Comedy

In “Long Story Short,” Jews Will Not Be Replaced

Jeremy BeckFeatures
A scene with the full family in Long Story Short

Long Story Short is a surrealistic animated comedy whose plot points include wolves invading schools, mattresses bursting from tubes, and donors misplacing sperm. It’s the most relatable TV show I’ve seen in years.

This dissonance isn’t exactly unthinkable. Raphael Bob-Waksberg, the creator of Long Story Short, is best known for BoJack Horseman, the wonderfully ridiculous Netflix series that anthropomorphized animals and afflicted them with decidedly human problems. Compared to the absurdity of BoJack, Bob-Waksberg’s newest effort can feel downright grounded; there are no talking cats, no underwater festivals, no three kids standing on top of each other in a trench coat presenting as “Vincent Adultman.” But aside from confining its speaking parts to two-legged creatures—there is a cute dog named The Undeniable Isadora Duncan, but it merely barks—Long Story Short resonates with me for a more specific reason: It’s a rich and complex portrait of American Jewishness. Read More

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Original Screenplay Weekend, Again: Honey Don’t, Eden, and Relay

Jeremy BeckReviews
Ana de Armas in Eden, Margaret Qualley in Honey Don't, Riz Ahmed in Relay

The top grosser at the box office last weekend was a sing-along version of KPop Demon Hunters, Netflix’s animated phenomenon about a girl-pop trio who use their musical talents to battle demons disguised as a boy band. I’m not lamenting this; it’s a mostly charming movie, and it’s nice to see any Netflix product in theaters, even if that company remains philosophically committed to eradicating the very existence of cinema. KPop Demon Hunters is also an original work, meaning its success derives from thoughtful artistry and word-of-mouth rather than by leveraging intellectual property.

Not every new release last weekend was so triumphant. Look considerably lower down the box-office chart, and you’ll find the debut of three movies with original screenplays that combined to gross less than one-third of Demon Hunters’ $19M. (I’m ignoring Splitsville, which played in just five theaters across the country.) When I last performed this exercise in 2021, I expressed gratitude that original pictures had returned to theaters as the industry rebounded from the COVID-19 pandemic. Four years later, I’m less optimistic about our cinematic future. But let’s celebrate (and evaluate) what we’ve got, while we’ve still got it. Read More

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The Naked Gun: Burden of Spoof

Jeremy BeckReviews
Pamela Anderson and Liam Neeson in The Naked Gun

Wander into The Naked Gun at the exact wrong (or right) moment, and you may suspect that you’ve mistakenly arrived at the latest Mission: Impossible flick. As a henchman lies handcuffed to a hospital bed, a detective coaxes incriminating information from him under the pretense that the villain’s master plan has already succeeded. Once the crucial details are revealed—and just before the room’s false walls fall away to reveal a phony set, confirming the elaborate masquerade—the cop asks his unseen colleagues, “Did you get all that?”

You probably didn’t. The chief attribute of The Naked Gun, the new sorta-sequel to the Leslie Nielsen-led franchise from the ’80s and ’90s, is density. It runs 85 minutes and features roughly 10 times as many jokes, to the point where your brain can’t possibly process all of the purported humor in real time. The assault is relentless but also oddly reassuring. If a line or gag or reference sails over your head, you need not spend time chasing it; another one will be arriving within 10 seconds. Read More

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The Phoenician Scheme: The Hand Grenade’s Tale

Jeremy BeckReviews
Mia Threapleton, Benicio Del Toro, and Michael Cera in The Phoenician Scheme

Wes Anderson’s movies are so meticulously constructed, it’s easy to overlook that they also tend to be explosive, messy, and violent. It takes all of 30 seconds into The Phoenician Scheme, his latest lavishly imagined whirligig, before someone gets literally blown in half by a missile. Not long after, the picture’s unscrupulous hero, an entrepreneur named Zsa-Zsa Korda (Benicio Del Toro), emerges from the wreckage of a plane crash, trying to stuff a protruding organ back inside his body. Over the picaresque adventure that follows, Korda will face flaming arrows, gun-toting guerillas, duplicitous spies, overcooked pigeons, and a pit of quicksand. He’s the unflappable eye of a fastidiously unstable hurricane.

That all of this mayhem unfolds in the context of Anderson’s characteristic rigor—a method of careful framing, crisp camerawork, and filigreed production design—isn’t really a product of dissonance. Rather, The Phoenician Scheme harmonizes control and commotion. Anderson’s style is often pejoratively deemed fussy, but his exacting craft doesn’t drain the life from his filmmaking. Quite the opposite: The rich colors, the sharp wordplay, and the impeccable ornamentation all coalesce to imbue the proceedings with urgency and vivacity. In this heightened alternate reality, precision generates momentum. Read More

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The Accountant 2: In Autism’s Life, No Second Tax

Jeremy BeckReviews
Jon Bernthal and Ben Affleck in The Accountant 2

The Accountant 2 could’ve been a pretty good movie, if it weren’t a sequel to The Accountant. It’s best suited as a hangout picture, sporting playful dialogue, a light comic touch, and a pair of appealing performances. Yet because this emergent franchise made its bones as a hot-blooded crime yarn, it subjugates its mild-mannered strengths in favor byzantine plotting and stale gunplay. It’s guilty of genre evasion.

Yet the Hollywood IP machine cranks on, and there are worse figures to resuscitate than Christian Wolff, the autistic genius and assassin who first appeared on screen nine years ago in the hunky, bespectacled form of Ben Affleck. The decade away hasn’t improved Christian’s social skills: When we first catch up with him, he’s the eye of a speed-dating hurricane, only we learn that single ladies are throwing themselves at him because he hacked the app’s algorithm; once he opens his mouth and starts rambling about appreciating assets, their excitement quickly curdles into dismay. Read More

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