Dearest Reviews: Bad Boys

Up for review: the latest adventures of a pansexual mutant superhero and the scandalous escapades of a bisexual Hollywood pimp.....

Deadpool 2:
What made the original Deadpool so entertaining was that it not only tweaked the nose of every cinematic superhero convention in the book, it was also surprisingly softhearted. The sequel is back with, smartly, more of the same, although the strain of keeping that snark-to-sweet balance shows more and more despite the efforts of Ryan Reynolds and his (on- and off-screen) partners in crime (now including Josh Brolin as Cable, his second Marvel villain role of the year, and Ricky Baker himself, Julian Dennison, as a hot-headed orphan with a revenge streak). While the action becomes ever-increasingly over-the-top (at one point, our hero is literally ripped in half), most of the jokes lean heavy into Reynold's (by now overly-) familiar "ain't I a naughty boy" shtick, which, let's face it, is growing old with the star now in his 40s.
(6/10) Now available on DVD and Blu-ray.

Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood:
Meet Scotty Bowers, former Marine and WWII vet who found his fame and fortune in post-war Hollywood as a service station attendant on Hollywood Boulevard not by pumping gas but by pumping... movie stars. A fateful meeting with Mr. Miniver himself, Walter Pidgeon, led our hero Scotty to becoming a very successful procurer (as well as practitioner) of male and/or female companionship for all sorts of Tinseltown elite, mostly of the closeted variety. Be prepared for shocking revelations about the secret sex lives of everyone from Hepburn & Tracy to none other than the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (for whom Scotty reportedly set up bisexual orgies for on a regular basis). It's all very sordid and at times crass (I admit to flinching when he offhandedly states that he "fucked Bette Davis"), and one can't help but question the veracity of such an abundance of sexual shenanigans, even when  the likes of Gore Vidal have backed him up.

Somewhere, under the rainbow

The bulk of the film, however, is devoted to recent interviews with Scotty himself, now a 95-year-old hoarder married to a woman who is still, even after the publication of his memoirs, "Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars", largely in the dark about the bulk of her husband's past (to be fair, she doesn't want to know... do you blame her?). Gay actor Stephen Fry is among the scant collection of talking heads, on hand to offer some historical context of the time when being gay could ruin careers, sprinkled among scenes of Scotty visiting his former "staff" and picking up old toilets off the side of the road. Director Matt Tyrnauer (Valentino: The Last Emperor) touches on themes of "faded glory in La La Land" but never quite develops them, and frankly, with at title like Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood, one would expect far more of the latter than we end up with.
(6/10) Available on DVD November 6th.

Reviews by Kirby Holt, Movie Dearest creator, editor and head writer.