If only. That is my takeaway from seeing Suicide Squad. It could have been great, if only. It would have been great if only. Despite the films best efforts, Suicide Squad is still a very entertaining movie. But there are some glaring flaws that consistently detract from the experience. What is shocking is how good the movie is considering how obvious some of its missteps are.

Suicide Squad does not get off to a good start. It opens with some highly artificial character introductions that interspersed with Amanda Waller outlining her Task Force X plan. It is poppy and high energy, but even in just the context of the first 20 minutes it doesn’t fit. While it quickly introduces the team, it doesn’t really give them a context. Deadshot is a hit man with perfect marksman ship who was caught by Batman. Harley Quinn is the Joker’s lady friend who was caught by Batman. El Diablo is a pyrokinetic, Killer Croc is a human Crocodile, and Captain Boomerang is a murderous jewel thief with a signature weapon. Then about 15 minutes later is introduces everyone again. It feels like they chopped up the first act to get to the team faster and to make it feel more like the trailers. It ends up feeling disjointed and unfinished.

After that, though, things really pick up. The team is quickly pressed into action, as a mystical force is attacking the fictional Midway City and that requires their skills and their expendability. Things start to feel more organic. Initially their mission is to rescue a high value individual from the city, afterwards they must try to stop what they are told is a terror attack.

Nominally the villain is the Enchantress and her brother. She began as part of the team, an extra-dimensional entity that had possessed archaeologist June Moone and controlled by Waller, who has her heart. But she manages to break free and attempts to destroy human civilization. While Enchantress is the antagonist that they actually fight, but the true villain of the film is Waller, whose arrogance and disregard for other people endangered the world. There is nothing redeemable about here.

Other than the choppy, nigh incomprehensible opening, the other big flaws are the back half of the Squad and the Joker. This is the Deadshot, Harley and El Diablo show, the other team members are just there to fill out the ranks. Captain Boomerang steals every scene he’s in, but he doesn’t really have anything to do. The same is true of Killer Croc and Katana, who doesn’t even get her own intro. Even Flagg, the leader of the team and the person who should be the emotional center of the movie, gets pretty short shrift. All of that really isn’t a big problem, but it certainly feels like the movie would have been better if only they had done a little more with those characters. Especially Flagg, who was in a relationship with Moone. He has an emotional connection to the mission that is largely ignored for the bulk of the film.

The Joker stuff is harder to reconcile. I don’t hate Jared Leto’s take on the character, despite the reports of his obnoxious, to put it lightly, antics on set. He plays the Joker as some sort of trashball gangster, like a green haired Scarface. But even though the character is in all of about 10 minutes of the movie, that feels like about twice as much as he should. His storyline with Harley, where the Joker spends the movie trying to free her from prison and then the squad, goes nowhere. It’s just kind of there, distracting from everyone else. Harley is one of the best parts of the film, but the stuff with the Joker doesn’t add anything to her portrayal. It is a wasted, pointless subplot. In only they could have provided a reason or some resolution to that plot it would have add some much need depth to the movie.

Yes, the movie stumbles out of the gate. It wastes time on bad characters and plots and ignores more interesting ones or at least the chance to make other characters more interesting. But despite all of that, the film still delights. There is enough emotional connection to the characters to make the viewer care and the action is largely fun. It isn’t quite earned with El Diablo refers to the team as his family, but that thought is not echoed by anybody else in the film. It feels like a movie that bears scars from reshoots and editing, but the core of the film is still a strong action movie.

***1/2

No movie this summer has stirred up the internet manchildren like the Ghostbusters remake. The absurd tantrum being thrown about how they replaced men with women made it hard to have any sort of rational discussion about the merits of the film. Pathetic cries of it destroying viewers’ childhoods, dead face serious such complaints, sounded in comments sections whenever the movie was mentioned. Doing my best to ignore all that garbage; how was the movie? Pretty damn good. Not really a scratch on the original, but highly entertaining in its own right. It wisely isn’t a straight remake of the original, but a new story about people hunting ghosts. It isn’t the best or most well considered story, but it is very funny and visually interesting.

Ghostbusters stars Kristin Wiig and Melissa McCarthy as childhood friends and scientists who had a falling out over a book they wrote about the paranormal. McCarthy’s Abby publishes the book against Wiig’s Erin’s wishes, which causes some strife, but soon has them teaming back up, along Kate McKinnon’s Holtzman, when they discover a real ghost. They work to discover what is causing an outbreak of ghost sightings, soon teaming up with Leslie Jones’ Patty, who works for the MTA.

It is nearly impossible to watch this film and not compare it to the original. It is inevitable. This version of Ghostbusters is strongest when it differentiates itself from the previous film and weakest when referencing it. Most of the stars of the 1984 movie make cameo appearances, to moderate degrees of effectiveness. The scenes in the movie that most closely resemble the original are mostly inferior. Those and the cameos mostly serve to remind the viewers of the other movie they could be watching. The bulk of the movie, though, charts its own path and that is largely an enjoyable one.

Most wisely, the new team is not just made up of gender swapped versions of the old characters, they are all original creations. There is no direct equivalent of Peter, Ray or Egon here. Abby, Erin and Holtzman are all their own characters. While the first two are fine characters, characters whose friendship forms the emotional heart of the film, the real standout is Holtzman. She has a touch of Egon’s mad scientist in her, but hers is more focused on the mechanical side of things than his more theoretical work. Patty, the slightly late addition to the team, is a more essential part of the team than Winston was in the first movie, and actually gets a chance to be funny.

Those differences in character help to drive the plot. These Ghostbusters are much more focused on the equipment they use. Holtzman, ever tinkering, comes with much more inventive tools that just proton packs. They get grenades and shotguns and even more fun stuff. Instead of being concerned with running a business and making money, they are more concerned with scientific respect.

I would say that this is a funnier movie than the original, though the jokes come at the expense of the plot. The original is a movie with a clear through line and much of the focus is on the main conflict between the Ghostbusters and Zuul. The villain’s scheme and the plot in general, is much less considered in this new version. That lack of focus gives the characters a lot more time to just be funny. For the most part, it succeeds. Ghostbusters (2016) is a very funny movie. Not every bit hits, but much more hit than miss.

It does kind of falter in the third act, when it tries to go big but hasn’t spent the time building up the threat or the stakes. It just kind of throws them out there at the end. And while it does feature on thoroughly satisfying CGI fueled action scene, the big threat at the end is almost an afterthought. It would have been better served with a smaller climax, but it instead went for the unearned big one.

Ghostbusters (2016) is a fine comedy. Likely not an all-time classic, but certainly a welcome addition to this franchise. It breathes new life into something that had been dead for more than twenty years. It is imperfect but highly entertaining.

***1/2

This has been a wet fart of a summer at the movies. It started good, with the very solid Captain America Civil War, but that gave way to the flaccid and the bloated. There have been some passably entertaining films, but nothing I would call great or even very good. Luckily, the end of July is here to save this lackluster summer. It might very well be lowered expectations due to a few lackluster months, but Star Trek Beyond is right now a strong contender for best movie of the summer.

My lack of any deep care for the Enterprise crew or their adventures allowed me to have a fairly positive take on the Into Darkness when it first came out, though even in that review the more thought I applied to the film the less I liked it. My opinion has not improved in the intervening time. While there is no way for Beyond to escape some sense of pandering, with it still featuring the original crew, it lacks Into Darkness’s morbid feel of rooting through the bones of the old stuff instead of creating anything new. If anything, Beyond feels like an episode of a Star Trek TV show. A particularly action packed episode on steroids, but it still has that kind of adventure of the week sort of feel.

Star Trek Beyond sees the Enterprise crew’s shore leave interrupted for a rescue mission in uncharted space that goes seriously awry when they are suddenly attacked. As the ship is destroyed, an occurrence so frequent in the films that it lacks any effect, the crew is split up and they each have to work to try to get everyone freed from a powerful foe intent on destroying the Federation for some old slight. It is not exactly going boldly where no one has gone before, but at least it isn’t going where it has famously been yet again.

This is far from a perfect movie. The opening half hour is particularly unfocused, especially when the crew is first split up. The villain, as is becoming tradition in this series, never has his methods or motivations properly explained. Also, for a franchise that is often on the more thoughtful side of science fiction, Beyond pays the barest lip service to any serious science fiction before going full on action nonsense. Really, the villain feels like the biggest missed opportunity in the film, since once he is explained it helps tie the rest of the movie together, but that information would have helped a lot better earlier in the film.

Still, even with those complaints Star Trek Beyond is a blast. It gets the characters very right, with each member of the crew having a chance to shine and perfectly what captures what has made these characters so popular for so long. The cast they got for this reboot has always been one of the films’ strengths, and that is still true. Most of the primary crew can and have headlined films all on their own. Director Justin Lin is a master of using a big cast and making the viewer feel the camaraderie, as seen in his work on the Fast & Furious movies. And while the action is ridiculous, it is internally consistent. No nonsensical twists just to have twists, but a story that builds on its own logic.

Star Trek Beyond is not likely to go down as an all-time classic. It is no Mad Max Fury Road. It is an engaging and well executed action movie; thoroughly entertaining is not ground breaking. After a summer of franchise non-starters like Warcraft and ambitious wrecks like X-Men Apocalypse, the satisfying competence of Star Trek Beyond is a complete delight.

****

The BFG’s biggest problem is that the story doesn’t fit on the screen very well. Spielberg and the effects team to a wonderful job creating The BFG and making him and his world look real enough, but the structure of the story doesn’t quite work as a movie. It ends up feeling distracted and scattershot. That is not unlike the how I felt about the book years and years ago. The BFG may be a true and faithful adaptation, but that doesn’t make it a good movie.

The technical achievement of the character The BFG is worth noting. While it doesn’t ever quite look real, it does look good. The look of The BFG and his house are believable in that totally unbelievable dreamlike way that permeates the movie. The best part of the movie is early on, when BFG is hiding in the dark streets of London, making his cape and horn look like trees and light posts in silhouette. It shows some wonderful inventiveness. Mark Rylance infuses the characters with a charming vulnerability as he catches dreams and mangles words. While he is great, Ruby Barnhill does good work as Sophie. She is smart and adventurous. The pairing works well together. The only other characters that get much time are the rest of the giants, who are evil man-eaters with names like Bonecruncher and Gizzardgulper. They are giants both to Sophie and to BFG, who they bully. There are some great scenes that play with the three levels of size between the characters, with the bad giants being at least twice the size of BFG and he being about 10 times bigger than Sophie. It is visually interesting, at least.

It is too bad about the scattered, episodic nature of the plot. I know that is kind of a shot at Dahl’s original, but at the risk of having everyone tune me out, I’ve never been the biggest fan of Dahl or the BFG. It starts well, with Sophie spying BFG at night and him taking her away to Giant Country. They have some adventures and misunderstandings at his house before he takes her dream catching. Up until this point the movie has been largely great. A little lacking in drive at times, instead content to meander around to give BFG a chance to say funny words. The third act, though, is a real let down and killed my interest in the movie. Without spoiling anything, the duo’s plan to deal with the man-eating giants is supremely disappointing.

It ends up feeling a lot like Favreau’s The Jungle Book from earlier this year. It is a wonderful looking film, but the visual magic doesn’t translate into wonder. It looks nice, sure, but the movie itself is edgeless and dull. Comparing this to past Spielberg films like E.T or even The Adventures of Tintin shows its lack of substance. Outside of the silly words, fart jokes and technical wizardry, there really isn’t much to The BFG.

**1/2

As a big fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs, I was excited to see Tarzan on the big screen. I hoped it would be as fun to watch as the criminally underrated John Carter movie from 2012. In its own way Tarzan is as hard a sell as the stories of that space faring Civil War veteran. There is something at the very least dubious about the racial politics of Tarzan, King of the Jungle. Still, I was in for what would hopefully be some exciting jungle action. While it certainly has its flaws, The Legend of Tarzan delivers enough of that to be satisfying.

To the film’s credit, it doesn’t try to side step the racial implications. Instead, it attempts to address the issue head on, with mixed results. Samuel L Jackson plays real life adventurer/politician/journalist George Washington Williams and the movie deals primarily with the Congo Free State and the atrocities King Leopold of Belgium’s agents perpetrated there in the 19^th century. This is rather heavy stuff to graft onto a series of pulpy adventure stories about a man raised by apes, but The Legend of Tarzan does its best to conscious of its implications.

It just can’t square that circle, though. The attempts to eliminate the problematic elements of the Tarzan story only help to highlight them. Bringing in the real world history of the Congo and having the white savior rewrite it is a bad look. That is not how it went down in history, and it diminishes Williams’ story by making subordinate to Tarzan’s. It gives the Africans a hand in securing their own freedom, but only after being united by Tarzan. For all of the film’s good intentions, it still ends up feeling a little embarrassing. The same goes for Jane, who the movie spend an inordinate amount of time establishing the competence of only to still have her act as a damsel in distress for the bulk of the runtime.

Still, much of the movie works as a movie. Alexander Skarsgard is perfectly cast as Tarzan, though the movie keeps him civilized for far too long. Sam Jackson, Djimon Hounsou and Christoph Waltz give their usual quality performances. Margot Robbie is electric as Jane. The movie looks good. I fully bought Tarzan’s interactions with the various jungle beasts that he meets along the way. I absolutely loved that the movie was not an origin story. It did deal with Tarzan’s origin, but only in brief and effecting flashbacks.

The movie really sold me on this version of Tarzan. His relationships with society, with Williams, the animals and especially with Jane all felt real. I believed both his attempts to put his jungle life behind him and be the modern civilized man as well as his sliding back into his natural state. While I would argue that the movie did not give him enough action, what action the movie had was convincing.

Despite a sluggish start and some general hand wringing, I ended up enjoying The Legend of Tarzan quite a bit. The grafting on of real historical atrocity to the Tarzan story was maybe not the best choice, though it was a choice that shows that at least the filmmakers were trying to do something. Honestly, I was not familiar going in of the history, or of George Washington Williams. I am thankful to the movie for teaching me something, but the more I look into it the more I think that maybe they should have just made a movie about that real man. It kind of feels like that is the movie they wanted to make anyway.

***

I feel like I start all of my Pixar movie reviews noting their excellent track record. It hovers over all of their films, inescapable. Though I haven’t seen The Good Dinosaur yet, I feel confident saying that Pixar has one bad movie to their name. Even though it didn’t blow me away like the best of their output, a long list including last summer’s Inside Out, Finding Dory keeps up their strong output.

A sequel to 2003’s Finding Nemo, Finding Dory shifts the focus to the titular blue tang who has, as she will tell you repeatedly, short term memory loss. After briefly recalling something of her life before she met up with Nemo and Marlin, the three of them go on a quest to find her missing family. Their trek leads them to the aquarium where Dory was born and raised. There she becomes separated from Marlin and Nemo and both she and they meet up with a variety of colorful aquatic life, including the grumpy yet helpful octopus Hank. Other than Hank the new characters fail to make much of an impression, most of them having only one bit that is repeated a few times instead of actually feeling like characters.

The biggest part of the movie amounts to a series of highly amusing vignettes as the characters move around the aquarium. The only character with any sort of through line is Dory, and hers development moves in fits and starts thanks to her memory problems. The other characters are mostly static. Marlin goes through the exact same arc as he did in the previous movie. Still, Dory’s journey is well done even if she is a character that I have never cared for. Pixar has mastered the art of making all-ages movies that have jokes and bright colorful stories for kids, but running thoughtful, adult themes behind them. Dory’s steady recovery of her previous life and her growing ability to deal with her handicap is a strong idea to hang a story on.

Still it doesn’t quite land like the better Pixar movies do. It feels a little too close to its predecessor. It makes sure all the characters from Finding Nemo get to make an appearance, even if it doesn’t add anything to this film. It isn’t a retread, but neither does it add a whole lot. Some characters get assumed character growth that doesn’t actually come out of anything that has happened in the rest of the movie. It also doesn’t help that the film escalates to a finale that doesn’t really fit in with the tone of the rest of the movie.

It is most reminiscent of Toy Story 2, which is fine but not quite as good as the first, only noting that Finding Nemo isn’t quite as good as Toy Story to begin with. This is starting to sound harsh, when Finding Dory is a perfectly good film, just not a great one. Finding Dory is a fine addition to Pixar’s library, but it isn’t one that is long going to be remembered. It is touching, but not heartbreaking, amusing but not hilarious, good looking but not gorgeous.

***1/2

How much one enjoys Central Intelligence depends on how much they enjoy watching The Rock or Kevin Hart. This is not the movie to convert non-fans, but it lets both actors do their thing with a modicum of enjoyment. The movie’s biggest problem is that it never commits to being one kind of movie, instead meandering somewhat among several options. It is saved, however, on the strength of the performances of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Kevin Hart, both of whom are excellent here.

Hart is Calvin Joyner, a former High School phenom who is unsatisfied with his life 20 years later. The Rock is Bob Stone, former bullied fat kid who has remade himself as a towering mountain of a man. Bob idolized Calvin in school, and since, and on the eve of their 20 year class reunion comes to him for help; because Bob is in the CIA and needs Calvin’s accounting expertise. Things then go through the usual spy movie tropes as Bob and Calvin work together to overcome their problems. There is nothing particularly new or unexpected here, but what is her is well executed.

There are some problems. For the most part Central Intelligence is sweet. It is a comedy that want’s viewers to like its characters. Calvin is the one person, including the teachers and the principal, who stands up for Bob in his most humiliating moment in High School. Throughout the movie he is shown to be a genuinely good person. Bob is a bit of an unknown, but is largely sweet if more than a little daffy. That tone works, except that the film occasionally drifts into mean spirited Happy Madison shit. (There is a resemblance, if only superficial, to the straight to Netflix Adam Sandler and David Spade misfire The Do-Over, a comparison that makes Central Intelligence look all the better) This is exemplified in Trevor, played by Jason Bateman, who was Bob’s bully in high school and remains a unrepentant bully 20 years later. While there is reason to have that plot, it sticks out tonally from much of the rest of the movie. I don’t know if I love or hate that the two plot threads of this movie, the spy stuff and the reunion, are never connected. It would be ludicrous for them to tie together, if the bully were to be the villain or something, but the two threads are literally disconnected from each other.

At times, the film closes in on having some genuine heart. When the two of them break into their old school and see the shrine to Calvin’s accomplishments, he lament how disappointing his life is and you can almost feel it, but the film bounces off that and moves on to something less compelling. The same goes for Calvin’s marital troubles, which start as though they are going to important rather than just the fodder for a couple of scenes and to be forgotten by the end.

The highlight of the film is Johnson as Bob Stone. Both in the action scenes, which are actually quite good, and in his still trapped in high school persona. There is something undeniably delightful to hear The Rock wax on about his love for unicorns (” ‘corns are the deadliest mythical beast), Twilight and Sixteen Candles. Johnson manages to sell it all. He is a CIA agent how has never lost his hopeful, childlike innocence. He likes what he likes and who are you to tell him to change?

I walked out of the theater mildly disappointed in Central Intelligence, but the more I think about it the more I like it. The better its good moments seem and the bad one sort of fade from my memory. Still, it is far from a perfect film. I would like to see this duo team up again. There is some chemistry between the motor mouthed, diminutive Hart and the gargantuan Rock. This movie gives them just enough to work with to be worth your checking out, at least for those who are already fans.

***