Ranking the Movies of 2018: Week 15
'Super Troopers' and Amy Schumer Ranked This Week
Cult movies are a strange breed of cat. One can never know what will become a cult movie or why a movie becomes an underground hit. Super Troopers is a good example of this odd, unpredictable phenomenon. When the comedy group Broken Lizard broke out in 2001 with the comedy Super Troopers, no one could have predicted that the low budget comedy would become a home video juggernaut.
Indeed it happened, however, Super Troopers cost a minuscule $3 million and went on to gross $23 million at the worldwide box office and more than $70 million on home video formats. There is no good explanation for why this happened. Nothing about the low budget aesthetic of Super Troopers gives any indication as to why audiences took to the movie as they did.
You can’t predict a cult phenomenon. Something about the goofball prank based comedy of Broken Lizard spoke to something in the audience that fell in love with it. Now that Super Troopers 2 has arrived, 17 years later, the cult phenomena is now a nostalgia piece and once again Broken Lizard have found a formula for success.
I am not a fan of Super Troopers or Super Troopers 2 but I can’t help but admire it from a business standpoint. Like the original, Super Troopers 2 has a relatively low budget, a crowd-funded, $6 million budget that made a profit on its opening weekend by grossing nearly $18 million.
The Broken Lizard comedy troupe just doesn’t appeal to me. The bro-ey, self-satisfied nature of the Broken Lizard style just leaves me cold. The sequel played, for me, like a greatest hits record from a band that I don’t care for. Comedy routines from the first Super Troopers get repeated in the sequel and since I didn’t laugh the first time at the "meow" gag, I didn’t laugh when it was repeated beat for beat in the sequel.
Super Troopers 2 was not the only comedy released this weekend as Amy Schumer returned to theaters with I Feel Pretty, a comedy with a unique premise and a little controversy. I Feel Pretty tells the story of Renee, (Schumer) a woman who suffers a head injury and suddenly develops unending self-confidence.
Despite not seeing herself any different than before her head injury, Renee now has the self confidence of a super model and it begins to turn her whole life around, including helping her meet a new boyfriend and get her the job of her dreams working at a cosmetics company headed up by Michelle Williams.
I enjoyed I Feel Pretty but not wholeheartedly. The film struggles in the first hour with pacing issues as it feels much longer than it is, especially prior to the head injury plot kicking in. More troubling however, are the recurring gags that portray Schumer/Renee as unattractive. I’m of two minds on this as I do find Schumer attractive but I understand that the movie is aimed at what Schumer and the directing duo of Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein see as the societal standard for beauty.
I Feel Pretty is intending to be empowering and send a message to everyone about self-care and loving who you are despite your perceived flaws but the message is muddled. Schumer sends the point home well in a final monologue at the film’s climax but the triumph feels unearned within a movie that relies to heavily on set-piece gags rather than a tight and consistent narrative.
I did get plenty of laughs from those set-pieces, especially Renee’s bizarrely empowering wet t-shirt performance and Rory Scovell’s sweet, fumbling, nice guy act, but the laughs are only tangentially related to the point that the filmmakers are intending. The gags of I Feel Pretty are seemingly at odds with the intended message. Are we to laugh at our distaff Falstaff or laugh with her?
The final new movie of the weekend was Traffik, but there isn’t much to say about that exploitative, slapped together mishmash of thriller clichés and human trafficking. Next week, it’s all about Marvel, as Avengers: Infinity War joins the rankings. My review is out now and you can get a sense that the movie is going to land relatively low on this list from reading the review here.
Also joining the list next week is the Nicolas Cage action movie, Knowing which is our “classic” on this week’s Everyone’s a Critic Podcast. The film was chosen by my co-host, Josh Adams, because the apocalyptic theme seemed to tie in a little with the near apocalypse we’re assuming from Avengers: Infinity War.
We will also be adding on a streaming challenge for this week’s episode as we have only one new movie. This means, that I along with Josh and Bob will be choosing new movies available on streaming services and bring them to the show. I will be watching the new Netflix movie, Kodachrome starring Jason Sudeikis, Elizabeth Olson and Ed Harris.
New rankings below and new additions to the list are in bold type…
1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
2. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
3. Black Swan
7. Best F®iends
8. Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
9. Annihilation
10. Unsane
11. Just Charlie
12. Columbus
13. The Death of Stalin
14. Hostiles
16. Boogie Nights
17. Foxy Brown
18. Becks
19. A Quiet Place
20. Game Night
21. Are We Not Cats
23. 12 Strong
24. Red Sparrow
25. Act & Punishment
28. Switching Channels
29. Actors of Sound: A Foley Artist Documentary
30. I Feel Pretty
31. Tomb Raider
32. War Games
33. Ready Player One
35. Sheik Jackson
36. Gringo
37. Love, Simon
38. Isle of Dogs
39. Hurricane Heist
40. Samson & Delilah
41. Heat
42. Hell’s House
45. Blockers
46. Early Man
47. Almost Paris
48. Bloodsport
49. Reds
50. Play Misty for Me
51. Frantic
52. Beirut
53. 7 Days in Entebbe
54. Taffin
55. Super Troopers
56. Super Troopers 2
57. Samson
58. Friday the 13th
59. Rampage
60. Last House on the Left
61. Burnt Offerings
62. Paddington 2
63. Traffik
65. Sherlock Gnomes
66. Chappaquiddick
67. Cloverfield Paradox
68. Peter Rabbit
69. Proud Mary
70. The Mist
71. God’s Not Dead: A Light in the Darkness
72. Den of Thieves
73. Death Wish 1974
74. Death Wish 2018
75. The Commuter
77. Winchester: The House That Ghosts Built
78. Midnight Sun
79. Forever My Girl
80. Every Day
82. 15:17 to Paris
83. Truth or Dare
84. The Greasy Strangler
About the Creator
Sean Patrick
Hello, my name is Sean Patrick He/Him, and I am a film critic and podcast host for the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast I am a voting member of the Critics Choice Association, the group behind the annual Critics Choice Awards.
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