HAPPY BIRTHDAY Mary Elizabeth Winstead! We Check Out The Underrated A.C.O.D.!

The Good: Decent performances, Interesting characters, Realistic character arcs, Some very funny lines
The Bad: Somewhat predictable plot, Spread thin on analysis
The Basics: A.C.O.D. is an engaging and very funny exploration of the effects marriage and divorce have had on U.S. culture.


It seems that almost every day that a celebrity death is announced of a beloved actor, musical artist or director (I have no idea how to write a tribute to Fritz Weaver!) and it is hard to escape the conclusion that 2016 has just flat-out sucked in that regard. Rather than focus on the endless parade of celebrity deaths today, though, I thought I would try to celebrate something good. As it turns out, today is Mary Elizabeth Winstead's birthday (Happy Birthday!!!!) and I just finished watching the film A.C.O.D., an underrated independent comedy in which Winstead has a disturbingly under-credited role.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead is an actress on the rise who has slowly been getting more and more featured roles in works as directors come to understand that she has range and impressive acting abilities. She recently led the cast of 10 Cloverfield Lane (reviewed here!) and it is tough to believe that there could be a young actress who could so effectively steal the spotlight from John Goodman, but Mary Elizabeth Winstead does it! A.C.O.D. features Winstead in the supporting role of Lauren, the girlfriend of the protagonist and while there are problems with Lauren in the film, none of them have to do with how Mary Elizabeth Winstead performs the character. From the way that Lauren is introduced - with a deadpan mockery of Carter intended to freak him out - to her character never explicitly saying on-screen that her parents' long marriage intimidates her (a subtext which Winstead acts the hell out of throughout the film!), a surprising number of issued in A.C.O.D. and the way its themes are executed surround Lauren. And yet, Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays the part that was written incredibly well and continues to draw the eye with her on-screen presence.

Carter is in his thirties, a survivor of his parents' rather brutal divorce and the various remarriages that gave him a presence in assorted blended families growing up. After successfully keeping his parents completely apart for twenty years, his younger brother Trey decides to get married and Trey wants both Hugh and Melissa at the wedding. After approaching his mother and his father, Carter discovers exactly what he suspected remains true: Hugh and Melissa still have so much animosity and fury between them that they cannot be in the same place together without destroying the event. To try to figure out a way to make Trey's wedding wish come true, Carter turns to Dr. Judith, a woman he thought was his therapist during the divorce. But Dr. Judith was a researcher and Carter's time with her was fodder for her book C.O.D. (Children Of Divorce). Carter tracks down the bestselling book on divorce and reads it, quickly recognizing which character in the book was him.

Attempting to reject Dr. Judith's character analysis of his faults, Carter manipulated Hugh and Michelle into meeting in a public place to discuss Trey's wedding and bury the hatchet enough so they might be civil to one another for the event. Carter's peacekeeping gesture backfires, however, when Hugh and Melissa begin having an affair on their respective spouses with one another. His life in a tailspin, Carter tries desperately to protect Trey and his step-parents from the truth, keep his business afloat and his relationship solid, all the while Dr. Judith hounds him for follow-up research for a sequel to her original book.

A.C.O.D. is a surprisingly underrated comedy that hits most of the right notes with its hilarious lines and uncomfortable moments that make humor out of people treating one another badly. Opening with Hugh and Melissa screaming at one another through Carter's ninth birthday party at the beach house, A.C.O.D. makes an art form out of realistic uncomfortable incidents. The film is complicated and smart even as it evokes grimmaces, most notably in a scene where Carter's family sits down for a meet and greet with Kieko's (the bride's) family and Carter starts to assert himself.

Adam Scott plays Carter in A.C.O.D. and the film continues to showcase that the actor has genuine range. Long before it is made explicit, Scott plays Carter as a man desperately attempting to keep things together, Carter is a man acting like everything is okay and that he has overcome his childhood modeling. An actor playing a character who is (unconsciously) acting himself is a difficult part to pull off, but Scott does so. Just as Mary Elizabeth Winstead infuses the scene outside her parents' anniversary dinner with subtext for what is going through Lauren's head, Scott infuses key scenes with miniscule physical tells that indicate his character is still wrestling with the past on a daily basis.

A.C.O.D. is one of those films that can be used by those who have been through such things as a way to enlighten those not in-the-know to a condition, but for adult children of incredibly messy and acrimonious divorces, A.C.O.D. is more predictable than it is revelatory. Dr. Judith is a user, Carter is the negotiator he is pegged in the book for being and Melissa is an embittered ex-wife who feels like she settled when the man she wanted in her life turned out to be a cheating jerk. Cycles repeat; characters who think they are aware of all of their button issues fall into bling spots. And cycles repeat. Watching A.C.O.D. together highlighted the predictibility of such things for survivors when my wife shouted out "flying monkeys!" when Gary (Melissa's new husband) tries to give Trey a check for the wedding. Survivors who are metaconscious will see much of what happens in A.C.O.D. coming.

Despite that, A.C.O.D. is very funny and makes some important statements. The cast - main and supporting - is amazing, though the parts are definitely skewed toward giving veteran actors like Richard Jenkins (Hugh), Catherine O'Hara (Melissa) and Jane Lynch (Dr. Judith) more to play with than some of the younger cast. Clark Duke, for example, is given incredibly little to play with and Amy Poehler's supporting role is given important hints of depth but not enough time to grow and develop on-screen as a truly compelling character.

Ultimately, A.C.O.D. is a solid, if occasionally unsettling, film that is well worth watching and successfully tackles its subject matter with realism and humor.

For other works with Adam Scott, please visit my reviews of:
My Blind Brother
Friends With Kids
Piranha 3D
Leap Year
Step Brothers
Star Trek: First Contact

7/10

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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My Wife Might Love Step Brothers, But I'm More Ambivalent To It!

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5/10

For other movie reviews, please visit my index page!

© 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Interesting Characters In A Low-Plot Movie: Killing Them Softly

The Good: Good acting, Interesting characters, Interesting thematic elements/narrative techniques.
The Bad: Exceptionally low on plot development
The Basics: In one of the most straightforward movies ever, Brad Pitt plays a hitman who takes a job to kill some people who stole from the mob.


When it comes to the crime movie genre, it is hard to do anything truly new these days. I mean, I love a good crime caper or mob-themes movie as much as the next person, but since The Usual Suspects (reviewed here!) and Lucky Number Slevin (reviewed here!), I have been waiting for a film in the genre which truly challenged me. Unfortunately, after seeing Killing Them Softly, I’m still waiting.

That is not to say Killing Them Softly is bad. It is not. It’s not bad at all. However, it is fairly simplistic, at least on the plot front. The writers work very hard to pack in quite a bit in the way of character and Killing Them Softly actually has themes and a well-developed sense of philosophy to it that is usually lacking from the genre. I’ve not read the novel upon which Killing Them Softly is based, but it is clear from the very beginning that the film is attempting to make a larger statement on the world (or at least the United States) from the very beginning. That element works very well.

After the mob’s card game is knocked off by thieves, the local games shut down for a while. After they get back up and running, one of the mobsters, Markie openly admits that he was the one who orchestrated the heist. At that point, his peers take is as a joke and write it off. Now that the games are back in full swing, another operator decides to pull the same stunt on Markie’s game, figuring that the mobsters will just blame (and punish) Markie. The heist goes poorly, but it puts two young thieves on the run and the leader (Driver) hires the hitman, Jackie, to find and kill the guilty parties.

As Jackie tracks down the leads, he learns that one of the people he will have to kill is someone he knows, so he subcontracts to the struggling Mickey for that kill.

And that’s pretty much it. Jackie finds the responsible parties and kills them and then gets less money than he was promised.

Killing Them Softly has entertaining temporal mechanics – the past and current capers are mixed together as people tell the stories of the card games that get taken off. To illustrate the time differences, director Andrew Dominik smartly utilizes the clips that he is using to develop the film’s themes. Thematically, Killing Them Softly tries to illustrate that crime is a function of economy. To do that, interspersed throughout the film are clips of speeches from Presidents Bush and Obama. Depending upon whose speech introduces a scene (or is playing in the background), the viewers can figure out which part of the story they are watching.

The theme is a good one and it works well with the level of character detail in the movie. For significant portions of the movie, characters are simply sitting around telling stories or espousing their personal philosophies to one another. This comes up especially with Mickey, who is presented as a remarkably empathetic character, who has had love and loss mixed in with his life of crime. The character elements try to give a well-rounded sense of the fact that everyone in the film is a person, an individual with their own hopes and dreams. This is set against larger political and economic statements delivered by the politicians which group everyone together as cogs in a giant capitalist machine. It’s clever and well-developed.

On the acting front, there is nothing bad, but no superlative performances either. Whoa! James Gandolfini as a hitman?! Stop the presses! He is good, but his performance as Mickey is nothing at all audacious or surprising for the performer. Similarly, Richard Jenkins (Driver) in a position of authority and Ray Liotta as the smirking mobster Markie are utterly unsurprising. Virtually interchangeable are Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn, Trevor Long, and Max Casella, who play various named thugs throughout the movie. None of them are given the chance to develop their characters or really shine in Killing Them Softly. Again, no one in the film is bad, but none of the performances are at all superlative.

That brings us to Brad Pitt. Pitt plays Jackie and most of his role actually consists of looking interested as other characters talk to or at him. He is predictably charismatic as Jackie, but – like so many others in the movie – he is not given a lot to do to shine. He realistically plays a guy who is just going about doing what he sees as a job. He is the willing cog in the machine and the film ends at the moment that dynamic is actually challenged. As a result, Pitt shows up, does his thing and it is not one of the roles that actually stretches his talents.

That’s where Killing Them Softly ends up. It’s very average film and yet another one where I felt I saw most of the movie in the preview. It is good, not great and ultimately forgettable.

For other works with James Gandolfini, check out my reviews of:
Welcome To The Rileys
Where The Wild Things Are
The Taking Of Pelham 1 2 3
In The Loop
All The King's Men (2006)

6/10

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

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Return Of The Jim Carey Comedy, Sort Of . . . Fun With Dick And Jane

The Good: Decent story, Interesting characters, Moments of humor
The Bad: Radically inconsistent tone, Fairly typical acting, Jim Carey's standard
The Basics: When Dick loses his awesome job and the local economy tanks, Dick and Jane lose everything they have built, snap and begin to retake their lives through robbery.


Back when I was in high school, Jim Carey comedy movies were the big thing. He was racking up box office receipts with such comedic gems as The Mask, Ace Ventura, Pet Detective, and other movies I refused on principle to see. Having to make a snap decision on what movies to get out of the library to review yesterday, I ended up grabbing Fun With Dick And Jane, which features Jim Carey returning with typically "Jim Carey" style antics, which include throwing himself around, making bizarre facial expressions and, in this case, a parody musical number in an elevator. But Fun With Dick And Jane, which turns out to be a remake of a 1977 movie, is not a typical Jim Carey movie, or considering the directions he's headed in now, perhaps "traditional" Jim Carey movie would be better. This is not a traditional Jim Carey movie, it is dark and real and exploring themes many of us commoners live with.

Dick Harper is happily married with his wife Jane, living in suburbia, generally happy with his life and his fabulous job. When he earns a huge promotion, Dick is able to convince his wife to quit her hellish job and the two make big plans. The next day, literally, the company Dick works for collapses completely and within three months, the Harpers are destitute. Furious about losing everything, having played the game like good Americans, Dick sets out to take back his life. With Jane's help, the two begin to rob their way back into the upper class (sorry, but a $650,000 house is NOT middle class!) and when the time is right, they figure out the biggest score that will keep them set for life.

What works about Fun With Dick And Jane, a largely un-fun movie, is that it finally tackles some real problems people face in a way that we face them. Dick and Jane continue to lose and despite all his best efforts, Dick cannot land a job, much less an interview. When people in positions of authority talk about the economy and opportunities in the United States, they often speak as if the nation is tripping over itself to benefit the common citizens, that no matter where one goes in the US, there are opportunities to use the talents one has or has trained for just waiting for someone to apply. Reality is different and in many parts of the country, those tools we use to get ahead - i.e. a college education - can impede getting a job (manufacturing jobs and simple service jobs will often not look at resumes with college education because those people are "overqualified" for their jobs and they assume they will simply leave when something better comes along) and Fun With Dick And Jane is the first movie I've seen to actually show that. Dick's frustration over getting knocked off the truck of migrant workers ("We should report that guy!") is one of the most clever and real exhortations of the problems workers face in the United States.

And Fun With Dick And Jane devastatingly, if subtly, and correctly links the acquisition of material wealth with happiness. Dick and Jane are only romantic with one another when their financial problems are not overwhelming. They barely touch one another during Dick's unemployed phase and that's especially clever of the writers and director Dean Parisot. We tell children - and ourselves - "Money can't buy you love," but anyone who has been unemployed or underemployed and tried to meet a romantic partner or make a romantic connection will tell you in the United States, we judge one another terribly on employment and income rather than personality and ideology.

What makes Fun With Dick And Jane watchable is that after the agonizing destruction of Dick and Jane's lives - which is difficult to watch, especially for those who live with such struggles in reality - the movie becomes the ultimate working class fantasy, taking from those who have to live the way they do. Anyone who is a poor worker will tell you that it's baffling that CEOs in the US can make an unlimited amount of money off the backs of the workers (in some countries, that is capped, where the CEO cannot make more than 24 times the lowest paid employee). In Fun With Dick And Jane, the viewers are treated to watching the execution of the fantasy as Dick and Jane take off banks (federally insured) and the super rich who have humiliated or exploited them (used them to achieve their status). It's refreshing and enjoyable to watch.

Of course, if you've never been so poor as to look at your monthly bills and say "I'll have to rob a bank this month in order to pay all these," then perhaps Fun With Dick And Jane would be more disturbing than enjoyable.

What does not work as well as it could are some of the Jim Carey antics. There is physical comedy - a bored Dick vaulting around his house - and the musical number by Dick in the elevator on his way up to the fifty-fourth floor that seem out of place in the movie. Much of the humor is more cerebral, like thanking Kenneth Lay and Arthur Anderson at the end of the movie. When I noted that the movie clocks in at exactly 90 minutes, this began to make sense; the script needed some filler in order to make the minimum recommended movie time. It's a sad way to use that time, but we'll let it slide.

In some ways, Fun With Dick And Jane is the movie that Friends With Money (reviewed here!) aspired to be. Dick and Jane lose almost everything and the disconnect with reality and their dreams creates a very real frustration. Unlike Jennifer Aniston's character in Friends With Money, for whom poverty does not seem materially evident, Dick and Jane LOSE their gains in order to keep what little they have. There are consequences for the loss of their jobs in material possessions and social status.

Fun With Dick And Jane might not always be fun or consistently a comedy or a dark social piece, but it ends the balance being worthwhile and worth a watch. And for those who have read my critique of Carey as chameleon actor, Fun With Dick And Jane finds him continuing his Billy Campbell impression from Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind.

For other works with Tea Leoni, please visit my reviews of:
Tower Heist
The Family Man

6/10

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

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

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Graduating Into Something Mediocre: Rumor Has It . . .

The Good: A few lines near the very end
The Bad: Unextraordinary acting, Flat characters, Formulaic plot
The Basics: In a disappointing romantic comedy, Jennifer Aniston's character Sarah learns she may be the lovechild of the guy from The Graduate. Sigh.


When Harry Met Sally and Love Actually (reviewed here!) are two romantic comedies that are traditionally well-reviewed that I love. They are in my permanent collection, I watch them periodically, I enjoy them quite a bit. I mention them because lately I've seen a lot of romantic comedies or dramadies that border on romantic comedy that have been disappointing, vacuous or unsurprising and unfulfilling. I give every film, c.d. and book I encounter a fair, open-minded chance, but lately, I've been running into a lot of duds. The latest in that series is Rumor Has It . . .

Thirty years after the affair that inspired The Graduate, Sarah Huttinger is going through something of an existential crisis. While at her sister's wedding, while covering up her own engagement, Sarah learns that her grandmother, Katharine, is the woman who Mrs. Robinson was based upon and that the man who she seduced also seduced Sarah's mother. This causes Sarah to believe it is possible that Beau Burroughs might be her biological father, so she hunts him down.

Romantic comedies often hinge on chemistry. Chemistry is key to convincing an audience within ninety to 180 minutes that two people who are just coming together could be romantically involved. Hollywood creates for the audience and society the myth that relationships are not complex and can be condensed into an experience that is encapsulated within a ridiculously short period of time. Even given that common conceit, too many movies fail to engage the viewer simply based on lack of chemistry.

Rumor Has It . . . is plagued by a lack of chemistry all around. There is no palatable chemistry between Sarah and her fiancé Jeff. When we meet Beau, he is not terrible charismatic. Beau and Sarah have no discernible chemistry. And, though it was probably intended, Annie (Sarah's sister) and Scott have no chemistry either. It's pretty much impossible to sell a romantic comedy when none of the characters/actors have chemistry with one another.

I'm going to start the blame here with the actors. Mark Ruffalo plays Jeff and from his first appearance on-screen, my thought returned to the age-old problem of directors casting the Hollywood Beautiful d'jour actor of middling talent. Ruffalo fits this mold and it's unclear what his appeal is. This is the first movie I've seen Ruffalo in and he did not spark any desire to see him in any other roles. His delivery is bland, his affect is dull and he has no on-screen chemistry with Jennifer Aniston.

Conversely, Ruffalo is given the best line of the entire movie, though it comes far too late (almost at the very end) for the viewer to care and be impressed by his character for it. Moreover, there is nothing spectacular about Ruffalo's delivery, so the credit for the line has to go squarely to writer Ted Griffin.

Kevin Costner plays Beau and his performance calls to mind a gag from Family Guy. Chris, the dim son on the show, states, "I haven't been so confused since the ending of No Way Out!" and the shot immediately changes to him walking out of the movie wondering, "How does Kevin Costner keep getting work?" Yes, Rumor Has It . . . brings that question to mind as Costner is neither charismatic or even interesting as a character that pretty much demands being both. His performance feels surprisingly woody and Costner does not add anything to the role to sell the character.

Jennifer Aniston plays Sarah and it does not work for her. She proved to me her acting talents in Friends With Money, which might have been mood-terrible, but she was great. Aniston plays a character too much like her strong but occasionally befuddled Friends character Rachel. She exhibits no chemistry with either Costner or Ruffalo, which pretty much sinks the story.

Director Rob Reiner gets a lot of credit from me. He directed both When Harry Met Sally and the fabulous The American President. He is a man with some real talent and he has proven it time and time again. Rumor Has It . . . is not his best work. He doesn't bring out anything in the cast, does not make the story pop in a visually interesting way nor does he manage to sell us on any of the leads as being talented individuals.

Ultimately, Rumor Has It . . . just does not pop from the writing to the acting to the directing. It is not engaging and the events that are supposed to lead to a cathartic end fail to because the supposed catharsis is based on the concept that two of the characters are good together. Alas, we will hold out for better.

For other works with Mark Ruffalo, be sure to visit my reviews of:
The Avengers
Date Night
Shutter Island
The Kids Are All Right
Where The Wild Things Are
Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

3.5/10

For other film reviews, please check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the movies I have reviewed!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Holodecks And Horrors, Joss Whedon And Drew Goddard Make A Mess With Cabin In The Woods!

The Good: Moments of dialogue, Very general concept
The Bad: Most of the performances, Utterly ridiculous plot, No character development/interesting characters, Direction.
The Basics: Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard co-write a film that is easy to understand, but makes no real sense with Cabin In The Woods.


It is a pretty rare thing for me as a reviewer to continue writing about any movie or product I encounter and find myself talking myself into steadily lowering the rating I have planned to give it. And yet, with The Cabin In The Woods, I find myself having difficulty writing my full level of distaste for the film without providing massive spoilers. And yet, at the end of the day, it is utterly impossible for me to write anything without first acknowledging that: 1. I am, as a general rule, a big fan of the works of Joss Whedon, and 2. The Cabin In The Woods is a terrible movie built upon an exceptionally flawed premise. And one of the few redeeming elements of the advertising campaign for the film was that it ruined enough of the movie so that I was not scared for . . . well, any of it.

The Cabin In The Woods is a horror film that harkens back to a number of concepts Joss Whedon already mined (to death) in Buffy The Vampire Slayer. My wife suggested to me that I might be too harsh on the initial concept of The Cabin In The Woods (though she liked it even less than I did), despite my general belief that the vast majority of people going to see The Cabin In The Woods will know what a Holodeck is. A Holodeck is a device in Star Trek: The Next Generation (and that era of the Star Trek franchise) that creates a virtual reality experience that includes holograms, force fields and inanimate objects that are materialized from raw matter. Early in The Cabin In The Woods, it becomes apparent that the film is Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard’s Holodeck horror film . . . or, at the very least, the film employs a barrier that has Holodeck-like qualities.

That said, The Cabin In The Woods is a deadly take on the idea and the film mortgages any sense of personal safety early on. This is not a clean, controlled program . . . and therein lies one of the major problems with the film. Without revealing any spoilers, in the final third of The Cabin In The Woods, the whole purpose to the exercise that involves killing young people is revealed. Sufficed to say, the stakes are ridiculously high. Given that, the movie makes no real sense. The whole, complicated construct around which The Cabin In The Woods revolves leaves far too much to chance with the stakes being as high as they are.

And, at the end of the day, the movie oscillates between the silly, the pointless and elements that Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard have already done before. And both have presented the concepts and elements that they use in The Cabin In The Woods with characters we actually care about in their other works. The Cabin In The Woods has no emotional tether for viewers. In fact, probably the biggest jag either my wife or I got out of the film was seeing actors we liked or recognized from other works pop up. That, sadly, is not at all enough to make The Cabin In The Woods worth spending money upon.

Jules, Curt, Marty, Holden and Dana are headed to the woods for a weekend away from everyone and everything. Having inherited a place in a remote location, Curt is eager to check it out and they head up, ignorant of an entire facility existing below the property and agents monitoring them from before they even leave for their trip. At the last possible place, the young people stop for gas where a creepy man, Mordecai, freaks them out. The quintet arrives at Curt’s cabin and almost immediately discovers odd things about it, including a one-way mirror.

With Jules acting hyper sexual, the result of chemicals administered to her through her hair dye by the workers in the facility below the cabin, the friends start a game of “Truth or Dare.” This leads the quintet to the creepy basement of the cabin where they find several mysterious objects, one of which is a journal. Dana reads the journal, including a passage in Latin aloud, which causes the people in the facility below to set a group of zombie rednecks upon the group. From there, the kids get slaughtered one by one and when they are killed, their blood is provided to the subterranean facility for use in a very old machine. . .

The Cabin In The Woods immediately provides viewers with information that the five young characters lack. Because the movie starts with Hadley and Sitterson in the secure facility, some of the traditional horror shock is absent from the film. I like that, in a way, because the movie becomes far less about freaking the viewer out and more about trying to engage the viewer into reasoning out what the purpose of the facility and the scenario is. And the moment Jules is slain by a turn-of-the-century zombie, the viewer knows that The Cabin In The Woods is not some safe, fun flick that is going to have a happy ending that mortgages the rest of the film, a la The Game (reviewed here!).

Director Drew Goddard presents The Cabin In The Woods with a significant amount of physical darkness, while co-writer Joss Whedon’s light and often ironic lines easily stand out to disarm the viewer. But, even Goddard’s direction feels like something that would have made most of The Cabin In The Woods safe for a Buffy The Vampire Slayer arc. In fact, with most of the carnage for the bulk of the movie occurring in very dark scenes or off-screen, the real bloodbath that ensues is of such a scale that it is impossible to focus on any one thing. This actually lessens the impact of The Cabin In The Woods in its climax because by that point in the film, most of the characters the viewer might have cared about are already dead and/or they are dispatched ridiculously fast as part of a wholesale slaughter that gives Joss Whedon a chance to do something so nihilistic and game-changing that he could simply have never done it on a television show (much the way the second season of Millennium ended with such a profound and powerful ending that the show had to entirely retool and negate it to progress to its third season).

The reason this review of The Cabin In The Woods has been so plot-heavy is that is how the film is. None of the characters, above or below, is particularly interesting or even distinctive. The closest any of them come to being engaging is the stoner Marty who seems much more aware of how weird things are. He serves as a strange voice of reason for the group, which is (oddly) both addressed and contradicted within the movie. Marty believes that he is so aware because the THC in the weed he is constantly smoking is making him immune to the various chemicals and pheromones those below are administering to the youths, while scientists below confirm that they have treated his weed.

On the acting front, The Cabin In The Woods is a great example of a film with pretty amazing casting that goes absolutely nowhere with it. What was supposed to be the start of a big summer for Chris Hemsworth,The Cabin In The Woods barely utilizes him and when he is on screen, he has very few lines and takes very few actions. In fact, in The Cabin In The Woods, Hemsworth was used like Channing Tatum might have been and the result is both Hemsworth and his character of Curt are essentially nonentities in the film.

In a similar fashion, Bradley Whitford is woefully misused in The Cabin In The Woods. Whitford’s character in The Cabin In The Woods is Hadley and he is essentially Josh Lyman in an underground compound. This performance shows us nothing new, different or distinctive from the otherwise great actor. Similar things could be said for Amy Acker’s brief appearance, Tom Lenk’s pointless role, or most of Richard Jenkins’s presence in the film. These are usually wonderful actors and Drew Goddard gets nothing from them for The Cabin In The Woods.

The Cabin In The Woods is a hard horror . . . eventually. The gore is mostly computer-generated in the last quarter of the film and by that point, viewers are unlikely to still care. As important, when the special effects kick in, there are so very many of them that the scenes are much more chaotic than either scary or even interesting. That makes The Cabin In The Woods pretty much a failure on all fronts and very easy to recommend against watching at all.

For other films with Chris Hemsworth, please check out my reviews of:
Snow White And The Huntsman
The Avengers
Thor
Star Trek

2/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the films I have reviewed.

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Re-viewing Changing Lanes, Because I Just Can't Help Myself!

The Good: Decent acting, DVD bonus features
The Bad: Unlikable characters, Repetitive plot
The Basics: Worth watching once, Changing Lanes tells a predictable story about two men who just can't help but attack one another over minor things for a day.


Have you ever watched a movie, then years later looked for your review of it, only to discover you never wrote one? Lately, I have been finding that happening more and more. So when I discovered I had never written a review for the film Changing Lanes, I found myself stopping and asking, "What DID I think of that movie when I saw it oh so long ago?!" This necessitated a second viewing . . .

. . . and I remembered. Changing Lanes was one of those films I didn't know how I felt about it after I was done with it. I recall at the time there being a lot of hype about it and a number of people being quite excited about the film, the characters and the performances, but now - having seen it twice - I am fairly sure it does not live up to the hype. Sometimes, years after a film creates a stir, it is fun to go back and check it out, devoid of packaging, hype, merchandising, etc. I wonder, for example, how Mystic River and My Big Fat Greek Wedding would hold up in the market now . . .

Changing Lanes is a generally tense drama about the power of revenge, the importance of doing the right thing and the struggle to get by in the world when bad things happen to us. It is a morality play and either a cautionary tale demanding one do the right thing from the outset or a simple story of escalating revenge between two men who get into a pissing match of sorts for an entire day.

Doyle Gipson is driving to the custody hearing where he is representing himself in an attempt to keep even partial custody of his children when his ex-wife threatens to move the kids across the country when his car is hit by Gavin Banek. Gavin is a lawyer who is feeling a bit of stress as his law firm has been bilking a charitable trust that Gavin himself got a dying man to establish. Gavin is rushing to court to produce documents to take the teeth out of a lawsuit against his firm when he is distracted and runs Doyle off the road. Feeling pressured, Gavin flees the scene of the accident, delaying Doyle from his hearing and losing the important file in the process.

Doyle recovers the file and misses his court date, losing his children to his ex-wife. Distraught, he teeters on the edge of falling off the wagon when he is contacted by Gavin. Seeing that Gavin is desperate to get the file back, Doyle recovers it. As he battles with himself over whether to simply return the file or to exact a price for it, Gavin seeks out corrupt individuals who know how to work the system to squeeze Doyle into compliance. When Doyle's credit is turned off, causing him to lose his bid on the house he was buying for his children, Doyle and Gavin escalate their attacks upon one another.

Changing Lanes is a real tough movie to figure out, not in terms of plot or morality, but as to whether or not it truly is a decent film. The plot is obvious and problematic, the characters are largely unlikable and their actions are reprehensible throughout most of the movie. But it is very well acted, the film is going somewhere and the DVD extras are surprisingly thick for a drama of this type. It makes it tough to sell the film to a potential audience.

First, then, the plot. Changing Lanes is a pretty classic story of escalation and conflict. Doyle acts, Gavin reacts, Doyle is put on the defensive, Gavin attacks, Doyle prepares to capitulate, Gavin surrenders, Doyle sneaks in another punch, Gavin punches back harder. Plotwise, this is hardly a new movie. Whenever it seems like peace might break out, like Gavin might give up or try doing the right thing, he goes the other way, which forces Doyle to respond in kind as opposed to following his better instincts.

The thing is, this is a very plot-thin movie because the characters truly do move the film, which is part of what makes it so very agonizing to watch. Just when the viewer thinks that things might go in a humane direction, Gavin does something even more atrocious. Doyle, as a result, spends much of the movie reacting to Gavin's bad behavior. This is in no way an excuse for how Gavin acts, but on his own, he does seem much more likely to do the right thing and try to be a decent fellow.

Sadly, this is a very masculine movie and as a result, rationality quickly leaves the picture. And on the character front, there are only two truly wonderful moments that surprise a seasoned movie veteran like myself. The first involves Gavin, who finds himself in a church fairly late in the movie. Gavin, not a Catholic, is given a moment to confess his sins and learn and grow from his mistakes. What makes the moment so truly wonderful and surprising is that he does not receive his catharsis and instead, he leaves the church and does something even more heinous, which completely undermines the predictable plot and the conventions of the story as it is being told. In other words, at one of the last possible moments, the story zigs when good money says it would zag; a movement made by the characters.

The other surprisingly wonderful character element comes from one of the secondary characters. Amanda Peet - one of my favorites on screen - has what basically amounts to a cameo in Changing Lanes as Gavin's wife, Cynthia, daughter of one of the partners at the firm Gavin works at. Cynthia appears all sweet and nice (an easy task for Peet) but pushes Gavin toward the lesser angels of his nature. In Cynthia's monologue, she discusses how she knew exactly who she was marrying when she married Gavin and I recall being horrified the first time I saw Changing Lanes. On the second viewing, though, I took strange comfort in the scene and in Cynthia's character. I suspect I took such comfort because unlike the two male protagonists who are blinded by a stupid rage, Cynthia is smart and she sees the world clearly, for what it is. She comes to the relationship in a position of power and she actually offers a strange clarity in the truth that she does not want Gavin to be soft, weak or uncorrupt. That purity of character actually reads as remarkably true and intelligent and it is refreshing to see in a film filled with characters who are otherwise doing terrible things.

It helps that Peet is a good enough actress to sell the emotional intensity and underlying intelligence of Cynthia. She joins a cast of supporting actors that is quite extraordinary, including Toni Collette, Sydney Pollack and Richard Jenkins. All of the supporting cast, given the chance, shines for their moment on screen, adding the sense that this is a very real world and all of their characters have extensive backstory to them.

Ben Affleck gives a decent performance as the high-powered, very stressed lawyer Gavin. He is moody and his laughs are more nervous than sincere, insinuating a moral core that is seldom actually shown in the movie. Affleck's body language transforms over the course of the movie from a stiff, literally upstanding, guy into a haggard, fellow and he is quite able to pull the transformation off well.

But it is Samuel L. Jackson who makes Changing Lanes worth watching. Jackson comes to the role projecting a quiet desperation into Doyle that he is able to play out amazingly. Jackson emotes very well using just his eyes and there are moments where director Roger Michell capitalizes upon this, simply focusing on Jackson in quiet moments and letting his body language speak. Jackson is able to portray conflict without speaking and he is amazing in this role, which is not quite like anything else he did before or since.

Am I glad I saw Changing Lanes? Yes. Am I glad I saw it twice? No. Changing Lanes is one of those "see it once, take it as it is" type movies. So, I recommend it, but only for one viewing. I'm not suggesting anyone buy it. After all, once in a lifetime for some things is enough.

For other works in which Matt Malloy appears, please visit my reviews of:
The Bounty Hunter
Couples Retreat
Six Feet Under - Season Five
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence
Finding Forrester
State And Main

6/10

For other movie reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the films I have reviewed!

© 2012, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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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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Hall Pass Might Not Be The Hangover, But It Is A LOT Of Fun!

The Good: Very funny, Moments of acting
The Bad: Characters follow very predictable arcs, Jokes are better than the whole.
The Basics: Hall Pass has charm and is funny, but many of the jokes work as well independent of the movie, which strains very hard to keep itself together and be fresh.


March is finally here and with it comes movies that might not necessarily suck.  I say that as I sit to review Hall Pass, which my wife and I took in last night because it was the final big film of the February Doldrums and it did not, rather nicely, suck.  February tends to be a dumping ground for terrible movies, but Hall Pass actually amuses more than it disappoints, which is probably why it is doing so well with critics and moviegoers.  But while I am able to recommend Hall Pass, it is tough to do so when March's early blockbusters are right around the corner.  Hall Pass is a fun flick, but it's not one that truly uses the canvass of the big screen especially well.

Hall Pass is exactly what it appears to be; a "guys night out" comedy flick which, ironically, my wife laughed at more than the five frat boys with whom we shared the theaters.  The humor is generally relationship and gross-out humor, as one might expect from Peter and Bobby Farrelly and their writing partners for the film, Pete Jones and Kevin Barnett.  The film is a big step up from last year's Hot Tub Time Machine (reviewed here!) which fills the same essential niche and was released around the same time.  But for those who are looking to go out to the movies to see something essential on the big screen, it is easy to pass Hall Pass by.  This probably could have been a straight-to-DVD release and not lost any real effect.

Rick and Fred are best friends living in suburbia as a realtor and insurance agent, both married to great women who don't understand quite why their eyes stray, even if they never cheat.  Inspired by a doctor friend of theirs, Maggie and Grace consider giving their men a "hall pass," a week off from marriage.  The idea is that because they married young, they didn't have the chance to "sow their wild oats" or they have forgotten the pain and rejection of dating their marriages saved them from.  So when the guys are touring a rich associate's house and end up on camera insulting the daylights out of all their comrades, the Maggie lets Rick out of their marriage for a week.  Shortly thereafter, after an embarrassing incident with the police and his car, Fred gets a hall pass from Grace as well.

With Maggie and Grace out at Cape Cod for a week, Rick and Fred begin to check out the social scene. The early days of their hall pass are spent dining well and falling asleep, getting wasted on pot brownies and getting rejected.  But as the week comes to a close - and the women find temptation in the form of a traveling baseball team on the Cape - Rick makes a move on Leigh, the barista at a local coffee shop and Fred falls into an initially appealing situation which takes a bizarre turn.

Right before watching Hall Pass, my wife described Why Did I Get Married? to me.  She described that movie as a film about a bunch of guys who sit around kvetching about how bad their wives are and wishing for the good old days of being single.  By the end of the movie, they apparently realize how great their wives are and take it all back.  Before seeing Hall Pass, we pretty much figured that would be what the flick was and it was.  The only substantive difference seems to be that Hall Pass opens with two guys who truly love their wives and who don't seriously consider cheating; they just want a little more sex in their lives, so they look at and think of other women from time to time.

Thus, it is pretty surprising it takes until late in the movie before Maggie realizes just how the idea of the hall pass is working for her and not for Rick.  Rick and Fred are exactly as hapless as Grace originally predicts and watching them becomes more painful than actually entertaining.  Their foibles are hardly as funny or even interesting as the setup insinuates it might be.  Instead, this is a film where the guys try to be something they are not and it becomes gutwrenching to watch in the middle act.  Fortunately, the big finish is worth sticking around for and the scene midway through the closing credits finally gives Steven Merchant a time to shine.  But in between, Hall Pass goes from being a relationship comedy to a pretty lame buddy comedy film and it is unsurprising that the laughs fall off for almost a half hour in the middle.

Ultimately, Hall Pass does not stand up as an even noteworthy character study largely because the characters travel along surprisingly predictable lines.  Rick is loyal like he appears at the outset, but curious about what might be available to him and Fred is jusy lame on the singles scene.  They are ably played by Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis, respectively.  Neither gives a particularly surprising performance, though Owen shows depth one usually associates with Luke Wilson as Rick has the epiphanies about his relationship with Maggie that his character made explicit pretty early on in the movie.

Hall Pass is dominated on the acting front by the strength of the supporting performances.  Steven Merchant is charming in his usual goofy way as Gary and Jenna Fischer and Christina Applegate give solid supporting performances.  But when Richard Jenkins finally appears as Coakley, that is when Hall Pass illustrates some genius in the casting department.  Jenkins, who usually plays dignified and articulate is perfectly smarmy as Coakley and he steals the late scenes of Hall Pass with no real effort.

There is enough in Hall Pass to enjoy, but it is not much more than an HBO-style comedy for the big screen.

For other films in theaters, check out my reviews of:
I Am Number Four
Unknown
The Green Hornet
Black Swan

6.5/10

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

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

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A Mostly Dead-On First Season: Six Feet Under The Complete First Season!

The Good: In General, the acting, Characters, Strength of writing
The Bad: Several of Peter Krause's deliveries, Plot inconsistencies, Price
The Basics: The story of a funeral home being passed from father to sons paints the picture of one of the weirdest television families in American television history with the first season of Six Feet Under!


I have enjoyed Peter Krause's work since he first appeared on Cybill and so when the former Sports Night (click here for that review!) actor got Six Feet Under, I was instantly intrigued. For some weeks, there had been the rumor that HBO would pick up Sports Night,=" so when Krause took their Six Feet Under, it was pretty much impossible to begrudge him that.

When Nate Fisher returns to California for Christmas, he walks into his family in the middle of its complete collapse. His father is killed in a car accident, his mother is plagued by guilt over an affair she had, his brother is emotionally retentive and resentful of his presence and his sister is smoking crystal meth and to complicate matters further, he has just had sex with a woman whose name he does not know. The first episode of the series finds Nate Fisher dealing with all of these variables when he returns to the family's funeral home business.

The first season of Six Feet Under follows Nate - primarily - on a journey of self discovery that keeps him in California helping his brother David run the family business while trying to put his life in order. That means forming a meaningful connection with his younger sister, who is an outsider, it means accepting his brother David's homosexuality, it means coming to terms with his lunatic mother's mood swings, it means dealing with the business' sole employee, Federico, and it means forging a deep bond with Brenda Chenowith (as that is the woman's name he hooked up with in the premiere) despite the interventions of her manic depressive, stalker brother Billy.

What doesn't work for the series is Billy. Billy is an intriguing character, a gifted artist who goes off his medication from time to time simply to feel things. The problem is, Billy is not a terribly good fit for this show and he serves either as a distraction or as tired plot device when the main plots get stretched thin. That is to say, whenever an episode seems to be faltering, suddenly Billy shows up. It becomes a matter of "We need to fill several more minutes, what can we do?" "Use Billy!" and it feels that way. This is why Billy is not needed in the earlier episodes and becomes a driving force by the end of the season; at the beginning, everything is fresh and new and there are plenty of ideas to get onto the screen. And yet, by the end of the season, ideas were running thinner and Billy has a breakdown.

The other problematic aspect of the series is in Peter Krause's acting. I love Peter Krause on Sports Night. He was funny, intelligent and expertly witty as Casey McCall. On Six Feet Under, Krause simply rehashes much of the delivery and style he created as Casey. That is to say, when Nate explodes with Brenda, almost every time, Krause is using the same volume, intensity, tone and speech pattern as he did when Casey McCall would blow up with Dana on Sports Night. Until the last two episodes in this season, Krause does not find a niche for Nate Fisher and instead results to playing him the way he is comfortable, which is playing him like he did Casey. Fans of Peter Krause are likely to find themselves somewhat disappointed until then because the early episodes seem to point to the idea that Krause cannot act.

But the cast is solid and they work quite well together. Rachel Griffiths does a remarkably convincing American accent throughout the season that convinces us that Brenda is quite American. Matthew St. Patrick is wonderful as Keith, David's . . . racquetball partner. Or, by the end of the season, David's former lover. Freddy Roderiguez and Jeremy Sisto round out the non-Fisher portion of the cast as Federico and Billy, respectively, creating some diverse male performances to keep the show from feeling monotonous.

The women are wonderful in Six Feet Under. Frances Conroy plays Ruth, Nate's mother, with impressive, stunning range. She gets into Ruth in a way that forces the viewer to watch her, enraptured by the way the actress so completely becomes Ruth that not for a second do we not connect with her. She never seems anything other than completely real in the show. Lauren Ambrose plays Claire with amazing proficiency, creating a believable outsider. She is a character and a unique individual and those traits are what Ambrose capitalizes on, consistently making the viewer believe in her.

The person who steals the show, though, is Michael C. Hall. Hall plays David and he plays the retentive David with compassion and dignity. While David has the most bothersome character arc of the first season - the sequences where David gets involved with drugs are hard to buy considering how reserved and professional he is in the beginning -, Hall plays him with consistency that makes the viewer believe absolutely in this quirky and intense character. There is no denying he is a viable individual and Hall's performance reminds us of similar people we might have known in our own lives.

All in all, it's easy to see why so many people enjoy Six Feet Under; it is an intelligent show that challenges the viewer each episode with notions of mortality and healing. These are things everyone must deal with at some point and Six Feet Under does it with style, often contrasting death with life to illustrate the importance of every moment of our lives being used to the fullest. It's worth your time, but it is not as perfect as others would have you believe. Krause's acting and David's disturbing decent into drugs and sexual promiscuity are almost as daunting as the $80 - $90 price tag on the 13 episode season. HBO might realize that their future is in DVD, but that's no reason we, the viewers, have to pay so much for it. At the end of the day, the thirteen episodes are worth the money; the writing is intelligent and the feel of the show is intense and worthwhile. And if you had to pay for television, you couldn't ask for much better than that.

For the Complete Series of Six Feet Under, please check out my review of the entire series by clicking here!

For other television dramas, please check out my reviews of:
The West Wing
Lost
True Blood - Season 1

8.5/10

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

© 2010, 2007, 2003 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.


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