83 Best Easy Movies On Netflix Australia (Page 6)

Staff & contributors

Sometimes all we want is a movie that won’t eat up any brain power, but still contains the ingredients for maximum enjoyment. If that’s you, here are the best easy watches that are now available for streaming.

You ought to know what you’re getting into with a movie like The Out-Laws, a production from the Adam Sandler-founded Happy Madison banner that’s behind such lofty cinematic heights as Grown Ups and Paul Blart: Mall Cop. Even in that charitable frame of reference, though, The Out-Laws feels, even more than usual, like a tax write-off for its creators and a sweet solely-for-the-paycheck gig for its starry cast, who don’t have to do much by way of actual dramatic work here. The perfunctory editing and bland direction often seem disinterested in (or, perhaps, embarrassed by) most of the script’s attempts to be funny, and so the film rushes through its scenario, which is only mildly amusing to begin with. In a movie like this, that’s more of a blessing than a curse, even if it does mean some of its better moments get short shrift from the whistlestop treatment. All in all, even as Happy Madison vehicles go, this is an utterly forgettable 95 minutes — the kind you’ll barely even be able to recall by the time the credits roll.

Genre: Action, Comedy, Romance

Actor: Adam Devine, Anthony Belevtsov, Betsy Sodaro, Blake Anderson, Cale Schultz, Dean Winters, Derek Russo, Ellen Barkin, Gigi Bermingham, Haley Leary, Jackie Sandler, Jackson Beals, John Winscher, Josh Bolla, Julie Hagerty, Laci Mosley, Lauren Lapkus, Lil Rel Howery, Lynne Ashe, Michael Rooker, Mo Gallini, Montrel Miller, Nina Dobrev, Orelon Sidney, Otis Winston, Paul Eliopoulos, Peggy Walton-Walker, Pierce Brosnan, Poorna Jagannathan, Rebecca Covert, Reyn Doi, Richard Kind, Sunny Sandler, Tywayne Wheatt, Zele Avradopoulos

Director: Tyler Spindel

Rating: R

Seemingly engineered in a lab to appeal strictly to romantic comedy enthusiasts who are familiar with every trope, Make Me Believe is charming and enjoyable in the moment, but ultimately does little with its ingredients. The things that it gets right are pretty foolproof: beautiful Turkish locales, steamy PG-rated romance, and a good dose of humor from supporting characters who can see the spark of love even before the couple does. Unfortunately this is all window dressing for a story built on flimsy foundations. The protagonist's assignment to book an interview doesn't actually carry that much weight, which makes the risk of pursuing and/or seemingly betraying her childhood neighbor feel inconsequential. And when these two characters inevitably meet in the middle, their connection is unconvincing, draining the excitement out of everything that follows.

Genre: Comedy, Romance

Actor: Ayça Ayşin Turan, Çağrı Çıtanak, Ekin Koç, Naz Çağla Irmak, Yıldız Kültür, Zerrin Sümer

Director: Evren Karabıyık Günaydın, Murat Saraçoğlu

Rating: R

Amid energetic lights and obnoxious airhorns, Katt Williams makes his way to the stage and quickly greets you with the gospel of crass. His descriptions and premises aren’t anything to write home about as his style is more a boisterous NSFW style that resembles a night of gossip. But for most of this set, you’ll just be thinking about how his performer voice sounds like a cartoon grandma, a southern Spongebob, and “Macho Man” Randy Savage preaching to you all at once. The set had a touchy mental health bit that sucked the life out the room for a moment, but would take an empowering turn in its final third as Williams talks about racism in 2024. It’s a mess, but it finishes strong, at least.

Genre: Comedy, Documentary, TV Movie

Actor: Katt Williams

Director: Troy Miller

Rating: R

All the little twists in the case of Mirna Salihin's murder are intriguing enough to speculate over, so Ice Cold is definitely a true-crime case worth revisiting. The problem is in how the documentary indulges sensationalist arguments and pure speculation with the same level of urgency as it does with expert counsel. A large part of the film has to do with how this trial started to become such a fixture in Indonesian public life, but it feels as if the movie would rather provoke even more baseless conspiracies through its gossipy tone than provide smarter analysis. There's an appeal to how simple this case is relative to other true-crime stories, but this shouldn't be an excuse to haphazardly throw opposing perspectives at each other for the sake of drama.

Genre: Crime, Documentary

Actor: Edi Darmawan Salihin, Jessica Wongso, Marcella Zalianty, Mirna Salihin, Otto Hasibuan

Director: Rob Sixsmith

Rating: PG-13

Even if it knows to keep its ambitions modest, Holiday in the Vineyards still doesn't find much to do for its small cast. The actors do what they can and certainly seem like they're having fun play-acting a warm Christmas romcom, but when all is said and done there simply isn't anything particularly striking about the collection of romcom-isms assembled for this movie. Even the film's premise—which seems to promise a unique clashing of values between a small town and big capitalist business—resolves things with little more than a pat on the back. It's certainly sweet on the surface, but these people we're asked to to spend 107 minutes with still feel like strangers to us by the end.

Genre: Drama, Romance

Actor: Alan Toy, Annika Noelle, Carlos Solórzano, Cullen Douglas, Eileen Davidson, Gregory Zarian, Josh Swickard, Julian Rangel, Kaleina Cordova, Manuel Rafael Lozano, Omar Gooding, Paul Witten, Sol Rodríguez

Director: Alex Ranarivelo

Rating: PG

The Spy Kids movies have always been knowingly corny, which hasn't changed for this latest installment—it's just that it also has an odd lack of color and personality to its generic action movie shenanigans. This is especially disappointing given the film's focus on video games, which it only seems to understand in their most surface level terms. And because there's a lack of definition in the movie's rules and logic, the plot progresses without any weight or sense of mounting excitement. These are just people going through the motions toward some unclear message about the value of honesty and kindness, which never really factor into the actual adventure and keep the status quo firmly unchanged.

Genre: Action, Action & Adventure, Adventure, Comedy, Family, Science Fiction

Actor: Billy Magnussen, Connor Esterson, D.J. Cotrona, Everly Carganilla, Gina Rodriguez, Jersey Johnston, Joe Schilling, Neal Kodinsky, Patricia Vonne, Solar Dena Bennett, Zachary Levi

Director: Robert Rodriguez

Rating: PG

Mae is a hopeless romantic looking for love and more clients for her custom t-shirts. After a meet-cute at the grocery store, she turns to an app called Missed Connections to find him. After they finally meet, Mae realizes he has a connection with someone else. Now determined to make him fall in love with her, she hires him to rebuild her website. As a rom-com, the comedy isn't particularly outstanding or noticeable. The romance, and Mae, are hard to root for, especially when her obsessions go too far, her slut-shaming goes unchecked, and it all lasts for 90% of the film without any real cathartic resolutions. 

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance

Actor: Chie Filomeno, JC Santos, Kelvin Miranda, Matet De Leon, Miles Ocampo

Director: Jelise Chung

For almost the entirety of its runtime, Old Dads feels like it has something it's desperately trying to prove. But while the millennial generation and a newfound popular interest in political correctness are ripe for satire, this film chooses the lowest hanging fruit possible to make jokes about—inventing one senseless situation after another in order to laugh at people's "sensitivity" with little energy or wit. The main cast has tried and tested talent, but the material they're working with feels more artificial and whiny than truly perceptive of today's generational clashes. The movie tries to manufacture some sort of dramatic realization by the end, but it hardly changes the protagonists anyway. A film need not be PC to be good, of course, but it should at least stand for something instead of simply standing against so much.

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Actor: Abbie Cobb, Angela Gulner, Bill Burr, Bobby Cannavale, Bokeem Woodbine, Bruce Dern, C. Thomas Howell, Cameron Kelly, Carl Tart, Chelsea Marie Davis, Cody Renee Cameron, Dash McCloud, Erin Wu, Jackie Tohn, Josh Brener, Justene Alpert, Justin Miles, Katie Aselton, Katrina Bowden, Leland Heflin, Miles Robbins, Natasha Leggero, Paul Virzi, Paul Walter Hauser, Rachael Harris, Reign Edwards, Rick Glassman, Rory Scovel, Steph Tolev, Tom Allen

Director: Bill Burr

Rating: R