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droppinmonkeys
Reviews
Primo (2023)
Secret Email Club wins again
I have been following Shea Serrano for a few years now on twitter, have a couple of his books so I was so pumped to hear he was bringing his gift to my tv screen, also netw3rk / jason concepcion (who also had his own jeopardy category not that long ago) worked on this too which got me even more excited. They absolutely hit it out of the park, it was super funny and heartwarming.
Each episode changed which of the 5 uncles was my favorite, in the end, I have to say its Rollie for obvious reasons but Jay and his money coats is a super strong contender. But Mike is super funny too, the sunglasses on the back of his head was the perfect little quirk. Mondo just vibing all the time and his overall presence reminding me of one of my own uncles and Ryan having his own mini graduation was great too. Their sister and Rafas mom Drea is like the best mom in the world and all of Rafas friends are great, Harris is super funny, such great comedic timing just like Rafa.
Its hilarious and has some of the best cutaways I have ever seen in a show. Go watch it and buy a shea serrano book you wont regret it.
Mortal Kombat (2021)
Good but not great
My first exposure to Mortal Kombat was the Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe on the PS3 and I loved that game, I played it a ton with some of my friends when we were kids and as I've grown up I have distanced myself from the series but I was like "hey a MK movie, wonder what it will be like" so yeah.
Well to start off, the fighting, action, choreography, special effects were all spectacular as you might expect from a movie about Mortal Kombat. The casting was meh, the picks for Sonya, Jax, SubZero, Scorpion, Raiden and Kano were very good. But the rest of the characters were rather underwhelming or just awful(looking at you Shang Tsung), whether it be bad acting or bad writing or a combination of both. They were very bland and the main character was just alright. But the real standout of the movie was Kano, he made the movie for me, he was very well written and the actor did a fantastic job. He was hilarious at all the right times, hurling insults at every person he could, giving jokes whenever he could, perfectly arrogant, had good action scenes, always gave good scenes, great introduction, super self aware and it all made the character perfect. The other highlight character for me was SubZero, really good casting and every scene with him was great, he was like a horror character. You would see little ice shards popping up and you would know that it was about to be a bad time for the other characters. Most scenes that did not contain either of them was a little bit of a disappointment (that was not a fight). The casting for Shang Tsung was horrific, terrible choice and it sucked some of the life out of the scenes he was in, "yay subzero is here, good fight about to happen" *shang tsung appears* "pain" or something along those lines. Some of the fights were underwhelming mostly because it contained a character that we know nothing about (at least I do not) or they were short or had poor editing.
Overall, the only true gripes I had about the movie (considering it was the directors first big movie and the budget constraints) was the lack of the tournament. The movie is just a big prologue to the next movie about the tournament and that did not sit well with me. Also the main character, Cole, was just very bland, underwhelming, lame and seemed like a weird addition.