R.I.P. Carrie Fisher: Postcards From The Edge Had So Much Potential!

The Good: Good performances, Some wonderful lines (both funny and dramatic), Good direction
The Bad: Glosses over much of the complexity of recovery and narcissism
The Basics: The moments of insight and wit make Postcards From The Edge a worthwhile film to watch, even if it is not nearly as complex in its resolution as the set-up indicates it might be.


When news broke that actress Carrie Fisher had suffered a heart attack on December 23, my heart sunk. 2016 has been a brutal year for deaths of beloved celebrities, writers, musical artists, and actors and while I joined my voice to wish for the best for Carrie Fisher and her speedy recovery, I had no reason to believe that 2016 would alter its momentum and Fisher would recover from her good health. So, when I awoke yesterday to the news that Fisher had died, I was very sad, but not surprised. The days between the two major news stories gave me time to consider what I would write as a tribute to Carrie Fisher.

Like most people, my first and enduring encounter with Carrie Fisher came from her iconic portrayal of the strong-willed Princess Leia Organa in the Star Wars Saga (reviewed here!). Fisher also delivers brilliantly the lines that help create my favorite moment in When Harry Met Sally . . . (reviewed here!) and that got me thinking about how much I came to enjoy watching interviews with Fisher over the years for her candid nature and wry wit. So, when Fisher was hospitalized, it occurred to me that the greatest tribute to Carrie Fisher I could provide would be in reviewing something new (to me) that illustrated Fisher's humor, honesty, and creative skill. For that, I decided it was time to watch Postcards From The Edge.

Postcards From The Edge was released cinematically when I was a teenager, shortly after I had discovered and become obsessed with Star Trek and was fully immersed in that culture. Ironically, a film that addressed in a straightforward manner mental illness probably would have served me better at that time in my life, but Carrie Fisher's cinematic adaptation of her own novel on the subject of substance abuse and living in the shadow of parental pressures is worthwhile and smart. This review is of Postcards From The Edge, which Fisher loosely based upon some of her own life experiences; while some might belabor making the connections between the art and the reality, I am opting for a pure review of the film as it stands on its own.

Actress Suzanne Vale is working on the set of a film, where she is having a rough time of getting through her lines because she is high and the director she is working with tries to avoid cuts in his shots. Shortly thereafter, Vale is unresponsive in bed with Jack Faulkner, who rushes her to the hospital. After her stomach is pumped and she regains consciousness, Vale has to confront her drug abuse. Her celebrity mother comes to visit her in rehab, whose narcissistic tendencies make it difficult for Suzanne to confront her issues. Coming out of rehab, Vale discovers that it is hard for her to get work again because of her history with drugs.

Vale is given the chance to act again if she stays with "a responsible party" during the shoot. Drug tested on the set, Vale is forced to live under her mother's roof where she is subjected to her mother's expectations and pressures. Doris (Vale's mother), puts Suzanne on display and pressures her to perform publicly at a party she throws for her daughter and it becomes clear that Doris is trying to remain relevant and active through Suzanne. Returning to the set the next day, Vale gets a lot of notes on her performance and overhears people talking about her physique, which make it tough for her to give a good performance. After her second day of work, she runs into Faulkner, who starts to pursue her. When Faulkner visits Vale's home, Doris hits on him, but Vale willingly gets into a relationship with him. But, when she learns that Faulkner is sleeping around and she tires of her mother's drinking around her, Vale begins to fight for her own identity and stand up for her own hopes and dreams.

Postcards From The Edge is tough to discuss without some references to Carrie Fisher because Meryl Streep's portrayal of Suzanne Vale so perfectly captures some of the cadences of Carrie Fisher as to make it painfully obvious that the character, or Streep's performance, is based upon her. Streep adapts a speech pattern virtually identical to Carrie Fisher's in many of Vale's most potent deliveries of irony and exasperation. Streep makes Vale accessible and interesting, even as viewers become more and more frustrated with the environment she is in and the people who surround her.

When Vale starts to realize that Doris is her "x-factor" that brings her the stress that begins to make her tempted to use drugs and alcohol, Streep is able to break out and make Vale seem vital in a way that the first half of the movie does not. When Vale asserts herself, Postcards From The Edge starts to take on a richness and level of intrigue that turns the uncomfortable comedy into a potent drama. Streep succeeds more as Vale when she can be heard - there are a number of scenes where she and Shirley MacLaine talk over one another - and Postcards From The Edge works best when it is focused on her.

It is not long into Postcards From The Edge that it becomes obvious that Suzanne Vale is struggling under the yolk of pressure and expectations from her narcissistic mother, Doris. Doris hijacks the party thrown in Suzanne's honor and flirts with Faulkner in a troubling way. Postcards From The Edge does an excellent job of creating a narcissistic character in the form of Doris Mann, but glosses over the complexity of confronting and surviving toxic people in order to deliver a "feel good" ending.

Postcards From The Edge does a rare thing in confronting familial alcoholism and substance abuse and creates a vivid portrait of a horrible narcissist . . . but to get the film into a hundred minute run time and be easily classifiable, the movie creates a situation that is complex and realistic, but then resolves it remarkably simplistically. That makes Postcards From The Edge a bit less satisfying than it ought to be, especially given how good all of the performances are and how decent the characters are when they are allowed to breathe and develop.

Perhaps that is the most fitting epitaph for Carrie Fisher, who railed against having to look a specific way in order to appear in the newest Star Wars films; she worked in an industry that values style over substance and Fisher had a mind for complexity and realism where consumers buy into flash and simplicity. The sad truth is that Carrie Fisher might well have been better as a writer and human being than she was ever allowed to be as a performer and she (and her audience) deserved better.

For other 2016 tribute reviews, please check out my reviews of:
Blackstar - David Bowie
Mother's Day - Garry Marshall
Strangers - Merle Haggard
Firefly Soundtrack - Ron Glass

6/10

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

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Will The Giver Work Better In Context? (It’s Still Wonderful On Its Own!)

The Good: (Mostly) Wonderful directing, Good acting, Great story, Interesting character arcs
The Bad: Some elements of coincidence that do not play out well on their own
The Basics: A generally strong narrative, well-executed, The Giver might be the great start to a worthy new science fiction film franchise!


I’ve been on vacation for the last week, which explains my absence from blogging. My wife and I have been on something of a second honeymoon and today, we took the day off and took in a couple of movies. We started with The Giver, which is somewhat ironic; it has been several weeks since it was theatrically released and there seems to be a sudden rush of new releases this weekend which seems to indicate the beginning of Oscar Pandering Season. With so many new choices to take in, that her first choice was going back to take in a film she had missed seemed a bit odd to me. I can’t complain, though; the movie was pretty wonderful and it was nothing like I thought it was going to be.

My wife was big into seeing The Giver because she read it back in middle school. Apparently, she told me all about it and I was not, honestly, paying attention when she did. Based on the brief advertising campaign I caught for The Giver over the summer, I honestly thought the film was something along the vein of Pay It Forward (reviewed here!). Fortunately, my wife has forgiven me for not quite paying attention to her and, essentially, going into The Giver blind.

And the film was well-worth seeing and it is an engaging start to what should be a series (there was a full quartet of the books). Come to think of it, I cannot recall a film based-upon-a-book series where the first film in the series left me eager for the next installment(s).

In a seemingly perfect community that is apparently high in the clouds, above a ruined Earth, all of the people live predictable, planned lives. At the age of nine, like Jonas’s younger sister Lilly, children are given bicycles to teach them more responsibility and give them greater autonomy. At age eighteen, young people are given their permanent jobs and Jonas is selected to be the new Receiver, a mysterious position that seems to be exempt from most of the society’s rules. Attending his training after ominous allusions to what happened with the last chosen Receiver, Jonas learns that his position is to be the repository of all knowledge that has been withheld from the community. After telepathically linking with the current keeper of the knowledge, The Giver, Jonas realizes just how much has been withheld from the community.

Starting to see the world around him in color and feeling deeper emotions than the fleet feelings the members of the community feel, Jonas finds it impossible to continue living within the bounds of the society. Jonas feels love for his lifelong friend, Fiona, and he stops taking the medicine that everyone in the community takes in order to regulate their emotions. As the Giver and Jonas work together, transferring more and more powerful emotions to Jonas during their sessions, they hatch a plan to save the life of an under-developed baby (Gabriel) and forever alter the society. As the authorities within the society hunt down Jonas, he and the Giver come to believe that there is a boundary outside the community where Jonas could pass and restore the held memories to the community.

The Giver is the first film in a long time that I have watched and not had a powerful opinion on right afterward (one way or the other). I knew the moment the movie was done that I had enjoyed it, but it did not truly excite me. I felt the movie more than it left me in a position to analyze it. The film was set up with a number of seemingly predictable premises: a repressed society in which one member holds the ability to transform the whole system, lifelong friends who initially do not want anything to change (put into a situation where change is inherent), and an ordered society where people are kept in check with firm rules and medication (does that ever work?!). Naturally, The Giver quickly starts to deconstruct the myths of the perfect society – from the conceptual (emotions regulated by drugs cannot keep people from having opinions and feelings) to the geographical (the ground is actually ridiculously close to the edge of the cliff that is the raised community) – but it goes through the process of unfolding the resistance that is forming within Jonas well.

Jonas is an interesting protagonist and his story is well-conceived. He is anxious about the career he might be assigned (the reason for that is not explained well in the film) and he has good reason to be anxious. While all of his peers are given jobs and a purpose (he and his friend Asher easily call that Fiona will be placed in the Nurturing Center), he is held back. Until the Chief Elder gives him his job as Receiver, Jonas is a nervous young man alone. While Jonas’s mind is blown by the memories imparted to him by the Giver, his journey is more subtly illustrated as a young man going from insecure to confident.

Director Phillip Noyce gets so much right with The Giver that it is hard to find a lot to gripe about. The film begins in black and white and long before the literal interpretation of this is revealed, the metaphorical presentation of the sterile world of the community is masterfully presented. As Jonas experiences more emotions, his world is infused with color and that plays out decently. In fact, one of the few decent gripes I could come up with the film was how the costumes appeared to change after Jonas starts seeing the world in color. In other words, the planned community where everyone wears white works as a symbol of perfect order; what does not work is that when Jonas starts seeing in color, Fiona is seen actually wearing a light blue outfit and suddenly the children playing are wearing brown and orange outfits!

Beyond that, the only real flaw I could find with The Giver was with the performance of Alexander Skarsgard. I like Alexander Skarsgard and his role in The Giver is very different from his part on True Blood (though the first time his character of Father was placed right next to a baby, I involuntarily thought, “Don’t give that to him, he’ll exsanguinate it!”). Unfortunately, his performance in The Giver opens up way too much ambiguity in both the society and the people within it. Skarsgard delivers his lines with more emotion than his character is supposed to have. While Father circumvents some of the minor rules without consequence (apparently learning Gabriel’s name involved hacking into forbidden files), his lack of bewilderment when Jonas uses the word “love” makes it seem like he knows what the emotion is. In fact, throughout the film I kept waiting for him to reveal to Jonas a big secret about his own emotional range (based on Skarsgard’s performance).

The rest of the cast is wonderful and fills out the “perfect” world beautifully. Brenton Thwaites is able to evolve Jonas well from stiff but nervous to emotional and rebellious well. Jeff Bridges is virtually unrecognizable as The Giver. My wife and I watched The Big Lebowski (reviewed here!) right before we left for our vacation and Bridges looks and acts nothing like The Dude in The Giver! Still, he is entirely credible as a disenchanted keeper of all knowledge in the film. Katie Holmes is wonderfully dispassionate as Jonas’s Mother and Odeya Rush is able to move from repressed to emotional well as Fiona.

The Giver does not explain everything it needs to in order to be absolutely satisfying, but the few big questions it leaves dangling are enough to want to return to this cinematic world. The Giver is smart and establishes a firm setting before beginning the process of disassembling it and, in that regard, it does all it should.

For other films currently in theaters, please check out my reviews of:
10,000 Days
Hit By Lightning
Horns
Listen Up Philip
The Best Of Me
The Judge
Dracula Untold
The Equalizer
The Zero Theorem
The Maze Runner
This Is Where I Leave You

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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Unimpressive Oscarbait: I Keep Waiting For August: Osage County To Take Off.

The Good: Moments of performance, Some of the lines, Moments of humor.
The Bad: Hard to empathize with the characters, Sterile direction, Bland plot
The Basics: With an incredible cast, August: Osage County might be an acting showcase, but it still nets a painfully dull movie for the most part.


Before sitting down to watch August: Osage County, I became convinced of a simple premise: the main reason Meryl Streep is cast in movies these days is so the movie will get noticed during Oscar Pandering Season. It’s been years since anyone tried releasing a film with Meryl Streep outside Oscar Pandering Season – Julie & Julia (reviewed here!) was the last I know of – and while I suppose it is as good a reason as any to put Meryl Streep in a movie, it would be nice if the films for which she was cast had substance to back them up.

I mention this at the top of my review of August: Osage County because this is a movie with a massive cast of talented performers, including Meryl Streep, that goes nowhere as a film. This is not to say that Meryl Streep is not wonderful in August: Osage County - because she is – but one suspects that director John Wells loaded the film with Streep, Benedict Cumberbatch, Chris Cooper, Julia Roberts and Ewan McGregor in the hopes that viewers would be so blown away by who was on the screen that they would not notice that the movie is pretty boring. And I write that as one who loves the film Magnolia (reviewed here!). In fact, in her best moments in August: Osage County, Meryl Streep’s performance is reminiscent of Jason Robards’s performance in Magnolia as a person suffering through a painful end of life period.

Shortly after Beverly Weston sets his wife up with a caretaker, he disappears, leaving his wife Violet to die on her own (for all he apparently cares). Violet’s daughter, Ivy, calls Barbara and Barbara, her estranged husband Bill and their daughter Jean, return to their family’s house. Violet’s sister, Mattie Fae Aiken and her husband Charlie, come to help out as well. When Beverly’s body is recovered (having drown himself), the other daughter Karen and her older fiancé, Steve, show up for the funeral. Missing the funeral is Charlie and Mattie Fae’s son, Little Charlie, though he shows up for the post-funeral meal.

With the full family together after the funeral, the Westons, Aikens, and Fordhams sit down for one of the most uncomfortable meals in cinematic history. There, Violet spitefully sets family members against each other (and her) by claiming right to all of the money Beverly left (though the will was never legally changed) and the family tries to put up with the venomous woman, despite knowing that she doesn’t have very long left herself. Over the course of the stay, Little Charlie and Ivy’s affair comes out – though their true relationship is not disclosed to Little Charlie – and Steve tries to use weed to get Jean pliable enough to rape. As Violet’s pill-popping increases, the family falls apart, leaving only misery in her wake.

August: Osage County works, when it does, because it is funny. When it is not gut-wrenchingly, excruciatingly uncomfortable, August: Osage County has some very funny lines. Chris Cooper is in rare form as Charlie; his bit about eating some good fear is hilariously delivered and it’s easy to see the charm he possesses and portrays in almost every scene of August: Osage County. Cooper plays Charlie’s love for his son as perfectly organic and beautifully delivered (the moment he stands up for Little Charlie is one of the film’s high points). During the meal scenes, August: Osage County is reminiscent of Peep World (reviewed here!) for its charm, complicated dynamics, and the way the expert cast members play off one another.

Sadly, the comedy in August: Osage County ends. It does not merely end: it dies a fast, hard, miserable death. From the moment Steve first ambles up to Jean, there is something sinister about him. When he becomes more aggressive with her, the film commits to a tone that it never turns back from. For all the spite and horribleness of Violet, other characters managed to get in amusing lines before that. As a result, August: Osage County has a flow and some sense of enjoyment until that point. After that point, though, the film becomes oppressive and downright miserable.

While some of the characters are interesting (oddly, in a film dominated by wonderful women, only Ivy and Johnna Monevata – the caretaker – are truly likable), few are really decent people. Charlie is good, Little Charlie is so deeply caring, and even Bill has some moments, but the film is largely about dysfunction and how people react to the spiteful Violet. Violet is arguably Meryl Streep’s meanest role since The Devil Wears Prada (reviewed here!).

That makes the reason to endure the two hours of August: Osage County the acting. Everyone in the film perfectly embodies their characters and they perform admirably. While Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts continue to get most of the attention, I was impressed by Julianne Nicholson. Nicholson plays Ivy and she has great onscreen chemistry with Benedict Cumberbatch (Little Charlie). She plays Ivy with a deep, restrained sadness for most of the movie and she emotes so much with her eyes that it is hard not to empathize with her character.

That said, it’s unsurprising that August: Osage County did not get nominated for the Best Picture Oscar; it is a ponderous, painful movie. It’s worth watching once for the impressive acting, but unfathomable to want to sit through a second time as it is largely unenjoyable, regardless of how well it captures a slice of reality.

For other works with Benedict Cumberbatch, please check out my reviews of:
The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug
12 Years A Slave
Star Trek Into Darkness
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Atonement
Fortysomething

5/10

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

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Hope Springs Is A Marriage Counseling Movie Filled With Clichés And Lacking In Spark.

The Good: Moments of realism, Good casting
The Bad: Predictable, Nothing extraordinary on the acting front, Set-up with all of the obvious elements for a troubled marriage.
The Basics: Hope Springs is intense and real, but hardly entertaining and not terribly original.


Marriage is a complicated thing. Marriage is complex and there have been problems in marriage since the institution was formed. I have news for you: with the proliferation of information, greater communications options, and a rise of technology without any corresponding psychological growth in the human animal, marriages are only going to get more complicated. As Baby Boomers age, Hollywood is working to find works to get their dollars and aging marriages are one of the topics for films competing for Baby Boomers’ money. The Brits beat Hollywood to the punch with The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (reviewed here!), but last year was a good year for the first big push toward courting mature viewers. The biggest release in that regard was Hope Springs.

In courting Baby Boomers, the major studios seem to have forgotten that Boomers have seen and experienced a lot, especially in cinema, and have had more outlets than the prior generations. So, Hope Springs might have been audacious a decade or three ago, but it seemed far more formulaic and predictable now. Hell, the Boomer crowd had the money and interest to keep In Treatment on the air for several seasons; did Vanessa Taylor think Boomers hasn’t seen or known about it? Even without actually watching episodes of In Treatment, with my cinematic and television history, Hope Springs seemed more familiar than fresh to me.

Kay and Arnold have been married for thirty-one years and they now have adult children, an empty home, and separate beds. Kay is extremely sad about that fact, while Arnold seems to accept the relationship with indifference. Kay dips into the couple’s CD to buy tickets to Dr. Feld’s intensive marriage therapy in Maine. When it becomes clear that Kay will leave without him, Arnold gets on the plane with Kay and, following her first victory, they begin the difficult process of marriage counseling with the straightforward Dr. Feld.

Over the course of the week that follows, Arnold and Kay begin talking about all the things they never actually talked about, spending time together, practicing all the things they used to do, as well as trying to do the things they always wanted.

Hope Springs is not bad, but it is nothing special and certainly nothing original. Arnold is characterized as an emotionally-reticent man, whose sex with his wife was pretty much limited to the missionary position. Kay is a sexually-repressed housewife whose inexperience and lack of communication contributed in part to the disintegration of their marriage. And so much initially changes when Dr. Feld just has the two start talking honestly. Communication, of course, being a cornerstone of a healthy marriage, it is usually the element that is most damaged in a relationship in decline and Hope Springs wisely starts with that.

But, as the film goes on, Hope Springs seems less impressive on that front. Dr. Feld never pushes Kay and Arnold so hard that they actually develop a willingness, desire, and ability to communicate with one another. In fact, for an “intensive therapy” experience, Dr. Feld’s office is incredibly safe, unthreatening, and (ultimately) unchallenging. He addresses the surface problems – the effects – instead of the causes of the problems in the marriage and those who have a lot of experience in psychotherapy will find Hope Springs far less impressive than writer Vanessa Taylor and director David Frankel might want. When you’re trying to appeal to the generation that invented “self-help books,” this seems like a critical flaw.

On the acting front, Hope Springs is cast well within the ranges of each of the main three performers. Steve Carell, whose casting as therapist Dr. Feld might have seemed audacious right after he came off The Daily Show, but given works like Dan In Real Life (reviewed here!) where he has played much more dramatic roles, this is not at all surprising for him. Similarly, Tommy Lee Jones playing a grumpy older man who is efficient at his job, but is emotionally reticent has been done to death. In fact, it was done in 2012 prior to the wide release of Hope Springs with Men In Black III (reviewed here!).

As for Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence had nothing to worry about before the Golden Globes; the role of Kay is not one of Streep’s more impressive roles. In fact, it is reminiscent of some of her earlier roles where she was relegated to the supporting wife character who did not have the chance to shine, like The Deer Hunter (reviewed here!). For someone who has played big, dramatic, thematically complex roles, the mousy, reserved role of Kay seems like a huge step back for her. In other words, the role of Kay is well within her established range and she does not surprise the audience with her performance or her mastery of the character.

Now on DVD, Hope Springs has alternate takes, a gag real, and the like. They are fair bonus features for a fair movie. Hope Springs is not bad, it is just nothing new, exciting, or even particularly entertaining.

For other relationship movies, please visit my reviews of:
The Family Stone
Letters To Juliet
About Schmidt

5/10

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

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Conflicts In Age Differences And Jewish Mothers/Therapists: Prime

The Good: Decent acting, Interesting characters, Some interesting ideas
The Bad: Failure of characters to advance meaningfully, Tone/emotional resolution
The Basics: In a razor decision, the similarity in emotional resonance to previous movies makes it difficult to recommend the generally entertaining Prime.


When I finished watching the movie Prime - and I understand that's an awkward place for the review to begin - I found myself in something of an odd position. The feelings I felt at the resolution to Prime were identical to how I felt at the end of As Good As It Gets (reviewed here!). So, I sat contemplating this. Was this a good thing or a bad thing? My final decision was that this was unsatisfying; I wanted something new and different. I did not want something that put me into the identical emotional place I had once been. Been there, done that. If you want a kind of "aw, well . . ." ending, there's that movie and, unfortunately for writer-direction Ben Younger, As Good As It Gets was years ahead, so it is this work that suffers as derivative.

David is a twenty-three year old artist living in Manhattan with his grandparents while he pursues his love of creating art. He's a talented painter, though every major influence in his life has told him it's not a practical way to support himself, so he has remained introverted and unsuccessful. He meets Rafi, who is branching out after a particularly difficult divorce. Rafi and David begin a relationship, though neither knows that David's mother is Rafi's therapist, though Lisa (David's mother) soon suspects this is the case. As Lisa does her best to both maintain her professionalism and not influence the relationship, David and Rafi grow to love one another and experience complications based on their age difference, their religions and Lisa's place in their lives.

Because I'm feeling negative about this movie right now, let's get the beefs out first. Prime has an essentially good idea, save that none of the characters learn anything. Rafi is incredibly insecure about dating a younger man. Despite her experiences with him, she never gets over this. Thus, the movie is tainted because Rafi goes in with a prejudice and simply lives the relationship a slave the that prejudice, never successfully defying it. Similarly, Lisa's annoying insistence that David not even date a non-Jewish woman is prejudiced start to finish. I recognize that there is a significant sect of Jewish culture (beyond the simple stereotypical Jewish mother) for whom cultural purity in the form of maintaining the tradition of children marrying within the religion is important to this day. In Prime it comes across, not as spiteful but, as limited. It does not fit much of the rest of Lisa's character. That she never grows beyond it, never even lets a chink show in her emotional armor on this issue is infuriating.

In fact, it is ironic that out of the adults in the movie (Lisa is in her fifties, Rafi in her early thirties), it is David who is easily the most open minded. David accepts and opens completely to loving Rafi, despite his initial fears that his mother will not accept her. He accepts Rafi's gay friends, he and his friends hang out in a rather multicultural setting and he just seems the most open to actual living and the only one who offers the viewer any real hope.

The film keeps raising the same conflicts over and over again; age difference, religious difference (which seems from the beginning far more important to Lisa than David) and lack of steady employment. This is a very practical, unromantic movie and it has an emotional drag to it as a result. For someone in therapy, Rafi never seems to get anywhere better emotionally and that's troubling.

What does work is the acting. The primaries in this film are Meryl Streep (Lisa), Uma Thurman (Rafi) and Bryan Greenberg (David). Greenberg slouches his way through the movie in a parody of the browbeaten young Jewish man who has lived under his mother's influence too long. He mumbles, effectively creating a character who is instantly recognizable. A problem arises, however, in the middle of the film stemmed more from the character as written than Greenberg's portrayal. When David and Rafi start their relationship, Greenberg's whole body language changes; he's a man in love. It seems, therefore, silly and canned when Rafi buys him a Nintendo and he neglects their lovemaking for it. Greenberg sold us on a transformation that seemed too easily undone.

Uma Thurman is decent as Rafi. She makes good use of her expressive face and eyes and some of the scenes - especially early in the movie - of Rafi in therapy are made convincing by Thurman's ability to dramatically emote. She convinces the viewer of an extensive backstory that we are not privy to and her performance through most of the movie requires the greatest range of any of the actors and she rises to the occasion.

Meryl Streep is Meryl Streep here. By that, I mean that she is acting with professionalism and class. It's difficult to evaluate her acting because her character is so static. Streep's Lisa has little emotional resonance, not so much because of Streep's performance, but rather because of how the character is written. Streep is convincing as a somewhat controlling, traditional Jewish mother.

But overall, the movie falls just flat enough not to recommend. It's an emotional downer because the characters are stagnant and while it may be human, it's not entertaining. And for a film that starts so well, we deserve some happiness. So do your characters, Mr. Younger!

For other works with Bryan Greenberg, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Friends With Benefits
Bride Wars
The Perfect Score

5/10

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

© 2012, 2007 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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Half Worthwhile, Half Annoying, Ultimately Worth Only One Viewing: Julie & Julia Disappoints.

The Good: The entire Julia Child plot, Most of the performances
The Bad: Almost the entire Julie Powell plot, Moments when Streep slips out of character
The Basics: Erratic in the way it mixes a past and contemporary plot, Julie & Julia is lackluster chick flick fare which fails to resonate even with its target demographic.


[Note: As there are almost no experiences my mother and I shared together, I am opting to keep the opening to this review – which was originally written based on a preview screening of the film over a month prior to the cinematic release – unchanged. Enjoy!

There are few times I actually consider the theatrical experience, despite the fact that I often find myself these days in crowded movie theaters watching the latest movies with large audiences. But sometimes, I encounter something of note that leaves me baffled and feeling the need to discuss the phenomenon outside the work that inspired it. Today, what has me baffled was a result of the film Julie & Julia. I caught an early screening of the film a few nights ago - I was able to take my mother, which made her happy, as she is a big fan of Nora Ephron's works - and as the movie plodded along, I watched and listened to the audience. There were few laughs, few moments when anyone reacted. I thought this odd because preview screenings like the one I attended tend to be filled with people who are predisposed toward a work. Throughout the movie, the audience was largely quiet; they did not laugh, they did not cheer, they did not react for almost the entire film. But when the movie was over, the horde of women (the screening was predominately women) began to erupt into enthusiastic conversations about how much they had enjoyed the movie they had just seen.

Here's the thing, I'm a respectful first-viewer, but I find myself smiling, laughing or otherwise reacting during movies. As a seasoned viewer and reviewer, it did not take me long to realize that the reason I was able to observe so much of the audience during Julie & Julia was because I was largely bored with the movie. I suspect that most of the screening audience was and while there were certainly elements to praise about Julie & Julia, on the balance it is an erratic work whose most significant moments were shown in the preview trailers and that this is a film where the longer people have away from it, the less they will enjoy about it. In fact, my bet would be that people who were at the same screening as me would have little to say about the movie other than "Meryl Streep was great as Julia Child." She was, but even her performance was not flawless and one has to wonder why director Nora Ephron included certain takes in the film's final print.

Julie & Julia is a blending of two stories, poorly, one contemporary, one from the past. In 1945, Julia Child and her husband, Paul, arrive in France to work at the United States Embassy. As Paul establishes himself, Julia flounders and searches for something to do which will make her feel (and be) useful. In 2002, Julie Powell arrives with her husband Eric in Queens where the two take up residence over a pizza place so Eric may be closer to his work. Amid the pressure from her successful friends, Julie strives to actually do something with her life, as she spends her days working for the Lower Manhattan Development Corp and has no real authority of zest in her life.

Julie's solution is to start a blog and for one year, she begins going through the recipes of Julia Child from Child's famous book on cooking French cuisine. As Julie struggles to maintain her goal and grows in popularity on the internet, the film looks back to Julia Child, who becomes one of the first women to take advanced cooking lessons at the prestigious French culinary school, Le Cordon Bleu. As she learns to cook, she finds herself in the company of two French women who are looking to teach cooking and sell a book in the United States on French cooking.

The plot is remarkably simple and the title implies it all and the film's trailers reveal it all: Julie Powell seeks gratification and acknowledgment as a writer by taking on the task of cooking all 524 recipes in Julia Child's cookbook over the course of 365 days. While she wends her way through the cookbook, the film flashes back to the process of Julia Child becoming the world-renowned chef she was ultimately considered. The only question potential viewers will have after seeing the trailer is "Does Julie Powell succeed in her goal?"

The problem is, after the first few minutes of the movie, it is almost impossible to care. (Actually, attentive viewers to the trailer can figure out the answer as some of the final shots from the film are in the revealing promotional trailer.) The viewer knows the outcome of the Julia Child plot: Child will succeed in getting her cookbook published and readers everywhere will eventually flock to it. So, the only question in the Julia Child section is "how does Child get the book published?" Unfortunately, much of the beginning of the movie is bogged down with the Julie Powell plot and it is such a dud that it almost instantly crushes the momentum of the film.

Julie Powell, in Julie & Julia (I've never met the Julie Powell in real life) is boring, whiny and utterly without qualities worth watching. She complains about her job and the move with her husband and as she whines through the early scenes, viewers are unlikely to care whether or not she makes a goal and sticks to it, we just want her to grow up! In fact, her irksome tendency to complain is epitomized in such melodramatic phrases as "Ritual cobb salad lunch tomorrow. Dreading. Dreading. Dreading." In this stereotypical chick-flick scene, Julie gets together with her three friends, they all order variants of cobb salads and complain about their work (though her friends spend most of the time on their cell phones or digital voice recorders). Powell is characterized not so much as a woman who has friends with incongruent lifestyles, but rather as a woman content to be walked all over by her friends and otherwise neglected. When Powell declares that she has thoughts she could blog about, it comes at a point where most viewers will not care what those thoughts are and as she winds through the recipes in Julia Child's cookbook, the cooking takes place as quick cuts and final product shots and most of the plot is mired in the melodrama of Powell's home life.

By contrast, the Julia Child sections of the movie are wonderful and they become a welcome respite for the viewer from the whiny, annoying and over-the-top Powell. The irony here is that Julia Child is a tall, loud, energetic woman who is presented as over-the-top, but her struggles are more compelling and interesting than the faux-conflicts that come up with Powell, who has disproportionately (childlike) meltdowns over them. Child labors for respect only after she is actualized by her desire to be useful to herself and her husband. Her sections of the film are welcome respites from the Powell plot and the moment the film shifts back from the past to contemporary times, my stomach sank almost every time.

Nora Ephron, who adapted the books this movie was based upon into the screenplay and then directed the film, does a decent job of creating the two stories and developing them, but she is trapped using material that is half wonderful, half not so much. Ephron, who proved her ability to write complex and engaging romantic storylines with When Harry Met Sally is unfortunately given two stories that do not work nearly so well interweaving with Julie & Julia; and Ephron sure tries. Opening with what might seem like a schmaltzy shot of ground zero in Manhattan, Ephron quickly recovers by explaining away the use of the World Trade Center rubble for the necessary explanation of Julie Powell's ennui. Ephron then attempts to make parallels between not only the characters of Julie Powell and Julia Child (both government workers, both escaped their monotony through cooking, both were married, etc.) but the time periods. And while there are great parallels to be made between the early 1950s and the rise of McCarthyism and the reign of George W. Bush, Ephron makes weak connections. Paul Child is targeted by McCarthy and his goons and he and Julia suffer transfers as a result. Julie Powell and her husband have no similar political ramifications for their backstories, so Ephron's attempt falls terribly short (for a much better peek into the McCarthy-like parallels during the George W. Bush years, please check out Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip, reviewed here).

One of the things Ephron does quite well is not insult the intelligence of her audience. Julia Child is motivated in this by a need to feel useful, at least in part, by the fact that she is barren. One scene easily establishes this idea without making it explicit and another reinforces it wonderfully. Ephron never states it directly and this is a pleasant surprise for viewers. Unfortunately, so much of the rest of Julie & Julia is formulaic in the most unpleasant ways. As a result, Julie and her husband have all of the predictable conflicts and reconciliations that the film seems to feel the need to have. Unfortunately, they are formulaic and they are presented without any real emotional depth to them.

What Ephron does well is she fixes her mediocre recipe using great ingredients. Amy Adams is hard to discuss as Julie Powell because the character is so annoying and difficult to watch and her costar, Chris Messina is relegated to generic spouse status as Eric Powell, but both seem to be adequate in Julie & Julia. Meryl Streep is amazing as Julia Child, though. Ephron cast Streep perfectly and Streep lives up to the challenge, creating the flamboyant and fun Child in a way that makes it possible for the viewer to close their eyes and hear Julia Child perfectly. Unfortunately, even Streep's performance is not the absolute gem most would want it to be. While Streep is great, there are at least three moments in the film where Streep stops using the Julia Child voice and falls into her own. These moments stand out as memorable because in those few moments, Streep does not even carry herself the way she does the rest of the movie.

But the one who never slips is Stanley Tucci. It might seem odd in a film geared toward women with an amazing cast of prestigious or great actresses that the most laudable performance would come from a man, but Stanley Tucci does it perfectly as Paul Child. He plays Paul with a great emotional range, from quiet and supportive to eager and giddy and in every moment, he is unlike any other character he has played. His performance is so good, one wishes that he were in the movie more and that this had simply been a film about the life of Paul and Julia Child.

Ultimately, the best I can recommend is if you have the chance, see Julie & Julia once, but when it comes out on DVD don't bother with adding it to your collection. And in the hard and fast system of "thumbs up, thumbs down" or "recommend, not recommend," this is too tough a sell to advocate recommending. There is just not enough to keep viewers engaged and certainly not enough to come back to again and again.

For other works with Amy Adams, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Leap Year
Charlie Wilson’s War

6/10

For other movie reviews, 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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Losing The Translation To Attempts At Wittiness, Adaptation. Fizzles.

The Good: Decent acting, Good opening
The Bad: Degenerates into a scholarly experiment, Pacing, Lack of sensible character development, Utter lack of plot
The Basics: Adaptation. begins as a slow story about a ridiculously nervous screenwriter and degenerates into a disappointing scholarly exercise even a person with a comparative literature major couldn't enjoy.


As a novelist, I am always interested in what is new and different. I went into Adaptation. with high hopes and reasonable expectations. I had enjoyed Being John Malkovich and I found the previews to Adaptation. compelling. That said, I was horribly disappointed.

Opening with Charlie Kaufman, who actually did write the film Adaptation., the fictional character is pushed aside on the set of his own film and he is portrayed instantly though his own voiceover as a loser. Charlie then goes on to get the film rights to the book "The Orchid Thief" and struggles with making what he finds a great novel into an even remotely workable film. The narrative bounces between Kaufman's agonizing attempts to write the film while his twin brother Donald makes a very "Hollywood" horror script and the past where Susan Orlean researches and writes "The Orchid Thief." Orlean is led by John Laroche, a Florida redneck who is an expert on orchids.

Adaptation. does very well in the beginning, despite some serious pacing problems. While the film focuses on the difficulty of translating a book about ideas and emotions into a film - i.e. not adding characters and/or attempting to have contrived plot devices - it works well. Even as Susan works on writing some of the compelling lines Charlie gets hooked on, the narrative flows. In the beginning of the film, Adaptation. is a movie about nothing about writing a film about nothing.

And it's slow. It's dreadfully slow, in fact. That works for a little while, when focusing on Charlie, but not when the attention shifts to Susan and John. Alas, the pace does not pick up in those moments.

Had the film remained a film about nothing, that could have been fine. It could have endured as a film about the struggle to write and even been intriguing to non-writers.

Unfortunately, about halfway through the film, Adaptation. becomes obsessed with the conventions of movie-making and all of the cliches and stereotypes of the typical Hollywood film. It is at this point in the movie that Adaptation. surrenders all of its reasonable and plausible premises and degenerates into what it hates. That is, Kaufman becomes disappointed with the conventions of writing a film personified in Robert McKee. These conventions are such things as the importance of plot, the lack of voiceovers and the "standards" like the car chase, the moral at the end, and the use of a popular song in a film.

Adaptation. seeks to make a satire of these conventions in the latter half of the film and as a result it becomes both snobby and ridiculous. In attempting to mock the establishment, Adaptation. sinks into it, becoming the worst cliche of all. This film is roughly equivalent to the upper class intellectual who despises sports in their social circles and then sneaks away to play football (note: not squash) on the weekends. It's hypocritical when it attempts to be clever and ultimately this film lets us down by sacrificing the characters and ideals of the beginning for the quick fix the end provides.

The only redeeming aspect of this film is the acting. Nicolas Cage plays Charlie wonderfully. Cage also plays the somewhat pointless Donald well and quite differently. Cage is a fine actor here. Meryl Streep and Tilda Swinton are both wonderful as Susan and Valerie. The scene stealer is Chris Cooper, who plays John Laroche. Cooper deserved the Golden Globe Award he won last week for playing Laroche. Fans of "American Beauty" will remember Cooper as the militant marine next door, Colonel Fitts. Here he plays a very different, far more alive character and he does it quite well.

Unfortunately, even the acting cannot save this film. What it tries to mock pretentiously, it becomes in the last act. So even when we recognize that it is mocking the phenomenon of the stylized film industry, when drugs and guns come into play, it tries to play it seriously and it is impossible for the viewer to accept the abrupt about face. It results in the film ceasing to mock bad films and it instead becomes one.

Ultimately, this is a terribly slow film. I mean dreadfully. I felt like the film was at least three and a half hours long and was shocked to learn that it was, in actuality 114 minutes. And keep in mind, I was looking forward to this film.

For other reality-bending films, please be sure to check out my reviews of:
The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus
Inception
Sucker Punch

3/10

For other film reviews, please visit my Movie Reviews Index Page by clicking here!

© 2012, 2003 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Steven Spielberg's Argument Against Having Children . . . Or Robots: A.I.: Artificial Intelligence!

The Good: Essentially good philosophical question, Some acting
The Bad: Overly graphic, Thematically heavy-handed, Characters that are difficult to connect with, Loses focus
The Basics: The MPAA drops the ball on not rating this nightmarish fairy tale “R.” Otherwise, there is little of note here.


It did not take watching A.I. or Artificial Intelligence long to realize that Steven Spielberg was the wrong director for this movie. At best, no other director could be accused of trying to capitalize on the same type feelings as E.T, at worst, no other director would be a target for trying so desperately to make a hit film. Artificial Intelligence fails to be as simply endearing as E.T. was upon its release and too pointlessly graphic and needlessly complicated to be the real hit that he wanted.

When Henry Swinton believes he has found the solution to his wife's heartbreak over their son's apparent coma, he purchases a robot (mecha) that has the ability to love her without question. David, the mecha, takes a while to endear himself to Monica and eventually, she begins to return his affection. When her biological son reanimates, there is natural conflict between the two children and Monica decides to abandon David. David, unalterably programmed to love Monica, begins a search for the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio in an attempt to become human. In the process, he flees the most dangerous element of humanity, the Flesh Fair, and journeys to the submerged Manhattan to try to become human.

First of all, if you are not a fan of Pinocchio-type stories, this will be a huge let down for you. Essentially, it is a souped up fairy tale with all the simplicity and none of the charm. Haley Joel Osment does a fine job portraying David with simplistic, childlike wonder, but there is no magic in his performance. There's no spark of joy in him, which makes watching Osment's David difficult.

If you read my reviews, you will no I am not a prude for most of the things Conservatives decry are wrong with movies. I was disappointed at how sexually graphic Henry And June (reviewed here!) wasn't and the ultra-violent "Empok Nor" rates as one of the best Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episodes in my book. That said, the MPAA completely dropped the ball when it came to rating this movie. Whatever dolts at the MPAA slapped a PG-13 on this movie instead of an "R" deserved to be fired.

Why? A significant portion of Artificial Intelligence happens at a Flesh Fair. The Flesh Fair is basically a bunch of hicks getting together and tearing apart robots. In the scene, we see a robot shot from a cannon, through a ring of fire and into a jet engine where it is destroyed, another is drawn and quartered before our eyes and yet another is melted completely with acid. The purpose of the scene is to illustrate what monsters humans have become in relation to their servants. This horrific scene immediately follows a scene wherein a dump truck of already destroyed robots attempt to reconstruct themselves and includes such things as one robot tearing jaws off other dead droids to find one that fits. The problems of these scenes are twofold. 1. They do what they do exceptionally well, to the point of being overbearing, oppressive and gross. In the robot dump scene, we see quite comprehensively how poorly the robots have been treated and any viewer with a brain is going to feel the sense of injustice and "get" that this situation is absolutely wrong. The scene that follows with the chase and torture of robots is therefore unnecessary. Add to that, the scene is supposed to illustrate how inhumanely the robots are being treated by showing their torture and we are to understand how wrong that is. The MPAA completely dropped the ball on this one in that it uses the excuse that the beings being tortured are simply inanimate objects to justify showing things it would never allow to be illustrated with human beings. Thus, the MPAA is desensitized, becoming in itself a flesh fair. It is unethical and desensitizing to allow such graphic torture to be shown, especially to youngsters and the idiocy of the MPAA's decision to rate this PG-13 is that the robots are, of course, humans in actuality! The second problem is both of these intense, graphic scenes of dismemberment, torture and destruction are too long. We get the thesis of the scenes. They feel like the Ripley Clone Room scene in Alien Resurrection (reviewed here!) - we got it, get on with it.

Following the disgusting and inappropriately rated Flesh Fair scene, the movie falls completely into chaos. The comic relief provided by Jude Law's character Gigolo Joe wears thin immediately such that the viewer is not disappointed by his rapid exit from the movie soon after. Then the movie descends into a weird fairy tale involving massive passages of time and alien beings.

The problem, ultimately, with Artificial Intelligence is that it does not seem to know what it wants to be. Too often, it is an oversimplified fairy tale. Other moments, however, it rises to a wrenchingly graphic and adult portrayal of ostracization and loneliness. In the end, none of the characters come alive. David is simplistic and monotonous, Monica is pretty much the worst mother ever, Joe is a one trick joke, and Professor Allen Hobby, who has great potential as a philosopher somehow loses his way in the last scenes we see of him. His philosophical quest motivates the movie, yet his actions at the end are inexplicable; until he knew the outcome of the David experiment, why would he start other such experiments?

In contrast to the characters, the acting is halfway decent. Almost redeeming the movie are the performances of William Hurt, who plays Hobby as intelligent and compassionate, and Haley Joel Osment, who earns his fee easily with his weird, robotic performance of David. The contrast between the warmly emotional Hurt and the quirky, quasi-dispassionate Osment works quite well.

Unfortunately, it is not enough to save this movie. It lacks serious direction other than trying to prove that the responsibility one would have to an artificial life form is the same as one would have to a biological entity, but that is proven rather quickly. The lack of purpose through much of the movie is complicated by a situation devoid of empathetic characters and ruined by an unnecessarily gruesome set of scenes that defy good taste. If you want a better time making an ethical argument over robots, I strongly recommend "Measure Of A Man" from Star Trek The Next Generation's second season. They say that if a movie resonates emotionally with you, it's good regardless; I say if it resonates only in that it makes you nauseous and others when you describe it, it's garbage. There's no antacid that counteracts the Flesh Fair and only sadness that 28 Days Later's Brendan Gleeson was a part of it.

For other big science fiction films, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Bicentennial Man
Inception
Minority Report

3.5/10

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

© 2011, 2003 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Dear Anne Hathaway, Are You Aware Your Character Was Raped In The Devil Wears Prada?

The Good: Costumes, Moments of acting
The Bad: Characters make little sense, Plot is predictable, Mood
The Basics: When Andy Sachs moves to New York City to work for a magazine, she ends up as a personal assistant to a ruthless editor in a pointless movie.


For those who might not follow my movie and music (and I suppose even my tea reviews), I tend to review things from a feminist perspective. I am a proud liberal who believes in freedom over government control and equality over classes. I also tend to review movies in such a way that does not reveal the end or elements that come in near the end, out of respect for those who might actually go and see the film I am (or am not) recommending. After all, there's still the sanctity of those "I am your father" moments in cinema and I work to maintain them. However, after seeing The Devil Wears Prada, my feminist outrage is overriding my cinema integrity argument and as a result, this review will reveal one or two elements that come into the movie rather late. You're warned up front and as a result, I'm going ahead because the problems I experienced with the movie were pretty solid, but they do reveal one or two late elements in the movie.

After seeing Anne Hathaway in Get Smart, I decided that I could stand to see a lot more of her works. As such, I put in requests at my library for anything of hers I could find on DVD. The first film to arrive was The Devil Wears Prada, a movie I had not caught in the theaters, nor read even a single review of. As I understand it, the movie is based on a book and with my usual disclaimer, this is a review of the film as a standalone project. If my gripes with the movie are addressed in the book, that's fine, but as far as the movie goes, this is what we have.

Andrea "Andy" Sachs is a graduate of Northwestern University who has moved to New York City to get a job as a reporter, rather than go on to Stanford Law. In New York City, Andy hangs out with her boyfriend and two friends until the day she is able to score an interview at Runway. Runway, a fashion magazine, is a far cry from where Andy wants to be and instead of dealing with content, she is granted a job as personal assistant to the editor, Miranda Priestly.

Miranda is pretty much the archetypal domineering female boss who is demanding without any sense of humanity. Andy rejects the lifestyle of the size two to four crowd while in her service until one demand after another wears her down. In the process, she tries to fulfill her own goals, but mostly runs petty errands for a woman who does not care about her or her ambitions.

The Devil Wears Prada reminds the viewer that it's tough to do a good "coming of age" story today because there have been so many of them done before. This is essentially the story of Andy Sachs learning to stand up for herself and follow her own dreams and the entire movie is the brief period she spends getting off track. This sort of selling out to the fashion industry might seem remotely interesting if it hadn't already been done. Indeed, Just Shoot Me! managed to do the essential plot of this movie in a single half-hour episode.

And going into The Devil Wears Prada, the viewer has pretty much the right idea of where the movie is going. One of three things will happen by the end of the movie: Andy will either learn the value of being independent and stand up for herself and her dreams, Andy will sell out and become the next Miranda and/or Miranda will soften into an actual human being and learn a valuable lesson on her own. From the very beginning, Miranda is characterized as someone who has been established for quite some time, so fortunately the film does not disappoint the viewer with the family-friendly, "antagonist gets what's coming to them" ending. As for the other two options, I won't ruin that "surprise."

The thing is, in the process of getting mired in the corporate and style worlds, Andy becomes an utterly unlikable character. While we might be rooting for her from the outset, by the time she happily asserts to Nigel that she is now a size four, she is utterly unlikable and the viewer lacks any empathy for her. She has made her choice and whether or not she chooses to change back, she has spent the lion's share of the movie as a jerk and frankly, we want to see characters who are more interesting than that.

But even more troubling than that is where the movie goes and fails to go while getting there. In the process of meeting Miranda's ridiculous demands, Andy finds herself dealing with a writer named Christian Thompson. Christian helps Andy get such things as the unpublished "Harry Potter" manuscript for her daughters to read and he is characterized as both an opportunist and a guy who genuinely likes Andy. In fact, it is almost easy to overlook the degrading way he accepts that Andy has a boyfriend and does not express interest in the personal or professional advances he makes with her.

But the moment The Devil Wears Prada fell into the "not recommend" category for me was the moment Christian rapes Andy and the movie brushes it off like it's just not a thing. Stereotypes and confusion exist in societies that do not make their rules or mores clear. Laws and legal precedents help to make rules clear, even when society might not want to embrace them. Granted, there are differences in perspective, but legally, a woman who has an inability to consent is raped whenever a man takes advantage of that lack of consent. In Paris, Andy tells Christian "no." She says it clearly. He presses on. She admits she has had too much to drink. He presses on. She tells him she is confused and in a strange city, while backing off. He presses on. What comes next is rape and it's not a little technicality; drunk women do not have the capacity to consent and that The Devil Wears Prada simple expresses the sex as a natural, normal and LEGAL courting ritual is offensive and the antithesis of entertainment. This sort of "she really wanted it" type sexual encounter on screen makes a mockery of the established laws and basic tenants of decency and it's astounding that more feminists have not lampooned this film for just that reason.

Similarly, Miranda is utterly unlikable, re-establishing for the audience that in order to work in the "man's world," a female boss must play the bitch. In The Devil Wears Prada, though, it quickly becomes clear that Miranda is not playing. She is the archetype and the stereotype and there is pretty much nothing redeeming about her. Sure, she pays lip service to caring about her children especially as the film reaches its climax and plot events strain even that relationship. But, for example, Miranda chastises Andy for not getting her on a plane out of Florida when a hurricane hits and no planes are flying. The viewer sits and waits for Andy to just point out something like, "Hey, you can't always get what you want and I don't control the weather." People who are only used to getting what they want, like Miranda and Christian, are especially irritating to watch in movies.

The flip side of that, though, is that it soon becomes baffling that Andy decides to play the game as opposed to fight the established order of things, especially when it becomes clear that characters like Nigel and Emily are not the people she wants to become. Her refrain of "I'll stick it out because this could be a great springboard to other things" becomes tired the moment she starts dressing in the outfits and playing the game. The character putting up with all of the loathsome demands of Miranda only makes sense so long as it becomes clear that she has an external goal that will take her away from this life and that sense is quickly lost in the "Anne Hathaway looks fabulous" montages.

And Anne Hathaway looks fabulous, but it doesn't take much for a woman of her innate beauty to look good on film because, so long as the camera is loaded, it's going to catch what is there. Hathaway's opening shots are roughly the equivalent of saying that Betty (on Ugly Betty) is ugly because she wears glasses and braces. These are ridiculous (I'm trying not to overuse the word "stupid" in this review) arguments and from the first moments she hits the screen, Hathaway's Andy looks like she belongs even if her clothes do not match all those of the people around her.

As far as the acting goes, Simon Baker, whom I recognized from his work in the underrated movie Something New plays Christian and whenever he pops up he manages to be a little more than just a pretty face. Conversely, Stanley Tucci provides his usual solid performance as Nigel. Tucci's problem here is that he is given yet another seemingly monolithic role, like he had in Swing Vote where the character is given one genuine moment and the rest of the time, he is essentially an accessory to the powerhouse players. Tucci makes the best of it, though, and the lone scene where his character is humanized beyond the "type," he steals from Hathaway handily.

As for Anne Hathaway, it is easy to see why her star is on the rise. In addition to being young and beautiful (which is the Hollywood type), she is articulate and manages to make the little actions like Andy snickering or rolling her eyes at the absurdities of the culture the focal point of her character. As a result, the viewer misses them when they erode and are gone. Hathaway rightly does not re-establish those idiosyncrasies in the finale, though, which does make the viewer believe that Andy has undergone some profound and changing experience, even if it was not the most incredible story ever told.

But given that Meryl Streep is given the top billing, it seems like she ought to bear the brunt of the acting critique and it's too easy on this front. When I was in college, I worked at a department store and whenever I had to watch the Electronics Department over the worker's breaks, it seems I would get stuck watching the live-action 101 Dalmatians. That movie starred Glenn Close and Streep as Miranda is simple Streep doing Close as Cruella DeVille. There is nothing Streep brings to the part that Close didn't already do in that other role and my sense was director David Frankel could have saved some dough and used Close instead. Whether this is a stretch for Streep or not, I can't honestly say; I'm not as familiar with her work as I ought to be. But she plays the role consistently enough that the viewer does not like Miranda.

Unfortunately, this viewer ultimately did not like the movie. The more I write about it and consider it - especially the fact that in France or not, Andy is raped and the movie fails to address that in any way - the less I like it. Sure, it is stylish and well shot and the whole thing is easy enough to look at. But all of the main characters are robbed of their likability, no matter how they are initially established.

And I, for one, don't find that entertaining or worth watching.

On DVD there are behind-the-scenes featurettes, many of which repeat what is in the commentary track. The bonus features are pretty much what one would expect of this type of drama and they are neither a selling point, nor a detraction.

For works featuring Anne Hathaway, please check out my reviews of:
Anne Hathaway For Wonder Woman!
Love And Other Drugs
Family Guy Presents: It's A Trap!
Alice In Wonderland
Valentine's Day
Twelfth Night Soundtrack
Bride Wars
Rachel Getting Married
Passengers
Get Smart
Hoodwinked!
Brokeback Mountain
The Princess Diaries

5/10

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

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