Movie Nation

“Good men do bad things,” the speech begins, promisingly enough. “And bad men do good things.”

And then, the punchline — “If I can’t stop a beast like him, what’s my purpose?”

The bloke delivering those lines is “geezer” tough guy Vinnie Jones, a British mob enforcer who’s telling his boss (Malcolm McDowell), that this West Virginia goon has killed his girlfriend, and by God he’s getting his pound of flesh for it.

It should be a high point in veteran screenwriter and director Scott Wiper’s “The Big Ugly.”

But there’s all this palaver that comes in between the cliches that open that monologue and the flinty finish to it. And there’s the dead weight at the heart of this West Virginia mob war movie. The flashes of B-movie action are but interruptions for the endless succession of long, pretentious C-movie speeches.

That’s probably how he rounded up the grizzled quartet of character heavies he built the movie around. Ron Perlman, playing a Mountaineer mineral tycoon, has several stump speeches about “losers” and their fetish for Confederate flags and “honoring” the land he wants to drill for oil on. Malcolm McDowell goes on about “loyalty” and such in his talkative moments with Perlman, whose oil scheme is the perfect place to park London mob money that needs laundering. Jones, whose character narrates this saga of “God, land and oil,” talks more than he’s verbalized in a score of other movies.

Only Bruce McGill, as the mostly-silent and lethal “fixer” for Perlman’s character, avoids soliloquies in a movie that could use a lot fewer of them.

It’s a ludicrous tale of mob molls and comely barmaids, of private jets and Big London money and the good ol’oil boy (Perlman) who describes himself in terms that make him the Al Gore of Big Petroleum.

Harris (McDowell) brings Neelyn (Jones) and Neelyn’s girlfriend (Lenora Crichlow) to “Wild, wonderful West Virginia” to close a deal and plug an associate.

Neelyn’s given to snorting coke and chasing it with bourbon, and is black-out drunk when the son (Brandon Sklenar) of Perlman’s big chief hits on Fiona (Crichlow), and she disappears.

Neelyn looks for her, and since he’s the sort that barmaids and bar owners (Joelle Carter) just give a truck and “Daddy’s old clothes” to, he finds out what happened to her.

But confronting “Junior” won’t be easy. Junior’s used to bullying and beating up his way through this corner of W. Va. Even if the “geezer” can hold his own, Junior has Daddy and a whole organization behind him.

The other Londoners have gone back to London.

Fists fly, then bullets. Threats are made, and promises.

“I’ll take care of it.”

Prettiest blonde in town Kara (Leven Rambin) gets caught between Junior and the Brits. And lurking in the wings is Milt (McGill, from “Lincoln” and “Animal House”). Don’t MAKE him have to pull the trigger.

Stupid scene follows bloated speech, all the way through to a finale set up to go off, but which fizzles like soggy fireworks. Precious few movies are set in Appalachia, and every one that doesn’t work makes it less likely we’ll soon see another.

I like the old guys in this one, and have tracked down each and every one of them at one point or another for “movie tough guy/character actor” interviews.

Wiper (“The Cold Light of Day,” a couple of direct-to-video “The Marine” sequels) didn’t have enough of a movie to justify rounding up this cast, these locations and this budget for. Simple as that.

MPAA Rating: R for violence, language throughout, some sexual content and brief drug use

Cast: Vinnie Jones, Ron Perlman, Leven Rambin, Malcolm McDowell, Brandon Sklenar, Lenora Crichlow, Joelle Carter, Bruce McGill

Credits: Written and directed by Scott Wiper.  A Vertical release.

Running time: 1:46

The Muppets return from that abortive “adult” mockumentary TV series Disney/ABC attempted a few years back with “Muppets Now,” a device-friendly Disney Plus series that won’t make anybody forget their 1970s heyday.

Which is kind of the idea. The original voices are gone, replaced by not-quite-funny imitations, which hamstrings the characters.

Kermit’s mood swings — enthusiastic cheerleader to dismayed impresario beaten down by the needy no-talents and diva puppets surrounding him — are missed.

But “Diva, it’s a POSITIVE term, right?” Missy Piggy (voiced-performed by Eric Jacobson) asks guest RuPaul. Yes, she’s reassured. And we’re treated to RuPaul’s unintentionally fake laugh.

Keeping in mind Disney has this valuable property and it can’t make a dime off nostalgia, let’s forget how genuinely tickled most of the guest stars on the original “Muppets Show” seemed to be, back in the day. The very process of acting and interacting with wise-cracking adults doing vaudeville shtick via puppets made Rita Moreno, Julie Andrews, Milton Berle, Pearl Bailey and Alice Cooper just crack up.

So it’s on to this new series, which begins with a video call each week as producer-Scooter confers with Kermit and dodges “notes” and pitches and pleas from Piggy and Fozzy, et al, for new bits and sketches as he drags and uploads each new episode to the network/streaming service.

It takes a while to reach that first “bit” that pops. A long while. Some performers never quite find a voice that suits the persona of the funny character they’ve taken over. Some bits are utterly dependent on the enthusiasm of their guest stars (some of whom return for multiple episodes).

Pepe the Prawn hosts “Pepe’s Unbelievable Game Show,” a zingy parody with “real” contestants and what sounds like genuine riffing by the Spanish-accented host (Bill Barretta). Pepe changes the rules of the “game,” willy nilly, forgets to introduce the contestants, and mispronounces the names when he does.

“Artun” becomes “Cartoon,” and it’s “Oh, so joo INVENTED cartoons?”

In a show of bits and bytes, this recurring sketch is the funniest, the one that works pretty much every time out.

The reinvention of Dr. Bunsen Honeydew (Dave Goelz) and his hapless victim/assistant “Beak-R” comes via “Muppet Labs Field Test” segments, where they explain (Hah!) concepts like “velocity” by catapulting pizzas into a wall. “Combustion?” You KNOW that’ll be “lit” (Genuine Muppet Joke).

“Let’s skip learning and let’s start BURNING!”

Miss Piggy’s “Life Sty” segment must have “tested” well, because they keep coming back to it (Taye Diggs and Linda Cardellini are here for the early episodes) and the Pig isn’t as funny and the “hot yoga” and “slap massage” bits kind of flail in silence.

The “test audience” for the series is like the critics in the balcony of the original show. Nothing the wisecracking old grumps Statler and Waldorf  say or do is worth a rim-shot.

The Swedish chef’s “Okëÿ Dokëÿ Køøkin” segment is packed with promise. Bring in a celeb chef — Carlina Will or Roy Choi — for a competition with the nutty, incompetent Swede. The deadpan, stoic and “Swedish” nature of the character is tossed aside for these throw-downs. I guess even Swedish “ethnic humor” is out (not for Pepe, though).

The only one of these that I saw that worked had Danny Trejo going mustache-to-mustache over a molé cook-off. Trejo’s the rare guest star to really blast past the surreal and get into the over-the-top spirit of Muppet acting.

“Meatballs shmeatballs. Hah!”

Sketch comedy is by its nature hit or miss. Adjusting for the “device” era in viewing habits means that double-take subtlety and wordplay take a back seat to big (ish) sight gags and the like.

Will a new generation discover the pleasures of a Fozzie the Bear joke?

“Why’s the chimney under the weather? He’s got a FLUE! Wocka wocka!”

Hard to say.

Disney and Henson Co. might be on the right track with the Muppets. But judging from the early episodes, they may have to beef up the writing and deliver some blunt “notes” to the performers. For “Now,” they’re just not getting it done.

MPAA Rating: general audiences

Cast: The Muppets, with guest stars such as Danny Trejo, Linda Cardellini, Taye Diggs, Chef Roy Choi

Credits:  A Disney Plus streaming release.

Running time: Episodes are @24 minutes each.

Here we have the hit of the Beloit Film Festival, a twee little nothing of a British road comedy contrived to tickle, now and again, and nothing more.

“Above the Clouds” finally earns wide release via the many content-starved free streaming TV platforms (Tubi is where I caught it), just the sort of movie easily lost or passed over pre-Pandemic. For instance, I don’t know that it was a hit in Beloit, Wisconsin, just that it played there. In 2019.

It’s about a quirky, mildly rebellious only child, played with perk and pluck and patter by Naomi Morris. Charlotte or “Charlie” calls her parents by their first names, rejects Dad Jack’s edict that “Art’s NOT a career,” and is late again for her seaside café waitress job in Margate.

But but but it’s her BIRTHDAY. “You’re 18 today,” the boss grumps. “Time to grow up!”

Charlie is 18, and pondering the misery of realizing “What if this is IT?”

She ponders this to a smelly wino she sits next to as she contemplates her favorite painting, a diptych of two panels, one a grey gloomy city below, the other of bright light above fluffy, happy clouds.

Oz (Andrew Murton) opines that “even if you’re being pissed on down here, it’s always sunny above the clouds.” And don’t worry about him — homeless, unwashed, “invisible” to a public that’s learned to look right through him.

“I’ve got most of my wits and a near-new sleeping bag. I’m winning!” 

Charlie remembers that when her parents jet off on an anniversary holiday, when she stumbles across a birthday card her mother (Cordelia Bujega) hid from her, a card signed “Dad” but not in her dull father’s (Glen McReady) handwriting. When she rummages more and realizes her “real” dad is some fellow named Malone who lives in Scotland, and her lone friend from work (Leah Hackett) turns down her pitch that they go “find him,” she has another use for the articulate, homeless wino.

He’s the “responsible adult” who can ride with her and finish off her driving lessons as she takes the new Fiat 500 Dad Jack left for her in the garage north to find her TRUE genetic origins.

“On the road and off the leash” she’ll be, in one of those illogical leaps only a screen comedy would try to pass off.

Charlie ponders if her “real” dad might “be an earl, or an actor” as she poor-mouths the bore who helped raise her and gave her the car. Oz makes important decisions via a process he calls “I ask the Queen.” He tosses a coin. And he tries to impress the teen with his worldly wisdom.

Two big moments in every kid’s life? “The first is when you realize you parents aren’t always right. And the second is when you realize they aren’t always wrong.”

The kid isn’t phased.

But “that’s brought grown men to tears, that one.”

So Charlie, an aspiring artist (their trip is illustrated on a diorama map, with a toy yellow Fiat) will seek her true origins and genetic destiny, that which explains how she turned out, and Oz, in bits  and pieces, will reveal why he doesn’t like cars, how he reached this station in life, his sad sad secret.

“Above the Clouds” is more a movie you don’t mind sitting through than one you fully embrace. The comic “obstacles” are cute enough. There just aren’t enough of them, and they never quite take it over the top.

Sheltered Charlotte has never filled up a car in her life. Thus, the Fiat lives up to its legendary acronym nickname in the English speaking world — “Fix It Again, Tony.” The ill-tempered Scotts mechanic (Gordon Kennedy) she leaves “th’wee yellow casualty” with is worth a few laughs.

“Did you find the problem?”

“I’m lookin’ at it.” No, lass, diesel isn’t the same as petrol.

Breaking down in the dark at a spot the locals use for “snogging” assignations throws them in the path of a loopy lonely sexual adventurer (Ian Bustard).

More bits like this, a few standard road comedy “see the sights” moments, would have livened up the script Simon Lord conjured out of director Leon Chambers’ malnourished story idea. Scenery and mildly-amusing banter isn’t enough.

Virtually everything in this road comedy feels contrived, even the payoff to the “mysteries.” But Murton and Morris, making her screen debut, make the ride pleasant if not the least bit surprising.

MPAA Rating: unrated, profanity, sexual situations

Cast: Naomi Morris, Andrew Murton, William Jackson, Leah Hackett, Ian Bustard, Gordon Kennedy and Peter Hannah

Credits: Directed by Leon Chambers, script by Simon Lord. A Third Light film, now on Tubi and other free platforms.

Running time: 1:27

It helps to think of“xenophobia” being explained by Michael Constantine, the amusing Greco-proud poppa of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”

“From the Greek,” he’d say, “‘xeno,’ which means ‘stranger,’ and ‘phobos,’ which means fear.”

Fear of foreigners. Kind of an ugly word. The Greeks didn’t invent it, but boy it pops up in stories about modern Greece all the time.

Xenophobia in modern Greece is the anchor issue that drives “Amerika Square,” an engaging and pointed parable about life at Ground Zero in the the global refugee crisis.

Director and co-writer Yannis Sakaridis doesn’t take us into the camps, onto the panicked beaches of Turkey or to war-torn Syria. This story plays out with Greeks, Syrians and Africans in one square of Athens, interconnected lives telling a larger story.

The film has three narrators, all male (because “Sexism, from the Greek…”) philosophizing in Greek, English or Arabic about the state of their lives and their world at this point in time, when so much attention has been focused on human migration and Greece (the film was finished in 2016).

Nakos (Makis Papadimitriou) is 40 years old, living at home “without a Euro to your name,” his father gripes. He describes, at length, the cosmopolitan nature of just the building his family lives in, with Pakistanis and Afghans living on the ground floor, “the Russian Annex,” the “African commune,” and so forth.

Spread that over all the buildings surrounding Amerika Square. Fill the square with immigrants passing through, sleeping on park benches.

“Look at what happened to us,” he laments to his pal Billy (Yannis Stankoglou), lamenting how Greece isn’t nearly as “Greek” as it once was.

Billy is a poetic “artist in ink” and skin who runs a tattoo parlor. Billy defines tattoos as “a code,” a way to signal to someone “we have something in common.”

Nakos may talk darkly of “What the whites did when they came to America” (give Native Americans diseased blankets) and “What the Japanese did to the Chinese in World War II” (dumped poisoned rice out of airplanes). Billy? He frets over the impermanence of the world and his place in it.

“Even ink, humble ink, lasts longer than us.”

Tarek (Vassilis Koukalani) is a Syrian refugee, shrugging off Greek griping about their “square,” which “you stopped using years ago.” He won’t be here long. He’s taken his young daughter out of a war zone, gotten her to Greece. Now, he discusses his escape options with human trafficker Hassan (Sultan Amir), who gives the “walking out,” “flying out” and “boat” escape prices.

All of our narrators are political and social philosophers, and all have their beliefs — freely-shared — tested when push comes to shove.

Tarek, putting his trust in “good men” (he thinks) running a highly illegal business, will wonder about the humanity still extant in the Birthplace of Western Civilization.

Billy will find a purpose to his aimless existence when a gorgeous North African singer (Ksenia Dania) comes to get her “Property of Mike” tattoo removed, and to escape the indentured servitude she’s working under.Makis Papadimitriou

And Nakos, hapless, bigoted Nakos, will decide whether or not to act on his dark dislike of the foreigners around him.

The players, being unfamiliar to most viewers, are instantly credible, especially Koukalani, an educated man desperate to save his daughter from their plight, so desperate he has to take “Trust me, it’ll be fine” from men we might be inclined to not trust.

Papdimitriou makes Nakos or “Nako” a seemingly harmless grump, but one capable of violence if not man enough to inflict it in person.

“They haven’t done anything to me,” he says of the foreigners, “but (their presence) BOTHERS me.”

Dania lets us see love in Tereza the singer’s eyes, even as we sense the desperation that fuels her every flirtatious interaction with Billy.  Yeah, she’d do that to escape. Who wouldn’t?

But it is Stankoglou whom the audience will identify with, a Bogart-Belmondo figure, rakish, working class, principled and sympathetic. Of course he has a motorcycle, a Royal Enfield. Of course he’s seen “Casablanca.”

Of course he knows the perfect tattoo metaphor when Tereza asks for it —“Refuse to sink,” in English.The portrait that emerges of weary, broke and broken Greece is of people who won’t charge others out of compassion — tattoos, or passport photos. Some may voice their gripes about the massive influx and the problems associated with being human migration’s new choke point.

Politicians may prey on those prejudices.

But no one is so far gone that their humanity isn’t easy to find. As Michael Constantine might have put it, “Humanity, from the Latin humanus. But you know, they borrowed it from the Greeks…”

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Yannis Stankoglou, Makis Papadimitriou, Vassilis Koukalani, Ksenia Dania and Sultan Amir.

Credits: Directed by Yannis Sakaridis, script by Vangelis Mourikis, Yannis Tsirbas and Yannis Sakaridis. A Film Movement Plus release.

Running time: 1:26

Let’s return now to the Baztan Valley, Navarre, the cloud-and-fog shrouded north of Spain, where detective Amaia Salazar must wrap up her toughest, most gruesome and most personal murder case.

“Offering to the Storm” finishes of the “Baztan Trilogy” based on the fiction of Dolores Redondo. We’ve followed conflicted, conspiracy-minded and dogged Detective Chief Salazar (Marta Etura) through her days as as “The Invisible Guardian, ” a sleuth pondering “The Legacy of the Bones.”Now, with everybody else convinced her cult leader mom died at the end of “Bones,” she must uncover the truth about Mom and her baby-sacrificing Spaniards once and for all.

This trilogy — Spain’s answer to “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” (long, lurid, a cinematic “page-turner”) — is about dead babies. And as the final installment begins with an infant being smothered in the crib, it won’t be for everybody.

It’s a beautifully gloomy, chatty mystery-thriller that’s always on its feet. Amaia is often on the run, chasing down the baby-killer in that first scene (Iñigo de la Iglesia), who mumbles “I have to finish this, I MUST finish this” (in Spanish or subtitled into English, or in dubbed English, if you prefer) as he’s caught.

Amaia tracks down her Hannibal Lecter, Dr. Berasategui (Álvaro Cervantes), a cult leader she caught in the last film, in prison where his threats are laced with clues.

She dashes from graveyards to morgues, questions the priest (Imanol Arias) who provides hints even as he tries to distance the Church from the crimes.

“Witchcraft is not Satanism,” he explains. “Insulting God is not the object!”

And she copes with homelife, where American husband James (Benn Northover) does most of the childcare of their new infant and gripes that she’s compulsive about her job.

Her sisters would agree with that. They’re ready to have Mom’s funeral, but damn if Amaia is going to accept that she’s dead without finding the old witch’s body.

Somehow, through all this running about, crossing into France to dig up old graves, trying to investigate “every mystery baby death in the past five years,” wearing out her staff as she drives through rain and snow, trying to get to that next witness/prisoner before their timely “suicide,” Amaia has time for a side-piece.

Ah, España!  They may have given up their siesta in the rainy north. But not bed-hopping.

Etura has made her career with this trilogy, and handles the cop patter and voluminous dialogue and emotional scenes with skill. The threats turn more and more personal in the story, in that “No one can protect you from Them” sense, and Etura sheds her poker-faced cop visage now and again.

But she still makes Amaia more interesting than compelling.

The story is so exposition-heavy that we’re getting new wrinkles, new trains of thought and lines of inquiry, right up to the end. That preserves the “twists,” but there aren’t nearly enough of those to justify the film’s gasping 140 minute sprint.

The best scene is the Navarre version of that American thriller staple, the police officer’s funeral. No bagpipes (a cliche of American cop movies), but moving nevertheless.

The most interesting new character for the finale is a grief-stricken, raging mother of a victim, Yolanda. Marta Larralde does more to get across the REAL stakes here — a conspiracy reaching high and far, going back decades, fanatics who have bought into monstrous rituals — than any other actor or character.

We never really get the “why” or “to what end,” though. It’s a conspiracy to preserve a cover-up, not a means to wealth and power?

Or…IS it?

Not exactly the sort of question you want hanging over a trilogy that’s eaten up close to seven hours of your Netflixing time, but that’s part and parcel of the whole “page turner” label. This page-turner trilogy was always better at eating up your time than filling it.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, violence, nudity, profanity

Cast: Marta Etura, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Álvaro Cervantes, Marta Larralde, Imanol Arias and Benn Northover.

Credits: Directed by Fernando González Molina, script by Luiso Berdejo, based on the Dolores Redondo.  A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:19

Decades ago, I tracked down animator and director Chuck Jones to talk about his greatest creations on the occasion of Bugs Bunny’s “birthday,” the date of his first appearance on the big screen.

“Bugs Bunny is how we see ourselves,” Jones said. Bold, brave, smart, swaggering. “Daffy Duck is how we really are.” Petty, venal, thin skinned and delusional.

Chuck identified more with Daffy for those reasons, as do I.

But give yourself a break today, a Bugs break. Enjoy.

From a Zoom conference at Comic Con.

“Gerry” is one of those indie films whose reputation spread much further than its distribution. And that reputation explains how few people have seen it. It’s an interesting experiment in minimalism, but a willfully obscure, indulgent wank of a movie.

Two friends motor into the desert for a hike, to see something, a “thing” that is their destination. A natural phenomenon, nirvana, “the American Dream?” We don’t know.

They both go by “Gerry.” And whenever they mess up, the expression they use for their ineptitude is “Gerry it up.”

The hike goes wrong when they run short of time and decide to “Gerry” their way to “the thing,” rather than follow the path other hikers, tourists or “pilgrims” take. As the desert isn’t featureless — not at first, anyway — this might not be a disastrous call.

But since neither Gerry (Matt Damon) nor Gerry (Casey Affleck) is very experienced at hiking, since they’ve neglected to bring water, “bushwhacking” (what hikers in my part of the world call taking their own path) could be fatal.

What co-stars and co-writers Affleck and Damon were shooting for here, and what director Gus Van Sant captures in one gorgeous but stark composition after another, is an existentialist riff on “Waiting for Godot,” featuring two down-to-Earth-but-ill-prepared Americans confidently wandering into the abyss.

I’ve seen “Godot” lots of times, as a theater viewer and critic, and most of the absurdist or existential plays it’s often grouped with. I can’t say these two, Oscars aside, really get there with this script. The futility is there, but not the poetry or pathos.

But as the two Gerrys trudge in desert-crunching silence, their pace quickening as panic sets in, I locked in on their predicament, the hiking lore that drives their decisions.

Yes, you tend to start hiking faster, trying to outrun your way out of being lost.

Yes, in the West, you look for promontories and climb one to get your bearings and find your way to civilization. In the East, you hike downhill, looking for a stream to follow to a river to civilization.

No, you never go out in the desert, even in winter, without water.

Each Gerry gets himself into a predicament that he acts as if he cannot extract himself from. Each frustrates the other. Blame sets in, even when it isn’t expressed openly.

“How do you think the hike is going so far”?”

And as they crunch from dry creek beds, in search of water, up mountainsides, across dunes and even salt flats, you wonder how lost two doofuses have to be to turn the road-crossed and somewhat developed desert southwest into “Lawrence of Arabia.”

The performances in this 2002 production aren’t the most demanding Damon or Affleck have attempted. But looking at “Gerry,” you can see Affleck’s attraction to such later dialogue-light projects as “Light of My Life” and “A Ghost Story.”

About 60 minutes into “Gerry,” your tolerance may face the desert of your own impatience with its repetition and dreary monotony. It looks like a beautifully-shot but under-scripted indie feature everybody involved knocked out in a couple of weekends.

But if you’re going to tackle something deeper, skimming the surface of Beckett will never do. Damon, Affleck and Van Sant did just that and that alone, and that leaves the viewer thirsty for a lot more than “Gerry” delivers.

MPAA Rating: R, for violence and language (profanity)

Cast: Matt Damon, Casey Affleck

Credits: Directed by Gus Van Sant, script by Casey Affleck and Matt Damon. An Echo Bridge film available on Tubi, IMDb and other free streaming platforms.

Running time: 1:43

The legal profession takes its share of rightly-deserved brickbats from the press, the public and stand-up comics. And if you’ve ever dealt with a “class action” hustle — “We sue in your name, and keep all the money” — or a small town estate lawyer — “Let’s see how I can bill your estate into infinity — you have your own reasons for agreeing.

But there are people for whom the law is a calling, for whom the Constitution is Holy Writ, lawyers hated more out of ignorance or because those inundating them with threatening calls, hateful letters and emails have been conditioned to hate by the echo chamber of right wing media.

Whenever Constitutionally-protected speech is threatened, wherever rural populist politicians figure “majority rule” means they can turn off civil rights for outvoted minorities, ACLU lawyers are there. They’re the hated “outsiders” from that Mecca of right wing venom, New York. They show up with the legal arguments they hope a rational, Constitutional court will listen to and stop the erosion, or in recent years, open trampling of America’s celebrated, traditional, legally-protected civil rights.

They’re here for “The Fight.” 

“The Fight” is a documentary about the American Civil Liberties Union, an institution derided in American life for much of its existence, but particularly since the 1960s, when its role in ensuring civil rights meant rights that had to apply to “all Americans,” of any race, gender or region. It’s been a favorite knee-jerk target of America’s increasingly shrill conservatives of the press, the pulpit and the Republican party.

Filmmakers Elyse Steinberg, Josh Kriegman and Eli B. Despres (and producer Kerry Washington) set out to do an almost-intimate overview of the ACLU’s activities in battle with an administration hell-bent on rolling back American civil liberties to earlier sexist, white supremacist and homophobic standards.

Lawyer Dale Ho is captured, at work, in court and at home, battling Trump administration efforts to suppress the vote and strip voting rights through a back-door “Are you a U.S. citizen?” question on the 2020 census, part of a wider assault aimed at intimidating Hispanics — legal voters, and refugees — and disenfranchising populous (Democratic) states. 

Brigitte Amiri tackles the “Overturn Roe V. Wade” effort, beloved by rural Protestant and urban Catholic America, via a case where a Trump appointee tries to force an immigrant, underage rape victim to carry a pregnancy to term. Scott Lloyd, a bellicose and unqualified activist briefly in charge of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (he was later removed) would go on religious chat shows and brag about how he was ending abortion, one case at a time, in his department.

Lee Gelernt gets emotional as he struggles to overturn the horrific policies of separating migrant children from their families while refugee and immigration requests are processed.

And Chase Strangio and Josh Block take on the case of Brock Stone, a transgender member of the Navy, defending the right of transgender people to serve in the U.S. military after yet another extra-legal “executive order” is handed down by Trump to attack that minority’s rights.

Ho, seen with his family, notes that he’d been hoping to move into a quieter corner of ACLU law so that he’d be able to spend more time at home. And then Trump was “elected.”

“If I’m not going to be a civil rights lawyer now, then when?”

ACLU officials such as Jeffrey Stone agonize over the widely unpopular case they’ve taken on, specifically protecting the rights of Trump-emboldened Nazis to march in Charlottesville, Va., leading to riots and a murder, with “our name attached to this event” simply by standing up for the right of free speech.

Strangio discusses being both a lawyer on LGBT issues, and a spokesman as a transgender man on such issues, in his work.

And Gelernt, interviewing immigrant clients, prepping his briefs and making his case on TV, when invited, laments that his battle against child-separation policies is “one of those cases I just cannot lose…These little kids are just being terrorized.”

One knows from experience that “The Fight” isn’t a movie that will reach the wider public. If it’s mentioned on One America News, Fox News or other right wing outlets, it will be simply the subject of ridicule. “ACLU” is an acronym, like NAACP, that makes a portion of the populace see red and tune out.

While lawyers read, in one montage, from their mountains of hate mail, there’s not a lot of balance to the film, aside from snippets of Fox News opinionators praising this or that Trump extra-legal executive fiat. The split screens following assorted cases don’t cover for the fact that every chapter of the film is given short shrift by choosing to explore four separate sets of cases.

And of course, if you follow the news, you know sometimes they win, often they lose.

But it’s worth remembering that in a time when reactionaries are taking a blunderbuss to The Constitution, to the norms of a democratic republic, to anybody they perceive as “the other,” when courts are being stacked with unqualified partisan hacks, bigots and rage-aholics, there’s this one institution and its lawyers, interns and backers, arguing back, taking “The Fight” to those started it.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for strong language, thematic material and brief violence.

Cast: Brigitte Amiri, Lee Gelernt, Dale Ho, Brock Stone, Chase Strangio

Credits: Directed by  Eli B. Despres, Josh Kriegman, Elyse Steinberg.  A Magnolia release.

Running time: 1:36

The children’s fantasy “Animal Crackers” didn’t deserve to be left on the shelf, which I am sure the folks who made it will be relieved to hear.

It’s been finished since 2017, never gaining distribution in North America, barely being shown anywhere else.

It attracted a dazzling voice cast — Sir Ian McKellen and Danny DeVito, Raven-Symoné and Stallone and Wallace Shawn, Hollywood Hot Couple Emily Blunt and John Krasinski, and such cartoon voice mainstays as Harvey Fierstein, Patrick Warburton and Gilbert Gottfried.

And the animation — by Spain’s Blue Dream Studio — is playfully designed, whimsically colored if not quite of the expressive texture of the best of Pixar, Dreamworks or Blue Sky.

But even as children’s entertainment, this ‘toon about a circus whose animal acts are actually humans who have eaten from a magical box of Animal Crackers — thus stripping “animal cruelty” right out of the whole lion-tamer, horse high-diving into a pool business — never amounts to much more than background noise kiddie entertainment.

The songs include Queen retreads and Huey Lewis never-weres, and some even blander fare as filler. The sight gags work, here and there, but the dialogue never rises far above the “corpulent clown” Chesterfield’s (DeVito) go-to line.

“Pull my finger!”

Even small children may pick up on “Meh, don’t need to pay much attention to this. Know where it’s going, seen it all before.”

The Huntington Family Circus used to be run by siblings. But vain showboat Horatio (McKellen), in Gunther Gebel Williams bouffant and jumpsuit, gave his mild-mannered younger brother “Buffalo” Bob an “It’s her or ME” ultimatum when Bob fell in love with a Gypsy aerialist, and was ousted.

Years later, embittered Horatio accidentally burns the circus down, leaving it to more distant relative Owen (Krasinski) who might finally get to quit his job at his father-in-law’s factory, a job he takes and keeps because he wants to please the old crank ( Shawn) and wife Zoe (Blunt).

“I taste DOG BISCUITS for a living!”

To make a go of the struggling circus, they’ll need the crackers. Eat one, and you turn into an animal, the night’s star attraction — a giraffe, elephant, rhino, horse, etc., with human showmanship skills.

It’s an accidental discovery which Owen makes, transforming into a hamster, shocking Zoe as she’s driving.

“For the love of TOM AND JERRY, please stop PUMMELING me with your purse!”

But Horatio is around, and with his sidekick, Zucchini (Gottfried), who thinks HE’s the villain and Horatio’s HIS sidekick, he aims to reclaim the circus for himself. Zucchini refers to himself in the Third Person, which is cute.

“Suffering SEVERE internal injuries, Zucchini continues his pursuit!”

The voices are fun, with Warburton doing a vintage Warburton toady trying to sabotage Owen and his scientist pal Binkley (Raven-Symoné) at the dog biscuit works, Shawn sputtering and Sly Stallone taking a sort of “I am Groot” role as BulletMan, the fellow they shoot out of a cannon to entertain the kids.

None of it adds up to much, although a car chase and an action-packed finale, with characters changing bodies willy nilly, eating crackers to win a sort of “rock, paper scissors” battle with the shape-shifting villains, pay off.

Grab me as a horse? Try holding on…to a PORCUPINE.

It’s all harmless, if almost charmless, rendered in different shades of “bland.”

MPAA Rating: TV-Y7

Cast: The voices of Ian McKellen, Emily Blunt, Raen-Symone, Danny DeVito, John Krasinski, Patrick Warburton, Harvey Fierstein, Gilbert Gottfried, Wallace Shawn and Sylvester Stallone.

Credits: Directed by Tony Bancroft, Scott Christian Sava and Jaime Maestro. Script by Scott Christian Sava and Dean Lorey, based on a graphic novel by Scott Christian Sava. A Blue Dream Studios/Netflix release.

Running time: 1:41