Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle

First Hit:  The interaction of the actors in this film make it work – I enjoyed it.

It is hard to miss the funny mark when you’ve got Jack Black (as Bethany), Kevin Hart (as Fridge) and Dwayne Johnson (as Spencer) together in a film. The wonderful part is that Karen Gillan (as Martha) held her own quite well with these three funny and larger than life guys.

A young Spencer (Alex Wolf) is nerdy and unsure of himself. As the film begins, he’s being taken advantage of by a young Fridge (Ser’Darius Blain), who is a big strapping young man. Intimidating Spencer into doing his homework Fridge creates a friendship of convenience.Although Spence is somewhat resentful of being taken advantage of he does it anyway. After they get caught cheating, they are sent to detention.

Young Bethany (Madison Iseman) is the class popular beauty. She’s constantly on her phone and uses her contrived sexuality to get her way in school.  She ignores a teacher’s request to put away her phone and gets sent to detention.

Young Martha (Morgan Turner) is a nerd and introverted. She hates PE and tells the teacher she won’t participate in the exercise class and gets detention.

This is the setup and together in detention they discover an old electronic version of Jumanji. Getting sucked into the game they end up in a jungle where they arrive as the opposite of who they are outside the game. Spencer (Johnson) is no longer an intimidated skinny nerd, he’s a big, strong assertive man. The big man on campus football player Fridge (Hart), has turned into a small wise cracking man. The beautiful Bethany (Black) turns into a short dumpy man. And the nerdy quiet Martha (Gillan) has turned into a beautiful, strong woman who is a martial arts expert.

Given this setup, a lot could go wrong if the situations and dialogue are weak or don’t allow the actors breathing room, however this is not the situation. It works: The situations and dialogue create scenes that are funny and allow the actors to interpret both their former younger selves while embodying their new older bodies and skills.

Johnson is fun to watch here because his ability to seem like his size and strength are new to him really works. His interactions with Hart are priceless. Hart does a great job of trying to make the others still believe he’s still the size of his younger self instead of his shorter self. The script makes good use of his innate talents of making wise cracks and barking out his intentions. Black is perfect. He makes you believe that he was once a beautiful young lady who is now trapped in a stubby man’s body. I enjoyed the scenes when he gave Martha lessons on how to seduce the men guarding the transportation building. Gillan was fantastic because, despite her beauty, she embodied the nerdy girl of her younger self. She was great as the martial arts expert, ready to kick some butt. Wolff, Blain, Iseman and Turner all did a wonderful job of being the younger characters. Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers did a nice job of creating a screenplay that enhanced the story and actors. Jake Kasdan elevated the story to something fun and engaging.

Overall: I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this film.

Sex Tape

First Hit:  At times very funny and the laughs were easy to come by and at other times it pushed too hard for the laughs.

The concept was very good. The points made by the film including; being careful what you video, asking oneself why there was the need to create the video, and how quickly today’s technology can turn a fun idea into a nightmare are solid and well founded.

Here Annie (Cameron Diaz) and Jay (Jason Segel), who as young college lovers spent all their free time having sex. Then she got pregnant and, as what happens to many couples after having kids, the sex started to become infrequent. The film follows them as they conduct their life on a day to day basis:  Kids to school, both to work, and occasional conversations about when they might have sex next.

One evening they’ve got time off and they decide to film themselves in all of the positions in the famous 1972 book, "Joy of Sex". For some reason Jay doesn’t erase the video and – the fun ensues when try to get the video erased (off the cloud). Her sister Tess (Ellie Kemper) and her husband Robby (Rob Corddry) are friends and they are also enlisted to help them find and delete the video. Jack Black has a small part as the owner of a porn site who helps them out.

Additionally Rob Lowe as Hank, the owner of a company that may buy Annie’s motherhood blog, is fun in a role that requires him to play off his past drug use. The overall premise is good, some of the scenes are good while others are trying and seem very pressed. The dog scenes went farther than they needed and were not believable.

Diaz seemed to have a lot of fun in the role and she was good in it. Segel also seemed to have fun in his role. Together they seemed to click and have a similar sense of humor. Corddry was good as the friend who wanted to help but also wanted to watch and keep the video. Kemper was strong as the sister and gave the role supportive credence. Black was really good and I really enjoyed him. Lowe’s parody of his real life was fun and a stroke of genius. Segel, Kate Angelo and Nicholas Stoller wrote a good script. It would have been better to aim with a little more subtlety and they didn’t. Jake Kasdan’s direction was good, over done in some scenes and appropriately touching in others.

Overall:  It was good, but I felt that there was more potential in the subject than what was delivered.

Bad Teacher

First Hit: There are some very funny laugh-out-loud moments but in the end it was trite and less than satisfying.

 Elizabeth Halsey (played by Cameron Diaz) is a grade school teacher obsessed with finding a wealthy man to keep her in a particular lifestyle.

As the film starts, she has found him, however he breaks up with her and she has to go back to teaching. She drinks, smokes pot, and is scheming to find a man with money.

Coming back to teaching, her classes consist of turning on films for the kids to watch instead of actually teaching them anything. She thinks her biggest problem and the reason why she hasn’t nailed the right man is that she has small breasts, so she begins to manipulate her student’s parents for donations for classroom supplies (which she’ll keep), along with stealing items from student’s homes. With the extra money she hopes to have breast implants, catch her man, and quit teaching.

During this time she is also finds herself in competition for the affection of Scott, a long-term substitute teacher (played by Justin Timberlake) who has family money but is a nerdy spineless sort of guy. The competition is another teacher named Amy Squirrel (played by Lucy Punch) who is miss goody two shoes but also is a little twisted because something happened in 2008 (we never really find out).

Russell (played by Jason Segel) is the school’s gym teacher who has a crush on Elizabeth but, because he doesn't have money, she’s not interested in him, even though we all know he’s the best fit for her. The film is a set of scenes, which generally show how inappropriate Elizabeth’s actions are in being a schoolteacher.

The film plays off of stereotypes of kids and adults alike. We aren’t supposed to really care about anybody in this film, and here the film really succeeds. There is nothing to really care about. But there are some laugh-out-loud moments.

 Diaz does an adequate job of mugging through the non-caring school teacher bit and in the scenes where she is suppose to be sexy, she can be. But there isn’t much acting going on here. Segel is good as the steadfast easygoing guy who knows what he wants. Punch is, at times, perfect as the obnoxious obsessive tattletale snot of a teacher. Timberlake, makes a good nerd, but I couldn’t help but sense a “I’m just playing this role with a wink of an eye” sort of feeling from him. I did thoroughly enjoy his song for Amy. Phyllis Smith was perfect as Lynn the teacher who wants to be more and different than she is. She was the best actor in this film. Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg wrote this screenplay and it felt lightweight and only scraping the surface. Jake Kasdan directed this and given the screenplay I’m not sure what else he could have gotten out of it.

 Overall: Although some of the laughs are very out loud funny, this is a forgettable film.