Andrea Duran

Overall, a predictable, but still entertaining, chick-flick. Amazon Prime recommended it to me after I watched Something Borrowed (GREAT BOOK, OKAY MOVIE!) One of the most obnoxious things about this film, as others have pointed out, is the mother. She's a very toxic, controlling mother, despite her sweet and tepid voice, who orchestrates her daughter's love life. And, she makes the daughter feel bad and self-conscious about herself whenever she can because she has no life or partnership of her own. Milly and her sister's were all likeable and interesting and they could have and should have done more with those relationships.

I LOVE comedies but Happy Madison films have gone a little bit downhill... I think this movie could have been so much funnier if they gave Missy (Lauren Lapkus) actual funny dialogue! Instead they gave her random, ridiculous bits to do that didn’t make much sense to the scene at hand. Do they not know how to create funny dialogue for women or what? It’s like if a 4 year old first learning her words smoked meth and was up for 5 days She’d be fine one second and the next second she would speak in a demonic voice and yell, “I’m Hellstar! Rawr!” Or shed trip in a swamp and roll around and drool. Just a bunch of cheap laughs and cheesy bits. However, I noticed when the character was toned down, Lauren Lapkus did a good job at being both sympathetic and quirky. And I think that’s the angle they should’ve played at. Up the quirky with better dialogue! David spade, I love him. He kind of plays the same character as in most of his movies. The uptight, goody two shoes who needs to take a chill pill. The ensemble in the movie was great too but they weren’t utilized as much as they could’ve been And the plot itself was entertaining. I’m only giving our stars for the actors & the plot. Nothing else.

I’m independent and love to hear both sides of the argument. I felt this film was an eye opener with some very interesting points alongside shocking videos. It explores the topic of the first amendment, free speech, and America’s sudden desperation to silence anyone who thinks differently than them. They also explore the topic, in passing, whether first amendment should come with restrictions on what can be said. I think this should have been further explored with both regular citizens and students to see what “the people” think. Being a first generation Hispanic, I have heard it all and I still think there should NOT be restrictions on free speech. Just because someone tells me I don’t have a place here, doesn’t mean I’m going to leave, and it doesn’t mean I’m going to go home and cry. Instead, I’ll study up and take his job and tell him HE has no place there. The events and videos of the documentary were frightening and appalling! It goes through the Evergreen College Incident of 2017, the Berkeley riots, and speakers and professors receiving death threats and verbal assaults for speaking THEIR truth and THEIR argument and the bizarre desperation from the left to silence them. The documentary did such a great job, it earned my respect and had me leaning towards the right for once.

I love indie movies, Naomi Watts, and nontraditional love stories so I thought this would be a perfect fit. I actually selected this movie by total accident believing it to be something else and believing it to be an LGBTQ love story, grew really excited. Instead, I was presented with a family who enjoys to have sex with each other’s teenage sons. Paging Dr. Freud! The two female besties grow up next to each other. They remain neighbors through marriage and birthing their sons who are close in age and become best friends. Eventually, teenage Ian kisses Roz as she’s going through it and they sleep together. Son Tom finds out and extracts revenge by sleeping with Ian’s mom. And then the ladies begin affairs with each other’s sons which last years. I’m extremely open minded but, this bordered on incesteous for me because of the age of the boys and the fact that they all grew up as a family! In my eyes, that’s like starting an affair with a stepson. That wasn’t the only issue, the character Tom had no personality. He was like a blank minded sociopath which was incredibly creepy. The husbands played no role in this movie at all. And the women were acting like silly frat girls repeating, “This shouldn’t happen again! Tee hee!” Overall it wasn’t a bad movie, the women are great actors and the scenery and direction was beautiful but I think the story and characters needed a lot more work.

3 stars for its diverse cast, hysterical scenes Implementing magical realism, and it’s funny relevant topics when it comes to female friendships and insecurities. It’s worth a watch, I promise you that. The reason I removed 2 stars is because the show is very new and as such, is still on a learning curve. The First two episodes are very strong but it seems to kind of lose its focus, particularly with the characters themselves. And that’s my biggest issue. Madison (Brenda Song) and Stella (Shay Mitchell) are my favorite characters of the 4 women group. The uptight, control freak Madison & the Free Spirited Partygoer Stella, are commonly used tropes in most shows (think Monica & Phoebe) and they can be played out. But the actresses do a good job in playing these tropes that it feels natural and it makes them funnier. What does NOT feel natural to the group dynamic are the personalities of the main character, Jules (Kat Dennings) and her coworker Izzy (Esther Povitsky). Jules is INCREDIBLY bland and slightly awkward. I’m not too familiar with the Dennings work so I don’t know if that’s her actual personality or the character’s but, I feel like anybody could play Jules because there’s no unique traits or anything interesting that stands out. Her reactions, her arguments, her statements, are bland and monotonous and almost robotic. It just doesn’t flow well at all in their group. And the character of Ivy is trying waaaaaay too hard to be the “weird, silly” character trope commonly found in most shows. For example, Joey & Phoebe from Friends, their “dumb and weird” traits made them laugh out loud funny. But, her character is made soooo insecure & desperate AND weird, that it suctioned the funny out. Theres nothing funny about her at all. So you have a bland, boring character, and one who likes to lick wall sockets, and there’s your group of empowered women? Again, it’s worth a watch. I still ENJOYED the show and it’s plots/topics, and found the magical realism funny but, I think the characters need to be worked on.

Wow! I was very surprised how much I loved this movie. A longtime fan of Joseph Gordon Levitt, I only watched this film to see his work but maintained low to moderate expectations. It was fresh, funny, and possessed a surprisingly intelligent, modern theme for a movie infiltrated by vulgar scenes and porn. For a movie with more sex scenes than actual porn, it had a lot to say. It touched on society's very distorted expectations of relationships, sex, and physical appearance. Men like Jon (Levitt's character) base their expectations of sex on the unrealistic scenes in porn. Women like Barbara (Johansson's character) base their expectations of relationships on unrealistic romantic comedies/dramas. Both are a recipe for disaster. That being said, I applauded his acknowledgement on the recent and growing epidemic of porn addiction. The way the men think now, how they respond, and what they expect sexually is held to the high and glamorized expectations of media and pornography. 5/5! I'd watch it again!

This was a comedy, not a thriller. We spent half the film giggling at what was supposed to be scary and suspenseful. Not just me and my friends, but the groups in front of us and behind us! The fact that the entire theatre was giggling shows something. It had the potential to be a great film. The tools, the plot, the great actresses were all there. But, it was incredibly cheesy for over an hour up until the end. There was no substance to the characters, no chemistry between the actors, and Moretz’s reactions and portrayals of “fear” and “shock,” were too silly to feel believable. And before Frances (Moretz) spends much time with Greta or even allows her to explain herself, she goes into a full melodramatic outlandish attitude where she runs away and ignores her and phones the police. 5/10