The worst example of all of this, however, is Get Hard, a film made all the more egregious for the lack of ownership its creative team takes in the offense that its comedy caused. But she deserves-and we deserve-to do it with some agency and responsibility. This isn’t an argument that Sofia Vergara should deny her Latin roots or not use her heritage and identity for comedy. But there needs to be nuance and a point of view to the humor. Sofia Vergara herself is an expert at just that on Modern Family each week. We’re not saying that race can’t be used smartly as a tool for comedy. Smith at Bitch Magazine, “While Vergara threw in a few withering comments about Latina stereotypes, perhaps designed to offset the fact that her character was a stereotype herself, they fall flat.” But more than that, the film reduces her character to a one-note racial cliché.Īccording to S.E. The film itself kicks off with a terribly offensive transphobic gag, and does an odd job of objectifying star Sofia Vergara, considering that star is one of the film’s executive producers. In Hot Pursuit, the star vehicle featuring Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara, the tone-deafness of the comedy was evident from the trailers alone, perhaps explaining why the box office haul was so miniscule. That flaw, unfortunately, seems to be a plague that’s spreading through Hollywood’s most recent big blockbuster comedies. ![]() “The casual racism, homophobia, and sexism might be tolerable if any of it was remotely funny, but none of it is.” “The movie’s off-color humor also doesn’t connect like it once did either,” says Rodrigo Perez at Indiewire of Pitch Perfect 2. But more important than that, the jokes-even if intentionally uncomfortable with their racial bends-were funny. Rebel Wilson’s Fat Amy is probably the best example of the film as an empowerment message: take pride in your weirdness and of the base-level things that other people will define you by, and then throw it back in their faces. But lines about Ester Dean’s homosexuality or Hana Mae Lee’s Silent Asian Girl tendencies came from the film’s good-natured owning of stereotypes in order to them play them for proud comedy. Part of the backwards appeal of Pitch Perfect was the off-color comedy. In this film, they just drop racially charged one-liners for comedy shock value-jokes so lazy and obvious they elicit eye rolls and groans instead of any laughs.Īs Wilmore says, “The pair’s off-color cracks escalate into bits of bigotry without a punchline in sight other than offensiveness.” In the first film, the duo provided a clever Best in Show-like satire of color commentary at competitive events. The majority of these race jokes are presented as stand-up comedy bits from returning a capella commentators played by Elizabeth Banks and John Michael Higgins. Trying to misguidedly relate to her fellow Bellas by earnestly detailing how horrible life was for her back in Guatemala-“I had diarrhea for seven years,” for example-“it’s hard not come up with a reading of repeated jokes about kidnapping and border crossing that’s not, ‘Developing nations are hilarious hellscapes!’” says Buzzfeed’s Alison Willmore. ![]() “One new character is from Guatemala and, as far as I could tell, literally did not say anything that was not about human trafficking, cheating death, or other too-real hardships she left behind when she fled to America.” The biggest weakness of the movie is “race jokes that don’t pay off,” says Jessica Goldstein at Think Progress. Yet depressingly, the casual racism of the film is perhaps the biggest throughline in reviews of Pitch Perfect 2. ![]() More, it doesn’t make sense for such laziness and off-putting writing to sour the experience of watching a film that there was already so much goodwill for. Like Hot Pursuit and Get Hard before it this spring, the film is plagued by tone-deaf and, worse, unfunny racial comedy.Īudiences deserved better from a franchise that made its mark by having a fresh voice and satirical take on the stereotypes that so often define us. There’s so much of the same harmony-shameless embracing of individuality, charismatic performances, Rebel Wilson-singing in Pitch Perfect 2 as there was in the original that it makes its biggest, discordant flaw almost unforgivable.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |