Comedy | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: Marry Me [2022]

2022/02/082022/02/10 Jared Mobarak

We have to change the narrative. It’s not often that a web comic gets optioned into a film produced by a superstar singer for a Hollywood studio, but that’s what happened to Bobby Crosby‘s 2012 work Marry Me. Screenwriters John Rogers, Tami Sagher, and Harper Dill polish the “don’t all arranged marriages work” sentiment and pee-your-pants excitement comedic edges from the spontaneous and conflict-fueled meet-cute of twenty-somethings to the existential crises of two fifty-somethings lost in life who are willing to take a leap of faith. The switch does wonders…

SLAM22 REVIEW: Gleich zurück [Be Right Back] [2022]

2022/02/012022/02/03 Jared Mobarak

Circles everywhere. Hearing director Frauke Havemann‘s story about traveling into the woods with her dramaturg to discuss a new project at the onset of COVID-19 feels crucial to understanding the experience that she and her co-writers Peter Stamer and Matthias Wittekindt have brought to the screen with Gleich zurück [Be Right Back]. The initial sense of escapism. The inevitable introduction of that nightmare via social media and the internet. The increasing emotional uncertainty and existential crisis born from knowing you must return to the world as it’s shutting down. The…

SLAM22 REVIEW: Yelling Fire in an Empty Theater [2023]

2022/01/282023/01/17 Jared Mobarak

Double samesies. A long-time coming fit of exasperation gets Lisa (Isadora Leiva) to ask herself the question she should have asked before leaving Florida behind: is New York City a place or just an idea? A stranger at the airport tried to prepare her for this inevitable reckoning by handing over an unsolicited fifty-dollar bill along with advice to temper expectations, but dreams aren’t so easily thrown away. This move is about hope and excitement. It’s about leaving behind the only life she’s ever known to adventure forward into a…

REVIEW: Definition Please [2022]

2022/01/162022/01/20 Jared Mobarak

Why did you come back? Monica Chowdry (Sujata Day) was everything her Indian immigrant parents could have hoped from a child. Not only did she win the national Scribbs Spelling Bee, but she also became somewhat of a young intellectual celebrity courtesy of the victory tour with photographic keepsakes alongside Oprah Winfrey and fellow Pittsburgh-area native M. Night Shyamalan as well as an episode of television with host LeVar Burton that her mother (Anna Khaja‘s Jaya) still watches to this day almost twenty years later. The sky was the limit…

REVIEW: Babardeala cu bucluc sau porno balamuc [Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn] [2021]

2021/12/312021/12/31 Jared Mobarak

It’s never anyone’s fault. Did Emilia (Katia Pascariu) and Eugen (Stefan Steel, although we see little beyond his penis) purposefully upload the sex tape that opens Radu Jude‘s bold satire Babardeala cu bucluc sau porno balamuc [Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn]? I think we should assume they did. That doesn’t, however, mean they meant for it to be circulated beyond the niche fetish site to which it published. She’s a respected history teacher at a prestigious middle school and thus beholden to certain morality clauses that would deem pornographic…

REVIEW: Sing 2 [2021]

2021/12/212021/12/22 Jared Mobarak

I love sky-fi! Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey) and his ragtag bunch of heart-of-gold singers have their sights on leaving their small-town theater for the bright lights of Redshore City if talent scout Suki (Chelsea Peretti) thinks they have what it takes. Their rendition of Alice in Wonderland with shy Meena (Tori Kelly) belting out the lead part opposite Johnny’s (Taron Egerton) Mad Hatter, Rosita’s (Reese Witherspoon) Cheshire Cat, and Gunter’s (Nick Kroll) Caterpillar has sold out every night, so their hopes are as high as poor Miss Crawley (Garth Jennings)…

REVIEW: Licorice Pizza [2021]

2021/12/202021/12/22 Jared Mobarak

Gritted teeth and fixed bayonettes. Let’s face it: there’s an elephant in the room (well, make that two with the casual racism) when even beginning to talk about Paul Thomas Anderson‘s latest San Fernando Valley in the 1970s vibe of a movie adorned by two words the writer/director says supply a Pavlovian response to his past, Licorice Pizza. It’s about the exploits of a fifteen-year-old hustler named Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) and the twenty-five-year-old soon-to-be friend/business partner named Alana Kane (Alana Haim) that he tries to pick-up at his high…

REVIEW: Red Rocket [2021]

2021/12/162021/12/16 Jared Mobarak

I’m in. After buying the bus ticket from California to the place he swore he’d never return (his hometown of Texas City, TX), Mikey (Simon Rex) has twenty dollars left in his pocket to passive-aggressively offer his estranged wife (Bree Elrod‘s Lexi) when begging to stay at her mother’s (Brenda Deiss‘ Lil) house for a few days. He does what he does best by leveraging his ego and smarmy charm to fast-talk his way back from the property line to the porch to the shower to the kitchen. Mikey says…

REVIEW: Verdens verste menneske [The Worst Person in the World] [2021]

2021/12/092022/01/27 Jared Mobarak

No safety net. No holding back. Writer/director Joachim Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt complete their thematic “Oslo trilogy” with Verdens verste menneske [The Worst Person in the World], a film told in twelve chapters, a prologue, and an epilogue. What’s intriguing, however, is that it actually begins with a glimpse of Julie (Renate Reinsve) from the middle. Before traveling back to watch her overachieving university student change majors every time something shinier and new comes along, we see her smoking a cigarette in a black dress, gazing off into the…

REVIEW: The French Dispatch [2021]

2021/12/032021/12/03 Jared Mobarak

Just try to make it sound like you wrote it that way on purpose. I’m not sure you can get a more unadulterated shot to the vein of Wes Anderson than his quasi-anthology film The French Dispatch. Born from his own mind (and that of frequent collaborators Roman Coppola, Hugo Guinness, and Jason Schwartzman) with a healthy dose of inspiration taken from his adoration of The New Yorker, this self-proclaimed love letter to journalism set abroad in France proves to be the perfect venue for the auteur to distill his…

REVIEW: The Mitchells vs the Machines [2021]

2021/12/022021/12/02 Jared Mobarak

Be bold and never play it safe. So many familial conflicts can be solved by a simple conversation laying out wants and desires since passive aggressive ultimatums will always prove insufficient as a means for compromise. Should Rick Mitchell (Danny McBride) need Katie (Abbi Jacobson) to overtly tell him she’s desperate for his support? No. It’s what every child wants from his/her parents. Should Katie need Rick to explain the reasons he lets his own insecurities and failures dictate his attitude towards the light years’ worth of cultural distance separating…