Author: BRWC

Home Team: The BRWC Review. By Jake Peffer.

Home Team is the latest Netflix movie from Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions. In this one we follow Kevin James as real-life New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton. After coming off of winning the Super Bowl in 2010 Payton gets suspended in 2012 for allegedly paying his players to purposely injure the players of other teams.

After he gets suspended Payton spends his time trying to build a relationship with his 12-year-old son. His son just so happens to play football on the worst team in his Pop Warner league. To try and get closer with his son Payton eventually becomes the team’s offensive coordinator to try and help them turn their season around.

This movie is quite the oddity. The movie itself isn’t really odd but just the whole concept is kind of mind boggling. I don’t think anyone ever imagined there would be a movie about what Sean Payton was doing during his suspension from the NFL. Let alone it being produced by Happy Madison and then having Kevin James play Payton himself. It almost sounds like this movie was made by those manatees from that South Park episode where they toss random balls into a generator and make episodes of Family Guy based on that.

With all that being said this is the perfect example of an average movie. There is really nothing particularly bad about Home Team but there’s also not too much that’s good here either. It’s an hour and a half movie with some okay performances, a few chuckles here and there and a pretty traditional rag tag sports movie plotline. The biggest problem that it has is that it doesn’t do anything all that well.

For a comedy, it’s not very funny. There’s barely an ounce of real drama here. The only thing it really has going for it is the sports aspect but even that doesn’t get executed all that well either. Unfortunately, it suffers from what almost every Happy Madison suffers from and that’s laziness. From the writing to the direction to some of the performances it all just comes across as lazy.

I wouldn’t put this in the bottom tier of Happy Madison Productions, as there are a lot you could put at the bottom. Home Team ends up somewhere in the middle, which seem to be where most of the Kevin James vehicles end up, at least for me. Like I said before it’s not flat out bad but it’s not particularly good either. If you’re a fan of Kevin James I would say give it a shot but if not then it’s probably not worth your time.

Bliss: A Sex Workplace Romance. By Joseph Ha.

Henrika Kull’s Bliss follows two sex workers in a German brothel, Sascha and Maria, and their romance after meeting at work. Sascha is divorced and has a son whom she is a bit estranged from. She also has a bitter relationship with her hometown which later causes some tension with her relationship with Maria. On the other hand, Maria is a slightly more mysterious character.

She is an Italian immigrant to Germany but for some unknown reason, dubs herself Jessy in the brothel. In her free time, she calls her father from time to time in her free time, but these calls are filled with odd fantastical details that conflict with the reality of her life. Additionally, she has a locker full of money that seems to be more than an average sex worker’s earnings, or at least more than Sascha’s earnings. 

Like many cinematic relationships, the foundation of Sascha and Maria’s relationship is, funny enough, bliss, mainly bliss for Sascha. While the movie’s beginning doesn’t portray Sascha’s life as joyless, it contains some dissatisfaction. She doesn’t like spending time with her ex-husband, not even a platonic lunch together. Her only other relationships with men are her male clients who only treat her as a commodity.

But all that changes when Maria enters the picture. She has an attraction to Sascha as a person and writes poetry. Even Maria’s love scenes with Sascha display an emotional intimacy not found in their love scenes with clients. However, what Bliss does well is to show how Sascha needs healing before a loving relationship can bring lasting bliss into her life. 

Another genius aspect of Bliss is the integration of sex work into a familiar story arc: the workplace romance. Although Bliss utilizes sex work as a background element, its impact on the protagonists’ lives and the stories it whispers save it from becoming a replaceable narrative component. Sexual intimacy in the workplace and between employees and client are taboo and subject to abusive power dynamics but what sort of relationships arise when the entire field of work is founded upon sexual intimacy

Refreshingly, Kull doesn’t portray sex work in the usual manner: a criminal, underground, seedy world full of vice, betrayal, and exploitation. Even if there is some truth to this image of sex work, the emphasis on this aspect blinds viewers to the truth of sex work, mainly that it’s a job like any other job with its own issues and filled with people trying to earn a living.

Potato Dreams Of America: Review. By Jake Peffer.

Potato Dreams of America is the perfect example of a movie that has all the right intentions but unfortunately doesn’t execute everything that it wants to achieve. We follow a young boy nicknamed Potato who lives with his mother in the Soviet Union. He aspires of going to America as his life in the Soviet Union isn’t all too great.

With the help of Jesus Christ, Potato comes to the realization that he’s gay and is constantly bullied for it. His mother wants nothing more to provide a better life for Potato, so she becomes a mail order bride for them to make it out of the Soviet Union and move to America.

Director/Writer Wes Hurley tells a very personal story here as this is autobiographical. He puts a unique style in his storytelling which is arguably the best aspect of this movie. If only he could have put that style to better use throughout the entirety of this movie maybe it would have been somewhat more enjoyable.

In the earlier parts of the story everything feels like a stage play. Most of the sets and décor feel like something out of a local theater. It’s certainly different but makes things a little off putting when later in the movie we get actual on location sets.

I understand what he’s trying to go for in separating our characters lives in the Soviet Union versus how they are in America, but the choices just don’t feel earned. Once we get to America, we jump ahead a few years, so we have a different actor portraying Potato but then we also get a different actress playing his mother as well.

Not enough time has passed where they would need to have a new actress portray the character, so it seems like an odd choice. Also, both characters suddenly have Russian accents when in American versus having English accents when they lived in Russia. Again, I get what the director is trying to get across, but it just comes off as jarring.

All the performances are perfectly fine. Lea DeLaria and Jonathan Bennett are definite standouts but neither get enough screen time which is a shame. In the end, this is a personal movie that has some good things about it but for the most part just feels like too many missed opportunities.