BARE BONES: BLACK FRIDAY (2021)

BLACK FRIDAY (2021)

Black Friday takes place on the most dreaded shopping day of the year for retail employees. Crazed customers are the least of the worries for the staff of the We Love Toys store, though, as a meteor shower has brought an extraterrestrial organism to Earth, one that takes over and assimilates other lifeforms, so it may grow. Now the embattled staff must fend off the worst kind of customer…alien-controlled zombie shoppers!

Flick is sadly a ho-hum effort directed routinely by Casey Tebo from a script by Andy Greskoviak. The premise could have been a lot of fun if they took the ball and ran with it, but a lot of it is the cast sitting around and bemoaning their fate while talking about their own personal issues. The characters are colorful, but all underused, such as Bruce Campbell’s retail nerd, store manager Jonathan, Ryan Lee’s hyper clean-freak Chris and Ivana Baquero’s sexy, spunky Marnie. Even Devon Sawa’s hero Ken is kind of bland. The film is supposed to be a horror comedy, but is neither funny enough to satisfy us with laughs, nor scary enough to satisfy the horror elements. The zombies are routine, despite their alien origin, and only the climatic full-size alien is somewhat interesting. FX range from some decent make-up and gore to cheesy CGI.

A sad disappointment, as anyone who has retail experience and has worked this dreaded event, knows this could have been a blast of fun and a welcome satirical look at retail’s biggest shopping day, had it been in more creative and enthusiastic hands. The opening credits of Krampus accomplishes this far better than this entire movie.

-MonsterZero NJ

 

BARE BONES: SKIN TRADE, BIG GAME and GRUDGE MATCH

SKIN TRADE (2014)

Routine action adventure pairs action icon Dolph Lundgren (who also produced and co-wrote) with Thailand action sensation Tony Jaa. Lundgren is Newark, N.J. cop Nick Cassidy who teams with Thailand cop Tony Vitayaku (Jaa) to take down crime lord and human trafficker Viktor Dragovic (Ron Perlman). There is nothing we haven’t seen before in this fast paced and sometimes ludicrous action flick, directed by Thailand director Ekachai Uekrongtham, but, there is a B-Movie entertainment to be had and it’s fun to see Lundgren pair with someone who speaks English far worse than he does. There is also fun in seeing Lundgren and Jaa together and against Ron Perlman, no less. The action itself is routine for the most part, as is the plot, but go in expecting that and it can provide some fun and unintentional chuckles. Also stars Michael Jai White and Peter Weller.

BIG GAME (2014)

Offbeat Finnish action adventure is based on a comic book and tells of young teen Oskari (Onni Tommila) who is sent into the woods, with bow and arrow, as part of a coming of age hunting trip to prove himself a man. At the same time a terrorist (Mehmet Kurtuluş) and a traitorous Secret Service agent (Ray Stevenson) take down Air Force One over those same woods and are on the hunt for the escaped President Of The U.S. (Samuel L. Jackson). Obviosuly, he is found by Oskari first, who vows to prove his manhood by delivering the President to safety, despite being outnumbered and outgunned by his pursuers. Directed by Jalmari Helander and co-written by he and Petri Jokiranta, this is actually a fun little movie despite being preposterous and silly. Jackson and young Onni Tommila get along well and are a fun team. It’s not to be taken too seriously and doesn’t holdup to today’s Hollywood blockbusters, but it has it’s heart in the right place and can be lighthearted, if not forgettable, fun.

GRUDGE MATCH (2014)

On paper, making a movie about Robert De Niro and Sylvester Stallone playing two over-the-hill boxing rivals who get together for one more tie-breaking fight, must have sounded like a great idea…and it could have been. But the film takes itself far too seriously, instead of just having a good time with the silly premise and just going with it. Director Peter Segal (who’s made a career out of mediocre and mundane comedies) directs with a leaden hand from the script by Tim Kelleher and Rodney Rothman, a script which makes the mistake of downplaying the humor and tries to make a fairly serious flick out of this nonsense. De Niro and Stallone do the best they can with the weak soap opera-level material, but neither really acts like they are completely onboard with this. It’s a shame, the premise could have been a lot of fun with writers and a director who recognized it’s real potential. Also stars Kevin Hart as the son of a Don King-like fight promoter and Kim Basinger as the girl who got between the two boxers back in the day. Snooze Match is more like it.

-MonsterZero NJ