Movie Nation

It’s hard to attach “disappointing” to the box office take of any movie that opens with a $220 million 3.5 day (Thursday night counts, too) weekend. It’s made it’s money, pop that champagne at Disney/Lucasfilm, right?

The second weekend of “The Last Jedi” will clear $100 million, so no worries. Except…It’ll only clear that if you make it a four day holiday weekend. And it’ll only clear that if the near free-fall in turnout is reversed Sunday and Monday.

The updated take on how much it earned its second weekend shows a 69% plunge, still $68 million on its second week. Granted, it made a boatload Dec. 14-17. It’s up to $390 million, but the vast majority of people who wanted to see it have seen it, and they’re not nagging friends and relatives to go.

And in any event, it’s not like the drop was a TPPP, a “Tyler Perry Picture Plunge” of 70% or more. But it was close.

Early projections for the three-day take dropped from an expected $83-84 million Friday, by more than $12 million by Sat., and plummeted another $5 million by Monday. Friday to Friday comparison, opening weekend to this weekend, is a 77% drop. That’s the worst ever first week to second week performance for a “Star Wars” film.

For the whole weekend, it’s projected to be down 67%, which says the repeat business isn’t there, the word of mouth is not making it “Must See.”

Maybe Disney needs to re-think their tinkering with the franchise. No, don’t bring back the Death Star. Maybe reconsider giving Rian Johnson and J.J. Abrams the keys to the store?

All those people and publications buying the Disney line that a few disaffected fanboys, using comment bots on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes to pan the movie in “user reviews?” The Alt-right taking credit for “creating” that backlash? BS. Yeah, Deadline and Washington Post, I’m talking to you. This isn’t a fall-off, it’s a plunge. The Alt Right had nothing to do with it. The movie was over-rated by a timid, callow reviewing press.

Not by me.

It didn’t resonate with me, and my guess is, based on comments on my review and on the tsunami of poor-mouthing going on over at IMdb, Rottentomatoes and elsewhere, is that it’s not resonating with many.

“Jumanji” is managing a $32 million weekend (it opened Wed. and will clear $60 million by midnight Monday). “Pitch Perfect 3” cleared $20 ($25 including Monday) on its opening weekend, “Greatest Showman” only $12.

Which is well-over twice what “Downsizing” and “Father Figures” will manage. They both will spend this weekend and this weekend only in the Top Ten. Bombs.

“Darkest Hour” broke into that list with a screen expansion and great reviews, “The Shape of Water” did as well. Neither would appear to have broad appeal (“Shape” is absurdly over-rated), but they’ll stick around as nothing of note opens for a couple of weeks and the Awards Season push behind each picture is amped up.

I’m only just now getting around to “Okja” because, well, the thought of a two hour dark Korean comedy about a digital built-in-the-lab superpig of the future holds little appeal.

I loved “The Host,” liked “Snowpiercer” and “Mother,” so filmmaker Joon-ho Bong’s resume should have overcome any reservations.

All the cool kids are in it; Tilda Swinton, Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Dano, Giancarlo Esposito and Shirley Henderson among them.

But the stills I’d seen of the digital “Babe” in this sci-fi animal rights satire made it look sillier than it is. Not that it isn’t entirely.  Digital critters have been comfortably enjoyed on screen since the first “Jurassic Park” and original “Jumanji,” with the big improvement here being a young actor (Seo-hyun Ahn) literally crawling over something that (more or less, as they used fabricated models) simply doesn’t exist.

And Netflix got into the business of extending the career of Adam Sandler, which cheapens their “Made for Netflix” brand.

Watching it didn’t overcome these pre-viewing biases, alas. It’s alternately wacky and bleak, and despite stunning Korean scenery and a passable chase or two, it feels small-screen. It’s also obvious, with an ending you can guess in the first ten minutes.

But anyway, onward.

Swinton (“Snowpiercer”) plays a supposedly kindly corporate CEO who announces to the world a solution for the growing global food shortage. Her MIRANDO (Monsanto, anyone?) corporation has stumbled across (right) this freak pig, they say, who uses less resources, produces more that’s edible and whose poop literally doesn’t stink. They’re sending samples of this pig to the far corners of the world for a contest to see who does the best job of growing it.

“We needed a miracle. And then we got one!”

Naturally, the porker parked in the play than invented Korean BBQ is a winner. Young Mija ( Seo-hyun Ahn) has bonded with her pig, named her Okja and romps in the forests with her.

Then the company’s resident TV zoo show host (Gyllenhaal) arrives with a crew to film her and select her for the Grand Finals in the content, to be held in New York.

Mija is naturally very upset by this.

But a humorously fanatical band of Animal Liberation Front (Hah!) activists pig-nap Okja en route. Dano plays their passive-aggressive leader, with Steven Yeun, Lily Collins and Devon Bostick in their ranks.

They promise Mija that they’ll save Okja, if she’s OK with them letting her go to the States so the pigs-in-a-test-tube lab can be exposed for the sham it is. They’re VERY committing to protecting all animals, even ones invented by Big Agribusinesses. And they’re so deep into the cause that some of them only eat anything with the greatest reluctance. Reducing their footprint, as it were.

Joon-ho Bong has fun with culture clashes at every turn, making a movie for Netflix yet messing around with translations with jokes only Koreans will understand.

Pitching this as a “children’s fairytale, with an edge” is a serious understatement. The pig is cute enough to be a toy, but the film is “Babe 2” dark and foreboding.

There’s tomfoolery with Swinton’s character having an evil twin (More evil, twin?). Giancarlo Esposito makes an amusing, clipped and emotionless corporate “fixer,” Gyllenhaal takes the opportunity to crank up the wacky as his short-tempered, utterly-compromised “friend to animals” TV host who’s caught up in a slaughterhouse conspiracy.

The animal rights gang’s competence in the pignapping is undercut hilariously by their passivity once they’ve completed the job.

“He still hasn’t eaten anything?”

“No, he’s, uh… still trying to leave the smallest footprint on the planet that he can.”

All in all, very much a mixed bag of a movie. Kudos for Netflix for writing the check that let Joon-ho Bong make a movie available to a much wider audience, but it’s as if he’s hellbent on showing he’s entirely too cool to “sell-out” like that.

And that flattens the comedy in a comic thriller that already lacked suspense. He lost himself in the message, and undercutting that message with a wink.

(The most over-rated movies of 2017? They’re here.)

MPAA Rating: TV-MA

Cast: Seo-hyun Ahn, Tilda Swinton, Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Dano, Giancarlo Esposito, Shirley Henderson

Credits: Written and directed by Joon-ho Bong. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:00

(UPDATED — “Jedi” plunges Fri/Sat to Fri/Sat. There is, officially and measurably, a backlash).

The full holiday weekend — four days of box office glory — greatly inflate the numbers for all the films opening this weekend, and the Movie that Ate December — “The Last Jedi.”

Actual  weekend comparisons — three days — are a bit more sobering. “Jedi” is falling off well over 60%, a bit steeper fall than a real film phenomenon would typically see. It’s making money everywhere, but an $83 million three-day suggests it’s not doing the repeat business and doesn’t have the “You have GOT to see this” word of mouth even “Force Awakens” enjoyed.

Over $112 million through Monday, projections predict.

“Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” will have a three-day $33 million take. “Pitch Perfect 3” should manage $25, and “Greatest Showman” — a Golden Globes contender — might hit $9.

“Downsizing,” once the most promising comedy to open Xmas weekend (before its first test-screenings, I dare say) is bombing as well, a $6 million weekend that won’t have any Oscar push, the way Alexander Payne’s movies often make their money. It’s a bummer of a movie and a bomb at the box office.

Musicals are a hard sell, even brand name ones. “Greatest Showman” is original and isn’t pre-sold with a famous brand attached to it, except for Hugh Jackman. Mixed reviews aren’t helping.

“Father Figures” suggests any appeal Ed Helms once had is gone, and that Owen Wilson’s days as a lead (“Wonder” is a supporting role) are over.

All this back and forth over “There’s no REAL backlash to ‘The Last Jedi,'” “Everybody LOVES it,, exit-polling PROVES IT. Just like Disney SAYS!” and “It’s the fanboys/alt-right, hate-bots that have gamed the user-reviews on websites” have been rather vexing to those of us who have chewed on the film, discussed it on comment forums, etc, and know there is a HUGE section of the fanbase that is indeed irked with what Disney, J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson have done to it.

I see it partly as late blowback for “The Force Awakens.” There’s an ebb and flow to film series, and if fans felt burned, in retrospect (and upon further reflection on a movie that isn’t aging well), they sometimes vent upon the sequel that follows it.

But all this talk about illegitimate complaints on Rotten Tomatoes is laughable. Rotten Tomatoes is itself gamed. The days when it was filled with an elite corps of time-tested critics ended when most of America’s magazine and daily newspaper film critics were purged over the past decade and a half.

So some of what’s linked to on the site these days is some clerk or stringer or copy editor  at a legacy media organization (NPR appears to be making interns critics, for instance) who has convinced an editor to “Let me take this free pass and review ‘Star Wars,'” etc. A vast sea of no-names and callow kids join established to make up RT’s critical mass. There’s simply not as much institutional memory and the lifetime of comparison points in criticism any more. And a lot of older critics clinging to their jobs by a thread turn into cheerleaders for whatever piffle is popular with the public right this second.

Metacritic’s aggregate critics’ score is a little lower, but again, a changing of the guard is partly responsible for that.

I have seen Youtube videos of would-be Alex Jones types blaming the backlash on “SJW” decisions in the plotting and casting. “Social Justice Warrior,” aka the Political Correctness Police. I don’t buy into that (One gets the feeling they’d much rather be typing JEW instead SJW), but the Abrams-Johnson Skywalker saga has a wimpiness (Let Leia Go! She’s not going to survive that!) and a feminization of the story’s drama (not solely casting, softening the “WARS” half of “Star Wars”) that is taking the teeth right out of it.

I knew there’d be plenty of love for it when it opened, and figured I’d be an outlier among America’s critics. But I’m not alone, and acting as if “This backlash never happened” is denying a voice to a lot of fans I am hearing from. And it’s a lie.

The damned movie is losing audience, hand over fist, in its second weekend — 77% down, Friday to Friday, 67% weekend to weekend). Is that made up, too?

What do those who insist “There’s no real backlash” do when Mark Hamill disowns the film’s portrayal of Luke Skywalker? Mark’s Luke learned from the ever-patient Obi Wan and even MORE patient Yoda, and yet in “Last Jedi” tried to off Han Solo’s son on a hunch, flicks non-existent debris off his shoulder like some Ice Cube sidekick in “Ride Along,” and generally seems reluctant to pass along the sacred training that Obi Wan couldn’t wait to pass to him, a Luke and Mark out of character and out of his depth in a movie series he knows like the back of his hand because of Rian Johnson’s facile take on this universe?

“Jake Skywalker” is how Hamill refers to this guy, “He’s not MY Luke Skywalker.”

My complaints about the film had to do with a whole variety of things — casting, for starters — and not Luke’s “transformation.” The original video has been yanked. The Long Arm of the Mouse?

Maybe the Alt-right put him up to it. Or maybe mainstream organizations need to seriously consider the lightweights and fraidy-cats they’re putting their institutional weight behind when they don’t have the critical facilities to know what’s good and what’s all surface sheen, tone-deaf dialogue and satisfying but limiting PC casting/story decisions. Maybe what Rottentomatoes REALLY needs to do is stop assigning “top critic” status to institutions, and label top critics that instead.

Beware of the actor, preacher or politician a little too in love with the sound of her or his own voice.

And be leery of a writer enamored with the clatter of his own keyboard.

Aaron Sorkin made his reputation on TV (“The West Wing,” “The Newsroom”) and film (“A Few Good Men,” “The Social Network,” “Steve Jobs”) as a writer of wordy and witty dramas — immensely quotable exercises in the dramatic writers’ art.

Given free rein by a new-ish studio to adapt a book about a bombshell poker “game runner” to the rich and famous, he gives us two hours and twenty minutes of over-written, endlessly-narrated and dramatically flat drama about Texas Hold’em and a woman making her way in an underground, cutthroat world of ruthless men in low-cut dresses.

“Molly’s Game” has a mesmerizing quality, and an exhausting talk-your-ear-off air that is almost shockingly uncinematic. I filled a notebook with examples of Sorkin’s camera showing us a long line of high-end booze labels, or card players entering a room, taking their seats and looking at their cards, as Molly (Jessica Chastain), in redundant voice-over narration, RECITING EXACTLY WHAT WE’VE JUST SEEN WITH OUR OWN EYES.

It’s bloody maddening. And it goes on and on and on, the laziest screenwriter’s crutch of them all. The guy’s got Oscars and Emmys. He should know better.

Molly Bloom was an aspiring Olympic skier, pushed by a hard-driving psychologist father (Kevin Costner, the best thing about the movie) until she wiped out one time too many and lost her chance at glory. Prodded and raised in bright, challenging conversation that augmented her schooling, she could have done anything with her life.

What she stumbled into instead was high-stakes poker among the rich and show-biz powerful of L.A. She transitions from working for tips, running her creeper boss’s
(Jeremy Strong) weekly game, to “The Poker Princess,” running her own well-oiled gambling enterprise, first in Hollywood, then in New York.

We’re given a fascinating peek inside this world, a “Guys and Dolls” of actors, producers, hedge fund managers and — as the film tells us in the beginning when Molly is arrested by a platoon of F.B.I. agents — Russian mobsters and money-launderers. She ran with a fast crowd, wrote a book about it, and got busted for who she knew and what she knew.

As her lawyer (Idris Elba. terrific) incredulously asks, “Did you commit a felony and then write a book about it?” Um, maybe.

The narrative skips back and forth, to her “on the couch” childhood of skiing and interrogations by her analyst father, to her assorted dealings with bullying men in her business to the court case this hustler with “integrity” — she refuses to name-names — prepares with her lawyer.

There’s no romance. Her assorted clients (Chris O’Dowd, Justin Kirk) lust after her with professions of undying love. They fall for the cornucopia of cleavage she uses as a calling card.

“You look like the Cinemax version of herself,” her lawyer complains.

Michael Cera is interestingly cast against type as a particularly ruthless, unnamed famous actor who doesn’t particularly care for this game he’s mastered.

“I don’t like poker. I like destroying people’s lives.”

It’s a mini-series’ worth of colorful characters — losers, card sharps, gambling addicts and Feds — and too-too clever banter of blisteringly smart exchanges. But when every remark is the prologue to a speech, nobody takes a breath and no character dares so much as stammer, clear her or his throat or break eye contact as they declaim, orate and speechify, it’s  a bit too much about too little.

This is a small-scale scam, hyped and typed into Great Drama. Which it isn’t. If the real Molly Bloom wasn’t a bombshell plying her trade in Hollywood (a “Hollywood madam” of poker), she’d have never gotten the book deal for a memoir “that ends before the GOOD part.” Take away the “Decolletage: The Movie” element, and Chastain’s brittle, aloof performance would be getting no more notice than her equally chilly turn “Miss Sloane.”

For all his big-screen success, and really, nobody re-watches “Steve Jobs,” Sorkin has tailored his talents for the small screen, a close-up medium of faces where lightning-quick banter is what you need to hook viewers in between commercial breaks.

A great give-away in that regard is Chastain’s wardrobe, which is stacked (ahem) on top of the skinniest stilettos ever filmed. Sorkin frames her, in scene after scene, in medium to long shots, something TV cinematography would avoid. So we see her ungainly, broken-hip march through scene after scene, a powerful, focused woman who can’t walk in these damned things to save her life.

TV would have hidden her feet and preserved her character’s athletic grace. On the big screen, Sorkin has Chastain just charge ahead, chattering away as if she’s paid by the syllable, hoping nobody’s eyes leave her chest long enough to wonder what’s with the arthritic gait.

(The most over-rated movies of 2017? They’re here.)

MPAA Rating: R for language, drug content and some violence

Cast: Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba, Kevin Costner, Michael Cera, Bill Camp, Chris O’Dowd

Credits:Written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, based on Molly Bloom’s book. An STX release.

Running time:

Wow.

This is what comic purgatory looks like. Actors, trapped in a laugh-free road comedy called “Father Figures” — a paying (gullible) audience, slack-jawed in dismay, trapped there with them for two hours.

It co-stars Owen Wilson, with the fresh tailwind in his career that a supporting loving-dad turn in “Wonder” gives him, decided he just had to play one more surfer-doofus/free spirit.

Ed Helms plays Wilson’s character’s twin brother, an uptight proctologist who can’t find a laugh, even in the obligatory up-your-bum jokes. He’s got “The Ben Stiller Role” in this buddy comedy, twitchy, irked, the same facial tics. Hell, he even looks like Stiller in a couple of scenes — Stiller on stilts, anyway.

Whatever one thinks of Wilson’s aging, desperately-preserved screen persona, the only words that come to mind for Helms are, “What the hell HAPPENED to you, man?”

You’ve seen the trailers or the TV ads, so you know basically the whole movie. Mom (Glenn Close) finally admits to her 40something boys, on her wedding day that she’s lied to them about the father they never met.

Pete (Helms) has felt this void keenly, taking up his profession because Mom always said their father died of colon cancer. Funny. Divorced, bled by his ex and hated by his tweenage son, he can’t keep the bile down for long.

Kyle (Wilson)? He never really cared, just a lucky free spirit who stumbled into being the label model for a best-selling brand of barbecue sauce, lives in Hawaii, has a newly-pregnant young Hawaiian girlfriend.

But if finding their Dad will make his brother happy, he’s down. Mom’s first lead is this affair she had with footballer Terry Bradshaw, thrilled at the thought he might have two more sons (More proof of the NFL’s CTE cover-up?).

But he wasn’t the only Steeler of the ’70s she entertained. Ving Rhames plays a retired linebacker with equally explicit memories of Mom’s mammaries.

“We only cuddled.”

Their cross-country odyssey then takes them to a hunkered-down ex-Wall Street baron (J.K. Simmons) living holed up with his mom (June Squibb) and so on.

Some potential dads get misty-eyed over Mom, others launch into explicit descriptions of her sexual specialties.

“It was the ’70s!”

The script is all random encounters, “traveling shots” set to music and dead-end scenes — getting urine soaked in an interstate men’s room, picking up a sadly-subdued Katt Williams as a hitchhiker and getting hit by a train, a bar hook-up.

And hell’s bells, none of it is the least bit funny. You’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen the movie. No, the trailer’s not funny either.

Cinematographer-turned-director Lawrence Sher took a job from any  number of unemployed directs with talent. Screenwriter Justin Malen wrote “Office Christmas Party.”

And in a just universe, they’d be the only ones in two hours of comic purgatory, not us, and not the should-know-better Helms and the ever-hapless Wilson.

MPAA Rating:R for language and sexual references throughout

Cast: Owen Wilson, Glenn Close, Ed Helms, Christopher Walken, J.K. Simmons, Ving Rhames, Terry Bradshaw

Credits:Directed by Lawrence Sher, script by Justin Malen. A Warner Brother release.

Running time: 1:53

Well shucks, before this past weekend, I’d not given a thought that might be a sequel even in the works for the all-star, Greek location-filmed adaptation of that big, cheesy ABBA musical, “Mamma Mia.”

But you know, they barely cracked the ABBA songbook with the first film. And even though Meryl Streep NEVER does sequels, and Cher was supposedly retired, the gang’s all back for ouzo and good times in “Mamma Mia 2.”

Apologies if you saw the pirated version of this making the rounds of the Interwebs last weekend before Universal pulled them down. I did. Not that I’m all ABBA on the brain or anything. That’s my story, sticking to it, etc.

Sappy, not a laugh in the trailer. But we’ll see.

What everybody wants to know about “All the Money in the World” is if Christopher Plummer, plugged into the “villain” role when disgraced star Kevin Spacey was edited out, pulls it off.

Of course he does, with venomous, flinty flair.

Movies and performances in them are modular affairs, and even a big part like that of miserly millionaire J. Paul Getty can be replaced, a new actor slotted in for close-ups, a few recreated location shots and the occasional multi-player scene.

Heck, check out Plummer in “The Man Who Invented Christmas.” This was a no-brainer.

The great, Oscar-winning Plummer, who takes on hints of Ebeneezer in every villainous turn, makes Getty the greatest real-life Scrooge of them all. His Getty is an owlish, avaricious, cunning and cheap SOB not inclined to part with “MY money” — even for a kidnapped grandson and heir.

Ridley Scott’s thriller is about an infamous kidnapping in the even-more anarchic and corrupt of Italy of the 1970s. John Paul Getty III (Charlie Plummer, no relation) is a beautiful teen getting into all the trouble a lad with impulses and the means to indulge them could get into in 1973 Rome.

“Got home, don’t worry your mother,”  a hooker lectures him.

“I can take care of myself,” he sniffs. Yeah, that’s the very moment when he’s kidnapped. The Red Brigades, a terrorist organization, want $17 million for his return.

The trouble with that, we quickly learn and they (Romain Duris is their leader) never do, is that “Paolo” isn’t a teen “of means.”

“There IS no money,” his mother (Michelle Williams, brilliant) shrieks into the phone. Even though she might have BEEN a “Getty,” that’s long-past. Her ex is off, stoned out of his gourd, partying in Morocco with whores and Mick Jagger.

And Grandpa? He’s “the richest man in the history of the world,” ensconced in a vast English manor house, living like the Lord of Oil he is.

“Everything has a price,” in his eyes. “The great struggle in life is coming to grips with what that price is.”

How much WILL the man with “All the Money in the World”  pay for that grandson?

“Nothing.”

Scott, working from a David Scarpa script (based on John Pearson’s book about the Gettys and the kidnapping), paints a quick history of the family’s staggering wealth in broad strokes — ancient deals with the Bedouin of Saudi Arabia — and of Abigail Harris’s history with those same Gettys.

Gail (Williams) married an alcoholic heir (Andrew Buchan) estranged from a father who never made time for his family. Money was and remains J. Paul’s obsession. His few flashback dealings with his son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren are little life lessons in obscene wealth and what comes with it.

“To be a Getty is an extraordinary thing.”

He’s most intent, not on making more money (though he’s pretty intent on that, using the new OPEC cartel to make his holdings more valuable). The trick, he says, is “staying wealthy.”

“If you can count your money, you’re not a billionaire.”

A lot of Getty’s philosophy is imparted to the audience via  his chats with our surrogate in all this, Fletcher Chase, Getty’s ex-CIA “fixer,” a negotiator Getty hurls at every difficult deal or security matter in his empire. Mark Wahlberg gives this guy a compact confidence and easily-accessed cynicism as Chase takes the place of the ransom money, a “gift” from Getty to Gail who will retrieve her son for her.

Chase deals with the overmatched Italian police and the increasingly impatient kidnappers, who spirit young Paul to a semi-abandoned farm in remote Calabria, where the corruption runs deep and no local — cook or cop — can be trusted to do the right thing.

Months and months pass as the increasingly steely mother matches wits and will with a rich old man too cheap to pay for laundry service at the four-star hotels he sometimes visits, much less any ransom that would cut into his art collecting budget.

That time passage works against the picture’s “ticking clock” tension. We dread Paul’s fate, even if we don’t remember the history of how this all unfolded. It’s just that his fate comes at us in slow motion.

What Scott’s film does well is capture the near-anarchy of Italy in the ’70s, with violent paparazzi, terrorists and criminals run amok and a justice system straight out of a Third World country (It was a kidnapping capital long before Colombia and Brazil got into that game).

Williams amazingly transforms Gail from the faintly-patrician young woman who married into this empire into an impoverished but defiant negotiator whose accent has grown more posh and her spine stiffer, all from combat and interaction with the richest man on Earth.

Wahlberg, toned-down, underplaying it, still has one lay-it-all-out-there/tell-the-boss-off scene that feels far more Hollywood than realistic. It mars a near pitch-perfect performance.

But Scott and Plummer conspire to give us the ultimate portrait of greed, pettiness and the deep psychological holes in the souls of those obsessed with acquiring wealth and maintaining it.

I love the way Plummer gives us this side of the old man, his grandiloquent sense of self even when he’s being sentimental (in flashbacks) with the grandson he now refuses to ransom.

“You’re a Getty, Paul. You have a destiny.” 

One got a sense, from the early trailers, that Kevin Spacey’s take on Getty was sinister and somewhat the product of makeup. Plummer? He manages his avarice and villainy with nothing but a great performance.

It’s that disconnection from “The Real World,” that sense that “We look like you, but we’re not like you” that makes “All the Money in the World” feel so timely. As the super-rich seize, at long last, absolute power in America, they reveal just what this movie lays out for us — untrammeled greed, and a heartless calculus that allows the top tier of the One Percent to loot without conscience, to accept that the deaths of others are just a price they’re willing to shrug off to achieve that singular desire — “more.”

There have always been Gettys, and the world has always tried to rein them in. But it’s rare in our history that we’ve actually decided to surrender what little control we have over them so absolutely. Expecting anyone with “All the Money in the World” to maintain a conscience is the height of folly.

MPAA Rating:R for language, some violence, disturbing images and brief drug content

Cast: Michelle Williams, Mark Wahlberg, Charlie Plummer, Romain Duris, Christopher Plummer

Credits:Directed by Ridley Scott, script by  David Scarpa, based on the John Pearson book. A Sony/Tristar release.

Running time: 2:12

Welcome to “The Breakfast Club” goes “Big,” and gets trapped in Oz, also known as “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.”

It’s a long, violent and jokey reboot of “Jumanji” re-set as a body-switch comedy, with teenagers stuck in a video game as avatars almost wholly unlike their “real” selves.

Right away you can see the advantages of this high concept commodity. You get to re-cast the teens, a quartet forced to do punishment duty cleaning out a high school storage room where they stumble onto and then are sucked into this antique (Late ’80s, early 90s?) video game.

So the lovelorn nerd (Alex Wolff) morphs into a game avatar hero, played by Dwayne Johnson, his towering jock ex-pal, Fridge (Ser’Darius Blain) is reduced to Kevin Hart “sidekick” status (“Where’s the REST of me?”), the sneering, unpopular smart girl (Morgan Turner) is transformed into a Lara Croft (Karen Gillan) bombshell (“Who dresses like this? In the JUNGLE?”) and the vapid, self-absorbed pretty girl (Madison Iseman) becomes the cowardly, “middle-aged” cartographer who looks like Jack Black.

“Where’s my PHONE?”

They’re stuck in a jungle-scape, with character “strengths” and “weaknesses” established,  clues given in rhymes and game levels to be reached on a quest to break a “curse” involving a magical stone, fending off wild animals, a villain (Bobby Cannavale) and his motorcycle-riding minions, all just to “get back home” and back to their real selves.

Clever.

It’s obvious, right on the surface, how that could work. The skinny boy transformed into The Rock, dazzled by his new muscle (listen for the little squeal of delight Johnson lets out upon checking out his pecs) but still a cowardly shrimp at heart, the emerging bully suddenly diminished to Hart’s perpetual “angry little man,” the beauty horrified at disappearing into Jack Black and in need of her first potty-break with a penis (“How do we DO this?”) and the smart wallflower suddenly possessing feminine wiles (Black’s “Bethany” gives her flirting lessons, hilariously).

But the shortcomings of this re-setting are just as plain. Dragging the supernatural terrors of a game into our everyday world is inherently a lot more interesting than hurling a bunch of grown up movie stars (and a scantily-clad starlet) into the game.

“Jumanji” is memorable for the kids trapped playing it overwhelmed when they unleash a tidal wave of monkeys on a house, or a stampede of rhinos on their town streets. Ground-breaking “real” effects let the digital rhinos crush real cars, destroy real houses.

“Welcome to the Jungle” has new and improved digital hippos, rhinos and jaguars, doing what they do in the jungle, but still obviously digital, with no “reality” reference point.

A quartet of screenwriters find a few funny things for Hart to say and Johnson and Gillan to act out. Black gets in touch with his feminine side. And there are a couple of nice “moments” thanks to character arcs that are Yellow Brick Road obvious — loner has to work with a team, narcissist has to learn to sacrifice, smart kid has to become brave and jock has to use his brain.

But the whole affair feels corporate, cooked-up-by-committee, surprising and entertaining only to tweens craving video game violence popped on the big screen and the titillation of a live-action bare-midriff/short-shorts heroine instead of the animated version “Tomb Raider” gives them.

By the time a Jonas Brother shows up, most of us will have checked out and started checking our text messages.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for adventure action, suggestive content and some language

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan, Jack Black, Bobby Cannavale, Nick Jonas, Alex Wolff

Credits:Directed by  Jake Kasdan script by Chris McKenna, Eric Sommers, Scott Rosenberg, Jeff Pinkner . A Sony/Columbia release.

Running time: 1:59

When you think of the word “Gringo,” the first actor to come to mind won’t be the African actor David Oleyowo. I guarantee that.

But he’s the hapless representative sent to Mexico with the formula for a new “Medical Marijuana Pill” by um, South African bombshell Charlize Theron and Aussie troublemaker Joel Edgerton (Nash Edgerton directed it).

It might take South African Sharlto Copley to get him out. What do you think they’re saying with the casting here?

Amanda Seyfried’s also in it, and Thandie Newton.

Hey, it’s Amazon Studios. At least they aren’t wasting money on alleged pedophile and proven bomb-maker Woody Allen any more.