Cook Off! Is the new movie featuring husband and wife industry duo, Melissa McCarthy and Ben
Falcone. This mockumentary-styled comedy follows the intersecting lives of various people as they
prepare and compete in cook-off competition for a $1 million prize. It stars an ensemble cast with the
likes of Gary Anthony Williams, Niecy Nash, co-writer Wendi McLendon-Covey, Stephen Root, Diedrich
Bader, Sam Pancake, and Jennifer Cox, with McCarthy rounding out the cast.
Though, McCarthy, is essentially playing the same kind of frumpy, unkempt character, I will say this
go-round because the character in this movie looks to a bit more endearing and not as crass and rude
like so many of her other characters, I'm not entirely exhausted or annoyed at the character that she is
choosing to play.
This movie was apparently made a decade ago, back in 2007, where it premiered at the US Comedy
Arts Festival. Lionsgate, reportedly re-edited the movie after they decided to for some reason pick it
up off the shelf that's it's so idly been collecting dust on. The fact that this movie was made a decade
ago would also explain the choice. Though, I do think some of the people in this movie can be
genuinely funny at times, I couldn't help but to think how if the right people had been casted for
this movie how much better and more seemingly funny that the movie would've seemed.
I didn't laugh once while watching this trailer and though I don't think much of the movie and
rightfully so, I can only imagine the reasons as to why this movie was shelved for all of these years,
there is still this part of me that holds out hope that this movie can exceed my just about non-existent
expectations. So here's to my foolish optimism.
Cook-Off! premieres November 17. 2017
Trav's Note: The film also mysteriously has two directors now when it was originally some joker named Guy Shalem. Listed as co-director is somebody named Cathryn Michon, and I wouldn't be surprised if that name was just a front for what was probably a bunch of studio hacks in an edit bay.
