Impersonation as a way of life

 Seriously Red stars a hard-working Krew Boylan as an Australian real-estate worker who believes her real calling is to be a Dolly Parton impersonator. To this end, the screenplay -- directed by Gracie Otto -- pushes Boylan's Raylene "Red" Delany into a troupe of professional impersonators. Turns out Red, covering her natural color with a variety of platinum-blonde wigs, makes a good Parton. The movie tries too hard to be funny/cute while delivering the expected message: In the end, best to be yourself. Bobby Cannavale signs on as the troupe's boss. He hires the inexperienced Red because she's got moxie. Eventually, Red teams with a Kenny Rogers impersonator (Daniel Webber). They become a hit on the impersonation circuit as well as lovers, never shedding their roles as Dolly and Ken. Thomas Campbell plays Red's best friend; he loves her for who she really is. A plentiful supply of Parton tunes boosts the story's energy. There's no pressing reason to catch this one unless you've been yearning to see Rose Byrne, one of the film's executive producers,  play an Elvis impersonator.  Really. One more thing: About midway through, Red gets breast implants in an effort to try to approach the reality of Parton's famous physique. The procedure leads to a semi-surreal production number that takes place with Red under anesthesia. I told you the movie was trying hard. But trying hard and getting there are are not the same. Seriously Red has its moments but they don't add up to much.

'Irresistible?' Try lukewarm satire instead

Just about everything that Jon Stewart wants to say in his new movie Irresistible shows up in the movie’s epilogue, which consists of real people talking about how big money has corrupted American democracy.

Prior to that, you’ll find a satire that dulls its edge with unexpected timidity and a big dose of conventional comedy.

Here's the story: Steve Carell plays Gary Zimmer, a hotshot political operative whose attention perks up when an aide informs him that a rural town in Wisconsin can be flipped to the Democratic side of the ledger. Why? Because a straight-talking farmer and former Marine (Chris Cooper) addressed the town’s city council with a speech so sincere it might have made Gary Cooper blush. He's exactly the kind of person who might lure wary independents to the Dems.

The plan: Persuade Cooper’s character to run for mayor, upset the political balance, and prove that a Democrat can capture the hearts of middle-Americans.

Gary heads for the town of Deerlarken, Wisc., where he’s a fish-out-of-water, a sophisticate who finds himself at a remove from Washington’s “civilized” ways: high-speed internet connections, fancy restaurants, and room service.

Of course, things can’t go smoothly or there’s no movie. Enter Rose Byrne's Faith Brewster,  the GOP's answer to Gary. Savvy and ruthless, Faith represents powerful interests that don’t want to see the town turn Blue.

Carell and Byrne banter as they create some chemistry, the attraction of opposites who can’t resist trying to outdo each other when it comes to political maneuvering. The movie also hints at a possible relationship between Gary and Jack's grown daughter (Mackenzie Davis).

In one of the more predictable scenes, Gary takes Jack to New York City to meet a group of liberal elitists with whom he has nothing in common. He’s supposed to ask for money to finance a campaign they’ve been told might be the beginning of a national transformation. Of course, they can't get enough of Jack's homespun honesty.

All of this builds toward a twist that reveals Stewart’s real purpose, a kind of backhanded celebration of all-American wisdom that raises the question: If politics is a cynical game, why can’t more people play?

Look, I laughed some, I enjoyed watching the cast — particularly the comically gifted Byrne — and I never tuned the movie out. But in the end, I felt letdown.

In a moment of political volatility, I expected a comedy with a little more grit in its craw — not one that ends with a lecture, even one that's on-point about desperately need campaign-finance reform. Where’s the anger? Where’s the outrage? Where’s the feeling that things are so out-of-control that no fix may be possible? Where’s the recognition that even if we had campaign finance reform, there would still be voter suppression and a host of other seemingly intractable problems?

Enough. I don’t want to write a total slam, but it's difficult to see Irresistible as too much more than a movie of squandered promise.

‘Like a Boss’ is like a comedy — only less so

Tiffany Haddish and Rose Byrne team in a comedy of low risk and little imagination.

I worry about Tiffany Haddish. Since her hilarious movie breakthrough in 2017's Girls Trip, Haddish's career has — to use the vernacular — blown up. In addition to the new comedy Like a Boss, Haddish has several movies on tap, not to mention Black Mitzvah, a Netflix comedy special that’s currently playing.

So what troubles me? Just this: I hope that the movies can find a better fit for Hasddish than the wearying January release that I’m about to review. She’s funny. She can command the screen and she has acting chops. She deserves a showcase that transcends sub-sitcom level screenwriting.

I wouldn’t call Like a Boss a personal setback for Haddish, but — to put it bluntly — there’s a reason why the movie is slipping into theaters in January, a time of low big-screen expectations as awards expectation focuses on last year's releases.

As the first movie I've seen in 2020, Like a Boss sank me into a New Year’s funk. Here is a movie in which neither cast nor audience is being asked to go anyplace worth going, a waste.

Directed by Miguel Arteta, Like a Boss tells the story of two women: Haddish’s Mia and Rose Byrne’s Mel. Friends since middle school, the two women share a house and run a make-up company with two employees: Billy Porter and Jennifer Coolidge. Dubbed Mia and Mel, their company is on the verge of hitting the financial skids. Could an acquisition offer by a major cosmetics firm be the godsend they need?

Her hair died red, Salma Hayek portrays Claire Luna, the brash head of the cosmetics company. A ruthless entrepreneur, the cartoonish Luna obviously can’t be trusted. She walks through her lavish offices carrying a golf club, presumably in case a need to smash something should arise.

The script contrives to have the eager-to-please Mel and the fiercely independent Mia turn on one another as they try to figure out how to work for the dictatorial Luna, who threatens to take over their company and kick the both of them to the curb.

As high-concept premises go, this one’s built on shaky scaffolding that turns the movie into a low-grade formula job in which the only real energy comes from Haddish’s often ribald one-liners. Both Haddish and Byrne try their hands at physical comedy but the movie’s display of comic imagination operates at dismal levels. Witness the inclusion of a passé karaoke scene, jokes about pot, jokes about the male and female nether regions and a gag about an overly seasoned Mexican dish.

The actresses seem to be straining to bring comic life to the material. They're game, but no amount of make-up can cover the screenplay’s witless inadequacies.

Mel and Mia are committed to helping women bring out their inner glow, an ironic message for a movie that has no inner glow of its own and which is built around two characters who have been conceived by filmmakers who were unwilling to take even the slightest of risks with them.

So fingers crossed for Haddish going forward. Rose, of course, has her strengths. But the talented Haddish has no need for a sidekick and Like a Boss has even less reason to command much attention.

Cozy up to 'Neighbors 2?' Not me

Still crude and dumb after all these years -- two to be exact.

If you loved the comedy Neighbors, you probably can stop reading. I was not a fan of that vulgar heap nor am I about to enthuse over Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, the sequel to the 2014 hit.

Neighbors 2 declares its intentions almost immediately as it re-introduces us to Mac (Seth Rogen) and Kelly (Rose Byrne), the harried suburban couple from the first movie. In the movie's opening scene, a queasy Kelly vomits in Mac's face, letting us know -- in case we didn't already -- that we're in the kind of comedy more attuned to zits than wits.

But wait ....

Neighbors 2 seems to want to steer its sensibilities toward something more politically correct. A gay couple, former frat boys, become engaged during an early picture poker party. Later, Zac Efron's Teddy -- the frat-pack leader from the first movie -- cautions against using the word "ho" when referring to women. Not cool, says the suddenly sensitive Teddy.

Silly discussions about masculine and feminine roles also crop up from time to time.

Of course, all of this "sensitivity" has been stuffed into the same grossly stained sack that was tossed into the nation's multiplexes a couple of years ago.

As you can guess from the title, the sequel pulls a switch: Instead of noxious frat boys living next door to Mac and Kelly, noxious sorority girls move in.

This spells trouble. Mac and Kelly have just sold their home. During the escrow period, the buyers (Sam Richardson and Abbi Jacobsen) are entitled to back out for any reason.

Needless to say, once they learn that the house next door will be occupied by a sorority, they're eager to withdraw.

A word or two about this sorority: It's called Kappa Nu, and its members are young women who supposedly are rebelling against college rules. Evidently, on-campus sororities aren't allowed to host parties, something that the weed-smoking Kappa Nu women can't abide. If frat boys can have parties, shouldn't women be allowed to stage revels of their own?

The solution: rent a house off-campus.
Additionally, Kappa Nu's sisterhood consists of women who say they're repelled by typical frat-boy misogyny.

As it turns out, the founders of Kappa Nu (Chloe Grace Moretz, Kiersey Clemons and Beanie Feldstein) seem more dedicated to smoking pot than they are to upsetting any campus stereotypes.

Because they need help renting a house for their sorority, the women take in Efron's Teddy, who serves as an advisor. He tells the women how to throw parties that will raise the $5,000-a-month they'll need to rent a home and -- not coincidentally -- drive Mac and Kelly crazy.

The girls eventually tire of Teddy, and give him the heave-ho. He is, after all, the most dreaded of their personal nightmares, an "old person."

OK, enough about the plot, which obviously focuses on attempts by Mac and Kelly to oust the sorority girls from the house next door.

You'll have to overlook a Jewish joke (offensive, I thought) to enjoy the rest of the comedy, but Efron certainly gives his bare-chested all as a dim-witted guy who wants to feel appreciated.

In conversation with Mac, Teddy describes the girls' lack of team spirit with a claim that they don't know how to work together. "There's no 'i' in sorority," he says, thus turning the joke on his own meager mental powers.

Director Nicholas Stoller doesn't do much to keep the movie from looking like what it is, a sloppy second helping that for all its attempts to capture a 2016 zeitgeist is really just more of the same.

She marches into her daughter's life

Susan Sarandon taps her inner New Jersey in The Meddler.

Marnie Minervini is the kind of person (you probably know at least one) who leaves exceptionally long phone messages. For Marnie leaving a phone message becomes part of a ceaseless monologue in which she expresses her needs and concerns. The major recipient of these lengthy messages is Lori, Marnie's grown daughter.

As a screenwriter trying to recover from a failed romance, the last thing Lori wants is a close and confiding relationship with her widowed mother, who -- by the way -- moved to Los Angeles from New Jersey after her husband died so that she could be closer to her daughter.

You don't need to be a genius to know that The Meddler, a comedy from director Lorene Scafaria, drips with denial, specifically about the death of the most important man in both mother and daughter's lives.

Scafaria takes a mostly mellow approach to a difficult emotional issue by turning Marnie into a woman who can't resist becoming involved in other people's lives. Marnie's method of avoidance involves helping anyone and everyone -- with pretty much anything.

Adopting a near parodic New Jersey accent, Susan Sarandon plays Marnie as a human intrusion. Rose Byrne -- in a nice small performance -- portrays Lori, the daughter who says she wants to escape her mother's suffocating attentions.

Marnie means well. When she goes to an Apple store to buy an iPhone, she can't help but come to the aid of a sales person (Jerrod Carmichael) who wants to attend college, but can't get to classes because he doesn't own a car. Marnie happily becomes his chauffeur and advisor.

And when she meets a young mother (Cecily Strong) who feels deprived because she and her gay spouse never had a "real" wedding, Marnie insists on planning and paying for a big celebration.

Marnie's husband, we learn, left her lots of money, and she doesn't seem reluctant to part with some of it -- so long as it keeps her connected to others.

Marnie also volunteers at a hospital, where she engages in conversation with an elderly woman who may be suffering from dementia, and doesn't seem to understand a word Marnie says. Whoever plays this woman fares better than Michael McKean, as a man who Marnie rebuffs in one of the movie's least believable scenes.

Most of the movie takes place when Lori takes off for New York to work on a pilot for an upcoming show. Marnie must fend for herself, which mostly involves making friends with her daughter's friends. She even starts seeing her daughter's therapist (Amy Landecker)

Sarandon gives a committed and sometimes touching comic performance as a woman whose good intentions are inseparable from her desire to involve herself in the lives of others.

Slowly but inevitably, Marnie begins to stake out her own turf. She opens herself to a relationship with a man, a retired cop played by J.K. Simmons, who has grown a mustache for the role. Maybe Sam Elliott, who usually plays these kinds of attractive older men, was otherwise engaged.

Supposedly a semi-autobiographical work by Scafaria, The Meddler offers intermittent and often sunny amusements as it allows Marnie's incessant chatter to march through the movie like an invading army that's immune to all resistance.

A movie or a sitcom episode?

Adult Beginners: Just one more indie comedy.

About half way through Adult Beginners, I began to wonder whether I wasn't watching a sitcom about a failed entrepreneur (Nick Kroll) whose reduced economic circumstances force him to move in with his sister and her husband (Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale). To make matters even more humiliating for Kroll's Jake, his sister and her husband live in the suburban house where Jake grew up. Stripped of his upscale Manhattan lifestyle, Jake is asked to earn his keep by taking care of the couple's young -- and sometimes difficult son. The comedy revolves around various additional indignities that are heaped on Jake, who suddenly finds himself sleeping on an air mattress in his old room. Cannavale gives what's becoming a familiar performance for him, the gruff but good-hearted guy who's a little wayward. As the pregnant Justine, Byrne splits the difference between comedy and drama, and Kroll -- perhaps best known for his work on Parks and Recreation -- alternately annoys and amuses in a comedy in which director Ross Katz focuses on two siblings who re-establish their childhood bond. The movie's title stems from the fact that neither Kroll nor Byrne's character ever learned to swim. At some point, Jake must leap into the pool of adult responsibility and also get his priorities straight. Fair enough, but when it comes to expanding the world of indie-oriented comedy, Adult Beginners seems to be treading water.

'Annie' again? Yes -- and updated, too

A wobbly version that too often falters..

The 2014 big-screen edition of the over-exposed musical Annie seems to have been intended as an urban fantasy that's meant to combine the joys of the original with an updated story and a few new songs.

This Annie only occasionally does justice to the original material and, at the same time, fails to stake out enough turf of its own. It's like a third-rate comedy with musical numbers and a spunky 10-year-old kid who wanders through a Manhattan that's imagined with lollipop sweetness.

Annie (Quvenzhane Wallis) now lives in a Harlem foster home. She believes that the parents who left her at a restaurant when she was an infant someday will return.

But Annie isn't only about the need for a girl to shed a harsh Dickensian childhood. It's about the way a plucky waif becomes the instrument by which an ambitious businessman turned politician (Jamie Foxx) can be humanized.

Thanks to some glaring plot contrivances, Annie's taken under wing by Foxx's cellphone billionaire, a corporate baron who also happens to be running for mayor of New York City. Foxx's Will Stark crosses paths with Annie when he keeps her from being hit by a speeding car. Filmed by a bystander, Stark's rescue goes viral.

Why not, asks the billionaire's crass campaign manager (Bobby Cannavale), lift Annie from her hard-knock life and let her live in a gleaming, aggressively modern apartment with a billionaire? Surely, voters will swoon.

The super-rich Stacks has political ambitions, but he's not much of a people person. He keeps himself emotionally isolated, and has a Howard-Hughes-like obsession with germs.

In this version, Wallis takes over from the red-headed dynamo type that usually plays Annie, something the movie accomplishes in an energetic opening sequence that finds Annie pushing a red-headed schoolmate off center stage so that she can present a lesson on FDR to her classmates.

Wallis impressed just about everyone by playing a Louisiana six-year-old named Hushpuppy in Beasts of the Southern Wild. Here, she may be working a little too hard.

Director Will Gluck makes room for the adult cast members, but saddles them with material that's straining to shed its Depression origins.

Cameron Diaz does everything she can to overact as Miss Hannigan, an embittered show-biz reject who takes care of foster children -- for the money, of course.

Both Diaz and Cannavale give the kind of out-sized performances you might expect to see in a children's theater production, and, at times -- though not consistently -- the movie seems to be aimed at the youngest audience segment.

Rose Byrne never quite finds a niche as Stack's assistant.

Look, I like the idea of a multi-ethnic Annie. And why not update material that's been done to death? It's just that Gluck hasn't been able to do it in a truly meaningful and exciting way.

You know the filmmakers have run out of imaginative gas when, toward the end of the movie, they add a helicopter chase sequence. It saves Annie, but not a movie that's too wobbly to ensure that it finds a place in the sunshine -- either today or (as Annie optimistically promises) tomorrow.

Another Hollywood family grieves

It's not as bad you might think, but This is Where I Leave You is burdened by formula.

A mother (not Jewish) tells her four grown children that her departed husband (Jewish) made a final request: He wanted his family to sit shiva, the seven-day period of mourning that follows a Jewish death. During the period, the family receives guests who wish to pay condolences.

This is Where I Leave You uses a suburban shiva as a contrivance around which to string a strong comedy cast that's anchored by Jason Bateman and Tina Fey.

If you've seen the much-exposed trailer, you've got a pretty good idea about the movie's humor, which tends toward dismaying predictability.

And you certainly won't be surprised to learn that This is Where I Leave You eventually attempts to wring emotion out of the family's alternately awkward and combative encounters. The movie was directed by Shawn Levy (Date Night and Night at the Museum) from a screenplay by Jonathan Tropper, who adapted his own novel.

The story centers on Bateman's Judd Altman, a pleasant enough fellow who produces a radio talk show. Judd's life comes apart when he arrives home to find his wife (Abigail Spencer) in bed with his boss (Dax Shepard).

We are, of course, talking about an ultimate-bad-day scenario: Almost immediately after Judd's marriage and job go down the drain, he receives a phone call informing him of his father's death.

Judd, who becomes a kind of sitcom version of Job, heads home where he reunites with his mother (Jane Fonda) and siblings.

His older brother (Corey Stoll) runs the family's sporting goods store, and is manfully trying to perform his sexual duty with his wife (Kathryn Hahn). She's desperate to become pregnant.

Judd's sister Wendy (Fey) has a wavering marriage and two small children, one of whom has a fondness for using his potty in public, something the movie apparently regards as so hilarious, it must be repeated several times.

The irresponsible Altman brother (Adam Driver) shows up with an older woman (Connie Britton) in what's supposed to be his first serious relationship.

As the story unfolds, Judd reconnects with Penny (Rose Byrne), a woman who liked him in high school and who looms as a potential love interest. God forbid anyone in a Hollywood movie experience anything resembling lingering dejection and loneliness.

Timothy Olyphant turns up sporadically as one of Wendy's former boyfriends, a guy whose promising future hit the skids when he was brain damaged in an auto accident.

Not enough characters? Throw in Ben Schwartz as the local rabbi, a clergyman who the Altman brothers knew and tormented as a kid, and who now arrives to torment an audience.

The writing mixes sit-com style cleverness with heartfelt exchanges, creating scenes aimed at Hollywood's solid double; i.e., a blend of laughs and tears.

Apart from the fact that none of the siblings looks as if they've sprung from the same gene pool, the movie comes off as a formulaic attempt to be quirky.

Neither as painful as the trailer might lead you to believe nor as successful as it surely wanted to be, This is Where I Leave You feels like a movie that wanted to click in a big way, but put far too much effort into trying. It shows.

When the neighbors are frat boys

A gross-out comedy that parties hard.

The new comedy Neighbors failed to persuade me that Seth Rogen's inner schlubiness deserves to occupy a movie's center ring, a spot he's now sharing with Zac Efron and Rose Byrne.

Neighbors -- which contrasts a dissolute-looking Rogen with a super-trim Zac Efron -- may create an early summer stir at the box office.

Why? The movie bristles with the kind of vulgar energies that mark most of today's successful comedies. Neighbors is full of opportunities for gross-out jokes -- and doesn't pass on many of them.

The high-concept gist: A party-hardy fraternity moves next door to a young couple that's adjusting to taking care of their first child, a baby daughter.

At first, the new parents (Rogen and Rose Byrne) try to cozy up to their raucous neighbors, who are being led by Efron's Teddy, the frat's chief party boy.

Husband and wife share in the drug-fueled debauchery, awkwardly trying to present themselves as peers -- albeit peers with responsibilities.

When that tactic fails to produce the desired quiet, Rogen and Byrne declare war on the rowdy neighbors, employing subterfuge and other means to close the frat house.

The purported battle between adults and hormonally active young men is a bit of sham. Neighbors seems like the kind of comedy that would become a DVD staple at Delta Psi Beta, the movie's fictional fraternity.

Director Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall and The Five-Year Engagement) happily embraces the movie's premise, which allows for more gags than story.

To me, Rogen's performance seems barely distinguishable from everything else he's done. Byrne -- whose Australian accent seems to come and go -- displays no qualms about leaping into the profane fray. Efron -- often sans shirt -- tries to mix comedy and hunk appeal as the movie's Peter Pan figure, another guy who refuses to grow up.

A subplot pits Efron's character against one of his fraternity brothers (Dave Franco), a young man who begins to understand that the fraternity's concerns (who invented the game of beer pong, for example) aren't exactly on a par with working to limit the effects of climate change.

We get it: A few years ago, Rogen's character would have been Efron's character: A few years from now Efron's character might be Rogen's character. Profound, no?

You'll find jokes about breast pumps and dildos. A sight gag involving airbags made me laugh.

Personally, I wouldn't want to live next door to any character in a movie that parades its crude humor across the screen while making what feel like random attempts to play grown-up.

Oh well, I suppose something is accomplished here: Neighbors makes the strongest case for restrictive zoning ever put on film.