Charming But Completely Predictable, Post Grad Fills In The End Of Summer Blahs.

The Good: Moments of laughs, Generally good casting, Moments of charm
The Bad: Entirely predictable, Editing, Incongruent moments with main plotline.
The Basics: Barely fun, Post Grad flops as the subject is not enough to sustain itself, so it frequently digresses.


[Note: This originally was written upon the movie’s release, hence the dated references! Enjoy!]

As the end of summer comes, I find myself considering just what it takes for a film to participate in Summer Blockbuster Season. Every year, it seems, there are a few big surprises or a few sleeper hits and the longer Post Grad went on, the more I felt like it was this year's Swing Vote (reviewed here!). Swing Vote arrived in theaters last year with little fanfare, died at the box office and was generally a mediocre film that was predictable and understated and entirely average. Post Grad is essentially this summer's Swing Vote, replacing the message on the importance of voting with an exploration on the difficulties in the economy today.

Unfortunately for those who like romantic comedies or thematic comedies, Post Grad is far too scattered and predictable to be truly enjoyable and while it has some laughs and moments that garner smiles, it is essentially a failure. This is yet another movie where the preview trailer shows the entire movie and yet, I went into the film with high hopes. After all, this was Alexis Bledel's big chance to open a film. I loved her in Gilmore Girls (reviewed here!) and have been waiting to see what she would do on the big screen. Alas, the film starts out with Bledel playing her new character, Ryden Malby in a very Rory-esque way and the movie stagnates and wanders far too much.

Ryden Malby is graduating from college, trumped by her childhood nemesis for valedictorian, and she is surrounded by her loving family and platonic friend, Adam. Ryden has big plans and after signing a $3,500 check for her ideal loft, she goes to interview for her dream job at Happerman & Browning publishers. En route to her interview, she and Adam get into a car accident and she finds herself competing against several other candidates just like her. When her nemesis, Jessica Bard, gets her ideal job, Ryden is forced to move back in with her father, mother, grandmother and weird younger brother.

While Adam quietly pursues Ryden romantically - all the while feeling out his own musical career and debating going to law school on the East Coast - Ryden and her father try to find a path for the new college graduate. This puts Ryden working for her father, both at his luggage store and a shady startup as a belt buckle distributor, while she tries to get a better job. When her father accidentally kills the neighbor's cat, the chance encounter leads Ryden to a job as a p.a. and puts Ryden's heart in play and her future in uncertain territory.

The fundamental problem with Post Grad is that it is a comedy and that there isn't enough material to make a comedy out of the subject. Writer Kelly Fremon attempts to flesh out a script about an overachiever's flailing life after college and the film fails to stick with that. As a result, minutes burn by - not with Ryden-related romantic subplots, which are ridiculous and predictable enough - with cat poop jokes focused on Ryden's father, Walter, a weird bit involving Ryden's mother advising her younger brother to stop licking kid's heads at school and the whole belt buckle enterprise subplot. While these might flesh out the Malby family well, they completely distract the viewer from the movement of the film and the growth of Ryden into an actualized character.

As a result, Post Grad struggles to be funny and stay focused, creating an erratic story where Ryden is a fairly ambitious young woman surrounded by a family that is anything but like her. Her family is funny and Ryden is relegated to the straightman of the family and the film runs out of steam and runs out of plot well before the seventy-nine minute running time is exhausted. As a result, much of the movie is not focused on Ryden's struggle to enter the working world, but pointless digressions like her father's arrest and a soapbox derby race.

What Post Grad does have is a lot of charm and excellent casting. Alexis Bledel even performs well as Ryden more and more as the movie progresses. She and costar Zach Gilford have great on-screen chemistry and the scenes between Ryden and Adam "read" as entirely real. Gilford holds his own in the scenes they share and they insinuate in the ease of their body language a history and connoting that weight is impressive by young actors. Similarly, Bledel and Michael Keaton play well off one another. Keaton plays Walter and he is hilarious as the off-kilter father figure. Jane Lynch and Carol Burnett round out the cast well, though this represents the only bit of poor casting for the main characters. While Keaton and Bledel look like they could be related, Burnett plays Walter's mother, when she and Lynch bear a more striking resemblance.


The only real dud on the acting front is Rodrigo Santoro, whose tenure on the screen is mercifully short. Santoro and Bledel have no chemistry as Ryden and her next door neighbor and their scenes are excruciating in the way they are drawn out. Santoro's role is designed to keep open the age-old paradigm that forces a woman to choose between two men and realize that the man she wants is the one who was with her all along. Unfortunately, Post Grad does not even try to put up the pretense of surprising the viewer. This film is one of the most predictable ones to come down the pike in a long time.

As well, the editing in Post Grad is sloppy; I noticed several bad cuts throughout the movie and this is death to a movie that was already struggling to fill the minimum necessary airtime. For example, when the soapbox derby race begins, Hunter Malby's car that is brought to the starting line is clearly a different vehicle in the first shot than it is in subsequent shots.

On a strangely contrary note, the humor that is generated by the subplots and random humor elements - the headlicking bit especially - are actually some of the film's most enjoyable moments. The problem is that they just don't fit the particular movie the viewer went in to see. If this were "Meet The Malbys" it would be one thing, but it is supposed to be a comedy about the struggles one suffers after college and these scenes - most notably one where Grandma Malby takes the family coffin shopping - just do not fit.

The result is an awkward film that does not quite seem to know what it wants to be and it flounders in a way that makes it drag, despite not being a particularly long movie to begin with. That combination of lack of focus and predictability make one wonder how Fremon and director Vicky Jenson got the movie made. As it is, despite the fact that they did get it made - and with a respectable cast - ought not be encouragement for others to try or for audiences to flock to see it. And for those of us who love Alexis Bledel's works . . . we have confidence she'll get into a better project next time.

For other works with J.K. Simmons, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Megamind
Extract
I Love You, Man
Spider-Man 3
Thank You For Smoking
Spider-Man 2
Spider-Man

4.5/10

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

© 2012, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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An Urban Comedy Under The Sea: Shark Tale

The Good: I'm stretching here, so I'll say "moments of humor"
The Bad: Unimpressive Animation, Obvious overused story, one-dimensional characters, just dumb
The Basics: Shark Tale should be avoided for its gross racism and sexism that attempts to fly by as "family fare."


Some time ago, it became part of popular culture to refer to all things "black" as "urban." That is to say, when people want to use a polite euphemism for "black," they say "urban." Thus, it became something strangely appropriate to talk about the language of "urban music" as opposed to saying "man, people swear a lot in that newfangled black music." Or we started to talk about "urban crime" instead of "black on black crime." Sometimes, things are just plain ridiculous.

I preface this review this way because within five minutes of beginning Shark Tale, it became obvious to me that I was watching the same "urban comedy" I've seen before. I've seen such jokes and character types in such bla . . , er, "urban" movies as Barbershop and . . . well, others that aren't coming immediately to mind. All I know is that within a few minutes of watching the protagonist in Shark Tale, I felt that someone at Dreamworks, at some meeting somewhere, said "we need to do something to bring in more money. We need to target a new audience. What audience haven't we exploited yet?" "Well, there's a black audience we've neglected." "Phil! It's 'urban!' But good idea. We could make an urban film and use all sorts of urban actors to flesh out our world. Who's the most popular urban actor of our time?" "Well, there's Denzel . . ." "What about that Fresh Prince guy? He's kind of urban?" "Yeah, he's wildly popular! Call Will Smith! We'll need a good urban actress to star along side him. Who could that be?" "Well, how about Angela Bassett? Or Vivica A. Fox?" "No, Phil, we need someone even more Urban, you know with a capital B, er, U." "How about Renee Zellweger and Angelina Jolie?" "Well, they're pretty whi . . . er, suburban, but at least they'll let us draw them as fish." "Yeah, Jolie might even complain that we made her lips too small . . ." "Shut up, Phil."

All humor aside (and if that amused even one of you, it's more than Shark Tale would do), Shark Tale is a pretty pathetic and transparent tale of Black America set under the sea. The saddest part of this incorporation is that it lacks all of the genuine social commentary that could set it apart from a decent satire or an original urban comedy. Instead, in attempting to be a "family friendly" movie, Shark Tale incorporates and reinforces much of the worst stereotypes in American Ethnic relations today.

Enter Oscar, your slacker-type, minimum wage stereotype. He is the type of lazy fish that Conservatives like to characterize all urban fish as. He is a barely-working grunt, showing up late to his job at the Whale Wash. Like other urban fish, he has maxed out his credit to loan sharks and bookies on ridiculous get-rich-quick schemes because, as any Conservative will tell you, those urban fish can't be trusted to use credit responsibly. And they're always dreaming of something better. I wonder why they do that? Oscar, being a male urban fish, is completely oblivious to the affections of Angie, another urban fish working at the Whale Wash in an administrative capacity.

The Reef, the urban area where Oscar, Angie and others live, is plagued by sharks, who in this incarnation take the stereotypical role of the Italian-descended Americans. Naturally, then, the sharks are all into organized crime, led by Don Lino, who is trying to teach his pacifistic shark son Lenny how to be ruthless enough to run the racket on the Reef. When the Don's other (more vicious) son is killed in an accident while chasing Oscar, Oscar and Lenny become buddies (in a real Eddie Murphy/Judge Rienhold way). Oscar becomes the celebrity of the Reef, Lenny gets to go into hiding and Don Lino, believing his sons have been killed, goes off with murderous rage as we all know sharks are inclined to do.

Okay, first off, the positive. I laughed once during the movie. I don't remember even what the joke was. But there was a laugh involved. And it didn't come when the vaguely homophobic reference to Lenny as a dolphin was made (hey, if the movie is going to be pretty transparently anti-Italian and anti-Bl . . . urban, why not throw in a few anti-gay pokes, too?). I laughed once.

Beyond that, there's nothing impressive about Shark Tale. Indeed, just the opposite, this is an unremarkable movie. From the outset, the animation is nowhere near as impressive as previous Pixar or Disney-Pixar movies. In their new thrust to churn out some computer-generated animated fodder at least once a year, Pixar has lost its magic for detail. In Monsters, Inc., there was a real treat seeing the film on the big screen for the impressive details. At least on the big screen, the viewer could marvel at how distinct every one of Sully's hairs were. Shark Tale lacks that level of animation detail.

Shark Tale is also disappointingly humorless. It is hard to see how even a child would find Shark Tale funny. I suppose another reason for making a "children's movie" with an "urban flavor" is that a lot of music, fashion and popular culture is taking more from popular urban culture. Little children of all ethnicities have baggy jeans and basketball jerseys and know what "bling-bling" is (though the origins of the latter term, as a poignant moment on The Wayne Brady Show illustrated, has its origins in the early portions of the previous century's monied classes). Perhaps even whites do not get off scot-free in this movie if the slow, rich whales are the metaphor for caucasians.

But there is something to the argument that Shark Tale is perpetrating dangerous stereotypes under the guise of the same old stupid "rags to riches" story. I was concerned that perhaps I was putting forward an argument that was not necessarily there, but the more I consider this movie, the more disturbing and dangerous I think it may be. Just about every subculture portrayed in Shark Tale is from a minority (save women) and none is portrayed positively. Here, in frank language, is how Shark Tale pervades and reinforces terrible ideas about how people who aren't white live:

Black Americans - characterized, or caricatured, by Oscar (voiced by Will Smith) are portrayed as lazy, poor, and not terribly cunning. Oscar is an opportunist who lies, is caught in his lie, lies some more, comes up with a crazy scheme to continue perpetrating his lies, until he is put in a situation where he is in danger and he folds like a cheap card table. And at the end of the character's journey from rags to riches, he is put back in his place, servicing the whales. The difference between Oscar at the beginning of the movie and at the end is that at the beginning he has real dreams for advancement and riches and living in the skyrise, and at the end, finding himself back at the Whale Wash as the new owner of the facility, he finds that he can dream, but only so far. In the greatest work of American Literature (my obviously unbiased opinion), Invisible Man (reviewed here!), Ellison writes the line of the Black Predicament in the business world, "Please hope him to death, and keep him running." The idea there is that the key to controlling the oppressed minorities (especially true of the economically disadvantaged) is to give them hope, but no real hope for progress. Shark Tale reinvents this idea that Ellison wrote about in 1947 through Oscar by dashing Oscar's dreams, but leaving him positive about where he is left. So, Oscar goes from the bottom of the sea, to the top of the Reef and ends up back at the bottom of the reef, but feels better about it because now he has slightly more of a stake in it. If the trend held, any Shark Tale sequel would have to, by necessity, begin with Oscar near to losing the Whale Wash (probably through his irresponsibility) and then ending with him reclaiming the small business. Shark Tale illustrates how complacent the masses of poor and predominantly Black Americans may be kept in their place by simply turning their dreams of equality into minority partners in the worst possible businesses in America. And that suits such ill-educated and lazy people anyway, if Shark Tale is any indication.

Women - fare no better in Shark Tale as characterized by three personas: Angie, Lola, and Katie Current. Angie (Zellweger) is intelligent but refuses to express herself. Indeed, she is characterized as demure, subservient (or at the very least deferential) to Oscar in all things and lacking in confidence in her own abilities and beauty. She has a crush on Oscar, wants to help him out, but only expresses her true love for him through violent, irrational outbursts when she has pushed him away. Moreover, her affections for Oscar compel her to remain silent when she learns of his duplicities rather than exposing him. Men, rejoice! Women won't turn you in if you pay them lip service from time to time. Show them the least amount of affection and they'll trail you like puppies. Except, that is, for the type like Lola (Angelina Jolie). Lola is a golddigger type explicitly (through music) characterized as a woman who is only after money. Of course, an urban fish like Oscar just sees good tail and will go after it, never thinking of the consequences. And then there's the annoying cameos by Katie Currant (Katie Couric), who is pushy and invasive as the lead reporter on the Reef. If her real shows are like the parody here, one wonders who watches her shows. So, to clarify, women in Shark Tale are either deferential, spineless and starved for attention or emotionless predators hungry for men's money or just plain annoying.

Italian-Americans - are simply brutish mobsters. The sharks in Shark Tale are the parody of Americans of Italian decent. Allow me to preface this by saying my view on the Italian-American Defamation League's problems with The Sopranos was an overreaction: "The Sopranos" never tried to characterize all Italian-Americans as gangsters, merely exploring that sect of Americans of Italian decent who happen to be mobsters and how they operate. Conversely, Shark Tale characterizes all sharks as mobsters (save Lenny, who is something of a pouf). Robert De Niro voices Don Lino and helps to perpetrate the stereotype of Italians as ruthless, family-loving mobsters who will terrorize those who they can hold any sort of power over, including their own assistants (characterized by an octopus in Shark Tale). The sharks solve their problems through asserting dominance and threats, respecting only strength and having a fiery temper.

Homosexuals - might be a bit of a stretch in Shark Tale, but Lenny (Jack Black) is played as an effeminate shark who disguises himself as a dolphin to leave the shark mob. The most obvious implication is that the pacifistic Lenny is somehow less of a man, a common stereotype about gays that the rabid homophobics never seem to spread when confronted with the athletic (and clearly masculine) sect of gays who place an emphasis on bodybuilding and fitness. Lenny is a caricature with a faint lisp, enthusiasm for dressing up and also happens to be an unmanly vegetarian.

Jews - what is far less opaque is the stereotype of Jews in Shark Tale. Since well before the time of Shakespeare, Jews have been characterized as the business-people, the money lenders, the people who are good with money and seem to have the financial advantage over everyone else. Martin Scorsese plays the pufferfish Sykes who is both an agent and a money lender. He is the common link between Don Lino and Oscar, the middleman between the Reef and the Mob. Which, if we've learned anything from the ethnic stereotypes in Shark Tale is appropriate. After all, who better to deal with the money of two vastly disparate groups as Blacks and Italians than a Jew?

And the final nail in the ethnic culture might well be Sykes' assistants. Two Rastafarian jellyfish who act as muscle for the Jewish accountant. Well, at least Shark Tale was smart enough to avoid any allegations of promoting hate crimes. After all, if a little urban fish is assaulted by Jamaican Immigrant jellyfish, it's not really a hate crime. It's "those people" doing it to themselves. And popular culture seems to have little problem with depictions of black on black crime, er, make that "urban on urban violence."

Shame on Shark Tale and those involved with it for their lack of foresight and transparent poor depictions of so many different ethnicities. For some of us, positive relations between all peoples - regardless of color, gender, sexuality or country of origin - is more than some fish story.

For other animated Dreamworks films, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs. Evil
Shrek Forever After
Hoodwinked!
Shrek

1.5/10

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

© 2012, 2007, 2004 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Shrek: A Collection Of Allusions That Fails To Be Its Own

The Good: Concept, Moments of humor
The Bad: Animation, Failure to be cohesive
The Basics: Surprisingly unsatisfying as it tells the same type joke over and over, Shrek is plagued with poor animation, timing and balance of allusions to original material.


Most spoof films don't rate so high in my book. It's not that I don't enjoy them, because usually, I do. The problem is they suffer exponentially upon rewatching. That is, a film like Spaceballs that plunders around the science fiction landscape alluding to something in each scene (though primarily focusing on Star Wars) is hilarious the first time, amusing the second and by the third, you're only smiling. Don't ask me to watch it a fourth time. Humor is tricky. I think the reason every true geek ends up reciting from Monty Python (usually, sigh, from Monty Python And The Holy Grail, though I personally prefer the episodes) and/or The Kids In the Hall is because it stands up well over multiple viewings. In fact, it's raw, honest humor that will endure so long as there's a society to be challenged; jokes on other works, especially more transient works than universal concepts, suffer immensely upon rewatching.

So, the first question is, was I entertained while watching Shrek? No. Would I reckon I'd enjoy it more or less the second go around? Less, most assuredly. The answer, in this case, is remarkably simple. I mean, usually when I'm borderline on something, as I was on Shrek, it takes me a day or two to diagnose the problem. In this case, it was that the film is a spoof and that's fine, but it's a spoof of the lowest order. That came out much more derogatory than I intended, allow me to explain. If a spoof is a work that alludes to others and attempts to usurp the purpose of the alluded films through humor, then it seems to me the greatest spoofs would call upon the most sources, mostly subtly (so at least 50% would take a second viewing simply to catch), while telling its own, unique story that becomes part of the collective unconscious in and of itself. I can't come up with a spoof that has done that yet either. As far as comedies go, Dogma would fill this niche. Moving on, it strikes me then that the lowest form of spoof would be the one that simply strings together allusion after allusion without adding anything truly unique. The lowest form of a spoof would be a one trick pony, mocking the alluded-to works in much the same way throughout. In simpler terms, the lowest form of spoof would tell the same joke over and over again essentially or pick on the alluded-to works in the same ways throughout.

Shrek is one such film. In it, the Ogre Shrek finds his swamp invaded by fairy tale creatures, in the company of a donkey, when he resolves to deal with the problem. So, he visits the diminutive Lord Farquaad and goes on a quest to rescue a princess who, despite her first impression, is not the typical fairy tale princess.

In short, Shrek is a ninety minute stringing together of jokes about fairy tales and Disney and Disney-style films. To its credit, it's a nice idea. I like the idea of mocking fairy tales. The problem is it turns them all the same way. Everything is supposedly not what we expect, so by the time we get five minutes in we're expecting it. For instance, Ogres are classically thought to be mean and evil and we're exposed to one who is good natured and a jokester. We encounter a donkey that speaks and pesters, rather than aids, the protagonist. Thus, by the time the Lord and the Princess enter, we expect them to be something other than they appear and we are not surprised then by their secrets.

To its credit, Shrek doesn't only attack fairy tales and Disney fare, it tackles plenty of other films (like The Matrix and Babe). The problem is, that's all it does. The film is a constant stringing together of allusions. I can't name a single scene that did not allude to some other work. So, it had the feel of a protracted mockery. Often, reviewers of films based on Saturday Night Live sketches complain that the sketches were wonderful, but that they film kills it stretching it into a work at least ninety minutes long. Well, Shrek suffers similarly and I think it no surprise that it clocks out at exactly ninety minutes.

My other beef, other than the lack of substance in this film, is the animation. I watched it on DVD and I was disappointed with the animation. I mean, Princess Fiona's eyes are lifelike and I know a lot of effort went into them. They are the superlative point of animation. The animation is choppy in parts and my real problem is in movements. Things in Shrek have a habit of not moving like things in real life. By that I mean that if you go back and watch early Disney films, it's obvious the animators study the ways bodies move and they worked hard to get it right. The animators in Shrek made no such efforts and it shows.

Good for two to five laughs, Shrek failed to do anything original, simply making joke after joke after joke after joke and, as we know, even comedies, even spoofs, need to have something more than just that.

For other animated films, please visit my reviews of:
Shrek Forever After: The Final Chapter
Hoodwinked!
Toy Story 3

5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my index page on the subject by clicking here!

© 2011, 2001 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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