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Tag Archives: Comedy
CAPSULE: THE NAPA BOYS (2025)
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AKA Napa Boys Present: Napa Boys 4: The Sommelier’s Amulet
DIRECTED BY: Nick Corirossi
FEATURING: Armen Weitzman, Nick Corirossi, Sarah Ramos, Jamar Neighbors, Nelson Franklin, Mike Mitchell, Chloe Cherry, Paul Rust, Vanessa Chester
PLOT: The Napa Boys and a slew of friends and hangers-on assemble for one last wine country adventure in this fourth installment of a franchise whose first three movies were never made.
COMMENTS: The Napa Boys are, as near as I can tell—having, like everyone else, missed the first three movies—Miles Jr., Jack Jr., and Kevin. And maybe, once upon a time, Stifler? Miles Jr. is a neurotic virgin in his 30s with a dead wife and son (just roll with it). Jack Jr. is a lecherous jackass. Kevin is… well, so forgettable that he disappears without explanation for most of the movie. They are joined in their wine country adventures by fill-in Boy Stifler’s Brother and stowaway Puck, a female fan with a Napa Boys podcast. There’s also affable ally Mitch, owner of Mitch’s Winery, and fascistic enemy Squirm, owner of Squirm’s Winery. Three of the characters acquire love interests, a female drug dealer and a pair of waitresses. Adding to the crowd are unexpected cameos by Jay and Silent Bob and Francis Ford Coppola. Not to mention the Milfonator.
All of that sounds like fertile ground for a wacky comedy, but that’s not what’s on the filmmakers’ minds. The high concept here implies that, as the fourth film in a franchise, the blush is fading off the rosé. Thus, the in-universe movie script is desperate for new twists and turns, while continuing to work the formula and deliver bits the in-universe fans have come to expect. That means a lot of apparent references to past events that Napa Boys fans would know about, but we don’t. Corirossi and company are going for clever rather than funny, with the “joke” being ultra-meta. The cast act badly on purpose, delivering their lines in an anti-comedy game of coming as close to a joke as they can possibly get without actually making one. (For example, when Mitch spills wine down his chin, Puck observes that he’s dribbling, and the vintner explains no, he just prefers wine filtered through his beard.) There were about three jokes in the whole thing that made me giggle. I’m sure they were included by accident; no anti-comic can bat a thousand.
A surprising number of critics misdiagnosed the film’s humor because they hadn’t encountered the concept of anti-comedy before. And if professionals are missing the point, you can be sure 99% of the film’s potential audience is, too. (It’s a shame that Rex Reed never lived to see this; the film’s writers would have treasured his dismissive takedown). The Napa Boys was designed to alienate and encourage walkouts; not only is the anti-humor off-putting until (and maybe even after) you get what they’re up to, but they also put the grossest of gross-out scenes relatively early in the first act. Anyone who makes it through Jack Jr.’s desperate encounter with a wine barrel without heading for the exits is in for the long haul.
There are three possible reactions to Napa Boys: you either don’t get it, or you get it, or you get it but conclude it wasn’t worth getting. I vacillate between the last two options. But what kept me watching was the unpredictability. The plot seems road-movie random, but is more structured than it first appears: subplots that appear to have been dropped reappear at unexpected moments. And even after all the plot threads seem to have been wrapped up, the movie keeps going on in a long epilogue, introducing new characters intended to set up the in-universe sequel or a spin-off. And the stop-motion moose surprised me, too. The Merlot may have been foul at times, but I can’t say my trip to wine country was entirely wasted. If you want to go, just be sure to pack a lot of patience.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
CAPSULE: BUTTONERS (1997)
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DIRECTED BY: Petr Zelenka
FEATURING: Pavel Zajicek, Jan Haubert, Seisuke Tsukahara
PLOT: A variety of tales unfold simultaneously during a single night as a radio show attempts a review of the twentieth century.
COMMENTS: Czechoslovakian, and later Czech, cinema has a lot to offer, especially for those interested in the weird. Many are familiar with the legacy of the Czech New Wave (Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, Daisies) or its tradition of stop-motion animation (The Cybernetic Grandma, The Pied Piper). There are a plethora of lesser-known auteurs and visionaries lurking in the shadows, however, awaiting rediscovery. One of them is Petr Zelenka, whose comedies tackle the human condition through an absurdist lens (the distributor’s statement says he “formally combines an American independent movie poetic with Bunuelesque absurdity.”). Buttoners is a perfect example of his style.
Buttoners takes place mostly in the course of one long night and is divided into a series of chapters, each of focusing on different characters and their quirks. It gradually adds layers of meaning by revealing new points of view and multiple intersections between the characters, hidden in the details. In “The Rituals of Civilization,” a neurotic psychiatrist tries to find comfort in the small routines of personal care and hygiene. “The Last Decent Generation” shows how two elderly couples discover each other’s strange yet harmless fetishes. And this is just a sample of the stories included here, building into a complex narrative of humanity at its weirdest and most original.
This is not superficial comedy where the characters eccentricities make them the butt of the joke. “The Rituals of Civilization” is, in fact, a meditation on our relationship with death and chaos. “The Last Decent Generation” tackles human quirks with sympathy, recalling Jan Svankmajer‘s far more bizarre Conspirators of Pleasure (1996). The bombing of Hiroshima is referenced throughout the movie, with a metaphysical twist towards the end, forming a common ground for all these disparate stories. This major event, with all its consequences, couldn’t be absent from a movie that attempts, among other things, to review the twentieth century.
All in all, Buttoners maintains a playful tone while reveling in clever twists. We can trace some formal similarities with the more recent Hungarian title Treasure City (2020), like the constant darkness and slightly surrealistic final segment. This Czech movie is way more light-hearted and comedic in style, however, which makes it the perfect recommendation for anyone looking for a sophisticated comedy unafraid to tackle serious subject matter.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
![Knoflikari [Buttoners]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/515WzGs7G0L._SL500_.jpg)
SATURDAY SHORT: CARROTS (2011)
A carrot farmer finds his money’s no good at the local car dealership in this early Jim Hosking short.
APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: I LOVE BOOSTERS (2026)
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DIRECTED BY: Boots Riley
FEATURING: Keke Palmer, Taylour Paige, Naomi Ackie, Demi Moore, Lakeith Stanfield, Poppy Liu, Will Poulter, Eiza González
PLOT: A gang of shoplifters develop a vendetta against an arrogant billionaire fashion designer and determine to ruin her.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: For his sophomore feature, Boots Riley takes everything that worked in Sorry to Bother You—absurdist comedy that builds until it approaches surrealism, Oakland grit, an insane third act sci-fi twist, and casually shoehorned-in communist propaganda—and piles it on even thicker. It’s arguable that he piles it so high that the story totters by the climax, but then again, that’s not exactly a disqualifier for a weird movie.
COMMENTS: Fashion—which, as Oscar Wilde quipped, is a form of ugliness so intolerable that it must be altered every six months—is an easy subject for satire. Boots Riley uses haute couture as an entry point to criticize the wider world of capitalism, though he doesn’t skimp on the cheap jokes afforded by crazy attention-getting getups and pretentious gits who value high thread counts more than high IQs. The three (later four) members of the shoplifting consortium known as “the Velvet Gang” are just scraping by financially; Corvette squats in an abandoned chicken shack, and frequently sees herself chased by a giant ball formed from bills and eviction notices. Their crimes aren’t excused so much as minimized compared to the legally-enabled theft practiced by the fashion industry. You root for them like you would for any outsiders fighting against the Man (or, in this case, the Woman).
Everyone in the expansive cast pulls their weight, with Demi Moore’s megalomaniacal fashionista and Will Poulter’s aggressively shallow middle-manager emerging as standouts. But best of all is Lakeith Stanfield, a dreamboat male model who isn’t even given a name in the movie. He’s a left-field oddball in a cast that includes skinwalkers, moguls who work in slanted skyscrapers, and pyramid-scheme cult leaders, and he’s so sexy that whenever the camera tries to focus on him it visibly starts to swoon.
Boots has a message, but he wraps it in laughter and awe. When Eiza González gives a lecture on dialectical materialism in the middle of the movie, it’s integrated into the film’s comic fabric so that it doesn’t seems out-of-place or preachy. You don’t have to buy into the ideology to enjoy the unfolding madness, but Boots wouldn’t be Boots if he didn’t take time out to testify. And just give costume designer Shirley Kurata her Oscar right now; from Poulter’s color-matched hair and glasses to the swollen with booty shoplifting sweats to outrageous outfits that André 3000 would pass on for being “too much,” she matches Boots’ mania for satire and spectacle. It’s entirely fair to argue that the plot completely loses its bearings by the time the climax at Christie Smith’s eyeball-themed runway gala arrives—some of the details of the capacities of the technology at the center of the plot are so rushed through so that you’re not sure what it’s capable of, and it even gets hard to figure out where the characters are in relation to each other during a chase scene—but that’s a small price to pay to enjoy this explosion of creative spleen. I Love Boosters goes over the top early on, then just keeps soaring higher.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY: