Movie Nation

“The Summit of the Gods” stands alone when it comes to animated films about mountain climbing. So it has that going for it.

It’s a tale that hangs on two mysteries — that of a recovered camera that might have belonged to George Mallory, the Englishman who might have “summited” Mount Everest in 1924, before disappearing in the snow for 75 years. His body was found in 1999, something not mentioned in the film, which is based on a Japanese comic book (manga).

The movie’s speculation is about a camera that Mallory might have had on his person, and the notion that an obsessive purist climber might have found it, withholding it from the world.

The other “mystery” is the one that’s been glibly answered for the 150 years people have battled sheer rock faces and ice walls to reach the world’s highest peaks. Why do they climb this or that mountain? Mallory is the bloke who gave that oft-quoted answer.

“Because it’s there.”

French animation filmmaker Patrick Imbert and his animation team tell this straightforward story in the most time-honored straightforward way. That makes for an engrossing film, but one that doesn’t really “get at” that “why,” despite paying lip service to the psyche of climbers.

A photojournalist comes home from a failed Everest expedition disgruntled with the work and the people who engage in this sport that has become his specialty. But a Nepalese barfly pitched him a much better story and an artifact, one that Fukamachi failed to act on. The guy wanted to sell him Mallory’s “vest pocket camera.”

The cynical Fukamachi brushed off the hustle, but later saw the hustler surrendering the camera to a big guy who seemed to have a better claim on it. And that guy’s missing fingers convince Fukamachi that he was the reclusive climbing legend Habu, a working-class mountaineer who gained fame in the ’60s and dropped out of sight years before.

Finding Habu and that camera become the reporter’s obsessions. But even after finding Habu, “answers” won’t come easily for a plainly-haunted man who will only say, “Once you get a taste for it, nothing else matters” when it comes to explaining himself.

In classic “Citizen Kane” fashion, we have a reporter talking to people who knew Habu, hearing their accounts of a self-absorbed obsessive, a classic loner who reminds anyone climbing with him, “If I’m in a tough spot, you leave me.”

His interview subjects him fill in on the man’s life story, and what they leave out Fukamachi fleshes out in voice-over narration.

“The Summit of the Gods” isn’t necessarily a story that needed to be told via animation. There are no talking animals, monsters or big-haired ponies. The medium is used to depict a death or two, some hallucinations and some decently rendered mountains. The animation isn’t anime, but is in that ballpark — slightly jumpy, under-animated.

It’s the screenplay, the mysteries in the plot, that sell this. It’s worth adding that it’s not over-sold, and like most films adapted from comic books, it’s more a surface skim than a deeply illuminating exploration of the human condition.

While “Summit” doesn’t expand the animation frontier or lift animation as an artform, it’s a perfectly watchable way of telling a reasonably compelling story.

Rating: PG, Thematic Content|Peril|Some Language|Smoking|Unsettling Images

Cast: The voices of Darren Barnet, Rich Ting, Keiko Agena

Credits: Directed by Patrick Imbert, scripted by Patrick Imbert and Magali Pouzol, based on the manga by Jirô Taniguchi and Baku Yumemakura. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:36 

A March 17 you-know-what-day tale of Irish goblins getting after the new folks in town, who happen to be Londoners played by Hannah John-Kamen and Douglas Booth.

A 50 year-old man loses his job and finds his home, family and very life are subject to “Repossession” in this new thriller from Singapore.

That plot summary has a lot more potential to it than the choppy, hard to follow and not at all frightening film that co-writer/directors Ming Siu Goh and Scott C. Hillyard turned in.

It’s “choppy” because while flashbacks purport to fill in a story that takes forever to get down to business, big gaps in what we’re meant to know remain. We can’t keep track of what is real and what isn’t because the filmmakers didn’t. And it’s literally choppy at times, as jump-cuts work their way into the would-be terror, totally taking the viewer out of the moment, if indeed it had any notion of drawing us in for a good scare.

If you’ve ever lost a job, you can identify with what happens to Jim Tan (Gerald Chew of “Wonder Boy”). The entire chilly process is offensive and humiliating. When the layoff hits and he refuses to sign a letter of resignation or the letter of termination, he takes things one step further by lashing out at the boss who gives him her best “It’s out of my hands.”

He’s so crushed he can’t tell his wife Linda (Amy Cheng of “Crazy Rich Asians”), who fills her days with charity work, work that often includes her writing a big check. They have a live-in maid and a daughter (Rachel Wan) in college. Their condo has a pool, and he drives an Audi.

And he’s not inclined to listen to the advice of his old army buddy (Sivakumar Palakrishnan) who all but orders him to tell his wife, sell the car and job hunt like mad.

“Repossession” goes seriously wrong by devoting its first hour to Jim’s job interviews, his dabbling in day trading and his secret work driving a ride-share.

It isn’t just agism, periodic downsizing and an ebb and flow economy that are working against him. Something more sinister has it in for him. We think. Or he thinks.

Is it paranoia that has him seeing spectral things, flashing back to a telling moment from his and his sister’s childhood or another army days “episode?” Or did that teen (Matthew Loo) he knocked down with his car who later tells him a dullish story about a monster who devoured a village have some message he was cryptically trying to pass on?

“You look down,” the sage kid says (in English). “Bad things happen when you’re down.

Whatever the viewer pieces together in her or his head, the movie doesn’t pass along straightforward answers. There’s nothing resembling a cause-and-effect, here. We can guess that there is, but there’s too little information to settle the matter.

As the film jumps around with those two flashback timelines, events in the present day seem to mimic events of the past, with the suggestion that whatever made bad things happen then is back to make similar things today.

Only that’s not clear, either. Is it all just in his head, as the narrative ignores this “possessed” moment or that exorcism, jumping ahead as if they never happened?

So confused. So confusing. So NOT scary or edifying. So why bother?

Rating: unrated, horror violence, profanity

Cast: Gerald Chew, Amy Cheng, Sivakumar Palakrishnan, Rachel Wan and Matthew Loo

Credits: Scripted and directed by Ming Siu Goh and Scott C. Hillyard. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:34

He’s stoic, a humorless loner. Unless he’s replaying his favorite TV commercials starring the infantile comic “Jackal.” Those move him to hysterics.

He’s tougher than tough, with the scars to show for it. But he freaks out like a little boy if his food’s too hot.

He’s unblinking, unflinching, and prone to doing everything around the house from computing to working out in the nude.

And as we’ve seen in the opening scene, a geisha restaurant slaughter, he’s a methodical hitman who does the calculus of a kill before he pulls the trigger. We see graphics (a “Terminator” or Guy Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes” movies trick) of the targeted spot he wants to hit, the angle the bullet will travel and the many many variations of each shot he has to wade through in the blink of an eye.

He’s so good he’s mythic. Call him “The Fable,” because this masked-murderer (Jun’ichi Okada) might be just that, someone who doesn’t exist.

The long, somewhat sluggish comic thriller director Kan Eguchi gets out of this manga adaptation has scattered laughs and lots and lots of killing, much of that played as comedy, too. We are not that amused.

But the big set-pieces here are wowzers, good enough to merit a sequel (“The Fable: A Hitman Who Doesn’t Kill”), so let’s dive in.

Our nameless mass murderer (“hundred of kills”) has just finished cleaning up “some trouble,” so his boss (Kôichi Satô) sends him and his Tokyo driver-sidekick (Fumino Kimura) off to Osaka to lay low.

They are to “blend in” as “ordinary” citizens, Boss instructs them (in Japanese with English subtitles). But as he is being put up by a mob ally, our hero will go as “a professional,” just not himself, the legend others call “The Fable.”

“Don’t you DARE get into trouble,” the boss who trained him warns. “No killing.” If he does, “I’ll kill you.”

That’s going to be tricky, as there are a lot of mob “problems” swirling around Director Ebihara (Ken Yasuda). A mob-connected sociopath (Yûya Yagira) is about to get out of jail and stir things up. And then there’s this contract killer (Sôta Fukushi) out to find this “Fable,” and test himself against him in the midst of what could be a mob coup in the making.

All the Fable, hiding under the name Akira with his hard-brawling, hard-drinking “sister,” wants is get a job and pretend to lead an ordinary life, with just enough mobsters knowing he’s there to prevent that.

Okada maintains a poker face for most of the movie, until those goofball commercials by the Jackal show up. He dissolves into hysterics, something no one around him quite understands.

The comedy is played broadly while the action beats have a methodical dullness about them. He wades through foes in ways that are more impressive as you repeat-watch them in slow motion. At speed, the killing is perfunctory, driven by a need to impress through sheer numbers.

I wasn’t. Not much, anyway.

Flashbacks explaining how The Boss and The Fable met are unnecessary.

The complications are a damsel (Mizuki Yamamoto) in distress, a mobster wanting to pimp her out, kidnappings and the threat of rape, all with poor Akira forced to handle the situation without actually killing anybody.

As a gimmick, that’s kind of interesting. But the explanations — reduced lethality bullets and what not — are feeble.

Still, all involved seem to think that’s enough to hang not one movie, but a sequel titled “A Hitman Who Doesn’t Kill” on. Maybe they get a better handle on their plot device in the second film. “Fable,” despite its excessive run time and stretches of tedium, was at least popular enough to warrant having another go with this character.

Rating: TV-MA, bloody violence

Cast: Jun’ichi Okada, Fumino Kimura, Mizuki Yamamoto, Sôta Fukushi, Ken Yasuda, Yûya Yagira, Osamu Mukai and Kôichi Satô.

Credits: Directed by Kan Eguchi, scripted by Watanabe Yusuke, based on a manga by Katsuhisa Minami. A Nippon TV film on Netflix

Running time: 2:03

A Cape Cod rom com starring Tate Donovan, Danielle Savre, Josh Peck, Susan Anspach, James B. Sikking.

Donovan pretends to be a Brit and Dash pretends she never worked for and supported a traitor.

Dec. 17.

I distinctly remember cringing a bit and scrunching down in my seat during the opening scenes of “Nothing Sacred” the first time I saw it, in a university film society.

The William Wellman/Ben Hecht classic opens with some tomfoolery about a fake “sultan” who bamboozles a New York newspaper and others into thinking he’ll finance some development scheme in the middle of the Great Depression.

It’s remarkable to see prominent African American representation in most mainstream movies from that era, and there’s more of that in this David O. Selznick production than in virtually anything contemporaneous. The imposing, bug-eyed Troy Brown is in a few scenes. Here’s Hattie McDaniel, who’d win an Oscar just a couple of years later in Selznick’s “Gone With the Wind,” playing the charlatan/hustler’s wife.

Brown is playing a stereotype, but a character with some agency. And wide-eyed double takes or not, he’s funny. The cringing comes in after his “Walker” character is exposed. The headlines about the “bootblack” who fooled a “star reporter” (Fredric March) include so many “shine” jokes than you’d think even 1930s white America would have winced.

But when your movie’s titled “Nothing Sacred,” when it’s built on corruption in government, medicine and newspapering and centered on a young woman feigning “radium poisoning” that gives her just days to live, well I suppose a little racism just adds edge.

This high gloss Technicolor production, with gorgeous art deco sets and Carole Lombard in the lead, is the film that sealed her screen immortality. She’d already made “Twentieth Century” and “My Man Godfrey,” and she’d marry The King of Hollywood, Clark Gable, complete “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” for Hitchcock and “To Be or Not to Be” for Lubitsch before dying in a plane crash at the end of a “Buy War Bonds” public service tour.

But the 77 minutes of “Nothing Sacred” had given the Queen of Screwball Comedies her crown.

She’s Hazel Flagg, a Vermont woman mistakenly diagnosed by her small town doc (Charles Winninger) as dying of the magic ingredient that scores of young women died from hand painting on watch numbers to make them glow in the dark.

Man. That is one BLEAK subject for comedy.

Hazel’s gotten just enough notoriety to merit media attention and a planned “dying girl’s trip to New York” when the same “star reporter” who bought into the bogus sultan storms into town intent on redemption by turning her into a New York celebrity in her final weeks. Or months. However long it takes.

Fredric March, who’d age into many a distinguished role after WWII, was a decent substitute for the assorted Kings of Screwball (Cary Grant, William Powell– Lombard’s ex, others). All his Wally Cook needs is a break from his editor.

That would be Oliver Stone. Well, an “Oliver Stone,” harrumphing and threatening and played by Walter Connolly.

Ex-newspaperman Hecht and a whole Scout Troop of gag writers tarted up the dialogue surrounding Hazel’s Toast of New York trip in which she knows the awful truth, and drags her compliant tipsy doctor along for cover.

 “I’ll tell you briefly what I think of newspaper men,” the about-to-commit-fraud doctor lectures. “The hand of God, reaching down into the mire, couldn’t elevate one of them to the depths of degradation!”

A Vermont joke — “You lived here all your life?” “TWICE that long.”

And there’s lots of offhanded dark humor about the situation at hand.

“For good clean fun, there’s nothing like a wake!” “Oh please, let’s NOT talk shop!”

Reconsidered today, the picture feels like a dry and dry-eyed run at Frank Capra’s later and more highly-regarded “Meet John Doe,” a sentimental romantic comedy about a homeless hobo set up for a Voice of the Common Man newspaper hustle, only to be co-opted by the oligarchs of his day.

“Meet John Doe” is funnier as well, and has a timeless quality “Sacred” seems to have lost.

Lombard and March click. There’s virtually no screen time wasted as the picture sprints along. And after that early racial insensitivity, a children’s choir comes along to serenade the “dying” Hazel, and you can’t help but notice it is integrated.

Even Walker the hustler makes a more amusing second entrance, running a “deliver flowers/steal flowers” scam in Hazel’s swank hotel.

Then we hit the scene in which Wally “has to” punch out Hazel and the grimaces return. Part of Lombard’s rep as “one of the boys” able to take a joke is seriously tested in this sequence, which begins with Hazel standing up and being repeatedly knocked down by a desperate, scheming and smitten Wally.

Watch where his hands land every time he shoves her. I’d like to think Lombard slapped his face between takes of that.

The “knock out” bit is something movies and TV shows toyed with — male violence against women played for laughs, with a lot of “Why I ougghtas” all the way through “I Love Lucy” and “The Honeymooners” and even “The Flintstones.”

Whatever audiences thought of that at the time, it’s not funny now. Not in the least. And one of the defenses of the racism/sexism in such films is how “that was the norm” and how “prevalent” it was. Then you see “Casablanca” and are reminded of how few films of the era went as far as “Nothing Sacred,” how “It was the norm” but plenty of Hollywood people knew it was wrong and managed to avoid putting caricatures in their films, or somehow managed to avoid “She needs a good spanking” as comedy.

Not Selznick. 

Accept a movie as representative of its time, appreciate how times have changed and take all that into account when you watch it. Let your jaw drop at the “I cannot believe they WENT there…in 1937!” But there’s no getting around the story elements that make “Nothing Sacred” problematic, that take you out  of the picture and won’t let it age well.

Some of the comedy is so seriously “not funny any more” that the luster is fading on this “classic” too fast for the shine to last. 

Rating: “approved”

Cast: Carole Lombard, Fredric March, Charles Winninger, Walter Connolly, Margaret Hamilton, Sig Ruman, Troy Brown, Hattie McDaniel and Charles Lane.

Credits: Directed by William Wellman, scripted by Ben Hecht, with bits added by Moss Hart, Budd Schulberg, Davod O. Selznick, Ring Lardner Jr., Sidney Howard, Goerge S. Kaufman, George Oppenheimer, Ben Carson and William Wellman. A Selznick International production released through United Artists.

Running time: 1:17

The audacity, the nerve, remaking a “classic” and all that. And in the Golden Age of Lin-Manuel Miranda, too!

But this Christmas, we’re all going to get a load of Mr. Spielberg’s take on the
Robert Wise film, Tony winner Tony Kushner’s updating of the Arthur Laurents book, a revival of Leonard Bernstein’s songs, many of which permanently entered The American Songbook.

Justin Peck of the New York City ballet gets the unenviable job of replacing Jerome Robbins’ iconic choreographer.

There’s no obvious EGOT-goat in this cast. But who knew Rita Moreno would win the Oscar, as well as take home Tony, Grammy and Emmy glories over her storied “triple threat” career?

Yes, Rita’s in this version, a lovely nod to its history.

Aside from her, the best-known members of the cast are Ansel Elgort, a baby driver singing and starring as Tony, with Ariana DeBose, Corey Stoll, David Alvarez and Brian D’Arcy James.

There’ll be no Natalie Wood, white and singer-doubled, as Maria. A Colombian American, Rachel Zegler has that life-changing role.

The latest Disney cartoon opened with a pandemic dampened way under $30 million weekend, clearing just over $40 since Thursday.

Those aren’t typical Disney toon numbers, and give away what a hard sell this script by committee, Lin Manuel Miranda musical misfire is

“Ghostbusters” cleared $35 over five days on its second weekend.

“House of Gucci” opened with a robust $21.83. Gaga over Gucci?

The “Resident Evil” reboot “Welcome to Raccoon City” did $8 8 over five days.

“Eternals” added another $7.9 Andis now the seventh place movie in total North American box office take of 2021.

Both “Eternal” and “Dune” are wrapping up their theatrical runs, with the latter clearing $100 mill

“King Richard” added another $3.5 million

Figures provided by Box Office Pro.

R

Oh come on, not THIS crap again!

You’d figure six “Resident Evil” movies would have been enough, a seriously-lowbrow but seriously successful video-game film franchise that helped Milla Jovovich put her kids through college and what not.

But her character, an avenging Lara Croft-type with sex appeal and a violent streak, is gone. This new reboot, “Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City” is a back-to-the-game, back-to-basics bore.

The world’s biggest pharmaceutical company, Umbrella Corp, is closing down its gigantic plant in Raccoon City, a company town given that name by English-as-a-Fourth-Language Japanese video game designers.

There are rumors about what’s “in the water” there, and what they’ve been experimenting on “below” the factory, rumors that were prevalent when siblings Claire and Chris were orphans in the Raccoon City Orphanage way back in “The Golden Girls” ’80s.

Claire, in particular, saw things — scary things. She ran away as a teen, and now (1998) that the plant is closing and the town is dying with it, she (“Maze Runner” alumnus Kaya Scodelario) is back to check up on cop-brother Chris (Rob Amell of TVs’ “Upload”).

But Claire can’t even hitch a ride from a pervy trucker without all hell breaking loose. They hit a woman in a hospital gown, standing in the middle of the roadin the rain and gloom. While arguing about what to do about this, the woman staggers off.

I know what you’re thinking. “Zombies.” Granted, that’s not what Umbrella Corp. was setting out to create (the game’s name is “Biohazard” in Japan). But as they look like rotting, bleeding corpses and crave brains — or flesh — “zombies” will have to do, as it always has.

Claire and a rookie cop (Avan Jogia) without any discernable policing skills and a Johnny Depp haircut team up to survive in the police station, while Chris and a team of Raccoon City’s Finest, including Hannah John-Kamen and Tom Hopper, are prowling the halls of the old, spooky manor house of Umbrella’s founder (“Umbrella is your shelter in a storm!”), looking for clues left on a Palm Pilot and fighting off zombies.

And then there’s the police chief (Donal Logue), whose first reaction to the Umbrella civil defense sirens going off is to flee, as does the scientist who used to “care for the orphans,” who grabs his wife and daughter and floors it. They just know…

The scientist is played by veteran heavy Neal McDonagh, so expect the worst, right?

There’s a hint here and there that writer-director Johannes Roberts (“46 Meters Down”) gave a thought or two to making this a darkly funny splatter-the-zombies thriller, or a darkly thrilling splatter-the-zombies comedy. A few deaths are treated as jokes, and the sight gags are by default amusing period references.

It’s 1998, and pagers, Palm Pilots, Blockbuster and Journey were still going concerns.

The lines are never cleverer than “I think there’s something seriously wrong with this place,” and “Lock the gates. There might be others.” “Other WHAT?”

The most interesting scenes are the origin story bits, with Claire consulting a conspiracy buff on this newfangled thing, “The Internet” to figure out what’s been happening in this mysterious “company town” in the middle of the woody mountains.

The first local to start bleeding from her eyes — “I’m sure it’s nothing!” — the first bloody writing on a window — “Itchy Tasty” — gets our attention.

But damned if I didn’t miss Milla in this. Say what you will about the onetime Joan of Arc/”Return to the Blue Lagoon” siren as an actress. She’s got screen charisma, and her total investment in her character made her a compelling surrogate for the B-movie audience.

We rooted for her, and dare I say it, suffered with her. Nothing of that sort happens here. Nobody is developed in enough depth the viewer to identify with.

If Scodelario is signed up for a franchise, and saving something for the next film in it, she gives us zilch to cling to here. Claire’s background is glossed-over in ways that don’t explain her motorcycle savvy and firearm skills.

Nobody in this picture seems the least bit horrified at what they’re experiencing. It’s like they’re — I don’t know — video game characters just girding for that next lock-and-load moment.

If indeed this is a full on franchise reboot, this “origin story” is no “Welcome to Raccoon City” at all. It’s a warning to avoid ever coming back.

Rating: R for strong violence and gore, and language throughout.

Cast: Kaya Scodelario, Robbie Amell, Avan Jogia, Donal Logue and Neal McDonagh

Credits: Scripted and directed by Johannes Roberts. A Sony/Screen Gems release.

Running time: 1:47

All that a cast filled with music personalities adds to the dull, trashy money-laundering melodrama “For the Love of Money” is the occasional pause for a song. And the last thing this movie should do is pause.

It’s just as well that so much of the acting is handled by non-actors, as it’d be a shame to burn through the Screen Actors’ Guild’s finest trying to wring something out of this sloppy, cliche-ridden script.

Keri Hilson of “Think Like a Man” and “Almost Christmas” moves from singer and bit-player to leading lady as Gigi, a single mom trying to keep her Atlanta house, her daughter in private school and herself stylishly dressed on two part time job salaries.

Well, we’re told she works in a gym where we see her working out, but that side-hustle is forgotten by the second or third scene. A lot of characters, background details and story threads get lost in this shuffle-the-deck screenplay, or Leslie Small’s direction of it.

Gigi’s main gig is waiting on well-heeled customers at the tony Symphoni Champagne Bar run by Chris (Keith Sweat). As great as the tips are, that’s not enough to cover tuition for aspiring singer-songwriter teen daughter Ashley (Jazzy Jade) at her private academy.

Ex husband Greg (Jason Mitchell) refuses to ante up more, and gives her an odd directive when it comes to supporting their daughter.

“It’s time for you to decide, are you gonna be a boss-ass b—c or a beggin’-ass b—h?”

As we’ve just seen Mom help Ashley compose a love song for Jesus that she’s performed in church, we are shocked SHOCKED at the vulgarity of the man, who implies his ex knows something of “the street.”

Not sure what he means by that. But mortal men’s eyes pop out of their heads at the gym, on the street and in the bar at the mere sight of Gigi in cleavage and stilettos. So, maybe…

Little Angel Ashley gets in a brawl with a bully after a school basketball game. The other girl winds up “in a coma” and Ashley is badly manhandled by a cop who lets “your black a–” slip as he’s cuffing, roughing up and arresting her.

Add legal bills to the bottom line Gigi isn’t able to cover. Maybe it’s about time to take up the flirty co-workers at the bar (D.C. Young Fly, Cedric Pendleton) on some sort of standing-offer she has to join their side-hustle, moving drug money hither and yon.

At this point, feel free to put down the popcorn, rest your head in your hands and wrack your brain for memories of that “standing-offer.” Because Gigi somehow has a master plan for “fixing” their money laundering for handsy-pushy dealer Trey (Rotimi) all worked out, and they let her implement it and all but take over.

I didn’t hear the offer. But then, I was trying to figure out how the darling little church singer nearly beats another child to death and A) doesn’t get expelled from that private school and B) somehow gets a plea deal that spares her jail because of the cop’s racist over-zealousness.

No, “SHE started it!” never holds up in court.

“For the Love of Money” has a lot of lapses like that — story threads and characters forgotten, details skipped-over because nobody gave them any thought.

What the film is really about is giving Hilson a showcase for her curves and voice, and the audience a ridiculous taste of “wish fulfillment fantasy” as Gigi negotiates a stupidly lucrative deal with a potentially violent drug dealer that allows her to buy a Jag, and the champagne bar.

But before handing Symphoni over, Chris and Gigi do a little duet for the paying customers.

There’s also a nothing-to-the-imagination sex number by Latto, and a couple of musical trips to church, for those who their movies to give them whiplash.

The soundtrack is more R-rated than most of what’s on the screen, and all of it, including the half-assed crime and waiting for Gigi’s profligate, criminal “boss-ass b—h” behavior to catch up with her is pure trash.

Add to that actors who don’t know how to show desperation, rage, greed, lust or much of anything else, and a story that moves so slowly you notice every flaw –thanks, director Smalls (“Hair Show”) — and you’ve got yourself a dud.

I was grateful for a cameo by comic Katt Williams, playing Gigi’s corrupt, money-laundering pastor with a poker-faced stillness and seriously silly fey voice. Give that man top billing, as he’s the only person on the payroll who seems to know what he’s doing, and why.

Rating: R for language, some sexual content/nudity and violence

Cast: Keri Hilson, Rotimi, D.C. Young Fly, Jazzy Jade, Jason Mitchell, Latto, Keith Sweat and Katt Williams

Credits: Directed by Leslie Small, scripted by Timothy Allen Smith, Zadia Ife and Leslie Small. A Freestyle release.

Running time: 1:38