The Sleepover: Far from a snooze

The Sleepover (2020) • View trailer 

Three stars. Rated TV-PG, for fantasy peril

By Derrick Bang

This is a silly little film.

 

It’s also reasonably well plotted, crisply paced, family-friendly and — given the proper frame of mind — a lot of fun. Director Trish Sie and scripter Sarah Rothschild toss a quartet of energetic children into a “suspense lite” scenario; while the results certainly won’t set the cinema world on fire, there’s no denying the entertainment value. (You'll find it via Netflix.)

 

Having successfully captured an intruder, our young heroes — from left, Mim (Cree
Cicchino, Lewis (Lucas Jaye), Kevin (Maxwell Simkins) and Clancy (Sadie Stanley) —
are about to learn that he's a WITSEC handler ... in other words, a good guy.

It’s also refreshing, given the genre, that a) these kids are not insufferable brats whose sole purpose is to make all adults look stupid; and b) the story does not succumb to the needless destruction of personal and public property.

 

But yes: We do get a car chase.

 

Adolescent Kevin Finch (Maxwell Simkins) is introduced while fabricating a whopper during a classroom presentation designed to share each student’s family life: an apparently frequent tendency toward wild exaggeration that fails to amuse his teacher. 15-year-old sister Clancy (Sadie Stanley) has a crush on senior Travis (Matthew Grimaldi); she’s also an accomplished cello player, but too shy to perform in public.

 

To Clancy’s greater mortification, parents Margot (Malin Åkerman) and Ron (Ken Marino) refuse to give her a phone, leaving her the only kid in the entire school without one (she insists).

 

To add insult to injury, Clancy’s savvy, über-cool best friend Mim (Cree Cicchino) always is glued to her phone.

 

Clancy further believes that her parents are hopelessly square. Dad, an accomplished pastry chef, forever embarrasses her by (among other things) “working out” — in public — with tiny finger-grippers. Ron actually fits that characterization: Marino, well remembered as smarmy Vinnie Van Lowe on TV’s Veronica Mars, plays the guy as a good-natured doofus.

 

Margot, though, has a bit of an edge; we catch a glimpse when, as school lunch monitor, she confronts a trio of disrespectful eighth-grade jerks.

 

On this otherwise average evening, Kevin is hosting best friend Lewis (Lucas Jaye) on a sleepover; Ron, determined to wean the boys from video games, insists they camp out in the back yard. This doesn’t sit well with timid Lewis, unable to enjoy kid-hood due to a helicopter mother who relentlessly broadcasts his many physical and emotional ailments and shortcomings (more perceived than real, we suspect).

 

Clancy, despite being grounded for smart-mouthing her mother, intends to sneak out with Mim, in order to attend a party at Travis’ house (while his parents are away). After all, he invited her.

 

Masterminds: Wishful thinking

Masterminds (2016) • View trailer 
One star. Rated PG-13, for crude humor, cartoonish violence and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang

On the evening of October 4, 1997, the Charlotte, North Carolina, regional office of Loomis Fargo & Co. lost $17.3 million during a slapdash scheme orchestrated by vault supervisor David Scott Ghantt, his girlfriend Kelly Campbell, her friend Steve Chambers and his wife, Michelle, and four other participants.

After David (Zach Galifianakis, foreground left) fills the getaway van with countless stacks
of money, his confederates in crime — from left, Eric (Ross Kimball), Steve (Owen Wilson),
Kelly (Kristen Wiig) and Runny (David Ratray) — stare at the haul in utter disbelief.
Enduring this misbegotten comedy prompts an entirely different kind of disbelief.

In early March of 1998, all eight were arrested by the FBI, in large part because Steve and Michelle Chambers had spent so much of the loot quite brazenly. Subsequent prison sentences ranged from eight to 11 years, and the entire affair became known as the “hillbilly heist,” because of the blindingly stupid behavior of almost everybody involved.

Now, close to two decades later, what was the second-largest cash robbery on U.S. soil — at the time — has “inspired” a new comedy by director Jared Hess, best known for overly broad farces such as Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre and an episode of the TV series The Last Man on Earth. Not to mention additional big-screen flops such as Gentlemen Broncos and Don Verdean.

It’s further telling that the scripting credits for this new film — which cite Chris Bowman, Hubbel Palmer and Emily Spivey — make absolutely no mention of the 2002 book Heist: The $17 Million Loomis Fargo Theft, written by Charlotte Observer investigative journalist Jeff Diamant. Why bother sourcing the official record of what obviously was an incredulously juicy saga to begin with, when hack film writers can deliver an inferior script instead?

Better still, why bother with the script, when Hess willingly tolerates a free-wheeling shoot that feels as if 90 percent of the dialog was ad-libbed?

After all, isn’t that why one hires comedic personalities such as Zach Galifianakis, Kristen Wiig, Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis?

Ah, but here’s the rub: Not one of those stars is anywhere near as spontaneously sharp, fast or funny as s/he seems to think. Every line in this film feels stiff, forced and tin-eared; very few earn laughter. Worse yet, Hess holds his camera far too long on each dialog exchange, exposing the noticeable pauses that occur when actors haven’t yet figured out their next line.

Or, alternatively, can’t remember a legitimately scripted riposte.

We also endure the usual flatulence jokes and exposed butt cracks that pass for humor these days, along with — the height of humor — a bout of diarrhea in a swimming pool. Seems awfully easy to write moron comedy movies.

To put it bluntly, Masterminds is a train wreck of near epic proportions: a 94-minute slog that absolutely butchers what could, should and would have been a great heist comedy in better, less narcissistic hands.