One Mann’s Movies review of “Stuber” (2019).
Bob the Movie Man’s Rating:
Certification:
US: R. UK: 15.
FIVESTARS. For the avoidance of doubt, that’s part-time Uber driver Stu’s number plate… not what I’d give the film “Stuber”. Although, actually, I was pleasantly surprised by this one. Remembering all the bad reviews I recall this film had when it hit cinemas last year, I was bracing myself for a shocker.
Carnage at the animal hospital. Stu (Kumail Nanjiani) and Vic (Dave Bautista) take cover. (Source: Twentieth Century Fox).
Kumail Nanjiani hits my funny bone… again.
Like no other genre, comedy is highly personal and one person’s comedy gold is another person’s comedy nightmare (“Mrs Brown’s Boys” anyone?). Similarly there are some comedians that I really engage with and others that really irritate. For me, stand-up comedian Kumail Nanjiani falls into the former category. Although having had bit-part roles in many films over the last ten years, it was his starring role playing… well… basically, himself in “The Big Sick” that first caught my attention. Here he repeats that starring role and delivers a deft performance as the shy and ‘scaredy-cat’ driver making a pick-up he won’t forget in a hurry.
He’s paired here, in an unusual ‘buddy cop’/’not buddy cop’ manner, with “Spectre” bad-guy Dave Bautista, a giant of a man who displays a knack for comic delivery (albeit as the straight man) that I was not expecting.
Here’s sauce in your eye! The odd couple take on Oka Tedjo. (Source: Twentieth Century Fox).
The seeing-eye Uber man.
Bautista plays cop Vic Manning who is in an obsessive pursuit of bad-guy Oka Tedjo (Iko Uwais). Suffering from increasingly bad eyesight, Manning undergoes laser eye surgery on the very day that the “big tip-off” comes through. Being almost blind, Manning hires (read kidnaps) Stu to be his unwilling partner in a battle that puts Stu as well as Manning’s attractive artist daughter (Natalie Morales) in harm’s way.
There’s comedy to be mined in the blind cop set-up…. it’s similar in some ways to the Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor comedy “See No Evil, Hear No Evil”.
A bird of prey in different feathers. Natalie Morales plays Vic’s well-sculpted sculpturess. (Source: Twentieth Century Fox).
Surprisingly visceral action.
We all know that Bautista can do a good fight scene. That fight onboard a train in “Spectre“, with Daniel Craig‘s Bond, was almost on a par with the famous Connery/Shaw fight in “From Russia With Love”. Here, Bautista gets to brawl with gusto in a few scenes.
In general, the “action” in this “action-comedy” is pretty full-on and entertaining. The opening scenes in particular, with Manning and officer Sara Morris (the ever-watchable Karen Gillan) taking on Tedjo in an upper floor of a high-rise building are exciting and dramatic. This is due in no small part to the acrobatic capabilities of Iko Uwais. (Uwais is an Indonesian champion at the martial art Silat… and it shows).
A man with more than a few nifty moves. Iko Uwais as the villain of the piece. (Source: Twentieth Century Fox).
Slick writing that delivers some great lines.
The script is by Tripper Clancy, with this being his first US film after penning two previous German films. And it really made me laugh a lot, both in terms of some of the set up scenes (one in an animal hospital is particularly funny) and in some of the dialogue. As an example, when pushed to the limit of his stress, Stu wails “So I’m gonna have to get cheap student therapists who quote white guys with Indian names and tell me that I should meditate. I…DO…MEDITATE!!!!”.
Also top-notch is the use of music in the film. A use of the Hollies classic “Air that I breathe” during the above mentioned Animal Hospital scene was brilliant.
Using brains not brawn. Stu is about to show Vic how it should be done. (Source: Twentieth Century Fox).
Summary
Comedies need to make me laugh. This one did. Repeatedly. It even made the illustrious Mrs Movie Man laugh too. Repeatedly. As such “Stuber” comes with a “recommended” from me.
Trailer:
The “Stuber” trailer is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5l6a5RiR1E. (Note that in common with many comedy trailers, they tend to put some of the better lines in the trailer…. as such, you may wish to avoid!)
