Mike Schulz talks with Dave Levora and Darren Pitra about having missed Kandahar, but he may have dodged a bullet there; otherwise, he saw the majority of the movies discussed last week. About The Little Mermaid, one of The Deez laments the exclusion of the song “Les Poissons” from the remake, which he felt was the best song in the original. Though the film was not designed to be a “laugh riot,” as Schulz indicates, Rob Marshall’s 2023 remake did do better than either man in the studio could have foretold ($209.2 million on a $250 million budget, and expected to grow, grow, grow). Nonetheless, the recasting of what was once a very funny animated feature to be a latterday weepy romance (at two hours and twenty minutes, no less) made Schulz more ambivalent about the overallness of it than he would have preferred. There were superb touches, such as Halle Bailey’s performance and singing, but even that wasn’t enough for Our Man in the Seats to label it a worthwhile, shell-out-the-cash, pawn-your-car type of cinemagoing experience. About the comedy You Hurt My Feelings, Schulz thought it fantastic, with Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Beth, a first-time author whose husband, Don, played by Tobias Menzies, confesses to a friend that he thinks the product of her labors is a flaming zeppelin of a failure — and, naturally, Beth overhears this and goes into a tailspin. Moreover, in a supporting cast brimming with talent, Michaela Watkins was cited by Schulz as a pure delight as Sarah, Beth’s sister, who must somehow contain the whirlwind of Beth’s outward-spiraling neurosis. About The Starling Girl, featuring Eliza Scanlen as Jem Starling, a fundamentalist Christian in Kentucky who falls in love with both the art of dance and the boy of Owen (Lewis Pullman), who’s also a youth pastor freshly returned from missionary work. What sounded like a remake of a film that’s already been remade (Footloose) is to Schulz a fine melodrama, “a little ‘Afterschool Special’ [in parts],” particularly in its portrayal of the religiously devout as a nest of smiling spitting cobras — and with Jimmi “Liam McPoyle” Simpson as the father, how could it be otherwise? — but enjoyable on the whole, owing to Scanlen and Pullman’s performances. About The Machine, Peter Atencio’s adaptation of a stand-up bit by shirtless comic protagonist Bert Kreischer, and About My Dad, Laura Terruso’s film based on the reminiscences of comedian Sebastian Maniscalco’s relationship with his father, Salvo (Robert De Niro), the gang expressed incredulity that both films, in their culturally-specific ways, shared the same plot about hanging with your dad — “so it should have been a Father’s Day release,” Schulz said. Kreischer’s story/routine concerns his college days, when he visited Russia in the Nineties, found himself infiltrating the Russian Mafiya — as one does — and all manner of comic chaos following in his wake. The first half of the film concerns his initial trip, with Jimmy Tatro portraying his apple-cheeked self; and then, in the second half (which is taken from Kreischer’s “sequel” to his “Machine” shtick), Dad-bod Kreischer has to return to Russia with his Dad-Dad, played by Mark Hamill, to somehow get Pandora back in her box. Perhaps because the milieu is post-Soviet Russia, the events of The Machine are much gorier than Schulz had expected (surprise N° 1), but (surprise N° 2) it was a well-crafted, intricate film, much more involved than the notion of a filmmaker adapting a comic’s old stand-up bit might lead one to believe possible. Kreischer’s performance didn’t impress Schulz, though the lone group of guys who were present during the showing were apparently primed to guffaw over nearly utterance made by him. Hamill, meanwhile, impressed the Deez with the level of comic performer he has turned out to be (though a case can be made that he’s always been, even if inadvertently, going back to his Luke Skywalker days), having aged into grandfather roles. About About My Father, the fact that Sebastian Maniscalco is a very big deal right now on the comic circuit was apparently all the proof Lionsgate Films needed to distribute a whole film based on a length of his old rope. Maniscalco, portraying himself, shares a Sicilian upbringing, with Robert De Niro basically reprising his old schtick from the Meet the Parents franchise as his father — Jack Byrnes with a Godfather accent. Sonny-Sebastian is bringing the family of Elle (Leslie Bibb), his fiancé, over to meet his sprawling clan. He’s a bit nervous about the coming clash of civilizations, about which Dad feigns a prideful incredulity. It’s the sort of set-up that traditionally gets portrayed in the broadest manner possible. The film had some solid laughs (plus Kim Cattrall, who hasn’t been seen in quite a while), but when asked if he preferred it over The Machine, Schulz couldn’t respond definitively, except that he had no plans to ever see either film again. (Based on the abysmal box office both films made, it may surprise some people if either film gets streamed.) Schulz will be out of office until June 15, but should have a review in the pages of the River Cities’ Reader of the animated Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and The Boogeyman, a Stephen King adaptation by local boys Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (with Mark Heyman). Schulz hasn’t taken a holiday in a long time, folks, so you’ll have to wait a while for your next fix. . .

The Little Mermaid, You Hurt My Feelings, The Starling Girl, About My Father, and The Machine