Sophie Thatcher and Jack Quaid in Companion

COMPANION

Because it takes nearly a half-hour for Drew Hancock's Companion to reveal its central conceit, that's probably long enough for the film's very premise to be considered a spoiler. So if you're interested in seeing the comedy thriller yet have managed to avoid its trailers, and even its poster, please return to this article at a later time – there's no way I can do justice to Hancock's stunner without giving away at least some of the goods. Besides which, if you're not privy to the particulars, I envy you. I absolutely adored this funny, nasty, intensely satisfying shiv to the gut knowing its hook in advance. The mind boggles at how much fun I might've had going in unprepared.

Even though the movie starts with the cutest of Meet Cutes – a supermarket flashback suggesting every rom-com intro you've ever seen – Hancock isn't exactly shy about teasing what's to come. Gazing at the dimpled, lovestruck face of her beau-to-be Josh (Jack Quaid), our pretty, throaty heroine Iris (Sophie Thatcher) reveals in voice-over that “the two happiest moments in my life were the day I met Josh … and the day I killed him.” That's an awfully grabby opener, to say nothing of a ballsy one, and we've barely had time for Sophie's admission to sink in before we're accompanying the young lovers on a weekend trip to the woods – more accurately, the posh lake house belonging to Russian millionaire Sergey (Rupert Friend, with a deliciously overripe accent). Along for the good time are Sergey's partner Kat (Megan Suri), who instinctively disliked Sophie upon their prior meeting, and the demonstrably affectionate boyfriends Eli and Patrick (Harvey Guillén and Lukas Gage), who are far more considerate. The first day goes reasonably well. The second not so much, given that Sophie, following an attack, has become a blood-soaked killer before lunchtime. Trembling in panic, she tells her shocked housemates that she doesn't know what happened. That's when Josh says, “Iris, go to sleep.” And she does. By which I mean she powers off.

Sophie Thatcher in Companion

Iris, you see, isn't human, but rather an “emotional support robot” sold – or, in Josh's case, leased – by the electronics wizards at Empathix. For what would have to be a debilitating fee, customers can order these seemingly sentient androids and program every facet to their liking: vocal timbre, eye color, level of intelligence. The 'bots are even pre-programmed with memories, such as Iris' charming grocery-store encounter with Josh, available through a drop-down menu. Unfortunately for the AI, though, they don't know they're not human, and it's a rude awakening for Iris when she's instructed by Josh to wake up, and finds herself tied to a chair as the love of her life reveals that their relationship – Iris' entire sense of being – is a lie. I'd mention that she doesn't take the news well, but given the bomb Iris dropped when revealing those two happiest moments in her life, you already gleaned that, right?

Were Iris' true identity Companion's only narrative switcheroo, Hancock's feature debut would likely still be a hoot. The writer/director has clearly thought deeply about the specifics regarding Empathix's invention, and he smartly, carefully doles out informational nuggets throughout his film's brisk 97 minutes: how Iris and her fellow 'bots have been programmed not to lie or act violently toward humans (unless a dipstick such as Josh tinkers with the settings); how their speech modules can be altered to effectively mimic the voices of others.

Sophie Thatcher, meanwhile, is flat-out amazing. Not three months after her knockout turn as an increasingly freaked Mormon missionary in Heretic, she returns with an even juicier comedy-thriller portrayal, Thatcher's role allowing for a full run of the emotional gamut while also requiring her to fluently speak several foreign languages – and be funny while doing so. Quaid, with his aw-shucks likability, is ideally cast as an entitled, mealymouthed beta-male who whines about his lack of respect and crappy one-bedroom apartment. (Maybe Josh could afford a better one if he weren't spending his disposable income on self-driving cars and glorified sex robots.) But this is Thatcher's movie all the way – or would be if the constantly unpredictable, wickedly clever plotting didn't more expressly make it Hancock's.

Sophie Thatcher in Companion

Unlike, say, last year's fright flick Abigail, in which the sole, ruined-by-the-trailers twist was that the titular ballerina was a vampire, Companion keeps the surprises coming long after Iris' android reveal. Even the reason behind the couples' weekend getaway is its own surprise, as is the identity of one of the other house guests, and Hancock's sparsely populated nail-biter is given added jolts of comic frisson whenever an unexpected arrival turns up: an understandably confused sheriff's deputy; a pair of seen-it-all Empathix servicemen; a blond who looks startlingly similar to the brunette Iris. As demonstrated through the sharp editing rhythms and joke-fueled banter (with Guillén more acerbic but just as wonderful as he was on What We Do in the Shadows), Hancock's comic timing is stellar. Yet his work might be even more impressive in its astutely rationed delivery of unanticipated narrative turns. It felt like my jaw was dropping, either before or after a round of giggles, at least once every five minutes.

As the film partly concerns a man who is literally controlling every aspect of a (faux) woman's life, right down to when she's allowed to be conscious, there are obviously all sorts of current political and sociological themes to dive into here, and some viewers may be disappointed that Hancock doesn't do a deeper dive into the ethical and moral waters. Yet while I personally think that Companion might be the strongest offering in its genre since Get Out, it's not, unlike the Peele, a work of justifiable anger or outrage. If Hancock has opinions about where our dependence on AI is leading us, or where we're leading it, he keeps them to himself. That's not necessarily a demerit. What he's given us may not be especially trenchant, but it's almost flabbergastingly enjoyable – a bewitching blend of Ex Machina, The Stepford Wives, Westworld, and like-minded titles that handily stands toe-to-toe with them when it's not routinely towering above them.

Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon in You're Cordially Invited

YOU'RE CORDIALLY INVITED

The only thing that's objectionably wrong with the rom-com You're Cordially Invited is the rom part. Writer/director Nicholas Stoller delivered one of the genre's millennial best in 2022's Bros, and there's a lot of recommend in 2012's The Five-Year Engagement, and 2008's Forgetting Sarah Marshall (which Stoller directed but didn't write) is a genuine classic. But even though his newly-streaming-on-Prime offering is frequently very funny and boasts one of its helmer's traditionally outstanding casts, there's no getting around the fact that the movie is also … icky … due to its deeply unwise partnering of Reese Witherspoon and Will Ferrell. Feel free to take a pause as you adequately absorb that information.

Welcome back! And yes, I'm serious: Reese Witherspoon and Will Ferrell. In the history of romantic-comedy pairings, has there ever been one – beyond the gross-in-theory/delightful-in-practice teaming of Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon – that has felt so unequivocally wrong? It's not necessarily a matter of age; astonishing as it seems, Ferrell is only Witherspoon's senior by nine years, though it feels more like 20. But with all due respect (to Ferrell), literally nothing about this match makes sense when you throw romantic love into the picture. Thankfully, however, Witherspoon and Ferrell appear to know it, too. The one chaste kiss they eventually share wouldn't be out of place for a senior tucking his toddler granddaughter into bed, and when the stars are arm-in-arm toward the finale, Ferrell has the decency to look embarrassed while Witherspoon's exudes mild pity – like she's comforting a much-older neighbor whose spouse just died.

Will Ferrell and Geraldine Viswanathan in You're Cordially Invited

The hook of Stoller's slapstick involves that money-in-the-bank go-to of two weddings scheduled for the same day at the same locale, the intended brides being Neve (Meredith Hagner), the younger sister of Witherspoon's Margot, and Jenni (Geraldine Viswanathan), the daughter of Ferrell's Jim. Margot is a contendedly single and childless reality-show producer – i.e. brittle and caustic – living in L.A. Jim, whose career is kept a deliberate secret until the end, is a widowed Girl Dad – i.e. overbearing yet lovable – heartbroken by the thought of his little bird fleeing the nest. As Margot and Jim, after arriving at the island resort, bicker, scheme, and cause general mayhem in their attempts to do right by their individual families, you'll likely notice that Witherspoon and Ferrell share considerable comic chemistry.

That totally tracks: They're gifted comedians with specific personality and killer timing, they know how to undersell or oversell punchlines, and the film's welcome R rating means they don't have to mind their manners. (Witherspoon, in particular, hasn't appeared this fired up onscreen in more than a decade.) It's only when you detect the creaky gears of forced affection between them that their teamwork begins to crumble, and makes you wonder why Stoller designed You're Cordially Invited as a rom-com in the first place. Wouldn't the alternately raucous and sentimental goings-on have been far more enjoyable if we didn't spend so much time dreading an inevitable lip lock?

Because really, there's a lot to enjoy here, and it's almost all due to the collective guest list. The setup and follow-through are about as formulaic and silly as you'd imagine, even if I did quite admire the farcical machinations that got the unintended double wedding scheduled in the first place. (They involve a hotel clerk who passes away mid-booking and the woman's replacement staffer, a well-meaning doofus played by Jack McBrayer, looking every bit as youthful as he did nearly 20 years ago on 30 Rock. Is it possible that, like his sitcom character Kenneth Parcell, McBrayer himself is an ageless angel sent to Earth by Jacob?) Ferrell's bunch is pretty amusing, with Viswanathan reliably energetic and Keyla Monterroso Mejia – so good as an aggressive speed-loan administrator in the current One of Them Days – an easily wounded Gen-Z riot. It's Witherspoon's Southern-with-a-vengeance clan, however, that continually scores points for either dim-bulb adorability or hilarious passive-aggression, the assembled talents including comedians Leanne Morgan and Rory Scovel as fellow siblings, Jimmy Tatro as the groom, and, best of all, the eternally great Celia Weston as the family matriarch who disguises her insults with mint-julep sweetness. Ignore the rom of it all and you can have a decent time at You're Cordially Invited. Under no circumstances, though, would you want to see the honeymoon photos.

Dog Man

DOG MAN

Cartoonist/author Dav Pilkey's Dog Man graphic novels constitute one of my favorite 10-year-old's all-time favorite book series, so I was a tad disappointed when, after asking her if she wanted to join me for the Dog Man movie, she said she already had plans to see it with her cousins. Happily, though, that didn't prevent her from agreeing, with considerable gusto, to see the film twice. She may simply have been taking pity on me, not wanting Uncle Mike to have to sit through this animated kids' entertainment without a much-younger chaperone. More likely, though, given her familiarity with Pilkey's books, she knew that a second viewing would likely be mandatory, given the crazy speed with which the author's jokes – and now writer/director Peter Hastings' – would zip off the screen.

Like its source-material predecessor, 2017's Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie (which, unreasonably, remains the good captain's only movie, epic or otherwise), Dog Man is a nonstop barrage of gags, puns, and visual slapstick, this one finding our human-canine hybrid police officer determined to foil the anarchic plans of Petey, “the world's most evilest cat.” My young pal ate it up with a spoon. So did the guy who paid for the tickets. When I wasn't marveling at the sheer speed and joke-per-minute ratio of Hastings' animation – its distinctly modern presentational approach off-set by refreshingly old-school visuals – I was smiling at the non-manipulative sweetness, as well as the spirited vocal contributions by the likes of Lil Rel Howery, Isla Fisher, Ricky Gervais, and the aurally unrecognizable Pete Davidson as (natch) Petey. And then there were the moments in which I honestly couldn't believe the pop-culture references I was hearing. A cruise-ship reminiscence acknowledging Captain Merrill Stubing was one thing. But the mention of a gerbil named Colonel Kurtz?! There are currently 13 graphic novels in Pilkey's series, with another due later this year, which means we could conceivably get sequels for the next four decades or so. I have no idea if my Dog Man companion will still be up for one of these things when she's 50. But 96-year-old Future Me is already eagerly awaiting the experience.

Support the River Cities' Reader

Get 12 Reader issues mailed monthly for $48/year.

Old School Subscription for Your Support

Get the printed Reader edition mailed to you (or anyone you want) first-class for 12 months for $48.
$24 goes to postage and handling, $24 goes to keeping the doors open!

Click this link to Old School Subscribe now.



Help Keep the Reader Alive and Free Since '93!

 

"We're the River Cities' Reader, and we've kept the Quad Cities' only independently owned newspaper alive and free since 1993.

So please help the Reader keep going with your one-time, monthly, or annual support. With your financial support the Reader can continue providing uncensored, non-scripted, and independent journalism alongside the Quad Cities' area's most comprehensive cultural coverage." - Todd McGreevy, Publisher