While I write this I’m sitting at Fort Wilderness at Walt Disney World. It’s my now yearly weekend getaway from the Michigan winter. This also isn’t the first time I have seen a movie at Disney Springs during a vacation. It’s happened at least two other times. The first time was back in 2004 when I saw The Village. The other time was more memorable. It was for Star Wars: The Last Jedi. I still remember walking out of the theater with my parents and being what felt like the only person who liked it. Hearing people grumble about the movie on the bus to Magic Kingdom kind of cemented that. Will Argylle be another version of that day? Let’s get to the reviews to find out.
Closing out the month in an appropriate way. This one was mediocre at best. When I was watching it, it caused me to think of The Family Plan, which was also on Amazon Prime. This seemed like gender swap version of that with way less character development, and a plot that is more predictable. I just had a hard time believing Cuoco was this world famous assassin. I was fun watching Oyelowo get to do some acting when her real identity was revealed to him. Also, I pegged the main antagonist as soon as the first showed up. This could be a case of me watching too many movies, or it could be like an episode of Law and Order when you start an episode, see the credits role, and see “special guest star Robin Williams.” You already know he is the culprit. That is what happens here when there are only like five real characters in the movie.
To avoid sorrow, is to avoid love. That was a statement made towards the end of the film, and it really encapsulates what this film was. Dan Levy does a good job at crafting a story about how the passing of a love one can cause you to feel one way, and how revelations after the pass cause you to reevaluate. There are really only 7 characters in the film and we obviously are focused on Levy’s Marc. Luke Evans shows up every now and then as his late husband, and injects some life into the film. Also doing that are Ruth Nega and Himesh Patel, who play Marc’s best friends. Those characters each have their own problems, but Marc’s issues are the focal point. Levy does a great job of showing the anguish he is feeling constantly, but the film barely shows him moving past such a horrible moment like all his friends want to, not that that is even possible to be fair. While it ends really on a nice note, the film just feels like it’s spinning its wheels for about an hour.
This one was disappointing, but that probably my fault for having my expectations so high. I will say though that the trailer that has been incessantly playing before every movie for the last five months is lying to you. This movie is a jumbled mess. I’m sure there is a really good 80 minute movie in here, but there is just so much thrown in that bogs it down. In the first act, we see the Henry Cavill fantasy sections, and those a campy and fun like you are watching one of the later Brosnan Bond movies. It’s when we get to the third act and the entire movie feels like that that I had a problem. Without spoiling anything, there is sequence near the end that I really hated and thought it was symbol of my problem with the movie as a whole. Vaughn just didn’t know how to land the plane it seemed. The last 40 minutes just was big sequence after big sequence, and it could have been cut down and still been good. The movie isn’t bad. It just is a lot and it doesn’t really know what it is trying to be. With this and The King’s Man both not doing well at the Box Office, what does that mean for Kingman 3? More important, do we really need more of this in the future?
Two movies down, and at least 10 more to go in February. The next few weeks have three films each at this point, and it’s all a long walk to Dune at the end of the month.
Mitten Film Nerd 
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