuriatingly in the middle of a sentence.
Then Gus helps Hazel get a response from the author, Peter Van Houten, an American now living in Amsterdam and played by Willem Dafoe, who responds that if Hazel is ever in Amsterdam to look him up.
And then here come the surprises, right and left, and then the tragedies, up and down.
THE FAULT IN OUR STARS is just a LOVE STORY for teenagers.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Chef “Tantalizes the Taste Buds”
Jun 5th
(“Tantalizes the Taste Buds”)
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
CHEF is more than just a little movie about food or about the personal redemption of a first-class chef.
As evidence of that, there is even a cookbook, THE OFFICIAL CHEF MOVIE COOKBOOK: RECIPES FROM EL JEFE, available as a free e-book or iPad app, which contains recipes from some of the food prepared in the movie, which was written, directed, and stars Jon Favreau.
Favreau plays Carl Casper, the chef at a trendy Los Angeles restaurant owned by Dustin Hoffman.
Carl also has a complicated personal life, because he is divorced from Inez, played by Sofia Vergara, and they have a son, Percy, who would love to spend more time with his father, but Carl is consumed by his occupation as a chef.
In fact, Carl says, “I get to touch people’s lives with what I do, and I love it.”
At the beginning of the movie, a famous food critic shows up at the restaurant, and whereas Carl wants to prepare something special for the critic, who has reviewed Carl before, Carl’s boss doesn’t want him to change the menu, but just stick to “playing his hits.”
Sure enough, the critic writes a bad review, so bad that it goes viral on the Internet, and after Carl gets Percy to sign him up with a Twitter account, Carl just makes matters worse, and a second chance to redeem himself makes everything so worse that Carl loses his job when things escalate to the boss level.
Then when Inez gets a temporary job in Miami, where both she and Carl are from, Carl agrees to go along and watch Percy while Inez works.
Inez also has an ex-husband there, Marvin, played by Robert Downey, Jr., to whom she was married before Carl, and through a series of circumstances, Carl ends up buying a beat-up food truck from Marvin, and he and Percy refurbish it to make it operational again, along with the help of Martin, played by John Leguizamo, who was Carl’s sous-chef and best friend back in L.A. and who shows up unexpectedly to help Carl in his new career.
Then we follow Carl, Percy, and Martin as they drive back to Los Angeles for an unexpected twist at the end.
CHEF is much more than what meets the eye or tantalizes the taste buds.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”