Masters of the Universe

It's a He-Man movie, right? And I was at the exact target age of the original, animated TV series that existed primarily to sell action figures. I don't remember whether I or my brother ever had any of the action figures. It was the kind of thing a pastor's family never had money for. But it didn't cost us anything to watch the TV show (rabbit-ears TV and whatnot). It was the kind of mindless fun that went down easily between getting home from school and dinnertime, or maybe it was Saturday mornings. I don't recall. But we dug it, and we also enjoyed the 1980s cult film featuring Dolph Lundgren as He-Man and the great Frank Langella as Skeletor. The whole family had a ball with that. Langella's makeup reminded my dad of someone powerful (at the time) but not particularly nice, and the nickname "Skeletor" became our little family joke whenever that person came up in conversation. Money can't buy that kind of fun, which is a good thing because we didn't have any.

But enough about the 1980s. Well, almost enough. Did you know that the earth teens who served as point-of-view characters in the 1987 movie were played by Courteney Cox, a.k.a. Monica on Friends, and Robert Duncan McNeill, a.k.a. Tom Paris on Star Trek: Voyager? Could anyone be a better Evil-Lyn than Meg Foster, she of the almost see-through blue eyes? Or did you know Man-At-Arms was played by the police chief from Hill Street Blues and the Sorceress by the head nurse from St. Elsewhere? Or how about the principal from Back to the Future playing a detective? Voyager's Maje Culluh played the one-eyed villain Blade, and the movie also featured widely credited "little person" actor Billy Barty and My Three Sons alum Barry Livingston. The movie was crazy with people you'd remember from back in the day, and you don't even remember it, do you? Well, do you?

So the 2026 reboot was meant to be another terrible franchise movie, and I'm afraid the box office will probably suffer from that perception. But the movie isn't terrible at all, and the people spreading the rumor that it sucks, sight unseen, are the ones who suck. There, I've said it.

It's a really fun movie that doesn't take itself one whit more seriously than it ought to. It allows its hero to be heroic without going overboard with "He-Man" machismo. And let's be honest, Nicholas Galitzine looks great in that loincloth. Joining him in the cast are Camila Mendes (Riverdale) as Teela, not so much a girl-boss as a tough cookie who gives young Adam (as He-Man is known at home) just the push he needs to become the hero Eternia needs. Idris Elba plays her dad, Duncan a.k.a. Man-At-Arms. A mercifully unrecognizable Jared Leto plays Skeletor, and choose whichever of those two modifiers you like, it applies because he doesn't suck, for once. Yes, children, even Jared Leto being in it doesn't ruin this movie. Although at times I had a hard time understanding his lines (about 20% of what he said flew by me, uncomprehended). I guess it's tough to read lips when the person talking at you has a skull for a face. Also featured are James Purefoy (Rome, The Following) as Adam's hard-driving royal father, Morena Baccarin (Firefly) as the Sorceress, and the previous He-Man, Dolph Lundgren, in an important cameo. Also, Kristin Wiig provides the voice of a lovable battle robot.

While it runs a little long, I didn't have a problem with this film's pace. It establishes how Adam ends up on earth, trying to fit into a corporate life that stifles his identity as the lost prince of Eternia, and what it costs him to keep looking for the Sword of Power that went missing when he escaped from Skeletor's clutches as a child. The action goes into near-nonstop gear after he finds the sword in (of all places) a comic book store, and an other-worldly beast comes hunting for him. Of course Teela whisks him back to Eternia and the race is on to save his world from the post-apocalyptic horror Skeletor has been imposing on it. The adventure has bizarre and sometimes just slightly ridiculous heroes and villains, wacky battles that skew haphazardly all over the boundary between sword-and-sorcery fantasy and high-tech spacecraft-and-aircraft science fiction. It has a talking tiger. It has tons of cyborgs with such enhancements as extendable necks and iron fists. It has a magical maguffin that turns out not to be where the magic is really at. And in addition to some knockout battle scenes, it has laughs and high spirits and an undeniable dose of sex appeal.

Lo, the Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Adam almost kisses Teela, but she friend-zones him just in time. Awkward, but sexy and funny at the same time. (2) Adam's "I think I just died" scene, and what he learns from it. (3) The wild aerial chase through the Eternian forest after Teela, Duncan and Adam escape from Skeletor's dungeon. The joy you see on Adam's face during scenes like this (another example is how he laughs as Teela's ship enters hyperspace, earlier in the movie) kind of makes the movie. This isn't a "Don't look for a smile here, I'm too busy to have fun" hero like, for instance, Black Panther, with all due respect to the memory of Chadwick Boseman. This is light entertainment and it doesn't forget it. Honorary Mention: Adam's coaching by the soul-crushing chief of the human resources office where he works, until he doesn't. It would be so much better to find a magic sword and become a generational hero in a world like Eternia, wouldn't it?

593. Hymn of Reproach

This hymn has been cooking on my back burner for a good long while. I thought about turning it into a paraphrase of the Reproaches from the Good Friday liturgy, but that didn't really stir my creative juices much, so nothing materialized until I decided to go back to my initial idea, which arose while listening to a Sunday sermon I know not how many weeks ago. The tune I have in mind is NUN LASST UNS DEN LEIB from Georg Rhau’s Geistliche Gesänge, Wittenberg, 1544, best known in connection with the burial hymn "Now lay we calmly in the grave."

Unholy age, hear my reproach:
Beware the Judge's swift approach!
Do now, ere He convenes His court,
Acts that with penitence comport!

Think you the world t'ward Jesus turns,
Grows and progresses, upward yearns?
Lo, hist'ry proves the flat reverse:
Each epoch wickeder and worse!

Think you the faithful will arise
To better all before God's eyes?
Open your own, and take concern:
Can faith endure till He return?

Think you God's Word somehow complies
With reason? Mark how man denies
The very words He pledges plain:
Repent and hear His Word again!

Think you Christ's suffering and blood
Suffice not for all sinners' good?
Spew out faith's bane, uncertainty:
His sov'reign will declares you free.

Think you His Spirit's calling voice
Completes or answers your free choice?
Let grace assure your doubting heart
Which ere all worlds set you apart.

Think you, in floods of peril dark,
Your quav'ring faith will be your ark?
Would that the water Jesus pours
Float it from sin to safer shores!

Think you the bread and cup we share
Are merely signs of mystic fare?
Think but how Jesus would emboss
Upon our flesh His lively cross!

O people, see the ages' wreck!
Away, heart hardened, stiffened neck!
The incense of repentance burn;
Watch, pray for Jesus' swift return!

The Breadwinner

I went to see The Breadwinner last night in the local movie theater, under protest. I never expected it to be a good movie, but nothing else that I wanted to see was materializing, and I just needed to go out. So I saw it with super-low expectations and the only surprise I can report is that I actually made it through the whole thing. I seriously entertained the idea of walking out as early as four minutes into the movie, and at regular intervals throughout. It had some cute moments but it didn't exactly elicit belly laughs.

The movie is about a dad, played by standup comedian Nate Bargatze, who has to shift from being the breadwinner (the top Toyota salesman in his city) to a stay-at-home dad to three girls when his wife sells a share of her spiffy invention to one of the sharks on Shark Tank. Of course he's dreadful at it, and he doesn't actually get better. The disaster gets worse and worse, and it isn't just bad luck. It's bad character.

As a comic actor, Nate Bargatze lacks a certain something. Perhaps the best example is the scene where he gets his nose hair waxed. I had seen trailers for the movie that left in footage of his reaction that the movie wisely edited out. A talented comedic actor would have made the audience laugh. Bargatze? Crickets. If the aim of comedy is to make you squirm with discomfort and feel that people like you, as a group, are being treated as lame-ass morons, this movie succeeded brilliantly. I didn't like Nate's character and I wasn't particularly fond of the characters playing off of him.

The movie features Mandy Moore (A Walk to Remember) as Nate's wife, Zach Cherry (Severance) as his boss, Kumail Nanjiani (Silicon Valley) as a rival salesman, SNL cast members Colin Jost and Will Forte as a (cough) rival house-dad and an incompetent roofing contractor respectively, and Brett Cullen (Lost, The West Wing) as Nate's dad who mostly helps out by eating pistachios and napping on the couch. And of course, the sharks as themselves. For what it's worth.

If any Three Scenes Made It For Me, and I did after all stay to watch the whole movie, it would have to be (1) Nate goes back to his dealership after assuming stay-at-home-dad duty and finds that Mr. "The Pecs Get the Checks" has already replaced him as the top salesman. (2) The youngest daughter's pet horse goes ape and destroys the house. (3) The Über Eats driver imagines himself as a member of the happy family – though this type of joke (also involving the roofing guy) has already been played several times.

For me, much of the pleasure of watching this movie came from the subversive thoughts that arose within me, imagining it ending with Nate getting divorced and losing visitation rights of his girls. I'm just a vindictive swine. But it would be a more believable ending than what the movie gave us. And I hasten to add that the closing credits featured excerpts from Bargatze's stand-up, on which the movie was apparently based, and that was no funnier. If anything good comes out of this movie, let it spare us further unfunny comedies based on Nate Bargatze's unfunny comedy.