'Desperados' Review
TV-MA: Language and Suggestive MaterialRuntime: 1 Hr and 46 MinutesProduction Companies: Good Universe, MXN Entertainment, Lost CityDistributor: NetflixDirector: LPWriters: Ellen RapoportCast: Nasim Pedrad, Lamorne Morris, Anna Camp, Robbie Amell, Heather Graham, Sarah BurnsRelease Date: July 3, 2020
A panicked young woman, with her reluctant friends in tow, rushes to Mexico to try and delete a ranting email she sent to her new boyfriend.
With every piece of garbage comes a silver lining. In Desperados’s case, it’s Lamorne Morris. His character Sean is the only sane, likable character in this infested pool of shallow characters. From the beginning, he is completely turned off by Wesley’s overbearing nature and is the only person who actively calls her out on her bullshit. Based on his archetype alone, you can easily predict what role he plays in Desperados, but Morris has so much charm and charisma that he is the only thing that shines in this film. He shares great chemistry with Pedrad, which isn’t shocking since they also played love interests in New Girl, so… go watch that instead of this dumpster fire.
I’ll be completely blunt: Desperados is the worst movie I’ve seen this year. I don’t know where to begin expressing how much I hate this film. Oh! I know. Let’s go back to 2009, shall we? Back in 2009, there was this R-rated comedy called The Hangover that took the world by storm and did gangbusters at the box office. Because of its unexpected success, every studio wanted to make their own Hangover-style comedy, including the dudes who wrote The Hangover. Seriously, look at Jon Lucas and Scott Moore’s filmography. It’s the only thing they do. So, in November 2009, Universal optioned a comedy spec script from Ellen Rapoport which was to star Isla Fisher. According to The Hollywood Reporter, “The project has been described as a female-oriented Hangover.”10 YEARS LATER, that screenplay was dusted off the shelf and put into production by Netflix. Did nobody consider doing a complete rewrite of this script so that it would match our times? And I don’t just mean making current-day references — I mean write jokes that are actually funny or write a story that doesn’t feel like a product of its time. The state of comedy has changed significantly since 2009. Most comedies of that time, The Hangover included, haven't aged well. So, watching a movie about an email in 2020 — with humor ranging from a horny CG dolphin slapping its dick on a woman’s face to a running gag about a woman accused of being a pedophile — makes Desperados feel utterly outdated and incredibly unfunny. It’s quite fitting for this film to be titled Desperados because it desperately tries to make you laugh.
Let me deconstruct the premise for you. There’s this woman-child named Wesley who is going through a mid-life crisis of sorts. She’s unsatisfied because she’s unemployed and single. You would feel sympathy towards her if she wasn’t immature and shallow while trying to be the center of attention at all times, especially around her friends who are going through their own struggles. Kaylie (Sarah Burns) is trying to get pregnant and Brooke (Anna Camp) is going through a divorce. Sean is introduced as a blind date –– which is apparently something people do in 2020 instead of, you know… dating apps –– and immediately tells her off for being alarmingly overbearing, which marks the first hint of realism in the film. But when Wesley trips headfirst into some concrete and wakes up to the hunky face of Jared (hunky Robbie Amell), she degrades herself by putting on a cool, straight-laced persona so she could get with Jared because, as I said, he’s hunky. He completely ghosts her after a one-night stand, so Wes and her friends collaborate to send a hurtful email. However, it’s later revealed that he was put into a coma in Mexico, so Wes and her friends drop everything and set out on a trip to Mexico to DELETE AN EMAIL. Oh, and Wes also happens to run into Sean while she’s there. That’s the setup. Now, it’s a hard pill to swallow for a comedy in 2020 to be centered on a grown 30-year-old woman venturing to Mexico to delete an email so she can stay with her current boyfriend because he’s hot and shallow in his own way — just like her — but Wesley is the absolute fucking worst. Aforementioned, she’s self-centered and doesn’t take accountability or responsibility for her actions at all. Her friends are also terrible people, for they enable Wes and join her on her stalking expedition. They’re all fucking terrible people with little to absolutely no redeemable qualities. Even the subplots regarding Wesley’s friends are completely predictable and effortless, for even their archetypes have been done to death in other cheap R-rated comedies of this nature. The moment I uttered, “They’re going to make this character gay because that’s the cheap joke route,” lo and behold, it happened. The humor is one-note and tries to force unfunny jokes on you that it becomes as grating as its characters.Holy shit, is this the gendered opposite to a Happy Madison/Adam Sandler comedy? I think it is.Cheap shock humorUnlikable, shallow charactersThe entire movie’s plot is an excuse to take a vacation
Oh my God, this is the female equivalent to an Adam Sandler movie. It’s even written by a woman. Wow. Poor Nasim Pedrad. She was one of my favorite cast members on SNL during the early 2010s but has yet to find herself a hit role to showcase her talents. She was good in Aladdin, but that film was mediocre. Give Nasim Pedrad a good role, y’all. She deserves better. #NasimPedradDeservesBetterSeriously, the only fun I had during Desperados was seeing how quickly this would end up on my worst-of list. By the time the hour mark hit and the film returned to the running gag about Wes being a pedophile because she keeps having run-ins with a 12-year-old boy who’s attracted to her, I was like, “Okay, 0 STARS.” Then, Lamorne Morris shows up with his charm and I went, “0.5 stars!” Oh yeah, the movie is too fucking long. It’s an hour and forty-six minutes, but when you’re watching a boring comedy, it feels like an entire eternity. Luckily, Desperados doesn’t reach the two-hour mark where you know I apply my infamous “Apatow rule.” Either way, this is by far the worst movie I’ve seen this year. #NasimPedradDeservesBetter Rating: 0.5/5 | 15%
