More Of The Same: Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues Still Entertains!

The Good: Very funny, Decent performances
The Bad: Predictable plot and character arcs
The Basics: Cameos and incongruently hilarious lines (along with a surprising amount of social commentary), make Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues a worthwhile sequel!


As we reach the end of the year, I find myself catching movies I missed over the last year. I was actually surprised to discover that Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues came out a whole year ago! I guess that illustrates how excited I was about the Anchorman sequel. My wife, however, is a huge fan of Will Ferrell, so with the release of the trailer to Get Hard, she’s been eager to catch up on the Ferrell films she’s missed over the last two years. We started with Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues. We opted for the extended edition of Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues because what the hell is the point of the theatrical version when you can have half an hour more of Ron Burgundy?!

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues picks up right after Anchorman (reviewed here!) and for those who have not seen the first film, there is almost no humor in the movie that depends upon the first film. In fact, outside the introduction of Brick Tamland, the humor in Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues stands entirely on its own. But for those who are fans of Anchorman, while Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues is enjoyable, it is largely a continuation of what came before without much new . . . other than the lines. Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues is funny and continues the humor of Anchorman which worked best as a collection of hilarious lines, more than a humorous narrative. Like the first one, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues is the funniest when it is just playing with funny lines as opposed to moving the film in wacky directions.

After the success of Ron Burgundy and Veronica Corningstone working on the nightly news in San Diego, the pair moves to New York City. There, Veronica is offered a position as a major network news anchor and Ron Burgundy is fired. Six months later, Ron Burgundy is working at Sea World, getting drunk, fired and then unsuccessfully trying to kill himself. Offered a position at GNN, a new 24-hour news network in New York City, by Freddie Shapp immediately after his aborted suicide attempt, Ron Burgundy reunites his old news team to take the job at the cable news company. After getting Champ Kind, Brian Fantana, and Brick Tamland out of their current situations, the quartet goes to New York City where they meet their new boss, Linda (where they are shocked by working for a black woman).

Ron Burgundy adapts poorly to working at the cable station where the primetime anchor, Jack Lime, is better-looking and more popular than he is. While Brick falls for a secretary working for GNN, Ron ends up in a fight with Jack. Challenged to beat Jack’s ratings, despite being at the 2 A.M. timeslot, Ron creates soft news (infotainment) in an attempt to win. When infotainment makes Burgundy a national hit, his formula leads him to unprecedented success. He begins to present his own stories – like smoking crack on the air – and the results are awards, women, and even more success. But Burgundy’s new relationship with his boss and his attempts to keep his old family (winning them back) leads him to real conflict that puts him at odds with his oldest friends. When sweeps week puts him at odds with his ex-wife and his news team,

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues is, at best, a series of hilarious lines strung together by a thin plot involving Burgundy’s attempt to dominate cable news. As such, the film includes a pretty time-consuming subplot involving Brick and Chani, musical numbers, and otherwise incongruent comedic exchanges (condoms, horse piss, and the shock of working for a black boss). The film is funny, but is actually quite a bit smarter than one might expect.

Loaded with a social commentary that actually explores the degradation of journalism. While Burgundy creates feel-good pieces and ratingsbait, the commentary is actually impressive. Burgundy sinks a hard-hitting piece on how airplane parts are falling off planes and killing people because the corporate sponsors of GNN have a major stock interest in the airline that is criminally negligent. But, to appease the corporate owners of GNN, Burgundy eagerly jettisons the significant story in favor of a car chase. That Ron witlessly does the wrong thing is one thing, but as an audience able to evaluate the work, it is clear that writers Will Ferrell and Adam McKay had something to say.

It’s easy to overlook the commentary in Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues amid troublingly blatant jokes surrounding Ron Burgundy’s racism and the ridiculous plot development of Rob going blind. Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues starts to feel repetitive for those who have seen the first Anchorman as Ron refocuses his life on Veronica and his son. The film loses some of its focus as it transfers from being a story of an ambitious idiot working his way up the cable news ladder to achieve popularity when it takes a right turn with Ron and his son Walter rehabilitate a shark they find washed up on the shore of the lighthouse Ron moves into after he goes blind.

The performances in Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues are exactly what one expects from a Will Ferrell film that utilizes the strongly comedic cast that was assembled for the first film, along with newcomers (to the franchise) like Kristen Wiig, James Marsden, and Meagan Good. Even Dylan Baker, who usually plays straightlaced, powerful dramatic characters, plays Freddie as goofy and hilarious which is unlike any other performance of his I have seen.

The leads in Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues: Will Ferrell, David Koechner, Steve Carell, and Paul Rudd each reclaim their roles from the first film and they manage to make their characters distinct and funny. The film is funny, entertaining, and has more substance and commentary than the first, though it is more repetitive and familiar than it is audacious and originally. Still, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continued is worth watching!

For other works with David Koechner, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Cheap Thrills
Piranha 3DD
Paul
Extract
The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard
Sex Drive
Get Smart
Let’s Go To Prison
Farce Of the Penguins
Thank You For Smoking
The 40 Year Old Virgin
Waiting . . .

5.5/10

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

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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It’s Not Exactly Men In Black, But The Watch Is Very Funny.

The Good: Funny, Generally decent special effects, Performances are fine
The Bad: Predictable plot progression, Lighter on character than I would like.
The Basics: The Watch is a funny science fiction comedy that ultimately lacks the character/heart to make it worth watching more than once.


I can only imagine how director Avika Schaffer and the three writers of the piece (one of whom is Seth Rogan!) have dreaded the reviews of their film The Watch for the inevitable comparisons reviewers will make to Men In Black. Figuring that, I put Men In Black right in the title and at less than 100 words in, I’m referencing it because there is a comparison to be made and the target audience is the same. Men In Black (reviewed here!) revitalized the science fiction comedy in a way that made The Watch a feasible success.

The truth, however, is that The Watch is the hard “R” version of Men In Black with characters who are more the bumbling idiots or psychopaths as opposed to the professionals of MIB. Outside the plotting and special effects, The Watch has more in common with The Hangover (reviewed here!) and Super than it does Men In Black.

Evan is a very organized, but entirely fearful man whose friend was murdered. Trying to keep busy to avoid the pain and to prevent violence in the suburbs where he lives with his wife, Abby, Evan forms a neighborhood watch. The group comes together with Evan, Bob – a father of a teen daughter who he feels the need to keep an eye on -, Jamarcus – a divorce hoping to become part of the local community and get some action, and Franklin, the somewhat disturbed younger man who was psychologically unfit to be a police officer. The neighborhood watch they form quickly becomes more of an excuse to get together, drink, and develop a friendship.

After an incident where the quartet runs into an alien with green blood (that they initially mistake for an octopus), the four discover an alien weapon and soon find their otherwise peaceful neighborhood as ground zero for an alien invasion. As they take it upon themselves to rid the neighborhood of the extraterrestrials, they get in over their head and discover they might not be up to stopping the big threat.

The Watch rapidly loses its connection to Men In Black on the character front. First, Men In Black worked so well because of the “buddy cop” dynamic between Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. The Watch does not have that. While the movie focuses more on Ben Stiller’s Evan and Vince Vaughn’s Bob, the two are not so completely different. As a result, they tend to play off Jonah Hill and Richard Ayoade well, but The Watch lacks the instant charm of the chemistry between the leads; it is much more of an ensemble piece.

To be fair, it is very clear from the language, situations, and some of the effects that The Watch is not trying to simply retread Men In Black. Instead, it is going for hard core humor, trying to tap the market of people who grew up on Men In Black for an escapist piece that is more in line with where they are today. This is readily apparent by how irresponsibly the men of The Watch use the alien technology when they come across it. That they are eager to test the destructive capability of the alien weapons is very much “guy humor” and it is much more likely to appeal to those looking for a good laugh than it is to anyone looking for sensibility. In other words, The Watch gladly trades in any potential for a smart science fiction film in favor of getting the riotous laugh.

And The Watch is funny, but in a very obvious, expected way. In recent years, with movies like Observe And Report mixing violence and humor, there has been a bar that keeps getting pushed for risqué humor that often has a dark quality to it. The Watch treads in that tradition and many of the jokes have to do with drugs, violence, talking about sex, and utilizing foul language. And it’s funny, but the appeal is pretty limited and my experience has been that it does not replay especially well. Instead, by the end of The Watch many of the jokes are ones that the viewer can see coming.

On the acting front, The Watch is pretty solidly average. Ben Stiller has proven he can do serious and with The Watch he stays in his more deadpan mode than doing anything zany. Vince Vaughn gives viewers nothing new with his deliveries or performance as Bob and Franklin could be any number of Jonah Hill characters. The Watch was my first experience with the works of Richard Ayoade and he was funny in a dry, quietly ridiculous way. His talent seems to be for keeping a straight face while delivering some of the most questionable and offensive dialogue in the film, but he does that very well.

Ultimately, The Watch is undeniably average-at-best. It is a summer popcorn movie that wants to be this year’s The Hangover. Sadly, it lacks the charm even for that.

For other science fiction comedies, please check out my reviews of:
Galaxy Quest
Evolution
Men In Black 3

5/10

For other movie reviews, be sure to 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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Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy: Very Funny, But Very Average Comedy.

The Good: Funny, DVD bonus features, Generally the acting
The Bad: Somewhat repetitive humor
The Basics: Funny, but often a one-trick pony, Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy excels on the acting front more than on the character or plot points.


Some part of me has come to entirely embrace the old axiom that it is easier to get work if you already have it. I come to this acceptance by way of watching more and more movies my wife loves. She is a big fan of films I derisively call "dumb comedies." She doesn't argue; she's looking for light fare full of dick and fart jokes, unburdened by social commentary. She wants foul language, nudity and jokes that are racy and while I have not, traditionally, been a fan of such fare, I have found a few that I enjoy. Largely, the ones that she enjoys are the works that feature Will Ferrell in them. She's a fan and there are a few works by or featuring Ferrell or from his production company that I have come to enjoy.

The latest in the parade of movies my partner has subjected me to is Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy. This brings me back to my original premise. Having just seen The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard which is by the same creative team as Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy and Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby, it is easy to see how the production company makes its friends and sticks with them. The primary cast for the three films is startlingly similar, especially with the troupe surrounding Ferrell. It seems David Koechner and Kathryn Hahn, for example, have comedic talents Ferrell and his team enjoy exploiting. The only problematic aspect of their continued cinematic associations is that they never seem to be asked to do anything other than their initial shtick. Fortunately, Ferrell and his team mix it up by infusing other talent, like Steve Carell and Christina Applegate into their otherwise familiar mix.

In Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy, Will Ferrell plays Ron Burgundy, a newscaster in San Diego who is at the top of his game. He wins the nightly ratings battle for the attention of his audience and reports the news with his team, smoking and drinking his way through his sappy deliveries of the nightly news. In the 1970s, Burgundy becomes a legend and his arrogance grows, in part because he is surrounded by sycophants like Champ Kind, Brian Fantana, and weatherman Brick Tamland. But when diversity becomes the word of the day, Burgundy is teamed up with investigative reporter and newscaster Veronica Corningstone.

While Ron works to seduce Veronica, she finds his advances both annoying and charming. When they do hook up, Ron almost immediately violates their privacy by reporting the act. After further incidents which disrespect her, Veronica sets out for revenge. She gets it through Ron's Achilles heel; having Ron swear on air by simply changing his call line on the teleprompter. As Veronica takes over, Ron flounders and his team struggle to get on without him.

Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy is essentially a mock documentary of the life of Ron Burgundy and the humor is derived largely from uncomfortable deadpans and such things as one of the characters (Brick) being mentally retarded and socially awkward. The reversals, like Ron promising Veronica he will not say anything about their sex immediately followed by him telling all of his friends, tend to happen quickly and be very predictable. This is not to say the film isn't funny, but it is a very standard sort of absurdist humor for which Will Ferrell is famous. That said, there's not much surprising here.

Ferrell presents Ron Burgundy as a stiff, strangely formal character whose on-air persona never goes away. As a result, when he tries to interact with friends or with Veronica, there come strange deliveries that seem inappropriate for the setting (imagine having a newscaster on a dinner date who spoke with the same deliveries as they did on-air). Ferrell is adept at the deliveries and he makes Ron Burgundy funny as a result. However, because most of the humor is related directly to either delivering the news or scoring with Veronica, much of the movie seems repetitive.

This is where DVD truly pushes a film up; in the bonus features, where Will Ferrell plays Ron Burgundy for an interview, the result is absolutely hilarious. Ferrell is fearless in his presentation of the parody opposite a serious interviewer and the result is comic gold. Similarly, the outtakes and deleted scenes are very funny.

What Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy does best is lampoon the pretensions of the news industry, especially in the way it attempts to make information entertainment. Things like the repeated joke where Burgundy and his team stride toward the camera and look earnestly at it and one another effectively skewer the way actual news organizations try to blur the lines between disseminating information and keeping an audience hooked with personalities. Of course, the movie is not at all just social commentary, which is made evident by the battle royale that occurs between Ron Burgundy's news crew and those of the competing stations (which is little more than an excuse for cameos by people like Ben Stiller). That scene creates a parody of violence and offsets the predictable and slow moments revolving around the news story of the decade, a pregnant panda at the San Diego zoo.

All of the actors are thoroughly invested in their roles and it is hard to actually criticize the acting here. While Ferrell and Koechner do their usual schtick - they play off one another wonderfully - and Fred Willard plays the station manager pretty much exactly as any fan of his would predict, other performers nail their roles. Steve Carell, for example, establishes his dry wit on the big screen perfectly as Brick. He has a dry delivery that underplays any form of sarcasm and given that this is one of his roles before The Office, it is easy to see how he got that role. He plays Brick as a hapless mentally challenged individual and that works.

But the real standout for acting has to be Christina Applegate. Yes, Christina Applegate, whose fame was predicated on her looks, appears in Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy as Veronica and she is impressive. Veronica is basically the straightman to Ron's absurdity and Applegate plays off Ferrell's over-the-top comic sense with an understated delivery that makes her the perfect foil. More than that, she plays Veronica as incredibly smart and she seems mature and intelligent enough to plausibly be in the place she is. Applegate is a surprise who steals all of her scenes.

This is quite a feat when one considers that much of the movie is spent with the characters staring at the camera delivering lines. When not doing that, Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy is simple hoping to grab laughs off the look of the 1970s personas. Ron dresses in a maroon suit and he and his companions have big-70s hair. Those jokes replay less well than the satirical comments on the news industry but they still work.

Largely, though, Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy is good, escapist humor that sets out to get some laughs and it does that. It does little more than that, but it works for what it is.

For other works with David Koechner, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Piranha 3DD
Paul
Extract
Sex Drive
Get Smart
Let’s Go To Prison
Farce Of the Penguins
Thank You For Smoking
The 40 Year Old Virgin
Waiting . . .

6/10

For other movie reviews, be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Part Three of Jennifer Lopez's Hat Trick, Tarsem's The Cell Disappoints

The Good: Imagery, Moments of concept.
The Bad: Lack of character, Mediocre performances
The Basics: While Catherine Deane runs around inside the head of a killer, the audience becomes acclimated to the horror and wonders why she does not.


There was a moment when the world completely opened up to Jennifer Lopez. When she began her music career, she had a weekend that she had the distinct honor of having the #1 album in the nation (On The 6), the #1 single in the U.S. ("If You Had My Love") and the #1 movie with The Cell. The Cell is a fairly derivative movie directed by Tarsem, the man who directed the R.E.M. video "Losing My Religion." For his feature film debut, he essentially uses the same techniques and imagery that made that music video one of the more memorable ones.

Catherine Deane is a psychotherapist whose unconventional technique to help a traumatized boy is to journey into his mind to help him work through his trauma from the safety of his own imagination. Near to where Deane is doing her breakthrough work, the FBI is hot on the heels of a serial killer, Stargher. Stargher's fetish/modus operandi is to capture a woman and place her in a glass cell. After 40 hours, the prison is filled with water, essentially becoming an aquarium, and the woman he has in there drowns. Unfortunately for the FBI, when he is found, he is comatose, so agent Novak brings Stargher to Deane and she enters his mind to find where his latest victim is being held before her time runs out.

It seems to me, ever since Jacob's Ladder (reviewed here!), Hollywood has been looking for another film that is essentially a nightmare on celluloid. The relative success of Jacob's Ladder proved to some that one could essentially string together a whole bunch of terrifying images with the barest plot and sell it as a movie. The Cell seems like the natural successor in that history. Unlike a movie like What Dreams May Come, The Cell takes little time to develop the protagonists in a compelling way and resorts for the most part to the twisted imagery of the killer's mind to define Stargher.

Even so, the box-office success of The Cell is no real surprise. It was sold on Jennifer Lopez and the advertisements featuring Lopez dressed in various outfits no doubt brought the crowds in. It certainly was not the themes or plot of the movie that made this a load of dough, as it was far too conceptual and abstract for most people. This is essentially a science fiction crossover into the psychological horror.

The superlative aspect of The Cell, however, is not Jennifer Lopez, it is the direction and imagery from director Tarsem. Tarsem was an excellent choice to direct this visual-intensive film because he has an eye for metaphor, a great sense of lighting and a rich understanding of the use of color. So, for example, when Catherine's world is presented, the color contrast is richly different from the inside of Stargher's mind. Tarsem very effectively shows the statement he is trying to make without having to have characters speak about it.

And even though Tarsem utilizes some of the same imagery in this film that he used in the R.E.M. video he directed, he pulls it off well, making it feel new and different enough that it's easy to watch.

Tarsem's visual sense heightens the horror of The Cell, as his sense of what will be most disturbing is timed to have maximum impact. So, for example, early in Catherine's trip into Stargher's mind, a horse is vivisected by glass panels and spread apart where it appears to continue living (though it's not goin' out for any gallops anymore!). While this is widely regarded as a reference to the artwork of Damien Hirst, the image is effect, gross and powerful. Somewhere, there is still a woman beating her fella' senseless for dragging her to The Cell on a date.

The problem is not in Tarsem's direction or his sense of visual style, which creates some genuinely intriguing moments. The problem with The Cell is that effect is only one aspect of a movie. Unlike Requiem For A Dream, which had characters who were loathsome and descending into a metaphorical nightmare, The Cell features largely unremarkable characters living through a literal nightmare in the mind of Stargher.

Writer Mark Protosevich does not create characters that are empathetic, much less sympathetic or interesting. Sure, there are moment that the audience, like Catherine, manages to feel sorry for Carl, the boy Stargher once was. But whatever emotional connection the viewer has with the humanity of Carl is mortgaged by the way the film journeys into the nonsensical. Catherine becomes trapped within Stargher's mind, but it's unclear what keeps her trapped. Indeed, when Novak joins her in the mind of the killer, it's only when he starts shouting out personal information that she snaps out of the stupor she's in. But by that point, the character does not make sense. Catherine is strong, we're led to believe, but she becomes virtually hypnotized such that nothing has an effect on her, including watching Novak being tortured. IT's hard to believe that someone as empathetic as Catherine, who works so hard to help Edward (the boy) would not respond to a colleague being tortured.

Moreover, it seems very cheap that the person who has the most experience with this technique needs to be reminded that it's all unreal. My point here is that the characters are all flat and make no real sense. Novak adapts far too quickly to the nightmarish world he finds himself in (now if it was Mulder from The X-Files, it would be different . . .) and Catherine becomes victimized in a way that makes too little sense. Indeed, Stargher adapts pretty quickly and rationally to having other people running around in his head for someone who is supposed to be completely insane.

As it is, though Stargher is the best-developed character in the film and he is also played the best. Vincent D'Onofrio portrays Stargher and through all the weird outfits, hairstyles and beastly permutations Stargher takes on, D'Onofrio maintains menace and a strength of presence that makes it easy to believe his character is utterly insane.

Ultimately, though, it's not enough. Protosevich and Tarsem take the cheap, Hollywood, way out to resolve the movie, much like the way all of the last Star Trek movies degenerated into a "kill-the-villain" situation. Unlike the far superior The City Of Lost Children (reviewed here!) that has essentially the same plot - and precedes this by a couple of years - The Cell resorts to the big, Hollywood tough-woman-through-violence routine. It's cheap. The City Of Lost Children resolved its conflict in a far more compelling way and it worked with the characters, whereas it's hard to buy a psychologist slipping as far as Deane does.

What pushes the movie up into average territory is that it did not insult my intelligence by trying the cheapest trick in a movie like this. At the beginning, there are tests Deane is given as she comes out of the experience that establish that she is all together and she is herself. I waited for an end where there would be the cheap reversal of Stargher taking over Deane and being loose in the world in her body, but I was pleased to see neither Protosevich nor Tarsem were so unoriginal.

As it is, the images are interesting and disturbing, but not enough to recommend this movie. What Dreams May Come and The City Of Lost Children provide better opportunities to explore a visual marvel and a similar plot.

For other films where dreams are an essential aspect of the film, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Inception
A Nightmare On Elm Street
Coraline


5/10

For other film reviews, please be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing of the films I have reviewed!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Eh, On The Action-Adventure Front: Mr. And Mrs. Smith Fizzles.

The Good: Everything looks good
The Bad: Lack of convincing characters or acting, Predictable plot twists
The Basics: Unfit for consumption by clever individuals, Mr. And Mrs. Smith is simply another Hollywood action-adventure with nothing truly to recommend it.


Sometimes we sit down to watch a movie with the hope, the barest hope, that it will not be as terrible as we suspect it can be. Mr. And Mrs. Smith, if you want the short answer, is just as terrible as you might expect of a big-budget Hollywood, action adventure movie staring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Unlike the far better Jersey Girl, which suffered because of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez's relationship off-camera, this piece of cinematic garbage apparently benefited from Jolie and Pitt's off-camera whatever.

John Smith and Jane Smith are bored with their marriage and in counseling to work on their problems. There, they recount what led them to counseling; they both learned that the other was lying to them about the same thing, in fact. Both John and Jane are hired assassins working for different companies. When one of Jane's missions is blown by John, he becomes her target and the two set out destroying just about everything in order to get to one another.

Along the way, they learn how much of their relationship was built on lies and how much genuine feeling they have for one another. And it all resolves itself in a feel-good Hallmark movie-of-the-week type way.

It's just crap. Save yourself the time and money. Better yet, watch a decent action adventure, one with brains. Spend a little more and get the first season of Alias on DVD. That's a vastly better use of your time and money. And I can say that without even knowing you. You can do better than this.

The best thing about Mr. And Mrs. Smith is that it looks good. The people are unnaturally attractive, their hair doesn't get messed up or singed off when giant explosions go off near them, and the explosions themselves look great on the DVD. This is a movie where things look good and Doug Liman, the director, hopes that will be enough.

He's wrong. First off, Simon Kinberg, the writer of this movie, should be forced to turn in his WGA card and spend the next five years selling ice cream. There was not a line of redeeming dialogue in this entire movie. The characters are utterly flat and it makes no sense whatsoever that they would spend minute after minute recounting all of the lies between them and then conclude that they should be together. This is stupid even for Hollywood fare.

The acting is all-around terrible as well. Brad Pitt supports the notion that he is simply good looking and can't act. There is none of his brilliance from 12 Monkeys (reviewed here!), none of his humor or charm from his guest appearance on Friends, nothing but a guy in a suit playing a part Keeanu Reeves could have covered just as insightfully. Angelina Jolie and Vince Vaughn (Pitt's sidekick and best friend in the movie) are dull and cringeworthy unfunny, respectively. Vaughn's appearances on screen are enough to make the viewer grab the remote to fast forward through his banal, predictable jokes and phrases.

The plot is predictable and all of the reversals that are executed, we've seen before in better works. I should try to say more that's bad about this film, but that's it. That's all there is. You have a terrible script with an inane plot, lousy dialogue delivered by actors who either can't or aren't performing and you have a lousy movie. This is it.

For other works with Michelle Monaghan, please be sure to check out my reviews of:
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
Source Code
Mission: Impossible III
Constantine

2.5/10

For other film reviews, please be sure to visit my Movie Review Index Page for a complete, organized list of my movie reviews!

© 2012, 2006 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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"Mistletoe!" I Beg To Be Let Out Of Four Christmases!

The Good: Opens well, surprisingly
The Bad: Guts all character, Previews ruined virtually all of the humor, Not extraordinary acting.
The Basics: What could have been an average Christmas comedy is brought down by a smart beginning that develops into a predictable, formulaic comedy that makes no real sense.


Christmas movies tend to fare poorly with me because I have a low tolerance for schmaltz. Indeed, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (click here for that review!) and How The Grinch Stole Christmas (click here for that review!) remain some of the movies I have been especially critical of. In fact, the only movie centered around Christmas that comes to mind that I love is Love, Actually (click here for that film's review!) and that, arguably, is not for the Christmas elements of the film. So, seeing an insufferable number of previews for Four Christmases did not help its chances of getting a favorable review from me.

So, if anything, I went into Four Christmases knowing I was a bit biased against the movie, but I took my brother because I knew it was his kind of movie. The thing is, Four Christmases begins with enough humor, character, and fun that I found myself smiling. I found myself actually thinking - literally, the words! - "This might be like Sex Drive, I might be pleasantly surprised!" Instantly, the characters were engaging - they had character! - the humor was general and worked and I was having fun. Then came the first joke that had been in one of the many trailers, right around the same time as the first noticeably bad editing cut and the movie took a sharp right turn to Disappointmentville (you know its Christmastime when it's the train to "Disappointmentville" as opposed to . . . )

After a particularly invigorating role playing exercise out at a bar where Brad and Kate pretend to have anonymous sex with a stranger (when, in fact, they've been dating for three years and this is one of their many activities together), the couple prepares to avoid their families for Christmas by vacationing together in a spa in Fiji. Unfortunately for them, all flights out of San Francisco are postponed for the day because of fog. Kate gets caught by her mother, who sees the pair on the news and Brad and Kate are suddenly stuck cramming four Christmas celebrations into one day.

The pair visits Brad's blue-collar father, Kate's born again mother, Brad's new age mother and finally, Kate's nonentity father, all the while interacting with family members and children who torment them and challenge their ideas of what being parents might be like. After firmly rejecting marriage and parenthood for so long, Kate begins to think that she might want to settle down with Brad and this leads to tension between them.

"It's that kind of movie." Let's just start there. It's that kind of movie; it's a Christmastime romantic comedy where the point, of course, is to reinforce the importance of family and help the selfish happy couple realize that their lack of conformity to social mores is ultimately unacceptable and they can only derive real joy from falling into the same rut as most Americans. We get that going into the movie, but Four Christmases did two things to try to make itself appear like it wasn't going to be like that. First, all of the press. If you've been to a Regal Cinema for the past month (or two), you've seen previews for Four Christmases and in their "First Look" screensaver show before the movie, this is one of the movies that Regal (especially) has been plugging with interviews about the movie. In one of those, actress Reese Witherspoon makes a point of saying that what makes Four Christmases different from other movies of the type is that while Kate and Brag experience all sorts of humiliations at the hands of their respective families, it brings them together and they bond over the course of the day, as opposed to being torn apart by that.

Ms. Witherspoon: I hate it when celebrities lie to me! Far from being as reassuring and different as the star claims, the day is not about Kate and Brad comforting one another and sticking with one another through the hells that are their families. Kate abandons Brad to be beaten up by his brothers and nephews, never using their safe escape word ("Mistletoe!") to help him, instead expecting he might be able to do that while having the crap kicked out of him by his family, as she watches. Similarly, Brad leaves Kate to her own devices while she is trapped in the "jump jump" with children who are attacking her and then again on stage at an evangelical nativity play. Far from it, Four Christmases is about the Christmas Brad and Kate almost didn't make it.

The second thing that made me believe that this might be a different movie and actually surprise me was the vehemence of the arguments Brad and Kate have at the outset of the movie against having children or getting married. They were convincing, they were funny, it worked! I sat in my seat and I believed the lies . . . until the first bad cut.

The problem with Four Christmases is that it starts out with character and a decent message/theme and then it utterly abandons it in the most nonsensical way possible. After three very funny scenes wherein the viewer is treated to just how much in love Kate and Brad are and how adamant they are that marriage will ruin what they have, the movie launches into the whole idea of spending the four Christmas celebrations with their various families. Like Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back where Kevin Smith talks about how he had a vision of what the movie was when he wrote and directed the movie, only to be told by the studios that no, he had written a road movie, so get the characters on the road as quickly as possible, director Seth Allen is suddenly directing a Christmas movie, so get them to the Christmas celebrations as quickly as possible. This is done by Kate taking ONE phone call and suddenly, they are locked into FOUR visits. I sat in my seat and said, "What?! He didn't even answer HIS phone, how did they get committed to anything but one?!"

But let's boil it down to its simplest elements because I'm beginning to actually dislike the movie more, the more I write about it: I can deal with it being "that kind of movie," but it still has to make sense. Kate and Brad do EVERYTHING together and have a loving, healthy relationship where they love and respect one another and WANT to be together and stay happy and loving, so they have decided to not have children. They loathe children and in the process of their day, they meet with family who humiliates and abuses them, they see children who commit acts of violence against them, act like brats, and spit up on them and this makes them decide they WANT to have kids! Now, admittedly, I have a little bias here: I'm happily childfree (yes, there are those of us in the world). I was thrilled because for a moment Four Christmases looked like it might advocate a positive, childfree position. But no, all it takes is Kate seeing Brad holding one baby before her reserve cracks.

So, here we have two very intelligent, well-employed people who have love and have made a conscious decision based on logic, reason AND emotions and all it takes for them to change their minds is abandoning one another to the wolves that are each other's families and the reinforcement of all of their worst fears about having children (and, to a lesser extent, marriage). Call me crazy, but whenever I witness my worst-case scenario for something I decided against in another person or couple, it doesn't make me think "wow, I should try that," I think, "Wow, I sure dodged a bullet!" So, even if it's "that kind of movie," it still has to be good at being "that kind of movie" and Four Christmases is not.

And yes, it is appropriate to rail against it being "that kind of movie" even at the holidays. Your single or childless friends don't need yet another Hollywood film coming along and trying to convince them that they are selfish or miserable for not having or wanting children (we tend to have parents for that). Here are two DINKs who are able to have fun, provide their loved ones with fabulous things and treat one another beautifully: why should they suddenly want children, especially when they see how rotten other people's kids have turned out and know about their own boatloads of issues?

The marriage issue is dealt with somewhat better than the child issue, though there's an irritating tendency in Four Christmases to push the two hand-in-hand. At no point do either of the protagonists say "Okay, maybe children, but we were right about not getting married." Instead, the idea of marriage working for the couple comes out in a particularly witless scene where Brad's brother Denver and his wife mop the floor with everyone in a game that proves how well they know one another. The reason this scene doesn't work like it could in virtually every other movie is that Kate and Brad do everything together and love doing things with one another. You don't have that level of interaction with someone without picking up on what they like, dislike, etc.

In other words, Four Christmases sacrifices any sense of character for a dumb, obvious comedy that is just plain troubling. Indeed, much of the movie is violent physical comedy that will largely appeal to the under 13 crowd or slapstick and gross-out humor like babies spitting up on people. All of this is in the trailer and rather than go on my usual rant against preview trailers that show all of the movie - this one did - I'm going in a different direction. Mr. Gordon: watch the preview trailer for your movie Four Christmases. If that doesn't make you want to fire your editor, I don't know what would. The editing for the trailer has an actual sense of comedic timing, lines like Witherspoon talking to her mom about Brad giving her a hug are actually funny (at least the first time) in the trailer. In the movie, it is cut together with such speed that there is no joke there. As well, there are elements in the trailers that did not make the final cut, so this is bound to be loaded with deleted scenes for the DVD. One suspects, again that there is some pressure here to get the Christmas visits started because some of that humor might have slowed down the film. But with only 82 minutes to the movie to begin with, it's tough to wonder why they weren't included at least to get it up to the requisite 90 minutes most films are held to (matinees only, people!).

The soundtrack in Four Christmases is annoyingly overt through most of the film as well, with background music being up-tempo Christmas remixes, as if to remind the viewer before the visits begin that they are watching a Christmas movie. The whole editing problem persists throughout the movie and if comedy is based upon surprise, virtually all of the best moments once the Christmas visits begin are ruined by the trailers. Actually, the only real laughs to be had outside what was in the trailers is all dialogue-based - ahh, geriatric sex jokes! - and the overall feeling of the movie is that this is a sloppy movie. Yes, those of us who watch even "that kind of movie" for details will be shocked at how poorly put together this movie is. For example, after being vomited on by a baby, Kate is forced to wear clothes her sister has for her at her mother's house despite the fact that her luggage would have been in the car they came in (all of the gifts were mailed beforehand and if the couple was that eager to get the day over with, they would have gone right from the airport . . .)

The pacing is also terribly off in Four Christmases, with the first two families taking a disproportionately long time. Family visit number three is essentially a setup for a single joke (it's in the trailers) and the final one isn't funny at all, merely the chance for everyone to come around to their obvious and predestined revelations.

As for the acting . . . Jon Voight might as well have walked off the set of Pride And Glory and onto the set of Four Christmases for all of the differences in how he plays the two parts I've seen him in the last month. Kristin Chenowith plays yet another perky, ditzy woman and Jon Favreau is yet another Neanderthal type man. It turns out that this is actually the first movie starring Vince Vaughn I've sat through but he plays the role of Brad exactly as I would have expected given the few supporting roles I've seen him in or in previews for other dumb comedies in which he starred.

As for Reese Witherspoon . . . Merry Christmas: I'm not going to go into how poorly she was boxed into an obvious role and relegated to passing off her smile and a look of cautious intrigue as comedy. Please, just don't lie to me again.

Four Christmases is exactly the movie is appears to be from the trailers, only the process of getting there is nowhere near as funny, clever or sensible as it could have been. And no one needs their intelligence or values insulted for Christmas.

For other Christmas movies, please check out my reviews of:
The Muppet Christmas Carol
Batman Returns
The Nightmare Before Christmas

3.5/10

For other film reviews, be sure to check out my index page by clicking here!

© 2010, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.




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