Wine Country Delivers A Vacation That's At Its Best When It Comes To Easygoing Comedy

Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Paula Pell, Emily Spivey, Rachel Dratch and Ana Gasteyer are the six leading performers of Wine Country. That's quite the roster of talented folks to headline a movie and Wine Country finds plenty of amusing comedy out of just the camaraderie of this troop of actors interacting with one another over a single weekend. Interestingly, though, the biggest problem with Wine Country is how it doesn't lean on such simple comedic pleasures enough. Instead, its story ends up leaning too hard on predictable conflict-laden storylines between the individual six leading characters that make one yearn for more grounded sequences of just these six performers trading witty dialogue back-and-forth. 

The Failed Attempts At Comedy Were Coming From Inside The House!!!

Poet Mark Strand once wrote how "Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing; When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end." It is true that the end of our lives is full of uncertainty, but even I could have never predicted that my end of always expecting the best from a Will Ferrell movie would come from such a listless movie like The House. As someone who considers The Other Guys, Elf and Anchorman to be among the best 21st century comedies (heck, I even enjoyed Land Of The Lost!), seeing Ferrell follow up abysmal torturous comedies like Get Hard and Daddy's Home with yet another terrible comedy that pairs him up with Amy Poehler and a whole bunch of funny people (including Nick Kroll and Jason Mantzoukas) to such dismal results is...painful, it's just painful to watch really.

Wet Hot American Summer Knows Teen Comedies And Hillarious Absurdist Comedy Super Well

So, this past weekend I watched Wet Hot American Summer for the first time.

I cannot tell you my thoughts on the movie right here and right now.

However, if you meet me back here at this picnic table in 10 seconds, I'll tell you everything.

(Ten seconds pass)

OK, so...

(Mean) Girls Got (Comedic) Rhythym

Isn't it nice when a movie kind of just knocks you off your feet in how much its quality surprises you? It's an unexpected sensation that totally happened with me after I finished watching Mean Girls for the first time yesterday. Now, it's not like I had never heard of this 2004 Mark Waters effort in the past 12 years, far from it. I knew about October 3rd being Mean Girls Day, I'd heard how fetch was "not gonna happen", the various jokes that had cemented themselves in pop culture in a way very few 21st-century comedies have. Basically, I was familiar with Mean Girls in that I'd absorbed that the film had managed to resonate with people in a certain way....and now I totally understand it.

Sisters Review

We've all seen this premise before; two siblings intend to throw a major party in their humble abode in order for the more restrained "uncool", if you will, sibling to prove their worth in a more reckless atmosphere. Sisters throws a few new wrinkles into this conventional premise, for starters making the two siblings at the center of the plot two women over 40. Those sisters are Maura (Amy Poehler) and Kate (Tina Fey), who learn their childhood home is about to be sold and intend to throw a big o'l bash that'll allow for Maura to finally, in her own words, "...let her freak flag fly".

So, I Was On Netflix: Free Birds

Not since Beverly Hills Chiahuahua has a movies
poster had such a true claim

Each Tuesday I review a film that can be found on Netflix Instant Streaming. This week, what happens when time travel and turkeys get mixed together. Spoiler Alert: an awful movie happens.