Tag: Dave Franco

Review: Together

It’s not often a debut director comes out of the gate with such a high-profile film, although some of the publicity around TOGETHER is probably not what anyone intended. Australian filmmaker Michael Shanks, best known for The Wizards of Aus, uses the opportunity to explore codependency through the time-honoured lens of body horror.

Long-term duo Tim and Millie (real-life couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie) have just moved to the country to take the next step in their life, or possibly just restart it. Their sex life is non-existent, Tim’s music career has stalled, and he’s increasingly leaning on Millie, who’s busy with a new teaching job and an enthusiastic coworker/neighbour (Damon Herriman).

After a misadventure in the woods, where the pair get trapped in a Gigeresque cave, they begin to experience disturbing physical symptoms. A gooey substance intermittently fuses them together. Tim deteriorates when Millie goes to work. Their dreams turn somnambulistic, and the edges of reality start to blur. Is Tim spiralling, or is something more sinister happening?

There’s not a lot of subtext to Shanks’s script. This is separation anxiety writ gory. For the most part, it works, especially early on, when the mystery unfolds with a good balance of unease and jump scares. Two standout sequences—a bathroom scene that redefines the term “stuck on you” and a squirm-inducing nighttime merge—had a festival audience giggling, gasping, and occasionally walking out. All good signs.

But once the premise is clear, the film becomes more predictable. Shanks telegraphs some of the later shocks, including one major needle drop. A subplot involving Tim’s family history, which fuels some early scares, is mostly abandoned in the second half. As the story shifts gears and the external threat is revealed (or for most audiences, simply confirmed), it falls into more familiar territory.

Franco and Brie are an always compelling pair, reteaming after their recent professional collaboration on Somebody I Used to Know, and their chemistry grounding even the most outlandish moments. Herriman, meanwhile, is creepy even when he’s just being Ned Flanders, which might also be exactly why he’s unnerving.

At time of writing, TOGETHER is the subject of a lawsuit from the makers of Better Half, who allege it’s a “blatant rip-off.” I haven’t seen the earlier film and can’t comment on that, but Shanks is clearly drawing from a deep well (pun intended) of body horror tradition, as most filmmakers do. Regardless of the controversy, TOGETHER is a solid debut with a strong central idea, and one that mostly sticks the landing. Plus, you may never listen to the Spice Girls the same way again.

2025 | USA | DIRECTOR: Michael Shanks | WRITERS: Michael Shanks | CAST: Alison Brie, Dave Franco, Damon Herriman | DISTRIBUTOR: Sydney Film Festival 2025, NEON (USA), Kismet Movies (Australia) | RUNNING TIME: 108 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 4-15 June 2025 (SFF 2025), 30 July 2025 (USA), 31 July 2025 (Australia)

June 10, 2025
Review: The LEGO Ninjago Movie

LEGO is certainly not the first toy company to use cinema to leverage their brand, but they have become quite good at it. If the animated films that have come out since 2014’s The LEGO Movie have followed an instruction manual, then THE LEGO NINJAGO MOVIE makes little attempt to break away from this formula. In fact, it locks into place next to its stablemates as if it were another brick in the system.

In the land of Ninjago, six teenagers are trained under Master Wu (Jackie Chan) to defend the city from threats led by the would-be conquering warlord Lord Garmadon (Justin Theroux). His son Lloyd (Dave Franco) is tormented by his peers just for his being related to Garmadon, but as a member of Wu’s ninja squad, must learn to reconcile the two worlds.

From the surprising live action bookends, featuring Jackie Chan as the owner of an antique store, to the gorgeously realised cityscapes of Ninjago, THE LEGO NINJAGO MOVIE is certainly one of the more visually interesting of the LEGO films. Coupled with the characteristic non sequiturs, and the fertile ground of a sentai/Power Rangers parody, co-directors Charlie Bean, Paul Fisher, and Bob Logan had all the ingredients they needed to build something innovative here.

So it’s a shame that the core of the film relies on the same troubled father-son relationship that all three of the LEGO films, including The LEGO Batman Movie, have fallen back on. At its best, it’s played for laughs as skewering of these tropes, with an ongoing gag about Lloyd’s inability to throw or catch. Yet even with a whopping six names attached to the screenplay, the running time is padded out with extended heavy-handed montages, and a cloying ending that doesn’t gel with the rest of the film.

There is fun to be found in THE LEGO NINJAGO MOVIE. This is, after all, a film that summons a live-action cat with the Ultimate Weapon (that is, a laser pointer). Yet these highlights are sandwiched between a series of relentlessly monotonous plastic-on-plastic mecha fights, at times turning the whole thing into a repetitive drag.

Applying the same cookie-cutter narrative to each of their distinctive sets, LEGO are becoming increasingly like President Business from The LEGO Movie, and failing to realise that good play is embracing notions outside the box. Unlike the bricks that the film is based on, it seems that one size doesn’t necessarily fit all.

[stextbox id=”grey” bgcolor=”F2F2F2″ mleft=”5″ mright=”5″ image=”null”]2017 | Australia | DIR: Charlie Bean, Paul Fisher, Bob Logan| WRITERS: Bob Logan, Paul Fisher, William Wheeler, Tom Wheeler, Jared Stern, John Whittington | CAST: Dave Franco, Justin Theroux, Fred Armisen, Abbi Jacobson, Olivia Munn, Kumail Nanjiani, Michael Peña, Zach Woods, Jackie Chan | DISTRIBUTOR: Roadshow Films (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 100 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 21 September 2017 (AUS) [/stextbox]

September 21, 2017
Review: Nerve

Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman burst onto the scene with 2010’s Catfish, a controversial documentary that explored some of the darker aspects of social media. In the half-decade that has followed their debut, in which the filmmakers have gone on to make a pair of Paranormal Activity films and expanded Catfish into a TV series, social media has become a ubiquitous constant in our collective lives. With the fictional thriller NERVE, Joost and Schulman once again tap into the zeitgeist and ponder what damage can be done with the information we choose to share every day.

Based on the young adult novel by Jeanne Ryan, the film’s basic premise asks the question “Are you a Watcher or a Player?” These aren’t simply the online rules to the underground game Nerve, but more of a existential question for sidelined high school student Vee Delmonico (Emma Roberts). Goaded into action by her outgoing “player” friend Sydney (Emily Meade), Vee soon finds herself partaking in the game in real life and partnered up with a charming stranger (Dave Franco). As the game amps up, and the duo garner thousands of Watchers, they are met with an increasingly difficult set of dares and start to question the very nature of the game.

NERVE is the kind of film where you can’t help but root for the stars. As with David Fincher’s The Game, the all-encompassing nature of their quests builds its own reality logic we just simply go along with. The likeable personalities of Roberts and Franco drive much of the narrative, but we as the audience must acknowledge that it’s our own voyeurism that keeps us glued to the screen. As the dares escalate, so does the suspicion about the puppet masters behind the the scenes. Yet we can’t help but crave more ridiculous stunts and potential for danger, because that’s what we’ve been hardwired to do in the 21st century. The part of our brains that wants to look away during Tosh 2.0 or Jackass is just as fascinated with the bizarre spectacle of it all. That’s when NERVE has you lock, stock, and barrel.

Cinematographer Michael Simmonds doesn’t deal with subtlety, with his contrast turned all the way up, and this hyperkinetic visual energy mirrors the rapid pace of the film. Framed almost entirely within the brightly coloured social media paradigm, perhaps the only thing that will date this film is that it is so heavily reliant on the aesthetics of “near future” connectivity. This is a film about now, turning the selfie camera back on the audience and using the visual language of its viewers, another tool to convince us of the normalcy of this kind of observation.

NERVE is the kind of film that sits easily as a companion piece to Snowden or Catfish as a unambiguous warning about the pitfalls of the information age, and a sharp commentary on how dangerous a weapon that aggressive anonymity on the web can be. Given the huge spike in organised hate speech online, the target millennial audience needs this message now more than ever. Like The Hunger Games before it, there’s a parallel with our own “reality TV” obsessions. The only difference is that those films took the form to the extreme, using a dystopian future as a stand-in for our own follies. Joost and Schulman keep us firmly in a world that we recognise, making the connection all the more uncomfortable. Yet for all of our meta-awareness, we still stay watching to the very end, for as long as there is an audience there will be a demand for misfortune as entertainment.

2016 | US | DIR: Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman | WRITERS: Jessica Sharzer (Based on novel by Jeanne Ryan) | CAST: Emma Roberts, Dave Franco, Juliette Lewis | DISTRIBUTOR: Roadshow Films (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 96 minutes

August 30, 2016
Review: Now You See Me 2

This sequel that pulls a hat out of a rabbit, and feels pretty good about doing it.

Despite missing out on a golden opportunity to call the film “Now You Don’t,” the Horsemen return from their exile only to be thrown straight into a new box of cards. After eluding the FBI for several years and framing Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman) for their crimes, thanks largely to “Fifth Horseman” Dylan Rhodes’ (Mark Ruffalo) misdirection from inside the bureau, the team is itching to get back onto the stage. They get the chance when Danny Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson), Jack Wilder (Dave Franco) and newcomer Lula (Lizzy Caplan) are lured to perform a public takedown of a tech magnate. However, their flamboyant act is a trap, as Walter Mabry (Daniel Radcliffe) uses their outing to blackmail them into performing a seemingly impossible heist.

Which is where NOW YOU SEE ME 2 significantly differs from its predecessor. While there were heist elements to the first film, there was also a mystery around the Four Horseman and half the fun was in finding out how they were getting away with their “magic.” Here we are following the group as underdog heroes, rather than dubious anti-heroes, and the primary focus of the sequel is a caper in the vein of the Ocean’s Eleven franchise. Now having to follow these characters more closely, but keep their final reveal until the bitter end, scribe Ed Solomon (co-writer of the original) occasionally baffles with nonsensical occurrences and MacGuffins. Take for example the twin brother of McKinney, which gives Harrelson a chance to play two characters, both of whom are hams. With Ruffalo’s Dylan now on the side of the Horseman, we also miss an antagonist that we secretly want to see win.

Make no mistake: NOW YOU SEE ME 2 is an incredibly silly film, but while it isn’t always self-aware of this fact, it’s nevertheless endearing because of its devotion to that special brand of self-satisfying denouement. While the greatest trick this sequel pulls is making the memorable Isla Fisher disappear completely, and sliding Lizzy Caplan into place without too much fuss, there is also something uniquely charming about the series of final reveals and wrap-ups, each of which will make you smile despite the fact that they don’t actually make any sense upon closer inspection. Like a magic trick, you’ll believe that the curtain has been pulled back and some clever comforting truth has been revealed, even though you know at your core it’s all smoke and mirrors.

NOW YOU SEE ME 2 releases in Australia on 2 June 2016 from eOne Films. It releases in the US on 10 June from Summit Entertainment.

2015 | US | DIR: John M. Chu | WRITERS: Ed Solomon | CAST: Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Daniel Radcliffe, Lizzy Caplan, Helder Rei, Jay Chou, Sanaa Lathan, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman | DISTRIBUTOR: eOne Films (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 115 minutes | RATING:★★★ (6/10)

June 2, 2016
Review: Bad Neighbours 2: Sorority Rising (a.k.a. Neighbors 2)

Everybody needs good neighbours, and these ones come with social commentary.

The movie known in Australia and the UK as Bad Neighbours, and simply Neighbors to the rest of the civilised world, was an unexpected gem filled with unrestrained stoner comedy, risqué humour and a delightfully honest couple in Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne. Yet like many films of its kind, there was a definite boy-centric humour, and the amount of was dick jokes matched only by gratuitous shots of Zac Efron’s abdominals. So BAD NEIGHBOURS 2: SORORITY RISING (or just Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising) tackles, in part, the real US National Panhellenic Conference directive that their sororities can’t throw the parties that their fraternities down the road can enjoy as cultural norm.

Of course, the main thrust of the film is warring neighbours again, as Mac (Rogen) and Kelly Radner (Byrne) expect their second child and decide to sell their house. Going into a period of escrow means a convoluted plot device by which the new buyers can withdraw their deal if they are spooked by anything untoward. Meanwhile, disillusioned college student Shelby (Chloë Grace Moretz) moves in next-door and decides to show the establishment who is boss by setting up her own sorority, Kappa Kappa Nu, and run parties under the tutelage of former frat boy Teddy (Efron). It sets the stage for a series of misadventures in the vein of the first film, and to this end there is a definite sense of the familiar.

Nevertheless, this sequel immediately offers up a few surprises, certainly when it comes to fate of the mostly sidelined characters of Dave Franco and Christopher Mintz-Plasse. Efron’s Teddy is now a dejected shell of his former self, and there’s plenty of fun to be had with that, with Efron getting to stretch his range a little beyond the still obligatory shirtless scenes. Moritz’s Shelby isn’t the charismatic lightning rod that Teddy was, and nor is she meant to be: she an actual voice with a pointed piece of anti-discrimination messaging behind her. Likewise, neither of her constant colleagues (played by Kiersey Clemons and Beanie Feldstein) have singular character traits like their spiritual predecessors, as they too are present to point out what passes for comedy has unfortunately different standards when it comes to gendered material. Sadly, neither of them are given much of a screen presence beyond this either. Like all the other elements in the film, they serve to set up the next gag.

While BAD NEIGHBOURS 2: SORORITY RISING isn’t as consistently or outrageously hilarious as the high points of the original, oftentimes getting caught in the nexus between commentary and comedy, it still plays to the character strengths of the first chapter. You can’t help but fall for the couple of Mac and Kelly, and even the chief antagonists have a point of view that is perfectly plausible and relatable. Any shortcomings it has with a loosely defined house-selling narrative are covered by a barrage of jokes, including frequent parodies of Universal’s Minions franchise, journeying further into the non-sequitur surrealism of Rogen and Stoller’s earlier works.

2016 | US | Dir: Nicholas Stoller | Writers: Seth Rogen, Nicholas Stoller, Evan Goldberg, Andrew Jay Cohen, Brendan O’Brien | Cast: Seth Rogen, Zac Efron, Rose Byrne, Chloë Grace Moretz, Dave Franco, Ike Barinholtz, Carla Gallo, Selena Gomez and Lisa Kudrow | Distributor: Universal | Running time: 92 minutes | Rating:★★★ (6/10)

May 5, 2016
Rapid Review: Bad Neighbours

A disarmingly funny new film from Nicholas Stoller combining the two most unlikely leads for cross-demographic fun.

Despite penning the mostly forgettable Fun with Dick and Jane, Nicholas Stoller has rapidly set the tone for off-beat comedies over the last decade. His directorial debut not only successfully transitioned Jason Segel into a leading man, but it paved the way for the writer/director to add his distinct voice to projects as diverse as Gulliver’s Travels, The Five Year Engagement and of course, The Muppets. Although penned by Andrew J. Cohen and Brendan O’Brien, Bad Neighbours (simply known as Neighbors in its native US) has Stoller’s style stamped all over it, successfully mixing it with the edgier brand of comedy that star Seth Rogen has been associated with.

New parents Mac Radner (Seth Rogen) and his wife Kelly (Rose Byrne) think they have it made when they move into the suburbs to start their life together. However, when a college fraternity moves in next door to them, their fears that a peaceful existence may soon be over rapidly become a reality. After inadvertently breaking the trust of frat leaders Teddy Sanders (Zac Efron) and Pete Regazolli (Dave Franco), the latter duo declare war on their neighbours – with hilarious consequences.

Bad Neighbours portions out the laughs between the unlikely duo of leading men, both slipping comfortably into the raunchy gags and adult-oriented humour. Indeed, Efron makes for a charming comic antagonist, mostly because his intrinsic charm makes him impossible to dislike. As such, simple stoner comedy sits easily beside a scheme to make dildos out of the frat member’s members. It’s also wonderful to not only hear Rose Byrne speaking in her native Australian accent, but celebrating it via several jokes at our crazy country’s expense. Bad Neighbours is a unfettered and often unchained assault on the funny bone.

Rating:Better Than Average Bear (★★★½)

May 15, 2014
Trailer: Warm Bodies Warms the Cockles of Your Undead Heart

Try explaining this love bite to your friends and office colleagues. The very delayed Warm Bodies, best described as a zom rom com, has finally released a trailer (via Entertainment Tonight), defying expectations by actually looking pretty good. Publicity to date had us pegging this as “Twilight with zombies”, but this latest film from writer/director Jonathan Levine (50/50, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane) looks set to shuffle its way under your skin and devour you from the inside. With laughter.

Starring Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer, Rob Corddry, John Malkovich, Analeigh Tipton, Dave Franco and Cory Hardrict, it follows an unusual zombie who has learned to love, and is slowly curing himself with this power. For those who think that The Walking Dead has become way too dark, here’s the antidote for the impending zombie apocalypse.

Warm Bodies is due for release in Australia on 11 April 2013 from Icon Film Distribution.

November 9, 2012
Review: 21 Jump Street

A reworking of the 1980s television series borrows the name but brings the laughs in a film that is nothing like what you will expect it to be.

[stextbox id=”grey” caption=”21 Jump Street (2012)” float=”true” align=”right” width=”200″]

Director: Phil Lord, Chris Miller

Writer(s): Michael Bacall, Jonah Hill

Runtime: 109 minutes

Starring: Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, Ice Cube, Deray Davis, Dax Flame, Dave Franco

Distributor: Sony

Country: US

Rating: Better Than Average Bear (?)

More info

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As regular readers of 80s Bits will know, the 1980s is a mine of rolled gold for remake material. From the wonderful TRON: Legacy, the woeful Clash of the Titans and Conan the Barbarian and the troubling The A-Team, recapturing the trends of a bygone era have served as a substitute for creating a meaningful post-1990s culture of any consequence. Certainly in terms of box office push, we are back to a place of escalating budgets and diminishing returns both creatively and financially. Which is why it is refreshing when something like 21 Jump Street comes along, taking the legacy of a bygone era and crafting something that lives in the now.

Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) are from opposite ends of the social spectrum during high school, but once they go through the police academy together, they find that their friendship is mutually beneficial, with Schmidt bringing the smarts and Jenko the braun. Failing at every attempt at police procedure, they are sent to do undercover work under Captain Dickson (Ice Cube), who runs the Jump Street program. They must go undercover at a high school to bust a drug ring selling a deadly new breed of high. The only problem is that in the ten years since they’ve both been at school, the times have rapidly changed and they find themselves in a world they no longer understand.

The real joys of 21 Jump Street begin when the film explicitly acknowledges the cycle of remakes and retreads. Ice Cube’s angry black Captain not only acknowledges his own stereotype, but the derivative nature of the plot. Referencing Jump Street as a “cancelled program from the 80s”, he ponders how they can keep dredging up “shit from the past and expect us all not to notice”. It is a small token of a line, which in and of itself doesn’t make the movie an instant classic, but it is part of a generous deal that asks us to overlook any familiar paths in return for a genuinely fun and funny ride through modern high school.

Throwing anything vaguely resembling the original show out the window, short of the title and the abandoned church headquarters, 21 Jump Street is above all things a comedy: one where the laughs are fast and frequent, and incredibly disarming at times. While some of the jokes are low-brow, including an alarming number of dick jokes that share the mildly homophobic humour of their contemporaries, the hit rate is pretty high thanks to a sharp screenplay from Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World‘s Michael Bacall, co-plotted by Jonah Hill.

Villains, friends and well-wishers are perfunctory when compared to the chemistry between Hill and Tatum, who make an excellent mismatched pair of cops. Once the initial gag of just how different they are wears off, we are left with an easy back and forth that plays to Hill’s natural comic experience and gives Tatum a chance to flex his hitherto unseen comedic flow. Placed in a rapid-fire series of scenarios, the pair seem to react as often as they are “acting”, and this is one of the great strengths of this comic gem.

[stextbox id=”custom”]Bucking the trend of TV adaptations going wrong, 21 Jump Street strikes a perfect balance between action and comedy, but finds its real strengths in playing this 80s reboot for laughs.[/stextbox]

21 Jump Street is released on 15 March 2012 in Australia from Sony.

March 7, 2012