I Feel Pretty

First Hit: At times, very funny but was also a bit sluggish in getting to the point.

I’m not a big fan of Amy Schumer’s acting or humor. However, in this film there is an upgrade to her “I don’t care, take it or leave it” shtick because in this role she adds and portrays an honest air of humility.

As Renee Bennett, we see her working with Mason (Adrian Martinez) in a hidden on-line sales warehouse for a high-end cosmetics firm called Lilly LeClaire started by Lilly (Lauren Hutton) and run by her granddaughter Avery (Michelle Williams).

Because of a computer glitch, Renee has to physically deliver their online marketing reports to headquarters office which is in an elegant downtown NYC building. Walking into the office, the high-end, arrogant and exclusiveness of this company is put on full force. Everyone is perfectly shaped and quaffed. But it is when they open their mouths that the level of arrogance really comes out.

When she drops off the reports, she learns that the receptionist position is open and wishes that she could apply for and get the position. When she looks at the qualifications, she realizes she doesn’t quite fit the bill.

In her attempts to get into shape, she goes to a Soul Cycle. The stuff there is more of the same attitude but she also meets a young woman who is beautiful but also struggles from being seen for not who she is on the inside.

In an incident where she hits her head, she transforms her perception of herself and now sees herself as beautiful.

With this newfound perception, she applies for and gets the receptionist’s job. Her strength is her realness to everyday people and thinking about others. However, the downside is that she begins to think she’s better than her close friends, Jane (Busy Phillips) and Vivian (Aidy Bryant).

Slowly pushing away her friends with her new found positive self-esteem she also seduces a unconfident Ethan (Rory Scovel).

What Renee doesn’t know is that she is the same person physically that she was before she hits her head.

The film goes on to show how Renee’s down to earthiness helps the cosmetic company grow their new brand in stores like Target, but when she re-hits her head, she loses her perception of herself as a beautiful woman and tries to hide from her boss Avery, Ethan, and others.

There are very funny scenes, like when she’s seeing herself as beautiful for the very first time. The comments while looking in the mirror are hilarious. Also, it was funny when she enters a hot girl contest and almost wins. The Soul Cycle scenes are funny as well. However, I didn’t think Avery’s brother Grant’s (Tom Hopper) character was needed. There there are office scenes that didn’t add much to the film either.

Schumer was strong and I would say this was her best film yet. Williams character was oddly funny. She played a smart beautiful woman who had a very high-pitched voice. At times the character was difficult to understand but I liked her. Hutton was fantastic. It was great to see her in this role. Bryant and Phillips were very strong as Renee’s friends that both supported her and also guided her to look at how she was treating people. Scovel was fantastic. I loved his character and his slowly warming up to the power of Renee. Topper was good but I didn’t think his role was needed. Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein co-wrote and co-directed this film. Without knowing their process of co-directing, I can only suspect that the issues I had with the unevenness were because there may have been two visions of a single film.

Overall: Although unevenly paced, I liked many of the scenes and thought they were out-loud funny.

Thank You for Your Service

First Hit:  Powerful and, at times, very realistic about the struggles vets have getting support from the VA.

Adam Schuman (Miles Teller) is back from serving in Iraq as the person who leads a group finding  IEDs. He’s good at it because he senses where they are. After serving 15 months in Iraq, he comes home to Kansas to his wife Saskia (Haley Bennett), his daughter whom he knows and his son who was born while he was away.

The audience sees how he buries his angst towards what he’s been through and, in particular, certain events that he feels guilty about. Specifically, he’s pained over the loss of Sergeant First Class James Doster (Brad Beyer) who took his place in a Humvee outing that got him killed. It is especially painful because Saskia’s best friend is Amanda Doster (Amy Schumer) James’ wife.

He's also in pain because one of his men gets shot in the head and he tries to carry him downstairs to save him and drops him possibly causing more injury.

Adam is especially close with two others who served with him Specialist Tausolo Aieti (Beulah Koale) and Billy Waller (Joe Cole). Tausolo (aka - Solo) has a severe case of PTSD, and although he just wants to go back to Iraq where he feels comfortable, the Army medical team and his wife do not want him to go back. His memory is shot, he’s jumpy and he hallucinates. So what is he to do now?

Billy returns to find his apartment bare because fiancé has left him and didn’t tell him. He’s shocked and filled with sadness and dismay and commits suicide in-front of her at her place of employment as a bank teller.

This sets up the story about how our country takes care of our wounded. The physical wounds are one thing, but the inner wounds of PTSD are killing people everywhere all the time and the US Government doesn’t do enough to help them.

The lines of chairs filled with people holding a number to get served at the VA is shocking. Having tried to get VA service attention for my own Vietnam disabilities was horrible, yet here we see how much worse it has gotten. Vets stand in long lines, only to be told they don’t have the right form, or the right line to help them through the process.

The look of disbelief on Solo’s face when they tell him they have no record of the explosive incident of which he had to pull a burning Doster out of a blown-up Humvee, tells it all. Shock and sadness. What is worse is that they make him find someone to document the event.

The war scenes felt real and were well filmed. There wasn’t a lot of them, but enough to make the point solidly. The VA scenes were strong, yet I do feel that they could have been even more pointed. The guilt Adam wore for the responsibility to his men was embodied perfectly.

Teller was sublime. He’s become one of my favorite must see actors and if you want to see him in three great roles see; Whiplash, Only the Brave and this one Thank You for Your Service. Bennett was excellent as Adam’s wife who does everything she can to help Adam feel safe, have a place to open up while being supportive. Great job. Schumer was very good in her role as grieving wife while having the ability to not blame Adam for her husband’s death. Koale was amazing. He was excellent as the soldier that had felt the Army saved him from a unproductive life but was now abandoning him with his severe case of PTSD. Cole was very strong as the young man filled with bravado who couldn’t wait to see his fiancé again, only to have her not show up. Keisha Castle-Hughes was very good as Solo’s wife who tried to help and support her struggling husband. Jason Hall wrote and directed this film. He definitely had a good feel as to what he wanted to show. I wish more of the VA’s shortcomings were on display so that maybe we could do something about how we take young men and women, send them off to war, and discard them after all is said and done.

Overall:  This is a strong film that I liked.

Snatched

First Hit:  The film never seemed to find its purpose and the pre-release hype of comedic fun was far more than the reality.

Emily (Amy Schumer) is an unhappy desperate woman. When she gets dumped by her up and coming rock and roller boyfriend Michael (Randall Park), she must find someone to go with her to Ecuador on a non-refundable vacation. None of her friends like her enough to go with her, so she asks her mom Linda (Goldie Hawn). Linda is very security oriented and is afraid of going but gets convinced to go.

One would think that two gifted comediennes together in a film could make the circumstances of being kidnapped funny, but they don’t. Yes, there are a few lighthearted and funny moments  and scenes, but mostly it is a poorly constructed action film with attempts to make it funny.

It just didn’t work and wasn’t believable in any way, shape or form. When they meet Ruth and Barb (Wanda Sykes and Joan Cusack respectively) this film might have taken a more comedic turn, however the film only used them in the end.

The bits with Jeffery (Ike Barinholtz), who was Linda’s son, were supposed to be funny. But his house bound character was poorly constructed, not believable and insipid.

Schumer was not funny and certainly not very good as an action figure. Not sure if it was the script or direction but this film failed her, or she failed the film. Hawn was worse. I have watched Hawn from the mid 1960’s and I’ve never seen her more constrained and out of place. This was not the right role for her. Sykes was OK and did her best to bring some excitement and comedy to this film. Cusack was the best thing in the film. Barinholtz was very poor and did not make his role believable. Katie Dippold didn’t write a comedic film. It was a lost action film with comediennes in the lead roles. Jonathan Levine directed this mess and did it no favors by not driving this film to either action or comedy because this didn’t work this way.

Overall: This film is mostly a waste of time.