The Moviefone Blog

'Hop' Review: The Easter Bunny Lays an Egg

Eric D. Snider — 2011-04-01T09:20:00+00:00

While the world's desperate cries for more sequels to 'The Santa Clause' go unanswered, Universal Pictures brings us the next best thing: the same basic concept, changed to the Easter Bunny, mixed with 'Alvin and the Chipmunks,' and executed without distinction. This is 'Hop,' a forgettable family comedy -- live-action save for the animated talking animals -- that will be tossed out in a few weeks with the plastic Easter-basket grass.

Since there isn't nearly as much lore built up around the Easter Bunny as there is Santa Claus, 'Hop' is free to invent some. (By which I mean 'Hop' uses the Santa Claus mythology as a starting point and alters the details. They've got the Easter Bunny riding around on an "egg sleigh," for crying out loud.) The current Easter Bunny, voiced by Hugh Laurie, is about to retire (or die? It is not clear), and has appointed his son to be his successor. This son, conveniently named E.B., is voiced by Russell Brand, and is carefree and irresponsible. He does not want to be the Easter Bunny. He wants to be a drummer for a rock band. To that end, he runs off to Los Angeles to seek his fortune.

Meanwhile, in L.A., a similar scenario is playing out between a human father and son. Fred O'Hare (James Marsden), an unemployed slacker, has been mooching off his parents (Gary Cole and Elizabeth Perkins) for far too long, lazily turning down job opportunities because he has no ambition, no skill, and no interest in doing anything. He runs into E.B., is initially terrified to have encountered a talking bunny, and then finds himself designated as guardian of the reckless rabbit.

Several subplots, side stories, and tangents soon emerge. E.B. wants to put his drumming skills to work at an audition for a David Hasselhoff-produced TV talent show (which means, yes, that Hasselhoff makes a cameo in the movie). Fred interviews for a job at a company that makes video games, where E.B. barges in on a recording session with the Blind Boys of Alabama, whose sightlessness explains why they don't realize their impromptu drummer is a rabbit but not why this scene is in the movie to begin with. Fred tells E.B. not to talk in public or else people will freak out; E.B. talks in public and nobody notices or cares. Back at headquarters, E.B.'s dad sends a squad of bunny ninjas called the Pink Berets to retrieve his wayward son, while his chief of staff, a yellow baby chick named Carlos (Hank Azaria), plots a coup to install himself as the new Easter Bunny, which would be crazy, because he is not a bunny, he is a yellow baby chick.

By the way, it's probably good that the current Easter Bunny is about to retire (or die?), as he doesn't seem to grasp some of the fundamentals of the holiday he represents. He is mystified at not being beloved in China, evidently unaware that Easter is a Christian observance and the vast majority of Chinese are not Christian. He also tries to appeal to E.B.'s sense of duty by reminding him of the Easter Bunny's "four thousand years of tradition" -- which means they started delivering candy and eggs to commemorate the resurrection of Christ some two thousand years before the birth of Christ, which demonstrates remarkable foresight.

Anyway, like this review, the movie is rambling and unfocused and, for the most part, not very funny. It doesn't define the "rules" of its fantasy world clearly, and therefore has trouble finding comedy in it. James Marsden, an under-appreciated comic talent, is enthusiastic and endearing; Russell Brand, meanwhile, does his Russell Brand thing, a thing that is fast wearing thin. Supporting cast like Hugh Laurie, Chelsea Handler, Gary Cole, and Elizabeth Perkins are barely given a chance to do anything.

I was not surprised to realize, after the fact, that 'Hop' was directed by Tim Hill, who also made 'Alvin and the Chipmunks.' (Both films even have jokes about eating the central animal's poop! Hooray!) And what do you know, two of the film's screenwriters, Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio, also worked on 'The Santa Clause 2'! The third writer, Brian Lynch, is responsible for the animated web series 'Angry Naked Pat,' a single five-minute episode of which has more laughs than all of 'Hop.' (Literally. I counted.)

Perhaps someday Easter will get the kind of classic family comedy that Christmas already has several of. 'Hop,' affable and inoffensive though it may be, has very little wit or creativity. It's disposable at best, vaguely dispiriting at worst. Better luck next time, Easter fans.

'Rango' Review: Must Be Something in the Water

Eric D. Snider — 2011-03-04T09:35:00+00:00

With 'Rango,' the only thing more astonishing than its subversive sense of humor and general anarchy is the fact that a studio is putting it in wide release. It's a cartoon about talking animals, but I don't know if kids will like it. I'm not even sure it's intended for them. Some of the jokes are surprisingly grown-up. The story has direct references to 'Chinatown,' 'Blazing Saddles,' 'Star Wars,' 'Apocalypse Now,' and spaghetti Westerns. The humor is slapstick one minute, hallucinatory the next. The characters are deliberately un-cute in appearance, with great attention paid to the grimy details of their matted fur, unsightly scales, and physical imperfections. The whole thing feels like the Coen brothers made a Tex Avery cartoon set in the Old West, ran it through a Pixar filter, and then dipped it in LSD.

Rango, voiced by Johnny Depp, is a pet chameleon suffering from an existential crisis. A natural-born actor, he amuses himself by carrying out playlets with the props in his terrarium (headless Barbie doll, wind-up fish toy), until one day fate delivers him out into the world -- the Mojave Desert, specifically. Advised by a wise, elderly armadillo (Alfred Molina), our lizard friend goes on a spiritual quest that takes him to the tiny town of Dirt, a saloon-and-mercantile outpost populated by desert animals.

It's here that the chameleon realizes the opportunity to give himself an identity -- not to start his life over, really, but to start it for the first time. ("Rango" is the name he chooses for himself, after the town of Durango.) He tells tall tales of his past adventures, dazzling the cactus-juice-besotted crowd at the saloon. He speaks quickly and engagingly, like George Clooney in 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?': erudite, but folksy. The residents of Dirt, who are experiencing a severe drought and use water as currency, love him, though the requisite brassy female, Beans (Isla Fisher), is skeptical. Soon Rango is the new sheriff.

Like all the towns in the formulaic Westerns of yesteryear, Dirt is regularly troubled by bandits. In this case, the residents live in fear of a hawk (or perhaps hawks in general) and a rattlesnake named Jake (Bill Nighy). The town is controlled by the mayor, a wheelchair-bound turtle with the voice of Ned Beatty who is clearly patterned after John Huston in 'Chinatown.' There is also the matter of the moles, who can dig tunnels and perhaps steal what precious water is left in the Bank of Dirt. Oh, and the story is observed and commented on by a quartet of mariachi owls.

This is the first animated film directed by Gore Verbinski, whose track record includes everything from idiosyncratic, under-appreciated gems like 'The Mexican' and 'The Weather Man' to blockbusters like 'The Ring' and the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' trilogy. 'Rango,' with its cheerfully off-the-wall style and twisted sense of humor, is closer to the first category. (Verbinski shares story credit with James Ward Byrkit and John Logan; Logan, who wrote 'The Aviator' and 'The Last Samurai,' is credited with the screenplay.)

Energetically loony, the film is full of peculiar throwaway details, like the fact that Beans' father died when he got drunk and fell down a mine shaft, or the grizzled Dirt resident who you can tell once got shot in the eye with an arrow because the arrow is still protruding from his head. There's a vivid assortment of colorful characters populating the town, all animated to perfection and voiced with rootin'-tootin' enthusiasm by actors both famous and not.

If the film has a flaw, it's the same one a lot of smart-aleck animated comedies have: not much heart. Rango and company are fun, sure, but that's all there is to them. Then again, who says a feature-length cartoon has to be emotionally rewarding? Maybe we've been spoiled by a certain other toon factory's knack for touching our hearts and have come to take that miracle for granted.

'Rango' is memorable, to say the least. I'm not entirely sure what to make of it, except to say that it's unusual, hilarious, and endearingly weird. I have no idea what age level it's appropriate for, and I'm glad I don't have to worry about it. You get the impression Verbinski and his cohorts did what they thought would be fun, without regard for how it would be marketed. I'd be surprised if there's an animated film this year that proves to be more daring and inventive than this one.

Oscars Live Blog: Blogging the Academy Awards in Real Time

Eric D. Snider — 2011-02-27T20:25:00+00:00

We're live-blogging the 2011 Academy Awards with Cinematical's William Goss, David Ehrlich and Eric D. Snider. Keep refreshing this page for the latest piece of snark-filled wisdom from our team of professional awards show live-bloggers, and check out the links below for a list of nominees, as well as winners and red carpet photos updated in real time. Enjoy the show!

2011 Oscar Winners (updated in real time)
Check Out Your Favorite Stars on the Oscars Red Carpet
Complete Oscars 2011 Coverage

11:41 PM: Fine. We grant you that the kids were cute, and we didn't have to endure anyone asking them who they were wearing. And seeing Melissa "F-bomb" Leo sing along with the end of the song melted our cold, black hearts slightly.

11:39 PM: Oh, man, really? It's not over? Surprise musical number, BAM, out of nowhere! Kids from a public school in Staten Island are singing "Somewhere over the Rainbow," soon joined by all of tonight's winners.

11:38 PM: The producer say some lovely things, the usual business, all very nice. Standing behind him, Helena Bonham Carter looks like she has better places to be, which very well may be true.

11:35 PM: In a shocking upset, Best Picture goes to the movie everyone has been saying was going to win ever since Labor Day, 'The King's Speech'!

11:31 PM: Steven Spielberg introduces the Best Picture montage, which has the guy from 'The King's Speech' reciting a monologue from 'The King's Speech' while images 'The King's Speech' play (accompanied by a few shots of some of the other nine nominees)

11:27 PM: Best Actor is Colin Firth -- in general, but also specifically tonight, for 'The King's Speech.' He uses the term "upper abdominals" and makes it sound elegant.

11:25 PM: The show is supposed to end in five minutes, and they only have one award left. They're going to have a REALLY hard time going over this year. Quick, slap together a montage! A modern-dance tribute to movies where guys walk slowly away from explosions! Something! Anything!

11:22 PM: Sandy calls Jeff Bridges "Dude," makes the obligatory Facebook "friend" reference to Jesse Eisenberg, mentions the Queen to Colin Firth ... Yep, the writers hit all the major talking points!

11:20 PM: Anne Hathaway -- who seems to be taking this a lot more seriously than a certain co-host whose name rhymes with Shmames Shmanco -- is dressed in a rubber blue dress, for some reason, and that means it's time to bring out Sandra Bullock. (Those are the Academy rules, you guys. Not up to me.)11:17 PM: As expected, Natalie Portman wins for Best Actress. The baby inside of her right now will one day be able to say, "I was there when my mom won an Oscar!"

11:15 PM: It would be OK with me if Jeff Bridges just came out and talked to all the nominees in all the categories before announcing them.

11:14 PM: Is there is anyone on this earth who does not love Jeff Bridges? If there is, I hope I do not meet that person.

11:13 PM: Except Jeff Bridges. Jeff Bridges is stoned enough.

11:12 PM: I mentioned this before, but I'll repeat it. It's not that James Franco is too stoned. It's that everybody else isn't stoned enough.

11:06 PM: Annette Bening introduces the footage of Very Special Honorary Awards to Hollywood Legends Whom We Adore But on Whom We Don't Want to Waste Too Much Time During the Actual Telecast, So They'll Just Come Out on the Stage and Stand There for a Minute. The winners of this year's VSHATHLWWABOWWDWTWTMTDTATSTJCOOTSASTFAM's were Eli Wallach, Francis Ford Coppola, and Jean-Luc Godard.

11:04 PM: Best Director goes to Tom Hooper for 'The King's Speech'! He is suuuuper British. And he loves his mum, which is nice. Cold comfort to David Fincher, though, who also loves his mother.

11:01 PM: Hilary Swank comes out to introduce Kathryn Bigelow to come out and introduce the award for best director, because Kathryn Bigelow couldn't do it by herself because she's a lady, or something.

10:54 PM: Did the crowd not applaud anyone during the death montage, or did they cut out the sound? Either way, it's a shame, because I know a lot of Oscar pools have "Which dead person gets the most applause?" as one of the categories. Take a mulligan, everyone.

10:52 PM: Yeah, if you want to bring down a room, giving a microphone to Celine Dion is definitely the way to go.

10:47 PM: The Oscar for Best Original Song goes to Randy Newman for "We Belong Together" from 'Toy Story 3.' He's been nominated 20 times, and this is only his second win. He should have gotten it for "Fat Man with His Kids and Dog."

10:44 PM: Celtic Kathy Griffin sings the song from '127 Hours,' followed by the lady from 'Glee' singing a song from the hilariously bad 'Country Strong.' (I beg your pardon -- the Oscar-nominated 'Country Strong.')

10:41 PM: We've been making jokes for over a year about how 'Winter's Bone' sounds dirty, but now James Franco has made it official by saying it AT the Oscars.

10:33 PM: And the Oscar for Best Special Effects goes to 'Inception.' And they're going right into the next category, with Best Film Editing going to... Angus Wall & Kirk Baxter for 'The Social Network.' They thank David Fincher, who will later have them try this speech 98 more times.

10:31 PM: That Bob Hope Passover joke never gets old. Well, it certainly never gets as old as Kirk Douglas. Crazy technology from the future allows him to say the names Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law.

10:27 PM: Billy Crystal comes out, saying "So where was I?" His hair never left. He's raving about Bob Hope, and here comes a tribute.

10:18 PM: And now we're auto-tuning & re-mixing some of the Best Picture nominees and it's painful, but it turns out just to be an insidious way of making Oprah seem like a refreshing change of pace. She's here to present Best Documentary, which as far as she's concerned is code for "Best Depressing Movie." And the Oscar goes to... 'Inside Job!' C-Span 7's ratings instantly jump 935%. Filmmaker Charles Ferguson keeps it real, while also disappointingly revealing himself not to be an adult version of Ferguson from 'Clarissa Explains it All.'

10:17 PM: James Franco gives a shout-out to NYU, one of the several universities that's classes he's sent an assistant to sleep through.

10:12 PM: Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal are out to present the short film awards. And the Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject goes to Strangers No More! From the clip, it seems as if the film is about young people trying to learn math. All the doc shorts look like they're about suffering, and all the live-action nominees look like they're about sex. Best Live Action Short Film goes to God of Love!

10:08 PM: Colin Firth is about an hour away from winning Best Actor, which means that we're about 7 years and 1 hour away from his Stella Artois commercial.

10:04 PM: Mandy Moore comes out to perform her song from 'Tangled' with Zachary Levi. It's like that scene from 'A Walk to Remember,' but we don't all have to pretend that Mandy Moore is ugly.

10:01 PM: 'Alice in Wonderland' now has two more Oscars than you do. And Kevin Spacey is rapping. Randy Newman is performing the first of the nominated original song, short people everywhere begin to resent the telecast.

9:59 PM: Galadriel stays out there to award Best Costume Design. And the Oscar goes to Colleen Atwood for 'Alice in Wonderland.' It's like complimenting the Hindenburg for having nice ridges.

9:57 PM: Marissa Tomei comes out to talk about science and winches. And then Cate Blanchett to award the Oscar for Best Makeup. Whomever made a human look like Paul Giamatti deserves to win. And the Oscar goes to... The Wolfman! Most of us saw this coming, as it was the only one of the nominees to feature makeup that you can't find at CVS.

9:50 PM: And the Oscar for Best Sound Editing goes to 'Inception!' That movie definitely had sound, and it definitely had editing, so this seems valid.

9:45 PM: Matthew McConaughey is up there with the girl from 'Lost in Translation' to present Best Sound Mixing. And the Oscar goes to Inception and the people who mixed its sound! Is that Andy Serkis? I think it's Andy Serkis. Chris Nolan is referred to as "The Architect," and the Internet explodes with theories.

9:42 PM: And Best Score goes to... Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for 'The Social Network!' The most successful four notes in modern music! Reznor - who was great in 'Lost' - thanks David Fincher, who was asleep.

9:39 PM: Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman are out there to present... Star Wars? E.T? The orchestra is playing lots of music about aliens - a revelation about Nicole Kidman's origins is imminent.

And now we hand over the reins to David. Take it away!

9:31 PM: Reese Witherspoon is here to give out Best Supporting Actor, and the winner is Christian Bale in 'The Fighter.' (We all know, though, that he's really winning for 'Reign of Fire.')

9:27 PM: 'Arthur' and 'The Tempest' co-stars Russell Brand and Helen Mirren announce Best Foreign Language Film, which goes to... 'In a Better World.' Sorry, 'Dogtooth.'

9:24 PM: And here's Franco in a dress. Of course.

9:23 PM: Hathaway is now doing a duet, alone, knocking an anonymous Aussie for not joining her on stage. (Cut to Hugh Jackman.)

9:17 PM: And Best Original Screenplay goes, unsurprisingly, to David Seidler for 'The King's Speech.' Remember: you have until Thursday to see the R-rated cut that just won that prize in theaters!

9:15 PM: Sorkin thanks Armie Hammer twice -- a nice touch. The man did not let the play-off music get him down, either.

9:13 PM: 'No Country for Old Men' reunion between Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem (check those initials! and those white tuxes!) present Best Adapted Screenplay. And the award goes to... Aaron Sorkin for 'The Social Network.'

9:09 PM: Me? I'm still rooting for 'Tyler Perry's I Can Do Internet All by Myself.'

9:03 PM: 'Friends with Benefits' co-stars Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis present Best Animated Short and Best Animated Feature to, respectively, 'The Lost Thing' and 'Toy Story 3.'

8:57 PM: The Best Supporting Actress award goes to... (God, Kirk is adorable, just milking this) ...Melissa Leo for 'The Fighter.' #snooze

8:52 PM: Acting legend Kirk Douglas is being utterly adorable on stage right now. About Anne Hathaway: "Where were you when I was making pictures?"

8:48 PM: And Best Cinematography goes to... Wally Pfister for 'Inception.' Sorry, Roger Deakins.

8:44 PM: Hanks just announced Best Art Direction for 'Alice in Wonderland.'

8:42 PM: Tom Hanks is here to announce the night's first category -- no, wait, just admiring past winners. Yikes, will this ceremony run something like five hours? Save this sentiment for a 100th anniversary, AMPAS, not 83rd.

8:39 PM: Anne, referring to her lack of a nod when compared to Franco: "It used to be, you got naked, you'd get nominated!"

8:37 PM: Just jumped from the ten Best Picture contenders to friggin' 'Back to the Future.' Well played.

8:32 PM: Nice to see last year's co-host, Alec Baldwin, pass the torch to Anne Hathaway and James Franco in the usual nominee parodies.

8:25 PM: One pre-show observation -- man, is Natalie Portman packing on the pounds or what?

Complete Oscars 2011 Coverage

'Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son' Review: Even Worse Than You Imagined

Eric D. Snider — 2011-02-18T11:15:00+00:00

For many years, scientists believed that the sight of an ordinary man dressed as a fat woman was literally the funniest thing in the world. Millions of films were produced based on this premise, each more side-splitting than the last, each delighting viewers with its surefire mixture of giant latex bosoms and farts. Euphoria stretched through all the land as mankind celebrated its arrival at the pinnacle of comedy.

But then, one day, a crazy, disheveled man burst into a scientists' conference, ranting that he had found something EVEN FUNNIER. The scientists dismissed him as a harmless lunatic, of course, before realizing it was Martin Lawrence. Then they dismissed him as a dangerous lunatic. Still, they listened.

"I've found it!" the frothing maniac shouted. "I've found something funnier than an ordinary man dressed as a fat woman: TWO men dressed as TWO fat women!"

There was a moment of stunned silence in the auditorium, followed by a flurry of activity as the scientists performed calculations and double-checked complicated algorithms. "Great Fermat's marginalia, he's right!" one shouted. "That IS funnier!"

And that, my friends, is the origin of 'Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son' -- the funniest film in the history of cinema.

The preceding sarcasm has been deployed as a coping device, made necessary by the absence of liquor or narcotics in the reviewer's apartment. For in truth, this sequel to 'Big Momma's House' and 'Big Momma's House 2' is a rancid, unwatchable load, devoid of mirth and joy, and an enemy to all that is good. You expect a certain level of awfulness from this franchise -- let's be honest, you expect a certain level of awfulness from post-1995 Martin Lawrence -- but the idiocy on display here is breathtaking.

Lawrence reprises his role as Malcolm Turner, an FBI agent who has gone undercover as a morbidly obese grandmother twice already and is evidently itching for another opportunity. He gets it when his 17-year-old stepson, Trent (Brandon T. Jackson), witnesses a murder, and the two of them must go into hiding. The only safe place, naturally, would be an all-girls school for the performing arts where one of the dorms needs a housemother. Luckily, there is just such an institution here in this very city! Also very luckily, this school is where an important flash drive full of evidence has been hidden. Malcolm and Trent can hide from the killers AND look for the flash drive AND dress up like fat women AND fall down a lot, all at once!

(The part where Malcolm has to convince his stepson to do this is omitted altogether. Malcolm says something like, "I have an idea," and we cut to the two of them in costume. The movie doesn't even TRY to do a scene where Malcolm talks him into it.)

Malcolm's character is Big Momma, who is morbidly obese (i.e., HILARIOUS), and Trent's is Charmaine, who is only a little chunky. Charmaine, claiming to be Big Momma's niece -- and evidently allowed to attend a prestigious school for the arts on that credential alone -- blends in with the girls and quickly falls in love with Haley (Jessica Lucas), a winsome pianist. Big Momma, meanwhile, snoops around for the missing flash drive, fending off advances from a love-struck custodian named Kurtis (Faizon Love).

Brandon T. Jackson (from 'Tropic Thunder') actually looks fairly convincing as Charmaine. Probably not up close, and probably not for an extended period of time, and certainly not when he fixes Haley up with his "cousin," Trent, and starts dashing back and forth, changing in and out of his costume to be two people at once. (Yes, it's one of THOSE movies.) But he looks all right. Lawrence, on the other hand, as Big Momma: yikes. If you saw this monstrosity in real life, you would not assume it was just a regular old lady. You would assume it had accidentally been brought here from another dimension by military testing. Big Momma's head looks like someone tried to sculpt a bullfrog out of pudding, then let it melt.

Ah, if only the shoddiness of the disguises were the film's only flaw! I guarantee that if you have seen even one cross-dressing comedy, you have seen every single device used here. The screenplay, by first-timer Matthew Fogel and 'Big Momma' veteran Don Rhymer, is almost admirably lazy: It contains not one original idea. Trent is a horndog who can't believe his good fortune at getting to live in a girls' dorm. He sometimes forgets to speak in a high-pitched voice. He and Haley go clothes shopping; she sees no reason not to share a fitting room; he nearly passes out from excitement. Nowhere in this do you find even a spark of creativity, no solid one-liners, no twists on the formula. Nowhere in this do you find anything, in fact, that isn't completely irritating, predictable, simple-minded, and insulting.

As if that weren't enough, remember how this is a school for the performing arts? That means one thing: musical numbers! Trent is an amateur rapper, which means Charmaine is pretty good on the mic, too, yo. There's an excruciating "spontaneous" performance in the cafeteria that ends with Big Momma dancing on a table (why not?) before it collapses under her weight. (I guess we're supposed to assume Malcolm's fat suit weighs as much as an actual fat person.) The climax of the film coincides with the school's big talent show.

If you love the sloppy, unfunny slapstick of the 'Big Momma's House' movies but always wished they were more like deleted scenes from 'High School Musical,' this is definitely the movie that you should ask your caretaker to let you see the next time you're permitted to leave the group home.

'I Melt With You' Sundance Review: The Year's Dullest Debauchery

Eric D. Snider — 2011-02-01T19:45:00+00:00

In 'I Melt with You,' a quartet of 44-year-old men who were friends in college reunite for their annual weekend of debauchery and hedonism. Sounds fun, right? Not this time! This time, one of the four is being a real Debbie Downer, reminding everyone of how they've failed to live up to any of their youthful ideals, and how they're all terrible human beings. They start to wonder if life is even worth living. Having sat the ludicrous tedium of 'I Melt with You,' I know how they feel.

Seldom has a film that longed to be so insightful wound up being so superficial. Directed by Mark Pellington ('The Mothman Prophecies,' 'Henry Poole Is Here') and written by Glenn Porter from a story the two conceived together, 'I Melt with You' attempts to turn a 'Big Chill' scenario into a dark, thrilling character study, yet fails on almost every level. It seems to think it's the first movie ever made in which middle-aged characters reflect on how they've changed since college, as if this is some awe-inspiring revelation. Then, when the story telegraphs what's eventually going to happen, we're stuck waiting for it to get around to it.

Unhelpful is the fact that all four central characters are loathsome bastards. Jonathan (Rob Lowe) is a skeevy doctor who sells prescriptions to recreational users. Ron (Jeremy Piven) is a thieving financier. Richard (Thomas Jane) is a teacher who's resentful at not being a successful novelist. Tim (Christian McKay) is Señor Buzzkill, mourning a tragic loss from five years ago and forcing the others to remember the things they swore they'd do when they were 19.

These four reprobates assemble at a California beach house to drink as much alcohol and take as many drugs as is humanly possible, and to cavort with whatever college-age locals they can lure back to the place. Pellington, whose background is mostly in music videos, depicts the days-long revelry in a garish, nightmarish fashion, as if the party is at once the most fun you've ever had and the dirtiest you've ever felt. This is likely intentional, and kudos to Pellington and cinematographer Eric Schmidt for achieving it.

What's unintentional, I suspect, is how painfully dull it is. We get scene after scene after scene of drinking, snorting, smoking, and swallowing, interspersed with scenes of various pairs of the four men having generic conversations about their lives. Hey, did you know we're not the same people we were 25 years ago? Whoa, man. THAT IS DEEP.

Then, for some reason, there is Carla Gugino. She plays a local police officer who responds to some weirdness at the beach house. She even gets her own scene, with a female friend, in which they discuss the nature of men. One suspects the movie's more profound themes were meant to be conveyed here; instead, the effect is laughable: What is Carla Gugino doing in this movie? Why is her character such a bad cop? Wasn't there a better way to get these ideas across?

I was briefly intrigued by the meat of the movie's plot, which emerges about halfway through and suggests chilling potential. (I won't spoil it for you.) Unfortunately, like everything else, this is dragged out interminably, the four actors blithering and sobbing and screaming like first-year theater students while Pellington tries to establish suspense over a conclusion that A) we know is foregone, and B) we don't care about anyway.

Once it's over, you can look at the entire story and see how it could be the basis for a compelling film. But that film would need to be about 30 minutes long, not 125, and it would need to have believable characters in whose fates you have some interest. 'I Melt With You' is a tiresome, self-serious slog that needs to melt a whole hell of a lot faster.

'Cedar Rapids' Sundance Review: Ed Helms Gets a Starring Role

Eric D. Snider — 2011-01-29T18:00:00+00:00

If there is justice in the world, Ed Helms will soon be a comedy star whose name above the title sells a movie all by itself. A veteran of 'The Daily Show,' 'The Office,' and 'The Hangover' (plus its impending sequel), Helms is a master of lovable, slightly square awkwardness, and there's room for him at the top. 'Cedar Rapids' probably is not the film that will do it for him, but it's a step in the right direction, a reasonably successful attempt to capitalize on Helms' skills.

He plays Tim Lippe, an insurance agent in a small Wisconsin town who must attend a convention in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where a prestigious award will be bestowed upon a deserving member of the American Society of Mutual Insurers. The central joke of the film is that to Tim Lippe -- a rube who wears Dockers and sweater vests and has never been on an airplane or even stayed in a hotel -- Cedar Rapids is the BIG CITY.

At the convention he meets Ronald Wilkes (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), a jovial and harmless fellow, and Dean Ziegler (John C. Reilly), a notorious bad boy and troublemaker, at least as far as insurance agents go. Tim's boss back home (Stephen Root) warned him about Ziegler's reckless ways. Meanwhile, Joan (Anne Heche), a seasoned veteran of the insurance business and its annual conferences, takes a shine to Tim and helps him break out of his shell.

Much of the film's plot concerns itself with Tim's efforts to secure the award for his agency. For some reason this means he must kiss up to the president of the A.M.S.I. (played by Kurtwood Smith), who evidently determines the winner based on which insurance agency is the most decent, moral, and Christian. I don't know what kind of sense that makes, but there it is.

The screenplay, by Phil Johnston (his first feature), was developed with Helms in mind for the lead role, and indeed with Helms' participation in the brainstorming process. It's no wonder, then, that it plays to Helms' strengths. But the story takes Tim's naivete to implausible extremes, and the comedy suffers. For example, he is unaware that the sultry young woman (Alia Shawkat) standing outside the hotel is a prostitute; in fact, he seems unaware of the very idea of prostitutes. He's like a slightly smarter version of Forrest Gump sometimes, which isn't nearly as funny as someone who's gullible in believable ways. The director, Miguel Arteta, has overseen better protagonists, in films like 'Chuck and Buck' and 'Youth in Revolt.'

Nonetheless, Helms sells it with his earnestness and charm, and John C. Reilly is a good foil as the naughty Dean Ziegler. (Rare is the comedy that is not improved by the presence of John C. Reilly.) Sigourney Weaver is somewhat wasted in a small role as the older woman Tim's been sleeping with back home, but in general the supporting cast (which also includes Thomas Lennon and Mike Birbiglia) is buoyant and colorful. This was probably pitched as "'The Hangover' goes to Iowa!'," and while it doesn't even approach that level of raucous, R-rated hilarity, it's not a bad attempt.

MORE: Ed Helms Sundance Interview: 'Cedar Rapids,' Nude Scenes and 'Office' Spoilers

'Hobo with a Shotgun' Sundance Review: A Bindle of Laughs

Eric D. Snider — 2011-01-29T12:00:00+00:00

'Hobo with a Shotgun' is everything you'd want a film called 'Hobo with a Shotgun' to be, except that ideally you'd be watching it on a crusty VHS tape that you found in the back of an independent video store run by a weird guy with a ponytail.

In an era of too much campy self-awareness, too many grindhouse homages, and too much blood-for-blood's-sake, 'HWAS' is a breath of fresh, sleazy air. First-time director Jason Eisener, expanding on the fake trailer that he and writer John Davies made in 2007 as part of a contest, takes exactly the right tone, straddling the line between imitation and parody. 'HWAS' both makes fun of Troma-style exploitation movies and is one itself.

The key is to play it with a straight face. Luckily, Eisener has Rutger Hauer, the iconic veteran actor who seems like he ought to have been in a movie called 'Hobo with a Shotgun' already. Hauer shows in his performance that he knows what the joke is, but also that he knows not to let it show. He doesn't wink at the audience, but he isn't a clueless old man, either. He gets it.

Hauer plays an unnamed hobo (think Clint Eastwood in the Sergio Leone trilogy) who rides into a miserable Canadian town that has become a nightmare of crime, violence, and depravity. The chief perpetrator is The Drake (Brian Downey), a slick-haired sleazeball who runs a crime empire with his psychopath sons, Slick (Gregory Smith) and Ivan (Nick Bateman). The Drake does whatever he wants with impunity -- the cops are useless or corrupt -- and inspires every lowlife in town to do the same. The crimes are depicted unrealistically, over-the-top: a pedophile in a Santa Claus costume leers at children on a playground; a man is hung upside-down and beaten like a piñata by hot topless chicks. This lets us enjoy the madness without having to consider the unsettling real-world implications of such acts. It's pure escapism, no reality.

After running afoul of The Drake and seeing so many others suffer too, the hobo finally takes matters into his own hands when thugs hold up a pawn shop where he is a customer, and where there is a shotgun on display. He starts dispensing justice throughout the city, punishing criminals quickly and bloodily. ("HOBO STOPS BEGGING, DEMANDS CHANGE," screams a newspaper headline.) He also befriends Abby (Molly Dunsworth), a hooker with a heart of gold, and must eventually face off against The Drake to save the town once and for all.

Eisener obviously grew up watching the low-budget exploitation flicks of the '70s and '80s, and he recreates their style with an impressive attention to detail. He and cinematographer Karim Hussain shot the film in vivid Technicolor, the kind where caucasian flesh tones appear almost orange and the geysers of blood are deep red. The movie has the look of something made 30 years ago. The musical score, the vaguely '80s-ish setting, and even the choice of font for the credits all contribute to the experience.

Davies' screenplay is rife with pseudo-badass lines like "I'm gonna wash this blood off with your blood" and "They're gonna make comic books out of my hate crimes." That's goofy stuff -- but it's only a half-step away from the cheesy things that people actually said, in all seriousness, in the movies that inspired this one. In a similar vein, the performances tend to be loud and clunky, just as you remember. Are these good actors convincingly pretending to be bad ones, or are they just bad? The fact that the answer is not obvious -- and that it doesn't matter either way -- is a testament to the film's success.

'Hobo with a Shotgun' works very well on that level. It summons the adrenaline-fueled pleasures of the grindhouse experience, but because its purpose is ultimately satiric, the abundant blood and debauchery come across as funny instead of vicious. The blend of homage and parody -- of laughing at and laughing with -- is nearly perfect.

MORE: Sundance Interview: 'Hobo with a Shotgun's Rutger Hauer & Jason Eisener

Ed Helms Sundance Interview: 'Cedar Rapids,' Nude Scenes and 'Office' Spoilers

Eric D. Snider — 2011-01-26T16:00:00+00:00

The very funny Ed Helms followed in his 'Daily Show' colleague Steve Carell's footsteps by joining 'The Office,' and thereafter branched out into films. 'The Hangover' helped make his toothy face recognizable to even more people; now, in addition to 'The Hangover 2' (due May 26), Helms has 'Cedar Rapids,' in which he is not a supporting player but the star. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and Fox Searchlight will release it theatrically Feb. 11.

I met with Helms on Jan. 24 at a venue in Park City, Utah, that had been made to look like the small-town insurance office inhabited by his 'Cedar Rapids' character. As he sat down, he cautioned me that despite the setting, he didn't actually know anything about insurance. I threw away all my insurance-related questions, and here's what followed.

Cinematical: First of all, happy birthday, am I right?
Ed Helms: You're exactly right! Thank you very much!

I looked you up on the Wikipedias, and today's your birthday. You were born in 1974, right?
Correct.

So, when you were 10 years old, watching 'Ghostbusters,' did you ever imagine that one day you would have a sex scene with Sigourney Weaver?
Oh my God, that is a fabulous question. That's when the fantasy first started. Of course, I never, ever would have imagined that it could actually happen. She was ... she's just a remarkably sexy woman.

She is. She's one of those that people mention as being "of a certain age" yet still really attractive.
She exudes confidence and gravitas and feminine elegance.

Is it weird to be in a movie with someone you watched in movies growing up? Does one get starstruck, or is one enough of a professional not to?
At this point, I rarely get starstruck in a work environment. At awards shows or that kind of thing, that's when I can get a little -- clam up, get a little wide-eyed. But when everyone's showing up to work, it's kind of -- and Sigourney in particular is such a seasoned vet, such a professional, she's prepared, she's gracious as an actor, she just kind of wants to explore it with you. She was so kind to me, right away, she put me at ease.

I guess on a similar note, when you were in your 20s, watching 'That '70s Show,' did you ever imagine that one day you'd have a nude scene with the dad from 'That '70s Show'?
[laughs] No, no, no, you should go further back! When I was watching the bad guy in 'Robocop,' did I ever think I'd have a nude scene with him?

He was the bad guy in a lot of movies back then, wasn't he?
Yeah. Kurtwood Smith. He's just the greatest. For some reason 'Robocop' was one of my favorite movies of ALL. TIME. And that's one of my biggest Kurtwood Smith associations. Of course, Red on 'That '70s Show' is one of the great sitcom dads, but yeah, we had a nude scene. And it was the same thing, actually. Kurtwood is the most seasoned vet, and the most gracious and wonderful actor that you could ever hope to work with, and certainly put me at ease. But most actors, I think, subscribe to the philosophy that dignity really doesn't have a place on a film set.

Especially in comedy.
Especially in comedy. Dignity is the enemy.

This is the kind of thing that you'll probably get tired of talking about, but, you know, you're kind of naked in that scene. We see your naked butt.
Yeah.

And people want to know: How naked were you? Do they have those special "socks," or whatever? Or were you just lettin' it all hang out?
I was completely naked.

Good for you.
Yeah, just so you know. You don't actually see my genitals, but ...

We can imagine.
You can imagine. The thinking was, you know, with John C. Reilly and me in the movie, they felt pretty good about the young male demographic, but they really wanted to get the women into the movie as well, so let's get a close-up of Ed's tush.

This one's for the ladies.
This one's for the ladies!

The script was written with you in mind -- is that right?
It wasn't just me in mind, it was me involved. Phil Johnston is the writer, and he is a genius. And I don't use that word casually. He had this idea for this movie and had me in mind for it, so a mutual friend of ours introduced us, and we just immediately clicked on this idea. It was just an idea at the time. And we were instantly on the same page, riffing on the same jokes, loving the same kinds of character choices, painting this world in just perfect synchronicity. And so it was really a remarkable creative fit, the two of us. We kind of jammed on it for a long time, and then he went off and wrote this script in like two weeks. It was crazy. That is the draft that got Alexander Payne on board [as producer]. And so then we just kept steadily growing the team with like-minded people. First it was Alexander, and then Miguel [Arteta, the director], then of course John C. and Anne [Heche].

It's a good cast, a really good comedy cast.
I think that we surprised ourselves with this cast. Everyone is sort of a homerun in that I'd kill to be in a movie with any one of these actors, but if you had asked me three years ago, "How about a movie with these four actors?," I'd have said, "Well, what the hell context would THEY all fit together?" [both laugh] And then this script and this world just sort of got conjured up, and everyone just fit so beautifully together. It was a blast.

Did you always want to get into comedy when you were young?
[immediately] Yes.

Who were your comedy idols growing up?
[just as immediately] Eddie Murphy is my number one comedy idol, especially from a very young age. When I was 8 years old --

When he was on 'SNL'?
Yes, when he was on 'SNL,' and he was EIGHTEEN years old! And I loved that whole -- those were a weird couple years, the Dick Ebersol years, kind of a hiccup in the history of 'SNL,' when Lorne Michaels was off the show. But they were some of my favorite years because it was when I first got addicted, and then just as those people just sort of cycled through, Martin Short, and Joe Piscopo was fabulous, and of course even Chris Guest and Harry Shearer were making appearances at the time...

Billy Crystal.
Billy Crystal. And Dana Carvey, I think, did some of his best work of his whole life on 'SNL.'

Oh, sure.
And Phil Hartman is, to me, one of comedy's greatest performers, and most tragic losses.

I completely agree.
He was such in his prime.

He was the glue that held the show together.
Many shows. Even 'The Simpsons,' he just sort of spackled things together. I was so heartbroken when the world lost Phil Hartman, because he was one of the few people -- and I didn't even realize this until he died -- he was somebody that I always believed or hoped that I would have an opportunity to just tell him what his career has meant to me, and what ... I don't know, I still get misty thinking about it.

I know, you're making me kind of sad now! [both laugh] There aren't very many celebrities that die that really affect me, but that was one where it was genuinely sad. By all accounts he was a great guy, too.
But going into this business, and feeling like here's a guy that's a reason why I want to do this, I just really always thought I'd have a chance to tell him. You know? And so it was a very personal loss, even though I never met him. It's a weird thing.

Who are your comedy idols now? Who do you admire now? Not Eddie Murphy anymore, I assume. [laughs]
Yeah, he is someone I've met. I worked with him on a movie called 'Meet Dave,' and I was able to tell him what he's meant to me, which is great. Um, let's see. For stand-up comedy, Brian Regan is to me the world champion. Just one of the greatest of all time. I love ... I would say Will Ferrell -- it's kind of an obvious list, but I don't care. Ben Stiller, 'There's Something About Mary' was so formative to me, as was 'Anchorman.' And Zack Galifianakis. It was such a privilege to be in scenes with him. His energy -- he's just a special person.

Were you a fan of his before you did 'The Hangover'?
Well, I've known Zack for a number of years, so I was a fan and a friend. But even the more I've gotten to know him personally and the more I've watched him do, from a strictly comedy standpoint, he's really in a league of his own. [Thinks some more.] Larry David is fantastic. I could go on and on.

Are you a fan of Steve Carell at all?
I LOVE Steve Carell. I mean, we overlapped on 'The Daily Show.' Not for very long, I think for about six months, and he was even away for a lot of that. But I was such a fan. And Colbert. I mean, 'The Daily Show' --

It was kind of a training ground for a lot of people, wasn't it? A lot of people came out of there.
Yeah, and I'll include Jon Stewart. Jon and Stephen and Steve are some of the people I feel the most privileged to call colleagues. To just sort of learn from those guys is incredible.

Can you give any spoilers about the end of 'The Office' this season?
Hmm, I don't have anything to give you.

Can you make something up?
Yes. Sure. Steve Carell becomes ... goes to space camp and accidentally gets launched into space.

Nice.
And that is why he's no longer on the show. But then, for the next five seasons, there will be a radio box on his desk, where he's sort of giving us our marching orders from outer space.

I like it. Now, you've finished 'The Hangover 2,' right?
Yeah, we just wrapped it.

There's always the worry with sequels that it's just going to be doing the same thing again. Do you feel like you were able to break away from just repeating the jokes of the first one?
I'm not particularly worried. You always ride that line making a sequel. How much do you celebrate the first one, versus how much do you go in an entirely different direction?

You want to give them what they want, but you don't want to just repeat yourself.
You want to actually celebrate what people responded to in the first one, and I think that this script and the way this movie has been executed has enough of what's familiar that fans will feel anchored, and enough insanity -- I mean, it goes -- it just -- it goes to such a more insane extreme.

Even more insane than the first one?
Not even comparable! Just like from the very get-go, when the s*** hits the fan in the story, it's just off to the races.

Is this your first time being at Sundance?
It's actually my third, technically. My first time, I came in college, with a buddy. I was a film major and a big film nerd and was totally intoxicated by the independent film spirit. And then I came two years ago, I had a small part in this movie with Tea Leoni and Billy Bob Thornton called 'Manure,' which ...

Oh, I remember. I didn't see it, but I remember that movie.
It kind of disappeared.

Are you enjoying the experience, all the hoopla, and on your birthday, even?
It is so frickin' cool. I mean, just to be here, you know, there's such a mystique around Sundance, and it really feels like a privilege to be right in the heart of it, right in the middle of it, to have a movie that has pretty high awareness around the festival. And both positive anticipation, and now that it premiered last night, some really positive responses. Which is -- I mean, already it's been more than I think you could reasonably hope for, in terms of the positive energy of the experience.

'Homework' Sundance Review: Your Dog Wouldn't Eat It

Eric D. Snider — 2011-01-25T13:00:00+00:00

'Homework' would be a good film to watch if you were cramming for your Indie Films of the 2000s final and didn't have time to see everything on the syllabus. It's like a Cliff's Notes version of every teen-centered Sundance comedy of the last decade.

Precocious teenage boy who's a slacker at school because he finds the material unstimulating? Check. Calls his teachers by their first names, cuz he's quirky like that? Check. Reads philosophy, watches foreign films in repertory theaters, fixates on death and mortality? Has major potential as an artist/writer/thinker if he'd just apply himself? Falls in love with a classmate, leading to a journey of self-discovery and coming of age? Check, check, check.

The familiarity of all these elements isn't the problem; it's the unimaginative fashion in which they've been cobbled together. 'Homework' is the first feature by writer-director Gavin Wiesen, and I don't think there's a single fresh idea anywhere in it. No witty dialogue, interesting characters, or amusing scenarios, either. It should have a plain brown label and be called ' Festival Movie.'

'Tis a pity, because it has a good cast. Freddie Highmore ('Finding Neverland,' 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory') plays George, a Manhattan lad who reads Camus and ditches school to watch Louis Malle films. Too smart for his own good, he's obsessed with the fact that we will all die eventually, and so why does it matter whether we do our trigonometry homework? His mother (Rita Wilson) is concerned and involved; his stepfather (Sam Robards) is barely present.

George meets Sally (Emma Roberts), a fellow 12th-grader who's also a bit of a free spirit (i.e., she smokes cigarettes). Sally's parents are divorced, and her drunken, slutty mother (Elizabeth Reaser) flirts with George and gives him alcohol. Sally and George are just friends at first, and he frets about her relationships with other guys, the cool kids with rich parents.

At school, the principal (Blair Underwood) is on George's case to finish his work so he can graduate. His English teacher (Alicia Silverstone) is frustrated by George's refusal to do any assignments, but awestruck by how much he knows about the literature they're studying. His art teacher (Jarlath Conroy) wants him to express himself on canvas. An alumnus of the school, Dustin (Michael Angarano), now a moderately successful artist himself, becomes a mentor of sorts, though why the principal thought a slacker burn-out like this guy would be a good influence on George is anybody's guess.

And so it goes, in this manner, for 84 minutes -- inoffensive, forgettable entertainment on the order of 'Tadpole,' 'Adventureland,' 'Garden State,' 'Thumbsucker,' 'Rocket Science,' 'It's Kind of a Funny Story,' and numerous others, but with nothing to distinguish itself from the rest of the pack. The novelty of these "alternative" characters and "sophisticated" situations wore off long ago. You can't just toss 'em up on the screen and let things play out. You have to DO something with them.

The movie is further hindered by a plot device that just doesn't make any sense: Basically, George has three weeks to do ALL his homework from the past year, or he won't graduate. (Will he finally be able to commit to something and see it through and thus grow up??) A subplot has George's stepfather lying to the family about his financial situation; that bit collapses into embarrassing and implausible melodrama. There are some expensive last-minute plane trips and other romantic-comedy devices, too, just for good measure.

Highmore, Roberts, and Angarano are promising young actors who have done interesting things in the past and will probably do interesting things again. 'Homework' just has them spinning their wheels, waiting for something better to come along.

'Pariah' Sundance Review: Coming Out in Brooklyn

Eric D. Snider — 2011-01-23T19:00:00+00:00

While coming-of-age dramas about gay teenagers are common enough (especially at film festivals), they're usually about boys, not girls. Your more lesbian-centric movies tend to be about adults. At least as far as American films go, anyway. (The Europeans are bigger on teenage lesbians.) And now that we've helped our Google rankings for the search terms "European teenage lesbians," let us discuss Dee Rees' 'Pariah,' which is indeed an American coming-of-age drama about a 17-year-old girl.

Her name is Alike (that's ah-LEE-kay), she is played by Adepero Oduye, and she is a virgin, though she seeks to change that status. Her best friend, Laura (Pernell Walker), a bold and sexually active lesbian, regularly takes her to a dance club in their Brooklyn neighborhood that caters to African American ladies, in the hopes that Alike will meet someone. The loud, aggressive atmosphere is intimidating to a newbie, though. Alike lives with her younger sister, Sharonda (Sahra Mallesse), and their parents, and has made only tentative steps toward coming out to any of them, at least officially. There is certainly some degree of awareness -- Alike dresses "butch"; some of the neighbors gossip -- but that awareness is accompanied by denial. Alike's mother, Audrey (Kim Wayans), buys her a girly blouse and tries to push her into being friends with a co-worker's wholesome daughter

Needless to say, Audrey doesn't think much of Laura. Secrecy is a bigger concern for Alike at home than at her school, which is almost entirely African American and seems to have a sizable contingency of gay girls. (The film depicts the subculture of black lesbians matter-of-factly without delving too deeply or making it into a curiosity.) But she isn't the only one sneaking around: her father (Charles Parnell), a cop, is quite obviously having an extra-marital affair.

'Pariah' was written and directed by Dee Rees as an expansion of her 2007 short film, which featured the same young actresses playing Alike, Sharonda, and Laura. Rees says the film is at least partially autobiographical, and that's no surprise. It has the ring of authenticity, and in particular the kind that is found almost exclusively in small, independently financed movies rather than impersonal studio productions. The performances are raw without falling into melodrama; the characters behave plausibly.

Unfortunately, the trade-off for emotional honesty and a real-world story line seems to be that the film doesn't come across as remarkable in any way. Even though indie dramas about black teenage lesbians (hello, SEO!) aren't exactly a dime a dozen, 'Pariah' feels overly familiar, a fairly standard entry in the broader genre of teen-centered dramas. But as criticisms go, "This fails to be remarkable" isn't a very harsh one. 'Pariah' is definitely respectable work, with earnest intentions and a vivid depiction of a corner of American culture. Dee Rees may be a filmmaker to watch.

The 5 Best and 5 Worst Sundance Purchases

Eric D. Snider — 2011-01-18T22:00:00+00:00

Philosophically, the Sundance Film Festival's most important goal is to give independent films from around the world a venue in which to be seen by enthusiastic audiences, but there's no denying Sundance's other major function: to help the filmmakers sell their movies to distributors, who can then sell them to the movie-going public.

For the industry, Sundance is like a big ol' bazaar, where the merchandise is of varying quality and you're free to browse before you buy. You might get something at a bargain price and turn a handsome profit when it goes to theaters later on; or you might pay through the nose for something you're sure will be a hit, only to lose your shirt when it tanks. It's always a crapshoot (often heavy on the crap), and the only way to know for sure whether the purchase was shrewd is in retrospect.

So here's some retrospect! You'll note that it has nothing to do with quality -- all 10 of these movies are good. Yet somehow, their fates ranged from the miraculous to the tragic.

5 Best Sundance Purchases

'sex, lies and videotape' (1989). This was the sale that established Sundance as a marketplace rather than just an exhibition venue. It also put Bob and Harvey Weinstein's company, Miramax, on the map, and during the indie revolution of the 1990s, it was Miramax that stood at the forefront. Oh, and it launched Steven Soderbergh's career, too. Sundance sale price: $1 million. Domestic box office: $25 million.

'The Blair Witch Project' (1999). This would be a milestone film even if all it did was spawn the now-inescapable genre of "found footage" horror movies. But that is not all it did! It was also the first movie to benefit heavily from Internet marketing (the term "viral marketing" wasn't common yet in those days). After it scared the poop out of Sundance audiences, Artisan bought it for a million bucks, then spent another $25 million on marketing -- an absurd investment that wound up paying serious dividends. Sundance sale price: $1 million. Domestic box office: $140 million.

'Napoleon Dynamite' (2004). Yes, there was a backlash. Yes, a lot of people honestly hated it from the beginning. But you wouldn't have known that in Park City that cold January seven years ago. As soon as Jared Hess' oddball comedy had its first public screening, the town was abuzz. (The town was also soon inundated with "Vote for Pedro" stickers.) Fox Searchlight bellied up to the bargaining table and made themselves a tidy pile of quesadilla money. Sundance sale price: $3 million. Domestic box office: $46 million.

'Little Miss Sunshine' (2006). Two years after its 'Napoleon Dynamite' success, Fox Searchlight struck gold again, this time breaking records in the process. The distributor paid $10.5 million for the film -- the biggest deal in Sundance history -- and bought not just U.S. rights but worldwide rights. (Normally a distributor will buy a film for North America only, leaving foreign companies to strike their own deals for worldwide distribution.) Some Oscar nominations came along eventually, but in the meantime... Sundance sale price: $10.5 million. Domestic box office: $60 million. Foreign box office: $40 million. Total box office: $100 million.

'Precious: Based on the Novel Push By Sapphire' (2009). It was just called 'Push' when it premiered at Sundance, and Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry had nothing to do with it. Then Lionsgate snatched it up for $5 million, Winfrey and Perry lent their names to its promotion, and soon all America was marveling at Mo'Nique's villainy and Mariah Carey's mustache. Sundance sale price: $5 million. Domestic box office: $48 million.

5 Worst Sundance Purchases

'Happy, Texas' (1999). Oh, man. This is the 'Ishtar' of Sundance deals. The light comedy -- with Steve Zahn and Jeremy Northam as escaped criminals hiding in a small town by pretending to be the gay organizers of a beauty pageant -- was purchased by the Weinsteins, back when Miramax was the heavy hitter in this world. They upset a lot of people in the process (as described in this contemporary account in the Los Angeles Times), allegedly throwing their weight around and muscling other distributors out of the bargaining process. Miramax says it paid $2.5 million for the film, but pretty much everyone else says it was actually more like $10 million. Either way, it was a bust. What was supposed to be a big crossover hit -- the quirky indie comedy that regular folks will love, too! -- tanked. Miramax's luster was already fading after a decade of influence, and this accelerated the process. Sundance sale price: somewhere between $2.5 and $10 million. Domestic box office: $2 million.

'Son of Rambow' (2007). After an intense bidding war, Paramount Vantage paid $8 million for this nostalgic and raucous English comedy about two mischievous young boys, and I was one of many people who thought they could make a fortune with it. Then, for reasons that remain mysterious, they waited a year and a half to release the film, then delivered it during the competitive summer months. It's a shame, because this one deserved a lot more attention than it got. Sundance sale price: $8 million. Domestic box office: $1.8 million.

'Grace Is Gone' (2007). The Weinsteins again, now operating as The Weinstein Company and showing they could screw things up just as efficiently as they had when they were Miramax. John Cusack starred in this drama about a father who must tell his young daughters that their mother has died in Iraq, and some people were talking Oscars as soon as it played at Sundance. The Weinsteins grabbed it, gunning to reclaim their former glory, held it for the end-of-the-year awards season ... and then saw it disappear. Unable to gain any traction with critics or audiences, it never played on more than seven screens and was quickly forgotten. Sundance sale price: $4 million. Domestic box office: $50,000 (that is, $0.05 million).

'Hamlet 2' (2008). Steve Coogan's surreal and outlandish comedy about a delusional drama teacher was a last-minute addition to the 2008 festival, and it sparked an all-night bidding war once it screened. As R-rated comedies were becoming a box-office commodity again, this looked like it could be a major hit. Focus Features shelled out $10 million for it, promoted the living crap out of it all year, opened it in wide release, then watched in what must have been horror and alarm as it crashed and burned. Sundance sale price: $10 million. Domestic box office: $4.8 million.

'Buried' (2010). Here's another one that looked like a sure-fire hit. Ryan Reynolds is a big star; the concept is cool; it got great reviews right out of the gate from critics of all stripes; what could go wrong? That's what Lionsgate was thinking, anyway, when it paid $3.2 million for it. What Lionsgate was thinking when it subsequently dumped the film on a hundred screens, basically burying it, is anyone's guess. Sundance sale price: $3.2 million. Domestix box office: $1 million. (It made another $17 million internationally -- but Lionsgate only had the North American rights. That $17 million went to a variety of other distributors.)

'The Dilemma' Review: Welcome to Sitcom Territory

Eric D. Snider — 2011-01-14T09:00:00+00:00

At 118 minutes, 'The Dilemma' is easily 30 minutes too long. It's also one of the shortest films Ron Howard has ever directed, and his first comedy in over a decade. The man who grew up on sitcoms and then made agreeable diversions like 'Splash' and 'Parenthood' seems to have lost his comedic touch.

Then again, maybe it's just a bad screenplay. 'The Dilemma' was written by Allan Loeb, who's had more practice at dramas ('Things We Lost in the Fire,' '21') than comedies ('The Switch') -- which might explain why this thing is constantly uncertain of what it's supposed to be. Its premise is pure farce: a man discovers his best friend's wife is cheating on him, is blackmailed into silence, and has his own furtive behavior misinterpreted. Yet there are surprisingly few laughs in the film, and several scenes that were clearly intended to be straight-up serious, despite being built on a premise that only works if you don't take it seriously.

The stars are Vince Vaughn and Kevin James, two formerly very different actors who are now starting to look alike, at least where hairlines and waistlines are concerned. They play Ronny Valentine and Nick Brannen, best friends since college who have started an automotive design firm. Ronny is the tall, fast-talking pitch man who sells General Motors on their idea; Nick is the squat, anxious engineer who makes the cars go vroom.

Nick is married to Geneva (Winona Ryder), apparently happily. Ronny has been dating Beth (Jennifer Connelly) for some time and is considering popping the question. Ronny and Beth have endured tough times already: He used to have a gambling problem and had to seek treatment. (This is the movie's way of saying, "Remember how fun Vince Vaughn was in 'Swingers'? Yeah, not anymore.")

It takes far too long to get there, but the story's inciting incident is eventually that Ronny sees Geneva making out with some guy who is not Nick. The titular dilemma is that Nick is already a stress case over the engine he's designing for GM, and Ronny fears telling him now that his wife is cheating would sink the project and ruin them both financially.

So far, so good. This should probably be a two-part episode of 'Everybody Loves Raymond' and not a two-hour movie, but we won't harp on that. The trouble is that Loeb doesn't believe this is enough trouble. It isn't sufficient that Geneva is secretly cheating on Nick, and that Ronny is keeping his knowledge of it secret from Nick. Ronny also stumbles upon information that makes him wonder about his own partner, Beth, but he keeps his suspicions secret from her. Meanwhile, Beth and Nick both wonder if Ronny is gambling again, but rather than discuss it with him, they jump to conclusions and stage an intervention. Ronny also learns something about Nick that Nick wants kept secret, and doesn't tell him that he knows.

We're in full-blown Idiot Plot territory here. All of the film's many, many conflicts would solved immediately if the four parties would have some honest conversations and stop harboring secrets from one another. The movie is so intent on making everyone hide information from everyone else that it has Ronny refuse to even tell Beth -- the woman he wants to marry -- what he knows about Geneva. He'd rather let Beth break up with him than tell her that their friend is cheating on their other friend. Why? Dunno.

This parade of misunderstandings and miscommunications could work if it were treated like the two-dimensional, just-for-laughs farce that it clearly wants to be. So why you gotta get all serious, movie? Why must you make Geneva into a psycho -- a stock comic character -- and then, turning on a dime, ask us to treat her sympathetically? (Not that Winona Ryder doesn't make a great psycho.) Either ignore the harsh realities of the whole scenario, or handle them legitimately. Don't introduce a few of them haphazardly and disregard the rest. That's bad.

I'd still like to see Vaughn and James in a buddy comedy. They have chemistry that goes untapped here, hinted at now and then when Ronny and Nick start bantering. I'm a little curious about two other characters, too: Zip (Channing Tatum), the guy Geneva's sleeping with; and Susan (Queen Latifah), the boys' liaison at GM. They're both oddball characters, composed mainly of quirks, the type of supporting players that can sometimes steal a film. But it feels like their funniest scenes -- the ones that would have helped them break out -- were deleted, leaving behind bizarre remnants of goofiness. You'd think there'd be room in a 118-minute semi-comedy for more comedy, but apparently not.

'Season of the Witch' Review: A Big Helping of Medieval Cheese

Eric D. Snider — 2011-01-06T21:00:00+00:00

After being kicked around for a while, 'Season of the Witch' -- originally scheduled as one of 2010's dumbest cheesefests -- will now be one of 2011's. You expect that a movie starring Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman as medieval knights seeking to destroy a witch would be a lively, dopey train wreck, and in that regard it does not disappoint.

This is the kind of movie that entrepreneurs had in mind when they started opening theaters that serve alcohol. It's the kind of movie that 'Mystery Science Theater' would heckle, and that the SyFy Channel would play constantly between showings of 'Mystery Science Theater.' This is how 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' would have turned out if it had been funny unintentionally instead of intentionally.

Cage and Perlman star as Behmen and Felson, two 14th-century Crusaders who cheerfully administer death to infidels (i.e., non-Catholics) while trading one-liners, 'Bad Boys'-style. After a long day of battle, the buddies like to unwind by drinking ale and cavorting with wenches. Sure, they're knights on a holy errand from God. But they're also just a couple of bros!

Behmen, the slightly more noble one, is suddenly appalled one day when he has to kill an infidel who is a woman. The wholesale slaughter of non-Catholic men is one thing, and that was definitely what God commanded. But ladies?? Behmen draws the line there, and he's sure God agrees with him. Having had enough of these lame Crusades, Behmen and Felson go AWOL.

In their travels, they stumble upon a village whose population has been decimated by the Black Plague. The local Cardinal (Christopher Lee) and his top scientists have determined that the plague was caused by a witch, whom they have also managed to apprehend. Now all they have to do is transport her to an abbey where the monks have a special book from which certain incantations must be read in order to destroy the witch and end the plague. This abbey is far away, however, and the journey is perilous. Behmen and Felson, now working freelance not unlike the A-Team, get roped into taking the gig.

The supposed witch, played by Claire Foy, is a Kristen Stewart-y teen who glowers at her captors through the bars of a wheeled cage, like the kind circus tigers travel in. A local con artist named Hagamar (Stephen Graham) is assigned to lead Behmen and Felson to the abbey (he knows the way), while a priest named Debelzaq (Stephen Campbell Moore) and a soldier, Eckhart (Ulrich Thomsen), accompany them. Also along for the journey is Kay (Robert Sheehan), a young man who wants to become a knight and join the Crusades, which was very trendy in those days.

All the makings for a jaunty medieval road trip are here, including a rickety bridge over a deep canyon, CGI wolves that appear to have been summoned by teen witch, and disputes among the personnel over whether the girl is innocent, guilty, or just misunderstood. Cage remains very serious while Perlman serves as the jokier sidekick, one using formal diction while the other keeps it casual, both of them speaking almost entirely in anachronisms. (The screenplay, kicking around Hollywood for a decade, was written by Bragi Schut and feels like it ought to have been put in front of Brett Ratner at some point.)

Oh, it's all pretty goofy, sure enough. The director, Dominic Sena ('Gone in Sixty Seconds,' 'Swordfish'), perhaps realizing the futility in treating the material seriously, doesn't even try. A movie about 14th-century knights fighting the forces of evil could be exciting and scary -- but not this one, not with these actors, not with this cornball script. Not with lines like "We must go. There is no hope here. Only the plague." Not with Cage's exclamation of "S**t!" when enemies descend upon him. Not, for that matter, with Cage being strangely less crazy than usual yet not sane, either. 'Season of the Witch' is, instead, perfectly harmless and reasonably enjoyable malarkey. It's about as good as it tries to be, which isn't very much at all.

10 Festival Favorites That Didn't Make It to Theaters in 2010

Eric D. Snider — 2010-12-30T12:00:00+00:00

One of the pleasures of attending a film festival is discovering good movies that most people haven't had a chance to see yet, then raving about them to your friends. One of the frustrations, however, is when those good movies don't make it past the festival stage, and the people to whom you've been raving never get a chance to see them. (I'll go out on a limb and guess that this is more frustrating for the filmmakers than it is for me.)

It would be neither feasible nor advisable to see every movie at every festival, so this list is incomplete. But of the 80 or so festival movies I saw this year, here are 10 praiseworthy ones that have not yet been released in the United States. Keep your fingers crossed for 2011!

'American: The Bill Hicks Story' | This documentary about the subversive, dearly departed comedian got a theatrical run in the U.K. (where the filmmakers are based) but nothing yet in the United States, despite a warm reception at South By Southwest, HotDocs, Seattle, and elsewhere. You might be able to find it on a Region 2 DVD. Official website.

'Hesher'

| The title character in this bizarre (and strangely affecting) comedy-drama is a teenage dirtbag and agent of chaos who befriends a young boy after the boy's mother dies. He's played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I wish it had come out this year, as a companion piece to JGL's very different 'Inception' performance. Newmarket bought the film at Sundance and presumably still has plans to release it in 2011, but I wasn't able to track down an exact date. Official website.

'His & Hers'

| From Ireland comes this charming little documentary in which women from ages 4 to 90 talk about the men in their lives: their daddies, their boyfriends, their husbands, their sons. What emerges is a profound admiration for the fairer sex, if only for the way they put up with us dopey males. It played at Sundance and SXSW, among other fests, but so far has no theatrical run lined up. (A DVD is available for purchase, but they'll only ship to Ireland addresses.) Official website.

'I Saw the Devil'

| As you are probably aware, South Korea's chief export is bloody movies about revenge. This one, which played at Toronto and Fantastic Fest and will turn up at Sundance in a few weeks, is an admirably unsettling addition to the canon. Magnet (the genre arm of Magnolia Pictures) will release it stateside on March 4. Official website.

'The Loved Ones'

| This Australian shocker -- about a crazy teenage girl who goes to extreme measures to secure a prom date -- premiered at Toronto in 2009, then played SXSW this year, where it found a very appreciative audience. It's now one of those buzzy, you-gotta-see-this horror films, endorsed by no less an authority than Cinematical's Scott Weinberg (who reviewed it for those Weinberg-stealing fiends at Fearnet). But can you see it? It's in Australian theaters now, with no word yet on when (or whether) it will expand. Official website.

'Monogamy'

| 'Murderball' co-director Dana Adam Shapiro made his fiction debut with this engrossing character study about a voyeuristic photographer (Chris Messina) and his fiancee (Rashida Jones). It's nominated for an Independent Spirit Award, which is a good sign. Oscilloscope has distribution, release date TBD. Official website.

'Saturday Night'

| For fans of 'Saturday Night Live,' what could be better than a behind-the-scenes look at a typical production week? How about if it's directed by James Franco? And how about if SNL's guest the week in question was John Malkovich? SXSW and Tribeca fans got a kick out of this entertaining doc (read our review), which Oscilloscope plans to release in "early 2011."

'Tabloid'

| The latest from Errol Morris -- one of the best documentary filmmakers alive, you know -- is an outrageously entertaining look at a strange-but-true news story from the 1970s, in which a woman allegedly kidnapped a Mormon missionary in England and made him her sex slave. It gets nuttier from there. The only word we have on distribution so far is from Morris himself, just a couple days ago, via Twitter: "'Tabloid' will be in theaters next year. A deal will be announced in the very near future. (Thank goodness.)" So there you go. Official site.

'Tucker and Dale vs. Evil'

| You know those slasher movies about creepy backwoods guys who torture and kill innocent teens? This is a hilarious deconstruction of such films, from the point of view of the hillbillies -- played by Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine -- who it turns out are harmless and misunderstood. It was a hit at Sundance and SXSW. How does it not have distribution yet?? That's an atrocity. Maybe this is another job for Drafthouse Films...? Official site.

'Zonad'

| Oh, I don't really expect to ever see this in theaters. It's too goofy, too provincial, too weird. Sure made me laugh at Tribeca, though. Erik Davis observed that it's like a live-action 'Simpsons' episode, and that's exactly right. An alcoholic escapes from rehab and convinces the morons in a quaint Irish village that he's a space alien; hilarity ensues. It's gotten some play in the U.K. and Australia and is for sale on DVD in Ireland only. I could see this becoming a cult favorite once it gets some more home-video exposure. Official site.

The Lowest-Grossing Wide-Release Movies of 2010

Eric D. Snider — 2010-12-29T09:30:00+00:00

It would be easy to slap together a list of the lowest-grossing movies of the year and then make fun of them. It wouldn't be fair, though. A lot of independent films only play on two or three screens for a couple weeks before going to DVD or Video-on-Demand. Their theatrical grosses are tiny -- often less than $50,000 -- but that doesn't mean they were failures. Those films usually didn't cost much to make, and a big box-office haul was never in the cards anyway.

It will be much more sporting, then, to look only at the wide releases, the films whose distributors put them on more than 1,000 screens and then got jack-squat in return. These tend to be the bloated studio productions, the cynical cash-grabs, the absurd star vehicles. They are ripe for mockery, especially insofar as this mockery makes us feel better about ourselves. (Even a big-studio "flop" is seen by hundreds of thousands of people, which is more famous than we will ever be.) So here are...

The Lowest-Grossing Wide Releases of 2010*

*For our purposes, wide release is at least 1,000 theaters. All grosses are U.S.-only and courtesy of Box Office Mojo.

Dishonorable mention: 'Letters to God' (Gross: $2.9 million. Widest release: 897 theaters.) This Christian-themed tearjerker, about a boy with cancer whose letters to God are intercepted by an alcoholic mailman, only played on 900 screens. But we wanted to mention it anyway, mainly because it's about a boy with cancer whose letters to God are intercepted by an alcoholic mailman.

10. 'Splice' (Gross: $17 million. Widest release: 2,450 theaters.) The divisive reviews didn't help. The icky premise probably turned a lot of people off, too. It turns out the audience for Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley creating genetic abominations is smaller than anyone realized.

9. 'Youth in Revolt' (Gross: $15.3 million. Widest release: 1,873 theaters.)

Michael Cera as an awkward, neurotic, sardonic teenager? Audiences just couldn't accept such bizarre stunt casting.

8. 'My Soul to Take' (Gross: $14.7 million. Widest release: 2,572 theaters.) There was a time when a horror film written and directed by Wes Craven would automatically be a hit. It is not that time anymore. Remember 'Music of the Heart,' directed by Craven, where Meryl Streep played a music teacher? That made more money than 'My Soul to Take' did.

7. 'Repo Men' (Gross: $13.8 million. Widest release: 2,521 theaters.) We got our hopes up thinking this was a sequel to the 1984 Emilio Estevez film 'Repo Man,' only to discover it was actually a futuristic sci-fi thriller about the market for human organs. So sad.

6. 'Case 39' (Gross: $13.3 million. Widest release: 2,212 theaters.) This psychological thriller was shot like four years ago, and stars Renee Zellweger and Bradley Cooper had no interest in promoting it or even discussing it, and Paramount Vantage didn't screen it before it opened, and, well, there you go. Case closed!

5. 'Let Me In' (Gross: $12.1 million. Widest release: 2,042 theaters.) Let's face it. No matter how good it was, a moody remake of a Swedish import about a non-sparkling teen vampire was never going to be a blockbuster. But we were still surprised at just how poorly this fared in theaters. For comparison's sake, 'Twilight: Eclipse' made $300 million, and even 'Vampires Suck' made $36 million. This is why we can't have nice things.

4. 'Extraordinary Measures' (Gross: $12.1 million. Widest release: 2,549 theaters.) Lovable stars Brendan Fraser and Harrison Ford in a heartwarming drama about a man trying to cure the disease that's killing his children? How could such an enterprise fail? Oh, right: We can see the same thing for free on the Hallmark Movie Channel.

3. 'Jonah Hex' (Gross: $10.6 million. Widest release: 2,825 theaters.)

Haha, remember 'Jonah Hex'? It is a movie that came out this year.

2. 'MacGruber' (Gross: $8.5 million. Widest release: 2,551 theaters.) There have been 11 films based on 'Saturday Night Live' characters. Two of them, 'Stuart Saves His Family' and 'It's Pat: The Movie,' only played in limited release. Of the remaining nine, where does 'MacGruber' rank? Ninth. Ouch. It made even less money than 'Blues Brothers 2000' and 'The Ladies Man.' OUCH.

1. 'The Warrior's Way' (Gross: $5.6 million. Widest release: 1,622 theaters.) Ninjas meet cowboys in the Old West. Geoffrey Rush plays the town drunk. Kate Bosworth is a hooker with a heart of gold, or something. What's amazing isn't that the movie did so poorly, but that it ever found its way to theaters at all. Its $5.6 million box office translates into about 700,000 tickets sold, which means it was seen by fewer people than the average episode of 'Cake Boss.'

'Little Fockers' Review: An Obscene Act of Unspeakable Horror

Eric D. Snider — 2010-12-21T12:12:00+00:00

'Little Fockers' would be a lot less painful to watch if its cast of victims didn't include so many beloved actors. Replace De Niro, Stiller, and Hoffman with a bunch of D-listers and it would still be terrible -- the screenplay is unsalvageable -- but at least then it wouldn't feel like a punch in the movie lover's gut.

Arriving six years to the day after 'Meet the Fockers,' this third film in the 'Meet the Parents' saga is one of the dullest, laziest, unfunniest comedies I've ever seen that didn't go straight to DVD and have the words "National Lampoon" attached to it. Most of the gags from the first two films are repeated, only now they're broadly telegraphed so that you'll never NOT see the joke coming before it arrives. Any character growth that occurred previously is forgotten so that we can revert back to the basics: De Niro doesn't trust Stiller, Stiller keeps accidentally messing things up, and Stiller's last name is Focker. (DO YOU GET IT???)

In addition, you may be interested to know that 'Little Fockers' includes many reminders that farts, vomit, and erections are funny. They are so funny, in fact, that you needn't write actual jokes around them. Just toss 'em up there on the screen! A kid barfing on someone is comedy gold, period.

Not that these movies were ever exactly classy, but good grief, what happened? Everything in this disaster reeks of desperation. The screenplay, by franchise veteran John Hamburg and 'Meet the Fockers' associate producer Larry Stuckey, is an embarrassing shambles, without a coherent story line or any clear reason for existing. The normally talented director Paul Weitz ('American Pie,' 'About a Boy'), replacing Jay Roach, is helpless. The characters, many of them given nothing to do, just wander around, bumping into each other and doing their usual shtick.

I once saw a high school production of 'Grease' where they had some technical difficulties and had to stall for time, so the director sent the main actors onstage, in character, to improvise a scene. 'Little Fockers' feels like 100 minutes of that.

We reunite with Greg (Ben Stiller) and Pam Focker (Teri Polo) as they prepare to celebrate their twins' fifth birthday. Pam's parents, Jack (Robert De Niro) and Dina Byrnes (Blythe Danner), come to Chicago several days in advance (the twins' fifth birthday is a weeklong affair, like Lollapalooza), and Jack tells Greg that he must be the family patriarch after Jack is gone, which may happen sooner than later, as Jack has been having heart problems. For some reason, Greg takes all this to mean that he should put the twins in a snooty private kindergarten even though he can't afford it.

(Pam is sick with the flu on the day Greg is visiting the school, so Jack goes with him. That scenario, plus some clueless dialogue, allows the school administrator to mistake Greg and Jack for a gay couple which = hilarity. The next day, Pam is up and around and the flu is never mentioned again. In other words, the writers needed her to be incapacitated just long enough to miss the school visit, but were too lazy to work it into the screenplay organically.)

To earn extra cash, Greg does some work for a pharmaceutical company represented by a hot chick named Andi (Jessica Alba), who's pushing an erectile-dysfunction pill called Sustengo. Andi talks and flirts like a 16-year-old girl, flustering Greg. She helps him administer an enema to a patient (it is OK for pharmaceutical reps to do this), and the act is rife with double entendre. Barely 15 minutes in and already the film has moved below the waist, never to re-ascend.

Everything Andi does is designed to give the wrong impression. For example, when Greg is scheduled to speak for her company at a conference at the downtown Hilton, she sends this text message: "cant wait to see you at the hotel tonite!!!" That is not what a grown-up of any profession would write, of course, let alone a representative for a pharmaceutical company. But it gives Jack something to misinterpret when he looks at Greg's cell phone. After the conference, Andi takes a photo of her harmlessly kissing Greg on the cheek, then posts it to her MySpace page with the caption "crazy night at the hotel!!" Again, utter nonsense. But just wait till Jack googles Andi and finds her MySpace page!! (Where does one find a MySpace page, anyway? An Internet museum?)

Greg's parents, Bernie (Dustin Hoffman) and Roz (Barbra Streisand), will be in town shortly. They serve no function in the story, but hey, the producers convinced Hoffman and Streisand to come back, so they are GOING TO BE IN THE FILM. I thought there were a couple lines about Roz not supporting Bernie as he pursues his dream of becoming a flamenco dancer ... but now that I think about it, I realize this cannot possibly be what the movie said, so let's assume I was hallucinating.

I definitely was not hallucinating when Greg sliced his finger while carving a turkey and sent blood spraying all over the dining room, or when Jack took a Sustengo and Greg had to inject a needle into his erect penis to prevent lasting injury, an act witnessed by one of the Focker twins. I also was not imagining things when Jack's beloved cat arrived at the birthday party, having been flown in from New York especially for the occasion by Pam's old boyfriend Kevin (Owen Wilson). Why would Kevin go to that kind of trouble and expense when Jack and Dina could have brought the cat with them in the first place if they'd wanted to? So that the cat can eat the little Focker boy's pet lizard, obviously. Like Hoffman, the cat was probably holding out for more money before agreeing to appear in the film, and once the papers were signed the producers were desperate to find an excuse to squeeze him into the story.

Elsewhere in the movie, in an act of unmotivated and implausible spite, Jack openly declares that Pam should dump Greg -- her husband, the father of her children -- and reconcile with Kevin. Jack says this because he thinks Greg is cheating on Pam -- a completely false allegation that Greg makes no effort to disprove. Why? Because addressing it head-on would mean Jack couldn't continue misunderstanding for the rest of the film.

The Fockers are renovating their house. The project is overseen by a contractor played by Harvey Keitel. Keitel and De Niro have one scene together, just so someone can say Keitel and De Niro had a scene together. Then Keitel disappears and is never mentioned again.

The point I'm trying to express is that this is not a "movie" in the way that term is normally understood. It is a garish collection of awful comedy sketches whose only connection to one another is that they involve characters we have seen before. The elements that made 'Meet the Parents' a treat -- the surprise, the novelty, the sharp banter -- are long gone. This is a pale, sickly imitation of the original, so derivative and putrid that you'd think it was the fifth sequel, not the second.

'Yogi Bear' Review: No Smarter Than the Average Sack of Doorknobs

Eric D. Snider — 2010-12-16T20:20:00+00:00

Whenever they announce something like a Marmaduke movie, or a Smurfs movie, or a -- sure, why not? -- Yogi Bear movie, people's reaction is always the same: "Who wanted THAT?!" Well, I hate to break it to you, but we've reached the point where it doesn't matter if literally not one person on Earth wants to see a big-screen version of a fictional character. If someone in Hollywood owns the rights to that character, a movie will be made. That's just how it is.

So here, inevitably, is 'Yogi Bear,' which puts a computer-animated Yogi and Boo Boo in a live-action Jellystone Park and gives them the voices of Dan Aykroyd and Justin Timberlake. Turns out Aykroyd and Timberlake do really good impressions of these 50-year-old cartoon characters, which means there is one (and precisely one) aspect of the film worthy of praise.

As you are probably aware, Yogi is a binge-eating kleptomaniac with a particular fetish for picnic baskets. He rarely speaks of their edible contents -- he seems to be more interested in the baskets themselves, regardless of what specific foodstuffs may be found therein. He is enabled by Boo Boo, an adult bear who is much smaller than Yogi, possibly due to a chromosomal condition such as dwarfism. Yogi and Boo Boo both wear neckties, but only Yogi wears a hat, because he is in charge.

Both bears are also capable of human speech -- English, specifically, though it is conceivable that they could learn other languages, as their ability to read is also implied -- and this fact is noted by the humans around them. It isn't like in some movies, where the animals talk to each other but people only hear regular animal noises, or where they only talk when humans aren't around, or where only certain humans can understand them. Yogi and Boo Boo converse openly with one and all. But Ranger Smith (Tom Cavanagh) and Ranger Jones (T.J. Miller), the only two employees at the enormous Jellystone Park, find Yogi's habit of stealing visitors' food far more noteworthy than his ability to speak. A nature photographer named Rachel (Anna Faris), who wants to make a documentary about Jellystone, is eager to meet the talking bears for novelty's sake, but soon becomes blasé about it. Her interest in the park is related to the grandeur of its natural beauty, not the fact that talking bears live in it. Likewise, the local mayor (Andrew Daly) and his chief of staff (Nathan Corddry) acknowledge that Yogi and Boo Boo speak, yet find the fact unremarkable.

I mention all this because of the film's plot, which is as follows. The unnamed town of which Jellystone Park is a part is going bankrupt, and the evil mayor plans to sell Jellystone to land developers. (You might think Jellystone is a national park, or at least a state park, given that it is thousands of acres in size and has rivers, waterfalls, and mountains. But no, it is entirely within the jurisdiction of one small town.) Ranger Smith, who loves Jellystone more than life itself, has only one week to come up with $30,000 to meet the park's operating budget.

To recap, the plot of 'Yogi Bear' is that Ranger Smith must raise $30,000 to save Jellystone Park. The park where talking bears live.

"Pardon me, Mr. Ranger, sir, I was wondering--"

"Don't talk to me now, Yogi! I'm trying to think of ways to attract visitors to Jellystone!"

"What if I did my waterskiing act?"

"Be quiet, Yogi! How am I supposed to come up with fundraising ideas when I'm constantly being interrupted by a talking bear??"

"What if we held a bake sale?"

"Please, Yogi! Stop formulating thoughts in your highly evolved brain and using your miraculous vocal cords to express them in speech! I'm trying to think of a way for the park to raise money!"

Ranger Smith's solution is to throw a party for the park's 100th birthday, which happens to be next week, and which Ranger Smith didn't realize was coming up, which may explain why he is so terrible at keeping the place running. Within 24 hours, he has spread the word and gathered thousands of people to come celebrate at Jellystone. Yogi does his waterskiing routine, which observers find entertaining but not especially noteworthy, and then Yogi accidentally sets off all the fireworks, which terrifies people into fleeing for their lives. And thus the bear that can talk and waterski has somehow cost the park money, a cruel irony.

Spoiler alert: The way the park is finally saved is that they realize the turtle that Boo Boo keeps as a pet is an endangered species, and so Jellystone must be federally protected. You know what else is an endangered species? Bears that can talk.

I'm dwelling on this aspect of the movie because all of its other aspects aren't any fun to talk about. Three writers are credited. Among them, they came up with dialogue such as this, with regard to Boo Boo's flatulence: "For a little bear, he sure makes a big stink!"

They also conceived this moment, when Yogi tells Ranger Smith how to woo Rachel: "Urinate on her to mark her as your territory."

There is also the part where Rachel used tree bark as a postcard, and for ink used "bird poop and spit."

I may have neglected to mention that there is a scene where Yogi and Boo Boo dance to "Baby Got Back." Yes, reviewing what I have written so far, I find that I have indeed neglected to mention that. Please consider this a rectification of that oversight.

Late in the film, Ranger Smith and Rachel's budding romance has apparently suffered a setback. He has "lost the girl" and must reconcile. I use the word "apparently" because the scene in which this break-up takes place is not in the movie. One minute things are fine, the next minute Ranger Smith is sad because Rachel has left him. Bears dancing to "Baby Got Back," sure, we have time for that. But a scene that actually relates to the story, sorry, no, cutting-room floor.

The director, Eric Brevig ('Journey to the Center of the Earth'), probably did everything he could with the simple-minded screenplay, the dumb jokes, and the general tedium. Studio heads probably instructed him to overdo the 3D gimmicks, too. Who knows, maybe they even told him to prevent Anna Faris from being funny, which I wouldn't have thought was possible. In a way, though, the film is faithful to the old cartoons, in that it's grating and tiresome and not suitable for anyone over the age of 4. The animation is better, though.

'The Tourist' Review: Jolie and Depp Don't Travel Well Together

Eric D. Snider — 2010-12-10T09:00:00+00:00

Even if we accept that Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp are incredibly charismatic Tinseltown luminaries of the highest possible wattage, that doesn't guarantee they'll be any good together -- especially if you just throw them into something generic and assume they'll carry it by the sheer strength of their combined screen presence. That's arrogant, that's what that is. Maybe a little lazy, too. What, we're supposed to love something as pale, weak, and one-dimensional as 'The Tourist' just because it happens to feature two of the biggest movie stars in the world? No! We will not do this! We are better than that, movie.

German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, whose debut feature, 'The Lives of Others,' won the Oscar a few years ago, took the reins on this big-time showbiz project after scheduling and other difficulties bumped some other directors (and actors) out of it. Let us not hold it against him. The Academy Award opened a lot of doors for the director, and who wouldn't jump at the chance to direct Depp and Jolie in a faux-Hitchcockian you've-got-the-wrong-guy European adventure, no matter how unremarkable the screenplay was? Turning down a job like that is for people who've already made a dozen Hollywood films, or people who are dead inside, neither of which describes Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.

I urge you to say his name aloud. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. Did you do it? There, you just had more fun than you would if you watched 'The Tourist.'

Based on a 2005 French film called 'Anthony Zimmer,' this is a story about how beautiful Angelina Jolie is. The bulk of the film is devoted to shots of her walking around seductively, often in slow-motion, looking glamorous and ravishing while all male humans in her vicinity gape. She plays Elise, an Englishwoman in Paris who's being tailed by the police because her lover, one Alexander Pearce, is a master thief whose face has never been seen. The cops, led by Scotland Yard's Inspector Acheson (Paul Bettany), hope that she will lead them to Pearce. So does Reginald Shaw (Steven Berkoff), a ruthless billionaire from whom Pearce stole a rather sizable amount of money.

This leads to Venice, where most of the movie is set. Here an ordinary American tourist, Frank Tupelo (Johnny Depp), is mistaken for Alexander Pearce -- at least in part because Elise has let the police (who she knows are following her) think that's who he is. He's a decoy to distract the authorities while she rendezvouses with the real Alexander. But Frank, poor schmuck, baffled by the attention paid him by this beautiful stranger, starts to fall in love. You may well imagine the lighthearted chasing and abducting and explaining that ensues.

There are questions. Why does Elise, after having used Frank for her purposes, continue to care what happens to him? Why does Frank, who traveled to Italy on purpose and with some forethought, keep speaking Spanish? (The practical answer is that the screenwriters thought this would be a funny running gag. The only answer within the world of the movie, however, would have to be that Frank is impossibly dim.) Why were Elise and Alexander ever separated, and why can't they communicate by normal means? Some of these puzzles are eventually answered; some are not. The story's final twists, being completely nonsensical, raise even more questions.

Johnny Depp is simply miscast. The whole point of Frank is that he's an average, ordinary guy -- the one thing Johnny Depp is not good at playing. Misfits, oddballs, kooks, nuts, drunken pirates, tea-party-attending hat enthusiasts, sure. Regular guys, no. We have Jolie playing to her strengths (enigmatic beauty, vaguely sensual dialogue, some light gunplay) while Depp must play against his. It is a bad idea.

At no point did I ever buy that these two characters had any romantic feelings for one another. This is crucial, given that the film is supposed to be a romance. They spend too much time dealing in untruths and hidden motives to establish a believable connection. The action is not thrilling, the jokes are average at best, the dialogue has no zing. There are mediocre films that are elevated by their likable stars, but this isn't one of them.

The Weekly Trailer Awards: Primates, Mechanics & Angst

Eric D. Snider — 2010-12-03T14:50:00+00:00

The Weekly Trailer Awards is a column celebrating the finest achievements in trailerdom. It runs every Friday.

Best Idea for a Mission That Is Doomed for Failure: 'Source Code' (in theaters April 1). Jake Gyllenhaal plays a soldier who is somehow zapped into another man's consciousness during the last eight minutes of that man's life. That man's girlfriend is Michelle Monaghan. The soldier knows they only have eight minutes to live. He's supposed to find out who's responsible for killing them. But since he only has eight minutes, and since Michelle Monaghan is his girlfriend, he is clearly just going to have sex with Michelle Monaghan. The end.

Strangest Attempt to Get Girls Interested in Becoming Astronauts: 'Mars Needs Moms' (in theaters March 11). We know that science has traditionally been a male-dominated field, and that space travel in particular skews toward men. But telling girls that they should become astronauts when they grow up so that they can go to another planet and be "moms" for aliens? That's just sexist.

Best 'Saturday Night Live' Audition Tape: 'Frankie & Alice' (in theaters Feb. 4). The best sketch-comedy performers are the ones with a lot of versatility. To prove your worth in this department, you could either play a lot of different characters or play one character who has multiple personalities. Halle Berry goes the more efficient route here, showing off her Southern Belle character, her Stripper character, and her Pam Grier character. Please please please let one of her personalities be a racist! (Checks IMDb.) Yes! Comedy gold! (Note: This is not a comedy.)

Best Footage of Monkeys Taking a Bath and Eating the Soap, and Also of Elephants Playing Soccer: 'Born to be Wild' (in theaters April 8). If there's anything cuter than orphan baby animals being rescued, it's orphan baby animals being rescued while Morgan Freeman narrates.

Best Motivation to Learn a Practical Skill in This Tough Economy: 'The Mechanic' (in theaters Jan. 28). Ben Foster is an ordinary young man who is uncertain what to do with his future. Fortunately, Jason Statham is there to teach him how to be a killer-for-hire. Trends fade, technology changes, the economy ebbs and flows. But people who can murder other people in exchange for money will always be in demand.

The Weekly Trailer Awards: Put on Your Lincoln Highness Lantern Battle Hood

Eric D. Snider — 2010-11-28T17:32:00+00:00

While America recovers from its gluttonous day of giving thanks and dozing off in front of football games, we labor intensively to shine a spotlight on the most outstanding achievements in movie advertising. Forthwith, the weekly trailer awards! (Note: Weekly trailer awards are also tasty as reheated leftovers.)

Most Flagrant Product Placement: 'The Lincoln Lawyer' (in theaters March 18). Matthew McConaughey's title character isn't the "Lincoln lawyer" because he's a gangly bearded giant with an unsightly mole and a fondness for emancipation. He's called that because he's a defense attorney who operates out of his car, which is a Lincoln. The trailer makes both the lawyer and the car appear snazzy and sleek, thus helping to distract the viewer from the fact that under no circumstances would you ever hire a lawyer who operated out of a car.

Best Use of Green: 'Your Highness' (in theaters April 8). Kids, I'm not saying marijuana is cool. I'm just saying that this movie looks cool, and that marijuana was apparently a significant factor in its production.

Best Use of Green (Runner-Up): 'The Green Lantern' (in theaters June 17). In times of darkness and turmoil, a bright light can serve as a beacon of hope. If a bright light is not available, a murky green one will suffice. And if you don't have electricity or a flashlight, then sure, a lantern will do. A green lantern is definitely better than nothing! That is the message here.

Best Example of Eliminating Unnecessary Information: 'Battle: Los Angeles' (in theaters March 11). The title of this aliens-attack sci-fi thriller does not appear in the trailer. Nor do the names of its cast members. What does appear? Ample footage of cities being wiped out, people running in terror, and soldiers shooting at unkillable alien forces. All of it is accompanied by a song that appears to have been sung by a robot suffering from clinical depression. Oh, and the date, 03-11-11. That's all you need to know: it's about an alien attack, and it opens March 11. Everything else is irrelevant.

Most Unnecessary Detail: "From the director of 'Twilight,'" in the trailer for 'Red Riding Hood' (in theaters March 11). Really? The movie about a teenage girl who has a forbidden romance in the woods with a deadly supernatural creature who looks exactly like Edward Cullen is from the director of 'Twilight'?? You don't say!

'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' Review: Things Are Getting Dark

Eric D. Snider — 2010-11-17T21:15:00+00:00

Was 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' split into two movies so that the franchise could make more money? Well, yes. But maybe not just for that reason. As it turns out, 'Deathly Hallows: Part 1' is a quietly thrilling and artful chapter in the eight-part series. It doesn't stand on its own, exactly, any more than the first half of a TV two-parter would, but it isn't merely set-up, either. If you think of 'Half-Blood Prince' and the two 'Deathly Hallows' entries as a trilogy that concludes the Potter saga, 'Part 1' is a terrific middle.

You will recall the somber way we left things at the end of 'Half-Blood Prince.' Things aren't any cheerier now. The director, David Yates -- who will have made half of the eight films by the time it's over -- instantly revives the tension by starting on a tight close-up of Bill Nighy as Minister of Magic Rufus Scrimgeour, who is assuring his constituents that everything is fine, just fine. We know it isn't true. And look at Scrimgeour's eyes. Does he even believe it?

There's a palpable sense of gloom as Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and Hermione (Emma Watson) leave their homes, not bound for Hogwarts, but headed to war against Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes). Assisted by the members of the Order of the Phoenix, Harry and Hermione converge on the Weasley home, where there is to be a wedding between Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour. Everyone is aware that this may be the last festive moment for a long time.

And boy, is it ever. The last one, I mean. Harry, Hermione, and Ron (Rupert Grint) are tasked with locating the remaining horcruxes while hiding from the newly fascist Ministry of Magic ("You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide!" the new minister declares), which has been infiltrated by Voldemort's Death Eaters.

Those who have read the book will remember that ah, yes, this is the one with all the camping. A great deal of time passes (for the characters and for us) while the trio waits, desperate for clues, uncertain what to do next. Ron is frustrated that Dumbledore didn't leave more explicit instructions, and disillusioned in Harry's status as their leader. Harry, too, catches glimpses of his old mentor in shards of a broken mirror and pleads with him for help.

While this section of the movie isn't exactly brimming with action, it's impressive how Yates (working from Steve Kloves' screenplay) fills it with internal meaning. 'Half-Blood Prince' began to establish just how serious the stakes were for these characters, and the stark, wintry portions of 'Deathly Hallows: Part 1' expand on it. The familiar warmth of Hogwarts has been stripped away: Harry, Ron, and Hermione are out in the world now. The feeling of cheerful fantasy that pervaded the first couple films has gradually given way to something closer to horror, especially as Voldemort and the insane Bellatrix (Helena Bonham Carter) rev up the torture and mayhem. Stuff just got real, yo.

Mind you, the tone isn't oppressively gloomy. There are light moments here and there: Brendan Gleeson's few scenes as the sentimental Mad-Eye Moody, several interludes with polyjuice potion, anything involving Luna Lovegood (Evanna Lynch). The story of the three deathly hallows is recounted in a delightfully inventive fashion, like something Tim Burton would do. Yates' point isn't to depress us, but to engage us in the seriousness of the situation. At every turn, he reminds us that this series is really about the friendship and love between its characters. There is more hugging (and kissing) than I remember there being in the previous films, along with the sense that such affection is more meaningful now.

We miss the characters who are absent, though I think that's part of the point. Snape (Alan Rickman) and Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) have barely any screen time; Miss McGonagall has none. But we know what's coming -- we know we're headed for a spectacular finish. Those who have read the book will realize that with as much material as 'Part 1' covers, 'Part 2' must be focused almost entirely on battles. Consider our appetite whetted.

Only Two Animated Films Will Lose to 'Toy Story 3,' Not Four

Eric D. Snider — 2010-11-15T22:00:00+00:00

It's official: When 'Toy Story 3' wins the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, there will only be two losers in the category rather than four.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences rules state that if there are between eight and 15 eligible toons, the category has three nominees; if there are 16 or more, five are nominated. (If there are fewer than eight eligible animated features, the category is canceled.) The tallies are in, and 2010 has 15 contenders. So close!

This is the 10th year the category has existed, and three nominees is the norm -- it's only had five nominees twice (last year and 2002). The question is, which two movies will join 'Toy Story 3' in competition for the coveted Let's Avoid Having to Take Cartoons Seriously By Giving Them Their Own "Special" Category award? According to the Academy, these are the 15 movies in the running:

'Alpha and Omega,' 'Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore,' 'Despicable Me,' 'The Dreams of Jinsha,' 'How to Train Your Dragon,' 'Idiots and Angels,' 'The Illusionist,' 'Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole,' 'Megamind,' 'My Dog Tulip,' 'Shrek Forever After,' 'Summer Wars,' 'Tangled,' 'Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue' and 'Toy Story 3.'

Note that 'The Illusionist,' 'Summer Wars,' 'Tangled' and 'The Dreams of Jinsha' haven't actually opened yet; the Academy is assuming they will do so before Dec. 31 as planned. Note also that 'Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore' is live-action but has enough animated elements to qualify. Note also that the Tinker Bell thing was basically a direct-to-DVD project that Disney put in theaters for a week just so it could qualify for this category. Note also that 'Alpha and Omega' is on the list, even though literally not one person ever saw that movie.

As previously implied, 'Toy Story 3' is a sure bet for one of the three nominations. (And yes, a movie nominated in this category can also be nominated for Best Picture, like 'Up' was last year.) 'How to Train Your Dragon' was hugely successful with critics and audiences and seems a likely candidate for one of the other two spots. And the third? 'The Illusionist' is by Sylvain Chomet, the director of 'Triplets of Belleville' AND is based on the work of beloved French whimsy-maker Jacques Tati. If that isn't Oscar street cred, I don't know what is.

Then again, we mustn't rule out the lesser-known but respectable entries. 'Persepolis' and 'The Secret of Kells' came out of nowhere to get nominations in recent years; could the indie drama 'My Dog Tulip' or Bill Plympton's 'Idiots and Angels' surprise everyone this year?

Eh, it doesn't matter. 'Toy Story 3' is going to win. The major philosophical question is this: Does the Best Animated Feature category ensure that no cartoon will ever win Best Picture, since voters aren't likely to reward the same film twice? Or does the category draw attention to movies that would otherwise be ignored? Also, if 'Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore' is an "animated" film, why wasn't 'Avatar'?

Nominate Your Favorite Animated Film
Alpha and Omega	6 (0.9%)
Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore	4 (0.6%)
Despicable Me	18 (2.7%)
The Dreams of Jinsha	1 (0.2%)
How to Train Your Dragon	158 (24.0%)
Idiots and Angels	4 (0.6%)
The Illusionist	9 (1.4%)
Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole	15 (2.3%)
Megamind	14 (2.1%)
My Dog Tulip	4 (0.6%)
Shrek Forever After	3 (0.5%)
Summer Wars	29 (4.4%)
Tangled	21 (3.2%)
Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue	2 (0.3%)
Toy Story 3	371 (56.3%)

The Weekly Trailer Awards: 'Focker,' 'Hall Pass,' 'Zookeeper,' Sandler Crotch

Eric D. Snider — 2010-11-14T18:20:00+00:00

There are too many noteworthy moments in too many trailers for the average mortal to keep track of them all. That's why we have the Weekly Trailer Awards, spotlighting the very best in 150-second film advertising! Grab your popcorn and bourbon and enjoy!

Best Use of Subtle Humor: 'Little Fockers' (in theaters Dec. 22). This is the third film in the series, but 'Little Fockers' admirably avoids drawing attention to its central joke, which is that the main character's last name is "Focker." Do you get it? Because "Focker" is very, very close to "f***er," which is a swear word that we don't say here. "Focker," though, that's fine. Focker, focker, focker, focker, focker. No asterisks necessary. They say it a lot in the trailer, too, wedging it into illogical phrases like "the godfocker" and "give me a focker sandwich." Focker, focker, focker. No doubt the film will be rated PG-13, and it opens at Christmas, fun for the whole family, etc. Also, if you pay very close attention to the trailer, you might notice a clever and subversive gag wherein Ben Stiller injects a needle into Robert De Niro's erect penis in front of a child. Meanwhile, Woody Allen's latest is rated R because it says the actual F-word twice. The MPAA is a bunch of fockers.

Fastest Change of Opinion: 'Hall Pass' (in theaters Feb. 25). Guys, you know how sometimes you're married to an attractive and loving woman, but you wish you could have indiscriminate sex with other ladies, and so your wife gives you permission to do whatever you want for a week with no consequences? We've all been there, and it always works out great. 'Hall Pass' made our head hurt until we saw it was written and directed by the Farrelly brothers. Now we're thinking there's a chance it won't be terrible. Who knew the Farrellys had the opposite effect of Shyamalan?

Most Terrifying Use of a Giant-Mouthed Animal: the lion in 'Zookeeper' (in theaters July 8). You thought we were going to make a joke about the "giant-mouthed animal" being Kevin James instead of the lion, didn't you? That's offensive. In all seriousness, we're glad someone is finally addressing the important issue of wise-cracking animals who frighten their human masters.

Best Use of Adam Sandler's Groin: being hit with a sturdy little boy's head in 'Just Go With It' (in theaters Feb. 11). Guys, you know how sometimes you pretend to be married in order to have one-night stands with women who are turned on by adultery, but then you meet a woman you want to date seriously but she won't because she thinks you're married, and so you get your platonic friend to pretend to be your ex-wife in order to fool the girl you like into thinking you're newly divorced so that your entire relationship can built on a foundation of lies and deception? And then a little boy smashes his head into your crotch? Adam Sandler reenacts this timeless story.

The Weekly Trailer Awards: Gulliver's Sucker Yogi Rabbit Mommas

Eric D. Snider — 2010-11-06T21:13:00+00:00

A lot of trailers really put forth some solid effort this week, so nobody should feel bad for going home with a trophy. These are the winners of the arbitrary and capricious Weekly Trailer Awards, which are voted on by me and given out by me in a special ceremony every Friday attended by me. And now, on with the show!

Most Logical Use of a Robot: 'Gulliver's Travels' (in theaters Dec. 22). To his dying day, Jonathan Swift regretted not including in his 1726 novel a Transformer who gives Gulliver a wedgie. His version was tragically lacking in iPhone product placement, too, which the author immediately recognized. Now, at last, Swift's vision will be complete, and his tormented soul can stop haunting Jack Black's house.

Most Inspiring Trailer: 'Sucker Punch' (in theaters March 25). A hot chick is locked in a hot-chicks-only mental hospital, with no hope of escape. But then she realizes all she needs to break free is her imagination! Her imagination gets very graphic. Somehow there's a dragon, too. This is all very good news for people who have spent their lives wrapped up in role-playing games. Turns out you weren't wasting your time like everyone said. You were practicing for if you're ever wrongfully imprisoned in an asylum.

Most Unsubstantiated Assertion: 'Yogi Bear' (in theaters Dec. 17), in which the title character avers that he is "smarter than the average bear." Even if we take for granted that being capable of human speech makes Yogi "smarter" than most of his contemporaries, that still doesn't necessarily put him ahead of Boo-Boo, or any other bears who happen to speak English. And it may well be that bears who are lacking in language skills are perfectly intelligent otherwise -- even more so than Yogi, perhaps, whose preference for human food over his natural diet is unhealthy at best, deeply ill-advised and self-destructive at worst. No, I do not think we can declare with any certainty that Yogi is "smarter than the average bear," not until educators have devised some sort of standardized test. (Also: Justin Timberlake? Really?)

Least Entertaining Trailer: 'Rabbit Hole' (in theaters Dec. 17). Wow, this comedy about a married couple coping with grief after the death of their young son does not look funny at all. I hate to see what the video game looks like.

Best Fake Trailer: 'Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son.' This parody of formulaic Hollywood crap is hilariously dead-on. A guy dresses up like an obese woman and goes undercover at a sorority, where there is ample opportunity for double entendre and jokes about crushed genitalia (two jokes in one trailer!). They went all out on this fake preview for the fake movie, going so far as to get Martin Lawrence to participate. So funny. Just be glad this isn't a real trailer for a real movie!

'For Colored Girls' Review: All the Trite Cliches of the Rainbow

Eric D. Snider — 2010-11-06T09:03:00+00:00

For some people, learning that Tyler Perry was going to write and direct the movie version of 'For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf' must have been like finding out Garry Marshall was going to film 'Death of a Salesman.' Ntozake Shange's 1975 theatrical piece was an acclaimed work of prose poetry that examined what it means to be a black woman. Tyler Perry makes hammy melodramas that turn the African-American experience into cliches and platitudes. Finesse would be required to convert the abstract 'For Colored Girls' into something cinematic. There was some fear that Tyler Perry would ... you know ... Tyler Perry it up.

I take no pleasure in reporting that those fears were justified. Tyler Perry has Tyler Perried the hell out of this thing. Shange's collection of poetic monologues chronicles all manner of traumas, from everyday things like broken relationships and infidelities to rape, domestic violence, and abortion. On the stage or the page, these things are recounted with mournful beauty. The movie, going by the shorter (but still awkward) title 'For Colored Girls,' must flesh out the ideas into actual scenes -- supply the characters who were previously only mentioned, give those characters dialogue, make the abstract concrete -- and in the process cheapens them. Now it's just a junky soap opera.

Or at least that's the effect of Perry's touch. To be fair, even a really talented writer and director might have found it impossible to make this material work on the big screen. But Perry doesn't do himself any favors by amping up the melodrama and hysterics. For example, an incredibly shocking event that comes at the very end of the play -- and even then is only described as having already happened, not depicted before our eyes -- has been moved to the middle of the movie and is acted out in detail, for maximum effect. What was a harrowing tragedy in the play is a manipulative gimmick in the movie.

Perry's version is set largely in a rundown Harlem apartment building. In one unit is Tangie (Thandie Newton), a bartender and freelance whore whose little sister, Nyla (Tessa Thompson), is starting to follow in her wanton footsteps. Across the hall lives Crystal (Kimberly Elise), whose alcoholic veteran boyfriend, Beau (Michael Ealy), beats on her and their two young children. Kelly (Kerry Washington) is a social worker who checks on Crystal's kids. Crystal works as an assistant for Jo (Janet Jackson), a mega-rich fashion-magazine editor with nothing but disdain for poor people. Juanita (Loretta Devine) is a nurse who runs a non-profit organization helping inner-city women. Tangie and Nyla's mother, Alice (Whoopi Goldberg), is a hellfire-and-brimstone religious fanatic. Yasmine (Anika Noni Rose) teaches dance to Nyla and other teenage girls. Gilda (Phylicia Rashad) manages the apartment building and tries to keep an eye on her tenants.

These characters cross each other's paths in that 'Crash,' rich-tapestry-of-life sort of way. While it's occasionally contrived, it's not a bad device for turning the unnamed archetypes of the play into actual characters. You can still have them give their monologues, even if parts of those speeches are now delivered to other characters while having dinner or walking down the street rather than simply addressed to the audience.

In fact, the film works rather well when the actresses are sticking to Shange's original text. It doesn't sound like dialogue; it sounds like highly theatrical and evocative poetry. The language sizzles with raw emotion and pain. Depending on the caliber of the performance -- and they range from the fiery Loretta Devine to the dull Janet Jackson -- some of these moments are genuinely effective.

The problem, to put it bluntly, is everything else. The mortar that Perry has used to assemble the bricks of Shange's play is the cheapest, crappiest material available. The plot points that fill in the details are standard Lifetime Movie Channel fare: secretly gay husbands, nice guys who turn out to be rapists, infertility caused by STDs, back-alley abortions administered by a chain-smoking crone who sterilizes her instruments in bourbon, etc. Sometimes this banality can be saved by the matriarchal strength of Phylicia Rashad, or by Kimberly Elise's unadorned sincerity. Usually, though, it's just laughably trite. And I do mean laughably. When a rape victim sees her attacker dead in a morgue and her response is to slap his dead face as if challenging him to a duel, what reaction other than laughter can we possibly be expected to have?

Underneath Tyler Perry's incompetence, buried but still visible, are the ideas that have made so many women respond so strongly to this play for 35 years. The idea that to love a man, especially sexually, means giving up part of yourself, relinquishing some of your power. The idea that to be a woman is difficult enough without having to contend with other women tearing you apart. But Perry's version winds up emphasizing the same theme as all of his other films: men are dangerous and troublesome, and women would do well to steer clear of them. I don't think that's what Ntozake Shange intended for us to get out of her work -- but I'd guess there's a lot of stuff in this corpse-slapping, date-raping, incest-implying, child-defenestrating debacle that Ntozake Shange didn't intend.

'Saw 3D' Review: If You've Seen 6 'Saws,' You've Seen the 7th

Eric D. Snider — 2010-10-29T03:30:00+00:00

The people responsible for the 'Saw' franchise have said that the seventh entry, 'Saw 3D,' will be the last one. If that's true -- and there's no reason to believe it is -- then it's a fitting conclusion. Part 7 takes us back to the beginning in many ways, wrapping up some loose ends and reminding us of how goofy the whole thing has become. Even better, you get to pay extra for your ticket and wear dark glasses while you watch it!

You will recall that Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) -- the cancer-ridden sociopath with the God complex who tortures people until they appreciate life again -- died, like, four movies ago. He lives on through the magic of flashbacks, though, and also thanks to the tireless efforts of a police detective named Hoffman (Costas Mandylor), who continues to find Jigsaw-worthy victims in need of a life lesson. Unmentioned but surely an integral part of Jigsaw's operation are the teams of engineers who design and build all of his devices, doing so in secret and in complete defiance of zoning laws and safety codes.

In part 7, 'Saw 3D,' the final chapter, in 3D, Hoffman is still up to his (that is to say Jigsaw's) old tricks, but now his fellow cops are on to him. Jigsaw's widow, Jill (Betsy Russell), has told a detective named Gibson (Chad Donella) what she knows, which is plenty. In exchange for this, Hoffman will probably try to kill her. This is fair.

Meanwhile, Hoffman teaches valuable lessons to one Bobby Dagen (Sean Patrick Flanery), an ordinary man who has gotten rich writing a book about his experience as a Jigsaw survivor. Bobby has become an inspiration guru to many, in particular his fellow survivors, who meet in support groups to talk about their run-ins with Jigsaw. Many of them say that they genuinely felt reborn after they escaped their traps -- that Jigsaw's plan worked, in other words. All hail Jigsaw! For he is all-knowing and mighty to save!

If you've seen the last few films, you know the routine. Bobby has to get through a series of traps in which he or one of his loved ones could be killed or maimed, learning a new valuable life lesson with each step. He has only 60 minutes in which to accomplish all of this and save his wife (Gina Holden); naturally, having established that tight deadline, the movie shows many hours' worth of police work happening within that time.

Jigsaw's signature fiendish traps became the focus of the franchise at some point -- you can rewatch the first 'Saw' and see how NOT the focus they were -- and that means the films get less titillating as the traps get less inventive. By now director Kevin Greutert and writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan are just going through the motions, only this time they try to compensate for a lack of ingenuity by having the guts splatter in three dimensions. A little of this goes a long way. 'Saw 3D' contains a lot of it.

The other element of the series that the hardcore fans enjoy, I think, is the bizarre soap opera that it has become. And it really is a soap opera: The backstories for Jigsaw, Hoffman, and others have become elaborate, people believed to be dead keep coming back, the acting tends to be hammy and melodramatic, and the sets look cheap. Is that a selling point? Part 7 is more of the same, if that helps.

But of course most of the life has gone out of it, and this one culminates in Hoffman stalking around like Jason Voorhees, only a Jason Voorhees who talks and isn't scary. When was the last time we felt any thrills or suspense in one of these? If we ever thought there was any profundity to Jigsaw's philosophy, surely we long ago realized it was B.S. It seems like we're watching now just because, well, we've watched this much, so we might as well finish. What reward is there for us? We can say we watched all seven of them. Jigsaw would be proud.

EXCLUSIVE: Script Pages from the 'Alien' Prequel Gay Sex Scene!

Eric D. Snider — 2010-10-27T17:15:00+00:00

Last week word got around that an Australian website had seen the script for Ridley Scott's 'Alien' prequel, and that it included a rather peculiar scene. Two human slaves, Fin and Karik, are terraforming under the command of some aliens called Growers. The Growers want their slaves to breed, so they use mind control to make them have sex. The problem is that Fin and Karik are both male. Seems the Growers are a single-gender species, so they don't know how human reproduction works.

We didn't know if these rumors about the script were true. All we knew was that Fox asked the site that first published them, What's Playing, to take them down. (Here's a screenshot of the original post, though, which is indeed real.) In honor of this story -- and the way everyone (including the source site) went about covering it and exploiting it, we present our satire of the entire situation below in the form of script pages from the scene in question.

(FIN and KARIK, two brawny, handsome men in their twenties, are plowing a field under the sultry alien sun.)

FIN: Sure is hot out today on this space farm, doing this terraforming.
KARIK: I'll say.
FIN: You mind if I take off my shirt?
KARIK: Not at all. In fact, I think I'll do the same.

(They take off their shirts.)

FIN: Say, have you been working out, Karik?
KARIK: Me? Nah. Well, maybe a little.
FIN: You're ripped, bro!
KARIK: Haha, thanks! You're looking pretty fit yourself, dude!

(They continue working for a moment.)

FIN: (stretching) Man, I am sore from all this back-breaking slave labor under the harsh reign of our alien overlords.
KARIK: I hear ya, dude.
FIN: My shoulders are KILLING me!
KARIK: Hey, why don't we take a break for a few minutes and I'll give you a massage?
FIN: Yeah? You wouldn't mind?
KARIK: No way, bro. I'll do you, then you can do me.
FIN: Sweet, dude!

**[A few pages of the script are missing here.]**

(As if snapping out of a trance)

KARIK: WHOA!
FIN: HEY!
KARIK: What the--?
FIN: What just happened?!
KARIK: What was that all about??
FIN: Did we just--?
KARIK: Was my--?
FIN: Did you put your--?
KARIK: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Not cool, bro. Not cool.
FIN: What are you talking about? You started it!
KARIK: Me?!
FIN: Well, I'm sure as hell not--
KARIK: Neither am I!
FIN: Not that there's--
KARIK: --anything wrong with that!
FIN: Right!
KARIK: But I'm not!
FIN: Me either!
KARIK: Then what were you doing putting your--
FIN: I don't know! Why did you have your--
KARIK: It's not like I wanted my--
FIN: You could have fooled me!
KARIK: Oh, you were loving it!
FIN: So were you!

(A beat.)

KARIK: Well, in the moment, yes.
FIN: Sure, me too, in the moment.
KARIK: I mean, right then, AS it was happening.
FIN: Yeah, totally.
KARIK: I mean, who wouldn't?
FIN: Yeah.
KARIK: But NOW...
FIN: Ugh, disgusting.
KARIK: Why did we...?
FIN: I don't know...

(ALIEN slavemaster comes galloping up on a space-horse.)

ALIEN: Human slaves! I have come to inquire as to the success of your breeding session.
FIN: Our what?
ALIEN: We must take tests to ensure that the reproduction process has been initiated.
KARIK: Reproduction? What is this guy talking about?
FIN: This alien is trippin'.
ALIEN: You have completed the reproductive act, is this correct?
KARIK: What, were you watching?
ALIEN: Naturally. We must monitor our slaves at all times to ensure that they breed successfully.

(FIN and KARIK look at each other.)

FIN: Uh, listen, buddy, if you somehow MADE us do that--
KARIK: With that weird mind-control crap of yours--
FIN: When we finally rise up in rebellion and cast off the chains of our oppression, I will personally beat the s*** out of you.
ALIEN: Please do not become hostile! Aggravated emotions may harm your unborn offspring!
KARIK: I don't have any unborn offspring!
ALIEN: Not you, of course. The other one.
FIN: I don't have any either! Wait, why do you assume it would be me?
KARIK: Were you ... hoping that we would ... make a baby?
ALIEN: Create new human offspring, yes.
FIN: You stupid, stupid aliens.
KARIK: That isn't how it works!
ALIEN: If you failed to perform the act properly, you may attempt it again.
FIN: WE PERFORMED THE ACT PROPERLY.
KARIK: Damn right we did.
FIN: But we're both dudes. Two dudes can't make a baby.
ALIEN: Why not?
FIN: Because -- seriously? -- because you have to have a man and a woman!
KARIK: One of each!
ALIEN: ... I see.
KARIK: Did you seriously not know that?
FIN: I thought you were some kind of highly evolved race!
ALIEN: Our data on your race is incomplete.
KARIK: Obviously!
ALIEN: You're quite certain...?
FIN: YES.
ALIEN: Giving it another try wouldn't help?
KALIK: NO.
ALIEN: ... Then I take my leave of you. GET BACK TO WORK, SLAVES!!

(ALIEN gallops off.)

FIN: So.
KALIK: There you go.
FIN: That explains it.
KALIK: Wasn't our fault.
FIN: Right. No harm, no foul.
KALIK: Are we cool?
FIN: Yeah, bro. we're cool.
KALIK: Cool.

(They return to their labors.)

FIN: My shoulders are still really killing me, though.

Note: The above "script pages" are not real, and are not from the upcoming 'Alien' prequel. Yes, we made them up.

New Trailers This Week: The King's Restless Biutiful Scream 4 Cars 2

Eric D. Snider — 2010-10-22T21:02:00+00:00

Welcome to the weekly trailer awards, where we look at the new movie previews and tell you what's the Most, the Best, the Worst, and so forth. Please remember that if you do not watch all the new movie trailers as soon as they are released, you make Hollywood sad.

Best Motivation to Overcome One's Weaknesses: because Hitler is better at it than you are. In 'The King's Speech' (in theaters Nov. 26), the king of England has a terrible stammer, but he sees that Hitler is a pretty good speaker -- say what you will about him, the guy could dazzle a crowd -- and thinks, "Well, shoot, if Hitler can talk without stuttering...." And the rest is history. That's how a speech therapist defeated the Nazis.

Most Offensive Trailer for People Who Crash Funerals and Have Imaginary Friends: 'Restless' (in theaters Jan. 28). The girl from 'Alice in Wonderland' meets Dennis Hopper's son, an emo guy who goes to strangers' funerals for fun and communicates regularly with a Japanese ghost. For those of us who really do crash funerals and have imaginary friends, the film's stereotyped portrayal of our kind is offensive, and we will be boycotting.

Worst Spelling and Theology: 'Biutiful' (in theaters Dec. 29). The trailer doesn't give us much to go on, but Javier Bardem appears to have terminal something-or-other, and he appears not to know how to spell the word "beautiful." More alarming, however, is the woman (his mother?) who tells him he needs to prepare for death because "you and I know the dead suffer if they leave debts behind." Oh, you and I know this, do we? This is in some book of scripture somewhere? "Yea, verily, he who dieth while a balance yet remaineth upon his Capital One card, the same shall be punished in hell; yea, tormented by collection agencies, which shall call him both day and night unto eternity."

Best Use of Identical-Looking Young Women: 'Scream 4' (in theaters April 15). In the 90-second trailer, I count six different brunettes and five different blondes, I think. Apart from Courteney Cox and what's-her-name who plays Sidney and Veronica Mars and the cheerleader from 'Heroes,' it's hard to identify any specific people. It's possible the film only has those four actresses, each playing multiple roles, plus David Arquette and a bewigged Rory Culkin.

Most Enthusiastic Attempt to Make Us Not Hate Larry The Cable Guy: 'Cars 2' (in theaters June 24). Pixar is taunting us now. They know they can basically do no wrong, and that even a mediocre-by-Pixar-standards film like 'Cars' is still better than a lot of other movies. So they take an actor universally hated by all sentient moviegoers worldwide, Larry The Cable Guy, and give him a major role. Then, in the teaser for 'Cars 2,' he's front and center. 'Cars 2' looks like it could be all ABOUT Larry The Cable Guy. And Pixar knows we'll see it anyway! I'm telling you, they're evil geniuses over there.

'RED,' As Written by David Mamet

Eric D. Snider — 2010-10-20T09:52:00+00:00

One of the supporting roles in 'RED' is played by Rebecca Pidgeon, who is married to David Mamet and primarily appears only in movies written and/or directed by him. When you see Rebecca Pidgeon in a film, you think David Mamet must be involved. As it happens, that's not the case with 'RED.' But it was enough of an excuse for us to imagine what 'RED' would have been like if it had been written by David Mamet.

David Mamet's 'RED'

FRANK MOSES (Bruce Willis): F***ers shot up my house.
JOE MATHESON (Morgan Freeman): Your house?
FRANK: My house, the f***ers shot it up.
JOE: Those f***ers.
FRANK: Sons of b******.
JOE: Who were these f***ers?
FRAN : Dunno. The Company, maybe. Black ops? The hell do I know?
JOE: Did you get--
FRANK: Here, I got--
JOE: --I'm gonna need--
FRANK: --a manila envelope full of their fingers.
JO : --Yeah. Good.
FRANK: Figured you'd want that.
JOE: Sure I do.
FRANK: Run their prints and such like.
JOE : Run those f***ers' prints, see who they are.
FRAN : See who those f***ers are. The f***ers.
JOE: You get shot?
FRANK: Did I get shot?
JOE: Yeah, you get shot?
FRANK: The hell kind of a question is that? Did I get shot?
JO : Calm down, man, it's just a question.
FRANK: I know it's a question. Your voice went up at the end of it, like a question.
JO : OK.
FRAN : Plus I just identified it as a question when I said, 'The hell kind of a question is that?,' remember?
JOE: Calm down, man.
FRANK: No, I didn't get f*****' shot. Do I look like I got f*****' shot?
JOE: No.
FRANK: No, what?
JOE: No, you don't look like you got f*****' shot.
FRANK: That's right, a**hole.
JOE : Shoot me in the f*****' head for showing concern about my friend!
FRANK: Yeah, I need your concern like I need a f*****' second mortgage on my shot-up-by-f***ers house!

FRANK MOSES: Relax, it's me. Frank.
SARAH ROSS (Mary-Louise Parker): Frank?
FRANK: From the phone.
SARAH: Frank from the phone?
FRANK: Frank from the phone.
SARAH: In my apartment?
FRANK: Frank from the phone, now Frank in your apartment.
SARAH : Well, Frank from the phone, now Frank in my apartment, what the f*** are you doing in my apartment?
FRANK : There's some trouble.
SARAH : Oh, some trouble, is there?
FRANK : Yeah. Some trouble. Yeah.
SARAH : Damn right there's some trouble, you son of a b****.
FRANK : You gotta trust me.
SARAH : I don't "gotta" do anything, Frank from the phone, you son of a b****. All I "gotta" do is call the police, you son of a b****.
FRANK : Some f***ers are trying to kill me, and they'll be after you too.
SARAH : Some f***ers?
FRANK : Yeah.
SARAH : Trying to kill you, and now trying to kill me?
FRANK : Yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah.
SARAH : What is this, some kinda secret-agent super-spy bull****?
FRANK : It's not bull****.
SARAH : I know bull**** when I smell it, and you reek of it, you son of a b****.
FRANK : You gotta trust me.
SARAH : Again with you gotta trust me? You are ten pounds of bull**** in a five-pound bag, my friend.

* * * *

FRANK MOSES: Whoa, whoa! Marvin, don't shoot!
MARVIN BOGGS (John Malkovich): How the--
FRANK : S***! You--
MARVIN : --f*** did you find me--
FRANK : --scared the s*** out of me!
MARVIN : --you son of a f***?!
FRANK : S***!
MARVIN : CIA, wasn't it? They sent you?
FRANK : Nah, man.
MARVIN : F***ers watch me day and night.
FRANK : Nah, man.
MARVIN : Then what are you doing here? Just missed being shot at?
FRANK : We need your help, man. CIA's after us.
MARVIN : Who's this with you?
SARAH : Hello, psycho.
MARVIN : What's your name?
SARAH : What's my name? F*** you, that's my name.
MARVIN : Well, Miss F***-You-That's-My-Name, I hope you're not too attached to this son of a f***, because if the CIA wants him dead, the CIA will most assuredly make him most assuredly dead.
SARAH ROSS: I'll keep that in mind.
MARVIN : Most assuredly.
FRANK : Come on, Marvin. That's why we need your help.
MARVIN : I look like a guy who can help you? Camouflaged up the ying-yang, residing in the swamps of Florida like some LSD-addled alli-f***ing-gator? This is who you want on your side?
FRANK : It's either you or that old broad. What's her name? Victoria.
MARVIN : Old broad Victoria has it goin' on.

New Trailers This Week: Barney's Good Tiny Wrecked Tempest

Eric D. Snider — 2010-10-15T21:02:00+00:00

Hey! You! We heard you left the Internet for a few minutes, so we took the liberty of compiling the most important trailer-related info that you might have missed. In the future, please don't leave the Internet without a supervisor's approval. Thanks.

Best Attempt to Trick People Into Watching Shakespeare: 'The Tempest' (in theaters Dec. 10).
The trailer is loaded with things that young moviegoers like: sorcery, Russell Brand, attractive teenagers, Doc Ock from 'Spider-Man 2,' and Helen Mirren. There are even dogs made out of fire. That's right, flame-based canines! What is this? you think. David Lynch's Harry Potter?? But no -- it's 'The Tempest,' based on a play by notorious audience-borer William Shakespeare. Doh! They really had you going there for a minute. But you didn't read it in high school, and you're certainly not going to pay ten bucks to see it now, even if it does look awesome. NICE TRY, JULIE TAYMOR!

Best Attempt to Trick People Into Thinking Ryan Gosling Is Normal: 'All Good Things' (in theaters Dec. 3).
The Oscar-nominated actor and erstwhile Mouseketeer could have gone the standard route and specialized in Handsome Leading Man roles. Instead, Gosling has mostly played weirdos, drug addicts, and Jewish neo-Nazis. And good for him! 'All Good Things' appears to be a departure, with Gosling playing a wealthy real-estate heir who marries Kirsten Dunst, which is a relative ordinary thing to do. By the end of the trailer we realize it's not a departure, though, as Gosling's character is psychotic or something, with Gosling's trademark unfashionable hairstyle and eyeglasses used to ugly him up.

Best 150-Second Summary of an Independent Film Festival: 'Tiny Furniture' (in theaters Nov. 12).
Film festivals last for days, even weeks, and showcase hundreds of movies from around the globe. How could you possibly make ONE trailer that encapsulates ALL of them?! ... Oh. Yep. Well played, 'Tiny Furniture.' (Note: Despite our near-constant exposure over the last decade to twee indie comedies about directionless twentysomethings, this trailer made us laugh. Dammit.)

Best Use of a Trailer to Tell a Movie's Entire Story: 'Wrecked' (TBA 2011)
... in which Adrien Brody wakes up in a wrecked car, badly injured, with no memory of who he is or how the accident happened or who his dead passenger is. Intriguing! Oh, then the radio tells him he's a bank robber who probably killed a guy yesterday, the end. Eh, we'll probably still watch it anyway, just to see Adrien Brody grimace in pain for two hours, which is pretty much how he won that Oscar for 'The Pianist.'

Most Convincing Use of Paul Giamatti: 'Barney's Version' (TBA 2011)
... in which Giamatti plays a man who is irresistible to at least three different women, including Rachelle Lefevre, Rosamund Pike, and Minnie Driver. We wonder if Paul Giamatti ever gets tired of being typecast as a sexy ladies' man, the guy who always gets the girl, the guy who has so many women in love with him that he doesn't know which one to impregnate first. We suspect that just once Paul Giamatti would like to play an ordinary schlub -- the loser best friend, or the neurotic worrier, or the abrasive pedant. Ah, but it is not to be. Such are the burdens of being famed Hollywood sex symbol Paul Giamatti.

'Secretariat' Review: Put This One Out to Pasture

Eric D. Snider — 2010-10-08T09:10:00+00:00

Penny Chenery, the genteel Virginia-born owner of the title racehorse in 'Secretariat,' might be the first movie character I've seen who is composed entirely of speeches. She has something stirring and passionate to say for every occasion, even occasions that do not call for stir or passion. Everything's a dramatic moment for her.

"When I went off to college I felt like that colt -- full of promise, full of adventure!" she declares upon seeing a young horse. When she learns that her teenage daughter is putting on a play to protest the Vietnam War, she says, apropos of nothing, "Our political beliefs can change, but our need to do what's right doesn't." This is to remind you that the movie is about Doing What's Right (or at least that it thinks it is), and that she, Penny Chenery, has done what's right. A stranger asks her what time it is and you half-expect her to launch into a discourse on the fleeting nature of time while the music swells on the soundtrack.

'Secretariat' is so intent on being inspiring that it forgets nearly everything else, including story and character. Directed by Randall Wallace ('We Were Soldiers') and written by Mick Rich ('Finding Forrester,' 'The Rookie,' 'Radio'), it recounts the true events of 1972-73, when a horse named Secretariat ran faster than some other horses and thereby won a lot of money for its owners. There's a good chance you already know that Secretariat won the Triple Crown; if you don't, the movie makes it clear early on that he's going to, with characters constantly saying things like, "The Triple Crown? Why, no horse has done that in 25 years!" and "If he doesn't win the Triple Crown, you'll lose the family farm!" You get the idea. The movie makes SURE you get the idea.

The marvelous Diane Lane, looking Betty Draper-esque in a blond wig, plays Penny, who becomes the executrix of her family's horse-breeding operation after her father lapses into senility. Living in Denver with her lawyer husband (Dylan Walsh) and children, Penny takes time to head back to Virginia and sort things out. The stables, badly mismanaged, are losing money. But a new colt has just been born, and the li'l fella is so eager to race that he started walking mere moments after being expelled from the womb!

Penny fires the farm's current trainer, who is impolite and greedy, and hires Lucien Laurin, a flamboyant and mercurial French-Canadian played by John Malkovich. Discouraged by past losses, Lucien has threatened to quit the business and take up golf, but secretly he is passionate about winning again. (Well, he is passionate about training a horse that will win. Lucien himself is not required to race.) The groom, Eddie Sweat (Nelsan Ellis), is sensitive and gentle, beloved by all horses, a giant within the horse community.

The paint-by-numbers screenplay flirts half-heartedly with a number of cliches, never fully committing to any of them. Penny is away from home too much, upsetting her husband and kids; then the crisis passes and everything is apparently OK. Penny's brother, Hollis (Dylan Baker), disagrees vehemently with Penny's decision to leverage the farm against Secretariat's success rather than just selling it; after a while Hollis isn't even in the movie anymore. There is old-boys-clubs sexism against Penny, on account of she's a WOMAN, and who ever heard of a WOMAN owning a racehorse?? -- then all of that just sort of goes away.

Most crucially, it is alleged that Penny is something of a horse whisperer with Secretariat, that they can practically speak to one another because they are so close. But when did that happen? Whatever scenes would have established Penny bonding with the horse didn't make it into the film. She continues to insist that she KNOWS Secretariat can win these races; how she came to be so in tune with her half-ton meal ticket is never demonstrated. It's like this is the template of a generically inspiring movie without any of the details filled in.

The respectable cast, which also includes familiar character actress Margo Martindale as Penny's dad's secretary, does what it can to enliven things, and it's not like the film is terrible. The film isn't anything. That's the problem. It's a weak mediocrity that inspires no strong feelings one way or the other.

Zack Snyder or Darren Aronofsky: Who Would Be a Better 'Superman' Director?

Eric D. Snider — 2010-10-06T17:02:00+00:00

Warner Bros. announced two days ago that its 'Superman' reboot would be directed by Zack Snyder, whose owl cartoon is currently freaking out young audiences in theaters nationwide. But no sooner had the e-ink dried on the Interblogs than another interesting fact emerged: WB originally wanted Darren Aronofsky to handle the reboot, but went to Snyder because they knew he could get it done a lot faster than the meticulous Aronofsky.

This presents us with a fascinating philosophical quandary. Would 'Superman: Man of Steel' be better as directed by Aronofsky or by Snyder? Like most fascinating philosophical quandaries, this one is pointless. The gig is Snyder's, period, and he hasn't made the movie yet, and Aronofsky will never make it at all, so we can't compare them. But pointlessness has never been an obstacle before, so let us proceed with the arguments!

For Aronofsky:

- The possibility that he'd cast Mickey Rourke as Daily Planet editor Perry White.
- The hyper-stylized sequence where Superman injects liquid Kryptonite into his arm, his pupils dilate, and he destroys Metropolis before passing out in an alley.
- His upcoming 'Black Swan' is about dual identities and good vs. evil, and the main character is in tights most of the time.

Against Aronofsky:

- The possibility that he'd cast Mickey Rourke as Superman.
- Superman, Clark Kent, and Kal-El exist in three different time periods; nobody understands what's going on; somehow Rachel Weisz is involved.
- Remember what happens to Jennifer Connelly at the end of 'Requiem for a Dream'? Now picture it with Lois Lane.

For Snyder:

- 'The Owls of Ga'Hoole' shows his facility with heroic flying creatures who do battle against evil. (Little-known fact: Like an owl, Superman also regurgitates the fur and bones of his victims in pellet form.)
- After '300,' a movie about a muscular, flamboyantly dressed bachelor isn't much of a stretch.
- Everyone gets one mediocre superhero movie, and Snyder already made his.

Against Snyder:

- Might be tempted to give Superman CGI abs.
- Running time: 120 minutes. Running time if all the slow-motion scenes are played at regular speed: 75 minutes.
- Would upset purists with his insistence on using fast Lex Luthor instead of traditional slow Lex Luthor.

What do YOU (the person reading this) think? Who would be a better director for 'Superman: Man of Steel'?

Who Would Be a Better Director for the 'Superman' Reboot?
Zack Snyder	284 (57.1%)
Darren Aronofsky	213 (42.9%)

New Trailers This Week: Ninjas, Numbers and 'Gnomeo'

Eric D. Snider — 2010-10-01T21:30:00+00:00

What's fresh and new in the world of two-and-a-half-minute movie advertisements? Nothing, probably! But you never know! So let's take a gander at the trailers that have been weighing heavily on our minds this week and give out some awards -- hey, everyone is a winner.

Best Use of Ninjas: 'The Warrior's Way' (in theaters Dec. 3) -- in which, according to the trailer, a noble warrior refuses to kill a baby and is exiled to the Old West, where he meets up with Geoffrey Rush and many, many ninjas. This trailer also serves as a reminder that someone probably isn't much of an "international superstar" if you have to tell us that he's an "international superstar."

Most Effective Use of Counting: 'I Am Number Four' (in theaters Feb. 18). See, there's this dude narrating what happened, and he says, "There were nine of us who escaped," and then he says what happened to Number One, Number Two and Number Three. And you just know that Number Four is going to be next, and sure enough, he is, and it turns out that the guy talking is Number Four. It's perfect. If he'd been, say, Number Seven, then we'd have gotten bored by the time he rattled off the first six. But four! That's right in the sweet spot. The nine in question are apparently teenage aliens who go to high school, and we're guessing Number Four falls in love with a moody local girl who's friends with an Indian werewolf.

Most Flagrant Refusal to Give Any Clues About the Movie's Story: 'For Colored Girls' (in theaters Nov. 5). We know that Tyler Perry adapted and directed this drama based on the successful stage play 'For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf,' and that the title was shortened to make it slightly harder for people to make fun of it. Thanks to the trailer, we know that the cast includes Janet Jackson, Thandie Newton, Whoopi Goldberg, Anika Noni Rose, Kerry Washington, Mrs. Huxtable and 150 other people. What we do not know is one damn thing about the plot, characters or premise. Also, is it just for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf, or would other people enjoy it too?

Best Use of Corporate Synergy: 'Gnomeo and Juliet' (in theaters Feb. 11) is a shameless ripoff of 'Toy Story' -- but that's OK, because 'Toy Story' came from Pixar and Pixar is owned by Disney and Disney made 'Gnomeo and Juliet.' Plus, the songs in the movie are all Elton John tunes, and Elton John composed music for Disney's 'The Lion King,' so now Elton John belongs to Disney. He lives at Disneyland and plays the piano for company parties. Disney probably didn't even have to tell him they were using his songs for this movie.

Most Thorough Commitment to a Gimmick: 'Saw 3D' (in theaters Oct. 29), the seventh film in the series, claims to be the conclusion to the epic saga about a man who died three movies ago yet somehow continues to set traps. No one believes that this really is the last one, but the trailer is sticking to it, using phrases like "the final cut" and "the last act." Surely this is akin to the stores that are forever having "going out of business sales." The trailer also plays up the 3-D effects and asks the question: "Will you survive until the end?" Well, sure we will. Why wouldn't we? The chainsaws and hatchets aren't actually flying out into the audience; that's just a 3-D illusion. Even if the film really were dangerous or deadly, why would that be a selling point? "Come see this movie and there is a very good chance you will be murdered!" No thank you, movie! We will pass on your offer!

'30 Days of Night: Dark Days' Review: Not As Good as the Original

Eric D. Snider — 2010-09-30T14:32:00+00:00

Horror sequels that skip theaters and go straight to DVD have a bad reputation, and '30 Days of Night: Dark Days' is a good example of why that is. Its predecessor, one of the better thrillers of 2007, made good use of a terrific premise -- vampires descend on an Alaskan town where the sun doesn't rise for an entire month -- and delivered tension, scares, and sufficient gore, all despite the limitation of having Josh Hartnett as its leading man. In contrast, 'Dark Days' is a cheap-looking cheesefest that wastes the few good ideas it has.

Stella Oleson is a survivor from the first film who used to be Melissa George but is Kiele Sanchez now. She has left Alaska and moved to perpetually sunny Los Angeles, where she spends her time trying to spread the word about what happened to the town of Barrow. No one believes her, of course, and the government made sure no evidence escaped. (Small villages being wiped out by vampires rank high on the FBI's "must cover up" list.) Still, Stella gives public lectures that are well attended by people who want to laugh at a crazy lady.

There is significantly less laughter when some vampires show up at one of these speeches, however! That scene contains one of the movie's aforementioned few good ideas. At this point, while the movie isn't exactly dazzling, it's at least innocuous and watchable.

This does not last, as the film devolves into a disappointing formula that would barely merit a two-part episode on any of the current vampire-themed TV shows. Stella is approached by a group of fellow vampire-attack survivors eager to get revenge by destroying the vampire queen, Lilith (an unwittingly campy Mia Kirshner), who is rumored to be in L.A., probably to audition for 'True Blood.' This crew includes Harold Perrineau, Diora Baird, and Rhys Coiro, one of whom will later be involved in a sex scene that is the very definition of the term "obligatory for a straight-to-DVD movie." Stella joins the gang in implementing their anti-vampire agenda.

Also present: an FBI agent (Troy Ruptash) whose desire to become a vampire approaches Bella Swan levels, and Dane (Ben Cotton), a vamp who managed not to lose his soul when he was turned, rendering him useful to the good guys as long as he doesn't have sex with Buffy (or something).

This is the kind of movie where, when someone asks the non-murderous vampire Dane how he feeds, rather than simply saying he gets blood from a blood bank, he silently walks to the refrigerator, pulls out a bag of it, pours himself a glass, and drinks it. Why must vampires be so theatrical? Just answer the stupid question, Dane. (Oh, and FOR SURE he always uses a glass instead of drinking straight from the bag. Way to put on airs just because you have company.)

The film is based on the graphic novel by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith, and adapted for the screen by Niles and director Ben Ketai. I haven't read the 'Dark Days' book, but if it successfully maintained the stylishly eerie tone of its predecessor, then the movie version is not faithful to it. The dialogue is corny, the performances are phoned in. Furthermore, I don't know what kind of budget Ketai had to work with, but the sets look cheap, the gore effects are almost embarrassingly unconvincing, and the film uses what is unquestionably the wateriest fake blood I've ever seen. Gallons of it, too. But it matches the rest of the movie: thin, weak, and a poor substitute for the original.

'Star Wars' Films to Get 3D Re-Release Beginning in 2012

Eric D. Snider — 2010-09-28T22:43:00+00:00

You may recall that many 'Star Wars' fans were unhappy with the prequels, and that as a consequence of the fans' anger, Episodes I, II, and III are only the 7th, 30th, and 12th highest-grossing films of all time, with a combined worldwide gross of just $2.4 billion. Duly chastened by this catastrophic failure, George Lucas announced Tuesday that those prequels, along with the three original films, will be re-released in 3D. This will fix everything, since the main thing people didn't like about the prequels was that watching them didn't require special glasses.

Episode I, 'The Phantom Menace,' will hit theaters in 2012, followed by its prequel brethren and the original trilogy. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the six movies will be released one a year, which means 'Return of the Jedi 3D' will come out in 2017, which will be the 40th anniversary of the original 'Star Wars,' which means that you are very old.

Lucasfilm told Variety that the company is committed to making the 'Star Wars' saga look as good in 3D as it would have if it had actually been shot that way. "It's not going to look like [conversions] we've seen in the past," said John Knoll, the visual effects supervisor for Industrial Light & Magic. I assume he then coughed into his hand and said something like 'Clash of the Titans.'

Knoll also says they're not going to tinker with the special effects, though I wouldn't hold my breath on that one, given Lucas' fondness of tinkering and his uncanny ability to annoy his fans no matter what he does. Even if they don't do anything new to the prequels, it's probably the "special edition" versions of the original trilogy that they'll be converting, not the original ones. Then again, the very idea of 3D-ifying 'Star Wars,' 'The Empire Strikes Back,' and 'Return of the Jedi' is probably offensive to a lot of hardcore fans, so if Lucas is going to desecrate them he might as well use the heretical "special editions" as his starting point.

Lucas has been talking about new ways to make money on his old products -- I'm sorry, new ways to help fans experience the 'Star Wars' saga -- for years; here's a reference from 2005. He's been waiting until there were enough 3D screens to make it worthwhile. After all, what's the point in releasing a 'Star Wars' film on only a few hundred screens? You might as well just throw the movie in the bushes.

What do you think? (I happen to know that George Lucas cares deeply about what you think.) Do you look forward to seeing 'Star Wars' in this new way? Can Lucasfilm and ILM really avoid the post-conversion curse? And will this silence the critics who complained that the prequels lacked depth?

Watch the Trailer Debut for Indie Thriller 'Kalamity'

Eric D. Snider — 2010-09-21T19:05:00+00:00

Do you like independent feature films in which Nick Stahl returns to his hometown in Virginia and discovers that his long-time best friend might be an lunatic who murders people? Then you are in for a treat, as 'Kalamity' -- due in theaters Oct. 22 -- appears to be a movie about exactly that!

The fine people at Original 4 Releasing have been kind enough to give us an exclusive peek at the trailer, and we're being kind enough to share it with you. You can watch it by pointing your Internet clicker at this link right here.

Stahl's friend, the possible killer, is played by Jonathan Jackson (not Joshua Jackson). The cast also includes Robert Forster, Christopher M. Clark, and Beau Garrett. It was written and directed by James Hausler, whose first two movies, 'Trip Out' and 'Wild Seven,' made their way around the fest circuit.

'Kalamity' will open in New York and L.A. on Oct. 22, and expand from there. What do you think of the trailer?

Five Part Fours That Are Worth Two Hours of Your Time

Eric D. Snider — 2010-09-17T15:22:00+00:00

Last weekend, 'Resident Evil' joined the relatively small club of movie franchises that survive to the fourth chapter. A three-part series is nothing. Plenty of movies produce exactly two sequels and no more. It's so common that we have a word for it. That word is "trilogy." But FOUR parts! That is rarefied territory, so uncommon that the word we tend to use for it, "quadrilogy," isn't a real word. And to make a Part 4 that's actually entertaining is even rarer. In honor of 'Resident Evil: Afterlife,' here are five other fourth chapters that are worth watching.

'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.' The midpoint of the book series is the high point of the movie series -- if any of the novels should have been split into two films, it was this one. Once again fighting evil at his notoriously unsafe school for witches and devil-worshippers, Harry Potter here discovers that the stakes are as high as they can get: Someone actually DIES in this chapter. It's only Robert Pattinson, but still.

'Thunderball.' The fourth James Bond film has a lot of scenes set underwater! And Sean Connery almost got eaten by a shark while filming them! And Bond has a jet pack! And the villain has an eyepatch! Everybody has something, including the viewer, who has a great time!

'Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.' It is commonly known that within the 'Star Trek' franchise, the odd-numbered films are bad while the even-numbered films are good. It is less commonly known that 4 is an even number, and thus that 'Star Trek 4' must be a good movie. Mathematics proves it. The Enterprise crew saves some whales in this story, a precursor to the time when it would be appropriate to make jokes about William Shatner's weight.

'Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter.' We have to deduct a few points for this installment failing to actually be the final chapter, but it's one of the best films in this series about a taciturn, hockey-loving forest-dweller and the people he murders. (For the record, part 9 in the series, 'Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday,' isn't the final one either.) Many of the characters in 'The Final Chapter' say and do interesting things, and are played by interesting actors such as Crispin Glover and Corey Feldman. Unless you've sat through all the other 'Friday the 13th' movies, you have no idea what a breath of fresh air this is.

'Rocky IV.' The 1980s were a magical time. All you needed to make a movie character seem villainous was to make him Russian. If he was Russian AND killed Apollo Creed, well, forget about it. The Rocky series hit a dead end in Part 5, but Part 4 -- with the rah-rah Americanism and James Brown's funky theme song and Ivan Drago saying "I must break you" -- is energetic enough to make you want to run up some museum steps.

Mike Leigh Offers 'Another Year' (TIFF 2010 Review)

Eric D. Snider — 2010-09-14T09:03:00+00:00

Mike Leigh, often a chronicler of hapless middle-class Londoners, went light with his last film, 2008's 'Happy-Go-Lucky,' which focused on a relentlessly chipper Pollyanna type. His new one, 'Another Year,' heads back in the direction of somberness, but it carries a lot of mirth with it. In fact, for most of its running time it feels like a straightforward sophisticated comedy, one that might even have a happy ending...

What we have here is a solar system of messed-up people who orbit an older couple named Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen). Tom and Gerri are stable, rock-solid types, with professions to match: he's a geologist, she's a counselor. They've been married for more than 30 years and still adore one another. They are everyone's ideal, all the more lovable for being slightly daft, like a favorite aunt and uncle. It's no wonder they're admired by the people who know them.

These include Mary (Lesley Manville), a secretary at the hospital where Gerri works who's been in one unsuccessful, ill-advised relationship after another. Mary is bubbly and sarcastic, a pleasant chatterbox and an enthusiastic drinker. She's a bit lonely but seems optimistic. Until she drinks too much, that is, whereupon her bipolar pendulum swings the other direction and she becomes hilariously morose.

Tom and Gerri have a 30-year-old bachelor son named Joe (Oliver Maltman). Since they're the perfect parents, they don't nag Joe about settling down and producing grandchildren for them, though they clearly want that. Mary, whose age is somewhere between Joe's and his parents', behaves flirtatiously with him -- maybe like a saucy family friend, maybe like a ravenous cougar. It's hard to tell whether she really wants to date him, or whether she just thinks she does.

Mary is a fascinating woman, exceptionally well played by Mike Leigh veteran Lesley Manville. She wears all her emotions on her sleeve, a whirlwind of energy and neuroses, and an authentic, believable character. Only a scene in which she expresses petty jealousy over Joe's new girlfriend rings false and sitcom-y; everything else Mary does feels pulled from real life.

To further our examination of Mary, Leigh provides a few characters who are slight variations of her. There's Ken (Peter Wight), a big, beery friend of Tom's who is also single and gets emotional when he drinks too much, which is often. You might think the film is contriving to set Ken up with Mary, but no: she is repulsed by him. An older woman named Janet (Imelda Staunton), a patient at the hospital, is married with children, like Mary wants to be, but is deeply and bitterly depressed. Joe's girlfriend, Katie (Karina Fernandez), makes some gestures and remarks that remind you of Mary, except that Katie is well-adjusted and happy. I think the suggestion is that Ken, Janet, and Katie are all visions of what Mary could become, depending on how she deals with her current crises.

Leigh presents all of this in his typical slice-of-life fashion, light on plot but heavy on characterization, full of effortlessly funny dialogue. 'Another Year' comes across like an exceedingly well-acted stage play. Each performance is richly detailed, even when the character appears in only a few scenes. (David Bradley, familiar as Argus Filch in the Harry Potter films, is startlingly memorable as Tom's brother, who doesn't appear until the last quarter of the film.) With all their flaws, these are still perfectly delightful people. It's a pleasure to spend a couple hours with them, even if it's only in fiction.

Telluride Review: The First Movie

Eric D. Snider — 2010-09-07T18:02:00+00:00

When Mark Cousins was growing up in war-torn Belfast, he would escape the horrors of life by going to the movies. For a child, imagination can make all the difference. But what about kids in strife-ridden areas who don't have the luxury of nearby movie theaters? How do they cope?

As it turns out, children who don't watch movies are still capable of engaging in whimsy and fun. It's true! Mark Cousins learns this in The First Movie, a documentary shot in the tiny, impoverished village of Goptapa, Iraq. The locals have never even seen a film before, much less been part of one, and Cousins gives them both opportunities. He screens E.T. and other gems for them, and gives video cameras to a few of the kids so they can record their own stories.

The subject of how children deal with the realities of war is potentially a very moving one, and "The First Movie" often addresses it with great sensitivity. Unfortunately, Cousins inserts himself into the story too much of the time, and what should be a movie about Goptapa turns into a movie about Mark Cousins' trip to Goptapa. His intentions seem to have been pure, but by the end, he comes across as parochial and condescending.

And that's a shame, because a lot of his material here is poignant. He narrates the film in his lilting Irish brogue, poetically describing how children see magic everywhere. His footage of Iraq's landscape (which he shot himself) is hauntingly beautiful. Scenes of Iraqi kids out goofing around are heartening.

The adults can remember when things were much worse. "We get very sad when we remember the Anfal and the chemical rain on Goptapa," says one. "The Anfal" refers to the gas attacks that Saddam Hussein made on the region in the late 1980s, part of his ethnic cleansing program. In the second half of the film, Cousins includes footage of the older villagers recounting what happened in those dark days. Much of this was filmed by the youngsters themselves, the cameras trained on their parents and grandparents, who are telling stories they might not have told before. They get choked up with emotion. It's very powerful.

If only Cousins had let the material speak for itself! A certain amount of flowery narration to encapsulate the lessons of Goptapa is useful, but it eventually becomes too much. It starts to sound like Cousins is too impressed with his own humanitarian goodness -- which, again, I don't think he was. If he were to re-edit the film to give us more Goptapa and less Mark Cousins, he could make The First Movie into something truly beautiful instead of a missed opportunity.

Telluride Review: Tabloid

Eric D. Snider — 2010-09-06T23:18:00+00:00

Errol Morris must have felt like it was time to lighten up. After his last few documentaries addressed the death penalty, Holocaust deniers, the Vietnam War, and Abu Ghraib, his new one tells an astonishing-but-true story about an insane-but-functional woman named Joyce McKinney. It's called Tabloid, and its purpose is not enlightenment but entertainment.

In 1977, England was delighted by a news story about a North Carolina girl who had come to the U.K. looking for the boyfriend who had left her and was now working as a Mormon missionary. The young man, Kurt Anderson, said that when Joyce McKinney found him in the midst of his religious labors, she abducted him, tied him to a bed, and made him have sex with her. When she was arrested, McKinney insisted it had all been consensual, though she also insisted Anderson was being held by the Mormons against his will, which was manifestly untrue.

Well, you can see why the story amused the Brits. "The case of the manacled Mormon!" screamed the headlines. The idea of a woman raping a man made for fascinating cocktail conversation; the fact that the man in question was a Mormon missionary made it especially provocative. Out on bail, McKinney became a media darling, photographed at movie premieres and at parties with rock stars. When she and her accomplice, Keith May, fled to the United States (in disguise, with fake passports), McKinney had 13 suitcases full of press clippings.

In his usual fashion, Morris simply trains the camera on McKinney and lets her tell her story. Say what you will about her -- that she's a rancid, delusional trollop, for example -- there's no denying she's a colorful character. Her Southern accent and flair for the theatrical make her a lively interview subject. When the things she says are contradicted by other talking heads, including journalists who covered the story in 1977 and a man she hired at the time to help her find Anderson, she becomes an object of fascination. She is clearly not telling the truth about some things, and yet she seems to believe her story so intently. She obviously loves being the center of attention, yet she claims all the publicity ruined her life. When anything negative is reported about her -- like, for instance, that she worked part-time as an S&M mistress for hire -- she acts wounded and aggrieved, like everyone's just out to get her. In her view, she has never done anything wrong, ever, and none of her problems have been her own fault. Anything that would appear to suggest otherwise is a distortion or fabrication.

What Morris has realized is the same thing the tabloids have always known: that people with an outlandish sense of self-regard make for riveting entertainment. In keeping with the theme of sensationalized reporting, Morris indulges in a bit of tabloidism himself. McKinney despises the Mormon church, blaming it for turning Anderson against her. When she rails spitefully against the faith's ceremonies and doctrines -- the specifics of which have nothing to do with the matter at hand -- Morris helpfully finds a random, sarcastic ex-Mormon to offer further insight into how weird Mormons are. For illustration purposes, he uses clips from a film called The Godmakers, a ludicrously slanted and long discredited anti-Mormon screed from 1982. Quoting The Godmakers in a story about Mormons is like quoting Mel Gibson in a story about Judaism.

While this sort of arbitrary disrespect will be offensive to Mormons, it fits with the theme of Tabloid, which is that sensationalism sells. No matter who's talking, Morris is eager to make fun of their foibles, to underscore their peculiarities. (One of the journalists refers to Anderson's manacled position as "spread-eagle"; Morris flashes the words "spread-eagle" on the screen every time he does.) He only corrects their falsehoods when doing so will stir things up further. Otherwise, he lets them stand. Joyce McKinney is a freak show, engaging in one crazy shenanigan after another: the "manacled Mormon" story was just the start. None of her insane adventures are "relevant," per se, except insofar as they give us one more thing to be entertained by.

Morris has made insightful and thought-provoking documentaries in the past (see especially Mr. Death and Fog of War), and he probably will again. Tabloid is nothing more than a lark, the equivalent of glancing at the goofy headlines in the checkout line and then forgetting all about them.