9/30 Movie Trip

Creator of Paul’s Trip to the Movies, Paul McGuire Grimes reviews Bros, Hocus Pocus 2, and The Greatest Beer Run Ever.

BROS (in theaters)

Billy Eichner has been making audiences laugh since his days on Parks and Recreation and his “Billy on the Street” videos went viral. He wrote and stars in the new rom-com Bros, and you can feel him pulling from his own life in how he writes Bobby. He hosts a podcast called “The 11th Brick at Stonewall” and runs a LGBTQ history and culture museum in New York. He’s out with some friends at a club where he meets Aaron who appears to be the typical jock gay, completely ripped, wearing a baseball cap and seems completely out of Bobby’s league. That is until they strike up conversation despite both claiming to be emotionally unavailable. Sparks fly and they continue to text and flirt trying to decide if they want to test the boundaries of a relationship.

-Starring: Billy Eichner, Luke Macfarlane, Bowen Yang, Miss Lawrence, Ts Madison, Jai Rodriguez

-Bros comes under the direction of Nicholas Stoller who also co-wrote it with Eichner. Stoller is no stranger to rom-coms having worked on Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Neighbors.

-Universal Pictures is touting as the first gay rom-com from a major motion picture studio featuring a principal cast of out queer actors. The visibility and representation here is important and there’s a lot riding on this film to do well.

-Eichner’s brand of comedy is all over this film with irreverent humor and zingers thrown left and right with its commentary on gay culture.

-He and Stoller don’t try to rewrite the rom com genre just because this features two gay characters as the lead couple. They have written your traditional rom-com filled with all the tropes from the New York City setting to big, public declarations of love. There’s a commonality to the language and games that come with dating.

-There’s an easiness to Eichner and Macfarlane as they have great chemistry together, they’re not afraid to poke fun at themselves and their images along the way from references to Hallmark movies for Macfarlane to Bobby’s faux anger like Billy’s known for.

-What’s more important is the layers with both characters, both vulnerable, both flawed and Eichner has a great monologue about confidence that speaks volumes.

-Billy Eichner and Nicholas Stoller throw a lot at this movie both in terms of its themes, its place in queer cinema, and all the fun cameos along the way. It deserves a big audience who can financially support it. We need more movies like this, about these kinds of characters, and the visibility of having an out queer principal cast.

RATING: 4.5 out of 5 TICKET STUBS

 

HOCUS POCUS 2 (Disney+)

Hocus Pocus has become a cult classic since its release in 1993. New generations of fans have discovered a love of the Sanderson Sisters and its popularity only seems to grow more and more each year. Thankfully, Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy are back for more in Hocus Pocus 2. It’s Present Day Salem and the town is as mad for Halloween as it always has been. The legend of the Sanderson Sisters is still discussed although they haven’t been seen in 29 years. Becca, Izzy, and Cassie are three high school friends who are facing a bit of a rough patch thanks to Cassie’s current boyfriend. Becca and Izzy head out into the woods for a little séance after picking up some supplies from the Magic Shoppe that’s now run by Sam Richardson’s character, Gilbert the Great. You may remember this shop from the first movie, and Gilbert claims to be the Sandersons’ biggest fan. The girls light a candle only to realize it’s the Black Flame Candle and they’ve conjured up Winifred, Mary, and Sarah who are back to feast on the children of Salem.

-Starring: Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kathy Najimy, Doug Jones, Tony Hale, Hannah Waddingham

-There’s a lot riding on Hocus Pocus 2 to live up to the high expectations of the first, especially if you’re a die-hard fan who grew up with it. Fear not as this is a worthy sequel to the original

-You have to go in with the right expectations. Don’t expect a direct sequel as this isn’t about Dani, Max, and Alison all grown up. It’s about a new generation of characters in Salem.

-The film opens with a bit of an origin story for the Sanderson Sisters. We see Winifred, Mary, and Sarah as town outcasts banished from Salem and visited by a witch in the woods. This is the one scene with Ted Lasso star Hannah Waddingham, and it would have been great to somehow have her in present day. These young actresses did their homework capturing all the little quirks of the sisters.

-Everyone watching the sequel is here for Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy who have slipped back into their iconic roles as if no time has passed. The chemistry between them is fantastic as they play off each other so well. Midler is just as wicked as you want Winifred to be while Najimy still makes Mary the nutty oddball of the trio. Parker is given some great moments to and expands on making Sarah more than just the flirty sister.

-Features a modern-day setting finding easy jokes along the way with the Sanderson Sisters as fish out of water in 2022. There’s a funny scene with them finding potions and lotions at a Walgreens. It’s funny due to the commitment of the main trio of actresses. It fully acknowledges the events of the 1993 story without utilizing too many flashbacks or throwbacks.

-There’s a deliberate acknowledgement of the fans, especially in the gay and drag communities who have made this film remain popular over the last few decades.

-Director Anne Fletcher (27 Dresses, The Proposal) has made this a movie about sisterhood, your blood sisters and your best girlfriends who get you through life. She knows exactly what the audience wants with musical numbers, the Sanderson Sisters catch phrases, and more but also wants to challenge us that it can’t just be the original rebooted all over again. She has a fun new cast while letting Midler, Najimy, and Parker cast a spell on us all over again.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5 TICKET STUBS

THE GREATEST BEER RUN EVER (in theaters, AppleTV+)

Some true stories seem too wild and unbelievable to be true. Thus is the case for the new film The Greatest Beer Run Ever, but I do assure you, that it is based on a very true story. Zac Efron leads the film as Jon “Chickie” Donohue. It’s 1967 in New York and the Vietnam War continues to rage on dividing the country’s opinions along the way. Chickie has friends serving, while he lives at home drinking beers with his buddies at the local bar. His dad thinks he’s lazy and going nowhere in life. He’s very protective of the troops and wants people to respect them despite the anti-war sentiment around him. He’s frequently asked “What are you doing to help them?” as a counter to how vocal he is without the actions to back up his opinion. Then the light bulb goes off. Thanks to an idea from the local bartender, he hops a boat to Vietnam with a duffle bag full of beer hoping to find his friends and offer a bit of thanks for their service.

-Starring: Zac Efron, Bill Murray, Russell Crowe

-If you start to negate the truth of the story early on, you’ll have a hard time buying into the rest of the movie. I’ve read Chickie’s memoir that the movie is based on and watched interviews with Chickie and his friends that are profiled in the movie.

-It takes a certain kind of hubris to pull this off, and Zac Efron fits the bill early on for this character. You can buy him as the potential bum that his family sees him as, but Efron can easily pull off the neighborhood brotherly friend willing to do something totally unheard of and completely dangerous. It’s role that’s written and acted well as it lets Efron sink his teeth into the oblivion of a character and the eye-opening realization he’s in for.

-Writer/director Peter Ferrelly’s script has a familiar trajectory to it as it doesn’t take him long to establish Chickie, the divisive opinions about the war and then thrust him into the middle of a war zone. It’s somewhat of a road trip movie like we saw Ferrelly do with Green Book.

-The middle section starts to drag and feel a bit repetitive with him going from one friend to the next delivering beer. Ferrelly leans into his comedy background to play up Chickie’s humor and the absurdity of his idea. It’s here where I started to question if Ferrelly was going to remind us of the horrific nature of the war, the absolute danger Chickie was in, and why his actions were so shocking. It was a lighter tone than you would want out of a movie set in the Vietnam War.

– It’s only in the third act does it come into focus once Chickie meet a journalist played by Russell Crowe. Crowe brings a strong and focused approach and is the mentor Chickie needs to truly understand what’s happening. The film needed more of these images and danger throughout to counter Chickie’s mentality. The stakes needed to feel higher in the second act even if Chickie didn’t understand it.

-The Greatest Beer Run Ever works thanks to Efron’s performance and the realization that’s felt by the end. He’s a person whose beliefs about our troops, the media, and war are still very recognizable today. Ferrelly needed to understand that better and make it tonally consistent throughout in order to drive it home.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5 TICKET STUBS