For Every Great Netflix Movie Like “Annihilation”, There’s Dog Turds Like “Game Over, Man!” That Make Me Want To Puke

March 26 03:03 2018 by Alexei Rivera Print This Article

Sometimes, its tough to be a Netflix subscriber. Especially when the majority of Netflix Originals don’t get the same review treatment as most theatrical release movies. Because why not? Watching it is potentially free anyway – sans the monthly subscription fee you pay the all-you-can-watch streaming service – but what of your sanity? Who pays for the psychiatric bills when you had to watch countless hours of crappy movies because it randomly popped up on your feed? Take, “Game Over, Man!” for example: a movie that seemed to have a decent premise, some stoner quality logic and maybe a little bit of action for good measure. Turns out I’d rather have cut off my own ***** instead of watching it. And yes, that’s a vulgar joke – but if “Game Over, Man!” was happy enough to slap us in our faces with that same joke with about 20 times the airtime needed, then we might as well have told you beforehand.

Yes, there is a “joke” involving a man’s reproductive organ getting cut off in “Game Over, Man!” And they’re not afraid to show it to you, more than once, or twice, or several times. That’s the extent of what you can expect from this action-comedy that’s devoid of both. Starring Adam Devine (Pitch Perfect) and a crew from Workaholics starring as a bunch of hotel housekeepers. They have to man up, “Die Hard,” style to overcome terrorists who have taken over their hotel. Except they don’t man up. They just turn into bumbling idiots and perverts with no redeeming qualities.

Watching, “Game Over, Man!” made me feel like I’m watching a parody movie like “Epic Movie” because there’s a bunch of celebrity cameos that gets killed off immediately and the bad guys can’t be taken seriously if at all. One scene involves the protagonist forcing a male hostage to pleasure a portly guy’s rear end – on camera. If you find that funny then I will honestly have to question how old you are.

On the other end of the spectrum, you get “Annihilation”. A movie starring Natalie Portman as a scientist investigating a weird “shimmer” phenomenon that has landed on earth. It is every bit a visual treat – with organic, otherworldly visuals that go on for days. Like watching Dr. Strange or the Ant Man go through their “Shooting Stars” memes – and about as dark and 90’s sci-fi as the old Aliens movies. There are some logic and plot holes that get them into circumstances learned scientists should have gotten themselves in, but when the third act happens it all just falls into the background as we discover what’s behind the phenomenon and what the hell is happening. It is not a profound movie, but it definitely left us hanging at the edge of our seats more than once and for much longer than we’d expect. If we had to complain, its the somewhat slow flashbacks that flesh out a love story that doesn’t really have much of an impact in the movie. Flicks like this always have to have those lulls in between to flesh out characters or slowly introduce a little suspense, but sometimes it just gets a little slow. Either way, “Annihilation” is an awesome movie that I’d love to keep getting from Netflix, and a lot less of “Game Over, Man!”

What ticks us off is that very huge difference in quality we’re getting on Netflix these days – when I see a movie like, “Game Over, Man!” where Adam Devine holds his dick on camera for what seems like hours of unneeded footage (that’s not even the same joke as the cut penis, by the way), we see a depraved quick cash grab that makes us want to puke. Its an insult that it lives and breathes in the same page as, “Annihilation”. Netflix needs to fix their recommendation system in that better movies show up first. And yes, they’re promoting this nudie stoner movie because they produced it, but that also ties into the fact that the service doesn’t have a good rating system set for separating the good movies from the bad. Netflix is taking advantage of their own faulty curation system by just producing terrible movies and making their library look better than it should. That’s why I haven’t bothered watching the Adam Sandler Netflix Original movies because I don’t know if its good or just your typical Adam Sandler crap.

Sigh. Anyway, here’s hoping that some day Netflix will have a way for us to slice through the dreck in the platform and get to the good stuff.