Thursday, June 29, 2017

Masterminds

This is not the Masterminds from the '90s, the one about the kewl kid that protects his fancy school from evil Patrick Stewart. This is the Masterminds from 2016, about an idiot armored truck driver that gets tricked into stealing $17 million.

Zach Galifianakis is playing David Ghaant, the idiot in question. Kristen Wiig is Kelly, who originally came up with the idea, and convinces David to go through with it at the urging of Steve, a schmuck crook played by Owen Wilson. David robs the place, forgets one of the security tapes, abandons his fiance Jandice to hide in Mexico, is betrayed by Steve, who sets a killer on him. The killer becomes friends with David instead, David ends up exposing Steve as the one behind everything, they all go to prison for awhile.

Everyone in the movie is a complete moron. This is based on a true story; I have no idea how much of it actually happened. I'm guessing not much, but people are pretty stupid so, maybe more of this is true than I would think, as Men Who Stare at Goats put it. I can believe David forgetting one of the security cameras. I can believe Steve and his family not maintaining a low profile and instead spending millions of dollars like crazy. The hitman character, that I couldn't buy. The fight in the department store? Couldn't buy that. And so on. I can buy that someone would put their Geo on monster truck tires, although I wonder if that actually happened in the real events.

Some parts of it are funny, some are gross. I have no idea what Kate McKinnon was going for with Jandice. Is she supposed to be on the autism spectrum? All her reactions and facial expressions seemed bizarre, someone trying to mimic humanity. Every scene she's in, I'm sitting there wondering what the fuck is going on with her, which is maybe not ideal.

Leslie Jones is in here as an FBI agent. She didn't really get much to do, which is too bad. I think she was my favorite part of that Ghostbusters movie from last year. But there were a few funny parts, so not a total loss.

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