Stylish And Simplistic: La La Land Is Unsatisfying Beyond The Hype!

The Good: Decent direction, Emma Stone is fine
The Bad: Dull characters, Boring plot, Indistinct musical numbers
The Basics: La La Land is a gimmick win for Oscar Pandering Season, but is annoyingly insubstantial.


One of the true terrible aspects of being a film reviewer is that, in order to retain any level of credibility, reviewers must experience some works outside their comfort and known enjoyment zone. I, for example, have among my "gimmicks" an obsession with watching every film that has won the Best Picture Oscar. Long before I built up my love of films across a number of genres, I decided that if I was going to be a film reviewer, it was important for me to understand the history of film. Despite that, I never believed that I had to sublimate my personal preferences for popular opinions; there are a number of films that won Best Picture that I assert are utter garbage and some "great" films that I found boring and unimpressive - Citizen Kane (reviewed here!), for example. In recent years, I have tried to get ahead of my Best Picture Project (check it out here!) by watching as many of the Best Picture nominees before Oscar night and with its massive victory at the Golden Globes, today I decided I had to watch La La Land.

La La Land is an inevitable "gimmick nominee" for Best Picture and unfortunately, the Academy has a history of leaping on gimmick nominees, like The Artist (reviewed here!). For my money, though, the novelty of making a silent black and white film or a musical does not at all impress me over the merits of a film with interesting characters and a decent plot. La La Land is exceptionally well-choreographed and directed and Emma Stone is adorable as hell (she is a talented actress, but La La Land is not one of her great performances as the character she plays is very much below her acting abilities - though her dance skills in the film are impressive), but it is not a very complex or engaging film. Despite the bright colors (we get it Damien Chazelle, each roommate gets her own solid color dress), La La Land is flat and boring most of the time and the musical numbers are hardly distinctive.

On the same day as she is stuck in traffic and gives the finger to Sebastian, Mia leaves work at the coffee shop early to go to an audition. There, she makes so little of an impression that people walk in while she is performing. That night, she is out at a club with her friends and she hears Sebastian playing the piano. Sebastian spends the same day mourning his lack of a career as a jazz piano player and his inability to finance his own club. Come Spring, Sebastian is working parties as a background piano player for a small band when Mia encounters him again. The two start to talk about their goals and dreams.

By summer, Mia and Sebastian are dating and Sebastian starts to woo Mia into liking jazz. Sebastian encourages Mia to write and perform her own play, while Mia encourages Sebastian to take more opportunities to get his music out. Sebastian takes a job working for a rock band, where his piano playing is used more as samples in the background. Sebastian continues to work for the band, even when Mia stages her one-woman show and he has to miss her ill-attended, highly-critized play. As their relationship experiences tension, both have to decide between following their dreams and being with one another.

La La Land suffers almost instantly on two important fronts, a prioritization of style over substance and a fundamental lack of chemistry between the protagonists. Writer and director Damien Chazelle makes La La Land look good. I went into La La Land with no knowledge of the film outside the fact that Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling were at the top of the cast list and knowing it won a lot of big awards at the Golden Globe Awards, so I was somewhat surprised when the film opens with a big musical number set in Los Angeles gridlock. La La Land looks good and the dance numbers are well-choreographed. I watched La La Land two hours ago and not a single musical number stuck in my head; while the film looks great, it's no Singin' In The Rain (reviewed here!) on the song front.

That sense of prioritizing style over substance continues into the characters and it guts the emotional resonance of La La Land. Mia is established as a struggling actress with no noticeable dramatic experience - she wrote plays as a child, but it seems like the came to Hollywood to be an actress without having high school or college theater successes that made her believe she was pursuing even a partially reasonable dream - and she is given remarkably little superfluous (or actual) character traits. So, given that one of her few character traits is that she actually does not like jazz, naturally Sebastian sets to changing her mind. La La Land is troubling in that Mia has a pretty flat characterization and so does Sebastian . . . and Sebastian completely steamrollers Mia. La La Land presents such a generic interpretation of adult relationships that the man cannot accept a difference in musical tastes?! That could be fine, but La La Land then forces the relationship.

La La Land forces the romantic relationship based more on plot convenience than actual character commonalities. Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling have had amazing on-screen chemistry in other films (like Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, it seems they come as a package deal!), but in La La Land they present their characters so flatly that there is no real spark between them on-screen. Gosling and Stone have amazing timing for their synchronized dance moves in La La Land, but that is the height of their on-screen skill in the film.

La La Land might dazzle visually, but like most special-effects driven films, it is high on flash and hype, low on substance and enduring greatness. Stone and Gosling are not presenting a timeless couple or even well-developed conflict in La La Land. It might be the big winner at the Golden Globes, it might well get nominated for the Best Picture Oscar and it could win, but as Academy voters truly consider it, I'd encourage them to ask "How often do you really pull The Artist off the shelf to watch it?" Not everything has to be a comparison - in fact, La La Land is objectively unimpressive - but sometimes it helps to recall that the Academy has made some bad choices when it comes to voting for the flash-in-the-pan novelty film as opposed to a movie of substance.

For other movies currently in theaters, please check out my reviews of:
War On Everyone
Underworld: Blood Wars
Passengers
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

3/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Happy Oscar Nomination Day: Birdman!

The Good: Great acting, Moments of plot and character
The Bad: Ending guts the realism of the film.
The Basics: Birdman is not the worst nominee for Best Picture, but the hype surrounding the indie film seems to be working more than the film itself.


One of the nice things about Awards Season is that it encourages me to watch any number of films that I did not get around to watching the rest of the year. As Oscar Nominations have been released today and I go through the lists, I find that I am woefully unprepared for this year’s Awards Season. In fact, for someone with a Best Picture Project (check that out here!), which has me watching the Best Picture Oscar winner each year, I find myself terribly out of step this year. Of the eight Oscar Nominees for Best Picture, I had only seen one before today! In a year when cinema was pretty crappy, I should not be surprised that only one of the films nominated for Best Picture was released outside of Oscar Pandering season. But, while watching the Golden Globe presentation on Sunday, the movie that seemed most like one I might enjoy watching was Birdman.

Birdman seems, in many ways, tailor-made to its lead, Michael Keaton. Keaton’s greatest commercial popularity came when he appeared in Tim Burton’s Batman (reviewed here!) and Batman Returns (reviewed here!). While he had many other career peaks and valleys, his box office cache was highest at that time in his career. So now, more than twenty-five years later, it is easy for The Industry and moviegoers to look at the former a-lister and sarcastically call him “washed-up” or a “has been” (William Shatner has a great song on the subject!). But, Birdman does a good job of illustrating that anyone who has been has the chance to be (in the public eye) again.

A telekinetic actor who once starred in the popular Birdman movie franchise, based upon a comic book, is now attempting to launch a theatrical play. Days before the first preview, Riggan Thomson smacks Ralph, knocking him out to get the terrible actor out of the role that Riggan originated on screen. After a round of bad press, while Ralph threatens to sue the production, Riggan realizes that the “dream actor” he wants to materialize is not going to appear. Leslie, the female lead of the play, gets actor Mike Shiner to fill in for the lead. Shiner brings real talent and some creative vision to the project, despite challenging what Riggan wrote.

When the preview goes terribly, because Mike freaks out midway through, Riggan sees that his big chance to reclaim the spotlight is slipping away. His erratic girlfriend tells Riggan he is pregnant, his new star is drunk, and Riggan’s daughter, Sam, is struggling with her sobriety (and not just leaping into bed with Mike). With theater critic Tabitha Dickinson’s New York Times review hanging over their head, Riggan and Mike prepare for the second preview. While the second preview goes vastly better than the first (despite a hiccup with Mike having an erection). But as the debut of the play looms, Riggan’s personal life spirals out of control – in real life and in his own head.

Birdman is one of those films that is almost entirely undone by its last few minutes. I like a good film with a reversal, like Brazil (reviewed here!), but so many films are diminished by the reversal; Birdman is one such film. Despite Birdman peppering clues to the end at the beginning (Riggan is not actually telekinetic, for example), the cyclical “death dream”y nature of the film robs the movie of its reality and punch.

For much of the film, Birdman captivates the audience as the story of a man who is making one last gambit for success in the public eye, while plagued by the voices of self-doubt and criticism in his own head. While there might me multiple interpretations to the film, the seeds peppered throughout – and are supported by the end – lead to a climax that guts the real-world sensibilities from the movie, in favor of an end that is both more and less fantastical. Riggan is not endowed with super powers, he is merely delusional at times (fantastic is robbed in favor of reality); the harsh life turns that have led Riggan to where he is now are called into question by the nature of the “vision” he has been experiencing (the harsh reality is, potentially, just an elaborate mental vision – a fantasy!). Either way, the intimacy of the film is diminished by sidestories, like the truth or dare game Sam and Mike play – which seems odd in a vision of Riggan’s.

While not overwhelmingly plagued by problems, Birdman has one serious casting issue and that is Edward Norton. Norton is great as Mike; he takes the role of the cocky, established Hollywood actor and makes it work masterfully. The problem is that Birdman makes multiple allusions to The Avengers (reviewed here!) and the Marvel Cinematic Universe . . . of which Edward Norton is a part. In the film Birdman, the “Birdman” franchise is a thinly veiled allusion to Michael Keaton’s participation in the cinematic Batman franchise. In Riggan’s head, his past role mocks The Avengers as living in the shadow of Birdman; he paved the way for them. There is a logical fallout, then, for denying Batman, acknowledging the current Marvel Movie phenomenon . . . and then using one of the actors from that in a role that isn’t him. In other words, it’s hard to have lines poking at Robert Downey Jr. and having Riggan surprised that Jeremy Renner ended up in a cape (metaphorically), but then have Edward Norton on screen as someone who is not Edward Norton.

On the acting front, Birdman succeeds. Never one who has been a fan of Naomi Watts (on screen, not in real life – I’m sure she is a wonderful person, but outside Mulholland Drive I can’t think of a role she’s played where I’ve been truly impressed), I was pleasantly surprised by her performance in Birdman. Watts gives a good supporting role in the form of Lesley, an actress on the verge (potentially) of a breakout. Watts is credible as a young actress and she plays off Norton incredibly well. Her ability to emote in Birdman was more impressive than Emma Stone delivering a quality tirade or Michael Keaton playing an actor who is struggling to find his spotlight again.

That said, Michael Keaton, Emma Stone, Edward Norton and even Zach Galifianakis (in one of his straightest, most understated supporting roles yet!) are all good in Birdman. Despite my issues with the film’s “left turn” near the end, the performances are wonderful and create a very strong sense of character and time and place. It is easy to get immersed in the film.

Unfortunately, Birdman is a tough place to want to get immersed, at least more than once. For those expecting an incredibly original tale of an actor fighting for one last chance, one last role, there is a bit too much Black Swan (reviewed here!), not enough American Dreamz (reviewed here!).

[As winner of the Best Picture Oscar, this film is part of my Best Picture Project! Check it out!)

For other films that have surreal elements, please check out my reviews of:
The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus
Across The Universe
The Voices

6/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Exactly As Droll As One Might Suspect: Maxim: The Hot 100 Disappoints

The Good: Decent photography, Good interviews
The Bad: Stupid concept, Addy, Lowbrow writing
The Basics: Maxim: The Hot 100 lives down to what one might expect of the annual magazine issue, though I was pleasantly surprised by the interviews!


One of the animated sitcoms - Family Guy, American Dad or The Simpsons has a line about Maxim that was utterly hilarious; something about their “Most Rape-able Celebrities” list. My wife recently gave me a gift subscription to Maxim, ostensibly for review and when Maxim: The Hot 100 (the annual special issue) arrived, I found myself trying to remember the joke from television about the publication. Maxim: The Hot 100 might not be quite the sinister issue that the joke insinuates, but it is pretty damn close.

Comprised of photos and a blurb for the 100 women that Maxim has decided (apparently through votes somehow) are the most desirable in the world, Maxim: The Hot 100 is like a catalog for shopping for unobtainable women. In addition to being a preposterous exercise (ranking women on their “hot” factor, as if there were a universal standard for the subjective emotion of desire), Maxim: The Hot 100 undermines itself far too frequently to be at all useful or even engaging. It’s not just some form of weird sour grapes that I write that; - favorites of mine like Anne Hathaway and Ellen Page did not make the list, but Bar Paly and Candice Swanepoel did(?!) – but any list where Katy Perry is ranked as more desirable than Sophia Vergara or Avril Lavigne ranks 44 and Anna Paquin is 78 seems skewed toward the absurd.

In addition to having a purpose that is ridiculous – are Maxim readers so stupid that they need to be told whom to be attracted to?! – and somewhat inscrutable (what are the readers supposed to do, exactly, with this information?), the Maxim: The Hot 100 special issue seems remarkably lowbrow in terms of the writing. Take, for example, the listing for Gal Gadot (who made #84 on the list) on page 13 of this year’s Maxim: The Hot 100. The blurb for Gadot reads, “Hollywood’s newest Wonder Woman is a total badass. She not only owns a motorcycle but also served two years in the Israeli army” (13). Gal Gadot is Israeli. You know who else served two years in the Israeli army? Every other Israeli citizen; it’s mandatory. Does that make her more of a badass than #39, Gina Carano, who was a MMA-brawler? Probably not. My point is that virtually none of the blurbs say anything useful, interesting or insightful about their subjects.

What keeps Maxim: The Hot 100 from the most dismal of ratings, then? First off, the photography. Most of the photos are incredibly good, exactly what one might hope for from a celebrity spankbook with a ridiculously low cover price of $3.99. The price of the magazine might make one think that it was not going to be a glossy, good-looking magazine, but apparently advertiser dollars subsidize the magazine enough that the special issue needs not charge an arm and a leg. Maxim: The Hot 100 features photographically solid pictures; in terms of color, contrast, and composition, the photographers utilized in Maxim: The Hot 100 clearly know what they are doing. In fact, because the photographers seem able and their subjects are undeniably photogenic, it is astonishing that they get some of the celebrities in remarkably unflattering looks (there’s something horrid about calling someone “hot” and smacking up a picture of them looking haggard, as at least one of the women was).

The other aspect that sells the magazine – the one that pleasantly surprised me – is the interviews. Maxim: The Hot 100 features interviews with cool celebrities (this year, it was Bryan Cranston and Nick Offerman). The questions asked of these celebrities are not the typical ones that have been asked to death and the answers are fun and informative.

Unfortunately, the two articles and a smattering of the hundreds of pictures throughout the magazine are hardly enough to justify the magazine’s existence. Several pages of the magazine are wasted debunking movie plot/effect issues (like would reversing the Earth’s direction a la Superman: The Movie turn back time). Does Maxim believe a large population of its readers are physicists who somehow slept through basic temporal mechanics? Or biology students who do not know the average size of a great white shark? Other preposterous articles focus on the latest supermodel, hot trends, and a short story about joining the mile-high club. The average length of an article in Maxim: The Hot 100 is one page, which suggests that the average reader’s attention span is ridiculously limited.

Not overflowing with impressive diction or vocabulary, Maxim: The Hot 100 is fairly ad-filled. The 120-page magazine features 22 pages of full ads (not counting the inside and back covers), along with 3 pages of partial ads and 8 pages of style articles which list all of the items in the photos, with a price (which is pretty much an advertisement to me!).

Maybe I’m not the target demographic, maybe I’m not desperately looking for unobtainable women or maybe I just don’t need a magazine to tell me what to like to have opinions. But, for those who don’t care about smart (the most common comment by women on the Maxim Hot 100 list is about their own butt; none of the quotes capture the intelligence of any of the smart women on the list), aren’t looking for a woman even close to 40 (Jennifer Lopez seems to be the most senior member of the list) and who want something more respectably portable than a hard-core magazine, Maxim: The Hot 100 is enough to entertain those who want to spend the four bucks on it.

For other magazine reviews, please visit my evaluations of:
AAA Living
Ladies’ Home Journal
Buffy The Vampire Slayer Magazine

2.5/10

For other magazine reviews, please check out my Magazine Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Counting Up To Six: How The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro Loses Its Way. . .

The Good: Good performances, Pretext of character development
The Bad: Over-the-top special effects, Entirely derivative plot, Lack of spark
The Basics: The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro starts off remarkably well, but continues to add in elements until it is diluted into being Just Another Superhero Sequel.


I went into The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro with reasonably high expectations, despite having never been a fan of the Spider-Man franchise. I enjoyed The Amazing Spider-Man (reviewed here!), but found it largely to be an example of “better ingredients, better meal.” In other words, the reboot started out from an advantageous place considering that the actors in it were of a higher caliber than those who began in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man Trilogy. So, bolstered by the success of the reboot a few years back, I turned to The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro ready to be solidly entertained.

Little did I know that Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci (the two who brought us the reboot of Star Trek, reviewed here!), and Jeff Pinkner were basically going to turn in a rewrite of Batman Forever (reviewed here!) for the Spider-Man franchise. Okay, it’s not quite that bad, but The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro has a primary villain who bears a striking resemblance in terms of character arc to the Edward Nigma character in Batman Forever and he is juggled clumsily between other budding villains so he never quite pops the way viewers might hope. In fact, The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro is such a jumbled mess of elements that it would be more accurately subtitled (for those markets that include the subtitle): The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Set-Up For The Sequel.

Therein lies the fundamental problem with The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro: the whole film has a grossly assembled feeling to it. Of course The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro is an assembled work: there was a writing team, a director, the actors add their own stuff, the studio comes in with notes, etc. Almost all films are collaborative works that start as a work cobbled together from ideas that writers hope will work together. The trick in moviemaking is that the film’s elements need to feel organic, not assembled. When the great moments of reversal come, the viewer should be able to say, “that makes sense” even if they did not see it coming. The best films make one stop looking for the tricks and get so engrossed that when the surprises pop up they truly are surprising. Unfortunately, The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro doesn’t do that. Instead, the film follows a troublingly rigid formula that cobbles together elements from The Amazing Spider-Man, Batman Forever and classic Spider-Man comic book storylines that are so well known that even non-fans like myself are entirely aware of them. In short, The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro has no surprises for anyone who is awake and has seen any five comic book-based films over the last ten years; what’s worse is that it misuses the talent present in the film in a way The Amazing Spider-Man did not.

Opening with a ballsy rehash of Richard and Mary Parker fleeing Oscorp and New York City (which keeps the protagonist of the film off the screen for the first seven plus minutes!), Peter Parker’s parents meet an untimely end, this time on-screen. As their plane goes down, Richard sends his files to a secret Roosevelt facility using wi-fi technology I’m pretty sure we didn’t have during that time period. In the present day, New York City is besieged by deranged thief Aleksei Sytsevich, who has stolen some vials from Oscorp and is fleeing through downtown with his thugs when he runs into the New York City police department and Spider-Man. Spider-Man manages to foil the robbery, much to the chagrin of Detective Stacy, who – like Peter Parker (Spider-Man’s mundane alter-ego) is kept from the high school graduation by the chase. Parker makes it to graduation just in time (just in time for an awesome Stan Lee cameo!), but having seen Detective Stacy recently, he feels conflicted about actually taking Gwen Stacy up on her generous offer to join the Stacy family for dinner that night. Appearing at the restaurant, Peter tells Gwen he can’t really keep seeing her and Gwen breaks up with Peter for not having the balls to break the promise he made in the prior film to her father outright.

Following their break-up, Max Dillon, an Oscorp employee who has created a revolutionary new power grid for New York City, which is housed in Oscorp, finds himself alone and stepped on by everyone around him. Having been rescued by Spider-Man during the Sytsevich heist, he has a bit of hero worship for Spider-Man. On his birthday, the lonely engineer – who is stepped on by everyone around him, most notably an Oscorp employee who is many years his junior, but seems more outwardly ambitious and a bit of a jackass – meets Gwen Stacy and is thrilled by the simple fact that she remembers his name. Unfortunately, that is the day that Norman Osborn, the founder of Oscorp, dies. Norman dies after having recalled his son, Harry, from prep school and revealing to him that he has prolonged his life using terrible means which have mutated him into something not-quite-human. Harry inherits Oscorp and the employees are all sent home. Unfortunately for Max Dillon, that means his jack-ass superior is unwilling to turn the power off in the conduit he is fixing for the company and Dillon is electrocuted and falls into a tank of electric eels . . . which naturally turns him into a glowing blue man who resurrects in the company morgue hours later.

Scared and unsure of his own abilities, Max Dillon walks out into New York City where his thirst for electrical energy leads him to absorb massive amounts of electricity in Times Square. This makes Peter Parker’s spider-sense tingle (though not explicitly referenced) during his conversation with Gwen Stacy, with whom he is attempting a friendship. Spider-man arrives on the scene and, despite having one of his two web-slingers knocked out by the electrified Dillon, he is able to incapacitate Max Dillon (largely because conversation with Dillon was going remarkably well until one of the police snipers jumped the gun and shot at Dillon). While Peter Parker reaches out to the mourning Harry Osborn, Max Dillon is experimented upon at the secret Oscorp facility, Ravencroft Institute. But soon, Harry’s quest for a cure to the genetic disease that killed his father and whose first symptoms he is now experiencing hits dead ends and corporate intrigue. Following Kurt Connors’ experiments in The Amazing Spider-Man, Oscorp destroyed a number of experiments to avoid lawsuits, including the radioactive spiders that bit Peter Parker. Harry’s right hand man at the company, Donald Menken, is working against him to advance to the CEO position himself. So, when Harry realizes he needs Spider-Man’s blood, he asks Peter Parker for help (thinking Peter knows Spider-man because he has photographed the superhero). But Peter Parker’s own quest for answers has led him to discover the Roosevelt facility and, in the process, he has learned the circumstances under which his father fled. Peter knows that his blood cannot help Harry, but when he and Spider-man refuse to help Harry, Harry takes a different path. He breaks into Ravencroft to free Electro (Max Dillon’s now-villainous alter-ego) and set him upon Spider-man. With the power out in New York City and a determined Gwen Stacy insisting on helping him, Spider-Man must stop Max Dillon and an obsessed Harry Osborn before they destroy New York.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro juggles a lot and while it is not too much for a single film, it is too much for this particular film. The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro is an odd film as far as pacing goes. It starts out with an interminably long sequence with Peter Parker’s father, becomes engaging for the bits involving Peter, Gwen and the actual rise of Electro, but stumbles through the entire Harry Osborn plot. The Harry Osborn plot is good, but it feels like it is part of another movie entirely. And, in order to make it work and all come together, the writing team and director Marc Webb seem to have given up. Much the way Princess Leia in Return Of The Jedi (reviewed here!) bears almost no resemblance to the character seen in the two films that precede it, Max Dillon/Electro bears no real resemblance to the character seen in the first two-thirds of the film. Harry Osborn gives Dillon the weakest argument for turning against his hero, Spider-man, ever conceived and Dillon just goes right along with it. In a film where the viewer knows so much of the mythos (Sam Raimi’s Spider-man movies are not terribly old and it’s not like they were not popular!) (It’s hard to call Gwen Stacy’s fate a “spoiler” when it was the subject of a comic book FORTY-ONE YEARS AGO!), the team that assembled The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro takes all of the easiest possible ways out. Max Dillon spends the first two-thirds of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 being set up to be Spider-man’s sidekick. He’s a likable guy, stepped on by schmucks around him until he is given a series of powers he does not at all understand. Then, he’s tortured by the same people who screwed him over his whole life so . . . how is it we’re supposed to believe he goes after entirely the wrong guy in the last act?! Did the writing team learn nothing from Star Trek: Nemesis* (reviewed here!)?!

So, Electro . . . utterly generic villain after one of the coolest super hero origin stories that could have been. That leaves The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro with two villains and a phantom antagonist. First, the villains. Aleksei Sytsevich is cartoonish in his original appearance and when he pops up at the climax of the film as the Rhino, it embodies a problem that has been present through the entire film: the special effects. The special effects in The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro are just ridiculous. Gone is a sensible proportion, a realism of physics that was more apparent in The Amazing Spider-Man than in anything from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man Trilogy. In fact, from his first moments on screen as a CG webslinger, the Spider-man in The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro looks like a collection of b-roll from Sam Raimi’s trilogy. The attempt at spectacle is over-the-top, distracting and makes the film look like an animated film as opposed to a serious super hero work. But when the Rhino, in this incarnation a massive tank-like mech blasting through New York City, makes his appearance, it is much more worthy of a groan than a gasp.

Then there’s Harry Osborn. Harry is played by Dane DeHaan and he is, to be entirely fair to him, really good in the role. DeHaan holds his own opposite a heavily made-up Chris Cooper who plays the dying Norman Osborn and he has enough on-screen gravitas to be a compelling leader of Oscorp. DeHaan is as good in The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro as Andrew Garfield was in The Amazing Spider-Man. And it’s not DeHaan’s fault that the character is written so thinly, cramped in between two other villains and manages to absurdly talk Max Dillon into completely betraying his established character. I can understand why the studio did not want to risk everything on Dane DeHaan and a Spider-Man film that focused on the Green Goblin as the villain . . . no, wait, they risked at least as much on a reboot of the franchise and won, so why wouldn’t they play to their known strengths for the mythos?! Yes, one of the big reasons The Amazing Spider-man 2 is likely to be released in the U.S. without the Rise Of Electro subtitle is because audiences will recognize the film to be equally the Rise Of The Green Goblin and wonder why the hell Sony isn’t touting that. If you’re going to turn the story on its ear from what fans of the Spider-Man film franchise know anyway, why not completely reinvent the origin of the Green Goblin and give him his own film?!

Then there’s the phantom antagonist. Detective Stacy has no real presence in The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro. He pops up, glowers once or twice and disappears from the narrative. In fact, anyone who looks at basic movie structure will look at the film’s climax and wonder just where the hell Detective Stacy is. Peter Parker stands around at the same location for quite some time, a place where Detective Stacy would be bound to go, and yet there is no scene where the law and order cop who spent the entire first film loathing Spider-man’s vigilantism appears, sees Peter Parker and snaps just long enough to kick the kid’s ass. Detective Stacy is recharacterized in The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro as a complete wuss. In fact, the only analogy I have is to my own life. When I met the woman who became my wife, we met online and for our first in-person meeting, we met at the restaurant at which she was working at the time. I was caught in a snowstorm and was late and her friends had been ragging on her and when I finally appeared (an hour and a half late), she was relieved and her friends were wary. Her friends, protective as they were, said to me, “If you hurt our girl, we’ll kill you.” Well, me being a pragmatist, bored, and wanting to spend time with the woman I had come to see, I said, “Didn’t you say that about the last guy she dated?” The answer from her friends were, “Well . . . yes.” So, I won some points with some and made some pretty freaked out when my response was, “Well, it’s hard to take your threat seriously when I know for a fact he’s still walking around above ground.” Detective Stacy, like my wife’s friends, talk a good game, but when confronted with everything he feared . . . the good detective completely disappears from the storyline. It’s impossible to take him seriously and I know if I ever go back and rewatch The Amazing Spider-Man, I’m going to laugh my ass off at Denis Leary’s over-the-top indignation as Detective Stacy.

That brings us to the big plot event that anyone who knows comic book history knows would eventually come to one of the key characters in the Spider-man cinematic stories. Without revealing that “spoiler” to those who are not so well-versed, it does happen in The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro . . . in exactly the way it was done in the books (which I was surprised by because I thought it happened differently, but upon further research, yup, it was right on the mark!). That brings a decent tragic element into The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro.

Unfortunately, it comes too late and after so many other threads have been introduced and disappointed the viewers and quite a bit before the ultimate climax to the movie. Moreover, the impact on Spider-Man is not one of a vigilante hero. Spider-Man is given an arc that is pretty much the opposite of Batman in The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro; in analogous terms, Spider-man’s arc here would be like if Batman were an established vigilante and the death of his parents led him to hang up the cowl, as opposed to hunt down the mobsters that killed them. That Spider-Man spends no time on-screen hunting the villain that instigates the tragedy that knocks Peter Parker off his game makes one wonder just who Spider-man was setting out to help when he put on the mask (it clearly wasn’t himself!).

The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro is a good example of better casting than performances. Jamie Foxx is good as Max Dillon . . . unless one has seen him in The Soloist (reviewed here!) in which case he’s adequate and peaks at reprising his role from that film. Colm Feore is given too little to do in the underdeveloped role of Donald Menken (which would have been a much more effective role had the character appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man as an ambitious up-and-comer who was screwed over by Harry’s return in this film) and Felicity Jones (who has given some amazing performances in the past) could be replaced by a house plant for all that the role of Felicia offers her . . . or the film. Paul Giamatti’s role of Aleksei Sytsevich is presented with so much enthusiasm that viewers have to wonder how much is the character and how much is Giamatti laughing at the studio for paying him so much for such a ridiculous role (and the promise of future appearances as the Rhino!). Sally Field, Chris Cooper, and Marton Csokas (Dr. Kafka at Ravencroft) are all adequate in their roles, sometimes even good.

But The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro is headlined by Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone and for two performers who can usually do no wrong, they fall unfortunately flat in this film. Gone entirely is the on-screen chemistry between Garfield and Stone . . . and that has severe ramifications for the movie’s climax. The two have mediocre banter that is delivered adequately, but from Stone and Garfield, viewers expect sparks. Garfield’s initial voiceovers are quips as the CG Spider-Man flies around and Garfield sounds bored delivering the lines. Not to be outdone, Emma Stone’s valedictory speech for Gwen Stacy is delivered with such a lackluster quality that I was bored . . . and it wasn’t as long as a real graduation! Sadly, the pair reaches their peak for a scene in a maintenance closet where they almost break the fourth wall by acknowledging the cliché of hiding in the janitor’s closet whilst being pursued by company thugs (who, like Star Wars Stormtroopers see a closed door and assume that those they are hunting cannot possibly be on the other side of it). That banter is good, but subsequent scenes simply throw the pair together after months of being apart without any organic incidents to allow them to truly rethink the decisions that drove them apart. Could Garfield and Stone have sold it? It’s possible, but they don’t and that undermines The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro.

Despite the over-the-top web-related effects, Electro looks pretty awesome in The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro. Sure, Marc Webb essentially resurrected Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen (reviewed here!) for Electro in the film, but the effects work better than almost anything else in the movie. Sadly, given that Doc Ock’s tentacles can be seen in the Oscorp lab and rumors have leaked for months that the Sinister Six (six villains from Spider-man who team up but never seem to quite be able to actually kill Spider-man once and for all) might well get their own film, The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro seems largely like a set-up film for that. The essential Spider-Man characters are present, they are doing their own things, but every opportunity to look back (for a dead character, Richard Parker spends a lot of time on-screen in this film!) and look forward is utilized to push those characters out of the way for painfully obvious foreshadowing moments. The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro is almost enough to make viewers wish for six stand-alone films featuring the rise of each of the Sinister Six . . . just so long as they bothered to develop each one well. As it stands, The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro puts three potentials in play, but does so in such a way that the viewer doesn’t give a damn if they ever grace the screen again. At least Webb and his team were smart enough to not recast J. Jonah Jamison on-screen (Sam Raimi got him absolutely, perfectly right, with J.K. Simmons!).

If you feel you must watch The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise Of Electro, I’d say hold out for its appearance on DVD; this is one of those films that the more one contemplates, the more faults they see in it and I cannot imagine it will age any better.

For other movies based upon the Marvel comic books, please check out my reviews of:
X-Men: Days Of Future Past
Guardians Of The Galaxy
The Wolverine
The Avengers
Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance
Captain America: The First Avenger
X-Men: First Class
Thor
Iron Man 2
The Incredible Hulk
Spider-Man 3
Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer
Blade: Trinity
Elektra
Daredevil

4/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

*For those who don’t catch the reference, in Star Trek: Nemesis, the villain was tormented by Romulans, discarded and despised by Romulans, and when he assembled a massive military power that would have allowed him to actually get proper revenge on the Romulans, he instead turned his aggression toward the Federation, which made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Come to think of it, his whole mission in life was blood, too, so between Harry Osborn and Max Dillon, the writing team just picked all the worst aspects of villain motivations from Star Trek: Nemesis and ran with them!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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So Many Wonderful Actors Create Something Horrible: Movie 43

The Good: Moments of actual humor, Wonderful cast used fairly well.
The Bad: Drawn-out concept, No character development, An equal number of misses as hits
The Basics: Movie 43 is a sketch comedy film that pushes the envelope of good taste with drastically mixed results.


When it comes to comedy films, there are very few that live up to the hype for repeated viewings. When, during a first viewing, viewers find themselves bored or frustrated with the premise of the film, it does not bode well for the film’s longevity in the collective unconsciousness. Slapstick comedies especially suffer from the problem of having limited rewatchability, as do sketch comedy programs. So, last year’s star-studded film Movie 43 had two potential strikes against it before the movie even began. Despite having an incredible cast of classy actors, Movie 43 is little more than an extensive, R-rated episode of MadTV or Saturday Night Live.

Movie 43 trades on its extensive movie-star cast to try to fool viewers into believing they are watching something other than lowest common denominator humor for under an hour and a half. The film, which is loosely held together with a plotline of a failed writer trying to sell his first script to a movie studio executive at gunpoint, is filled with raunchy humor that frequently crosses the line of good taste.

Opening with Charlie Wessler pitching to Griffin Schraeder, Wessler tells stories that he thinks are supposed to be heartwarming and crowd-pleasing. The first is a blind date between a woman who is excited to go out with one of the world’s most eligible bachelors. Davis is rich, successful, single . . . and has a scrotum on his neck, which causes Beth quite a bit of discomfort to see during her dinner with him. That is followed by a couple talking with another couple about their homeschooled son. They tell their new neighbors all about how they haze their son and provide him with awkward high school-level first sexual experiences (which is beyond troubling to the neighbors and the audience). Then comes the “romantic comedy” pitch where a woman asks her boyfriend to poop on her and, after getting some advice, filling up on burritos and laxatives, he feels he needs to rush into meeting his girlfriend’s bizarre request.

The pitches continue with a young man working at a grocery store when the young woman who loves and loathes him comes in and the two give each other sexually explicit small talk . . . over the public address system in the store. There is a parody of an Apple product; the iBabe, which is a life-sized MP3 player in the shape of a naked woman. After the initial advertisements, the makers of the iBabe wrestle with the public relations nightmare of young men whose penises are mangled when they fuck the iBabe and encounter the unit’s cooling fan inside the vagina of the unit. Superhero fans are treated to a sketch wherein Robin is out on a speed date with Lois Lane and then Supergirl when Batman comes and cockblocks him. In another sketch a boy has a girl over for a first date when she has her first period and bleeds through her pants. The three males in the house freak out having no idea how to deal with the event and it only serves to embarrass and horrify her. A brutal segment follows in which two men capture and torture a leprechaun for his gold. Then comes a first date in which a man and a woman play an escalating game of truth or dare. They end up horribly disfiguring and humiliating one another before finally consummating their relationship. The penultimate segment is a hilarious mockery of sports movies. In it, a coach motivates his high school basketball team by pointing out that the students are black and they are going up against a white team so they are guaranteed to win. Partway through the closing credits comes the final segment, a sketch involving a couple that is interrupted by their (animated) cat, Beezel. Beezel has a crush on his owner, Anson, and when Amy walks in on Beezel masturbating to pictures of Anson in a swimsuit, a very violent series of encounters follow.

Such is the type of humor in Movie 43. Sadly, there is not really much more to the movie than the sketches themselves. Movie 43 scores as high as it does with me because it actually is amusing in points. Movie 43 is entertaining and it is funny when it is not being entirely disturbing.

Moreover, Movie 43 is a cinematic example of “better ingredients, better pizza” as it were. Getting Liev Schreiber, Terence Howard, Elizabeth Banks, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Kristen Bell and other a- and b-list actors to perform in the sketches makes them seem like something more than cheap shots and gross-out humor. But, that’s mostly what Movie 43 is; it’s just fortunate that the jokes land as often as they do, or else the movie would be far less than it appears.

For other works with Leslie Bibb, please visit my reviews of:
Iron Man 2
Confessions Of A Shopaholic
Iron Man
Talladega Nights: The Legend Of Ricky Bobby

2/10

For other movie reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing.

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Stacking The Deck Does Not Always Make A Winner: The Amazing Spider-Man

The Good: Great acting, Moments of character development, Special effects
The Bad: Very predictable plot progression, Telegraphing music
The Basics: As Peter Parker explores his father’s legacy, he struggles to find his own identity and come into his own as a vigilante superhero and a young man.


For those who do not read my many reviews, there are two things at the outset of my consideration of The Amazing Spider-Man that you ought to know: 1. I was not wild about the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies and 2. I make a pretty firm distinction between great actors and great acting. The Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies garnered an incredible amount of attention and praise at the time for their special effects and the casting. While it is virtually impossible to come up with a better J. Jonah Jameson than J.K. Simmons and he performed the role exceptionally well, the rest of the acting, plot and character elements in the Spider-Man movies were tired. It didn’t wow me and I was very much not impressed by the series.

So, when I heard about The Amazing Spider-Man, I thought nothing of it. Then, the casting announcements for The Amazing Spider-Man began. Martin Sheen . . . love him, Andrew Garfield . . . I’m a fan, Emma Stone . . . whoah! She even looks amazing as a blonde! Sally Field and Denis Leary have both done things I’ve liked, but I began to worry. When I applied to colleges, one of the schools I went to apply at left me very underwhelmed. They were looking for the best and brightest students and even offered me a full scholarship, the very best financial aid package I was offered. The thing is, when I sat in on classes, I was bored and so were virtually all of the students I met. It did not take long for me to realize exactly what the college was doing; it was getting a higher caliber of students to raise the overall G.P.A. as opposed to investing in good teachers or innovative programs. As casting for The Amazing Spider-Man continued, I had the horrible feeling that that was what might be happening.

Fortunately, I was wrong.

The Amazing Spider-Man does not suffer excessively from stacking the deck; there is enough character development and enough opportunities for the actors to perform that make the film work. While the film occasionally treads close to “mediocre greatness,” The Amazing Spider-Man’s most stifling issue is that the plot follows a very predictable progression and it relies upon the special effects being visually overwhelming at times, as opposed to truly incredible. “Mediocre greatness,” by the way, is my term for incredible casting that does not stretch the abilities of the actors. Related to stacking the deck, “mediocre greatness” casts all of the right people in exactly the right positions and, as a result, there is no room for the performer to actually grow. Instead, even at their best, they can only rise to what the viewer expects knowing their range and abilities. Martin Sheen’s Uncle Ben in The Amazing Spider-Man is pretty much that. Fortunately, the rest of the cast (largely) is given room to give viewers something new.

Peter Parker lives with his Uncle Ben and Aunt May, following his abandonment by his parents. He is exceptionally smart, but an outsider as a high school student. He has a crush on the brainy Gwen Stacy, but is quiet and bullied. Parker finds a case at his Uncle’s home that provides him with clues on what his father was working on when he fled. This leads Peter Parker on a journey that takes two forms. He encounters Dr. Curt Connors, who is working on similar research – mixing genetics from different animals in order to try to isolate a single benefit. Connors wants to use lizard’s regenerative properties to regenerate human limbs, a cause very dear to the one-armed scientist.

Peter swipes and modifies a mechanical device from Oscorp that gives him the ability to sling webs, much like a spider (though far, far stronger). He uses this newfound technology and his reaction to being bitten by a spider at Oscorp to help people and, after a few problematic attempts, he creates a costume and alter-ego to become a vigilante crime fighter, Spider-Man. While the police are handed criminals by Spider-Man, NYPD police Captain Stacy cannot abide by a vigilante running around (and causing some collateral damage, in addition to embarrassment for the police), so he begins a nightly manhunt for Spider-Man. As Peter gets his chance with Gwen Stacy, Dr. Connors makes his most bold attempt at scientific advancement, testing a serum on himself . . . with disastrous results.

The Amazing Spider-Man, is very good, but I could not help thinking - even as I watched it – that it was depending too much on giant and impressive special effects. For those who just tool toward the bottom line on these things, I oscillated between the 6.5 and 7 at various points in my analysis. While The Amazing Spider-Man is good, it is not great and the plot, especially, makes it feel quite a bit more average than one wants out of an action-adventure superhero film. If anything, The Amazing Spider-Man might be pioneering a new class for me. Instead of “mediocre greatness” where amazing actors are cast in decent roles for films where they can pretty much only rise to our expectations, The Amazing Spider-Man takes an almost boring and droll plot and makes it feel interesting by populating it with great actors who are portraying characters who are different from those we have seen them as before. This “superlative averageness” is what, at the very least, pulls The Amazing Spider-Man up to a level of film that the prior cinematic Spider-Man was not.

The Amazing Spider-Man is Peter Parker’s story, though Gwen Stacy and Curt Connors have enough to do in the film to make them interesting, at the very least. Peter Parker is delightfully smart and it is refreshing to see a protagonist who uses his wits instead of brawn or an inflated sense of ego. That does not stop Andrew Garfield from taking the role and making it physically and psychologically interesting. Outside the annoying penchant for commentary while swinging around on his webs (Hollywood seems to have a real problem with characters who are quiet when they are focusing on survival), Garfield’s Peter Parker is smart, witty and a good kid. Garfield’s strong dramatic roots play out well for him in The Amazing Spider-Man. While Garfield, no doubt, has the ability to be funny, some of the attempts in The Amazing Spider-Man work too hard to get him to be that way. While he sells some of the funniest moments with a lighter sense of humor (the very popular clip of Spider-Man mocking a criminal about his knife stands out), some of the other lines seem slightly out of place; Garfield could have sold them with his more serious delivery.

Rhys Ifans is good as Dr. Curt Connors, but the caliber of performance in The Amazing Spider-Man is dominated by the performances of Denis Leary and Emma Stone. Denis Leary plays Captain Stacy and while one might predict that he could play a grizzled police captain who has seen a lot on the streets of New York City, it is unlikely that most people could have predicted the authority he would carry in the role. Leary plays Stacy as smart and determined, a true leader and he manages to pull it off. While one or two of his lines seem tailored to Leary’s sense of sarcasm, Leary manages to present them without the acidity he is usually known for.

Emma Stone makes The Amazing Spider-Man into a movie that should make it popular with young women, as opposed to just a comic book geek hit. Stone makes Gwen Stacy smart, funny, and emotionally intelligent. In The Amazing Spider-Man, Gwen Stacy is useful to Peter Parker and the result is that Gwen Stacy is not a damsel in distress who is some form of “prize” for the hero. Instead, she uses her own sense of judgment to try to solve the problem represented by the Curt Connors Lizard and she helps make another Marvel superhero seem anything but invulnerable (which is much more interesting on the character front anyway). Stone is a brilliant choice for the role, as she is ridiculously smart and makes Gwen Stacy plausibly brilliant. She also has the dramatic gravitas to play off Garfield in a way that makes it entirely reasonably that Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy would be interested in one another. In other words, the romantic subplot feels far less like a conceit and more an organic relationship than in many such films. Stone deserves a lot of credit for that.

Predictably, the effects in The Amazing Spider-Man are truly incredible. The Amazing Spider-Man is summer fare; it is big, action-filled, and it has its moments of being both smart and making the viewer care. But on a smaller screen, away from the spectacle and hype, it is hard to imagine The Amazing Spider-Man will appear to be more than a well-made, overly familiar, movie.

For other movies based upon the Marvel comic books, please check out my reviews of:
The Avengers
Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance
Captain America: The First Avenger
X-Men: First Class
Thor
Iron Man 2
The Incredible Hulk
Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer
Blade: Trinity
Elektra
Daredevil

6.5/10

For other film reviews, please be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the movies I have reviewed!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Worse Than We Had Predicted, Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past Is Unredeemably Bad!

The Good: Soundtrack
The Bad: Acting, Plot predictability, Direction, Character development, Continuity contradictions.
The Basics: Utterly unredeemable, Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past is a terrible film that reinforces negative stereotypes about women and treats men badly, too. No entertainment value.


My wife and I have different tastes in movies, but it seems like lately I have been picking more winners. Indeed, she was concerned she would fall asleep during X-Men Origins: Wolverine, yet squeezed my hand at all of the shocking moments and after begrudging me (quietly) the two hour drive and hour wait in line to a screening of Star Trek eagerly talked about it with me and anyone who would listen. But from the previews, she was eager to see Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past. As she observed afterward, "even people who went in with low expectations will be disappointed."

She is right; I went in figuring that the best moments were in the trailer and the irony of that is that some of the best moments stay in the trailer. The trailers had moments cut from the final film and the result is even less funny than the concept. But if you want to save yourself time and money, here is the simplest possible explanation of Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past: women are idiots and sluts, men are dogs who refuse to take responsibility for their actions. That's not me saying that, it is the message that comes through loud and clear in the film and those who like good chick flicks will cringe at how bad this is both as a "chick flick" and as a film in general.

Connor Mead is a photographer who shoots women in their underwear and who is not tied to any one woman. In fact, as he works to seduce a new singer, he breaks up with his three latest prior conquests, then abandons his latest chick for his brother's wedding where he has bedded all but one of the bridesmaids in the past. As Connor tries to convince his brother, Paul, to flee marrying Sandra, he is reunited with the arguable love of his life, Jenny. Jenny continues to reject Connor and Connor looks to hook up with the last bridesmaid at the wedding.

This is when Connor and Paul's dead uncle Wayne appears to Connor and tells him he will be visited by three ghosts, who will teach him a lesson on love. Connor is soon visited by the Ghost of Girlfriends Past, who illustrates to him how poorly he has treated women, then reminds him of the relationship he had with Jenny and how he left after the first time they made love. As Connor wrestles with the understanding he might have left the love of his life walk out in the past, Paul and Sandra get cold feet and Connor must apply his newfound heart to saving the imperiled couple.

Sometimes, simplest is best: Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past is stupid and insulting. My apparent generalization before is, unfortunately, not a generalization. Women in the film are treated atrociously and the men are little better, but certainly no worse. There is an undertone of misogyny in the way Connor treats women like objects, but they not only let him, they encourage him. Then they act like surprised idiots when he abandons them the way he abandoned everyone else. The height of this sickness is arguably reached at the beginning when the new up-and-coming superstar witnesses Connor treat three women poorly, encourages him to bed her and allows herself to be seduced with the line "come to papa" (which is much grosser in context than it sounds out of). This, however, is "arguably" the low point for women being treated badly by themselves (because, again, women in this film are sluts and/or idiots) because later a woman responds to Uncle Wayne by approaching him with the line, "She might not be into that kind of thing, but I am!"

But the most important idiot, er, woman, is Jenny. Jenny appears as a strong female character from the outset, rejecting Connor and keeping him at arm's length. We soon see why; despite a childhood together, when she rejected Connor at a middle school dance, Connor became a misogynistic dog. Ten years later, he woos her only to leave her. The stupidity here in Jenny takes the form that she let him in to begin with, despite correctly analyzing his tendencies, and that she still pines for him now. Jenny's whole catchphrase throughout the movie in relation to Connor is "not as dumb as he looks, folks." The problem is, Jenny IS! Seeing him again turns Jenny into mush, which helps reinforce the old concept that women want the bad boy and the project.

This is, unfortunately, not the only message being reinforced throughout the movie. The positive message is a remarkably conservative "fidelity pays off and everyone ends up with who they are 'supposed' to" message, all within a heterosexual and ethnically conservative sensibility. As a result, as the movie ends with people pairing off, the film's two most recognizable ethnic characters make a love connection and the viewer is afforded one final cringe in a movie filled with them. Sandra is a neurotic caricature of a bride and this reinforces, like many of the movie's other messages, that women live entirely for the bridal day and that this is the socially appropriate way for them to be . . . neurotic.

As well, men are dogs, but that is okay as long as someday they settle down. This is reinforced pretty obviously by Connor and Uncle Wayne, but the more troubling message is that men refuse to take responsibility for their actions. Connor only bucks this trend in the final moments of the movie, but his character is such a ridiculous trainwreck anyway (I'd mention the specific moment in the last minutes that was so ridiculous that it did not fit, but I'd ruin it for the one person reading who did not see the movie trailer, because the trailer DID show virtually the entire movie) that it is hard to care.

The most problematic aspect of Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past is that the Dickensian message being spread in it is unfortunately inapplicable in the specific circumstances. Connor is learning a Very Valuable Lesson about the strength of love. He learns the lesson in time to try to save the romance between Sandra and Paul and pursue Jenny at arguably the last moment he will have to get her. The thing is, Sandra and Paul's romance is beleaguered on the eve of their wedding not because they suddenly learn a new fact about each other, but because their fundamentals are not solid and that fact upsets Sandra to a ridiculous extent. In other words, Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past annoyingly supports a romance that is not firm enough to survive on its own because it is not a decent romance. Only in the movies do people lie to one another up to the wedding day, have a real conflict about that and salvage the wedding day. In the real world, people come clean early, delay the wedding or don't get married, more often than films show any of those consequences.

As for the acting, this is not the Jennifer Garner of Catch And Release and my wife is convinced that Matthew McConaughey is trying to be Adam Sandler in his role as Connor Mead. Either way, they have utterly no chemistry on screen. The only other noteworthy acting comment would be that Lacey Chabert appears to be contractually obligated to give her teeth screen time in every moment of the film. No performer in this film ought to be proud of the final result.

There are a few good lines in Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past, but for every good line, there is a cringer and one that reinforces a negative stereotype. And for those who want to write it off as "just a movie," I'd argue this is how prejudice, sexism, misogyny and outdated gender roles persist. Of course, keeping women dumb and skanky works for those dogly men, so . . .

For other films with Emma Stone, please check out my reviews of:
The Help
Crazy Stupid Love.
Friends With Benefits
Easy A
Marmaduke
Zombieland

1.5/10

For other movie reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2010, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Oscar Pandering Season Comes Early With The Help, The First Serious Contender Of 2011!

The Good: Social message, The acting, Character development
The Bad: Slight pacing issues
The Basics: Emma Stone rocks out her final movie of the season, The Help, which tells the important story of exposing segregation in Mississippi.


Oscar Pandering Season is usually in December; it's the push when all the major studios and all the art studios release their contemplative pictures before the holidays and, coincidentally (?, no, it's by design!) the Oscar nominations process begins. They have, for the past several years, bet that the members of the Academy are too dim to recall any movies that came out a month before to nominate. Last year, with the Best Picture nominees being bumped up to ten, films like Inception (reviewed here!) had a chance at the big prize, though the first serious contender (for everyone but me, who was hoping Inception could pull it off) came out in October when The Social Network (reviewed here!) was released. This year, Oscar Pandering Season comes even earlier with it being hard to acknowledge that The Help has a serious chance at the Best Picture nomination and win.

What I found so interesting before going into see The Help tonight was the advertising. Unlike most movie previews of late, The Help did not try to cash in on the celebrity behind any of its stars. Instead, because it was based upon a wildly popular book (in the interest of full disclosure, I have not read the book, so this is a very pure review of the film), the advertising thrust for the movie was simply showing off who embodies which of the characters. Unfortunately, the advertising left me, a complete newbie to the phenomenon that is The Help with the idea that the film is populated by four character/archetypes: Skeeter the woman coming of age in the South who begins to challenge the mores and norms, Aibileen the long-suffering maid who is quiet and powerful, Minny the sassy black housekeeper and Hilly the stereotype of the Southern woman who embodies most of the problems with segregation.

Having now seen The Help it is easy to say that there is a serious contender for three of the big Oscars as well as a tough to whittle down Best Supporting Actress category (from just this one movie!). And the movie is near-perfect. My wife thought it was perfect, I think there were a few minor pacing issues that robbed it in the intangibles from reaching perfection (and, honestly, the more I think about Skeeter, the less I think there is actual character development going on there). I will say that I cannot recall the last time I watched a movie and found myself tearing up as much as tonight.

In the early 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi, Skeeter is stepping out into the workforce. She has landed a job at the newspaper writing the household column, but she is noticing that the status quo is upsetting her more and more. So, she pitches a New York publisher an idea; to write a book about the black maids in Jackson and get the inside story on how their lives are lived. Her first subject is Aibileen Clark, a maid she has known for years and now works for Jolene, one of Skeeter's bridge club friends.

Just as Aibileen is reticent to risk her job by telling Skeeter what she truly wants to know, Minny is uneasy about her employer, Hilly's, push to get separate bathrooms for the help so whites and blacks will not share toilets. When a rain storm makes it difficult for Minny to get to the bathroom Hilly has provided, she attempts to use one of the indoor bathrooms and Hilly fires her. As Aibileen warms up to Skeeter's project, Minny takes work at the only house in town where Hilly has not badmouthed her; the estate of Celia Foote, a social outcast who is trying to get pregnant. As the Civil Rights Movement takes violent turns with the deaths of Medgar Evers and JFK, Aibileen and Minny get up the courage to help Skeeter write her book and encourage others to stand up, too.

Thrown in there is a very brief subplot in which Skeeter has a go with one of Hilly's friends and it is very much a subplot. It works for the social message of the film, but not so much for Skeeter's character. She seems smart enough from the beginning to not truly need a man in her life and the point of the boyfriend seems mostly to nail home the sense of conflict going on after The Help is published. Moreover, Skeeter is comparatively liberal from the outset, so she doesn't so much develop as she simply learns new information.

That said, The Help is a powerful character study for Aibileen and Minny. Aibileen's arc takes her on a journey of self-discovery whereby she gets the courage to stand up and tell the truth about some of the horrors of the segregated lifestyle. Unfortunately, the climax for the character is ruined in the previews, but the film is so engaging that I enjoyed the build-up to her confrontation with Hilly. Minny's character arc is one whereby her fronts are pulled away until she develops actual self-worth through her chaotic employment situations. Sure, she is the sassy black archetype that the previews made her seem, but she works because the movie has so much more of her in terms of developing her character after the fall from Hilly's graces.

But the real story for The Help is going to be the amazing acting. Allison Janey gives a wonderful supporting performance that proves what Mr. Sunshine's viewers quickly learned; Janey has a remarkable knack for performing crazy. As Skeeter's mother Charlotte, Janey bears the secret to one of the film's recurring mysteries - what happened to Constantine, the maid who raised Skeeter? Janey plays the role as crazy enough to steal the attention in her scenes but not so overbearing as to distract from the main narrative flow. And she does it opposite her once-recurring-star from The West Wing Brian Kerwin!

Anna Camp, Jessica Chastain and Emma Stone all give wonderful supporting performances. And I lump Stone in on the supporting end because Skeeter is the facilitator, not so much the focus of the narrative. Besides, I'm pretty sick of writing how amazingly talented Stone is. She's wicked talented and while Janey slips out of her accent for a single line, Stone never does, giving a performance that continues her memorable ascent.

Bryce Dallas Howard is cold and vicious as Hilly. Hilly is the uber-bitch and Howard lands the role so effectively that there is truly nothing more that can be said. Her body language is wound so tight that it is amazing to think that she has ever played anyone more loose.

Octavia Spencer is more than just decent as Minny. Spencer is a tough one to write about; Minny is a pretty stereotypically sassy black woman and Spencer seems to dive right into that role. But when Minny has her epiphanies and is accepted by Celia's family in a loving way, Spencer lands the moment just right. She softens her eyes and there is a tenderness that she portrays that runs deep. She makes more out of the moment where her character does not speak than most of the moments when she is delivering the film's funniest lines.

But most of the film rests on the shoulders of Viola Davis. Davis is a master of the craft and at only 46, she has the task of convincing viewers she is quite a bit older. Her physical presence is impressive; she shakes slightly, she waddles a little bit, but mostly, she starts the film with a tired look in her eyes that embodies years of oppression. But when she interacts with her ward, she lights up and Aibileen comes alive as a truly viable and complicated character. And her journey works and captivates the audience for the full two hour seventeen minute runtime of the film.

The Help is emotionally complicated and it does not shy away from confronting the big horrors of segregation. It does, however, couch it to retain its loyal middle-aged female fanbase. So, for example, when a maid is arrested and becomes the subject of police brutality, we see the nightstick raised, but we are left to our imagination how terribly it falls. And complicated films tend to do well when the Oscars are considered. For a change, I feel like pushing for the obvious choice. So far, The Help is the best movie of 2011 and it deserves to be viewed, contemplated, and probably watched again.

For other works featuring Octavia Spencer, please check out my reviews of:
Peep World
The Soloist
Spider-Man

9.5/10

For other movie reviews, please be sure to visit my index page on the subject by clicking here!

© 2011 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.



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