The spring season is drawing to an end, and it’s coming to a conclusion with a bit of laughs, animated action, and famous people falling in love. Get ready for Keanu, Ratchet and Clank and Mother’s Day.
Just remember, I'm not reviewing these movies, but rather predicting where they'll end up on the Tomatometer. Let's take a look at This Rotten Week has to offer.
Rotten Watch Prediction
I hate cats. So while I’m not hoping anything negative befouls the titular kitten Keanu in this thing, it’s hard for me to root for any feline-led flick. Thankfully, this might be about the cat in name alone. The rest of the flick looks like a chance for Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele to rip off every redband joke they couldn’t throw out there on their sketch show. And for that, we might be rewarded. Because this thing looks pretty hilarious. In the quest to get back Peele’s new cat, Keanu, the duo embark on a gangster-filled, shoot’em up replete with just about everything you’d expect to see from the duo who push past a bunch of racial barriers in their comedy to expose both the good and bad living within our culture right now. That they’d make it about a mission to retrieve a kitten makes it all the better. Early reviews are strong with it sitting at 75% on the Tomatometer, now with critics mainly agreeing that the film works on a number of different levels. It might not stick this high over the course of the week, but it’s going to be a strong showing for the pair.
Rotten Watch Prediction
Garry Marshall has a mission in the movie world. And that mission is to one day claim that he’s used every living (and dead) actor and actress in one of his movies. It’s a bold mission and I don’t envy the task. But my man has a goal and he’s sticking to it. It’s coupled with another benchmark and that’s to go through all of the holidays and write a very (very, very, very) loose script around said holiday. It dovetails nicely with his first goal because it allows him to just chuck a bunch of names on screen and hope something sticks. It rarely does. And now we have Mother’s Day.
This one includes Jennifer Aniston, Kate Hudson, Julia Roberts, Timothy Olyphant and that’s just the beginning of the list. But as dude’s proven with flicks like Valentine’s Day (18%) and New Year’s Eve (7%), it takes more than every available working person in Hollywood to make a good flick. And it says a lot that in the trailer they feel the need to remind you he helmed Pretty Woman, which came out 26 years ago. It’s been a long time since dude’s done anything critically worthwhile and Mother’s Day won’t change the course.
Rotten Watch Prediction
I love a good animated movie. In some ways I think animated movies are harder to pull off because they typically need to appeal to both adults and kids alike with really crisp storytelling and an attention to plot and detail that you don’t necessarily need from live action. There’s less of a margin for error with these flicks because they aren’t instantly relatable. It really needs to fire on all cylinders with both the writing and details. It’s no easy feat though places like Pixar and Dreamworks pull it off time and time again. Ratchet & Clank doesn’t look like it’s in the same league. Not by a longshot.
Based on the popular video game series, this film follows Ratchet as he meets Clank and does, I don’t know… stuff? I couldn’t really figure it out watching the trailer. Animated movies can go one of two ways: appeal to the all audiences or go lower common denominator. This one feels like it follows the latter path. The jokes are tired and generic and it feels like a cash grab on the kids who like the video games.
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A hit and a miss from the Rotten Watch last time around. The miss was Elvis and Nixon (Predicted: 44% Actual: 75%), and I whiffed by quite a bit. I was thrown off by first by how little the leads, Michael Shannon and Kevin Spacey, resembled the actual historical figures in Tricky Dick and The King. Maybe that swayed too much of how I looked at the rest of the movie. I seemed to have written if off on that (seeming) flaw alone and missed with my prediction. Critics really liked it from a comedic standpoint and most loved the lead performances. It makes sense, as these dudes are great actors. I thought they’d fall short on the story as well, but it looks like the bizarre incident plays well enough for a feature. Overall it was a critical hit and I was way off.
Meanwhile The Huntsman: Winter’s War (Predicted: 14% Actual: 17%) was right in line. It makes sense. This isn’t really a movie that anybody wanted, and it doesn’t help that it’s basically centered around formerly periphery characters. The early reviews were weak and nothing improved over the course of the week. This one bombed and I very much suspect it’s last we hear of the Snow White retelling no one was asking for.
Next time around we’ve got a big one with Captain America: Civil War. It’s gonna be a Rotten Week!
