Movie Nation

A tepid attempt to graft agoraphobia onto the weary “indie filmmaker trying to get a second film made” comedy, “Welcome Matt” neither delivers laughs nor insights to an illness a lot of people think about as a pandemic winds down.

The jokes are gassed, the characters bland and the unanswered question that hangs over it, first scene to last, is “Who cares?”

We meet Matthew Hillard (Tahj Mowry) as he’s shooting on the beach in LA, a comedy hilariously-titled “Life’s a Beach,” which one day will be finished and referred to as “‘Clerks’ on the beach.”

Problem one, scene one, first page of dialogue. Nothing remotely cute, funny or even interesting happens in the “film within a film.” Not a promising start.

But damned if the film school dreamer didn’t get that feature made, get a little famous, and wind up shut in, refusing to leave his apartment, trying to summon up a follow-up film and give the illusion everything’s fine on his social media when nothing is.

Why? We just know the reason will be a killer. Eventually.

Matt’s girlfriend (Adriyan Rae) is over it, and her need to go out gives away that she’s cheating on him.

His film school buddy, first-film producer pal (Aaron Grady) is ready to cook up “Life’s a Beach II.” Matt’s not having it.

“You ever seen ‘Clerks II?'”

“I don’t think ANYbody’s seen ‘Clerks II.'”

“My point exactly.”

Bringing him hookers doesn’t help. Yeah, it’s that kind of lame, with broad takes on an audition that turns out to be with a psychotic actor, an “intruder” (Deon Cole) who turns out to be a stoner washed-up stand-up who wants to “co-write” a film with him, and so it goes.

Everybody in town knows who he is, everybody wants a piece of that, nobody cares about his “problem.”

Of course his Facetiming Mom (Jazsmin Lewis) signs him up for in-home therapy sessions with a weeper of a counselor (GG Townson).

As the comic attempts “tough love,” as the producer “leaks” the sequel to the press, as the manipulative ex tries to finagle her way into “Life’s a Beach II,” as the therapist says “I think we’re making progress,” we drift towards The Big Revelation.

No nice way to put this, but “Welcome Matt” is cinematically still-born, “comedy” that barely fits the broadest definition of the word. It clumsily mishandles the “serious” stuff — relationships, “get some help,” etc. — so badly that therapist Lisa isn’t the only one almost moved to tears.

Scenes die of oxygen starvation, characters behave like script archetypes with no visible signs of life, and Matt isn’t the only one eye-rolling his way through this. The selection of photos from this online suggest that this was trimmed rather severely, to which I can only whisper “Thank God.”

A comic co-writer is rarely a bad idea. And in this case, maybe a little more research than googling “agoraphobia” was in order.

MPA Rating: unrated, profanity

Cast: Tahj Mowry, Deon Cole, Adriyan Rae, Aaron Grady, Malik S, GG Townson

Credits: Scripted and directed by Leon Pierce Jr. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:32

A brisk, bracing opening straight out of “The Stand,” only set to Elvis and Elvis covers, sets the tone.

“Army of the Dead” is going to be jaunty, and because there’s little new that can be done with zombies, that’s a good thing. More “Zombieland” than “World War Z,” probably the safe play.

But no sooner have I scribbled “Zack Snyder rediscovers his first, best destiny” in my notes than “Army of the Dead” grinds to an almost-complete halt. A stumbling, lurching narrative, long bursts of exposition — explaining this or that variation on a zombie theme — and a general lifelessness to every scene not involving slaughter condemn Snyder’s latest take on George A. Romero’s “Dead” to tedium.

It’s a heist picture with “the undead,” who have taken over Vegas (Hah!) and are about to be nuked. But there’s $200 million tax-free in a vault there, and only survivors of that zombie outbreak are desperate enough, and possess the necessary skills, to get in there and grab it for the Japanese oligarch (Hiroyuki Sanada) who stashed it in a vault and already collected the insurance on it.

“Easy peasy Japanesey,” he cracks.

The Medal of Freedom winner, a hero of the outbreak, who is now a short order cook is who the oligarch hires. Scott (Dave Bautista) could use the cash, as could everybody else he assembles for his “team” in the slowest, lamest “assemble my team” sequence in action film history.

Ella Purnell, Ana de la Reguera, Omari Hardwick, Raúl Castillo, Theo Rossi, Nora Arnezeder, Garrett Dillahunt, Matthias Schweighöfer and Tig Notaro, play a collection of “types” who emphasize “inclusion” and action film cliches — the German safecracker, the Latino Reddit zombie-killer/influencer, the oligarch’s untrustworthy “security expert,” the lesbian chopper pilot/mechanic (Notaro) who can fly them out (cleverly recast and re-shot when the actor originally in the film tested positive for #MeToo violations).

Oh, and let’s not forget the daughter (Purnell) who never forgave Scott for shooting her mom/his wife when she went undead. She’s here to save a fellow detainee at the refugee camp where Vegas survivors are being held.

Yes, their presence in the camp has been totally politicized.

Notaro gives the picture a welcome if half-hearted comic touch as the team fights/schemes and bargains its way past the zombie subculture towards the twin towers — Sodom and Gomorrah — and their big payoff. No other supporting character is fleshed out enough to develop an impression.

Snyder, who first gained fame for his Romero reboot “Dawn of the Dead,” renames the undead a couple of things — “alphas” and “fast ones” and “shamblers” — and made a movie paced like the latter. This ungainly, overlong (Pilot for a TV series?) beast never gets on its feet and up to speed after that jaunty intro.

This is “Escape from New York” where nobody is cool enough to make us care, where the stakes are low and the pace is slower than slow.

A trio of screenwriters can’t find a clever line of dialogue to save their skins, so the score is peppered with Elvis and morose covers of “Bad Moon Rising,” “This Is the End,” etc. because that’s what we do in post-production to juice up the juiceless — “Forrest Gump” that sucker.

There’s little of the political subtext that gave earlier zombie pictures intellectual heft, no “Zombieland” whimsy, just gory deaths ever-so-slowly achieved, and soap operatic “Walking Dead” character dynamics.

“Tell me this isn’t some insane way to reconnect with your daughter!”

Maybe this is Zack Snyder’s “first, best destiny” as a filmmaker. But when he can’t even get through a formulaic zombie picture without crawling, maybe he was never destined to deserve final cut.

MPA Rating: R for strong bloody violence, gore and language throughout, some sexual content and brief nudity/graphic nudity

Cast: Dave Bautista,  Ella Purnell, Ana de la Reguera, Omari Hardwick, Hiroyuki Sanada, Raúl Castillo, Theo Rossi, Nora Arnezeder, Garrett Dillahunt, Matthias Schweighöfer and Tig Notaro.

Credits: Directed and photographed by Zack Snyder, script by Zack Snyder, Shay Hatten and Joby Harold. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:28

The great Russian filmmaker Andrei Konchalovskiy’s remarkable third act “comeback” in the West began with an allegorical Life of Michelangelo, a Russian-Italian co-production titled “Il peccato” or “Sin.”

The director of the ’80s masterpiece “Runaway Train” had decades in the cinematic wilderness. But he followed 2019’s “Sin” with “Dear Comrades!” And if it wasn’t for the fact that he’s 84, we’d be heralding him as a “hot new talent” emerging from slumbering post-Soviet cinema.

“Sin” is a fascinating take on the greatest Renaissance sculptor and one of the great figures in all of art, Michelangelo Buonarroti. Famously “brilliant” and as the Pope labels him here, “a scoundrel,” but “a divine scoundrel,” he was the finest artist among Italy’s Holy Trinity of art contemporaries, Leonardo and Raphael being his rivals.

This is a markedly different look at the man, played with a twitchy verve by Alberto Testone. He’s as grimy and whiney and intense as Charlton Heston portrayed him in “The Agony and the Ecstasy.” But this Michelangelo is profane and paranoid — manic at times — a mere mortal pulled in different directions by two warring families and the Popes they put in power for their benefit — the Medicis and the Della Roveres.

We meet him trapped in Rome, where “every step I take, a priest, pilgrim or prostitute” is in his way — never satisfied, never finished with his painting of the Sistine Chapel. He ventures back to his native Florence where his mooching family spends his commissions> And then he’s off to a long sojourn in Carrara, supervising the extraction of the famed “white as sugar” marble that he would carve into statues for the tomb of Pope Julius, famously remembered as “The Fighting Pope.”

But as Julius (Massimo De Francovich) dies and the decadent Medici Pope Leo (Simone Toffanin) steps in, that commission is back-burnered.

Money and contracts change hands, no one is happy and most miserable of all is the artist himself, sure he’s being spied on, poisoned, haunted by “assassins” in every shadow.

Glibly put, this Michelangelo is every contractor you’ve ever hired to paint, roof or renovate your house — overbooking and lying about it, pushing deadlines and taking money and crying like a New Testament martyr (here in Italian with English subtitles) every time you complain.

Michelangelo frets about the Inquisition, “the Hounds of the Lord,” they call themselves, “the Bitches of the Lord” he hisses. He rages at the plagiarizing and glory-stealing Raphael (Glenn Blackhall), attacks his long-suffering, duplicitous aide Peppe (Jakob Diehl) and begs the quarrymen to be quick but careful with his Carrara marble, including the massive block everyone calls “il mostro, the monster,” which we know will be carved into his masterpiece.

A manic egomaniac, control freak and genius is overextended, and we watch him — like “Fitzcarraldo” — labor over his quixotic dream, juggling creditors and assignments every step of the way. That’s the metaphor here, the great artist laboring to put himself in a position to create a statue for the ages, squandering years of his life and his sanity in its pursuit.

“My every project goes beyond my strength,” he complains, and Testone and Konchalovskiy let us see it and feel it.

But as he fends off this creditor or that Pope or menacing Medici, he is watching — the daughter who could be his Madonna, the hands of bejeweled wealth and age, or youth or labor, his trademark as a sculptor.

It’s a gritty, lived-in film that feels like a smelly, life-is-nasty-brutish-and-short for anyone not in the ruling classes depiction of the Renaissance — beautiful and painterly even in it’s ugliness.

And Testone, wearing the weight of the world and his Herculean tasks in every haunted, furrowed-brow moment, never lets is forget the stakes, even when “Sin,” like Michelangelo, becomes more and more bogged down by the mortal sin — vanity — that “the monster” becomes.

MPA Rating: unrated, violence, sex, profanity

Cast: Alberto Testone, Massimo De Francovich, Nicola Adobati, Jakob Diehl, Simone Toffanin

Credits: Directed by Andrei Konchalovskiy, script by Andrei Konchalovsky and Elena Kiseleva. A Corinth Films release.

Running time: 2:14

Their eyes lock in across the darkened room. They share a smile, and as their finely-waxed mustaches meet, they kiss.

“The Dance of the 41 (El Baile de los 41)” is Mexico’s “Age of the Not-So-Innocent,” a beautifully baroque period piece about a signature political/sexual scandal for a culture wrapped up in Latin machismo.

It happened in 1901, a “raid” on a private club that ensnared many of the country’s shakers and movers — Congressmen, bankers, the son-in-law of the president — generations of men in the exquisite beards and mustaches of the day, cross-dressed and dancing at a gala ball.

“Dance” tells the story of this exclusive “club,” whose members donned blindfolds, stripped off their shirts and confessed to their fellow practitioners of “Socratic love,” “Soy maricón.”

The story begins with the marriage of the Ignacio de la Torres (Alfonso Herrera) to Amada Diaz (Mabel Cadena) The groom, freshly appointed to Congress, becomes “the nation’s son-in-law” as Amada is President Porfirio Diaz’s daughter.

But whatever political advantages having him in the family entail, in the bedroom it’s instantly obvious that all isn’t as promised in the bedroom. Ignacio has to fake his way through it.

Meeting a colleague in government, Evaristo (Emiliano Zurita) confirms it. Yes, gaydar predated radar. And then we see him at his “club,” home to the “late night dinners” that keep him away from home and his increasingly frustrated and then furious wife.

“Tell your wife that we ladies LOVED her dress,” the other members cackle.

The strained marriage drives “El Baile,” but its life is this club where Ignacio can be himself, and doesn’t hesitate to. But amidst the hedonism, the drinking and orgies, staged operas and ribald pantomimes, initiations (for Evaristo, “Eva”) and figuring out what all these candlelit bathtubs are for, Ignacio commits a cardinal sin for the many powerful and married members. He falls in love.

“Dance of the 41” is a gorgeous, ornate and tragic romance that seems filmed and acted at arm’s length. We can’t embrace the characters of their plight, because the dry treatment ensures nobody is that sympathetic, no one is obviously worth rooting for.

The performances, save for Cadena, who brings hurt and fire to Amada, have a bloodlessness about them that hampers our connection to the characters.

The victim here is Amada, the one lied to, mistreated and gaslit by a husband who insists she has health and sleeping problems as he moves out of their bedroom. Ignacio may be derisively called “Nachito” by the bride’s military man brother, with a lamb left behind as a taunt at one point. But he’s a bit of a bastard, and impossible to feel sorry for as presented here.

Amada is likewise problematic, high-born and determined to make a go of this even if she has to burn his world down around him to keep up appearances.

Coming twenty years after “Y tu mama tambien,” “Dance of the 41” seems curiously cautious and tentative, aside from the orgy and sex scenes and the fact that it “outs” a Congressman and son-in-law of a long-serving Mexican president.

What’s served up is dry history that neither judges nor commits to what might be “tragic” in this story, which is understandable, given the principals.

That takes “Dance” into the realm of that Martin Scorsese movie I referenced earlier. Like “Age of Innocence,” this melodrama feels preserved under glass, an emotionally barren account of a “scandal” and its (briefly shown) aftermath, regarded from afar without much sympathy for anybody involved.

MPA Rating: TV-MA, sex, nudity

Cast: Alfonso Herrera, Emiliano Zurita, Mabel Cadena, Fernando Becerril

Credits: Directed by David Paplos, script by Monika Revilla. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:39

“Ferry” is a straight-up old-fashioned “mobster grows morals” thriller from The Netherlands, a movie that doesn’t surprise but does what it does with efficiency and a hint of style.

And I don’t think it gives too much away saying that this Cecilia Verheyden film, script by Nico Moolenaar and Bart Uytdenhouwen, is an homage to “Miller’s Crossing,” because it is.

The title character (Frank Lammers) is a hulking “enforcer” for Amsterdam mob boss Brink )(Huub Stapel). When Brink’s counting room is robbed and his son is killed, Ferry is the pitiless tough he sends to “The South” for answers, and revenge.

“I want you to find them, and I want you to shoot them.”

“The South” is where Ferry came from, the poorer trailer park corner of Holland that doesn’t make it onto the windmills and wooden shoes postcards, a region far removed from the hip, touristy, sexually and pharmaceutically-liberated Amsterdam.

The script is sort of a mobster procedural. See what resources Ferry calls on to get his first lead, see where he goes to get some names. And in this case, check out the past he was running away from.

The opening scene shows his traumatic but toughening trailer park childhood, where he and his sister had to stick together under an abusive alcoholic’s manufactured-housing roof. Now, he’s catching up with that estranged sister (Monic Hendrickx), mainly because her husband (Raymond Thiry) was an old running mate.

Ferry embeds himself in a trailer park and waits. Danielle (Elise Schaap) is the damsel he rescues at the carnival, the neighbor he flirts with in the park and a woman who makes him wonder if there’s more to life than the one he’s been leading. He even starts to feel guilty about his sister, who is dying and all he wants is information from her husband.

The “investigation” isn’t deep or canny, the violence isn’t anything fancy. Tell me who you worked with, tell me who you’re working for, and no, there’s not much chance I still won’t shoot you if you do.

Lammers has a sort of Oliver Platt look with a Michael Shannon vibe. His Ferry learned from the school of hard knocks. He isn’t educated, sophisticated or even overly cunning. Brute strength, bulk and revolvers with a willingness to use them covers for a lot of disadvantages when it comes to life-or-death situations.

Schaap’s high-mileage Danielle is very pretty woman who started out in the hole and got beaten down every time she crawled out of it. I like that she’s not self-pitying, although her interest in her “rescuer” seems more primal than realistic.

Film buffs will catch the references to “Miller’s Crossing” even if nobody else does. That makes this a B-movie with a little something extra. What’s more important is that it’s a B-movie that works.

MPA Rating: TV-MA, violence, drug abuse, nudity

Cast: Frank Lammers, Elise Schaap, Huub Stapel, Monic Hendrickx and Raymond Thiry

Credits: Directed by Cecilia Verheyden, script by Nico Moolenaar, Bart Uytdenhouwen. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:46

Paul Sorvino, Lorraine Bracco, Ashley Benson, Aldis Hodge, Penn Badgley, Shiloh Fernandez, Luis Guzman, William Fitchner, Val Killer and Ewan McGregor are the stars of this June 18 release.

The thing about “feel good” movies is that, to work, they’ve got to flirt with making you feel awful. Edge of tears, disappointment, life’s pitfalls turning into potholes, the works.

And that’s never truer than in feel good movies about horses. We all know what can go wrong with horses you’re trying to race.

So a word to the wise about “Dream Horse,” about a Welsh village that pools its cash and breeds a racing stallion. Don’t watch it in your dressy face mask. This adorable tear-jerker is made for disposable ones.

It’s a movie whose winning warmth, plucky “up from nothing” story and genteel rowdiness are infectious. But its glory is in another gem of performance from Toni Collette. As Jan, the co-op clerk who decides that a race horse might be just the ticket to get herself, her marriage and her aging, dying town out of a rut, she leads our emotions in every gasp of unadulterated joy, every moment of slack-jawed horror, with every tear.

Jan Vokes is the sort of woman not quite resigned to this is “all there is.” She raises a duck, geese, goats and a wolfhound because her two kids have “flown the nest.” Husband Brian (Owen Teale) lost his job, and enough of his teeth to notice, years before. So Jan works two jobs, tending bar down at the club evenings.

That’s where she overhears the Cardiff tax advisor Howard (Damian Lewis, wonderful) talk about the glory days when he was in a syndicate, an “owner” (one of several) of a racehorse, something rumor has it almost ruined him and nearly wrecked his marriage.

Ownership via syndicate? “It’s more affordable than you think.”

Jan gets a wild hare to buy a mare.

“I’m going to breed a race horse,” she tells layabout Brian as she prints up fliers, struggles to win over Howard to the cause and recruit local “types” to join in. There’s old age pensioner Maureen (Siân Phillips), barfly and local “character” Kirby (Karl Johnson, of course), pedantic councilor Maldwyn (Anthony O’Donnell) and others.

They dream of riches, but Howard, thrilled as he is to have skin in the game again, sets them straight. “There’s less than a one percent chance it’ll ever win a race,” he says. If you’re buying in, “do it for the hwyl,” a Welsh lark and a laugh. And so they do.

The Neil McKay script that Euros Lyn directs hits the stations-of-the-cross of feel good movies, thus the “I need something to look forward to when I get up in the morning” speech, the “whole wide world out there” that punching out of your comfort zone brings.

It’s got horse racing movie staples, but skips over the hoariest. We see the naming of the newborn (“Dream Alliance”), watch the cute foal bottle-fed, grasp how Jan and Brian look at the critter as a beloved pet, and glimpse his uncertain start in training and in racing.

Nicholas Farrell of “Chariots of Fire” is the wealthy trainer who journeys from dismissive snob to “He’s got something…spirit” in a flash. And there’s an upper class rival who doesn’t really add up to being the villain here, nobody is.

Because “Dream Horse” is about the fractious “syndicate,” competing agendas, family discord and the triumphs and tragedies of race horse ownership.

We sit in on giddy sing-alongs, tearful choruses of the Welsh national anthems — both of them, including “Delilah,” a hit for native son Tom Jones.

Characters take sentimental inner journeys and tears are shed.

It’s not “Seabiscuit,” but plucky winners like this are a great reason to get back into the cinema-going habit.

Just remember my advice about the face mask. You can’t “feel good” without a few tears.

MPA Rating: PG for language and thematic elements

Cast: Toni Collette, Damian Lewis, Owen Teale, Siân Phillips, Karl Johnson, Anthony O’Donnell

Credits: Directed by Euros Lyn, script by  Neil McKay. A Bleecker St/Topic Studios release.

Running time: 1:53

This is now slated for August. Respect my need to see this in a theater and wear a mask until all doubt and COVID vanish.

Jennifer Hudson, Audra MacDonald as her mom, Forrest Whitaker, and in a cleverly apt bit of casting. Marc Maron is producer Jerry Wexler, the one person in this story I met and interviewed.

The director has Dolly Parton movies and “Walking Dead” on her resume. Perfect.

(UPDATE: Roger Moore’s review of “Respect,” opening Aug. 13, is here)

Frenetic scenes over-stuffed with pop art/comic-bookish visuals, politically-savvy “tech is taking over” messaging and a handful of seriously silly and over-the-top moments give “The Mitchells vs. the Machines” its fizz and buzz.

And Oscar winner Olivia Colman, voicing a cell phone digital assistant app out for revenge, is worth a laugh or three. Throw in Maya Rudolph and a generally colorless voice cast doesn’t seem like the dead weight it might with a muted Danny McBride and unamusing turns by SNL folk and Eric Andre in other roles.

That adds up to a somewhat fun if cluttered and fatiguing animated action romp of the short attention span school. Produced by Sony Animation and sold to Netflix, it’s a more manic “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” and the sort of animated comedy that gains swoons from some quarters, and is forgotten by Awards Season.

To be fair, catching up with any film just as the wind (gas) has gone out of its breathless hype is always a little deflating. But my honest reaction was a half dozen good laughs, dozen more decent chuckles, a shrug at the rank sentimentality (better handled in “Meatballs”) and occasional annoyance at all the intentional visual overkill, meant to make the viewer ignore how slack and predictable this all is.

The hook here? An aspiring filmmaker, a teen Youtube regular thanks to her “Dog Cop” comedies starring the family pug, is heading for film school. But a family feud with her more low-tech, pragmatic (“Can you make a living doing that?”) Dad causes Mr. Outdoorsy/Tool Handy (Nick Offerman wasn’t available?) patriarch to pile everybody into the ancient “learn to drive a stick” station wagon for a cross-country road trip.

Dad’s all “unobstructed eye contact” (for 30 seconds) at dinner in this cell-phone addicted household. Everybody else is into their digital PAL (Apple-Siri with sinister side), daughter Katie (Abbi Jacobson) is annoyed that she’s finally found her “tribe” and is being delayed in joining it by square Dad (McBride, not giving us much) and Mom (Rudolph) isn’t taking her side.

But as they settle in for the arduous drive and make that necessary kid brother (co-director Michael Rianda, sounding like an adult voicing a little boy) visit to Dino Stop, wouldn’t you know it? That’s the moment the robots take over.

That bit of business is cleverly handled as a sort of Apple product rollout, with heartless tech tycoon Mark (Eric Andre) assuring a screaming mob of fans that “we just gave your smort phone arms and legs.” And “I know what you’re thinking, ‘Are they gonna turn EVIL?'”

Sure enough, they do.

Next thing we know, humanity’s being trapped and readied for liftoff in “Human Fun Pods,” and the Mitchells — not their “perfect” neighbors the Poseys (John Legend and Chrissie Teigen, with Charlyne Yi voicing their daughter) — are humanity’s last hope.

Can they upload the “kill code” that will stop “The Machine Apocalypse?”

The “quest” takes them a journey by “camouflaged” station wagon, and an inner journey from people who are disconnected and at odds and “incapable of change” to a family that finds inner resources as they’re remembering dormant skills and forgotten teaching that will help them save the world.

There’s a wonderfully clever “donkey tour” of a Grand Canyon that floods that’s practically a throw-away moment. But the money scene? A mall full of Furbies, and every other damned gadget with a microchip in it, attacks them — toasters and drones, vending machines and those dolls that everybody had to have decades ago. Because they’re coming back, I tellya.

Fred Armisen and Beck Bennett forgettably voice a couple of glitchy robots who become co-conspirators.

But Colman, as a cell phone assistant who’s been wronged, steals the show, a gadget that we’re always leaning on for “the world’s knowledge” put right at our fingertips, but which e keep dropping into toilets.

There are vocal and visual interjections filling out this adventure, little “Batman” the comic and original TV series flourishes, Youtube videos and real-life photos mixed in with the animation and Katie voicing over this or that effect tossed in for a laugh.

“Maybe this would be less horrifying with the cat filter” on her phone, activated. Not quite a laugh, any more than the character’s incessant efforts to visualize what she’s experiencing as a student film.

But the sentiment, pithily summed up by Mom, stings.

“Who would have thought a tech company wouldn’t have our best interests at heart?”

Funny enough, but overhyped — kind of a mixed-bag of a film, one that makes me hope “The Mitchells” may not fare all that well vs. the other animated offerings this year.

MPA Rating: PG for action and some language 

Cast: The voices of Abbi Jacobson, Maya Rudolph, Danny McBride, Olivia Colman, Eric André, Fred Armisen, Beck Bennett, and Chrissie Tiegen and John Legend.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Michael Rianda and Jeff Rowe. A Sony Animation/Netflix release.

Running time: 1:53