Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)

Even though author Lee Israel's autobiography as it appears here on screen is heavily signposted so that every development is understood long before it comes, Melissa McCarthy as Israel and Richard E Grant as her foppish "An Englishman in New York" criminal aider and abettor Jack Hook turn the slightly belaboured story into a gleefully funny romp about a talented writer driven by circumstance to engage (exceptionally well) in literary forgery.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Boss (2016)

It starts out looking like it's going to be a comedy about a charlatan who commands megabucks for financial advice delivered via big arena concerts but quickly shifts focus to the relationship this business mogul has with her staff, but that only lasts one scene - one of the staff members you see actually vanishes from the movie after this elaborate introduction - and then, just as suddenly, the movie becomes a Get Hard-style comedy about the mogul spending time in prison like Martha Stew--...but before you can even say her name, the mogul is released from prison and ends up sleeping on the couch of her long-suffering assistant and so you think you are actually watching a rehash of Trading Places, until a West Side Story war between rival Girl Guide gangs erupts...and all these tonal shifts never stop - the movie ends with you never feeling like you ever quite understood what story you were watching, except it is clear it is a not especially funny one.

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Tammy (2014)

The makers of this road movie (husband-and-wife team Ben Falcone and Melissa McCarthy, who needed outside voices to check their married groupthink) probably intended a typical Melissa McCarthy gross-out comedy crossed with the sort of quirky familial drama of Little Miss Sunshine, Captain Fantastic or even something bruised and tender like Young Adult, but the result isn't funny nor touching, just loud, shrill, and dull, with the would-be family drama that develops as dropkick Tammy (McCarthy) and her alcoholic grandmother (Susan Sarandon) hit the road landing as lifeless as the jokes.

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Ghostbusters (2016)

It is serviceable and on a few occasions nostalgically recalls the classic by way of cameos and great ghost effects, and it doesn't matter that the men have been replaced by women and vice versa - what matters is this is a too cartoony, childish exercise constructed without the original's connection to time and place, and has more product placement than ghosts lurking in a story about as complex as a themepark ride.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Heat (2013)

The funny moments in this mostly unfunny buddy cop comedy are, first, when Melissa McCarthy's rough-as-guts street cop throws a watermelon at a perpetrator, and second, the slightly un-PC moment when Sandra Bullock's by-the-book opposite is asked earnestly if she is a man or a woman - and that's it.

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Bridesmaids (2011)

A bridesmaid's problem-filled life isn't going to let up for the impeding nuptials of her best friend and her problems are compounded by the presence of a rival overachieving maid of honour in this extremely funny if slightly unevenly paced comedy depicting a faaaar from perfect lead up to a wedding.

★★★★★

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEW