Movie Review

Callous characters in Gully drive their lives into a ditch

Charlie Plummer, Kelvin Harrison, Jr., and Jacob Latimore in Gully.

Photo courtesy of Romulus Entertainment

People acting badly being at the center of stories has been a staple of 21st century movies and TV shows. From Training Day to The Sopranos to Breaking Bad to Deadpool, the media landscape has been littered with antiheroes. Of course, there were examples of such characters long before the year 2000, but the uptick has been so significant that their appearance is no longer regarded as unusual.

Usually, though, a good faith attempt is made at endearing the characters to the audience so that they’re more willing to go along when the characters start acting out. That’s a crucial component that’s missing in the new film Gully, which follows three friends – Jesse (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.), Nicky (Charlie Plummer), and Calvin (Jacob Latimore) – who have all experienced some kind of trauma as youths. Now in their early twenties, they live mostly aimless lives, playing a Grand Theft Auto-type video game to pass much of their time.

The trauma has caused each to have a lot of pent-up anger, and – playing off each other – they collectively reach their breaking points, using any kind of excuse to wreak havoc on a number of people, pretending like real life is now the game. Most of the people they target, however, haven’t done anything other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, making it impossible to empathize with the actions of the three friends.

Gully is an appropriate title for the film, because these characters are doing nothing but driving their lives into a ditch. Written by Marcus J. Guillory and directed by longtime music video director Nabil Elderkin, the film is told with little regard for nuance or comprehension. The filmmakers hint at the underlying reasons for these guys’ anger, but the reveals are perfunctory, yielding no insight into their individual mindsets. They may fancy themselves as making a modern-day A Clockwork Orange, but this film is nowhere near as stylish or complex as that classic.

Adding to the confusing nature of the storytelling is the presence of two well-known actors in prominent supporting roles that don't add much to the film as a whole. Jonathan Majors plays Greg, a recently-paroled man looking for work, while Terrence Howard plays Mr. Christmas, a homeless man who rambles outside of the local convenience store. Each is returned to on multiple occasions, possibly as calmer counterpoints to the mayhem of the main trio, but the ultimate purpose each character serves never fully comes to light.

Harrison, Plummer, and Latimore have been lauded as some of the brightest up-and-coming actors, but this film doesn’t showcase them properly. The dial on their acting is almost constantly set to 11, giving them no chance at making their respective characters knowable. Aside from the previously mentioned Majors and Howard, John Corbett, Robin Givens, and Amber Heard play supporting characters who don't get much to do but react to the insanity of three headliners.

If there is an ultimate point that Gully is trying to make, it gets lost among the video game aesthetics and faux wisdom dished out through much of the film. There’s no feeling sorry for or commiserating with characters who are hell-bent on destroying their own lives, and those around them.

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Gully is now playing in select theaters; it will debut on video on demand on June 8.

Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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