danny rosenberg
sr. copywriter

Soggy Waffles

Welcome to Soggy Waffles. Here’s how these bite-size, digestible movie reviews work. Every movie gets a haiku. That’s one movie, 17 syllables. Every movie gets a short write-up. I’m talking so short that you should be able to completely syrupize a plate of waffles in the time it takes to read the write-up. If not, then I’m not doing my job. This is my take on the movies I see, not a chewed up and spit out version of anything you’ll find online.

 And finally, every movie gets a Soggy Waffles rating. The scale is as follows:

1 = The Frozen Waffle. The type of waffle that you can still taste the freezer burn when you bite into it. That bite was so traumatizing that you it might be awhile before you can safely bite into another.

 2 = The Soggy Waffle. You don’t need a pick-axe or other climbing gear to attack this waffle, but the pneumonic device you learned in elementary school to memorize the cardinal directions still applies: Never Eat Soggy Waffles.

3 = The Microwaved Waffle. This is the type of waffle that won’t stick with you for the rest of your life, but damn you enjoyed it nonetheless. Not every movie can be a Superbad.

 4 = The Crispy Waffle. Oh yeah, it’s not the best waffle you’ve ever had, but it’s pretty close. This is the type of movie that cracks into your End-of-Year best list, but doesn’t quite make it onto your Best of All Time.

5 = The Toasty Waffle. This is that from-scratch, special recipe, best-you’ve-ever had waffle. The kind in which the waffle is so good that the act of adding chocolate chips, butter or even syrup would be sacrilegious. You can never eat it for the first time twice, so savor it when you’ve got it.

Logo and illustrations by Adrienne Luther.

Logo and illustrations by Adrienne Luther.

Welcome to Soggy Waffles Reviews. Here’s how these bite-size, digestible movie reviews work. Every movie gets a haiku. That’s one movie, 17 syllables. Every movie gets a short write-up. I’m talking so short that you should be able to completely syrupize a plate of waffles in the time it takes to read the review. If not, then I’m not doing my job. This is my take on the movies I see, not a chewed up and spit out version of anything you’ll find online. And finally, every movie gets a Soggy Waffles rating. The scale is as follows:

Soggy_Waffles_Draft-08.png

1. The Frozen Waffle

The type of waffle that you can still taste the freezer burn when you bite into it. The whole experience is so traumatizing that it might be awhile before you can safely bite into another.

Soggy_Waffles_Draft-07.png

2. The Soggy Waffle

You don’t need a pick-axe or other climbing gear to attack this waffle, but the pneumonic device you learned in elementary school to memorize the cardinal directions still applies: Never Eat Soggy Waffles.

Soggy_Waffles_Draft-03.png

3. The Microwaved Waffle

This is the type of waffle that won’t stick with you for the rest of your life, but damn you enjoyed it nonetheless. Not every movie can be a Superbad.

Soggy_Waffles_Draft-02.png

4. The Crispy Waffle

Oh yeah, it’s not the best waffle you’ve ever had, but it’s pretty close. This rating is reserved for the movise that crack into your End-of-Year best lists but don't quite make it onto your Best of All Time.

Soggy_Waffles_Draft-01.png

5. The Perfectly Toasted Waffle

This is that from-scratch, special recipe, best-you’ve-ever had waffle. The kind in which the waffle is so good that the act of adding chocolate chips, butter or even syrup would be sacrilegious (but obviously you still do). You can never eat it for the first time twice, so savor it when you’ve got it.

Vice

vice2.jpg
Rating: Microwaved.

Rating: Microwaved.

Dear Adam McKay,

Please don’t force the fourth wall breaks

Where they do not fit.

 Imagine “Step Brothers,” but with a narrator. Picture “Talladega Nights,” but every 20 minutes the frame freezes and Jesse Plemons jumps in to explain the rules of NASCAR to the uninitiated. I don’t know shit about NASCAR, but I can guarantee that Talladega Nights was a hell of a lot better without John C. Reilly jumping out of character to describe the delicate nuances of the Shake and Bake maneuver. For all the good that Adam McKay has brought into this world, especially last year’s Succession (that I stuck by when no one else did, and every other critic ended up eating their words (suck it, other critics)), “Vice” is not it. I put off seeing Vice for nearly two months, but seeing as I do love everything about it on paper, I had to catch it in theaters before the Academy Awards this weekend. It’s not so bad that I regret seeing it by any means, but I definitely could have skipped it. Here’s why.

The first half of Vice is excruciatingly boring. I know McKay said explicitly that Vice is not a comedy, but that doesn’t mean your biopic has to be by-the-numbers dull. It doesn’t help that the movie jumps all over the place. Within the first like five minutes of the movie, we go from present-day Dick fishing to fuck-up Dick getting a DUI in 1963 to 9/11 Dick getting hustled out of the White House, then back to DUI Dick to start there. If that sounds exhausting, it’s not. It’s just boring. Luckily, the movie does pick up significantly in the second half. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that it’s fun to watch Dick’s ascent to power (because fuck him, that’s why), but it’s definitely more exciting to watch unfold. And I did learn a lot. For example, if the movie is to be believed, I didn’t know that Dick was basically single-handedly responsible for the creation of ISIS. That’s a lot of blood on his hands right there!

 Acting-wise, I have one three-letter question for everyone who’s hyping up Christian Bale’s performance: why? He basically just reverse-“Machinist”’d himself and dusted the cobwebs off his Batman voice. Not that special to me. Just give the award to Bradley Cooper, thanks. It seemed like Steve Carell was the most game here, and he was probably my favorite part of the movie. I also liked that guy from Weeds as Scooter Libby, mostly because I didn’t know he was in the movie and I was pleasantly surprised to see him in a chunky role. The same can’t be said for Sam Rockwell, who I thought was tragically underused as goofball George W. B. Not that I wanted the movie to be longer by any means, but his short-lived screen time left a lot to be desired. He could have been the movie’s saving grace. But alas.

Once the movie got going, I started to doubt whether Dick’s infamous hunting mishap would be included. But rest assured, it’s there, and it pays off in dividends. The gunshot comes as such a shock that everyone in the theater jumped, and the friend I saw it with yelped so loudly in response that I had to look around the theater to see if anyone else heard him. That moment was worth the price of admission, even if the rest of the movie wasn’t.

 As I was getting at earlier, I really hope everything McKay puts forward in the future does away with the characters-talking-at-you thing that he apparently is fond of now. It worked well with “The Big Short” because it was funny and refreshing, but mostly because that banking shit is very confusing and was surely to go over the heads of 90 percent of the audience otherwise, myself included. Vice cheapens everything that worked well for The Big Short and turns its success into nothing more than a gimmick, with far diminished returns. The humor (if it can be called that) of the movie was just all wrong, sometimes painfully so. Don’t believe me? When Vice hits streaming services, look up the restaurant scene with Alfred Molina as a waiter. We almost walked out during that part. Yikes.

The thing about Dick is that he’s really fucking evil, but he’s not the type of antihero you’d ever want to get behind. I’ve seen plenty of great movies and shows with straight up unlikable main characters, but Dick has nothing redeeming going for him, and I think that ultimately affects how much you can enjoy the movie. At least it did for me. It’s funny, though; Dick’s only redeeming quality was the (little) support he showed for his gay daughter, and even that he reneges on by the end of the movie/his life. What a terrible piece of shit. He honestly had me contemplating my organ donor status, as the thought of my heart going into a terrible person’s body freaked the shit out of me for a second. But have no fear, I’d never actually go through the trouble of revoking my organ donor status. Ultimately, I kind of just feel like Dick  sucks so much that he doesn’t deserve to have a movie made about him. At least while he’s living. I’m sure I’ll feel the same way when McKay tries to turn Tr*mp’s presidency into a movie sometime in the next two decades as well.

In Theaters, MicrowavedGuest User