Awake not Woke!

Not that woke

I feel like the movie itself isn't that woke, at least if we are ignoring its intentions. On a purely logical level Bear has absolutely no reason to believe a random object from a shop has magical powers. He’s just making a wish that people make all the time. He's also obviously in constant denial that her sudden love for him is unnatural due to his desire for her to like him and because thats a natural reaction to experiencing a paranormal event. He didn't have control of the situation, to argue he took advantage of her, he was literally trapped in this situation. But seeing how people reacted to it, and knowing how the movie industry works, we can guess it was intended for people to see him in a villainous manner. They know that the average watcher (especially women which are the target audience) will react based on feelings instead of logic (his harmless action caused a tragedy = his fault, he should have been fully aware of the unpredictable turn of events). So it's kinda woke but still enjoyable.

The lead white female greets her white daughter, Spanish husband and black father. Sure, why not. The entire movie is populated by nothing but DEI minorities and females. I think I might of seen 1 white male background character until the first one shows up at the 30 minute mark and he's a throwaway character in service to the black father. Actually other than the black father and Spanish husband there's almost no male characters. Every single character is female. Even the Spanish husband is a manbun wearing neutered emotional house husband. The acting is decent but the writing is pretty bad. There is a secret bunker safe house with state of the art security cameras and defenses to hide diplomats but all the cameras are hardwired in with large gauge conduit literally just laying everywhere above ground for anyone to see. My internet provider buries hidden cable better than this nonsense. Most of this movie consists of noises and shapes in the dark with the lead wondering around looking concerned. The finale gets even sillier and the creature design and CG are shockingly bad. Not recommended.

It's been a while since I watched the first one but I don't remember it having so many corny cheesy scenes in it. The FX are still great and the story is ok as a follow up but this one just seems less fun somehow. I don't remember the first one having so much forced humor and pop culture references though I could be wrong. Also the woke is pushed significantly into this one as well. Norway is a vast majority white country yet there is DEI minorities everywhere here including crowd and background character shots. Of the six core main actors in the group there is 1 white male, 1 darker male that I couldn't find anything on, 3 white females. and 1 Iranian female. The feminist movement is very prominent here. All men are relegated to just standing around or making jokes until a much smarter woman tells them to do something. Even the white Prime Minister and his general are ineffectual idiots. The ending has the females suddenly turn into military grade arms experts firing grenade launchers with precision and rapid reloading without any training whatsoever. If you liked the first one this is worth a one time watch if you can take the heavy forced in feminism and DEI.

The opening 5 minutes is pure cringe. I initially thought it was set in modern day and just really bad with the acting, music and terrible humor. Then I thought I was wrong and it was set in the 90's sometime and it was meant to be like that. However 5 minutes later a character pulls out a smart phone and starts texting. This sets the tone for this idiotic mess. The longer it goes the worse it gets. This is slapstick pure cringe comedy that's bordering on parody. Nothing is funny and every painful joke goes on for way to long. Also this should be advertised as Sci-Fi as well as Action-Comedy and I'm not sure why it's not. The acting is ok but that's about it. The music it terrible and out of place. The fight scenes are badly shot and they use the low frame rate stutter motion effect that looks awful. I only made it to 30 minutes and I just couldn't take any more. At that point the only woke I saw was some DEI and a black father says his son is white.