KWIF: Obsession (+4)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. This week's batch of films is actually last week's batch of films. At least two days of this week were spent laid up on the couch with post-Gamma Knife-related side effects (migraines, earaches, discombobulation and fatigue). They've largely tapered off, but my ability to focus has still slipped, so I need to practice getting back at this review blog writing thing. This week's theme...toxic relationships apparently.

This Week:
Obsession (2026, d. Curry Barker - in theatre)
Over Your Dead Body (2026, d. Jorma Taccone - amazonprime)
Dead Again (1991, d. Kenneth Branagh - netflix)
Roommates (2026, d. Chandler Levack)

---

When films are unexpectedly successful well beyond any executive or critical projections, it's usually because they're meeting a moment in the culture. They are films for their times. This is even more true of horror films, where often the film is a metaphor or moral fable disguised under more visceral gore and/or frights. Curry Barker's theatrical debut, Obsession, has now grossed over 200 million dollars domestically, and 300 million worldwide (and was made for a paltry 750,000) with no franchise or name recognition behind it, and it's done so by meeting a moment.

If you, like most people, are inundated with headlines every time you open your browser or social media, you've heard about the loneliness epidemic, or that young men are in crisis, or that young women would rather just not date these days.  Perhaps you've heard of the manosphere, or trad wives, or the various right wing movements trying (and succeeding far too much) in stripping away the rights of women, and trying to resurrect old ideas of gender roles where women are dutiful and subservient to men.  Obsessession is borne out of these trappings without explicitly addressing any of them head-on.

Bear (Michael Johnson) is not shown as being a message-board obsessed incel, but he is hopelessly pining over his friend and coworker Nikki (Inde Navarette). They are pals, doing trivia night after work, and going to parties, but Bear wants it to be more than what it is. Desperately. But he's too shy to make a move. Even when Nikki confronts him as he drops her off at her place, asking him bluntly if he likes her, he still can't admit it.

The thing men -- especially young men -- fear the most, is being emotionally vulnerable. There's the old Seinfeld joke about people being more scared of giving the eulogy than being in the casket, but I think men are more scared of admitting their romantic feelings to someone than they are of public speaking or dying. Cowards. We're pretty much all cowards. (More times than I can recall [mainly because I'm old and don't recollect well anymore], I have been told by someone they were interested in me, and I cannot recall there ever being a situation where, over the many crushes I've had in my life, having actually admitted that to said crush without them first having opened up to me. Not even to my wife [though she said it was pretty obvious, but that's besides the point]. That's pretty shameful, if I'm being honest. Shameful, and embarassing to realize that I was basically a romantic coward, afraid of opening up and afraid I couldn't handle the rejection.)

So, sitting in his car in shame over the missed opportunity, Bear tears open the novelty gift he bought for Nikki, the "One Wish Willow", a small twig that the colourful packaging says will grant the bearer one wish after snapping it. And so he wishes Nikki would love him more than anyone. *Snap* Seconds later she's tapping at his window and coming onto him. He can't believe it, but he's going to take it. Cue the montage to perky music of their new, happy life together... although moments within the sequence show Nikki helplessly unable to resist just staring at Josh.

In perhaps Barker's best directorial moment, Bear's buddy (and coworker at Andy Richter's music shop) Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) pulls Bear aside and just has to ask...how? How is this happening? How did this happen? He knows that Nikki told their friend Sarah that she only liked Bear as a friend just days before they started going out. Bear, you can tell, has a modicum of guilt, genuinely suspecting that the One Wish Willow was legit, but at the same time still can't get over his biggest want having come true. The whole time this conversation is going on, Nikki is in the background, quite out of focus, just staring at Bear, an intense, haunting, almost spectral presence.

Nikki's obsession with Bear, continues to ratchet up, getting more and more overbearing (no pun intended...or maybe it is?) and Bear's happiness starts to dwindle under Nikki's oppressive, destructive and harmful behaviour.

If we were to step back, maybe not even 10 years ago, this would be the story of a toxic relationship, about women who control their men through emotional manipulation and illnesses (feigned or real). The hallmarks of emotional abuse are there -- violent outbursts followed by extreme moments of contrition and tenderness and sexual advances. I've definitely heard about such stories, and to a lesser degree, been there myself. Yet, despite Bear being our point-of-view character, he's not the protagonist. He's the antagonist. Nikki is the victim of this story, having been stripped of her agency, and everything her body is doing is beyond her control, serving only Bear's whims with nearly no ability to advocate for herself.

In the film's funniest scene Bear calls the service line for the One Wish Willow, only for an apathetic voice on the other end to tell him the only way to reverse the wish is for someone else to wish it so...that, or Bear dies.  And in the most haunting scenes of the film, more than once, Bear hears Nikki's real voice while the "other her" is asleep, or distracted, and he knows, he's fully aware that the Nikki who is his girlfriend is not really the woman he though he was in love with. And yet, to even attempt to undo his wish, to free this woman he said he loves, takes him weeks to come to that decision, and begrudgingly so. Only when it's at its most extreme does he even truly try.

He may not be a Jordan Peterson-watching douche, but under the nice guy persona still lies a man who thinks that, maybe, it's best if a woman is his possession.

Barker's film is not scary so much as upsetting and disturbing. Barker's "monkey's paw" tale is not in any way original (I believe I saw a Twilight Zone episode recently with much the same plot), and Barker's direction is solid even if lacking much standout style. But it's the way in which the story is told, where the camera's sympathies lay that makes this different, and that is what meets this moment. This is Nikki's tale, moreso than Bear's, and Navarette is an immediate superstar in the role, having to switch moods at the snap of a finger, and go from extreme perkiness to extreme rage while still retaining that sense of helplessness in her eyes. It's an astonishing performance, frankly.

Much like when Zach Cregger's Barbarian became a phenomenon (though still paling in comparison to what this film has earned), all eyes will be on what Barker does next. Is he a one-hit wonder, or does he have the juice to make more films that audiences and critics will respond to. The insane success of this film almost suggests that whatever he does will have a lot of expectations and pressures put upon it, hopefully he can meet the moment with his sanity intact. 

---

Based on the 2021 Norwegian film The Trip, Over Your Dead Body is a nasty dark comedy about a married couple who have such severe communication issues that they'd rather just plan each other's murder than talk it through.

Unlike Obsession, there's no moral fable here, it's really a War of the Roses(/The Ref)-type story where the unhappy couple in question need to find themselves in the most extreme circumstances in order to open up and connect with each other again.

Dan (Jason Segel) is a failed film director stuck working in commercials. Lisa (Samara Weaving) is a wanna-be actress who has been unemployed for too long for Dan's liking (and is possibly cheating on Dan with her scene partner in acting class). They take a heated road trip out to Dan's father's lakeside cottage "upstate" (this was shot in Finland, and I had an impossible time ignoring that fact...the setting here doesn't look like anywhere in North America I've seen), where they've planned for each other's murder (having ham-handedly established with colleagues and neighbours the possibility of hiking or hunting excursions going wrong over this weekend).

While they had prepped for murdering each other, which is a pretty raw taste to accept as comedy, it is humorous the reactions they both have once they discover the other's plans. There is some comedic mileage to be had in the scenario.

What they hadn't planned on was a pair of escaped murderers Pete and Todd (Timothy Olyphant and Keith Jardine) and the prison guard, Allegra (Juliette Lewis) who helped them get free (according to Allegra, her and Pete are in love... Pete's less convinced). And so it becomes a fight for survival for Dan and Lisa against hardened criminals, and their only path forward is together.

This is not a gentle movie. The violence hits hard, real hard. It's not cartoonish, it's traumatic. This isn't Looney Tunes comedy, it's serious damage, bruising, cuts and far, far worse all shown in pretty graphic detail. It's far too extreme, and far too nasty to be funny, so it's all the more impressive when the funny can creep through it all.

Segel has become a master at emotive comedy, his malleable face can represent such despair, depression, resolve, joy, whatever the case may be, while his eyes can convey something completely different. He makes Dan into an impotent man who can't seem to stand up for himself or follow-through on his decisions, but you also start to buy into his stepping up. Segel can sell that every time, and he can undercut it just as easily. Weaving has become a top notch take-no-shit lead, while also having a wryness that lends itself quite well to comedy. She does sarcasm and snark as well as she can take a hit and project her rage (which she got a lot of experience with in the Ready or Not movies). The age gap between them is addressed, but they are a pretty evenly matched pairing.  It's just then so disappointing that I really didn't like either Dan or Lisa all that much... I was sort of rooting for them, but where they wind up in the end is more scary than heartwarming or delightful. 

---

The opening credits to Kenneth Branagh's 1991 neo-noir Dead Again features a montage of old timey newspaper headlines that tells the story of German composer Roman Strauss' arrival in America, his whirlwind romance with Margaret, their marriage, her death, Roman being accused of murder, his conviction, and his death sentence. You'll be forgiven if it seems like you missed a predecessor story (called Dead maybe), and it is pretty crucial setup.

The film proper then starts, in black and white, where we meet Roman Strauss (Branagh) on death row. He's getting trimmed, given his last rights and last supper, and being interviewed by Gray Baker (Andy Garcia) who wrote some (all?) of the articles we saw in the intro. Roman's cell is lined with Baker's articles as well. Baker asks Strauss if he really killed Margaret. He smiles, whispers something in his ear, then pulls out a knife from his last supper and charges forward. Quick cut to present day,in full colour. A woman (Emma Thompson) wakes up screaming. There's a chair propped under the doorknob of her room. Eventually nuns and others find their way in. 

Apparently this woman arrived at this orphanage with amnesia and was given care and a room, but the cold hearted priest who rules the place seems to have little compassion for her situation (the nuns, on the other hand, worry for her safety...women taking care of women). The priest calls in a favour from former tenant of the orphanage, now a private investigator, Mike Church (Branagh again), to help figure out this woman's origins. When they meet, there's an immediate attraction, both ways.  She winds up staying at his place because the sanitarium is just chaos.

With the help of Pete, a colleague in the media (Wayne Night, as an affable creep), they get the woman's story out, and eventually Mike and "Grace" (he gives her the name just to call her something) meet Franklyn Madison (Derek Jacobi), an antiques dealer with a hypnosis side hustle. In unrestrained sessions with Grace, Franklyn starts to reveal that her nightmares are actually past-life traumas, which we experience in brilliant black and white, seeing more to the story of Roman and Margaret Strauss' life together, and possible motivations for her murder at, presumably, Roman's hands.

Twists and turns, drama and intrigue. It's all very pulpy and, if I'm honest, a little cheesy, but at the same time so aware of what it's trying to do and having fun doing it. It's a throwback story with a throwback style set in two different time periods that's trying to marry both Hitchcock's earlier style with his later period one, strapping in an additional layer of the fantastical, and mostly succeeding.

Branagh's American accent is pretty dicey but surprisingly his Mike Church is a decent and respectful guy, very careful not to take advantage of this traumatized woman (in contrast to Pete, who, while relatively harmless, seems unable to contain his many lascivious thoughts from coming out of his mouth). Branagh and Thompson were newly married at the time, so there was a palpable chemistry between them that comes across on screen, the innate attraction being essential to the past lives plot (for the record, they divorced in '97). But Thompson is the dominant player in the movie. Yes, everything revolves around her, but she's not a passive character... well, eventually.

When the story starts, "Grace" is mute, unable to speak, barely able to communicate, and seems bewildered by everything. I was truly worried she was just going to be in neophyte mote, a spin on the "born sexy yesterday" trope where her mental state and lack of communication skills are irresistibly attractive to the men around her. But once she does start speaking, she's a total Emma Thompson character, smart, sophisticated, and challenging. As discombobulated as her life has become, once she's able to display her personality she's exactly who you want Thompson to be playing. And in playing Margaret in the flashbacks, she has to be a character of the 1940's, where there was more deference from women to the men in her life, and yet she still has such agency. I can't help but feel that Thompson did a pass on the script (credited to Scott Frank, Out of Sight) to make these two characters more...her. And yeah, it really works. I know exactly what this film would look like with Grace and Margaret in less confident hands.

Dead Again doesn't get brought up much. It's not a lost classic, and it's not totally forgotten, but it's just a tiny little blip in both Branagh and Thompson's incredible careers. It's a bit of a wisp of a film, fun but not fun enough to obsess over. Rewatching it won't reveal hidden depths, it's all on the surface, but it's really not trying to be anything else other than what it is.

---

Canadian music journalist-turned-writer/director Chandler Levack has become a must-see filmmaker for me, although I can't seem to put my finger on why.  Her first film, I Like Movies, I found compelling and anxiety-inducing, and her sophomore effort, Mile End Kicks, was a level-up, doling out a big bale of Canadiana that felt incredibly cool, and both modern and retro all at once.  The alluring Canadian-ness, I guess is the pull of Levack, but there's definitely a vibe to her first two films (despite being tonally different) that seems unique.

So with Levack being called up by Adam Sandler himself, requesting that she direct this script about warring roommates in a college dorm, a script written not by Levack but by SNL staff writers, and starring Sandler's daughter as well as going straight to Netflix...well, I worried that Levack would get swallowed up by this big American machine and there would be nothing visible of her in this film.

If I'm being totally honest, there mostly wasn't, and yet, in tiny little ways there was.

The film's framing device finds the Dean of Student Life (Sarah Sherman) relaying to two warring roommates (Storm Reid and Ivy Wolk) the tale of the most epic roommate war of all.  It starts with high school outcast Devon (Sadie Sandler) making her first real friend at college bootcamp in gives-no-shits Celeste (Chloe East). She asks Devon to be her roommate and Celeste agrees, but warns Sadie that she's not looking for a fairweather friend, but a ride-or-die bestie. She's been burned before, or so she says.

But spending a few afternoons with someone who is utterly carefree can be exhilarating, living with someone like that can be exhausting, and typically a one-way exchange. As much as Celeste is wildly inconsiderate, messy, taking up space, borrowing Devon's stuff and low-key manipulating her, Celeste also pulls Devon out of her shell by dragging her out place, pushing her out of her comfort zone and cheerleading her on to do more. So while Devon rather rapidly becomes tired of Celeste's behaviour (and for good reasons), she also finds moments to appreciate what Celeste brings into her life. 

Levack's prior films have centered around selfish characters who the director has had overwhelming empathy for. When we watch Lawrence be his worst self in I Love Movies or Grace do her own thing to the detriment of everyone else in Mile End Kicks we're still on board with their journies. Roommates is Devon's story, and Celeste is the antagonist, but Levack can't help but have empathy for Celeste, and that conflicts with her purpose as chaos agent in the story.

At a certain point it seems like Devon is the one who is being selfish... she only knows about Celeste what Celeste has told her and never probes deeper, basically too worried that asking more intimate questions will push Celeste away rather than bring them closer, but also getting too self-involved in her new college life (and too used to being in solitary mode) to know how to relate to being with someone so different from her.  And the advice given to her to, you know, talk to Celeste is just ignored. (This is all not too dissimilar to the confrontation between Grace and her Montreal roommate in Mile End Kicks, which may or may not explain why certain things do or don't happen the way they do in this film....Is Levack avoiding repeating herself?)

And so things fall apart, to extremes. And in the end Celeste is truly painted as the villain, the nightmare, the bad guy, and when she gets her comeuppance, the script wants us to laugh at her, but Levack can't seem to let go of her empathy.  

The cast, outside of its young leads, is low-key stacked with comedic talent, including Nick Kroll and Natasha Lyonne as Devon's parents, Carol Kane as her grandmother, Jeanine Garofolo as her architecture professor, as well as other nepo-babies like Please Don't Destroy's Martin Herlihy and Francesca Scorsese. It's easy to be dismissive, but everyone delivers in this film, a testament to Levack's direction.  It's amusing enough and entertaining enough, but it doesn't find its core, it doesn't know where its heart is. There a pull between a script that needs to be a big dumb broad comedy and a director who just wants to be grounded in what's real about the characters and the situation. 

This was good for Levack to cut her teeth on the Hollywood machine, to try something different, prove that she can handle bigger budgets and scale, but hopefully she can continue to do things her way on a larger scale from now on.

T&K's XMas (2021) Advent Calendar: Day 3 - Santa Girl

 2019, d. Blayne Weaver - Netflix

this poster is an accurate representation
of the quality of this film

I know in my brain that most Hallmark movies are bad, bad movies.  But as I've concluded before they're their own subgenre even within the subgenre of holiday romance, and as such they compare against one another to differentiate between bad and good within the subgenre. In that comparison I find a lot of joy, hence our "A Toast to HallmarKent" feature, which you would not believe how much effort those take to write, for next to no return on investment.  

I would much rather be writing another "A Toast to HallmarKent" right now.  I would have much rather watched a Hallmark, or even Lifetime movie next to this.

In the world of horror, there's an abundance of exceptionally low budget movies with high aspirations that may have a germ of a fun idea or conceit, but are almost always sunk by the execution.  Cheap production values, a lack of visual acumen, amateur musical score or an overreliance on noname indie music, maybe a lead actor or two with experience but a cast rounded out by inexperienced local talent, The same thing happens with holiday romcoms.  If you think Hallmarks look cheap, go digging around Amazon Prime or Tubi, there are films that make Hallmark look like a Spielberg production in comparison.

Santa Girl is one of those films.  It stars two former tween show leads - Jennifer Stone of The Wizards of Waverly Place, and Deven Werkheiser of Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide with Barry Bostwick doing his Barry Bostwick thing.  It's an ugly movie with nominal production value (there's two "reaching for the stars" moments where it tries to pull off special effects - first a man hovering, moving through a crowd, and second a flying car - with zero success.  They had already implied that these things were happening and could have gotten away with just the intonation, but then they felt the need to actually show them.  It's not even laughable, just an utter palm-to-face head-shake.

The film opens using nicely shot aerial stock footage of what the wife determined to be a German castle and countryside.  It's posing as Santa's place in the North Pole but it's too many trees and mountains for the arctic, buddy.  Inside it does not look palatial at all.  At best it's a bed and breakfast they put their more prestigious cast members up in.  It's mid-year and Bostwick's Santa is a widower with a teenage daughter.  He wears a suit and tie, and talks "business talk" about profits and whatnot. 
"What profits?" I ask.
"Probably licensing..."the wife astutely observes.  Only the film later reveals that the Clause family made a deal with Jack Frost and family to have a merger, the Frost's financial resources for Clause's prestige and delivery acumen.  What. the actual. fuck?  This film just puts this "merger" on the table, setting up that Santa's daughter and Jack Frost Junior have been betrothed since childhood in order to secure both their families' legacies.  But they never explain how this corporate entity actually works.  It's a company called "Kringle" but what do they do? Unknown. How is money made? Nobody says.  Delivering free toys to millions of boys and girls every year is a terrible business plan, and definitely a money loser.

Santa's daughter Cassandra (the restraint they had in not outright calling her Sandra Clause was admirable) is a bit of a tough lead to crack.  The film sets her up by way of the Elves (whom I'm assuming are now gainfully employed by "Kringle" and not just indentured servants), as they debate who is going to wake Cassandra up.  Pep (McKayla Witt) takes the bullet for the team and Cassandra is pretty horrid to her.  This is supposed to be our likeable lead?  Cassandra was accepted to a university and really wants to go, but her father has plans for her to start her apprenticeship in taking over the business this Christmas.  Santa, you're immortal, what's another year or two.  He agrees that she can go as long as she comes back in time for training at Christmas.  Santa warns her "no magic" and not to reveal who she really is.  Santa also sends Pep along with her to pose as her little sister and to keep an eye on her (umm, little sisters don't tend to accompany big sisters to university, and Pep does not seem to be enrolled in any classes...how are they explaining this).  They're both sheltered individuals so I'm not exactly sure what Pep's supposed to do. But in keeping a "low profile", Pep never once makes any effort to conceal her huge pointy elf ears.  She has very long hair that could cover it, instead she keeps styling it in such a way as to accentuate her huge pointy ears.

Cassandra, still really, really rude to Pep, goes about trying to charm the maybe two dozen other students that attend this university by buying them drinks at the coffee counter and being overly chipper.  She runs into J.R. (Joshua Cody) with his Ken doll hair (seriously looks like plastic) and his severe cheekbones and his uneasy smile.  It took me less than a minute to figure out this was Jack Frost Junior.  While he tours Cassandra around the campus, they run into a boy, Sam, freaking out in the bookstore, unable to pay for his books. Cassandra helps him out and suddenly we have a love triangle.  A severely inept love triangle.

Jack Frost shows up and pressures JR to seal the deal, while Sam makes his play for Cassandra but is rebuffed because she is promised to someone else. Jack Frost makes Sam a deal, that he will pay him to watch out for Cassandra and report back to him, which we can instantly tell is just so that there can be some trust issues complication later.  

I'll admit Cassandra and Sam are kind of cute together.  These two former tween stars are actually able to sell the romantic connection, even if Cassandra is forced to keep it at arms length.  That said, there's not a lot of romance in that romantic connection.  The campus grounds of Shenandoah University in Winchester, VA aren't exactly teeming with pretty locales for romantic set pieces (and there's certainly no budget for dressing things up). I couldn't help but constantly wish for just a little Greendale magic.

The attempts at comedy are about a 1-in-10 success ratio.  Better than I would have expected but still not very good. Stone has tween sitcom comedic chops which is more than a few steps up from the less experienced cast members (the gossipy bitches and magical extras are kind of sad).  Bostwick gets a good line or two in.  But most of the comedic moments fall flat. And they steal Bewitched's nose twinkle for Cassandra's magical powers, which are not defined at all.

Besides more budget for set decoration and lighting and sound (everything sounds so hollow), this film needed to be more campy.  The most delightful moment of the film is when Pep spies Jack Frost walking the university grounds.  She calls out to him and he lifts up his cape Dracula style and covers his face, turning quickly and speed walking away.  It was a moment of inspiration I wish the whole movie would have had.

In the end Cassandra and JR are about to get married when Santa and Sam interrupt the wedding. The one choice I think they made well was not to make JR an outright villain, but at the same time they can only seem to hint at the idea of his character, never actually finding any ongoing focus or compassion for him.  They botch the whole love triangle pretty badly.

It's a bad movie.  I did not enjoy it.  Yet I watched it, because I needed something to write about today.  

(Update: netflix's not-horror thumbnail picture:

Pitch Perfect

2012, d. Jason Moore -- netflix

In the intervening two-ish years between Pitch Perfect's theatrical release and last month I managed to build up a huge level of excitement for this campus competitive a cappella comedy without really knowing why, to the point that when it came onto Netflix I gleefully turned to my wife and exclaimed "Ooooh, Pitch Perfect!  We need to watch this ASAP!"  And we did, at the first available opportunity.  And I loved it, as I expected to.  For what is, by all accounts, a rather mediocre film, I unabashedly loved it, logic or reasoning be damned.

This is the kind of "new wave" chick flick, equal parts romance, gross-out, and college campus comedy, with a dash of non-sport competition thrown in for thrust.  Anna Kendrick plays a freshman at the college where her dad teaches.  She could still live at home but she chooses to move into the dorm for a sense of liberation.  She DJs in her spare time, making mash-ups (remember when those were a thing back in the last 2000's?) and volunteers at the campus radio station (which, unlike almost every campus radio station I know, isn't looking for students who want to do their own programming).  She's a bit of an outsider, and seems disinterested in much other than her own interests so her dad challenges her to get out, socialize, join a club, and if she can stick with it for the year, he will pay for her to go to school in L.A.  She gets suckered into a rag-tag all-female a capella club that's fallen on hard times, and gets sucked into all its drama and competitive b.s., making friends and nemeses along the way to the big competition.

What makes the film work is not its sort of stock plot, but all the eccentric asides it has.  The competing a capella groups on campus sub in for the frats of your typical campus comedy, while an off-the-books sing-off competition provides this rather puerile recreation a comically overstated sense of dangerous cool.  At the big competition, in the front lobby, a quartet of 30-somethings set up a pop-up booth, trying to reclaim faded glory from their college days.  And then there's the weirdo characters like Hanna Mae Lee's sweetly mumbling pyromaniac (think of the offspring of Alyson Hannigan from American Pie and Stephen Root from Office Space and you'll get the idea) or Rebel Wilson's aggressively confident/clumsy Fat Amy, and even the two girls who are always there, never named, and then pointed out for precisely that reason late in the game.  It has some sharp comedic angles which get rounded off frequently, but every now and again it surprises with how clever it can be.  The singing competitions are all pop songs mixed up in varying ways, most of them palatable if not enjoyably so (save perhaps the aggravatingly sugary "I Saw The Sign", but it's pointedly in the film repeatedly for that very reason) .

If there's a major drawback to this film, it's the lead male, Kendrick's love interest, played by Skylar Astin.  As if that name weren't enough to make you want to smack him in the face, he has an unfortunately perennial smirk on his face (and upturned curl at either side of his lips that he genetically can't help) that just makes you want to hit him, repeatedly.  Perhaps it's just me.  I had a mad hate-on for Astin thanks to incessant repeating of ads (or rather, the same ad) for his atrocious sit-com Ground Floor day after day, week after week for months watching my TV programs via Canadian network streaming sites and on-demand channels.  There wasn't a moment he appeared on screen that I didn't find myself expressly resenting his presence, yet, even with that sizeable drawback (he's in the film a lot) I STILL loved this movie.  It's just good fun.  I can't wait for the sequel this summer!