Disappointment Comes From The Erratic Nature Of The Heat.

The Good: A few lines, Most of the performances
The Bad: Painfully predictable and formulaic, The middle is exceptionally boring, Not as funny as it could have been.
The Basics: The Heat starts fine, dies for the long middle and finishes strong, but is nowhere near as good as one might hope.


This is not Melissa McCarthy’s year. For sure, she has had some box office success with films like Identity Thief (reviewed here!), but with The Heat and her appearance in The Hangover, Part III (reviewed here!), it has become clear that this year, Melissa McCarthy has been pigeonholed into a terrible niche. If you want an utterly unlikable, gruff character who will say anything, cast Melissa McCarthy. With The Heat, she has buried the last remnants of her kind, smart, and entirely likable character of Sookie from Gilmore Girls (reviewed here!). The problem, for fans of Melissa McCarthy’s works, is that the actress is not gaining anything from the exchange. For sure, we see some more range from McCarthy, but when you participate in three crapfests in a row, it is hard to say your cache is growing.

And I was looking forward to The Heat.

The Heat is another Summer Blockbuster Season entry that illustrates how desperately comedies falter when they try to compete against the big-budget special effects films. In fact, moments after Melissa McCarthy’s character, Mullins, begins climbing through closely parked police cars to get out of her own ride and I found myself hoping desperately that the film’s best moments might not have all been included in the trailer, I began cursing CBS/Paramount Studios. Paramount had absolutely nothing to do with this piece of crap film, but after his second appearance on screen, Demian Bichir began to seem remarkably familiar (ironically, I did not place him from his role on Weeds). Instead, Bichir sounded exactly like Ricardo Montalban and the more frequently he appeared on screen, the more I got pissed at Paramount. Here was the absolute, undeniably perfect actor to play Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness (reviewed here!) (yeah, universe reboot wouldn’t have made Khan younger or more white J.J. Abrams!) and that the studio did not back up a dump truck of cash to make sure he got the role is utterly perplexing.

The fact that I spent any time at all cursing Paramount for an utterly unrelated project to this one is a testament to the weakness of the content in The Heat.

The Heat is an entirely formulaic and predictable “Odd Couple” style buddy cop movie. It’s 21 Jump Street (reviewed here!) with female protagonists and no need to allude to any (however distant) source material. And it is just plain not good.

Ashburn is an FBI agent who is exceptionally smart and a gifted crime fighter who is nevertheless not respected by her peers (especially when she shows up the Bureau’s crime dog). When her boss, Hale, is promoted, Ashburn wants his job and he lets her know that the promotion is only available to her if she can illustrate better that she can work well with others. Ashburn is sent to the Boston Field Office to help deal with the drug squad there, specifically to find and arrest the major supplier to Boston. Already in Boston is the foul-mouthed street cop, Mullins, who is busy pursuing her own leads and working to clean up the streets on her own. Motivated by a desire to keep her brother, who she put away for his drug-related crimes, on the straight and narrow when he gets out of prison, Mullins harasses local johns and drug dealers.

When Ashburn interrogates one of Mullins’s suspects, Rojas, it enrages Mullins and the two get off to a very rocky start. Mullins steals one of Ashburn’s files to learn what the FBI is doing in “her town” and soon the two are competing for leads in bringing down the Boston drug cartel. In the process, they butt heads with drug dealers and DEA agents, as well as Mullins’s family. While Ashburn is willing to put Mullins’s family in jeopardy, Mullins tries to do whatever she can on her own, leading to more conflict before the two grudgingly discover that they need one another to achieve their goals.

The Heat is so formulaic that it is astonishing that screenwriter Katie Dippold is a seasoned scriptwriter and over the age of twenty-one. Seriously, The Heat seems to be a blend of so predictable and so sloppy that it feels more like a college writing class reject than a well-constructed work from a professional that production companies and major studios would ever compete for. The film begins funny enough, though it is plagued by the specter of its trailer which had truncated versions of all the film’s best early jokes. The middle, though, is a painfully boring, plot-heavy with obligatory character moments so blandly presented neither the writer nor director Paul Feig even tries to hide the fact that they are presenting characterization entirely through straightforward exposition. After a painful and bloody scene foreshadowed through Ashburn watching a program that included an emergency tracheotomy, The Heat ends well as an action movie, but it does so long after the viewer has stopped caring.

To its credit, what The Heat lacks in terms of genuinely interesting characters – though Marlon Wayans steals all of his scenes as the FBI agent with enough pride to stand up to Asburn – it almost makes up for in genius casting. Dippold used to write for MadTV and she uses her contacts Michael McDonald and Taran Killam exceptionally well. With a supporting cast that includes Jane Curtain (not a role she’s going to move to the top of her resume!), Damian Bichir, Marlon Wayans, Michael Rapaport, Nathan Corddry, Tom Wilson (whose only truly significant scene was one of the first scenes leaked from the film for promotional purposes), Tony Hale, and Kaitlin Olson, The Heat assembles a killer cast, even if most of them are not given the opportunity to shine or present anything one has not already seen from them before.

Sandra Bullock is fine as Ashburn, though she is playing yet another straightlaced, “good girl” type professional character. By the time she gets around to swearing, the viewer has largely lost interest in her performance and the transformation was more predictable than audacious. She and Melissa McCarthy play off one another well, though their best moments are in incongruent scenes that have nothing to do with the rest of the flick (most notably the bar scene where they dance very well with one another).

As for Melissa McCarthy, the role of Mullins is one of her worst. McCarthy plays the part well, but either the lame, obvious script or the timid direction leave McCarthy with little to do. She presents the character of Mullins well, but she does so in a way that does not make the viewer connect with her. We don’t care what happens to her or, honestly, about her character’s struggle before now. In fact, it is a hard thing to be indifferent to a character McCarthy is playing, but for the third time this year, she plays the part, but the part is beneath her.

That, truly, is the death knell of The Heat.

For other works with Marlon Wayans, please check out my reviews of:
Marmaduke
G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra
Dance Flick
Requiem For A Dream

3.5/10

For other film 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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Bridesmaids Is More Funny In The Abstract Than As A Movie.

The Good: Very funny, Moments of decent acting (especially from Melissa McCarthy), Generally good progression.
The Bad: Kristen Wiig doesn't land it, Obvious character arc/plot progression, Pacing?
The Basics: A very funny comedy for Summer Blockbuster Season, Bridesmaids does not hold together as well as one might like.


It actually takes quite a bit to go against public sentiment when one is reviewing the "sleeper hit of the summer." Bridesmaids has been dubbed that by several critics and it has been rocking the box office for a few weeks now, which is why I was interested in seeing the film. My wife, on the other hand, loves comedies and she was eager to see it from the previews. For me, the big selling point was Melissa McCarthy in the cast, as I loved her on Gilmore Girls (reviewed here!). And a strange thing happened as my wife and I watched the movie last night; I found myself laughing and having a good time and I found myself bored and not caring about the movie. That's an exceptionally weird combination, I realize, so I'll elaborate.

Last year for Christmas, I started a new tradition with my wife. I decided I would surprise her with a DVD each Christmas of a movie we saw together in theaters that year and were surprised by the quality of. Last year, that movie was Easy A (reviewed here!), which we both went into with ridiculously low expectations and ended up loving. I had seen so many previews for it that I thought there wasn't anything left to see and she just hadn't been in the mood to go to a screening, but we went and the movie won us over. I was thinking of that experience with Easy A last night as we watched Bridesmaids because at one point my wife turned to me and said (with glee in her voice and eyes), "There is so much more to this than was in the previews!" and I didn't feel bowled over by the film the way I did for Easy A. In fact, Bridesmaids is often uproariously funny, but when I wasn't laughing, I was bored. Painfully bored. So, it might seem strange for me to write that I liked the movie, on the balance.

Annie lives in Milwaukee where she works in a jewelry store, has an unfulfilling sex life with a guy with whom she is not in a real relationship and has grown apart from her best friend, Lillian. But Annie and Lillian reconnect and shortly thereafter, Lillian is engaged to Doug and Annie is to be the Maid Of Honor for her wedding. But at the engagement party, Annie meets the rest of the bridal party - the long-married Rita, the newlywed Becca, Doug's manic sister Megan and Helen, a control freak who works with Lillian. Annie immediately feels a sense of competition with Helen and the two vie for Lillian's good graces as the wedding approaches.

As bridal matters consume Lillian, Annie meets a good-natured state trooper, Nathan Rhodes, who has an instant affection for her based on the cream puffs she used to make when she owned her own bakery. Annie and Rhodes keep running into one another as Helen takes over the wedding, Annie loses her job and is forced out of her own home by her housemates. After an eruption at the bridal shower, Annie feels like she has lost everything to Helen and her friendship with Lillian appears destroyed.

Bridesmaids is largely a series of adventures focused on Annie as she sinks more and more into depression and despair on her way to rock bottom. From competing with Helen during the toasts at the engagement party to a dress fitting interrupted by horrible food poisoning to a plane ride that Annie is drugged on, Bridesmaids is often hilarious as it follows Annie down her long spiral. And when it is funny, it is very funny. The movie seldom overreaches in the humor department, though the awkward humor of Annie and Helen competing for Lillian's attention through their toasts at the announcement party becomes wrenching, as opposed to laughable. This awkwardness is more than made up for by the wonderful gross-out humor of the dress shopping scene.

And to be fair, the movie ends exceptionally well. The film is not entirely predictable - for example, the moment Rhodes mentions that he loved Annie’s cream puffs, I figured she would run right home and bake him one to thank him for not giving him a ticket. Through their subsequent encounters, he kept mentioning them and I waited for him to have a cream puff baked for him. My expectations were defied, pleasantly, though Rhodes does get a cake.

But what was sold to me as the comedy of the summer didn’t quite land for me. Part of the blame for that goes to Kristen Wiig, which might seem odd to say considering she co-wrote the film. Wiig works at the beginning and she actually has the presence to make the more serious moments with her character work. As Annie becomes more and more depressed, Wiig manages to sell that well. But she seems woefully out of character when she plays Annie as more manic and she reminds one of some of her zany Saturday Night Live characters in those moments. This is especially disappointing as she truly is embodying a character until those points. Unfortunately, after the break, she never quite gets it back. For example, while on the plane, Wiig is channeling Tina Fey. In fact, she’s playing the drunk Tina Fey on a plane from the 30 Rock episode “Believe In The Stars.”

Similarly, I found myself exceptionally unimpressed by Maya Rudolph, who played Lillian. Rudolph might be going for more dramatic in the film, I just found her to be anything but funny.

On the flip side, Melissa McCarthy is brilliant and fearless in a role which ought to land her plenty more work. Playing Doug’s sister, Megan, she is brassy, ballsy and in her lone dramatic scene, she rules. McCarthy is the light in the film that does not go out, which is probably why she gets the honor of the troublingly funny bonus scene during the closing credits. While I want to say that Wendi McLendon-Covey and Ellie Kemper (Rita and Becca, respectively) were in a similar situation, their characters pretty much fall out of the movie after the airplane scene. Rose Byrne is good as Helen, as I pretty much hated her character the entire film.

My final note one the film is this. While I often rail against the previews to films, I didn’t see many previews for Bridesmaids, but the movie poster did leave me with something to comment on. The line-up of the bride and bridesmaids that makes up the movie poster is a good one, but it has little connection to the film. In the movie poster, Rita looks more slutty and Becca looks more angry than they appear in the film. Rita is actually angry (not easy) and Becca is naive, which makes her determined stance for the movie poster something of a character red herring. In short, any expectations one might have from looking at the poster/DVD cover are bound to be usurped by the movie itself.

All in all, Bridesmaids is fun, worth one viewing, but doesn’t hold together very well as a film. The jokes are better than the overall movie.

For other films with Kristen Wiig, please check out my reviews of:
Despicable Me
Date Night
How To Train Your Dragon
Whip It
Forgetting Sarah Marshall

6/10

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

© 2011 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Short Lived Series With Passion Makes For Best Possible DVD Release: Freaks And Geeks Stand Up!

The Good: Original! Acting, Characters, DVD extras, Plotlines
The Bad: A vastly better (and more expensive) set available, Slightly less replayability than I’d like
The Basics: An amazing series about high school life in the '80s at a midwestern school, Freaks And Geeks turns into one of the best DVD boxed sets you can own! No kidding!


I remember the first time I saw Freaks and Geeks. I was on a trip and it was a Saturday night and NBC was doing a marathon of Freaks and Geeks and as I was flipping through the channels, I caught a glimpse of one of the weirdest exchanges of dialog I had heard on television (for fans of the show, it was the fight scene from "The Little Things") and I was caught. I watched the next episode they showed, the season finale "Discos and Dragons" and I was impressed. Hooked might be more like it. And that was the last time NBC showed an episode. I returned home from my trip, looked it up on-line and learned that NBC had canceled the show and that it was pretty much a dead and buried series. Man that stunk. I ended up going on eBay and doing something I never thought I was capable of doing; I bought bootlegged copies of the entire series so I could see the whole thing. It was the worst (ethically) and one of the best (I was so impressed by this series!) things I had ever done. So, when I was at Media Play back in the day and a salesperson snared me and actually made me look over the list of upcoming releases on DVD and I saw that Freaks and Geeks was one of them, I instantly put my money down (ALWAYS buy legitimate, kids!). Read on to find out why.

In Michigan, in 1980, at a small high school, Lindsay Weir finds herself feeling disenchanted. Always a good student, she dons an old army jacket and falls in with a fringe crowd (the Freaks) and her life opens up. At the same time, her brother Sam, a freshman and a geek, and his friends struggle with growing up and learning the ropes of high school. And at the same time, their parents Harold and Jean, cope with being middle aged and falling out of touch with their children.

Of course, it's more complicated than that. Lindsay has always done everything by the book and her falling out with her life has come from her grandmother dying and calling into question all of her beliefs. She befriends a slacker named Daniel, who is lazy and underachieves. Daniel introduces her to the aspiring drummer, but druggie burnout Nick and their sarcastic friend Ken. Add to the mix Daniel's somewhat psychotic girlfriend Kim Kelley and Lindsay is left unsure of pretty much anything in her life.

Kim Kelly is one of several people who torments Sam. Sam and his friends are plagued by bullies, cheerleaders and trying to establish their own ways. This is made especially difficult as his friend Bill is the archetypal geek with thick glasses and a goofy ability to quote from all sorts of science fiction and his equally disturbing friend Neal who acts as if he is far older and more world weary, despite being the same age. And Sam likes these guys and fits together perfectly with them. So, despite his pining for cheerleader Cindy Sanders, he finds his friendship with Bill and Neal to be the real thing he cannot live without.

And what binds them together is their parents, Harold and Jean. Harold is a conservative, emotionally distant man who served in the Korean war and is troubled by the way the world is changing. Jean acts as the emotional nexus of the family and her love for her children is quite clear and charming. They are the two most significant adults in the lives of Sam and Lindsay, though they find themselves continually getting the attention of the former-hippie guidance counselor, Mr. Rosso, as well.

What makes Freaks and Geeks work so very well is the casting. Hands down, this is one of the best ensembles to ever hit television. In fact, outside Sports Night (reviewed here!) and Star Trek Deep Space Nine, I have not seen a show where the actors so instantly and perfectly fit their characters. And I love great television. Freaks and Geeks has each individual actor playing a part that they look and sound like so there is never a single moment when their characters do not feel natural or genuine.

The plots of the show tend to follow a typical a-plot, b-plot format and typical stories include Lindsay throwing a kegger while her parents are out of town while Sam and his friends swap the beer for non-alcoholic beer ("Beers and Weirs") and Ken actually falling in love while Sam reveals to Neal that his father is having an affair ("The Garage Door"). The magic of the plots of "Freaks and Geeks" is that some of them are absurdly simple, like Bill eating a peanut and he is allergic to them ("Chokin' and Tokin'") and the fact that most of the episodes do not go where one would expect. For instance, in "The Diary," Harold and Jean sneak a read of Lindsay's diary. On pretty much any other comedy or dramedy, Lindsay would find out and the story would be about her outrage at having her privacy violated. Instead, Judd Apatow and Rebecca Kuirschner (the writers of that episode), take it in a completely different direction, wherein Harold and Jean are shocked by Lindsay's impressions of them and they work to change them.

And that's one of the real strengths of "Freaks and Geeks;" when you think it will zig, it zags. When you think you'll laugh, you find yourself intrigued by how heartwrenching the characters are. Or when you think a positively significant moment has arrived (i.e. the geeks celebrating when Bill catches a fly-ball in gym class), they turn it into something hilarious (it's only the first out and while the geeks are celebrating other runners tag up and score runs). This is something that is aided by the fact that each episode is a full hour as opposed to a twenty-two minute "half hour" comedy. It allows them to develop the plots and make for vivid characters.

So, let's look at how the characters develop over the series:

Lindsay Weir - This is arguably her story as she finds herself an atheist looking for something to believe in. As her friendships with the freaks grow and are tested, she finds herself alienated from her past, studious friends and growing into an independent, intelligent, young woman who is not afraid to stand up for herself and question the establishments,

Daniel Desario - Is a user and his quest to discover how much he can be leads him to love Kim Kelley, explore being a punk rocker, though he finds himself continually cheating and not caring about life,

Nick Andopolis - Goes from being a burned out drummer junkie to exploring all sorts of music, while rebelling against his oppressive, conservative father. His journey leads him to love Lindsay and be devastated when she breaks up with him. That causes him to question even more and leads to an awakening that may change him forever,

Ken Miller - Starts out as monolithic and sarcastic until he falls in love with one of Lindsay's old friends which forces him to examine himself and his sexuality,

Kim Kelly - Seems to be a simple, bullying girl who enjoys nothing more than tormenting the geeks until Lindsay gets closer to her. Kim is revealed to be a young woman with deep trust issues stemming from an abusive stepfather and a domineering mother,

Sam Weir - Lives in fear of Kim until he gains the courage to ask her why she does what she does. His friendships are tested as he falls in love with the beautiful cheerleader Cindy Sanders and is forced to question all he thought he knew about relationships when he discovers that just because she is cute, does not mean she is nice,

Neal Schweiber - Goes from being a know-it-all jokester who seems far older than he actually is to shell-shocked upon learning that his father is an adulterer and, more important, that his mom knows and stays with him for the sake of their children,

Harold Weir - Guides Lindsay and Sam using his array of parenting skills that usually make him appear distant and robotic. He is, however, deeply in love with his wife and very protective of his children which he illustrates through his actions,

Jean Weir - Becomes troubled by Lindsay's thoughts that she is simply a woman in a rut in life and attempts to become more involved with her children and their world as they begin to distance themselves from her,

and Bill - The son of a divorced woman who begins to see his nemesis, the gym teacher, Bill is the consummate geek. He eats a peanut.

All of the characters come across as very real and the producers and writers expertly recreate a time and place with amazing insight to the people and issues of the time. Watching Freaks and Geeks is like a time machine back to a school in the '80s and if you lived through it it is an amazing experience to be so transported back to somewhere so familiar. And if you didn't, the characters make it all come alive with such intriguing realism that you'll feel like it was a familiar place.

And a lot of the credit has to go to the actors. All of them are perfectly cast, but they each add depth and shading to characters that could easily be simple archetypes. Joe Flaherty, for example, has an amazing ability to deadpan such that his deliveries of Harold's stern warnings about life and his experiences often come across as hilarious. Similarly, Seth Rogen has an amazing sense of tone and timing for sarcasm, which makes Ken incredibly vivid. Moreover, his range extends to making his more sensitive scenes feel completely authentic to such an apparently distant character.

The real winners, though, are the series' two main stars. John Francis Daley plays Sam Weir and his every movement seems authentic by his ability to understate his body language. Daley has an incredible ability to seem nervous and trapped within his own skin, the perfect balance of uncertainty and individuality that defines a nervous high school freshman, especially a geek.

Arguably, though, the show hinges on Linda Cardellini as Lindsay Weir. Cardellini's ability to deliver complex lines and to emote makes her an ideal star for a show that wants to be intelligent, funny and emotive. Freaks and Geeks often does not look for easy answers and Cardellini's ability to take Lindsay from rebellious to horrified in less than a second makes her an asset to this show. Her ability to turn her emotions on a dime makes for realism that is not found in most television shows.

The lone, real, drawback is this: there are 18 episodes. That's it. There aren't more, there's never likely to be more. This is the complete series and it is exceptional, but I imagine that after years and years of watching it, it may begin to get old. It hasn't yet, though and it is so different from all of the crappy reality television and the uninspired scripted garbage on television today that it becomes essential to anyone who wants to see anything truly amazing in comedy/drama these days.

This DVD set is the ideal set for a television series, though, as every episode has commentary - most have two different levels of commentary! And the commentaries are interesting, funny, insightful and diverse, based on who is doing the commentary. One of the episodes even has commentary from parents of some of the child actors, so extensive is the set! As well, every single episode has deleted scenes and some even have outtakes and bloopers. There are screen tests, alternate takes, you name it. For a show that only produced eighteen episodes, you'll find this set packed with vastly more than for any other television show.

For those who fall in love with the series, there is an exceptionally limited edition DVD set that has even more bonuses available directly from the producers.

And it's clear that those involved love and miss Freaks and Geeks. Give it a chance; you'll feel that way too.

For other dramedy series reviews, please check out my takes on:
The West Wing
Wonderfalls
Six Feet Under

9.5/10

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

© 2011, 2004 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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