Pha-Q woke's Reviews
The only woke is maybe some DEI casting in secondary characters, but race is never mentioned or made an issue so I just can't bring
myself to give it a woke rating. This was a surprise find I had never heard of and just stumbled across. Surviving WWII vet travels alone
to France for the 70th anniversary of D-Day. There are some very funny scenes and lines and a really great performance by Caine in particular
but really everyone involved. There is also a lot of very real looks at veteran trauma and grief both past and present after coming home from
service. Based on a true story this can be hilarious laugh out loud one minute and very sad the next. Absolutely excellent movie.
Created: 01-02-2026
Doesn't really hold up so well as back in the day. This was supposed to be the big break out action movie for The Rock and it's a decent watch although not as good as I remember when I first saw it. He's still young and not yet become the loudmouth douche political pawn he his today.
The acting is decent and most of the FX are good save for some shoddy cgi scenes, but it is 2008 so still not too bad. There are some
funny scenes and the action is over the top, loud and cartoonish. It's probably more of a 3.5 really but I rounded it up to 4. As for
woke, well it's the usual evil rich white man taking advantage of the good noble natives and the leader of the rebellion is female. Walken plays a good over the top villain and there are a few preachy scenes but nothing too bad in my opinion. If you've never seen it before and watching it for the first time the woke score probably goes up and the movie score goes down.
Created: 01-02-2026
Nothing woke. A thief gets trapped in a small town after a botched robbery with his drunk bumbling partner and hijacks an extremely dysfunctional couple while trying to figure a way to escape. This is not your tradition family friendly Christmas movie but it is a hilarious one.
It's very 90's but it holds up well. Great performances and humor just don't expect a happy hallmark movie.
Created: 12-31-2025
While there are a few comments that could be considered wokish they are done in the context of a joke and for humor and not preachy or forced so I'm not marking it for that. This is another yearly watch for the holidays for us. Good acting and writing. While the jokes are good and well done it's more of a solid humorous Christmas movie than a laugh out loud one though there are some of those as well.
Created: 12-29-2025
This will not be for everyone but it's become part of the regular Christmas watching rotation for us for years now. The comedy is pretty good but it is a 90's movie so there's some sappy romance stuff mixed in as well. Cage and Lovitz work well together with their comedic timing. Carvey's performance is a little one note and while he has some decent comedic scenes his constant Klepto and over the top stupidity starts to get old halfway through the movie. The FBI agent and the mother have some great scenes as well. Whether or not you will like this probably will depend largely on your like of the 90's and the 3 lead actors.
There is nothing woke.
Created: 12-28-2025
Not really woke. There is one 2 second scene of a lonely man in a window who has another man come up to him and give him a kiss
on the cheek and he smiles and they both walk away implying a gay couple. It's a very short scene and it's done in the context of a joke. The characters are never seen again or before this. I Don't see any reason to ding it for that one thing. This is a watchable Christmas movie despite Affleck's horrendous performance. I don't know if he was directed to do this or if it's his fault. His character is so annoying and his acting is terrible. He does this weird high pitched whiney high energy annoying voice that is awful. The strange thing is there are a couple of scenes were
he is a normal person and his acting is fine and his voice is normal. His character has some great jokes and lines that would be funny if not
for his bad acting and voice. The saving grace though and the real reason to watch this is the performances by James Gandolfini and Catherine O'Hare. Those two steal the show with excellent acting and hilarious jokes. Applegate has some good scenes but those 2 are by far the highlight.
Created: 12-28-2025
I really don't know how stuff like this gets funded and released. It's like a bunch of friends took an iphone and shot a movie with virtually no
budget, then rendered in some not so special FX using a laptop and blender. The acting is not very good though some of that can probably be blamed on the bad jokes, the VFX are laughable, every joke goes on forever and the director doesn't know the meaning of subtle humor. There are some jokes that would be mildly amusing but they just don't know when to stop. Actually the whole movie feels like an SNL skit that's not really working but they decided to go ahead and stretched it out to 100 grueling minutes. I stopped around the 45 minutes mark and I could of sworn it had to be almost over. The only real woke would be maybe some DEI and the fact that out of the 3 main characters the 2 males are pretty much dumb as nails and the female is the only smart one.
Created: 12-20-2025
What happened to Beckinsales career? This is almost the same movie and review as for her terrible Canary Black movie. It's a generic boring, badly written action film but I think it's actually the worse of the 2 movies. They are so similar in look and feel I actually think they filmed a ton of generic scenes and then edited it into 2 different movies. The acting here is not very good. Kate has the same weird deep raspy voice that sounds like she's been smoking 2 packs a day her whole life. Her hair is dyed the same and cut the same in both movies, she walks around in the same black leather coat and high heel boots that are out of place to be doing action scenes in. This one is more woke than Canary however. A lot of DEI overrepresentation, all leadership
roles and positions of power are held by females with the men being thugs and followers. Beckinsale is in her 50's and way to scrawny and small to be beating up on much smaller younger males sometimes multiple at once. They also had to have her banging the Chinese dude because we just have to get that mixed race box checked. Then
there is the deaf daughter and the use of sign language. I've seen so much of this casting having deaf characters in particular and some sort of disability in general lately this has be considered some sort of woke overrepresentation at this point. I mean only an estimated 1% of world population is deaf so this has to be a diversity and inclusion push that would fall under DEI. I gave up on this one around the 50 minute mark when she walks into an s/m club with a bunch of duds walking
around, dancing and get spanked in leather outfits. No one wants to see that garbage.
Created: 12-17-2025
I only made it to 30 min but nothing really woke at that time. Listed as a thriller it's basically husband cheats on his wife than is harrased by
the other woman and blackmailed. The scenery and cinematography is great, at least until they get onto the hot air balloon. At this point the terrible green screen is so poorly done and noticeable. The biggest issue though is the awful acting. Although it says it is from the U.K it's like they hired all non English speaking actors. All of the lines are delivered with this sort of stilted dialogue it is so distracting and unnatural. By 30 minutes I just couldn't keep going and the story seemed like it was going to be very slow and unoriginal anyway.
Created: 12-17-2025
Nothing really woke. Another 80's set comedy that actually does a pretty good job of getting the period right. Unfortunately it's just not
that funny. The acting is ok and the writing is decent but there's a lot of eye rolling too stupid comedy. While there is a few good genuine laughs it's not enough. It feels like it's on the verge of what could of been a great comedy, there are some really good setups for funny scenes but the punchlines and payoff too often miss the mark. The whole time I was watching it I kept visualizing ways the scenes could of been so much funnier. It's still kind of watchable but it just misses the mark a little too much in my opinion. This movie spends a lot of time bordering on hilarious it's a shame it rarely manages to get there.
Created: 12-16-2025