Tag Archives: Queen Latifah

Movie Review ~ End of the Road

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The Facts:

Synopsis: A cross-country road trip becomes a highway to hell for Brenda and her family. Alone in the New Mexico desert, they have to fight for their lives when they become the targets of a mysterious killer.
Stars: Queen Latifah, Ludacris, Beau Bridges, Mychala Faith Lee, Shaun Dixon, Frances Lee McCain
Director: Millicent Shelton
Rated: R
Running Length: 89 minutes
TMMM Score: (7/10)
Review:  Like many others reviewing movies today, I grew up watching the great Siskel & Ebert duke it out weekly on their eponymous television show. I learned a lot hearing the two critics debate the pros and cons of what they enjoyed and disliked about the various new releases that came out over the years, and while their opinions were obviously coming from one perspective (white, hetero, male), I appreciate even more now that the show taught me perspective. Especially Roger Ebert. I’m not in any minority when I say that I’ve liberally lifted from him the necessity to evaluate each movie on its merits, doing my best not to compare it to anything else that week or even outside of its genre. That’s not fair to the film or the reader.

Take a film like End of the Road. This new Netflix movie starring Queen Latifah is predictable fare with a clear skeleton of previous movies cobbled together, albeit with a highly likable cast and filmmaking far above in the creativity department. It’s not going to win any awards or be the most known for on the resume of anyone involved, yet it gets the job done in the best way possible. However, it’s being released right in the middle of festival season when many critics are reviewing the first crop of potential Oscar hopefuls, so it’s bound to get compared to those films in passing. It’s not in the same league as those, nor does it intend to be. For what it is and what it sets out to do, End of the Road plots out its course and takes audiences on a fast-moving thrill ride with few bumps along the way.

Recently widowed and faced with substantial medical bills, Brenda (Queen Latifah, Girls Trip) is forced to sell her home, uprooting her children to move back to Texas and in with her mother. Understandably her teenage daughter Kelly (Mychala Faith Lee) and young son Cam (Shaun Dixon) aren’t thrilled about losing their father, home, and friends in quick succession, but they’re all pitching in to help their mom. Also coming along on the trip from California is Brenda’s brother Reggie (Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges, F9: The Fast Saga), who struggles to be a dependable figure in the lives of his family.

The group isn’t too far into their trek when they run afoul of some racists in Arizona (note: the tourism board of AZ will be none too pleased with this one), the first encounter with broadly drawn characters that target Brenda’s family. Shaken, they find a hotel to stay at for the night only to find themselves next door to a man murdered later that evening. As they try to save him, Reggie notices a bag hidden in the bathroom filled with unmarked bills, a bag a local drug kingpin will do anything to get back. Once he figures out that Reggie has made off with the bag, it becomes a game of cat and mouse as Brenda has to find a way to get the money back to a shadowy figure who ups the ante by stealing something of hers in return.

Making her feature film debut, director Millicent Shelton works with production designer Lucio Seixas (Chemical Hearts) and cinematographer Ed Wu to create a hyper-neon-realism of the Arizona desert locations where the film takes place. It makes End of the Road feel like it’s taking place in an alternate dimension at times, which aligns with the entire situation being so foreign and strange for Brenda and her family. Colored with pinks, purples, and other neon glows, I thought it looked incredible and helped the viewer not to focus on some of the more traditional twists and turns the movie leans into. 

Screenwriters Christopher J. Moore and David Loughery concoct a standard wrong place/wrong time scenario and find a way to have Brenda, Reggie, and her kids get into all kinds of worsening situations throughout a harrowing night. Most of this is as believably executed as possible, sold nicely by Queen Latifah, who never gives less than 100% in any project she undertakes. There’s always natural ease to her acting, which helps the viewer acclimate to whatever character she’s trying on for size, and it’s refreshing to see the Oscar-nominated actress in a more physically active part. When she takes charge in the film’s second half and begins to steer the ship instead of letting it sail on its own, you wish you were in a movie theater to see how an audience would have reacted.

I also enjoyed Chris Bridges as Reggie and the strong scenes he shares with Queen Latifah, especially the two children. The uncle character gets a chance for redemption, and while none of the acting in End of the Road needed to be as strong as it was for it to be as enjoyable as it turns out to be, it’s appreciated that the cast took the movie as seriously as they do. In more minor roles, Beau Bridges (Hit & Run) looks good at 80, and his investigating sheriff stands out in the supporting players, along with Frances Lee McCain (Scream).

Running a smooth 89 minutes (shorter if you consider the very long credits), this is a film you can invest time in and not run out of gas. One of those movies you might have stood in line for a Friday night in 1993 and watched while devouring a bag of popcorn with a raucous audience, End of the Road delivers on its promise and doesn’t ask anything more of you. That’s the kind of movie that feels good at this time of the year, so zoom zoom over to Netflix and start ‘er up!

Movie Review ~ Girls Trip

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The Facts:

Synopsis: When four lifelong friends travel to New Orleans for the annual Essence Festival, sisterhoods are rekindled, wild sides are rediscovered, and there’s enough dancing, drinking, brawling, and romancing to make the Big Easy blush.

Stars: Regina Hall, Jada Pinkett Smith, Queen Latifah, Tiffany Haddish, Larenz Tate

Director: Malcolm D. Lee

Rated: R

Running Length: 122 minutes

TMMM Score: (6.5/10)

Review: The latest in a long line of Women Can Be Raunchy Too comedies (like Bad Moms and Rough Night), Girls Trip is better than you or I thought it would be.  Maybe it was wrong to doubt it in the first place, though, because it stars four actresses who could each easily headline their own film and is the kind of free-for-all extravaganza of ribald humor rarely seen anywhere in film lately.  Better still, it winds up touting a message of acceptance of oneself from within instead of opting for an easier and more expected takeaway.

The members of the Flossy Possy are four friends that grew up together, went to college together, lived together, but then forged their own paths in varied directions.  Sasha (Queen Latifah, Joyful Noise) is a gossip blogger nearly bankrupt, divorced mom Lisa (Jada Pinkett Smith, Magic Mix XXL) hasn’t had a fun night out in years, man-loving Dina (Tiffany Haddish) just got fired from another job, while Ryan (Regina Hall, Vacation) is reaching the pinnacle of her career as an Oprah-esque self-help guru that seems to have it all.

When Ryan is asked to be the keynote speaker at the Essence Festival in New Orleans, she decides to make it a (ta-da!) Girls Trip and invites her three best friends that she hasn’t seen in years.  Over the next several days the women party, play, fight, dance, take absinthe, and a whole host of other NSFW activities that can only be appreciated when experienced with friends.

The four women elevate the material to something better than it ever was intended to be.  I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that Latifah was originally approached to play Hall’s part and vice-versa.  Both actresses have done those types of characters before and it’s nice to see them take on something different, especially Latifah who’s taken some pretty bland roles lately.  Pinkett Smith seems at home in the mother hen role but let’s loose when she’s good and ready.

Truly, though, the star of the show is Haddish as a wise-cracking, foul-mouthed broad that owns her sexuality and honesty like a badge of honor.  Impossible to embarrass, Dina will say anything and do anything to get a reaction out of her friends and Haddish goes to the same lengths to set herself apart from her costars who all have more experience on the big screen.  What Haddish does with a banana and a grapefruit at one point should earn her some sort of special medal for bravery.

Sure, the movie feels cheaply made with an abundance of “group” shots that look like they were filmed at different times and badly photoshopped at that.  Then there’s the supporting cast that seemed to be comprised of actors that would work for scale just to keep their health insurance going.  I’m not saying that Kate Walsh (The Perks of Being a Wallflower) is in it just for the money but she does subject herself to some pretty embarrassing “I’m so WHITE!” dialogue and one whopper of a sight gag when she drunkenly grabs the wrong cocktail glass.

This is one that would be best to see with a large audience and if they are anything like the people I screened this with, it will only add to the ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ feeling.  There’s a bit of graphic nudity early on in the film that elicited screams of laughter from the audience, screams that remained going strong for a solid minute.  Then there was the projectile urination scene…but I’ll let you see for yourself what that’s all about.  While it frustratingly bottoms out several times, it sticks its ending with a fresh message of be your best self that feels genuine in its delivery.

The script from Kenya Barris and Tracy Oliver and direction from Malcolm D. Lee are, to be honest, nothing special.  Most of the jokes are telegraphed in advance and even some of the tackier vulgarity feels also-ran.  The movie heads in exactly the direction you think it will and rarely strays off course.  Allowing his movie to go on too long by a good 15 minutes, Lee seems beholden to give each actress the exact same amount of screen time, whether we like it or not.  This creates a Girls Trip that overstays its welcome at times but ends with a bang.