More Of The Same: Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues Still Entertains!

The Good: Very funny, Decent performances
The Bad: Predictable plot and character arcs
The Basics: Cameos and incongruently hilarious lines (along with a surprising amount of social commentary), make Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues a worthwhile sequel!


As we reach the end of the year, I find myself catching movies I missed over the last year. I was actually surprised to discover that Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues came out a whole year ago! I guess that illustrates how excited I was about the Anchorman sequel. My wife, however, is a huge fan of Will Ferrell, so with the release of the trailer to Get Hard, she’s been eager to catch up on the Ferrell films she’s missed over the last two years. We started with Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues. We opted for the extended edition of Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues because what the hell is the point of the theatrical version when you can have half an hour more of Ron Burgundy?!

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues picks up right after Anchorman (reviewed here!) and for those who have not seen the first film, there is almost no humor in the movie that depends upon the first film. In fact, outside the introduction of Brick Tamland, the humor in Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues stands entirely on its own. But for those who are fans of Anchorman, while Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues is enjoyable, it is largely a continuation of what came before without much new . . . other than the lines. Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues is funny and continues the humor of Anchorman which worked best as a collection of hilarious lines, more than a humorous narrative. Like the first one, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues is the funniest when it is just playing with funny lines as opposed to moving the film in wacky directions.

After the success of Ron Burgundy and Veronica Corningstone working on the nightly news in San Diego, the pair moves to New York City. There, Veronica is offered a position as a major network news anchor and Ron Burgundy is fired. Six months later, Ron Burgundy is working at Sea World, getting drunk, fired and then unsuccessfully trying to kill himself. Offered a position at GNN, a new 24-hour news network in New York City, by Freddie Shapp immediately after his aborted suicide attempt, Ron Burgundy reunites his old news team to take the job at the cable news company. After getting Champ Kind, Brian Fantana, and Brick Tamland out of their current situations, the quartet goes to New York City where they meet their new boss, Linda (where they are shocked by working for a black woman).

Ron Burgundy adapts poorly to working at the cable station where the primetime anchor, Jack Lime, is better-looking and more popular than he is. While Brick falls for a secretary working for GNN, Ron ends up in a fight with Jack. Challenged to beat Jack’s ratings, despite being at the 2 A.M. timeslot, Ron creates soft news (infotainment) in an attempt to win. When infotainment makes Burgundy a national hit, his formula leads him to unprecedented success. He begins to present his own stories – like smoking crack on the air – and the results are awards, women, and even more success. But Burgundy’s new relationship with his boss and his attempts to keep his old family (winning them back) leads him to real conflict that puts him at odds with his oldest friends. When sweeps week puts him at odds with his ex-wife and his news team,

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues is, at best, a series of hilarious lines strung together by a thin plot involving Burgundy’s attempt to dominate cable news. As such, the film includes a pretty time-consuming subplot involving Brick and Chani, musical numbers, and otherwise incongruent comedic exchanges (condoms, horse piss, and the shock of working for a black boss). The film is funny, but is actually quite a bit smarter than one might expect.

Loaded with a social commentary that actually explores the degradation of journalism. While Burgundy creates feel-good pieces and ratingsbait, the commentary is actually impressive. Burgundy sinks a hard-hitting piece on how airplane parts are falling off planes and killing people because the corporate sponsors of GNN have a major stock interest in the airline that is criminally negligent. But, to appease the corporate owners of GNN, Burgundy eagerly jettisons the significant story in favor of a car chase. That Ron witlessly does the wrong thing is one thing, but as an audience able to evaluate the work, it is clear that writers Will Ferrell and Adam McKay had something to say.

It’s easy to overlook the commentary in Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues amid troublingly blatant jokes surrounding Ron Burgundy’s racism and the ridiculous plot development of Rob going blind. Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues starts to feel repetitive for those who have seen the first Anchorman as Ron refocuses his life on Veronica and his son. The film loses some of its focus as it transfers from being a story of an ambitious idiot working his way up the cable news ladder to achieve popularity when it takes a right turn with Ron and his son Walter rehabilitate a shark they find washed up on the shore of the lighthouse Ron moves into after he goes blind.

The performances in Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues are exactly what one expects from a Will Ferrell film that utilizes the strongly comedic cast that was assembled for the first film, along with newcomers (to the franchise) like Kristen Wiig, James Marsden, and Meagan Good. Even Dylan Baker, who usually plays straightlaced, powerful dramatic characters, plays Freddie as goofy and hilarious which is unlike any other performance of his I have seen.

The leads in Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues: Will Ferrell, David Koechner, Steve Carell, and Paul Rudd each reclaim their roles from the first film and they manage to make their characters distinct and funny. The film is funny, entertaining, and has more substance and commentary than the first, though it is more repetitive and familiar than it is audacious and originally. Still, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continued is worth watching!

For other works with David Koechner, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Cheap Thrills
Piranha 3DD
Paul
Extract
The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard
Sex Drive
Get Smart
Let’s Go To Prison
Farce Of the Penguins
Thank You For Smoking
The 40 Year Old Virgin
Waiting . . .

5.5/10

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

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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If The Avengers Were Made As A Science Fiction Comedy: Guardians Of The Galaxy!

The Good: Good humor, Decent soundtrack, Good plot development
The Bad: Rather obvious (and rushed) character development, Nothing exceptional in terms of performances, Distracting 3-D in several points
The Basics: Guardians Of The Galaxy further expands the Marvel Cinematic Universe while amusing viewers . . . without resonating the same way as the prior installments.


Guardians Of The Galaxy has a number of reasonable comparisons to the giant Marvel film The Avengers (reviewed here!), not just because both are set within the same storytelling universe. The Marvel Cinematic Universe was established in Phase One (reviewed here!) as a surprisingly grounded place: Tony Stark needed time to train within his suit of armor, Steve Rogers was a unique warrior set in place as the only stopgap against an army powered by an extraterrestrial device and for the bulk of his time on Earth, Thor was without his godlike powers. For all of the supernatural and comic book conceits that exist in science fiction and comic book movies, the Marvel Cinematic Universe did not employ most of them (save in the Hulk movies, which is arguably why they failed). In other words, most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe strove to generally recreate the real world and then add slight twists to it and explore how “real people” and the “real world” would react to those twists.

Until the climax of The Avengers, when an interstellar alien force invades, and outside the climactic event of Thor: The Dark World (reviewed here!), the Marvel Cinematic Universe has worked hard to keep a realist sensibility to itself. Taking an entirely different tact is the new addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Guardians Of The Galaxy. Guardians Of The Galaxy, as the name implies, is set (mostly) in the farthest reaches of the galaxy (where a sizable population still looks mostly human) and explores the larger consequences of the artifacts that the other films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe have been introducing. Those artifacts, like the Tesseract and the seed in the Thor sequel, are given an explicit name in Guardians Of The Galaxy: they are Infinity Stones (which Marvel geeks knew years ago). Guardians Of The Galaxy introduces another one and reveals what their purpose is . . . along with the motivation Thanos had for hunting the Tesseract in The Avengers. More than just in its outlandish setting, Guardians Of The Galaxy transforms the Marvel Cinematic Universe into a much less grounded place. Guardians Of The Galaxy feels like exactly what it is: a film based on a comic book.

That is not to say Guardians Of The Galaxy is not good. It is. Guardians Of The Galaxy is a fun and funny science fiction comedy, continuing the tradition of the niche genre like Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (reviewed here!) or Men In Black (reviewed here!). Unlike the former, Guardians Of The Galaxy lacks a sense of theme and universal resonance and treads more toward entertainment than enlightenment.

Opening in 1988, Peter Quill’s mother dies and the young boy flees into the night where he is promptly abducted by aliens. Twenty-six years later, Quill is scavenging on a dead world where he recovers an orb from the ruins. Moments after he gets the item he was sent for, he squares off against Korath and his forces. Evading them and retreating to his ship, the Milano, Quill decides to betray his employer and sell the recovered Orb on his own. While Quill heads to Xandar to sell the Orb, the villainous alien Ronan dispatches Gamora (who volunteers) to recover it. When the potential buyer for the Orb freaks out – after learning Ronan is after the artifact – Quill is attacked by Gamora, a sentient genetically-modified, cybernetically enhanced raccoon named Rocket and his humanoid plant companion Groot, and the Nova police force.

The quartet is imprisoned on a remote world, the Kyln, where virtually everyone wants to kill Gamora, especially Drax The Destroyer. Quill manages to save Gamora’s life and refocuses Drax on finding and killing Ronin. The quintet stages an incredible escape from the Kyln by working together, with the four aliens actually waiting for Quill when he goes back for his prized mix tape. Hunted by Ronan, Quill’s regular employer Yondu Udonta and the police force from Nova, Quill and his compatriots become determined to keep the Orb from falling into the hands of Ronan and Thanos when Ronan reveals that the Orb contains an Infinity Stone with virtually unlimited power to destroy. Working together, Quill, Gamora, Drax, Rocket and Groot must protect the citizens of Xandar from the genocidal plans of Ronan and Thanos.

In many ways, Guardians Of The Galaxy is a very typical science fiction film. In fact, its reliance upon humor makes it fun, but also as formulaic as virtually every comedy to grace the big screen . . . ever. Guardians Of The Galaxy transforms the Marvel Cinematic Universe simply by realigning the physics of the galaxy to allow virtually every comic book conceit as opposed to conforming to realistic physics. That makes the fight scenes in Guardians Of The Galaxy extraordinarily dynamic and animated, especially when Groot and Rocket are involved. They hop around without clear boundaries on their abilities (Groot, for example, is entirely inscrutable and only reveals the extent of his powers and abilities when they become relevant and necessary).

Peter Quill is a decent anti-hero; he does the right thing when it suits him, but he is a Han Solo-esque bounty hunter who also strangles small animals to use them as microphones when the mood takes him. In his quest to get respect in the galactic underground as Star Lord, Quill does not actually distinguish himself in any strong or meaningful way. Less the function of his personality or values, Quill manages to survive Guardians Of The Galaxy simply by biology. Heavily alluded to in the film’s very first scene, Peter Quill is not simply a human, but his heritage is only a minor subplot in the larger film.

Far more of a component of Guardians Of The Galaxy is establishing and then defying the premises of the universe and characters Peter Quill is a part of. In this regard, Guardians Of The Galaxy is painfully formulaic. Elements that are established in an obvious way include Groot’s limited vocabulary (he, we are told, only speaks the three words “I am Groot,” though Rocket seems able to interpret what he means by it as the film goes on), Gamora’s absolute refusal to dance, and the obviously seeded gift Quill receives from his dying mother that he has not opened over the lapsed twenty-six years. For sure, viewers need a film with character development to make any movie worth watching, but Guardians Of The Galaxy is like watching a checklist of the elements that are used to establish the characters getting checked off. Virtually everything established about a character, up to and including Drax’s lifelong struggle with metaphor, is defied by the film’s end. Guardians Of The Galaxy is obviously intended to build a franchise, but the way the film ends, there is almost nowhere to go for the characters that will not force the writers to completely redefine them. This would be analogous to Bruce Banner learning to control his ability to transform in Hulk (such an ability would have left the character with nothing compelling for The Incredible Hulk or The Avengers). So, in some ways, Guardians Of The Galaxy undoes its own attempt to build a franchise by making a solid (if formulaic) story.

In a similar fashion, Guardians Of The Galaxy is nothing extraordinary on the acting front. John C. Reilly is (mostly) goofy as the Nova Police Officer Dey and Glenn Close is appropriately authoritative as Nova Prime, the leader of Xandar. Djimon Hounsou plays the villainous Korath with virtually the same presence that he has played many other adversaries over the years. The film’s lead, Chris Pratt, plays Quill as an everyman and he does so with a similarly goofy quality (but without the slouch) to his character from Parks And Recreation. Even Zoe Saldana (who plays Gamora) is used in such a familiar way that director James Gunn doesn’t even bother hiding the allusion to her playing Uhura by throwing her in a miniskirt at the movie’s end.

Guardians Of The Galaxy is charming and worth watching, but it is hardly a great and enduring film the way some other, recent super hero films have managed to be.

For other works in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, please check out my reviews of:
Ant-Man
Captain America: Civil War
Doctor Strange
Iron Fist - Season 1
"What If . . . " - Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.

7/10

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

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Am I The Only One In The World Who Did Not Enjoy Anger Management?!

The Good: Moments of humor, Generally good performances
The Bad: Agonizing tone, Predictable plot, Irksome character development
The Basics: When Dave Buznik is sentenced to 20 hours of anger management therapy, he ends up getting more than he bargained for when noted author and expert Dr. Buddy Rydell antagonizes him.


There are a number of movies that came and went in their theatrical run that I had absolutely no interest in watching that I now find myself catching thanks to my wife. Pretty much any film featuring Adam Sandler falls into that category; my wife is a fan and I’m not a huge fan – though there are some that I have enjoyed. Despite the presence of Jack Nicholson in it, I never had the urge to watch the Adam Sandler film Anger Management. That avoidance ended last night when my wife and mother-in-law were in the mood to watch Anger Management and I was in the mood to hang out with them.

Hated it.

The thing is, I don’t recall what I knew about Anger Management going into it, but from the outset the movie set me off because the protagonist seemed woefully misdiagnosed with anger issues. Adam Sandler is possibly the ultimate actor for portraying seething rage beneath a good-guy persona. He did it masterfully in Punch-Drunk Love (reviewed here!), so Sandler has abilities. For sure, there are many different ways people who have anger under the surface might act, but in Anger Management, Sandler’s character of Dave Buznik exhibits no recognizable traits of someone who is truly angry and struggles to deal with that. Instead, in Anger Management, Dave is constantly provoked and he is surrounded by angry people who overact to his calm rejections of their behavior.

Dave Buznik has been dating Linda for years and he remains too timid to commit to her, despite the fact that she pals around with Andrew, an ex who shows no respect for her relationship with Dave. Dave has a great idea that his boss takes credit for. That leads to Dave traveling for his boss and on the plane, he moves seats to sit next to Dr. Buddy Rydell. In asking for headphones, Dave is forced to wait and when he gently puts his hand on the stewardess’s elbow, the plane lands and he is charged with assault. He is sentenced to twenty hours of anger management therapy . . . with Dr. Rydell.

Rydell begins almost immediately making offers to Dave and then betraying him. Dave’s sentence is expanded to forty hours and the group sessions Dave attends include the legitimately violent Chuck, a porn star couple, and a guy who is far long in Rydell’s program, Lou. Traveling together, Dave and Rydell go through a number of exercises, like Rydell having Dave pick up a woman at a bar, then telling Linda about it. Rydell has Dave confront his childhood tormenter and then starts dating Linda himself. In the process of Rydell agitating Dave, Dave comes to stand up for himself and his relationship with Linda.

Anger Management is unpleasant to watch because almost immediately, the viewer has the sense that Dave is being played. Watching a generally nice guy get railroaded by an erratic manipulator is not my idea of entertaining. As a result of the transparent way that Rydell works Dave, the “surprise” twist near the end is more obvious than audacious. Anger Management telegraphs itself and it is frustrating to watch a film where the protagonist is so far behind the curve.

That said, Anger Management has an impressive cast that is utilized remarkably well . . . outside Sandler. Sandler’s Dave is not written to be particularly angry, clever or distinct and that leaves Sandler with remarkably little to play. Anger Management does not give Adam Sandler one of his interesting or quirky characters to play and the result is that much of the movie has the viewer watching an indistinct tool.

The rest of the cast of Anger Management is impressively utilized. Jack Nicholson plays Dr. Rydell with an energetic quality that borders on the sadistic and makes the role instantly credible. Nicholson gets through the psychobabble with a brilliant straight face and when his character turns toward the charming and erratic, he lends some continuity to the performance that makes it seem like it is the same character going through everything. Nicholson has amazing facial acting and director Peter Segal captures that wonderfully. The supplemental cast of Marisa Tomei, Luiz Guzman, Kurt Fuller, Woody Harrelson, John Turturro, Heather Graham and John C. Riley flesh out the world around Dave and Rydell to keep Sandler playing off an intriguing number of other talents.

Unfortunately, the humor in Anger Management is slapstick and not at all shocking. Telegraphed well in advance, much of the film has mediocre jokes broke up by long stretches of Rydell antagonizing Dave. Anger Management is like watching torment on film and for as much as Dave is tormented, so is the viewer.

For other works with January Jones, please visit my reviews of:
X-Men: First Class
Unknown
Love Actually
Bandits

4/10

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

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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My Wife Might Love Step Brothers, But I'm More Ambivalent To It!

The Good: Funny, truly, absurdly funny.
The Bad: Predictable, Mediocre (or unsurprising) acting
The Basics: Ultimately average-at-best, Step Brothers is more a predictable Will Ferrell movie than a surprising one.


My wife and I, fortunately enough, still have plenty that differentiates us from one another. Among her many loves - which I do not share - are mushrooms, loud music and the movies of Will Ferrell. I have nothing against Will Ferrell, I reviewed The Other Guys (available here!) earlier. But I do have an appreciation for the acting talents of John C. Reilly. So, when I picked up Step Brothers for my wife as her final DVD (we're on Blu-Ray now!), having heard her rave about it for the entire first year of our knowing one another, I figured I was in for a fifty-fifty split. Having seen the movie with her now, I'm still there.

Step Brothers follows in a pretty long tradition of movies where adults act like children and it reunites Ferrell with Reilly along with the director who put them together in Talladega Nights. And while Reilly does a decent job playing the manchild, in this case, Dale, Ferrell's character Brennan is very much what one expects from Ferrell in this type comedy. In fact, the most severe problem with Step Brothers is that it is only what one expects from a Will Ferrell comedy.

Brennan is a middle-aged guy living with his mother, just as Dale lives with his father following the death of his mother. Robert, Dale's father, meets Nancy, Brennan's mother, while on a business trip and the two hit it off immediately. In fact, they marry exceptionally quickly and Nancy and Brennan move in with Robert and Dale. While the newlyweds do their thing, Brennan and Dale square off and Dale exerts his dominance, by threatening Brennan and warning him about such things as touching his drum set. But when Dale takes on Brennan's successful young brother, Brennan changes his mind about Dale.

At that point, the two begin to work together to have fun and make the best of their time together. They create a company, based upon having a great name for an entertainment conglomerate ("Prestige Worldwide") and they plan to turn their lives around. But it is at that point that Robert and Nancy decide to move out and sell the house, forcing Dale and Brennan to get real jobs. Failing to do that, violence breaks out and Robert decides he cannot live this way any longer and the family falls apart, pitting Dale and Brennan at one another's throats again.

This is, in many ways, a formulaic comedy that only seems fresh for moments because the movie takes time to create characters who have such a grasp on absurdist humor that one cannot help but laugh at their antics. For sure, the viewer does not so much care about what happens to Dale or Brennan, but we laugh at them as they do their things, especially in such scenes as the sleepwalking destruction scene. It is so over-the-top crazy that it has the freshness of being funny and wonderful, which is something I seldom see.

But comedic interludes like that which are actually fresh are all that breaks up long stretches of the movie where the comedy is obvious and obviously delivered. Ferrell bugs out his eyes and says something silly in an inappropriately menacing tone, Reilly nods and plays straightman to an over-the-top sexual advance from Brennan's brother's wife and the viewer is unsurprised. These performances and jokes fall within the range of comedic actors of their caliber and, sadly, do not hold up so well over multiple viewings. Instead, once the initial shock of the awkward situations that most of the movie is preoccupied with, the movie sags.

The only real surprise for me is how Adam McCay got Richard Jenkins to do Step Brothers. Jenkins plays Robert and he is largely the straightman of the film. No matter how absurd Reilly's Dale or Ferrell's Brennan are, Jenkins keeps Robert real, rational and adult. But that is why the character of Robert fails to work. He is so much the by-product of reality that it does not seem realistic at all that he would have allowed Dale to develop as such a stunted individual. Jenkins gives a wonderful performance, though, especially when Robert snaps and actually disciplines the adult children. But even the quality of Jenkins' performance cannot forgive the fact that the character makes little sense.

Everyone else in the film is startlingly average, from Ferrell - whose performance is so familiar to anyone who has seen any of the other films Ferrell has done in the last five years - to Mary Steenburgen (who has appeared in plenty of lemons as essentially this same character) to Kathryn Hahn whose performance is one joke repeated over and over again. None of the performers or their performances surprised me or even interested me enough to think that I might like to see them in anything else.

On the two-disc special edition, there are plenty of bonus features for those who love gag-reel type humor. In addition to a commentary track which has Ferrell, Reilly, McCay and others actually making verbal humor over the movie, there are deleted and extended scenes and a gag reel. The extended scenes continue onto the second disc with featurettes such as the full video presentation from Prestige Worldwide (it is panned off of in the actual film) and featurettes on the music and the two main characters. Most of these are funny in the same way the movie is funny, so those who like the movie will tend to like the features and those who do not will not.

For me, I am glad I saw the movie once, but after that, it has been a tough sell and never captivated my interest the same way. While my partner laughs at jokes she remembers from it or quotes lines occasionally, it just didn't resonate with me. In fact, I'd bet it resonates more with the inner child in most adult viewers than any rational being and I have a tough time turning the rational off.

For other comedies, please check out my reviews of:
Hot Tub Time Machine
Year One
Planet 51

5/10

For other movie reviews, please visit my index page!

© 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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A Kid’s Movie For Adults, Wreck-It Ralph Is A Lot Of Fun!

The Good: Decent plot, Interesting characters, Great animation, Snappy dialogue
The Bad: Somewhat predictable character arcs
The Basics: Wreck-It Ralph lives up to its hype as a funny, well-developed film based upon the idea of a working-class video game villain who wants something more from his life.


There are very few films these days that lure me in with the previews. Yet, with Wreck-It Ralph, I saw the previews and I was hooked! Wreck-It Ralph uses the vocal talents of some of the hottest actors and actresses today and a very cool premise. And, I am happy to say, the contents of the preview trailer are (blissfully) indicative of the concept and set-up of the film, without revealing much at all of the film’s actual execution.

Wreck-It Ralph also managed to do something that few films today manage to do for me; it surprised me. In fact, the surprise of the villain in Wreck-It Ralph is well-alluded to, but the movie worked hard enough going off in other directions to make the obvious seem surprising once again. In short, Wreck-It Ralph might be written like a formulaic, multi-layered project that (objectively) utilizes many of the “proper conventions” of the screenplay, but the snappy dialogue obscures that to make for a wonderfully executed film.

Wreck-It Ralph is the villain in the video game Fix-It Felix Jr. He, however, wants more out of his life; he wants to be a hero. After attending a meeting with the other video game villains, he enters the game Hero’s Duty to get a hero medal. Ratted out by Q-Bert from when he passed through the grand gaming station, Fix-It Felix begins to follow Wreck-It Ralph when the game – missing its villain – is in danger of being permanently unplugged. After escaping Hero’s Duty with the medal he wants, Wreck-It Ralph ends up in the video game Sugar Rush, with one of the villainous Cybugs from the first person shooter game.

In the candy-colored racing game, Wreck-It Ralph encounters the young, determined glitch Vanellope. Vanellope wants to race in the race that will determine the starting line-up for the next day. Beset upon by the villainous King Candy, Vanellope’s dream is put into jeopardy by the multiplication of the Cybugs within the racing game and the bullying racers. Wreck-It Ralph’s chance for real heroism comes when he discovers the glitch is the key to resetting the game and saving all the games in the arcade.

Wreck-It Ralph is many things, but it is not actually a children’s movie. The film has moments when it wants to be for younger audiences, but having witnessed it in a crowd that was mostly children, my wife and I clearly enjoyed it more than the kids did. Most of the jokes went over the heads off the young people, like the threat actually represented by “pulling the plug.”

The film has its own vernacular – “going turbo” – and makes fun allusions to many video games classic, contemporary, real and created just for the film. The animation for the film is incredible and it has a great sense of movement. The reality of all the arcade characters meeting together in neutral places and in video games outside their own is exceptionally easy to buy into because each of the games have their own voices and dialect that makes each one distinctive.

More than trying to satirize video games, Wreck-It Ralph attempts to play in the universe of video games and flesh out the ideas of them while making a broader statement. Unlike something like Shark Tale (reviewed here!) that suggests one ought to stop striving to reach for anything better and stay in their place, Wreck-It Ralph explores the idea of gaining the esteem of others, while becoming comfortable with the strengths one possesses. The message works and the plot surprise makes up for the obvious character direction.

Wreck-It Ralph utilizes the talents of John C. Reilly, Jack McBrayer, and Jane Lynch remarkably well. Sarah Silverman’s role as Vanellope is more the result of excellent casting than any form of successful acting on her part. Silverman plays enthusiastic and childlike just fine, though she does that in her stand-up and sketch comedy acts (satirically and with usually grossly inappropriate language for the age of her characters), so this is nothing new. On the flipside, Lynch does militant in a way that is different from her character of Sue Sylvester and John C. Reilly is deliberate and the slow-growing hero as the film’s title character. While virtually every one of the lines delivered by Jack McBrayer could be delivered by his character from 30 Rock, he makes Fix-It Felix Jr. actually seem viable and original.

Ultimately, Wreck-It Ralph does not feel like the typical Disney animated movie. Instead, despite moments when director Rich Moore uses the medium to deliver giant special effects-driven sequences – the race is reminiscent of the podrace from The Phantom Menace (reviewed here!) and the Cybug invasion could have been from The Matrix Revolutions (reviewed here!) – the film is enjoyable and feels fresh because it is rooted deeply in the character conflict.

For other Disney animated films, please visit my reviews of:
Brave
Tangled
Toy Story 3
A Christmas Carol
Up
Ponyo
The Princess And The Frog
Bolt
WALL-E
The Incredibles
Lilo & Stitch
Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Monsters, Inc.
Mulan
The Lion King
Beauty And The Beast
The Little Mermaid
Lady And The Tramp
The Sword In The Stone
Sleeping Beauty
Fantasia

7/10

For other film reviews, be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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More Funny Than Not, Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby Amuses.

The Good: Funny parody, Opens John C. Reilly up to comedy beautifully, Decent DVD bonus features
The Bad: Some predictable humor, pacing
The Basics: Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby might not be a perfect comedy, but it has a lot of humor that endures from the broad attacks on NASCAR/NASCAR culture!


When one becomes involved romantically with another, they tend to share things. I think that is actually one of the more exciting aspects of relationships and I have found myself more delighted than not to share my DVD collection with my partner and have my partner share DVDs with me. This has led me to watch any number of movies - mostly comedies - that I would not have otherwise checked out. Indeed, when I sat down to watch the copy of Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby from my partner's shelf, I did so with the thought that this was one of the last movies in the world that I would have guessed I would ever watch.

That said, this Will Ferrell comedy that saw Ferrell pairing with one of my favorites - John C. Reilly - actually was amusing and offered enough for me to watch it not just once, but pretty much whenever my partner sits down to watch it. If that's not love, I don't know what is! In truth, though, Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby does what it sets out to do; it is funny and the performers in it get behind their roles in completely convincing ways. In other words, despite any of the movie's faults, I laughed . . . a lot. This is, at the very least, what one ought to demand of their comedies and the truth is, I had fun watching this movie.

Growing up without a father, NASCAR racer Ricky Bobby feels the need for speed and does little in his life well outside race cars. With his hot wife, Carley, and best friend Cal Naughton Jr., Ricky Bobby wins every race he is put into. But when a French Formula One driver comes to America to race Ricky Bobby, Bobby and Naughton feel threatened. Engaging the Frenchman in a race, Bobby's car is damaged and he is psychologically wounded, arguably also as a result of his deadbeat dad showing back up in his life.

Recovering from his failure to beat the Frenchman, Ricky Bobby works his way back from losing everything to try to race again. In the process, Cal takes his wife, wins a race on his own and Ricky Bobby must learn to stand on his own two feet (not as much of a problem given that his crash did not actually break his legs). As he comes back from incredible odds, he learns the true value of friendship and romance and racing.

Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby is, at its core, a parody of the sports movies where the protagonist struggles against very real obstacles and odds to overcome adversities that illustrate their prowess and skill. Writers Will Ferrell and Adam McKay (who directed the film) picked the perfect sport to make a parody of sports movies with. Ricky Bobby is part of a national phenomenon where people sit and watch other people drive fast in a circle. Having been a runner, I can understand racing around a track (though cross country was always more interesting as a runner than track was) and the athleticism involved. But NASCAR racing is much more about equipment and avoiding other contestants than anything having to do with skill or even willpower. As a result, characters like Ricky Bobby who are hapless idiots make for probable and fun protagonists in movies just like this one. In other words, by picking NASCAR to make fun of, writer/director McKay hits a goldmine; the struggle back to greatness is as simple and witless as the task of getting to "greatness" in the first place.

Ricky Bobby, then, is a great protagonist for just such a struggle of ridiculous proportions. Bobby possesses no special skills, but a desire to go fast and his complete pursuit of that goal. Moreover, because Ricky Bobby surrounds himself with doormats like Carley and Cal, he is able to achieve greatness equally through his own efforts and those of others not improving themselves. So, because Cal promises to let Ricky Bobby win and he is content to be in second place for years, Ricky Bobby becomes a celebrity. Cal enjoys the light near the spotlight and Cal enjoys the vicarious benefits of winning. But when Cal challenges the dynamic and Ricky Bobby is challenged by the Frenchman and the reappearance of his father, the utter lack of skill that got Ricky Bobby where he ended up becomes pretty evident.

Obvious comedies have to be looked at for exactly what they are and Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby does not promise to be anything either terribly unique or extraordinarily complex. Instead, it takes a simple premise - mocking sports movies and NASCAR culture - and running with it. Will Farrell is the perfect performer to embody such a quirky and dim sports figure and he hams it up, though in truth this is not an exceptional leap from his caricature of George W. Bush. As Ricky Bobby, Ferrell screws up his face in a blank expression and looks confused for laughs. Between that and selling such gags as telling off his father-in-law when his children act up at the dinner table, Farrell reminds viewers why he is considered a wonderful comedian without truly offering the viewer anything new outside delivering new lines.

The person who does rock Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby is actor John C. Reilly. Perfect as a dramatic heavy, Reilly becomes the ultimate costar for Ferrell by playing off him and accenting Ferrell's absurd sense of physical comedy with a strong deadpan ability. Reilly is surprisingly adept with his comic timing, something bound to surprise fans of his more respected works. Together Reilly and Ferrell lead the supporting cast of Sacha Baron Cohen, David Koechner, and Gary Cole to a good number of laughs.

On DVD, the movie has a decent number of bonus features, including a commentary track and a number of deleted scenes. There are alternate takes which are certainly not appropriate for the PG-13 audience, but the movie is not exactly oriented toward that market anyway. The DVD has enough in the way of featurettes and comedic gags to make the DVD worthwhile for comedy fans.

But the movie is predictable and the humor is not classy. But for those looking for sophomoric and fun, Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby actually delivers and it makes good use of talented performers who pull out the stops to entertain!

For other works with Gary Cole, please check out my reviews of:
Extract
Psych - Season 3
Pineapple Express
The West Wing
Crusade
Office Space

7/10

For other films, be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Endings In Mediocrity; A Prairie Home Companion: The Motion Picture

The Good: Moments where the dry wit is funny, Casting (I suppose)
The Bad: Dull, Little in the way of character or character development, Dull
The Basics: As the radio show A Prairie Home Companion winds down, performers on it talk backstage, embodying the humor of Garrison Keillor.


In my travels, I've encountered a certain snobbery from NPR listeners who almost universally assume that those who do not enjoy the dry wit ramblings of radio entertainer Garrison Keillor on A Prairie Home Companion simply do not understand him. There's a highbrow assumption that if one does not find the show funny, the lack of humor is in poor, ignorant listener who does not appreciate classy, subtle humor. I "get" Keillor and A Prairie Home Companion's humor but it just doesn't entertain me. When I recently spelled Keillor's name wrong in my panning of Marie Antoinette (reviewed here!) and I was corrected by no less than three fellow reviewers within 12 hours, I decided my penance would be to sit through the cinematic version of A Prairie Home Companion.

Set on the night of the final episode of A Prairie Home Companion, the radio show is taping before a live theatrical audience as they present down-home stories of living in Wisconsin (though Lake Wobegon is never directly mentioned). While G.K. does his monologues and fake commercials, entertainers from the show talk backstage about the demise of the radio program. As well, security guard Noir is hunting a woman in a white trench coat who he believes might save the show. As the night winds down, old tensions between G.K. and ex-lover Yolanda Johnson flare, lewd cowboy entertainers Dusty and Left irk the standards and practices director, and Noir encounters the woman in white.

I "get" the idea of this film of A Prairie Home Companion; while the actual show is going on on-stage, the performers are telling stories and singing and such to present a parallel show backstage. While G.K. tells the stories up front to the radio audience, the film audience is treated to a similar show. It's not a terribly complicated concept. The thing is, it's not terribly exciting, either.

It takes a lot to make a radio show interesting to watch. It's why it's somewhat baffling that Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern and others have simply stuck a camera in their studios at different points when making their radio presentations and pretended that makes the radio show a television series. It does not. It's watching a guy make radio. And it's about that entertaining.

A Prairie Home Companion, this movie, is not that unentertaining. Instead, the parallel stories go a long way to solving the problem of making a film out of people talking into microphones. Here, instead, the movie wisely neglects the theater performance as much as possible in favor of the backstage activity for as much of the movie as possible.

But therein, too, are the challenges of the movie; the backstage "antics" (if they can be called that) are the embodiment of the dry wit of the radio program. So, while Keillor describes mid-westerners in dry tones with subtle wit and little affect, backstage we see their antics. And for the most part, they're just entertainers telling one another stories in their particular idiom. So, for example, there's nothing extraordinary about Lola Johnson, Yolanda's daughter, as she talks in unemotive tones about her suicide poetry. And the very stereotypical way her aunt Rhonda and mother simply talk over her with generic feel-good sentiments falls as flat in the actualization as it does in Keillor's routine.

So, it's something we GET, it's just not something that's terribly entertaining and, in the litmus test for a movie, it's not interesting to watch. That's important for understanding why A Prairie Home Companion (the film) fails; it simply does not utilize the medium in a way that takes advantage of what cinematic presentation can do. I shudder to think of what the commentary track is like; with actors talking over people talking. I mean, truly, what do you do on a commentary track about a movie about people sitting around telling stories?! It must be surreal, listening to people tell stories about people telling stories.

My point here is that the film captures little entertainment value of the live performance of the radio show A Prairie Home Companion. In fact, the only things we SEE that we would not have heard of the performance are G.K. ad-libbing his way through a monologue on duct tape, hindered by the improvisations of Yolanda, and Yolanda's expressions of anger and hurt toward G.K. as her old feelings resurface.

I did laugh once during this movie and that was when G.K. is talking to Lola about her conception, which was based on him abandoning her father at a rest stop, where he met Yolanda and had a chance encounter. He dryly declares, "You're the best mistake I never made." It's not enough to justify the 104 other minutes of the movie.

As for the acting, it's nothing to shout out about. The acting is more a function of decent casting than actual performances in this film. So, for example, if I was going to make a movie with singing cowboys telling one another dirty jokes, Woody Harrelson would seem to be a natural choice for one of them. And he fits the role, but it's nothing that challenges our expectations of Harrelson or him as an actor. Similarly, Lily Tomlin as a country singer and Kevin Kline as an out-of-work gumshoe all fit. No one is better cast for his role (save Keillor himself, essentially playing himself) than Tommy Lee Jones who enters the film late as the axeman, the new company's representative come to kill the show.

So, it's nothing new or special and it barely has the entertainment value of the radio show. It's a shame that Robert Altman's final directoral outing was something so limited. Then again, with its pervasive theme of endings, perhaps it is appropriate.

For other works with Maya Rudolph, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Bridesmaids
50 First Dates
As Good As It Gets

5/10

For other movie reviews, be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Gangs Of New York Is A Lacking Tale Of Revenge And History

The Good: Daniel Day-Lewis, Moments of directing
The Bad: Howard Shore's soundtrack, Lack of use of quality actors, Romantic subplot, Idiot characters
The Basics: When gangs ruled the Five Points of New York City, Irish immigrants rise up against the Native New Yorkers in a dull tale of revenge and confused character types.


Most everyone says that Martin Scorsese is a genius and it's easy to see why when watching The Gangs Of New York. Scorsese has a great eye for movement and framing and using the camera to tell the story he wants to tell. He populates his film with talented actors and has a decent sense of pacing. Unfortunately, there is little that lives up to his potential genius in this film.

The Gangs Of New York begins with the slaughter of the Dead Rabbit gang in the Five Points in New York City (made even more distracting by the time frame of the massacre being given after the battle as opposed to before). This is not a big plot revelation as anyone who knows movies can figure that Liam Neeson's character will not survive given he is not billed near the top in the credits. Priest Vallon is killed and sixteen years later, his son, Amsterdam, comes looking for revenge. He quickly absorbs into the corrupt New York City run by Boss Tweed and Bill the Butcher, the man who killed Priest. Amsterdam gets closer to Bill until he is exposed and leads an Irish revolution against the "Native" New Yorkers and the Civil War draft changes everything.

First, the high points. Daniel Day-Lewis is phenomenal as Bill the Butcher. He brings William Cutting to life with a crooked grin, an expert sense of timing and a fury and ferocity that is unlike anything he has ever done on film before. There is no trace of his subtle and likable character from The Last Of The Mohicans, nor his dull, plodding character from The Age Of Innocence. Here, Day-Lewis performs and convinces the viewer he is someone and something totally different, a corrupt killer. In short, he does everything an actor is supposed to with smashing results.

Unfortunately, Day-Lewis is the exception to the rule. A lot of talented actors appear in The Gangs Of New York and are woefully neglected and/or ignored completely. Jim Broadbent's Tweed is decent, but remains almost entirely a peripheral character. The acting talents of John C. Reilly and Brendan Gleeson are almost entirely wasted in the bit roles they perform in this movie. Similarly, Liam Neeson's performance is too easy to neglect given that the entirety of his performance is in the first fifteen minutes of a 166 minute epic.

The real loser of The Gangs Of New York (outside the viewer who sits through the entire thing), is the story. We've seen revenge stories before. I happen to like a decent story of revenge and intrigue. This is not that. It has all of the same, old cliches. Parent is killed, disappears, returns years later with vengeance on their mind, gets close to killer, is discovered, the situation moves to a resolution. Even the confused, out of the subtext ending that might surprise some, seems canned and serves only to rob the film of a decent catharsis. Instead, the conflict between Amsterdam and the Butcher seems simply like it wasn't worth resolving. It's a lot of blood and violence to lead to a vengeance not worth the effort to resolve.

Moreover, the romantic subplot, and I use the term "romantic" loosely, in The Gangs Of New York between Amsterdam and Jenny is both entirely cliche and tacked on. There is an attempt to make triangle issues between Amsterdam, Jenny and the Butcher, but it feels like a cheap romantic tool used to add a woman to the mix. In short, Cameron Diaz's Jenny feels like a character added at the last moment so there could be some sort of romantic interest for Amsterdam and it fails to engage the viewer. Instead, we feel like we are being cheated because it distracts from the emotional intensity of the revenge plot. This is a rare instance where the film would have been fine without trying to balance the cast and it might have made a more powerful commentary to show the obsession of the vengeful son to not include anything as redemptive (or in this case, obscuring) as a romantic attachment.

Like Jenny, many of the characters are simply archetypes that fit into a rather generic role in the larger storytelling mythos. The problem is, we - as viewers - want actual characters and end up woefully disappointed by The Gangs Of New York. The let down here is that almost all of the characters turn out to be complete idiots in the end. For example, Brendan Gleeson's world-weary warrior Monk transforms in an instant from a battle-hardened soldier and mentor to Amsterdam into an idealistic moron who is willing to turn his back on the greatest villain he has ever known. And unfortunately, he is not the exception in this movie, he embodies the rule. All of the characters defy their better judgment and the common sense of the viewer by reversing their own wariness and anger.

My final problem with The Gangs Of New York was Howard Shore's derivative score for the movie. As a big fan of The Lord Of The Rings saga (reviewed here!), I was surprised while watching The Gangs Of New York to find many similarities in the soundtrack to the Trilogy, especially in the battle scenes. This disappointment was amplified when Howard Shore's name came up in the credits; the similarity was the result of Shore's sudden lack of musical imagination and it plagues the movie as Shore attempts to link (musically) gang-ridden New York City to Middle Earth. That's just wrong.

In short, The Gangs Of New York may have had potential and there are stylistic elements like directing and costume design that work in its favor, but the potential is never reached because the actors are underused or are playing characters with such contrast to sensibility that they are almost unwatchable and ultimately not relatable.

For other films with Jim Broadbent, be sure to check out my takes on:
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, Part 2
Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince
Inkheart
Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull
The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe
Nicholas Nickleby
Bridget Jones’s Diary
Smilla’s Sense Of Snow
Brazil

5/10

For other film reviews, be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2004 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Boogie Nights: The Weirdest Family Story From One Of America's Greatest Writer-Directors!

The Good: Characters, Story, DVD bonuses, Acting
The Bad: It feels long at times
The Basics: When Eddie Adams runs away to join the porn industry, he finds family with Jack Horner and his crew in an excellent DVD set!


There are very few artists whose works I will go to see without reading reviews and carefully deciding about the current project. Indeed, there are only three writer-directors whose films would instantly get me into the theaters: Terry Gilliam, Kevin Smith, and P.T. Anderson. Anderson won my heart and attentions with Magnolia (reviewed here!), which made my list of Top Ten Movies of all Time. Following that, I checked out his debut, Hard Eight (reviewed here!) or "Sydney" as he prefers it to be called. Ironically, his breakout film, Boogie Nights, was the last film by him that I watched.

Set in the late 1970's in California, young Eddie Adams is working a menial job at a nightclub when porn director Jack Horner walks in and takes notice of him. Horner is convinced that Eddie is physiologically gifted and made for doing porn. Following a fight with his mother, Eddie runs away to Jack's mansion where he finds himself in the company of the illustrious porn stars Amber Waves and the equally young Rollergirl. Eddie changes his name to Dirk Diggler and becomes the porn star Jack is convinced he could be.

But with the advent of the '80's and the rise of video tape, Horner's porn empire and Diggler's career head into a nose-dive. Diggler becomes pathetically hooked on cocaine such that he cannot sustain his erections, Amber becomes lost in an obsessive quest to see her child and Jack finds himself churning out crap on video that makes him ashamed of what he does and who he is. As things tumble out of control for the principles, Diggler and Horner slowly realize how important they were to one another's lives.

Boogie Nights, despite being a film about the porn industry and the performers and denizens of it, is essentially the story of a family. Jack Horner and Amber Waves have an untraditional family that takes in the various elements of their work, most notably Rollergirl and Diggler. But they have an extended family that includes Diggler's costar Reed Rothchild, black porn star Buck Swope, the gay sound tech Scotty J., and Little Bill, the producer whose wife is constantly cheating on him. Indeed, it is Little Bill who marks the change of the decade when he deals with the infidelity of his wife and starts the '80's off with a serious change.

But weird as the family may be, this is essentially a piece that looks at the family; what creates one, what binds one, how they fall apart and what strengths exist within the family to bring the members back again. It's an adult film that explores poor decisions, living with consequences and the resiliency that comes with . . . well, love. Yes, indeed, if there is any common element in the works of P.T. Anderson, it is the strength of love and its weird resiliency. His film Punch-Drunk Love (reviewed here!) was possibly the most explicit with that, but Boogie Nights gets there, too.

The thing about Boogie Nights that might throw a lot of more moderate moviegoers is that it uses the porn industry as a setting and it fearlessly explores that setting. This means the film has a bit of nudity and as the '80's progress, there's some pretty extreme amounts of drug use and violence as well. But where the setting works most effectively is in the peripheral areas; the borders between the porn world and the real world. The '70's insulate Horner and his weird family and they thrive as a continual party. As the '80's begin and the family falls apart, much of what collapses is the isolation Horner and his band of merry actors have. And therein, the film takes its toughest look at the world.

For example, Buck Swope has a lifelong dream of owning an electronics store, specifically a stereo shop. He starts a family and makes a stab at respectability but in leaving the Industry, he finds no welcome in the real world. Prejudiced against him for the jobs he had as an actor, Swope's dreams are almost all systematically crushed by those existing in the "real world." (The resolution to Buck's character is discussed hilariously by Don Cheadle, who played Buck, on one of the two commentary tracks. Seriously, it's one of the funniest bits on any commentary track ever!) In a similar fashion, Amber's desire to be around her child is thwarted and Rollergirl discovers there's no escape for one as young as her from all she has done.

Boogie Nights has a pretty massive cast, so on its lush two-disc DVD set, bonus features extensively explore all that was cut in order to make the movie what it is. The frightening aspect of the film is how much more ambitious P.T. Anderson was prepared to make it, versus how it ended up. That is not to say that it is not ambitious, because it is, but Anderson describes - and illustrates through many deleted scenes - just how much more there could have been. Anderson has a commentary track by himself as well as a second commentary track featuring various cast members. Both commentary tracks are informative and entertaining.

Other bonus features include outtakes, full improv sessions where actors Mark Wahlberg and John C. Reilly simply play off one another and warm up to one another, and extensive cast and crew biographies as well as character biographies for the principle characters.

The reason moderate - adult - filmgoers ought not to be intimidated by the two and a half hour epic about a porn film family is that the movie is well-written, well-directed, and possesses a cast that is excellent working at the top of their game. Indeed, it's difficult in some ways to get into Boogie Nights at first because of Mark Wahlberg's acting. Wahlberg as Eddie Adams is playing a young man, barely legal as it were. Wahlberg's genius in his performance is he plays Adams as a kid; he's immature, awkward and he gets into fights with his mother and runs away from home. Wahlberg's performance is wonderfully childlike and it informs the viewer to the spoiled diva Diggler will become. It's unlike anything else Wahlberg has performed in and he does a masterful job of it.

Some of my favorite actors in the film - William H. Macy, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Philip Baker Hall, and Melora Walters - get the short end of the stick as it were as they play supporting cast members. Even Don Cheadle is relegated to a support role that gives him almost no scenes to dominate as his own. Heather Graham is good as Rollergirl and part of her strength, like that of Wahlberg, comes from being able to portray young with a certain level of naivete.

Julianne Moore, who plays Amber Waves, reaffirms her true greatness as an actress, though I'm not sure she does anything new in her role other than appear naked. What I mean by that is simple; Moore is a truly great and versatile actress and she instantly brings a caliber and credibility to the production that some of the other actors - like Wahlberg at the time and Graham - cannot. She lives up to all of the expectations placed upon her as a great actress, wonderfully conveying emotions using her eyes and body language. Indeed, one of her most expressive moments is during her sex scene with Mark Wahlberg when the camera focuses on her eyes and they tell the viewer exactly what her character is thinking and feeling.

The cast is rounded out by Burt Reynolds as Jack Horner. Reynolds's new look as debonair middle aged gentleman was pretty much developed by his appearance in Boogie Nights. The immaculately trimmed beard, the use of the laugh lines and piercing eyes as opposed to attempting to make him look younger seem to stem from his portrayal of Horner and it's a great look for the mature actor. Reynolds brings a confidence to the screen that makes almost all of his scenes have a strange dignity to them. Reynolds plays Horner as a professional and a father-figure to the assembly and he has a leadership quality to him that works to make the piece seem bigger than life.

And Boogie Nights is a big film. It is ambitious and surprisingly smart and its only real flaw is that it feels long in a number of places. This is ironic considering Magnolia was longer, but does not feel it. This is not a film for the feint of heart; it is long, gruesome and watching the characters plunge from the top of the world to hitting their rock bottoms is depressing and difficult.

It takes a writer-director like P.T. Anderson to make the viewer care that much and execute it with that much panache!

For other films featuring Mark Wahlberg, please check out my reviews of:
The Other Guys
Date Night
Max Payne
The Departed
Four Brothers
Three Kings

7.5/10

For other film reviews, be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Length Of Drowning Is What Dark Water Feels Like!

The Good: A decent cast
The Bad: Terrible script, Acting, Characters, Pacing!
The Basics: Despite the presence of Jennifer Connelly, Dark Water sinks with poor characters and a story that is more jumbled than scary.


There are performers who are almost universally worth the price of admission, especially if one is offered the opportunity to see them perform for free. So, for example, one need not be a fan of basketball or golf to take advantage of an opportunity to see Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods play. If they showed up, were performing for free, and one had the time, odds are most people would go to see them play. In the acting world, each of us develops artists we enjoy watching perform, even when we learn they are in dubious works. Jennifer Connelly is one such performer in my world. Despite her appearance in the utterly awful Hulk (reviewed here!), she remains one of my favorite people to watch. So, despite never having been grabbed by any of the previews for Dark Water, I decided to give it a shot.

Dahlia and her daughter Ceci have moved into a real dive of an apartment following a bitter divorce proceeding. Dahlia is lonely and her ex-husband accuses her of mental illness, though we suspect this is mostly his jerkish personality. Ceci soon develops an imaginary friend as Dahlia becomes plagued by water dripping in the apartment she is now renting. The water is coming from the apartment above hers, where the occupants are absent, looters invade and apparently a ghost haunts. As the days progress, Dahlia is caught between her fears that she is going mad and her good-faith belief in a supernatural force above her and her daughter.

Dark Water is another in a string of remakes of Japanese horror movies which became popularized in the United States with the cinematic success of The Ring (reviewed here!). That Dark Water is following in this tradition comes as absolutely no surprise when the lawyer Jeff Platzer enters the movie midway through and in the film's resolution. Platzer is more helpful and interventionist than any successful lawyer in the Manhattan area ever would be. And, as for the resolution to the movie, all I can say is that the choice Dahlia makes reflects a very different set of values than the traditional American values.

My point with this is that Dark Water ultimately does not work. It just does not work. If one sets a movie in the United States, it ought to feel like the people are from the United States. The world has different nations filled with different cultures and subcultures and they are, quite simply, not interchangeable. The cumulative effect of the characters in terms of culture and decisions they make is analogous to one making a film about New York City with an all Southern cast.

But the characters themselves suffer from the writing. There is no chemistry, no remnant of anything remotely emotional between Dahlia and her ex-husband Kyle. Kyle is a jerk to such an extent that there is nothing in any of the exchanges between him and Dahlia that suggest they ever had anything that would have resulted in a daughter.

Because the majority of the film dwells on Dahlia, she bears the brunt of the problems of character and of the movie in general. Dahlia suffers from migraines and some serious depression, stemming in part from an abusive childhood. The problem here is that because the first person to accuse her of any form of illness is her ex-husband in the context of a nasty divorce proceeding, we don't take it so seriously. That is, Kyle has no authority or emotional credibility with the audience so when Dahlia begins to become symptomatic of anything other than depression, we are somewhat dubious.

But more than that, this addition feels forced. Dahlia seems like she is trying hard in difficult circumstances and the psychological issues only confuse the plot. The movie stops making sense and the audience never truly feels like they are unsure if this is a ghost story or a psychological horror. It's a ghost story; one of the earliest shots of the movie (Veeck watching Ceci in the elevator) establishes that. The attempt to add depth to the film with the addition of Dahlia's psychological issues feels forced.

Similarly, I was surprised to find Dark Water clocked in at 105 minutes. The pacing of the movie is so off it felt about twice as long. But more importantly, early on in the movie there are a number of scenes with Dahlia and Ceci where the two are established as a normal family, complete with fairly inane and common dialogue. In all honesty, as I watched those early scenes, I felt like the movie was simply killing time waiting for the plot to get started. Those scenes, more than establishing character, feel like filler.

The sole thing Dark Water has going for it is its cast. Jennifer Connelly leads the cast with John C. Reilly and Pete Postlethwaite giving strong supporting performances. Tim Roth ends up in the movie as Dahlia's lawyer and some of the acting burden is dropped on young Ariel Gade, who spends much of her time acting like a disturbed little girl, which is the character she is playing.

The problem is the acting this cast is pulling off is based on a poor script. John C. Reilly adds nothing to the role of the slum lord and Pete Postlethwaite, who I've been impressed with in The Usual Suspects and Alien 3, is put in a role where he is treated like he could be exchanged with anyone. In short, he is not used for any of his talents and he could have been swapped out with any other actor in the world and not have affected the movie.

My sadness here is that Jennifer Connelly appears in this mess, that's two strikes. Connelly has played some awesome, strong women. Indeed, her breakthrough role in Labyrinth was about using her brain and being strong. She was cool. Her role of Emma in Dark City is a positive role model working through difficult circumstances. My point is, I'm used to seeing Connelly in strong female roles where she is in control. In Dark Water, Dahlia is utterly dependent upon men. Whether it is her ex-husband, her landlord, her super or her lawyer, the men make all but two decisions for her in this movie (her daughter makes one of the two the men don't make).

None of the actors give performances to recommend them and the movie often does not work. Finally, the movie is poorly shot and that is what ultimately made me decide to rate it as low as I did. There are several scenes that the lighting is too dark, making it impossible to tell what is going on.

I gave Dark Water a chance and there simply wasn't enough to keep my interest or recommend this movie. Far better than this, for fans of Japanese psychological horror, is Perfect Blue.

For other works with John C. Reilly, be sure to read my reviews of:
Cedar Rapids
Cyrus
Zombieland
9
Step Brothers
Chicago
Magnolia
Nightwatch
Hard Eight

2.5/10

Check out how this movie stacks up against others by visiting my specialized Movie Review Index Page!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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