Movie Reviews Archives - Page 12 of 36

Friday

10

September 2021

TIFF Review: Mothering Sunday

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

The societal changes brought upon by World War I have been thoroughly explored by literature and film. A blunter, more imminent alterration stemmed from the millions of casualties, mothers who would never see their young sons again, families who would never be whole. Time only moves forward, risking to leave behind those who don’t know how to face the reality of tomorrow without those they loved most.

Mothering Sunday spends the bulk of its narrative steeped in the grief of families who lost their sons in the Great War. Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young) works for the Nivens (Colin Firth and Olivia Colman). Abandoned at birth, Jane knows nothing of her upbringing, ambitious for a life beyond service. She finds romantic companionship in Paul (Josh O’Connor), the son of family friends of the Nivens, and the sole surviving soldier among his brothers and peers.

Director Eva Husson plays with time throughout the narrative, largely jumping between the events of a sexual rendezvous between Jane and Paul while the latter is late for his engagement party, and Jane’s subsequent career after service years later. Thrown into the mix is the reaction of the Nivens and Paul’s family to his perpetual tardiness, a glaring reminder of how absent their table will feel for the remainder of their days.

Young delivers a mesmerizing performance in the lead role, often buoying the scattershot narrative. Jane is not a particularly interesting character, consistently forced to live in reaction to the never-ending tragedies that land on her doorstep. Young brings to life the subtleties of her character’s position, a woman who wants more in a world that seemingly only knows how to take.

Of the supporting cast, only O’Connor manages to leave much of an impression. O’Connor and screenwriter Alice Birch chart a course for Paul that avoids reducing the lazy socialite to predictable stereotypes. Paul is tender, sweet, and irrevocably broken. O’Connor finds the nuance of a boy with the faint aura of a charm that’s been beaten down but never fully extinguished.

Firth and Colman are largely squandered in brief supporting roles. Colman’s scenes in particular look like they could have been filmed in a single day. Firth is given a little more room for his character, but Husson leans a little too heavily on a single scene at a garden party, frequently returning to the eternally dour Mrs. Nivens even as the frequent cutaways greatly advance the narrative elsewhere.

Husson shows off her ample skills, drawing attention to the minor pleasures of life that obviously mean so much to characters who are otherwise adrift in their own misery and boredom. Where she falters a bit is in the execution of her broader themes. Everyone is sad and Jane has lived a life full of tragedy. That same drum is pounded repeatedly throughout the 104-minute runtime, losing its impact by the third act.

Mothering Sunday is a first-rate production that lands with more of a thud than it should have. A compelling commentary on loss in need of a stronger sense of focus. Fans of Husson, Young, and O’Connor will find much to enjoy, but the film never quite shakes the feeling that it all could have been better.

Friday

10

September 2021

0

COMMENTS

TIFF Review: Petite Maman

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

Courtesy of TIFF

The best relief for grief is time, advice that is of no practical use in the immediate wake of the death of a loved one. The responsibilities to take care of the deceased’s affairs tend to awaken long-forgotten memories, bringing with them a blanket of nostalgia that can sting as much as it can soothe. Céline Sciamma stakes Petite Maman in the midst of this painful period, a moving exploration of grief and all its subtleties.

Nelly (Joséphine Sanz) is a young girl just old enough to understand the effect that her grandmother’s death has had on her mother (Nina Meurisse), who can’t bear to remain in her childhood house and all its memories. Left to her own devices, Nelly befriends a local girl Marion (Gabrielle Sanz) while her father (Stéphane Varupenne) packs up the rest of her grandmother’s things. Nelly and Marion quickly bond in the woods, united by a common sense of anxiety. While Nelly is still overcoming her grief, Marion is just days away from an invasive operation bound to make any young child nervous.

While Sciamma’s last film Portrait of a Lady on Fire dazzled audiences with its fiery passion, Petite Maman finds the director honed in on the subtleties of human emotion. The film is a quiet work of beauty, cinematographer Claire Mathon wielding the natural landscape of the woods to enhance the narrative’s meditations. With a runtime of just 70 minutes, Sciamma demonstrates her well-deserved confidence by letting the third act conclude right when it’s ready, not a single superfluous scene in sight.

While the adults both behind the camera and on screen help set the stage, the young Sanz sisters are largely entrusted to carry the narrative. It’s a peculiar casting choice to use siblings in roles where their characters are not related, but the talented young actresses work very well opposite each other. There are points where it’s a little hard to tell the two apart, perhaps deliberate, drawing attention to the kind of warm comfort a stranger can provide in trying times.

Grief is often all-encompassing. Even being aware of the idea that all of those painful moments will pass doesn’t really help them actually pass. You look for things to occupy your time until you’re able to be alone with yourself without feeling like the sadness will reopen all the wounds you’re desperately trying to heal.

Film often sets out to explore ideas that are massive in scope, narratives centered on saving the world or meeting the love of your life. Sciamma sets her sights on a narrower target, those days in the immediate aftermath of your whole orbit experiencing a cataclysmic change. A child doesn’t need to understand the depths of grief to reap the benefits of a friendly face when surrounded by nothing but sadness. Petite Maman is a moving reflection on the power of simple human connection in the wake of tragedy.

Thursday

9

September 2021

0

COMMENTS

TIFF Review: Dug Dug

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

Courtesy of TIFF

At first glance, the idea of the spirit of a car accident victim inhabiting the motorbike they died driving sounds like a pretty absurd thing to use as the foundation of a religion. Such a story isn’t all that fundamentally different from countless religious narratives. The stories in the Book of Genesis essentially require the same level of suspension of disbelief, the key difference being thousands of years of tradition doing just that.

The film Dug Dug transforms an unsuspecting dirt road in India into a place of religious pilgrimage. When a 40-year-old drunk named Thakur finds himself bisected in a brutal accident, the police confiscate his Dug-Dug branded motorcycle. Miraculously, the bike escapes custody and returns to the scene of the crime. Efforts by the police to detain the bike by chaining it in a jail cell fail to prevent its return the following morning, showcasing its divinity to the townsfolk.

Director Ritwik Pareek crafts a masterful satire that relishes its absurdities without ever feeling like it’s belittling people of faith. The sight of people offering bottles of alcohol to please the spirit of a drunk burnout is ripe with obvious parody, yet Pareek plays his narrative out with a straight face. Taking the story at face value, there is a clear miracle here, the motorcycle being as good a deity to worship as any.

Pareek’s script is absolutely delightful, supplying constant laughs. Perhaps most impressive is the fact that the 107-minute narrative largely operates without a human protagonist. Altaf Khan, Gaurav Soni, and Yogendra Singh show off their acting talents playing the lazy police officers tasked with managing the situation, but the motorcycle is really the driving force of the story. Pareek successfully pulls off the challenging feat of keeping his ideas at the centerpiece of the film without relying on a lead actor to channel the themes through.

A psychedelic billboard overlooking the road essentially acts as a supporting character, along with the fantastic score by Salvage Audio Collective. Pareek’s singular aesthetic helps hone the audience in on his fascination for the absurdity of faith, a gateway to the existential nature of God and religion. Dug Dug is both a farcical satire and a deeply serious contemplation of humanity’s greatest questions.

The narrative does hit some bumps in the third act, which could’ve cut a few scenes without missing a beat. Pareek knows when to ease up on the gags to get his point across, but the transition takes a little longer than it needed to. Dug Dug is a very impressive film, the kind of material you could show a true believer, not to poke fun at their faith, but to seek a deeper understanding of how these stories take such holds on entire cultures. However silly the motorcycle seems, the Bible has plenty of narratives that are no less absurd.

Thursday

9

September 2021

0

COMMENTS

TIFF Review: As in Heaven

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews

Courtesy of TIFF

The notion of “God’s Will” largely lies in the eyes of the beholder, essentially a Rorschach test. One can attribute their own good fortune to God, or view life setbacks as punishment for their own failings in His eyes. Whether fate or destiny are actually real is almost irrelevant. One’s faith, often influenced by their family or cultural ties, is all that matters.

As in Heaven (Danish title Du som er i himlen) follows Lise (Flora Ofelia Hofmann Lindahl), a young woman about to leave her 19^th century rural village to go to school. Her mother, Anna (Ida Cæcilie Rasmussen), is about to go into labor after a challenging pregnancy. On the cusp of adulthood, Lise’s dreamy final days spent playing with her cousins and youthful crushes takes a dark turn as her mother experiences some dire medical complications.

Making her directorial debut, Tea Lindeburg has an exquisite eye for detail that works wonders for her period drama. Cinematographer Marcel Zyskind presents frame after frame that could be presented in an art gallery. The film does a wonderful job capturing the natural beauty of Denmark.

Where Lindeburg falls short is with the screenplay. The beautiful cinematography and strong performances are constantly undercut by a narrative that only feigns a middling interest in its own themes. The first act stretches for about half the 86-minute runtime, setting up a lot of big questions without ever really caring to grapple with what’s been presented.

Lindahl does an admirable job in the lead role, capturing Lise’s natural sense of angst as she prepares to leave her world behind to pursue her studies. An anxious time in anyone’s life, Lindahl showcases her great range as the narrative starts to finally ramp up. For all the shortcomings of the screenplay, Lise remains a compelling figure to watch.

The meatiest plotline in the film lies with Lise feeling guilty over a misplaced hairpiece she borrowed from her mother, blaming herself for her mother’s difficulties in labor. Lindeburg sort of signals her intentions to explore the burdens that religious communities place upon their youth, but the narrative is too unfocused to explore this concept in a satisfying manner. It’s almost as if the film threw a bunch of ideas at the wall and left them behind without waiting to see what stuck.

As in Heaven is a perplexing experience. For all the beauty captured on screen, the end result leaves a rather empty feeling. Shot during the COVID-19 pandemic, Lindeburg and her crew deserve a lot of credit for putting together a first-rate production, which would have been a lot better if the screenplay didn’t play out like a rough draft in desperate need of fine-tuning.

Wednesday

8

September 2021

0

COMMENTS

Classic Film: The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

As a sport, baseball is frequently criticized for its perceived lack of “star power” in the modern era, even as players like Shohei Ohtani make history for feats that haven’t been seen in nearly a hundred years. Baseball isn’t a sport that generally rewards flashy antics or trash-talking superstars, regarding such behavior as detrimental to the integrity of the game. Anyone who follows the game closely can attest to the abundance of characters that populate the dugouts, apparently flying under the radar of the broader media at large.

As a film, 1976’s The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings harkens back to a time when the sport of baseball was filled with nothing but characters. Set against the backdrop of 1930s segregation, Bingo Long (Billy Dee Williams) is a star pitcher fed up with the corrupt owners in the Negro Leagues. Barred from MLB due to its abhorrent racism, Bingo instead sets out to form a team of his own, traveling the Midwest to scrape out a living playing local clubs. Veteran slugger Leon Carter (James Earl Jones) balances out Long’s ambitions with a healthy level of skepticism for their power of change against the rigid confines of institutional power structures.

Based on the 1973 novel of the same name, the film is an unusual blend of slapstick comedy and serious drama. Director John Badham does a marvelous job supplying plenty of laughs while never allowing his audience to lose sight of the bleak realities of his characters. Few comedies seek to grapple with capitalism and the means of production in such a serious manner, all the while working double-time to keep things upbeat and entertaining.

Williams and Jones work marvelously off each other, grounding the narrative’s comedic efforts through their efforts to bring change amidst impossible circumstances. Though Leon’s practical realism occasionally clashes with Bingo’s lofty goals, the two communicate their differences with love and deep mutual respect. The quality of their performances elevates the material through some of its more predictable twists and turns.

While mostly Williams and Jones’ vehicle, the supporting cast is filled with memorable characters who get their own moments to shine. Richard Pryor carves out a hilarious subplot centered around his character’s efforts to pass as Cuban in order to circumvent MLB’s segregation rules. Pryor finds humor in the reality of America’s racist rot, a tall order that leaves a lasting impression on the audience.

The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings struggles a bit with its 110-minute runtime, losing steam when the third act needs to reign in the jokes toward a destination that most could see coming from a mile away. At times, Badham seems a little too content to simply let Williams and Jones carry the narrative, not quite shaking the sense that the end results could have been better if everything was tightened up a bit. As far as baseball films go, the film is pretty singular in its execution, a script capable of blending humor with Marx’s theory of economics. Few sports narratives are so sincere with their intentions.

Monday

23

August 2021

0

COMMENTS

Classic Film: Sylvia Scarlett

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

The Golden Age of Hollywood offers pretty slim pickings for queer-positive content for LGBTQ cinephiles. Gender variance is played almost exclusively for laughs, while broader gay representation tends to skew exclusively negative in the rare instances where homosexuality is even referenced at all. Being asked to offer transgender film recommendations is often just an exercise in figuring out which presents the least amount of cringe.

With all this in mind, 1935’s Sylvia Scarlett is an unusual outlier for a film centered on gender variance. Katharine Hepburn does a fabulous job in the lead role, remarkably transformed into “Sylvester” Scarlett as she flees France with her father, Henry (Edmund Gwenn), a hapless crook wanted for embezzlement. Henry’s inability to keep his mouth shut as to his crimes attracts fellow schemer Jimmy Monkley (Cary Grant) into their orbit, leading the three to team up for a series of cheap scams across England.

The first on-screen team-up of Hepburn and Grant is largely a disaster after its charming first act. Based on the Compton MacKenzie novel The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett, the film doesn’t have any obvious clue as to how to adapt a book into a feature. There isn’t really much of a narrative present across the 90-minute runtime, instead playing out like a series of loosely connected vignettes.

The comedy ends immediately after the narrative shifts gears away from the con job hijinks toward a bizarre romance between Sylvia and Michael Fane (Brian Aherne), who met the group during one of their “performances.” Michael is almost completely unphased by Sylvester revealing herself to be Sylvia, itself made weirder by the presence of Michael’s wife, Lily (Natalie Paley). Even stranger is how the film seems to forget about Jimmy, only for him to appear sporadically throughout the second half while throwing vague hints at also wanting a relationship with Sylvia.

The narrative offers no explanation for why Sylvia continues to occasionally present as Sylvester even after all the characters know who she is. There is no consistency from scene to scene beside the cast, almost no follow-through on any of the film’s storylines. The whole ordeal is a puzzling display of incompetence from director George Cukor, otherwise among the most talented filmmakers of his era.

Sylvia Scarlett does have some obvious appeal for LGBTQ audiences. Hepburn delivers a tactful take on gender variance in a film that is otherwise a disaster in practically every regard. It’s a stretch to call it nuanced in a narrative that looks like each scene was compiled without a second thought. LGBTQ audiences deserve better than the mess that is Sylvia Scarlett, but at least it is a respectful disaster.

Monday

23

August 2021

0

COMMENTS

Black Widow is a bland action film without any sense of purpose

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

Comic books don’t necessarily need to be concerned with timelines and continuity. Just this past year, Marvel Comics have released new material set in 2006’s Civil War storyline and a whole line of X-Men comics set during their famous 80s run. The idea of a Black Widow film being released after the death of Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff in Avengers: Endgame feels a bit cheap, along the lines of Ant-Man and the Wasp being set in the same pre-Infinity War era, but it’s hardly unprecedented.

The big difference between film and comic books here is that fans have plenty of options for content. Fans who love the X-Men have more than ten monthly books to cater to their every inclination. Nostalgia isn’t the only thing that’s being served. That’s not completely true for the MCU, where Black Widow serves as the first theatrical release in more than two years. Marvel film fans who want new content don’t have a ton of alternatives.

The problem with Black Widow is that the whole ordeal feels like an obligatory afterthought, simply going through the motions with only a perfunctory sense of charm. The film sees Natasha joined by a group of “family” members including Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Alexei “Red Guardian” Shostakov (David Harbour), and Melina Vostokoff (Rachel Weisz), as they take on the Red Room, where black widows are trained. Standing in their way is Dreykov (Ray Winstone), the Red Room’s answer to Nick Fury, and the Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), an assassin with the ability to mimic elite fighting styles at will.

The core group of Johansson, Pugh, Harbour, and Weisz all have pretty solid chemistry. Harbour in particular works well as comedic relief, essentially the Russian equivalent of Captain America with a dad bod. The found family dynamic is constantly undone by the actors’ complete inability to maintain Russian accents, which far too often completely fall off by midsentence. It’s distracting and more than a bit unprofessional.

The action sequences are perfectly fine. Director Cate Shortland has crafted a competent film that knows which notes to play, but too often the narrative lacks the necessary dramatic stakes to carry it through a bloated 134-minute runtime. As a feature, it’s a bit of a slog to sit through, something that might have been better as a Disney+ series that had more time to flesh out the supporting cast.

Johansson looks quite comfortable, unsurprising given her decade-long tenure in the title role. What’s missing from her performance though is a sense of drive that made her character so much fun in films like Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Some of that makes sense, given the fact that the audience knows what’s going to happen to Natasha, but this dynamic takes a lot of air out of the experience.

The MCU has been designed for years to be an à la carte experience, ensuring that casual fans don’t have to watch dozens of films to keep up with its main installments. While there are some skippable entries into the MCU, Black Widow feels like the very first that was designed to be inessential. With the Avengers being in a state of flux post-Endgame, fans might be a little anxious to see what comes next. While some of these characters will undoubtedly pop up down the road, Black Widow finds itself stuck in the past with an audience that’s understandably hungry for the future.

Wednesday

18

August 2021

0

COMMENTS

Classic Film: The Revolt of Mamie Stover

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

Part of the beauty of 1956’s The Revolt of Mamie Stover is the way the film’s core themes have evolved in the nearly seven decades since its initial release. The original 1951 novel of the same name served to illustrate the decline of American society, a criticism that every subsequent generation has heard a billion times before adulthood. No matter if its 1956 or 2021, the kids are always blamed for ruining everything.

Jane Russell leads the show in the title role, playing a twenty-six-year-old woman on a ship to Honolulu, looking for work at a local dance hall that caters to off-duty servicemen. Set in 1941 against the backdrop of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Honolulu is the place to be for people looking to make a quick buck off all the chaos. While never explicitly stated in the film, it is heavily implied that the shady dance hall, which serves watered-down liquor to soldiers looking to book private sessions with its employees, makes its fortunes through prostitution.

Mamie quickly bonds with fellow passenger Jim Blair (Richard Egan), a writer and reserve officer with a house in Honolulu. Due to the dance hall’s strict rules against its employees having bank accounts, Mamie enlists Jim to help her protect her savings, which quickly accumulate as a result of her prowess in the field of seduction.

Russell delivers a powerful critique of capitalism’s inherently sexist applications, thoroughly debunking any nobility within the military-industrial complex. Mamie spends her money buying up local real estate, whose owners are eager to sell in the face of imminent war. Derided as a war profiteer and a trollop, Mamie thrives in an environment that doesn’t want to have a place for women.

Public opinion on America’s unending wars has certainly changed drastically in the decades since The Revolt of Mamie Stover. Mamie’s modest success is mere peanuts compared to the billions made by corporations and their private armies intent on eternal combat in the Middle East. When combined with capitalism’s decades-long efforts to terraform Hawaii on behalf of the tourism industry, one can’t help but root for Mamie’s quieter sense of protest.

Which isn’t to say that The Revolt of Mamie Stover is a perfect narrative. The 92-minute runtime is spread a bit thin between Mamie’s romance with Jim and her gradual domination of the dance hall. Dance hall owner Bertha Parchman (Agnes Moorehead) largely takes over for Jim as Mamie’s primary foil in the third act, shortchanging much of Russell and Egan’s natural sense of chemistry. As Bertha’s primary enforcer Harry Adkins, Michael Pate puts in a strong supporting performance as a scummy businessman intent on preserving the status quo.

The show mostly belongs to Russell, whose charisma is more than enough to carry the film through its minor shortcomings. The title role was originally intended for Marilyn Monroe, its subject matter is a bit of an odd fit for the staunchly conservative Russell. While The Revolt of Mamie Stover’s themes will undoubtedly resonate differently with modern audiences, the film is a valuable case study as to the ways that previous generations applied varying standards of morality to unfettered greed, depending on which sex was benefitting from the fruits of capitalism’s rot.

Wednesday

11

August 2021

0

COMMENTS

Classic Film: La Piscine

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

Photo courtesy of Rialto

The prestige TV landscape has a certain fascination with beautiful rich people doing awful things in luscious settings. 1969’s La Piscine (titled The Swimming Pool internationally) takes two of France’s top stars of the era, Alain Delon and Romy Schneider, and deposits them in the Côte d’Azur. The dreamy narrative quickly descends into a gripping psychological thriller as the characters find themselves with little to do besides lay in the sun, basking in their own grievances.

Jean-Paul (Delon) and Marianne (Schneider) are staying at a friend’s villa for a month. The beautiful scenery of the French Riviera provides ample kindling for the non-stop sexual tension between the two, a relationship that’s just over the two years mark. Jean-Paul is a failed novelist with a perpetual chip on his shoulder, unhappy with his job at an advertising agency.

The arrival of an old friend, Harry (Maurice Ronet), and his daughter, Penelope (Jane Birkin), rekindles old flames and older grudges. Harry, a lover from Marianne’s past, and friend/rival to Jean-Paul, has done extremely well as a record producer, eager to rub his success in anyone and everyone’s faces. The hot sun provides more than adequate kindling for jealousy to transcend fantasy into reality.

As the title suggests, La Piscine takes place almost entirely around the swimming pool and its corresponding villa. The small cast and intimate setting work quite well for director Jacques Deray to craft his psychological case study into the ugly nature of human emotion. There’s barely any plot in the 124-minute narrative, but Deray brings a keen sense of timing to his pacing. The sleepy story never manages to drag, a highly impressive feat giving the scope of the production. If it weren’t for the swimming pool, the whole production could have been easily adapted into a stage play.

Delon and Schneider, who were in a long-term relationship that ended several years before the production, have a sense of chemistry that’s perfect for the narrative. Their passion is real, but it’s an aged sense of love, peppered with loss, never quite able to completely hide the scars of time. Summer’s lust stirs the emotions, surfacing a kind of innate sadness.

In Jean-Paul, longtime Delon fans will see a different side of the actor floating in the water. Delon has a knack for playing impeccably suave hotshots, mavericks with devil-may-care attitudes. Here, Jean-Paul does care, a vulnerability rarely seen from the iconic actor.

The summer months fly by in the blink of an eye. La Piscine delights in its slow-burn story, a gripping thriller powered by three lead actors at the height of their craft. The story itself is a little rougher around the edges. Deray doesn’t always display a clear sense of purpose for Birkin, whose Penelope frequently skirts between being an actual character and a mere object of fascination for the rest of the cast. Similarly, the backstory of Harry’s relationships with Jean-Paul and Marianne remains a bit unclear, receiving only scattershot mentions throughout the narrative that seems to contradict itself at times.

There’s a reason shows like Big Little Lies and The White Lotus throw unlikable rich people into exotic locations to be awful to each other. Hedonism tickles the mind, extreme wealth and lust eliciting naturally intense emotions. La Piscine understands that better than most, a masterpiece that packs quite a punch in modern times.

Sunday

8

August 2021

2

COMMENTS

The Suicide Squad should have been better

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

Photo courtesy of Warner Bros

2016’s Suicide Squad is a strong contender for worst DC film ever made, a true abomination of filmmaking. Director David Ayers has so strongly denounced the atrocity that it feels almost unfair to mention him when talking about it. Underneath the repetitive montages and failed self-referential humor existed a fairly strong core, backed by commanding performances from Margot Robbie and Viola Davis. It’s easy to see the appeal in The Suicide Squad for a talent like James Gunn, architect of Marvel’s finest dysfunctional found family, The Guardians of the Galaxy.

The bar for a sequel/soft reboot is so low that it’s almost not even worth mentioning. Two hours of Harley Quinn painting the side of a building with an old toothbrush would be better than the 2016 trainwreck. Gunn would be forgiven for trying to steer as clear of the first film as possible, but the director does deserve some credit for earnestly engaging in the aspect of Ayers’ mess that did work, namely through Quinn, Amanda Waller, and team leader Colonel Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman).

Like the first, the plot is barely worth mentioning. Task Force X is sent to Corto Maltese, an island in South America recently overthrown by anti-American militants who seek to unleash longtime DC character Starro the Conqueror, a giant mind-controlling starfish, upon the world. Starro is the perfect subject for an irreverent mind like Gunn’s, eager to add depth to a character many others might instantly write off.

Corto Maltese is less a mission site than a playground. Gunn is rarely all that concerned with his plot, instead spending the bulk of his 132-minute runtime having fun in his sandbox. It is a fun sandbox. Newcomers such as Bloodsport (Idris Elba), Peacemaker (John Cena), Blackguard (Pete Davidson), and T.D.K. (Nathan Fillion), are all outlandishly entertaining to watch.

The cast is a little too large for a bloated feature running entirely off a sugar high, but Gunn does an admirable job carving out sections for character development. Both Robbie and Kinnaman are given plenty of chances to shine that go a long way toward correcting the way they were squandered in the first film. Davis is predictably bankable, the perfect Waller. Elba and Cena have absolutely delightful chemistry.

Gunn digs a bit deeper beyond his A-listers, giving supporting players Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian) and Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior) satisfying arcs amidst the broader chaos. The script is nothing special, but Gunn has a knack for crafting interpersonal relationships that helps buoy the film when the jokes aren’t flying a mile a minute. Surprising to absolutely no one, King Shark (Sylvester Stallone) steals the show whenever he’s on-screen, a natural source of levity.

The Suicide Squad prioritizes jokes to such an extent that the film starts to fall apart whenever it’s required to function like a story, two hours of cinematic cotton candy. That’s not necessarily the worst thing in the world. Gunn’s action sequences are spectacular and the cast knows how to carry the show when the script doesn’t give them much to work with.

It’s too easy to walk away from The Suicide Squad feeling like the talent involved could’ve done a bit more with this material. This notion is particularly true with regard to Harley Quinn. Making her third appearance in a DC film, Margot Robbie is one of the company’s most recognizable and beloved faces. Robbie is a phenomenal Harley Quinn, but The Suicide Squad hardly knows how to utilize her talents, boxing her into an arc that kind of seems like it was initially designed to elevate her, but ended up reducing her overall impact to the narrative. Robbie’s tenure as Quinn is largely defined by her fabulous performances in service to lackluster films.

Despite the fairly mediocre third act, The Suicide Squad is a pretty entertaining film, albeit not a particularly great one. Gunn is obviously capable of better. The fact that the first Suicide Squad was an abomination shouldn’t necessarily preclude its successor from being a masterpiece. This effort fell short.