Spider-Man: Homecoming Review

One of my favorite moments each year is sitting in the theater as yet another movie from the Marvel Cinematic Universe starts to play. Nowadays it happens two or three times a year. But it never gets old. The advertisements end. The trailers start. The anticipation through each trailer is high as you realize you are closer and closer to the movie starting. Then the trailers finish and you get one more blurb or two from the theater and then there it is. The epic Marvel logo shows up and gets you absolutely pumped! This weekend it's time for millions of people across the world to experience this feeling yet again! Kinda. We had a minor little caveat this time around as the moment where the Marvel logo was supposed to show up, the Sony and Columbia Pictures logos showed up instead. Because even though most people now believe that Spider-Man is Marvel's franchise, Sony kindly reminded us that they still own the character. They just struck a deal with Marvel so that Marvel can help them actually make good movies and in turn they'd let Spider-Man join the MCU. So we got the Sony logo first. Then an opening scene involving Michael Keaton, not Spider-Man. Then they let the Marvel logo show up. And we were officially in business with another MCU superhero movie!

For comic book fans, this is the moment that we've all been dreaming of ever since the Avengers initiative began with "Iron Man" in 2008. When is Sony going to man up and let everyone's favorite Marvel character into the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Well, it took the financial and critical disaster that was "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" to happen before Sony caved and came whimpering to Marvel for help. And now we have it. Spider-Man has been rebooted for the second time this millennium, but this time Marvel has a say in the matter and they are doing it their way. We're going to wipe the slate clean, pretend that both Sam Raimi's trilogy and the Amazing Spider-Man movies don't exist, cast a nobody baby face as Spider-Man, hire an unknown director and boom! Marvel's Spider-Man. Then we throw on there the "Spider-Man: Homecoming" title, which is has a duel meaning with this being Spider-Man returning to Marvel as well as it reflecting the style and tone of this movie, which is a straight-up teenager, high school drama in the vein of a classic John Hughes movie such as "The Breakfast Club" or "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," but with superheroes. Yeah this is a very different Spider-Man movie than what we are used to, but in this case I think that's a good thing.

Now in regards to my personal opinion of the Spider-Man lore, it's worth noting that I have been a Spider-Man fan since I was a young kid. I remember the animated Spider-Man TV shows and the Spider-Man video games. He was a comic book character, along with Batman and Superman, that I really loved. Then as a 13-year-old kid I was elated with the fact that Spider-Man was finally coming to the big screen courtesy of Sam Raimi. Toby Maguire put on that Spider-Man mask for the first time in 2002 and I loved it. Then I loved the sequel in 2004. Unfortunately the third entry in that franchise is one we don't talk about in my household and sadly it was so bad that it killed that specific franchise. But because Sony owns the character and has to continue to make movies or they lose the rights, they rebooted the character with Andrew Garfield in 2012. Even though it was a retread of Spider-Man's origins, I thought it was done fantastically. I even enjoyed the sequel two years later that most of the world likes to tear apart and throw in a dumpster. But because I was in the minority, that movie killed the franchise, too. So now we get what is either going to be three strikes and you're out or third time's the charm. Luckily it appears to be the latter.

The big question that everyone will face with this new Spider-Man movie is how does this stack up against the previous five? Well, I'm not going to answer that yet. I initially planned to do a Spider-Man marathon to refresh my mind and reassess my opinions on everything so I could come up with an honest ranking in this review, but I ended up not having time to do that, so that will come at a later day. When it happens, I will throw in a comment down below as to what my rankings are in addition to a facebook post on my personal page. But for now I'll just say that I enjoyed all of the Spider-Man movies outside "Spider-Man 3." And I have a feeling that this one is going to be a bit tough to figure out exactly where it stands because quite frankly this is a much different iteration of Spider-Man. For one, as I said earlier, the tone is much different as this is a high school drama with superheroes. But also, Tom Holland is much younger than Toby Maguire and Andrew Garfield  were when they took on the mantle. Maguire was 27 when "Spider-Man" was released in 2002 and Garfield was 29 when "The Amazing Spider-Man" was released in 2012.  Tom Holland is 21 right now. But he honestly looks like he is about 16, which is what Marvel is going for here.

If I'm comparing the three actors in their portrayal of Peter Parker and Spider-Man, I'd still probably say Toby Maguire does the best Peter Parker while Andrew Garfield does the best Spider-Man, but Tom Holland is the most well-rounded in playing both. He's very natural at playing the nerdy Peter Parker who is very socially awkward and, as we learned in "Captain America: Civil War," he is great when he puts on the suit to become the famous web-slinger as he may have been the best part of that airport sequence. The high energy level that he brought to that scene is present throughout this movie once he becomes Spider-Man and it's a lot of fun to watch. But in this movie, Marvel has done something really fascinating that the other two sagas didn't do. They made Spider-Man a kid. Sure, Toby Maguire and Andrew Garfield were technically supposed to be high school students in their first movie, but no one ever bought it due to how old they were. In this movie you do. And anyone who knows the Spider-Man comics, that's how it's supposed to be. Spider-Man is a kid who got superpowers and has to balance school life with superhero life and sometimes fails at both. That's the story Marvel is telling here. He's a kid trying to be an adult with these powers.

If you're looking for classic Spider-Man story arcs in this movie, you're not going to get them. There's no Harry Osborne or Mary Jane Watson in the movie. Instead his best friend is named Ned and his love interest, or rather high school crush, is a girl named Liz. There's no Uncle Ben in the movie, only a subtle reference to Aunt May going through hard times, which I took to be Uncle Ben's passing. Speaking of Aunt May, she actually looks like an Aunt May instead of the Grandma May that most versions interpret her as in terms of age, which I appreciated. Having Aunt May be in her 70's shouldn't necessarily be a requirement. In fact, younger, hotter Aunt May made for a lot of great comedic moments. Although those complaining at Aunt May being too young may not realize that Marisa Tomei is 53. A pretty dang good looking 53-year-old if I might add. Moving on, we also don't have Norman Osborne or any Green Goblin/Hob Goblin references. With no Uncle Ben, Peter's mentor in the movie is Tony Stark, which I'd be willing to bet is not the case in any previous Spider-Man stories. So yes, Marvel has gone in a completely different direction with this new iteration of Spider-Man. All things considered, though, I think that was necessary. Another rehash would not have been accepted.

But despite the movie being completely different in terms of our specific, classic Spider-Man stories, Marvel nailed the spirit of Spider-Man as this young kid figuring out this thing called life. He had quite the initiation to the Avengers in "Civil War" and now he is completely obsessed with all of that. He starts dropping out of all his school programs and putting his full energy into becoming Spider-Man, but much to his dismay, Tony Stark is mainly ignoring him. He doesn't get to go on any more cool adventures with the Avengers and thus he becomes really frustrated at this whole process as he tries to simply become a friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man, but finds himself kinda bored with it. To me this felt like real teenager emotions. If a kid got super powers, this is how he would act. He'd probably try to be a superhero, but he'd probably fail because there's a lot more to being a superhero than having powers and putting on a costume. These are the lessons that Peter has to learn the hard way. He thinks he's ready, but he's really not. Thus while the movie itself is not an origin story -- the spider bite is only referenced in passing -- this is a movie about kid Peter Parker learning how to become Spider-Man and it's a really beautiful arc that he goes through. 

So yes, I loved Tom Holland's version of the character and I loved the arc that he went through. But if I'm being a bit nit-picky, the movie as a whole is not quite as sharp and focused as some other previous Spider-Man movies. This is more of a high school drama than a superhero movie for a lot of it and while I enjoyed that, I did also feel that we were kinda wandering through high school for a while without having a traditional three act movie. I didn't know where the movie was going for most of it. While not as bad as the first half of "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" from earlier this year, I did feel there could've been a bit more focus and direction. Thus while I don't know exactly how I will rank all the Spider-Man movies, I do know this one won't be on the top of that list, but it does have a good chance at being in the top half of that list and that is actually because of Michael Keaton as the Vulture, which I was surprised by. I don't want to dive too much into his character because I want that to be a surprise for you, but he got a lot more attention in this movie than I thought he was going to get and, based on trailers I'd seen, he has a lot more depth and humanity to him than I was expecting. This is one of the best Spider-Man villains if I'm being honest.

Overall, this definitely is a very enjoyable movie. Kudos to Tom Holland for nailing both Peter Parker and Spider-Man. Kudos to Marvel for deciding to go with the teenage Spider-Man instead of the adult Spider-Man we've gotten in the previous movies. More kudos to Marvel for being bold enough to take this in a completely different direction, thus making this feel fresh, despite the fact that this is our sixth Spider-Man movie in 15 years. I know a lot of people that were sick of the character after the past three movies and I think Marvel has done a perfect job of getting everyone excited again for their most popular character. I also have to dish out kudos to our supporting cast, which includes Jacob Batalon as Peter's best friend Ned, Laura Harrier as his crush Liz, Tony Revolori as Flash Thompson, Zendaya as a girl named Michelle, Marisa Tomei as Aunt May and "Iron Man" director Jon Favreau as Happy Hogan. They were all great. Then of course RDJ was great again as Tony Stark, this time in a mentor role. And a huge round of applause to Michael Keaton for making this movie work. This is the fourth best superhero movie of 2017, which is more of a testament to how great this year has been for the genre as I'm giving "Spider-Man: Homecoming" a 9/10.

Baby Driver Review

We're halfway through Hollywood's summer and sneaking in at the end of June, right before the year's halfway point, is the latest film from director Edgar Wright. I'm not sure what the specific qualifications are to be considered an official huge Edgar Wright fan, but if we were to get into technicalities I may not be eligible. Up until last month I had only ever seen one of his films, that being "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World." But in my defense, he's only made four major theatrically released films. Yes, he made a few early films that didn't get much of a release and he worked a lot in TV and other random small film projects, but outside "Scott Pilgrim," his other three films consist of what is referred to as the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy: "Shaun of the Dead," "Hot Fuzz" and "The World's End." Now I've been madly in love with "Scott Pilgrim" ever since I saw it in theaters in 2010 and I caught up with the Cornetto trilogy before seeing "Baby Driver" and holy cow are all three of those movies fantastic. So however much time is required to become a huge Edgar Wright fan after seeing all of his films, sign me up on that waiting list because this man is a genius filmmaker with no blemishes on his record up to this point. That continues with "Baby Driver," which is another Edgar Wright masterpiece.

Since box office totals of these four Edgar Wright films lead me to believe that he is a master of the cult classic wherein not enough people have seen these films, let me give you my plug. "Shaun of the Dead" is a zombie movie parody that came out in 2004 when zombie movies where a huge thing. The movie is hilarious, intense, exhilarating and emotional all in one film. It's an absolute blast. Three years later, in 2007, "Hot Fuzz" was released and is one of the most insane buddy cop movies I've seen with so many over-the-top twists and turns that just keep coming and coming. I was laughing so hard for all of the right reasons. In 2010, we have the illustrious "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World," which is literally a video game movie. Not an adaptation of a video game. The movie itself is a video game. One of the most clever, hilarious and fun movies I've ever watched. And finally we have "The World's End" in 2013, shortly after the huge craze over the "end of the world" in 2012. Another hilarious and awesome film that ingeniously parodies all of the end of the world movies that came our way at that point. Four great films. Yet the highest grossing of the bunch at the U.S. box office was "Scott Pilgrim" with only $31.5 million? Say what? That's practically a crime to humanity.

It's really a shame that none of these movies made much money. Sure, several of them did solid numbers in Edgar's home country of the U.K., but such low grosses makes me sad. Here we cry for more originality in Hollywood, yet when a director like Edgar Wright gives us movies that are the dictionary definition of original, creative and fun, we ignore them? I don't get how that makes any sense. And you wonder why we get so many sequels, remakes, reboots and adaptations. That's all consumers will bother paying for while hypocritically demanding for more original movies that they always choose to skip when they come around. I'm just glad that "Baby Driver" at the moment is NOT suffering the same fate as Wright's previous movies as it's already at around $30 million through its first five days in release, with word of mouth suggesting that it's in for a long, healthy run during this busy summer. It's about dang time that Wright gets love from more people than his home country. This is another unique, fun, crazy film from Wright wherein I loved every second of my movie-going experience. In fact, I had so much fun that I waited a few days for it to settle in before writing this review so that I can comfortably make some bold claims.

The major bold claim that I am going to make right now is that "Baby Driver" is my favorite movie that I've seen in 2017 thus far. With movies such as "Spider-Man: Homecoming," "War for the Planet of the Apes" and "Dunkirk" coming up in just the next three weeks, it's quite possible that this title only lasts for a brief moment, but from the moment the publishing of this review, that is my claim. That's why I had to give this a few days of thought. So with that bold claim out of the way, what is "Baby Driver"? The easy answer to this question is that it's everything. There are so many genres packed into this one film and all of them are perfectly balanced by Edgar Wright so that the final result is one huge, epic film. With so many genres in one movie, the initial watch is almost like drinking from a fire hose, but when you give yourself time to unpack everything and think about what you just watched, you slowly begin to realize how genius this movie is and how many layers there are. Then comes the daunting task of trying to do the movie justice in one short movie review because there is just so much to this. I almost just want to end right here and tell you to go experience this movie for yourself, but I will do my best to try to press forward with this review.

The movie itself centers around a character named Baby, played by Ansel Elgort from "The Fault in Our Stars" fame, who has gone through an accident in his past that caused a ringing in his ears. Because of this, he listens to music to drown out the buzzing and has since gotten himself deep into a hole with a violent, dangerous criminal organization who commit heists and robberies. Baby isn't helping with the robbing part of this. He's the getaway driver. And he's so good at what he does with his driving that he's gotten himself stuck in helping them. His secret to being such a good getaway driver? His music. He syncs his driving to the music he's playing and that's what gives him the energy to make it through each job. Thus as he's listening to this music, we as the audience get the pleasure of seeing these epic chase sequences go down synced to this fantastic music. Thus right off the bat we have a heist film, a car chasing film and a musical. Thus the initial comparison was like a "Fast and Furious" the musical. I'd say combine that with a heist film, but "Fast Five" already got that genre covered, so maybe this movie is similar to a "Fast Five" the musical. And that's only the first portion. The further into the movie we get, the more layers and genres we add.

One genre that we quickly add is a romance film as Baby meets Cinderella herself working at the diner he goes to everyday for certain reasons. And by Cinderella, I of course mean Lily James, who is as beautiful and wonderful as ever in this film. Her and Baby immediately develop a ton of romantic chemistry that is totally not forced at all. It happens quickly, but completely naturally. The second they meet in the diner, you immediately are cheering for them to get together. With Baby being in such a tough position that he doesn't know how to get out of, Lily James gives him the motivation to try. Thus the movie becomes daring enough to combine a sappy chick flick with a guy-targeted action/racing thriller. One might ask if it's possible to combine these two very opposite genres and make it work. Well, Edgar Wright is daring enough to run with it and he managed to make me absolutely love all the guy stuff that I'm suppose to love with this type of movie that felt like a "Fast and Furious" or "Mad Max" film while also making me fully invested in this romance arc because I wanted nothing more than the two of them to have their happily ever after and since this is Edgar Wright and not Nicholas Sparks, I had no idea if I was going to get that.

Yet Ansel Elgort and Lily James aren't the only two characters in this movie worth caring for. We have so many different characters with so many different character arcs all interweaving together in such a way that on paper you might look at it and think this is a disaster waiting to happen because often too many characters with too many different story arcs can blow up in a director's face if not handled correctly. But again, Edgar Wright crafts this to perfection. This is more than just poor little Ansel Elgort trying to escape the evil villains who have done all this wrong. Every character has depth and complexity to him or her. Characters in this movie that I really cared about outside Ansel Elgort and Lily James include characters played by Jon Bernthal, Jon Hamm, Eiza Gonzalez, Kevin Spacey, CJ Jones and Jamie Foxx. I don't want to say who played what role in the movie or what each character went through to make me care about them because that would dive into plot spoilers. But needless to say, each character has his or her share of flaws and each character has believable motivation behind what he or she does. These elements made each character worth caring about and thus we got no hollow characters on either side.

We do eventually get to the point where it's hero vs. villain in one epic showdown and while I hesitate to even say that, I feel the need to bring this up because in addition to a mashup of genres that shouldn't work combined with so many story arcs that should make the movie over-bloated, that against all odds works beautifully, we also have the perfect hero vs. villain story arc that every superhero movie attempts to pull off while many fail in the process. We have a complex, flawed hero who has made a lot of mistakes fighting against a well-fleshed out villain who is both ominous and scary while also having a whole lot of depth and motivation behind the actions taken. You understand why this villain is doing these things and you are almost tempted to side with this villain, thus making this a lot more than your typical good guy vs. bad guy story. And there are stakes in this movie. In a lot of superhero movies or other blockbusters, you often know that the hero is going to make it out alive, even in times where you are thoroughly enjoying the film. That's not the case here. There are stakes. There are consequences. And if you watched the Cornetto trilogy, you know Edgar Wright isn't afraid of doing exactly what you DON'T expect. In fact, he seems to like that.

I've gone over a lot of details of this film, but despite that, I don't feel I've covered a whole ton of specific details. This movie has a lot of layers to it with several twists and turns that you come to expect from an Edgar Wright film if you're familiar with his work. I've only scratched the surface. But I've said what I wanted to and now it's up to you to go give this movie a shot. It's an absolute beauty. Edgar Wright is a bold, daring filmmaker who is oozing with fun, creative ideas that I feel give life to what is often a super familiar landscape when it comes to Hollywood. Thus if you want to get away from the predictable and boring, come dive into the world of "Baby Driver." We have so many different genres and story arcs going on during this one movie that on paper it may seem like it wouldn't work, but Edgar Wright masterfully crafts this work of art together into what can be called the perfect summer blockbuster that is glued together with Wright's distinct visual and editing style. If you are a fan of Edgar Wright's films and you haven't seen this movie already, make this a top priority. If you are less familiar with Edgar Wright, but you are wanting to see a unique and perfect summer blockbuster, then you also need to make this a priority. I'm giving "Baby Driver" a 10/10.

Despicable Me 3 Review

It's been a busy month for animation as three of our huge animation studios have all released summer tent-poles. We started early in June with DreamWorks delivering "Captain Underpants," then Pixar punished us with "Cars 3" and now Illumination is back at it with the third installment of their marquee franchise, "Despicable Me 3." As concerning this franchise, I consider myself a huge fan. I own and love "Despicable Me." I think it's not only a hilarious and cute movie, but I feel it's also super emotional and deep when it comes to the themes. "Despicable Me 2" wasn't as deep, but it was a hilarious romp from start to finish. I even enjoyed the much hated "Minions" spin-off/prequel as 90 minutes of Minion gags had me cracking up. I totally get why people hate it. But I thought it was fun. Because of all this, I was looking forward to "Despicable Me 3." After a movie without Gru and the gang, I was excited to see them back with our beloved Minions. Underwhelming trailers didn't push me away because bad trailers for good movies happen all the time. But despite my excitement, I have to unfortunately announce that "Despicable Me 3 is a bad movie. I was in shock at what I was watching and was really angry and disappointed walking out of the theater.

The plot. This is where I describe the plot. Oh man, this is going to get complicated. The biggest question mark that I personally had from the trailers was that every time we released a new trailer, it didn't feel like the latter trailers were building off the previous trailers, it felt like each trailer was advertising a new movie. So what in the frack was this movie going to be about? Which of the completely different marketing pushes was this movie going to focus on the most? The answer? All of the above. For some reason they decided that they needed to set up so many different story arcs that for over half of the movie is spent going sidewards with the plot and when we've finally introduced every plot point, the movie was only capable of moving so far forward because it was forced to bounce around between all of these plot points. By the end of the movie, it felt like we had only progressed forward a few feet. The emotion and depth is what I like most about this franchise and there was potential with some of these story arcs, but there were simply too many of the story arcs which consequently made it so it was impossible for there to be any depth in this movie which also wiped away any emotion that they attempted to set up.

So let's attempt to tackle some of these. In this movie, Gru learns that he has a twin brother named Dru. Their parents were divorced when they were babies and each parent got to raise one child. We've already established that Gru's mother doesn't like Gru and now we establish that Dru's father doesn't like Dru. In fact, each parent seems to like the other one better. Here we had potential to dive deep into an emotional family drama where Gru and Dru figure out that they both have a sense of worth, which helps them bond as a family. Do they do this? Nope. Too much time with everything else. We just kinda introduce this idea, which is played off for laughs instead of actual emotion, and never dive into it. Ouch. Instead, Dru wants Gru to teach him how to be a villain, so Gru takes advantage of this opportunity to finally stop our villain, Balthazar Bratt, which I'll get to in a second. Steve Carell does voice both Gru and Dru, which I found very impressive because he is able give each character a distinct voice and personality to the point where I often forgot that Gru and Dru were voiced by the same person. That's impressive voice work. But unfortunately that effort was wasted because the movie chose not to dive as deep as they could've.

In "Despicable Me 2" we introduced the wonderful character of Lucy, voiced by Kristen Wiig, who ends up marrying Gru at the end of the movie. I really loved Gru and Lucy in that second movie. I thought they were perfect crime-fighting partners that fed off of each other quite well. But this time around I surprisingly have to say that Lucy annoyed the heck out of me. Her whole point in the movie is that she has to learn how to be a mother to the three girls and she has no idea how to do this. Again, there is potential with a story arc like this. In fact, that's the whole story arc of the first movie. Gru trying to figure out how to be a parent. So not only does this specific story arc feel like a complete rehash, but it's also a poor, second-rate copy of that original story arc that, again, they don't have time to dive into, so it feels extremely rushed and undeveloped. And it was also really annoying. Every time we went over to Lucy trying to be a mother, I wanted to scream at the movie to just stop. I developed this weird sense of anger towards Lucy because she was completely useless and a huge distraction in this movie. I also didn't feel like Kristen Wiig gave any effort this time around, so there was an imbalance because Steve Carell definitely put his heart and soul into this project.

Now should we talk about another major distraction in this film that breaks my heart to tear apart? The girls. I absolutely adore these girls and I would go as far as to say that they are the heart and soul of the first two movies. So now for me to say that they were annoying, pointless distractions actually hurts me. I mean, you have three of the best characters from any animated movie and you can't figure out what to do with them? Ouch. Margo has a tiny bit to do. At one point Lucy forces her to go be nice to this young boy, which blows up in both of their faces. Then we have a conflict between mother and daughter. Potential here? Yes. Developed? Absolutely not. We have two short scenes between Margo and this boy that served no purpose. And was again a rehash of something better, this time from the second movie. Then we get to Edith, who literally has nothing to do, so the movie sends her off with Agnes, who is on a hunt to find a real life unicorn. When I speak of useless and annoying, this takes the cake. Agnes and her unicorns was an adorable sub-plot of the first movie. This time around it felt like we were recycling old jokes and shoving them down our faces in an extended sequence that I really just wanted the movie to stop.

We're not done with introducing our story arcs and I'm not done complaining about them either. So how about just two more? It's time to finally talk about Balthazar Bratt, our villain. The introduction to our movie was a Balthazar Bratt exposition sequences, which annoyed me. Because they didn't feel like taking the time to develop him like a normal movie would, or like the first two movies did with their villains, they shove it all down our faces in the first few minutes. Then they leave him sitting there in the background for most of the movie while they develop these other sub-plots that I mostly didn't care about. This was disappointed to me because I actually loved his character and I think Trey Parker had an absolutely blast playing him. Yeah, sure, he was a cliche villain from a kids movie where they didn't seem to put much thought into why he was a villain and quickly threw together a cliche backstory. But man he was fun. He was a character stuck back in the 80's with his hairstyle, outfit, music and gadgets. It was a lot of fun to watch and Trey Parker added a lot of personality to him. Kudos to the movie for creating such a great character. But then I have to take all those kudos back because they could've done a lot more with this character.

I think you get the point by now. When I said I have two more, the final one is the Minions. You either love the Minions or you think they are the worst side characters on planet Earth. I'm in the former. I love the Minions. They are a lot of fun. In this movie, they get mad at Gru for not being a villain and most of them leave, giving us yet another story arc to follow. But this one was a lot of fun. Every time the group of rebellious Minions are on screen, I had a blast. In fact, I had so much fun with those scenes that there came a point in the movie where the only thing I wanted to see was the Minions. I wanted to follow their little escapade through prison and whatnot and nothing else, because everything else just because so stupid and/or underdeveloped. And I consider this a huge negative. I didn't care about Gru and Dru. I hated Lucy. I thought the girls were useless and unfortunate distractions. I thought Balthazar Bratt was underdeveloped and underutilized. I just wanted to see the Minions. And when I walk into a "Despicable Me" film excited to see Gru, Lucy and the girls and I end up not caring about all of that and I just want to see another "Minions" movie, that's an unforgivable sin this franchise has committed and thus I'm giving "Despicable Me 3" a 5/10.

The Book of Henry Review

I've had my eye on "The Book of Henry" for some time now. Not necessarily because I was extremely excited for it or that the trailers looked amazing, because that wasn't really the case. The reason I had my eye on this is because this is a movie that comes from director Colin Trevorrow, who has a very small sample size of directorial efforts which, outside a few small shorts, TV movies and documentaries, really only include "Safety Not Guaranteed" and "Jurassic World." Based on that alone, LucasFilm made the decision that he was worthy enough to direct Star Wars Episode IX. And I'm willing to bet that this was based solely on the fact that "Jurassic World" made a ton of money, because that movie is more dumb fun then epic. Not a worthy "Jurassic Park" successor. Consequently that hire made me really nervous, but since we've had such a small sample size of Trevorrow films, I really wanted to see what else the man could do before I make a determination on if I'm excited for his chapter of Star Wars, which is set to be the finale of our new trilogy. Enter "The Book of Henry." And oh my heck, red flags are now going up everywhere because "The Book of Henry" is a pretty big dumpster fire of a film that's gotten worse as I've pondered over it.

I watched an interview with Trevorrow about this film and what really stood out to me was that he has a strong passion and desire to bring the world some great original films. I have mad respect for this. And if you know me by now, you'll know that smaller independent films are the style of movie that I actually prefer over our big blockbusters because that's where the creativity and passion come in with movie making. The directors making these smaller films aren't guaranteed that they are going to make any money, so they're often filming with their hearts instead of filming with the studios breathing down their necks giving them certain mandates based on how the studio thinks they are going to make the most money, which can create all sorts of problems if the studio and director aren't on the same page. Thus a small film like "The Book of Henry" would show us what type of filmmaker Trevorrow is and I was crossing my fingers that this would be a great independent film that would be a good change of pace during our busy, blockbuster-heavy summer. But sometimes too much creativity can be a bad thing when you sacrifice things such as logic and common sense in favor of making a movie that you hope few people have done. That's what I feel happened here. 

Being that many of you may not have any idea what this movie is, allow me to describe by touching on elements from the first and third act of this movie. Oddly enough, it's the second act of the movie that is the major spoiler, so I will avoid that section because thankfully the marketing team did, too, so that middle portion was a huge surprise to me and I want to allow you to witness that surprise for yourself if you decide to be rebellious and actually see the film, which I won't recommend you do. Anyways, the setup for this movie centers around a super genius boy named Henry and his rather naive and uneducated mother. Even though she is an adult and he is a kid, mentally it's the other way around. She's the kid at heart who has no idea how to run a family or live a responsible, adult life while at just 11 years old, Henry knows essentially every detail of the world and is the one running the house, including making all of the financial decisions for everything. Then we have the younger brother played by the great young Jacob Tremblay who is just trying to be a normal kid, which is understandably difficult when you have a perfect older brother paving the way for you and a fairly irresponsible mother who is often not very good at being a mother.

This is actually a family dynamic that I mostly enjoyed. However, I think the movie got a little carried away with the role reversals of Henry and his mother. I think they could've written his mother like a struggling adult instead of a child in a grown up woman's body and I think they could've scaled Henry back a bit. Make him a gifted child, but go easy on his vast knowledge of things that no kid no matter how smart would know anything about. It took me out of the movie a bit during the first half of the movie. But I still was enjoying it as there was some true emotion displayed and some fantastic acting all around despite some cheesy writing and some not-so-great directing. And I was curious to see where they were going to take this. One of the unfortunate problems here that is out of the control of everyone around is that when I describe how I think this premise could've been refined to make it a special movie, I'm essentially describing the plot of the movie "Gifted" from two months ago. Since the release dates are this close, I'm guessing that Trevorrow and his crew had no idea about "Gifted" when they started writing, but strangely enough, both movies had a similar unique idea, but "Gifted" pulled it off so much better and released their movie first.

That's the unfortunate aspect of this movie. Trevorrow wanted to make a unique film and in the production of this movie, I'm certain that everyone involved thought this was an original idea, but the movie "Gifted" completely stole their thunder, thus the originality of the movie is no longer a strength and consequently they had to rely on the execution to make it great. The whole cast obviously did their absolute best to make this work, but the writing in this film is such a massive train wreck that the whole thing derails and left me cringing in my seat. As I've stated, I could probably forgive the cheesiness of the over-the-top role reversal if the direction this movie went was good, but that's not the case. And the eventual third act of the movie heavily involves the girl next door. I'm not going to give specific details or resolutions away, but Henry begins to have suspicions that his female crush from school, who is also his also his neighbor, is being abused by her father, who happens to be the well-respected chief police in town that everyone loves. If this child abuse angle is true and this man is covering up his tracks so well, how is an 11-year-old kid going to convince the world that a problem is going on when the girl herself will admit to nothing? 

These specifics are totally believable plot points. In theory, with a bit of refinement, this premise could work. But there comes a point in the movie where Henry makes a decision on what he is going to do about it and that's when the floor falls out. We eventually get to the point where the mother is listening to instructions from Henry on how to follow through with his plan and I practically had my hands in my face the whole time with how awful things get. Not scandalous, dirty or violent. But a horrendously written plot that had me embarrassed at what I was watching. I won't go any further on what happens next, but the movie shifted gears from family drama that I was enjoying to dark, intense crime thriller. The shift wasn't the problem, though. I was cool with that. But I love watching crime thrillers and I've watched so many good ones, which includes 12 seasons of "Criminal Minds," that I immediately know what to look for. I practically have it down to a science. And "The Book of Henry" breaks pretty much every rule of what NOT to do in crime thriller. I could detail this third act, but since I don't want to actual spoil the movie in this post, you're just going to have to trust me on this one. It's one of the worst crime thrillers that I've seen in a long time.

But credit has to be given where credit is due. Jaeden Lieberher is great as Henry. Naomi Watts is great is the mother. Jacob Tremblay nearly steals the show as the little brother. Sarah Silverman, Dean Norris and Lee Pace are fine, even though there is a horribly awkward scene between Sarah Silverman and Jaeden Lieberher. But who does steal the show for me is Maddie Ziegler, who made me practically jump out of my seat in excitement when her name came up in the opening credits. If you don't know Maddie, she is the stand-in for every Sia music video and even some live performances. Sia doesn't like showing her face, so she never shows up in her videos. But she has Maddie in every one of them. And by goodness can Maddie dance. She is able to successfully portray the emotion in Sia's songs through her dance skills and I love it. You can go watch the music video for "Chandelier" as a classic example. In this movie, Maddie plays the girl getting abused and although she doesn't say much, she gets the opportunity to express a high amount of emotion... through dance! I won't say how it connects to the plot, but there's a dance sequence that is integral to the plot where Maddie totally owns it! It almost made the whole movie worth it. 

Unfortunately, though, the rest of the movie did happen and it ended up being pretty bad. Had the final act of the movie been solid, I could've forgiven some of the cheesy moments in the first act or the awkward moments in the second act, but the third act was so bad that it made those moments even more glaring when I thought back on them. I love the intentions from Trevorrow, but the final result was bad. If you want a better version of this movie, go watch "Gifted." I loved that movie. But despite a great cast, this movie just doesn't work. So yes, this does make me mildly nervous about Star Wars Episode IX. If we need to drive home some emotion and have some powerhouse directing that will wrap up this new trilogy perfectly, I'm not so sure Trevorrow has the talents to pull it off. But luckily it's not just him working on it. It's a team project and LucasFilm has already shown just recently that if they don't like what a director is doing, they aren't afraid to step in or pull the plug on the directors. "Rogue One" had 40 percent of the movie re-shot last second and the directors for the Han Solo film were straight-up fired last week. So hopefully things work out. But as pertaining to "The Book of Henry," I was extremely disappointed and am giving the movie a 5/10.

Cars 3 Review

One of the best film studios in existence is back with yet another film. It's the illustrious Pixar Animation Studios! Along with every other sane individual in the world, I love Pixar! Not only do they make great movies for kids, but they normally also make fantastic movies with mature themes that adults can appreciate just as much, if not more, than the kids in the theater with them. Anyone that says animation is a kids only genre clearly has never seen a Pixar film. Which means I should've been excited for this film and rushed out opening night to go see it, right? Well, not in this instance. "Cars 3" just finished its second full weekend of release and I had to fight myself just to go give it a shot. I had no desire to see this film. Never once did I have any faith that it would be good. And not one trailer convinced me that this was a movie worth seeing. Thus is why I went nearly 10 days without even seeing this movie. I just didn't want to. When I finally forced myself to go see this, I was an angry, bitter mess. And I was having a great day up to the point where I made the decision to go see this movie. Was it as bad of a movie going experience as I was expecting it to be? Well... for about 95 percent of the movie... yes. If you were on the fence with this one, then just don't worry about it.

The big thing that caught most people off guard with this film was that first teaser trailer. We had that really dark, shocking moment where Lightning McQueen gets in a major accident, which was followed by a statement that said something to the effect of "from here on, everything changes." That made people wonder if we were going to get a dark, deep, emotional Pixar film that would end up in the top tier of Pixar films. Effective teaser, I admit. But I didn't buy it. I had no idea what they meant when they said that everything was about to change and after seeing the movie I still don't know what that means. But a teaser is a teaser. All I got out of that is that we were going back to the racetrack with this film and that towards the beginning, Lightning McQueen was going to get in a wreck and experience some sort of other setback, but then we would proceed with a cliche sports movie where he spends time training and improving before going back on the track for one more go of it at whoever this new racer was. Do you know what? I hate to toot my own horn, but that's exactly what we got with this movie. It's a cliche sports/racing movie with no major twists or turns that is only here because the "Cars" franchise is second only to "Star Wars" in toy sales.

In fact, the only big surprise here is how big of an over bloated mess this film is. I was kind of expecting a by-the-numbers racing film here. And I got a by-the-numbers racing film that felt like they had no idea how to extend it to 110 minutes, so we got a whole bunch of worthless crap that my best explanation for is that they wanted more toys, so they found ways to include as many new vehicles as possible until they finally decided to get to our actual ending. And you thought this was going to be a dark, emotional film after we saw that big crash in the teaser? Ha! Joke's on you. Do you know how long it took Lightning McQueen to get over that crash and decide to go back on the racing course? Two minutes. After he crashes, we get a thing that says four months later wherein we see Lightning McQueen in Doc Hudson's place looking at videos for a few moments. Sally drives in and tells him that he needs to go back to racing, so he drives out and announces he is going back. That's it. Thus everything you saw in that teaser that made you excited is what I call trailer fodder. It's only in the movie to make the trailer interesting, but has little pertinence to the movie itself. "Cars 3" is what you thought it was going to be when you heard it announced.

Most of this movie is a bunch of drama about Lightning McQueen being old news. He's been the king of racing for a while, but now we have a whole host of new racers that are simply better than Lightning McQueen. They are updated cars with fancier technology. The world is moving forward while Lightning McQueen is stuck in the past. He refuses to accept the fact that world is changing and that he needs change with it if he wants to stay relevant. There's new ways to train. New technology to work with. Things that could make him better. But he refuses to accept any of it as he would prefer to train by going to race on the dirt tracks and other old-fashioned ways that have always worked for him. So basically he has become Doc Hudson and he has to learn how to deal with it and he's not doing a very good job. This is all fine and dandy on paper if the movie itself had any actual focus or emotion. Which is unfortunate because, speaking of Doc Hudson, the entire movie is practically a tribute to the late Paul Newman, the legendary actor who voiced Doc Hudson in the first movie, but passed away before they could make "Cars 2." Way too much happening in this movie and not enough voice actors seeming like they even care about this movie they're making.

If the movie had decided to pick one angle with the training and run with it, then I may have been able to give this a pass. The idea of the world leaving the older generations in the dust is a real issue that could've made for a classic Pixar film that entertains kids while leaving adults in deep thought. Bring Lightning McQueen into the new training facility with this hard-nosed trainer and let the two duke it out emotionally like one of our "Rocky" movies. Instead of having one big training sequences that is fleshed out, we get four different training sequences with each new sequence shifting gears thematically and tonally. Thus when we finally got to the final race that's going to determine whether or not Lightning McQueen's career continues, given a deal that him and new boss man make, I didn't feel like we had given Lightning McQueen enough time to be ready because the movie couldn't make a decision on how it wanted to go about things after Lightning McQueen's big crash in the first act. A proper sports movie hinges on the second act of the film. If that second act succeeds, then our final sporting moment has the emotional weight to make us care about the final outcome. Because of this failure, the final act of this movie lacked this emotional weight to make things work.

So let's talk a bit about this final act. In vague terms because I don't plan on spoiling things. When I said at the beginning of this review that 95 percent of this movie was exactly how I expected it to be, there is one moment in this film that I really appreciated and it happens in this final act. No, I'm not going to give it a full 30 percent because I think the second act was bad enough to make it so I didn't really care about what happened in the end, but there is a small moment that almost redeems the film. A little bit of a twist that I didn't see coming that made me smile. In fact, it made me smile enough that I was able to bump this film up a notch. Instead of driving home saying the movie belonged in the trash bin with "Cars 2," I instead found myself debating in my head as to how this ranks when compared to "Monsters University" and "The Good Dinosaur," the two Pixar movies that are just slightly better than awful. But when push comes to shove, "The Good Dinosaur" had a lot more individual sequences that made me smile while "Monsters University" had a more powerful ending and a slightly better first and second act. But kudos to this movie for making it onto the same tier as those films while avoiding becoming a complete dumpster fire.

Speaking of tiers of Pixar movies, I have determined in my mind that there are five tiers of Pixar movies. Bring out your torches and pitchforks ladies and gentlemen, because I'm going to quickly place all of Pixar's movies into those tiers. The top tier are the Pixar classics. The masterpieces that you turn to time and time again. For this I'm going with "Toy Story 3," "Toy Story," "The Incredibles," "Monsters, Inc.," "Finding Nemo," "Inside Out" and "Up." Just under that level, but not quite at the masterpiece level, are our second tier of Pixar movies. This includes "Finding Dory," "Toy Story 2" and "Ratatouille." In our third tier, our good but not great level, I'm including "Brave," "A Bug's Life," "WALL-E" and "Cars." Jumping down to our very bottom tier, the fifth tier of awful Pixar movies, luckily there is only one. "Cars 2." But it's in the fourth tier of Pixar movies, the disappointments, where "Cars 3" belongs." As I mentioned, with it are "The Good Dinosaur" and "Monsters University." The ending of "Cars 2" moved it up from the fifth tier to the fourth tier, but the rest of this movie was bad enough for me to comfortable declare it belongs no higher and is unfortunately the second worst Pixar film. I'm giving "Cars 3" a 6/10, and even that feels a bit generous.

47 Meters Down Review

It's now time to review our yearly shark thriller! This type of film has practically been a yearly tradition ever since "Jaws" was released in theaters 42 years ago in the summer of 1975. "Jaws" was such a landmark film for so many reasons that filmmakers have endlessly attempted to recapture the magic that Steven Spielberg masterfully created. Yet no shark movie since "Jaws," not even the "Jaws" sequels, have been able to pull off what "Jaws" did. And that's OK to me. I don't expect any shark movie to be on the level of "Jaws" and I'm certainly not going to tear a movie to shreds just because it wasn't as great as "Jaws." I like my shark thrillers. They're fun. Many of them for different reasons. "Jaws" is a very character-driven horror film that does horror right. It's practically the perfect example of how to properly make a horror film. I mean, how many thousands or millions of people have hated going in the water and been terrified of sharks just because of "Jaws"? Brilliant. But then on the complete opposite side of the scale we have "Sharknado," a movie I also love. That movie is so dumb that it's awesome. The key ingredient there is that the movie is so self-aware that they are making an enjoyably awful movie that it's an absolute blast from start to finish.

The problem is when you get a movie that's trying to be the next "Jaws," but ends up being "Sharknado" instead. If you're trying to make a bad movie, it can work. It's a hard balance to find, though, because if you don't capture the magic of purposely bad filmmaking, you can often wind up simply making an awful, unwatchable film with no redeeming qualities. And it can be worse if you were trying to make a good movie, but failed in every way. When I watched the trailers for "47 Meters Down," that's exactly what I thought we were getting. A movie that was trying to be the next "Jaws," but ended up accidentally being on "Sharknado" level in a very bad way. Not helping their case for me was that this was initially intended as a direct to DVD film before an company called Entertainment Studios, who had never distributed a theatrical film before, swiped it up and decided to throw it in theaters. That, combined with the awful trailers, gave me no hope that this was going to be even worth watching. I was expected the critics to lash and give it a score in the teens or single-digits on Rotten Tomatoes. But that's not what happened. Instead initial reviews had this up in the 70 percent range before sliding down and settling in the mid-50's. I was floored.

Pretty soon, I found myself in the theater seeing "47 Meters Down," before "Cars 3" or "All Eyez on Me," both of which were initially higher on my list of movies to see. But even then, I went in expecting a shark thriller that was extremely cheesy and over the top, hopefully in a good way. In the opening sequences of this film, that's exactly what was playing out. We have two sisters on a trip in Mexico. One has recently broken up with her boyfriend, so her sister decides that they need to party hard so that she can forget about him and make him jealous that they're having fun. So of course the logical sequence of events is to party all night then go cage diving with a couple of awesome Mexican dudes that they just barely met and made out with. None of this was even remotely interesting, thus I started to feel like I would be on team shark in this movie, which is not really a good thing when you're trying to make a successful horror film. Then the two of them get into the cage and one of the first things that happens is one girl drops the camera and immediately a giant shark comes and snaps it up. And I was laughing so hard at how ridiculously awful that was. That's the type of movie this is going to be? OK. Let's do it! Bring on the sharks and bring on the cheese!

Then something happened. And no, I'm not talking about the chords breaking on their cage, sending them to the ocean floor. If you didn't know that was going to happen after watching the trailers or looking at the title of the movie, you'll know after the first five minutes that both of these ladies are destined for the ocean floor, 47 meters down. No, by saying that something happened, I mean that the movie actually became a good movie. Not a movie that's so dumb and so cheesy that it's good. A movie that's legitimately good. No, this is not on the level of "Jaws." No shark movie ever will be. But it's also not on the level of "Sharknado," for better or for worse. This is actually very comparable to "The Shallows" from last year, which I also rather enjoyed. I thought "The Shallows" was very complimentary to "Jaws" in that "Jaws" is a movie where a killer shark terrorizes an entire town while "The Shallows" is a movie where a killer shark terrorizes one girl who is unfortunately trapped on a small rock off the shore of an empty beach, with no way of getting a hold of anyone. While "The Shallows" also doubled as a Blake Lively photo shoot, she also managed to give a pretty good performance as a girl stricken after being trapped close to a killer shark.

I do think it's worth mentioning at this point that if you are not a fan of shark thrillers, "47 Meters Down" is not the movie that's going to covert you to this sub-genre of horror. If you're one of those people that's hated every shark movie since "Jaws," then skip "47 Meters Down." It's simply. But if you're like me and you've enjoyed a lot of different shark thrillers for many different reasons, then this is a movie to go see. Once these ladies fall to the bottom of the ocean in the cage, the movie actually becomes fairly intense. The two of them are trapped so far down that there's no service with their little walkie-talkie things and they have to figure out how to escape and survive this situation in a timely manner because their air is slowly running out. This often requires them to sneak out of the cage for certain periods of time where there is a danger of running into a shark. I was worried that this was going to be a gore-fest with a lot of shark attacks. It wasn't. I thought it was going to be 90 minutes of girls screaming at the camera with cheesy sharks surrounding them, trying to have a quick, easy dinner. It wasn't. Mandy Moore and Claire Holt are our two main girls and I quickly came to care for their characters and was rooting for their escape.

One thing I think this movie really does right is that our shark scenes are held to a minimum. The suspense comes in play mainly due to the unknown. The movie teases us at the beginning with sharks, informing us that they're there, but then the movie chooses not to reveal them very often, leaving us in suspense because we know they're there, yet we don't know when they're going to show up. So every time one of the girls swims out of the cage, things become suspenseful. And the discount John Williams theme is good enough to make the scenes suspenseful while not sounding too much like that classic score that every knows, even those who haven't seen "Jaws." When the sharks do show up, I think they made me jump every time. I'm not one who usually gets tricked by horror movie jump scares, but these got me. Then they quickly went away, leaving us in suspense again. This leads me to my next point. When compared to other shark thrillers, these sharks are fairly realistic. They aren't killer sharks that are out to get these girls. They're just there minding their own business when these girls invade their space. When the girls get too close, we get a brief chase sequence, then the shark goes away. I was successfully scared of these sharks throughout the whole movie.

Granted, no shark movie is going to be perfectly realistic. Not every shark movie is as ridiculous as "Sharknado," but not even "Jaws" gives an honest portrayal of how sharks really act. If you expect that out of your shark movies, then you're going to be disappointed every time because a perfectly realistic shark movie is going to be very boring because sharks aren't quite as scary and evil as "Jaws" and all of our "Jaws" wannabees make them out to be. You mind your business and they'll mind there's. But that doesn't make for a good horror movie, so you have to suspend your belief when you go into these movies. But comparatively, I think "47 Meters Down" is a lot more realistic and terrifying than some, which pleasantly surprised me because I was expecting a full out cheese fest, but didn't get it. I'll also quickly say that this movie has a very bold ending that I didn't see coming. My whole theater was floored at this twist, with all sorts of different reactions. Listening to those reactions was rather satisfying. It might turn people off, but I applauded it. That's all I'll say there. In summary, my final recommendation is simple. If you are like me and you enjoy shark thrillers, then check this one out. If you hate shark movies, then skip it. My grade for "47 Meters Down" is an 8/10.

Love, Kennedy Review

It's time to dive into Mormonville with my next movie review as we discuss T.C. Christensen's latest film, "Love, Kennedy." If you are an active member of the LDS church and you've watched any church videos, short or long, you've definitely seen T.C. Christensen's work, even if the name is jumping to your head right away. Films like "Finding Faith in Christ," "The Restoration," "Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration" and "Treasure in Heaven: The John Tanner Story" are all examples of his work. Recently, though, his feature-length theatrical releases include "17 Miracles," "Ephraim's Rescue" and "The Cokeville Miracle." See? I told you that you know this man's work. With a lot of LDS-themed films under his belt, it's safe to say the man knows how to make a film for the LDS audience. If you're not LDS and you're reading this review, well I'm not exactly sure what to tell you. If you don't like these religious films, then you probably weren't going to see this anyways, but you can still read on if you want to. But I'm going to assume that most people that clicked on this review are active members of the LDS faith because that's exactly who this movie is made for. This is a movie that's here to remind us of what's most important in our lives and it does a great job.

No director has a completely flawless record. It's just the nature of the business. For me I think "The Cokeville Miracle" was a bit of a bump in the road for T.C. Christensen, but I chalk that up to subject matter, not poor film making. It's a bit of a curious choice to make a movie about a school of children who miraculously survived a school hostage situation not long after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting where 20 kids were shot and killed. Why did God allow those kids to die while deciding to save the kids from Cokeville Elementary School? That's a question that wasn't really answered at all in the film, so I don't think it was great timing. I was hoping with this latest film that T.C. would make a recovery because I really enjoyed both "17 Miracles" and "Ephraim's Rescue," even though they are like the same movie, but from different perspectives. With "Love, Kennedy,"  there's no issue with the subject matter as T.C. goes back to making a faith-inspiring film that LDS audiences should eat right up. The big trick here is the narrative structure is such that it's hard for any filmmaker, regardless of experience, to get completely right and I don't know if "Love, Kennedy" completely succeeds at this even though it makes the audience bawl their eyes out.

This narrative structure I speak of is that of telling the story of the life of an individual. This individual is Kennedy Hansen, who as a young girl grew up like a typical child with lots of dreams and aspirations which include dating, driving a car and being a cheerleader. On top of that, she's the sweetest, most loving, Christlike child you'll ever meet. But once she gets older they discover she has what's called Batten Disease, an extremely rare, incurable disease where the person slowly starts losing their eyesight and mental capacity until the inevitable happens. So yeah, being diagnosed with a terminal illness is not a fun thing for anyone involved and everyone reacts in a different way, but often confusion and anger is mixed in there somewhere. Why me? Or why my daughter. What did she/I do wrong to deserve this? In this instance, young Kennedy was practically perfect in every way with how she handled things, thus inspiring everyone around her, from family to friends and even strangers who didn't know her well. Consequently, we as an audience watching her story unfold are also inspired to learn or remember what's most important in life and what attitude we should have towards the things that trouble us. Thus her life becomes a love letter to all.

Perhaps it's the analytical thinker in me who has watched and reviews a whole ton of movies in the last five years, but I'm not one to give an automatic pass to every faith-based film just because it left me with an inspiring message. I prefer the film making qualities to be up to par with the message and theme. There's a lot of poor quality films with great messages that I'm not going to simply ignore the flaws because my heart strings were successfully tugged at. I'm not saying this is one of those poor quality films, but I was slightly distracted at the fact that this didn't feel quite as polished as some of T.C.'s previous work in terms of the technical aspects of the film. The movie felt a lot more homemade that usual as if they didn't quite have as big of a budget to work with this time around. The camera work and editing felt more like a first time filmmaker instead of a seasoned veteran and the cinematography didn't quite jump out at me. If they were working on a smaller budget this time around, I can understand that, but I still don't give it an automatic pass because I've seen movies made on small budgets that you certainly would've fooled me had you claimed they had a big budget to work with. Then sometimes you can flip that around and fail with a big budget, so no excuse.

I really do feel bad saying these things because I know a lot of people are going to love this movie and certainly won't be as nit-picky as I am right now. I've also met and talked with T.C. Christensen and I definitely have a lot of respect for him as a filmmaker and as a person in general, so I hate to be the annoying little movie critic, but I commit myself to being honest and I'm not going to blindly praise a movie that I found a bit distracting and slightly unpolished. Then we have this narrative structure I referenced earlier. There's not really one major through story arc here. It's Kennedy living through her first year of high school while suffering from this awful disease as she slowly digresses throughout the film. There's a lot of individual segments that often only loosely connect together to make one movie. With much of this film, you could probably watch a lot of these individual segments on their own or even out of order without missing a beat as they sometimes stumbled a bit from scene to scene. Then you think the movie is going to end, but we have another major segment of the movie attached at the end. Thus instead of having a beautifully polished narrative that flows seamlessly, we have a great, inspiring story that's a bit a bit rough around the edges.

But oh my freaking goodness, what I am doing here? I was a lot more negative in those last two paragraphs than I meant to be. Even if the movie is a tad bit clunky at times with a bit of a low-budget feel to it, this is a movie that grabs you right from the start and forces you to brace for the worst. We introduce this family that is extremely likable and this little girl that is just a precious little angel, then we get slammed in the head with a baseball bat as she is diagnosed with this terminal illness. Immediately you know what is going to happen, but you don't want it to happen, thus you are prepared to have your heart ripped out and stomped on. Then throughout this journey we are introduced to character after character who completely melts your heart with the stunning acts of service that they perform for Kennedy that make me want to go find the real life people and thank them for what they did, which is not entirely impossible in this scenario given that this is a recent story that took place practically in my back yard somewhere in Utah. Christlike love and service are shown in abundance throughout this film that it's no wonder that there were so many sniffles in my theater. I could also use the cliche statement that there wasn't a dry eye in the building during certain scenes because it was true.

Then we have our cast. Holy cow were they great! The only name and face that I recognized is that of Jasen Wade, who has played the lead role in several of these recent T.C. Christensen films. He pulled off another great performance as Kennedy's father, who went through quite the emotional journey throughout this film. We also have a slew of supporting characters that all did a great job. I'm not going to name them all by name because I've already talked your ear off, metaphorically speaking, but I do want to call out the absolute star of this film and that is Tatum Chiniquy as Kennedy. I've never seen her in any prior film and her IMDb page claims this is her first major theatrical role, but she took on quite the difficult task here of playing this teenage girl who is slowly degenerating mentally and she knocks it out of the park. This movie hinges solely on us caring for this girl and Tatum gives the absolute perfect performance. I was reminded in many ways of Eddie Redmayne's Oscar winning performance as Stephen Hawking in "The Theory of Everything." So if any of my friends happen to know Tatum, which has happened before with these local movies, pass on the word to her that I'm a huge fan of what she pulled off here and I hope to see her on screen again soon.

Overall, I did a lot more complaining in this review than I meant to, so I hope you don't walk away thinking I hated this movie. There were just certain technical aspects of the movie that I didn't feel were up to par with what T.C. Christensen usually produces and the narrative wasn't as smooth as it could've been. And it may have had a bit too much narration. But despite that, this is a movie that knows its target audience and what it needs to do to please them and it fully succeeds. We have a gripping story that is both tragic and inspiring as there's a whole lot that everyone can learn from the story of Kennedy about life and perspective. There were plenty of people in my theater with me that were downright sobbing at the end of this film. There were a lot of sniffling and a lot of tissues wiping away tears. That should say a lot. This movie is kind of leaving theaters quickly, so if you don't see this now, you may have to wait till the DVD comes out, which wouldn't be the end of the world. But at the moment it's in most of the Megaplex theaters in Northern Utah if you're anxious to enjoy this on the big screen. But act now. Or you can wait as this will make a pretty darn good Sunday movie night with your family and friends. I'm going to give "Love, Kennedy" an 8/10.