2024 in Review: Big Dumb Fun

 

After a VERY long hiatus, I am back online, and looking back on the best and worst of film in 2024; this is the first in a series of posts about the year in film.

Welcome back, kids!

2024 has been a great year for movies - I'm already struggling to limit my still-to-come "year's best" list to just 12 entries... and I have at least 12 more potential candidates to watch!

But some of my favorite film experiences aren't so much deserving of critical accolades. They're just examples of what I lovingly call "Big Dumb Fun."  Here are a few you might want to indulge yourself in when you're just not up for a Serious Film:

Unfrosted

Jerry Seinfeld's goofy, highly fictionalized story of the invention of the Pop-Tart has a "throw  everything at the wall and see what sticks" approach. Unfortunately, no one took the time to edit out the stuff that didn't stick.

It's a bit lumpy and lazy, with some gags that utterly fail to land. Most of Melissa McCarthy's dialogue feels like placeholder lines from an early draft of the script that the writers never got around to replacing with actual jokes.  Amy Schumer is badly miscast as the cereal heiress Marjorie Post, a role which cries out for an actress who can deliver moneyed elegance and sharp comic timing in the same moment. Sigourney Weaver or Gwyneth Paltrow would have knocked it out of the park. 

However...

When the gags DO work (and many of them do), Unfrosted is laugh-out-loud funny. When Jon Hamm and John Slattery show up as their Mad Men characters to deliver a sex-saturated advertising pitch for the new breakfast pastry, the film briefly soars into the comedy stratosphere. A funeral for a Kellogg's executive provides some dark fun in the form of a special graveside ritual performed by the Rice Krispies trio of Snap, Crackle and Pop. I won't reveal which famous British actor emerges from Tony the Tiger's costume, but his deadly serious approach to the role is a giddy delight.

There's certainly plenty of talent on hand. In addition to the aforementioned stars, Jim Gaffigan plays a major role, and various small parts and cameos are filled by SNL and Veep alumni, among others. They all look like they're having a great time, even when the audience might not be. But ultimately, it's hard not to love the all-cast dance number that plays over the closing credits.

The First Omen

I can't say that I've kept up with The Omen franchise over the years, but this much I remember: Damien, Satan's creepy little spawn, was born to a mother who died while giving birth to him. When the son of Lee Remick and Gregory Peck arrived stillborn, a nun working on the maternity ward helpfully suggested they swap in Damien for Remick's baby while she slept. And if you thought that nun was acting out of innocent benevolence, this film will set you straight.

Forty-eight years after Richard Donner's genuinely terrifying horror classic, The First Omen gives us Damien's somewhat less terrifying origin story.  It begins with the journey of an idealistic young American nun (Nell Tiger Free) sent to serve in a Roman orphanage.  She's very serious and devoted to her calling, at least until she bonds with an orphan girl who has visions of 'evil things.' Lots of very bad, very creepy things happen for which there is no obvious explanation.  It's all very tense and atmospheric (good work by director Arkasha Stevenson), even if it takes a very long time for the pieces of the puzzle to fall, more or less logically, into place. (Slight spoiler: the Catholic Church is ALL up in it!) Old pros like Sonia Braga, Charles Dance and Bill Nighy fill out the cast with welcome flourishes of gravitas.

The First Omen segues seamlessly into the 1976 film. I watched them back-to-back on Hulu just before Halloween this year, and found that the final scene of the new film matches the opening scene of the original to near perfection. I strongly suggest you do the same, although you'll now have to rent the original film on another streaming service like Amazon or Apple.

Gladiator II

Ridley Scott's sequel to his own 1999 hit, Gladiator, is the most fun I had at the movies all year. But I'm not entirely sure that was the intention.

There is every indication that Gladiator II takes itself fairly seriously, even if I can't. It plays fast and loose with Roman history. Well, with every kind of history, for that matter. In one scene, a character is shown sitting in a cafe while reading a newspaper; this takes place approximately 1200 years before the invention of the printing press and God knows how many years before cafes became a thing. It's comparable to Fred Flintstone having a TV.

Then there are the gladiator battles, many of which feature obviously computer-generated animals like sharks, baboons and a rhinoceros, none of which ever made an appearance in the Roman Colosseum in real life.  But honestly, those scenes are so crazy that they're just fun. When Paul Mescal grappled in hand-to-hand combat with the CGI baboons, I laughed harder than I had at anything in a comedy film all year. But it wasn't laughter born of derision - I was actually having a great time. A baboon would roar in Mescal's face, Mescal would fearlessly roar right back, and the baboon would freak out in fear - I mean, how can you NOT find that hilarious?  I got a pretty big laugh out of the gladiator who rode into the arena on the back of a charging rhino, too.

The best performances in Gladiator II are the devilish tongue-in-cheek turns by the supporting cast. Paul Mescal's gladiator and Pedro Pascal's general are played in earnest, while Denzel Washington underplays his scheming consul character with dry humor and deadly confidence. A pair of demented, ginger-haired co-emperor/brothers (Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger) and Tim McInnerny's corrupt, debt-ridden Senator Thraex provide the decadent comic relief.