Movie Nation

Is it a spoiler to refer to the coda of thriller “The Boy” as the clumsiest cop out in recent horror history?

Never mind.

That goes for the movie as well, a tepid tale of elderly Brits, the Heelshires (Diana Hardcastle, Jim Norton) who hire, sight-unseen, a young American Greta (Laurent Cohan) as nanny to their little boy.

But “The Boy” is a life-size porcelain doll, which you know if you’ve seen the TV ads or the theatrical trailers. So our struggle is the same as Greta’s — to not laugh.

The boy’s name is Brahms, and yes, he loves “Brahms’ Lullaby.” Brahms has rules. Music “is to be played, loud.” He has to be dressed for bed and kissed good night. He must be read to “in a loud, clear voice.”

Never leave Brahms alone. Never cover his face. Never, ever spill water on him.

Oh wait, that’s “Gremlins.”

Greta, of course, is ready to ignore that long list of orders when the elderly couple leaves them alone together. And that’s when things turn weird.

Rupert Evans is Malcolm, the flirtatious grocer who tries to make time with Greta even as he wonders if she’s going off her rocker. Greta starts to believe Brahms is real.

It’s as if she followed Mr. Heelshire’s own trip down the rabbit hole of delusion.

“Little by little, and then, all at once.”

She believes!

The doll is creepy by design, but director William Brent Bell (“The Devil Inside”) can’t do much with him that surprises us, much less frightens. The sound design — chilling noises, music, footsteps heard over our shoulders — works.

At least the lovely Ms. Cohan looks alarmed — wild-eyed, once or twice. But even she loses her fear of the doll. Long after we have.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for violence and terror, and for some thematic material

Cast: Lauren Cohan, Rupert Evans, Diana Hardcastle, Jim Norton
Credits: Directed by William Brent Bell, script by Stacey Menear . An STX release.

Running time: 1:37

“The Finest Hours” is a ripping good seafaring yarn based on a famous shipwreck and the Coast Guardsmen who undertook the “suicide mission” to rescue the survivors.

It’s old fashioned in all the right ways, built on Chris Pine’s most understated performance, solid support from Casey Affleck, Ben Foster, Eric Bana and Holliday Grainger, and filmed like a snowy, sepia-tinted  3-D postcard from the past.

In February of 1952, all that the shy, unassuming Bernie Webber wants out of life is to stay warm at his post — the Wellfleet, Massachusetts Coast Guard station — and get permission from his commanding officer to marry Miriam (Grainger).

That’s “just a formality,” and a dated one. But Webber is a “by the book” Guardsman. He doesn’t make a lot of eye contact, had to be nagged into dating Miriam. Truth be told, she had to propose to him. Bernie harbors guilt about a failed mission, frets about his worthiness as a man thanks to the accusing looks the locals give him.

“I don’t want to disappoint nobody.”

But a Nor’Easter has blown in, and the tanker Pendleton is in trouble. Casey Affleck plays Ray Sybert, the sea dog/engineer who hears the hum of the new welds in the hull, and barely has time to predict the ship’s demise when it splits in two. The bow, with the bridge and the unseen captain who ignored warnings, goes down. The unpopular Sybert has to convince the surviving crew not to kill themselves by taking to lifeboats in a raging storm. They have to keep the stern afloat until somebody comes looking for them.

Considering that they have no radio, that visibility in a snow storm is limited and the nearest Coast Guard station has glitchy radar, that’s a long shot.

But they are discovered, and Commander Cluff (Eric Bana), a drawling Southerner whose men don’t think he knows local conditions well enough to be giving orders, sends Bernie and three other volunteers out to look for survivors.

The script (Oscar nominee Scott “The Fighter” Silver had a hand in it) builds up dissent in the station over “the suicide mission,” in the town where Bernie is a pariah and on the sinking tanker, where the crew debates the merits of prayer and “every man for himself.”

Director Craig Gillespie (“Lars and the Real Girl,” “Million Dollar Arm”), out of his depth here, helps his actors get across the fatalism of the doomed — working class professionals using the very limits of their skills to try and survive this murderous night.

“It’s the Coast Guard,” Bernie mutters. “They say you gotta go out. They don’t say you gotta come back.” Sounds like a man resigned to his fate, and in need of redemption.

The characters — remember, this is inspired by a true story — are ’50s movie “types” — the cynical old salt Guardsman (Ben Foster), assorted greenhorns, the plump, jolly ship’s cook (Abraham Benrubi) who sings (badly) “Sit down, you’re rocking the boat” to calm his messmates’ nerves.

The sprinklings of humor echo a different time, too. A young volunteer whose normal duty is on a lightship sees their boat and pleads, “Please tell me we’re taking that boat to a bigger boat.”

The effects are several digital generations above those of “Titanic” or “The Perfect Storm,” so “The Finest Hours” presents a stunningly realistic shipwreck, roiling seas and glorious underwater shots of the plunging and rolling 36 foot Coast Guard boat.

The Cape Cod accents come and go, and the actors needed to be reminded how cold their characters would have been — coatless in a blizzard, wrestling with machinery in freezing sea water. The melodramatic touches are as obvious as such moments always have been.

But “The Finest Hours” is an adventure drama with sea legs, a story of heroism steeped in period detail, played with sympathy and stoicism by people who respect such old fashioned virtues.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of peril

Cast: Chris Pine, Ben Foster, Holliday Grainger, Casey Affleck, John Ortiz, Eric Bana
Credits: Directed by Craig Gillespie, script by Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson. A Walt Disney release.

Running time: 1:57

With all the sins one can lay at the feet of “Dirty Grandpa,” here’s one that won’t stick — false advertising.

It’s exactly what the title portrays it to be — “Grandpa” Robert DeNiro, as potty-mouthed, oversexed and politically incorrect as he’s ever been. So don’t go if you’re going to get offended by a foul-mouthed retiree indulging in a “Hangover” binge during Spring Break.

He isn’t very funny in that guise, and seeing Aubrey Plaza as a coed with Granddaddy Issues throwing herself at him with all the subtlety of a phone-sex operator isn’t quite as hilarious as seeing Plaza (she’s 31) cast, again, as a college student.

Zac Efron is along to provide the beefcake, a henpecked Atlanta lawyer driving grandpa to Daytona Beach in his fiance’s pink Mini Cooper  where the newly-widowed old man tries to score with loose women one-third his age. His long-suffering wife just died, and unknown to corporate lawyer Jason, he’s dead set on a bender.

Sex, sand, alcohol, and “amusing” encounters with a local souvenir shop/drug dealer named “Pam” (Jason Mantzoukas) ensue as they try to connect with a coed Jason knew in college (Zoey Deutch), the trashy/oversexed Plaza and their cliched gay BFF (Jeffrey Bower-Chapman).

These three are quick with a put-down, and when they aren’t, they let each other know about it.

“That was really late, but it still counts.”

“Oh? Like my period?”

We’ve already walked in on grandpa masturbating, so the bar’s set low and only dropping lower. Plaza’s coed is “half Cuban,” she cracks. “The BOTTOM half,” bending over to prove it.

Don’t let yourself get distracted with how a corporate lawyer pushing 30 could say “Shadia (Deutch) was my lab partner in photography class” and the hippy girl is somehow still in college questions.  What you’re supposed to be hunting for is laughs.

Besides, she’s attending The University of Florida. Makes perfect sense.

Jason is trying to drag this lecherous, lying drunk to Boca Raton while the old man calls him one homophobic (“lesbian”) frat boy slur (“vagina repellent”) after another and gets him into jam after jam, interrupting the future Jason’s dad (Dermot Mulroney in a thankless, embarrassing role) has planned for him.

This all takes place in locations that look very much like a pale Georgia imitation of Florida. You can see the skyline of Atlanta behind one outdoor scene. Characters mention using I-85 to transit the state (not in Florida). Yes, the Brit director, Dan Mazer, was Sacha Baron Cohen’s partner in comedy crime for years (the less talented half, judging by the continuity errors) and screenwriter John Phillips (he’s written “Bad Santa 2”) knows more about potty jokes than geography.

None of which would have mattered had DeNiro managed to make this vulgarian funny, had Efron not relied on nude or at least shirtless scenes for laughs, had Julianne Hough (as the Jewish/controlling fiance) been amusing, had the Karaoke scenes or beach body “flex” contest worked or had they not insisted on ending this with a dollop of “live the life you want:” sentiment.

That may be the grossest scene in the film, and considering the semen stain/jail rape/spiked drinks/gang fight with racial overtones stuff that’s preceded it, that’s saying something.

MPAA Rating:R for crude sexual content throughout, graphic nudity, and for language and drug use

Cast: Robert DeNiro, Zac Efron, Julianne Hough, Aubrey Plaza, Dermot Mulroney
Credits: Directed by Dan Mazer, script by John Phillips. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:42

One selling point for the “Shane” inspired Western “Forsaken” might be the pairing of father and son Donald and Kiefer Sutherland, working together for only the third time in their respective careers.

Then there’s Kiefer, playing a reformed gunman/Civil War veteran who still sparks for the gal he left behind, played by Demi Moore, whom he co-starred with in “A Few Good Men.”

A third Western reunion here is Sutherland hooking up with his “24” director, Joe Cassar, for a film shot in the country Kiefer was born in. Lovely Alberta locations make for a greener West than the one Hollywood portrayed when “Shane” knockoffs like this one were as common as sagebrush.

But the best you can say about “Forsaken” is that it attracted a good cast, sports the odd cool character or hard-bitten bit of dialogue and that the rare surprises in its stolid, formulaic script are pleasant ones. Still, any excuse to put Kiefer on a horse and Demi in a schoolmarm’s bonnet, I suppose.

John Henry Clayton (Kiefer) ambles back into his hometown unarmed and wary. His estranged preacher/rancher dad (Donald) greets him with “Your mother is dead!”

How did she pass?

“Calling out your NAME!”

John Henry has abandoned — “forsaken” — his violent life, thrown away his guns. He goes to church with Pa, clears that acreage Ma always wanted him to farm, and tries to hide the torch he still carries for Mary-Alice (Demi).

Then he strolls into the saloon, and the lack of effort in the script starts screaming at you.

“Well well well,” the gunslinger Frank (Aaron Poole) sniggers, “it ain’t John Henry Clayton.”

Well, well well, if it ain’t the most exhausted line of introduction in screen history.

The railroad’s coming to town, the land baron (Brian Cox) has hired gunmen to chase the small farmers and ranchers out. The great and under-used Michael Wincott is dapper Dave, the Southern gentleman shootist in charge of those hired guns. He and John Henry have history, and share the script’s pithiest cliches.

“I fear you and I are headed for an inevitable conclusion,” Dave drawls.

First, John Henry must be tested, townspeople must be gunned down and John Henry himself given a beating for the ages. He turns the other cheek, for his Pa and dead Ma’s sake.

“Kick a dog long enough he’ll bite,” Dave drawls in warning.

As indeed he does. Killing is hard, these two know.

“After the first one, it gets easier,” John Henry remembers with regret.

Cassar and Sutherland-the-Younger handle the shootouts with skill and gory efficiency. Kiefer still rides wonderfully, and shows that off once or twice. And he wears the gravitas of a reluctant man of violence as well as he rides.

But the scenes with his father don’t spark. Were they even on the set at the same time for the early ones?

The pace is sedate, and the lovely locations lack the majesty that a more painterly cinematography would have delivered. It looks and plays like a TV movie — stretching to reach that magic 90 minute run-time, shot in a rush.

Demi has little to do, Brian Cox curses with venal zeal and Wincott just adjusts his hat and immaculate vest, waiting for the moment of reckoning.

Those shortcomings, and its recycled story with every move pre-ordained and telegraphed to the viewer, don’t add up to a bad film.

Revisiting classic Western tropes is no sin. But this Western reunion and those reunited in it breath no new life into its over-familiar Western themes, memes and scenes.

 
MPAA Rating:R for violence and some language

Cast: Kiefer Sutherland, Donald Sutherland, Demi Moore, Brian Cox, Aaron Paul, Michael Wincott
Credits: Directed by John Cassar, script by Brad Mirman. A Momentum/eOne release.

Running time: 1:30

The storm impacting much of the East put a damper on “Dirty Grandpa,” “The Boy” and “The Fifth Wave.” None of those lesser (January–low expectation) new releases will have earned more than $10 million by midnight Sunday.

“Grandpa” has a shot at just barely clearing it, and opening in 4th place.

“Ride Along 2” is doing what dogs do — dying a quick death its second weekend. Huge opening, despite bad reviews. It’s down 70% on its second weekend, hoping to cling to a top three finish. Kevin Hart should do some more chat show appearances, make some tired, dated jokes about black filmgoers and snow. Or something.

The Oscar favorite “The Revenant” will manage a win, close to $15 million for a Frontier Era tale of survival and revenge starring Leonardo DiCaprio. It’s over $118 million, as of Sunday night.

“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” has cruised to $878 million. Will it hit a $billion in the U.S.? As there’s no Oscar bump for this one, chances are — no. But it’ll be close.

The blizzard will almost certainly kill the big indie Oscar contenders this weekend, with the DC-Boston corridor snowed in.

Well, here’s Michael Caine throwing a little shade — or at least some perspective — on the whole #OscarsSoWhite/#whiteOscars/#boycottOscars dust up.

“You can’t vote for an actor because he’s black” is the pull-quote that folks are fixating on for maximum outrage. “Be patient” isn’t something to say when people are complaining about discrimination. “White privilege” will get tossed back in your face. But read the whole interview.

Speaking of older white actors getting blunt on the subject, Charlotte Rampling tosses “racism against whites” into her description of the boycott. Crucifixion by the black twitterverse to come.

But seriously. Dial it down, kids.

Will and Jada, Spike and whoever, and Idris are a bit ruffled. Because out of 20 possible acting nominations, black actors (British or American) got none.

Which happens. More often than just “occasionally.”

Benicio del Toro wasn’t recognized for “Sicario,” nobody from “Straight Outta Compton” scored a nomination, Idris Elba didn’t get a nomination for what was in essence a Netflix movie and Michael B. Jordan’s middling work in “Creed” was ignored. To say nothing of Spike’s unfairly passed-over “Chi-Raq.”

So the Academy is “racist,” so the arguments go.

The Oscars are voted on by an electorate, the 6000 or so members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It’s hard to insert “inclusion” into what is supposed to be a popularity or recognition of excellence contest among a population that large.

The Academy is almost certainly not demographically representative of the nation, or the current state of the film industry. The Academy recognized this, and if the Oscar boycott accomplished nothing else, then getting them to announce that they’re going to work at making the Academy itself more inclusive, kudos to the boycotters. Don Cheadle and I agree on this. A more representative Academy by 2020 is a good move.

But film critics, the honest ones, are having more trouble with this “whitest Oscars” thing for a variety of reasons. There weren’t any performances by black actors that the Academy’s omission makes one think “Racism.” Starting with the opinion that Jordan didn’t give a top five, top ten or top 15 performance among the leading men, or supporting men, of 2015.

Then there’s Idris Elba. Was the Academy ever going to thumb its nose at film exhibitors and give his Netflix “Beasts of No Nation” turn (Caine loved it, BTW) a nomination? No. He could have been in the top 10 or top 15, had he made a strictly theatrical movie.

Black women didn’t get a single decent Oscar worthy showcase this year, which is pathetic on Hollywood’s part. That’s the real outrage. More movies featuring more diverse casts are the real prize to have your eyes on, here. That will lead to more nominations.

I don’t think there was a stand-out acting turn in “Straight Outta Compton,” which could have landed a best picture nomination (only eight made the cut, out of ten possible openings). Did the older white voters of the Academy see it, or just reject it? I think there were 10-15 movies you could argue were better than this one. We wouldn’t be hearing this #OscarSoWhite thing if “Compton” had a best picture nomination. But this isn’t the vote-doctoring Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Nobody slipped it into the best pic mix.

“Compton” is an ensemble piece that wasn’t likely to land an acting nomination. Was it poorly campaigned as an Oscar contender? That’s quite possible.

This isn’t a “12 Years a Slave” or “The Help” year. The Academy showed up for those films. Nominations were offered, Oscars were awarded. Should “Ride Along 2” move to the top of next year’s inclusion list simply because it’s one the black audience lined up for?

The bigger, implied question is this. Should the Academy try to make Hollywood something that no other industry in the world actually is — racially representative? That’s the crux of Caine’s argument. And do we want quotas on our honors for excellence?

The world isn’t fair, or representative. Monocultures form in most any industry you can think of. And a monoculture tends to be blind to its de facto segregation. People cast, hire, recruit based on both merit and “types” of people they’re comfortable with — “their own kind.” Happens everywhere. And it needs addressing. But quotas for awards?

People toss tantrums about the movies, but how might the NBA, NFL or MLB look if that cut both ways? Education has used minimum and maximum quotas, over the decades, and irritated many with each extreme. Congress is achieving something like that racial balance through gerrymandering. Whiter than white conservative districts, “safe” black or Hispanic ones. How’s that working out?

Fox News would be less Aryan, NPR would sound less like B’nai B’rith Broadcasting. Quotas! Yes!

That’s the way to honor the exceptional. African Americans (sorry, Idris) make up 13.2% of the U.S. population. Latins, Asians, Muslims, Native Americans — all can be reduced to simple numbers, if quotas are what we’re shooting for. That means two nominations a year for this group, or one every other year for some other racial category.

A lot of performances were “snubbed.” Michael Shannon and Tim Guinee in “99 Homes,” Carey Mulligan in “Suffragette,” del Toro in Sicario,” Oscar Isaac in “Ex Machina,” Paul Dano in “Love & Mercy,” and so on. A lot of performances are snubbed every year. There are just five openings in every acting category. Learn the numbers, recognize the long odds facing every film, and every performance.

And then lobby to expand the Academy to make it more inclusive. That’s the bigger issue, and the real solution to a “problem” that feels more like Jada and Will whining over a top 25 performance in a problematic movie that was a long shot. He was far better in “Ali,” and less craven about why he took the role (“Oscar bait” always grates), back then.

Young Adults save the world in so much of the fiction aimed at Young Adults. And when this science fiction comes to the big screen, YA fiction becomes PYA, full of PYTs.

It’s a future where the boys have peach fuzz and the girls perfect hair, perfect teeth and perfect makeup — even when they’re Maze Running, Hunger Gaming, or simply Divergent.

Thus, Chloe Grace Moretz, Alex Roe and Nick Robinson are the Pretty Young Adults struggling to stop “The Fifth Wave.” If only they’d succeeded.

It’s not quite the most laughable of the many eye-rollingly derivative entries in this overused genre. “The Giver” still takes that prize.

But from its love triangle centerpiece, to the adults and institutions that cannot be trusted, the child soldiers trained for Mortal Combat — military style — and the post-Apocalyptic future where only the prettiest survive, “Fifth Wave” never escapes the genre joke that it is.

Moretz (“Kick-Ass”) is Cassie, our narrator who misses “the Cassie I was.” The one before she became “the Cassie who kills.”

We meet her After the End, or Beginning of the End. Aliens have invaded, and all she has is a teddy bear, a backpack (apparently full of skin and hair care products), an assault rifle, and skinny jeans.

She’s trying to get back to her kid brother, who is training with Liev Schreiber, Maria Bello (in her scariest hiarstyle ever) and the Army to hunt The Others. Those are the aliens.

Along the way, she must choose between the boy she crushed on in high school (Nick Robinson) and this new stubbly, sometimes shirtless hunk (Alex Roe) she meets on the run. My favorite was the Emo/Goth Girl super soldier (Maika Monroe). But really, they’re all just as ridic.

The best elements in “Fifth Wave” are the flashbacks — showing the aliens arriving in their “District 9” spiky spaceships, then subjecting the human race to various special effect cataclysms (“waves”) as they drive us toward extinction.

Moretz rarely suggests the terror this should bring, but she does manage the grief that losing her family would cause. It’s just that every time she’s around a boy, those overripe lips tremble and the screenplay pauses for an Awkward Teen Moment — courtship, you see.

It’s all so obvious and (unintentionally) laugh-out-loud funny.

Seriously, if you’re not five steps ahead of “The Fifth Wave,” you need to have yourself tested.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violence and destruction, some sci-fi thematic elements, language and brief teen partying.

Cast: Chloe Grace Moretz, Liev Schreiber, Maria Bello, Nick Robinson, Alex Roe, Ron Livingston, Maika Monroe
Credits: Directed by J Blakeson , script by Susannah Grant, Akiva Goldsman and Jeff Pinkner,  based on a Rick Yancey novel. A Sony/Columbia release.

Running time: 1:52

Well, it’s no “Inside/Out.”

The first animated offering from the brain of Charlie Kaufman (“Being John Malkovich”) started life as a play about the mechanical banality of modern existence, and perhaps the emptiness of narcissism. So naturally the fellow who imposed “Synedoche, New York” on us thought “puppets” (stop motion models) when transferring it to the big screen.

Alternately daring and dull, inventively animated, intimate and yet impersonal, it’s challenging enough to turn off most. There were mass walk-outs of the screening I attended. There’s depth, but it’s trapped beneath a suspiciously shallow surface.

David Thewlis gives voice to Michael Stone, a customer service guru who is famous within his little world. People recognize him in the lobby of the hotel he checks into in Cincinnati, where he’s to give a speech.

Everyone he encounters — from his wife and child (reached by phone) and the dim bulb chatterbox cabbie to the hotel clerk — who never loses eye contact, or blinks, as Michael checks in — has the same voice, provided by Tom Noonan. Because…that’s the way the world sounds to the self-involved?

There’s a letter he keeps re-reading, a “How COULD you?” tirade from a woman whose heart he broke years before. She has Noonan’s voice as well. Calling her since he’s in Cincinnati, where she lives, is a mistake.

And stumbling, feverish, into two call-center “fans” and plying them with drinks in the bar seems like a heel move, too. But one of them, younger with a streak of pink in her hair, sounds like a woman — at least in his head.

Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh) chatters away, at Michael’s insistence. She’s sure she’s giving away her unworldliness to Michael. “Shut up, Lisa,” she reminds herself.  And him.

His every word seems profound.  To Lisa.

“Sometimes, there’s no lesson. That’s a lesson in itself.”

But over the course of an intimate evening, he connects with her, or at least puts moves on that she responds to. She is new to his broken soul act, an anomaly to his experience — “Anomalisa.” She sings and he immerses himself in her “miraculous voice.” Leigh gives Lisa pathos, lets us fear for how this all will turn out. Thewlis plays Michael as guilt-free, which undercuts the “romance” of it all. We’re meant to feel the angst he’s feeling. I never got past contempt.

And in any event, we start to see how letters like the one he brought with him on this trip get written.

Nothing happens in the first 30 minutes of “Anomalisa.” And nothing that comes afterward screams “This MUST be animated.” Has the world been waiting for a fresh way to animate sex — puppet porn? Outside of Japan, I mean?

Judging from the earliest reviews and the best animated film Oscar nomination, it has.

But I’d suggest it’s a film of obvious jokes — the punchline-in-waiting misunderstanding of what Michael means when he asks the cabbie if there are “toy stores” near his hotel — and awkwardness. The most promising sequence is Kafkaesque — so literally that you expect the hotel manager who summons Michael to his typist-filled office to be named “Franz.”

“Anomalisa” still has the capacity to touch you, provoke an accounting of empty lives and the white noise sameness of everyone we meet. But the folks walking out on this one, confused and put off, earn a pass from “You just don’t get it” charges. Kaufman’s been plunging deeper and deeper into his own head, or another handy body cavity, for years.

MPAA Rating: R for strong sexual content, graphic nudity and language

Cast: The voices of David Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tom Noonan.
Credits: Directed by Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson, based a play by Charlie Kaufman. A Paramount release.

Running time: 1:30

The decades may have passed, but the recipe for vintage ’80s sci-fi cheese has not been lost.

“Lazer Team” is a goofy riff on “The Last Starfighter,” or a “Pixels” without the Curse of Adam Sandler hanging over it. A cast of no-names and a story so clunky it grinds gears every time it changes scenes take nothing from surprisingly effective (cheap) effects and the odd laugh-out-loud one-liner.

There are aliens invading the Earth, and the planet’s only hope is a quartet of losers, inadvertently rendered our “champions” by an accident involving friendly aliens and their universe-dominating technology.

How’d this happen? Aliens let us know bad times were coming, that we’d need to raise and train a champion. So the U.S. military did just that, with buff Adonis, Adam (Alan Ritchson).

He was being sent this “suit of power,” with a brain-boosting helmet, invisible shield, laser cannon arm-piece and shoes the Flash would be proud to call his own.

But these rural rubes accidentally shoot down the supply ship and stumble into the pieces of the suit.

There’s big, dumb drunken Herman (Colton Dunn), who finds himself fleet of foot, even dumber Woody (Gavin Free), who turns brilliant when he dons the helmet of knowledge. So brilliant he starts talking with a British accent.

Zach (Michael Jones) is a punk, a brawling showboating jock trying to score with Mindy (Alexandria DeBarry), whose dad is a doofus deputy (Burnie Burns) and the fourth member of the quartet Zach names “The Lazer Team.”

When the Feds figure out what they’ve done, and that the weapons can’t be used by anyone else after they’ve imprinted on their new owners, they set to training the idiots to fight the incoming threat, the Gord.

The training involves a tennis ball cannon and lots of crotch-shots.

Not that the champion, Adam, takes this lying down. Not that the guys don’t WANT Adam to take this burden from them.

“Put’em on, Hitler Youth.”

Zach, the loose cannon, is entrusted with the attached arm cannon, and Hagan, the deputy, has the shield that could protect them all. If only they could learn to work together!

There are Ambiguously Gay Duo gags and electronic scorpions that turn friendly folk into alien automatons. An Eastern Bloc model (Irina Voronina) is passed off as the lead scientist in the project.

And a lot of stuff blows up in the best low budget tradition.

There’s not much to this, but stumbling across “Lazer Team” in the right state of mind at the right time of night wouldn’t be the most unpleasant way to sleep one off.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for sexual material including references, language, action violence, teen partying and smoking

Cast: Burnie Burns, Colton Dunn, Gavin Free, Alexandria DeBerry, Michael Jones, Alan Ritchson.
Credits: Directed by Matt Hullum, script by Burnie Burns, Josh Flanagan and Matt Hullum. A FullScreen release.

Running time: 1:42

Audiences are ignoring critics and flocking to “Ride Along 2.” Sad, but true. At least for Friday.

Once word of mouth trickles down to the critic proof — got to figure that dog will lose its way. But as things stand now, “#2” will pull in a whopping $40 million on its opening weekend.

Another big opener? “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.” It’s riding a wave of Fox News and Trump endorsements (actually, misguided, as there’s no Hillary Clinton bashing in it) to about $21 million this weekend. Not bad for a combat pic with no big name star. Yeah, I’m talking about you, Krasinski.

“Revenant” didn’t need an Oscar nominations bounce to roll up another $30 million+.

“Spotlight” and “Brooklyn” and “Carol” aren’t in enough theaters to blow up. “Brooklyn” is doing better business than the others, with other Oscar nominated pictures like “Room” and “The Martian” and especially “Mad Max” out on video.

If you look at the plunging numbers for Quentin Tarantino’s latest 3 hour “event” act of onanism, well the word “disaster” is starting to pop up in discussions.