Why Him? (2016)

Why Him? (2016)

7/10

Starring

James Franco

Bryan Cranston

Directed by John Hamburg

Why Him? Is not a tough movie to like and it is fun to watch. The movie stars James Franco as Laird Mayhew a weird overgrown child who is also a millionaire thanks to good investments and a video game. His behavior and views will knock any father off his feet, when such a man comes to say he wants to be your daughters partner or he is already dating your daughter.

The poor father in this movie is the Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston as Ned Fleming, the father to Stephanie who is madly in love with her new boyfriend Laird.

They have been many father vs boyfriend movies and although this movie does play along the streets of its predecessors, the outstanding cast made the movie for me. Each one delivered a memorable performance and the events in the movie like the bathroom mishap will bring water to your eyes, from laughter that is.

One other cool thing about the movie is, in other father vs boyfriend movies you are supposed to dislike the father for being over protective of his daughter. Here in this movie, I get to feel like he was not doing enough protecting.

If I was in his shoes I would have acted the exact same way with the way Laird behaved and carried on behaving like there was no reason to be civil, I too will be scared if my daughter is considering being with him instead of graduating out of the university.

The other good thing I liked in the movie is the childish character portrayed by Franco was bearable. There is nothing more irritating than having to cope watching a movie where the character’s childish behavior is overacted and too impossible to be true that such human exists on the same plane like I do.

Franco’s portrayal was not that hard to believe, I have met someone like that and I have done some of the things he did myself.

I have let loose some of the movie’s plot lines above on this movie about a rich man in his thirties who fell in love with a lady in her twenties and wants to spend his whole life pleasing and being with her.

This idea did not sit well with her parents bearing in mind that she has withheld his existence from them for the fear that they will not understand her feeling towards him and be unable to bear being with him.

Her fears were met by her parents and now Laird must try and prove himself the suitable suitor for their daughter.

James Franco is always a delight to watch.

Office Christmas Party (2016)

Office Christmas Party (2016)

4/10

Starring

Jason Bateman

Olivia Munn

T. J. Miller

Jennifer Aniston

Kate McKinnon

Directed by Josh Gordon and Will Speck

Here is a movie that makes you want to cry. The tears will not be from laughter as this movie is meant to be a comedy, filled with talented comics whose job was to make you laugh until you cry, but in the end the only tears I cried were tears of disappointment.

Here is Jennifer Aniston leading the pack of comics and even her presence as an overbearing dick in a skirt, could not save the movie. The plot of the movie is all over the place, there are too many sub stories in the movie and the writers decided to link all of them into the grand ending.

The problem of such was, characters whose presence were ignorable had things to do with the way the movie ended, with clichés all over the place you had these ignorable characters tripping over the clichés knocking down everything seriously useful in the movie.

Although the movie was a box office success, everything else about it was not. The casting was too silly to make any of them memorable. The plot was too weak to even make any form of sense, then the error leading to the almost magical moment was seriously uneventful.

(Spoiler Alert)

Here is a movie which kicked off when one of the characters mistakenly puts cocaine into a snow machine in the party. Then by mere accident the man whom the leads were trying to get his business happened to be passing by the snow machine and gets doused by the cocaine making him high.

The movie plot has a rich, spoilt, dumb and naïve son of a millionaire Clay Vanstone (T. J. Miller) running one of his late father’s IT company branches. His sister Carol Vanstone (Jennifer Aniston) is the head of the company and has decided to close the branch her brother works in. Her claim is, company is not making enough money and she shuts down their Christmas party plans to save money also.

Clay in a desperate need to keep the branch open lied that he is closing a big deal, and that by doing so will make enough money to keep the branch open and running.

Carol agrees to this, but now Clay with his close compadres Josh Parker (Jason Bateman) and Tracey Hughes (Olivia Munn) must find a way to persuade a company procurement staff to buy servers from them.

When the deal was going south Clay tells the man they are having a Christmas Party and invites him to come see how the office runs like a family.

The movie then plays down the old street of clichés never missing any stops.

Sing (2016)

Sing (2016)

6/10

Starring the voice of

Matthew McConaughey

Reese Witherspoon

Seth MacFarlane

Scarlett Johansson

Directed by Garth Jennings

Sing is a fun movie with all the nostalgic events attached to the songs we love added to it. Illumination Entertainment have created another masterpiece animation from my point of view outside the Despicable Me franchise.

Illumination Entertainment has previously released in the same year The Secret Life of Pets, a movie I did not seem to fancy much, and I think it was a step down from the their 2015 Minions. The financial returns on The Secret Life of Pets has ensured the plans of a The Secret Life of Pets 2.

As we await a Despicable Me 3 (2017) and a Minions 2 (2022), Sing was a great interval. The movie’s voice casting was exceptional. The characters were memorable and Illumination did a great job in the back story of all the characters.

The animation gave life to each of its lead characters so while watching you do not get lost on why they are devoted in getting the task done and leave everything else they cared about to satisfy their need to sing and be free.

The storyline however is not eventful nor is it newish. You can guess your way through the movie as the events unfold you can see the familiarity between this any other musical based movie. Their use of anthropomorphic animals was welcomed as it added a colorful sight, as we see them manage their day to day lives in an exaggerated and yet funny setup.

The movie’s use of anthropomorphic animals may not step up to the Oscar Winning Zootopia (2016). Where Disney set a bar for such so high it will take a while to get the taste of such out of your mouth, not to mention the critical praise and box office returns they got from it, Sing tried to reach such a height, but did not quite make it.

The animation plot focuses on a Koala named Buster Moon who owns a theatre which is faced with financial crisis. Moon’s antics to keep the theatre going was getting him nowhere until he thought up an idea to make a musical, filled with people from a music competition he will organize.

His plan was to give a $1000 to the winner of such a competition, but his bumbling secretary messed up and added two more 00s to the prize money making it $100,000.

The lines for the competition went around the block before Moon found out the mistake, now Moon is trapped with making sure the competition goes well to save his theatre and raise the cash which he does not have for the winner.

His problem became more compounded with the performances selected to perform at the finale, as each of the performers had with them different baggage which can make or mar his plans.

Sing is a nice movie for the family to watch and I enjoyed watching the movie myself.