Comedy | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: Penguins of Madagascar [2014]

2014/11/272014/11/27 Jared Mobarak

“Venetian blinded again” Is Penguins of Madagascar a total cash grab? Not quite. It’s one thing when a studio hones in on a successful franchise’s periphery character and deems it worthy of a spin-off by pretending it possessed enough depth to carry a feature of its own, but it’s another when the filmmakers embrace its appeal and simply expanded upon that element. Puss in Boots was painted as a hero to begin with and supplying him an origin wasn’t a giant leap past Shrek. The “cute and cuddly” penguins from…

REVIEW: אפס ביחסי אנוש [Zero Motivation] [2014]

2014/11/262014/12/02 Jared Mobarak

“Paper Shredding NCO is what you make it” When thinking about the Israeli army, images of badass Mossad agents covertly wreaking havoc across the world crop up. It’s a hyperbolic generalization, but that’s kind of the flavor our media delivers being that the country is such a strong defensive ally of the US. We’re to believe in their power. The problem with this, however, comes from the fact every citizen eighteen and older is conscripted to a mandatory two-year stint. No country can have a law like that and expect…

REVIEW: Beverly Hills Cop [1984]

2014/11/222014/11/23 Jared Mobarak

“We got cocaine and coffee here. We’re gonna get wired and have a big party.” It isn’t difficult to believe why Beverly Hills Cop received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. The laughs are huge, the characters more complex than simply facilitators of plot progression, and the central mystery a solid criminal investigation despite being relegated to the background as a MacGuffin used to evolve relationships and build trust between Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) and the cops he messes with along the way. The surprise comes from reading about…

REVIEW: Cousin Ben Troop Screening with Jason Schwartzman [2012]

2014/11/182014/11/18 Jared Mobarak

“Why? Why? I don’t know.” A Funny or Die exclusive promoting the release of Moonrise Kingdom, Cousin Ben Troop Screening with Jason Schwartzman is a two-minute piece directed by the feature’s Wes Anderson with co-writing duties from Roman Coppola. Schwartzman reprises his role as Cousin Ben while the children paying admission to watch his tented screening of the film are all revealed to be familiar faces from it as well. This causes a meta crisis considering they are characters speaking about the very world they exist inside as a fiction…

REVIEW: The Mule [2014]

2014/11/172016/02/22 Jared Mobarak

“Who doesn’t want a veranda, eh?” Directors Tony Mahony and Angus Sampson‘s The Mule is not at all what I expected. The marketing materials draw it up as a B-movie romp, something the involvement of Sampson and Saw co-creator Leigh Whannell (they co-wrote this one together from a story by Jaime Browne) helps corroborate. Besides a couple gross-out moments due to the excremental nature of the plot, however, the film proves differently. It’s instead a rather slowly paced true-life thriller spanning two weeks while the authorities wait on their captive…

REVIEW: Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story [2004]

2014/11/152014/11/16 Jared Mobarak

“So what are you dying from that’s keeping you from the finals?” I’m usually the guy who watches the trailer for a stupid raunchy comedy and instantaneously declares it unworthy of my time. For some reason, however, Rawson Marshall Thurber‘s Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story hit every mark necessary to have me believing it could actually be entertaining. I was unfamiliar with much of the cast save the three main leads—it introduced me to both Justin Long and Alan Tudyk—but something about the sheer absurdity of a major league, cable…

REVIEW: Thou Wast Mild & Lovely [2014]

2014/11/142016/02/22 Jared Mobarak

“My lover knows how to love me” She is not kidding when she says: “To those who feel that their cruelty is too cruel, their sadness too sad, I dedicate this film: an embrace.” Writer/director Josephine Decker means every single word because she herself has laid bare her own cruelty and sadness with Thou Wast Mild & Lovely. Her characters are flawed, dangerous, and inviting—animals working the farm yet animals just the same. They each desire, take, and enjoy, suffering the psychological consequences after the fact, unregretful for what they’ve…

REVIEW: Dumb and Dumber To [2014]

2014/11/122014/11/14 Jared Mobarak

“I don’t even know cursive” Nope. Not even the movie that started it all can save the fledgling career of the Farrelly Brothers. Despite reading an interview of them speaking about how great the sequel’s script was due to its being almost identical to the first, I entered their last film with an open mind. The same and more, they said? Come on—it’s been twenty years. They should have noticed by their diminishing box office returns this past decade that the comedy used to propel them towards A-list status in…

REVIEW: Dumb and Dumber [1994]

2014/11/102014/11/11 Jared Mobarak

“You sold my dead bird to a blind kid?” It’s the film that brought us the high concept, gross-out comedy sensibilities of Peter and Bobby Farrelly and it has some of the most memorable laughs of the 90s. The filmmaking brothers would go on to create a mixed bag of obnoxious, offensive, and hit or miss work that steadily grew tiresome while revealing they were for all intents and purposes one-trick ponies. Just because the trick wasn’t able to sustain the public’s love, however, doesn’t mean it wasn’t riotous at…

REVIEW: Always Woodstock [2014]

2014/11/102014/11/13 Jared Mobarak

“Don’t love anyone that makes you hate your art” The feature debut of writer/director Rita Merson is mired in convention. Think to yourself about five cinematic tropes that could be found in a romantic dramedy and I’ll bet you at least four are present in Always Woodstock. But that’s not telling you anything you wouldn’t already guess from a plot centering on a young wannabe songwriter stuck in a dead-end, soul sucking job meant to help get a foot into the music industry who finds herself escaping to the country…

REVIEW: Turist [Force Majeure] [2014]

2014/11/082014/11/10 Jared Mobarak

“You can’t run in snow boots?” Very rarely does an international name change occur for the better, but few titles are more perfect for their respective film than Force Majeure. The original Swedish moniker was Turist, a succinct and appropriate label considering the entire piece portrays a family’s five-day ski vacation in French Alps. Force Majeure, however, showcases the powerfully random event that changes the tone and dynamic of the characters involved as well as the story itself. The beauty of Ruben Östlund‘s creation is that this moment arising to…