charmless

The curse of auburn-haired American women heading to Ireland for terrible magic-themed romcoms continues, 14 years after Amy Adams took an unfortunate vacation in the detestable Leap Year (a film that even her co-star Matthew Goode generously referred to as “turgid” within weeks of its release). There’s less at stake here – Adams was a two-time Oscar nominee leading her first romantic comedy – but we’re left in a similarly unremarkable place, a persuasive tourism ad masquerading as a real movie.That might have sounded…

It’s only been a couple of months since Jonah Hill won over audiences with Stutz, his sharp and surprisingly stirring documentary about his therapist, Phil Stutz. The actor is back with another contribution to the Netflix canon, this one an unfortunate monument to the unexamined life.Hill stars in, co-produced and co-wrote You People with Black-ish creator Kenya Barris. Strong as its streetwear and soundtrack game may be, the project lacks the discipline or specificity that makes a romantic comedy pop. Instead we have an…

Last October, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, E-40 and Too $hort released not-bad bop Big Subwoofer, its camper-than-panto video showing the west coast rap supergroup Mount Westmore flying into space to… stage an am-dram Avatar sequel in a strip club? It was never quite clear. Distressingly, they tried to parlay the limited artistic gains of that debut single into a summer album, Bad MFs, which appeared “on the blockchain” (honestly, no idea) and is proffered here with a worse name and tracklisting. Its lush, soul-stroked title…

Meet Cute, a grating Peacock romcom starring Kaley Cuoco and Pete Davidson, dives straight into a classic story: boy meets girl at a New York bar – or, more specifically, girl eyes boy intensely from one end of the bar, asks him for a drink and seems to know what he’ll say before he says it. Cuoco’s perky Sheila and Davidson’s Gary, diffident and a bit disheveled, exchange rhythmic banter. A couple of sarcastic, too-mannered barbs later, they’re off on a solid New York first date: dinner at East Village staple Panna II…