Two films I recently watched are Kenny and Booksmart.
Kenny is a gently humorous mockumentary about an ordinary Aussie bloke who works for a company that supplies portaloos for events. It follows his day to day as he manages his team delivering and maintaining toilets at festivals and street parties, picks up his kids from his estranged wife for weekend visits to his cantankerous Dad, and generally lives his relatively uneventful life.
It's low stakes stuff, delivered in a very low key way. A really nice way to pass 90 minutes - Kenny is such a likeable, genuine character. Despite the realistic nature of it, it does have an arc and it's a very heartwarming one, without indulging in slush or mawkishness.
Recommended. I watched it via NowTV Movies, and it'll also be on Sky Movies.
Booksmart is a film about two high school girls in their final year, who realise that they've spent so much time studying, they never had a genuine teenage rebellion or high school partying experience. Applying their exam-cramming sensibilities to the problem, they decide to compress a whole high school career's worth of partying into a single night.
I wanted to like this but I couldn't get on with it. I find the two protagonists a little unlikeable, and the situations overly contrived. It treads a very well worn path in terms of story, which would be entirely forgivable for me if it was genuinely funny, but it sadly didn't raise much of laugh.
One thing that's quite interesting about it is that it purports on the surface to be a teen film, but actually feels more like it's designed primarily for people aged 30-plus. There's nothing wrong with that of course - Dazed and Confused pulled the exact same trick- but the problem is that this isn't Dazed and Confused. It's not even on the same planet quality-wise.
So, yeah, a little disappointed with that one. It can be found streaming for free on Prime Video.
Kenny is a gently humorous mockumentary about an ordinary Aussie bloke who works for a company that supplies portaloos for events. It follows his day to day as he manages his team delivering and maintaining toilets at festivals and street parties, picks up his kids from his estranged wife for weekend visits to his cantankerous Dad, and generally lives his relatively uneventful life.
It's low stakes stuff, delivered in a very low key way. A really nice way to pass 90 minutes - Kenny is such a likeable, genuine character. Despite the realistic nature of it, it does have an arc and it's a very heartwarming one, without indulging in slush or mawkishness.
Recommended. I watched it via NowTV Movies, and it'll also be on Sky Movies.
Booksmart is a film about two high school girls in their final year, who realise that they've spent so much time studying, they never had a genuine teenage rebellion or high school partying experience. Applying their exam-cramming sensibilities to the problem, they decide to compress a whole high school career's worth of partying into a single night.
I wanted to like this but I couldn't get on with it. I find the two protagonists a little unlikeable, and the situations overly contrived. It treads a very well worn path in terms of story, which would be entirely forgivable for me if it was genuinely funny, but it sadly didn't raise much of laugh.
One thing that's quite interesting about it is that it purports on the surface to be a teen film, but actually feels more like it's designed primarily for people aged 30-plus. There's nothing wrong with that of course - Dazed and Confused pulled the exact same trick- but the problem is that this isn't Dazed and Confused. It's not even on the same planet quality-wise.
So, yeah, a little disappointed with that one. It can be found streaming for free on Prime Video.
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