One Of Television’s Most Intriguing Family’s Stories Continues High With Parenthood Season 3!

The Good: Wonderful characters, Great acting, Decent plot progression, Better balance among the many characters.
The Bad: Somewhat predictable plot developments
The Basics: Parenthood has a pretty incredible third season that is well worth watching and picking up on DVD!


There are so few shows that I would argue get better and better as their stories progress. Parenthood is one of them! After doing a marathon of Parenthood season one (reviewed here!) and Parenthood Season Two (reviewed here!), we found ourselves eagerly going into Season Three! The third season is an eighteen episode, hour-long (each) drama and the heavily serialized episodes move along exceptionally quickly.

Parenthood centers around the three generations of the Braverman family; Zeek Braverman (an ex-Vietnam vet) and his artistic wife living in California. They have four adult children: Adam, Sarah, Crosby, and Julia, all of whom have families and children of their own. Adam and his wife Kristina have a young son, Max, who has Asberger’s Syndrome, and a teenage daughter, Haddie. Sarah got her daughter Amber and son Drew away from her alcoholic musician ex-, Seth. Crosby has a son, Jabbar, with the dancer, Jasmine. The youngest Braverman, Julia, is married to Joel and they have a daughter, Sydney.

In the third season of Parenthood, the storyline picks up few months after the end of the second season, with Amber moving out. As Adam struggles with being unemployed, he gets a surprising opportunity from Crosby, who finds a recording studio called the Luncheonette. Having determined that it is a viable option, he and Crosby go into business together, which leads to complications with his wife. As Sarah becomes more comfortable with her writing, she reconnects with Amber’s former teacher, Mark Cyr. As the Luncheonette attracts people like Cee-Lo Green and has the potential to get bought out, Crosby and Jasmine struggle to negotiate their on-again, off-again relationship.

On the child front, Haddie is growing up and showing a real aptitude for going to a great college, which comes at a time when expenses for Max’s treatment is driving up the family’s bills. Zeek and Camille begin to worry about their health and Joel and Julia become more concerned about Sydney and they work to have another child of their own, but getting a surrogate who moves in with them.

Because the plots, which are heavily serialized, are an ongoing family drama, the plots are far less important than the characters. The plots periodically involve characters standing outside rooms where they listen to what others are saying or doing. The characters have a pretty consistent way of spying on one another that would usually add a huge element or melodrama, but in Parenthood, the characters have a way of bringing out the truth exceptionally quickly, so the dramatic tension does not last long. Instead, Parenthood goes for realism much more often than not. In the third season, the very real characters are:

Adam Braverman – After much debate, he goes into business with Crosby, which becomes complicated when Kristina has her baby and their new assistant at the Luncheonette, Rachel, kisses him when they get drunk one night and Adam drives her home. He comes to Alex’s aid when Alex punches a teenager at a drinking party he is rescuing Haddie from.

Kristina Braverman – After having Nora, she drifts for a bit. She tries to enforce a family fun time, with disastrous results, and becomes very jealous of Rachel working in proximity to Adam. She comes to Max’s aid when he is mocked by his peers without his knowledge. As revenge upon Adam for the kiss, she goes back to work working for a candidate for city council and gets Amber a job on the campaign with her.

Haddie Braverman – Seventeen now, she begins facing adult problems when Alex comes to her aid at a party and hits a teenager. She is heartbroken when he breaks up with her afterward. When she gets saddled with Max for a weekend, and loses him, she works with the police and Adam to get him back. When she gets into Cornell University, the family finances prevent her from going,

Max Braverman – A child with Asperger’s, he becomes convinced Jabbar is his best friend and has a fit when Jabbar does not want to eat lunch with him every day at school. After a fallout with Jabbar, he apologizes when Kristina gives birth. He is mocked without understanding he is being mocked, for his mannerisms when he solves complex math problems. After leaving the family to go to the museum on his own, he calls Kristina a bitch and is forced to stay home during the family trip.

Sarah Braverman – The eldest daughter of Zeek and Camille, mother to Amber and Drew, she continues with her new career as a writer. She is seeing Mark Cyr, but begins to romanticize her relationship with Seth, when Seth returns and goes into rehab. She finds herself conflicted and forced to play more of a parental role when Drew starts acting out,

Amber Holt – Sarah’s daughter. She moves into her own apartment, while working at a local coffeehouse. She gives Drew advice on how to get around their mother and lets Seth stay at her place after his in-patient program ends. She gives the politician she is working for an honest opinion of his campaign and earns his respect. She works to negotiate a relationship with Bob Little, the candidate she and Kristina are working on,

Drew Holt – Sarah’s son, he takes Zeek’s advice and ends up dating a girl who lives down the street. He has his first kiss and gets a D in math at school as a result of both his new dating life and his father’s in and out of rehab. He is further traumatized by seeing Sarah and Mark Cyr having sex. He and his new girlfriend move very quickly toward being together, which contrasts his resistance to the relationship between his mother and Mark Cyr,

Crosby Braverman – With his relationship with Jasmine in shambles, he gets inspired to buy the historic Lunchonette recording studio. He gets jealous of Jasmine and the pediatrician getting into a relationship and they have to explain to Jabbar that they are not getting married. He and Jasmine hook up one night, confusing things between them. He gets jealous when Adam is spotlighted in a magazine article about the Luncheonette. When Adam is given an amazing offer on the business, it causes some serious friction between them,

Jabbar Trussell – Crosby and Jasmine’s son, he and Max become friends at school. He begins to bond with Dr. Prestige, but gets excited with the results of a very important camping trip between the three,

Jasmine Trussell – Taking care of Jabbar full time, she begins dating Doctor Prestige, Jabbar’s pediatrician. Otherwise, she and Crosby negotiate their relationship awkwardly. And that changes when she, Jabbar, and Crosby go camping together,

Julia Braverman-Graham – Wife of Joel, mother of Sydney, she is a powerhouse lawyer. With Joel, she becomes determined to adopt and the coffee cart girl at work is pregnant. That leads her to befriend Zoey and she prepares to adopt the child until Zoey’s boyfriend tries to extort the couple for money.

Joel Graham – Househusband to Julia, he starts to stand up to Zeek, when Sarah comes to him and Julia for money to get Seth into rehab. He also stands up to Zoey’s boyfriend when he extorts the couple for money. He has to discipline Sydney when she exhibits the traits of being a sore loser. He becomes protective of Zoey and he and Julia take her in before the baby is born,

Sydney Graham – When she loses at charades and a game Joel plays with her, she explodes, revealing that she is a sore loser.

Camille Braverman – Jealous of Zeek getting an acting job in a commercial, she begins to learn Mandarin. When Zeek makes the family go across the state to visit his mother, she becomes protective of him.

and Zeek Braverman – Gets a job working on an impotence medication medicine. When he becomes obsessed with bringing the family to his mother’s for her 86th birthday, he shows a dark side of himself to the family. He is diagnosed with a heart problem, which leads him to buy a mobile home for him and Camille.

On the acting front, the third season of Parenthood has the impressive cast of Peter Krause, Lauren Graham, Mae Whitman, Craig T. Nelson, Sarah Ramos, and Monica Potter falling flawlessly into their roles. Dax Shepard and Joy Bryant continue to play off one another exceptionally well and they make their on-again, off-again relationship seem entirely plausible. Both play off recurring guest star D.B. Woodside decently.

But the real winners in the diverse and large cast in the third season of Parenthood are Erika Christensen and Sam Jaeger. Sam Jaeger continues to get more and more of a role and in this season, he is able to present more of his dramatic chops as Joel. He and Christensen continue to develop their on-screen chemistry and there are moments where he seems frustrated with Sydney in a way he has not been in the past. It works incredibly well.

Erika Christensen improves her dramatic presence with a greater mastery of body language and emotion in her deliveries. While, before this, I had only viewed her as a poor casting director’s Julia Stiles, Christensen is fully blooming with a range and emotive power that I’d not seen from her before. As Julia negotiates with the mother of her surrogate mother, Christensen presents an incredible range of emotion that presents her as vibrant and complex. Christensen can say more with a look and a tightening of the jaw than many performers can say with pages and pages of dialogue.

In the third season of Parenthood, the show continues to raise awareness of Asperger’s Syndrome, current economic issues, and the complexity of emotional issues in the workplace. And yes, there is a group dance scene which the show gets out of the way very fast! Even better than the prior two seasons, Parenthood in its third season is an incredible continuation to the story of the Braverman family.

For other works with Mae Whitman, be sure to visit my reviews of:
The Perks Of Being A Wallflower
Nights In Rodanthe
Arrested Development
Independence Day

8.5/10

For other television program and DVD set reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Old Friends Fail To Entertain With Sex And The City 2!

The Good: Moments of cinematography, Moments of humor
The Bad: Characters are stalled, Not terribly funny, No great acting, Overly familiar
The Basics: A droll sequel that feels like one, Sex And The City 2 is a series of recycled plots and character moments that only the die-hard fans are likely to endure.


The very best cinematic follow-ups to television shows ought to either continue the adventures and character development from the small screen or tell a completely new story that utilizes the characters in a way that the small screen never could. Some of the best series’­ avoid the temptation to tell more story (Lost’s recent series finale, for example, left plenty of story opportunities open that one may only hope never get ruined by a sub-standard cinematic sequel) and let the series rest where it ended. Sex And The City is not like that. Sadly, almost as soon as it was off the air, the film was announced and shortly thereafter, Sex And The City 2 was announced. This, alas, could have been a fan-loved film that brought new fans to the series, but instead it has the feel of being an entirely cheap sequel.

Truth be told, I did not see the first cinematic Sex And The City, but the film catches viewers up very quickly before launching into the “new” story. I write new in quotes because the story has been done to death on the television show, it is just done in a different setting in Sex And The City 2. I gave up on Sex And The City after Season 3 and not only did I not feel at all lost with where Sex And The City 2 went, but I didn’t feel like I was watching anything I had not already seen before. Indeed, all but one of the major characters in Sex And The City 2 were present in the television series by season three (the holdout being Charlotte’s husband Harry).

Sex And The City 2 opens with what one has to assume is a favorite bit of fanfic, which finds Carrie Bradshaw meeting Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda in the early 1980s. After they befriend one another, the film shifts gears to the present day (two years after the first movie). Carrie is in a rut with Mr. Big, who wants to stay in when she wants to go out at night and Charlotte’s life is overrun by her children. An old beau of Samantha, a movie producing sheik, asks for Samantha’s help on a movie shoot and offers to fly her and her friends over to Abu Dhabi to consult on his film. This getaway for the four friends seems perfect.

But while in Abu Dhabi, temptation rears its ugly head. Carrie meets up with her former lover, Aiden and sees his being there as a sign. When they kiss, Carrie has a crisis of conscience and debates on whether or not to tell her husband. Charlotte’s eye wanders while away from Harry and Miranda enjoys the sun and tries to advise Carrie on how to handle her situation. But soon, Samantha’s sexual antics have the quartet on the run from the more conservative elements in the Middle East.

Basically, it’s Sex And The City before it degenerates into “ethnic mismatch comedy” of the most generic sort. Most of the movie is spend in Abu Dhabi and while this initially seems like it might shake up the Sex And The City formula, it fails to. Running into Aiden in Abu Dhabi is much the same as it was when Carrie randomly ran into him in New York City in season three of the television show. In fact, the whole movie ultimately has the feel of the Los Angeles arc that the television show did, just in a different sunny city.

The problem, of course, is in a formulaic plot that keeps the characters ultimately stagnant. This is not Married Life (reviewed here!), it’s Sex And The City and as such, there has to be sex, melodrama and moralizing in an over-the-top way about decisions most people are actually smart enough to avoid by not putting themselves into the initial, problematic situations that force the decisions. Miranda is a virtual nonentity in this film, which makes one wonder why Cynthia Nixon bothered to come back. Sure, Nixon and Miranda have a sage-like quality and is fun to watch, but there are no great character leaps for Miranda in this outing. Similarly, Samantha is still a hornball and Charlotte is still trying to be the faithful “good girl” long past when she last actually was one (in the series her character loses her initial path ridiculously quickly).

But then there is Carrie. In Sex And The City 2, Carrie is a homogeneously uninteresting character. She spent years hunting Mr. Big and now that she has him, she doesn’t know whether or not she wants (or how) to keep him. Their sexual magnetism - which some would have argued was more assumed than shown on-screen anyway - is largely drained and whether or not Carrie feels it, it is hard for the viewer not to feel like she has made the wrong decision. That is, until Aiden appears. The appearance of Aiden could have been a huge thing for the fans, but the truth is, when he appears, the result is more of a groan than an excited gasp. Aiden’s appearance feels contrived and Carrie’s debating on how improbable his appearance is makes it feel more contrived, not less.

Ultimately, Sex And The City 2 does not add to the acting range of Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristen Davis or Cynthia Nixon, it simply allows them to once again step into the familiar shoes (metaphorically) of the characters that they embodied for years. There is nothing truly new here and too many of the moments in the film have the principles looking bored with the material, like they know they have said similar lines before. I know I’ve heard the lines from them before, so that reaction is absolutely no surprise.

For other Sex And The City reviews, please visit:
Sex And The City - Season 3
Sex And The City - Season 2
Sex And The City - Season 1

3/10

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

© 2013, 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Growing More Attached To A Strangely Predictable Family: Parenthood Season Two Succeeds!

The Good: Wonderful characters, Great acting, Decent plot progression
The Bad: Somewhat predictable plot developments, Max is annoying and everyone coddles him!
The Basics: Continuing to develop well, Parenthood in its second season is engaging and is very easy to get invested in almost all the characters.


The last few days, my wife and I have been on a Parenthood marathon. After rewatching Parenthood season one (reviewed here!), we moved right on to Season Two. The second season of Parenthood develops well and continues the growth of all of the characters in the Braverman family. For those unfamiliar with Parenthood, the show is a one-hour drama and the twenty-two episodes of the second season are heavily serialized, making it very easy to sit down and start watching it and suddenly find that they have burned through the episodes over the course of two or three days!

Parenthood centers around the three generations of the Braverman family; Zeek Braverman (an ex-Vietnam vet) and his artistic wife living in California. They have four adult children: Adam, Sarah, Crosby, and Julia, all of whom have families and children of their own. Adam and his wife Kristina have a young son, Max, who has Asberger’s Syndrome, and a teenage daughter, Haddie. Sarah got her daughter Amber and son Drew away from her alcoholic musician ex-, Seth. Crosby has a son, Jabbar, with the dancer, Jasmine. The youngest Braverman, Julia, is married to Joel and they have a daughter, Sydney.

In the second season of Parenthood, the storyline picks up only a few months after the end of the first season. Crosby has been struggling with having Jabbar and Jasmine in New York, where she is dancing, and commuting. Zeek has been struggling in his marriage with Camille and the counseling has shown some clear effects as Zeek is clearly making an effort to listen to her and not leap to imposing his own views. The situation with Crosby changes rapidly; Jasmine comes back and when she heads to Europe to tour, Jabbar is left with her mother, who hates Crosby. In stepping up, Crosby becomes more of a man.

Meanwhile, Adam has serious trouble at work when he hires Sarah as an intern and then she starts dating their boss. Their family is shaken up when the boss sells the company and Adam and his new stoner boss butt heads. When Amber scores high on her SATs, she gets an internship with Julia before collapsing entirely. As Max begins to do better, Haddie starts dating, which causes stress for Adam and Kristina. And Joel steps up to get some respect from Zeek!

Because the plots, which are heavily serialized, are an ongoing family drama, the plots are far less important than the characters. The plots periodically involve characters standing outside rooms where they listen to what others are saying or doing. The characters have a pretty consistent way of spying on one another that would usually add a huge element or melodrama, but in Parenthood, the characters have a way of bringing out the truth exceptionally quickly, so the dramatic tension does not last long. Instead, Parenthood goes for realism much more often than not. In the second season, the very real characters are:

Adam Braverman – With his marriage to Kristina seeming more stable than ever, they are thrown a little when the Lessings, who also have an autistic child, split up. He takes Sarah’s idea for the shoe clicker and runs with it at work and to make up for taking initial credit for it, he gets he an internship. When his boss sells the company, he is left as a serious man in charge of a company run by a stoner moron. He is accidentally stoned by his boss, comes to respect Haddie’s new boyfriend, and pushes to mainstream Max when the boy seems to be doing well in his special school,

Kristina Braverman – She adapts better to Max having Asberger’s and dealing with the chaos in the family. She is more protective toward Haddie as Haddie starts seriously dating,

Haddie Braverman – Sixteen now, she starts volunteering at a soup kitchen with her grandmother, Camille. There, she meets Alex and after showing him that she is not just a flakey do-gooder, the begins dating him. When Adam and Kristina demand she stop seeing the recovering alcoholic 19 year-old, she leaves home and moves in with Zeek and Camille to establish her independence. After prom, she and Alex take a huge step forward,

Max Braverman – A child with Asperger’s, he continues to act out. However, with the help of Gabby, he starts (theoretically) doing better and starts to succeed academically. He gets a bug birthday party, hosted by an entertainer who has Asperger’s Syndrome,

Sarah Braverman – The eldest daughter of Zeek and Camille, mother to Amber and Drew, she briefly dates her boss at the shoe company. When she loses her internship there, she becomes concerned at how Amber is spiraling out of control and she starts writing a play. Zeek helps her get her first play read publicly and she starts dating Mark Cyr again,

Amber Holt – Sarah’s daughter. She tests exceptionally high and gets the grades necessary to get into Berkley. She gets an internship with Julia’s law firm and makes contact with a famous alumni at the school. When she fails to get into Berkley, she goes off the deep end,

Drew Holt – Sarah’s son, he shows up but does very little until he makes contact with his biological father, whose return causes predictable chaos with him, Amber, and Sarah,

Crosby Braverman – He fights for his relationship with Jasmine and for his relationship with Jabbar even harder. He has serious conflicts with Jasmine’s mother Renee and her brother. The principal of the school Jabbar and Sydney go to asks him to spice up the school play, which puts him at odds with Joel. When the play goes haywire, he has to get Joel back on board with directing the play. When he is continually rejected by Jasmine, he gets drunk and sleeps with Gabby, ruining things for Adam, Kristina, and Max. At the height of his conflict with his family, he sells his houseboat and buys a house as a hail mary, which brings him and Joel closer,

Jabbar Trussell – Crosby and Jasmine’s son, he and Crosby bond quite a bit as Jasmine travels more. He shows no real reaction when Crosby and Jasmine get engaged . . . or when they stop living together,

Jasmine Trussell – Moves back to California with Jabbar, but then goes off to Europe to dance, leaving her son behind with her mother, who is hostile to Crosby. When she gives up dancing overseas, she and Crosby begin a serious relationship. Even so, she gives in to her mother quite frequently, which draws a wedge between her and Crosby. She resolves not to forgive Crosby when he cheats on her,

Julia Braverman-Graham – Wife of Joel, mother of Sydney, she is a powerhouse lawyer. When Joel begins to stretch his legs away from their family, she accidentally snaps at him about how much money she makes. She and Syndey actually begin to bond finally. She decides she wants another baby, which Joel does not seem to want as much. She gives Amber an internship and is disappointed when Amber begins to screw up on the job,

Joel Graham – Househusband to Julia, he begins to stretch his wings. He helps Zeek repair the Braverman house, even when Zeek continually screws things up there. That leads him to return to doing some contracting work, which causes some stress between him and Julia. He makes Sarah a desk, feels displaced when Crosby takes over the school play, and feels needed when Crosby makes his hail mary house play,

Sydney Graham – Steps in for Jabbar on the school play when Jabbar gets stage fright. She has drama with classmates involving playdates that various friends are not invited to,

Camille Braverman – Patching up her marriage with Zeek, she begins taking a class that her fling is temporarily teaching, which makes Zeek jealous. Otherwise, she continues to support her adult children in their various enterprises,

and Zeek Braverman – Working at changing his longterm behaviors, he and Camille find themselves on firmer footing. He reads for Sarah’s play and kicks Seth’s ass. He becomes very worried for Adam when Adam punches another man at the supermarket (when the guy calls Max “retarded”). He is characteristically protective of his family this season.

On the acting front, the second season of Parenthood has the impressive cast of Peter Krause, Lauren Graham, Mae Whitman, Craig T. Nelson, Erika Christensen, and Monica Potter falling flawlessly into their roles. Sarah Ramos (Haddie) is given more to do this season and she rises to the occasion well, playing off Michael B. Jordan (Alex) exceptionally well.

But the real winners in the diverse and large cast in the second season of Parenthood are Dax Shepard and Sam Jaeger. Shepard continues his dramatic ascent as the conflicted and rapidly maturing Crosby. Crosby has a fantastic character arc this season and Dax Shepard, who usually plays stoners, scammers, and losers, continues to adapt to the serious role of Crosby with an adeptness that many would not have guessed he could pull off.

Sam Jaeger is given a vastly more meaty role in the second season than he was in the first. In the first season of Parenthood, his Joel was relegated to a house husband whose daughter was overly attached to him. The character was pretty flat and Jaeger was not given much to do with the part at all. In the second season, Joel and Julia and Joel and Crosby have major arcs and their relationships are given much depth. This allows Jaeger to add more dimensions to Joel and in the second season he is funny, serious, and loving and he portrays the full range of emotions well.

In the second season of Parenthood, Max’s character is a little more annoying in that characters talk about how he is doing much better in terms of behavior, but that is not actually evident on screen. That said, the character remains interesting and actor Max Burkholder plays the part with a sense of conflict and awkwardness appropriate to the character. Max is difficult to watch at times, especially when the character learns he has Asperger’s Syndrome and exactly what that means.

In the second season, Parenthood establishes what some of the traditional conceits for the show will be. In addition to the various characters listening outside one another’s doors, each season there is an adult dance party scene which is charming and season two’s is even better than the one that introduced “The Fever” to season one!

There are few television families that I actually get invested in anymore; the Bravermans are definitely one of them, though. The writing for Parenthood is sharp – funny and dramatic – with wonderful characters who are well-performed, making for solidly entertaining and socially relevant television worth watching over and over again.

For other works with Dax Shepard, be sure to visit my reviews of:
When In Rome
Old Dogs
Baby Mama
Let’s Go To Prison
Employee Of The Month
Without A Paddle

8/10

For other television program and DVD set reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Dreams Die In The Desert In Dreamland: The Best Film Of 2006 That No One Heard Of!

The Good: Excellent acting, Intriguing characters, Decent pacing, Tone
The Bad: Nothing happens!
The Basics: In an understated and underrated drama, Dreamland satisfies, even if the DVD has no significant extras. :(


2006 was not the best year for movies. Looking at the nominees for Best Picture was just an argument for making the Oscars every two or three years. And while the mainstream movies may have been uninspired, the art films had one or two gems. Dreamland, which I was introduced to via a trailer on DVD to a much worse film, caught my attention. While it might not stack up in other years as a contender, it should have been last year. My instant vote would have been to replace Little Miss Sunshine (panned, er, reviewed here!) with Dreamland in the big categories.

Audrey has just graduated high school and returned to her trailer park to tend to her alcoholic father and dying friend when in drives a truck carrying the shirtless Mookie. Mookie is a creative young man who is training to return to playing college basketball and he instantly captures Audrey's attention. Unfortunately for Audrey, when she pushes Mookie toward her friend Calista, both Mookie and Calista take her up on it and Audrey watches as the two fall in young love. As Audrey watches Calista no longer needing her, she begins to dream that her poetry can be her way out of the trailer park and for the first time she seriously considers leaving.

What's good about Dreamland are the characters. It's important to say right off the bat that nothing happens in this movie. This is not a big "things happen" movie. Instead, nothing happens. If you're waiting for things to happen, it'll be a long wait (though the movie is only 88 minutes). This is a movie filled with quiet moments, waiting, and a whole lot of no action. In fact, there's not even a lot of movement in the film. There are a lot of static shots where the sky moves around Dreamland, the trailer park, where days fade and begin and nothing happens.

Which is why the characters have to be pretty extraordinary to sell Dreamland and they are interesting enough to fit the bill. Why? They are complex and multifaceted. A perfect example is Audrey's father, Henry. Henry is portrayed as an alcoholic who has lost his wife and is completely broken by it, so much so that he never leaves the trailer park. But he's not an idiot, as many drunks are portrayed as in films and television, and he's not inhuman. Instead, he's perceptive and watching Audrey struggle allows him to reach out of his own problems. There's a wonderful moment when Audrey reads him a poem about Mookie and he just quietly says, "Your narrator's not Calista." It's the moment that we realize that this is not a guy who has always been lost and that it's unfortunate that he is lost now.

Calista is a lot of fun, from the beginning. Calista, we learn quickly, is dying slowly of MS and in the opening scenes, Calista changes her name ostensibly because "Calista" sounds more like a porn star. The dialogue between Calista and Audrey as they sit in bikinis in their hot tub in the desert instantly gets the viewer into the place and mood of the characters. Calista is dying, so she dreams big, wanting mostly to be Miss America and win for being beautiful, having a strong social agenda and getting the pity vote. She's weird and fun and tragic.

Mookie is pretty generic, though it's refreshing to see a young person with dreams and ambitions. Mookie's defining moment, more than in the love he shares with Calista and longs for with Audrey, is as he practices basketball without a ball at night because he does not want to wake any of the trailer park residents up. It's cute and pulled off well.

Audrey is the central character, though and she is easily one of the most kind, giving young people portrayed in film in the last decade. Audrey is prepared to stay in Dreamland to tend to her father and Calista and keep her dead-end job in the convenience store nearby so she can be near those who need her. Audrey is faced with a very real choice and she pulls it off well. The story works in part because she is not perfect; she's having fairly meaningless sex with her coworker, she tries smoking because Calista cannot and she gets into a drug situation that puts her in danger.

On that note, I've been awfully critical of movies where youth are portrayed as idiot drug users fairly homogeneously (I believe I was most scathing about it in my review of Garden State, available here!). In Dreamland, Audrey does not go into her experimentation blindly and she certainly seems to learn from it. Moreover, there are consequences for her actions and I like that. That's the element too often missing from such films where every kid does it.

And what makes Audrey so believable is the acting. Portrayed by Agnes Bruckner, Audrey is an introverted enabler who quietly lurches through her life. Bruckner plays her with an expert awkwardness most like Clea Duvall. Bruckner has a subtle delivery that is excellently timed for realism. Lines do not come out of her mouth with the precision of a writer, but instead with the agony of a young woman caught in a genuine dilemma day after day.

Similarly, Kelli Garner is wonderful as Calista. Garner's real talent comes in her physical acting. She portrays weakness amazingly and as her condition gets worse at various points, her face actually becomes puffier. I was impressed. Justin Long proves he can do more than run around without a shirt or sell Macs as Mookie. Long, the Mac persona on the recently popular commercials, is understated here and he sells the idea of Mookie quite well.

Bit roles by Gina Gershon and Chris Mulkey are decently presented as well.

It is John Corbett who is amazing beyond the others in Dreamland. Corbett creates Henry almost exclusively through body language and he's phenomenal in the role. He slouches and sticks out his stomach to become the drunk Henry, perspiring profusely. And as the character transforms, Corbett transforms his whole body and persona. It's impressive.

Dreamland is a great drama and a wonderful character study and it works in part because of the static shots of director Jason Matzner. Matzner is a minimalist of movement here and that powerfully creates the mood. The viewer feels as trapped as Audrey and the sense of confinement works expertly. The script by Tom Willett is strong, giving him a lot of field to play in emotionally.

Anyone who likes a good drama and intriguing, distinct characters will find something to enjoy in Dreamland. Just don't expect a lot to happen. It's still a better choice where things happen, but they add up to nothing. Here, nothing happens and the cumulative effect is vivid and worth your time and attention.

For other works with Justin Long, check out:
New Girl - Season 1
Going The Distance
Old Dogs
Planet 51
He’s Just Not That Into You
Zack And Miri Make A Porno
Waiting . . .
Galaxy Quest

8/10

For other film reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

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

| | |

Quirky Becomes Boring In Northern Exposure The Complete Fifth Season.

The Good: Moments of character, Moments of weirdness or culture, DVD bonus features
The Bad: Not funny, Little new on the acting, Stagnant plots, Pacing
The Basics: A pretty lame season of television, Northern Exposure The Complete Fifth Season does little service to the characters or concepts of the television series.


When a television series becomes tedious, sometimes the best thing that a network can do is pull the plug. As time goes by, I find myself appreciating or understanding why networks have done that from time to time. For sure, there was still plenty of potential in Firefly (reviewed here!), but the more I rewatch Twin Peaks (reviewed here!), I can understand how it did not get renewed for a third season. The middle of that second season of Twin Peaks winds and wends in directions that are not just strangely dreamlike, but are just plain bad. This comes to mind when I consider the DVD set Northern Exposure - The Complete Fifth Season because I am at a loss as to how this season survived for the entire twenty-four episodes as well as how it won a sixth season.

In its fifth season, Northern Exposure does nothing of note or significance that viewers of the series have not already seen before. In fact, the only ones who might find any portion of this season palatable are those who have suffered through the earlier seasons; those approaching just this season are likely to find the episodes tiresome and tired. The season has a homogeneously slow pace with few peaks and one long, extended valley. While the show continues its serialized storylines, nothing of note happens in the fifth season and after sitting through my latest viewing of the twenty-four episodes - each almost an hour in length - I find myself at a loss as to what to write about the boxed set because the season blurs together as one dull mass of images. There is nothing superlative in this season and while the show still occasionally delves into the philosophical or the native american indian culture, the fifth season finds the divergences less quirky and more dull; we've seen it before and for those who haven't it just "reads" as weird and quirky for the sake of quirky.

In the fifth season of Northern Exposure, Joel gets ill with Glacier Dropsy around the same time that Ed gets his calling . . . to become a shaman. As Ed begins to train for his spiritual calling, Maurice has a life-sized wax casting made of himself for a museum, Chris continues working at the radio station and trying to fulfill the spiritual needs of Cicely and Maggie spars with Joel while their passions slowly build up again. Maggie solves a minor mystery and becomes a homecoming queen for the local high school. Elsewhere in Cicely, Holling and Shelly prepare for the birth of their baby, who does eventually make an appearance and Ruth-Anne begins to date Walt.

Adam makes an appearance, to thwart Maurice's efforts to have fireworks in Cicely under the pretense that the company he is using are covert government operatives. Ed returns to working on film, even while training as a shaman, Maurice breaks his leg and loses his house to a fire and Shelly and Holling adapt to the presence of Randi. As the season winds to a close, the resident gay couple in Cicely gets married, Maurice tries to make money off a wheelchair race, and Joel finally accepts the magnitude of Cicely's effect upon him.

The only episode worth watching in the entire season is "Hello, I Love You," which has Shelly meeting a time-travelling version of her own daughter at the Laundromat. The episode is clever, allows actress Cynthia Geary to stretch beyond the strangely immature character of Shelly by giving her some real parental depth. Geary, for much of the rest of the season, is forced to play Shelly like a high school brat and the role becomes tiresome to watch, especially after Shelly loses her musical ability which made her remotely interesting at the end of the prior season. "Hello, I Love You" is psychologically interesting and does a good job of showing what could be if parents were given a chance to see the results of their childrearing before their kids are born and the concept is unique to this episode and it works.

Unfortunately, it is probably the only unique thing in this entire season. Maurice continues to try to swindle other businessmen, he retains his homophobia and he is portrayed as an absolute idiot in "Mite Makes Right." In that episode, Maurice pays over a million dollars for a violin and he refuses to consider the advice of a violin protege who insists it must be played or else the violin will be ruined. That Maurice is played as so monolithically stupid and into his investment just for the money reinforces the anti-capitalist messages Northern Exposure tends to have, save that in this case it does not logically track; Maurice is too smart to be so ignorant and not even pay attention to the violinist's view. "Mite Makes Right" is not a bad episode, but it follows on the heels of the one-note "Mr. Sandman," which is too obvious and the concept (people in Cicely begin dreaming one another's dreams) wears thin quickly.

Recurring characters like Bernard and Officer Barbara make their annual appearances, as do Adam and Eve. But the quirkiness that once made Northern Exposure interesting is gone and the series seems to be stretching for stories to tell. This seems as good a reason as any for the appearance of the gruff Walt to give Ruth-Anne a love interest and the plot with Walt becoming addicted to a light treatment is predictable and just bad. Fan-favorite characters like Chris are relegated to few scenes and almost no complete plots. Instead, Chris, Maggie and Holling (and even Joel for most of the episodes) take a backburner to stories focusing on Ed, Ruth-Anne, and Shelly. Unfortunately for viewers, they are not enough to carry the season.

For those interested in who the primary characters of Northern Exposure are, this is how the fifth season finds them:

Dr. Joel Fleischman - His tenure in Cicely rapidly running down, Joel looks to escape even as he realizes how much of a part of Cicely he has become. Irritated by a visit from his parents, he tries to have a dinner party (but fails completely) and he begins to date Maggie outright. He makes an effort to work with the fire department and admits to Maggie he cannot stand children. And when he and Maggie hit a bump, he is swallowed by the giant fish living in one of Cicely's lakes where he is taught a very valuable lesson,

Maggie O'Connell - Slowly warms to Fleischman after trying to solve a mystery of a local store and its weird owners. She builds her own airplane, becomes a homecoming queen (despite being in her thirties), and she buys a clothes washer only to discover she misses the socialization of the Laundromat. She also snags a doctor friend for Joel,

Maurice - Exposed as a shoe-fetishist when others dream his dreams, he tries to swindle a local native american businessman only to be bested in the transaction. He finds his colleagues have become geezers and tries to have Ed organize a film festival. After purchasing a rare violin, he breaks his leg and his house burns down and he is forced to rely upon others in Cicely,

Holling - Nervous (still) about becoming a father, his troubles multiply when Randi is born and he has to admit he renounced his Canadian citizenship decades ago. Things get weird for him with fellow birdwatcher Ruth-Anne when it is revealed his ancestor ate one of Ruth-Anne's during a blizzard. He begins to paint-by-number after Randi is born,

Shelly - Insecure about becoming a mother and shrill after Randi is born with Holling over religion and childcare, she has a brief lull when she meets future versions of Randi on the day Randi is born. She gets irked at Holling for his acting out during birthing classes,

Chris - Continues working at the radio station, save a portion of an episode where he quits because he learns that bloodpressure medication will keep him alive well beyond his initial expected life expectancy. Otherwise, he does sculpture, is frustrated when Bernard's new girlfriend (who is one of Chris's ex's) cannot tell them apart in bed, and he fawns over the Catholic priest who comes to baptize Randi,

Ed Chigliak - Gets the call to become a shaman. As he trains for that (undermined by a Green Man), he continues working on his film work and working at Ruth-Anne's store. He fails to arrange a film festival and when he snags an agent, his agent wants to completely alter his script "The Shaman." He betrays Ruth-Anne and Walt's relationship at a dinner party and still struggles to understand what virtually anyone in Cicely is saying,

Marilyn - Continues to show up to work at the clinic each day, though she uses patient's records to figure out who to date,

and Ruth-Anne - Pursued by Walt suddenly, she begins to question her priorities. After having a spat with Holling, she and Walt hook up. Still, she becomes upset with the residents of Cicely and abandons the store to join a motorcycle gang. Upon returning, she and Walt are outed.

There are no great performances in Northern Exposure The Complete Fifth Season. In this season, all of the principle cast simply does what they have been doing for the prior years and their performances in this season seem somewhat lackluster, as if the actors know they are not doing anything new and they are peeved about it.

On DVD, Northern Exposure The Complete Fifth Season comes with a slew of deleted scenes, many of which simply offer more quiet, awkward moments to each episode. Given that this is DVD, it is disappointing that there is no branching that allows the deleted scenes to be put back into the episodes. Given that the deleted scenes are now all relegated to the fifth disc, putting the clips back in their relevant episodes is not even remotely possible. There is a season five featurette as well and a "play all" function, but there are no commentary tracks on any of the episodes.

Northern Exposure is a supposedly quirky dramedy set in Cicely, Alaska and there is nothing quite like it on television, either before or after. In the case of how the fifth season presents its stories, this is not a bad thing. Fans of the series will find greater economic and space-saving value in Northern Exposure: The Complete Series (reviewed here!), but those looking at the seasons of Northern Exposure and considering which ones to buy can easily pass "The Complete Fifth Season" by. It is not funny, it is not well-developed and it is not distinctive or even interesting for most of its episodes.

For other fifth seasons of television shows, please check out my reviews of:
Gilmore Girls - Season 5
Frasier - The Complete Fifth Season
Friends - Season Five

4/10

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

© 2011, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Predictable Exposure: "The Big Feast" Seems Like Far Too Much Of A Standard To Buy!

The Good: Moments of humor, Very few moments of character
The Bad: Moments of predictability, Nothing stellar on the acting front, Light on character
The Basics: Terribly disappointing, "The Big Feast" starts with a contrived plot, fails to add character development and is performed blandly by the entire cast.


As I reach the final individual episode of Northern Exposure on VHS for me to review, I have to say I am happy. Northern Exposure is a series that came to me highly rated and I have discovered it to be far more mediocre than extraordinary. Having watched the entire series (I'm on my second viewing of the final seasons for review), I find that it is hard to get excited about going through the later seasons and final individual episodes that are available when there are so many other, better products available for me to review.

With that, I find myself at "The Big Feast," a fourth season episode of Northern Exposure that even the die-hard fans would have to admit is predictable and more of a standard plot than a truly original episode of supposedly groundbreaking television that Northern Exposure claims to be. Instead of being intriguing or interesting, "The Big Feast" could have been written by a high school student and yielded pretty much the same results as we have on screen.

Maurice is in the mood to celebrate and he has chosen to honor the twenty-fifth anniversary of Minnifield Communications. He decides to throw the biggest party Cicely has ever seen, a feat that is guaranteed to be quite extraordinary given the references to prior events. He sets to slaughtering a virtual herd of cows for a reduction sauce, imports some extraordinarily expensive bottles of wine and hires an army of chefs and servers. And everyone is invited . . .

. . . except Joel. Joel builds up his sense of outrage, resentfully confronting Maurice when the feast begins and Marilyn falls ill during the shellfish course. Shelly breaks a bottle of wine that costs more than she makes in three years and she struggles to replace it with something drinkable without Maurice knowing, and Adam returns to take over the kitchen as an imported French cook fails to meet Maurice's standards. In the course of his whining, Fleischman and Maggie are forced to deal with their feelings for one another, especially now that they have had sex.

"The Big Feast" has far too many obvious plot conceits to be considered truly original or even interesting. First, there is the Joel plotline. When Joel is excluded, his pride prevents him from confronting Maurice directly and the roundabout way he tries to find out if he was purposely excluded or omitted by accident is obvious and predictable. Moreover, that the missing invitation forces him to confront O'Connell is disappointing especially for Northern Exposure.

In a move that makes one think that the writers of the episode were thinking, "the audience thinks we're going to zig or zag or otherwise do something surprising, so let's surprise them by doing what everybody else who has ever had a television show has done!," Shelly knocks into a bottle of fabulously expensive wine moments after discovering how costly the bottle is. Naturally, this forces her into a wacky run-around trying to find a way to acquire it (Holling doesn't even have that much money), replace it (no one in town has a bottle of it) and ultimately, forge it. This overlaps well with the final plot conceit as Adam returns and he is known to be a connoisseur of fine things and - apparently - an enophile.

The problem with the plot peaks with the return of Adam. Don't get me wrong, I am a fan of Adam and actor Adam Arkin who portrays him. I am always delighted to see him. The thing is, whenever there are so many chefs in the kitchen and an event of such momentous proportions in Cicely, involving fine food and drink, the viewer comes to expect that Adam will pop up. This is especially insulting after the long-belabored string of chef's who come through the kitchen with impeccable credentials and . . . oh, no! It turns out they are completely bloody incompetent. Isn't it handy that Adam just happens to be in the area to save the day?!

Yes, "The Big Feast" could have been written by the most formulaic hacks in Hollywood and on the off chance that writers Mitchell Burgess and Robin Green are reading this - or director Rob Thompson - shame on you! Seriously, did you guys just open the "Classic Television Plots" book laying around the studio?!

The only thing more insulting than the standard and obvious plots in "The Big Feast" would have to be the character development. Joel's plotline is the closest the show comes to character development, but the sad thing is there is no real development. Joel runs around whining. Wow, what a surprise. It's what he does virtually every week! Joel feels legitimately hurt by being excluded and it's hard to blame him . . . save that every week he is an elitist who tries to be above everyone else in the Alaskan wilderness. So, it's not like Maurice would be unjustified in excluding the doctor.

No, Joel does not grow and learn a very valuable lesson in this episode. In fact, in the Joel plotline, it is Maggie who grows a bit and she realizes that how she has been treating Joel might well be unfair and wrong. Good for her . . . it only took three and a half years for her to get there. But, at least there is an epiphany to be had and the show takes the viewer there.

The Shelly plotline, the Adam plotline, even all of the time Maurice spends on screen, these elements involve nothing in the way of development or growth, they are simply the characters running around doing what they always do. This is disappointing and does not distinguish "The Big Feast" from any number of other episodes of Northern Exposure. This is a bit of a disappointment for anyone who wants to sit and watch a decent drama.

Equally pathetic is the acting. It seems the actors have the sensibility that they are doing something that is tried, true and has been done at least a thousand times before on television. None of the regulars sparkle and even Adam Arkin phones in his performance. There is not a single spark in this episode and none of the regulars seem at all enthusiastic about working this one.

Ultimately, "The Big Feast" is one of the more forgettable episodes of Northern Exposure and it is a true disappointment to the fans.

[Knowing that VHS is essentially a dead medium, it's worth looking into Northern Exposure - The Complete Fourth Season on DVD, which is also a better economical choice than buying the VHS. Read my review of the last worthwhile season by clicking here!
Thanks!]

3/10

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

© 2011, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Northern Exposure Plays The Weirdness Card Well With "Northern Lights."

The Good: Decent character work, Decent acting
The Bad: Light on plot, Some quirky for the sake of quirky.
The Basics: "Northern Lights" casts Cicely in darkness and gives Joel a chance to whine and Maurice a chance to learn another valuable lesson.


I know I am in the minority in being lukewarm on the television series Northern Exposure. I know a lot of people think it is one of the funniest, weirdest shows ever to grace television's airwaves, but as someone who got into television-watching with Ally McBeal, it's hard to see why Northern Exposure is considered so groundbreaking. After all, I can see the merit in Twin Peaks (reviewed here!) and I can see how that paved the way for shows like Northern Exposure and Ally McBeal, but on its own, Northern Exposure seems much more the fizzle than the bang.

I mention this before reviewing the Northern Exposure episode "Northern Lights" because while I like this episode just fine, I do not think that it is the perfect episode some reviewers have considered it to be. Indeed, within the context of the series, "Northern Lights" might suffer a little more than the average Northern Exposure episode for the simple fact that virtually everything in the episode has been done in a prior episode. Or, at least the inverse of what has been done before is in this episode . . .

Unlike the many episodes involving the unending sunlight in Alaska, Cicely is cast into darkness for days on end and its residents begin to go somewhat batty. Joel throws a fit over losing his Caribbean vacation, an event he has been looking forward to for quite some time. He is threatened with legal action by the citizens of Cicely, who maneuver Mike Monroe into taking the doctor out when Joel stages a strike for being denied his vacation.

While Joel does his pretty typical thing, Maurice discovers the local homeless man in Cicely is actually an ex-marine and he does his best to take him in and make sure the man is provided for. Of course, pride of a marine being what it is, this does not go quite the way he planned. As well, Chris is stuck with the visual artist's equivalent of writer's block and Holling goes into hibernation to survive the dark night. Maggie, for her part, begins looking into advancing her relationship with Mike, a huge step for her, Mike, and - of course - Joel.

"Northern Lights" plays on the tired and equally true idea that the weather in Alaska has a profound impact on the citizens there. Often in this series, that takes the form of the unending sunlight, as it did in an earlier fourth season episode where Joel takes over the basketball team. This is a pretty standard conceit on Northern Exposure and while it is good, it is by no means original on this series. In fact, it seems every season there is either the sunlight episode or the waiting for the thaw from the long winter, etc. The whole long dark idea is hardly a new one or an exciting premise.

Perhaps the only real benefit of this "weather of the season" episode of Northern Exposure is that it gives a good excuse for Chris's brother Bernard to make an appearance. As Chris wigs out into his art, Bernard takes on some of the responsibilities at the radio station. In "Northern Lights," the viewer begins to see that (perhaps) Bernard is just about as crazy and wonderfully weird as Chris is. Bernard has the same easygoing mannerisms, but he has - traditionally - been more grounded in reality and numbers than his half-brother.

What "Northern Lights" does least effectively as it tries to present itself as a new episode is make the viewer think they are watching anything truly original about the characters in Cicely. Much of the episode is dominated by the Joel plotline and the truth is, anyone who does not get by now that Joel will whine and complain about any setback to his plan to getting back to New York City to practice medicine is either not awake or completely dense. Joel does this. All of the time. He is a pathological complainer and by this episode, fairly late in the fourth season, it would be nice to see some growth from him. Instead, we get more of the same. Neurotic doctor is entertaining for a while, but after seeing glimpses of what he could be, this is just flat-out disappointing that he does not grow. Watching Fleischman complain throughout this episode, the viewer just wants to scream, "Grow up already!"

The only Joel-related aspect of the episode that works is that it effectively delays the inevitable hooking up between Joel and Maggie. As Maggie debates the merits and potential dangers of having sex with Mike Monroe, she and Joel come to understand more about themselves and their hot and cold relationship. This is almost enough; it is something so delayed because in the season premiere, it seemed like that relationship would actually get going that now it is just annoying that it is being delayed, though this episode does that pretty effectively.

The character aspect that works the best in this episode is the arc involving Maurice. Minnifield is often treated as the arch-conservative and something of a whack as a result. His initial outrage over Cicely having a homeless man quickly subsides to the Valuable Lesson Maurice Learns. The problem here is that Maurice is pretty consistently learning the Valuable Lesson Of The Week and at some point, it would be nice to see him be ahead of the curve of racism, homophobia or flat-out classism. "Northern Lights" is not the episode where he achieves any real sense of enlightenment, but at least his character works in this episode.

Part of this is because Barry Corbin, who plays Maurice, does a great job in this episode. Corbin is able to play Maurice as ignorant, but less boorish to begin with, making his character's journey make more sense. And while the plot fix might be a little obvious, Corbin makes it seem fairly original as Maurice struggles with the state of the veteran. He loosens his body language some throughout the episode, visually indicating how Maurice is becoming less rigid and that works.

But the one who steals every scene he is in is Richard Cummings, Jr., who plays Bernard. Cummings has an awesome ability to deliver some of the most extreme and quirky lines and make them seem perfectly reasonable and sensible. He makes the episode fun where it could otherwise just be yet another Northern Exposure morality tale.

On the balance, there is enough here for anyone who likes a good dramedy to appreciate, but fans of the series are likely to get a bit more out of the episode than those who are not already sold on the series. It's good, but not knock-your-socks off good and certainly not a great episode of the series.

[Knowing that VHS is essentially a dead medium, it's worth looking into Northern Exposure - The Complete Fourth Season on DVD, which is also a better economical choice than buying the VHS. Read my review of the last worthwhile season by clicking here!
Thanks!]

6/10

For other television reviews, please be sure to visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Oh My, Another Absolutely Terrible Horror Film Without Redemption: The Messengers

The Good: Well, it makes for great MST3K fodder . . .
The Bad: Wow . . . everything. Acting, characters, plot, direction, effects, all of it.
The Basics: In another disappointing horror flick, the undead come to a troubled family's new farm where only the youth can see them.


NOTE: This review was originally written in 2007, when this film was new. I was amused by my assessment of Kristen Stewart at the time and decided to keep it in here! Enjoy!

Every time I sit down to write a movie review, I look the film up on the IMDB in order to be sure that I am getting the spellings of names correctly and to properly reference things like the directors, writers, etc. Whenever I do this - which is especially useful, notably for reviews I'm writing weeks after seeing a film - I usually learn something about the work I am reviewing. Every now and again, I become baffled by something I find out about the film that makes me just shake my head. In the case of The Messengers, when I sat down to prepare this review, I was reminded that there were two directors for this movie and I learned that there were two writers for it as well. My thought was dismay to think that it took four people to create this piece of crap.

When the Solomon family moves out to North Dakota to start their new life on a farm, disturbed daughter Jess begins to see things. Her younger brother, Ben, mute for months, sees the undead as well wandering around the house and doing generally creepy things. Because Jess has a prior incident that left her parents distrustful of her, father Roy and mother Denise tend to focus on growing sunflowers and shooing away the murders of crows that appear to eat the crop. They take in the kindly Burwell Rollins, who helps with the farming and they wait for the crop of sunflower seeds to come in to make a living at this. Meanwhile, Jess faces the specters that roam the farmhouse and tries to unravel the apparent mystery of the haunted house.

This witless work reminds one of just how bad horror movies have the potential to be. Like Pulse, the basic premise of The Messengers is not necessarily bad. Unfortunately, the idea of children seeing the forces of evil that adults are blinded to, is sublimated by effect-rich shots that make absolutely no sense (like how the basement floor of the farmhouse becomes selectively liquid throughout the film). Instead, The Messengers quickly degenerates into yet another undead revenge story a la The Grudge or Dark Water. Sadly, even while watching The Messengers, my thought was "there is so much here for the next Scary Movie installment!"

What's so bad about The Messengers? First, let's start with the obviousness of the plot and character devices. Like a good drama, The Messengers begins with the sense that the Solomon family is a family with a backstory. There is a history to the group that has resulted in Roy being wary of Jess and Denise outright not trusting her. Ben does not speak, even when in mortal peril. The obvious directions for this movie to go would be for the viewer to find out about the incident that precipitated the move (which no doubt closely relates to the current paranormal situation) and sometime before the end of the flick, the silent child would speak again. And lo and behold! This is EXACTLY the way the movie goes. This movie is utterly unsurprising and as a result, completely unoriginal.

The only thing less clever than the plotting of the film, wherein the only interloper into the family - Rollins - naturally is not what he appears, is the characterization. All of the characters are fairly generic and the results of the combination of the "types" is more silly than suspenseful. William B. Davis - beloved by fans of The X-Files for his portrayal of The Cigarrette-Smoking Man - appears in what amounts to a cameo as a Generic Creepy Guy who offers to buy the farm back from Roy right away. The purpose of his character is not so much to provide valuable plot information or even a reasonable amount of suspense, but rather to fill an obvious niche in the horror film as the creepy sage who provides a warning to the protagonist (the witches in The Tragedy Of MacBeth filled the same niche, only with much greater purpose).

Roy is the generic father figure and the moment he becomes remarkably - near the end of the film - the result is more laughable and disappointing than heroic. Without ruining anything of this flick, I shall simply say that when a film sets up a character as the "typical father" and then tacks on an exceptional ability (like the ability to do anything physical after a trauma to the body), the result has to be explained or it falls flat and into the realm well outside suspension of disbelief. Roy falls into such territory so that the legitimacy of the end of the film is completely compromised.

But much of the film remains focused on Jess, played by Kristen Stewart the jailbait of the week actress who is attempting to carve out a niche on the big screen. The directors arguably do not use Stewart as any form of sex symbol (a relief given her age, though that doesn't seem to stop most directors these days!) and her asexual qualities play fine throughout the movie until The Messengers tacks on "Generic Romance Subplot #12" wherein Young Woman (damsel in distress) must express some interest in Local Boy of Approximately Same Age. Jess pairs up, even minimally, with Bobby in a pointless plot move designed to bring the film closer to 90 minutes (it fails, clocking out at 84 minutes!).

And this is where writers Mark Wheaton and Todd Farmer ought to lose their ability to ever write - especially in Hollywood - for eternity. The whole point of virtually any Romantic Subplot that is tacked on to a film that has no real need for romance is simple; it's designed to make the viewer care about the protagonist and/or to insinuate that the character on screen has something more to live for than themselves or their immediate goal. Jess does not. Moreover, her brief, mostly implicit relationship with the bland local boy does not make her more interesting, does not give her more incentive to live and it certainly does not give the viewer more of a reason to watch.

Instead, this film is a continued disappointment. The disappointment resulting from watching Dylan McDermott slouch around the sunflower fields without any spark of intellect or intrigue that he possessed on The Practice is trumped only by the mystery of how the directors got John Corbett (from Northern Exposure) to play such a dull and disappointing character as Burwell.

The DVD extras are similarly unenthusiastic with such things as the trailer and featurette being uninformative and as dull as the film.

No, The Messengers will not scare, certainly not thirteen year-olds or older, it will not entertain and it won't even amuse. If you insist on watching this piece of garbage, at least have someone watch it with you who can wisecrack throughout to make it more entertaining. Otherwise, it's a waste of 84 minutes of life.

For other works with Kristen Stewart, please visit my reviews of:
Breaking Swan Part 1
Eclipse
The Runaways
New Moon
Twilight

0/10

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

© 2011, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.


| | |

Tomatoes And Bubble Man Make For An Intriguing "Thanksgiving" On Northern Exposure.

The Good: Funny, Moments of charm and character, Decent acting, Interesting enough plot
The Bad: Concept gets stretched for a while.
The Basics: "Thanksgiving" is a surprisingly fun episode of Northern Exposure that lives up to the hype of the show being quirky and smart, funny and dramatic.


In the fourth season of Northern Exposure there are a few episodes that work and that I do enjoy enough to rewatch. One of the very few of those is "Thanksgiving," the annual episode focusing on, you guessed it, Thanksgiving. In truth, Northern Exposure (complete series reviewed here!) is one of two severe disappointments for me as a connoisseur of television shows on DVD. In my travels, I had heard much about how truly great Northern Exposure was and when I finally found it on DVD (and video), I found myself drastically underwhelmed.

However, since it is not a big special effects endeavor, when I encountered the VHS video of choice episodes, I have not minded spending on them. One such episode is "Thanksgiving" and that it managed to stand out in a season as poor as the fourth season of Northern Exposure is - in some ways - no surprise.

As Thanksgiving approaches in Cicely, Alaska, Dr. Joel Fleischman receives two bits of bad news: he is white and he is condemned to Cicely for an additional year over what he was originally contracted for. Being white is a problem in Cicely around Thanksgiving because the Native population launches tomatoes at the white folk as a kind of "f-you!" for past injustices (like taking their land). Fleischman's Jewish heritage becomes vocal as he declares to Marilyn that he is not white. Unfortunately for him, even after the locals stop lobbing tomatoes at him, his extended sentence in Cicely turns out to be ironclad and binding.

While Joel goes through his issues, Chris begins to feel some homesickness for prison when he finds the same beans they served there on the shelves at Ruth-Anne's store. While he reconciles his criminal past with his new philosophical nature, Mike finds himself plagues by yet another environmental anomaly and he considers moving away, which leaves Maggie feeling vulnerable and hurt.

"Thanksgiving" is what Northern Exposure was promised to me as; it is weird, funny, dramatic and compelling. The characters are vivid and border on absurd at times, yet they educate the viewer as well as enlighten them. Joel's comparison of the schtedls and concentration camps to the displacement of Native Americans and the reservation system is an interesting one. The scene where he labors to explain to Marilyn how he is not white and he identifies solely with his Jewish heritage is compelling. Moreover, that Marilyn accepts the explanation is equally intriguing.

The b-plot with Chris is funny for its absurdity and it comes in when the Joel plot begins to get heavy and he reverts to his usual state of whining and complaining. The scenes with Chris, then, take on a much more pleasant and rational tone, despite the fact that the character is pining for a return to prison. Amid the tomato throwing and Chris's acceptance of being pelted with tomatoes, Joel becomes obsessed with fighting the extension of his stay in Cicely.

This also leads to an intriguing scene between Joel and Mike Monroe. Mike has been getting closer and closer to Maggie and his character is essentially established through the absurd. He lives in a bubble; a sterile dome house away from everyone else and coming into contact with the real world as little as possible. While he does leave his bubble - thanks to Maurice's space suit - his character has traditionally been grounded firmly in the absurd.

"Thanksgiving," then, allows Mike to stretch into a much more real and interesting character. In addition to being severely compulsive and/or ridiculously sensitive to the environment around him, it turns out that Mike is a lawyer and a pretty genius one at that. Joel, who has been distant from Mike in no small part because of the relationship Mike has with Maggie, is forced to turn to the greatest legal mind in Cicely. Joel finds himself dismayed when it soon becomes clear that Mike will not be able to find a loophole because the contract has no loopholes.

Of course, the savvy television viewer will figure that the whole contractual issue is based on the real world anyway; Northern Exposure was something of a gamble. No one knew how it would be received and as a result, it started with the premise that Dr. Fleischman is condemned to Alaska for four years because the state paid for his education. Given that the show was such a success and Fleischman is the lead protagonist, something had to be done to keep him on for a fifth season, hence the letter Joel receives. Actually, the idea is clever; because the economy is stalling, Fleischman owes the state more in adjusted dollars, enough to keep him in Cicely for an additional year.

"Thanksgiving" manages to be funny and heartwarming at the same time as well as being both quirky and somewhat educational. Despite the character reverting some, Rob Morrow's performance as Dr. Fleischman is surprisingly diverse over the course of the entire episode. Usually, Morrow is forced to play Fleischman as either arrogant and condescending OR wounded and real. In "Thanksgiving," Morrow is forced to play him at both extremes and the result is that the viewer is treated to acting that covers a great deal of emotional terrain. Morrow does it beautifully.

But it is John Corbett who steals every scene of the episode that he is in. Corbett plays Chris Stevens and while he usually plays Chris as a quiet, philosophical guy, in "Thanksgiving," he infuses the character with a deep and nagging tug from his past and the sense that Chris actually has some torment under the surface. Corbett plays that with a very subtle quietness that comes from playing out the beats a little longer than he usually does and it works perfectly to clue the viewer in to how there is something different from Chris's usual philosophical nature. Here, Corbett infuses an undertone of melancholy and it is masterful.

Who is likely to enjoy "Thanksgiving?" Even those who are not traditionally drawn to Northern Exposure are likely to enjoy this episode. Anyone who likes a decent mix of drama and humor will like "Thanksgiving" as it delves quite well into both the character-driven drama and the plot absurdities needed to make for an entertaining hour of television.

[Knowing that VHS is essentially a dead medium, it's worth looking into Northern Exposure - The Complete Fourth Season on DVD, which is also a better economical choice than buying the VHS. Read my review of the middle season by clicking here!
Thanks!]

8.5/10

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

© 2011, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

| | |