SMITKINS

> **"It's every man for himself where I come from. That's just how I grew up."** I went into this knowing absolutely nothing except that everyone kept telling me it was good. They failed to mention how fucking insane this movie is. Marty might genuinely be one of the most unhinged protagonists I’ve seen in a while - in a great way. Every time I thought he couldn’t possibly make a worse decision, this man somehow found another gear. And Josh Safdie just lets the whole thing spiral into glorious chaos. Timothée is obviously great, Odessa A’zion is fantastic, but the two biggest surprises for me were Gwyneth Paltrow and, somehow, Kevin O’Leary. Paltrow I absolutely wasn’t expecting - sue me I dont like her. O’Leary? I genuinely had no idea the fucking Shark Tank guy could act. And he’s really good. Came in expecting “a good movie.” Left wondering what the hell Josh Safdie just did to me.

> **“I have the power!”** I’ll be honest, I never followed the original Masters of the Universe particularly closely, so maybe I’m simply not the target audience here. I can absolutely see this landing better for people who grew up with it. But this movie seems to fail at almost every goal I can imagine it having. It’s not particularly funny, not particularly exciting, and most importantly, it never gave me much reason to care about these characters. There are moments where you can see the movie it wants to be, but they never really come together. And I’m sorry, but the whole “Are you the God of Hammers?” moment with the sword had me laughing for completely the wrong reasons. It’s clearly trying to have that big Thor Ragnarok “you’re worthy of the weapon” moment, but instead it felt like the movie was desperately trying to convince me that it had depth. That said, there are some genuinely great performances buried in here. Idris Elba, Nicholas Galitzine and Camila Mendes all stood out to me, and honestly, Skeletor rocked. I also completely forgot Jared Leto was even in this movie because Skeletor sounded absolutely nothing like him Maybe this hits differently if you grew up with Masters of the Universe. For me, it mostly just left me wondering what I was supposed to care about.