Sorry to Bother You (2018)

When deciding whether or not to include spoilers in a movie review,  I take into account whether or not it would serve any purpose.  After thinking about it, I don’t know that giving specific details about the movie’s ending would benefit anyone.  Aside from which, I’m not sure there’s any way I could properly explain the plot if I wanted to, as I’m still trying to figure it out, myself.  But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Sorry to Bother You focuses on Cassius “Cash” Green.  He’s so broke, he’s filling up his gas tank 40¢ at a time.  He’s four months late on his rent to his Uncle Sergio.  This is why a crappy telemarketing job with RegalView looks great.  Despite being caught faking both a trophy and an employee-of-the-month plaque, he’s hired.  He’s selling encyclopedias, but there’s the promise of being promoted to power seller if he does well.

Cash does do well enough to earn the promotion, but it comes with several tough choices.  His fellow telemarketers unionize and strike, meaning Cash has to choose between money and principle.  When the job puts a strain on his relationship with his girlfriend, Detroit, she gives him an ultimatum:  Either he leaves the job or she leaves him.  It’s easy to say that you’d support your friends, but it is a lot of money he’s being offered.

I don’t want to say anything more about the plot than this.  For those that may have read other reviews of the movie, I will say that the rest of the movie is bizarre.  It’s as if Spike Lee directed a Monty Python film.  There is a fair amount of seriousness and commentary on society.  Consider that Cash and other employees of color have to use a white voice to be successful.  (David Cross, Patton Oswalt and Lily James provide voiceovers.)   However, there is a fair amount of bizarre elements.  These elements are what I don’t want to give away.  It’s probably better that you go into the movie unaware.  This isn’t to say that the movie is bad.  It is unexpected.  I did see a couple walk out of the theater when the movie started down the rabbit hole.

This isn’t a Hallmark movie.  If you tend towards more mainstream entertainment, you will likely be put off.  I was going to say that the movie is like an avant-garde art piece, but the movie is avant-garde in its own right.  I’m not entirely certain what the movie is trying to say, other than it’s tough needing money.  When you’re that in need of it, there aren‘t really any good options.

IMDb page

Idiocracy (2006)

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

An IQ of 100 just doesn’t seem to go as far as it used to. I don’t know what it is, but I seem to live in a society dominated by idiots in a figurative sense. Private Joe Bauers finds himself surrounded by idiots in a literal sense. That’s the concept of Idiocracy. The Army wants to do an experiment where they freeze two average people for a year to see what happens.

They take Pvt. Bauers and a prostitute named Rita, both people who have no living family and not to many friends, and cryogenically freeze them. The intent is to wake them up in a year and see how it’s affected them. However, the person in charge of the project is arrested and the base is shut down. (For some reason, no one notices two cryogenics units while the base is being dismantled.)

Fast forward 500 years and we have a world covered in trash and populated by idiots. You see, humans have no competition and, as Darwin once said, evolution doesn’t mean progress. Without any real challenges, humanity has degraded into the dumbest of the dumb. Joe and Rita wake up finding a planet totally different from the one that they left.

It takes Joe a little while to figure out what happened. No one around knows about him or the project or where Rita is. When he sees a newspaper, he thinks it’s a mistake, but it eventually dawns on him that he’s been asleep longer than intended. To make matters worse, he’s arrested and subsequently identified as the smartest person on the planet. His one chance for a pardon is to help save the planet from its problems.

The humor in the movie seems to be targeted towards the high-school and college demographic. (The movie is made by Mike Judge of Beavis and Butt-head fame.) To give you an example, the big show of the far future is called, "Oww! My balls!" It involves a man taking a beating to the aforementioned part of his anatomy. There are also a lot of gags, such as police finding Joe and asking if he’s the unfit mother that a computer had just identified.

The people of Idocracy’s future are extremely dumb. A Gatorade-style sports drink has replaced water in every way except for use in toilets. This results in a famine. The company that makes the drink has taken over several aspects of the government, allowing them to claim whatever they want. They say that plants crave electrolytes, which a normal person of today would see as a lie. Joe has a hard time convincing people otherwise.

The setup is pretty funny. The movie starts to get a little repetitive once Joe and Rita find themselves in the future. Many parts of the movie are funny, but others aren’t. As I said, there are a lot of gags related to how society has gotten worse and that plays out rather quickly. Also, as with many comedies, certain things aren’t explained. For instance, how did the cryogenic units stay powered for 500 years? There are a lot of machines in use, but someone has to build and maintain them. How is this done in a society of idiots?

The movie gets three stars. It‘s worth watching once, but I don’t see a lot of replay value with this movie. The thing I’m left to wonder is how much of it has already come true.

IMDb page

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 (2013)

Note:  This is a review of a sequel.  I’m going to give away some details of the first movie.  If you don’t like spoilers, be warned.


Some movies are harder to get people to watch than others.  Movies based on other media, especially books, can be hit and miss.  Sequels are also hit and miss, depending on how it was planned.  Also, not everyone goes for animated movies.  When Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs came out, I noted that the style wasn’t quite what I was used to with CGI.  The sequel is in the same exaggerated style, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing depending on the audience.

In the first movie, Flint Lockwood had invented a machine that makes food from water.  This sounds great.  You have limitless food.  The downside is that it became harder to control.  The entire island of Swallow Falls is covered in food.  It requires the deactivation of Flint’s machine, the FLDSMDFR.

The sequel picks up not long after the events of the first movie.  Chester V, CEO of Live Corp, gets the job of cleaning up Swallow Falls.  He does this because he knows that Flint’s machine survived and is still working.  If Chester can get his hands on it, it could make him rich.  The only problem is that the FLDSMDFR has a mind of its own and is capable of fending off Chester’s people.

Chester’s last and only home?  Send in Flint on a super-secret mission to retrieve the machine.  This, of course, leads to the characters from the first movie finding out and going along to help.  Flint’s hesitant to risk the lives of his friends.  The way Chester tells it, there are all manner of dangerous creatures living on the island.

On the island, the group finds many of these animals, like a strawberry with arms, legs and a face.  Flint is initially terrified, as he’s the only one aware of the potential danger.  However, it becomes clear that the strawberry poses no threat.  Most of the other hybrids seem to be innocuous, as well.  Shrimpanzees, from shrimp and chimpanzees, seem to be ok.

When Chester discovers that Flint brought friends, Chester goes to the island with his orangutan assistant, Barb.  Chester saves them from a cheeseburger spider.  It eventually becomes evident to everyone in Flint’s party, with the exception of Flint, that Chester is manipulating Flint.

Despite the exaggerated animation, this isn’t a movie exclusively for children.  Yes, it’s one of those animated movies that has a few references for adults.  It kind of puts me in an odd position for recommending the movie.  The overall style of the movie seems to be geared towards small children.  It’s goofy and you get lots of puns, like repeatedly finding a leek.  (There’s a leek in the boat!)  It’s also predictable, like you might expect from a children’s movie.

There are also some more adult themes, like Chester, the evil CEO of an Apple-like company.  I don’t recall anything that would overtly offend younger viewers, but I wasn’t really watching it with that in mind.  (I don’t have kids, so I do really think it terms of what a kid should watch.)  Yes, there are a few dangerous situations.  The cheeseburger spiders can be scary.  However, I think the worst thing that a parent would have to sit through is all of the puns and food-related portmanteaus.

If you’ve seen the first movie and liked it, there shouldn’t be any surprises here.  The movie comes off as a continuation of the first movie without recycling too much of the original movie.  I’m a fan of animated movies, but I think most of the replay value will be for kids, though.

Official Site

IMDb page