When Adult Fables Deserve To Be Cut: Barbershop Is A Real Mixed Experience.

The Good: One or two moments of acting and character
The Bad: Lack of humor, Obvious plot and moral, Unremarkable acting and character
The Basics: A disappointing comedy, in Barbershop a small businessman learns the value of the business after he sells it to a thug who wants to turn it into a strip joint.


If one were to read many of my reviews, one might be surprised to find me reviewing the comedy Barbershop. After all, I tend to shy away from the predictable and I make no bones about the fact that comedy has a difficult time maintaining my interest and respect. The truth is, I had read several glowing reviews of Barbershop by people I respect and I watched the film based on that. I cannot join my voice to theirs because I found Barbershop to be predicable, bland, mostly uninspired in the acting and in the end, just not funny.

Barbershop is a weaving together of two stories. On the one front, a couple of hoodlums break into a neighborhood store to steal an ATM and spend the day trying desperately to break it open. Dominating the film, however, is Calvin Palmer, owner of an inner city barbershop that is floundering economically. Surrounded by neighborhood personas like the elder Eddie and the sassy Terri, Calvin is forced to sell the barbershop to the local loan shark before realizing that the barbershop is a special place and an important part of the community.

Blah, blah, blah. The question one always has to ask in a film like this is, if the characters are smart enough to realize the importance of where they are after they sell the shop to the loan shark, why aren't they clever enough to figure it out before they let it get to that point? The plot is pretty well canned from the simplest of childhood fables, such that - were it not for the language - it might be fun to sit a child in front of Barbershop and see how quickly they could guess what happens.

The process then becomes "How is this different from the others like it?" and to answer that, we must always look at the characters. Unfortunately, the characters here are all "types." None of them stand out as individuals, they are all stereotypes. Eddie is the crotchety old man spouting out controversial logariah until the crucial moment where he is able to illustrate his worth and deliver something the young ones don't know. Terri is the generic angry young woman that is utterly without character beyond that guideline. There's the student (Jimmy) and the white guy who wants to fit in with this crowd. They are all types. Calvin Palmer is the generic stereotype (not archetype) of the small businessman under siege with dreams of doing something else.

Barbershop is too simple to be enjoyed repeatedly, especially considering how quickly one is likely to call the entire process of the film the first time around. Some of the acting steps up from time to time. Sean Patrick Thomas continues to deliver as the educated person who stands out in the crowd, which only goes to reinforce the most horrible of stereotypes by making the comparison. Still, Thomas plays the part well and consistently.

Anthony Anderson quite competently plays J.D., the ATM thief in a role that is largely unrewarding for its attempts at making humor and its failure to do that. Anderson, however, cannot be blamed for the poor script that surrounds him. Similarly, Ice Cube works within the confines of a poor script on a character that is utterly flat. However, he manages to be convincing in a way that we do not doubt that he could be a small businessman.

In a movie this bland, sometimes that's the best you can ask for.

At the end of the day, there are worse films, ones where the actors are all bad and the situations are all bad and the characters are utterly unredemptive. Barbershop comes close to suffering from all of those, save that it has actors who clearly have some talent (Eve, for example, steps up quite well to the acting plate), they just aren't able to tap it in this outing. If you're looking for entertaining, though, you can do much, much better.

For other ethnically-relevant films, please be sure to check out my reviews of:
Crash
Idlewild
Shark Tale

3/10

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

© 2012, 2003 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

The Plague Of Comic Book Movies At Its Zenith: Rise Of The Silver Surfer Disappoints

The Good: Special effects, Stan Lee's cameo
The Bad: Everything else. Seriously.
The Basics: Another pointless superhero movie, Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer tries to cover lack of character development, obvious plot and bad acting with special effects.


Sometimes I find myself forgetting how very much I have disliked a certain experience right before I repeat it. No, I haven't become a cutter or anything equally self destructive . . .at least, I don't think that watching bad movies is considered self destructive. A few years back, I watched the cinematic outing of The Fantastic Four (reviewed here!) and found myself completely disappointed. So, why - why?! - did I sit down and watch the DVD of Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer? Honestly, I think it must have been curiosity.

After all, I thought, it couldn't be as bad as the original, right? They wouldn't make a lousy comic book movie AND a crummy sequel to it, would they? And perhaps my curiosity truly was all about going to all of the Star Trek conventions I work. At one or two of them, there have been gaming demonstrations with the Heroclix toys featuring Marvel Comics characters. At some of those demonstrations, the gamers have had Galactus to fight against and while most of the game pieces are less than two inches tall, Galactus is over two feet tall. Knowing that the Silver Surfer was the herald of Galactus, I guess I picked up Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer to see how Galactus was rendered for the big screen.

Wow, was this a disappointment by those standards! That said, Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer suffers most because it is exactly what it appears to be. This is a comic book movie. While some films based on comic books rise up quite well to become decent cinematic endeavors, Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer seems obsessed and determined to stay in the rut, er, niche that birthed it. As a result, much of the movie attempts to wow viewers with special effects, expresses itself through ridiculous, over-the-top dialogue and gives the actors remarkably little to work with. The characters are mostly monolithic and the film is largely self-referential, making it an all-around disappointment to those looking for a decent movie, as opposed to sitting and reading a comic book.

Following the destruction of a series of planets, a man on a flying silver surfboard speeds over various parts of the world, radically altering the environment wherever he flies. Having done such things as freezing a fishing vessel into a lake and created massive craters in the Earth, this flying stranger gets the attention of Reed Richards. Reed Richards and Susan Storm, plagued by the paparazzi over their impending wedding, have been distracted. Johnny Storm seems to be taking his newfound celebrity quite well, including trying to get endorsements from companies and selling space on his outfit to advertisers.

But the plague of media attention is swept away when Richards is visited by General Hager, who is concerned about the Silver Surfer and what his presence might mean. Richards decides this is the time to have a spine, give in to Susan's demands that he pay attention to the wedding details, and he turns his back on Hager and the fate of the world (sort of). He is content to let the Earth get trashed by the Silver Surfer until Johnny encounters it and gets his butt kicked, incidentally interrupting the wedding of the century. He is also put on edge when Victor Von Doom resurfaces, healed by an encounter with the dangerous new stranger, who is on a mission to prepare the world for its end.

Sometimes, when faced with a movie that is unrelentingly bad, one becomes overwhelmed when it comes time to evaluate it. After all, it's like a kid in a candy shop; where to start with panning this endeavor?! I'll take the high road and start with the good (that way, if I crap out going through the laundry list of problems with this movie, I'll be covered). The special effects are frequently not bad. Outside Mr. Fantastic's ridiculous and comicy stretching effects, Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer admittedly has decent special effects. The Silver Surfer looks cool and effects like the destruction of planets in the opening sequence are not quite like the exploding planets moviegoers have seen hundreds of times before. Even the Human Torch looks better in this outing than in the first one.

Stan Lee's cameo is humorous, even if it is problematic (don't people ever consider such things like: "If the Fantastic Four were real and not comic book characters - i.e. the Marvel Universe was reality - just what is it that Stan Lee would have done to become a celebrity?") and the tired and true lesson about sticking together as a team is always a good one. And hey, casting Jessica Alba for a movie when one needs a babe is pretty smart, too.

Now I'm stretching. Let's start with that. Special effects are used to enhance storylines and do what actors are unable to do in reality. Unless one is creating a virtual character, there is still the need to have actors who can act. There are moments - like in the ridiculous bachelor party dance scene where actor Ioan Gruffudd's acting is not covered up by the special effects. In other words, director Tim Story hopes that viewers will be watching the stretchy arms and the hot chicks Richards is dancing with and not Gruffudd's face . . .

And in a movie, comic book conceits do not always work. In my reviews of the Spider-man films I noted that the volume of webslinging material shot out of Peter Parker should have at least dehydrated the poor guy. In Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer, Reed Richards stretches around the Millennium Wheel . . . several times and the special effect cannot cover the baffling physics of it. Come to think of it, with matter being altered - like the river being turned solid - the lack of consequences becomes disturbing. I mean, if a section of river suddenly turned to stone, upstream there would be some pretty significant flooding . . .

Okay, so The Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer is supposed to be escapist and not so sensible. There is still such a thing as decent escapism. This is not it. The characters are all types: Geek, whiny nag, arrogant Man, and Other Guy (Other Guy in other movies is usually Black Sidekick or Token Asian, in this case he just happens to be a a rock man). There is also Generic Villain (didn't Victor Von Doom learn anything from his near-death experience?!), Dumb Military Guy, and Conflicted Adversary. Yes, they are all here, along with Susan's non-team girl friend, imported to make the wedding realistic. And yes, in an otherwise all-white cast, Alicia adds some color.

To be fair, Dumb Military Guy - General Hager - is played by Andre Braugher. I've respected Braugher since I first saw him in Gideon's Crossing and he made much of Homicide: Life On The Street watchable, if not good. Why he chose to be a patsy in this movie baffles me. After all, one might expect an actor of Braugher's character to be able to read a script and say to the director, "Okay, why is my character - a man who has risen to the rank of General - trusting a guy named Doom?! How do we explain that an intelligent military guy falls for this guy's terribly unclever ruse?!" Perhaps he did raise those concerns and he was told that his character is shaken after recovering from a stroke and Braugher went along with it.

Sadly, the only remotely interesting performance comes from Julian McMahon, who plays Victor Von Doom. McMahon manages to be villainous in a way that takes his character a bit away from how he was in the original. He is a little more like his character in Nip/Tuck and that actually works well for this movie. But the truth is, even his performance is something of a stretch for a positive; his character is so monolithically bad and obvious that he can't do much with it.

Similarly, Chiklis is hampered by his make-up, Evans does nothing new, Grufford is bland when not being dull and Alba . . . Alba suffers from the writing. After all, she seems to be the butt of "Heh, Susan Storm is nekkid!" type humor. It's like there is an obsession with seeing Alba naked, so much of the chances for her to shine involves being embarrassed about being naked, covering herself up and running away.

Which leads me to my final gripe that I am actually going to gripe about. Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer assumes its audience is idiotic or under age fifteen too frequently for my liking. Just as the X-Men movies make sure everyone knows who Mystique is by flashing her yellow eyes, this movie makes sure the Invisible Woman is never quite invisible so when the plot becomes terribly obvious, it is at least made . . .well, clear. Too often, it insults the intelligence of the viewer.

It's bad enough we have the injury (Galactus!), we don't need to be insulted on top of it.

For other movies based upon the Marvel comic books, please check out my reviews of:
X-Men: First Class
Thor
Iron Man 2
The Incredible Hulk
Blade: Trinity
Elektra
Daredevil

3/10

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

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

Unextraordinary Superhero Movie, Sigh. Again. Fantastic Four Isn’t Fantastic.

The Good: Moments of Michael Chiklis and Julian McMahon's Acting
The Bad: Story is predictable and trite, Almost no character development, special effects, Other acting
The Basics: In an unremarkable superhero movie, superheroes barely rise to the occasion of defeating a late-to-the-movie villain.


The very least I want out of a movie based on a comic book is to be entertained. I want my heroes to be cool, though I usually like them dark, and I want my villains to be evil, compelling and intelligent enough to win or make it a fair fight. With Fantastic Four, I was not even entertained. To jump ahead to the bottom line, this movie was a serious disappointment.

Three scientists, a pilot and businessman go into space and are exposed to cosmic rays which mutate their DNA. With suspension of disbelief in full effect, one man begins to stretch in improbable ways like rubber, one becomes combustible, the woman is able to make herself invisible and the third man becomes a giant lumbering rock. And no one bothers to ask what happened to the fourth man, but the businessman begins to turn into metal. The prior four work to understand and reverse what has happened to them and in the process, they leave themselves open to the machinations of businessman turned supervillain Victor Von Doom, who decides he's a bit of a god. The Fantastic Four, then, form to combat Dr. Doom while fighting among themselves on the meaning of their transformations.

Before I saw the movie, I heard mixed reviews that all included the idea that the scene worth watching in the movie is the bridge scene. Personally, I think the scene just prior to that does all the essential things the bridge scene does, so the bridge scene is neither revelatory nor terribly exciting. In short, we know the characters' powers before they reveal themselves to society on the bridge, so it's not as dramatic as it could or ought to be.

Even worse are the special effects. The point of a big budget special effect action adventure movie is to dazzle the viewer. Perhaps director Tim Story realized the dated and realistic limitations of the characters he was working with because Story cheats around a number of special effects. In the bridge scene, for example, Reed Richards' exercising of powers is cut around so the viewer doesn't exactly see how far he stretches. Odds are, it was such an improbably length that the special effects looked goofier than any they actually showed.

The Human Torch (Johnny Storm) isn't terribly impressive an effect either, nor is Sue Storm (the Invisible Girl). Even worse, though, is Dr. Doom when Victor Von Doom makes his transformation near the climax of the film into the fully villainous persona. He ends up looking more silly than scary.

The special effect that the movie gets right is The Thing (Ben Grimm, played by Michael Chiklis). Chiklis makes the special effects work by making his face as animated as possible for being suddenly made of rock. He connotes a great deal with his eyes and that makes the appearance of the Thing work.

But Ben Grimm doesn't work as a character. His motivation seems to be that he has lost the love of his wife through his freakish transformation. This is a compelling motivation. Unfortunately, the film can't sustain even this basic character conflict; Grimm suddenly seems content to let his wife abandon him when a blind woman looks his way.

The superlative aspect of this movie is the acting of Julian McMahon, who plays Victor Von Doom. The character isn't much and the special effects for the character are terrible near the end, but for the majority of the piece, McMahon (best known from Nip/Tuck) makes the film bearable and barely watchable.

It is ultimately unsurprising that the extras on the DVD are rather thin. There are only three deleted scenes and they are basically reworking dialogue that appeared in the movie.

Ultimately, Fantastic Four is anything but. It's a disappointment that relies on too little story, character or special effects to be worthwhile. It's a shame that they (the producers) already made a sequel; I'd wait until the stink blows off this one before committing to another.

For other movies based upon the Marvel comic books, please check out my reviews of:
X-Men: First Class
Thor
Iron Man 2
The Incredible Hulk
Blade: Trinity
Elektra
Daredevil

4/10

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

© 2011, 2006 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

| | |