Time to send you on (hopefully) vacation with a review of two new movies: ‘Sicario: Day of the Soldado’ and ‘Uncle Drew’. We will be reviewing them both in-depth, as well as reviewing Trillballins’ score, on our Thursday podcast, which you can subscribe to here. Also, make sure to add your ratings for all 2018 movies in the links at the bottom of this blog.

Jeff (72/100): This is a tough one for me to rate and review. I am a huge fan of ‘Sicario’ and Taylor Sheridan. My expectations were fairly high, and I left the theater somewhat letdown. Despite this, I also think it is still a decently made movie, so I have to avoid factoring in the result of my expectations. Many people who have seen the movie have said that it just doesn’t quite feel like ‘Sicario’. Well, this is true because it actually is missing many elements from the first one. I am pretty confident the reason this movie didn’t work as well as many had hoped comes down to three things.

First and foremost, Denis Villeneuve (who made my pick for best movie of 2017, ‘Blade Runner 2049’, which I gave a 99/100) did not direct this movie. Villeneuve’s last three movies, ‘Blade Runner 2049’, ‘Arrival’, and ‘Sicario’ have racked up 16 nominations and three wins at the Oscars. Not having him direct ‘Sicario: Day of the Soldado’ was a massive loss, because you can just feel his touch not being on the movie. The legendary Roger Deakins, who did three of Villeneuve’s last four movies, was also not on board for the sequel as cinematographer. The movie looked fine, sure, but the striking visuals from the first movie were a big part of its success.

Lastly, Emily Blunt and her character not returning really changed things big time. With ‘Sicario’, Emily Blunt’s character was the humanizing protagonist who countered nicely to the mysterious characters played by Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro. Without Emily Blunt, not only do you lose a world class actress, you lose what made the gritty original work so well in terms of characters. The government was basically the antagonist along with the drug cartels in the first movie and Blunt’s character balanced that out as the “good” side of things. You were also constantly asking “are they playing everyone?” with Brolin and del Toro’s characters in ‘Sicario’. In ‘Sicario: Day of the Soldado’ however, Josh Brolin’s is sort of the de facto protagonist, which really strips away much of what made the character and role work so well in the original.

There’s really no question that all three of those elements I mentioned above being absent hurt the final product of ‘Sicario: Day of the Soldado’. While I respect all movie opinions, I have a hard time seeing how someone can disagree with me. The story isn’t quite as good, but still had enough brutal twists and turns to keep me engaged. It also goes without saying that Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro, as they usually do, turned in great performances.

Look, I said this is a tough movie for me to review and rate, because as you can see by my score, I still liked this movie to an extent. I scored the movie for what it is and tried, as always, to focus on the movie as a standalone and not factor in any expectations. A sequel wasn’t necessary for ‘Sicario’, but was one people wanted, so it is disappointing we were sort of given a broken-down version of the original. By itself, ‘Sicario: Day of the Soldado’ is an “okay” movie, but when pitted up with its predecessor, it’s a decent letdown.

KenJac (76/100): The very first Taylor Sheridan joint I haven’t been head over heels for, ‘Sicario: Day of the Soldado’ suffered pretty heavily from the absence of Denis Villeneuve’s direction. What I loved about the first one was the pacing, the build and fall of suspense that went on non-stop throughout, and the fact that there is clearly no “good” force. That sort of all gets muddled here, and what you end up with is a sort of imitation-feel movie which is what we were afraid of going into it. Instead of classic Sheridan Neo-Western, this is more of a pure action-thriller along the lines of ‘Taken’. That is by no means bad, but just off key from the first. Still, it’s not a terrible overall movie!

One of the best things about this movie is the first 20-ish minutes, which are truly scary. Terrorism obviously is a very real threat, and I think Sollima did a great job capturing both that fear and a representation of a U.S. response. The performances were all solid as well, with del Toro and Brolin taking all that added exposure left from the void of Blunt and Kaluuya with stride. Isabela Moner also pulled off a pretty incredible job as Isabel Reyes, daughter of a drug kingpin. Catherine Keener is sort of wasted, however, in her role. Another huge plus is the action sequences, which were all pretty grinding. It is nice seeing my boy Michael Weston (Jeffrey Donovan) from ‘Burn Notice’ get the call again too because I will go to my death saying the first few seasons were actually not bad!

The “bad” from the movie especially comes in during the last 20 minutes. The wrap-up of the main plot and sub-plots of this movie is really just, bleh. There is a lot of groaning and head-scratching and I also just hated the main sub-plot in general. It is way too similar to the first except it took up more time.

Like I mentioned earlier, I also hated how they turned Brolin and del Toro into the pure good guys. The best part of Blunt and Kaluuya was that they served as narrative drivers and moral arbiters, basically watching the battle between two forces (the DOD and the Cartels) who are both bad guys in different ways. It is good to have sympathy for Alejandro (Del Toro) while still understanding he is a murderer, but when you turn Matt (Brolin) into the good guy you ruin one of the main points of the first movie in that neither the Cartels or the DOD are innocent. They have semi-symbiotic, chicken-before-the-egg type relationship considering how many times the CIA interfered with South American governments over the last 70 years, so that narrative shift is really frustrating.

In the end, you get an “okay” action flick with plenty of redeemable aspects. It’s certainly worth the watch for its core components, but in this last month of sequels (‘Incredibles 2’, ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’, ‘Deadpool 2’, ‘Ant Man & The Wasp’) this is not one of the better ones. Taylor Sheridan is a God, in my opinion, and in the future, he should be allowed to pick his own crews (jk but not really).

Jeff (55/100): This is a movie based off a Pepsi commercial.

I thought about making that my whole entire review, but it isn’t anywhere near the level of an awful enough movie for me to just end there. There simply isn’t much to this movie and that’s unfortunate.

Despite this being an absurd idea for a movie, considering its source material, I feel like they could’ve done something more entertaining. The reason the Kyrie Irving as Uncle Drew Pepsi commercial was so great was because of the basketball being played. Seeing an old dude breaking people down in a pick-up game was awesome. In ‘Uncle Drew’ you get some basketball here and there, but most of the time spent with Kyrie, Shaq, Lisa Leslie, Chris Webber, Nate Robinson and Reggie Miller is just them moseying around and talking. I was just bored most of the movie, which, again, is unfortunate, because if it had mostly been all of these basketball players in old people makeup actually playing basketball, it would’ve been a good time.

Also, I do need to talk about Nick Kroll and Tiffany Haddish for a second before I just move on. Both popular comedians played the comedic relief roles in the movie and my fucking word were their characters absolutely exhausting. I find Tiffany Haddish and Nick Kroll hit or miss, but in the right role they can both be pretty hilarious. With all of that aside, in ‘Uncle Drew’ their character’s purpose is to basically shout insults at the main character played by Lil Rey Howery. There’s an entire scene where I’m pretty sure they just shot 10 minutes straight of Kroll’s character shouting nonsense insults at people playing basketball, cut them up and then sprinkled them in. There are good laughs in the movie here and there, but most of them come from the basketball related characters just being old.

‘Uncle Drew’ is a movie that exists and would’ve been an ideal Netflix release.

KenJac (60/100): Uncle Drew is an entertaining novel concept that probably didn’t deserve to be made into a movie. That said, the final product isn’t terrible, but it is certainly corny. Director Charles Stone III (Drumline, Mr. 3000) made probably the best possible product that he could with what he was given.

By far the best part of this movie is Chris Webber. I never really found him overly entertaining as an analyst, so his performance and charisma as “Preacher” is outstanding. Whether it is roasting Dax (Lil Rel Howery) or running from his wife Betty Lou (Lisa Leslie), he had me cracking up the whole time. Kyrie himself is serviceable, Shaq is, well, Shaq, Nate Robinson didn’t really talk at all, and Reggie Miller is corny. The funniest part of this movie is the non-basketball related humor which is mostly at Dax’s expense. Some of it is laugh out loud funny, other parts make you groan. For me, the most endearing part is seeing the ex-players play in their old styles and rhythms. They had Webber taking elbow jumpers, Miller’s goofy shooting form, and Robinson street-ball style and dunks. Just simple-brain nostalgia boner stuff.

The worst part of this movie is Tiffany Haddish and Nick Kroll. Haddish is very talented and I loved her in ‘Girls Trip’, but I think producers watched that and decided to have her play the most dialed up version of her character Dina in ‘Uncle Drew’ and every one of her 200 movies coming out this year. She is unbearably annoying, but not more so than Nick Kroll’s character Mookie, who is so God damn annoying and over the top. Aaron Gordon also seemed uncomfortable in his role as the antagonist’s star player, which is fine, but his execution just ended up looking bad in comparison to the other ex and current NBA guys.

The actual plot is ok, but I never vibe with the “you can only love basketball if you play the game the right way” argument, which is the main driver of this movie. Sucha poopy pants thought process. Maybe my second least favorite aspect of the movie is the reliance on referential humor. Having Shaq say the word “Kobe” isn’t inherently a joke.

What you end up with in ‘Uncle Drew’ is a movie that probably should have went straight to a streaming platform. If I had watched this on Netflix, I probably would have liked it more by default. Biggest takeaway: put C-Webb in more movies!

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Trillballins will drop his scores on next week’s Lights, Camera, Barstool, which you can subscribe to here. ‘Uncle Drew’ is Officially Not Buttered, as an audience score of 49/100 seals the deal despite Trill’s future score. Meanwhile, ‘Sicario: Day of the Soldado’ needs a 55/100 or higher to become Officially Buttered. We want to see what your movie ratings are for the year 2018 and new releases. Click the links at the bottom of this post to submit your rating for everything released so far this year.

January: https://goo.gl/forms/nNzX19HbebeQMUAA3

February: https://goo.gl/forms/DWG9TJMISLzUunsu2

March: https://goo.gl/forms/k0dL5ozOrhwJ2Bk03

April: https://goo.gl/forms/Z218hqWq3XGyqi9C3

May: https://goo.gl/forms/f5aYcpJHnBMmkcs52

June (Sicario and Uncle Drew in here): https://goo.gl/forms/1sfizEF3LCTcXFrh2