Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-03-08 (Friday)

On 3/9/24 8:38 AM, Dimensional Traveler wrote:

What Did You Watch?

While I stayed a little later at work than I intended to, I did get home mid-afternoon, which was enough time to get through some movies.
All I did yesterday was movies:
Mean Girls (2024) (Pee+) - In (glorious?) 4k - another movie that benefited not at all from being 4k (because of the way it was filmed (hell, the movie I watched after, which wasn't even 4k, was a better looking image!).
    Luckily, I have seen the original (on Showtime?...) in the past few months, so it is still pretty fresh in my mind.
    Anyway, you're probably thinking - "What is the point of remaking a movie that already hit it out of the park 20 years ago?!" Well, this one is the musical version.
    As such, I definitely found it inferior to the original (which Pee+ also has in 4k, though I have not checked that out yet...) in about every way possible.
    There were a few good bits - John Hamm turns up as Coach Carr (Dwayne Hill played him in the original). And I thought Christopher Briney was a more appealing Aaron Samuels than Jonathan Bennett was. Finally, Angourie Rice is probably a better actress than Lindsay Lohan.
    Cady's mom is played by Jenna Fischer, who looks so old now...
    Bebe Wood and Avantika are fine as the other plastics, Gretchen and Karen - not much worse than the originals, but no better.
    The scene where Regina finds out that Cady has been feeding her carb bars to make her fat, and screams, is incredibly well lit - Rapp looks downright demonic! That's the best-shot scene in the whole film, but it belongs in an entirely different (better! horror!) movie.
    Other changes I didn't understand at all - the character of Cady Heron's dad is totally eliminated from the proceedings! And they replace Amy Poehler with Busy Philipps as Regina's Mom (why?!!).
    They also sneak in a cameo from Lindsay Lohan (who also looks old now - and she's not even 40!!) to play the Mathletes Moderator, but I thought Bruce Hunter excelled at this bit in the original.
    Tim Meadows and Tina Fey are still in this, but it felt like both roles, especially Meadow's, are downgraded in this version, which I also find inexplicable, as Meadows (and to a lesser extent Fey) are the best things about the original film.
    They also excise some key bits from the original, like Cady daydreaming that she attacks Regina, and more crucially the end of the original film where we learn that the "reformed" Regina channeled all of her rage into lacrosse and became a jock - Why would you drop probably the best bit from the original film?!
    On the singing and music end:
    The music was OK - some of the songs were better than average, others were unmemorable.
    Of the singers, I thought Auli'i Cravalho was by far the best (well backed up by Jaquel Spivey) - I didn't like Cravalho's take on Janis nearly as much as Lizzy Caplan's, but Cravalho's (and Spivey) provide probably the best musical bits. Reneé Rapp as Regina can really sing... well, sort of - she can really belt it out, but I thought Rapp's enunciation was poor (very!) so as a result I couldn't make out half of what she was singing! Angourie Rice is an OK singer - she's not bad, but she's nothing special either.
    This was an OK watch, but I have no desire to rewatch this version now, and the original is a much better watch.
Follow Her (Pee+ (w/ Showtime?)) - This film (which hit the festival circuit in 2022, but wasn't internet-released until 2023) is ostensibly a "thriller".
    I watched it primarily because it co-stars gorgeous Canadian actress Eliana Jones (who unfortunately isn't in the film very much), who I am disturbed to see has not worked since 2022 (maybe another actress who got married, and either temporarily or permanently "retired" from acting?... see, also: Cristine Prosperi).
    I did like the way this was filmed - while it wasn't presented in 4k, it looks like it was probably filmed that way, and looked virtually 4k watching it.
    Anyway, this stars actress Dani Barker (who I think must also be Canadian, as she co-starred in 2014's "The Scarehouse" which was definitely a Canadian film). Barker plays a NYC aspiring actress who is slumming it as a social media star - her "bit" seems to be "exposing" men with fetishes.
    One of her recent bits involved a glitch where the identity of the fetishist she was exposing is revealed in her video (their faces are supposed to be masked), but she leaves it online as it's her biggest video yet, and is about to vault her into the Top 10.
    But destitute, and about to have her apartment taken away by her disapproving father (Mark Moses), she takes a job in upstate New York to help a man (Luke Cook) develop a screenplay.
    Of course, the dude, while handsome, is a bit of a nut. Oh and he may have an ulterior motive!!
    It's not long before things take a disturbing turn.
    This was all right. I'm not sure it sports anything we haven't seen before. But I guess it delivers on what it's after.
    I am not sure I cared for the ending, which felt like it came right out of "Unfriended (2): Dark Web".
What did you watch?