Valentines Day

‘Heart Eyes’ – A Romantic Comedy Slasher Film Worth a Look

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

“Heart Eyes” comes to us packaged as a horror comedy filled with blood, gore, creative kills, mystery and a pair of sexy leads, one of whom looks like he just stepped off the set of “Bridgerton.” Perhaps the filmmakers wanted to give February 14th another horror classic as “My Bloody Valentine” may not have the same staying power these days have (assuming it ever did). As for “The St, Valentine’s Day Massacre,” that’s a gangster film not many have watched in a long time (and they probably should). Whatever the case, it is here and, judging from its gloriously bloody trailer, looks to be Valentine’s Day’s answer to Eli Roth’s “Thanksgiving.”

The masked serial killer of this film is called the Heart Eyes Killer, and he, his gender assumed, wreaks havoc on Valentine’s Day by killing couples who are madly in love. Clearly, the filmmakers have brought all the tools to the table as this killer has everything a growing serial killer needs; a machete, a simple knife, night vision, martial arts training, and if he doesn’t have any weapons on him at any given moment, he will be quick to make use of whatever automotive parts or kitchen tools available at his (again, I assume) disposal. The first kills come to represent how good this psycho is with their aim and viciously cold he is ending the existence of those unlucky to be in their way.

From there we head over to Seattle, Washington, home of the Space Needle. Ally (Olivia Holt) has a chance meeting with a “Bridgerton” looking dude named Jay (Mason Gooding) at a coffee shop where it turns out they like the same drink and the same amount of sugar and honey put in it. The chemistry is very palpable to where there is no denying this is love at first sight, but Ally is still recovering from a breakup from an ex who has quickly moved on to another love, and Jay is only in town for a day.

Well, it turns out they are to be co-workers on an advertising project which needs to be salvaged as Ally’s take on love is not the least bit appealing to her condescending boss who is given an inspired portrayal by Michaela Watkins. This leads to dinner, drinks, and an arrival at someone’s apartment. Unfortunately for them, the Heart Eyes Killer is waiting for them there, and they become the killer’s favorite target even though they are not exactly a couple.

In a lot of ways, “Heart Eyes” plays a but like a “Scream” movie as we spend our time trying to figure out who the killer is, and if there is more than one. All the while, we are treated to a film score by Jay Wadley which sounds like Marco Beltrami leftovers. But while I have been down this road many times before, I still enjoyed what this romantic comedy slasher flick had to offer as it held my attention throughout, and it never lost my attention throughout.

The beginning which features a couple getting engaged, and the man proposes in a rather gross way to put it mildly (watch it for yourself), and it quickly reminds us of how difficult it is to get a proposal just right. Those who are lucky enough to do so strive for perfection, and they should just be happy they didn’t get an arrow through the eye or get smashed in a compactor to where one of their eyes shoots out of its socket. This sets this film off to an inspired start to where I was curious to see where things would go from there.

As for the kills, they are as creative as one might expect for a slasher flick. A tire iron will never look the same, a machete cannot help but be a welcome sight even if it isn’t being wielded by Danny Trejo, and an arrow which ends up in the most painful, let alone fatal, spots of the human body. Just when you think you have everything, there is another which cuts much too close, and I don’t just mean to one’s private parts.

Oh yeah, there are also a pair of police detectives out to investigate and solve the crime, and they go by the last names of Hobbs and Shaw. The fact that one of them is played Jordana Brewster should help to clue the average viewer as to what franchise this is all referring to. For the more naïve ones, it might just refer to a drift, particularly from Tokyo.

What really holds “Heart Eyes” together the most is the irresistible chemistry between Holt and Gooding. Together, they power a film which might have easily come across as an average slasher flick, but instead works as a subversive answer to the regular romantic comedy.

As you may expect, the identity of the killer is eventually revealed, or is it really? I imagine there are some who will say, “I knew who it was all along,” but even those schmucks will be wondering if there is a second shooter on the grassy knoll. This all results in a number of inconsistences which tend to make for the worst plot holes of all, but I was having enough fun to where I lost any interest in examining just how big those holes were.

Director Josh Ruben and screenwriters Phillip Murphy, Christopher Landon and Michael Kennedy were intent on taking the kind of slasher flick we all grew up watching and mashing them together into something which is recognizable but still its own thing. When it comes to romantic comedies, I usually find myself running in the opposite direction from them like everyone else, but the scene in which Ally and Jay share their vulnerabilities with one another while hiding in a van at a drive in showing a film starring Cary Grant while the couple who own the van have loud and passionate sex in the rear proved to be moving enough to where if Elton John’s song “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” started playing in the background, I would have been totally cool with that.

It will be some time before critics, film buffs and horror movie addicts can proclaim “Heart Eyes” a horror classic for the ages. Some works age like a fine wine, and while this one is no classic, I like to believe people will come to appreciate it more in the future than upon its release. It is not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination, but I found it to be a fun ride which is worth the price of admission.

And looking at the pattern of this serial killer’s victims, it makes me wonder what this film’s tagline could have been. I am thinking it could have been something like “it’s better to be single” or “just when you thought it was safe to get into a romantic relationship,” this one reminds you of the advantages of going into Valentine’s Day solo. Then again, mistaken identity, as it is shown to be here, is a real bitch.

* * * out of * * * *

Jenny Slate Makes a Lasting Impression on us in ‘Obvious Child’

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

Obvious Child Jenny Slate

We all know Jenny Slate from her brief tenure on “Saturday Night Live,” and she has since left an impression on us with “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” and on episodes of “Parks and Recreation.” But in Gillian Robespierre’s “Obvious Child,” Slate gives one of the best breakout performances of 2014 which will stay with you long after the movie has ended. As comedian Donna Stern, we watch as her life hits rock bottom after she gets dumped by her boyfriend and fired from her job in rapid succession. Then after a one-night stand with a really nice guy named Max (Jake Lacy), she finds herself dealing with an unplanned pregnancy. She decides to get an abortion, and it all leads up to the best/worst Valentine’s Day she’s ever had.

Obvious Child movie poster

I was very excited to meet Slate when she arrived for a roundtable interview at the “Obvious Child” press day held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, California. I told her I came out of the movie wanting to hug her character, and she replied that was great and exactly the way we were supposed to feel (I couldn’t agree more). The movie is advertised as being the first “abortion comedy” ever, but that’s far too simplistic a description. To me, it was about how Donna learns how to empower herself and trust people again after having her heart broken, and Slate felt the same way.

Jenny Slate: It’s not representative of what the film actually does or how it unfolds. I guess, trying to look on the positive side, if people think that’s all that it is when they go and see the film, they will be delighted to see how complex and thoughtful it is and funny. If you think about it as just the story of one woman trying to understand the process of going from passive to active and trying to understand how to make choices you’d think, well why would I try to shy away from that? That’s a human story and I should just tell it.

“Obvious Child” derives its title from the song of the same name by Paul Simon. The discussion about the song led Slate to talk about when she used to ride the subway while she was a college student living in New York. She reminisced about how, when the train went through a tunnel, the window across from her would become a mirror, and this usually happened when she had headphones on.

JS: I remember sophomore year of college I would listen to, on repeat, the “Amelie” soundtrack and just imagine myself as a woman in a movie that was about a woman. It’s pretty interesting that I got to do it. I think a lot of people connected music that way. It makes them feel like they’re in a movie.

In the movie, Slate’s character is a comedian who does a stand-up act at a club in Brooklyn. The way Slate performs Donna’s act, you can’t help but think all her material was improvised, but Slate made it clear those scenes were the result of her collaboration with Robespierre.

JS: Gillian wrote this stand up based off of the style that I perform in; sort of loose storytelling, very instant with the audience, a conversation that’s evolving and not clubby or anything like that. She wrote it, we cut it down, we did some workshopping where I improvised a set based off of what she had written, and she recorded that, rewrote it, and then on the day of the shoot the shooting draft of the film had that stand-up set that we turned into bullet points so that I was not memorized and that it could be natural. You would have the feel of Donna feeling it out, and we talked about it and then I went up and went through these subjects that Gillian had set out and some of them are exact lines of her writing and some of them are lines that came up during it, and she would also call out to me during the shooting and be like, you know, circle back to talking about dirty underwear or whatever. And then I would go back and, during that time of walking backwards, new material would come in. I think if somebody says to me that it’s okay to work and it’s okay to be loose then I go with that. It’s in my nature to be playful and it’s my nature to feel a little bit claustrophobic with the rules, and that’s something I often just have to deal with and work through. You can’t improvise on every job, and you should be good enough at acting that you can say your lines. But for Gillian to say you can be a little looser and for her to be comfortable enough in what she had written to be flexible was an amazing testament to her. We are just a good pair.

One actress who was brought up with much excitement during this interview was Gaby Hoffman who plays Donna’s roommate, Nellie. Hoffman is best known for playing Kevin Costner’s daughter in “Field of Dreams” and for playing Maizy Russell in “Uncle Buck.” The interesting thing is that Slate and Hoffman actually look a lot alike to where you want to see them play sisters in a movie together. As it turns out, Hoffman’s career proved to have a major effect on Slate’s.

JS: I have always wanted to be an actress since I was young and can’t remember anything else. It was my ultimate desire, and she was my age and acting when I was growing up. I used to think I looked like her and was just like, oh I want to be like that girl. And when I got to meet her in my adulthood, I was like totally blown away in general just because I was such a huge fan. After getting past that, the real ultimate moment of just like being totally floored was discovering her personality. She’s very wise, really open and just like really no nonsense. She’s very fearless and I think she sets the bar really high for performance, and I felt that in a good way. I wanted to impress her, and I just think she’s the closest you can get to like a goddess. She’s got that real mythical vibe.

Now many people may say Slate is just playing herself in this movie, but this is the kind of unfair assumption we tend to make about actors in general. We may think we know an actor from reading about them in magazines or seeing them on the countless talk shows on television, but while Slate is a stand-up comedian like Donna, she was quick to point out the differences between herself and her character. Most importantly, she does not expound endlessly on her personal life like Donna does.

JS: I don’t do it. It just never seems right to me, but I’m not Donna. I know my boundaries and I think, although my standup is about like being horny and diarrhea and things like that, I still feel like it’s paired with really nice manners. I think the cornerstone of having nice manners is to have an equal exchange. Someone says how are you, and I say fine how are you, and Donna does not understand boundaries and limits at the beginning of the film. For me, I get it. My relationships are precious and I don’t talk about my husband on stage unless it’s something flattering. But even if it was something flattering that was going to embarrass him, I wouldn’t do it because there’s just too much to talk about.

Seriously, Jenny Slate’s performance in “Obvious Child” is one of the best and most moving I saw in 2014, and it’s a must see even for those who, like me, are not fans of romantic comedies. Regardless of how you feel about the Valentine’s Day Donna ends up having, it’s a lot better than the one Slate told us about from her past.

JS: I had a really bad Valentine’s Day one year because I had a really shitty boyfriend who forgot that it was Valentine’s Day, and he gave me his digital camera in a sock. Wow, thanks! Such a bummer, the worst present ever. That’s like a present that a baby would give to somebody. I never wanted a digital camera in general. I don’t care, I don’t like technology. I just wanted some fucking chocolate. Look around you! There’s hearts everywhere! Fucking get it right! Dammit! My husband is so good at Valentine’s Day. He rules at it. No socks.