Be Kind, Please Rewind

He’s a Dinner Roll-Playing Game. He’s the…

Vidiot

Week of May 25, 2018

You lose a turn but you gain wisdom. First up…

Game Night

The best thing about game night at a friend’s house is rooting through their medicine cabinet.

Unfortunately, the players in this comedy are too involved to sample meds.

Max (Jason Bateman) and Annie’s (Rachel McAdams) weekly game night with their friends is upended when Max’s older brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler) shows up and involves them all in a game of kidnapping.

Determined to finally show up his sibling, the competitive couple go to extremes to locate the missing person only to find out that they are all part of a deadlier game that Brook’s is caught up in involving black market art.

Consistently funny, this breezy R-rated romp has the confident vibe of a long-running sit-com thanks to its scene-stealing neighbour, talented cast and amusing subplots that feed into the more violent extortion narrative.

Moreover, game nights are a great way of warming your friends up to having an orgy.  Green Light

Early Man

The upside to being around at the beginning of time was enjoying that new Earth smell.

Mind you, the bipeds in this stop-motion comedy are to busy inventing sports to enjoy it.

At the dawn of civilization, a dimwitted caveman (Eddie Redmayne) and his daft tribe of rabbit hunters dream of one day taking down a mammoth, but instead they have the chance to dethrone a vile despot (Tom Hiddleston) in a game of soccer.

If they win they get their hunting grounds in the valley back. But if they lose they will all be become slaves working in the mines.

The latest from the English Claymation studio behind Wallace and Gromit, Aardman Animations really drops the football with this sports themed offering. The jokes are lackluster, the characters forgettable and the football fervor may be lost on western audiences. 

Incidentally, cavemen football players would be terrified of the jumbotron.  Red Light

***Chewing the Scenery***

Gumby: The Movie  

Claymation is typically a family run business on account it takes generations to film 8 minutes.

In fact, it took animators 36 years to make this 90-minute stop-motion feature film.

Lead singer and guitarist Gumby, his equine friend Pokey, and they rest of their rock band The Clayboys hold a benefit concert for their farmer friends who are being evicted by Blockhead E-Z Loan for missed mortgage payments.

During the showcase, the Blockheads kidnap Gumby’s dog and then replace Gumby and his band mates with robotic replicas that wreck havoc around town.        

Released in 1995, forty-years after the clay character debuted on Howdy Doody, this anniversary feature film has the low budget, retro feel of the original shorts. While the mortgage crisis plotline is advanced for younger viewers, the madcap supporting cast keeps everything loosey goosey.        

And remember: always put Gumby back in his container or he’ll harden and fragment.

He’s a Fun Factory Worker. He’s the…

Vidiot