Activation warning
Netflix has the magical ability to take even frankly awful movies and turn them into the most-watched offering in America for a while, at least based on the reach of its subscriber base. That’s exactly what happened with Trigger Warning, Jessica Alba’s critically acclaimed action flick that was #1 on the Top 10 movie list for over a week. But no more.
Rather, a new film replaced it with A-list stars and at least somewhat better reviews. But not good reviews. It’s definitely not good. That would be A Family Affair starring Zac Efron, Nicole Kidman and Netflix favorite Joey King. Kidman plays her mother and King is an assistant to her film boss, Efron.
Neither of these movies are good, by any measure. Trigger Warning has a rather shocking 18%. Rotten tomatoes, but even worse, a 15% audience rating, which rarely happens when something is already that low. People must really hate this movie, and as much as I’d like to see a renaissance Jessica Alba, I’m not going to watch this thing with such low ratings.
A Family Affair
A Family Affair fares a little better, but not much. He also had one pair of low scores, 44% from critics and again, an even lower 34% from the public, albeit with not as many reviews yet. It’s not unusual for those #1 movies to be terrible, but we recently had the good fortune of Hit Man being #1, a really great 96% comedy starring Glenn Powell, though it’s now down to #9.
The rest of the list is mainly children’s movies, which are always popular, Minions, Home, Shrek and Boss Baby. And of course Super Mario Bros. which I don’t believe has left this list in four months.
A new, high-profile licensed movie is The Flash, currently at #3, and for some, the movie that was sort of the last gasp of the DCEU. I wouldn’t say it’s worse than Black Adam or Shazam 2, sure, but it was about an important member of the Justice League, with an awesome take on Supergirl and the return of Michael Keaton’s Batman. And it still wasn’t good, hampered in part by poor CGI in a movie that needed really, really good CGI. The cameo-filled final sequence is one of the worst things I’ve ever seen in a superhero movie.
A Family Affair will likely stay #1 for a while given its star power. Maybe as more reviews come in these ratings will increase, but anecdotally my wife gave up on this movie after about 20 minutes, so I’m not so sure.
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