CAPSULE MOVIE REVIEWS: 8-7-26

[Get the exclusive video version of these weekly reviews each Friday by becoming a paid subscriber!]

My Film Critic pants are quite fetching; they are on, pressed, and ironed. I'm ready to review three new movies in this week's capsule (short) movie reviews for Friday, August 7th, 2026.

1) SUPER TROOPERS 3

The comedy troupe Broken Lizard has been around since the early ’90s, when the guys met at Colgate University, started performing together onstage, and eventually developed the very specific style of comedy that has sustained them for more than three decades.

Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter and Erik Stolhanske write the movies together, they all appear in them, and Chandrasekhar usually directs. Their breakthrough was Super Troopers in 2001, a genuinely funny little comedy that gradually became a cult classic, a stoner favorite and the kind of movie people can quote endlessly at midnight screenings.

They followed it with Club Dread, their clever 2004 parody of slasher movies, and eventually Super Troopers 2 in 2018. But, for me, their masterpiece remains Beerfest, which is one of the funniest comedies of the early 2000s, filled with unbelievably stupid situations, inspired running gags and some of the best work these guys have ever done.

Now they’re back with Super Troopers 3, and if you know Broken Lizard, you pretty much know what you’re getting. The mustaches are back. The ridiculous traffic stops are back.

The Vermont State Troopers are still screwing with civilians, each other and anybody unlucky enough to encounter them. There are drinking jokes, drug jokes, vomiting jokes, terrible police work, elaborate pranks and a plot that becomes increasingly insane as it goes along.

And you know what? I like these guys. I like their particular brand of comedy, and while Super Troopers 3 doesn’t come close to Beerfest, it made me laugh a lot.

The main plot involves the thoroughly obnoxious Farva, played once again by Kevin Heffernan, falling in love with Thorny’s sister Sarita, played by Hannah Simone, who was always so terrific on New Girl and is very funny here.

Farva rescues her after her SUV is run off the road, they fall madly in love, and somehow this fat, loud, ill-tempered, arrogant lunatic not only wins her over, but charms Thorny’s traditional Indian parents as well. Thorny, naturally, is horrified and spends much of the movie trying to sabotage the impending marriage.

The movie actually opens at the enormous Indian wedding, complete with a big Bollywood-style musical number, before flashing back to show us how the hell we got there. It’s a funny opening and establishes exactly the right tone: this is going to be big, ridiculous and completely unapologetic about it.

While Thorny is desperately trying to prevent Farva from becoming his brother-in-law, the Troopers also become involved in an investigation concerning a new drug called Canadian Crystal, maple syrup, smugglers, Canadians and eventually an elephant. Because of course there’s an elephant.

The plot is completely ridiculous, but plot has never really been the point with Broken Lizard. It’s an excuse to hang a collection of comic set pieces and running jokes on these characters, and some of those set pieces are hilarious.

There’s a terrific gag involving Steve Lemme being frozen in corn syrup and ending up looking like Han Solo encased in carbonite in The Empire Strikes Back. There are chases, shootouts and some very funny bits involving a Canadian electric police vehicle voiced by Will Sasso, including a big jump that becomes a wonderful little tribute to Smokey and the Bandit. There are also nods to The Dukes of Hazzard, which makes perfect sense since Chandrasekhar directed the 2005 movie version.

The supporting cast gets plenty to do. Brian Cox returns as retired Captain O’Hagen, and while it’s essentially a glorified cameo, he is absolutely hilarious every time he appears.

There is something inherently funny about watching an actor as powerful and distinguished as Brian Cox completely commit to this stupidity. Nat Faxon plays Captain Todd Markowski, who is constantly handing people strange self-help books and novels, and every single book exchange gets a laugh.

He also has an incredibly funny recurring sequence in which he’s trying not to get drunk, accidentally eats chocolate laced with hallucinogens, and spends the night simultaneously screaming and vomiting. It sounds disgusting. It is disgusting. And it’s very, very funny.

Andrew Dismukes, who is so funny on Saturday Night Live, plays a rookie Trooper and gets some terrific material involving ordering coffee, apps and a fantastic foot chase after a traffic stop.

Chace Crawford and Jon Rudnitsky turn up as part of the criminal side of the story, Marisa Coughlan returns as Ursula, and Brian Cox continues to wander through the movie dispensing insults and reminding everybody that Captain O’Hagen is still one of the funniest characters in the series.

But what really works about Super Troopers 3 is the dialogue. Broken Lizard has always been very good at writing stupid people saying strangely clever things. The throwaway lines are often funnier than the big set pieces.

There are mispronounced words, bizarre puns, arguments about coffee, jokes about women wearing pants instead of skirts, an Ocean’s 8 reference, strange conversations about getting older and being alone, ridiculous radio communications and endless jokes involving the Troopers taking their jobs far more seriously than anybody else does.

The movie just keeps throwing verbal nonsense at you, and sometimes a line is tossed away so casually that you almost miss how funny it is.

There’s also a running joke about the Troopers being terrible tippers whenever DoorDash drivers or other delivery people show up. Thorny’s attempts to destroy the wedding keep backfiring because Farva, inexplicably, becomes more beloved by everyone around him.

There’s even a sequence involving Farva having sex with Thorny’s sister in Thorny’s house and then casually wandering around half-dressed in Thorny’s clothes, which naturally sends Thorny into another rage. The character dynamics are exactly what they’ve always been, but the Broken Lizard guys understand that these relationships are the engine of the movies.

These idiots genuinely love one another even while spending almost every waking moment trying to humiliate each other.

Not everything works. There’s a long sequence involving a shellfish allergy and EpiPens that goes on way too long. Some of the sight gags fall flat, the big chase near the end could have been tightened considerably, and there are moments when the movie seems determined to keep escalating a joke long after it has reached its natural ending.

But for every gag that dies, there are three or four throwaway lines, puns, character moments or ridiculous pieces of wordplay that made me laugh out loud. That’s a pretty good ratio for a comedy.

And yes, the movie eventually builds to exactly the climax you expect: drugs, the wedding, mistaken identities, shootouts, chases, the elephant and general chaos all colliding at once.

Broken Lizard is recycling plenty of cop-movie clichés while simultaneously recycling its own Super Troopers traditions, but that’s part of the joke. The traffic stops, the mustaches, the radio chatter, the idiotic contests and the endless abuse of authority are all here because people want them to be here.

The difference between lazy repetition and a good running gag is whether it still makes you laugh, and quite a bit of this still does.

There are also a couple of terrific surprises toward the end, including a cameo that fans of ’70s television are going to absolutely love. And make sure you stay through the credits.

There’s a priceless scene involving Brian Cox and that surprise guest, followed by the kind of hilarious outtakes that Broken Lizard fans have come to expect.

I’ve always liked Broken Lizard because their movies have their own peculiar comic personality. They’re vulgar and juvenile, but they’re also much smarter about comedy than they sometimes pretend to be.

Their best material comes from character, timing, wordplay and the willingness to pursue a completely idiotic idea until it somehow becomes funny again. Super Troopers 3 is nowhere near as good as Beerfest, which remains their funniest movie, but I’d put it around the level of Club Dread, and I definitely think it’s better than Super Troopers 2.

It’s an improvement over the previous sequel, it has a surprising number of genuine laugh-out-loud moments, and after all these years the Broken Lizard guys still clearly enjoy making each other laugh.

At the end, they promise Super Troopers 4. I’m in. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️

2) ICE CREAM MAN

I have a feeling this review may get me into a little trouble.

Most critics are absolutely demolishing Ice Cream Man, the latest blood-soaked horror comedy from Eli Roth, and I understand why. It is dumb. It is ridiculous. It is wildly excessive. There is nothing remotely subtle or sophisticated about it.

I also had a really good time.

I laughed frequently, admired several wonderfully disgusting practical effects, and appreciated the fact that Roth never pretends this is anything other than an absurd, over-the-top splatter comedy.

Not one second of Ice Cream Man is intended to be taken seriously. It is a feature-length celebration of bad taste, ridiculous slasher mythology, homicidal children, exploding body parts, and the kind of outrageous gore that used to fill grindhouses and video-store shelves.

Apparently, I am in the minority on this one. I’m fine with that.

I have enjoyed most of Eli Roth’s horror movies. He burst onto the scene more than twenty years ago with Cabin Fever, a nasty, funny, genuinely disgusting little horror picture that caught the attention of Quentin Tarantino.

Then came Hostel, which I still think is both brutally effective and deeply funny. It is a savage satire of obnoxious American tourists charging through Europe with their fraternity-boy arrogance, only to discover that the rest of the world may not find them quite as charming as they find themselves.

Roth became part of the group of early-2000s horror filmmakers critics labeled the “Splat Pack,” alongside directors like Alexandre Aja, James Wan, and Rob Zombie. These filmmakers embraced explicit violence, practical gore, and the gleeful destruction of good taste. Some were much better than others. Rob Zombie, for example, is a terrible filmmaker.

But the movement itself was real, and Roth has always been one of its most enthusiastic showmen.

He has occasionally wandered outside horror. The House with a Clock in Its Walls is a surprisingly good family movie. Borderlands is terrible. His remake of Death Wish is exactly the kind of unnecessary remake you would expect.

But Roth remains most comfortable when he is working with blood, guts, genre clichés, and an audience willing to laugh while people are being torn apart.

His last film, Thanksgiving, was a hilarious slasher satire with a terrific opening sequence built around the insanity of Black Friday shopping. People trampled one another, fought over appliances, and were ripped apart in the pursuit of bargains. The entire sequence pushed a recognizable piece of American madness to a ludicrous extreme.

Ice Cream Man takes the tone of that opening and stretches it across nearly the entire movie.

The setup is beautifully stupid. A mysterious ice cream vendor arrives in a small suburban town and begins serving children frozen treats containing some kind of mind-altering substance. Soon, the kids have blue lips, crazed expressions, and an uncontrollable desire to murder every adult in sight.

The only children who remain unaffected are the ones who avoid the ice cream, including a lactose-intolerant teenager who suddenly becomes one of humanity’s last lines of defense.

That alone made me laugh.

Once the children begin killing, the movie barely stops to breathe. The town becomes a miniature apocalypse as packs of sugar-crazed kids attack parents, teachers, priests, doctors, and anyone else unfortunate enough to cross their paths.

Every imaginable household object, medical instrument, and gardening tool becomes a murder weapon. There are decapitations, dismemberments, eye injuries, exposed intestines, severed limbs, and enough fake blood to fill several swimming pools.

On a gore scale from one to ten, Ice Cream Man is approximately a twenty-five.

The violence is explicit, but it is also so exaggerated that it becomes cartoonish. Nobody could possibly mistake any of this for reality. Roth stages the murders like elaborate punchlines, with practical effects that deliberately recall the handmade splatter movies of the 1970s and ’80s.

You can feel the influence of George Romero, Lucio Fulci, low-budget drive-in movies, and the notorious video nasties that once terrified censors and delighted horror fans. The practical work is fantastic.

Bodies do not simply fall down in this movie. They burst, tear, split, spray, and occasionally seem to disassemble themselves. One especially funny moment involves a smug man riding a Segway and losing his head in spectacular fashion. The timing is perfect, the effect is wonderfully grotesque, and the whole thing made me laugh out loud.

That is the movie’s basic rhythm: setup, bloodbath, punchline.

Roth is also having fun with the increasingly complicated mythology of long-running slasher franchises. About an hour into the movie, the surviving kids are given the tragic backstory of the murderous ice cream man and the bizarre rules required to defeat him.

The explanation involves injustice, supernatural revenge, a priest, a freezer, a necromancer, a siren, and a series of increasingly nonsensical instructions.

It is a direct parody of the elaborate mythology surrounding characters like Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, and every other supernatural killer whose backstory became more complicated with each sequel.

The kids keep asking logical questions, and every answer only makes the plan more absurd. The scene is very funny because Roth understands that slasher-movie rules rarely make sense once anyone stops to examine them.

The Ice Cream Man himself, played by Ari Millen, is an appropriately ridiculous creation. He has a cheesy mustache, a stiff uniform, a silly hat, and a permanent smile that suggests he has been standing behind the same truck window for several decades.

Even in flashbacks involving courtrooms and prison cells, he is still wearing the complete ice cream-man outfit. The visual joke becomes funnier every time it appears.

Roth also includes a clever parody of the famous playground sequence from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. Instead of crows gradually gathering behind an unsuspecting Tippi Hedren, homicidal children begin appearing on the playground equipment. The reference is obvious, but it is staged with enough affection and comic timing to work.

Then there is the movie’s rather blatant relationship to Weapons.

That massively overrated horror film also involved children being hypnotized, running through a town, and eventually forming a violent mob. Weapons treated the premise with tremendous seriousness and surrounded it with enough self-conscious style to convince audiences they were watching something profound.

I wasn’t convinced.

Ice Cream Man takes a similar basic idea and turns it into exactly what it probably should have been in the first place: a ridiculous, vulgar, blood-drenched comedy. It has no pretensions.

It does not want to be elevated horror. It wants to watch crazed children tear adults into pieces while an ice cream jingle plays in the background.

Honestly, I found it more entertaining than Weapons. I realize that will not be a popular opinion.

The young cast is quite good, particularly because the kids understand the movie’s tone. They play the danger straight enough to keep the story moving, but nobody acts as though they are appearing in a serious drama about the collapse of civilization.

There is also a ridiculous teenage romance shoved into the middle of the carnage, because apparently even the possible extinction of adulthood cannot stop hormonal teenagers from flirting.

Roth himself appears in the movie, and anyone who dislikes him personally may enjoy seeing what happens to his character. I will leave it at that.

The film runs barely eighty-five minutes, which is exactly the correct length. It does become repetitive because there are only so many ways to stage another group of children attacking another adult, but Roth keeps the pace moving and rarely allows the movie to pause long enough for anyone to notice how completely idiotic the story is.

And it is idiotic.

This is not intelligent satire. It does not contain profound commentary about childhood, consumerism, parenting, or the corrupting influence of sugar. It is a knowingly stupid exploitation movie designed for horror fans who appreciate latex wounds, fake intestines, severed heads, gallons of stage blood, and jokes that would horrify anyone with respectable taste.

Fortunately, respectable taste is not always necessary.

Ice Cream Man is gross, juvenile, chaotic, and completely excessive. It is also frequently funny, technically impressive, and filled with affection for the kind of splatter movies Eli Roth grew up loving.

The practical effects are terrific, the kills are inventive, and the entire production has the energy of a filmmaker throwing an enormous, disgusting party for gorehounds.

Most people will hate it. I didn’t.

For serious horror fans who understand exactly what they are walking into, I am recommending Ice Cream Man. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️

3) ONE NIGHT ONLY

The minute I hear that a new movie is a romantic comedy, I begin to tense up.

I know that sounds unfair, but decades of terrible romantic comedies have trained me to expect the worst. The genre has become a dumping ground for beautiful actors, flimsy screenplays, manufactured misunderstandings, cheap sentimentality, and characters who behave like complete idiots because the plot needs to keep them apart for another ninety minutes.

Most romantic comedies are as flimsy as a rubber band and about as deep as an ashtray.

There are exceptions. Annie Hall is a classic. Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy is wonderful. (500) Days of Summer is smart and inventive, and Crazy, Stupid, Love finds clever ways to play with the genre’s conventions. Even Stranger Than Fiction brings genuine imagination and emotion to the form.

Those movies are exceptions for a reason.

Then every once in a while, a romantic comedy comes along that is so bad it gives other terrible romantic comedies a bad name. One Night Only is one of those movies.

Directed by Will Gluck, the man responsible for Fired Up!, the dreadful 2014 remake of Annie, two Peter Rabbit movies, and the horrific Anyone but You, this is a romantic comedy constructed around one of the most bizarrely mishandled premises I have seen all year.

The film takes place three years after an authoritarian government has outlawed premarital sex for 364 days of the year. Every citizen is fitted with a biometric tattoo that monitors physical arousal, tracks sexual activity, and alerts law enforcement if anyone breaks the mandate. For one twelve-hour period each year, the restrictions are lifted and unmarried people are legally allowed to have sex.

So basically, it is The Purge with intercourse instead of murder.

That could potentially be the basis for a dark political satire about government control, bodily autonomy, religious authoritarianism, privacy, repression, or the complete collapse of civil liberties.

The movie is interested in none of those things.

Instead, this deeply disturbing dystopian concept exists only so New Yorkers can run around half-naked, fight over condoms, have sex in public places, and behave like crazed cartoon characters while loud pop songs play on the soundtrack. The political and social implications of this world are barely explained.

There are a few protest signs in windows, but otherwise everyone seems to have accepted the fact that the government has installed sensors in their bodies and now controls when they are permitted to have sex.

Why are there not riots in the streets? Why has everyone accepted this?

What happens to people in different kinds of relationships? What are the rules for the LGBTQ community? How is any of this enforced? Why are these characters treating a horrifying violation of basic human freedom like an annual street festival?

The screenplay does not care.

It simply borrows the setup of The Purge, removes all the social commentary, and uses the remaining gimmick to justify frantic slapstick and a series of tired romantic-comedy misunderstandings.

The result is not merely stupid. It is strangely offensive because the movie introduces an idea this dark and politically loaded, then refuses to think about it for more than a few seconds.

Monica Barbaro plays Allie, a singer who records jingles for prescription-drug commercials and has grown tired of being ghosted after meaningless hookups. Callum Turner plays Owen, a pizza-shop owner preparing to propose to his girlfriend before she abruptly decides she wants to spend the legal sex night with somebody else.

Allie and Owen repeatedly bump into each other around New York. They fight over the last condom in a convenience store. They land in a police station. He throws up in front of her. They attend increasingly ridiculous parties.

Eventually, they agree to help each other find other sexual partners even though anyone who has ever seen a romantic comedy knows within thirty seconds that they are clearly supposed to end up together.

The movie then forces us to wait more than an hour and a half for the inevitable.

Neither character is particularly interesting. Barbaro, who demonstrated real talent in A Complete Unknown, is reduced to mugging, shouting, and performing endless variations on the same joke about singing commercial jingles for psoriasis medication. The joke is mildly amusing the first time. By the seventh repetition, it becomes punishment.

Callum Turner is an attractive but completely generic presence here. He has appeared in films like Eternity, Rose of Nevada, and the Fantastic Beasts series, but Gluck gives him nothing to play beyond “nice guy who has been humiliated by his girlfriend.”

He and Barbaro are both talented performers, but the screenplay flattens them into the sort of sitcom stereotypes that exist only to stumble from one contrived situation to the next.

The movie wants to be a farce, but Will Gluck has no understanding of farce.

Great farce requires precision, escalation, timing, and characters whose bad decisions create increasingly complicated consequences. Here, people simply scream, run, fall down, lose clothing, and crash through various New York locations while the soundtrack tells the audience how to feel.

There is no rhythm, no comic architecture, and no sense that one absurdity is building upon another. It is just noise.

The nighttime journey through New York also invites comparisons to much better movies. I found myself thinking about Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, and even Darren Aronofsky’s Caught Stealing. Those films understand how a familiar city can become strange, threatening, erotic, and surreal after dark.

One Night Only just throws extras into the street and tells them to behave like sex-crazed lunatics.

There is also an anti-mandate rock star named Ezra, played by Charlie Gillespie, whom Allie initially idolizes. Naturally, he turns out to be an idiot. This is supposed to represent her realization that the fantasy man is less valuable than the decent man standing in front of her, another ancient romantic-comedy lesson delivered with absolutely no subtlety.

The film’s treatment of LGBTQ characters is equally halfhearted. The enormous complications of this government mandate are brushed aside in one brief subplot, with Quintessa Swindell essentially asked to represent an entire community before the movie races toward its next condom joke. It feels less like inclusion than another box being checked.

The cast is overloaded with cameos.

Molly Ringwald plays Owen’s mother, and LeVar Burton appears as her partner. It is always nice to see both of them, but they are given almost nothing to do except participate in a dreadful sequence involving bubble wrap.

Nicholas Braun from Succession appears. Ben Marshall from Saturday Night Live appears, along with several current and former cast members from the show. Flavor Flav pops up as himself. Julia Fox, Ziwe, and others drift through the movie for a few minutes before disappearing.

There are two surprise cameos involving actors shooting a police movie in New York that actually made me laugh. I will not reveal them, because they account for two of the only genuinely enjoyable moments in the entire film.

Those appearances are the only reason One Night Only receives even one star.

The soundtrack is just as exhausting as everything else. Songs are thrown onto scenes with no imagination or purpose. Air Supply’s “All Out of Love,” Maroon 5’s “Payphone,” Sara Bareilles’ “Brave,” Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles,” Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” and the Violent Femmes’ “Blister in the Sun” all appear in the most obvious ways imaginable.

Yaz’s “Only You,” one of my favorite songs from the 1980s, is used repeatedly and for no discernible reason beyond reminding audiences that they recognize it. “Blister in the Sun” accompanies people smashing windows and stealing condoms because apparently that is the full extent of the music supervisor’s imagination.

The songs are not commenting on the scenes or giving them an unexpected emotional counterpoint. They are simply there to create more noise and keep the audience awake.

That becomes necessary because the screenplay by Travis Braun is one of the worst of the year. It contains no believable romance, no successful satire, no compelling characters, and almost no jokes that land.

Its potentially provocative premise is treated with shocking laziness, while every romantic-comedy cliché is slammed down with the force of a blunt object.

Will Gluck applies the same shrill, artificial tone he used in Anyone but You, another movie filled with attractive performers behaving like irritating morons. He takes two charismatic leads and wastes them inside a chaotic collection of bad jokes, obvious needle drops, forced cameos, and sitcom coincidences.

This is one of the most unpleasant experiences I have had in a movie theater all year.

The government surveillance is not explored. The politics are ignored. The romance is unconvincing. The comedy is painfully unfunny. The cameos provide a couple of brief distractions, but they cannot rescue a movie this badly conceived and executed.

One Night Only is not simply a bad romantic comedy.

It is one of the very worst films of 2026. - ⭐️

Thanks for reading, and please SUBSCRIBE to my weekly NEWSLETTER!