Movies may be back in theaters, but that doesn’t mean they can’t still be enjoyed in large from the home box office either; especially new releases.
There is a reason why some of the best working filmmakers are flocking to the streamer that helped inspire the boom of the platform in the first place. Netflix is where someone like Judd Apatow (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up) can return to stand-up and reclaim a joke-per-minute rate he hasn’t pulled off in a feature since his understated work on 1995’s summer camp farce, Heavyweights.
Where Shawn Levy, after directing a gobsmacking string of hits from 2002-2014 in anonymity – including, but not limited to: Big Fat Liar, Cheaper by the Dozen, The Pink Panther, Date Night, Real Steel, The Internship, and This is Where I Leave You, with some Night at the Museums mixed in for good measure – could complete a recharge with Stranger Things before bursting back onto the movie scene as the latest Ryan Reynolds whisperer.
And it’s where Richard Linklater (Dazed and Confused, Boyhood, the Before films) completed yet another trilogy, this one of the “rotoscoped animation” variety, that no one saw coming when it first commenced.
All three directors brought new arrivals to Netflix over the past couple of weeks; two are the talk of the online town, and one really should be.
The Bubble
It’s not too soon anymore, and boy doesn’t the Massapequa native-turned-Hollywood poignant-raunch soothsayer in Apatow know it. Pandemic woes have never produced more laughter than in his Galaxy Quest-meets-Christopher Guest allegory of the Hollywood-depraved cave.
David Duchovny and Apatow’s real-life wife, Leslie Mann, star as a pair of on-again/off-again prima donna performers. Alongside them: Guardians of the Galaxy’s Karen Gillan, Keegan-Michael Key of Key and Peele, The Mandalorian’s Pedro Pascal, Saturday Night Live’s Fred Armisen, and Apatow and Mann’s daughter, Iris – all headlining as the cast and crew of a Jurassic World pastiche film-within-the-film. The team struggles to complete their sixth film together due to quarantine paranoia and green screen pitfalls.
Keeping with his wheelhouse, Apatow flaunts his knack for documentarian sensibilities, as he’s done with earlier work like HBO’s The Zen Diaries of Gary Shandling and the 2009 dramedy, Funny People.
This makes it all the more impressive that a veteran who worshiped at the funnybone of yesteryear’s comedic royalty like Shandling, Mel Brooks, George Carlin and Rodney Dangerfield could reinvent himself as someones whose far-and-away stand out scene-work within one outing constituted the incorporation of quote-unquote TikTok humor and dance numbers galore.
Apatow has something to say here – and it’s that if we can’t laugh at ourselves and our debatably overblown but nevertheless real anxieties, we don’t deserve to laugh period.
The Adam Project
In 2016, rom-com dynamite-turned-jack of all trades action lead Ryan Reynolds boarded a rocket a la Deadpool and hasn’t calmed down since.
In fact, his only return to base just crash-landed–in the form of a Back to the Future for the Internet age, wherein he positively lays it down in a buddy comedy high concept sci-fi pairing him up with – here’s a new one – the teenage version of himself.
Equally self-deprecating and poignant, The Adam Project goes for the gut even more so than Disney’s shamelessly Truman Show-charged Free Guy was able to; and for the early ‘aughts rom-community, a special delight appears, as 13 Going on 30 (2004) leads Jennifer Garner and Mark Ruffalo star as Reynold’s time-crossed world-apart parents in Shawn Levy’s second of (at least) three Reynolds collaborations.
Zoe Saldana also stars, as does Walker Scobell as Reynolds’ younger counterpart. The newcomer is sure to find offers up to the ceiling after proving a natural while receiving tutelage-by-example from this era’s master of camera-ready improvisational – and general – confidence.
The Adam Project is Field of Dreams for the bullied that still want to have a catch (and it’s “have a catch,” not play catch – come on now) even after not making the school team. It’s a Nickelodeon-consumable cut of Interstellar edited into a 4:30 movie; one that will leave you talking through and well-past dinner with parents you’ll remember to hug just a little bit tighter the next time the opportunity presents itself – ergo, not too long after catching this sneak attack tear-producer.
Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood
While The Adam Project kicks off with a future rocket sent back to us, Richard Linklater’s contribution to the “here’s more than a slice of my unique upbringing” subgenre takes us back to the most memorable time in space travel history.
Jack Black trades in musical tenacity and funny voices for Daniel Stern-reminiscent nostalgic voiceover commenting on Linklater’s impressions of his own wonder years while living in Houston when Houston was the place to live, and work; specifically, for NASA in 1969.
Stan, the head-full of fantasies teenage lead, doesn’t dare attempt to wrangle his imagination. Thus, we rally for him to make it to the Moon just as hard as the rest of the nation is pulling for the astronauts whose names grade school textbooks embedded into our collective memory.
The film reminds us of what’s most often revised. During those world-stopping moments from our youth, we weren’t as dialed in as we wish we’d been. We were too busy wrapped up in ourselves and our playground mythos to stay awake later on at night while the rest of the family was glued to the TV set – or keep from billing ourselves the protagonist in both our dream world and our waking lives. Not even American pop culture’s arguably most defining moment is safe from what our minds are capable of.
Linklater’s return to the cutting-edge trace animation technology he hasn’t dabbled in since his 2006 adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly also serves as an ample coming of age – which he’s perfected several times over.
Forget Wall-E and Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars (yes, that exists); of its comparables, this renegade, potential non-Disney animated feature Oscar contender most closely resembles the similarly needle drop-heavy Recess: School’s Out (2001).
Could this be? The dawning of the age of kids’ movies captivating adults as equally as they ought to. Leave it to Linklater, who’s always pushing the envelope – whether with arthouse (Tape, 2001), studio (School of Rock, 2003) and even a forthcoming Boyhood-inspired undertaking, this time a twenty-years-shot musical adaptation (Merrily We Roll Along, 2041?).
With Apollo 10 ½, he’s yet again reclaimed what’s long-been lost by creating a truly original path – one of the many he’s forged, and still continues to this late into his hangout movie Heaven-sent career.
