Movie Review

Extremely unfunny The Binge is too high on its own concept

The key to any good film is having a vision of what you want to show the audience. It doesn’t matter what the genre is; if you only have a general concept and nothing else, your film will rarely work. The makers of the new Hulu film The Binge obviously never got past the idea stage when they set out to make it.

A take-off of the horror film The Purge, The Binge takes place in a highly-fictional world where all alcohol and drugs have been banned except for one day a year when anyone 18 or older is allowed to binge to their heart’s desire. Griffin (Skyler Gisondo) doesn’t have a huge desire to participate, but his best friend Hags (Dexter Darden) is all for it, so Griffin goes along for the ride.

What ensues is boilerplate material when it comes to teen comedies, as Griffin and Hags run into all sorts of trouble trying to make it to the biggest party of Binge Day. Other issues include Griffin missing opportunities to ask Lena (Grace Van Dien) to prom; Principal Carlsen (Vince Vaughn), who happens to be Lena’s father, out to ruin everyone’s good time; and Andrew (Eduardo Franco) continually leading Griffin and Hags astray.

Directed by Jeremy Garelick and written by Jordan VanDina, the film works neither as a parody of The Purge nor as a teen comedy. In fact, it barely works as a movie at all. The slapdash effort put into the film shows right from the start, as they use generic footage for interstitial scenes, insert random sex jokes to make the script “edgy,” and skip any kind of plot development for the sake of more wildness.

The film is so actively unfunny that it’s a wonder anyone making it thought it would work at all. The characters have no connection, and the situations they’re subjected to are so over-the-top that they have no entertainment value. The only reason it remains watchable is due to the sheer charisma of Gisondo, Darden, and, to a lesser degree, Vaughn.

The one memorable scene is a musical number near the end of the film, but by that point it only registers as mild amusement compared to the complete lack of humor in the rest of the movie. The sequence leans hard into the euphoria and hallucination that comes with the booze and drugs the boys have taken over the course of the film, and it’s so ridiculous that you can’t help but at least chuckle.

Both Gisondo and Franco had memorable supporting roles in 2019’s Booksmart, which had such a similar base story to this film that The Binge pales in comparison. Gisondo is interesting in small bursts, but he doesn’t work as a leading man, at least not here. Darden is slightly better, but even his enthusiasm can’t save the horrid lines he has to deliver.

The Binge should serve as a cautionary tale for how not to make a movie, much less a comedy. Even a silly story with little at stake must take some kind of form or it to work.

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The Binge debuts exclusively on Hulu on August 28.

Eduardo Franco in The Binge.

Eduardo Franco in The Binge

Photo courtesy of Hulu

Eduardo Franco in The Binge.

This week's hot headlines

CMT Awards' Texas debut tops this week's 5 most-read Dallas stories

Carrie Underwood Kelsea Ballerini Moody Center

Getty Images for CMT

The CMT Music Awards are coming to Austin's Moody Center in 2023/

Editor's note: A lot happened this week, so here's your chance to get caught up. Read on for the week's most popular headlines. Looking for the best things to do this weekend? Find that list here.

1. Texas will host CMT Music Awards for the first time ever in 2023. Big news for country music fans: During Carrie Underwood's sold-out show in Austin on November 2, CMT Music Awards co-host Kelsea Ballerini came on stage to announce that the CMT Music Awards will come to the city's new Moody Center next year. Airing Sunday, April 2, 2023, the fan-voted awards ceremony will be hosted in Texas for the first time ever.

2. Where to see the most spectacular Christmas lights dazzling Dallas-Fort Worth in 2022. Tis barely the season for Dallas-Fort Worth to light up, merry and bright, for the 2022 holidays — from towering trees that twinkle and shine to dazzling drive-thru displays and immersive walk-thru experiences. Here's our guide to the biggest, brightest, most spectacular Christmas light displays in the area.

3. Pop rock powerhouse Paramore heads to North Texas on new North American arena tour. Dallas-Fort Worth fans of alterna-emo-pop group Paramore and their radio-ready hooks can catch the trio next year during a just-announced stadium tour. The act famous for anthemic singles such as "Ain't It Fun," "Misery Business," and "Still Into You" will hit Fort Worth's Dickies Arena on July 8, 2023, with Foals and The Linda Lindas as openers.

4. Dallas architecture firm nabs top floor of cool MCM Meadows Building. A Dallas design firm has snagged the top floor of an iconic building: SHM Architects, PLLC, has leased a 12,218-square-foot space at the historic Meadows Building at Energy Square, located at 5646 Milton St., relocating from their offices at 4514 Travis St. in the Knox District.

5. Beachy tiki-styled bar to surf into Downtown Plano, pina coladas in hand. Surf's up in Plano with a fun new venue coming soon: Called Coco Beach, it's a tiki-themed bar and restaurant diving into historic Downtown Plano, with an opening targeted for December.

music awards texas holidays cocktails concerts hot-headlines

Animal News

Dallas joins a dozen-plus Texas cities in banning sales of puppy mill pets

kittens dog

Photo courtesy of Kuper Sotheby's International Realty

Hetting along like cats and dogs.

A new animal ordinance approved by the Dallas City Council in May goes into effect November 11. Called the humane pet store ordinance, it forbids pet stores in Dallas from selling puppies or kittens from commercial breeders.

Dallas joins Austin, Bryan, College Station, El Paso, Euless, Fort Worth, Houston, New Braunfels, Pasadena, San Antonio, The Colony, Sherman, and Waco among Texas cities that have passed similar ordinances.

The ordinance was recommended by the Dallas Animal Shelter (DAS), as well as groups such as Texas Humane Legislation Network (THLN), which works to promote better treatment of animals.

In Dallas, it affects only one store: Petland. Other pet store chains such as PetSmart, Pet Supplies Plus, Petco, Odyssey, The Upper Paw, Pet Supermarket, and Uptown Pup do not sell puppies or kittens.

Dallas has only one Petland store, at 11909 Preston Rd. #1428 - one that's been plagued by criminal activity including repeated thefts. The chain has been the target of protests for more than a decade and the subject of repeated investigations by the Humane Society of the United States.

The Dallas ordinance is Sec. 7-4.5 "SALE OF DOGS AND CATS" and says that it's "an offense to sell, exchange, barter, give away, transfer, or offer or advertise for sale, a dog or cat four months of age or older unless the dog or cat is currently vaccinated or cannot be vaccinated due to health reasons as verified by a licensed veterinarian, and the person has a current registration receipt and registration tag for the dog or cat."

The only exceptions are animal services, an animal welfare organization, or an animal adoption agency, who charge adoption fees.

“The ordinance will help stop hundreds of puppies from being shipped in from out-of-state puppy mills and sold to unsuspecting consumers,” said Stacy Sutton Kerby, Director of Government Relations at THLN. “We applaud the Dallas City Council for recognizing the importance of halting the sale of commercially-bred animals in retail pet stores."

Over the years, the THLN helpline has regularly received complaints about Dallas retail stores selling sick or unhealthy puppies. Ending the sale of commercially-bred puppies and kittens in retail pet stores will encourage consumers to acquire puppies or kittens from a reputable breeder or shelter, both of which provide full health history, age, and vaccination information.

"Dallas Animal Services is excited to see the Humane Pet Store Ordinance go into effect,” said MeLissa Webber, Director of Dallas Animal Services. “It was a genuine community effort that started with Dallas animal advocates and quickly garnered support from DAS and the City Council. With shelters all over the metroplex struggling with capacity, we are hopeful that more families looking to add another pet to their home will choose to adopt, not shop. After all, there are incredible pets available to adopt at Dallas Animal Services and an estimated 20% of pets in shelters are purebred."

Texas Tornado

Re-released documentary explores the greatest Texas musician you've probably never heard of

Sir Doug and the Genuine Texas Cosmic Groove explores the life and times of Doug Sahm.

Courtesy of Arts and Labor

Sir Doug and the Genuine Texas Cosmic Groove explores the life and times of Doug Sahm.

What do Guy Clark, Hank Williams, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, ABBA, and Freddy Fender all have in common? Apart from being icons in their own right, each legend's name has at one time or another been in the same sentence as one Texas musician you may have never heard of. Why? One documentary, Sir Doug and the Genuine Texas Cosmic Groove, explores this and more, and it's available to stream again this week.

"Has San Antonio lost its soul? Has Austin lost its groove? Dough Sahm is the answer," reads a recent release for the documentary ahead of its re-release.

Born on the same day as Guy Clark in 1941, San Antonio native Dough Sahm started singing at age 5, playing steel guitar at age 6, followed by the fiddle and mandolin at age 8. At 11, he joined Hank Williams at Austin's Skyline Club for what turned out to be Williams' final show before his untimely death. As a teen, Sahm had hit country western radio records before reaching international fame (and a nod from Bob Dylan) with his rock-and-roll, Beatles-inspired band, Sir Douglas Quintet.

Sahm started playing steel guitar at age 6, followed by the fiddle and mandolin at age 8.Courtesy of Arts+Labor

A bust up over cannabis possession sent Sahm to California right before the "Summer of Love" in 1967, where the band explored the psychedelic San Francisco scene. Returning to Texas in the '70s, he joined Willie Nelson on his Shotgun Willie record and became an integral part of the new Americana genre emerging out of Austin at that time. He moved to Sweden in the '80s, knocking ABBA off the top charts with the song Meet Me in Stockholm. And in the '90s, his new group, the Texas Tornadoes, featured fellow Texas musicians Freddy Fender, Flaco Jimenez, and Augie Meyers.

Sir Doug and the Genuine Texas Cosmic Groove explores the enormous variety of genres Sahm absorbed into his own music, and the impact he left behind in each genre in return. Originally screened at South by Southwest in 2015, the film's website summarizes its portrait of Sahm as an "artist who had so much music inside himself that he had to play all the varied sounds he was schooled in in order to satisfy his soul."

Directed by noted historian and author Joe Nick Patoski, who also co-wrote the film along with Jason Wehling, the documentary won multiple awards at film festivals around the world, landing on Amazon Prime before disappearing from circulation altogether in 2020 after initial music and visual licensing rights expired.

Thanks to the Society for the Preservation of Texas Music (SPTM), the documentary was re-released on November 6, 2022, in honor of what would have been Sahm's 81st birthday. For the re-release, SPTM partnered with Austin-based production company Arts+Labor and digital distribution platform seer.la, which also produced the groundbreaking Guy Clark documentary, Without Getting Killed or Caught.

Doug Sahm A still from the documentary Sir Doug and the Genuine Texas Cosmic Groove.Courtesy of Arts+Labor

“The revival of the film comes at a critical moment for Doug’s hometown of San Antonio, and his adopted home of Austin,” says Patoski in the release. “Both cities have grown rapidly and are growing towards each other, becoming a single metropolitan area of five million people touted as America’s next great metroplex. Nowhere else in the United States are two connected metro areas expanding so rapidly. Folks who don’t know Doug Sahm from Houdini need to see this film to better appreciate why San Antonio and Austin are such special, soulful places with a groove that fostered and championed the artistry of the greatest single musician to ever represent the state of Texas.”

The documentary is available for worldwide streaming at sirdougfilm.com.