The Willoughbys (2020)

The Willoughbys (2020)

Director: Kris Pearn, Rob Lodermeier, Cory Evans

Cast (voice): Ricky Gervais, Will Forte, Maya Rudolph, Alessia Cara, Terry Crews, Martin Short, Jane Krakowski, Sean Cullen, Brian Drummond

Convinced they’d be better off raising themselves, the Willoughby children hatch a sneaky plan to send their selfish parents on vacation. The siblings then embark on their own high-flying adventure to find the true meaning of family. – IMDB

There’s nothing like a quirky and colorful animated film to bring in some joy. The Willoughbys fills that really well. While its a bit of everything mushed together and incredibly random, (maybe you can call it imaginative), it manages to be clever especially as its full of little references of other popular things from movies and whatnot in their own version that makes it absolutely enjoyable to watch. That’s something that I’ve always appreciated in movies. It starts off with narration a little like A Series of Unfortunate Events and then the story moves on and these children are a little random like the Despicable Me kids and then we move forward the characters they meet including their parents are all very extreme in their own ways. It still manages to be quite entertaining.

The Willoughbys has a decent cast behind it and a few of them are pretty recognizable. First of all, we start of with Ricky Gervais being the narrator who is a cat that lingers in the neighborhood and just like Gervais’s humor, he delivers some funny narration that carries the story from one scene to the next. The parents who love each other so much that they don’t have any love left for their kids is voiced by Martin Short and Jane Krakowski, who are suitably mean for a family film. The nanny is voiced by Maya Rudolph who I’ve always loved and found incredibly underrated but her enthusiasm really carries through into the nanny here and adds so much fun. Then, on their city escape, the kids ends up meeting a Willy Wonka parallel sort of character voiced by Terry Crews whose voice is very unique and wildly entertaining all the time.

The Willoughbys is incredibly silly and at times some of the things that happen are a little absurd however somehow it all works together. There’s a lot to love here with the story progression. The kids themselves are trapped inside their world and each have their own personalities that somewhat balance each other out. They also have the heart to be true Willoughbys and defining what makes a good person and making good choices even if they don’t have the best approaches. At the same time, its a touching story about family whether its between the siblings or the finding them along the way.

You know what The Willoughbys is? Its simply a great time. Its full of laughs and adventures, mistakes and bad decisions and most of all, learning the meaning of family. There’s clever dialogue, fun characters and some pretty great voice cast tossed into the mix. Its charming, clever and colorful: three things that I love in animated films. Totally recommend this one!

TV Binge: Ultimate Beastmaster (Season 1, 2017)

Reality TV has always had some sort of following on regular television. Along the similar veins of American Ninja Warrior, Sylvester Stallone’s co-created obstacle course beast is the new Netflix Orginal Series, Ultimate Beastmaster. Filmed in the California Dessert and grandly built with 4 different obstacles sectors and 108 competitors from 6 different countries and filmed over 8 days with 12 different hosts from USA, Brazil, Mexico, Japan, Korea and Germany. This is a huge feat in itself. The question now is how compelling is this show going to be? Will it live up to expectations? How will they keep it entertaining?

Let’s check it out!

Ultimate Beastmaster (Season 1, 2017)

Creators: David Broome & Sylvester Stallone

Eighteen competitors run an obstacle course known as “The Beast”, where nine of them will be crowned “Beastmaster”, and will compete against each other to be crowned Ultimate Beastmaster. – IMDB

 There’s something incredibly appealing about watching man perform and compete in challenging obstacles. It is similar to watching for example Olympics or Crossfit competitions. I gather that is the appeal of watching American Ninja Warrior. The Ultimate Beastmaster takes this initial concept and creates an entertainingly challenging course full of very competent challengers who are fighting for this title. Being in Canada, we got the American cut which means we spend most of it with hosts Terry Crews and Charissa Thompson. Terry Crews is a great host with lots of one liners and adds a lot of fun just like the other sections with the other countries’ host that are fun and colorful in their own ways as well. The competitors themselves, no matter where they are from, are also very fun to watch in action and of course, as we listen to some of their backstories with the US competitors having more complete backgrounds (because this is the US edit), really give us a good idea on who to cheer for in each round and speculate who will make it to to the finale. Its 10 episodes of fun and entertainment.

The best part aside from its variety of competitors and the colorful hosts are for the beast of a structure themselves. The obstacle course is very challenging. It relies heavily on a complete well-rounded physique. As the episodes progress certain episodes will have various modifications in their courses like changing the rope to swing from one obstacle to the next or adding extra difficulties in slope for another. As we watch the competitors, we gradually learn who are probably more capable and perhaps the best part is cheering for the underdogs who we never expect to go through and finally do. There’s going to be favorites and sometimes, we found ourselves cheering for so many of them. Plus, everyone has a different approach on how they complete these obstacles or whether they go for the point thrusters often placed in challenging places and making decisions that could make or break their run of that level.

To become the Ultimate Beastmaster is a huge title, the hard work in each episode makes us know the competitors that win and head into the episode 10 finale which crowns the ULTIMATE Beastmaster. They run the same course luckily but with higher difficulty. Knowing that this series with filmed over eight nights makes us realize that these competitors really didn’t have a lot of time to rest before having to jump into their next run, especially for those entering into the finale. Their wounds haven’t had time to heal and everything can really be against them, even if they have a certain level of expectation. However, it also depends on how the competitors are grouped.

Overall, there is a great thrill in watching Ultimate Beastmaster. The concept of making it international and hosted and shown in different participating countries is very commendable. The course is challenging and monstrous. There’s so much to love about this show. While we hope for a new season, the question remains whether they will use the same course or whether the beast structure will stay the same and the obstacle course itself will be reconstructued in order to make it refreshing. It is definitely one to watch if you enjoy these types of shows.

Have you seen Ultimate Beastmaster?

The Expendables 2 (2012)

Last night I finally got around to going to see The Expendables 2 with my boyfriend (of course!).  He’s a big fan of all the old school action stars, so it was really a lot of excitement on his end.  I’d be lying if I wasn’t a bit worried (as usual) for a sequel.  A lot of the actors added onto this one that I haven’t had much exposure to so my boyfriend was telling me a short description of who they were during the movies.  You know, general description like martial artist or wrestling, etc.  Honestly, thats what you need to expect what awesome moves they’ll pull and surprise you.  Enough with the rambling…here we go!

Lets say I wanted and expected to get exactly what was in the first.  If they managed to be at par, I was going to be extremely happy because I had a happy thrill ride in the first one.  I LOVE testosterone movies.  I’m serious…explosions, gun fights, fist fights, martial arts, etc.  I didn’t expect this movie to have a crazy plot either, nothing too deep.  I just expected it to have the minimum to get the action going.

What did I get? MAXIMUM SATISFACTION!! My eyes were glued to the screen.  Right from the beginning to the final showdown, I was hooked.  It was so fun!

It had a really nice mix of humor also.  I felt it was mostly because the old cast: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews and Randy Couture had a really good chemistry, especially Stallone and Statham and their random bickering was just absolutely hilarious.  You have Lundgren with his random comments and then Crews’ remarks.  On top of that, they added Liam Hemsworth which had a little side story to supplement.  I have to say that I really enjoyed his appearance.  I haven’t seen any of his other movies yet since I didn’t catch Hunger Games in theatres and then I haven’t wanted to sit down and watch Last Song yet either.  This will definitely motivate me to do it though.  We also got an Chinese action actress, Nan Yu who started off not doing too much but built into a character that pulled off some pretty cool moves.  Of course, the extended appearance of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis is always a plus (despite its constant referral to its past movies, first 2 times was alright, eventually was starting to roll my eyes).  They played an interesting part in how this movie flowed.  Then we have the new roles played by Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and even Scott Adkins.  These roles pulled my boyfriend mostly because he grew up with them and that was the fun part I think.  Scott Adkins had left his mark for my boyfriend in Undisputed 2; Jean-Claude Van Damme was for the reknowned martial arts and well, Chuck Norris…is Chuck Norris.  The cast itself boost this movie’s raw action up so many levels.

Seeing as the cast itself are a lot of awesome action stars, we are expected to have just an amazing experience.  Let me tell you, it didn’t disappoint me at least.  I thought it was amazing.  It started off with lots of explosions, guns, big cars, ramming through obstacles.  There’s a lot of sticking up for each other going on as well. We get surprise covers everywhere.  From the beginning, with Hemsworth’s character in the sniper role and making his appearance as the addition to the Expendables crew.  Chuck Norris also comes to the rescue for a little snapshot in the middle with lots of shooting.  Honestly, there really wasn’t much drama going on in terms of the plot.  Its start forward: The team starts with a mission to introduce the cast, then falls into a mission that they are assigned with by Bruce Willis’s character as making up a situation to retrieve something from a destroyed plane.  They go in and things end up going bad when another team, the villain played by Jean-Claude Van Damme (called Vilain) and his right hand man, (played by Scott Adkins) comes in.  The plan afterwards in response to Statham’s question, “What now?” Stallone responds, “Track him, find him, kill him”.  At that point, you know that the intensity level is going to shoot up.  If nothing else caught you, the final showdown was seriously awesome!  I mean everyone shows their crazy fighting, shooting, tackling, martial arts abilities.

All in all, I really enjoyed The Expendables 2.  I would even say that I liked it even more than the first one, which is actually quite rare (in my movie view experience at least).  The cast was great and had a huge amount of intense action. It was all I expected and I think, it exceeded my expectations so thats even better.

How about you? Did you see this movie yet? If yes, what did you think? If not, will you eventually see it when it releases on DVD/Blu-ray?