The Sandlot (Retro)

THE SANDLOT (1993) PG 101 Minutes Director: David Mickey Evans Writer: David Mickey Evans CAST Tom Guiry...Scotty Smalls Mike Vitar...Benny Rodriguez Patrick Renna...Hamilton "Ham" Porter Denis Leary...Bill James Earl Jones...Mr. Mertle Art LaFleur...Babe Ruth

“I am Hercules.” — Kevin Sorbo

The Sandlot is one of those movies that feels smaller when you’re a kid and larger when you’re an adult. What once felt like nothing more than a string of jokes and bits slowly reveals itself as something gentler — a memory of a summer that mattered, even if no one knew it at the time.

The narration sets the tone. It’s Christmas Story–adjacent, but with a key distinction: Ralphie grows up still wrestling with his childhood. Scotty Smalls grows up simply grateful for his. There’s no bitterness in the voiceover—only fondness.

That tone brings the movie closer to a family-friendly Stand by Me. Same idea—kids on the brink of change, one last shared adventure—but filtered through humor, exaggeration, and baseball. And even then, it’s not really about baseball. Baseball is the setting, not the point. This is a movie about kids hanging out one last summer before their lives quietly shift out of reach.

You see that shift everywhere. The legend of the Beast is cartoonish and funny, a child’s myth inflated into something operatic. The s’mores bit still works. The chewing-tobacco-on-the-carnival-ride scene remains perfectly disgusting and impeccably timed. Everything is heightened, but it’s emotionally honest—how summers felt, not how they literally happened.

The adults mostly exist as pressure. Bill, Smalls’ stepdad, radiates pure Denis Leary energy. You know he’s going to give that kid a black eye; the only surprise is how.

Even the stuff that could have aged poorly mostly doesn’t. The pool make-out scene lives in a gray area, sure, but it never feels creepy. If this movie had been made five years earlier, it’s easy to imagine that scene being played differently. Instead, the joke stays on Squints, keeping it silly over leering. That restraint matters.

Hercules—the Beast—becomes a central emotional anchor for the movie. He’s terrifying, misunderstood, and ultimately just a lonely old dog with a bad reputation. For anyone who grew up with an outdoor dog—the kind that growls at strangers but licks your face when you get home—it rings true. And mercifully, this is a movie with the right amount of dog in it: memorable, meaningful, never emotionally exploitative.

Art LaFleur’s brief turn as Babe Ruth is one of those performances that stays with you. He shows up for maybe three minutes, delivers a handful of lines with the perfect mix of gruff kindness and faint impatience, and then vanishes. But those minutes quietly reframe everything that follows. He’s not trying to steal the spotlight—he’s just there to hand it back to the kids. That understatement is what makes him so good, and it’s why, even now, I catch myself smiling every time the Bambino walks out of the fog.

I was surprised by how teary the ending made me. Nothing especially tragic happens—none of the boys meet some grim fate, no one gets killed breaking up a fight at a McDonald’s—and yet the emotion sneaks up all the same. Maybe it’s the exact balance the movie strikes between sweetness and sincerity, with just a trace of melancholy underneath. Even Hercules—or the Beast, as he’s more often called—is revealed, just before the epilogue, to be a mere mortal when the fence collapses on him. Later, we’re told he lives to be 199 in dog years, which sounds legendary until you realize he’s still the only character who actually dies. Or maybe the sadness comes from something simpler: the knowledge that once the movie ends, you don’t really get to see these kids—these newfound celluloid friends—again. Like childhood summers themselves, they don’t end in tragedy. They just end.

The epilogue seals it. “Heroes get remembered, legends never die” works because the movie earns it. The futures aren’t tragic, but they aren’t fantasy either. Benny Rodriguez makes it all the way, the way you always hoped he would. The rest don’t—and that’s the point. Bertram gets really into the ’60s. Life happens. It’s the exact right balance of bitter and sweet—proof that a family movie doesn’t need to be a bummer to be honest, and doesn’t need to be a fantasy to be comforting.

If anything, The Sandlot improves with age. As a kid, it’s funny and exciting. As an adult, it’s generous. It’s the kind of memory that sneaks up on you years later—when you’re old enough to see just how much that one summer really meant.

Final Verdict: 92 out of 100

Sidenote: Postscript

The Rip

THE RIP 113 Minutes Director: Joe Carnahan Writers: Joe Carnahan, Michael McGrale Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Steven Yeun CAST Matt Damon...Lieutenant Dane Dumars Ben Affleck...Detective Sergeant JD Byrne Steven Yeun...Detective Mike Ro Teyana Taylor...Detective Numa Baptiste Sasha Calle...Desiree “Desi” Molina Catalina Sandino Moreno...Detective Lolo Salazar Scott Adkins...FBI Agent Del Byrne Kyle Chandler...DEA Agent Mateo “Matty” Nix Néstor Carbonell...Major Thom Vallejo Lina Esco...Captain Jackie Velez

So the cops knew Internal Affairs was setting them up, but they played along so they could catch the real killer.
—Homer Simpson, THE SIMPSONS, 6F23

The title is deliberately vague, which turns out to be fitting—it could be about Rip Torn, Rip Van Winkle, Rip Hamilton, or a documentary about a guy engraving tombstones. URBAN DICTIONARY will tell you a rip is a monster hit from a bong. But in this movie, it’s simpler: a rip is robbing a stash house — money no one can claim. That looseness isn’t just in the title. It bleeds into everything else.

The movie opens with Jackie’s murder. From there, it settles into a mode where no one trusts anyone. Everyone is a potential liability, everyone’s a suspect, and no one’s motives are entirely clean. Even Mike Ro, who the movie quietly positions as someone to watch, is hard to read. Is he doing a dirty job, or just stuck inside a system where everyone’s already compromised?

THE RIP is built to entertain, and on that level — while the bullets are flying — it does work, even if that forward motion ignores basic logic. It’s the kind of movie where you stop caring exactly why someone is being shot, as long as the choreography looks good.

Part of the issue is that the plot is over-engineered, stacking OCEAN’S ELEVEN–style reveals — tactics and timelines held back just to be “cleverly” unveiled. In a straight heist flick, that’s part of the fun. Here, with real stakes like bodies dropping and careers imploding, it feels evasive by design. THE RIP wants that gotcha satisfaction without dealing with the mess it’s making.

The story feels cobbled from real cop stories and heist-movie tricks, but that real-life edge gives THE RIP a seriousness it wouldn’t have otherwise — even when the script takes a few shortcuts to keep the plot moving.

Still, there are moments that pull you out of it. There’s a scene where Ben Affleck’s JD, alone in a bathroom, takes off his shirt to dry his face — a move so exaggerated it borders on parody. Paper towels exist. Hand dryers exist. The shirt comes off, the face is dried, and back on it goes. It’s not symbolic enough to mean something, and not natural enough to feel real. It plays less like psychological distress than a brief pause where you can almost hear Ben Affleck saying, “hey, check me out, I hit the gym at 53.”

JD doesn’t help matters. Is there anyone named JD in fiction who isn’t a total douche? Jermaine Dupri remains the lone exception. The movie wants him to carry real moral weight—but it feels more like a performance than real pressure.

Oddly, the most likable character is Wilbur, the cash-sniffing beagle. He’s cute, efficient, and refreshingly uncomplicated, unlike the humans around him. The movie could have used more of him. He’s also got one of those names that feels like it wandered in from another era — you mostly hear “Wilbur” now in MR. ED reruns — which gives him an unintended charm. He’s certainly easier to root for than most of the people in THE RIP.

Kyle Chandler pops up as Matty, and if you’re looking for FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS–era nobility, adjust your expectations. The only lights he seems headed for are red and blue — no football fields in sight, Coach Taylor. Chandler brings a steady, professional presence, but even he can’t ground a story that keeps flipping between that Ice-T procedural grit and convenient plot shortcuts.

It’s not dumb or lazy—it’s entertaining, competently made, and engaging in the moment. It’s the kind of movie that’s fun while it’s running, but doesn’t hold up when you hit pause—like a stash-house rip that falls apart if anyone looks too close.

Final Verdict: 60 out of 100

Blank Check (Retro)

BLANK CHECK (1994) PG 93 Minutes Director: Rupert Wainwright Writers: Blake Snyder, Colby Carr Brian Bonsall, Karen Duffy, Miguel Ferrer CAST Brian Bonsall...Preston Waters Karen Duffy...Shay Stanley Miguel Ferrer...Carl Quigley James Rebhorn...Fred Waters Michael Lerner...Bank Manager Tone Lōc...Juice Jayne Atkinson...Mrs. Waters Rick Ducommun...Henry

“You got the juice now, man.”
—Bishop, JUICE

BLANK CHECK opens by taking its villain way more seriously than the rest of the movie ever will. Miguel Ferrer, in full ’90s character-actor mode, is shown in a dark, industrial basement counting out a million dollars in illicit cash. It’s played completely straight, like we’re meant to take Carl Quigley as a genuine criminal threat, which makes it stranger to watch him get outsmarted by a kid with a handful of Kevin McCallister tricks.

It’s nice, occasionally, to review a movie where the title handles most of the work for you. Preston Waters is a dorky, friendless kid — a YOUNG SHELDON type — ignored at home, picked on at school, and framed as poor in that specific ’90s-movie way where poverty means only having a couple of dollars at a theme park. When Carl Quigley backs into his bike and hands him a signed check to make the problem disappear, Preston fills it out for a million dollars, and the movie immediately enters a reality where a child is treated like a serious adult, no questions asked. In 1994, a check was money; now it’s evidence.

Miguel Ferrer should have been appreciated more while he was around—here, he brings a level of conviction that feels wildly out of scale with the movie he’s in. If you want to see what Brian Bonsall was doing just before this, watch MIKEY and then watch BLANK CHECK right after. The whiplash alone is worth the double feature.

Once the money clears, the movie settles into its fantasy: Preston living like a kid pretending to be a rich adult, though he’s not any more likable with a mansion than he was without one. What kid doesn’t fantasize about living like Nicolas Cage—buying a castle one week and going completely broke the next? There’s generic ’90s music underscoring expensive toys and a long line of adults who never once question the existence of “Mr. Macintosh.” Even the poster tries to help, sticking sunglasses on Preston and turning the hat backward, like he’s Snoop Doggy Dogg. Preston builds himself a kid-friendly version of Neverland Ranch.

The movie runs on fantasy speed, where a racetrack and a waterslide appear overnight and nobody thinks to ask how. The name itself—grabbed from the nearest computer—is adopted without a second thought. One thing the movie gets right is that in the ’90s, parents didn’t really care where you were — just be home in time for dinner.

The one relationship that actually works is with Henry, Preston’s chauffeur. He isn’t law enforcement, a plant, or a secret guardian — he’s just hired help, and that’s why the character works. He doesn’t ask questions because the movie needs at least one adult who won’t immediately shut the fantasy down. When Preston realizes his party guests are only there for the free food and prestige, Henry stands out as one of the few people who seems to genuinely care. It’s the closest the movie comes to anything resembling emotional grounding.

By this point, Preston has managed to burn through a million dollars in less than a week, which helps explain why the big party feels less like a celebration and more like a problem.

Naturally, the villains catch up. There’s a bike chase through the park, a limo escape, and Carl Quigley repeatedly shouting “your butt is mine,” a line it seems oddly proud of. The money disappears faster than the movie seems willing to acknowledge — even in 1994 — and the fantasy starts to fall apart.

Beyond a Super Soaker, a pair of Jordans, and a big-screen TV, I honestly wouldn’t have known what to do with a million dollars as a kid in this time period. Five grand would’ve felt like plenty.

BLANK CHECK is a simple premise stretched just a bit too far, stitched together by overqualified character actors and a brand of wish-fulfillment that only works if you squint real hard. It’s harmless, occasionally weird, and stranger than you remember — a kids’ movie from an era when Disney was still comfortable letting a little sleaze creep in around the edges.

Final Verdict: 45 out of 100

Sidenote: Streaming on Disney+. If you don’t have Disney+, it’s usually only a dollar more to buy than rent.

Bingo (Retro)

BINGO (1991) PG 89 Minutes Director: Matthew Robbins Writer: Jim Strain Cindy Williams, David Rasche, Robert J. Steinmiller Jr. CAST Cindy Williams...Natalie Devlin David Rasche...Hal Butler Robert J. Steinmiller Jr....Chuckie Devlin Donnie Jeffcoat...Lonnie Billy Jayne...Leo

The name’s Poochie D and I rock the telly
I’m half Joe Camel and a third Fonzarelli
I’m the kung-fu hippie from gangsta city
I’m a rappin’ surfer you the fool I pity
—Poochie D, THE SIMPSONS, 4F12

I didn’t grow up on BINGO, so I’m coming at this without rose-colored glasses. Most people who like this movie probably wore out their VHS copy in 1993, but I was raised in a house where my father had zero tolerance for “dog movies.” I finally see why. So many of them are lazy, relying on a cute face to carry the entire movie while the actual filmmaking stays stuck in a strange, low-effort place.

My path to BINGO came through David Rasche. I was watching SLEDGE HAMMER! and wanted to see if his straight-faced, deadpan delivery translated to a ninety-minute family comedy. Throw in Cindy Williams—whose LAVERNE & SHIRLEY status usually earns a movie at least twenty minutes of my patience. But even with that pedigree, you start to suspect the actors were in it just for a paycheck—possibly earmarked for alimony or tax debts.

BINGO is very much a product of the video-store era. Regardless of quality, a movie with a dog wearing sunglasses on the cover was going to get rented—especially by kids, and especially by parents desperate to kill ninety minutes. It’s a hard PG, too, from a time before the lines between kids’ movies and adult movies were so aggressively enforced. There’s something oddly refreshing about seeing children exchange middle fingers or a parent occasionally swear without the movie feeling like it was sanitized by a corporate focus group.

Movies with talking dogs are an abomination. Maybe “abomination” is too strong—let’s just say they’re strictly for kids in nursery school, the kind where a Chihuahua is given George Lopez’s voice and says things like, “We’re Mexi-can, not Mexi-can’t!” BINGO at least avoids that particular sin. There are no digitally altered mouths and no inner monologue voiceovers explaining his feelings. The gold standard for the genre remains EIGHT BELOW (or its source material, ANTARCTICA), and BINGO never threatens that title. But it does understand that dogs are most effective when they’re actually allowed to be dogs—even if “being a dog” in this movie involves MACGYVER-level tactical genius.

I’m not going to pretend this was a good movie, but there are a lot of fun scenes. Bingo licking dishes clean at a diner as a “job.” A hot dog stand run by a guy who keeps dogs in cages, implying they’re not just mascots but inventory. Bingo even manages to call 911 to report the villains after they kidnap a family and steal their RV. A courtroom scene where Bingo places his paw on a Bible before testifying, gets cross-examined, and somehow winds up in jail. There’s an unaccompanied bus trip to Green Bay, Wisconsin. An extended crotch-attack gag that refuses to let go. And yes, Bingo grabbing the villains’ suitcase bomb and dumping it into the water, limiting the damage but not walking away unscathed.

The villains have a budget HOME ALONE energy—all bluster and incompetence—which makes the movie’s later escalation into genuine peril feel especially strange. They kidnap Chuckie and stash him in a nondescript warehouse while the plot slides into actual hostage territory. It leads to a bizarre ultimatum where Chuckie’s father is forced to tank his kicking career or his son gets blown up. This is the point where BINGO stops being a goofy dog-on-the-loose movie and briefly convinces itself it’s a thriller, even though it never fully commits to that shift.

Bingo’s fear of fire, which the movie went out of its way to seed earlier, finally comes into play here. It’s rooted in his backstory as a circus dog, where a missed jump through a flaming hoop led to a catastrophic blaze. Overcoming that trauma is the movie’s way of giving Bingo an emotional arc, even if it arrives packaged in the clunkiest way possible, with consequences that immediately turn physical. Judging by the size of the explosion that follows, the villains wildly overestimated how much explosive force was required to kill a child.

Bingo survives, of course, after being injured by the blast, and the movie milks the hospital scene for all the fear it can before it gets sentimental. Friends—human and canine—wait anxiously for him to pull through. Once he does, BINGO can’t resist one final joke, ending not on relief or reflection but on a neutering gag—a final reminder that this was always meant to be a family comedy first and a coherent emotional experience second.

Final Verdict: 55 out of 100

Roofman

ROOFMAN R 126 Minutes Director: Derek Cianfrance Writers: Derek Cianfrance, Kirt Gunn Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst, LaKeith Stanfield

CAST

• Channing Tatum...Jeffrey Manchester
• Kirsten Dunst...Leigh Wainscott
• LaKeith Stanfield...Steve
• Juno Temple...Michelle
• Peter Dinklage...Mitch
• Ben Mendelsohn...Ron Smith
• Uzo Aduba...Eileen Smith
• Melonie Diaz...Talana
• Emory Cohen...Otis
• Molly Price...Sgt. Katherine Scheimreif

It’s a tale as old as time: robbing McDonald’s through the roof after they close. Except the employees are still there, and because he’s such a nice guy, he locks them in the fridge. Don’t worry—he calls the authorities afterward so they can get out. As if nothing could possibly go wrong in the time between him leaving and help showing up. It seems so easy and straightforward, it’s a wonder I haven’t done it yet.

ROOFMAN opens right in the middle of Jeffrey Manchester’s routine—dropping through ceilings and calmly cleaning out registers like he actually works at McDonald’s. He’s good at it, but eventually he gets caught. After robbing 45 different McDonald’s locations, Manchester is sentenced to 45 years in prison.

Prison doesn't agree with him. Almost immediately, he's scanning routines and weaknesses like he's back casing a McDonald’s. His escape is hiding in a false bottom he built in a box truck—low-tech in concept, but it actually takes some decent planning and work to pull off. This isn’t a movie about a criminal mastermind—it’s about persistence and not getting noticed.

Once he’s out, Manchester disappears into the world’s most bizarre safe house: a Toys “R” Us. He shuts off the cameras and moves into an inconspicuous corner of the store, surviving on a steady diet of Peanut M&M’s and whatever merchandise he can flip at the local pawn shop. It’s a middle-aged man living out a childhood fantasy as a survival strategy, like an alternate version of BIG where Tom Hanks never gets to go home. Here, Manchester isn’t liberated by the toy store — he’s imprisoned by the neon aisles and shiny new toys, spying on the employees with baby monitors.

Channing Tatum drops the usual MAGIC MIKE charm and plays Manchester with this low-key, vacant energy that actually works. He’s not going for swaggering outlaw or cool rebel—just a socially awkward guy who's oddly polite while making one bad decision after another. Even in that dumb blonde wig for the fake passport photo, he lets himself look a little pathetic, and it makes for a better movie.

Ginger-haired freak, Kirsten Dunst shows up and does what she’s been doing for the last decade—playing grounded wife/mom types with a quiet sadness humming underneath. It’s the kind of role she’s been playing since FARGO, and she’s still very good at it. Here, her weariness plays off Manchester’s blank detachment: she feels everything, he feels almost nothing, and somehow that makes their scenes land without forcing it.

The problem is that ROOFMAN eventually falls into the familiar “based on a true story” trap. Once Manchester meets Leigh, the trajectory becomes obvious. He grows attached to her kids. He lives a lie he can’t sustain. You know he’s going to disappoint everyone involved, and you know how it’s going to end long before the movie gets there. At over two hours, it lingers too long on Jeff’s isolation, stretching what could have been a tight 90-minute oddity.

Still, there’s an offbeat weirdness that kept me watching. Strange without feeling random, quiet without being dull. A movie about a grown man surviving on pawned toys and candy sounds like a stretch, but it’s more engaging than the premise suggests.

Final Verdict: 65 out of 100

The Grinch that Stole Bitches

THE GRINCH THAT STOLE BITCHES R 74 Minutes Director: Malik Marcell Writers: Urick Hopkins, Malik Marcell Otis “Money Bag Mafia” McIntosh, Navv Greene, Christianne “Chrissy Cindy” Jones CAST Otis “Money Bag Mafia” McIntosh...The Grinch Navv Greene...Santa (Martin Luther Santa) Christianne “Chrissy Cindy” Jones...Mrs. Claus (Coretta Santa) Nigel K. Rhoden...Lil G Marly St. Cloud...Lil E Terry “Goofy” Jones...Jevonte Erica Duchess...Greisha Marco Lavell...Jamier Travis Adonis...Jaquan Nic Starr...Father Claus

I don’t know how I missed this gem last year. I picked it mostly because I knew the title alone would make you laugh—and to be fair, you can’t accuse the movie of false advertising. There are definitely bitches stolen.

A movie like this has so much potential. In my head, I pictured something with a little more confidence and swagger: Katt Williams in a fur coat, walking around the neighborhood with a pimp cane, stealing bitches with intent. That’s not the movie we get.

Instead, Gregory Reynolds gets out of jail in a headless green Grinch costume. It doesn’t work. The movie expects you to accept he’s the Grinch and keeps moving.

Through a flashback, we learn Greg tried to rob Santa a few years earlier and got arrested. Now he’s back, and he wants revenge.

After three years inside, Greg heads back to Santa’s house to finish what he started. Instead, he kidnaps Mrs. Claus—Coretta Santa. From there, the Grinch rides around town with an accomplice or two, knocking on doors like Jehovah’s Witnesses, except he’s stealing bitches instead of handing out pamphlets.

This is some deeply specific hood shit, punctuated by weird, soft-core porn montages that feel like they belong to a different movie entirely.

You can also tell exactly where the ad breaks were supposed to be. The movie plays straight through without commercials, which makes sense. I’m having a hard time picturing the meeting where someone says, “Okay, let’s advertise our detergent in this film.”

THE GRINCH THAT STOLE BITCHES.
Brought to you by Tide: clean up your jizz stains with Tide.

If you want an extra laugh, turn on the subtitles. They’re wrong from the very beginning, like they were auto-generated and never checked.

There’s a running gag with the Grinch’s old lady showing up with a kid that—even by the standards of this movie—definitely isn’t his. Not because it’s funny—because it keeps showing up. And that’s about as consistent as this movie gets; everything else feels like it was assembled from a series of unrelated Vine clips.

It all builds to the husbands marching around in red cloaks like it’s HANDMAID’S TALE, tracking the Grinch to his lair. We eventually learn that the movie casually drops that the Grinch is Santa’s father’s bastard son, like it’s no big deal. This reveal happens and then immediately disappears into the next scene, as if the film itself forgot it just said that. Santa and the husbands finally catch up to him, chaos ensues, and by the end everyone learns to appreciate their wives. Why not.

Every filmmaker wants their movie to make sense. That’s something I believed before watching THE GRINCH THAT STOLE BITCHES. Put it on if you have family over and you’d like them to leave.

Final Verdict: 42 out of 100

Sidenote: Only available on Tubi.

Merv

MERV PG 105 Minutes Director: Jessica Swale Writers: Dane Clark, Linsey Stewart Zooey Deschanel, Charlie Cox, Patricia Heaton CAST Zooey Deschanel...Anna Finch Charlie Cox...Russ Owens Patricia Heaton...MJ Owens David Hunt...Jack Owens Chris Redd...Vice Principal Desmond Ellyn Jameson...Jocelyn Jasmine Mathews...Rebekah Gus...Merv

THE MERV-U-MENTARY

If you clicked MERV hoping for Merv Griffin: nope. No one’s singing “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts.” That’s a joke—for my readers over 80. Instead, we get something quieter and very modern: two exes who share joint custody of a rescue terrier mix because they can’t stand each other but can’t let go of the dog.

Anna is an optometrist; Russ is a teacher played by Charlie Cox (post-Daredevil), looking like he wandered off a Marvel set into the world’s most low-stakes crisis. Anna is an angry, brittle workaholic who seems allergic to joy, and Russ is a sad sack with a permanent apology-face. You’ve met this guy: “We swear he’s fine, but he looks like he cries in his car.”

Merv—the dog—is the one with depression. That’s not me projecting; the movie tells us Merv is sad because his parents aren’t getting along. The veterinarian even suggests Xanax, and Anna and Russ react like she’s talking about heroin. I’m not exaggerating.

Nothing cheers Merv up. Not the house, not toys, not even a trip to a Florida beach in December. (I can’t really blame him for that last one.) Once they’re in Florida, Anna shows up because she “misses the dog”—but what she really misses is Russ. They end up at a dog birthday party, where they meet a “spiritual animal healer” who channels Merv’s feelings and basically tells them the dog wants mom and dad back together. I kept waiting for Merv to roll his eyes and walk out. At this point, I was about three minutes away from turning the movie off, but Merv looked so genuinely embarrassed by the “healer” that I stayed.

All I wanted was a bland Christmas movie with an adorable dog—and I didn’t want the dog to die. That’s the bar now. I didn’t even know about dog boots before this. Apparently, we’re putting tiny boots on terrier mixes so they don’t freeze their paws in Boston snow. Do dogs in Boston actually need boots? Probably not. Are they adorable? Begrudgingly yes. Gus (the real dog) steals every scene anyway—mostly with hangdog eyes that say, “Fix your shit, humans.”

Zooey Deschanel plays Anna, and I mostly know her from Elf. Everyone else seems to find her quirky and charming; I’ve never quite understood her appeal. Twenty years later, and we’re still doing the “adorkable” thing—just with more edge and fewer ukuleles. She plays Anna like someone who treats every room as a group project nobody asked for—defensive, prickly, and convinced she’s the only adult present.

Patricia Heaton pops in as Russ’s mom, delivering a concentrated dose of the prickly matriarch role she patented decades ago. It’s basically Debra Barone if she retired to Florida and switched to high-end box wine. She’s not on screen long enough to anchor the movie, but she’s a needed shot of sitcom professionalism—landing more punchlines with a silent, weary blink than the rest of the humans do with their actual dialogue.

There’s a running subplot about Anna not being able to have kids. The movie treats it like a late reveal, but Anna and Russ spend the whole film orbiting the issue before finally saying it out loud like it’s a twist.

The movie actually gets one thing right: Russ’s rebound dog, Angelina. He gets her after it looks like he and Anna won’t reconcile. It’s a very human move: “Fine, I’ll just get another emotional support dog.” Angelina’s role is pretty transparent, but the movie isn’t wrong—dogs know when something is missing in your life. Or at least they know when you’re sad and eating more snacks than usual.

Buck the dog made Married… with Children. Without him, it was just a show about assholes who lived together. Same idea here. Merv (and later Angelina) are the moral center of the movie. Watching them, you think, “These people can’t be all bad. They take care of their dogs.” The humans act out, sulk, and overcomplicate everything. The dogs just exist, and somehow they make everyone else more watchable.

The ending is kind of sweet, I have to admit, even though it’s telegraphed from the beginning. If you’ve seen a couple holiday movies, you know where this is going: big gesture, heart-to-heart, dog in the middle, some tasteful Christmas lights in the background. It works. It’s not winning any awards, but it serves a purpose.

One practical question: how did they get Angelina a personalized sweater in less than 24 hours? Is there a secret emergency monogram service for emotionally fragile dog owners?

MERV isn’t great, but it knows exactly what it is. It’s a paint-by-numbers Christmas movie about broken people using a rescue terrier mix to patch the hole in their lives.

Final Verdict: 60 out of 100

Playdate

PLAYDATE PG-13 93 Minutes Director: Luke Greenfield Writer: Neil Goldman Kevin James, Alan Ritchson, Sarah Chalke CAST Kevin James...Brian Jennings Alan Ritchson...Jeff Eamon Sarah Chalke...Emily Alan Tudyk...Simon Maddox Stephen Root...Gordon Isla Fisher...Leslie Benjamin Pajak...Lucas Banks Pierce...CJ Hiro Kanagawa...Colonel Kurtz Paul Walter Hauser...“Zach Galifianak-ish”

For those of you who think I can’t review two Kevin James movies in a row—like I’m going to run out of jokes, or it’ll start sounding redundant—challenge accepted.

“Do I look like a child predator?” Kevin James asks early in PLAYDATE, standing in a park in a windbreaker that’s practically begging for a restraining order. Honestly? I bought it. I can believe him as the awkward stepfather everyone assumes is a creep. What I don’t buy—not for a single second—is Kevin James as a forensic accountant.

The suit looks like it’s on him for the first time in his life. He doesn’t even bother to wear glasses. Oh, don’t get confused—he keeps them perched on top of his head, because in Hollywood, glasses are shorthand for “this is a smart guy doing smart things.” But actually crunching numbers? Please. I could see him as a zookeeper, an IPS driver, or maybe a high school biology teacher who does mixed martial arts to save the music program.

Anyway, Brian gets fired and slips into stay-at-home dad mode, which means he ends up in that weird daytime purgatory of parks, small talk, and pretending you’re not desperate for adult conversation. That’s where Alan Ritchson shows up as Jeff, and he’s the funnier of the two. Jeff has this infectious, manic energy—like he just chugged three energy drinks and decided friendship is a contact sport. I can see why Brian ends up in his orbit, even if Jeff gives off a “this guy has seen some shit” vibe.

Is Ritchson playing the same character as Reacher? It’s hinted. I think he missed the fine print on his Amazon contract: “If you want to get renewed for another season, you have to do a movie with Kevin James.”

Sarah Chalke plays the wife, Emily—you may know her as the other Becky Conner—and yes, she seems a little too attractive for him. The movie knows it too and says it out loud. That kind of self-awareness goes a long way here, and it’s part of why PLAYDATE ends up better than you’d expect.

Then the movie remembers it needs a plot. Jeff kidnaps CJ, and the story never quite gives you an airtight reason. We find out the kid is his—or so it seems—until the villain shows up and snatches him back, because we need movement, not clarity. The pacing stays brisk. It never turns into a slog, which is more than I can say for a lot of these algorithm-built streaming movies. It all builds to a bizarre final standoff involving Maddox, Colonel Kurtz, and an entire army of CJs.

We also get an appearance by the doofus from COBRA KAI (Paul Walter Hauser), and he’s cast perfectly in this. Jeff refers to him as “Zach Galifianak-ish,” and that’s about right. He leans into the weirdness enough to be memorable. The movie could’ve used more of that energy.

PLAYDATE is a solid C. Not an “I didn’t deserve it” C like I got in high school—a real C. Some of the jokes are dumb, but not all of them. Yes, this is a movie you can watch with your family. If I were grading on a curve, I might bump it up—because contemporary family movies are god-awful. But I’m not grading on a curve. If you need something harmless in the background, this’ll do.

Final Verdict: 72 out of 100