comedy

Jackpot! Review: Paul Feig’s dystopian comedy gets you up and running with Awkwafina and John Cena

~ fewburnedkurnels ~ Leave a comment

Rating: Full

Genre: Comedy, Action

Studios: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/RK Films/F. Co Entertainment

Cast: Awkwafina, John Cena, Ayden Mayeri, Donald Elise Watkins, Sam Asghari and Simu Liu

Director: Paul Feig

Writers: Rob Yescombe

Producers: Paul Fieg, Laura Fischer, Jeff Kirschenbaum and Joe Roth

Music by: Theodore Shapiro

Rated: R for pervasive language, violence and sexual references

Release Date: 08/15/24

Tagline: Take the money and run

Favorite Character: Katie Kim

Quote: “After this, there’s an oboe going right up your ass.”- Noel

Fun Fact: The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures in one scene aren’t props, they really belong to John Cena.

The Review: Earlier this year, John Cena made a huge appearance in an Amazon Prime R-rated comedy ‘Ricky Stanicky’ He plays a character that outcasts all the other characters (even Zac Efron’s leading role) as we watch him transform from an X-Rated version of Weird Al to the real life imaginary friend.

Now he is back in another of 2024’s Amazon Prime’s R rated comedies, this one being directed by Paul Feig (Bridesmaids), this retired wrestler portrays a TMNT obsessed freelancer protector of the lottery winners. But Cena wasn’t not protecting the winners because of the fact that people would want to befriend the lucky winner, actually these people are trying to KILL the winner.

Yes, you heard me, they are trying to kill the jackpot winner. Jackpot sets in 2030 during the second Great Depression with a crisis so bad, the desperate government of California had to create a Lottery system. It is like regular Lottery, but with a deadly twist!

Whoever is the lucky (or should I say, unlucky) Jackpot (what they call winners) has until sundown to stay alive and avoid the killer crowds before keeping his/her prize.

Everyone else who didn’t win has a opportunity to claim the winner’s jackpot by legally murdering him/her. The only rule is they are not allowed to use shooting guns, so they would just have to be creative and use whatever they can get their hands on as a weapon.

Not everyone wants to kill the winner though, there are groups of people rooting on the Jackpot. a company determine to try and protect the winners (I said TRY) For John Cena, his new client is a former child star Katie Kim (Awkwafina) who just moved looking for a hopeful start as an actress after losing her mother in Michigan.

She wasn’t aware of the whole Lottery purge and only won because she had accidently entered the lottery with a high tech card, which is a record breaking $3.6 billion. She may have not gotten the role she was auditioning for that time. But she is about to find out that she IS the role of this story, if she is still alive at the end that is.

So, was the result of Paul Feig’s new R rated flick?

On one hand, the action part of this action comedy works with all the amount of knife throwing and the chorography that may have been inspired by a Jackie Chan movie. On the other hand, the comedy felt flat with so many jokes feeling so clutzy throughout almost 2 hours of the film.

But it doesn’t matter if the movie was more action packed than funny, because I believe Jackpot! did good in keeping up with the promising premise that was seen in the trailer that many other films failed to do.

And did I mention Awkwafina is terrific at bringing chemistry with other actors. Look at her and Sandra Oh in last years ‘Quiz Lady’ and her and Simu Liu (which he stars as a head of the Jackpot protection company) for a little Shang-Chi reunion. So it shouldn’t come a shock that her and John Cena’s time together on the screen didn’t tremble down like the stock market. Plus, we get a cameo from Machine Gun Kelly.

As Jackpot! may not not be a lucky winner, it is not close to a losing ticket either, so no way am I saying that this isn’t a fun time nor that this is not crazy ridiculous.

Ricky Stanicky

~ fewburnedkurnels ~ Leave a comment

Rating: Half-Full

Genre: Comedy

Studios: Metro-Goldwyn Mayer/Footloose Productions/Rocket Science

Cast: Zac Efron, Jermaine Fowler, Andrew Santino, Lex Scott Davis, Anja Savcic, Jeff Ross, William H. Macy and John Cena

Director: Peter Farrelly

Writers: Jeff Bushell, Mike Cerrone, Jason Decker, Peter Farrelly, Brian Jarvis, Pete Jones, James Lee Freeman and David Occhino

Producers: Paul Currie, Michael De Luca, John Jacobs and Thorsten Schumacher

Music by: Dave Palmer

Rated: R for sexual material, language throughout and some drug content

Release Date: 03/07/24

Runtime: 1h 53m

Tagline: He’s the best friend they never had.

Favorite Character: Rod Rimestead/Ricky Stanicky

Quote: “Stanicky’s like one of those trick birthday candles, no matter how hard I try to blow him out, he just keeps coming back.”- Dean

Fun Fact: The movie was first announced in 2010 so the movie took fourteen years to make.

The Review: Growing up, you might did something bad and blame it on your sibling or friend or someone you made up. In Ricky Stanicky, that’s what these three childhood best friends (Zac Efron, Jermaine Fowler and Andrew Santino) did. 25 years ago on Halloween, these three committed a prank that went horribly wrong. Rather than telling the truth, they invented an imaginary best friend named, who else? Ricky Stanicky.

But that doesn’t stop there! Throughout the animated opening sequences, they took advantage of it and do mischievous things and also lying to their families using non existent Ricky to pin a blame on. We jumped to present day, they are still using the name to lie their partners to go anywhere they want. this time, saying that Ricky has cancer to get out of the baby shower of JT’s wife and going to Marc Rebillet concert in Atlantic City. But that caused JT to miss his son’s birth. Worse for them, their partners are starting to get suspicious. Wes of course had to almost spill the beans.

Well let’s face it, had these guys not been to Atlantic City, they would have not have met the best star of the film , John Cena (cue his theme song) Cena plays Rod Rimestead, struggling at life and does a X Rated version of Weird Al songs for a living. But he also is an actor who also nailed the Owen Wilson impression, he does impressions and he wasted it at a Atlantic City show. But anyway the three guys hired him to play Ricky Stanicky just for JT’s son’s bris to prove to their partners he is real, although, Dean’s mother in law wasn’t all that convinced.

It works for the guys, maybe a little too well. Because Rod is really starting to turn into the real Ricky Stanicky and all it takes to make him a real deal is for him to perform a circumsice. The fact that these guys got away with their lies for 25 years is hard to believe I mean if someone did, it would be impressive, but let’s not forget that this is just a movie so anything is possible. As for the plot itself, when I saw the premise for the movie, I somewhat knew it was going to suffer with a formulaic story.

If you are a single person with a drug problem and wants to get a good lesson about redemption, go to Amazon Prime. If you want to be entertained by John Cena go to Amazon Prime. If you want some laughs, I suggest you go somewhere else.

Self Reliance

~ fewburnedkurnels ~ Leave a comment

Rating: Full

Genre: Comedy, Suspense, Thriller

Studios: Hulu/Neon/MRC

Cast: Jake Johnson, Anna Kendrick, Natalie Morales, Andy Samberg, Mary Holland, Emily Hampshire and Christopher Lloyd

Director: Jake Johnson

Writer: Jake Johnson

Producers: Ali Bell, Joe Hardesty and Jake Johnson

Music by: Dan Romer

Rated: R for language throughout

Release Date: 01/03/24

Runtime: 1h 25m

Tagline: Surviving is all about the company you keep.

Favorite Character: Tommy Walcott

Quote: “This Show is a Comedy”- Charlie

Fun Fact: the bar in the movie ‘La Cita’ means ‘The Meeting’ in spanish.

The Review: I have only heard of Jake Johnson from the Spiderverse films and I don’t watch New Girl so I may not be familiar with him. So, I’m starting to get familiar with him in his directorial debut. I am, however, am familiar with SNL’s Andy Sandberg and it was quite interesting with his comedy band ‘Lonely Island’ producing this film.

Johnson also wrote and starred in the film as a guy named Tommy who is suffering from a bad breakup and goes through the loss by exercising, working and drinking every day. That really doesn’t sound like a fun life at all. That all changes when a mysterious limo came by and who is sitting in the limo is none other than Andy Sandberg, inviting him in the limo for what is about to be a game changing adventure. Sounds a man’s fantasy, it evens feels like it, but it is really happening. If Tommy actually thinks about it, something awesome like this will always have one big catch.

This turns out to be a Dark Web reality show and he will be watched, every move! But if he survives 30 days without being hunted, he will win $1 million, which sounds pretty tempting but deadly. Now the good news is that there is a loophole, the hunters won’t kill him if he is within a few feet of someone, but he will be at risk if he is all alone. Sounds like this dark comedy is really in a social experiment genre.

I wasn’t expecting Johnson told immediately tell his mother and two sisters about the game, I mean we probably would in a same situation. And as we expect, they don’t believe him and assume that he is having mental issues, turning him into a person who the world thinks he’s crazy (but he isn’t). The first five days was no problem for Tommy but after that, the dark web show begins and things are getting tense. So his only option is to have anybody with him 24/7. Anybody. Even if its a homeless man named James. But before that, comes a suspenseful and hysterical moment of the film. Involving his sister’s boyfriend, him taking a crap and Johnson panicking…yeah, you probably might figure out what this is.

You might have heard Pitch Perfect’s Anna Kendrick is in the movie and you might be like, where is she? That’s what I was like, but thankfully, she appears in the movie at the same bar that was part of Tommy’s same old schedule. And as someone who is also participating in the game, so all they had to do way be within each other for the remaining of the game. Sounds easy right? Well, I wouldn’t hold my breath for that one because if you are in a movie, things will always take a radical turn.

I won’t say much about the ending, but by that time, the story really slipped. A very anticlimactic moment that would you will be like…really? That’s it? It also could use more of the humorous moments too, but Self Reliance did manage to teach the audience the same value of life that Tommy learned. It’s a squid game like social experiment that Johnson used to teach the audience and the results are various but entertaining.