Directed By Tate Taylor

Starring – Allison Janney, Mila Kunis, Regina Hall

The Plot – After her husband goes missing, Sue Buttons (Janney), an under-appreciated suburban wife, gets a taste of being a local celebrity as she embarks on a city-wide search in Yuba County to find him. In an effort to prolong her newfound fame, she stumbles into hilarious hi jinks as her world turns upside down, dodging a wanna-be mobster (Awkwafina), a relentless local policewoman (Hall), her half-sister (Kunis) a local news reporter desperate for a story, and her husband’s dead-beat brother (Jimmi Simpson), who all set out to uncover the truth behind the disappearance.

Rated R for violence, sexual content, adult language and some nudity

breaking news in yuba county trailer – YouTube

POSITIVES

– Shining stars. If Taylor has the ability to do anything right as a director, it’s once again stacking a collection of talent, lead and supporting, that matches up exceptionally to the ensembles of any of his other films, and offers several instances of scene stealing magnetism for these rampant personalities. There’s nothing award worthy, but I deeply commended the work of Janney, Hall, and even Awkwafina, who once again supplants her depth and versatility with an antagonist role that is unlike anything else she has played to date. She’s focused, remorseless, and very dangerous when complimented by a menacing henchman (Played by the wonderful Clifton Collins), and cements the ideal that there’s nothing this youthful leading can’t do to further her brand appeal. As for Janney and Hall, they share a surprisingly rich chemistry that supplants a unique dynamic between them, especially considering they are often on the opposite sides in the battle for justice. Janney exudes a cold emptiness that is the effect of years of neglect and longing, and Hall’s foul-mouthed detective is everything we’ve loved about her comedic roles for years, but sprinkled with an edge of toughness that enhances the maturity of her evolution.

– Nourishing commentary. I certainly didn’t expect a movie this silly to garner with it an element of dissection that comes in the form of how we prioritize celebrity, but even beyond that, how we glorify tragedy in the public eye. As far as ideas go for a screenplay, it’s probably not the most compelling for the integrity of the characters, but what Tate does provide offers plenty of self-reflective social commentary that feels stitched together from a greatest hits collection of Nancy Grace, especially considering the talented Juliette Lewis plays a TV host similar to Grace’s who exploits victims for the benefit of her ratings. This mold also reflects Janney’s character, who above all else just wants the outlet to tell her story, so much so that she engages in a series of lies and misappropriations that spares no expense of consequence to the victims initially uninvolved. It questions the sanctimony of grief, all the while aiming the focus at those of us who celebritize it, offering a distinct vision for the story’s direction that does feel authentic despite the lunacy of the details that materialize in between.

– Fluid pacing. There’s certainly no shortage of things that I will eventually rip this movie apart for, but never during any of this problematic screenplay was I ever remotely bored, and that stems from the work of sequencing in script that offers very few moments of downtime in between the madness. It starts right from the opening scene, where we balance between as many as three arcs of characters, complete with introductions and initial conflicts that are established with very little wasted time from the get-go. Beyond that, the film never overstays its welcome, clocking in at a brief 96 minutes, that while a bit more ambitious than the typical braindead slacker comedy, does justify its existence with a barrage of characters who constantly keep the story moving at all times. This film could’ve been a lot worse if it were boring on top of everything else, but the doubling down of the carnage in chaos creates a trainwreck too loud to look away from, allowing it the ultimate boost when being compared to some of the other eventual worst films of the year.

NEGATIVES

– Unlikeable characters. There isn’t a single person here redeemable without some shred of negativity introduced along the way to make you question their legitimacy in the role they’re playing in context with the narrative. I compare this to a film like “Drowning Mona” in more ways than one, but in particular the group of quirky characters in that film, who while dumb enough to constantly illustrate their own demise, are at least charming in the way of naivety for deep south characatures. Here, these characters know the kind of acts they commit, and above that, there never feels like a fully realized evolutionary arc between them, which could either epiphanize the greater importance, or commend the direction of Tate, which often feels aimless in his execution. It’s realized all the more when the body counts start to stack during the film’s second half, and I found myself shrugging my shoulders without a shred of care to boot, outlining a disconnect with the pivotal pawns that are anything but.

– Inconsistent humor. While not as bad and ineffective as “Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar”, the humor nonetheless from first time writer Amanda Idoko doesn’t feel authentic for the kind of high stakes world that Taylor reaches for so firmly, and leaves us with more duds than deliveries in the way of comic material. It hurts enough that its best material is in the shock factor it tries so bluntly for during the movie’s first act, but it’s made downright tragic when the film’s opposing tonal direction and story during the second and third acts seem to remove it completely from the diaphragm of the film’s registry, proving its minimal importance in the genre classification that is first and foremost a comedy above everything else. Considering the plot, it’s the humor that feels a bit like a contradiction in the film’s overall creativity, and could afford to be omitted from the finished product, especially considering I laughed at some observational humor two or three times throughout the film.

– Indulging gore. One of the many unnecessary aspects within the film’s R-rated classification is an abundance of gruesome gore and repeated brutality that does more harm than good when feeding into the tonal consistency with its own share of problems. Part of it stems from its oversaturated use, which by the third act of the film feels resurrected purely for shock factor, without a shred of convincing make-up or prosthetics schemes to boot, but the majority of my problem with this element is the adversity it creates for the film’s comedic material, which as I already said is problematic enough with such lukewarm writing along the way. Adding to that difficulty is a series of abrupt tonal shifts, which inevitably ruin the buzz of its braindead humor, and now ask for people to purchase depth in a world, complete with consequences and repercussions. For my money, it’s essentially unnecessary in this particular film, especially since Taylor can’t commit as firmly to the kind of black humor film that the Coen Brothers have made a career out of, giving us a series of scatterbrained ideas reeking of desperation in trying to bring out the most of its rating.

– Stretched logic. “Yuba County” feels like one of those films and places where honest conversations don’t take place too often. I say this because the conflict of this film is stitched together with a series of leaps and misunderstandings that could easily be talked out in a ten minute conversation, but because this is a film, let the shenanigans ensue. It’s worse from an audience perspective, where anyone with half a brain could piece together that an autopsy could clear some of the movie’s key suspects, and resolve everything in time for these people to move on with their lives. From here, the plot conveniences only get more strained and convoluted with each passing character motivation, complete with pointless lies and exaggerations that only create more problems for those few innocent bystanders. One such instance involves the greatest cell phone known to man, as Mila Kunis character is able to record a conversation between two characters from at least sixty feet away, and can hear it perfectly like she was standing right next to them. Elements like these are easy to fix in the context of reality, but everything about this movie’s execution feels lazily strained and unenthused to even partake in a single ounce of energy, and makes this feel like an unintentional spoof at times that defies its own elements of environment.

– Technical incompetence. The laundry list of complaints isn’t just limited to the talent on-screen or the writers off screen, but also with the movie’s bumbling post-production, which alleviated one of the more flawed executions in presentation that weighed so heavily on my investment to the film. First off, the editing and scene transitions are abrupt and often ill-timed in the consistency of the scene. This leads to many scenes feeling like they are halted in the middle of some breakthrough discovery. Secondly, the sound mixing is sloppily executed and obvious to anyone not plagued by selective hearing. During the film, the same gunshot sound is used as many as five or six times throughout, complete with identical echoing and contact feedback that was obvious even before I compared the sounds in a sound file on my computer, and saw their patterns exactly match in dual depiction. Finally, there’s some horrendously awful A.D.R deposits done in post production that don’t match the lips of the actor mouthing them, nor match the consistency of audibility volume between characters. It proves that this film was doomed from the word go, and that nothing on-screen or in script could’ve saved it from the clutches of errors.

– Underwhelming climax. A laundry list of problems with the film’s closing moments could easily be made, but my biggest grievances comes with the resolution of the protagonist, and the lack of learning throughout the many consequences of this story that feels apparent in where she ends up. If this is where the benefit of some compelling social commentary was planning on leading us, then it defeats its inclusion in the first place, directly contradicting the deconstruction that attained urgent level of social commentary in the form of the polarization it provides towards audiences watching tragedy at home on their couches. Instead we get a gift-wrapped finale that dramatically underscores everything previously endured, and essentially proves that consequences are only catered for the innocent.

My Grade: 4/10 or D-