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Jungle Cruise (2021)
Jungle Cruise (2021) is a modern-day take of the films from the Indiana Jones series. It is about a young female scientist from Britain going on an expedition to the jungles of the Amazon in search of a tree whose petals possess the power to miraculously cure all illnesses. The film feels like a two-hour ride inside one of the Disney theme parks. With no surprises, it still delivers exactly what you expect and was fun. The film is available on Disney+Hotstar and gets our ‘Raw’ rating – families with children may like more than I did. The lead actors: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt and Jack Whitehall (of the popular…
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Pretty Smart (TV series)
Pretty Smart is yet another one of those serialized American TV shows that attempts to fill the void left by Friends. It is about four roommates and the sister of one of them sharing a house, their minor wins and loses, and about finding love. Though the stories had nothing imaginative, I found the episodes to be fun to watch with the characters being cheerful – a welcome break for the pandemic year. Available on Netflix it gets my Ripe for that reason. There are four friends living in a house in Malibu, each from a different background: Claire is a happy-go-lucky character who enjoys her job as a waitress…
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The Courier (2020)
Spy movies need not be action thrillers like James Bond, in recent years there have been films that were inspired by true incidents and told subtly like A Call to Spy (2019), which featured women protagonists during the Nazi occupation of France and Red Sparrow (2018) which had a female lead but from the other side of the iron curtain. The Courier (2020) follows this style and talks of a British salesman who played a key role in bringing vital documents from Moscow that prevented the Cuban missile crisis from going nuclear. Starring Benedict Cumberbatch (famous as Doctor Strange), The Courier (2020) was engaging and crisp. Available on Amazon Prime…
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Ted Lasso (TV Series)
I didn’t think I will like a TV show about Football, one of the many games I have hardly watched, but after starting to see Ted Lasso on Apple TV +, I had to binge-watch the entire season 1 in two days. It was that good. Jason Sudeikis has done the title role of Ted Lasso very well; it was a delight to watch him. It had all the right ingredients for a TV series: an underdog sports team, a bit of British humour, and inspiring but down-to-earth coach who has absolutely no idea on the game he is coaching, one divorced couple, another divorcing, a broken relationship which leads…
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Disjointed (2017)
Disjointed (2017) is a comedy web series on Netflix, that deals with the staff and the customers of a legal marijuana dispensary in Los Angeles. Reading the description, I thought it was not for me – surprisingly I liked the series of twenty episodes, it grew (pun intended) on me and I binge-watched it over the last few days. The show stars Kathy Bates as the owner of the store Ruth’s Alternative Caring and an activist Ruth Whitefeather Feldman, she has a black son who is the co-owner of the store Travis (played by Aaron Moten). It is co-created by David Javerbaum and Chuck Lorre, the creator of many of…
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The Boss Baby: Family Business (2021)
Seeing a baby wearing a three-piece suit and tie, running business meetings and coupled with the strong voice of Alec Baldwin, The Boss Baby (2017) was a family entertainer and a hit. As usual, Hollywood has tried to milk the franchise by making a sequel: The Boss Baby: Family Business (2021) was the result and it was a mediocre attempt to say it kindly. The film gets a mangoidiots rating of “Raw” as kids will like the film, especially those who haven’t watched the first one. The plot was uninspirational and beyond the first thirty minutes, I found it tough to keep watching. In the original, puppies were being created…
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Friends: The Reunion (2021)
Friends (1994-2004) was the popular comedy sitcom of the 1990s. It defined the category of having a story around a close-knit group of friends. In the next two decades, scores of films and television shows around the world were ‘inspired’ liberally by Friends. During the early two-thousands, Friends and Frasier, which were both on-air, was my stable dinner companion, when I was on my many business trips to the USA away from my family in India. I carry nice remembrance of both the shows, with Friends being special. Last week, Zee5 in India (HBO Max in the USA), released a sort-of silver-jubilee reunion of the six cast members titled [wait…
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Stowaway (2021)
Outer Space is tough and unforgivable. We have seen many science fiction films that have explored how the bonding, courage and sacrifices of team members on a long journey to the unknown salvages a mission against all odds. Stowaway (2021) is one more of the same, it had little of science and more around the moral decisions that have to made on who gets to live and who dies in extreme situations. The film is available on Netflix and gets a Mangoidiots rating of ‘Raw’. A 3-member crew is on a two-year mission to Mars when they suddenly discover they have a stowaway, a fourth-person inside their ship unknown to…
