Fool's Paradise

2nd worst movie I've seen this year! Padre Pio was the worst, just for lack of the movie's topic and abysmal filler as an alternative. They seem to be dumping a lot of their garbage out right now This reminded me of Movie 43. Just absolutely terrible jokes and a ton of celebrity cameos mixed in. Yeah, we get the industry jokes and yeah you have not done them in a humorous way. The music too was cornball cheesy the entire time. What they tried to do here just does not work as a movie. The main character couldn't speak but could have written, done some sign language, there were some obvious parts where he wanted to communicate. And I guess Hollywood doesn't care what you have to say, but they could have shown him trying at least. That's a small nitpick though, overall it's fault is that it's just a humorless comedy. I'm actually looking forward to watching Fast X now. Compared to this it's going to be a joy and I would bet dollars the humor is better.

Truly terrible parable about a non-verbal man who gets to replace a deranged movie star in a film and becomes a star. All of Hollywood's leaches then attach themselves to him until he becomes yesterday's news. The film seemingly tries to use the figure of Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp as an inspiration for its central character and it doesn't work. Every character in the film is unlikable but none so much as the screaming hysterical Asian played by Jen Jeong. The final scene and its attempt at pathos is embarrassingly bad. Career lows for all involved, including Adrien Brody, Kate Beckinsale, John Malkovich, Edie Falco, Jason Bateman, Ray Liotta, and Jason Sudeikis. Written and directed by Charlie Day, who also stars. Never heard of him before and never will again.

Charlie Chaplin used his Little Tramp to say something important and new. He was cutting edge for his time by deconstructing human reliance and interactions with a newly created technological world in "Modern Times". In "The Gold Rush" he spoke to class and the struggle of those not born with privilege. However in all of this he did have some agency. Charlie Day while being earnest as Latte Pronto has no agency, in fact he really could have been Bernie from "Weekend at Bernie's". But what makes it a miss for me is that he is not giving us anything new. Toxic Hollywood dynamics have been done just too many times to make this worthwhile. If you are going to play a "Chaplin-esque" character you damn well must have something fresh and important to say beyond being funny for those involved in the Hollywood film industry.

This was like a very long, 98 minutes long and dragged out failed SNL sketch. I'm a fan of Charlie Day and he's a great comedian, but putting yourself in a funny film and choosing not to use your comedic trademark funny voice is what failed this film. And that's too bad, as it started out good, not laugh out loud good, but constant smiling and entertaining good. But you can only go so far on silent charm, and can only take so much satirical un-funny comedy. It was great to see the lovely Kate Beckinsale, and Jeong was his usual blast as well, and it was also great to see the late Ray Liotta doing his thing in what is probably the last film he made, but it's too bad this film was more of a flop than it was fun. The story was mostly long dragged out and incoherent nonsense that lacked any good comedy or sharp satire. It's a generous 4/10 for all the stars that I'm sure mostly donated their time for this mess.