I had the pick of Arbitrage (2012) for this week’s movie. This is a movie I had not heard of prior to the draft at the beginning of the month, and upon glancing at the IMDB page for it, I immediately knew that I was in for a very “boomer-coded” flick, and boy was I right on that call. This movie stars Richard Gere (Robert Miller), Susan Sarandon (Ellen Miller), Brit Marling (Brooke Miller), and Tim Roth (Detective Michael Bryer). I have looked at other reviews and they all have one thing in common: the glazing of Richard Gere’s performance in this movie. For me, I thought that he played an absolutely abhorrent character, and did not do a very ‘good’ or interesting job of it. 

The story of this movie is rather simple, Robert has a “financial business” as it is referred to in the film repeatedly; I am still entirely unsure of what the business does other than “something related to finance.” He is in the process of selling the business to some bank, and in the middle of an audit when the movie starts. However, he has been committing various forms of fraud through the business over the years to elevate the numbers, and now is borrowing money to cover the trail. On top of this, he has a sidepiece outside of his wife, Julie (played by Laetitia Casta) and he is supporting her gallery and paying for her fancy New York apartment through his business. 

The first 25 minutes of this movie were agony. The pacing of Arbitrage is unbelievably slow, and un-methodic. It takes so long for anything to happen, and the things that happen are impossibly boring. I think if I had tried to watch this at night, rather than the middle of the afternoon, I would have fallen asleep were it dark outside. There was one scene in this movie that I actually got excited about in any way, and it was when Robert leaves town with Julie and while driving at night, he starts to doze behind the wheel, which causes him to hit the concrete divider on the highway, flipping the car, and killing Julie. This scene happens at the 25 minute mark, and everything before and after that is bland and boring. 

Outside of this scene, there are few things to be liked about this movie, primarily two of the characters and their acting and stories. The first character is Detective Bryer, the second is Jimmy Grant (played by Nate Parker). Jimmy is the son of Robert’s former driver, who gets wrapped up in the story because Robert calls him to pick him up after the accident occurs in the middle of the night. Thankfully, Jimmy gets a good ending in a movie where the ending is entirely unsatisfying. The Detective is an interesting character, and Tim Roth is a good actor. Despite his storyline of being unable to capture Robert in the end. 

Robert is a gross and idiotic character. His relationship dynamic with Julie is clearly one of power, and he abuses it to his advantage. He is constantly late to dates with her, lying to her as much as he lies to his own wife, and despite all of this, she still makes love passionately to him. He even goes as far as to sneak in through the back door of her apartment (that he pays for I’ll remind you) while she’s hosting a party, and has her kick out her guests after they have an argument. 

On top of being a gross person, Robert is also an idiotic character. Years of financial fraud have finally caught up with him. He borrows 412 MILLION dollars from a friend to cover the trail while being audited. This causes an argument between the two where Robert is a massive dick to the friend, because he’s had the money for 32 days when he initially said he would only have it for two weeks. This scene pissed me off more than anything else; in any other movie, or even the real world, with that much money on the line, sitting in a bank account, not collecting interest, the friend who loaned him the money would hire a hitman for $100,000, off Robert, and get his money back without a second thought. This also pissed me off as the movie continued, because the friend, and this issue was never revisited. 

The saddest part about this god awful movie is the fact that the Detective forged some evidence in the trial with Jimmy, and this was revealed in court. This leads to Robert getting off scot free in the end, but it also meant that Jimmy was able to take the payoff from Robert to keep quiet in court, and also get off scot free. Jimmy then buys an Applebee’s and runs off to Virginia, getting a happy and deserved ending. 

There is one character that I have yet to talk about, because she is barely a character. Brooke, the daughter of Robert, works for his company. She is in a handful of scenes, is an extremely awkward actress, and really doesn’t do much for the story overall. Many of her lines were delivered with a weird, nervous chuckle, which felt very out of place. The main thing that she attributes to the movie is when she becomes aware of the fraud at her dad’s company, confronts him about it, and there is a scene where she yells at him on a park bench. This is their final interaction until the final scene of the movie, which also made me upset, because there is never any resolution shown to the viewer in this film. It occurs, and we must accept that it does without an ounce of explanation or reasoning.

There were two other scenes in this movie apart from the car crash scene that had any sort of impact on me while watching. The first one had me laughing out loud at the lunacy in its writing near the end, where Ellen serves Robert with divorce papers. She is finally aware of everything, the fraud, the homicide cover up, the Detective. She attempts to blackmail Robert while serving him. An argument ensues, where Richard Gere delivers the funniest line of the entire movie: Ellen says “…It can cause just enough trouble, the kind of trouble you don’t want. According to my lawyer, enough to give them probable cause. Then they can subpoena your DNA and your cell phone.” Then Richard Gere interrupts her and yells “FUCK THE DNA! I’M SICK OF THIS SHIT!!!” and I burst out laughing. Everything in this movie is Robert’s fault. He is a gross, idiotic character, and he takes no responsibility for any of his actions. The way he screams these lines of dialogue had me thinking of a Tim Robinson skit, it was so absurd and honestly, poor writing.

The very next (and final) scene in this movie is one that also made me yell at my tv: we jump to a charity dinner scene where Robert, Ellen, and Brooke are in attendance. Robert is sitting beside his wife at one of the tables, everyone is smiling and his daughter, Brooke, is presenting an award to Robert, while congratulating him for selling his business. She even says “A man I am proud to call my coworker, friend, and father.” Despite the last time we see these two characters interact is her blowing up on him over the fraud. The credits then roll while everyone applauds Robert and he walks towards the stage to accept the award.

THAT’S THE ENDING? IT JUST ENDS??? No resolution on the homicide of Julie that Robert committed. No resolution on the fraud, the borrowed money, the lying, the cheating, the anything. It’s just over. This movie is “boomer slop” at its worst. I cannot fathom how people saw this in theaters in 2012 and walked away feeling any sort of satisfaction afterwards. I am curious as to what the average age of the critics reviewing this movie on Rotten Tomatoes is, because it has a collective 87% from them. As said at the beginning, they are also uplifting Richard Gere’s performance, but I could not buy into it for one second of this movie. I have seen many different movies that feature “unlikable” characters portrayed extremely well by the actor playing them, in a way that makes you think about the performance and how they can act so well. Richard Gere does such a poor job at playing a poor character that it’s ultimately infuriating. This is a movie I would never recommend to a peer, and I never would have sought out on my own if it hadn’t been for the devilish randomizer dealing it my way for this blog. 

0.5 mallard/5

-Seann

Unfrosted (2024) likely had similar origins to the film I reviewed last week, Twins (1988). Both movies probably started as off-the-wall ideas that then were formed into fully-fledged scripts, actors hired, and a production squad assembled. Unfrosted (2024) came about when Jerry Seinfeld decided he wanted to make a biopic about the creation of the classic kids’ breakfast item (that also appeals to adults, myself included) – the Pop-Tart. However, unlike Twins, this is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen, and I really wish that was an exaggeration. Let’s talk about what went wrong, and then perhaps a sentence or two on what the good aspect (singular) of the movie was.

The absolute biggest issue with this movie is that it is non-stop jokes. The script is horribly unfunny, the characters are appallingly flat and annoying, and the acting is uninspired. The best performer in this movie is Hugh Grant – let that sink in. A movie that is non-stop jokes can be done well, and has been done well in the past, but an issue arises when we move from one bad, unfunny, topical, boring joke to the next at breakneck speed. This movie does not let up – it hits you with a jab of a joke about the airbag (yes, they joke about the airbag), to a jab about Mussolini (everyone’s favorite comedic topic), only to then hit you with a blinding uppercut to the chin in the form of the inventor of the Schwinn bicycle being blown to bits. This movie is 90 minutes. I would venture to say there are over 250 moments that are meant to be humorous or at least entertaining. I laughed, or was at the very least even slightly amused, at a grand total of one of them. If you’re curious which one, it is JFK’s remark about JFK Jr. 

I know I’m coming out of the gate hard on this one. Normally I try to lean more into a nuanced discussion of whether the movie fulfilled its aims, or perhaps an in-depth discussion of what the aims of a movie like this are. There’s no nuance to this: this movie was made with the entire goal of being funny, and it is one of the absolute most unfunny movies I’ve ever seen. I laughed more times while watching Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011) a few weeks ago than I ever laughed watching this. 

What exactly makes it so not funny? I touched earlier upon the rapidity with which the groan-inducing references and jokes come, but perhaps the most difficult part is just how damn hard it tries to be funny. It tries DESPERATELY to make the viewer laugh at every turn. There’s slapstick, there’s modern political commentary, there’s bizarre attire, there’s a robot that is supposed to make us laugh (by revealing that one of the characters isn’t wearing underwear). There’s an erudite child. There’s a joke at the expense of grape-nuts – it’s about time someone knocked them down a peg! If I were to make a compilation of all the jokes in this movie, it would just be the entire run-time of the movie. I would be shocked if there’s ten lines of dialogue that do not in some way set up a joke or are a joke in and of themselves. 

Moving on, I’ll touch on the star-studded cast. The cast list reads as a who’s who of people who are famously not funny, or co-worker funny, to borrow a term from the music world. Your boring, normie co-worker’s favorite comedian is in this movie, I guarantee it. This film has, more or less, everyone. Amy Schumer and Melissa McCarthy are the two female leads, and they more or less play the same role they always do. Amy Schumer even burps and farts and has sex with a man (….Nikita Khrushev…), just as her reputation and the memes about her would have one expect. Jim Gaffigan is there, and he talks like a baby most of the time. Even Thomas Lennon, of whom I’m normally a fan (I’ll go on record as a Reno! 911 enjoyer), plays a really unexciting character: a German, who dodges the question of where he was in the early 1940’s multiple times. I think the question “is X person funny?” could reasonably be answered by “were they in Unfrosted (2024)? If so, then no.” 

This movie also looks like complete garbage, and by that I mean it is not visually appealing or interesting whatsoever. It’s a Netflix movie, so it’s completely over-polished, devoid of any sort of artistic inspiration at all. This truly is a movie that’s meant to appeal to the greatest number of people possible, and entertain them just enough so that they don’t turn it off. This is the Sleep Token of the movie world. This is the James Patterson of the movie world. This is the Los Angeles Lakers of the movie world. Completely soulless, devoid of any sort of care or creative merit whatsoever. I would go so far as to say that this is the first feature-length film that is actually just an extended TikTok. 

As promised, I’ll touch on the one thing that is passable (not good, but merely passable) in this movie, and that is the continuity of the plot. The movie, more or less, makes sense. The events that happen on screen proceed in a logical order, and we arrive at a conclusion to the story that is in line with the events that happen before it. Is it an interesting plot? No, not at all. Does it tell a story? Very poorly, but yes. There’s a beginning that happens first, a middle that happens through most of it, and then it does end (thankfully). This is the first movie of the blog that I’ve struggled to get through twice. All of the others I watched at least twice before writing my review, and many of them three times, but watching this a second time was a struggle. I had to take breaks periodically and do something else more pleasurable, like fold laundry, or wash the dishes. You know, things most people look forward to doing. 

Unfrosted (2024) has a score of 5.5 out of 10 on IMDB, a 39% tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes, and a score of 2.1 out of 5 on Letterboxd. Shocking. Absolutely baffling. Reading the reviews, it seems like some people actually found this movie funny. Those people are all of our co-workers. I can imagine a film worse than this, but I have to try really fucking hard to do so, and therefore I feel I can’t give Unfrosted (2024) a flat 0….but I’m awfully tempted.

0.5 mallards/5

–Maxwell