Benjamin

I once wrote a novel about a sarcastic person whom everyone took seriously. Thus, the sarcastic person ended up having to play out a lie they never meant to tell. Now, if someone told you Redbox was joining the original content game along with Netflix and Amazon Prime, you’d think that someone was sarcastic. What if that someone was Redbox and you actually believed them, so they had to hire Bob Saget to make a godawful film about an intervention where the interveners are more messed up than the intervened? It’s called “Benjamin” (2019) and it’s worse than my novel.

Dick

What if two teenage girls nearly as dense as Forrest Gump also possessed Gumpian powers to alter history? What if their world was the Watergate complex and Nixon White House? What if the girls were played by actresses as good as Michelle Williams and Kirsten Dunst and the rest of the cast was packed with veteran comedy troupers? There are lots of “parodies” where just one character or one plot element is parodied and everything else is played straight. “Dick” (1999) does the heavy lifting of true parody – it creates an entire, hilariously absurd, alternate universe and makes it work.