Booksmart (2019)

Reaching the end of their final year and realising they've concentrated so hard on study they've missed out on everything else, a high-achieving pair of high school students decide to catch up on some fun and on the eve of their graduation resolve to be brave, declare their Love, Simon crushes and finally make a good Romy and Michele impression on their peers...but first they have to get to their White Castle: Nick the school jock's house party.

★★★☆☆

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Colossal (2016)

A simple but effective metaphor, likening an alcoholic's lifestyle to a gigantic monster wreaking havoc in South Korea, becomes thoroughly mixed because someone wanted to see the monster fighting a giant robot under the spotlights of hovering helicopters - Hathaway survives but characterisation, side plots, and creative potential are left decimated.

★★☆☆☆

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Horrible Bosses (2011)

Three employees plot to do away with their horrible bosses, a plan that sees them, respectable men leading regular suburban lives, venturing clumsily into an underworld of crime, which is the premise of this shrieky, snide, sneery and unpleasant comedy of minimal laughs featuring Hollywood's most smug performers.

★☆☆☆☆

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Vacation (2015)

There are some amusing predicaments typical of the sort the old Griswolds got themselves into, in this 2015 new generation tie-in to the National Lampoon's movie series, but the new movie doesn't work very well because where the Chevy Chase movies were comedies for the whole family with a moral compass and humour of both the more risque adult variety and some goofy childish stuff as well, this new movie is aimed squarely at a teenage audience judging from all the young people in it who swear like troopers, the outrageous lack of consequence in scenes that end calamitously with injury and death, and not to mention the update's distinct lack of heart — this is sometimes funny, but more often shrill, puerile.

★★☆☆☆

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Movie 43 (2013)

Perhaps compiled from footage recovered from the SNL cutting room floor, this laugh-free sketch comedy compilation is remarkable only for the incredible number of A-list Hollywood stars who were willing to appear in its appalling skits about excrement, sperm, grubby sex practices, incest...

☆☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS