This was absolutely hilarious and much needed. Lindy West has written other humor books but this has to be her best yet because she gives critiques on popular movies. And in her opinion, The Fugitive is the best and the other movies she discussed are based on Fugitive DVDs. My personal favorite observations of hers had to be, even if i didn't agree with the ranking are: Titanic, Twilight, The Notebook, Forrest Gump, Top Gun, Face Off and Shawshank Redemption. I don't agree that Jurassic Park is almost good as the Fugitive because they are castly different movies. And Harry Potter is better than the Santa Clause? Phht. She ranks Shawshank the equivalent of Fugitive. I concur.

All in all in this rather hilarious, good and quick read. I really recommend it if you need a laugh.

Thanks to Netgalley, Lindy West, and Hachetta Books for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Available: 10/20/20

What happens when you combine surprise wedding bands with face-switching cops and violated apple pies? This work of pure brilliance from Lindy West. 'Shit, Actually' is a collection of essays West wrote after rewatching some of the biggest movies of the past few decades. Since this book is coming out during the COVID-19 pandemic, she suggests it can be used as a substitute for all those movie nights with friends (remember those?). From 'The Fugitive' (“The Only Good Movie”) to 'The Lion King' (“What Is A Monarchy We Are Animals”) West’s laugh-out-loud commentary will keep you entertained both during and after the time of masks and toilet paper shortages.

Lindy West has a wicked sense of humor and she lets it all out in these essays. From her classic roast of Love, Actually ("Shit, Actually") to her detailed recounting of inane movie plots (including Speed and Back to the Future Part II), West had me snickering, cackling, and outright roaring with laughter. It doesn’t matter that I haven’t seen at least half the movies she profiles: most of them have become enmeshed in popular culture and her plot summaries fill in the rest. In fact, I might just go back and watch some of these gems. At the very least, I’m hunting down 'The Fugitive,' but I’m going to pass on 'Face/Off.' (Who came up with this terrifying concept? And who thought it would make a good movie?? And who decided to hire Nicholas Cage?!?!!).

P.S. – Don’t miss the footnotes!

Rating: 11/10 DVDS OF THE FUGITIVE

The introduction of this book made me burst into tears, because the author said that it could stand in for a movie night with friends while those aren't possible during the pandemic, and I was just deeply touched by that idea.

The book is less essays than humorous recaps and reviews of particular movies, but it's so fun and funny. It made me think of how the terrible things in life-- racism, sexism, etc. etc. can force writers to constantly write about those things, and never give them a chance to write what they would write if the evils of the world weren't so urgent. So I'm glad Lindy West could write a book that is just silly and fun. I wish for that freedom for so many writers.

What's great is that Lindy and I are very close in age, and our tastes are quite aligned, so it's like reading an extra funny version of my own opinions, with references I'm guaranteed to get, and there's something deeply satisfying about that as a reader.

I haven't seen every movie in this book, so I think the best way to approach the book is to read the essays about movies you're intimately familiar with, and (re)watch movies you've never seen or have forgotten the details of. Then it really would be like a movie night with a friend!


***Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for providing an ARC in exchange for my honest review.***

Will post the following review to all major sites and my blog when the book drops in October.



3.5-4 stars

This was so much fun!
In all honesty, I wasn’t the biggest fan of LW’s previous work. But when I heard the premise of this book...snarky essays on some “classic”(?) movies ...I knew it was right up my alley.
Not all of the essays worked for me. Some felt a little too long (the one about Back To The Future was especially hard to get through), but most were full of silly fun and lots of quotable moments. Frankly, the essays on Twilight, Harry Potter and especially The Notebook make this collection well worth your time.

*ARC provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. *

This book is hilarious! When I say I cackled like the swamp witch I am, it really doesn't do the essays justice. The “Top Gun” essay had me sobbing with laughter, the breakdown of whatever Nicholas Sparks movie it was (who can even tell them apart?) was amazing and we can all definitely agree: “The Fugitive” is the best movie ever made.

Fans of Lindy West know she is smart, sharp witted and amazing with rhetoric, this collection of essays is a brilliant showcase of her skills. With humor and an eye to feminism and social justice, these movie reviews are blistering evaluations of all our “problematic faves.”

Okay, I love Lindy West. I want to be her best friend, but I am a little too awe-struck to even imagine being her best friend. Yet, somehow, while I devoured "Shrill" and "Witches are Coming" upon their release, I have never read any of her early online work... and, after reading this book, I will CERTAINLY be remedying that! I loved this book so much that sometimes I had to stop so I could throw my head back and howl with laughter. I performed a dramatic read aloud of the titular "Shit, Actually" for my husband. I haven't even seen "The Fugitive," but I appreciated the ranking system. While I did skip over one or two essays for movies I haven't seen, I would recommend this book to anyone who loves Lindy, loves movies, or just needs a laugh. Thank you to Netgalley and to Hatchette Books for the ARC!

Cultural commentary from one of literature’s leading funny ladies. Smart, accessible, and a pleasure to read.

Excellent, hilarious and strikingly nonfecal takes on classic blockbusters of the recent decades. I’m a complete cinema junkie and, as much as I’m all about books, in many ways movies are easier to love than books, they are easier to enjoy with someone, they stick with you more (that’s how my memory works anyway), they are more universal. They are also shorter and more user friendly, a shitty movie will still have the courtesy to end within 120 minutes or so, the shitty book will go on. Movies are easier to revisit. It might be a dumb magic or at least a dumbing down one, but it’s still, undeniably, magic. So that’s what drew me to this book. A promise of a fresh humorous take on beloved and otherwise classics from a very contemporary, hyper woke, militantly feminist perspective. F*ck yeah. Bring it. And boy did it. Lindy West, whoever she is, I’ve never heard of her, I’m not that hip, is freaking hilarious and so very unapologetically herself, it’s a pleasure. You may not agree with all her views and still enjoy this book. Although if you are a fan of current administration, you might want to stay away, she bashes it pretty brutally. Also…you read? Fascinating. Personally I’m wary of the effects of reexamining the past under the unforgiving loupe of the hyper aggressive political correctness of the present. Which is to say I understand the concept and agree with some of it, but also believe that people/books/ideas and yes, movies are very much a product of their time, ideological representations of the prevalent mentalities of their era. You can’t reedit the past based on the present, well, mostly anyway, It just can’t work. The past is there to be learned from and (ideally) not repeated. You can’t just get woke, topple some statues and proclaim a new world to appease your freshly found conscience. The world doesn’t work this way, people (majority of) don’t work that way and it’s bound to produce an epic backlash. But…it works well for movie reviews. Because the great silver whales of the 80s and 90s and 00s really did have some backwards ideas. And that isn’t just because they were old, it’s because they were blockbusters, meant to target the lowest hanging audience fruit and therefore not exactly winning any MENSA entries plot wise nor any awards from great and greatly accurate depictions of life and people. They are the overblown MichaelBayed spectacles of (usually) hypermasculinity and terrible science. And Lindy West not just calls them out on it, she rips them brutally for it. And it’s so freaking funny. Rated on a scale from 0 to Fugitive, which is her idea of a perfect movie, chronologically it’s from Top Gun to Twilight with bunches of boombastic trasures in between. She actually does the entire movie plot for each chapter with awesomely hilarious asides. Even her footnotes kill. Butts are genitals. Prove me wrong. Something like that. That’s footnote gold right there. You might not be able to have a movie night with a friend during these apocalyptic times and West is here do offer you the next best thing. Actually, I don’t know if I’d want to do a movie night with her, she seems like she talks through movies, a lot. But would be totally on board to hear her opinions on movies any time. In fact, hope she rewatches more modern classics and writes a sequel. Meanwhile, this was great, few things make me laugh out loud during these sh*tty sh*tty times we live in, but this one did. Repeatedly. So thanks for the laughs, Lindy West. And go read this book. Sh*t, actually is the sh*t. So very excellent. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read this in exchange for an honest review.

I will be honest, I only read about half of the essays in this book because I hadn’t seen a lot of the movies the author wrote about. But what I read, I really loved! Hilarious and spot-on reviews of the plot holes in the Harry Potter series, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Love Actually, and many more! Also loved her introduction. Funny and well-written. 4 stars.

Super funny. I actually have seen most of the movies in the book, which is kind of a miracle? I don't watch many movies.

Seriously, in most essays, especially those in the first half of the book, there was so much out-loud laughter. I think I was bothering my husband with it, that's how much I was laughing.

Thanks to NetGalley and to the publisher for the ARC.

Funny, Actually

This book is truly funny, and after having really hoped for it to be entertaining I'm pleased to be able to write an enthusiastically positive review.

I'm so old I remember reading Art Buchwald, (look it up), in the newspaper. I'm tired of my generation's humorists, (P.J. O'Rourke just wants you to get off his lawn). I'm tired of the guys my son's age who all write the same book about how cute they are because they are incompetent klutzes and abject failures. What is that about? I've lost all interest in people who think they can turn their stand up act into a hilarious book just by also adding a bunch of stuff about how hard stand up comedy is, (boo hoo), and doing a lot of name dropping. And I'm really tired of anyone who was ever in the writers' room of a late night TV show and now thinks they can write a whole book.

Saddest of all, I am resigned to the fact that Nora Ephron isn't coming back.

But guess what. Lindy West is the real deal. She's now a high profile opinionator who writes about feminism, social justice, reproductive rights, body image, and political culture. But once upon a time she was the brutally flippant, off the hook, irreverent, ornery, and very funny movie critic for Seattle's alternative weekly "The Stranger". As she tells us in her Foreword, finding herself stuck inside because of Covid-19 she decided to revisit her movie critic days, freshen up some old reviews, work up some new reviews, and share them with us as part of what is becoming a possible 18 month long shelter-in-place with a movie night.

The reviews range from hilarious to very amusing. That is an excellent range. They are sly and edgy and rude and marked by an abundance of witty throwaway lines and observations. This isn't Siskel and Ebert territory. This is barely movie reviewing as we usually think of it. The movies being reviewed are mostly just jumping off points for whatever strikes West as funny and somehow pertains to the movie. The reviews aren't even really reviews; they are more like very smart movie rants with an abundance of silly jokes tossed in.

Do you remember that show "Mystery Science Theater" in which a guy and his sentient robot pals made wisecrack comments at old B movies? Well, picture your funniest, wittiest, most irreverent, best friends sitting with you on your couch, while having just the right amount to drink, talking back to Tom Cruise in "Top Gun". That's this book.

(Please note that I received a free ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

A modern take on film classics. Do you think you know the version of your favorite films? Think again while this creative author breaks down the logic and social issues of the film genre.