ParsingHaus Reviews

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016)

In search of an old-fashioned, low-tech little potboiler that'll make you long for the time when fists were enough? See the first one.

[6/10 · 19 October 2016]

Mysteries abound on our planet. Why did Homo sapiens prevail over Homo neanderthalensis? Who will decode the Zodiac letters? Why is Kate McKinnon such total comedic catnip? And now, thanks to Tom Cruise, we have another: Why in creation is Jack Reacher: Never Go Back showing in IMAX?

To actually shoot a film in IMAX isn't just some eh-why-not decision -- it requires bulky and expensive cameras, it costs a lot of money, and there aren't a whole lot of screens around to show it. This is why hardly anyone does it. (Christopher Nolan used it in Interstellar, and The Dark Knight Rises also had a few flagship scenes; JJ Abrams and Zack Snyder have dabbled as well. Clint Eastwood's Sully is notable for being arguably the first major motion picture shot almost entirely on IMAX cameras.)

But there are also IMAX pretenders, shot on regular film but projected onto the giant screen regardless. Star Wars Episode III is one. Having just watched the advance screening of Cruise's Jack Reacher sequel in IMAX, it sure looks to be another.

And this is strange, because Jack Reacher is about the last film I'd expect to merit the ten-story treatment. It has no special effects to speak of; no sweeping expanses or shiny alien worlds or majestic spaceflight or men in capes swinging from rooftops.

The original didn't, either. I liked the original Jack Reacher film, the way I might like finding a classic boombox at a garage sale or dropping an LS1 into a V70. Underpromoted and under-appreciated, it was a tidy, gritty, old fashioned and workmanlike little picture that punched considerably above its weight, a solid genre piece in a hard-nosed genre we don't see much of anymore.

This sequel, though, falls short.

Cruise reprises his role as reserved tough-guy Reacher, a modern-day drifter with a military police resume, savage street-fighting take-downs, and a deep respect for the uniform. His itinerant existence is getting over the top here -- he's traded the 1970 Chevelle of last time for hitchhiking around with only the clothes on his back and thirty bucks in his pocket -- but he's still, somehow, not only surviving but helping MPs solve unspecified crimes on federal land (?). He takes a shine to Major Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders) based solely on her comely phone voice (...) and buys a bus ticket to DC to take her out to dinner (not weird at all). He arrives to find that she's been stripped of her command and tossed in the brig, and a mystery is brewing -- involving arms in Afghanistan, Blackwater-esque security firms, government intrigue, and a possible teenage daughter Reacher never knew he had (Danika Yarosh). Reacher sets out to get to the bottom of all this, thus beginning a -- well, the kind of movie your dad would watch, and probably will.

The lion's share of the film involves Reacher, Turner, and the maybe-daughter fighting with people, running from people, or hiding out in hotels. Director Edward Zwick makes much of every drawn out foot chase, fistfight, and taunting phone call from the villain -- who, surprise of surprises, is a nonspecific stubble-faced ex-special forces crony who lacks even so much as a name.

Strip away the seventies-style action (they're coming, run!) and the one-beat plot, and you're left with Reacher being an off-grid know-it-all hard-butt, and Cobie doing her level best to inject some modernity into the exercise. (She has a brief scene where she complains about having fought sexism her entire career -- but that message didn't seem to reach the writers, who in the end still relegated her safely to a back up role.) The maybe-daughter looks something like Anna Paquin and is mildly petulant but never really sympathetic, and so there's not much for Reacher to do but deliver brutal and unrealistic one-hit take-downs to a series of "ex-military" thugs he finds in various spots (chiefly downtown DC and New Orleans -- hardly the most inspiring global locations.)

Abundant cell phones aside, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back belongs in another era. It plays like a flip-book of filmgoing memories, the kind of film where characters slink away unnoticed from a shooting scene, disappearing into a crowd; where the good guys spend the whole movie running from the law but all is forgiven as soon as the real bad guy is revealed. A lot of this strains believability, especially today. I mean, Reacher can savagely beat two men in a crowded plane without raising any suspicion whatsoever? Come on -- once the cabin door closes you can't even play Words With Friends without being tossed onto the tarmac and probably tazed.

But perhaps that's the appeal. In a world of senseless death and "active shooters" -- a world where Baltimore street criminals routinely pump dozens of rounds into each and every victim -- it's sad to say it's refreshing to watch grizzled, macho war machines pound one other in the face for good, honest, salute-the-flag reasons. If only that were our world -- and if only Never Go Back did it quite so well as the original.

Haus Verdict: In search of an old-fashioned, low-tech little potboiler that'll make you long for the time when fists were enough? See the first one.

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back opens Friday October 21.

The Infiltrator (2016)

A touch too long and a touch too whitewashed, but a solid, engrossing, ultimately entertaining sting picture with a truly top-drawer performance by Bryan Cranston.

[7/10 · 14 July 2016]

Ding-a-ling, and take your seats children because it's time for Oscar-bait semi-thinky semi-sleazy undercover period pieces! You know the type. Some high-wattage actors get all mustached, gold-chained, and spread-collared and take on the eighties. And that's pretty much what happens here. With Bryan Cranston!

It's not a great film, but it's a solid genre base hit and entertaining, if a tad too drawn out.

On the tail of the successful series Narcos comes The Infiltrator, the story of a slightly less dramatic undercover sting that chased the money, not the coke. Bryan Cranston plays Robert Mazur, a government agent who goes deep as Bob Musella, a mob- connected money launderer. Teaming up with Emir Abreau (John Leguizamo) and his cover-fiancé Kathy Ertz (Diane Kruger), Mazur brokers some cash-washing deals between the Medellin folks and a big investment bank, and we follow the trail as it leads deeper in and higher up.

The story is based on real-life Mazur's equally real-life book, and frankly isn't terribly interesting (as, to be fair, I suspect many other true bust tales probably are not). And the fact that real-life Mazur wrote the real-life book also presumably accounts for the ultra-pure, good-guy undergirding of Cranston's protagonist in the film. Whitewash? So be it. The victors write the history, and all that.

Director Brad Furman (The Lincoln Lawyer) tries to spice things up with a dusting of sexual tension between Mazur and his cover girl (will they or won't they?); there's also a feely bromance with Benjamin Bratt, who plays the gleaming, wholesome gentleman of the drug trade. Mazur and Ertz form earnest friendships with Bratt and his family, hinting that when the time comes it might be hard for Mazur to sell his pals down the river.

Except it's not. Said friendships feel too forced and phony, and Bratt's genteel drug lord character strains credibility -- he's just too polite and wholesome and nice. There's no real doubt that goodie-goodie Cranston will do the right thing in the end.

But that doesn't make The Infiltrator a bad movie. For starters, Cranston is a really terrific actor. Even in a throwaway opening vignette with a bowling alley waitress, his microexpressions just seep realism. His performance here is fantastic, and it's worth watching this movie just for him. The supporting cast is earnest and hardworking and generally believable. There also are some pretty locations, great fashions, flamboyant characters, classic meanies, and crisp shots. It all comes together quite nicely.

And then it stays there. The Infiltrator falls short (long?) in its pacing, running probably a half hour past its bedtime. It's perhaps hard to fault Furman for this, given that he was directing from a script his own mother wrote (no joke -- must be a first?). Happy Mother's Day, I left your chaff in my picture! Either way, you might find yourself wondering when time's up.

All told, The Infiltrator might not be best of breed, but it's engaging, atmospheric, nicely shot, and offers an interesting take on the 80s drug war -- one with fewer Uzis and drug mules and more middle eastern bankers. Relax and enjoy.

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (2016)

Here's the Pitch Perfect-meets-Dirty Grandpa mashup that precisely no one asked for. And it's dumb. And sometimes hilarious.

[6/10 · 7 July 2016]

There's a definite Apatow-type genre comedy making the rounds these days, consisting of semi-improvised dirty talk by young ne'er do wells who suddenly get super wholesome around act three. This is one of those, and it's a decent example of the breed — which is to say, not particularly intelligent and almost entirely dependent on (a) its cast and (b) the ability of said cast to pull off funny one liners.

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates isn't a good movie, but it does get you from (a) to (b). (Like that?)

The titular Stangle brothers (Dave, played by Zac Efron, and Mike, Adam Devine) are thinly-sketched liquor salesmen with a serious failure to launch; while they bounce around all Animal House style, their parents lament the brothers' (utterly contrived) history of ruining family gatherings (by generally being manic and partying too hard). The parents implore the duo to stop chasing women and to find real, actual dates for their dear little sister's wedding.

Their Craigslist ad soon goes viral, landing them a TV spot and the attention of an even bigger pair of screw ups, freshly unemployed drunks Tatiana and Alice, played by Aubrey Plaza and Anna Kendrick. The wily ladies hatch a scheme to clean themselves up, land the guys, and score a free trip to Hawai'i. Of course, they do.

The wedding gets royally boned, but that's not particularly funny or interesting. People also get sporadically wholesome, and ditto on that. These characters are thin and none has much of an arc save for bouncing around like pinballs between wholly artificial deep reveals. If it weren't for Plaza's foul-mouthed quips over sly, knowing glances, Kendrick's actually-kind-of-decent-after-all damaged damsel, Devine's babyface rants, and Efron's pure comedic charisma, this film would founder. But every now and then, the guys — and it is generally the guys, I think — hit one out of the park. There's some legitimately funny stuff in here. (It also has low points, like the cringe-worthy, 2010-era Adam Sandler-style cutting of the ATV crash scene. Feels like you're watching a cheap B-movie comedy.) Upshot, it's uneven.

The supporting cast is decent here. I doubt you'll rush to the marquee to see Stephen Root, but he's good as the frustrated dad; Sugar Lyn Beard (now there's a name) does more with the little sister bridal role than she probably needs to, hamming it up to good effect. I enjoyed the choice of Sam Richardson as her fiancé, and similarly that the filmmakers made precisely no mention of the fact that the pending marriage was interracial. (But before you ring the bell and declare social justice achieved, consider the underlying premise of women as simple arm candy to soothe and control hyperactive man-boys — and gaze also upon Alice Wetterlund's "Cousin Terry," a comic-relief predatory lesbian with a Tesla who certainly comes off like a stereotype, but to my knowledge, isn't — at least not yet.) Bell not rung.

I will say, for a movie about pretending to be someone you're not, this film graciously shortchanges the inevitable reveal. (You know, that moment when a protagonist has fibbed to get where they are, reaped the rewards, and then has to come clean, despite having developed real feelings in the interim… their poor counterpart is always dumbstruck and super hurt, whereas in real life they'd likely have smelled a rat and seen it all coming.) Reveals happen here, of course, but they don't seem to matter very much to anyone. Blink and you'll miss one of them. I like that.

So, overall? I loved the first 15 minutes of this movie. I loved various other minutes of it, but nowhere near all of them. It has a saggy and dumb middle and it misses its shot at greatness by a substantial margin. But sometimes you're in the market for a lousy, R-rated comedy with a few high notes, some good looking leads, improvised quips, and nice Hawaiian scenery. There are other, better entries in this slim little canon (Forgetting Sarah Marshall comes immediately to mind), but this one isn't all bad. Summer's here. See a movie.

Haus Verdict: About as smart as you thought it would be (not very), and sometimes a whole lot funnier. Efron really makes it for me. Is that weird?

(via Haus at www.parsinghaus.com)

Puerto Ricans in Paris (2015)

Facile and fluffy buddy-cop comedy about a missing handbag with an ethnic topcoat and a Parisian backdrop. Not a good film, but a sincere one.

[3/10 · 7 June 2016]

I would like to stress at the outset that Puerto Ricans in Paris is not a good movie. If you take only one thing from this review, it must be this. I'm going to say some things in the paragraphs that follow -- I may even say I enjoyed it -- but let there be no uncertainty. Movie. Not good. Okay.

So here's the rub. There's a certain primal pleasure in watching a film like Puerto Ricans in Paris, an unabashed B-movie buddy comedy that knows what it wants to be, aspires to nothing more, and delivers just about what you'd expect. Granted, it's abysmally weak by ordinary standards, but let's be realistic -- you won't wander into this one expecting Fellini. From those to whom little is given, little is required. Or something.

The title pretty much sums up the premise, but here goes: Luis Guzman and Edgar Garcia play two NYPD detectives working the counterfeit luxury goods beat. When a Parisian arrives with a special request -- help a famous designer (Alice Taglioni) find a missing prototype handbag worth millions -- the pair jets off to Paris (macarons, bro?) and vapid screwball comedy ensues.

I enjoyed the early promise of the counterfeit luxury goods angle, since I recently read Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Luster -- and a surprising number of details in this film actually ring true: like a corporate heavy ousting a designer to profit from her name, and the faithful portrayal of Canal Street merchants and their backroom dens. That said, I haven't the faintest idea why this luxury-goods storyline was paired with overt Puerto Rican ethnic humor -- it's as though two separate spec scripts were shuffled together and promptly green-lit. Not that it matters much, since the luxury angle fades into the background right quick.

The Parisian storyline is simplistic and frankly not too important, a basic whodunnit in which even the filmmakers regularly lose interest. Guzman and Garcia go through the motions of screening various suspects (often donning ethnic disguises, because easy laughs) and in the meantime chastise one another, have heart-to-hearts about the meaning of family, and so on. Characters come and go; some story lines are left unfinished.

The protagonists are simplistic and one-dimensional, but likable nonetheless. Guzman is the ladies' man of the pair, a perpetual bachelor and womanizer -- a role that's frankly hard to take very seriously given that he's not exactly George Clooney yet he's slinging more game than a Spiderman reboot on some very young, very attractive French women. (To be fair, he has limited success -- his shlubby appearance paired with aspirational macking could've been a punchline here, but I don't think it was.) Garcia by contrast is married with kids, and we taste his workaday struggles when his wife (Rosie Perez) laments yet another unobserved anniversary. In Paris, Garcia's loyalties are tested when the beautiful designer takes an interest in him -- but the film stops short of ever causing Garcia a real problem in this regard. (One senses that family and loyalty are particularly sacrosanct here -- we mine Garcia's plight for gentle laughs, but never place him anywhere near risk of actual infidelity.) Secondary characters are double-thick stereotypes. Yes, this is ground-floor, feel-good xenophobic comedy for Trump Nation.

This movie struggles to strike the right rhythm with its two-fish-out-of-water premise. And we're never really sure if Guzman and Garcia are bumbling or actually on their game. Director Ian Edelman also does his best to reinforce an American tourist's fantasy of Paris, all gleaming cobblestones and streetlamps and whimsical bicycles and fancy hotels and baguettes and Eiffels and romance. (The less that's said about this, the better.)

Production quality isn't great. Much of the film looks like it was shot on an iPhone 6 and with about the same budget. The end credits would have benefited from an undergrad intern, ten minutes, and a free trial of Final Cut Pro. Puerto Ricans in Paris is, however, mercifully short, clocking in at just over 1 hour 20 minutes.

But all that said, and perhaps in spite of myself, I still enjoyed this movie. Puerto Ricans in Paris is just wholly unpretentious. This is real, working-man authenticity in film form. I mean, look at the title. That's real honesty. And while I wouldn't send you to see it, I also won't blame you if you do.

Like our style? See more reviews at The Parsing Haus (www.parsinghaus.com).

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

Haus Verdict: Weak villain, much CGI, not much sense. The elements are there, but it doesn't hum. But that Quicksilver scene is the flippin' mustard.

[6/10 · 28 May 2016]

An omnipotent deity falls into a thousand-year sleep, leaving humanity to fend for itself. I know what you're thinking--ah, so that's why there haven't been any Haus reviews!--but no, my flock. 'Tis not my apologia. 'Tis, rather, the soft undergirding of what passes for a backstory to X-Men: Apocalypse.

Quick recap: First Class (2011) was awesome, a fact attributable entirely to Matthew Vaughn's direction. Bryan Singer's 2014 Days of Future Past was a messy muddle, though plenty of people seemed to love it. Singer's now back with Apocalypse, which is--to put it kindly--a trifle uneven.

Whereas some superhero films cling to reality by the tenderest of bowlines, the X-Men franchise cast off from those shores long before it ever got green-lit. As you probably know, the various characters wield arbitrary and wholly impossible powers, which absent careful story-rigging would lead to some very uneven title fights indeed. As usual, there's really no sense belaboring the lack of realism in the X-Men films, but it's perhaps worth noting that unlike some of its sibling installments, this one doesn't even try a pseudoscience gloss. Mutants here are closer to gods, which is perhaps how they're properly seen. (Once I decided this, in fact, I enjoyed the climactic battle a good deal more.)

Story wise? Well, as the trailer suggests, an ancient Egyptian mutant/god (Apocalypse, who according to the credits is played by an unrecognizable and deeply slumming Oscar Isaac) awakens from his poorly-explained sleep to seek--what else?-- the destruction of the world. He identifies other mutants as henchmen and augments their powers. Some mutants join him, others try to stop him. He wrecks some things (largely of the Egyptian variety) though never manages effectively to convey his motivation for pretty much anything he does. (He's also not frightening, coming off more like a lumbering eighties action figure with seaweed-colored pancake makeup.) Humans, perhaps mercifully, play virtually no role in this film--eschewing even their traditional duties of gawking helplessly as heroes and villains wreak havoc. A couple of cut scenes show Pentagon-types wringing their hands, but that's about it. Mutants Only.

Coolest scene ever. Coolest scene ever. The good? An absolutely brilliant (and appropriately long) scene featuring Quicksilver racing through frozen time takes the Haus trophy for best Sweet Dreams montage ever put to film. Evan Peters (that's right, Kick Ass's best friend) playing Quicksilver-- that's great too. Olivia Munn's monotone glare. Olivia Munn's outfit (for comedic value, natch). Legitimately strong performances by the main leads.

The bad? The story leaves aforementioned main leads often with little or nothing to do. The villain is lame. It's long. Is any of this tied to reality in any form at all? And this may be sacrilegious, but I really didn't find much of the CGI to be that good. Your mileage may vary.

The big question is, should you see it? Eh, maybe. If you've already seen Captain America: Civil War (a far better version of Marvel hero overload that's also out now) and Zootopia (a fabulous Pixar film, still playing as I write), and you still fancy a summer blockbuster type experience, this one isn't all bad. I've seen worse. And for an X-Men film, around these parts, that puts it right around the middle of the pack.

Haus Verdict: Weak villain, much CGI, not much sense. The elements are there, but it doesn't hum. But that Quicksilver scene is the flippin' mustard.

X-Men: Apocalypse opens everywhere today, May 27.

Zoolander 2 (2016)

As an oblique send up of today's empty talk, click-bait headlines, and emoji-fueled net-speak, this is strong tea indeed.

[6/10 · 21 February 2016]

Ben Stiller has hooked a rolling hitch to the tow rope du jour, the long-belated sequel, with predictable and sporadically funny results.

Stiller and Owen Wilson reunite in Zoolander 2 to rehash a fifteen year old running gag, joined by Will Ferrell as Mugatu and various new supporting characters and cameos (chareos?), a few of whom are a total hoot. For instance, Kristen Wiig's tortured accent is verbal Bikram that would give Henry Higgins an aneurysm and pleased me about as much (that is, a lot), while Kyle Mooney's Don Atari quietly spawns a mesmerizing new genre of millennial doublespeak. Sucks so bad, just awful. Loved it! Can't believe how lame it was— totally awesome! And so on. As an oblique send up of today's empty talk, click-bait headlines, and emoji-fueled net-speak, this is strong tea indeed.

Was it consciously done? Your literary criticism professor told me it doesn't matter.

The actual plot is rubbish as anyone could have guessed, but that's not a big deal. The real crime here is that Zoo 2 slips into lazy sequelitis, recycling the very same jokes and expecting the very same laughs as before. This is bad territory, the same poopy spittoon where we find floaters like Hot Tub Time Machine 2 and the Hangover sequels.

Another problem is that Zoolander and Hansel are still their same Y2K selves. Zoolander still doesn't use a smart-phone (?), and even the other characters can't help pointing out that the duo is "old" and "lame"—which perhaps should be the filmmakers' first clue that the leads are so out of touch as to be satirically impotent. Sure enough, the only decent zings here belong to the zeitgeisty supporting cast. Kind of a lot's happened since 2001, and it would be nice to see Derek Zoolander reflect that in some character- appropriate way—a new print on his velvet jacket or something.

The 80/20 rule is in effect here, with a pretty small fraction of the action yielding an outsize slice of the comedic pie. Zoolander 2 doesn't amaze but hardly disappoints—and if it does, well, you probably weren't being like super fair with your expectations now were you? Tsk.

Oh, also, the continuation of the Derelicte joke (think reclaimed medical waste as the reductio ad absurdum of slow food hipster-ism) is surprisingly apropos, at least from my Bay Area crow's nest. (The flyovers may not get it, having presumably not yet been steeped in forty minute locovore French presses, flannel and suspenders and Talibeards and artisanal dog biscuits. Their loss?)

But forget all that. Everyone will like this movie. Why? Well, this was co-written by (and briefly features) Justin Theroux, which means Jennifer Aniston must at least like it, and as goes Aniston, so goes the writhing bulk of grocery-store America. My logic is sound. Anyway, I liked it, which is Everyone around these parts, so QED, and stop being such a box troll. (I'm not drunk, I'm high—37,000 feet, in fact.) OK, I'll stop.

Haus Verdict: I enjoyed this! If you're seeing Zoolander 2, you probably know what you're getting into. And if you know what you're getting into, this really shouldn't surprise you too much. Squint for satire.

Deadpool (2016)

Ultraviolent. Funny, and in on the joke. Meta and it works so well you won't mind the second-string X-Men and empty plot. See it.

[8/10 · 21 February 2016]

It's sort of a running joke that Marvel's blockbuster squad is giving its Midas-touch reach-around to progressively fringier characters in the comic book "universe," a trend I blame on Iron Man and one that shows no sign of letting up. (I heard they're doing Aquaman in 2018.) To this slow trudge of gold-plated also-rans we now add Deadpool, no one's favorite secondary superhero who—thanks, handsy Midas!— actually deals a solid R-rated base hit in this strong, strong film.

As any helicopter parent will tell you, excellence starts early. And the opening credits are brilliant. Not the CGI, which is cool and all, but the actual credits. So rare to see something really novel done here. I've never laughed so hard at names before—and that includes the social security list of unusual baby names. I loved this opening nearly as much as I did 21 Jump Street's end credits. (But them's tall boots.) Also, if you were in LA on opening weekend, there were some truly inspired spoof billboards around town. Hausey likey.

Ryan Reynolds is in his element here as Wade Wilson, an ex-special forces type who falls in love, gets sick, and turns invincible. This isn't the gentle rom-com Reynolds—no, this is the real, improv-bred, Van Wilder Canucklehead Reynolds. He's crass and harsh, breaks the fourth wall on the motherflippin' regular, and slings insults like Donald Trump in a Tough Mudder. He's great. His white-hot love affair with his manic pixie dream girlfriend is a bit much, but gives him dramatic purpose and all. Also, he forgets stuff in cabs, leading to a cute (if lonesome) side storyline.

And not to toot my amateur-reviewer horn here, but I did once learn screen writing from the late Syd Field himself at AFI—and armed as I am with this prestigious toe-dip into The Real Thing, I feel qualified to opine that this film is structurally very interesting. That's as far down film school lane as I'll take you, but check this out: Syd's BMW 3-series had the vanity plate "PLT PNT." Take that for lagniappe.

It's a shame then that given such an engaging and in-your-face antihero lead, Marvel poops it down the bad pipe with a closed, self- referential story that distills down to Deadpool exacting bloodthirsty revenge on the dude who helped him. There's no real villain to speak of, no heroics, and nothing really for Deadpool to do besides take out his own dirty laundry—which causes one to wonder what he'll do once that strange score is settled. (I'm sure Midas will figure something out.)

But as much as I generally despise closed-system superhero films (ahem, Green Lantern), here the basic narcissism of the storyline works fairly well. After all, Deadpool is unapologetically all about himself and his own problems, and the only folks with a ticket to the twitching bone heap are those who've wronged him in past. Fair enough, Mr. Pool.

What I won't do here is trot out once more my standing objection to Marvel's "mutant" science. It's beyond ridiculous, and nothing's changed. But couldn't they at least have done something with the fact that cancerous cells are themselves mutated, so mutating him more would likely cause more cancer…? No. Sigh.

Haus Verdict: Ultraviolent. Funny, and in on the joke. Meta and it works so well you won't mind the second-string X-Men and empty plot. See it.

Drunk Wedding (2015)

Drunk Wedding is a Gonzo faux-doc raunchy travelogue wedding comedy that takes its pants off early and often.

[8/10 · 27 May 2015]

If you wish The Hangover had more of a found-footage feel — and no Bradley Cooper, and more bros getting peed on — here's an offbeat treat for you. You might not have heard of this one, and unless you happened to be at an Alamo Drafthouse this weekend, you probably haven't seen it. But if you're anyone I went to undergrad with, you absolutely should.

Paramount released Drunk Wedding direct to iTunes this weekend. I bought it, and I watched it, and I can report that while you may not know all of the actors and it won't get the usual blockbuster ad campaign, it's quite the tequila-soaked barrel of fun.

Just so we're on the same page here, Citizen Kane this is not. No. Drunk Wedding is a Gonzo faux-doc raunchy travelogue wedding comedy that takes its pants off early and often. It's dialed in tight and quite nicely paced, its modest 1:20 runtime a steady drumbeat of redband-worthy gags, pranks, and awww-shoot moments. Shooting on location in Nicaragua brings immediacy to the action, though the film is not without its issues in this regard: The found-footage style demands a certain gritty realism that doesn't always mesh well with the clearly quite decent cameras actually used here, and the cinematography occupies that strange reality/scripted middle ground that reminds me of an early dose of The Hills. (Nothing that a goat won't fix.) The writing is solid, at times laugh out loud hilarious, but set against the whole average-joes-filming-themselves trope it sometimes feels overwritten, too smart for its premise. (Too clever for your own good, Nick and Tony Weiss?) Interestingly, Drunk Wedding shares something in common with Take Me Home Tonight, another collegiate comedy I really liked: both languished on the shelf for a couple of years before their release.

Quibbles aside, Drunk Wedding is here now and delivers what you're crashing it for — some memorable characters (Dan Gill is terrific as Phil, Nick P. Ross is deliciously creepy as Linc aka Beavis incarnate, and Victoria Gold does a great job as the girls' girl bride Elissa), some quality pranking, and an almost but not quite home movie feel.

This is also the kind of movie you'll want all your friends to see, so your party-prone social circle has ready access to the bank of soon-to-be-iconic-at-least-to-us references. I will say though that if your "hey, this is just like the time" moments overlap very much with this film, your parties are off the flippin' chain, bro.

Haus Verdict: Loved it. Small on budget and big on raunch, Drunk Wedding is just what it sounds like — and if you're in the market for that, take a look.