Review: Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)

* * * 1/2
Director: Marielle Heller
Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Richard E. Grant

Likeability is a very overrated quality in a protagonist. We don't need to like someone to find their story compelling and engaging. We don't even have to like them in order to root for them to come out of things alright. Good thing, too, since Can You Ever Forgive Me?'s Lee Israel, played with marvelously jagged edges by Melissa McCarthy, is pretty difficult to like most of the time. She's a nasty, misanthropic drunk who doesn't think twice about using people, screwing them over, and manipulating them. She's also a lonely person who tends to self-sabotage relationships because she fears connection/expects rejection, adores her cat, and is capable of deep compassion for people who are (somehow) worse off than she is. She's also pretty damn funny ("Oh to be a mediocre white man who doesn't realize how full of shit he is," she laments at one point and, lord, truer words have rarely been spoken) and the movie itself offers a great balance of seriousness and humor. It's one of the year's lowkey delights.

Review: Life of the Party (2018)

* * 1/2
Director: Ben Falcone
Starring: Melissa McCarthy

Life of the Party, the latest vehicle for the go for broke talents of Melissa McCarthy, is neither as well put together as the films that McCarthy has made with director Paul Feig, nor as broad and crass as her previous collaborations with Ben Falcone. There's a sweetness to the movie which many of McCarthy's other movies tend to lack until until their third acts, and it's pretty funny even though it must be said that it has a pretty simple premise - after being left by her husband, a woman decides to make over her life, starting by going back to college - and manages to do remarkably little with it. Still, McCarthy is funny and charming and sometimes that's enough.

Review: Ghostbusters (2016)

* * *
Director: Paul Feig
Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Kristin Wiig, Leslie Jones, Kate McKinnon

So here we are, finally. After over a year of internet-destroying discussion, the most controversial movie of 2016 (at least until The Birth of a Nation comes out in October, I presume) is here. I'll skip any kind of commentary on the war of words between those who believe that the original Ghostbusters is sacrosanct and those who think that the extreme reaction to the idea of a reboot and subsequent campaign against the finished film is fueled by the most impotent kind of misogyny. It's not that I take no position on the subject; it's just that I'm so bored with it at this point that I'd rather leave this particular hill to those who have decided they're willing to die on it. So, to the point: I liked it! I thought it was really funny and Kate McKinnon is an absolute treasure. It's not a masterpiece, but it's good summer fun.

Review: The Boss (2016)

* *
Director: Ben Falcone
Starring: Melissa McCarthy

I'll admit it, I'm something of a Melissa McCarthy apologist. I find the most consistent criticism of her - that she plays the same character over and over again - to be kind of lazy as, aside from the occasional foul-mouthed tirade, I don't really see that the ruthless con artist who discovers that she's capable of actually caring about others of Identity Thief, the tough, lone wolf cop of The Heat, the woman damaged by a lifetime of disappointment of Tammy, and the hyper-capable agent hiding inside a meek and submissive persona of Spy have all that much in common. Even the way that the people who surround those characters relate to them is quite different, with Tammy inspiring people's pity at basically all turns, Mullins (of The Heat) inspiring fear of her hair-trigger temper, Susan Cooper inspiring those around her to constantly underestimate her, and Dawn Budgie (Identity Thief), inspiring wariness because she's so clearly a sociopath. I also, generally, admire McCarthy's willingness to go for broke in the interest of getting a laugh, often sacrificing all vanity to get there. That said, The Boss is far, far from her best and her collaborations with husband Ben Falcone continue to be a distant second to her collaborations with Paul Feig

Review: Spy (2015)

* * *
Director: Paul Feig
Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Rose Byrne, Jason Statham, Miranda Hart, Jude Law

As much as I loved Bridesmaids and enjoyed Melissa McCarthy in it, if you had told me in 2011 that she would become one of my favorite things about the summer movie season, I don't think I would have believed you. But 2013 brought The Heat, and McCarthy in all her foul-mouthed glory, and 2014 brought Tammy, which has some deep flaws but which I enjoyed nevertheless, and now comes Spy, a film which combines her ability to tap into the vulnerable humanity of a character and her facility with outsize moments of almost cartoonishly comic crassness to great effect. In that respect, Spy is second only to Bridesmaids, only this time McCarthy is the star and has her own scene-stealing supporting player in Miranda Hart to make the film ever so robust with laughs.

Review: St. Vincent (2014)

* * *
Director: Theodore Melfi
Starring: Bill Murray, Melissa McCarthy, Naomi Watts

Ten years ago, St. Vincent would have starred Jack Nicholson and become another notch in his series of "curmudgeon with a heart of gold" movies. Nicholson's loss (and apparently he actually was signed to the film at one point) is ultimately Bill Murray's gain, giving him a great character to play, even if the film itself is a bit messy, stacking subplots on top of each other until it seems like the narrative might collapse under the weight. Nevertheless, I enjoyed St. Vincent quite a bit. Sure, the movie is a veritable grab bag of familiar storylines and character beats thrown together, and it is deeply sentimental, but it has charm enough that you feel inclined to forgive it for its more formulaic elements and just enjoy it for what it is.

Review: Tammy (2014)

* * 1/2
Director: Ben Falcone
Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Susan Sarandon

I like the idea of Tammy more than I liked its execution. This is a film, after all, where the majority of the speaking parts belong to women (that, in and of itself, feels almost revolutionary), which passes the Bechdel test so easily that it makes you give the side-eye to those films that fail it, and which gives voice to various kinds of women normally ignored by pop culture. On top of that, it's a funny movie, albeit not as frequently laugh out loud funny as last summer's McCarthy-starring The Heat. So what's the problem, then? It's in the construction, mainly. Written by McCarthy and director Ben Falcone, Tammy is a bit too loosey goosey for its own good, lacking in the kind of structure that might have given it some narrative momentum, and burdened with a few well-worn tropes and cues which it would have been better off without. It's not a bad film - sometimes it's quite good - it just doesn't always rise to the occasion.

Review: The Heat (2013)

* * *
Director: Paul Feig
Starring: Sandra Bullock, Melissa McCarthy

If there was any lingering doubt, that can now be laid to rest: Melissa McCarthy is a star. How long she can sustain that status remains to be seen, given that even this film, which relies so heavily on her for its success, used its promotional materials to try to disassociate from the very unconventionality that helps set her apart by airbrushing her into someone else entirely. Nevertheless, for right now, McCarthy can do no wrong. That's not to say that The Heat is a great film - beyond making its two leads women, it's not very imaginative in terms of its genre - but it's an engaging and enjoyable one.

Review: Identity Thief (2013)

* 1/2
Director: Seth Gordon
Starring: Jason Bateman, Melissa McCarthy

When in doubt, just throw in a throat punch. At least I assume that that was the strategy behind Identity Thief, an occasionally funny film that has the curious misfortune of being both over and underplotted. This is not a good film, nor is it a particularly good use of the talents of either Melissa McCarthy or Jason Bateman. What it is, is the very definition of a first quarter movie, the sort of thin, diversionary effort that will be forgotten before the next season even begins.