It’s time to review some movies again. We are going to take a look at four movies and give you some short takes, and our ratings, on each of them. For an explanation of the rating system and what to expect from our reviews, click this link to our first blog. Today’s reviews include: ‘Fahrenheit 451’, ‘Life of the Party’, ‘Tully’ and Jim Carrey’s 0% on Rotten Tomatoes movie ‘Dark Crimes’.

Jeff Lowe (45/100): Michael B. Jordan and Michael Shannon? I mean, talk about a fucking Hollywood dynamic duo. The idea of ‘Fahrenheit 451’ being good made a ton of sense based off of its two stars. Changing the story around from the original source material, in an attempt to try and be super relevant to 2018, was a massive downfall of this movie. It just didn’t work, it felt forced and, on top of that, the script was really weak. I give it a bit of a pass in terms of special effects because it was on HBO, but the movie didn’t look particularly great. The only redeeming thing from this movie was the fact that, as always, Michael B. Jordan and Michael Shannon were great in their roles. Neither of these actors deserved to be in such a whiff of a movie remake.

KenJac (35/100): This movie was hot garbage, pun intended. Literally, the “flaming dumpster fire GIF unironically tweeted by SportsMan69 after any NFL turnover” of movies. The whole time you’re watching you get the sense that they’re trying really, really hard to be relevant and deep. The problem is that they’re just failing the whole time. I expected a lot better of a movie out of Michael Shannon and Michael B. Jordan, as well, which made this even more of a bummer to watch. Definitely don’t waste your time watching this unless you are a fan of the book series.

Jeff Lowe (29/100): This is the third movie where the married team of Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone have teamed up to make a comedy movie. Falcone was behind the camera once again with McCarthy as the lead actress, which was the case for their other two: ‘Tammy’ and ‘The Boss’. I gave ‘Tammy’ a 16/100 and ‘The Boss’ a 33/100 and ‘Life of the Party’ felt very much like more of the same from the duo. Don’t get me wrong, I find both McCarthy and Falcone funny, but the movies they have been putting out just don’t do it for me. This one wasn’t exactly an original premise to start and basically just amounted to absolutely nothing in the end. Many scenes and references really tried to make the movie seem hipper than it was, which is always a treat to sit through in the theater. There was a scene involving weed that reminded me of this from the movie ‘This Is The End’:

Speaking of nothing, the script also wasted away some great comedy actresses and actors in Gillian Jacobs, Chris Parnell, Maya Rudolph, Julie Bowen and Jimmy O. Yang.

Movies like this one or ‘I Feel Pretty’ have been touted as having “good messages,” but the problem is they’re just not funny. The movie ‘Blockers’ with Leslie Mann, Ike Barinholtz and John Cena was fucking hilarious and also touted a good message. So I am not going to rate a comedy movie on a curve just because it has a good message. The simplest way for me to judge a comedy movie is asking “is it funny?” With ‘Life of the Party’, the answer is a pretty simple “no.”

KenJac (21/100): ‘Life of the Party’ is just a cascading rain of groans and sighs. We haven’t seen Melissa McCarthy in a movie for over a year and this wasn’t a great return. It’s a movie about the relationship between an older woman and a millennial and the millennial aspect is very clearly written by an older person. It’s not worth watching outside of a few laughable lines, none of which are delivered by the main cast. Also, Jimmy O. Yang (Jian Yang from ‘Silicon Valley’) and Chris Parnell were both completely wasted in this movie.

Jeff Lowe (88/100): Hey, look, a good movie! ‘Tully’ was hyped up as a more adult version of ‘Juno’ and it’s a fairly accurate take. The movie has a pretty distinct “realness” to it as it mixes the up and down emotions of parenthood with humor sprinkled throughout. Charlize Theron delivers a great lead performance (not very shocking), which executes everything it wants to do perfectly. Mackenzie Davis (who was recently in my favorite movie of 2017, ‘Blade Runner 2049) also adds to a very well acted movie. My only (not real) complaint is that Mark Duplass and Ron Livingston look far too much alike to be in a movie together. You can’t convince me those two are not related. The movie may not blow you away, but in a world where “real” movies like this are usually in the coming-of-age genre, it’s a great change of pace.

Jeff Lowe (15/100): Whenever I see a movie with an approval score of 10% or lower on Rotten Tomatoes, I get fairly excited. The cherry on top of Jim Carrey’s new movie ‘Dark Crimes’ is the fact that it can be watched right now on iTunes, Amazon and other services. A very, very dark movie about Jim Carrey’s character trying to connect the dots for an unsolved murder, ‘Dark Crimes’ is a total bummer. I am all for dark movies, but there’s nothing redeeming about it, nothing positive about it and the movie is just a straight up depressing watch. On one hand, I want to say the acting is poor, but the script does the cast no help either. This is a hollow, empty and boring thriller that, unfortunately, wasn’t worth me getting excited about. Avoid wasting the $6 or $7 it requires to rent this movie.

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We want to see what your movie ratings are for the year 2018. Click the links below 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

Our next review will be up Friday morning for the probably-awful ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’, which we are going to see on Thursday night. You can subscribe to Lights, Camera, Pod and listen to our new episode, dropping early tomorrow morning.