Movie Review: Windfall (2022)

Genre: Crime Thriller  

Director: Charlie McDowell  

Starring: Jason Segel, Lily Collins, Jesse Plemons  

Running Time: 92 minutes  

Synopsis: A burglar (Jason Segel) rummaging through a high-end vacation home in the California desert is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of the owners, a husband (Jesse Plemons) and wife (Lily Collins) couple. The husband is a wealthy technology capitalist, the wife runs his charity organizations, and now the burglar holds them hostage and tries to extract a large sum of cash.

What Works Well: The single location benefits from the rustic beauty of a dream vacation home nestled in a desert hosting orange groves. The restless music carries a dynamic edge, and all three central performances are committed to the quirkiness of the premise.

What Does Not Work As Well: An idea in search of a movie, this chamber thriller is probably more suited to the stage. Despite the short running length, the cinematic execution is flabby and gets caught in long stretches of irrelevant talkiness and silent pauses, the script bypassing dramatic momentum by only nibbling at character backgrounds. The ending is therefore devoid of substance and defaults to shock for shock's sake, decoupled from coherence.

Key Quote:

Burglar: I want $150,000.

Husband: Do you think that's enough?

Wife: Yeah, I think you're probably gonna want more than that.

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Movie Review: Our Friend (2019)

Genre: Drama  

Director: Gabriela Cowperthwaite  

Starring: Casey Affleck, Dakota Johnson, Jason Segel  

Running Time: 124 minutes  

Synopsis: The story is told through multiple time jumps. In Alabama of 2013, Matt and Nicole Teague (Casey Affleck and Dakota Johnson) inform their two daughters that Nicole is close to succumbing to cancer. Matthew is a writer and Nicole is a theatre actress, and back in 2000 they were establishing their careers in New Orleans when Nicole's colleague Dane (Jason Segel) became a family friend. When Nicole was diagnosed in 2012, Dane moved in to provide support. Flashbacks also reveal the couple's previous struggles: work assignments kept them apart, and a near-affair threatened the relationship. 

What Works Well: Based on a true story, this is an honest celebration of friendship under exceptional stress. Dane's actions are selfless, and the sidekick perceived as a goof becomes the one person to step up and provide essential support to a devastated family. The trio of Casey Affleck, Dakota Johnson, and Jason Segel excel in forging a triangle of support. All three are portrayed as essentially good people, but director Gabriela Cowperthwaite also invests in the wrinkles of Matt and Nicole's marriage, and the spikier edges of friendship.

What Does Not Work As Well: The frequent time jumps add unnecessary clutter and awkward truncations to what is an ultimately simple story. With insufficient content to stretch over two hours, several scenes are unnecessary while others linger well after the point is made.

Conclusion: Competent and well-intentioned without ever threatening to be exceptional.



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Movie Review: Sex Tape (2014)

A raunchy comedy, Sex Tape delivers on modest expectations through the story of a couple accidentally oversharing the best sex of their married life.

Married couple Annie and Jay (Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel) used to enjoy a vigorous sex life, until kids came along. Now often too busy and exhausted, they rarely have time for physical intimacy. Jay is a music producer who saves and shares playlists on numerous iPads, while Annie runs a popular mommy blog, now attracting interest from a major corporation run by Hank Rosenbaum (Rob Lowe).

When a rare opportunity arises and they have the house to themselves, Annie and Jay have trouble rediscovering their sexual spark until they hit upon the idea of filming themselves having sex and performing every move from The Joy of Sex. After the three hour marathon session, Jay delays erasing the file then falls victim to the vagaries of cloud storage and synching. Soon the sex tape is uploaded onto iPads in the hands of all their friends and relatives, plus the mailman. Annie and Jay scramble to track down all the file copies before it's too late.

Directed by Jake Kasdan and written by Kate Angelo, Sex Tape unambiguously aims for cheap laughs and mostly finds its targets. This is unfiltered adult comedy with flashes of nudity and plenty of sex, peeking behind the curtain of middle class bedrooms, all played for hit-and-miss humour with obvious stretches of improvised dialogue.

The vibe between Annie and Jay helps keep the material afloat. Diaz and Segel play to their strengths and create an in-synch couple embracing a healthy sex life, not shying away from sex's many less-than-perfect moments, working as a team, and maintaining a (mostly) even keel to try and recover the embarrassing tape. And in-between the yucks are some frank discussions about the impact of kids on married sex, and on-line pornography's prevalence and societal context.

But the thin material is often stretched and exposed. Jay's level of technological incompetence is difficult to believe, a sequence at Hank Rosenbaum's mansion alternates between funny and overcooked, while a blackmail sub-plot includes the awkward involvement of a kid.

In addition to Lowe, the supporting cast includes Rob Corddry and Ellie Kemper as Robbie and Tess, Annie and Jay's best friends. They play a prominent role and add zing to the madcap adventures. Jack Black makes a late and uncredited but noteworthy appearance, doling our unlikely relationship advice. When sexual escapades are unintentionally set loose, surprising wisdom can be found in a nondescript warehouse housing a porn empire.



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Movie Review: The Five-Year Engagement (2012)

A romantic comedy about the compromises needed to bridge diverging aspirations, The Five-Year Engagement features a genial couple but is needlessly over-long.

On New Year's Eve in San Francisco, sous-chef Tom Solomon (Jason Segel) proposes marriage to his girlfriend and aspiring psychology teacher Violet Barnes (Emily Blunt) exactly one year after they met. She accepts, but they delay setting a date. Meanwhile, his best friend Alex (Chris Pratt) and her sister Suzie (Alison Brie) meet at the engagement party and get married quickly after Suzie becomes pregnant on their first night together.

Violet accepts a two-year graduate position in Michigan, which means a major relocation and delays to the wedding plans. She quickly makes friends with her charming professor Winton (Rhys Ifans) and a tight-knit group of fellow graduate students. But Tom cannot find a good position as a chef and settles for preparing artisan sandwiches at a popular hangout. He starts resenting Violet's success, and when she is offered an extended stay at the university, the strain on their relationship reaches crisis levels.

Just because Tom and Violet's engagement stretches for five years is no excuse for the film to feel that long. Director Nicholas Stoller, working from a script he co-wrote with Segel, contrives to stretch proceedings over the two hour mark. For a relatively slight romantic comedy with the entire premise given away in the title, the bloat is galling.

But The Five-Year Engagement is a slick Judd Apatow production, and the quality shines through. Working in the film's favour is sharp humour, smart performances, lively chemistry and a cast deep in comic talent. Thanks to calibrated execution from Segel and Blunt, Tom, and Violet make for a believable couple, invested in caring for each other despite the deep potholes and uncertainties in their relationship.

In support, Chris Pratt and Alison Brie get plenty of screen time and offer some big laughs as the offbeat but perfectly compatible couple building a family at warp speed as Tom and Violet procrastinate for years. And in addition to Rhys Ifans as the potentially seductive Winton, the cast also includes David Paymer, Jacki Weaver, Mindy Kaling, Kevin Hart, and Dakota Johnson.

The laughs come from numerous sources. As the wedding wait drags on, grandparents quietly expire. Violet and her classmates conceive of psychology tests involving donuts, with the results spilling over into her relationship with Tom. And while he waits out Violet's graduate studies in Michigan, Tom reverts to Mountain Man mode, complete with an ill-advised attachment to a crossbow. The Five-Year Engagement does go on forever, but also enjoys pointy edges.

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Movie Review: Knocked Up (2007)

A crude romantic comedy, Knocked Up does not hold back on the vulgarities but also finds a few good comic moments in the story of an unwanted pregnancy resulting from a drunken one night stand.

Alison (Katherine Heigl) works at the E! television channel, and is unexpectedly promoted to celebrity interviewer. To celebrate she goes out for a night of clubbing fun with her sister Debbie (Leslie Mann), who is married to Pete (Paul Rudd) and the mother of two. Alison ends the night having unprotected sex with slacker Ben (Seth Rogen), who does nothing in life except get high and hang out with his equally useless friends Jason (Jason Segel), Jay (Jay Baruchel), Jonah (Jonah Hill) and Martin (Martin Starr). The morning after, Alison confirms that she has nothing in common with Ben and they part ways.

Eight weeks later Alison discovers that she is pregnant. She reconnects with Ben, and decides to go through with the pregnancy. They try to make it work as a couple, while Debbie and Pete face a crisis of their own. As the due date draws nearer, the stresses of the forced relationship between Alison and Ben come to the fore.

Directed and written by Judd Apatow, Knocked Up is a hit-and-miss romantic comedy, although the romance element is more of a search through the jungle of incompatibility. There are plenty of laughs to be sure, but also many jokes that fall flat and others that are overcooked. The improvisational, irreverent vibe is a welcome shot in the arm for an often tired genre, as is the unapologetic celebration of the brotherhood of offensive slackerhood. But there is only so much humour that can be squeezed out of men who waste their life on dope, juvenile sex jokes and the general pursuit of nothingness, and Knocked Up frequently bumps up against these limits.

Beneath the coarse exterior, Apatow does add thoughtful commentary on relationship dynamics. The women, through Alison and Debbie, are portrayed as more stressed but also more responsible and more caring. The men, represented primarily by Ben and Pete, are either diamonds in the rough, or just rough, seeking escape from the emotional responsibilities of adulthood through actions that avoid accountability. While the men seem to be more fun, it is the women who set the agenda and make the key decisions that strive towards meaningful happiness.

The cast is mostly made up of Apatow regulars, and they are all in, riding the wave of organic humour, soaring and crashing depending on the cleverness of the dialogue. With all the bromances in full flow, it is left to Heigl and Mann to provide any sense of organizational structure, and they deliver steady performances. The cast also includes Harold Ramis and Kristen Wiig in small roles, and a host of celebrity cameos.

Knocked Up works its way to a spectacular climax, the pregnancy reaching full term just as the reality of what it takes to achieve couplehood finally dawns on Ben, labour pain mixed with manic panic and over-the-top laughs.

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Movie Review: Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)

A raunchy sex comedy with some romance elements, Forgetting Sarah Marshall finds humour in breakups, new beginnings, and revenge sex in the alternate reality of a picture-perfect Hawaiian resort.

Peter (Jason Segel), the creator of music for television shows, is unceremoniously dumped by girlfriend Sarah (Kristen Bell), the glamorous sex-symbol star of a CSI-style series. Unable to get over the breakup, Peter seeks to mend his broken heart at a Hawaiian resort only to find Sarah also vacationing there with new boyfriend Aldous (Russell Brand), a global pop music star.

As Peter and Sarah do their best to avoid each other and regularly fail to do so, Peter meets the resort's receptionist Rachel (Mila Kunis), and they start a tentative relationship. Surrounded by assorted other guests and resort employees stumbling through their own issues, Peter, Sarah, Rachel and Aldous need to untangle their lives, which suddenly become more complicated when Sarah receives unwelcome news.

Co-produced by Judd Apatow, directed by Nicholas Stoller and written by Segel, Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a rare example of an adult sex comedy that actually works, and without resorting to toilet humour. The film's success resides with Segel's witty script, which in addition to a continuous stream of raunchy situations creates a large number of memorable and often hilarious characters, even in the smallest roles, and sets them loose to do their thing.

The depth of enjoyment within the ranks of the secondary characters is quite remarkable. The list covers Russell Brand as Aldous Snow, Jonah Hill as Matthew the waiter with stardom aspirations, Paul Rudd as Kunu the surf dude with memory issues, Jack McBrayer and Maria Thayer as the newlyweds with wildly diverging sex drives, Bill Hader as Peter's stepbrother and even William Baldwin and Jason Bateman doing their best David Caruso impressions in promo snippets as Sarah's co-stars.

In most other comedies these secondary and tertiary roles would be sketched in and played by nobodies. Here they are recurring and sustained, carrying their own comic momentum and delivered by actors keen to leave an impression. Brand, in particular, delivers a performance so cool and laid back as the superstar who stole Sarah's heart, that it's impossible not to fall under his magnetic spell.

And in the three main roles, Segel, Bell and Kunis shine as the three awkward points of the love triangle. Segel has rarely been better in a restrained performance that emphasizes pathos over doofiness. Bell is perfectly cast as Sarah, an ice cold and self-assured television star who will unexpectedly meet her own vulnerabilities once she hits a crisis point. And in a breakout role, Kunis dazzles with a fresh spray of girl-next-door appeal.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall is firmly aimed at adults, and the unrated version does not shy away from nudity (mostly Segel's) and several scenes of couples energetically and loudly coupling for comic effect. The film wastes no time in setting up the premise, surrounding it by anarchy and then vigorously milking it for all its worth over the course of 110 frantic minutes. While most of the jokes do work, the approach here is that the next good gag is only as far as the next minute.

With talent in peak form delivering the laughs, Forgetting Sarah Marshall will be no easy task.

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Movie Review: Bad Teacher (2011)

An adult comedy of bad manners in the class room, Bad Teacher showcases Cameron Diaz's talent and little else. After establishing the basic premise, the film fizzles into a trite search for whatever passes as a happy ending.

Golddigger Elizabeth Halsey (Diaz) is a middle school teacher, doing the bare minimum for her students while desperately seeking a rich husband. Recently dumped by an affluent fiancée, Elizabeth is broke and desperate to find a man to look after her expensive tastes. Meanwhile, at school, she smokes pot, drinks, and teaches nothing: she just shows her students an endless stream of movies. Fellow teacher Amy Squirrel (Lucy Punch) is over-enthusiastic about delivering a good education, and as a result clashes early and often with Elizabeth, while gym teacher Russell (Jason Segel) is interested in dating Elizabeth, but he does not have the wealth that she craves.

New teacher Scott Delacorte (Justin Timberlake) is spineless but appears to come from a rich family, and is therefore immediately an attractive option. Elizabeth learns that Scott's former girlfriend had large breasts and becomes obsessed with collecting enough money to augment her own. When Elizabeth finds out that there is a financial reward for the best teacher in the county, she hatches a plan to steal the official state test questions to help her students succeed, setting in motion a chain of events that will land both her and Amy in a heap of trouble.

Funny only in patches and unnecessarily crude in parts, Bad Teacher has a thin veneer of talent. Cameron Diaz shines in an over-the-top, brassy and sexy performance, packing into Elizabeth Halsey every imaginable nightmare teacher trait. Diaz allows herself to have fun with a wildly exaggerated comic character, and she gives Bad Teacher its only lift.

Otherwise, there isn't much to celebrate. The script is unable to build on the personality of the central character, and veers into jerky transformations, Elizabeth suddenly eager to deliver a proper education in a desperate attempt to win cash, and even less convincingly discovering a talent for mending young broken hearts and the potential charm of the non-wealthy. Justin Timberlake fails to make an impression, Jason Segel is his usual irritating self, and Lucy Punch has the thankless task of playing Amy as the anti-Elizabeth, although Amy's concealed stress triggers hint at a deliciously damaged personality that deserved more screen time.

Director Jake Kasdan, son of Lawrence, capably demonstrates that he has a long way to go to match his dad's illustrious achievements.

Bad Teacher gets a C for sputtering entertainment mixed with disappointingly lackadaisical effort.

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Movie Review: The Muppets (2011)

A wafer thin exercise in nostalgia, The Muppets celebrates the frantically positive attitude of the 1970s critters, but fails to add anything new or worthwhile to remember.

Walter, a muppet, and Gary (Jason Segel) are brothers growing up in Smalltown. When Gary and his long-term fiancée Mary (Amy Adams) invite Walter along for a trip to Los Angeles, he is thrilled to finally have a chance to visit the Muppet Theater. But when they get there, they find the place abandoned and decrepit, and Walter overhears a plan by evil developer Mr. Richman (Chris Cooper) to buy the place, raze it to the ground, and drill for oil.

Walter races to find Kermit and convinces him to reunite the old gang, put on a Muppet Show telethon, and raise the required $10 Million to buy back the Muppet Theater. A road trip follows, and Kermit tracks down the likes of Fozzie Bear in a Reno dive struggling as a stand-up comic, Gonzo as a successful plumbing tycoon, drummer Animal undergoing anger management therapy in a group that includes Jack Black, and Miss Piggy as a fashion magazine editor in Paris.

The reunited muppets convince television executive Veronica (Rashida Jones) to broadcast the telethon. As preparations for the show get underway, Kermit and Miss Piggy try to sort out their feelings for each other, Walter struggles with his destiny, Gary has to decide if The Muppets or Mary are more important in his life, and The Muppets have to overcome Mr. Richman's attempts to disrupt their efforts.

While it's always great to enjoy time with Kermit and the gang, the generally forgettable songs and production numbers are directed at the very young, and the script (co-written by Segel) is utterly predictable and lacking in anything that can be construed as wit or genuine laughs. There are some self-depreciating moments, but they smack more of desperation than confidence.

Jason Segel channels Dick Van Dyke at his least convincing, an actor not able to move beyond portraying the role as anything more than entertainment at a party for six year olds. Amy Adams goes through The Muppets almost openly wondering what on earth she is doing.

A long list of names make cameo appearances, including Whoopi Goldberg, Alan Arkin, Emily Blunt, Neil Patrick Harris, Selena Gomez, Mickey Rooney and Judd Hirsch, in a case of too many well-wishers suffocating the party.

The Muppets is a reunion with long-lost friends: some warm memories are shared, but ultimately the experience does emphasize that yes, the world has firmly moved on.

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