Barbie (2023)

I was reluctant to try something so polarizing. If nothing else, I figured that seeing the largest amount of pink outside of a nudist community would sicken me. But on a tiny airplane-back screen, that's not so risky.

Here we see Barbieland, home to live humanoids who mostly go by "Barbie" and "Ken," who come into existence as Mattel makes their corresponding doll models, and who change based on how the dolls are played with. The focal characters are Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) and Beach Ken (Ryan Gosling), whom I'll call SB and BK for simplicity. SB starts to develop realistic flaws nearly unheard of in Barbieland, so she travels to real-world L.A., where Mattel is headquartered, in search of a solution. BK tags along and discovers that Barbieland could become a lot more fun for the men -- at the cost of the women. He returns before SB does....

Elf (2003)

For the first time in ages, my family couldn't go to a theater together on Christmas. I wound up watching this DVD alone, partly from lack of interest by others. Given my low opinions of Will Ferrell and 2003 movies in general (gosh, I haven't even reviewed any of the latter in full here), I was only slightly interested myself. But it keeps getting positive references 15 years later, so I figured I owed myself a little education.

Santa Claus (Ed Asner) accidentally takes an infant stowaway from an orphanage back to the North Pole. The head elf (Bob Newhart) adopts him, calling him Buddy. Like Navin in The Jerk, Buddy has no idea he's adopted until told so in adulthood, despite not fitting in -- literally. When he learns that his unknowing biological father, Walter (James Caan), is a "naughty" New York exec, he makes a trek in the hope of making a loving connection. Of course, in many ways, he fits in even less among fellow humans, but his stepmother (Mary Steenburgen) encourages Walter to receive him in all his perceived lunacy after a DNA test confirms their relation.

Stranger Than Fiction (2006)

Right from the first minute of the preview -- establishing that one Harold Crick suddenly hears his life narrated by a novelist -- I got the impression that Will Ferrell was attempting what Jim Carrey did with The Truman Show and Bill Murray did with Groundhog Day: a sci-fi/fantasy comedy-drama just philosophically serious enough that we may finally consider the star something other than a full-time clown. I welcomed this prospect, as Ferrell's humor has always struck me as about half decent and half obnoxious. (Like some other comedians I could name, he fares better in voice roles.)

It turns out that STF doesn't spend much time trying to be funny. As absurd as the above, unexplained premise is -- not to mention the addition of an apparently sapient watch that goes on the fritz to affect Harold's actions -- the story quickly introduces some dark ways for his setup to suck. In particular, the narrator indicates that Harold is going to die very soon. From there, it's a question of whether to go quietly into that good night or struggle to find an escape. Yeah, he spends more time doing the latter.