We end the 40s with:
#42 Ricki and the Flash
For years, we of the Twin Cities ilk couldn't help but mentioning, if she came up in conversation, that stripper-turned-screenwriter-turned-author-turned-director Diablo Cody hailed from Minneapolis. Her snarky, feminist, pop-culture musings were enough to earn her an Oscar and officially canonize her as one of the most sought after writers of the oughts. From Juno to the Megan Fox horrocomedy Jennifer's Body, to creating the critically-lauded Toni Collette quadruple-persona'd United States of Tara and to the criminally underrated Charlize Theron showcase Young Adult, the girl, nay-woman-was on fire.
Then, an uncharacteristic speedbump. Her directorial debut, 2013's Paradise (I honestly don't even remember it coming out) is the story of a young conservative played by Julianne Hough who survives a plane crash, denounces God and heads to Vegas to sin.
Apparently, it's really, really bad.
So while Ricki is certainly not Paradise bad, it's not Cody's strongest. Her usual wittiness didn't come through in quite the same way that it did in her earlier work, and there were moments, especially in a scene involving Ricki (Meryl Streep) and her lover and bandmate Greg (Rick Springfield) that felt like a daytime soap. Ms. Streep is solid as usual as the titular Ricki (actual name Linda) who, one night after playing a gig in her cover band the Flash, gets a call from ex-husband Pete (Kevin Kline) letting her know that her daughter Julie (Mamie Gummer, real-life daughter) has been left by her husband and is in the middle of a pretty legit breakdown, i.e., get your ass on the next plane back to sunny Indianapolis.
Easier said than done. Her day job is bagging groceries, and most of her now adult kids haven't seen her since she left to pursue rock stardom years and years before. A couple of Julie letting-her-have-it scenes and an excruciating family restaurant dinner later and we are all caught up; the big reveal being that the one of her sons who isn't gay is getting married, and wasn't initially planning to invite her. So will she keep her shit together long enough to win everyone back over?
Streep is always worth seeing in just about anything, and she really does capture the nuances of someone stuck somewhere between old regrets and current routine. As a mother, she tries tirelessly to convince her kids that she cares, despite the years of relative radio silence. The cast does what they can with the sometimes cheesy material. When it connects (usually because of Streep), it's a hit, but often it just doesn't. I have a feeling we haven't seen the last of el Diablo, and I hope that Ricki's character isn't representative of Cody's future work--an aging rockstar trying to catch the comeback wave.
#41 Minions
The fact that a Despicable Me spinoff featuring Gru's little yellow goggle-eyed overall boys with the incoherent speech got made didn't surprise me in the least. What did surprise me is that it took them this long. Try to think of a funny part in either of the Descpicables that didn't involve a minion and it'll probably take you a while; when I heard kids talking at work over the years, it was always the minions lines and actions, not Gru's, that were being discussed and dissected (if I have to hear a kid say "bah-na-na" one more time...) . Could they, or at least three of them, carry a whole movie?
They're awfully cute, though a whole hour and a half of them got to be a tad much. Minions tells the origin story of how they got from the beginning of time (!) to their current master. In a pretty great montage, it shows them obeying and subsequently screwing up life following orders from a dinosaur, a caveman, Dracula, and multiple abominable snowmen. Kevin the minion has had enough, and he grabs up both Bob and Stuart and heads to New York to find a master. This is late, Vietnam-era, 1960s. They catch wind of Villain-Con in Orlando and end up hitchhiking down there with the "Nelsons" and family (Michael Keaton and Allison Janney). At Villain-Con, they fall head over heels for Scarlett Overkill (Sandra Bullock) and end up accidentally winning the competition to become her henchmen after she's kicked basically every ass in the building. Scarlet, the trio and her husband Herb (Jon Hamm) head her lair and begin to hatch a plan to steal Queen Elizabeth's royal crown.
Little, yellow, not that different. A cute movie that is plenty of fun but plenty repetitive by the end. Like nuprin, maybe they're better in small doses.
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