keiichi73 Reviews

Nine Lives (I) (2016)

You will believe that a man can purr...

[1/10 · 6 August 2016]

Barry Sonnenfeld's Nine Lives is a profoundly stupid movie. It's about a billionaire New York businessman who is egotistical, full of himself and likes to put his name on every building he owns (Sound like anyone who's been in the headlines a lot this past year?), and how he learns to be a better father to his adult son and young daughter, and a better husband to his wife, while having his soul trapped in his daughter's cat.

The movie stars Kevin Spacey. Yes, Kevin Spacey, that most gifted and treasured of actors. The man has won numerous awards, including the Oscar and the Tony. Now he can probably expect a Razzie early next year. To be fair, he's not sleepwalking through this movie, though you kind of wish he was. He gives the material more effort than it deserves. The movie also stars Jennifer Garner as his wife, and Cheryl Hines as his ex-wife, who shows up to be humiliated once in a while. When Hines shows up at his penthouse apartment, Kevin Spacey (in cat form) decides to use her expensive purse as a litter box. Ho, ho.

Spacey is Tom Brand, who wants to build the world's tallest skyscraper. When it's revealed that a building in Chicago is going to be taller, he has a fit, and threatens to miss his 11-year-old daughter's birthday party. Still, he's determined to impress her, so he races around Manhattan for a pet cat that she wants. This leads him to a tiny little pet shop run by a mysterious shopkeeper, played by Christopher Walken. The performance Walken gives is sadly subdued. A little bit of his strange humor would have done wonders. Tom picks out a cat named Mr. Fuzzypants, and then decides to head back to his corporate building, so that he can go to the roof in the middle of a thunderstorm and yell at his corporate lackey Ian (Mark Consuelos). To make a long story short, a stray thunderbolt knocks Tom off the roof, placing him in a coma.

When Tom wakes up, his soul has been transported into the body of Mr. Fuzzypants, and he finds himself in the hospital where his wife and daughter are fretting over his unconscious human body. Fortunately, Christopher Walken is there to explain what has happened, and tells him he has to learn to appreciate his family in the cat's body before the doctor's pull the plug on his human body. Tom's wife and daughter (who don't seem nearly as distressed as they should be that he is clinging to life) bring Mr. Fuzzypants home, not knowing that Tom is inhabiting the feline. He tries to get their attention, but nothing seems to work. It's not until he starts bonding with his daughter that he starts to realize how important his family is.

Nine Lives is credited to five different screenwriters, who must have gone home weary after a long day of dreaming up scenes like the one where Mr. Fuzzypants tries to open a bottle of scotch with his tiny paws. The cat itself is played by a combination of a real cat, and a blatantly CG one for when it has to leap off a windowsill and bounce off an awning, or when it starts doing amazing dancing and backflip moves. I'm not blaming the filmmakers for using special effects in order to display things that a real cat simply can't do. I just wish they made more of an effort, so the effects would look slightly more convincing than Gumby and Pokey.

The movie is 90 minutes of pure mindless fluff with no nutritional value whatsoever. And no, I am not exactly condemning all fluff. I have enjoyed films that most have dismissed as such in the past. This is simply bad fluff. It's cheaply made, poorly written, and has absolutely nothing to offer other than those with the simplest of tastes. This is yet another movie that feels like nobody really wanted to make it, and just showed up every day.

I will probably never know what drew Kevin Spacey to Nine Lives. All I can say is I hope he got more out of it than I did. At least he got paid. I got to sit in the dark, and wonder what I was doing with my life for 90 minutes.

After Earth (2013)

What happened here?

[31 May 2013]

Generally, Sci-Fi is supposed to fill us with awe with its visions of other worlds and of the future. All After Earth managed to fill me with is an overall sense of boredom. This is a lifeless adventure story about a gruff military father and his son bonding when they are both stranded on an abandoned planet Earth. The father and son dynamic, which is supposed to be the main dramatic force which drives the story, fails because we don't believe in the relationship, and the actors have zero chemistry. This is odd, considering said actors are the real life father and son, Will and Jaden Smith.

After Earth is the latest movie from director M. Night Shyamalan. Not that the studio would like you to know this. You might remember how just a few years ago, the studios heavily hyped each release from the director, plastering his name all over the poster and ad campaign. However, after a series of expensive flops, Shyamalan's name is no longer a selling point. And so, they literally have hidden his involvement with this stillborn movie that contains some of the shoddiest CG effects I've seen in a big budget summer movie. Just look at the CG baboons, lions and eagles that threaten our heroes during the course of the film. Compare it to the work done with the CG animals in Life of Pi, and the end result is almost comical.

The plot - We learn through endless, droning exposition that humans have been forced to flee Earth for another home planet. Considering the recent Tom Cruise Sci-Fi film, Oblivion, opened in a similar manner, it only made me wish I was watching that film instead. The humans have generally been living peacefully on their new world, except for some pesky encounters with some big, ugly aliens called Ursa who are blind, and can detect people only by smelling their fear. They're yet another hostile alien race who have mastered the art of the jump scare, but not intelligent conversation, since all they can do is roar, growl, and generally look and act like generic CG.

One of the main war heroes in the battle against the Ursa is General Cypher Kaige (Will Smith). Cypher is a tough, battle-hardened military man who seems to have a hard time differentiating his work life from his home life. His son is Kitai (Jaden Smith), a young boy who desperately wants his father's approval, and is trying for a position in the military, but fears he will never live up to dad's lofty expectations for him. Kitai is also haunted by the memory of seeing his older sister, Senshi (Zoe Kravitz), being killed by an Ursa right before his eyes. Cypher's wife suggests a father-son space voyage, so that they can bond. This doesn't go very well, as the ship is severely damaged in an asteroid belt, killing everyone on board except Cypher and Kitai, and sending the ship crashing on the abandoned planet Earth.

So, now they're trapped on Earth, and must rely on each other for survival. Cypher has broken both of his legs in the crash, so it is up to Kitai to get them home. The journey Kitai undertakes is supposed to make him into a man, while allowing his father to win respect for him. This could be effective, if it weren't portrayed in such a crashingly obvious way. Each adventure he undertakes is small in scope - He runs away from a pack of baboons, he fights off some lions, he is briefly poisoned by a parasitic creature...All of these encounters seem like annoyances, rather than grand adventures. There is no sense of scope here, no sense of awe or wonder.

But the real question here is, how could the performances by both Will and Jaden Smith be so wooden, unemotional, and unconvincing? I'm not exactly sure, but my best guess is that they took their character descriptions completely to heart. In the case of Will Smith, I imagine his character bio read something like this - "Cypher is an emotionally distant, gruff military man who has a hard time showing emotion, or being open with his son". And so, Will Smith interprets his character as if he is completely devoid of any emotion whatsoever. He reads all of his lines in a passive, monotone voice. It got to the point where I found myself wondering if I wasn't watching the wax statue figure of Will Smith from Madame Tussaud's museum instead.

The performance by young Jaden Smith is not much better. He often comes across as shrill and grating, his voice pitched at this high and whiny tone. It just made me want to peel him right off the screen and replace him with another actor every time he opened his mouth. Who is to blame for these awful turns by these actors who have been likable in the past? Was the director's heart just not in this project? That sounds reasonable. Say what you will about Shyamalan's recent body of work, but I've often found something to admire in the look of a lot of his films. Here, we get no interesting visuals. Even the fleeting glimpses we get of humanity's new planet home are disappointing, and look like they were shot on a studio soundstage.

After Earth is the kind of movie experience you want to forget as soon as possible. In a year that has already brought us Sci-Fi films like Oblivion and the flawed-but-enjoyable Star Trek Into Darkness, this movie feels all the more insignificant and lame.

Mama (I) (2013)

A stylish and effective early-year thriller

[8/10 · 18 January 2013]

Whenever an actor or actress currently up for an Oscar appears in a horror film, it's usually a sure sign that said actor is "slumming it" or "cashing a paycheck". This would appear to be doubly true if said horror film is released in the usually dreary month of January. But in the case of Jessica Chastain, she treats her role here with respect. She's giving a real performance here, and it's a good one. It also helps a lot that Mama is much better than the kind of horror we usually get this time of year. It's genuinely creepy, kind of suspenseful, and a hell of a lot of fun.

Mama grabs our attention right from the start with a great prologue, concerning a father and businessman (Nikolaj Coaster-Waldau) having a mental breakdown in the brink of a financial meltdown. He's murdered two of his co-workers, and as the film opens, has just arrived home to murder his estranged wife. With the job done, he grabs his two young daughters, Victoria (age 3) and Lilly (age 1), and drives off with them. He doesn't seem to have a plan as to where he's running off to with the girls, and in his haste, the car slides off the icy roads, landing in the middle of the woods below. Everyone manages to survive, and make their way to a seemingly-abandoned cabin in the middle of the woods. As is frequently the case with cabins in horror movies, it is inhabited by an evil and shadowy entity who immediately kills the father, but takes pity on the two young girls.

Flash forward five years later, and we're introduced to Lucas, the brother of the ill-fated man in the opening scenes, who is also played by Coaster-Waldau in a dual role. He's a struggling artist, living with his punk rocker girlfriend, Annabel (Jessica Chastain) in a small apartment. For the past five years, he's organized searching parties for the two missing girls. Word finally comes that the two girls have been found. They're still in the cabin where we left them, only now, they have grown feral, having lived mostly on their own in the wilderness all this time. Young Victoria is now played by Megan Charpentier, while her little sister Lilly is played by Isabelle Nelisse. The children are placed in a psych hospital under the care of the shady Dr. Dreyfus (Daniel Kash), who seems particularly fascinated in the story the girls tell of "mama", a shadowy figure who lived in the walls of the cabin, and took care of them during the years they were alone.

Eventually, Victoria and Lily are well enough to live with Lucas and Annabel. For Annabel, this is not the ideal situation, as she is not interested in being a mother in the first place. Shortly after the girls move into the new home that Lucas has provided for them, ominous things begin to happen. They are somewhat innocent at first. In one particularly memorable scene, we see little Lilly playing with someone (who remains off camera) in her bedroom, which should be impossible, since we see everyone else in the house outside the bedroom, going about their daily lives, oblivious to what's going on just around the corner. It's a scene that brings to mind the playfulness of Spielberg when he built suspense in films like Close Encounters or Poltergeist. Of course, we know that "mama" has followed the girls to their new home, and is not happy that they now have new parents looking after them.

Mama is a horror movie that's just as interested in having us grow attached to its characters, as much as it is in scaring us. The fact that it is successful on both fronts is no small feat. The movie takes its time, letting us get to know these characters and their situations, while all the while, we know that something is wrong. It's a skillful blend of human drama and a first-rate supernatural thriller that, yes, does borrow a lot of ideas from other films (there seem to be a lot of nods to Japanese horror), but does so in an effective way.

For most of its running time, "mama" chooses to stay mostly in the background. During the third act, she reveals herself through CG and a performance by Spanish actor Javier Botet. Quite frankly, she's scarier when she stays in the shadows. In fact, the last 15 minutes fall apart, because we see too much of her. Up until then, this had been a subtle, intelligent, and creepy thriller. Then, it all explodes in a rushed climax of special effects and half-baked plot developments. Before all that does happen, however, I loved every minute of this film. And even the ending, flawed as it is, isn't enough to drag down what works. The performances, the atmosphere, and the unusual amount of intelligence rarely seen in a Hollywood horror film all outweighs any negatives. Director and co-writer Andy Muschietti, his team of writers, and producer Guillermo del Toro have set out to create an effective and smart little ghost story, and have strongly succeeded.

Speaking of del Toro, the movie reminded me of another film he did a few years ago called The Orphanage. Both are classically-styled and atmospheric ghost stories surrounding troubled children. The Orphanage was widely looked over in the U.S., due to the fact it was a foreign film with subtitles. Given that Mama is a full-scale Hollywood production, it hopefully will be greeted much more warmly by audiences, as it deserves.

The Lucky One (2012)

Middle of the road romantic weepie fare

[4/10 · 21 April 2012]

As romantic dramas go, The Lucky One is pretty thin stuff. It has a workable premise and everything, but the movie can't think of anything to do with itself, so it pads out its running time with one musical montage after another. You know a director has run out of ideas when he puts two different montages in about a span of two minutes apart from each other. The film is based on a book by Nicholas Sparks, who has done much better (and worse) than this. This falls somewhere in the middle.

Our hero is Logan, a Marine fighting overseas as the film begins, and played with wooden indifference by Zac Efron. There's nothing particularly interesting about Logan to begin with. He's handsome, he's noble, he works hard, and that's about it when it comes to his personality. Despite this, Efron could have shown a bit more life in his performance. After a particularly intense battle, Logan spots a photo of a woman lying in the rubble of the battlefield. Lucky thing he found and walked over to that photo, as moments later, a bomb drops where he was standing just seconds ago, killing his comrades. Logan finishes his tour, but is obsessed with discovering who the woman in the picture is, and who it belongs (or belonged) to. He returns home briefly to Colorado to live with family for a while, but when he can't readjust to civilian life, he packs his bags and, with his faithful dog Zeus by his side, decides to walk cross country to search out who the mysterious woman in the photo is.

His travels take him all the way to North Carolina, which is quite an amazing feat to walk all that distance. What's even more amazing is how Logan managed not to get dirty, or even mess up or grow out his hair during those many long months of walking. He arrives at a farmhouse/dog kennel, where it just so happens that the woman in the photo lives and works there. She's Beth (Taylor Schilling), who works at the kennel, is a single mother to her seven-year-old son, Ben (Riley Thomas Stewart), and shares the home with her mother (Blythe Danner, who gives the most interesting performance in the film). Logan means to tell Beth about the photo he found that day, but he just can't bring himself to mention it. Part of this is because of Logan having issues with his own past as a soldier, and part of this is for plot convenience, so that the movie can drag out his secret as long as it can, until it is dramatically appropriate. He takes a job at the kennel, and becomes a natural taking care of the many dogs.

He also starts building a bond with both Beth and her young son. She starts sharing her private hopes and dreams with him, and little Ben starts taking him to the old tree house where he hangs out, which is accessible only by crossing a rickety old bridge over a raging river. As soon as I saw that broken down old bridge, I knew it would collapse at one point - most likely during the intense climax, and during a storm. Sure enough, as the climax approached, those storm clouds started rolling in, and all the central characters started heading for that bridge. Logan also gets to meet Beth's ex-husband, Keith (Jay R. Ferguson), who serves as the town Sheriff as well as the town bully. He's a one dimensional villain who exists solely to push Logan and Beth around, and threaten to take Ben away from them. As a villain, he couldn't be any less subtle if he was wearing a T-shirt at all times that had the words "HI! I'M A SLIMEBALL!" written on it.

The Lucky One is pretty standard stuff as these kind of films go - The central romance between Logan and Beth is nice and all, but the characters don't really have a lot of personality to go with their physical attractiveness. You get the feeling that these two don't have a lot to talk about when they're alone. The movie also has its share of corny romantic lines, such as when Logan tells her, "You deserve to be kissed every hour, every minute, every second of every day", or when he says, "Finding that picture of you on the battlefield was like finding an angel in Hell". Yes, the movie is gooey in its sentimentality, but it never offends. I also enjoyed Blythe Danner's performance. She seems to know what kind of a movie she's stuck in, and has a little fun with it, delivering some much needed sarcasm and wit in her performance. It's no wonder I found her the most interesting character, she's the only one who gets to act like a real person.

The movie was directed by Scott Hicks (No Reservations), who's done some films I've admired, but seems to be cashing a paycheck here. I don't blame him for wanting to take it easy once in a while, but I wish he had picked a more interesting script. I can't really picture The Lucky One being a very memorable romantic weepie, but hey, I said the same thing about The Vow, so what do I know?

We Bought a Zoo (2011)

We Bought a Zoo, but should you buy a ticket?

[4/10 · 28 November 2011]

Cameron Crowe's We Bought a Zoo is a harmless movie about some very nice people who, yes, end up buying a zoo when they go looking for a new place to live. Unfortunately, while the movie is harmless, it's also not very interesting. Same goes for the people. They're nice and all, but don't seem to have a lot on their minds. Even the zoo animals seem kind of bored. This certainly isn't a bad movie, just a very familiar one.

The film is based on the true story of Benjamin Mee (played here by Matt Damon), a single father who is coping with the recent passing of his wife, and having to raise his two children on his own. His teenage son, Dylan (Colin Ford) is your typical isolated young man, who expresses himself by getting in trouble at school, and drawing graphic pictures of death in class. His younger daughter, Rosie (Maggie Elizabeth Jones), is one of those cloying little movie kids who always has something cute or clever to say on cue whenever the camera is pointed at her. He also has a supportive brother (Thomas Haden Church), who is mainly there for sarcastic comic relief. Benjamin decides the time has come for a change when Dylan is expelled from school, and he himself becomes fed up with his newspaper job, and walks off. He wants to start a new life for himself and his family.

He finds the perfect home somewhere in the Southern California countryside. Naturally, it's the one that the realtor seems the most nervous about, due to the fact that the house comes with its own struggling private zoo. In what has to be one of the biggest impulse buys in the history of cinema, Benjamin decides to buy the house when he sees how happy his little daughter is around the animals. I certainly hope there was more than that behind his decision to buy the property in real life. The family moves in, and they take charge of the zoo, which comes with its own staff of colorful stock characters. There's Kelly the zookeeper (Scarlett Johansson), who serves as somewhat of a love interest for Benjamin. The zoo's staff even has a teenage zookeeper (Elle Fanning) to act as a love interest for Dylan. There's an attempt at a subplot about Fanning's character trying to help Dylan come out of the emotional shell he's been in since his mother died. Too bad it never really works on an emotional level. Maybe if she had been written as an actual character, rather than someone whose main character trait is to smile a lot.

The rest of the staff is made up of eccentrics and oddballs that the movie can't think of anything to do with, so they're not worth mentioning. I understand what Crowe was going for here - He wanted to make a big-hearted movie about a family's emotional healing after a crisis, and how this family adventure of trying to run the zoo brought them closer together. You can literally see the screenplay co-written by Crowe trying its hardest to push our emotional buttons. You can also see him throwing just about every audience-pleasing trick in the book. A cute child, a shy teen romance, the struggle to save a sick tiger, a monkey who makes cute little reactions to what the characters say, a father trying to move on from his painful past, as well as connect with his emotionally distant son...It gets to be a bit much. I have not read the book that inspired this film, so I don't know if things actually happened this way. But, it felt awfully manipulative and contrived to me.

I was also put off by the severe tonal shifts that go on throughout the movie. The stuff concerning Damon and his son are actually pretty good, and there are some honest moments. But then, there are a lot of moments that are so overly sentimental or broad that they seem like they belong in a different movie. Thomas Haden Church is one of my favorite actors, but his role as the dry-witted brother is out of place. He's like a character on a sitcom, his every word a sarcastic quip. Equally out of place is John Michael Higgins, who plays the film's villain, a safety inspector who wants to close down the zoo, and does his best to find problems with it. Higgins plays the part too broad. As soon as he steps out of the car with that confident and smug smirk plastered on his face, you know what role he's supposed to play. And that smirk never leaves his face. It's like he's silently telling us at all times, "Yep, I'm a jerk. How can I be so terrible to these nice people? Don't you just hate me?"

We Bought a Zoo wants to wear its great big heart on its sleeve, and it does. But then, for some reason, it thinks we don't notice, so it keeps on hammering good, sunny feelings into each scene to the point that I started to feel assaulted by the film's manipulations. Like I said, I have not read the book that the film is based on, but I have a sneaking suspicion it's more honest and subtle than what's up on the screen. It has to be, because it's real life. This movie is an overly sunny, sitcom-level imitation of real life.

Jack and Jill (I) (2011)

Sandler's House of Stupid

[12 November 2011]

Is it me, or are Adam Sandler movies getting stupider with each passing one? Oh sure, Sandler's sense of humor has been pretty dumb from the beginning, sometimes in an enjoyable way. But lately, his movies seem to be reaching for a lower form of humor than I even knew existed. I'm guessing it won't take long until we get a movie comprised of nothing but Sandler sitting on the toilet and belching for 90 minutes straight.

But, I'm here to talk about Jack and Jill, a stupefyingly dumb comedy that places Sandler in a dual role as both an uptight ad executive and family man, as well as his loud, obnoxious sister. The movie was a miscalculation from the start. Seeing Sandler dressed in drag and talking in a whiny voice probably would have been pushing it in a three minute sketch back in his Saturday Night Live days. In a 90 minute movie, the performance is excruciating. Was there no one around to stop him and tell him the performance, and the character in general, was just a bad idea? No one to say that it just wasn't funny? Seeing a movie like this makes you want to sit Sandler down, and make him watch his performances in Punch Drunk Love, Spanglish, Funny People, and Reign Over Me to remind him that he is so much better than this.

The plot (such as it is) concerns Jill (the sister) coming to visit her brother Jack and his family for Thanksgiving. She's only supposed to be there for a few days, but she extends her vacation time, and winds up staying almost to New Years. During that time, we get a lot of toilet humor (much more than a PG-rated comedy aimed at kids needs), a ton of product placements (How much did Dunkin' Donuts pay to get their brand worked into the plot of the movie? And would it have been better for business if they had just stayed out of the movie all together?), and a lot of celebrity cameos that include Sandler's friends, as well as some big names cashing a paycheck. The cameos in this film include David Spade (in drag, no less), Dana Carvey, Johnny Depp, Regis Philbin, John McEnroe, Shaquille O'Neal, Drew Carey, Christie Brinkley, and Bruce Jenner. Oh, and then there's Al Pacino.

Yes, I said Al Pacino. Only he's not making a cameo, he's a main supporting character. He plays a caricature of himself as a raving oddball who speaks gibberish in order to fool people he can speak other languages, and becomes inexplicably attracted to Jill when he happens to meet her at a basketball game. Jill has no interest in Pacino, but Jack's ad agency wants to hire the actor for a Dunkin' Donut campaign, so he tries to bring the two together. When Jill further resists, Jack is forced to dress up as his sister and be seduced by Pacino. But never mind. The important thing is Pacino gets the film's only laughs, because he tackles the material head-on and with full passion. He obviously knows this material is stupid, but he gives such an energetic performance, you sometimes find yourself laughing, even if what he says isn't that funny. Say what you will about his decision to appear in this movie, but he earns every cent of that paycheck when he appears in trash like this.

Outside of Pacino's off the wall performance, I can't say I laughed very much at Jack and Jill. The movie's just not that funny. Don't tell that to the guy who was sitting two rows behind me at my screening, though. Every tired pratfall, every loud fart that blasted on the soundtrack, and every knock to the head caused him to erupt in extremely loud fits of laughter, stomping of feet, and slapping his knees. I wanted to ask him what he found so funny about the movie. Most of all, I wanted to be enjoying myself as much as he was. That's obviously the intention of the movie. It wants to make us laugh and forget our problems for 90 minutes or so. That's admirable. But it fails on both counts. My guess as to the reaction of the man sitting behind me? He's been locked away somewhere for a very long time, and has never seen a movie in his life.

I won't go so far as to say that Jack and Jill is the worst comedy of the year, as there's much worse out there. But, it's certainly one of the most annoying. This is the kind of movie where the filmmakers started with the idea of Sandler playing brother and sister, and then stopped there, not developing the screenplay, characters, or the jokes. Considering that the initial idea wasn't that hot to start with, maybe they shouldn't have even gone as far as they did.

Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star (2011)

A movie with absolutely no life whatsoever

[11 September 2011]

How does a movie like Bucky Larson get made? Here is a movie that appeals to no audience I can think of, and yet it is playing on thousands of screens. The only logical explanation I can come to for this movie's existence is that Mr. Sandler has some very incriminating photos of someone at Columbia Pictures.

Our title hero, Bucky (played by comedian Nick Swardson), is a dweeb. Not a funny one, or a likable one, but a pathetic dweeb who seems to live in his own world. Bucky hails from a small Midwest farm town, where he works as a bag boy at a grocery store, until he's fired about two minutes after the opening movie credits. He goes to a friend's house, where they decide to cheer him up by showing him a classic porno film starring a pair of legendary porn stars named Rosie Bush and Jim Spraysium. Seconds into watching the film, Bucky recognizes the stars as being his parents. Rather than be horrified, he is entranced by the idea that his parents were once in movies. It's at that moment he decides that it's his destiny to be a star as well, and decides to head to California and make it in "nude movies".

Bucky arrives in Hollywood with big dreams, but seemingly little common sense, as when he auditions for a mac and cheese commercial, and immediately drops his pants and starts jerking off in front of the horrified director and casting crew. Fortunately, the director on the commercial shoot used to work in the porn business, and directs Bucky to someone who can help him. The first person Bucky meets is the porn star Dick Shadow (Stephen Dorff), who is currently the biggest thing in the movies (in more ways than one), and immediately shuns him. He's later introduced to Miles Deep (Don Johnson, looking particularly embarrassed here), a down on his luck porn director who is so desperate to make a movie, he's even willing to give Bucky a shot. The audition does not go well, as when Bucky drops his pants, his "manhood" is revealed to be literally microscopic. He also has a tendency to start screeching like a monkey whenever he sees a woman take her shirt off, and starts shooting off blasts of his "man juice" like a shotgun all over the room and ceiling.

Let me stop this plot synopsis, and ask a simple question - Does this sound like a movie you would want to see? Does it even sound like a movie to begin with? I find myself returning to my original question, how does a movie like Bucky Larson get made? It holds absolutely no laughs, its lead character is an unlikable schmuck with an overbite and not a shred of knowledge of how to behave in social situations, and there's literally no plot to speak of. Just one situation after another for Bucky to humiliate himself. As the movie dragged on for nearly 100 interminable minutes, I came to realize that the entire screenplay revolves around three basic jokes. 1:) Bucky has buck teeth and talks funny. 2:) Bucky has a small dick. 3:) Bucky orgasms instantly every time he sees a woman take her shirt off. The movie repeats these same jokes many times, as if it thinks if it repeats them enough, it will wear down our defenses, and we'll eventually start laughing.

Back to the plot - Bucky's disastrous audition winds up on the Internet, and becomes a sensation. This inspires Miles Deep to give the guy another chance, and come up with a new form of porn that is non-threatening to guys (because they know they're better than Bucky), and is reassuring to women, since they know they are sleeping with a better guy than Bucky. Somehow, this idea takes off, and Bucky becomes a major star in the porn industry. He even sweeps the porn film awards, which is hosted by Pauly Shore, who plays himself in a cameo. It also means that this is probably the worst movie Pauly Shore has ever appeared in. (And no, I'm not forgetting BioDome.) While all this is happening, Bucky also strikes up a relationship with a sweet young waitress named Kathy (Christina Ricci). Kathy seems like a bright young woman, and Ricci plays her with charm. So, why is she hanging around Bucky to begin with?

Looking back over my review, I see that I have left very little out. This literally is all there is to the movie. There's no real conflict, other than a very halfhearted falling out between Bucky and Kathy that exists solely because the movie was nearly 90 minutes old, and nothing had really happened so far. This is nothing more than a story of an insufferable schmuck who goes to Hollywood, gets a job in porn, and falls in love with a nice girl. That's all. There's a hint of a subplot concerning the jealous porn star, Dick Shadow, trying to ruin Bucky's career. But this is so unmemorable, it could be cut from the film without anyone noticing. Why did it take three people to write a movie where virtually nothing happens? A movie that's quite clearly dead.

Yes, Bucky Larson is a dead movie. It shows no signs of life or inspiration. It doesn't even have the decency to be a lively or memorable bad movie. It just sort of lies there, not doing anything, and then asks us to leave 100 minutes later. Those who know me know that I never wish ill will upon anyone, but I seriously think that a movie like this could end careers. I hope that doesn't happen. I'm sure Nick Swardson is a nice and funny guy in real life. I'm also sure he'll be apologizing for this one for a long time to come.

Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son (2011)

Has it really come to this?

[1/10 · 19 February 2011]

To live in the world of Big Momma, it helps if you have the intelligence of a box of instant potatoes. That way, Detective Malcolm Turner (Martin Lawrence) and now his 17-year-old stepson Trey (Brandon T. Jackson) can pass themselves off as women, despite both of them looking like they escaped from a bad Saturday Night Live sketch, and not arouse suspicion. That both of them are able to fool an entire girl's college campus is one mental hurdle the movie asked of me that I just could not accomplish.

Of course, given the attempts at humor on display in Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son, it probably wouldn't hurt if the audience shared the same IQ as the characters up on the screen. There's not a single laugh to be had. Believe me, I counted. But then, that's not surprising when the film's sole joke was explored to its fullest in 2000's Big Momma's House. That was the movie where Lawrence went undercover as a 300 pound Southern granny in order to crack a crime. Somehow, this idea struck a chord with enough people to see the movie gross over $100 million, which led to 2006's Big Momma's House 2. It was less successful at the box office, but here we are with the third film. Not only does the Big Momma disguise that Lawrence dons look a little more worn out than before, but Lawrence himself seems confused as to what he's doing back in the role. It's an encore performance that no one, not even the star, asked for.

Lawrence is back as Malcolm, although his love interest (played in the previous two films by Nia Long) is nowhere to be seen. I guess they couldn't pay her enough to come back, so they explain in dialogue that she's away at a retreat. This leaves Malcolm to deal with family problems on his own, such as stepson Trey wanting to ditch a college education at Duke University, so that he can become a rap artist. Trey is underage, and needs his dad's signature in order to sign a contract with a music producer. In what is probably not the brightest of ideas, Trey decides to follow Malcolm on a bust of some Russian gangsters, hoping he can corner him and convince him to sign the contract. (I told you these characters were dumb.) This leads to Trey witnessing a murder, and having the gangsters gunning after him. Malcolm decides that the best way for his stepson and him to remain inconspicuous is to dress in drag, a fat suit, and clothes that look like they were stolen from a circus clown's wardrobe.

They head for the Georgia All Girl's School for the Performing Arts, where incriminating evidence against the mobsters has been conveniently hidden, and even more conveniently, a position for housemother has opened up. No need for any real credentials or background checks, apparently. "Big Momma", with Trey posing as her granddaughter, show up and immediately get wrapped up in campus life, and the various emotional problems (boys, the stress to be popular and "perfect") that the students face. The movie can't think of a single funny thing to do with its premise. Every scene ends with either a tired physical gag (Big Momma poses nude for an art class!), or sometimes no laugh at all, just an awkward transition to the next scene. I guess we're supposed to get caught up in the subplot of how Trey falls for one of the girls at the school (Jessica Lucas), and is forced to keep his feelings and identity a secret. All I could think about is how does this girl not realize that Trey and his female disguise are one and the same person, especially since she spends ample personal time with both of his identities?

I don't think I'm spoiling much by revealing that Big Mommas ends with the gangsters getting what they deserve, and father and son bonding during their time in drag together. This is an unwanted and miscalculated comedy that is so lacking in energy and entertainment, it's mind boggling. Nobody up on the screen looks like they want to be there, and as the movie dragged on through its overlong 107 minutes, I felt a connection with them. At least I was feeling something.

The Crazies (2010)

Starts strong, loses energy too soon

[5/10 · 27 February 2010]

In the small town of Ogden Marsh, Iowa, a farmer does his chores, friendly neighbors greet each other, and American flags wave peacefully outside just about every building. The town Sheriff, David Dutton (Timothy Olyphant), is at the local baseball diamond to cheer on wholesome, clean-cut high school baseball team. The serene mood is interrupted when the town drunk suddenly comes walking onto the field with a loaded shotgun in his hand. David tries to reason with the man, but he is unresponsive to his words and raises his gun. David is able to raise his gun first and fires, killing the man in front of everyone.

David feels remorse for his action, and doesn't know what to say when the man's grief-stricken wife and teenage son confront him. He assumed the incident was brought on by the man's alcohol problem, but the wife insists he had been sober for two years. These opening moments intrigued me, and made me think I had stumbled upon the rare, thoughtful and character-driven horror film, but the plot speeds right on ahead, and introduces us to the Sheriff's wife, Judy (Radha Mitchell), who is the town doctor. She too has a strange incident with a despondent and unresponsive man who is brought in for an examination by the man's concerned wife. She can't see anything physically wrong with him, despite his odd behavior, and sends him home to rest. That same night, the man ends up locking his wife and young child in the closet before he sets the house on fire with them inside it. It's a chilling scene to be sure, and it would have been even more so if the film had slowed down to actually let us feel for the people these things were happening to. Instead, the plot plows on ahead once more.

Are you noticing a pattern here? The Crazies keeps on setting up interesting and terrifying situations, then just moves right on along. It'd be one thing if the movie was hurrying along to something truly interesting, but director Breck Eisner eventually settles down into a predictable series of non-stop jump scares. After the early promise, we get a fairly typical plot for this sort of film. We find out that the town's water supply has become tainted, and is turning the people slowly into mindless and murderous creatures. The military quickly swoops in and seals off the town, killing anyone on sight who shows any sign of illness. The film is a remake of a 1973 horror film by George Romero, and it feels like a remake, because you constantly feel like you've seen it all before. David and Judy try to escape from the town and the military forces with the help of David's Deputy (Joe Anderson) and a young woman from Judy's office named Becca (Danielle Panabaker). All the while, they're constantly menaced by people who have succumbed to the disease ("the crazies" of the title), who all act exactly like every single generic monster villain that's ever walked, lurched, or slithered across the silver screen.

This really had the potential to be so much more. Aside from a scene where young Becca sees her boyfriend get gunned down and incinerated by the military, we never really get a sense of the tragedy of the situation. We don't know anything about the townspeople, or who they really were before the disease hit. The script by Scott Kosar and Ray Wright starts out smart, and offers some genuine thrills. But then the whole thing goes on autopilot in the second half, and I found myself losing interest little by little, until I just didn't care anymore. The movie stops being tense and scary as well at this point. I'm tired of horror movies that rely solely on things jumping out for their scares. They don't even provide a good jolt, since we pretty much can sense a set up for an attack from a mile away.

At least I can complement the movie on a technical level. It's very well made for a film of its kind. The vast cornfields and desolate streets do give a small sense of isolation that I wish the movie was smart enough to utilize more. The cast also manage to wring out as much personality as they can out of their thinly written characters. At least none of the heroes are annoying. In movies like this, there's usually one character that you hope will get chomped by the monsters or shot by the army, but no such feelings were stirred within me here.

I tried my hardest to hold onto the early feelings of intrigue and enjoyment I felt during the first 40 minutes or so watching The Crazies. I eventually found myself wishing that Woody Harrelson's character from Zombieland would show up and liven things. If ever there was a movie that needed a guy who still knew how to have fun when modern society is collapsing all around him, it's this one.

Aliens in the Attic (2009)

Flat and uninspired

[1/10 · 2 August 2009]

The original title for Aliens in the Attic was "They Came From Upstairs" - a much better title, you must agree. Still, I can understand the change. Everything else about the movie is generic, bland, and unmemorable. The title was the last part of the movie to have any ounce of inspiration sucked from it.

What we have here is a children's movie that should have been fun and mischievous, but is instead overly safe and tedious. It doesn't even bother to give us any real characters. The kids who act as the heroes are dull, the adult actors may as well not even be there, and exist mainly to pop up every now and then to say, "What are those kids up to now?", and the aliens are even more boring than the adults. Shame about the aliens. They kind of look like Yoda's angrier and shorter half-cousins, but they hold absolutely no personality. I remember they had names, but darned if I can remember what they were. The aliens themselves are a ragtag group that are pretty much interchangeable. There's a girl one (voice by Kari Wahlgren), one who turns out to be nice and helps out the kids (Josh Peck), and two whom the movie didn't even bother to give personalities or real dialogue to, so naturally they are played by the best actors in the cast (Thomas Hayden-Church and J.K. Simmons).

Why are the aliens here on Earth? From what little the movie tells us, it has something to do with an invasion campaign. The little creatures arrive at the vacation home of the Pearson family, who are having a sort of family reunion for the weekend. There's apparently a device the aliens want hidden under the basement of the house. The Pearson kids learn about their presence soon enough, but the adults remain completely oblivious throughout. The six kids who act as the heroes basically act as one giant unit, and have very little individual personalities. The leader of the kids (Carter Jenkins) is flunking school, much to the shame of his clueless parents (Kevin Nealon and Gillian Vigman), and his sister (Ashley Tisdale) is dating an older guy who's a jerk (Robert Hoffman). Speaking of the jerk boyfriend, he becomes the victim of the alien's mind control gun, which turns him into a zombie that can be controlled with a device. Fortunately, said device looks and works like a video game controller, so when the kids get their hands on it, they can control him easily enough. The kids' grandmother (Doris Roberts) also falls under alien control, leading to a scene where the boyfriend and the grandma have an elaborate kung-fu fight, with the kids controlling granny, and the aliens controlling the jerk. This scene should be fun, but it's really very boring.

So is the rest of the movie. Aliens in the Attic is cinematic junk food for kids that doesn't even have the decency to go down easy enough for accompanying adults. No one seems to be that involved, not even the kids themselves. They're going through the motions as much as the adult actors are, almost as if they're already planning to wipe this movie from their screen credits before they hit 17. It's bad enough seeing people like Andy Richter and Tim Meadows cashing paychecks in the worthless adult roles this movie gives them. I found myself wondering what was going through the minds of the filmmakers. Did director John Schultz think kids wouldn't care, as long as there were cute CG aliens added in later? Speaking of the CG, not even that impresses. Not only have they been given no personality by the credited writers, but they're boring to look at. They don't even get any real one-liners. I have to question if anyone even cared about this movie.

The premise for this movie calls out for a director like Joe Dante (Gremlins), someone who knows how to mix fun with creature terror. Instead, we've been given a toothless commercial product that will probably fade from theaters long before August ends, and sit forgotten in the back corners of video store shelves the world over. Kids deserve more and better.

The Last House on the Left (2009)

Empty violence and cheap thrills

[3/10 · 13 March 2009]

If there's a lesson to be learned from The Last House on the Left, it's this - If you ever see a suspicious-looking and awkward teen lurking in the dark corner of a supermarket, and he offers to take you to his seedy motel room for some weed, don't go with him. Thanks, Hollywood. I'll be sure to remember that next time I'm in such a situation.

It's too bad that teenage friends Mari (Sara Paxton) and Paige (Martha MacIssac) learn the lesson the movie wants to impart with us a little too late. They follow the teen named Justin (Spencer Treat Clark) back to his room, hoping for a party, only to learn that his family are a group of psychotic killers on the run from the law. We witness in the film's opening scene how Justin's father, Krug (Garret Dillahunt), Uncle Francis (Aaron Paul), and Krug's girlfriend Sadie (Riki Lindhome) murdered a couple of police detectives. (Just to let us know they're *really* evil, the movie makes us watch Krug strangle one of the detectives with a car seatbelt and forces him to bleed all over a family photo of the detective's children.) The murder has made front page news, and the family doesn't want any witnesses, so Krug and the others take the two girls out to the woods to have their way with them. Paige ends up dead, and Mari ends up getting raped and left for dead when she tries to escape and is hit by a stray bullet. With a storm bearing down on the local area, the killers decide to take refuge in the closest house nearby, which just happens to belong to Mari's parents, John (Tony Goldwyn) and Emma (Monica Potter).

John, Emma, and Mari have come to the house for a much-needed family vacation after dealing with the tragedy the past year of their eldest son, Ben, dying. When the killers arrive at the house, wounded and disheveled (Mari and Paige got a few hits in on them before they were overpowered), the parents initially have no idea, as they think their daughter is staying overnight with the friend. Then young Justin begins to feel racked with guilt when he realizes who the house belongs to, and begins to leave little signs for the parents to discover who they are and what they did. When Mari manages to drag herself to the front porch of the house and the parents discover her clinging to what little life she has left, they decide to take the law into their own hands by seeking bloody vengeance. This is obviously intended to be a thorny moral issue. Heck, the film's poster even asks us "If bad people hurt someone you loved, how far would you go to hurt them back"? Too bad it never has any intention of answering this question, as The Last House on the Left is an entirely exploitive and cheap enterprise designed solely as a gore show.

Yes, there is quite a lot of gore. The R-rating is put into effect as we get to see close up and graphic depictions of stabbings, rapes, attempted drownings, fingers being cut off in a kitchen garbage disposal, blood-splattered shootings, and to top it off, someone being paralyzed then stuck in a microwave until their head explodes. The problem is the movie stops at the shock value of these images. There's nothing behind them other than the filmmakers wanted to maybe raise a concerned eyebrow or two. The only way a story like The Last House on the Left could work is if we actually cared about or were interested in what was going on, or about the people these things are happening to. But we don't, because everyone who exists in this movie exists for a single narrow-minded purpose. The daughter exists solely to be raped, the daughter's friend to be murdered, the villains to do terrible things and then have terrible things happen to them...There are no real relationships on display, not even within the family. Mere moments after they arrive at the vacation home, the daughter runs off to be with her friend. It's like she knows what the audience is here for, and wants to give it to them as quickly as possible.

Not only does this cheapen the entire film, but it actually managed to lessen the impact of the film's harsher sequences with me. The characters are so single-minded in their motivation, I had a hard time seeing them as people instead of merely as manipulations of the screenplay. The movie asks us how far would we go to find vengeance, but the characters of John and Emma never do. As soon as they find their daughter and discover what's happened to her, they grab the nearest sharp or blunt object, and start going after the killers. There's no pause for questioning, asking if what they're doing is right, or even a moment's hesitation. Like everyone else, they know what they're here for. (The fact that the characters literally have nothing to do with anything in the movie until the final 40 minutes or so is proof of this.) This could have been a tense and terrifying dramatic thriller, but because the movie never strays from the expected path or gives us anything to think about, we're simply left to wait for the inevitable.

The film's sole saving grace is that the director Dennis Iliadis shows some talent here. I hope he can get attached to a real movie next time around. The Last House on the Left is for people who don't care what's going on up on the screen, as long as they get to see some severed limbs. When the film's poster asks smarter and tougher questions than anything brought up in the movie itself, you've got a problem.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009)

About as good as a movie called Paul Blart: Mall Cop could be

[6/10 · 16 January 2009]

If Paul Blart: Mall Cop had been made 20 years ago, it would have starred John Candy. That's a complement, by the way. Candy had a knack for playing bungling, yet good-hearted people who mainly wanted to please. He certainly specialized in playing people who tried too hard to be nice to cover up past pain. There's a lot of this in Kevin James' performance as the title character here. He's more than just a comic goofball. James turns him into a likable and surprisingly sympathetic hero that we find ourselves cheering for by the end.

Kevin James rose to fame on television starring on the sitcom, The King of Queens, and has been trying to break into movies for a while now. He's acted along side stars like Will Smith and Adam Sandler, but this is his first shot at a stand-alone starring role. Sandler is still there behind the scenes (His Happy Madison production company produced the film.), but this is James' film all the way, and he doesn't waste the opportunity. His Paul Blart is admirable in a way. He's overweight and he suffers from hypoglycemia, but he always tries to do the right thing. He's passionate about his job as a mall cop, but he'd really like to be a police officer on the street. He's taken the physical entrance exam many times, but his health problems have prevented him from finishing. He makes up for his shortcomings by being the best mall cop he can be, and by also being a good single father to his teen daughter (Raini Rodriguez), who respects him and wishes he could fall in love again. Paul has his eyes on a young woman named Amy (Jayma Mays), who also works at the mall. The first half hour or so of the film is devoted to Paul's life, and it certainly helps us get into his corner when the actual plot kicks in.

It's Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year, and some high tech criminals stage a lock down and a hostage situation at the mall as they pull off their theft plan. They place motion sensors and small bombs at the entrances, so no one can get in or out. They think they've removed everyone from the building, but didn't notice Paul was in the back of the arcade playing Guitar Hero. When he emerges from the arcade, he quickly learns about the hostage situation, and discovers that both Amy and his daughter are amongst them. This kicks off the main action, where Paul must use his resources around him to out think and outrun the criminals while keeping everyone alive. I liked this aspect of the story, and how Paul Blart actually has to be clever in order to outsmart the captors. The movie is rated PG, so it's never too violent or scary for kids, which is the perfect target audience for the film. They'll like the film's gentle and goofy humor, and accompanying adults may find themselves charmed by Blart himself.

I never laughed out loud while watching this movie, but I did smile a lot, and I found myself caring more about the main character than I imagined. Let me tell you, that's more than I expected walking into a movie called Paul Blart: Mall Cop. There's plenty of sweetness during the early moments, establishing Paul's shy relationship with Amy, and the caring one he shares with his daughter. When the time comes for him to be a hero, we can cheer for him, because the movie makes him into a true underdog. He's constantly battling with his own shortcomings and health issues, and it's clever the way he keeps on finding ways to keep himself going, driven by saving the ones he loves. If I'm making the movie sound too serious, it's not. There's plenty of slapstick gags, surprisingly no bodily fluid or toilet humor to be found, and some pretty good physical comedy on display. If there's any major shortcoming to be found, it's that the movie is pretty inconsequential, and will probably be forgotten by me a few months from now.

Still, considering the kind of junk that usually clogs theaters in early January, Paul Blart certainly is not bad. I imagine the movie will make a good rental, since its somewhat small scale will make it perfect for watching on TV rather than the big screen. If anything, it's one step closer to making James the cross-over star he obviously wants to be. I wouldn't mind seeing the same kind of likability he gives here in a less juvenile script. He's on to something here, he's just gotta find the project where he really knocks one out of the park.

Bolt (2008)

Skip Madagascar 2, this is the one to take the kids to

[8/10 · 22 November 2008]

In Bolt, a small American White Shepherd dog has amazing adventures, not realizing that none of it is real. The little guy (whose voice is provided by John Travolta) is actually the star of a highly rated action show for kids, but the show's director is a believer of method acting, and wants the dog to think the things that happen to him on the show are real to get a more natural performance from him. On the show, Bolt the dog travels with his young human owner, Penny (Miley Cyrus), cross country searching for Penny's father, a scientist who has been kidnapped by the diabolical madman, Dr. Calico (Malcolm McDowell). Bolt has been genetically enhanced to have super canine abilities (actually special effects that are performed right there on the set), and uses those abilities to battle Calico's forces.

The concept of an actor on a TV show living in a make believe world, and not realizing his every move is being filmed by hidden cameras reminded me greatly of the Jim Carrey drama from 10 years ago, The Truman Show, and made me wonder if this was going to be another look at the same idea aimed at a much younger audience. The movie drops this idea fairly early on, and turns into a standard road trip comedy, but I wasn't disappointed. The film has plenty of wit, charm, and heart to go around. Bolt is forced to hit the road when he believes Penny is in danger. The most recent episode ends with a cliffhanger where the girl has been kidnapped by Calico. After the shoot, Bolt is sent to his private trailer as always, but believing that Penny has actually been kidnapped, he breaks free and ends up accidentally inside a shipping box which is sent to New York City. In his strange real world surroundings, Bolt initially doesn't understand why his "powers" don't work like they usually do. He's still determined to track down Penny, even in his supposed weakened state, and forcefully brings an alley cat he finds named Mittens (Susie Essman, wonderful here) along for the ride, believing that she has ties to the evil Dr. Calico and can tell him where his human is.

The relationship between the delusional dog and the street wise, sarcastic cat is at the heart of Bolt, and also what makes the film work above all else. I loved the way that Mittens the cat begins to train him in the art of being a real dog. Bolt has been living a fantasy his entire life, and has never even experienced the joy of playing with a chew toy or sticking his head out an open window with his tongue flapping in the breeze. With so many animated films forcing the idea that animals are just like us, only with fur, here is a movie about a dog who learns to enjoy the simplicity of a natural life. I liked that angle, and I liked the way that Mittens slowly warms up to Bolt's situation. She's a cat with a past, as she used to belong to some people who were forced to abandon her when they moved. She doesn't understand Bolt's devotion to Penny, as she believes humans can only hurt. The spot on vocal performances by Travolta and Essman add a lot of the heart the character's hold.

Also along for the trip is a pudgy little hamster named Rhino (Mark Walton), who is familiar with Bolt through watching his adventures on the "magic box" from his cage. He's mainly there to provide comic relief, and though kids will likely enjoy him, I found him a little grating. Fortunately, the movie never allows him to distract from what works. I was surprised by how sympathetic Bolt is, and how much I ended up caring for the characters. Even young Penny gets some effective moments. The preteen actress has always felt bad about having to lie to the little dog, and make him think their adventures were real. When he runs away, she feels responsible. As mentioned earlier, Penny is voiced by pop singing sensation and actress, Miley Cyrus, and this movie hints that she may have a future after the Hannah Montana fad comes to an end.

The film is wonderful to look at, too. The visual style is bright and vibrant, and the character designs carry a lot of personality. When we see Bolt as a puppy at the very beginning of the film, playing with a toy, it's filled with much more character and emotion than any of the live human actors can muster in this weekend's other big release, Twilight. I also greatly admired the attention to detail in many of the film's settings. There's a brief montage where the three traveling animals visit different landmarks as they make their way cross country, and a shot of them watching the famous "water show" outside the Belagio hotel in Las Vegas looked like the real thing. This movie makes even the well animated Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa pale in comparison. The fact that this movie has some actual soul and heart behind it, unlike that mediocre cash-in sequel, certainly helps.

Over the years, the Disney studio has been trying to catch up to the works of Pixar with some of their own in-house computer animated films, and the results have up to now been middling. (Does anyone really remember Chicken Little or Meet the Robinsons?) Bolt is by far their best effort to try to capture the tone of a Pixar film, and while the film takes a few wrong steps (mainly with its unfunny comic relief character), it's definitely the closest they've come to their league. Bolt proves you don't always need original ideas as long as you have a lot of genuine emotion and likable characters on your side.

W. (I) (2008)

Sometimes entertaining, but ultimately unfulfilling

[6/10 · 17 October 2008]

Make no mistake, W. is an often entertaining and surprisingly even-handed look at our current President. Given the fact that this film was rushed into production to be released just in time for the elections, I was expecting much worse. However, this film also gives strength to another argument - Oliver Stone, once one of the most controversial and outspoken filmmakers, is losing his edge. The movie never quite delves deep enough into the man or into his political legacy, and pretty much tries to sum up everything in one simple phrase - George W. Bush has daddy issues.

This is not the hard-hitting or critical look at Bush that many expected. The movie completely glosses over or skips entirely certain important events, like the 2000 election fiasco. It is a Cliffs' Notes version, only hitting some major notes, and jumping through them without any in-between or lead in. The movie skims over his notorious hard drinking early years, equally skims over his years trying to find a place in the world, and then pretty much jumps into his decision to run for political office. Faces fade in and out of the narrative, and we never once feel like we're getting the whole story. Maybe Stone and screenwriter Stanley Weiser (who previously collaborated with the director on 1987's Wall Street) became intimidated about going into too much detail.

And yet, for all its obvious flaws, I cannot deny that W. intrigued me in a lot of ways. I may have been left wanting more, but at least I was liking what I was seeing enough to want more in the first place. Although I do think the movie puts too much weight into it, and pretty much uses it as its single answer to almost every question it presents, I did enjoy the relationship between Bush and his father. In the film, George W. Bush (Josh Brolin) is presented as a man forever in the shadow of his dad (James Cromwell). It's something that is stressed from the beginning, such as the scene when Bush is called into his father's office, pretty much only so that his dad can say he's a real disappointment to him, since he can't seem to hold down a job. When his father runs for President in the 88 election and asks for his son's support, George is hurt by the fact that his dad turned to him only after his brother, Jeb Bush (Jason Ritter), turned him down to concentrate on his own work. And when George starts to make strides toward his own political career, his father cannot say he is proud of his son, and simply hands him a note saying he's proud.

This antagonistic father-son relationship is pretty much what drives the entirety of the film. Brolin portrays our President as a man constantly trying to please everyone around him, though he never seems quite to know how. He's faced with the legacy of his father, his brother, and those he respects. All he seems to really want is recognition, and maybe some appreciation, but that becomes continuously out of grasp as the situation in Iraq spirals out of his control. Josh Brolin certainly does a great job at capturing Bush's mannerisms and speech, without turning it into a Saturday Night Live-style parody. It's a performance that takes a little while to get used to (seeing him try to pass himself off as a 19-year-old fraternity pledge is a bit of a stretch), but he grows into the role quite quickly, and before long we forget we're watching an impersonation. As the elder Bush, Cromwell does not even try to mimic the appearance or talk of him, which is most likely for the best, as it probably would have ended up going into Dana Carvey territory. He simply gives a strong performance as an emotionally closed-off father who doesn't know how to react when his son succeeds or fails.

Stone has cast the movie with a sharp eye, and it's amazing how many of the actors resemble their real life counterparts. Of special note are Richard Dreyfus as Vice President Dick Cheney, and Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice. Like Brolin, they have the speech, the mannerisms and definitely the look down. What bothered me is that's about all they do have. The movie doesn't give a lot of the supporting cast a chance to stand out, aside from a few meeting scenes as they discuss the war situation. Unlike Brolin's Bush, they come across as imitations rather than genuine characters. In a way, it's understandable. There are so many people who played a part in the story that Stone tries to tell that it's impossible to fit them all and give them due credit in a movie that runs just a little over two hours. But at the same time, I felt like I was watching a bunch of talented actors dressed up as recent political figures, and not much else beyond that.

I think in the end, the main problem with W. is that it's not time to tell the story. We need more distance, more reflection before we can start to truly understand him, or his Presidency. It's interesting that one of the final scenes of the film is Bush being asked by a reporter how he thinks history will remember him, and he becomes tongue-tied right there in front of the cameras. Oliver Stone often seems equally confused with this film. This is a well made movie that contains some good performances and a number of very good stand-alone scenes. Those scenes just never come together to form a completely satisfying film.

The Family That Preys (2008)

Typical Perry

[2/10 · 13 September 2008]

Tyler Perry's back to his old tricks with The Family That Preys - A film that is just as manipulative and as ham-fisted of a melodrama as some of his earlier work. The only saving grace are a pair of performances at the center.

Those performances come from Kathy Bates and Alfre Woodard. They play the matriarchs of two very different families who have been friends for the past 30 years. Their characters come from very different worlds. Bates plays Charlotte Cartwright, a wealthy tycoon who is in danger of losing control of her company as her greedy son William (Cole Hauser) plots to slowly get rid of her influence and power in the business. Woodard plays Alice Pratt, a God-fearing middle class woman who runs a local diner, and likes to help the homeless on the side. The two actresses have great chemistry together during their subplot, which concerns them leaving their troubles behind for a little while, and going on a cross country road trip. Their performances are almost enough to make us forget just how poorly they've been written in Perry's screenplay. Take for example the fact that Charlotte seems to suffer from a split personality. Usually when she's around Alice, she's a fun and spirited woman. But whenever she's alone, she comes across as a cold and unfeeling millionaire right out of an 80s prime time soap opera like Dallas. Unfortunately, this won't be the last time I use the word soap opera in this review.

That's because The Family That Preys isn't really about the two women I just mentioned, it's about their intertwined family, and the numerous betrayals, affairs, and other ludicrous overstuffed plots that would be right at home in any afternoon soap. Let's just see how many plots there are. The first concerns Alice's daughter, Andrea (Sanaa Lathan) having an affair with Charlotte's previously mentioned son, William. Andrea's husband, Chris (Rockmond Dunbar), works as a construction worker for William's company, and has no idea about their bedroom meetings behind his back, even though it's painfully obvious to everyone else. Poor Chris comes across as the slowest guy in the world, as he frequently stares the obvious in the face, and chooses to look the other way until the screenplay decides to finally give him a clue. Chris and his best friend on the construction crew, Ben (Tyler Perry), want to start their own construction company, but Ben doesn't know if they should take the chance, despite the urgings of his wife, Pam (Taraji P. Henson), who just happens to be Alice's other daughter. Meanwhile, William's wife, Jillian (KaDee Strickland) is a bit more on the ball than Chris is, and suspects her husband's affair. Not only that, there's another woman worked into the story named Abby (Robin Givens) who has just been hired to the company by Charlotte, much to the anger of William, since he wanted the position and is upset that his mom didn't give it to him.

All this, and I still haven't mentioned the mysterious homeless person (Sebastian Siegel) whom Alice helps out, and eventually ends up playing a part in the plot. There's also friction between Charlotte and William's wife, because Charlotte never approved of her, although the movie doesn't go very deep into this. And yes, there's also that previously mentioned road trip between Charlotte and Alice as they go on a trip of self discovery, while stopping at various cowboy bars and male strip joints along the way. (Because this is a Tyler Perry movie, Charlotte also stops to get baptized at one point.) Watching this movie, you can almost picture Tyler Perry writing this screenplay after a marathon viewing of his daytime TV soaps. The writing, direction, and storytelling is all on the same level here. He does his best to juggle the film's various plots, but they never come together. It's jarring the way the movie constantly jumps between its numerous characters and plots. It seems that Perry had a hard time squeezing them all in, as some get more attention than others. The whole affair situation between William and Andrea gets the most attention, but even that never seems to truly build anywhere. The characters just keep on going through the same motions over and over, while Andrea's husband Chris begins to resemble an unintentional running gag with how clueless he is about everything.

The only aspect of the film that does work are the scenes between Bates and Woodard, and that's more due to their screen presence than the material the film gives them. If the movie had trimmed away all lamebrained corporate backstabbing and affairs and just centered on them, I may have been able to forgive the sometimes dopey dialogue between them, and the last minute revelation about Bates' character that cries out of desperation. The Family That Preys obviously wants to tackle some heavy issues, but everything's been written in Perry's trademark over the top style. This makes it hard to identify with just about anyone who walks into the frame of the camera. The only character who does come across as a genuine human is the one Perry has written for himself, and unfortunately, he plays a minor role in everything. Given his somewhat genuine performance here, it's hard to believe that this is the same guy who dresses in drag and a fat suit for his most famous portrayal. Perry fans will be glad to know that his Madea character will be back in his next film, Madea Goes to Jail. Everyone else has been warned.

The Rocker (2008)

Completely conventional. Not much new here.

[4/10 · 20 August 2008]

If there was ever a movie that needed Jack Black, this is the one. The lead character in The Rocker almost seems to be written with him in mind, and I don't know, maybe it intended to be a starring vehicle for him at one time, but other projects got in the way. Whatever the reason, it's impossible not to think what kind of energy he'd bring to this film - Energy that Rainn Wilson (the actor who does headline this movie) cannot supply, despite his best efforts. At least he seems to be trying.

Wilson plays Robert "Fish" Fishman, a washed up drummer who lost his chance at stardom back in 1986 when he was the drummer for a rising heavy metal hair band named Vesuvius, only to have his bandmates ditch him right before fame came knocking for the group. His attempt to stop his former friends from running away from him brings about an inspired comic sequence, where Fish seemingly develops superhuman abilities while chasing after their fleeing van. He can run at impossible speeds like a human Terminator, and he then leaps on top of the van, and punches holes through the roof with his drum sticks, causing his bandmates to scream in terror. I laughed a lot at this sequence. I liked its goofy tone, which seemed to be parodying horror films, and it set my mind at ease early on that director Peter Cattaneo (The Full Monty) would be giving the movie a likeably offbeat sense. As soon as this sequence ends, however, the movie goes on total auto pilot and never looks back.

Robert is now jobless, homeless, and holding a major grudge against his former band, which has gone on to chart-topping success. Opportunity comes knocking while Robert is living at his sister's house, trying to get his life together. His nephew, Matt (Josh Gad), is in a high school garage band called ADD, and they have recently lost their drummer right before their first gig at the school's prom. Matt asks Robert to fill in as a last resort, much to the dismay of his two fellow bandmates - lead singer and songwriter Curtis (Teddy Geiger), and cynical guitarist Amelia (Emma Stone). They eventually welcome Robert into the band, since he can get them other gigs, and they find their popularity quickly building, especially after Robert becomes an Internet sensation when a video of him drumming naked becomes a hit on Youtube. Seemingly in a matter of weeks, the band is going on tour, selling out massive concert halls, and releasing hit CDs.

The Rocker seems to know just how derivative it is, as it races through its various pre-required stops, almost as if it was checking its clichés off one by one. Robert gets a love interest in the form of Curtis' mom (Christina Applegate), who accompanies the band on tour. Despite Applegate getting second billing in the cast, though, her character barely registers, and her plot hardly goes anywhere. There are relationships within the band itself, as young Matt has his eyes on a girl who appears at all of their concerts, and Amelia and Curtis keep on exchanging meaningful glances at each other, but can't speak their feelings. These are dealt with the same lack of interest, almost as if the screenplay is just throwing these ideas out there, but doesn't want to do anything with them. And of course, there has to be turmoil amongst the bandmates. There's a slimy manager who pops up now and then to manipulate Curtis into turning against Robert, but this brief spat is resolved about two scenes later, so we're left to wonder why the movie bothered in the first place. This film is so haphazard and lazy in its tone that even the band getting arrested and going to prison isn't a very big deal in this movie.

Instead of creating characters or situations that we can care about, we're left with a lot of music montages, which seem to make up 80% of the film's middle. But, at least the music was able to distract me a little from most of the film's humor, which seems to be under the rule that seeing Rainn Wilson getting hit in the face or the privates gets funnier each time it tries it. When he's living at his sister's house early on in the film, it seems to be designed for him to hit his head or fall backwards over something, almost as if The Three Stooges had built the house. I can just picture someone on the construction crew while the house was being built asking why they were making the ceiling and boards in the attic so low, and the head foreman saying, "Trust me, it will be funny when some guy has to live up here someday". Even when he's not in the house, he seems to be a magnet for bees flying in his mouth, tree branches smacking his face, and TV boxes in hotel rooms striking his crotch.

Despite its message of embracing a rebellious spirit and never giving up on your dreams, The Rocker is completely substandard and instantly forgettable. This almost seems to be the kind of movie the month of August was made for. It's not exactly bad, but there's absolutely nothing that stands out about it. Now that the big summer movies have come and gone, it's time for the movies that won't be remembered a month from now. If only the movie had kept the same level of insanity of its first five minutes. Then The Rocker would be a movie worth seeing.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008)

Adventures in Hutt-Sitting

[1/10 · 15 August 2008]

So, it has come to this. I think it's safe to say that The Clone Wars pretty much flattens any last shred of credibility that the Star Wars franchise may have held. The disappointing prequel trilogy gave us warning signs that all was not well in LucasLand. This disappointingly shallow, dull, and unneeded side story all but rams the point home.

The solitary purpose of The Clone Wars is to introduce a new animated TV series that will be debuting on the Cartoon Network later this year. Now kids will be able to follow the further adventures of Obi-Wan Kenobi (voice by James Arnold Taylor) and Anakin Skywalker (Matt Lanter), set chronologically between Episode II: Attack of the Clones and Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. But, hold on a minute. Did executive producer George Lucas or anyone else involved with the project realize just how pointless this idea is? We've seen the original trilogy, we've seen the prequel trilogy. We pretty much know what's going to happen to the characters, since their fates have pretty much been public knowledge for about 30 years now. It's a core problem in the movie as well. When Anakin faces down the evil Count Dooku (Christopher Lee) late in the film, the fight seems completely needless, since we hold advance knowledge that the characters do not.

The story can best be described as a very basic and shallow hook to hang a seemingly endless string of interminable space dogfight battles, and lightsabre duels. Jabba the Hutt's infant son, Rotta, is kidnapped by mysterious assailants. The kidnappers are working under the devious Dooku, who plans to use the baby Hutt to frame the Jedi, leading Jabba to believe that they are responsible for the abduction. Obi-Wan and Anakin already have their hands full battling the evil droid army that is spreading out across the galaxy, and now they must track down the young creature before the Hutt clan declares war against the Jedi and the Republic. While Obi-Wan and the clone soldiers try to hold off the advancing armies, Anakin, along with his young Padawan apprentice Ahsoaka Tano (Ashley Eckstein), must try to return Rotta to his proper home. Call it Adventures in Hutt-Sitting.

The Clone Wars literally starts with a bang, throwing us directly into the middle of a battle with little explanation, other than a hastily-spoken narration voice over that sounds like it was read by a game show announcer. From there, the characters are briefly re-introduced to us in the thick of battle. Once the situation with the missing baby Hutt is established, the movie literally never slows down. It's one exhausting fight scene or action sequence after another as Anakin and Ahsoaka race across the galaxy to reach the planet Tatooine, as they're pursued by various aliens, droids, and whatever else the filmmakers feel like throwing in. It doesn't take long for the movie to start to resemble a hyper-active video game, as it never slows down long enough to allow the characters to do anything but run and shoot at things. But then, given the wooden dialogue on display, maybe it's a good thing. While the actual Star Wars films were not exactly known for their dialogue, I have to admit I choked on my soda just a little when I heard Anakin's new Padawan refer to him affectionately as "Sky-guy".

It's quite clear that the main appeal of the original films were the special effects, not to mention the imaginative worlds and creatures. So then why does The Clone Wars look no better than the stuff you see in a Saturday morning cartoon? I know, the movie is intended to be a launching point for one, but that doesn't explain how cheap everything looks here. The characters suffer from a very shiny and "plastic" look that makes them look more like animated action figures than actual people inhabiting the story. The hair on the characters don't even move. It's molded and painted onto their heads, kind of like a Ken doll. I'm also still trying to figure out the filmmakers' decision to give everyone such limited facial movement, making the entire cast look like they just received a massive Botox implant. I didn't believe for a second that I was watching a genuine story, or even a continuation of the Star Wars universe. I felt like I was listening to a bad fanfiction story written by a fanboy hopped up on way too much caffeine, acted out by poorly rendered video game characters.

Unless you're the most forgiving fanatic of the franchise to walk this green Earth, or are under 10-years-old, there is absolutely nothing appealing to be found within The Clone Wars. It's nothing but a lot of noise and explosions that assault the senses for 100 minutes, then leaves you walking out of the theater with no real thoughts or impressions. It's not even enjoyable in one ear and out the other entertainment. I'm sure the TV series will probably be no different, but at least you won't have to pay to watch it. You can also change the channel, something I wished I could have done many times watching this film.

Meet Dave (2008)

Well, it's better than Norbit...

[2/10 · 11 July 2008]

The funniest thing about Meet Dave is that one of the credited screenwriters is Bill Corbett. Corbett was one of the head writers and stars of the 90s cult hit TV show devoted to bad movies, Mystery Science Theater 3000. Seeing his name here makes me think he still had bad movies on the brain when he wrote this uninspired and dull family comedy about tiny aliens coming to Earth. Take away the big budget and the name star above the title, and this movie would be right at home on the show he used to work on, and would be rightfully ridiculed.

Meet Dave reunites Eddie Murphy with his Norbit director, Brian Robbins. The good news is that this is a vast improvement over their last collaboration. The bad news is that's not saying much. As is usual in his recent films, Murphy plays a dual role. He plays the Captain of a race of microscopic intergalactic travelers who have come to Earth to save their far off world. He also plays their vessel, a giant robot/spaceship that looks and talks exactly like the Captain. The aliens pilot the robot from within, trying to fit in with human society, as they seek an orb that belongs to them and crashed on Earth three months ago. The orb is designed to destroy the Earth so that their planet can live by "borrowing" our world's resources. But, shortly after arriving on Earth, the aliens befriend a single mom named Gina (Elizabeth Banks) and her young son, Josh (Austin Myers), who discovered the orb when it initially crashed, and has been holding onto it ever since. The more time that the Captain and his crew spend around the humans, the more interested they become in our society, and begin to doubt their own mission.

Take that bare bones premise, and stretch it to the breaking point of 90 minutes, and you pretty much have the movie right there. To call Meet Dave padded is an understatement. The movie kind of sits there, unsure of what to do with itself. It throws in some subplots, such as a pair of cops who suspect that "Dave" (the name the giant robot the aliens pilot goes by) is not from around here, and a concerned neighbor of Gina's, but does absolutely nothing with its own material. It sets it up, and then forgets about it, so it can focus on more uninspired antics by Murphy and his co-stars. Not even the plots amongst the aliens themselves are developed to any real degree. There's a shy relationship between the Captain and a fellow crew member (Gabrielle Union), the crew's weapons specialist discovers he's gay after watching only 10 seconds of a Broadway musical, just so the movie can throw in some tired "flaming" stereotype humor (which seems very out of place in a movie targeted at kids), and the ship's second in command (The Daily Show's Ed Helms) stages a mutiny when he fears that the Captain is too interested in the Earthlings, and has forgotten the mission. In any other movie, these could have been workable story lines (okay, probably not the one about the weapons specialist...), but here they're just thrown about the plot at random, and genuinely ignored.

Meet Dave is quite literally a crashing bore. I was sitting there, seeing all this money thrown up on the screen, and I had to wonder what anyone saw in this project. It does not want to entertain, it does not want to inspire, and despite its imaginative premise, it does not want to be original. Say you were assigned with the task of writing a comedy about tiny aliens coming to Earth in a giant robot body to study us. Think of the possibilities and imagination such a premise would inspire. Would those possibilities you come up with include Murphy literally shooting money out of his rear end (and later hot dogs)? Would they include Murphy singing the Bee Gee's "Staying Alive" in a goofy voice for no reason? Would they include product placements for Old Navy? This is a commercially bankrupt film that did not have a single thought put into it, aside from how the filmmakers could make this as bland and lifeless as possible. And yes, I do think this was intentional. At one point maybe, this was a creative and witty concept, and maybe even a real screenplay. Then some studio heads got a hold of it, and tried to dumb it down as much as possible. The end result is a movie that will most likely already be gone before August hits. (Judging by how vacant my screening was.)

The summer movie season of 2008 has been one of the strongest in recent memory, so there's absolutely no reason for anyone to waste their time with Meet Dave. Kids will be bored, and adults will spend a majority of their time looking at their watches as the minutes slowly tick by. When it's done, you walk out a little bit sadder, and with a little less money in your wallet. No one needs that, and no one needs this movie. Murphy's career has survived much worse films (Norbit and Pluto Nash, anyone?), but if this is the best material he can find, he needs a good long vacation.

The Love Guru (2008)

No love to be found here

[1/10 · 21 June 2008]

Mike Myers can't seem to get enough of himself in The Love Guru. He's constantly giggling at his own jokes, and mugging for the camera as if he thinks his latest comedy creation is the funniest thing he's invented. I had a very different reaction. Pitka was born in America, and traveled to India to study under the cross-eyed Guru Tugginmypudah (Ben Kingsley), who taught his students lessons by having them hit each other with urine-soaked mops. Pitka devotes his life and his teachings to helping other people out with their relationship troubles, and hopes his words of wisdom will become so popular, he'll wind up on Oprah.

This is information we learn early on in the film (after Pitka serenades us with a Bollywood-style musical number of Dolly Parton's Nine to Five during the opening credits), and I pretty much knew right there that The Love Guru was going to be a very long 90 minutes. The movie makes a grave miscalculation with its lead character. Guru Pitka is not funny or likable. It's simply Myers talking in a funny accent, and coming up with as many alternate ways for saying "penis" as he can without losing the film's PG-13 rating. Pitka is not even a real character. Myers plays him more as an experiment, as if he's still testing the character out, and we the audience are the guinea pigs being subjected to the experiment. It's been widely reported that the reason why Myers hasn't done a live action film in five years is because he's been fine tuning his Guru Pitka at various comedy clubs until he felt he was ready. He was not ready, and he probably should have spent another five years if the end result is any indication.

Pitka is approached by Jane Bullard (Jessica Alba), the owner of the struggling Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team. Her star player, Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco), hasn't been performing up to the best of his abilities ever since his wife, Prudence (Meagan Good), left him for the goalie on the rival team - a French player named Jacques "Le Coq" Grande (Justin Timberlake, embarrassing himself here) who is known for his over-sized "manhood" as much as he's known for his talent in the game. The character exists simply so that Myers and co-screenwriter Graham Gordy can have the characters say cock a lot more than humanly necessary. The Maple Leafs have a chance at winning the Stanley Cup, but not if Darren doesn't have his head in the game. The team's pint-sized coach (Verne Troyer) doubts that Pitka can turn the situation around, but the Guru is determined to help. He'll do this by finding a way to distract Darren from his problems (By forcing him to watch two elephants having sex, thereby taking his mind off of his problems with his wife. You figure it out.), and help him confront his over-bearing mother (Telma Hopkins), who has long cast a shadow over the star player.

The Love Guru is not a comedy, it is a cry of desperation on behalf of Myers and everyone involved. Comedy is funniest when it seems to come naturally out of the material, but everything seems so forced and strained here. It's almost like if they can't think of something funny to do, they'll throw in elephants humping each other, or light a midget on fire. And if that doesn't work, they'll throw in another couple references to male genitalia. If there's a bigger cry of comic desperation than limp innuendo humor, then it has to be out of the blue musical numbers that are not funny in themselves, the movie just expects us to laugh at the fact that the characters are suddenly singing for no reason. You know, I think I'm going to have to take that last statement back. There's an even more desperate form of comedy, and that would have to be building an entire scene around the fact that Guru Pitka has a different kind of food stuck in his beard each time we see him, building up to a sight gag where his entire beard is cotton candy. This movie has so many scenes of just plain wrong-headed desperation, you'd almost think it was intentional.

While Myers cackles and mugs his face with glee, pretending that he's having a great time, the rest of the cast kind of look like they wish they were somewhere else. Jessica Alba looks uncomfortable, and her scenes where she's supposed to be warming up to Pitka look more like she's hanging out with him out of pity more than anything else. It's not unusual in a comedy to have the supporting players stand in the background so the star can do his thing, but the cast here seem just as confused as I was as to what we were supposed to be watching Myers doing.

There is not a single laugh or moment of inspiration in The Love Guru. It's just a sad, depressing slog through material that's not funny to start with, taken by actors who seem to know it's not funny. It's bad enough when a comedy can't generate any laughs, but it gets even worse when you start feeling sorry for everyone up on the screen. You want to ask them and their agents what they were thinking when they signed up. You want to remind Myers of just how funny he can be, and why this material and character don't suit him. But most of all, you want to be able to somehow turn back time to before you gave the ticket counter your money, walk back out the door, and figure out another way to spend 90 minutes.

Get Smart (2008)

Fun, light summer entertainment

[7/10 · 20 June 2008]

As I was watching Get Smart, I came to the delighted realization that the filmmakers weren't trying to do a spy spoof here, but rather a loving tribute to spy movies with a lot of comedy thrown in. This is the right approach, as the now-tired Austin Powers franchise has pretty much run the spy spoof idea into the ground. Director Peter Segal (a veteran of many past Adam Sandler comedies) tries and succeeds at doing something rare. Get Smart is silly enough to work as a comedy, but at the same time, contains some truly impressive action sequences that would be right at home in just about any summer blockbuster that had a slightly more serious mind.

I cannot claim to be an expert on the original 1960s TV series created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, but I do have enough knowledge to know that this is a fitting and loving tribute that won't insult fans of the show, or alienate newcomers with countless in-jokes. The casting of Steve Carell as the well-meaning and often bungling secret agent, Maxwell Smart, was a great decision. Carell is able to capture the spirit of the performance of late actor, Don Adams, while not trying to ape Adams' distinctive voice and mannerisms. He fits comfortably into the role, and does not make Smart into an incompetent goof. He plays the part as a man with some obvious intelligence, but things don't often go the way he intends. It's a very likable comic performance, and Carell even gives the character a lot more personality than I expected walking into the film.

As is expected, the plot is mainly something to hang a lot of situations for Smart to be in over his head. He starts off as an analyst for CONTROL, a top secret government spy organization devoted to thwarting the terrorist designs of the evil organization KAOS. Smart dreams of being a field agent, and has even taken the test eight separate times, only to be turned down each time by the Chief (Alan Arkin), who thinks Smart belongs as an analyst. When KAOS launches a surprise attack on CONTROL headquarters, killing most of the field agents, the Chief has no choice but to promote Smart, and send him off on the latest mission. He is teamed up with Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway) to travel to Russia and uncover a secret weapons factory where the evil organization is developing nuclear weapons to target America. With the aid of Agent 23 (Dwayne Johnson) back at the base, Smart and Agent 99 will attempt to stop head KAOS agent, Sigfried (Terrence Stamp), from carrying out his master plan of destruction.

Get Smart is breezy, frequently very funny, and never once slows down enough to become dull. This is one of those movies where you can tell that the cast is having a great time, and that joy carries through on the screen. The movie is a comedy, but the action scenes and stunt work on display are truly first rate. What's perhaps most impressive is that the movie finds a perfect way to blend the silliness and the spectacle, so that the two halves never seem out of place. The entire cast play the comedy as if they are smart people who can't believe what they've just done, or what is happening to them. This is a comedy that laughs with the characters, not at them. There's a scene where Maxwell and Agent 99 have to crash a lavish party being thrown by a suspected enemy agent, and Smart winds up dancing with an obese woman. A lesser movie would have mocked the woman, but here, the movie finds humor in the situation in other ways. The fact that the woman winds up with the final laugh, and that it's not at her expense, was very welcome.

Aside from the very strong lead from Carell, Anne Hathaway brings a certain sexy yet vulnerable charm to her role. She's a good match for him as a co-star, and they create a good "buddy" chemistry as the film goes on. They're slightly less successful when they're asked to bring romantic chemistry into the relationship, but it's not really their fault, since the film does seem to be trying to start a franchise, so I'm sure there's time for it to build in a sequel. Former pro-wrestler Dwayne Johnson drops his "the Rock" title for the first time, meaning he's finally serious about moving beyond his past and becoming a real actor. He manages to get some laughs here, and even has some charisma, leading me to believe he could be the rare wrestler to move onto an actual career in films. There are even some fun cameos, including James Caan as the President of the United States, and Bill Murray turns up as a fellow field agent who has the unfortunate task of having to pose as a tree while undercover. There are some more to look for, some for fans of the original show and some for fans of Saturday Night Live, but I'll leave those for you to discover yourself.

Get Smart is probably one of the stronger TV-to-film adaptations to come along in a while. It's not Earth-stopping entertainment, and it never pretends to be. It's merely a light and simple summer comedy that's a great way to kill an afternoon. We need those during the summer as much as we need the big blockbusters, so it's fortunate that this is a very good one. And despite the film's PG-13 rating, I can't imagine any parent being offended by letting their kid watch it. Get Smart is harmless and entertaining, and sometimes, that's all a movie needs to be.

10,000 BC (2008)

Not fun, not even in a cheesy sense

[1/10 · 7 March 2008]

Some critics have moaned that as film technology grows, the storytelling ability of the movies shrinks. I have never quite agreed with this assessment, as I believe there is a place for spectacle of any variety, even the mindless kind. However, to those who share the view of those critics, 10,000 B.C. will most likely be the most convincing piece of evidence to their argument. Here is a movie that looks like it cost millions to make, but is saddled with a screenplay that looks like it came from the Dollar Store.

Director and co-writer, Roland Emmerich is no stranger to brainless spectacles. This is the guy who brought us Independence Day and 1998's Hollywood take on Godzilla, after all. There's a very fine line between brainless and just plain brain dead, unfortunately. 10,000 B.C. is short on spectacle, short on plot, and short on just about anything that people go to the movies for. There are characters and a love story to drive the bare bones plot, but this seems to be added in as an afterthought. I got the impression that Emmerich and fellow screenwriter, Harald Kloser (a film score composer making his first screenplay credit), had the idea for a couple cool scenes, then tried to add a bunch of filler material between them. They threw in some sketchy characters that hardly reach two dimensions to inhabit this filler, and called it a screenplay. In order for spectacle to work, even the cheese-filled variety such as this, there has to be something for the audience to get excited about. This movie is just one big tease.

The plot, if it can even be called that, is set in the days of early man. The heroes are an unnamed tribal people who speak perfect English, all have the bodies of supermodels, and hunt mammoths for food. The two characters we're supposed to be focused on are a pair of young lovers named D'Leh (Steven Strait) and Evolet (Camilla Belle). Why they are in love, and why we should care about them, the movie never goes out of its way to explain. The rest of the villagers do not really matter. They exist simply to be captured when a group of foreign invaders come riding into their peaceful tribe, and kidnap most of them to work as slaves back in their own home colony. Evolet is one of the captured, so D'Leh and a small handful of others set out to find where they've been taken to, and to seek the aid of other tribes that have also been invaded by this enemy. There's a mammoth herd here, a saber tooth tiger there, but they have nothing to do with anything. They're just computer generated special effects who are there simply because the filmmakers felt the current scene needed a special effect shot. I'd be more impressed if the effects didn't look so out of place with the actors most of the time.

10,000 B.C. probably would have worked better as a silent movie, or a subtitled one, as most of the dialogue that comes out of the mouths of these people are as wooden as the spears they carry. The good tribes are the only people in this movie who have mastered the Queen's English, naturally. The evil invading tribe speak in subtitles, and sometimes have their voices mechanically altered and lowered, so that they sound more threatening and demonic. No one in this movie is allowed to have a personality, or act differently from one another. Everybody in each tribe talks, thinks, and behaves exactly the same, with facial hair and differing body types being the main way to tell them apart. This would make it hard to get involved in the story, but the movie dodges this tricky issue by not even having a story in the first place. Once the film's main tribe is attacked, the movie turns into an endless string of filler material and padding to drag the whole thing out to feature length. Aside from a brief encounter with some bird-like prehistoric creatures, there are no moments of action or danger until D'Leh and his followers reach the land of the invading army. The movie throws a saber tooth tiger encounter to fool us into thinking something's gonna happen, but the tiger winds up being just as boring as the human characters inhabiting the movie, and is just millions in special effects budget wasted on something that didn't need to be there in the first place, other than to move the shaky plot along.

There is a key ingredient missing in 10,000 B.C., and that is fun. This movie is not fun to watch at all. I kept on waiting for something, anything, to happen. When something eventually did happen, it was usually underwhelming. I know of people who are interested in seeing this movie, because of the special effects, or because they think it looks enjoyably cheesy. To those people, I say please do not be drawn in by curiosity. This isn't even enjoyable in a bad sense. Your precious time is worth more than what any theater may be charging to see this movie. For anyone wondering, yes, that includes the budget cinema and the price of a rental.

Penelope (2006)

A balloon tied to a lead weight

[2/10 · 1 March 2008]

So, I was sitting there watching Penelope, and the mental image of a balloon with a lead weight tied to the end of it kept on appearing in my mind. Much like that balloon, this is a movie that wants to take off and fly, but is constantly held to the ground. In this case, the lead weight is the script provided by Leslie Caveny (TV's Everybody Loves Raymond). For a movie billing itself as a modern day fairy tale and romantic comedy, there is a surprising lack of magic in the story, and even less romance thanks to two leads that never generate any sparks together. Penelope is a case of a cute idea that should work, but it's brought down by its underdeveloped screenplay.

The title character (Christina Ricci) is a young woman who was born to wealthy parents (Catherine O'Hara and Richard E. Grant) and seemed destined to have it all, if it weren't for the fact that her father's side of the family is cursed. It seems that years ago, her father's family angered a local witch, who placed a curse on them that the next woman born into their family would be born with the face of a pig. Indeed, Penelope was born with the snout of a pig, and the curse can only be broken if she finds true love. Her parents have sheltered her from the outside world all this time, but this hasn't stopped them from trying to find a man for their daughter that can break the curse. Unfortunately, every guy who lays eyes upon her nose goes diving out the window in terror. (A visual gag that is cute the first time the movie uses it, but tiresome the 30th.) Penelope eventually decides to run away from home and experience the outside world, wrapping a scarf around the bottom part of her face to hide her abnormality. There might be someone out there who can break the curse, and that someone just might be Max (James McAvoy), a penniless piano player and gambler who initially is working for a sleazy tabloid photographer (Peter Dinklage) to snap a picture of the fabled and often rumored "pig girl", but starts to fall for her the more time he spends around her.

Despite the support of Hollywood star, Reese Witherspoon (who not only produced the film, but also has a small role as a woman who befriends Penelope after she heads out on her own), Penelope has been sitting on the studio shelf for a little over two years. My guess is the recent success of Disney's modern day fairy tale, Enchanted, inspired the studio to try its luck. Penelope is no Enchanted, however. This is a surprisingly dull and lifeless film that doesn't even seem interested in its own premise. Here is a movie that cries out for a light, funny, magical touch, but the pace of the final product on display is leaden and uninspired. It takes almost an hour for the story to finally reach the outside world, which means we have to sit through a good 50 minutes or so (and this is a 90 minute movie) of Penelope isolated in her own home, and the gag of people throwing themselves out the window or running away over and over for far longer than necessary. Even after the lead character finally sets out, and the movie looks like it's finally going to pick up, things remain the same. We never get to truly experience Penelope discovering the world, as most of this aspect of the story is pushed aside in music montages. The most we get is Penelope sitting in a bar, sipping a beer mug from a straw, so that no one can see what's beneath her scarf. Here is a movie that could have been spirited and uplifting, but its so concerned with the mundane aspects, it never takes advantage of its own potential.

The love story that is supposed to be at the center of Penelope is also curiously lacking, due to the fact that the romantic leads spend so little time together, and the few scenes they do spend together are completely dull and lifeless. We never get a sense that a real relationship is building between the two, not only because the movie gives them nothing to do together, but they come across as complete opposites in terms of performances. Christina Ricci is plucky and likable in her portrayal of Penelope, so much so you wish her performance was inhabiting a better movie. James McAvoy, on the other hand, is a lifeless bore, who never comes across as anyone the audience can get behind. Not even the usually reliable Catherine O'Hara can escape from the film's sloppy writing. Her performance as Penelope's mother runs the range of being sympathetic and sweet, to being a screaming harpy who is insensitive and shrill. Her character fits whatever the story requires her to be, so sometimes she comes across as being sensitive to her daughter, and sometimes she is treated as the villain. Her relationship with her husband, and the strain the curse must have placed on their relationship all these years, is also completely ignored. It's ignored so much, Richard E. Grant may as well have not even bothered to show up as her father, as he's given little dialogue, and even less to do with anything that happens in the movie itself.

As is often the case when I'm stuck watching a movie that doesn't grab my attention, I found myself asking a lot of questions. Here's a good one to ponder. If Penelope's parents have been keeping her locked away from society all this time, how do they explain to the people hired to replace the numerous broken windows in their house about why they need their windows replaced so frequently? That could have been a funny scene, but the movie completely skips over this obvious idea.

The Bucket List (2007)

Don't let the talent suck you in...

[4/10 · 11 January 2008]

Remember those old soft drink commercials that would show elderly people drinking the product and acting young by listening to rap music, doing the latest street dances, and talking about "catching waves"? If you hated those commercials as much as I did, you will hate The Bucket List, which is basically a 100 minute variation on the same idea. It features two great actors running around acting young, but it adds a couple disturbing twists. The first is that they are both terminally ill with only months to live. The second is that they don't seem to care about anything but themselves, not worrying about friends or loved ones who may be concerned about them.

The two men at the center of the story are played by a pair of great actors, namely Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. Unfortunately, these are not great characters that they are playing. They are merely playing rifts on the same roles they've occupied for the past 10 years or so. Freeman is once again the sagely type who gives advice to anyone who will listen, and also acts as the film's Narrator. It's a role he perfected in Million Dollar Baby, and this seems like nothing more than a mere rehash. Nicholson is once again the seemingly-grumpy "I don't give a damn" type, who is eventually revealed to have a heart of gold after spending time with a person who changes his life. It's a role he perfected in As Good as it Gets, and once again we are stuck with a rehash here. They both find out early on that they are dying of Cancer, and that they only have a few months to live. Freeman's character introduces an idea to the other about a "bucket list" - a list of things you want to achieve before you die. Nicholson's character just happens to be a devil-may-care millionaire who figures they should act upon this list, since they only have a short time left. The two men supposedly pack their bags (I say supposedly, as no luggage is ever used or seen), and go on a whirlwind around the world journey.

The Bucket List obviously wants to be a big, heartfelt movie that leaves us walking out of the theater with a tear in our eyes and a spring in our steps. The heart at the center of the movie, however, is completely artificial and calculated. Okay, I can sort of buy the fact that two men near the end of their lives could just suddenly up and leave at a moment's notice on a trip around the world. But, you'd think they would require medication and constant monitoring given their current states. Not only do these men not need any luggage to travel around the world, but they also don't need any medicine or professional medical evaluation the moment they leave the doctor's care. As soon as they decide to take their journey, they're skydiving out of a plane. Well, actually, a pair of stunt doubles are skydiving out of a plane. The movie uses special effects to paste the faces of the two actors onto the heads of the stunt doubles diving through the clouds in an effect that does not look the least bit convincing. Their globe-trotting adventure that leads them to such places as China, the Himalayas, and the Pyramids of Egypt is mostly accomplished through special effects. We're usually not watching these two actors visiting these places, we're watching them sitting in front of a blue screen while an image of their current location is projected behind them. I'd like to think that director Rob Reiner is making a statement on how phony and unrealistic the screenplay he's been stuck with is, but I'm afraid that's not the case here.

You'd think the movie would handle the most obvious question. What about the people these two guys leave behind? Wouldn't they be worried sick that these guys who are terminally ill and will be dead in a year or less are jumping out of planes and flying souped-up race cars off of ramps? The script by Justin Zackham dodges this issue by basically ignoring it. Nicholson's character is a grump who doesn't really have any friends, so he's covered. But Freeman's character has a concerned wife and family. We get a scene before they go on their adventure where his wife tries to talk him out of it, but the guy doesn't back down, basically saying he has to be his own man. Not once during his trip does he make any attempt to contact his wife, friends, or loved ones to let them know that he's doing okay or even if he's still alive. He does eventually return home to his family, but he doesn't get to share any real scenes with them. His entire family is treated like a prop, used only to sit at his bedside when he's not jaunting about with his friend. There is a subplot about Nicholson having a daughter that he doesn't talk to, but the movie is not interested, and merely tosses it out as a vague attempt to give his character something resembling humanity. In movies where someone is dying, there's always some unresolved family crisis. The script knows this, and includes it, but doesn't care. The inevitable reunion with his daughter is treated as a throw away scene that gives us what we expect, but no reason to care.

The Bucket List knows what emotional buttons to push, but it doesn't push hard enough. This is a shameless movie that wastes the wonderful talents of two great actors, and puts them through a dopey screenplay that's far beneath their talents. They deserved better, and so do their fans, who will no doubt flock to this movie expecting something great. Despite the best intentions of everyone involved, this movie falls far short of even being good.

One Missed Call (2008)

One missed call, one stupid movie

[1/10 · 4 January 2008]

Some tips on how to write a horror movie...

All you need is a young hero or heroine who discovers some kind of cursed device is killing off all of their friends. The device may be anything, just as long as it's something we use everyday like a computer or something. After a group of the hero's faceless and underdeveloped friends die (The depiction of said deaths will depend on whether or not your film is PG-13 or R.), the hero must then team up with a second hero, and try to discover what's going on. After going through old files and visiting creepy old buildings that hold secrets of the past, the lead characters must discover that the cursed object is tied into some tragic past event, usually revolving around a spooky little girl. As the clock ticks down to the hero's own death, they must race to right the wrongs of the past. After the past has seemingly been corrected, the characters breathe a sigh of relief, only to discover that they were wrong, and that someone or something else is responsible for the evil.

It is a formula that has been employed by numerous films, many originating in Japan or some other Asian country. One Missed Call follows this formula to the letter, right down to the originating in Japan part. The only problem is that it seems to know we've seen it all before. The actors sleepwalk through their dialogue, and many times the hero of the story - a college student named Beth Raymond (Shannyn Sossamon), forgets to even react to the deaths of her friends. You see, all of Beth's friends are being killed off by a cursed cell phone voice mail message. It appears on your phone, and when you play it back, you hear the exact moment of your death. The friends are haunted by spooky visions of ghouls and decaying people walking around in broad daylight, until the character suddenly meets an untimely end in some sort of "accident" that makes me think the evil ghost in this movie took lessons from the ghastly spirit in the Final Destination films, as its method of killing people is somewhat similar. The Final Destination villain is much more flashier and complex in its killings, but you have to remember, the ghost in this movie is working under a much more restricted PG-13 rating, so you can't really blame it if its kills are not as bloody or grand.

Now, let me ask you something here. If you knew that people were dying because of a mysterious voice message that appears on your cell phone, wouldn't you just try not listening to the voice message in the first place? This never dawns on Beth or her friends. They try smashing their cell phones to pieces, but this doesn't seem to halt the killer spirit's advances. I don't know if not listening to the message would save your life or not, but I figure if all of my friends were being killed after listening to it, I'd be willing to give it a shot. The movie continues down the expected path, and introduces our second hero, a police detective named Jack Andrews (Edward Burns). He's the only person who believes Beth's story about the cursed voice mail message, because his sister was a victim of it, too. They join forces to discover the truth behind the curse, and the clues fall right into place, leading them to a hospital that burned down a while ago. Everything that we saw happen in films like The Ring, The Grudge, Dark Water, and the like happens, and not even the characters don't seem to be all that surprised. They go through the expected motions, and so does the movie itself.

When I say One Missed Call follows a rigid path, I am dead serious. There's not one single moment we haven't seen in similar-themed movies. I have not seen the Japanese movie that inspired this remake, so I don't know if the original was as uninspired as this. I will give the original the benefit of the doubt that it had a lot more life and energy than this. The characters all seem to be walking a pre-determined path, and what's worse, they seem to know it. There's nothing worse than when the characters seem to be smarter than the movie they're in, but they're forced to act like idiots, because it's expected of them to do so. The movie doesn't even do a good job of explaining itself from time to time. I'm trying hard not to go into spoilers here, but should you see this movie (not that I'm recommending you do), ask yourself why the corpse they discover in the tunnels underneath the burnt hospital was there in the first place? Also ask yourself how many reality TV shows are filmed live? And wouldn't having someone die on your show live on national television kind of cause more attention than it seems to in this movie? My personal favorite moment of the movie actually comes early on, when the film's first victim meets an untimely end. The ghost then decides to not only kill her, but comes back for the victim's pet cat moments later. Did the cat get an eerie voice mail too? One Missed Call is the very definition of an early January release, a time of the year when the studios usually unload their stinkers that they don't know what to do with. The fact that it's the only new movie opening this weekend in wide release means that it will most likely find an audience with kids and teens looking for a cheap thrill. If you're bored this weekend, and actually consider this movie, please don't. This movie does not alleviate boredom, it only causes it.

The Comebacks (2007)

Another sad spoof

[1/10 · 20 October 2007]

I lay the blame for The Comebacks on anyone who enjoyed Date Movie and Epic Movie. You people encouraged the Fox studio to keep on churning out desperate parody films, and now we're faced with what just may be the laziest and most desperate one of them all. The Comebacks barely qualifies as a parody. Heck, it barely qualifies as a movie. This is a comedy in theory, but not in execution. No one, not even the people involved with this mess, could have possibly fooled themselves into thinking they were making a funny movie. Director Tom Brady (The Hot Chick) has made something truly wretched here.

The plot, if you can even call it that, centers on a man named Lambeau Fields (David Koechner). Right when I heard his name within the first couple seconds of the film, I knew I was in for a long movie. Funny names are seldom funny, and become even less funny the more you hear them. Lambeau is one of the worst coaches in the world, but he's been given another chance by his best friend, Freddie Wiseman (Carl Weathers), to coach a ragtag high school football team called The Comebacks. Lambeau must not only lead the team to victory, but also teach them the ways of inspirational sports movie clichés. He expects his kids to have poor grades and problems with alcohol, and ridicules them when they don't. When it looks like the team has a chance to play at the big championship Toilet Bowl game (Did 10-year-olds write this script?), Lambeau is shocked to discover that Freddie is the coach of the big rival team that his team will be playing against. Turns out Freddie only encouraged Lambeau to take the coaching job, because he wanted The Comebacks to lose.

The Comebacks is a movie so forced and pathetic, I almost had a hard time believing what I was watching. Spoof movies have recently turned into a game of "spot the movie reference", and this continues the tradition. It tries to squeeze in as many references to other sports movies as it can, but it either does absolutely nothing with them, expecting us to just point at the screen and laugh out of familiarity, or it attempts to be funny and falls flat on its face. Some of the films referenced include Field of Dreams, Bend it Like Beckham, Rocky Balboa, Friday Night Lights, Stick It, Radio, Miracle, Remember the Titans, Gridiron Gang, Invincible, and Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. But wait, wasn't Dodgeball already a parody of inspirational sports movies? So, in other words, we're watching a parody of a parody of inspirational sports movies. If that makes any sense to you, you're just the audience this movie is looking for. Some of these films are referenced in the plot, and some (like the Rocky one) are just thrown in for no reason, because the filmmakers wanted to try to reference as many films as possible. There are some that the movie even feels the need to explain to us in its dialogue, just in case we've missed the obvious reference. You know a movie is in trouble when it has to spell out its own jokes to us.

The worst thing is that the screenplay by TV veterans and first time screen writers, Ed Yeager and Joey Gutierrez, doesn't even know the first and most important rule of parody - You have to play it straight. The actors have to pretend they're not in on the joke. The reason why the classic Zucker Brothers movies like Airplane, Top Secret, and The Naked Gun are remembered so fondly is because they cast serious actors like Leslie Nielsen (yes, he was a serious actor before he turned to comedy) and Robert Stack, and then threw them into ridiculous situations. What made it funny is that they acted like they weren't in a comedy, and kept a stone face to the weirdness around them. Those films wouldn't have worked if they played their roles broadly. The Comebacks proves this, as all the actors are forced to play their roles so goofy, it's like they're screaming at us to laugh. David Koechner keeps on flailing his arms, bulging his eyes, and screaming at the top of his lungs to the point he looks like someone who knows he's trapped in a dead-end comedy, and just tries too hard to pretend he's having a good time. The movie also doesn't understand the art of celebrity cameos (also an important factor when it comes to parody films). What kind of cameos do we get in The Comebacks? Andy Dick and Dennis Rodman.

By the time the movie throws in an out of nowhere and extremely pointless cast musical number to Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" for absolutely no reason whatsoever, I was just about ready to walk out the theater door. I was the only person at my screening, and the thought of this movie going on its pathetic way to a completely empty house kind of appealed to me. I did sit through the rest of The Comebacks, and I was not rewarded for my efforts. The sad thing is, Fox is not yet done killing the spoof genre. They have a parody of 300 coming out next year called Meet the Spartans. I'd say it can't be much worse than this, but I've seen the trailer, and I wouldn't want to get your hopes up.