Heard The Concept, Seen The Movie: Inside Out

The Good: Decent voice acting, Moments of emotion that work
The Bad: Plot is exceptionally forced, Overblown concept, Bland protagonist
The Basics: Inside Out is Disney/Pixar's attempt to make a psychological exploration film, but it falls apart under any real scrutiny.


The other day, my wife was pitching to me an idea that I'm still kicking around in my head. After a number of spinnings of the Susanne Sundfor album The Silicone Veil (reviewed here!), she said, "I think you should do a blog each month about all the things you wanted to review, but couldn't muster up the enthusiasm and energy to do a sophisticated analysis. There should be a one-paragraph review for all the things you went to review but just stopped caring about before you tried to write the detailed review." I know that, at the time, she was just annoyed because she did not like that particular album and was sick of hearing it - and, to be fair, I was stuck trying to review it because it was so mediocre - but it was an intriguing idea in its own right. I might be one of the few reviewers who feels a complete sense of "ho-hum, meh, this review is just not writing itself" about the new Disney/Pixar film Inside Out. But that is where I am; if I were to take my wife's suggestion, Inside Out would definitely have been in the group review with a very simple "not worth it."

Inside Out is garnering almost universal praise from critics everywhere and, not to be contrarian, it's an okay film, but nothing truly exceptional. There's no point in me being the 1000th reviewer to point out that the concept is virtually identical to the 1991 FOX sitcom Herman's Head - which I watched, so the film's "hook" seemed instantly unoriginal to me - but one of the things I haven't seen from other critics is that the concept of Inside Out is made instantly unambitious by the fact that the protagonist is an average American girl.

For the five people who have not yet heard the concept, Inside Out is a film that focuses on the emotions inside the head of Riley Anderson, an eleven year-old girl from Minnesota, whose family moves to San Francisco. Personified inside her mind are Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Fear, and Anger and the five negotiate with one another to control Riley. The plot to Inside Out - I'll get to that later - is almost incidental; the entire point of the film is the concept. Writers Pete Docter, Josh Cooley, and Meg LeFauve are trying to illustrate how emotions work inside a girl's head and how they adapt to obstacles. Regardless of the execution, the purpose of the film is instantly baffling: Inside Out is of no use to children, who lack the metaconscious awareness to truly understand abstractions like the personification of emotion and adults who see Inside Out should either have the emotional awareness to get the concept instantly or are probably sociopaths (in other words, if you don't understand how your emotions are working by the time you reach adulthood, you probably have a personality disorder of some sort!). Children are too young to have developed empathy and adults watching the film are more likely to be bored by the obviousness of the concept than entertained by it. The purpose becomes confused then because Pixar is clearly trying to go for something sophisticated - the sheer volume of emotions expressed and moments intended to play off the viewer's empathy - but the only way the film actually works is on an entertainment level.

On a psychological level, Inside Out becomes incredibly problematic in that most of the action occurs while Riley is asleep and the stakes in play postulate that Riley could have a complete psychotic break and/or suffer from a serious memory issue while she is sleeping. The basic plot of Inside Out is that Riley is moved from Minnesota to San Fransisco and her expectations are instantly upended; the brownstone her family moves into is not what she expected, the moving truck is delayed so she has to camp out on her bedroom floor and the pizza she and her mom go to get for comfort food is covered in broccoli (which Riley dislikes). After a bad first day at her new school, Riley lets Anger and Sadness take over and she is sent to her room as punishment. Riley then falls asleep, but inside her head, Sadness breaks into the core memories and, in the process Sadness and Joy get whisked away to long-term memory and have to find their way back.

Their quest to return to headquarters is aided by Bing Bong, Riley's imaginary friend, and along the way, the core islands of Riley's mind become disconnected from Headquarters and their existence is threatened. The analogy becomes very troubling there: that one bad day of not particularly traumatic events can lead to the collapse of how a person thinks and feels, is somewhat ridiculous. The mind has internal defenses outside the basic emotions to protect core memory and to protect certain associations. It takes things like traumatic new core memories - death of a loved one at a young age, abuse, etc. - or physical injury (an ax to the brain, severing the connective tissue between the brain's hemispheres, etc.) to destroy those connections. But, Sadness getting curious and looking at core memory nearly makes Riley into an entirely different person in Inside Out and to buy the menaces Sadness and Joy face on their journey back to Headquarters, viewers have to buy the premise that the mundane usurption of expectations could lead to a complete psychotic break. But then, Inside Out would be a much harder sell for viewers if Sadness was simply operating Riley for a time after her move to San Francisco.

Which leads me to the real problem with Inside Out. Riley is a healthy girl going through average problems. Inside Out could have achieved all of its goals by having a much more extraordinary protagonist. Seeing inside the head of a manic depressive, watching how difficult the emotional negotiations are for someone when they are traumatized, contrasting the emotional thought patterns of a healthy person with one who suffers from trauma, mental illness or abuse would educate children, give adults something to empathize with and start discussions for those who suffer those conditions with those people in their life who do not understand it. Moreover, the plot would not simply be a contrived adventure piece then; the concept would effectively sell the story and plot without the need for anything inorganic or forced.

Amy Poehler does a decent job providing the voice of Joy; she's actually so good that I did not feel like I was watching Poehler or listening to any one of her routines while watching Inside Out. Similarly, Bill Hader is good as Fear, though Lewis Black is used exactly like one would expect for Anger.

Inside Out is one of those films that becomes worse the more one thinks about it - like how can Bing Bong be running around the memory centers of Riley's brain instead of being trapped by his very nature on Imagination Island?! If it could be used to teach selfish young people how to empathize with others, it might be useful, but instead it encourages a very ego-centric interpretation of the film, especially for unsophisticated, undeveloped younger audiences. As a result, the more I thought of the film as an average film, the more it upset me; it's a movie where the concept could work, but the execution at the script level does not. Instead, Pixar and Disney made a brightly-lit, well-voiced film that has forced conflict and only a surface understanding of the complex concepts it attempts to explore.

For other Pixar films, please check out my reviews of:
Monsters University
Toy Story 3
Up
WALL-E
The Incredibles
Monsters, Inc.

4/10

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

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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An Amazing Cast And Well-Executed Concept Make The Ten Worth Watching!

The Good: Interesting concept, well executed, Decent performances, Very funny.
The Bad: No real character development, Somewhat limited concept, Does not replay as well.
The Basics: A cleverly-executed comedy, The Ten explores a series of situations that remind viewers (ironically) of the importance of the Ten Commandments.


Given how limited many horror movies can be, it is unsurprising that the antithesis – comedies – can be similarly basic in their concept. If Seven was a horror film focused on a killer who is motivated by the seven deadly sins, it is equally ambitious or simple to have a comedy like The Ten. The Ten has the very simple concept of creating vignettes on the Ten Commandments that overlap in minimal ways. Several of the characters recur from sequence to sequence, with “character development” taking the form of them experiencing more variations of violations of the Ten Commandments.

In other words, The Ten has far less in the way of memorable characters and much more in the way of memorable gags or plot twists that disturb while they amuse. More than the characters, much of the joy for viewers comes from how the actors are utilized and how they pop back into the narrative in initially clever ways. After watching the film twice, I can honestly say there are none of the characters I particularly care about, but I enjoyed the movie and enjoyed how the actors were utilized to serve the fairly clever plot concept.

After a beleaguered narrator (who is on the fast track to have an affair himself) explains the concept of the film, the story begins with Stephen Montgomery. Stephen accidentally jumps out of a plane and miraculously survives the fall. However, Stephen is embedded in the ground where he becomes an overnight star. Even though his fiancé Kelly sticks by him, the superstardom that he achieves for the television show based around him goes to his head. Others begin treating him like a god and he arrogantly lets it go to his head, until he loses everything. This is followed by the story of Gloria, who goes to Mexico, meets Jesus there and has a torrid affair with him. When she returns home and has sex with her boyfriend, she calls out “Jesus!” and ruins their relationship, illustrating the importance of not taking the lord’s name in vain. Dr. Glenn Richie (who essentially had a cameo in the first vignette) pops back up in the “Thou Shall Not Murder” sequence where he kills a woman by leaving medical scissors in her body after surgery. While he did the medical malpractice “as a goof,” he is quickly prosecuted, found guilty and goes to prison where he is pretty constantly ass-raped.

After a woman who has two black children who denies (for decades) that they have a father other than the white man who raised them comes clean about her affair with Arnold Schwarzenegger, her children realize that the actor she hired to impersonate Schwarzenegger is more a father than they ever had before, illustrating that it is important to honor one’s father and mother. A convoluted series of events leads to the death of a whole fieldtrip worth of children when they cannot get CAT scans they need when competing neighbors buy truckloads of scanners and go out together to bury the hatchet. In prison, Duane Rosenblum covets Dr. Richie leading to a very dark exchange that results in Richie being horribly violated by Rosenblum (instead of his regular prison rapist!). The story of the drug-dealing Lying Rhino becomes the less for not bearing false witness and men getting together for naked Sundays is the premise for honoring the Sabbath and keeping it holy.

The Tenreally goes out of its way to create convoluted situations to make its points. The prison ass rape concept for not coveting your neighbor’s wife is so over-the-top that it avoids the minor discomfort of rape jokes and leaps into the area of taste that actually addresses what bad taste simple rape jokes have. It’s risqué, but the film makes it work. In explaining “Thou Shall Not Steal,” The Ten reaches its highest level of meta-conscious humor: it is Winona Ryder’s Kelly who steals a ventriloquist dummy to have an affair with who illustrates that commandment! In other words, The Ten is not for the comically faint of heart. The humor is ballsy and pushes the envelope, but the movie makes its point well.

And The Ten has a pretty amazing cast, especially for a movie I had never heard of. Led by Paul Rudd, The Ten features established talents like Oliver Platt, Ron Silver, Winona Ryder, Famke Janssen, Jason Sudeikis, Live Schreiber, Justin Theroux, and Jessica Alba. Some have little more than a brief cameo, like Janeane Garofalo (who is in a single sequence for a single scene). Newer talents like Rob Corddry, Rashida Jones, Joe Lo Truglio, Gretchen Mol, and Adam Brody all have good outings in their respective segments.

But more than a cohesive movie, The Ten is a concept film and the concept is quickly established and then beaten to death. It is not unpleasant – though the film has somewhat low replayability – and the star power overshadows the characters many of the performers play , but The Ten is well worth watching for anyone who wants a comedy that is beyond the ordinary.

For other works with Jo Lo Truglio, please visit my reviews of:
Wreck-It Ralph
Pitch Perfect
Wanderlust
Paul
I Love You, Man
Pineapple Express

6.5/10

Check out how this movie stacks up against other movies I have reviewed by visiting my Movie Review Index Page for a listing of those reviews from best to worst!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Big Year Is Another Decent, Little, Movie

The Good: Moments of humor, Good acting, Moments of character
The Bad: Predictable plot and character arcs
The Basics: The Big Year showcases some wonderful acting from Steve Martin and Jack Black, but is ultimately an unambitious story packaged with great nature footage.


I have, in the interest of full disclosure, no real interest in birds or birding or even movies that are about competitions. I don’t think I have ever seen an entire episode of The Amazing Race even. I am, however, discovering that I like the works of Steve Martin more and more and as a result, I was eager to watch The Big Year. The Big Year became an opportunity for my wife and I to have a long-distance date, which was pretty nice. I picked up the film on DVD, she got a copy in Michigan and we watched it together, from 500 miles apart.

Usually, my personal anecdotes serve only as introduction, but in this case, it is germane. One of the important themes of The Big Year is loneliness and it’s a lonely thing to be apart from the one I love. Watching The Big Year, I would have expected more of a tug, given how many characters experience frustration, emotional tugs, or outright loss based upon how their attempt to be the number one birder (bird spotter) in the world progresses. But I didn’t. The Big Year does what it sets out to do well, but not in a superlative fashion that really made me feel enthusiastic about recommending the film.

Was it bad? No. But it did not rise to extraordinary. It did not leave much for my wife and I to discuss afterward, either.

Brad Harris is a tech support worker near a nuclear power plant who has his eyes set on breaking Kenny Bostick’s 732 bird birding record. Single and using funds from his reluctant father, Brad prepares to squeeze in a year’s worth of bird watching for his “big year” while still keeping his job. Stu Preissler is finally retiring (this time for real) in order to have his big year after a lifetime of corporate deals and putting off his own wants. Financially solid, he is supported in his endeavor by his wife, who understands birding is important to him, but does not share his passion for it. Kenny Bostick, for his part, feels utterly insecure in his new world record. So, despite his wife Jessica taking fertility treatments so they might have children, Kenny rushes off to “set the pace” for the new year.

What follows are a series of encounters as Brad and Stu meet and become friends, while denying that they are actually working on their big year. Stu takes Brad under his wing and keeps the young man from starving on the road. He also encourages Brad to talk with birder Ellie, who does all sorts of bird calls. Kenny’s paranoia soon begins to show and he begins playing games and making maneuvers in order to keep Brad and Stu off-guard and on the path away from breaking his world record. In the process, Brad and Stu experience betrayal, loss, and come to understand just what is truly important to each of them.

What is enjoyable about The Big Year is watching how each of the three main characters deal with the tugging on them by outsiders. Clearly, all three of these men are happiest when they are birding. Stu seems the most financially set for pursuing his big year and though he misses the birth of his grandson, he continues with his plan to bird. Even the incompetence of his two former employees, Jim and Barry, is not enough to distract him for very long. By the time the film is nearing its end and Jim and Barry beg him to return to his business as the new CEO, it is obvious well in advance how he will respond. In fact, Steve Martin’s delivery is so clear as Stu that it is shocking he needed to make it explicit for Jim and Barry!

At the other end of the spectrum is Brad. Brad is trying to do all of the travel for the year on $14,000. At the outset of the film, he hits his father up for $5,000 and his mother volunteers to be Brad’s travel agent. Brad struggles and when his work actually needs him to stay for a weekend, he does so only to be able to fund the next leg of his trip. The romantic subplot between him and Ellie is appropriately cute and heartbreaking and makes for a nice way for Stu to help guide Brad. Brad is one of the only characters Jack Black has played with whom it was easy to empathize.

Experiencing far more complicated emotions – though Brad has to deal with his father’s failing health and Stu wrestles with what it means to be absent from the lives of his wife, children and new grandchildren – is Kenny. Kenny quickly realizes that the top is a very tenuous place and his journey rapidly transforms from a something enjoyable into a desperate attempt to hold onto what he has. The choices Kenny makes are often disappointing or disturbing and even from five hundred miles away, I could hear my wife yelling “no!” when Kenny had the opportunity to be at the right place at the right time with his wife.

The acting in the Big Year is the film’s superlative aspect. While much of the narrative has the feel – and even look – of a Wes Anderson film, David Frankel gets decent performances out of Jack Black, Steve Martin and Owen Wilson. The only questionable moment of performance in The Big Year could even be written off as a character moment! As Jack Black’s Brad searches for his father in a snow-covered woods, he does not look down at the snow for tracks, he keeps looking up into the trees. That was a baffling choice to me, from a rational perspective, but it could make sense for a guy who is always used to finding what he is looking for up in the air, as opposed to down on the ground.

Now on DVD, The Big Year has both the theatrical and extended cuts, but no other bonus features. That makes it much easier to recommend for a viewing, than for one to buy to add to their permanent collection.

For other works with Owen Wilson, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Hall Pass
Marmaduke
The Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Darjeeling Limited
Night At The Museum
The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou
The Royal Tenenbaums
Zoolander
Meet The Parents
Bottle Rocket

5.5/10

For other movies, check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Save Your Money, The Best Of I Love You, Man Is In The Previews!

The Good: One or two good jokes, Sweet, Gay positive
The Bad: Repetitive humor, Light on character, Average-at-best acting, Entirely predictable.
The Basics: When Peter plans on marrying Zooey, he goes through a disastrous process of man-dates to find a best man in the surprisingly un-funny I Love You, Man.


[Note: I originally wrote and published this review in advance of the film. My wife and I rewatched the film last weekend and I found it still held up. Enjoy! - W.L. Swarts]

Ostensibly the point of early screenings that I take part in is to build word of mouth buzz for new movies. The advantage to being a reviewer is that when a film is good, I might be part of the buzz to help build the lines and sell tickets. And when a film is lousy, I can help people in these tough times save their hard-earned cash and devote their time to better causes. I am sure that if I had any real effect on the market at large, I would be a bane to several of the major studios. Tonight, I would no doubt earn the ire of Paramount for putting the bottomline on I Love You, Man first:

Save your money: all of the best lines and moments in this film were in the preview. If you saw the preview, you've seen the best clips and, sadly, there is not much substance beyond what was in the previews in the actual film. But more than that, this is a movie not worth purchasing or renting the DVD when it is eventually released in that medium. No doubt, even with it being rated R for language, there will be a more extreme DVD version with even more swearing, but this is a flick that can safely be left behind until it shows up on network television. It is seriously that un-funny and predictable and utterly average at its best moments.

Peter is an orderly, decent real estate agent who has just proposed to Zooey, and they plan to be married in Santa Barbara. Peter has a big real estate deal that he is planning, hinged upon selling the mansion of Lou Ferrigno. As they begin preparations for their wedding, Zooey quickly narrows down who she might have as her maid of honor, but Peter realizes his best friend is probably his mother and he begins to search for a male friend who might stand beside him as his best man.

What follows is a series of man-dates that put Peter with freaks, manly men drastically unlike him and gay men who misinterpret his desire for friendship as a romantic advance. While showing the Ferrigno Estate, Peter meets Sydney Fife, a free-spirited investor who shows up to pick up women and eat the good food Peter provided. Despite being exact opposites, Peter and Sydney hit it off and begin spending more and more time together. As the wedding nears, Zooey begins to feel threatened by Sydney's new place in Peter's life and Peter must decide which of the people he loves he truly wants in his life.

Set in Hollywood, I Love You, Man is arguably a one-line concept that plays out like exactly what it is. Peter goes on man-dates and that comes to jeopardize his relationship with Zooey. The basic concept of a man with no male friends trying to get some by essentially going on dates is a simple concept and that it threatens his relationship with his fiance is possibly the most obvious potential consequence of such a move. So from the outset, I Love You, Man is conceptually weak. The idea is simple and the plot and character direction is pretty obvious.

At least as insulting to the audience looking for anything even remotely new is that the Peter/Sydney relationship is treated as an "opposites attract" type scenario. In other words, the film trades on the concept that audiences will be wowed by the idea that instead of a movie where a fiance is cheated on by her man with another woman - the "meeting the love of your life after you're engaged" scenario - this movie has a man filling that role. The problem is, outside that, the film does nothing truly unique or even interesting. Outside the switch in gender, this is a romantic comedy that follows along the most formulaic lines.

I Love You, Man is a movie startlingly lacking in humor. One knows one has become jaded in the process of reviewing movies when one goes into a comedy and keeps a tally of how many times they laugh. For the record, I Love You, Man had twenty laughs and twenty-two moments that made me smile. Out of a movie that is over an hour and a half long, this is not an especially good record. And, for the record, only one of the laughs was something that was not in the trailer (a pretty hilarious phone conversation between Peter and Lou Ferrigno at work that Sydney walks in on). As well, a few things that were amusing only garnered smiles . . . because I saw the joke in the trailer.

What the film does have given that it does not have an excess of humor is charm. The moments between Peter and Zooey are rightfully charming and fun to watch. Peter is a sweet guy and clearly very loving of Zooey, so one empathizes predictably with Peter when he overhears Zooey talking with her girlfriends about the upcoming wedding and her anxieties about Peter's lack of male friends. Unfortunately, most of that charm is so predictable, obvious and choreographed that it makes it difficult for the seasoned movie viewer to enjoy it. The viewer understands that Peter will have different, but equally genuine, relationships with Zooey and Sydney and this movie carries that with a remarkably predictable sense of schmaltz to it. It is just a little corny, made more so by how predictable it is.

And ultimately, I Love You, Man has a lot of crude "guy" humor. So, there are several fart jokes, beer-drinking humor and vomit gags that are not terribly funny and end up making the movie into something with even less potential than the predictable plot and character arcs established it as. Worse than that, so much of the movie repeats itself as far as the humor goes. Starting with a phone conversation that involves a number of mildly explicit sex jokes, the movie drifts into an office scene with Peter where a co-worker subjects him to a Youtube video that involves several sex jokes.

What character elements might have existed tend to be compromised in favor of a ridiculous plot. Peter is very white bread, so of course Sydney is a free spirit whom he is able to be completely honest with. Peter and Zooey withhold truths from one another and there is only a fair amount of on-screen chemistry with them. There is a pretty decent sense of chemistry between Peter and Sydney, but it largely seems to go the one way, with Peter simply becoming more like Sydney throughout the film. At least the film is pretty gay-positive (Peter's brother is gay).

Rashida Jones plays Zooey and given that my experiences with her acting before this comes largely from Boston Public, it is nice to see her given a role that is easily within her capacity, but is more than she has been used at on other works. Unfortunately, Jason Segel, who plays Sydney, is much more a function of good casting than good acting. Director John Hamburg utilizes Segel in virtually the same way that everyone else uses Segel. As a result, there is little differentiation in mannerisms between Segel's performance in Freaks & Geeks (reviewed here!) and How I Met Your Mother and his role here as Peter.

To the best of my knowledge, this was my first experience with Paul Rudd, the lead of I Love You, Man. Rudd slouches through the movie with a limited appeal and body language that reminded me of much of Ben Affleck's early works. In other words, Rudd's acting as the tight guy who slowly begins to unwind under his friend's guidance is as average and blase as the role itself is. In other words, Rudd's performance is not going to get people out of their houses in anticipation of his mastery of the craft.

Then again, I Love You, Man leaves the viewer with far too few reasons to get out of their houses and go to the theaters to check this flick out.

For other works with Paul Rudd, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Year One
Monsters Vs. Aliens
Forgetting Sarah Marshall

4/10

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

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


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Justin Timberlake Without Pants, Mila Kunis' Sideboob And Will Gluck Goes 2 For 3 With Friends With Benefits!

The Good: Consistently, laugh-out-loud funny, Wonderful acting, Fun characters
The Bad: Obvious plot arc and character development.
The Basics: Will Gluck and his team successfully turn a contrived idea into a hilarious and fun movie experience with Friends With Benefits!


Last year, my wife and I saw a movie via a preview screening that neither of us was terribly excited about - largely based on months of preview trailers that we felt showed the entire film - and we came out raving about it. It became one of my wife's favorite gifts for the winter holiday when I got her the Blu-Ray and we have watched it several times since, with delight each time. The movie was Easy A (reviewed here!) and with it, director Will Gluck got off my "Ack!" List (a spot he earned with Fired Up!). It was the credibility Gluck earned with Easy A that made me uber-excited that I scored tickets to a screening of his new film Friends With Benefits and that my wife (who had not been feeling well early in the day) rallied her health and was able to accompany me to the screening.

Quite simply, Will Gluck and his team have managed to do it again. Friends With Benefits takes an overly done and cliche idea and recreates it with enough self-referential pokes at the romantic comedy genre to make it all seem fresh and new once again. One of the games I play with movies these days is seeing how the PG-13 film will use the one "fuck" it is allowed by the MPAA. I went into Friends With Benefits without knowing its rating and was quite happy when it exposed itself as an "R-rated" film with multiple "fucks" in the first five minutes. It set me up for a movie that wasn't going to play it safe with language, visuals or concepts. And Gluck and his team delivered!

Friends With Benefits, as hard as it tries, is what it mocks. I'm not talking about how Gluck creates a parody film within the movie - amusingly titled "I Love You, I Love New You" - and comments on the inappropriate use of soundtrack, then uses the same song at the climax of Friends With Benefits; that is obvious parody and a funny joke worth the laugh it gets to the engaged audience. But as much as Gluck and his team mock the romantic comedy cliches, they use them. There is nothing so audaciously new in Friends With Benefits as to surprise moviegoers or make them feel like they have watched anything particularly new. So, Friends With Benefits has a soundtrack that might not telegraph all of the emotions, but it fills a lot of space with noisy music that is distracting or unnecessary. Regardless, viewers come away from Friends With Benefits with the feeling they have seen a higher caliber of romantic comedy than the standard fare.

Friends With Benefits is, as much as it tries to fight or deny it, pretty much the standard "two friends try having sex without complications" romantic comedy. This is a style so prevalent in contemporary cinema that it was done recently with No Strings Attached and with the more dramatic interpretation, Love And Other Drugs (reviewed here!). The fundamental difference was stated eloquently by my wife as we drove home last night. She did not like Love And Other Drugs, (among other reasons) because it started out funny and energetic and became something serious and moody. What I call "character and plot development," she called "bait and switch." What she loved about Friends With Benefits that I enjoyed as well was that it started funny and while it has some obvious heartstring moments in the last third, it never gets so serious as to make one think they are watching anything other than a well-developed comedy.

Dylan is a moderately successful blog operator whose girlfriend breaks up with him at a John Mayer concert right around the same time that Jamie's boyfriend is breaking up with her. Jamie is Dylan's headhunter, hunting for a new editor for GQ, who brings Dylan to New York City to try to seal the deal. With a tour of New York City and the help of a flash mob, Dylan takes the job and moves to the City where Jamie is the only person he truly knows. Hanging out one night, commiserating on their failed relationships, Dylan and Jamie admit to being emotionally unavailable and emotionally damaged and yet desirous of sex, so they make a pact to have sex as friends and not let it become more complicated than that.

Their experiment, predictably, goes quite well and the lack of romantic attachment allows them to be more open and honest with each other than they have been with any of their prior partners, leading to fantastic sex and a pretty solid bedrock for a relationship. So, when Jamie opens up to dating again, Dylan steps back and watches as she dates a pediatric oncologist who appears able to live with Jamie's "five date" (before sex) rule. But when that fizzles, Dylan invites Jamie back to his father's house for the Fourth Of July to heal and the true depth of their feelings comes out, with complications ensuing.

For all the good things about Friends With Benefits, someone ought to say it: Will Gluck, you are a pussy! Friends With Benefits has major plot developments around the Fourth Of July. Why didn't you release this to compete with Transformers Dark Of The Moon (reviewed here!)?! Seriously! Pussy! (FYI, I haven't taken leave of my senses here: Gluck and Screen Gems could have offered moviegoers a real option against the banal special effects film that won the 4th of July weekend and this is actually a reference to Friends With Benefits wherein Jamie gets Dylan to do something uncharacteristic simply by calling him a pussy.) Sure, Friends With Benefits might have competed against Justin Timberlake's other current outing, Bad Teacher, but this was a vastly superior movie (and it could remain that if it is not spoiled with more trailers that show more of the movie!). Regardless, writers Keith Merryman, David A. Newman and the other four writers have made a movie which might top ID4 for best 4th of July film.

What works best for Friends With Benefits is that it is funny and well-acted. The humor is smart and when it is crude, it is not upsettingly crude. So, for example, the teaser that sets up Dylan and Kayla's breakup (and features Emma Stone in a delightful bit role!) and Jamie and her boyfriend's breakup outside Pretty Woman is very funny and owes huge points to the film's editor who cut the scenes together to be exceptionally well-timed and funny. The humor continues with the initial agreement which has Dylan pitching the arrangement because "sex should be like tennis." The movie gets a comedy boost when Patricia Clarkson enters the film as Jamie's crazy mother, Lorna, and keeps the humor original with Dylan trying to urinate with an erection. Gluck is smart enough to keep that scene surprisingly classy by not making it explicit and the humor there works.

Gluck falls back on some of his successful conceits from Easy A, where he mocked "Pocket Full Of Sunshine," by lampooning Chris Cross's "Jump" and calling back to "Closing Time" a lot. The level of diction in Friends With Benefits is better than in most romantic comedies. In fact, the only comedic element that did not work quite so well was Dylan's problems with math, which becomes a running joke after the trip to Los Angeles, and could have been hinted at better earlier on in the movie. Fortunately, Gluck never detonates the joke he planted the seeds for, which would have been a tasteless bombshell that put Dylan and Jamie as siblings (Lorna does not remember Jamie's father and Dylan's Alsheimer's-riddled father mistakes Jamie for someone he once knew).

The acting, in concert with the hilarious writing and wonderful direction, helps Friends With Benefits transcend the stale formula for a romantic comedy that is constantly lampooned in the film and helps it all feel fresh once again. Jason Segal and Rashida Jones have cameos as the stars of "I Love You, I Love New You" within the film (and they get the post-credit scene which is cute enough to stay through the closing credits for). Richard Jenkins lends some dramatic strength to the latter half as Dylan's father and Jenna Elfman is resurrected from wherever she has been since Dharma & Greg to have a decent supporting role as Annie. Patricia Clarkson is more the product of typecasting as she plays yet another sage free spirit as Lorna, though Woody Harrelson plays Dylan's homosexual sports editor with genius comic timing. Harrelson's role is arguably to make the one pejorative use of the word "gay" less-offensive (Dylan's nephew's comment about "gay" Harry Potter is slightly sour), but Harrelson rules the bit role.

Mila Kunis veers away from the overly dramatic to make Jamie truly funny. Kunis has the dramatic gravitas to easily pull off the moments where Jamie must appear hurt or vulnerable, but in Friends With Benefits, viewers are reminded how she got where she is today. She is funny, she has a great sense of comic timing and it is hard not to smile when she tries to be charming. Her flirting with Justin Timberlake reads as very real and there is a spontaneous spark that comes frequently to her eyes that tells the viewer not only is Kunis having fun, but Jamie is as well. And for those for whom such things are important, Kunis's sex scenes with Timberlake are steamy, but the most one will see is a butt shot and sideboob.

Which, of course, is more than we see from Timberlake. Of course, we see his ass and his chest, but this is not Timberlake's full frontal attempt to get every fan who ever loved N'Sync to the theaters. Timberlake, for his part, has successfully reinvented himself as a real actor now. Between this and Bad Teacher it is clear that he is a very funny guy and Will Gluck plays off his innate sense of comic timing wonderfully. But what sold me on Timberlake were the two serious moments. When Dylan realizes how bad off his father's health is and when he understands just what he had with Jamie and how important that relationship is, he emotes with his eyes such a profound sense of loss and grief that the viewer is unable to resist empathizing with him.

Ultimately, Friends With Benefits is a reinvention of the romantic comedy for the stale "friends having sex" plotline. Random elements like the Shaun White cameo which initially seemed weird and disturbing work because they are called back to and developed and while I'm not much of a fan of the whole "flash mob" fad, even that works. Having seen the film twice now, this comedy holds up remarkably well over multiple viewings making it great for multiple dates or sharing it with friends. For adults looking for something truly funny this summer, Friends With Benefits is the movie we've been waiting for, even if Will Gluck was too much of a pussy to release it to compete with the big guns of Summer Blockbuster Season.

For other films with Justin Timberlake, please check out my reviews of:
Bad Teacher
The Social Network
Southland Tales


8.5/10

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

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

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Oscar Pandering Season Comes Early (And Rightfully) With The Social Network!

The Good: Great dialogue, Wonderful acting, Engaging plot/development
The Bad: Underlit, Unempathetic characters
The Basics: The Social Network, the latest Aaron Sorkin endeavor, has all the makings of a successful film . . . except characters to care about.


It does not take much to become a fan of the works of Aaron Sorkin. Sorkin is a brilliant writer and while his show Sports Night (click here for review!) was truly what sold me on his exceptional talents, he is arguably better known for his show The West Wing and his film The American President. He is also known for being ridiculously smart and not being terribly concerned about raising the bar for dialogue in American cinema. Sadly, last night as I sat at a screening of his new film The Social Network, others seemed to find the intelligence of his writing and the characters he was portraying through his writing to be "too smart." I cringed when I heard one of my fellow viewers make that complaint as I honestly thought that the commercial success of The Big Bang Theory would have adequately softened up mass culture for a character like the Sorkin-written Mark Zuckerberg.

I write "character" for Mark Zuckerberg because The Social Network is loosely adapted from The Accidental Billionaires and it is played out like a drama, fiction. I am delightfully ignorant of the reality of the start of Facebook - or The Facebook, as it was initially known in the movie - so this is a pure review of the film as a film, not as any sort of documentary. The truth is Sorkin and director David Fincher have managed to create an entirely engaging movie without a strong enough protagonist to actually care about. While David Fincher, who is used to bending reality for films like The Game (click here for my review!), has The Social Network move along at a great clip for a two hour film, but the riches to riches story of Mark Zuckerberg is robbed of perfection by how he underlits most of the movie and how he and Sorkin fail to make the viewer truly care about the central protagonist.

At Harvard University in 2003, Mark Zuckerberg and his girlfriend Erica are having a meandering discussion about geniuses and final clubs when Erica decides the relationship is over. Walking out on Mark leaves the sophomore distraught and he returns to his dorm room where he begins blogging about the failure of his relationship - and Erica's many faults - and hacking the various Harvard clubs for photographs of women on campus. Mark's best friend Eduardo arrives, having actually read his blog, to comfort Mark and he shares a code with Mark which will allow the young genius to create a website by which visitors vote on which of any two young women Mark has taken the pictures of is hotter. As a party rages as Harvard's prestigious Phoenix Club, Mark's little Facemash site gets 22,000 hits in two hours, crashing the Harvard servers.

At that moment, The Social Network flashes forward to a near-future where Mark is being sued on two fronts, one of which is Eduardo himself. It is noted that Mark received a six month academic probation for crashing the servers and from that action, he draws the attention of the Winklevoss twins, who are also suing Mark in the future. Back in 2003/4, Mark is approached by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss who want Mark to make an exclusive social website for Harvard which will allow only the cream of the Harvard crop to stay in contact with one another. After being asked to create this by the twins, Mark begins developing a social website with Eduardo's help and money. With Eduardo's $1,000 startup money for servers and other expenses, Mark and Eduardo begin developing thefacebook.com which goes live early in 2004. When that happens, Eduardo tries to turn the site from something that is cool and different into something which will help him make his money back (and make his 30% stake in the company mean something) and the Winklevoss twins begin complaining about how Mark stole their intellectual property (which he denies because he used none of their code). As thefacebook begins to make Mark and, to a lesser extent, Eduardo famous on the college campuses, Mark is wooed by Sean Parker, founder of Napster, who sees Mark's Facebook as a way to make money and screw over those who he believes wronged him in the past.

First, where The Social Network goes wrong. Why? Because there is so little wrong with the movie, I want to get what doesn't work out of the way. The first is that David Fincher does underlight far too much of the movie, making it visually murky which makes the viewer work unnecessarily just to catch movement in several of the scenes. Sure, there is some mood that is created from the smoky bar, the smoky party and later the bong-smoke in Mark's California residence, but even the scenes at the depositions are not terribly bright and that is distracting on a very simple level.

Beyond that, the only thing wrong with the movie is that the characters are not interesting enough to make us care about them. That is not entirely true. Mark starts out as engaging - even if Sorkin resorts to the annoying cliche that brilliant people are miserable and socially awkward - and Eduardo is likable throughout. The problem becomes that Sean Parker is utterly unlikable and when Mark starts associating with him, I quickly realized that I didn't care at all how the lawsuits against Mark turned out as a result. The viewer empathizes completely with Eduardo, especially after Facebook stock is diluted making him virtually irrelevant, but the Winklevoss twins seem like whiny elitist snobs and Mark's seduction by, frankly, the douchebag Parker makes one think he couldn't be all that smart to begin with. Parker pretty much ruins the relationship between Eduardo and Mark - and there's some implied love from Eduardo to Mark which is not developed well after it is heavily insinuated early on - and given the complexity of Mark's mind at the beginning of the film, the viewer is left a little disappointed that he was so easily duped. After all, it doesn't take a genius to see that when Parker has Mark tell Case financial "f-you" (which, given it is the only one I heard in the movie, seems to imply the film is aiming for a PG-13 instead of an R) that he is acting out of his own sense of spite and not in Mark's best interest.

Beyond that, though, The Social Network is homogeneously wonderful. Aaron Sorkin's dialogue pops and is predictably smart. This might go over the heads of many viewers, though, as I found there were lines that only garnered laughs from me at the screening, but Sorkin fans will be pleased. As well, despite not quite landing, the relationship between Mark and Eduardo is a refreshingly true relationship between two strong, likable young men. Moreover, the intertwining of the two lawsuits is done so well that the viewer is never confused about which proceeding is underway and it remains easy to follow the progression of the story. The story may not be terribly complicated, but the rise of the on-line social site is told with a surprisingly brisk pace and feels much shorter than the two hour running time.

The Social Network is also bound to get a lot of attention for the quality of the performances in it. Justin Timberlake makes Sean utterly unlikable, but he plays the founder of Napster with an arrogance and cocky quality that reads as very true. Moreover, Armie Hammer and Josh Pence play Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss perfectly. Indeed, it wasn't until doing fact-checking on the IMDB for names that I discovered the twins weren't! They perform with a synergy that is absolutely brilliant.

Jesse Eisenberg, whose only other work I've seen is Zombieland, adequately leads the cast of The Social Network. Despite the humor in Zombieland, Eisenberg has a serious quality to him that made his character in that completely credible. Similarly, in The Social Network, he is able to walk around with eyes narrowed and shoulders hunched. He makes it around Sorkin's fast dialogue expertly and he instantly convinces the viewer that Mark is exactly that smart and socially awkward. Eisenberg is credible, even if the viewer does not particularly care which lawsuit he might win or lose.

It is Andrew Garfield who steals The Social Network, both from his performance as Eduardo and the character he plays. Garfield has an instant dignity and humanity that he brings to the role of Eduardo. From the way he softens his expression the instant he first sees Mark after Mark is dumped by Erica to the way he steels his eyes when freezing the account that Mark has for Facebook, Garfield is in complete command of the role. Moreover, Garfield looks the part of a young businessman who is aware, clever and has enough heart (and capital) to fund his friend. From the moment Garfield is on screen as Eduardo without Mark, the viewer begins to root for him, to empathize with his struggle and care about the resolution of his character's arc.

Ultimately, though, The Social Network is a human rise-to-power story that makes it easy - because of the youth involved - to forget that it is the story of young rich, white kids making an obscene amount of money. It is well-told, but at the end of the day, for all its greatness, it is hard to overlook that it is a fight between a bunch of young people over what is cool. No matter how clever the dialogue is, it never snaps beyond that. Still, it is easily the best thing audiences are going to see up until the big push for Oscar nominations and it is refreshing to see The Social Network try for the attention of voters this early on. Hopefully, that audacity will be rewarded.

For other works by Aaron Sorkin, please check out my reviews of:
Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip
Charlie Wilson's War
The West Wing
Sports Night

9/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my index page!

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