Jean-Paul’s rating: 4/5 stars
Bottom Line: This movie is much better than it any right to be. Pretty consistent laughter from start to finish.
“Stuber” is a ridiculous movie based on a ridiculous premise. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, goodness was this a fun movie! The reviews for this movie have not been good and I can only assume that those reviewers were expecting a different movie because the movie I saw delivered a fairly consistent lineup of jokes and laughs even if some were pretty long in the setup. For instance, there is a scene where they are stocking up on arms for the big showdown and Vic (David Bautista) packs in some propane tanks which Stu (Kumali Nanjiani) exclaims are completely unnecessary. Fast forward to the end of the movie and Stu’s electric car explodes and Stu exclaims “It’s an electric car! Electric cars can’t explode! Oh, the propane tanks.” Somehow, and I cannot tell you why, that is absolutely hilarious.
Much of the humor revolves around Vic’s manliness and Stu’s unmanliness and exploring the nature of manliness, but it does so in a very constructive way. Vic is almost always wrong and Stu is almost always right. Vic’s manliness is toxic and gives him a skewed world view that makes him neglect his daughter Nicole (Natalie Morales) while still believing he’s a good father. Stu has his problems and Vic really only kind of sort of helps him solve them, not by “manning up” as Vic suggests, but by simply confronting them and having a conversation and firmly but politely saying how things need to go. Don’t worry, though, while these are pretty serious topics, you can rest assured that they are not handled in any serious way at all and the results are hilarious. The scene in the strip club for instance. Be sure to watch the background at all times during that scene.
“Stuber” was a delightful surprise. From the previews, I thought the premise had promise, but when the reviews started hitting I kind of assumed the premise failed. Fake news! I was a bit disappointed that they didn’t use Natalie Morales more than they did because she has a great straight person humor. As long as you aren’t looking for a plot that makes sense and are ok with a series of scenes designed for the humor material and not for the furthering of the plot, you’ll probably have fun with “Stuber” too.