Logo and illustrations by Adrienne Luther.

Welcome to Soggy Waffles Reviews. Here’s how these bite-size, digestible movie reviews work. Every movie gets a haiku. That’s one movie, 17 syllables. Every movie gets a short write-up. I’m talking so short that you should be able to completely syrupize a plate of waffles in the time it takes to read the review. If not, then I’m not doing my job. This is my take on the movies I see, not a chewed up and spit out version of anything you’ll find online. And finally, every movie gets a Soggy Waffles rating. The scale is as follows:

1. The Frozen Waffle

The type of waffle that you can still taste the freezer burn when you bite into it. The whole experience is so traumatizing that it might be awhile before you can safely bite into another.

2. The Soggy Waffle

You don’t need a pick-axe or other climbing gear to attack this waffle, but the pneumonic device you learned in elementary school to memorize the cardinal directions still applies: Never Eat Soggy Waffles.

3. The Microwaved Waffle

This is the type of waffle that won’t stick with you for the rest of your life, but damn you enjoyed it nonetheless. Not every movie can be a Superbad.

4. The Crispy Waffle

Oh yeah, it’s not the best waffle you’ve ever had, but it’s pretty close. This rating is reserved for the movise that crack into your End-of-Year best lists but don't quite make it onto your Best of All Time.

5. The Perfectly Toasted Waffle

This is that from-scratch, special recipe, best-you’ve-ever had waffle. The kind in which the waffle is so good that the act of adding chocolate chips, butter or even syrup would be sacrilegious (but obviously you still do). You can never eat it for the first time twice, so savor it when you’ve got it.

Palm Springs and Greyhound: Double Feature

PALM SPRINGS

Dare I say Palm Springs is the best movie of 2020 so far? That would be a bold-ass statement coming from someone who is admittedly very behind on this year’s movies. But compared to like the two movies I have seen (Trolls World Tour, Onward), yeah I’d say it’s no-contest for Palm Springs so far.

Palm Springs is a Crispy movie teetering on the edge of Perfectly Toasted. It’s got a foot in the PT pool, but it hasn’t quite jumped yet. I loved it. It’s laugh-out-loud funny (though not a laugh-a-minute like Popstar; it reminded me most of Safety Not Guaranteed), heartwarming and deeper than expected from the guys who brought you Hot Rod and the 2011 classic, Motherlover. But I wear my love for The Lonely Island on my sleeve, and maybe now the rest of the world can, too.

GREYHOUND

It’s not Tom Hanks’ fault I have the attention span of two Quibis right now. And it’s certainly not Apple TV’s fault that Lululemon announced its summer sale the same weekend of Greyhound’s release. But the failure to characterize any of the movie’s leads before throwing them into action sequence after action sequence is the fault of Greyhound’s writers, and it is Tom Hanks’ fault that he never said, “We sunk their battleship,” when he sunk the enemy’s battleship. For these reasons, Greyhound is Soggy.

Now Streaming, Crispy, SoggyGuest UserJuly 13, 2020