August 23, 2020
One night, Clancy Finch (Sadie Stanley) planned to sneak out of the house with her friend Mim (Cree Cicchino) to attend a party thrown by her crush Travis (Matthew Grimaldi), while her younger brother Kevin (Maxwell Simpkins) had his friend Lewis (Lucas Jaye) over for a sleepover. That same night, some bad guys came and abducted their parents Ron (Ken Marino) and Margot (Malin Akerman). The kids decided they should go rescue them, discovering that their mother was not who they thought she was.
The four kids were typical spunky Disney Channel-type characters. Stanley's Clancy started out as shrinking violet yet to bloom, while Cicchino's Mim was her wacky sidekick. Simpkins' Kevin was a wide-eyed and quick-witted boy, while Jaye's Lewis was an over-protected Asian kid. Marino played the insecure dad Ron as the main comic relief, easily the most annoying character. Akerman did well in her action scenes together with Joe Manganiello, who played Margot's alpha male ex, Leo.
It has been some time since I had last seen a crime action-comedy movie featuring children as the main protagonists. When my kids were much younger, I watched "Spy Kids" and "Sharkboy and Lavagirl" with them. As expected, while the dangerous situations were there, the treatment of the story were all very cute, light, shallow and humorous to be appropriate for the target kiddie audience. Adults who watch these movies should watch them with the eyes of their inner child to enjoy them, and they will. With that in mind, I do think Trish Sie's "The Sleepover" does hit its mark. 6/10
Since their school days, Palm (Naphat Siangsomboon) had been harboring an unrequited love for his best friend Gink (Pimchanok Leuwisetpaiboon), who only thought of him as a confidante and sidekick. As they grew older over the next ten years, Palm had become a flight attendant while Gink was a music producer, both getting their fair share of romantic partners along the way. However, whenever the insecure Gink needed help at any time, Palm would drop everything and went out of his way to go rescue her.
During its 2 hours running time, we see a repetitive pattern of Gink getting into an emotional funk and Palm going the extra mile to help her out -- but always winding up frustrated to tell her his real feelings for her. This film had a high-budget, with Gink and Palm's story crisscrossing several international cities like Yangon, Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong, as well as Thai destinations like Chiang Mai and Krabi.
I think a lot of viewers can identify with Palm's predicament, although their problems will most probably not reach the outrageous extent of what he had to go through in his Herculean efforts to win Gink over. While this Thai romantic comedy was a mostly delightful romp, I just did not like the way that bathtub scene was written and executed, which felt incongruent to the general light spirit of the film. I'm sure there could have been a better way to stage this confrontation scene without getting unnecessarily sordid. 7/10.
Quinn Ackerman (Sabrina Carpenter) was a straight-laced high school senior whose whole school life had been geared towards being accepted into Duke University. She maintained her 4.0 GPA, volunteered at a nursing home, joined the AV club as the lighting director and played the cello to boot. However, during her interview at Duke, the lady at admissions Mrs. Ramirez (Michelle Buteau) mistakenly thought she was a member of their school's famous winning dance team, and Quinn did not object. When Mrs. Ramirez wanted to see her dance, Quinn had to walk her talk.
We have seen this teen story done so many times before with the same predictable conclusion, like "High School Musical" for musical theater or "Bring It On" for cheer-leading. All the usual characters were there: we have dorky protagonist Quinn, the supportive best friend Jasmine (Liza Koshy), the over-bearing mom (Naomi Snieckus), the good-looking love interest Jake (Jordan Fisher) and the school diva antagonist Julliard (Keiynan Lonsdale). It followed the usual story of overcoming incredible odds to try and win the competition in the end. What do you think -- will Quinn's team win?
The free-style dance sequences had some great moves individually and were generally fun to watch. However, the final team routines were not as clean or impressive as we have seen in other similar dance films. Even if we know how impossible it was for a group of nerdy misfits who had just barely met to do this in two short months, somehow we still wanted to see a flawlessly-executed competition-level choreography and performance in the finale, especially if they expect us to believe that this group was going to win it all. 5/10.
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