Comedy | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: American Ultra [2015]

2015/08/252015/08/27 Jared Mobarak

“We fired the ugly one” When there are only seven basic plots—as the saying goes—to implicitly choose from as a screenwriter, genre-bending homage becomes the sole path towards creativity. So while Max Landis‘ script for American Ultra is The Bourne Identity meets Mr. and Mrs. Smith through a Pineapple Express filter, it’s a damn good ride regardless. He’s throwing common tropes on their head by making a government-trained agent into a paranoid stoner filled to the brim with anxiety. He’s creating laughs out of dramatic convention while director Nima Nourizadeh…

REVIEW: The Great Outdoors [1988]

2015/08/152015/08/16 Jared Mobarak

“Let go of the rope” Most would probably call it lesser John Hughes—he wrote and produced with Howard Deutch taking the director’s chair—but The Great Outdoors will always hold a special place in my heart. If you asked me who John Candy was in 1990 I’d probably have said, “the guy from The Great Outdoors” even though Uncle Buck had been released and deservedly held as the better work. There was something about the comedy brought forth from nature that appealed to me as a kid who had never been…

REVIEW: My Cousin Vinny [1992]

2015/08/152015/08/15 Jared Mobarak

“I’ve just never actually seen a grit” I watched My Cousin Vinny a lot in my youth thanks in part to it being a cable TV staple. It’s been a while since my last visit with Joe Pesci‘s titular character’s antics, but the appeal of its humor never faded. I’ve continued to quote lines like “two youts” and others despite my memory for that type of practice being far less conducive than most and therefore merely assumed through years of detachment that my enjoyment was purely on a comedic level.…

FANTASIA15 REVIEW: リアル鬼ごっこ [Riaru onigokko] [Tag] [2015]

2015/08/082018/01/03 Jared Mobarak

“Watch the ripple” If リアル鬼ごっこ [Tag] were any indication of writer/director Sion Sono‘s warped mind, I’d almost believe he films without rhyme or reason besides excess. Based upon the Japanese novel Riaru onigokko by Yûsuke Yamada—coined by some as the Stephen King of Japan—this surreal tale of three girls in one traversing a nightmarish landscape of evil pursuers taking whatever form is most absurd lives on the edge of falling into complete randomness. You have to embrace the ride or else you’ll check out very early on because while watching…

REVIEW: The Man from U.N.C.L.E. [2015]

2015/08/032015/08/13 Jared Mobarak

“Inside every Kraut is an American trying to get out” Writer/director Guy Ritchie is like that band all my friends dismiss because they think every song in their discography sounds the same to which I reply, “But I like that song.” With the exception of Swept Away—because I’ve never seen any reason to actually watch it—I’ve enjoyed all of the high-octane, visually kinetic action comedies he’s brought forth into this world. Whether an original Cockney tale like his earlier work or a Hollywood property adapted to his sensibilities of late,…

FANTASIA15 REVIEW: Pos eso [Possessed] [2014]

2015/08/012015/08/02 Jared Mobarak

“What he did left his teacher speechless” I didn’t know I wanted a horror parody in the style of “Celebrity Deathmatch” until about halfway through Samuel Ortí Martí‘s [Sam] pitch black skewering of the genre Pos eso [Possessed]. His and Rubén Ontiveros‘ script is littered with homage to The Day the Earth Stood Still in dialogue, The Omen in characters, The Exorcist in plot, Raiders of the Lost Ark in its cold open, and countless others—Alien, A Trip to the Moon, etc.—in visual flourishes. A fun pastiche of anything and…

REVIEW: Vacation [2015]

2015/07/272015/12/25 Jared Mobarak

“I’m as hard as a faucet right now” I smelled trouble as soon as Ed Helms was cast in Vacation as the now father-of-two Rusty Griswold. While the perfect surrogate for Chevy Chase‘s bumbling Clark in a remake of the original National Lampoon’s Vacation, he’s a far cry from the character he’s meant to play in this half reboot/half sequel. I made the mistake of rewatching that first entry into the Griswold’s saga to realize it coupled with the equally fantastic Christmas Vacation prove Rusty was always the one family…

REVIEW: National Lampoon’s Vacation [1983]

2015/07/262015/07/27 Jared Mobarak

“Nothing worthwhile is easy. You know that.” You can’t blame the magazine for thinking movie-making was going to be easy after the success of National Lampoon’s Animal House. But does anyone really remember its two follow-ups National Lampoon’s Movie Madness and National Lampoon’s Class Reunion? I didn’t think so. Something about the latter must have hit someone’s funny bone, though, because screenwriter John Hughes—a writer for the periodical—would get another shot. This time it was in the form of a somewhat established property the producers knew could be successful as…

REVIEW: Game Changers [2015]

2015/07/252017/04/07 Jared Mobarak

“That’s not how you use that card” Can a film about twenty-eight year olds be considered a coming-of-age story? I guess it can when the two men in question were teenage professional gamers because that’s exactly what Robert Imbs‘ Game Changers is. And if we really thought about it, that age is a pretty critical crossroads in a person’s life regardless of the path they’ve taken to get there. Thirty is kind of an unspoken cut off point where maturity is either embraced or ignored forever. That’s a gross generalization…

REVIEW: Trainwreck [2015]

2015/07/142015/07/16 Jared Mobarak

“Monogamy isn’t realistic” Here I thought I could blame the editor for why Judd Apatow‘s films have been lackluster and overlong since The 40-Year-Old Virgin only to discover his latest Trainwreck is the first of his theatrical quintet not in part handled by Brent White. Instead we have William Kerr, Peck Prior, and Paul Zucker: three people who either failed to explain that a scene shouldn’t remain in the final cut just because it’s funny or three people who ultimately were ignored and/or sequentially replaced by one another. Don’t get…

REVIEW: Mr. & Mrs. Smith [2005]

2015/07/102015/07/11 Jared Mobarak

“Right. Five or six years.” It was the aggressive nature of the stories told to screenwriter Simon Kinberg by friends in couples therapy that inspired Mr. & Mrs. Smith—his MFA thesis turned half billion dollar moneymaker at the box office. The leap from the tit for tat dynamic between bickering spouses to secret lives is hardly unique, but making those hidden existences equally successful assassin careers instead of extramarital affairs certainly was. Killers need to work through issues too, especially when the question of whether they married out of love…