Ever had that recurring dream where you walk into your old high school science class and realize you’re late and don’t know what’s going on? That’s kind of how I felt watching “Bottle Rocket” (1996). I get the fact that it’s a Wes Anderson movie and it launched the careers of Luke and Owen Wilson, but it’s just not a very good movie. Owen’s lunatic criminal mastermind is curiously entertaining, but pointless. And I don’t know why most of the other affluent slacker characters are doing what they’re doing. Not James Caan. He’s an actual criminal. And he’s no slacker.
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A bunch of crazy rednecks plan an armored car heist. Hijinks ensue. That’s pretty much all you need to know about “Masterminds” (2016). In recent years, Lorne Michaels has gotten highly efficient at taking a rotating cast of “Saturday Night Live” alumni and cranking out disposable comedies that don’t make you feel as if two hours of your life have been wasted. There’s something to say for that. There’s also something to say for Kristen Wiig. In a film full of marginally likeable characters, she deftly convinces you to root for her most of all. That, friends, is the real heist.
Finally, toward the end of “Zoolander 2” (2016), I laughed out loud. I don’t know whether it was that particular gag or just the absurdity of the whole thing that finally got to me. This movie is stupid. It knows it’s stupid. It knows that you know it’s stupid. It wasn’t trying not to be stupid. In fact, because it knows that you know it’s stupid, it doubled down on stupid until stupid became absurd and I laughed out loud. Just like the original, there’s dopey male models and world-saving hijinks. Thank god Penelope Cruz has a sense of humor.
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