THE NAPA BOYS (C-minus) - There's nothing wrong, necessarily, with making a moronic movie. But it should be more than occasionally funny. And if you are going to go off the rails, find a better go-to gag than excessive bodily fluids.
The brainchild of its two stars -- check that: the idea of the two lead actors -- "Napa Boys" imagines a world in which a rag-tag group of "Scooby-Doo" wannabes enjoys a cult following as they traipse around wine country and help their pal Mitch compete for the top prize at a wine festial. Oh, and there's a mysterious Somellier whose amulet they have discovered. Or something like that.
Director Nick Corirossi is Jack Jr., the alpha male, and co-writer Armen Weitzman plays his buddy, Miles Jr., the ultimate beta cuck (his wife and daughter have died, LOL). They come off as an obnoxious, tone-deaf Greg Kinnear (Corirossi) and a mentally challenged Jason Schwartzman (Weitzman). I've never seen a deader crowd at a comedy; every 20 minutes or so you'd hear a chuckle in the sparsely attended cinema. A deadpan running gag has characters using the "Jr." after their names constantly, while others have descriptors instead of names -- such as Stifler's Brother (an amusing Jamar Malachi Neighbors) or the Mayor of Napa or the Milfonator (yuk-yuk).
A few sad cameos from C-Listers raise the game of these D-Listers. That includes the micro-budget filmmaker's best friend, Ray Wise; comedian Natasha Leggero; the amusing Riki Lindhome; and Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith, reprising their hoary roles as Jay and Silent Bob from Smith's own awkward comedies from years ago. This has been described, generously, as a cross between "Sideways" and "American Pie," with the latter running away with the contest in a landslide. It is supposedly some high-concept meta-joke (it masquerades as the fourth in a series of franchise films), but it mostly comes off as sophomoric.
NEIGHBORHOODS AT A CROSSROADS: WELLS PARK (2020) (B) - Local documentarian Anthony DellaFlora continued his series of profiles of Albuquerque neighborhoods with look back at the history of Wells Park, which provides a unique mix in the heart of the city: residential, industrial and homeless services.
This probably came at the nadir of the homeless inundation six years ago, a problem that has eased in recent years with the revival of the neighborhood's namesake park at Sixth and Mountain, where kids and dogs were running around and basketball players were sieging the hard court during this week's screening of the 46-minute film next door at the Johnny Tapia Community Center. Tapia gets his due in the documentary, the troubled boxer having cut his teeth in the working-class neighborhood in the 1970s and '80s.
Two couples -- Jessie and Fred Sais and Claudette and Leo Romero -- handle the bulk of the reminiscing, all of them at some point central to the formation of the Wells Park Neighborhood Association in the mid-1990s, a move credited with addressing the blight and decay that had been plaguing the area ever since the urban-renewal movement of the 1960s. That includes significant cleanup of the environmental hazards created by the sawmills and public utility.
DellaFlora makes expert use of archival photos and yellowed documents. He digs out interesting stories, including one from Jesse Herron, owner of what was once a rowdy brothel at the turn of the 20th century (called, believe it or not, the Swastika Saloon) and now is a quaint inn called the Painted Lady, which revives the old house of ill repute in spirit if not in practice. Local Ken Salazar recalls handling the solo evening shift at the family-owned gas station as a kid to give his dad a break. We get a solid overview of the Chicano rights movement led by Reis Tijerina (who ran for governor in 1968). It's a fine mix of memory-lane traipsing and analysis of the phases of a city neighborhood. (Available on YouTube.)
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