Rating: E
Dir: Jimmy Warden
Star: Samara Weaving, Ray Nicholson, Eric Dane, Jimmie Fails
Dear lord, this is the worst mainstream movie – y’know, with real actors and a seven-figure budget – I have seen in a long time. Nominally a “horror-comedy”, quotes have never been more necessary. It’s certainly a horror, in that you’d see less misbegotten entities being scraped out of syphilis infected whores. It is a “comedy”, only if your idea of humour is a large black man in a wedding dress. It’s the kind of smug, self-referential and elitist garbage only Hollywood could make, with not the slightest relationship to real life. SAMARA, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN US?!?! You’re the only reason I bothered, but it’s clear the only reason you bothered, is because you’re married to the writer-director.
As the title suggests, it’s loosely based on a nineties incident where Robert Dewey Hoskins broke into Madonna’s mansion, and told her PAs he would marry her or slit her throat. Yeah, the comedy just writes itself. Were the rights to the Manson murders unavailable? It would take a much better writer than Warden to extract the humour here. Instead we get psycho Paul Duerson (Nicholson), escaping from the loony bin and breaking in to the house of pop-star Sofia (Weaving), for marital purpose. Except, he’s so disturbed he doesn’t really know her, mistaking first her bodyguard, Bell (Dane), and then her boyfriend, basketball player Rhodes (Falls), as the singer. Paul comes equipped with a pair of minions who might arguably be even more insane, especially Penny (Alba Baptista).
Within a few minutes, during the first encounter between Paul and Bell, it was clear I had made a terrible mistake. This was written by the man responsible for Cocaine Bear? Well, the cocaine bit certainly makes sense. The dialogue here would only makes sense after an industrial strength dose of Colombian marching powder. It’s not helped by Nicholson doing a piss-poor imitation of his father, Jack. There’s also a slew of annoying needle drops, which are as far as the film can be arsed to go, in terms of creating period atmosphere. We reach peak cringe when the film grinds to a halt for a Sofia-Penny duet (top) of Celine Dion hit It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.
This is immediately followed by a brawl between the pair, which may be the only thing which saved this from an F grade. Weaving clearly enjoys action, and Baptista does too, being best known as the Warrior Nun. Or perhaps as Mrs. Chris Evans. Fuck me, is everyone in this movie related to somebody else? It would kinda make sense, if this was some kind of nepo baby concoction, made up around the mutual family dinner table, while millionaires cackled maniacally. There is absolutely no reason for this film to exist. Written during COVID, it should have been consigned to the rubbish bin with other things which seemed like a good idea during that unfortunate time. Gal Gadot’s group rendition of Imagine is no longer the worst thing to cone out of Hollywood during the pandemic.