A couple weeks ago I was at Fright Fest in San Jose with a group of friends and someone mentioned this movie and I laughed and asked if anyone in the world had seen that movie. Two of–what I thought were–my friends balked and said to keep an open mind, because it had been entertaining. This past weekend, I spent time with my Brother, sister-in-law, and Wife and we ran out of self-respect stuff to do in the first five hours, couldn’t agree on Motherless Brooklyn or Last Christmas, so instead we saw this thing.
As a result of this experience, I would like to pose some questions to the trolls who tricked me into thinking they had judgement:
- Why didn’t you warn me that Zoey Deutsch isn’t an elaborate double-agent character, preying upon the weak with her airhead bit?
- Why didn’t you mention that the 3 types of zombies at the beginning (Homer, Hawking, and Ninja) would not actually factor significantly into the rest of the story? Where was the fucking ninja zombie in the movie? Why draw my attention to it and then not bring it back?
- or that the title was a red herring and had nothing to do with a thematic nod to further video game references or really pop culture references at all?
- or that Woody Harrelson’s character would largely lean on a unapologetically racist trope about Indian heritage?
- or that no one bothered to come up with good lines so instead the characters spend a lot of time navel-gazing at the script and critiquing Harrelson’s misogyny? (A lot of these reasons have to do with how the movie never really bothered to develop any concepts or characters past the ten years since we last saw them.)
- Why did you think it was OK for the film to couple all four/five main characters in fairly boring matches?
- Why hadn’t Babylon run into trouble before?
- Why do they spend so much time ragging on Uber and minivans?
- Was Graceland so low on the list of things to do that they couldn’t take time to pay homage?
- Why does Breslin stay moot on the Bob Dylan cover until she does?
- Why is there a rule about group sex in the commune?
- How come no one acknowledges the passage of ten years?
- How come no one impersonates Emma Stone in the impersonation scene? Is her doppelganger Zoey Deutsch? And if so, isn’t Stone the one making fun of Deutsch, not the other way around?
I’m just spitballing. I feel like there was too much missing for this to be a movie you’re gonna take a stand for. Probably the best scene is in the end credits when there’s a celebrity cameo that we didn’t know we needed. You can check it out online if you really want. I’m really glad that I waited this long to see this. Enjoyment is correlated to how long long you can resist succumbing to the cash grab.
