‘Happy Gilmore 2,’ ‘The Naked Gun,’ and the 21st-Century Comedy Movie Crisis

Sean and Amanda are joined by The Ringer’s Craig Horlbeck to discuss all things 21st-century comedy. Before diving in though, they cover a handful of movie news headlines, including Celine Song being attached to a remake of ‘My Best Friend’s Wedding’; rumors that Jeremy Strong, Mikey Madison, and Jeremy Allen White are the top choices for ‘The Social Network Part II’; and Bradley Cooper’s film ‘Is This Thing On?’ being announced to close the New York Film Festival (1:44). Then, they cover Netflix’s ‘Happy Gilmore 2,’ starring Adam Sandler, which they all had wildly different reviews of, varying from apocalyptically bad to incredibly fascinating (14:59). Finally, they talk about ‘The Naked Gun,’ starring Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson, and use it as a springboard to have a conversation on why there are so few theatrical comedies being made and whether we’ll get more going forward (38:06). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Craig Horlbeck Producer: Jack Sanders THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY THE STARBUCKS COFFEE COMPANY. ORDER NOW | STARBUCKS. COM/MENU Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:00Sean Fennessey?

  This episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Amazon Prime. What pairs with a good comedy? The cozy blanket arriving with Prime. What pairs with a nail-biting thriller? Snacks arriving with Prime. What pairs with the big game on Prime Video? That new couch arriving with Prime. Whatever feeling you're after, Prime helps bring it to life with great entertainment and fast shipping that delivers what the moment calls for. From streaming to fast shipping, it's on Prime.

• 1:34Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Fantasy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about comedy. On today's episode, we are discussing two follow-ups to some legendary Gen X comedy IP, Happy Gilmore 2 and The Naked Gun reboot. We'll also be talking about this century in comedy movies, What the Hell Happened to Them? Joining us today is Craig Horlbeck.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 1:52Sean Fennessey?

  Is this your first time on the pod?

• 1:54Speaker 02

  It is. You've never invited me.

• 1:55Sean Fennessey?

  Welcome. That's insane. Well, and here you are. Co-host of The Ringer Fantasy Football Show, producer of The Rewatchables, producer of The Town, handsomest guy at the company. So many incredible declarations to be made. You are also the number one guy in my life. Who's like, what the hell happened to comedy movies?

• 2:13Speaker 02

  Remember comedy movies? They used to be so fun.

• 2:15Sean Fennessey?

  They were so fun. So we're gonna talk about a couple of the new ones today and if we'll ever get any more ever again in Hollywood. I'm just gonna present a tease to the audience.

• 2:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:24Sean Fennessey?

  Stay tuned to this show, to this channel.

• 2:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Every day, but especially next week.

• 2:29Sean Fennessey?

  Especially, yes. Next week, we will have information about a new live event. Chicago went so well that we are opening for Oasis at Wembley. And I'm really saying, no, we're not doing that. Uh, we are gonna do something and we will have information about that for you next week.

• 2:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Replacing Sean with Noel.

• 2:46Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I, I.

• 2:47Amanda Dobbins?

  You're the Noel and I'm the Liam.

• 2:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:49Amanda Dobbins?

  It's, I mean, it's really, it's true.

• 2:51Sean Fennessey?

  Can you sing like Liam?

• 2:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I wish. That would be really fun.

• 2:54Sean Fennessey?

  You wouldn't be here today.

• 2:55Amanda Dobbins?

  But like 90s Liam, respectfully. I'm not gonna be Andy, like with the tapes, you know? I'm, I'm, I am really excited to go see Oasis. I'm pro Oasis. Um, but you know, age comes for us all.

• 3:06Sean Fennessey?

  It certainly does, and that's a great transition to the news in movies right now. Which is, we got word earlier this week that reportedly Celine Song, the writer-director behind Past Lives and Materialists, is been tapped to write a sequel to My Best Friend's Wedding.

• 3:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 3:22Sean Fennessey?

  Which is a huge favorite of Amanda's. I just shared with Craig that I think it might be my favorite Julia Roberts movie. And it is a sacred text among the rom-com fans. And Amanda, I'll start with you. How do you feel about this news?

• 3:36Amanda Dobbins?

  I heard from roughly 30 people in my life about this. Uh, both, you know, people I haven't talked to in several years and, and kind strangers on the internet who wanted to check in, who wanted to make sure that I'd heard about this. Uh, and, and I, I said to all of them, I was collecting my thoughts and I'd be ready for Friday when we were recording. I, obviously I hate it, but like, what if I don't hate it? What if I don't? It's, it, I, I'm reclaiming Materialists. You and I are on that project together. Hey, where are you on Materialists?

• 4:10Speaker 02

  I have not seen it.

• 4:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, well then you can't be a part of our project.

• 4:13Sean Fennessey?

  I actually really need to know your thoughts. Uh, just putting that out there. Just find a way to check it out soon.

• 4:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And I, I, I do feel that Celine Song has identified, isolated as pursuing one of her great themes and interests, which is the love triangle. So in that sense, I think she could be well, you know, fit to this. They are ruining or remaking, but less well, all of my favorite things now. And you, Sean, have just started laughing at me because as, as you said, it comes for us all. And it came for you five to 10 years ago because, you know, our financial and corporate structures are weighed towards men, but I get, they finally got around to me and now it's coming. And I don't think it feels great, but at the

• 5:02Amanda Dobbins?

  same time, maybe I'll like it. Maybe I won't.

• 5:05Sean Fennessey?

  This is the trap.

• 5:06Amanda Dobbins?

  I know.

• 5:07Sean Fennessey?

  This is the trap.

• 5:07Amanda Dobbins?

  But what if they do it well? What if it's good?

• 5:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, sure.

• 5:10Amanda Dobbins?

  What if it's The Godfather 2?

• 5:11Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely.

• 5:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 5:12Sean Fennessey?

  Definitely.

• 5:12Amanda Dobbins?

  You know?

• 5:13Sean Fennessey?

  What if, what if?

• 5:14Amanda Dobbins?

  There's a two after that.

• 5:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, there's a lot of possibilities.

• 5:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm nervous. I mean, I'd like for them to spend money on it, you know? I'd like for them. Do we even know whether the, the three main stars are returning?

• 5:25Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know.

• 5:26Amanda Dobbins?

  I think it would be hard to do it without Julia Roberts and Dermot Mulrooney. I mean, perhaps there's been a divorce, you know? Maybe marrying Cameron Diaz at 19 didn't pan out.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  Would you prefer them to be the stars of the movie or kind of the, the side characters ushering in a new, younger generation?

• 5:44Amanda Dobbins?

  No, don't do that. Well, I, we already did that. That's Ticket to Paradise. You know, I'm good. I saw that. I didn't have a bad time, but I would like to know what happens after, you know, second marriage wise. This is, this is the phase of life we're entering, Craig.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  I wouldn't like to know.

• 5:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 5:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  I think that's the beauty of these movies is they stay as they are.

• 6:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  And they're perfect the way they are. It just feels like we're slapping a Band-Aid on, on things right now by, by relaunching all of these great movies from the 90s and early 2000s. And it's, they're going to work. They're going to make a little bit of money. They're going to get a lot of Netflix views, but this is just slapping a Band-Aid on a larger problem that is not being fixed.

• 6:20Sean Fennessey?

  Spoiler alert, I think on your Happy Gilmore 2 review potentially. Um, yeah, it's a little depressing. Celine Song is a really interesting writer. And I like the way that she tries to filter thematic ideas into very obvious structures. You know, like A Longing Romance, like Past Lives, is a much deeper movie than Someone Who Is Less Gifted making a movie like that. The same goes for Materialist, which I think is less successful, but was at least really interesting to think about and talk about. I don't know if My Best Friend's Wedding is like the vehicle for deep ideas, but maybe in her hands, it could be a little bit better. But you know, between this and Devil Wears Prada 2, it's a really hilarious time to be potting with Amanda. That's what I'm gonna say.

• 7:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 7:05Sean Fennessey?

  I wish you the best.

• 7:07Amanda Dobbins?

  And also the next one. Let's keep moving. Speaking of twos.

• 7:10Sean Fennessey?

  Reportedly, Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White are the top picks for significant roles in The Social Network 2, which is apparently still being written and directed by Aaron Sorkin. As far as we know, David Fincher and Mark, not Mark Zuckerberg, David Fincher and Jesse Eisenberg are not a part of this project.

• 7:30Sean Fennessey?

  Thoughts?

• 7:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Disaster. I just, once again, I'm, once again, I am begging Aaron Sorkin to consider a group project, you know? Just, just, just open it up. And I am begging Jeremy Allen White and Mikey Madison to, to not cast themselves in the morning show by accident. You know, like, it's just really, we're, we're in danger of something bad. And I like all parties involved, and I think that we should rethink it. You know, once you say David Fincher and Jesse Eisenberg are not involved in this project, some, just alarm bells should be ringing for everyone.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  It was rumored that Jesse Eisenberg might be involved, that he might be coming back at Zuckerberg, right? And that has now been confirmed he's not?

• 8:14Sean Fennessey?

  It has not been confirmed, but I think that was a hope and a wish.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:17Sean Fennessey?

  And I don't think that there was anything meaningful to it. And it doesn't mean if they don't, you know, if they cut the check, why wouldn't Jesse Eisenberg's about to be in Now You See Me 3?

• 8:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:24Sean Fennessey?

  Like, I don't think he's above working on The Social Network 2.

• 8:27Amanda Dobbins?

  But he really likes those movies, right?

• 8:29Sean Fennessey?

  He does. He loves magic, just like me. Close up magic, me and Jesse, we have that in common.

• 8:33Speaker 02

  It does feel like the sanctity of the movie lies on if Jesse Eisenberg returns at Zuckerberg. To me, that legitimizes it. I feel like it's a bit more serious of a movie that he's back with Sorkin. If he's out, and now it's just a new cast figuring it out with Sorkin directing, it does feel much cheaper. Obviously, I don't want this movie to be made. Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White being in it, that doesn't bother me.

• 8:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 8:53Sean Fennessey?

  They're very talented. Um, we learned that Mikey Madison, it sounds like, passed on being the damsel in distress in a Star Wars movie starring Ryan Gosling, directed by Sean Levy. I think that indicated that she was an actress looking for richer roles. She already has an Academy Award. She should be able to get, you know, not just paid, but get star parts that have some depth. I just, Sorkin's as a director is just-

• 9:14Amanda Dobbins?

  You need venture.

• 9:15Sean Fennessey?

  He's not been good.

• 9:16Amanda Dobbins?

  You need venture.

• 9:16Sean Fennessey?

  I know, and he's-

• 9:17Speaker 02

  It's one tier above Star Wars. This.

• 9:19Sean Fennessey?

  It is. It is. Yeah. It's an adult drama.

• 9:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Sorkin's movies still get nominations. Their actors get nominated.

• 9:24Sean Fennessey?

  No doubt. Trial of Chicago Seven and Being Ricardo's both got Oscar nominations, for sure.

• 9:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, they did.

• 9:29Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I don't think either of those movies are that strong. Molly's Game probably the strongest of the three, in my opinion.

• 9:34Amanda Dobbins?

  That is right.

• 9:35Sean Fennessey?

  But all flawed. And I agree, he's a great collaborator. He's somebody who, like, the friction of another strong voice tends to create great work. Steve Jobs, another example. Bring in somebody like Danny Boyle to match the weird energy that Sorkin has in projects. So we'll see. I think we're just kind of wish casting both what actors would do something like this and also who is gonna make it. If Sorkin wants to make it, he's probably gonna make it. We'll see what happens. One other festival piece of news. Do you follow the festival stuff at all? You don't really go to the festivals.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  Uh, I go to Sundance. I've been a couple times.

• 10:06Sean Fennessey?

  You do go to Sundance. That's true.

• 10:07Speaker 02

  But that's the only one I've been to. I'd love to go to more.

• 10:08Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, well, Is This Thing On was announced as the closing night film at the New York Film Festival. We kind of suggested this could be a possibility when we talked about the Toronto slate and the Telluride slate and the Venice slate. And this is Bradley Cooper's new movie. It stars Will Arnett. It's based on the life of a stand-up comedian, which I know is a world that Amanda has spent a lot of time inside of and is really excited to explore more deeply with Brad Cooper. Um, do you think this is gonna be good, this movie?

• 10:36Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know. I sent you an email about this before 8 a.m. the day it was announced. And it just said, this puts us in a real pickle in terms of scheduling, in terms of anticipation, in terms of reading the tea leaves. You-

• 10:51Amanda Dobbins?

  You don't seem that optimistic.

• 10:53Sean Fennessey?

  Well, the last two closing night films of the New York Film Festival were Blitz, Steve McQueen's movie, and Ferrari, Michael Mann's movie. Two extremely hyped up movies that have some good things going for them, but ultimately fizzled out, not just in the awards race, but in the public consciousness.

• 11:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 11:07Sean Fennessey?

  That doesn't mean it's not going to be good, but it's not super encouraging.

• 11:13Sean Fennessey?

  New York Film Festival is not really a place where you usually launch a Best Picture contender. It's usually at one of the previous fall festivals and then you run through to New York.

• 11:21Amanda Dobbins?

  There are exceptions, The Irishman.

• 11:23Sean Fennessey?

  The Irishman is an exception, a profoundly New York movie.

• 11:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 11:27Sean Fennessey?

  With some Scorsese heritage.

• 11:29Amanda Dobbins?

  This could be a profoundly New York movie, you don't know.

• 11:31Sean Fennessey?

  You're right, I don't know.

• 11:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Bradley Cooper is living in New York and getting photographed with Gigi Hadid and and selling cheesesteaks in New York, even though he's from Philly, so.

• 11:42Sean Fennessey?

  Do you follow Bradley Cooper's personal life, Craig?

• 11:45Speaker 02

  Hmm, not unless it's put in front of my face, which it is sometimes.

• 11:48Amanda Dobbins?

  It is, yeah.

• 11:49Speaker 02

  By the algorithm.

• 11:51Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. That also comes for us. Fox Searchlight has not missed on a Best Picture nomination since 2017. This is a Searchlight movie. Whether it's this movie or Rental Family, it's unclear if that's going to be their big contender this year. Rental Family premieres at TIFF. Cooper, also one of the most nominated men alive. He's had, how many, I think he's had like 14 nominations.

• 12:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 12:19Sean Fennessey?

  When you include producing, directing, acting, songwriting, like all the way down the line, he's gotten a lot of nominations. He's directed Star is Born and Maestro. See Maestro?

• 12:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:30Sean Fennessey?

  What'd you think of that?

• 12:32Speaker 02

  In the theater, I thought it was a fun theatrical experience. I thought the music was great and he tried really hard and I'm happy he tried.

• 12:39Amanda Dobbins?

  You're a pro-mauler. We'll always put that on the record.

• 12:42Speaker 02

  Sure. Bradley Cooper wants to be taken seriously and I think this movie is another attempt at that.

• 12:47Sean Fennessey?

  I wonder, this seems like definitely like a pitched at a lower register, maybe like a more intimate, quieter movie. Doesn't mean it won't have a lot to say, but it's not this gargantuan biopic like Maestro was meant to be.

• 13:01Sean Fennessey?

  Watching with interest, we'll see what happens.

• 13:03Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 13:03Sean Fennessey?

  I'd like to watch it. I think he's a really talented filmmaker, even if the material he chooses is sometimes a little bit confusing. So we'll see. Okay, we have some incredible breaking news. The timing in this is remarkable.

• 13:14Amanda Dobbins?

  I am. Go ahead.

• 13:16Sean Fennessey?

  We've just had like a five minute conversation about the potential of The Social Network 2 and who the actors are and whether or not Jesse Eisenberg is coming back.

• 13:26Sean Fennessey?

  And it appears that there is an actor who's being eyeed to play Mark Zuckerberg, but it is not Jesse Eisenberg. Now Craig does not know who this person is.

• 13:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 13:34Sean Fennessey?

  Do you have any guesses as to who the actor is that is being strongly considered for this part?

• 13:40Speaker 02

  Can you give me a small hint? Big star, medium star?

• 13:43Sean Fennessey?

  Medium star. Appeared on a very prominent television show in the last five years.

• 13:48Amanda Dobbins?

  One of Sean's favorites.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  Kind of around like 40 year old white guy-ish?

• 13:52Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 13:54Sean Fennessey?

  Correct.

• 13:55Speaker 02

  Prominent television show. Jason Segel.

• 13:59Sean Fennessey?

  Not a bad guess.

• 14:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 14:01Sean Fennessey?

  That's not correct. The answer is Jeremy Strong.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 14:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 14:06Sean Fennessey?

  Now.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  Wow, he's gonna take that so seriously.

• 14:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 14:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. That is fascinating.

• 14:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I.

• 14:13Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not saying it's good. But it is appropriate.

• 14:18Amanda Dobbins?

  So here's the thing, Jeremy Strong is yet one more person who needs a group project. Do you know what I mean? It's just, it's like, let's, let's all get in the mix together. Let's all add our interpretations. Let's balance each other out.

• 14:36Sean Fennessey?

  Well, fortunately, he's an actor, so he has to, he's gotta read the words, you know?

• 14:39Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess so.

• 14:40Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, Jeremy Strong, who I think is clearly

• 14:46Sean Fennessey?

  slightly deranged performer, um, but is incredibly gifted.

• 14:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 14:51Sean Fennessey?

  He did previously collaborate with Sorkin, obviously, on The Trial of the Chicago Seven. He played Jerry Rubin in that movie. He's, I thought he was good in that movie.

• 14:58Amanda Dobbins?

  He's fine.

• 14:58Sean Fennessey?

  Um, you have, you've got like a black liquor thing with Jeremy Strong?

• 15:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And I just, I don't, I don't know that I trust Aaron Sorkin and Jeremy Strong without a counterweight in the room.

• 15:13Sean Fennessey?

  Jeremy's, that's a fair point. Jeremy Strong, Jeremy Allen White are gonna be together in the Springsteen movie, so they obviously have a working relationship. Jeremy Strong, Jeremy Allen White and Mikey Madison, now all of a sudden, we're cooking with gas. Now, again, I need Bennett Miller to just come back and make this movie for Jeremy, for Aaron Sorkin. Like, I just need something else to happen.

• 15:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, that's what I'm saying.

• 15:37Sean Fennessey?

  But that is a very talented cast.

• 15:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Everyone is talented in their own way with this project, attached to this project. And we just, we need to-

• 15:46Sean Fennessey?

  We actually can't cancel this podcast because we have to see this movie. We gotta last at least until this movie.

• 15:54Amanda Dobbins?

  I, oh, my stomach hurts. That's my reaction to this.

• 15:57Sean Fennessey?

  Does it seem more exciting or less exciting to you?

• 15:58Speaker 02

  Definitely more exciting. Drawing Jeremy Strong into this makes it much more interesting. This is, those are three good actors.

• 16:07Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, well, hopefully this works out for the best.

• 16:10Speaker 02

  I'm sure it won't, but I'm very excited. I'll watch that. That is, that's a, is that a legacy sequel? How do we categorize that?

• 16:17Sean Fennessey?

  I think so. Speaking of, maybe we should pivot now to another conversation about legacy sequels. Let's talk about Happy Gilmore 2, directed by Kyle Nowicki, who has directed Game Over Man. Did you see that movie?

• 16:29Speaker 02

  No, I missed it.

• 16:29Sean Fennessey?

  The Workaholics, guys?

• 16:31Speaker 02

  I, I'm a fan of the Workaholics, guys.

• 16:33Sean Fennessey?

  Me too. I just saw them on the lot at Netflix when I went to go see another movie. Murder Mystery also, Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston on a boat, somebody got killed. We talked about that movie on this pod once.

• 16:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I watched the sequel too, I think.

• 16:46Sean Fennessey?

  The Murder Mystery 2?

• 16:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I, yeah, I don't know actually now. Maybe I, maybe I watched the trailer.

• 16:51Sean Fennessey?

  Those movies are among the most watched movies in Netflix history. So Kyle Nowicki is a proven commodity. And the movie is written by Tim Hurley, he and Adam Sandler. And it is a follow-up, a legacy sequel to

• 17:05Sean Fennessey?

  one of the most important movies in the history of my life. And an essential Gen X, elder millennial comedy that Craig's generation also claims.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:14Sean Fennessey?

  Recently, you guys did on the Ringer Fantasy Football Show, an episode in which you used moments from Happy Gilmore to define the upcoming fantasy football season.

• 17:23Speaker 02

  It is the most quoted show, quoted movie on our show. And I think it's the movie I can quote the most, the comedy I can quote the most.

• 17:28Sean Fennessey?

  So we had an interesting experience with this movie on the rewatchable some years ago. We did that episode with Josh and Benny Safdie.

• 17:34Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 17:35Sean Fennessey?

  And Josh and Benny Safdie-

• 17:39Sean Fennessey?

  I felt really put us to shame in terms of the knowing every square inch.

• 17:44Speaker 02

  They adore it.

• 17:45Sean Fennessey?

  They were, and I love this movie and I know Bill loves this movie and they were obsessed with it. Lo and behold, Benny Safdie is a part of this new movie. He is in fact, the big bad, the villain of this movie. Coming back from the original film, Sandler, of course, Julie Bowen, sort of Christopher McDonald, the shooter McGavin.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  We'll talk about Julie Bowen.

• 18:07Sean Fennessey?

  We will. This movie also is the most star studded cameo fest in movie history.

• 18:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 18:14Sean Fennessey?

  Is it fair to say?

• 18:16Speaker 02

  Certainly. I'm waiting to be unleashed. Let me go.

• 18:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, just let him go. Let him go. Let him go.

• 18:21Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, Craig, you go first. What did you think of Happy Gilmore 2?

• 18:23Speaker 02

  First off, I wanna, I wanna get this out of the way that I love Happy Gilmore and I desperate, I love it. Okay, it's one of my favorite movies ever. I think it is underratedly smart, tight, well-written, well-acted. It's a great story. I desperately wanted this movie to be good. Of course I had my doubts, but I went in with as much of an open mind as I could. And I thought this was genuinely maybe the worst movie I've ever seen. I thought this was the laziest fan service pandering nostalgia bait I've ever seen. It was barely a movie. It was a YouTube compilation of cameos. It was, it was SNL 50 of them just jamming in as many people as they possibly could. They weren't even in there long enough for it to be a scene.

• 19:10Speaker 02

  It was made to be marketed. It was made to be a trailer. That is my thought. That is my, that was my initial gut reaction after watching this two hour movie, 30 minutes longer than the first one.

• 19:20Sean Fennessey?

  So would you say you didn't like it?

• 19:22Speaker 02

  I didn't love it.

• 19:23Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  But here's the thing, I, I might be in the wrong because I have, I would say the majority of the people in my life didn't like it. However, there were a few that did. There were a few that were like, I didn't think it was so bad. There were some fun moments. It was an easy watch, which I think is a problem with a lot of the movies that air on streaming now, is that you can just kind of lean back. And think to yourself, ah, it's easy to watch. Yeah, there were some moments. It was entertaining.

• 19:45Sean Fennessey?

  I want to explore that with you for sure.

• 19:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I.

• 19:47Sean Fennessey?

  What did you think?

• 19:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I, at first, I'd just like to add some context to Craig's impassioned speech, which I'm, I'm, think I mostly agree with, except when Craig says that it is the worst movie that he's ever seen, I just want to note that Craig has not seen most superhero movies. So.

• 20:03Speaker 02

  I've seen a lot of them.

• 20:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, you know, and we, and, and we saw The Naked Gun together and he was asking me about other movies and was then just like, I will never see that. So, you know, with, that's, that's the world that we're living in. I didn't think this movie was a good comedy, but, and, and this is, this is dark days. This is, this is tough for me because this shows you like how far golf has entered my home and my life. Like, maybe it was kind of a fun golf movie. Like, maybe I started cheering when Rory McIlroy and Scotty showed up and I was like, Zach, come back in. Look, it's Rory. You know, like, maybe I recognized Colin Murakawa, like, on the screen getting a punchline. So, I don't know what to do

• 20:48Amanda Dobbins?

  with that. And to Craig's point, like, that is, that's just, like, that is fan service and that is fan service for this, this synergy of the golf, then the golf world and the golf show that's on Netflix and Adam Sandler and all these sorts of things.

• 21:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 21:03Amanda Dobbins?

  It has nothing to do with the original movie. Adam Sandler is not very funny in it. Like, it's, it, so, I think as, as a sequel, thumbs down, as me having a decent time watching the whole thing, I, I did.

• 21:19Speaker 02

  And look, I can agree with her. Like, it is fun to see Scotty Scheffler and Rory. That's undeniable. I don't think that makes it a good movie. It can be, I guess, an entertaining watch, but I feel like that sets the bar on the floor for what a movie needs to be.

• 21:33Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. You've had your say. Um, you're both wrong. This is a fascinating document in American movie making, for a million reasons.

• 21:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Here we go.

• 21:42Sean Fennessey?

  Now, can a movie be bad and wonderful at the same time is an important question to ask.

• 21:47Speaker 02

  I'm terrified you're gonna say you didn't think this was bad.

• 21:49Sean Fennessey?

  I think it is a weirdly honest portrait of a person in a fascinating place in their life. Now, obviously, the movie is made to do all the things you described. It's made to be a trailer. It's made for social breakout moments. It's made to just kind of like, let the day roll past. So you have two hours of wallpaper that feels familiar and comfortable, and you can raise your hand and be like, oh, my God, Colin Morikawa, this is so fun. Oh, Ben Siller's back. That's so exciting. And it does all that stuff.

• 22:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. Oh, which Alex is that?

• 22:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 22:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I think it was Earl, not Cooper.

• 22:18Speaker 02

  It was Earl.

• 22:18Sean Fennessey?

  Earl, yes.

• 22:19Amanda Dobbins?

  But I saw.

• 22:20Sean Fennessey?

  Lot of podcast hosts in this movie as well.

• 22:22Speaker 02

  Bobby Lee, Andrew Santino. I mean, every cutaway. I didn't even recognize some of the TikTok stars.

• 22:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Some professional golfers, I'm told.

• 22:29Sean Fennessey?

  Some professional golfers.

• 22:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, Nelly Korda, right?

• 22:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 22:32Speaker 02

  Post Malone, next to 85-year-old Vern Lundquist.

• 22:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah, Vern.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  Did we enjoy that?

• 22:35Amanda Dobbins?

  I know Vern. SEC life.

• 22:37Sean Fennessey?

  Vern Lundquist saying gangster shit indeed is one of the best things that's happened in movies this year. Okay, here, seriously, here's my thing. You made the key point.

• 22:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 22:45Sean Fennessey?

  Which is that Adam Sandler is uniquely unfunny in this movie, which is uncommon, even in the largely forgettable Netflix comedies that he's been making for the last seven or eight years. He at least gets to be kind of funny and do the Sandler shtick. This movie is a weird meditation on death and alcoholism. I mean, the whole movie is about an aging father who's lost his wife, who doesn't know how to raise his five children.

• 23:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 23:07Sean Fennessey?

  And has lost his way as a professional person and somebody who can earn money to support his family. This is a really weird movie to be combining that incredibly serious and like, maybe just ever so slightly autobiographical Sandler stuff, especially when you consider the way that he works his daughters and his wife into the movie.

• 23:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 23:27Sean Fennessey?

  Alongside, I think, the movie that, obviously, Billy Madison is the first feature that he made. It's still my favorite Adam Sandler movie. It kind of just changed my brain chemistry for the comedies that I liked. But Happy Gilmore was the breakout. This was the first, like, real hit that he made, and it is the movie that is probably the most quoted thing he's ever done. And it looms really large. And there's a reason that this is the movie that got a sequel some 28 years later, and not any of his other movies in this way. And him using it, he has a screenwriting credit on this movie. Using it to put all this personal stuff in alongside Benny Safdie, playing like an insanely weird, unlikable fake live tour golf villain.

• 24:06Sean Fennessey?

  Is is is actually worth like unpacking and I find this an interesting contrast to The Naked Gun. And The Naked Gun to me is clearly a better movie and a more effective movie than Happy Gilmore 2. But The Naked Gun is not as good of a movie for a podcast.

• 24:22Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 24:22Sean Fennessey?

  Because there's not a lot to say and this kind of dovetails, I think, a little bit with our relationship to movie comedies and the absence of them in recent times. We haven't had a lot of opportunity to talk about movie comedies on the show and part of that is because there's not a lot to say about movie comedies that are joke a minute, other than like, did you think that was funny? And if you didn't, where does your criticism go? And I think back all the time on the way that Roger Ebert wrote about comedies in the 90s. And that was the only time, really, with the exception of maybe some slasher movies where I was like, man, he just missed the mark. Like, he did not understand what these movies are attempting to do and how they make people happy. And so his criticism is often rooted in the fact that there's no thematic depth. And if he didn't think that they were funny, then there was nothing to say about them.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:07Sean Fennessey?

  But this movie is actually trying to do a couple of things emotionally. Now, whether they're successful or not is very debatable. But the fact that he's even trying and a movie that went from being 89 minutes to two hours and five minutes, I know pisses you off because you love a short comedy. But it is at least something that is different in addition to being a kind of a cheap sellout golf comedy remake.

• 25:32Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 25:33Sean Fennessey?

  Care to retort?

• 25:33Speaker 02

  I don't know. I think that's generous to say that these are deep themes that he is integrating from his life into the film. I think you could easily argue this was just the easiest way they could come up with a way for Happy Gilmore to be back at the bottom and have to work his way back up. Right. I don't know. I don't want to attribute it that much depth because I'm not sure that's actually the genesis of the story.

• 25:54Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know. I haven't read any interviews with Sandler about it. I it's it's unusual to me that this many members of his family are not only in this movie, but have become a part of like the Netflix original movie strategy. You know, his daughter was the star of a movie that came out last year.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  The Bat Mitzvah movie.

• 26:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, the Bat Mitzvah movie. I was very surprised. I don't maybe his wife had acted before, but I don't remember ever seeing her in a movie, her inclusion in this movie. And the fact that, you know, Sandler has this reputation as like a huge family man now.

• 26:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 26:21Sean Fennessey?

  He's kind of always making movies to kind of include his friends and family in the journey of making the stuff. That doesn't make the movie better. I'm not trying to tell you that this is good. It's not good. But it's actually kind of nice that it exists to me in a way that doesn't piss me off. And call me a hypocrite, I can certainly, I'm happy to get on here and say Jurassic World Rebirth is cynical garbage. And I'm really mad that it happened. But for whatever reason, because I have a lot of love for Sandler and the happiness that he's given me. And also the fact that I, for me personally, it does feel like he's obviously, there's something personal in the movie. Because there's something personal to him about Happy Gilmore. You guys aren't going to give me an inch on this.

• 26:57Amanda Dobbins?

  No, no, I mean, I think it's an interesting interpretation. I think you're a good podcaster.

• 27:02Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you.

• 27:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I assumed that they killed Julie Bowen off because she was only available for two days. You know, I was really only thinking.

• 27:10Sean Fennessey?

  What's she doing?

• 27:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, that's a great question. I think maybe I do know the answer to it.

• 27:15Sean Fennessey?

  She's like insanely rich from Modern Family. She doesn't have time to work on this movie.

• 27:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Maybe she didn't want to.

• 27:20Sean Fennessey?

  Julie Bowen, you guys made note of this on your podcast. In Happy Gilmore, that's important stuff. Important. That's. Did a lot, changed a lot. She changed a lot. She had a great power. Also a central character to the movie. She was. The original movie, okay.

• 27:39Sean Fennessey?

  The original movie is weird because this is something that a lot of comedy sequels get stuck in. It's about an outsider trying to break into a system. Right? A lot of golf comedies especially are about this. Caddyshack is about this. Tin Cup is about this. You know, people who are kind of, who are the like, the rebels who do things a little bit differently and are trying to subvert and infiltrate a very staid, traditional world. Happy Gilmore 2 can't work if he's just a successful golfer. So.

• 28:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 28:09Sean Fennessey?

  They go to great lengths. They kill his wife. They make him an alcoholic. They completely eliminate his ability to be successful at golf.

• 28:20Sean Fennessey?

  And then he has to work his way back, but he has to work his way back against the encroaching forces of a terrible villain.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  Well, also, why does he initially start to come back? In the first movie, the Happy Gilmore character is motivated because his beloved grandma, who raised him, her house of 60 years, which his grandfather built with his bare hands, is being foreclosed on, and he wants to save it, his childhood memory, and he needs hundreds of thousands of dollars. In this movie, his daughter wants to go to ballet school, and that's why Happy Gilmore needs to come back to golf, because he needs-

• 28:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Excuse me-

• 28:52Sean Fennessey?

  This is a guy who does not have kids.

• 28:53Speaker 02

  Seventy-five grand a year.

• 28:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, you gotta fund her art, man. There's no problem with that.

• 28:59Sean Fennessey?

  This is why, I'm like, this is a personal movie. You don't have kids.

• 29:01Amanda Dobbins?

  It's some girl dad shit, but listen, you know, he has nothing left-

• 29:06Speaker 02

  You find those are equal motivations.

• 29:08Sean Fennessey?

  Well-

• 29:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, of course.

• 29:09Sean Fennessey?

  I can't say I was profoundly moved by grandma's plight in Happy Gilmore. That wasn't the motivating interest for me to get excited about the movie.

• 29:16Amanda Dobbins?

  She didn't pay her taxes.

• 29:18Sean Fennessey?

  That's true. That's a really good point.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  She's being tortured in an old people's home.

• 29:21Sean Fennessey?

  I know.

• 29:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, yeah. I mean-

• 29:23Speaker 02

  Your fingers hurt.

• 29:25Amanda Dobbins?

  His daughter's being tortured by four idiot brothers.

• 29:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I have more issues with the construction of this movie than I do the larger thematic choices made by Sandler and his personal relationship with movie-making and his career.

• 29:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 29:37Speaker 02

  But there are no new jokes in this movie.

• 29:39Sean Fennessey?

  I agree.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  The lazy cutbacks to Happy Gilmore, one, every character is just the son of the character from the original movie. You have Chubbs' son doing the same joke with the hand. You have Eminem being the son of the heckler. He's in the movie for 75 seconds. He gets eaten by alligators immediately.

• 29:54Sean Fennessey?

  Enjoyed that.

• 29:55Speaker 02

  Boba is the son of Mr. Larson. None of these cameos even stick around long enough for them to be actual characters that can do anything. It's not a real movie. We're also ignoring the fact that the last hour of this movie is an AI Mr. Beast video about a fake golf obstacle world, and sure, you can say it's a commentary on Liv. I mean, this is just all extremely generous.

• 30:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, the thing about it being a Liv send-up, which I thought was like, if not clever, then at least I was like, oh, hey, they're doing Liv, you know? And I was like, well, okay, that's something. But aren't half the guys in the movie also on the live tour?

• 30:32Sean Fennessey?

  Bit of a flaw.

• 30:33Amanda Dobbins?

  So, yeah.

• 30:33Sean Fennessey?

  Bryson DeChambeau playing a pretty significant role.

• 30:35Amanda Dobbins?

  And when like, it like both Brooks and Bryson, Bryson moved over, right? Brooks is the Gretzky wife and the...

• 30:45Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 30:45Sean Fennessey?

  No, that's Dustin Johnson.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 30:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, okay.

• 30:49Speaker 02

  Who's not in the film.

• 30:50Sean Fennessey?

  Who's not in the film. Brooks is the like guy who looked like the Terminator. He was like an NFL linebacker coming to conquer football and then began getting injured routinely. Struggled with those injuries and gets injured in this movie.

• 31:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, right.

• 31:04Sean Fennessey?

  Which I thought was a kind of an amusing in-joke.

• 31:05Speaker 02

  Right. And Scotty Scheffler gets arrested.

• 31:07Amanda Dobbins?

  That was funny. I laughed. I chuckled at that one.

• 31:09Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know. I thought that stuff was okay. I mean, it's a little inside baseball for golf, but I didn't think it was like deplorable.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  No, no. I don't think that is either. I just, I wish it was just a normal movie and it had five cameos and they were in the whole film and they were characters in the movie that grew and changed and things happened.

• 31:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  Rather than 200 jammed in, you know, 100 minutes.

• 31:28Sean Fennessey?

  I won't defend it and yet it didn't bother me. When Margaret Qualley showed up for eight minutes, I was happy to see her. I thought that was kind of amusing.

• 31:36Speaker 02

  Again, I don't mind the choice. It's the execution.

• 31:38Sean Fennessey?

  Sure, sure.

• 31:40Speaker 02

  And Tim Harley's son is in that scene as well.

• 31:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  Who I like and think is funny.

• 31:44Sean Fennessey?

  Please don't destroy.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  And I think those guys are great.

• 31:46Sean Fennessey?

  So you're a big man.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  I'm so upset. I'm so upset.

• 31:52Sean Fennessey?

  This is kind of a perfect episode because your youth is being destroyed and now your youth is being destroyed by Hollywood.

• 31:59Speaker 02

  This movie is the maxi golf of movies. The movie is ostensibly about saving golf, but the movie itself is ruining movies.

• 32:08Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I don't disagree with him.

• 32:10Sean Fennessey?

  I was happy to see 90-year-old Jack Nicklaus give a somewhat decent performance in the film. I mean, that was impressive. He wasn't terrible.

• 32:16Speaker 02

  I thought Christopher McDonald was good. I think he's a good actor.

• 32:19Amanda Dobbins?

  I was surprised by Travis Kelsey, honestly.

• 32:22Speaker 02

  I thought he could deliver a line.

• 32:24Amanda Dobbins?

  It was better than I thought. They also gave him some really flattering lighting for the, until he had to get like punched a million times.

• 32:31Speaker 02

  He looks great.

• 32:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Bad Bunny. Bad Bunny was very funny.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Older in his career.

• 32:34Sean Fennessey?

  Bad Bunny?

• 32:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Bad Bunny is incredibly funny.

• 32:36Sean Fennessey?

  Was funny? I thought he was incredibly funny in this.

• 32:38Speaker 02

  I've always liked Bad Bunny. I think he has great comedic timing.

• 32:40Sean Fennessey?

  The thing that he does on SNL so well, he's so funny on SNL. He was, I thought he was one of the, arguably the best part of this movie.

• 32:47Speaker 02

  I actually totally agree. I think one of the best things he's ever done is with Please Don't Destroy. That short film they made of him as Shrek is hilarious. He has great comedic timing.

• 32:56Sean Fennessey?

  That same energy. So I don't know, come on. It's not bad.

• 33:00Speaker 02

  Oh, it's, I mean, it's slop.

• 33:01Amanda Dobbins?

  It's really, it's bad.

• 33:02Sean Fennessey?

  It's bad.

• 33:03Speaker 02

  And we should say it was the most viewed Netflix movie in its opening weekend ever.

• 33:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, let's just talk about why is this slop okay with you and other slop not okay with you?

• 33:12Sean Fennessey?

  I'm a complete contradictory asshole.

• 33:14Amanda Dobbins?

  That's okay. I'm not even asking you to say that. It's like, is it the emotional thing? Like you just?

• 33:21Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I dig what's, I just dig what Sandler is about. I think that what he, the way that he is like going about his career, where he's like, I'm not giving up on this stuff, but I'm also going to do Hustle because I think this filmmaker is interesting and I'm also going to do the Bombak movie.

• 33:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:34Sean Fennessey?

  That, I just think that's so cool. I think the way that he has like flexed his power is a no drama celebrity, seems to genuinely like appreciate and support his friends. I just feel like he's doing it right. And so I'm, I'm just going to be more generous towards this stuff. We don't review most of the movies that he puts on Netflix because we know that they're negligible and not very interesting and that they're just like rehashes of things he's done before. This was a movie we can't ignore because so many people are watching it and it is a sequel to a hugely important movie for all of us in some ways. The fact that you're golf pill now too makes it all the sweeter to me. It's so funny.

• 34:07Amanda Dobbins?

  I was really upset, but it's like, what are you going to do? It's just all around us. And I guess, you know, it is like pop culture at this point, more and more. And this, and like this movie is sort of like an evil tool of that as well. So in that sense, I'm bad, but I laughed. Well, I laughed at the Scotty joke. I got the Scotty joke and I laughed at it.

• 34:24Sean Fennessey?

  It's an, it's an interesting time though in golf where I think, and I talk about this with your husband all the time, three or four. Years ago, as golf fans, we were like, this is the greatest time this ever happened. Like, we don't have Tiger, but we have somewhere between nine and 14 guys who are incredible to follow on a weekly basis, let alone just the majors. And the last couple of years have been pretty juiceless. And the looming tower of Scottie is like, makes the sport a little less interesting because he's so damn good.

• 34:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Unfair to Rory.

• 34:52Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I was very happy for him.

• 34:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 34:53Sean Fennessey?

  Glad he got the monkey off his back.

• 34:54Amanda Dobbins?

  That was cinematic.

• 34:55Sean Fennessey?

  That was great stuff.

• 34:56Amanda Dobbins?

  I would like to get him longer shorts when in a seated situation.

• 35:01Sean Fennessey?

  Well, he's Irish, you know?

• 35:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, sure, I know. You know, otherwise I didn't, I thought they like, otherwise it looks great.

• 35:07Sean Fennessey?

  I just think this is kind of a funny adrenaline shot in a very quiet golf year.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. I can't believe, I'm terrified that I'm on an island.

• 35:16Sean Fennessey?

  You're not, no, no, no.

• 35:17Amanda Dobbins?

  No, no, no, no.

• 35:18Sean Fennessey?

  The reviews of this movie are rough.

• 35:20Speaker 02

  I know, I know Rotten Tomatoes is not, we don't really care about Rotten Tomatoes, but the scores are pretty close to the original. The whatever.

• 35:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I mean, no, no, we can't do it. We can't do it. You can't, you can't do it.

• 35:32Speaker 02

  The fan rating is higher for Happy.

• 35:33Sean Fennessey?

  Dumb comedy is made for teenagers. Like, you can't even look at the

• 35:36Amanda Dobbins?

  You can't.

• 35:36Sean Fennessey?

  The scores.

• 35:37Amanda Dobbins?

  You can't.

• 35:37Sean Fennessey?

  It doesn't really mean anything.

• 35:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Think about who's clicking the tomato, you know?

• 35:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 35:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, no, just it doesn't, it doesn't matter.

• 35:43Sean Fennessey?

  I listened to the No Laying Up guys talking about this movie. They did like 15 minutes at the end of an episode earlier this week.

• 35:49Amanda Dobbins?

  They were not in.

• 35:50Sean Fennessey?

  They did not like it. They weren't in it.

• 35:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 35:53Sean Fennessey?

  I think Neil was it, had like a very small cameo, but Neil wasn't talking about the movie. And they really thought it was bad, like really bad. And they did not cotton to any of the golf contemporary culture stuff. And they more, they didn't have the same sense of, I don't, I don't, I don't know, emotional rejection that you feel around the movie. Yeah.

• 36:12Speaker 02

  This is apocalyptic to me.

• 36:15Sean Fennessey?

  So funny to me. It's so nice to be, you know, relieved of this burden where someone has to be this person on the podcast.

• 36:24Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think it's good, and yet I didn't hate it. I didn't hate it. And I feel okay saying that.

• 36:28Speaker 02

  The last hour of the movie, the first hour I thought was bad. I texted my friend, he said, just wait. The last hour of this movie is really AI slop. It is, there are ATVs and purple smoke and CGI, AI. Haley Joel Osment, why is he the villain in this movie? And they're spinning around like they're at a carnival hitting the ball.

• 36:53Sean Fennessey?

  How do you feel about the hip surgery as a way to make guys super golfers?

• 36:58Speaker 02

  Horrible.

• 36:59Sean Fennessey?

  I thought that was amusing.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  You enjoyed seeing him spin around like a demon looking at Happy Gilmore?

• 37:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I thought it was funny.

• 37:05Speaker 02

  The final scene of this film is Bad Bunny and Happy Gilmore on a spinning top of a green.

• 37:12Amanda Dobbins?

  That did look quite bad.

• 37:13Speaker 02

  Trying to make a putt.

• 37:14Amanda Dobbins?

  I did start online shopping during that.

• 37:16Sean Fennessey?

  Thought it was amusing. You guys seen Caddyshack? These movies are not fucking sophisticated. This is not Casablanca. It's Happy Gilmore sequel.

• 37:26Sean Fennessey?

  It's very funny to watch people feel have their youths attacked by contemporary movies. This is like a trend that has been happening for about 20 years now. It's not going to stop anytime soon. And now it's time for a new segment crafted for cravings presented by Starbucks.

• 37:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Some things just hit different in summer. Big screen blockbusters and refreshing Starbucks drinks both top the list.

• 37:46Sean Fennessey?

  And while Starbucks' summer beverages always deliver, the film offerings may vary. Let's talk about a few summer movies that really tickled our fancy this year. F1 springs to mind, an incredible adrenaline rush. What did you think about that movie?

• 37:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Very fast.

• 37:58Sean Fennessey?

  Very fast.

• 37:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Very exciting. Biggest screen possible. Like, you know, a summer event, the classic, classic summer tent pole that we were in for.

• 38:06Sean Fennessey?

  Throwback, a great star performance from Brad Pitt and a lot of fun to see on a big screen. What about Superman?

• 38:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I was, I liked this. I did. We liked it. And I think the further we get from it, the more we were like, hmm, okay. That really kind of did work, didn't it?

• 38:21Sean Fennessey?

  It really worked well. It was kind of the tent pole franchise movie of the summer for me personally. Really love the cast, David Cornsweat, Nicholas Holt, Rachel Brosnahan, all turning in great performances. And then 28 years later, which I guess is sort of a surprise as a summer blockbuster, but is one of the best movies of the year so far.

• 38:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, I don't think that we expected it to be as good as it was, even though it was a return of Danny Boyle, Alex Garland, actors we like, and Jodie Comer, and Aaron Taylor Johnson. So we knew it was going to be good, but I don't think we like expected to start crying.

• 38:56Sean Fennessey?

  We were crying. Yeah. We were crying. In a good way. It was a beautiful story about, yeah, about love and, and childhood. Sure. And coming of age and viruses. And bones. And it was, it was wonderful. And there was a, there was a bone temple. Yeah. And that was extraordinary. If there's one thing you can rely on to hit the spot this summer, it's Starbucks summer beverages. Try cooling off with a new Strato Frappuccino blended beverage. It's a crave worthy ice blended beverage topped with creamy cold foam, making for delicious layers of silky flavor. Available for a limited time only. Your Strato Frappuccino blended beverage is ready at Starbucks. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Ads. Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first, but didn't live up to the hype? Marketers know that feeling. They optimize for the numbers that look great. Impressions, reach and reacts.

• 39:41Sean Fennessey?

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• 40:17Speaker 04

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• 41:30Sean Fennessey?

  Let's pivot to The Naked Gun again.

• 41:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 41:31Sean Fennessey?

  This is a really, really interesting text because this is a theatrical movie. It's not a streaming movie. It is directed by, I think, one of the very few good comedy directors of the last 10 or 15 years, Akiva Schaffer, who is one-third of The Lonely Island.

• 41:44Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 41:44Sean Fennessey?

  Who directed Pop Star, he directed Hot Rod.

• 41:47Speaker 04

  Both great underrated movies.

• 41:48Sean Fennessey?

  Great comedies from the last 10 years. This is the fourth film in the Naked Gun franchise, which was originally spun out from the Police Squad TV series starring Leslie Nielsen. This new movie stars Liam Neeson, Pamela Anderson, Paul Walter Hauser, Kevin Durant, and Danny Huston. Helpful note here, 85-minute runtime.

• 42:06Amanda Dobbins?

  It was unreal.

• 42:07Sean Fennessey?

  Dramatic difference between the two hours and nine minutes of Happy Gilmore 2. Here's the story. Following in the footsteps of his bumbling father, Detective Frank Drebin must solve a murder case to prevent the police department from shutting down. Amanda, I'll start with you. I just want to know your relationship to The Naked Gun because we've never talked about these movies on the show.

• 42:23Amanda Dobbins?

  I have seen the original, not the sequels, but it was not like on a, on a repeat in my house. So I guess I have like generational reference point and some of the jokes like live outside of the movie at this point. So I'm, I'm not un-conversant, but it's not like Happy Gilmore.

• 42:42Sean Fennessey?

  Not a cortex.

• 42:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Or Billy Madison or, or, you know, Tommy Boy or any of those.

• 42:45Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. That's good to know. What about for you?

• 42:47Speaker 02

  I've seen it a couple of times. I, I love it. I, I'm a fan of all of that kind of spoof genre from the seventies and eighties, the airplanes, all of the Mel Brooks movies.

• 42:57Speaker 02

  I think these are just like classic joke writing films. And that is something that has basically disappeared since, I don't know. I think there's, there's elements of that in the Austin Powers movies a little bit, but it's largely been gone, I think, for the last two decades.

• 43:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, this is, at the time when it was released, a style of movie that was very common. And Zucker Abrams, who made Airplane, are behind these movies, and they made movies like Top Secret and The Spoof, The Joke a Minute Spoof, I was also raised on. These movies predate Happy Gilmore a little bit, but not too much. I remember seeing Naked Gun 33 and a third.

• 43:38Speaker 02

  They feel very far apart. Naked Gun's 88, Happy Gilmore's 96, they feel 15 years apart.

• 43:44Sean Fennessey?

  They do, but the sequels were in the 90s.

• 43:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:48Sean Fennessey?

  I love these movies. I don't think I have the same emotional connection to them that I did to the Sandler stuff, or Tommy Boy, or even Austin Powers. But they're not sacred texts in any way. You know, I was just listening to Seth MacFarlane on The Town, and he made a very interesting point. He's the producer of this movie.

• 44:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 44:07Sean Fennessey?

  That the one thing that was really important to him when having conversations at the studios is you have to cast real actors to execute on these spoof movies. You can't cast comedians, because the whole point is that they have to deliver the material straight. Because this is a spoof of a hard-boiled cop noir.

• 44:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, procedurals.

• 44:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's what these are, 50s, 60s movies, like, you know, the big heat. And I like this new movie. I think it's funny. I wish it was like 20% funnier. And I don't think that that's like a damning criticism, but when the whole premise of the movie is joke a minute, and every other joke hits, I felt, maybe my expectations were too high. Because we saw the trailer at CinemaCon.

• 44:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, yeah.

• 44:54Sean Fennessey?

  And I was like, fuck, hell, yes.

• 44:55Amanda Dobbins?

  I'd like to talk about the trailer. Because...

• 44:57Sean Fennessey?

  Because a lot of the jokes are in the trailer.

• 44:59Amanda Dobbins?

  The trailer has half the jokes.

• 45:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 45:00Amanda Dobbins?

  And it's a real, and that's a problem just in terms of like, the number of jokes that it indicates, but also because you have spoiled half of the jokes, including like the opening quote-unquote set piece. In the trailer.

• 45:12Speaker 02

  It's true. It's a tricky part with theatrical movies now because you're kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't, where you need to show people at home that it's funny and it's worth getting out of your chair to drive in to see the movie. But then also you don't want them to sit down, watch the movie and be like, oh, all the funny moments are in the trailer.

• 45:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and I completely, I basically agree with every review of this movie that is like, thank God theatrical comedies are back because I want them to and we can talk about what's happened in the last 20 years or so. And I want this movie to succeed and I think Liam Neeson is pretty good.

• 45:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 45:39Sean Fennessey?

  Pamela Anderson is very game.

• 45:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:41Sean Fennessey?

  Um, for the most part, like it works, you know, the plot works. I thought Danny Houston was the absolute MVP of the movie. I thought he was very, very funny as a villain.

• 45:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Also, I mean, how many Elon Mosks have we had in movies just this summer at this point? I thought like at least three, I think.

• 45:54Sean Fennessey?

  It's the most dependable villain style right now. Um, and so I dug it. We can talk about some of the gags that really work and are funny to us. Um, it's a little bit hard to explore beyond like, did you think it was funny? Did you think it was funny?

• 46:07Speaker 02

  Thought it was really funny. I thought it was a great time.

• 46:08Amanda Dobbins?

  You chuckled.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I was, I think I was even, I watched it with Amanda. I think I was even suppressing my laughter a little bit because I didn't want her to think I was laughing at really stupid jokes, but I was inside.

• 46:20Amanda Dobbins?

  First of all, I never would have judged you. Like you did chuckle. You like, I did notice you chuckling, but you were more reserved. I was like, oh, interesting. Craig's not like a laugh out loud kind of. We were also seated next to two people who were loving it, laughing at every single thing. And the room was pretty good, I thought.

• 46:37Speaker 02

  I, I, the theater had a great time.

• 46:38Sean Fennessey?

  This is a huge part of whether or not this movie's gonna work.

• 46:41Speaker 02

  Did you see it in a full theater?

• 46:42Sean Fennessey?

  I saw it at the same theater that Matt, uh, saw it in, which was a very big room at the studio. And I would say it was not as raucous as you would have wanted it to be. And I have a lot of fond memories in the 2000s of going to see all these movies.

• 46:55Speaker 02

  Sure, yeah.

• 46:55Sean Fennessey?

  And, you know, seeing, seeing The Hangover, regardless of how you feel about The Hangover, seeing The Hangover when it came out.

• 47:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:00Sean Fennessey?

  In a movie theater on Friday night, insane.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  Anarchy, yeah.

• 47:03Sean Fennessey?

  It was like, it was like being at a Kendrick Lamar concert. I mean, people were losing their shit. So I didn't quite get that. It was also a very big theater.

• 47:12Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 47:13Sean Fennessey?

  You actually kind of want to be in a small movie theater for a movie like this.

• 47:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:16Sean Fennessey?

  Because then the, the laughter gets more infectious and I didn't have as much of it. So maybe that kind of dimmed some of my enthusiasm for it. I, I, I definitely thought it was funny and effective and it works. I just, one, I'm a little bit cautious about people being like, this movie is fantastic. I'm like, it's good. It's a good spoof comedy and nothing more than that. And overpromising, I think maybe does the movie a disservice. But also I desperately need. Somewhere between seven and 14 of these a year. And I do not understand why we don't have them. I've heard the excuses and I've heard the explanations around.

• 47:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:49Sean Fennessey?

  It's expensive and it's harder to get people in the theater and streaming. And we can talk through some of those things, but like, I sent you a list of movie comedies released this year. It's dire.

• 47:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 47:59Sean Fennessey?

  It is absolutely terrible. Okay, so before we get too far down the road of that, what else like popped out to you about The Naked Gun? Or what did you enjoy about it?

• 48:08Speaker 02

  I thought this is the right way to honor IP, where you keep the style, but you make it your own.

• 48:12Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 48:13Speaker 02

  There were minimal callbacks to the original. There were some that were funny, but they largely made their own jokes in the same style. It's just nice to know that this is still possible, that there are writers who can still do this, that there are actors and directors who can still pull this off.

• 48:28Speaker 02

  I just found it to be a very easy, fun time at the movies. It's 85 minutes. The theater, I thought the theater was pretty lively.

• 48:34Amanda Dobbins?

  It was.

• 48:35Speaker 02

  And had a great time.

• 48:37Amanda Dobbins?

  You could have laughed more than I would have laughed more too.

• 48:39Speaker 02

  I thought it was well cast. I think it's gonna be, I don't know if young people are gonna see this movie. I think they maybe should have tried to cast somebody in the Liza Koshy role. Give her a bigger part and maybe a slightly bigger star. To just try to expand the net for audiences, just to.

• 48:54Sean Fennessey?

  You pointed this out on the town that there's no young person draw in the movie, which is an interesting choice to have two, basically two 60 year olds be the leads of this theatrical comedy. But does that say more about who the movie is trying to appeal to?

• 49:07Speaker 02

  Certainly.

• 49:07Sean Fennessey?

  Is it trying to get the 40 and 50 year olds into the movie theater more so than the 20 and 30 year olds?

• 49:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I think so. Anecdotally, I have like a lot of 40 year old peers who are like, oh, I can't wait to see that. People who don't go to every single movie theater, but they remember it. So maybe, I don't know, they've maybe at least identified their audience.

• 49:26Speaker 02

  It's also a movie, this style of comedy is well suited for now, for 2025. The joke a minute, fast paced, attention.

• 49:32Amanda Dobbins?

  I want to talk about that a little, because I like, I did think it was funny and I like the joke a minute structure. I, watching it was remarking on how topical a lot of it was, how like. Twenty twenty five, like just a lot of recent references, which in the moment works now. But you know, you do wonder whether like three, six, you know, nine months, like five years from now. And maybe like they're not going for shelf life. I also listened to you guys talking to Seth MacFarlane on the way here. And the thing he said to me that was, that was to me both interesting and sort of chilling was like, most people now experience this type of comedy in like adult animated comedies.

• 50:12Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 50:13Amanda Dobbins?

  But there is something to that where, you know, topical, very fast humor is just, it like it's a volume thing, you know, and a, and a thing that's supposed to live on, um, on a streaming service. So you can dial it up whenever you want. So I don't know whether, I guess it's harder to, there's a reason that it's not in movies as much. Because, um, it's not what you return to 45 times. You just do another one.

• 50:44Sean Fennessey?

  It is pretty consistent with the original Naked Gun movies. Like I, in my head, I have a memory, a strong memory of seeing, there's a pointed crying game joke in Naked Gun three.

• 50:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm.

• 50:56Sean Fennessey?

  That is like very tasteless in the movie, um, but is like such a early nineties movie reference that like watching it now, any 20 year old would be like, what? I don't even understand. I mean, I get what the, what the joke of the character is, but I don't know what it's a reference to. So it's not out of fashion per se. It might mean that the movie doesn't age super well. I don't think, you know, these movies, the idea then was get, get asses in seats in theaters. And that's the idea now for this movie is to get asses in, in seats in theaters. I mean, a couple of things that I really liked in it. My favorite part was the, the love montage where. The snowman.

• 51:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, the snowman. Oh, that's really good.

• 51:31Sean Fennessey?

  You know, I don't want to ruin that for anybody. Not on the trailer.

• 51:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Really funny.

• 51:34Sean Fennessey?

  I thought it was really funny and really well done. And like, to me, classic Lonely Island, like hyper absurdist. Musically oriented, um, just a very funny, tight sketch idea inside of the movie that I really laughed at.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  And apparently it was almost cut.

• 51:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I'm glad they didn't do that.

• 51:51Speaker 02

  And they wanted to replace it with something more, uh, similar to the montage from the original.

• 51:56Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, interesting. Okay. Um, I thought, even though this was spoiled, Frank Drebin Jr.'s body cam story and getting really sick in the car because of the food that he eats is gross, but like so naked gun, like perfectly naked gun. I really wish I didn't know anything about that sequence because I really would have loved it.

• 52:18Sean Fennessey?

  I also, the hardest I laughed in the whole movie was near the end when there's a showdown between Neeson and Danny Houston and Neeson punches Danny Houston in the stomach and his reaction.

• 52:32Sean Fennessey?

  What Danny Houston says and how he responds to it is dumb and beautiful and why I will always watch a movie like this. Any other moments or memorable gags that you guys liked?

• 52:43Speaker 02

  Uh, I love when they have Kevin Durant in the fake hospital and then the door, all the walls fall and they get him to admit to the crime. And then they ask Liam Neeson, Frank Drebin Jr., how he was able to do this.

• 52:57Speaker 02

  And then those doors, those walls fall down and they catch him and then it happens again to Elijah Kosch. It's great.

• 53:02Sean Fennessey?

  That part was very funny too. Great, great little Mission Impossible Fallout call out for us, Amanda.

• 53:07Amanda Dobbins?

  I enjoyed, I thought Pamela Anderson really was very funny.

• 53:10Sean Fennessey?

  She was.

• 53:10Amanda Dobbins?

  And very game and like the jazz stuff was pretty funny, but, um, the, the taking the chair is just like really stupid. And like, you know, and keeps, it's really funny.

• 53:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, there's a lot of good moments like this and memorable stuff. And, you know, to the point you were making about Happy Gilmore 2, this is another movie that when you just put the joke on X.com in six months, it's going to be funny. You know, it's like this movie can also be kind of pulled apart and dissected and. I'm glad it exists and I'm glad that Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson have found love together in real life.

• 53:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 53:41Sean Fennessey?

  How wonderful for them.

• 53:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I immediately thought it was a bit, leading up to the release of this movie, which-

• 53:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, we can't know, you know?

• 53:47Sean Fennessey?

  So you think this is a stunt?

• 53:50Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't think it's a stunt, no. I often feel this is, this does not apply to Tom Cruise and Anadarmus, which if you'd like to talk about that, Craig, we can. I know that's material, but everyone else, it's like, I think that there probably is something romantic going on. I do think they also just have to be in the same place, like, a lot right now and have for the last six to nine months. So I don't think it's a, you know, like a normal, like a civilian relationship, but I believe it, you know, we'll check in in a year.

• 54:20Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 54:21Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, but that doesn't mean it's fake.

• 54:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:23Sean Fennessey?

  You believe in their love?

• 54:25Speaker 02

  Sure, I don't want to yuck anyone's yum.

• 54:27Sean Fennessey?

  Good, okay, that's nice. I hope they're both very happy. Um, are people gonna go see this movie?

• 54:33Speaker 02

  Um, well, the tracking was, I think, around 20 million?

• 54:36Sean Fennessey?

  That's pretty good.

• 54:37Speaker 02

  It is good. What was the budget? Do we know?

• 54:38Sean Fennessey?

  I think it was 42 million.

• 54:41Speaker 02

  Um, I don't know. I mean, young people go to movie theaters and old people are the ones that kind of don't.

• 54:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 54:48Speaker 02

  So-

• 54:49Sean Fennessey?

  It's true.

• 54:50Speaker 02

  This will be a good test, you know, people like my parents, often when movies come out that they want to see, the number one thing I hear from them, I'll just wait until it comes out on the street.

• 54:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 54:58Speaker 02

  I do think this movie, and this is a problem with comedies in general that we can get into, it is very hard to make them feel theatrical.

• 55:05Sean Fennessey?

  This is a really fun movie theater-going weekend. In addition to, you know, you've got second weekend of Fantastic Four, you've got Together, the new horror movie with Dave Franco and Alison Brie, which I liked, and you've got The Bad Guys 2, which is an animated hit, is getting a sequel that I'll be seeing with my daughter on Saturday.

• 55:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, that's cute.

• 55:23Sean Fennessey?

  So, to me, this weekend at the movies, like, looks like what I remember.

• 55:30Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 55:30Sean Fennessey?

  You know?

• 55:31Speaker 02

  Something for everybody.

• 55:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. It's spread out. All three of these movies are pretty good. I assume Bad Guys 2 is good. It's gotten good reviews so far. And there's not a $180 million movie that needs to make $700 million for it to break even, and we don't have to have that discourse. And everything can just be, like, pretty good and you can have a nice time and then go home. And I hope, I hope they all win. I hope everybody has a lot of fun. I don't, my one thing with this is, like-

• 55:58Sean Fennessey?

  It's not necessarily guilty of any of the legacy sequel stuff that we whinge about. It doesn't commit any of those sins. But it is still not original.

• 56:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:10Sean Fennessey?

  And it is still using the exact same structure, which works in its favor, and the exact same style. In fact, an actor with the initials L N is the star of this movie. And I don't feel bad about it, but I would have preferred ultimately an original comedy from a strong writer-director and an exciting new comedy star. And this is kind of the opposite of that. So it's not a crisis. It's exciting that it's here. I, my concern is that if it is successful, that the takeaway will be we should make a new Top Secret, and we should make a new Hot Shots, and we should make a new, we should only, we should just remake funny spoof movies

• 56:55Sean Fennessey?

  and just only do those and not give exciting comedy voices a chance. And I know that there's some conflict there too, because some comedians, you know, Bill was talking about this with Matt on his show recently. Why would Shane Gillis want to make a $40 million movie comedy when he could bank half a million dollars over a long weekend on a tour?

• 57:13Speaker 02

  Right.

• 57:13Sean Fennessey?

  I get it.

• 57:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 57:14Speaker 02

  Spending one to two years developing a movie, getting notes from studio executives, risking the movie being terrible and flopping, or he can just go on tour, have a podcast, make his own TV show,

• 57:28Speaker 02

  and make more money.

• 57:28Sean Fennessey?

  It's completely logical, and yet, obviously, this is a movie podcast and me favorite movies, but there is still something about being minted in a movie that is unlike anything else. If you make sinners,

• 57:42Sean Fennessey?

  people will never forget. You will be able to say for the rest of your life, I was a part of something that was a phenomenon that touched so many people and had a kind of mass cultural expansion. So I do, I'm, I feel like it's gonna swing back.

• 57:55Speaker 02

  You do.

• 57:55Sean Fennessey?

  I do. I-

• 57:57Speaker 02

  Do you?

• 57:58Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I don't know, because I, I never believed that the, the right lessons will be taken from this. And I, like, I, I had a perfectly nice time at the Nick again. I thought it was pretty funny. Like, once we stop recording, I will quite literally never think about it again. Uh, and so I, I worry that many people will be like-

• 58:23Amanda Dobbins?

  People will go, people will see it, people will have a nice time. And then the lesson will be, let's just do like refillable things that you don't ever have to think about again, instead of making something original, something worthwhile, something that because that is, that is a lot harder. There are a lot of uncertainties. There are a lot of things that don't hit and the theater business is not in, or the studios are not favoring like taking any sort of risk. So.

• 58:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, unfortunately, I think comedy movies are no longer the cultural center of humor. And if I asked you to tell me your favorite comedy quote from the 2020s from a movie, I bet you couldn't even give me one. However, if I said, name 10 memes right now from the last five years. Oh, kombucha girl, Homer Simpson going back into the hedges, Jennifer Lawrence saying, what do you mean on hot ones? That's how people speak in memes now. I mean,

• 59:18Amanda Dobbins?

  What's kombucha girl?

• 59:19Speaker 02

  You know, the kombucha girl meme?

• 59:21Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 59:21Sean Fennessey?

  The one where like.

• 59:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, it's she's having kombucha. I know her. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 59:27Speaker 02

  There's a Paul Rudd on hot ones. Look at us.

• 59:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 59:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 59:30Speaker 02

  That is how we speak. Now, those are the jokes that even on the fantasy show, when we tried to relate to the audience or come up with a reference that makes, that applies to whatever we're talking about, we usually speak in memes, however, which is just horrific. However.

• 59:44Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know. There's, there's, you know, you, there's art everywhere. If you look for it.

• 59:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:48Sean Fennessey?

  Look at you, Andy Warhol over here.

• 59:50Speaker 02

  It's why I'm nervous.

• 59:51Amanda Dobbins?

  I know.

• 59:52Speaker 02

  Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg run the town and Seth was saying that he thinks all it's going to take is one big smash comedy hit to kind of revive the genre. I don't know if I, I agree. I think one smash hit could come, do really well. And I don't, I don't know if that means others will follow because I just inherently think it has become so splintered and niche now, people's interests in comedy. And it used to be all you had was, oh, it's 2005. We have the 40 year old version. We're going to go, even if this isn't exactly what I want, or tailored to me, or whatever, we are all going to communally have a relationship and interact with this movie. And now it's like, there are 10 TikTok people on reels, on TikTok or whatever, that give me my exact brand of humor that I love.

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  And so why would I need to drive and spend $30 at the movies for a movie that might not even be for me?

• 1:00:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you guys ever think about dying? Is a line from a studio comedy of the 2020s. So.

• 1:00:46Speaker 02

  Oh, what is that from?

• 1:00:48Amanda Dobbins?

  The most successful movie of 2023.

• 1:00:50Sean Fennessey?

  It's called Barbie.

• 1:00:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah. Weird Barbie.

• 1:00:54Speaker 02

  Barbie's a great example.

• 1:00:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Screaming about cellulite.

• 1:00:56Speaker 02

  Of something that we're not doing is putting big stars in.

• 1:00:59Amanda Dobbins?

  My job is beach.

• 1:01:00Speaker 02

  And having good directors with good writers make them and then supporting them. Barbie's the only one.

• 1:01:07Speaker 02

  Cause I agree, that's obviously a huge hit, but that is, I mean, that's a little bit of a, I mean, that is massive IP.

• 1:01:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:11Speaker 02

  So it's in a different bucket a little bit, but I loved Barbie and I think it is fantastic.

• 1:01:15Sean Fennessey?

  It's just a great example of how you need to kind of game the system in 2025. You need to be able to locate material that can get made and find a way to elevate it. Now, The Naked Gun, I would say, doesn't elevate it. It does a really good job of replicating it. Barbie was an elevation of something that we didn't think was possible because there's just so many talented people applied against it. I still would have preferred an original Greta Gerwig movie, to be honest with you.

• 1:01:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:01:37Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know if she could have gotten one of those made at that scale with those stars.

• 1:01:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Number three on my Greta Gerwig list.

• 1:01:42Sean Fennessey?

  Right, exactly. So I, it's such an interesting thing because one, everything in Hollywood is cyclical. Everything always comes back. There, there are nine genres. They all have moments that circle back over the 120 year history. So I do think that there's a version of this that can happen. The person that is the most important person of this century in movie comedy is Judd Apatow. For a variety of reasons, obviously he had an enormous success, but when you look at the origins of his career, started out as a stand-up comedian, working alongside Adam Sandler, then became a writer to the stars, wrote for stand-up comics, then went into the salt mines of television, working with Ben Stiller, working with Gary Shandling, learning about the inside of the business slowly, slowly, slowly, develops into more of a writer-producer who identifies talent and helps build talent up.

• 1:02:27Sean Fennessey?

  And he became a kind of Svengali.

• 1:02:30Sean Fennessey?

  We need someone like that. To me, it's not one hit. One hit, I don't think will change everything. We need a person who is a change, a culture-changing person. He also, you know, was happening alongside Todd Phillips and Adam McKay and a number of other voices who were, you know, crucial to this new generation of people. But Apatow was the one who was like, he was the 800-pound gorilla. And we don't have one right now. And I don't know if we can have one. It was interesting to hear Seth talk about the fact that Seth MacFarlane talked about the fact that he just can't get a movie made that he wants to get made. And he has been one of the money factories of American comedy for the last 25 years. The shit that he created 20 years ago still has an audience and is successful. Whether or not the people who helped do this are also responsible for its downfall,

• 1:03:14Sean Fennessey?

  whether or not, like, Family Guy's success led to a smaller theatrical stake, I guess you could argue that. But I, and I don't have any picks for who this person is, because I don't know enough about who is at the bottom and wants to go to this place. But like, even two years ago, you might have been like, oh, Quinta Brunson, she's interesting. She created Abbott Elementary, she's got the requisite experience, she has a kind of like, bigger things in front of her. But I don't, I don't get the impression that she wants to like, take over. I think she wants to do her stuff and that's it. I think you need a kind of unhealthy ambition to shift, to force the industry to make a change like this. So I don't want to be doom and gloom about it, but I, I hope that something like this comes along soon, because I, we're hungry for it, you know? And I don't think

• 1:03:59Sean Fennessey?

  you need to sacrifice memes at the altar of a movie. We can have both. There's no reason why we can't have both. Like, we always think of these things in binary. Well, it's like, well, and people only like things like this now. I just don't think that's true, you know? I, I think that there's a way to have both things at the same time, the same way there can be a successful comedy TV show, which we also don't have a lot of at the moment. So I think you've just got to keep banging the drum.

• 1:04:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I agree with everything you're saying. I don't know where that person's going to come from. I think in the 90s and 2000s, I think you had these kind of natural pipelines of talent. I think scarcity drives demand where SNL and stand-up were kind of the only places where you could identify talent and put them in a movie. And also, it was the only thing that people at home could watch. And so it was like, oh, we all like this guy, Will Ferrell. We all like this guy. It's saying like he's in a movie now. SNL, which I love dearly, does not have that same cultural cachet, even though it's still doing quite well. There's just so many other ways to have, to consume comedy and humor. There are so many funny people out there. I don't know how you're going to be able to find

• 1:05:04Speaker 02

  five of them and build your Apatow universe and put these people in movies. And I, like, an example I always think about is like, I was watching The Forty Year Old Virgin two weeks ago with some friends on a trip. The movie is still very funny. I think it holds up in most ways. But the humor itself, I'm kind of like, I see this humor online a lot. Like, they're, like, somebody like Veronica is cool. I don't know if you know who that is. She's the love interest in tires. She's hilarious. She has a TikTok channel. She's great. She's making tons of jokes. I think she has great comedic timing. There's 30 of those people online. And so I'm just like, I don't know if people need to go to a movie to get that

• 1:05:45Speaker 02

  feeling anymore because it's everywhere and people are doing it at a very high level. They're just making it on their own.

• 1:05:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I'm kind of with him, you know.

• 1:05:54Speaker 02

  I don't think comedy is bad now. I think there's great comedy. There's almost too much of it. It's everywhere and it's personal.

• 1:05:58Amanda Dobbins?

  But it's, yeah, it's not, it's not scripted. It's not in movies and it's not really in TV either, which I think is like a important point.

• 1:06:05Sean Fennessey?

  So the point that you're making then, the movies that have been successful in the last five to 10 years have been eventized, right? Large premium format, action movies or horror, which is like, you have to have a mo, there's a moment, an experience you're having you can't have anywhere else. Even though you can get comedy in all of these places, I do think that there is a communal experience that is lost that is really fun with comedies. You know, like you guys are talking about that, that screaming of Naked Gun, like you can get it at a stand-up comedy show, but otherwise, you can't get it looking at your phone. I just think. I think it's incumbent on studios to try to make hay of this because when a movie like this takes off, it's very profitable. Like, these movies don't cost $250 million to make. And me continuing to hear like, "Well, the financial incentives are not there for a movie

• 1:06:48Sean Fennessey?

  like this," makes no sense. Like, the budget is gonna be significantly smaller on a movie like this than on any other genre except for horror. And, so I, I don't know. I guess I'm just flummoxed. I asked you to do an exercise. I asked you to pick what you thought were the 10 most significant movie comedies of the last 25 years.

• 1:07:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:11Sean Fennessey?

  How did you feel about this?

• 1:07:13Speaker 02

  It was an extremely fun exercise. I had a tough time whittling it down to 10.

• 1:07:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:17Speaker 02

  And I'll read you my 10. It might be colored by the fact that I'm a 30-year-old white guy, so I don't know.

• 1:07:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, did you, like, what was your methodology here?

• 1:07:24Speaker 02

  Well, Sean gave me kind of a prompt, which, if I, it was like significance, staying power.

• 1:07:32Sean Fennessey?

  Success.

• 1:07:32Speaker 02

  Success. So I kind of tried to boil that all together. And then he also said just also personally what you love. So in no particular order, my top 10: Anchorman, Superbad, The Hangover, Forty Year Old Virgin, Talladega Nights, Wedding Crashers, Bridesmaids, Stepbrothers, Meet the Parents, and Mean Girls.

• 1:07:52Sean Fennessey?

  It's a very 30-year-old white guy list.

• 1:07:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I was, I was very nervous until that, that you weren't gonna say Mean Girls. You saved that one for last, but that one, you know, is important.

• 1:08:03Sean Fennessey?

  I would probably add Girl Trip to that.

• 1:08:07Amanda Dobbins?

  That's also one of, yeah.

• 1:08:09Sean Fennessey?

  I guess you could add Barbie, just in an effort to continue to widen the aperture of who gets to participate in movie comedies. I'm sure there are some other, 21 Jump Street comes to mind.

• 1:08:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:20Sean Fennessey?

  Movie I like.

• 1:08:22Speaker 02

  I, yeah. Personally, I feel like the staying power of that movie has not stuck around as similarly as movies like.

• 1:08:30Speaker 02

  I don't know, Superbad, Hangover, Forty Year Virgin.

• 1:08:32Sean Fennessey?

  Game Night?

• 1:08:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:33Speaker 02

  Love Game Night.

• 1:08:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Really good.

• 1:08:34Speaker 02

  But I don't know if it stuck around.

• 1:08:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Later, I agree. I would put Zoolander on the list, but that's a personal.

• 1:08:39Speaker 02

  Thought about it.

• 1:08:39Amanda Dobbins?

  That's a generational thing. Did you have a trailer, like a fake trailer at the beginning of your screening starring Liam Neeson?

• 1:08:47Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:08:47Amanda Dobbins?

  So, oh, we, so we did. I guess spoiler alert if you are going to see Naked Gun and don't want a joke spoiled for you. Before the film, they did like a, basically like a Save the Children commercial, but it was like, Save the Comedy, and it's Liam Neeson, direct to screen, being like, every time you buy a movie ticket, like, a comedy is saved. And then they did honor like a bunch of other movies. Zoolander was in it, Clueless, they like, they had to go back about like 30 years to really get like the full breadth, but it was about like, buy a movie ticket, like, see a comedy.

• 1:09:22Sean Fennessey?

  That's very funny.

• 1:09:22Amanda Dobbins?

  It was very, very funny. And then at the very end, they list like, you know, like, in the way that like, here are some other organizations you can donate to, like, just like a bunch of, a bunch of comedies. I think everything, I don't know whether Meet the Parents was on that list.

• 1:09:37Speaker 02

  It was.

• 1:09:37Amanda Dobbins?

  It was, okay, you noted. All right, so were all of your movies represented?

• 1:09:41Speaker 02

  Um, most of them. The only other movie I thought about adding was Ocean's Eleven. Are we count, do we count that as a comedy?

• 1:09:47Amanda Dobbins?

  It's funny, but no, but I like, but I like where your heart is.

• 1:09:50Sean Fennessey?

  Um, yeah, I mean, I'm looking at a list of the highest grossing live action comedies of all time, and I think this tells you the tale of why we don't get a lot of comedies in the vein that we're describing. Number one is Barbie, number two is Deadpool and Wolverine, number three is a movie called Hi Mom, which is a Chinese comedy film that made 840 million dollars. Number four is Deadpool Two, number five is Deadpool, number six is Detective Chinatown Three, also a Chinese movie, number seven is Men in Black Three, number eight is Men in Black, and number nine is The Hangover Part Two, number 10 is The Mermaid, another Chinese film.

• 1:10:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:10:21Speaker 02

  Uh. So the only pure original comedy there is Hangover.

• 1:10:24Sean Fennessey?

  Right below that at number 11 is Ted.

• 1:10:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:26Sean Fennessey?

  Which I would say is another movie that belongs on the list.

• 1:10:29Speaker 02

  I thought about it.

• 1:10:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Which was really funny.

• 1:10:30Sean Fennessey?

  It's a funny movie.

• 1:10:31Speaker 02

  I think that's the loudest theater I've ever been in.

• 1:10:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:33Speaker 02

  Was the first Ted.

• 1:10:35Sean Fennessey?

  That movie.

• 1:10:35Speaker 02

  Which made like 500 million dollars.

• 1:10:36Sean Fennessey?

  Which I didn't love.

• 1:10:38Speaker 02

  I enjoyed.

• 1:10:38Amanda Dobbins?

  But it's funny.

• 1:10:39Speaker 02

  Oh, I think, that came out when?

• 1:10:41Sean Fennessey?

  2012.

• 1:10:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was a teenager, it, I mean, it hit home. We loved it.

• 1:10:47Sean Fennessey?

  It's a big movie. Uh, that show was pretty funny, too, the new Ted TV show that no one has seen.

• 1:10:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:51Sean Fennessey?

  Um.

• 1:10:52Amanda Dobbins?

  But now, Seth MacFarlane said it might not get made because the bear is so expensive.

• 1:10:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, CGI. It's tough. It's not ideal. Anything else that we didn't mention or that Craig didn't have on this list?

• 1:11:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Just like, you know, like an animatronic or just like a bear talking for like a stuffed bear as Ted, I would still think that was funny and I would watch. So maybe they could save money.

• 1:11:13Sean Fennessey?

  If what did?

• 1:11:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Like if they made Ted going forward, just with like one of the large stuffed FAO Schwartz bears, which are not expensive, but which are not cheap, but are less expensive than CGI. Like I, I would still laugh. That's just a free idea for Seth MacFarlane.

• 1:11:27Sean Fennessey?

  We'll send Seth that note.

• 1:11:28Speaker 02

  Looking at this list of top 10, does it like, what does it tell you about right now?

• 1:11:34Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I think we're in a moment of cultural confusion where the previous five years were defined by a certain level of sensitivity or perceived sensitivity in the culture, where though you were not allowed to enjoy The Hangover or Wedding Crashers, the same way that you did. I was as guilty of this as anybody. And because of some of the style of humor or who was being at the center of the story. And now like, obviously things socio-politically have kind of swung back the other way where there's like less of a concern about offending people and, you know.

• 1:12:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Unless you're buying American Eagle jeans.

• 1:12:10Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I'm glad I didn't have to have that conversation on this podcast. I know you had it on jam session. Um, I think that probably portends an openness to returning to like an Aptovian, Todd Phillips style comedy sensibility. Right now, back then, it's just like, it wasn't that different from how it was in the seventies, eighties and nineties. You know, it was like loud, obnoxious white guys who were dumber than everybody and we all laughed at them. And that was true for Bill Murray and Chevy Chase. You know, Eddie Murphy was not white, but he was also doing a version of that. The kind of like fast talking, getting into big trouble comedy star.

• 1:12:50Sean Fennessey?

  Was pretty significantly consistent for 25 to 30 years in movies. And now I feel like everybody's like, ah, I don't know. What's the, who's the right person to center in our story? Does it have to be a tall, white guy? And yet, here we are, talking about a Liam Neeson and Adam Sandler movies as the big comedies of the year. So maybe it means that that also is swinging back a little bit.

• 1:13:12Speaker 02

  I also think stars used to factor in comedies as part of the movie star playbook. And I'm not sure they're really doing that anymore. I really respect Jennifer Lawrence trying with No Hard Feelings, a movie I think is good.

• 1:13:21Sean Fennessey?

  I agree.

• 1:13:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and she's very funny.

• 1:13:23Sean Fennessey?

  She's very funny. Um, to me, that was like, that's actually what makes her super special as an actor is that she can do that. And no other like ingenue prestige actress can do that, but maybe we just don't know.

• 1:13:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Emma Stone can.

• 1:13:35Sean Fennessey?

  She can.

• 1:13:35Amanda Dobbins?

  And Emma, and Emma Stone did.

• 1:13:36Speaker 02

  She's gotten away from it.

• 1:13:37Amanda Dobbins?

  She did, but that's, you know.

• 1:13:39Speaker 02

  Cause what often happens, you do your comedies and then you take yourself more seriously. You want to start expanding your, your resume. But I would love to see Timothy Chalamet and Florence Pugh and Michael B. Jordan making comedies as just part of the overall resume they're building. Robert De Niro made comedies.

• 1:13:54Sean Fennessey?

  He did.

• 1:13:55Speaker 02

  He can be, you can be one of the best actors ever and make a comedy.

• 1:13:58Sean Fennessey?

  Michael B. Jordan did make that awkward moment, you may recall.

• 1:14:01Speaker 02

  Whew.

• 1:14:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:03Sean Fennessey?

  Remember that movie?

• 1:14:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I do remember that.

• 1:14:04Sean Fennessey?

  Who was the third? It was Miles Teller, MBJ. Who was the third fellow in that movie? Zac Efron?

• 1:14:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow.

• 1:14:11Sean Fennessey?

  That was, that's all, that's all credit to Sam. Alright. Stacked cast, nice job, Sam. Um, any closing thoughts on the state of comedies? We're so back, we're fucked, what's happening?

• 1:14:21Speaker 02

  I'm nervous. I'm nervous about it.

• 1:14:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Are you more nervous than you were a week ago?

• 1:14:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Having not seen these movies?

• 1:14:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, no.

• 1:14:28Speaker 02

  I'm nervous because a lot of people were like, Happy Gilmore 2, pretty good.

• 1:14:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:14:31Speaker 02

  I'm like, we're screwed.

• 1:14:34Sean Fennessey?

  Wow, shots fired.

• 1:14:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it comes first of all.

• 1:14:38Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you to Craig, listen to him on the Ringer Fantasy Football Podcast, which is heating up. Now that draft season is nearly upon us. Uh, thanks to Jack Sanders for his work on this episode. We'll be back next week with a summer movie mailbag. See you then.

• 1:15:09Speaker 05

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